October 20, 1997
- There's been a lot of fallout from the death of Brian Pillman, mostly from everyone using his death to push their own agendas. The biggest controversy has come from the live interview with Pillman's wife Melanie that aired on Raw the day after he died, which in hindsight was undoubtedly a terrible idea. It came off as exploitive, with some of the questions seemingly meant to get close-ups of her crying. The idea for the interview stemmed from McMahon speaking with Melanie Pillman the night before, where she talked about wanting to warn other wrestlers and their families about drug use so no one else would suffer a similar fate. McMahon wanted to put her on television so she could give that warning but it just didn't come across well. The fact that they hyped the interview during the show was an obvious attempt to garner ratings from it. Dave is willing to cut McMahon and the WWF a lot of slack though, because while there were a lot of bad decisions and errors in judgement, those decisions were made by people under a lot of emotional stress.
- New York Post writer Phil Mushnick was also criticized for exploiting Pillman's death, using it to write another of his anti-wrestling articles and trying to link Pillman's death to steroids, which appear to have had no part in it. This led to WWF putting Jim Cornette on TV this week to cut a promo on Phil Mushnick, which was also then criticized as using Pillman's death to further promote themselves and to fight Mushnick. Dave doesn't agree with Mushnick's desire to abolish the entire wrestling industry but he does admit that Mushnick's writing usually has validity and that he's arguably one of the biggest people responsible for the business cleaning up its steroid issues in the early 90s because he railed so hard against it in the media. And the high number of deaths in wrestling IS a legit problem that Mushnick is right to be concerned about. But Cornette's promo about Mushnick also had some validity, but not entirely. When it comes to the steroid argument, WWF would probably be wise to not re-open that can of worms and get into a public fight with Mushnick.
- With Pillman's death, a lot of people want to point the blame at WWF. Should they have put him on the road full-time in his condition? In hindsight, no. But Pillman publicly tried to hide how much pain he was in because he wanted to work. Should WWF have sent him to rehab? Yes they should have tried but Pillman probably would have quit the company before going. Maybe they could have kept him out of the ring as a manager or commentator but Pillman prided himself on his athletic ability and he wanted to wrestle. Dave says it's easy to point the blame at WWF if you don't understand the business or the mindset of most pro wrestlers, but Dave doesn't blame WWF for this.
- While talking about Pillman's career and life, he says you can't dismiss a lot of the darker stuff. His wild behavior and drug use left him estranged from a lot of friends and caused marital problems with his wife. Dave also recounts a story from Pillman's college years when Pillman was a senior, and he had sex with a girl who was hanging upside down from a pullup bar wearing gravity boots while the rest of the football team watched. Pillman used to write letters to Penthouse magazine telling of his sexcapades and they would get published and while most people thought his crazy sex stories were a work, people that knew him vouched that they were true.
- Pillman's funeral was held last week in Cincinnati, mostly limited to family and friends that were invited, but only a few people from the business. Bruce Hart, Joey Maggs, Eric Bischoff, Les Thatcher, and a few others. There was a private wake the night before, which Vince McMahon and Jim Ross attended. But that seems to be it, as far as Dave knows. That....seems weird. I would have figured most of the industry would have come out for Pillman's funeral.
- The first ever Pride show took place in Japan, featuring the long-awaited Nobuhiko Takada vs. Rickson Gracie fight. Takada, former star of UWFI, had been wanting a legit shootfight against Gracie for years and he finally got it. It didn't go well for him, as Gracie destroyed him in less than 5 minutes. For years in UWFI, Takada was the top star, winning worked shoot matches and turning the promotion into one of the hottest groups in the wrestling business. He built up a rep for himself as the best fighter in the world and a lot of people bought it. But this wasn't a worked fight and the crowd (99% wrestling fans) were let down after watching Takada get exposed and get basically no offense against Gracie. And finally, Dan Severn was indeed injured in his fight for Pride in Japan and now has to pull out of UFC's PPV 6 days before the show. He will be replaced by Tank Abbott. As for UFC, they're pretty pissed at Severn about this whole thing so it's unlikely he ever gets another shot at fighting for them.
- Business is so bad for AAA right now that some of the midcard guys have been getting paid $11 dollars for shows, which Dave says makes Jerry Jarrett look like Santa Claus (Jarrett is notoriously cheap).
- Michinoku Pro held their biggest show of the year due to some help from WWF and ECW. Undertaker worked the show, managed by Bruce Prichard. Sunny and Chris Candido also worked the show. Undertaker faced Jinsei Shinzaki who used his old WWF gimmick (Hakushi) for this show.
- Akira Hokuto has vacated the WCW women's championship due to injuries. Not so anyone would notice, since not even WCW seems to remember that they have a women's title.
- At this year's Cauliflower Alley Club banquet, Fred Blassie gave a speech and ranted against WCW. He said that since WCW has a wrestling school, Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall should go to it so they can learn how to wrestle.
