Wrestling Observer Rewinder

December 23, 1996

Shout out to u/YotesFan22 who sent me this issue. It's not on the Observer website for some reason and I had no idea until he sent me a scanned copy. Direct all upvotes his way!
WWF's latest In Your House PPV is in the books and was fine, but nothing special. It was basically just a throwaway show. Sid kept the title, which sets up Shawn to win it at Rumble next month in his hometown, which then should lead to Michaels vs. Hart at Wrestlemania. Other notes from the show: on commentary during the Hunter Hearst Helmsley match, McMahon and Jim Ross talked about Helmsley being court-martialed in military school, and McMahon acted aghast that someone would be such a bad person. It's an inside joke because, as a child, McMahon was court-martialed in military school. Also on commentary, Michaels made semi-shoot comments about Hart being arrogant and also tore into Sid, saying he'd be nothing if guys like him weren't carrying him every night. Which Dave says is true, but, yanno...probably not the time or place. After the match, Shawn got into it with Bret and after the show went off the air, Michaels lost his cool and got into an argument with a fan that was heckling him. Because Shawn.
Atsushi Onita made his return to the ring for FMW in his first match after retiring a year and a half ago. The show made huge headlines in mainstream sports papers and was sold out weeks in advance. The show was also the retirement of Mr. Pogo, who suffered serious injuries in a match earlier this year with Terry Funk and also has a heart condition that forced him to retire (this didn't last).
The PPV schedule won't be slowing down in 1997. WWF plans to have their Big 5 shows (Rumble, WM, KOTR, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series) and in the months in between, there will be the smaller In Your House PPVs. WCW has 12 PPV events on the schedule for 97, and two of them are billed as NWO events. Plus, UFC has announced 5 PPVs, plus ECW's long-awaited PPV debut is scheduled for sometime in the spring, most likely on April 13th. RequestTV has approved carrying ECW's show, but word is Viewer's Choice is unsure, due to concerns over the angle with Sandman's son.
TNT has beaten the USA Network (and everything else) in the 1996 prime-time ratings race, mostly due to high ratings for NFL football and WCW Monday Nitro. USA was in second place and TBS was third. But even though Nitro has been kicking Raw's ass and Raw ratings are down, Dave says it's worth noting that the Raw ratings are still doing better than the average rating of everything else on the USA Network, which should mean it's in no danger of being cancelled, even if WCW continues to win. It's still the highest rated show on USA every Monday.
AAA president Antonio Pena has been making plays for several top Mexican stars, trying to sign them and using his connections with WWF as bait. He's basically promising people that if they sign with him, he will get them contracts with WWF as well. He approached El Hijo del Santo, Negro Casas, and Hector Garza among others. In the case of Santo, who has had longstanding heat with Pena, Santo told him that if WWF wants him, they can contract him themselves and basically told Pena to go get fucked.
Hiroshi Hase will be working prelim matches in All Japan when he starts with them, despite being one of the biggest stars in Japan. The gimmick is basically that, since Hase is coming into the promotion for the first time, he's got to start at the bottom like everyone else and work his way up.
In Louisville, Ian Rotten's promotion IWA-Mid South has been running a one-sided promotional feud against USWA and it seems to be working. USWA runs weekly shows in Louisville and every time they're there, Rotten shows up and hands out fliers for his IWA promotion until security makes him leave. As for the shows themselves, Rotten has been having major bloodbath and weapons matches and the crowds seem to be growing each week. He also has Tommy Rich and Tracy Smothers working for him as his top heels and the storyline is that they are USWA bounty hunters who are there to put IWA out of business. Of course, USWA has nothing to do with any of this.
In ECW, Chris Candido did a bit where he was pretending to be sick with a bad cold and claimed he had a disease called Kerwinsilfitis which is a reference to WWF TV producer Kerwin Silfies.
Former 1960s-70s wrestling star Jerry Valiant is currently working as a mall Santa in Franklin, IN.
On Nitro, Eric Bischoff and Ted Dibiase did the announcing for the first hour and called it NWO Nitro. Dave says Bischoff was so obnoxious that if they still did the year end award for Most Obnoxious, Bischoff would have clinched it for the year and probably all the way through the year 2000 based on just this episode alone. He barely called any of the action, he spent time running down WWF, and was just irritating as shit for the entire hour.
WCW has negotiated a 3-year deal to air Nitro on Canal Plus, which is a French TV network that has been airing WWF programming for nearly a decade. But WWF will now be replaced on the channel by WCW, which is a pretty huge blow to WWF and a big win for WCW.
Expect WCW to bring in Tatanka (under another name) and possibly Bam Bam Bigelow to join the NWO soon. As far as Bam Bam, it's not quite a sure thing since the main reason he left WWF is because he didn't get along with Hall and Nash (neither happened).
Randy Savage is expected to re-sign with WCW soon. Word is he's not really happy with the offer they've got on the table, but it's better than WWF's offer, so he's expected to begrudgingly take it.
Diamond Dallas Page held a Christmas party at his house (which everyone backstage was calling Silicon Valley due to Kimberly Page having a bunch of her stripper and modelling friends there). They actually taped an angle at the party with Eric Bischoff crashing it with the NWO. But another incident took place after the cameras were off that wasn't an angle. Former WCW wrestler Van Hammer was there and began talking trash about WCW for using "little Mexican wrestlers" and then eventually he started trashing the British wrestlers, specifically Steve Regal and David Taylor. Well, Regal was there at the party and turns out he's the wrong person to piss off. A confrontation ensued and 2 headbutts later, Van Hammer was unconscious on the floor. Bischoff reportedly said Van Hammer will never work in WCW again (that didn't last long). Also, ECW star Raven was at the party, but only because he's good friends with Page, nothing to it beyond that.
On Raw, they turned Goldust babyface and heterosexual, because evidently in WWF, the two have to go hand-in-hand. They did a bit where Goldust got protective because Hunter Hearst Helmsley was hitting on Marlena and Lawler was confused. During an interview, he eventually asked Goldust "Aren't you a queer?" and Goldust loudly said "NO!" which got a huge pop and then he punched Lawler.
They did another angle on Raw similar to the Shawn Michaels/Owen Hart angle where Bart Gunn dropped Billy Gunn on the top rope, seemingly breaking his neck. The match abruptly stopped while doctors ran out and both Billy and Bart's wives ran into the ring crying. Unlike the Shawn Michaels angle, nobody was buying it this time and it came across cheesy.
On a radio show, Shawn Michaels was asked about Hulk Hogan and called him a "worthless human being and total piece of shit." Due to the 7-second delay, they were able to bleep Shawn's cursing before it aired.
The Fake Razor and Fake Diesel characters are still around working dark matches and whatnot, and they're greeted with NWO chants every time they come out. Everyone in WWF realizes that the angle has flopped but they're trying to salvage something from it. They've all but given up on Rick Bogner (fake Razor) but everyone in the company likes Glen Jacobs because he has a great look and size and everyone says he's trained hard and works hard to improve. So they'll probably keep him around and eventually repackage him.
Letters section: only notable thing is some guy writing a loooooong ass letter berating Dave for not giving an ECW match as many stars as he thought it deserved. You know, basically every day of Dave's Twitter feed nowadays.