April 23, 2001
- Another week in 2001 and another dead promotion as Power Pro Wrestling comes to an end. As mentioned last week, the tradition of Saturday morning Memphis wrestling, which dates back to the 1970s, is finally ending. While shows will continue to air for 2 more months, they will be highlight shows from years past. The final live in-studio show took place this week. WMC-TV in Memphis made the decision to cancel the show and informed promoter Randy Hales of it last week. In the 70s and 80s, the weekly Memphis show was the highest rated local wrestling show ever in the United States. The station is still willing to air wrestling in that time slot, but they're no longer going to foot the bill for it and that's where most of Power Pro's funding came from. But if any other promoters want to put together a promotion and start taping shows on their own, WMC is willing to air it in that time slot. But there's no viable money to be made by any promoters from doing that.
- Dave goes into all the reasons why the TV network made the decision to cancel Power Pro. The fire marshal had deemed the studio unsafe and ordered lots of renovations to get it up to code, insurance required, new seating required, etc. and the cost was well into the 6 figures. On the final PPW episode, promoter Randy Hales opened with an emotional interview thanking the fans for their support over the years. But behind the scenes, there's heat between Hales and PPW announcer Cory Maclin, who put in a proposal to WMC for his own wrestling promotion to take over the time slot and Hales feels like Maclin went behind his back and yada yada local wrasslin' drama. Anyway, the final match in PPW saw Jerry Lawler pin Spellbinder. And that's a wrap for Power Pro Wrestling. Man, as a kid growing up in Memphis, I vividly remember growing up watching Saturday morning wrestling on channel 5. End of an era.
- WATCH: Final episode of Power Pro Wrestling (Full Show)
- We're 7 weeks away from the planned relaunch of WCW and it's certainly shaping up to be totally different from the old WCW. A major concern for the relaunch appears to be keeping the finances under control while still running profitable shows and rebuilding the brand. The idea is for them to take the 24 WCW wrestlers they signed, add a few current WWF stars who "jump ship" and probably some former ECW and WCW stars who's contracts weren't picked up initially will also be added. They may also move some OVW developmental guys over to the new WCW. Jim Ross is flying to Atlanta this week to meet with several former WCW stars. Dave lists all the currently signed WCW names and says they have the talent for a strong undercard. But because they only bought out the lower-salaried guys, they have no viable top stars yet. Plus, the show has an 11pm-to-1am time slot on TNN, which is a death slot, so they need big names if it's going to have any chance of pulling viewers. Dave suggests moving The Rock to the new WCW, since working only one show a week with them would fit better with his movie schedule and he's a big enough star that he might be able to draw viewers to that time slot. He also suggests Rob Van Dam, but says there's some bad blood there (RVD and Sabu didn't exactly make a great impression on Vince a few years ago during the brief ECW-invasion angle, when they refused to do jobs for WWF undercard guys. Hence why RVD has been a free agent for months and hasn't been signed yet, despite his obvious star potential). At first, the new WCW will only be a weekly TV show. Any plans for touring house shows or PPVs are still months away and depends on how the WCW TV show does. If it does strong, they'll start running more shows and building the brand. If it flops on TV, Dave predicts they'll pull the plug early, do the inter-promotional angle and get it over with.
- Regarding the former big names of WCW, there's some back and forth being played with them and the WWF. It's believed the new WCW has to make a strong first impression and because of that, WWF really wants to sign some of these bigger name stars. But that is dependent on them being willing to take a buy out from Time Warner on their current contracts and accept a lower offer with WWF. At this point, nobody seems to be willing to take the buyouts because nobody wants to make less money. Even Booker T, who was the one major star WWF was counting on, doesn't appear to be a sure thing anymore, at least not in time for the new WCW relaunch. Many of the top stars (Booker, Flair, Scott Steiner, Goldberg, and DDP in particular) have already spoken with Jim Ross and most expressed interest in coming to WWF but not enough to give up their lucrative contracts. Goldberg in particular stands to earn a cool $6 million by sitting out the rest of his WCW deal so he's almost guaranteed not coming in, unless he just really hates money. It sucks because he's by far the biggest name they could bring in, and the potential dream matches with Austin, Rock, and Triple H would probably do big enough business to be worth buying out his contract, but WWF isn't willing to upset their salary structure by doing so. And Goldberg isn't a glory hound and doesn't care about the fame. He's said to be perfectly content to be retired and collect his money.
