Wrestling Observer Rewinder

January 06, 1997

Hey there. I'm back! And luckily, I managed to bust ass and get all of 1997 written up so we're good to go. Let's get this party underway. You know the drill, every Mon-Fri unless real life gets in the way. Let's do this!
After a week of negotiations, Paul Heyman is said to be "cautiously optimistic" that ECW will be able to work out a deal with Request TV to air their planned first ever PPV in April. The deal fell apart after Request TV president Hugh Panero learned of the Mass Transit incident from back in November. Panero said he initially thought ECW was just another wrestling promotion like WWF and WCW, but after learning they were a more violent, adult oriented company, he had some concerns. "As the new kid on the block they have to demonstrate they (ECW) are up to the same level of professionalism as WWF and WCW," Panero said. "My people thought they were like WWF and WCW and when we found out differently, we started to do more research. I have no intention of banning them." Viewers Choice has still decided against carrying the show because of the angle with Sandman's son and they aren't budging on that. Losing Viewers Choice probably cuts a good 30% of pure profit from the potential money the show would likely make. If they do good numbers on Request TV, then Viewers Choice may be influenced to carry a 2nd PPV in the future, but it depends on how well the first one does.
Prior to these discussions, Request TV had released a statement on the cancellation. Here's the full statement:
"Request TV has been in on-going discussions with Extreme Championship Wrestling to carry one of its events in 1997. During these discussions we learned about specific incidents involving an underage ECW wrestler who appeared to be seriously injured during an event in Massachusetts. We were surprised that the ECW never mentioned that these public relations problems existed, and contrary to the claims made by the ECW, no tape of the incident was sent to anyone at Request TV.
"Whenever we work with a new PPV event provider we like to be thorough in investigating their ability to stage a quality event. Therefore, my staff was instructed to research these alleged incidents and discovered that they were true, and also learned that generally the ECW was theatrically more violent than other wrestling events. Based on this new information and the fact that an ECW event would be a step up from being a local event to a national PPV event, we decided it would be prudent to temporarily cancel the event while we did additional research to better understand how the ECW operates.
"We are still considering carrying the event and, as we would with any national PPV event, we are taking great precautions to ensure that when an event does air it meets all of our standards to create longevity for that particular event."
ECW is having to make some compromises in order to get Request to air the PPV. Request is concerned about any scandals like the Mass Transit incident or a repeat of the famous fire incident and they want ECW to put safeguards in place to make sure nothing else like that happens. Blood will be allowed, as long as they don't overdo it and if they air a warning at the beginning of the show. No stabbing motions with sharp objects will be allowed (for example, no one will be allowed to do an Abdullah The Butcher gimmick and stab someone with a fork). Request also wants paperwork on all the participants on the show to make sure they're of legal age (remember, Mass Transit was only 17) and if Heyman has any last minute surprise participants on the show, Request has to be notified in advance. They also want a medical team on hand, which ECW already does anyway.
The story of ECW possibly getting their PPV cancelled has blown up in the last week, with many hardcore ECW fans placing the blame on Wade Keller of the Pro Wrestling Torch newsletter. Keller interviewed Panero, asking about the PPV and about his thoughts on the Mass Transit video, which Keller believed Panero had already seen (because Paul Heyman had said they had sent the tape to Panero). Turned out, Panero had never heard about it and learned of the incident from Keller. When he investigated the issue, that eventually led to them cancelling the PPV. In the end, Dave says Wade Keller isn't responsible and the blame for almost losing their PPV rests on ECW alone. They have let the company often times get out of control and have ignored warning signs and let these problems go unchecked for too long and in the end, it finally came back to bite them. For a long time, ECW has been a powder keg, ready to blow and it could have ended a lot worse. Hopefully this is a wake-up call to the company that they have to make changes before something even worse happens.
