August 18, 1997
- WCW's Road Wild PPV is in the books and it was a bad show. But the reason why is the real story. It all comes down to backstage maneuvering from wrestlers with creative control and big egos. It started with Scott Hall and Kevin Nash complaining that there had been too many title changes lately, which may be true. But there were 3 title changes scheduled that night and months of booking had been planned in advance for storylines coming out of those title changes. All 3 title changes were scrapped and now months of booking plans are ruined because of it. Dave agrees that title changes are too frequent these days, but thinks it's awfully convenient that Hall and Nash made this complaint on the night that they were scheduled to drop the tag titles to the Steiners. So the finish was changed and Hall and Nash kept the titles, and the cruiserweight and TV titles didn't change hands as planned either. This caused them to scramble to come up with new finishes to all the matches at the last minute, most of which were bad. But they DID keep the plan to have Lex Luger drop the WCW title back to Hogan, only 5 days after winning it on Nitro and three guesses on who's decision that was. In the end, it left the Steiners, Chris Jericho, and others feeling lied to because they were told they were winning titles, only to have it snatched away at the last minute. And it completely neutered Terry Taylor as the booker because he had written weeks of TV and house show bookings based around these title changes, and Hall, Nash, and Hogan basically ripped it all up and threw it in his face.
- Other notes from Road Wild: the outdoor show, with the ring on a platform, pretty much killed the workrate of the show, plus they kept all the fun high flyers off the show, so the matches generally sucked. Luckily the crowd wasn't nearly as racist as they were the last time WCW was in Sturgis, which boded well for Harlem Heat. The Konnan/Rey Misterio Jr. match was planned to go longer but they cut it short because, once again, Misterio's knee is still not ready to be wrestling. Ric Flair vs. Syxx was awful and Dave says it's a sad day when Hulk Hogan is a better worker on the show than Ric Flair. And it's not because Hogan was good, but Flair was just that bad. Syxx worked hard to carry him but it just wasn't happening. Dave also mentions that there's a lot of heat on Diamond Dallas Page because other wrestlers feel like his success has gone to his head. During the main event, Hogan called Luger a piece of shit, so apparently the new no-vulgarity rule doesn't apply to him. After the match, Hogan was supposed to have a celebration in the ring and re-paint "NWO" on the belt. But the fans started throwing debris in the ring and Hogan caught a rock to the head, so they called an audible and rushed to the back, which forced the announcers to stall for time since they still had another 8 minutes or so left in the broadcast. Eventually they got a camera and went backstage and filmed the celebration back there. Dennis Rodman was there, but he wasn't booked to be. Rodman is in Sturgis because he's a motorcycle enthusiast, so he just decided to drop by. So his appearance was a freebie for WCW.
- In one of the most gruesome matches in the history of American wrestling, Sabu won the ECW title from Terry Funk in a barbed wire match at the ECW Arena. This sets up the main event for next week's Hardcore Heaven PPV as Sabu vs. Funk vs. Shane Douglas in a triple threat match, which is a rematch of one of the most famous matches in ECW history from several years ago. Sabu was scheduled to face Sandman at the PPV but Sandman's injured so they decided to insert Sabu into the title match, as champion. As for the barbed wire match, both wrestlers and Bill Alfonso were covered in blood by the finish. At one point, Sabu got caught in the barbed wire and ripped his arm up in sickening fashion that later required 75 stitches to close. Sabu screamed for Alfonso to get some tape and taped his arm up and continued the match. By the end of the match, both men were so tangled together in barbed wire that wire cutters were brought in to cut them loose (yeah, this match is gnarly).
- WWF plugged ECW's upcoming PPV on Raw this week. Speaking of, Viewer's Choice is still refusing to carry this ECW PPV, but it will be aired on all the other usual PPV outlets. ECW has also instituted a few other rule changes, like no fighting over the guardrails, no touching of fans, etc. These are pretty much done to keep any more potential issues from happening that could threaten a lawsuit or cause them to lose PPV providers.
