Wrestling Observer Rewinder

July 15, 2002

In a shocking turn of events, NWA-TNA announced last week that Vince Russo was joining the promotion, less than 3 weeks after he returned to WWE. Russo's return to WWE was announced as joining the company as part of the creative team on 6/20, but after his first creative meeting, he was demoted to consultant and was paid $1,000 a week to sit at home and send in written critiques of the weekly TV shows. Russo didn't have a contract and it's no secret that his return was deeply unpopular in the locker room and even more unpopular in the office among those who still resent him for how he left in 1999. Russo has told friends that he feels like WWE is a mess and it won't change because Vince McMahon won't remove Stephanie McMahon from her position as head writer. Russo recently sold his record store in Atlanta and was planning to move back up north (he never liked living in the south, but moved there when he went to WCW) but he hasn't moved yet. According to TNA sources, Russo will essentially help with production and writing of the shows. TNA is way understaffed when it comes to people with experience producing live shows like this. Russo was introduced to the staff on 7/9 and, much like in WWE, there were a lot of unhappy people who weren't the least bit happy to see him. He's not exactly the most well-liked guy in the business. But he's still good friends with Jeff Jarrett and Russo had already been contributing ideas and storylines for this company before the brief WWE return anyway. At the time, Russo's involvement was being kept secret because of his lawsuit with Hulk Hogan. AOL/Time Warner was representing him (since the incident happened in WCW). They only agreed to represent him as long as he didn't go work for another wrestling promotion. When the WWE offer came along, Russo managed to get AOL/Time Warner to drop that stipulation, which allowed him to go work for WWE. And now, subsequently, TNA. The lawsuit with Hogan is still ongoing and AOL/Time Warner's lawyers are still repping Russo.
Kevin Nash will be out of action for god knows how long after tearing his left quad in a match on Raw. It was Nash's first match back since suffering a bicep tear back in March. After tagging in, he tore his quad on the first move. It's the same injury Triple H suffered that kept him out for over 7 months and there's no way that Nash—who's 10 years older than Triple H—is about to put himself through the same grueling rehab that Triple H did. Triple H moved to Birmingham and lived there 24/7 doing Dr. James Andrews full-time rehab program. Nash has kids and a family and shit, he's probably not moving to Birmingham so he can do rehab 3 times a day. Dave suspects this is gonna take a bit longer for Nash (ended up being around 9 months). The injury occurred in a 10-man tag match that Nash wasn't even scheduled for until he found out the day of the show. Nash's original return to the ring was supposed to be on house shows later that week. The match was planned and designed to get Nash over as a huge monster and build him into one of the top 5 or so major main event stars in the company, because the plan was to do Nash vs. Triple H at Summerslam in one of the top matches (with Rock/Brock and Hogan/Vince penciled in as the other top matches). But as soon as Nash tagged in, he kicked Booker T, but then tripped over him when trying to step over Booker and collapsed, grabbing his thigh and screaming in pain. The match fell apart and nobody knew what to do until Shawn Michaels (not even in the match, just outside the ring) took charge and started telling guys what to do and calling spots. He improvised a superkick on Booker T and told Big Show to chokeslam him to finish it. The next day, Nash underwent surgery from Dr. James Andrews, who has done several previous surgeries on Nash (knee, bicep, elbow, and more). All in all, not a bump gone wrong or anything, just a freak accident.
Bret Hart has written a new column in the Calgary Sun, his first since suffering his recent stroke. Dave copies and pastes the whole column here, but I'll just cliff notes it: Bret is doing as well as can be expected. Made a stupid mistake by bike riding without a helmet because he'd been too lazy to fix the broken chin-strap. Hit a pothole, crashed his bicycle, hit his head, believes he suffered a stroke on impact. Was unable to move the left side of his body. Used his cell phone to call for help. Thanks fans, doctors, nurses, wife, kids, family, friends, etc. for being there for him. Promises he'll recover. Dave says Bret's progress has been slow but steady over the past week. He can take small steps with help but is mostly still confined to a bed and wheelchair and is only just now getting feeling back in his left leg. He's spending his time doing therapy and working on his autobiography which is apparently already 960 pages deep and he's only up to the late-80s so far. Doctors were surprised Bret was able to work on his book since they expected him to have memory issues or problems writing due to the stroke, but he has neither. Dave says Bret has talked about dividing the book up into 3 parts and releasing them that way due to the length (it only ended up being around 600 pages so he must have had a merciless editor).
