May 01, 2000
- The smoke has finally cleared around the ECW world title situation and it ended up with Justin Credible crowned as the company's new champion at the latest ECW Arena show. Long-term, Heyman had actually talked about making Credible the champion more than a year and a half ago, but wanted to wait until they had a national TV deal. But then Mike Awesome came along, things changed, and it just never happened. Pretty much all of the ECW title changes during the last year have been the result of Heyman having to respond to real-life problems (Shane Douglas injury issues and heat with the company, Taz leaving for WWF, Awesome defecting to WCW, etc.). The idea to put the belt on Tazz after the Awesome situation was in order to get the ECW title promoted on WWF television, but of course, it was presented as a nothing title and Tazz ended up doing a 5 minute job to Triple H on TV, in Philadelphia no less, so that didn't really do ECW any favors. The TNN shows afterward did pretty much the same exact rating it had already been doing. Now that Tazz has dropped the title, there's no plans for ECW and WWF to work together beyond this. It was just WWF throwing them a bone for this one situation. Anyway, as for the title change: Tazz got the biggest pop of the show from the ECW Arena crowd. Tommy Dreamer then defeated Tazz to win the ECW title and afterward, Tazz gave a big speech, putting over ECW and the other wrestlers. As various wrestlers were congratulating Dreamer, Justin Credible came out, threw down the tag title (basically a way of vacating those belts to get it off Lance Storm. They did an injury angle earlier in the show on Storm, who still hasn't signed a contract extension and may be WCW-bound soon) and challenged Dreamer, and won the title.
- WATCH: Tazz defends ECW title against Tommy Dreamer - CyberSlam 2000
- WATCH: Tommy Dreamer defends ECW title against Justin Credible - CyberSlam 2000
- There's been a lot of calls for safety reform in NJPW after the death last week of Masakazu Fukuda who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage during a match. He'd previously suffered 2 other hemorrhages and had undergone brain surgery just 6 months earlier. The first hemorrhage happened back in October in a match with Shinya Makabe. He returned in February and suffered another hemorrhage. Before being allowed to return this time, he was given a full physical and the doctors gave him a clean bill of health after an MRI and CAT scan. Two days later, he wrestled his first match back....and hemorrhaged again. Went into a coma and 4 days later, he died with his family, his fiance, and Shinya Hashimoto at his side. Hashimoto had driven overnight for 6 hours to be at Fukuda's side immediately after the injury and stayed at the hospital for days until he passed away. Everyone from NJPW attended his funeral, including Antonio Inoki. There's been a lot of media coverage of the death, calling for better medical care for wrestlers. NJPW has actually been at the forefront of this sort of thing in the past. In 1988, NJPW was the first company to hire a full-time doctor, before any other promotion did and in 1996, they started having trainers on the road with the wrestlers full-time as well.
- Afa Anoa'i held a tribute show for Gary Albright this week featuring several WWF, WCW, and AJPW wrestlers. The show opened with Afa bringing out Rikishi, his sons (Manu and L.A. Smooth), his brother Sika, and his grandson. The Rock and Mick Foley sent video tributes and donations. RVD was there signing autographs to raise money but didn't work because he's still injured. Scotty 2 Hotty, Stevie Richards, Head Bangers, Kaientai, Road Dogg, Eddy Guerrero, Chris Jericho and Rikishi from WWF all worked, while Crowbar was the only representative from WCW. AJPW sent Too Cold Scorpio, Steve Williams, Johnny Smith, and Maunukea Mossman. There was a lot of talk about Sabu not being on the show. Sabu claims that he didn't want to cause Afa any legal problems by working the show, since Paul Heyman has been sending legal threats to anyone who tries to use Sabu. But Paul Heyman says he specifically sent Sabu a letter giving him clearance to work this show because it was a tribute for Albright. But Sabu missed the show anyway for some reason. (I can't find one long video of the whole event, but if you go to Google Videos and search "Gary Albright Memorial Show", you can find several videos and matches from this show).
- Dave gives a glowing review to a recently published book detailing the history of wrestling at Madison Square Garden dating back to the 1800s. This is interesting considering all the people who get outraged every time Dave because he refutes the WWE claim that Bruno Sammartino sold out MSG 187 times. He's already pointing that out here, noting that after Sammartino won the title in 1963, "the crowds were usually strong but the mythology that the Garden sold out every month was definitely not the case." In fact, during the late 60s, business was down and one Bruno match against George Steele at MSG only drew 5,527 (and even that number is probably inflated, Dave says, since that's the number the promotion itself reported, and they always exaggerate). Most of the time, Bruno was drawing around 9,500 to shows at MSG and during one 5-year period during Bruno's first title run (1965-1970), he didn't sell out MSG a single time. Things turned around in 1970 and they began drawing sellouts again. Sammartino's 2nd title reign did much better business and at that point, he began selling out MSG regularly. Using this book, WWF's records, and Dave's own research, he tries to fill in as many blanks as he can. And at most, Bruno Sammartino and Bob Backlund are actually near tied, with around 41 verifiable sellouts each, give or take a couple, though he admits that there are some gaps in the 70s that he can't account for that might boost Bruno's number up a little (Dave has later revised Bruno's number to around 60 or so. Impressive but still nowhere near the 187 that WWE still claims today. But some people get really pissed when you dare question WWE History™).
