Wrestling Observer Rewinder

June 26, 2000

The situation with AJPW pretty much exploded this week, with Misawa announcing the formation of his new promotion and Nippon TV officially cancelling AJPW's TV show in the wake of the company splitting up. Misawa held a press conference and spoke about why he split from left, saying he was unable to modernize AJPW because Motoko Baba wouldn't allow him to make the changes he felt needed to be made for the company and compared it to when Giant Baba left JWA in 1972 to form his own company. The issues were both creative and financial, with Mrs. Baba resisting making any of the changes Misawa wanted. He also wanted to increase the wrestler's pay and give them medical benefits, which she also refused to do. Even though the company was struggling somewhat last year, they were still profitable, but Misawa felt the money wasn't being reinvested in the company properly. As for his new promotion, Misawa didn't reveal the name but it's believed the company will be called NOAH and will debut in August, with its first major tour scheduled for October. As expected, almost the entire AJPW roster as well as nearly all of the office employees sided with Misawa and left with him. Occasional AJPW star (and Japanese senator) Hiroshi Hase wasn't at the press conference but word is he is siding with Misawa as well. In the meantime, Kenta Kobashi is taking these next couple of months off to get long-needed knee surgery and hopes to be back in time for NOAH's debut (here's the press conference, just in case some of you understand Japanese).
WATCH: Misawa press conference announcing AJPW split
Only Toshiaka Kawada, Masa Fuchi, one of the referees, and 2 members of the board of directors chose to stay with Mrs. Baba in AJPW. And really, it's believed that Kawada only stayed because NJPW reached out to him and he realizes he only has a limited amount of time left in his career and wants to work a few big money cross-promotional matches against NJPW stars rather than become a midcard guy in NOAH. There's a lot of money in Kawada defending the AJPW Triple Crown title in Tokyo Dome matches against NJPW guys like Muto, Chono, and Hashimoto and in fact, those matches are already being discussed. In return, NJPW may step in and help keep AJPW afloat during these trying times. Plus, Kawada and Misawa have never really gotten along, which is another reason he chose to stay with AJPW.
Motoko Baba held her own press conference announcing that several foreign stars (Stan Hansen Steve Williams, Johnny Ace, Too Cold Scorpio, and others) will be on the next tour so it seems the foreigners are sticking with her. Vader is out of action injured but it's believed he will stay with AJPW as well (nope). Most of the foreigners are taking a "wait and see" stance since they have no real dog in this fight and haven't been around or privy to all the backstage drama and their loyalties have always been to Giant Baba so for now, they're choosing to stand by his wife's side. But without a TV deal, it's unknown how long AJPW can afford to pay all these big salaries that the foreigners get. And if the money starts to fall, you can bet all the foreign stars will run to Misawa quick. Mrs. Baba claimed in her press conference that Misawa had not worked hard as company president over the last year and that he had been planning to leave for a long time (the last part is true, more on that in a moment). She asked for all the wrestlers who left to come back to at least work the upcoming July tour but so far, Misawa hasn't responded to that proposal and really, it's just an attempt by Baba to save face with AJPW fans. But it does present a problem for the company because advertising for the July shows is already out all over Japan, with Misawa's face all over the posters and tickets were already being sold. Kawada has pretty much said that anyone who wants a refund will be able to get one. AJPW is also reaching out to NJPW and Michinoku Pro wrestlers to try to fill up the roster for some shows. As of press time, they have 11 confirmed wrestlers working the July tour and are hoping to get at least 16.
As mentioned, Nippon TV announced that it was cancelling AJPW after airing it for 28 years. It's actually been known for almost a year that if Misawa left, NTV would go with him. Misawa wanted to leave Motoko Baba a year ago and he got word even back then that most of the roster and NTV would go with him. But it was so soon after Giant Baba's death that it wouldn't have looked good publicly. NTV wanted to wait, so as not to appear disrespectful to Baba's legacy, which is largely why Misawa stuck with AJPW for as long as he did. But it's been over a year since Baba's death and enough time has apparently passed now. Misawa's new promotion will take over AJPW's weekly time slot when they debut. Once again, this is very similar to what happened in 1972. NTV was the station that aired JWA and when Baba split off to form All Japan, NTV went with him, just like they are following Misawa now (it's an absolute miracle that AJPW survived and still somehow continues to exist to this day, although they never truly recovered from all of this).
