Wrestling Observer Rewinder

August 04, 1997

I'm on a road trip today, so I'm posting this from my phone while my wife drives. So if any of the formatting is screwed up, apologies.
Main story this week is the latest UFC PPV, highlighted by the biggest upset in UFC history when Maurice Smith beat Mark Coleman and all the problems the show is dealing with getting on PPV because they're losing a political war against them. Basically a lot of doom and gloom about the future of UFC.
66-year-old Fritz Von Erich has been diagnosed with lung cancer, which has spread to his brain and adrenal glands. His long-term prognosis is not good. The cancer was found after he was hospitalized for a stroke. Dave says Von Erich's life story has so many twists and turns that they could make a movie about it but nobody would believe it was true. Dave writes a medium-length...I dunno, "pre-obituary" I guess? His wrestling career, starting World Class, the deaths of his sons, and more.
The biggest indie show of the year will take place next month, called Terry Funk's Wrestlefest taking place in Amarillo, TX. It's being promoted as Terry Funk's final match "in Amarillo." Which...is not quite the same thing as retirement. Beyond The Mat lied to me! Bret Hart will be Funk's opponent and there will be a Sabu vs. Mankind match as well. ECW and FMW stars will also work the show. Dave notes that this is the first indie show Bret has worked in years and says Bret's first match actually took place in Amarillo in 1973 when he was 16, three years before he started wrestling in his dad's Stampede promotion.
This is the slowest issue ever. How the hell am I already halfway through this and only have 4 short things?
The most famous wrestling fan in the world died in Mexico this week. 97-year-old Virginia Aguilera passed away this week. She had been a regular in the front row for almost every show at Arena Mexico for the last 58 years. Numerous TV shows have done stories about her over the years and she was called the Grandmother of Lucha Libre. Several wrestlers, including Perro Aguayo were pallbearers at her funeral.
As mentioned last week, Masahiro Chono recently suffered a broken ankle. He spoke to reporters after getting off a plane on crutches and said he still plans to work the G-1 tournament but NJPW held a press conference saying that Chono will have to be cleared by a doctor first before he'll be allowed to work the tournament.
Dave talks about how good a job NJPW has done in building former judo champion Naoya Ogawa as a special attraction and how he's seen as special even though he doesn't have 1/10th of the charisma that Ken Shamrock has. Then compare it to how WWF has already turned Shamrock into "just another guy" after only a few months in the company.
After "retiring" last year, FMW star Mr. Pogo returned to the ring, using the name Great Pogo. In his match, he "used a gigantic knife and an electric drill" on his opponent's forehead. As Lou Thesz intended.
This week, WWF contacted Glenn Jacobs and told him he was being brought back immediately and it's expected he will play the role of Undertaker's brother "Cain." Jacobs is still USWA champion (using the Doomsday gimmick) and wasn't given a chance to drop the USWA title before he left. USWA is discussing putting a different wrestler under the Doomsday mask and pretending as if nothing's different, but they haven't decided yet.
Gordon Solie's wife Eileen passed away from cancer this week at age 70. It was expected and the night before her death, she wrote her own obituary before passing away in her sleep.
Actor Billy Crystal is planning to make a movie about the life of Andre The Giant, starring NBA Washington Bullets basketball player Gheorghe Muresan. If it happens, New Line Cinema, which is owned by Turner/Time Warner, would be producing the movie. Within the business, it's led to jokes that Eric Bischoff will try to get himself hired to play Vince McMahon (obviously this one didn't happen).
Madusa has been at the Cincinnati Bengals training camp recently with 23-year-old starting lineman Ken Blackman (yeah, they later got married).
Dave Boy Smith's 12-year-old son Harry Smith wrestled at an indie show in Canada against 15-year-old TJ Wilson.
Sandman missed a few ECW shows with a pelvis injury. No word on exactly what caused it but he was bedridden for several days.
