Wrestling Observer Rewinder

March 13, 2000

More controversy over Beyond The Mat this week after USA and UPN both pulled advertisements for the film after pressure from the WWF. Vince McMahon has a strong "with us or against us" philosophy and has made it clear that the movie is not "with them" so has decided to use his power over the networks that carry WWF programming to force them to ban the ads. The ban is 24/7 on those channels, not just during WWF shows. Dave talks about how much power Vince wields over the networks now (especially since he's playing them all against each other in negotiations for WWF's next TV deal). Dave talks about a similar incident recently where NBC wouldn't air trailers for the movie Dirty Work, starring Norm MacDonald, who had recently been fired from SNL in an ugly feud with NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer. In retaliation for comments MacDonald made about him after the firing, Ohlmeyer banned ads for MacDonald's movie from airing on NBC. In an interview with a newspaper in Memphis, Jerry Lawler called Beyond The Mat director Barry Blaustein a jerk and trashed the movie. Film executives have begun airing ads on other channels, calling Beyond The Mat, "the film Vince McMahon doesn't want you to see." It also won the Best Documentary award at the Cinequest Film Festival. Ads are still airing during WCW and ECW shows (even though WCW has no role in the film whatsoever) but obviously the biggest wrestling audience are WWF fans and not being able to promote the film directly to them during WWF shows is a pretty big blow.
The New York Daily News published a big 3-part story about the plague of early deaths in the wrestling industry that featured a lot of new information. The story discussed Brian Pillman, with quotes from his wife Melanie talking about his use of steroids, HGH, and painkillers and focusing heavily on Pillman's doctor, Dr. Hackett, who also prescribed drugs to Louie Spicolli and paints him as a dangerous and irresponsible doctor. Vince McMahon was quoted in the story saying that Pillman had passed a drug test before his death. Dave says the opposite, saying that the test actually showed nandralone (a steroid) in Pillman's system which he claimed was left over from a long time ago (apparently nandralone can be detected in your system for an extremely long time after use). Pillman was livid about the test because he felt he was being singled out and had talked about how Shawn Michaels was never tested despite going on TV high out of his mind repeatedly, and how Hawk had lost consciousness on an airplane due to drugs but was also never tested afterward. At the time, Pillman was so pissed he wanted to quit the company but Jim Ross had ordered the test because Pillman's behavior had gotten increasingly erratic. A month later he was dead. The story talked about Ahmed Johnson being prescribed painkillers and steroids by the same doctor, although Ahmed told the reporter that he had since found god and cleaned up his drug problems. It noted that The Patriot (Del Wilkes) had obtained large quantities of drugs from Hackett, who knew that Wilkes was distributing them illegally to other wrestlers (Wilkes was arrested in both 1998 and 99 for forging hydrocodone prescriptions). Dr. Hackett refused to talk to the newspaper but had his lawyer give a statement that basically blamed the WWF. The statement said the doctor had alerted the WWF to certain wrestlers abusing drugs and that WWF banned the doctor from being backstage at WWF shows in response. But several WWF wrestlers went around the ban, continuing to get Hackett free tickets and flew him out to shows so they could get stuff from him. A week after Louie Spicolli's death, a major WCW star (unnamed) flew Hackett out to a show in San Francisco. This guy basically sounds like another Dr. Zahorian waiting to happen.
The story was also the first to address the real cause of Rick Rude's death, which was triggered by an accidental overdose of painkillers and sedatives. Oxycodone, diazepam, midazolam and citalopram were all found in his system. In fact, the amount oxycodone in Rude's system alone was enough to be fatal. Vince McMahon claimed in the story that WWF dropped its rigorous drug testing program in 1996 because of high costs and the company was struggling financially and losing to WCW at the time. However, the doctor in charge of WWF's drug testing in the early 90s claimed that McMahon stopped the testing because the wrestlers "didn't have the physiques the public wanted to see." This leads to discussion about the drug issue in wrestling and how it's not specific to WWF. Both WCW and ECW have the same problems in their locker rooms as well. In the story, McMahon claimed that WWF has nothing to hide, but considering both WWF and WCW continue to avoid running shows in Oregon (the only state that requires annual drug screenings to run shows) proves otherwise. WCW argued that they do random drug screenings, but WCW's testing is a known joke. X-Pac, who had a well-known history of drug issues (it was the whole reason he was fired from WWF in the first place), claims he was never tested once during his WCW tenure. The story also talked about the lack of health regulation, using the death of Gary Albright as an example. Albright died from a heart issue that almost certainly would have been detected ahead of time if he had ever had a routine. Wade Keller, of the Pro Wrestling Torch newsletter, was quoted in the story talking about the dangers of chairshots to the head and concussions and talked about the noticeable mental deterioration of wrestlers he knows who have spent their careers getting hit in the head, which Dave also vouches for. The rest of the story was all about the usual questions of whether or not wrestling is appropriate for kids (here's the 3-part story):
Ratings news: LOLRAWWINS. ECW also did its all-time highest rating on TNN so far, a 1.28. Inch by inch, ECW's ratings are sloooooowly growing.
