Wrestling Observer Rewinder

November 27, 2000

Survivor Series is in the books and ended with a Wile E. Coyote finish of Austin dropping a car with Triple H in it from a forklift, in a spot that basically looked like Austin murdered him. The angle was done to give Triple H time off to rest his back and hip injuries. The Angle/Undertaker WWF title match also had a wacky finish, with Angle's brother Eric getting involved and doing the whole Twin Magic Bella twins gimmick. Dave is pretty "ehhh..." about screwjob finishes in main event matches on a PPV and he heard a lot of complaints from fans live who paid a lot of money for tickets and were upset that half of Triple H/Austin happened backstage and they had to watch it on the video screens.
WATCH: Steve Austin murders Triple H
Other notes from the show: Molly Holly made her PPV debut, pinning Trish Stratus in their match. K-Kwik (Ron Killings, aka R-Truth) also made his PPV debut but didn't look very good and didn't get much time. He looked green and blew a spot before getting pinned by Benoit. Lita got legit busted open over her left eye in her match with Ivory and required stitches after and had half a crimson mask for most of the match. Dave mocks Undertaker's unbelievably bad new ring gear, especially the pants (I think it came out later that Undertaker's luggage got lost or something and he was wearing Godfather's pants). And that's about it. Nothing much notable from the show.
At the first night of the latest AJPW tour, Motoko Baba announced that Stan Hansen, the most popular foreign wrestler in the history of Japanese wrestling, will be retiring. Hansen is expected to wrestle one final match, at AJPW's Jan. 28th Tokyo Dome show (didn't happen. Unbeknownst to everyone, Hansen has already wrestled his final match by this point). At 51 years old, Hansen is banged up after years of crippling injuries and it's been obvious for awhile that it's time. Dave recaps Hansen's career as a top star in Japan, starting in the late 70s as Inoki's biggest rival before making the surprise jump to AJPW in one of the most famous angles in company history. Hansen is also famous for being the guy who broke Bruno Sammartino's neck when Bruno landed wrong on a Hansen bodyslam. He's also the only foreign wrestler to ever beat Andre The Giant in Japan. Legendary feuds and matches with Baba, Kawada, Misawa, Kobashi, and a famous match with Vader that nearly cost Vader his eye. During the 80s, he was part of one of the greatest tag teams of all time with Bruiser Brody. He's a 4-time Triple Crown champion and also held the AWA title before famously refusing to lose it to Nick Bockwinkel in a story that was huge at the time (Dave doesn't mention that Hansen literally ran over the belt with his truck before sending it back to Verne Gagne, half mangled and destroyed).
Observer Awards season is coming up and it's been a unique year. WWF has dominated the industry. WCW and ECW are in disarray, AJPW is clinging to survival after the NOAH split, and while still the clear #2 promotion in the world, NJPW still had a pretty bad year. Anyway, Dave breaks down all the categories, what they mean, how to vote, who's eligible, etc.
WWF released its quarterly financial report and yada yada numbers revenues, something something operating income, rights fees, blah blah licensing projections, so on and so forth. There actually is some interesting stuff here. Profits were down from this same quarter last year. The big reasons were due to the $7 million that WWF had to pay as their share of the Owen Hart settlement (insurance paid the other $11 million), another $6.5 million in costs associated with XFL startup expenses, and finally, they lost a bunch of money on expenses related to the WWF New York restaurant in Times Square. House show revenue increased, not because they sold more tickets, but because they increased ticket prices. PPV revenue was up 35% due to Steve Austin's return doing big numbers on the Sept. and Oct. PPVs. Hell, everything is up. TV rights fees are up 165% due to the switch over to Viacom and that number will be substantially higher next quarter. Merch revenue is up 10%. Publishing up 17% due to increasing WWF Magazine prices. Home videos up 12%. Internet revenue up 56%. But the Owen Hart lawsuit and XFL costs are huge hits and because of that, WWF is expected to fall short of their year-end projections.
