May 14, 2001
- WATCH: Riki Choshu & Manabu Nakanishi vs. Naoya Ogawa & Kazunari Murakami
- UFC 31 is in the books and Dave notes that it's UFC's 3rd sellout in a row. Randy Couture won a controversial decision victory over Pedro Rizzo, which will surely lead to a rematch (yup, at UFC 34). The show also saw the debut of B.J. Penn, who Dave said looked awesome. Penn is the first American to win the black belt division of the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu world championships and a lot of people say he's the Oscar de la Hoya of MMA. Many people are predicting big things for him (yeah, he did okay for himself). Shonie Carter knocked out Matt Serra with an awesome spinning backfist. And Chuck Liddell knocked out Kevin Randleman in the first round in what many thought was an upset but Dave points out that Liddell's no joke and didn't think it was as big an upset as others seemed to think (the beginning of UFC's resurrection has begun).
- I included the UFC bit because this issue is slow and short and I'm trying to pad this shit out.
- Dave reviews attendance figures from WWF house shows for all of 2001 so far and crunches a bunch of numbers to determine who's a draw, who's not, and all that fun stuff. Problem is, the numbers are so skewed by so many different factors that these numbers don't really mean anything. But there is one interesting statistic in here that is hard to deny: babyface Austin headlining house shows averaged 11,537 paid attendance per show. Heel Austin is averaging 7,142 paid. In other words, no matter how much heat Austin appears to be getting on TV and no matter how much people boo, this heel turn is a disaster for his drawing power. If Austin's heel turn had led to PPV buys increasing by 130,000 or more on average, then it might be okay because that would be enough to offset the lower attendance figures. But....that's not happening either. From a business perspective, Austin's heel turn is looking like a complete and total abject failure so far.
- FMW in Japan ran its annual biggest show of the year....at the parking lot of the old Kawasaki Baseball Stadium. In years past, FMW ran hugely successful shows in that stadium, with Onita drawing 40,000-50,000 person crowds several years in a row during the mid-90s. But FMW has fallen on hard times in recent years and then the baseball stadium was torn down in 1998. But FMW returned to the former location and set up a show in the old parking lot, with an announced crowd of 10,500. Dave says the number is exaggerated, though not by much and it was reportedly a financially successful show, which is good because FMW desperately needed it (little did anyone know at the time but they were in deep debt to the Yakuza). They have been struggling for years and it was said that if this show hadn't been successful, it would likely have been the end of the promotion. They banked their entire future on drawing a big gate for this show and it paid off (for now. The company will still be dead in less than a year and the company president ends up killing himself so the insurance money could pay off his debts to the Yakuza and keep his family safe. And even the insurance payout wasn't enough. His family spent years after paying off the remainder. Depressing shit).
- In CMLL, they aired footage of Perro Aguayo talking about him having neck surgery and talking as though he is retired. Dave is skeptical and thinks it might all be a work and thinks they wouldn't be devoting so much TV time to him if he was really finished and thinks it might be one of those fake Hulk Hogan style "retirements" (turns out it was real. Not sure if the neck surgery was legit but I assume it was because this really was pretty much the end of the road for him, aside from a one-off comeback match in 2005).
- Dave talks about the Colon family members who are wrestling in Puerto Rico. Word is Eddie Colon (Primo) is really good and everyone raves about his in-ring skill at only 18 years old. The other brother Carly (Carlito) is said to be decent but he's mostly over based on his family name rather than skills.
- Shinya Hashimoto is talking about bringing in Minoru Suzuki to work some shows for his ZERO-One promotion. Dave talks about how Suzuki was a huge deal in the shoot-fighting world in the mid-90s and helped found Pancrase, but he took too many beatings and is a shell of his former self these days. Now that he can no longer be competitive in MMA, Suzuki is looking to get back into pro wrestling, which he used to do in the late-80s and early-90s prior to starting Pancrase (still about 2 more years before he returns to wrestling, but he eventually did and continues to be the scariest person in NJPW to this day).
- A note on ECW's financials that were reported in the bankruptcy filings last week. A major reason why ECW's income declined in 2000 compared to 1999 was because InDemand PPV was slow to pay ECW money it was owed. In fact, InDemand still owes ECW more than $800,000 for 1999 and significantly more than that for 2000. However, even if you don't factor that in, ECW's gross revenue for 2000 was still not any better than 1999, despite having national TV for most of the year, and they were almost certainly doomed regardless. Even if/when InDemand pays ECW everything it owes, they're still going to be millions of dollars in debt (Heyman has talked about this in detail in past interviews. He still hates the people at InDemand and still believes that if they had paid the money they owed in a timely fashion, ECW could have survived or at least bought them more time to get another TV deal. Who knows how true that is or not, but yeah).
- A lawsuit against Shane Douglas from a 1997 ECW incident was settled out of court this week. Long story short, Douglas got into an altercation with a fan at a show and the fan claims Douglas spit on his teenage daughter and then attacked him, permanently injuring him. The man later had a hip replacement and argued that the incident with Douglas was the reason. Douglas, of course, argued that the whole thing was self-defense and that the guy and his daughter spat on him first. Anyway, it was all settled for an undisclosed amount of money. ECW was named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, no word on what the settlement entails for them, but good luck getting any money out of the corpse of ECW at this point.
- Jerry Sags, of the Nasty Boys, teamed with Brian Knobbs for the first time in almost 5 years at an indie show this past week. Sags has been retired since 1997 after suing WCW and Scott Hall, claiming they were responsible for a career-ending concussion he suffered during a match. Sags had already been working with a concussion and told Hall not to hit him in the head during the match. So naturally, Hall came in with a chair and bashed Sags right in the head with it. At that point, the match fell apart and Sags attacked Hall and legitimately beat the shit out of him in the middle of the match, forcing Hall to undergo dental surgery. Sags later sued him and WCW for it and collected a big settlement and retired. But now that WCW is out of business, Sags has apparently decided retirement no longer suits him (yup, he still periodically teams with Knobbs and wrestles to this day).
- The Mummy Returns opened this week and it was a huge success, setting the record for the 2nd biggest opening weekend in movie history, doing nearly $70 million (second only to Lost World: Jurassic Park). The Rock was everywhere this week doing press for it and, although he only has a small role in the film, it's a pretty damn good first step for the Rock and this whole Hollywood thing.
- Nothing much new on the WCW re-launch. Jim Ross, who is kind of heading up everything, was sick this week (he also missed the Insurrextion PPV because of illness). There are arenas on hold for planned WCW shows, but apparently there's an issue with TNN regarding the TV situation for it that looks to be delaying things, so the planned June launch date might not happen and there's whispers that it may be as late as September before they are able to relaunch WCW. None of the Time Warner-contracted former WCW names have been given any offers yet either so the roster is still in limbo as well. However, there is talk of bringing in at least one of the major WCW stars. Dave thinks Goldberg is almost a must-have if this WCW thing is going to be successful, but he also understands why WWF isn't willing to buy out his huge contract to get him, so it's kind of a catch-22.
- Regarding former ECW talent, Paul Heyman is pushing to get Super Crazy, CW Anderson, Tommy Dreamer, and the FBI brought into WWF (though likely they would end up on the WCW brand).
- Chris Jericho, performing under the name Fozzy Osborne, will be performing a concert next week. Pffft, yeah like that'll ever turn into anything...