Wrestling Observer Rewinder

January 04, 1999

Hi. Hope everyone had a good few weeks. I went to Wrestlemania. Like everybody else, I have a lot of thoughts on the whole weekend but this isn't really the place. But I do have a message to a specific person. You probably won't read this, the odds of you being a Redditor and seeing this post are slim. But who knows, maybe? Anyway....to the guy in the parking garage at the Superdome after WM who shouted "fucking stupid kid!" at your son because he accidentally tripped and fell down while he struggled to carry a souvenir chair that was damn near bigger than him....fuck you. You're a shit father.
Anyway, you all know the drill, M/W/F unless real life gets in the way. Let's see if I can remember how to do this.
Dave opens the issue with a quick blurb that apparently came in just before this issue went to press, saying that Mankind beat the Rock for the WWF title on Raw that was taped on the 29th and will be airing on Jan. 4th. Apparently it's a short-term title change and Rock will win it back at the Rumble. WWF apparently wanted to counter WCW's big Georgia Dome Nitro that will be happening on the same night. Surely this won't become a big famous story next week or anything...
Okay, the issue officially starts with an in-depth look at where all the major promotions stand going into 1999. WWF has been dominating the ratings war for the last half of the year and they finished off 1998 with 14 consecutive legit sellouts. They've done an incredible job of creating new stars and hooking viewers with soap opera storylines. Coming off losing both Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, they managed to make megastars out of Austin and Rock, turned DX into legit main eventers, and struck gold with Kane. Dave expects this to be the year that WWF widens the gap in the war with WCW.
WCW, on the other hand, fell hard in 1998 by continuing to rely on old stars and not creating any new ones aside from Goldberg and even he's been floundering the last few months because WCW can't seem to figure out how to book him anymore. They have some of the best young talent in the world, but they're all miserable and are stuck under a glass ceiling below all the 40-and-over top stars. Dave says it looks like Guerrero, Mysterio, Malenko, and Benoit will probably be staying with WCW (more on that later), but Chris Jericho is still holding out and Dave won't be surprised to see him make the jump to WWF when his contract expires this year. But WCW does have that new deal with NBC that should give the company a significant boost in exposure and might help them regain some traction against WWF. Bischoff held a meeting backstage and said the company has a few other deals in the works but didn't want to reveal them all yet for fear of them leaking out, but he did mention a Saturday morning cartoon show and that the NBC deal was for 6 network specials during the year. He also said that there are 2 movies in the works. Dave says if all that's true, it should be pretty big for WCW and would pose a challenge for WWF unless they can get their own network special to compete. But he also says all the exposure in the world won't matter if WCW's product continues to suck the way it has for the last year.
ECW has grown by leaps and bounds. A year ago, they had only done a few shows that drew 2000 people. Nowadays, that's not unusual for them to draw on a regular basis. PPV buyrates are still steady even though most of the PPVs have sucked. But that's not exclusive to ECW. He talks about how both WWF and WCW have been having mostly shitty PPVs all year too. In WCW's case, it's shitty main events, often with Hogan. In WWF's case, it's the opposite, with overlong and boring undercards, occasionally saved by good or memorable main events. But anyway, ECW is looking good right now on the surface.
In Japan, business is down for a few reasons (stale booking, less TV exposure, economic downturn, etc.) AJPW had a profitable year mostly due to all the money they made on their first Tokyo Dome show, plus Vader showing up near the end of the year gave the company a shot in the arm.
Shinya Hashimoto criticized NJPW in an interview for their plans to hold an IWGP contender tournament in February, saying it dilutes the prestige of the G-1 tournament. NJPW had warned talent not to publicly criticize the booking of the company after Kensuke Sasaki recently complained about them bringing in Atsushi Onita for the Tokyo Dome show. That resulted in Sasaki being booked against Onita at the show, where he's almost certainly going to have to do the job to him. With Hashimoto being scheduled to be in the main event, NJPW announced that they are suspending him effective immediately after the Dome show.
Other stuff to look out for in 1999: wrestling is still dealing with a serious drug issue and nobody seems willing to address it. With wrestling now being more popular than it's ever been, the business is just one significant death away from a major scandal. There's also potential labor issues. Even though guys like Sting and Scott Hall are making upwards of $1 million per year, Dave argues that they're actually underpaid. When compared to the money WWF and WCW bring in, if you compare the salaries that wrestlers make to the salaries of other athletes in the NFL or NBA, wrestlers should be earning way more than they are. In short, McMahon and Bischoff have successfully managed to keep screwing over their stars. Plus, most of them are still expected to cover their road expenses, which add up significantly and of course, they don't have health insurance. If the business continues to grow and keeps making more money but wrestler salaries don't keep pace, it might become an issue where guys start talking about unionizing. Of course, there's also the issue of top stars trying to avoid working full schedules. You shouldn't be able to demand top money and then only work part time. Dave compares it to Michael Jordan signing a new contract with the Bulls but demanding that he only has to play in 25 games.
