Wrestling Observer Rewinder

May 03, 2004

The top story this week in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter is.....not wrestling! PRIDE had a big show that saw Kevin Randleman score a stunning upset knockout over Mirko Cro Cop, who many expected to win the entire months-long Grand Prix tournament. Because he's such a huge draw, PRIDE is already trying to set up another match for Cro Cop that will allow him to re-enter the tournament as an alternate if someone ends up being unable to continue. The same show also had Zero-ONE wrestler and judo champion Naoya Ogawa against Stefan Leko and the jury is out on whether this was a work or shoot. Ogawa has turned down countless shoot fights in the past and he won this match pretty handily, but there's a lot of suspicion that it may have been a work and Leko got paid to do the job. (No one really knows to this day as far as I can tell).
We finally get the long-promised review of Ole Anderson's book and this shit is foreeeeeeever long. Strap in. Ole comes off bitter and out of touch throughout much of the book and Dave is surprised that someone who should have as much knowledge about the business as Ole could come across so clueless throughout so much of the book. He spends so much time complaining about how the business is dying because it's not the same now as it was in 1970 and seems unable to comprehend (or accept) how PPV and the cable TV industry completely changed things. A single WWE PPV now generates more money than an entire year of shows did in the Georgia territory during Ole's prime. Many of the stories here from the 60s and 70s are colorful and entertaining, but they also don't hold up to scrutiny in many cases. Ole claimed that not a single wrestler active today in 2004 would have drawn a dime in the old system, which is such a ridiculous claim that it barely deserves mentioning. This book is a textbook example of someone not realizing that time has passed them by. In fact, it passed him by in 1984 when Vince started going national and Ole didn't know how to keep up. He wrote that TBS were "marks" for paying talent so much money, but of course, if they hadn't, Vince would have just signed away everyone. Ole's response to that is basically, "So what? We'll just create new stars and pay them less." One of the few people Ole praised in his book was Verne Gagne, and of course, Gagne ran the AWA into the ground with that same mentality. Burying your head in the sand and trying to pretend WWF didn't exist in the 1980s wasn't a viable solution, no matter how much Ole still seems to believe it to this day.
Anderson also criticized the shit out of Jim Barnett, claiming his lavish spending is what destroyed the territory. He tore Eric Bischoff a new one, saying his overspending is what put WCW out of business. That's a) not true and b) Bischoff and WCW made more money in both 1997 and 1998 than Georgia made in the entire decade of the 1970s. The credibility issues in this book are all over the place, as Ole continues to try and keep kayfabe at times and completely exaggerates or outright lies on other stuff. And with the advent of the internet and access to historical resources, it becomes incredibly easy to disprove many of his claims. A lot of the typical "we sold out that arena every night for years!" about buildings that they literally never sold out once. Stuff like that. Braggadocious, typical ex-wrestler bullshit. He claimed the Georgia territory paid the wrestlers 35% of the house but court records from lawsuits with Jim Barnett show it was only 15%. Ole, as booker and owner at the time, would know this better than anyone, and outright lies like this make it hard for Dave to trust anything in the book. In fact, Dave spends a lot of this review dropping numbers, stats, and dates that disprove one claim after another. Dave also reached out to several of the people mentioned in the book to get their sides of different stories and the near-unanimous answer Dave got back is that Ole is full of shit (you may recall a few weeks back when Bret Hart wrote in to call bullshit on something Ole wrote about him).
You also don't get much of Ole's later career. Most modern fans only remember him for his time during the Four Horsemen and Ole barely even mentions it or any of his late-80s career, blowing right past all of it. He says there's thousands of Hogans and Flairs out there and they could have easily been replaced. He still sees Randy Savage as a baseball geek who he only hired as a favor to his father and gives Savage no credit for all the success he had and the star he became. He even says Hogan didn't know how to draw money and basically says he was lucky to be in the Wrestlemania 3 match and it was the name Wrestlemania that drew the crowd, not Hogan/Andre. Dave says that might be the case these days, but in 1987, that was not true whatsoever. Claimed Flair wasn't as great a worker as everyone claims and says the wrestlers shouldn't be treated like stars when it's the promoters who make them. Jesus this dude was delusional. Imagine saying that Ric Flair is a shitty worker and Hulk Hogan wasn't a draw. Anyway, Dave's pretty bummed because Ole Anderson should have plenty of interesting historical knowledge and stories to share, and he wishes someone who wasn't as full of shit as Ole had edited this book before it was released.
