August 04, 2003
- Our top story this week looks to be the imminent demise of AJPW. The July 19th Budokan Hall show was the final night in the company for more than half of AJPW's front office employees, some of whom were let go for cost-cutting reasons and others who quit because they haven't been paid on time in months. They also let go their dojo coach, which means the person responsible for training stars for the future is gone and they've given up on developing new talent for the time being.
- There's really no other way to cut it: this stems from Keiji Muto's decision-making. He mortgaged the future of the company and gambled by spending excessive amounts of money on elaborate WWE-style shows and production values, the utter anthesis of what AJPW was for 30 years under Baba family ownership and not at all what fans want. The hope was to land a big network TV contract, but that didn't pan out and they were left with massive debt and nothing to show for it. After taking ownership, Muto also came in and fired many of the people who had been with AJPW since day 1 and replaced them with his team of NJPW office workers and connections that he brought with him, none of whom were familiar with the ins and outs of the company. Add all of this to some pretty questionable booking decisions and an overall downturn of the wrestling economy in Japan and there's a lot of talk in the press that this may be the end of the road for the legendary promotion (BUT NO! As we all know, somehow, AJPW survived and still lives on to this very day, 20+ years later).
- Other Vengeance notes: Eddie/Benoit for the new US title was a 4-star match that would have been higher if not for the overbooked goofy finish. Jamie Noble beat Billy Gunn to earn the right to have sex with Torrie Wilson, because that's a thing that happened. They recently did this with Trish Stratus too. Where's that Lineal Champions post guy when you need him? Haas & Benjamin vs. Kidman & Mysterio was the match of the night and the crowd was super hot for it. Cena/Undertaker was a pretty good match but more on that in a moment. Vince McMahon vs. Zach Gowan was an accidental blood bath, with Vince getting cut badly and gushing an absurd amount of blood everywhere. They immediately went to an impromptu finish and Vince needed several stitches afterward.
- WATCH: Vince McMahon vs. Zach Gowan - Vengeance 2003 Highlights
- The original plan for the Cena vs. Undertaker match was for Cena to win clean. That had been unanimously decided by all the writers and agents, but on the day of the show, Vince changed his mind and overruled everyone. Dave hasn't heard any word that Undertaker refused to put Cena over or anything like that. This was apparently all Vince, who said he doesn't want unproven guys beating one of the top stars in the company's history. Pretty much everyone was second-guessing this one and pushing back, feeling Cena should have won, but Vince wouldn't be swayed. In fact, Undertaker had Cena beat early in the match and then picked him up at 2 instead of pinning him. Then he kicked out of Cena's FU finisher and pinned him clean with the Last Ride. So what was originally supposed to be the biggest win of his career couldn't have gone worse for Cena. He'll probably be fine in the long run, Cena is talented enough to overcome it, but Dave feels this kind of mindset is why new stars have such difficulty getting over and why top heels like Triple H are out of challengers.
- Mil Mascaras is filming his first movie in decades. If you aren't familiar, Mascaras, Blue Demon, and El Santo made up the Big 3 of Lucha Libre films, which peaked during the 60s and 70s. Anyway, this new movie is called Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy. Harley Race is expected to have a cameo (funny enough, even though it's filming here in 2003, it wasn't released until 2007).
- WATCH: Mil Mascaras vs. The Aztec Mummy (FULL MOVIE)
- The WWC vs. IWA war in Puerto Rico has gotten even nastier. On WWC television this week, they started airing Bruiser Brody matches and said they wanted to remind fans of how great Brody was. That's all well and good, right? Well, you see....WWC hasn't shown or even mentioned Brody's name on TV once in the 15 years since he was murdered there. So why are they doing it now? Because Invader I, the guy who killed him, just jumped ship to IWA and now WWC is happy to remind you "Hey, you know that IWA guy murdered Bruiser Brody right? You really gonna watch their show?" Meanwhile, on the flip side of that coin, IWA has been doing annual Bruiser Brody tribute shows for the last couple of years, even though IWA didn't even exist when he was alive. Dave wonders if IWA is going to continue that tradition and thinks it'll be pretty awkward if they have a tribute show for Brody while actively employing the man that murdered him.
- Riki Choshu's ill-fated WJ promotion is continuing to struggle. Choshu recently went back on his past criticism of shoot matches, and WJ is now promoting several upcoming shoot fights. Why, you ask? Choshu didn't change his mind. He still hates shoot matches and has publicly said for years that he believes it will kill worked pro wrestling. But WJ has a financial backer that they desperately need to keep happy. And he likes shoot matches. So until the money runs out, Choshu now likes shoot matches also (things with WJ are about to get a LOT worse in the next week or two, but that's a much more tragic story we'll get to soon enough).
- Representatives from NJPW, AJPW, and Zero-One (Chono, Muto, and Hashimoto) are meeting next month to discuss a joint show with all 3 promotions. With Muto's involvement, it's led to further speculation that AJPW's days are numbered and Weekly Fight, one of the big sports weeklies, has already reported that Muto and Satoshi Kojima are going back to NJPW (not quite).