WWE reached an out-of-court settlement this week with the Parents Television Council which will award WWE $3.5 million and a public apology from the PTC, as well as a promise that they will leave WWE alone. As part of the settlement, PTC agreed to never have any involvement with WWE business in the future, to never urge boycotts of WWE or of WWE sponsors. PTC head L. Brent Bozell had to issue a public apology to the WWE and Vince McMahon and the apology must be posted on the PTC's website home page for 6 months. They also must remove all other content from its website relating to WWE, its advertisers, or the accusations that WWE held any responsibility in the deaths of several children. Also, if WWE decides to make him do so, they can request Bozell meet with WWE advertisers personally to further explain his apology, and he'll be required to do it. Long story short: the PTC got absolutely fucking SPANKED here. The PTC will not be paying the settlement out of pocket, it will be paid by insurance, which is the only thing that is allowing them to even stay in business because without them, that $3.5 million would have killed the organization. The case was expected to go to trial in September and WWE was seeking $55 million in damages. And they likely would have won easily, so the PTC didn't have much of a choice here. They had to settle.
In addition to the above, attorney Jim Lewis (who represented Lionell Tate, one of the kids who was convicted of murdering a young girl) must also publicly apologize for claiming that Tate's actions were inspired by what he saw watching wrestling. Dave recaps the history of the PTC going after WWF at the height of its Attitude Era success, crusading against WWF by targeting their sponsors. At first, the PTC made some valid points about some of the extremely questionable content WWF was producing. Problem is, then they started outright lying and their claims got more and more outlandish, and Bozell turned it into a personal mission to take down Vince McMahon and the WWE, to the point that they crossed over into libel and defamation. They also used fake and misleading statistics when pressuring sponsors. All of this led to WWE taking them to court and mollywhopping dat ass. (I've actually done a lot of research on this WWE/PTC case for some other thing I'm writing and it's a really fun case to read about. WWE's past is pretty indefensible sometimes, but Bozell was out of his mind obsessed with destroying them. He's a hardcore right-wing conservative and his battle with WWE was literally a moral and religious crusade to him. To this day, I bet it eats Bozell alive that he got owned so thoroughly and had to release such a humbling apology. And oh, bet your ass, we're about to read that apology):
Bozell's and PTC's public apology on their website reads the following:
`Media Research Center (MRC), Parents Television Council (PTC), Dr. Delores Tucker, Mark Honig and I have in the past made statements regarding so-called wrestling deaths — children killed by other children alleged to be mimicking “professional wrestling” moves they saw on television.
We made such statements to members of MRC and PTC, the media, advertisers on World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) SmackDown! program, retailers that sell WWE-related toys and merchandise, public officials and the public.
MRC and PTC also produced a videotape as part of a fundraising campaign in connection with its “National Campaign to Clean Up TV Now!”, which advanced the notion that the murder of Tiffany Eunick was caused by the influence of professional wrestling on Lionel Tate.
The videotape included interviews with Lionel Tate’s lawyer advancing the notion that the murder of Tiffany Eunick, the victim, was directly caused by the impact that professional wrestling had on Lionel Tate.
We based our statements on media reports and source information. We now believe, based on extensive investigation and facts which have come to light since making those statements that it was wrong for MRC, PTC, their spokespersons and myself to have said anything that could be construed as blaming WWE or any of its programs for the deaths of the children.
Simply put, it was premature to reach that conclusion when we did, and there is now ample evidence to show that conclusion was incorrect. I now believe that professional wrestling played no role in the murder of Tiffany Eunick, which was a part of our “Clean Up TV Now!” campaign and am equally convinced that it was incorrect and wrong to have blamed WWE or any of its programs for the deaths of the other children.
Because of our statements, PTC, MRC and the WWE have been in litigation since November 2000. WWE vigorously advanced its position that neither it, nor “professional wrestling” led to these deaths.
