March 01, 2004
- There's a ton of optimism in WWE right now heading into Wrestlemania 20. Raw this past week was the biggest crowd they've drawn in months, and every Smackdown house show since Eddie Guerrero won the WWE title has been a legitimate sellout. True, these are house shows in 2,500-seat arenas, but still. WWE only sold out a handful of house shows in all of 2003, even at that level. Basically live attendance is up across the board in recent weeks, which is a good sign after the slow downward spiraling of the last several years. Rock is scheduled to return soon for a tag match with Foley at Wrestlemania and WWE feels they've set the table perfectly for that one and are "salivating at the reaction they expect him to get." Also for Wrestlemania, it's confirmed Steve Austin will referee the Brock Lesnar/Goldberg match and Harley Race is telling people he's accepted an invite to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
- But there's some downsides: Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair are both injured as we head into Mania. Shawn is working on a torn ACL, but he's not taking time off for it. He's in the main event of Wrestlemania and has no intention of missing it. But he's off house shows for now until then. As for Flair, he's got a neck injury and several back issues. He's had inconclusive MRI's and CAT scans in recent weeks, and it's believed to be a ruptured disc or pinched nerve. That's why Flair and Batista dropped the tag titles so abruptly to the random team of Booker T & RVD a couple weeks ago. In the locker room, there's a lot of whispers that at 55, this might be it for Flair (lol if only). Flair is telling people he'll be fine to work Wrestlemania, but he currently has no match scheduled.
- The Rock is scheduled to be getting the traditional Samoan tribal tattoos that cover large parts of the body by the time you read this. It's a very long, painful, and often dangerous process that's not done like the same tattoo shop you walk into in your city. If you recall, Rock's grandfather Peter Maivia, had similar tattoos that covered much of the lower half of his body. We'll see what Rock ends up with. Dave wonders how that's going to go over in Hollywood.
- During the 2/16 Raw episode where Randy Orton punched Mick Foley with several hard shots to the face, the idea was to split him open hardway. There's an old school wrestling technique of a hit across the brow can bust a person open easily if you hit it just right. Orton did not hit it just right. So 7 hard ass legit punches to the mf head ended up injuring Orton's hand and messed up Foley's face and eye but drew no blood. Foley also taped an interview segment afterwards with Coach to air the next week but Vince apparently hated it so much that he refused to air it (ATTENTION: WWE VAULT!!!!). They redid it later in the week with JR hosting instead and Vince liked that a lot better. Guess Foley wasn't the issue.
- Oh dear god, remember in the 2003 issues when Dave would have a slow week, he would publish parts of a History of WWE thing he wrote? Well here's another one. 10,000+ words on the period of late-1991 through early-1992. It seems pretty obvious to me that Dave was working on a book about WWE or something at this time and decided to just publish it piecemeal in the Observer instead. Anyway, this is all steroid era, ring boy scandal, World Bodybuilding Federation, Flair debut, Tuesday in Texas experiment, Billy Graham and Bruno Sammartino drama, culinating around Wrestlemania 8 and preparing for the rises of Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. Another great history piece if you're into that kinda thing.
- Adolfo Tapia, the original La Parka, has publicly announced he is changing his name throughout Mexico to L.A. Park. Basically, he was tired of the legal fights with AAA head Antonio Pena and said he doesn't want the legal battle to drag on and cause anymore trouble with him or his family and just wants to move on with his career. And so it was, he continues as L.A. Park to this day.
- Pro Wrestling NOAH gave extensive coverage on TV to the Observer Awards. They showed a copy of the awards issue and hyped up a big announcement later in the show, which was the reveal that NOAH's TV show was voted best wrestling TV show of the year and that Kenta Kobashi won Wrestler of the Year while the Marufuji/KENTA team won tag team of the year.
- It's sounding more and more like Tenzan pinning Yuji Nagata during the IWGP title tournament was indeed an accident. When Tenzan came down with the moonsault, he hit Nagata with his knee across the face and knocked him out. When the ref counted, Nagata was supposed to kick out but didn't and the ref held up at 2 and it looked bad. After a few seconds of not knowing what to do, Tenzan covered him again and this time the ref counted 3. Tenzan would go on to win the entire tournament (which Nagata was supposed to win). The idea seems to have been Nagata dropping the title to Bob Sapp at an upcoming show, since they felt Nagata could carry Sapp to a solid match. Now Tenzan has to do it and they're not as confident about that (no worries, Tenzan will be losing that title to Kensuke Sasaki in a week, and then Sasaki ends up being the one to lose it to Sapp 2 weeks later, but we'll get there).
- Antonio Inoki had a big 61st birthday party in Japan which had most of NJPW's biggest stars in attendance, as well as several K-1 fighters and, for some reason, Steven Seagal. Sure why not. First person that can find me a picture of Inoki and Seagal together wins.....uh...my gratitude I guess.