- With all the time slot changes, this was the first week where Nitro aired from 8-10pm and Raw aired from 9-11pm. That meant Nitro's first hour was unopposed while Raw's second hour was unopposed. Raw's second hour did a strong rating and now WCW is considering expanding Nitro to 3 hours permanently in response. Dave knows that sounds bad (who wants to watch a 3 hour wrestling show on Monday night, right?!) but the ratings don't lie and last week's 3-hour Nitro did monster numbers.
- Latest on the kidnapping of former UWA promoter Carlos Maynes and Mexican union leader Manny Guzman in Mexico: Authorities had feared both men were dead, but Guzman was released this week by the kidnappers. However, Maynes is still being held hostage somewhere and the kidnappers have demanded a $100,000 ransom to release him.
- A few weeks ago, EMLL sold one of the arenas it owned, and apparently they got rid of it just in time. The building collapsed this week, injuring around 20 construction workers who were working on it, with several of them injured seriously. It took hours to dig everyone out of the rubble. The new owner was working to remodel it and now he and the engineer face possible charges in the collapse.
- Great Sasuke has pretty much returned full-time to Michinoku Pro, which indicates his WWF deal has probably fallen through. He had been negotiating a contract with them but never actually signed and Michinoku Pro was suffering without Sasuke on the shows.
- Legendary wrestling announcer Lance Russell was rushed to the hospital in Memphis last week and had emergency quadruple bypass surgery. He had complained of what he thought was indigestion for weeks and an exam revealed 4 blocked arteries.
- USWA's Saturday morning TV show is being moved to a midnight time slot and also being cut from 90 minutes down to 60 minutes. The TV station wants to air more cartoons and other kids shows during that morning time slot. This is pretty likely to be the death nail for USWA.
- An event in California drew probably the biggest crowd of the year for an indie show. It mostly featured Mexican wrestlers but also featured Yokozuna's first match since he disappeared from WWF last year. He's lost a little bit of weight but not much and still appeared to be around 650 pounds.
- Jesse Ventura is still talking about running for governor of Minnesota.
- There has been an internet rumor going around that Matt Borne had died of a drug overdose. So at an indie show this week in Vancouver, they started the show by announcing Borne had died and started to do a 10-bell salute. Halfway through, Borne came out and grabbed the mic and said there aren't enough drugs in all of Vancouver to kill him and he would know because he's tried most of them (turns out there were enough in Texas to do the trick).
- Remember the Incredibly Strange Wrestling promotion? In the "Best of" section of a local weekly newspaper in San Francisco, they described the promotion as, "The best place to experience human gridlock while throwing tortillas at wrestlers."
- Correction on a story from a couple of weeks ago. It was reported that Billy Crystal was working on a movie about Andre The Giant starring NBA player Gheorge Murasen. The movie isn't actually about Andre, but it was reportedly inspired by Crystal's friendship with Andre (the two met during the filming of Princess Bride). But the movie doesn't have anything to do with Andre's life. (This ended up being My Giant, released in 1998).
- Al Snow is expected to debut with ECW at the Hardcore Heaven PPV also. He's still under contract to WWF but is being allowed to go work in ECW as part of the working agreement between the 2 companies. He has 11 months left on his WWF contract. He's expected to get a decent push and when he gets his release from WWF, he'll get an even bigger one.
- Paul Heyman had a meeting with Eric Bischoff this week at a steakhouse in Orlando and personally showed Bischoff a copy of Raven's ECW contract with the PPV non-compete clause. Heyman claims he never received the letter from WCW requesting a copy of Raven's contract and that even if he had, he was under no obligation to send a copy to WCW before Raven appeared at the Bash at the Beach PPV.
- Heyman is also denying rumors that he was ever on WWF's payroll. He says ECW as a company was paid for its wrestlers appearing on WWF TV and that Heyman used that money to pay the ECW wrestlers. He also says WWF paid ECW money when they brought in Too Cold Scorpio because they basically bought him out of his contract. But he says he himself has never gotten a regular paycheck from WWF (Heyman sticks by this to this day).