WWE also contended that MRC, PTC, their spokespersons and I had misrepresented the number of advertisers who withdrew support from WWE’s SmackDown! television program after receiving communications from the PTC, some of which regrettably connected the WWE and SmackDown! to the deaths of children.
As such, WWE exercised its right to initiate this litigation, during which facts came to light that prompted me to make this statement.
By this retraction, I want to be clear that WWE was correct in pointing out that various statements made by MRC, PTC and me were inaccurate concerning the identity and number of WWE SmackDown! advertisers who withdrew support from the program. Many of the companies we stated had “withdrawn” or pulled their support had never, in fact, advertised on SmackDown! nor had any plan to advertise on SmackDown!
Again, we regret this error and retract any such misleading statements.
Finally, concerning the statements about child wrestling deaths, it was wrong to have stated or implied that WWE or any of its programs caused these tragic deaths. Specifically concerning the Lionel Tate case, recent developments lead us to believe that others and we were given, and relied upon, false information provided by parties close to the case.
The information that we were given and relied upon may have been designed to make a national example of the Florida murder trial, pinning the blame on WWE.
For example, we were told by a source that Lionel Tate was watching a WWE program when he assaulted Tiffany Eunick. In fact, Lionel Tate was watching the “Flintstones” and a cartoon entitled “Cow and Chicken.” We were also told, by a source, that Lionel Tate killed Tiffany Eunick while executing a wrestling move unique to a WWE character called the “Stone Cold Stunner”.
We have since learned that this was not true, nor was there any evidence that it was true. It is now well documented that after the Tate trial concluded, the presiding Judge said it was “inconceivable” that Tiffany Eunick’s injuries were caused by Lionel Tate mimicking wrestling moves.
Indeed, since the trial ended, Lionel Tate’s new lawyers have filed court papers in which they admit that the “wrestling defense” was, in their words, “bogus.”
Given these facts, WWE was within its rights to be angry at the MRC, PTC, their spokespersons and I for contacting WWE’s advertisers to go beyond complaining about WWE content but passing along accusations which we now know were false. Because I feel a simple retraction is not sufficient, I have personally extended my apology to Vince McMahon and the WWE on behalf of MRC, PTC, Dr. Tucker, Mr. Honig and me.
Through this letter, I now make this apology public and specifically directed to the advertising community that has in the past, is currently or may in the future consider advertising or sponsoring WWE programming.
The PTC can have its concern with the content of WWE’s television programming – though these concerns have been reduced significantly over the past years as a reflection of WWE’s changed standards. But nowhere in that debate, including in the correspondence and statements to the advertising community, should there have been any discussion of “wrestling” deaths.
I regret this happening. It wasn’t fair to WWE.
And I say this emphatically: Please disregard what others and we have said in the past about the Florida “wrestling” death. Neither “wrestling” in general, nor WWE specifically, had anything to do with it. Of that I am certain.’
Dave looks at some business numbers and it ain't good news. Just to give one example, WWE's average attendance-per-show was 4,711 during the month of June, which is the lowest month for attendance since Feb. 1997. And most of the tickets for those shows were sold before Austin walked out. So once fans realize that Austin really is gone (at least for now) and not coming back anytime soon, the coming months could look even more dire for ticket sales.
AAA's Triplemania X event took place last week (again) and ended with Octagon unmasking Pentagon in a mask vs. mask match. I only mention this because there have been lots of "Pentagon" characters over the years in AAA and later the indies in Mexico, portrayed by different people. But this match ended up being the last time the Pentagon gimmick would be used in AAA for the next decade.....until AEW star Pentagon Jr. began using the gimmick in 2012.
Keiji Muto is apparently trying to shorten what's left of his career by being a complete madman. Muto is already beyond banged up, with knees that should have retired him years ago. He has no business working a full schedule at this stage in his career, but he's AJPW's biggest star and best draw, so he is continuing to work every show. But now he's taking it a step further. Muto will be working 3 separate matches in one night for AJPW's upcoming Budokan Hall show. He's doing the Mick Foley gimmick, where he will wrestle under a different gimmick for each match. He'll be wrestling as Muto, Great Muta, and Kokushi Muso (the gimmick he uses only when he teams with Hakushi and paints his body in similar fashion). So yeah.