- Kevin Nash and Scott Hall reunited for their first matches in a long time at the UPW 5th anniversary show. It was a charity show that they agreed to work for free "and they worked about that hard" Dave jokes. It was the first time they'd teamed together in about two years, since 2002 when both were in WWE. Nash came out and "joked" that they were scheduled for the main event but they wanted to catch their flights early so they decided to do the match in the middle of the card. Then they goofed off through a brief mostly comedy match against Tom Howard and Christopher Daniels, which saw Hall get pinned by Howard (Hall sure never had an issue doing jobs). Then Nash made a big show of laying down so Daniels could hit him with a moonsault, which the crowd chanted bullshit at. They joked around some more and Nash got on the mic and admitted no one was taking the match seriously. Vince McMahon also sent a tape in which aired and had him congratulating promoter Rick Bassman on 5 years of UPW (which has been a farm system for WWE in the past). There was also an "angle" between Ken Shamrock and Tank Abbott, who was shitfaced drunk, with a big pull apart brawl and both guys yelling about wanting to fight each other in UFC. This wasn't a planned angle and Dana White apparently called up Shamrock afterwards to ask him "hey wtf?" and Shamrock said it wasn't planned, Abbott was drunk, and they just kinda did it on the fly and it was more shoot than angle. Abbott's UFC contract has expired and there's no word on that fight actually happening. Shinsuke Nakamura was at the show and reportedly didn't pay attention to anything except the Shamrock/Abbott deal.
- Hulk Hogan's best friend, radio host Bubba The Love Sponge, was fired by ClearChannel after amassing more than $750,000 in indecency fines from the FCC, the largest amount in broadcast history. Bubba is like a low budget wannabe Howard Stern in the same way that XPW was a wannabe ECW: a cheap imitation of the most extreme stuff and without understanding any of the nuance or genius that made ECW/Stern what it was. Typical shock jock shit. Dave wonders where Hogan is going to run to now whenever he needs to float a bullshit story out to the public.
- Cody Runnels, the youngest son of Dusty Rhodes, won his 2nd straight high school state wrestling championship. Dusty, his brother Dustin, and DDP were all in attendance. Cody finished high school with a 101-2 record and has apparently already been planning for years to go into pro wrestling. So we might be seeing more of this kid some day.
- On TNA recently, Jonny Fairplay cut a promo trashing Joanie Laurer (aka Chyna). To those watching, it probably looked like the setup for an angle, but nope. It was just a straight up burial after negotiations between her and TNA fell apart because she reportedly made exhorbitent requests. So now she's not coming in. Fairplay had lines in the promo about her demanding first class tickets for herself and her agent, and that's true. There was talk at one point about using taped phone conversations between Chyna and TNA officials during the segment in order to further embarrass her but thankfully cooler heads prevailed there. In other news, what the fuck, TNA?
- The next TNA show has a match featuring "Team Canada" which will consist of Teddy Hart, Petey Williams (who Dave has never seen), and Jack Evans who is a high flyer that was trained by Bryan Alvarez. The team will be managed by Scott D'Amore.
- TNA has been using Juventud Guerrera illegally. He's supposed to get a work visa to work shows for them but he hasn't and instead has been coming into the country as a tourist who's not there to do business. Problem is, Guerrera has been red-flagged at border patrol for this in the past and so he has to be very careful about it. It's worked out so far but it's a risk every time TNA books him that he might not be able to make it.
- Notes from latest TNA taping: Vince Russo is back in TNA, this time on TV as a babyface with no real explanation. He's also working on booking again, as this past week's show was a mix of Russo and Dutch Mantell. Florida local wrestler Roderick Strong debuted for the company and got good reviews and will probably be back. CM Punk has been given more promo time recently and has been knocking it out of the park (Punk's days in TNA are coming to an end very soon). And that was mostly it for the show. It was tough for all the wrestlers because once again, the crowd was packed with ICP fans who were only there to see them, as ICP continues to be far and away TNA's biggest draw.
- Bret Hart and Vince McMahon had another conversation this week about Hart possibly appearing at Wrestlemania but the issue is now settled. Bret will not be there. They did leave the door open to something in the future and Dave thinks it's inevitable that Hart will appear on WWE TV again sooner or later. But it won't be Wrestlemania this year. For what it's worth, Bruno Sammartino was also finally approached about a Hall of Fame induction, but he turned them down flat.
- New Line Cinema is still really high on Triple H after his work in the Blade Trinity movie. Director David Goyer admitted having reservatons at first, saying, "I was REALLY skeptical" but that New Line Cinema insisted on the casting. But now Goyer can't sing his praises enough, saying he was super cool, has great comedic timing, and they loved him so much that they wrote extra stuff for him during filming. "He totally got it and understands how to make the transition," Goyer said. Between the success of Rock and Triple H, there's been a lot of talk in Hollywood of using more WWE stars. There's talk of Chris Jericho appearing in a sequel for Freddy vs. Jason among other things.
