July 12, 2004
- We start with another 10,000 word piece about Ric Flair's recently released autobiography "To Be The Man" and, specifically, all the controversy it's stirred up this week. In particular involving Bret Hart and Mick Foley. WWE's chosen ghostwriter Keith Elliot Greenberg reportedly tried to tone down some of the more controversial stuff, but much of this book was ghostwritten with, and by, former WCW announcer Mark Madden prior to WWE getting the rights to it. Vince McMahon decided to go with Madden's version and WWE even pushed the Mick Foley drama online in promoting the book, something that has since driven a wedge between Foley and WWE. Vince wants to do a Flair vs. Foley feud later this year based off of it, and Flair has agreed. He's even willing to do a big blow-off hardcore match, Foley-style. But Foley's pretty pissed about all this and turned it down and doesn't want to work with Flair. Foley felt he'd given too much to the company to be buried like he was in a WWE-produced book, and to have those passages used to promote sales of it irritated him even more. He also feels Flair was clearly given more freedom to say things than he was in his own books, which he's also upset about. This has been simmering for awhile. Foley wrote in his first book that he felt Flair was a bad booker in WCW. And a few months ago, before the Backlash PPV, Flair trashed Foley in an interview, calling him a glorified stuntman and ass-kisser. Foley complained about it to WWE management at the time, since Flair was burying him right before he was scheduled to put over Orton on PPV.
- So what exactly did Flair say about Foley to get all this stirred up? Basically the same stuff: falling off a ladder doesn't take skill, Foley never saw the inside of a gym, Foley wouldn't have lasted one day training under Verne Gagne like he did, he "sucks up" to the WWE writers, he can't work, he's a mark for himself, so on and so forth. Dave argues that it doesn't matter if Foley would have flunked out of Gagne's training camp, he still became a huge star (Michael Jordan didn't make his varsity high school basketball team either). It's impossible to know if Gagne would have seen something in Foley, but if he hadn't, it would have been Gagne's loss. He would have missed out on one of the hardest working, most charismatic guys ever in wrestling.
- Ok, then what about Bret Hart? Flair's issues with him stem from when they worked together in the early 90s in WWF and they just didn't gel. Hart has also gone on record in the past, saying Flair isn't as good as he was always hyped to be and called his matches predictable (Dave says that's fair and one of the few true knocks you can make on Flair as a wrestler. But hey, predictable or not, the formula worked). Then Hart ended up in WCW and they had to work together again and Flair, always a pro, was perfectly willing to put him over, despite Hart frequently criticizing him over the years in his Calgary Sun newspaper column. Hart, for his part, has admitted that a lot of what he said about Flair in the 90s stemmed from frustration and a bit of jealousy, and softened his stance towards him. So it seemed like all was peaceful....until Flair wrote this book: he basically called Hart a mark for himself, only a "good" worker at best, never drew money, thinks Bret was in the wrong in the Montreal Screwjob situation, Bret wasn't even close to Shawn's level as a wrestler, etc. Dave writes this off to politics: Flair's closest allies in WWE are Triple H and Shawn Michaels, aka the Bret Hart Haters Club. So none of that is a big deal. Buuuuuuut Flair also said he lost respect for Bret after the way he reacted to Owen's death, saying that Bret cared more about what happened in Montreal than he did about what happened to Owen and used the tragedy to grind his ax with Vince. Dave thinks that was crossing the line, but he also admits that Flair isn't the only one who has voiced that opinion. Vince has publicly said as much, and even some other members of the Hart family have said it. Bret hasn't publicly commented on it yet but Dave thinks it's unfortunate because Bret had grown to like and respect Flair in recent years, but turns out Flair was still holding on to a grudge about things Bret said years earlier and decided to go for the jugular.