Speaking of the Mass Transit tape, Dave finally saw it and says nothing he heard about it before could do it justice. He calls it "perhaps the most revolting thing I've ever seen in wrestling." In fact, when it first happened back in November, when Dave reported on it, he reported at the time that some were claiming it wasn't that big a deal. Now, Dave flat out says, "The initial reports in this publication almost downplaying the incident as being a big deal were an embarrassment to the Observer." Even before the botched blade job, it was bad because New Jack was beating the shit out of the kid, hitting him as hard as he could in the face with a toaster and breaking a crutch over him. After the bladejob, you could hear Eric Kulas' father run to ringside screaming that he's only 17 and to stop the match but the beating continued while Kulas continued to gush blood from his head. Dave said he felt like he was witnessing child abuse by watching it. People in ECW claim that Kulas lied and said he was 19, but the blame is still on ECW for not verifying his age and for simply taking his word for it. And it was made even worse by how desensitized to the violence everyone was. No one stopped the match. All the wrestlers stayed in character. And the fans chanted "You fat fuck!" at Kulas as he lay in the ring bleeding to death. Dave thinks it's sad that him writing this very description of it will probably help sell hundreds of copies of this "banned" tape on the tape trading scene.
It's been awhile since we've had one, but Dave gives 5 stars to Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue vs. Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama from the AJPW World Tag League tournament finals.
A newer promotion in Puerto Rico called WWA has got a working agreement with WWF and many WWF stars have been working their shows lately, guys like Sid, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Jake Roberts, and Savio Vega among others. The promotion announced that in 1997, they will have shows featuring Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, and Undertaker. Savio Vega is one of the people running the company, which explains the connection.
There's rumors that AAA is in danger of losing its television deal in Mexico. Televisa is reportedly unhappy with the AAA product now that they have lost most of their young stars to Promo Azteca and are now pushing old washed up guys as the top stars. Televisa was upset that all these young stars who had been built up in AAA for so long were now in another company, on a rival TV network.
Chris Jericho is rumored to be the mystery opponent for Koji Kanemoto at the Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show. It would be Jericho's NJPW debut (yup, it was Jericho).
Antonio Inoki is still working on putting together a show in Cuba sometime this year and actually has a meeting scheduled with Fidel Castro later this week ("No, I'm not making this up," Dave says).
Some interesting statistics about the recently defunct UWFI. During its 6-year history, they ran 64 shows, drawing a total of 585,724 fans which averages out to a little over 9,000 per show. Dave doesn't think there's ever been a promotion in wrestling history to average that many fans per show over a 6-year period. But despite all that, they were running in deep debt for the past 2 years which led to them going out of business.
Dave has confirmed that Jerry Jarrett did indeed sell his 50% of USWA to Jerry Lawler and is out of the wrestling business. Lawler is running the company alongside his business partner Larry Burton and a sports agent named Elliot Pollock. Jerry Jarrett has been devoting almost all of his time to other business interests outside of wrestling, so his selling wasn't a big surprise but it's interesting because Jarrett was basically the last of his era. He was the last remaining promoter from that golden era of the 70s & 80s to finally be put out of the business (by the end of 1997, this becomes a pretty big deal. TL;DR - after buying out Jarrett, Lawler and Burton end up immediately selling 55% of USWA to an Ohio businessman, which in turn leads to USWA going out of business and nasty lawsuits claiming Lawler defrauded people and a bunch of other shit. But we'll get there).
The reason Taz is currently doing a gimmick where he's refusing to wrestle unless he can get Sabu is because he's nursing a shoulder injury but he should be cleared in plenty of time before the PPV.
Ian Rotten has recently started a new promotion called IWA in Louisville, KY (I feel like we've already talked about IWA at this point so not sure why Dave is just now mentioning it as a new promotion).
Dave says of all the foreign people WCW have brought in, Ultimo Dragon picked up the American style faster than anyone and says Dragon may be the best worker in the U.S. right now.
Nitro ended with the NWO turning on The Giant and kicking him out of the group, leading to The Giant turning face, only 4 months or so after turning heel to join the group. (Rapid fire Big Show heel/face turns? "IT BEGINS!" I guess.)
