January 20, 1997
- With a few days left before Royal Rumble, WWF is expecting close to 50,000 to be in attendance. As of a few days ago, almost 29,000 tickets had been sold. They've been heavily papering the city (giving away free tickets) and are hoping for a big walk-up crowd the day of the show. This show has seen some of the heaviest local promotion ever, with tons of radio and TV ads, "literally millions" of coupon discount codes on cans of Dr. Pepper and at Taco Bell locations throughout southern Texas, and custom commentary on WWF TV shows airing in the area where they are heavily pushing ticket sales. The PPV will be blacked out throughout southeastern Texas so if you live in the area, the only way to see it is to be there live. That being said, WWF has pretty much quietly admitted that the show won't be a sellout. But they've been hyping the 71,000-seat capacity on TV so much that they may still claim there are 71,000 people there even if it's nowhere close. As for the show itself, Dave predicts Shawn Michaels to win the title and Bret Hart to win the Rumble match, although they may try to throw a swerve, with some sort of disputed ending, and have someone else win the Rumble. But with that being said, Shawn vs. Bret is still the plan for WM13.
- Rick Rude made a surprise appearance in ECW last week. Rude wore a mask backstage the entire time to try to disguise who he was but of course everyone figured it out, and when he came to the ring, the fans had figured it out also. Rude never ended up taking the mask off. It ended up leading to the return of Pit Bull #1, who had been out of action for several months after legitimately suffering a broken neck from a Shane Douglas DDT. Rick Rude has been rumored to be heading to WWF when his Lloyd's of London disability insurance policy runs out, with many saying he'd be heading there in late-spring. But WWF officials have denied the rumors and those close to Rude insist he will never wrestle again after suffering a back injury in a 1994 match with Sting in Japan. Rude claimed his injuries were career-ending in a lawsuit he filed against WCW. Paul Heyman has said that the masked wrestler won't ever wrestle in ECW but will continue to make appearances leading up to the first ECW PPV in April. (Here's a video below. I don't think it's Rude's first appearance but it's the only one I can find where he's there under the mask):
- Weekly Pro Wrestling reported that during 1996, there were 1,423 wrestling shows in Japan, for a total attendance of 3,081,288. But those numbers have to be taken with a huge grain of salt because all the promotions, especially the smaller ones, often greatly over-exaggerate their attendance numbers.
- Dave recaps NJPW's Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show (or at least the 2-hour edited version that aired on TV). Overall, it seemed like a good show, but nowhere near as good as the usual Dome shows. Antonio Inoki had his match with Willie Williams that was mentioned a few weeks ago and Dave gives it -1 stars. Ultimo Dragon vs. Jushin Liger was good but not up to either man's usual standards. Shinya Hashimoto vs. Riki Choshu was the match everyone came to see and it delivered although it wasn't as good as their match last year.
- Antonio Inoki plans to do another World Wrestling Peace Festival inter-promotional show this year. He was in Mexico City over the weekend meeting with EMLL to set it up. The plan is for it to take place later in the spring, either in Mexico City or possibly in Cuba.
- Box y Lucha magazine in Mexico talked about 1996 being a down year for business and listed off a bunch of suggestions about how both EMLL and AAA could improve business. Stop the constant no-shows, stop cheapening mask-vs-mask matches by having the loser just put on a new mask with a new gimmick a few months later, said there's too many championships and cheap finishes, and too many guys jumping back and forth between promotions while burying their former company, among other things.
- Vampiro turned down a major soap opera role in Mexico because they wanted him to play the role of an American border patrol officer and he thought it would get him heat.
- All Japan and FMW seem to be building up to an inter-promotional angle. It's playing out in the wrestling media between Giant Baba and Atsushi Onita and will likely lead to a match between Hayabusa vs. Kenta Kobashi (doesn't look like that 1-on-1 match ever happened, but Hayabusa worked a handful of tag matches in AJPW later in the year).
