April 22, 2002
- Dave opens with a short novel about the relationship between pro wrestling and television. Raw is usually the highest rated show on cable every week. Smackdown is the highest rated show on UPN. Even though it's down from its peak 2 years ago, WWF is still far and away the most successful promotion in the history of the business. One would think this success would have other networks jumping to get in on this trend, but that hasn't happened. Ever since WCW folded, start-up after start-up has tried and failed to get a TV deal. A lot of the networks aren't available. WWF has exclusivity with Viacom so all their channels are out. Part of the WCW purchase was an agreement that Time Warner wouldn't air another wrestling show for 5 years, so TBS and TNT aren't an option either. With the exception of maybe Scott Steiner, every single available, major star is already signed to WWF. Sure, there's guys like Savage and Piper still out there on the open market, but you can't build a viable company around them anymore. Dave desperately wants one of these start-ups to make it. He wishes XWF and WWA can be successful, but it doesn't look good. Dave goes into all the history of wrestling/TV, back to the 80s with national syndication and how the costs of being on TV (in an effort to compete with Vince) drove a lot of the territories out of business, or how TV production costs helped to sink both SMW and ECW.
- So what about Jerry Jarrett's idea? He's trying to build a promotion exclusively on weekly PPVs, but without TV to get storylines and characters over, who's going to buy PPVs? Even with all the money they have behind them, UFC can't even turn a profit running exclusively on PPV right now, they're also in desperate need of a TV show (one particularly ironic line: "We are a long way, if ever, from seeing UFC clips on SportsCenter after a big show, something that is necessary for a mainstream sport to be a hit."). So Jarrett, trying to produce a secondary wrestling product, with no TV, using unknowns, washed up stars, or the leftovers that Vince didn't want, and getting people to pay for it every week is....gonna be tricky, needless to say. What about NJPW? Could they be a viable TV presence in America. Dave doesn't think so. Language barrier, plus the style is completely different from what American fans are used to. Lucha Libre? It's had some success in places near the border and the Hispanic population is growing in America, but Dave doesn't see a nationally televised Lucha Libre product appealing to the American masses outside of a few markets. When it has aired on TV, even in Hispanic markets on channels like Univision or Telemundo, the ratings have been middling. This whole thing is one of Dave's classic looooooong analysis pieces and it's interesting but there's nothing of note here.
- Vince McMahon, Stacy Keibler, and Mark Henry held a press conference to announce a show at the 55,000-seat Colonial Stadium in Melbourne, Australia for later this year. It will be a Smackdown branded show, with Hogan, Rock, and Triple H being the main names promoted. They made it clear that Steve Austin wouldn't be there, and it's expected the show will be filmed and released on video or air on TV in Australia. With high ringside ticket prices, it's expected this could end up being one of the biggest live shows in WWF history. The press conference got off to a good start when the state tourism minister got on the mic and announced that "Wrestlemania" was coming to Melbourne, causing Vince to facepalm and shake his head while the crowd, realizing the mistake, chanted "You fucked up!" at this poor government official.
- Speaking of Melbourne, Australia, WWA held its latest PPV there only 3 days after Vince's big announcement. The show was a mixed bag. Sabu vs. Devon Storm in a cage match was excellent and both guys gave it their all and then some. Jerry Lynn vs. AJ Styles was also a good match. The crowd was much more into the show than the Vegas crowd was. The rest...eh. 3,700 in the crowd, a lot papered. Sid Vicious was there as the commissioner and Dave says it was sad to see. Over a year after the horrible injury he suffered in WCW, Sid was still relying on a cane to walk around and looked to have aged significantly and Dave hates to see it. Sid was telling people at the show that he's frustrated with how little he can do physically and that he likely will never be able to wrestle again. He also appeared to be in pain when he walked, but seemed genuinely emotional at the response he got from the crowd. 3 days after winning the WWA title at a house show, Nathan Jones lost it to Scott Steiner, who isn't under contract and could still be snatched up by WWF at any moment. But of course, Steiner's health ain't great either. Jeff Jarrett surprisingly only appeared in a backstage segment and Dave doesn't know what the story is there. He was there, but they just didn't use him beyond that. Guys like Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Road Dogg, and Kronik were all advertised but weren't there and never mentioned. Production value sucked. Mics not working, sound cutting out, producer time cues coming over the audio, etc. Other than the matches mentioned above, everything else ranged from "awful" to "watchable, I guess."
