January 10, 2000
- NJPW's Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show is in the books. Despite a lukewarm build, it ended up being a surprisingly big success, selling out the Dome and wasn't heavily papered. WCW officials JJ Dillon and Paul Orndorff were in attendance, along with Chris Benoit, Randy Savage, and Rick Steiner who all worked the show. Benoit had at one point pitched a match between he and Bret Hart for the WCW title on this show, but WCW management shot it down. Instead, Benoit lost to Hiroyoshi Tenzan, while Rick Steiner defeated Randy Savage who was filling in for Goldberg in what was said to be a terrible match. A video was played with Goldberg, showing his arm injury and stitches and apologizing for not being able to make the show but promised he would be there at some point this year. Beyond that, Dave recaps the rest of the show. (Here you go. The 3rd-to-last match of Savage's career. He worked 2 more WCW matches after this. A house show match and a battle royal on Thunder. Then he sorta just showed up in a match in TNA in 2004 and that was it for him. But all of those were bullshit nothing matches. For all intents and purposes, this is the last significant match of Randy Savage's career).
- WATCH: Randy Savage vs. Rick Steiner (NJPW Jan. 4, 2000 - Tokyo Dome)
- 1999 was clearly the biggest year in wrestling history as far as major mainstream media coverage goes. By other standards, it's still unclear. Ticket sales are for sure down (WWF is holding steady from 1998 numbers but WCW live attendance has tanked and ECW was declining until late in the year when it leveled out again after they got the TNN deal. TV ratings on average are also down. Again, this is mostly to blame on WCW, because their decline has been greater than WWF's gain. PPV, same story. WWF holding steady, WCW numbers free falling. But revenue-wise, 1999 was the biggest year in history. There's a lot more revenue streams than in the past (internet stuff, video games, higher ad revenue, etc.) that adds up to more money coming in than every before in the history of the business.
- From here, Dave basically predicts the year 2000 for various companies. WWF is huge and only going to get bigger. They already have a built in story for Wrestlemania with Rock almost certainly winning the title at Wrestlemania (lol) and taking his spot on the throne as the biggest star in the industry now that Austin's on the shelf and his career is still in question. Mick Foley is likely going to retire, Austin will return eventually and turn heel. Triple H has finally started to click as a headliner and a lot of the undercard guys have superstar buzz around them. The only things that can really derail WWF right now would be a bunch of injuries or a major scandal. Otherwise, they're pretty much untouchable right now.
- ECW had an interesting 1999. Early in the year, they were bouncing checks left and right and were extremely close to going out of business before the TNN deal literally saved the promotion. ECW's ratings started far lower than TNN expected, but they have gradually been growing (although still nowhere close to what TNN hoped, even though they're still the highest rated TNN show on Friday nights). The ECW product has been getting better, with more of a focus on in-ring action and good matches and the ratings are ticking up ever so slightly. So things are looking stable for them right now at least (it's not gonna be an easy year for ECW either).
- And then....there's WCW. These days, when it comes to popularity among wrestling fans, they're closer to ECW than they are to WWF. There's a lot of people within the company who openly feel like bringing in Vince Russo was a huge mistake, while others feel it wouldn't be fair to get rid of him after only 3 months. Nitro still does good ratings for a cable TV show, but compared to the numbers they used to do, they've had a HUGE fall. WCW has been in existence for about 12 years and has really only been successful for about 3 of those years. Basically, we all know how much of a dumpster fire WCW is right now. But they still have stronger financial backing than any other wrestling promotion, and for that reason alone, they should be the #1 company in the world. And 18 months ago, they were. Now, they're nowhere close and everyone knows all the reasons why. The struggle now is to regain that position and Dave doesn't see that happening any time soon because time and time again, WCW has proven to be a company that stubbornly refuses to ever learn from its mistakes. The forecast for WCW in 2000 doesn't look good at all, Dave decides.
