August 21, 2000
- Steve Austin was given word that he'll be able to return to in-ring action in 8 weeks, most likely at the October PPV. Austin has been out since last November and had neck surgery in January. While he's been out, his knees (which were in rough shape) have also had a chance to heal and are the strongest they've been in years but he's been very limited in upper body exercises since the surgery. Austin's next exam will be at the end of September, at which point he's expected to get full clearance. They're discussing having Austin return to TV on the debut Raw episode on TNN on Sept. 25th which would obviously be a good way to get the most hype to the channel switch. It's unlikely that he'll ever return to a full-time schedule but they're hoping for one last big short-term storyline as a career send-off, and hoping he can at least hold up until Wrestlemania. The hope is that he can be at all TVs, wrestle on all PPVs and maybe occasionally work a TV match or a major house show but it all depends on how his body holds up. Austin has said he doesn't want to be like Hogan and hang around living off his name value, but Dave says you can count on zero fingers the number of people who have walked away from the business while still being a huge draw and Austin is still among the biggest of all time. But he does have offers on the table for starring roles in 2 different TV series and at least 1 major movie, so who knows?
- Remember how Viacom was going to buy UPN? Well in a big surprise, NewsCorp, which is run by Rupert Murdoch and owns FOX, swooped in and outbid them for it and purchased the parent companies that own UPN. This is sure to affect Smackdown in some way. This all gets weird and complicated with UPN losing its coverage in major markets like New York and Los Angeles. Before this sale, UPN was on track to lose $150 million this season. They were also getting ready to undergo a name change to The Paramount Network (Spike just recently changed their name to that. Weird). UPN is expected to lose even more after losing their coverage in those markets and most experts think UPN is doomed. Smackdown is a strongly rated show, so even if UPN goes under, they'll easily find a home on some other Viacom-owned channel. But unless they move it to CBS, it will lose the prestige of being on a broadcast network. On the other hand, if they move it away from broadcast TV, it might help get the PTC off their ass (none of this happens for awhile).
- More major cutbacks in WCW, with the announcement that starting in late October, all Thunder TV tapings have been cancelled. WCW is cutting back to 1 TV taping per week to save on costs. Thunder may still exist on TV. There's talk of pre-taping Thunder after Monday night's live Nitro taping ends in front of the same crowd. Meanwhile, the weekend WCW WorldWide show is expected to become a recap show with no more first-run matches. All of this will save the company enormously on production costs and building expenses, but it's likely going to lead to dead crowds and probably a lot of people leaving after Nitro ends and not sticking around for the Thunder taping. With the Tuesday tapings cancelled, that leaves WCW running just 5 shows per month (4 Nitro tapings and 1 monthly PPV). Cutting back on shows isn't the only major cost-saving move. At this week's Nitro and Thunder tapings, pyro was limited and ring entrances were less elaborate. At the recent PPV, they only had 1 big screen on the entrance way rather than the usual 3. As for rumors of big name wrestlers being released or contracts being renegotiated, that hasn't happened yet....
- ECW and USA Network are still in the midst of very serious negotiations. The talk now is for ECW to get a late-night 2 hour time slot on USA that would combine elements of pro wrestling with MTV's Real World (wtf?). It's not a unique idea, as California-based UPW has toyed with the idea in the past, and the recent Discovery Channel special that aired featuring UPW was partially a pilot for the idea. If it happens, Bunim-Murray Productions, the producers for the actual Real World show on MTV, are expected to handle production of the ECW show. The initial talk was giving ECW a Saturday night time slot of 6-8pm, which is basically the same time slot that WCW (and NWA before them) had on TBS for decades and was traditionally the highest rated time slot for pro wrestling before the Monday night wars. But USA execs are said to be squeamish at giving ECW a show that early in the evening, so that's why they're leaning towards a more late-night time slot (it's heartbreaking to read how close ECW was to pulling off yet another last minute save during this time, knowing that it all eventually falls apart).
