Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 22, 2001

The big story this week is Dave examining why WWF is rapidly losing viewers over the age of 30. I mean, obviously, every demographic is dropping right now, but the over-30 audience in particular is plummeting at an alarming rate. At the peak of the Monday night wars, back in 1998 and 1999, there were around 6 million viewers over the age of 30 watching wrestling on Monday nights. Now that number is closer to 2 million. Over the last three years, around 4 million people over the age of 30 just said, "Fuck it" and quit watching wrestling entirely. And it's been happening at a faster rate lately. Long-term, this is a huge problem for WWF. Viewers over 30 are generally considered the most loyal. Teenage viewers are a fad. Something is hot with teens for a year or two and then they move on to the next thing. People in their 20s often fall off because they're out having social lives and shit. But viewers over 30 are the people who have been watching for years and are dedicated, long-term habitual viewers. That means they're losing the hardcore fans, not just the casuals. The single biggest cause of the decline of wrestling has been the failure to make new stars. WCW's reliance on old names and failure to create and fully get behind new stars was ultimately what caused their downfall. Last year, when WWF was still doing big numbers, guys like Edge, Christian, the Hardyz, Benoit and Jericho were all hot upper midcard stars who looked to be on the verge of breaking through to the top. A year later, none of them are really in any better position than they were then and a lot of them are lower down the card and the stars at the top of the card now are the same ones from 2 or 3 years ago, to diminishing returns.
Back when WCW business started to decline, Turner commissioned a study to investigate why people stopped watching and what they liked and didn't like about the product. The study determined that fans wanted more of an emphasis on the wrestling and sport-like aspect of the show and less focus on wacky angles and skits and promos. At this point, Vince Russo was booking WCW and of course, that flies completely in the face of what Russo and others in charge of the company thought wrestling should be and ultimately, the study was ignored. That's not to say WWF necessarily needs to change the style of the company and focus more on in-ring stuff. But Dave thinks it might be wise for WWF to do a similar study and figure out exactly what is driving viewers away at such a rapid rate and maybe don't ignore the results like WCW did.
For shits and giggles, Dave posted this question online, asking fans over 30 to let him know why they had lost interest in the WWF and the response was overwhelming, far more than Dave has ever gotten to any question he's ever posted on the site before. The question hit a nerve. To be clear, Dave isn't saying that these results are the answer to WWF's problem. He's aware that the people who come to his website are a very specific type of wrestling fan and only represent a narrow view of the overall wrestling audience. That being said, it might be worth hearing what they have to say. After reading through literally hundreds of responses, these are the things that were mentioned most often by formerly hardcore fans over 30 who were turned off and disenfranchised by wrestling in recent years and why they stopped watching. Dave goes into a little detail on each and there's a lot of them: botched Invasion angle. Too much Shane and Stephanie. No more Flair, Goldberg, Sting, Hall, Nash, or Hogan. Lifelong WCW fans who had no interest in switching to WWF when WCW died. Too many long promos. Never truly getting behind the "glass ceiling" guys. Too much wacky and unrealistic stuff. Lack of competition. Vince Russo. No emphasis on the importance of titles. Too much T&A. The way the Kurt Angle/Stephanie McMahon/Triple H storyline ended (Dave says a LOT of fans cited this as a turning point for why they gave up on WWF). Bad writing, stale shows, no storyline or character consistency. Not enough actual wrestling. Turning Steve Austin heel. And on and on and on. People had a LOT of reasons why they lost interest and this lead story is SO damn long....
The condition of Helen Hart took a turn for the worse this week as she suffered another seizure and fell into a coma again. She awoke 4 days later but her condition has been described as grave and the family was told at one point that she may not live through the night. She has a lot of severe liver and kidney problems as well and is on a respirator. Bret Hart postponed his scheduled trip to Australia for the WWA tour due to her situation. Dave also notes that in a similar situation, Hulk Hogan's father recently suffered a stroke and is in bad shape (he ends up dying about a month after Helen does).