WCW ran a PPV in Germany called Millennium Final. Dave didn't see it, but has a report from someone he knows in Germany who did. A lot of people missed the first hour of the show due to PPV technical problems. It was interesting because they also were broadcasting 2 separate feeds, one showing the main show and another feed showing the backstage area and featuring a lot of interviews. Konnan and Rey Mysterio both cut promos saying a lot of negative things about WCW and Konnan even hinted at wanting to go to WWF. This isn't new, everyone in WCW hates it and wants out, but it was strange to hear someone say it on an official WCW broadcast. Kronik beat Kidman and Mysterio and they were basically treated like jobbers. Dave says call him crazy, but he's starting to think that just maybe the Hogan feud didn't do Kidman any favors after all. They did a Royal Rumble-style battle royal with a new guy entering every 45 seconds, which was won by Mike Awesome. Alex Wright and General Rection won the tag team titles. It was supposed to be Disco Inferno instead, but he got injured and Rection took his spot. The win was mostly just to pop the German crowd since Alex Wright (German) was so hugely over during the show. They immediately lost the titles on Nitro as soon as they got back to the U.S. which pissed off a lot of German fans who saw it for the meaningless cheap pop it was. Dave thinks that'll probably hurt business whenever they return to Germany next time (spoiler: there's no next time). German boxer Axel Schulz refereed the Sting/Kevin Nash main event and at one point when Nash was in the scorpion deathlock, he tried to make a 3 count before realizing that this was a submission hold and that Nash was face down on the mat (this is one of the few WCW PPVs that isn't available on the WWE Network for whatever reason. You can find bits and pieces of it online. Here's the main event).
WATCH: Sting vs. Kevin Nash - WCW Millennium Final
Nitro this week did a 2.27 rating which is the lowest rating in the history of the show in its regular time slot. Thunder did a 2.32 which is higher than normal but the rating plummeted throughout the show so the extra viewers clearly didn't care much for what they saw.
At the latest NOAH show in Japan, Kenta Kobashi teamed up with rookie wrestler Kenta Kobayashi. Dave still thinks the new kid desperately needs a new ring name to avoid the obvious confusion (he eventually shortens it to just KENTA before changing it again to Hideo Itami).
Tatsumi Fujinami has decided not to step down as NJPW president, which he was considering when he was outvoted on firing Shinya Hashimoto. Instead, Fujinami met with Antonio Inoki, who talked him into staying. Dave also mentions that Inoki is trying to get more NJPW guys to work PRIDE shows.
The NJPW/AJPW relationship is still shaky. It was announced that a show next month will have NJPW's G1 tag team tournament winners facing an AJPW team. In the meantime, Fujinami is still saying that he wants someone from NOAH to wrestle in the Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome tournament for the IWGP title, which Motoko Baba is not happy about. She has threatened to pull out of the partnership if NOAH is involved, but to be honest, AJPW needs this relationship a lot more than NJPW does so it's kind of an empty threat.
Japanese women's wrestler Yumi Fukawa has been forced to retire at age 24 due to brain injuries. She suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was told one more bad shot to the head could be fatal, similar to the injury that killed Masakazu Fukuda earlier this year.
Laila Ali, the daughter of Muhammad Ali, will be attending an LLPW women's wrestling show with the idea she may face Shinobu Kandori in a boxer vs. wrestler match in the future (I think she does attend the show but the match never happens).
That show from Australia several months ago that featured Dennis Rodman vs. Curt Hennig will be airing as a PPV next month under the name iGeneration Wrestling, and they plan to run several more events in the future. On one hand, this pretty much sounds like it's gonna be a bust. But on the other hand, with WCW and ECW in worse shape than ever, this might not be the worst time to start a new promotion. WCW is cutting people left and right and ECW is behind on paying everybody, so there's a lot of free agents on the market right now, and there may be more soon if things keep getting worse. So hey, who knows? But this PPV is going to live or die on the drawing power of Dennis Rodman, and he's nowhere near the media superstar he was 2 years ago. His last appearance in WCW did fuck all for them so Dave doesn't have high hopes for this.
Bret Hart was scheduled to appear on Good Morning America last week, but due to "all the hoopla" surrounding the finish of the Presidential election, he was bumped from the show. An in related news, Bret's column in this week's Calgary Sun was also pulled, due to apparently being too controversial. Probably something to do with the Owen Hart lawsuit settlement/Hart family drama. Speeeeeeeaking of...
