August 24, 1998
- The return of Ultimate Warrior (or in this case, just "Warrior") to pro wrestling was everything it was cracked up to be: incomprehensible, mind-numbing, and a short-term ratings win. Warrior debuted on Nitro and the segment destroyed Raw in the ratings. But the legal battle beforehand was the real story. Last week, Dave criticized WCW for not promoting Warrior's debut, but turns out they had a good reason. They never hyped Warrior's debut because of the issues regarding the trademark of his name and the gimmick (face paint, arm tassels, etc). WWF took the case before a judge a few weeks ago to try and stop Warrior from being able to use the name and gimmick and since the case wasn't going to be heard until 3 days before Nitro, WCW decided not to promote Warrior's return in case it didn't go well and they would end up having to scrap it. But the judge ultimately ruled in favor of Warrior and he debuted as planned.
- Of course, as you would expect, it was a shit-show. Warrior came out and cut an 18-minute long promo that dragged on so long that the crowd started to turn on him. He used the term "Ultimate" 3 times when referring to himself, which WCW explicitly ordered everyone not to say because the "Ultimate" part of the Warrior name is still tied up in court. But Warrior did it anyway. Also, it was only scheduled for 6 minutes, so the fact that he went 18 totally screwed up the timing of the rest of the show, including cancelling one match and shortening others. The promo was the usual indecipherable Warrior babble, but the crowd was so jacked to see him that Dave doubts it did any permanent damage and he'll probably help WCW get another big rating next week. The plan is for Warrior vs. Hogan at Halloween Havoc, which he suspects will do a big buyrate. But beyond that, he doesn't think Warrior is going to mean much for the ratings or buyrates going forward.
- WCW has been quiet lately when it comes to talking shit about WWF but they were back at it big time this week. On Nitro, Tony Sciavone repeatedly talked about Raw being a taped show and spoiled the main event of Austin vs. Undertaker by revealing that the match only went for 1 minute and wasn't even really a match, while saying WCW actually delivers on the matches they advertise. Is he watching the same WCW we all watched?
- It's Observer Hall of Fame time. As mentioned last week, ballots were sent out to dozens of past and current pro wrestlers, writers, historians, and other backstage figures (promoters, execs, etc.) to vote on Hall of Fame inductees. All of the ballots are kept confidential, except Dave who openly tells you who he voted for and why. This year, only one person received enough votes to be inducted: Dos Caras, who Dave does a brief career recap for. Keiji Muto, Cactus Jack, Masa Saito, Lioness Asuka, Wahoo McDaniel, and Dick Murdoch all received more than 50% of the votes but didn't quite hit the 60% needed to be inducted this year. Next year, the ballot will consist of people who got at least 10% of the vote this year, plus new people who will become eligible. For the record, Dave's personal choices were Dos Caras, Hiroshi Hase, Cactus Jack, Jimmy Snuka, and Undertaker. Dave was surprised that Jack and Undertaker didn't make it. He also says that Muto was only 1 vote away from being inducted and says he almost voted for Muto but he's confident he'll make the cut next year (yup, he did). Cactus Jack was also only 1 vote away from making the cut (he eventually got inducted in 2000). Anyway, Dave explains the reasoning behind each of his picks.
- Road Wild PPV numbers are in and it's not great. Depending on who you believe, the show did somewhere between 320,000 to 400,000 buys. WCW claims the high number, other independent sources claim the low number. These would probably be decent PPV numbers under normal circumstances, but considering how much money they paid Jay Leno, they needed to do at least 425,000 to be worth it. People have argued that the mainstream publicity they got from having Jay Leno involved was worth the trade-off. But the TV ratings and ticket sales didn't really show any kind of increase from getting the Leno-bump, so it's hard to say WCW really benefited all that much from it there either. In the end, the PPV wasn't a bust or anything, but WCW probably would have been better off without wasting 6-7 figures on bringing Jay Leno in to wrestle since it didn't seem to matter one way or another.
