March 27, 2000
- Chris Craft Industries agreed to sell its 50% ownership stake in UPN to Viacom for $5 million, which is one of the last hurdles left to finalizing the WWF/CBS deal. CCI had tried to block the CBS/Viacom merger due to its own deal with Viacom over UPN where they couldn't make a deal with a competing network. CCI didn't have a lot of say in the matter. They filed a lawsuit to try to block the CBS/Viacom deal, but the NY Supreme Court ruled against them and gave them just a few days to accept Viacom's $5 million offer to buy out their half, which is a tiny amount for half of a TV network. The deal still has to go through FCC approval because this will end up with Viacom owning both CBS and UPN, and there's laws about one entity owning more than one TV network but they're expected to make it work. According to most sources, WWF making a deal with CBS is all but a definite now. It will result in Smackdown most likely staying on UPN while Raw and other WWF TV shows will move to TNN (which is expected to get a name change and face-lift to make it a less southern network) later this year.
- Vince McMahon did an interview on the WWF website this week where he responded to all the controversy around Beyond The Mat. Needless to say, Vince came off poorly. Vince's main complaint was that the movie shows all these WWF wrestlers and scenes from within the company, but WWF doesn't have any financial stake in the movie, which Vince claimed was unfair. Which is true, but as Dave points out, that's the contract they signed and lord knows WWF has never had any qualms about holding people to unfavorable contracts. WWF agreed to allow cameras to film at WWF events for the movie without any interference or control over the product, and now they're upset that they're having to own up to the stipulations of the contract. Furthermore, a documentary where the main subject has a financial stake in the project instantly kills any credibility the film might have. Vince also claims he was told that the film would be a limited release project, not a nationwide theatrical release. Dave calls bullshit, noting that Universal Pictures and director Barry Blaustein have been talking from the very beginning of trying to give the film a national release and aiming for major awards. With Ron Howard producing it, everybody expected there was a good chance it would be nationally released. McMahon also said he was upset at the advertising which has dubbed it, "The movie Vince McMahon doesn't want you to see." McMahon said he doesn't care if people see it or not. Of course, the fact that his PR team has gone out of their way to bury the movie (putting out statements calling it "boring") and the fact that Vince pressured both UPN and USA to stop airing ads for it proves otherwise. After saying he didn't care if people saw it, Vince went on to call it a disappointing snooze-fest, said it's a lie that lacks entertainment value and shouldn't be considered a documentary. But he totally doesn't care if you see it....
- Vince also complained that Mick Foley won't be making any money from the film (again, that's kinda how documentaries work) and was upset that WWF's intellectual property is being used. But, again, this is the deal WWF agreed to when they signed up for it. Vince also complained that the nature of the movie changed several times during filming, which is actually true. The original idea for the film was to follow young wrestlers as they attempt to make it to the WWF, but as they began filming and uncovering more things, the concept of the movie changed. Vince said he had offered producers triple the cost of the film in order to have a financial stake in it (presumably so he could then order a bunch of changes) but was turned down. WWF had agreed to advertise the movie up until the moment they didn't, and ads were scheduled to run before they were pulled at the last minute, which further proves that WWF was involved up until the moment that Vince decided he didn't want people to see it. McMahon has denied that he pressured USA or UPN to pull the ads, but other sources say otherwise and it would surely be a weird fuckin' coincidence if that was the case. Especially for UPN, which is badly in debt and isn't in the habit of turning down advertising money without a good reason. The New York Times last week ran a story on the whole ordeal, including a quote from Ron Howard who said he believes Vince is trying to shut down the movie to keep anyone from seeing it and that Vince doesn't want viewers to see his wrestlers as real people. It's also said that both Vince and Linda McMahon were particularly unhappy with the scene depicting Foley's children crying while their father is beaten to death by the Rock with chair shots. Anyway, Lion's Gate is apparently considering filing a lawsuit over all this, since they claim to have contracts for advertising that WWF, USA, and UPN violated.
- Anyway, Beyond The Mat is out nationwide now and the reviews are gold. It already won several film festival awards, has been getting lots of 3-and-4 star reviews from all the big movie outlets. Roger Ebert, who is not a wrestling fan, said watching the movie made him realize just how real pro wrestling actually is. It has gotten some negative reviews, mostly from people who felt it didn't go hard enough on wrestling and complaining that it didn't address the drug and steroid issues. Dave's take: hey, it's a 2 hour movie, they couldn't tackle everything. The film chose the story it wanted to tell and told it well, but no, it wasn't a full blown take-down of the wrestling industry as some critics were hoping it would be. Anyway, from here Dave just shares a bunch of reviews from different media outlets, mostly raving about it.
