September 07, 1998
- After a 5 month legal battle, it's expected that Ric Flair will return to WCW within the next couple of weeks, likely at the 9/14 episode of Nitro in Greenville. Dave recaps the issues that began in April when Flair missed a Thunder taping to attend an amateur wrestling event his son was taking in (which Flair claimed he had asked off for well in advance but Bischoff disagreed). After the no-show, Bischoff gave a speech to the locker room, burying Flair, saying he would never come back, and promising to sue him into bankruptcy. WCW then filed a $2 million dollar lawsuit against Flair for breach of contract. Flair filed a motion to have his agreement with WCW declared void. Flair actually didn't have a contract with WCW at the time, but had instead signed a letter of intent to stay with the company through 2001. The letter of intent was to keep him there while they finished negotiating the real contract. WCW still believed it to be just as binding as a contract, while Flair contended that it was no longer valid since it was based on the two sides agreeing to mutual terms on an actual contract, which they never did. As of now, the legal issues haven't quite been settled but there have been serious settlement talks and, with the legal bills piling up for Flair, he's expected to settle with WCW and return to TV soon. It's also expected that this whole thing will be turned into an angle between Flair and Bischoff.
- Flair has been very interested in going to WWF to work an angle with Steve Austin and McMahon has publicly praised Flair recently, but WWF has not made a serious attempt to get him. It's likely due to all the pending legal issues and with so many lawsuits flying back and forth between WWF and WCW over the years, Vince likely doesn't want to get involved and risk getting sued for contract tampering. It's also worth noting that, while McMahon has praised Flair, several WWF wrestlers, most notably Undertaker and Triple H, have publicly trashed Flair for being too old and said he should retire, saying there's no place for him in WWF. Despite not being pushed as the top star for the last several years, Flair has consistently been the top ratings draw for WCW right up until he disappeared from TV in April and his segments always outdrew whatever was happening on Raw at the same time. His angle with Bret Hart earlier this year was the hottest thing going in WCW for a few weeks until they abruptly pulled the plug on it because they were reportedly unhappy with the mixed crowd reactions since fans were cheering both guys. The plan all along has been to re-form the Four Horsemen. It was supposed to happen on the Thunder taping that Flair no-showed in April and then for the last several months, they tossed around the idea of reforming the group without Flair. But 2 of the men booked to be involved (Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko) told Bischoff they didn't want to do it if Flair wasn't in it. It's expected that they will reform the group when Flair returns.
- Speaking of, the Benoit case is interesting because Bischoff reportedly told him that he wouldn't put Benoit in the group unless he re-signed with WCW and so far, Benoit has refused to sign a new contract. A few months ago, Bischoff had made it clear to most of the midcard guys who were thinking about not re-signing that he would spend the remaining year of their contract burying them if they didn't. But he's since changed his tune and has promised many of the wrestlers (particularly Benoit and Eddie Guerrero) that he will prove to them that they will be pushed if they re-sign. So Benoit will be part of the new Four Horsemen while Eddie Guerrero's current angle (being unhappy in WCW and wanting his release) will lead to him forming a stable of other underutilized Mexican wrestlers against Bischoff.
- WWF's Summerslam is in the books and was one of the best PPVs of the year. The movement to push younger stars was evident, as Val Venis and D-Lo Brown were given plenty of time in the opening match, Edge was introduced as Sable's mystery partner, and Triple H and the Rock had an excellent ladder match for the IC title that elevated both men to the next level (even though Triple H went into the match with a legit knee injury). They did a live Sunday Night Heat before the show, with Shawn Michaels joining Shane McMahon and Jim Ross for commentary. Dave says commentary is clearly not Shawn's strong suit. Shane McMahon still isn't great either although he was better this time than ever before. MSG was sold out and the live gate was the 3rd largest of the year in North America (behind Wrestlemania and the Goldberg/Hogan Nitro). However, the Lions Den match between Shamrock and Owen Hart was held at the adjacent MSG theater and they sold separate tickets for that (the Owen/Shamrock match was live in person and then people inside could watch the rest of Summerslam on the big screens) but tickets for that sold poorly, only filling up about half of the 4,500 seat building and pretty much proves that closed-circuit is dead. The crowd also seemed to wear out near the end of the night after 4+ hours of wrestling which is just too much.
