Wrestling Observer Rewinder

December 24, 2001

WWF developmental wrestler Russ Haas passed away this week from an apparent heart attack. It's the first death of an active WWF-contracted wrestler since Owen Hart. If you recall, Haas suffered a previous heart attack back in September following a match with Prototype (John Cena) at an HWA show. Following that heart attack, Haas had been cleared by his cardiologist to return to wrestling a couple of weeks ago. But WWF wanted to remain cautious and refused to let him return to the ring until he was cleared by a second cardiologist. Haas suffered this second, fatal heart attack just 3 days before he was supposed to meet that doctor. Haas reportedly felt great and was itching to get back in the ring and had already resumed weight training at the time of his death. Russ, along with his brother Charlie Haas, were seen as an up-and-coming tag team with a lot of potential. According to Russ' wife, they had some friends (other HWA wrestlers) over to their place after a show and they all hung out till the wee hours of the morning. At that point, his wife went to bed while Russ stayed on the couch in the living room watching TV. When she woke the next morning, she went into the living room and found him still on the couch, and it was clear he had been dead for several hours. Charlie Haas arrived soon after, as he had planned to pick up Russ for an HWA Christmas party they were going to attend, and when he arrived, the ambulance was already there, which is how he learned of his brother's passing. HWA went ahead with their TV taping the next day, dedicating the show to Haas and it was done very similar to the WWF's Owen Hart show. HWA promoter Les Thatcher ran a card with straight matches, no angles or gimmickry, and they did the 10-bell salute and played videos of Russ throughout the show. On WWF Raw, Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross spoke about Haas' passing, even though most of the national WWF audience didn't know who they were talking about. As for Charlie Haas, he has been told to take as much time off as he needs and word is he was considering quitting wrestling at first, but decided that would be the last thing his brother would want right now. He's expected to return to the ring in January.
I was hoping to find the HWA tribute show they did for Haas but no luck. However, I did find the match between Haas and Cena that took place just a few hours before Haas suffered his first heart attack. So here's that. It's Russ Haas' final match. Dude was hella-talented. I know Team Angle was fun and all, but it's a shame we never got to see the Haas Brothers as a team on the main roster.
WATCH: Russ Haas vs. Prototype - Sept. 29, 2001 (Haas' final match)
WWA announced plans to do a live PPV in Las Vegas in February. This leads Dave to talking about the companies springing up since WCW folded (WWA and XWF) and the fight they're likely going to have over available talent. The main star everyone wants is Sting, who interestingly enough doesn't seem like he even wants to return to wrestling. Sting's WCW contract expires at the end of the month and XWF and WWA are both said to be putting together big offers for him to work a limited schedule. Sting has had talks with WWF but he apparently isn't interested in whatever they're offering. Then there's the other big stars: Randy Savage reportedly wants so much money that nobody is even bothering to waste time talking to him. Hulk Hogan is playing it safe, not wanting to align himself with a promotion that isn't established and he's probably just hoping WWF calls soon. Kevin Nash is leaning towards WWA because he has a bunch of heat with the Nasty Boys and they're heavily involved behind the scenes of XWF, so they don't want him. WWA has made big offers to Nash, Hall, and Scott Steiner. WWF claims to not be interested in any of those 3 but that can obviously change given that Vince McMahon changes his mind on this sort of stuff on a near-hourly basis (yup, all 3 of them would end up in WWE in 2002).
