Wrestling Observer Rewinder

February 24, 2003

More this week on the death of Curt Hennig, starting with this quote: "Curt Hennig used to brag to his friends that he had a horseshoe up his ass because he was so lucky." Autopsy reports on Hennig are still a couple of months out, pending toxicology results. We get lots of great quotes here from people like Bobby Heenan, Don Frye, Tom Zenk, and others, mixed in with another spin around the biographical block, as Dave recounts a ton of great Hennig stories and history that he didn't cover last week. Heenan reveals that Hennig never actually liked the Mr. Perfect gimmick and always wanted to do a cowboy charatcer. He says the gimmick Hennig did in WCW with the West Texas Rednecks was the favorite of his career because it was basically the character he'd always wanted to play. Dave goes into a lot more detail on things here that are pretty interesting, specifically Hennig's injury situation in the 90s, the falling out with WWF because they screwed over his Lloyd's of London deal, and him jumping to WCW. Among those at the funeral were the McMahon family, Jesse Ventura, Bret Hart, Goldberg, Brock Lesnar, Rick Steiner, Ray Traylor, Harley Race, and many more.
The attempted revival of Portland Wrestling appears to be dead again. Dave gives us a quick rundown of the Portland wrestling history dating back to the 1950s and all the attempts to keep the territory alive since the 90s. Athletic commission laws regulating wrestling are the culprit, with Portland basically being the only place in America that still strictly enforces all that stuff. The cost of licensing for shows, required drug testing, etc. has made it cost prohibitive to run. So they're shut down for now and not taping new TV shows and it will take weeks to clear all the red tape even if they decided to try. For now, what appears to have been the final episode of this incarnation of Portland Wrestling opened with Roddy Piper cutting a promo about the passing of Curt Hennig. He then followed it up with a 10 minute rant "that didn't seem to make any points" but ended by telling viewers to email the state governor and the athletic commission and not to watch "the monopolized version of pro wrestling that borders on pornography" while a number scrolled across the screen for viewers who were interested in applying for vacancies on the athletic commissioner. Then Piper played bagpipes. Yeah, this all sounds about right. I can't find video of this but sure would like to.
Lots of death this month, as we have another obituary for 1960s Japanese star Michiaki Yoshimura who passed away at 76 from lung failure. Yoshimura was a frequent tag partner with Rikidozan, Giant Baba, and Inoki over the decades and was basically the #2 guy throughout the 60s and 70s, but he walked away from the business in 1973 and is relatively unknown by the younger generation because of it. He joined the Japanese Navy in WWII when he was 14, stationed in Singapore where he learned sumo, jumped to pro wrestling, ended up in Rikizoan's promotion where he stayed until it folded. After Inoki and Baba left in 1972 to form NJPW and AJPW respectively, Yoshimura retired in 1973 and never looked back. He got a job as a college sumo coach and never even attended another pro wrestling event for 20+ years. Despite being a household name in the 60s and being linked to every major star of the era, he is virtually forgotten today.
WWE has come to a verbal agreement with one-legged wrestler Tenacious Z (Zach Gowan) for a 3-year contract with a downside of $52k per year. This was also one of the strangest (and funniest) contract negotiations of all time. Gowan had previously been offered a 26-date deal with TNA at $500 per show, but chose not to sign it when he got word WWE was interested. Dave says it's a perfect example of why you sign guys before putting them on television. TNA put this kid on TV, he got over huge, and then they offered him a contract. But by then, WWE had already gotten wind of him. TNA is learning the lesson the hard way about getting raided by WWE, the same way everyone else who's ever challenged Vince has learned. This might not seem like a big coup on the surface, but Gowan has the potential to garner more mainstream publicity than anyone on TNA's roster by a mile and WWE clearly recognized that. Given how hard TNA has been trying to get mainstream publicity by using guys like country singer Toby Keith and multiple NASCAR drivers, letting Gowan slip through their fingers was a pretty big fumble. To their credit, TNA had already reached out to USA Today, People Magazine, and others and the ball was rolling on trying to get some publicity out about the one-legged wrestler. Reportedly the David Letterman show is also interested. Jeremy Borash was the one pushing for Gowan and trying to get all this happening. But....TNA never bothered to actually sign him first, and as a result, they lost him. Dave expects Gowan to end up associated with Hulk Hogan in some way because Hogan is said to have visited Gowan when he was a kid in the hospital after he lost his leg, which is what inspired him to become a wrestler. Or at least that's the "story." Anyway, Gowan was backstage at a TNA taping when he got word that Tom Prichard from WWE was asking around if he was signed. When word came back that he wasn't, they called him immediately and Laurinaitis offered him a deal on the phone and FedEx'd it to him.
