March 23, 1998
- The situation regarding Syxx (Sean Waltman) being fired by WCW seems to have been at least partly due to Eric Bischoff trying to send a message to Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, who have been openly complaining about how unhappy they are with things in WCW. As it stands, it seems like the only thing Syxx did to be fired was have the wrong friends. Syxx still had a year and a half left on his contract but was FedEx'd his termination notice from WCW. Syxx has already started negotiating with WWF but word is WWF's offer was described as embarrassing and would be a substantial paycut from what he made in WCW. Keep in mind, WWF freely released Waltman in 1996 and allowed him to go to WCW, mostly due to his problem with painkillers. WCW paid for his rehab and brought him in as the 6th member of the NWO. Waltman has been out for months due to a serious neck injury and is still months away from being cleared to return, and it's led to a lot of people in WCW, even people who don't generally like Syxx, talking about how it's kinda fucked up to fire a guy with a wife and 2 kids, while he's injured, seemingly for no other reason than to stick it to his friends. Reportedly Hall and Nash tried to rally a bunch of WCW wrestlers together, almost as if to unionize, and confront Bischoff. But Bischoff got wind of it early and put a stop to it somehow. Earlier this month, Hogan, Bischoff, and Nash had a meeting with Hogan accusing Nash of trying to run him out of WCW and Nash told Hogan point blank that he wants his spot and Hogan said he wasn't giving it up. Hall and Nash have both been open about wanting their release but Bischoff isn't even remotely considering that because WWF would snatch them up in a heartbeat. On Nitro, both Hall and Nash have seemingly been phoning it in and goofing off, with Hall at one point even getting on the mic and jokingly telling Giant it was his cue to attack them. And, in unrelated news, Ric Flair is still unhappy and actually they plan to keep him off TV for the next few weeks, which Dave once again points out is stupid since his segments are often among the highest rated. It's led to Flair still talking about wanting to retire, not because he wants to stop wrestling, but he just no longer wants to deal with the backstage shit.
- That's behind the scenes. On the surface, everything is golden in WCW. This week's Nitro broke nearly every wrestling rating record ever since Raw was preempted. It became the first wrestling show in cable TV history to average over 4 million homes for the entire show and nearly hit 5 million for the main event. The last hour of Nitro had 4 matches and all 4 of those matches now hold the record for the 4 most watched wrestling matches in the history of cable TV. Dave compares WCW to NJPW in 1982. Dave says that back then, NJPW was on top of the world, drawing huge houses and doing huge TV ratings, but behind the scenes, there was chaos similar to WCW, where all the younger wrestlers were feeling held back by the old guard (Inoki). But no one was concerned because NJPW was on top of the world. But only 2 years later, NJPW was on the brink of folding after all the young talent jumped ship and went elsewhere because they were fed up with the politics (and sure enough, 2 years from now, WCW will be on the brink of folding not long after Jericho, Benoit, Guerrero, Malenko, Saturn, and others all jump ship for the exact same reasons. Oh, how history repeats itself. And Dave was predicting it in 1998, at the height of WCW's success).
- Other notes from the show: in a typically silly WCW angle, they did a promo where JJ Dillon agreed to un-ban the powerbomb for the Giant/Nash match (the move has been banned for weeks and they've been doing angles where Nash gets arrested when he uses it). Anyway, JJ Dillon said the move would be allowed in their match only because Giant asked for it to be unbanned. And then they had the match and neither guy ever used a powerbomb, thus rendering the entire angle pointless. They did an angle where Dean Malenko is on a losing streak and basically quit, which should lead to him returning in a few weeks with a different gimmick. Bret Hart/Curt Hennig was decent, but Hennig just isn't the worker he used to be anymore and it showed. As for the main event, Hogan/Savage in a cage, Dave just rips it apart. The Hogan/Piper match last year was dubbed "Age in the Cage." So Dave starts tossing out potential nicknames for this match: "Crowd silence for a poor representation of violence? Lack of suspense in a fence? Yawner en la juala" ("en la juala" means "in the cage" if you weren't sure). He also talks about how both men bladed and bled all over the place and points out how WCW allegedly still has a no blading policy and how others in the past have been fired for that. Dave basically calls it one of the worst matches of both their careers.
