Wrestling Observer Rewinder

March 12, 2001

This issue opens with a really in-depth look at the dangerous transitional period that American pro wrestling is facing right now, with the death of ECW and the impending sale (maybe) of WCW. Starting with WCW. If/when the sale goes through, they are still in for a major uphill battle for survival. On paper, they're in a similar situation to 1993, when business was at rock bottom and they were fortunately able to recover from that. If WCW can create a new superstar and create some hot angles, then they have a chance. The key ingredient is television exposure and fortunately, they have that (whoops). But creating new stars and running hot angles is easier said than done and WCW sure hasn't proven that they know how to do that anytime recently. When WCW recovered from the 1993 bottom, they did so by signing up guys like Hogan and Savage. That's not an option these days. There are no huge marquee name stars that WCW can poach from WWF the way they did then. Rock and Austin aren't going anywhere. There's no more exciting Mexican or Japanese stars they can bring in to make WWF look slow and boring by comparison because WWF is no longer slow and boring. WCW's roster is filled with past-their-prime guys in their 40s (with some pushing 50) and the young stars are still so young and inexperienced that they're years away from becoming marquee names. And, Dave adds, WCW ratings are in the toilet and Ted Turner no longer has much power over the company, so it's not a guarantee that WCW will always be on Turner networks if ratings don't improve. For decades, Turner has had a loyalty to pro wrestling and pretty much vowed to always carry it, but with him no longer in charge, WCW is in the same position that anyone else on TV is in: they could be cancelled at any time. (nah, that doesn't seem very likel.....what's that? Two weeks, you say?)
18 months ago, Dave felt a lot more optimistic about the industry. WCW was struggling, but they had a lot of good young talent to build around and a competent person should have been able to reign in costs and turn things around with a good product. That didn't happen. Most of the good young talent is gone. They lost untold millions and the product was godawful. And now, even under new ownership, it's going to take a miracle for WCW to climb out of the hole they've dug for themselves. 18 months ago, ECW had just landed their first national TV deal, but the ratings were about half of what TNN was expecting and they lost $2.5 million during the year 2000, when they had more exposure than they'd ever had before. Vince McMahon nearly bought WCW last fall before the deal fell through and Dave talks about how bad it would be for the business for only 1 company to have a monopoly on the industry. Wrestlers would lose all negotiating leverage and there would only be so many spots and a lot of wrestlers left looking for jobs. Japan is barely using Americans these days and Mexico's economy can't support bringing in any name-value American wrestlers for the money they would demand.
Dave thinks for WCW (or whatever comes along after them) to survive, they have to present something different. Copying WWF never works. WCW's original resurgence came when they signed Hogan. These days, Austin or Rock walking out of the WWF and signing with someone else would be huge, but that's just not gonna happen. And even that might not work. In a monopolistic wrestling industry, Vince McMahon would be king and even someone like Austin wouldn't have many viable alternatives to make big money outside the WWF walls. The only person who would probably be okay is The Rock because he seems to have a budding Hollywood career waiting on him if/when he decides to walk away from wrestling. Whatever comes next has to be different to compete with WWF. Paul Heyman did it with ECW originally, but hardcore wrestling has lost its edge and isn't the attraction it was a few years ago to fans. All the other big things have been done and killed. Junior heavyweights? Nobody takes them seriously in America anymore. Inter-promotional angles? With what promotions? Celebrities? Been done to death and doesn't draw anymore. No one cared about Rodman's returns or Jay Leno's match and David Arquette as WCW champion will be remembered as one of the most boneheaded booking decisions in wrestling history. Worked shoots? Russo loves them, but we've seen how that goes. Real shoots? Brawl-4-All showed what a bad idea that is. All the old washed up names from the 80s mean nothing anymore (as evidenced by the raging success of Heroes of Wrestling) so that won't work. So what kind of tricks are left? Dave thinks a pure shoot company like UFC could become a viable #2 promotion if they could get some kind of TV deal and get all the commission and PPV issues worked out. If WCW folds, every little no-name indie company in America is going to claim to be the #2 promotion, but that's a meaningless statistic. Without a strong TV deal, nobody is going to remotely come close to touching WWF. And even with TV, you need a strong product. Dave lists several failed promotions that had some big money behind them and bought their way onto national TV with syndication deals in major markets, but they all flamed out almost as quickly as they came. Dave thinks that if any new start-up company comes along, they would be best served by starting small, running live shows and set up regional TV deals in small markets before trying to grow nationally. But if WCW can't survive, things look pretty bleak for American professional wrestling right now if your name isn't Vince McMahon (it's interesting to note that Ring of Honor basically did all these things when they started in 2002: totally different style of product, focusing on the best in-ring wrestling, started locally and grew regionally, etc. And they're the ones that are still around today).
