Wrestling Observer Rewinder

December 25, 2000

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Legendary Lucha Libre star Blue Demon has passed away at age 78 from a heart attack. He was alone on the subway, coming home from his morning workout, when he suffered the heart attack. Paramedics were called but were unable to save him. Dave notes that Demon was arguably the 2nd most famous wrestler in Mexico's history (second only to El Santo). Much like Santo, Blue Demon starred in a bunch of films during the 60s and 70s and became a cultural icon. Dave recaps Blue Demon's career, from his start in the late 40s and his legendary feud with Santo, which even spawned a song entitled "Los Luchadores" which is still popular in Mexico today. Despite their careers being so entwined, he and Santo never really got along, as they had a professional rivalry in both the ring and on film, where Demon was always treated as second fiddle to Santo, and sometimes to Mil Mascaras. Demon was also one of the most feared legit shooters in the business, known as someone who could wipe the floor with pretty much anybody (Mexico's Meng, basically). He was also known for never missing a booking, often wrestling with serious injuries, including one match he wrestled with a broken collarbone. Demon was buried in his famous blue mask.
WATCH: "Los Luchadores" performed by La Sonora Santanera
More chaos in WCW, as Kevin Nash, DDP, and Sid Vicious all walked out of the Nitro/Thunder tapings during the show. All 3 men had key roles in the show and their walkout forced the remainder of the live Nitro and the already-booked Thunder to be changed and literally booked on the fly as the shows were taping. Needless to say, because it's WCW, there's questions over how much of this is legit but most seem to believe it's real. It started when Sid Vicious had a problem with his role in the show, something about doing a job after he had already put over Steiner at Starrcade the night before. So before the Nitro tapings started, Sid walked out and they re-wrote the show to factor him out. So that's why he left.
Then, after the first match on Nitro, Ric Flair was supposed to cut a promo and then Steiner would come out and respond. Well, Scott Steiner asked if they could tweak the segment and let him go out first. So they did. And then Steiner proceeded to go out there and cut a promo on DDP. On TV, it seemed fine, like they were just building up to a match Steiner/DDP match. Problem is....that wasn't the plan. And everyone backstage quickly realized Steiner was going against script. DDP went to the gorilla position to wait for him and when Steiner came backstage afterwards, DDP confronted him and an all-out brawl broke out. From all reports, it didn't go too well for DDP. Both men had their faces cut and puffed up but Steiner reportedly had DDP on the ground for a long time, putting a beating on him and was going for his eyes before he was eventually pulled off. The two men have had problems for awhile now, stemming from an incident a few months ago when Steiner called Kimberly a cunt and "management didn't have the guts to insist Steiner apologize" according to Dave and Kimberly ended up quitting the company over it. Since then, DDP has refused to work with Steiner and the bad blood has been brewing for awhile. Following the fight, DDP reportedly shouted "I'm outta here, fuck this place!" and stormed out of the building while Steiner was shouting insults about Kimberly at him as he left. Nash, either out of loyalty to DDP or just seeing an opportunity to get out of work, left with DDP, forcing further re-writes to the show as it was already happening. Both Nash and DDP told people on the way out that they weren't coming back until the company had new ownership.
This wasn't the only incident with DDP that night. A week earlier, DDP was pissed off and had vowed to never work with or speak to Mark Madden, after some comments Madden had made about him on commentary recently. But this week, DDP approached Madden before the show to try and peacefully talk out their issues. But Madden wasn't having it, blaming DDP for him being suspended last week (if you recall, he didn't commentate on Nitro last week although there was no word why at the time, but apparently he was suspended for a week due to whatever he said about DDP). Anyway, DDP denied having anything to do with Madden's suspension, but Madden didn't believe him and refused to shake his hand when DDP offered. A lot of people in the locker room have sided with DDP in all this, first for trying to resolve his issues with Madden peacefully and then for standing up to Steiner in a fight that everyone knew he had no chance to win (Steiner is basically the scariest guy in the locker room according to most wrestlers).
