Wrestling Observer Rewinder

November 18, 2002

We open with a preview of the upcoming 2002 Observer Awards. It's interesting because a lot of the categories don't seem to have obvious winners. Dave talks about past winners of the Wrestler of the Year award and how in the past, the winner was usually a mixture of in-ring ability, overall drawing power, and value they bring to their company. This year, the top contenders are all kinda iffy in different ways. Keiji Muto is an obvious contender because without him, AJPW would be dead. Instead, they've had a huge revival and are doing pretty good right now. But Muto's in-ring work hasn't been good this year due to his fragile knees. On the flip side, Kurt Angle has arguably been the best in-ring performer of the year, but he hasn't had any kind of title run or even been a top star in WWE this year. He only had one PPV main event (the three-way with Rock and Undertaker, and Angle was only thrown into that match so Undertaker wouldn't have to do the job). Being a world champion doesn't really mean much anywhere in the world anymore. AJPW's Triple Crown title is the only one of any relevance that hasn't been passed around and devalued like a cheap whore. WWE's title was starting to matter more and the Rock/Lesnar title match at Summerslam felt like a big deal. But then a month later, they created a brand new world title out of thin air and literally handed it to Triple H, and that pretty much immediately killed any value the WWE title still had. Anyway, Dave lists the dozen or so obvious contenders for Wrestler of the Year from promotions around the world and gives his brief opinion.
Survivor Series is next week and WWE has never seemed more directionless. Big Show is challenging Lesnar for the title and they've done a good job of pushing Show the last couple of weeks, but prior to that, he was racking up quick TV losses against mid-carders like it was nothing so they've got their work cut out trying to rehab him. The reason for all this, of course, is Hogan refused to come back and put over Lesnar at Survivor Series, so they had to get Big Show ready quick as a last-minute replacement (it was between him and Chris Benoit. People like Heyman were pushing for Benoit but of course, Vince makes final decision and you know how that goes). As of right now, there's serious consideration to having Big Show win the title. Vince is wanting to push Lesnar as the top babyface of the company, since the crowd has been cheering him since Summerslam anyway. The obvious way to do that would be to have Heyman turn on Lesnar and align with a heel to cost him the belt. A Heyman/Benoit pairing obviously makes a lot of sense and would probably be great, but it's looking more likely that it will be Heyman/Big Show if they decide to pull the trigger at Survivor Series. As of now, Vince hasn't made a decision either way, but word is he's pretty much leaning to putting the belt on Big Show and having Lesnar do a face turn at the PPV next week. Others are obviously against it, with Gerald Brisco being the most vocal against it. Brisco wants to keep Heyman and Lesnar together and pushed the idea of Lesnar as an old-school champion who defends against both heels and babyfaces equally before building up to Lesnar/Angle at Wrestlemania. Michael Hayes pushed for Benoit to win the title at the December PPV if they're going to do the turn, figuring Benoit/Heyman would be a better pairing. As for Heyman himself, his idea was to simply have Lesnar beat him up and fire him to write him off TV and that way they turn Lesnar without him having to lose the title. But as always, this will probably be decided by Vince on the day of the show because there's no such thing as long-term booking in WWE anymore apparently (spoiler: Heyman turns on Lesnar and helps Big Show win the title. As always, Vince has his way).
ROH and CZW worked together to co-promote an independent double-header in Philadelphia this week and it was a big success. ROH drew its largest crowd to date (525 fans!) for a 5pm show. Immediately after, just down the road, 850 fans piled into the old ECW arena for CZW's show. There were issues though. ROH's show went an hour longer than planned, although no one complained because that last hour featured AJ Styles vs. American Dragon in a 4+ star match among other great bouts. Many long-time readers and ROH fans reported it as the best show in ROH history. Zero-1 tag team Shinjiro Otani and Masato Tanaka worked against Low-Ki and Steve Corino in another great match. Tommy Dreamer made an unannounced appearance. He was in town with WWE doing a house show and ROH had contacted WWE about using him because Dreamer had expressed interest. WWE allowed Dreamer to make the appearance so long as he didn't take any bumps. Dreamer gave a speech saying ROH is the evolution of ECW and made a joke about wrestling for another promotion. Fans booed the WWE hint and Dreamer laughed it off and said, "I know, but at least I get a check after wrestling the show." Samoa Joe, Paul London, Amazing Red, Christopher Daniels, and others were also on this show, which also featured CM Punk making his ROH debut. The CZW show was headlined by what was announced as Wifebeater's retirement match because he legitimately is going to go get shoulder surgery (he ends up being out of action for a year but of course, didn't really retire until 2006). Wifebeater won an I Quit No Ropes Barbed Wire weapons match after using a weed-eater on his opponent. And that's basically that.