The departure of Jerry Lawler and his wife Stacy Carter (aka The Kat) from WWF and the subsequent hiring of Paul Heyman as his replacement has been a strange story. There's been a lot of rumors that Vince McMahon wanted Lawler out in order to replace him with Heyman and that he knew Lawler would quit in protest if they fired his wife. Lawler himself has said this might be true, but Dave doesn't know why WWF would want to break up the best announcing team in the business. On the surface, the word is Stacy had become a disciplinary problem and after complaining about an angle she was asked to do at No Way Out, several people backstage complained about her to Vince. The day after that, at the Smackdown tapings, McMahon made the decision to fire her and told Jim Ross to make it happen, even though she was already written in for an angle on that night's taping. Ross told Lawler about McMahon's decision only 2 hours before the taping was to begin that they were dropping Stacy's angle (she was doing a Right To Nudity gimmick against the RTC group) and firing her because they felt she had an attitude problem and was difficult to work with. Lawler was pissed, denying Stacy had an attitude problem or was difficult to work with, and said if she was leaving, he was leaving. Ross asked him to reconsider, but Lawler responded asking JR if he would stay with the company if they fired his wife for no reason and Ross agreed that he probably wouldn't. Lawler said both JR and Vince know him well enough to know that he would stand by his wife so he assumed they wanted him gone also. Lawler first went to Kevin Dunn and said it was clear that Dunn already knew, but said his hands were tied. So then Lawler and Stacy went to Vince's office and confronted him directly. When asked why they were firing Stacy, Vince played dumb and claimed to not know all the details and that it was a talent relations issue, thus kicking the ball back to Jim Ross. Lawler said that if there was a problem with Stacy's attitude, someone should have said something to her first before just firing her without ever letting her know there was an issue. Vince agreed that someone should have....but he still didn't change his mind. When Lawler said he was leaving with her, Vince replied that "I hoped you wouldn't" and then finished by shaking his hand and saying, "I want to thank you for all the hard work you've done here" and showing him the door. The whole conversation took less time than it took to read it here (Lawler writes about this extensively in his book but it's pretty clear he's talking to Dave at this point, because the Observer has exact quotes from people involved and everything).
Lawler still has 2 more years on his WWF contract and although McMahon has agreed to release Lawler, it's unknown if he'll get a full release (which would allow him to go to WCW) or a conditional release (allowing him to go everywhere but WCW). It's believed Lawler and Bischoff have already talked. His son (Grandmaster Sexay) is staying with the company and this isn't expected to affect the developmental deal with MCW, which Lawler is involved in (just wait). Up until recently, Stacy had been off TV and Lawler had been pushing for an angle to get her back involved. Lawler had previously pushed an angle where Chyna and Eddie Guerrero's relationship fell apart because it would be revealed that Eddie was cheating on her with Stacy, but Chyna apparently nixed the idea and didn't want to do it. So then they pitched this Right To Nudity angle. On TV, the idea was that Lawler lost a match and thus, Stacy was forced to join the RTC. And that's as far as it ever got. In case you're wondering what the long-term plan was, it was for Stacy to tear the group apart from within, as she slowly seduced each member of the group and their morals would weaken and they would eventually succumb to her advances and sleep with her, until the leader, Steven Richards, would eventually break down give in to her also, destroying the group and ending the RTC gimmick.
Word is Stacy's firing may have been about a lot of things over the last few weeks. Even in Memphis, on the MCW show, Stacy has been unpopular because she gets tons of TV time on the local show there because, well, she's Lawler's wife and naturally, people feel like there's some favoritism going on. At No Way Out, Stacy and Lawler apparently bickered with writers over the finish of the match they were involved in and at one point Stacy allegedly yelled at a backstage employee about something (she denies that). Lawler says "never say never" in wrestling but thinks it's unlikely he'll ever return to WWF. He's pretty upset about the whole thing. A few days later, Lawler took matters into his own hands. He posted a lengthy story on his website, explaining the situation, and encouraging fans to email various WWF creative team members about the situation.......and he posted their individual email addresses. That went about as well as you'd expect, with thousands of fans sending the writers tons of hate mail, forcing the WWF to change their email addresses. Later in the week, Lawler went online again and urged fans to bring signs supporting him and Stacy to Raw and to chant for them. He then posted the mailing address and phone number for Titan Towers and urged fans to write letters and call to complain about Stacy's firing. Security at the arena for Raw confiscated all Lawler/Stacy related signs but there were several audible "We want Jerry!" chants during the show. And that's where things stand for now.
