January 19, 1998
- It's the awards issue and Dave runs down all the winners for 1997, as voted on by readers of the Observer. So let's do this:
- Wrestler of the Year: Mitsuhara Misawa
- Most Outstanding Wrestler: Mitsuhara Misawa
- Best Box Office Draw: Hulk Hogan (this replaces the old Best Heel/Face awards)
- Feud of the Year: Steve Austin vs. Hart Foundation
- Tag Team of the Year: Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama (2nd year in a row for them. Misawa also won it in 95 with Kobashi so 3 in a row for him)
- Most Improved: Tatsuhito Takaiwa (2nd place goes to Rocky Maivia)
- Best on Interviews: Steve Austin (by a landslide. Also, 2nd year in a row for him)
- Most Charismatic: Steve Austin
- Best Technical Wrestler: Dean Malenko (2nd year in a row)
- Bruiser Brody Memorial Award (Best Brawler): Mankind (7th year in a row for Foley)
- Best Flying Wrestler: Rey Misterio Jr. (more than 3x more votes than the 2nd place winner, Taka Michinoku. Also, this is the 3rd year in a row for Rey)
- Most Overrated: Hulk Hogan (4th year in a row)
- Most Underrated: Flash Funk (just barely beating out Chris Benoit by 4 votes)
- Best Promotion: NJPW (3rd year in a row)
- Best Weekly Television Show: NJPW (breaking ECW's 3 year streak and in fact, ECW fell to 4th place this year)
- Match of the Year: Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin at Wrestlemania 13
- Rookie of the Year: Mr. Aguila
- Best Television Announcer: Mike Tenay (puts an end to Joey Styles' 3-year streak)
- Worst Television Announcer: Dusty Rhodes
- Best Major Wrestling Card: WWF Calgary Stampede
- Worst Major Wrestling Card: WCW/NWO Souled Out
- Best Wrestling Maneuver: DDP's Diamond Cutter
- Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic: Vince McMahon interviewing Brian Pillman's wife after his death (in fact, WWF has the all top 5 spots on this one)
- Reader's Personal Favorite Wrestler: Chris Benoit
- Reader's Least Favorite Wrestler: Hulk Hogan (4th year in a row)
- Worst Wrestler: Hulk Hogan
- Worst Tag Team: The Godwinns (2nd year in a row)
- Worst Television Show: USWA
- Worst Manager: Sonny Oono (there is no Best Manager category this year)
- Worst Match of the Year: Hulk Hogan vs. Roddy Piper at Halloween Havoc
- Worst Feud of the Year: DOA vs. Boricuas vs. Nation of Domination
- Worst on Interviews: Ahmed Johnson (2nd year in a row)
- Worst Promotion: USWA
- Best Booker: Paul Heyman (4th year in a row)
- Promoter of the Year: Riki Choshu (3rd year in a row)
- Best Gimmick: Stone Cold Steve Austin
- Worst Gimmick: New Goldust (normal Goldust was fine but the S&M version in 1997 was just too much I guess)
- Most Embarrassing Wrestler: New Goldust
- Mike Tyson is expected to become a regular character on WWF TV starting at the Rumble and going through until Wrestlemania. He will appear on most, but not all episodes of Raw during that time. The plan is likely for him to be a referee/outside enforcer for the main event. It's believed WWF is paying him somewhere in the $4 million dollar range, and it will take a very creative storyline for him to be worth that much money on PPV. WCW's recent Starrcade, which was the biggest money PPV in the last 6 years, only did $6.5 million so WWF will need to be in that range for the money they're paying Tyson to be worth it. But there's other things to consider, like the mainstream media coverage WWF will get out of this, plus sure-to-be higher ratings for Raw. So it may be worth it in that way. It looks like Tyson will be booked as a babyface. Dave expects the WM main event (Austin vs. Shawn) to end with Austin pinning Shawn and Tyson KOing Helmsley to send the crowd home happy. The negative media publicity has already started, but that was expected. This whole thing gives the media 4 easy targets to hate: Tyson, Don King, Vince McMahon, and pro wrestling. It's been the usual stuff, calling WWF a cesspool of drugs, Vince McMahon's a smut peddler, it all glorifies violence, Tyson is a criminal and disgrace to sports, yada yada yada.
- The contract situation with Hulk Hogan has gotten interesting. It's believed (but not confirmed) that Hogan signed a new WCW contract this week, allegedly with a huge raise over his previous one. But rumors had been going wild all week that Hogan was heading to WWF. For their part, WWF denied that they even had negotiations with Hogan but a source Dave spoke to says there might have been a little bit of truth to the rumor. Considering WWF still has a contract tampering lawsuit against WCW pending, they're obviously going to deny that they ever spoke with Hogan even if they did. It's known that Hogan was shopping his TV series around to different networks, including USA Network, but USA didn't seem interested. Regardless, rumors of Hogan going to WWF got so strong that a few mainstream newspapers started reporting it. Jim Ross went on the WWF hotline and strongly denied that they had spoken with Hogan and said that it was likely just Hogan trying to fuel rumors in order to help his negotiations with WCW.
- Wrestling legend Bobo Brazil is in critical condition after suffering a stroke a few weeks ago. Dave even names the hospital and room number because the family is encouraging get well cards. Dave recaps Brazil's life and career. He was almost always a babyface and headliner everywhere he worked. Dave covers his legendary feud with The Sheik that lasted decades and how he was one of the first true black stars in professional wrestling to headline shows and sell out arenas.