As for the funny part of the contract negotiations....John Laurinaitis initially offered the deal to the wrong one-legged wrestler. If you've listened to any of Bruce Prichard's podcast, you may know this story. He's told it several times. Laurinaitis sent the contract to Steve Chamberlain, another one-legged wrestler who's barely begun training and hasn't even had a match yet. But he's training under Steve Keirn and I guess wires got crossed and this utter nobody with no experience got offered a 3-year WWE deal, which he (of course) immediately signed. Word is Paul Heyman saw Tenacious Z on TNA, told Vince, who then told Johnny to "go sign the one-legged guy." Johnny asked around, got the wrong guy, and here we are. After doing the deed, Laurinaitis reported back that he had signed the 270-pound giant one-legged guy. Considering Zach Gowan is about half that size, they realized....whoopsie! Anyway, ummmm, this Chamberlain fella now has a legit, binding, signed 3-year WWE contract and Dave isn't sure if WWE is going to buy it out now or what. Nothing like this that he knows of has ever happened before and he's not sure what happens next.
Vampiro won the NWA light heavyweight title in a match in Mexico. "Now I know you’re asking how Vampiro, who is about 250 pounds these days, qualifies as a light heavyweight. Actually, you probably aren’t, which is just as well," Dave adds before moving on.
Telemundo has responded to WWC's lawsuit over Ray Gonzalez, arguing that WWC failed to hold up its end of their contract with Gonzalez because they were behind on paying him and thus breached their end of the deal. Therefore, they believe IWA was within its rights to sign him and Telemundo was within its rights to show him on their network. They're asking to have the WWC lawsuit thrown out and for WWC to pay their legal fees (I believe this is what happens, as WWC takes yet another L).
Speaking of WWC, they've lost TV on the west coast side of the island. WWC was paying for the TV spot and are late on payments to WORA-TV, so they pulled their show. WWC has also had to cancel multiple house shows recently. Things are looking dire for this promotion (still hanging on today. Somehow, they made it through all this).
Steve Williams, Johnny Smith, Mike Rotunda, and several of the other long-time foreign regulars with AJPW appear to be done. Dave expected Williams to jump to Riki Choshu's new promotion, but there doesn't seem to be any interest there (yeah, Williams bounces around Japan and American indies for what's left of his life and career).
Weekly Pro Wrestling in Japan had their annual awards issue this week, which covers all of wrestling and MMA in Japan. MVP for the Year went to Takayama by a pretty huge amount. Rising Star award went to KENTA, while Misawa vs. Takayama on 9/23 won Match of the Year. Best Foreign Star, is anyone surprised, went to Bob Sapp. In fact, Sapp had 13x more votes than anyone else in the category, which is the biggest margin of victory in the history of the awards. There's some other ones here but that's the most notable ones.
