Wrestling Observer Rewinder

February 21, 2000

The issue starts with a final look at some business numbers for 1999. First, WWF: attendance increased 20% over 1998 numbers. TV rating average increased from 4.40 average in 1998 to a 6.04 average in 1999 which is a 37% increase. PPV buyrates went up 23%. In 1998, they sold out 33.5% of shows. In 1999, they sold out 63%. Live gate increased an average 52%. So on and so forth. Needless to say, 1999 was by far the biggest year in WWF history. Then there's WCW: attendance fell 46%. Ratings dropped 18%. PPV buyrates fell a staggering 41% which is what accounts for a lot of the red ink in their books this year. Sellouts dropped. Live gates down were 14% and would have been more but increased ticket prices helped keep it from being that bad. On to Japan! AJPW attendance down 3.8%. TV ratings up but the average was skewed by the monster ratings from post-Baba death shows. NJPW attendance was down 5% but TV ratings were up significantly so that's good news.
Vince McMahon appeared on Paula Zohn's show on Fox News to talk about the XFL. Dave spends a lot of time examining Vince's statement that there will be no drug testing in the XFL, looks at the criticisms of the NFL's testing system, WWF's history with steroids, etc. Vince also said the XFL wouldn't hire players with felony convictions, unlike the NFL, although misdemeanors are still okay. Dave mentions that the WWF does do background checks on new talent already. Vince lashed out at investment analysts who downgraded the WWF stock after the XFL announcement and claimed all the wrestlers in the company are on board with the XFL idea. Dave disagrees and says none of the wrestlers he's talked to are happy about it but of course, none of them are going to tell Vince that. WWF is in the midst of TV rights negotiations right now and are trying to leverage their success to get a good TV deal for the XFL as well. Dave breaks down all the potential issues if WWF ends up on FOX or TNN or stays on USA and how the Smackdown deal with UPN is complicating matters. No one really knows what Vince's plans are with this league right now and Dave talks about the complications regarding team ownership and all the huge hurdles XFL is going to have to get over in order to be successful. With the year of hype for the debut, Dave predicts the XFL will be big when it starts, just from the curiosity factor, but the product better be good. You only get one chance to make a first impression. But no matter how good it turns out to be and no matter how many cool new concepts (like cameras all over the field) he comes up with, the reality is that the NFL has far more money and they will steal those concepts and steal any new stars that the XFL creates. And Dave doesn't see Vince willingly sitting by and being 2nd best for long without fighting back. And that's when Vince resorts to what Vince knows: gimmicks, working storylines, possibly fixing games to protect stars, etc. Following the stock drop, McMahon wrote an article in the New York Daily News explaining his decision to start a league. It was clear from the article that McMahon's knowledge of football doesn't extend past Ernie Ladd and Wahoo McDaniel, football players who later became wrestlers (I think Dave talked about that recently too. Talking about an interview during this time where Vince was asked who his favorite football players were and he answered Ladd and Wahoo, which is about the point that most people realized that Vince doesn't know fuck-all about football).
McMahon was also on a radio show in San Francisco promoting the XFL but the conversation instead turned to the recent ABC 20/20 story about Mick Foley. The 20/20 piece had talked about all the damage Foley had done to his body over the years and concussions and all that stuff and also featured interviews with not only Foley, but his wife also. McMahon trashed the 20/20 story saying it was a sensationalized negative hit piece. One of the radio hosts pointed out that Mick Foley's wife made some of the strongest comments on the show. McMahon responded and compared Foley's wife's comments to the famous Robin Givens/Mike Tyson interview on 20/20 back in the 80s and said Foley should never let his wife do another interview. "It reminded you of Robin Givens and Mike Tyson doing that interview where poor Mike Tyson is sitting there and Robin Givens is talking all about him," Vince said. (For those of you not as old as me: Givens and Tyson were married in 1988 and they were interviewed together on 20/20. During the interview, Givens basically said "this guy abuses me" while Tyson was sitting there beside her. It was pretty dark and fucked up and made more fucked up by the fact that people turned on her for it. She was seen as a money-hungry fame whore. Anyway, Foley wrote about this in his book. He was none too happy with Vince about it).
