June 23, 1997
- Sorry, a little late today. Hey, since I'm here, let's chat Wreddit. How would we feel about maybe changing this to a M-W-F schedule starting in 1998? Here's the issue. Right now, there's a big gap in the f4wonline archives but they upload a new back issue each week and they're slowly filling in the gap. As of this writing, the latest issue is an Aug. 2000 one. But each week, they add the next issue.
- By my very rough calculations, at the 5-day a week rate, I will catch up to the archives sometime in mid-2001, hopefully right around the time WCW and ECW go out of business. But if I switch to a M-W-F schedule, that might add enough time to get all of 2001. Am I making sense? I feel like I'm not. I dunno. Anyway, point being, I may (not for sure yet) switch to a M-W-F schedule starting with the 1998 issues.
- Whatever. That's future daprice82's problem. For now, let's talk about some wrasslin'!
- Sycho Sid, Doug Furnas, Phil LaFon, and Flash Funk were involved in a car accident this week that left all 4 hospitalized. They were on the way to Ottawa, with Sid behind the wheel. He was going around 100MPH and went to adjust the sun roof and lost control of the car, hit the shoulder, and rolled 4 times. The car was destroyed and all 4 men were taken in an ambulance to the hospital. Sid suffered cuts on his face and a concussion and aggravated his already injured back. Furnas was the most seriously injured, suffering a separated and broken shoulder that required surgery. LaFon suffered a concussion and tons of cuts and bruises and they had to shave most of his hair to get glass out of his head. Flash Funk was the luckiest, as he was just shaken up but not seriously injured. Obviously, all 4 men are probably lucky to be alive.
- It appears Shawn Michaels will be returning to WWF after all. Last week, after a fight with Bret Hart, Michaels stormed out of the arena, yelling, "I'll never work for your fucking ass again!" at Vince McMahon on the way out. The latest on the fight is that Bret confronted Shawn about the "Sunny days" comment, to which Shawn taunted him by saying "What are you gonna do about it?", to which Hart responded by punching Shawn's face in and snatching a clump of hair out of his head. Shawn was furious and said he would sit out the next 4 years of his contract if he had to before coming back to work for WWF. Dave mentions the inheritance that Shawn received from a fan last year (which Shawn still denies to this day) and says Shawn could definitely afford to sit out 4 years if he wanted to. After going home, Shawn also disconnected his phone so WWF officials couldn't get hold of him. WWF claimed Shawn had breached his contract and wouldn't be paying him his $15,000 per week downside guarantee until he returned. Michaels then had his lawyers send WWF paperwork saying he wasn't breaching his contract and that he does plan to return, but he had suffered knee and neck injuries in the fight with Bret and would be unable to wrestle for 4-6 weeks. On this week's Raw, Bret Hart was ready to return and he also wanted to cut a semi-shoot promo to explain the situation and try to use the backstage fight to further their angle. But WWF didn't want Bret to do anything to antagonize Michaels and were afraid of what he might say on live TV if they let him cut a promo, so they kept him off Raw entirely. It's also worth noting that Shawn Michaels is still tag champions with Steve Austin. On Raw, they announced a tag tournament with the winners facing Austin and "a partner of his choosing" for the titles. If Shawn is back by then, he'll probably resume being Austin's partner. If not, they'll have to throw someone else in there as Austin's partner.
- WCW's Great American Bash is in the books and was mostly uneventful. Several of the matches ended in tap outs, because WCW is still trying to get that over to fans. Konnan messed his knee up during his match and after it was over, he had to be helped out of the ring. Madusa lost her retirement match. Dave says it's even bigger than that because it pretty much spells the end of women's wrestling in the United States. WWF gave up on it in '95 and this pretty much amounts to WCW giving up as well. Dave recaps a little bit of Madusa's career, talks about how WCW pretty much only signed her because they wanted her to do the garbage can thing with the WWF women's title and says WCW had no idea what to do with her after that. These days, it seems the male fans want half naked valets rather than women's wrestling and predicts it'll be many years before women's wrestling makes a return in WWF or WCW. And of course, anything involving the women in ECW is just catfights. Nancy Sullivan didn't come to the ring with Chris Benoit and was never mentioned, so apparently their association on TV is over now that Kevin Sullivan isn't booking anymore. They may put Nancy with someone else. Dave says NFL player Kevin Green showed more natural wrestling ability in only his 3rd match ever than pretty much anyone Dave has ever seen that early in their career. Given Greene's age, he'll probably never be a full-time wrestler, but Dave says he's amazing for someone who's only had a few weeks of training.
