November 04, 2002
- The results of the Katie Vick angle are in. WWE did the angle last week in an effort to stir up controversy in a desperate ratings grab. Didn't work. This week's Raw was the lowest-watched episode of the show in almost 5 years. On the flip side, this week's Smackdown was the highest rated since April, just in case it's not apparent which approach is working. Paul Heyman's wrestling-centric show is holding up while Raw Is Necrophilia clearly is not. To be fair, from what Dave has heard, most of the people involved in producing the show also thought the Katie Vick angle was horrible. Seems like this is one of those things that only Vince thought was funny and everyone else was forced to go along with (Bruce Prichard has said this himself on the podcast. Says he and everyone else were horrified at having to do the angle this way, but Vince overruled them all). Vince was said to be pretty pissed off about the backlash from the fans while receiving practically no mainstream coverage. He actually wanted to replay the angle later in the show, but was talked out of it after it aired the first time.
- In regards to fan displeasure, TNN was inundated with emails and phone calls and WWE themselves received more than 1,300 complaints. TNN finally released a statement, simply saying that the angle didn't violate their standards and practices. In Australia, where it was edited, the Fox Sports Australia spokesman said it wasn't appropriate for children and would not air again on their network. In Europe, they pretty much digitized the entire screen when it started and then cut away to a shot of the flowers when it got worse, so those viewers didn't see most of the angle either. Vince has doubled-down, sending a memo this week to the creative team that said they are going to continue on the creative course they're going down. The memo was said to be written in a very smart-ass, dismissive way of people who were criticizing the angle. In other words, fuck 'em if they don't like it. So expect more corpse-boning and other soap opera storylines and if you don't like it, suck Vince's dick. That's pretty much the gist. We're heading into sweeps season, where TV ratings are more important than ever. And this month will determine whether Vince McMahon is the kind of promoter who listens to his audience, or if he's the kind of promoter who believes he can convince the audience to like what he likes (pretty sure time has proven the answer to that one).
- WWE announced this week that Scott Steiner has signed a contract. No word on what the money is, but it's confirmed that his contract calls for no more than 14 dates per month, which is pretty much the same schedule Undertaker has. Basically, Scott will work all TVs and PPVs and a handful of house shows. In the short-term, this should be a good boost. Other than Sting or Goldberg, Steiner is pretty much the only guy on the market who could come in and have big time name recognition from day one and maybe move the needle. He still has enough star power from WCW that he can probably work a handful of matches with top WWE stars and do big business. Long-term though....that's another story. WWE is going to need to push him hard from the start and get everything they can out of him as fast as they can because it's unknown how well Steiner's body can hold up to even a 14-date-per-month schedule. No word which show he's going to be on, because they're planning to do an angle where both shows are fighting over him. But Dave expects him to end up on Raw since they need the star power and he figures Steiner vs. Triple H for the title is the natural direction (yup). The last time Steiner wrestled was on recent shows for NJPW and he looked horrible there, clearly in pain and not able to do much. So time will tell.
- Motoko Baba, the widowed wife of Giant Baba, officially stepped away from the wrestling business at a ceremony at AJPW's latest Budokan Hall show. Ms. Baba had already turned over the reins of the company to Keiji Muto a few weeks back, but this ceremony was her official send off in the arena AJPW has called home since 1972. She gave a brief speech to the crowd and thanked them for their support over the past 30 years. Elsewhere on the show, Muto (wrestling under his Great Muta gimmick) captured the Triple Crown title from Genichiro Tenryu. Only 8 days after blowing his right knee out and spending the whole week on crutches, Muto went in and wrestled like he had a death wish, doing 3 moonsaults among other things. After it was over, Muto's knee was said to be hurting worse than ever before. But he's not stopping, and they announced plans for Muto to face Bob Sapp at next week's big Yokohama Arena show. Goldberg is expected to work that show as well.
- WWE's Rebellion PPV is in the books and as usual for these UK-only PPVs, it was pretty much just a glorified house show. Dave recaps it and there's nothing of note here. Angle & Benoit vs. The Guerreros was the best match but duh. Lesnar & Heyman beat Edge in the main event. And that's basically it.