- Foley was given permission by McMahon to appear on the Larry King Live show (along with hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, and producer Barr Blaustein) to promote the movie and he came off great. Piper talked about hoping that wrestlers in the future could get medical benefits and retirement and saying that they need to have a union (which Foley agreed with, surely to McMahon's delight). They eventually got into a little back and forth, with Foley calling Piper bitter at one point. Hogan claimed he liked the movie and wished he was in it but didn't contribute much otherwise. He and Foley did talk about wanting to work with each other, with Hogan claiming they could sell out the Pontiac Silverdome together. During the show, both Piper and Hogan complained about the long list of injuries they've suffered in their careers. In a later radio interview, Foley scoffed at that, saying he's had more injuries than both of them combined. He also said that Piper is always in character and dismissed most of what he said. During the same interview, Foley said he didn't think Mae Young should be taking bumps and she definitely shouldn't be stripping to her bra and panties on TV anymore. When asked about his retirement, he said, "Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who feels that I'm actually retired. Nobody believes me. I will probably come back for one big match in about a year, but for right now, believe it or not, I'm working on some children's books and other projects." (Fun fact, Dave notes: Foley un-retired 3 days after this. But we'll get to that in a moment...)
- Villano III lost his mask to Atlantis in one of the biggest matches in Mexican wrestling history, in the main event of CMLL's first ever PPV. Villano III is probably one of the top 15 or so stars in the history of Lucha Libre and had worn the mask for 27 years. The show packed 20,000 people into Arena Mexico, which is thousands more than the usual capacity. The show sold out in advance, the fastest sellout in the 67-year history of CMLL. They put 4,000 standing room only tickets on sale the next day and they sold out immediately also.
- WATCH: Villano III vs. Atlantis - Mask vs. Mask match
- Other notes from the PPV: Chris Candido debuted and is apparently going to be part of the cruiserweight division. No Tammy Sytch yet but she's still expected soon (Dave contradicts this later in this same issue). Bam Bam Bigelow faced The Wall and the highlight of that match was Wall splitting his pants. In the Jarrett/Sid Vicious world title match, Hogan had to run in and give Jarrett the leg drop, then dragged Sid on top of him for the win, thus establishing that Hogan basically beat Jarrett, not Sid. Then the main event was the Hogan/Flair strap match. The announcers talked about how the only way to win was to drag your opponent to each corner, meanwhile, Hogan and Flair were busy trying to pin each other and the referee was counting, so nobody knew what the actual rules were. Hogan pinned Flair to win the match and then, just to make sure everyone got the point, he also dragged him to all 4 corners afterward. LOLHOGANDOUBLEWINZ.
- At NJPW's upcoming Tokyo Dome show next month, IWGP champion Kensuke Sasaki will face IWGP Junior heavyweight champion Jushin Liger. It'll be the first time in NJPW history that the heavyweight and junior heavyweight champions have faced each other. The show also has Ogawa vs. Hashimoto and Muta vs. Chono and will air on TV-Asahi live in prime time (this show ends up doing a MONSTER rating on TV).
- XPW in California is planning to start running monthly shows at the 17,000-seat Los Angeles Sports Arena which is a pretty ambitious place to be running shows. XPW also will start airing a weekly show on the America One Network in the L.A. area. They have also offered big contracts to names like Sabu and Shane Douglas, because apparently they've got a lot of money to throw around since they're funded by a successful porn company.
- New Jack is expected to be back in about 2 weeks after his scary injury at the recent ECW PPV.
- Joey Styles is appearing in an infomercial selling colorized dollars and coins for New England Mint.
- WATCH: Joey Styles infomercial
- Lots of rumors going around about potential management changes in WCW. The word around the locker room is that Eric Bischoff will be returning to take over control from Bill Busch (not exactly). There's thought that bringing Bischoff back may also make Sonny Onoo's racial discrimination lawsuit go away, since Onoo and Bischoff are close friends. Bischoff has denied he's coming back, but nobody believes him, which tells you all you need to know about his credibility among the wrestlers. Dave says WCW is desperate right now, since the last 2 PPV buyrates were embarrassing beyond anyone's wildest imagination and ticket sales for upcoming shows are reaching scary low numbers.
