January 19, 2004
- Observer Awards time! Let's run through the interesting ones fairly quickly. For the full list, it's all on Wikipedia or in the Observer: Kenta Kobashi wins Wrestler of the Year in a landslide, with Kurt Angle a distant second. Bob Sapp is Biggest Box Office Draw by a huge margin. Brock vs. Angle is Feud of the Year, but interestingly enough, the Raven vs. CM Punk feud that took place in ROH and in some other indies came in 2nd place. Yeah, that feud pretty much put Punk on the map. Top 3 Most Improved are Lesnar, Cena, and Trish Stratus. Jericho gets the Best Promo award this year, just narrowly beating out Cena (and again, CM Punk lands in the top 5, as 2003 was clearly a breakout year for him). Triple H gets Most Overrated by HUGE margin for the second year in a row, almost tripling the number of votes for 2nd place Jeff Jarrett. PRIDE wins Promotion of the Year, and NOAH got 2nd place, followed by ROH, WWE, and CMLL rounding out the top 5. Match of the Year is, unsurprisingly, the 3/1/2003 Misawa vs. Kobashi classic. Chris Sabin wins Rookie of the Year, ahead of Zach Gowan and Shinsuke Nakamura. Steve Austin wins Best Non-Wrestler which is pretty nuts. Worst Non-Wrestler, by a massive margin, is Stephanie McMahon. Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic goes to the McMahon family for making themselves the focus of most of the television shows in 2003. The Royal Rumble 2003 match between Triple H vs. Scott Steiner wins Worst Match of the Year. Jim Cornette wins Best Booker for OVW. John Cena's rapper character wins Best Gimmick, while 2nd place yet again goes to CM Punk for his straight edge gimmick. That's the gist.
- K-1 promoter Kazuyoshi Ishii, who won Promoter of the Year last year, finds himself sentenced to prison this year. How the turn tables. Ishii was sentenced to nearly 2 years in prison and a $660k fine for income tax evasion. Ironically enough, some of the charges stemmed from Ishii forging and fraudulently claiming to have Mike Tyson under contract. Now, Tyson actually is working with K-1, but he wasn't back when Ishii was trying to convince people he was. Whoops.
- UFC star Vitor Belfort's sister Priscilla Belfort, has gone missing, never arriving for work one morning in Rio de Janeiro. Police are speculating kidnapping, since that's apparently common there, especially for relatives of celebrities like Belfort, but so far no ransom demands have been made. Belfort is scheduled to fight Randy Couture at the end of the month and still says he's planning to do it but that could obviously change depending on the situation. (To this day, the case remains officially unsolved and she has never been found and is presumed dead. It's a wild story. I found this post detailing more if you're interested.
- The Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, one of the most legendary wrestling arenas in all of North America, is in danger of being torn down. The city is building a new arena (FedEx Forum) and they also still have the Pyramid Arena. Dave runs down the history of the Coliseum, which is where all the biggest moments in Memphis wrestling have happened since the 70s. Most recently, the show a couple months ago where Moondog Spot died took place there. (Memphis resident here: the Coliseum still stands to this day, although it officially closed in 2006. There's been plans to renovate it and turn it into other stuff but it's never panned out and it's basically just been sitting there abandoned and crumbling into disrepair for the last two decades. Meanwhile, the Pyramid is a goddamn Bass Pro Shop now.)
- Even though IWA Puerto Rico is one of the few promotions in the world actually making a profit right now, morale in the company isn't great. Only a few of the top stars are making money and most everyone else is making $400 a week or less. Everyone basically makes a living but no one is getting rich off this except a handful of people. Word is there's a lot of people upset that Savio Vega just got a new Hummer and is apparently flashing his wealth while everyone else is living check-to-check. Could be worse though: WWC wrestlers continue to fight just to get paid at all, and the promotion recently took out a $150,000 small business loan to try and get back on its feet.
- Bad news for NJPW: the knee to the face Shinsuke Nakamura took at the K-1 show on New Year's Eve actually fractured his orbital bone around both of his eyes. He was hospitalized again this week for treatment for it and there's no word on when he'll be back.
- Dave finally got to see the Jan. 4 Tokyo Dome matches that aired on TV so he can properly review them now. Bob Sapp looked horrible but the crowd was still super into him. Nagata vs. Sasaki tore the house down and was one of the bloodiest matches in NJPW history. Whatever aura Nagata may have lost by getting beat up by Fedor four days prior was back here because he came across as a superstar on this show. And the Nakamura vs. Takayama title unification match was fantastic. Nakamura's face was a mess because of the orbital bone stuff, with one of his eyes almost totally swollen shut before the match even started. And the story of the match was Takayama beating Nakamura in the face some more. It was basically a squash with Takayama beating the brakes off Nakamura while he sold like Ricky Morton. Dave doesn't usually like world title matches that are so one-sided and end with the underdog winning via fluke, which is exactly what happened here, but because of the story they were telling, it worked and the drama was great. But the overall story of the match was basically what WWE did years later with Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena, because Takayama dominated 95% of this match.
