July 03, 2000
- The judge in the WWF vs. USA Network lawsuit ruled in favor of the WWF this week meaning the path is clear for WWF to leave USA and move their shows to Viacom stations. The WWF/Viacom deal not only moves Raw and other shows to TNN and MTV, but it also included advertising on Viacom-owned radio stations, billboards, theme parks, book publishing deals, CBS prime-time network specials, a scripted drama series, cable deals for the XFL, and a bunch of other stuff. Anyway, in September, Raw, Live Wire, and Superstars will be moving to TNN while Sunday Night Heat will go to MTV. They expect ratings for Raw to decline initially, since USA is the #1 cable network and TNN is #15. But it's believed that WWF fans will quickly follow them to the new channel so it probably won't be a big decline and the addition of Raw is going to immediately boost TNN to becoming one of the top cable networks. Where this leaves ECW is still unknown and, according to Paul Heyman, "A week from now, I'll either be a champ or a chump." As of press time, USA has not officially made an offer to ECW but they did reach out to Heyman immediately after losing the trial, so there is interest there. ECW and WCW both have also had discussions with FOX.
- WWF also released their quarterly stock reports this week. TL;DR - just take all the numbers from last quarter and increase them a whole bunch, because WWF is booming right now. There's a bunch of figures and Dave breaks it all down, but nah. I ain't trying to fall asleep at my desk summarizing boring financial details today, just take my word for it, WWF is doing pretty decent. Despite all these big numbers, it wasn't quite the most financially successful quarterly report ever because WWF spent a lot of money on XFL startup costs, legal fees from the USA Network lawsuit, and the out-of-court settlement with Ultimate Warrior from that old lawsuit.
- King of the Ring is in the books and on paper it should have been a strong tournament, but it ended up feeling more like a WCW show. The best 3 wrestlers (Benoit, Guerrero, and Jericho) were all eliminated in the first round, while Rikishi was depended on to work 3 matches and made it all the way to the finals. Dave says that Rikishi is over because of his dancing, not because he's someone that fans want to see wrestle 3 lengthy matches in one night. Edge & Christian regained the tag titles. The Patterson vs. Brisco evening gown match was arguably the worst match of the year, full of gay jokes on commentary and the crowd booing the whole thing out of the building. Dave ponders whether or not Russo has secretly returned to WWF. He gives the match -3 stars. Well then, we can't not watch that. Kurt Angle won the King of the Ring tournament in a bad match with Rikishi. And Rock's title win felt secondary since he won it without even pinning Triple H.
- OVW held a big 30th anniversary show at the Louisville Gardens featuring several WWF stars as well as developmental guys signed to OVW, plus some other nostalgia acts. Dave talks about how bringing in big WWF stars for independent shows usually ends up being a bad thing for the indie companies, because it attracts a bunch of fans, but those fans only come to see WWF stars. So the local indie has trouble drawing on their own and fans only attend the shows that feature the big WWF stars because the ones that don't are seen as unimportant. It's the same mistake Smoky Mountain Wrestling made earlier in the 90s when they got to a point where they couldn't draw fans unless a WWF star was on the show. Dave says this is why Paul Heyman has been smart to reject WWF's offers to send stars to work ECW shows in the past, because then you become dependent on them. That was basically the case with this show, as it drew around 3,000 people, most of whom came to see Mick Foley and Kane rather than homegrown OVW stars. Dave recaps the show. The Fabulous Ones were there, Kurt Angle, Mark Henry, Al Snow, D-Lo Brown, and more.
