November 11, 2002
- Issues between Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon have reportedly reached an impasse and it looks as though Hogan may be gone from the company, just as his autobiography that WWE is releasing is scheduled to hit stores. There have been disagreements over the book, but the bigger issue is due to booking concerns. Hogan had initially agreed to come back a few weeks ago and work a program with Lesnar, leading to a match between them at Survivor Series. But just days before Hogan was scheduled to return, he backed out, apparently over not wanting to put Lesnar over again. Hogan's image has since been removed from the Smackdown opening credits. Vince is said to be handling this the same way he handled Austin's departure, which is essentially, "Fuck him. Keep moving forward, on to the next" and not really selling it. Hogan will continue to make a few previously scheduled media appearances to promote the book, which WWE booked for him, but otherwise, most of that promotional tour has been scrapped. The long-term plan was for Hogan to lose to Lesnar and that somehow leads to Vince vs. Hogan at Royal Rumble. That seems like it should be an obvious Wrestlemania match, but Hogan's contract expires before WM, so they weren't counting on that. Thus, Rumble. So that's kinda where things stand right now. Much like Austin, Hogan has decided to go home and WWE is now out another big star. Even the reasons are technically the same (refusal to job to Lesnar, although the circumstances are obviously different). Hogan's contract expires in February and he's interested in working some big money matches in Japan and doing a farewell tour in the U.S. that he would book and promote himself. AJPW and K-1 are doing a joint show next week and Goldberg will be there. They're interested in bringing in Hogan for it also and word is that Hogan's WWE contract might actually allow him to do it. There's talk that he has a unique contract that would allow him to work matches in Japan under certain circumstances, so WWE might not be able to stop him from doing the show next week. Hogan has been telling people this week that he's considering it, but he keeps wavering back and forth. And that's where things stand for now.
- It was officially announced that Panda Energy has purchased a majority interest in Jerry Jarrett's NWA-TNA. This purchase has also settled the debate over who will be in charge creatively. Vince Russo had gone behind Jarrett's back and made a strong case to the Panda owners that he was the right man to lead the company. Jarrett himself had conceded that it looked like Panda was going to go with Russo. But this week, Bob Ryder and Jeremy Borash met with the Panda execs and made their case for keeping Jarrett in charge and it worked. As of this moment, Jerry Jarrett will remain in charge of creative. As a result, Russo no-showed this week's event and, for the time being at least, appears to be out of the company. TNA won't officially comment on Russo's status but did release a statement noting that Jarrett will remain "firmly in charge." However, much like WCW, the new owners can change whoever's in charge on a whim at any given moment. There's a lot of people who believe Russo will still end up in power if/when Jarrett fails to turn the ship around.
- More details on the TNA sale: Dixie Carter, the daughter of Panda CEO Robert Carter, announced the ownership change to the employees and wrestlers at a big company-wide meeting. Jerry and Jeff Jarrett will remain minority owners but they essentially work for Panda now if we're being realistic. This deal is essentially just like WCW: a wrestling company owned by a large corporation with no wrestling experience. But WCW had the benefit of being owned by a television network. TNA is owned by an energy company that runs power plants (not the WCW kind). Under the new ownership, TNA made its first big move this week, purchasing commercials during WWE's Raw in more than 30 major markets. ECW and other minor promotions have tried this in the past and usually found it was a waste of money that didn't seem to yield results. This new deal keeps TNA alive for a little while longer, but they're still facing the same challenges: they're trying to get fans to pay money weekly to watch a second-rate product with a lot of unknowns and WWE cast-offs. And they still desperately need a TV deal because this sale doesn't change the fact that trying to run exclusively on weekly PPV isn't sustainable.
- But make no mistake: this sale has saved the company. Remember back in late-Aug/early-Sept. when two episodes in a row were nothing but compilations of previous shows? That's because Jarrett had decided to fold the company. They were already done as far as he was concerned. But at that exact moment, the Panda negotiations started and they were positive enough that Jarrett decided to keep the company running a little bit longer to see if he could make the sale happen. And he did. But if the deal had fallen apart, Jarrett planned to close the company immediately. So this was the textbook definition of saved at the last second. Here's how bad things had gotten. TNA's original investor, HealthSouth, earmarked $1.6 million to help launch the company. But TNA blew through that money quickly and HealthSouth wouldn't invest more, and so Jarrett was keeping the company afloat with his own life savings for about 2 months. That's when he was about to throw in the towel and then Panda came along. TNA still doesn't have accurate numbers for what any of its PPVs have done, so it's hard to say what the true buyrates have been. But estimates are that they were losing $25-40k per show. The company had no television and a marketing budget of almost nothing, which made it impossible to attract new fans. So they were dying fast.
- Long obituary for Edward "Yukon Moose" Cholak, who died at age 72 from a stroke. He was a big star during the 50s-80s. Big 400+ pound dude, back when that was rare in the business, and it made him a huge star in most of the territories he went to. He also wrestled Rikidozan in Japan in what is one of Rikidozan's most famous matches ever because they did an injury angle where Cholak injured his shoulder. It was the first injury angle Rikidozan had ever done and fans were horrified. It led to a couple of big rematches. Bunch of other stuff because Dave somehow knows everything about wrestlers I've never even heard of.
