June 30, 1997
- General consensus yesterday seemed to be okay with the idea of eventually switching to a M-W-F schedule for these posts. But not until we get to 1998. So for now, the rest of these 1997 ones will continue on a daily basis. But just an early heads up, starting with next year's posts, I'll be cutting down to M-W-F. That should hopefully keep this going a little while longer, which will give them time to add more issues to the archive. And it'll also hopefully help me not completely burn out on writing these because trying to stay far enough ahead is a bitch sometimes. Anyway, on with the show!
- Stan Stasiak passed away this week from heart failure at age 60. Stasiak was a main event heel everywhere he wrestled in the 60s and 70s but is mostly remembered for his 9-day reign as a transitional champion in WWF (or WWWF at the time). He'd been in poor health for awhile and had a pacemaker put in this year and was awaiting a heart transplant when he died. As usual, Dave writes a long but great obituary detailing Stasiak's life and career. Dave tells the story of Stasiak winning the title from Pedro Morales and how they were so afraid of a riot from the Puerto Ricans in the crowd that they did what looked like a double-pin, but Stasiak got his shoulder up to win the title. But they didn't announce the winner to the live crowd and most people in the building didn't even realize a title change had taken place until they saw it in the newspaper the next day. And then, of course, 9 days later, Bruno Sammartino defeated Stasiak to win the title, kicking off a 3+ year long reign. Dave mentions that his son Shawn Stasiak was a great collegiate wrestler and has done some indie stuff. I'm sure we'll Meat him eventually...
- Ahmed Johnson has suffered a knee injury, just 2 weeks before he's scheduled to face Undertaker for the WWF title at the Canadian Stampede PPV. The injury happened on Raw during a brawl with the debuting Disciples of Apocalypse. They ended up changing the main event of Raw that night and substituting D-Lo Brown in his place. It's believed he'll need arthroscopic knee surgery and will be pulled from the PPV but as of now, Dave doesn't know all the details. Meanwhile, Sycho Sid was also hospitalized this week with back problems stemming from the car accident last week. This basically puts 2 of the PPV matches in jeopardy since Sid was supposed to face Vader. But with both Sid and Ahmed out, it's likely that WWF will change the matches and do an Undertaker vs. Vader match (yup).
- Other WWF injury notes: Phil LaFon is expected to be out for about a month due to his injuries from the car accident. Doug Furnas was the most banged up in the accident and it was thought he would need shoulder surgery but turns out he doesn't. But an x-ray later in the week showed a broken vertebrae in his back, so...that's not good. Steve Austin missed several house shows due to a whole list of injuries. He already has a bad back, a bad neck, and 2 bad knees, and now the most recent is torn rib cartilage. So they're all out, along with the aforementioned Ahmed and Sid, plus Bret Hart's still out with the knee injury and Shawn Michaels is still out nursing his ego. Speaking of...
- Shawn and McMahon were supposed to have a meeting, with Michaels' lawyer present, but it was cancelled for some reason. They still plan to meet up later this week. Michaels is claiming unsafe working conditions due to the backstage fight with Bret Hart and claims to have suffered neck and knee injuries during it and still wants out of his contract.
- WWF and WCW both have shows in Los Angeles this week on the same night. WCW is treating it like an internet PPV and will be doing live audio commentary on their website (no video because, well, it's 1997. Think of how much of a pain in the ass live video streaming still is now sometimes, then subtract 20 years). They're also promising a confrontation (but not a match) between Hogan and Sting. As for WWF, their show will feature Bret Hart's return to the ring and a bikini contest with Sunny, Sable, Marlena, and Chyna. According to WWF officials, ticket sales are neck and neck, while WCW claims to be several thousand tickets ahead of WWF. Both sides are claiming that the other is heavily papering the shows. For what it's worth, Dave says that despite the perception that WWF is the #2 company, the truth is that they still consistently outdraw WCW on house shows. And the advance ticket sales for Summerslam, which is still over a month away, has already made more ticket money than WCW has ever made for any show in its history.
- Eric Bischoff has discussed the possibility of doing monthly Lucha Libre PPVs with all of the Mexican wrestlers on the roster, which is why he's negotiating with EMLL to bring in more talent (and to keep WWF from having them and also to take away some of Konnan's leverage). Bischoff wants EMLL and Promo Azteca to work together and do promotion vs. promotion angles but naturally, neither side wants to because they basically hate each other.
- On USWA TV, they did an angle playing off the Raw match where Paul Heyman outed Brian Christopher as Jerry Lawler's son. On TV, Lance Russell asked Lawler about it and Lawler beat around the bush and said he'd answer the question later in the show. But then later in the show, Lawler came out to talk about it as the show was ending and he said they were out of time and he'd answer the question next week. It was a sleazy soap opera-like cliffhanger and the crowd seemed to be embarrassed by the whole thing.
- Also in USWA, Fake Diesel has challenged Fake Razor Ramon to a loser leaves town match (as I'm writing this, I don't know who wins yet but I'd assume Diesel loses since he'll be returning to WWF as Kane here in a few months).
- The reason Mabel was fired from USWA was for repeated no-shows. For the hundreds of you who were probably dying to know the answer to that from yesterday's post.
- There's a new guy in USWA named Nick Dinsmore, who was trained by Danny Davis (Dinsmore, of course, would go on to become Eugene in WWE).
- Jesse Ventura attended a fund-raiser in Minneapolis and hinted that he plans to run for governor of Minnesota, although he hasn't made an official announcement yet. Speaking of Ventura, he and indie wrestler Jeep Swenson both have roles in the recently released movie Batman & Robin. Dave says Swenson plays "a larger than life person although he doesn't have a speaking role but looks freakishly large." (That would be Bane.) Ventura has a role as a prison guard who gets killed by Poison Ivy.