Martha Hart did a lengthy interview on the Vicki Gabereau Show in Canada. Martha didn't have much nice to say about the rest of the family, but said that Bret Hart is one of her best friends and that during the entire lawsuit, he supported her and all the decisions she made. She said Owen would have been proud of how Bret handled it. When asked about the rest of the family, she said there would never be any repairing the relationship. She specifically blamed Diana Hart Smith and Ellie Neidhart for looking out for their own self-interests and for trying to sabotage her case against the WWF. She said she's still on good terms with several other members of the family, but they also have contact with Diana and Ellie and it's just an awkward situation so she tries to avoid it. She also said Stu and Helen have always been good to her. She said she didn't want to sling any mud, but there's plenty of it to sling if she wanted to. She thanked wrestling fans who had already raised more than $100,000 for a Calgary children's hospital in Owen's name. She said that every morning when she wakes up with Owen not there, she feels like she's living a nightmare, but she's trying to move on with her life. She said she'd never want her children to get into wrestling and says Owen would have never wanted them to.
There's a lot of questions over the future of Rob Van Dam in ECW. It was initially reported (by the Observer itself, on their website) that RVD had quit. Turns out that wasn't true and Dave made sure it was corrected immediately and apologizes for the mistake. But even though RVD hasn't officially quit, there are big-time money issues between the two sides which is why RVD hasn't been working shows lately. Every wrestler in the company is owed money, at the very least one month's pay, and some are owed a lot more. Plus no one has received any PPV bonuses in ages. Fortunately for ECW right now, they're in a position where WWF isn't hiring anyone new and WCW can't afford to hire anyone due to cost cutting, so most of the ECW roster isn't leaving because they have nowhere else to go. But RVD's situation was serious enough that they didn't mention his name at all during the PPV and they're not planning any storylines for him right now, so they seem to be under the impression that he's at least not going to be around for a little while. Neither RVD or ECW would go on the record with Dave to discuss the issues, other than to say as of this week, RVD isn't booked for any upcoming ECW shows and they're still negotiating (he ends up making one final appearance at ECW's very last PPV in January, but otherwise, that's it for RVD and ECW).
ECW only has 2 shows left on the schedule for the rest of the year. The PPV on Dec. 3rd and an ECW Arena show on Dec. 23rd. There are 2 TV tapings scheduled for Texas next month but as of press time, they are almost certain to be cancelled. If so, they'll have to tape extra matches at the PPV in order to fill TV time for the rest of the year.
On ECW TV this week, they pretty much dropped the angle of the FBI cutting off Jim Mitchell's fingers after the almost universally negative response they got last week for showing the footage of Mitchell being legit treated for the injury.
Vampiro did an interview on Insane Clown Posse's website claiming that he is leaving WCW, due in part to concussions he suffered at Halloween Havoc and Nitro the next night. There's skepticism within WCW over the legitimacy of his injuries. Vampiro just had a new baby and a lot of people believe he's faking the concussion symptoms so he can stay home with his child, despite the fact that the WCW doctors did diagnose his concussions as legit. It's not just Vampiro though, there's people in WCW who are doubtful of Bret Hart's concussions as well. On the ICP Hotline (yes they have a hotline), Vampiro talked about having permanent speech impairment, a possible broken neck, and brain damage. He was adamant about never going back to WCW and ripped on the company as well as Terry Taylor and Vince Russo. He said the only wrestling he's going to be doing from now on is for ICP's JCW promotion and that he also plans to go on tour with ICP to play bass (indeed, he never stepped foot in WCW again).
Sting is dealing with an elbow injury and will miss all of December. If he ends up needing surgery, he may be out 3-6 months (Sting doesn't wrestle again until the final Nitro).
