July 05, 2004
- Ric Flair's autobiography has been released. Dave has read it. You think he's got some thoughts? Jesus, here we go........
- Flair takes a pretty honest look at himself, talking about his partying, excessive drinking, living the gimmick and questioning if it was always the right decision. He admits to not being there for his first wife and oldest 2 kids because he was so busy being Ric Flair and his regret for that is why he's so involved in his younger kids' lives now. His battles with the IRS because of his spending problems. All that stuff is acknowledged. His feuds in the 70s with Steamboat, Wahoo, Piper, Harley Race, etc. The plane crash that broke his back. We get the story of his winning the title at Starrcade 83 and the story of Vince McMahon trying to sabotage it by offering Harley Race $250k to no-show (a famous story that had always made the rounds, but which Race himself confirms for the first time in this book). We have the 1991 fallout with Jim Herd, resulting in Flair leaving WCW and jumping to WWF with the big gold belt, then returning to WCW in 1993. We hear about Flair's depression in the 90s as he struggled to find his place in WCW under Eric Bischoff. Despite being the face of WCW for its entire existence, Flair was only earning $500k a year at the end of WCW, which is less than half of what guys like DDP, Goldberg, Hall, Nash, Sting, Hart, and Hogan were all making. No wonder Flair hated Bischoff. He touched on his heart issues in 2003, which stemmed from years of drinking (take a hint Ric) which is why he was mostly doing manager stuff at the time.
- Another interesting part of the book is all the people Flair takes shots at. He basically paints Hogan as being bad worker and insecure for refusing to do jobs. He also says Hogan was obsessed with the Observer newsletter and what Dave thought about him. Hogan was a known "hater" of the Observer, and even burned a copy of it live on PPV one time. But privately, he read every issue and Dave's opinions of him drove him crazy. Dave just sorta shrugs this off, only saying that out of all the negative things Flair wrote about Hogan, being exposed as an Observer reader is the one that will probably bother him most. He talks about his WWE dressing room fight with Eric Bischoff which is basically exactly what was reported in the Observer at the time (probably because Flair was the source lol). Aaaaand that's it for now. This 8,000+ word review condensed into 2 small paragraphs but don't worry. Dave promises to have much more in the coming weeks, as he's evidently spreading his review out across multiple issues. So we'll get to the Mick Foley stuff next time. Because yeah, he talks about this book weekly for, like, a long time...
- WWE's Great American Bash is in the books and it saw JBL goosestep his way to a WWE title and Undertaker commit murder on the worst PPV they've done in years! JBL's title win makes him probably the most unlikely WWE champion in history (aside from that time Vince McMahon held it) by winning a bull rope match, ending Eddie Guerrero's reign at 4 months. Eddie's title reign was supposed to be more of a long-term thing, but Vince pivoted and made the decision to get the belt off him immediately, feeling that the bigger money is in chasing the heel champion. As you might expect, this got a pretty negative reception backstage, but Vince, Bruce Prichard, and Michael Hayes are all strong supporters of the JBL gimmick, and the CNBC controversy gave Vince a reason to justify it, because there's nothing Vince loves more than thumbing his nose at what he considers the "liberal media."
- The other major thing from the show was the storyline of "Will Paul Bearer be murdered?" and turns out the answer was....yes. They had a partially pre-taped segment (good thing too, because when they did the stunt live in the arena, it malfunctioned the first time, but viewers at home had no idea because they saw the pre-taped scene) that featured Bearer in a glass case about to be suffocated by cement. And then, Undertaker seemingly turned heel and pulled the lever, killing off his manager for seemingly no reason. The reaction to the angle was extremely negative, with groans and silence in the arena to utter backlash online. Paul Bearer, meanwhile, just signed a 3-year contract late last year. He's expected to work a front office job for the remainder of his deal. So is Undertaker a heel after committing cold blooded murder? Undecided! He's still being booked as a babyface at house shows and there's thought that he shouldn't be turned. There's been talk of putting him with Heyman but turns out Undertaker and Heyman had some heat with each other in the past, due to when Heyman was booking Smackdown in 2002 and wanted to make changes to the Undertaker gimmick that he wasn't down with, and for that reason, Dave suspects they won't be paired together, even though it makes the most sense. Vince wants to keep Undertaker (who, remember, murdered a man) as a tweener, figuring the fans won't boo him anyway.
