May 24, 2004
- Judgment Day was a legit sellout and was a pretty nothing show until the main event. The RVD/Mysterio vs. Dudleyz opener was solid but everything else was basically a forgettable waste of time. And funny enough, the opening match had its finish given away halfway through when RVD's music started playing in the middle of the match, and sure enough, RVD got the pin a few minutes later. Mordecai made his in-ring debut against Scotty 2 Hotty, with a big Undertaker-like entrance. Crowd didn't care at all and this didn't get over. Rico & Charlie Haas retained the tag titles in a match where neither opponent (Billy Gunn or Bob Holly) wanted to be in the ring with Rico because OMG GAY, YUCK! Chavo Guerrero regained the cruiserweight title by beating Jacqueline with one hand tied behind his back. John Cena beat Rene Dupree and Cena got possibly the biggest pop of the show for his entrance. They might have themselves a star there. Undertaker beat Booker T, who was in backstage segments with creepy dark rooms and candles and came out with a bag of magic voodoo dust. Just dumb shit like that. Michael Cole repeatedly kept hammering everyone over the head about how this was Undertaker's first match on PPV since Wrestlemania, leading Dave to point out that this was the first PPV match since Wrestlemania for literally EVERYONE ON THE SHOW. And then, the bloodbath main event.
- Pepper Gomez obituary. 11,000 words. Nope. Sorry. Too many wrestlers have died in 2003 and 2004 and I feel like I've recapped dozens of obituaries since I started these up again. The ones that are newsworthy, I'll dive into. But this is a long-retired guy who died in his late 70s. Super interesting story, it's a great obit, highly recommend everyone go read it. But I can't. I just can't.
- UFC head Dana White officially stripped BJ Penn of the welterweight title, claiming Penn violated his UFC contract by accepting a fight in K-1. Dave talks about how UFC is kinda the ECW of the MMA wars right now. They create all these new stars, but they don't pay as much as K-1 or PRIDE, so they're constantly losing fighters to one of those other companies. Kinda funny that, in this case, the ECW of MMA ended up winning the war.
- Former FMW star Fumihiro "Sambo" Asako died at age 40 this week from complications of diabetes and goddammit with the obituaries! Anwyay, he was pretty much a permanent midcard guy in FMW, retired, came back for a brief run in 1999, retired again, lost a leg and vision in one eye due to diabetes, and had been in bad health in recent years.
- If he hadn't been injured, the original plan for Goldberg vs. Toshiaki Kawada at the HUSTLE show was for the match to end in a double count out, which would have been one of the first times Dave can remember that a Triple Crown title match would have ended in a screwy finish. Basically, HUSTLE doesn't want to job out Goldberg because of how much they're paying him, and AJPW can't afford to pay him on their own, so they couldn't let him win their title. Hence the planned finish. Why they would even book the match in the first place if they couldn't have a real finish remains to be explained. Regarding Kevin Nash and Scott Hall working the show, both men were originally asking for $50k each but HUSTLE was only willing to go up to $25K each so talks fell apart. Then, a few days before the show, they found out Goldberg had to pull out and got desperate. As a result, they threw massive money (reportedly $75k each) for both of them to come in at the last minute. Needless to say, HUSTLE is kind of a mess and Hall and Nash made out like bandits (Foley also).
- Speaking of messes, AJPW started its new tour this week and yikes. Crowds were sparse, and money is so tight that they had almost no foreigners on the cards. Many members of the front office are said to be behind on pay and an upcoming house show was canceled due to low ticket sales. How this company ever survived past 2000 and continues to this day will never cease to amaze me.
- More details on IWGP champion Bob Sapp facing Kazuyuki Fujita in a K-1 match. K-1 head Sadaharu Tanigawa announced that the fight will be a unification match. Sapp is the IWGP champion and Fujita actually held the title back in 2001 and never lost it (he was forced to vacate due to injury), so evidently that's what he means by "unification" match. Tanigawa said that since Sapp is under K-1 contract, they can decide if his fights are IWGP title matches or not. NJPW, as you might expect, wholeheartedly disagrees with this and says that Sapp's next title defense is in June against Hiroshi Tanahashi and whatever he's doing with K-1 has nothing to do with their belt. NJPW obviously doesn't want their world title defended in a shoot, especially one where Sapp is by no means guaranteed a victory. Sapp has been doing everything except training for the last few months, between wrestling, media appearances, filming movies, etc. And Fujita is no slouch (Sapp will soon learn this the hard way).