Shinya Hashimoto's new Zero-One promotion had their debut show and it was a huge success. It's believed Zero-One hopes to operate as somewhat of a neutral ground between all the Japanese promotions and wants to work with them all and do inter-promotional angles. This show set up a possible dream match between Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Naoya Ogawa for somewhere down the line. Yuji Nagata and Keiji Muto from NJPW worked the show as well as K-1's announcer doing commentary and, of course, Ogawa represents Inoki's UFO group while Misawa is from NOAH. It drew 11,000 fans, selling out the arena. They're also talking about doing Misawa vs. Hashimoto which is another dream match and could be a historic title vs. title match. Misawa is expected to book himself to win NOAH's new world title (it would have been Kobashi, but with him out injured, Misawa is the biggest star they have) while Hashimoto is expected to win the NWA title soon.
Raw did a 4.57 rating, which is the lowest non-holiday Raw in several years. And Nitro did a 2.06, which is a new all-time record low for the show during its regular live time slot. The combined audience watching wrestling on both nights was around 7 million, also the lowest figure in years. And this is without NFL competition. Oh hey, speaking of football, XFL's game on NBC this week did a 2.4 which is the 3rd lowest rated show in the history of a major network during prime time. The games on TNN and UPN also set near-record low ratings.
In an attempt to re-create the success of old El Santo movies in Mexico, they are making a new movie called Infraterrestre which will star El Hijo del Santo, Blue Panther, and others. The plot is Santo investigating mysterious abductions that lead him to discover a society of supernatural underground beings.
Kenta Kobashi had more surgery done on both knees this week, which is the 3rd surgery on both knees in the last year. Plus he had double elbow surgery recently also. Doctors have advised Kobashi to stay out of action for at least one year and that he really should retire. But obviously, he's Kobashi so that's not going to happen. Dave says knowing Kobashi, he'll probably try to return before the end of this year (nope. In his defense, Kobashi finally listened to doctors this time and stays out of action for over a year. And it was still too soon. When he finally returns, he immediately blows his knee out in his first match back and misses another 5 months. He doesn't return to full-time action until mid-2002).
Misawa held a press conference to announce that NOAH wrestler Yoshihiro Takayama will fight for PRIDE later this year. Takayama is one half of NOAH's top heel tag team and Dave can't fathom why Misawa would allow one of his top stars to work a shoot fight and be put in the position to be humiliated. Takayama has had some shoot matches before and they didn't go well for him, and Dave thinks this is a bad idea (yup, this happens and Takayama ends up losing, but we'll get there. This becomes a bigger story).
Kensuke Sasaki has an IWGP title defense against Scott Norton next week and Dave ponders the possibility of Norton winning the title ("god forbid") because NJPW is trying to cut his pay and Dave thinks they may try to throw him a bone by giving him the title to make him okay with it (yup. Norton wins the title and I'm sure Dave is going to just love that).
The latest NJPW show, with Scott Hall working the tour, didn't even sell out Korakuen Hall, only drawing 1,600 people. Hall looked okay but not great.
Masato Tanaka, Hideki Hosaka, Gedo, and Jado have all reportedly quit FMW. Dave doesn't know if it's real or gimmick (turned out to be real. FMW was having some pretty serious money problems at this point, deep in debt with the Yakuza).
ECW still has a PPV time slot scheduled for this weekend, but last Dave heard, Viewers Choice is planning to show a re-run of January's PPV. No event has actually been booked.
The Women of Wrestling PPV did a 0.01 buyrate which is among the lowest PPV buyrates of all time.
Nothing much new on the WCW sale. Time Warner and Fusient officials had a big meeting this week to try and close the deal, but it didn't happen. Dave doesn't know how significant that may or may not be. Until the sale is finalized, booking is basically just in a holding pattern, and in reality, that's pretty much been the case for months now, ever since Russo got a concussion, went home, and never came back. In all honesty, the WCW/Fusient deal was clearly announced earlier than it should have been. But Brad Siegel pushed for the announcement back in January because they wanted to announce it before the AOL merger was announced (which was announced later that same day). But the announcement was obviously premature, as here we are some 2 months later still trying to finalize it and they keep running into hiccups. As of press time, everyone involved still seems to believe the deal is on but there's whispers that it could still fall through (we're going to hear a WHOLE LOT more about this very soon).