The USA Network vs. WWF trial is just about all wrapped up but there was still no verdict at press time. The judge ordered the 2 sides to try to negotiate a settlement because one side probably wouldn't like his decision. Most news reports seem to suggest WWF is likely going to win this one. If you recall, USA is suing because they had a right-of-first-refusal clause in their contract with WWF stating they could match any offer for Raw, LiveWire, Superstars, and Heat. So Viacom then swooped in and offered WWF a huge amount of money for those shows, plus another $3.5 million for additional TV specials, another million or so for scripted TV show development, an $8 million budget to promote the move to TNN, some book deals, and a bunch of other shit. USA felt that they shouldn't have to match Viacom's offer on that extra stuff, they only want the original 4 shows and shouldn't have to bid against Viacom for anything other than that. Anyway, in a side note, Dave offhandedly mentions that WWF and Viacom have discussed airing regular special events on CBS (pretty sure that never happened). During the trial, Vince McMahon testified that the USA Network did virtually nothing for WWF, complained that they underpaid for WWF programming, and admitted being upset about USA pre-empting the show every year for the U.S. Open and the Westminster Dog Show (you and me both Vince), claiming it was stupid because nobody watches those shows. Dave points out that, up until the last few years, the dog show routinely did bigger ratings than Raw and was much more valuable to advertisers, which is why USA always bumped Raw for it. The US Open never beat Raw in the ratings, but it was also more valuable to advertisers and USA made more money from it, so same thing. McMahon also said that USA Network execs laughed at him because he asked to buy an ownership stake in the Sci-Fi Channel. In a related note, it came out during the trial that USA had proposed starting a new network called the Man Cable Channel that would have heavily featured WWF and XFL.
Vince Russo reportedly quit WCW this week, although others dispute that. Russo hasn't returned anyone's calls but he has a meeting later this week with Brad Seigel to discuss his future. Reportedly it was over a disagreement with Eric Bischoff who wanted to bring Kimberly, Lex Luger, and Elizabeth back. All 3 reportedly quit recently because they didn't want to go along with his scripts and Russo doesn't want to bring them back. Kimberly and Elizabeth both walked out for a variety of reasons but mostly because they aren't trained wrestlers and don't want to take bumps (more on Kimberly's situation in a bit). Dave notes that neither woman was very popular backstage. Elizabeth was reportedly making $300,000 a year which, needless to say, is ridiculously overpaid for someone who mostly just stands in the corner and rarely even talks. And Kimberly wasn't well liked because she'd gained a reputation of having a big head with people saying she was turning into the next Sable. But she looks good and is a better actor than most of the people cutting promos and thus she was given a lot of TV time. And in the case of Luger, he was complaining about how he was being used, eventually refusing to do an angle Russo wrote for him. Dave argues that Russo is in the right when it comes to Luger. If you're the guy in charge, you can't just have guys refusing to go along with the script and allow that to go unpunished. But WCW management felt otherwise because Luger has several years left on a very lucrative guaranteed contract and felt that as long as he's healthy, they have to find a way to use him to justify it. But the problem is, that basically neuters Russo's authority, which is a necessity when you're the booker. That being said, others have pointed out that Hogan and Nash routinely do the same thing and both have been a way bigger problem in the locker room than Luger. This all leads Dave on a rant about how Hogan and Nash try to give the appearance of putting people over while not actually doing them any favors, and specifically talks about the recent Hogan vs. Billy Kidman feud, where Kidman allegedly got the rub from working with Hogan (even getting a pinfall or two at times), but in reality he got treated like a jobber through the whole storyline and probably came out of it worse off than he was before he worked with Hogan. Anyway, Russo is also unhappy with the Turner standards & practices people editing a lot of this week's Thunder episode and all of this led to Russo reportedly quitting.
