June 18, 2001
- We're halfway through "one of the most unique years in the history of pro wrestling" so Dave has decided to take a look at his thoughts on who would win all the usual year-end awards if the year ended now. Dave talks about how, with the deaths of WCW and ECW, there are less full-time wrestlers working in the U.S. than ever before so the choices are kinda limited. Anyway, this is just for fun, it's just Dave's opinion, not the actual awards.
- Hey speaking of matches of the year and best feuds, the NJPW vs. AJPW feud is still going and this past week, Keiji Muto became the first non-AJPW wrestler ever to win their Triple Crown title. Muto defeated Genichiro Tenryu in what many are calling a likely match of the year winner. It sounds shocking since they're both, yanno, old as dirt by wrestling standards (Muto is damn near 40 and half crippled while Tenryu is 51) but word is both men discovered the fountain of youth for this match. Muto now joins Tenryu and Vader as one of only 3 men in history to win both AJPW and NJPW's top titles and is the first to win it while still with NJPW. Dave runs down the rest of the show, which featured several AJPW vs. NJPW inter-promotional matches but he hasn't seen it yet so he doesn't review it (Muto vs. Tenryu does indeed end up winning Match of the Year for 2001 and yeah, it's a classic).
- WATCH: Keiji Muto vs. Genichiro Tenryu - AJPW Triple Crown title match
- Pro Wrestling NOAH held their own Jumbo Tsuruta tribute show this week. If you recall, NOAH originally announced the show a month ago. But then AJPW decided to announce their own Tsuruta tribute show and did theirs first, just to be dicks. But Tsuruta left AJPW on bad terms (Motoko Baba basically forced him out soon after Giant Baba died) and Tsuruta had made it clear he was on NOAH's side in the split before he died. Anyway, none of Tsuruta's family went to the AJPW show, but a bunch of them attended this NOAH ceremony.
- My god this is a slow issue.
- When reviewing the latest NJPW TV show, Dave offhandedly notes a couple of things. For starters, the last 6 weeks or so of NJPW booking has been WCW-level bad (dAvE iS bIAsEd foR nJpW!). And secondly, there's still talk of bringing in Minoru Suzuki.
- Kevin Nash is the latest name to come up in the Atlanta Gold Club trial. The former manager of the club testified that Nash was one of the celebrities for whom they arranged strippers to have sex. The gist of the trial is that the government is accusing the club of using strippers as prostitutes (paid by the club) to have sex with famous celebrities and athletes in order to make the club a more hip, happening place in order to attract more celebrity clientele. And then they allegedly funneled those profits to the Gambino crime family.
- Former WCW wrestler Dale Torborg, who wrestled as the KISS Demon, is now working as a strength and conditioning coach for the Montreal Expos baseball team. His father Jeff Torborg is the team's manager.
- Matrats, the teen promotion in Canada that Eric Bischoff is involved with, is going to get a name change and they're hoping to do a PPV in October. Bischoff says for it to work, it has to be 180 degrees different from WWF, so they're planning to eliminate all the bad language, sexual innuendos, violence, etc. (That's gonna put some butts in the seats.)
- Diana Hart Smith's new book is coming out in October and is called Under The Mat (whew lord, just wait until we get to all the drama coming out of this book).
- Occasional wrestler Shaggy 2 Dope of the Insane Clown Posse was arrested after a bar brawl along with 2 other rappers (Monoxide from Twiztid and Marz, if you're juggalo enough to know those names). Apparently they were asked to leave a bar at 2am as it was closing and it led to a fight and they beat up some guy.
- Scott Hall was hospitalized after suffering a seizure at the mall while he was with his kids, no other details given.
- Scott Steiner has been sued in Knoxville by a woman over an incident that took place last year. According to the lawsuit, she says she was sitting inside a parked vehicle when Steiner reached in the window without consent and groped up her skirt and told her, "Take it off baby," "Show it to me," and "Oooh you have gold panties on." The lawsuit doesn't state much more than that.
- Randy Savage is the latest name to say he's planning to start up a new promotion, talking about trying to get investors and TV time. Dave says until that stuff is locked down, none of these stories are anything. Getting money and TV is the key and if you don't have either, you're just flapping your lips. (Yeah, this obviously doesn't happen).
