Wrestling Observer Rewinder

August 12, 2002

In one of the sickest and strangest stories in indie wrestling history, former XPW star Messiah was attacked in his home by men who cut off his thumb and also attempted to cut off his penis. Police are now investigating under the belief that the attack was connected to the wrestling business. Messiah described 2 large black men coming into his unlocked apartment while he was playing video games. He initially believed they were there to see his roommate but instead they locked the door behind them and began attacking him. One of them held Messiah down while the other one severed his thumb with garden shears. The thumb was never recovered. They attempted to then cut off his other thumb and his penis while he screamed for help. During the brawl, he was also hit with a chair and a fish bowl because they were trying to knock him unconscious. Neighbors heard the screams and called police and the attackers fled the scene. Police have a description of the vehicle and sketches of the 2 men based on Messiah's description, but that's it. Following the attack, Messiah was treated at the hospital but then checked himself out and is said to be in hiding out in another state, in fear of another attack.
Messiah was recently fired from Rob Black's XPW promotion, allegedly because Black found out Messiah was sleeping with his wife, XPW valet and porn star Lizzy Borden. After leaving XPW, Messiah had become a big star for CZW. The Lizzy Borden rumor was pretty much confirmed at another indie show this week that featured a lot of XPW names. During the show, New Jack cut a promo saying it happened and when Messiah came out, the crowd chanted "You fucked Lizzy!" to which Messiah got on the mic and responded with "And she fuckin' loved it!" No one is outright saying so, because it's dangerous to make accusations without enough proof to back them up, but the clear implication is that this attack on Messiah was retaliation from Rob Black. XPW acknowledged the incident on its website, basically saying no matter what happened in the past, this is a tragedy and sending thoughts and prayers to Messiah. Needless to say, not a lot of people buying it (I don't think this case was ever solved but to this day, the overwhelming belief is that Rob Black was definitely behind it. America's Most Wanted even covered it and they heavily implied the same thing, but we'll get there).
We have a big obituary for legendary Portland promoter Don Owen, who passed away this week at age 90. He was the longest reigning promoter in history, running his territory for 54 years, promoting his final show in 1992. Owen was the next-to-last surviving promoter from the regional territory days (Jerry Jarrett's Memphis being the last). Owen was beloved by most wrestlers who viewed him as one of the few fair promoters in the business, always paid fairly and treated his wrestlers fairly. Pretty much anybody who was every anyone during the 50s-70s in particular worked the territory. He promoted his biggest show in 1985, drawing a sellout 12,000 fans for Ric Flair vs. Billy Jack Haynes. It's worth noting that this show also featured Roddy Piper. Yes, in 1985, while he was working full-time for WWF, Roddy Piper also worked this NWA-branded show headlined by Ric Flair. In fact, Piper was so loyal to Owen that for years, he refused to wrestle on WWE shows in Portland because he didn't want to compete against Owen. It was the same territory where Art Barr made his name before the rape accusation derailed his career and he had to go to Mexico. Over the years, when Owen found out about former wrestlers of his who were down on their luck, he would often make anonymous donations to help them, which many of those people never found out about until after his death.
Dave notes that there won't be an Observer next week, so if you notice a big gap in the Rewinds, I didn't mess up. Dave is just lazy.
Update on the lawsuit TNA filed last week against Jay Hassman's marketing and accounting firm they claim defrauded them. Dave compares it to the death of Jarrett's old USWA promotion and he briefly recaps all the legal drama surrounding that (see previous Rewinds, it's a lot to cover here). It's also worth noting that Hassman's company worked with WCW in the past and was dropped before WCW folded because there were a lot of problems with them then as well. But TNA is using a lot of the same people and office staff that WCW used so that's how Hassman's firm got roped into this. A rep for the company dismissed the lawsuit as nonsense and claimed Jerry Jarrett was telling everyone they would get 150,000 buys per week while they were trying to keep him focused on more realistic numbers. He also claimed the lawsuit was a distraction from TNA's "inevitable implosion" and said that Jeff Jarrett recently told him the company is running entirely on credit right now. Dave says of course they're in debt and will probably be deep in the red for months even if this accounting mess hadn't come up. He claimed Jarrett was supposed to have $5 million in credit and $1 million in cash on hand for the deal with InDemand and he claimed to have it, but the accounting rep says they didn't because the sponsor of their first show pulled out because Jarrett didn't have the proper paperwork. I dunno, this is all a boring accounting mess. The rep claims TNA is "now in self-destruct mode" and says they are in breach of their InDemand deal in multiple different ways, and that the lawsuit is an attempt to distract from Jarrett's own failure with this company. So on and so forth.