Vader was arrested in his hometown of Boulder, CO earlier this month for allegedly spitting at a police officer, threatening the officers with rocks, resisting arrest, drinking and driving, careless driving, and leaving the scene of an accident. It ended up taking 8 officers and 2 police dogs on the scene before Vader agreed to be arrested peacefully, and they used multiple sets of handcuffs. It started when Vader crashed his van into some bushes, but then backed out, left the scene, and drove home (about a block away). Police came to his home and found Vader severely intoxicated and barely able to stand. At some point, Vader told the police, "I will and can kick all of your asses! Let's fight!" The police brought in the police dogs, but Vader still wouldn't back down and threatened to kill the dogs if they came at him. Then he picked up rocks and threatened to throw them and spit at one of the cops, but missed. The other cops showed up and they eventually calmed him down and arrested him. According to records, Vader has 2 prior DUI arrests in Boulder. This all occurred just days before he was scheduled to leave for Japan for the latest NOAH tour but he still went and is over there working shows now.
Kenta Kobashi finally made his real in-ring return after more than a year out of action (aside from the one comeback match where he re-injured himself for 4 more months). Kobashi has been told in no uncertain terms that one more knee injury and he's done for good. Dave figures that knee injury is inevitable. Kobashi is working opening matches all week, teaming with the rookies and doing hot tag spots for now.
Former IWGP champion Kazuyuki Fujita is scheduled to make his return to NJPW next week after being out of action the past 7 months with a torn Achilles that caused him to vacate the IWGP title. He's going to continue doing shoot fights as well.
Manami Toyota, arguably (is it even arguable) the greatest female wrestler of all time, announced she is leaving All Japan Women and jumping ship to Gaea. Toyota has spent her entire 15 year career working for AJW so this is a surprise and a pretty big blow to AJW.
Jesse Ventura was rushed to the hospital this week with a blood clot in his lung after complaining of chest pains. He's now in stable condition, on blood thinners, and should be okay. Ventura has a history of blood clots and a pulmonary embolism in 1984 took him out of action right before he was about to start a lengthy (and surely lucrative) feud with Hulk Hogan. He eventually returned and wrestled for another year, mostly in tag teams and such, before retiring due to the health issues.
Dave has some anecdotal evidence of how TNA's viewership numbers are going and it ain't pretty. Between week 1 and week 2, there was a full 50% drop in responses to the reader poll Dave put out on the show. That was to be expected. But the drop from Week 2 to Week 3 was another 41% drop from that. So we're only a few weeks in and it appears this company is already hemorrhaging viewers. Internally, TNA is basically flaunting the preliminary numbers they got from the PPV providers that show they're doing big buyrates. Dave feels sorry for them because he's been following the PPV industry since it began and the preliminary numbers from the providers are ALWAYS wrong and ALWAYS substantially higher than what the real number ends up being. Dave basically says TNA is getting excited over fake numbers and if they're basing their future on what they expect to pull in financially, they're going to be VERY disappointed a few months from now when the real numbers are revealed and those PPV checks end up being way less than they're expecting. TNA's weekly production costs are around $200,000, which means they need at least 50,000 buys per week just to break even on the production costs (and that's not counting all the other costs like paying the wrestlers, advertising, etc. that I'm sure they'd like to have some extra money for). So we're only a few weeks in and, yet again, this whole project still does not seem sustainable.
Notes from TNA Weekly PPV: this was by far the weakest of the 3 shows so far. Dave thinks they're trying too hard to copy much of WWE's formula, rather than focusing on what makes them different or what they can do better. They were in Nashville this week, with about 2,000 fans (1,100 paid, the rest freebies). There's a lot of young talent here and they have potential, but so many of them aren't ready for the national stage and it showed. They did almost nothing to promote or build for next week's show, which is a killer when you're depending on people to pay for it every week. Dave thinks it felt like an episode of WCW Thunder. More production mistakes (wrong names on the screen during introductions, etc.). They announced Japanese wrestler Takao Omori and Christopher Daniels will be there next week, but made no effort to educate fans on who those people are or why anyone should care. Monty Brown made his debut and Dave is impressed, since he looks good, was athletic, and has some good mic skills and he thinks TNA did a better job of debuting and protecting him than WWE usually does with new guys. Another angle with NASCAR driver Hermie Sadler and it sucked, leading Dave to joke that Sterling Martin carried their tag team last time. 6 matches into the show and Dave says not a single one of them has even reached the 1-star mark. Thankfully, AJ Styles and David Young saved the show with a 2.25 star classic. Brian Christopher turned heel on Scott Hall, leading Hall to do a stretcher job in what was a pretty good angle but, ya know....it's Jarrett and Brian Christopher.