Dave always lists poll results that they do online. I usually ignore them because they're usually boring but there's 2 good ones here. The first was about the XFL and whether it will succeed. 8% said it will be a big success. 19% say it will make it eventually but it will struggle at first. 28% say it will start strong by then fade. 18% say it will be a flop from the start. And 27% say it will never even happen. The second question is about Mick Foley's retirement. 11% believe he will never wrestle again. 20% think he'll have one more match. An overwhelming 62% think he'll continue to wrestle sporadically. And 7% think he'll return full time. The masses were correct on both.
Barry Blaustein, Roddy Piper, Hulk Hogan, and Terry Funk will all appear on Larry King Live this week to discuss Beyond The Mat. Dave thinks it's a bad lineup, since neither Hogan or Piper have reportedly even seen the movie and have no part in it. Funk is one of the stars so he'll probably be good. Hogan is always good at being Hulk Hogan on talk shows, but he probably won't bad-mouth Vince McMahon since he's almost assuredly looking to return to WWF when his WCW contract expires. And Piper has been an embarrassment on every talk show he's been on recently, still acting like a 70s guy who is trying to protect the business and being halfway in-character during media appearances. Considering this movie does nothing but expose the business, Piper probably won't have anything nice to say about it. Larry King's people tried to get Vince McMahon and Mick Foley for the interview but were of course turned down. Dave once again ponders why WCW is sending their oldest, most washed up guys for big media appearances like this, saying once again that they need to put the focus on young stars and that Goldberg would have been much better suited for this.
ECW star Justin Credible will be working an upcoming TWA show, which is the promotion Shawn Michaels runs. Paul Heyman is hoping to leverage this into Michaels making an appearance for ECW, but that's all up to Vince McMahon since Shawn is still under WWF contract.
Sabu is seemingly done with ECW for good. He came back briefly and worked 2 house shows last week. Sabu showed up at the next TV taping in the ECW Arena and was given a script by Paul Heyman (scripts are something they usually never do in ECW) which laid out plans for Sabu to put over Super Crazy in a TV title tournament match. Sabu took one look at that and walked out of the arena, saying he wasn't going to do the job. Heyman reportedly knew Sabu wouldn't agree to do the job and in fact, the reason he wrote it out in a script was so that he would have tangible evidence in case Sabu decides to go to court, Heyman can show evidence that Sabu was refusing to go along with plans and thus breaching his contract. And Sabu fell right into the trap. Super Crazy is well-liked and has consistently been one of the best workers in ECW recently and Heyman is trying to elevate him to be a top star. With Sabu flat out refusing to put him over, it has kind of erased any sympathy Sabu had from other wrestlers in the locker room in regards to his contract situation. Heyman has said he won't stop Sabu from making a living but it will have to be in Japan because he's not going to willingly let Sabu out of his contract to go to WWF or WCW. Dave thinks Heyman will eventually let either WWF or WCW buy out Sabu's contract, which expires in 2003, but he's trying to stall as much as he can. When ECW signed the deal with TNN, the network wanted every wrestler to be under contract because they didn't want the illusion of ECW as a stepping stone and didn't want ECW wrestlers jumping ship to the bigger companies overnight. So Heyman is trying to keep Sabu off ECW TV for as long as he can before he eventually shows up in WWF or WCW, so it won't look like they stole another ECW wrestler.