Dave saw Part 1 of the two-part TSN Off The Record interview with Bret Hart and if you didn't know better, you wouldn't even know that Bret had a stroke recently. In the part Dave saw, Bret talked a lot about the people who helped him after his stroke. In regards to Hulk Hogan, he confirmed that yes, Hogan WAS supposed to drop the title to him at SummerSlam 1993, no matter what Hogan claims otherwise. They took promo photos for the match and everything. But then Hogan refused. Bret says they made amends in WCW so it's water under the bridge now. Said WCW was a lunatic asylum and that he likes Bischoff personally but felt like he had no idea what to do with him and had no control over the inmates. Said Triple H was an ass-kisser and was never one of the boys. Called Shawn Michaels an insecure chickenshit who would pretend to squash the beef with you and then be talking shit about you 10 minutes later. Said he has a ton of respect for Steve Austin and wishes they'd stayed in touch, but they lost touch after Owen died. Bret says he even took Austin's side in the Owen beef and says Owen should have checked in on Austin after injuring him and doesn't know why he didn't. Also loves The Rock and said he knew he was going to be a top star when he first saw him (Dave recalls that Bret even wrote as much in an early-1997 Calgary Sun column back when Rock was still a nobody so this isn't just revisionist history from Bret). When asked about the possibility of a last match, Bret said he doesn't really have any interest in doing it but that he thinks if he worked hard, he could get himself in shape for one last time. Says he would pick Benoit or Kurt Angle. Asked what match he could do that would draw the most money, Bret responded "Me vs. Vince. Loser goes to hell," which drew an audible laugh from the crew off-screen. Said his biggest regret was letting his home life fall apart when he was on the road, but also said if he could change anything, he'd stay in WWF because he would have prevented Owen from doing the stunt that killed him.
WATCH: Bret Hart - TSN Off The Record (2003)
WWA canceled its upcoming tour in Australia, one of which was to be a PPV taping. Reason is Sting, who is the WWA champion and who the tour was built around, backed out. They're planning to reschedule the dates (indeed they do, for late May. That also ends up being the end for WWA).
Jamie Kellner, the head of Turner Broadcasting and the man who put the final bullet in WCW when he canceled the company's TV shows, is being replaced as the head of the company. He will continue as CEO of the WB Network until his contract runs out next year, but his tenure over all things Turner is done. Back in March of 2001, Kellner made the decision to pull the plug on Nitro, Thunder, and all other WCW programming on TBS and TNT, leaving the company without a television deal. As a result, Fusient Media (investors headed by Eric Bischoff) backed out of plans to purchase the company because without TV, WCW was worthless to them. Vince McMahon swooped in and Turner Broadcasting practically gave the company away to him for 3x less than a blowjob settlement. Anyway, don't get your hopes up for wrestling to come back anytime soon. Part of the agreement for WWE purchasing WCW was that no pro wrestling could air on Turner-owned networks for 5 years. So no rasslin' on TBS or TNT until at least 2006. Check back in 2019.
XPW is looking to be in some trouble. Yeah, they're still around. Sandman just bounced to TNA (more on that later), and several others appear to be on the way out as well. They've had some bad luck with shows in Philadelphia recently (bad weather, low attendance), etc. While reviewing one of those recent XPW shows (150 fans), Dave talks about Juventud Guerrera having a great match and has been doing that a lot lately. Dave says Juvi seems to have finally realized that he was flushing his incredible talent down the toilet with his out-of-ring behavior and is working hard lately to rebuild his reputation. Chris Candido wrestled his match in a t-shirt while Tammy Sytch looked like she just rolled out of bed to be there. In fact, earlier in the show, she was in line at concessions to buy beer and almost no one even recognized her or paid attention to her even though they were standing right next to her. And they did an angle to set up Chris Candido vs. Justin Credible main event at the next show in Pittsburgh in a couple weeks (unbeknownst to people, that Pittsburgh show was the end of the road for XPW. Rob Black's legal troubles are about to keep him pretty preoccupied).
Random News & Notes: Buff Bagwell was telling people recently that he finished rehab and was reading the Bible and reportedly appeared clean and healthy at a show he was at. Bobby Heenan just had hip surgery from an infection that took 70 stitches to close. He's more susceptible to infections due to his chemo last year. Dusty Rhodes' son Cody is 49-0 in high school wrestling and is favored to win the state championship in his weight class.
Phil Mushnick ran a story in the New York Post on the death of Curt Hennig, under the appropriate headline "This Story Won't Die." It touched on the usuals, with the deaths of guys like Pillman, Rick Rude, Davey Boy, and now Hennig and asked why the mainstream press doesn't cover all these early deaths the way they would any other sport (yeah, 2003 is right around the peak of when wrestlers were dropping dead in their 40s and nobody was doing anything about it. We're seriously gonna have so many major deaths in the next year or two).
