Wrestling Observer Rewinder

February 25, 2002

"It was one of those moments," Dave says to start the issue. He's of course talking about the moment on Raw this week when The Rock came out and challenged Hulk Hogan to a match at Wrestlemania. What originally seemed on paper like just another big match suddenly became a dream match transcending generations and completely captivated the crowd. Hogan was better on the mic here than he's ever been in his entire career. Dave lists some of the most memorable moments in wrestling history and puts this up there with them as an all-time classic moment. He goes into detail about how a lot of those moments (Hogan heel turn, Austin stuns Vince for the first time, Andre/Hogan, etc.) were catalysts that turned around business and led to a boom period. Of course, after a commercial break, they followed this moment up with a lame angle of Hogan driving a forklift into an ambulance with Rock inside. After the magic of the promo, to follow it up with that angle felt like a fart in church. Dave says he had heard about the ambulance/forklift angle a week ago but thought it was something that was planned for Wrestlemania or the Raw the night after. The idea Dave had heard was Rock would win the match with Hogan and the next night, they would do the ambulance angle to give the NWO their heat back and Rock would take time off. But alas, that was not to be. Dave suspects it may be because Rock wants time off now because, if you recall last week, he's burned out from wrestling and filming the movie and he has a 6-month old daughter he sure would like to see once in awhile. Anyway, Dave goes into exhaustive detail on some of the biggest angles in wrestling history and how they changed the business. Whether or not this Rock/Hogan challenge will have the same effect remains to be seen but Dave says this feels like the biggest match since Hogan/Andre in 1987. All in all, it was a career defining moment for both guys. (I mean, yeah. If this moment didn't give you goosebumps, why are you even a wrestling fan?)
The Rock challenges Hulk Hogan for Wrestlemania 18
So....the original 3 NWO members are now in the WWF and Dave has lots of thoughts on it. Aside from Hall's incident on his first day in, everyone has been behaving so far. They did all the right things, sold for Rock and Austin on the mic, bumped all over the place for Austin during the beat down angle, they were cordial and humble and friendly to everyone backstage. There's still a lot of skepticism about whether Hall will last until Wrestlemania, and even though there weren't any incidents, Hall in particular still seems to be rubbing people the wrong way in general, and the locker room was tense. But otherwise, so far so good for the most part. Of course, there's still a lot of people that aren't happy about these 3 guys coming in and immediately locking up some of the top spots in the company. Guys like Edge and RVD just got knocked way down the totem pole by these guys showing up. But time will tell how it all goes. Austin has agreed to work with Hall at Wrestlemania and they'll be working house shows together before then. Hogan is expected to work with Rikishi on an upcoming house show. Nash isn't expected to have a match at Wrestlemania but will be in Hall's corner. But despite rumors, Nash isn't being kept as a backup plan in case Hall flakes out. Apparently, the belief is that even Austin wouldn't be able to carry Nash to a watchable match, so if Hall doesn't make it to WM, the backup plan is for Austin vs. Kurt Angle.
Did I mention Dave has a lot of thoughts on this? Because we ain't done. Hall and Nash spent 2 days in Cincinnati working out at HWA to try to get back in ring shape and work on some things. Dave thinks it was a political move designed to show everyone they're trying to be team players and he doesn't buy it a bit. For what it's worth, I agree with most things Dave has ever written in this newsletter (and I've read a lot of them) but he has a serious hate-boner for Hall, Nash, and Hogan around this time that's difficult to ignore. No doubt those guys earned their reputations and I understand why Dave feels the way he feels, but he doesn't even pretend to give these guys the benefit of the doubt in a new company. It's one of the very few times in doing these Rewinds that I feel like Dave may be being a little unfair. But then again, I'm also reading it with 2020 eyes. Back in 2002 when this was written, the actions of all three of these guys were a lot more fresh and they were almost universally despised within the business. So whatever, I dunno.
Anyway, Hall and Nash also arrived late to Raw this week, in a limo. Needless to say it raised some eyebrows, not just because they were late, but also because not even Rock and Austin show up in limos. Hall and Nash said the night before, they had been told to be at the arena at 11am for a meeting with the creative team. So they did, but the team didn't show up until 12:30. Hall and Nash were annoyed, feeling like they were being tested. So the next day, at Raw, they were asked again to show up to the arena at 11am and this time, they said, "Fuck that" and intentionally showed up at 2pm instead. So yeah, this whole relationship is off to a great start.
