January 20, 2003
- We open with the death of PRIDE president Naoto Morishita, who hanged himself (::ahem::) after an argument with his mistress. This, just two weeks after K-1's president was forced to resign amid tax evasion charges. These 2 things, happening within a month as both PRIDE and K-1 were doing huge business, has shaken the MMA/wrestling industry to its core in Japan. Word is that Morishita (who was married with a 2-year-old daughter) was in a hotel in Tokyo and had an argument, just hours after he had appeared at a company press conference to announce a whole slate of big plans for PRIDE in 2003. Morishita went into the bathroom and never came out. When the woman went to check on him, she found him hanging from the belt of his bathrobe. Police have confirmed that they believe it was a suicide, but given that it's Japan and given their well-known influence within the industry, gossip about Yakuza involvement is running wild and many don't believe the official story. Even the media is hinting around that there's more to it. Furthermore, friends of Morishita claim he was planning to break up with the mistress, and aren't buying that he killed himself over an argument with her (yeah, to this day, his death is considered suspect). PRIDE executives are trying to quell rumors that Morishita's suicide was due to financial problems with the company. They stated that the company was profitable last year. While true, they have definitely been cutting back, restructuring salaries and spending less on other expenses in recent months. Dave runs through the history of the rapid rise of PRIDE to becoming the hottest thing in Japan. Interestingly enough, with Morishita gone, there's talk that Antonio Inoki could end up gaining power in the company.
- WATCH: Chris Benoit & Kurt Angle vs. Edge & Rey Mysterio - No Mercy 2002
- NJPW's Jan. 4th TV show actually did a strong TV rating despite being a fairly resounding flop otherwise. The broadcast only aired the top 2 matches on the card. The rest was a countwon of NJPW's 30 greatest matches, as voted on by fans. Dave lists them all and gives his thoughts on several (in 1 giant, unbroken paragraph). Inoki vs. Muhammad Ali was #1, which is more for historical purposes because it was flaming hot garbage as an actual match.
- Raw X is in the books. The 10th anniversary of the show was....not great. Trish Stratus was awarded the Diva of the Decade, which is nice and all, but really is because she's the only one on good terms with the company. Trish has never been nearly as big a star as either Chyna or Sable were. Both Mick Foley and the Rock won awards and neither appeared live, which made the show feel unimportant after weeks of promising huge surprises. Rock's babyface acceptance speech via video got heavily booed. He's coming back soon and basically has to be a heel at this rate, the way fans are turning on him. Steve Austin won Superstar of the Decade and, of course, wasn't there either. On the plus side, many of the acceptance speeches were good and seemed genuine, and a lot of the video packages and tribute videos were tremendous. WWE is always at its best when they're romanticizing their history.
- There was also the vote for Best Match in Raw History, which was won by the 7-man TLC match on the Oct. 7, 2002 episode of Raw in what can only be a case of serious recency bias. Dave lists a handful of better, more memorable matches off the top of his head. He also argues against the Jeff Hardy/Undertaker ladder match being in the top 5, arguing that it wasn't even the best ladder match on Raw in 2002 (the RVD/Guerrero one being the better match, Dave thinks).
- WWC in Puerto Rico is struggling again and is behind on paying talent. On the usual payday after the recent Sunday show, Carlos Colon left the building without telling anyone anything (I don't know how this company survives because this is pretty much a constant with them going forward, but they're somehow still going to this day).
- Bob Sapp's first music single will be released in March in Japan. Oh, you bet your sweet ass I found this. And yes, it's everything you hope it will be and then some.
- WATCH: Bob Sapp - "Sapp Time"
- Bobby Heenan underwent surgery on his jaw and throat to remove scar tissue from his radiation treatments. He hasn't been able to eat solid foods lately and is down to 170 pounds after his recent battle with cancer. Because of it, he turned down a recent appearance with TNA and also did not appear at the Raw 10th anniversary show despite being advertised.
- ROH ran its first show in Pittsburg in front of only 300 fans, the smallest crowd they've ever drawn. But the crowd was said to be super hot and into everything and it was still a great show.
- "Dusty Rhodes' youngest son, Cody Runnels, is 19-0 this season in high school wrestling," Dave tells us. Unfortunately, no matter how good his win/loss record is, he can't challenge for the championship because he promised the other students he wouldn't, so he'll likely transfer to a new high school next semester and finish his story there instead.
