August 03, 1998
- Dave gives some more news on the upcoming Jay Leno match at WCW Road Wild. The plan is for Hogan/Bischoff/The Disciple vs. DDP/Jay Leno/Kevin Eubanks in a 6-man match as the main event of the show, which might just set a new standard for worst PPV main event ever. Dave talks about how using celebrities is usually hit or miss and the ones that usually get used are athletes like Rodman, Malone, Lawrence Taylor, etc. or at least in the case of Mr. T, someone with a tough guy reputation. Leno is none of those things, obviously. And word is Leno's schedule between now and the PPV is so tight that he won't have any free days to train or prepare for the match. Take Karl Malone for instance, who spent several days at the WCW Power Plant getting a crash course in wrestling so as not to embarrass himself and learn some moves and how to bump. Leno will be going into the PPV main event without a single day of wrestling training. On their respective shows (Nitro and The Tonight Show), Leno and Hogan/Bischoff have been tossing insults back and forth and it's expected to culminate with Hogan's team appearing on The Tonight Show this week.
- WWF's Fully Loaded PPV is in the books and was...a show. Nothing much to say about it. Some good, some bad. Vader jobbed to Mark Henry in a bad match and Dave says it's clearly time for Vader to move on but at this point in his career, there may not be anywhere he can really go and do any better. In fact, there seemed to be a theme with all the older legendary wrestlers (Vader, Terry Funk, Legion of Doom, etc.) doing clean jobs to prelim guys, as if WWF is trying to send a message that this ain't the company for stars who are past their primes. The Dungeon match was good but awkward since it was pre-taped with no crowd and no ring. Rocky Maivia went to a 30-minute draw with Triple H and which was probably the longest match of either of their careers which is a real risk with today's short attention spans and with 2 unproven workers but they worked hard and it turned out pretty good. And the only real note from the main event was Undertaker coming out to an altered version of his theme. Dave says he wouldn't have messed with the original.
- Also at the PPV, there was a bikini contest between Sable and Jacquelyn. First it featured Jacquelyn's nipple slipping out which was supposed to seem like an accident but Dave is pretty sure it was intentional (this is blurred out on the "uncut and uncensored" WWE Network). Then Sable came out with body paint over her nipples and was topless otherwise. Dave says if you thought it was tasteless, you're right, but that's like taking kids to an R-rated movie and complaining after. At this point, everyone knows what WWF is and they aren't trying to pretend this is a show for kids anymore. So if you were offended, that's on you. Then Dave finishes it off with this hilariously weird bit: "And believe me, if I had kids there is no way I'd let them watch today's WWF--I only have a dog and the only time WWF was objectionable to my family was when DX was peeing on DOA's bikes because my dog's hero Sean Waltman--who became a heroic figure when he did that interview telling Hulk Hogan that he sucks--was setting a terrible example for impressionable puppies. It gets worse. My next door neighbor is a bonafide Hells Angel with several expensive bikes in his garage and wild parties every other weekend with a bunch of guys that look like rejects from Tank Abbott's gangs and we have enough problems because his favorite wrestler is still Hogan and the last thing I need is a dog who hates Hogan thinking it's cool to pee on his bikes--I swear almost every word of this is true."
- WWF won the ratings war again this week but just barely. WCW had advertised a replay of the Hogan/Rodman vs. DDP/Malone match from the last PPV would air on Nitro so that seems to have been what drew Nitro's viewers and the match ended up being the 2nd most watched wrestling match ever on cable (behind the Hogan/Goldberg match). But even that wasn't quite enough to beat Raw's overall rating. This week was also a perfect demonstration of the quality gap between the shows, as it was one of the worst Nitro episodes ever while Raw continued the streak of great shows they've been having all year.
- Dave does another business comparison from the first half of 1998 compared to the first halves of 97, 96, and 95. It's just crazy how much business has grown in the last year. Attendance, gate, TV ratings, buy rates, PPV revenue...1998 is light years ahead of every other year in this decade for both companies. As for comparing the 2 companies against each other, on paper, things look to be pretty much even. But it's undeniable that WWF has the momentum right now and WCW is still mostly surviving on the momentum they built last year and that won't last forever if they keep floundering (just on a personal note, I'd really love to know what Vince and Eric were both feeling around this time. Bischoff had spent the last 2 years arrogantly talking endless shit about how easy it was to beat WWF and how looking at the ratings on Tuesday wasn't even fun anymore because they were in the middle of their 84 week win streak. But now that WWF has won the last 8 out of 9 weeks and WCW is floundering while WWF is clearly rising like a rocket...I can only imagine how smug Vince was feeling while Eric was probably panicking himself to sleep every night trying to not lose control of everything).
