Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 30, 2000

We begin this week with a long obituary for Yokozuna, who passed away at age 34 at a hotel in Liverpool, England. Yoko was a member of the famous Anoa'i family of Samoans and held the WWF title twice in the early 90s. It's thought that he may have been the heaviest wrestler in the world at one point although that's difficult to prove. In late-96, he's believed to have weighed close to 800 pounds and he was definitely the heaviest in the history of WWF. Yokozuna was found by a tour bus driver in his hotel room when he didn't answer the door when he was supposed to be picked up for a show later that night. It's believed to have been a heart attack (turns out no, it was something to do with fluid in his lungs). He was said to be drinking heavily the night before and just a day earlier, it's known that he'd had a lengthy phone call with his cousin Rikishi. In recent years, Yokozuna hadn't wrestled in the U.S. because he couldn't get cleared by any state athletic commissions due to his size and the potential for heart problems. He was believed to weigh anywhere from 600-750 pounds and was practically immobile in the ring during his recent indie appearances. On Raw, they acknowledged his death with Vince McMahon calling him the greatest big man in the history of wrestling. On Nitro, the announcers mentioned him and basically gave him the same praise. WCW wasn't going to mention it since he never worked there, but Yoko was well-liked within the business and other wrestlers who knew him pressured them to give Yoko a shout out, so they did.
Dave runs down Yokozuna's life and career, all his connections and relationships with the Anoa'i family, his early Great Kokina gimmick, wrestling in USWA, Mexico, NJPW, and the dying days of AWA before making his way to WWF in 1993. He had a successful run there but eventually got so large that WWF sent him to the Duke University weight loss program but he failed at that so they took him off the road completely and he never returned. He had talks about returning plenty of times over the last few years, including just in the last few weeks, but because he could never get his weight under control, it didn't happen. His final appearance in WWF was the 1996 Survivor Series in a throw-away 8-man elimination match in which he did almost literally nothing but stand there. At that point, for all intents and purposes, his career was over. He made a couple of indie appearances and his last major appearance was in the main event of the embarrassing Heroes of Wrestling PPV in 1999.
WATCH: WWF's Yokozuna tribute video
Negotiations for WWF to buy WCW are continuing this week and are going slower than expected. There's issues on both sides that neither seems willing to budge on, reportedly over what happens to WCW front office workers as well as who gets the PPV money that WCW is still owed (naturally, Turner and WWF both want that money). There were allegations that Vince McMahon and WCW head Brad Siegel got into an argument during the negotiations, but people close to the situation denied that to Dave. WWF lawyers have also denied the rumors that they have a right-of-first-refusal deal as part of the lawsuit settlement a few months back. The big hold up appears to be over existing WCW contracts, not just with wrestlers but in all facets of the business (licensing and merchandising contracts that WCW has with other companies, for example). It's also believed that there is some hold up with Viacom, which is now paying WWF $28 million per year for exclusive WWF programming. But if you recall, one of the things Turner isn't willing to budge on is that they still want WCW programming on their channels. So if WWF buys WCW, they would be producing shows for TBS and TNT, which are rival networks to the Viacom-owned channels that WWF is currently on. So there's all sorts of legal red tape that has to be sorted through if this deal is actually going to happen and it's said to not be as much of a sure thing as everyone thought it was last week (spoiler: that Viacom stuff is what ends up killing this whole deal).
Bret Hart was officially fired by WCW this week. To say his 3 years in WCW was a disappointment would be the understatement of the century, Dave says. He came into WCW as arguably the hottest star in the business after the Screwjob and WCW pretty much fumbled him right from the start and never recovered. Throw in the death of his brother, several injuries, and countless heel/face turns, and it was just a bad 3 years, both personally and professionally for Hart. His contract ($2.5 mil per year) was the second highest in the company behind Hulk Hogan and it wasn't a surprise that they released him. WCW is deep in debt and there's huge pressure to cut costs. Hart hasn't wrestled since January and it's unknown if he'll ever be able to again. Per Hart's contract, if he was unable to wrestle for more than 90 days, they had the right to terminate the deal and so they finally did. It's very likely Hart's in-ring career is over, as he's still not recovered from the concussions he suffered in December and January, which started with an errant Goldberg kick at Starrcade and were worsened in the weeks after, most notably during a hardcore match with Terry Funk. Hart has been noticeably bitter following what happened in Montreal and lashed out not only at WWF, but often at WCW and all the changes in the wrestling business that he didn't like. Hart's criticisms of WCW led to a lot of heat and resentment from higher-ups in the company, even though most of the wrestlers usually agreed with him.