To make things even worse, Rick Steiner was written into the show to be a part of the main event angle and was supposed to be revealed as the mystery opponent for the January PPV main event. But because WCW can't get their shit together, nobody ever told Rick Steiner to be at this TV taping and he wasn't flown in for it. So then they had to change that too, and so they put Robbie Rage under a mask and had him do a run-in. The plan at the next TV taping is to put Rick in the same outfit and then have him unmask and reveal it then. But it was supposed to be revealed this week before the travel screw-up. Unfortunately, with Nitro and Thunder all being pre-empted this week, they already don't have a whole lot of time to promote the next PPV (and it doesn't even end up being Rick Steiner. It ends up being Road Warrior Animal, and even that gets overshadowed by Sid breaking his leg at the moment Animal is coming out during the match. But we'll get to all that).
Needless to say, all of this threw the remainder of the live Nitro and the Thunder taping afterward into total upheaval. Dave cannot believe the company is in this much disarray and that shit like this all keeps happening unpunished. Scott Steiner is the WCW champion and they're trying to build the company around him, but this isn't his 1st, 2nd, or even 10th incident. He's shown a pattern of this sort of behavior and he has to be punished if WCW management is serious about ever regaining control of its locker room. And of course, Kevin Nash has gone against directions so many times that it's comical, never being punished. DDP probably should be punished as well because he did throw the first punch to start this fight and even if you feel like he was justified, you can't be physically attacking your co-workers. This sort of thing is a near-weekly occurrence in WCW and no one is ever disciplined. Dave hates that WCW has a locker room full of young, hungry talent who are still fresh in the business and are coming up learning that this is how the business operates because this isn't how it should be.
Aaaanyway, it's the last Observer of the year, so Dave takes a look back at the year 2000. It's been a great year for one company and a disaster for pretty much everyone else. Things have never looked more uncertain than they do heading into 2001. The WWF has passed its peak, but they're still untouchable and for the first time ever, it looks impossible for anyone to compete with them. Their business is stronger now than it was even in the golden era of the 80s. But they only have so many positions. A year ago, people talked about Rob Van Dam as potentially being the next breakthrough star in the business. Now, even his future is uncertain because WWF doesn't seem to be in any hurry to sign him and ECW and WCW can't. That speaks scary volumes for all the men and women who make their living in the wrestling business if those companies go under.
Things continue to look worse for both the other promotions. ECW desperately needs a TV deal that will pay production costs and help them get financially stable. As for WCW, they've had 2 horrible years and have lost untold millions of dollars. The Time Warner/AOL merger is all but complete as of this week and it's almost certain WCW will be sold soon, likely to a group headed by Eric Bischoff, though it's not expected to happen until after the new year. In 1999, the company was in free fall, but there was a lot of optimism when Vince Russo was brought in last fall, with the hope that he could at least get WCW back into the game and continue competing with WWF. Instead, WCW went from losing $15 million in 1999 to an estimated $60 million in losses this year (it ends up being even higher than that). Dave talks about how the Vince Russo-era (with a short break in the middle when Kevin Sullivan was in charge after Russo briefly quit) was creatively a low point for the company, with the championships being rendered meaningless, heel and face turns happening so often that fans couldn't keep track of who they were even supposed to cheer or boo, storylines that didn't make sense, and so on. Of course, you had Benoit quitting the company while champion, the reboot when Russo and Bischoff came back, David Arquette winning the belt, and in the last few months, you had Russo booking the entire show around himself as the main character, and turns out he's not quite the ratings draw that the other Vince is.