- Dave breaks down the plans for Spring Stampede and talks about how the current idea is to eventually build for Goldberg vs. Sid Vicious. But Dave thinks in this case, Hogan should actually win the title and then drop it to Goldberg. Obviously, Hogan as world champion is the last thing WCW needs to be doing right now under normal circumstances. But Hogan's name still means more than Sid's. And if they want to make Goldberg the face of the company, it would mean more for him to be the one to finally vanquish Hogan once and for all. So Dave thinks they should put the belt on Hogan for a quickie title reign when the time comes, and then have him drop it to Goldberg in decisive fashion. And after that, Hogan needs to fuck off forever down to the mid-card. But obviously, the big problem here is getting Hogan to agree to any of that. He has full creative control of whatever he wants to do and he's not looking out for anyone but himself, so what's in WCW's best interest isn't necessarily what Hogan is going to want to do. And nobody can stop him.
- WCW's new policy of cutting people's pay in half when they've been out injured has hit 2 new victims. Both Kevin Nash and DDP got their pay cut to 50%. Dave thinks this new policy is more bad than good. It's good because WCW has a history of guys milking injuries and taking off more time than they need just so they can sit home and collect a paycheck. So this will encourage guys to stop being lazy and return to work. That's good. But the bad side is that it's going to force wrestlers who really are hurt to come back to work too soon or to not take time off at all when they're injured. That in itself pretty much guarantees more injuries and more drug issues and Dave knows of examples in WCW of that very thing already happening.
- Scott Hall is still out "injured" and he's expected to face some sort of punishment once he comes back for all the incidents that occurred before he got hurt. Remember, he was expected to be fired after his main event match at SuperBrawl, but he conveniently got hurt at the very end of the match and now WCW doesn't want to fire him because it opens a whole can of worms to fire a guy who just got injured in your ring (despite all the skepticism, Hall apparently really was hurt. He ends up getting neck surgery during this time off).
- Notes from Nitro: Chris Candido debuted in his first match, beating Lash Leroux and looked good. In recent weeks, Vampiro has been the closest thing WCW has had to a younger star who has been getting over, so naturally, he lost to Lex Luger because god forbid one of the old top guys in this company aside from Flair ever be willing to put over somebody else. Ric Flair was the best in-ring performer on the show, carrying Sting for the millionth time to a good match. But Dave says Flair may need to start wrestling in a shirt because no matter how decent he still is in the ring, his physique is gone and it's hard to take him seriously. He also says Flair should be a special attraction at this point instead of wrestling every week but WCW is determined to always do the opposite of what they should do, so whatever. And in the main event, Sid turned on Hogan (they were partners in a tag team match) and choke slammed him, then Sid pinned Hogan and the ref actually counted, which is stupid. So the team of Hogan & Sid both won and lost the main event apparently.
- Goldberg is expected to return to the ring in May. He reportedly lost nearly 30 pounds due to not being able to work out while injured so they're giving him an extra month or so to get his look back before he returns. In the meantime, he's making a ton of media appearances to promote Ready To Rumble and other stuff.
- WCW has reportedly decided not to hire Tammy Sytch after all, feeling she's too much of a risk due to her well-known issues (nah, they still bring her in).
- Several people reported "problems" with a recent WCW.com poll that asked fans to vote on what they thought was the best match at Uncensored. Basically, no matter what you picked, it added extra votes to other matches instead. Wanna guess how that went? Basically, it ended up with the Hogan vs. Flair match getting the majority of the votes, even when you voted for something else. When someone pointed this out on the Observer online show, WCW immediately changed the website so that you couldn't see the vote totals anymore.
- Bret Hart has been telling people he may be forced to retire due to his concussion issues. He's still suffering from bad headaches, slurred speech, occasional memory loss, and losing his train of thought. He said that even if he does come back, he'll never take anymore shots to the head. In a recent interview, he put the blame on Goldberg, saying that Goldberg closed his eyes when he threw the kick that gave him the concussion and couldn't see where he was aiming the kick, which hit Bret super hard in the head. He said he wasn't bitter at Goldberg, but said, "The kind of accident that happened with me is somebody was just a little too real with his kicks." If Bret does end up retiring, it doesn't sound like he'll miss it much, saying, "The wrestling profession is in the toilet. I am looking forward to running as far away from it as fast as possible. I look forward to a day not only when I can wash my hands of it completely, but never have anything to do with any aspect of it."