In the termination letter that Brad Siegel sent to Hart, he wrote, "At this point in time, we have been unable to utilize your wrestling services for over nine months and according to your doctor, you remain incapacitated. Based on your ongoing incapacity, WCW in exercising its right under paragraph 8 (e) to terminate your independent contractor agreement effective Friday, October 20, 2000. Your contributions to the wrestling business are highly regarded and we wish you only the best in the future." Hart responded in his weekly Calgary Sun column, writing, "Yeah right," and added that he'll be taking time to think over his options. Dave says those options are pretty limited. Even if he can wrestle again (which is doubtful), where? Dave says that even if Bret can't wrestle, there's obviously a big money angle waiting for him in WWF between him and McMahon, but there's so much hatred there that it's pretty clear neither side wants that. Most likely, Hart's short-term plan is to write a book about his life in the business.
WWF's No Mercy PPV is in the books and was a good show, built around the in-ring return of Steve Austin. It also saw Kurt Angle become only the 2nd Olympic gold medalist to win a major pro wrestling world title (the first being Henri DeGlane who won the world title from Strangler Lewis back in 1931, y'all remember that? Oh man, good times...). Dave says Angle has had one of the quickest rises to the top of any performer in history. Big Show won his first WCW title 6 months after his debut and Salman Hashimikov won the IWGP title only a month after his debut in 1989, but otherwise, that's it. Nobody has catapulted to the top the way Angle has. But of course, the big selling point of the show was Austin's return. Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a match and it left more questions than answers about Austin's health, since he didn't really take much in the way of bumps and mostly just brawled around with Rikishi for a bit before doing an angle to get arrested. The big focal point of the title match and whole show really was Stephanie McMahon and Dave basically compares her to a Von Erich daughter considering the way her father is building the company around her lately.
Other notes from No Mercy: during the opening tables match, Grandmaster Sexay accidentally broke a table with his feet, which should have eliminated them from the match but the referee just ignored it while the crowd chanted "You fucked up!" Dave mentions that Victoria, who is one of the Godfather's hos, will be going to Memphis to train and will become a wrestler. They did an angle backstage to write the Acolytes off the show and their scheduled match didn't happen. It was done because Bradshaw recently suffered a broken rib and Faarooq needs knee surgery. They made a point of showing Steve Austin chugging a beer while driving his truck away from the ring, which Dave finds pretty classless from the company's top star who so many teenagers think is cool. Edge/Christian (as the Conquistadores) vs. the Hardyz was a bad match, which Dave didn't think was possible for these 2 teams to have together. Christian suffered a stinger when doing a dive to the outside and half his body went numb but he's expected to be okay (I remember on an episode of their podcast, Christian talked about this and said it was the scariest moment of his career). Triple H vs. Chris Benoit was a great match and would have been a near-classic if the crowd wasn't so dead for it. And the Rock/Angle match was even better, with Angle winning the title and getting a big face pop for it.
WATCH: Kurt Angle wins the WWF Championship from The Rock
We have another obituary, this one even longer than Yokozuna, for the death of Leo Nomellini, a part-time wrestler and NFL player who died this week. Nomellini wrestled during the off-season in the San Francisco territory in the 1950s and Dave goes into a ton of detail about this dude, I guess because this is the region where Dave grew up and he knows a lot about the local wrestling history in the area. As a football player, Nomellini was pretty great and was even inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The vacant IWGP title will be decided on the Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show with an 8-man one-night tournament featuring Toshiaki Kawada, Shinya Hashimoto, Keiji Muto, Manabu Nakanishi, Kensuke Sasaki, Masahiro Chono, Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Genichiro Tenryu. For name value and star-power, it's probably the biggest one-night tournament in Japanese wrestling history and it's notable that Kawada and Tenryu, who are AJPW stars, will be involved. Apparently, NJPW reached out to NOAH as well, hoping to get Misawa and Kobashi in the tournament, but Misawa turned it down. (Holy shit, can you imagine this tournament if they had somehow managed to get Misawa and Kobashi also? My god...)
