November 12, 2001
- Once again, we start this week with more examination of how bad business is plummeting for the WWF with a silver lining of good news. So let's start there. Tickets for Wrestlemania 18 went on sale and around 53,000 have already been sold which pretty much guarantees that WM18 will break the all-time gate record (set by WM17 just seven months ago). It's certain to sell out the Skydome in Toronto and it was said to be the biggest first-day ticket sales for any event in the history of Canada, although that's misleading. About half of those tickets were sold before the "official" first day to pre-sale customers with a special password. So really, all those tickets were sold over the course of two days, not one. But still, a pretty monumental accomplishment and a clear sign that even though business is down, the "Wrestlemania" name is still a draw.
- So that's the good news. The bad news is everything else. Survivor Series is only a week away and there's still over 6,500 tickets available as of press time. Raw in the same building recently only drew about 7,600. For the past three years, WWF sold out every Madison Square Garden show, but the recent MSG show, headlined by Rock vs. Austin, didn't even come close to selling out the world's most famous arena. Dave blames the fact that there's no long-term planning anymore and everything in WWF is changing on the fly. On Raw 2 weeks ago, they made the decision pretty much the day of the show to turn Kurt Angle heel and have him join the Alliance. Dave notes that Undertaker and Chris Jericho were originally considered before they decided on Angle, but then they couldn't decide if he should be a comedic character or serious character and instead, they've decided on both so he's completely inconsistent and has pretty much lost all the momentum and heat he had just a few weeks ago. The plan is to finally end the Invasion angle at Survivor Series and then do a draft to split the brands. No word on what the 2nd group would be called. They have pretty much killed any credibility that "WCW" or "ECW" would have had, so it probably won't be either of those. The idea is for Rock to anchor one brand, while Austin anchors the other and run them separately. With business collapsing, Dave isn't sure this is the best time to dilute the product by splitting the roster in half. Fans already aren't coming to the shows. They'll be even more likely to stay home if they know half the people they want to see aren't going to be there because they're on the other show. A lot of people internally are against the idea, but Vince still feels strongly about it and won't be convinced otherwise, at least so far. WWF has failed to create new stars this year, with RVD and Chris Jericho coming closest to breaking through. But RVD, who was really getting over as a big star, was pretty much buried in recent weeks (and to be fair, he probably didn't help his case by repeatedly hurting everyone he wrestled). And Jericho got hot for awhile feuding with Rock and they put the title on him, but he only held it for 15 days before dropping it and he hasn't even sniffed the top of the card since. And there's no big stars that can come turn business around. Rock came back earlier this year from filming his movie and that only led to a 3-week ratings bump. Mick Foley and Vince McMahon both returned to TV in recent months, and it led to no increase whatsoever. Triple H is due back soon, but if Rock's return couldn't turn things around, Dave doesn't see Triple H doing it either. So there's that.
- Bruce Prichard is moving from Stamford, CT back to Houston, TX due to his wife who is battling cancer. Prichard will still be part of the creative team but he won't be around as much on a day-to-day basis which leaves the core of the creative team as Stephanie McMahon, Paul Heyman, Brian Gewirtz, and Michael Hayes. Although, as always, the final decision is always made by Vince (Bruce has talked about this on his podcast a few times. I don't remember all the details, but yeah his wife has had a few cancer scares over the years. Real serious ones too. Like, she wasn't expected to live through them. But she has and to this day, they're still happily married).
- We have a lengthy obituary for Helen Hart, who passed away this week at age 77 in Calgary. She had been hospitalized for over a month after suffering several seizures resulting in organ failure. Ultimately, the family made the decision to pull the plug on her life support system. Dave talks about how the Hart family is always engulfed in scandal and they're always controversial, but Helen was the one person that everyone seemed to love and respect in the family. Helen, however, never loved the wrestling business and had gone on record in the past saying she wished the whole family would have just been farmers or something instead of wrestlers. He talks about how even in her old age, she was active and vibrant but those close to her talked about how Owen's death and the way it tore her family apart was extremely hard for her. She was also a native New Yorker before moving to Canada and reportedly was greatly affected by what happened there on 9/11. Dave talks about how she met and married Stu in New York and moved to Canada to help him run the business side of his new company. All 8 of their sons were involved in wrestling at one point or another and all 4 daughters married wrestlers. In 1984, with Stu battling health issues, Helen insisted he get out of the business which led to Stu selling Stampede Wrestling to Vince McMahon. They eventually re-started it again, but the financial pressures were too much and seeing how much stress it was causing Helen, Stu once again closed down shop. Dave recaps her later years, in the 90s where she occasionally made appearances on WWF television with Bret and Owen. Stu Hart, on the outside, seems to be handling it well, but others have said he's been completely broken by Helen's death. Dave has a lot of quotes from Keith Hart and a few other members of the family, including Bret, about Helen and things like that. It's a pretty good read. Helen's funeral service details are being kept secret because they want a private ceremony and don't want another public spectacle like the Owen funeral was.
