December 18, 1995
- Obligatory reminder again: tomorrow is the final issue of 1995. Then I will take a week or so off and we'll start with 1996 on Monday, May, 8th.
- The top story is about Denver attempting to ban the upcoming UFC PPV from the city and about a segment on Larry King Live where Ken Shamrock and Senator John McCain debated each other about the sport and Shamrock basically exposed McCain as completely clueless. It's not wrestling related but it's interesting and I only mention it because it's the top story of this issue and it's several pages. It's worth reading if you're into learning about the early days of UFC though.
- An Army soldier named Douglas Griffith, 23, was charged with second degree assault for assaulting Shawn Michaels back in October and will appear in court this week. Griffith is alleged to be one of the group of servicemen who attacked Michaels. According to the police report, Shawn was passed out in the front seat of the car when he was dragged out and had his head slammed in the door and hit in the head several times in the fight. Initially, both Michaels and WWF declined to press charges, perhaps because WWF didn't want the story getting too much publicity in the media because it would reveal that Davey Boy Smith and Shawn were hanging out when they are supposed to be feuding on TV and that Smith actually saved him from an even worse beating. But recently, Michaels changed his mind and has pressed charges.
- El Gigante and Koji Kitao lost a match against Shinja and Typhoon in Japan's WAR promotion. I only mention this because even though no one knew it at the time, it ended up being El Gigante's final match and he quietly retired after. Probably for the best, since Gigante was barely functional at this point.
- AAA held a show in Los Angeles, drawing 4,000 fans, which is the smallest they've ever drawn in L.A. but it's not surprising for several reasons. They're down to only 1 hour per week of TV in the area, the lineup of the show was weak, etc. This was the "Star of Death" cage match show. The main event was in a 16-sided cage shaped like an eight-point star that featured a ton of daredevil stunts that Dave tries to describe. Everyone was banged up after the match and Konnan had to get 33 stitches. Dave gives it 4.75 stars. I can't find video of this anywhere, which sucks because this sounds absolutely insane. Of other note from the show, Dave says Juventud Guerrera is like a younger version of Chris Benoit and says within a few years, he'll likely be the best wrestler in the world.
- Antonio Inoki is trying to put together a multi-promotional show in Los Angeles to take place in March. He's hoping to get wrestlers from NJPW, AJPW, EMLL, AAA, WCW, and WWF all on the same card. Obviously, that's going to be tough to pull off. Inoki will be in town for the Los Angeles Marathon that weekend which he and Muhammad Ali will be torch carriers for, so he's trying to book the show to take place that same weekend.
- Big Van Vader has only agreed to work 2 shows for NJPW. The Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show and another major show in March. Vader is also currently filming a guest spot on an episode of Boy Meets World, which will be his 2nd time on the show.
- All Japan Women is doing a unique show next week. Manami Toyota will wrestle 30 matches and, one-by-one, will wrestle every other woman in the promotion all in the same night.
- The Dec. 4th USWA show at the Mid South Coliseum in Memphis set an all-time low record of just 420 fans, by far the lowest crowd in history (if you don't count the famous empty-arena match with Funk and Lawler, Dave jokes). This has led to a lot more talk of moving the weekly Memphis shows to Wednesday since they simply can't seem to compete with Raw and Nitro being on TV that night.
- Public Enemy's final show for ECW before they leave for WCW will be Jan. 5th and they plan to have a house party in the building after the show. WCW was originally going to have them be called The Mac Daddy's, but now they're negotiating with Def Jam (the record company that owns the rights to the name Public Enemy, because of the rap group) and likely they will still use that name in WCW.
- There was a lot of controversy this week regarding Woman (Nancy Sullivan). On the WCW Hotline, Mark Madden reported that Woman will be leaving ECW and coming to WCW and using the name "Elizabeth" and acting as Randy Savage's new manager. Both Woman and Kevin Sullivan have vehemently denied it and WCW actually erased that message from the hotline and there's rumors that Madden's WCW future is in question over it. Kevin Sullivan reportedly wants him fired. Dave says he can confirm that WCW actually had been discussing doing exactly that, so Madden wasn't lying about the idea, but as to whether it will actually happen or not, Dave suspects it won't. At least not any time soon, since both Woman and Sullivan were so adamant in denying that she's leaving ECW.
- Steve Austin is almost certainly going to WWF soon. He worked the recent ECW show with a newly shaved head, almost a crewcut, which many think is for whatever his new WWF gimmick is.
- WCW is strongly pursuing Konnan and Dave says the real reason is because where Konnan goes, the rest of the AAA stars usually follow and this is WCW's attempt to try and steal all the AAA stars away from ECW.
- The Bushwhackers are rumored to be heading to WCW under the name Luke & Butch From Down Under (since WWF owns the Bushwhackers name). Dave doesn't get it since they basically don't mean anything as a tag team anymore which is why WWF hasn't even been bothering to use them.
- Nitro is expected to start taping two shows every other week, so it won't be live every week. It's expected to save WCW around $2 million next year (never happened).
- WCW hasn't done any drug tests in over 2 months. The current drug of choice for everyone in the company seems to be HGH combined with a German-version of the steroid Anavar. Both drugs are supposedly undetectable in current tests so that's what everyone is using at the moment.
- It was announced on WWF TV that Ted Dibiase is bringing back the Million Dollar Belt for somebody. Dave suspects it will likely go to Steve Austin (under a different name) or possibly Jeff Jarrett.
- Aja Kong worked a match on the 12/11 Raw that was one of the stiffest matches of the year and ended up breaking her opponent's nose. Vince barely paid attention to the match and basically played it for comedy, so they've clearly lost interest in the women's division (I actually just saw Dave respond to a fan about this on Twitter recently). Anyway, here's the match and holy shit. It's brutal even by 2017 standards, I can only imagine how they felt about it in 1995:
- Vince McMahon has offered Jim Cornette a job as a booker, but no word if he's accepted it yet.
- There's talk of giving Bruce Prichard a big, renewed push as Brother Love and they plan to introduce a hot girl as Sister Love. McMahon reportedly described Sister Love as someone who has posed for Penthouse, which leads people to believe they may be bringing in Beulah from ECW (never happened of course. Someone should get Prichard to talk about this on his podcast).
- Lots of people have been unhappy in WWF recently and there were rumors that the Smoking Gunns had given their notice and were leaving. But it's not true and as of now, no one has given notice.