Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 18, 2004

WWE's 12-show European tour grossed more than $7 million dollars, the biggest week of live shows in WWE history. To put it in perspective, they made more money in this one week than they would have made in TEN weeks of American shows. Even during the peak Attitude Era years with Austin and Rock, it would have taken weeks of live shows to equal this one week tour. This money is the equivalent of WWE having 2 additional PPVs for this quarter. Even with business collapsing elsewhere, those 12 shows guarantees WWE will have a strong financial quarter. 9 of the 12 shows were legit sellouts. So needless to say, good news for WWE.
The Hollywood Reporter put out a front page story noting that WWE's 5-year deal with Viacom for Raw and other shows on SpikeTV is expiring in Sept. 2005 and WWE has recently opened talks with TBS, USA, and FX. WWE's ratings have plummeted since leaving USA for Spike back in 2001 but they're still looking to get more money for their TV rights. Currently they make $28 million a year from Viacom and WWE is looking for more like $40 million per year for their next deal (a far cry from the multi-BILLION dollar deals they have today). In regards to ratings, when comparing WWE shows from this week 5 years ago, the audience decline is 62%. WWE blames Spike for that. Within the TV industry, USA head Bonnie Hammer was always credited with the success of WWE Raw, since it grew under her watch into a mega-hit and ratings dropped when they moved to Spike. But Dave thinks it's ridiculous to credit WWE's success or decline to USA or Spike. The decline is very clearly due to a lot of reasons, most self-inflicted by WWE. SpikeTV has no hits on its plate except for WWE, and losing them will be a huge blow to the network. USA Network never wanted to lose WWE (they even sued to try and keep them) and USA is said to be the front-runner right now in a new deal and it looks like both networks are willing to spend big money to get/keep WWE. Although if Spike loses WWE, it might open up the door for TNA.
As for the other options, FX is a possibility and if that happens, it would kill whatever hopes TNA still has of getting on FX (they've had talks recently). A move to TBS would kill the other long-rumored dream that Ted Turner might try to start a new promotion (which was always unlikely to happen anyway). The article quoted an unnamed executive that said WWE "is desperate to get out" of their deal with SpikeTV. Dave says he has heard similar things from other WWE sources in recent years. The relationship got off on a bad foot from the start because Vince McMahon wanted to keep WCW running as a separate brand and had talks to run WCW shows on Turner networks as a separate entity, but Viacom refused to allow Vince to promote wrestling on another network and blocked it from happening, which is at least one of many reasons why the Invasion was such a bust. Viacom also refused to pick up a 4th season of Tough Enough and the decision to bounce Sunday Night Heat around from MTV to Spike helped kill the ratings for that show as well.
In the midst of all this, Pat Patterson also gave notice that he plans to retire and leave WWE, with his last night being the upcoming Taboo Tuesday PPV. He left once before, sorta, in 1992 when he was implicated in the ring boy scandal, but many felt he was simply scapegoated for being gay and there was never any evidence that he did anything inappropriate towards children, and he was eventually brought back. He's talked about retiring more in recent years, but wrestling is all he's ever known so he's never really been able to walk away. But in recent weeks especially, he's been outspoken about the direction of the company and had confided in friends that he was thinking about quitting. In particular, Patterson has been very vocal ("loud enough to make sure everyone hears") about all the power Triple H has backstage and his belief that Triple H should be helping to make new stars rather than eating up all the TV time with himself as the top star and frequent world champion. Patterson pretty much blamed Triple H for Goldberg flopping in WWE and has complained openly about Triple H burying talent like RVD in creative meetings. Even with people that he has helped, such as Orton and Benoit, the reasoning behind building them up was because Triple H felt he needed new people to work with and pointed out that Benoit was pretty much shunted back to the midcard once Triple H was done working with him. No matter who the champion was on Raw for the last 2 years, the show was always built around Triple H, and Patterson is pretty over it. He's not the only one. Apparently there was an incident awhile back where a lot of the agents got together and decided to confront Vince on how they feel Triple H has monopolized the show. But when they got to the meeting, Stephanie was there as well and everyone realized that if they said anything, it would immediately get back to Triple H, so everyone backed down. Dave compares it to the World Class days when people would try to tell Fritz Von Erich about all his kids having drug problems and it would result in them getting fired for speaking up. Patterson also has felt the company is being run into the ground with the more extreme storylines recently (gotta be the miscarriage angle I'd assume). That being said, after Patterson's long-time partner Louie Dondero passed away a few years ago, many felt Patterson lost his passion for the business overall.
