Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 13, 1997

A couple of notes. For starters, I just realized that I screwed up the title of the previous Rewind post. It should have been Oct. 6th, not Sept. 29th again. So for anyone in the future who is reading these archives, sorry for the confusion. Not sure if an mod can do anything about that, but if so, it'd be awesome...
And secondly, I took yesterday off because today is the 20th anniversary of Brian Pillman's death and this issue is the one that covers that death. It coincidentally lined up perfectly. R.I.P. to one of the most brilliant workers to ever lace em' up.
Brian Pillman has passed away at age 35. Dave actually starts the issue with a personal note, saying Brian Pillman was one of the few people in the business he actually considered a friend and he was devastated when he found out he had died. He says Pillman was one of the funniest people he knew. Dave says he's been doing the Observer for 15 years and this is the hardest issue he's ever had to write.
Pillman's death appears to have been from a heart attack in his sleep, although it's thought prescription drugs may have played a part. Until toxicology results come back, no one knows for sure. WWF learned of Pillman's death shortly before the Badd Blood PPV went on the air. Vince McMahon announced Pillman's death on the pre-show, and everyone on the roster basically had to try and put their grief on hold for a few hours to get through the show. Some of those who knew Pillman are said to have not been surprised and said that scary warning signs had been there for awhile. His body was found around 1pm in his bed in hotel room in Bloomington, MN. There were several bottles of prescription pills, muscle relaxers, and pain killers, along with an empty beer bottle. Pillman was known to rely heavily on painkillers after his car accident last year where his ankle was destroyed and he dealt with severe pain every day, but he often tried to hide it. His in-ring ability was obviously hindered after the accident which frustrated Pillman because he prided himself on his ability. Just getting through airports was painful for him, which is why WWF often kept his matches short, because he was working through constant pain. Dave talks about how he was such a student of the business that he studied tapes of old wrestlers to pick up their mannerisms and how he memorized Lou Thesz's book and then went out on his own to try to verify all the anecdotes in the book. The night before his death, Pillman worked a house show in St. Paul and reportedly was sleeping on the floor of the dressing room during the show and looked to be in bad shape. He went back to his hotel room around 10:45pm after having some drinks with other wrestlers and left an answering machine message for his wife, and that's the last anyone heard from him.
The next day, both Pillman and Bret Hart were late getting to the arena for the PPV. They assumed the 2 guys were on a late flight, but when Hart eventually showed up without Pillman, they became concerned due to the knowledge that he had a painkiller problem. They called his house 30 minutes before the pre-show and his wife Melanie hadn't heard anything. Soon after, police showed up to her house and broke the news to her, and when she heard the news, she fainted. Soon after, a WWF official called the hotel and got word that Pillman had been found dead. Pillman had been in the middle of an angle that was planned to end with Marlena leaving Goldust for him but of course, the angle has now been completely dropped and Goldust and Marlena weren't on Raw the next night.
The whole thing is one of Vince McMahon's worst nightmares: a major star dying on his watch, possibly due to drugs, and he had to go on live TV 30 minutes before a PPV and announce it. From here, Dave goes on a tangent about the drug culture in the business and said most people have suspected that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. Of course, the nightmare is worse for Pillman's family. He left behind a wife and 5 children, with another on the way. His wife had just found out she was pregnant and hadn't even told Pillman yet. Both Raw and Nitro the next night acknowledged Pillman's death. WCW only had a brief mention, but WWF held a 10-bell salute and also did a controversial live interview with Pillman's wife Melanie. She had been hesitant to go on the air and do the interview but she felt loyalty to the company her husband worked for and she reportedly wanted to warn others of the dangers of drugs. Dave is hesitant to criticize the segment given the emotional state of everyone involved and maybe the best decisions weren't made, but teasing the interview throughout the show to build ratings rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. But Melanie Pillman gave a good interview with a very emotional and heartfelt message (we'll hear more about this in the coming days).
