December 06, 2001
- Getting down to the wire. Looks like next Friday, Aug. 30th will be the day.
- In the most interesting and riskiest booking decision Dave has seen in a long time, NJPW has decided to allow Yuji Nagata to face K-1 fighter Mirko Cro Cop at Antonio Inoki's New Year's Eve show. The event will be carried on national television and Nagata vs. Cro Cop will likely be the main event of the show. If this fight ends up being a legit shoot, it will be the biggest risk any wrestling promotion has ever made with one of its top stars. Nagata is a full-time NJPW top star, winner of the most recent G-1 Climax tournament, and a surefire future-IWGP champion. He's clearly been groomed as NJPW's future ace. Nagata does have a strong amateur wrestling background, but he's 32 years old and hasn't competed in nearly a decade and has never done an MMA match. Putting him in a position to possibly get massacred by a top-level K-1 fighter seems risky to say the least. Regardless, the hype around this event is insane and it's expected Inoki's show will draw the largest TV rating of any pro wrestling event in years in Japan. A win over Cro Cop will make Nagata an overnight megastar, but a quick loss could completely derail his career (spoiler, since we won't actually get the results before I finish the Rewinds: Nagata gets annihilated in 21 seconds. He still won the IWGP title 4 months later but it definitely hurt his credibility and was yet another example of how Inoki nearly destroyed NJPW during the coming years).
- With the Invasion angle finally over, WWF has essentially hit the reset button on the company and part of that seems to be a return to the risque days of 1999 with Raw this week. In the last two years or so, WWF has toned down significantly due to the pressure from the PTC. But WWF is currently suing the PTC and over the course of the lawsuit, it has become clear that the PTC was pretty dishonest in their claims against the company. So the PTC is kind of neutered right now and WWF sees the opportunity to go back to pushing the envelope. So this week on Raw was essentially an episode full of McMahon's favorite kind of television: bathroom humor and employee humiliation, culminating in Jim Ross being forced to join McMahon's Kiss My Ass Club, in his hometown no less. As you might expect, Ross was extremely upset about the angle and fought against it, but he's the VP of Talent Relations and felt like, in his position, he had to set an example of going along with it. So we got Vince McMahon, the 56-year-old owner of a publicly traded company parading around the ring in front of a sellout crowd with his bare ass exposed while Undertaker forced Ross's face into it, in an angle that the real-life performer REALLY wasn't comfortable with doing. Earlier in the show, we also had William Regal accidentally peeing on Big Show, a bra and panties match that was much more revealing than most, and a bunch of other shit. TSN in Canada attempted to edit the show as it was airing live but they kept messing up the timing and every time they tried to cut away from Vince's bare ass, they ended up accidentally showing it instead. And of course, the Undertaker heel turn was yet again another illogical turn that made no real sense. In the last 8 days, Jericho, Austin, Vince, Undertaker, and Kurt Angle (twice) have done heel or face turns. Keep in mind, Ric Flair made his big return to the WWF last week and this week, he wasn't even on the show. He was there. They brought him out in front of the live crowd and he made a match during a commercial break. But that was it. All in all, this company is a complete mess right now.
- Dave lists all the wrestling books on Amazon's bestseller list and notes that his own book, Tributes, is currently in 2nd place (behind the paperback version of Mick Foley's 1st book) and he thanks everyone. But there's a lot of books here. Both of Foley's books, Rock's book, Angle's book, Missy Hyatt's, Gary Michael Cappetta's, Chyna's, Dynamite Kid's, DDP's, etc. 2001 was kinda the boom period of wrestling books.
- Taka Michinoku returned to Japan this week and announced he's opening his own promotion called K-Dojo. Michinoku recently had shoulder surgery and will be out of action for several more months. He stated that his WWF contract expires in June of 2002 and didn't seem hopeful that it would be renewed. But regardless, he praised the WWF for paying for his surgery and continuing to pay him while he recovers, which a lot of promotions won't (and can't afford to) do.
- WWA's tour of the UK and Ireland began this week and after all their hype about Scott Steiner being there...he wasn't. They even had merch for him and everything, but nope. No Scott. The show was said to be a pale imitation of WWF. Jerry Lawler obviously isn't with the group anymore now that he's returned to WWF and so his son Brian Christopher went in his place. All the former WWF stars were way more popular than all the former WCW stars. Bret Hart, as commissioner, gave the same anti-Vince McMahon speech that he did in Australia, once again talking about how he never was beaten for either the WWF or WCW world titles and about passing the torch on to the next WWA world champ. In the main event, Jeff Jarrett beat Road Dogg in a match that was said to be bad, with both guys out of shape, and Bret Hart putting Jarrett in the sharpshooter after the match.
