Wrestling Observer Rewinder

February 14, 2000

Vince McMahon made headlines this week by announcing that he's planning to start his own football league called the XFL. Last year, McMahon failed in negotiations to buy the Canadian Football League. McMahon had been contacted last February about purchasing the Toronto Argonauts team, but McMahon said he'd rather just buy the whole league. Several teams, particularly ones that are losing money in recent years, wanted to hear him out but the majority of team owners were concerned that McMahon would change the rules and pull out of smaller Canadian markets in order to expand into the U.S. so they didn't want to sell and the discussions fell apart. Before that, back in 1998, Vince had inquired about purchasing the Minnesota Vikings, but never made an official offer and it was seemingly never more than just an idea. The new XFL was announced as having 8 teams and will probably end up being the place for players who aren't quite good enough to cut it in the NFL. It's scheduled to start in February 2001. The announcement sent WWF stock prices crashing and McMahon's personal WWF stock worth dropped from $1.66 billion down to $555.9 million overnight. Most people would expect it to bounce back soon, but people said the same thing when advertisers started bailing on WWF, causing the stock to drop, and it never did bounce back even when ratings went up and the advertisers stopped leaving. So who knows. Investment analysts are recommending against WWF stock right now, even at the new low prices. McMahon took the drop in stride, saying brokerage firms that downgraded the WWF stock "don't get it" and could "kiss his ass" which is, needless to say, not normal behavior for a major corporate CEO and probably only damaged the company further. The costs and risks of starting a new football league are enormous, which is why the stock has tumbled. McMahon claimed his company will be running the XFL on its own, saying "We're not looking for partners. We don't play well with others." But other sources on the inside tell a different story and claim Vince is indeed looking for other partners and investors (this was before NBC got on board. Contrary to popular belief, this wasn't always a joint venture from the start, it was purely WWF at first).
Vince insists that this isn't meant to be competition for the NFL, but he did trash talk them during the press conference, calling them the No Fun League. There will be some rule changes in XFL, like no fair catches among other things. Rumors are each team will have a $2 million salary cap and a 40-man roster. There's talks of incentive-based contracts also. The idea is to keep costs low so they don't lose a shit-ton of money trying to hang with the NFL. Of course, as long as they're paying low salaries, they'll always be the ECW of football because they won't be able to get the best players. Anyone who is actually an NFL-quality player is going to go for the NFL money. Dave lists other failed football endeavors (USFL and WFL) and how they both failed miserably and lost huge amounts of money. Recently, NBC and Ted Turner had talks about starting their own football league but the idea was scrapped when they decided it wouldn't make sense financially. And NBC and Turner both have faaaaaaaaar deeper pockets than Vince McMahon. Anyway, XFL games will be played at major stadiums in major markets like New York, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, Miami, Orlando and two other unannounced cities. Whether Vince can fill up these major stadiums to get people to come watch minor league football remains to be seen, especially during the Feb.-Apr. season.
And of course, this all leads to questions about credibility. Will the games be worked? McMahon has denied it, but many in the media are skeptical. Dave expects them to establish characters with some of the players, probably worked gimmicks and whatnot, and rely on pro wrestling-style hype which is what Vince knows. But what happens if Vince creates a marketable personality who isn't that good on the field? That's when you have to question whether or not he'll start trying to work the games. Needless to say, Vince McMahon is the greatest promoter in wrestling history but his track record outside of wrestling is, to put it nicely, utter shit. He's failed as a boxing promoter, a movie producer, a bodybuilding promoter, a hotel owner, and more (Dave also mentions the new Times Square restaurant, saying it's too soon to see if he'll make it as a restaurateur. Spoiler: no). A lot of the success of this is going to depend on the television deal WWF can put together.
WATCH: Vince McMahon announces the XFL. The first time.