Nash is also pushing hard for X-Pac to be added to their NWO group. Dave says if it happens, it won't be until after Wrestlemania. But if it happens, there's gonna be a lot of people upset. X-Pac, like it or not, is pretty much an undercard guy (prior to his injury a few months ago, he was feuding with Kidman and Tajiri for the cruiserweight title, just to give you an idea of where he was in the pecking order around this time). So if X-Pac returns from injury and immediately leapfrogs everyone else on the roster to join the main event NWO angle because Nash politicked for his friend, that will pretty much confirm everything everyone already believes about them. But anyway, Triple H is also pushing for X-Pac to be involved, so there's a considerable push to make it happen (and sure enough, next month, X-Pac joins the group. Maybe Dave's pessimistic view of these guys isn't unwarranted after all...) In other news, there's still no talk whatsoever about including Shawn Michaels. There has been talk about bringing in Eric Bischoff, but nothing serious.
Edge was expected to face William Regal at Wrestlemania, with the idea of crowning Edge as the new IC champion in his hometown. But the Edge/Regal matches on house shows have been getting a lukewarm response and the feeling is that the angle has dragged already and they may just wrap it up sooner and build Edge and Regal for different matches at WM instead (yup, that's what ends up happening).
Oh yeah, there was a PPV. No Way Out is in the books and featured the return of Hogan, Nash, and Hall. It was the first appearance for Hulk Hogan in a WWF ring since his final house show in Aug. 1993. Overall, the PPV was probably the weakest WWF shows in months, partly due to the completely dead crowd. Dave thinks bringing out the NWO at the beginning of the show may have killed everything that followed. The PPV sold out in about an hour when tickets went on sale, so it's not like these weren't rabidly interested fans, but when the bell rang, they were dead and even Austin and Rock had trouble keeping their attention during the matches. None of the show was bad, but none of it was particularly great either. It was all just there. The main event of Austin vs. Jericho was marred somewhat by a fight in the crowd between two women that lasted several minutes and took everyone's attention away from the match.
Other notes from the PPV: DDP beat Big Boss Man in the pre-show Heat match. DDP's eye is all messed up from a stiff shot he took from Val Venis in a match the night before. The NWO came out for their promo and there was a moment where they joked about Scott Hall's drinking. Dave finds it pretty uncomfortable to be portraying Hall as this "cool" drunk guy given how serious his problems are, and Dave said he got several letters from people in recovery who were furious about WWF making light of Hall's issues. RVD vs. Goldust was RVD's worst PPV match in years because of the styles clash. Goldust is an experienced technician and RVD's weaknesses became glaringly apparent when trying to work that style, and he looked extremely sloppy. Flair cost Undertaker his match against Rock, which sets up the Undertaker/Flair match for Wrestlemania. The Triple H/Kurt Angle match had Stephanie McMahon as the referee and there was a spot early in the match where Angle clotheslined her over the top rope and it was a hell of a bump. Dave gives Stephanie all the credit in the world, because she flew over the top perfectly and Dave says it was one of the highlights of the show (yeah, I just went back and watched it and for somebody completely untrained, she nailed that spot beautifully). But of course, she came back out before the match was over and the whole thing ended up just being background to the Triple H/Stephanie drama and Dave ain't feeling it. Austin/Jericho was a brutal chop fest and overall was the best match on the show, but the overbooked finish and ref bumps was all too much. It ended with the NWO beating down Austin, but after the show was off the air, Hall came back out and Austin recovered and stunned him to send the fans home happy. He also poured beer all over Hall, which was not planned and backstage, Kevin Nash threw a fit about it. He went to Jim Ross and said Hall is on anti-alcohol medication that causes him to get violently sick if he tastes, or even smells, alcohol and Nash felt Austin was purposely trying to dump beer in Hall's face.
(The above story is interesting. On the Bruce Prichard podcast, they talk about the segment a few weeks later where Austin had Hall tied up backstage and was pouring beer on him and they talk about how Hall got sick. In the podcast, Prichard claims they didn't know Hall was taking this medication until the night they filmed that backstage scene. But according to this, Nash was making everyone aware of it the night of the No Way Out PPV, which was weeks before that. Also, there's a couple of other instances during house shows where Dave reports Austin was pouring beer on Hall after matches. Honestly, sounds to me like there were people in the company that were actively trying to fuck with Hall. But who knows.)
