October 05, 1998
- The goofy little publicity stunt with Jerry Lawler and Jim Carrey on the set of "Man on the Moon" has taken a life of its own in the media. Carrey reportedly stayed in character as Andy Kaufman throughout filming, even while the cameras were off and allegedly spat at Lawler during one point while they weren't filming. Lawler chased him down and grabbed him in a headlock which the media reported caused Carrey to suffer a neck injury. He went to the hospital and came out wearing a neck brace, just like Andy Kaufman did for months after his original angle with Lawler. Carrey vowed he would never work with Lawler again and that all of Lawler's scenes would be cut from the movie. Neither of which is true, as they still have more scenes to film together. Because they pulled it off so well and Carrey is such a big star, the news story blew up in the media and by the next day, it was a pretty big national story. Almost all the media outlets covered it as a legit story and even Vince McMahon and Jim Ross were quoted in the USA Today defending Lawler. Dave says it was known in a few circles that Lawler and Carrey had been cooking up some sort of angle but no one knew what it would be exactly. Since it happened and now that everyone is beginning to realize it was a work, some have been trashing the media outlets for falling for it but Dave says that's simply wrestling at its best. Workers work people and sometimes they do a good enough job that everyone falls for it. Dave doesn't blame the media for taking the bait, he just seems to find it amusing. The only real story is that none of the media outlets came out in the following days to admit they had been fooled or retract the original story, which hurts the credibility of the media and makes you wonder what else they incorrectly report and then never correct. (Note from the day I wrote this back in November: There's a new Netflix documentary about the making of this movie. I wonder if it covers that stuff.) (Note from today, Feb. 12: I still haven't watched that documentary but I think it's pretty well established nowadays that Lawler wasn't in on this either and it was just Carrey being a method acting dick.)
- Scott Norton became only the 3rd American ever (Hogan the first, Vader the second) to win the IWGP title after defeating Yuji Nagata to win the belt that Masa Chono had to vacate last week due to injury. Interestingly enough, Norton injured his knee in the match and no word on how bad that is yet. Despite losing, word is Nagata had a star-making performance and the crowd was super into him so they may have made a new top star out of Nagata anyway.
- Eric Bischoff was in Japan meeting with NJPW to discuss helping them promote a PPV event. In Japan, only about 600,000 homes have access to PPV (as opposed to 35 million in the U.S.) and neither NJPW or AJPW have ever attempted it but word is NJPW is interested and since Bischoff has experience with it, they brought him in to help guide them.
- Due to the economic crisis in Mexico, AAA promoter Paco Alonso had to send every foreign wrestler he's been using home. Most of them were working on guarantees and being paid in U.S. dollars, which are worth far more than pesos right now and the company simply can't afford it. So they're all gone and AAA is running with 100% Mexican wrestlers.
- Mitsuharu Misawa has pretty much taken over complete control of booking AJPW. He always had a lot of influence but now Giant Baba is said to be totally out of booking the company although he's still involved in the business end. Of course, unbeknownst to basically everybody at this time, Baba is dying of cancer. It's not even known for sure if Baba is aware yet at this point, though there's rumors he found out years before and kept it a secret.
- There was a weird death match in Japan this week. The match itself was the usual garbage match (barbed wire, beds of nails, lightbulbs, etc.) but the stipulation was that the loser of the match would have to face a live crocodile in a casket match. Anyway....it happened and the crocodile did the job (on a personal note, fuck using live animals in a wrestling match).
- Yokozuna is booked to work an indie show against King Kong Bundy in New Jersey. Since NJ deregulated wrestling a couple of years ago, it's basically the only state Yoko can wrestle in because he can't pass the physical for any other states.
- Three ECW house shows in Florida were cancelled this week due to the looming threat from Hurricane Georges.
- Dave has heard from several good sources that The Giant is either close to or has already agreed to a deal to go to WWF. He's been openly talking about wanting to go there for weeks, although it was thought he was mostly just trying to get Bischoff's attention in order to get more money and a stronger push. He reportedly still has a few months left on his WCW deal so he can't jump ship just yet but at this point, it's expected he's heading north when his contract expires. It's no secret that WWF has been interested in him from the moment they saw him debut in WCW in 1995. He's everything Vince McMahon loves in a wrestler: big.
- The Wrestling With Shadows documentary hasn't officially been released yet but several mostly-finished copies have been floating around the industry so most people have seen it by now and it's been the talk of the biz this week. Dave says he's already seen it 7 times because a lot of his friends wanted to see it so he keeps ending up watching it with them and says he keeps picking up new things every time he watches it. He says he has a lot more he wants to say about it, but will wait until it's properly released first.
- Latest on Warrior in WCW: as expected, the bloom is off the rose and ratings for his segments are just as stagnant as everything else. And this week on Nitro, he was booed out of the building and there were massive "Warrior sucks!" chants during his promo, causing him to forget what he was trying to say. Dave says everyone warned Bischoff that Warrior was only going to be good for about 2-3 weeks worth of ratings and here we are. It's no secret to everyone in WCW that Warrior is dying out there every week and there's concern that he's pulling Hogan down with him. They still have a Halloween Havoc match with him and Hogan scheduled (which still may do a decent buyrate since it's the first rematch of their famous WM6 match), but after that, Dave thinks they should just bring Goldberg out and have him spear Warrior right out of WCW and then try to forget it ever happened and move on.
- Raven, Chris Jericho, and Disco Inferno will be appearing on an episode of The Dating Game soon (ends up being Kidman instead of Raven but yeah).
- There's been some talk of adding Bret Hart to the Four Horsemen group to have him replace Steve McMichael, who is simply the worst.
- Telemundo wants to do a wrestling show with Mexican wrestlers in the U.S. and have been talking to WCW about using their guys. But the problem is, all the Mexicans are basically treated like undercard jobbers in WCW and Telemundo doesn't want to do a show where the people are stars on one show and treated like a joke on another show. So in short, WCW's piss-poor booking of the Mexican wrestlers has probably cost them the possibility of a likely-profitable show.
- At a house show in Baltimore, Scott Hall cut a promo before his match saying that after his show, he's having a big party at his hotel and told all the women to go to the front desk and ask for Scott Hall and "for all the fags to ask for Kevin Nash." Well then.
- The New York Times ran a big story about the declining Monday Night Football ratings (down 11% and falling since last year) and it acknowledged that the popularity of wrestling on Monday nights is one of the key reasons.
- They did a great angle on Raw with Steve Austin driving a Zamboni to the ring and attacking Vince McMahon before being dragged away by police. Dave loved it. Yeah, I'd say this one is just a tiny bit famous.
- Other Raw notes: they did an angle where Owen Hart "accidentally" injured Dan Severn similar to the botched piledriver that hurt Austin. Severn was taken out on a stretcher while Owen looked concerned but it was an angle. Insane Clown Posse came out on Raw with the Oddities again and Dave says they're actually becoming pretty great heels. The Rock's "People's Elbow" is super over and the crowd went nuts when he did it.
- WWF is working with A&E to do a movie on the life of Andre The Giant. "Should be one entertaining work of fiction," Dave predicts. (It wasn't a movie, it was part of their Biography series. Dave gives this a proper review in 1999 when it comes out, but just for shits and giggles, here it is now).
- Someone who was an extra in the crowd during the filming for the Jerry Lawler/Andy Kaufman match for Man on the Moon writes in to tell what he witnessed. He says Carrey didn't take any bumps, they brought a stunt double in for the back suplex and piledriver spots and describes how many times they filmed the scenes and other neat behind-the-scenes movie stuff. He says Carrey kept provoking the fans and Lawler and was basically in character the whole time also.