- Effective next week, Nitro will permanently become a 3-hour show. The decision was made because WWF's unopposed 2nd hour was doing strong ratings after Nitro went off the air. With Raw seeming to gain momentum lately, WCW wants to nip it in the bud. This obviously brings up the question of overexposure. Between Raw, Nitro and Thunder, that's 7 hours of wrestling on TV every week, plus monthly PPVs (jeez, 3-hour shows every Monday night, can you imagine? Ugh.)
- Newspapers in Japan are reporting that Muhammad Ali will be a special guest at the April 4th Tokyo Dome show where Antonio Inoki will be retiring. Dave doesn't know if it's true. Could be a work and it wouldn't be the first time Inoki has promised Ali would be somewhere (in other news, as I write this, I just recently finished reading Ali vs. Inoki by Josh Gross and it's a fantastic read. Highly recommend.
- At the latest ECW show, Paul Heyman gave away styrofoam mannequin heads to most of the crowd as they came in the building, which they all waved during Al Snow's match. ECW plans to start selling the heads as well. It made for a great visual and Al Snow is quickly becoming the hottest star in ECW.
- After the ECW Arena show, several of the wrestlers reportedly got into a brawl with some people at a nearby bar. There's a million different stories but apparently Chris Candido and Sunny had parked their car in a way that blocked someone else in. When they went to leave, Sunny got into an argument with the woman who was blocked in, and it led to a drink being thrown. People came out of the bar and it started to turn into a mess. Sabu came out to stand with Candido to fight and then someone alerted people who were still at the ECW Arena and a bunch of other wrestlers came running over to get involved. It's known that Candido was on the ground and had been stomped a few times and one of the bar patrons got a black eye from a Too Cold Scorpio punch (Scorpio was working the ECW show with WWF permission which is why he was there). Police showed up but no one was arrested.
- Speaking of Scorpio, this was a one-time deal, although ECW wants to keep using him if they can. As it stands, the agreement is pretty much that WWF will allow ECW to use any wrestlers that they don't have booked for those dates, as long as the wrestler wants to do it. Scorpio (or Flash Funk, whatever) wasn't booked by WWF this weekend, so ECW asked and were allowed to use him on the show.
- The Bushwhackers contacted ECW about coming in, using their old Sheepherders gimmick, but it doesn't look like it will be happening.
- Marty Jannetty debuted on WCW Nitro this week in a good match and looked to be in good shape.
- Dave mentions yet again how much this Bill Goldberg fella seems to be getting over. He's getting big pops every time out. Might end up being a star.
- TNT recently lost their NFL Sunday Night Football contract to ESPN, but the belief is that this is good news for WCW. It will make WCW a higher priority for the network since Nitro is one of the highest rated programs on the network and now may be #1 since they no longer have the NFL. Sometimes NBA basketball games do better ratings that Nitro, but not always. It also frees up a lot of money that TNT was paying the NFL that can be used for other things.
- WCW has released Debra McMichael. They had considered putting her with Flair but eventually nixed that idea. Over the past few months, WCW has cut ties with Debra, Sherri Martel, Nancy Sullivan and Jacquelyn. Kimberly Page is mostly just a Nitro girl now, which pretty much leaves Elizabeth as the only woman in the company with an actual role.
- Dave talks about how disorganized WCW is, with so many title changes happening on the fly. With house show advertising being sent out in advance, it has created a mess where advertised matches rarely take place because the champion usually isn't the person that was advertised. It's also screwed up the weekend shows which are pre-taped weeks in advance, and you often have matches on TV showing someone as champion weeks after they lost the belt on Nitro or PPV.
- Dave says the recent training camp that WWF wrestlers had to attend must have done some good. He says Kurrgan used to wrestle like a 60-year-old Giant Baba, but now he wrestles like 55-year-old Giant Baba. Speaking of that camp, Dave has heard nothing but positive reviews. The standouts were Adam Copeland and Sean Morley, but reportedly Ahmed Johnson impressed as well. He showed up in better shape than he was the last time he was seen on TV (reportedly lost around 35 pounds) and showed a willingness to work hard and learn, which got him over with Patterson and Dory Funk, who were doing the training.
- HHH will be out of action until mid-February due to his knee injury. Shawn Michaels also injured his foot over the weekend but didn't miss any shows.
- Dan Severn officially signed with WWF this week. No word on if he'll be brought in as NWA champion or be put into the NWA angle but that would make the most sense.
- Jacques Rougeau and Pierre Oulette have also signed with WWF. It's surprising considering how bad of terms Rougeau and WWF were on just a couple of years ago but then this is the wrestling biz so Dave says nothing is a surprise. They had recently been in WCW but both of them were phoning it in and were terrible.
- Jeff Jarrett's wife has been diagnosed with cancer so he's out for awhile to be with her (she dealt with the cancer for several years and eventually passed away in 2007).
- WWF is reportedly trying to bring in several "seedy" celebrities with bad reputations for Wrestlemania. That's why they got Tyson and they're also reportedly bringing in Pete Rose. Dave says that pretty much every sleazy celebrity other than OJ Simpson has likely been contacted (they also eventually got Gennifer Flowers).
- Gorilla Monsoon returned backstage to WWF after his recent near-fatal heart issues. Word is he has lost around 50-60 pounds and currently, there are no plans for him to get a heart transplant, although he still may need it down the line.