Starrcade 98 is in the books and although it wasn't the worst show ever, it was yet again another bad WCW PPV in a long line of them. The show was built around 2 matches: Kevin Nash ending Goldberg's streak and Ric Flair fighting Eric Bischoff. 6 out of 9 matches ended with outside interference, there were a million ref bumps, and it just got old by the end of the show.
Other notes from the show: it opened with a couple of really great matches with Billy Kidman having a star-making performance but the crowd just didn't seem to care. Ric Flair had to bounce around and sell for Eric Bischoff and then ended up losing the match due to outside interference, because apparently Ric Flair is willing to lose any match. And of course, Kevin Nash beat Goldberg in the main event to win the title and end his streak. They announced Goldberg's record at 173-0, apparently forgetting that just 2 weeks ago, he had a match on Nitro end in a no contest draw, so if anything, it should be 173-0-1. Anyway, there were some vocal anti-Goldberg fans but he was still far more over than Nash was with the crowd, who got a massive "Nash sucks!" chant at one point. And it ended with Scott Hall hitting Goldberg with the cattle prod and Nash winning. The crowd was mostly booing this as the show went off the air.
Dave gives a long career recap for Jaguar Yokota, who announced her retirement and was regarded as one of the best female wrestlers in history. She was one of the biggest stars for All Japan Women during the 1980s when they were at their height and became a bit of a pop culture icon in Japan as well. She initially retired in 1986 and became a trainer, and is responsible for training many of the best women's wrestlers ever (Manami Toyota, Kyoko Inoue, etc.) Then she came out of retirement for a few years before announcing now that she was retiring again (she eventually came out of retirement again in 2004 and still wrestles a pretty full schedule to this day. Also, Dave mentions that she made news when she posed nude a couple of years ago and, well, google is your friend if you're curious). Dave ends it by saying that during her time, she was not only the best female wrestler but probably better than almost every male wrestler at the time also.
There's some rumors about the physical health of Giant Baba. AJPW announced that he will be missing the upcoming January tour. Baba was recently hospitalized and said to be suffering from a bad cold, but AJPW's statement said that he is now out of the hospital and recovering at home.
The plan for NJPW's Jan. 4 Tokyo Dome show is for Keiji Muto to win the IGWP title from Scott Norton. Eric Bischoff isn't happy about it, since Norton is a WCW guy, but he doesn't really get a lot of say in the matter so NJPW basically told him to go drink a tall glass of shut the fuck up and deal with it.
The New York Post ran a story on legendary wrestler Wahoo McDaniel, saying that he is on kidney dialysis and is awaiting a transplant as well as diabetes issues (yeah, he ends up dying from kidney issues in 2002).
The actual charges against New Jack in the Mass Transit case are "felonious assault and battery with a deadly weapon." A jury trial will begin in April. New Jack faces a maximum of 11 years in prison if convicted.
WCW's deal with NBC is for 6 shows throughout the year, although if ratings aren't good, NBC can cancel at any time. NBC wants all the shows to take place in Las Vegas and they also want its own network stars to appear for cross-promotional purposes. The first two dates are scheduled for 2/14 and 3/28 which not-so-coincidentally are the same dates of WWF's next 2 PPVs (St. Valentine's Day Massacre and Wrestlemania) so they'll be going head-to-head against those. Both of those shows cause travel problems for WCW though because they take place on Sunday nights and they already have Nitro scheduled in Tampa and Toronto the following nights, so everyone will have to perform and then fly across the country to get to the next show. And in the important bit of news that no one realizes yet: this is all because of the ongoing NBA lockout. WCW shows on NBC are taking the place of previously scheduled prime-time NBA games. So if the lockout gets settled and the NBA season resumes, then those dates may be changed (which is exactly what happened and is part--but not all--of why this WCW/NBC deal died. But we'll get there). For what it's worth, NBC reportedly had talked with WWF about this deal also but the talks went nowhere because NBC didn't want anything to do with the WWF's raunchy product and WWF evidently wasn't willing to tone down. In Bischoff's meeting with the locker room, he once again expressed his belief that WWF's current direction is only helping in the short term but will work against them in the long haul.
Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, and Eddie Guerrero haven't yet signed new contract extensions but have all pretty much agreed to new terms and should be signing soon. They're all for $1.35 million total over 3 years ($400,000 the first year, $450,000 the next, $500,000 the last). WWF was interested in all 3 of them, especially Benoit, but the WCW guaranteed money was too much to turn down. It's believed that Bischoff will probably push all 3 of them pretty hard because he has to justify paying them that much. Rey Mysterio is also expected to re-sign soon although he's been offered significantly less than the other 3 (but still more than what WWF will pay him).
