Wrestling Observer Rewinder

January 06, 2003

Hi!
It's been a minute. Let's see if the wrestling time machine still works. As per tradition, I'll be trying to post these on a MON-WED-FRI schedule but the usual disclaimer stands: real life could always get in the way. Ok, hop in!
We're headed back to 2003, year of the Iraq War sequel, "freedom fries", Steve Bartman, the Columbia shuttle disaster, and that one dude that cut his arm off with a pocket knife that they made a James Franco movie about. We had SARS, the birth of MySpace, 50 Cent dropped Get Rich or Die Tryin', and Ohio State won the national championship in one of the greatest and most controversial games ever. The last movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was released and Saddam Hussein was found hiding in a hole in the ground.
On the wrestling front, we have the rise of John Cena, Randy Orton, and Batista in WWE. We see the further decline of the Japanese scene at the expense of MMA. The retirement of Steve Austin, the phasing out of The Rock, and more deaths than I care to count. The WWE debut of Goldberg, the Mr. America gimmick, the reign of terror of Triple H, the rivalry between Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle, the explosion of Ring of Honor onto the indie scene, the slow growth of NWA-TNA, unmasked Kane, Evolution, one-legged Zach Gowen, and so much more.
Soooo without further ado....
And after all this time away, we return with.......K-1 news! Look, let's get this out of the way right here on the front end: 2003 was a HUGE year in the rise of MMA and in Japan, K-1 and PRIDE were very tied in with pro wrestling, especially when it comes to NJPW or Bob Sapp. As a result, these Rewinds are going to have a good bit more MMA coverage than in the past, simply because you can't really discuss wrestling in 2003 without acknowledging the huge role MMA played in it. I try to only cover MMA stories that relate to wrestling in some way. Okay, where were we? Kazuyoshi Ishii, the most powerful man in the wrestling/MMA industry in Japan, and 2 other K-1 execs were indicted on tax evasion charges. Ishii resigned as president of K-1 the following day. Ishii not only runs K-1 but has helped co-promote shows with AJPW and PRIDE in recent months and his promotional tactics turned Bob Sapp into a national superstar. The charges claim Ishii ordered his accountants to doctor the books and that more than $500,000 in back taxes are owed. During their searches, investigators found $850,000 in cash hidden in Ishii's hotel room. Due to the scandal, the arena for K-1's upcoming show later this month pulled out of the deal and the show has been canceled.
When being arrested, Ishii essentially acknowledged that he was worried about the long-term sustainability of K-1. Dave talks about Ishii's history in the industry, his ties to Akira Maeda and how the Newborn-UWF in the late-80s was the hottest thing in wrestling until suddenly it wasn't. Ishii was acutely aware of how quickly things can turn on a dime and seems to be admitting that he was preparing for that eventuality. Business had already cooled down in the past 2 years and as a result, K-1 had begun working with Anontio Inoki, booking cross-promotional matches with PRIDE, and trying to squeeze every bit of juice they can out of the Bob Sapp money train before it goes dry. The Sapp/Hoost fight just last month was the company's most successful show ever, selling out the Tokyo Dome and doing a record TV ratings.
Just before the deadline, Dave has results from the most recent Antonio Inoki Bom Ba Ye New Year's Eve event. As usual, it's a mish-mash of kickboxing, MMA, pro wrestling, and every other fighting discipline Inoki can fit under one roof. Of note, NJPW rookie Shinsuke Nakamura lost by submission in the 2nd round to Daniel Gracie in an MMA fight. Nakamura has legit collegiate credentials and he looked competitive here, taking down Gracie multiple times, though he didn't accomplish much and Gracie is better on the ground anyway. But it's believed Nakamura looked good in defeat and is being groomed for a shooter-type role in NJPW. Elsewhere on the card, Mirko Cro Cop defeated another pro wrestler with a unanimous decision win over Kazuyuki Fujita. And of course, in the main event, Bob Sapp defeated Yoshihiro Takayama by ref stoppage after beating the brakes off him for 2 minutes first.
Inoki Bom Ba Ye 2002: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Daniel Gracie
Inoki Bom Ba Ye 2002: Bob Sapp vs. Yoshihiro Takayama
Midway through the card, there was a segment with Antonio Inoki and Great Sasuke that Dave can't make sense of. He hasn't seen the show, this is just a report he was given of the results. But I'll just quote this part here verbatim because it's worth it: "Then they brought out Sachio Nomura, who is the wife of a very famous former baseball manager who was fired after he got in trouble on tax evasion charges. Inoki slapped her in the face. Unlike here, where it would be considered criminal assault on a woman, there it’s considered a high honor."
