Wrestling Observer Rewinder

May 15, 2000

The main story this week is a LOOOOOOOONG in-depth look at the proposed legislation that would require drug testing for all wrestlers that work in New York and Dave says if it passes, it would completely change the business as we know it. Dave doubts the bill will pass and he also expects all of the major U.S. promotions (WWF, WCW, ECW) to put on a united front against it. The drug test would include all drugs. Illegal drugs, prescription drugs, and steroids. There's 2 big things here that are especially worth noting. For one, there would be mandatory suspensions for failures. The 1st failed test is a one-show suspension, which is fine. But a 2nd failure is a 1-year suspension. And since 20 other states honor suspensions by other commissions, that would make anyone who fails a 2nd drug test unable to wrestle in about half of the country for a year, which is going to make them pretty useless to any of the major companies. And a 3rd failure is a lifetime suspension, which means you might as well pack up and move to Japan or Mexico at that point. So failing more than 1 drug test can pretty much destroy someone's career. Dave thinks that may be a bit much, especially if the failure is for something harmless like marijuana, but that's how the bill is written.
Furthermore, the suspensions are enforced by outside agencies, not the company, so you can forget all the freebies that people have gotten away with for years. Dave uses Scott Hall for example. In WWF, Hall officially only failed one drug test (coincidentally, ahem-ahem, he was suspended for it on the same day he gave notice that he was leaving for WCW). But according to Hall's wife, he failed at least 10 tests while with the WWF, but was never punished for them. That shit won't fly under the New York law. The other big deal here is that this is in New York, the state that grosses by far more money for pro wrestling than any other. WWF and WCW have been avoiding Oregon for years and it's no big deal because, well....it's Oregon. Even if they could, they would only run 1 city there (Portland) and since Portland is so close to the Washington state line, they can just run a show in Washington and draw most of the Portland fans. But New York is too big and too profitable to not run shows in. WWF especially would stand to lose tens of millions of dollars if they pulled out of the city. And New York is the media capital of the world and it wouldn't look good if WWF was refusing to run shows there because the reasons why would be obvious (aka the entire locker room is full of pilled out junkies and the company knows it) and the media would surely cover it. Not to mention the effect something like that would have on WWF's stock. And of course, the only other alternative would be for the companies to really do their best to clean up the locker room and hope like hell their top stars stay clean. And, well, you know how that goes. Dave goes into a ton of detail about this, but (spoiler) this bill never amounts to anything, so.....moving on.
Other notes for the show: the opening match got screwed up when they botched the finish. The referee counted 3 even though The Artist kicked out and then they briefly played Candido's music before stopping it. Tammy Sytch got her dress pulled off and was wearing more clothing under her dress than any woman in wrestling history that has had her dress pulled off. Shawn Stasiak beat Curt Hennig clean, leading Dave to quip, "I didn't know they were allowed to do clean wins in WCW." Hugh Morrus ditched that name and announced he was now going by the name Hugh G. Rection. Oh, Russo. Last week on Thunder, Ric Flair won a battle royal to become the #1 contender for the WCW title, so of course he jobbed to Shane Douglas on this show, because that makes perfect sense. Flair is still wrestling matches in dress pants and a shirt, which looks ridiculous. Sting made a regular entrance, which is good because this show was in the Kemper Arena plus it was Owen Hart's birthday, so at least somebody had the common sense enough to not lower Sting from the ceiling this time. Hogan faced Kidman and it was a decent enough match by Hogan standards but these 2 are just totally miscast. Kidman as the heel who needs a million people to help him fight Hogan is doing nothing whatsoever to get him over. Hogan repeatedly had Kidman beat a dozen times in this match, but special referee Eric Bischoff wouldn't count, just to ensure that people know that Hogan would have easily won otherwise. And in the main event, Jeff Jarrett won "the most prestigious title in the history of our sport." It was the triple cage match and Arquette turned on DDP to help Jarrett win. Basically the exact same finish of the last PPV, with the same 2 guys, except this time it was Arquette instead of Kimberly who turned heel. After the match, Kanyon took a big bump off the cage through the gimmicked rampway. After the show, Dave got a lot of emails and calls from people who hated that spot because they felt uncomfortable seeing something like that in the same building Owen Hart died in but Dave doesn't think it was that big a deal and compares it more to the Foley HIAC bump.