- Goldberg was forced to no-show a house show in Providence, RI that he was scheduled to main event against The Giant. He was doing an autograph session in Philadelphia and the flight WCW booked for him after it ended got delayed and he wasn't able to make the show. They even tried to charter a private jet or helicopter for him but they weren't able to do it in time. They stalled for time during the show, including doing a 45-minute intermission while they kept trying to figure out a way for Goldberg to make it in time. But finally, they gave up and ring announcer Dave Penzer had to go out to the ring and announce to the crowd that he wouldn't be there. Fearing there could be a riot if Goldberg didn't show up, WCW decided to allow fans to get a full refund up to 7 days after the show. So basically, everyone in Providence got a free house show.
- Nicole Bass, who has made some ECW appearances, had her wrestling debut in Japan, winning a 4-person women's tournament. She wasn't good in the matches, but her look led to a lot of publicity and landed her on the cover of the sports pages.
- A man in Florida was arrested for aggravated child abuse after he seriously injured the neck of his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter by doing a piledriver on her. The child showed signs of other physical abuse as well. Fuck that guy. That girl would be 24-ish today. Hope she's okay. And for the record, I sometimes get bored and decide to look up things like this. Randomly internet-stalk strangers and shit. Don't judge me. Anyway, I did some research and found the guy. He ended up doing 11 years in prison for it. Sentenced in 2000, got out in 2011, and apparently violated parole or something and went back again in 2013 for two more years. As of 2015, he's out again.
- Assorted ECW notes: Tammy Sytch is still out recovering from various cosmetic surgeries she's having. Sandman still hasn't re-signed, so he's still jobbing to Justin Credible in short matches. New Jack is out of action allegedly due to injury but others are suspicious that it's something else. No word what. Big Dick Dudley can't wrestle in the state of New York right now after being arrested there a few weeks back at the ECW show that got out of hand.
- Latest on Flair/WCW: he's been trying to get a judge to rule that his WCW contract is void and the hearings keep getting delayed. WCW filed a motion to get the hearing moved from Charlotte to Atlanta. WCW is basically trying to stall the case in order to run up Flair's legal bills which are said to be nearing 6 figures at this point. WCW has a bottomless pit of money to keep the lawsuit going while Flair obviously doesn't, so they're basically trying to bleed him dry so he'll settle (aka exactly what WWE is doing to CM Punk in their lawsuit now).
- On Nitro, Eddie Guerrero came out and did a fake shoot promo, talking about being unappreciated in WCW and how he'd been held down and all that stuff. He said he wanted out of his contract and told Bischoff to take the job and shove it and all that. Then he poured a cup of coffee on himself as a reference to an incident a few months ago when Guerrero really did ask for his release and Bischoff got mad and threw a cup of coffee at the wall, some of which got on Guerrero. That story has blossomed into "Bischoff threw his coffee on Eddie" so it was a reference to that. Anyway, this promo died a slow death on TV and the live crowd had no clue what the fuck he was talking about and were dead for it also. Dave says this sort of stuff works in ECW, but not with this crowd. The idea seems to be to fool the newsletter/internet crowd similar to the Pillman angle a few years ago, but the announcers barely sold it and Bischoff came out later and didn't acknowledge it. Anyway, the plan is for Eddie to form a group of other wrestlers who have all been "held down" like Silver King, La Parka, Psicosis, etc. but Dave says they're still going to be the same midcard guys as always because there's no upward mobility in WCW (and thus, the seeds of the Latino World Order are planted).
- Remember a long time ago when WWF and WCW were in a lawsuit over some shit Mark Madden said on the hotline? It had to do with Madden talking about something related to WWF business that he shouldn't have been privy to, so WWF sued and wanted him to reveal his sources in a deposition. Madden argued that he was a journalist and was protected from having to reveal sources. WWF argued that he was a paid employee who's hotline reports were directed by WCW and thus not a real journalist. The original judge ruled that Madden was protected under the journalist law and didn't have to reveal the sources. WWF appealed and they won the appeal. So Madden was supposed to give up his sources. But now WCW has appealed that. So this shit is still dragging on in court (fun fact: this lawsuit has huge future ramifications. The lawsuit is eventually settled in 2000. One of the terms of the settlement gave WWF the right to bid on WCW's assets if the company was liquidated. Flash forward less than a year later and....WWF buys WCW. But we'll get there).
- Funny story. The New York Daily News wrote an article trashing Jay Leno for lowering himself by participating in a pro wrestling match for WCW. When the newspaper contacted NBC for comment, they said they weren't involved in the decision and gave the reporter a number to call for more info. The number ended up being the offices of WWF, not WCW. Whoops.
