January 15, 2001
- The results of the 21st annual Observer Awards are in, so let's see what everyone thought was the best of the best in the year 2000.
- WATCH: Atlantis vs. Villano III
- WATCH: the Dragonrana
- WATCH: Patterson vs. Brisco - Evening Gown Match
- NJPW's Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show is in the books and it's hard to judge the impact of this show now. Dave thinks it'll be better to look back at this show a few months from now and see if the right decisions were made. They announced 62,001 fans (to play off 2001, get it?) but the real number was, of course, less. Most of the matches were very good but some of the finishes were questionable. Shinya Hashimoto vs. Riki Choshu ended with a non-finish that the crowd absolutely hated. They were super into the match but the finish was a bad copy of the Hashimoto/Ogawa finish from 2 years ago, pretending the match had turned into an out of control shoot. But nobody bought it and when the match was stopped, fans were literally screaming for refunds. And Kensuke Sasaki won the tournament to regain the vacant IWGP title, which the live crowd loved, but from a long-term business standpoint, Dave thinks it was the wrong move. For the good of the AJPW vs. NJPW feud, it's too soon for Kawada to be doing a clean job to NJPW's champion. There had been discussions for Kawada to win, and then challenge Tenryu in a champion vs. champion match, which would have been huge business but NJPW apparently balked at putting their title on an AJPW star. Also, during the show, they aired a video on screen with Inoki (who got the biggest pop of the show, even though he wasn't there in person) and during the video, Inoki talked about how the world was changing and how pro wrestling needed to change with it. He told fans not to be scared to support new concepts (and thus, the next several years of Inoki nearly running NJPW out of business with his MMA obsession has begun).
- In what may have been the company's swan song, ECW's Guilty As Charged PPV is in the books, but there's more questions than answers about the future of ECW right now. There are only 2 shows left on the schedule, which are sold shows in Poplar Bluff, MO and Pine Bluff, AR this coming weekend. As of press time, nobody had gotten plane tickets for those shows yet. ECW has a March 11th date scheduled for their next PPV and they promoted it during this show, but no venue has been booked for it yet. Wrestlers received half their weekly pay at the show, which puts everyone about 7 weeks behind and morale was terrible, as you'd expect. Furthermore, ECW has indeed lost its TV deal on the MSG Network due to lack of payment, which means they no longer have television in their key market of New York. Their show scheduled to air on TV the night before the PPV ended up not airing and even worse, no television show has even been produced to air next week and it's looking like the company may not be doing anymore TV at all going forward.
- Other notes from the PPV: The show drew a sellout crowd of 2,500 to Hammerstein Ballroom. Going into the event, ECW had promised on their website a surprise that would change the face of ECW, which ended up being the surprise return of Rob Van Dam. Needless to say, while cool, it wasn't exactly a groundbreaking moment that's going to save the company and a lot of people felt like Heyman stooped to Bischoff and Russo-levels of over-hype with that announcement, desperately promising something huge to draw in PPV buys but delivering something weak. Honestly, Dave thinks announcing RVD's return ahead of time probably would have generated more buys than hyping it up as a surprise. Tommy Dreamer vs. CW Anderson in an I Quit match was surprisingly good and even in defeat, the crowd gave Anderson a standing ovation when it was over. Missy Hyatt appeared in a backstage comedy skit. Sandman won the ECW title only to be attacked afterwards and challenged for a match on the spot by Rhino, who then won the belt from him. So Rhino is your new (and final) ECW champion. Then RVD came out to challenge Rhino for the belt, but Rhino left and RVD ended up pinning Jerry Lynn in a good main event. The show ended with a backstage promo with Justin Credible and Steve Corino uniting as a team to form a new version of the Impact Players. And with that, ECW's final PPV and in fact, final televised event ever is in the books.
- Two obituaries together for 2 Mexican wrestling stars from the 1980s who died this week, Villano I and Kung Fu. Brief recap of each of their careers, but nothing much else to add.
- A total of 7.1 million viewers watched wrestling on Monday night, the lowest total in several years. And you can't blame it on Monday Night Football either, because that wasn't on. The American Music Awards were on instead, but they did a lower rating than football usually does, so can't really blame that either. It was especially bad for Nitro, which set multiple records this week. Lowest rated unopposed hour ever, lowest rated opposed hour ever, overall lowest rated episode ever in the regular time slot, and even the lowest quarter hour rating for a segment in the history of the show (DDP & Nash vs. Natural Born Thrillers). Needless to say, this week was pretty much rock bottom for WCW Nitro.