- This week's TNA show was built around the feud of.....Vince Russo vs. Mike Tenay! Both guys got over great in their roles with the small live crowd but there's nowhere this can go long-term and making it the focus of the show ain't it, chief. Neither is bringing a rotating cast of 80s-stars-of-the-week. Speaking of, this week, Dusty Rhodes and the Road Warriors appeared, unannounced. The only thing dumber than relying on these names to draw fans is not advertising them in the first place, so they don't even get the few people that might care. Dave thinks the company is counting too much on fans buying the $10 weekly PPV because they "don't want to miss whatever the surprise is this week" rather than, ya know, building a consistent product. Ah yes, that's called The Vince Russo Special. They had a debate segment that was mostly unscripted, and Russo said all sorts of things like "this place will be out of business in 6 months" and there were references to TNA being too cheap to fly talent in. Dave doesn't understand how putting any of this on TV benefits the company. James Storm and Chris Harris won the NWA tag titles in the only good match on the show (interesting to see stuff like this in the wake of Russo's recent comments on the Who Killed WCW? show where he says he felt like he was a better performer than 80% of the roster and that's why he booked himself to be the focus of everything. Seems to be continuing in TNA.)
- Elsewhere on the TNA show, Curt Hennig vs. David Flair in an "axe-handle on a pole match" (again, a Russo special) was an early Worst Match of the Year contender. Flair has regressed a ton since his WCW and OVW days, while Hennig set a new record for lack of effort in this match, and was again babbling in his promo about how he beat up Brock Lesnar on the plane ride from hell, as if TNA fans give a shit. Hennig also did a radio interview this week bashing TNA and implying he wouldn't go back. He also implied that he'll be working Wrestlemania. Dave pretty much rolls his eyes at all this and says Hennig is one of those old timers who can never stop working people (sadly, the match with David Flair turns out to be Hennig's last match).
- WATCH: Curt Hennig vs. David Flair - Axe-Handle on a Pole match - TNA 2003
- Goldberg (along with his agent) and Vince McMahon all had a meeting in Los Angeles last week, the first time the two have actually met in person. No deal was agreed to, but they talked to him about working with Rock, Austin, Angle, and Undertaker. The idea is to keep him away from Triple H since they have some bad blood. Initial talks had only been for Goldberg to work a couple of matches with Rock, but now they're talking about a longer deal. Given how the Japan market seems to be collapsing and all the aforementioned troubles with AJPW, a stable big-money deal in the U.S. has to be appealing more to Goldberg than before, although he doesn't particularly need the money or anything. WWE has pushed for 10 dates per month, while Goldberg is pushing for a shorter deal. The Rock is said to be pushing hard for it because he feels like himself vs. Goldberg is the only big money match for him at Wrestlemania right now, so he wants it to happen.
- Speaking of Wrestlemania, they already sold the 40,000 pre-sale tickets the very day they went up and they held back an additional 10,000 that will be released in the coming weeks. It's already guaranteed to be the 2nd largest gate record in U.S. history (behind Wrestlemania 17, which this has no chance of beating).
- Notes from 1/9 Smackdown: Dave really, and I mean, REALLY hates this Torrie Wilson/Dawn Marie stuff. During the tapings for this show, Lesnar did an F-5 on Albert and it went wrong, with Albert getting dropped on his head. That was edited out of the show (but it's horrifying if you've never seen it. How he wasn't crippled off that is beyond me). John Cena is getting over with this rapping gimmick. Nidia and Jamie Noble are getting jobbed out right now because Stephanie McMahon reportedly doesn't like Nidia (anyone got the tea on that? first I've heard) so there ya go.
- WATCH: Brock Lesnar botched F-5 to Albert
- Notes from 1/13 Raw: The premise was Bischoff wanted everything to run smoothly because Vince was returning, so of course, it all went off the rails. Weak show, dead crowd. Jeff Hardy vs. Raven was notable because Jeff looks worse and worse by the day. Get that man some help (I'm sure he's fine, nothing to worry about). Raven, meanwhile, wrestling his first match on Raw in 7 months with a new gimmick based on the movie Seven, lost clean in 4 minutes to a guy who clearly shouldn't even be in a ring.
