Wrestling Observer Rewinder

February 23, 2004

Eddie Guerrero is the new WWE champion and Dave writes about it as if he's penning Eddie's autobiography. He basically sums up Eddie's entire life and career leading to this moment, to put into context just how historic this is. Just a few years ago, Eddie Guerrero as WWE champion, or even a WWE main eventer, would have been unthinkable for several reasons, most of all his size. In fact, this No Way Out show was the first time in his career that Guerrero had ever headlined a PPV. From here, we go into the history of the Guerrero family and all the members who have challenged for major world titles over the years, leading to Eddie's debut in the 80s, being turned down by NJPW because they thought he was too small even for the junior heavyweight division, unmasking on his own in Mexico, teaming with Art Barr, the ECW and WCW runs, the 1998 car accident that led him to a painkiller addiction, jumping to WWE, getting fired and arrested due to his various issues, separating from his wife, and then his rise from the ashes. Indies, getting clean, returning to WWE, and being so great that the fans organically made him a top star despite WWE never planning it.
Oh yeah, let me get this out of the way first: No Way Out is in the books! It took place at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, which is the oldest major building in the U.S. to still host pro wrestling and drew a turn-away crowd of 11,000 people, many of whom were Hispanic and were going nuts for Eddie. Of course, this wouldn't be Dave Meltzer without him rambling on about the history of California wrestling in the 50s and 60s at the Cow Palace, so let's move along past that. The crowd was actually scary at first because there was a major traffic accident that kept people from getting to the arena. When the show started, it looked frighteningly empty until people were finally able to get there. So the opening matches were missing much of the crowd, which didn't matter because aside from the main event, this PPV sucked.
Other notes from the PPV: Rikishi went to high school in the area and many of his friends and family were there and he was over big. Shaniqua was in the match and got pinned by Rikishi, which was done to write her off TV so she can go back to OVW (never to return, this was her last appearance in WWE). Kurt Angle earned a title shot at Wrestlemania by beating Cena and Big Show, which sets up Angle vs. Eddie at WM20. And then the main event, which went 30 minutes and was fantastic. Goldberg returned (after being thrown out earlier in the night for fighting Lesnar) and gave Brock a spear and Eddie eventually won the match. The crowd went nuts and this match saved an otherwise pretty rough show.
So how is the main event of Wrestlemania 20 shaping up? There was some second guessing about Shawn Michaels pinning Chris Benoit on Raw this week, since Benoit is expected to win the title at WM. Dave defends it, saying it's good to have the future champion eat 1 or 2 pins beforehand, to set up future challengers after he wins the belt. So this seems to imply to Dave that Benoit is winning the title, but then again, they did the same stuff with Booker T last year before his match with Triple H and we saw how that all worked out. It's also expected that this WM20 Benoit/Triple H/Michaels match will be a ladder match and Dave thinks that's a bad idea because even if Benoit wins, he doesn't get the rub of pinning or submitting the champion, which he needs (of course, the ladder match plans end up getting scrapped). Edge is expected to return soon after Wrestlemania and Dave thinks he should feud with (and beat) Triple H in his first feud back. Because that way, Edge would be established as a main eventer and have a ready-built feud with Triple H when he (inevitably) wins the title back (nah, Edge ain't getting anywhere close to a singles feud with Triple H anytime soon lol. Dude comes back and immediately returns to the same midcard he was in before he got hurt. Still got another couple years before that main event scene comes calling).
One other WM20 random news bit: some Japanese magazine is reporting that Steve Austin is going to be the special referee for the Goldberg/Lesnar match. Total rumor for now and Dave hasn't heard that anywhere else, but that's the word.