- Latest on the Steve Regal situation: the story is that Regal, Scott Norton, and Marcus Bagwell were flying back from Japan and Regal was apparently acting up on the plane so much that they made an unscheduled landing in Anchorage and all 3 wrestlers were kicked off the plane. Regal was apparently the worst of the 3 as he reportedly urinated somewhere in first class (not in the bathroom). Norton and Bagwell were evidently just guilty by association which is why they were kicked off the plane also. Regal was arrested when they landed. WCW hasn't yet decided on his future in the company.
- Eddie Guerrero missed Nitro because he wrecked his rental car earlier in the day but he's fine.
- Syxx was briefly fired by WCW this week and then brought back. Apparently it had something to do with Syxx using some language on TV he wasn't supposed to use, which the Turner company has been putting pressure on Bischoff to stop. And then on TV, when Syxx ran in to interfere in a Flair match, he pulled Flair's tights down, exposing his ass and that was the final straw and Bischoff fired him. In turn, Hall and Nash threatened to quit and an hour later, Syxx was un-fired and everything was smoothed over.
- Rey Misterio Jr. is being given more time off since they seem to realize that they brought him back too early from his knee injury. Looking like mid-September before he'll be back now.
- Steve Austin had an MRI on his neck and was told by one of the leading neck specialists in the country that he should retire immediately and that he's risking paralysis if he continues wrestling. The MRI showed trauma to the C-4 and C-5 vertebrae. Austin is going to get a second opinion from another doctor soon. Austin is telling people that he actually doesn't feel that bad. He has some neck pain, but nothing major and says he's ready to get back to work now. When the injury happened, he admits he was scared to death since he couldn't move for a few seconds and thought he was paralyzed but he feels back to normal now for the most part. For now, WWF is going under the assumption that he'll be back by the next PPV.
- The latest on Sid is that there is some sort of injury clause in his contract which WWF felt gave them the right to terminate him (probably because of his history of faking injuries for time off). He was then offered a new per-night deal that would pay him the same as his normal contract if he worked full time, but he turned it down because he feels his original contract shouldn't have been terminated. So at that point, WWF just fired him completely and now Sid is threatening legal action.
- Jim Ross has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Titan Sports, making him the highest ranking person in the company that isn't named McMahon. Ross will be in charge of things like contract negotiations and talent recruiting, as well as some booking. Of course, as always, the final decision on everything still comes down to Vince McMahon.
- The Vice President of Event Booking in WWF, Ed Cohen, was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago. It's the 4th time he's battled cancer (I did some research and as far as I can tell, this dude is still alive and kicking and up until a couple of years ago, he still worked for WWE. So good for him).
- Rick Rude debuted on WWF Raw this week as Shawn Michaels' new bodyguard. The deal was made with Paul Heyman and in exchange, WWF plugged ECW's upcoming PPV several times during Raw and heavily hyped the Jerry Lawler/Tommy Dreamer match. The original deal was for it to be a one-time thing but now word is Rude will probably be sticking around WWF and also still work ECW some as well. But Rude has no contract with ECW so that's not guaranteed. WWF is trying to bring back more of the 80s stars since WCW has had so much success in the ratings with the adult demographic by using names like Hogan and Savage. This is why Rude and Sgt. Slaughter have been brought back.
- The two "groupies" at ringside for Dude Love on Raw this week were Mankind's wife (the taller one) and the other was one of Shawn Michaels' ex-girlfriends.
- Also on Raw, Rocky Maivia joined the Nation of Domination because evidently they're trying to put all the black guys in the roster in one group.
- It looks like they're forming a group with Shawn Michaels, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Chyna, and Rick Rude. Dave thinks it will likely be called the Kliq.
- WWF suggested some sort of angle that would culminate in Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania 14, but Bret shot it down before it even got past the suggestion phase.