- Diana Hart has said she won't retract anything she wrote in her book. In a statement, she said, "I'll stand by my book and let the courts decide. I'm not prepared to back down on this." Martha Hart is still planning to file a lawsuit this week if the book isn't taken off shelves and Diana doesn't publicly retract the things she wrote about her. In somewhat related news, all the criminal charges against Davey Boy Smith from his issues with Diana and Bruce Hart from a few months ago have recently been dropped.
- Fresh off his firing from WWF, Eddie Guerrero is looking for indie bookings. He reached out to NJPW but they said the earliest they would have a spot for him would be in March.
- Chyna was on Howard Stern's show this week and he was absolutely brutal to her. Stern treated her like Nicole Bass, with all his usual mean comments. Stern demanded she pull her pants down and prove she didn't have a penis and called her "John" Laurer when he introduced her. He said Playboy must have airbrushed her penis out of the photos. Then he talked about her voice being weird, saying it was due to steroids, which Chyna denied and said it was from being hit in the throat. Chyna also went into more detail than ever on the Triple H/Stephanie situation. She said when she first suspected something was up, she confronted Triple H and he denied it. But then she went through Triple H's stuff and found love letters that Stephanie had written him. Chyna said she found these right before a show and then still had to go out afterward and perform in front of the crowd. She said she then confronted Stephanie about it, in front of Vince, which probably wasn't a great career move. She said she hasn't spoken to Triple H since she found out. She also said Triple H is in a tough spot because if he breaks up with Stephanie, his own job would likely be in danger (worked out well so far). Anyway, Chyna was on Stern's show a lot of times over the years but I can't find video of this particular one.
- Notes from Raw: after a strong Survivor Series and one of the best Raws of the year last week, WWF immediately squandered all that goodwill by dropping a big ol' Raw-shaped turd this week. Full of the usual sophomoric Vince McMahon humor. We had William Regal peeing on Big Show in a backstage segment. A Rock promo full of gay jokes about Vince and never even bothering to try and get over the unification match at the PPV they have coming up in 2 weeks. Lance Storm was shown working as a janitor at the WWF New York restaurant, since he's "out of a job" now that the Alliance lost at Survivor Series. And of course, the big angle at the end to humiliate Jim Ross in his hometown and force him to kiss Vince's ass. Dave hated every bit of this.
- Booker T is the latest guy to get busted up by RVD in a match. Booker got a concussion and was busted open from a Van Daminator at a house show in Tulsa.
- The plan to split the roster into two brands is still a go, but the timetable is up in the air. May be as early as January, or may be after Wrestlemania. Because they need enough wrestlers to fill both rosters, Dave doesn't expect any large talent cuts anytime soon. Midcard guys like Val Venis, D-Lo Brown, etc. will probably get renewed pushes when the roster splits and there's talk of bringing up some developmental names to fill some spots. Rico Constantino, Randy Orton, Ron Waterman, and Brock Lesnar are the 4 being talked about, since all 4 are already working full-time house show schedules on the road. But that's still a long time off. Dave figures of the 4, they'll probably delay Orton the longest because he's still young and they have plenty of time to let him keep developing in OVW.
- Jerry Lawler's return to WWF came right down to the wire. He was contracted to XWF and they agreed to let him out of his deal so he could return to WWF, but the lawyers and Jimmy Hart were in negotiations with WWF about his release up until about 3 hours before Raw went on the air that night. But they eventually signed off on everything just before showtime and he was allowed to re-debut. XWF doesn't want to make enemies with WWF because that's like showing up to a bazooka fight with a water gun.
- Dave lists all the latest injuries and there's a lot of them. Regarding Triple H, due to the advice of Dr. James Andrews, it looks like he won't be returning to the ring until January. The marketing for the Dec. PPV is all built around Triple H and it's too late to change it now. There's a chance he might appear and do an angle, but he most definitely won't be wrestling until next month at the earliest. He has been living in Birmingham and they sent a ring down there for him to train in. He's said to feel great and is ready to go as soon as they'll let him.
- Paul Heyman has taken on a bigger role backstage on the creative team now that he's no longer on TV. There's talk of bringing him back down the road as a heel manager, but not for a little while.
