Wrestling Observer Rewinder

March 26, 2001

"Even to the end, they couldn't be honest to their own employees." Those are the opening words from Dave Meltzer this week as we have arrived at the death of WCW.
I started doing these Rewinds here on Reddit almost 3 full years ago. It feels like the whole thing has been building up to this moment.
The following memo was sent to WCW staff by Brad Siegel on 3/16:
"In early January, we told you about an agreement that we had reached to sell WCW and its related assets. At that time, we said that we would apprise you of any changes to the way WCW operates. Effective Tuesday, March 27, WCW programming will begin a period of hiatus. During this hiatus, WCW will review its programming plans and determine the course of future WCW-branded entertainment events. On Wednesday, March 28, please plan to attend an all-staff meeting at 10 a.m. at the Power Plant, at which we will share with you further information regarding WCW plans. In the meantime, I hope that you will maintain the level of professionalism that distinguishes our organization, particularly as we prepare for the upcoming Panama City, Florida event. Thank you."
- Brad Siegel
Don't believe the memo. There will be no temporary hiatus and relaunch of WCW under Eric Bischoff. As of this week, TBS announced they will no longer air wrestling on its stations after 29 years. What's left of the company (the name, trademarks, video library, and some contracts) is expected to be purchased by the WWF in the next 2 weeks. This story marks the end of the wrestling wars that began in 1983 when Vince McMahon began raiding talent from Verne Gagne and Jim Crockett and expanding his empire nationally. 18 years later, the war is finally over and McMahon stands as the sole survivor atop the mountain. Dave calls it the biggest news story in the modern era of professional wrestling.
In reality, this was probably inevitable anyway. It was clear that WCW was going to be sold because AOL didn't want to keep money-losing properties. And no matter who bought WCW, they were going to have a very steep hill to climb. WCW has had almost negative momentum for the past 2 years, the product was borderline unwatchable and it had a terrible stigma among fans. More importantly, the money losses were huge and only a billion dollar company could afford to take those kind of hits. To be quite honest, even if the Fusient/Bischoff sale had gone through, the odds for its long-term survival weren't good. WCW had simply dug itself too deep a hole to climb out of.
In his first major act as CEO of Turner Broadcasting, Jamie Kellner (who Dave says has always disliked pro wrestling) made the decision to cancel all wrestling programming on their networks. Doing so effectively killed the WCW/Fusient sale talks, since Fusient wasn't going to buy a wrestling company without a TV network to air it on. Those sale talks had already been rocky. The sale was prematurely announced in January because they wanted to announce it before the AOL/Time Warner merger was finalized. But despite being announced in January, the deal was never actually completed. Later in January, when Fusient examined WCW's books and realized that the company was in far worse shape than they had been led to believe, they lowered their offer from $75 million down to $48.7 million. That deal was accepted and in the process of being finalized when Kellner decided to cancel the TV shows. The plan was for Fusient to pay $5.7 million up front and then an additional $2.15 million-per-year over the next 20 years. As recently as just last week, everyone was still working towards finalizing that sale and it was thought that things were going ahead as planned. But then it all fell apart. It's funny because just one year ago, a company called SFX attempted to buy WCW and were in negotiations with Time Warner, who was was asking for $600 million. Only a year later, Fusient was almost able to buy it for $48.7 million. And now WWF is going to swoop in and buy the company for far less than that (Dave doesn't know the number yet, but the entire haul only cost WWF $4 million. Imagine, in only a year, WCW went from sale negotiations in the half a BILLION-range before finally selling for only $4 million).