Wrestling vs. MMA continues to be the big thing in Japan, with NJPW, PRIDE, and K-1 all running major shows on the same night and airing on different TV networks against each other. On the NJPW side of things, Hiroyoshi Tenzan captured the vacant IWGP title after winning 3 bloody matches in a one-night tournament but....it may not have been the plan? In the semi-final, Tenzan hit Yuji Nagata with a moonsault, hitting him hard in the head with his knee and seemingly knocking him out legit. Tenzan pinned him abruptly and then there was a looooooooong intermission. Dave's heard 2 different stories on this. One is that the intermission was so long because they were trying to figure out what to do backstage for the next match, because Nagata was supposed to win the whole tournament and the title, meaning Tenzan and Genichiro Tenryu had to put together a match real quick for the finals. The other story is that Nagata being "knocked out" was a storyline and Tenzan was the planned winner all along. Dave doesn't know but either way, Tenzan is champ now and it seemingly sets up a match with former champ Shinsuke Nakamura when he's healthy (nope, Tenzan loses the title less than a month after this to Kensuke Sasaki). For what it's worth, they did a very similar angle earlier in the show that definitely was an angle, so doing the same thing in another match makes no sense. Also, after Tenzan won the title, he was confronted by Manabu Nakanishi to set up a match. Considering Nakanishi has been feuding with Nagata, it makes more sense that this would have been an angle planned for Nagata rather than Tenzan. But who knows? IWGP title is cursed right now. Elsewhere in the tournament, Hiroshi Tanahashi got a huge upset win over Yoshihiro Takayama, as his star continues to rise.
"Dr. Death" Steve Williams is expected to do an MMA fight with K-1 soon as well, and Dave thinks that's a bad idea. Maybe 20 years ago, when he was younger and MMA hadn't evolved yet, he might have stood a chance. But now, at 42-years-old with no real fighting experience, he's going to get slaughtered against any real fighter (indeed, he faces Alexey Ignashov and loses in 22 seconds, and then reveals he has throat cancer immediately after).
Brutus Beefcake checked himself into rehab this week when his cocaine caused a major incident. Beefcake has been working at a Boston subway station and apparently left his baggie of cocaine on the counter of his ticket booth. Someone saw it, suspected it might be anthrax , and reported it, and they EVACUATED THE FUCKING SUBWAY STATION. Ahahahahahaha oh man this is gold. If you're not old enough to remember, there were some major anthrax attacks a couple years before this so America was terrified about anthrax for awhile. Anyway, Beefcake later admitted it was his and, presumably, was fired from his job. The story was all over Boston media last week, and it was reported Beefcake was making $25k-per-year as a ticket taker and that he owes more than $57k to the IRS. So yeah, he's in rehab now.
In less fun news, Jake Roberts was arrested for animal cruelty following the death of his 12-foot pet snake, the latest in a long line of Damiens. Animal welfare officers received a tip from neighbors that the snake was being mistreated. When they got to his place, they found the snake neglected and starved. They took the snake away for medical attention, but it died two days later. Roberts has denied any wrongdoing. Goddammit Jake. I'm glad the man got his life back in order and I try not to hold people's decades-old misdeeds against them that were done when they were in a dark place but I'm also an animal lover and this story enrages me. We're going to hear about it several times throughout 2004 also.
ROH held its 2nd anniversary show this week. The show was built around a one-night tournament for the new Pure Wrestling title, which is a gimmick where the wrestlers are only allowed three rope breaks, no closed fists, etc. AJ Styles beat Jimmy Rave, Matt Stryker, and CM Punk in the finals to win the title. Elsewhere on the show, Samoa Joe retained his ROH title, but suffered a bad cut on his hand that he had to go to the hospital for after the show. Davey Boy Smith's son Harry Smith is supposed to debut at the next ROH show and it's expected Teddy Hart will return as well, since they've squashed their issues.
Toronto trainer and former wrestler Ron Hutchison (who trained Edge, Christian, and Trish Stratus among others) is involved in a new PPV venture in which naked women wrestle in cages or something. The shows are going to be hosted by Carmen Electra (this becomes the Naked Women's Wrestling League and it's basically exactly what it sounds like. Carmen Electra ended up suing them later over money. You'll have to find your own links for this one).
inDemand PPV has a listing for a TNA PPV called "Bound for Glory" scheduled for April and lists Randy Savage and Chynna (new spelling) as the big stars on the show. Well, despite tentatively hoping for it, there's no PPV scheduled for that date as plans fell through again. This is the 3rd time TNA has tried to schedule a major PPV event only to have to scratch the date, which is not helping their credibility with PPV providers. Randy Savage has been telling people he doesn't have a deal in place with TNA, despite talks, so they probably shouldn't be advertising him, but seems they won't learn their lesson. Kevin Nash has told people he recently started watching the show so that he can get familiar with the company but has said everything about it, except Mike Tenay, is minor league. Nash likes Tenay. As for Chyna, negotiations fell through with her too. She wants more money than they think she's worth and she also made it clear she doesn't want to do anything physical, which, I mean......it's a wrestling company. So that's kind of a dealbreaker. Unrelated note: despite all their public issues recently, Chyna and Sean Waltman are reportedly back together.