One final thing to note about this book is that Ole is very bitter about not being inducted into the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame. He writes about it in this book and he's brought it up in nearly every interview he's done to promote it. Dave kind of understands, as Ole has enough credentials that he belongs in the conversation. But he just hasn't gotten the votes. In the book, he writes about the 2001 class (El Satanico, Lizmark, and Bull Nakano particularly) and complains that he wasn't familiar with any of them, so how did they get in but he didn't? He called the voters ignorant (Dave points out that a large majority of those voters are former or active wrestlers, fellow promoters, or others within the business, and many of them worked the same territories Ole did. These "ignorant voters" are his peers). Ole was removed from the ballot in 2002 after getting less than 10% of the votes and while he can blame it on "internet geeks who don't know the business", it was the wrestlers of his era with whom Ole got the least votes. Anyway, Ole's pretty pissed about that, so much so that he basically dedicated a chapter of his book to complaining about it.
Fun fact: the above 4 paragraphs about Ole's book total about 1,000 words. Dave's full review is around 12,000 words. Just so you know how much I'm leaving out on a regular basis.
WWE is getting very agressive in trying to purchase any available pro wrestling video libraries, so they can launch a video-on-demand service. WWE already owns the libraries of WCW (along with the Crockett, Georgia, and Mid-Atlantic libraries they owned), AWA, ECW, and SMW. They're also believed to be on the verge of completing the purchase of the Stampede library. Dave finds it funny that they paid $3 million for the AWA library but they got all of WCW and everything included for $2.5 million. Just goes to show how much of a bargain the WCW deal was. They've approached Mike Graham about the Florida library, but he's rejected them and wants to make money off it himself somehow (WWE eventually gets it). They've also started talks with Kevin Von Erich for the World Class tape library as well as Larry Matysik for whatever remains of the St. Louis tapes. Bill Watts' ex-wife actually got the rights to the Mid-South tape library in her divorce from Bill, but she hasn't been receptive so far to WWE's offers. Dave ponders about other libraries out there (San Francisco, Montreal, etc.) but suspects most of it is long gone since they used to tape over shows and re-use tapes back in those days, so most of that footage no longer exists. Vince McMahon has made it known he wants to be the caretaker of wrestling history (which Dave finds ironic since he spent most of the last 2 decades trying to ignore and re-write said history) and WWE wants to own all this footage under one roof. Dave mentions that NTV in Japan owns most of the AJPW library and may be willing to lease it to WWE but would be highly unlikely to ever sell. If AJPW actually owned the footage themselves, they would probably sell it in a heartbeat because they need the money. AJPW's library has tons of footage featuring most of the biggest American stars in history, and it would be one of the best collections of all if WWE could get it.
Anyway, the latest HUSTLE show takes place next week and is expected to see Toshiaki Kawada defending the AJPW Triple Crown title against Goldberg, with the winner facing Keiji Muto next month at an AJPW show. Dave expects Kawada to win this simply because AJPW can't afford to pay Goldberg to work shows if he were to become champion (don't worry, this match falls apart at the last minute anyway).
Fresh off his WWE release, Sean O'Haire is making his NJPW debut at the upcoming Tokyo Dome show, in the semi-main event, against Hiroshi Tanahashi. O'Haire is being pushed as a K-1 guy so they can keep up the MMA guys vs. pro wrestlers facade. The advance ticket sales for this event are an unmitigated disaster right now and fans responded with pretty much universal disappointment and confusion over O'Haire being revealed as Tanahashi's mystery opponent. This show is gonna bomb.
This year's NJPW Young Lion's tournament was won by Ryusuke Taguchi, who defeated Hirooki Goto and Kazuya Yuasu along his path to winning. NJPW has done 9 Young Lion tournaments throughout the years and 8 or the 9 winners went on to become stars in the business.
Goldberg was a guest on "Best Damn Sports Show...Period" this week and basically burned some bridges. Basically implied that he wouldn't go back to WWE unless Vince was dead and said the top guys in WWE need to do more to protect the lesser stars from Vince. He said Triple H only got to the top because of his marriage to Stephanie. Dave disputes that, pointing out that Triple H had already become a main eventer and world champion before his relationship with Stephanie started. But in the years following, as business collapsed and Triple H was a shell of himself due to injuries, being married to Stephanie probably didn't hurt when it comes to him staying on top.
