Wrestling Observer Rewinder

April 21, 2003

Our top story this week is a 19,000 word monstrosity about.....how Vince killed the territory system? What the fuck Dave? Ok, so apparently there's no news whatsoever this week? This one thing is like half the damn issue. I'm gonna read this and I'll be right back. Everybody sit tight for a second.
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Ok, I'm back. We cover everything here from the territory days. Vince raiding Verne Gagne's AWA in detail, and how all the big promoters of the time tried to form a group together to fight back but it quickly fell apart because none of them could agree on anything. Gagne out of business by 1991 (on life support for years before thanks to an ESPN contract). Watts out of business by 1987. Driving Crockett to near bankruptcy and forcing the sale to Ted Turner to form WCW. Taking over Toronto from the Tunneys. Black Saturday and the Georgia Championship Wrestling stuff. Cyndi Lauper and Rock & Wrestling. Mr. T and the power of cable television that Vince saw before everyone else. Paul Boesch selling to Vince. Tom Magee. All the stars who jumped from their territories to hop onto Vince's national wrestling spaceship. And on and on. This whole thing seems like left over stuff from the 2-part history of the WWF title story he did. In fact, if you add all of that together with this, it really is just a history of WWF from Vince Jr. taking over up through 1987 or so. For those who ever want to do any research on those early WWF expansion years, this issue (and the 2-parter on the history of the belt) are absolutely the place to go. I have a theory. I suspect Dave may have been crafting a book on the history of WWE or something here and decided to just publish it in chunks in the Observer instead. Because we're going to get more of this in the coming weeks and by the time you add it all up, you damn near have a small book on the history of modern wrestling.
Preliminary buyrates for Wrestlemania show it doing between 525-550k buys, which is a pretty massive drop from last year and has many within WWE and in the cable industry utterly shocked. Preliminary numbers always vary somewhat but if this holds, it's a massive blow. It also makes you question the wisdom of how the show was promoted. Despite the Austin/Rock and Angle/Lesnar matches, by far the most heavily promoted match on the show was Hogan vs. Vince and, well, looks like that match was NOT a draw. This also looks to be the 2nd lowest buy rate in Wrestlemania history, only behind WM13.
Great Sasuke became the first known masked politician this week, winning election to the prefectural assembly in the Iwate Prefecture of Japan. He's the 4th Japanese pro wrestler elected in Japanese politics (behind Inoki, Hase, and Onita). Of course, of those four, only Hase is taken seriously as a politician. The story was covered by major news outlets all over the world, mostly focusing on the fact that he still wears his mask. That was a big controversy, with questions over whether it was allowed. Sasuke argued that it was no different than female politicians wearing too much makeup. Oh dear. The controversy made its way all the way up to Japan prime minister Junichiro Koizumi who commented, "I’d like to see his face, but he’s very popular with his mask, so it’s okay for him to serve wearing the mask." So there ya go. Next up for election, former FMW star Mr. Pogo is running for city council in his home town next week. What the hell is up with politics in Japan? America would never elect an unqualified celebrity to political office!
So as mentioned previously, NJPW's upcoming Tokyo Dome show next month has several shoot matches scheduled featuring NJPW stars. In case you're wondering about that, NJPW put out a statement that very much sounds like it was written by Inoki himself. This has to be read in full:
"New Japan was established in 1972 with the idea of it being the strongest form of mixed martial arts, however, these past several years, K-1 and Pride were born and made their marks in the MMA field to finally be our rivals. Even the New Japan owner, Antonio Inoki, has doubt in our existence now. Pro wrestling should be about a fighting form that includes all the great elements of world’s strongest martial arts. NJPW’s professional wrestlers must train at MMA techniques at our dojo in order to show the audience their strong bodies and minds as well as te courage to live, and the excitement of life. All NJPW wrestlers, new or experienced, used to share the same belief, 'I am the strongest of all.' But young applicants at NJPW today seem to lack such strong passion and motivation; they rather desire to become famous, expect to get paid, or just hope to become like Antonio Inoki. NJPW is not trying to go back to the old times, and we understand that the market is different from then. But we would like to see our professional wrestlers train much harder, to their limits, at our dojo only to become the strongest. When (Shinsuke) Nakamura fought at Inoki Bom Ba Ye on New Year's Eve, it was a disappointment for me to see none of NJPW wrestlers were on his side as seconds....The Japanese may have less physical abilities compared to Western or Brazilian fighters. Yet when such Japanese shoot for a victory, risking their bodies and souls, great excitement and impact will be born. Do not be afraid to lose! NWF champion Takayama has never won in MMA yet, but look at where he stands. Fans are paying great respect to Takayama for his courage and fighting spirits."