- WCW's New Blood Rising PPV is in the books and Dave sums it up in two words: "overbooked crap." Aside from the first and last matches, which were good, everything in between was bad. And even the main event wasn't that good. It leads Dave into a rant about how WCW doesn't understand that their fanbase is different from WWFs and they've continually made the same mistake of trying to be a bad copy of whatever WWF has done in the past. WCW was hopeful of strong ticket sales for this show because it was in Vancouver, BC and the first week of sales were good. But then they stalled out, so there were only 5,300 paid fans in the building. They handed out a ton of free tickets but more than 50% of people who were given free tickets didn't even show up. It was a pretty bad and embarrassing turnout for a major PPV in a new market that WCW has never run in before.
- Other notes from the PPV: The 3 Count/Jung Dragons match was the best of the show. There was a "Judy Bagwell on a Pole" match which was really just her tied to a forklift in the corner. Miss Hancock vs. Major Gunns gets -2 stars although nobody was watching it for the actual wrestling and it ended with Hancock apparently doing a miscarriage angle, stretchering her out as she held her stomach while David Flair freaked out. Sting beat Demon in a match only notable for Sting coming down from the ceiling again because WCW is still doing that. Lance Storm vs. Mike Awesome is a match that has potential to steal the show on most nights but it was so overbooked that it turned into a mess. Storm got a huge babyface reaction since they were in Canada but the match was horrible. But it did lead to Bret Hart coming out and getting easily double the pop of anyone else on the show, although he looked embarrassed to even be involved in the angle. Vampiro and Muta won the tag titles. Nash/Goldberg/Steiner was more typical Vince Russo-style "shoot" stuff. First they announced that Goldberg had been in a motorcycle accident the day before (true, which is why he was all bandaged up because he had bad road rash) and wouldn't be there. Goldberg eventually came out and they did an angle where Goldberg wouldn't go up for Nash's powerbomb and they played it as if he had gone against the script and wouldn't do the job with the announcers playing it up big. Goldberg then walked out and Nash ended up winning when Steiner taking the powerbomb and the announcers selling it like he was being professional and doing the job unlike Goldberg. Ugh. Dave just can't. And finally, Booker T beat Jeff Jarrett to retain the title in a decent match that the announcers started screaming was an all-time classic after the first 5 minutes. It wasn't. (Look at this shit. They even aired commercials hyping Fall Brawl talking about how Goldberg "didn't follow the script." Vince freakin' Russo, everyone.)
- WATCH: New Blood Rising main event - Goldberg walks out of the match, it's totally a shoot you guys...
- WATCH: Fall Brawl commercial: "Goldberg went against the script"
- Of the 19 weeks since Russo took over the booking from Kevin Sullivan, eight of those weeks have seen Nitro do lower ratings than Sullivan's all-time low. This week was the lowest rated Nitro in the history of the show since it expanded to 2 hours in 1996. The show opened with the Goldberg/Russo "shoot" angle which did a 2.0 rating, making it the lowest rated unopposed segment in Nitro history.
- Road Warrior Hawk was hospitalized for several days in Melbourne, Australia for cardiac problems and fluid in his lungs before flying home to Florida and apparently he's okay now.
- Dave got a copy of Gordon Solie's 1947 high school yearbook. He was awarded Best Line, Biggest Flirt, and Most Talkative. Dave says he can just imagine Solie picking up girls in high school by saying, "look at the development in his quadricep femoris and spinae erector muscles!"
- Eric Kulas, aka Mass Transit, will be wrestling at an indie show in the same building in Revere, MA where the incident happened. It's the first time Kulas has had a match since New Jack sliced his him open in one of the sickest things in wrestling history. The advertising for this show is, "Will history repeat itself?"
- Various ECW notes: crowds have been chanting "USA" (as in the channel, not the country) during the segments with Cyrus pretending to be a TNN Network exec. New Jack will probably be out awhile longer after complications from his recent ankle surgery. Psicosis is back in ECW now but they're said to be kind of disappointed in him because he's nowhere near the wrestler now that he was back in 1995 when he and Mysterio lit the company on fire.