- Goldberg will be in Canada for the next 2 months filming the movie "Santa's Slay" in which he plays a heel Santa. The only day he'll be leaving the set is to fly to New York to work Wrestlemania and then right back to set to continue filming. As of now, the Wrestlemania match with Brock is still scheduled to be Goldberg's last date with the company. Dave fully expects special referee Steve Austin to give Goldberg a stunner on the way out the door. The movie schedule is also what's preventing Goldberg from working the upcoming HUSTLE II show in Japan but he's hoping to work their 3rd show in May. He also wants to continue wrestling in the U.S. but it's pretty obvious he's ready to leave WWE, and TNA can't afford him, so Dave doesn't know where else he can go.
- Notes from 2/19 Smackdown: Of the two-hour show, a good 90 minutes of it was to build the Kurt Angle vs. Eddie Guerrero match for Wrestlemania and it was well over an hour into the show before we had a segment that didn't feature one or the other. One thing you gotta give WWE, they're going all the way with Eddie and pretty much spent the entire damn episode establishing him as The Guy. Elsewhere on the card, John Cena's babyface character isn't working and the crowd was turning on him and booing him at times (my guy, you better get used to that). Lesnar cut a promo about losing the title and almost seemed like he was about to break down and cry before challenging Goldberg. Dave thinks it was completely the wrong look for Lesnar's character (don't worry, he'll be gone in 2 weeks anyway). Show ended with Angle finally turning heel on Eddie in ruthless fashion, leaving him a bloody mess in a great angle.
- Notes from 2/23 Raw: another great show and the largest Raw crowd in months. Lots of backstage segments to build up for the main event of Eric Bischoff vs. Vince McMahon, with them showing the old WCW footage of Bischoff challenging Vince to a fight in 1998. Bischoff had to spend the entire show acting afraid of what was going to happen to him when he faces Vince. Dave really likes this Trish/Christian/Jericho storyline, with Christian in particular being pretty great. The Biscoff/Vince main event was pretty much awful and had Vince no-selling Bischoff's kicks and choking him out until Brock Lesnar showed up and led to a big non-finish.
- Edge's return to the ring has been delayed another month or so because he injured his ankle during training. Dave thinks it's vital that they make Edge's return a big deal and thinks Triple H should put him over in his first feud back to really establish him again as a top guy (don't hold your breath).
- Brock Lesnar, apparently fed up with the travel, has leased a small plane and hired one of his friends who's a licensed pilot, to fly him to all the shows. He has first class travel in his contract but apparently that's not far enough away from people, so instead WWE is just paying him the extra money they would be using for his first class tickets and Brock is using it to pay a pilot (yeah, this dude's at a breaking point).
- Stacy Keibler did an interview with a Baltimore radio station and addressed several things: she talked about why she turned down Playboy and said they told her the door is always open in the future. She noted that she and her boyfriend Test are both moving to Los Angeles soon with plans to pursue acting, which Dave thinks is hilarious because Test is easily one of the worst actors in WWE. She said that, after turning down Playboy, WWE booked her into her current storyline where she and Jackie Gayda are jealous of Torrie Wilson and Sable. Stacy notes that she actually wasn't happy with the storyline and that they wanted she and Gayda to go in a lesbian direction, which she wasn't comfortable with and apparently she shot down (boy, doesn't this age well in the wake of the Vince stuff. In later years Jackie Gayda said she believes she was fired for turning down the Playboy offer and that the storyline with her and Stacy was basically punishment booking for both of them. And here's Stacy flat out saying the same thing in 2004 as it was happening). Victoria, on the other hand, has been telling people she would love to pose for Playboy. Stacy also said she never knows what she's doing until she gets to the venue the day of the show and it's especially hard if she's booked to wrestle that night because it gives her so little time to prepare. She admits that she isn't good in the ring, blaming the training she got at the WCW Power Plant, so that's why she doesn't try to do more than she's comfortable with in the ring. She's never had any serious injuries but said she thinks the neck and back pain she has is more than a normal 24-year-old woman should have.
- Amateur wrestling NCAA champion Damion Hahn has apparently gotten some interest from WWE. Hahn says he's currently only interested in training for the Olympics for this year and again in 2008, but might go the WWE route after (yeah this dude never does).
- Kenzo Suzuki, formerly of NJPW and Riki Choshu's nearly dead WJ promotion, is expected to start with WWE after Wrestlemania, using the name Kenzo. He's been at the OVW tapings for weeks already, just observing and studying what makes US fans react.
- VH1 had a show called "Illest Minority Moments" and talked about WWE's portrayal of minorities over the years....in a positive way. RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan talked about growing up loving the Wild Samoans team of "Sika and Tika." And they had other stars like Eddie Guerrero on there praising Vince McMahon for creating racially diverse characters, while showing clips of people like Iron Sheik and Kamala.