- Masahiro Chono vs. Yoshihiro Takayama in NJPW's first ever cage match is taking place next month. Word is the cage is more like a Hell in a Cell cage that surrounds the entire outside of the ring rather than a typical steel cage.
- Lot of talk about bringing Hulk Hogan into NJPW for an upcoming Tokyo Dome show. There's a lot of back and forth, with some who are for it and others who argue that Hogan's asking price (six figures for one match) is too high and it wouldn't be beneficial for the company. Dave says it'll only be worth it for a major Tokyo Dome show and even then, they'd better sell a lot of tickets. And even then, probably only good for a one-off. Dave doesn't predict a big wave of Hogan nostalgia in Japan the way it happened here in 2002.
- You may have seen Atsushi Onita on the news if you're paying attention to global political headlines. Japan's parliament (of which Onita is, somehow, a part) was having a vote on whether to send troops to Iraq to help U.S. soldiers rebuild the country. The debate got heated and a big pushing and shoving match broke out on the parliament floor. This footage was all over the news worldwide. Well, Onita was right in the middle of it. To his credit, he didn't seem to be instigating anything and, in fact, he appeared to be one of the primary people who was trying to break up the fight and separate everyone. Onita wasn't identified on any of the newscasts by name.
- More on Jeff Hardy's ROH appearance. He was actually supposed to arrive in town the night before so he could film an RF Video shoot interview, but he didn't show up until 3:30am, at which point everyone had already gone to bed. So he was then asked to arrive at the venue at 4pm so they would have time to film stuff. Instead, he showed up well after 7pm. So yeah. Considering the fact that ROH fans completely turned on him and considering how unprofessional that is, ROH doesn't intend to use him going forward. Dave says they probably still would, because he drew a big crowd, but he definitely didn't endear himself to anyone in ROH.
- Jerry Lawler's latest attempt to get a Memphis promotion off the ground ran into another snag this week due to weather. The TV studio didn't have power and so they couldn't broadcast the live show. (Yeah, I remember this. I was living in Memphis at the time and it was called Hurricane Elvis by everyone locally. This storm even has its own Wikipedia page.)
- Former WWF wrestler Maxx Payne filed a $10 million lawsuit against Rockstar Games and other game developers involved in the creation of the video game Max Payne, arguing that they stole his name and likeness. Dave doesn't expect this to go anywhere.
- Sonny Onoo's racial discrimination lawsuit against Turner Broadcasting was settled in arbitration. Terms are secret but word is Onoo made out like a bandit.
- Buff Bagwell recently did an interview blaming all his problems on the internet. That's not an exaggeration. "It was 100% the internet. The internet has done it all to me," he was quoted as saying. He went on to say everyone in WCW was crazy and only he and Lex Luger got the heat, questions why nobody blames Booker T for the disaster match in WWF and ignores all the times they had great matches in WCW, and said he got fired from WWF because people looked at him and saw a 240 pound ripped, tanned, great wrestler and were afraid he was going to steal their spots. Sure, that's probably why.
- Crash Holly debuted in TNA using the name Mad Mikey and basically doing the same WWE gimmick he was already doing. That's basically the only real news in the TNA section, everything else is Dave just recapping a lackluster show.
- This isn't wrestling but it's interesting. K-1 fighter Genki Sudo was one of 5 people stabbed by a crazy tattooed guy in Japan this week, and the stabber escaped and is still at large. The story got national news coverage since Sudo is a minor celebrity. All of the victims will survive and Sudo wasn't seriously injured. (I looked it up and Genki Sudo ends up having a hell of a life. MMA fighter, author, musician, and current politician).
- Triple H, who has already been working through a leg injury, was injured again when working a post-Raw dark match against Goldberg. This is the only way the two can really work together before Summerslam, since Goldberg doesn't do 99% of house shows. Anyway, this was a strained groin and possible hernia. WWE pulled him from the Australian tour because he was advised not to travel on the long flight. WWE is still hopeful he'll be good to go by Summerslam.
- The Undertaker's father, Frank Calaway, passed away last week. It was expected and Undertaker was off the road for a week or so leading up to it so he could be with his family. Frank Calaway was a WWII vet who worked for the Houston Post newspaper for several decades.
- Notes from 7/24 Smackdown: this was all go-home show stuff for the Vengeance PPV. Dave doesn't like how they made Cena (one of their hottest heels who is this close to being turned babyface by the crowd) fawning all over Stephanie McMahon like a horny teenager who'd never been laid, only for him to show back up in the show 30 minutes later, doing the tremendous graveyard promo on Undertaker. In fact, Dave says there were people in the company pushing against the Cena/Stephanie deal for that very reason, feeling it made Cena look like a chump, but they were overruled by Vince yet again. Says Eddie Guerrero (also on the verge of being turned babyface by the fans) was the star of the show, cutting a great promo on Benoit and Dave says Eddie has become a fantastic all-around performer lately. Dave thinks they need to turn him face and push him hard. They've been desperately trying to find someone who can click with the Hispanic demographic and Dave thinks they basically have Hispanic Stone Cold in the making if they play their cards right (I love that we're getting to re-live the beginnings of Eddie Guerrero's breakout year here. By the end of 2003, that dude is a STAR and then some).