Publicly, WCW has stated that Russo is just taking a few days off due to a concussion but lots of sources in WCW have confirmed that he quit. Bischoff has been wanting to get away from all the crazy Russo angles and focus more on wrestling anyway. Most people feel the issues will get worked out and Russo will probably return. He's notoriously hot-headed but he just bought a home in Atlanta and has a wife and 3 kids and Vince McMahon ain't taking him back, so it's unlikely that he's going to walk away from an extremely lucrative contract and more likely, this is more of a power-play. Terry Taylor and Ed Ferrara wrote Nitro and Thunder this week and it was a better show, with no run-ins and actual focus being put on the matches, as opposed to Russo's formula of quick 90-second matches with run-ins on every one of them, sandwiched in between poorly-acted skits. It also saw Booker T drop the GI Bro gimmick and go back to Booker T, which was a relief to everyone in the company who hated what Russo was doing with Booker. The newly-heel Goldberg got a huge ovation, which once again had people second-guessing Russo's decision to turn the most popular money-making act in the company heel and a lot of people think it's only a matter of time before they're forced to turn him face again and pretend like the heel turn never happened (yup). Most people feel Russo is right in regards to Luger, but also feel his storming out and quitting over it was immature, but it's not the first time Russo has thrown a temper tantrum and pretended to quit. Since Russo wasn't at Nitro, it also led to them barely acknowledging the Ric Flair head-shaving angle, which is the hottest storyline WCW has going right now and Russo walking out basically stopped it in its tracks since he was such a big part of it.
A public funeral was held for Jumbo Tsuruta in Japan, drawing an estimated 5,000 people. Aside from Giant Baba and El Santo, it was the largest crowd to ever attend a pro wrestler's funeral. Despite the AJPW/NOAH split, basically everyone from both groups attended the service, along with several NJPW stars like Tatsumi Fujinami and Shinya Hashimoto.
The first ever AAA/CMLL joint show took place and, as you might expect, most of the news comes from behind the scenes. The show was pretty much ordered by Televisa which airs both promotions and forced them to do a show together. The show drew around 40,000 fans and was heavily pro-CMLL, with even the top AAA babyfaces being heavily booed. Both AAA head Antonio Pena and CMLL head Paco Alonso were there but Alonso refused to come to the ring with Pena at one point. Wrestlers were kept in separate dressing rooms with intermediaries passing messages between them to work out finishes and whatnot. There's a lot of heat between the wrestlers also, with CMLL feeling like AAA makes a mockery of Lucha Libre by doing hardcore matches and using celebrities and other American-style things while AAA wrestlers argue that CMLL stars are old and out of touch and stuck in the past. During some of the matches, CMLL stars in particular almost completely refused to sell for the AAA guys. At one point, a legit fight broke out between Cibernetico and Pierroth Jr. leading to a lot of wrestlers from both sides running out to the ring to break it up and doing some pushing and shoving of each other also. So not a good start to the working relationship between the two companies (yeah that was the last of that for awhile. Anyway, here's the full show. And yes, I'm also noticing a pattern of all the videos in today's post being in non-English languages).
WATCH: CMLL vs. AAA show - 2000
Bad sponsor news for WCW also. Some sponsor (it's unsure who...either Burger King or Toy Biz depending on different sources) pulled their ads from WCW which is said to be a $500,000 loss for the company. Which isn't great news considering they're already hemorrhaging money at record pace. It was due to concerns over content, because Russo has pretty much turned WCW into a trashier copy of WWF and the same sponsors who are nervous about WWF now feel the same about WCW.