- This week's Nitro was the 3rd lowest rated episode of the show in several years. On the plus side, it's a slight improvement the week before, which was the 2nd lowest rated. So....yay Russo?
- A Lucha Libre show in Mexico featured the debut of several wrestlers based on Pokemon characters. "I guess somebody was going to do that at some point," Dave says.
- Nikkan Sports, one of the biggest sports publications in Japan, had a vote for match of the decade. The winner was Misawa vs. Kobashi from Oct. 31, 1998 in AJPW, which got 21.8% of the vote. Dave doesn't really disagree. He gave it 5 stars himself at the time and it won the Observer Match of the Year award for 1998. Giant Baba at the time called it the greatest wrestling match to ever take place. Second place went to Keiji Muto vs. Nobuhiko Takada from 1995 which was a good match, but was only voted so high because of how big a deal it was at the time (sorta like Rock/Hogan wasn't exactly what you might call a great match, but it's still legendary). Another 1997 match from Misawa vs. Kobashi was 3rd place.
- WATCH: Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kenta Kobashi - Oct. 31, 1998 (Nikkan Sports Match of the Decade)
- The film "Beyond The Mat" is in contention for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. The film made the final 12 list for documentaries. A final vote will be done this week to narrow the list down to 5 actual nominees. The movie is expected to be released in theaters in March. The film has also been listed by the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times as being among the best movies of the year, of any type.
- Dennis Coraluzzo is no longer part of the NWA after leaving the organization over a money dispute. Something to do with money owed to NWA champion Naoya Ogawa, among other things (and I don't think I've seen his name since in any of the Observers I've covered. He eventually dies in 2001 so I guess we'll get there).
- Jerry Lawler is no longer affiliated with Power Pro Wrestling in Memphis (he actually hasn't been for months and I just never mentioned it). Anyway, Lawler is instead planning to run in competition against Power Pro. He has lined up a TV deal on a different local network in Memphis and is working with Nashville promoter Bert Prentice to start up a new promotion. Dave thinks it's interesting, because Lawler works for WWF. And Power Pro is basically a full blown developmental promotion for WWF, and it's weird that Lawler is going to be running shows against them (Lawler ends up taking the WWF developmental deal with him, nearly killing PPW in the process).
- An Orlando newspaper ran a story on Gordon Solie, talking about his health issues. He can no longer breathe through his mouth or nose after his surgery and instead, he now breathes through a hole in his throat. He also can't talk anymore. The story talked about Solie's lifelong love of cigarettes and blamed that for his condition. Smoking is bad, mmmkay.
- Dawn Marie injured her ankle while filming a commercial for the new ECW video game. They were filming a catfight scene with her and Francine when it happened.
- Early numbers are in for Starrcade and it doesn't look good. Seems the PPV did around a 0.3 buyrate which is downright disastrous for the biggest PPV of the year and is only slightly above the recent Fall Brawl PPV, which was the lowest PPV buyrate in the history of either WWF or WCW. So that would mean Starrcade is likely going to make the list as the 2nd lowest PPV buyrate ever. Dave says there's not really a good excuse either because they had months to build up the Goldberg/Hart match.
- As you may have noticed on Nitro this week, Terry Funk debuted doing an angle. Interestingly enough, the angle was offered to Ric Flair first, and Dave lays out what the plan for the angle was, which would basically end with Flair yet again being portrayed as the dumb commissioner and doing jobs to put over Kevin Nash and the NWO again. Flair obviously turned it down, so they offered it to Terry Funk instead and he accepted the role. Flair has been off TV for months now but has still been working house shows, but after this, he was pulled from house shows as well and, once again, his WCW future is in jeopardy. It's no secret that he's been wanting to leave to go to WWF, but WCW won't release him. Speaking of, Hall and Nash are openly wanting to leave as well, but same situation. WCW won't let them because they don't want to give the impression that people are trying to flee the sinking ship, although that's exactly what's happening.