In regards to the ECW/WCW legal situation, ECW hasn't filed a lawsuit yet as of press time. WCW claims Stevie Richards wasn't under contract to ECW and that he used the Stevie Richards name before he was in ECW, so they have no claim to him. As for Raven, WCW claims Scott Levy created the character (with the help of DDP). Raven does admit that he signed a non-compete contract with ECW that is supposed to prevent him from appearing on anyone else's PPV until October. But Raven doesn't have a copy of the contract and WCW's lawyers asked Paul Heyman to send a copy of the contract to them within 10 days or they were going to use Raven on PPV. Heyman never responded, and because WCW gave him a warning that they planned to do it within an allotted amount of time, WCW feels they were in the clear to use Raven on the PPV. Dave spoke with another lawyer who agreed that WCW was probably in the clear because they gave Heyman ample time to respond and he didn't. Up until the last minute, WCW expected Heyman to respond and they were ready to scrap the Raven angle on the PPV, but Heyman never did, so they went ahead and used him on the show.
At an ECW show in Rochester, RVD threw a chair at Balls Mahoney outside the ring. Balls moved and the chair hit a teenage fan at ringside and knocked him silly and he was bleeding pretty badly and had to be treated by medical staff.
Alex Wright won the WCW cruiserweight title from Chris Jericho on Nitro. There's been talk of doing an angle where Wright comes in just barely over the weight limit and will be forced to relinquish it back to Jericho, but no word if that will actually happen (it didn't but Wright eventually lost it back to Jericho a few weeks later anyway).
WCW still won the ratings battle this week, but Raw ratings were the closest they've been in a long time (still 8 months away from WWF finally winning one again). Funny enough, last week's Nitro, which was moved to Tuesday, did a shockingly strong rating. It surprised everyone who thought most fans only watch because Monday night is the traditional wrestling night, but Nitro doing a strong rating on Tuesday means fans are actively seeking it out. This has shown TBS that a possible Thursday night show could probably do strong ratings also, so there are whispers of that idea coming back up. But Eric Bischoff is still against the idea because he doesn't want to overexpose the product and overwork the bookers and wrestlers so he's fighting against it.
Eric Bischoff held a meeting with the wrestlers last week and specifically said he doesn't want any bad language or vulgar gestures on the shows. Apparently he's gotten complaints from higher-ups at Turner about it. Bischoff told the wrestlers to leave that stuff to Vince McMahon, WCW won't be doing it.
The Omni Arena in Atlanta, which for years had been considered the Madison Square Garden of WCW, was demolished last week. A new arena will be opening in 1999. (Dave doesn't go into details, but I looked it up. Basically the arena was a piece of shit and was falling apart. Ted Turner was trying to bring an NHL team to Atlanta and they deemed the arena not suitable even as a temporary arena. They only agreed to give Atlanta a team if a new stadium was built, so the Omni was demolished and the Phillips Arena was built on the same spot and Atlanta got the Atlanta Thrashers in 1999.)
Curt Hennig's matches at the Saturday TV tapings last week were said to be so bad that WCW won't even air them. The truth is, the matches were never planned to air because WCW knows he's still trying to work the ring-rust off. So they had him wrestling just so he can get back in the groove.
Bill Goldberg may be debuting at next month's Clash of the Champions, using the name Bill Gold but that's not for sure (nah, not until Nitro in September). Raven is also expected to wrestle his first WCW match on the Clash show.
Since Raw is moving back an hour, TNT has changed the Nitro replay to air immediately after Nitro goes off the air so Raw will still be going up against Nitro during the 2nd hour, even though it'll be a replay. This also allows the live airing of Nitro to go as long as they want now, since the only thing it'll be bumping into is its own replay. But this will only last until January, when TNT debuts new episodes of Babylon-Five.
There have been rumors of Disco Inferno returning to WCW but it appears to be contingent on him agreeing to lose a match to Jacquelyn, which is why he was canned in the first place (refusing to put her over in a match).
WCW is working to put together some sort of ceremony honoring Verne Gagne at an upcoming Minneapolis house show. Dave says Gagne has so much heat with so many people in the business that it's hard to get people to cooperate with putting this sort of thing together. (Dave adds that, in the mid-80s, Verne Gagne was the most hated person in the industry, "even more than myself or Vince McMahon.")
Sid was officially fired by WWF this week. Dave thinks it's crazy that a star of his magnitude would be outright fired in the middle of this Monday night war, but WWF apparently felt they had no choice given that they couldn't get any straight answers from Sid about his medical condition or when he may be able to return. Normally, you'd expect WCW to hire him immediately, but Sid has a lot of heat with people in WCW and he has pretty much the worst track record in the biz as far as dependability so who knows.
