Wrestling Observer Rewinder

July 08, 2002

Dave opens with a brief history of the cursed Hart family before going into the latest story, that Bret Hart has suffered a stroke. Hart suffered a blood clot on the right side of his brain, causing temporary paralysis on the left side of his body after hitting the back of his head on a rock following a bicycle accident. Hart was going down a hill and not wearing a helmet when he hit a hole on the bike path and flew over the handlebars. He distinctly remembers the accident, hitting the ground, and being unable to get up. He was able to call his ex-wife Julie on his cell phone and help was summoned. At the hospital 12 hours later, doctors determined he had suffered a stroke. His back is still in great pain but as of press time, he's made a lot of progress and is able to use his left leg again. At one point, that went away and he wasn't even able to wiggle his toes, but the feeling has since come back. He still has no control over his left arm however. But doctors are optimistic that he'll be able to walk out of the hospital on his own power eventually. Doctors are saying they don't believe the stroke was related to his concussion history at the moment, but more tests are being done. He does have a family history of strokes, as Helen Hart suffered several in her final days. He's currently bedridden or using a wheelchair and will have to re-learn how to walk again. While they do expect him to walk again, a full 100% recovery from something like this is a bit more rare, so he may have lifelong lingering effects. On WWE's website, Jim Ross wished him well and even Vince McMahon chimed in, giving a comment to the Calgary Sun saying, "Despite our differences of opinions, I respect him. Bret's contributions to the WWE are enormous and everyone thinks very highly of him" and wished Hart well.
WWE's latest business reports are out and shows that, despite the downturn in business, WWE is still doing just fine financially. Even though they're facing 5-year lows when it comes to attendance and TV ratings, the previous quarter was the largest grossing quarter in company history (due to the success of Wrestlemania and a lot of international touring). Even though the popularity of the product is down, between merchandise, licensing deals, etc. WWE has figured out how to milk more money out of a smaller fanbase via other avenues. Plus, every time business in the U.S. goes down, they're able to tour more overseas to make up for it. During the bad mid-90s years, as terrible as things got in the U.S., they were still doing huge business overseas and those tours were vital in sustaining the company during those times. There was a lot of talk about international expansion this week, which means that's probably the plan again. And even with declining ratings, WWE is still the top rated show for TNN and UPN, but despite the high ratings, neither shows are strong moneymakers for the networks because wrestling still has a negative reputation among sponsors. So it will need to sustain higher ratings than most shows would in order to stave off cancellation, but there's no danger of that yet. Ratings haven't gotten that bad.
During the investors call, Linda McMahon blamed competition from shows such as The Osbournes, Fear Factor, Spongebob, and Survivor as contributing to the falling ratings. All of those shows do higher ratings than WWE, but for those keeping track, Survivor is the only one that even airs head-to-head against WWE. The other 3 are on different days at different times and have zero bearing on WWE's ratings. Linda McMahon also blamed video games for the declining ratings, as if those are a new phenomenon that didn't exist last year. The departure of Steve Austin was completely avoided until someone outright asked about it, at which Linda said that Austin is currently suspended for conduct reasons and said it would only have a short-term impact and noted that new stars like RVD, Chris Jericho, Booker T, and Brock Lesnar are being pushed to take his place. She noted that WWE made a flat $2 million from Rock's involvement in Scorpion King because he's under WWE contract and they will also make a portion of the profits on the back-end. Anyway, the rest of this is "blah blah blah revenue is down such-and-such % from last year." So just imagine a bunch of big numbers in 2001 and then imagine all those same numbers, but smaller, in 2002. See, easy peasy!
XWF has just about thrown in the towel. After a lengthy meeting this week, the powers that be pretty much realized that it's going to be all but impossible to get this promotion off the ground. After shooting 10 episodes last year, they've spent much of this year trying to secure a television deal without success. In the TV industry, despite the success of WWE, wrestling is seen as a fad that was hot for a while but has since died out. XWF's last-ditch effort was with WGN in Chicago, a local station that does have some national coverage. But it would have cost them $300,000+ just to pay for 5 episodes to air. Buying TV time is what has killed other promotions in the past and XWF wasn't making enough on live shows to pay that cost. Plus, WWE's success has changed what a national promotion is expected to look like. If networks are going to put you on their TV, they want you to have big budget production, pyro, effects, etc. Nobody other than WWE can afford to do that and everyone else looks minor league in comparison because of it. Bottom line, it's pretty much impossible to run a profitable wrestling company on a national level without a strong TV deal to off-set the costs. And it's impossible to get that TV deal without having the money to put together a big budget product that can attract them. Officially, XWF isn't folding completely just yet, though all the wrestlers have been released from contracts and most of the employees have been cut as well. The plan for now still seems to be to sell the original tapings overseas and try to follow up by running a tour over there with many of those same stars. But those tapes are a year old. Hogan and Lawler are back in WWE, and a lot of the footage already feels dated. And they obviously won't be able to bring Hogan on the tour. European fans can just wait for WWE to come if they want that. So needless to say, this is pretty much the end of the road for XWF.
