August 11, 2003
- New SEC filings give a clearer look at WWE's current business status. Lots of numbers here so let's just simplify things. The McMahon family owns 80% of the company's stock. We get a breakdown of Vince, Linda, Kevin Dunn, Jim Ross, and other exec's salaries, bonuses, and stock dividends. The SpikeTV deal ($28 million per year) expires in Sept. 2005 while the UPN deal ($15.6 million per year) expires a year sooner. The total losses from WWE's Times Square restaurant are $53.6 million. Worse still, WWE is locked into a lease that doesn't expire until 2017 and will cost them another $46 million. That's a pretty awful lease to have signed. WWE has been unsuccessful at offloading that lease to anyone else so far.
- The only other real interesting thing is the ongoing fallout from the World Wildlife Fund lawsuit. WWE obviously lost the battle and had to change its name, but that was just step one of the process. WWE is still on the hook for damages. The Wildlife Fund initially submitted a claim arguing $360 million in damages. There was an offer to settle it out of court for $90 million at one point, which WWE refused so now it's in the courts hands. There's also the possibility of punitivie damages. Dave doesn't think the WWE's use of the "WWF" initials was really all that damaging to the Wildlife Fund but punitive damages may be another story. WWE was in flagrant and knowing violation of their agreement for years, arrogantly dismissive of the Wildlife Fund's claims, and the presiding judge over the case (and in fact, all the courts this went through) was absolutely ruthless in his response to WWE, angrily scolding them for their behavior throughout the proceedings. It wouldn't be shocking if he made an example out of WWE in this case.
- The official cause of death for Miss Elizabeth has been ruled an accidental overdose of alcohol and pills. Police interviews with Lex Luger revealed she had been taking Somas and Lortabs for back pain and had drank a couple of glasses of vodka beforehand. Elizabeth's blood alcohol level was 0.299, more than triple the legal limit, plus she had a significant amount of medication in her system in dangerous levels. That BAC level is considered near fatal in and of itself even without the addition of the pills. Worth noting that she had no recent physical injuries, but she did have some from a couple weeks earlier that were healing. Luger had been arrested 2 weeks before her death when police were called for a domestic disturbance and found Elizabeth with 2 black eyes, a split lip, and knots on her forehead. She claimed she fell trying to catch the dog but, ya know. That being said, the charges were later dropped and it was claimed the cop was overzealous in making the arrest. Elizabeth's family apparently "has no animosity or bad feelings towards Lex Luger and how he treated her," according to the medical examiner that did her autopsy. How the hell would he know? Anyway, the same day of Elizabeth's death, Luger was arrested again for all sorts of drug chargers which are still pending, as well as a recent DUI charge.
- WWE's Australia tour is in the books and it was a mess. Since neither Steve Austin or Goldberg was on the tour, Triple H was the top guy who was supposed to main event all the shows, but as mentioned last week, he suffered an injury (now confirmed to be slightly torn groin). Doctors told him he would be out 6-8 weeks, which even in the best case scenario means he shouldn't be able to work Summerslam. But he's Triple H and is apparently determined to work the show regardless. Due to the uncertainty, the Goldberg vs. Triple H match at Summerslam has now been changed to an Elimination Chamber match with Nash, Jericho, Orton, and Shawn Michaels added (Jericho vs. Nash and Orton vs. Michaels were previously planned to be individual matches on the show). They obviously gotta get the title off Triple H soon but Dave thinks they've changed their mind on Goldberg. Despite what Vince may say publicly, internally, everyone acknowledges the Goldberg experiment is a failure. Dave thinks Jericho is the only other person in the match that makes sense to win the title, but he's not been pushed like a top guy recently and Dave wouldn't be surprised if they just keep the belt on Triple H, injury be damned. (Yup! This is pretty much the point when everyone turned on Triple H and the "reign of terror" was at its peak. Like, just drop the goddamn title and go away for a little while dude....)
