January 03, 2000
- It looks like Goldberg will be out anywhere from 10-15 weeks after tearing his arm to shreds in an angle gone wrong on Thunder last week. During the angle, he had a small metal pipe hidden in his fist to help him bust out the windows but during one of the first windows he broke, it flew out of his hands into the limo. And with the camera rolling, he couldn't just stop. So he kept going and struggled to break one of the windows using only his fist and, in the process, slicing his arm to shreds. He ended up getting plastic surgery done on the arm that night and needed 40 stitches to close the wound. Goldberg was supposed to face Rick Steiner at NJPW's Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show this week, but that's obviously out of the question now. WCW is sending Randy Savage in his place, but it's a big loss for NJPW because his Japan debut was one of the biggest selling points of the show, although Savage is a big enough name that it's a decent replacement. NJPW still hopes to bring in Goldberg for the next Dome show in April. On the WCW end of things, he's definitely out for Souled Out and SuperBrawl and he might not be back in time for Uncensored in March either. Goldberg's injury also leaves a big hole in the babyface side of things. He was scheduled to face Bret Hart again at the next PPV but now it will likely be changed to Sid or Benoit or maybe Flair, although he's still trying to get out of his contract. They also thought about bringing Hogan back but he doesn't feel it's the right time for his return yet so probably not (shit's about to get a lot more chaotic in the next couple of weeks before the next PPV. And poor NJPW to this day never got their Goldberg match that always wanted, although he worked a few matches for AJPW in 2002).
- WATCH: Goldberg is injured on Thunder
- Sports Illustrated listed the top 50 athletes of the century from each U.S. state, 50-per-state, and several pro wrestlers made the list. Frank Gotch (#27 from Iowa and chosen because during his days, wrestling was believed to be a legitimate shoot sport), Danny Hodge (#26 from Oklahoma, for his amateur wrestling accomplishments), Verne Gagne (#24 from Minnesota, also for amateur wrestling), and Bronko Nagurski (#1 from Minnesota, for being one of college and pro football's greatest legends during the 30s and 40s who later quit the NFL in his prime to be a pro wrestler full-time). Needless to say, most of these names were added for reasons other than wrestling because Sports Illustrated frowns upon that. And none of the bigger stars from the more modern, fake 'rasslin-eras were included. Dave says that's kinda bullshit considering there were a couple of famous Harlem Globetrotters players included, who spent their entire careers playing "worked" basketball games for entertainment, so what's the difference? In fact, one of the Globetrotters on the list was from North Carolina, and Dave doesn't grasp how you can include that guy, but not, say, Ric Flair. But whatever. There were a bunch of other names on the list who have dabbled in pro wrestling (Babe Ruth was a wrestling referee on occasion, Lawrence Taylor has worked a Wrestlemania, Leon Spinks was a former boxer who did a lot of matches, etc.). Dave writes bios for all these people, detailing mostly their wrestling careers rather than their other sports careers.
- Dave announces that they will be doing some Wrestler of the Century and Observer Decade Awards in the coming weeks. As far as Wrestler of the Century, they've narrowed it down to 10 candidates: Andre The Giant, Giant Baba, Ric Flair, Frank Gotch, Hulk Hogan, Antonio Inoki, Strangler Lewis, Rikidozan, El Santo, and Lou Thesz. Of course, this list isn't everybody and if you want to vote for anyone else, feel free. Dave argues his case for any of those 10 guys and also explains why other people (Gorgeous George, Bruno Sammartino, Buddy Rogers, Verne Gagne, Steve Austin, Jim Londos, etc.) didn't make the top 10 list.
- The Jim Carrey movie "Man on the Moon" about Andy Kaufman is promoting itself heavily to wrestling fans. Commercials focusing mostly on the wrestling aspect of the movie aired repeatedly during both Raw and Nitro. The overall movie has gotten mixed reviews, but Jim Carrey has gotten almost unanimous praise for his portrayal of Kaufman. Dave says Lawler did a great job playing himself and Jim Ross did well portraying the Lance Russell role. Dave recaps the story of the Kaufman/Lawler angle back in the early 80s. Kaufman was a huge wrestling fan growing up and was obsessed with Buddy Rogers, and even once got Rogers to appear on SNL with him. He first approached Vince McMahon Sr. about working an angle, but was turned down. Bill Apter suggested he contact Lawler in Memphis and the rest was history. He recaps the women wrestling angle, the first Lawler match, the worked injury that led everyone to thinking it was real which Kaufman sold by wearing a neck brace everywhere he went for months (he even wanted to wear it on the show Taxi but producers wouldn't allow it), the David Letterman angle, etc. Contrary to how people remember it these days, the angle was never a huge success. It did good business, but it didn't sell out the Coliseum the same way Lawler did against other big stars. Dave also talks about how the mainstream coverage, while a big deal at the time, wasn't THAT big of a story and how WWF gets more mainstream coverage in any given week now than Lawler/Kaufman ever did. And it also led to diminishing returns because Kaufman never wanted to quit and he would literally show up to shows unannounced and Lawler would put him on the show. Eventually, fans kinda started getting tired of it but Kaufman loved it so much that he kept coming back and Lawler would never tell him no and eventually, it even started to hurt business. It wasn't until his cancer diagnosis that Kaufman finally gave up on wrestling.