- Ric Flair is torn because, on one hand, he wants to take care of his family and do the smart financial thing. And on the other hand....he's Ric Flair. Smart financial decisions aren't really his strong suit and he really wants a one last big run in the business while he still can, even if it means taking a buyout and walking away from the guaranteed money he still has coming for the next 2 years. Privately, Flair has admitted that his match with Sting on Nitro may have been his final match but he doesn't really seem ready to walk away. Scott Steiner is sort of in the same boat. WWF would be a huge pay cut, but he's still willing to listen to offers. DDP really wants to come in to WWF but again, financially, it's not a smart decision and he knows he has to think about his family first. Same goes for Kidman, Kanyon, Mysterio, and others. Interestingly enough, Sting has had no talks with WWF. It's believed he may not want to wrestle anymore and may just quietly retire. Many who were around him in WCW for the last year or so said it's clear that he hasn't had any interest in wrestling for awhile and was just there to collect a paycheck. Sting is a born-again Christian and wasn't happy with the direction of WCW for the last year and clearly is no fan of WWF's direction either. As for other top WCW stars, like Jeff Jarrett, Lex Luger or Kevin Nash, it appears that WWF simply doesn't want them.
- The plan is to start putting together a WCW office team this week. Writers, agents, producers, etc. Dave notes that Tony Schiavone almost certainly will not be part of the new WCW. After making several inquiries to WWF about whether or not he was going to be hired and not hearing anything back, Schiavone accepted an announcing job to host a post-game radio show for the Atlanta Braves, which is kinda what he used to do before he got into wrestling years ago. Mike Tenay and Scott Hudson are expected to get WWF offers but that's still up in the air. Arenas have already been booked throughout June for the new WCW TV tapings. Another problem with the tapings is that they will have to rethink how they structure the shows. Most wrestling shows build up to the main event at the end. But with the WCW show airing in such a late time slot, not ending until 1am EST, all the big stars and angles will need to air earlier in the show (similar to how Hulk Hogan always worked the first match during SNME tapings in the 80s, since that's when the biggest audience was watching). TL;DR - still a whole lot of kinks to work out with this whole WCW thing (and of course, NONE of this ends up happening because Vince torpedoes the whole plan. We've got months of this shit-show coming up).
- WATCH: Keiji Muto vs. Toshiaki Kawada - AJPW, 2001
- Latest Wrestlemania 17 numbers: the latest estimate is a 2.15 buyrate for 900,000 buys. That's not the final number, but it's probably close and it makes WM17 by far the biggest non-boxing PPV event in history. The total gross from PPV, merch, and gate is now looking to top more than $40 million (these numbers were record-breaking 20 years ago. But in the wake of the BILLION dollar TV deal they have now, they seem almost paltry).
- When recapping the latest TV ratings news, Dave notes Raw did about a 5.08 which is about the same rating they were doing when Nitro was still on the other channel. It's interesting because in theory, no more competition should mean higher ratings for Raw. But nope. WCW fans aren't watching WWF. They just...aren't watching wrestling. Dave thinks that's a bad sign for the industry as a whole (yup. When WCW died, literally millions of wrestling fans just....vanished. And never returned. The Attitude Era was the peak of professional wrestling. At this moment in 2001, the industry is in the beginnings of a free-fall that honestly has continued to this day).
- Katsuhiko Nagata, the younger brother of Yuji Nagata, may be joining his brother in NJPW soon. Katsuhiko recently won a silver medal in the Olympics for amateur wrestling but had a full-time job as a police officer. But he recently quit the police force and is expected to make the jump to pro wrestling (he signs but never worked a match. He does dabble in MMA for awhile after this though).
- Harley Race, at age 58, will be having his first match in about 8 years at an indie show in June (not sure if this ever happens, I can't find any evidence of it).
