July 20, 1998
- WCW's Bash at the Beach is in the books and, well....Dennis Rodman. Dave talks about the danger of using celebrities, especially flaky ones like Rodman. WWF learned that lesson earlier this year with Mike Tyson, who was scheduled to make several more Raw appearances than he actually did and often left WWF hanging at the last minute, with them not sure if he would be there. Rodman is even less reliable and at one point, WCW (who still had Rodman contracted for 1 match) considered selling the booking to NJPW and letting them use Rodman for a Tokyo Dome show. But NJPW couldn't justify spending the $750,000 for it so they weren't interested. So WCW used him for the match with Karl Malone and it was a disaster. Rodman reportedly showed up "in no condition to perform" and was a mess in the ring, with DDP noticeably irritated trying to keep it together and Hogan trying to call shots off-camera while Rodman seemed to almost fall asleep in the corner at one point. And for some reason they allotted 45 minutes for this trainwreck, which led to several earlier matches being cut short (Jericho vs. Mysterio was cut from 18 minutes to 6 minutes, for example). But the match was so bad that it ended up getting cut a good 10 minutes short on the fly, leading to the announcers killing time after the match and then going off the air 7 minutes early. As expected, the mainstream media coverage was pretty much all negative, with sports reporters griping about "real" athletes demeaning themselves by doing professional wrestling. But yeah....god awful main event, decent undercard. Typical WCW (in a few issues, we find out even more Rodman drama from this show).
- Other notes from Bash at the Beach: Billy Kidman had his first singles match on PPV and they're beginning to slowly phase him away from Raven's Flock because they want to push him on his own as a serious cruiserweight since he's so talented. Kevin Nash was "dressed up like the only 40-year-old who is still in high school." They did an angle where Bret Hart destroyed Booker T's knee with a chair, to write Booker off TV so he can get minor knee surgery that'll keep him out for 4-6 weeks. The main event was so bad that the crowd pretty much turned on it and began booing everything other than DDP winning. Chris Kanyon, Billy Kidman, and DDP worked with Karl Malone to train him for the match. And finally, both Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley were playing in a nearby golf tournament and had requested tickets, but even though WCW held tickets for them, they never showed up so WCW never acknowledged it.
- The Hogan/Goldberg match on Nitro last week managed to break WWF's 5-week winning streak in the ratings but the victory party only lasted a week. Despite giving away their biggest money match on free TV and the media hype around Dennis Rodman and Karl Malone, WWF was back on top again this week. The Goldberg/Hogan match last week became the most watched wrestling match in cable TV history, with over 5 million people watching but it's hard to dispute that WCW left a LOT of money on the table in pursuit of that 1-week TV ratings win.
- WWF quietly cancelled its "Footbrawl" house show scheduled for Foxboro Stadium due to low ticket sales. The event was supposed to be co-promoted by the New England Patriots but despite WWF being on an unprecedented hot streak, for some reason, only 2,000 tickets had been sold after the first week. Seeing the writing on the wall, WWF just scrapped it.
- WWF's Brawl For All continued this week and it's been a mixed bag. The ratings have been steady for the most part and last week they got a decent crowd reaction. But this week on Raw, the crowd shat all over it (chanting "We want wrestling!") and the matches continue to expose these supposedly top class wrestlers as being totally out of their element in a real fight. In order to build interest, WWF changed their mind and decided to ask Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock to participate. Shamrock declined, but Severn accepted immediately. Severn replaced Shawn Stasiak in his match against Kama and it was a mess because he seemed to not understand the rules (repeatedly trying to pin Kama after takedowns) and the nonsensical scoring and confusing commentary made it seem like he was losing. Kama was legitimately upset after the match (remember, there's real bonus money on the line for the winners) because he felt Severn wasn't acting within the rules, but then again, nobody involved seems to understand the rules. Anyway, Kama legitimately refused to shake Severn's hand after the match. Dave thinks the Bart Gunn vs. Bob Holly fight was at least partially a work and led to a post-match angle that definitely was.
- Dave is in the midst of trying to put together a book compiling all of the obituaries he has written over the past 10 years for the Observer. He suspects it will be around 170 pages and feature lengthy obits for Bruiser Brody, Paul Boesch, Buddy Rogers, Andre the Giant, Steve Schumann, Kerry Von Erich, Dino Bravo, Oro, Boris Malenko, Art Barr, Eddie Gilbert, John Studd, Ray Stevens, Dick Murdoch, Fritz Von Erich, Dr. Jerry Graham, Brian Pillman, Louie Spicolli and Junkyard Dog. It will be called Tributes and cost $20 and will be available from a website called Powerbomb.com (these days, you can just get it from Amazon).
