July 13, 1998
- Less than 10 months after making his professional wrestling debut, Bill Goldberg won the WCW title from Hulk Hogan in front of the largest crowd in WCW history and the 4th largest crowd for pro wrestling ever in the United States. It's been debated whether putting the title on Goldberg was a premature, panicked reaction to Raw kicking their ass in the ratings last week, and that will probably be debated until the end of time, but what can't be denied is that the win garnered one of the biggest crowd pops in the history of the business. The entire episode was built around Goldberg, with him first defeating the returning Scott Hall (fresh out of rehab) and then facing Hogan in the main event. The original plan was for it to be a dark match but that changed last week and Hogan reportedly had no problem putting Goldberg over clean. But in return, he was promised to be the person to end Goldberg's streak when the time is right. But that probably won't happen for awhile. WCW smartly realizes that Goldberg has potential to be the top star in the business and they don't want to screw things up like they did after the big Sting title win (although Dave says a lot of that is on Sting, since he had pretty much no fire once he actually returned to the ring).
- WCW is expected to win the ratings battle this week, but at what cost? Hogan vs. Goldberg was a potential $7 million grossing match on PPV and they gave it away for free on TV. They also had potential big money matches with Hogan defending the title against Kevin Nash and Bret Hart and now those storylines are thrown out the window. If WCW doesn't win the ratings war this week, it would be a huge blow since they just gave away their biggest money match for free. They had over 41,000 fans in the building, for a gate of $906,000+ and did massive merch numbers. All of these broke every WCW record in history, but all that money is still only a small fraction of what they could have made if the match was on PPV (Starrcade with Hogan vs. Sting did $7 million and with the right build up, Hogan/Goldberg likely would have done more). That being said, just judging the show by itself, it couldn't have gone better and established Goldberg as without a doubt the top star of WCW and the atmosphere and excitement of the show couldn't have been better. So where does it leave Goldberg? He's a green worker and unproven on the mic, but none of that has stopped him from getting the most incredible crowd reactions of any wrestler in modern history in recent months. But since putting the title on him was a spur of the moment decision, what next? They haven't planned any future angles or challengers for him. Dave ends this whole thing by saying, "When the story is written years from now, people will be shocked that Goldberg's first world title win wasn't something planned in advance and came simply because a company was desperate after losing the television ratings the week before. But that wasn't all that different from how Lou Thesz ended up with the title the first time either. July 6, 1998 could be a historical night for pro wrestling ushering in the first big match of one of the most charismatic figures the game has ever seen. Or it could have been one humongous pop for a moment, a moment that means nothing in the long run."
- Other notes from this huge Nitro: Dennis Rodman was scheduled to appear at the Georgia Dome show to further the angle with Karl Malone but he no-showed. WCW tried all day to get hold of him but Rodman wasn't returning calls. The night before, Rodman was at a Pearl Jam concert in Dallas, guzzling wine from the bottle and getting onstage with the band, leading to Eddie Vedder to call him out for being drunk. This obviously doesn't bode well for the Bash at the Beach PPV, since Rodman clearly isn't taking his commitments seriously. There was also a spot during the show where DDP took out Ed Leslie (whatever his gimmick is this week) with a stiff chairshot that legit busted open Leslie and required stitches. It led to the 2 men having words backstage but didn't amount to anything. Buff Bagwell returned to TV at the Georgia Dome Nitro, appearing in a wheelchair pushed by his mom and cut a promo. He got a thunderous ovation and gave a great speech that wasn't a wrestling promo talking about his injury and the road to recovery and promised to return. And finally, even though they spent $70,000 on the fake Tonight Show set, WCW has already dropped the idea of Bischoff hosting his own talk show segment after it killed last week's show dead in its tracks. (Here's Rodman wearing out his welcome onstage with Pearl Jam that night, just for shits and giggles).
- The recent merger of AT&T and TCI will likely have major ramifications on the wrestling industry. Within the cable industry, it's believed that due to the merger, within a few years, nearly every home in the U.S. will have PPV capabilities. Currently, around 35 million homes have access to PPV but it's thought that in a few years, it will be around 100 million. In theory, that should triple the revenue brought in by WWF, WCW, ECW, and other things like UFC and boxing and would be hugely profitable for everyone involved. A lot of this is theoretical of course. PPV has not been the huge success everyone predicted it would be 15 years ago. They expected it to put video rental stores out of business, but they're still thriving. It was supposed to make major sports like football and basketball zillions of dollars but it didn't. Concerts and entertainment specials have been a flop. Even UFC and boxing are declining and, in reality, the entire business of PPV is really only kept alive at this point due to WWF and WCW. Dave starts crunching numbers here and it gets pretty boring but in short, Dave doesn't think the expanding PPV universe is really going to make that much of a difference. He also talks about the possibility of another promotion forming since ECW has proven that you can be fairly profitable on PPV as long as you stay small and within your means. But Dave points out all the problems with trying to start a new promotion these days: basically every halfway marketable star is already signed to either WWF or WCW and there's not really anybody in Japan or Mexico that could be brought to America and get over the way they used to in the past.