Anyway, Dave thinks that WWA attempting to run a PPV in the United States makes zero sense right now because they have no television exposure. And they're not going to set the world on fire with Jeff Jarrett and Road Dogg as their main top stars. Speaking of, Road Dogg and Grandmaster Sexay are both still using their old WWF names and gimmicks in WWA. As long as those shows are happening overseas, WWF doesn't seem to really care. But if they try to do a show in the U.S., Dave suspects Road Dogg and Sexay would be hearing from WWF's lawyers pretty quickly. And even if they do manage to bring in guys like Nash and Sting, Dave doesn't see this PPV doing well. Those guys weren't even drawing last year in WCW when they did have television exposure and they also had Hogan, Goldberg, Flair, etc. The only combat sports promotion in history to run successful PPVs in the U.S. without television exposure has been the UFC and that's only because they were presenting a new and unique product that people wanted to see. WWA, which is basically just WCW 2.0 with a lower budget and the same Russo-esque booking, doesn't stand a chance in the U.S. without TV. Speaking of Russo, there's rumors he may be secretly involved in booking WWA right now, but he's actually not supposed to be involved in any pro wrestling at the moment on advice from lawyers since he's still in the midst of a lawsuit with Hulk Hogan. Dave also talks about how Russo refuses to accept that his booking methods were a complete failure in WCW and continues to point the blame at everyone else.
Back on track, this PPV is a bad idea. Dave thinks the only non-WWF promotion that has even a prayer of doing a profitable PPV show in the U.S. right now would be CMLL or AAA. Both those promotions have TV shows in the U.S. on Spanish stations and if they decided to run a PPV in a heavily Hispanic market, they could probably draw and maybe do enough business to turn a profit. But aside from that, anyone else trying to run PPV right now with no TV is insane and is just begging to go bankrupt (in case you're wondering, WWA did indeed run a PPV in Las Vegas in Feb. 2002 and as predicted, it was a disaster. Flopped on PPV, flopped at the gate, a bunch of wrestlers no-showed and tried to hold up the promoter for money, etc. They never ran in the U.S. again).
Kazuyuki Fujita's torn Achilles tendon injury has completely wrecked plans for Inoki's New Year's Eve show and NJPW's Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome event and both shows are scrambling to put together new cards. Fujita was scheduled to defend the IWGP title at the NJPW show against Yuji Nagata in the main event, in a match that has been built up for months. That was already risky enough, since both Fujita and Nagata were scheduled to work shoot MMA fights against K-1 fighters at Inoki's show 5 nights earlier. Instead, NJPW will have Pro Wrestling NOAH's GHC champion Jun Akiyama facing Nagata instead, in a non-title match. Politically, it's interesting. NOAH can't afford to let its world champion lose to another promotion's star. Nagata is still scheduled to face K-1 fighter Mirko Cro Cop at the Inoki show and who knows how that's gonna go (spoiler: very badly for Nagata). Anyway, this leads to Dave talking about the long history of wrestlers vs. shoot fighters in Japan and running down the card of the Inoki show.
Tokyo Sports in Japan had their annual awards (which is voted on by all of the major sportswriters in the country) and to absolutely no one's surprise, Muto was named the MVP of wrestling for 2001 in a landslide. Dave notes that the awards are often very political (for instance, a foreign wrestler can't win the MVP award, which is something Kenny Omega was pretty outspoken about the last couple years he was there). Otherwise, the awards are pretty similar to the Observer Awards, same categories for the most part. Dave breaks down all the winners.
Dave breaks down the list of all the top-selling wrestling books on that amazon.com website where everybody buys books these days. The rankings vary greatly and seem to change hourly, with Kurt Angle's book spending most of the time at the top of the list. But Dave's own "Tributes" book has been at the top of the list a few times as well. The real success story is Missy Hyatt's "First Lady of Wrestling" book which got pretty bad reviews, but is doing strong sales.
Kenta Kobashi announced that his return match will take place in February after 13 months out of action. Kobashi has been out since January of this year after getting multiple knee surgeries (Kobashi does indeed return in February for this match....and immediately blows out his left knee again. He then misses another 5 months before returning for real in July).