WATCH: Mike Awesome throws Kanyon off the cage
NJPW's Fukuoka Dome show also took place and it was by far the smallest crowd NJPW has ever drawn for a major dome show. It was announced at 35,000 but the real number was closer to 25,000. The big dome shows are what carry the company financially and at this point, they need 3 successful dome shows if they're going to break even financially this year. The last dome show didn't do great and this one was an unmitigated flop. PPV isn't a big thing in Japan so there's no real money to be made by running PPVs, live gates are still where it's at. They filmed a major angle during that match with Antonio Inoki and Riki Choshu that's expected to lead to a match between the 2 retired wrestlers. It's the first time in his long career that Inoki has played a full-fledged heel and Dave thinks it's all a sign of desperation from a company that is clearly struggling right now. Kenzo Suzuki won the Young Lion's tournament by beating Shinya Makabe. They did a tribute before the show for recently passed wrestler Masakazu Fukuda and Dave says Fukuda was scheduled to be in this match and may have even been booked to win the tournament before his death.
WWF ran another UK-only PPV, called Insurrextion. The Kat flashed her breasts briefly at Terri after their arm wrestling match and the cameras caught it for a split second. Benoit worked the show with a broken cheekbone and his right eye was basically swollen shut. Davey Boy Smith made a surprise appearance and won the hardcore title from Crash Holly but he got a pretty disappointing pop, which surprised everybody who figured he'd be given a hero's welcome. Otherwise, nothing really notable about the show. Here's what you're looking for, 7:20ish you degenerates:
WATCH: The Kat vs. Terri arm wrestling contest
The Lou Thesz Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, which is part of the International Wrestling Institute & Museum, inducted several pro wrestlers. It's basically an amateur wrestling HOF, but they made a special pro wrestling section of it for pro wrestlers and Lou Thesz pretty much has the final say on who gets inducted. This time around, they inducted Danny Hodge, Dick Hutton, Earl Caddock and Joe Stecher. Dave gives a little history on each man.
There are reports coming out of AJPW that the company will be splitting into 2 promotions soon. Motoko Baba, who owns 85% of the company (the TV network owns the other 15%) and company president Mitsuharu Misawa don't get along and aren't on the same page. Misawa is expected to resign as AJPW president at the end of the month. Misawa is upset because he says Motoko doesn't even come to the shows anymore, but she won't give up her decision making power and frequently overrules him on business and creative decisions. This split is expected to be ugly, because Motoko Baba isn't well liked and reportedly almost every single wrestler in the company is siding with Misawa and are expected to leave with him. Misawa wants to start his own promotion later this summer.
At the next AJPW show, rookie wrestler Kenta Kobayashi will have his first singles match (that'd be Hideo Itami). Dave once again says this kid needs to change his name ASAP considering how similar it is to Kenta Kobashi in the same company.
Billy Kidman and Juventud Guerrera from WCW were both booked for NJPW's Best of the Super Juniors tournament, but WCW has pulled them and are sending Elix Skipper and Alan Funk (later Kwee Wee) in their place. Needless to say, NJPW isn't thrilled and are refusing to put the new guys into the tournament and have replaced them with actual NJPW stars. Dave doesn't understand why they don't send talented guys they aren't using like Psicosis or Christopher Daniels. In fact, Daniels (as Curry Man) already has a name in Japan and is somewhat popular there so he would have been perfect.
Lots of heat between FMW in Japan and Paul Heyman's ECW. For starters, ECW was supposed to send 2 people (Balls Mahoney and Tracy Smothers) to Japan for FMW's big show last week but Heyman ended up not sending them because he claims FMW still owes them money. FMW was pissed and reached out to Sabu to work the show. Well, as you might remember, Sabu is still in a contract dispute with Heyman, who claims he is still under ECW contract. That hasn't stopped Sabu from working for XPW in California, despite Heyman's legal threats, and Sabu even won the XPW championship, which he then went to FMW to defend. Heyman has spoken with FMW and told them he's okay with them using Sabu but said ECW won't have any cooperation or participation in any show that acknowledges XPW. So that's where things stand right now.
Randy Savage has signed on to appear in 5 episodes of RollerJam on TNN (I think he does at least one, where he's announced as the new commissioner, but I don't know of anything past that and can't find any video).