Panda Energy owner Bob Carter was at the 2/12 TNA show, his first time there live, and gave a bit of a pep talk. His daughter Dixie Carter, who has been at the shows regularly, also spoke and said the company's numbers are rising but gave no specifics. Dave says the company has no way whatsoever of tracking their progress week-by-week because remember, they're doing weekly PPV and those numbers take forever to trickle in from all the providers and even then are rarely accurate until final totals come in months later. So TNA themselves really has no idea how well they're doing. In other news, wrestlers were told no more fighting in the audience and no more wild brawls around the ring after a ringside employee was injured last week.
Vader has signed a deal with TNA. Apparently the "knee injury" in Japan was a cover story to explain why he's no longer in NOAH anymore. As for the real reason, "mysterious circumstances" is all Dave says (not sure that's ever explained and I've never heard anything. So probably nothing much to it).
TNA this week had another one of those dumb "shoot" segments where Vince Russo and J.J. Dillon had a face-to-face in the ring and sAiD tHiNGs ThEY weReN't sUPpOseD tO SaY!!1! Dave says Russo actually did say things Dillon wasn't ready for and took the segment home earlier than planned. A bunch of shit with Russo blaming Dillon and Kevin Sullivan for forcing him out of WCW and killing the company. Dillon responded with Russo and Bischoff not understanding that profits were more important than obsessing over ratings and blah blah. I don't need to describe this. You've seen a Russo segment before. Anyway, Sandman (fresh off leaving XPW) debuted to little reaction. Sandman reportedly doesn't get along well with XPW booker Shane Douglas and peaced out. Raven was the one who got Sandman the spot and they worked in a main event match that didn't get over at all. (These early days of TNA were rough.)
Bob Sapp is scheduled to face Mirko Cro Cop under K-1 rules at an upcoming show in Japan next month, which is likely to be the biggest rated match of the year and will likely be one of the biggest K-1 fights ever. Dave thinks Cro Cop should win because he's by far the more skilled fighter. And Sapp's stamina is always a concern. But Sapp is a monster and can't be discounted (this fight goes VERY badly for Sapp, but we'll get there).
Triple H proposed to Stephanie McMahon (in real life) on Valentine's Day last week and the two are officially engaged. While this seems like a big deal now, Dave thinks this will be a much bigger deal ten years from now (boy ain't that the truth. Just wait for 20 years!)
D-Lo Brown's contract is expiring and he's been told he won't be re-signed. His contract was $350k a year, which he signed several years ago when WWF was at its peak. But now in 2003, with business declining and D-Lo not being used for much of anything, that's a hefty price tag. His recent angle, playing on the race card with Teddy Long, was basically a last-ditch effort to find something to do with him. Vince McMahon reportedly loves the angle and is going to keep it going with Rodney Mack, but felt Brown wasn't good enough at the role. They did an angle on Heat where Mack attacked D-Lo and replaced him as Teddy Long's new guy. Dave expects D-Lo to end up in TNA since he's friends with Russo. Vince is reportedly trying to get famous OJ Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran to make an appearance as part of the Rodney Mack story to get mainstream attention.
Tommy Dreamer has been helping to write Raw these past couple weeks. Dave notes Dreamer was always Heyman's right-hand man in ECW for that kind of stuff and his position in WWE is sort of a tryout for the writing team more than an official role. WWE clearly has no interest in using him as a wrestler much anymore.
Rock was on a radio show this week and confirmed he had signed on for the lead role in the "Walking Tall" remake, which pretty much guarantees he's gone from wrestling again when the movie starts filming in May. Rock also confirmed that the match with him vs. Goldberg at Wrestlemania isn't looking likely. He said he tried everything he could to get Goldberg to sign but expects he'll be facing Austin at WM now. Dave mentions that Rock wants Goldberg in WWE way more than Goldberg himself wants it.
Evan Marriott, the guy from the Joe Millionaire reality show, was on Howard Stern this week talking about his wrestling past. Said he was in UPW until 2001 when he gave up on the biz because there were so few places to work after WCW and ECW folded. He said WWE came to him with an angle that would have concluded at Wrestlemania this year, where he would bully various women (sorta like the old Andy Kaufman gimmick) before getting his comeuppance at WM by Trish Stratus. He turned it down saying "it wasn't the right thing for him right now." In other words, his publicist told him to stay away from that carny wrestling shit.