- Legendary women's wrestler June Byers passed away at age 76 and Dave gives her the usual obituary, including recapping what he says is the most significant match in American women's wrestling history. In 1954, Byers won the women's title from Mildred Burke in a match that was a total shoot. The booker (Burke's ex-husband) wanted Burke to drop the title (to the woman he later married so you can imagine Burke didn't want to drop her title to her ex's new fling). Burke refused and the booker figured the only way to get the title off her would be to put her in the ring against the biggest and strongest woman he had and do it as a shoot. That was June Byers and Burke agreed to face her in a shoot. (Fun fact: Byers was married to the booker's son, from a previous marriage before he was married to Burke. And that son had previously had an affair with Burke in the 1940s. Y'all still following all this drama?) So the match happened, in a 2 out of 3 falls match. Burke injured her knee in the first fall and gave up so she could have her knee popped back into place. Then she worked the rest of the match on one leg and it was eventually stopped after 47 minutes by the local athletic commission because it had turned into a boring stalemate of ground grappling. Burke was initially declared still champ because she only lost 1 fall and the match was stopped after that. But the booker was tight with the local commission and got them to overturn their ruling, declaring Byers the winner. In the end, Byers was recognized as the new champion even though Burke was arguably never beaten and held her own against a much larger and stronger woman for an hour while grappling on 1 leg. Anyway, this all led to the lineage of women's world titles in the U.S. splitting up and going in different ways. Burke continued to claim herself as champion and that championship ended up in Japan and was held by all the top women's stars there. Byers' title is the one that Fabulous Moolah ended up holding for most of the next 30 years (and now in 2017, in that lineage, Jazz is the recognized champion).
- Dave gives 5 stars to a Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka match from RINGS. Keep in mind, RINGS is a mix of shoots and worked matches. This one was worked and Dave says the match wouldn't get over with most fans who aren't familiar with the style but it was the best worked-shoot match Dave has ever seen and it's his personal match of the year so far.
- In a recent magazine interview, Johnny Ace claims he taught DDP the diamond cutter (originally called the Ace Crusher) a few years ago when Ace was working in Atlanta and they were friends.
- Keiji Muto is still having knee trouble despite recently having surgery on both of them. Word is his knees are so bad that he's considering retirement (19 years later, he's still wrestling to this day).
- Jerry Lawler will be playing himself in the upcoming Andy Kaufman movie Man on the Moon starring Jim Carrey.
- Dennis Coraluzzo is promoting a show this week billed as NWA vs. ECW. He's trying to bring in a group of ex-ECW guys (like Stevie Richards and others) to feud with his guys. Former ECW owner Tod Gordon is involved and claims he still owns the rights to the ECW initials since he still owns the old Eastern Championship Wrestling trademark (even though that company hasn't existed under that name since 1994). Dave thinks it would probably make an interesting legal case if Paul Heyman wanted to actually fight it.
- Nobuhiko Takada has a rematch with Rickson Gracie scheduled in October in a shoot fight. Takada has been training in Los Angeles for the fight and his trainer recently gave an interview to a TV show about Takada and had this to say: "Pride's owner asked me so I'm training him, but he won't stand a chance against Rickson. He is not a true fighter. I could train him for ten years and it wouldn't help. As Master Carlson Gracie said, the guy is a wimp." Good for your trainers to have faith in you I guess.
- An appeals court in Revere, MA overturned a ruling that New Jack couldn't be charged for assault in the Mass Transit incident. They turned the case over a grand jury and New Jack will be arraigned this week. He's expected to be charged with assault with intent to commit bodily harm. The judge also wants Paul Heyman and Tommy Dreamer to appear since they were in charge of the show that night.
- Beulah is returning to college full-time and is reportedly done with ECW. It's possible she may return for a surprise appearance at some point in the future but for now there's no plans for her to return (nope, that was it for Beulah until WWE did the One Night Stand PPV in 2005).
- Paul Heyman is trying to sign Mike Awesome to a full time deal but it's tricky because he's the top foreign star in FMW and they have a good relationship with ECW. So Heyman doesn't want it to look like he's trying to steal one of their top stars but, well....he is.
- Dave recaps Nitro and talks about how absolutely terrible it was and even jokes that he wished for a sniper in the crowd to put us out of our misery during the fake Tonight Show segment. I should note he apologizes in advance for the poor taste of the comment and clarifies that it's a joke before he even writes it. But Nitro REALLY sucks right now, you guys.