Jamie Kellner, who took over the CEO job less than 2 weeks ago, didn't see wrestling as upscale programming. The final Nitro broadcast will air on 3/26 in Panama City. TBS will begin showing movies in the old Thunder time slot starting on 3/28 and in the Nitro time slot on 4/2. While Nitro and Thunder still did above-average ratings for TNT and TBS, wrestling still has a negative stigma and didn't pull in nearly the same advertising revenue that other, lower-rated shows pull. It's a problem that even WWF deals with, but it was especially bad for WCW since Russo came along and turned it into a trashy garbage show (which made advertisers nervous) and ratings were continuing to fall. So even if movies in those time slots do lower ratings, the network will make more money from it. Following the cancellation decision, Fusient made a last-ditch effort to try and secure a TV deal with FOX, but after 2 days of meetings with them, they couldn't come to a deal. At that point, Fusient officially backed out of the sale, clearing the path for WWF to purchase the corpse. Some of these decisions regarding WCW programming were made before Kellner took over as CEO. As far back as a year ago, there were plans to change the kind of programming on TNT and TBS and it was expected that Nitro would eventually move TBS and that Thunder might be dropped entirely. TBS has also gained syndication rights to air reruns of Seinfeld, Friends, Drew Carrey Show, and Everybody Loved Raymond, all of which greatly lessened the value of wrestling, since those shows in prime time would all bring in more advertising revenue. TBS spokesman Jim Weiss, when asked by WrestlingObserver.com about the situation, said, "We've decided professional wrestling in its current incarnation just isn't appropriate for the high-scale, upscale brand that we have built on TNT and TBS Superstation. We're no longer interested in carrying the product."
Dave also mentions that Jerry Jarrett made a proposal to attempt to buy WCW, although it was never considered very likely to happen, and Jarrett also pulled his offer when they found out the TV show was cancelled. There's been rumors that Jarrett may be planning to start a new company in the wake of WCW's demise but others have said that there's nothing to it (a year later, he'd be funding a little something called Total Nonstop Action).
So what will WWF do with WCW? That's still undecided. Last year, when WWF almost bought them, the idea was to keep WCW as a separate entity for a year or so to rebuild it and then do a big promotion vs. promotion feud (which WWF would ultimately win, of course, and then absorb WCW). But that was dependent on WCW still having TV shows, which it no longer has. Right now, all the key backstage WWF people, including McMahon himself, are overworked to the point of exhaustion due to running both the WWF and the XFL. Adding another full promotion to operate and attempt to rehabilitate would be too much for some. A lot of people backstage wish the company would give up on the XFL idea and dedicate that energy to WCW because Vince McMahon actually knows how to promote wrestling, whereas his luck isn't going so good with football. But to do that, Vince would need to get Viacom to open up one or two prime time spots on one of their networks (likely TNN on Tuesday or Wednesday) in order to air WCW shows. Dave thinks TNN might go for it because WWF has been a huge success for their network.
I'll just paste this sentence here since it seems slightly relevant: "There is also the chance that McMahon would pick and choose who he wants for a minor invasion angle, which would leave the majority of the wrestlers, announcers and office personnel out of work."
It's unclear how WCW's contracts will be handled. Many of WCW's top stars are making waaaaaaay more money than WWF's top stars and also have limited dates. If McMahon picks up those contracts, he would have to honor them which would greatly upset the WWF payscale and probably piss off a lot of his own talent. Most of the wrestlers have contracts on 90-day cycles so those will likely be phased out as the cycles expire and then Vince can try to re-sign whoever he wants to keep, at lower salaries. Time Warner may continue to pay out some of these deals, but all that stuff is still up in the air right now.
None of the wrestlers were told anything at the PPV or the 3/19 Nitro tapings. In fact, none of them were even told that the TV show had been cancelled, although the decision had already been made and many people already knew. On the 3/19 Nitro, it was announced that next week's show would be the final show "of the season" but no explanation of what that meant or acknowledgement that the show was cancelled, although by that point, the media had started reporting it. And even when the rumors started going around, many believed it was just a work, because after so many Bischoff and Russo work-the-boys angles, nobody in WCW trusts management or believes anything anymore.
Some think the decision to cancel the programming was ill-timed. In wrestling, it doesn't take long for ratings to turn around if the company can get hot. WWF was nearly cancelled by USA not so long ago, and within 2 years, they went from getting bitch-slapped weekly by WCW to becoming a billion dollar company. Some feel Bischoff should have been given a chance first before Kellner decided to pull the plug. Plus, with the impending baseball lockout and SAG strike, wrestling could be valuable programming later this summer. TBS execs have often tried to cancel WCW in the past, especially in the early 90s. But Ted Turner was loyal to the business (it was the first ratings hit his new Superstation TV network ever had) and he always kept it around, even when it was losing money. But Turner doesn't have power over those decisions anymore since the company had been sold.