Various other TNA news and notes: they've been taking out radio ads to promote the shows, with the tagline, "If you're tired of that other wrestling..." Dave is flabbergasted that TNA brought Jackie Fargo in for the debut shows (in Huntsville, where he wasn't really a big name) but didn't use him at all in Nashville this week, since he's the biggest drawing star in the city's history. Vince Russo and Disco Inferno were backstage at the show. TNA's new backstage interviewer Goldylocks was in the Los Angeles airport during the shooting there last week that left 2 people dead and several others injured. She was even interviewed by the local news about it.
More fun political games in WWE. Paul Heyman and Pat Patterson came up with an angle to continue John Cena's momentum following his debut match with Kurt Angle, in which Cena would slap Vince McMahon in the face and then have a match with Jericho in which he would almost win and Jericho would have to cheat to get the pin. You know, make him look strong in defeat kinda thing, same as the Angle match. Well, Triple H apparently went to Vince and convinced him to nix the angle, saying nobody should be laying hands on Vince right now since they're building to Hogan vs. Vince at Summerslam. This turned into a major issue backstage because most of the locker room doesn't like the "NWO group" (basically, Nash, X-Pac, Shawn Michaels, and Triple H, even though he's not part of the group on TV). The usual Kliq stuff. Some of the wrestlers said that everyone can see that Cena has major star potential and they feel like Triple H cutting him off at the knees like this is more about protecting his own spot. They compromised and had Cena slap Jericho instead (Dave says it was a hell of a slap, and on his podcast, Bruce Prichard has told this story. Apparently Jericho insisted that Cena really lay in the slap to make it look good. And so Cena damn near killed him). Patterson in particular was furious that his idea got scrapped and told everyone who would listen about it, feeling the original angle would have gotten people talking about Cena (something they haven't been able to do with any of the other news guys) and felt the compromise angle didn't really have the same effect. Dave notes there's been a lot of resentment towards Nash and Michaels because they're getting some of the biggest pushes in the company right now despite not working full-time like everyone else. And Triple H is going to always be a target of it because of his real-life relationship with Stephanie McMahon. And, of course, X-Pac is basically protected by all his friends and has gotten out of doing multiple jobs in recent weeks when Nash or Michaels complained on his behalf. For what it's worth though, Hulk Hogan is said to be the total opposite, doing exactly what is asked of him and working as hard as he's capable of doing, has had no problem doing jobs or putting anyone over, and is pretty much avoiding all this Kliq drama. So at least one of these guys is redeeming their reputation here a little (just don't turn any hidden cameras on when he's having a conversation).
Chris Jericho has agreed to a new WWE deal, but hasn't yet signed the contract and is actually working without one at the moment. His previous deal expired a week or two ago and he's been hammering out details with WWE ever since. With declining business and no real competition to use as leverage, Jericho's negotiating power was obviously not great. But he is one of the company's key guys and word is Jericho considers the offer "fair, under the circumstances." So probably not as good as he was hoping, but that's what happens when you work for a monopoly.
Notes from Raw: "one of those nights best left forgotten," Dave says, as WWE's 2002 continues to suck. Booker T cut a promo challenging the NWO, but Eddie Guerrero answered the challenge instead, "I guess since they could get him to do a job on TV without complaining," Dave quips. And indeed, Booker won. Chris Benoit was embroiled in the beginnings of an angle with Austin and Flair, but when Austin left, everything got changed, and now Benoit is feuding with Bubba Ray Dudley, which is quite the demotion. Shawn Michaels cut a promo talking about the Kliq days, full of insider references that were lost on most of the crowd and it was so quiet that you could even hear one heckler yell, "Get to the point!" Dave doesn't understand why they're fondly reminiscing about a time that was by far the darkest, lowest period in the last 30 years of the business, but whatever. William Regal lost to Jeff Hardy, leading Dave to wonder whatever happened to the Regal/Molly Holly storyline that has seemingly been dropped with no explanation. And, of course, the Kevin Nash injury to end the show.
