September 03, 2001
- WWF's latest quarterly earnings report exceeded expectations, mostly due to the huge success of the Invasion PPV, which buyrate-wise clocks in as one of the top 10 PPVs in wrestling history (behind a few Wrestlemanias, Rumbles, and a Summerslam). Basically, this Invasion PPV was a MONSTER hit. Dave breaks down a billion other numbers from the report, live attendance figures, merchandising figures, year-over-year revenues, etc. Despite the PPV success, everything else is down quite a bit. In fact, if not for the staggering success of that PPV, WWF would have had its first money-losing quarter since 1997. There's a ton of detail in this but it's mostly boring numbers stuff. During an investors meeting, Linda McMahon acknowledged the issues between WWF and DirecTV over who gets what percentage of PPV revenue. She also mentioned that they still plan to break the WCW/ECW group off into its own separate brand sometime in the first quarter of 2002. The company also seems to be preparing for the U.S. market to get weaker, and are already making plans to be more aggressive in expanding internationally in 2002. Dave talks about the dark days of 1993-96 and how WWF did tons of overseas tours during that period because business in the U.S. was horrible but they always did strong numbers overseas which helped them survive when business was bad.
- The Rock is attached to 2 upcoming movies. The first is tentatively titled "Hunting Bronze" and will see Rock playing a bounty hunter who is trying to find a fugitive before the "heel police" guys can kill him first. Oh Dave. Anyway, this movie is considered a lock to happen and in fact, it was primarily written with Rock in mind for the lead role (the title changes and this eventually becomes "The Rundown"). The other movie is an untitled film written by Brian Helgeland, the guy who wrote "L.A. Confidential." This one isn't guaranteed yet, but Rock is considered the leading candidate for it (not sure what movie this ended up being, but Rock isn't in it. Hegleland wrote 2 movies around this time: one called Blood Work which mostly flopped, and the other was Mystic River which was a big hit and won a ton of awards).
- Main Event Championship Wrestling is already unraveling due to a shady promoter and money issues. They were scheduled to have an event this week, which was announced as a TV taping, but when several of the top wrestlers arrived at their local airports to fly to the show, they learned their tickets hadn't been paid for as promised and thus, they all no-showed. Dave says this whole situation is utterly predictable because so many wrestlers are desperately hoping that a new promotion will spring up from the ashes of WCW and ECW and a lot of snakes are lurking in the grass to take advantage. In this case, MECW promoter John Collins has been claiming to have big name wrestlers signed to contracts, when he actually doesn't. They ran one show in the old ECW Arena and despite claiming to have millions of dollars earmarked for the company, they didn't promote the show well and ended up having to give away hundreds of freebies to fill the building. And now this. Collins apparently tried to book the flights through Bob Ryder's travel agency (he writes for 1wrestling.com and is also a travel agent) but Collins couldn't pay for the tickets in advance and offered to send a check later. But Ryder isn't new to this game and wasn't falling for that shit. So anyway, that's where everything is at. The show still happened, but some of the big names weren't there and there was no cameras, so no TV taping. The crowd was upset about the no-shows and some of the wrestlers weren't paid. Others had checks bounce, so the spirit of ECW is still alive. Dave notes that Collins has spent time in prison in past for writing bad checks.
- There appears to be a business split between Antonio Inoki and Shinya Hashimoto which threatens the future of the Zero-One promotion. This is a confusing mess and apparently has something to do with Hashimoto signing MMA fighter Mark Kerr to a wrestling contract against Inoki's wishes. Kerr has been fighting for PRIDE but Inoki wants him in NJPW and had big plans for him, but Hashimoto apparently swiped him up first. That led to Inoki pulling all of his guys out of a Zero-One show at the last minute. Dave also notes that Zero-One had been negotiating with UFC fighter Josh Barnett (who is a student of the business and a huge pro wrestling fan) but that fell through because they wanted Barnett to job to Naoya Ogawa in his first match and Barnett wasn't going for it.
- Man, there is just nothing else happening in the rest of the world. Mexico, Puerto Rico, Japan....all Dave really has, for the most part, is just recaps of shows. Not much in the way of news. He recaps the Fujita vs. Cro Cop fight mentioned last week and says NJPW is hoping to put together a rematch for Fujita to get his win back, since having their IWGP champ get annihilated in less than a minute is pretty bad for NJPW (they do have a rematch at the end of 2002 and Cro Cop wins again, this time by unanimous decision).
- A tabloid in Japan reported a story of a woman claiming to have had an affair with Atsushi Onita. The woman claims she slept with Onita 3 times and that he had lied to her, claiming he wasn't married even though he's actually been married for 9 years. Onita held a press conference admitting to meeting the woman but denying that they had sexual relationship and the woman is lying. Onita, of course, was just elected to a national political office. Dave thinks the next few years are going to be hilarious.