- Dave talks about a recent study that looked at racism and stereotyping in professional wrestling, looking at various ethnicities and gimmicks, and things of that nature. The short version of it is that Vince McMahon has a record of promoting heavily stereotypical and horribly racist characters. WCW's overall attitude towards race was also termed "horrible" while ECW's was "good" but still had room for improvement. It looks at the racial makeup of the U.S. (74% white, 13% black, 10% Hispanic, 4% Asian) and how that's represented in the 3 companies. In WCW, almost 95% of people in PPV main event matches during the last 5 years were white. The remaining 5% can pretty much be attributed multi-man main event matches like War Games or battle royals. If it was just singles matches, WCW's numbers would pretty much be 100% white. For WWF, it was 91.5% of PPV main events, while for ECW it was 96.6% (the other 3.4% is basically all D-Von Dudley). The story is the same when looking at who has held the world title in those companies. ECW got a big bump in the Asian category due to Masato Tanaka being champion for a bit. As far as stereotypes go, it talked about groups like Kaientai or the black guy playing a pimp in WWF, or the FBI group in ECW being an Italian stereotype and a bunch of other stuff like that. Long story short, despite The Rock's success, racism still exists in wrestling and aside from the occasional exception, non-white performers still aren't pushed or promoted fairly by any of the big 3.
- Hiroshi Hase won an election to the Japanese House of Representatives, making him the first pro wrestler to win a seat there. Hase was previously a member of the Diet (basically their Senate), as was Antonio Inoki a few years back. The workload in the House is a lot heavier and it's believed Hase won't have nearly as much time to wrestle, if at all, with his new position. Hase was one of the best in the world during his prime in the early 90s and has wrestled sporadically in AJPW while working in the Senate. During his victory speech, he acknowledged the AJPW drama, saying he's been so busy that he's not really familiar with the situation, and thanked several wrestlers who campaigned for him, such as Hashimoto, Masa Chono, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, and others.
- The bill to regulate "extreme" wrestling in New Jersey passed the state Senate and will be signed into law by the governor this week, and it effectively prevents Jersey All Pro Wrestling and Combat Zone Wrestling from running their typical hardcore shows in the state. JAPW and CZW now have to get approval from local officials 3 weeks before any show, ban people under 18 from attending, pay a tax on the profit they make, carry medical insurance for every wrestler, and have 2 doctors and an ambulance on hand at every show. Needless to say, this is all cost-prohibitive for 2 fledgling indie companies and of course, none of these rules apply to WWF, WCW, or ECW which is obviously unfair bullshit. But this was never about fair regulations anyway. Just some local politicians decided they wanted to ban JAPW and CZW from running in their backyard and since they didn't have any legal recourse of doing so, they basically created a law that effectively does it. So anyway...not good news for those companies.
- Speaking of CZW, they had announced a show that would be taped for PPV with Atsushi Onita vs. Terry Funk in an exploding barbed wire match, but the show has been cancelled. They're claiming the athletic commission forced them to shut the show down, but Dave's not buying it. It was scheduled for Philadelphia, not New Jersey and as of a few days before the show, there were still 2nd row tickets available. The cost of the gimmicked ring, flying in Onita and Funk, and things of that nature means it was an expensive show and it clearly wasn't selling. They're planning to move it to a new location and try to save it, but Onita and Funk have since both backed out of working with CZW so this won't be happening.
- Misawa has agreed to let his wrestlers work the upcoming AJPW shows that they had already been advertised on, since tickets had already been sold. But the stipulation is that Misawa will make the matches for his people and none of his guys will face Masa Fuchi or Toshiaki Kawada (the 2 wrestlers who stayed with AJPW rather than leave with him). Misawa's guys will all face each other or face foreign stars. AJPW must also provide Misawa's wrestlers with a different hotel than Fuchi or Kawada and they won't travel on the AJPW buses either. So needless to say, things are tense right now. And speaking of Onita, he reportedly called Mrs. Baba and offered to work some AJPW shows and Dave talks about how Onita actually started his career in AJPW in the 70s as a normal wrestler before retiring for awhile and then returning as the bloodbath psycho wrestler he's known as today.
- Kenta Kobashi had knee surgery and is hoping to be back in time for NOAH's debut show in August. Dave thinks that may be pushing it (indeed, turned out it was way too soon and he ended up re-injuring himself even worse. We'll get to it, but yeah, Kobashi's knees are shot by this point).
