Wrestling Observer Rewinder

January 27, 2003

We open this week with the passing of The Sheik, the legendary Ed Farhat, at age 76. When it comes to drawing intense, riot-causing heat, he was the greatest heel there has ever been in the business. And because of the way wrestling has changed, no one will ever be as hated a heel as he was ever again. He'd had several health issues over the past decade and it was something of a miracle he hung on as long as he did. Dave runs through his life. Allegedly born in Syria, he was actually born and raised in Lansing, MI, played football at MSU in the 40s, served in WWII, and began wrestling in the 50s. He became one of the wealthiest men in wrestling during the 60s and 70s as his Detroit territory (he owned it) packed thousands of fans into Cobo Hall every week. Dave also tells the brief story behind the "I Like To Hurt People" movie. (I remember renting that from the video store when I was a little kid because I'd already seen all the other wrestling tapes they had and that's where I became a fan of The Sheik.)
WATCH: I Like To Hurt People (full movie)
Despite The Sheik's legend and drawing power in the business, he's virtually unknown in the mainstream. NOAH and AJPW have acknowledged his passing, and it got a brief mention on ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" but that's about it. Dave gives the usual huge obituary for The Sheik, running down all his famous moments. His territory in the Detroit/Toronto area was notorious for bullshit finishes to avoid Sheik doing jobs in order to get people to come back the next week. These days, that would kill a company quick, but in those days, it worked for years (although it did, slowly, still kill the territory). Babyface after babyface would come in and fail to take down the evil heel. Andre, Bruno, Race, Rogers, Abdullah, the Funks, Dusty, Von Erichs, Giant Baba, Randy Savage....they all fell to The Sheik at one time or another. He's believed to be the first wrestler to pioneer throwing the fireball (later famously adopted by "The Wizard" Chris Jericho). His famous rivalry with Bobo Brazil. Running shows head-to-head in Detroit against Dick The Bruiser's crew who ran shows at the nearby Joe Louis Arena (formerly the Olympia).
After awhile, Sheik's reputation for nearly inciting riots with his heel antics caused big promoters to steer clear of him for fear of lawsuits if a fan were injured. He main evented MSG against Bruno Sammartino 3 times and then was legitimately banned in the state of New York by the athletic commission after a 1969 riot during another match. Covers his partnership in Japan with Abdullah the Butcher (who basically patterned his own gimmick completely after Sheik). Territory eventually died off due to mismanagement and all the other reasons the territories died. Sheik was old by now, but had squandered much of his fortune, so he continued working. Briefly tried to cross promote wrestling and country music with "Big Time Wrestling and Big Time Country" which was....bad. He trained Sabu and RVD, and even helped get Scott Steiner into the business. Worked a show in Detroit for Jim Crockett Promotions, which drew a huge house, and then no-showed the return show a few months later when they wouldn't meet his money demands, which killed the Detroit market for years, well into the WCW days. Speaking of, he appeared alongside Sabu for his match at WCW Halloween Havoc 95 and threw a fireball in Jerry Lynn's face. This wasn't planned or approved by WCW and as a result they never used him again. And of course, there's the famous 1992 incident in FMW where a barely mobile 60+ year old Sheik wrestled an inferno match that went wrong and he couldn't get out of the ring fast enough and nearly died.
Sheik was unique in another way: he never broke character, even to the end. Unless you were a close friend or family member of the Sheik outside of the locker room, you never heard him speak. He was also a terrible in-ring worker. And yet, without saying a word and without using a single stepover toehold, he became one of the biggest wrestling stars of his era. But because of his secrecy, little is still known about Ed Farhat, the man.
(Since I just dropped 4 paragraphs on the Sheik, a couple of things I want to mention: the Sheik was one of my favorite wrestlers as a kid, which is weird because I was too young to have seen his prime and he wasn't a mainstream guy that a 10-year-old kid from Tennessee should even know about. But I loved the "I Like To Hurt People" movie and I used to get all the Apter magazines so I was very familiar. As a kid, doing trampoline backyard wrestling with my friends, I even brought out fake blood capsules and taped up a fork so I could do Sheik stuff. Also, a couple years ago, a book called "Blood & Fire" was released about The Sheik and I highly recommend it. One of the better wrestling books I've ever read. Okay, I'm done dickriding the Sheik now).