- Oh yeah, the Australia trip. With Triple H out, they asked Goldberg to go in his place. Recognizing the situation WWE was in, Goldberg was willing to go, but his passport was in San Diego and he was in Atlanta for whatever reason, so he was going to have to fly across the country to get it first, which would have been cutting it too close and he would have missed the first show. But then WWE realized they never got a work visa for him and was unable to get one on short notice, so it was a moot point anyway. So no Goldberg. Then Ric Flair forgot to pack his passport, a mistake he said he's never made in his 31-year career, so he was turned away from the airport at LAX, had to fly back to Charlotte to get it, then back to LAX again to go to Australia. So he missed the first show. Then Kevin Nash apparently collapsed at the hotel in Melbourne and was pulled from the shows, either due to exhaustion or neck issues? A fan described what happened and it sounds terrifying. Like Nash just lost consciousness while taking photos with fans. Best I can tell, Dave never follows up on this and Nash seems to be fine. Anyone know this story? Was he just drunk or something? Elsewhere on the tour, Booker T also worked the shows with a really bad back and ended up being sent home early because the pain was unbearable and he missed the next night's Raw.
- Giant Ochiai, a student who was training with Riki Choshu and Kenzo Suzuki, is in critical condition this week after falling into a coma during training at the WJ dojo. It's unclear what happened other than Ochiai took a bad bump during training and fell unconscious and has been in a coma ever since. Ochiai has done some MMA and was training for WJ under Choshu's watch. There's been a lot of criticism on the company for how few details they have put forth, and Ochiai's friends have been vocal in the media that WJ is hiding the truth (Ochiai ends up dying and his death pretty much is the final nail in the coffin for this horrible attempt at a company Choshu is running here, but that's next week).
- Dave runs down the lineup for PRIDE's upcoming grand prix tournament. This is MMA so we'll move along, I just wanted to note that Dave breaks down the card and predicts every winner of the tournament correctly, except the final match. He (along with all the other experts) thinks Rampage Jackson is winning it all. But alas, Wanderlei Silva will be picking up the victory. Dave also reached out to other fighters for their predictions and we have comments here from Don Frye, Bas Rutten, Frank Shamrock, and Dan Henderson, just in case you wanted an idea of what Dave's MMA rolodex looked like in 2003.
- Perro Aguayo Jr.'s debut at Arena Mexico drew a packed house. After his match, they started an angle with Universo 2000, the man who defeated Perro Aguayo in his retirement match in 2001. After that match, Aguayo got much-needed real life neck surgery and retired, and the story has been that Universo 2000 crippled Aguayo and ended his career, so this is the logical storyline for Aguayo Jr. to be getting revenge for his father.
- WWC held a show recently in a 12,000-seat stadium that drew a grand total of 261 fans. It was the lowest attended stadium show in the history of wrestling in Puerto Rico. In past years, WWC has ran previous stadium shows in the middle of near-hurricane level torrential downpours that drew more fans. After this disaster, Carlos Colon reached out to Jimmy Hart to see if there was any way possible to bring in Hulk Hogan for some shows. Colon has tried this in the past and, as you might expect, the money Hogan demands and the money WWC can afford are lightyears apart so no, that will not be happening.
- Nothing too much new on the AJPW front. Keiji Muto's newest move is to try bringing hot female valets in, specifically in the mold of Missy Hyatt. Dave notes that, for most of the times Muto was in WCW, Missy Hyatt was the top female in the company and was extremely popular, so that's the idea. Because if Muto has learned one thing, it's that AJPW fans that grew up on decades of Giant Baba's vision of pro wrestling love Americanized gimmicks and characters!
- Pancrase announced NJPW wrestler Josh Barnett is challenging for the vacant King of Pancrase openweight title. NJPW pushed for Barnett in this match because he's favored to win and if he does, NJPW intends to have him defending his Pancrase title in NJPW, which is basically Inoki's wet dream. Dave hates this. If it happens, NJPW will essentially have 3 "top" titles. The IWGP title, which is their longstanding world title for workers. The NWF title which is basically a worked-shooter belt. And then the Pancrase belt, which is a shooter's belt defended in a worked company. Then you throw in things like the U-30 midcard title, the Jr. title, two sets of tag titles, etc. etc. Just too many belts in NJPW.
- Atsushi Onita vs. Great Sasauke in a match dubbed Battle of Politicians will be taking place in September and yes, it will be an exploding barbed wire match. I'm not suggesting that putting politicians against each other in exploding barbed wire rings is something America should adopt, but I'm not not suggesting it either....
- Bret Hart is hoping to have his autobiography finished by the end of this year and released in early 2004. (Ends up being 2007. Books are hard.)
