Wrestling Observer Rewinder

September 08, 1997

Top story this week is Dan Severn signing on to fight at the next UFC PPV in October, filling in for the injured Mark Coleman. If Severn wins, he's expected to retire from shoot-fighting as UFC champion and use that fame to jump into pro-wrestling full-time with the gimmick of a UFC champion who never lost the title. Severn has already been wrestling for IWA in Japan and WWF is interested in bringing him in to feud with Ken Shamrock as well and there have been negotiations for months.
Eric Bischoff held a meeting with AAA president Paco Alonso and Promo Azteca's Konnan to try to get the 2 sides to work together and to put together a WCW-promoted joint Lucha Libre PPV next year. But the meeting didn't go well and the 2 sides are already back at war. A couple of EMLL stars no-showed their recent show and surprise debuted the same night for Promo Azteca. As for the meeting, word is Konnan and Paco Alonso were cordial at first but by the end of the meeting, both men were yelling and cursing at each other.
Kensuke Sasaki defeated Shinya Hashimoto for the IWGP title, ending Hashimoto's 489-day reign as champion, the longest reign in title history (still the longest reign ever to this day. Although as I post this, Okada is on day 464. So it's entirely possible that this record will finally be broken within the next month. Although never doubt EVIL!). As for Sasaki, he's currently being given one of the biggest pushes ever in NJPW history. On top of now being the IWGP champion, he also won the IWGP tag titles last month and he also won the most recent G1 Climax. After winning, Sasaki challenged his mentor Riki Choshu to a match, which will likely be the main event of this upcoming Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show (nope) because that is the show where Choshu is retiring. Speaking of Choshu, even though Sasaki won the title, the show was pretty much a tribute show to Riki Choshu and drew the largest non-stadium gate ever in Japanese wrestling history. Choshu's merch sold out in record time and the crowd was insane for him. Choshu got on the mic and emphatically said that unlike every other wrestler who "retires", he will never wrestle again after the Jan. 4th show (yeeeeah about that...). It's expected that Choshu will eventually take over as president of NJPW after retiring.
A former Olympic wrestler and later pro wrestler Dale Lewis died this week from leukemia. His amateur wrestling days in the 50s and 60s ended up negatively affecting his later pro wrestling career. In college, Lewis went to the University of Oklahoma along with Bill Watts. Lewis and Watts had a wrestling match to see who would be the school's varsity heavyweight wrestler. Lewis won (also claiming it was the toughest match he ever wrestled, including in the Olympics). Watts never wrestled varsity while Lewis went on to win 2 NCAA titles. Watts reportedly held a grudge against Lewis over it and he claimed that years later, that grudge held him back from being able to work in the Oklahoma area as a pro wrestler, because Watts ran that whole region and did everything he could to keep Lewis out. The same thing happened when Lewis tried to go work in the northeast. In the 1960 Olympic trials, Lewis defeated Gorilla Monsoon in an amateur match to make the team, while Monsoon didn't make the cut due to the loss. And so years later, Lewis was never able to work for the WWWF in the 70s because Monsoon wouldn't let him in.
Steve Williams & Garry Albright vs. Kenta Kobashi & Johnny Ace in AJPW was.....horrible. Dave says it was possibly the worst AJPW match of the decade and says he wouldn't believe how bad it was if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. Considering the talent in the ring, he says it's a worst match of the year candidate. Everyone except Kobashi looked bad, but Kobashi wasn't good enough to save it. It gets the dreaded DUD rating. Can't seem to find video of it.
Former UWA promoter Carlos Maynes was finally released by his kidnappers last week. The story seems to have been covered up and the media is being pretty quiet, so no one knows if the ransom was paid for his freedom or not (we never find out. But for those who wanted closure on that, there ya go. He was released and lived until 2015.
In FMW, Atsushi Onita is scheduled to face Wing Kanemura in one of their usual exploding ring death matches. Interestingly enough, Onita has vowed to retire from wrestling if he loses, which Dave says takes a lot of nerve given all the controversy of him going back on his word on his first retirement a couple of years ago.
The ownership situation in USWA is sort of a mess. No one really knows what's going on, but it seems like the new owners (a couple of Cleveland businessmen) seem to be spending a lot of money on things like new sets and making the show look better, but there hasn't been any new money coming in to offset it. USWA has survived for years because Jerry Jarrett basically never spent any money and ran a bare bones promotion while everybody else went out of business. There's lots of rumors flying around about the future of the company (nearly dead).
At the funeral of wrestler Jeep Swenson, both Hulk Hogan and actor James Caan gave eulogies. Everybody in the WCW locker room was talking about Swenson's death since he was just there last year for a PPV main event and his death has been widely attributed to his years of steroid abuse, which lots of people in WCW are familiar with.
ECW star Perry Saturn has signed with WCW. Apparently lots of ECW talent have been contacted by WCW recently and there are rumors that WCW is trying to raid the company. There's lots of blame going around about who's responsible because it's believed someone in ECW is facilitating it (just a hunch, but I think Bill Alfonso and Tod Gordon should start covering their tracks...). John Kronus won't be joining Saturn in WCW because apparently Saturn has been wanting to go solo for a long time and had been trying to split up the Eliminators since last year, but Paul Heyman wanted to keep them together.