- The latest PRIDE show is in the books and it wasn't a good night for pro wrestlers. PRIDE is a promotion that pretty much markets itself to pro wrestling fans and its biggest draws are wrestlers in shoot fights. The problem is the wrestlers tend to lose more often than not, which is killing the mystique for these guys. The most successful, Kazushi Sakuraba, lost for the 2nd time to Vanderlei Silva while Nobuhiko Takada went to a draw with Mirko Cro Cop and wrestlers from Battlarts and NJPW both lost their fights as well, doing major damage to their reputations as tough bad asses. Cro Cop in particular was pissed because his fight with Takada was similar to the famous Inoki/Ali fight, with Takada laying on his back and fighting from the ground most of the time, which made for an incredibly boring fight that the crowd booed the shit out of. Cro Cop called Takada a fake fighter afterwards and said he was so disgusted he could barely even talk and said he wouldn't have taken the fight if he had known Takada was basically going to fight like a bitch. Also, during intermission, Antonio Inoki came out (getting the biggest pop of anyone on the card) and read a poem. Then he plugged his New Year's Eve show and said it would do bigger ratings than the NHK show (which is a traditional New Year's Eve Dick Clark-style show on NYE in Japan every year that always does huge ratings and is one of the biggest TV events of the year there).
- UFC 34 is in the books and was a textbook example of how important timing is. The previous PPV, UFC 33, had a huge buzz and a ton of publicity but it was a horrible show that UFC president Dana White, in conversations with Dave, has claimed set UFC back at least a year because of how much of a disaster it was. On the flip side, this UFC 34 was a fantastic show, with explosive matches and great finishes. But unlike the last show, there was no buzz going into it, no publicity, and it flew totally under the radar. Dave says if this show had taken place last month, when all eyes were on UFC, the entire sport of MMA in the U.S. would be different now. So yeah: timing. Last month, they put on a horrible show while everyone was watching and this month, they had a great show when nobody was paying attention. Dana White also told Dave that he believes they need to be on television to be successful, which puts them in the same position as every other non-WWF promotion right now: they need a strong TV deal and a lot of money to burn if they want to get to where they hope to be. Anyway, Dave rambles on about that for a bit and then recaps the show.
- Dave does his usual break down of numbers comparing last year to this year. Some of the TV ratings are misleading because last year, WCW Nitro still existed so they had head-to-head competition back then which they no longer have. But the other numbers are pretty sobering. The average attendance for Oct. 2001 is down a whopping 40% from Oct. 2000. It was the lowest average attendance month for WWF since Dec. 1997. For comparison, these attendance numbers are about the same as WCW was doing during the Kevin Nash booking era, which is where WCW's decline really started to become obvious. Now, to be fair, there's a 9/11 factor in play here. In a recent interview, Jim Ross mentioned that pretty much all touring acts have seen their attendance numbers decline since 9/11 and that's true. But none of them have declined 40% in a year. And that doesn't explain the plummeting TV ratings (which have not been affected by 9/11 for anyone else, so they can't use that excuse for ratings). There's just no other way around it: the business is obviously in a major free fall right now, excuses be damned.
- Oh yeah, back to Inoki's New Year's Eve show, he's trying to get NJPW stars Yuji Nagata and Manabu Nakanishi to work the show. But NJPW booker Tatsumi Fujinami is refusing to let them do it. The show is based around pro wrestlers against K-1 fighters in legit shoot fights and Fujinami doesn't want to risk some of his top stars getting injured or embarrassed in a real fight, especially since it's only 5 days before NJPW's biggest show of the year. In retaliation, Inoki is threatening to keep IWGP champion Kazuyuki Fujita from working the Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show (I'm not sure what happens here yet, but Nagata does end up working Inoki's NYE show. But Fujita does not work the Tokyo Dome show due to injury. So NJPW's Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show didn't even have an IWGP title match). There's also some television politics at play here. Inoki's NYE show is airing on a rival network from TV-Asahi, which many of NJPW's wrestlers are exclusively contracted to, and TV-Asahi doesn't want NJPW stars appearing on a rival network.