Oh yeah, speaking of Kazuyuki Fujita's injury, he had surgery on his right Achilles tendon and is expected to be out for anywhere from 6-12 months. He suffered the injury while training in Thailand earlier this month. Naoya Ogawa is expected to replace Fujita at Inoki's New Year's Eve show in a matchup against a K-1 fighter. The network airing the special insisted on someone of similar star-power to replace Fujita, and Ogawa is pretty much the only person that fits that role. The problem is, Ogawa doesn't want to risk a legit shoot because a loss would wreck his aura and drawing power. So the two sides are kind of at an impasse right now (Ogawa doesn't end up working the show at all).
Jushin Liger is pushing to bring in Eddie Guerrero to help give some name value to the junior heavyweight division (he works a handful of shows there in March before returning to WWF).
After the controversy from their last match, Shinya Hashimoto officially won the NWA title from Steve Corino at a show in McKeesport, PA. It was a sellout crowd...of 250 people, in near-freezing conditions. The temperature inside the building was said to be around 40 degrees and you could see the steam rising from the wrestlers' bodies. After the match, a masked Dan Severn ran in and attacked Hashimoto, to build to a match between them. The following night, Hashimoto worked a 4-way match with Corino, Gary Steele, and Dylan Night that was said to be a great match, but it only took place in front of about 100 fans (I can't find video of the Hashimoto title victory but I do have this 4-way match. It's not really newsworthy but I only mention it because maaaaan this crowd is tiny, in a little shitty warehouse. It's interesting to see Hashimoto in this atmosphere considering how many sold out Tokyo Dome shows he's main evented just a year or two before this).
WATCH: Shinya Hashimoto vs. Steve Corino vs. Gary Steele vs. Dylan Night - 2001
Remember the story last week of Randy Savage challenging Hulk Hogan to a match and talking about donating the proceeds to a local children's hospital? Well, as mentioned, Hogan was completely unaware of this. It's just Savage trying to stir some shit up on his own. The story got picked up by the local newspaper in St. Petersburg. Hogan appeared on the Bubba The Love Sponge show and addressed the issue and tried to be diplomatic about it. He said Savage's heart is in the right place, but he's going about it the wrong way by trying to put him on the spot like that. He also said he has prior commitments on the day Savage challenged him for. BubbaSponge wasn't as good humored about it, trashing Savage and saying he shouldn't be using children's hospitals for publicity stunts. Savage responded and went on a different local radio show and said he and Hogan could raise millions for the hospital by having the match broadcast on PPV and said HBO and Showtime were also interested in airing it ("now he's really getting delusional," Dave says). Savage also said he was challenging Hogan to a shoot, not a wrestling match because they've had issues with each other for awhile and he wants to settle it like men. Savage predicted their match could raise $10 million or more for the hospital. Aside from Wrestlemania 17, there hasn't been a pro wrestling event this year to generate even close to that kind of money, and Dave kinda questions Savage's sanity and thinks this whole thing is just sad and desperate (we're still 2 years away from the rap album but yeah, Savage was deep into his mid-life crisis at this point).
Comedy Central has reportedly purchased the entire AWA tape library from Verne Gagne and seem to be interested in running some sort of wrestling show. Dave can't imagine what they have in mind with that idea and a collection of AWA footage (pretty sure Dave got some bad info here. From what I can tell, WWE ended up buying the library from the Gagne family in 2003, so it doesn't appear Comedy Central ever bought it).
Chyna filmed an episode of "Sabrina The Teenage Witch" that is scheduled to air in March. She also appeared on "The Last Word" with Jim Rome this week and he pressured her to say whether wrestling was sport or acting. Chyna said it was both, and Rome just couldn't comprehend it. He also talked about bitter ex-wrestlers and asked Chyna if she was bitter towards WWF. She said she didn't agree with everything that was done in regards to her departure, but refused to knock Vince. She also said she made more money from her latest Playboy spread than she did in her 6 years in WWF combined. All in all, Jim Rome was basically a dick who hates the business and was trying desperately to get her to trash professional wrestling, and she wouldn't play along.
