May 22, 2000
- We open with the death of Jumbo Tsuruta who passed away from complications after a kidney transplant in the Philippines at age 49. He was a household name in Japanese sports and his death was the lead sports story in the country. On a cultural level, the only Japanese wrestlers more famous are Rikidozan, Baba, Inoki, and Riki Choshu. He was a top star in Japan and arguably one of the best in-ring performers for most of the 70s, 80s, and even into the early 90s. But in 1992, he abruptly disappeared from wrestling for most of a year (later learned to have been due to Hepatitis B health issues) and when he came back, he was clearly unhealthy and had lost his stamina and a lot of weight. For the remainder of his career, he pretty much just worked undercard 6-man tag comedy matches on a sporadic basis because he could no longer compete at a main event level. And even in those matches, he'd usually only be in the ring for a minute or less. Shortly after Giant Baba's death last year, Tsuruta left his office job with AJPW and moved to the U.S. to take a teaching job in Portland. But while there, he got cancer, which he kept a secret from most people. He returned to Japan for treatment and then went to Australia where he had one surgery to remove the cancer from his liver. But he still needed a kidney transplant. Apparently transplant laws in Japan are a mess so he went to the Philippines when a donor was found there. He had the surgery in Manila but died afterward due to heavy internal bleeding.
- We get the usual massive obituary, detailing Jumbo's life and hall of fame worthy career, and these are always Dave's best writing, plus Jumbo's life story is really interesting. He was a great athlete in high school, where he was the star basketball player on the national championship team during his senior year. He went to college to play basketball, but then one day, he read a magazine article about amateur wrestling and decided, on a whim, he'd like to give that a try. So he quit basketball and started wrestling, which he had never done before. And literally just 18 month later, he qualified for the Olympics in Munich, where he went on to win his first 2 matches before losing his 3rd via decision and placed 7th overall. After the Olympics, he jumped into pro wrestling. He was a huge star from the Olympics and all of the promotions fought to sign him. Ultimately, he decided to sign with AJPW, which had literally just formed 10 days earlier, and Jumbo Tsuruta was the promotion's first major signee. He was first sent to the U.S. to work for the Funks, became a quick star there and was a big draw. Then he went back to Japan to begin his career there and yet again instantly got over and became a star. This guy's life story is that, basically everything new thing he did, he was instantly amazing at it. A lot of the older wrestlers resented that he came in with a big contract without having paid his dues and was getting a monster push, but he was so good that it was impossible to deny that he deserved it. By 1974, he was already considered the best technical wrestler in the world. At one point, the NWA was seriously considering having Harley Race drop the NWA championship to him. He had classic matches with Flair in the 80s. Spent a lot of the 80s also working the U.S., won the AWA title, headlined huge shows for the NWA title, etc. In the later 80s, a newer fast-paced style developed in Japan, and he adapted and changed his style and continued being one of the best in the world. He unified 3 different championships to form the AJPW Triple Crown title, which is still the top championship in AJPW to this day, and he was the first to hold that title. He helped usher in the era of Misawa and Kawada in the early 90s but then he got sick and that was pretty much it.
- Other notes from Hardcore Heaven: they did a dumb angle before the main event to get Dreamer out of the match and it killed the crowd, who spent a lot of the Credible/Storm main event chanting "We want Dreamer!" And during the second match, the lights in the arena went out for a bit and they had to use a single spotlight to light up the ring until the lights came back on. Steve Corino did an epic blade job, to the point that even his hair turned red. RVD made his in-ring return, losing to Jerry Lynn (also making his in-ring return from injury) in the best match of the show. And Lance Storm, who never blades and has gone on record saying he wouldn't, decided to do it in his final ECW match in order to try to get Credible over (to this day, I think it's the only time in his entire career that he ever did a blade job).
- Buff Bagwell was arrested last week after a show in Springfield, IL on battery charges. As a result, he was suspended for 30 days by WCW head Brad Siegel. Allegedly, a WCW ring crew member was carrying a roll of carpet through the back of the arena and ran into Bagwell, Luger, and Elizabeth who were apparently blocking the door. He asked them to move so he could get through and Bagwell told him they were "conducting business" and told him to fuck off. Words were exchanged and Bagwell punched the crew member in the neck. Bagwell was arrested and released after paying $100 bond. Another ring crew member reportedly also wasn't allowed through the doorway earlier by Bagwell. The version Bagwell told the cops is basically the same. The crew member asked him to move, but Bagwell thought he did it in a rude way and after words were exchanged, Bagwell admitted that the guy pissed him off so "I punched him upside the neck." Both Luger and Elizabeth gave statements to the police saying they didn't see anything (Luger and Liz ain't no snitches, apparently). Anyway, based on Bagwell's contract, his 30 day suspension is gonna cost him somewhere in the neighborhood of $45,000 in lost wages, plus whatever further legal implications come out of this. That's a pretty expensive punch.
