February 09, 1998
- It must be a slow news week because the big story is Dave just breaking down business numbers. In 1997, both WWF and WCW did their highest attendance numbers in over 6 years. WWF attendance increased almost 20% over 1996 numbers and showed substantial ratings increases as 1997 ended and it's clearly a boom period for the company. WCW of course had an even better year with its attendance increasing by over 59% from 1996 (which itself was a 56% increase over 1995). WCW has grown at a much faster rate and is beating WWF in everything but attendance at this point, but Dave expects they'll probably pass WWF in that regard in 1998 as well. WWF averaged around $94,000 per show at the gate while WCW averaged about $87,000 (a 113% increase over their 1996 average). To put it in perspective, a few years ago, doing $100k at the gate for a house show would be considered a very good. Now that's basically the average for every show.
- TV ratings are an interesting beast. It's been proven repeatedly that there's no correlation between TV ratings and live attendance, even though logic would say that there should be. But for example, while WWF attendance in 1997 was the best in the last 6 years, their TV ratings were the 2nd lowest they've done in that same 6 years. As for WCW, while they're doing good ratings for Nitro, they used to do about the same rating for the non-prime time TBS weekend shows (often doing 4.0 ratings) and back then, attendance was in the gutter (they were averaging less than 1000 fans per show). Both companies have raised their ticket prices and even though it goes against all economic sense, the reality is that the higher the ticket prices go, more fans keep buying them, which has been a big part of the reason both companies keep setting gate records for shows. The same goes for PPV prices, which have gradually been increasing, and it somehow leads to more people buying them. When prices are slashed (like when Kip Frey lowered WCW ticket prices in 1992 or WWF experimented with "budget" PPVs with the In Your House shows), it leads to less people buying. The theory is that the more expensive the event is, the more its seen as a luxury or status thing and people will pay for it. If you offer them a $5 ticket or $15 PPV, they see it as cheap and not worth it. Anyway, it's all really interesting stuff. Dave plans to take a similar look at NJPW and AJPW business numbers next week.
- As of press time, TCI Cable has not agreed to carry WWF's upcoming Wrestlemania PPV. TCI is the largest cable conglomerate in the U.S. and they seem to be trying to "protect" the sport of boxing and won't agree to carry Wrestlemania until they know what Mike Tyson's role in the show will be and until they get assurances from the Nevada State Athletic Commission that it won't affect Tyson's boxing reinstatement. Dave says it sounds serious, but there's way too much money at stake for TCI and WWF not to work this out so he's confident it'll be settled.
- Dave sarcastically says that Shawn Michaels is scheduled to drop the title at Wrestlemania so, of course, an injury has suddenly popped up. After taking a backdrop on the edge of the casket at Royal Rumble, Shawn Michaels has been out of action claiming a lower back injury. Michaels doctors have sent word to WWF that he's suffering from a litany of injuries: a bruised kidney, a slightly separated shoulder, both hips out of alignment, a sprained foot, issues with vertebrae in his back, not to mention a worsening of his chronic knee problems. Dave thinks it would be a good idea to keep Shawn out of the ring until Wrestlemania so that he can't come up with another excuse to avoid dropping a title. Shawn was scheduled to face Owen Hart at house shows but those have been changed.
- Nobuhiko Takada will have a rematch against Rickson Gracie in October, a year to the day of their first shoot fight last year. Last year's fight drew 40,000 people to the Tokyo Dome to see Gracie easily take out Takada in less than 5 minutes which was no surprise since Takada is a pro wrestler with a manufactured shoot-fight reputation despite never having actually competed in one. And Rickson Gracie is considered the best fighter in the world. There's still been talk in UFC of doing the Takada vs. Ken Shamrock match (which was advertised for a couple months ago but fell through due to Takada being injured). But if Takada is hoping to draw a big crowd for the Rickson Gracie match in October, he'd be foolish to risk fighting Shamrock before then, since Shamrock is likely to destroy him just as easily as Gracie did which would hurt his drawing power even more. Most likely, Takada will face some jobber between now and then, someone he can easily beat in order to build up for the Gracie fight.
