Wrestling Observer Rewinder

December 23, 2002

The Rock did an interview with a Dallas radio station last week and seemed to accidentally reveal that WWE is planning a Rock vs. Goldberg match for Wrestlemania. As mentioned last week, WWE has gotten aggressive in its pursuit of Goldberg and negotiations are closer than ever between the two sides. That being said, Dave thinks it's a horrible idea. Wrestlemania is already guaranteed to probably do a good 750,000 buys or more just because it's Wrestlemania. Adding Goldberg/Rock to the card might boost the buys up a little but not probably significantly. People are going to buy Wrestlemania whether that match is on there or not. But putting that match on one of the secondary PPVs that only draw the hardcore fans would likely be enough to pull in a lot of those fringe fans too and could probably double the usual buyrate of, say, a Backlash or something. The revenue from that alone would probably pay for Goldberg's entire contract in one night. Dave also notes that Goldberg still has 3 matches left on his Japan deal with PRIDE and AJPW. If it happens, Goldberg will likely only have a short-term contract with WWE. Dave seems to think Goldberg is only going to be working 2-3 matches matches (ends up being quite a bit more than that, a full 1 year contract). Dave thinks the best idea long-term is for Rock to face Austin at Wrestlemania, with Rock winning. And then do the Rock/Goldberg match the following month and get 2 huge buyrates in a row. Then that should lead to Goldberg putting over either Austin or Lesnar at, say, Summerslam. Dave says it needs to be Lesnar for the long-term best interest of the company, but Goldberg/Austin is a huge dream match in its own right, so either one would work (this is pretty much how it played out. Goldberg debuts the night after Wrestlemania, beats Rock on PPV the next month, and ended his run by feuding with Lesnar. And of course, he was scheduled to lose that, but then Brock decided to quit too and fucked everything up and Vince got pissed and jobbed out Brock instead. Also, Triple H decided he had to beat Goldberg a couple of times along the way. It's a shame I won't be doing 2003 anytime soon. Re-living the slow motion Goldberg car crash is probably a fun read).
Bob Sapp broke the longest-standing taboo in wrestling when he was given the MVP award for Japanese wrestling at the annual banquet held by the Japanese media. Not only is Bob Sapp the first rookie to win the award, he's also the first foreign wrestler to ever win it in the 29-year history. This is also the second year in a row that someone who's career is primarily MMA won the award, showing how much shoot-style has penetrated what "pro wrestling" is in Japan. There has always been an unspoken rule/taboo that a foreign wrestler can't win the MVP award. Even in years when Stan Hansen, Bruiser Brody, and Vader were dominating the business, the MVP awards were always given to a Japanese wrestler instead (this is still true today. A couple years ago, there was a bit of a controversy when Kenny Omega was passed over for it after becoming a mega star there). But this year, the choice was undeniable. Sapp is the biggest drawing star in the global wrestling/MMA business and it's not even really close. Between MMA and pro wrestling, he's only had 9 matches. And in that brief time, he's become one of the biggest overall sports celebrities in the Japan. Dave runs off the rest of the awards (Takayama vs. Nagata IWGP 5/2/02 match at the Tokyo Dome for match of the year, among others).
Dave has finally read Hulk Hogan's autobiography and awww lord, here we go. Strap the fuck in folks. Dave says it essentially summarizes the wrestling world of the last 20 years as Hulk Hogan would like people to think it was, with an extra helping of Vince McMahon's perception also since WWE was very involved in what was written and how it was edited. Needless to say, this book arguably belongs in the fiction section of your local bookstore. So full of bullshit that Dave felt insulted as a reader. Of course there's the usual attendance lies (claiming he drew 20,000 people for a match with Andre in 1979, to a building that only held 6,000 people). The whole story behind the Andre/Hogan WM3 match is exaggerated or in some parts, outright fabricated. Same with the Rock/Hogan match at WM18 (claims a broken rib going into the match, which some people believe and some don't, and also claims he went into the match with a 103-degree fever, which no one believes). Just shit like that. To his credit, he does come clean about the Vince Russo/Bash at the Beach 2000 story, admitting that the original deal with him laying down for Jarrett and his promo on Russo, was indeed all scripted. Of course, then Russo cut the promo afterwards which Hogan didn't agree to and that led to everything that happened after. Naturally, he takes no blame for the collapse of WCW and talks about how he put Billy Kidman over 3 times ("letting a guy pin you" and "putting him over" are two very different things and Hogan definitely didn't do the latter in that angle). Dave just picks apart lie after lie in this book. One example being how Hogan talks about how he quit wrestling and was working the loading docks in Florida for 6 months before he got a call to go meet Vince Sr. and the rest is history. Of course, one quick glance at the records will show you that there was almost no gap whatsoever between Hogan working as Sterling Golden in Atlanta and becoming Hulk Hogan in WWF in 1979. Not to say he wasn't working loading docks as a second job, that may be true, but the whole "he had quit the business and was ready to put it behind him when Vince called" story doesn't match up to the facts at all. Claimed he was in Memphis for the famous Lawler/Andy Kaufman match (nope, he was working an AWA show in Wisconsin that night). Just on and on and on.