Dave decides to take a look at who the real PPV draws are in wrestling. This is basically taking statistical data from Sept. 1995 through May of 2000 (basically the entirety of the Monday Night Wars) and crunching the numbers to see who moves the needle on PPV, which is where the big money is, to determine who the real draws are. It's based on the number of PPVs the wrestler headlined, the average buyrate, and other little things. It gives a lot of interesting info. Needless to say, the numbers for Austin and The Rock are off the charts. Rounding out the top 5 are Hogan, Triple H, and Mick Foley. Guys like Kane, Undertaker, and Vince McMahon are in the running too, but that can usually be attributed to the fact that the PPVs they headlined were against Rock or Austin. On the WCW side, Hulk Hogan was undoubtedly WCW's biggest draw during the earlier years. Surprisingly, Sting and Lex Luger both were stronger draws on PPV than Flair, Nash, or Hall. Goldberg's numbers are impressive but his main event run coincided with the beginning of WCW's downfall, so he's only 4th on the list. But when you consider the time frame and the people he headlined against, Goldberg's numbers are actually more impressive than anyone in WCW other than Hogan. And on and on. Man, this is actually a lot longer than a thought and full of interesting analysis. Austin was a bigger PPV draw than Hogan. Ric Flair is consistently one of WCW's top TV ratings draws but only an average draw on PPV. Scott Hall was average. Jeff Jarrett's a flop. Bret Hart was slightly more of a PPV draw than Shawn Michaels. DDP's numbers look good but are artificially inflated due to the 2 matches with Rodman and Karl Malone, which are celebrity flukes. If you subtract those 2 matches, DDP was a below average draw. Kevin Nash was average. Roddy Piper was way up there but that's mostly due to his WCW matches being against Hogan. Undertaker's numbers were inflated by working with Austin so much and if you take Austin matches out of the equation and recalculate the averages, Undertaker is actually a pretty bad PPV draw. Same for Vader and Sid. And on and on and on. Dave notes that, overall, The Rock is the most impressive PPV draw of modern times. There's a LOT more here if you're interested in these sort of stats but this already feels like the longest Observer Rewind I've ever typed and I'm not even out of the top stories section yet.
Next month's Onita vs. Choshu exploding barbed wire match will air on PPV, which will be the first live PPV ever for NJPW. In Japan, PPV is still in its infancy and hasn't really caught on the way it has in the U.S. so there's never really been a drive to push towards running PPV because there's not a lot of money in it. But Choshu coming out of retirement after more than 2 years is expected to be a big draw so they decided to give this PPV thing a whirl. In the future, NJPW hopes to run more PPVs and also wants to air all house shows on the internet.
Naoya Ogawa announced he will be vacating the NWA title so he can train for a shoot fight against Rickson Gracie (he does indeed vacate the title soon but the Gracie fight never happens because Rickson's son dies and he basically retires after that).
Antonio Inoki recently made a trip to Minnesota to meet with Jesse Ventura and while he was there, he also stopped by a training camp where both Don Frye and Brock Lesnar were training. In Japanese magazines, they had a photo of Inoki wrestling with Lesnar and in the photo, Inoki is in a dominant position, on top of Lesnar and pinning him. Dave thinks it's hilarious because the photo was obviously staged. In a real grappling session, Lesnar would eat Inoki for breakfast (I can't find this picture anywhere so I'm gonna need one of you internet sleuths to come through for me on this).
There was a big interview with Bruno Sammartino in a Charleston newspaper this week. Sammartino talked about Mark Madden's recent comment about Bruno turning over in his grave after David Arquette won the title. Sammartino and Madden don't like each other and the comment led to Sammartino threatening a lawsuit against WCW and Madden apologizing. Bruno admitted he was pissed by the comment because Madden said it purposefully and said he doesn't want to be associated with the garbage that either WWF or WCW is doing these days. He said he wants to be done with wrestling completely and only recently made an appearance at an indie show because he had already committed to it, even though he didn't want to do it. He also talked about his son David's use of steroids, which Bruno had been very publicly against for years and said he didn't know for sure that David was using them until he had a health scare and nearly died in Japan in 1989. The drug issues led to Bruno and David being estranged and they haven't spoken in years.
Dave talks about the most recent RF Video "shoot interview" with Bill Watts and says it's the most interesting interview of that kind that he's ever seen. This was still in the early days when RF Video had only done a handful of these. They would go on to release probably hundreds of shoot videos in the future but they were still a new novelty at this point.
Dave himself will be interviewed on Superstar Billy Graham's new website superstarbillygraham.com. And guess what? I dug through Web Archive and actually found the damn thing! Enjoy this Dave Meltzer interview from 2000. And be sure to click "Continue" at the bottom of the page for more:
Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst recently appeared at an Incredibly Strange Wrestling event in California. Yes, that promotion is somehow still around and no, I can't find footage of this.
