June 29, 1998
- Just for the record, the replies to this post were amazing and I love you all
- Steve Austin and Undertaker are both out this week with injuries, just a week before King of the Ring. Austin was hospitalized with a staph infection in his elbow, resulting in a 104 fever and was still hospitalized as of press time several days later. As for Undertaker, he suffered an ankle injury while filming an off-site angle that was supposed to be at Paul Bearer's house. Ironically enough, Bearer also injured his ankle during the segment somehow. Both Austin and Undertaker worked the Friday night house show in Houston in great pain. After deciding neither man could work, WWF decided to just postpone the upcoming house shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Boston later in the week. Both men are expected to work the King of the Ring PPV (Austin has a first blood match with Kane and Undertaker has a Hell In A Cell match against Mankind) even though neither of them is expected to be anywhere near 100% (in case you ever wondered why Undertaker was limping through that match or why Austin's elbow is taped up in his). It's expected Mankind will have to mostly carry their HIAC match (boy, I'll say). It was a pretty big surprise that WWF would simply cancel house shows due to the main eventers being injured, especially shows that were already close or completely sold out. But they didn't want to run the risk of killing the towns by having advertised top stars not appear and plan to make it up by having "loaded" shows.
- Time Magazine is publishing a story about pro wrestling this week and though Dave hasn't read it yet, he's heard some advance details. Reportedly it claims wrestling in the U.S. is a $1 billion-per-year business which is massively inflated bullshit, but since it's coming from a respected publication, people will buy it. This leads to Dave deciding to try to get an accurate figure, or at least somewhere in the ballpark. He uses the month of May since those are the most recent statistics. Basically, take all the numbers, add them up, and then multiply by 12. It's a very rough estimate and of course there are variables but yanno. He crunches all the numbers from PPV, live event gates, merch, magazines, 900 lines, VHS sales, etc. for WWF, WCW, and ECW. Long story short, even with the most liberal estimates, wrestling in the U.S. is about a $325 million per year industry. If you add in the cut that the cable companies, PPV providers, and other middlemen make, you could probably bump it up to around $440 million. Which, hey....not bad. But still not even half of $1 billion that Time Magazine is claiming.
- WCW once again got a ton of media publicity from the Dennis Rodman/Karl Malone involvement on Nitro, but yet again, WWF won the ratings battle for the 4th straight week. Despite the mainstream publicity, Rodman and Malone haven't moved the ratings needle at all.
- Power Pro Wrestling in Memphis ran their first major show at the Mid-South Coliseum and drew around 3,500 fans and it was considered a major success. They had a lot of help from WWF though, as Kane, Jeff Jarrett, Jesse James, Rock & Roll Express and Midnight Express all worked the show with WWF's blessing. It's expected Power Pro will likely become a developmental territory for WWF and they will continue sending newer wrestlers to work shows for them.
- Mitsuharu Misawa is expected to return to the ring for AJPW in late-August.
- Former WCW wrestler Bobby Walker filed a $5 million racial discrimination lawsuit against WCW, claiming he was told WCW hired him as a "token black guy" and that he would always be booked to lose and he would be fired if he complained about it. He also claimed he earned much less than white performers, (comparing his salary to Ric Flair's) and that he was passed over for pushes in favor of white wrestlers. A lot of people in WCW are concerned about how Teddy Long might react to this lawsuit. Even though he hasn't been on TV in ages, Long is still signed to WCW until August and if his contract isn't renewed, there's concern that he may side with Walker. Long has a lot of knowledge of the inner workings of the company and could possibly strengthen Walker's case.
- Still not much new on the Ric Flair situation. He's wanting changes to his contract or out of it completely, based on parts of the deal that Flair claims WCW didn't honor. WCW still wants him to come back, but there's a lot of bad blood after the backstage speech Bischoff gave where he buried Flair and threatened to sue him into bankruptcy. Flair's attorney recently gave an interview strongly hinting that Flair is trying to get out of his contract so he can go to WWF and said that Bischoff has become so consumed with his TV character that he treats people backstage the same way he does on TV. There's a hearing scheduled in August where the judge will decide the validity of the agreement Flair signed. Interestingly enough, part of Flair's counter-suit against WCW claims that Eric Bischoff downgraded Flair's role in the company in order to satisfy the wishes of other wrestlers, including one Terry Bollea.
