June 22, 1998
- Now that the NBA playoffs are over, WCW is expected to announce Hogan & Dennis Rodman vs. DDP & Karl Malone at the upcoming Bash at the Beach PPV. Within the business, it's been known for weeks that this was the plan, but the story finally broke mainstream and got major coverage throughout the sports world. During the last game of the NBA Finals, between the Bulls and Jazz, there was a moment when Rodman and Malone went after a loose ball on the floor and were throwing elbows at each other, which led to NBC announcer Bob Costas telling them to save it for their bogus wrestling match and saying he didn't understand why Malone would lower himself to participate in wrestling. Dave thinks it's funny since Costas used to be a wrestling fan back in the day and attended many shows in Sam Muchnick's St. Louis territory and has even done announcing for wrestling shows in the past. Anyway, Karl Malone is an avid wrestling fan and is friends with DDP and even Malone's mom is a hardcore wrestling fan, so he's reportedly excited to participate. As for whether this is a good idea or not, Dave talks about the last PPV Rodman wrestled on and says the buyrate was one of the biggest ever for WCW, but financially it was a wash because all the extra profits basically went to paying Rodman to appear. But it did help get WCW a ton of mainstream publicity and that's invaluable. (Rodman and Malone were kicking each other's asses during that game, here's a whole highlight reel of it. 5:20ish is when Costas trashes wrestling).
- Lots of different stories on Rodman missing basketball practice to appear at Nitro. The New York Times reported that WCW paid Rodman $250,000 for skipping practice and doing the show. Considering the NBA fined him $10,000 and the Bulls fined him $5,000, that would seem like a smart business decision. Others say Rodman had already decided to skip practice because he had been out partying the night before and others are disputing the idea that WCW paid Rodman to skip practice because TNT has a contract with the NBA and it's believed Turner execs never would have signed off on something like that. Dave doesn't know the full story, but says Rodman's WCW contract calls for him to wrestle on 2 PPVs and also to make TV appearances leading up to those events. Dave suspects the Nitro appearance was one of his contractually obligated dates. Rodman probably did make $250,000 for appearing on Nitro, but that was part of the already agreed upon contract, not extra money that WCW threw at him.
- Great American Bash is in the books and was a typical WCW PPV: strong undercard, Benoit doing a job, and shitty main events. The Benoit thing in particular was egregious because he gets stronger reactions than almost everybody other than Goldberg lately and most expected this to be the show where he'd finally get his due. But when he lost the final match in the best of 7 series to Booker T, the crowd totally turned on the show and spent the rest of the night chanting "Boring!" and worse at everything that came after except, of course, for Goldberg. With WCW stalling out and WWF flying past them recently, Dave says the company needs to make obvious changes that they don't want to make: the old guard needs to pass the torch to the young stars. Pushing young talent and creating new stars is what has pushed WWF past WCW, while they continue to rely on the same Hogan/Piper/Savage guys to carry the company. It's time for WCW to start preparing for life after those guys and elevate the Benoits and Guerreros and Jerichos of the company.
- Other notes from the show: the announcing was terrible. Goldberg won his "100th" match (really more like 103). Juventud Guerrera vs. Ron Reis was billed as the largest size discrepancy ever in a wrestling match. Dave says it was also the largest talent discrepancy in one. They did angles during the show and the next night on Nitro to write Randy Savage off TV because he needs knee surgery and will be out for probably the rest of the year. The Benoit stuff notwithstanding, the best of 7 series has done wonders for turning Booker T into a respected top worker. The post-match brawl with Jericho and Dean Malenko ended up outside with Jericho legit running into traffic trying to escape Malenko, causing cars to have to stop and then ran into another building across the street. Goldberg was, of course, over bigger than anyone this side of Antonio Inoki in Japan and has become a legit megastar. Curt Hennig was in Konnan's corner of the match and there had been a plan for Hennig to help Konnan screw Goldberg out of his "100th" win, but that got changed. Hennig was pissed about it being changed and had a heated argument with Bischoff about it before the show. And The Giant came to the ring smoking a cigarette, playing off a comment Sting made about Giant smoking all day and being out of shape.
- With Mitsuharu Misawa still out injured, AJPW's current tour has been doing record low numbers. As a result, AJPW abruptly had Kenta Kobashi win the Triple Crown title from Kawada. With business down, the company didn't believe Kawada was a strong enough draw to carry the promotion and Kobashi is seen as a bigger draw, so the decision was made to change the title unexpectedly.
- Raw beat Nitro in the ratings again this week, but more interestingly, both shows featured angles with a steel cage with a roof. WWF, of course, had their Hell In A Cell cage, while Nitro brought out their own version for the main event match. WCW made the decision after getting advance word earlier in the week from someone at the arena where Raw was hosted that they would have their roofed cage, so Dusty Rhodes (who is handling a lot of the booking lately) made the call to bring in the cage for Nitro and it was kept secret from most everyone in the company until the production crew learned that they would have to put it together the day of the show. But long story short, it was basically WCW copying what they knew Raw would be doing the same night.
- Dave talks about the planned card for ECW's upcoming Heat Wave PPV in August and says Heyman is working on bringing in Hayabusa for the show. ECW hasn't really had a good PPV since their first one, with most of the other shows being marred by poor lighting, bad crowds, bad matches, etc.