The Associated Press balloting for Athlete of the Year was won by Michael Jordan, but it turns out Ric Flair received 2 votes. This made news in Canada because Canadian sprinter Donovan Bailey, who won a gold medal in last year's Olympic games and is something of a national hero in Canada, didn't get any votes. So there were a lot of news stories about how Bailey got 0 votes while a pro wrestler got 2.
Former ECW wrestler 911 debuted in WCW under the name Tombstone. The name is a rib aimed at Paul Heyman because when Heyman first broke into the business years ago as a manager, he managed a guy named Tombstone (that seems like a stretch).
The hatred you see on TV between Debra McMichael and Woman isn't just for TV. Apparently the heat between them backstage is legit and they won't even dress in the same dressing room together.
Bam Bam Bigelow reportedly turned down a deal to go to WCW because they wanted him to join the NWO. One of the main reasons Bigelow left WWF in the first place awhile back was because he was upset about all the control and power Kevin Nash had so he has no interest in going to WCW and working under Nash and being his lackey on TV.
There's been talk of bringing in Kimona from ECW as Chris Benoit's new love interest.
Most people think Randy Savage will inevitably return to WCW, but he hasn't signed a new contract and the two sides haven't agreed on money yet.
Mr. Fuji was backstage at a recent Nitro because he lives in the area.
Raw this week in Albany, NY was filled with ECW and BWO signs in the crowd, and Dave admits he may have spoken too soon a few weeks ago when he said the ECW-loving crowds at WWF shows had died down.
On WWF Superstars taping, Jim Ross made a couple of interesting comments. He first criticized Barry Windham's "Stalker" character, calling the gimmick another lame marketing idea. And he said the headgear that Faarooq wore when he first debuted will go into the WWF marketing hall of fame next to Gobbledy Gooker.
Mankind, Goldust, and Undertaker filmed a scene for a pilot episode of a sports/comedy show put together by the same people who created Second City TV. The skit was that the 3 wrestlers were in their full character gimmicks, sitting at a bar discussing high-brow topics like philosophy (I guess maybe this show never aired or something? I can't find video. But somewhere out there, it's gotta exist. I'd love to see this).
As of Dec. 31st, WWF had sold around 13,500 tickets for the Royal Rumble, which would be a great advance number for a normal show, but they're still a long way from the 71,000 needed to sellout the Alamodome.
In the letters section, someone writes in to say Stevie Richards has more charisma in his little finger than Shawn Michaels has in his entire body. He predicts Richards will end up in WWF or WCW soon but they probably won't use him right.
A wrestler (who's name is withheld by request) writes in with a 3 paragraph tangent about how hypocritical wrestling fans are. They cry about the Austin/Pillman gun angle then act like everything ECW does is the best thing ever. They complain about the unbelievablility of WWF's storylines and then cheer when tiny Rey Mysterio Jr. is doing frankensteiners to guys twice his size. They bitch about Hulk Hogan not being a good worker while he's doing the best work of his career. And he's really upset about how the fans have turned on Shawn Michaels. He says Shawn is the best wrestler in the world right now, but he's getting booed out of the arena in every city. "Perhaps people would like him to pout like Bret Hart" instead of having great matches every night. He ends the letter by saying, "I'm not saying people have to like him, I just want people to realize they are witnessing the greatest worker of their lifetime and should think about it before they cheer Sid to the point where Vince McMahon decides to go back to big, lumbering guys who can't work and whose matches are as exciting as watching golf."
Finally, someone writes in with a David Letterman-esque list of the top 10 reasons why Sid shouldn't be the champion:
10. While they might have the same skills, at least Backlund can talk
9. Raising his fist in the air is going to confuse the audience into thinking he's part of the Nation of Domination
8. Poor Bret Hart is going to have to be able to work like Manami Toyota to carry him to a DUD
7. No longer has a squeegee to clean his belt with
6. Pillman is liable to shoot on him
5. Arkansas already has one idiot on top
4. Jim Hellwig is at least more reliable to show up
3. Valu-Jet will take you higher than his choke slam
2. Might shoot if an opponent calls a leg scissors spot
The Karate Fighters have a better work rate