- It's unknown what AJPW will do with their championships. Every single champion they have has left the promotion, including triple crown champion Kobashi. Speaking of this whole situation, there's been another defection. Long-time referee and front office exec Joe Higuchi, who has been with AJPW since the company started in 1972, announced he was siding with Misawa and is also heading to NOAH. This brings the total number up to 25 wrestlers and 18 office employees who have jumped ship to Misawa's new company. NOAH will be operating out of the new Diffa Ariake arena in Tokyo. Not only will they run shows there, but they are opening the company offices and a dojo there, so it's basically NOAH headquarters. Misawa said they will continue using Budokan Hall for major shows and are hoping to continue many of the traditions of AJPW, since this new company basically is AJPW in everything but name only. The new promotion will have a green ring with silver ring posts, since green and silver are Misawa's trademark colors.
- Antonio Inoki is pushing for NJPW to send Shinya Hashimoto to work some AJPW shows to help save that company. The idea of course is to eventually do an AJPW vs. NJPW angle, but right now, since AJPW has literally almost no one, there's no point in doing it now until they get new stars. Still no word on if NJPW is going to send Hashimoto or not (this actually surprises me. You'd think Inoki would want to see AJPW die more than anybody).
- Next week's issue of Sports Illustrated is scheduled to have a small story about Dave and the Observer (found it).
- Bill Watts did an interview basically trashing today's wrestling, especially the way they use women, the steroids, and the language. Dave points out the Watts' old Mid South promotion had a lot of similarities to modern day Raw in some ways, certainly when it comes to violence. He also says Watts used women like Missy Hyatt, Sunshine, and Dark Journey on his shows and, for their time, they were also dressed provocatively, although they look tame by today's standards. But the principal is still the same. Also, even though Watts was openly critical of steroid use back in the 80s, he never did anything to quash it in his own company and often pushed roided up stars to the top just like every other promoter. So really, this is just another "old man yells at cloud" situation.
- Shawn Michaels students Spanky and American Dragon have started working for Memphis Championship Wrestling. That would, of course, be Brian Kendrick and Daniel Bryan.
- New Jack suffered an ankle injury doing a balcony dive on a recent ECW show. Apparently a fan bumped up against him or pushed him, which messed up his trajectory and he fucked up his ankle somehow and ended up leaving on a stretcher. He also was put in a neck brace, although the ankle injury is thought to be more serious. No word how long he'll be out.
- Randy Savage's ex-girlfriend (they broke up) Gorgeous George appeared at the latest ECW tapings, only to get laid out by Francine with a kendo stick and then came back later in the show to attack Francine again. Word is she's going to be sticking around for awhile (yeah, she's there a few months).
- Random ECW notes: WCW women's star Mona (Nora Greenwald) was backstage at the ECW taping but wasn't used because she's still under WCW contract (she'll be in WWF soon). The ECW Arena has a "for lease" sign out front. And Paul Heyman is still negotiating to bring in Psicosis to debut at this month's PPV.
- Vince Russo is apparently sitting things out and waiting for WCW to come crawling back to him. Russo feels like last week's Nitro (which he didn't write) had too much wrestling and feels ratings will drop if they stick with that formula and they'll come begging for him to come back. A lot of the top (older) WCW stars are said to be against Russo returning, mostly because he wants them out. Russo is apparently trying to get rid of Hogan and DDP but needless to say, they have no interest in being forced out of their spots. There's also complaints about Russo making himself too much of the focal point of the shows, which Dave agrees with. For now, Terry Taylor is the main person booking WCW.
- Speaking of Hogan, the plan right now is for Bash at the Beach to be headlined by Jarrett vs. Hogan for the WCW title, with Hogan winning the belt. (Heh, yeah something like that...)
- After 27 years, WCW Saturday Night is no more. The show has been moved to 11am and is now pretty much just a morning recap show. This has been planned for months due to declining ratings.
- Ric Flair's father passed away this week from complications from bowel surgery (holy shit, considering what eventually ends up happening to Flair 17 years later, that's awfully ironic).