- DirecTV has dropped TNA from its PPV lineup, effective immediately, and as of press time, no reason has been given. The news dropped the day before TNA's weekly Wednesday night PPV. Dave assumes he will have more info on this next week, but as of now, that's all he knows. It's not good news for TNA though because DirecTV accounts for a decent percentage of TNA's weekly PPV buys and it's going to cut into TNA's profits at a time when their budget is already being forced to increase for the FSN show.
- Ultimo Dragon's Toryumon promotion in Japan has announced it is closing up shop, or rather, restructuring as a new company called Dragongate. Ultimo Dragon will not be involved in the new company, but the rest of the former Toryumon is moving forward as Dragongate. As for Ultimo Dragon, he is retaining the name Toryumon and will use it as the name of a training school he plans to open. He's still expected to return to WWE this year, wrestling under his real name Asai and no longer using the mask (didn't happen) and Toryumon had recently run its biggest show ever just last week, drawing 8,000 fans (definitely more to the story here, but Dave doesn't seem to know it).
- More on Hector Garza quitting AAA. After the Triplemania show, he told Antonio Pena he was quitting. A few days later, they agreed to have one last meeting about it so Pena could try to convince him to stay. Garza got on a plane and flew to Mexico City for the meeting and........Pena no-showed. Dave says anyone who's ever done business with AAA shouldn't be surprised by that. Soooo since he was in town, Garza went to Arena Mexico to check out the CMLL show and they immediately put him on the card. Pena, when he found out, started threatening lawsuits because he said he has Garza under contract. Garza denies that and says they only had a verbal deal and Pena owes him several thousand dollars in back pay (Garza wins this battle because he continues freely working for CMLL for years after this).
- "Dr. Death" Steve Williams is working a one-week tour of IWA in Japan later this month, which seems to indicate that his cancer battle is going ok. That said, people who have seen Williams lately say his goal of trying to wrestle in a few weeks is "exceedingly ambitious" (he manages to do it).
- A remake of the 1974 film "The Longest Yard" is in the works and as mentioned previously, Nathan Jones has been cast. Well, you can add Steve Austin, Goldberg, and Kevin Nash to that list as well. Whole buncha wrestlers in this thing (Bob Sapp ends up in it also). Speaking of Austin, he's apparently cut communication with almost everyone in wrestling according to several people who used to keep in touch with him (sounds like exactly what Punk did when he left).
- David Flair got married a few weeks ago and I only mention that because I'm trying to imagine how difficult it would be as a woman to know you're trying to follow Stacy Keibler.
- AJ Styles' brother tragically committed suicide this past week, casting a dark cloud over the TNA tapings. Styles was backstage and preparing for his match with Alex Shelley when he got the news. Elix Skipper filled in for Styles in the match (I had no idea that had happened. Ugh, that's terrible).
- Dennis Rodman managed 3 Live Kru at the TNA tapings this week and what a disaster that was. TNA had a whole list of ideas for Rodman, particularly involving Jeff Jarrett and Ken Shamrock, but he vetoed literally everything, refusing to do anything other than come down to the ring and stand at ringside for the match. He refused to even wear the basketball jersey they asked him to wear. A lot of people backstage were upset about it, with some trying to talk Shamrock into going out there and "scaring" Rodman, but of course, he didn't. All in all, a total waste of money that TNA already doesn't have, and they got exactly zero publicity out of it.
- TNA sources claim Jeff Hardy has signed a contract, but Hardy sources deny it. He is open to working more shows with them though. A lot of people within TNA are worried that they're asking for trouble if they sign him.
- TNA is very interested in moving all operations to Orlando because of how much better everything looks. The downside is trying to run 2 shows per week in Orlando is gonna be difficult. Plus the Nashville crowds have been better lately, but that doesn't overcome the fact that the Orlando shows look so much nicer. There's unconfirmed rumors that 7/21 will be the last Nashville show. Jeff Jarrett is strongly against it because he doesn't want to burn out the Orlando crowd, but the decision is in the hands of the Carter family. Dave says the best bet would be to just eliminate the Wednesday PPVs entirely because they're not profitable anyway, but whatever.