Nitro did a near record-low rating this week while Raw did its best numbers on TNN so far. The first hour of Nitro was the 2nd lowest rated unopposed hour ever, while the second hour was the lowest rated second hour in the history of the show. Raw's numbers were up, but still not to where they were before the move to TNN, but its inching that way.
Hiroshi Hase has avoided picking sides in the AJPW/NOAH split until now. This week he announced that he will work shows for AJPW in January. Hase is a member of the Japanese Diet (the equivalent of the U.S. Senate) and they will be on break in January, which will allow Hase the free time to wrestle again. So chalk up a much-needed win for AJPW on this one.
Scott Hall apparently reached out to NJPW about working some shows, since WCW fired him and WWF doesn't want him (yeah, Hall ends up spending a good bit of 2001 in NJPW).
XPW in California held a press conference to announce an Atsushi Onita vs. Sabu match taking place in December. Onita cut a promo saying Vince McMahon and Paul Heyman promised they'd do exploding ring matches with him but they backed out. Sabu then came out and it turned into a brawl between them. Onita and XPW promoter Rob Black then set an American flag on fire and tried to throw Sabu on it. Oh. Well then. Onita then went back to Japan and when he was interviewed by the media there, he challenged Terry Funk and Antonio Inoki, vowing to retire afterwards because he needs a knee replacement. Dave thinks Onita is trying to compete with Funk for how many times a guy can say he's retiring and then not do it.
WATCH: XPW Atsushi Onita press conference
Big Dick Dudley was involved in an accident when his motorcycle was hit by a truck and he reportedly spent 2 days in a coma.
Shawn Michaels is scheduled to appear at a Memphis Championship Wrestling show next week.
ECW's December PPV is already sold out, two months in advance. But it's only 2,500 tickets at Hammerstein Ballroom, so it's not like that's a huge financial boon for the company or anything.
Dan Severn was backstage at an ECW show recently, looking for work. Dave doesn't see it happening because for starters, Severn is all wrong for this company now. Back in the day, they tried to bring Severn in to get him to put over Taz when he was doing the shooter gimmick, but that didn't happen and nowadays, the style of the company has changed. Plus, ECW isn't in a position to be hiring anybody new right now.
Other ECW notes: they had a house show in Battle Creek, MI which seems like a no-brainer to have RVD there, but he wasn't. They offered free tickets to the PPV in Chicago next month to anyone who wanted them to make up for RVD not being there. Paul Heyman was in attendance at both weekend house shows, which is the first time he's been at those shows in awhile. Joe C, the little guy who raps with Kid Rock, worked the MI show and was in the corner of Sandman and Whipwreck for their match.
Notes from WCW Nitro: this continues to feel like a lame-duck company, with all the shows pretty much just in a holding pattern. Kevin Nash cut a promo talking about Scott Hall again and Dave is just flabbergasted. Hall was fired by WCW a couple of weeks ago, leading Dave to say "WCW is run by total chowderheads." Dave says if this was WWF and someone got on a live mic on Raw and started shooting and going off-script by putting over a guy that Vince McMahon had just fired in real life, that guy would probably be joining him in the unemployment line as soon as he got backstage. But there's pretty much no discipline or rules in WCW. Nash has been talking about Scott Hall in his promos for months now, and it was never part of an angle. It was just Nash politicking on live TV for them to bring his fuck-up buddy back. In fact, online, Mark Madden wrote about how Scott Hall gets bigger pops than most of the roster, because Nash has been working his own angle to bring him back and the fans are all excited and hyped up for something that's not going to happen. Meanwhile, the entire rest of the roster doesn't get half the build-up that Nash has been giving Hall on his own. And Nash realizes that nobody in WCW has the balls to discipline him, so he just goes into business for himself. Oh, and just in case you didn't get the message the first time, Nash had another interview segment later in the show and he once again made it all about Scott Hall. In other news, Goldberg is supposed to be building back up his winning streak. On Nitro, they announced him as 12-0. On Thunder last week, he was 7-0. WCW hasn't had any shows in between, so somehow Goldberg added another phantom 5 wins to his record over the previous 4 days. But putting all that stuff aside, it was kind of a solid show, with some good matches and one of the better Nitro main events they've had in awhile.
Also, this was the first of the new joint-tapings WCW is doing, so after Nitro, they taped Thunder for the same crowd. This is the plan going forward, so WCW will only be running 5 shows-per-month from now on (4 Nitro/Thunder tapings and 1 PPV, no house shows).