It was announced this week that WWF's upcoming No Mercy PPV won't be airing on DirecTV due to their ongoing money dispute. It basically comes down to a fight over the revenue split. The original deal was pretty much a 50/50 split of the profits. DirecTV is wanting a 60/40 split in their favor. There actually is a reason why DirecTV feels entitled to this extra 10%. WWF's current deal with cable companies is that the local cable company gets 50%, WWF gets 40%, and the PPV provider (InDemand) gets the other 10%. DirecTV feels that, since they act as both the cable provider and the PPV provider, they should be entitled to both of those cuts. WWF of course, said fuck that and the whole thing ended up in some sort of legal arbitration. As a result, WWF has been threatening to withhold their PPVs from DirecTV entirely, which would cost both sides in the range of $1 million per month in lost potential revenue. Dave doesn't know if WWF is bluffing or not, but needless to say, both sides would desperately like to resolve this. WWF and DirecTV have been working without a contract since way back in January and have been basically just going along under the terms of the old 50/50 deal while they've been trying to negotiate a new agreement. But with fan interest and buyrates declining so rapidly lately, WWF isn't exactly in the best bargaining position anymore.
Madison Square Garden has always been seen as the barometer of how the business is doing for the WWF. Until this week, WWF had been on a consecutive 18-show streak of sellouts at MSG (again, this flies in the face of what was reported in the last issue, about WWF not selling out MSG recently. I think that had to be a mistake or typo). But that ended this week, with a show headlined by Austin vs. Rock in a WWF vs. WCW title unification match that failed to sell out the Garden. Prior to the show, Linda McMahon went on Sunday Night Heat live and announced that they would be donating $1 million to the 9/11 relief fund for New York City. $500,000 of it will come from the WWF, and the other $500,000 from the McMahon family personally. In addition, WWF office employees raised an additional $32,000 that will be donated. While in NYC, most of the WWF roster went around visiting fire stations and police departments as well as the workers at Ground Zero. Thousands of tickets were given away to the families of those who lost loved ones on 9/11 as well as the police and fire departments. Despite all the free tickets, MSG was still around 2,600 seats shy of being full. Paid attendance was only 11,098. It was the lowest gate at MSG since 1997. Some people are blaming 9/11 for the low turnout, but the reality is most of these tickets were sold when they first went on sale, before the attacks and they were on pace to sell pretty much this amount anyway. There were also two injuries during the show. William Regal suffered a torn bicep which sucks because he's been incredibly over as a heel after turning just last week and was expected to start doing more in-ring stuff rather than just being the commissioner. And Undertaker suffered a concussion and needed 13 stitches after a chairshot from Booker T. Anyway, Dave talks about how the recent 18-show sellout streak from 1998-now was the longest MSG sellout streak in history. Even at the height of Bruno Sammartino's days, he never sold out the Garden that many times in a row.
Raw this week did its second lowest rating in its regular time slot since 1998. It also provided more confirmation of the lead story. Ratings were up among males 12-24, but once you get older than that, viewership plummeted. After the Rock/RVD match, over 885,000 viewers tuned out before the next match (Tazz vs. Kidman) and continued to drop throughout the rest of the show. By the time they got to the main event (Austin/Booker T vs. Angle/Undertaker), the rating had dropped to a ridiculous 3.88, which is the lowest for a Raw main event in years. Considering how heavily hyped this show was, with them promising all week that this Raw would change the face of sports entertainment, this is a scary sign. Speaking of ratings, that new WWF Excess show that airs on Saturday nights just did a horrible 0.58 rating which is not only lower than ECW used to do, but it's lower than even RollerJam used to do. In fact, it's even lower than the Grand Ol' Opry show that used to do in the same time slot back when they were still The Nashville Network. Again, it's simply staggering how fast WWF's numbers have dropped in the last 6-7 months or so.
A Konnan biography special aired on TV Azteca in Mexico and was pretty interesting, with Konnan making some controversial comments. He was particularly outspoken about the current wartime situation in America between the U.S. and Afghanistan, saying that the United States always wants to try to police the rest of the world and said if people want to know the truth about American politics, they should read the newspapers from other countries because American media is so controlled. But he also said if you wanted to know what's happening in Mexico, you should read American newspapers for the same reason. On the wrestling side of things, he said AAA head Antonio Pena used to be like a father figure to him but refused to go into details on their falling out, other than to say he dedicated more time and effort than anyone behind the scenes in AAA and that Pena didn't come through on a promise to him. Konnan also said WCW was a racist company that never cared if he was injured or not and that he was threatened with breach of contract if he refused to work when he was hurt. He openly admitted to using drugs in WCW, saying he used marijuana, methamphetamines, and other uppers and downers, but he never mentioned steroids.