The second NWA-TNA show is in the books and was highlighted by an incredible 4-way main event of Low-Ki vs. Jerry Lynn vs. AJ Styles vs. Psicosis that Dave says was every bit of 4.5 stars. But the rest of the show was an embarrassment. Don West is enthusiastic but adds nothing else as a commentator and Ed Ferrara is obnoxious enough to make you want to change the channel on a show you paid for. Furthermore, the response Dave heard from readers on this show was about half as much as the first show, which isn't a good sign for potential PPV buys, but it was also expected. No one knows the actual numbers for the first show yet. Dave has heard estimates anywhere from 25,000 to 80,000 buys. Regardless, just from anecdotal research, the second episode is probably looking at around a 50% drop from whatever the debut did. Jarrett vs. Scott Hall was passable, but everything else was terrible until the main event. Bad production, no graphics, bad camerawork, half the stars are no-names to all but the most hardcore fans...it's becoming very apparent how much of a stranglehold WWE has on American wrestling and how difficult it's going to be for anyone else to gain a foothold. The atmosphere was awful (remember, this was taped after the first show, so the half empty building had already sat through several hours of this already). The lingerie battle royal, on PPV, was less risque than what WWE does on network TV every week, with women who don't have a fraction of the star power. Dave desperately wants to see an alternative company make it, but this is 2 weeks in a row of a show that felt like WCW Thunder: dead crowd, bad show, with only one redeeming Lucha-style match to save it. That being said, the match was as good as any match he's seen this year and for that reason alone, Dave can't give the show a complete thumbs down. But they've got a steep mountain to climb if they want to survive.
Taping for the 3rd season of Tough Enough has been postponed due to Kelsey Grammer. Yup. The plan was to film the show over a 9-week period from July-September at a home in Malibu, in the neighborhood Grammer lives in. Grammer, along with several other neighbors, expressed concern about disruptions in the usually quiet neighborhood and found a municipal code that restricts filming in the area, noting that any filming can only take place during a 14-day period. Grammer and his neighbors went to the city council who voted 5-0 to enforce the code. WWE had already spent more than $100,000 on pre-production in the area but now may be forced to find a new location to film. If they can't find a similar beachfront location, they may just move it back to Stamford like they did before.
Diamond Dallas Page's in-ring career is officially over, after his insurance company and WWE management all decided to listen to the doctors because his back is a mess. Lloyd's of London informed DDP this week that if he wrestled again, they would terminate his insurance policy. Vince McMahon and Jim Ross agreed, after receiving letters from DDP's doctors recommending retirement. He still has 2 years remaining on his contract and is expected to stay with the company in a different role, perhaps announcing, though DDP has said he would be interested in a public relations role. From here, Dave recaps DDP's career as if he died, full obituary style. It's a long piece on every major storyline and angle DDP was ever involved in, but it's not particularly newsworthy. Great read though.
Dave has seen the recent PRIDE show that was headlined by Don Frye vs. NOAH star Yoshihiro Takayama and hoooooly shit. Original reports of this fight were that it was one of the best in MMA history. Now that Dave has seen it....yeah. "You could have said the first two minutes of the match were the greatest two minutes in the history of MMA, boxing, kickboxing, pro wrestling and just about anything short of sex, and not have been disappointed, because it was," Dave writes. He says it was the fight of the year but he also hopes we've seen the last of these two men in PRIDE. Takayama took a merciless beating because he's all offense and no defense but he can take a punch. It makes for exciting fights, but he's going to get seriously hurt fighting like that some day. And Frye, who has been doing this for years, also needs to face reality at 36 years old after the beating he took in this fight and against Shamrock a few months back. Basically, both men are the type of guys who will go in there and die in the ring before they give up and that's not good. And stepping away from the sport after this, arguably one of the greatest fights in MMA history, would be the perfect time to escape with their health still relatively intact (I posted this in last week's Rewind, but it deserves to be seen again).
