April 06, 1998
- Wrestlemania 14 is in the books and was a pretty good and memorable show. Mike Tyson's involvement was, as expected, limited and predictable but was well-done. Shawn Michaels went into the match with a serious back injury, re-aggravated the injury worse during the match, and tried to gut out a classic performance but wasn't able to live up to the level of classic matches he lives to perform on big shows. The match was good but not great, but the fact that Shawn was clearly in agony for the entire match and still managed to do as well as he did was the real story. There's concern that he ruptured a disc in his back and will likely be out of action for close to a year if surgery is required, and the next night on Raw, he was basically written off TV, with HHH taking over DX. Surprisingly, the real show-stealer ended up being Sable, who wrestled her first match ever and did a wide variety of karate kicks that looked better than anything that the WCW "martial artists" (Glacier, Mortis, etc.) have ever done. She wasn't in much to keep from exposing her and came out of the match looking great. Pete Rose ate a tombstone from Kane. Jim Ross did some of the best commentating of his life and seemed to be out to prove himself and made every match feel important and epic.
- Other notes from Wrestlemania: Legion of Doom debuted their new gimmick, repackaged as LOD 2000 with a new look and managed by Sunny wearing next to nothing. Dave says that calling Hawk awful would be an insult to awful wrestlers everywhere. Aguila is a great high flyer but aside from that is pretty bad at actual wrestling and his match with Taka Michinoku wasn't even up to the level of the worst WCW cruiserweight matches. Owen Hart was working on a bad ankle and probably shouldn't have been in the ring at all but he did good considering. Shawn Michaels was wearing a ring on a chain around his neck because he reportedly just got engaged to a former WWF seamstress (that one clearly didn't go anywhere) and he looked into the camera and gave Earl Hebner a shout-out before the match (more on that in a second). The crowd chanted "Holyfield!" at Mike Tyson but the announcers ignored it. Shawn worked hard but it was evident that he was dying out there.
- Earl Hebner was scheduled to referee the show and take the bump in the main event, but the night before the show, he suffered what is believed to have been a brain aneurysm and was rushed to the hospital. He reportedly didn't recognize anyone who came to visit him and was in bad shape and is expected to be hospitalized for at least a few weeks.
- The most influential wrestler of the modern era, Antonio Inoki, is expected to have his final match this week. He'll face the winner of a 4-man tournament that will be held earlier in the show. The show takes place at the Tokyo Dome and sold out weeks in advance. It's expected to be the largest crowd in the history of Japanese wrestling. They're trying to cram 70,000 into the building which would also be the largest crowd ever in the Dome, wrestling or otherwise. Dave has been in the building many times and he doesn't think it will be possible to cram that many people into it but we'll see. The show will air in prime time on network TV throughout Japan. Muhammad Ali, Bob Backlund, and many others are expected to attend. This leads to Dave recapping Inoki's career. He talks about how Japanese wrestling would be unimaginably different without Inoki and even argues that shoot fighting probably wouldn't even exist today as a sport if not for Inoki. UFC might still have happened but it would probably be a whole different world, since it essentially spawned from things like Pancrase in Japan which wouldn't have existed if not for Inoki. He was also the first wrestling promoter to make Hulk Hogan a superstar. He's responsible for popularizing promotion vs. promotion angles, which directly led to things like the NWO. Over the last nearly 4 decades, Inoki has been at the forefront of most of the changes in the wrestling business more than anyone else in history. Not to say he was a great man. Dave recaps some of his scandals, talks about how Inoki used his popularity to become a politician and was nearly impeached. He's had accusations of embezzlement, tax evasion, and other personal failings. But his influence on pro wrestling is simply unmatched.
- Sean Waltman (formerly Syxx) signed with WWF and debuted on Raw the night after Wrestlemania as the newest member of DX, cutting a shoot promo against WCW and Eric Bischoff. Waltman was fired 3 weeks ago by WCW, pretty much as a pawn in the disagreements between the Hall/Nash and Bischoff/Hogan camps. Waltman then agreed to a 4-year deal with WWF for somewhere between $300,000-$350,000 which is a significant raise over what he was making in WCW. Bischoff had told Nash that he might be willing to rehire Waltman, but no one in WCW ever contacted him and naturally, Waltman was pissed and wasn't going to come begging them to rehire him. It was the second time Bischoff had fired Waltman and Dave says Bischoff is notorious for threatening to fire people to get them to do what he wants. WWF originally low-balled Waltman but after more negotiations, ended up paying him more than WCW was. The deal also requires Waltman to only work a maximum of 15 days a month. The signing sent a signal to many disgruntled WCW wrestlers: WWF is now willing to pay big money for top talent, which they weren't willing to do before. And especially since they featured Waltman in a top spot (with DX) despite his size, it especially sends a message to smaller guys like Benoit, Mysterio, Guerrero and Jericho that WWF may be a better option, since there's the chance of upward mobility. In WCW, those guys are under a glass ceiling and word is now that they may be willing to give up the WCW money to take their chances in WWF.