- There was a backstage promo filmed for the Thanksgiving episode of Smackdown that never aired. It apparently involved Rock and RVD in a funny bit. But the segment implied that RVD was stoned on the reefers (gasp!). The segment got a laugh from the live crowd but then Kevin Dunn decided the marijuana reference was too much and it got axed from the show before it aired on TV. (Would love to see this end up in the Hidden Gems section someday on the Network. Are we still arbitrarily tagging u/RealWWE to do things he likely has no control over?)
- Mick Foley is no longer under WWF contract, as he was granted his release a few weeks ago. Under his WWF contract, any outside projects he wanted to do had to be cleared through them and that was a big sticking point with him. Foley has hired a couple of agents to negotiate deals for him now. Now that he has two #1 bestsellling books under his belt, he's probably as hot as he's ever going to be and he's attempting to negotiate some literary deals. Foley is almost finished with a novel he's been working on and has been kicking around some ideas for children's books as well. Foley was unhappy in WWF because he wanted to do more outside projects. He also didn't like that he couldn't book himself to do things on Sun-Tues. in case he was needed for PPV, Raw, or Smackdown even though he never was. It was decided that giving Foley his release was the best thing because neither side wanted the relationship to become strained and it felt like it was going that direction. So now, everyone parts on good terms and there's hope that he could come back in the future if they want to work together again. Foley has made it clear he doesn't want to wrestle anymore unless it's a one-time comedy match against Vince. They almost booked that idea for this month's PPV before deciding against it and gave Foley his release instead.
- The hold up between WWF and Kevin Nash is still over the fact that Nash doesn't want to work a full schedule. He's talked about working short programs. For instance, he works full time for 2-3 months for a storyline, then takes a few months off, then back again for another big angle, etc. Nash is adamant that he isn't going to go back on the road full time working the typical 180+ day WWF schedule. There haven't actually been any negotiations between them in recent weeks and it's said that Hall and Nash coming to WWF is a dead issue right now. After the recent firing of Eddie Guerrero, who was the 3rd guy they've released for substance issues in recent months, it's believed bringing in Scott Hall would be a bad idea. There have been no talks with Hogan at all.
- Of all the free agents out there, the only ones WWF seems halfway interested in right now are Scott Steiner and Sting. It's believed that Steiner will probably be brought in whenever he's healthy enough to work. There have been talks with Sting recently, but he's not interested in working a full-time schedule.
- Although indie wrestlers were allowed to tryout for Tough Enough this season, no notable names were selected. They didn't want anyone with too much experience, feeling it would give them an unfair advantage. WWF had a lot more leeway in picking people this season. Last year, MTV made a lot of the picks because they wanted good looking people for the TV show.
- Bobby Eaton is no longer working for WWF as a trainer for developmental. This release actually happened awhile ago but Dave's just now learning about it I guess. Eaton was dealing with both personal family issues as well as IRS tax problems and apparently the wrestling gig wasn't working out for him.
- Dave saw the latest HWA wrestling show (the other WWF developmental territory) and it was bad. He thinks all the ex-WCW guys have lost whatever charisma they may have once had. The Jung Dragons were repackaged as square dancing rednecks (Jamie Noble pretty much kept that gimmick forever). Brian Adams was working with some guy named Medic 8 who looked to be maybe 140 pounds and it was just awful.
- A list about the most warped and offensive Christmas toys has been released and a WWF-released action figure pack with Lita and Bubba Ray Dudley was listed as the #4 most twisted. The warning says, "The male figure has tongue hanging out, with his head between female action figure's legs" and called it sexually suggestive. Dave notes that Lita is doing a hurricanrana and Bubba's tongue is out because that his gimmick with the "Wazzup" spot. But it does look a little questionable if you think about it that way.
- WATCH: Bubba Ray and Lita action figure pack
- At recent house shows, Crash Holly has been kissing Molly Holly after their match. Neither of them uses the "Holly" name anymore so Dave doesn't know if they're just ignoring that they used to be kayfabe-cousins or if this is testing the waters for some incest angle (Vince will get an incest angle over one of these days or die trying).
- Also at a recent house show, Booker T, Lance Storm, and Justin Credible worked. Since all those guys allegedly "lost their jobs" when the Alliance was defeated at Survivor Series, they had Bradshaw cut a promo saying that they were just fulfilling their final contractual obligations as a way to explain it. Bradshaw really got into trashing WCW, saying there used to be a company called WCW that tried to steal everything from WWF and said "they even stole a certain jackass writer." Dave mentions that Bradshaw has apparently never been shy about his feelings towards Vince Russo.