Ratings news: Raw was the lowest rated show in over 4 years, so that's not good. And Smackdown didn't fare much better. And in fact, the Jeff Hardy vs. Undertaker ladder match (more on that in a bit) was an outright disaster, with viewers tuning out in droves, despite how well the match seems to have gotten over with fans. Overall, more than 1.1 million viewers tuned out during that particular match, a staggering loss, to the point where Dave actually wonders if there was a clerical error from the Neilsen ratings people or something. It also shows how little people care about the Hardyz right now and Dave thinks Jeff in particular needs to go away for awhile.
The wrestling war in the U.S. may be finished but it's still boiling over in Puerto Rico. In noting the TV ratings for both WWC and IWA, Dave mentions that for the first time since it was founded in 1973, Carlos Colon's WWC promotion is solidly in 2nd place. IWA is on fire right now in Puerto Rico, outdrawing WWC in both TV ratings and live crowds.
Eric Bischoff had meetings this week with Keiji Muto and Motoko Baba of AJPW, but it appears that the meetings didn't lead anywhere. Dave talks about how a lot of Japanese companies like to try and work out deals with the U.S. promotions and promoters because it gets good coverage in the magazines and newspapers and makes them appear like a major, international brand. But ultimately, the deals never seem to go anywhere. Muto and Ms. Baba were in Hawaii a few weeks ago meeting with people in WWE for the exact same reason. Bischoff does have interest in any idea that comes along if it's viable, but he's told friends he doesn't see anything viable coming along because TV networks aren't interested in wrestling right now. In order to get a real product off the ground, Bischoff estimates you'd need a $75 million commitment from a TV network and even then, it's not guaranteed to succeed and if it fails, whoever approved it at the network would probably be looking for a new career. So it's a huge gamble that none of the networks want to take, which means there's nothing viable in the wrestling world right now for Bischoff to get involved with (oh, I suspect he'll find something new to do in a few weeks...)
Hayabusa announced plans to start his own promotion called WMF (Wrestling's Marvelous Future), or FMW backwards. He will appear in public as Hayabusa for the first time since his career-ending injury last year that left him paralyzed.
Women's indie wrestler Ms.Chif is a genetic research scientist by day and was featured on a news show discussing her work on the Human Genome Project. Dave goes into what this is and how groundbreaking the project is and how it could change sports forever due to the way they've been able to engineer muscle mass in lab rats and things like that. Click for example
A couple weeks ago, Road Warrior Animal and Keiji Muto put together an indie show in Atlantic City featuring a bunch of washed up 80s names from the past. I didn't mention it because it didn't seem like a big deal but some fun news coming out of it: everybody's check bounced. Even Road Warrior Animal's check, because he was working with some other guy who was acting as the promoter. Needless to say, a bunch of wrestlers are pretty pissed off, in particular at Animal who they all know and trust and thought he wouldn't allow everybody to get fucked over like this by some snake promoter.
Dave saw a tape of the latest Ring of Honor show and says it was as good a show from top-to-bottom as he's seen from any promotion in the world all year. Several 4-star level matches. AJ Styles, Low-Ki, Bryan Danielson, Spanky, Amazing Red, Doug Williams.....Dave sees star potential in all of them and thinks Low-Ki and Danielson in particular could be cult superstars in Japan (especially if Danielson puts a mask back on)
Deathmatch wrestler Necro Butcher nearly had to have his arm amputated after a match with Mad Man Pondo left his arm punctured with a light bulb tube. Here's the spot. NSFL, obviously.
NWA president Jim Miller is expected to get involved with TNA in an on-screen role. Miller is currently a huge heel for Zero-1 in Japan but for now, the plans are not for him to do the same in TNA. Reportedly, they want to avoid doing the heel commissioner gimmick that WWE does constantly and that everyone else has been copying ever since.
Terry Taylor had talks with TNA about coming in but they only wanted to pay him $500 per week to work the gorilla position at the shows, and he turned it down.
TNA has signed a new wrestler named Monty Brown, who has been wrestling on the indies in Michigan under the name Alpha Male (god I wish that guy had gotten the chance to live up to his full potential).