And of course, even if Bischoff does take over WCW, what does that mean? No one knows who his financial backers are, but they surely won't have as much disposable income as the Turner conglomerate. So Bischoff may be in a situation where he has to find a way to turn WCW around and turn a profit quickly. If so, that's going to be tough because WCW has killed off pretty much all the goodwill it has built with fans and winning them back won't be easy, especially not quickly. WCW is in worse shape than ever, while WWF is stronger than ever. And without Turner footing the bill for him to buy up all of WWF's old stars, a lot of the wrestlers don't have a ton of confidence in Bischoff as a promoter. If he's going to succeed in rebuilding WCW, he's going to have to come up with a new formula, because the one that worked the first time isn't going to work this time. They won't be able to tour at first because it would be a huge money loser, and running shows out of the same building every week isn't very profitable either (Dave talks about how, during the early 90s, they literally couldn't fill Center Stage studio's 780 seats even with free tickets. And WCW is way worse off now than they were in the early 90s). PPV business is dead, with the recent Mayhem PPV doing a record low buyrate and Starrcade's number may be even lower. But Bischoff's strength is that he's a deal-maker and Dave says you should never underestimate him. He convinced Ted Turner to take a huge risk on Nitro. He convinced guys like Hogan, Savage, and Piper to come to WCW, something they never would have considered before. He's clearly convinced enough investors to get on board that he's in line to purchase WCW. He's been close to deals with NBC and FOX in the past. Basically, Bischoff is a hell of a negotiator and you never know what tricks he might have up his sleeve. But it's going to be a tough road. For the good of the entire industry, Dave hopes he's wrong about all this doom and gloom because a WWF monopoly would be bad for everyone except Vince McMahon. He hopes Bischoff proves him wrong. He hopes Heyman proves him wrong. But the signs don't look good for WCW and ECW heading into 2001.
In a major surprise, NJPW announced that Riki Choshu will be coming out of retirement at the Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show to face......Shinya Hashimoto. Needless to say, it's led to a lot of speculation that Hashimoto's recent firing was a work. Apparently this is the brainchild of Antonio Inoki. Due to the success of PRIDE's recent shows, which were in part booked by Inoki who has been doing a lot of crossover angles between MMA and wrestling, Inoki is basically the most powerful guy in the Japanese scene right now. Inoki pushed Choshu to come out of retirement, noting his biggest money opponent would be Hashimoto. The original plan was for Choshu to team with Manabu Nakanishi to face Keiji Muto and Nobuhiko Takada but Inoki talked them into changing it to Choshu vs. Hashimoto. This complicates things politically, because there's still a lot of money in the NJPW vs. AJPW feud, particularly with Toshiaki Kawada going through all of NJPW's top stars. But the whole angle may be in jeopardy now, because Motoko Baba was assured that Hashimoto's firing wasn't an angle when he agreed to work with NOAH. Mrs. Baba has made it very clear that if NJPW is working with NOAH in any way, they would no longer have any involvement. Dave's not sure where this goes from here. NJPW vs. AJPW is a big money angle because of the history between the 2 companies, but to be honest, AJPW only has one really marketable star (Kawada). NOAH doesn't have the legacy that AJPW has, but they have Misawa, Kobashi, Vader, etc. so there's a lot more potential there for dream matches if NJPW wanted to work with them. Plus, working with NOAH might be easier than dealing with Mrs. Baba.
More bad news for ECW, as once again, paychecks didn't come this week. Furthermore, their big show at Elks Lodge in Queens didn't sell as well as expected. They sold out the 800 seats, but there's usually an overflow standing room area that is always packed for ECW shows and this time, they didn't fill that area. Many of the wrestlers are said to be near panic over the state of the company and their jobs. But everyone is still working the shows because, quite frankly, most of them don't have anywhere else to go and working ECW is the only way to keep their names alive right now. The few wrestlers who might have a chance elsewhere are finding out just how difficult the job market is, since WWF is being selective and WCW isn't hiring. ECW is still trying to negotiate with USA Network but just getting a TV deal isn't good enough if USA isn't willing to help pump money into the promotion and cover production costs. On the other hand, no TV exposure is death and ECW being unable to pack such a small arena in New York City shows just how desperate times have become. Each week ECW isn't on TV, the name value diminishes and people begin to forget about them. Heyman still insists the company won't go under, but the clock is ticking. This house show featured the Dudleyz returning to work the main event and a surprise appearance by Tazz as well. Tazz was pretty much there just to help put over Danny Doring and Roadkill, he didn't work a match, but cut a promo on their behalf. The Dudleyz were super over but caught some flack from some who felt they didn't sell for their opponents (Simon Diamond, CW Anderson, and Johnny Swinger). Also, aside from the initial reaction for the Dudleyz, the crowd was pretty dead for the main event. Also, Kid Kash suffered broken ribs during the show and couldn't do much during the rest of his match. Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was backstage but didn't participate in the show in any way.