WWF is planning to send a lot of their developmental stars to MCW in Memphis and in particular are looking to get some of Shawn Michaels' students that they have under contract to work there. Everyone is especially raving about Spanky. Speaking of MCW, the Blue Meanie has been working there but he's planning to move back to Philadelphia because his grandmother lives there and she's sick so WWF is going to try to get him rehired by ECW (he works a few more ECW shows but that's it).
ECW's Hardcore Heaven PPV is coming up this week and only a couple of matches have been announced. Heyman's hoping to get Gedo and Jado on the show, but with FMW relations falling apart, that's not a guarantee. Also, Super Crazy got detained at the Houston airport for not having the proper paperwork and it's possible he won't be allowed in the country in time for the show (indeed, he misses it). Dave doesn't acknowledge it here, but you can definitely see ECW starting to be pulled in all directions now. In the pasts, having PPVs booked weeks and even months ahead of time, with long-term storytelling, was always Heyman's strong suit. Now, by mid-2000, he's basically throwing together PPVs on a napkin at the last minute. The train is starting to come off the tracks.
The trial regarding the ECW fire incident in 1995 was wrapped up this week and the jury ruled in favor of ECW, Mick Foley, and Terry Funk. Apparently it came out during the trial that the fan who was burned had his hand on the wrong side of the guardrail and thus I guess they felt it was his fault or something. I dunno. Either way, ECW dodged a bullet.
Raven was thought to have suffered a concussion at the latest ECW on TNN taping after taking a bump out of the ring. He definitely cracked his head on the floor and was glassy eyed and threw up later backstage. But he's still been cleared to work the PPV. In fact, Raven has been badly banged up in general for weeks and is only working TV lately.
For the first time ever in ECW history, Paul Heyman missed an ECW TV taping because he was attending the funeral of a close friend out of town. He still called in and booked/produced the show over the phone, however.
Sandman and New Jack got into a backstage fight and for once, it apparently wasn't New Jack who was responsible. Word is Sandman started the fight by repeatedly calling New Jack the, uh, word you're not supposed to say. New Jack tried to dismiss it as just drunk ass Sandman being Sandman. But he kept saying it and it eventually turned into a fight. A lot of people said the tension between the 2 has been building for awhile and even the next night at another ECW show, it was still tense between them backstage.
Rob Van Dam had an appearance on this week's X-Files episode, though he had no dialogue (I had a video of this when I first wrote all this back in June, but the YouTube account has since been terminated for copyright reasons. Mulder and Scully got that shit shut down).
Notes from Nitro: the show drew 3,388 fans paid to the TWA Dome in St. Louis. Considering the size of the venue and cost of running a show there, this ended up being the biggest money-losing event for WCW so far this year. They drew 29,000 paid during a blizzard to the same arena just 17 months ago. Dave trashes the angle with Ric and David Flair. During a promo, Ric pulled out his cell phone and told David he could call and get him a job with Vince McMahon and he could be on Raw next week, which got arguably the biggest pop of the show. WCW couldn't look more bush-league if they tried to right now. WCW is attempting to rebuild Tank Abbott after killing his momentum last week, which pissed off Goldberg since they are expected to feud when he returns. Hogan and Nash pretty much spent the entire show beating the shit out of New Blood members, even when outnumbered, just in case you actually thought that these guys are serious about putting over young stars. "It's so great to see how unselfish Hogan has become of late," Dave sarcastically writes after recapping how Hogan beat up 5 members of the NB group by himself. And even with all those complaints, Dave still says it was one of the better Nitros this year, which goes to show just how much all the rest have sucked.
WCW injury notes: Goldberg is expected to be back around July or August. Scott Hall should be back from his neck surgery in about 8 weeks and will form a team with Nash when he returns (never happens, he doesn't come back). And Hogan's knee is said to be in bad shape.
Juventud Guerrera was supposed to get a push but after his recent arrest for DUI and fleeing the police, WCW expects that he'll likely get deported. So they aren't doing anything with him until after that case winds up (nah, he manages to not get into too much trouble for this one. But in a few months, he gets all riled up on PCP and attacks some cops, and that gets him fired).
Vince Russo apparently wanted to do an angle at the recent WCW PPV (in Kansas City at Kemper Arena) with Bret Hart up in the rafters. Needless to say, that got shot down pretty damn quick and Dave seems outright disgusted that it would even be considered.
