Wrestling Observer Rewinder

June 02, 1997

Tensions between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels reached a boiling point this week and has led to plans for the long awaited Hart/Michaels rematch at King of the Ring being cancelled. The initial plan was for it to be a short match because Bret's knee injury still isn't fully healed and it was really going to be more of an angle than a match anyway. But that's been scrapped now after incidents this past week. It's no secret that Bret and Shawn genuinely don't like each other but these days, it's hard to know where the line between shoot and work is. Dave recaps some of the history, noting that the initial plan was to build the company around Shawn and when Bret returned last year, WWF wanted him to put over Shawn in a ladder match. But Bret felt that the ladder match was his gimmick (he's the first one who brought it to WWF, even before the famous WM10 match) and refused. He also talks about how Bret still holds a lot of bitterness (and rightfully so) at Hulk Hogan for refusing to put him over in 1993 and leaving the company instead or doing the job and says Bret feels much the same towards Shawn. It's widely believed that Shawn's knee injury that forced him to pull out of Wrestlemania a few months ago was more of a personal meltdown and a way to avoid doing the job to Hart than an actual injury.
On the May 12th Raw, Bret was cutting a promo and babbled on and on, to the point that the show ran out of time and ended before Shawn could get his superkick in so he was left standing there looking like an idiot as the show went off the air and the televised audience didn't see the superkick until it aired the week after. Shawn believes it was intentional but of course, Bret just claims he missed his time cue. On May 19th, Shawn showed up at Raw "in no condition to perform" but was still sent out on TV to cut a promo, where he slurred his words a lot and made a reference to Bret having some "Sunny days" which naturally got tons of rumors flying and is especially unfortunate for Hart since he's married and has young children. Bret has reportedly been telling people that, when his knee is well enough, he's planning to fuck Shawn up for real as soon as he gets the chance due to the "Sunny days" comment. From here, Dave recaps all of Shawn's immature bullshit, from complaining about having to do an interview putting Ken Shamrock over, making not-so-subtle shout outs on TV to Kevin Nash and Scott Hall in WCW, and of course, likely faking a knee injury and walking out before Wrestlemania, thus screwing up a year-long awaited match with Hart that he was going to have to lose, which was arguably the biggest factor in WM13 drawing such a poor buyrate and literally costing WWF millions in revenue from the biggest show of the year.
In recent weeks, Shawn Michaels has also been at odds with Vince McMahon, demanding a new contract that would put him at the same level as Bret Hart (who has the most lucrative guaranteed contract in WWF history). When Vince turned him down, Shawn told Vince he quits and that he wanted to go be with his friends in WCW, but Shawn still has 4 years remaining on his contract. But they still didn't know if Shawn was going to show up to TVs and PPVs, so they began coming up with backup plans in case he no-showed. If Shawn quits the company, WWF will almost certainly do everything in their power to make Michaels sit out for 4 years rather than allow him to go to WCW. At the time Michaels signed his WWF deal, believed to be for a minimum $750,000 per year, he was openly bragging about it and saying WCW couldn't afford him but, of course, things change. Michaels was actually a pretty decent success as champion, drawing big house show numbers, but TV ratings plummeted and he lost his temper at minor things like crowd heckling or missed time cues and began to melt down personally. From here, Dave talks about how WCW has been able to offer top stars more money and reduced schedules, plus WCW has a non-existent drug policy, which is also enticing to some of the guys, though he points out that WWF has pretty much abandoned their own drug policy these days also.
In the upcoming UFC PPV, Tony Halme (formerly Ludvig Borga in WWF) was scheduled to face Jason Fairn. But Fairn pulled out of the show, and Dave basically says it was because he's scared of Halme. He will be replaced by 1997 Greco-roman wrestling champion Randy Couture. It will be Couture's first UFC fight.
In NJPW, the announcers have been referring to Shinya Hashimoto as "Mr. Strong Style" (why be a Mr. when you can be a King?). Anyway, Hashimoto defeated Naoya Ogawa to retain the IWGP title with a stiff kick to the face that led to Ogawa's side throwing in the towel to stop the match. Dave says people will be talking for years about the brutal finish.