- Long-time New Jersey area promoter Dennis Coraluzzo underwent triple bypass heart surgery last week, no word on his condition as of press time (apparently had some big time health problems at this point because he ends up dying just a couple months after this).
- Former ECW house show promoters Steve Karel, Greg Bagarozy and Dan Kowal have created a new promotion called Wrestling Zone, which will mostly feature former ECW wrestlers and other indie guys. They held a show last week that turned into a bit of a news story when Balls Mahoney got banned for life by the Maryland state athletic commission. Before the show, they had warned the wrestlers about some commission rules, specifically about blading. Needless to say, Mahoney went out there and bled buckets during a match with RVD. He had previously been suspended twice before by the commission, so this was kind of a 3rd strike thing.
- Stu Hart was hospitalized this week from health problems stemming from diabetes. He's home now and is said to be okay. But he turns 86 next month and, well, any hospitalization at that age is scary (he still has 2 years left). But Stu was said to be in good spirits at the hospital and was talking to the nurses about Frank Gotch and guys like that (classic Stu).
- Dave talks about a Florida newspaper which published a story this week on backyard wrestling. Dave says it was one of the best written mainstream articles he's ever seen on wrestling but was also one of the most unpleasant to read because of the subject matter. Dave says this whole backyard trend is awful because these kids are out there hurting themselves and doing hardcore bloodbaths in unsafe environments and it's extremely dangerous. But on the same hand, even though nobody in WWF will admit it, Dave figures half the roster 5 or 10 years from now is going to be made up of guys who started out doing this stuff. (Here's the full 2-part story and yeah, this is a pretty good read).
- At an indie show this week, they did an angle where Jack Victory turned on Steve Corino to set up a match between them next month. This was actually the plan for those 2 guys in ECW, but of course, the company died. So they just did the angle themselves on this show. So at least we're getting some closure on lingering ECW storylines I guess?
- There was a match in CZW with Jun Kasai & Nick Mondo vs. Johnny Kashmere & Justice Pain that is said to maybe be the sickest wrestling match ever held. It was a fans-bring-the-weapons match and fans brought all sorts of crazy shit. Guitars with light bulbs glued to them, light tubes covered in thumbtacks, glass windows, barbed wire, a bazillion light tubes, and more. Dave hasn't seen it yet and expects to have more on it next week, but he's been told it was just gruesome and disgusting (yeah this match is just.....why? Also, sorry, only link I could find was this Chinese video streaming site).
- WATCH: Jun Kasai & Nick Mondo vs. Johnny Kashmere & Justice Pain - CZW, 2001
- Now that ECW is dead, video game company Acclaim's planned 3rd ECW video game is also dead. Acclaim is still trying to do a wrestling video game based on the work they already started. It's going to be a legends game and they're trying to make individual deals with older wrestling legends who aren't under contract with WWF or another company (yeah it ends up being called Legends of Wrestling. They got a lot of big names and it turned into a bit of a series for a few years until Acclaim went out of business).
- Road Dogg held an auction on eBay for a fan to hang out with him for a night. The winning bid was just over $4,000.
- In an interview with Premier Magazine, The Rock stated publicly for the first time what his family and many people in the business have quietly been whispering about for awhile....that he eventually plans to leave wrestling for a career in Hollywood. When asked if he would be leaving wrestling, Rock said, "Absolutely. That's the first time I've ever said that. But, yeah. Making movies, you don't get the immediate reaction, but you're able to tell longer stories and it's great. Having done my first film--boy, this is what I want to do." Most people feel like Rock will never fully break ties with WWF or pro wrestling, but if his movie career continues to go well, his full-time wrestling career will probably come to an end sooner than later. Last year, during an appearance on the Tonight Show with Roger Ebert, the critic joked that Rock needed to get away from wrestling as fast as he could and become an actor and Rock laughed and responded, "I'm trying." Anyway, Dave says this is a no-brainer. Rock can make more money from one starring movie role than he could in a year of destroying his body for WWF. Anybody in his position would be a fool not to do it. Of course, Rock is still a huge star in wrestling and he could always come back and work the occasional big PPV match and collect a huge paycheck for doing that too, so Dave doesn't expect Rock to walk away entirely. No one who tries to leave wrestling ever goes for good, even the people who leave to go do movies. Although to be fair, there's never been a wrestler with the type of Hollywood potential that Rock has either, so who knows?
