Wrestling Observer Rewinder

April 17, 2000

There's some strange happenings going on between WCW and ECW in regards to ECW champion Mike Awesome, who debuted on Nitro this week despite allegedly still being under ECW contract and still holding the ECW world title. Awesome reportedly has more than 2 years remaining on his ECW deal. It started over the weekend, when Awesome no-showed the Thursday and Friday ECW house shows. At first, no one was suspicious since Awesome had never missed a show and he claimed on Thursday that his flight had been cancelled. But then he made a similar claim on Friday and missed that show as well. Around that same time, rumors began spreading that he was going to WCW, which no one in ECW was aware of at the time. The rumors came from Florida radio host Bubba The Love Sponge, who reported on his show that WCW had offered Awesome a high 6-figure-per-year offer to jump ship. By Saturday, everyone in ECW was aware of the rumors and it was believed that Awesome was gone and would not come back to drop the title and everyone naturally felt he was acting unprofessionally. On Saturday night, at the TNN tapings, Heyman had with him a copy of Awesome's contract, signed and initialed on multiple pages by Awesome, though Awesome himself claims he had never signed a contract and accused Heyman of faking his signature. During the day on Monday, Heyman attempted to get a temporary restraining order to prevent Awesome from appearing on Nitro, but it didn't work. Throughout the day, WCW and ECW went back and forth on negotiations and it apparently ended with WCW agreeing to pay ECW a low 6-figure payment in order to get Awesome a full release from his ECW deal, and in return, Awesome would not bring the ECW title belt with him onto Nitro. Also as part of the deal, WCW has agreed to allow Awesome to return to ECW later this week to drop the title to an ECW wrestler, which will be his final ECW appearance. In addition, WCW agreed to promote Awesome's upcoming title defense that would air on ECW's TNN show later that week, although that didn't quite go as planned, since WCW announcers only sort of vaguely referenced it and never directly mentioned the TNN show on the air. WCW also violated the agreement by allowing Awesome to cut a promo during his debut after attacking Nash, which wasn't agreed upon during the negotiations. Due to that, negotiations between both sides continued on Tuesday, with Heyman threatening legal action over WCW violating their agreement.
It'll be interesting to see how all this plays out at a time when many, for the first time ever, are beginning to view ECW as the #2 promotion in the U.S. Last month, ECW attendance and PPV buyrates were ahead of WCW's numbers. But WCW still has more money to throw around, and stealing the ECW world champion is going to destroy months of planned storylines which were building to Awesome vs. RVD where Van Dam would finally be crowned ECW champion, which was expected to be the biggest show in ECW history when it eventually happened. This puts ECW in a tough spot now, if WCW can just swoop in and steal their contracted stars at any moment and use their money to buy their way out of any legal issues that come from it. It makes it impossible for ECW to book long-term or create true stars. For what it's worth, the Awesome WCW debut was pretty much meaningless, since most people in the crowd didn't even seem to know who Awesome was and his mic work in the promo afterward was weak and forgettable. Dave talks about how Heyman's biggest talent is hiding peoples' weaknesses and WCW is going to have to carefully protect Awesome and book him correctly if he's got any hope of becoming a star there and, well.....it's WCW. He's also 35 years old and coming off double-knee surgery less than a year ago and his best matches are the kind of dangerous ECW style brawls that WCW doesn't do.
WATCH: ECW champion Mike Awesome debuts in WCW
It turns out Awesome isn't the only one WCW went after, as word got around that they had also made some type of offers to Lance Storm, Sandman, Rhino, Mikey Whipwreck, Kid Kash, and manager James Mitchell. Backstage at the latest ECW show, Heyman was determined to get signed agreements on paper from everyone who is working on verbal deals. Sandman signed an extension on his current contract. Rhino, who has apparently considered taking WCW's offer, chose to stay and has signed a 5-year deal with ECW. Don Callis has verbally agreed to a long-term deal, but he signed a 1-year agreement. Lance Storm only agreed to sign a 30-day deal on paper, which means he and Credible will be dropping the tag titles soon if he doesn't sign a longer deal. If he leaves, that will mean ECW basically lost both its world and tag team champions within a month which obviously wrecks even more long-term storylines and destroys plans for next months PPV. But it puts Storm in a good negotiating position with both ECW and WCW.
