April 28, 1997
- Vader got himself into some trouble in Kuwait this week in a situation very similar to the 1984 incident where wrestler David Schultz slapped reporter John Stossel. Vader was appearing on a TV show called Good Morning Kuwait (along with The Undertaker) when he got into an altercation with the host. Vader and Undertaker were appearing on the live morning show and had been told in advance what the questions would be, including being asked if wrestling was fake. The producer of the show told the wrestlers to "ham it up." When asked if wrestling was fake, Undertaker gave the usual answer; it's entertainment but with real athletes and real injuries, yada yada. Then Vader chimed in and grabbed the host by the tie and went on a tirade about the question being "bullshit" and roughed up the terrified host. Police were called immediately and Vader was arrested for assault and "lascivious conduct" because it's illegal to swear on TV in Kuwait.
- Vader was immediately placed under house arrest at his hotel after the incident on April 11th and remained there until April 22nd, when he had a court hearing and was released to return to the U.S. There's been a lot of speculation that it was a publicity stunt because WWF immediately began airing footage of the incident on TV, made Vince McMahon available for interviews, and sent out press releases about it after the fact. Eric Bischoff has also publicly come out to claim it was a hoax. The incident made headlines everywhere. USA Today was working on a big story about it but when they learned that it may have been a stunt, they squashed the story. Whether it was real or not, everyone in the WWF locker room sure believed it to be real. Vader being detained in Kuwait for so long also made WWF have to alter their storyline plans for the recent Raw and upcoming PPV. Dave's belief is that the incident and the arrest were indeed real, but WWF decided to use it to try to get as much mainstream publicity as they could out of it. McMahon claims that the host had offered to drop the charges if WWF paid him a $35,000 settlement and McMahon was willing to do so, but then the host stopped returning calls and seemed to vanish. Complicating all this even more, it occured during Ramadan, which is the Muslim country's holiest time and much of the legal system is shut down for the month.
- One final note, there was another incident with Vader in Kuwait at the hotel while he was still detained, on April 21st. No word on what it was, but it led to 20 police officers, several U.S. Embassy officials, and Vader's lawyer all having to calm him down. Vader also reportedly had an incident with a flight attendant on the original flight to Kuwait as well. Shit man, Vader was out of control on that trip.
- AJPW's Champion Carnival tournament ended with a triangle match between Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi, and Mitsuharu Misawa. It's notable because it's only the 2nd gimmick match ever in the history of the promotion (the other was a Texas Death Match between Fritz Von Erich and Giant Baba, way back in 1974). Kawada won the match and the tournament which is also notable because it's the first time Kawada has ever pinned Misawa
- Atsushi Onita held a press conference in Japan announcing a working relationship between FMW and WWF that should lead to a major show in Japan later this year. Full details aren't known yet but Onita has apparently had talks with Vince McMahon and Bruce Prichard and is coming to the U.S. next month to meet with them in person. He may also be meeting with Paul Heyman while he's there as well to possibly get ECW involved.
- Jim Ross and Bruce Prichard also met with several wrestlers from Michinoku Pro (who recently worked ECW's PPV) and are hoping to bring them in. WWF is planning to start a lightweight/cruiserweight division soon and are trying to get wrestlers who will fit that mold. If WWF and Michinoku Pro work out a deal, it would probably be the end of the WWF/AAA relationship. Apparently, AAA is so disorganized that WWF has been having problems getting the wrestlers they want on the dates they want, which makes it impossible to give them any kind of push or storyline.
- The ECW PPV seems to have done a better buyrate than expected. Dave starts breaking down all the confusing numbers of how many homes have PPV available, what the percentages and figures mean, how some didn't carry the PPV so that changes things, etc. etc. Point being, it looks to have done over 50,000 buys which would mean it made over $400,000. Which means it was actually a profitable show. Paul Heyman had openly admitted that he expected to lose money and their break-even point was 40,000 buys so if they did over 50,000 and made a pretty decent profit, that's obviously great news for them. Other numbers from the show were 1,170 in attendance for a gate of around $70,000 which was also an all-time record for ECW. All in all, this makes it pretty much a certainty that they will have a 2nd PPV and that it will likely be carried by all the other outlets who refused to carry the first one. Furthermore, the PPV was a critical success as well, getting lots of praise from wrestling fans. By pretty much every standard, ECW's first PPV has to be considered a home run.
- WWF managed to turn a major negative into a positive on Raw this week. The episode featured one long angle with Steve Austin injuring Bret Hart in one of the best episodes in Raw history. The angle was a last minute decision because Bret Hart has a knee injury that is going to require surgery, which couldn't have come at a worse time. Hart suffered the injury on the Kuwait tour and will undergo arthroscopic surgery this week in Canada and, while he's out, will also have surgery on his right wrist (from an injury where the wrist was broken several years ago but never healed properly). Hart is expected to be out 6-8 weeks. Hart was expected to face Rocky Maivia at the King of the Ring PPV and likely win the IC title, but it's unknown if he will be back by then so that plan is scrapped. Hart was also booked to main event all the house shows for the next several weeks. The night before the angle on Raw, Hart was booked to face Austin at In Your House and decided to work the match despite the injury as well as worked the angle on Raw where Austin brutalized his knee and wrist with a chair. The angle was good enough that it seemed to make a dent in WCW's ratings dominance. They still won the night, but WWF kept it closer than normal throughout the show.
- Speaking of the In Your House PPV, it happened and was mostly forgettable and marred by bad finishes. Billy Gunn, renamed Rockabilly, was revealed as Honky Tonk Man's mystery protege, which went over about as well as a church fart. Mankind vs. Undertaker featured a great spot with Mankind going headfirst through a table, followed by a bad blown spot where Mankind tried to throw fire in Undertaker's face but the flash paper wouldn't light. And the Bret vs. Austin main event was good but not up to the level as their other matches, probably because Bret was working injured.