- And in one other Bret Hart note, he appeared on the Geraldo Rivera show because they were talking about Beyond The Mat. Rivera was extremely dismissive and negative towards wrestling in general. At one point, it was brought up that Hart is working on an autobiography about his years in the business. Later on, apparently after they were off the air, Geraldo said the book would make a good door stopper since it's about wrestling. The remark was apparently not meant to be heard, but Bret did indeed overhear it and was pretty offended, as you can imagine. In related news, fuck Geraldo Rivera.
- Hulk Hogan recently did a radio interview saying he was back in WCW because the younger wrestlers there can't cut it, so he's back to save the company. Dave thinks that's sure to help morale.
- More on Gene Okerlund's recent DUI arrest in Tampa. The local news there reported that he ran a red light and was weaving in and out of traffic and almost hit a police car before he was pulled over.
- Psicosis and Juventud Guerrera's contracts both expire in October. Dave doesn't think either is going to stay with the company but it might depend on where WCW is by then. If they've started making moves to push younger stars, then it might be worth it to stay. But otherwise, he expects them to leave. WWF probably won't want either of them, but ECW would. Dave says that aside from Kidman and Goldberg, there's probably nobody in WCW that Paul Heyman wants more than Guerrera. But unless ECW gets a bigger network deal (their days are probably numbered on TNN if/when this WWF deal goes through), with a lot more cash, they probably can't afford him. (Dave doesn't know it yet, but at this point, Psicosis has already wrestled his final WCW match. He'd show up in ECW a couple months later. He's right about Juvi though. He stuck around until October when his contract was up and bounced. Didn't end up in ECW though).
- Bryan Clarke (formerly Wrath) and Brian Adams will be forming a team called Kronik. Dave thinks Clarke has potential (although he says Nash basically buried him during his time as booker) but Brian Adams is useless and brings nothing to the table, so why are they saddling Clarke with him?
- Mick Foley is already returning to the ring, and will be headlining Wrestlemania in a 4-way match alongside Triple H, The Rock, and Big Show. According to Foley, he says he planned to really stay retired, at least for awhile. But nobody believed him anyway, and the chance for a big payoff and to achieve his dream of main eventing Wrestlemania came along and so now he's decided to work the match. Dave doesn't seem to be buying it and looking back on the angle leading up to Foley's "retirement", he things it looks like this was planned from the beginning, that No Way Out was never REALLY going to be his last match. Either way, he seems disappointed. Before No Way Out, Foley cut one of the best promos Dave had ever heard (literally calls it one of the 10 best promos in the history of the business) talking about how much he was against prostituting his retirement and wasn't going to be one of those guys who came back just to get one last payday and vowing that if he lost the match, he really was retiring. And now, literally only 3 weeks later, he's already announced a comeback. Dave thinks it's a pretty big blemish on Foley's credibility and says for all the jokes people make about Terry Funk retiring, at least he stayed retired for 17 months the first time. And when Funk returned, Japanese fans in particular never fully forgave him for going back on his word and his popularity there was never the same (Foley wrote about this in his book. If I remember correctly, Foley still claims that he really was going to retire but I guess Vince called him and convinced him to come back for this match).
- Notes from Raw: it was in Chicago and the crowd was nuclear hot, probably one of the hottest crowds in Raw history. In fact, they may have been too hot, because during the Acolytes match, 2 women in the crowd took their shirts off, which completely derailed that match since no one in the crowd cared about it anymore. During Linda McMahon's entrance at the end of the show, a fan jumped the barricade and ran up the ramp towards Linda. Luckily, Triple H jumped on him before he could do anything as the camera cut away. Edge got into a shoving match with a fan while making his entrance through the crowd. Trish Stratus was at ringside for Test's match and then announced she was going to be managing Test and Albert as a new team T&A. And her mic skills here were baaaaad. Dave says she made Sable sound like The Rock on the mic. The lines she was given were bad to begin with but her reading of them was terrible (yeah it wasn't good. But to be fair, it's her very first time ever speaking on camera. She's clearly nervous as hell. She would get MUCH better in later years). Anyway, this new team isn't for them, it's mostly being used as a platform to give Trish a big promotional push, since they see dollar $ign$ with her. Speaking of Trish, the T&A idea wasn't the first idea they had for her. The original idea was for her to play a porn star and be affiliated with Val Venis, but she refused to go along with that idea.
- At this point, neither Austin or Undertaker is expected to appear at Wrestlemania, although they will both be in town for the fan fest the day before signing autographs and whatnot. That could still change at the last minute but as of now, they're both still too messed up to do anything. And they feel it doesn't serve any purpose to have either of them on the show if they can't do anything physically. They're hopeful that Austin will be in decent enough condition by next month's PPV to at least show up and deliver a stunner or two.
