July 07, 1997
- Not gonna be around in an hour, so it's going up early today!
- WWF vs. WCW in the "Battle of Los Angeles" as Dave calls it took place this week (Dave already shouting out PWG years before they even existed). Both WWF and WCW held house shows in the city on the same night. WCW claimed a total attendance of 10,948 which is by far the best WCW has ever drawn in California. But there's a question if the show was even profitable. WCW spent tons of money on advertising, they threw in all the production bells and whistles of a regular Nitro, with pyro and stage setup and everything, and Hogan worked the show (which of course costs extra money). Plus the venue they ran in (Great Western Forum) is one of the most expensive arenas in the U.S. to run in. Merchandise sales may be the only thing that make this a profitable show for WCW. Billed as WCW Saturday Nitro, the show was good but nothing special and audio commentary was broadcast live on WCW's website. Chris Jericho won the cruiserweight title from Syxx and was booed out of the building for it by the pro-heel crowd. Hogan didn't work a match at the show but he came out with the rest of the NWO to cut a promo. The crowd gave Hogan and the rest of the NWO a huge babyface reaction. To end the show, Sting came down from the ceiling and beat up all the NWO and eventually put Hogan in the scorpion deathlock.
- WWF drew 9,469 fans to their show and despite drawing slightly less than WCW, without all the added production and promotion costs, WWF is the clear money winner here. They had a bikini contest that apparently went on for over 20 minutes, with all the women stripping. The crowd began throwing money "which Sunny was glad to collect." Sable wore the least and got the biggest pop to win. Bret Hart made his in-ring return during the main event but his knee was still obviously hurting and not nearly 100% recovered yet. Anyway, it's worth noting that these 2 shows were also competing with something else going on that same night, which leads us to....
- Mike Tyson faced Evander Holyfield in one of the strangest boxing matches of all time that ended when Tyson bit Holyfield's ear. This isn't wrestling related but Dave covers it and, I mean, c'mon, we gotta. Actually Dave does tie this whole thing in to wrestling by talking about an old wrestling incident from 1931 called the Battle of the Bite. It's a really long, convoluted story and involves Ed "Strangler" Lewis and a guy who intentionally bit himself on the arm and drew blood (and made it look like Lewis had done it) in order to get Lewis DQ'd so he could win the title, which was a shoot double-cross (he wasn't scheduled to win the belt, but when the referee calls it a title change in front of the crowd, the promoters had to go with it). From that point on, it became policy in American wrestling that world titles didn't change hands by DQ anymore. So if you ever wanted to know why that's a rule, now you know. Anyway, back to boxing, Dave says the sport will survive and Tyson will eventually return to the ring and still draw big money and thinks people are overreacting when they say this will kill the sport.
- Jim Cornette debuted in ECW in an angle similar to the Lawler angle. The lights went out and when they came back on, Cornette was in the ring and he began hitting people with his tennis racket. Word is this angle got over just as big, if not more so, than the Lawler angle and had massive heat. Chris Candido reportedly acted as the middleman between Paul Heyman and Cornette to negotiate the deal to bring him in. Heyman figured Cornette was the last person anyone would expect to show up in ECW, given that the 2 of them have legitimately always hated each other. Cornette originally wasn't going to do it, but he loved the idea of the angle (it's an old southern-style angle, the kinda shit Cornette loves) and after Heyman agreed to meet several stipulations, Cornette agreed to do it. The main stipulation was that Paul Heyman agreed to apologize to Cornette's longtime friend Dennis Coraluzzo for double-crossing him during the NWA title tournament in 1994. Heyman met with Coraluzzo and the two sides buried the hatchet and even discussed allowing ECW wrestlers to work shows for Coraluzzo and in exchange, Coraluzzo would drop his longstanding war against ECW, where he has tried repeatedly to use legal means to get the company shut down. Heyman also agreed to send a limo to pick up Cornette and Coraluzzo and bring them to the ECW Arena. Cornette also wanted Heyman to apologize to Coraluzzo in front of all the ECW wrestlers, but that didn't happen. Coraluzzo never left the limo and had his meeting with Heyman there. Cornette was only in the ECW locker room for a brief time before leaving after the angle. It's expected Cornette will be Lawler's manager for any upcoming shows that Lawler works, including the ECW PPV in August. (No video of Cornette's debut on YouTube but it's on the Network on the June 30th, 1997 episode of Hardcore TV).
- Also during the Cornette angle, Jerry Lawler hit Tommy Dreamer in the balls with a kendo stick for real. Dreamer was legitimately injured and couldn't work the next night's show and is said to still be in a lot of pain (yeah, Dreamer has talked about this. Lawler almost ruptured his balls for real. Let's hear Tommy talk about it. The video of it happening is also in that episode of Hardcore TV, during the Cornette angle. Dreamer's high-pitched scream when it happens will haunt your nightmares).
- It's almost a lock that the main event of NJPW's Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show will be Riki Choshu vs. Kensuke Sasaki (nope). Sasaki is a protege of Choshu and has never beaten him. And Choshu will be wrestling his final match at the show before retiring, so expect Sasaki to finally defeat Choshu there (didn't happen. Choshu ended up wrestling 5 matches that night and none of them were against Sasaki).
- Tom Prichard is moving to Memphis and word is USWA will end up becoming a satellite company to the WWF and will be used as a developmental territory and training location. Dave also mentions offhandedly that USWA is currently being funded by a guy from Cleveland who runs a chain of massage parlors (this WWF deal fell through and we'll find out all about it in about a year).