- Other notes from the PPV: Vince actually wasn't there because he was hospitalized this past week with diverticulitis and wasn't able to travel. Dave notes that Billy Graham had it recently also (and later Brock and Omega....don't suppose steroids play a role in this? Any doctors wanna check in?). It was the first PPV Vince has missed in a decade, since the steroid trial. But he was on the phone constantly throughout the show and the event was ran by Stephanie, Shane, Triple H, Jim Ross, and Kevin Dunn. John Cena referenced Booker T's old "GI Bro" gimmick in his pre-match rap. Cena retained the US title in the opener but got exposed pretty badly in the ring. He's still not great. Mysterio vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. was easily the best match on the show. Kenzo Suzuki's gimmick continues to die in front of crowds. Same for Mordecai. That's about it.
- SpikeTV officially announced the debut of UFC's new show The Ultimate Fighter starting in January. The basic plan is to have 16 fighters living and training together and eliminated one-by-one reality show style, with the winners getting a UFC contract. Basically the Tough Enough format. And that's all we got.
- Hector Garza quit AAA following his match at Triplemania this past week. The issue is reportedly because Antonio Pena wasn't paying him for the dates he worked for TNA. The deal there is TNA paid AAA directly to use their wrestlers and that money was supposed to trickle down to them, but apparently not. Garza claims he's owed several thousand dollars by AAA. Of course, AAA claims he's under contract and will sue any promotion that uses him (must not have been much of a contract. Garza pops up in CMLL almost immediately and remains there for the next 7 years).
- Seiichi Kusama, the new president of NJPW, is believed to be a short-term puppet for Antonio Inoki. He's actually Inoki's personal financial guy who Inoki decided to give the job to. While Kusama will handle the financial side of things, Inoki will still have all the real power, as always. Kusama has been compared to Kip Frey, a nice guy who knew nothing about wrestling and breifly became head of WCW in the early 90s. Inoki really needs to turn NJPW around. His own MMA ventures have flopped. He's burned his bridge with PRIDE. Even his used car business he owns in Brazil (today I learned...) is reportedly failing. He still has connections with K-1 but otherwise, NJPW is the best bet Inoki has going right now and it's in rough shape because of his own bad decisions. Fumihiko Uwai is the new head booker. Uwai’s plans are to build around Shinsuke Nakamura, Katsuyori Shibata and Hiroshi Tanahashi as the future of the company but of course, Inoki can step in at any time and fuck all that up (and he will).
- NJPW's first TV taping at Inoki's dojo in Los Angeles took place this week. It had some interesting matches, such as Toru Yano against future WWE Raw general manager Adam Pearce. Shinya Makabe (who will be changing his name to Togi Makabe soon) challenged Samoa Joe for the ROH title. The story there is NJPW wanted someone with a title to defend it on the show and ROH wanted more exposure and they get the rights to sell footage of the match. Win-win for everybody. The show airs locally in Los Angeles on KVMD-23 and in Japan.
- The sale of Rob Feinstein's ownership stake in Ring of Honor finally went through this week and he's officially, legally, finally gone. The deal almost fell apart at the last minute, with Feinstein begrudgingly agreeing to a one-year non-compete to prevent him from starting a new promotion. And ROH agreed to some shit regarding video sales and RF Video's mailing list. Ring of Honor is also legally changing names to Ring of Honor Wrestling, Inc.
- Latest ROH show featured a multi-man match designed to push Austin Aries as a top guy in the company. He got over strong in finally losing to Danielson at the end. Speaking of Danielson, he's quickly gaining a reputation as being one of the best technical wrestlers in the biz today. He's booked on every ROH show for the next several months. Ricky Steamboat is also going to be around regularly in ROH going forward, but has decided he won't be coming out of retirement to work a match.