And from here......Dave recaps the history of this company, in all its incarnations. Starting with Ted Turner starting his station in Atlanta in 1972. Georgia Championship Wrestling becoming a ratings hit, the golden years of the early 80s, the Black Saturday/Vince McMahon debacle of 1984, the rise and fall of Jim Crocket Promotions, Ted Turner purchasing JCP in 1988 and forming WCW, the dark days of the early 90s, the ascension of Eric Bischoff to power. That in turn led to him throwing around big money to sign guys like Hogan, Savage, Hall, and Nash and launched Nitro to compete with Raw. The NWO, 83-week winning streak, Goldberg, Dennis Rodman....WCW simply caught fire and was the biggest company in the world. For perspective on how much WCW was dominating the war, in 1997, WCW's Starrcade did 640,000 PPV buys while WWF's Wrestlemania only did 237,000. But then, of course, they self-destructed under their own repeated mistakes, Steve Austin got nuclear hot, Russo, Radicalz, Arquette, and here we are. Dave goes into all the reasons WCW failed, but I think we've covered that to death already. Dave says that while WCW was on top, they never planned for the future. They were on top and thought the ride would never end. Dave says you could write a book on all the things WCW did wrong that led to their demis (Bryan Alvarez reads this issue and strokes his chin, pondering...)
Did you know there's also non-WCW news? Vince McMahon made headlines this week during an HBO interview with Bob Costas on his new "On The Record" show. The interview lasted 30 minutes and was about half-XFL and half-WWF and boy did it get unpleasant when Costas pushed Vince on certain topics and Vince lost his temper. To most non-wrestling fans, Vince came off like a raving lunatic and that was the general consensus among sports talk radio shows nationwide the next day. The XFL part of the conversation was fine. McMahon bullshitted Costas on some things, which Dave is glad to point out the inaccuracies, but overall, things were going well at first. But Vince began getting defensive as Costas pushed back on some of his answers. Then the subject turned to WWF and the show went off the rails. Costas showed a clip of the Vince/Trish angle from a few weeks ago and asked how he could defend it. When Costas asked about kids imitating the crotch-chops and "suck it!" phrases, Vince lost it completely. He screamed at Costas, "Don't raise your voice at me!" (even though Costas hadn't) and then compared Costas to Phil Mushnick. He got even madder and stuck his finger in Costas' face and told him to "shut your mouth" and repeatedly referred to Costas as an "elitist" who has it out for wrestling, to which Costas replied that Vince knows full well that Costas had been a wrestling fan for most of his life. In fact, Dave points out, Costas even did radio announcing for pro wrestling back in the day. He was even scheduled to be a guest at Wrestlemania 7 but pulled out over the Gulf War/WWF controversy. Just last year, Costas did the introduction on a documentary about the St. Louis wrestling scene and Sam Muchnick.
And then Costas brought up the Lionel Tate murder case, involving the 12-year-old in Florida who killed a 6-year-old girl and claimed it was accidental because he was doing wrestling moves on her. Tate was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole. Dave thinks Costas made a mistake here because the jury didn't buy the wrestling connection (the girl's fatal injuries proved she has suffered a sustained brutal beating, not a move gone wrong) and using this as ammo against Vince made Costas look bad. But of course, not nearly as bad as Vince made himself look in response. Vince accused Costas of not knowing his facts (true in this case, although snarling it angrily at him likely didn't earn Vince any sympathy from viewers). Costas asked about the objectification of women and Vince said the women on the roster willingly do the angles and are free to say no at any time (although, of course, you know how much Vince loves when talent refused to do something. Refusing to go along with sexual angles sure didn't work in Sable's favor). Dave says Lita and Trish just recently did interviews and Lita admitted being uncomfortable doing the recent shower scene angle and the lingerie angles. And Trish said she hates that her niece isn't allowed to watch the show and that she still gets taunted by other kids in school who do watch it. Anyway, throughout the interview, as he got mad, Vince did his best to look intimidating, but Dave doesn't believe he ever would have physically done anything to Costas, because that would have likely destroyed the NBC relationship, tanked the stock, and lord knows what else. But regardless, Vince came off looking like a pretty big embarrassment in this whole thing, in Dave's opinion. (Here's a quick clip of some of it, where you see that Vince is annoyed. But most of the "juicy" good parts of the interview seem to have been completely scrubbed from the internet. Funny how that works).