The ECW Hardcore Revolution video game has sold over 600,000 copies and was the #2 selling Playstation game last week (and #6 selling N64 game). It's a pretty amazing number, because ECW's TNN show is only seen in about a million homes, and they just sold 600k video games (that video game money is a big reason why ECW didn't go out of business sooner than they did. It kept them alive through much of 2000).
Dave talks about how ECW is continuing with this gimmick of making the TNN network be seen as heels in the eyes of ECW fans. There's a lot of belief that if WWF ends up making a TV deal with CBS, it would lead to Raw being moved to TNN and ECW would likely be booted off the network (yup). So Heyman is preparing for that by actively trying to turn fans against TNN. It's the damndest thing Dave's ever heard of.
The PPV buyrate for WCW SuperBrawl looks to be around a 0.15 which is by far the lowest buyrate ever for one of the big two companies. In fact, it's lower than most ECW buyrates and is even lower than the buyrate AAA's 1994 PPV did. This buyrate is so low that it's actually in the same range as the one-off UWFI and K-1 kickboxing PPVs of the early 90s and those 2 shows had no television promotion whatsoever. SuperBrawl featured heavily promoted matches with both Hogan and Flair making their in-ring returns after months of being gone and needless to say, this speaks volumes about their drawing power these days. And at the rate things are going, Dave wouldn't be surprised if the next PPV does even worse. He thinks at this point, WCW would probably save money by cutting back to quarterly PPV shows. To put it in perspective, WCW grossed a total of $773,000 from SuperBrawl. A WWF house show in Atlanta recently made more than that.
Notes from Nitro: there were only 2,200 paid fans in the building, with another 2,600 freebies for a grand total of less than 5,000 in attendance. Just one year ago, WCW legit sold out the same 16,000-seat arena the first day tickets went on sale. How the mighty have fallen. Flair is supposed to be a heel but he's so beloved by WCW fans that he can't get booed to save his life these days, especially here in Chapel Hill, NC so he had to resort to praising Duke University to get the crowd to turn on him. And even that only sorta-worked. Flair and Luger did the gimmick where they used the chair to break Curt Hennig's wrist and he left in ambulance, leading Dave to ponder why someone needs an ambulance for a broken wrist. From here, Dave just rips the rest of the show apart. Nothing good to say about any of it. We're getting into the really bad, dark days of WCW now.
At the Thunder tapings, Sid Vicious no-showed, which....shocker. No reason given but Dave is just done with this shit. It might almost be forgivable if Sid possessed some Hogan-like drawing power, but's never been a draw and it's absurd that he continues to get so many chances in this business. Rey Mysterio was sent out to the ring and cut a promo saying he'll be back in a few months. He was backstage and WCW officials wanted him to work the show, but apparently didn't realize that he had major knee surgery and isn't going to be cleared for at least 3 more months, so they just had him do the promo instead. Funny how that sort of thing just slips past them.
More on the racial discrimination lawsuit being filed by Sonny Onoo, Hardbody Harrison, and Bobby Walker. The lawsuit also argues that their status as independent contractors is illegal and that they were denied employee benefits like vacation and sick time. Walker (who is still technically under contract to WCW) claims he would be a huge babyface star if not for the racism in WCW and says he was told by someone in WCW management that he wasn't being pushed because not enough black people watch wrestling. WCW spokesman Alan Sharp has claimed that 87% of WCW's audience is white. Sonny Onoo was paid $160,000 per year for his on-screen manager role and was upset, noting that the average WCW wrestler makes $300,000. Of course, there's a difference between managers and wrestlers and Onoo also made a lot of extra money for his role as a liaison for WCW and NJPW but he never mentions that in his lawsuit. He also was upset that Asians and Mexicans were mostly given heel roles and said that WCW never had any minority writers on the booking teams.
WCW is gearing up for Goldberg's return next month, and the plan is to basically turn almost everybody heel so he has a whole roster full of top stars to run through. Which is a fine idea, but there's a lot of stars that aren't going to be willing to turn heel just so they can do clean jobs to Goldberg. Lots of guys in the company have no interest in just becoming fodder for someone else's big push.
