Wrestling Observer Rewinder

October 18, 1999

Gorilla Monsoon passed away this week at age 62. He'd been in poor health for a year or two and had a heart attack last month that led to further complications related to his diabetes. Those close to Monsoon said he went out "like a man's man" because he actually would have been able to stay alive if he had chosen to, but he would have spent the rest of his life hooked up to machines (daily kidney dialysis, pacemaker, etc.) and would have essentially been stuck in his home for the rest of his life. Rather than do that, Monsoon decided it was time to "check out." He voluntarily took himself off dialysis and went home from the hospital, where he willingly died a slow death over the next 10 days. As usual, Dave writes an in-depth obituary recapping Monsoon's life and career. From his early days as an extremely successful college athlete in multiple sports, then as a professional wrestler, to his years as co-owner of Capitol Sports (which later became the WWF) and even owned a stake in Puerto Rico promotion WWC for awhile. He retired in 1979 and is one of the only big name wrestlers in history to actually stick to his retirement and not come back. He eventually sold his stock in the 2 companies he owned and later became an announcer for WWF. In 1994, his son and WWF referee Joey Marella died in a car accident and Monsoon later became the figurehead president of WWF. Backstage, Monsoon had worked basically every job at some point over the years, from helping McMahon Sr. run the company to working just behind the curtain keeping time on the matches (the Gorilla position) and everything in between. Dave also recaps his role in the Muhammad Ali/Antonio Inoki fight and other famous feuds and whatnot. McMahon Jr. bought out his ownership stake in 1982 but gave him a 10-year employment contract plus a small stake in every WWF house show gate, which is a hell of a deal considering Monsoon didn't even have to leave his home and was making a lot of money during the days when WWF was running 1,000 shows per year.
Weirdly enough, almost none of the wrestlers from WWF attended his funeral except for Savio Vega and Miguel Perez. Steve Austin and Undertaker sent flowers. Some of those close to Monsoon were said to be somewhat upset at the complete absence of WWF wrestlers. Some old-timers were there, along with Monsoon's close friend Bobby Heenan. Most of the WWF office staff was there, especially the TV producers with whom Monsoon worked closely. And of course, Vince McMahon was there and gave a eulogy, calling Monsoon "one of the finest men I ever knew." On TV on Smackdown, they aired a tribute video that is probably the best they've ever done for anyone from the company's past.
WATCH: WWF's tribute to Gorilla Monsoon
Darren Drozdov, better known simply as Droz, suffered a crippling injury at the Smackdown tapings this week during a match with D-Lo Brown. According to reports, they were setting up for a running powerbomb spot and something went wrong. It's not known if D-Lo lost his grip or slipped or if Droz wasn't in the right position or what exactly happened. Regardless, he landed on his head, fracturing his neck and as of press-time, is still hospitalized and paralyzed from at least the waist down. The show was stopped for 15 minutes while Droz lay motionless in the ring and was attended to by doctors. He was eventually taken to the hospital and underwent a 3 hour surgery, where bone was taken from his hip and used to try to repair his neck. He was breathing with a respirator for awhile but over the weekend, they removed it and he regained some movement of his upper body, which led to cautious optimism that the same might happen for his lower body once the swelling on his spine goes down. To make it even worse, during his hospital stay, he also managed to get pneumonia. Dave mentions that Droz is currently engaged to WWF seamstress Julie Youngberg (they eventually get married, divorce in 2005, and she goes on to marry Shannon Moore in 2009 and they later get divorced also. She still works for WWE). The match obviously didn't air on Smackdown when it was broadcast 2 days later.
Droz's injury got a lot of mainstream attention, especially since it's only been 5 months since Owen Hart's death, and it's all bad press for the WWF. It's led to a lot of questions about safety and all that, but this isn't an Owen Hart situation, where Droz was being asked to do something ridiculous. This was just a routine move that went badly and could have happened in any wrestling match. MSNBC did a show focusing on it (Dave says he was asked to be a guest but couldn't make it work due to a scheduling conflict). Bruno Sammartino and Jim Ross appeared on the show and both talked about the dangers of wrestling. Ross refused to place blame on either man. Dave says that D-Lo Brown obviously is devastated and feels horrible about what happened. The next night, Jake Roberts appeared on the Hannity and Colmes show on Fox News and of course it turned into a debate about the content of WWF. Jake Roberts talked about being on a mission to clean up wrestling and how he was against all the drugs and treatment of women and all that fun stuff. Dave thinks that's pretty cute since 2 days later, well........more on that in a bit. Anyway, Dave basically says the Hannity and Colmes segment was just about the worst media segment on wrestling he's ever seen. I mean, Hannity is literal human garbage, so no surprise there.