- Dave saw the Jeff Hardy ROH show and it was just as bad as he'd heard. The crowd was ruthless and didn't even give him a chance, chanting stuff like "You got fired!" and "We want Matt!" at him. Gabe Sapolsky defended Jeff against the stories last week of showing up late, saying no one relayed the message to Jeff and it wasn't his fault. Sapolsky said Hardy was totally professional the night of the show, even after the crowd turned on him. He said they saw it coming and warned Jeff ahead of time that he was going to get booed out of the building and he was cool with it and expected it. Dave doesn't seem to be buying this, since it flies in the face of everything he's heard from other sources that were there that night and it honestly kinda sounds like Sapolsky is trying not to burn a bridge with Jeff, since he drew ROH's biggest crowd ever despite them hating him (yeah, pretty sure Jeff has come out since and admitted that this caught him off-guard and he wanted nothing to do with ROH for years after because of it).
- David McLane's Women of Wrestling is trying yet another comeback. They did 24 episodes of TV in 2000-2001 and aired them in about 100 markets on TV time they paid for. The hope was to run a PPV show based off that, but turns out it didn't work. The PPV was a bust and the venture lost several million dollars in the process. In fact, they lost more in 3 months than ECW did during its entire final year. WOW has been dormant ever since, but apparently they got a new money mark because they're ready to try again (this dude has kept WOW limping along off and on for literal decades now).
- According to all the sources Dave has spoken with, TNA is simply not getting a national TV deal anytime soon, at least not on any significant television network. The interest in pro wrestling is non-existent right now. WWE is the only promotion any of the TV networks care about and when even their ratings are collapsing, it makes it next-to-impossible for a lesser promotion to get any interest.
- Don Callis got to basically do 2 shoots in 1 promo this week in TNA. The angle where Callis "fired" Edward Chastain was basically a shoot. TNA decided not to use Chastain anymore but brought him back one last time this week to finish off the angle by having Callis fire him. As for Callis' claim that New Jack was suspended for bad language, that was also a shoot. As you may recall, TNA issued an edict of no more swearing a couple weeks back, and New Jack went on live TV and dropped an F-bomb during a promo. TNA felt they had no choice but to suspend him for it. Of course, he's not under contract and is just working per-appearance anyway, for whatever weight a "suspension" carries in TNA.
- More MMA stuff here, mostly that K-1 is doing a PPV here in the U.S. next week with Bob Sapp and he's been everywhere promoting it, including an appearance on Jay Leno's Tonight Show. That being said, despite the big promotional push, Sapp is still not exactly a huge celebrity here, nowhere near what he is in Japan, so Dave doesn't expect this to do well.
- Speaking of Bob Sapp, NFL star Warren Sapp is tired of hearing about him. Tampa Bay Bucs PR people have been telling media officials that they can't ask any questions about Bob Sapp. Funny enough, Bob Sapp was working alongside the NFL in Japan to help promote an NFL game that took place there this past weekend (Bob was paid $100k by the NFL for his role in promoting it) and the NFL wanted Warren Sapp to make appearances with him to promote it. Warren refused, but when he got to Japan, all the media kept asking him about Bob Sapp anyway. Warren is also apparently upset that Bob once claimed to be his half-brother in an interview (not true, there is zero relation between them) and was so mad, he called and cursed out the magazine that published it. Bob has denied ever saying it, but Dave says Bob Sapp has become very Hulk Hogan-like with the stories he tells in interviews. Dave notes some more interesting history here: back in 1994, when both were in college, Bob Sapp's Washington Huskies ended the Miami Hurricanes' 58-game Orange Bowl winning streak. After the game, Bob introduced himself to Warren, who basically blew him off because Warren was in a crabby mood after the loss. Want some more fun history? The Rock was Warren Sapp's backup in that game.
- Notes from 7/31 Smackdown: Zach Gowan wrestled Shannon Moore and now that he's away from the Vince storyline, it's pretty amazing to see how great of a worker Gowan is when he's paired with someone else that can actually wrestle. It's incredible what he can do with only one leg. But he's going to destroy his hip joint if WWE puts him on the road full-time working like this. Doink was played by Nick Dinsmore of OVW. Eddie Guerrero continues to get massively over and Dave is waiting to see if WWE is going to fuck this up or not (surprisingly not). Only other note is Brock Lesnar seems to be doing the F-5 differently, as guys are rotating and landing on their backs or sides now. Dave says that Paul Heyman and Big Show were both taking F-5s every night on the road at house shows and both ended up suffering injuries. In fact, Heyman isn't on the road right now because he has a bulging disc in his neck from taking repeated F-5s and is not cleared to return yet.