- AAA's annual Triplemania shows took place. It pretty much fell apart from the beginning due to the usual AAA disorganization. It's beginning to look like the company is falling apart. The dates of the shows kept changing and then the first scheduled show was cancelled due to AAA not having permits. When they finally had the first show, it was basically the same as any house show and wasn't even being taped. Overall, it's the worst show in Triplemania history.
- Dave gives 5+ stars to a Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada match from All Japan. So for everyone whining about how Dave broke the scale for Okada/Omega, there ya go. But for years afterward (and in this issue), Dave says this is perhaps the best match he's ever seen. Says it's slow paced but every move meant something and tells a great story in their rivalry. Anyway, behold one of Dave's older 6 star matches. He doesn't say 6 here, but he adds a + sign to the end of the 5 stars, so, yanno.
- Antonio Pena's nephew, who wrestled in AAA as Espectro, has left the company to go join some no-name indie group. Dave says you know things in AAA must be going bad when the owner's nephew leaves the company to go work for an indie fed. Expect others to start jumping ship soon also.
- It looks like Ken Shamrock will face Vader at FMW's big stadium show in September. Onita is trying to bring in more WWF and ECW wrestlers for a show in December and hopes to run Japanese style angles with them. Onita is also considering doing a major heel turn, ala Hogan in WCW.
- The Tommy Dreamer/Jerry Lawler feud continued in USWA this week, with Dreamer appearing live on USWA's Saturday TV show and then the 2 faced each other that night. On the TV show, Dreamer was an out of control madman, destroying much of the set and attacking everyone he saw. USWA officials were actually a little butt-hurt because Dreamer was hugely popular and there were a lot of ECW shirts in the crowd and ECW chants. Basically, the ECW guy showed up to USWA and was supposed to be the heel, invading the local promotion, but the crowd liked him more than everyone else in USWA. Anyway, Paul Heyman is expected to appear here at one of the next shows as well. Backstage, some people were laughing at Dreamer and calling him a mark because he wanted to get his picture taken with Lance Russell and Dutch Mantel, because he's a lifelong wrestling fan. (Here's some video. Behold Stacy "The Kat" Carter doing the interview before she was in WWF).
- Steve Dunn, Mabel, Spellbinder, and Downtown Bruno (Harvey Wippleman in WWF) were all fired by USWA this week for various reasons. No word on why Mabel was fired. Spellbinder was fired because of a locker room argument with someone else. Downtown Bruno was fired after getting into an argument with USWA manager Larry Burton over a $50 payoff, which resulted in Bruno actually slapping Burton. As for Steve Dunn....USWA held a late night bar show in Memphis that drew about 80 people. For whatever reason, they passed out squirt guns to everybody at ringside and Larry Burton had one. Everyone was having fun with them, but Burton in particular kept squirting water at Dunn during his match. After the match, Dunn was furious at Burton, saying he has a surgically repaired knee and squirting water in the ring was making it unsafe for him to wrestle. It turned into a big argument that apparently got heated enough that Dunn was fired.
- Ultimate Warrior appeared at a comic convention this weekend, promoting his Warrior comic books. He told people that, under no circumstances would he ever return to pro wrestling.
- At an MMA show in Brazil, a former Olympic Greco-Roman wrestler named Dan Henderson had his first fight and won (I don't know a lot about MMA, but even I know Henderson eventually became one of the best ever).
- Tommy Dreamer missed an ECW house show because he didn't get back from Memphis in time after doing the USWA angle.
