May 29, 2000
- WWF's Judgement Day PPV is in the books and was capped off by The Rock vs. Triple H in an iron man match, which is extremely risky given the short attention span of wrestling audiences these days. But both men delivered and although it was by no means the best hour-long match in history or anything, it was still very good. Triple H won the WWF title in 60:08 because they fucked up the timing of the finish and panicked officials took the clock off the screen with only a few seconds left and didn't ring the bell until after the returning Undertaker tombstoned Triple H, thus causing the DQ for the final fall. But aside from that, it was a great match. In fact, the whole PPV was great, with Dave dubbing it the best PPV of the year so far.
- WATCH: Undertaker returns to WWF - Judgment Day 2000
- Other notes from the PPV: Rock hyperextended his knee and didn't wrestle the next night. Triple H also was banged up. Vince McMahon got a cut above the eye from Undertaker punching him. Chris Benoit vs. Jericho was a show-stealer that Benoit worked despite having the flu. Perry Saturn worked the show despite being hospitalized a day earlier for coughing up blood, possibly food poisoning, and still had his best match yet in WWF. Big Show worked the show but they did an injury angle to take him off TV for the next few weeks due to a knee injury (torn meniscus). There was a backstage skit where Gerald Brisco attacked some concession stand workers (OVW wrestlers Nick Dinsmore and Scotty Sabre). And of course, Undertaker's return got a monstrous pop and featured the debut of his new biker gimmick.
- The latest Super J Cup is in the books. The first two versions, in 1994 and 1995 were all-time classic shows and this one, put together by Michinoku Pro, wasn't anywhere close to those. NJPW has the best junior heavyweights in the world and they only sent Jushin Liger and Shinya Makabe who is still young and nowhere close to being in the same league as everyone else. And Liger, who won the whole thing, is past his prime and didn't look great. Dave recaps all the matches and they were all pretty average, with nothing reaching 4 stars.
- AAA in Mexico is planning a major California run of shows this summer. Dave talks about how AAA had a lot of success running shows in California about 5 years ago (in fact, those shows were the last non-WWF/WCW shows to sell 10,000 or more tickets until All In did it in 2018). But it's the year 2000 now and AAA is nowhere near as hot as they were then and don't have as much TV coverage in the U.S. Back then they had 5 hours per week on Galavision and a roster full of hot young stars. But then WCW signed all those stars away and squandered them and now AAA has no real marketable names and only 90 minutes of TV per week on Galavision. So don't expect them to do as well this time. Anyway, they have shows scheduled for Los Angeles, San Jose, and Anaheim but Dave says the night they claim they have the Staples Center booked is the same night the Democratic National Convention will be there, so obviously that date (or at least arena) is bullshit. Dave doesn't think AAA can even run profitable shows right now in the U.S. and seems skeptical that any of these shows will ever happen (nope, they didn't).
- Raw and Nitro didn't air head to head this week because Nitro was pushed up an hour earlier. Despite heavily pushing the earlier start time, the first hour of Nitro bombed. The 2nd hour was basically the same as what they usually do in that time slot. Raw, being unopposed, did a 7.07 making it the 6th highest rated episode ever. And the overrun segment did nearly 10 million viewers, making it the 4th highest rated segment on cable in pro wrestling history. Smackdown ratings were down slightly, which is actually good news because it was airing against the season finales of both Frasier and Friends, which both did monster ratings. So considering that, Smackdown actually held up pretty well.
- Jumbo Tsuruta's funeral was this week and was kept super private, with only close friends and family and people from AJPW. Tsuruta was always a reluctant celebrity so his wife kept the location and date of the funeral private to prevent the media from swarming it. But there is talk of having a more public ceremony eventually. A little more news on his death, he was undergoing a kidney transplant and the surgery took 16 hours (which is, needless to say, way too long and it really sounds like this hospital fucked up). During the surgery, he lost about 70% of his blood and needed almost 6 liters transfused into him to keep him alive but it didn't work and he officially died of hypovolemic shock (blood loss).
- Riki Choshu officially announced that he is coming out of retirement after more than 2 years to face Atsushi Onita in an exploding ring barbed wire match in July (and he still wrestles occasionally to this day).
- ECW has offered Raven a full release from his contract, which is set to expire in August anyway. Right now though, Raven can't sign with WWF until July at the earliest, per the terms of his previous WCW release. Raven has said he wants to stay with ECW and finish out the remainder of his contract, but Heyman apparently wants him gone now because Raven has an expensive contract and since he was leaving in August anyway, Heyman doesn't want to push him as a top star, just to have him leave as soon as it gets over. So he's basically just riding out the remainder of this hefty contract and Heyman is kinda trying to nudge him out the door a couple of months early (he sticks around for another month or so).