Hey, finally some true rasslin' news! Dave has gone over the ratings for every segment of WWE Raw for the last quarter of 2002 in order to see who is and isn't a ratings draw. For starters, the term "drawing money" is kind of out-dated these days. Pretty much nothing shakes the status quo anymore except for the occasional dream match. Rock vs. Lesnar at Summerslam was the only match that seemed to significantly move the PPV needle in 2002, which did a much bigger buyrate than usual. House shows don't even have advertised lineups anymore and don't draw well. So that leaves TV ratings. Dave uses a bunch of criteria here to break this down, but TL;DR for 2002 - Kane was a pretty big draw in main events. Triple H, Jericho, and RVD did okay, although considering how heavily the show has been built around him, "just ok" is kind of a bad look for Triple H. Scott Steiner is a hit right now but he just showed up a month ago, so let's see if the new wears off (boy does it). And meanwhile, Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair are big flops right now. Dave points out that Flair was one of the top draws earlier in 2002 and argues that the utterly horrible booking of him through most of 2002 is to blame.
Good lord, again with the MMA! We have a long review of the documentary "The Smashing Machine” which follows the careers of Mark Kerr and Mark Coleman. This is interesting, (like, real interesting, I really want to check out this movie now...) but we're 6 paragraphs deep into my Rewind comeback and it's 90% MMA so far. Let's move along.
In a major story in Mexico, CMLL's contract with Televisa is expiring soon and renewal negotiations aren't going great. The two sides are stuck over which will pay the production costs for the shows. Meanwhile, AAA has had talks of moving to TV-Azteca (I don't think this ever actually turns into much of a story, or if it does, Dave doesn't talk about it).
Remember the situation where Negro Casas punched commentator Leobardo Magadan? Yeah, me either. It's been awhile since I wrote up the 2002 issues. Anyway, that happened. Well the story is Magadan, a heel commentator, went on TV and claimed that Casas had skipped out on his bill at a restaurant recently. Oooooh, scandalous! Casas was upset about this "apparently true" allegation being made about him on TV since he's a babyface. So Casas, who may or may not have been drunk, punched Magadan and broke his nose. After things settled down, Casas apologized and Magadan was willing to let it go. But Televisa was furious and wants Casas punished, so he's not out of the water yet. Also, not great timing for CMLL given the aforementioned renewal negotiations.
Dave just throws a random factoid in here: Blue Demon and El Santo legit hated each other. Ok, sure. I guess Dave talked to a close friend or family member of Blue Demon's recently and learned in detail about how their professional rivalry gradually became a real life personal dislike (he compares it to Jesse Ventura and Hulk Hogan). In particular, Demon always felt slighted that El Santo was always more popular despite being the less skilled wrestler of the two. Cool.
Dave reviews the latest Zero-1 show out of Japan. Nathan Jones was in a cage match. Get used to seeing that name this year and then never again. Jimmy Snuka Jr. teamed with Dos Caras Jr. in a match. Dave thinks Caras Jr. was really impressive and thinks, given his size and skill, he should probably be in WWE. (It would take many more years, but he would eventually get there as Alberto Del Rio. Unfortunately).
Lots of whispers in the Japanese press lately about financial and business issues with AJPW. Sorry y'all, the first issue of the year usually covers Christmas week, not jack shit happening in the American wrestling scene apparently. Anyway, after running several big budget, high-production super shows recently, AJPW is deep in the red. There's also dispute over the direction of the company. Longtime AJPW employees argue that the fanbase wants the Baba-style version of wrestling the company was built on. Keiji Muto, who was recently brought in as AJPW president, feels that style is dated and has trying to modernize the company, hence the big super shows with K-1 and PRIDE. But the fact that the most recent show, with Bob Sapp vs. Muto as the main event and Goldberg on the undercard didn't even come close to selling out Yokohama Arena is a bad sign in Muto's favor. Speaking of Goldberg, they bungled the dates and ended up having to charter a flight to get Goldberg there at the last minute, which was another huge expense AJPW couldn't really afford but had to do. Other shows have been drawing poorly as well. There's concern that Muto's style is going to kill the company and that he might not particularly care anyway, instead preferring to co-promote supercards with K-1 and PRIDE under his own WRESTLE-1 banner rather than run AJPW as a typical touring promotion. Speaking of the WRESTLE-1 triad of sports entertainment, they have a show scheduled for the Tokyo Dome this month and it looks to be a disaster, with not a single match announced yet. Ah, Muto. Like a Baby Inoki sometimes.
