October 14, 2002
- It's been 6 months since the brand split and we open with an analysis of how it's gone and the answer is not great. Dave wants it to work. In theory, it should give more talent TV time, let them slow-burn angles, create more stars, and foster healthy competition. In reality, it hasn't worked out like that at all. Guys like RVD, Benoit, Kane, Jericho....all of them are worse off now than they were 6 months ago when the split started and are no closer to breaking through that glass ceiling. Edge and Mysterio are the only two who seem to have benefitted by WWE making an actual effort to push them up the ladder but they aren't past that glass ceiling yet either. Everyone else is pretty much exactly where they were before or worse. Bubba Ray, Booker T, Lance Storm, Christian, Rikishi, Eddie Guerrero....all still mired in midcards. The only real main event top level stars WWE is building around lately are Undertaker, Triple H, Kurt Angle, and Lesnar, who is the only real "star" that has been created since this brand split started. Other top stars from 6 months ago like Austin, Rock, Hogan, and Vince are gone or off TV. Ric Flair has been reduced to doing comedy jobs to Rico. And Chris Jericho, who main evented Wrestlemania 6 months ago, is back to the midcard.
- And when you look at it from a business perspective, it's even worse. Live attendance from March to September has dropped over 50% and is the lowest it's been since December of 1996. Raw ratings in the last 6 months have dropped from 4.93 to 3.54, which is almost identical to the same 6-month drop WCW had when Nash took over booking during the first half of 1999. But at least WCW had the excuse that WWF was putting on amazing competitive shows on the other channel. WWE doesn't have that excuse in 2002. No competition bringing them down, just their own incompetence. Of course, there are other factors at play. They didn't expect to lose Austin the way they did. You could argue that losing Rock hurts, but he was around all summer and even held the WWE title for a month of that time and ratings continued to fall, so how much was he really helping? Dave goes on a big rant here about all the problems facing WWE right now holy shit it feels exactly like 2020. Let's cherry-pick a few lines: "The creative process works best with long-term storylines that fans feel they can invest in, and building characters that don't let the fans down. Vince changes his mind every week, so that makes that aspect difficult to impossible [...] Those backstage in Vegas remarked how amazed they were at how they were literally redoing the script as the show went on." Anyway, WWE doesn't have many more big cards to play. The Invasion has been done. NWO has been done. Hogan came back. Bischoff came in. None of it has worked. What's left? Scott Steiner can't hold up to the WWE schedule. Goldberg refuses to do the WWE schedule. Austin is on the outs and who knows how much his return would really change things anyway? The solutions aren't external. They have to fix the internal problems now and that's writing better shows and creating new stars. This piece goes on and on but it's just Dave rehashing what we already know about the creative issues that started plaguing them in 2002 and haven't gotten better in 18 years.
- It's time to talk about Bob Sapp. He's a former WCW Power Plant trainee who only made one appearance on WCW television, in a backstage promo on Thunder to promote a Tough Man contest on FX during the dying days of the company. The interviewer was Lenita Erikson, a singer from the 90s who was rumored to be the secret girlfriend of a high-ranking TBS executive (Dave doesn't name him here, but pretty sure it's been revealed as Brad Siegel in years since) and she looked completely strung out on drugs, but was still given a gig on WCW TV for a few minutes. Anyway, they pushed Sapp as if he was a huge football star and hyped him up as the next big WCW star. But he never appeared on WCW television again. He worked a few NWA Wildside shows but that was it. When WCW folded, he got involved with MMA and kickboxing and here we are. Just one year later, Bob Sapp is a phenom in Japan, and with less than a year of training, he capped off his rise with a stunning victory this week over the greatest heavyweight kickboxer in history, Ernesto Hoost. Following the victory, he shot an angle with Manabu Nakanishi for their upcoming NJPW Tokyo Dome match, which will be Sapp's first pro wrestling match in Japan. And just like that, without ever having wrestled a match in Japan, Bob Sapp has become the biggest wrestling attraction in the country and will likely be what saves this Tokyo Dome show from being a disaster (which it was looking to be until this K-1 fight and the following Nakanishi angle).