Anyway, the first Nitro of the new Bischoff/Russo era finally happened and was mostly considered a big success. It was built around a young vs. old feud, the New Blood (young stars) against the Millionaire's Club (the older stars) and saw most of the older top stars getting beaten down by younger stars that they never would have been caught dead in the ring with before. Hulk Hogan actually laid down for a three-count in a non-match with Billy Kidman, and it looks like they're turning Hogan's recent comments about Kidman into an angle. And even more shockingly, Ric Flair worked an angle with Shane Douglas (who was brought back at this show) after vowing for years that he would never work with him. WCW announced every championship was vacated and that they would all be decided at Spring Stampede in 6 days. But by the end of the show, only 1 match was announced for the PPV. The rest is expected to be announced on Thunder. Overall, it was unpredictable and exciting but on the downside, it was full of insider references that were clearly lost on the live audience and probably most people watching on TV also. Bischoff came off strong as a character, but in his first real on-screen appearance as a character, Vince Russo didn't come across as a star at all and seemed out of place. They also revealed Bischoff as the person who drove the Humvee in that big mystery angle from, like, a year ago that most fans had long since forgotten about. WWF was referred to constantly during the show, which just made WCW seem minor league by comparison. Due to all the publicity going into this show, the rating was up about half a point and took a decent bite out of Raw's audience. But they can't re-create a monumental show like this every week, so the real test will be the next few weeks.
WATCH: Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo strip all WCW champions of their titles
New Japan's latest Tokyo Dome show drew the smallest crowd that NJPW has ever drawn in that stadium and initially the show was considered a failure. But then the TV ratings came in. The show aired in prime time for the first time in years and did a monster 15.7 rating, on the strength of the Hashimoto vs. Ogawa rematch, with Hashimoto vowing to retire if he couldn't win. The match had a lot of mainstream interest given their history. Roughly 34 million people watched the match, which would be the largest rating for any pro wrestling match in the world since Antonio Inoki vs. boxer Leon Spinks in 1986. The most watched U.S. match of the modern era was the Hogan vs. Andre match on Saturday Night's Main Event from 1988, which did 32 million viewers, so this match even beat that. Anyway Hashimoto lost and Dave doesn't believe for a second that he's retiring and says when he makes his inevitable comeback, he'll be regarded as a liar and his popularity will never recover. Same thing happened to both Terry Funk and Atsushi Onita. Japan takes retirement promises seriously. They're already doing an angle where NJPW claims fans are writing in letters begging Hashimoto not to retire. (yup, he came back in 6 months). Also, Ogawa dislocated his shoulder during the match and is expected to be out for a little while. It was the 5th time Hashimoto and Ogawa have main evented the Tokyo Dome, which is a record.
WATCH: Shinya Hashimoto vs. Naoya Ogawa - Tokyo Dome, Apr. 7, 2000
Jushin Liger won the 3rd Super J Cup tournament as expected, since NJPW refused to let him participate if he wasn't winning. And a wrestler named Cima from Ultimo Dragon's Toryumon promotion (later renamed Dragon Gate) stole the show with his performance. He's only 22 and reminds Dave of a young Eddie Guerrero. He went all the way to the finals, after having the 3 best matches in the tournament, and was especially popular with the female fans. Dave runs down the results.
WCW's movie Ready To Rumble opened to mixed reviews and landed at #6, doing $5.6 million opening weekend. It basically makes a mockery out of wrestling and the people who watch it, full of dumb toilet humor aimed at the 16-year-old teen boy demographic. Dave thinks it shows exactly what wrestling companies and mainstream media producers think about wrestling and its fans, as it was basically dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. But hey, it's just a movie. Some of the jokes worked, some didn't, and Dave seems ready to just put this flop behind us and forget it existed. Oh, if only it would be that easy...
In CMLL, they've got a guy named Tarzan Boy who they have been pushing as a new top star. But he's been getting booed unmercifully for weeks because the fans don't accept him as the top star (spoiler: I looked it up and he turns heel soon. What a novel idea.) (10-29 UPDATE: this was written pre-leukemia reveal. He's NEVER turning heel now.)
Vader is out injured after losing to Misawa in the 2nd round of the Carnival Champion tournament. In storyline, they're claiming Vader's arm was broken by Misawa's armbar finisher. In reality, it's thought to be a shoulder injury and he was already hurt going into the match so they did the angle to give him time off. He's expected to take a few months off before returning (that was it for Vader and AJPW for awhile. When he returns in October, it's for Pro Wrestling NOAH and he spends the next couple of years there. He did eventually return to AJPW for a one-off match in 2004 and a few more in 2011 and 2012 but that's it).