- George "The Animal" Steele also has another movie role in the film Blowfish where he's one of the lead stars.
- An indie company in Canada has a few shows coming up, mostly with Badnews Allen and Rick Martel as the only noteworthy names. They also have a rookie there, some kid named Adam Copeland who has wrestled in a few other indie promotions under the name Sexton Hardcastle.
- The Eliminators finally lost the tag titles to the Dudleys this week, in what amounted to a handicap match since Saturn is injured. The did a gimmick where he was banned from ringside, so Kronus defended the titles himself and lost.
- Sabu got married a couple of weeks ago, on June 12th.
- Diamond Dallas Page's mystery partner at the Bash at the Beach PPV will almost certainly be Curt Hennig, although there's talk that he may turn on DDP and join the NWO when he debuts. WCW has kinda booked themselves into a corner with this because they've been hinting that Sting will be the mystery partner. And WCW fans have been waiting for 8 months to see Sting in a match again, so even though Curt Hennig would be a pretty big surprise under normal circumstances, fans are likely to be letdown when they find out the partner isn't Sting.
- WCW is trying to get Mike Tyson to appear on an upcoming Nitro in Las Vegas but he has a fight 2 days earlier, so it's iffy that it will happen (yeah, plus I'm not sure if you've heard, but this fight gets Tyson in a little bit of trouble. You know who didn't hear about it? Evander Holyfield. Get it?! Because of his ear?!....ah fuck it.)
- At this point, the belief is that Arn Anderson will likely never wrestle again due to his injuries and the surgery he had a few months back. There was talk of having Anderson come out and form a new Four Horsemen, but they nixed those plans.
- Ric Flair is filming a Dr. Pepper commercial (I can't find any video of this. I think I later read somewhere that it was a Coke commercial but I can't find that either so who knows).
- The recently "retired" Madusa worked matches against Luna Vachon on last week's WCW tour of Germany.
- Crush, Brian Lee, and the Harris Brothers debuted on Raw as a group called the Disciples of Apocalypse and came out on motorcycles. They seem to be working a racial angle between the white motorcycle gang and the all black Nation of Domination. The brawl that took place during their debut is where Ahmed suffered his knee injury.
- Tap outs seem to be the new rage in wrestling. WCW has been trying to get it over and Ken Shamrock won a match on Raw this week with a tap out also. Even in EMLL in Mexico, they've started doing it.
- Dan Severn appeared on Raw, doing commentary on a Ken Shamrock match and during commentary, Vince McMahon really put UFC over huge. He talked about how it's misunderstood and he and Severn talked about how there's never been a death in MMA, which Vince then said was something neither pro wrestling or boxing could say. They really put over the athleticism and safety of the sport and pushed back against the "it's human cockfighting" narrative. Dave is surprised at just how much McMahon was willing to put over UFC. Severn was at the show to negotiate a possible deal with WWF and since he was already there, they asked him to do commentary on the match. No word on if the two sides reached a deal, but it doesn't appear that they have yet.
- Sabu worked a match on Raw against Flash Funk. Sabu got over pretty well and the crowd chanted his name. Paul Heyman did commentary and said something along the lines of "Eric Bischoff wants you to believe Public Enemy invented breaking tables, but they stole it from Sabu." Dave thinks it's the first time Bischoff's name has ever been mentioned on Raw. Speaking of, when Sabu tried repeatedly to put Flash Funk through a table, the table wouldn't break and afterwards, Sabu was going nuts backstage, furious about the table not breaking. Also, Dave offhandedly mentions that Flash Funk has been in the dog house for the last few months over some sort of incident that happened at a hotel during Wrestlemania weekend, but doesn't specify.
- There was a triple threat match on Raw and Dave says the match had "those stupid WCW rules where the first guy to score the pin wins, which means you can lose the title when someone else is pinned" and in a later sentence adds that the triple threat match rules are "lame." (It's been 20 years and those are still the established rules for triple threat matches. Wonder how Dave feels about it now).
- Pro boxer "Hitman" Tommy Hearns did an angle on Raw with Bret Hart, which was mostly WWF's way to try to get some mainstream ESPN-style publicity, the same way WCW has gotten a lot of mainstream coverage by using Dennis Rodman. It wasn't bad. "Hey, two years ago they were doing these same angles with Captain Kirk," Dave says. I can't find the video of this, but I remember it.
- Both Sabu and Rob Van Dam were apparently causing major problems backstage at Raw. Sabu complained about having to do a double-count out finish with Funk. Van Dam was supposed to have a match with Jesse James on the Shotgun Saturday Night taping, where Lawler would interfere and cost him the match. Van Dam complained that him losing to James would be like Bret Hart coming to ECW and losing to one of their jobbers. As you can imagine, this pissed off a lot of WWF officials to no end and it nearly caused them to pull the plug on the whole WWF/ECW angle, but Paul Heyman managed to smooth things over with all the right people. Needless to say though, there's a lot of heat on RVD right now in the WWF locker room.
- WWF injury update: Brian Pillman suffered a broken nose in his recent Raw match with Austin. And Rocky Maivia is out with a strained MCL but should be back in a few weeks. And one more injury, which brings us to...
- Howard Finkel is injured. Poor Finkel has always been the butt of jokes in the company for some reason (this was before Jim Ross became the constant target of Vince's bullying). Anyway, at house shows recently, they've been having referees pretending to attack him and doing pull apart brawls, apparently unbeknownst to Finkel when they first started doing it. Anyway, this time, referee Jack Doan bodyslammed Finkel and he landed on his shoulder and suffered a pretty serious shoulder injury. "You know things are bad when even the ring announcer is out of action due to injuries."
- Van Hammer got a WWF tryout, as a favor to Marc Mero. No word on how he did (evidently not great since he didn't get hired).