From here, Dave goes into the usual long and detailed obituary of Brian Pillman. It covers his health problems as a child, resulting in 30+ throat surgeries, his unlikely football career (considered too small, but still made it to the NFL and played for the Bengals), and then his early wrestling career with Stampede in Canada, then jumping to WCW, the Hollywood Blonds team with Steve Austin, and his personal life (he had tumultuous relationships with multiple women). One of his baby mamas had a drug problem and at one point disappeared and was feared dead and Pillman was freaking out because he was the police's main suspect and he began to fear he'd get arrested for something he didn't do. They eventually found her a few weeks later in Florida, fucked up on drugs, and she later killed herself. Pillman developed the loose cannon gimmick and worked everyone in the entire business except for a small handful of people who knew the truth. He also managed to work Eric Bischoff into legitimately firing him as part of an angle, and then Pillman went to ECW and then got WWF and WCW into a bidding war for him. But just before signing with WWF, Pillman was in a bad car accident that destroyed his ankle and likely should have ended his in-ring career. Dave covers the gun angle, Pillman's return to the ring, and how he worked in constant pain until the very end. Dave talks about how Jim Ross had ordered Pillman to take a drug test several weeks ago, which infuriated Pillman because he had never gone to the ring drugged up "like another top star" had been doing recently (coughShawncough). He refused to take the test and said he was being singled out and requested his release from WWF. His marriage was falling apart during these last few weeks as well, as his wife filed for divorce and got a restraining order against him, which he violated at one point, requiring him to go to anger management classes. But they reconciled shortly before his death. Pillman eventually took the drug test, which showed prescription pain killers and trace amounts of steroids, which he had apparently used to speed up the healing of his ankle. But because the steroids were such a small amount and can remain in the system for months, he wasn't suspended. Soon after, he was dead.
WCW's Mark Madden wrote an article for WCW's website and also asked if it could be printed in the Observer. Dave says it's a great piece and publishes it in full. It's long so I won't paste it here, but it's a great read. In fact, this whole issue is. The obituary, the story of his passing, all of it is some of Dave's best writing. This one's worth digging into the archives for and reading in full if you're a subscriber. Anyway, finally on to other news...
Michinoku Pro announced that they will be suspending operations early next year. The company has been operating heavily in debt for awhile. Top star and promoter Great Sasuke also announced he will be having major knee surgery which will keep him out of action for most of 1998. When he's able to return to the ring, it's believed he will likely restart the promotion. Michinoku Pro was formed in 1993 and has slowly grown in Japan. It's believed one of their other top stars, Taka Michinoku, will likely be heading to WWF soon.
WMC-TV in Memphis announced this week that they are cancelling USWA's TV show. It's no surprise to anyone following the story because the legal issues around USWA's ownership aren't going away and until the legal mess is cleared up, the company can't run shows anyway. This is pretty much the end of the road for the last surviving promotion of the territory era. In it's place, local promoter Bert Prentice has started a new promotion in the Tennessee area, using several of USWA's stars and surprisingly, the new promotion is getting funding from Jerry Jarrett. It's called Music City Wrestling and it's expected that they will be taking over many of USWA's syndication deals.
The biggest behind-the-scenes controversy in UFC history has unfolded due to fighter Mark Hall claiming he threw his fight against Don Frye in the 1996 Ultimate Ultimate tournament. Dave says it was fairly well known (and he even quotes himself from last year's Observer recap saying that it looked like the fight was thrown). Hall has now confirmed it, saying Frye asked him to throw the fight and that he agreed after Frye agreed to pay him, but says Frye never paid. Frye, of course, is denying all of this. It's a big black eye on UFC, which has to protect its credibility to be taken seriously, and if this is true, it certainly means the end of both Hall and Frye ever stepping foot in a UFC octagon again (indeed, they never did).
WWF held its latest PPV, Badd Blood, last week under the cloud of Brian Pillman's death. Dave says it's hard for him to give an assessment of the show because everyone's work was affected and Dave was in no mood to really pay close attention. He only rates one match: Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker in the Hell In A Cell match, which Dave says is an all-time classic and gives it the full 5 stars, with Shawn working his ass off to make the match. It also featured the debut of Kane (spelled correctly finally!) which is Glenn Jacobs ("with lifts in his boots" to make him appear taller) who tombstoned Undertaker to cost him the match. Dave says it's a must-see classic. So let's see it.