Lots more WCW turmoil this week, starting first with Sabu. He was originally scheduled to debut on Nitro last week but as explained in the last issue, it turns out his contract with ECW is pretty legit and Heyman has him locked down. Sabu claims ECW breached his contract by being late on PPV payoffs but the contract stipulates that any claim of a breach must be filed in court and that ECW then has 90 days to make it right. Sabu has never even gone to court to claim it was breached so until he does, he's still locked into a perfectly valid contract and ECW still has 3 months after that to make it right before Sabu could actually be free. In the meantime, Paul Heyman has pretty much said he's got no interest in bringing Sabu back anymore either, but he doesn't want to let him out of his contract without getting something from WCW in return. So Sabu's in limbo right now (yup this is pretty much it for Sabu and ECW. He works 2 more house shows next week but then he's gone and never returns).
And there's a similar situation with Chris Candido and Tammy Sytch, who were scheduled to debut for WCW at the Thunder tapings but turns out they both still have valid contracts with ECW also. Neither has been paid in months because they haven't worked but they also haven't filed the legal paperwork necessary to claim breach of contract and they're basically being used as pawns in the ECW vs. WCW war right now. Heyman has no use for either of them but he's not going to willingly let them go to WCW without something for them either.
More Scott Hall drama, as WCW is in Europe this week. When leaving the U.S. for Germany, Hall got on the plane and looked like he hadn't slept in days. He ended up getting sick on the plane and was "in no condition to perform" on the first night of the tour. But hey, being in no condition to perform never stopped WCW in the past, and so Scott Hall was still sent out to the ring and he did perform. As punishment for his behavior though, he was told to put over David Finlay, which he did. During the entire tour, Hall was said to be barely functional every night, but he still went out and wrestled on all the shows. There were also incidents at bars every night with Hall trying to fight people and on one occasion, throwing a cake at his girlfriend. Finally, when they went to leave, he arrived at the airport in such bad shape that authorities wouldn't let him on the plane. So he missed Nitro this week because he was still stuck in Europe while everyone else came back. It totally wrecked WCW's plans because Hall was supposed to be involved in a major angle that would have put him into a triple threat match for the PPV main event. Yes, despite this kind of behavior being common for Scott Hall, he is still booked to be in the main event of SuperBrawl for the WCW title. Anyway, Hall did finally make it back in time for the Thunder taping the next night where they had an interview angle planned where Hall would hit Jeff Jarrett with the guitar (it sounds like this was supposed to be a backstage pre-tape). But Hall was totally shit-faced and couldn't get anything right and talked about breaking the guitar over Terry Taylor's head instead of Jarrett's and the whole thing dragged on for about 30 minutes and literally held up the taping, before they finally made the call to scrap Hall from it. Hall left the arena and they ended up having Jarrett hit Terry Taylor instead. Right now, Hall's future in the company is uncertain, with a lot of people feeling like this might be the last straw (yup, this was finally the last straw for Hall. He does indeed main event SuperBrawl, but that ends up being his final appearance ever in WCW. Hall has admitted in interviews that the whole European trip incident is what finally what got him fired. Turns out that girlfriend he threw a cake at was the niece of TNT President Brad Siegel and apparently Hall had cheated on her while they were there or something and it was a big fight. I dunno all the details, but it was enough that Siegel finally sent Hall packing and refused to bring him back. No matter how hard Nash spent the rest of 2000 trying to change his mind....we'll get to that).