Bret Hart is hoping to be back by July at the earliest but it's still touch and go. As of last month, Hart's pay was cut in half and as of next month, WCW can fire him. His contract prevents him from being fired while injured for a certain amount of time I guess. Hart was interviewed in a Winnipeg newspaper and said he doesn't remember Christmas or New Years due to the concussion he suffered and said it sucks because some people don't believe he's really injured and he's frustrated by that. He said that people not believing him is harder on him than actually being out of the ring. WCW head Bill Busch has spoken to Hart about the pay cut, saying it was a decision made by the legal department based on his contract but that he would try to get the decision reversed.
Terry Taylor has voluntarily stepped down from the WCW booking committee, apparently due to personal reasons, nothing involving any backstage WCW drama. He'll continue as a road agent for now. Kevin Nash has also been removed from the committee, except he was apparently kicked out with the excuse being that he was a detriment to anything getting accomplished and was a negative influence on things. Nash argues that everyone else on the committee is out of touch and doesn't know how to reach the young adult male demographic that they're fighting for. At this point, pretty much anything you see on WCW TV of any significance is being booked by mostly Kevin Sullivan and some from Ed Ferrara. The idea is that Sullivan is basically in a sink-or-swim situation now to turn the company around and if he fails, he'll be replaced by Terry Taylor (when/if he decides to return) or possibly even bringing Russo back.
Remember a few weeks ago when Chris Jericho's fiancé bought a Jericho/Malenko action figure set and it rang up as Hogan/Savage action figures on the receipt (thus counting towards their merch numbers)? Dave has gotten word from several others who have since done the same thing with the same result. He says someone also bought some old Steiner Brothers action figures and both of them rang up as Hogan figures as well. Basically, Hogan was unfairly getting a cut of merch profits that should have been going to others.
Punk band The Misfits are threatening to sue WCW, claiming that Vampiro is using their look and that his ring gear and merchandise has artwork associated with the band's signature look.
Buff Bagwell signed a new WCW deal this week and then immediately missed the following week's Nitro with an alleged knee injury. Lots of people are skeptical, but to be fair to Bagwell, everyone in WCW is paranoid and skeptical of everything these days. With morale in the dumps, pretty much every injury gets questioned by people and the second anyone misses a show, there's a dozen people ready to claim that person is faking it.
Speaking of faking injuries, Scott Hall is expected to return in a few weeks (nah).
Rare good news for WCW: the upcoming tour of England looks like it's going to be a huge success. Almost all the shows are sold out or close to it already with some pretty big gate numbers. So for the first time in at least a year, WCW wrestlers will be wrestling in front of large, packed arenas. Also, the Goldberg monster truck is doing good in....monster trucking, or whatever. It's ranked #1 in whatever monster truck rankings are.
DDP has an autobiography out called Positively Page. Dave is halfway through it and plans to review it in a later issue. DDP is already working on a second book titled Positive Affirmation for Kids from A to Z with DDP (that 2nd one never happened. That was DDP's only chance to make a positive difference, and he missed it. Pretty sure he never did anything good for anyone ever again).
WWF's quarterly financial report came out and it's good news. I'll try not to bore everyone with exact numbers, but in short: gross revenue is up significantly, almost entirely due to the increase in ad revenue because of the creation of Smackdown last year. Attendance is about the same as last year, but ticket prices went up 20% so they made a lot more money on that. Slight increase in PPV revenue. Huge increase in merch revenue. Tripled online revenue because this internet thing is taking off and this dot com bubble just keeps getting bigger and bigger and it's totally never going to burst. The WWF's wrestling business is so strong that the XFL could lose $92 million dollars and the company would still be profitable. That's why Vince is apparently willing to take this risk now: even if it loses tens of millions of dollars, the WWF should remain strong. Although Dave points out, this is the wrestling business and a lot can change in a year or two (see: WCW) so it's risky to try to predict the financial future based on how good things are going today. But for now, WWF is still doing astronomically huge numbers, although the overall peak of the wrestling industry seems to be fading into the past now.
There's talk of doing an Onita-style exploding ring match between Kane and X-Pac at Wrestlemania (nah but woulda been neat).
On Raw, Bubba Ray Dudley powerbombed Mae Young off the top rope through a table and he didn't protect her nearly as much as he protected the other women he's powerbombed recently and Mae took the bump hard. Dave says she's a very tough, ornery woman and she probably loves all this. A lot of the stuff with Mae Young is funny. But she's also 77-years-old and Dave doesn't think it's going to be very funny when she really does get hurt one of these days.