Other notes from the show: they brought out a few of the Mexican minis wrestlers to fill the time that had been planned for Brian Pillman's match. Several of the wrestlers looked like they mentally wanted to be anywhere other than where they were. A lot of wrestlers (Vader, Davey Boy Smith, Patriot) were all working injured. Vader had a broken nose and bad elbow, Davey Boy Smith's knee is still messed up, and Patroit had a viral infection so severe that he was hospitalized before the show and had to get fluids through an IV just before working the match.
Kenta Kobashi is working injured and doctors have told him he needs to take a long time off to rehab some knee injuries, but he's Kobashi, so of course he's ignoring them and working anyway.
Atsushi Onita has "quit" FMW to form his own promotion called ZEN. But it's apparently an angle ala WCW/NWO and ZEN is just another promotion under the FMW umbrella. But they will be trying to run their own shows and eventually build up to an interpromotional angle (this didn't get over at all and eventually died a quiet death).
Billy Jack Haynes resurfaced on the wrestling scene after pretty much disappearing off the face of the earth 7 months ago. Word is Haynes was pretty much driven into hiding because he's accumulated a lot of gambling debts and had some bad dudes looking for him.
Taz has agreed to stay with ECW through the end of 1998 after having some recent discussions with Eric Bischoff. Taz's ECW contract expires at the end of this year and he met with Eric Bischoff earlier this week. Bischoff made Taz an offer, but Taz didn't like it so he went back to Paul Heyman and agreed to stay with ECW. This led to Bischoff making Taz a much better offer which he almost took, but after discussing it with his family, Taz decided to stay with ECW. The travel was the main reason, since he would only be working 100 days or so per year in ECW and most of the shows are within driving distance of his home. In WCW, it'd be closer to 200 days a year and almost none of them would be close to home. In an AOL chat, Eric Bischoff denied ever talking to Taz, but Dave knows for a fact he did.
Jeff Jarrett's WCW contract expired this week. They had offered him $300,000 per year to stay but he turned it down and word is he's probably done with WCW and may be returning to WWF. This didn't stop WCW from foolishly running an angle on Nitro and promoting a Jarrett vs. McMichael match for next week, which pretty much has to be cancelled now that Jarrett won't be there.
On Nitro, Scott Hall did a bit where he jokingly faked a back injury during a match with Hector Garza. This is actually a reference to real life, since Hall has been claiming his back is injured for a couple of weeks now, but people backstage have been thinking he faked it, so he's making a joke about that.
Ric Flair ("with his new face") made his return to Nitro to a huge reaction and chased Curt Hennig out of the arena. Dave says it was probably the best finish to an episode of Nitro in the show's history.
Former Vince McMahon strangler Nailz worked a dark match before the Nitro taping against Yuji Nagata that was said to be off-the-charts terrible.
For the first time in months, WWF won a quarter-hour segment of the ratings war against Nitro with the opening of the show. Undoubtedly, curiosity about Brian Pillman's death and how Raw would treat it was what drew the strong opening rating.
The plan is for Disco Inferno to face (and lose against) Jacquelyn at the Halloween Havoc PPV but there was some concern that they might not be able to do the match because the Nevada State Athletic Commission had some issues with it. But they discussed it and agreed to some certain stipulations and the match is a go. It'll probably be more of an angle than an actual match, but expect Disco to do the job since that was a condition of getting his job back.
On Raw, Michaels and Helmsley showed the fan-footage from the famous Curtain Call incident last year and made fun of Vince McMahon and basically just broke kayfabe left and right. Then Bret Hart came out and called Michaels and Helmsley "homos" and said he made more money than them combined. Bret then said he ran Diesel and Razor out of the company and called them Shawn's boyfriends. Shawn said don't confuse them leaving with expansion, basically saying the Kliq is taking over both companies, which isn't entirely false.
Marc Mero returned to TV with a new gimmick, where he has short hair and basically does a boxer gimmick that destroys whatever charisma he has. Dave thinks the gimmick sucked.
Jim Cornette went on Raw and did an almost word-for-word repeat of his Byte This promo from last week where he ripped on WCW, NWO, and Eric Bischoff. Dave thinks it was fun TV but doesn't see the purpose in it since it doesn't really advance any storylines or help the company make money. It's just a segment where they burn valuable TV time shitting on the competition. The idea is for Cornette to cut weekly "shoot" promos like this.