March 05, 2001
- More uncertainty in WCW, both on-screen and off-screen. After both Nitro and Thunder did all-time record low ratings the week before, Bischoff decided to significantly re-write this week's Nitro at the last minute and brought back Booker T, which totally goes against the long-term angle they were planning, which would be all the top babyface stars (Hogan, Goldberg, Sting, Nash, and Booker T) to come back at once when the company relaunches. But after the low rating, Bischoff evidently panicked and rushed Booker T back to television early. Basically, at this point, no long-term plan is really finalized anymore and the other guys may be brought back sooner. It's all up in the air right now and in the meantime, the "new owners" storyline that has been acknowledged on TV is being slowed down. Why is it being slowed down you ask? Well....
- Speaking of up in the air, the off-screen uncertainty is because the WCW/Fusient Media sale nearly fell apart this week. During the final process of examining all the expenses, Fusient discovered that WCW's losses and the downturn in other aspects of the business was worse than they were previously led to believe. All the issues seem to have been mostly worked out as of press time and they still expect to finalize the deal in the next week or two, but for a minute there, it was looking like the whole thing was going to fall apart at the last minute. (Whew, can you imagine?!)
- WWF's No Way Out PPV is in the books and was a potential show of the year. Even though the TV product has been stale lately, they've still been delivering strong PPVs but this was even better than usual. It set up the expected Rock vs. Austin main event at Wrestlemania (though Dave says there was some lobbying backstage from a certain someone to make it a three-way. He doesn't say who, but it's pretty obvious he means Triple H, trying to politic his way into the WM main event). Even the matches that looked bad on paper before the show ended up delivering. Trish vs. Stephanie was better than it had any right to be and Dave gives Stratus a ton of credit for carrying Stephanie to a good match and to Stephanie for holding up her end better than expected.
- Other notes from the PPV: Austin vs. Triple H in the 2-out-of-3 falls match was a match of the year candidate (this is actually a Three Stages of Hell match, with each fall having a different stipulation, but they weren't calling it that back then). After the finish of the match, someone threw a full can of beer in the ring and hit Austin right in the head while he was laying on the ground. Dave gives the match 4.75 stars. Rock vs. Angle in the main event was also great, getting 4.25 stars. Rock won his 6th WWF title, which is the all-time record (Rock, Hogan and Bret Hart were previously tied at 5 for the record). Dave says that would have been a huge story at one time, but nowadays, title reigns don't mean anything so whatever. The finish looked it got screwed up by Earl Hebner but otherwise, great match that made Angle look like a killer in defeat.
- UFC 30 is in the books and it's notable because it's the first show under the new ownership of Zuffa. Behind the scenes, the changes are night and day. Many of the big name fighters, like Mark Coleman and Frank Shamrock, are talking about returning because it's believed UFC will be paying a lot more to fighters now. There's expected to be a much bigger focus on creating stars and putting together matchups fans want to see. The announcers did a lot more hyping up each fighter's personality and storylines in each fight and they aired video packages and things like that for them. The plan is to build Tito Ortiz as the UFC's marquee star and ironically enough, new UFC day-to-day head Dana White used to be Tito's business manager. Fortunately for them, Tito delivered, winning the main event in only 29 seconds. The UFC's matchmaker John Peretti wasn't there and many of the matches were put together by Joe Silva.
- Wrestling ratings news: the Jeff Jarrett vs. Dustin Rhodes main event with Flair as referee set the record for all-time lowest-rated main event in Nitro history. Demographically, it's even worse news, with only 53,000 teens watching (the Raw main event was watched by 1.4 million teens).
- Juventud Guerrera worked a show in Mexico and the newspapers reported that he came out in no condition to be wrestling (aka fucked up on something) and criticized his performance and talked about how it was wrong that other wrestlers in the match had to put their safety at risk by working with him.
- Legendary Lucha wrestler Fishman lost a mask vs. mask match back in August. He was supposed to be paid more than $26,000 for it. He was paid the first $4,000 but then the checks the promotion sent him for the remaining $22,000 bounced. Later, they tried to give him a new car as payment, but he refused it. Fishman wants his money (this turns into a bit of an issue later on).
- Steve Williams' sister passed away this week from stomach cancer. Williams was on tour with AJPW at the time and because they're struggling and because he's the biggest foreign star they have, he decided to stay and continue working the shows he was booked for (sadly enough, Williams himself later dies of cancer also).
- Antonio Inoki continued his claims of bringing in Mike Tyson. He held a press conference this week and announced Tyson will be facing Naoya Ogawa in June at the Tokyo Dome in a match that will air on PPV around the world. This led to boxer Lennox Lewis' manager releasing a statement implying that Tyson was scared to fight Lewis and said he's going to go be a pro wrestler in Japan instead. The next day, Tyson's business manager Shelly Finkel told the AP, "Not only is Mike not wrestling there, he has never spoken to these people." Inoki claims Tyson will be getting paid between $40-50 million for the match. Needless to say, this is clearly some ol' Inoki bullshit and it's not happening. Carnies gonna carny.