This leads Dave to talk about how NJPW originally grew in popularity by using real fighters from other disciplines and having them come in and lose to Inoki (and later to other stars like Muto and Hashimoto as well). That was all well and good when fans didn't know better. But then real fighting came along in the form of MMA and fans got used to seeing the real thing. Now, watching pro wrestlers do worked shoots doesn't appeal to anyone anymore, and putting them in real shoots usually ends badly for the pro wrestlers. It's lose-lose and Dave doesn't seem too gung-ho about the direction NJPW is taking.
Pancrase founder Minoru Suzuki is in talks with NJPW to come in and do some worked matches. Suzuki actually started his career as a pro wrestler in the 90s with NJPW but quit to go to UWF and later jumped to real MMA with Pancrase. But now he's looking to return to pro wrestling soon (indeed he does, and murder grandpa is still going strong today).
Stu Hart is negotiating to sell the rights to over 500 hours of Stampede Wrestling videos. WWE is obviously interested, but there's others making offers as well (ESPN Classics Canada in particular). For those curious, WWE ultimately ends up with the exclusion that Bret Hart owns the rights to all of his own matches, so it's still a convoluted mess to this day.
XPW news: Due to the legal troubles of its porn parent company, XPW has canceled its upcoming Pittsburgh show and it's June PPV has been postponed indefinitely. This company is dead.
TNA notes: Chris Sabin, a wrestler from Border City Wrestling, made his debut this week and looked impressive. Lots of blood on the show, with most of the matches having blade jobs, including one where the referee even bladed. Nikita Koloff and Dusty Rhodes' storyline has been dropped with no explanation. The reason is Koloff can't actually wrestle because he took a permanent disability insurance settlement years ago (god bless you Lloyds of London) so they couldn't go anywhere with the feud. Why even start it then?
Zach Gowan was backstage at this week's TNA PPV and got a very icy reaction from most of the locker room. Turns out there's a lot of people not very happy with him turning down a TNA contract, signing with WWE, and then showing up backstage at TNA anyway just to hang out.
UFC president Dana White did an interview with Alex Marvez and said he's not letting Tito Ortiz out of his contract and will not be allowing him to work with WWE while under contract either. Dana also complained about how hard it was to get a TV deal for UFC despite proven rating success in UK and Canada. A recent negative story on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" on UFC apparently killed any momentum the TV talks had.
Update on the Jericho/Goldberg incident from last week. Basically same story as before. Goldberg was talking to Kevin Nash and apparently he made some comment about Jericho. Either Nash or Hurricane (who overheard it also) went back and told Jericho, who went to Goldberg and essentially said "Hey, this isn't WCW. We try to help each other here, so if you have something to say, say it to my face or keep your mouth shut." It got heated, Goldberg grabbed Jericho by the throat and Jericho front face locked him and they went down to the ground and were pulled apart quickly. After a bunch of hemming and hawing, they all settled down and ultimately shook hands. As you'd expect, because of his big contract and limited dates, Goldberg is kinda resented in the locker room and a lot of people are looking at Jericho as a locker room hero for standing up to the guy (despite being obviously smaller) and putting him in his place. For what it's worth, Ric Flair is kinda seen the same way because a LOT of people still don't like Eric Bischoff and loved that Flair was ready to beat his ass last week as well. We're in 2003, but there's plenty of residual WCW resentment still brewing in the WWE locker room.
There was talk of bringing in Tony Schiavone for a few weeks to do Raw commentary. With Jim Ross written off TV for the firing angle and Coachman being terrible, everyone is looking for a fix. Kevin Dunn ended up nixing the Schiavone idea though.
Despite their pasts, Goldberg and Triple H are said to be on good terms now. Sounds like they must have sat down and talked things out after Goldberg signed. Right now, the plan is to hold off for the obvious Goldberg/Triple H match until Summerslam. When Goldberg finishes with Rock, his next likely feud is.....probably Jericho, funny enough. In the meantime, Triple H is expected to feud with Nash. Dave is skeptical of WWE's ability to drag the build out that long without ruining Goldberg first (how right he was).
The Road Warriors/Legion of Doom have been telling people they're headed to WWE. They have a tryout match scheduled to see how they get over, but that's all that's official for now. Dave has seen them wrestle lately and it's not been a pretty sight (yeah, they just get a one-off here and of course, Hawk passes away later in the year. Also, in yet another case of the Observer Rewind Time Vortex, the new WWE Vault YouTube channel just posted this LOD 2003 tryout match yesterday. It's LOD vs. Doug Delicious and a young CM Punk.)
WATCH: Legion of Doom vs. CM Punk & Doug Delicious - 2003 dark match
Dave goes over the upcoming Backlash card. Brock Lesnar is expected to defend the title against John Cena. It was originally between Cena and Benoit. Neither match is really a draw. Dave would have gone with Benoit because at least you're guaranteed a great match and Benoit can afford the loss. Cena is a rising star and probably shouldn't be beaten this early and he's also still a little too green to be in this title picture already.