Despite first becoming a big star there, Hogan doesn't talk much about his time in Japan. It's no secret that Hogan patterned himself after Superstar Billy Graham but he doesn't mention that at all. Probably understandable that he wasn't given any credit considering the bad blood between them over the years, but the reality is, Hulk Hogan doesn't exist without Billy Graham. Claimed during his first run starting in 1979 that he was the top heel in WWF. Not even close to the top heel, never even headlined MSG as a heel during that time, despite WWF running there constantly. Claimed he was told to shoot on Riki Choshu during a match in Japan so he did and knocked him out and pinned him in 3 minutes in a match booked to be a 20 minute draw. Probably goes without saying that this never happened. Hogan and Choshu had tons of matches in Japan during that period and none of them involved Hogan going into business for himself and shooting on Choshu and double-crossing him on the finish. Sounds like Hogan heard the Akira Maeda/Choshu story and decided to drop himself in there. Claimed Andre was 7'4 and 700 pounds at the time of their WM3 match. Even in wrestling, Andre was only ever billed as 515 and that was a fake number too, so 700 pounds is obviously stupid and wrong. He also wasn't 7'4 and in fact, was around 6'10 and gradually getting smaller as he aged and began hunching over due to his condition. Claimed the Shea Stadium 55,000-seat sellout in 1980 was due to him and Andre. Ignoring that the main event was the famous Sammartino/Zbyszko match, which Hogan flat out claimed no one cared about and insists he and Andre drew the crowd. Absurd. Also, even if it was true....not a sellout. Only drew 35,000 paid. And the Hogan/Andre match was 4th from the top. And Sammartino/Zbyszko outdrew them in every other city when they were on different cards in separate cities. You get the drift.
I just scrolled down to look and, you guys....this is SO long. We're not even 1/4 of the way through Dave's review of this book yet. Almost every paragraph is exposing one bullshit story after the next. How he got the part in Rocky III. Claimed he basically invented the idea of selling merch at wrestling shows and was the first to use entrance music. Claimed he was the one who got Cyndi Lauper involved in wrestling. Claimed (as he does to this day, ridiculously) that he didn't know how the match with Andre was gonna go at Wrestlemania because he didn't know if Andre would do the job for him. Talked about how no one had ever slammed Andre before. Claimed they were concerned about canceling WM3 because they didn't know if they could sell it out. Steroid stuff. The Bret Hart/WM9 stuff. Working the Summerslam 1992 show at Wembley. WCW ratings tales. How Dennis Rodman got into WCW. Dropping the title to Goldberg. Owen Hart's funeral. His alleged role in WCW being sold to WWE. On and on. Dave spends paragraphs delightfully pointing out how nearly every word of it is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, lies, lies, wrong, lies, exaggerated, wrong, lies, lies, lies, wrong, and explaining, [i]with evidence and exact dates and stats[/i], how so. (I've never read this book but man, it sounds like a whopper of a good time).
WWE's final PPV of 2002, Armageddon, is in the books. The show was headlined by Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels in a 3 Stages of Hell match. The idea was to re-create the Triple H/Steve Austin 3 Stages of Hell match from last year, which was arguably the greatest performance of Triple H's career. Well, this time, they didn't come close. Triple H went into the match with a messed up thigh and right leg. It was a gutsy performance from a guy who clearly had no business in the ring, but the match suffered greatly as a result. The final match of the 3, a ladder match, will go down in history as the worst ladder match in WWE history thus far. The full match went over 40 minutes and was a plodding indie garbage match that felt like it was never going to end. And the final result was, of course, a very injured Triple H winning the world title when he probably needs to be taking a few months off, from a guy who never should have had it hotshotted onto him for one month in the first place.