- Notes from 8/4 Raw: this was actually Raw in Vancouver but Dave jokingly calls it "Nitro from the Greensboro Coliseum" and talks about how WWE spent the whole show rubbing shit in the fans' faces because they didn't cheer the people WWE wanted them to cheer, "and anyone following WCW knows how that plays out in the long run." They booked Bischoff vs. Shane McMahon for the main event and acted like it was a huge PPV main event being given away for free. By the way, this show also had a Goldberg vs. Ric Flair match for the first time ever on TV but whatev. Speaking of, Dave talks about seeing a trailer for Freddy vs. Jason and wonders if Jason puts on a gold wig in the first 5 minutes of the movie and then spends the rest of it getting outsmarted by Freddy at every turn? But then he assumes "someone with more brains is probably booking that feud." Oh, Dave is SALTY today. SpikeTV had a commercial for a new show called Slamball which featured DDP, leading Dave to speculate that SpikeTV must not have gotten the memo that DDP was a big fish in a small pond and wasn't a big enough star to beat WWE prelim guys like Bob Holly, so why are they using him in a commercial? I love this version of Dave lol. Goldberg vs. Flair ended in a DQ in a match where the Canadian crowd booed the everloving fuck out of Goldberg. Triple H, on commentary, not-so-subtly buried him in a way that didn't do anything to build the PPV match. Shawn Michaels made the save after the match and also got booed ferociously. Then Nash came out and got booed worse than both of them, while Jericho was the most popular guy on the show, so the commentators basically spent the rest of the show burying the Canadian crowd and calling them stupid and "proof that evolution can go backwards," according to Lawler. Victoria, who has been working on a torn ACL for awhile, re-injured her knee on a spot with Trish Stratus. Gail Kim turned heel for seemingly no reason and after only being in the company for a few weeks. Jericho challenged Nash to a hair vs. hair match and rumor is Nash recently landed a movie role that requires him to have short hair, so that's the reason for that.
- Notes from 8/5 Smackdown tapings: Lesnar turned heel. More on that next week.
- Dave reviews the latest OVW show which is important for one thing: the final blow-off match in the feud with Doug Basham vs. Damaja in a loser leaves town match for the OVW title. Damaja won and Basham turned babyface afterwards. Dave says the build for this led to an amazing crowd and it was the best atmosphere for any match Dave has seen this year and calls the show must-see and an example of how, when pro wrestling clicks, it fuckin' CLICKS. The idea was for Basham to leave as a babyface so now, when he and Damaja are a tag team in WWE, it makes sense (if you recall, we've spent the last few weeks with Cornette trying to figure out a way to save this storyline after WWE nearly killed it by putting those guys together on TV).
- WATCH: Damaja vs. Doug Basham - Loser Leaves Town title match - OVW 2003
- The Smoking Gun website, which often publishes arrest records of celebrities, updated its WWE collection this week. Turns out Brock Lesnar got arrested in 2001 while he was training in OVW in Louisville. Lesnar was charged with accepting a package of what was believed to have been steroids, but when they were tested, it was HGH and, as a result, the charges were dropped somehow. Lesnar's attorney claimed they were vitamins of some sort. Sure.
- Another Vince McMahon interview, more great quotes. He railed on the internet critics, saying, "These small-minded people think they know who I am. I can’t change them and I’m not going to try. Those types of critics are sophomoric. I am my own worst critic. I don’t think I do a lot very well. I am very self-critical." He blamed declining ratings on the rise of the internet and expanded channel selection of satellite TVs. Dave barely even bothers pointing out how much bullshit this is. Vince also said he would love to publicly bury the hatchet with Bret and seemed optimistic that he would return to WWE eventually.
- Various WWE news & notes: Kurt Angle is working with a groin/hamstring injury. Mick Foley's novel got a pretty awful review in the New York Times. Harry Smith, son of Davey Boy and still a high school senior, worked dark matches at the WWE shows in Canada. There was talk of using Teddy Hart as well but WWE has had "an unpleasant history" with him so decided against it. Probably didn't help that he also appeared on that HBO special that got Piper fired.