September 14, 1998
- Three careers are ending or in danger of ending this week. Dave doesn't seem to have a lot of detail on them, so he just lumps all 3 into one big story. First and biggest, Jim Duggan has been diagnosed with cancer and will have one of his kidneys removed this week. Dave notes that several athletes have returned from losing a kidney and still excelled at their career, but given Duggan's age and the inherent risks involved with wrestling as opposed to other sports, Dave thinks this could be a career-ender. In the other case, Ultimo Dragon suffered an infection and other complications from elbow surgery recently that was only supposed to keep him out for a month, but now it's looking more like 6 months and doctors have told him he might never fully recover, so his career is in danger also. And finally, legendary Japanese wrestler The Great Kabuki wrestled his retirement match this week in a tag match with Terry Funk and Doug Gilbert in IWA. Kabuki is expected to still work behind the scenes with IWA.
- Antonio Inoki is forming his own fake promotion called UFO which is still basically an NJPW project. The idea is to build up UFO as a shoot-fight promotion built around Naoya Ogawa and eventually lead to a promotion vs. promotion battle with New Japan. Inoki held a press conference this week to announce the debut show for UFO and interestingly enough, they went so far as to get UFO its own TV deal. Furthermore, it's even on a competing TV network from the one NJPW airs on. The rules are basically similar to UFC or Vale Tudo although many, if not all of the matches will be worked. The idea with getting them their own TV show and network is to build credibility for the eventual NJPW feud (this turns into all sorts of clusterfuckery in the coming year or so).
- WWC's heavily-hyped 25th anniversary show drew around 13,000 people which is the biggest crowd they've had in years. Carlos Colon won the Universal title for like the 23rd time but then lost it the next night at a much smaller show. Must be nice to be the booker.
- Both EMLL and AAA are kicking themselves because they both booked big shows on 9/18. Problem is, the Julio César Chavez vs. Oscar De La Hoya boxing match is happening that night and Chavez is basically a national hero in Mexico. So those 2 wrestling shows happening the same time as the boxing match aren't likely to draw very well since basically everyone in Mexico will be staying home to watch the big fight (De La Hoya won. They shoulda just gone to watch some wrasslin' instead).
- Jesus, I'm already at the ECW section. This must have been the slowest week in wrestling history.
- The idea of doing one of Atsushi Onita's exploding ring matches in ECW this year has been postponed until spring, if it even ends up happening at all (nope).
- Unless things change, Ric Flair is still scheduled to return next week on Nitro in Greenville. As of press time, neither Flair nor WCW have dropped their lawsuits against each other. Flair is still trying to get a judge to rule his contract voided so he can at least negotiate with WWF, although the odds of him going there aren't as good as one would think after both Undertaker and Triple H made comments about him being too old, which reportedly upset Flair. Eric Bischoff was on a radio show this week and had this to say about the situation: "He (Mike Mooneyham of the Charleston Post-Courier and Wrestling Observer Hotline in response to an article about the situation favorable to Flair) doesn't know the whole story. He doesn't know the fact that Ric Flair had agreed, that any time that Ric Flair ever wanted any time off that request would come in writing so that we would have the opportunity to schedule his time off accordingly. His agents are being deposed next week and will testify to that. Ric Flair took time off that he never asked for, that he wasn't scheduled for, and put WCW in a bind. I had to make a decision. I had to draw a line and say, OK, am I going to let Ric Flair get away with this so that other 130 people that I have under contract realize that any time they don't want to show up for a show they can just basically stick it to WCW and no-show or do I draw a line and make people realize that there's policies, there's procedures, there's agreements, and this is a business and we have to act professionally and responsibly, and I drew the line on Ric Flair because Ric Flair, in my opinion and according to his agreement and the agreement that we had with his agents, acted unprofessionally and irresponsibly and I had to draw the line and it's unfortunate because Ric is, was, is, a big-name talent and he's a guy that could have continued to contribute, but unfortunately, we're just not seeing eye to eye with regard to that subject." For what it's worth, Ric Flair disputes this and claims he asked for the time off months before and that it had been approved. (Knowing how much of a disorganized mess WCW was and how the left hand never knew what the right hand was doing, I think I have to side with Flair here. My guess is he probably did get the time off approved by somebody, but then that somebody neglected to pass the word on and Bischoff was never told until it was too late. Speaking of disorganized....)
- Nitro is basically being written these days by Eric Bischoff, former child actor Jason Hervey (Bischoff's longtime friend), Hulk Hogan, and Kevin Nash. Anyway, it's all still so disorganized that things are frequently changing backstage as the show is going on live. Dave gives an example, talking about how Kevin Nash and Sting were supposed to team up in the main event, but midway through the show, they changed it to Luger & Sting and simply had Nash interfere.
- Arn Anderson has physically improved to the point that he badly wants to wrestle again but Dave seems to hope he doesn't because it's not worth the risk. That being said, Anderson is still getting by far some of the biggest reactions on the shows lately simply by cutting promos.
- Konnan, Disco Inferno, and Juventud Guerrera were all banged up last week when they unknowingly took bumps on the part of the ring that had a trap door set up for Warrior to disappear and reappear in the ring during the show. Konnan is scheduled for an MRI this week but everyone else is still working (interesting to hear, since a week after this, British Bulldog suffers a near career-ending back injury because he bumped on that same trapdoor and it reportedly led him into a pain pill addiction).