The latest WWE Confidential episode aired and Dave thinks it was the WWE's biggest attempt yet to re-write history. The main focus of the show was about the decline and death of WCW. Now that they have Bischoff, Hogan, Jericho, Booker T, Big Show, etc. they can interview them all for it. The story opened saying, "Those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it," which is a pretty ironic way for WWE to be talking about WCW in 2002. Anyway, instead of focusing on what really killed WCW (running off their audience with a terrible product), the show threw out dozens of reasons, blaming faceless Time Warner execs, guaranteed contracts, and even painting the signing of Bret Hart as if that was what doomed WCW (which Dave finds laughable since 1998 was WCW's most successful financial year ever). They basically blamed the death of WCW on all the things that WWE doesn't do, and ignored all the real causes, which are things also plaguing WWE right now. In particular, Dave argues against the claim that guaranteed contracts were the reason. Reality is, even if every single wrestler on the roster had worked for free, WCW was still tens of millions of dollars in debt. The guaranteed contracts really didn't even represent more than a few drops in the bucket when it came to how much WCW was bleeding money at the end. And when they were successful, they were making tens of millions of dollars, despite those huge contracts. During the episode, not once did they acknowledge that awful writing and poor creative direction drove away fans by the millions. Bischoff once again blamed the death of the company on the corporate merger, but the reality is, if WCW was still drawing 6 million viewers per episode and was still one of the highest rated shows on cable, it would not have been canceled, merger be damned. All in all, it was another example of this Confidential show re-writing history to paint WWE and Vince McMahon as the conquering world beaters who nobly defeated all the evil-doers who dared challenge them. But as they say, the winners write the history books, so there ya go.
WATCH: WWE Confidential: The Downfall of WCW
WWE announced plans last week to start WWE Films and expand into non-wrestling programming. Ever since the company went public, there's been talk of opening an office in Hollywood and doing movies and TV shows. But Dave thinks the timing is questionable, since WWE's core business is declining and the economy is suffering. Remember, WWE just made major budget cuts a few weeks ago and laid off a bunch of people, so launching a whole new division now when the wrestling side is collapsing is certainly an interesting choice. WWE hired TV and film producer Joel Simon to run the Los Angeles office of WWE Films. The goal is for WWE to finance some movies as well as get roles for WWE stars. This idea was first broached 2 years ago, back when the company was on fire and they had the finances to eat it if this venture didn't work out. No word how much money is being set aside for WWE Films, but TV and movie production is expensive and risky. Not to mention, WWE's track record outside of wrestling is.....let's just say "not good," to put it mildly.
According to a Charlotte newspaper, Ric Flair is once again considering running for governor of North Carolina as a member of the Republican party. Flair first talked of this back in 1998, after Jesse Ventura successfully ran for governor and it got a lot of publicity, but Flair ultimately decided against it. Among the reasons is because he apparently didn't want to have his personal life examined as closely as it would have been by the media (yeah, I suspect digging into Flair's past would be bad news for his political aspirations). Flair thought he'd have a better chance than Ventura because he's a bigger star in NC than Ventura was in Minnesota. But Ventura's election was based far more on how he campaigned as opposed to his wrestling celebrity status. Jerry Lawler is a god in Memphis, but he ran for mayor and didn't even crack the top 3.
NJPW's upcoming Budokan Hall show is weird because it doesn't feature most of the company's big stars, including IWGP champ Yuji Nagata. It's a bunch of freak show booking with MMA guys and rematches from PRIDE shows and inter-promotional matches with NOAH guys and shit. "More Inoki craziness" Dave notes. The show is also expected to feature the in-ring debut of 22-year-old rookie Shinsuke Nakamura.