- Here's the latest on Jimmy Hart's XWF promotion: Hulk Hogan and Kevin Sullivan are writing and booking the shows. The plan seems to be to run some house shows soon, with Jeff Jarrett vs. Buff Bagwell as the main events and Dave hopes they're booking small arenas because those 2 guys aren't draws even if they had TV, and they don't yet. Hogan did another interview on the Bubba The Love Sponge radio show, talking about the Bash at the Beach/Russo incident and claimed everything about it was a total shoot. Dave calls bullshit and says that while he doesn't quite know exactly where the lines blurred, he knows all the stuff at first with Jarrett laying down for Hogan and all that was completely planned ahead of time and was a total work. After that, the story gets fuzzy. Hogan also said they were interested in bringing in Scott Hall for XWF and Dave thinks Hall is probably going to wait and see if WWF has any real interest first. Hogan also claimed he was really close to signing with WWF last year, to work a match at Wrestlemania 17 against Vince McMahon, but he ultimately decided against it because his family didn't want him to go back on the road working the WWF schedule. Dave calls bullshit again and says the actual plan that was discussed was for Hogan to come in and work with Triple H, but they wanted Hogan to do a clean job to the pedigree and Hogan wasn't going for that shit and backed out of the talks.
- Scott Steiner is being advertised for WWA shows when they tour the UK and Ireland in a few weeks. It's unknown if Steiner will be wrestling since he's been dealing with injuries and he also has talked about filing a lawsuit against Time Warner, claiming career-ending injuries. So if he wrestles for WWA, that will obviously hurt his lawsuit plans. That potential lawsuit is why he hasn't gone to WWF yet either, along with the fact that, well, he really is still pretty injured. Dave figures he may just do run-ins or something, but who knows. The WWA promotional material also features Bret Hart and it clearly gives the impression that Hart will be wrestling, not just appearing as a commissioner. So bullshit false advertising is obviously not beneath WWA.
- Goldberg did an interview with the Observer site and talked about a few things. He said even if his Time Warner deal expired, that wouldn't guarantee he would go to WWF and said right now, it's not something he's even considering for lots of reasons. In regards to PRIDE, he said it's something he has considered but unless he was 100% ready and able to fully train and prepare for it, he wouldn't do it. He also said his wrestling career isn't necessarily over, but right now, he's taking a rest and collecting his WCW checks. Dave thinks it's for the best. Goldberg in the Invasion angle could have been huge, but politically, he thinks it would have gone poorly. There's no doubt in Dave's mind that WWF would have immediately wanted Goldberg to put over Austin, Rock, Triple H, and Undertaker. And even if he did it without complaint, those guys would have just said "he doesn't know how to work" and tried to bury him like they did all the other WCW talent.
- The official cause of death for Terry Gordy was a coronary artery thrombosis. Basically a blood clot near the heart. Gordy had damage to his heart from past drug issues, but his death wasn't drug related. The only drug found in his system at the time of his death was trace amounts of marijuana.
- Diana Hart did an interview on a Canadian talk show promoting her new book and a lot of people said she came across very similar to the infamous Farrah Fawcett/David Letterman interview (if you're too young to remember this, basically, Farrah Fawcett went on Letterman's talk show in 1997 drugged out of her mind. Hunt it down on Youtube if you're curious). Diana didn't come across well at all, to the point that even the host was defending the other Hart family members that she was trashing. The Calgary Sun published excerpts from Diana's book, which led to Owen Hart's widow Martha threatening legal action, claiming the book constituted libel. The newspaper apparently agreed and pulled the excerpts down from their website. Martha is now saying she plans to file a libel lawsuit against Diana. Longtime Stampede Wrestling announcer Ed Whalen is saying he will join Martha's lawsuit, because apparently Diana wrote a bunch of bad shit about him too. Bret Hart initially planned to keep quiet about the whole thing and ignore it but it's become such a big story in Canada that he finally had to respond (though Dave doesn't say what Bret's response was). Keith Hart has said the book is full of "malicious lies" and said many people in the Hart family have wanted to speak out against it but they also don't want to give the book any more attention than it's already receiving. A former brother-in-law to someone in the Hart family is also threatening to sue Diana over what she wrote (Martha's lawsuit threat eventually got the book pulled from stores and taken out of print and the publisher paid a settlement to her Owen Hart charity. Diana stood by it at the time, but in later years, she distanced herself from it and blamed her co-author for twisting everything she said and claims she didn't really write the book. Bret Hart has basically called bullshit on that and says she knew exactly what it said before it was published. But pretty much the entire Hart family distanced themselves from Diana after it was published and claimed the book is full of lies). Following Diana's awful appearance on the talk show, a scheduled Off The Record interview with her was cancelled by the show.