- There had been talks of doing an exploding ring match between X-Pac and Kane at Wrestlemania, similar to Onita's famous matches. But they dropped the idea because they didn't think they had enough time to plan it and get familiar with it. They didn't want it to go wrong and not look good at Wrestlemania of all shows. Plus, without having time to fully test something like that beforehand, they also don't want to risk something going wrong and someone getting hurt.
- Saturday Night Live was hosted by the Rock and featured guest appearances by Big Show, Foley, Triple H, and Vince McMahon. It was considered a big success, with Rock coming off like a star. All the other wrestlers played their parts well also and it was the highest rated SNL episode of this season. In fact, it was the highest rated episode since an episode from last year that featured a Monica Lewinsky appearance.
- WATCH: The Rock's full monologue from SNL in 2000
- WATCH: Other highlights from The Rock on SNL in 2000
- Taka Michinoku is still rehabbing his shoulder from the injury suffered at Royal Rumble. Doctors recommended he have surgery but he's trying to avoid it. He wants to come back 100% because he's excited about the opportunity to work with Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko. His contract expires in October and he has said he'd like to stay in WWF.
- The Owen Hart family lawsuit against WWF is expected to go to trial in Feb. 2001 but will probably be delayed several times before then.
- The WWF Restaurant in Times Square is going to turn into a night club on weekend nights. To try to bring in more people, the night club area of the building will have almost no WWF-tie ins. No wrestling merch or logos or anything like that around because, turns out, the kind of super cool hip people who hang out in NYC night clubs on Saturday nights till 3am aren't really wrestling fans. So that will all be exclusively in the restaurant side. New York mayor Rudy Guiliani has publicly come out against the night club because WWF plans to allow people under 21 to enter. Guiliani publicly warned WWF that at the first sign of trouble from the night club, "we're going to bust you from A-to-Z and back again." Speaking of the restaurant, word is it does good business on Mondays and Thursdays, as people watch Raw and Smackdown there, but it's not really doing well on most other nights, even though it's right in the middle of Times Square and literally thousands of people per hour walk past it.
- Remember the case in Florida with the 12-year-old kid killing the 6-year-old girl and how Rock was subpoened for it? WWF lawyer Jerry McDevitt wrote a blistering letter to the defense attorney and the mother of the accused killer, blasting them for trying to blame WWF or wrestling for what happened and for subpoening the Rock. "Your statements and associated innuendo that either the WWF, Dwayne Johnson, or both, have some causative role with and to the brutal murder committed by your client are false," the letter said. "Nobody need look any further than the actions of your client and his mother to understand why Tiffany died that day." The mother was home when it happened but was in another room. The WWF has threatened to sue the defense lawyer to prevent Rock from testifying. Speaking of, since WCW was in Florida last week, but Hulk Hogan and Sting were also subpoened to testify in the trial. The lawyer responded to McDevitt's letter, saying, "If the WWF doesn't like the media exposure of children being hurt or killed by other children imitating professional wrestling, do not blame me. Blame your shameless marketing of violence to children." When asked about Hogan and Sting, he responded, "I want Hulk to provide the jury with a historical perspective of pro wrestling, on how pro wrestling became increasingly violent and how it caters to kids. And Sting is important because he shot a Sprite commercial where he is shown grabbing a kid, sending him through a window and rattling his head on a fireplace mantel."
- Lita suffered a severe concussion, dizziness, and double vision when Eddie Guerrero power bombed her on the floor on Raw a couple of weeks ago but she was back on the road this week working matches against Jacqueline.
- WATCH: Eddie Guerrero power bombs Lita
- The Rock is expected to miss most of May and June because he will be in England filming his role in the new Mummy movie. So if he wins the title at Wrestlemania, it will likely be a short title reign.
- Lots of letters this week, most of them about Beyond The Mat. One guy writes and talks about how dark the movie was and how he can see why Vince wants to suppress the film, because it paints a dark picture of the business and the way it affects people's lives. He's worried the movie will give critics more ammo to target wrestling. Dave responds and says if you think the movie is an honest portrayal and that it makes the wrestling business looks bad, that says more about the business than the movie. If it gives the critics more ammo, maybe it's because the critics are worth listening to. Wrestling is a fucked up, dirty industry and instead of being mad that someone is shining a light on it, maybe we should all pay more attention to what that light is exposing.