February 11, 2002
- The first round of the tournament to crown a new IWGP champion took place this week, and saw the surprise return of Rick Steiner, who went over Kensuke Sasaki in the first round. Tadao Yasuda and Yuji Nagata also advanced and the 3 of them will join Masa Chono (who had a first round bye) in the semi-finals next week. As far as the vacant IWGP Jr. title, rumor is that will be decided in a match next week between Minoru Tanaka vs. Masahito Kakihara but that may change. As for the vacant tag team titles, they will hold an 8-team tournament in March to crown new champs.
- Big story about Tito Ortiz tearing his ACL and needing surgery, forcing UFC to scrap his planned dream match against Vitor Belfort. That fight doesn't end up happening until 2005. But anyway, that's MMA so....
- Looooooong obituary for Nelson Royal, the former NWA Jr. Heavyweight champion, who died from a heart attack at 66 years old. Royal held the Jr. title in the 70s and was the last real touring champion that title had. Danny Hodge had previously held the belt and made it famous until a car wreck mostly ended his career, at which point Royal became champion and toured the territories defending it for most of the next few years, but that title was never really a big draw compared to the NWA world title. Anyway, Dave recaps his career and, with it, the weird convoluted history of that title. I'm always blown away at how Dave can write thousands of words about the interesting career of someone I've never even heard of.
- Remember a couple of issues ago where Dave recapped some of the Observer Awards and gave his personal opinions on the winners and whether he agreed with them or not and why and blah blah blah? Well, he only did half of them in that issue. So this issue has the other half. Slow week I guess.
- Dave looks back at numbers for the Japanese business over the past year. Yeah, definitely a slow week. Anyway, attendances, gates, TV ratings, etc. AJPW business is still in decline because they've not really recovered from the NOAH exodus in 2000. Speaking of NOAH, this was their first full year of existence so there's nothing to really compare their numbers to, but they're holding steady. PRIDE numbers are almost identical to the year before. NJPW was hit hard with their Dome shows, with attendance dropping 25% since last year. All their other numbers are mostly steady, so for all the doom and gloom about NJPW, the only real decline they saw was in their ability to draw for big stadium shows (yeah, that was just the first sign. The next few years for NJPW are going to be the real doom and gloom).
- A guy named Ben Miller writes occasional columns-within-the-Observer and he has one about the NJPW situation. No news, just analysis. Then, after Ben's thing, there's another looooooong section of....Observer history. Hey, that's my job! Anyway, it's like "2 years ago this week" then 7 years ago, and 12 years ago. And he just recaps all the big stories from the Observers of those years. Fuck off Dave, I'm working this corner!
- In Mexico, a tag match featuring Vampiro and a wrestler named Cobarde went sideways when a fan got involved. The fan brought his chair to ringside and was acting like he was going to hand it to Vampiro to use on Cobarde. But suddenly, the fan pulled the chair back and swung it at Cobarde himself, cracking him hard in the head and giving him a cut that required stitches. Charges were filed against the fan.
- Rey Mysterio is still working in Puerto Rico and having show-stealing matches with Eddie Colon (Primo) over the WWC Jr. title.
- Jun Akiyama said that if he gets pinned by Kenta Kobashi in Kobashi's return match next week, he'll vacate the GHC heavyweight title. NOAH is big on realism and from a ring-rust kayfabe perspective, Kobashi has been out for over a year, so it wouldn't make sense for him to be able to beat the champion in his first match back. Dave expects Akiyama will pin Kobashi, which will give Kobashi a loss to avenge later on.
- A St. Paul newspaper wrote a story about Jesse Ventura using his political office as state governor to cash in for himself, specifically talking about his Summerslam 1999 appearance, XFL announcing gig, books he's written, and more. Dave talks about how Ventura was very cagey about the money he got from Summerslam, attempting to mislead the media into thinking he was donating it to charity when in fact he didn't. Ventura has always claimed that his outside business ventures are done on his own time and don't interfere with his work as governor, but the article used a recent example of Ventura disappearing for several days in the middle of the week to film a role in a Dana Carvey movie (The Master of Disguise).
- Superstar Billy Graham had a donor lined up to give him a portion of his liver, a friend he knew from church, but the man failed his blood test and is no longer a candidate. So Graham is still waiting. If there's a silver lining, the donor found out in the midst of the test about his own liver issues that needed immediate attention, which he wouldn't have found out about otherwise so that's good.
- Gary Michael Capetta is hosting a live theater show, based on his book Bodyslams, about his 21 years as a wrestling announcer. Sounds like it's pretty much just a speaking tour, telling stories about his career. Years before Mick Foley started touring with the same idea.