Paul Heyman has been pushing to trade Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit. The idea is to get Benoit on Smackdown as a heel with Heyman as his manager and potentially do Undertaker vs. Benoit at Wrestlemania. And moving Kurt Angle to Raw would allow them to do Angle vs. Shawn Michaels at WM as well. Undertaker and Angle have been pushing to do a match together at Wrestlemania but it seems to have been shot down by Vince, thus the new ideas that Heyman is pushing for (well, at least some of this happens).
NJPW's latest major Sumo Hall show was an interesting one. The main event featured Kensuke Sasaki winning the IWGP title for a 5th time, tying Tatsumi Fujinami's record, but that was a disaster we'll get to in a moment. The show also featured several major angles. The biggest was the return of Riki Choshu, who was basically forced out of the company by Inoki in 2002 when he was working as booker. Choshu has spent the last 2 years trying to keep his horrible WJ promotion afloat but that failed and the promotion is dead. So now he's back. He came out to a massive reaction, alongside his protege from WJ, a young wrestler named Tomohiro Ishii. Choshu did an angle with Yuji Nagata and Jushin Liger and the plan is for Choshu to work NJPW's upcoming Osaka Dome show. Elsewhere on the show, Minoru Tanaka turned heel, dropping his Heat gimmick and joining the CTU stable. And another match on the show featured the return of Don Frye who seemingly joined the CTU stable. The did a big heel beatdown on Nagata and Tenzan and this whole thing ended with NJPW basically trying to turn CTU into a new version of the NWO (which had a lot of success in Japan a few years ago but now WWE owns the rights to that name). Keiji Muto also returned to NJPW, teaming with Nishimura to face Shinsuke Nakamura and Hiroshi Tanahashi, and this match was promoted hard, as the team of Tanahashi and Nakamura are being pushed as the future of NJPW. Muto was reportedly upset about the Chono return, feeling like it scooped his heat since he thought he was gonna be the big returning star on the card.
Sasaki's IWGP title win over Kazuyuki Fujita took all of 2 minutes. One of those things where Fujita was choking him from behind and Sasaki fell back on him for the surprise quick pin. The crowd HATED this and it absolutely killed any good feelings people had about the overall show. The decision was apparently made to get the title off Fujita as quickly as possible, since he's publicly made it known he doesn't care about being NJPW's champion and wants to focus on MMA. But Sasaki looked like a fluke winner here and Fujita was completely protected, and no one benefitted from this. The idea, on paper, was to show that MMA fighters will make mistakes in pro wrestling and can be easily beaten due to lack of pro wrestling experience, but the message didn't translate. This just sucked. NJPW president Masakazu Kusama actually apologized for the match a few days later, thanking fans for braving terrible weather to come to the show and apologizing that the finish of the title match was so poor. They've even discussed having Sasaki vacate the title so they can do a proper tournament, since Sasaki looked like such a bitch in winning it. But as of now, the plan is to hope Sasaki can rebuild the prestige of the title by having a long reign with good matches (nah, he only defends it twice and loses it before the end of the year).
Dos Caras Jr. (the future Alberto Del Rio) quit AAA. This all stems from a booking idea Antonio Pena had where they would do a worked-shoot fight match with Shocker vs. Caras Jr., playing off the fact that Caras Jr. has legit MMA experience. Shocker would win. And therein lies the problem. Caras Jr. refused to do the job in the match, saying losing a worked MMA fight would hurt his MMA drawing power in Japan. Dave notes that Caras Jr. hasn't fought in Japan in a year and no one there would give a shit anyway because he's not even remotely a draw.
Masahiro Chono has a "babyface role" in the upcoming Jackie Chan/Owen Wilson film "Around the World in 80 Days." I know I've said this at least once a year as I've done these Rewinds, but Dave using wrestling lingo for non-wrestling things continues to be my favorite running gag. Also, I looked into this and can't really find anything about him being in this movie and I don't intend to watch it to look for him. He's not listed on its IMDb page or anything.
Jamie Noble is going to be using his real name, James Gibson, when working an upcoming tour of NJPW. In the past, WWE has looked the other way when people use their WWE-gimmicks overseas, but not this time apparently.
Hiroshi Tanahashi has been requesting a singles match against American Dragon for the U-30 title. This is a big deal because it's practically forbidden to have a junior heavyweight challenge for a heavyweight singles title. But Tanahashi loves Dragon's work and really wants to work with him, so the match is happening soon.
Various Old Wrestler Health Updates: John Tenta is still undergoing chemotherapy. One of his cancerous tumors has shrunk significantly but it has spread to his lymph nodes and that's still an issue. Gene Okerlund recently had a kidney transplant (his second one) and is still hospitalized. And Dynamite Kid recently had part of his leg amputated due to an injury he suffered when he fell from his wheelchair, and he's also suffering kidney issues and requires 24-hour care (this poor fucker lived another 14 years after this).