- Sean Morley, wrestling as Steele, (and later as Val Venis) won the EMLL heavyweight title this week. Dave finally saw this guy work and says he has a great physique and has a lot of potential as a worker and athlete, but he's still really green. But he does do a great splash from the top (the money shot!)
- AAA held a show and one of the matches featured Jake Roberts. Word is he looked 100 years old and was blown up within minutes and was just terrible (yeah, this is kind of a dark period for Jake. We're not too far away from him smoking crack in Beyond The Mat).
- All Japan is continuing to honor the referee who recently retired after 32 years. They started selling t-shirts of the referee and also held a retirement ceremony which featured an appearance by Akebono, the sumo wrestler who is arguably one of the top sports celebrities in Japan.
- Tiger Jeet Singh has been telling people that his son Tiger Ali Signh's deal with WWF is a 14-year contract. Dave doesn't know if that's true, but it sounds insane so he doubts it but then again, they did sign Mark Henry to a 10-year deal so who knows.
- Dutch Mantel is now booking USWA. Paid attendance for the last Memphis show was 210 people.
- WCW attempted to basically raid ECW this week by offering deals to many of ECW's major stars. Paul Heyman responded by signing new deals with or extending contracts for Shane Douglas, Francine, The Eliminators, Sabu, Taz, Joey Styles, The Dudleys, Stevie Richards, and Tommy Dreamer all within the last few days and is also trying to lock in Sandman, the Pit Bulls, and Chris Candido. In particular, WCW has offered Raven a 3-year deal worth six-figures per year to come to WCW and possibly be part of the NWO. Raven has a meeting with Paul Heyman this week to discuss it with him. WCW wants Raven immediately, but he's still under contract to ECW through August and has a 90-day non-compete after that so Raven wouldn't be able to go to WCW until October at the earliest. If Raven does decide to leave, Heyman will likely insist that he finally put over Tommy Dreaamer on the way out (Dreamer has never beaten Raven). Heyman's looking into legal action, claiming that WCW is tampering with ECW contracts. Heyman has also had his lawyers look into the WCW jobber tag team "The Extreme Team", claiming they've got a copyright claim on the phrase.
- Sign Guy Dudley has quit ECW because he got a new real-life job that no longer works with the ECW schedule.
- It's not yet known for sure if Rob Van Dam is leaving for WCW. He's agreed to stay through mid-June and Sabu is trying to talk Paul Heyman into offering Van Dam more money to keep him.
- Other notes from ECW's Barely Legal: Brian Lee was originally supposed to take the bump that Big Dick Dudley took, but with Brian Lee suffering from a neck injury, they decided not to risk it. Terry Funk plans to wrestle through the end of the year before maybe retiring (lol). Rick Rude will continue to be part of angles but no word on wrestling a match. The Dudleys were expected to regain the tag titles just a couple of weeks after the PPV but that has been changed due to Bubba Ray's ankle injury.
- Bill Alfonso is denying rumors that he was at the WCW Nitro in Philadelphia.
- Louie Spicolli is doing a gimmick where he does the NWO/Kliq hand signal all the time. At live shows, Tommy Dreamer has been running in and stomping on his hand to stop him. That gimmick is too sweet.
- Arn Anderson had neck surgery this week and there were some serious complications. At one point he had fluid in his lungs and the incision in his neck was a foot long. His discs and vertebrae were in better shape than expected but the problem was to the side of that and they had to cut through a lot of muscle to get to it. The talk over the last week is that Anderson is in rough shape and may never wrestle again. He was released after a week in the hospital (where he was in terrible pain the whole time) and is back up and walking but will need a significant recovery time. No one knows for sure how long and if or when he'll ever be able to return to the ring (he didn't).
- On Nitro, Kevin Nash and Syxx cut a response promo to the Flair/Piper promo from last week, basically shitting on guys from that older generation for holding back young talent and things like that. Dave says it was one hell of a promo. Speaking of last week's Flair/Piper promo, it was only scheduled to go 3 minutes but it went way longer than that "because they couldn't stop making no sense." Everyone backstage was banging their heads against the wall in frustration, wishing they'd shut up and wrap up the segment.
- Word is Kimona probably won't be hired by WCW after making a dark match appearance last week because they already have enough valet women who can't wrestle.
- The WCW women's cruiserweight title tournament has ended. Did you know it was even happening? The final match of the tournament was held as a dark match before Nitro and the title was won by Toshie Uematsu. It hasn't been acknowledged at all on TV since and the idea seems to already be dead in the water (The match ended up airing on Main Event).
- On Raw, Ken Shamrock cut a promo challenging Mike Tyson. Dave says don't hold your breath for that one (less than a year later, we'd have Tyson in a WWF ring).
- They also showed Goldust and Marlena out of their wrestling gimmicks and they were referred to on commentary as Dustin and Terri. WWF is trying to get him over as Dustin Rhodes because the Goldust gimmick isn't getting over like they want it to anymore. The idea is to eventually have Goldust and Marlena against Hunter Hearst Helmsley and Chyna in some mixed tag matches. Starting probably next week, they plan to air an interview with Goldust that will probably greatly alter the Goldust gimmick or possibly scrap it entirely and admit that he's Dusty Rhodes' son and try to find a kayfabe way to explain why he did the Goldust gimmick.
- The current plan for the King of the Ring finals is Undertaker vs. Ahmed Johnson, but that's so far out that it can and most likely will change before then (it did).