If you ever wanted a sign that NJPW is in trouble, it's this: after months of hype, the long-awaited rematch between Shinya Hashimoto vs. Naoya Ogawa failed to sell out the Tokyo Dome. There was a crowd of more than 58,000 which sounds good and is close to a full building, but it was heavily papered. It was on pace to become the lowest-drawing Tokyo Dome show in NJPW history early that afternoon but they frantically gave away tickets to fill the venue. After Ogawa beat the brakes off of Hashimoto back in January in a shoot, Hashimoto took several months off to recover from a shattered nose. The match killed his tough guy reputation and his comeback since has been lackluster, so it was figured Hashimoto desperately needed to win this. But NJPW has nothing big planned for their next Jan. 4th show coming up so they figured they would want to do a 3rd Hashimoto/Ogawa match. So for this rematch....Ogawa beat the shit out of Hashimoto again. This match wasn't a shoot but was booked to look like one, with Ogawa beating Hashimoto senseless until Inoki jumped in the ring to stop it and the match was stopped. The crowd booed the shit out of the non-finish.
WATCH: Naoya Ogawa vs. Shinya Hashimoto rematch
Jerry Lawler's mayoral run has failed. The King finished in 3rd place out of 15 candidates. He got about 19,000 votes, far behind the 75,000 votes by incumbent mayor and winner Willie Herenton who easily coasted to re-election. The city has a huge racial divide and Lawler was hopeful that his popularity could cross racial lines but it didn't work, and he only received 1% of the black vote. (Lifelong Memphian here and yeah, there's always been a racial divide in this city and it sucks. Willie Herenton is black and I remember white people in this city fucking HATED that guy).
An upcoming FMW show in Japan next month looks to be a big one. It will feature Shawn Michaels as the special referee of the main event. Tommy Dreamer, Raven, Francine, Jazz, and Balls Mahoney from ECW will work matches. And Dory and Terry Funk, who haven't teamed together in Japan since the 80s, will reunite for a match. Word is FMW has spent a lot of money trying to make this a huge show and are hopeful that it draws big but Dave is skeptical. WWF is huge in Japan right now, but it's 1999 WWF that's popular, not 1997 WWF. Shawn Michaels as a referee likely isn't going to be a huge draw. The Funks are legends but not to younger fans. All of which probably came with a huge price tag.
A lot more news on the unexpected departures of Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara from WWF, and clearly Russo has been talking to Dave because he's got tons of detail from Russo's side here. Russo claims he saw the writing on the wall, saying that everyone in WWF celebrated when WCW added the new 2-hour weekly Thunder show because they all knew it would damage WCW in the long run because of the pressure it would put on the company. But he says WWF forgot that lesson and jumped right into the same kind of deal with Smackdown which put WWF in the same predicament, with everyone overworked and on the road more. Dave says in retrospect, this shouldn't have come as a shock. In his last Raw Magazine column, Russo didn't even write about wrestling and instead talked about being mentally exhausted and not seeing his family. The new schedule essentially kept Russo working and on-call, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. After 6 weeks of working the new schedule, Russo approached Vince McMahon asking for a significant raise and to relocate his family out of Connecticut, and wanted a contract so he would have some stability (he wasn't under contract). Russo notes that if this was any other television company and the head writer was given an entire second weekly show to write, he'd be compensated extra. But McMahon turned him down. Russo claims that when he talked to Vince about never seeing his children, Vince responded by saying he makes enough money to hire a nanny. Russo says that after that comment, he was done and wouldn't have stayed even if McMahon had tripled his salary. At about the same time, Bischoff was given the boot in WCW and Russo saw his opportunity. He contacted J.J. Dillon who put him in touch with Bill Busch, who flew Russo to Atlanta. They had a long meeting that day and within 48 hours of first contacting them, Russo had signed a WCW contract. On his way home from Atlanta, Russo called McMahon to give him the news. In the meantime, Terry Taylor, Bruce Prichard, Kevin Kelly, and others are heading up the WWF writing team. Russo's WCW deal is heavily incentive based on PPV buyrates and TV ratings. It's a pretty good time for Russo to jump on board because WCW's numbers are at rock bottom right now. Fall Brawl did a less than 0.30 buyrate, which would make it the lowest buyrate ever for either WWF or WCW and probably even lower than most UFC buyrates, so hey, he can't possibly make things any worse could he?