- The midcard wrestlers (Benoit, Jericho, Malenko, Guerrero, Konnan, etc.) have all been offered substantial pay raises to stay with WCW when their contracts expire next year but on the flip side, Bischoff has also made it clear that if they don't re-sign, he will basically spend the next year burying them. Konnan has already re-signed. It's believed Jericho will be soon but he hasn't yet (and doesn't).
- Bruce Buffer, the younger brother of ring announcer Michael Buffer, is working as Tank Abbott's business manager and is pushing to get Tank to join WCW.
- The New York Daily News had a good story on the WCW Bash at the Beach PPV. After the recent remarks from Bob Costas about Karl Malone demeaning himself by doing wrestling, Karl Malone was quoted in the story saying, "Excuse my French, but fuck Bob Costas." The story also talked about how the night of the PPV, Dennis Rodman disappeared for several hours to "go get food" with some friends and there was legit concern that he wouldn't get back to the arena in time for his match. Fellow NBA player Antoine Carr was backstage and WCW even approached him and asked if he would want to do the match if Rodman failed to return. Luckily, he did but as you can see by the match, he came back drunk and was obviously in no real condition to perform, but WCW put him in the ring anyway. The story also talked about an incident at the PPV where CNN's Craig Sager tried to interview Goldberg backstage and Bischoff freaked out because they don't want Goldberg giving interviews and talking because they're trying to protect him and keep his silent bad ass gimmick.
- In a huge upset in the WWF Brawl For All tournament, Bart Gunn knocked out Steve Williams in the 3rd round. Dave says it's one of the biggest shocks in recent wrestling history. The plan was for Williams to win this whole tournament to set him up as a challenger for Steve Austin, but you can't predict shoots. Williams suffered a knee injury in the fight and the punch that beat him also dislocated his jaw. Basically, Bart Gunn just straight fucked him up.
- Other notes from Raw: Kama is now going by the name Godfather and doing a pimp gimmick and came to the ring with 3 hos. They also did a gimmick with Legion of Doom where Hawk was basically on drugs or something and Dave thinks it's kinda messed up that they have Hawk of all people doing a drug gimmick considering he's known to have real issues. Sable is in a storyline with Vince McMahon and he was bullying her around so she took off her dress and paraded around in her underwear to....get back at Vince somehow I guess. Dave thinks it must be nice to work at a place where, when the women get mad at the boss, they just take their clothes off.
- Ken Shamrock has reportedly agreed to face the winner of the Brawl For All tournament in a shoot fight under the BFA rules. Not a definite to happen yet but it's being discussed (sadly never happened).
- There's been a lot of gossip about Brian Pillman's former wife Melanie getting re-married a few months ago. Which obviously got a lot of people talking about how it was so soon after Brian's death. Dave says, "Let's just say real life isn't black and white and real life and wrestling don't mix well in the first place." (If I'm reading between the lines here, that sounds like Dave is implying that she was probably already dating this guy before Pillman died. Which would also backup the claims made later that the baby Melanie was carrying when he died wasn't Brian's).
- Undertaker was interviewed on a radio show recently and was asked about Ric Flair coming to WWF. Undertaker was very negative on the idea, saying there comes a time when everyone needs to hang it up and Flair's time was up years ago (just for shits and giggles, Ric Flair was 48 at this time. Undertaker will be 53 when Wrestlemania rolls around this year. Tsk tsk, Mark.)
- At every WWF show, DX has been getting women (plants) in the crowd to lift their tops and flash the crowd. On WWF's website, there is a note asking women who attend the live shows to be willing to take their tops off if they're asked (wow).
- Someone writes in asking Dave his top 5 favorite matches from WWF and WCW. Dave doesn't really give a list but kinda just writes a bunch of run-on sentences about great matches he's loved over the years. He says the Shawn/Razor ladder match at WM10 is the best WWF match he's ever seen and puts Austin/Hart at WM13 in 2nd place. As for WCW, he just rambles on about which Flair/Steamboat match he likes best.
- It's around the 10th anniversary of Bruiser Brody's death and someone writes in asking Dave what he thinks Brody would be doing in the biz if he was still alive. Dave says he'd be 52 and his body was already breaking down 10 years ago so he probably wouldn't be in the best condition anymore. But with so much money in the business today, he's sure Brody would still be trying to work. He figures Brody would go back to AJPW for a few years, probably go to FMW and eventually to ECW, where he'd probably become a cult hero with them. He says Brody probably would have also gotten a chance with WWF and WCW too since in this age of the Monday Night Wars, almost anyone with some name value gets signed at some point or another. But he also points out that Brody didn't have the best reputation so he'd probably end up getting pissed and quitting on all of those companies at some point and burning bridges. That was kinda Brody's thing.