- Scott Hall claims he's headed to work some shows in NJPW soon. But NJPW announced the cards for their upcoming tours and he's not on their list, so take it with a grain of salt until Dave can confirm otherwise (Hall was actually telling the truth here. He ends up spending a big chunk of 2001 working for NJPW).
- Nell Stewart, who was the big sex symbol during the 1950s era of women's wrestling, passed away at 69 after battling cancer. She was nicknamed the Betty Grable of Pro Wrestling and was married to promoter Billy Wolfe, who had previously been married to Mildred Burke.
- FX Networks, which is one of the channels Paul Heyman has been negotiating with, stated this week that they have no interest in airing a pro wrestling show. So...not great news for Heyman (or Bischoff for that matter, as we'll find out in the coming months).
- The announcement of the sale of WCW is expected at any moment. People close to the situation tell Dave the deal was finalized over the past few days. Though for what it's worth, Dave says he's been hearing that every week for months now, so who knows anymore.
- The TV situation with WCW is something that has been talked about a lot lately. TNT is planning to change direction in regards to its programming and it's been known for awhile now that Nitro would likely move to TBS in a year or so. But now, with ratings in the toilet, there's talk that TBS might want Nitro after all. It's thought that Turner may end up only broadcasting one wrestling show per week, probably on TBS, but it might not be Nitro and may not be Monday either. TBS also has a lot of other sports commitments, so depending on what night the show ends up on, it could also end up getting bumped around like the old days, when Georgia Championship Wrestling got shuffled around constantly so they could air Atlanta Braves games instead (and now we're getting into the real death of WCW, with Turner starting to realize that even if Bischoff buys the company, they don't want this low rated show on their networks anymore. And without TV, Bischoff's deal falls apart).
- Dave takes a moment to remind everyone that 2 years ago this week, WCW drew nearly 40,000 fans to the Georgia Dome for Nitro, in a show that ended with the infamous fingerpoke of doom. On the same night, Mick Foley won the WWF title and Tony Schiavone made the "Ha, that'll put butts in seats" comment while giving away the result. Funny how quickly things change.
- Nitro will be pre-empted again in two weeks because TNT is airing the movie "2001" since, well, it's now 2001. Dave says it's good that WCW got 2 weeks to get the word out, but this just shows how little TNT gives a shit about Nitro these days. It's the 2nd time in recent months that they have bumped Nitro in order to air a movie from 20 years ago.
- Vince Russo is attempting to come back to WCW. His contract is similar to the wrestlers, in that his pay can be cut in half if he's gone too long, and he's approaching the time limit. But Dave doubts it'll happen. Apparently, the Turner people want him gone, so even if the company isn't sold, they don't want him back. And Bischoff doesn't get along with him either, so it's unlikely he'll bring Russo back either.
- Various WCW notes: former announcer Mark Madden says he's working on a book about his time in WCW. They have been scripting all the wrestlers's interviews lately and because everybody is trying to memorize lines, it comes across like bad acting rather than natural talking. Dave doesn't seem to like the idea of carefully scripted promos (oh my, have I got some bad news for him). Film critic Roger Ebert listed "Ready To Rumble" as one of the worst movies of the year. Dave says WCW's big mistake was marketing this movie to wrestling fans and then releasing a turd of a movie that basically insulted all wrestling fans.
- Backstage WCW announcer Pamela Paulshock was the latest cost-cutting release, so she's gone. Even though the sale isn't finalized yet, Eric Bischoff is basically pulling the strings when it comes to deciding who they're keeping and releasing right now, and he's trying to get rid of most of the women, since they have so many on the roster that don't really add anything other than the occasional eye candy. Torrie Wilson was obviously the most marketable woman they had, but she also had the highest contract, so she was the first one they cut loose weeks ago.