Hulk Hogan's return to WCW last week has morale sinking again, as a lot of people were upset by his recent comments where he said Billy Kidman couldn't main event a flea market. It pretty much confirmed to all the midcard wrestlers exactly what they've always thought, that people like Hogan at the top are determined to keep them down. Hogan's return led to Chris Kanyon asking for his release. Kanyon has been upset for awhile, citing the fact that he's never been given a push after being there for 5 years, but he is also good friends with Kidman and he said Hogan's comments were the final straw and just proves that the midcard guys will never be able to move up in WCW. Bill Busch offered Kanyon a raise to stay but no word if he accepted it. A lot of WCW guys have seen the way that WWF has actually pushed Chris Benoit as a real star and now more than ever, they want out of WCW for the greener WWF pastures.
Hardbody Harrison, Bobby Walker, and Sonny Onoo filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against WCW in Atlanta last week. The lawsuit claims all 3 were forced to portray demeaning stereotypical minority roles and also claimed white performers made more money. It also mentioned the example of Buff Bagwell appearing in blackface for a match against Ernest Miller and claimed that racist jokes were often printed out and posted around WCW's offices. The lawsuit also argues that wrestlers should be classified as company employees rather than independent contractors. Dave says there's actually a long history in the Atlanta area, dating back to Thunderbolt Patterson in the 70s, of wrestlers claiming racial discrimination and/or filing lawsuits. Seems to be a pretty common problem there. Harrison claims he lost his job because he's black and is looking to get his contract re-instated. Dave says to be honest, Harrison and Walker are both pretty terrible workers and it's going to be difficult to prove they were fired because of their race. And he thinks Sonny Onoo's involvement in this lawsuit is laughable, since Onoo is one of Eric Bischoff's best friends and was arguably his closest confidant in the company and says that Onoo himself helped create the character he played. Not to say there's not racism in WCW, but Dave is calling bullshit on Onoo's claim.
Dave goes off on a long and really random side note about wrestling newsletters. He talks about the first wrestling newsletter, called Matmania back in the 60s and talks about how it was the first to start really hinting about things outside of kayfabe, which later inspired Mat News, the newsletter Mike Tenay put out. Dave got a recent copy of Matmania from 1966 and talks about how different it is and....sorta recaps the news. OMG. Dave is doing a Matmania Rewind! Holy shit you guys, we're going meta! Dave mostly just seems to be in awe of everything he's learning about this period of the business that he was too young to remember, especially just from reading results and seeing how big the crowds were they were drawing back then and how they would run twice-weekly shows in Los Angeles, drawing thousands of fans or how crazy the travel was back then. Ray Stevens was working as a regular in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Seattle, and Texas and still found time to fly out and work shows in Australia also. He's also amazed by all the international news coverage in this newsletter, talking about shows in England and France (including one show featuring a 20-year-old giant named Jean Ferre who of course later became Andre The Giant). All told, Dave is just fascinated by how much the business has changed but how it also stays the same. Many of the same ups and downs the business deals with today were apparent in reading this newsletter from 1966 and knowing how things have changed since. Pffft, yeah right. Like there's anything interesting about looking back on old newsletters with the benefit of hindsight...
Lots of rumors regarding the future of AJPW. Word is company president Mitsuharu Misawa and the owner, Motoko Baba (widow of Giant Baba) aren't getting along and that the company may end up splitting into 2 groups. And if it happens, it's possible the NTV television deal may go with Misawa because pretty much all of the wrestlers are reportedly siding with Misawa in this power struggle. Nobody's really talking about it publicly now so details are scarce (yup, this is pretty much exactly what happens and leads to the formation of NOAH but that's still a few months away).
Last year, Antonio Inoki announced another show in North Korea would take place this month but it was officially cancelled this week. Dave had been told months ago that it wasn't happening, but Inoki kept talking about it and promoting it as if it was. In the end, Inoki claims the U.S. Pentagon stepped in somehow to prevent the show from happening at the last minute, but again, Dave knew months ago that it wasn't happening. So as always, take anything Inoki says with a grain of salt.