- Don Frye was on the Observer live show and talked about wanting to go to either WWF or UFC and noted that he has had discussions with WWF.
- Chris Candido and Tammy Sytch will be working on the upcoming NJPW tour, which is the same tour Scott Hall is working. Dave thinks that's a bit of a dangerous group to have together in one place at the same time if they're trying to stay out of trouble.
- Nobuhiko Takada claims he's training to represent Japan at the 2004 Olympics in Greco-roman wrestling. Dave says this is ridiculous because Takada will be 42 by then and he has never competed in amateur wrestling at any level in his life. So needless to say....no.
- Mandalay Sports announced a new venture called Matrats. It will apparently be a weekly television show based around crazy high spot wrestling, featuring teenagers as the top stars. The audience is mostly planted female fans who "whooooo!" and go crazy over all the dreamy boy wrestlers, like some sort of N'Sync-esque boy band shit. The top stars are going to be Teddy Hart and Harry Smith (aka Davey Boy Smith Jr.). They have already taped pilot episodes in Calgary and the company has licensing, PPV, sponsorship, and advertising plans in place and are projecting to gross more than $18 million the first year. Umm....sure thing, you guys (Eric Bischoff later gets involved with this briefly after WCW folds. Spoiler: it does not gross $18 million. Or even $18).
- The annual independent ECWA Super 8 tournament took place this week, featuring a lot of notable indie guys. In the finals, Low Ki won by defeating American Dragon (Daniel Bryan). Dragon was said to be the star performer of the tournament, having great matches with Spanky and Reckless Youth along with Low Ki (this tournament still takes place each year and features well known indie guys).
- Former WCW wrestler Blitzkrieg is looking to get back into wrestling. In 1999, he had the best match of the year in WCW against Juventud Guerrera, and WCW rewarded him for it by releasing him. At that point, he lost interest in wrestling and retired and started working a regular job in the computer industry. He won Rookie of the Year in the Observer Awards for 1999 after he had already retired.
- Let's just copy and paste this one: "Roddy Piper is saying that he's going to be doing a rap CD for Death Row Records that will be rap with no profanity saying he's mad after hearing one of his kids play some Eminem music because of the profanity." (I googled this and yup. It was posted on Piper's website. He seemed to be under the impression that Eminem was on Death Row though).
- Gonna copy and paste one more, the saddest sentence ever, regarding ECW: "There is no PPV show on 3/11 and at this point, barring something unforeseen, there is no ECW."
- Brian Adams of Kronik ended up needing an emergency appendectomy last week which will keep him out of action for about 6 weeks (WCW will be dead by then, but Kronik eventually briefly reunites in WWF).
- Just this week, WCW has finally started trying to book venues for April. Due to the planned shutdown, WCW didn't have any shows booked beyond the 3/26 Nitro and hadn't booked any arenas. But with the shutdown scrapped, they're now looking for venues (they probably shouldn't bother). The long-term plan is still to do future Nitro tapings all from one central location but that probably won't be until the summer.
- Notes from Nitro: they started a tournament to crown cruiserweight tag team champions. Dave thinks this is a bad idea, because adding new titles to a division that nobody cares about isn't going to make people care more. The Cat resigned his on-screen commissioner role to feud with Kanyon, which Dave is just exasperated by. Literally just a week ago, the whole storyline for the show was The Cat fighting to get his job back and now this week, he quits it. That's about it. Nothing notable happening on TV lately, as WCW continues to be in a holding pattern waiting for this sale to go through. (Only 4 more Nitros left...)
- Plans for Ric Flair to write an autobiography have apparently been scrapped. Turns out Goldberg's book was a major flop and the view of many in the publishing industry right now is that people will buy WWF books, but there's no interest in books for anyone outside of WWF.
- Arn Anderson has been suspended for 2 weeks by WCW. Dave doesn't have all the details yet but it apparently has something to do with a Luger vs. Palumbo match on Thunder last week that Anderson was the agent for. I guess it didn't come across like it was supposed to on TV and Anderson took the heat for it, enough so that he was suspended (I assume there'll be more on this next week).
- WCW has cancelled its developmental deal with indie promotion NWA Wildside. A few WCW wrestlers who were booked to work shows for them in March will fulfill the dates but no more after that (and of course, WCW would end up dying before Wildside did. It's so interesting to see all these little business decisions and plans being made, everything business as usual, with no one knowing at the time that WCW would be dead in less than a month).
- Random WCW notes: Lash Leroux was told to lose 20 pounds because they want him in the cruiserweight division and they don't want "chunky" cruiserweights. Gene Okerlund has 2 years left on his contract but hasn't been used in weeks. Despite rumors, neither Joey Styles or Don Callis have been offered contracts.