In Puerto Rico, the Bushwhackers have been working, doing the same goofy WWF gimmick as always. But this week, they turned heel and beat down some people in brutal fashion and announced that they were going back to being The Sheepherders, which is the team name they went by during the 70s and 80s when they were a team that did lots of hardcore bloodbath wrestling.
El Dandy abruptly quit EMLL and has jumped ship to Promo Azteca. Thought he was a jam-up guy. Guess not.
Dave says a newcomer in EMLL named Mr. Aguila is the best rookie he's seen this year and says he reminds him of Juventud Guerrera (he would later spend a little time in WWF, best known as Essa Rios and was managed by Lita during her pre-Hardy days).
In Mexico, Antonio Pena is trying to register a trademark on the terms "cage match" and "lumberjack match" so that no one else can advertise matches using those terms. Good luck with that.
Pancrase is reportedly filing a breach of contract lawsuit against Ken Shamrock. They believe he's still under contract to them and thus shouldn't have been able to sign with WWF.
Dave mentions Ron Garvin worked a recent indie show but this is only notable just because of what Dave says. He calls Garvin a former NWA champ and then adds, "And boy was that an embarrassment at the time."
At a recent ECW house show in a small town that only drew 200 people, Raven decided to break character and worked a match with Stevie Richards using his old Johnny Polo gimmick (wish I could find video of that).
Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff had discussions this week regarding the Raven situation. Dave doesn't know all the details but he believes Raven will be in WCW within the next few weeks. Heyman is trying to make a deal for Raven to return to ECW for the PPV in August to put over Tommy Dreamer. Speaking of ECW's next PPV, there's a lot of concern over whether or not the PPV providers will carry it. They've all been dropping UFC and there's talk that Time Warner and Viewer's Choice may also refuse to carry another ECW show. Basically, Dave says the political atmosphere has all but killed UFC on PPV and it's looking like ECW may be the next target. Then again, it's hard to make a logical argument for dropping ECW while still continuing to carry WWF and WCW, especially considering how much more adult-oriented WWF has gotten in recent months. But if logical arguments worked, they wouldn't be banning UFC in the first place. So who knows.
On Nitro, there was a Mexicans trios match with Juventud Guerrera, Super Calo, and Hector Garza vs. La Parka, Damian, and Ciclope. Dave gives it 4 stars and says it was off-the-charts awesome and had the crowd going insane by the end, including a spot with Super Calo jumping through the ropes and landing in the 3rd row on top of the fans. Mike Tenay did a great job of getting everything on commentary, while Larry Zybysko seemingly went out of his way to undermine everything and did the best he could to try to bury the match. Several people in WCW have been trying to make trios matches with the Mexican wrestlers a regular thing on Nitro, but when Kevin Sullivan was booking, he didn't want to do it. But with Terry Taylor now handling most of the booking, he gave it a chance and the guys knocked it out of the park. So you can probably expect more of those types of matches in the future.
Spring Stampede and Slamboree both had relatively low buyrates which proves that, heel or face, when Hogan isn't on a PPV, the buyrate drops significantly. Like it or not, he's still the top money PPV draw for WCW.
Darius Rucker, the lead singer of Hootie & The Blowfish, was in attendance at a recent WCW house show.
Dave says WWF's Raw episode on May 26th was one of the best episodes of Raw ever. They aired Part 2 of the Mankind story which was just as good, if not better than the first part and showed footage of him at ringside during the famous Jimmy Snuka cage dive in 1983 and home video footage of him jumping off the roof of a house and talked about how he wanted to be a guy named Dude Love. They also showed footage from the 1995 death match tournament in Japan. Shawn Michaels and Steve Austin also won the tag titles in a great match.
Jerry Lawler cut a promo on Raw towards Goldust, and said that the reason his father (Dusty, who Lawler referred to as Oldust) doesn't talk to his son is because he dresses "like a flaming fag" and because he married Marlena, who is like a Target store because everyone shops there. The comment got a huge pop and Goldust (the face) was booed out of the building. 1997 was a different time.