There was an article in a sports medicine journal about the injuries suffered by pro wrestlers, and they spoke to Dr. James Andrews, the most famous sports doctor around. Andrews talked about how he's been treating wrestlers dating back to the territory days in the 70s and said he's seeing more injuries now because the style is more demanding. He said he also sees a lot of retired wrestlers with degenerative knee issues that are becoming disabled. Herniated discs and should subluxations are frequent, and rotator cuff injuries are becoming more common along with muscle and tendon tears and ACL injuries. He said rib fractures are so frequent that most wrestlers don't even bother seeking treatment for them. He also talked about how much wrestlers work hurt or push themselves too hard while still recovering or go back to wrestling too soon. There was also a lot in the article about how doctors are seeing more children with those kinds of injuries due to mimicking what they see on TV.
Paul Heyman gave a big pep talk to the ECW locker room again this week. Dave says that, "He did his entire speech without talking about money, apparently to see if anyone would speak out about it. Nobody did. He then paid everyone, so checks are caught up." Anyway, Heyman basically said that they're pretty much just in a wait-and-see situation until the USA Network vs. WWF trial finishes up because that will determine the future of what happens with Raw/TNN and, in turn, what happens with ECW. Regardless of how it turns out, Heyman wants out of the TNN deal and had lawyers send a notice to TNN accusing them of breaching their agreement. So even if the judge rules against WWF in the trial and they don't end up going to TNN, Heyman is still pushing to get out of it so they can get a TV deal somewhere else.
Various ECW notes: they've had talks with both Bobby Eaton and Psicosis and hope to have both signed and debut at the next PPV but neither has signed as of yet (Psicosis does and spends about 2 months in ECW. Eaton never does). Super Crazy is expected to be back in a few weeks. Sandman will be back from his suspension this week.
After Justin Credible became the ECW champion and Lance Storm went to WCW, the ECW tag titles were vacated and have pretty much been forgotten. But there's talk of doing a tournament or something for them in August at the New York TV tapings to crown new champions (it wasn't a tournament but yeah).
Speaking of TNN and ECW, the back and forth war continued on this week's episode of ECW on TNN. Right at the end of the show, during the finish of the Credible vs. Jerry Lynn title match and show-ending angle, TNN filled almost the entire screen with a huge promo for the Arena Football League game that was starting next, so the finish of the match and all the post-match stuff couldn't be seen. Dave says ECW has occasionally seemed whiny in all their complaints about TNN, but in this case, they're right because what TNN did was totally unnecessary and it was clearly an intentional "fuck you" to ECW and to everyone watching the show. In this case, Dave says ECW has a pretty valid complaint against TNN.
Notes from WCW Nitro: the show opened with Horace Hogan challenging Goldberg because he was standing up for Hulk Hogan, who was injured. Dave points out that Horace and Hulk have turned on each other a million times in the last few years, including just a few weeks ago, but hey, who gives a shit about continuity anymore? Lance Storm debuted in a big angle with the announcers doing the whole "What's he doing here? He doesn't even work for us!" schtick. Dave notes that WCW announced Lance Storm's signing on their website and even already had his profile page up on the site. Dave thinks this is pretty stupid, especially considering all WCW does these days is book the show for internet fans and now they're pretending to those same fans that Lance Storm is some sort of outsider. Booker T dropped the GI Bro gimmick which is good because Dave says it was a career-killer, just like Terry Taylor and the Red Rooster, so it's good he got out of it before it could last long enough to really damage him (he'll be WCW champion in less than a month). Goldberg, the heel, got the biggest babyface pop of the show, by far. Ernest Miller was in the crowd and at one point it looked like he attacked a fan. Dave thought it may be a plant, but the cameras cut away real quick and it wasn't acknowledged so it may have been real. A week ago, David Flair was Vince Russo's psychopath sidekick hitting people with a crowbar. This week, with Russo not around, his whole gimmick changed to smooth talking ladies man and they had him making out with Miss Hancock. And on and on and on. Picking apart Nitro is just shooting fish in a barrel at this point, it's too easy.
