Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 28, 2002

Awwwwwww yeah, it's time! It's what you've all been waiting for! Our top story this week is none other than the Katie Vick necrophilia angle! Or, as WWE executive producer Kevin Dunn stated in a press release, "this was an attempt at dark humor capitalizing on the popularity of programs such as CSI, Six Feet Under and X-Files." Or, as Dave Meltzer puts it, WWE is so out of touch with its audience that, because Vince thought this was hilarious, he thought everyone else would too. It's the latest desperate attempt to create controversy and get some buzz, just a couple of weeks removed from HLA and Billy & Chuck's wedding. So a refresher if you've somehow never seen this: Triple H shows up in a funeral parlor in a Kane mask, removed the bra and panties of the alleged Katie Vick corpse in a casket, starts taking off his own clothes, climbs in and starts humping the dead body. Then he said, "I screwed her brains out!" as mush poured out of her head. We all caught up now? The live crowd in Nashville booed this loudly and a huge "refund" chant broke out during the commercial break that followed. During the show, Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler repeatedly pushed the narrative that the media was gonna be outraged and it was going to be controversial. The goal was absolutely to rile up the Phil Mushnicks and other media types because Vince loves that kind of controversial publicity. But it's not 1999 anymore. The media doesn't care about what they perceive as a dying product trying desperate ratings ploys and this didn't generate much of a response from the public at all. Even TNN, which publicly apologized for the HLA segment a few weeks back, didn't even make a comment on this one. Dave talks about how WWE has become a parody of itself. Jim Ross is known for calling great matches and now he has to try to get necrophilia over. Jerry Lawler has gone from hip and entertaining to aging and creepy (man, ain't that the truth). Vince McMahon has forgotten how to do what he used to be great at: taking performers with limited talent and finding a way to make them superstars. Now in 2002, he has the most talented roster he's ever had, and he can't figure out how to make stars out of any of them (once again, ain't that the truth).
Anyway, this angle has pretty much killed Kane's character, barely a few weeks after returning from injury. Later on Raw, they did an angle where Kane threw Triple H in the trunk of a car and drove off, but as he did, the trunk lid popped open when it wasn't supposed to, meaning Triple H could have easily escaped. Right there on camera. "Stuff like this only used to happen in WCW," Dave says, and he's right. WWE got unbelievably lazy and complacent when all the competition was gone. Ten minutes after Raw ended, Paul Bearer (who just left the company last week after having been there for the last 12 years) wrote a post online saying, "I am horrified. I never thought that I would ever be proud to say that I do not work for Vince McMahon any longer." As you can imagine, the necrophilia angle didn't air in a lot of places. TSN in Canada cut away from the segment as soon as Triple H first began fondling the "corpse." In Australia, they also cut away midway through the segment. Raw hasn't aired yet in Europe, but word is lot of the television partners there are also planning to heavily edit the segment, if it airs at all. Otherwise, that's pretty much it. No mainstream publicity, no outraged news stories, no media outlets demanding comment. Just an increasingly desperate company doing increasingly desperate shock tactics because that's what worked 3 years ago, only to learn that the public cares less and less every time.
Latest on the Brock Lesnar vs. Lennox Lewis rumors, as of now, the absolute earliest that match could happen would be in late-2003. There have been a lot of discussions over the past week with both sides, discussing potential rules for the match and other such issues. Vince McMahon called the Nevada State Athletic Commission to get info about having the match sanctioned there. The idea is to hold it in Nevada so that it would be sanctioned and thus prove to the public that it's a true shoot and not some wacky pro wrestling stunt. Dave also offhandedly mentions talk of a Kurt Angle vs. Michael Moorer fight as well and hints that it would take place on the undercard of the same show. Anyway, Vince wanted to do Brock/Lewis in February, as a way to build for Wrestlemania (the idea being Lesnar and Angle would both beat big name boxers on the same show, which would be huge mainstream news, and then they could catapult that stardom into headlining against each other at Wrestlemania the next month. Huge back-to-back PPV buyrates). But Lewis has a boxing match in February and he's also in talks for a huge rematch with Mike Tyson in June. Because of the risk of injury in a Lesnar match, he won't risk it until after that but has said he's interested in doing it in the fall next year.