The behind-the-scenes power struggle in NJPW continues. Antonio Inoki had publicly predicted that the company's recent Tokyo Dome show would be a failure because they refused to put the match he wanted as the main event. Turns out the show did surprisingly well. In a newspaper interview, Inoki expressed disbelief that they were able to draw 61,500 fans to the show (for the record, they didn't. The number was a good bit lower than that, somewhere in the 45k range. But in Japan, the press rarely ever questions the "official" numbers that NJPW gives them. NJPW, like every other promotion in the world, tends to be completely full of shit regarding their attendance numbers for big shows). However, on television, the highest rated match of the show by far was the Fujita vs. Sasaki match, which is the match Inoki put together that he felt should have been the main event. So Inoki got some bragging rights there. But the company is still pretty divided backstage with Inoki and his people on one side pushing for more MMA-style matches and angles, and the rest of management on the other who want NJPW to remain a traditional pro wrestling company.
Keiji Muto and Mitsuharu Misawa have had a few secret meetings to discuss a potential dream match between the two of them sometime next year. Muto has been wanting a match with Misawa for a decade now and has made it publicly known. But until recently, it was impossible politically due to the NJPW/AJPW relationship. But those barriers are no longer in the way. Muto and Misawa have also bonded over their shared dislike of the direction Inoki is trying to take the business in, with both men frustrated over the push to make wrestling more like MMA. They both feel the worked shoot style matches are killing the art of pro wrestling. If the Muto vs. Misawa match happens, both men are said to be more than willing to put each other over cleanly and they may even do more than one match (sadly this never happened. In 2004, they worked two tag matches. One where they teamed together and one where they were on opposing teams. But a pure 1-on-1 Misawa vs. Muto match never happened).
Despite what is being reported elsewhere, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall are not scheduled to work NJPW's upcoming Jan. 4 Tokyo Dome show. Hall has been pushing for it for months, but NJPW doesn't seem interested and pretty much just blows him off when he mentions it. That's not to say it won't happen, but as of right now, it's not even really being considered. NJPW doesn't see any value in the Outsiders together for the Dome show, especially for what it will cost. Dave says that, on average, the people who run wrestling promotions in Japan have about the same amount of knowledge of American wrestlers as American companies have about Japanese wrestlers. Basically, they know a few of the top names, but everyone is busy focusing on their own shit. Vince McMahon probably isn't sitting down and watching tapes of all the best Japanese wrestlers and most WWF fans don't know or care about any of NJPW's stars. Same thing in Japan. They know some of the big names, but overall, they're too focused on their own business. (I think the same thing still applies today. Contrary to what some diehard WWE fans would have you believe, America isn't the whole world and WWE isn't the only major league promotion in the world. In fact, during the 90s, NJPW was by far a bigger and more successful company than WWF was).
Arsion, the women's promotion in Japan, announced their biggest show of the year and they tried to bring in both Chyna and Rena Mero for it. Dave notes that the media in Japan actually had a fascination with both of those women during their WWF days and they were really popular in the Japanese wrestling magazines so they do have some name value there. Anyway, both women were willing to appear but they both wanted too much money and neither of them wanted to wrestle, they just wanted to make an appearance. Arsion passed on that.
The new XWF promotion will reportedly have Tony Schiavone and Jerry Lawler doing commentary. They're also hoping to bring Bobby Heenan in for some kind of role as well as Gene Okerlund and Rena Mero. The have the first set of tapings in November and are hoping to do another round of tapings in January. Jimmy Hart, who is running this whole thing, hopes to lock up all the talent to contracts before the tapings so that they don't put people on TV only to have them jump ship to WWF before all the taped shows can even air (Turns out this was a valid concern. I believe this ends up being exactly what happens with Curt Hennig in January with his Rumble 2002 appearance. He was in XWF without a contract and the Rumble was supposed to be a one-off but he ended up getting signed and therefore bailed on XWF even though he was a big part of their already-taped shows).
The NWA 53rd anniversary show, headlined by Steve Corino vs. Shinya Hashimoto for the NWA title, took place and was a total clusterfuck that no one knows whether it was a work or shoot. The plan was allegedly for Corino to retain the title to set up a rematch with Hashimoto next month. Corino bladed in the match and reportedly told Hashimoto to kick and punch him hardway to open the cut up more because he wanted the beating to seem realistic. Apparently it was too realistic because Corino was legit knocked damn near unconscious and the referee, not knowing what else to do, stopped the match and awarded the title to Hashimoto via knockout, which led to a lot of confusion among the NWA board members. Hashimoto was scheduled to win the title in November anyway, so many members of the NWA board kinda figured, "fuck it, might as well just let him have it a month early." Problem is, Corino is scheduled for an NWA title defense in the UK in a couple of weeks and he's pretty pissed that he's not going to have the title for a match that was advertised to be an NWA title match. So yeah.