FMW, the death match promotion started by Atsushi Onita in Japan in 1989, is the latest casualty of the declining wrestling business, announcing this week that they're closing down. At its peak in the early/mid-90s, FMW was drawing upwards of 55,000 fans to major stadium shows and changed the face of Japanese wrestling by inspiring dozens of copycats. FMW also can be credited for being a big inspiration behind ECW in the United States and all the copycats that stemmed from it (CZW, XPW, etc.). Eventually, Onita left the company he started (selling his shares to company president Shoichi Arai in 1998) and that was the beginning of the end, as business began to plummet. By last year, FMW had laid off much of its office staff and was down to less than 20 wrestlers. Then Hayabusa, the promotion's top star, broke his neck several months ago and remains paralyzed, and that appears to have been the final nail in the coffin. The company is nearly $1 million in debt on several high interest loans (Dave doesn't mention it and probably isn't aware at the time, but those debts were to the Yakuza) and in recent weeks had been bouncing checks everywhere and unable to pay talent. It was very similar to the dying days of ECW. Dave notes this is the 3rd Japanese promotion to close down in recent months, with Battlarts and RINGS recently closing as well. Dave gives a long, detailed history of FMW, from guys like Sabu first making his name there, The Sheik, Rick Bogner (better known as the fake Razor Ramon), The Gladiator (Mike Awesome), and others all getting their first real brush with success there. He also talks about all the controversies (like Sheik nearly dying in a match because of the fire or the time Onita brought in Invader 1, the guy who killed Bruiser Brody, and did an angle where Invader "stabbed" Onita in the exact same way, to recreate Brody's death). The whole thing reads like an obituary for a promotion and is a great primer on the history of FMW (and of course, a few months after this, Shoichi Arai ends up committing suicide in hopes that the insurance money would repay his Yakuza debts and keep his family safe).
Good and bad news for Pro Wrestling NOAH. The good news is that their show this past week at Budokan Hall was the biggest in company history and even better, it was announced they're getting a TV upgrade. NOAH's show will expand to 1 hour and moving to a much better time slot (currently it's a 30 minute show and airs....randomly. Anywhere from 1:30am to 2:30am, depending on whatever). This will move it to a midnight time slot, which still seems not great by American standards, but these wrestling shows always seem to be in weird middle of the night time slots in Japan. And a stable time slot at midnight with a one hour show is a tremendous upgrade. The Budokan show was a sellout crowd of more than 16,000 to see Kenta Kobashi's return, with fans chanting for him throughout the show, long before his match even took place.
Now the bad news: at that very same Budokan show, Kobashi once again re-injured his left knee in his first match back in over a year. The next day, he was examined and told he suffered further ligament damage. If he gets another surgery, he's looking at another year-long recovery and even without surgery, he's looking at another 4 months minimum and more like 6 months. Kobashi, of course, refused the surgery and at first, he planned to keep wrestling immediately, 'cause fuck them doctors. But when Misawa learned of the news, he canceled all of Kobashi's upcoming dates and pretty much forbid him to do it. During the previous 13 months Kobashi was out, he underwent 5 surgeries on that same left knee and 4 surgeries on the right knee. Kobashi has been told he essentially has the knees of an 80-year-old and that he needs to retire because he's risking permanent, debilitating injury by trying to continue wrestling (so of course, he continues for another 11 years).
As for the Budokan show, Kobashi teamed with Misawa in a losing effort to Jun Akiyama and Yuji Nagata. As expected, Kobashi did the job because in kayfabe, he's been out for over a year and shouldn't be able to beat the best wrestlers in the company. Despite the injury, he finished the match. In fact, during the match, he felt great. It was the next morning, when he woke up and his knee was killing him that they figured out something was wrong again. The show also featured NJPW stars Jushin Liger and Wataru Inoue starting an inter-promotional angle with some of NOAH's junior heavyweights, likely leading to NOAH's jr. champion Naomichi Marufuji facing Liger soon.