- There was an incident with The Giant and a large fan after Nitro. Apparently the fan was around 6'6, big dude and was talking shit to Kevin Nash who ignored it, so the fan turned his attentions to The Giant and got him so riled up that Giant threw a punch at the guy, who then ran away.
- There's a story that made some national news outlets about an 8th grade student in Indiana who got in trouble for trying to start a satanic cult he called Raven's Flock. He recruited other students and had them sign contracts saying they agreed to join "4 life" and allegedly threatened to kill any students that tried to leave the cult.
- Someone played a sick practical joke on Bret Hart recently. Backstage at the Great American Bash PPV, as Hart was going over his match with Hogan, Piper, and Savage, he was pulled aside by Eric Bischoff, who told Bret that his father Stu had passed away. Bischoff told him he didn't have to do the match and he would charter a flight back home for him immediately. Apparently, someone claiming to be Bruce Hart called the unlisted number at the arena and gave very specific details that most people wouldn't know, which is why they believed the story and passed the word on to Bret. After some phone calls were made and they found out it was a hoax, Bischoff felt horrible and apologized repeatedly to Bret and offered to still let him skip the show since he had obviously been upset by the news. There were some (Randy Savage in particular) who were angry at Bischoff, feeling he should have confirmed the news before telling Bret about it, only to find out later that it wasn't true. But word is Hart didn't blame Bischoff and understood that he had been fooled too.
- Karl Malone and Dennis Rodman working with WCW has produced the usual negative publicity among cranky sports reporters. One in particular wrote, "Professional wrestling just gives kooks like Rodman an outlet and excuse for stupid behavior and is a vehicle for the promotion and creation of violence. Professional wrestling has absolutely no redeeming qualities--it's loud, obnoxious, annoying and has zero intellectual value."
- On Raw, Sable showed up and seems to have gotten yet another breast enlargement, leading Dave to write, "Seriously, are there any two more screwed up characters in this business than the Giant, who is 500 pounds and wants to get bigger, and Sable, whose breasts make her look like a human oddity and she should be managed by Jackyl (manager of the Oddities group) but for whatever reason will probably get them enlarged a few more times by the end of this year?"
- Edge (Adam Copeland) debuted on Raw, facing Jose Estrada Jr. but the match was cut short after only a minute or so when Estrada was injured after Edge did a flip over the top and landed on his neck. They called an audible and ended the match via count out. Estrada was hospitalized overnight but is expected to be okay but the injury definitely caused some people to think about what happened to Bagwell not too long ago.
- Shawn Michaels was backstage at the WWF show in San Antonio recently. It was the first time he'd been at a WWF show since Wrestlemania. They said he appeared to be in a better place mentally and he's also cut his hair shorter. He was able to sit down and stand upright for periods of time without excruciating pain, which is an improvement over where he was a few months ago. Shawn is hoping rest and rehab will fix the issue and doesn't want to get the surgery that a lot of people think he needs. The plan is for him to take off another 3 months to rehab it and then they will give him a full examination and try to get a better idea of when/if he can return. WWF is hopeful they can have him back by Royal Rumble, but there's been real talk that he might never wrestle again. Shawn left the show before the TV taping started and since there's no plans to bring him back anytime soon, WWF decided not to put him on television.
- Sunny missed another scheduled event, this time an autograph signing, telling WWF she couldn't make it because she was in a car accident.
- There's been a lot of pressure on various wrestlers to lose weight, with Vader, Jose Estrada, Faarooq, Goldust, Mark Henry, and Steve Williams being the main ones.
- There has been some legit talk among people in the sports world that WWF is interested in buying the Minnesota Vikings. At a company meeting recently, Vince McMahon did tell some people he was interested. Given that it would cost several hundred million, it's way out of McMahon's league but he could possibly be part of a group of investors if he wanted to put it together (or, yanno, he could just start his own football league...).
- Someone writes in implying that Benoit is being basically buried by WCW because he's dating Nancy Sullivan (since Kevin Sullivan is still a high profile backstage employee) and Dave responds and doesn't exactly deny it.