Okay, fine, this issue doesn't necessarily suck anymore.
Jim Neidhart is gone for the moment as well. Apparently before returning to WWF, Neidhart signed an exclusive contract with an indie company called UCW in New York. WWF wasn't aware of it until UCW contacted them after Neidhart has been on TV for the last several months. WWF told Neidhart to go get the legal situation cleared up and get out of the contract and until he does, they're not using him.
WWF announced they'll be bringing in a new TV commissioner next week. The belief is that it will end up being Sgt. Slaughter but other names mentioned included Pat Patterson, Ernie Ladd, Bill Watts and Jack Tunney (Slaughter indeed).
Ahmed Johnson returned from his knee injury and was somehow even bigger than before. Dave is just making blatant steroid jokes about him at this point.
Dave says, "The tension with Bret and Shawn together is tremendous because it seems like even they can't distinguish between working and shooting."
Mankind is still doing the Dude Love gimmick and it's getting a decent response but Dave doesn't think the gimmick has legs.
Shawn Michaels had a meeting last week with the producers of Baywatch and he's expected to film an episode or two of that show next season. Shawn is expected back in the ring by September and word is he's willing to do business with Bret.
Marc Mero isn't expected back until September either. He's apparently been rehabbing his injured knee so hard that he damaged it worse rather than making it better. He'll have to wear a heavy brace when he returns.
Chris Candido writes in to clear up a few misconceptions about the Jim Cornette/ECW situation from a few weeks back. Candido says he was the only one who was in contact with all parties so he wanted to tell the true story. I'll just copy and paste his letter:
As the only person who was in contact with all parties involved, I'd like to put to rest the Paul E., Jim Cornette, Dennis Coraluzzo story. Paul wanted a surprise for the Arena show. Who would be the last person our fans would expect to see working for Paul? The obvious answer was Jim Cornette. Figuring if they were to ever speak to each other the deal would fall apart, I became the middle man. Jim agreed to the angle only if Paul apologized to Dennis for the NWA title belt situation. Being equally as close outside business to all three, I thought it would only be fair if Dennis also apologized to Paul for attempting to get ECW shut out of buildings. Jim originally wanted Paul to apologize in front of the boys at the show, but it was decided that the Arena was way too hectic an environment for that. Once the limo that Paul had pick up Jim and Dennis got to the Arena, Paul and I got in. Paul apologized to Dennis and shook his hand. As agreed, Dennis went to apologize to Paul. Paul cut him off saying that they were even and to start with a clean slate. Paul invited Dennis to Asbury Park or Wildwood to let the boys know it was okay to work for Dennis. Dennis opted not to go because he didn't want the boys to second guess their boss when there is already way too many rumors involving the ECW/WWF deal. In Asbury Park, the crew was simply told that the hatchet has been buried between the two.
That night I told Dennis we had told the boys and if he wanted to book any of them, to call me and I would make the deal. Dennis wasn't to personally call the boys so he wouldn't put them in the middle. That is the entire Paul/Dennis situation.
The Paul/Cornette deal is even more cut and dried. I presented the angle to Jim. He named his price. Paul agreed. As far as Jim having creative control of the angle, that is way too general. Jim asked me how long he should stay in the ring and how much he should personally do to not take any of the heat off Rob (Van Dam) and Sabu. Paul's reply was that between Cornette and Lawler, they should do whatever felt right. Depending how it was going, he would send out more people. If it was going great, to just keep going. The final out would be when Taz' music was hit. It went great and that's how it went down. Everyone was happy.
Contrary to what was reported elsewhere, there were no locker room conflicts. Everyone was friendly and professional. I never left Jim's side so I didn't miss anything. Jim enjoyed himself and agreed to come back, but opted to wait out the Shotgun controversy. There is nothing else to the story. It may be boring for fans to read that people in the business acted like it was a business and that there wasn't any personal bullshit, but that's the way it happened.
As far as Tammy helping out behind the scenes, here is the boring truth. Paul has delegated responsibility to certain people. The Tom Prichard vs. Louie Spicolli was one of mine. It was originally to be on television but I thought Lou spent too much time on the mic. I had something to do and asked Tammy to tell him that when he got back. Boring, but true.
Chris Candito
Matawan, New Jersey