September 10, 2001
- I predict a slow news week, because the top story isn't really news. It's just a LONG piece of Dave pointing out all the problems and ways that WWF has botched this Invasion angle so far. Back in the 80s, Crockett bought the UWF promotion and completely bungled the promotion vs. promotion storyline because they buried UWF rather than present them as equals. Both Vince McMahon and Jim Ross (who lived through the Crockett/UWF deal) have talked about not making those same mistakes, and yet, 2 months into the Invasion and it's already happened. The Alliance's top star is Steve Austin who comes across as a WWF heel leading a group of incompetent geeks. Booker T and RVD are the only members of the Alliance who aren't "WWF guys" that have gotten any kind of push. The Alliance feels like a WWF heel faction rather than an outsider group that poses an actual threat to WWF. Literally millions of WCW fans vanished when WCW folded and WWF has made no effort to win them back. The introduction of WCW wrestlers into WWF was piss-poor. Back in 1996, WCW took the worst-drawing WWF champion in history (Nash) and a guy who had pretty much never main evented a single WWF PPV (Hall) and turned it into the biggest, coolest invasion storyline in wrestling history. Guys like Booker T and DDP were bigger stars in WCW than Hall and Nash ever were in WWF, and yet, WWF has totally fumbled the ball, for stupid reasons. DDP has been buried since day one for being a WCW guy. Guys like Booker T and RVD are accused of "not knowing how to work." Things like that. WWF has always had the mentality that they are the major leagues and "if it didn't happen here, it doesn't count." So instead of rebuilding the WCW brand and capitalizing on the star power of some of these WCW guys, they've completely shat on them instead. Hall and Nash were laying out WCW's top guys with baseball bats when they first debuted and it built tremendous heat. Meanwhile, in WWF, DDP is getting beat up by Undertaker's wife every week.
- Dave gives a laundry list of examples of guys who were huge stars in WCW (or even as far back as Crockett in the 80s) who jumped ship to WWF and quickly became just another guy because Vince would never treat them like his own top stars. The Alliance is a bunch of jobbers who only exist to further the ongoing McMahon family soap opera every week. Dave especially hates how so many of the WCW guys have been accused of not knowing how to work, as if in-ring ability ever mattered when it comes to drawing money. At one point in this, while discussing things they should do, Dave suggests bringing in Eric Bischoff and then jokes that hell will probably freeze over first before Vince does that. Whoops. As much as he hates to admit it, Dave thinks bringing in Hulk Hogan might be the only answer to saving this Alliance faction and the Invasion angle.
- From here, Dave basically fantasy-books how to save the Invasion angle and it mostly comes down to the fact that WWF has to make the Alliance a threat and that means pushing their stars, rebuilding the brand, and most importantly, WWF guys are going to have to start selling for and putting over the WCW guys. He also suggests debuting Brock Lesnar and pushing him in a way similar to Goldberg. Lots of stuff like that. Dave goes on and on about this for a LONG time. In fact, this is one of the only times in the history of covering 10 years of these Observers that I've seen Dave just veer off into total fantasy booking. It's just paragraph after paragraph of suggesting what WWF should be doing to save this Invasion angle and pointing out all the ways they've already fucked it up. And for what it's worth, he's right about pretty much all of it. Almost everything he writes here is stuff we've all spent the last 20 years since asking, "Why didn't they just do this? It was so obvious!" So yeah, nothing newsworthy here, but if you want to see some A+ complaining about the Invasion angle from way back in 2001 when it was still happening, this is the issue for you.
- Wrestlemania 18 was finally officially announced for the Sky Dome in Toronto at a press conference there this week. They held a big press conference, with local politicians and WWF stars. WM18 in Toronto has been known for a long time and Toronto mayor Mel Lastman has caught a lot of flack in the media for working an angle about the whole thing. Prior to this, Lastman had worked hard to bring the Olympics to Toronto but failed, which earned him a lot of criticism. So in an effort to work the local media, Lastman then publicly began pursuing Wrestlemania and pretended that he was still competing with other cities and that he was working to finalize the deal. But then the local media learned that the WWF deal had actually already been finalized a long time ago and the mayor was just trying to get some good publicity for himself by pretending he was fighting for something he already had locked down. In reality, WWF was offered a great deal on the Skydome and mayor Lastman really didn't even have much to do with the decision. At the press conference, Lastman was greeted with some cheers but a lot of boos as well. Triple H was at the press conference and took off his shirt at one point and Dave says he looked freakishly huge (this is while he was still out with the torn quad and yeah, he bulked up like crazy during that time).
- WATCH: WrestleMania 18 press conference highlights
- The smooth working relationship between UFC and PRIDE is shaky all of a sudden after it appears Brazilian fighter Anderson Silva has signed valid contracts with both companies, unbeknownst to either side. So now they're both bickering over who actually has the rights to use Silva. UFC and PRIDE had previously agreed not to get into bidding wars over talent and to work together, but they both really wanted Silva.
