February 03, 1997
- Legendary 1950s and 60s wrestler Jerry Graham passed away this week at age 68 and Dave gives us the usual lengthy obituary, starting with how Graham and his brother Eddie often sold out Madison Square Garden during the Capital Wrestling days when Vince McMahon Sr. was just getting started. Graham is most famous for being part of the match that led to the famous 1957 riot at MSG, that nearly killed the wrestling business in New York and led to MSG banning children under 14 for the next 20 years. Graham was also legendary for his wild out-of-the-ring behavior, with endless drunk and disorderly arrests (so much so that he had an alias--Richard Hertz, get it?--and had multiple arrests under that name as well as his real name). Throughout the 60s and 70s and even into the 80s, his alcohol addictions cost him jobs and he burned bridges everywhere. In 1969, when Graham's mother had heart problems, Graham called the doctor and threatened him that she had better recover. She didn't, and after she died, Graham and 12-year-old son went to the hospital armed with a knife and shotgun and attempted to steal her body. He literally carried her corpse out on his shoulders until police intervened and after a brief standoff, he was arrested and later institutionalized. Graham hated the police and even lost wrestling gigs because he would talk shit about cops on commentary or in promos. Graham had a stroke in December and had been comatose ever since. Friends and nurses tried for 2 months to locate his children, but never did and eventually Graham died last week, penniless and alone.
- After more than 30-years as the voice of Memphis wrestling, USWA announcer Dave Brown abruptly quit the promotion after an argument with current USWA general manager Larry Burton. Dave Brown was the longest running pro wrestling announcer in the biz, along with his partner Lance Russell. (Dave also adds that "Brown is even more famous locally for being the most popular television weatherman and perhaps the most famous local news personality in the Memphis market for the past two decades." which, yup, entirely true. And would continue to be true for another 18 years after this was written.) Larry Burton has heat with pretty much everyone in the company except for his friend Jerry Lawler and apparently Burton made some sort of remark to Brown that was finally the last straw for him and he quit. During the next taping, Lawler and Corey Maclin handled commentary duties and no reference to Dave Brown was made at all. Word is several other wrestlers have either already quit or threatened to.
- The NWO-branded PPV Souled Out took place this week and Dave calls it the single worst PPV show in the history of pro wrestling. Matches, commentary, skits, atmosphere, you name it. All of it was godawful. I really wish I could just copy and paste all the various burns Dave throws at this show when reviewing it. Basically, they couldn't have put on a worse show if they tried. Endless screwjobs, bad comedy, etc. Eddie Guerrero vs. Syxx in a ladder match was the only saving grace of the show, although the commentary during it was the worst. "By this time the show was about as much fun to watch as three hours of somebody masturbating. In fact, I'm not sure that isn't what we were watching." And we're not even at the main event yet! Speaking of, Dave gives the Hogan/Giant match negative stars and it ended with them exposing Giant's ass and spray painting NWO on it. Hey, this PPV has a WrestleCrap entry!
- Michinoku Pro wrestlers Tajiri and Taka Michinoku are going to be working some shows for EMLL in Mexico soon. Several of them are also booked for upcoming ECW shows.
- WWF is sending fake-Razor, fake-Diesel, and Jake Roberts to work an AAA show in Mexico, as part of the working agreement between the 2 companies.
- AAA president Antonio Pena and Konnan are at it again, having a war of words in the media. Pena returned from the Royal Rumble talking about how well the AAA guys got over in the United States (not even close to true) and that WWF was very pleased with them. Konnan, naturally, responded in an interview shitting on how much the AAA guys flopped at the Rumble. Pena responded by saying that all of Konnan's wrestlers in WCW don't ever get pushed and only get to wrestle each other because WCW doesn't take them seriously.
- Dave off-handedly mentions all the attributes that various promoters over the years seem to like. Verne Gagne pushed amateur wrestlers and college football players. Vince McMahon likes muscular bodybuilders. Bill Watts liked big football players. And Giant Baba likes tall guys.
- Miss Texas (later to become WWE Hall of Famer Jacqueline) quit USWA this week, although it wasn't due to Larry Burton. She has accepted an offer with WCW and debuted this week on Nitro, getting involved in the Benoit/Sullivan/Woman storyline.
- Lance Storm should be debuting in ECW soon.
- Tito Santana and his wife Leah have opened up a beauty salon in New Jersey. Santana is also working on becoming a full-time teacher and currently works as a substitute PE teacher.