Bischoff hates the new PPV names (Sin, Greed, etc.). Reportedly, WCW's May PPV will be called The Big Bang, which is a nod to the hit CBS series and #1 prime time comedy on television! Oh wait, sorry. I'm being told it's a reference to the start of the universe.
In an attempt to keep fans from leaving the TV tapings before the end of Thunder, WCW is now giving away trips to the next PPV at the end of the tapings to entice them to stay. Didn't work. Last week's Thunder was said to be an embarrassment, with only a few hundred fans left in the arena by the time the main event started.
The reason Arn Anderson was suspended last week is because prior to a Luger and Bagwell match on Nitro, they asked if they could cut a promo and Arn, the agent for their match, said yes. But that wasn't approved above him and it threw off TV timing since it wasn't scheduled and all that stuff. So Arn caught the heat for it.
Road Warrior Animal has a weird deal with his insurance situation. Several years ago, he got a huge settlement from one of those Lloyd's of London insurance deals for what was supposed to be a career-ending back injury. If he came out of retirement, he would be expected to re-pay the money back. But through some wacky loophole, Animal is only forbidden from wrestling singles matches. So therefore, part of his current deal with WCW is that he can only work tag team matches. Dave says he had the same deal with WWF during his stint there awhile back (yeah, Bruce Prichard confirmed this on his podcast awhile back. So ridiculous).
If WCW does end up doing a temporary shut-down angle, Dave thinks they should make a deal to send all their young, green guys (especially Sean O'Haire, since he has the most potential) to NJPW so they can spend a month or so working tours there. That way they'd be working with experienced vets 5 nights a week and probably learn a lot more in a month than they've learned in years of working out at the Power Plant. In fact, with O'Haire, Dave thinks they should send him away for a good 6 months to let him get experience in Japan and then re-debut him in WCW with a serious push and see if it clicks.
Notes from Raw: it was a great show with a controversial Trish Stratus angle and the debut of Paul Heyman as Jerry Lawler's replacement. Dave says Heyman did well in the role, acknowledging right off the bat that Lawler had quit the company after Kat was fired. The RTC angle Kat was involved in was dropped and never mentioned on Raw. They had Kurt Angle "injure" Scotty 2 Hotty with an ankle lock to write him off TV because he's got neck issues. The angle with Trish and Vince got a lot of people talking (the famous segment with Vince ordering her to get nearly naked and bark like a dog on all fours). Dave seems a little put off by it, saying he's glad he didn't have anyone else watching with him and found it embarrassing. He also thinks the fans who were cheering for it were just living out their fantasies of humiliating every pretty girl who ever spurned them in their lives. TSN in Canada edited the segment off the show completely (no mention of Paul Heyman's "I'm in DC and I'm gonna get to see Bush!" line that nearly got him fired on his first day on the job. Anyway, if you've never seen this segment, it's just about as close to NSFW as you're going to get in wrestling so be warned if you're watching at work).
WATCH: infamous Vince McMahon/Trish Stratus segment (NSFW)
Don Frye was backstage at Raw, looking for work. He was told to finish up his commitments with NJPW and then they'd talk to him.
Over in the XFL, the desperation is becoming apparent. Announcer Jesse Ventura has been working a one-sided feud with coach Rusty Tillman, taking shots at him and trying to get into an argument with him on the field after a game. But Tillman isn't going along with it. "They're trying to manufacture something, and I'm not going to do it," Tillman said in an interview. "I've said all along, if it's like the WWF, people are not going to like it. I'm not going to do it their way. That's not me. I didn't want to turn around and have an (insult) contest on the field. My wife and children are watching. I'm not going to do it, because I think it cheapens the game." Tillman has been completely uncooperative with Ventura's attempts to start a feud with him. Ventura didn't let up this week and Dave thinks it's pretty sad watching Mr. Tells-It-Like-It-Is be exposed as a paid shill trying to work a pro wrestling angle while being the governor of Minnesota. Dave points out that Phil Mushnick called this months ago, that as soon as ratings dropped, Vince would immediately resort back to what he knows, which is wrestling gimmickry. Dave understands why a lot of wrestling fans hate Phil Mushnick, but he also says that when it comes to predicting Vince McMahon's actions over the last 10 years, Mushnick almost always sees through Vince before anyone else and calls him on it. It's no wonder Vince hates him.