- Notes from Raw: during a segment with Kaientai, Big Show apparently used a racial slur for Japanese people, although it was bleeped on the west coast feed Dave watched. Later in the show, they had Paul Heyman emphasize that Big Show had called them "goofs." Anyway, the unedited tape is floating around the internet. Jeff Hardy lost the IC title back to Triple H and Dave thinks this was bullshit. Not that Triple H won, but that he made Jeff Hardy look like a complete jobber the whole time and pretty much buried him. That brought out Matt and Austin and it turned into a double burial, with Austin and Triple H not selling anything for them and beating them down like dogs, just in case fans were starting to get the crazy idea that the Hardyz could be main event level stars or something. They ended up being saved by Undertaker and Kane. Dave seems pretty irritated about all this, saying that this is the kind of dumb shit WCW used to do when new, young stars were finally starting to break through to the next level (Dave kinda has a point here. The Hardyz were nuclear hot going into this little mini-angle here. But after Austin and Triple H destroyed them, they went back to midcard tag feuds. It would be years after this before either of them would get put into a real main event position again).
- WATCH: Big Show maybe or maybe doesn't use a racial slur (around the :50 second mark)
- The XFL championship game will be San Francisco vs. Los Angeles. Attendance for both teams has been bad for awhile and getting worse and Dave thinks this game could have an embarrassing turnout (Wikipedia says the attendance was 24,000ish but who knows how legit that is, because they were blatantly fudging attendance numbers from day one of the league).
- In a recent newspaper article, XFL president Basil DeVito and director of operations Mike Keller vowed that XFL will return for a second season, with Keller going so far to swear on the lives of his children that it will be back. Dave cheekily jokes about the last Vince McMahon employee who swore on his children's lives about something (Earl Hebner swearing on his children's lives to Bret that he wouldn't screw him over, shortly before doing exactly that).
- XFL announcer Matt Vasgersian is also an announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers. Doing a game he was broadcasting there, someone asked him what he did during his off-season time away from the Brewers and he responded, "Doing a thing that was supposed to be football, I think." When asked if he would be doing the XFL for a 2nd season he laughed and said, "With the boss man constantly changing his mind week in and week out, I didn't know if they loved me or hated me. I'm surprised I lasted this whole season."
- The Jewish Defense League complained to the XFL, saying that the L.A. Xtreme team's logo is meant to look like a swastika. Then they went on their own website and asked people to vote on a poll whether it was meant to be a swastika and 60% voted no, so they have since dropped their complaint. Dave just shakes his head at this and doesn't believe for a second that "swastika" ever crossed anyone's mind when designing it and this is much todo about nothing.
- Notes from the Smackdown taping: it was in Philadelphia and despite several former ECW stars on the show, there were said to be pretty much no ECW chants, which one fan wrote was the final realization that ECW is truly dead. Security was confiscating fan signs at the doors of the arena, which is the first time Dave has heard of them doing that. WCW did it often, which at one point led WWF to mock them for it and brag about how WWF fans were free to express themselves however they wanted. No longer, apparently. With no more competition, WWF seemingly no longer has any qualms about doing things that rub fans the wrong way. Because fuck you, what else are you gonna watch? That's what we thought. Anyway, lots of OVW guys worked dark matches before the taping. Brock Lesnar and Shelton Benjamin got over the best, with lots of people in particular raving about Lesnar, who did a shooting star press for the finish. They said Lesnar's punches were bad (looked like Chyna's) but the shooting star press blew people's minds. And Benjamin did a 450 and was moving as smoothly as a luchador. Lots of people were talking about wanting to bring both of them up already. Anyway, Nick Dinsmore, Randy Orton, Rico Constantino, and others also worked dark matches.
- TSN in Canada got in trouble with the Canadian Broadcast Standards people for some stuff that aired on Raw. First for using "certain derogatory and demeaning terms in referring to women" and for using weapons during matches. Since TSN didn't air an advisory warning during the show, they were in violation of some broadcast rules I guess.