Tatsumi Fujinami announced he will be working one last retirement tour before hanging up his boots, saying his front office duties with NJPW prevent him from being able to train and wrestle regularly. Dave notes that Fujinami was one of the top stars in NJPW in the 80s but doesn't mean much these days (of course, this didn't really happen. He kept wrestling for a couple more years. Took a 2 year break in the mid-00s and then returned and has been wrestling ever since, up to present day at 64 years old).
NJPW's annual Young Lions tournament will take place in the next couple of weeks, featuring names such as Masakazu Fukuda, Katsuyori Shibata, Kenzo Suzuki, Wataru Inoue, Shinya Makabe and Hiroshi Tanahashi.
ECW and FMW are still working together and Mike Awesome was supposed to work the upcoming FMW tour. In fact, there had been plans in place for a quickie title change, with Awesome dropping the ECW title to Masato Tanaka, and for Tanaka to lose it back to Awesome in the U.S. shortly after. But obviously, that's all blown to shit now.
Bull Nakano is apparently serious about becoming a pro-golfer. She has tried in the past and didn't come close to making the cut and it was thought to be a publicity stunt. But she's continued working hard at it and it's said that she's really serious about it, and this isn't just some gimmick (she eventually makes it into the pros, though she's never really successful at that level). (10-29 UPDATE #2: that Bull Nakano shirt Beth Phoenix was wearing last night on the PPV was awesome.)
The judge in the murder case in Florida where The Rock, Hulk Hogan, and Sting were all subpoenaed to testify has apparently decided "fuck that" and trashed the subpoenas. So they're all off the hook and won't be forced to testify.
CBS' 60 Minutes show aired a piece on professional wrestling with Andy Rooney covering it. The entire premise of the piece was showing a bunch of clips of wrestling moves that would be impossible in real life and showing clips where punches obviously miss and then saying, "look, wrestling isn't real!" and questioned how stupid the audience must be to spend money on something so silly and fake, and said wrestling's booming TV ratings are evidence of the lack of intelligence in our culture today. Dave says this would have been a stupid story to run back in 1975. To do it in 2000, when the entire business doesn't even try to hide that it's fake anymore, is downright embarrassing and 60 Minutes should be ashamed. The business is ripe for some real investigative journalism to dig up plenty of worthy stories, but this was pure bullshit and, much like Ready To Rumble, it shows how the mainstream still views wrestling and its fans, despite its popularity.
XPW in California has a show coming up advertising Chris Candido vs. Shane Douglas for the XPW title. Both are signed to WCW but Candido won the XPW title before he signed and I guess WCW is allowing it? Dave doesn't say. Anyway, there's also going to be a barbed wire thumbtack nails glass light bulbs etc. match with Axl Rotten. They've also been talking about using Sabu, which has gotten them legal threats from Paul Heyman. XPW owner (and porn producer) Rob Black responded to the threat by posting a video on the internet cutting a promo on Heyman, saying he was going to introduce a new character called Gay Lee Dangerously with a vibrator instead of a cell phone, and he'll cut promos on gay movie sets. Well okay then. (Can't find video of this.)
A San Antonio newspaper ran a story about some of Shawn Michaels' students at his TWA wrestling school. One of them, American Dragon, is an 18-year-old from Washington named Brian Danielson. He was an honors student in college who dropped out to train with Michaels. In the article, Danielson was practically bragging about the fact that he has already suffered 3 concussions in just his first three months in the ring. I'm sure it's fine.
ECW had planned to hold their May PPV in Kansas City the week after WCW's Slamboree PPV. The whole reason is because ECW wanted to go into the same city as WCW right after them and draw more people for a major show, thus solidifying their position as the #2 promotion. But WCW had a 30-day exclusivity clause with city-owned arenas to not run PPVs from other companies. They could run a PPV in some of the non-city owned buildings but those aren't big enough to fit enough people to outdraw WCW so it defeats the whole purpose. So it's looking like it'll end up in Milwaukee instead (yup). The main event was scheduled to be Mike Awesome vs. Tommy Dreamer but, well, you know. With the loss of Awesome and possible loss of Lance Storm in the near future, the whole PPV card is up in the air right now.
New Jack made his ECW return for the first time since his injury at the last PPV and, in true New Jack fashion, he immediately got into a backstage incident with Vic Grimes, who he apparently blames for the bump gone wrong that nearly killed him. They were separated before anything could really happen, but there's still heat there. Some backstage said New Jack seemed to still be showing the effects of the concussion he suffered and has lost weight.