WATCH: The Dudleyz powerbomb Mae Young through a table
Davey Boy Smith is in rehab for an addiction to painkillers, sleeping pills, muscle relaxers, and morphone. He's going to the same place in Atlanta that Steven Regal was sent to and is expected to spend several months there. WWF has promised him that his job will be waiting for him when he returns, but only if he completes the treatment. Normally, WWF tries to keep this sort of stuff confidential, but it was all written about in a story that was placed in several Canadian newspapers, which reported that WWF is paying $75,000 for Smith's rehab. Dave thinks it's good that the company is doing this, because by all accounts Dave has heard, Smith was battling a very serious addiction and was on the road to something tragic if he didn't get it under control. But he also says the fact that all of this was revealed to the media (to a Canadian paper, no less) reeks of WWF trying to get good publicity. Especially in the case of Smith, who is basically McMahon's pawn in the Owen Hart legal issues ("look! This guy who is basically part of the Hart family doesn't blame us for what happened! And look at all the lengths we're going to in order to help him get clean!") Dave thinks this is a good precedent for WWF to set and if they're willing to cover the costs to help wrestlers get the help they need, then that's great. But in the future, he hopes they do it without making a big public deal out of it, because this whole thing comes off as self-serving PR. That being said, they may just be saving Smith's life, and that's more important than whatever their PR motives may be, so they should be commended for it. As expected, Bret Hart chimed in on the issue in his own Calgary Sun column, writing that Vince's motives seem noble on the surface but asked, "Why Davey and why now?" Hart noted that Smith has had these drug issues for years and said, "McMahon is free to prove me wrong by instituting a new WWF policy to rehab any wrestler with a drug problem, even when it doesn't serve his political agenda anymore. I'd be the first one to applaud it."
Speaking of Steven Regal, fresh off being fired by WCW, he's been given another chance by the WWF. But they're starting slow, by sending him down to Memphis to work for Jerry Lawler's promotion so he can get back in shape. Regal has to keep a job here in America in order to stay in the country, since he's here on a work visa. Otherwise, he'll be sent back to England.
Steve Austin is wearing a soft neck collar these days and his movement is limited to walking. He's still not allowed to lift weights. They still hope he can appear at WrestleMania but it's definitely not a sure thing.
WWF is considering holding WrestleMania 17 in 2001 at a domed stadium (indeed they did, at the Houston Astrodome).
Vince McMahon was away from work for most of last week because he was in Phoenix for the jury trial in Ultimate Warrior's lawsuit against the company. But before a verdict could be reached, the two sides reportedly settled out of court, although the details of the settlement are apparently confidential because Dave has no other info.
Remember the case in Florida a few weeks ago where a 12-year-old boy is being tried as an adult for the death of a 6-year-old girl? The boy claimed he was imitating wrestling moves he saw on TV. Anyway, The Rock has been subpoened in the case, mostly just because he lives in Miami and they want a wrestler to testify about the moves. Anyway, both WWF and WCW have been airing "don't try this at home" spots in recent weeks due to this case.
Speaking of the Rock, he will indeed be playing some sort of heel scorpion character in the new Mummy movie coming out next year.
The situation with B.B., the nurse character who was powerbombed through a table by the Dudleys a few weeks ago, is that she's probably gonna be let go. She's out selling the injury right now but they have no more plans for her. It's said that they liked her look (she's, uh, busty) but they feel she has no charisma and it just wasn't working. In a side note, she's currently dating Bob Holly (yup, she was released and briefly showed up in WCW and later in TNA for a minute before disappearing forever).
A company in Canada screwed up big time when airing WWF's No Way Out PPV. Since much of Canada still doesn't get PPV, a lot of those events are still shown on closed circuit so hundreds of people pile into movie theaters to watch PPVs on the big screen. This one particular company handles the bulk of it throughout Canada. Anyway, after the PPV was over, someone mistakenly flipped over to the adult PPV channel. It was only on screen for about 30 seconds, but that was plenty of time for crowds of families and children all across Canada to see a woman on her knees giving a guy a blowjob. Whoops.
On WWF house shows, they've been doing triple threat matches between Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, and Kurt Angle and apparently they're really good and it's expected that they will end up doing a triple threat match together at Wrestlemania.