Oh yeah....and then there's this. Raw also featured a match with Trish Stratus & Bradshaw vs. Chris Nowinski & Jackie Gayda, which Dave calls "the longest 3:14 in pro wrestling history." Basically every spot that Gayda and Stratus did was completely blown, some so badly that Dave can't even figure out what they were trying to do. Nowinski and Bradshaw brawled into the crowd. "I think they were running out as fast as they could to preserve whatever reputation they have left." Jim Ross on commentary used the dreaded "bowling shoe ugly" phrase which is JR Code for "holy shit this is a bad match." The ending was completely botched but this time, Gayda at least had the sense to realize that they botched the finish so bad that she probably shouldn't eat a pin from it, so she tried to kick out instead. But Trish and the referee didn't get the memo and so the ref counted the 3 anyway, which made the whole thing look even worse. Crowd booed this like crazy and Dave says it was clear to everybody that Gayda has no business on Raw yet, she's still waaaaaaay too green (If you haven't seen it, this match is legendarily bad and is widely known simply as "That Jackie Gayda Match."
Notes from Smackdown: on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, this was a great show. Lillian Garcia singing "America the Beautiful" was interrupted by Team Canada, who got the most heel heat Dave has seen anywhere in wrestling in a long time. They're trying to redo the 1997 Hart Foundation/Canada angle, except this time, it's Christian, Test, and Lance Storm. Whether it will be successful or not depends on who the babyface is. In 1997, it was Steve Austin. If they pick Rikishi or somebody here in 2002, it's not gonna get over near as big. Batista working tag matches is the best thing for him, because he's looking a lot better lately while being able to hide his weaknesses. The Cena/Jericho angle was good (though probably not as good as the original idea would have been). During the Billy and Chuck segment, Chuck had a line about being tired from walking all day on Sunday. The joke wasn't explained, so if you didn't get it: that recent Sunday was the day of a lot of major national gay pride parades in major cities around the country. And Hogan and Edge won the tag titles in a fun match that the crowd was nuclear hot for.
Chris Benoit didn't do any actual matches in developmental before his return, he was just there training and taking bumps, so the matches he's been doing on TV the last week or two really were his first actual matches since the neck surgery. Benoit is said to be in less pain than he expected to be and is hopeful to get back to his old self.
Dave saw a recent picture of Rey Mysterio and he's worried. Mysterio has bulked up waaaaay too much for his frame. Dave compares him to The Patriot, another masked wrestler who's career was pretty much ended due to repeated muscle tears from being too steroided up. With Mysterio's size, there's zero reason or advantage to him being so muscular and it's only going to increase his risk of getting injured, especially when he starts working that 200-dates-per-year WWE schedule (yeah, this proved to be pretty accurate. Despite the success he had during that time, the next decade or so of Mysterio's career is pretty much injury after injury after injury).
Latest on Goldberg is that he has no plans to do anything in wrestling until later this year, if at all. Dave thinks that's smart, since WWE business looks like it's going to keep plummeting, at which time they'll be even more desperate for him to come in. Dave thinks Goldberg could probably command a pretty large offer to come in around the beginning of 2003 and build to a big Wrestlemania match (close, but not quite what happens).
Various WWE notes: Triple H has been out of action since King of the Ring after getting elbow surgery. He's been back in Birmingham again, doing 24/7 rehab. Stephanie McMahon hasn't been working in the WWE offices for the last few weeks because she's been with him. Stacy Keibler asked for time off because she's burned out and was replaced with Dawn Marie for all her scheduled bra and panties matches on house shows this week.
During the Sunday Night Heat/Raw tapings, someone held up a sign that said "Big Show is not over" when Big Show was out during Heat. Show saw the sign, flipped the guy off, and pointed it out to security. They tried to get the sign but I guess the guy holding it ran away and actually escaped them. Later during the night, when Big Show was out again (this time on Raw), the sign got held up again. Show once again saw it, once again pointed it out to security, and this time, they jumped the rail and caught the guy and took his sign. Imagine being that sensitive.