Wrestling Observer Rewinder

December 01, 1997

WCW's World War III PPV is in the books and it pretty much sucked. Eddie Guerrero vs. Misterio Jr. stole the show, but that's not saying much and it wasn't as good as their Halloween Havoc match. Goldberg had to pull out of his scheduled match with Steve McMichael due to a groin injury so they did an angle where he was attacked backstage. Ric Flair and Curt Hennig had a decent match but both of them are inconsistent at best these days in the ring and it wasn't a good night for either of them. The final 3 men in the 60-man battle royal were Scott Hall, Giant, and DDP. Turns out Lex Luger was originally booked to be one of the final 3, but DDP managed to politic his way into the spot instead. Hall won the match. Also, Dave offhandedly mentions that Mike Tenay worked commentary for the entire show (usually he splits duties with Dusty Rhodes) and Rhodes was clearly unhappy about it because on the Saturday TV taping, Dusty was on commentary and spent half the show complaining about his new announcing duties.
Dave hypes up ECW's upcoming 3rd PPV, November To Remember. Their last PPV was considered a disappointment and this show has a lot less publicity going into it since WWF hasn't helped them promote it aside from a brief throwaway mention on Raw. Rick Rude was scheduled to be at the show, since he played a part in setting up the Shane Douglas vs. Bam Bam Bigelow feud but with him jumping to WCW, he won't be there now. Regardless, the show is expected to break both ECW's all-time gate and attendance records. They had attempted to book Guns n Roses guitarist Slash to play the national anthem (most of the guys in GnR are apparently legit ECW fans) but that deal fell through. The show is also scheduled to feature another appearance by porn star Jenna Jameson and rap group Insane Clown Posse, but neither of those is definite (I don't think either happened at this show). ECW will be using WWF's lighting guy to make sure they don't have a repeat of the 2nd PPV, where the lighting looked so bad and amateurish. Heyman had worked out a deal to get more promotion for the show on Raw but the promos he sent never aired. He had also offered to send Sandman & Dreamer vs. Sabu and Van Dam in a tables and ladders match to air on Raw, but WWF turned it down.
Bret Hart was scheduled to make an appearance on TSN's Off The Record show this week to make his first public statements since the screwjob. But Vince McMahon got himself booked on the show the next night, so he could have a rebuttal to anything Bret said. When Bret found out Vince was booked the next night, he cancelled his appearance. Vince then cancelled his also. Vince is still making noise about pressing charges for the punch and WWF sources now say Vince suffered a concussion, blurred vision, black eye, and broken ankle in the fight. Hart has a cracked bone in his hand from the punch also and doctors have told him not to wrestle for 6 weeks. Vince McMahon is said to be upset that basically everyone is siding with Hart in this situation and will air part 2 of the interview with Jim Ross on Raw this week to address the issue further. As for who's right or wrong, Dave says this is a messy situation and both sides made mistakes but he makes it pretty clear that he's siding with Bret on this one.
As for the possibility that Bret might have shown up on Nitro the next night with the belt and trashed it like Madusa did, Dave points out that the situations are much different. Bret is still under contract to WWF until Nov. 30th so that wasn't happening. Although there's always a possibility that Bret could have found a loophole in the contract or may have been willing to breach the deal to go to Nitro but Turner and WCW wouldn't have risked the legal ramifications of that, especially with lawsuits still pending. Dave points out the fact that Vince did that with Lex Luger back in 1992, signing him to a WBF contract and putting him on WWF TV to get around his non-compete clause. But even if so, if something like that was really a concern, Vince could have just physically taken the belt away from Bret and kept it himself until it was needed for TV. Dave does admit that Vince was in a tough spot of figuring out how to get the title off Bret during the last few weeks of his contract, especially if it happened after Dec. 1st, at which point Eric Bischoff would have a say in how Bret could be booked. But in that case, Vince should have never let things get this far to begin with. If he wanted Bret out of the company and wanted out of the contract, why make him the champion and put him in a feud with the guy you know he legit hates and expect him to drop the title when he has creative control? Bottom line, WWF tried (and failed) to destroy Hart's legacy, reputation, and dignity by double-crossing him to fix a situation that Vince himself created.