For what it's worth, the morale of the younger wrestlers in WCW right now is pretty good, because they feel like Russo and even Bischoff are serious about pushing them finally. As you might expect, there's a lot of skepticism from the older guys. In a pre-Thunder meeting with the entire locker room, Bischoff said everyone is going to be asked to do a job for someone at some point and said if you have a problem with it, hit the road. Word is Bischoff is barely involved in the creative aspect of the show, only occasionally making some minor changes, but WCW is 99% Vince Russo's vision right now.
The Vampiro/Sting feud is not working. Part of it is because of Sting, who clearly doesn't want to work with him and has been phoning in every match and segment they have together. He also won't take most of Vampiro's offense. Another part of the problem is that WCW turned Vampiro heel with their big company reboot, and that was dumb because Vampiro was actually starting to break out from the pack and get over as a babyface before that happened. Speaking of Vampiro, a couple weeks ago he had a contract dispute with WCW and he reached out to WWF. But when WWF asked other wrestlers who knew and worked with Vampiro in WCW and Mexico, they all had a pretty negative opinion of him, so WWF decided they weren't interested. ECW had a little interest, if for no other reason than it would look good for them to steal a rising WCW star, but it never really went anywhere. So Vampiro stuck with WCW and they've worked out a new deal that he's expected to sign soon.
Dustin Runnels is expected to debut a new Goldust-like gimmick, likely called Platinum (nah, but he's about to get suspended soon for talking shit about Russo in an interview, so there's that).
Lenny Lane reportedly asked for his WCW release because he wants to go to WWF. His partner Lodi reportedly feels betrayed by it, saying Lenny broke up the team and that affects him too.
Lex Luger has been upset with Vince Russo because Russo has been pressuring Elizabeth to wrestle matches, something that neither he or she is comfortable with.
How about some more Vince Russo news? He did an interview this week saying all sorts of bullshit. First, he told some lies about his time in WWF, which Dave uses timelines and dates and facts and whatnot to disprove. Then he defended his decision to make David Arquette the champion, talking about how USA Today covered the story. Dave points out how the ratings after it happened plummeted so the "all publicity is good publicity" myth doesn't quite hold up. Word is virtually everyone in WCW realizes it was a bad idea that clearly flopped, but only Bret Hart and Mark Madden had the balls to say it publicly, while Russo is continuing to stand behind it.
Early buyrate estimates for Backlash are in the 600,000 range, which would make it one of the top 5 largest PPVs in WWF history. Not bad for a minor, non-big-four event. The heavily-hyped return of Steve Austin surely played a big role in that.
On the Raw after Rock won the title at Backlash, Vince, Shane, and Triple H were talking about trying to make Rock the shortest-reigning champion in WWF history. This leads Dave to spend an entire paragraph pointing out how that's impossible and listing other title reigns that were already shorter (like Yokozuna losing it 2 minutes after he won it at WM9, among like, 10 other examples). I just include this because it's funny to me the way Dave took a hyperbolic statement and spent a paragraph deconstructing the logic of it, because Dave is nothing if not extremely analytical.
WWF is not giving up on this WWF New York restaurant in Times Square. They spent $23.5 million to buy out their business partners so now they have 100% ownership control of the location.
Remember a week or two ago when Steve Austin showed up on Smackdown and dropped the big boulder on top of the DX bus, causing it to explode? Remember how it went terribly wrong and the crane wouldn't work but luckily they were able to edit it for TV so it looked good? Well, in case you're wondering, in real life, there was a 22 minute delay while they tried to fix the crane to drop the boulder. So even though it only took a few seconds on TV due to the magic of editing, the live crowd spent almost half an hour waiting for them to figure that shit out.
Random WWF notes: The Rock is in Morocco for the next week filming his part in the Mummy 2. Rock is also going to be in a new Wyclef Jean video called "It Doesn't Matter." Tazz probably won't need surgery for his torn bicep and can rehab it in about 6 weeks.
WATCH: The Rock & Wyclef Jean - "It Doesn't Matter"
Davey Boy Smith was sent to rehab for drug issues (painkillers and morphine addiction) and was supposed to stay there until August. But after being there for 6 weeks, he left the facility due to some personal family issues. Even though he'd been doing well in rehab, they still advised him against leaving, but he did anyway. So since he's out of rehab and allegedly clean, WWF has already put him back on the road. Because of course they did.