A year ago, if someone suggested aging mid-carder Tadao Yasuda would be the IWGP champion, you'd think NJPW had gone crazy. But after Yasuda's shocking MMA victory over K-1 fighter Jerome Le Banner at Inoki's New Year's Eve show, the company decided to capitalize on his newfound fame and his underdog story by having him win the IWGP title tournament, capturing the belt vacated when Kazuyuji Fujita was injured in December. Yasuda beat Yuji Nagata in the finals, becoming arguably the most unlikely IWGP champion in history. The final 4 of the tournament left NJPW with no real good options. Rick Steiner was never a consideration, Riki Choshu is the booker and didn't want to book himself as champion. And Yuji Nagata, who would normally be the best choice, is coming off an embarrassing 21-second loss to Cro Cop and in kayfabe, NJPW doesn't want their champion to be a guy who got humiliated by the star of another promotion because it would feel like an empty consolation prize. The plan is to rebuild Nagata for awhile before giving him the title. So....Yasuda it was. In other notes from the same show, Minoru Tanaka captured the vacant Jr. Heavyweight title, which was vacated when Kendo Kashin jumped ship to AJPW along with Keiji Muto and Satoshi Kojima. Promising young newcomer Katsuyori Shibata lost a straight up squash match to PRIDE fighter Daijiro Matsui in 2 minutes because Inoki gonna Inoki. Hiroshi Tanahashi (who Dave says has a ton of potential) and Kenzo Suzuki won a huge upset in a tag match with Fujinami and Shiro Koshinaka.
In bigger NJPW news, company president Tatsumi Fujinami announced he would be retiring from in-ring wrestling. A few years ago, Fujinami had announced plans to retire and it didn't really get any publicity, so he quietly just....kept wrestling and everybody just forgot. But anyway, as mentioned a couple weeks ago, Antonio Inoki basically gave Fujinami an ultimatum: you can be a wrestler or NJPW president, but not both, and ordered him to make a choice. No word on when Fujinami's final match will be (he sorta retires in later 2002, works 1 match in 2003, and then returns full time in 2005. And he still wrestles occasionally to this day, in 2020).
Fuji TV in Japan announced they are no longer going to air women's wrestling on their network, dropping it after 25 years. A TV show on the network called Athena aired highlights of the top women's matches and for years featured All Japan Women's shows. It was one of the longest running television/promotion relationships in the history of the business. This leads Dave into recapping the history of Joshi wrestling in Japan, the massive mainstream success of the Crush Gals in the 80s, the rise of stars like Manami Toyota and others. AJW has been struggling financially for several years and nearly folded in 1997 before somewhat rebounding, but this is sure to be a big blow (indeed, this hurt them a lot, but they managed to hang on for a bit. They end up folding for good in 2005).
Meta news: the Wrestling Observer Live radio show, hosted by Dave and Bryan Alvarez, is returning! If you recall, Dave and Bryan hosted the show on Eyada.com, an online radio network, from 1999 to 2001. But Eyada didn't survive the dot com crash and went bust and the show went with it. But now the new show will air on syndicated radio. No word yet on the list of stations. Dave and Bryan will return to host the show starting the night of Wrestlemania. Also, Dave's son Cody was just born on Feb. 1st and he thanks everyone for all the well wishes and says this is one of the most hectic but best periods of his life.
Keiji Muto has reportedly gotten out of shape in the month or so he's been out of action since leaving NJPW. He's been going to a lot of sponsor parties and drinking with all the major executives, trying to help raise money and get investors to buy into AJPW. Muto himself admitted it, saying he's been drinking too much and got a big gut in his month off.
Random Japan notes: Jinsei Shinzaki, better known to American fans as Hakushi, has been named head booker (or "Executive Producer") of Michinoku Pro Wrestling. Indie wrestler Samoa Joe is working matches for Shinya Hashimoto's Zero-1 promotion.
Gold medal Olympic amateur wrestler Rulon Gardner nearly died this week while out snowmobiling with friends. He got lost from his friends, fell into a river, and nearly froze to death in Wyoming. He built a shelter and tried to wait for rescue but was there for most of a day in temperatures below zero. By the time rescuers found him, they had to use a helicopter to get to him and get him to safety. He was suffering from hypothermia and severe frostbite in his toes, which may need to be amputated, but it's unknown at press time (yeah, he ended up getting one of them amputated and suffered severe damage to the others).
Dave updates a story from a few weeks ago. The movie role that Goldberg lost out on to Michael Clark Duncan was indeed for Kingpin in the new Daredevil movie.
Dave says that XPW has fired Vampiro, but gives no other details. Okay, sure.
A rare indie show in Alaska featured guys like Eddie Guerrero, Scott Steiner, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, Spanky, Frankie Kazarian, and American Dragon. Hell of a lineup. The top matches were all said to be awesome.