At the latest ROH show, Brian Danielson beat CM Punk in a match refereed by Ricky Steamboat. ROH is heavily teasing the possibility of a future Punk vs. Steamboat match, but Steamboat has said he doesn't want to be one of those guys who comes out of retirement and disappoints fans. A few nights later, they held another show, this time in Chicago, which saw Punk and Colt Cabana win the tag titles from the Briscoes, with assistance from Ace Steel. Even though all 3 are heels, they were huge babyfaces to the Chicago crowd since they're from there. This was supposed to be the match where Bobby Heenan would have managed Punk & Colt while Jim Cornette would have managed the Briscoes, but when the Rob Feinstein thing happened, Heenan pulled out of all his scheduled ROH dates, and since he wasn't gonna get to work with Heenan, Cornette pulled out too.
The future of the Cauliflower Alley Club banquet may be in doubt due to the behaviors of people at this year's event. Throughout the banquet, half the speeches were all anti-Vince McMahon, anti-WWE, anti-modern wrestling, etc. Just a whole banquet full of Ole Andersons. Anyway, it led to a lot of people who were fed up with all the bitching and complaining and have said they won't have any future involvement in the event if it's just gonna be a place for old people to gather around bitching and moaning. Nick Bockwinkel, one of the key organizers of the event, noted how much different and likely worse off the overall business would be today if Vince hadn't been the last guy standing. With the way cable TV and PPV was going, it was inevitable that only 1 promoter was going to come out on top and nobody thinks Jim Crockett, Bill Watts or Verne Gagne should have been that guy. Could you imagine Verne Gagne trying to navigate the television media rights landscape in 2004? Exactly.
TNA's television deal with FSN is said to be a done deal. TNA is paying for the television time, with the hopes that they will do strong enough ratings in order to strike a better deal down the road. Multiple promotions have tried this in the past, with that same thought process, and it's never once worked out. As of now, the plan is to air at 3pm on Friday but that may change, as Sunday mornings at 11am is also under consideration. Either way, it won't be staggered for time zones, so it if airs at 3pm on the east coast, that'll be noon in California. And if they do the Sunday morning slot, that would be 8am in California. Needless to say, neither is great and probably death on the west coast no matter what. With all the added expense of producing the show weekly, and with flying talent to Orlando, there's a lot of skepticism within the company about this. There's also plans to try and start running house shows, which Dave thinks is an even dumber idea. But if wasting money is what TNA is into, running house shows right now is probably the best way to do it.
TNA has pulled Teddy Hart and Jack Evans from the Team Canada lineup for the upcoming X Cup tournament. Hart has bookings in Japan and TNA didn't want the expense of flying him in. And Evans has been taking ROH dates, so TNA decided not to use him. They are being replaced by newcomers Eric Young and Bobby Rude, who we learn nothing about here. Moving on!
There's a lot of rumors going around that AJ Styles winning the NWA title this week was TNA's way of making good on forcing him to quit ROH**. Not true, as Dave says the title win was planned for more than a month (and even reported in the Observer a few weeks ago). The plan is for AJ to lose it back to Jarrett prior to the debut of the FSN show. Jarrett has insisted on having the title back in time for the TV show debut.
Jim Ross appeared on WWE's Byte This show and talked in depth about several things. Said he considers Steve Austin a friend and is bummed they couldn't come to a deal. Expects Austin to return eventually but thinks he'll explore other options first. He was also negative on the idea of Austin wrestling in Japan and basically trashed the entire industry there. "They're desperate. Japanese pro wrestling is sucking pond water. It’s not drawing. Goldberg went there, maybe once or twice. He did not draw." Dave thinks that's an oversimplification of the Japanese wrestling industry, but it's true that traditional pro wrestling hasn't been drawing well for the major companies and it's true that Goldberg's recent appearances didn't draw well. His first 2 shows with AJPW were big though, and Austin would be as well, at least at first. That being said, from a quality standpoint, NJPW is still pretty good when not doing all the dumb MMA stuff. And NOAH has possibly the best in-ring quality in the world right now (they're also the only promotion drawing consistently well). Ross said he thinks Austin doing anything in Japan would be short-sighted and doubts Austin would do it unless the money was astronomical. Dave's not so sure, as Austin has done interviews recently where he's seemed very open to the possibility, but Ross knows him better than Dave.