- Kenta Kobashi is working on 2 bad knees, both of which need surgery. But with Misawa out of action for at least another month, the company can't afford for him to take time off. AJPW's current tour is already the worst drawing tour in the history of the company. And to think, just 2 months ago, they drew 58,000+ fans to the Tokyo Dome.
- Giant Baba wrestled his 5,700th match last week. Baba has had a 38-year career and he's been full-time since day one. He also has a reputation of being something of the Cal Ripkin Jr. of wrestling as he's been known to almost never miss shows. In 1984, he missed a show due to injury and it was the first show he had missed in over 2,000 matches. Which, when you think about it, is more impressive for wrestling than it is for baseball, considering how much more physically demanding wrestling is. With the exception of maybe Lou Thesz, Dave says there's probably never been another wrestler who has wrestled more matches than Giant Baba.
- Dave runs down the card for ECW's upcoming PPV next month and says over 2,800 tickets have already been sold so it's pretty much guaranteed to break the record for largest crowd and gate in ECW history.
- Atsushi Onita did a press conference in Japan saying he's expecting his exploding ring barbed wire match to take place in ECW in September. Dave says it will most likely be at an outdoor arena likely in Atlantic City or Philadelphia (never happened).
- Chris Candido nearly lost his ear due to an errant dive by Sabu, who landed on Candido's ear with his knee somehow. It was said to be one of the scariest situations ever backstage in ECW, with Candido bleeding profusely and even going into convulsions and fearing that he would lose his ear, but he didn't. Ended up needing a bunch of stitches but he'll be fine. Dave says Sabu has been so bad lately that he's becoming too dangerous for other guys to work with.
- Chris Benoit suffered some sort of elbow injury that's expected to keep him out of action for a month or two (actually ended up being closer to 4 months). Benoit was scheduled to work the upcoming NJPW tour and was said to be excited about it since he was scheduled for big singles matches, but that won't be happening now.
- Money-wise, this was the biggest week in the history of WCW. Over the course of an 8-day period, they had the Georgia Dome Nitro when drew the biggest crowd and gate ever for WCW, followed by 6 house shows that brought in over $2 million at the gate, plus another $780,000+ in merch sales. Furthermore, Bash at the Beach looks to be the 2nd highest buyrate PPV ever for WCW, which nets them another $6.5 million. All told, if you add it up, WCW brought in about $9 million in the span of a week.
- Dave reviews this week's Nitro and just shits all over it. Goldberg is clearly the new face of the company but every bit of the show was built around repairing Hogan's fragile ego after he dropped the belt. He recaps the angle with Hogan pushing Buff Bagwell out of his wheelchair and says that this is the moment he realized that WCW is going to keep losing the ratings war on Monday nights. Bagwell isn't going to come back and feud with Hogan, so why did Hogan have to get the heel heat of pushing Bagwell out of the wheelchair? Shouldn't that have gone to Jericho or Raven to get them some heat and give Bagwell an angle when he's actually ready to return? Instead, Hogan used it to get heat for himself and it's obviously not going to lead anywhere between them. Beyond that...Bret Hart vs. Fit Finlay got 4 minutes and Mistero vs. Malenko got 5 minutes. Meanwhile, a Stevie Ray/Rick Martel match was given 9 minutes, and why anyone would book Stevie Ray to go that long in a match is beyond Dave. DDP beat The Disciple (Ed Leslie's gimmick this week) with a roll-up because Hogan stepped in and had the finish changed so Disciple wouldn't have to job to the diamond cutter. The main event of Hogan vs. Scott Hall was somehow worse than the PPV match with Rodman. "Ungodly bad, and that's on a show that had a Duggan match." Dave says if they continue booking the show around Hogan rather than Goldberg, it's not going to be good for WCW long-term. TL;DR - WCW is awful right now (oh man, we haven't even scratched the surface yet. If you think Dave trashing on WCW is bad now, just wait until we get to 1999 and beyond).
- Speaking of Goldberg, he was given a raise just before winning the title and is reportedly signed for 4 years for $4 million which has to be a record for someone only 10 months into their career.