Beyond The Mat failed to get an Academy Award nomination. It was on the short list to be narrowed down to the final 5 but didn't quite make it. The movie still has premieres in select cities before rolling out nationwide next month. Even though Mick Foley is the star, neither he nor anyone else from WWF will be allowed to promote it because Vince McMahon is the only person in the wrestling business who doesn't like the movie. Foley tried to promote it during an appearance on Good Morning America a few weeks ago and McMahon was furious about it and won't let anyone in the company talk about it. WCW has no involvement in the film, but they're allowing Terry Funk to do any promotion he wants for it and WCW announcers aren't banned from talking about it and in fact they have mentioned it a time or two already during broadcasts.
Carly Colon, after only a few weeks as a pro wrestler, has already won WWC's Universal title. Must be good to be the promoter's son. Of course, this is early-career Carlito.
TNN did a media press conference that was also attended by Rob Van Dam and Joey Styles. When asked about his injury, RVD said he has a 3-inch crack in his fibula and a broken ankle joint and it will be about 12 weeks before he can return to the ring. There's been talks of a TV title tournament which means he'll likely be vacating that belt soon. As for ECW, they talked about the possibility of doing special ECW events on TNN in the future. When asked about the rumors of WWF coming to TNN and how that would affect ECW, the TNN exec had no comment. Mmmmmhmm.....
During a match at a house show in ECW, Justin Credible went through a table and somehow a piece broke off and...went into his mouth and got caught in his throat. Credible, as you might expect, panicked, but fortunately he was able to dislodge it and turned out to be okay. Yikes.
Various ECW notes: Pitbull #1 came back to work some shows but nobody remembered who he was so the crowd didn't care. Elektra missed a show last week because she freaked out and refused to get on the airplane I guess, claiming a fear of flying. But she's back this week. Gedo and Jado are scheduled to come in for a few weeks to work some shows. Gedo, you treacherous bastard, I hope someone puts you through a table...
On ECW on TNN this week, they continued having Cyrus play a heel TNN executive, and he cut a promo saying the network only cares about ECW delivering a strong lead-in for RollerJam. Dave says they didn't just come up with this character for shits and giggles, there's a reason for it and there's a lot of tension between ECW and TNN right now.
Notes from Nitro: Miss Hancock danced on the announce table during a match (I only include this because good GOD the crush 15-year-old me had on Stacy Keibler in these days is unspeakable). The KISS Demon jobbed to Booker T in a short match. The Demon still gets this big elaborate entrance but then ends up treated like a jobber in everything he does. Apparently WCW has a contract with KISS that they have to fulfill, so he still has to be on TV wrestling but they've turned him into a total jobber because now that Bischoff is gone, WCW has no interest in the character, but they're stuck with it due to the contract. Sid Vicious was cut open legit from a Jeff Jarrett guitar shot and got a concussion that caused him to miss the Thunder taping the next night.
Speaking of Sid, he was upset with Mark Madden after the show. During Nitro, there was something to do with a three-way match and Mark Madden said that Sid was the "monkey in the middle" of the angle, which is of course just a reference to a kids game. Someone told Sid that Madden had called him a monkey on commentary and he was furious about it and confronted Madden. He tried to explain that he meant no ill-will but maybe due to being groggy or in a bad mood from the concussion, Sid wasn't interested in hearing Madden's explanation.
After Scott Steiner was suspended due to his promo on Nitro last week, Steiner ran into Ric Flair as he was leaving the building and they had a nasty altercation. No word on what was said but there's obvious heat between the two men, which is what led Steiner to cut the promo to begin with. Anyway, Steiner has been suspended with pay, which most of the other wrestlers are jokingly calling a paid vacation because nobody in WCW is ever really punished for anything.
Despite the trailers looking terrible, "Ready To Rumble" actually got very high scores on exit polls from people who saw early screenings last week (what? HOW? It's so bad....)
Rey Mysterio appeared on the Observer online show last week and said that Konnan is serving a 2-month suspension, but will be back in April. Guess that's the punishment for threatening to leave last month. Turns out some people get punished, just not the top stars. Mysterio also talked about his various knee injuries, including a recent near-tear of his PCL which would have been career threatening.