This week's National Enquirer has a story about Triple H and Chyna's breakup and while it's sensationalized a bit (because it's the Enquirer), the story is basically accurate. Chyna suspected Triple H was cheating on her with Stephanie and there were rumors in the locker room saying as much, but he denied it. One day backstage, they had an argument and he stormed off, at which point Chyna snooped through his briefcase and found a bunch of love letters Stephanie had written him, some dating back more than a year. She said she confronted Stephanie and Vince, with Vince claiming that he thought Chyna and Triple H had already broken up. Dave says this actually rings true to him. Dave makes it a personal policy to try not to know about people's personal relationships like this unless it affects business, but he says even back in mid-2000, he was hearing people whisper about Triple H and Stephanie having something going on and Dave also thought Chyna and Triple H were already broken up by then. But apparently not, or at least nobody bothered to tell Chyna. Anyway, a week after Chyna discovered the letters and confronted everyone about it, she was gone from the company. Chyna has been careful not to blame that on the reason her contract wasn't renewed, but you'd have to be pretty naive to believe it didn't play a part.
CZW ran a show at the old ECW Arena and packed the building, with one of the largest sellout crowds for an indie show this year. The show got mixed reviews, starting an hour late and running until almost 2am. They also ran a CZW vs. ECW angle, with a bunch of ex-ECW stars showing up but word is most of them showed up out of shape, didn't take it seriously, and the whole thing came off embarrassing. After the main event (which saw Justice Pain and Wifebeater take a huge bump off a scaffold on top of a cage), Rocco Rock, Gary Wolfe, Blue Meanie, and Tod Gordon came out wearing ECW shirts. Gordon cut a promo saying the fans turned on the ECW guys and then Sandman came out to seemingly be the hero, but he took off his ECW shirt to reveal a CZW shirt. Insane Clown Posse was booked to work this show, but it was announced that they had no-showed, leading Dave to ask why anyone even bothers trying to book them anymore considering how many times they've burned promoters. And in the weirdest side note of this whole thing, legendary boxer Joe Frazier was in attendance at this show.
WATCH: Highlights from CZW Cage of Death 3 at the ECW Arena - 2001
Jacques Rougeau has booked a huge show at the Molson Center in Montreal that has sold nearly 6,000 tickets so far at press time, which is insane for an indie show. But Rougeau is a big name in Montreal and the show is mostly built around all the Rougeau family members teaming up for the first time in years. Sid Vicious, who hasn't appeared in pro wrestling since breaking his leg at that PPV back in the dying days of WCW is scheduled to be a referee on this show, because he's nowhere near ready to actually wrestle yet (I can't find any footage of it, but it's worth noting that a young Kevin Steen also worked this show).
RF Video's new promotion Ring of Honor is scheduled to debut in February and has announced a double main event. First is Eddie Guerrero vs. Super Crazy. And the other is a three-way match with Christopher Daniels vs. Low-Ki vs. American Dragon.
Bill Goldberg still has no interest in going to WWF but said he would love to run his own independent PPV and have matches against Steve Austin or The Rock when their WWF contracts expire. Needless to say, that's a pipe dream. Goldberg has been talking more about wanting to do MMA than return to wrestling and seems interested in going to fight for PRIDE. But Dave says there's almost no upside to that. If he wins, cool. But he's already rich and a big star. And if he loses, it pretty much destroys his aura and kills his drawing power in the future. Dave thinks it would be a bad idea.
Eric Bischoff is now working with K-1 and has been trying to get them a TV deal in the United States as well as talking with tour promoters to run shows here. Dave doesn't seem to have much hope for this, and Bischoff has tried several times this year to get TV deals for other wrestling and MMA ventures, with no success (yeah after the WCW/Fusient deal fell through, Bischoff spent the next year desperately trying to get pretty much anything off the ground but had no luck).
Remember last week how it was almost a certainty that WWF would be splitting the rosters and doing a brand split on the Jan. 7th edition of Raw? Well, once again, that's looking to be in doubt. As of press time, the company is wavering on whether to do it then or delay it again and Vince has reportedly changed his mind on it a million times. That Raw is going to be at Madison Square Garden and Triple H is expected to make his return on that show.