Sabu has agreed to a deal with WCW this week, which in turn prompted threats of a lawsuit by Paul Heyman, who has Sabu signed to a contract through 2003. Word is Sabu's WCW deal is for around $400-500K per year, which is about double what he was making in ECW. As for his ECW deal, Sabu claims that Heyman has somehow breached the deal, allegedly due to late payments, and thus it's invalid. While it's true that there have been late payments lately to wrestlers, Heyman claims there was no breach. Even if it had been, Sabu's contract specifically states in the event of a breach that a letter must be written to ECW informing them of such and giving them 90 days to resolve the issue. No such letter was ever written. Any attempt to terminate the contract by legal means has to be filed in court in Westchester County and Sabu has not filed any such paperwork. WCW hopes to debut Sabu at the 2/14 Nitro and their lawyers and Heyman have had a lot of discussions about it, with Heyman alleging contract tampering by WCW. Heyman has said that he is willing to sell Sabu's contract to WCW (since at this point, with all the heat between them and Sabu clearly wanting to leave, why force him to stay?) but said he's not going to release Sabu without something in return from WCW. Otherwise, Heyman has said he will file a lawsuit and restraining order against both Sabu and WCW, which would prevent him from debuting on Nitro. Sabu's best days are behind him and Dave suspects he'll likely just end up another lower-card hardcore division wrestler in WCW. But hey, if the money is good, at this point in his career he's smart to take it, assuming the ECW stuff gets worked out. All of this couldn't come at a worse time for ECW, which just lost both RVD and Jerry Lynn to serious leg injuries. In the midst of all this, Sabu's mother suffered 2 heart attacks this weekend so he's been dealing with that too.
Time for some best of the decade awards! Dave looks at the results of all the year end award votes from 1990-99 and uses fancy math to come up with a list of winners for all the best ofs of 1990. He explains how the math works but I hate math so if you have any questions, you're gonna have to go read this shit yourself. It actually IS really interesting to see how these points accumulate and how it shapes who wins. While someone like Steve Austin seems like the obvious winner for a lot of categories, he was only a top star for the last 2 years of the decade, so his numbers don't fully reflect that. Anyway, here are your best from the best of the decade of 1990s.
1990s BRUISER BRODY AWARD (BEST BRAWLER): Mick Foley
Ratings news: more of the same of course, but USA Network's "Walker Texas Ranger" beat Nitro during their head-to-head hour, which is the first time that's ever happened. ECW on TNN's ratings are down for the 2nd week in a row. And Sting's made for TV movie Shutterspeed was a huge flop. In fact, Raw's rating was higher than Nitro, ECW, and Shutterspeed's combined.
Several of the female wrestlers in CMLL are threatening a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the company because the female wrestlers are never booked on the major arena shows.
Shinya Hashimoto and Naoya Ogawa are scheduled for yet another rematch against each other in the main event of the April Tokyo Dome show. They're also hoping to have Kensuke Sasaki defend the IWGP title against Bill Goldberg if he's physically ready by then. NJPW is also hoping to run a show at a 100,000-seat outdoor stadium this summer that would be a mixture of wrestling and vale tudo, because goddammit, Antonio Inoki is going to kill this promotion with his vale tudo obsession or die trying.
Michinoku Pro will be doing a show honoring the 10-year anniversary of Great Sasuke's wrestling debut, which leads Dave to drop an interesting anecdote: "Not only did I actually see his first three pro matches, but I was in the car with him on the way home from his first match."
Mil Mascaras is in Japan right now working shows which are being billed as the last time he'll tour Japan before he retires. Dave calls bullshit and says Mascaras will never actually retire (yup, to this day he still wrestles a handful of matches per year, at 75 years old.)
New Jersey indie promotion Combat Zone Wrestling announced plans for a PPV in June that will feature Atsushi Onita vs. Terry Funk in one of Onita's famous exploding ring barbed wire matches. CZW isn't actually funding the PPV, some other group is funding it I guess and CZW is just the company involved. CZW also said there would be other matches including one match with snakes, alligators, and a piranha in various corners of the ring. The PPV date was announced as the same date that WWF's King of the Ring is scheduled for so there's no chance they're going to get any real buys or even clearance from the PPV providers, for this show. Especially not for a hardcore show, given how much the PPV providers frown on excessive violence sometimes. Funk claimed that he hasn't been any discussions about it but that he'd be willing to do it. He doesn't have an exclusive contract with WCW right now, he's just being paid by appearance. The last indie to take a chance on running a PPV was the Heroes of Wrestling show which was an enormous flop. With WCW and ECW barely turning a profit on PPV these days, Dave thinks this is a bad time to try this.