- Notes from Nitro: former Nitro Girl Skye is now a valet for the Standards & Practices group, going by the name Miss Hancock (that would be Stacy Keibler). The tag team title tournament, which Dave calls "the single worst tournament in the history of our great sport" continued to suck and ended with David Flair and Crowbar winning it all, to become the "worst tag team champions in the history of WCW." Terry Funk was introduced as the new commissioner, and the crowd audibly started chanting "We want Flair!" during this segment. David Flair was all over this show, and boy does he suck. Plus there was a bunch of convoluted shit with Buff Bagwell and Kanyon and Vampiro and shit where everybody kept turning on each other and Dave just thinks it was all so stupid and bad.
- Notes from Thunder: Ed Ferrara's Oklahoma character is back and is now feuding with Madusa over the cruiserweight title, just to show how much of a joke that belt is now. The NWO allegedly kidnapped Arn Anderson and had been torturing him for 3 days. Dave wonders if they were making him watch Nitro and Thunder episodes. The Wall faced Jerry Flynn in a "shoot fight rules" match which was said to mean the match could only end by tap out or knock out, but not by pinfall. So of course, The Wall pinned Flynn to win. Bret Hart fought Terry Funk in a hardcore match and Dave thinks it was kinda sad to see Bret out there doing meaningless garbage matches (for what it's worth, Bret was walking around in a fog during all this anyway. He writes about it in his book but this is after the Goldberg concussion and he's wrestling while suffering the effects from it. He also suffered another concussion in this match. This was basically one of Bret's last matches before retiring. Oh, and on that note...)
- Bret Hart suffered a concussion during the match with Goldberg at Starrcade. No word how bad (pretty bad, as it turns out). Speaking of Hart, in the angle on Nitro last week where Sid was run over in the car by the big monster truck, they wanted Hart to drive the truck and even explained where Sid would be in the car so as to not run him over. Hart, as you might expect, pointed out how fucking stupid and insanely dangerous that was (guy kinda has a sore spot for dumb stunts) and told them to hire professional stunt men for that shit because he's a wrestler. Apparently, upon being put in their place, Russo realized Bret was right and apologized to him for even asking him.
- Alternative Press magazine named the Insane Clown Posse its Band of the Year. In an interview in the magazine, they talked about wrestling a little, with Violent J saying, "One thing came out of wrestling. We're addicted to pain killers now. But just on the road. The thing is, we're still, like, super nerds. We wouldn't know how to get any pills ourselves. If we were going to, we'd be asking people, 'Did you get an operation recently?'"
- Perry Saturn caught some heat within the company after doing a radio interview where he called Sting the most overrated wrestler in the business and said he's been doing the same match for 10 years.
- WCW's Ready To Rumble movie is tentatively scheduled to come out in April. Chris Kanyon handled a lot of the choreography for the movie and also acted as a stunt double in some scenes. Speaking of Kanyon, he really put over Lash Leroux during a recent interview, saying that Leroux is married with a family but before his WCW debut, he used to drive 90 miles, both ways, to go to the Power Plant for training every single day (I always liked Lash Leroux, it's a shame his career never really took off after WCW).
- Ric Flair's youngest daughter Ashley made the Cheerleading All-American team in her age group at a cheerleading competition in Nashville recently (that would be 13-year-old, future bad friend Charlotte).
- Magazine fitness model Midajah claimed on her website that she has signed with WCW to be a new Nitro Girl (signed yes, but they had bigger plans than Nitro Girl for her).
- If you thought Starrcade was bad in English, you should have watched it in German. I'll just let Dave explain: "Usually, they get the video feed from the U.S. and German announcing is done in a studio in Munich. Anyway, for the first time, the German crew was in Washington, DC live. The regular commentators were joined by a comedian named Tom Gerhardt, who was very popular in Germany ten years ago because he used to go on stage dressed as a giant penis and pretend to ejaculate on the audience. His fame with that skit was very short lasting. Anyway, he was doing heel commentary to get himself over, calling Disco Inferno gay, talking about Madusa having "nice tits" and said in commentary that none of the punches touch the other wrestlers, that pro wrestling is all fake and they he could beat any of them up. He even stood up when Benoit made the open challenge to anyone and challenged him. This was all done to build to a match where Gerhardt will wrestle Berlyn on 2/12 in Oberhausen, Germany on the WCW house show."
