June 08, 1998
- Happy New Year! So....I won a couple of Wreddit awards. I don't really know what to say to stuff like this. I'm not good with attention and recognition, it feels weird haha. Thanks to everybody who voted, I really appreciate it and I'm glad so many of you enjoy these Rewinds. Huge shout-out to u/EvanDeadlySins (who's knowledge and posts about NJPW have been invaluable in helping me learn about and follow along with New Japan) and u/MatthewMir (who's "Essential" posts are some of the best original content on Wreddit, bar none). And shout out to u/actuallyjohncena also. Thanks for puttin' me over brother.
- The Junkyard Dog passed away this week after a car accident in Mississippi. Dave learned of this story right as he was finishing up the issue so he doesn't have a ton of info at press time. It's believed JYD fell asleep at the wheel on I-20 near Forest, MS and crashed. Dave writes a brief obituary but I won't bother with it here because the next issue has the full story and a loooooong recap of JYD's career so we'll get to it then.
- WCW has a Nitro scheduled for the Georgia Dome next month and they already broke the company all-time gate record with the first day ticket sales. 14,000+ tickets were sold on the first day for over $540,000+ dollars, which breaks the record set by Starrcade this past December. They'll likely end up with nearly 40,000 in attendance for the show and a gate near $1 million which would be the first time any American company other than WWF has done that. Interestingly enough, Hogan volunteered to work a non-title dark match on the show against Goldberg, which should help sell a lot more tickets when they announce it locally. Since it'll be a non-title dark match, Hogan reportedly has no problem doing the job and keeping Goldberg's win streak intact and then collecting a big fat paycheck for the huge crowd he helped draw. Of course, being WCW, this could all change and Dave says that, given the ratings war and WWF's sudden resurgence, he wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being a heavily promoted match that ends up airing on TV, although as of now, that's not the plan.
- Speaking of ratings, WWF Raw had its biggest win in over 2 years against Nitro this week, winning by their largest margin since the early days of Nitro back in 1995. Interestingly enough, Dave points out how Hogan has been smartly playing the ratings game backstage, choosing which shows and PPVs he wants to appear on based on what he thinks the ratings will be. For instance, he chose not to appear on the previous PPV because Nitro's timeslot had bounced around due to the NBA playoffs. So he wisely figured that the buyrate would probably be lower than normal and chose not to work the show. But then he does work the next PPV, when it had a proper build, and the buyrate is higher, so on paper it looks like Hogan is the one responsible. Dave basically says Hogan is no dummy and it's not an accident that he's been able to manipulate WCW into giving him monster contracts. But anyway, this week on Nitro, the ratings actually dropped with Hogan on the show and it looks like his usual Teflon drawing power seems to be taking a hit, which coincides with Steve Austin's rapid rise as the top star in the industry. In fact, WCW has had a massive decline in the last 6 weeks, with everything seemingly sliding in the wrong direction while the WWF rocket just keeps rising. Dave talks about all the random heel turns in recent weeks that had no build or logic or reasoning behind them (Hart, Giant, Luger, Sting, Hall, Dusty Rhodes, etc.). We're 3 years from WCW going out of business, but Dave is already making comparisons to the demise of Jim Crockett Promotions back in 87-88 and says there's a lot of eerie similarities that WCW needs to get in check ASAP. As for WWF, it's worth noting that the ratings have been peaking early in the show and then dropping off before the end, which Dave thinks is a sign that Austin and McMahon are being overexposed since they get a ton of TV time during nearly every segment of the show. WWF seemingly agreed and this week on Raw, they toned down the constant Austin/McMahon drama until late in the show.
- WWF's Over The Edge PPV is in the books and was more of the usual: a fantastic main event and a terribly weak undercard. The Austin vs. Dude Love main event was probably the best match of the year so far in the U.S. but that's more of a testament to how weak this year has been when it comes to great matches. Dave also says that WWF is basically an upside down pyramid balancing on one person: Steve Austin, and if he gets injured, they're in deep shit. Some people, like DX, are really popular with their promos and entrances, but when the bell rings, the crowds don't really care about anyone but Austin (see the crowd chanting "Boring!" during the DX match on this PPV, for example).