Shane Douglas has still refused to sign his release, which would have given him a 60-day severance pay. So now, WCW has officially given him notice that they plan to terminate his contract in 30 days. Basically, both Douglas and Konnan are being punished for being part of the group that led the mutiny when the Radicalz left, but since both of them backed down when it came time to actually leave, now WCW is trying to get rid of them both and they're fighting to stay. Douglas went online and has threatened legal action against WCW if they terminate him.
Speaking of, Billy Kidman was also on the Observer show and said he chose to stay with WCW after Benoit, Eddie, Saturn, and Malenko all cut off contact with him. He openly questioned whether it was the right move and whether or not he should have stayed, but he did. He said he was promised a feud with Jeff Jarrett, but then Jarrett ended up being pushed as a main eventer and now suddenly that's no longer happening.
Jim Duggan apparently threw a fit backstage at Nitro over something they asked him to do. No word what it was, but Duggan refused, saying that WCW had already made him look like enough of a fool. He ended up not appearing on the show at all.
The long-term plan for WCW right now is to build up to Goldberg vs. Tank Abbott to headline Starrcade at the end of the year. Abbott has been knocking out people with his KO punch finisher in short matches and the hope is that he'll get over the way Goldberg did. Dave says the problem now will be getting most of the locker room to allow themselves to do clean jobs to a punch. But that's the goal.
WCW valet Midnight asked for her release and was given it. She's hoping to go to WWF (nope. Disappeared into obscurity).
Terry Funk has agreed to do an exploding ring match with Atsushi Onita in the U.S. if they can find a way to get it on PPV. It's already been announced as happening later this year on PPV, but there doesn't seem to actually be any agreements in place (yeah, this never happens).
A small publishing company in Canada is releasing a biography about Bret Hart called "The Best There Is, The Best There Was, The Best There Ever Will Be." It's being written by Toronto Sun writer Perry Lefko and Bret Hart is being listed as a co-writer. Hart does write the acknowledgements at the end of the book, but that's it. Roddy Piper wrote the foreword. This is not the lengthy autobiography that Hart has talked about writing at some point in the future.
Jim Duggan filmed a show called Biker's Court that they were trying to sell for syndication at the NATPE convention last week. Dave says it's like Judge Judy meets Jerry Springer, with bikers as jurors, half naked female bailiff, and Duggan, with his 2x4, as the judge. "A typical episode is a midget smoker who is suing the tobacco companies claiming smoking stunted his growth and asked for compensation for a multi-million dollar NBA career that he didn't have." And yes, I have video.
WATCH: Biker's Court clip
Both Bret Hart and Sting went on the recent Germany tour but neither of them wrestled. Sting did run-ins during the shows and Hart did interviews where he talked about his fond memories of Germany and was greeted with loud chants of "Owen!" Bret said he wants his eventual retirement match to be in Germany but said he didn't plan to retire that soon (unbeknownst to him at the time, he was already retired).
Speaking of, WCW cancelled some house shows that were booked for April in Canada. With Bret still out injured and the loss of Benoit, they felt they wouldn't be able to draw fans to a non-TV event in Canada, so they just cancelled the shows entirely.
Hulk Hogan appeared on the Don Imus radio show and confirmed he has creative control in his contract and outright said that he won't be losing anymore matches. Well okay then.
On Raw, Papi Chulo re-debuted using the name Essa Rios and was accompanied by former ECW valet Miss Congeniality, using the name Lita. The match didn't get much of a reaction aside from one spot where Lita did a killer hurricanrana outside the ring, which got a big pop.
WATCH: Essa Rios & Lita debut
When reviewing Smackdown, Dave notes that WWF has been putting a lot more emphasis on in-ring action in recent weeks and it's working. In the past, during the Russo era, crowds usually died as soon as the bell rang or spent the entire match looking towards the back waiting for the angle. But now they're slowly focusing more on the wrestling and the crowds are starting to react and get into the matches in a big way.