Nitro notes: Dave thinks Raven should give up wrestling and pursue an acting career because he's that good. Larry Zbyszko dubbed Norman Smiley's dance "the big wiggle." Nash cut a promo and was booed out of the building and drowned out by Goldberg chants. And Randy Savage made his return, "with his new hair and new body and new girlfriend with her Pamela Lee hair and body."
Goldberg has a role in the upcoming Jean Claude Van Damme movie Universal Soldier II. In an interesting note, Sable auditioned for a role in the movie but they picked ESPN fitness expert Kiana Tom for the role instead.
The plan right now appears to be that Kevin Nash will hand Hulk Hogan the WCW title at next week's Nitro. The idea is to essentially reboot the NWO angle and go back to what worked in 1996 when it first started: a small, but strong NWO (Hogan, Nash, Hall, Scott Steiner and Lex Luger) against a strong WCW, led by the Horsemen and Goldberg.
The latest on Shawn Michaels' back injury is that doctors have told him that he needs surgery to fuse the discs in his back. He's scheduled the surgery in a couple of weeks and there's no way he'll be working Wrestlemania and it's questionable now if he'll ever wrestle again, or even if he does, how limited he will be.
Plans for a Bart Gunn vs. Tank Abbott Brawl For All match have fallen through because Abbott was asking for $55,000 to do it and WWF felt that was way too much. They've tossed around the idea of doing Bart Gunn against Kimo Leopoldo also. They'd also love to do Gunn vs. Butterbean, but he's still in high demand as a boxer and it's hard to fit in his schedule but they do still have a contract with Butterbean to work one more show that they never used (they always wanted to do him vs. Marc Mero but it never happened). There's also been talk of Gunn vs. Ken Shamrock or Steve Blackman, but they don't want to risk either of those men getting injured in a shoot fight.
At recent house shows, they did an arm wrestling angle with Vince McMahon arm wrestling Mankind. At the first show, the gimmick was whoever won would get to kiss Debra. McMahon won and then refused to kiss Debra, acting like he was too good for it. The next night, they did the same angle, except this time it was Sable. McMahon won and this time, he did kiss Sable.
They shot 2 covers for Sable's upcoming Playboy. One is just her in her black leather outfit. The other is her nude from the waist down and using the Women's title to cover herself. No word which one they'll use (they ended up using the first one, but the other picture was used as the cover of a Raw magazine
Don Callis (Jackyl) has a weekly column in the Winnipeg Sun and had this to say in this week's issue:
Professional sports agents have injected themselves into big-time pro wrestling and as a result the wrestling industry is being dragged kicking and screaming into the real world of pro sports. Why kicking and screaming? Because none of the promoters want to deal with anyone who has not been brainwashed by the fantasy world of the business, much less a hard-nosed agent who is a tough negotiator. Most promoters see themselves as intellectual superiors to the talent and have personal relationships built up which work in their favor during negotiations. Wrestlers, on the whole, are dreamers, who want to believe in themselves, and will sometimes sell their souls for a dream or a promise by a promoter, which, of course, does not make for shrewd negotiating. At the end of the day, if it's not in writing then the promise is not worth the breath it took to make it. Promoters by and large have had an easy time with negotiations because of these reasons, until recently. With professional wrestling attaining levels of success and mainstream marketability unequalled in the history of the business, agents who heretofore might not have touched a client involved in wrestling, are not making above making money for both themselves and the wrestlers and the promoters hate it. In fact, all WWF talent recently received a memo congratulating us on how good business has been, etc. etc. but buried in the memo was a cryptic remark about how lamentable it is that some of the talent were enlisting the help of agents, because it robs the poor wrestler of the chance to learn how to handle his own business. Right. And having a doctor operate on you is deeply disturbing because it robs the patient of the opportunity to perform surgery on himself. Governor-elect Jesse Ventura may have been the first to use an agent for wrestling, and that decision no doubt contributed to his current lack of a good relationship with the WWF. Ventura's agent, lawyer Barry Bloom, currently represents, among others, X-Pac and Kevin Nash. Bloom has been successful due to the fact that unlike most lawyers, he understands the wrestling business, much to the chagrin of promoters for all three big wrestling companies. In the recent documentary Wrestling With Shadows, Bret Hart stated that the WWF treated their talent like circus animals. Apparently some of the animals are getting smart.
As you might expect, this column didn't exactly endear Callis to the company and word is the two sides are already negotiating his release from his contract.
WWF is hoping for The Giant to debut in mid-February in time to get him an angle for Wrestlemania. There's concern about his conditioning and attitude though. They wanted him to lose weight and he lost about 30 pounds and then almost immediately gained it back. The WWF schedule is significantly harder than WCW's so they're worried about whether he has the discipline for the job.
Lots of letters about how great Wrestling With Shadows is again, and one guy who writes in with his elaborate theory on why he still thinks it was all a work, which Dave just pokes a million holes in again. Bottom line: not a work. Stop it with that nonsense.