Bob Sapp vs. Great Muta - WRESTLE-1 (2002)
Japan's Nikkan Sports had its annual pro wrestling awards, which were dominated by....MMA and kickboxing. In particular, Bob Sapp who basically swept everything. This is the state of pro wrestling in Japan at the moment. Seriously, if you aren't familiar with it, stay tuned. You cannot fathom the level of megastar that Bob Sapp becomes.
In Philadelphia indie news, CZW, 3PW, and Ring of Honor all ran shows within blocks of each other on the same day. Only thing of note from the CZW show was that they buried M-Dogg 20 (Matt Cross) and Josh Prohibition for leaving the company to jump ship to XPW, essentially asking how they could work for XPW after what happened to Messiah. Meanwhile, 3PW had Dusty Rhodes no-show a booked match against Abdullah the Butcher, along with Ron Killings and 2 Cold Scorpio. X-Pac also worked the show and suffered a stinger and had to be stretchered out, but got on the mic and cut a promo apologizing for his performance (which is funny, since a lot of people thought his match was the best on the show prior to the injury). And finally, the ROH show packed 500 people into the building for a show with a 45-minute draw between Samoa Joe, Low-Ki, Bryan Danielson, and Steve Corino. Konnan also debuted in the match and it was said to be so awful that it'll likely be the first match to be edited off an ROH video release and he was basically booed out of the building (for those keeping track, this would be the very first ROH Final Battle event. And indeed, the Konnan match was not included on the video release, but here it is):
Konnan in gauntlet match - ROH Final Battle 2002
Goldberg has publicly said in the past that he would never work with TNA because of Vince Russo being there. But recently, he was asked about coming in to do a one-shot and cut a promo on Russo and he said he would be willing to if the money was right. It's Goldberg though, so TNA's not going to have the right money to get him, so it's a moot point.
Among the wrestlers getting tryouts for TNA in the coming weeks: former WCW valet Daffney, Colt Cabana, CM Punk, and others.
No word on when Steve Austin is making his official return to WWE but the plan is for he and Rock to both be back before Wrestlemania and both will have key roles on the show. Rock is expected back in February and has only committed through Mania, although based on movie committments, he may be able to stick around a little longer. As reported previously, WWE has made an offer to Goldberg for him to come in and work 2 matches with Rock: one at WM and one at Backlash (not quite what ends up happening).
Smackdown's contract with UPN ends later this year and there's rumors of what may be next for the show. It's the highest rated show on UPN, but that's actually not great news for the network. Smackdown (because it's pro wrestling) is among the bottom 5 lowest shows in all of network television for what it charges in ad-rates. So even though Smackdown does big ratings, the money UPN makes from ads isn't enough for the struggling network and if they can put something in its place that generates more ad-revenue, the strong ratings may not be enough to save Smackdown. If UPN had its way (and there have been discussions about this), they would cut Smackdown down from 2 hours to 90 minutes (or possibly even 1 hour) and fill the remaining time slot space with a sitcom that could benefit from Smackdown's strong lead-in but be able to charge more for ads. However, WWE's contract is for a 2-hour show and they refuse to make that concession, hence why it hasn't happened. It's unlikely, but if UPN were to cancel Smackdown, WWF wouldn't be able to take it to any other networks due to their Viacom non-compete. They could probably move it to MTV or TNN, but the ratings would drop.
Current goal is for Triple H to be back on the road this week and for him to start working house shows with Scott Steiner in hopes they can somehow pull off a good match at Royal Rumble. Triple H is still nowhere near 100% and Steiner is Steiner so....fingers crossed.
Smackdown notes from the 12/26 show: for those keeping count, there was a grand total of 22.5 minutes of wrestling during this two hour show. In fact, there was a full one hour period where the only wrestling was a 2-minute Rikishi vs. B2 match. That being said, Dave loved the Kurt Angle/Heyman stuff. Elsewhere, Dave LOATHES this Torrie Wilson/Dawn Marie/Al Wilson storyline. He likes the Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas team a lot, though he's not quite sure Haas is ready for the main roster yet. But Benjamin is a star. Guerreros vs. Kidman/Edge was great, with Eddie Guerrero in particular beginning to rival Kurt Angle as the best all-around wrester in North America right now (we're deep in the awesome Heyman-booking era of Smackdown and it ruled).