- Erik Watts is expected to be brought back to WCW soon. Yay.
- Sports radio host Jim Rome trashed pro wrestling after the Dennis Rodman/Karl Malone match. He talked about how bad the match was (fair point) and then claimed wrestlers never get hurt, all they do is tan and take steroids. When one caller called in to the show and complained that Rodman and Malone were taking the spots of full-time wrestlers who had worked hard in the business, Rome responded that nobody works hard in wrestling and that it's all fake.
- WCW is planning to open a Nitro-themed restaurant in Las Vegas at the Excalibur Hotel. Here's an album with pics of the menu. Some solid puns in here:
- All of the luchadors under contract to WCW (except Ultimo Dragon) have been officially banned from working any shows in Mexico unless WCW books them to work for EMLL at Arena Mexico. Dragon's deal is different because he only signed away his U.S. rights but he still keeps the right to book himself anywhere else in the world (this is obviously bad news for Promo Azteca, and pretty much kills them dead).
- Time Magazine is still doing their online voting for Man of the Century. Ric Flair is still in the lead in 1st place. In 2nd place is Adolf Hitler. Not sure who 3rd place is, but Jesus Christ is in 4th place (despite not being from this century) and close behind him in 5th place is Raven. Oh, the internet.
- Steve Austin had a photoshoot last week for a TV Guide cover, which is huge considering how big that magazine is with so much visibility (it's at the registers of basically every store in America). No other wrestler has ever gotten the cover of it, not even Hogan.
- Shawn Michaels returned to WWF as the new color commentator on Raw, playing a total babyface. He's been making $15,000 a week sitting at home, so Dave understands why they want him back on TV, but it seemed like a desperation move after WCW won the ratings last week. Michaels' return should have been a big shock to lead to an angle with the new DX. But now he's going to be on TV every week so when he finally returns to the ring, it won't be as big a deal. Dave also says that Shawn has suffered a lot of concussions in his career and while he can get away with being a little loopy during promos, hearing him for 2 hours on commentary was kind of a scary reminder of what concussions can do (and, you know...drugs).
- Other Raw notes: Steve Corino worked a dark match. Dave is certain the Bart Gunn vs. Bob Holly Brawl For All match was a work. On commentary, Shawn took a shot at Bret Hart, calling him a midcarder, which is pretty much true for him in WCW now. They furthered the angle with Val Venis allegedly stealing Yamaguchi-san's wife. Dave notes that the girl playing the wife is actually 17, so showing her in bed with Val Venis is a little messed up (I googled this and got conflicting date of birth info. She was either 17 or 22 at this time, depending on which sources you believe. For the next few weeks, Dave repeatedly mentions that she's 17 and sticks with that, so who knows).
- At a few recent shows, women in the crowd have been lifting their shirts and flashing DX. For the record, these are paid plants and not actual fans.
- WWF will be starting a new show on Sunday nights beginning in August. No word on anything else about the show yet (ends up being Sunday Night Heat).
- Bret and Owen Hart's 17-year-old nephew Ted Annis will be attending WWF's next training camp session. He's worked some indies and has been training for a few years (that would be Teddy Hart and, in typical Teddy Hart fashion, his shitty attitude and behavior ends up torpedoing his chances pretty quickly, but we'll get there).
- A correction from last week: when talking about WWF using the song "Highway To Hell" for Summerslam, Dave referred to it as an 80s song. Turns out it was actually released on Dec. 13, 1979. Just in case you thought Dave wasn't thorough with his research.
- X-Pac did an interview with the Pro Wrestling Torch newsletter and said that in the 18 months he was in WCW, he was never drug tested once, despite having a history of major drug problems (which is why WWF released him in the first place before WCW hired him).
- Someone writes in trashing Goldberg and saying his gimmick is a total rip-off of Steve Austin. Dave responds, pointing out that aside from the shaved head and black tights, there's no similarity between the two at all. He points out that WWF messed up because Goldberg's gimmick should have been what Ken Shamrock debuted as. But they dropped the ball on Shamrock. Luckily, he turned out to be a much better wrestler than expected, so he's done okay. But he had the credibility to be brought in as a killer. WCW took a guy who just has a good look and booked him the way Shamrock should have been booked and it turned the guy into a megastar. WWF had that potential in Shamrock and fumbled it.