- Notes from Nitro: there was a ton of vulgar language, to the point that it lost all shock value within the first 5 minutes. Russo came out with Tank Abbott and they did some lame shoot deal with Russo acting like Abbott was gonna kick Goldberg's ass and Dave can't seem to find the words for how dumb all this is. So Goldberg comes out and he and Abbott start fighting and using unrealistic moves like Irish whips and clearly calling spots even though they're supposed to be "shooting" on each other, or Abbott selling a kick that clearly missed, etc. Miss Hancock is now going by her real name Stacy and told David Flair she's pregnant. Lance Storm voluntarily gave up 2 of his titles, giving the Cruiserweight title to Elix Skipper and the Hardcore title to Carl Oulette. just in case WCW hasn't devalued their titles enough, now Lance Storm just hands them out to people like Halloween candy. Kevin Nash cut another promo doing nothing but pushing WCW to bring Scott Hall back. Dave thinks this is dumb because if Hall does return, it just proves that there's no rules in WCW. And if they don't bring him back, after months of Nash doing nothing but talking about it on TV, it basically makes all that valuable TV time wasted. Dave seems to wonder why WCW is continuing to push this angle (because it wasn't an angle. WCW was out of control at this point, it was nothing more than Nash going out there and saying whatever he wanted every week and trying to get his friend rehired. And no one ever stopped him.)
- When recapping the Thunder tapings, Dave notes that during this current tour of Canada (PPV, Nitro, and Thunder), Lance Storm was HUGELY over. So naturally, he lost or was made to look stupid in every single city on the tour. Dave isn't surprised, since this is basically the same dumb shit WCW did with Ric Flair that killed the Carolinas. So hey, why wouldn't they take their hottest Canadian star and bury him on every show in Canada? Speaking of, Storm was supposed to appear on TSN's "Off The Record" show but he was pulled from the show at the last minute and no one knows why. It would be smart to let Storm get some national prime time exposure in Canada considering WCW just signed a new 5-year deal with TSN but hey, if WCW made smart decisions, they'd still be in business.
- Konnan is the latest WCW wrestler to get his pay cut in half while he's injured. He's been at almost every TV taping and has appeared on TV. But since he's not wrestling....salary cut in half. Dave seems to think that's some pretty unfair bullshit.
- Random WCW notes: there were some raised eyebrows at Jeff Jarrett calling Booker T "boy" several times during the PPV. There's talk of doing an angle with Vampiro kidnapping and torturing one of the announcers. Jim Duggan and Brian Knobbs are the latest names to be cut. Juventud Guerrera is expected to be let go when his contract expires soon. Bret Hart is getting more brain tests done in September.
- WCW's upcoming Australia tour and TV tapings have been scaled back significantly as a cost-cutting measure. There was originally going to be 80 people being sent, but now it's down to less than 40 and probably only 2 announcers instead of the usual 3.
- Russo recently filmed a sit-down interview that didn't air (it was covered last week). One of the big reasons that it's believed to have been cut from the show is because Russo made several references to Booker T being held back and never getting a chance. WCW, still in the midst of a racial discrimination lawsuit, didn't feel like going on TV and having someone admit that they held one of their black stars back would be a good look.
- Speaking of lawsuits, WCW filed one against AWA Superstars of Wrestling claiming trademark infringement among other things. The lawsuit claims that AWA advertised that WCW talent Lenny and Lodi "might appear" at their TV taping (they didn't, nor were they ever booked to). The AWA also referenced the Nitro Girls and named another wrestler, who isn't even signed to WCW and never has been, as a "WCW rookie sensation." This is the same fake-AWA with the guy who even changed his name to Gagne. I think WWE eventually sues him into irrelevance in a few years.
- Brad Siegel had a big meeting backstage with the wrestlers and one of the things he announced were fines for wrestlers arriving late to shows. $500 for first offense, $1000 for the second, $2000 for the 3rd, 30-day suspension for the 4th, and termination for the 5th. Kevin Nash was said to be bragging that the rules don't apply to him because apparently he has a clause in his contract that says he can't be fined for anything.