- Former wrestler Brian Blair, of the Killer Bees, came just 4,000 or so votes shy of winning a nasty political race for county commissioner somewhere in Florida. Blair's campaign featured baseball star Wade Boggs (may he rest in peace) and Hulk Hogan in several of his campaign commercials. Blair pushed himself as a family man. His opponents pushed back, noting that Blair testified in the 1991 steroid trial about purchasing illegal steroids, among other things from his years in wrestling. His opponents also cited Blair's failed marriage to former WWF ring announcer Mike McGuirk and Blair allegedly assaulting fellow wrestler Doug Somers over his belief that Somers was having an affair with McGuirk. All this was used to essentially argue that Blair isn't the family values man he claims to be. Anyway, Blair lost, but just barely (I can't find any of these commercials).
- "This has absolutely nothing to do with wrestling, but I feel the need to say a few words about my grandmother," Dave writes, before going on to give a brief, but sweet tribute to his grandmother who passed away just a few months before her 100th birthday. Awwww. Dave's mom is still alive too and in her 90s. Them Meltzers live a long time.
- Dave saw the recent AJPW Budokan Hall show, which was essentially the end of the Giant Baba era of AJPW. Even though he died nearly 4 years ago, the company has remained synonymous with Baba. His picture still on the entrance curtain, representative of how he used to sit behind the curtain and watch all the matches at every show (so is this called the Baba Position in Japan?). But with Motoko Baba fully out of the company now, this was a sad show that symbolized the true end of the Baba era and the first step in AJPW becoming a new, more modern promotion. During the show, they had a list of the top 10 matches in AJPW history. And just so you know how deep the hatred for NOAH still runs, not a single match in the top 10 featured any of the former AJPW wrestlers who left to form NOAH. That's right. Not a single Misawa or Kobashi match made the list. In case you're curious, here's the top 10 AJPW matches ever, according to AJPW in 2002:
- Baba vs. Bruno Sammartino (1972)
- Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Funks (1973)
- Tsuruta vs. Mil Mascaras (1977)
- Funks vs. Abdullah & Sheik (1977)
- Baba vs. Verne Gagne (1981)
- Baba vs. Stan Hansen (1982)
- Hiroshi Wajima vs. Tiger Jeet Singh (1986)
- Tsuruta vs. Tenryu (1987)
- Hansen vs. Toshiaki Kawada (1993)
- A six-man tag on Baba’s birthday (1998) - Dave says this match actually did feature NOAH wrestlers, but they weren't mentioned or shown at all in the highlight video and it was only there because Baba was in it and this was Baba's last great match
- AJPW's annual tag tournament is coming up soon. Reportedly, Muto was trying to bring in Sting to be his partner, but Sting was already booked for the WWA tour in Europe. Man, Sting and Muta teaming up in a tournament would have been awesome to me. Those 2 are what got me into WCW as a kid.
- The guy playing the fake Great Muta in NJPW blew out his knee and needs reconstructive surgery. He's expected to be out at least 6 months. And that was the end of that dumb ass experiment.
- Dave reviews a recent NJPW show and has a couple of interesting notes. American Dragon wrestled in a 6-man match and looked good but lacked charisma. Some people there are making comparisons to Chris Benoit when he wrestled in NJPW. Dave ain't going that far just yet but the kid has real potential. Also, Dragon was reportedly asked to cut his hair but refused. And then there was another tag match with Chyna and it was by far the best match she's had in NJPW and probably the best wrestling match Dave has ever seen her have. She did some great mat wrestling with Tanahashi and Dave says she's been training with Sean Waltman (they're dating around this time of course). But she was shockingly good in this match.
- IWA-Mid South held a 2-night Ted Petty Memorial tournament that featured some notable names, including Colt Cabana, AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Ken Anderson, Ace Steele, Chris Hero, MDogg20, CM Punk, and BJ Whitmer, among others. The tournament was won by Whitmer who beat Punk in the finals (what a damn lineup in retrospect).
- WWE's CFO and two of its top marketing execs are out of the company. The details are being kept hush, but Variety magazine reported that they had been fired, not that they quit. Agusut Liquori, the CFO, was considered the #3 person in the company, behind Vince and Linda McMahon. These decisions were made so suddenly and unexpectedly that WWE didn't yet have replacements lined up. So right now, a couple of other WWE execs are filling those roles temporarily. Gee, this sure sounds familiar. These are the exact same roles that George Barrios and Michelle Wilson held. And earlier this year, they were also fired without warning, so suddenly that WWE didn't even have replacements lined up. When business starts to fall, that job is not safe.
- When talking about future opponents for Brock Lesnar as a babyface, Dave lists Big Show, Kurt Angle, and Eddie Guerrero as possibilities. They're already doing the Big Show match, which is how they're turning Lesnar babyface. They're holding off on Angle probably until Wrestlemania. And Eddie Guerrero, Dave says "I can't ever see that as a PPV match." Boy oh boy, those words taste aren't gonna taste good going down in a couple years.
- Dave recaps all the appearances of WWE wrestlers on the TV show Blind Date. Chris Nowinski, Linda Miles, Maven, Nidia, and Jackie Gayda. You can find most of these on Youtube if you search. They're entertaining. Nidia in particular just cuts right to the chase.
- Notes from Raw: Nathan Jones worked a dark match and even though his in-ring work sucked, he got over big with the crowd. They seem to have reeled back big time on the Katie Vick angle, with only one mention of it the entire show, and that was just a throwaway Goldust joke. Seems Vince finally caved on this one and it appears they're dropping the angle. Jeff Hardy is losing weight and looks more burned out than ever. Batista is now being called Dave Batista. Test got a haircut. And that's basically it.
- Goldberg gave another interview and talked about WWE. First, he questioned whether Scott Steiner's body would hold up to their schedule, but wished him luck. As for the Katie Vick angle, he said stuff like that is basically part of why he's not with WWE and he wouldn't want to be associated with that.