In other news, on the same show, there was a match between AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels that stole the show and got a standing ovation from the crowd. Also, backstage after the show, Bill Alfonso (who worked as a manager) didn't get paid. Apparently Alfonso assumed he was booked, showed up, worked the show, and nobody stopped him. But when he asked for his money, they hit him with the "We never asked you to work this show, you just kinda showed up and did it." It led to Alfonso actually throwing punches at NWA head Howard Brody, one of which hit Brody's glasses and cut his face up really badly (I posted the Corino/Hashimoto match a couple of days ago, so here's the AJ/Daniels match).
WATCH: Christopher Daniels vs. AJ Styles - 2001
Hashimoto actually almost didn't come to the NWA show due to the U.S. invading Afghanistan just days earlier. There was concern that he may have issues returning to Japan due to the war breaking out. Also, due to the ongoing anthrax attacks taking place in the U.S., which have gotten a ton of media coverage in Japan, they were fearful of that as well. Initially, Hashimoto's people cancelled all his scheduled dates in the U.S. Ultimately, Hashimoto did work the NWA show, but he cancelled his plans to work a UPW show in Los Angeles the following day and returned to Japan.
Missy Hyatt was hospitalized with 2nd degree burns after a fire in her apartment last week. The story Dave has been told is that she fell asleep with a lit cigarette and her bed caught on fire.
Hulk Hogan signed a deal to be the lead star of the upcoming Legends of Wrestling video game for Playstation. The game is being produced by Acclaim, who are looking to stay involved in the wrestling video game market after the death of ECW. The game will also feature Bret Hart, Jerry Lawler, and a bunch of other big names from the 1980s.
Vince Russo has apparently pulled out of any involvement in the upcoming WWA tour in Australia, claiming he's quitting the wrestling business entirely (we should be so lucky). The tour will now be run by Jeremy Borash and starts later this week. They have another tour in Australia scheduled for next month and another one in December in the UK. Along with all the ex-WCW names, the big star of WWA is expected to be Nathan Jones, the big 6'10 guy who was briefly signed to a WWF developmental deal earlier this year. He's green but athletic as hell and not the typical slow and clumsy big guy. Dave says he's light years better than pretty much all the other 6'10 wrestlers WWF has now and has a ton of potential and charisma. He was released by WWF because he had prior legal issues in Australia that prevented him from getting a visa to work in the U.S.
Bret Hart is also working the WWA tour, but only making appearances. Hart has done a bunch of interviews and has repeatedly made it clear that he can't wrestle. But all the promotion for the WWA show doesn't say that and they're not-so-subtly trying to mislead people into thinking he will be and from what Dave has heard, most fans there seem to be under the impression that Bret is going to be working a match. He's not. In a recent interview, Bret also made some comments about Mick Foley's first book, saying he didn't like the way Foley almost seemed to brag about all his injuries. "Well, just the way he talks, it makes somebody think we're all hellbent on hurting each other. Basically Mankind, and I like Mankind, he's a good guy and I like his book, but it doesn't represent the wrestling business and it doesn't represent me in the wrestling business. It represents a guy that basically was a masochist and made a living being a masochist. And that's fine, because that's what he needed to do."
Afa Anoa'i is running a Yokozuna tribute show next month that will feature Kidman, Kanyon, Rikishi, Samu, the Road Warriors, APA, the Rock, Godfather, Too Cool, OVW wrestler Leviathan, and others. Not all of those names will be wrestling, some are just making appearances (in other words, Rock ain't lacing up his boots for some indie show).
Mike Tyson recently had a boxing match against a guy named Brian Nielsen in Denmark. Tyson won after 6 rounds when Nielsen quit before the 7th. More interestingly, Tony Halme, better known as former WWF wrestler Ludvig Borga, fought on the undercard and got knocked out in the 4th round. Halme was winning the fight in the early rounds but he came in weighing nearly 300 pounds and he quickly tired, at which point he got his face punched in. Halme also once lost to Randy Couture on an early UFC card.