- A female wrestler in Australia named Donna Marie Parsons was charged with having her husband murdered by 2 hitmen to collect a $1 million life insurance policy. First they tried to kill him by cutting the brake lines in his car, but that didn't work and then they tried to run him off the road when he was riding a motorcycle but that didn't work either. So then on the third attempt, they just went to his house and beat him to death with a crowbar and cut his throat. Yeah, I've found that usually does the trick. Anyway, she has pleaded not guilty. (She later gets convicted and gets 23 years in prison).
- A Toronto newspaper ran a story about Diana Hart, her book, and the Hart family in general. Diana once again said she wanted Pamela Anderson to play her in a film version of her life (she said this in another interview awhile back on TV and was ridiculed for it). She also doubled down on her claims from the book, that Davey Boy Smith was abusive, drug addicted, and had raped her.
- WWA's Las Vegas PPV was confirmed for the Aladdin Hotel. Since the promoters weren't able to get a license from the commission in time, the arena is using its own license to allow the show to go on. Scott Steiner is claiming he'll be working the show. Konnan and Norman Smiley, both of whom have worked all previous WWA shows, are booked for an XWF show on that same date, as is Rey Mysterio, so don't expect any of them. They're advertising a Juventud Guerrera vs. Psicosis match, but Psicosis is claiming he hasn't heard from anyone in WWA about wanting to book him for that date yet.
- Speaking of XWF, it was reported last week that WWF made Jimmy Hart an offer to come in with Hogan, but Hart has decided to turn it down and stick with helping to run XWF (obviously doesn't pan out too well for him).
- Well that didn't take long. Scott Hall showed up to the WWF TV tapings this week and made a total spectacle of himself, apparently drunk. In the past, as long as you weren't working a match, a lot of wrestlers and promoters looked past being messed up in the locker room because you're just hanging out, you're not endangering anybody. But this was Hall's first day back in the locker room and needless to say, everyone was pretty irritated about it. It confirmed everything everybody expected when it was announced that these 3 guys were coming back. Dave says Steve Austin and Undertaker particularly have been vocal about the fact that they've worked too hard to get the company to where it is to allow these guys to come in and wreck things. Naturally, Triple H has been coming to his friends' defense but he's pretty much the only one. Speaking of Austin, it's expected he'll face either Hall or Nash at Wrestlemania, which would leave Rock/Hogan and Triple H/Jericho as the other 2 big matches.
- Notes from Raw: the show was in Vegas. The "police" that Angle hid behind when he was running from Triple H were actually bouncers from the local Crazy Horse Saloon strip club where Godfather has worked off and on for years in real life. They did the angle with Stephanie trying to get Triple H to renew their vows and telling him she was pregnant. Dave says pregnancy angles in wrestling always suck. The best pregnancy angle was the ECW one with Beulah, where she was "pregnant" for 6 months, never showed, and then turned lesbian for a week in an angle that was then forgotten about and only succeeded in getting them kicked off their Florida TV channel. And that was the good pregnancy angle. From there, Terri and Val Venis, Mae Young and the hand, the Stacy Keibler/Flairs/Russo nonsense in WCW, and so on and so forth. They're never good. Anyway, Dave expects Stephanie to turn on Triple H and join Jericho when they do the vow renewal. That was the original plan with the Goldust/Marlena/Brian Pillman angle back in 1997, but then Pillman died and the angle got scrapped.
- Fans have been doing the "What?!" chant during the national anthem at recent WWF shows. Literally Steve Austin's worst contribution to the professional wrestling industry.
- Apparently Jericho did end up playing in that charity hockey game this week as part of the NHL All-Star weekend, with Goldberg acting as celebrity coach. For what it's worth, Goldberg was said to be very apologetic to Jericho about what happened between them in WCW (when Goldberg refused to work with him because Kevin Nash convinced him that he was too big of a star to be working with Jericho). Goldberg said he realizes now he was basically being manipulated because, of course, soon after that, Nash himself worked with Goldberg and ended his streak. During the game, Jericho and Goldberg did an angle together where they pretended to fight and Goldberg had to pick Jericho up and carry him back to the bench, which got a lot of publicity (can't find any video of this).
- Hulk Hogan was on the Bubba The Love Sponge show and talked about how he's going to kick the Rock's ass, the same way he kicked his dad's ass. Dave isn't sure Hogan and Rocky Johnson ever even wrestled each other (from my research, the answer appears to be no). Obviously this further adds to the speculation that Hogan will likely face Rock at Wrestlemania.
- When Stacy Keibler was on Howard Stern recently, he invited her to come with him to Scores strip club and she agreed. But this week, Stern went on the show and said WWF officials wouldn't let her go to the strip club with him because they felt it wasn't a good look for the company, leading Stern to point out all the half-naked Attitude Era stuff she's been doing on TV for the last year and wonders how that's any different. Full disclosure, I'd still risk it all for Stacy Keibler. Top 5 all-time dead or alive, fight me.