Ross also said that Goldberg was offered a new WWE deal and turned it down, but Dave says that's kind of misleading, because it was a lesser, more restrictive deal than he already had. It was a deal designed to be rejected, and WWE knew he would. They simply made him a low-ball offer so they could claim they tried. Ross implied that he expected Lesnar to return to WWE next year if/when he fails to make it in the NFL. Talked about writing an autobiography some day and that he has heard interest from publishers. Mentioned that now that he no longer has to worry about being head of talent relations, he'll have more time to work on it. Said he has had talks with Jeff Hardy about returning and says he belongs in WWE, but a deal still hasn't been made because Jeff still refuses to go to rehab. Despite getting fired for failing multiple drug tests, Jeff has been in denial that he has a drug problem and WWE refuses bring him back until he completes treatment.
Lance Storm is pretty much considering himself retired. His last match was last month against Maven on Sunday Night Heat, which took place in Storm's hometown of Calgary. It was originally supposed to be some kind of squash match against a local jobber but when Richards got word that Storm may be retiring, he asked if he could work the match and put over Storm in his hometown, which he did. Storm said he would have liked to have gone out with a big match but it ended up being a forgettable 6-minute Heat match that wasn't acknowledged as anything special on TV. Storm hasn't been happy and wrote online this week about it: "I have been dissatisfied with my in-ring career for quite a while. I have been lost in the quagmire for the better part of the year, with no direction, no focus, and quite frankly, no forward motion. This isn't anybody's fault so much as it is a compilation of several factors. I have always wanted to be an important part of the product and I had come to the point where I was feeling that I could contribute more outside the ring than I have been inside it." Storm also has bulging discs and has been in a lot of pain after matches lately. Storm said that if his career had any momentum, he would have rehabbed the back injury and worked through it, but since his career is going nowhere in WWE, he doesn't see the point and is ready to hang it up. A lot of wrestlers in Storm's position hope to land agent jobs, but WWE only needs so many agents and those roles are already full (Storm ends up wrestling one more regular WWE match a few weeks after this, again in Calgary. Then he works the first ECW One Night Stand PPV a year later as a favor to Jericho. And then that's it for him in WWE. In the years since, he's worked a few dozen matches in various indies, with his last official match as of this writing being in 2016. But for all intents and purposes, this really was the end of his full-time wrestling career).
Notes from 4/22 Smackdown: still feels like a distant B-show to Raw. At least Booker T stopped calling it the minor league show on TV. Rico and Charlie Haas are tag team champs, even though the gimmick is that Rico keeps flirting with him and Haas acts homophobic and disgusted by him. They really played it up the Rico gay angle on this episode in the typical "haha look at what the gross gay guy is doing!" way that WWE tends to do. They had Paul London play a luchador named El Gran Luchadore, the alleged "Mexican heavyweight champion" and had him out there doing dumb flips while JBL laughed at him and showing a total lack of respect for Lucha Libre. On commentary, Taz said being the champion of Mexico is like being champion of Providence, RI. London is actually half-Mexican and reportedly wasn't super thrilled about this, but he went along with it. Overall, bad show with no good matches. Eddie Guerrero as champion is already feeling stagnant with his only challenger being a guy who was a lower-card tag team nobody for his entire career up until a month ago and John Cena is the only one on the show that seems to have star power right now.
Notes for 4/26 Raw: Kane started a storyline where he has a crush on Lita or something, and he later forcibly kissed her, which probably pales in comparison to whatever Vince was doing backstage in this same era. Jonathan Coachman continued his feud with Tajiri by ordering Tajiri to go get him some eggrolls and lo mein noodles. Dave has a whole rant here about the racism in storylines like this and the tired trope of confusing Japanese and Chinese to get heat and rightfully trashes this whole bit. This did lead to a pretty funny bit later where Tajiri blew the green mist in Triple H's face and blinded him and then Triple H, unable to see, went backstage and started cutting a promo at a fake plant he thought was Bischoff. They showed a clip of Chris Nowinski and Victoria attending a political event and they were shown alongside Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. Wrestling fans, particularly in Topeka, KS, don't tend to be Democrats and this got booed out the arena when it played on the screen. Worth noting Hillary was on CNN's Crossfire show later in the week and talked about it and said she and Bill Clinton used to watch wrestling all the time. Harley Race was at ringside and Randy Orton spit in his face and teased attacking him but it led to a match with Shelton Benjamin at the PPV instead. Main event was Benoit/Edge vs. Batista/Flair in a really good match. Flair is the 2nd best wrestler of his age range working today (Tenryu is ahead of him right now, Dave says) and Batista looked better than he ever has. Crowds still seem cold to Edge since his return though.