- Jeff Hardy's debut in TNA this week went about how you'd expect: he showed up late and had them stressing to the last minute that he wouldn't be there and when he did arrive, he was "hardly in the shape they wanted." Dave doesn't elaborate but you can probably guess. But he got an incredible reaction. Dave doesn't know if he's signed or if it's a per-appearance thing but he better be signed if they're pushing him on TV. Last thing they need is another Hogan debacle.
- The TNA and AAA relationship is strained. TNA is upset because Jeff Jarrett wasn't brought in for Triplemania as previously planned, and Abyss hasn't been paid for AAA appearances he made. Also a bunch of shit over AAA execs not returning phone calls and being uncommunicative about plans. AAA is upset because TNA has promised to continue using Hector Garza even though he quit AAA.
- Dennis Rodman will be making a one-off appearance at this week's TNA tapings. He won't be wrestling, said he won't do anything where he might get hurt, and is only doing this one date. The idea is to do something to get them some ESPN publicity. It was discussed having Jarrett smash Rodman with the guitar but it's believed Rodman won't do that so we shall see.
- Billy Gunn showed up backstage at the TNA tapings because he lives in the area. He spent a lot of time hanging with former partner B.G. James (Road Dogg) and was openly expressing his frustration with WWE. Word is Gunn isn't the only Smackdown wrestler who thinks they can jump ship to TNA and be a big fish in a small pond, rather than being lost in the shuffle of WWE (he'll get his wish soon).
- Notes from recent TNA anniversary show: Vince Russo has entrance music now. "Why not, since he's the top storyline babyface?" Dave asks sarcastically. And then it ended with a cliffhanger over whether Russo would reverse the Ron Killings title win over Jarrett or not, which Dave finds completely insulting to people who paid to see this show. It's fine for free television but for PPV is a bridge too far. AJ Styles against the debuting Jeff Hardy also ended without a clear finish. Hardy did get possibly the biggest reaction in TNA's history for his entrance though and even though they didn't boo Styles, they very much saw Hardy (a career midcarder in WWE) as the absolute biggest star on the show. Hardy also hadn't trained much lately and when Jarrett said he wanted their match to tear the house down, Hardy told he didn't think he could and not to expect it. The match was fine but nothing special. Hardy also missed 2 flights the day of the show and they didn't know until the last minute if he would even make it.
- Kid Kash did an interview complaining about TNA and of course, it got back to management and they weren't happy. He expressed frustration that TNA is willing to pay big money to guys like Lex Luger but not to the young talent that are actually carrying the company. He also doesn't like the 15% booking fee they take on his indie dates. Kash said he has requested his release from TNA multiple times and has been shot down, with Bob Ryder saying they have too much invested in him (apparently there's Kid Kash merch that has yet to be released as well as a video game in the works that includes him). He also complained about guys like AJ Styles and Americas Most Wanted being the favored young stars. Someone in the TNA locker room printed up this interview and taped it to the locker room door so everyone saw it. A lot of wrestlers were sympathetic, because Kash is only making $500-per-week and, like a lot of them, he is struggling to make ends meet while handcuffed by TNA's contract. Many were surprised he wasn't fired. But much like Konnan recently asking for a release, it seems TNA isn't interested in granting them right now (Kash will spend the next year publicly trashing TNA while remaining under contract before they finally let him go).
- Jim Ross and WWE's lead attorney Jerry McDevitt had a meeting this week with Bruno Sammartino and his attorney to discuss WWE's hopes of bringing Bruno back into the fold. The meeting went well, as Sammartino gets along with JR more than anyone in the company. This all stems from several months back when McDevitt and Sammartino were both called to give depositions in the Larry Zbyszko/WWE lawsuit and they spoke to each other then. McDevitt got the door open to further talks and here we are. WWE wants him in their Hall of Fame. Sammartino, for his part, isn't really into the idea because he considers the WWE's Hall of Fame to be bogus, so trying to dangle that carrot in front of him is meaningless to him. There was talks of a DVD set and autobiography, among other things. Bruno made it clear at the meeting that he's still staunchly against the steroid usage in the business and criticized what he's seen of wrestlers on the current roster that are obviously still on the gas. Furthermore, if anything with WWE does happen, he still made it clear that he wants nothing to do personally with Vince McMahon (we're still a few years away from this cold war finally thawing).