Speaking of Inoki, he's putting on another one of his UFO-branded MMA shows. There's rumors that Inoki will referee the main event. Inoki is also claiming boxers Mike Tyson and Thomas Hearns will appear, so we'll see how full of shit Inoki is. Tyson is a huge name in Japan and the NTV network that is airing the show hasn't mentioned him in the promotion, which you'd think they would if they were trying to draw ratings. At press time, Dave says there's literally reporters at Narita airport in Tokyo, camped out waiting to see if Tyson arrives. This isn't the first time Inoki has claimed Tyson was making an appearance for him. Last time, Tyson's people had to put out a statement saying it was bullshit. They also claimed Chyna will be working an exhibition match on this show because why not?
Bret Hart was discharged from the hospital, after spending more than 5 weeks there following his stroke. He's doing 5 days-per-week of physical therapy and has made impressive progress. There's hopes that he can make a 100% recovery within a year, but doctors are also being realistic in that he might not ever fully recover.
Dave saw the 60-minute iron man main event to crown a new ROH champion and says the effort was impressive, especially considering there was no AC and the building they were wrestling in was a furnace. You could see all 4 men near total dehydrated exhaustion by the end of it and Dave thinks it would have been better as a 30 minute match. Dave says it was a great match but not the 5 star classic it was reported as.
Dave gives some clarification on the problems ECW faced with InDemand at the end. During the first several years, InDemand paid ECW on time for all its PPVs. But then in the final year, the payments started coming later and later and then when ECW lost its TV deal with TNN, InDemand held the money back, waiting to see if ECW would survive. Needless to say, that guaranteed that they didn't.
Heard enough about Rob Black yet? Well, he's telling people he's attempting to purchase the old ECW Arena in Philadelphia. Needless to say, this doesn't happen.
Various TNA news & notes: there will not be a show on 9/11 because of it being the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Don West's time on commentary may be limited, since a lot of people don't like his work, and there's talk of bringing in former WCW announcer Mark Madden. TNA has sent out tapes to multiple TV stations in an attempt to get a TV deal. Jerry Jarrett has reportedly been toning down a lot of Russo's creative ideas, although Dave isn't sure how a the gun angle got through if that's the case (more on that in a minute).
Ron Killings did a radio interview where he put over Vince Russo for giving him "The Truth" gimmick. Killings also said he would never go back to WWE ("write that one down, folks," Dave jokes). He says he was mad about the way he was released, claiming Johnny Ace gave him the news in a phone call with no explanation why. He said he later called Vince, Stephanie, Shane, and Jim Ross for an explanation, none of whom would return his calls (that is kinda some coward shit). Dave thinks WWE missed the boat on Killings, because he's got all the tools to be a star.
Jerry Lawler was apparently pissed about a line they said on a recent TNA show where they made a joke about Lawler hanging out in high schools offering girls candy. Lawler called up Jerry Jarrett and was mad about it. Speaking of, even though he's cutting all these heel promos in TNA on his father, Brian Christopher and Jerry Lawler are still working together doing local Memphis shows.
Notes from TNA Weekly PPV: hit and miss show. They had screens in the arena this time, so fans could see what was going on during the backstage segments. They also did the best job so far of building up to next week, so that's a plus. Downside is the arena they're in (Nashville Fairgrounds) is awful and they only had 550 in the crowd for this show and it looked small on TV. To make it worse, they were dead for the show. Ron Killings continued the racial angle, singling out one of the black TNA girls and calling her a ho and saying she was being exploited. In fact, Dave thinks just about every woman on this show was called a ho or a bitch at some point (another hallmark of Russo booking) and it led to Killings getting a title shot against Ken Shamrock next week (after cutting a promo trashing WWE's titles). And then the really stupid angle of the show: Jeff Jarrett beating up one of the little people until another one came out and pulled a gun on Jarrett for the save. Dave thinks this was utterly ridiculous.
WATCH: Puppet pulls a gun on Jeff Jarrett - TNA 2002
Five days before the big Melbourne, Australia stadium show, WWE announced that Hulk Hogan won't be appearing due to "injuries" suffered in the Brock Lesnar angle on Raw. Hogan was by far the most heavily advertised name for the show and needless to say, pulling him off the card 5 days beforehand pissed off a lot of fans who have tickets. In fact, a lot of people have been trying to get refunds because not only is Hogan off the show, so is Triple H because it appears his elbow won't be healed up in time. That's 2 of the 3 big names that were most heavily promoted, and now Rock is the only one still scheduled to appear.