- WWF's experimental Brawl For All shoot fights have become a major topic of conversation in the business lately. The tournament appears to be a way to get Steve Williams over as a legit tough guy so he can challenge Steve Austin later this year. The plan is for it to continue on every Raw until Summerslam, but crowd reactions have been mixed and if ratings don't do well, it may very well get cut short. Dave seems entertained by the idea but points out how it completely exposes some of these guys. Savio Vega and Steve Blackman are the only 2 guys who haven't been completely gassed after only 3 minutes of fighting. Someone like Marc Mero, with a legit Golden Gloves background, was outclassed and beaten in the first round. Brakkus finally made his WWF debut and was destroyed, which does his his career no favors. It's all fascinating television but it's destroying the allure of some of these guys (which is why none of the real stars were allowed to enter) but then again, most of these guys were going nowhere anyway. Nobody was forced to enter and supposedly each man is getting paid an extra $5,000 for winning and $2,500 extra to the losers. Plus a $75,000 bonus going to the tournament winner. In the end, Dave thinks the only person who actually has something to lose is Steve Williams because the whole thing is predicated on the idea that he will win and become a top star and challenger for Steve Austin. So if Williams was to get exposed or beaten, it'll kill him dead because his only marketable trait is that he can be promoted as a legit tough guy (spoiler alert: that's exactly what happens).
- WWF will be having a house show next month called Footbrawl and it's being held at Foxboro Stadium and will be co-promoted by the New England Patriots. They kicked off the local promotion for the event by having Vince McMahon vs. Steve Austin in an arm wrestling match in front of a crowd of around 3,000 people, leading to Austin throwing Vince into a river. He also threw Dok Hendrix in after him for good measure. But despite all the promotion, ticket sales are slow so far (can't find video of this arm wrestling thing, but here's a picture of it. As for the show...it ends up getting cancelled but we'll get there).
- Dave gives 4.75 stars to Koji Kanemoto vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. in NJPW in the finals of the Super Juniors tournament. I only mention this because this is as close to 5 stars as NJPW is going to get for awhile. The last 5-star match was in 1997 and they don't have another one until 2012. Just for all the people who complain that Dave has a New Japan-bias and whine that WWE hasn't had a 5-star match in six years. NJPW went 14 years without one.
- Stan Hansen, arguably the most popular foreign star to ever work in Japan, hasn't been booked on the last 2 AJPW tours. Hansen turns 49 next month and despite being one of their top stars since the late-1970s, it's clear that the company has been phasing him out. Reportedly, Hansen tried to negotiate with NJPW awhile back but they weren't interested because of his age and because they didn't think he'd be a good fit for NJPW. Giant Baba learned of the negotiations and basically hasn't booked Hansen on an AJPW tour ever since (nah, nothing much to this. Hansen returns a month later and stays with AJPW for the rest of his career, retiring in 2000).
- In Japan, Akira Maeda is retiring from wrestling and it looks as though his final match will be against Nobohiko Takada. Just a couple of years ago, that match would have easily sold out the Tokyo Dome. But Takada's popularity took a huge hit after his first loss at Pride 1 against Rickson Gracie and he has a rematch with Gracie in October that will probably end with Takada getting destroyed again. If the match happens after the next Gracie fight, Dave doesn't think Takada will have the box office drawing power to pull the kind of crowd it could have done a few years ago.
- In Memphis Power Pro, they held a big outdoors show in Memphis and brought in Giant Silva from WWF and tried to crown him as the new King which of course led to Jerry Lawler showing up to defend his crown. It also led to Lawler's girlfriend Stacy Carter running in and of course she was wearing a short skirt and took a few bumps to make sure everyone got to see everything. (I think I may have been at this show. I can't remember for sure. It seems familiar but I've been to a lot of wrestling shows).
- Sid Vicious no-showed another indie booking and Dave says that at this point, it would only be news if Sid actually did appear at something he was booked for.
- Sandman missed a few recent ECW shows because his wife went into premature labor a month early, giving birth to a 5 pound 14 ounce son named Austin.
- An Atlanta newspaper ran a story on the Ric Flair/WCW situation, quoting Flair as saying, "If you don't have to take it, you shouldn't, and I just drew the line. I had been vented on one too many times." Backstage, people were openly talking about it and everyone seems to be under the belief that Flair will probably never return, although Flair has admitted that he would be open to it under the right terms.
- Bischoff is already pressuring some of the guys who's contracts expire in late-99 to sign extensions. It's been strongly hinted that if they don't sign the extensions, he'll stop pushing them and basically job them out for the next year, which would obviously hurt their drawing power a year later if they wanted to go to WWF.
- Triple H missed some shows last week while he was out filming an episode of Pacific Blue. WWF is also trying to get USA to use Edge in one of its TV shows.
- WWF still has boxer Butterbean signed to a contract for one more match. It's expected he will team with Sable at Summerslam against Marc Mero and Jacquelyn (nope).
- Speaking of Summerslam, it will be subtitled "Highway to Hell" and they have gotten the rights to use the AC/DC song of the same name and will use it in all the promotion.
- Raw (taped last week) aired and Dave finally saw the DX imitating The Nation skit and thought it was funny. The line about Mark Henry eating shit was actually a reference to something that happened a few years ago. When Henry first signed, a lot of people resented his big 10-year contract and he had an attitude of not wanting to learn. So someone pulled a rib on him by putting a real turd in his sandwich, and Henry ended up taking a bite of it (one of the all-time urban legends of wrestling, not sure if it's ever been verified as true).
- Backstage, people are already admitting that they screwed up in the way they debuted Steve Regal. (In retrospect, Regal was a pilled out mess at this time and it's probably better that they didn't do anything with him back then. If they would have made a big deal of his debut and pushed him into a feud with Austin as was allegedly planned, it probably would have exploded in their face way bigger than it did.)
- A lawsuit was filed against WWF and against LOD member Hawk and Dennis Knight (formerly Phineas Godwinn) over an incident at a house show awhile back where they brawled into the crowd and two teenage girls were injured when the guardrail collapsed on them (we never hear anything else about this, so let's just assume it was settled out of court and the girls walked away with a lot of money).