Dave complains about 2 recent commercials he saw on TV for TNA's weekly PPVs. The first commercial is the one they've been airing with Hulk Hogan voiceover and by continuing to air it, they're misleading people into thinking Hogan is with them. The other is a commercial saying TNA is the only place to see Sting, which is further misleading people into thinking that the guy who has only had 4 matches with the company and isn't under contract will be there every Wednesday. As of now, there's no indication that he's ever coming back.
Jeff Jarrett took an indie booking recently to defend the NWA title against Dory Funk Jr. and it was a bit of a mess. For starters, Jarrett's wife was due to give birth that week and she wasn't super thrilled that Jeff left to go take an indie booking. Then TNA was supposed to promote the show but they didn't. They filmed it and planned to air some of it on their show, but the footage wasn't usable for some reason. Also, the show only drew 190 fans which wasn't enough to even cover Jarrett's booking fee (and probably why they didn't want to use the footage. Funk, who booked the show, stopped payment on the check to Jarrett, claiming he didn't do his part by having TNA promote the show.
More on Don Callis leaving TNA. As noted, he recently got his MBA and was offered a job that was too good to turn down. When ECW went out of business in 2001, Callis decided he never wanted to be dependent upon pro wrestling ever again for a paycheck so he went back to school to get his business degree. Dave says Callis and Jim Mitchell are pretty much the only people in wrestling who seemed to learn a lesson from ECW and WCW folding 3 years ago and both men have worked hard to make backup career plans as a result.
Jonny Fairplay is trying to get fellow Survivor castmate Rupert Boneham to appear for a match with him in TNA. That would probably get some mainstream press, but Boneham isn't allowed to do any TV until after "Survivor: All-Stars" finishes airing so it'll be a few months if it happens at all (never happened).
Shawn Michaels suffered a torn ACL a few weeks back, but he's working through it because he's in the main event storyline for Wrestlemania (he ends up working with it for the next 4 months and making it worse every week before finally taking time off).
WWE financials for last quarter are out and on paper, they made a profit. But it took some maneuvering to get there. Live attendance is down 27% from the same time last year, and PPV and TV revenue is also in decline by millions of dollars (plus the cancelation of Tough Enough was another hit of almost $3 million). So how were they profitable, you ask? Because the Ric Flair DVD set and Steve Austin autobiography both did big numbers, but the real reason is that they cut a bunch of costs. Office and talent layoffs and other administrative expenses totaling some $18 million were made in order to hit profitability this quarter. So on paper, they're still strong, but once you look below the surface, you start seeing how things are looking ominous.
Notes from 2/16 Raw: one of the best Raws in a long time and a hell of a main event. There was a backstage segment with Bischoff talking shit about Vince, only for Vince to be behind him. It's leading to something but Dave isn't sure what. All he knows is that whatever this Vince vs. Bischoff thing is, apparently it's scheduled to end soon and not be a Wrestlemania program (indeed, it leads to a match on next week's Raw: the one and only time Vince McMahon and Eric Bischoff had a match against each other). During the women's match, Victoria was wearing an outfit that showed off her ass, and Jerry Lawler made sure to talk about it for the entirety of the 2 minute match. And the main event saw the first ever singles match between Chris Benoit and Shawn Michaels, two wrestlers that many feel have been among the best in the world for the last decade. They didn't disappoint, going 20+ minutes in a 4+ star match.
Notes from next week's Smackdown tapings: first show with Eddie Guerrero as champion, with a heavily Hispanic audience in Fresno, and holy shit was the reaction incredible. It also saw the full Kurt Angle heel turn, with him turning on Guerrero to build up to their match at Wrestlemania.