- Other notes from Summerslam: they did an angle on Heat with the Nation attacking Triple H's knee to explain why he would be limping during the match later in the night since his knee really is messed up. D-Lo Brown was billed from Helsinki, Finland (ah yes, the gimmick where he was announced from different cities in Europe because he was the European champion). His match with Val Venis started good but fell apart near the end with some botched moves. The Insane Clown Posse debuted in WWF doing the entrance music for The Oddities. The Shamrock/Owen Hart lion's den match took place in a cage similar to the UFC octagon but much smaller and taller with a platform on top. In the ladder match, despite being the heel, you could tell that the Rock really won the crowd over. The Undertaker/Austin main event was marred by injuries to both men. Undertaker is still dealing with a serious ankle injury and Austin got knocked loopy early in the match when they accidentally butted heads and later in the match, Austin was legit coughing up blood.
- With Raw pre-empted due to the U.S. Open for the next 2 weeks, Nitro aired unopposed and set an all-time ratings record, doing a 6.03 rating, with nearly 4.5 million homes watching, making it the most watched pro wrestling show in the history of cable TV. This breaks the record set by Raw earlier this year when Nitro was pre-empted. This, despite the fact that it was pretty much an atrocious show. But with no Raw to compete against, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that they would do record numbers. The bad show did hurt though, as ratings dropped during the 3rd hour, due to the nearly unwatchable 2nd hour.
- The WWF has now been banned from running events at the Catholic Youth Center in Scranton, PA over concerns about the product. The building holds nearly 4,000 people and WWF has been running events there for over 30 years. But as the name implies, it's owned by a Catholic bishop and needless to say, WWF's new edgier product has rubbed him the wrong way. He described the WWF product as "slightly less than softcore porn" and pointed out that a good half of the crowd at the last WWF event there was children who were exposed to foul language and sexual content. ECW was kicked out of the same building several months ago for the same reasons and Heyman smartly just accepted it for what it was and moved on. Vince McMahon, however, went on the offensive and went to the local media, saying the venue is trying to censor people's rights to entertainment (which is funny, coming from a guy who has repeatedly tried to block WCW from having access to arenas). Anyway, it turned a small local story into a much bigger one that is getting lots of media coverage. Dave takes this time to talk about the product saying, sure it's geared towards adults and WWF makes no bones about that. But 35% of their Monday night audience is still children (and the number is much higher for the weekend shows). Obviously, that responsibility mostly falls on the parents, not Vince. But wrestling, as popular as it is, is still under the radar to the point that the mainstream still doesn't really take it seriously so they can get away with a lot of crazy shit and Vince would be smart to try and not rock the boat on that one, lest other arenas start deciding they don't like the product and then the dominoes start falling (much like what happened when UFC started having trouble finding venues even though it was booming in popularity). One final funny note, Dave says that he's not a religious person but will admit that this past Monday, he was praying that the USA Network would never pre-empt Raw again so he wouldn't have to sit through 3 straight uninterrupted hours of Nitro anymore.
- Sid Vicious is booked for an indie show later this month in New Jersey. "I guess some people never learn," Dave says.
- Dave goes into detail on all the financial issues plaguing UFC right now, with Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, and Bas Rutten among others pulling out of an upcoming event because UFC can't afford to pay them what they're asking. (It really is a miracle UFC managed to survive this time period considering how dire things were looking. Maybe there's still hope for TNA yet.)
- Mike Awesome suffered a broken foot while wrestling in FMW and was immediately sent home and will probably be out of action for awhile.
- Rob Van Dam just barely avoided a horrifying injury in ECW. He and Sabu were putting Bam Bam Bigelow through a table and a piece of it slashed his eyelid and ripped it, causing part of his eyelid to be left hanging, but luckily didn't actually hit his eyeball. RVD still worked the main event of the show later that night (I can't find video of it anywhere, but I know RVD talks about this on the "One of a Kind" documentary that WWF put out several years back and they have video of it on there. You can also see it at the very end of Hardcore TV 281 if you have the Network. And yeah, he's insanely lucky he didn't lose his eye).
- ECW is doing a gimmick with Spike Dudley where he just beats people in super quick matches with his acid drop finisher. It's supposed to be sort of a spoof on how little guys never have a chance against big guys in WWF and WCW. So in this case, they're making Spike Dudley into the new 911, where he just comes out and quickly dispatches people way bigger than him with ease.
- A new valet debuted with Lance Storm in ECW going by the name Tammy Lynn Bytch and the plan is obviously for her to feud with Tammy Sytch. Her real name is Dawn Marie and she's been a valet on the east coast indie circuit for a few years. She ended up getting her dress ripped off by Sytch, which of course got a huge pop.