- Nitro starts back as a 2-hour show next week, which is just in time because this past week's Nitro did the lowest rating of Vince Russo's tenure since he took over several months ago, and it only barely beat the lowest rated Nitro of Nash's tenure. Dropping the 3rd hour should artificially inflate the numbers because it will change the way the ratings are averaged, but it's still not looking great.
- Some big media outlets in Japan held a voting a bunch of year-end and decade-end awards. For Japanese Man of the Century, Rikidozan finished in 14th place, behind names like the Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka, famous baseball player Shigeo Nagashima, etc. It also listed Giant Baba's death as the 4th biggest news story in Japan of 1999 (not just in sports, but overall) and the #1 wrestling story of the decade. Dave lists all the other top 10 wrestling stories of the decade results (formation of SWS, NJPW vs. UWFI feud, Inoki retiring, Ogawa vs. Hashimoto, etc.)
- Insane Clown Posse held an event called Juggalo Championshit Wrestling (not a typo) two weeks ago in Detroit. There were barbed wire matches, thumbtacks, tables, etc. ICP faced off against 2 Doinks in the main event (portrayed by indie wrestlers Tarek The Great and Truth Martini). King Kong Bundy, Balls Mahoney, Robert Gibson, Ricky Morton, and Raven all worked the show as well. In fact, neither Raven or Balls were advertised. Dave says this is like the opposite of most indie shows where big names are announced but don't appear. ICP had big names and had them appear as a surprise (this was later released by them on video under the name JCW Vol. 1 and features the usual hilarious commentary from ICP).
- WATCH: JCW Vol. 1
- Dave gives us some family tree info on the various Samoans in WWF. Afa has several sons. Two of them wrestle as Samu and L.A. Smooth. He has a 3rd son who is 14 who already worked a match in Europe and will surely end up in the business as well (yup, that was Manu). Sika has a son named Matthew who has wrestled a bit in Japan and ECW (that would be Rosey). Sika also has another son who hasn't started wrestling yet and Dave doesn't mention him, but you've probably heard of him.
- Chris Candido and Tammy Sytch are expected to start working for XPW in California later this month.
- The ECW show on TNN on Christmas Eve was the best episode of the show since it began. Cyrus announced he is working for TNN. Two awesome matches. Dave says Super Crazy has gotten over huge and they need to hurry up and push him as a top star because the fans are ready to buy it.
- Notes from Nitro: the show this week was dubbed New Years Evil Nitro and was hot garbage. The tag titles were declared vacant for some vaguely fake-shoot reason and they decided to do a Lethal Lottery tournament for it. Dave says Lethal Lottery was one of the most famous flops in PPV history every time they did it and now it's flopped on free TV also. After all the first round matches, he thinks even if they had been specifically trying to destroy interest in the tag titles, they couldn't have done a better job than this Nitro did. Nearly every one of the matches ended with one of the guys turning on his partner, because basically nobody seems to even WANT to be tag champions. The Wall looks like a "sober giant Sandman after a charisma bypass operation." Then it ended with the big angle of Scott Steiner joining the NWO. Dave thinks it's sad to watch Russo rehashing the same ideas that Bischoff did better a year ago. Then a monster truck ran over Sid's car, presumably killing him but Dave says the only thing in danger of dying is this company if things continue to be this bad.
- Jeff Jarrett faced Chris Benoit in a ladder match at Starrcade and it wasn't originally supposed to be Jarrett. Russo, Bill Busch, and JJ Dillon all asked Ric Flair to return and do it but he refused because, for starters, he wants out of his WCW contract anyway and secondly because they didn't have a long-term plan beyond that match. Then they tried to sweeten the deal by telling Flair he would win. But that backfired because Flair didn't think it was right to beat Benoit when he's so close to knocking on the glass ceiling of being a main eventer, so that led to him especially not wanting to do it. WCW won't give Flair his release and in storyline, he was apparently buried in the desert weeks ago (yeah) so that's the explanation for him being off TV. But Flair has agreed to still work house shows and is trying to be professional about it. His WCW contract expires in Feb. of 2001 but there's a clause that kicks in next month where his pay drops (from $750,000 per year to $500,000 per year) and the contract calls for him to take on a backstage role rather than wrestle. Russo wants him back as a wrestler though, because no matter how much WCW has tried to bury him over the years, on a segment-by-segment basis, Flair continues to be one of WCW's top ratings draws.