One final note from Nitro: Scott Steiner came to the ring with a live tiger. In case you're wondering, no one knows why they did this. Just some idea somebody came up with so they went out and got a tiger on the spur of the moment. Because WCW. Backstage before the show, Rey Mysterio was trying to take a photo with it and the tiger nearly took a bite out of him (can you imagine the liability issue of bringing a tiger to ringside, with only a little barricade standing between the fans and the tiger? If you watch it, the tiger is struggling to get away when they first bring him out. Obviously the handlers are there, but still, if that tiger decided to go full-tiger, all bets are off).
WATCH: Scott Steiner comes to the ring with a tiger
Various WCW notes: Terry Taylor, Bill Banks and Ed Ferrara are apparently the main guys writing television this week. No explanation given about why it wasn't Russo but he wasn't involved this week (never would be again, he's done). Goldberg's book "I'm Next" comes out next week. E! Network will air a Women of WCW special. In a Pittsburgh poll, Mark Madden finished 3rd in a poll for which local radio personality you'd most want to punch. Hulk Hogan has been telling people that he wants to end his career in the WWF.
WCW has changed the names of several of the 2001 PPVs. January's PPV will be called Sin (instead of Souled Out). February's PPV will be called SuperBrawl Revenge (instead of plain old SuperBrawl) and March's PPV will be called Greed (rather than Uncensored). And unbeknownst to anybody at the time, these will be the final WCW PPVs ever.
Time Warner's stockholder report estimated $10-15 million in losses by WCW over the last 3 months, which is actually a good thing. They were expected to lose more than that, but all the cost-cutting in recent months helped stem the tide somewhat. The company was on pace to lose $80 million this year, but it looks like now it'll be a little less than that (though it's still expected to total well over $50 million).
CNN ran a special on Goldberg last week. It talked about his parents divorcing 13 years ago, with Goldberg saying he's still angry about it. They also showed Vince Russo and Goldberg discussing an angle where Goldberg would attack Scott Steiner backstage and pour bleach down Steiner's throat. Dave notes that never actually happened, but here they are discussing it on the CNN special, so it was obviously a plan at some point that got scrapped. Russo also took a shot at Hogan during the show, saying it took Hogan 15 years to make a name for himself in wrestling while it only took Goldberg 3 months. Dave points out that Hogan started in late-1977, was a superstar in Japan in 1980, and by 1981, he was the biggest drawing star in the U.S. when working for the AWA. So, uh, the 15 years thing isn't exactly true. (I can't find video of this segment, but weirdly enough, CNN has a written transcript of the entire episode so scroll through this link and you can find it if you really want.)
There's expected to be another settlement meeting this week between the McMahons and the Hart family and all the lawyers. The last meeting fell apart after Martha Hart snapped and began yelling at Vince.
Notes from Raw: Ivory debuted as the newest member of Right To Censor. The role was originally considered for Mona from WCW, but she'll apparently be doing something else. They showed Christian backstage laying in the remnants of a shattered table, implying that the Dudleys did it. This was a way to write Christian off the show after the stinger he suffered at the PPV. The ho's were also written off TV by a Chyna beat down and Dave says it's no coincidence that the pimp, the porn star, and the ho's are all gone from TV within the first month of moving to Viacom. Those were all central complaints of the PTC.
Various WWF notes: Austin is scheduled to wrestle on most upcoming house shows, even in smaller markets, which is something of a surprise considering he just came back and it's unknown how well his neck will hold up. On the WWF's website, they stated there was nothing to the story of McMahon attempting to buy the Boston Red Sox, as the Boston Globe reported last week.
A 14-year-old boy in Romulus, MI was charged with assault and battery after he attacked his mother because she wouldn't let him watch Sunday Night Heat. He pushed her, threatened to break windows in the apartment, and shattered a cinder block and began threatening her with it. The boy is awaiting trial on 2 previous assault charges also.
Lots of letters about the potential WWF/WCW sale and how WCW is such a dead company at this point that some people don't even know why Vince would want it. Lots of doom and gloom predictions for WWF too, with people thinking it's getting stale, Rock is stagnating, Austin is yesterday's news, etc. Predictions that if Vince buys WCW, he'll eventually just shut it down rather than run it as a separate promotion, things like that.