Within the WWF, a lot of people feel Russo and Ferrara are taking too much credit for the company's success. There's no doubt they both put in long hours and Russo especially was a driving force behind that, but most feel Ferrara's role was minuscule. But Ferrara reportedly asked Russo to see if he could get him a job in WCW too and evidently, Russo was able to. Furthermore, Vince McMahon was known to be heavily involved in editing whatever came out of Russo's brain because he often had ideas that were too far out. Every week at Raw, the script and format stuff was often being heavily re-done right up to the last minute by Vince McMahon and people are saying that without McMahon overseeing the product, Russo's booking of the company would be disastrous. A lot of people predict that, without McMahon to keep him in check, Russo is going to go off the deep end with crazy ideas in WCW (whaaat? Noooooo...). Russo's relationship with Steve Austin had also become rocky, with Russo calling him the hardest person to work with in the company and that he was paranoid of losing his spot. Russo had recently tried to push an angle with Jeff Jarrett and Austin but Austin turned it down because he thought working with Jarrett would bring him down rather than elevate Jarrett. McMahon agreed and it was nixed.
Russo has said he plans to push guys like Chris Benoit, Billy Kidman, Eddie Guerrero, and others. Russo also plans to push Goldberg as the biggest star in the company and WCW had already planned to start phasing Hogan out before Russo even signed. If Hogan ends up phased down to midcard, most people don't think he'll stick around. Hogan has creative control in his contract and can veto any idea he doesn't want to do. Russo is already booking some stuff and a rumor leaked this week that Hogan had stormed out of the company and put in his notice. But it's a worked shoot angle, designed to fool everyone on the internet and in the locker room. The whole idea is basically to do a Pillman-type angle where Hogan wants out of the company and fights with Russo. Kevin Nash is pretty much done with having any booking power, although he'll probably continue to write the next few weeks of shows until Russo settles in. Russo plans to appeal to Turner higher-ups to allow him to push things in a more risque direction like WWF (he's hoping to get it changed to a TV-14 rating) and will be booking the show much like Raw, with short matches, more soap opera stuff, crash-TV type angles. He also wants to shorten Nitro back to 2 hours and Thunder back to 1 hour. That's a mixed bag. The loss of ad revenue from doing that would be significant, about a 40% hit which is bad news short-term for a company already in financial disarray. In the long-term, overexposure is one of the things killing WCW and they desperately need to cut back.
Well...the Heroes of Wrestling PPV is in the books. Dave calls it the worst PPV show of all time. It set new standards for bad wrestling. It made last year's Hogan vs. Warrior match look like Flair vs. Steamboat. Just about the only positive was Dutch Mantel on commentary, but he was brought down by his co-announcer who had no knowledge of wrestling and was one of the worst announcers ever "ranking only ahead of a drunk Herb Abrams screaming, 'Let’s hear it for the Jews!'" Dave adds. Gordon Solie was supposed to call the show but pulled out due to health issues. Too Cold Scorpio had the only watchable match on the show. Seeing all these old wrestlers physically incapable of doing much of anything made it all the more impressive to see how good Ric Flair still is at 50 years old. Iron Sheik was as immobile as Andre The Giant in his last days.