- The next few weeks may be the most important period in the history of ECW due to the situation regarding TNN and WWF. Currently, the USA Network is suing to attempt to block the deal that would move Raw over to TNN. It's expected that the lawsuit will likely be settled though and Raw is almost definitely moving to TNN later this year. So then it becomes a situation of what happens with ECW. Right now, ECW is not happy with TNN and it's clear TNN doesn't want to put any effort into promoting them, so the company isn't going to grow beyond where they're at right now if they stay on TNN. If Raw moves over, it's possible (though unlikely) that USA might pick up ECW. But as it stands, right now it's expected that TNN will probably dump ECW in September and from there, ECW's future depends on where they end up.
- Dawn Marie and Simon Diamond are engaged and scheduled to be married later this year (they never did. Stayed engaged for years but eventually broke up).
- Random WCW notes: Dave mentions offhandedly that Booker T may be joining the Misfits In Action group and that they may be changing his name to G.I. Bro. Fun trivia fact, Dave says, that was actually his first pro wrestling name back when he was working Houston indies before WCW. The WCW crew member who had an altercation with Buff Bagwell a few weeks ago that led to Bagwell's arrest is talking about filing a lawsuit over it. Juventud Guerrera goes to court this week over the DUI and fleeing police charges he caught awhile back and there's concern that he could be deported over it. Lance Storm and Norman Smiley have both signed a 3-year contracts.
- Kevin Nash reportedly won the WCW title from Jeff Jarrett at the Thunder taping but Dave is just getting word about it at press time so he's got no more info. More on that next week (the title will go back to Flair and then to Jarrett again between now and next week).
- Notes from Nitro: it was the worst show since the Russo/Bischoff era began and that's saying something. Daffney won the cruiserweight title and Dave once again reminds everyone how Bischoff promised to bring prestige back to that belt. Bischoff teased firing the MIA members but then said he couldn't because he has plans for them. Dave reminds us that the MIA group was supposedly fired on Nitro 2 weeks ago but they just came back, it was never acknowledged, and no one in WCW seems to remember it. Terry Funk cut a promo talking about having just signed a new WCW contract from Brad Siegel. This leads Dave to point out that Siegel has never been acknowledged on TV before and in kayfabe, Russo and Bischoff run everything, so WTF? A new interviewer named Pamela Paulshock debuted. David Flair put his 13-year-old brother in a figure four. The original plan was for David to give hum a brutal beating but the Turner standards and practices people didn't want to show too much of an adult beating the shit out of a child so they shot it down.
- Flair collapsed after a match on Thunder and no one knows if it was an angle or not. Some in the locker room believe Flair's initial collapse was legit but that they've since turned it into an angle while others think the whole thing was a work all along, similar to the 1998 fake heart attack angle. Flair claims it's an inner ear issue that is affecting his balance. He had a similar issue back in 1992 when he worked for the WWF so who knows. Either way, whether it was a work or not, it's definitely turned into an angle now, since WCW is playing it up on their website. Flair is expected to lose a retirement match to David Flair at the PPV and then take a couple of months off for arthroscopic rotator cuff surgery. It's a minor injury, not a major tear or anything, so he's been working through it but it's prevented him from being able to lift weights at all. That, plus the obvious issue being that he's 51 years old, is why his physique has gotten so bad and he's been wrestling in dress clothes.
- Word on Slamboree is that it did a 0.14 buyrate which would be the 2nd lowest in history for any of the 3 major U.S. promotions. Yes, even ECW is doing better PPV numbers than WCW these days.
- Mark Madden was forced by the Turner legal department to apologize on the air to Bruno Sammartino on Nitro. A couple of weeks ago, when talking about Arquette winning the title, Madden talked about former world champions rolling over in their graves like Buddy Rogers, Pat O'Connor and.....Bruno. Needless to say, Bruno's not dead (2018 EDIT: well, he wasn't then) and in fact, Madden and Bruno have had heat for years based on some comments Madden made years ago about Bruno's son David. Anyway, Bruno was pissed about WCW claiming he was dead and actually threatened a lawsuit, so Madden had to apologize on Nitro, although he did so in the least sincere-sounding way possible.
- The WB Network announced a new show about a Las Vegas showgirl who marries a pro wrestler (that should would be "Nikki," which starred Nikki Cox back when she was the obsession of teenage boys everywhere. It lasted for about a season and a half before it was cancelled).
- Dave recaps a recent interview featuring Sonny Onoo and his attorney regarding the racial discrimination lawsuit with WCW. Nothing really notable from the interview but it gives Dave a chance to talk about the case. A lot of it stems from Vince Russo making a comment last year saying that a Mexican or Japanese wrestler will never get over in the United States and saying, "I'm an American and I like watching wrestling here in America. I don't give a shit about a Japanese guy or a Mexican guy because I want to see American guys." With Russo booking the company, that naturally led the Japanese and Mexican wrestlers to feel like they were being discriminated against since Russo obviously is never going to give any of them a chance. Then they did things like the "pinata on a pole match" and ended up releasing half of the Mexican wrestlers and the ones that are left are worse off than before Russo arrived. Dave points out how inaccurate Russo's claim is, since several Mexican and Japanese wrestlers have drawn big money in the U.S. throughout history. In fact, just this year, Tajiri, Super Crazy, and Tanaka have all been responsible for some of ECW's best ratings (and remember, they're drawing better numbers than WCW on PPV using those guys in high profile spots). Dave spends forever detailing the history of foreigners who were legit draws. Russo's argument is that guys who can't speak English can't get over but Dave points out that Goldberg became the hottest star in the world before he ever spoke a word on TV. Plus, there's always managers. You'll never know who can get over if you never give them a chance. He talks about how Rey Mysterio has the most potential as a unique attraction of almost anyone in the business, and WCW turned him into just another guy by never pushing him beyond midcard.