Notes from the latest ECW on TNN show: during a promo, when discussing Da Baldies tag team, Francine said, "I'm a baldie myself but I can't show you on television." And Raven continued to be phased out. He's been doing lots of jobs lately and clearly isn't being pushed anymore and it's obvious that he's leaving ECW when his contract is up in August (remember, he only signed a 1-year deal after leaving WCW because the terms of his WCW release prevented him from going to WWF. So the plan all along was for him to spend a year slumming it in ECW before heading north to work for Vince).
Paul Heyman has threatened to sue the Insane Clown Posse and their JCW promotion if they use Sabu, because apparently they've been advertising him.
WCW is planning to make some major changes to their touring schedule, scaling down to about 13-15 shows per month. Monday and Tuesday TV tapings, plus 1 PPV per month and every other weekend running 2 house shows in major markets with all the stars appearing. WCW Saturday Night tapings are up in the air and for the next several weeks at least, it will just be a recap show.
Other notes from Nitro: Goldberg was heavily advertised locally and appeared after the show went off the air, but wasn't on TV since they aren't ready to do his big return yet. Russo was introduced as the man who turned WWF around, and cut a promo putting over the guys who left, like Benoit and Guerrero, and then start babbling about getting screwed over by management while no one watching had a clue what he was rambling on about. Bischoff came out and made a scissors comment to Sid to no reaction to the crowd and evidently Bischoff thought they must not have heard it because he said it again. Still no reaction. (pleaseclap.avi) Hogan and Kidman had their confrontation which led to Hogan blading after a Bischoff chairshot and Kidman pretending to pin him while Bischoff counted. Hogan's getting a lot of positive response for "putting over" Kidman but Dave calls bullshit and says Hogan basically treated Kidman like a jobber until Bischoff did the chairshot, which put all the heat on Bischoff, not Kidman. He's sure Kidman probably got a little something out of it, but let's slow down on crowning St. Hogan, Thy Lord of the Job. Bret Hart was shown in the crowd. They originally wanted him in the rafters but he vetoed that because duh, why the fuck would you even ask? Rena Mero was shown in footage of the Ready To Rumble premiere. Sean Stasiak (formerly Meat in WWF, and yes, they acknowledged it) debuted and did some move on Curt Hennig that was botched so bad, Dave calls the debut Shockmaster-esque. And one final note: during the opening segment, when all the wrestlers were in the ring, they were told to act somber and serious. But everyone was biting their tongues trying not to laugh because the opening pyro briefly caught Brian Knobs' hair on fire.
WATCH: Billy Kidman calls out Hulk Hogan
WCW is pushing Rey Mysterio to hurry up and return, but he's still not fully recovered from his most recent knee surgery and probably shouldn't be back in the ring until June or July (he'll be back by next week).
There's expected to be an official announcement about the WWF television situation soon. Word is the WWF/CBS agreement is pretty much a done deal. USA has the right to match any offer first, but word is USA is not going to match the offer so WWF is likely headed to TNN at the end of the year (this gets a lot messier before we get there).
Early estimates are that Wrestlemania did approximately 875,000 buys which would make it the biggest non-boxing PPV in history. And considering that WWF offered a more expensive 12-hour all-day package for the show, it's thought that WWF's take from the PPV money is going to be more than $15 million. So needless to say, a pretty overwhelming success.
WWF's Sr. VP of marketing Jim Byrne gave a speech somewhere recently and let loose lots of interesting quotes. He gave a lot of attendance and financial numbers that were actually realistic, and Dave says that ever since WWF has gone public on the stock market, they've been forced to be a lot more honest about a lot of the information they claim publicly, rather than giving outrageously inflated numbers like they've done for years past. Said they plan to start their own record label called Raw Records. Dave expects them to sign and push Lillian Garcia for that. He said WWF is producing an action adventure series with Steve Austin that they plan to pitch to networks. When asked about Owen Hart, he said the WWF has offered to take care of Martha Hart and her children for the rest of their lives, but said she's getting bad advice from her lawyers and it could drag on for years. When asked about Vince Russo, he said he wished him the best, but also said WWF's business has gone up since he left while WCW has gone down. He said perhaps Vince McMahon was protecting Russo from himself by shooting down much of his more ridiculous and outlandish ideas. He lashed out at Beyond The Mat, accusing the producers of setting up Foley's family at ringside against orders to try to get shots of them crying and basically painted it as if it was all faked. He also said he didn't think Foley was totally retired.