On Nitro this week, the NWO (Kevin Nash, Syxx, Marcus Bagwell, and Konnan) did a parody of the Arn Anderson retirement promo from last week and it's generated a lot of controversy. The initial idea was for the NWO guys to do their parody, and then the Horsemen would run in and clean house on the NWO and get the expected big pop. But on the day of the show, Eric Bischoff nixed the Horsemen run-in (Nash's suggestion). Flair was supposed to do a promo later in the show, but he was so pissed about the NWO parody that he refused to go out and do it. Flair had no problem with how he was portrayed in the parody, but he's very protective of Anderson, who is one of Flair's closest friends, and was furious about the way they made fun of him. Anderson was also upset, especially when he talked to his family and found out that his wife and 12-year-old son had been bothered by it. Anderson got into a confrontation with Kevin Sullivan (co-booker) about it after the show. Anderson was said to be considering quitting the company, while Flair's contract is up in February and he's resisted signing a new contract so far.
As for the segment itself, Dave says it was hilarious in parts, especially Nash and Syxx. But he also said it went a little too far at times and it began to feel more mean-spirited than a wrestling promo should be. Arn Anderson's mother died when he was young due to alcoholism so Dave thinks the alcoholic references were too far. There's been a lot of real heat brewing backstage between the Horsemen and NWO members.
On Nitro, during a Yuji Nagata match, Mike Tenay talked about Nagata's legit amateur wrestling background (1989 Japanese national champion and 1992 Greco-roman national champion). This led to Larry Zbyszko talking about his own amateur wrestling abilities and making fun of Nagata and basically burying him, acting like he could easily beat up Nagata if he wanted to. Dave says he doesn't know why bitter has-beens like Zbyszko feel like they always have to put other people down on commentary rather than helping to try to get them over, as is their job. Then Dave decides to share a story about Zbyszko, (real name Lary Whistler) which I'll just copy and paste: "When I was in college at San Jose State, the Athletic Director was a good friend of mine named David Adams, who was a great college wrestler in the 50s and later coached wrestling at Pitt for many years. When he was wrestling coach at Pitt, Larry Whistler was a high school wrestler in Pittsburgh. I figured from being a pro wrestling fan and how he was billed when he turned pro in Pittsburgh that he had to choose between going to college on a wrestling scholarship or turning pro under the tutelage of Bruno, that he must have been a hotshot high school wrestler. The truth of the matter according to Adams, who knew him well, is that he was a slightly above average high school wrestler, Adams would always point out he wasn't a good high school wrestler, and was nowhere near the calibre of even being someone that he would have considered as having college potential."
Disco Inferno returned to WCW on Nitro, doing a bit where he was dancing with the Nitro girls and then caused Hugh Morrus to lose a TV title match. Dave says Morrus is really agile for his size but don't confuse it with being a good worker, because he sucks.
For now, it appears that the plan is Nitro will become an NWO show while the new Thursday show will be a WCW show but that could still change.
Hector Garza suffered torn ligaments in his arm when he was installing an air conditioner at his house and the unit slipped and fell on him while he was on the ladder. He fell and the AC unit cut his arm up badly. He'll be out action for a month or so.
On the Saturday Night show, Dusty Rhodes "set a new announcing record by going an entire match on commentary without mentioning the name of even one of the six competitors" in a 6-man tag match featuring some of the Mexican guys.
Steve Austin's first match back will likely be at Survivor Series in Montreal, although he may work a few house show matches or something before then just to knock the ring rust off.
Mark Henry is being sent to Calgary to train with Bret Har. WWF is trying one last hail Mary with hopes that they might get something out of their multi-million dollar guaranteed contract investment in Mark Henry. I dunno you guys, doesn't sound like this guy has much left in the tank.
Jerry Lynn worked a match on Raw against Brian Christopher and was super impressive but they didn't offer him a contract because they have too many people under contract already and have trouble getting them all full-time work. But expect him to be brought in more often based on his great performance.
Meanwhile, one paragraph later: Scott Putski has signed a WWF contract.
The reason Jim Cornette is no longer being used as a manager is because they keep him busy with so much other work like announcing on Shotgun and writing for TV and other office work, so he doesn't have time to also go on the road.
WWF is looking for a way to elevate Hunter Hearst Helmsley to the next level so he may end up being paired with Shawn Michaels after all, which is what Shawn has been pitching anyway. There have been discussions of putting them together with Rick Rude as sort of a new version of the Kliq but it may not happen.
A couple of people writing in about fans bringing signs. The first guy spends 3 paragraphs bitching that WCW confiscated his sign at a show. The other guy writes in to complain about everyone else's signs and tries to lay ground rules for what fans should bring. Don't put your own name on signs, don't say hi to your friends or wife, don't be crude (he specifically calls out a sign on Raw that someone had which said "Hulk and Flair have tits!" which is kinda hilarious honestly).