- Chris Benoit was told by doctors that it's going to be at least 3 more months before he's cleared to return to the ring, which kills Benoit's hope of being back in time for Wrestlemania, although he kinda figured as much anyway, so the news wasn't a surprise.
- WWF has had discussions about maybe bringing in Eric Bischoff, but it's still a long way off if/when that happens, still just early talks. Also, those who have seen Bischoff lately say he's not exactly camera ready lately (dude's been unemployed and living out in the mountains for awhile I guess). Obviously, there's potential to bring him in with the NWO.
- Scott Hall's contract calls for a maximum of 10 dates per month, which basically means no house shows as long as he appears on all TVs. He and Nash are pushing to get X-Pac brought into the NWO with them, but Vince ain't going for it yet. Word is X-Pac has some heat from an interview he did on WWF.com a few months back where he made a lot of negative comments about how the company has handled its light heavyweight division. This ain't WCW, so going out in public and talking shit about your employer actually gets you in trouble here.
- In a recent interview, Jerry Lawler was asked who would win a legit wrestling tournament among all the WWF wrestlers. Lawler said it wouldn't even be close and that Kurt Angle would wipe the floor with every single one of them in 30 seconds. That begs the question of Brock Lesnar and, turns out, we have an answer to that. Apparently Angle and Lesnar had their own wrestling match backstage for that very reason, to settle that debate, and Angle won, although it was apparently close. Even an Olympian struggles when the guy is 75 pounds heavier than you. Angle talked about it in a WWF.com interview:
- "A guy like Brock, he's 310 pounds and he's a tremendous athlete. I give him a lot of credit. I underestimated him. He's actually better than I thought he was. He's not only a great wrestler; he' is a tremendous athlete. And I haven't wrestled in five years, so I'm kind of like an old man. I'm nothing compared to what I used to be. He just got out of college. so he's still pumping on all cylinders. To be able to get in the ring with him felt pretty good. Did I win? Yeah, but not by much. How would I do if I were in the same shape he was? I'll be honest. I'd kill him. If that hurts his feelings, too bad. It's just the way it is. He's a national champion. I'm an Olympic champion. He might be 80 or 90 pounds heavier than me, but I ate up guys his size. And until he realizes that, he's going to hear it from me. I'll never turn down a challenge. I've challenged him six times. Finally he took my challenge. I don't care how long I've been out of the sport; one thing I can say is that he'll never beat me. I might never beat him, because I've been out of the sport for so long now. But, give me two weeks on the mat, he's in trouble. It's a lost art for me, but I could still go to nationals and win it."
- Scott Steiner will be undergoing a full physical this week at the request of WWF. If he passes, he'll likely be brought in. Steiner has only worked a handful of matches in WWA since WCW folded and he had to literally tape his foot into place because he has no control over his foot due to back and leg issues causing nerve damage. If he doesn't immobilize it, his foot will just flop out of place.
- Various notes: Steve Blackman is dealing with some neck problems which is why he's been out (he never comes back, that injury pretty much retires him). Kurt Angle's brother Eric Angle, who's been signed to a developmental deal for awhile now, is needing another bicep surgery (yeah injuries keep him from ever really making it out of developmental). Steve Austin is taping a bunch of stuff for MadTV.
- In the UK, on SkyTV, all references to "WWF" have been changed to "WWFE" due to the World Wildlife Fund lawsuit. The case is being appealed, but if WWF loses, they will have to stop using the "WWF" initials for marketing purposes outside of the U.S., meaning all website stuff, magazines, TV shows, everything using "WWF" would have to be changed. Can you imagine?
- Speaking of developmental, down in HWA, Tough Enough winner Maven is getting good reviews. He survived a lot of ribbing when he first came in due to the way he got his contract, and it would have been easy for him to get a big head or bad attitude, but he's worked hard and gotten himself over with the other wrestlers because he's humble and recognizes that he still has a lot of work to do.
- Ron Killings (formerly K-Kwik) did an interview talking about his recent release from WWF and he was cool about it, saying these things happen and he's still going to keep working. He did say he was frustrated because no one ever gave him a reason why he was released and after the fact, neither Jim Ross or Vince McMahon would return his phone calls.
- Apparently in a recent discussion with one of the Nevada athletic commission doctors, Triple H was talking to him about UFC running so many shows in Nevada and Triple H apparently said, in all seriousness, "Don't you know that stuff is all fake?" For what it's worth, Dave says a lot of wrestlers are like that, so inside the wrestling bubble, that they think everything is a work.