Anyway, they have agreed to some certain rules so far, if this fight were to actually take place. Lesnar would not wear gloves and would not be allowed to punch, while Lewis would wear gloves and could punch. If Lesnar takes him to the ground, there would be a time limit before the referee would stand them back up. So Lesnar can't just take him down and keep him there the entire fight. No word on what that time limit might be, how many rounds, length of rounds, scoring system, etc. Both men would also have to be drug tested if this took place in Nevada. Theoretically, if Lesnar could get Lewis on the ground, he could overpower him and probably dominate, but Lesnar also has no submission training. And depending on how short the stand-up time limit is, they might spend more time on their feet than on the mat, in which case, that obviously favors Lewis. As for Angle vs. Moorer, same situation. Except Moorer isn't as good a boxer as Lewis and Angle is an even better wrestler than Lesnar. So unless the rules are extremely limiting, one would expect Angle could tie Moorer in knots. But, of course, these are both pro boxers and it only takes one split second punch to end things. If these matches happen, Lesnar and Angle would be taking the biggest risks of any pro wrestler in history. And Dave isn't sure it's entirely worth it. Maybe for a short-term boost, yes. Crossover shoot matches like these have done monstrous business in Japan. But one only needs to look at NJPW to realize how badly going down that road is long-term.
WWE's No Mercy PPV is in the books and Dave starts by pretty much admitting that, in hindsight, he was wrong. Last month, Undertaker and Lesnar had a non-finish to a PPV main event that most people, Dave included, shat all over. But in retrospect, Dave thinks it was the best possible decision. With split brands, WWE is trying not to blow through all their potential main event feuds too fast. If Undertaker had lost cleanly last month, who does that leave for Lesnar to feud with next? They're saving Angle for Wrestlemania. Edge isn't at that level yet. Chris Benoit is the only one on Smackdown that would be a viable opponent, and it has been discussed. But this allowed them to stretch Undertaker and Lesnar out another month and this time, not only did Undertaker do the right thing and put over Lesnar clean, he did it in what ended up being the best match of Lesnar's career so far.
Other notes from the PPV: in the opening match, Jericho went for the lionsault in what was supposed to be the finish, but the rope broke and for a split second, it looked like Jericho was going to Hayabusa himself, but fortunately, he didn't. Dave gives him a lot of credit for keeping his cool and improvising the finish as the match fell apart after that. Torrie Wilson's dad Al Wilson continued his storyline, complete with a Bill Clinton, "I didn't have sexual relations with that woman" joke since they were in Arkansas and figured the fans would love a nearly-5 year old political joke. Torrie vs. Dawn Marie was awful (negative half star). Crowd was dead for RVD vs. Flair. Triple H retained the world heavyweight title over Kane in a sloppy, whatever match that the announcers spent the entire time talking about Katie Vick (and this was the night before Triple H fucked a corpse). They blew off the Undertaker-cheated-on-his-wife storyline in a quick throwaway backstage segment that seemed done simply for the purpose of ending this storyline asap. Kurt Angle & Chris Benoit won the Smackdown tag titles by beating Mysterio and Edge in possibly the match of the year. Dave gives it 4.75 stars. And Lesnar beat Undertaker in a bloodbath Hell in a Cell match where both men and even Paul Heyman bladed. Undertaker in particular was gushing blood everywhere. 4 stars and Undertaker put Lesnar over clean.
Martha Hart has released a new book, "Broken Harts: The Life & Death of Owen Hart." Dave says there's only 4 other wrestling books that he would classify as must-reads (the 2 Mick Foley books, Dynamite Kid, and Lou Thesz) but he adds this one to the list. To be fair though, it's different than most wrestling books. It's more about Martha's life with Owen, his death, and her efforts to cope with life without him while trying to get justice for him. Aside from the people who were directly involved with the legal proceedings, Dave believes he himself had more access to information about that case and everything surrounding it than anyone. But he says he learned more from this book than he ever could have imagined. The most shocking revelation that hasn't come out publicly until now is that there were almost 2 lives lost that day. Originally, Mexican mini wrestler Max Mini was planned to descend with Owen, dressed as a mini-Blue Blazer. However, he showed up late to the arena (miscommunication because he didn't speak English) and so missed the scheduled practice time. As a result, they wrote him out of the stunt and it ended up only being Owen. They still planned to do it again with both of them the next night on Raw, but of course, that never happened. Owen's death was clouded in such controversy and legal drama and media coverage that it was easy for a lot of people to forget the real pain of the family left behind. This book doesn't allow the reader to turn away from that. Martha insisted that Vince McMahon attend Owen's funeral because she wanted him to see up close the pain his negligence caused. In the same way, this book doesn't let the reader off the hook. If you're a fan of WWE, it makes you face a very ugly part of their history. It's uncomfortable and raw and real and the pain of a woman who lost the husband she planned to grow old with is visceral. Naturally, it also goes into detail on how this tore apart the Hart family and how some of them actively worked against Martha.
