August 11, 1997
- WWF's Summerslam is in the books and it was a newsworthy one. WWF's hottest star, Steve Austin, suffered an apparent serious neck injury in his match with Owen Hart. After taking a botched tombstone from Owen, Austin whispered to him that he couldn't move. Owen stalled long enough for Austin to roll over, using mostly his stomach muscles since he couldn't move from the waist down, and roll him up for a weak pin 8 minutes earlier than planned. After managing to make it backstage, Austin was rushed to the emergency room and released later that night, with them saying he suffered a stinger. Austin has already been dealing with neck problems for awhile. He appeared on Raw the next night but still wasn't moving well. Raw was supposed to end with Shawn Michaels fully turning heel by costing Austin and Dude Love the tag team titles, but with Austin unable to wrestle, Shawn simply cut a promo to turn heel instead. Austin's expected to be out for a few weeks at least but no one knows for sure yet.
- Other Summerslam notes: Ahmed Johnson also suffered yet another injury at Summerslam, re-aggravating his knee injury. On Raw the next night, the Nation of Domination turned on him to write him off TV again for a month or two until it heals. Bret Hart won his 5th WWF title, tying Hulk Hogan for the most all-time (remember when 5 world title reigns was considered a lot? Ah, the good ol' days). the show was legit sold out and did major gate and merchandise numbers. But the crowd was mostly dead for the matches. Word is there was a massive tailgate party before the show and so many fans had been out in the sun all day before the show drinking and by the time the show started, a lot of people were just tired, worn out, and in some cases legitimately falling asleep. In a cage match with Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Chyna slammed the cage door on Mankind's head (Foley later wrote in his book that this hurt like a motherfucker) and Chyna also later blew the finish by getting into the ring too early to pull Hunter out and then had to leave and come back later to do it. The finish of Goldust/Pillman was completely botched. They did a bit where they were trying to give away $1 million to a lucky fan, but they got a disconnected caller and the second caller didn't answer and the last caller wasn't even watching the show. Dave also says, "How is it that Sable looks different every time you see her?" Anyway, Austin/Owen was by far the best match of the show until Austin's injury derailed it.
- The 100th episode of WCW Nitro was an experiment with 3-hour shows and it looks like we're in for a lot of them because it set an all-time ratings record for the show. It was also headlined by Lex Luger winning the WCW title from Hogan. In fact, with Nitro and Raw combined, over 5 million homes were watching wrestling that night, which is the first time the they've broken the 5 million mark in the history of cable TV (WWF's old NBC Saturday Night Main Event shows used to do way bigger numbers, but that was network TV, not cable). It goes to show just how mainstream pro wrestling has become these days.
- This year's NJPW G-1 Climax tournament ended with Kensuke Sasaki as the winner, Hiroyoshi Tenzan as the show-stealer, and Masahiro Chono in the hospital. Chono went into the tournament with a badly injured ankle from, of all things, a match with Dusty Wolfe at a WCW taping 2 weeks earlier. He had torn ligaments, dislocated ankle, and a broken heel bone. Rather than getting the surgery that doctors said he needed, he chose to work the tournament, only to injure it worse in his first match. He worked the 2nd match but it was short and he was eliminated from the tournament after that.
- Carlos Maynes, former promoter of UWA in Mexico, and Manny Guzman, former head of the most powerful pro wrestling union ever, were both kidnapped in Mexico this week after a show Maynes was promoting. As of press time, 10 days later, both men are still missing. Someone used Maynes ATM card and withdrew all the money they could the day after his kidnapping. There have been no ransom notes and no evidence that it's related to the ongoing wrestling wars in Mexico, but that hasn't stopped people from pointing fingers. Back in the 70s and into the 80s, UWA was the top promotion in Mexico and Maynes was the top promoter in the country before losing steam.
- For the first time in its history, ECW drew a crowd larger than 2,000 people to a show in Monaca, PA. At the show, Paul Heyman announced that ECW will hold its third PPV in November, entitled "November To Remember" and it will be at the same building in Monaca.
- The rap group Insane Clown Posse is scheduled to perform at the beginning of ECW's Hardcore Heaven PPV next week after hyping up ECW so much on Howard Stern's show last week.