- Just as the Bob Sapp thing was helping NJPW build momentum for the Tokyo Dome show, Kensuke Sasaki had to go and ruin it all by announcing he's leaving the company. Sasaki has spent his entire 16+ year career in NJPW and has been a major star for much of the last decade, a 3-time IWGP champion, and was one of the top four stars that carried NJPW throughout the record-setting business in the 90s, even though he never quite reached the success or ability as Muto, Chono, and Hashimoto. Publicly, Sasaki has said he is upset over the way NJPW handled the planned Pancrase match he was booked for against Minoru Suzuki, claiming that NJPW pulled him from the match against his wishes and replaced him with Jushin Liger. He put in his notice with the company and an attempt to talk him out of leaving failed, so NJPW has pulled him off all advertised shows.
- After a trial that lasted more than 2 weeks, a jury took only 4 hours to rule in favor of WWE and concluding that Nicole Bass did not suffer any sexual harassment. The jury gave statements afterward saying they felt Bass was lying about her claims that Steve Lombardi (Brooklyn Brawler) had groped her and rubbed himself against her on a flight in 1999. Despite it being a crowded flight, Bass was unable to come up with any witness to corroborate the story. Vince and Linda McMahon, Jim Ross, Triple H, and Rena Mero (Sable) and others all testified. WWE attempted to introduce evidence showing Bass doing softcore porn bondage wrestling videos and video of her multiple appearances on Howard Stern's show, but the judge blocked that. Sable and Alicia Webb (Ryan Shamrock) testified on behalf of Bass, in particular about claims that wrestlers would frequently go into the women's dressing rooms uninvited. In particular, Webb testified that Triple H once came in while she was using the bathroom. In his testimony, Triple H claimed he couldn't recall such an incident. Bass claimed that Triple H was a frequent intruder into the women's locker room. Triple H denied purposely intruding but did admit to being in there at times due to his relationship with Chyna but he was always invited and always knocked and made sure everyone was clothed before he entered. Everyone on the WWE side noted that Bass was a terrible wrestler, which is why they say she was fired, with Jim Ross testifying that she couldn't even take a simple back bump properly. Ivory testified and admitted she had shot down a lesbian storyline between her and Bass, saying, "I told them I don't have anything against lesbians, but I don't want to be a lesbian on TV, especially if Nicole is going to be my girlfriend." Anyway, that's pretty much it. Jury didn't believe her and ruled unanimously against Bass. Also, one final unrelated note, Triple H testified that his downside guarantee on his current WWE contract is $400,000 in case you were curious.
- Lots of issues with Chyna and NJPW. The promotion has to push her prominently because she's Inoki's pet project and he owns majority interest in the company. But no one likes working with her in the ring and she's rubbing people the wrong way by pitching ideas and giving advice on how they should be doing things and giving off the vibe that she thinks she knows more about wrestling than the Japanese do because she was a big star during WWF's peak. But they're all stuck with her because Inoki.
- Brian Adams, formerly known as Crush, will make his professional boxing debut on an undercard match at an upcoming event in Las Vegas. Randy Savage will be in his corner. He's 36, which is too late for him to ever make any kind of serious attempt at being a boxer, and they're mostly selling this on the hype that Savage will be in his corner more than anything (Adams ends up getting injured in training and never actually has a pro boxing match).
- Ring of Honor and XPW held competing shows in Philadelphia on 10/5, less than a mile apart from each other. Each group drew around 400-450 fans. During the week before, XPW began offering more money to advertised ROH stars to come work the XPW show instead. Some guys earning $100 for the ROH show were offered $500 to do XPW. Homicide's tag team partner Boogalou was the only one who accepted the offer and worked the XPW show under a mask (hope it was worth it, ROH never used him again). As the ROH show was going on, XPW called up Steve Corino (who was working the ROH show) and offered him $1000 to leave and come to the XPW show right then and do a run-in. He declined. This has resulted in former rivals ROH and CZW beginning to work together, out of a mutual desire to get rid of XPW. In another note from the ROH show, Insane Clown Posse showed up the day of the show and asked if they could work a match and they did. Crowd didn't like it at all and chanted, "Don't come back!" at them when it was over.