Speaking of, that angle on Smackdown (more later) with Hogan and Lesnar was to write Hogan off TV for a little while. Hogan asked for time off due to worsening knee and back problems. Exactly when he comes back is unknown, but when he does, it'll probably be to build for the match with Vince at Wrestlemania now, instead of at Summerslam. They wanted Hogan to still go to Australia and at least make an appearance, but Hogan asked off anyway because he knew 20 hours on an airplane to get there would cause him more back pain and he wanted to spend his birthday with his family.
WATCH: Brock Lesnar squeezes Hulk Hogan right out of an Australian tour
Latest on Goldberg is that he's hoping to put together a deal with WWE where he can work some shows for them while also taking big-event bookings in Japan. WWE hasn't let anyone have that type of deal since Hulk Hogan in 1993 when he was working WWE and NJPW at the same time.
Regarding Steve Austin, the feeling among the wrestlers is that they expect him back sooner than later. Agent Jack Lanza believes Austin is bored at home and he's reportedly been training hard. Dave says dozens of big stars have made big money in the business and tried to walk away but they all come back sooner or later (only exception Dave can think of off the top is Jack Brisco). With Hogan out for the foreseeable future and Rock leaving after Summerslam to make another movie, and Monday Night Football starting back soon, they need Austin more than ever. But reportedly Vince is still going forward and making plans as if Austin no longer exists.
Brock Lesnar is being advertised to appear on the Raw after Summerslam, which pretty well gives away that he's winning the title from Rock at Summerslam, which everyone already knew anyway. Of course, plans can always change, but Lesnar is almost certainly winning his first world title in a couple more weeks.
Notes from Raw: whole show was built around finding out who attacked Shawn Michaels, even though it was obvious that it was Triple H. When that was revealed and Shawn announced he was coming back to face him at Summerslam, it got surprisingly little reaction. It got a pop, but not the big overwhelming one you'd expect. Triple H was repeatedly referred to as "the franchise player of Raw." Hardyz were back together again and nobody cared. Big Show is getting fatter by the week. The UnAmericans cut a promo trashing President Bush saying he couldn't defend the country after 9/11. With the first anniversary of the attacks approaching, Dave figured it was only a matter of time before they tried to exploit it, but he didn't think they'd go this far. Trish vs. Victoria was marred by Jerry Lawler on commentary quizzing Molly Holly about whether she was a virgin the whole time.The Island Boyz (still no name) attacked Lillian Garcia and she did a stretcher job. And the Shawn/Triple H promo at the end was excellent, but the crowd didn't seem to care.
Notes from Smackdown: Dave apologizes in advance because he knows he's going to sound like a Paul Heyman cheerleader, but this was one of the better shows of the year, hitting on just about every level, from storytelling, to character development, to in-ring action. It was the best effort to date in getting Lesnar over as a top guy. Stephanie is still getting booed despite being the babyface. Kurt Angle continues to be pushed as a serious bad ass after years of burying that under comedy gimmicks. Angle vs. Hogan was even better than their King of the Ring match and, despite the shitty ending, was probably Hogan's best match in years. Nidia and Jamie Noble are a great act. Benoit/Guerrero vs. Rock/Edge was excellent, with Rock tapping out to Benoit which made for a strong finish, elevated Benoit, and furthered the Lesnar storyline with Rock all at once. On and on and on. Just an all-around great show that Heyman is heading up here.
Random WWE notes: Chris Jericho signed a new multi-year contract. Jim Ross wrote about the recent developmental cuts and said that eliminating HWA was also a step towards improving the overall developmental system. Basically just streamlining everything down to one location (OVW). The Island Boyz attacking Moolah and Mae Young last week was edited off TV in both Canada and the UK. Josh Lomberger from Tough Enough was hired, but not as a wrestler, and instead will do TV production and announcing (later becomes Josh Matthews, current Impact commentator).