- Paul Heyman had a meeting with Vince McMahon, Bruce Prichard, and Jim Ross this week in Stamford to try and fix the broken relationship between the two sides. Nothing solid was agreed upon but McMahon told Heyman that if he had any ideas for angles that would benefit both companies, let him know and they would consider it. They also discussed having ECW wrestlers appear on next month's Raw live in Madison Square Garden. There have been rumors that Paul Heyman is on WWF's payroll but he denies it. For now, all the back-and-forth about who's lying in regards to the issues the two sides had will stop, because they're both wanting to work together against WCW.
- 17-year-old EMLL star Aguila is reportedly trying to get a job in the WWF. He wanted to go to WCW, and he jumped ship from EMLL to Promo Azteca to make it happen (before WCW and EMLL started working together). But even though WCW currently uses several Promo Azteca wrestlers, they aren't taking any more and will only accept new wrestlers from EMLL. And, well, Aguila burned that bridge. So now he's looking at WWF.
- Dave mentions that there's some weird irony about Steve Austin getting injured by the botched Owen Hart tombstone. In 1992, Austin was wrestling Masahiro Chono in NJPW and Austin used the exact same move on Chono and injured him exactly the same way. Chono hasn't been the same since.
- In USWA, Fake Razor Ramon declared he was done with the WWF and wants to be referred to as Rick Titan. He threw the Razor Ramon outfit into a garbage can (and thus, the Fake Razor/Diesel gimmick finally comes to a merciful, whimpering end).
- Pit Bull #1 worked an indie show for Dennis Coraluzzo (since Paul Heyman isn't using the group right now due to their recent legal issues). During the match, PB#1 injured his patella and it looks like he's going to need major knee surgery.
- Steven Regal's WCW status is in question at the moment. He was allegedly involved in some sort of disturbance on an airplane returning from Japan last week, which caused the plane to make an emergency landing in Anchorage. It could lead to charges being filed, which could affect his work visa, which would in turn lead to him being deported back to the UK and obviously cost him his job in WCW. Even if he's not deported, there's a lot of talk that WCW may fire him anyway (as I'm writing this, I'm not sure if Dave ever mentions it, but turns out he got drunk and pissed on a flight attendant. In his book, he says he has no memory of it and just remembers waking up in a jail cell in Alaska).
- Ted Dibiase returned to WCW this week as the Steiners new manager.
- Rey Misterio Jr. also returned on Nitro in an angle where he faked like his knee was still injured but then revealed he was fine. In reality, he's not fine. He was supposed to have 2 months off to rehab his knee, but WCW rushed him back after barely a month, plus while he was out, he still had to go and film a lot of stuff for them, so he missed a lot of days in rehab. There's some controversy about it because a lot of people think WCW has rushed him back too soon and it's not good for his knee.
- The plan is for Sting to face Hogan at Starrcade. The gimmick right now is that JJ Dillon will keep offering Sting a contract for a match against different guys and each week, Sting rips up the contract and walks away. The keep going higher up the food chain until Dillon finally hands him a contract to face Hogan and Sting will sign it. Dave's not sure how they can stretch this out until December, but that's the plan.
- Expect Curt Hennig to end up as a member of the Four Horsemen. It's believed Arn Anderson will eventually return in a managerial role for the group. There's also talk of including Madusa.
- Ted Dibiase has a book coming out this month called Every Man Has A Price. It's got heavy religious overtones and talks about how the money and road life of being in the WWF nearly ruined his life.
- Sid will have surgery this week where they'll take a piece of bone from his hip to fuse his neck. If he hadn't been fired, it would have kept him out of action for about 3 months. Speaking of, Sid has hired a lawyer and is contesting his termination and is threatening to sue for breach of contract. Word is WCW is interested in Sid, but only on a per-show deal and not for a long-term deal because of his track record. And even then, they'll only bring him in if Arn Anderson approves of it (since, yanno, the whole stabbing thing).
- Shawn Michaels apparently does have a real knee injury this time. According to Dr. James Andrews, he has serious arthritis in the knee and is ACL is in bad shape. The belief now is that Michaels will never be able to work a full-time schedule again but he'll continue to work major shows (or, yanno, he'll retire for 4 years, then come back and basically have an entire second half to his career).
- Taka Michinoku was offered a WWF contract this week but hasn't signed yet. He's been used on Raw on a per-show basis for now.
- Rocky Maivia and Tom Prichard were on the Maury Povich show this week, talking about their dreams to become wrestlers. Maivia has been filming some segments that will air on WWF TV in the next few weeks, talking about his real life before wrestling (can't find video of it).
- The plan is for WWF to introduce "Cain" at the next big PPV (nope, not until October).