That being said, there are some parts of Martha's book that Dave doesn't agree with. Martha insists that Owen passionately hated pro wrestling and Dave has a hard time believing that. You don't get that good at something you hate that much. Did he hate that the business kept him away from his family? Did he hate the politics of it? Probably, but everybody in the business deals with the travel and hates the politics, so is that really the same thing as "hating wrestling?" There's also the issue of the Owen/Austin match at Summerslam 97 that left Austin with a serious neck injury. Martha argues that she thinks Austin's neck was messed up going into the match and argues that the Owen piledriver wasn't the primary factor. One needs only watch the footage to know how obviously wrong that is. Owen clearly botched that move in a very dangerous way that nearly paralyzed Austin. It was something Austin never forgave Owen for because he felt it was careless and possibly even intentional, no matter how much others tried to convince Austin that Owen would never have hurt him purposely. On several occasions afterward, he refused to work programs with Owen because of it. There's two sides to every story and Martha is, naturally, going to defend her husband's side. But the video doesn't lie, Owen spiked him. The Hart family also disputes Martha's version of things. Martha claims she always hated the business, while others in the family say she was a regular at the shows and it sounds like they're kinda hinting that she was a ring rat. Martha denies that and claims she only started going to the shows when she and Owen began dating in high school, so that she could see him. There's so much more but this is 2 paragraphs already. But this is pretty much the definitive book on the death of Owen Hart and the personal and legal aftermath that followed (I've never read this but I'm intrigued now. Anyone else ever read it?)
AAA star Gronda suffered a Sid Vicious-like leg injury at their latest show, snapping his lower leg. The footage was shown on TV in slow motion multiple times, just like Sid's was. Here you go, you sick freaks, enjoy:
Australian wrestler Nathan Jones is fielding some offers right now. Both WWE and NJPW have made it clear they're interested in using him. Right now, he's working shows for Zero-One. Between that, NJPW, and working other foreign tours, he could make way more money than WWE would give him for a developmental deal. So one would assume if WWE wants him, they'd need to make him a main roster offer. But he's by no means ready for the big time, he's still super green. Then again, WWE wanted Brock Lesnar so bad that they pretty much paid him main roster money and still sent him to developmental for 2 years, so if they want him badly enough, they could do that.
Fresh out of the Awful Timing Dept., it appears AJPW top star (and now President) Keiji Muto suffered a knee injury last week during a match. He was hospitalized after the show with ligament damage and was told by doctors to rest it for 3 weeks. Muto is scheduled to headline the upcoming Budokan Hall show to challenge Genichiro Tenryu for the Triple Crown title so, needless to say, Muto is ignoring the doctors. In fact, he already ignored them and returned to action the very next night, even though he was still using crutches backstage. He was part of an 8-man match and didn't do much. He's also planning to continue working all his scheduled house shows prior to the Buddokan show, because Muto is insane. His doctor told him it's inevitable that he will need at least one knee replacement sooner or later. He has no cartilage left in his right knee, so everything he does is bone-rubbing-on-bone. The doctor told him he has the knees of a 65-year old man. Of course, Terry Funk and Kenta Kobashi have been told similar things and they're both working every night on this tour too. AJPW is essentially the walking crippled right now.
Dave worries that Japan is going to burn out Bob Sapp sooner than later. In the next 2 months, he's booked for major shows with AJPW, K-1 and PRIDE. Meanwhile, NJPW is trying to book him against Yuji Nagata for the IWGP title at the Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show. Sapp is the top draw at all these events and they're all relying on him to draw big crowds (the NJPW match ends up being Nagata vs. Josh Barnett but we'll get there).