- Ratings news: Ric Flair won the WCW title on Nitro this week (more on that later) and the match between he and Jarrett did a decent rating by current WCW standards. Of course, Raw still wiped the floor with them. And for those of you keeping count, WWF's ratings win streak is now up to 76 consecutive weeks, so they're only 8 weeks away from passing WCW's 83-week win streak that Bischoff used to gloat so smugly about.
- In Tijuana, Mexico, Rey Misterio Sr. lost a hair vs. hair match against Psicosis (wrestling under the name Nicho el Millonario). The show drew 6,000 fans with highest ticket prices for wrestling ever in Tijuana, which makes it the biggest indoor gate ever for wrestling in that city. It was a big deal because Misterio Sr. has never lost a hair match and it was said when he was pinned, it was one of the loudest pops ever. If you're wondering, he was paid $13,500 for losing his hair.
- Vader recently had elbow surgery and will be out for about 2 more months (he actually was out for about 4 months, and when he returned, it was for NOAH, not AJPW).
- Hayabusa is reportedly looking to work with AJPW because FMW is having financial issues. But with all the rumors about AJPW possibly splitting off into a new promotion, he's not making any moves yet because everyone is waiting to see how all that is going to shake out.
- It was reported in Japan that NJPW plans to offer a PPV subscription service later this year. The idea being that fans could pay a monthly fee and watch all of NJPW's events on PPV as well as through the internet. If it ends up being available on the internet, then theoretically, American fans would be able to watch NJPW also, with the idea that all 100 or so NJPW shows, including house shows, would be available to view, although there's concern that broadcasting all the house shows might kill live attendance (This sounds like a whole world full of NJPW. An NJPWWorld, if you will). Anyway, Dave points out that "the video on the web isn't up to what most would consider enjoyable television viewing broadcast standards. No doubt that will change within a few years and I'd suspect it won't be that many years before all the major offices offer similar plans."
- A study on the effects of concussions on NFL players was released this week at a neurology conference. It was a survey of more than 1,000 retired NFL players that had suffered concussions during their careers and the study showed that those who suffered a concussion were more likely to suffer from neurological issues such as memory problems, speech or hearing impairments, numbness, and headaches. It was the first real study of its kind on the effects of concussions on football players and Dave suspects this might be an important issue in the future, not just for football players, but likely professional wrestlers as well (boy, I'll say).
- Atsushi Onita confirmed that he will be facing Terry Funk in an exploding ring barbed wire match next month for the CZW promotion, which had previously been announced by CZW but neither wrestler had confirmed until now.
- There's a bit of a promotional war brewing in Puerto Rico between WWC and IWA, which is ran by Juan Rivera, formerly known in WWF as Savio Vega. Turns out Vega wants to use his old gimmick name (TNT) in his own promotion, but WWC filed an injunction to prevent it. About a decade ago, Savio Vega got over huge in WWC using the TNT gimmick and WWC doesn't want him using it elsewhere, even all these years later.
- Yokozuna worked a tag match alongside Justin Credible at an indie show this past week and was said to look enormous, bigger than his WWF days. He only did one move in the match, a leg drop. Justin Credible got a much bigger pop than the former WWF champion (I think this might be his last match. All the usual sources--cagematch, wrestlingdata, etc.--list his final match as taking place in 1999 but those sites sometimes miss tiny little throwaway indie shows. So as far as I can tell, this was probably Yoko's final match. He dies about 5 months later).
- ECW filed lawsuits this week against XPW promoter Rob Black and Sabu. The lawsuit against Black is for contract interference (for booking Sabu) and for copyright infringement over the "Xtreme" part of their name, which ECW says causes confusion in the marketplace and also pointed out that the XPW logo is incredibly similar to the ECW logo. The lawsuit against Sabu is for breach of contract (for working the XPW show). That's all Dave knows as of press time.
- Masato Tanaka is hoping to sign a full-time ECW contract, which tells you all you need to know about the financial problems FMW is facing in Japan.