Most wrestlers in WWE are told nothing ahead of time about their upcoming feuds and angles. Most of them show up to TV and find out the day of the show what they're doing. For example, Benoit and Guerrero were recently switched back over to Smackdown and they had no idea until they arrived at Raw the day before and had to change their transportation and go to the Smackdown city instead.
Despite getting their asses handed to them in the recent lawsuit, the PTC is still around. This week, they listed Raw as one of the 10 worst shows on TV due to language, sexual content, and violence. The settlement that WWE won does not prevent the PTC from negatively criticizing WWE, but it does prevent them from targeting WWE's sponsors, among other things. But they're still free to go online and talk shit about them just like everyone else.
Wanna hear a joke? Here's something some guy wrote in 1988 that was published in the Observer Yearbook that year. It was a section featuring fake/spoof wrestling news predicting stories that would happen in 1989. Here's what was written: "The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in November 1989 that the World Wrestling Federation can no longer use the initials WWF to promote its business activities. A lower court injunction in favor of the World Wildlife Fund was upheld. A spokesman for the naturalist group expressed joy at the high court ruling. "Originally we didn't care about their having the same initials as us, but their heavy use of animals at their events, plus the naming of over half of their performers with animal nicknames was just causing too much confusion in the mind of the public. Attorneys for Vince McMahon and Titan Sports downplayed the court decision, saying, "We were previously thinking of dropping the wrestling part of our name anyway, since it has a lot of negative connotations and was not altogether appropriate given the nature of our product."
Jeff Hardy has taken time off from house shows because he's working on an album for his rock band PeroxWhy?Gen. Jeff is the lead singer, and Shannon Moore does background vocals. Jeff and Shannon were finding it impossible to work on the album while wrestling full time, so they took Jeff off house shows at his request. Jeff's not yet 25 years old and has said his body is already banged up from injuries, with constant lower back pain and bone chips in his elbow.
Speaking of elbow injuries, Triple H did an interview talking about his King of the Ring match and said he wasn't happy with his performance because he went into the match injured. Afterwards, he had surgery and they removed 8 bone chips from his elbow, some as large as teeth.
Regarding Steve Austin, Triple H had some thoughts on that too. "I have two contrasting reactions. One is for Steve Williams. I feel worried for him as a person and I hope whatever it is that's in his head can be sorted out. The stuff between him and his wife and what went down in San Antonio--who knows what happened? All those things, I feel bad for him and I hope things work out for Steve Williams the person. But as far as Stone Cold Steve Austin goes, it's hard for me not to be angry at what he did. He owes something to everyone here in this company from top to bottom, from the guy who answers the phone to Vince. If I was Vince McMahon, I don't know how I could look people in the eye, anyone who I have a responsibility to, like stockholders or employees and say, 'we're getting behind him and pushing him to the top.'"
Anyway, Dave has some thoughts on this. He agrees that Austin was absolutely in the wrong for walking out the way he did, with no notice, hours before a live show that was entirely written around him. He screwed up the show, and in particular, he left Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit hanging out to dry since they were just starting what was expected to be a major program with Austin, and which would have been the biggest program of Eddie's career. The company has a right to be mad. But this all started because they asked Austin to do a job to Lesnar on TV with no build-up, in order to help jump-start Lesnar's main event push. When Austin balked....they didn't ask anyone else. Dave kinda wonders why Undertaker or someone like that wasn't asked to do the same thing after Austin left, if it was really about getting Lesnar over. Dave seems to imply that there was more to the story about why WWE asked Austin to do it. It's sorta implied here that Vince knew Austin wouldn't want to do it but made the match anyway, almost like he was purposely pushing Austin's buttons. As noted, Austin and Vince weren't getting along at all prior to his walking out and the way they buried him afterwards probably wasn't a coincidence. There's still a lot of hard feelings on both sides.
The "Pile Driver" roller coaster ride at WWE's Niagra Falls location was shut down by safety officials just hours after its grand opening because they didn't have the proper permits and hadn't undergone safety inspections. They had shown the ride off on TV the day before during a big ceremony with Val Venis, Trish Stratus, and Benoit and apparently the safety inspector saw the segment on TV and realized it hadn't been approved and had it shut down. There's no timetable on when it will re-open (I just listened to a Bruce Prichard podcast episode talking about this and apparently it never re-opened. It just sat there dormant for years I think.)