- Summerslam will feature an Undertaker vs. Kane match that was thrown together at the last moment this week after the Big Show was sent home for disciplinary reasons. There's several reasons, but the biggest seems to be that he's terribly out of shape and giving him a major push would be setting a bad example. He was sent to OVW awhile back to get in shape and threw up during training and never really got in shape. At a house show this week, he was teamed with Benoit in a match because they figured Benoit could do most of the work and Big Show could do his few spots, but he still blew up quickly. He was scheduled to main event a house show the next night but he showed up claiming back spasms and they ended putting Albert into Big Show's spot, teaming with Kurt Angle in the main event against Taker and Kane. But apparently after the show, he was out and about and his back spasms had magically cleared up and he was fine. But then the next night he showed up for Raw claiming back spasms again and they finally had enough. Vince made the decision to send him home and do an emergency Kane/Undertaker angle on Raw to set up that match. Once his "back problems" subside, Big Show's going to be sent to OVW full-time and that's where he'll stay until he decides to stop being lazy and gets into better shape.
- On Raw, they did a bunch of segments with the Acolytes taking Kaientai out drinking and Dave thinks a lot of it was just outright racist, the way they treat these Japanese adults like dumb little kids and whatnot. Speaking of the Acolytes, Dave points out how they have all these ads on Raw telling kids not to smoke, and then they have the Acolytes, who are cool, beloved babyface characters, smoking cigars in every segment.
- Dave Hebner underwent an angioplasty to clear some blocked arteries after suffering a mild heart attack a couple weeks ago. He was initially released from the hospital but had to go back in after a staph infection.
- In case you're wondering, Brian Gewirtz is the writer who deserves the credit for scripting the awesome Triple H/Kurt Angle/Stephanie McMahon storyline that is currently going on.
- The ho that took the table bump from Goodfather a couple weeks ago is named Lisa Marie Varon who wrestles for UPW in California. That is, of course, Victoria.
- The Rock and Chyna are both scheduled to appear at the upcoming Democratic National Convention, which comes on the heels of Rock's recent appearance at the Republican convention. Speaking of...
- A panelist on CNN's Capital Gang show made headlines this week when talking about The Rock appearing at the Republican convention, when she referred to the Rock as a "white skinhead hateful wrestling guy." Needless to say, Rock is none of those things other than "wrestling guy" and Dave thinks it was pretty shitty and unfair of her to say that about Dwayne Johnson, who is simply playing a character (and not a white skinhead one, by the way) on TV. Anyway, she's one of those people who is all in with the PTC and she put out a statement calling Rock the star of WWF's "awful show Smackdown that celebrates anti-women, anti-gay, anti-black sentiments with language so coarse and vulgar I can't repeat it here. He loves violence and takes metal chairs, shovels, sledge hammers to his opponents. The Rock appeals to a growing group of white, working-class youths, and you would think the Republicans would rage against his rage theatrics, like AT&T, Coca-Cola and MCI, which have withdrawn their advertising. Instead, they legitimized him."
- 2000 NCAA heavyweight wrestling champion Brock Lesnar made his professional in-ring debut in front of about 60 fans at an OVW show in Louisville. Lesnar had only been in the training camp for 2 weeks before being put in the ring and was said to look very good in his debut against B.J. Payne (in case you ever needed an answer to the trivia question of who Brock's first ever opponent was). Lesnar did a nice bit of chain wrestling and was described as very quick and agile for someone his size but was noticeably blown up after 4 minutes in the ring, so he'll need to work on that. He threw a good dropkick, sold well, and showed lots of charisma. Lesnar's parents and grandparents were also at the show. He's expected to start appearing on OVW television in the next week or so which is amazing because Cornette usually doesn't rush to put anyone on TV before they're ready and WWF hasn't pressured him to, but they're really high on Lesnar.