Test and Stacy Keibler had a lot of heat on them for missing Raw this past week. They had the weekened off and there was a big storm where Raw was. Everyone was told to leave a day ahead of time so they wouldn't get caught up by the storm. Well, Test and Stacy didn't leave early and ended up getting caught in a bunch of storm delays and were the only 2 members of the roster to miss the show. The Test vs. Jericho match for No Way Out appears to have been pulled from the PPV as a result. On Raw, Test wasn't acknowledged and the storyline with he and Jericho pivoted to a Jericho/Jeff Hardy angle instead. So he's in the dog house for sure right now.
Notes from 2/13 Smackdown: Good show, good matches. Only notable thing was they finally had Angle and Lesnar get physical, as Lesnar beat up he and the other members of Team Angle. With all the hype and spending the past nine months not laying a finger on each other, Dave would have probably saved the first actual physicality for the 6-man tag at the No Way Out PPV before giving us the singles match at Mania. But whatever.
Notes from 2/17 Raw: they teased Goldust is returning soon but "isn't quite right" which is to build up his new character (oh lord). Rodney Mack won a match with a Tiger Driver '91 which is a dangerous move even when done correctly and Mack's was not. Al Snow appeared to have been injured and had to be helped at ringside for a bit before going backstage. None of that was shown on TV. Chris Nowinski jobbed to Hurricane in 3 minutes and is reportedly headed back to OVW. Dave knows Nowinski still needs more work, but he hates seeing WWE give up on people so soon after pushing them so hard. Show ended with a big angle of Bischoff beating up Jim Ross to build for Austin's return.
The Rock's upcoming movie "Helldorado" is having some money issues. There were expensive reshoots and over-runs in production and so Universal is looking for someone to partner with in order to offset some of those costs. Man, if only Shark Tank was around in 2003. Anyway, Columbia is negotiating to pay the costs in exchange for international distribution rights.
Random WWE News & Notes: Chris Jericho sat for a deposition this week in the lawsuit filed against him and WWE by Larry Zbyszko. Chris Benoit suffered a partially torn bicep in a match with Angle a couple weeks ago but is gonna work through it. Victoria also has a messed up ACL but is working through it. Former referee Tim White is returning to the company as a road agent, since he was forced to retire from refereeing after being injured last year.
Hey speaking of injuries, Edge has been off the weekend house shows due to a neck issue and that's why he didn't wrestle the Smackdown tapings either. He had an MRI done this week, no word of the results. As of now, he's still planned to work the PPV (Nope. That's the last we see of Edge for the next year. Off to go get neck surgery on the injury that would eventually force him to retire until he drank the stem cells out of Rey Mysterio's knees).
Jerry Lawler caught some heat this week when he made a comment on Raw mocking Eric Bischoff's martial arts, saying "Judo is what you make bagels from." Some Jewish folks at USA Network apparently didn't love that.
Of note from the recent WWE house shows: John Hennigan from Tough Enough 3 made his official in-ring debut, pinning Shannon Moore at a house show in Davis, CA which is where Hennigan lives and went to college (UC-Davis). At a show in Winnipeg (you idiot), Chris Jericho faced Kurt Angle and during the match, some guys in the crowd started fighting. Jericho grabbed the mic and said "You two are lucky I don't pull you in the ring and embarrass you both!" Nathan Jones missed that same show because he was detained getting into Canada when he made a joke at the airport about having a bomb when they checked his shoes. Turns out airports don't really find that funny these days and they wouldn't allow him on his flight as a result (I kinda find it amusing that Test gets into shit for missing a show due to a snow storm, but Nathan Jones misses a show due to making bomb jokes at the airport and apparently has no heat). In Detroit, Rhyno made his long-awaited return to a huge pop since he's the hometown guy.
The Goldust and John Cena gimmicks are basically because they got over with the locker room by doing them backstage. Goldust has been doing a fake Tourette's syndrome joke to pop the boys for years, whereas Cena's raps are popular backstage as well. And Cena's mic work, which everyone knew was good, has continued to improve. Dave says Cena is already one of the elite level talkers in WWE.