Notes from Nitro: Dave says the show has gotten better in the last few weeks that Russo hasn't been around because a lot of the illogical wacky shit is gone. But they're drastically overexposing the younger stars, especially Mike Sanders. Pushing new stars is great, but taking totally green Power Plant guys and making them the focus of the show is over-correcting. They brought out Alex Wright and Disco Inferno as the new tag team champions, saying they won them in Germany. They showed footage of Wright getting the win and edited it so that you didn't see that Disco wasn't in the match and that actually General Rection was the partner. Then they were booked to defend the titles, but Disco got taken out of the match (still injured) and replaced by Elix Skipper and they lost the tag titles. Dave mentions that Disco Inferno is the first wrestler "since the immortal Judy Bagwell" to hold the tag team titles while not being involved in the match to win it or lose it. Kevin Nash cut a promo saying he has 13 months and 10 days left on his contract and that he wants to have fun. Dave admits that this is actually kinda brilliant because Nash has set himself up an angle where he can possibly jump to WWF while hyping it up in WCW, or at the very least, pressure WCW into spending big money to re-sign him. Dave says you can't fault a guy for playing the game smart, but it sucks that WCW is the kind of place where a guy can go on TV and say whatever he wants with no consequence, even to the detriment of the team he's supposed to be playing for. Mike Sanders cut a promo on Nash, joking about Nash not getting first class flights and breach of contract. Apparently on the trip to Europe recently, Nash was complaining loudly about not having first class seats on the flight to Europe because that's apparently part of his contract, and was claiming it was a breach, so Sanders was busting his balls over that. DDP already feels like just another guy after returning to a huge pop just last week. Dave says that's because WCW did nothing to make it feel special. The single best thing the company (well, Nash) has promoted in the last six months is the return of Scott Hall and that's not actually happening. The crowd still chants for Hall every week, while guys like DDP get no build up at all and the crowd doesn't care that he's back.
All the stuff with the Battledome guys was put together by Eric Bischoff and basically none of the other writers or bookers are allowed to change any of it, only him. Dave mentions that Ed Ferrara is basically the head writer at the moment, although everyone is still under the impression that Russo will be back soon. Russo is still at home, saying he hasn't recovered from the concussions he suffered, and just like Hart and Vampiro, a lot of people backstage doubt how legit this is, especially since he's not a wrestler so it's not like they're asking him to come back and take bumps. Plus the timing made people suspicious, since it was when the WWF sale rumors were happening and Russo decided to take time off right around the time that allowed him to skip both the Australia and Europe tours. But Dave says, to be fair, Russo really did take several hard shots to the head during the couple of matches he did, so who knows.
Speaking of the European tour, Midajah was upset about having to go. Her father-in-law is very ill and she wanted to stay home to be near her family for that, but WCW wouldn't let her skip the tour so she had to go or lose her job.
Hey, we're back to ICP's website again. According to a story posted on ICP's site, several of the Nitro Girls approached ICP about forming a Spice Girls-like musical group for their Psychopathic Records label. I feel like these ladies might not quite be familiar with ICP's audience...
The episode of the sitcom "Nikki" which features Kevin Nash in a guest starring role will be going head-to-head with WCW's Mayhem PPV. Whoops.
Tickets for Starrcade went on sale last week and the first-day sales were disastrous. They only sold 926 tickets, for a building that holds around 20,000 for basketball. Dave says that's worse than scary for a building that large.
Dave gives notes from the latest NWA Wildside indie show in Georgia and the only thing of note is they have a rookie there who's a former NFL player named Bob Sapp. Word is he has a monster look and can move quickly and has potential (he'll be IWGP heavyweight champion in less than 4 years).
Only thing really notable from Raw was the main event of Austin vs. Benoit. It was by far the best match that Austin has had since returning and he looked to be completely back to his old self. He was wrestling pretty fearlessly, taking german suplexes and back suplexes and everything in between in a pretty great match. Speaking of, Benoit and Rock had a great match on Smackdown the next night. I think this Benoit kid might be a pretty decent 'rassler.
WWF signed a new deal to have Smackdown and the XFL broadcast on The Score network in Canada. Smackdown didn't previously air in Canada until now. Score is in a similar situation as UPN was when they first got Smackdown. It's a struggling network that is hoping WWF will give it a much-needed boost.