- CZW wrestler Ric Blade was seriously injured at that company's latest show, suffering back and neck injuries and a compound leg fracture that will require major surgery. Basically he did a dive off a balcony, kinda missed, and there ya go.
- WATCH: Ric Blade injured at CZW show
- Holy shit, we're already in the final WWF section. This really is a slow issue. No specific notes from Raw other than Dave hated damn near all of it. The Angle/Benoit cage match was good but everything else was a WCW-esque shit-show. Dave just tears it apart and he can't seem to understand what has gotten into WWF since WCW folded (spoiler: complacency) but aside from a brief 2-week period last month, they've been consistently awful for the last 2+ months.
- Eddie Guerrero will only be allowed to return to WWF if he successfully completes rehab. Guerrero has reportedly developed quite a nasty painkiller addiction, stemming from his 1998 New Year's Eve car accident injuries that he never fully recovered from before returning to the ring in WCW. Regardless, it hasn't gone unnoticed within WWF that there's been several drug-related issues lately (Eddie, Grandmaster Sexay, Road Dogg, etc.), but according to Jim Ross, the company still has no plans to resume company-wide drug testing the way they did in the early-90s. "We do drug tests upon cause or we take appropriate action upon cause. We had a situation where in our view Eddie Guerrero was unfit to work and we took action. He's in therapy. I don't know what else I could do with him," Ross said in an interview.
- Dean Malenko has talked about retiring and becoming a backstage road agent (indeed, Malenko only wrestles maybe 6 or 7 more matches before retiring at the end of 2001 and spent the next 18 years as an agent for WWE before recently leaving to go become an agent for AEW).
- As if the injury situation in the main event scene of WWF isn't bad enough already, Chris Jericho has a herniated disc in his lower back. Chris Benoit got a cortisone shot for his shoulder this week and showed significant improvement, which made everyone breathe a sigh of relief because it looks like he's going to be okay (that sigh of relief ain't gonna last long). It's thought it'll take about 2 months for his arm to regain full strength but he's finally able to do push-ups again.
- Jerry Lawler posted on his website, saying he was shocked by his son Brian Christopher's (Grandmaster Sexay) arrest. Lawler said he truly thought his son was one of the guys in the company who was drug free and admitted being disappointed to find out that wasn't true. For his part, Brian has released his own statement on Lawler's website saying that the drugs weren't his, which of course, no one believes because that's what everyone says when they get caught with drugs. When Brian was first confronted about it by Jim Ross after his arrest, he admitted the drugs were his. After he was fired, he has since changed his story. (I dug through the archive of Lawler's old site and found both statements):
- Tommy Dreamer has come to a verbal agreement with WWF and will be starting whenever they decide to bring him in. But in the meantime, he's still working indies.
- DDP was in Stamford last week talking to WWF. They're trying to keep the story quiet and DDP has been telling people he hasn't agreed to anything with WWF yet, but Dave says that's not true. His deal is in place and they already have storyline plans for him. They're just trying to keep it quiet so his debut can be a surprise. Dave notes that Booker T, Kanyon, and Buff Bagwell have all signed as well but WWF is keeping that hush-hush for now also.
- Former WCW announcer Scott Hudson is in a position where he can either return to his regular full-time job or continue to work part-time, which would allow him to work for WWF as an announcer, but he has to inform his current employer one way or another soon. So he reached out to WWF basically saying, "Hey, am I getting hired or nah?" and he never got a response. In fact, a lot of former WCW office and backstage employees are pretty annoyed with WWF right now. They were all led to believe that they would end up with jobs when the new WCW relaunched. The TV situation has, of course, caused that to be put on hold. Everyone is understanding of that but feels WWF has been terrible at communicating with the former WCW employees about what the situation is. So right now, a lot of people are still out of work with no idea if or when WWF is going to bring them in.
- Still no word on where Wrestlemania 18 will be. Currently, they're looking into the Georgia Dome in Atlanta or the Skydome in Toronto. Dave is kinda surprised they would consider the Skydome because, for starters, the acoustics there for wrestling aren't good and also because the exchange rate for the money is a killer and would cut into their profits (it does indeed end up being Skydome).
- Dave offhandedly ponders whatever happened to the Chyna/Lita storyline. Ever since their match at Judgment Day, the angle seems to have been dropped and Chyna hasn't been seen since (unbeknownst to anyone, Chyna's already done and will never be seen in WWF again).