Other notes from Heroes of Wrestling: Sheik/Volkoff vs. the Bushwhackers was the worst match ever held on PPV and Dave gives it "-459.4 stars" so, next time you want to bitch and moan about Okada and Omega breaking the scale, there you go. He adds, "absolute zero, this is the worst match I've ever rated in my life." Greg Valentine vs. George Steel gets -3 stars. Tully Blanchard looked pretty good but his knees are shot. Abdullah the Butcher vs. One Man Gang was terrible as a match (-2.25 stars) but both men bled like stuck pigs, so the crowd loved that. Jimmy Snuka vs. Bob Orton gets -1 star. And then...there was the main event. The original plan was for Jake Roberts to face Jim Neidhart in a singles match but it got turned into a tag match with King Kong Bundy and Yokozuna added (who were also supposed to face each other but they ended up putting the 2 matches together into one match). 30 minutes before the show, Neidhart refused to do the job and both he and Bundy refused to have Jake Roberts' snake put on them. Yokozuna looked every bit of 600 pounds if not more. And then, of course, there's Jake Roberts. Good lord, here we go. Roberts had talked in the days leading up to the show about being clean and that this was his last chance to do something in wrestling. Well, the day of the show, Roberts got word that his ex-wife was planning to hit him for $5,000 in back child support, knowing he was going to get a good pay day for doing this show and that he was facing jail if he couldn't come up with the money. Apparently, Roberts then disappeared for a few hours and returned later during the show, clearly fucked up out of his mind. He did a notoriously bad promo before the match ("You want to play 21, I got 22. You want to play Black Jack? I got two of those too. You want to play aces and eights? Well, I got some of those too.") He stumbled to the ring, had a horrible match, and then pulled out his pet snake and waved it around between his legs like it was a penis and pretended to jerk it off. At this point, Bundy and Yoko were sent out to "save" the show and it turned into an impromptu tag match. The cameras eventually cut to black abruptly because Jake then stuck the snake down his pants and they were afraid he was pulling out his dick. And that's basically it. Main event gets -3 stars. So yeah....this was legendarily bad. Enjoy.
WATCH: Heroes of Wrestling PPV (full show)
Eric Kulas, victim of the Mass Transit incident, filed a lawsuit this week against ECW, Paul Heyman, Tod Gordon, New Jack, Mustafa, D-Von Dudley, the venue, the city of Revere, MA and RF Video which filmed the event. The suit claims the match turned into a shoot with New Jack carving up his forehead against his wishes, permanently scarring and disfiguring him. New Jack was acquitted in a criminal trial earlier this year and many witnesses contradicted Kulas' story. Most people there say Kulas, who was 17 at the time, agreed to wrestle New Jack and even agreed to allow him to blade him. And, of course, New Jack bladed him using an Xacto knife and went way too deep and long and Dave says it was the single most disgusting thing he's ever seen while watching wrestling. Dave says Kulas hasn't done himself any favors during all this because he's repeatedly been caught in lies about various things that happened that night and about his past experiences as a wrestler. Kulas claims he never leaves the house anymore except to go to doctors or to see psychologists and that he suffers from headaches, anxiety, and depression caused by post-traumatic stress and dizziness and nausea from post-concussion syndrome. He claimed the deep blade job caused numbness from his forehead to the bridge of his nose and that he needs shoulder surgery because his rotator cuff was damaged on a slam during the match. Kulas claims that ECW later offered him $15,000 in cash and an ECW contract to stay with the company (and not sue them) but refused to fire New Jack. Kulas turned it down and was quoted in a recent news story saying, "I chose not to take it. I am out to get them. I am out to close them down."
Dave mentions that AAA wrestler Jerry Estrada is currently a fugitive. He was partying with an older "sugar mama" woman in Tijuana last week when she somehow mysteriously fell out of a window and died. Estrada never called the police after it happened and simply skipped town. He worked a mask vs. hair match a couple of says later and ended up getting his head shaved and hasn't been seen since, but police would sure like to talk to him (I can't find any detail on this and he never went to jail so I guess he didn't get in trouble for it).
At a recent NJPW show at Korakuen Hall, the company debuted 3 new wrestlers: Hiroshi Tanahashi, Katsuyori Shibata, and Wataru Inoue. All 3 men actually worked a battle royal earlier this year, but this was their first singles matches.
Beyond The Mat will be given a 1-week run in theaters in Century City, CA in order to make it eligible for Oscar nominations. There will be a Q&A beforehand with director Barry Blaustein, Terry Funk, and....Dave Meltzer.