- The movie about Rikidozan being filmed right now will star Sol Kyung-gu, a major movie star in South Korea. His previous film Silmido was a massive hit, becoming the first film in South Korea to draw more than 10 million people to theaters. Ironically enough, having a Korean actor play Rikidozan fits because although it was largely a secret in Japan, Rikidozan actually wasn't Japanese. He was born in North Korea and kept that secret for most of his life (anyway, this Rikidozan movie ended up being a flop in South Korea when it came out, but the actor Sol Kyung-gu ended up gaining 40 extra pounds for the role and did all his lines in Japanese and got rave reviews for his performance)
- Bob Sapp has a role in the upcoming movie "Elektra" starring Jennifer Garner. No word on what the role is yet (he plays a character named Stone). Sapp is also in talks to play Ben Grimm/The Thing in an upcoming "Fantastic Four" movie as well as an unknown role in "The Transporter 2" (these last two didn't happen). He's been in Los Angeles this past week doing screen tests.
- Austin and Goldberg were at the Lakers/Spurs playoff game this week and were interviewed together on the Lakers' radio network. Goldberg was adament about not going back to WWE while Austin gave more of a "never say never" response. The two were hanging out this week to discuss future plans for a possible match/PPV special they may do together.
- Jesse Ventura talked again about running for President, saying he was disappointed in George Bush and opposes the Iraq war. Dave notes that Ventura is extremely thin-skinned and spent most of his time as Minnesota governor beefing with the local media and says he wouldn't stand a chance under the national media spotlight if he ran for President, he would be throwing temper tantrums daily. (Could you imagine?) Ventura also complained about his MSNBC show being canceled because he claims he was too controversial. The real reason is that MSNBC had to delay the show repeatedly because Venutra proved to be an awful TV show host during pre-production testing and then, when it finally did debut, it got abysmal ratings.
- It's finally officially official: the TNA/Fox Sports Net TV show was announced this week. The show will be called Impact and airs every Friday at 3pm across all time zones. Shows will be taped at Universal Studios in Orlando on Thursdays, as it seems like Panda Energy is willing to continue spending money. There's obvious concern about the 3pm time slot, but TNA officials are trying to sell talent on the idea that it's just a starting point and they will move to a primetime slot if ratings are strong. The problem with primetime on FSN is that anything scheduled would be constantly pre-empted by local sports in multiple markets, which is FSN's primary focus. Dave notes that ECW, which was far more popular than TNA, was in a better time slot on a bigger network (TNN) and even they never came close to the lowest rated C-shows that WWE and WCW were airing at the time. And this TNA deal with FSN is worse in every way. There's also the issue that FSN isn't available in 2 of the top 10 markets (Philadelphia and Baltimore/DC). TNA will have local syndication deals in both of those cities but in the DC area, the show will air at 4am on Saturdays. Sooooo....
- Vince Russo claims he is entering seminary school, saying he's frustrated with wrestling. He says he was in a deep depression while in WCW and that TNA has been no different and the wrestling business is full of paranoid politicians constantly backstabbing each other and he's had enough (I give Russo shit from time to time, but he really did get religious during this time, really did attend seminary school, and really did pretty much disconnect from the wrestling business not long after this. And I'm not a religious person, but I salute anyone who walks away from a toxic situation to do something they feel is better for themselves).
- TNA is continuing to distance itself from the NWA name. They set up a new website (TNAWrestling.com) and have transitioned to using it rather than the NWATNA.com site they were using. Most "NWA" references have been scrubbed from the site and other material for the company, with most just referring to "TNA Wrestling."
- Jimmy Hart was on a radio show and once again teased the possibility of Hulk Hogan in TNA, which Dave says is "the second worst thing they could do." Later in the interview, Hart also teased that Ultimate Warrior may come in, "which is the worst thing they could do." Unless any of these people have signed contracts, teasing them is a terrible idea, especially considering how bad Hogan burned them previously. He also teased Steve Austin, and Dave shuts that down right away, noting that Austin has never had anything good to say about either of the Jarrets. He adds that he'd be less shocked to see Bruno Sammartino vs. Bret Hart at Wrestlemania next year than he would be if Austin actually went to TNA.