- Dave has finally seen the video of the recent NJPW Tokyo Dome show and reviews it. Bob Sapp was over like crazy and was by far the biggest star on the show. Sooner or later, the wheels are gonna come off this Sapp train and he's gonna get overexposed. But for right now, he's the hottest star in all of Japanese wrestling or MMA. Chyna vs. Masahiro Chono was as awful as expected. Chono laid into Chyna with some kicks harder than Dave expected. He also sold for her way too much and it looked like a joke. After the match, she cut a promo saying her goal is to be the first female IWGP champion. Yuji Nagata vs. Kazuyuki Fujita was the main event for the title and it was good but not great. The show ended on TV showing Chyna sitting in Bob Sapp's lap and acting like they were going to make out. Sure.
- There's a big story on the upcoming Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock UFC fight that kinda devolves into a story about MMA companies trying to distance themselves from pro wrestling. He talks about recent comments made by Dana White about how the wrestling audience helped them in the early days, but now they want to target "true sports fans" and have no interest in the fans who want soap opera drama. In Japan, pro wrestling fans are by far the biggest crossover audience for PRIDE and K-1 and matches with pro wrestlers are always the biggest draws. But both companies are also trying to distance themselves from wrestling, going to great lengths to never mention "pro wrestling" publicly. When Goldberg did commentary for K-1 a couple months back, they were noticeably doing everything they could to avoid mentioning that he's a famous wrestler, never once acknowledging it. Dave seems to think it's a mistake. Like it or not, pro wrestling is a huge draw for young viewers and being able to "cut promos" and get people interested enough to buy PPVs is a vital part of the MMA business and if you try to hide from that, it's not going to go well (sure enough, to this day, the biggest UFC draws tend to be the guys who aren't just great fighters, but who can also talk big shit the best. Conor McGregor being the obvious example). Anyway, this piece is really long and interesting look at UFC's business in 2002.
- It appears TNA has struck a deal with Dallas-based Panda Energy to purchase a majority interest in the promotion, though Dave has no real specific details on it yet. The question now is, who will be running things? Panda Energy CEO Robert Carter's daughter Dixie Carter runs Trifecta Entertainment, a Nashville-based PR firm that Jerry Jarrett has been using. Dixie put Jarrett in touch with her father and that started negotiations for Panda to purchase stake in the company. Those meetings apparently involved multiple people, including Vince Russo. During a meeting with Panda management last week, Jarrett was informed that Russo has been politicking to take over creative control once the Panda sale goes through and it seems like Panda may indeed be leaning towards Russo over Jarrett. Russo has been telling friends he's confident that once the new owners take over, he'll be in charge of creative. Right now, Russo is pretty much there as a favor to Jeff Jarrett and has almost no power because Jerry Jarrett doesn't allow most of his angles to air. But the reality is, to outsiders who don't know his history, Russo does have an impressive resume. He was the guy booking WWF during their biggest years. Russo has only been allowed to write backstage promos since joining TNA and even those haven't gone well. On the show a couple weeks ago, Syxx, Curt Hennig, and Ron Killings all went against the scripts Russo had written for them (the racial stuff) and said their own things instead. Several other wrestlers have vowed to quit if Russo ends up getting control. Jerry Jarrett seems somewhat resigned to it, feeling he's too old to get into a political fight for control and if Panda picks Russo over him, so be it. So that's where things stand right now.
- A recent NJPW show saw Yuji Nagata and Masahiro Chono go to a 60-minute time limit draw in a match for the IWGP title. It's only the 2nd time in history that there has been a 60-minute draw for that title. The first was Antonio Inoki vs. Tatsumi Fujinami back in 1988 (to date in 2020, there's only been five total. The aforementioned two matches, Nagata/Nakanishi in 2003, Kojima/Nakamura in 2005, and Omega/Okada in 2017).
- The NJPW TV show prior to the Tokyo Dome show was all about Bob Sapp and holy shit is it something. They had all these campy skits of Sapp going insane at a zoo. Dave says words can't do justice how goofy this was. He was ripping up posts of Nakanishi, cutting promos on elephants, eating straw and bananas (here's the video, from what appears to be a German bodybuilding website which is the only place I could find it. The video is, well.....it's as advertised).