Jesse Ventura made news again with a controversial Playboy interview, making comments about religion and also urging Donald Trump to run for president. Goddammit, Jesse. Anyway, Dave focuses on his wrestling comments, with Ventura claiming he was a huge draw, sold out most shows he worked and sold out MSG 3 times. Dave calls bullshit on that. For starters, Ventura only ever wrestled 2 main events at MSG and neither were sold out. A 3rd one was scheduled, with Ventura vs. Hogan and that show DID sellout but Ventura had to back out of the match due to illness. And let's not kid ourselves, Ventura wasn't responsible for that sellout. In fact, with Ventura claiming most shows he wrestled were sold out, when in reality, whether it was AWA or WWF, it was Hogan who drew those sellouts, not Ventura who was usually wrestling on the undercard below Hogan. In the interview, Ventura also returned to his previous way of thinking, talking about wrestlers needing a union. Just a few months ago, when WWF was paying him for Summerslam, Ventura had abandoned that line of thought, but now that he's no longer collecting a check from Vince, he's back to calling for unions again. Nice to know that Mr. Tell It Like It Is can be bought so easily. Ventura also said he wasn't sure if the guy playing Undertaker right now is the same one who originally debuted, which Dave just shakes his head at.
In the newly relaunched Stampede Wrestling, the shows are pretty bad and they're drawing crowds of only 100 or so people. But they have a guy named Mauro Ranallo who does the play-by-play and he's said to have a lot of potential as a commentator.
This past week's ECW show on TNN was the worst show to date, built around a 2-part Tammy Sytch interview and clips of recent PPV matches, with no new wrestling footage at all. The Sytch interview was cheesy and hard to take serious. It was supposed to "blow the lid" off the wrestling business but was mostly an excuse to show clips of Sytch in bikinis. The interview was pretty real though, with Sytch admitting to past issues with alcohol and prescription pills and crying when talking about the deaths of Louie Spicolli and especially about her 16-year-old niece who died in a car accident a couple of years ago. There was WWF footage included, which means they're still on good terms with ECW, and she was careful not to say anything bad about WWF. Dave remembers how she was when she first debuted in wrestling a few years ago and to see her now is one of the saddest things he's seen because she looks like she's been through hell and back. Anyway, this whole interview was supposed to be intense and serious but backstage, everyone was laughing at it (can't find video on YouTube but the episode is on the Network).
On Nitro, the show opened with Bobby Heenan saying some nice words about Gorilla Monsoon, with whom he was especially close. Heenan was visibly holding back tears during the segment (yeah this one is always a tearjerker).
WATCH: Bobby Heenan's tribute to Gorilla Monsoon on Nitro
Various other WCW notes: Sting wants to be turned babyface again already. A musician named Bob Mould has been added to the WCW booking team for now. ICP is claiming they've signed a new deal with WCW. Shane Douglas is going to get surgery for a torn bicep. Erik Watts, Horace Hogan, Scott Norton, Mike Enos, Chad Fortune, Barry Darsow and Barry Horowitz have all been released from their contracts but were told WCW may still want to use them on a nightly $500-per-match basis. Dale Torborg wrestled on Thunder this week as MVP (Most Violent Player, not Montel Vontavious Porter) but word is they may give him a new gimmick (yeah I'd say so). Steve McMichael is still under contract but hasn't been around in months and just had knee surgery. Gene Okerlund has re-signed with the company. Scott Steiner is expected to get back surgery and be back by the end of the year.
Jimmy Hart is still running WCW Saturday Night and is basically using all the undercard guys that never get time on Nitro or Thunder. Hart is planning to introduce a new 3-man group this week with Shane Helms, Shannon Moore and Evan Karagis as group called 3 Count which will basically be like an updated Rock & Roll Express meets Backstreet Boys.
Lenny & Lodi’s characters were dropped because of a letter from GLAAD, who wrote a letter to TNT president Brad Seigel saying, "The character of Lenny is presented with the intention to incite the crowd to the most base homophobic behavior." After the first letter, Seigel promised them Lenny's character would be dropped but he was back 2 weeks later and GLAAD wrote a second letter to them saying, among other things, "How many gay bashings and gay murders have to be committed in this country for you to remove such hurtful portrayals from your broadcasts?" That was apparently enough to do the trick.