Owen Hart and Davey Boy Smith are locked into their WWF contracts and both of them are said to be so one-sided that even if they both quit the company now, they wouldn't be able to wrestle anywhere else for the next 4 years. So against their wishes, both men will be returning. Smith is having knee surgery this week (on Raw, Shawn Michaels called it a fake knee injury, which Dave says Shawn knows all about). As for Jim Neidhart, he was never under WWF contract and can leave at anytime, but WCW apparently isn't that interested so he's probably staying also.
One final note on this topic, Dave says that he predicts this will all be turned into a storyline eventually, likely when Owen returns. He also predicts that WWF will try to copy this whole thing as a work in the future (sure enough, the very next Survivor Series). He also says that McMahon has received such a negative reaction from this that he wouldn't be surprised to see Vince use this incident to turn himself heel (boy, did he ever).
The lawsuit over USWA has apparently been dropped. No reason was given for dropping the suit but now that USWA is dead, there wasn't anything to win anyway. The most valuable assets were the syndication deals and those are gone, along with the Memphis TV deal. So whoever won would have only won a promotion with no place to air it, plus all the debts that the company had (another lawsuit for fraud ends up getting filed at some point because here's a link to a court document regarding it in 1999 and it's really interesting and tells all sorts of details about the last days of USWA if you feel like sorting through all the legalese).
The HBO show Inside The NFL featured a segment on Ernie Ladd, who was a football star before leaving the sport at his peak to become a pro wrestler. The story heavily featured his pro wrestling years (sadly, I can't find video of this).
UFC is holding a show in Japan later this month and have had discussions with WWF about bringing in a wrestler to fight on the show. Obviously, their first choice was Ken Shamrock and they made a big money offer, but WWF has big plans for Shamrock and don't want to risk him getting hurt. They started tossing around other names, but with WWF's roster so thin these days, they don't want anyone to risk getting hurt in UFC, so Vince turned them down.
At an ECW show, the fans chanted "You sold out!" at New Jack due to the internet rumors that he's going to WCW. New Jack claims WCW made him an offer and he turned it down. WCW denies that they ever made an offer for him. Either way, he's not going to WCW. Dave wants to assume WCW is telling the truth because pretty much nobody wants New Jack these days given his reputation. But WCW also denied making an offer to Taz when Dave knows for a fact they did. So who knows who's telling the truth. Anyway, New Jack was furious at the chants, saying he has jumped off balconies for ECW fans and now they call him a sellout. He was reportedly almost in tears backstage because he was so upset by it.
The latest on Rick Rude with WCW is that he still had lawsuits pending against WCW and against Sting personally over the back injury that ended his career a few years ago. Rude had to settle the lawsuits first before going back to WCW. Word is there's still a lot of personal heat between Sting and Rude, since Rude blames Sting for the injury and Sting wasn't exactly thrilled about being sued.
Sandman did a charity exhibition boxing match with Philadelphia boxer Damon Feldman that ended after about 1 minute when Feldman hit Sandman with a left hook that turned him into Jell-O. Sandman showed up to an ECW show later that night and his face was clearly beat up from the boxing match.
With the new Thunder show debuting in January, WCW plans to cancel the Saturday morning Main Event show along with the Sunday WCW Pro show. Nothing important ever happens on either of them anyway so it's no big loss.
Ric Flair signed a new 3-year deal with WCW this week so he'll be with them until he's 52.
Hogan's contract is up at the end of the year and with the made-for-TV movie success, the huge WCW success, and the huge buyrate for Halloween Havoc, Hogan is in a position to demand huge money wherever he wants to go but Dave thinks he'll stick with WCW. Dave says that people hate to hear it but Hogan is worth every penny he gets because he's proven to be worth more than that and then some when it comes to drawing money for WCW.