AJ Styles was on Observer Live this week and talked about why he chose not to sign with WWE. He said the offer they gave him was for only $500-per-week and he couldn't justify uprooting his family from Atlanta and moving to Cincinnati for so little money. His wife is currently in college in Georgia and that also played a role in wanting to stay where they are. Aside from wrestling, Styles is currently working full-time as a landscaper because even at the level he's at, as one of the hottest stars in the indies, there's very little money in pro wrestling outside of WWE.
Lots of news on Vince Russo. For starters, his lawsuit with Hulk Hogan has not been settled yet, although Russo has said he would be agreeable to working with Hogan. As for Hogan, just like everybody else, he was blindsided by Russo being re-hired by WWE and, just like everybody else, his reaction was pretty much, "WTF? No. Fuck that guy." There also appears to be no truth to the rumor that WWE rehired him in an effort to quash a potential tell-all book. Dave doesn't buy any of those conspiracy theories. He thinks the answer is as simple as it looks: Vince McMahon realizes the writing is in a rut, he's panicking, and he's going back to what worked in the past. And most recently, that was Vince Russo. So there ya go. In an interview on WWE.com, Undertaker was asked about it and was also negative and said if he was McMahon, he wouldn't be so forgiving on people who walked out on the company like Russo did, and compared it to Austin walking out. So seems like Taker isn't too keen on Austin right now either. Triple H was more diplomatic and just said basically, "Hey, whatever is good for the company." But his girlfriend, Stephanie McMahon, is the current head of the writing team and she's made NO secret about how pissed she is over Russo's return, so you gotta figure Triple H is just trying to play it cool. Jim Ross also commented on it, admitting he doesn't have much personal respect for Russo, especially after the way they mocked him in WCW, but also said he's okay with whatever is best for WWE. So that's where it stands: Russo is still basically a consultant who may or may not be taking over as head of creative if/when Vince finally decides to make a change. And in the meantime, fuckin' nobody likes him or wants him around.
WWE seems to have finally realized that building Raw so heavily around Ric Flair in 2002 probably isn't the way to keep your product feeling hot and fresh. Flair has basically been positioned as the focal point of Raw, as both heel and babyface, for the last few months. And he was even scheduled to work main events on all upcoming house shows (4 nights per week). As much as Dave loves him, even he realizes that, at 53 years old, building around Flair as your top full-time babyface headlining all the house shows isn't an ideal solution. So he wasn't used on Raw last week and was only used this week in a brief segment to help get Lesnar over, and his house show schedule has been cut back as well.
Notes from Raw: the show opened with Lesnar issuing an open challenge, mocking the Kurt Angle/John Cena open challenge match from Smackdown a few days earlier (more on that in a moment). Dave thinks this is a tease for an inevitable Lesnar vs. Angle feud (indeed, Wrestlemania 19 is on the horizon). Ended up being answered by Flair, who got beat by Lesnar. More of Trish Stratus (and Jackie Gayda this week, for whatever reason) humiliating Molly Holly for being "fat" and pulling her pants down to reveal her wearing granny panties. This fuckin' company, man. They announced Chris Benoit is now a member of the Raw roster, without even bothering to try and give an explanation for why or how. The last year of WWE has shown a staggering level of complacency since WCW folded. No competition, so no need to put any effort into telling stories that make sense. Because what else are you gonna watch? Fuck you, that's what. X-Pac was shown knocked unconscious backstage, causing the rest of the NWO members to freak out and leading Dave to joke that Scott Hall used to be unconscious backstage all the time and no one seemed to care then so what's the big deal? Then the Undertaker/Jeff Hardy match which Dave really liked and says built to the finish well and the live crowd was super into it. But man, the TV ratings fell right off a cliff during this match. It ended with Undertaker winning and then shaking Jeff's hand to show he respected him and to help Taker's babyface turn. Dave thinks it was a great angle, but on the flip side, they just had Undertaker do the same thing on Smackdown last week, shaking John Cena's hands and endorsing the new rookie, and having Taker do this for 2 young guys in the same week kinda lessens the impact of the moment the second time. Also, as great an angle as it was, Jeff Hardy isn't salvageable right now. He needs to go away for awhile and come back with a fresh character. The Hardyz in general have had almost negative momentum lately and an Undertaker handshake ain't fixing that (yeah, Jeff was so mentally checked out at this point. He needed help, not an endorsement.)