- Jim Cornette missed a recent ROH show he was supposed to be on because he went to the wrong city. The show was in Wilmington, OH and for some reason, Cornette thought they were gonna be at the same venue they were at the last time they were in Dayton (about an hour away). So he went to Dayton, got to the venue, saw no one there, and thought he was getting ribbed. He went back to his hotel and got on the phone with Shark Boy who gave him the right location. But even though it was 45 minutes away, Cornette just.....didn't show up. The wrestlers who were with him (Seth Skyfire and Mike Mondo) also mistakenly went to Dayton but they still managed to get to the correct city and venue in time for the show but Cornette apparently said "fuck it, I ain't going." It's all been worked out now and Cornette even apologized on his website for missing the show.
- Jesse Ventura is going to be a visiting scholar at Harvard for the spring semester. He was requested because the students thought he would offer an interesting political perspective. Dave isn't so sure what Ventura can really bring to the table. After watching his show on MSNBC, it's pretty clear that Ventura's entire political identity is shouting "the 2-party system sucks!" as loudly as he can, but he doesn't really offer much beyond that and every episode of his show is pretty much the same. Okay, cool bro. The system sucks. We all know. What else?
- Ole Anderson tried to stand by the story in his book that he fired Bret Hart early in his career for missing multiple shows, and he's swearing that it's true. But Dave and others have done the research on all the Georgia shows back then, cross referencing the time when Bret was there and the shows he worked and......yeah. Ole's lying. All the research done has confirmed Bret's version of the story from last week. Once confronted with that info, Ole suddenly backpedaled and now claims he may have confused Bret with one of his brothers. Dave notes that Owen Hart worked a few weeks for WCW in the early 90s but to the best of his knowledge, Bruce and Keith never worked that territory under Ole Anderson so that story doesn't hold water either.
- Lots of rumor that TNA has signed a deal with Jon Dalton from the show Survivor, better known in wrestling circles as Jonny Fairplay. Dave thinks they better move quick because Fairplay's 15 minutes of fame are ticking away fast already. It will be interesting since TNA is continuing to work with Roddy Piper and, well, Piper and Fairplay used to be friendly but their split was nasty. Fairplay worked as Piper's assistant or something and if you recall, Piper was in a bad car accident about 2 years ago. Well, Fairplay was the one driving the car they were both in and Piper has since accused Fairplay of trying to kill him. Both have gone back and forth in the media and Piper even threatened to sue him at one point. TNA would love to turn their frayed relationship into an angle, but that all depends on Piper and Fairplay being willing to play ball.
- TNA is in talks to bring in Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. Word is Nash's asking price is $7500 per week. Hey, good money if you can get it for a single day's worth of work. That would make Nash the highest paid guy in the company and if he's able to get it, then Dave admires him for pulling it off. But he wonders if anyone in wrestling ever learns from the past? In related news, Nash said he turned down a role on WWE's creative team because it would require him to be on the road 5 days a week.
- ICP & Vampiro continue to make waves in TNA. For his part, Vampiro's recent interviews on ICP's website, in which he utterly buried TNA, didn't do him any favors as you might expect. As a result, TNA currently has no plans to bring him back. As for ICP, they were scheduled to be on the show last week and even hyped it on their website, but then the deal fell through and the weren't there. There were quite a few facepainted juggalos in the crowd who likely left disappointed.
- K-1 is still hoping to put together a Mike Tyson vs. Bob Sapp fight and have a date tentatively scheduled for Las Vegas in May, now that Tyson is once again licensed in Nevada. The New York Times did a story and noted that Tyson's current contract with K-1 (yes, he has one) is actually the only income Tyson has had in months. He received a $175k advance and is receiving a 25-30k per-month living expense, despite the fact that he hasn't agreed to an actual fight yet. K-1 is just paying him to be Mike Tyson I guess. Tyson needs the money though. Even though he earned more than $53 million over the last few years, he's actually broke due to being wildly irresponsible with his money. He owes $4 million to a former manager, $4 million to HMRC (the British tax services) and another $13.5 million to the IRS here in America, among other debts. Pay your taxes, kids.
- Dave has finally seen the New Year's Eve K-1 show that had Shinsuke Nakamura's fight, with the controversial stoppage. Dave thinks the ref made the right call. Nakamura didn't look all that impressive in the fight. He kept getting takedowns on his opponent but couldn't capitalize on the ground. And he kept doing takedowns the exact same way, so it was only a matter of time before his opponent figured out the pattern. Sure enough, Nakamura went for another takedown and caught a BRUTAL knee to the face on the way in. He jumped right back up, but the ref stopped it and it was clear Nakamura was glassy-eyed and adrenaline is probably the only reason he got back up. Considering that, and since we now know that the knee basically destroyed his face, Dave doesn't have an issue with the stoppage. If it had gone to a decision, Nakamura would have won on points, but it wasn't definitive and unless Nakamura changes up his takedown strategy, he suspects Ignashov would win a rematch (nope).