Various WCW notes: Johnny Ace was backstage at Nitro helping out with some things (he quietly retired when the AJPW/NOAH split happened and gets hired as an agent in WCW around this time). Chris Candido has a broken wrist. Bash at the Beach has only sold 2,000 tickets so far. They're scaling down capacity of the building to 5,000 so it may have a chance of actually selling out. Great Muta was supposed to be on Nitro but had visa issues and should be there next week. Sting is out for the next month for....reasons, I guess. They want him to come back with a new look but he's against it. Goldberg has a concussion. Ric Flair is having rotator cuff surgery this week and should be out 2-4 months. Jimmy Hart has been off TV because back in March, during the Mancow match, he tore some knee ligaments. Kidman and Torrie Wilson missed Nitro because they're moving in together and were busy handling all the moving stuff.
The story with Kimberly quitting WCW is apparently because something happened between her and Scott Steiner. The previous night, when Steiner found out she wouldn't take a bump in an angle with him, he reportedly called her a nasty name and she overheard it and demanded an apology. He refused, one thing led to another, and she walked out. Dave says there's rumors that it might be a work but he doesn't seem to think so. For what it's worth, others in the locker room have been comparing Kimberly to Sable, saying she's gotten too full of herself and thinks she's the big star of the show but no matter what her attitude may or may not be, for Steiner to be calling her names is uncalled for (Kimberly has spoken about this since. TL;DR - Steiner called her a "cunt" and got in her face about some other stuff and that was the final straw for her, but she was unhappy before that too).
WATCH: Kimberly discusses Scott Steiner incident
Notes from WCW Thunder: Candido and Bigelow vs. Kronik had to be re-done after the taping because they botched the finish when Candido couldn't get the turnbuckle pad off. Candido, Bigelow, and Shane Douglas reformed their old Triple Threat group from ECW because Douglas assured WCW he owned the "Triple Threat" name, not ECW. They had a thing where Nash was supposed to call Scott Hall and his voice was going to air during the show but when it was time to do the skit and they called him, Hall didn't answer the phone so they had to pretend, which is just some peak WCW shit. Anyway, Hall is expected to return in a few weeks (nah). There was a Daffney/Miss Hancock angle but the cameras cut away to crowd shots a couple of times because Daffney's breasts came out of her top.
One of Scott Steiner's "freaks" Shakira was released. She had heat because she refused to go to the Power Plant to learn how to take bumps, saying that she had signed with the company to be a valet, not a wrestler. Apparently, she was working on the advice from Steiner and Nash, who had told her she should fight to get a raise if they wanted her to take bumps, so she did and, well, it didn't work out and Terry Taylor called her and fired her instead. Steiner was said to be especially upset with her being canned.
La Parka, Psicosis, Silver King, Dandy, Lodi, Barbarian and Los Villanos were all released by WCW this week. As mentioned before, ECW is interested in Psicosis. With the racial discrimination lawsuit still ongoing, this might not be the smartest time to, you know, fire almost every Mexican wrestler they have. Dave says some of them are expected to join the lawsuit. But word is WCW is pretty confident about their chances in the suit and aren't worried about it, which is why they made the decision to release all those guys anyway.
They did a thing on TV where Vampiro hit his finisher on Asya. Word is Vampiro was strongly against doing the angle because he's got a history of women being physically abused in his family and didn't want to do anything on TV that glorifies attacking a woman. But Bischoff convinced him to do it to be a team player and he eventually went along with it, though he wasn't happy. 'Member when Bischoff was against all this man-on-woman violence kind of stuff and criticized WWF for it? I 'member.
Torrie Wilson is expected to return as Hulk Hogan's valet ("what a shock" Dave says). He also notes that Torrie seems to be the hot new fitness cover girl because she's currently featured in or on the cover of several different fitness magazines that are all on newsstands right now, although it's not like you would know because WCW hasn't mentioned it once. Yet again, one of those little things that WCW always drops the ball on. If this was WWF, they would have hyped the magazines on their TV show, they would have sold record-breaking numbers, and that would lead to other media outlets wanting to put more WWF stars on their magazine covers. See how that works? Because WCW sure doesn't.
Several WCW front office employees have made inquiries about transferring to new departments within the Time Warner family because there's concern that WCW may get sold or shut down and they don't want to be out of a job if it happens. We're at the point now where people are actively trying to get off the ship before it sinks.