WATCH: Vince McMahon on the Bob Costas HBO show
Other notes from the PPV: Jason Jett (formerly EZ Money in ECW) worked the opening match and that makes him an interesting historical footnote. He now becomes the only person to have worked both ECW and WCW's final PPVs (so this dude still wrestles, and I think that would be a great gimmick for him. The guy you book for your final PPVs. If Impact or ROH ever folds, they should give him a call for the final show). Elix Skipper and Kid Romeo became the cruiserweight tag team champions. Kidman and Mysterio had been told for weeks they were winning the tournament, but it got changed the day of the show. They weren't happy but they kept it professional and it ended up being a great match (they end up winning the belts on the final Nitro, so it's fine). And Scott Steiner retained the title in the main event, in a match he had to gut his way through because his back was killing him.
The heat between the WWF and Jerry Lawler has unexpectedly caused Power Pro Wrestling to lose its WWF developmental deal due to their decision to put Lawler and Stacy Carter on TV. Earlier in the week, WWF had asked PPW promoter Randy Hales not to use Lawler on TV (he had been off for several weeks and they were planning an angle for his return anyway). That same week, the local TV station called Hales and insisted that he bring Lawler back because ratings are shit and Lawler is a huge local draw in Memphis. When Hales reported that to WWF, they told him if Lawler came on TV, they'd pull the deal. Stuck in between two choices, Hales chose to obey his local TV bosses and put Lawler on TV. Lawler and Carter did a long interview on the show, explaining in detail why he left WWF. He talked about the angle with RTC and how it was supposed to play out, how Jim Ross and Vince McMahon handled Carter's firing and his own quitting and saying he still didn't know why she was fired. Lawler never knocked the WWF and just gave his straightforward version of the story. Anyway, WWF responded as promised, by pulling all their developmental wrestlers out of the company. Dave thinks the real losers in this situation are the young wrestlers, who benefit by working regular shows in front of crowds several times a week and now that has been taken from them.
This week's XFL game on NBC was the lowest rated prime time television show in the history of the 4 major networks. Behind the scenes, there's serious doubt about the future of the league. If the XFL comes back for a second season, it's already a lock that it won't air on Saturday nights on NBC anymore, as the network has already begun looking to produce inexpensive dramas to air in that time slot next year. If the XFL sticks around, it may move to an afternoon time slot. There's also been talks of moving the games to CNBC, which would be a death knell for the league. McMahon also made headlines in an interview about the XFL where he trashed Jesse Ventura's commentary performance. McMahon said, "He's on thin ice. We've made mistakes and I think our biggest one was our selection of announcers. We need football announcers, not WWF announcers. Our research shows people don't like him on the XFL. He's too over the top. Hyperbole turns people off. They know when you're telling the truth." Many feel like this is Vince attempting to get Ventura to quit. Ventura is thought to be the highest paid person in the XFL (players and coaches included) and Vince isn't enjoying honoring that contract anymore. Ventura has yet to respond and he was still doing commentary on this week's game.
Kenta Kobashi had surgery on his right knee this week, and it's the 4th surgery he's had on that one knee in the last 2 months. In fact, he had another surgery on it last year, so this is the 5th time he's had surgery on his right knee. There's word he still may need another operation soon before he can come back. There's still talk of Kobashi returning to the ring, although it will be a very long time. Dave doesn't know how he can possibly return and thinks he'll be in a wheelchair by the time he hits his mid-40s. Dave doesn't outright say it, but he talks about how the injuries aren't worth having a diminished quality of life in your later years and he seems to really wish Kobashi would hang it up, for his own sake (we're still more than a decade away from that happening. In fact, he still has a few 5-star classics and a legendary title run ahead of him. He's 51 years old now and while not in a wheelchair, he definitely moves around pretty gingerly these days).