- The Mike Tyson deal with K-1 is apparently dead. Tyson's side is claiming K-1 breached their contract somehow. K-1 disputes this, saying Tyson is the one who has tried to breach the deal and as far as they're concerned, he's still under contract to fight for K-1 in September. Dave shrugs it all off, saying he never believed this was gonna happen in the first place.
- WWE management has told Edge that he needs some sort of makeover. They have been asking him repeatedly to cut his hair, but he's been refusing. They feel the long blond hair look is outdated, and Dave wonders why no one is asking Triple H to cut his hair. In years past, WWE pushed Christian and Test to cut their hair and Dave sarcastically notes how much that clearly helped their careers. They also want to change Edge's ring entrance. Edge getting booed by fans recently, particularly at MSG, was kinda the cause of all this. Dave acknowledges there's a problem, because fans don't buy Edge as a tough guy and he's been trying to play one since he came back, and it's clearly not working.
- Notes from 7/1 Smackdown: JBL as WWE champion reminds Dave of Ron Garvin winning the NWA title in 1987. He just doesn't have that world champion presence and although Dave likes his character, it immediately felt wrong seeing him with the belt. Commentary for the Mordecai match sounded like they were already giving up on the character. Two weeks ago, the plan was for him to challenge Guerrero for the title at Summerslam. Now JBL is the champion and Mordecai is expected to be sent back to OVW to "learn how to work" because he had a bad match with Bob Holly at the PPV, something Dave argues was more Holly's fault than Mordecai's. Oh well. They emphasized that Paul Bearer isn't dead and that he has "lung and internal problems" after being checks notes buried alive in cement. This was in response to complaints about the angle, with WWE having publicly claimed many times in the past that they don't do murder (better tell that to the Wyatt Sicks, who, as I type this, are presumably on the run after murdering Chad Gable last night). Sable vs. Torrie Wilson was a bad match, as you might expect (I only note this because turns out it was Sable's last match. She never wrestles again and is gone from the company soon after). The crowd did the Steve Austin "What!?" thing during Kenzo Suzuki's promo, to the point where production had to cut the crowd audio down because they don't want people thinking about Austin right now (oh fear not, the goddamn "What?!" chant is never going away. Absolutely the worst thing Steve Austin ever contributed to this business) and this was followed by another Cena promo full of poop jokes that were clearly written by the only person above 10 years old who still finds that stuff funny. Dave thinks it made Cena look awful.
- Notes from 7/5 Raw: they opened with a game of musical chairs to determine who gets an IC title shot (Eugene was GM for whatever reason) and it sounds stupid on paper, but Ric Flair saved it by being so entertaining (yeah this is kind of a classic Flair performance). Eugene's office was a bouncy house, leading to a funny segment where Triple H had to go into it to talk to Eugene. They were in Winnipeg and Jericho was the biggest star on the show by a mile. So of course, he jobbed to Orton, which killed the crowd for the rest of the show. Or as we call that, the Vince McMahon Special. If they were going to do that, they should have at least put it on last so it wouldn't ruin the rest of the show. Bunch of main event shenanigans with Triple H and Eugene at the end, and they're risking overexposing Eugene (oh, just wait until Summerslam).
- Hey remember Brock Lesnar's disgusting comments about gay people in a recent ESPN article? Outsports Magazine trashed him for it, quoting Lesnar's comments and saying, "It's just too bad that guys like him have to be to insecure in their own sexuality that they need to say such negative things about gay people. So many of us, who have participated in this month’s Gay Pride celebrations, have been there–done that. And we're not the ones prancing around on national television and jumping on sweaty men in our bikinis. Maybe someone should let this guy know-–in the NFL, though, he'll get to jump on more guys more often, but he'll have to wear pants."
- Sources close to Eddie Guerrero say he wasn't happy about losing the title, but he was also somewhat relived because the pressure of being the champion was getting to him. He particularly carried the weight of Smackdown's poor ratings with him on top.