Speaking of the XFL, they made huge news this week by announcing Governor Jesse Ventura has been hired as an an announcer for the Saturday night NBC games. Once again, it's led to controversy over whether a sitting governor should be getting paid all this money to do these outside gigs and whether he's using the power and celebrity of his office for private gain. For what it's worth, Ventura does have experience broadcasting football games, as he has done radio announcing for both the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Minnesota Vikings.
Vince McMahon himself also made waves with an interview in ESPN Magazine where he spoke about some of his XFL plans. McMahon said the cheerleaders may have some announcing duties and that they would be encouraged to date the players. "When the quarterback fumbles or the wide out drops a pass, and we know who he's dating, I want our reporters right back in her face on the sidelines demanding to know what they were doing the previous night." The quote led to a ton of criticism, forcing McMahon to actually walk it back and say he was just joking. But c'mon, we all know Vince McMahon...
Christopher Daniels has had talks with WWF about a developmental deal but nothing signed yet. In the meantime, he's planning to return back to Michinoku Pro and bring back his goofy Curry Man gimmick which made him a cult favorite in Japan.
Triple H did an interview with the Observer website and talked about a lot of things. In regards to his injuries, he said a powerslam fucked up his spine and coccyx bone and screwed up a bunch of hip ligaments and back discs and whatnot, leading to spasms. In regards to being heel or face, he said he loves being a heel more than anything else and added, "The hardest thing in this business is to stay one way or the other. If you're a babyface, if you're not creative enough, people start to dislike you." When asked about rarely doing clean jobs, he argued that none of the top guys do (Dave disputes that with plenty of examples). He said the famous Kliq curtain call back in 1996 was approved by Vince and if he knew he was going to get in trouble, he wouldn't have done it and blamed the backlash on old agents backstage who found it disrespectful but that Vince didn't have a problem with it until those people got into his ear. When asked about Scott Hall potentially coming to WWF, he said it basically depends on Hall proving that he's staying on the right path with his personal problems.
Kid Rock's sidekick Joe C passed away in his sleep at age 26. Joe C had celiac disease and lived a very difficult life, taking 60 pills a day and being monitored by machines when he slept at night. He had made several WWF appearances over the years and had hoped to do more with wrestling. He really wanted to work with ECW and was friends with RVD and Sabu. He was also an avid wrestling tape collector. Dave reveals he was also a long-time subscriber to the Observer until his death and offers his condolences.
Now that WWF's move to Viacom has passed the 8 week mark, Dave decides to compare ratings from before and after the move. Raw on USA was averaging a 5.94 and is averaging a 5.21 now, which is a pretty significant 12.3% drop, although some of that can be attributed to Monday Night Football starting back at around the same time that they switched to TNN so that was kind of a double-whammy. Smackdown ratings are up and PPV buyrates are also up, so it's not like interest in WWF has declined recently, so the blame is pretty obviously due to the TNN move and the NFL starting back. Livewire and Superstars (which also moved to TNN) suffered similar ratings drops, while Sunday Night Heat, which moved to MTV, suffered a 17% drop.
Kurt Angle's brother Eric Angle has appeared on PPV and Smackdown in the last week but isn't signed. But there's said to be interest in maybe giving him a developmental deal.
Ticket sales for Wrestlemania 17 are now at more than 52,000 sold and still climbing. The first day sales (where they moved almost 49,000) shattered virtually every company ticket sales record there is. (Has there ever been a more appropriate side-by-side example of how far ahead WWF was at the end? WCW's biggest PPV of the year sold 926 tickets on the first day while WWF's biggest PPV of the year sold 49,000 on the first day).
The promo posters for the Royal Rumble say "30 men....1 will become champion" which would seem to indicate that the WWF title will be vacated at some point before then. But Dave says that the marketing side of the company usually doesn't consult with the creative side and often they just come up with phrases and taglines like that which don't have anything to do with what's going to happen. Plus, the way plans change and the way everything is booked on the fly these days, this could mean nothing (yeah, this meant nothing).
Letters section: someone writes in about the story of Chris Candido collapsing backstage at an indie show a couple weeks ago and says it's true, Candido had a seizure and was taken away in an ambulance. Tammy Sytch was with him and the letter writer asks how many more near-tragedies is it going to take for these 2 to address their obvious drug problems?