Other notes from the PPV: there was Torrie Wilson/Dawn Marie lesbian angle. Dave actually notes that Stephanie McMahon allegedly produced this. Anyway, this was the scene where Torrie went to Dawn Marie's hotel room. They aired a small portion of it on Smackdown but UPN wouldn't allow them to air the full thing, forcing WWE to move it to this PPV. What resulted was a poorly acted sleazy angle that was really nothing more than Torrie and Dawn Marie getting down to their underwear and making out, before of course, they "stopped" the footage to get heel heat for Al Wilson. Dave thinks it was one of the worst segments in history, B-level soap opera stuff. Jeff Hardy beat D-Lo Brown on the pre-show and the match was a mess, with Jeff missing everything. Once again, Dave notes how horrible Jeff is these days. All throughout 2002, almost every week, Dave has been practically screaming "PLEASE GET THIS POOR MAN OFF THE ROAD AND SAVE HIS LIFE!!" but no one is listening. Benoit vs. Eddie Guerrero was good, of course, but not great. Batista vs. Kane was the deadest WWE crowd Dave has seen in awhile. Bad match but the idea was to give Batista a big win over a name star because they're building him up for the group with Triple H and Flair. John Cena did a rap and Dave thinks Cena is "doing a great job with a bad gimmick." Trish came into the women's match with a fractured nose from a house show the night before. Kurt Angle won the Smackdown title from Big Show, in a bad match because Show was gassed early. Angle won due to Lesnar interference and now that Angle is champion, the groundwork is set for he and Lesnar at Wrestlemania. And the full Triple H/Shawn Michaels 40-minute jerk fest gets a total 2 stars, though Dave again gives Triple H credit for working the match as hurt as he was because he looked like a man being tortured the entire time (yeah, say what you will about Triple H but that dude has had some horrific injuries in his career and he always man's up and finishes the match, even when he's in clear agony. Anyway, here's the Torrie/Dawn Marie thing we've been building up to for weeks).
WATCH: Dawn Marie and Torrie Wilson hotel lesbian scene
Dave reviews the latest Zero-1 PPV in Japan, featuring Naoya Ogawa doing a rare job to Matt Ghaffari in a tag match, although it was far from a clean pin. Elsewhere on the show, Nathan Jones lost in the opening match and then cut a promo saying it was his final match with NOAH and he's headed to WWE. Dos Caras Jr. (Alberto Del Rio) and Jimmy Snuka Jr. (Deuce) teamed up for a match. NWA champion Jeff Jarrett teamed with Steve Corino against Samoa Joe and some other dude. Keiji Muto did commentary and AJPW star Satoshi Kojima worked the show. Just a mish-mash of random companies and wrestlers who would go on to do interesting things in later years, all here together on a random Zero-1 show.
This past month was the worst month for WWE house show attendance since December of 1995. It's at the same attendance level WCW was at in Feb. of 2000. Even worse, the decline doesn't appear to be bottoming out, it appears to be speeding up, which points to far worse numbers to come (indeed). Last month was also the lowest rated month for Raw ratings since early 1998. Smackdown is also down significantly from last year, although it's actually gone up some from its lowest point a few months back.
As has been expected, WWC finally filed a lawsuit in Puerto Rico against former star Ray Gonzales for breach of contract after he jumped to IWA a few months ago. The lawsuit is not only against Gonzales, but also against IWA and their promoter Victor Quinones, as well as the TV network (Telemundo) that broadcasts IWA. The gist of it is Gonzales had a long-term contract with WWC that they say he breached by leaving and going to IWA. Gonzales, one of the biggest stars in the history of Puerto Rico, argues that his contract called for him to be paid every 2 weeks and when WWC fell behind in paying him, they breached the deal, so he quit. Soon after, he was in IWA, working under a mask.
Dave has finally seen video of AJPW's latest big Budokan Hall show from a couple weeks ago. Many have been calling it the worst AJPW Budokan show in history. Dave dunno about all that, but he says it was better than WWE's Armageddon PPV so whatever. As mentioned at the time, Taiyo Kea went into the finals of the tag team tournament with a badly injured knee and did very little. He had surgery this week and is expected to be out 8 months. Otherwise, most of the show was just kinda decent, forgettable matches. Dave notes that Muto will be defending the Triple Crown title against Mike Awesome (going by his old gimmick The Gladiator) next month. The storyline they're telling there is Awesome pinned Muto in WCW a couple years ago, so there you go.
Perry Saturn is coming to Japan this weekend and will be part of a press conference where Muto will announce him as a new full-time member of the AJPW roster (I'm curious to find out what went wrong here because this is not what happens. Saturn never works a single match in AJPW and spends much of 2003 working tours for NJPW instead).