- New York State senator Thomas Libous made headlines this week when he called for pro wrestlers to be drug tested to be allowed to work in New York. For what it's worth, Dave notes that the big problem in wrestling these days are pain pills, which are often obtained legally, which makes drug testing problematic. Libous suggested a 24 hour ban for a first failed test, a year ban and $25,000 fine for a 2nd failed test, and a lifetime ban & $100,000 fine for a third. The big thing here is that most state athletic commissions (in the 20 or so states that regulate this sort of thing) usually enforce suspensions made by other states, so if someone was banned in NY state, it would pretty much be the same as being banned everywhere that has an athletic commission. Vince McMahon responded to the story, saying, "We are performers. We are showmen. He'd be drug testing everyone on Broadway. He'd be drug testing the circus." McMahon also called it unconstitutional. WWF and WCW contracts both stipulate that steroids are illegal and against company policy, but nobody is even trying to pretend that they aren't still rampant in the business and neither company actively tests people. Dave talks about how WWF and WCW have both avoided running shows in Oregon for years due to this sort of policy. A few years ago, Florida talked about enacting the same sort of testing and both companies threatened to stop running shows in the state if that law passed (it didn't because WWF hired highly-paid lobbyists to fight and get it killed). Pulling out of Oregon is one thing, since they only have one major city that they would even run in (Portland). But pulling out of New York, on the other hand, would be damn near impossible for WWF. They do more arena business in the state of New York than anywhere else in America and it's essentially their home base (the company is technically based in Stamford, CT because that state has better tax laws, but it's only an hour from NYC). So needless to say, expect WWF in particular to fight the hell out of this one.
- Stampede Wrestling's planned Stu Hart birthday show has been postponed. It was to be held close to the 1-year anniversary of Owen Hart's death and Stampede had planned to bring in more than 20 WWF wrestlers for the show, which led to Stu Hart himself refusing to attend. Plus Owen's widow Martha came out against the show publicly also. It became a no-win situation because a lot of the WWF wrestlers who had previously volunteered when they thought it was approved by the Hart family wanted to pull out, but WWF ordered them to honor their commitments. But Stampede finally saw it was a no-win situation due to all the negative publicity and decided to postpone it. There's a lot of people claiming Stu had never agreed to the show in the first place. WWF officials claim Stu Hart spoke with Bruce Prichard and seemed happy about the show, but after Bret Hart confronted Bruce Hart about it, Stu decided to pull out. Chris Benoit claimed on his website that he and other wrestlers agreed to the show because it was presented to them (by Bruce and Ross Hart) as an Owen tribute show and they believed it had Bret and Martha's blessing (which is why 26 WWF performers, including referees and even Howard Finkel, all volunteered to work it initially). But anyway, it's all postponed and likely permanently cancelled now.
- Raw did its 2nd highest rating ever this week, a 7.15 which is actually slightly higher than the rating they got last year for the Owen Hart tribute show. And even though Raw did a huge number, Nitro did okay too, doing a 3.05 rating which is actually good "by WCW in the year 2000 standards." Just a lot more people overall decided to watch wrestling this week than usual for some reason.
- ECW's Sandman worked for Shawn Michaels' TWA promotion in San Antonio, taking part in their world title tournament. Sandman got eliminated by DQ and then beat up his opponent. Then he and Shawn Michaels drank beers in the ring together (can't find any video of this, but that's just a surreal pairing of wrestlers that I never knew crossed paths).
- Insane Clown Posse member Shaggy 2 Dope suffered a broken nose, broken cheekbone, and a concussion from a bump gone wrong at one of their JCW shows. It resulted in them cancelling a show this weekend.
- The WCW title changed hands twice this week, first with DDP beating Jeff Jarrett on Nitro, followed the next night at the Thunder tapings by actor David Arquette pinning Eric Bischoff in a match where DDP's title was on the line. The hope within WCW is that Arquette winning the title will garner mainstream publicity and a ratings boost. Time will tell if they're right but reportedly the crowd didn't seem to like it. (This happened right as the issue went to press so Dave has no other thoughts or news on it this week. We'll hear plenty about this on Monday.)
- More on Sting coming down from the ceiling last week. Before the show, Sting asked Bret Hart if he had a problem with it, and Bret told him he didn't as long as he felt safe doing it and had a safety line. There were some people in the company who thought it was in poor taste, but Russo insisted it was important for Sting to do it. He did it again on Nitro this week. Dave's waiting to see if they'll be disgusting enough to do it at their upcoming Kansas City show (not quite).
- On Smackdown, they did a thing where Austin dropped a huge block on DX's bus and it exploded. Except it went totally wrong. First, they couldn't get the crane to move. They tried to make it work for 3-4 minutes before finally turning off the camera. In the ring, Vince began ad-libbing to stall for time. Finally, the cameras came back on and they dropped the block on the bus. The idea was this big heavy block would plummet through the roof of the bus like a knife through butter and then boom goes the bus. Except it hit the roof....and didn't even make a dent. It just sorta landed there. And for some reason, the bus exploded anyway because that's how explosions have to work on TV. Luckily this was a taped show and with careful editing, it will probably look fine when it airs, but it was a disaster for the live crowd to see.
- WATCH: Steve Austin blows up the DX bus
- Mark Henry is being sent to OVW. Between this and the other angles he's been involved in for the last year, Dave thinks WWF is trying to get him to quit. Henry has a 10-year guaranteed big money contract that he signed back in 1996 before he ever had his first match and WWF has seemingly regretted it ever since, but Henry refuses to quit. He just keeps putting his head down, going along with whatever dumb shit WWF wants him to do, and keeps cashing those checks.
- Vince McMahon will be in Playboy in June. Don't worry, it's just an interview. This time.
- Whole bunch of letters from people mostly trashing the new Russo/Bischoff era, including one guy who brags about having worked 30 years in the business and claims if he was put in charge of WCW, he could save it. "I've been a booker and a matchmaker and guarantee with the talent they have, I could turn the product around very quickly and they wouldn't even have to pay me. Vince McMahon is doing well because he loves the business and the same goes for me. That's the difference." His name's Jeff Walton and no, you've never heard of him either. Fuck outta here, Jeff.