- Goldberg defeated Sting in about 3 minutes at a recent WCW house show. The match was a last minute plan after Sting's original opponent The Giant wasn't able to make the show after his flight was cancelled. There was a lot of heat on The Giant for missing the show since it was only 3 hours away and, after the flight was cancelled, he had plenty of time to rent a car and drive to the show, but he evidently decided not to. So Sting volunteered to go out there and be Goldberg's next victim to give the crowd a big moment.
- Steve Williams worked his final show for AJPW and won the match. Dave says it shows how much respect Baba has for Williams that he didn't even job him out on his way out the door. After the match, Williams began motioning a belt around his waist, indicating that he plans to go to WWF and win the world title which got a big pop. Then they had a big ceremony essentially transitioning Johnny Ace into the new top foreign star, which Dave says shows how far AJPW has fallen, because Ace isn't anywhere near Williams' level as a top star.
- The recent soccer game between Argentina vs. Japan in the World Cup did a monster 67.3 rating which made it the 2nd largest rating for any show in history in Japan. If you're wondering why this is related to wrestling, it's because the rating has bumped the famous Rikidozan vs. Destroyer match from 1963 down to 4th place all-time. At the time, the Rikidozan/Destroyer match was the most watched television event in Japanese history, doing a 64.0 rating and was the single most watched wrestling match in history until the Ali vs. Inoki match (and considering that wasn't technically a wrestling match, you could argue that it doesn't count).
- Occasional WWF jobber Jeff Hardy made his Japanese debut using the name Willow the Wisp, winning the vacant UWA middleweight title while wrestling for some indie promotion there (that's the old UWA promotion from Mexico that was long out of business at this point. The title had been vacant for a year when Jeff won it and was vacated again soon after and wouldn't be resurrected again until 2002).
- Superstar Billy Graham tried to put together a wrestling show/religious revival event in TX headlined by Terry Funk vs. Cactus Jack in a death match but it was cancelled due to low advance ticket sales. Death matches, praise the lord! (also, I somehow doubt WWF would have left their wrestlers work a show for Billy Graham, given the bad blood at the time).
- RF Video will be opening up a pro wrestling merchandise store in the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia, selling WWF, WCW, ECW, and Japanese wrestling merch. RF Video was opening several stores around the country back then. In fact, I remember a wrestling merch store here in Memphis back around this time but I can't remember what it was called. I wonder if it was RF Video.
- Nashville-based promotion Music City Wrestling held a show in Georgia but less than 100 fans showed up and the ring decided not to show up either. So they laid down gym mats and had 4 matches. The show ended early when wrestler Reno Riggins apparently broke his ankle.
- The Charlotte Observer newspaper ran a story on the Ric Flair/WCW issues. The current argument seems to be over whether Flair can be held to the letter of intent he signed in 1997 where he agreed to stay with the company for 3 years. This wasn't an actual contract, just an outline of terms that the two sides were discussing. WCW is still trying to settle with Flair and bring him back, especially now that they're losing to WWF in the ratings, which is good for Flair's bargaining position. Dave thinks bringing Flair back might help in the short term but WCW has bigger issues to deal with and pushing another guy in his late 40s as a top star isn't the answer. Assuming Flair doesn't return, they still intend to create a new Four Horsemen group, with Benoit, Malenko, Finlay, and McMichael. Dave thinks that's a pretty terrible idea and apparently Benoit and Malenko agree and both are strongly against it.
- There had been rumors of the Jericho vs. Malenko match at the PPV being a Loser Leaves Town match but it didn't happen and was never mentioned on TV as that being the case. But the rumors were so big that whoever updates the WCW website actually listed it as a Loser Leaves Town match, which is what happens when there's a lack of internal communication. Something WCW has had a huge problem with for awhile. The left hand never knows what the right hand is doing anymore since things change so often. There had also been discussions of bringing in Jericho's dad Ted Irvine (a former NHL hockey player) to interfere on his son's behalf to help him win the match, but that was scrapped too.
- Jimmy Snuka was backstage at Nitro. Dave thinks they missed an opportunity by not using him, since Piper was there also and they were in New York.
- The Nitro Girls didn't get the raises they were asking for. Bischoff apparently told them that he could get any hot girls to fill their spot so if they weren't happy with the money they were making, they were replaceable and could feel free to leave. So they ended up taking a much smaller raise.
- A Chattanooga newspaper did a story about Kevin Nash, talking mostly about his years as a college basketball player. His former coach described Nash as somewhat talented but didn't have a good work ethic and was smart but immature. Apparently, some sort of confrontation with the coach led to Nash not returning to the team for his senior season.
- Dave talks about how Goldberg hasn't yet been an actual draw for tickets or ratings, despite getting the biggest reactions of any wrestler in the last decade. He's main evented a couple of house shows but ticket sales were weak (people rightly assuming that they didn't want to pay to see a 2-minute main event with Goldberg squashing someone). He does huge merch numbers though.
- Michael Cole was in a car accident this week which totaled his car, but he was fine.
- Steve Regal, Steve Williams, and Edge should all be debuting in WWF sometime in the next 2 weeks.
- WWF is still looking to sign Mexican wrestlers for it's Lucha Libre show that they're planning to start later this year. They want an unmasked pretty boy babyface to build around, and they liked Hector Garza but he's under contract to WCW, so they're looking at Latin Lover or Tarzan Boy.
- Matt and Jeff Hardy have signed WWF contracts. They have been working as unsigned jobbers for awhile.
- Someone writes in and suggests that Dave should compile all the obituaries he's ever written and publish them as a book and it would be the greatest collection of essays in wrestling history. Sure enough, Dave did that soon after this. Twice actually. Books called Tributes and Tributes II.