- At the NJPW Tokyo Dome show, Chris Jericho worked as Super Liger, but the match was so poorly received that the gimmick has already been dropped after the 1 match. Jericho is expected to continue to work in NJPW for awhile, as himself instead of the Super Liger gimmick (Jericho later said the match was bad because the mask obstructed his vision and he couldn't work in it).
- Samauri TV, the new 24-hour wrestling channel in Japan, has been airing a bunch of legendary Japanese matches from the 1970s, many of which even the most dedicated tape traders have probably never seen.
- Jerry Lawler seems to be taking a more serious interest in turning around the USWA promotion now that he's the 100% owner of it. Right now, Bill Dundee, Randy Hales, and Brian Christopher are handling the booking.
- ECW is scrambling to get all the legal and insurance red tape done for their PPV to air on Apr. 13th. There's a 90-day deadline before the show where the promotion is required to have all the necessary insurance and legal stuff done to absolve Request TV in case anything unexpected happens. They have to get the paperwork done in time in order to guarantee the Apr. 13th date. If ECW can't get it done in time, the PPV would likely be pushed back to June because Request doesn't want to add another PPV in May because they already have several major events scheduled that month (boxing, WWF, WCW, and UFC).
- They're doing an angle with Terry Funk in ECW where he's back saying that it's his last chance at being a world champion. The angle is expected to be one of the top matches at the ECW PPV.
- BWO merch now accounts for over 40% of total ECW merchandise sales and ECW already does huge merch sales to begin with.
- The indie promotion called Continental Wrestling Alliance that had been running shows at the Dallas Sportatorium every week went out of business last month. Apparently the money guy simply walked out during the last show because he couldn't pay everyone. Former Dallas wrestling manager Gary Hart has already stepped in and started a new promotion called World Class: The Next Generation (I guess if it worked for Star Trek...).
- Yet again, WCW Nitro set records this week. The episode from New Orleans was the first Nitro episode to draw more than 10,000 people and the first show to do more than a $100,000 gate in New Orleans since Bill Watts' Mid South Wrestling in the 80s. And next week's show in Chicago has already topped both of those numbers in advance sales. The biggest pop of the show came when Hall and Nash tried to welcome Diamond Dallas Page to the NWO, only for Page to hit Hall with a diamond cutter and throw Nash out of the ring.
- Also on Nitro, they tried a weird gimmick at the end of the show where the main event (Hogan vs. The Giant) started with only 1 minute left in the show. The reason was because they were trying to build up the ratings for the new Robin Hood show that was airing after. They promised to come back and show the match during commercial breaks of Robin Hood and that's pretty much what they did, airing about 30 seconds of the match during each commercial break, for the entire hour of the show. Problem is, the match only lasted about 4 minutes total, but as they stretched it out during the commercials, they acted like it was going on live and that everyone watching was missing a classic 45-minute Hogan/Giant match that had been going on all through the show. Anyway, there were a lot of complaints about the sleazy attempt to spike ratings for Robin Hood at the expense of wrestling fans (this one even has its own Wrestlecrap page).
- Scott Hall had a tooth knocked out, 2 teeth loosened, a black eye, and possibly a broken ear drum from the incident where Jerry Sags of the Nasty Boys stiffed him during a match. Some in the company say Hall had it coming and the Nastys are good friends with Hogan so they're safe. Others say Sags should be fired. After the match backstage, Kevin Nash confronted the Nastys with a baseball bat, but it ended up just being a bunch of words being thrown. Bischoff reportedly wanted to fire Sags, but Scott Hall felt Hogan would retaliate against he and Nash if they got his friend fired. So yeah, not all good among the NWO in real life at the moment.
- Rey Mysterio Jr. blew out his knee last week and it's said to be serious. He had an MRI done and, no surprise, he has pretty significant damage in both knees. He has an appointment this week to see if he'll need surgery.