- Dave had the chance to see 2 new wrestling documentaries this week and neither of them paint a positive picture of the business. The first is called Gaea Girls and actually came out a couple years ago on the film festival circuit but was never properly released to the masses until airing on TV in the UK a few weeks ago, and Dave got a copy of the tape. The film follows the training process of a woman trying to make it in the Japanese world of Joshi wrestling. Dave calls it "Tough Enough times 20." The other documentary is called The Backyard and is basically like Beyond The Mat for backyard wrestling. Both movies show the physical punishment these people go through in the hopes of becoming famous. Nearly every person interviewed in The Backyard talked about having dreams of being in the WWF, apparently unaware that WWF refuses to even look at tapes from untrained backyard wrestlers. It was a bunch of people who grew up watching Mick Foley and think the key to becoming a star is throwing yourself on barbed wire and thumbtacks. RVD even has a cameo in The Backyard (filmed before he signed with WWF last year) and was shown being horrified at what these kids were doing to themselves. As for Gaea Girls, it follows a 22-year-old Japanese girl being practically tortured in her training quest to become a wrestler. Neither film paints a glamorous picture of wrestling.
- Obituary for Stanley Weston, who founded several famous wrestling magazines, including Pro Wrestling Illustrated. Dead at 82. Was the mentor for Bill Apter, worked on a lot of wrestling and boxing magazines. Dave recounts the famous story from 1963 where NWA champion Buddy Rogers dropped the title to Lou Thesz. Vince McMahon Sr. didn't want it acknowledged that Rogers had lost the match because he didn't want Rogers (his guy) to lose the title yet but the NWA decided otherwise. McMahon Sr. asked Weston not to publish anything about the match, so that no one outside of the fans in the arena would know and Vince could continue billing Rogers as the champion (without using the NWA name). Weston decided he had to tell the truth, so he published the story. As a result, Vince Sr. concocted a story about Buddy Rogers winning a fictional tournament to become the first WWWF champion. There's a lot more to it, but this whole story is what led to WWWF leaving the NWA and branching off on their own and, well, the rest is history.
- Most of the lineup for NJPW's Tokyo Dome show in a couple of weeks has been announced and it's a unique show. Antonio Inoki didn't feel the card is strong enough, so he's bringing in Naoya Ogawa and Shinya Hashimoto to work the show as well, against the explicit wishes of NJPW booker Masahiro Chono, who has publicly said he doesn't want either of them on the show or working with the company. But it's happening whether he likes it or not. Inoki talked about having Ogawa face Seiji Sakaguchi in a judo match. Sakaguchi is a former judo champion in the 1960s and 70s and later wrestled for NJPW. But he's a 60 year old man now. This is NJPW's 30th anniversary show and the original idea was for Inoki to face Sakaguchi in a big match but that got scrapped. So now Inoki wants this 60 year old to have a judo match on a NJPW card against Ogawa (thankfully doesn't happen). Elsewhere on the card, Yuji Nagata is defending the IWGP title against NOAH star Yoshihiro Takayama. And in a dream match, Chono is facing Mitsuharu Misawa but that match won't be airing on TV because of the TV-Asahi/Nippon TV stuff mentioned in previous issues. Dave thinks this match will do huge business but worries that it will be a styles clash because he can't picture Chono working Misawa's style. Rick and Scott Steiner are also teaming up to face Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kensuke Sasaki, plus a bunch of other stuff. Wrestlers from Big Japan, All Japan Women, PRIDE, and others will wrestle on the card as well. Chyna was announced as debuting on this show weeks ago, but Dave hasn't heard anything new on that lately.
- The new Will Smith movie Ali comes out this week, about the life of Muhammad Ali. Although his match with Inoki isn't mentioned in the movie, it was a huge part of the mainstream publicity in Japan for the movie's release there and Inoki was all over the media talking about it to promote the film. Will Smith was also there this week promoting it.
- Lou Thesz is still hospitalized at press time after heart surgery last week. His recovery has been more difficult than expected but the prognosis is still good (not so much, unfortunately. We're about 2 weeks away from his death).
- Goldberg was injured while auto racing at the Long Beach celebrity Grand Prix. During the 4th lap, his car had gear trouble and he was forced to drop out of the race. After he got out of the car, he got mad and took a punch at the driver's side mirror, which broke off and went flying. But he also hurt his wrist. Some reports said it was a damaged tendon or may have been broken. Either way, Goldberg is now wearing a cast and Dave really wishes he'd stop trying to fight cars.