- Lou Thesz recently had eye surgery to remove cataracts.
- For those who remember Incredibly Strange Wrestling, they're still around. Some of the new gimmicks are Le Femme Nikita Koloff (a Russian doing a gay gimmick), The Dianetic Death Squad and Los Papparazzis.
- Paul Heyman and Tod Gordon are still reportedly on cordial terms and are still talking but Heyman has said there is no chance Gordon will return to the company. They seem to be working together to make the transition easier. For instance, the old number for ECW ticket information went to a jewelry store that Gordon owned, so Heyman has gotten a new phone number. In the meantime, Gordon is still forwarding messages from the old line over to Heyman. So the split seems amicable enough.
- Jeff Jarrett's WCW contract has expired and there's a lot of rumors that he's WWF-bound. Jeff's father Jerry had been handling the WCW negotiations and Bischoff felt he had been negotiating in the media. Basically, going around to the various dirtsheets, giving interviews, etc. and saying things to try to get Bischoff to raise his offer. Dave agrees with Bischoff. That pretty much pissed off Bischoff and he pulled the $300,000-per-year offer from the table and basically told the Jarretts to go get fucked. Dave says Bischoff has been playing hardball a lot lately with people's contracts. WCW is in a really powerful position right now and he feels he doesn't have to get into bidding wars over people.
- Rey Misterio Jr. is facing Eddie Guerrero in a title vs. mask match at Halloween Havoc and the plan is for Misterio to lose his mask. Dave thinks it's a terrible idea and so does basically everyone else, especially the other Mexicans and those who understand the importance of it. For starters, Misterio looks like a teenager without his mask. Dave thinks it's at least 2 years too early to unmask Mysterio. If they build him up and take their time with it and spend the time educating fans on how important the mask is, it could be huge when/if Misterio is finally unmasked. But doing it this soon is a terrible idea (we'll hear a lot more about this).
- Several people were backstage at Nitro, most of them presumably looking for work. Dan Spivey ("looking 100 years older than he did as Waylon Mercy"), Brian Blair, Jimmy Del Rey, Siva Afi, Lanny Poffi, Steve Keir, Ed Leslie, and baseball star Wade Boggs, may he rest in peace.
- Dave once again says this Bill Goldberg guy shows a ton of potential. He's scheduled to face Meng at an upcoming PPV.
- WCW announcers were specifically told not to mention Brian Pillman's death on TV, supposedly due to all the lawsuit issues between WWF and WCW. They did air a graphic at the beginning of Nitro about Pillman.
- Ric Flair may not be able to wrestle at Halloween Havoc. His face is still very tender from the facial surgery he had and he has to be careful not to get hit.
- On Raw, Shawn Michaels and Hunter Hearst Helmsley cut a promo, giving themselves the name Degeneration X. On the same show, Rockabilly turned on Honky Tonk Man and formed a tag team with the Roadie.
- Also on Raw, Vince McMahon decided to talk shit about the movie No Holds Barred, talking about how much money it lost and saying that Hogan promised him that if the movie lost money, he'd pay McMahon back and said he's still waiting on that check. Later in the show, the Legion of Doom also cut a promo and ripped on Hogan and Savage.
- Steve Austin was cleared to wrestle by doctors this week, but the news wasn't all good. The doctor told him that he's still risking paralysis if he ever takes another bump like the one from Owen Hart at Summerslam. So you probably won't see Austin ever taking a piledriver again.
- Taka Michinoku STILL hasn't signed with WWF but he's expected to soon. WCW is making a play to try to get him as well but he's likely going with WWF.
- Yokozuna is said to be down to around 500 pounds and will be back on the road in November (nope).
- WWF has agreed to let AJPW use the Blackjacks (Bradshaw and Barry Windham) in their upcoming tag team tournament. Dave doesn't know what AJPW is thinking unless the plan is to purposely have bad matches on the shows.
- Eric Bischoff has been in a public war of words with Jim Ross this week. Bischoff said the best thing for WCW would be for Jim Ross to stay with WWF. He also said Ross called him up looking for a job awhile back. On the WWF Hotline, Jim Ross confirmed that he had called Bischoff about a job but it was waaaaay back before he was brought back by WWF. Ross also said that he and Bischoff had promised each other to keep the discussion confidential and off the record and that Bischoff going public with it shows what kind of person he is.
- As you'd expect, the letters section is a lot of people writing in about Brian Pillman. And pretty much universal disgust at Vince McMahon for dragging Pillman's wife out on TV 24 hours after her husband died, milking it the entire show for ratings, and then asking her really fucked up questions like "how will you and your 5 children be able to go on?" as they zoomed in on her that seemed designed to try and get footage of her crying (yeah if you've never seen this stuff, it's just bizarre. It's one of the more awful and disgusting things McMahon has ever done and seems to have been forgotten over the years. I posted it yesterday, but here it is again).