- Dustin Runnels was supposed to re-debut on Nitro this week under the name Platinum, doing a rip-off of his old Goldust character, but it was postponed at the last minute (never ends up happening, reportedly due to legal threats from WWF but I don't think Dave ever mentions that).
- Bret Hart did an interview with the Observer website and said it would probably be August or September at the earliest before he could wrestle again but also admitted that he may never be able to come back. He's been back on TV lately because his paycheck gets cut in half if he stays home. But isn't taking any bumps and is only doing what he can physically manage as an on-screen character. By the terms of his contract, WCW could have fired him by now because he's missed so much time so he said he's thankful that they haven't released him but he also said if a baseball or football player got hurt on the field, they wouldn't cut their paycheck in half while the guy is recovering. He also talked about the Screwjob, admitting that back then he took wrestling too seriously and may have overreacted to the whole situation. He said Vince McMahon always told him that WCW wouldn't know what to do with him and admits that McMahon was right and WCW dropped the ball with him when he joined the company. He thought his heel turn last November was stupid and meaningless. He said he stopped giving WCW booking suggestions because they never wanted to hear it. He said the only good angle he's done has been the one with Goldberg in Toronto (I think that's the steel plate thing?) and said he had to fight to get that done because otherwise, WCW would have bungled it and said he was pretty much sick of WCW's lack of logic and booking. Said he has no interest in watching wrestling these days because it's not wrestling anymore (man, the last 2 years just absolutely destroyed Bret's passion for the business).
- Notes from Raw: they had a funny skit with Rock beating the shit out of Vince McMahon backstage, hitting him in the head with garbage cans and other stuff. They were hard head shots and even though it was a funny segment, Dave once again sounds the alarm on people taking hard unprotected headshots and says concussions are no joke and Vince should probably not be scrambling his brains like that at 54-years-old. Lita turned on Essa Rios after catching him flirting with the Godfather's hos so that pairing is done (she joins the Hardy's the very next night at the Smackdown tapings).
- Latest on Steve Austin is that his neck is healing well but he's still at least 3 months away from even thinking about getting back in the ring, with the best guess being a Survivor Series return (ends up being 2 months earlier than that).
- Pat Patterson is usually the agent for big PPV matches and there was some concern at the last PPV over the Rock/Triple H ironman match because Patterson wasn't there to lay out the match. Patterson is considered the expert at that sort of thing, but he's moving from Tampa to Montreal and was busy moving that weekend. So Triple H himself ended up being the one to plan the match out, with a little bit of help from agent Jack Lanza.
- Randy Orton, the son of Bob Orton Jr., will be starting soon in OVW, which is the WWF's developmental territory.
- Sports Illustrated for Kids had a small article this week where they asked various famous athletes whether pro wrestling is fake. It's interesting because one of the responses was from NCAA amateur wrestling champion Brock Lesnar, who is likely going to be signing with WWF any day now. Lesnar said he felt pro wrestling was degrading to amateur wrestling because of all the hard work amateur wrestlers put into their sport (ol' Brock is about to find out just how much hard work this pro rasslin' business can be).
- This past week was the 1-year anniversary of Owen Hart's death and there was a lot of media coverage about it. WWF ran a show in Calgary a few days later and Martha Hart was quoted in the local paper saying she felt it was bad taste for WWF to come to Calgary almost a year to the day of Owen's death. WWF responded saying it was just a coincidence and said they would not be doing anything during the show in tribute to Owen because they worried that it might be taken the wrong way. Martha also wrote a column in the Calgary Sun and talked about the case, writing, "My husband Owen, waiting 10 minutes suspended six stories above a dark arena, trusting who he thought were top expert riggers with his precious life. Little did he know he was hooked up to a make-shift contraption which included a quick-release snap shackle clip meant for the sole purpose of rigging sail boats. Then it happened. The hook that was practically the equivalent of a paper clip released and Owen fell."
- Kid Rock will appear on Raw next week to promote his new album, History of Rock which comes out the next day (that's the album that gave us "American Bad Ass," Undertaker's new theme song for the next few months).
- Recently, Jim Ross went on WWF.com and criticized WCW for the bump Kanyon took off the triple cage a few weeks back in Kansas City. It's the same arena Owen died in and Ross said he thought it was tasteless to have Kanyon do a big fall and bump like that. Someone writes in to the letters section, chewing Jim Ross a new asshole over that comment, saying how can he criticize WCW for doing a big bump in that arena while still working for and defending the same company that continued the show after scraping Owen off the mat and then showed video footage of his funeral against the family's wishes?