- Antonio Inoki is talking about trying to form an MMA commission in Japan. For what? To prevent mismatches and total farce matches? That's Inoki's entire bread and butter, baby! Anyway, Inoki has also recently gotten a promoter's license in Nevada so he can run shows there now (MMA, kickboxing, boxing, or pro wrestling).
- WWE held talent meetings before both the recent Raw and Smackdown tapings. Vince gave a big rah rah speech that was described to Dave as "a joke", a "bullshit speech" and "too much of a performance by Vince" among other quotes. Jim Ross also spoke and seemed to be implying that they need to protect kayfabe better and talked about how back in the day, heels and babyfaces didn't travel together or hang out and seemed to be hinting (but not outright ordering) that the talent needs to start doing the same. At the Raw meeting, talent was told to study the recent Triple H/Shawn Michaels match on Raw as an example of "how to work." As you can imagine, given that Triple H (or Shawn for that matter) isn't the most popular guy in the locker room, that didn't go over great with some of the talent. "Hey, you guys see that 30-minute world title match with years of history between two men who get 1/4 of the weekly TV time? See how that match got over with the crowd? Start wrestling like that" doesn't really work the same when everyone else on the roster is stuck working 4-minute TV matches with little-to-no angles or creative freedom. Vince also chided the wrestlers for various small things, pet peeves of his during matches and angles that he doesn't like. Again, the wrestlers were annoyed because most of it was stuff that the agents and writers come up with and that the wrestlers have no say in anyway.
- Sable and Torrie Wilson will be dual cover girls for the upcoming Playboy issue to be released before Wrestlemania.
- Just to show an example of WWE's continued decline, 10 of the 12 PPVs in 2003 did lower buyrates than the same PPVs the year before. The only exceptions were the June PPV (which had a Hell in a Cell match and the return of Mick Foley) and the Survivor Series PPV, which was probably due to Steve Austin's career being on the line (also, 2002's Survivor Series did an abnormally low buyrate). So not great!
- Notes from 1/8 Smackdown: they continued strapping the rocket to Chris Benoit, and they're selling the story that he plans to be the 2nd person ever (behind Michaels) to enter the Rumble at #1 and win. Dave expects him to go the distance and be one of the last guys in. Whether he wins or not remains to be seen. Chavo Guerrero completed his heel turn, leaving Eddie a bloody mess in a turn similar to Lex Luger turning on Ricky Steamboat in 1989, which Paul Heyman was a huge fan of and Dave suspects he may have played a role in booking this. Tazz is now playing a heel-ish announcer and he and Michael Cole spent half the show fighting, which is an effort to give Cole more of a personality.
- Notes from 1/12 Raw: they teased a Goldberg vs. Scott Steiner match for next week and Dave reminds us that Steiner carried Goldberg to probably his best match ever at the WCW 2000 Fall Brawl PPV so maybe it'll actually be good?? Triple H and Shawn Michaels had a promo to build for their Rumble match and it was great, but yet another example of how people other than Triple H and his friends never get the opportunity for angles or promos like this. Triple H called Shawn one of the top 2 or 3 wrestlers he's ever seen, leading Dave to wonder how many Kenta Kobashi, Jumbo Tsuruta, Mitsuharu Misawa, or Manami Toyota matches he's watched. Oh Dave. Anyway, excellent promo for both men that hyped the hell out of the Rumble match. And Randy Orton once again came out of the show looking like a future superstar, continuing to mock Mick Foley for not fighting him.
- Chavo Guerrero Sr. is being brought in to join his son Chavo in the feud against Eddie. He's 54 and still works occasional indies in Texas. He worked a house show this week in Connecticut and the crowd had no idea who he was, which is no surprise, as he hasn't been a big star for decades and never was in the northeast.
- UPW wrestler Kyra, real name Melina Perez, has signed a WWE developmental deal and is starting at OVW. She appeared on the Thanksgiving Smackdown a couple months back in Native American costume. She has very limited wrestling experience, but has worked as a swimsuit model and has won some beauty pageants, so for all you women busting your ass at wrestling school to get better, you're wasting your time. Your quickest path to WWE is to win some Hawaiian Tropic bikini contests (also known as the John Laurinaitis Special).
- Multiple Japanese publications have reported that WWE is in talks with NOAH for Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle to both work the upcoming NOAH Tokyo Dome show. Dave says there's zero truth to this and it's just the Japanese magazines doing what they always do, which is create their own wrestling headlines and hope they can wish it into happening. Insert quote about missing 100% of the shots you don't take.
- On this week's WWE Confidential, Val Venis was quoted talking about the 1990 Summerslam match between Kerry Von Erich and Mr. Perfect for the IC title, saying it's considered by many to be one of the greatest matches of all time. Dave wonders if they watched the same 5-minute, one-star match he did?
- WWE is releasing a Monday Night Wars DVD soon and Dave is excited to find out how much they're going to re-write history (spoiler: a lot).