- Dave reviews the latest UFC show and I won't get too much into it, but he basically says it was the best show in UFC's history, with a crowd that was smart to how MMA works and weren't bored by ground grappling. Better matches due to a new matchmaker and all in all it was just a great show, but sadly, fewer people than ever saw it because UFC is basically blacklisted from most PPV providers at this point. The main event saw Frank Shamrock vs. Igor Zinoviev stopped after only a few seconds when Zinoviev was injured on the first takedown and had to be stretchered out of the octagon, which is the first actual significant injury in UFC's history. He follows that up with a long review of the 2nd Pride show, which was the complete opposite of the UFC show and was just flat out awful. They tried a gimmick with no time limits or rounds, and so several of the matches lasted a loooooooong time, including one fight that lasted almost an hour, which was mostly spent with both guys on the ground and the crowd was literally falling asleep.
- Japanese women's wrestler Akira Hokuto announced that she is pregnant and will be taking a hiatus from wrestling. Hokuto becomes the first woman in the history of Japanese wrestling to have a child while still being an active wrestler. Tradition in women's wrestling in Japan has always called for the women to retire at age 26, and there were strict rules about drinking, smoking, and having sex that could even get women kicked out of the promotion for violating them. Hokuto flouted all those rules and apparently was such a big star that no one ever held her to them and now, at age 30 and still not retired, she is pregnant, but plans to resume her career after she gives birth.
- Bob Backlund will reportedly be attending Antoni Inoki's retirement show next month. Backlund and Inoki used to be occasional tag team partners in Japan when Backlund was WWF champion. There's also a famous story of Inoki winning the WWF title from Backlund and then dropping it back to him soon after, in a title change that WWF doesn't recognize. Muhammad Ali is also expected to attend the retirement show.
- Tank Abbott has been telling people that he plans to get into pro wrestling.
- Cablevision has agreed to carry the next ECW's next PPV in May. They were the lone holdout so now ECW has the full scope of PPV carriers and it should guarantee ECW does around 60,000 to 70,000 buys per show, which should turn a nice profit for each show.
- Random ECW notes: Al Snow has the wildest entrance in wrestling but the crowd heat dies instantly as soon as his matches start. Chris Candido has added so much muscle that he looks like bodybuilder and all the added body mass is hurting his in-ring skills. Stevie Richard is scheduled for another vocal cord surgery next week.
- Sandman was prevented from wrestling at a house show in New York last week because his blood pressure was too high and the athletic commission wouldn't allow it. He was scheduled for the main event so Heyman had to restructure the entire card at the last second. Sandman ended up coming out but stayed far away from the ring (he wasn't even allowed to be in it) and ended up cutting a promo from the entryway, shooting on the athletic commission, calling them weasels for not letting him wrestle.
- Random notes from Nitro: Raven has been hinting on TV about "The Snake" joining his Flock, which is, of course, expected to be Jake Roberts. It was one of the outdoor spring break shows with the ring surrounded by water. At one point, Ray Traylor clotheslined Scott Steiner into the water, which is a spot they decided on their own to do. Backstage, people were freaking out because Hall and Nash had a spot with the water planned for later in the show and were upset that Steiner and Traylor had done the water spot first. It ended up being Hall getting thrown in by the Giant while Nash just did a cannonball into it. Eddie Guerrero made his nephew Chavo wear [an airbrushed shirt that said "Cheat to win" on the front and "Eddie Guerrero is my favorite wrestler" on the back.] (https://stashpag.es/collections/stashpages-originals/products/eddy-airbrush-t-shirt?variant=36567154753). Dave says Chris Jericho carries himself like a superstar. And finally, Sting made his ring entrance by rappelling down from a helicopter which got a great reaction but then he unfortunately had to wrestle. Dave says Sting is great as a character but the mystique just dies when the bell actually rings.