Hulk Hogan is back in WWE again, for the first time since losing to Brock Lesnar in August and then refusing to put him over again at Survivor Series. He returned to a huge standing ovation at the Smackdown tapings with the story being that Stephanie McMahon signed him against Vince's wishes and they set up an angle to do Hogan vs. McMahon at Wrestlemania. Dave hasn't seen this yet since it hasn't aired, but full review next week. As expected, there's a lot of pushback from Vince's inner circle about bringing Hogan back, since he left last time over refusing to do a job. But Vince gonna Vince, so he made the call and Hogan's back. More on that next week.
Meanwhile, on Raw they setup the angle for Steve Austin's return at the No Way Out PPV and also said he would be doing an interview for Raw magazine to tell his side of the story for walking out last year. Dave thinks the rumored lineup for Wrestlemania at this point is insane. Goldberg/Rock, McMahon/Hogan, Lesnar/Angle, Austin/???, plus matches for Triple H, Undertaker, and the rumored return of Kevin Nash.....absolute megastars for sure. But aside from Angle and Lesnar, none of those are guys you can build the future around. While the show looks monstrous on paper, it's indicative of a problem they have right now in creating new stars (WWE relying on stars of yesteryear to sell Wrestlemania? Perish the thought).
Royal Rumble is in the books and it was pretty rough going until Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit turned in a Match of the Year caliber masterpiece and saved the show. Scott Steiner vs. Triple H went 20 minutes and whew lawd, was that a bad idea. The crowd turned on Steiner early and soon after that, turned on the match completely. The crowd cheered for the screwjob finish (because it was over) and then booed Steiner out of the building during the post-match angle. It's interesting because Steiner has been over big as a babyface during the build-up. Dave knew people would figure out pretty quick once the bell rang that Steiner couldn't hang, but he didn't expect it to happen so immediately, mere seconds into his very first match. To be fair, Triple H wasn't much better with all his current injuries and Dave jokes that Ric Flair, as a manager, was the best worker in the match. They could turn Steiner heel, but that won't change the fact that he just can't really work anymore. This almost killed the whole show, but thankfully, after busting their asses, Angle and Benoit were able to reverse course and save it. After all that, Dave actually gives the Triple H/Steiner match 1 star, which is better than I expected. Angle/Benoit, meanwhile, gets 4.75 and even though he lost, the crowd gave Benoit a standing ovation afterward.
WATCH: Chris Benoit vs. Kurt Angle - Royal Rumble 2003
And as expected, Brock Lesnar won the Rumble match and will go on to face Kurt Angle at Wrestlemania, in the dream match everyone has been salivating about since the moment Lesnar signed with the company 3 years ago. Elsewhere in the Rumble match, Shawn Michaels and Jericho entered at #1 and #2, with Jericho tossing him out early after a chairshot to set up their Wrestlemania program. Early on in the match, there was a spot where Edge came off the top rope and they mistimed it and Edge landed ass-first on Chris Nowinski's face, "busting his nose" Dave says. (Turns out it was waaaay more significant than that. This is the spot that led to the post-concussion syndrome issues that ended Nowinski's career. He would go on to do significant work in the study of concussions as a direct result. The sports world understands more about concussions and is better off because of Nowinski and, indirectly, because of Adam Copeland's ass). Jericho was split open hardway by Tommy Dreamer's wild kendo stick shots. Bill DeMott was hurt too. Michaels later ran back in and caused Jericho to get eliminated. It was a good angle but Dave thinks they should have had Jericho in the final four and saved it for later in the match. And that's basically that.