Rob Van Dam's injury is a broken ankle and broken fibula and he's expected to be out of action for about 3 months, which is a huge blow to ECW right now.
Don Callis' gimmick of Cyrus is where he basically plays the role of a heel TNN executive and Dave thinks it's the craziest shit he's ever seen. Trying to get the TV network that carries the promotion's product over as heels that are hurting the company (this goes poorly for Paul in the end. Turns out TNN didn't particularly love the gimmick).
ECW was planning to hold a PPV later this year in the Westchester County Center in White Plains, NY but now they're banned from the building so that won't be happening. They sold out the building last time they were there, but the management was unhappy with the show due to the violence, the crowd chants (specifically "show your tits") and the fact that Paul Heyman cut an obscenity-laced tirade. So now the building won't let them come back.
Bobby Duncam Jr's. official cause of death is listed as an accidental overdose from the prescription painkiller called Fentanyl. He did not have a prescription for the drug, and had gotten it from a family member.
The WCW movie Ready To Rumble is scheduled to be released in April. They showed a trailer on Nitro and Dave thinks it looks pretty bad.
Correction, the DDP/Buff Bagwell angle hasn't been scrapped as reported last week. But both men are banged up so they're off TV for the moment and they'll probably pick it back up when they return. DDP's thought to have a ruptured disc in his back which, if it ends up being true, isn't great news for him (he should call up that ex-wrestler dude that teaches yoga. I bet it would help).
On Nitro this week, Scott Steiner cut an unhinged promo on Ric Flair and WCW in general. He pointed out that WCW sucks (which is true but Dave doesn't think they should be calling more attention to it on their own show), said people switch over to Raw when Flair is on TV so they can watch Steve Austin, then blamed Flair for getting Austin fired from WCW (Dave is befuddled at that one), and more. Needless to say, ratings numbers are freely available and of course, Steiner's claims aren't even remotely true and in fact, Flair has always been a bigger ratings draw than Steiner. In fact, Flair is still just about the only dependable ratings draw they still have. Anyway, the promo went on so long that they ended up scrapping other segments later in the show. Needless to say, none of it was supposed to happen and it led to Steiner being sent home from TV the next day as punishment, so he's essentially suspended right now, although it's not really a punishment. Everybody basically sees it as Steiner getting a day off the road with pay and of course he'll be brought back.
WATCH: Scott Steiner shoots on Ric Flair
Kevin Sullivan is still the head booker, assisted by Terry Taylor, Ed Ferrara, and Tony Schiavone. Vince Russo was offered a spot as one of the writers but refused unless he was the sole person running the show, saying that's what his contract gives him the right to. WCW head Bill Busch has suggested to Russo that maybe they should just part ways, but Russo doesn't want to give up his lucrative contract, so he's fighting to stay and get what he wants.
Lenny & Lodi have been repackaged as a new tag team that is basically meant to be a Hardy Boyz rip-off. On Thunder it was announced that their team name was Too Excess but that didn't last for long. WCW's legal department nixed the name, apparently feeling it was too similar to the Hardyz whole "2 extreme" thing. No word on what they'll end up being called now (they end up just being called XS).
Sting and Goldberg both did interviews with the Observer website. Sting expressed frustration with WCW not knowing what to do with him anymore. He also said they talked about him bringing back his old blond flat-top gimmick back but he said he doesn't want to do it. As for Goldberg, he said he suffered a severed tendon in his arm and needed over 31 liters of blood in the transfusion and came within a centimeter of losing usage of his arm. He also talked about his streak ending and said, "from that point on my career went downhill. I believe that to be an indication of the inability of the people responsible there to do their job, I guess." He said he's learned he can't trust anyone in wrestling and said he wasn't thrilled with Russo and Ferrera and the direction they've taken the company. "The new writers we brought in made me sick. I'm not Steve Austin and Bill Busch isn't Vince McMahon," he said. He also hinted at wanting to do MMA and there's been rumors of him fighting in Pride. Dave thinks it's a bad idea because he has so much to lose and so little to gain in a legit fight.