- Vince McMahon and Steve Austin talked this week and Vince reportedly said, "if it was up to him" he would gladly give Austin the rights to the Stone Cold name but that the stockholders would never agree to it. Dave isn't buying that for a second and it doesn't sound like Austin did either. Austin has been working with agent Barry Bloom lately and WWE is actually thrilled about that because they believe Bloom will be easier to deal with than Austin's previous reps, who they feel talked him out of the company based on bad advice. Bloom is also the guy who represents all the wrestlers (Goldberg, Hall, Nash, Foley, etc.) that have worked for HUSTLE lately, so this could also open that door.
- There was some concern out of the recent Judgment Day PPV in Los Angeles about the crowd. The show was sold out but the crowd was kinda lukewarm all night, and furthermore, not a single of the usual celebrities who attend WWE events when they're in L.A. was there, which led to some murmurring backstage about "Hey, are we not cool anymore?"
- DDP, Konnan, and Sean Waltman were all backstage at Judgment Day though! Waltman is desperately trying to get back in and apparently talked at length with Triple H about coming back. Seems like that might have been an awkward situation given the Chyna factor around this time. Konnan was also fishing around and may have been offered an announcing job but he still has TNA ties currently. Konnan is also wanting to wrestle, not just be an announcer, and WWE ain't biting on that despite both Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero going to bat for him. DDP seemingly was just visiting and doesn't actually seem to have any interest in returning.
- Notes from 5/13 Smackdown: decent show, which is better than it's been in recent weeks. A new Kenzo Suzuki vignette aired and he's going by his real name now that the Hirohito gimmick has been dropped. Jacqueline cut a promo talking about how proud she was to be the first female cruiserweight champion, leading Dave to point out that WCW actually did it twice (Madusa and Daffney) and before anyone screams "different companies!!!" you should know that the WWE cruiserweight title is a continuation of the WCW one. Same lineage. Rene Dupree cut a promo talking about how America is hated all over the world and Dave says that one might be a little too close to the truth this week (context: this is right around the time of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and yeah, that wasn't a good look for America to say the least).
- Notes from 5/17 Raw: another great show in an ongoing streak of stellar Raws. Wasn't perfect though. The Orton/Shelton Benjamin promo had another one of those race-baiting "people like you" lines directed towards Shelton. The Triple H/Booker T angle wasn't that long ago and Dave's been watching wrestling long enough to know where that's going and says shit like this makes him embarrassed to be a fan. This was followed by more of the Kane-trying-to-force-Lita-to-be-with-him storyline that Dave also hates. And yet somehow, this still turned into a great show despite those things. We got a 4-star tag title match followed by the surprise return of the Rock, who came out for a feel-good segment with Eugene. And a really good battle royal to close the show.
- Paul Heyman missed Smackdown and the PPV because his girlfriend is about to give birth (that would be his son, he already had a daughter born two years earlier. No idea if it's the same mother. This story just made me realize that Heyman has somehow kept his private life VERY hidden throughout the years).
- While in San Jose for Raw, Christian and Chris Jericho apparently left a big message on the dry erase board in support of the Calgary Flames hockey team. The 2004 Stanley Cup playoffs were happening at this time and the Flames were playing against San Jose in that building, so this was basically just the Canadian wrestlers trolling the San Jose Sharks.
- Chris Nowinski's career looks like it may be over, as he has still not made much progress on his post-concussion symptoms. It's similar to the concussion issues that ended Bret Hart's career. There's talk of keeping him onboard in a PR role but that's to be determined. Nowinski has been working with multiple concussion doctors and even gave a speech at an event this week regarding the effects of concussions and how football players often lie about them. Nowinski wants people to realize concussions are a serious issue (and so it begins. Nowinski has spent the last 20 years becoming one of the leading voices in concussion research and awareness).
- Chad Wicks got a tryout match with WWE this week. He was recently in the NJPW Young Lions tournament and also trains at the Inoki dojo in Los Angeles (this poor guy gets signed, gets his last name changed from Wicks to Dick and is given a Chippendale dancer gimmick that lasts for about 3 months of Velocity tapings before getting released).