Another show is in the books, and this one is the AJPW/PRIDE/K-1 joint venture under the name WRESTLE-1 at the Tokyo Dome. And if you want a textbook example of how not to promote a major show, this was it baby! Days before the show, nothing was announced. Hulk Hogan met with company execs for several hours to negotiate a deal, but to his credit, Hogan recognized the situation immediately. This was a company with big money to throw around, but no sense of direction and no future plans. Long-term, he recognized it would hurt him when the show bombed with him headlining in a match that he felt didn't even make sense. Hogan did offer to do a clean job to Naoya Ogawa or Yoshihiro Takayama in a singles match lower on the card, but they weren't interested in that and talks fell apart. But then, when Takayama found out that HULK FUCKING HOGAN was willing to come in and do a CLEAN JOB to him, and that officials turned it down without even consulting him, he (understandably) got pissed and pulled out of the show too. Then they made overtures to Sting and Lex Luger, with no luck. And while all this was going on, they were still advertising Goldberg, even though he hadn't yet agreed either. Only four days before the show, they finally locked down Goldberg, for a 6-figure payoff (most of which he spent right there in Japan that same week, buying a vintage 1970 Mustang that he won in an auction and then paying to ship it back to America). So that takes care of one half of the main event: Muto & Goldberg vs. who, you might ask? Well, with 4 days remaining, WRESTLE-1 pulled out the big bucks ($25k each) and booked none other than.......KRONIK! Yes indeed. Brian Adams and Bryan Clark were brought in for this match to main event the Tokyo Dome!
But alas, it was not to be the main event after all! To open show, kickboxer Ernesto Hoost challenged Bob Sapp to a wrestling match! Hoost, who is coming off 2 back-to-back shoot loses against Sapp in K-1, challenged Sapp and it was accepted. Dave says this company is all about copying American-style booking so they decided to book the Tokyo Dome and act like it was an episode of Raw, with an opening promo leading to an unannounced main event of Sapp vs. Hoost. You can just imagine how well this helped ticket sales (not at all). The crowd was announced as an absurd 45,371 but was nowhere close. Dave doesn't have real number yet (real total ended up being faaaaaar less but that's a story for next week). Anyway, Dave hasn't seen the show yet so he just runs down the results as reported. Goldberg/Muto obviously won, and Ernesto Hoost pinned Sapp in a worked match after a chair shot. Dave hears it has to be seen to be believed and he can't wait. It'll be a couple weeks before we get the full Dave review on this but just know it was an unmitigated disaster.
Since WWE Confidential just briefly touched on the history of the Royal Rumble, Dave decides to do a deep dive into the subject. Where was this shit during one of the previous slower news weeks? Anyway, Dave picks apart some of the "official" story of how Pat Patterson pitched the concept to Vince and then to Dick Ebersol. Dave mentions the lost Royal Rumble in St. Louis that happened before this, which WWE has apparently decided to erase from history. Of course, this is Dave, so you know there's lots of Roy Shire and Sam Muchnick battle royal talk in here. Anyway, we all pretty much know the history of the Royal Rumble and Dave doesn't shine anything new on this.
NOAH's first ever live show on PPV will take place in March at Budokan Hall and will be headlined by the first Misawa vs. Kobashi singles match in 3 years. The last time they faced each other one-on-one was in AJPW, just before the split (the upcoming match in March turns out to be, unsurprisingly, another 5-star classic but we'll get there).
Vader blew out his knee during a tag match in NOAH and flew home from the tour. Vader has been working through injuries for awhile and that's a big thing in NOAH, so this must be pretty serious for him to leave the tour (must not have been that serious. He worked a match in TNA a month later. This would turn out to be Vader's final match for NOAH, he never returned to the company. Suspect the knee isn't why he left, but I don't think we ever find out more).
Kenzo Suzuki and Shiro Koshinaka have both left NJPW to follow Riki Choshu to his new World Japan promotion. The loss of Suzuki is a big blow, as they've been grooming him to be a top star in the future (his career would go all sorts of wild ways, while Choshu's promotion would fail quickly).