Mike Graham, who owns the old Championship Wrestling from Florida tape library, has refused to sell it to WWE. He's offered to license it to them if they'll split profits with him, but Vince McMahon shot that down. Graham recently did an interview about it and said, "I’m not going to let him write a check, back a truck up and drive off with my family heritage. As long as I live, nobody is going to own the content but me because nobody is going to buy my dad’s work." (He clearly changes his mind on this because WWE buys the tape library in 2006).
In the same interview, Graham talked about his only WCW match, when he worked the Battle Bowl "random teams" gimmick at Starrcade 91. There's a famous spot where Graham didn't catch Jushin Liger on a dive and turns out he did it on purpose, which is unprofessional as hell. Graham told the story: "He was doing some kind of flips and I thought, 'This asshole is crazy.' He made a move and I let him fall and went for a cover. Oh, was he pissed. He started screaming and yelling. I was laughing so hard. That was my big PPV moment. When I walked to the back, Dusty was laughing so hard. He said, 'Goddamn, you just let the biggest Japanese star fall flat on his face.'" Yeah, I'd agree with Dave, that's pretty unprofessional. Dave also criticizes Dusty here, saying it's no wonder WCW was such a mess when that was the attitude of management (Graham was also part of the office in WCW during this time).
New Jack was arrested this week and charged with aggravated battery after stabbing his opponent 14 times during a match. The opponent, William Lane, was treated and released so it seems it must not have been that bad. Lane refused to talk to the media about the situation but his girlfriend did and said the match wasn't supposed to happen the way it did, even though it was billed as a hardcore match. The promoter, however, denied that it was ever supposed to be a hardcore match. The object that was used in the stabbing, whatever it was, was never recovered because a fan apparently left the arena with it. New Jack was held on a $40,000 bond and I guess is still in custody. Dave brings up the Mass Transit incident and says what was supposed to be a regular match was clearly criminal assault so this isn't the first time New Jack has done something like this (wouldn't be the last either. This whole thing is covered in detail in the New Jack episode of DSOTR).
Regarding Jeff Hardy no-showing TNA last week: when they realized he wasn't there and couldn't get ahold of him, someone who had Matt Hardy's number called him. Matt, who is at home rehabbing his knee after his recent surgery, apologized for Jeff not calling and said he'd find him. They finally got Jeff on the phone, who apparently gave them an excuse "that was said to be beyond lame" but they accepted it because Jeff's a big star and they need him. So he's apparently off the hook, but this kinda shows you how seriously he's taking TNA.
Former TNA wrestler Joe E. Legend did an interview trashing Jeff Jarrett and Dutch Mantel and went way over the line. Legend talked about Jarrett's wife's cancer returning and called it karma, which Dave is disgusted that anyone would say. Legend went on to say he would beat Jarrett's ass next time he saw him. Yeah, fuck this dude for that.
Several TNA wrestlers, including some of the more heavily pushed faces of the company, are openly talking about trying to go to WWE when their contracts are up. Dave doesn't name names, but the locker room in TNA is just totally toxic right now.
TNA wrestler Jerrelle Clark got pretty messed up at the latest tapings over some bullshit. There was some pre-match miscommunication over the finish of a match the week prior that had some people unfairly pissed at Clark (even though the mistake was on the agent of the match, Terry Taylor, who changed the finish without alerting the right people). So the next week, at the 10/5 tapings, management "allegedly" told Michael Shane and Frankie Kazarian to work stiff with Clark as punishment. The result was Clark came out of the match with 1 broken rib and 2 cracked ribs due to kicks from Kazarian along with other bumps and bruises. Clark went online the next day and said backstage that "everyone knows what's going on but you," saying everyone (even his tag partner in the match) was aware that he was about to get beaten up and no one warned him. He talked about how the agents changed the finish and even talked about getting heat from other wrestlers for daring to use the massage table backstage. He also said he was reprimanded for getting in more than 2 moves on a hot tag. He's been told by his doctor to take time off but he needs the money so he's continuing to work indies. This kinda bully shit is lame.
Latest update on the Steve Austin lawsuit against his former girlfriend Tess Broussard: Austin is suing for $125 million, which is probably a way to get her to drop her $10 million suit against him. Austin claims she never told him about her porn star/prostitute past (rumor is that Austin first learned of it by reading it in the Observer last week). The suit also claims Broussard is really 51 years old. Dave is skeptical there. Her online escort ads listed her as 26. Her police arrest records say 37. So she's clearly been dishonest about her age at times, but Dave doesn't think she's 51. Austin also accuses her of abusing drugs and alcohol and claims that she once stuck a gun in his mouth. Austin further accuses her of harassing his ex-wife and his kids (Jeannie Clark, who lives in England with said kids). He accuses her of breaking into his house and destroying all his furniture, damaging the walls, and stealing expensive belongings including a painting, a rifle, and 8 of his wrestling title belts, along with thousands in cash. Broussard's lawyer denies all the claims, said she's 39 (another new age) and denies that she was ever a porn star (Dave notes she appeared in some porn movies "but was not the star" in them). The lawyer also denies the gun accusation.