WATCH: Dudley Boyz at ECW Elk's Lodge show (Dec. 2000)
Voting for the 2000 Observer Awards is now open! Get your votes in before Jan. 4th, 2001 if you want them to be counted.
The total number of people watching wrestling on Monday night fell to 7.55 million, which is the lowest figure in years. At the peak of wrestling's popularity a year or two ago, on a strong night, as many as 12 million people were watching Raw or Nitro. This week, Monday Night Football was a strong game so that obviously plays a big part but the bottom line is wrestling just isn't as hot anymore. Nitro is doing horrible ratings, while Raw is down significantly following the move to TNN. This week, Nitro did one of (but not quite) its lowest ratings ever for the regular time slot and they're going to be pre-empted for the next 2 weeks, so that's even worse news. Raw did a 4.76 which is the lowest rating since sometime in......Dave says 1988 but I'm going to assume that's a typo and he means 1998. Dave figures WWF is more disappointed than WCW is. By this point, nobody expects WCW to do good numbers. But last week's Raw rating was strong and featured the return of Vince McMahon to television, so they were hoping for that momentum to go up this week. Dave suggests maybe less 30-minute opening promo segments and points out that this was the 3rd week in a row that an advertised main event match didn't happen and the show ended with a promo or angle instead of a match, which people are starting to grumble about (the Observer online poll this week had over 45% of voters saying there's too much talking and not enough wrestling). Meanwhile, Smackdown did a strong rating and actually has more viewers than Raw. Dave thinks a lot of people are beginning to see Smackdown as the main show, which may be part of the problem with Raw's ratings.
Speaking of ratings, Nitro (on Tuesday last week) did a 1.71, which is by far the lowest rated Nitro in history. Obviously being on a different night with no chance to promote the change ahead of time played a pretty huge part in that and Dave says it can't be overemphasized how badly WCW dropped the ball by not promoting the move to Tuesday. Throw in this week's low ratings and the pre-emptions for the next 2 weeks, and WCW might as well have negative momentum going into January's Sin PPV.
Pro Wrestling NOAH will be holding a tournament in March and April to crown its first ever champion. The title will be called the GHC championship (Global Honored Crown). They're also expected to crown junior heavyweight and tag team champions in January.
Keiji Muto said his contract with WCW expired last week, but he still has a non-compete built into it which lasts until June. He said he's had talks with Jim Ross about coming in to WWF, but couldn't take it because of the non-compete but would be interested in going there when he's able. Dave is skeptical of all this and thinks it might just be part of a NJPW angle (no idea, but seeing Muta in a WWE ring would be amazing to me. He was always one of my favorites as a kid. When people talk about big stars who never wrestled in WWE, he's always the one that comes to mind for me).
Nobuhiko Takada's wife Aki Mukai was diagnosed with cancer last week. Mukai is a fairly famous actress in Japan and because of who she is and who Takada is, the story of her cancer was covered by basically every news outlet in Japan.
Scott Hall is back in jail. He didn't do anything specific this time. Remember a couple of weeks ago when Hall was arrested for kicking the door of a taxi? Well, the charges were dropped when Hall agreed to pay the driver $400 for the damages. But between Hall's recent DUI, his failure to complete community service, and the taxi arrest (even though the charges were dropped), and all the other stuff, the judge ordered Hall taken into custody anyway for probation violation. He's expected to remain in jail until he gets a hearing later this week. In the meantime, his visitation rights with his children have been cancelled pending another hearing on that.