Sting is being advertised for WWA's upcoming European tour. And yes, WWA is still clinging to life (this is their last real tour. They have a couple of shows in 2003 in Australia before shutting down for good). Anyway, this will be Sting's first matches since the final WCW Nitro in March of 2001.
Billy Graham underwent a successful liver transplant last week. It was dire, with doctors telling him he wouldn't live much longer without one. They got a liver from a 26-year-old woman who died in a car accident and Graham went into surgery that same night. In the days after the surgery, Graham made a remarkable turnaround that doctors were stunned by. He's now doing better than he has in years and is expected to be out of the hospital soon. Originally, doctors didn't want to use the liver of anyone under 225 pounds because Graham is such a big guy. But he was running out of time, so they finally decided to use the girl's liver because they had no other choice. Her kidneys are also being used to save 2 people who needed new ones, so this young lady's tragic death is saving 3 lives. Vince McMahon, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, and Jesse Ventura have all reached out to Graham in recent days.
Tom Cole, the guy who was a teenager in the early 90s and was at the center of the WWF's ring boy sex abuse scandal, has threatened a lawsuit against Bobby Heenan over something in Heenan's book. Dave doesn't really get into detail on what was written, but it sounds like Heenan may have implied that Cole was willingly having sex with Terry Garvin to try to get a foot into the company. Cole, who alleged that Garvin attempted to drug and rape him when he was a teenager, of course denies this. So yeah. (I've never read Heenan's book so without knowing exactly what he said, I'ma just move on from this).
Over in TNA, you may have noticed Jorge Estrada has a new valet named Priscilla. She previously appeared on the debut episode as Miss Joni in the lingerie battle royal. Anyway, in case you're wondering....she is actually Jerry Lawler's current real-life girlfriend. During the show, they alluded to it when Don West asked if she was dating Estrada and Mike Tenay said she's dating a king.
Ron Killings has a new rap album coming out called InVINCEable (and yes, it's spelled that way on purpose and is very obviously a reference to McMahon) and the single has been getting some airplay on Nashville's rap radio station (so I can't find ANYTHING from this album other than the cover. And even the cover was barely out there online anywhere. Not a single song or mp3 from this album seems to exist anywhere, nada. How is that possible??)
The advertised lineup for WWE's Rebellion UK PPV was supposed to be headlined by Lesnar & Heyman vs. Undertaker in a handicap match. But it's not just a TV angle, Undertaker's wife Sara really is due to give birth at any moment, and as a result, he's been pulled from the tour. They're sending Booker T as an effort to make up for it, but Dave doesn't know if that means it'll be Lesnar vs. Booker T or if they'll just shuffle the card around (winds up being Lesnar over Edge in what I think would technically be Edge's first PPV main event).
Speaking of PPV lineups, WWE hasn't completely given up on long-term booking yet as of 2002. Because Dave runs down the tentative lineup for next month's Survivor Series, even though none of it has been announced on TV yet, and has most of it dead on, including some sort of new multi-man gimmick match called an Elimination Chamber...
Notes from Raw: Dave calls it "one of the most pathetic episodes of Raw ever" and says it felt like watching an episode of WCW Thunder. He talks about the Trish Stratus storyline, where Victoria and others were accusing Trish of sleeping her way to the top of the wrestling business. Trish is a babyface now and so of course, we're all supposed to be appalled and offended. But just a year and a half ago, Trish was a heel and her character was with Vince doing exactly that. So, I mean, in kayfabe....she did sleep her way to the top. Anyway, Stacy Keibler is now going to be the valet for Test because they're actually dating in real life. Big Show was traded to Smackdown, but.....they never said who he was traded for. It was never mentioned on Smackdown later in the week either. So in kayfabe, Raw just gave Big Show away. Other theory is it could be a way to explain moving Hogan to Raw whenever he comes back. And of course, the Katie Vick corpse fucking thing ending with Kane kidnapping Triple H in an open car trunk. Honestly, the recap didn't sound like this was that bad of a show. Maybe a little boring, but just an average Raw tainted by an otherwise all-time worst angle ever candidate.