Noes from 10/11 Raw in England: William Regal got a massive reaction for his appearance. And then, when he and Eugene seemingly won the tag titles, it was the biggest pop on Raw in months. But typical WWE, they reversed the decision (because Regal cheated) and restarted the match. La Resistance then won (by cheating) and the match wasn't restarted. This basically killed the crowd for the rest of the show because Vince loves nothing more than killing a hometown hero in front of said hometown. After playing a clip of Kane and Lita talking about how Snitsky was gonna be a dead man when Kane gets ahold of him, Snitsky cut a backstage promo saying "The only thing dead around here is your baby." Dave is so tired of this. They had a Flair and Orton face-off in the ring and Flair was NOT getting booed by the UK crowd no matter how hard they tried, and before it ended, they were starting to turn on Orton.
Notes from 10/12 Smackdown tapings, also in England: British wrestler Robbie Brookside worked a dark match. they did an injury angle to write Charlie Haas off TV because he may need knee surgery (he injured it a few nights earlier on a house show in Ireland during a match with Heidenreich and the match had to be stopped). Dawn Marie helped him out of the ring afterward and they did an angle where he accidentally touched her breast. If you're not aware, they've had a storyline going where Dawn Marie is trying to split up Haas and Jackie Gayda (his real life fiance) by flirting with Haas and this was part of that angle. And for those asking, even though they were dating for years going back to ECW days, Dawn Marie and Nova (Simon Dean) are no longer together. Finally, Undertaker returned to beat up Heidenreich, essentially no-selling his death last week at the PPV.
Notes from 10/7 Smackdown: the JBL vs. Bob Holly match was utter death and Dave says the WWE title has never meant less than it did in that match. More Tough Enough vignettes aired, including one for MMA fighter Daniel Puder and featured a clip of him fighting in Japan on one of Riki Choshu's WJ cards (where he did MMA matches instead of pro wrestling). Dave runs down all the other contestants shown as wannabe Rock rip-offs and a lot of bald-headed Steve Austin clones. John Cena, shortly before losing his US title to the debuting Carlito, cut a promo on Michael Cole full of bad gay jokes that even Cena's hometown of Boston groaned at more than cheered. It made Cena come off like a fifth-rate Rock copy, and lord knows WWE doesn't need more of those since that's half the Tough Enough entrants. Dave notes that this segment was written by Rock's favorite writer, Brian Gewirtz, which is probably why it felt like that.
Booker T was pulled from the European tour at the last minute over health concerns. He showed up to the Boston Smackdown tapings in pain and was sent to get an MRI over concerns of a liver issue.
Vince McMahon held a production meeting and noted that the company will be outsourcing Wrestlemania advertising to an ad firm in New York. The theme (since Wrestlemania is in Los Angeles) will be to re-create famous movie scenes with various wrestlers inserted into them. A lot of the production crew was annoyed that this is being outsourced, since this is the kinda stuff they've always done in-house for a lot cheaper than it will cost to oursource it to some big NY firm. (Maybe so, but those commercials were awesome).
Kurt Angle did an interview to promote the upcoming PPV. When asked if he was going to beat Big Show, Angle responded that he didn't know and wouldn't know until he got to the arena that day and Vince gave them the finish of the match. I, uh, don't think that's how you're supposed to answer that question Kurt....
Carlito was apparently booked to appear at this week's OVW tapings. But just before show-time, he wasn't there and after making some calls, that's when OVW learned that, oh yeah....WWE sent him to Europe. Also, he's the U.S. champion now so he's probably not coming back to OVW. You can imagine how happy Cornette was about this.
Latest from OVW: Mark Magnus, doing his Muhammad Hassan gimmick, came out with a servant named Osama. This seemingly pissed the crowd off so much that during his segment, most of the audience literally stood and turned their backs to the segment and looked at the wall instead.
In a recent booking meeting, an idea was proposed of bringing in a smaller wrestler for some sort of comedy angle. Heyman suggested Super Crazy, to which Vince responded, "Don't we have enough Japanese wrestlers already?" After Vince was gently corrected that Super Crazy is not, in fact, Japanese, it's believed he may still be brought in for the role (we're still about 6-7 months away from him debuting. But good fuckin' lord, Vince....)