Sabu worked a show for NWA Wildside against WCW developmental wrestler Air Paris and the match was said to be a disaster. Sabu missed pretty much every spot he tried. He later blamed a knee injury for his bad performance but also admitted that he had taken pain pills before the match and passed out and awoke right before he had to go to the ring. Sabu was scheduled to face AJ Styles the next night, but the promoter cancelled the match and they did an angle claiming Sabu was injured and Air Paris ended up facing Styles instead, though Sabu did do a run-in and got involved in the match later, basically turning it into a 3-way. But this allowed Styles and Paris to do all the heavy lifting while Sabu came in and just did a few of his spots.
WATCH: AJ Styles vs. Air Paris vs. Sabu - NWA Wildside 2000
Power Pro Wrestling owner Randy Hales was on the Observer live show to discuss the stuff going on with PPW and Jerry Lawler's Memphis Championship Wrestling. Hales and Lawler had been friends for years and Lawler was initially part of PPW when it started. But they had a falling out (in part due to Hales' testimony during the legal fallout from USWA, which Lawler felt was damaging to him). Lawler then started his own MCW promotion and took the WWF developmental deal with him which led to a bit of a promotional war in Memphis. At the time, that wiped out a lot of PPW's roster and Hales approached WCW at the time about setting up a deal with them, but they weren't interested. PPW has continued to limp along since, based on the strength of their local TV deal, but they've been struggling. But Lawler and Hales have squashed their beef and now the 2 companies are working together doing an inter-promotional angle and it's going well. Jimmy Hart appeared on the show this week but because of political issues (Jimmy Hart is signed to WCW), he wasn't allowed to interact on-screen with Jerry Lawler or any of the WWF developmental wrestlers.
Former wrestler and RINGS founder Akira Maeda was arrested in the United States back in September for allegedly punching a woman in Illinois. Apparently it was a woman who worked at a restaurant he was at and the punch broke her ribs. He was held for a few days and released after paying a large fine and then fucked off back to Japan and I guess we're just now hearing about it months later. Maeda's past is pretty checkered with similar incidents, such as the time he sucker punched Keiji Muto in the 80s, or the sucker kick he did to Riki Choshu during a 1987 NJPW match that led to him getting fired. He also attacked a Pancrase fighter once. Maeda's kind of a prick, basically. (Yeah, there's some more of this shit from Maeda coming up in 2001. Japanese New Jack. Oh hey, speaking of...)
New Jack is telling people he's done with wrestling. Part of it is money (like everyone else in ECW, he's owed quite a bit) and the rest of it is just being fed up with the business. Heyman didn't book New Jack on the recent show in Queens due to some issue that New Jack has with the athletic commissioner over the commissioner's daughter or something, but New Jack showed up to the Queens show anyway. Heyman was also upset with New Jack because he recently worked a show for JAPW that was held in the ECW Arena. New Jack also recently got into an altercation with an elderly couple at a bar, which led to New Jack punching the old man and him leaving in an ambulance (New Jack, of course claims the older guy hit him first). New Jack left before the police arrived.
Justin Credible and Dawn Marie both had money stolen from them backstage at the last ECW PPV. Given how tight money is for everyone in the company already, needless to say, they were pretty upset.
ECW and Acclaim are working on producing a new video game (ECW will be out of business long before this ever comes to fruition, but it's interesting to know they were planning it. Acclaim later released a Legends of Wrestling game in 2001 that featured some ex-ECW names like Sabu and RVD, so I assume that was it and they changed course on the game after ECW folded? I dunno).
On ECW TV a few weeks ago, Tajiri cut a promo in Spanish on Super Crazy and Dave thinks it's a good thing the TV censors evidently don't speak Spanish. Because the gist of Tajiri's promo was: "Fucking Mexican! Fuck your mother! Because you are a man who knows that your wife is fucking someone else and you act like you don't know so you won't lose her." (Tajiri: calling people cucks before unoriginal MAGA-nerds ran it into the ground).