Dave gives more thoughts about the Russo/Flair angle with Flair's head getting shaved last week. Dave says they shouldn't have had Russo do the shaving. Instead, it should have been Russo ordering one of the wrestlers to do it. Russo vs. Flair isn't going to do any kind of business and Russo isn't a wrestler. But, hypothetically, what if they'd had Goldberg do it? Then you get Goldberg more over as a heel and you set up a feud that can actually pay off in a real match that might actually draw money (plus Goldberg could probably learn a thing or two from working a program with Flair). Ric Flair getting his famous hair shaved was probably the last great angle they could do with him at this point in his career and they wasted it on Russo. Plus, with Russo possibly gone from WCW, it looks like Flair may have gotten his head shaved for an angle that can't even pay off now. If it had been a wrestler, it could still be going and wouldn't have been ignored on Nitro this week (yup, it went nowhere).
There's a lot of complaints and confusion about the Turner standards & practices rules. On Thunder, Nash cut a promo quoting several famous lines from the movie Deliverance ("purty lips" and "squeal like a pig" for instance) but for whatever reason, Turner standards and practices edited it out, which infuriated Russo, who argued that the movie Deliverance airs on Turner networks all the time and those lines are never edited. I mean...he's not wrong. S&P argued that since the scenes in the movie regard sodomizing someone, they didn't want to portray that on a wrestling show. Everyone in WCW had also been told not to use the word "ass" on TV and yet, somehow on Thunder it was used 11 times, which was basically just Russo's way of rebelling apparently.
Ultimo Dragon was in Atlanta working on an out-of-court settlement with WCW due to his career-ending injury from the botched surgery he had. Those who know him have said that his physical condition hasn't improved and he still has no feeling in his hand, so his career is still over (he eventually gets another surgery in 2002 that fixes some of the problems and allows him to return to the ring but yeah, until then, he was done).
[–]daprice82REWINDERMAN[S] 543 points544 points545 points 5 years ago (44 children)
WCW merch, like everything else in WCW these days, is doing poorly. There was hope that Goldberg's heel turn would lead to an increase in New Blood merch but that didn't happen at all. Goldberg himself is still the top merch seller by far, with nobody else even a close 2nd, and turning him heel naturally hurt his merch numbers also.
Rey Mysterio is only about 70% healed up right now. He returned about 5 weeks early from his most recent surgery and can't do any crazy moves or anything yet, but he was asked to come back to do as much as he could. And if you're out injured for too long, WCW has started cutting people's pay in half, so Mysterio chose to come back, but he really shouldn't be in the ring at all yet.
Konnan got hurt and the MRI was worse than expected. Turns out his tricep was almost completely torn from the bone and only hanging by a thread. He'll have surgery soon and will be out 3-6 months which means the Kidman/Konnan match scheduled for the next PPV is off.
Bret Hart underwent a bunch of tests in Montreal with brain specialists to see if they can figure out exactly what's wrong with him and whether he'll be able to wrestle again.
WCW took out a full page ad in USA Today to promote Goldberg's return to Nitro, which Dave says was "a nice waste of $50,000."
Notes from Raw: Eddie Guerrero gave Chyna a puppy during the show, which leads Dave to say, "Whenever you see a cute puppy on wrestling, you know he's either going to be stolen or eaten." He's not wrong. Pat Patterson pinned Brisco to win the hardcore title, giving him "his first title belt since his legendary tag team with Pierre Lefebvre during the Carter administration."
Sky Sports in the UK has decided that WWF programming is the network's #2 priority behind Premier Division soccer. During a staff meeting, it was specifically ordered that WWF be focused on ahead of boxing, rugby, golf, and everything else because it's the highest rated weekly show on Sky Sports. They will also no longer edit the shows for content unless it's just WAY too far over the top. Swearing, sexual content, and man-on-woman violence was all explicitly okayed. The only thing they may come down on is anything of a "Satanic nature" because the ITC, which regulates all television there, apparently really doesn't like that sort of stuff.
There hasn't been any official memo sent out regarding banned moves or anything. Mostly it's just been wrestlers being pulled aside and told not to do certain things. McMahon specifically told Eddie Guerrero not to do the frog splash anymore, which is why he's using the hurricanrana as his finisher. Eddie actually wants to keep doing the frog splash but they're worried he might injure his elbow again like he did when he debuted (obviously he eventually gets it back).