- Scott Steiner has 5 compressed discs in his back and it's unknown if he'll ever be able to make a full recovery. Expect his Fall Brawl match with Rick Steiner to be kept short.
- There's been talk of bringing Stevie Richards back to WCW, but Terry Taylor was the one pushing for it. But now that he's been basically pushed out of his booking position by Hogan, Nash, and Bischoff, that's not as likely to happen anymore. Same thing goes for Meng, who was beginning to get a big push a couple of months ago because Taylor and Kevin Sullivan liked him. But with them mostly out of the picture, his push is probably done.
- Just to show how big wrestling is at the moment, the St. Louis Cardinals, which is the hottest thing going in sports right now due to Mark McGwire chasing the single-season home run record, played the Atlanta Braves on TBS. The game drew the Braves' highest rating of the season: 2.6, which is about half of what Nitro and Raw do on any given Monday. McGwire hit his 55th home run during the game.
- Jason Hervey's mom runs a production company and is working on developing a movie for Sting to star in. Dave wonders why wrestlers who can't even act within the context of pro wrestling are getting acting gigs while the actual good actors in wrestling (Mick Foley, for example) never seem to.
- Chris Benoit is still out injured but was told to fly into Nitro anyway because they still wanted him to appear. So he packed his bags and flew out there, only to find out they decided at the last minute not to put him on the show after all. As you can expect, he was pretty pissed.
- Sports writer Frank Deford did an interview on NPR talking about mainstream athletes doing wrestling. Unlike most people in the sports world, Deford had no problem with guys like Rodman and Malone doing it and didn't believe they were demeaning themselves by doing it. He also talked about Dave during the interview and called the Observer Newsletter "a publication that is as authoritative about wrestling as the New England Journal of Medicine is about disease." (Yeah, Frank Deford, arguably the greatest sports journalist of all time, repeatedly praised Dave over the years. Here's an article from the New York Times in 2013 where Deford gives him even more props.)
- The movie that was being filmed about Bret Hart last year is called Wrestling With Shadows and will be released on video soon and air on TV as well. Dave has already seen a rough cut of the movie and says it's the most honest movie ever made about the wrestling industry but he will wait until it's properly released before he writes about it in detail.
- Bret Hart will also appear in an upcoming episode of the "Honey I Shrunk The Kids" TV show (Bret and Owen both appear in it).
- Dave takes a moment to throw some praise at DDP. While he's not a great worker and he's been massively over-pushed because of his friendship with Bischoff, Dave also admits that DDP has worked his ass off to earn the position he was given. While other wrestlers go get drunk in their hotel rooms after shows, DDP is always out doing promotional interviews and making charity appearances and working to get himself and the company over as much as possible. He was given the ball and hasn't dropped it and in fact, has run further with it than anyone could have predicted and he deserves all the success he's having lately.
- Early buyrate info for WWF's Summerslam is somewhere over 500,000 buys which would be a huge success. That's about the same as WCW did with the Rodman/Malone PPV and way ahead of the Road Wild PPV with Jay Leno. Also, after Summerslam, they did a thing where WWF merch was being sold on the Home Shopping Network after the PPV ended. They ended up doing around $250,000 in merch sales in about an hour with almost 10,000 callers calling in (here's a clip from the HSN with WWF guys. I'm not sure if it's the one from after Summerslam or not. But either way, it's hilarious, with Rock being classic Rock and with the New Age Outlaws DRUNK AS FUCK).
- WWF has produced a limited quantity of "Austin Rules, Goldberg Sucks" shirts that will be for sale at some mall stores (indeed they did)
- Steve Austin gave Regis Philbin a stunner on the Regis & Kathy Lee show last week.
- Speaking of Austin, there was a spot early in his Summerslam match with Undertaker where they seemed to smack heads against each other. Austin suffered a dislocated jaw and bit off a chunk of his tongue when it happened (yeah, Austin got knocked loopy from that spot, as explained here).
- Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle has signed a multi-year WWF contract. And was never heard from again.
- Faarooq missed some shows recently because his brother was murdered. Jeez, I never heard that story before.
- Sable will play a women in an all-women's prison on an upcoming episode of Pacific Blue (this shit is basically as close as they could get to softcore porn for basic cable back in the 90s haha).
- Jerry Lawler and Lance Russell will play themselves in the Jim Carrey movie Man On the Moon based on the life of Andy Kaufman. Jimmy Hart was originally supposed to be in it, but since Lawler is in it, WCW threw a fit and won't allow Hart to do the movie.
- For those interested, the primary writing team for Raw is Vince McMahon, Vince Russo, and Ed Ferrara. Dave mentions that Ferrara used to write for the show Duckman. Anyway, there's also a much larger circle of about a dozen people who regularly submit ideas that are often used as well but those are the primary three. And of course, nothing makes it to TV without final approval from McMahon.
- Still no word on Shawn Michaels returning to the ring. He's lost quite a bit of weight and the idea is maybe later this year or early next year. They've tossed some storyline ideas around regarding him and DX but nothing set in stone.
- Vince McMahon did an AOL chat recently and hinted that the WWF would be returning to network TV soon. In reality, there's nothing much to that yet, although given the strong cable ratings, they'll probably do something again on network TV eventually. Fox has expressed interest in getting into the wrestling biz and is actually looking at starting their own promotion.