- Harlem Heat and Public Enemy are both currently working without contracts and there have been a ton of rumors about Harlem Heat going to WWF. But word is WWF has already committed so much money to long term guaranteed contracts that they're now second-guessing spending all that money ("does the name Mark Henry come to mind?" Dave asks. Remember, Henry had signed a 10-year multi-million dollar contract at this point and had shown nothing for it so far). So they're hesitant to commit more money to signing anyone new unless it's for a major name and Harlem Heat probably won't make the cut (still interesting that it even got this close. Imagine Booker T in WWF during the Attitude Era).
- At the WCW Saturday Night tapings, Jim Duggan faced The Gambler and Dave hasn't seen it but was told its one of the worst matches of all-time (I mean, it wasn't Okada/Omega or anything, but this was a perfectly fine squash match. No idea what Dave's source is talking about).
- Chris Kanyon is being given a martial arts gimmick and will feud with Glacier. On the recent German tour, Kanyon worked under the name Mortis so that will probably be his gimmick.
- Funny story about WCW dropping the ball on a great possible promotional opportunity. A tight end for the University of Oregon football team named Josh Wilcox is a huge wrestling fan (and Observer subscriber) and he sent WCW a letter saying that he would be playing in several major all-star games this season and said he wanted to wear an NWO sticker on his helmet and in his interviews, he would pledge his loyalty to the NWO. Well, he never heard back from WCW for several months but just before he was set to play in the Blue Gray Football Classic all-star game, WCW sent him a generic "Dear Wrestling fan, thank you for your interest" letter back. Anyway, as luck would have it, Wilcox ended up scoring the winning touchdown and was the MVP of that game and was the focus of all the post-game interviews and got tons of ESPN coverage. But since he got blown off by WCW, he didn't mention them or NWO at all (fun fact: Wilcox later went on to play in the XFL and was on the Los Angeles Xtreme team that won the championship. He also did some indie wrestling).
- In a radio interview, Ric Flair praised Steve McMichael's in-ring work as a wrestler. "Since it was radio, we couldn't see how much larger his nose grew after that one," Savage Dave says.
- WWF is handling the PPV responsibilities for the upcoming Sugar Ray Leonard/Hector Camacho boxing match. The previous company, TVKO, backed out of the fight after the promoter was investigated for links to organized crime. So WWF jumped in to save the day. Several years ago, WWF handled promotional responsibilities for another Sugar Ray Leonard fight and that show lost a ton of money, which is why WWF hasn't promoted a boxing PPV since then. So anyway, expect a lot of promotion for this fight on WWF TV in the coming weeks.
- Dave finally saw the Shotgun Saturday Night debut episode and said it looked like a public access wrestling show, which probably wasn't the look they were going for. Bob Backlund was hilarious but that was the only good thing on the show.
- Expect Bradshaw and Barry Windham to be put together as a heel tag team as a 90s version of the Blackjacks.
- Tiger Jeet Singh and his son Tiger Ali Singh Jr. have some sort of deal with WWF with both of them scheduled to come in. Singh Sr. will likely just be a manger of some sort, since he's 52 years old and has been washed up for years. WWF has big plans for Singh Jr., with plans to make him an ethnic star to tour Middle east countries, as well as parts of Canada that have large Indian populations (20 years later and Vince is still chasing that elusive "ethnic star" dream).
- WWF has dropped the Flying Nuns gimmick because of complaints from their debut last week, so those 2 guys are back to using their Headbangers gimmick on this week's Shotgun Saturday Night. Also on the show, there were lots of chants of "Rocky sucks!" at Rocky Maivia. For the second week in a row, reviews of this show were universally negative.
- Former SMW wrestler Punisher (Bull Buchanan) is being brought in to WWF to train with Tom Prichard. WWF also has interest in ECW's Mike Awesome but they want him to get more wrestling experience first, because he's pretty much only worked garbage matches in FMW for most of his career.