WATCH: Wifebeater uses weed-eater on John Zandig
Dave previews the upcoming Ken Shamrock vs. Tito Ortiz fight at UFC 40, which is arguably the biggest fight in UFC history and the promotion is desperately hoping it does huge business. Dave expects it to do the biggest buyrate since UFC's heyday of the mid-90s. Shamrock is a good 11 years older and coming off a couple of losses and hasn't fought in UFC in 6 years, so on paper, this fight shouldn't be happening because Shamrock hasn't really earned it. But personalities and storylines are what make money and this is the fight everyone wants to see. Shamrock's legacy will be determined in this fight and it's the biggest of both men's careers. A lot of people think Shamrock is gonna get smoked. If Ortiz doesn't have a good night, he's going to get tagged as overrated. Shamrock is coming off the crazy fight with Don Frye in Japan and there's questions about how much that may have taken out of Shamrock. So there ya go. Chuck Liddell has signed a contract and is waiting in the wings to take on the winner.
This week's Raw was the lowest rated episode of the show since Dec. 15, 1997. And back then, they were facing head-to-head competition from Nitro. This time, nope. They got that rating all by themselves. And it's even worse because the rating dropped continuously throughout the show, meaning fans were losing interest in droves as the night went on. Needless to say, it's a disaster of a rating as WWE seems to have no idea how to stop the bleeding on Raw. Meanwhile, Smackdown went up from last week and continues to do fairly well, all things considered. I mean, everything in WWE is tanking right now, but Smackdown is holding its audience far better than Raw is. You take silver linings where you can find em, ya know?
Ultimo Dragon is easing back into wrestling following his recent comeback match. He's working some matches in Mexico soon and WWE reportedly offered him a $100,000 downside guarantee to start with them in 2003. Dragon has told people he's considering it (he does indeed end up in WWE next year).
Keiji Muto reached out to Sting, Bam Bam Bigelow, and Vampiro all to come in and be his tag team partner in the upcoming AJPW tag tournament. But Sting and Bigelow both wanted too much money so that's not happening, plus Sting was already booked for WWA. Vampiro isn't happening either, but it's reportedly due to other issues not money related. So Muto still has no partner for now (ends up being Road Warrior Animal).
Kenta Kobashi saw a doctor who told him his recovery from all his knee surgeries has been miraculous. At one point a few months ago, Kobashi was told he had the knees of an 80 year old, but this doctor told him his rehab has improved his knees so much that he could probably wrestle another 10 years or so. Kobashi has said he no longer has any pain in his knees when he walks or wrestles and says he's stopped needing painkillers as well (sure enough, Kobashi goes on to wrestle for another decade or so and never really has any more major knee issues. I mean, they obviously still bothered him and by the end, seeing him walk to the ring was hard to watch, but he never had any more major knee surgeries that caused him to miss months of action or anything. Make no mistake though, his knees were still very fucked).
TJ Wilson is being brought into NJPW as the Stampede Kid. Wilson is considered an honorary member of the Hart family and is considered the best wrestler coming out of that area these days. With Dynamite Kid and Pegasus Kid (Benoit) coming from Calgary and making big names in Japan, the idea is for Stampede Kid to follow in their footsteps and be the hot new junior heavyweight star from Calgary (doesn't quite work out that way, but he ends up working tours for Japan regularly until 2005 or so).