Davey Boy Smith showed up on Raw with stitches and cuts and bruises on his head and cut a promo saying he was attacked by Austin and needed 16 stitches. The real story is that Smith actually slipped in the shower and cracked his head open with a cut so deep you could see his skull. He was hospitalized and really did need 16 stitches, but he didn't miss any shows.
Brian Pillman is still in tremendous pain from his bad ankle after working recent matches, even though he hasn't been doing much in the ring (poor guy never really recovered). Steve Austin also suffered a neck injury on the show but no word how bad it is (he didn't miss any time).
As far as the secret about Undertaker that Paul Bearer keeps threatening to reveal, it's apparently got something to do with bringing back Papa Shango. Bearer said that when Undertaker's parents died, there were actually 3 graves. The 3rd grave is expected to be Undertaker's and the story will be that Papa Shango did some sort of voodoo to bring Undertaker back from the dead. Shango has reportedly signed a new 4 year contract with WWF and is expected to get a major push. They also considered Brian Lee (former fake Undertaker) for the role but they've decided to go with Shango instead (obviously, this all got changed. What a different world it would be if it hadn't).
On Shotgun Saturday Night, Brian Pillman cut a promo calling WCW the bush leagues and then started talking about religion somehow, which got him a ton of backstage heat.
Steve Austin's "3:16" shirt is apparently selling like crazy and in fact, WWF is selling more Austin 3:16 shirts than any other shirt in history, including Hogan and Warrior shirts in their primes. Merchandise records are being set every night. Less people are attending shows now than they did during the 80s, but with higher ticket prices and merch sales, people are spending more money now than ever before. It's the same in all 3 companies: WWF, WCW, and ECW are all doing massive merch numbers these days.
At a house show in Lexington, Sunny got on the mic and talked about her 16-year-old niece who died in a car accident last week. Sunny talked about holding her hand as the girl was brain dead and being there when she died and urged the fans to always wear their seatbelts. This led to fans booing her and backstage, Sunny was really upset about it. She was also yelled at by road agent Jack Lanza for cutting the promo because no one knew she was planning to say that and I guess talking about brain dead teenagers is kind of a buzzkill for live shows.
Sid was supposed to return last week but now he's claiming he has the flu and won't be back until late June. "I know what you're thinking and so is everyone else. Guess the softball team must have made the playoffs or something," Dave says. Anyway, Dave is curious to see how big Sid is when he returns (aka steroids) and how WWF will treat him. Dave suspects they'll give him another big push like they always do and then history will repeat itself and Sid will flake on them again. And he says don't feel sorry for WWF when it happens because they should have learned by now that Sid isn't dependable.
They did an angle where the Hart Foundation attacked Bob Holly and during the angle, Brian Pillman used a squeegee as a weapon, which is an inside rib on the Sid/Pillman incident from a few years ago where Sid tried to use a squeegee as a weapon in a fight with Pillman.
There have been rumors of Raw moving to Fox when their USA contract expires next year but Dave says there's nothing to it. USA has considered moving Raw to another night but WWF doesn't want to. But in the end, it's USA's decision.
Ken Shamrock has been training with Bret Hart, to incorporate more wrestling moves into his repertoire without compromising his usual shoot-style.
WWF hasn't finalized any deals with FMW yet but chances are they will soon. Dave suspects all the Mankind videos they've been doing, including his death match footage, is probably going to lead to WWF doing one of those exploding ring barbed wire matches that Onita has been wanting them to do (nah).
Leif Cassidy tried to get out of his WWF contract but he's locked in for another year so he can't leave until next year. They're doing a gimmick with him where he loses match after match until he finally snaps (and thus, the seeds of the J.O.B. Squad were planted).
WWF is copying WCW by breaking Raw into 2 shows. WCW breaks down Nitro into two separate 1 hour shows, and thus in the Neilsen ratings, they get credit for 2 highly rated shows instead of 1, which makes it look artificially more impressive for advertising dollars. WWF is now starting to do the same, which is why they have new opening graphics at the start of the 2nd hour.
WWF has re-opened negotiations with Steve Williams now that all the publicity from his recent drug arrest has gone away. They want to do a Williams/Shamrock feud.