- Other notes from the PPV: Sunny was back on TV this week, in the corner of LOD 2000 (that ended up being one of her final WWF appearances). Dave gives Rocky Maivia vs. Faarooq negative stars. Vader lost to Kane in a mask vs. mask match and afterwards he cut a promo nearly crying and calling himself a "fat piece of shit." They did a terrible angle for the local fan with Mad Dog Vachon, The Crusher, and Jerry Lawler that Dave says was just embarrassing. Dave gives the main event 4.5 stars.
- AJPW's latest tour has been the worst drawing tour in years, primarily due to the fact that Mitsuharu Misawa is still out of action and won't be back for awhile.
- Power Pro Wrestling in Memphis announced their first show at the Mid South Coliseum, which will be headlined by Jerry Lawler vs. Kane, on loan from WWF (here's a video with highlights from the match and a great Jim Cornette promo afterward).
- Dave issues a correction on last week's issue. When talking about Sid Vicious no-showing recent events, Dave accidentally used the word "professional" when he meant to say "unprofessional."
- ECW will be bringing in Masato Tanaka and have signed him to a 6-month deal.
- Justin Credible was finally given his release from WWF so he's 100% ECW now.
- Time Magazine threw out 40,000 of the votes for Ric Flair in their online Man of the Century poll, but it doesn't matter because the votes keep rolling in and now Flair is already back in 2nd place (behind Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the country of Turkey). Anyway, speaking of Flair...
- The latest on the WCW/Flair situation is that Flair's lawyers are trying to get his contract re-structured before he'll agree to return. Among the things Flair is asking for is for travel days to count against his total number of dates (for instance, if he has to work 100 days a year, and he has to leave on a Sunday to get to Nitro on Monday, he wants both Sunday and Monday to count as 2 days out of his 100). He also wants to make sure he still gets paid for the days WCW accused him of no-showing, and for WCW to cover his legal expenses for the lawsuit they filed against him. And finally, if Flair were to suffer a career-ending injury, he wants to make sure WCW still pays him 50% of the money on his contract (which runs through 2001). There's a few other little things Dave mentions, but those are the major ones.
- Scott Steiner has been in Vancouver with Hulk Hogan filming the sequel to Hogan's TV movie Assault on Devil's Island (I didn't watch it to see if/where Steiner is).
- People backstage in WCW are raving about Goldberg and saying that he hasn't let his success go to his head at all, which is unheard of. Apparently he's still super humble and gracious despite rapidly becoming one of the biggest stars in the company.
- In the highlight of Nitro, Chris Jericho filmed a skit in Washington D.C. proclaiming himself the victim of a WCW conspiracy theory and trying to talk to the president and lawmakers about it and even going into the law library to try to find the WCW rulebook. Dave thinks it was absolutely hilarious. He's not wrong.
- Goldberg faced La Parka on Nitro this week and the crowd went absolutely insane for Goldberg. The match saw La Parka hit Goldberg with a hard chairshot, which Goldberg no-sold and then speared La Parka so hard that it's believed he tore his ACL in his knee. No word on how bad the injury is yet (he'd be out for about 3 months).
- Kevin Nash has been out of action the last couple of weeks with a concussion and won't be working the upcoming PPV. It apparently happened during the angle where Hall turned on Nash. Speaking of, that whole thing seems to have basically been dropped now. They've barely mentioned Hall on TV at all since he went to rehab again and Nash never addressed it in promos.
- Jerry Sags of the Nasty Boys has filed a lawsuit against WCW, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall over his neck injury suffered last year which he says is career ending. Sags claims to have suffered a concussion and spinal injuries after Hall hit him with a chair at a house show in Jan. 1997 in Shreveport. Sags was going into the match already with a bad neck and asked Hall and Nash to take it easy, but Hall ended up clobbering him with the chair anyway, leading to them to get into a real fight in the middle of the match, where Sags knocked out several of Hall's teeth. The interesting part of the lawsuit is whether the court decides wrestling is a sport. The lawsuit was filed in Florida, and there's laws there saying that anyone participating in a sport assumes the risks involved so for Sags' case to have a chance, the court will have to rule that wrestling is entertainment rather than sport.
- Raw notes: Undertaker basically came out without his gimmick and cut a worked-shoot promo on Vince McMahon ("and without the lifts in his shoes, he only looked three or four inches taller than McMahon" Dave adds). Also, Jacqueline debuted as Marc Mero's new valet.
- Stevie Richards got a WWF tryout as a color commentator.
- WWF has re-signed with USA Network for another 3 years (they'll be moving to TNN when this contract is up, but we'll get there...)