- Stacy Carter officially filed for divorce from Jerry Lawler this week. Carter notes that she lived with Lawler for the last 12 years in a relationship and is arguing that she should be entitled to half of everything from those years. This would be a big deal because Lawler has made a lot of money in the last 12 years, particularly in 1997 where he pocketed more than $1 million on the sale of USWA. Carter is also asking for alimony and attorney fees. Lawler was on the Opie & Anthony show this week and talked about it. Lawler talked about all the stuff he wrote online recently about looking for a new girlfriend and admitted that he was secretly hoping Stacy would read it, get jealous, and come back to him. But Lawler says she has changed her phone number and moved out and he doesn't even know how to get hold of her anymore.
- Various news & notes: Goldberg will no longer be part of the flag football game taking place at the old Mile High Stadium with other former NFL players, no reason given. Indie wrestler Reckless Youth may be forced to retire due to back problems (nah).
- Some 24-year-old guy in Nashville died this week after some backyard wrestling gone wrong. Basically, a bunch of dudes got drunk and started doing moves on each other. This guy took a rock bottom on a concrete floor, hit his head, fell into a coma and never woke up. It became a big news story with, of course, WWF being mentioned in all the articles.
- Another promoter in Texas is making noise, claiming he's going to start up a promotion. He's talking about having a national TV deal in place already and that Shawn Michaels is interested in being part of it and they're gonna take down the WWF and so on and so forth. Dave, of course, has looked into it and calls bullshit on all this. This leads him to rant about all these new startups. Basically, unless you have a viable TV network behind you, forget about it. You can break even and maybe even make some money running a local indie, but if you're looking bigger than that, you have to have big names committed and you have to have a TV deal behind you. Otherwise, you're just going to lose a bunch of money. Back in the old days, you could buy syndication, but that's too expensive now too. The economics of the wrestling business have changed. So by all means, run your little indie shows and have fun with it and see if you can make a profit. But in regards to all these new promoters popping up and talking about challenging Vince....until you have millions of dollars, big names signed to contracts, and a strong television deal on a national outlet, Dave doesn't even wanna hear it with this "we're going to topple the WWF" bullshit.
- Notes from Raw: Shane Helms was repackaged as "a total geek who believes comic books are real." Dave says in real life, Helms is a big comic book fan and now they've got him wearing a cape and mask. Dave thinks it's a terrible gimmick. Dave is wrong. He notes that there's been talk of splitting the APA and pushing Bradshaw as a singles star. Dave notes that Stephanie McMahon was barely on this show but he also says that despite the fact that fans talk about how much they hate her, her segments actually do strong ratings, so she is a draw.
- Dave mentions that there have been a lot of complaints within the locker room about DDP, though he doesn't specify what they are. Apparently a lot of people don't like him. And in fact, during a recent production meeting, Vince started the meeting by (jokingly?) asking "does anyone have anything to say about DDP before we get started?" Others are saying that in a few months, nobody will even remember that DDP was once in WWF. Online, Jim Ross disputed that and said DDP definitely has a future with the company.
- OVW notes: wrestlers Rico Constantino and Prototype won the tag team titles. Dave thinks those 2 guys have the charisma and personality of a top level 80s tag team, but they're not all that great in the ring yet. Prototype in particular also over-acts a bit too much for Dave's taste but Dave thinks it might be okay if he was a heel (yeah, that guy should turn heel!). Leviathan shaved his head again and Dave doesn't seem to care for it. John Heidenreich is huge but shows zero charisma. They're doing an angle where Cornette blames WCW for how they over-pushed David Flair, so now Flair is having to work his way back up the ladder from the bottom, as a way to try to get him over. And Dave notes that Jim Cornette is probably the 2nd best promo guy in the business right now, behind Rock.
- The WWF schedule is getting to a lot of guys lately, with word that everyone backstage is pretty much exhausted, burned out, and just over it. There's also a lot of guys who are banged up but are keeping their injuries secret because they don't want to be taken off TV and lose their spot. With so many wrestlers now fighting for limited TV time and no WCW or ECW to run to, the "out of sight out of mind" thing is a huge problem that everyone is afraid of. Nobody wants to take a few months off, only to find out there's no place for them when they're ready to come back.
- WWF sent a threatening legal letter to the guys who run wrestletapes.net, because they've been selling dubbed WWF events. They also sent one to prowrestlingtv.com which has been streaming Raw and Smackdown episodes over the internet.
- There's a new unauthorized "biography" of Vince McMahon out called "No Chance" and Dave says it's not even worth mentioning because it's just a collection of random stories about Vince taken from the internet, most of which are bullshit and aren't even organized in a logical fashion. The book ends with the prediction that WWF will be bankrupt within 2 years, which Dave gets a big chuckle out of.
- The WWF has chosen not to give championship rings to the members of the L.A. Express Xtreme team that won the XFL championship last season in order to save money. However, WWF did give those players the option to purchase their own championship rings for $120. Dave thinks it's pretty shitty, with those guys busting their asses all season (for very low contracts), getting ridiculed in the press for things that weren't their fault, and were promised all along that there would be a 2nd season. Now it's not happening and the players who won the championship basically have to buy their own prize for it.
- This feels like a super short issue. Sorry y'all, I dunno what to say. Can't change the past I guess.