- The promo Curt Hennig cut on TNA this week, where he called DDP "a mark" and talked about taking down Brock Lesnar at 35,000 feet (reference to the Plane Ride from Hell), was all Hennig's doing. A lot of people thought it was Russo, but nope, that was all Hennig. Dave talks about how Hennig has long not particularly cared for DDP. A bunch of the old school wrestlers don't actually, because they remember DDP as the guy from back in the early late-80s AWA days who didn't know anything about the business and they feel like his success later in the 90s was only due to being friends with Bischoff. No doubt his friendship with Bischoff helped, but Dave says the truth is, DDP improved a lot in the ring, turned into a great self-promoter, worked his ass off, and became a bigger star for several years than a lot of the people who hate him. As for the Lesnar line, Dave doesn't comment on that. But from all the Plane Ride From Hell reports at the time, let's just say Hennig's claim about taking Lesnar down ain't exactly how it went.
- The original plan for WWE's upcoming Survivor Series was a Lesnar vs. Hogan rematch, stemming from the angle where Lesnar injured him. However, Hogan has refused to come back just to put Lesnar over a second time so that match isn't happening. The other two choices were between Big Show and Benoit. And, well, when Vince is desperate, he goes with size. So Lesnar vs. Big Show it is. Benoit obviously would be the better match, but neither match is really a big PPV draw, which kinda shows the lack of depth WWE has right now when it comes to legit main event star-power. They're holding off on Angle/Lesnar for now, and don't really have anyone else credible. They seem to be nudging Lesnar into being a babyface, which means he's likely going to be splitting from Heyman soon (yup). Reportedly, during the creative meeting when they were debating between Big Show or Benoit, Vince was frustrated and called Hogan "selfish" for refusing to do the match.
- Talk of a Brock Lesnar/Lennox Lewis match has died off. With Lewis having 3 boxing matches lined up next year, plus a big movie deal he just signed, he told WWE he wouldn't be available until at least fall of 2003, which is a lifetime away in wrestling time. So looks like this probably won't be happening.
- Notes from Raw: opened up with Triple H cutting a never-ending promo about how he escaped the trunk of Kane's car and then made a bunch of necrophilia jokes that got crickets from the crowd, and beat up a blow-up doll corpse. Stacy is managing Test now and they have started calling his fans "Testicles." Randy Orton broke into the show with a RNN (Randy News Network) breaking news update about his shoulder injury recovery. Dave says this is the 2nd week in a row that Orton was the best thing on the show because this was great. They had a storyline going about how Ric Flair wasn't at the show because he was stuck in Charlotte due to bad weather. Triple H called him on the phone and told him he didn't care and wanted him to fly to Raw anyway. So here's the thing: 3 days earlier, Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone and several others died in a plane crash that took off during bad weather. It's pretty much been the top news story in America this week and WWE would have to live in a cave to have not heard about it. Dave doesn't outright accuse them of making reference to that incident, but he also can't fathom how they didn't realize how this would come across. And Kane beat Triple H in a casket match due to Shawn Michaels interference, with Shawn debuting his new little Dutch boy haircut.
- Notes from next week's Smackdown tapings: it's a Halloween-themed show, with a show-long party going on backstage. John Cena was dressed as Vanilla Ice and was rapping and apparently was really entertaining. Can you imagine that getting over? As if. There was an angle backstage where Eric Bischoff kissed Stephanie McMahon and she ended up liking it. Dave always figured this was the inevitable conclusion of this storyline: Bischoff turns Stephanie against Vince and we get another months long McMahons hating each other storyline, this time with Bischoff thrown in (not quite what happens). Dave recaps the results of the matches but, of course, none of this has aired yet.
- Mick Foley was scheduled to be on WWE's Byte This internet show, but he canceled at the last minute over the necrophilia angle. Later in the week, he gave a speech at Southern Illinois University and talked about the angle, saying he can't justify or defend it and said if he went on the show, he would have either had to criticize the company on their own show, which he didn't want to do, or he'd have to be dishonest and try to defend it, which he refused to do. So he just didn't go. Otherwise, Foley still doesn't work for WWE and is doing his own thing right now, writing his book and relaxing. He's said he's open to coming out of retirement under the right circumstances.