Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 27, 1997

Weekly reminder: starting with the 1998 issues, I'll be dropping back to a M-W-F schedule.
Also, everybody strap in....this is Screwjob Week.
The All Japan Women promotion in Japan has filed for bankruptcy. The filing lists them as 1.6 billion yen in debt, which is about $13.6 million in American ($14.4 million in 2017 dollars). The owners held a press conference and announced that they hope to continue and plan to keep running shows in 1998, but most people feel that this likely signals the end of the promotion, which is the 3rd oldest in the world (behind EMLL and WWF). Dave gives a brief recap, almost an obituary, for the promotion. A little premature it seems. They stayed alive until 2005.
Dave recaps the latest UFC PPV, which was highlighted by Randy Couture scoring a huge upset win over Victor Belfort and also by Tank Abbott flat out quitting in the middle of his fight. Dave reviews it all and talks about it, but yanno, it's UFC not wrestling. But I did find this part really interesting, which I'll copy and paste: "Because of the various cable outlets not carrying the event, this show was also broadcast on the Internet for $20. As a test market without a lot of publicity, it drew about 1,000 orders. If the Internet can be viable as a distributor of the shows in the long run, it may mean survival of UFC even without a turnaround within the cable industry. But there is no guarantee of enough people willing to spend money to buy the signal through their computer or how long it'll take before such technology becomes viable to the masses."
WCW broke their all-time gate record again this week, but this time they did it for a show that's still over a month away. The upcoming World War III PPV in November, with no matches announced, has already sold over 9,000 tickets in advance for over $306,000+ gate. It's the first time WCW has ever broken the $300k mark for a show and considering it's sold this much so far in advance is just beyond amazing.
Shane Douglas lost the ECW title to Bam Bam Bigelow, to set up a rematch which is expected to headline ECW's November To Remember PPV. The decision to go this direction was a recent one, because up until a couple of weeks ago, they were still discussing other possible opponents for Douglas at the show. There had been discussions of bringing in Jeff Jarrett, Cactus Jack, and even Brian Pillman before he died (the latter 2 would have obviously been on loan from WWF). In fact, last year, Pillman was set to have a feud with Douglas but due to his injuries, the match never happened. Paul Heyman even attempted to get WCW to loan him Ric Flair for the night as part of a settlement over the whole Raven contract situation. Heyman has been talking about filing a lawsuit about that but he still hasn't done it and WCW hasn't really even considered settling with him, so there was no chance they were going to let him use Flair.
With the Monday night wars still in full swing, Dave decides to take a look at who draws ratings and why. For the last couple of months, Dave has been compiling all the quarter-hour ratings, who was in those segments, and examines how the ratings of a segment rise and fall compared to previous segments which is how you can see who is making people watch and who is making fans change the channel. And just looking at the number, your top ratings draw is.....Disco Inferno. BWAH? He's followed by Piper, Jericho, Steve Austin, and Alex Wright rounding out the top 5. The worst? Scott Hall, followed by the Head Bangers, Jeff Jarrett, The Steiners, and Steve McMichael. But the numbers aren't quite what they seem and Dave goes into explaining it in all the detailed, minute ways. A lot of it depends on the placement on the show. Raw and Monday Night Football both start right as Nitro's second hour is beginning, so that contributes to a ratings drop-off, so whoever is in that segment looks like a bad draw. Stuff like that. It's all complicated and interesting, but Dave also says the numbers don't lie; no matter where he's placed on the show, the ratings increase significantly every time Disco Inferno is on TV and all the different explanations don't fully explain that. Bottom line, Disco Inferno is actually a real draw on TV. Weird but true.
While we're on the subject, this week's Nitro had its biggest rating ever against Raw, doing a 4.54 rating and seems to have actually drawn viewers away from Monday Night Football. If you add in Raw, which also did a decent (by their standards) rating, it means over 5.3 million homes were watching wrestling that night, which breaks the all-time record for people watching pro wrestling on cable.
This week, TNT is airing Hulk Hogan's new made-for-TV movie Assault on Devil's Island. WWF has responded by putting together a Survivor Series flashback show, which will just be a highlight show of old Survivor Series clips. WWF has scheduled this show to air twice, both at the same times that Hogan's new movie will be airing. Eric Bischoff was clearly annoyed by this, because he brought it up 3 times on Nitro, saying Vince McMahon is scared of Hogan's new movie. God, I love the pettiness.