Kanyon was released by WWE this week, which wasn't a surprise. He hasn't been used well, or much at all, lately. He's got the right size, look, and in-ring skills but apparently they weren't happy with his lisp and New York accent. Kanyon posted online about it, saying he hasn't been happy with the direction of his career in WWE ("how could he?" asks Dave) but gave no hint as to what he'd do next. He'd been occasionally working matches on Velocity in the last year and his last major appearance on TV was on Smackdown where he came out of a box acting flamboyantly gay and getting beaten nearly to death by Undertaker as a result. And boy, isn't that an ugly story in retrospect? And it's gonna get uglier later in 2004. (Also, unbeknownst to people at the time, he had attempted suicide about 6 months before this in 2003 and sadly would succeed at it in 2010). TNA is interested in both Chris Kanyon and Spanky (Brian Kendrick) but both have 90-day non-competes from their WWE deals and WWE is enforcing it. Worth noting that WWE doesn't enforce those non-competes for other indies or even international promotions. At this point, the clause pretty much exists only for people who want to go to TNA.
Various other WWE news & notes: Ernest "The Cat" Miller was has also been released. The new "Monday Night Wars" DVD set is selling out everywhere and is hard to find in stores and even Amazon is sold out. Shane McMahon and his wife Marissa had their first child this week, officially making Vince and Linda grandparents.
WWE is doing a $5 million ad campaign for Wrestlemania. To make up $5 million, they would have to do 220,000 extra buys. Let's assume that, with no outside ad campaign, they'd do 500,000 buys minimum. So to make it worthwhile, now they'd need to do 720,000 to break even. That being said, many of the ads are going to air on Turner networks (TBS, TNT, etc.) because WWE is already obligated to buy ads with them. As part of the purchase of WCW in 2001, a part of the deal was that they would agree to spend several million buying ads on Turner networks and other properties. Even the print ads are going to be in magazines and newspapers owned by the Time Warner/AOL team so this is already money they had to spend anyway, but they're targeting it all towards pushing one big event.
There's heat on Tough Enough winner Linda Miles, aka Basham's manager Shaniqua. The feeling is that she didn't grow up as a fan, so she doesn't really have a respect for wrestling and doesn't take it seriously enough. She was a star college basketball athlete and they were hopeful that they could translate that into wrestling skills, but the feeling is she isn't really giving it her all. She also got fined for no-showing a training session which she apparently got pretty pissed about, saying she already didn't make enough money to be receiving fines on top of it. Dave says she grew up as a legit athlete, and then made it to WWE where they immediately urged her to get breast implants and then put her into a bunch of lingerie and told her to act like a dominatrix. Dave says it's no wonder she doesn't have a respect for wrestling. All she's seen of it so far doesn't leave a whole lot to be respectful of.
Percy Pringle (Paul Bearer) announced he's no longer accepting indie bookings. If someone were to start trying to add 2 and 2 together, they might just come to the conclusion that Bearer is preparing to return to WWE when Undertaker makes his return to the dead man gimmick, but of course, WWE and Undertaker have been staunchly denying that. And as we all know, wrestlers and wrestling companies would never lie about such things.
OVW's next big show will have some WWE involvement, with John Cena vs. Randy Orton, and Edge as the referee. It will also have John Laurinaitis (who has been portrayed as the promotion's evil corporate heel) working a tag match which will be his first match since retiring from AJPW in 2000. Also, OVW is doing another show in April which is to mark the 30th anniversary of a deadly 1974 Tornado Outbreak which was one of the deadliest tornado storms in American history and which hit Louisville particularly hard. Main event of that show, you ask? Tornado tag match.
Last week, when reviewing Smackdown, Dave was quite amused by the exchange between Kurt Angle and Big Show, in which Show told Angle he eats pieces of crap like him for breakfast and Angle responded with "You eat crap for breakfast?" Well, turns out that joke was taken pretty much verbatim from the movie Happy Gilmore, so Dave retracts credit from whichever WWE writer came up with it and instead gives credit to whoever saw Happy Gilmore and thought that line was hilarious. (Happy Gilmore came out in 1996 and this is 2004. And this very much feels like a joke Vince, who famously lives in a bubble and always finds out about pop culture trends long after they've passed, would love.)
WWE is getting Tom Prichard to do hands-on personal training with Matt Morgan because they desperately want him to get better. Morgan is well-liked in the company and everyone wants him to succeed because they (Vince) love his look, but it's become glaringly apparent that he was called up to the main roster way too soon and he's not picking up things as quickly as they'd hoped after throwing him into the deep water. For what it's worth, there's some frustration about this because everybody (except one person) knew Morgan wasn't ready and tried to keep him for more time in OVW, but ya know how that goes.