- Superstar Billy Graham's liver condition has worsened and he's still in desperate need of a liver transplant to survive much longer. A benefit show was held for him this week, with WWE and even Arnold Schwarzeneggar sending memorabilia to be auctioned off. WWE and Graham have had major issues in the past but to Dave's knowledge, things have patched up between he and Vince. Anyway, Brian Christopher showed up to the card and demanded his usual $1,500 fee. But he (and everyone else) had previously agreed to work this show for free since it was a benefit show. When Christopher was told he wasn't being paid, he left. Road Dogg (or BG James as he's called in TNA) also no-showed. Surprisingly, New Jack volunteered to work the show to make up for the no-shows, since he happened to be in the area. Good fella, that New Jack.
- TNA has a TV deal! Barely. They will start airing a weekly show on Tuesday nights on Urban America Television, which consists of 60 low-power TV stations scattered around the country. The show will be called TNA Xplosion. This is little more than buying your way onto syndicated TV networks, as other promotions have had similar deals that amounted to nothing. So this isn't really going to mean shit for the company but it's something I guess. In the meantime, TNA is spinning its wheels, waiting to see if this big influx of money that everyone keeps waiting for will come through.
- Nothing much to the latest episode of TNA's weekly PPV. Russo is primarily scripting interviews and being kept away from the overall storylines and angles. Scott Hall missed last week's show, calling the day of and saying his ex-wife left him with the children and he has a custody hearing so he can't leave them. They were understanding but at the same time....like, c'mon dude. So then for this week's show, he called a couple of days in advance and gave the same reason. Sorry, got the kids, can't come to work. Considering he's only working one day a week and this time he knew in advance, they were less understanding. The last time Hall was on TV, his over-the-top fake selling and complete lack of taking anything serious made it clear he doesn't prioritize TNA right now.
- There was a story in Milwaukee where a gang of teenagers beat a man to death that made national headlines. One of the teenagers admitted that he held the man in what they called a "cripple cross face hold" to allow the others to beat the man in the face. The teen confessed that he learned the move from watching Smackdown.
- Notes from Raw: Dave calls it an episode of Murder She Wrote because the episode ended with Triple H accusing Kane of murdering someone named Katie Vick 10 years ago. Dave doesn't have high hopes for this angle (oh Dave, you naive young thing, just you wait). They aired a vignette for Batista debuting on Raw, with no attempt whatsoever at explaining why/how he's jumping ship from Smackdown. Anyway, the long-term plan is for Batista and Orton to join with Triple H and Ric Flair in a new Four Horsemen-type group. The whole show was gimmick matches because they were in Vegas and had a roulette wheel to pick all the stipulations. Godfather was also on this show, with once again no explanation as to how or why he was moved from Smackdown (non-kayfabe reason is because he's well-known and loved in Vegas). A four-team TLC match gets 4.25 stars and the crowd was going insane for it. Lots of people ended up banged up when it was over, with Bubba Ray getting the worst of it with a serious concussion and he's been pulled from all current bookings (yeah this is pretty famous for the fact that you can see Jericho talking Bubba through the finish of the match).
- Notes from Smackdown: another excellent show, with every segment serving a purpose and furthering a storyline, with some great wrestling to boot. Edge vs. Angle gets 4.25 stars and another 4 stars for Mysterio vs. Benoit. And the only other notable thing was the beginnings of a Torrie Wilson/Dawn Marie feud that saw Wilson's real life father Al Wilson debut (and here we go...)
- Various news and notes: Hogan is being sued by someone for a boat he sold on eBay for $65,000, with the buyer claiming Hogan lied about the condition of the boat. Paul Bearer is leaving the company to spend more time with his wife who has been battling breast cancer. New York Post ran an article about ad rates for TV shows. Out of the top 135 network shows, Smackdown usually ranks somewhere in the middle each week in ratings. But they have the 5th lowest ad rates of any prime time show, more evidence that no matter how popular wrestling is, advertisers still see it as something that only poor people watch and aren't willing to spend as much money on it.