- There's been talk of putting Chris Jericho in the black-and-white NWO group but he reportedly doesn't want any part of it. Smart guy Jericho.
- Assorted WCW notes: add Kanyon to the list of guys unhappy with his role in the company. Lex Luger renewed his contract for 3 years. On Nitro, whoever was doing the closed captioning apparently decided to play a prank. During a Hogan promo, every time he mentioned "NWO black & white", the closed captioning kept typing "Steve Blackman."
- The Giant is telling people he wants to train to be a heavyweight boxer. Dave thinks he needs to drop 150 pounds before considering it and even then, age 27 is pretty late to start out in a sport like that if you're hoping to make any sort of career out of it (10 or 15 years later, he really did take time off and trained for it. That's when he came back and started using the knockout punch as a finisher).
- In an advertising industry magazine, Eric Bischoff was quoted saying that WWF's current edgy direction "will have a devastating impact on the business and set wrestling back 20 years. Advertisers are not watching what WWF is doing, because if they did, they would run." Vince McMahon responded, saying, "What we do is aggressive, but not violent. Murder, rape, those are blatant acts of violence." Vince also said he wanted to extend its business into other forms of media like movies, TV shows, and comic books.
- The Marc Mero vs. Bradshaw match in the Brawl For All tournament ended with Bradshaw winning a match that Mero should have won, but the judges ruled in favor of Bradshaw on a take down that he shouldn't have gotten points for. Backstage, Mero was throwing a fit about being robbed because there's legit prize money for whoever wins this thing. If the finals had come down to Mero vs. Gunn, Mero might have had a really good chance of winning it all since he's got the Golden Gloves boxing experience and Gunn appears to be a stand-up fighter.
- Speaking of the Brawl For All, lots of interesting backstage notes behind it. When he was asked if he wanted to participate, Gunn initially declined because he has a background in Tough Man contests and he was afraid he might hurt someone. And he obviously didn't want to be responsible for hurting his coworkers. Eventually he agreed to be in it. And later, when he was told he would fight Steve Williams, he told people backstage that he was afraid of getting heat because he knew the company had big plans for Williams, but he was confident that he would knock him out, thus screwing up the company's big plans. Which, of course, is exactly what ended up happening.
- The current Goldust gimmick, where he's going by his real name (Dustin Runnels) and preaching against the edgy product is basically one big inside joke. He's claiming to be representing a group called "Evangelists Against Television, Movies, & Entertainment" which is an acronym for EAT ME. The character is also basically making fun of Jake Roberts from when he last worked there. Jake had a reputation during his last run of being super preachy and trying to convert everyone to Jesus during the day and then going out and fucking up his life with drugs and women in every way possible at night.
- Shane McMahon was recently named President of New Media for the company, which basically means he's overseeing the WWF website.
- Vince's 22-year-old daughter Stephanie McMahon is in a management training program and will start officially working backstage for WWF soon.
- 1996 Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle will be at a WWF training camp this week. Angle had gotten a big money offer from WWF after the Olympics but he turned it down. He tried his hand at sports broadcasting but that didn't work out so he recently contacted WWF to see if they were still interested. They wanted him to train for a week under Dory Funk before they offer him another deal so that's what's happening. Now that the Olympics were over 2 years ago, his marketability as a major national star is way less than it would have been if he'd signed back then when they first made the offer. Matt and Jeff Hardy will also be at the training camp.
- Latest on Shawn Michaels is that he's still expected to return eventually, likely before the end of the year.
- After John Wayne Bobbitt appeared on Raw a couple of weeks ago, they discussed an idea to bring him back with the idea that he would re-marry his ex-wife Lorena live on Raw or a PPV, which would surely turn it into a huge media circus and would probably do a monster TV rating. But talks seem to have died on that for whatever reason and there's no plans to bring him back.
- Assorted WWF notes: Dave thinks Brian Christopher is the most underutilized guy in the company and says he carried Edge in their Sunday Night Heat match. Too Cold Scorpio's dad recently passed away. Steve Regal recently suffered a broken ankle and will be out for at least another month. Hawk has been pulled from all upcoming shows. Dave isn't sure if it's legit (due to his real personal issues) or part of the storyline (where they've been making fun of his real personal issues).