Notes from Raw: Dave says they had so much pyro during the opening that he thought they were trying to blow up the building. Austin did a promo and the crowd went crazy with the "what?" chants. Dave thinks it's probably fun for those in the building, but it makes for really annoying television (yuuup). Whole show was built around Booker T running from Austin, hiding in a church, shit like that. It was lame and ratings reflected it (plummeting throughout the show, 3rd lowest rated Raw of the year).
Notes from Smackdown: mostly a boring show aside from Booker T and Austin brawling in a grocery store, which was entertaining at first but Dave thinks it went on for way too long (Dave is wrong and should be ashamed of himself). They also did a Merry Christmas thing with Hugh Morrus who, in storyline, was fired last month when the Alliance lost to WWF at Survivor Series, but now he's back with no explanation and they're forgetting it ever happened, which is some WCW-level attention to detail. Jerry Lawler is still temporarily announcing both Raw and Smackdown and he's reaching a point of self-parody. Lawler has been a great announcer, but now he's just the guy who yells "Puppies!" multiple times per show and it's annoying.
WATCH: Steve Austin & Booker T brawl in a grocery store
Shawn Michaels met with Vince and Jim Ross last week, when he was brought in to appear on the Saturday night Excess show. Excess is a call-in show with pre-screened questions. Michaels was, of course, asked if he was ever going to return to the ring and he was non-committal and mostly avoided giving an answer either way. He said his top priority in his life right now is his son, not wrestling, and said he'd need to talk to his doctors before even considering it. Earlier this year, Shawn was scheduled to return and interfere in the Triple H/Undertaker match at Wrestlemania, but the week before, he showed up at Raw whacked out of his mind on pills and passed out backstage and that ended that. But the tension seems to have died off and Vince and Jim Ross were both receptive to the idea of Shawn coming back (yeah, at this point in his life, Shawn had finally started getting his shit together). Michaels hasn't wrestled in WWF since Wrestlemania 14 in 1998, although he did work one match for his own TWA promotion back in 2000.
Triple H has pretty much been living in Birmingham full-time since May when he tore his quad, only going to his real home a few times this year. He's been rehabbing full-time and has been on the road with WWF at TV events, hanging out backstage.
Zagat's Restaurant Guide, which is essentially the bible of New York restaurants, gave WWF New York a terrible review. It got the lowest score in Zagat's history for quality of food and one of the lowest for quality of service as well (the restaurant limps along for another year or so before they finally close it in 2003).
Prototype and Shelton Benjamin are going to go on the road in January and start working main roster house shows so the office can get a better idea of how they're progressing. Dave thinks Shelton Benjamin has all the in-ring tools to be a star, but he needs a lot of work on the other stuff. In particular, his promos aren't good (have they tried zooming in close on his face while he darts his eyes back and forth silently? Surely that's a winning gimmick). As for Prototype, his in-ring skills still need work, although he has improved a lot since coming to OVW. Out of everybody in developmental, Dave thinks Prototype has the most potential to become a superstar because he's got charisma and promo skills that are leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else, including a lot of main roster guys. In fact, if he came up to the main roster today, Dave thinks he'd be a better promo than all but maybe 4 or 5 WWF stars currently on the roster. Randy Orton is a better in-ring worker, but Prototype just has "it" and Dave predicts big things for him. Leviathan has a great presence and charisma but his in-ring work is still pretty rough. But Dave thinks both he and Lesnar also have a lot of potential to be big stars.
Rock has to re-shoot scenes for Scorpion King so he won't be working much in January so they can get the movie finished in time for the April release date. He'll still work TV and PPVs, but very few house shows.
ESPN.com listed Vince McMahon as a candidate for "Unsportsman of the Year." For, well, lots of reasons. The XFL flop, the Costas interview, the Kiss My Ass club stuff, etc. Forbes also listed him as the 13th "Most Fascinating Business Tycoon." Vince is also #364 on the Forbes 400 richest people in America.