Notes from Nitro: Terry Funk worked a hardcore match against Meng and Dave points out that it's been 3 years since they filmed that scene in Beyond The Mat where the doctor told Funk he needed a knee replacement and should stop wrestling immediately and here it is years later and he's in his mid-50s still working hardcore matches and taking chairshots to the head and shit. They continued hyping Glacier's return. Dave doesn't understand how guys like RVD, Tajiri, and Jerry Lynn are basically free agents looking for a job and can't get hired anywhere, yet WCW is spending weeks promoting the return of Glacier. Mike Sanders cut a long, meandering promo about nothing. This was supposed to be the segment where Nash and Page were supposed to do something but since they walked out, Sanders was told to just go out there and kill time. And this time, they were smart enough to finally inform fans that they'll be pre-empted the next 2 weeks.
A lot of wrestlers are talking about trying to get out of next week's Nitro tapings. While the show isn't airing in the U.S., they're still taping an episode of Nitro for all the overseas markets that won't have any storyline development, just matches. A lot of wrestlers are rumored to be faking/exaggerating injuries and illnesses to get out of doing the show so that it doesn't interrupt what would otherwise be a 2-week vacation.
Ed Ferrara is the only person on the booking committee who was still pushing for Mike Awesome to keep the 70s gimmick, but everyone else convinced him to let it go and they dropped it. Ferrara is the head writer of the show but has gotten a lot of criticism because, for starters, he's not very knowledgeable about wrestling (he comes from a real television writing background and wasn't a wrestling fan before getting into the business) and also because he's seen as Vince Russo's disciple and a lot of Russo's bad habits and bad ideas have basically trickled down to Ferrara. Many of the awful storylines and dumb ideas you see on WCW TV these days that seem like bad Russo segments are actually Ferrara's doing.
Dustin Runnels was told to be at Starrcade, so he showed up. Then they told him they didn't have anything for him so he went home again. Runnels is making $750,000 a year but isn't being used. Right now, he's been wrestling shows for his father's Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling indie promotion in Georgia, in front of about 100-200 fans. Great way to spend 3/4 of a million dollars.
Pamela Paulshock missed Starrcade and Nitro because she's filming a movie (not sure what movie it was. According to IMDb, she had several roles around this time: Young Hot Woman. Nurse. Attractive Woman. Female Extra. So on and so forth).
Various WWF notes: The Rock made People's list of the 25 Most Intriguing People of 2000. The Jim Ross cookbook that was recently released has already sold over 100,000 copies and is in its second printing. Viscera was released from his contract several months ago. The reason they had Lita modeling lingerie at WWF New York this week on Raw instead of on the show like normal is because she's got a back injury, so no wrestling this week. Tori is filming an episode of the show "18 Wheels of Justice" on TNN.
Notes from Raw: during the opening promo, Kurt Angle talked about the scene in Beyond The Mat with Foley's kids crying and called Foley a terrible parent. Dave thinks it's funny that Vince McMahon hated the movie so much (specifically because of those scenes) that he literally tried to kill the movie and keep it from coming out, but now a year later, they're using it in a storyline. There was a match with Steve Austin vs. William Regal and one spot in particular where Regal hit Austin with a neckbreaker and had him pinned clean in the middle of the ring for about 10 seconds, but the referee was distracted or something and missed it. But still. Dave can't imagine any other midcard wrestler getting what amounts to a clean pin on Austin on free TV, but Austin and Regal are good friends and obviously, Austin wanted to do it. Austin didn't even win the match, he lost by DQ, so Regal was protected there too. For new stars to get over, it's important for the top stars to want to work with them and put them over, and Austin was clearly out to help get Regal over in this match.
The WWF's has released their projections for the XFL and it all looks pretty positive. They estimate that the league will generate $33 million in first year losses, which is much less than they initially projected, plus the costs would be split 50/50 with NBC. They projected the XFL will be profitable by its 3rd season and are selling TV ad spots based on a projected combined 11.0 weekly rating (needless to say, the outlook isn't going to be nearly as rosy a few months from now). WWF stock has dropped 30% over the last three months and Wall Street analysts are saying that the success or failure of the XFL is going to be the main determining factor in what happens with that.