- ECW ran a pretty tasteless angle to set up a Tommy Dreamer/Justin Credible feud. They had a 10 bell salute for Tommy Dreamer's grandfather who just recently passed away (which is true, he really did) and around the 7th bell, Credible came out and interrupted, cutting a promo and saying he was sorry Dreamer's worthless grandfather died instead of him. Dave goes into the long history of promoters using real-life deaths to sell tickets (Fritz Von Erich, Mike Graham, and of course, Vince McMahon, who not only milked an interview with Brian Pillman's wife for ratings, but used the entire Gulf War as the backdrop for an angle).
- Dave talks about Sen. John McCain recently getting a sold out amateur MMA show in Phoenix shut down just hours before it was scheduled to start which leads Dave on a long rant about the repeated issues the sport is facing.
- Kenta Kobashi is reportedly interested in going to WWF during the summer and working a storyline with Vader.
- The latest on WWF's involvement in AJPW's Tokyo Dome show is that WWF was asking for $1 million as a package deal in order for AJPW to use all of WWF's top talent on the show. But AJPW is only interested in 2 or 3 guys (Undertaker, Vader, and Shamrock) and were offering WWF $50,000 each for them. Negotiations are still ongoing.
- Jerry Lawler is reportedly in discussions about starting a new promotion based in Memphis and trying to get his WMC TV deal back that they lost when USWA closed.
- A guy named Bob Barnett has wrestling videos for sale from around the world and can be contacted at japbob@beachnet.com so, yanno....get your Christmas shopping done early I guess.
- Dave's review of this week's Nitro is full of snark and sarcasm. He just shits on it left and right, goes off on mini-tangents about the announcers, Nash, Goldberg, Bulldog, the nonsensical booking, etc. (this becomes a recurring theme during 1998 as the quality of Nitro and Thunder begins to circle the toilet).
- WCW had house shows in Texas last week that were supposed to be headlined by Flair vs. Hennig but then Hennig had to get his knee scoped and missed the shows. The original idea was to have Bret Hart replace him, but Bischoff vetoed it because he feels Hart should be treated the same as Hogan. And Bischoff said he'd never send Hogan to work in Abilene or Midland, TX as a fill-in for a match, so he wouldn't send Bret either. So it ended up being Flair vs. Bulldog.
- WCW's Souled Out PPV early buyrate numbers are in and it is looking to be the biggest money show in company history that didn't involve Hogan and looks to have done better than WWF's Royal Rumble.
- Goldberg faced Meng on WCW Saturday Night tapings and it was a bad match because Goldberg got blown up a few minutes into it and it got dangerous. At 2 different points in the match, Goldberg dropped both Meng and Jimmy Hart on their heads. Luckily neither was hurt but Meng was pretty annoyed about it afterwards, as you could imagine.
- WCW has 31 house shows booked for the month of May without a single day off the entire month. Dave expects injury and divorce rates to skyrocket.
- A guy who attended an ECW show in Revere, MA writes in about an incident he had with New Jack (man, New Jack really doesn't do well in Revere). The guy says he and his fiance attended the show and his fiance was talking to a security guard that she knew near the curtain when New Jack poked his head out and told her to come see him after the next match. The girl naturally didn't go back and so after the next match, New Jack came out to where they were in the crowd and asked if she wanted to get together after the show. The guy stepped in and informed New Jack that she was his fiance. New Jack then started verbally assaulting the guy, calling him a bitch and a white boy. It nearly led to a physical altercation until security stepped in and tried to throw the guy and his girlfriend out. The guy refused to leave and when they got the full story, they realized New Jack was the one at fault, so they were allowed to stay. As he was leaving, New Jack yelled "You know who she really wants!" which pissed off his fiance so much that even she had to be restrained from going after New Jack. The head of security later apparently apologized to them and acted like this is just typical New Jack.
- On Raw, they did an angle that started out great but got watered down and stupid as the show went on. The New Age Outlaws put Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charlie into a dumpster and pushed it off the stage. It got lots of heat and everyone from the wrestlers to the announcers played their role perfectly. But then they kept the storyline of it going for the rest of the episode, concluding with Chainsaw Charlie in his underwear and a hospital robe and Jack still hooked to an IV doing a run-in to end the show.
- Sunny recently did a photoshoot for the cover of Muscle & Fitness magazine (I can't find anything about this).
- Ahmed Johnson was hospitalized last week after collapsing on an airplane in Indianapolis due to dehydration (this is pretty much the end of the road for Ahmed in WWF. His last appearance is at the next PPV and then he's gone).