Linda McMahon also spoke about the XFL this week on an investors conference call and said the company is committed to sticking with it through the end of the first season and would examine it from there. That immediately led to speculation that WWF is ready to give up on the league, and the next day, Linda put out a statement denying that. She blamed the ratings decline on bad games and said critics were judging it too early and that it takes time to build a brand and create new stars. She hinted that they're basically reevaluating all the business decisions and may be making some changes in the future but that they have a lot of long-term plans in place. Dave calls bullshit and talks about how the advertising for the most recent game never even mentioned the teams or players and instead focused on hyping up the cheerleaders. Dave is reminded of the dying days of Vince's failed WBF bodybuilding company. When that venture began to fail, it shifted from bodybuilding to becoming a T&A show full of women in bikinis to try and pull in viewers. Same here. Dave thinks they're desperate and the cheerleader angle is their last-ditch effort to draw male eyeballs.
And in more bad news, the XFL is now offering major discounts to sponsors for ad sales. In a recent trade magazine, the XFL took out an ad touting them doing a 3.9 rating, which beat out every other sporting event that weekend aside from the NASCAR Winston Cup race. Here's the catch though: that 3.9 rating comes from adding up the ratings of all three XFL games that weekend and then comparing it to single events in other sports. So needless to say, that's a pretty wildly dishonest claim. Dave breaks down a bunch of numbers here with advertising and how much WWF has to pay based on ad-rates and ratings that were promised and projected percentages and blah blah yada yada. Point being: the XFL is on pace to lose more money this year than WCW lost last year. And that's assuming ratings don't fall any further, which they almost certainly will. Dave estimates that WWF and NBC will each lose at least $46 million on this deal and probably more. WWF is projected to make around $100 million in wrestling profits this year, so fortunately for them, they can absorb the losses and take the hit and be okay, but it's still a staggering failure.
Are we finished dunking on the XFL yet? Not by a long shot. They had cameras in the locker room during a game and the camera caught someone taking a piss, leading Jim Ross to say the line, "That's somebody going to the bathroom." That line has been picked up and made fun of everywhere and was one of the more embarrassing moments in TV sports history. Jesse Ventura did an interview where he basically just talked shit about the media and blamed them for the XFL not succeeding due to the negative criticism. They changed the bump and run rule to try to increase the passing game because the scores have been lower than they want. Dave says sports has rule changes all the time, but they don't usually just make them up as they go along during the middle of a season.
Some notes from OVW: Leviathan, real name Dave Bautista, is out with an ankle injury but should be back soon and Dave thinks he has a great look. Jim Cornette predicts he'll be a Wrestlemania main eventer within 5 years (yup, almost exactly). Brock Lesnar and Shelton Benjamin have shown improvement but neither is ready for the big time yet. Dave thinks Benjamin is almost a sure thing to become a star and has limitless potential. Randy Orton has a good look and is improving rapidly and if he can show some charisma, Dave thinks he'll be a star too. Russ McCullough used to look too much like Kevin Nash but now he cut his hair so he doesn't anymore. But he's pretty generic otherwise and Dave doesn't see much in him. Dave thinks John Cena needs to move from UPW to OVW soon because he's got the look and charisma but he needs to be working in front of crowds more often and UPW doesn't run nearly as many shows as OVW.
Fun ratings demographic news. Last week, Raw beat Nitro in teenage viewers by a 94% to 6% margin. But the news isn't all bad for WCW! They actually beat Raw in the women ages 50-54 demo.
It's unknown if WWF plans to run an ECW invasion angle now that the company is dead and Heyman and several other ECW stars are signed to WWF. As of a week ago, WWF asked Rhino to come up with a new ring name, so it doesn't appear that they have any ECW invasion plans as of now, but that could change. Dave says there's positives and negatives to this. An inter-promotional angle always boosts business in the short term. But there's no chance that anyone on Team ECW will be portrayed as a threat to any of WWF's top stars, so in that case, why even bother?
Several letters from people who think the Trish/Vince angle went too far, saying this went beyond TV characters and was humiliating to watch.
Another guy writes in and talks about Bret Hart and comparing his life and career to that of Michael Corleone from The Godfather movies: "They both started out as wide-eyed innocents who swore they would never be a part of the family business. They both had fathers who had goals for them that were not their own. Michael's father wanted him to be a President or a Senator. Bret's wanted him to be an Olympic wrestler. Both ended up being drawn into the family business, temporarily, and both never got out. Due to a series of evens, both became more entrenched in the business they never wanted to be a part of than any other member of their family. At the end of Godfather II, Corleone was a broken man, beaten down by the life he led. As Hart has ended his career, you could say that he's coming to a similar end, but let's hope his story ultimately has a different ending, that he makes it out of the business and never looks back. He said in "Wrestling with Shadows" that would be his biggest test. In the last Godfather movie, Michael says, "Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in." As much as I'll miss Bret Hart in wrestling, I hope for his own well-being, that I never see him wrestle again."