At the tapings for next week's Smackdown, Jerry Lawler worked a dark match since it was in Memphis. The match was taped and is expected to air on Lawler's local Memphis wrestling show. Also at the tapings, during the Velocity tapings, Chase Stevens worked as a jobber in a tag team match against D-Von and Ron Simmons. You may remember Chase Stevens from last week's TNA episode, where he was challenging for the tag team titles and now he's a jobber on WWE TV, which is a bad look for TNA. There was also a Torrie Wilson vs. Nidia bikini match taped for Velocity. Just a regular match, except they wore bikinis for whatever reason. And before the show started, they had Matt Hardy come out and insult Elvis Presley to make sure the fans were booing when the show started. Later in the show, Jamie Noble came out dressed as Elvis too. And Al Wilson made an Elvis joke. So on and so forth. Dave notes that the Memphis crowd was dead for this. Yeah, about that. Fun fact as someone who has spent most of his life in Memphis: nobody there gives a fuck about Elvis. We don't go to Graceland. There is no Elvis pride among people who actually live in the city. Please stop using it to try to get heat at EVERY goddamn wrestling show that comes there. There's other things you can reference! Not even just the sports teams. You want to get heat cutting a promo in Memphis? Insult the BBQ.
There's some drama on Hulk Hogan's upcoming book. During the editing process, copies of it were sent to Vince and Linda McMahon, along with Jim Ross, to approve. Linda complained that it was boring and told the editors she wanted Hogan to address more controversial topics, like his drug use and marital infidelities. She also complained that Hogan didn't give Vince enough credit for his success. This got back to Hogan, who called Vince and basically said, "fuck you, I don't want to tell those stories. If y'all want that kind of book so badly, write your own. You've got plenty of skeletons in your closet too." That was more or less the gist. So anyway, the book doesn't have any of that stuff in it, at least in the current manuscript Dave has seen but as a compromise, Hogan did go back and write a lot more glowingly about Vince and credited him more for his success. Hogan was also upset that the McMahons and JR got to read and suggest changes to the edited manuscript before he did (keep in mind, Hogan had a lot of help from a ghostwriter on this, so he didn't really know what the finished product was going to look like either or how his words may have been twisted or changed by the author). That being said, Dave says he has read the current version of the manuscript and says it's actually pretty good. It has the expected Hogan spin on several things, of course, but still. It does blow through a lot of interesting history way too fast, but otherwise, the unpublished version Dave has read is decent. Full review when it comes out I'm sure.
There's rumors that The Rock is up for the starring role in a live-action version of the Johnny Bravo cartoon (this was true, but it got stuck in developmental hell and never happened).
WWE is signing a female Toronto indie wrestler named Felina and she's expected to go straight to Smackdown. Her real name is Gail Kim. They're also bringing in Nathan Jones soon for a 10-day tryout. He'll work some house shows and dark matches and from there, they'll decide if they want to sign him and what to do with him. He's got the look and charisma but he's awful in the ring. So time will tell. In a huge swing and a miss, Dave outright says, "he's got far more potential than Batista." Oh well, can't win em' all.
So, uh....Stephanie McMahon went on the Howard Stern show. She talked about the Chyna/Triple H/Stephanie love triangle and how Vince originally forbid them to date. She said that if Triple H asked her to marry him, she would say yes. Stern then joked that if Triple H screwed up this relationship, it would probably mess up his career, to which Stephanie pretty much agreed. Those 2 questions sure put a lot of pressure on Triple H. She blamed the declining business on the economy. Dave notes there's probably a dozen arguments against that being the reason, but what else is she supposed to do? She can't go on TV and admit that it's all collapsing because of their own failures, so there ya go. And that....is all Dave really says. He doesn't even acknowledge that Stephanie spent half the interview talking about her sex life and all the usual Howard Stern-type questions. Also, Dave Chappelle is sitting there the whole time chiming in.
There's been talk that maybe Triple H shouldn't be involved in creative meetings anymore. Even if he's not in there burying people, that's still the impression the rest of the locker room gets and it's causing a bunch of heat with him among other wrestlers, some of which is justified and some of which is just hearsay because they see him as the teacher's pet.
Triple H did commentary for the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding contest. Dave saw it and thinks Triple H was really good. A much better commentator than Goldberg was at PRIDE. You could tell he had an in-depth knowledge of bodybuilding and brought that to the table. It was funny seeing Triple H look so small next to these guys.
Letters section this week is chock full of letters from people who are done with WWE after this Katie Vick angle. Just letter after letter of people saying "I'm never watching again" and "this company has lost a viewer" and yada yada.