August 25, 1997
- Just another reminder that starting with the 1998 issues, I'll be cutting back to a Mon-Wed-Fri schedule of posting them. Just wanna mention it periodically so people aren't caught off guard when it starts in a couple of weeks.
- Japanese women's wrestler Plum Mariko died in the ring after a match last week. It's the first death stemming from an in-ring injury in the history of pro wrestling in Japan and the the first since Mexican wrestler Oro died in the ring in 1993. Mariko, 29, took a Liger bomb and was completely knocked out. The match was stopped and she never woke up. They rushed her to the ER and did emergency brain surgery but she died the next day from an abscess on the brain and fractured skull. It's believed she likely had those injuries before the match since she had been complaining of symptoms like severe headaches and tiredness lately. She had also suffered several concussions throughout her career and had trouble remembering complicated finishing sequences in her matches, which some said kept her from being a main eventer. This situation has turned into a major story in Japan, with calls for regulating the wrestling industry and requiring doctors to be at all shows (only NJPW has a doctor at its shows now). The police wanted to investigate her death but her parents asked them not to because she loved pro wrestling and it was her decision to continue wrestling despite her numerous head injuries.
- WCW is expected to soon announce a new 2-hour show on Thursday nights on TBS, with the planned debut set for January. The idea of a second show on TBS has been discussed for months. With the success Nitro has had on TNT, the Turner people want another wrestling show on TBS to help their ratings. WCW (Eric Bischoff in particular) has been fighting against the addition of a new show. There's the obvious concern about over-exposure, burning out the bookers and production staff, and of course, talent morale issues by adding another 52 days per year on the road to their schedule. But with the high ratings of Nitro, it was inevitable that WCW was going to be dragged, kicking and screaming if necessary, into adding another show by Turner. Eric Bischoff broke the news to the roster and told them he was going to resist it unless Ted Turner flat out orders it to happen. But for now, it's happening and the plan is for one of the shows to be more NWO-centric and the other one would be more WCW-focused, in order to try to portray the groups as totally separate promotions. Obviously this begs the question of overexposure, but that doesn't appear to be a problem. A couple of years ago, both Raw and Nitro were only 1 hour each. Then they expanded to 2 hours each. And now Nitro is toying with 3 hour shows. Plus both companies began doing monthly PPVs. And the result is that more people are watching wrestling than ever. It doesn't appear that the business is reaching an overexposure point yet but it's inevitable that it will eventually.
- ECW's 2nd PPV Hardcore Heaven is in the books and it ended up being what ECW feared most: the show looked minor league. The lighting, sound, and rest of the production came off looking like an old Herb Abrams PPV. The show got mixed reviews from most viewers and even Paul Heyman has admitted that it was decent for a house show but he felt it was terrible for a PPV. It also felt thrown together, with ECW officials frantically trying to find "surprises" during the week before the show, and got so desperate that they were even looking for Jim Duggan's phone number. They ended up getting Jake Roberts and Dory Funk, but neither really did anything important. They also tried to soften the show, with almost no vulgar language and even pulled the camera back for wide shots when there was blood, because Heyman is trying to walk on eggshells with the PPV providers. Early buyrate numbers look to show around a 13-20% drop from the first PPV, which isn't terrible and should still be profitable, but isn't great news either. The sold-out crowd of 1,800 came off as dead for most of the show, and aside from the main event, the other matches were pretty mediocre.
- Other Hardcore Heaven notes: Sunny also made an appearance on the PPV, with WWF's blessing, and ECW may try to book a Candido/Sunny vs. Dreamer/Beulah match, which would probably be a good draw for the novelty of WWF fans seeing Sunny in a match on PPV. Bringing in Sunny was a last minute decision because Heyman wasn't sure if Jake Roberts was going to no-show on them. He showed up late to the show and since Sunny was already there backstage with Candido, Heyman was frantically calling WWF trying to get permission to use her (which they eventually granted). Heyman said he may continue to use Jake Roberts periodically as a surprise but he won't advertise him in advance for shows due to his track record of no-showing. Before the show went on the air, they filmed an angle with the Insane Clown Posse, who came out talking about how RVD was their favorite wrestler but then RVD and Sabu came out and beat them down until Sandman made the save and then he was taken out also (fun fact: Violent J from ICP and RVD are actually old friends and knew each other back when RVD first started wrestling locally in Michigan. In his book, Violent J writes about how RVD got them on the show. He also says the kick from RVD ruptured his ear drum and it almost screwed up their tour plans). They also rented a helicopter for the angle and implied that Sandman was drunk while driving the ambulance, which really rubs Dave the wrong way that they would glorify drinking and driving. The whole helicopter/ambulance angle really was filmed live and Sandman really was driving. Porn star Jenna Jameson came to the ring with the Dudleys.