Notes from next week's Smackdown: this show hasn't aired yet but Dave has reports about an Undertaker/Kurt Angle match where the finish was totally botched. After the show was over and all the fans had left, they sent Angle and Undertaker back out there and had them redo the finish. They put a bunch of employees and people in the front row and then filmed the end of the match using mostly closeups so you couldn't see that the rest of the arena was completely empty. Gonna be interesting to see how it looks after editing (I just watched it on the network and they end up using the original ending that Dave describes. Didn't look particularly botched to me. Doesn't appear any of the close-up later shots were ever used that I can see EDIT scratch that). Also, Hogan and Edge won the tag titles. More on all that next week.
Notes from THIS week's Smackdown: one of the best WWE shows in a long time because it showed an actual focus on pushing new talent, with Dave saying this is the first time in a long time that he's seen light at the end of this dark tunnel WWE is in. The show was mostly built around the debut of OVW wrestler Prototype, using his real name John Cena. He was brought in to answer Angle's open challenge, and you'd expect a squash, but instead they had a hell of a competitive match and Dave says Angle is the best wrestler in the business today because he carried Cena to what was easily the best match of his young career. Afterwards, everyone congratulated Cena, with Undertaker giving him the big endorsement. Rico was out next and he and Cena were actually a great tag team in OVW, with a ton of chemistry. But Cena is now being groomed to possibly become a big star, while Rico is basically dead in the water with this hair stylist gimmick. Batista also finally got a chance to look good without this stupid Deacon gimmick hampering him. Chris Jericho vs. Hogan was the best match Hogan has had since his WCW days when he was still a babyface feuding with Flair.
X-Pac and Kevin Nash are at it again, getting a finish changed to a match on Raw last week. The Booker T & Goldust vs. X-Pac and Big Show match was supposed to end with Booker T pinning X-Pac. But Pac and Nash went and complained again and the finish got changed to Big Show pinning Goldust. It was a little bit of a bigger deal this time than the last time because WWE is making an actual attempt to push new stars and Booker T is one of the ones they're focusing on building. He needs big wins, and having the finish changed on this one directly hurts Booker.
John Cena didn't receive word that he would be debuting on Smackdown until about 3 hours before the show began. He had been on the road doing house shows with the Smackdown crew, so he was already there and they made the call to throw him on TV (and, while they were at it, base half the show around his big debut). Having him use his real name was also a last minute decision, with programs printed up for the following week still advertising him as "Prototype."
WWE's Divas Undressed special was canceled by TNN at the last minute and did not air as scheduled. TNN determined that it was full of "gratuitous sexual innuendo and was exploitive of women," leading Dave to wonder who TNN thinks they've been working with all this time? "Gratuitous sexual innuendo and was exploitive of women" is what TNN paid all that money for when they stole them away from USA. What'd they think they were getting with a spin-off called "Divas Undressed?" (I think this did eventually air somewhere, it's out there online if you look for it).
Chris Benoit has been fully cleared as of the beginning of this month and should be back in the ring wrestling again any day now. He's been told he'll have to adjust his style some because he can no longer take bumps on his head and neck like he used to.
Hulk Hogan did an interview with a Virginia newspaper and it was hilarious. He pretty much framed his return to WWE as Rock leaving to go make movies and so Vince called Hogan to come save the company in Rock's absence. Oh that's how it went, is it? I see. When asked about Rock's Hollywood success eclipsing his own, Hogan had a response for that too. Basically, Hogan claimed he was competing with Stallone and Schwarzeneggar when he was making movies, whereas Rock has an open field with no real competition in the action movie star department (this is around the same time Vin Diesel and Jason Statham were becoming household action star names so I dunno about all that).
WWE sued a small New Hampshire record label called Stone Cold Records for obvious reasons, arguing that the name creates confusion in the marketplace and interferes with WWE's own Stone Cold marketing. Dave thinks this is funny just because this is the EXACT scenario that led to the WWF/WWE name lawsuit. In that case, of course, WWE was arguing the complete opposite. Anyway, the owner of the record label (which was formed in 1999) says he'd never heard of Stone Cold Steve Austin until a WWE lawyer called and that he doesn't watch wrestling (this lawsuit drags on for months).
Construction is underway at WWE Niagra Falls, a new entertainment complex being built there which will have a restaurant, rides, indoor laser tag, etc. They hope to have it open in the summer (this ends up lasting for almost 10 years before it finally closed in 2011).