- Jerry Jarrett's mother Christine Jarrett was fired by USWA. She has worked the ticket office in Louisville "literally since the beginning of time" but USWA finally cut ties with her.
- Glenn Jacobs is no longer doing the Diesel gimmick in USWA and has been working as a gimmick named Doomsday, but wearing the old Lord Humongous mask.
- Curt Hennig debuted on Nitro in just about the weakest way possible, simply walking out during the NWO beatdown at the end of the show. Raven also debuted on Nitro in the crowd and at the end, when Hennig walked out, Raven jumped the barricade as well and they both sorta just stared down the NWO as the show went off the air. The original plan was for both Hennig and Raven to join the NWO but that may be too much at once and plans will probably change, because everything changes on a dime in WCW nowadays.
- Mike Tyson was backstage at Nitro, which was in Las Vegas and WCW had planned to bring him out as a big surprise to end the show. But given what happened with Tyson 2 nights earlier in Vegas (biting Holyfield's ear), they decided not to use him. The decision was mostly made by the MGM Grand Garden Arena and by TNT, who pretty much forbid WCW from using him or from even referencing boxing. In fact, boxer Michael Moorer was in the front row for the show, and WCW was told not to show him on camera or acknowledge him because the sport of boxing has such negative publicity right now after what Tyson did (man, I gotta disagree with them here. Bischoff bringing Mike Tyson out on TV on Nitro 2 nights after the ear thing would have made MAJOR news).
- WCW also tried to bring in Jose Lothario for the show, not for any real reason, just to get people talking and to stick it to WWF, but it didn't happen.
- WCW has released several wrestlers, including Michael Wallstreet, Craig Pittman, the Nasty Boys, Jim Duggan, Joe Gomez, Ice Train, and Nancy Sullivan.
- Speaking of Nancy Sullivan, word is she and Kevin Sullivan are splitting up in real life, "although this has nothing to do with the storyline." I think we can safely say Dave had that one wrong.
- Buff Bagwell will be starring in a movie called Return To Savage Beach, which I guess is a sequel to that other low-budget movie he did (here's the full movie. There's literally tits in the first 2 seconds, so, yanno...NSFW warning).
- Buddy Landel was given a tryout match at the latest WCW tapings and lost to Bill Goldberg in 90 seconds.
- On Raw, they finally had Paul Bearer reveal Undertaker's big secret. Bearer accused Undertaker of burning down his parents' home and killing his parents and his younger brother "Cain" and called Undertaker a murderer. Undertaker claimed Cain burned down the home by accident and said he blamed himself for letting it happen. So now they have to introduce a character that is Undertaker's brother. Dave thinks there could have been a lot of storyline potential if they revealed Mankind was his brother, but the recent Mick Foley interviews revealing his childhood, they kinda killed that possibility. Most people don't remember but when Undertaker first debuted in the WWF, his name was Cain The Undertaker, but they dropped the Cain part after a few matches.
- Sable came out on Raw in a low-cut top, "revealing yet another boob job" while Marc Mero acted jealous and tried to block her from the camera. "Sable needed another boob job like Yokozuna needs more cake and ice cream so go figure what goes through people's minds," Dave says.
- The Headhunters debuted in WWF on Raw and were managed by Jim Cornette. They had a hard time doing their big top rope moves because the WWF ropes are looser than they're used to and they're both big guys. Since WWF already has a team called the Head Bangers, they may change the Headhunters names to The Arabian Butchers (indeed they did, but they didn't last very long in the company).
- At the Shotgun tapings and in dark matches, The Patriot from AJPW made his debut, losing to Rockabilly (Billy Gunn). He didn't really get over. Shawn Morley who's been wrestling in Puerto Rico and EMLL had a tryout match (he'd later become Val Venis).
- They did an angle on Shotgun Saturday Night "firing" Brian Pillman as host of the show. The plan was to bring in Paul Heyman to host the show and WWF even sent him a plane ticket to fly to the next taping to do it. Problem is, no one told Heyman and he has no interest in hosting the show, so he didn't go.
- Speaking of Heyman, there seems to be a lot of heat on him for various things within WWF. For starers, Vince McMahon was reportedly furious that Heyman mentioned Nitro and Eric Bischoff's name on Raw. There's also still heat over the incident with Rob Van Dam and McMahon because of the incident last week with Van Dam not wanting to put over Jesse James. Heyman had a meeting with McMahon this week to discuss all these various things and it seems like the WWF/ECW relationship is on the rocks a bit. A lot of WWF wrestlers aren't happy about the relationship either because they feel that the ECW guys are being allowed to get over in ways they can't. WWF stars aren't allowed to break tables or jump off the guard rails and stuff like that, so they're a little peeved that ECW guys are being brought in to Raw and being allowed to do those things, which is getting them over while others in WWF are struggling to connect.
- Still nothing new on the Shawn Michaels front. He's scheduled to meet with McMahon sometime this week but that's all anyone knows. No word on if/when he might be back.
- Some guy writes in and talks about the lack of depth in the WWF roster and specifically talks about knowing it's time to change the channel when he sees guys like Rocky Maivia or Hunter Hearst Helmsley come on the TV. "Even if they weren't shitty workers, I could deal with them if they had a decent personality." Yeah, who wants to see those un-charismatic dweebs? Lots of ridiculousness in the letters this week actually. Someone else writes in defending Ric Flair and says that 20 years from now, people will still be talking about how great Flair is while Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Syxx, and Eric Bischoff while be barely remembered footnotes in wrestling history.