Notes for next week's Smackdown tapings: Mordecai debuted in a dark match. He looks like Bizarro Undertaker, with a similar entrance, but everything is white. OVW's Inspector Impact debuted as Kurt Angle's new bodyguard Luther (later Luther Reigns) and he's a guy who's a great talker and a terrible wrestler. So of course, they rushed him to the main roster in a role that requires him to wrestle and doesn't have him talking at all. JBL cut a promo saying it's despicable that Spanish is taught in American schools because illegal immigrants won't learn English. And that's the show in a nutshell.
The WWE Films movie that was scheduled to star Steve Austin is still going forward, but the main role will be recast with a different WWE star. No word on who it's going to be yet, that decision is up to Vince (the movie is The Marine and it ends up being John Cena).
There's a lot of confusion within the company on why WWE fired Sean O'Haire and then brought up Tyson Tomko from OVW as Christian's new bodyguard. O'Haire has more charisma, a better look, and is far ahead of Tomko in-ring, and it basically had everyone wondering, if they wanted to put a big useless guy with Christian, why they didn't just put O'Haire into that spot? (Dave doesn't seem to know this at the time, but I suspect O'Haire's drug issues probably had something to do with it.)
There's also some complaints here about recent character development in WWE. For years, WWE pushed the narrative that the best wrestlers are just people being themselves with the volume cranked to 10 (Austin, Flair, Rock, etc.) - so if that's the case, why are they debuting all these new characters straight out of the mid-80s cartoon era? Eugene, Mordecai, Hirohito, etc.
An SEC review of WWE expenses led to them temporarily suspending trading after it was found that WWE didn't properly report expenses of around $9 million related to the purchase of WCW. It's the $2.5 million that they spent to purchase WCW's assets, an additional $5 million WWE agreed to spend on advertising on AOL/Time Warner stations, and some additional costs related to paying off various expenses and licensing debts WCW had left when they folded. WWE has since adjusted the books and things are all right in the world again I guess.
Former referee Tim White was back on the road with WWE again this week as an agent. He tried to make a return to refereeing at Wrestlemania, but his shoulder popped out of its socket when he counted the finish of the Christian/Jericho match. Even that shouldn't have happened, as White had already tried returning to ref months earlier and had re-injured his shoulder then too. But Jericho and Christian requested he be the referee for their match and he was so honored that he tried to push through and do it anyway and hurt himself worse. He needs yet another shoulder surgery and this is probably the end of his refereeing career.
Jim Cornette has been ordered by doctors not to talk at all for the next 2 weeks due to inflamed vocal chords. He reportedly made it 3 days.
Brock Lesnar's agent told a Minneapolis newspaper that 14 NFL teams have expressed interest in attending Lesnar's upcoming tryout to see if this 290 pound man really can run a legit 4.65 40-yard dash as has been reported. The agent also said Lesnar earned $10 million during his 4 years as a wrestler and Dave is immediately calling bullshit. 2 of those years were before he was even on the main roster and he was making around $250k a year for each of those (which was still the biggest developmental contract ever, but nowhere near 7 figures). That would mean he made the other $9.5 million in the last 2 years. And Dave knows for a fact that he was making $1 million a year downside for 2003 and 2004. So no matter how you fudge the numbers, you're not getting anywhere close to $10 million even if you factor in merch and other stuff.
Jerry Lawler has talked with Jim Ross about running his promotion in Memphis as a developmental territory for WWE. They had a deal like that in the past, but it fell apart as the territory collapsed in the wake of Lawler quitting the WWE in 2001 when Stacy Carter was fired.
Sable has been out for the last couple of months due to one of her breast implants springing a leak that needed surgery to fix. She has over a year left on her contract but it's uncertain when or if she will return. Lesnar leaving the company didn't help her status any, which I think is the first time the Lesnar/Sable relationship has been acknowledged here.
WWE sent an apology letter to the Cauliflower Alley apologizing for the behavior of Chavo Guerrero Sr. (as mentioned last week). Chavo wasn't there on WWE's behalf of anything, but since he's currently signed and made an ass out of himself, I guess they felt the need to apologize anyway (he will be getting fired very shortly).
High Falls Brewing Company in Rochester was the company working with WWE on producing a Stone Cold-branded beer. High Falls head Tom Hubbard said they had done a lot of work on it but now that Austin has left WWE, he doesn't expect the beer to ever happen. He did say that WWE had already produced t-shirts for the beer though, that's how far along they had gotten before Austin left (wonder if any of those shirts still exist, seems like that'd be a good collector's item).