- Antonio Inoki did a newspaper interview and said he wants Kazuyuki Fujita to defend the IWGP title at the Tokyo Dome next month against Naoya Ogawa. Furthermore, if NJPW doesn't make that match, Inoki claims he will book the nearby Sumo Hall on the same night and run his own show in competition with NJPW. So needless to say, Inoki is basically trying to force NJPW to do what he wants them to do. Dave says the whole political situation in NJPW is a mess right now because Inoki has so much power and influence over the company and he's using it to put focus on his favorite shooters and MMA fighters and doing shoot matches rather than building up the wrestling product. All the top stars that NJPW has built are now being put in positions of losing real fights which kills their drawing power (yup, we're full speed into the Inoki-damn-near-kills-NJPW era. It's pretty clear that he wanted to run an MMA company instead of a wrestling company and he tried to turn NJPW into that).
- At the latest Zero-One show, Shinya Hashimoto challenged Pancrase founder Minoru Suzuki to a future match. Suzuki was at the show doing commentary and he accepted Hashimoto's challenge. Suzuki hasn't done a worked pro wrestling match since the early 90s, but he has worked as a pro wrestler for a few years early in his career, including NJPW and UWF (Suzuki vs. Hashimoto never happens and Suzuki doesn't return to pro wrestling for another 2 years. But he does pretty well for himself when he does).
- Chyna was on the Larry King show this week. It was strange because they literally interrupted the nonstop Gary Condit coverage to do the interview (in unrelated news, 9/11 ends up being the best thing that ever happened to Gary Condit). Chyna came across well and was mostly honest without seeming bitter, which Dave admires because in her position, it would certainly be easy to be bitter. Chyna talked about signing a deal to do another upcoming Playboy issue. She admitted that she wanted to win the WWF title and wanted to wrestle men and felt her career there was only going to go backwards if she stayed. When WCW and ECW folded, it gave Vince McMahon a monopoly on the entire industry and coincidentally, her contract was the first one to come due right after. So Vince low-balled her on money because, well, he can do that now. Dave disagrees and says Chyna wanted a big guaranteed contract, didn't want to work a full schedule, and wanted to pursue outside acting roles in her free time. That's the sort of deal that only guys like Austin and Rock can get. Basically, she was asking for way too much and Dave doesn't think the WCW/ECW deaths had much to do with it. There was talk months before either of those companies closed that Chyna had become difficult and that her contract might not be renewed. Larry King asked about the Triple H/Stephanie thing and Chyna admitted it was true but tried not to blame that on her being released, although she did say she was badly hurt by it. But she did acknowledge that it probably played at least a small part in their decision to release her.
- Bret Hart, Stevie Ray, and Road Dogg are headed to Australia to do advance promotional work for the WWA shows that are being booked by Vince Russo. Buff Bagwell was also asked to go and help promote it, since he's working the show, but he refused. "Some things will never change," Dave notes.
- Notes from Raw: they were in Toronto and Rock was booed heavily, especially when he used the sharpshooter (yeah, Rock's never really been particularly well-liked in Toronto. But he got 'em back). Christian finally turned on Edge after teasing it for weeks, so the end of E&C has finally arrived. Jericho got by far the biggest pop on the show. Huge "You screwed Bret" chants aimed at Earl Hebner. At some point, the whole show went to shit. The satellite feed cut out and things grinded to a halt. A lot of fans thought the show was over and started to leave. Lillian Garcia had to get on the mic and tell everyone the show wasn't over yet. Then Debra came out to do her planned promo and the timing was all messed up so they gave her the signal to stall for time. But she was dying out there and finally, they sent Paul Heyman out to cut a promo because he's good under pressure. But then his mic didn't work and he had to take Lillian's. Eventually the signal came back and they finished the show.
- Notes from Smackdown: former WCW tag team Kronik was signed this week and debuted, attacking Undertaker, who actually sold for them for once. Steve Austin's "what?" catchphrase seems to be getting over (ugh). Rock cut a promo talking about Lillian Garcia getting wet......with perspiration when she sees Rock, which led to Lillian admitting that she wanted his strudel. Dave found it all pretty hilarious. And RVD beat Austin in the main event, in a match where Austin basically beat the shit out of him the whole time and RVD's win came across as a total fluke, which doesn't help get anyone over.
- WATCH: Lilian Garcia wants the People's Strudel
- This week's episode of Tough Enough was the best of the show so far. Al Snow comes across as a great wrestling trainer and the real star of the show. During the episode, one of the women, Taylor, got drunk and started aggressively flirting with Maven (fun fact: Taylor is now married to THE Brian Kendrick). Everyone cut promos and most of them were terrible, but Maven actually cut a great promo. Dave doesn't know if Maven is any good in the ring, but he's got real potential with all the other aspects and he's the clear favorite to win the whole thing.
- Pretty much everyone expects Hall and Nash to come to WWF when Nash's WCW contract expires. Shane McMahon actually tried to bring in Hall recently on his own, but Hall pretty much blew him off which wasn't viewed very favorably. But this is a business and in a few months, that will all be water under the bridge.
- Various WWF notes: Gangrel has been released. Former ECW women's wrestler Jazz has signed. Sharmell Sullivan (formerly Paisley in WCW) was signed and is starting with OVW. Dave says she was basically hired as a favor to Booker T, who she has been dating since they were both in WCW. Speaking of WCW, a lot of those guys are now working OVW and HWA shows and it's a bit of an issue to some of them. They were all used to being stars on national TV in WCW, and now they're in developmental, working in front of tiny crowds, and they're having to break down the ring after every show and actually pay dues, and a lot of those guys aren't enjoying it very much.