- Eric Bischoff did a very interesting radio interview this week. He called Bill Watts the most overrated person in the history of the wrestling business, saying he was only ever successful for 18 months total as a promoter running a tiny backwoods promotion in the middle of nowhere (Dave calls bullshit on that and says Eric has never been a student of wrestling history). Made fun of Watts for acting like he's a big tough guy but implied he was a pussy for walking around CNN Center every day with a gun in a holster strapped to his leg. He also told a bunch of stories of Watts pissing off a balcony during a meeting with Turner execs and kinda clowned Jim Ross for being a Watts bootlicker for his entire career as well. He claimed WCW was nothing but southern regional stars until 1994 when he signed Hogan. He also called Hogan's book "revisionist history" which is probably being kind. He said that none of the books that have been released in recent years talking about the death of WCW have gotten the story right. He blamed the failure of the company on too many people being involved at a corporate level making decisions. Dave says the reason it died is simple: from late-98 until the end, the product was "ungodly horrible." Bischoff can blame the Turner execs for corporate decisions, but they weren't the ones putting hot garbage on TV every week for 3 years and that's what killed it. When asked if he thought anyone could ever start up a new company and compete with WWE, he simply said "That will never happen."
- WWE reportedly offered Kevin Von Erich $50,000 for the entire World Class tape library. Considering what WWE has paid for other video libraries, the offer is surprisingly low (they end up with it eventually)
- Random fun fact: the 5 cities where Smackdown does the highest TV ratings are Memphis, Norfolk, Houston, New Orleans, and Raleigh. Dave points out that all 5 of those are cities in which regional territories used to draw huge local TV ratings and wonders if that's just something ingrained in the culture of those cities now: when rasslin' is on TV, they watch.
- There seems to be some backlash against John Cena within the company due to his ring-work. Not that long ago, people were praising him as the guy who was going to deliver WWE back to the promiseland because he's the only character they had that was connecting with fans. But a lot of the older veterans in the locker room have criticized his ring work, saying it's not up to main event standards. Which is true, Dave says, but that's because Cena, like so many other people, was brought up from developmental before he was ready. But a lot of his biggest supporters are frustrated that his in-ring work hasn't improved like they think it shouldband say it's because they don't think he's working hard enough at learning that aspect of it. They say that Cena believes he's so over already that he only needs to keep doing what he's doing. As a result, he's working short matches on house shows to keep from exposing him. Imagine living in a time when people were claiming John Cena didn't work hard enough at something.
- After Raw in San Diego went off the air, Triple H cut a promo calling the mostly-Hispanic audience "beaners" which Dave rightfully notes is pretty goddamn racist.
- Dave is amused by WWE's Smackdown Your Vote campaign they're pushing. If you recall, they did this a few years ago during the 2000 election and they tried to play it down the middle, simply urging young people to get out and vote....right up until the eve of the election. The Raw episode before the 2000 election was pretty much 2 hours of Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler clowning on Al Gore and urging WWE fans to vote for George Bush (yeah I watched this whole episode awhile back when I was researching some stuff I was writing about the WWE vs. PTC deal. Dave's not exaggerating, the pro-Bush agenda on that episode of Raw is beyond blatant). Dave also notes that Linda McMahon, who heads up the campaign, has donated thousands to various Republican candidates over the years.
- On OVW TV, Joey Matthews and Johnny Nitro have formed a team, managed by Melina. They do a ring entrance where Melina wears a short skirt and does the splits entering the ring while the guys slide under her to get in the ring. Dave says it's pretty lewd by OVW standards (we'll be seeing it every week on national TV soon).
- Matt Cappotelli is expected to be brought to the main roster any day now, and of course, it's waaaay too soon. He has a good look and he's athletic, but he's still green and isn't a good talker either. Dave is blown away by how many potential future stars have been kneecapped in the last 2 years because they were rushed to TV before they were ready just because they have "a look."
- According to people who have been on both sides recently, there's said to be a stark difference backstage between Raw and Smackdown. The Raw locker room is said to be far more political and cut-throat, while Smackdown is cohesive and has everyone working together as a team. However, the Smackdown wrestlers are well aware that they're seen as the B-show and that Raw is positioned as the top priority.
- BBC2 in the UK ran a story on soccer star Kieron Dyer being backstage at a WWE show. Mostly it showed him getting flustered around Torrie Wilson, who he said was hotter than Britney Spears. He asked for her number and got blown off and then tried to play it off like he was just joking. He basically came off totally starstruck. I mean, I get it.