Regarding WCW wrestlers who WWF may have interest in, here's the lay of the land: WWF reportedly has no interest in Shane Douglas, Konnan, or Kevin Nash, all three of whom have unofficially reached out to WWF in recent weeks through intermediaries. WWF is interested in bringing in Ric Flair if he can get out of his contract, but that doesn't seem to be happening. There's some interest in DDP and he has also given word that he's interested, but WWF won't pay him nearly what he's making in WCW so that's probably a no-go. Everyone else is mostly just watching to see how things play out with Benoit, Guerrero, etc.
More media coverage on the XFL. A big story in the Philadelphia Inquirer said the NFL is basically the most bulletproof thing in sports and an XFL vs. NFL battle would be like an ant trying to stop an elephant. But they also said don't count out McMahon because he knows his target demographic better than anyone and he's not hindered by having a conscience. But in the end, it said the fact that it's going to be lower quality players than the NFL and the valid concerns that McMahon will try to fix the games will probably sink it.
Chyna appeared on Jay Leno's show, breaking the unofficial streak of only having WCW stars on it. She came off well, not in character, and was charming and likable and not at all like most wrestlers who appear on talk shows.
WATCH: Chyna on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno - 2000
Four of Shawn Michaels' students received tryouts at the Smackdown tapings last week and all 4 were offered developmental contracts afterwards. The 4 students were Lance Cade, Shooter Shultz, American Dragon and Spanky (not sure what happened to Shultz but the other 3 obviously went on to have varying degrees of success).
The Rock is expected to host Saturday Night Live in March.
Fun fact, the character of Joey Abs in the Mean Street Posse was supposed to be played by Canadian wrestler Joe E. Legend but the night the gimmick was set to debut, there was an issue with Legend's visa. So the role went to Jason Ahrndt instead (Legend later ended up in WWF for a minute under the name Just Joe and has bounced around the indies ever since).
Dave recaps a recent news story that talked about the reason Benoit & Co. all left WCW and talked about the downfall of WCW in general. The story noted that Russo was let go because of concerns over the content of the shows he was booking, which actually isn't true. In reality, it's because live attendance was falling at a scary rate. A WCW spokesman acknowledged the concerns over Sullivan being made the new booker as the reason why those guys wanted out and said they were released because "We cannot allow talent to dictate to management how to run the company."
An absurd amount of letters this week. And speaking of, the first one is someone who writes in and actually thinks WCW made the right decision when it comes to Benoit, saying no matter how talented he and the rest of those guys are, the company can't just give in to ultimatums from employees just because they don't like the booker. Dave says that's simplifying the issue too much, because there were a lot of bad decisions beforehand that led to that moment, mostly stemming from the hiring and then abrupt firing of Vince Russo and all the chaos that caused. Most people in the company felt Terry Taylor should have been made the booker and if he had, none of this would have happened. He also is still amazed that WCW would know all of this was happening and then STILL chose to make Benoit the champion the day before he walked. Dave agrees that you can't let the inmates run the asylum, but it was WCW's repeated fuck-ups that let things ever get that far to begin with.
The rest of the letters: debates over last issue's Wrestler of the Century stuff, whether WWF and WCW have gone too far with the sexual exploitation of the women, WWF stocks, Rock and Dynamite Kid's books, and then finally one last hilarious letter about Battlebots for some reason:
How can a family oriented company like Time Warner carry the Battlebots PPV? This event is nothing more than robot cockfighting. Does a robot have to DIE before legislation is made against this barbaric display of android violence? If I want to see robots fighting to the death, I'll hang outside at the bar in "Star Wars" on a Saturday night. I'm forwarding this to Sen. John McCain. I'm sure he'll share my outrage. Then again, I hear he was in the pocket of the Nevada State Animatronics Commission. Shame on you Time Warner.
Kevin Dillon
Albion, New York