- Morale in the WWE corporate offices is at an all-time low. You'd think it would be the opposite, since the latest earnings report was really strong. But the reason those earnings were stong is because the company has made millions in cut-backs to those front office jobs. Furthermore, most of the profit WWE made this last quarter either went to Vince directly (via stock dividends) and to pay off his private jet. So you can imagine how thrilled the office people are.
- Notes from 6/24 Smackdown tapings: Undertaker vs. Cena main event was the best match on Smackdown in weeks and was better than everything on the PPV. Undertaker did a great job of making Cena look like a star. Undertaker won after hitting Cena with his own chain and tombstoning him so....is he a heel? Sure seems like it! But still no. Also, Sable turned heel on Torrie Wilson for whatever reason. That's about all of note.
- Notes from 6/28 Raw: a fire alarm got pulled in the arena during the Batista match and the crowd got distracted by the beeps. More Kane/Matt Hardy/Lita love-triangle stuff. Dave hates this storyline. They had Triple H trick Eugene into attacking Regal and the crowd booed the shit out of that. Dave says it's months too early to split Eugene and Regal. Then they announced Eugene would be the guest GM next week and the crowd booed that too and Dave worries that they killed off Eugene in one night. Sgt. Slaughter teamed with Rhyno against La Resistance and the cobra clutch was the most over move on the whole show. They have a PPV in 2 weeks and not one thing was announced or really even seemed to build to anything for the undercard matches.
- Eric Bischoff and Jason Hervey's (yes that Jason Hervey) production company is in Hollywood this week, trying to sell a new reality show called "777" in which they take 7 rich people, each of whom put up $1 million in Las Vegas, and compete in a bunch of gambling-themed games, with the winner keeping all $7 million. Sure, why not? They're working with Rick Hilton (father of Paris Hilton) and they actually recently sold a show to NBC called "The Good Life" which will star Kathy Hilton (this later was retitled to "I Want To Be a Hilton" and was canceled after 1 season. The "777" show never happened, far as I can tell).
- Ultimo Dragon is still expected to return to WWE later this year, which was the original arrangement made when he went back to work in Japan. But Dave wouldn't be surprised if this falls through, since Dragon has business interests he needs to attend to in Japan and, besides, it's not like WWE is gonna push him anyway (indeed, he doesn't return).
- Lesnar was also a complete asshole in the interview, talking about how he wishes he could fight people and said he'd get into fights every day if it wouldn't cost him money and legal trouble. Well then. Dave is amused because he spoke with Lesnar years ago about doing MMA and Lesnar told him that he wanted no part of it, saying, "I'm a wrestler, not a fighter." Oh yeah, one last note that Dave mentions here: apparently in the article, Lesnar made a point to mention how much he hates gay people. This is literally how the article starts:
- "My friend Shawn thinks you're kinda cute," she said.
- Not Shawna. Not Shana.
- Shawn.
- The 6-foot-3, 290-pound Goliath, the guy who benches 475 pounds, squats 695 pounds, steamed.
- "Yeah?" the former pro wrestler said, his voice growing louder, his eyes getting bigger. "Well you tell that ..."
- To print what Brock Lesnar said might make even John Rocker blush. But after his curse-laden outburst, he turned to a nearby reporter and explained, "I don't like gays. Write that down in your little notebook. I don't like gays."
- Christian is expected to be out a bit longer with a back injury and he's reportedly pretty depressed about it, feeling the injury came at the worst possible time for his career. He was just starting to take off as a singles guy since the angle with Trish and Jericho.
- Chris Jericho is being honored by both Manitoba and Winnipeg this week. A local newspaper story written by "former wrestling personality Don Callis" talked about it, and also mentioned that Jericho had pushed back on Vince's decision to have him being billed from New York instead of Canada.
- WWE announcer Rue DeBona was released. She was a weird hire in the first place, since she had no wrestling knowledge and was hired pretty much entirely because she was pretty. She had grown to be tight with fellow announcer Josh Matthews and he was said to be extremely upset about her release (turns out he was upset because they were dating. They end up married a couple years later. Also, I don't remember this woman at all).