In a recent interview just before he left WWF, Vince Russo had this to say: "I'm going to tell you something right now that you will absolutely not agree with, but I've been a wrestling fan my whole life and I will live and die by this--it is hard enough, believe me, I write this shit, it is hard enough to get somebody over. You will never ever, ever, ever, ever see the Japanese wrestlers or the Mexican wrestlers over in American mainstream wrestling. And the simple reason for that is, even myself, I'm an American and I don't want to sound like a big bigot or a racist or anything like that, but I'm an American. If I'm watching wrestling here in America, I don't give a shit about a Japanese guy. I don't give a shit about a Mexican guy. I'm from America, and that's what I want to see." Surely all the Mexican and Japanese wrestlers under WCW contract are thrilled that this guy's coming in to be their new booker (yeah this doesn't go over well to say the least).
Notes from Raw: they drew 33,000+ to the Georgia Dome, making it one of the 10 largest crowds in American wrestling history. Right in WCW's backyard. That being said, WWF had hoped for 40,000 but didn't quite get there and a lot of the crowd still seemed to be pro-WCW so the regional biases are still a little relevant. They started an angle with Big Show being sad because his father is dying of cancer, which Dave thinks is pretty low for a wrestling show (just wait) and now he's feuding with Big Boss Man. Dave wonders why WWF is paying Big Show a guaranteed $950,000 per year for the next 9+ years for this shit.
Notes from Smackdown: Solofa Fatu worked a dark match using the name Rikishi. Kurt Angle also did a dark match, jobbing to Stevie Richards. They did an angle with Stephanie McMahon being "tragically" injured and being carted off in a neck brace. Considering this is literally the exact same taping where Droz got paralyzed, Dave's kind of aghast that they would continue that storyline on the same show. They started an incest angle, with sex addict Mark Henry talking about losing his virginity to his sister when he was 8 years old and that the relationship still continues to this day. "I just hope Mark Henry has no young kids of school age because no money would be worth the torture that they’d be put through," Dave adds because perhaps you haven't heard, but kids can be assholes.
A trial date has been set for next month with Ultimate Warrior's lawsuit against WWF. 2 of the 4 counts were thrown out already. Warrior's claim of defamation and his claim that WWF didn't fund his Warrior University training school as agreed upon were both dismissed. The remaining counts are in regards to his firings in both 1992 and 1996, I guess for wrongful termination?
There was a plan 2 weeks ago for Rock to beat Triple H for the title on Raw, but Triple H threw a fit and the idea was nixed.
Former ECW valet Kimona likely won't end up in WWF due to her less-than-stellar reputation (Dave doesn't clarify, but she was a stripper when she wasn't wrestling so maybe that). Apparently enough people got in WWF's ear (including Paul Heyman) to recommend not hiring her (she ends up in WCW eventually).
Yokozuna is apparently telling people that he's starting back with WWF after Wrestlemania to feud with Steve Austin. Dave says that Yoko is still banned in all of the states with athletic commissions that regulate wrestling, which is about half of them, due to his weight and heart issues, so this is bullshit and it's not happening unless he loses a huge amount of weight.
They're expected to start airing vignettes for Taz next month. Speaking of Taz, he might be in for a rough road in WWF. A lot of people in the company feel he's too small, but Vince Russo pushed hard for him and was his biggest supporter. But now Russo is gone before Taz has even arrived. Speaking of Taz again, the charges against him for exposing himself to an underage female tanning salon employee earlier this year were recently dropped, so he's off the hook.
The, uh, busty female EMT lady who has appeared in WWF recently doesn't have a character name yet but her real name is Cathy Dingman and is an indie wrestler from Florida. Russo had initially proposed the name Connie Lingus, but that apparently didn't fly (she ends up becoming B.B., aka Barbara Bush).
Execs from shoot-fighting promotion PRIDE in Japan are meeting with WWF officials this month to discuss working together, which would pretty much turn PRIDE into a total worked promotion. Dave suggests Kurt Angle could be a huge star in PRIDE if this turns into anything (it didn't).
ECW valet Miss Congeniality is expected to debut for WWF next month and was written out of ECW this week. She has trained with the Hardy Boyz and is said to be a good bump taker.