- Stevie Ray will likely be replacing Scott Hall in the upcoming War Games match at Fall Brawl, due to Hall dealing with a neck injury (he did indeed replace Hall in that match.....but Hall worked the PPV in a different match. More on that in a moment). Dave also breaks down the rest of the Fall Brawl card but he says that because it's WCW, this will almost certainly all change between now and then (indeed. About half of the matches he lists happens, the rest got switched around).
- Lots of backstage issues in WCW between office and executive people. Executive VP of WCW Nick Lambros has been pushed out of the company after losing some sort of power play to Eric Bischoff (Dave doesn't clarify). Lambros technically works for Turner, not WCW, so he's not out of a job but Turner is apparently looking into starting a football league (heh) and Lambros has been moved to an executive position on that product. Terry Taylor had heat with a producer and Bischoff told him to stay home the following Monday and not come to Nitro. In fact, both Taylor and Kevin Sullivan have basically been pushed out of their booking positions and are only putting together the Saturday Night show. Bischoff is booking Nitro and Thunder, mostly on the direction from Hogan and Nash.
- Scott Hall is expected to be out of action for awhile due to his latest injury but there's a lot of suspicion about that given Hall's obvious personal issues lately. A lot of eyebrows were raised when Hall got "injured" just days before a "surprise" drug test (which pretty much everybody in the locker room had gotten wind of in advance). However, those close to Hall insist that he really is injured and that he hurt himself in the gym doing squats. For what it's worth, Juventud Guerrera missed Nitro that night and a lot of people suspect it might have been for the same reason (attempting to duck a drug test).
- Vampiro is expected to officially debut soon (he worked a throwaway match on Nitro a few weeks back but no real gimmick or character). They're basically wanting to do a Marilyn Manson look for him and they're working on getting a ring outfit made for him.
- On Nitro, they used the 7-second delay to censor when Hogan said "Ultimate" Warrior. Since WWF still owns the name of that, they're not supposed to use the "Ultimate" part but people in promos have been slipping up and saying it by accident every week.
- Goldberg was at a Miami Marlins game this week and was shown hanging out with Mark McGwire. And yes, WCW is hoping to get McGwire to wrestle during the off-season, although it's just an idea right now, there haven't been any discussions (doesn't happen).
- Dave reviews Nitro and Thunder, as he does every week. Nothing really important here (except noting that Nick Dinsmore worked a match on Thunder), but I would be remiss if I didn't mention yet again how much Dave just shits all over nearly every aspect of WCW TV shows around this time, and it's hard to blame him. Considering the cutting edge stuff WWF was doing on Raw, WCW was horrendous around this time. But man, Dave is just ruthless in reviewing these shows.
- Sting signed a new 7-figure WCW contract and he no longer wants to work Thursdays so you may not be seeing him on Thunder much anymore.
- Goldberg missed a house show in Terre Haute, IN recently and because it's WCW, the whole thing was of course a total clusterfuck. Goldberg had asked for those 2 days off a long time ago and J.J. Dillon agreed and gave him the time off. But since no one in WCW communicates with anyone else, somehow the word never got to the promotions dept. and they continued to advertise Goldberg vs. Giant for the show. Nobody realized there was a problem until the day of the show when they got to Terre Haute and realized that Goldberg wasn't there and the Goldberg/Giant match was the only one they had ever advertised. A week earlier, Goldberg had missed a show because WCW double-booked him in 2 different cities and he couldn't get to the show in time so they ended up offering refunds to the fans, which cost them a shit-ton of money. So in this case, instead of offering refunds, they decided not to tell the fans at all. Instead, they had all the cars backstage warmed up and ready to go and as soon as the last match finished, everybody got the fuck out of Terre Haute before the fans could realize they were getting screwed. They had a show scheduled the next night in Peoria and, realizing they were going to have the same problem, they called and begged Goldberg to come work the show. Since he had asked for the time off, he wasn't happy about it, but he eventually agreed. WCW spent $11,000 to charter a jet to get him to Peoria for the show.
- Wayne Bloom and John Nord have both been released by WCW, though it's not like you'd have even known they were there.
- Notes from the latest Raw tapings: Undertaker and Kane destroyed Steve Blackman to write him off TV for awhile because he's having knee surgery later this week. Also at the tapings, there was a segment where Tiger Ali Singh came out saying he wanted a woman to make out with his gross sidekick Babu who hadn't brushed his teeth in 3 days and eaten nothing but sardines and he would pay her $500. They picked a woman out of the crowd (obviously a plant) and her shirt was about as see-thru as you can legally get. The crowd began chanting "Show your tits!" and she flashed the crowd 3 different times while in the ring. After she made out with Babu, he then started kissing her breasts before Undertaker and Kane showed up and choke-slammed Singh and Babu and the girl left the ring (as you can imagine, this was heavily edited. It's on the Network, Sept. 5th episode, and she's there in her little white see-through shirt and she makes out with Babu but...that's it. This was taped a week before it aired and there's an abrupt hard edit from Babu throwing money on the ground until suddenly Undertaker and Kane are already almost down the ramp. But I'm still amazed USA Network aired it at all, given that she was apparently freezing cold in a thin white shirt).