- Eric Bischoff has a meeting scheduled next week with Paco Alonso (EMLL) and Konnan (Promo Azteca). It's expected Bischoff is going to pressure them to make peace with each other and stop raiding each other's talent and to work together with WCW. Dave wants to take bets on how long a truce between them will actually last.
- The USWA/ECW angle seems to be falling apart because USWA is having trouble getting Paul Heyman to commit to sending his guys down to Memphis for the USWA shows. If the angle does continue, they plan to start selling "ECWHO?" shirts if Heyman gives his blessing. In fact, USWA is taking a lot of cues from ECW, by raising ticket prices to be more in line with what ECW charges and they're working on making more merch since ECW makes so much money from that.
- Brian Christopher got married over the weekend.
- For those wondering what USWA guys are paid, the undercard guys get around $40 per night while the established names are making a minimum of $100 per show.
- In the UFC section, Dave mentions this Joe Rogan guy who has done backstage interviews at the last 2 UFC PPVs and says he seems very knowledgeable about the sport.
- Scott Hall and Kevin Nash's complaints about too many title changes kept everyone from losing their titles on PPV, but a week later, both the cruiserweight and TV titles ended up changing hands as planned. So in the end, only Hall and Nash ended up not having to drop their titles. People in the locker room were "joking" that Disco Inferno got fired for refusing to do a job, so there's an obvious double standard.
- All of the Mexican wrestlers except La Parka no-showed Nitro this week, apparently due to travel issues. There's been problems sometimes getting these guys across the border. WCW has given them all raises and in turn has asked them to come over to the U.S. a day early in order to make sure they have plenty of time to clear up any border issues, but La Parka is apparently the only one who left early this time and thus, everyone else got held up and missed the show. It led to several planned Nitro matches being changed or scrapped altogether.
- Dave says the inevitable Hogan vs. Sting match is scheduled for Starrcade at the new MCI Center, which holds 22,000 people. They plan to scale ticket prices up and hope to make $600,000 on that show. Dave says the heat for Hogan vs. Sting is so hot that they should probably move it to a stadium because they could probably fill it up for that match.
- In a Chicago Tribue article, Hulk Hogan made some statements about Vince McMahon, without mentioning his name: "There was a wrestling promoter during the late-1980s (who he doesn't mention by name) who was on a negative vibe most of the time. He would say, 'Terry, wrestling will never be as big at it once (was). There will never be that media awareness. Your career will never be as great as it was during the 1980s.' I responded, 'Short-sighted, no vision, loser, see you later.' I'm proving now that wrestling is bigger and hotter than it's ever been."
- Still no real news on Steve Austin's neck injury. He saw a neck specialists this week but no word on what he said. He definitely won't be wrestling before next month's PPV but that might be too soon also. Regardless, Austin will likely have to modify his wrestling style and not take moves that could hurt his neck such as DDTs, piledrivers, etc.
- Rick Rude debuted on Raw as Shawn Michaels' new bodyguard as mentioned last week. Interestingly enough, when Michaels found out about being paired with Rude, he threw a hissyfit because he wanted HHH in the role. So expect the Rude thing to not last very long before they move him on to a different storyline. Dave says that Rude actually hasn't signed a WWF contract yet so putting him on TV like this is kinda risky (boy, I'll say...)
- Rocky Maivia cut a promo explaining his decision to join the Nation of Domination, blaming the fans who chanted "Rocky sucks!" and "Die Rocky die!" at him. This was followed by a parking lot brawl with the Los Boricuas group and during the fight, Kama's head accidentally busted the windshield of a car they were fighting on. The car was Jim Cornette's.
- Brian Pillman and Goldust made a match for the PPV where if Goldust wins, Pillman leaves the WWF forever, but if Pillman wins, he gets Marlena for 30 days (this ends up being Pillman's final storyline).
- Raw ended with Undertaker doing a major blade job, which they showed multiple replays of. So much for WWF claiming they'd never allow their wrestlers to do such a "barbaric" practice. Desperate times...
- Jim Cornette almost certainly won't be going back to ECW after his one-off angle a couple months ago.
- WWF is apparently planning to bring back drug testing, mostly to nip some problems in the bud before they become real problems. There was an incident on an airplane a few weeks back when a wrestler passed out on the plane and couldn't be awakened (don't worry, we find out who it was soon. I'm sure some are curious. I'll leave you in suspense for now). With the recent Phil Mushnick article about drugs in wrestling, WWF figured they'd just start testing again now before the media catches on that they ever stopped.
- Mark Henry is resuming his training after being sidelined for the last year with a broken leg. It was thought that he might not return at all due to the injury but he's coming back. A lot of people are skeptical that he will ever make it though because before the injury, he had developed a reputation of thinking he was already a star and not wanting to learn anything.
- Yokozuna is still under WWF contract. They want him to get down to 400 pounds, but that just ain't happening. He had a heart scare recently but recovered after changing medications.