- Chyna is all over the place lately. She is on an upcoming episode of Fear Factor. Her new issue of Playboy, under her real name, comes out next month. And this week, she taped an interview on Off The Record that sounds like it will be especially interesting. It hasn't aired yet, but Dave has been given the details. The host really pushed Chyna on whether or not she believed the Triple H/Stephanie McMahon relationship had anything to do with her leaving the WWF. Chyna tried to play it off and give the usual safe answers, but they kept pushing her for more info and she was reportedly almost in tears by the end of the interview. Chyna called Stephanie immature and juvenile for not conducting herself like a proper businesswoman, saying there's an unwritten rule in WWF that you don't mess with other people's relationships (it's noted that Kathy Dingman, who was breifly in WWF as a character named BB, got a lot of heat for dating Bob Holly while he was married, which led to the breakup of Holly's marriage). Chyna also admitted she didn't want to wrestle women and wanted to continue wrestling men and that's why she didn't enjoy her matches with Lita shortly before she left. In another interview on a different show later that week, Chyna again was asked about the Triple H/Stephanie stuff and Chyna said that as soon as she found out, she knew her time in WWF was over because they didn't want the ex-girlfriend hanging around.
- Notes from Raw: the crowd was absolutely dead for this show. At one point, during a commercial break, they sent Paul Heyman out to cut a promo to try to rile them up but it didn't work. Austin came out and even gave Vince McMahon a stunner, which should have been a huge moment but the lack of reaction from the crowd was scary. In the main event, when Rock put Jericho through the table, Heyman's leg got caught under it and injured his leg, but he'll be fine. And of course, Rock won the match, regaining the WCW title from Jericho, which led to an apparent heel turn from Jericho afterwards, which they've been teasing for awhile.
- Injury report: Rhyno had neck surgery this week, the same kind as Austin and Benoit had. Reportedly, Rhyno's isn't quite as serious as theirs but he's still expected to be out for close to a year (ends up being longer). Kanyon had surgery for a torn ACL and will be out 4-6 months. Same time frame for Taka Michinoku after shoulder surgery. X-Pac is out and being evaluated for a neck injury, no word yet. Austin got 18 stitches after an Undertaker match. And Triple H is expected back in December or January. The advertising for the December PPV is all built around Triple H's return match, with posters and commercials filmed and everything, but he might not actually be back by then (nope). Russ Haas' cardiologist has cleared him to start training again and they expect him to be cleared to wrestle by January but they're being cautious because the last thing they want is a guy who already had a heart attack to be put in a position to stress his heart and have another one (indeed, he sadly passes away from another heart attack a month after this).
- A Wall Street analyst site ran a very negative story on the WWF stock. It talked about the huge drop in ratings and attendance, the issues with DirecTV, and all the other negative business signs WWF is seeing right now and said the product has grown stale. Analysts don't recommend buying WWF stock right now (it was around $10 bucks a share back then at this time. As of this writing, it's worth $95.08 so....probably should have bought a bunch of it back then) (8-14-2019 update: $66.14).
- Down in OVW, Rico Constantino and Prototype have broken up as a tag team after recently losing the titles to Lesnar and Benjamin. Dave believes it's a final blow-off feud before Rico is moved to the main roster (pretty much. He spends another couple months there but he debuts on Smackdown in early 2002).
- Eddie Guerrero is wrestling down in HWA to try and get back into WWF-level condition after his recent rehab stint. Last week, he had a 30-minute triple threat match against Matt Striker and Jamie Noble that was said to be really good. Speaking of Noble, he's getting a lot of rave reviews lately for his work in HWA.
- Speaking of developmental, Jim Ross met with Cornette, Les Thatcher, and Danny Davis (the guys who run OVW and HWA) to discuss what to do with the developmental stars. Everyone is high on Rico and feel he's main roster ready. There was talk of bringing in Lesnar soon but they don't want to rush him. They also talked about giving him the Goldberg-style push right out of the gate. Dave mentions that Lesnar's developmental contract is significantly higher than everyone else because at the time he signed, WCW and NJPW were strongly pursuing him as well due to his amateur credentials. So because they're paying him so much, there's pressure to move him up to the main roster sooner than later to justify the contract (I love that Lesnar was bending WWF over a barrel from day one. Dude has always been good at playing that game).