Steve Williams is scheduled to work AJPW's next tour in January but beyond that, he's no longer under contract and AJPW doesn't appear to be interested in using him going forward. Muto is attempting to change how they do business with foreign talent and doesn't plan to keep any full-time foreigners (indeed, this is the last tour Williams works for AJPW. He comes back for a one-off show in 2004 but this is pretty much the end of his career on a major scale. He spends the next 6 years working small time indie shows in between battling throat cancer).
Lots of political maneuvering around the upcoming NJPW Jan. 4 Tokyo Dome show. Masahiro Chono went on a radio show and claimed Keiji Muto will be working on the show. 3 days later, he did another interview and did a complete 180, saying NJPW will not be working with AJPW. This has also thrown NOAH's involvement into uncertainty. Kenta Kobashi was originally planned to wrestle on that show, which would be his first time in a NJPW ring. But NOAH head Mitsuharu Misawa got wind that NJPW might have AJPW wrestlers on the show, so he pulled Kobashi, refusing to let a NOAH wrestler work on the same show as an AJPW wrestler. As of press time, the card for the Jan. 4th show is completely in disarray with very little announced. Whatever they were planning to announce this week seems to have fallen through, because the press conference they had scheduled (which was supposed to feature Steven Seagal for some reason) was canceled a few days ago. (Since we won't get there, here's what happened: Muto didn't work the show. But AJPW star Satoshi Kojima did, and as a result, Misawa kept his word. No NOAH stars worked the show. Kobashi ends up making his NJPW debut in May 2003 instead).
Hiroshi Tanahashi's in-ring return from being stabbed by his girlfriend looks like it'll be in May or June (nah, he comes back sooner). He spent 15 days in the hospital after the incident, but has been told he can now start light weight training.
Bob Sapp vs. Yoshihiro Takayama has been added to Antonio Inoki's annual New Year's Eve show. Along with Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Cro Cop, that's a double main event super show that is guaranteed to be a sellout and get a lot of media attention. But Dave thinks the match is borderline criminal. Takayama shouldn't be allowed to fight after some of the recent beatings he's taken, let alone against somebody like Sapp. Secondly, putting Sapp in a legit shoot only 3 weeks after he injured his hand in the Ernesto Hoost fight is risking a lot. Then again, there's a lot of question about whether the hand injury was legit or just a way to save face because he was practically dead after the Hoost fight and couldn't have continued in the tournament. Fighting only 3 weeks later only strengthens the rumors that his hand isn't really hurt. Or more likely, he is hurt and they're still pushing him out there anyway. Dave compares Sapp to a race horse and says promoters are going to ride him until he can't go anymore and then take him out behind the barn and put a bullet in his head and implies that he's being overworked and used by these promoters who are trying to milk him for as much money as they can with no concern for his long-term health or career (yeah I don't know the whole story or anything but I think there was some Yakuza strings being pulled behind the scenes also).
Jeff Jarrett did an interview addressing some of the backstage happenings in TNA recently. He called Sean Waltman a coward for not confronting Vince Russo and settling their issues and using Russo as an excuse for quitting the company. He said they've still been talking and said he thinks Waltman will be back eventually but confirmed that Waltman refused to come back and work the angle involving Russo. As for the Roddy Piper promo a few weeks back, Jarrett bent over backwards to avoid criticizing him, but did address Piper's comments about Russo being responsible for Owen Hart's death, defending Russo and saying nobody was responsible for it, it was just a tragic accident. For his part, Piper has said he isn't planning on returning to TNA, which makes the whole thing a few weeks ago even more pointless and dumb.
While they were overseas together working the WWA tour, Jarrett talked with Sting about joining TNA. Sting seemed receptive. Jarrett also talked to Goldberg about coming in to do a 1-shot match and an angle with him and Russo. Goldberg was said to be interested if the price is right. For what it's worth, just because they have Panda Energy money behind them doesn't mean they can afford either guy. Panda is actually trying to cut costs in TNA right now, so bringing either man in isn't as simple as it sounds (they do end up getting Sting in 2003. Goldberg, of course, never happens).
When it comes to Russo's involvement in TNA, he's only doing the angle with Jarrett. He stays in the car in the parking lot until it's time for his run-ins, as an attempt to swerve everyone, even the rest of the locker room, into thinking he's not there. Russo doesn't interact with anyone else backstage or participate in any talent or creative meetings, and yet he's clearly pulling the strings of whatever Jarrett is involved with at any given time. The whole secretive nature of his involvement with the company has the rest of the locker room as annoyed as you would expect and has invited constant comparisons to WCW's downfall.