Story Time With David Meltzer bay-bay! He was at a party on Christmas night and someone offered him a chair. It was a 1998 Royal Rumble souveneir chair. Turns out these people at the party were wrestling fans so naturally Dave bonded with them, they showed him their 100 Greatest Raw Moments WWE magazine and Dave spends the rest of the paragraph disputing the greatness of various moments and fact-checking WWE's version of some of them. Just in case you were wondering how Dave spent Christmas 2002.
Notes from 12/30 Raw: it was a "Best of Raw" show but Dave bailed when they started showing clips of the Owen Hart tribute show. WWE claimed that fans online voted for it as their favorite Raw moment and Dave knows that it was memorable and the people who voted surely meant well, but he thinks it probably shouldn't have been included. You can't lump the biggest tragedy in wrestling history in as if it was just another moment alongside Mr. Socko's bedpan. Dave wasn't into watching the show anymore after seeing those clips again. And while people in the company might have felt good about that show, members of the Hart family made it VERY clear afterwards that they didn't appreciate it and felt that the entire tribute show (especially the way they saved Austin for the end) was just a cheap ratings grab anyway. Given the disrespect WWE has shown the Hart family in the years since and all the hard feelings, Dave isn't sure why WWE felt the need to drag that footage out again, when they know it's against the family's wishes.
Hulk Hogan appeared in a two-part episode of TSN's Off The Record and it was basically awful. He confirmed that he had been asked to come back and lose to Lesnar at Survivor Series and accused Vince of changing plans on him so he pulled out. Also complained that if he was going to put over Lesnar, he shouldn't have lost so many other prior matches. Credited Rock's film success to not having any action movie competition (Dave mentions Vin Diesel) whereas he was competing with Stallone and Schwarzenegger during his peak days. Accuses Mick Foley of "prostituting his body" to be successful while Hogan was in the gym while Foley was eating cheeseburgers. Ok then. Admitted Ric Flair was a better wrestler but calls himself the Babe Ruth of wrestling.
Hulk Hogan on TSN's Off The Record - 2002
Random news & notes: Ron Simmons is all but retired and rumor is he will likely be made a road agent backstage soon (nah, Ron's got another year or so of being a full-time guy). Meanwhile, it's thought that Billy Gunn may not be able to return from his latest injury due to nerve damage and they may turn him into a road agent as well (as I type this in June of 2022, 58-year-old Billy Gunn just had the entire United Center going insane and was running through the LA Dojo kids like Brock Lesnar at Forbidden Door. Forget everything bad you've ever heard about steroids. He found the good ones).
Nothing new on WWE/Ken Shamrock, for anyone wondering. Since leaving WWE, he has made huge guaranteed money doing MMA. WWE wouldn't guarantee him nearly as much, plus he would have to work 150-200 dates a year for it. He's also pushing 40, which makes it hard to market him as the World's Most Dangerous Man anymore. It just doesn't make sense for either side really.
Nathan Jones is going to start full-time with WWE this month. He recently moved from Australia to Orlando (don't fall into that trap!) and is expected to get a huge push out the gate because he's Vince's new pet project. They shot a ton of footage of him this week in Australian landmarks and at a prison.
Nathan Jones WWE vignettes
Ah, early internet problems: Dave missed many of the recent reports emailed to him about Smackdown because they talked about the segment where Al Wilson talked about using Viagra. Apparently the word "Viagra" tripped up the spam filters and Dave never got your emails. So if you emailed Dave a Smackdown report in late 2002, please email him again.
In Jerry Lawler's recent book, he writes about his wife Stacy "The Kat" Carter leaving him for someone else and claims he had no idea who the other guy was. Dave is calling bullshit on that because everyone else knew who it was. The affair was with WWE developmental wrestler Mike Howell/Jack Dupp and it was somewhat common knowledge. There was even a point where Jim Ross sat down the Dupps and told them they were splitting up the team and made it very clear that Howell's affair with Carter was creating problems. Sounds kinda like everyone except Jerry knew. Or that he didn't want to believe.