So here's what went wrong with the hardcore battle royal finish at Wrestlemania. Bob Holly was supposed to break the jar over Crash's head and cover him for the pin. But as the referee was counting, the 15-minute time limit was supposed to run out at the count of two. But Bob Holly was a second or two early on the spot. Crash had no way of seeing that the time was off and since he wasn't supposed to kick out, he didn't. Referee Tim White went to make the count and at 2....there was no bell. He never actually hit the mat for 3, with White signaling that Crash had lifted his shoulder up (although he clearly hadn't). But the problem came from backstage. They thought White had hit the 3 count and made the call from backstage to announce Bob Holly as the winner. Crash was supposed to retain and even the announcers sold it as if he had won, but then word came from the back that they were going with Bob. So yeah, pretty nice clusterfuck there.
To clear up rumors going around, yes it's true: Triple H and Chyna have broken up. She gave a recent interview saying she was single. It's known that they have been having issues lately about where to live. She wants to move to L.A. because she's been getting acting offers and he just bought an expensive home in New Hampshire (they obviously end up getting back together at some point. The final breakup with Chyna discovering the Stephanie affair wasn't until 2001.)
Amateur wrestler Brock Lesnar from the University of Minnesota won the NCAA heavyweight championship a few weeks back. WWF has been interested in signing him and after winning the NCAA title, Brock gave an interview and was asked what he planned to do next. He said he definitely doesn't plan to play football and said pro wrestling is a good possibility. Dave says Lesnar has a great look for wrestling and is an incredible athlete. You can never predict how a great amateur wrestler will do as a pro because a lot of it depends on attitude and checking your athlete ego at the door, but Dave thinks this Lesnar kid might have a good chance of making it.
The Canadian Football League has had talks with WWF about making an agreement with the XFL. Obviously, they're concerned about XFL (who will be paying players more money) raiding the league of its best players. CFL President Jeff Giles talked about the situation and acknowledged that Vince McMahon had previously tried to buy the entire CFL outright. "What was on the table (that the CFL turned down which led to the formation of this league) was the outright sale of the league an the outright loss of our rules and we weren't interested in that. They wanted complete control of the league and our board felt that was giving up too much," he said. WWF Canada president Carl DeMarco responded, saying, "Those idiots missed the boat. The CFL dropped the ball. The WWF could have been the CFL's white knight. Seven out of eight teams lose money and surveys show the fans don't care--they really dropped the ball." Speaking of the XFL, advertisers are said to be concerned about what kind of fans it will attract. They think it will pull WWF fans, but not NFL fans, and that's bad because wrestling fans are seen as poor white trash and advertisers don't like to pay much money for their shows.
Things aren't looking good for WWF New York, their restaurant in Times Square. They've stopped pushing it on TV and word is it's been fairly empty other than on Mon. and Thurs. nights when they have live Raw and Smackdown screenings. And it's sitting in one of the most expensive real estate locations in possibly the entire world, Times Square (it manages to hang on for another 3 years).
In an interview, when asked if he planned to write a book like Foley and Rock, Shawn Michaels said he would love to, but he wants it to be a real book. Not the fluff bullshit books, he wants to write the real stuff that people want to hear. (I've read Shawn's book. It's the safest, most sanitized fluff book WWE has probably ever put out).
Tazz was interviewed by the Observer website and asked about the Mike Awesome situation and said, "I think it's great for Mike Awesome and his family financially if it's there. But I feel that him as he world champion from ECW going to Nitro is horrible. I'm old school. I'm a firm believer in doing the business the right way when you're going out the door. No matter how much animosity you have with the boss, you still owe your locker room as world champion and your fans that moment when you drop the belt and pass it on to another wrestler. I did it to Mike Awesome. I have nothing against Mike. Personally, I like Mike. The world heavyweight championship really means a lot to that company. Paul markets that belt in a big way. I'd hate to see him kill that belt. I understand he has some animosity with Paul, but it's business. I lost to Mike Awesome and handed him the belt. Mike wasn't in the company for a year. He was home with an injury. There were other guys in that locker room that I felt, I don't want to say deserve that belt more, but were in line for that belt. Guys like Rob Van Dam and Sabu and Justin Credible and Tommy Dreamer. Even Raven, who was only back a couple of weeks when I was there. Paul decided that Mike Awesome was the guy he wanted to do this with. One of the first things Vince McMahon said to me was do business the right way and drop the strap. I said I'd do it no other way. When I was ECW champ if someone offered me billions of dollars, I swear on my life I wouldn't throw that belt down." (I was with him until the last line.)
Tons of letters this week, with a lot of people just trashing the new Nitro and especially Vince "watch me mark out for myself" Russo. To be fair, there's a few who also really liked it, although pretty much everybody thinks all the shoot-y inside references were too much. Some letters bashing ECW. Complaints that titles don't mean anything in wrestling these days. Basically, nobody's happy about anything. Same as today.