- Notes from Raw: it opened with a promo that involved Vince, Austin, and Angle. And out of the 3, Angle was by far the best talker in the ring, which Dave never would have guessed was possible less than a year ago, and goes to show just how far Angle has come as an all-around performer. Dean Malenko worked a match, despite the fact that he had his knee scoped only 4 days earlier, but to be fair, he didn't do much. Angle vs. Austin was the main event, and it was the best match on Raw in a long time, with Austin looking better in the ring than he did before the neck injury, and even took about 10 different variations of suplexes from Angle. And Triple H returned to cost him the match to end the show with a crazy hot angle. It ended with them playing Triple H's new music (the same Motorhead song he still uses to this day)
- Notes from the recent Smackdown tapings: The Prototype (John Cena) worked a dark match and looked pretty impressive. There was a match with Test vs. K-Kwik that is going to have to be heavily edited because Kwik missed spot after spot, including one move 3 times in a row that was supposed to lead to the finish. Hey, everybody has an off night sometimes, it happens.
- Some details on Jesse Ventura's XFL contract. It calls for him to announce 12 games. Also, he can't be referred to as "governor" on the broadcasts or in any XFL promotional materials, in order to avoid the appearance that he's using his elected office for personal gain.
- The Rock is going to be working a very limited house show schedule going forward because he's spending a lot of time taking acting lessons to prepare for his lead role in "Scorpion King" which starts filming in a couple of months. It'll be about 3 months and he's likely not going to be available much during that time. He probably won't do any house shows and will work very limited TV and PPVs.
- The Rock also got a lot of publicity for appearing alongside Bill Gates at CES to reveal Microsoft's new video game console, the XBox (as if that thing is ever gonna take off, pfft...)
- WATCH: The Rock & Bill Gates at CES 2001
- Nothing much new on Jerry Lynn or RVD coming to WWF. They're still interested in both guys, but right now, Vince is trying not to do anything that would hurt ECW and isn't going to sign their stars until their situation is cleared up one way or another. WWF wrestlers were asked about their feelings on both guys and everyone who's worked with him said they love Jerry Lynn and want to see him in WWF. Those who have worked with RVD weren't as kind and there was a lot of negativity to the idea of bringing him in, so WWF is a little more cautious about him right now. But they'll probably both end up in WWF eventually.
- WWF is starting a new web site at WWFParents.com to help parents decide whether or not to let their kids watch WWF programming, in response to all the negative publicity from the PTC.
- Jim Ross met with Shawn Michaels recently and they discussed the possibility of him coming back for a limited schedule and doing a few matches. Ultimately, it's up to Vince but within the company, a lot of people aren't big on the idea. Naturally, there's concern over Shawn's usual behavior. If he goes out publicly shit-talking the company again or throws a temper tantrum when he's asked to do something he doesn't want to do, then what? It's worth noting that Shawn's 5-year, $750,000-per-year contract expires in a few months. Dave says if Shawn wants to come back, it'll have to be soon. Otherwise, he'll likely go to WCW when he's free, since that's where Nash is. But whether Shawn can resume a limited schedule or not depends on how his back holds up after one match. If he does okay in the ring and stays out of trouble backstage, they may continue to have him work the occasional big show.
- The plug you saw on Raw for "Tough Enough" is actually an idea for a new 13-week show on MTV. WWF is recruiting men and women who want to be wrestlers and it will be a reality show where they whittle it down to one male and one female winner, who would then be given developmental contracts. Dave notes that everyone is trying to copy the success of Survivor these days.
- Dave finally read the full Vince McMahon Playboy interview and as is par for the course with Vince, there were the usual exaggerations and half-truths. But it was still pretty interesting. Vince claimed that very few of the WWF wrestlers hang out at the bar and drink or do drugs anymore, which Dave says everyone backstage laughed at because that's not even remotely true. Vince admitted that they may have pushed some angles too far, such as the Mark Henry/transvestite angle awhile back. He talked about the years when WCW was winning the war, saying it was only because Ted Turner was paying all the top stars more money (to this day, the WWE narrative is that WCW was only winning the war because Ted Turner spent a bunch of money buying all Vince's top stars. They still portray it as a Vince vs. Ted Turner issue, when in reality, Ted Turner could barely have cared less what was happening in the wrestling war. Bischoff rarely gets the full credit he deserves for using those top stars to simply produce a much better product than WWF was doing at the time).
- In another recent interview, Linda McMahon noted that the company has toyed with the idea of an all-WWF cable channel but said it's a long-term goal, not any time soon (how does 2014 sound?)