The Wrestling War of Philadelphia rages on this week. XPW ran 2 straight shows at Viking Hall, while CZW also ran shows head-to-head against them. CZW did a spot mocking the Messiah/XPW incident where they pretended they were gonna cut a guy's dick off with garden shears. Cool. Speaking of Messiah, he worked a match with Nick Gage and did a spot where Messiah tried to thumb Gage in the eye, but Gage no-sold it because Messiah doesn't have a thumb. Ok, that's pretty funny.
ROH has given up its local Philadelphia TV deal. They were paying for the time and the time to edit the TV show was causing delays with their DVD business, which is their bread and butter, whereas booker Gabe Sapolsky said being on local TV in Philly doesn't really benefit them much at all. Obviously, they would love to get on TV, but making sure the DVDs get out in a timely fashion is the biggest thing (Rob Feinstein will return to local Philadelphia television in other ways soon enough).
The latest debuts in TNA this week: Nikita Koloff, Larry Zbyszko, the Road Warriors, Konnan, and Dusty Rhodes. And in the main event, Vince Russo (billed as a former WCW champion) teamed with Skipper, Daniels, and Low-Ki to face Rhodes (not announced as a former world champion), Jarrett, and the Road Warriors. There was a pre-taped talking segment with Tenay and Russo in which Tenay (mostly unscripted) absolutely destroyed Russo and his cluelessness on the wrestling business. It was taped about 3 hours before the show and most backstage loved it but Russo clearly hated it, yet apparently didn't want to admit to everyone that he wanted to re-tape it, so it aired as is. Dave seems to have loved watching Tenay tear down Russo. (This brings us the classic Russo line: "If you want Lucha Libre, go to Japan!")
WATCH: Mike Tenay vs. Vince Russo debate - TNA 2003
Dixie Carter, who is a member of the Panda group that owns TNA, gave a speech to the company talking of turning things around. She tried to spin some preliminary DirecTV numbers as a positive sign and about their new TV deal in Australia being a good source of income. Dave talks about how overseas revenue is a big untapped market that can keep the company afloat when the U.S. business is down (indeed, without that India deal they eventually got, I'm pretty sure TNA would have died years ago).
Raven and Justin Credible were both released by WWE last week. Credible wasn't a surprise since he was already on suspension for showing up late to shows and hadn't been used in forever anyway. He's had some issues outside of the ring that have been problematic as well. Raven had just come back with a new gimmick so he's more of a surprise. There were no personal issues with him, seems they just didn't have anything for him. There's been some talk about having him in as a writer or announcer, but Dave expects him to end up in TNA as soon as he's able and thinks he could be a big star for them (indeed, Raven showed up there almost immediately and was the best thing about TNA for a little while).
Paul Heyman and Brian Gewirtz were both suspended for one week by Stephanie McMahon due to an argument during a creative meeting. The two have had many loud arguments in recent months, but this one got out of control and they were both punished. Heyman was still at the Smackdown shows because the suspension was only from the creative team and he's still an on-screen character. The shows were mostly booked by Bruce Prichard (Raw) and Dave Lagana (Smackdown) in their absence. (I don't remember the episode, but Bruce Prichard talks about this in one of his earlier podcasts. Sounds like they had to be pulled apart and separated to keep the argument from getting physical. Pretty sure Gewirtz writes about it in his book as well).
Notes from 1/16 Smackdown: Have I mentioned Dave hates this Torrie/Dawn/Al Wilson stuff? Because man, he hates it. But otherwise, the wrestling is on another level. In fact, Dave says Edge is the most underrated wrestler in the company right now, arguably at the level of Benoit, Mysterio, Guerrero, and Angle and thinks he should be positioned as a title contender. They had Cena drop B2 (Bull Buchanan) as his partner because they're beginning to realize that they might have a star in Cena as a solo guy because of his mic skills. And that's basically it.