- There's a lot of negativity in the locker room towards Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara over making much of the show about themselves with the Powers That Be gimmick. So this week on Nitro, that was phased out completely and Ferrara's Oklahoma character seems to be dropped also. There's a lot of people who are also still looking at Russo and wondering why things haven't changed for the better. When he was hired, he promised to turn the company around in 6 months. It's been about 3 months so far and absolutely nothing has improved and ratings are still in the gutter and there's no positive signs of anything turning around any time soon. Plus, everyone sees through the "standards & practices" excuse. For what it's worth, Russo does have a pretty valid reason if things don't improve for the next couple of months. The whole company was being built around Goldberg and with his injury, Russo actually has a legit excuse to hang his hat on now. There's also a lot of the same complaints about Russo basically booking for internet fans and taking ideas from stuff he reads online and not listening to suggestions from people within the company.
- Scott Hall got a lot of heat from his appearance on Thunder and latest word is he is suspended. If you watched the show, you may have noticed a lengthy part during the opening promo that was hastily edited and they showed vague crowd shots. Apparently, Hall did his old NWO survey ("did you come to see Goldberg or us?" basically). Hall was ordered to try not to get a face reaction and was specifically told not to do his survey thing, but he did it anyway. Goldberg was furious because he felt like Hall was trying to undermine him and get over at his expense and he got into Hall's face about it backstage after. Russo wants the new NWO to get over as actual heels, not "cool" heels that make everyone else look bad. Hall has a knee injury and needs to get it scoped so he's going to be out for a couple of months anyway, so the suspension is pretty much just cosmetic at this point.
- Phil Mushnick wrote another article, mostly focusing on the controversy of Atlanta Braves baseball player John Rocker over comments he recently made during an interview (just check his Wikipedia page if you don't know the story. Spoiler: he's kind of a dick). Anyway, the Braves (owned by Turner) are trying to distance themselves from Rocker's comments and there's been talk about punishing him. Mushnick, of course, tied it to wrestling and said Turner-owned WCW does far worse every week.
- Raw featured a bunch of double-date skits that ended with Mark Henry and Mae Young in one bed and Harvey Wippleman with Moolah in another bed, all in the same hotel room. I only mention that so I can paste Dave's hilarious comment: "There are a lot of gross thoughts in this world, but I can't come up with many worse than having sex in a bed with anyone, let alone Mae Young, while Bruno Lauer is doing Moolah a few feet away."
- Various WWF notes: the Hulk Hogan pinball machine at WWF's Times Square restaurant was recently removed. Matt Hardy recently suffered a broken orbital bone. TSN's "Off The Record" has a bunch of awards for its show. Mick Foley won guest of the year and Edge was named Sexiest Male Guest. Davey Boy Smith missed TV this week claiming he was changing his tire and the car fell off the jack and landed on him, so he's injured I guess. Ken Shamrock is cleared to return from his neck injury but they don't have any plans for him (they never do).
- Someone writes in talking about how the world titles are meaningless. The WWF title changed hands more times in 1999 than it did during entire decades of the 60s and 70s combined. Same thing for WCW's title, which changed hands more in 1999 than the NWA title during the 60s and 70s combined.
- Other letters, almost all about Russo. Complaints about Russo booking things just to shit on his old WWF co-workers (Vincent was renamed "Shane", the "Gerald and Patrick" characters, and of course, Ferrara as Oklahoma. Plus bringing in Steve Williams just to help them shit on J.R. some more). Says it's obvious that Vince McMahon apparently kept Russo's more stupid tendencies in check because he's out of control in WCW without McMahon to reel him in. Other people complaining about the lack of push Russo is giving to the Mexican stars, the dozens of plot holes in every angle Russo books, how Russo doesn't care about even the basic fundamentals of what wrestling is, no logic or long-term planning behind any storyline, and so on and on. Someone else says Russo and Ferrara clearly aren't geniuses and Nitro is nothing but a 2nd rate shitty copy of Raw these days. Someone else writes in and says he actually thinks Nitro has improved but he found Russo's comments about nobody wanting to see Mexican or Japanese wrestlers to be more than a little racist. Someone else doesn't like him using racism to get heat, like the recent pinata on a pole match for instance. TL;DR - WCW sucks, Russo sucks, the sky is blue.