There was a situation at an HWA show that got out of hand this week. It happened during a 6-man match with Rikishi & The Island Boyz (Umaga and Rosey) vs. Russ McCullough, Haku, & Elix Skipper. During the match, McCullough was holding Rikishi for Haku to kick him and the idea was Rikishi would move and Haku would kick his partner by accident. Except McCullough didn't let Rikishi go while holding him and it resulted in Rikishi accidentally taking a stiff kick to the head from Haku. Infuriated, Rikishi grabbed a plastic chair and started beating the absolute shit out of McCullough with it as hard as he could, legit, and started cursing him and challenging him to a shoot. If you recall from the last issue, McCullough was told last week that he was being released when his developmental contract expires this month. So he only had a week left in the company when working this show and he knew it. So he just said, "fuck this," and left the ring mid-match and went back to the locker room, never to return, leading the confused referee to call for the bell since Rikishi obviously got DQ'd. Going into the match, McCullough was already unhappy since he was booked to do the job and take a stinkface from Rikishi, neither of which he wanted to do. Following the match, Rikishi and McCullough got into a shouting match backstage. HWA promoter Les Thatcher went ahead and told McCullough that he could leave a week early, so he's officially done with the company now. As for Rikishi, there's a lot of people feel he could have handled the situation better, since he's the veteran who should know not to lose his temper and derail a match because of a blown spot and also because he's supposed to set an example for the developmental wrestlers on how to handle things like that. Giving a guy a receipt for stiffing you is one thing, but many felt that Rikishi went way too far by assaulting McCullough with a weapon and causing the match to get scrapped before they could do the planned finish (no video of this that I can find anywhere).
Speaking of HWA guys who were let go, Kid Romeo and Evan Karagis were also told their contracts wouldn't be renewed last week and rather than stick around for their last few weeks, both guys just quit, never to return. Allan Funk (formerly Kwee Wee in WCW) was also released by WWF and Les Thatcher has been pretty outspoken about that one, saying he wishes he could have kept him. Meanwhile, Tough Enough winner Maven is still working here for now and he's....not good. He's extremely charismatic and has been getting huge pops at all the shows because fans know him from Tough Enough. But when the bell rings, he's said to be so green that under normal circumstances, he wouldn't even be allowed in the ring yet. But because he's so popular, they're sticking him in tag matches to hide his inexperience and are still using him.
Following the interview with former referee Billy Silverman last week where he detailed the bullying and hazing he suffered in WWF, there's been a lot of talk about "ribs" in pro wrestling. Sometimes ribs are fine, just harmless pranks to break up the monotony of guys living on the road. For instance, Owen Hart was notorious for pulling funny, but ultimately harmless ribs. But sometimes, you get sadistic assholes (coughBradshawcough) who take it too far, doing things like shitting in people's bags, cutting up their clothes, and things like that. Actually, I don't know why I'm cough hinting at it. Dave outright names Bradshaw as the primary person who bullied Silverman right out of the company. Silverman has since threatened a lawsuit against the WWF over all this while also adding that he was harassed about being Jewish (he's actually not, "Billy Silverman" is just a stage name, but still). It's noted that Silverman did report the hazing to talent relations. WWF has an HR department, but he didn't report it to them at the time because he was smart enough to know that if he did, the bullying would have only gotten worse and he would have been shunned from the locker room for being a snitch. Regardless, Dave hopes this whole thing can maybe be an eye-opening experience that this sort of stuff isn't funny (nearly 20 years later, JBL still works for WWE and as Mauro Ranallo can attest, he hasn't changed a bit).
There's a TON of letters this week, and most of them are people complaining about how the WWF product has become totally stagnant and shitty in the last 8 months since WCW folded and how Vince McMahon refuses to listen to the fans who want something different. The more things change...