- Dave reviews the latest WCW Thunder and shits all over it. Goldberg came out cutting a promo that 99% of the crowd didn't understand, talking about hating Scott Hall for being unprofessional and a bunch of other silly shit dating back to a real life incident back in December where Hall apparently cut some promo that Goldberg felt like buried him. Dave says if you don't closely follow all the insider gossip, then you probably had no clue what he was talking about. He also blamed Scott Hall for his arm injury and Dave says that, last he checked, Scott Hall wasn't a limousine window. He also rambled about Nash being a backstage politician and a bunch of other nonsense. Dave says this promo epitomizes WCW's problems. Booker T came out using his old music and the announcers went nuts talking about how they haven't heard that music in forever. Dave points out that Stevie Ray has been using it all along so it's really only been a week since they heard it. There's SO much more but if I wrote about every negative thing Dave said about this show, I might as well just copy and paste the whole review.
- Hulk Hogan has been appearing on the Bubba The Love Sponge radio show talking about trying to get a deal with FOX and claimed that FOX had offered him a $150 million talent budget and that after the July PPV, he was leaving WCW (true, as it turns out, though not quite how he intended) and going to start up a new promotion on FOX (obviously didn't happen). Hogan also said the Vampiro/Dale Torborg angle is terrible, which Dave agrees with.
- Lenny Lane appeared on the Observer radio show and talked about his status. His WCW contract expires next month. Lane said Paul Heyman told him he would give him an offer, but then never got back to him. And he said WWF has refused to talk to him until his WCW deal expires.
- Mick Foley has finished writing a screenplay for a movie based on his book. The process was basically the same as with his book. WWF wanted to bring in professional scriptwriters to do it, but Foley insisted on writing it himself. Foley has also written a bonus chapter for the paperback release of his book, which talks about his retirement and choice to come back only 6 weeks later, and he defended it by saying he was serious about retiring but Vince asked him and wore him down until he couldn't say no.
- The New York Times wrote a story about Brock Lesnar signing with WWF. It noted that he will start first in OVW in August. Jim Ross was quoted in the article saying that they don't plan to rush things with him but hope to have him on the main roster within a year. They credited Gerald Brisco with getting him to sign and said that he had turned down offers from WCW and NJPW and talked about his amateur wrestling credentials. The story said he's 270 pounds with 9% body fat and looks sort of like Dolph Lundgren.
- Raven has not yet signed a WWF contract but the two sides have reached a verbal agreement and for now it's basically just a matter of him getting out of his ECW deal (which Heyman has been wanting to get out of anyway). His ECW deal expires in late-August, assuming he doesn't get his release sooner. Unlike a lot of stars from other companies who come in and are pushed immediately, Raven has a lot of known baggage and has some enemies, so it's expected that he's going to have to come in and prove himself to some people in WWF. He had a meeting with Jim Ross this week at Titan Towers and will be doing the same Raven gimmick.
- The Winnipeg Sun ran a poll where readers could vote on Manitoba's sexiest man, and Chris Jericho won first place. Apparently I don't know Chris Jericho like I thought I did, because this seems like something he would have mentioned in promos for years after.
- WWF has hired identical twin models named Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski to developmental deals. They are dancers (not strippers, Dave clarifies) and have been training in wrestling for a few months (never became anything).
- WWF held a house show at Madison Square Garden and Donald Trump was at ringside. He was interviewed by Jerry Lawler and was heavily booed by the crowd when he began talking. But then he said his favorite wrestler was The Rock, which got a big pop, but then they started booing Trump again.
- Someone writes in and takes issue with the recent Lenny Lane interview on the Observer show. Lane defended his gay character in WCW, implying that it was representative of gay people and that they should take pride in the character. The person writing the letter points out that the gimmick was a total gay stereotype meant to incite homophobia from fans and get beat up by babyfaces and says that analogy is the same as saying black people should take pride in Virgil's WWF gimmick.