The Winnipeg Sun published an article calling into question some of the claims in Roddy Piper's autobiography. Piper claims he was essentially a latchkey kid who spent his teenage years sleeping in the subway homeless and whatnot. In reality, Piper's father was the police superintendent in Winnipeg and Piper lived at home like any other teenager, he was not the homeless street bum he claims to have been. Then stuff about his college career where he spent 3 years there, played football, and was pretty much just a normal kid until he left town in 1976 to really pursue wrestling.
Hulk Hogan had an audition for the upcoming Superman movie (Going by the timing, this would likely be for "Superman: Flyby" which was a JJ Abrams script that Brett Ratner was supposed to direct, but the film gets mired in developmental hell. A million things change over the years and this eventually evolves into 2006's Superman Returns but of course, Hogan is nowhere to be found). Don't expect him to say anything negative about Vince McMahon in any upcoming media appearances either. Dave mentions that both Sean Waltman and Mick Foley had to sign non-disparagement clauses when they got their early releases so neither of them can shit-talk WWE publicly. Dave assumes Hogan still has a similar clause until February. Hogan is filming an MCI commercial with Terry Bradshaw and has appearances on the Today Show and other talk shows scheduled. Slim Jim also contacted Hogan about replacing Randy Savage as their new pitchman, which probably isn't gonna help their relationship.
Randy Savage's ex-girlfriend Stephanie Bellars, who worked in WCW with him as Gorgeous George, is talking about writing a tell-all book about her relationship with Savage. The two broke up on really bad terms and Savage, who owns the name Gorgeous George, fought to legally prevent her from using that name when she returned to her stripping career.
Scott Steiner was booked to work the upcoming WWA tour in Europe but when he signed his WWE deal, they didn't want him doing it. So WWE started negotiating with WWA promoter Andrew McManus and he let Steiner out of his contract. McManus was apparently telling people he did WWE a favor with the expectation that Vince will owe him one now. Dave pities the fool who falls for that one.
Things are still basically the same in TNA. Now that the financial worries are out of the way, Jerry Jarrett remains in power over creative. Vince Russo is still technically employed but for the second week in a row, he didn't come to the tapings. Panda Energy exec Chris Sobol is making business decisions and right now, he appears to be sticking with Jarrett, though others say Russo is still pushing for power.
WWE's battle with the World Wildlife Foundation isn't over. Although they lost the court case and were forced to change their name, it now has to be determined how much WWE will be forced to pay in damages. The Wildlife Fund is asking for millions of dollars, which WWE has responded to calling offensive and unprecedented. But the Wildlife Fund claims extensive damage was caused to their brand name by WWE using the "WWF" initials illegally. So that still has to be settled and will almost certainly cost WWE a pretty penny.
Kenton Jenkins, the general manager of WWE's The World restaurant in Times Square, was arrested on grand larceny charges. WWE began investigating Jenkins after realizing some paperwork and money transfers weren't making sense. Once they realized what was up, they contacted the police and they opened their own investigation and arrested him (this was basically the last straw, WWE finally pulls the plug on this restaurant a few months after this).
Notes from Raw: the most notable thing was that there was zero mention or reference to the Eric Bischoff/Stephanie McMahon kiss angle, leading Dave to assume the angle has been dropped and won't be leading anywhere. Gee, great. Shawn Michaels cut a promo and came across as an out-of-touch relic from the mid-90s. He talked about how he debuted the ladder match, the Hell in a Cell match, and the Iron Man match and he won all of them. Dave disputes the iron man match claim (Bret Hart had 2 of them on WWE house shows prior to the famous Bret/Shawn one). As for the ladder match, the first one was Bret/Shawn in 1992 which Bret won. Even the first famous Shawn/Razor match....Shawn didn't win that either. But whatever. Not much else of note. It was an average show, nothing great, nothing offensive, and did a terrible rating.
Notes from Smackdown: it was highlighted by a 4-star Angle/Benoit vs. Mysterio/Edge match that took up 1/4 of the show and needless to say, Dave is here for that shit. Everything else on the show was pretty good too, except for Al Wilson proposing to Dawn Marie in one of the worst segments in the history of Smackdown. But it was made okay because even the announcers buried it and in the end, it was so bad that it was perversely funny. John Cena is doing a gimmick where he's basically playing a Vanilla Ice white rapper. Dave doesn't seem too into it yet.