- Other Raw taping notes: actually, since Raw is being moved to Saturdays for the next 2 weeks due to the US Open, most of Raw was throwaway stuff. And they taped a lot of the big stuff to air on Sunday Night Heat, since the one of the upcoming Heat episodes will be airing at the same time as a WCW PPV. Anyway, Insane Clown Posse appeared on Raw again with the Oddities and this time took a beating from LOD Hawk, who was out there in street clothes doing his drunk/druggie gimmick. Sable wasn't on the show because she's filming an episode of Pacific Blue for USA this week. At one point, Dustin Runnels (doing his religious normal guy gimmick since he's no longer Goldust) came out holding a sign saying, "He is coming!" which led to Val Venis showing up later in the crowd holding a sign saying, "I have come." And The Rock came out to cut a promo and despite being a heel, he got an almost universal babyface reaction. The tapings ended with Austin giving Vince, Patterson, Brisco, etc. all stunners. When announcer Shane McMahon ran in to check on his father, Austin gave him one also.
- There have been rumors of Triple H and Chyna getting married in a few months, but Triple H has been denying it. But they are indeed a real-life couple, in case you were curious.
- The people who impressed the most at the recent WWF training camps were Christian Cage, Andrew Martin, Kurt Angle, and the Hardy brothers.
- On the WWF Hotline, Jim Ross was almost apologetic about his previous comments towards Tony Schiavone. He said he believes Schiavone doesn't have a malicious bone in his body and is a nice guy with a great family and is only doing what he's told by his boss. He said the two have had issues going back for years because Ross was given the lead WCW announcer job ahead of him a long time ago but Ross said he had nothing to do with that decision and wishes they could have shared the top duties at the time. He said the people running both companies (WCW and WWF) should stop acting like 9th graders.
- Due to the school shooting a couple of months ago in Jonesboro, the school board in the city has banned all pro wrestling t-shirts due to some of the violent messages on them.
- Steve Austin was on Regis & Kathy Lee this week, mostly promoting the new WWF entrance music CD. WCW is also coming out with an entrance music CD sometime in the near future.
- "Lou Albano was backstage at MSG and wound up falling on his face and having to be revived." Okay then.
- The new Barry Blaustein wrestling documentary that is being filmed will essentially cover the entire industry except for WCW because they decided against being involved in the project.
- Interesting letter this week from a guy named Tom Cole, who you might remember as the under-aged victim at the center of the molestation scandal in WWF back in 1992. Since Terry Garvin passed away and Dave wrote an obituary last week, Tom Cole writes in to clarify some things and talk about his experience. Let's read it, shall we?
- I'm writing you in response to your article on the death of Terry Garvin. I went back to the WWF in March of 1992 after meeting with Linda and Vince McMahon along with Jerry McDevitt. I love the wrestling business very much and as a kid I was so happy to be part of it. My dream was to work for the WWF for the rest of my life, however that was not to be.
- When I was 19 and Terry Garvin summoned me to Titan Sports in Stamford, CT, I realized my dream was coming true. However, that dream soon turned into a nightmare. The job he had in mind was sex for working at Titan Sports and when I said No, that was the end of my life in the business.
- A couple of years later when I came out with my story, I had no intentions on killing the wrestling business. I knew many people in the business who treated me wonderfully all my time there and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt them.
- My time back at Titan was very hard. Being 20-years-old with a world of pressure on your back, something until you've been there you can't understand, it just didn't work out the way it should have. I always told the truth and never lied about anything. Ask yourselves why I was the only one to get a job at Titan Sports when many others were coming out. Answer. Because everyone who knows this business knew that I was telling the truth.
- My brother Lee did have my ear when I was working for Titan in 1992 and it made it very hard to concentrate on my job. I love my brother but my association with him definitely didn't help me being back with Titan Sports.
- I am and always will be a wrestling fan. The wrestling business didn't do me wrong. Just some people who were in it, like Terry Garvin. I do hope this man realized before he died all the lives he badly affected and all the dreams he ruined, especially mine.
- I know Linda McMahon tried to help me and I truly believe she is a good person. She has a son my age and tried to do right by me but at that time I didn't trust anybody.
- Thomas Cole