Random WWF notes: Bart Gunn was backstage at Raw, apparently trying to get back into the company since it looks like AJPW is going down the drain. Steve Regal is expected to start with WWF again in about 6 weeks and probably be in a European title feud. Expect Kurt Angle to start being a slightly more serious character and to tone down the comedy because they want him to be taken seriously as a top star. Dean Malenko, Tazz, Godfather, and Eddie Guerrero are all dealing with various injuries. Expect Birmingham and Memphis to be 2 more of the cities named this week to get XFL teams.
There was a big Licensing Fair event in New York last week with people from different companies and networks doing all their publicity stuff. Various wrestlers from both WWF and WCW attended and appeared at separate booths. Anyway, this all led to Goldberg and Triple H getting into a bit of a confrontation. Last year, Triple H made a fairly dumb comment, basically calling Goldberg a one-hit wonder who wouldn't last and said that McMahon probably wouldn't even want to sign him if he was available, which is obviously laughable because McMahon would snatch Goldberg up in a heartbeat if he could. Anyway, Goldberg hasn't liked Triple H since. At one point during the event, they got close enough to each other that Goldberg began yelling at him and was clearly pissed, but Triple H just laughed and ignored him (here's what Triple H said about the incident at the time).
WWF is experimenting running Raw and Smackdown back-to-back in the same building on 2 consecutive nights in Phoenix and it seems to already be a success. The shows aren't until September, but Raw sold out in 90 minutes and Smackdown sold out later that day. Dave expects them to try this more in the future because being able to run 2 nights in the same city has major advantages. Saves money on travel and set up costs, less travel for the wrestlers and crew, etc.
Contrary to rumors, there were never any plans to have Stu Hart accompany Davey Boy Smith to the ring at the recent WWF show in Calgary. The actual plan was for Smith's wife Diana to accompany him, but she and her husband are having some marriage issues at the moment so that didn't happen. Bruce Hart (that fuckin' guy...) had claimed Stu was coming to the show and apparently the family was concerned that he might talk Stu into doing it. Stu Hart is named in the Owen Hart lawsuit against WWF so needless to say, for him to show up to a WWF event and appear in the ring wouldn't have looked good for the Hart case.
Jim Neidhart is still on the WWF payroll. He was recently working as a trainer in Memphis Championship Wrestling, which is basically a WWF developmental company, but apparently Neidhart wasn't doing a good job of it, so they pulled him out of Memphis. But they're not firing him, because they basically want as many Hart-adjacent people under contract as they can. Same reason Davey Boy hasn't been let go despite being nearly immobile and dealing with repeated drug issues.
Big Show has been out injured but is expected to return soon. He'll be sent down to OVW for a few weeks to get his conditioning improved and train with the wrestlers there.
Mick Foley recently shaved his head. He's expected to eventually return to WWF as commissioner. He's also writing a kid's Christmas book that will have artwork by Jerry Lawler.
WWF signed several new wrestlers to developmental deals this week. Basil Bozinis, Aaron Aguilera, Justin McCully, and some guy named John Cena. The Aaron Aguilera dude later becomes Jesús on Smackdown for a few months in 2005. The other 3, never heard from again.
At a WWF house show in Minneapolis, Jesse Ventura was at ringside for the main event and played heel. By the end of it, the entire arena was booing him. They also brought out Brock Lesnar and introduced him to the hometown crowd.
Lots of letters this week seem to be about unions. One guy suggests wrestlers should be part of the Screen Actor's Guild. Someone else who's apparently anti-union argues that it's a bad idea. And one last letter about someone who works with horses and thinks WCW was out of their fucking minds for allowing Terry Funk and Chris Candido to wrestle into a horse stall on live TV a few weeks back, even if the horse was allegedly sedated. But the fact that it still tried to kick Funk means he clearly wasn't that sedated and was clearly agitated. In the wake of Owen Hart's death, he's astounded that WCW could be so stupid because if that horse's kick had hit Terry Funk in the head instead of the arm, he very well might be dead right now.