- A big indie show headlined by a 4-way bloodbath featuring Dusty Rhodes, Kevin Sullivan, Terry Funk, and Abdullah The Butcher drew over 3,000 fans in Florida. That's a combined age of 232 years old. But the match was apparently super heated and they brawled all over the arena and the crowd loved it. Funk even tried to run Dusty over with a pickup truck at one point (I'd love to see video of this match, but can't find it).
- Latest on Jerry Jarrett's new promotion: several wrestlers have been given actual contract offers, most notably AJ Styles and some of the other bigger names who worked recent WWA shows. Nobody has signed as of yet. Also, despite denials that Vince Russo will be involved, Dave is still hearing whispers from several people that he'll be ghostwriting. Dave thinks if that's true, it'll be obvious pretty quick. The company will be based out of Nashville and is set to debut on PPV in June. They're still hoping to do TV in different cities also.
- Remember during the Owen Hart lawsuit when Ellie Neidhart faxed secret legal documents to the WWF lawyers in an attempt to sabotage the case? In a new book was released on Stu Hart in Canada, the author claims Ellie did so in an effort to end the lawsuit because of the stress it was causing Stu and Helen. Dave is pretty skeptical of that and he's not alone. Apparently the book is decent and makes an honest effort to be fair and truthful, but most of the family refused to cooperate with the author, so it's only a partial version of the story. Bret Hart read the book this week and said he didn't like it.
- Dave saw the American Dragon vs. Low-Ki match from the recent Ring of Honor show and says it was the best match of that type that he's ever seen in the U.S. It was full Japanese-style, hard hitting, lots of submissions, etc. Like a mix of UWFI, Pride, and NJPW all in one. The crowd was nuclear hot for it and gave them a 6-minute standing ovation after.
- Random news & notes: the Lucha show in Los Angeles Dave mentioned last week drew the biggest non-WWF crowd in North America so far this year (little over 4,000). Jake Roberts broke some ribs on a backdrop gone wrong in a match in England. Superstar Billy Graham is still in desperate need of a liver transplant. Revised estimate for WWA's Las Vegas PPV back in February is significantly less than the 30,000 buys they claimed and closer to 15,000. Needless to say, huge failure and money loser.
- The Rock has been everywhere this last week doing promotion for Scorpion King, including hosting SNL for the 2nd time. Dave thinks he's handled himself tremendously. After he finishes the worldwide promotional run, he's going to have a few weeks off at home to finally relax and is expected to be back in WWF by June. Despite all the rumors that the movie was expected to suck because of all the last minute re-shoots, reviews have been pretty kind so far and everyone who's seen it expects Rock to become a huge star off this film.
- Kane underwent surgery for a torn bicep this week. Ironically enough, they did an injury angle with him on TV the week before, and then a few days later, he got hurt on a house show. So luckily, they were able to write him off TV before the injury even happened. After the angle on TV, he was expected to return in a week or two and team with Bradshaw to face X-Pac & Scott Hall at Backlash but that's out the window now (yeah, Kane was out until August and the Backlash match got changed to Hall vs. Bradshaw in a teeeeerrrrrible singles match).
- Speaking of Backlash, the show will be headlined by Triple H defending the WWF title against Hulk Hogan. Dave is intrigued by the match and how they book it. Both are babyfaces in theory, but the crowd is firmly behind Hogan right now. If they want to tell the ultimate feel-good comeback story, there will never be a better time than the present for Hogan to win the title. Because this wave of nostalgia popularity he's riding right now isn't gonna last forever. So if you're gonna pull the trigger, this is it (spoiler: they do).
- Notes from Raw: the focus of this show was clearly to elevate Bradshaw to the top guy level. Austin and Flair opened with a promo and Dave says it's one of the few times he's seen someone stand toe-to-toe with Flair and outshine him in a promo because Austin was on fire. Dave notes that the women's matches have improved 500% in recent weeks and credits it all to Trish Stratus busting her ass to actually become a good worker. And Bradshaw teamed with Austin in the main event against Undertaker, Scott Hall, and X-Pac, complete with Bradshaw getting the big hot tag and the winning pin.
- In reviewing Smackdown (and the tapings for next week), Dave finally gives Hogan some credit and admits WWF is using him perfectly right now. Both in ring and in promos, Hogan has actually been doing positive things to help get guys like Jericho and Kurt Angle over and Dave isn't letting it go unrecognized. It's the kind of stuff WCW should have been doing with him and they might still be in business.