- Bret Hart missed Nitro because he was in Calgary attending a city council meeting. It's a long story but basically, Stu Hart is having financial problems and attempted to make a deal to sell the famous 21-room Hart family mansion (complete with the legendary Dungeon basement) and the 2 acres of land. The idea is to turn it into a retirement community where Stu and Helen Hart will continue to live. But the sale isn't finalized and if Stu can sell another 1.4 acres of land he owns to a developer, it would fix their money issues and they wouldn't have to sell the house. But the city has zoned the land as a park and is attempting to low ball Stu Hart on the offer. Bret offered to buy the house but Stu refused feeling it would cause a rift in the family (the Harts not getting along? Perish the thought). Reportedly 2 of Stu's daughters already won't talk to him because he's attempting to sell the house outside of the family. Anyway, long story short, there's a bunch of city council zoning law boring legal bullshit to be sorted out and Bret went to go be at that so he missed Nitro.
- Rick Martel is going to be out for around 6 months after his recent knee surgery (that's pretty much a wrap on his career).
- Jimmy Hart is expected to play himself in the upcoming Andy Kaufman movie starring Jim Carrey. Jimmy Hart was instrumental in the Kaufman angle with Jerry Lawler (WCW ends up not allowing Jimmy Hart to do the movie because Lawler is in it).
- Some of the Nitro Girls will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Penthouse Magazine (awesome!) but they won't be nude photos (oh).
- The Giant's WCW contract is coming due within the next year and it's no secret WWF is very interested in him. But it's believed he'll stay wherever Hogan is (still almost a year away but nah, he's headed to WWF).
- Sports Collectors Digest ran a huge story on Bill Goldberg, talking about his football career. They wrote about his 4 years as a starter for the Georgia Bulldogs in college, the single season record for most tackles by a lineman (121) he set during his senior year, being drafted to the NFL by the Rams in 1990 but being cut during camp before eventually landing with the Atlanta Falcons from 92-94. Goldberg grew up in Tulsa and Jim Ross actually refereed some of his high school football games. He tore an abdominal muscle which ended up ending his NFL career and that's why he jumped into wrestling.
- On Raw, Vince McMahon came out cutting a shoot-ish promo, referencing the Montreal screwjob. Dave says he wishes he could go one issue of the Observer without having the mention that show, but it just won't go away. Anyway, they talked about how Shawn Michaels doesn't lay down for anyone and basically implied that Shawn may not put over Austin at Mania. They had Vince basically say he was the owner of the company and has already decided Austin will do the job. Dave figures since everyone expects Austin to win the title at WM, they have to do something to try to make fans doubt the obvious outcome. But this stuff probably went over the heads of a lot of average viewers but it was interesting. As for Shawn, he's planning to do the show, but the status of his back injury is still questionable. After Wrestlemania, he's expected to be out for awhile. No word how long, it really depends on if they determine back surgery is necessary.
- Someone writes in and points out how hypocritical Marc Mero is. When he left WCW, one of his complaints was about how he didn't want to do an angle with Kimberly Page because it offended his religious sensibilities to be seen stealing another man's wife. So the fan wonders how Mero can justify all the angles going on in WWF now, with his real-life wife Sable. Dave agrees that Mero's willingness to go along with WWF's storylines when he had such a problem with a minor WCW storyline is indeed a little bit puzzling.
- One final letter, someone asks Dave who he sees as his successor. Who will be the next Dave Meltzer? The writer says he loves the Observer and hopes Dave can continue for a long time, but he can't be around forever. The guy also wonders how long it will be until the Observer has an internet presence. "Surely all the complaints about slow mail delivery could be avoided if you published the Observer as a pay premium online service." Dave responds and says it'll be a long time before he quits because he can't imagine not doing the Observer. As for the future, Dave doesn't know of anyone who will take his place after he's done because they'd need to have the extensive knowledge of the industry that he has, plus the drive to write about it 24/7. As for the online stuff, Dave says they've explored the idea of publishing the Observer online but right now, it just isn't feasible.