Hulk Hogan appeared on Bubba The Love Sponge's wife radio show and also trashed WCW, saying they won't spend money to make money and said it was stupid that he wasn't even booked on Nitro for that night. He also particularly trashed Billy Kidman, saying Kidman wouldn't be able to headline a flea market and that WCW needs to stick with guys like himself, Savage, Sting, and Goldberg to bring in ratings. He said it's no wonder WWF is kicking their ass when WCW won't even use Hogan on TV while they have Kidman main eventing shows (which leads Dave to question, since when has Kidman worked a main event? Not on any shows Dave has been watching).
Latest on Shane Douglas and Konnan is that WCW wants 'em gone. But Douglas is refusing to sign his release that they offered him and Konnan has a meeting scheduled this week, but as it stands, WCW isn't making any effort to bring them back. Probably should have stuck with Benoit & Co. rather than chickening out when shit got real. Now they're stuck in the middle with neither side fighting for them.
Rick Steiner won the Buckmasters Classic hunting championship, which is a pretty famous celebrity hunting competition that a lot of wrestlers usually compete in. Steiner won the big buck competition. Due to an error in scoring, he thought he lost and so he left before the competition was over to fly to Nitro. But then they figured out the error and realized he'd won but they couldn't find him for the trophy ceremony. Steiner didn't even find out he won until the next day.
There was a big story in Variety that both CBS and FOX were trying to land deals with WWF for both network and cable shows. On the CBS side, the story reported that the plans were to keep Smackdown on UPN but to move Raw and all other shows over to TNN, which is owned by Viacom/CBS. WWF's contract with the USA Network expires in September 2001 but they have an escape clause that allows them to get out of the deal this year if they want to. TNN is a much lower-rated network than USA (even though they're both available in about the same number of homes) but WWF has enough fan loyalty that Dave thinks most fans would follow the show over to the new channel, although it'll probably still suffer a slight ratings hit. As for FOX, Rupert Murdoch claims they have no interest in wrestling but that's just patently not true and in fact, WWF and FOX have had off-and-on negotiations for the last 2 years. In fact, just before Owen Hart's death last year, FOX made a serious offer to outright buy the entire WWF, but Vince turned it down. As for current negotiations, the story reported that FOX is looking to buy an equity stake in WWF and that Smackdown would move from UPN to FOX, with Raw moving to FX. That would be a huge blow at first for WWF since FX is in about 30 million less homes than USA, although if Raw moved to FX, it would go a long way towards getting more systems to pick up the channel. Also, the FOX deal can't happen for at least 2 more years because UPN still has a contract for Smackdown until then and considering that's the show that is basically keeping UPN alive, they're not going to give it up willingly. This news led to WWF's stock going up sharply when the story came out. But then the next day, Vince announced the XFL, which erased all the gains and then some.
Royal Rumble did about 600,000 buys on PPV. For comparison, WCW Souled Out a week earlier did about 95,000 and ECW did 80,000 a week before that. This makes it the 2nd biggest Rumble in history (last year did 700,000 buys). WWF was pretty worried about buyrates for Rumble and especially Wrestlemania this year since Austin is gone, but this is a pretty good sign that Wrestlemania will still do just fine without him.
Smackdown notes: Dave thinks this was the best episode of SD since it debuted. Cactus Jack cut a promo on the Radicalz and trashed WCW (referring to it only as "Atlanta") and saying the reason the Radicalz came to WWF was because they weren't old enough to cut it in WCW. Dave says the perception of WCW as a company full of old has-beens is a real problem and they need to start giving young stars mega pushes, whether they're ready or not, because they have to erase that stigma. He says WWF pushed Triple H long before he was ready but it's paying off now and he's become a strong main event star. This is the episode Eddie Guerrero got injured in, messing up his elbow on a frog splash. There was some question over how that match ended because Eddie was supposed to win but after injuring his arm, he kinda panicked and told Road Dogg to pin him to end the match, which they did. But it was an arm injury. Austin damn near got paralyzed and still managed to get his scheduled pin on Owen Hart a couple years ago and there seems to be some raised eyebrows on Eddie for the way he handled it. Anyway, the Triple H/Benoit match was the best match in SD's short history, even though having him (the uncrowned WCW champion) lose to Triple H (the WWF champion) on the very first night didn't do Benoit any favors. But evidently sending the message that WWF is superior to WCW is more important to Vince (yup. He'll prove it again by totally botching the Invasion and he'll still be doing it 15 years later with Sting at Wrestlemania). Triple H also survived the crossface twice and kicked out of Benoit's diving headbutt finisher and Dave just isn't sure what the point is. But either way, Benoit came off like a total star and Dave says WCW has no idea just how badly they fucked up by having this guy on their roster for 4 years and never doing anything with him until it was too late.