- Vince did some interviews while he was in Australia last week and made some interesting comments. He talked about how far they pushed the envelope with the "Attitude" thing in recent years but talked about being more careful now. He also said they have to limit risky matches like TLC or Hell in a Cell because the wrestlers are always trying to push the limits and it's not safe (now we gets those matches a million times a year). He admitted there was originally animosity between himself and Hogan and they had to work through that before he was brought back to the company but said he doesn't harbor resentment. He said Owen Hart's death was the darkest moment in WWF history and also said he tried to reach out to Bret (before Wrestlemania, as mentioned) and wishes the Montreal Screwjob hadn't gone down the way it did and that it was nobody's fault (sure, Vince). He was asked about Vince Russo and said Russo's ego got too big and he didn't realize how good he had it in WWF until he left. "He's pretty much a failure," Vince said. When asked about Beyond the Mat, Vince said he didn't like it because he's in the business of putting smiles on people's faces and the movie doesn't do that and paints the business in a bad light. He said he's had talks with both Sting and Goldberg but didn't seem like it went anywhere.
- Fabulous Moolah recently finished writing her autobiography. It's not out yet but Dave has read the first 2 chapters and....eh. It appears to be all written in kayfabe and she presents all of her matches and title wins as if they were totally legit and portrays herself as a real sports champion for the past 40+ years and how no other athlete ever did anything like that and so on and so forth. Dave thinks she's gonna lose a lot of readers within the first few pages (yeah, apparently the whole book is in kayfabe and got pretty widely panned for it).
- Kamala did an interview recently and talked about his match with Undertaker at Summerslam 92. Kamala claimed he only made $13,000 for working 3rd from the top, while he claims Undertaker made $500,000 for the same match. Dave has asked around and while the Kamala figure sounds legit based on what others got paid, there's no way Undertaker got paid $500K for it. Dave writes that off as complete bullshit. But Kamala's pay is accurate and he, along with a lot of wrestlers from that show, were upset at the low pay offs considering it still, 10 years later, holds the WWF's all-time record for paid attendance and merchandise sales (this is the same show where Nailz got a low-payoff that led to him attacking Vince).
- Random WWF notes: Eddie Guerrero has been attending regular AA meetings. Lita suffered a stinger while doing stunts for the TV show Dark Angel this week and isn't working shows at the moment (that "stinger" turns out the be a neck injury that keeps her out for a year and a half). Brock Lesnar's wife gave birth to a daughter this week. The Big Valbowski is changing his name back to Val Venis because everyone realized the other one was a horrible name. Shane McMahon's wife Marissa has a brief appearance in Scorpion King (no idea). Rene Dupre has signed a developmental deal.
- Because Rock is signed to a WWF contract, Vince McMahon was given a producer credit on Scorpion King. Dave notes Eric Bischoff got similar producer credits when Hogan, Sting, and DDP appeared in various movies during their WCW days. WWF is also expected to get a portion of the films profits, although it's a very minimal percentage.
- Vince McMahon is apparently not the least bit concerned about Jerry Jarrett's new promotion. Jarrett had asked Victor Quinones and Savio Vega of IWA to do Spanish commentary for their show. IWA has a working relationship with WWF so those guy went to Vince and asked if it would be okay and Vince told them he was fine with it.
- Tammy Sytch did an interview, trashing the WWF women, saying there's too many women there who don't know what they're doing in the ring and shouldn't be wrestling. She also talked about her adult website she's doing with Missy Hyatt and talked about how she turned down an offer to pose for Playboy when she was still in WWF (biggest missed opportunity of all time). She also hinted she would like to come back to the company, but Dave would be shocked if that happened.
- Regarding Steve Austin walking out after Wrestlemania, internally, the belief is that he's mostly just burned out and had been holding in his frustrations for so long that he finally just exploded. Within the company, they've admitted that his role going into Wrestlemania 18 was pretty weak for one of the biggest stars in history. But with Rock/Hogan and Jericho/Triple H already chiseled in stone, that really only left Hall, Nash, or Angle as top level opponents. They had already done Austin vs. Angle several times so it wasn't fresh and they had no confidence in Nash having a watchable match, so....Hall it was. And Austin's displeasure with working with Hall, along with Hall's own repeated screw-ups, led to a weak build and immediately blowing the angle off when Austin demanded they end it.