RF Video's new promotion Ring of Honor has its debut show this week and tickets have already sold out (400-seat venue) several days beforehand. Good start!
People within WWA are claiming their debut PPV in the U.S. did between 35,000-40,000 buys. Dave says you can't take that number seriously because preliminary buyrate estimates are always higher than the actual number. Also, Dave doesn't believe this anyway. In their dying days, WCW and ECW were doing in the range of 60,000 buys on PPV, for shows that were heavily promoted (in WCW's case, on national TV). Meanwhile, this WWA PPV had pretty much no promotion at all, so Dave ain't buying the claim that they somehow pulled nearly the same kind of numbers as WCW or ECW used to do, even in their dying days. They have another PPV coming up this week, but Dave doesn't expect much.
Jimmy Hart has had meetings with Turner Broadcasting execs regarding XWF but they haven't really gone anywhere. Reportedly, there are still people at Turner who would like to see wrestling back on their networks, but they feel that as long as Jamie Kellner is in charge, there's no chance of it happening.
Notes from Raw: Dave says it was one of the all-time classic episodes of the show. The Hogan/Rock angle, of course. Triple H vs. Kurt Angle in the main event was Triple H's best match since returning, although it was clearly Angle carrying the load. Jericho was on commentary and talked sarcastically about the match being 5 stars. There was also a woman in the crowd flashing her breasts for a long time before she was removed by security, to a chorus of boos. And in my favorite thing, before the show, there was a dark match in which OVW wrestlers Brock Lesnar and Leviathan (Batista) teamed up and lost to the team of Tazz and Spike Dudley. I need to see this match ASAP.
Basil Bozinis, an indie guy who was briefly signed to a WWF developmental contract last year, died of a suspected drug overdose. Bozinis was part of the UPW group of wrestlers along with John Cena that was signed last year. He reportedly had issues with nubain and heroin and stopped coming to shows, which led to WWF cutting him from his contract.
Dave says there's a little bit of heat between Hulk Hogan and Scott Hall. After the No Way Out PPV, Hall went out partying with Godfather and you can imagine how that went. The next morning, Hall wasn't able to get out of bed for a scheduled workout, which annoyed Hogan because he heavily went to bat for Hall to come back to WWF and he's pretty obviously continuing to fuck up.
OVW happenings: they're building up to a big Prototype vs. Leviathan match for the OVW title soon. Dave talks about some of the other people there. Damaja is probably the best worker in OVW but he doesn't have the size or look that WWF may be looking for, but he's still young and is really good. Mark Jindrak and Sean O'Haire, former WCW champions, are making progress and improving as well. Dave says those 2 guys are in a tough spot because they were young and extremely green, but they got put on national TV in WCW, became tag team champions, and worked with some of the top stars. But then they got signed to WWF and essentially got sent back to wrestling school and told to re-learn everything they were ever taught and are working indie shows in front of 100 fans and then have to help clean up and break down the ring when it's over. Shit like that. Dave says it's probably a pretty difficult to thing to overcome mentally for a performer.
WWF tried to get Limp Bizkit to play Undertaker's entrance live at Wrestlemania but that fell through for whatever reason. So now they're trying to get the band Drowning Pool to perform (that does indeed happen, and they got Limp Bizkit the next year).
Scott Steiner did not pass his WWF physical. The results came back and there's a lot of issues that have to be addressed before WWF will sign him. Most notably, he still has drop foot syndrome, a nerve issue where he has no control over the movement in one of his feet and it will flop and drag unless it's held in position. There are other issues as well and many in the WWF feel he's too much of an injury liability right now. Even if they do eventually hire him, he'll almost certainly work a part-time schedule.
WWF is doing a show in Japan next week that will be headlined by Rock vs. Jericho and weirdly enough, when it airs on TV in Japan, Keiji Muto will be doing commentary. Dave says Muto actually has his own talk show in Japan where he interviews people. Dave doesn't speak Japanese, so he can't comment on it too much, but Muto has interviewed some American wrestlers and those have been good. In particular, he says an interview Muto did with Bob Backlund was fascinating. (I can't find the Backlund interview, but I found one where he's interviewing Abdullah The Butcher. My best guess is that this is around 1997-98 or so).
Details magazine had a story about a new bong that is popular among stoners because it's less harsh when taking hits. The article listed celebrities who like to use this bong, and one of them listed was the Godfather, which is probably some publicity WWF would probably rather not have.