- Waltman cut a promo, trashing Hogan and Bischoff and saying that Hall and Nash would be there with him in WWF if they weren't being held hostage by WCW contracts. Dave says a job that pays them $1 million a year for minimal work doesn't exactly qualify as a hostage crisis but says it's true that both Hall and Nash asked for their releases by WCW and were turned down. This leads into a mini-rant by Dave saying it's time for wrestlers to unionize, especially when it comes to health insurance. He says with business so hot right now, neither company will risk shutting things down if all the wrestlers banded together so now would be the best time to strike on that. Anyway, Waltman is expected to go by the name X-Pac (he wanted to be called Syxx-Pac but given all the lawsuit issues between WWF and WCW on things like that, WWF doesn't want to risk using his WCW name in any way). He won't be able to wrestle for about 2 more months due to his neck injury which still isn't healed. Speaking of, Eric Bischoff held a meeting backstage at Nitro to try and smooth morale since a lot of people were unhappy about Waltman's firing because it seemed to be done only as a way to fuck over Hall and Nash. Bischoff justified the firing by talking about Waltman being out injured for so long and told the locker room that any wrestler out of action for more than 6 months might be let go. This blatantly contradicts what Bischoff told the wrestlers a few months ago (after Pillman's death) when he said no wrestler would be fired for taking off for an injury or for rehab if they needed to get clean. Waltman has looked into the possibility of suing WCW for wrongful termination to collect on the remaining 18 months of his WCW contract.
- Other notes from the post-Mania Raw: it was WWF's raunchiest episode ever, full of bad language and deviant behavior more than any national promotion has ever done before. Sean Morley debuted doing a porn star gimmick using the name Val Venis. Dan Severn also debuted, as well as a few other Michinoku Pro wrestlers who came in to beat up Taka Michinoku.
- As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, WWC women's champion La Tigresa was arrested in Puerto Rico as part of a drug trafficking sting. The story got enough media coverage in the country that WWC addressed it on their TV show, saying they were surprised about the arrest and that everyone wrestling there has to undergo drug testing and background checks and all that stuff and that La Tigresa had never come up on their radar as anyone they'd need to be worried about. They even trotted out WWC co-owner Invader #1 to encourage people to say no to drugs and not get involved in crime, which Dave thinks is pretty rich coming from the guy who murdered Bruiser Brody.
- Carlos Colon is believed to be retiring soon. He's "retired" multiple times in the past but now he's the new owner of a record label called Primo Records and is reportedly considering retiring for real this time to focus on running that business (nah).
- Promo Azteca is slowly trying to change the booking and build the promotion around wrestlers who aren't signed to WCW because it's believed that WCW can pull its wrestlers at anytime. So Azteca doesn't want to be left with their dicks swinging in the wind if WCW decides to pull all of Azteca's top stars (which ends up being exactly what happens).
- AJPW's Champion Carnival tournament was completely screwed when Akira Taue suffered a knee injury. These tournaments in AJPW are meticulously planned out in advance, with a points system based on wins and losses (much like the G-1) so any deviation from the plan can mess up everything. Taue's injury will require him to miss the rest of the tournament, forcing them to re-book the entire thing now.
- Keiji Muto (Great Muta) will be undergoing reconstructive knee surgery and will be out at least a few months and they hope to have him back by the G-1 Climax in August. Turns out 14 years of moonsaults and landing on his knees has messed them up pretty badly and it's possible he may be retiring the moonsault as a finisher when he returns. Muta's knee problems are a big part of why his in-ring ability has declined so much in recent years.
- Eric Bischoff will also be attending Antonio Inoki's retirement show and will be meeting with NJPW officials while he's there to try to salvage the WCW/NJPW relationship. The belief is that NJPW will be willing to work with WCW as long as Bischoff takes Sonny Onoo out of the picture because they don't like him, but Bischoff has been using Onoo as his middleman.
- Memphis Power Pro Wrestling will debut on TV in the old USWA timeslot live on Saturday mornings. It will also feature the old USWA commentary team of Dave Brown and Cory Maclin. For all intents and purposes, Power Pro is basically just USWA with a new name and an owner who isn't being sued for fraud.
- At an ECW show over the weekend, the crowd started throwing stuff (bottles, cups, etc.) at the ring during a Sabu/RVD promo. Sabu tried to pick up a broken piece of table to shield himself with but kept getting hit and eventually, enraged, he threw the chunk of table at the crowd. A young fan, around 9 years old, was hit with the table and knocked to the ground and suffered an arm injury and had to be taken away in an ambulance. The crowd still didn't stop throwing stuff until Sabu and RVD eventually left without finishing their promo. Dave says WCW in particular has encouraged this sort of behavior for over a year by making it seem cool when fans throw stuff at the ring.