- Perry Saturn had successful knee surgery this week and is expected to be out for 8-12 months. He still showed up to the ECW shows and did some spots outside of the ring. Kronus has been defending the ECW titles in handicap matches and so despite the injury, The Eliminators are still tag team champions.
- On Nitro, Dennis Rodman repeatedly called Lex Luger "Lex Luthor" which is, of course, the Superman villain and not the bad wrestler.
- La Parka hit Super Calo with a brutal chairshot with a plastic chair on Nitro that left him knocked loopy for a long time backstage. He got a concussion and also needed stitches in his head and nose. La Parka reportedly felt super guilty and terrible about it afterward (here's the video. Chairshot happens near the end and....ouchie).
- Raven's debut has been pushed back because he hasn't yet signed his WCW contract, though he likely will this week. He was originally supposed to debut on this past week's Nitro.
- Rey Mysterio Jr. got a second opinion from a doctor who told him he doesn't need knee surgery but he needs to sit out for a couple of months and rehab it. The plan is for him to take July and August off.
- The audio of WCW's upcoming Saturday night house show in Los Angeles will be aired live on the internet on WCW's website. The show is going head-to-head with a local WWF house show in the same area that night, so WCW is pulling out all the stops for this one.
- CNN's show American Edge aired a segment on WCW's Power Plant facility.
- WCW is renaming their Hog Wild PPV and changing it to Road Wild because Harley Davidson owns the trademark on HOG (Harley Owners Group) and it was causing legal headaches for WCW.
- Kevin Greene was doing a ton of publicity and press appearances for WCW this week and there's a lot of talk about how it's affecting his football career. This is likely going to be Greene's final year in the NFL and training camp is currently going on. A lot of people said he should have been at camp but instead, he was busy doing wrestling stuff. Greene has reportedly told people that he's burned out on football.
- Dennis Rodman has also been doing the media rounds to promote the upcoming PPV he's wrestling on. Rodman was also in the news for making some comments about Mormons while in Utah for the Bulls vs. Jazz series, which got him fined $50,000 by the NBA.
- Chris Jericho is expected to win the cruiserweight title from Syxx sometime in the next couple of weeks.
- Chris Candido sorta made his return to WWF, in an ECW vs. USWA match that took place on Raw. Candido faced Brian Christopher. The crowd didn't care and Christopher didn't get over at all. With someone his size, fans these days expect high flying excitement and Christopher wrestles like an 80s Memphis heel, and it just doesn't work for someone that small in the 90s on the big stage. Paul Heyman was at ringside during the match and he publicly outed Christopher as Jerry Lawler's son, which led to Lawler slapping Heyman. Heyman also said Brian Christopher's mom is only 38 years old, which would mean she was 12 when she got pregnant, which was a shot at Lawler's legal troubles a few years back. Word is the angle was Lawler's idea, so he okay'd all of it.
- They also had the first light heavyweight division matches on Raw, with Tommy Rogers vs. Bobby Fulton. You can imagine how well that got over. Dave says WCW's cruiserweight division didn't take off until they brought in guys who wrestled a totally new style that Americans hadn't seen before. Sticking smaller faceless nobodies out there and having them wrestle a regular American-style match isn't going to get over in WWF.
- Charles Wright, now billed as Kama Mustafa, re-debuted as part of the Nation of Domination and pinned Undertaker clean in a tag team match which basically stunned the crowd. Before that, the match was totally dead and the crowd didn't give a shit about the returning Kama, so they were flabbergasted when they saw a guy that they view as basically a jobber go over on Undertaker. After the match, Ahmed Johnson turned heel and joined the NOD, but word is he didn't want to do the heel turn and pushed hard to remain a babyface, so they may work some sort of angle to explain why he's working with the NOD in order to not fully turn him heel.
- WWF has hired a new announcer named Michael Cole. He did commentary on Shotgun Saturday Night last week with Jim Cornette and word is Cornette carried him and it was obvious that Cole didn't know much about wrestling.
- The reason the first hour of Raw is called "Raw" and the second hour is called "The War Zone" is because WWF is presenting the 2 hours as 2 different TV shows, in order to try to have two highly rated shows instead of one in the syndicated ratings.