- WCW has not publicly released any official buyrate numbers for Slamboree because the number is such an embarrassment. Word is it was below an 0.2 which would make it one of the three lowest PPV buyrates in company history. So much for that David Arquette mainstream publicity. By all accounts, Arquette is an extremely nice and likable guy but the decision to make him world champion has clearly backfired in every possible way. Plus 7 years of shit-talking and internet hype from Shane Douglas didn't amount to anything when he finally got to face Ric Flair.
- Notes from Nitro: they introduced a new group called Misfits In Action. Tylene Buck is now going by Major Gunns. Chavo Guerrero is Lt. Loco. And Van Hammer is Major Stash. Hammer was originally going to be called Private Stash but he threw a fit because Private is the lowest rank and he didn't want to be the lowest ranked member of a comedy jobber group. Crowbar and Daffney somehow won the cruiserweight title in a tag team match from Chris Candido and Tammy Sytch in a match that ended with Miss Hancock dancing (that's the most WCW sentence ever). Dave recalls a recent interview where Eric Bischoff promised they were going to re-establish the cruiserweight title as a serious title with good matches. So much for that. Anyway, Crowbar and Daffney are now co-cruiserweight champs. Dave does give props to the angle with Ric and David Flair, which saw Vince Russo and David go to Ric's house to confront his family (featuring a cameo by 14-year-old Charlotte Flair). Dave thought Russo jumping up and down in Ric's bed and walking around his house wearing one of his robes was pretty great. Sid Vicious turned on DDP, making him like the 30th person to do so in the last month. Dave thinks they should bring in DDP's mom next so she can turn on him too. Hogan bounced Kidman around the ring like a ping pong ball, and Dave is pretty much done with people claiming that Hogan is "giving Kidman the rub" by working with him, when all he's done is treat him like any other no-name jobber. And Ric Flair, at 51 years old and working with one good arm (he needs shoulder surgery) and wrestling in street clothes won the WCW title from Jeff Jarrett. The WCW title changes hands all the time now, so Dave will be shocked if Flair gets more than a 2-week reign. The announcers weren't told of the title change beforehand because they wanted a "natural" reaction, and they got one: the announcers seemed confused, apparently thinking the referee messed up, and therefore didn't initially put over the title change with excitement and instead seemed lost. Anyway, in case you're wondering, Dave considers this to be Flair's 18th world title reign, although you could argue that its his 20th and you probably wouldn't be wrong.
- WATCH: Vince Russo, David Flair, and Daffney go to Ric Flair's house
- Mike Awesome did a couple of interviews (including with the Observer) regarding his decision to leave ECW the way he did. He said that due to legal reasons, he can't fully give his side of the story until next month (I guess there's a temporary gag order on the whole thing) but said he wasn't happy in ECW and after talking to Russo and Hogan, he was convinced to come aboard. Basically, he said Hogan convinced him that ECW was minor league and he should be in WCW. I assume we'll hear more on this once he can legally talk about it (we don't).
- As previously mentioned, Lance Storm is headed to WCW. Turns out they wanted to bring Dawn Marie in with him, but she still has 2 years left on her ECW deal.
- Since WCW can't draw in their normal markets anywhere, they're trying to run more shows in smaller markets where WCW and WWF usually never go, in hopes of drawing fans in towns they haven't already killed. They're also planning to run more international shows in England, South Africa, Australia, Germany, and Canada. The last WCW overseas tour actually did strong business even though everything in America is collapsing for them right now.
- Notes from Thunder: at one point, Dave mentions that David Flair is dating Miss Hancock, aka Stacy Keibler in real life, although on-screen he's with Daffney. They did the thing where blood was supposed to fall from the ceiling and land on Kevin Nash, but it mostly missed and instead splattered on a bunch of people in the front rows. And David Flair defeated Arn Anderson in a 2 minute match which was Anderson's first match back in over 3 years since retiring, but nobody seems to make a big deal of it and in fact, Dave doesn't even address it. What the fuck??
- In a backstage meeting with the wrestlers, Bischoff put over Kevin Nash and the Kronik tag team, basically saying they're the only ones getting over. Dave says until they start drawing an iota of money or moving TV ratings or buyrates in a positive direction, nobody is really "over" and you can't mistake a crowd pop as actually mattering. For example, Scotty 2 Hotty doing the worm gets the biggest pop of the show most nights other than The Rock, but nobody is tuning into Raw or buying a ticket specifically to see Scotty 2 Hotty. Nothing wrong with that, Dave clarifies. Prelim wrestlers are there to be entertaining, it's the main event star's job to put the people in seats. Don't mistake loud crowd pops for actually being a draw.