- Joel Gertner got married this past weekend. Some lucky lady bagged the quintessential stud muffin.
- On Nitro this week, Chris Jericho had a match and afterwards, he cut a promo talking about how Dean Malenko claims to be the man of 1,000 holds, but Jericho claims he knows 1,004 holds and he proceeded to read them off a list as the show went to commercial and was still reading when they came back. And in the ultimate WTF Dave Meltzer moment, he writes that it "flopped major" and even though it was designed to be intentionally bad, this "was bad in the wrong way." That's one of Chris Jericho's most classic bits! Dammit, I'm tempted to quit doing these Rewinds. I don't need this sort of negativity in my life from you Dave.
- Other Nitro notes: they teased Dennis Rodman returning soon, but didn't say when. The announcing was horrible, with Tony Schiovane twice saying that the Hogan vs. Piper matches last year were some of the greatest matches in the history of the sport. Sting legit injured his hip during the tag match.
- WCW released both Bobby Walker and Vincent/Virgil last week but they were both re-hired this week. Walker is related to former wrestler Thunderbolt Patterson, who is nowadays a prominent Atlanta-area black activist. In the past, Patterson has spoken up about how WCW treats black wrestlers so WCW has always been careful to keep a couple of black wrestlers on the payroll just to keep him quiet. A lot of people were surprised WCW would fire Walker for that reason so it wasn't a huge surprise that they immediately hired him back. As for Vincent/Virgil, his skin color had nothing to do with being rehired. He simply went to Hogan and asked him to intervene and Hogan got him hired back.
- WCW has struck a deal with DirecTV where customers can essentially "buy" Nitro each week as a $4.99 PPV and it will be without commercial breaks and they can see all the action that's happening in the ring while the TV show is still on commercial. It's an experiment now to see if it pays off. They're calling it Nitro-Plus (I don't think this ever really lasted long).
- The latest on Ultimate Warrior is that there are apparently serious discussions going on with WCW but no deal has been reached yet. WCW is offering him in the low six-figures to work 2 PPVs and a few Nitros later this year. Bischoff met with Warrior in Phoenix last week to discuss it.
- Lodi had surgery this week after breaking his ankle last week on Nitro and had 2 pins put in. He will be out for at least a month.
- Alex Wright has been cleared to return to wrestling after suffering a brain aneurysm a few months ago, but WCW wants him to sign a waiver absolving them of liability in case he has any future issues from it before they allow him to wrestle again. Wright is refusing to sign it so unless one side changes their mind, it looks like he's just going to sit out the remainder of his contract and keep getting paid but not wrestling (somebody eventually blinks because he's back in the ring by next month).
- Randy Savage was injured in a dark match with Sting at the WCW Saturday Night tapings. About 30 seconds into the match, Savage went down and Sting very gently put the scorpion deathlock on him for the win. Savage then had to be carried out of the ring and seemed to have suffered an ankle injury (worse).
- Scott Putski was supposed to have a tryout match before Nitro but it got cancelled because he didn't bring his medical release. Putski suffered a serious leg injury in a match with Brian Christopher at WWF's In Your House back in September and was later released. But he has to prove to WCW that he's medically cleared to wrestle again before they let him tryout (he eventually ends up in WCW).
- Rick Rude is reportedly seriously considering paying back his Lloyd's of London disability policy so he can return to wrestling.
- There's been talk of re-forming a new version of the Four Horsemen, with Arn Anderson as the spokesman and with Ric Flair of course involved and specifically to include Bill Goldberg. The idea being that they could put Goldberg in the spotlight but still protect crowds from seeing his weaknesses, which is basically what they did with Lex Luger back in 1987.
- There was a dark match before Raw with the Quebecers and Ray Rougeau vs. Adam Copeland, Shawn Stasiak, and Tom Brandi. Dave says it was Ray Rougeau's first match in years.
- On Raw, they did an angle with Steve Austin and Vince McMahon where Vince basically played the role of a slimy promoter trying to get the wrestler to do what he wants him to do, but of course, Austin rebelled and gave him a stunner and was arrested. Dave thinks it was great and says Vince and Austin are 2 of the best actors in the biz (I doubt this storyline will get over).
- WWF was reportedly very impressed with Christopher Daniels after his tryout last week (apparently not impressed enough).
- Steven Regal is telling people that he will be starting with WWF as soon as his non-compete clause with WCW expires. He's also in the process of losing weight.
- Shawn Michaels reportedly had a police guard with him for much of the weekend of Wrestlemania due to death threats. Umm, okay?