Blue Panther has jumped ship from AAA to EMLL. Fuerza Guerrera and Heavy Metal may be following him, all of which would devastate AAA. Things aren't looking great for them at the moment.
Atsushi Onita's Zen "promotion" (basically his version of the NWO) within FMW is struggling because nobody is taking it seriously as a separate promotion and the angle seems to be flopping hard.
The famous Dallas Sportatorium will be torn down in a few weeks, with a drive-through liquor store being built on the property. This has been rumored for awhile and negotiations went on for months. Dave recaps the history of the Sportatorium, which became one of the more famous wrestling buildings in the world in the World Class years (the negotiations ended up going for a lot longer; it wasn't demolished until 2003).
At the latest ECW Arena show, a fan punched Mikey Whipwreck in the face while he and Bigelow were fighting in the crowd. The fan then ran out of the building to escape. Many wrestlers in the dressing room came out and ran out of the building after him and searched for him in the parking lot. Luckily for the fan, he escaped. Many said it killed the momentum of the show because the whole show basically came to a stop in the middle of the match at that point and people said it was unprofessional for everybody to come out of the locker room like that, which is something you'd never see at a WWF or WCW show.
At the same show, during a segment with Beulah and Francine in the ring, a woman in the crowd flashed her breasts at the crowd which totally took the crowd out of the angle. Paul Heyman got on the mic and said, "Now we've all seen what a lousy pair looks like."
Still more outside-the-ring ECW incidents. A teenage girl grabbed Shane Douglas' hair as he was walking by. He turned and spat in her face and she spat back at him. This led to Francine getting into a fight with the girl until security broke it up. By this point, the crowd was about to riot until it was settled. The girl later called the police and claimed Douglas punched her and Douglas was questioned after the show.
Before a recent ECW show, New Jack told Joel Gertner that he was going to blade him during an angle they had planned. Gertner freaked out and went to Pit Bull #2 about it. PB2 confronted New Jack and they got into a big heated argument, with lots of words being thrown around, including the dreaded N-word. From there, it was reported that New Jack threw some punches at PB2 but he reportedly wasn't fazed by them at all, and then other wrestlers stepped in to break it up. But with so many wrestlers in the locker room reportedly tired of New Jack's shit, they decided to let them go, assuming PB2 would probably beat his ass. So they ended up brawling again, until Paul Heyman came in the room and forced the wrestlers to break them up again. By the next day, New Jack and PB2 had shaken hands and made up, so no harm no foul I guess.
ECW is planning to bring in California indie wrestler Erin O'Grady for a tryout, and he'll likely work with Spike Dudley (that would be Crash Holly. He had a few dark matches in ECW but didn't get signed).
On Nitro, Bill Goldberg ("who got a noticeable pop") beat Wrath in 20 seconds. Dave says WWF had the real Ken Shamrock and turned him into just another wrestler, while WCW is attempting to take a no-name rookie and turn him into their own Ken Shamrock.
Booker T worked a singles match against Lex Luger, due to Stevie Ray being injured. Dave says Booker T has a lot of potential as a singles star.
Eric Bischoff held a meeting with all the wrestlers before Nitro this week and talked about attending Brian Pillman's funeral and then said he isn't naive enough to think WCW doesn't have a drug problem but said he hasn't personally seen any major examples. Bischoff told the wrestlers that if any of them are dealing with a drug problem, come to him and they will treat it like an injury and help them get treatment and they wouldn't be punished. Dave thinks that's all well and good but points out that both Steve Austin and Ricky Steamboat were fired from WCW while injured so, yanno. Bischoff also pointed out that WWF used the word "ass" 17 times on the most recent Raw and said WCW will be going in the opposite direction and not trying to use so much adult content. He said Syxx can no longer do the bronco buster spot and the NWO guys can no longer do the crotch chop because he wants to differentiate WCW as a cleaner product. Advertisers are already leery of pro wrestling as it is and he thinks WWF's more adult product is going to cause advertising problems for them. He then guaranteed WWF would be out of business within 6 months. And then, he said there were only 3 people in the room who had ever put asses in seats: Hogan, Savage, and Piper. As you can imagine, Ric Flair was reportedly furious about that comment (yeah, Flair has talked about this before in interviews and talks about that comment specifically). Bischoff and Flair are currently in the midst of heatedly negotiating Flair's next contract and this was apparently Bischoff's way of hinting to Flair that they don't need him. Flair is definitely considering jumping to WWF, but it's still too early to say if he actually will.
Rob Van Dam was backstage at WCW's Orlando tapings, but not for any real reason. He just wanted word to get out to help his ECW gimmick.