- Random WCW notes: Vampiro signed a new contract giving him a base salary of $250,000 per year, plus $1,300 per live show and $4,000 per PPV. For some reason, there's been a lot of confusion about Scott Steiner's real age online, so Dave clarifies that he's 37. Several wrestlers are working hurt at the moment: Hogan has knee and shoulder issues, Flair has a shoulder issue, Konnan has a neck injury, Juventud Guerrera has rib and elbow injuries. However, after WCW started cutting people's pay in half when they were out for awhile with injuries, nobody wants to stay home and let anything heal, so everybody's working hurt.
- Goldberg was on the cover of Sports Illustrated For Kids. The editors first approached WWF, wanting Rock in the magazine but when they were told that the story would also feature WCW stars, WWF turned it down because they didn't want one of their wrestlers in the same photo spread as a WCW wrestler. Plus, they don't want to do anything too obvious to make it look like they're marketing to children, since that's been a big controversy lately.
- Speaking of Goldberg, there's a lot of jealousy from some of the top guys about how hard Goldberg's being pushed right now even though he isn't even on TV at the moment. They've been heavily teasing him for weeks but he's still not expected to be back for several more weeks. As for the people who are complaining, Dave doesn't name names, but says if you think of the usual suspects, you'd be correct (in other words, Hogan, Nash, Luger, Bagwell, etc.)
- One of Godfather's ho's briefly won the hardcore title on Raw this week before Crash won it back immediately after, making him a 43-time hardcore champion in case you're keeping count, Dave jokes (actually it was only Crash's 8th reign). This is great, simply for Lillian's befuddled announcement of the winner.
- WATCH: A ho gets on top of a sweaty shirtless man and removes his belt while thousands of voyeurs watch...
- According to USA Today, there's talk of doing a remake of the Conan The Barbarian movies, with The Rock being the front-runner to play the role of Conan, which is the same role that catapulted Arnold Schwarzeneggar to movie star fame (never happened. Guess The Rock won't get a shot to make it in Hollywood after all).
- The Undertaker is expected to return at Judgement Day and his first match back will likely be at King of the Ring (Dave seems to have no clue as of yet that Undertaker will be returning with a whole new gimmick).
- Random WWF notes: Big Show is working with a hurt knee, reportedly a torn meniscus. There's a reference to Vince McMahon in the new movie Road Trip. Chaos Comics is releasing a Chyna comic book. Steve Austin is reportedly set to play a Hell's Angel member in a movie about Janis Joplin (far as I can tell, that movie spent years in developmental hell and never happened).
- Shawn Michaels filmed a lengthy shoot interview talking about his career (pretty sure this would be the RF Shoot, although Dave doesn't clarify). He maintained that he knew nothing about the Bret Hart screwjob ahead of time. He admitted that Vince had asked him 3 days before the show to lose clean to Bret and promised him that he would win the title a month later at the following PPV, but Shawn said he refused to lose to a guy who was going to WCW. It's interesting because McMahon told Bret at the time that he had asked Shawn to lose the match clean and but then called Bret back and told him Shawn had refused. But there was always doubt over whether that had actually happened or if Vince had ever really asked him. But this confirms that, in this case at least, Vince was telling the truth.
- WWF met with NCAA heavyweight wrestling champion Brock Lesnar again this week to talk about bringing him in. Lesnar has already been training for pro wrestling in Minnesota and people are raving about how quick he is for a guy his size. Verne Gagne also showed up to watch him train. Word is that Lesnar is an incredible athlete and he definitely has a great look, but they don't know if he has much charisma or personality yet. Lesnar's former college roommate Shelton Benjamin is already signed to WWF and working in developmental so it's believed Lesnar is leaning towards WWF. Both WCW and NJPW are interested in him also, but it's thought to be pretty much a lock that he'll be going to WWF.
- Dynamite Kid ended up not attending the WWF's UK Insurrextion PPV. He was going to be an invited guest of Chris Benoit, but because Benoit was flying in for the show and then had to leave immediately after, it was figured they'd have no time to hang out, so he decided not to go. Despite rumors, Davey Boy Smith being there had nothing to do with his decision not to attend.