- A Pittsburgh newspaper reported that 2 houses and a car were vandalized with spray paint. You guessed it: someone spray painted "NWO" on them.
- Tony Halme (formerly Ludvig Borga) is reportedly trying to get WWF to bring him back in.
- Ken Shamrock's UFC contract has expired and he's currently a free agent. UFC offered him $250,000 to re-sign for a year but Shamrock hasn't accepted (spoiler: he ends up somewhere else...)
- Randy Savage's new WCW contract is for $1 million per year, for a limited number of dates. WCW justified the huge deal because without Savage, they would have also lost the Slim Jim sponsorship, which brings in $500,000 per year to WCW. Kevin Nash and Scott Hall both have clauses in their contract that no one can be paid more than them, so when Savage signed his new deal, both Hall and Nash were given raises to $1 million per year (both men started out at $780,000 per year less than a year ago).
- WCW will be raising the price of the NWO t-shirts because they're such a hot-selling item.
- WCW had huge first day advance sales for the SuperBrawl PPV, with people actually camping out the night before to be the first to buy tickets. Dave says that's never happened before, even when WWF was at its hottest.
- When WCW was in Green Bay recently, they sent out a photo to the media of Lex Luger in a Green Bay Packers uniform from back in 1982. Luger was in Packers training camp during the pre-season back then but was never on the active roster.
- WCW will be holding a show in Montreal in April, and the top 2 matches are going to be Hulk Hogan vs. Jacques Rougeau and The Giant vs. Pierre Ouellet. There's also rumors that Jack Tunney will be helping WCW to promote the show.
- WWF is considering making some changes to Monday Night Raw after 2 weeks of record low ratings. As of now, there are no plans to move the show to a different night but they have talked about going live more often and possibly increasing the show to 2 hours. Dave says the costs of doing a live 2 hour show every week would cost the company in the 6-figures weekly so if that happens, it'll be interesting to see how WWF and the USA Network would split the bill. When WCW started running live every week, WWF publicly said WCW was wasting money by doing it, but it ended up being the reason TNT beat out USA as the top prime time network last year and USA is desperate to do anything to reverse that trend.
- As usual, the Royal Rumble buyrate is the source of some lies, as WWF is claiming it did an 0.8 buyrate while other sources say it was 0.6. Either number would be a big drop from last year's Rumble buyrate. For what it's worth, every 0.1 is worth about $325,000 in pure profit for WWF, so even that difference amounts to over half a million in profit.
- Spin magazine published an article about WWF, mentioning that Vince McMahon, "barely escaped conviction in a 1994 federal drug-trafficking trial." WWF was upset by it and has requested a retraction from Spin.
- On WWF Superstars, they did an angle where Undertaker choke-slammed Sable to write her off TV for a bit. Sable is expected to return with a "more aggressive" personality, whatever that means (don't waste your time looking for this, we find out later that it never aired).
- WWF has been negotiating with CFL football player Glenn Kulka to become a wrestler. Kulka did an angle a few years back where he was in Bret Hart's corner for a match (yeah this guy eventually becomes a wrestler and holds a victory in a WWF dark match against the legendary Sexton Hardcastle).
- WWF has dropped the live aspect of WWF Livewire and they won't be doing live phone calls and all that stuff anymore. Between Shotgun Saturday night and Livewire on Saturday morning both being filmed live, they were overworking the production staff.
- Shotgun Saturday Night has been moved back an hour and will now air at midnight in New York. The station that carried it was concerned over the language Terry Funk used on the show last week, and that's why they decided to air the show later. There's talk of taping a future episode of the show at Penn Station.
- Lots of sickness going around in WWF right now. Vader has bronchial pneumonia, British Bulldog has the flu, and Shawn Michaels is still recovering from the flu as well.
- Goldust is beginning to get more of a mixed reaction, with some crowds starting to cheer him, but most still boo him.
- Sunny is reportedly the most downloaded celebrity on America Online, having recently surpassed Teri Hatcher and Elle MacPherson.
- Letters section has some people comparing Bret to Shawn and arguing over who's better and who's overrated and yada yada. Also, some notes about the Mass Transit incident. One guy who was there says it was sickening and he was disgusted at how the crowd seemed to enjoy it so much. Someone else who was there says Tommy Dreamer came out to try to help the EMTs and calm the crowd and overall, everyone seems to agree that ECW fucked up big time on that one.