Turner is giving WCW an additional $8 million budget increase in 1998 for them to get more talent.
The Giant is being paired with Rey Misterio Jr. as a tag team and Dave thinks the idea has potential, but Giant is really upset about it, feeling it reduces him to a mid-card comedy character.
Speaking of Misterio, he's very upset about the plan for him to lose his mask at Halloween Havoc and is fighting to get it changed. He has also hired an agent to handle his WCW contract negotiations and is trying to get his current contract bumped from $200,000 per year to $350,000.
Former WWF announcer Todd Pettingill is reportedly trying to get hired by WCW.
WCW nearly released Bobby Eaton and Joey Maggs, but booker Terry Taylor went to bat for them because they've been loyal to the company and are well-liked, so for now their jobs are saved (it worked. Maggs retired in 98 due to injury and Eaton stayed on as an agent until 2000).
Disco Inferno is expected to start using the Stunner as his finishing move, which is retaliation for WWF giving Marc Mero the diamond cutter as his finisher.
Steve Austin's doctor has told him he should rehab his neck for another couple of months and then be reevaluated. So he's still not wrestling but he has been doing run-ins and WWF is saying his status is day-to-day. He may not be back for Survivor Series (he was).
WWF held a press conference to announce the signing of Taka Michinoku for 3 years at $333,000 per year. Remember when Taka was a big deal?
Jeff Jarrett returned to WWF on Raw and cut a shoot promo trashing WCW, saying Bischoff low-balled him on his contract offer, and stuff like that. The live crowd had absolutely no clue what he was talking about. He also tore into Steve and Debra McMichael, but then also went after McMahon for his previous time in WWF and ripped on him too.
Dave recaps Kane's latest Raw segment and then says, "The Kane gimmick is going to get over huge." Yeah, I'd say so.
Billy Gunn (formerly Rockabilly) has changed his name to Bad Ass Billy Gunn and formed a team with Jesse Jammes, now going by the name Road Dogg.
Jim Cornette cut another one of his shoot promos on Phil Mushnick this week and urged people to write letters to the outlets that publish him. After the promo last week, the New York Post received over 1,000 angry letters and emails from wrestling fans and TV Guide got even more than that. Unfortunately, most of the letters just confirmed the negative image of wrestling fans that Mushnick has been pushing, since so many of the letters were just people saying "Suck my dick!" instead of addressing issues. Mushnick himself was said to be upset at Jim Cornette claiming he made fun of Pillman's death, when he most certainly didn't and he was amazed that wrestling fans couldn't realize that it was WWF who was exploiting the death, not him. All in all, Dave thinks that WWF going after Mushnick so aggressively shows that they're scared of what people would find if they investigated the last few months of Pillman's life under WWF's watch, because it would reveal that there's still a serious unaddressed drug problem in WWF. So as Vince McMahon always does, he's portraying himself as the victim of someone having a vendetta against him to divert attention away from the fact that Mushnick is often correct in most of what he says about WWF. He thinks Vince probably should have learned his lesson about that tactic after the steroid scandal, but evidently not (last week's video is easy to find but I can't find this one anywhere).
Yokozuna recently filmed a Coca Cola commercial (can't find anything about this).
Aldo Montoya (Justin Credible in ECW) has been given his WWF release and will now start full time with ECW (not quite yet).
The New York Times ran a story about the Monday night wars and one line said that the TNT network created WCW to compete with WWF when it wasn't carrying Braves games on Monday nights. Dave thinks that line might have set a record for most inaccuracies in a single sentence. The article also acted as if the ratings were neck-and-neck every week, when in reality, WCW has been massacring WWF by huge margins for at the better part of a year.
Survivor Series in Montreal next month has already sold 10,000+ tickets and is expected to sell out.
Bret Hart is scheduled to appear on Mad TV this week (I think he was in several sketches, but here's one of them).
Most of the letters section is people raving over how great Dave's obituary for Fritz Von Erich was a few weeks ago. Except for one guy who writes in to complain about how the issue spent over 4 pages on Fritz and basically says it's the last straw and if Dave is going to write long obituaries every time someone dies, he's going to cancel his subscription because no one wants to read that shit. "Simply tell us the guy died, what names he wrestled under and a few quick facts about his career. It's hypocritical to go any deeper and I'm not paying for that crap much longer." That person? A guy named Johnny Kashmere, later known as one half of the Backseat Boyz with Trent Acid, who have held the ROH and CZW tag titles.