Raw notes: Chyna wasn't on the show because she was filming a guest spot for the show Third Rock From The Sun. The Radicalz turned heel on Cactus Jack and were signed to WWF by Triple H and Stephanie, which led to the main event of the show which Dave says was the best Raw match in a LONG time. Triple H/X-Pac/Benoit/Malenko/Saturn vs. Cactus Jack/Rock/Rikisi/Too Cool. Dave gives it 4.25 stars and said it was one of those nights where everything clicked perfect and the crowd heat was off the charts. Kane and Paul Bearer returned to a monster pop.
Chris Benoit was on a recent radio show and said the reason they didn't do a WWF vs. WCW champion angle when he came in is because the WCW title doesn't mean anything anymore and has no credibility to start with, so the angle would have been meaningless. He said he was disappointed that he never got to have real feuds with Bret Hart or Ric Flair and said he had been promised repeatedly that he would, but it never happened. He said WCW had asked him and all the other guys who wanted to leave to just sit on it for a week and meet again to re-discuss. Shane Douglas had pushed everybody to wait the week and hear what WCW had to say, but Benoit said he had already made up his mind the day he walked out that he would never wrestle for WCW again even if he had to sit out the rest of his contract.
ABC 20/20 did a story on Mick Foley and Beyond The Mat, mostly focusing on the damage he does to his body and the effect it may be having on his brain. During production of the story, WWF's PR guy trashed the movie and claimed the scene with Foley's kids crying during his match was staged. Foley was pretty irritated by that and the PR guy eventually apologized for saying it (if you think he's irritated now, just wait till Vince talks shit about Foley's wife).
Vince McMahon was a guest on Jim Rome's show Last Word. It was mostly WWF-related (and Rome doesn't like wrestling) despite McMahon trying to steer the conversation towards the XFL. Rome doesn't know enough about wrestling to ask good follow-up questions, so he just asked Vince about the usual stuff (is it acceptable for kids, drug use, Owen's death, etc.). Of course, Vince is used to this game and he handled Rome pretty easily since he didn't know enough about the business to challenge any of Vince's responses. Rome was respectful during the interview but after the interview, in his closing comments, he trashed wrestling and McMahon, basically saying it damages society with racism and sexism and corrupts children and all that shit. Dave thinks Rome should have had the balls to say all that stuff during the interview rather than waiting for McMahon to leave and then tack it on to the end of the show when Vince isn't there to defend himself.
Shawn Michaels met with Jim Ross last week and expressed interest in returning to television, but it's said his back is worse than ever now (even after the surgery) and they never even discussed the possibility of him making an in-ring return. Shawn also is interested in getting some of his students a tryout.
Various WWF notes: Undertaker had surgery for a torn pec he suffered weightlifting which should keep him out another 3-4 months. Taka Michinoku will still be out for another 3 weeks or so after suffering a dislocated shoulder at Royal Rumble in that bump they kept replaying. Trish Stratus is expected to start on television in the next month or so, no word on her role yet.
Letters section is all people with thoughts on the XFL. One guy says it's just another Vince McMahon ego trip and says he's crazy for risking company money to do it (while publicly thumbing his nose at stockholders). Two different people speculate that this is Vince's response to Ted Turner announcing a similar plan last year, though Turner later decided it wasn't feasible and abandoned the idea. (In retrospect, I wonder how much of the XFL was just Vince McMahon trying to prove he could do something Ted Turner couldn't? Vince has always had a pretty unhealthy obsession with him). Someone else says the XFL will never get off the ground so why even talk about it? Someone else thinks Vince might succeed and says to never underestimate him. And most everybody else predicts that this is doomed for failure and says Vince needs to stick to wrestling because that's what he knows and he always fails at every other venture.