Scott Norton won the IWGP title from Kensuke Sasaki this week. On the surface, this seems like a terrible move because, well, Scott Norton is awful and past his prime. But Dave suspects he'll be a transitional champion and predicts he'll lose the title at the May 5th Fukuoka Dome show (he doesn't even last that long. He loses it in April). NJPW has spent more than a year grooming Manabu Nakanishi for the top spot, though Dave doesn't think he's very good either. But better than Norton at least. So that's Dave's guess. (Nope. Norton ends up losing it to Kazuyuki Fujita instead.)
Scott Hall worked the full NJPW tour and....it went well. Apparently he behaved and stayed out of trouble the whole tour and all the wrestlers in Japan enjoyed working with him. He's expected to return next month and may be put with Masa Chono in a tag team.
BJW wrestler Ryuji Yamakawa suffered a fractured skull and brain hemorrhaging after a spot gone wrong during a match. He was supposed to be choke slammed over the top rope to the outside through a table, but he missed the table and hit his head on the concrete floor (he ends up being out for the rest of the year but returns in December).
Road Dogg did an interview this week and talked about being fired by WWF. He talked about his drug addiction issues and said he still has good days and bad days and it's a constant battle. He says he got messed up before a match but still went out and wrestled anyway (the match aired on Heat). He tried to apologize to Vince McMahon after the match but Vince brushed him off and was too busy. So he went to Bruce Prichard and apologized and tried to explain that he's going through a bad divorce right now. The next day, Prichard and Jim Ross told him he was suspended and to go home. A few weeks later, he was fired and hasn't spoken to anyone since. Road Dogg said he wasn't bitter about it, since they made him a star in the first place and he understands why they did what they did. He blamed himself and said he was putting others at risk by getting in the ring impaired. He admitted that WWF had paid for him to go to rehab twice before in the past. He said the divorce is still ongoing and he hasn't seen his kids in 2 months because of it. He said he had spoken with Johnny Ace about going to WCW but obviously, that ship is sailing. So for now, he's planning to work indies.
Ken Shamrock injured his neck training and will have to pull out of his scheduled fight with Igor Vovchanchyn at this week's PRIDE show. Shamrock is going to be replaced by Tra Telligman, who has the unfortunate luck of stepping into the ring against Vovchanchyn on almost no notice (Telligman actually ends up winning the fight in a major upset).
Antonio Inoki did an interview talking about how WCW is folding and said he wants to bring in Goldberg to fight for PRIDE (obviously never happened. Goldberg has always said that he wishes he had done MMA when he was younger, but by the time the opportunity arose, he was too old. I mean, really, what kind of professional wrestler starts an MMA career in their mid-30s? Can you imagine?)
Notes from the next-to-last episode of WCW Monday Nitro: it was a very strange show, Dave thinks. It opened with an "R.I.P. DDP" video that Dave thought was a little tasteless considering all the real wrestling deaths over the years that they have always ignored. The weirdest part of the show came when they aired a phone interview with Eric Bischoff. He talked about his attempts to buy the company but mentioned that they had hit a roadblock that may be impossible to overcome. Bischoff announced that next week's Nitro would be the final show "of the season" and said that all the titles will be at stake. It was never announced that next week will be the end of WCW, so they're trying to keep hope alive. On commentary, Schiavone made reference to the fact that WCW has been on Turner stations for 29 years, but he never outright acknowledged that the show and company are done. They ran a few angles, like promoting a Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Shawn Stasiak match for next week, where the loser must get a tattoo. Dave thinks doing angles and storylines is kind of a moot point now. Scott Steiner is scheduled to defend the title against Booker T next week but that's touch and go due to a back injury. He's scheduled for an MRI this week but may not be able to wrestle.