- Notes from 7/28 Raw: Dave basically spends the whole review bitching about the commentary team of Lawler & Coachman. Particularly Coachman. Molly Holly won the women's title from Gail Kim, using her Molly Go Round finisher. To give an example of the commentary, when Molly went up to the top rope, Coach and Lawler started talking about how she doesn't do high flying moves and wondered why she was up there and completely didn't call the move. No biggie, she was just performing her same finishing move that she's used ever since she arrived in the company. No reason to expect commentary to know that in a match where she's winning the title with that move. Dave suspects Kim lost the title because of the match last week, where she botched a bunch of spots. Dave thinks it should have gone back to Victoria (I've noticed in these reviews that Dave is a big Victoria fan) but whatever. And as expected, the show ended with Shane McMahon returning to attack Kane for the assault on Linda last week. Dave hates that they went through all this work to rebuild Kane as a total monster, only to have him start selling for Shane fucking McMahon.
- Smackdown on 9/11 is going to be 90 minutes this week, because the last half hour is being used for the premier of UPN's new show The Mullets, which is about 2 idiot redneck wrestling fans. They seem to think there's gonna be a huge WWE crossover audience with this show. Dave predicts wrestling fans aren't going to have any interest in watching a sitcom in which wrestling fans are portrayed as dopey stupid rednecks (Dave is correct. Show gets canceled after 8 episodes). Also, the show is scheduled to debut on 9/11 and that's not an accident. UPN wants to take advantage of the fact that the other major networks will be airing news coverage or tribute shows for the two-year 9/11 anniversary and they're hoping The Mullets will be the only entertainment show on any of the networks that night. This has been roundly criticized in the media, so this show's not off to a great start.
- WWE doesn't really have any plans for Zach Gowan after this feud with Vince McMahon wraps up. In fact, it may already be over. The story was supposed to run through Summerslam, but that got sped up when Hogan quit the company and we ended up getting the Gowan/Vince match at Vengeance instead. As of press time, there's apparently no other plans to use him beyond that right now (yeah, they're pretty much done with him. He spends another couple months doing lower-midcard stuff here and there, but he'll be gone entirely within 6 months).
- Remember that Vince McMahon interview last week? Turns out there was a lot more to it. Vince railed against critics and this is worth posting in full: "The critics, I've got to tell you, I wouldn't care if you believed in Jesus Christ and we brought him back as a guest appearance, we would be criticized for doing that by that audience. They're so negative. They're so [expletive] negative about what we do. I won't read it. I won't let our writers read it. I don't listen to critics. I listen to our audience."
- Elsewhere in the interview, Vince dismissed the falling ratings and blamed the failure of the Invasion angle on the fact that they couldn't/wouldn't buy out WCW's top stars from their big contracts. Sure, but Dave also says that "the Kevin Dunn doctrine" that nobody from WCW should be beating WWE's established stars because they worked too hard to establish WWE's brand may have played a part and points to DDP getting utterly buried by Undertaker as an example of why the angle would never have worked even if they did have all WCW's top stars. Because WWE was never going to allow it to work.
- The deal with WWE talents working indie shows is this: no one can do it except for rare circumstances approved by Jim Ross. Now that they're running two rosters and the depth isn't there, they don't want to risk someone getting injured outside of a WWE ring. This may also be related to the ongoing Tiger Ali Singh lawsuit. It's not an indie show situation, but it's similar. Singh was under WWE contract and was assigned to work IWA shows in Puerto Rico. He suffered an alleged career-ending injury during one of those IWA matches, claiming he was forced to wrestle in the rain, and since he was on WWE's payroll and was sent there by WWE to work, he's suing them. Mostly the commentary guys have free reign to do indies though (Al Snow, Jerry Lawler, Ernest Miller, Michael Hayes, etc.) Apparently, Tazz is free to work indie dates as well, and would probably be a decent attraction even though he can't wrestle actual matches. But he's got no interest in it.
- Mick Foley's first attempt at fiction writing, after publishing two bestselling autobiographies, isn't going as well. The novel, "Tietam Brown," is getting pretty mixed reviews from the critics that bother to review it. Most of the reviews tend to be somewhat backhanded to wrestling fans, with the gist being "Hey the book isn't that good, but it's not like wrestling fans would know a good book if it slapped them upside the head, so they'll probably enjoy this drivel."
- Dave gives his own brief review, but admits he doesn't read many novels. His review is also pretty mixed and it seems like maybe he's trying not to bury it too badly and hurt Mick's feelings. He says he got into the book and seemed to enjoy the story, but felt like every time he hoped for something happy to happen, it never did, right to the very end. He also doesn't seem very into a lot of the gross stories in the book (no idea, I've never read it).
- Chris Nowinski is undergoing a battery of tests regarding his post-concussion syndrome symptoms and will be out of action until the tests clear him (not happening).