- Bryan Danielson (American Dragon) and ROH champion Xavier worked matches on the Velocity tapings and did jobs. Dave understands that these guys can't turn down WWE opportunities but being reduced to a Velocity jobber when you're becoming a star on the indies ain't great either.
- After a few failed catchphrases ("The new TNN" and "We've got pop!"), it appears the TNN network is planning to rebrand itself as a channel aimed for men. A new general manager was hired and a bunch of changes are being made. The idea is to capitalize on the audience Raw delivers, but that's never worked in the past. USA Network president Doug Herzog, in a recent interview, admitted as much. "USA had one of the biggest hits in cable for many years with wrestling but found it as impossible as TNN to build on it. It’s a very particular audience that comes for a very particular thing, and they aren’t interested in anything else." Other networks, notably TBS, have tried this targeting-exclusively-men tactic before and it always fails when advertisers (who like selling things to more than just 50% of the population) start pulling out.
- Rumors are running rampant that Jesse Ventura is returning to pro wrestling, with even ESPN reporting that he's in talks for a match with Brock Lesnar. Dave thinks this all stemmed from a joke Ventura made on a radio show that got taken out of context and went wild. In reality, Ventura and WWE haven't had any talks in months about anything, much less him coming out of retirement after, like, 20 years to wrestle Brock freaking Lesnar. Maybe another guest referee gig or something but that's it.
- There was a story in a Stamford newspaper gossip column that Stephanie McMahon and Triple H had split up. Dave got more emails and online messages from people about this story than any other story in about a year and kinda seems to wonder what the fuck is wrong with all you obsessive weirdos. Anyway, the story isn't true.
- This week's episode of Confidential was among the best ever. It featured a big segment on the Four Horsemen, mostly with interviews of Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard. You might wonder why Ric Flair, who is with WWE, wasn't interviewed for the piece. Well, he was scheduled to be, but they kept putting it off and rescheduling it and they just never had time to do it. So they aired it without Flair. Which, although Dave doesn't dwell on it, is some shit he would have been clowning WCW for a couple of years earlier if they had done it. Lots of great footage and honest history, which is usually the case with these pieces on other companies. WWE doesn't feel the need to stretch the truth about things the same way they do with their own history. Also had a great piece on Jericho's journey to becoming a wrestler.
- Kurt Angle has made it official: he won't be attempting to return to amateur wrestling for the 2004 Olympics. Just in case it wasn't obvious by now, the guy is one big walking injury who's still putting on great matches every night, but the Olympics are simply out of the question at this point with his physical health.
- This week's episode of Tough Enough featured a segment where the students worked with some of the trainers. It included "the most unprofessional spot of the season" where Bob Holly basically beat the fuck out of Matt Cappotelli. Dave calls it "total bullshit" made even worse by Holly (as well as Bill DeMott and Al Snow) trying to justify it by saying those things happen in wrestling and you have to learn to take it. Dave says they took complete advantage of the trust Cappotelli was putting in his trainers. The show is supposed to be about teaching these people to be wrestlers and if one of the students had done even half of this to someone, they would be kicked off the show immediately. A majority of the wrestlers Dave has talked to agree and feel Holly went too far. Holly did an interview on the WWE website playing it up, calling Cappotelli a crybaby who has no business in wrestling and saying he didn't regret what he did. Dave hopes WWE got whatever ratings boost they were going for out of this bullshit.
- Bret Hart was on the Observer Line show this past week to talk about some things. Bret said that given his health issues and because he has no interest, he wouldn't come back to work an angle or do a storyline in WWE. He talked about his recent meeting with Vince and said they're on decent terms. Vince has given Bret a standing offer to come back any time he wants to appear on the show and speak. Bret has considered it because he would like to say goodbye to the fans properly, but he's also been gone from WWE for over 5 years now and feels it would be weird to come give a goodbye speech after so long. He also recognizes that a lot of fans would consider him a sell-out if he went back to WWE after everything that has happened. He's still working on his autobiography and joked that it would be more honest about Hogan than Hogan's own book was. He also trashed Martha Hart's claim (in her book) that Owen Hart hated wrestling and didn't enjoy doing it, saying that's not true at all.
- UPW had a reunion show that was supposed to have Tito Ortiz appearing, but he no-showed. John Cena and Victoria, both of whom started with UPW, worked the show. Victoria was in a battle royal while Cena lost via DQ to Frankie Kazarian (no video but here's a pic of Cena vs. Frankie).