Eric Bischoff phone interview strongly hinting that WCW is dead
Also on Nitro, there was a Rick Steiner vs. Konnan match that was just about the most unprofessional shit Dave has seen in a long time, with Steiner stiffing Konnan with hard shots. Dave thinks it was probably the longest 5 minutes of Konnan's life because Rick was beating the absolute shit out of him. The match started to fall apart because Konnan started trying to avoid the hits to protect himself and he was legit knocked out at 2 separate points and is thought to have suffered a concussion. Dave doesn't know if Konnan pissed somebody off or if Rick Steiner just figured, "fuck it, the company's dead, I can do whatever I want now" and decided to be a bully. But either way, Dave thinks it was bullshit. The match was supposed to end with Shane Douglas running in to hit Steiner and let Konnan get a cheap win, but Steiner refused to do the job, so they did a DQ finish instead. (Yeah, this match is a mess. It starts out okay, but midway through, Rick obviously gets pissed about something and from then on, it's just a massacre. Rick has talked about this in interviews. TL;DR - he didn't like Konnan. Thought he was reckless and blamed him for injuring Lex Luger. Said they were in the match and he was trying to call moves and Konnan wasn't listening. And he knew WCW was finished so he just said, "fuck it" and beat the fuck out of Konnan for real, because he felt like it and he could. So...yeah.)
WATCH: Rick Steiner shoots on Konnan in match on Nitro
Hey, speaking of Rick Steiner, he was involved in a backstage skirmish this week when Chuck Palumbo tried to stand up to him during an argument. It didn't go well for Palumbo, with Rick taking him to the ground and twisting him into a pretzel before they were separated. Also, Sean O'Haire and Jason Jett got into a backstage fight that ended with O'Haire choking him out in 30 seconds.
More fun backstage stuff in WCW. Johnny Ace and Lex Luger got into a big blowup argument because Luger has been complaining about doing jobs for people. He compared himself to a Ferrari and said if you keep hitting a Ferrari with a sledgehammer, soon it becomes worthless. Johnny Ace didn't back down and Luger was still ordered to go out there and do the job, which earned Ace a lot of respect in the locker room. For so long in WCW, top guys would simply complain about not wanting to do jobs, and management would give in to their demands and change the finishes, so not backing down to Luger got Ace over with the boys. The problem, of course, is that even when doing jobs, Luger has been going out of his way to make the matches bad and make his opponents look like shit, so beating him doesn't get anybody over (I guess Rick Steiner refusing to put over Konnan wasn't a Johnny Ace decision).
Various WCW notes, perhaps for the final time: David Flair is said to be improving. He's been wrestling on the NWA Wildside indie shows. Ron & Don Harris and Mark Jindrak are the latest WCW guys to be released. And Viewers Choice in Canada was furious with WCW because nobody in the company ever contacted them to inform them that the 4/15 PPV that was scheduled had been cancelled, even though the decision was made by WCW weeks ago.
The post-Wrestlemania plan is for babyface Triple H to feud with a heel Steve Austin. In fact, Austin is expected to be aligned with Vince in order to get him over as a heel. Dave thinks the idea is for Vince to help Austin defeat The Rock at WM to win the title (yup). Dave doesn't know if this is a great idea. On Raw this week, Rock was booed while Austin got a monster babyface reaction from the crowd. Doesn't really seem like the crowd wants Austin to turn heel. Now that word is out about the planned Austin heel turn, Dave wonders if they'll still go through with it. Also, while predicting Wrestlemania, he talks about the Shane/Vince street fight and figures they'll do the ol' Linda-rises-from-her-wheelchair gimmick (yup) and that Foley will get involved to help cost Vince the match (yup).
Notes from Raw: former (and final) ECW champion Rhino debuted, using that same name, and speared Jeff Hardy. He was wearing an ECW shirt, which leads Dave to believe they may be doing an ECW invasion angle soon. Dave talks about how Edge, Christian, and Rhino are all friends dating back to their pre-WWF indie days in Canada. Chris Jericho peed in Regal's tee. Chyna returned. And Spike Dudley also debuted, aligning himself with his Dudley brothers. During the show, security was confiscating signs like crazy. Anything that went against the storylines, pro-WCW signs, negative-babyface signs (particularly anti-Rock signs), and tons of Jerry Lawler signs were all confiscated. On the flip side, they repeatedly showed close-ups of negative Bob Costas signs. After the show went off the air, Austin recovered (from the Rock Bottom he had taken at the end of the show) and did a hilarious Hogan routine, ripping his shirt and doing the poses and whatnot, while drinking beer. Then a fan hit the ring and Austin threw him down and held him down with a knee to the back of his neck until security carted him away.