- Stacy Carter (The Kat) was released by WWF this week and, in protest, her husband Jerry Lawler quit the company also. The news came in right at press time so Dave doesn't have all the details yet, so expect a lot more on this next week. But for now, the gist is that Lawler was told the company was going to release Kat and he basically said "if she goes, I go." That apparently wasn't enough to change their mind, so Lawler stuck with his wife and walked out with her. Lawler has said that neither he or Kat have any idea why this happened. There was no incident or anything and Lawler denied rumors that she had refused to do something she was asked. Dave thinks this whole situation could turn out to be pretty interesting because Lawler wears a lot of hats in WWF. He's the lead color commentator for every Raw, Smackdown, and PPV. Plus he's an XFL announcer. And he runs MCW in Memphis, which is a developmental territory for the WWF. It's expected that Tazz will end up getting the job of doing color commentary on all the shows, which is an enormous amount of pressure to put on a guy who has only done commentary a handful of times on Sunday Night Heat. (Tazz indeed takes over for Smackdown, but they end up finding someone else for Raw...)
- Hey, speaking of MCW, they drew the biggest crowd in their history, around 4,000 people, for a show in Jonesboro, AR that was headlined by Kurt Angle vs. Triple H for the WWF title. Yeah, that'll do it. Several wrestlers did a run-in at the end of the match, among them being Spanky and American Dragon. They all attacked Triple H to cause the match to end in DQ. Several other WWF wrestlers worked the show also, including William Regal putting over MCW champ Steve Bradley.
- WATCH: Triple H vs. Kurt Angle - MCW 2001
- Rhino and Prototype both worked dark matches at the Smackdown tapings, with both men doing jobs.
- Honda is the first sponsor to drop the XFL. Reportedly it wasn't due to ratings however, with the VP of marketing saying it was due to content. They didn't like all the focus on the scantily-clad cheerleaders, too much cross-promotion with WWF, and they didn't like Rock's recent promo that aired during a game where he took shots at the NFL. The Honda rep also criticized the fanbase, saying it was too downscale for them to associate with, basically implying the XFL fans are all poor losers who can't afford a Honda, so they don't want to advertise to them.
- Still more XFL news, none of it good. On the Tonight Show, Jay Leno joked about it, saying, "Apparently the ratings for the XFL are so bad, the executives said, 'Just burn the league for the insurance money.'" Publicly, both Vince McMahon and NBC execs are putting on a brave face and saying they're still committed to the XFL long-term, but privately, it's being said that people within NBC are already looking for a way out of this sinking ship that Vince has dragged them onto. On the WWF side, there has definitely been talk of trying to build more stories into the game with players, coaches, and announcers (such as the recent Jesse Ventura incident with Hitmen coach Rusty Tillman). UPN has a 2-year contract with the XFL but they have the option to drop it after one year. Apparently, a lot of UPN affiliates are pressuring UPN to hurry up and announce that they won't be picking up XFL for a 2nd season so that they can start lining up new programming ASAP. If the ratings don't improve, it's expected the the west coast stations will start carrying XFL games on a 3-hour tape delay. Yet again, across the board, XFL games were dead last in network ratings. The ratings for XFL have dropped at an alarming rate, faster than even the USFL in the 80s (the last failed attempt to compete with the NFL). Desperate to get some kind of mainstream coup, McMahon apparently spoke with Lawrence Taylor about joining the league in some fashion. Attendance is way down and games in most cities are being heavily papered. This week's game at Soldier Field in Chicago was announced at 14,856 but the real number was closer to 12,000. And even that, a large chunk of it was freebies.
- NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue has been quiet from the start about the XFL, but he finally addressed it this week during a speech at Yale University. "I was asked (about the XFL) by one of the Yale players at lunch and I have to confess, I've only seen about ten minutes of the XFL. And I can tell you that it was not the most rewarding way I've spent 10 minutes in the last month."
- ECW wrestlers Christian York and Joey Matthews signed developmental deals with WWF and are expected to be sent to Memphis soon. The two wrestlers had recently agreed to come in to WCW on a per-appearance deal and were booked for the cruiserweight tag tournament. But they had no contract. So WWF signed them. Dave says all is fair in war and if the roles were reversed, Bischoff would do the same thing. (So there's a fun trivia fact. Most people think Haku was the last person to jump ship during the Monday night wars, but technically, it was York and Matthews. Even though neither of them actually wrestled a match for WCW during this time, they had agreed to and WCW had already started booking plans for them when WWF came calling).
- Shawn Michaels and Mick Foley should both be returning to TV soon to set up angles for Wrestlemania. Michaels is expected to have a major role at WM, not in a match, but in some kind of angle to set up for his in-ring return. As for Foley, he'll be involved in Mania, but at this point, it doesn't look like he'll be doing a match either. The plan has always been Foley vs. Vince, but Foley has repeatedly shot down the idea and doesn't have any plans to wrestle again anytime soon.