- WATCH: C'mon, we all know we want to see it (NSFW-ish)
- Notes from Raw: Stephanie McMahon declared Chyna and Chris Jericho as co-IC champions. Dave says this angle is right out of the 1970s Los Angeles playbook when that territory did a similar angle. It was a flop back then, probably will be again now. Triple H won the WWF title from Big Show, as expected. And the show was in Miami, meaning Rock was insanely popular, more than he usually is.
- WWF's website listed the Hardyz vs. Edge & Christian ladder match as the WWF match of the year. This leads Dave to rant about how WWF pushes their young stars with things like this, while WCW doesn't. WCW's best match of 1999 was Juventud Guerrera vs. Blitzkrieg. But after that match happened, WCW literally never mentioned it again. And in fact, almost immediately after, both guys were taken off TV for a bit and neither of them worked PPVs for the rest of the year, and then Blitzkrieg was quietly released and isn't even wrestling anymore, he has a computer desk job now. Dave says this may be the first time ever that a rookie (Blitzkrieg) is going to get a Match of the Year nomination in the Observer Awards and yet not even have a job in wrestling by the end of that year.
- Vince McMahon did an interview saying that they may be filing a lawsuit against the PTC group. Dave sarcastically says "good luck on that one," but I think he ends up having to eat those words. WWF does end up suing them and settling out of court. PTC had to pay WWF a lot of money and issue a public apology.
- Mick Foley said in an interview that he plans to write another book. In the same interview, he was asked about retirement and said, "I plan to retire soon, but I just don't feel I can leave the company hanging with Steve Austin out. With all modesty, to lose Mick Foley on the heels of losing Steve Austin would put the company in a tough position. So I'm going to hang in there for a few more months."
- The letters section is HUGE this week. Guess they were short on other news and had to fill pages. Steve Sims, the Observer's resident Lucha Libre expert, writes in to talk about the top Lucha Libre stories of 1999 and of the 90s as a whole. Lots of letters about Vince Russo. None of them good. One guy says it's clear who the creative genius behind WWF's popularity is. Vince Russo went to WCW, has shoved Jeff Jarrett down everyone's throats, pushed Meng and Tank Abbott, reformed the NWO with all the same old names, and brought back Roddy Piper, all to no success. Meanwhile, Vince McMahon managed to get Moolah and Mae Young over as bigger stars than any of those WCW names. Everything WCW is doing is basically just copying WWF, but badly. David Flair and Crowbar are basically Al Snow and Head. Buzzkill is Road Dogg. Lex Luger is Mr. Ass. Jim Duggan is Mankind, etc. (come to think of it, looking back at the way those guys were booked at the time, this is actually dead on and it never even occurred to me at the time).
- A whole assortment of letters about lots of other stuff too. Owen Hart. Dynamite Kid's book. Andy Kaufman. ECW's issues on TNN (someone writes in arguing that ECW's ratings are hurt by being on TNN, which most people consider "hillbilly TV." Plus the show in Friday nights and for a show that's trying to attract teenage viewers, you're not gonna get a lot of teenagers who are home watching TV on Friday nights). Someone writes in saying Jeff Hardy is entertaining but he's going to be crippled like Dynamite Kid in 10 years at the rate he's throwing his body off of things. Speaking of Jeff Hardy, a friend of his named Thomas Simpson (who helped Jeff and Matt start OMEGA back in the day) writes in and talks about Jeff. He says he's been his friend for several years and says Jeff doesn't do drugs, doesn't drunk, doesn't party, and takes care of his body. He basically spends a paragraph putting over both Matt and Jeff as hardworking dedicated guys who he knows personally and swears they will be around for a long time and will be incredibly successful.