Notes from 4/10 Smackdown: Dave calls it the Heroes of Wrestling show, which probably isn't a good sign. Calls the booking of the show backwards, with the entire thing being built around Roddy Piper and the inevitable Hogan return. In this, the year of our Lord, 2003. He wonders why not bring Jim Duggan or Dusty Rhodes back too if nostalgia pops are so more important to them than long term business (two more years until we get both of them, be patient Dave). For what it's worth, Piper was at least entertaining. And while John Cena defeated Undertaker in the main event, he came out of the whole thing looking like a joke afterward. He's facing Lesnar for the title at the PPV and nobody expects him to win anyway, so why make him look even weaker by getting humbled by a guy he's not even feuding with? Pure WCW shit with this company lately.
Notes from 4/14 Raw: the show was "simply atrocious" this week. He rips apart the opening Triple H/Kevin Nash/Shawn Michaels segment. He hates the whole angle of Test stupidly lusting over Torrie Wilson's Playboy issue and repeatedly getting in trouble with Stacy for it. NASCAR racer Elliot Sadler was at ringside, which is funny because his less famous brother Hermie Sadler is basically TNA's go-to celebrity and they even sponsor his car. But here's his brother front row at Raw. They showed the APA visiting injured war vets. Dave is taking a wait and see approach on this. If this is just something APA and WWE did as a nice gesture, then awesome. But he can't shake the feeling that this is going to be used as fodder for the APA to feud with the new French guys soon, in which case it will mean WWE exploited injured soldiers for a mid-card tag team angle. In WWE's defense, I don't think they ended up doing that, but they don't worry, I'm sure they'll eventually find some way to exploi....what's that? Next segment? Oh ok. We get a "debate" between Chris Nowinski and Scott Steiner over the merits of the Iraq war, which gives them a chance to hit the 9/11 button a few times to get Steiner some cheap pops. Dave hated this whole show.
One final note from Raw: "at 9:38 pm Eastern time, on his third night in the company, WWE officially killed the Goldberg experiment." Ok Dave, maybe we're being a little hyperbolic here. It occurred during a backstage segment in which Goldust meets Goldberg and puts a blonde wig on his head. (Ok, yeah this was incredibly stupid and it later came out that Goldberg was livid about it and hated it too. He made the same argument, that it completely killed his character and Bruce Prichard said Goldberg bitched about this segment for pretty much the entire rest of his run in WWE, never let them forget it and felt it ruined him from the start). Dave says trying to book Goldberg like last year's comedy Kurt Angle is the worst idea for his character. Dave flat out thinks this kills Goldberg as a draw in WWE and notes that, judging by the ratings over the last couple of weeks, he wasn't really drawing already.
WATCH: Goldberg and Goldust backstage segment - Raw 2003
Random WWE News & Notes: at the recent Smackdown tapings, Alexis Laree of recent TNA fame got a try-out dark match (seems like it went well). Randy Orton should be back in July from his various dislocations and broken bones in his foot. Zach Gowan will be debuting in WWE in May and USA Today is already planning a story on him.
WWE is scheduled to return to Oregon for the first time in 10 years for Raw next month. Famously, WWE has avoided the state because of their strict athletic commission rules regarding taxes and drug testing. But all those laws are being changed now (turns out the state is more interested in banning MMA now rather than pro wrestling) so as a result, WWE is finally back to running Oregon.
Jeff Hardy has reportedly requested his release from WWE twice in the past six months and been turned down both times. Hardy has said he wants to quit wrestling to focus on his music and has saved enough money over the past several years that he doesn't need to work right now. WWE is willing to compromise with him on his schedule and but he moves a lot of merch and teen girls like him, so they don't want to release him. As of now, he's still working because he's under contract, but it's pretty obvious he doesn't want to be there and is making it clear he's there against his will.
This week's episode of WWE Confidential was all about Sable's return and whooo boy. Sable was interviewed and talked about how she made a bunch of mistakes the first time she was there and how WWE is a great place to work and how wonderful they are for taking her back. My oh my, how someone's tune can change when the money runs dry.
Notes from 4/12 OVW show: what's that? Yup, we're covering OVW this week because it was a one match show that Dave says was the best OVW show ever and one of the best top to bottom TV shows by any promotion in years. It was built around the blow-off of the Doug Basham and Nick Dinsmore feud, with a 2 out of 3 falls match that the crowd, because of the build-up and hype, was going INSANE for. Funny note, he mentions Basham's finisher which he describes as "a more impressive version of the pedigree" that he absolutely will not be doing on the main roster lol. Match went 34 minutes, Basham won, and the crowd came uglued for it. Perfect old school 1970s storytelling that, of course, was booked by Jim Cornette and Danny Davis.
WATCH: Doug Basham vs. Nick Dinsmore - OVW World Title, 2 out of 3 falls match - 2003
Crash Holly, who is still under WWE contract but rarely used, has started working as a bouncer at concerts to make ends meet (he'd be released from WWE in a couple of months and dead before the end of the year. 2003 was a brutal year for wrestler deaths. Crash is a sad story man).