Police raided the offices of K-1 in Japan this week, as well as the personal offices of promoter Kazuyoshi Ishii. They seized 50 boxes of records and files from the K-1 office. As noted previously, Ishii is under investigation for tax fraud. There's obvious concern about the future of K-1 here. Right now, it's at it's all time high popularity-wise, due to Bob Sapp, but there's a lot of concern that sponsors might start dropping off the shows due to the scandal, which would be a huge financial hit. There's also concern about the TV networks running from K-1 in the wake of the controversy (especially if Ishii refuses to resign his position as head of the company, which so far he has refused to consider). There's already reports that next month's K-1 show could be canceled (K-1 still lives to this day).
Notes from Raw: it was the first good Raw in a long time, mostly helped by a really hot crowd. They had Jericho come out and confront Shawn Michaels, with Jericho cutting one of his best promos in a long time. Clearly seems to be setting up an angle with those 2 (yup, all leading up to a classic Wrestlemania match). Jeff Hardy beat D-Lo Brown after the referee missed seeing Brown's foot on the ropes. This was followed by a backstage segment with Brown accusing the referee of doing it on purpose because he's black and the ref was white. Guess the race card angle was such a huge success in TNA that WWE felt the need to copy it. The main event segment with Triple H vs. Scott Steiner was surprisingly pretty much perfect. They never touched, they made you want to see the match, they elevated Steiner as a top star....all in all, this was a great segment (and then, as Bruce Prichard says, that damn bell had to ring). That being said, Dave thinks it's a good thing they're pushing Steiner to the top right away. Make as much money off him as quickly as they can because his body ain't gonna hold up long (indeed, it did not).
Vince McMahon has privately told some of the wrestlers that Steve Austin is indeed returning soon. But for obvious reasons, they're trying to keep it on the low for now. But you can't sneak the biggest star in history back into the company without Dave catching wind, c'mon now.
Eddie Fatu (Jamal of 3 Minute Warning, better known later as Umaga) was suspended a couple weeks ago. All Dave knows is that it had something to do with him getting into an altercation with police back on Dec. 7th in Pensacola (more on this next week).
Paul Heyman was interviewed on TSN's "Off The Record" and this should be good. Heyman talked about Austin's time away from wrestling and said it's a good thing for the fans to miss him for awhile so he's fresher when/if he returns. Heyman envisioned a scenario where Rock goes heel and turns on the fans when he returns, and Dave says that is indeed what is likely going to happen (yup, and it was faaaantastic). He said he doesn't know how much influence Triple H or Stephanie has on the product but says at the end of the day, the credit and/or blame for everything you see on WWE TV goes to Vince McMahon. Heyman admitted he hated Bischoff in the past but said ECW grudges died when ECW died and it's not an issue now that they both work for WWE. He said Booker T and RVD were the most under-pushed guys in the company (this is a great interview that I've never seen before, but it's always fascinating to hear Heyman talk about the business).
WATCH: Paul Heyman on TSN's Off The Record
Heyman also talked about how Chris Jericho came to ECW back in the day and says it was because he saw a tape of Jericho vs. Ultimo Dragon and was so impressed, he signed Jericho immediately. Dave has a fun story here! He says himself and Chris Benoit were responsible for getting Jericho into not only ECW, but WCW as well. Dave says he was the one who sent Heyman the tape of the Jericho/Ultimo Dragon match. But he did so because Heyman was interested in signing Dragon and the match with Jericho was the best match he had of Dragon's laying around the house (and it was also Jericho's best match ever at that point of his career). So he sent the tape to Heyman and the rest is history. As for WCW, similar story. Dave sent Bischoff a tape of the Super J Cup, which featured the a Jericho/Benoit match among other things. Dave didn't send the tape to recommend anyone in particular, he sent it as an example to Bischoff to show him what the company was missing by not pushing junior heavyweights. Bischoff watched it, was impressed by Jericho, so he went to Benoit to ask about him and Benoit vouched for him. Later on, in 1996, Bischoff finally met Jericho at the Inoki Los Angeles Peace Festival event and they struck a deal. So there ya go.
A lot of the talk backstage in WWE is similar to what fans on the internet are also saying. There's a feeling inside the company that Triple H's influence on Raw is killing the show. But Pat Patterson has been the only one to vocally speak up about it because everyone else recognizes that this is probably gonna be Vince's son-in-law one day and nobody wants to speak out against him. But more and more, there are whispers going around that somebody has to say something because they feel Triple H is slowly strangling the life out of that show.