Hootie & The Blowfish lead singer Darius Rucker was on ESPN Radio this week and talked about being a wrestling fan. He said Ric Flair is his all time favorite and said he once spent around $20,000 at a charity auction for one of Flair's original ring robes (yup. Here he is wearing it in his kitchen).
Memphis Championship Wrestling has apparently folded. They haven't held any new shows recently and had been airing re-runs for the last couple of months on local TV. But this week, the TV station decided to stop airing those as well, so MCW appears to be dead (yup).
In an attempt to really break into the U.S. market, PRIDE is attempting to put together a deal for Bill Goldberg to fight on a show next year in Las Vegas. Goldberg has expressed interest in the past in doing MMA, but he's 35 years old with no experience in real fighting, so that's a tall hill to climb (ask Punk). Also, Goldberg still has that multi-million dollar WCW contract he's collecting on which prevents him from doing any pro wrestling. And while PRIDE isn't exactly pro wrestling, the line there is a little blurry and Time Warner is looking for any loophole they can find to get out of paying these big money contracts for a dead company and Dave figures they might try to argue that fighting for PRIDE would be a breach. And Goldberg certainly doesn't want to risk breaching that contract before it expires.
When recapping Smackdown, Dave goes off on a little rant about "sports entertainment." He cringes when WWF calls it that instead of wrestling and says it's almost like they're embarrassed about being what they are, which is "wrestling." He says it's like porn stars calling themselves "adult entertainers." You are what you are. Own it (18 years later and WWE themselves are still the only people who call it "sports entertainment." To the rest of the world, they're still wrestling. Two-plus decades of trying to get this failed branding to stick).
More heat on RVD because at this week's Smackdown tapings, he once again caught Kurt Angle with a kick that basically exploded his nose. The week before that, he kept his streak alive by busting open Jericho's eye hardway. RVD has gotten hugely over in the last couple of months and because of how popular he is, the belief is that management is kinda turning a blind eye to the fact that he keeps hurting people. But a lot of the wrestlers feel that RVD is reckless and Undertaker in particular was heated about it after what happened to Angle in this match and spoke up about it. So yeah, RVD is still getting pushed because he's popular, but there's not a lot of guys itching to work with him and get their faces kicked in right now.
The belief internally is that it's pretty much a lock that Scott Hall and Kevin Nash will be returning to WWF in January. As mentioned before, there's a lot of people in the locker room and in management who are strongly against it, but ultimately it's Vince's decision and word is he's pretty much made up his mind that he's bringing them back, so long as they can agree on money and terms and whatnot. In conversations with friends, Nash has made it very clear that he doesn't want to work the normal grueling WWF schedule so that's something that will probably be an issue in the negotiations.
The latest on Scott Steiner is that he's still physically unable to wrestle and it's unsure when or if he'll ever be able to. His WCW contract expires at the end of this year and he's talked about filing a lawsuit against Time Warner, claiming a career-ending injury. If that happens, he definitely won't be wrestling any time soon.
Despite rumors to the contrary, WWF has no interest in Jeff Jarrett. The main issue is, of course, the way Jarrett left the company in 1999 when he held Vince up for nearly $200,000 to drop the IC title to Chyna in his last match. Also, while Jarrett is a solid performer, Vince has never seen him as a top guy and feels he lacks charisma so even if he did come back, he'd end up in a midcard/lower-card role and Jarrett isn't the kind of guy who would go for that kind of role (maybe he should just start his own promotion).
WWF has had recent talks with Ric Flair's attorney about him returning but as mentioned in the past, Flair is still collecting on his WCW deal and WWF won't pay him anywhere close to what he's making by sitting at home doing nothing. That being said, Flair misses wrestling although not as much as he might have a few years ago. He's older and banged up these days. When his WCW deal expires, it's expected that he'll come in with some sort of on-screen role but probably won't wrestle that often but that's still 2 years away (he'll be in WWF by next month and wrestles a near full-time schedule for the next decade. Because Flair.)
Vince wanted Maven to beat Tazz on Smackdown last week but was talked out of it by others who pointed out that Maven winning that match would do nothing but earn him even more resentment from the locker room than he already has.
Hogan has been on the Bubba The Love Sponge show trying to drum up interest in a return and talking about wanting to go back to WWF. But nobody from WWF has reached out to him and there doesn't appear to be much interest at the moment. Vince and Hogan apparently spoke back in August but nothing since.
"The Mummy Returns" set an all-time record by doing more than $75 million in VHS and DVD sales when it was released and another $15 million in rentals. Those numbers demolished all other records and needless to say is pretty good news for Rock's blossoming Hollywood career.