Eric Bischoff took part in a Prodigy Online chat and ripped into Vince McMahon again. Let's just read it, shall we?
On the subject of WWF's adult content:
"I read a copy of his online chat where he compared the sexual content and racial content of his program, and he said he isn't doing things that haven't been done before and he singled out NYPD Blue. That's the kind of poor judgement that if he does go out of business, he has nobody to blame but himself. While NYPD Blue has exposed derrieres and sexual content, one only has to look at the advertisers that ABC includes in that programming and you'll see that clearly that program is targeted toward adults, while McMahon's programming is clearly targeted at children, in many cases children under 12 years old. For the USA Network and Vince McMahon to suggest that it's OK to produce programming with the degree to sexual content, racial overtones and in my opinion general bad taste while obviously selling their program to advertisers that are targeting children's toys and candy, I think it's nothing short of professional and social irresponsibility on the part of McMahon and the people who work with him, and the USA Network."
On the subject of creative control by wrestlers:
"Given the circumstances that we unfortunately all witnessed, or at least have knowledge of, with regards to the Bret Hart situation, it's clear to see why wrestlers would want creative control. If you can't trust the people you work with and for, it's very difficult to put your career in the hands of people who if given half a chance would attempt to ruin your career. Actors have an opportunity to look at a script before they accept a role, and then decide whether they want to risk their career with a specific script or director. Wrestling isn't like that, as we all know. There is a big difference. I think violation of trust is one of the things that has created the kind of atmosphere that I have heard exists in the WWF locker room."
Gene Okerlund is lending his name to a small burger chain which is called Mean Gene's Burgers and they have 4 or 5 locations throughout the country (this ended up growing into a bit of a chain and lasted for years. I think there may still be a few of them floating around, but Okerlund isn't involved anymore and eventually got into a lawsuit with the food company he was working with over it).
On Raw, they sent Harvey Wippleman out to the ring dressed as Rick Rude and did an angle with that to basically bury Rude for jumping to WCW, with Michaels shoving Wippleman aside and saying, "That sure was a tough spot to fill."
Luna Vachon returned to WWF, in a segment with Goldust where she sprayed alcohol in Vader's eyes to blind him.
The medical examiner's office has released their final report on Brian Pillman, listing the cause of death as "natural causes due to arteriosclerotic heart disease." The autopsy showed that Pillman's heart had only been working at about 55% prior to his death.
Harley Race reportedly called up Bret Hart after the screwjob to tell him he was proud of Bret for how he handled the situation and especially for punching out McMahon.
Some notes on Adam Copeland, who recently signed with WWF and worked some dark matches: he's about 6'4 and 240 pounds and apparently looks a lot like Chris Jericho. He has been wrestling on the indies in Canada and Michigan for about 4 years.
Dory Funk Jr. writes in to clear up the air about his tussle with Dan Severn and it's basically the same as what was reported. They had words over something Dory's wife did and then went to the ring to settle it (the cops had already been called and Dory figured they wouldn't be arrested when the cops showed up if they were in the ring wrestling). So they got in there and Dory admits that Severn was damn good but he also says he had Severn down a time or two before Severn finally got out of the ring and walked away. Someone else writes in and basically says Dory Funk should be glad Severn had enough respect for him to only stretch him a little and not flat out murder him with his bare hands, because he could have easily done it.
Tons more letters about the Montreal situation this week. Most of them amount to fuck Vince McMahon, I'm never watching WWF again, he's a disgrace to wrestling, this is the beginning of the end for WWF, how will anyone who works for him ever trust Vince again, etc. A few people also write in to put blame on Bret and say he should have swallowed his ego and gone along with the boss's orders and whatnot. The "who was in the wrong?" debate that still carries on to this day has now begun.