Shawn Michaels' return is imminent and he will almost surely be at Wrestlemania. The idea is to do an angle to eventually lead to his in-ring return in the next month or two, probably at the April PPV after Wrestlemania (yup, that was the plan, but it gets scrapped when Shawn's drug problem rears its ugly head again).
Former ECW wrestler Chris Chetti had a couple of WWF tryout matches, one with Taka Michinoku and the other with former ECW star Nova, who was also getting a tryout. The Nova match was said to be pretty bad. Chetti also was criticized backstage for showing up not looking to be in top physical shape, so probably not a good omen for his chances of getting signed. Speaking of ECW wrestlers, Tommy Dreamer is said to be a sure thing to be signing with WWF soon.
Announcers on both Raw and Smackdown have been bitterly complaining about the media being unfair to the XFL. It's obviously a directive from Vince and Dave thinks it's pretty pathetic hearing Tazz and Michael Cole on Smackdown acting indignant about the media's treatment of the XFL, when they aren't even involved in the league. At least Jim Ross is an XFL commentator. Anyway, Jim Rome talked about it on his radio show, saying the XFL is failing because it sucks, not because the media is being unfair. Rome was particularly critical of the sleazy-attempts to make it like pro wrestling and said if people want to see strippers, they'll go to a strip club instead of watching women on TV who of course aren't going to actually show anything on NBC.
Chyna noted that she's doing a second Playboy photo shoot soon (not very soon. Ended up being in 2002, long after she leaves WWF).
TSN's Off The Record is going to do 3 episodes on wrestling in the week before Wrestlemania. The first will focus on the Hardyz and Lita, while the 2nd episode will focus on Canadians like Venis, Jericho, Edge, and Christian. Word is that one is interesting because they apparently didn't have many nice things to say about the XFL and also talked about a union. Dave doesn't know what exactly was said yet since he hasn't seen it, and who knows what may be edited out later. Val Venis in particular is very politically outspoken and is anti-union so it could be interesting. And the third episode focuses on Kurt Angle which is said to be really good.
Speaking of Kurt Angle, in a recent column on WWF.com, Jim Ross said Kurt Angle is the most talented performer he's ever seen with his level of experience. Dave has been considering that question and....he can't disagree. Angle's only been doing this for 2 years and the only people Dave can think of who might come close to being that good after only 2 years are Owen Hart, Jun Akiyama, and Kenta Kobashi. But Dave thinks Angle is an all-around better performer than any of them were at the same stage in their careers. Dave says it's ridiculous to call someone a future all-time great after only 2 years, but unless his career gets derailed by an injury or something, he thinks it's damn near a guarantee that he will be. (I hate that younger fans only know Kurt as goofy, glazed-eyed grandpa GM who can barely move these days. That guy was an absolute force of nature in the early-2000s).
Remember a few months back when the Rock's dad, Rocky Johnson, got into a whole bunch of trouble at a community center he was working at? Allegedly fondled a woman without her consent, was accused of stealing gym equipment, having sex with a co-worker in a back room while kids were present, asking a 12-year-old to play strip poker, wearing vulgar shirts around kids, talking about the size of his dick in the presence of kids, and that several children at the center were injured when they were left unsupervised while wrestling and boxing with each other. Anyway, the state has decided not to press any charges against him. According to the prosecutor's office, they had sufficient evidence to charge Johnson for sexual assault for the woman he allegedly groped, but the case fell apart because the victim didn't want to come forward because she knew her name would come out and it would be a high profile case because of who Rocky's son is. And the rest of it fell apart for various reasons (misunderstandings, hearsay, not enough evidence, etc.). So he's going to skate on all of it.
Kane worked a show for Heartland Wrestling, which has its own agreement with WWF as a developmental promotion. Kane defeated Leviathan (Batista) in the main event. Benoit was announced as appearing at the next show.
Rhino and Jerry Lynn appeared in Memphis Championship Wrestling and it looks like they're planning to do an MCW vs. ECW type of angle. But considering Rhino just debuted on WWF TV, it's unlikely that he's going to be spending much time working in MCW.
Howard Stern had 2 XFL cheerleaders on his show. They did nothing but complain about their jobs the whole time, saying they were told they would be involved in storylines and promised they would have more TV time, but it hasn't happened.