A current WWF wrestler contacted Dave recently to talk about steroids. The wrestler claimed that the use of steroids in WWF is down and the problem was nowhere near what it used to be back in the 80s. He claimed that probably 70% of WWF wrestlers right now are using steroids, but said that the dosages were relatively light compared to how much guys used to do them back in the day. These days, a lot of the wrestlers are more concerned with dieting and taking care of themselves, while using steroids in moderation to enhance what they already have. As opposed to the 80s where guys ate like shit, pumped themselves full of steroids until they were big and puffy and dropped dead of heart attacks in their 40s.
Kurt Angle did an interview talking about how he was seriously considering attempting to qualify for the Olympics again in 2004. Angle said WWF had already promised him that he could take off whatever time he needs to train. Angle estimated he would need about 9 months or so of intense training to get back into Olympic-level condition. Dave has concerns. Angle will be 35 in 2004 and if he continues doing pro wrestling between now and then, the wear and tear and injuries are sure to take their toll before then (and then some, as it turned out). Trying to make an Olympic comeback in your mid-30s with all those WWF miles on your body is a tall task. That being said, even if he's not successful, Dave thinks it's admirable because the kind of training it takes to make a comeback like that 8 years after winning a gold medal in such a tough sport is nearly incomprehensible.
Jim Ross posted online that Brock Lesnar is progressing quickly and he may be brought up to the main roster as early as this coming spring (yup).
They did a surprise drug test in OVW and HWA this week for all the developmental signees. It's interesting because WWF hasn't really done much in the way of drug testing at all in recent years, so springing a surprise test on the entire rosters of both developmental groups raised some eyebrows. No word on how everyone did, but the word is whoever failed will only be fined, not suspended. The tests also give WWF a heads up on anyone who may have issues before they get brought to the main roster. And it's also probably not a coincidence that the test comes on the heels of Russ Haas suffering a heart attack, which alarmed everyone (although it's important to note that Haas' heart attack was not drug related).
Speaking of developmental, there's a lot of frustration among some of the former WCW guys. These are wrestlers who were working on national TV and PPV and, in some cases, having great matches just 8 or 9 months ago and now they're slumming it in front of crowds of 100 people in developmental and they aren't happy about it. The names mentioned most are Evan Karagis and Mike Sanders. A lot of the guys are also refusing to live where they work, with some guys staying in town for a few days to work shows and then flying home to Atlanta or wherever they live. WWF wants guys committed to living this life full-time and they want them to either live in Cincinnati (HWA) or Louisville (OVW) rather than flying home to another city every week. Dave has a suspicion that this might be an effort to weed out guys who aren't fully dedicated to being WWF superstars.
The WWF December PPV was going to be called Payback but they have changed it again to Vengeance. Apparently someone else registered the domain name wwfpayback.com and so WWF basically said "fuck it" and just changed the PPV name again.
Bryan Clark (formerly of Kronik) is telling friends he has no idea why he was fired from WWF. He says the story that he refused to go to developmental is not true and he doesn't know what happened.
WATCH: Clip of Bryan Clark talking about Vince McMahon
On the Byte This show, announcer Kevin Kelly totally trashed Bret Hart. When talking about the upcoming Smackdown in Montreal, they were trying to come up with words to describe the city. Kelly started doing a fake whiny baby voice, mocking Hart and saying, "Waaah, I don't want to lose, it's my home country!" Kelly then called Hart an idiot and a loser. Dave says it's 4 years later and WWF constantly references the Screwjob and they sure seem to be having a harder time getting over it than Bret. That's not to say Bret is over it, but Dave says he hasn't mentioned it at all in any recent interviews Dave has seen. Considering Bret's mother is practically on her deathbed right now, Dave thinks it's kinda tasteless to be taking shots at him like this for no reason.
The latest on Tori is that she was asked to go to OVW for awhile and refused, so when her contract came due, they let her go.
Fun ratings fact: over the course of 10 weeks (from April through June), Raw ratings dropped from 5.67 to 4.09. That's the fastest ratings drop in modern wrestling history. Even WCW's ratings never plummeted that much that quickly. The introduction of ECW into the Invasion and the return of the Rock spiked ratings back up to 5.68 again, but only 11 weeks later, they're back down to 4.11. So not only did Raw have a scary ratings drop the likes of which WCW never had....it's happened TWICE this year.