Speaking of, Kurt Angle did an interview there and pretty much closed the book on going for the Olympics again. He said the last time they were in Colorado Springs, he went to the Olympic training center there and worked out with the current top amateur wrestlers who are already training for the Olympics. And after 6 years away from the sport, he realized he's not cut out to compete with that level of competition anymore. He said it was amazing how much better the wrestlers have progressed since 1996, with all these new techniques and styles he's never seen before, and said he felt like a fossil. He also said his back and knee are pretty messed up and he has until January to decide, but right now, it's a no. He was also asked about doing a moonsault off the cage recently on Smackdown and said it was crazy and reckless and he'd never do it again (lol). He also hinted strongly that he'll be facing Lesnar at Wrestlemania, which has been expected for months already.
Perry Saturn was released this week. The decision was made while he was out injured. He'll be paid through January when his contract expires since it was a guaranteed deal. This kinda sucks for him because when Saturn, Benoit, Malenko, and Guerrero all jumped ship from WCW, Vince wanted them to sign 5 year deals. But they all chose to sign 3 year deals instead, figuring the business would still be hot and in 3 years, they could negotiate even bigger deals. But WCW died, Japan collapsed, and now Saturn is probably really wishing they'd taken the 5 year offer. DDP was also officially released from his contract. He really is retired for medical reasons and since he's not going to wrestle anywhere else and wants to pursue acting, they mutually agreed to part ways.
Nothing really new on the Steve Austin front. He has been telling friends he doesn't know what his future holds. He says he thinks he's currently suspended by WWE, but he doesn't know because he hasn't called to ask and they haven't called him to tell him (Punk said the same thing in the Colt podcast if I recall. Basically that no one ever reached out to him to let him know his official status). Basically, there's just no communication between either side right now. Within WWE, creative is still moving forward without even discussing plans for him. But others quietly feel like it's only a matter of time. With business being down and Wrestlemania on the horizon, they figure Vince will make the call any day now (soon, yeah).
Boston Globe ran a story on WWE this week in which a reporter spent the day with Vince McMahon on a Monday before Raw. It detailed the production meetings as well as a post-show meeting in which Vince critiqued the show. This part was noted to be off the record and details weren't published, and you gotta figure it's because Vince probably shat all over people. Overall, Vince wasn't happy with the show and they detailed some of the reasons why.
Triple H was interviewed by a Cincinnati paper and was asked why he's the champion on Raw. His response was that he's the best part of the show and from a creative standpoint, he's the best they've got and a lot of the newer stars haven't reached his level yet. Needless to say, some guys were rubbed the wrong way. Dave actually doesn't really disagree though. Triple H is indeed probably the most well-rounded, established star on the roster. But he's also the guy who is dating the boss's daughter, acts as an agent backstage, sits in on creative meetings with management, etc. So comments like that tend to upset a lot of people in the locker room, whether true or not.
Various WWE notes: Nathan Jones hasn't signed a contract yet but he impressed during his tryouts so he'll probably get one soon. But they have to offer him more than the usual developmental deal because he can make more money working overseas. But he's not good enough for the main roster yet, so it's tricky. WWE wouldn't allow Spanky (Brian Kendrick) to fulfill his commitments to ROH so that's why he didn't work the recent ROH show despite being advertised. WWE has started selling "I love my Testicles" shirts for Test. Bradshaw did an interview saying he wants to retire in 5 more years and coach high school football. Tajiri is writing a book about his life in WWE, but it will be in Japanese and released there (this book was indeed released, by WWE in fact, but only in Japan and only in Japanese. I'd love to get an English translation of this).
In OVW, they've been doing a tournament where one OVW star will earn a spot in the 2003 Royal Rumble. It was won by Damaja and Dave thinks the crowd is going to be awfully confused and quiet when he comes out for his Rumble spot (never happens. Not sure what changes, but no OVW guys in the match. Sucks for Damaja).