Notes from 1/20 Raw: the Triple H/Scott Steiner feud is continuing, with Steiner remaining a babyface. God help us. Jeff Hardy vs. RVD was the best match on the show and best Jeff has looked in awhile. It was less than 4 minutes, in case you're wondering about the quality of the in-ring action at this time. Dudleys lost the tag titles they just won at Rumble in a 14-second "match" that was more of an angle. There was also a great angle where Jericho "accidentally" hit Stacy Keibler with a chair when Test moved. It looked great, the announcers sold it great, and the crowd was super into it, but Dave feels like it was a main event angle wasted on a lower-card feud. It was the kind of angle you end the show with, but then they had to follow it up with the rest of the show and by the end, it was kinda forgotten. They had a whole angle with D-Lo Brown not getting into the Rumble because of racism and using the MLK Day holiday to get heat, which Dave thinks was tasteless. The show ended with Triple H and Ric Flair joining forces with Randy Orton and Batista to form a new Four Horsemen-like stable and beat down Steiner. Dave has some thoughts. For starters, he feels like this angle suffered because the Jericho/Test/Keibler angle earlier in the show was the dramatic high point of the night and this couldn't follow it. Secondly, no one gives a shit about Steiner, so the crowd didn't really care. That being said, Dave likes the idea of the group, but he's skeptical about Batista being ready (it worked out ok. And with this, Evolution was born).
John Laurinaitis is reportedly pushing hard for the head of talent relations position, which is currently Jim Ross' job. There's been talk for months that Laurinaitis was being groomed for the job and JR has been delegating duties to him (if I remember correctly from JR's book, he basically got tricked into training his replacement and then....replaced, much against his wishes. But I may be confusing that with something else from his book? Can't remember, been awhile since I read it). From here, Dave goes into Laurinaitis and his recent beef with Matt Hardy, which basically stems from creative differences and Matt being outspoken about things that suck lately, which doesn't endear him to management. Paul Heyman has been fighting to keep Matt on TV and being pushed despite it.
There was a recent VH-1 show that did a piece on the Rock that was really good, leading Dave to recount the story of Rock getting into wrestling. In the piece, Pat Patterson claims he saw Rock training and called Vince and said they have found a kid with more potential than anyone he'd ever seen. Dave actually backs this story up. When Rock worked 2 dark matches at house shows back in 1996, Dave asked around because he didn't know who it was. They told him "It's Rocky Johnson's kid" and he was told by someone in WWF that within 5 years, that Dwayne Johnson kid would be the biggest star in the company. Lo and behold, he did. So yeah....pretty much everyone saw superstar with Rock from literally day one.
Remember when OVW star Damaja won a match last year in order to earn a spot in the Royal Rumble? No? Yeah me either. It's been awhile since I wrote those, I forgot too. Anyway, he did. And as you may have noticed, he was not in the Rumble. Well, to explain it on OVW television, they did an angle where Damaja beat up a bunch of OVW officials, and as punishment, Jim Ross pulled him from the Rumble. The real story, of course, is that Vince McMahon changed his mind on having an OVW guy in the match at the last minute, which sucks for OVW since they've been building up Damaja's entry in the Rumble for over 2 months as a central storyline. Given Damaja had storylines planned with Nick Dinsmore built around this, OVW's booking has been thrown into complete disarray, much to booker Jim Cornette's frustration. Not to mention, Charlie Haas was called up to the main roster as a heel, so he had to cut a promo to try and explain why he's aligned with the hated heel Kurt Angle in WWE while finishing up his OVW storylines as one of their more beloved babyfaces. Point being, Vince doesn't give a shit about OVW's plans lol.
Kevin Nash is hoping to be back in the ring by Wrestlemania. He was pushing to be in the Rumble, figuring he could hide his limitations since the quad injury last year, but no dice. He worked out in the ring for the first time since the injury at the show though.
Lex Luger is telling people he expects a call from Vince McMahon soon. Despite the bad blood there, Luger knows Vince is a mark for big guys and also thinks they're running out of surprises and old stars to pop ratings. "They'll have to get to me eventually!" seems to be what he's banking on. Next few months ain't gonna be very accommodating for ya, Lex.
There was a push to get Bret Hart to appear at No Way Out since it's in Montreal next month, but both sides feel it's too soon and Bret's not ready yet anyway, as he's still recovering from his stroke. Also, with Austin expected to return at that show, as well as Hogan's first match back, adding Hart's return would be too much.