PO Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228 ISSN1083-9593 April 10, 2000
The biggest money wrestling extravaganza of all-time hardly lived up to the hype.
Wrestlemania XVI, the first Wrestlemania that seemed to take on almost Super Bowl or Final Four level proportions as an American institution, turned out like many Super Bowls, with a flat crowd, a been there, done that main event finish ending a disappointing match, and with the exception of a ladder match, which was an amazing stunt show, it was probably not as good as an average episode of Raw.
The show ended with Hunter Hearst Helmsley retaining the title when Vince McMahon, instead of Mick Foley, was the one to make the heel turn screwing The Rock at the end. The ending came off too reminiscent of a WCW NWO reprise ending a Nitro as opposed to a finish of the biggest show in the history of the industry. The finish had been built up all day, when, during the pre-game show, the attempt was made to focus the success and history of the WWF on the McMahon family as opposed to the wrestlers, as the old style version of fans' mythology would have believed it to be.
Even with the vaunted WWF production making it seem special, and great ideas such as the leer jet flying a lucky fan to ringside, the show delivered less than most ECW and WWF PPV events, and if you took the ladder match and the last three minutes of the main event off the show, it would be probably about at the level of a recent WCW event. It was made worse because the crowd of 18,034 (announced on TV as 19,776), which was 16,716 paid with a live gate of $1,347,800 at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, CA, was dead for most of the show. The merchandise figure of $277,125 set what is believed to be an all-time U.S. record of $19.98 per head, breaking the $17.41 per head (based on paid attendance) record set at the Fleet Center in Boston for Wrestlemania XIV. The live gate was the fourth highest in the history of American wrestling, trailing only Wrestlemania III at the Pontiac Silverdome ($1,599,000), Wrestlemania V at Trump Plaza ($1,628,000) and Wrestlemania XV ($1,438,050) at the First Union Center in Philadelphia.
Part of the problem was timing. In order to make Wrestlemania "special" from the other shows, they lengthened it by one hour and added a live Heat show, meaning instead of a 2:45 live event, it was 4:15. Without any singles matches (the cat fight doesn't count), the monotony of gimmick matches made none of them seem special except the ladder match because the workers made it so memorable by risking their bodies. WWF should have learned, and did learn, from the one year when they did live Heat before PPV's and presented largely so-so cards because of lack of crowd reaction, and how the PPV's got far more enjoyable when the one hour Heat show was taped earlier and the live crowd didn't sit through it. When they went back to the old policy, the same dead crowd resulted. Lengthening the show caused them to add time by giving the guys more time in the ring. Unfortunately, even the ladder match would have been better if it was five minutes shorter, and the main event was a good 10-15 minutes too long.
The ladder match, which was more a collection of set up spots, some of which were spectacular and insane, and Jeff Hardy attempts to yet further raise the bar in an industry headed for some dangerous repercussions, was the show stealer. The main event dragged, particularly after Mick Foley was eliminated, and exposed the weaknesses of both HHH and Rock as workers as they were unable to carry a match which lasted 36:28. For the biggest match of the year, they couldn't even hold a candle to the previous two PPV title match main events, both of which HHH stood out in. Foley's appearance in retrospective on this show was sad in every way except for his personal financial rewards. He had made the greatest exit in the history of the business (well, with the exception of Terry Funk, who came back a million times afterwards, and Shohei Baba, who had to die to upstage everyone in history), the greatest retirement interview and the greatest farewell match, only to be brought back a few weeks later to negate both of them historically, and to do half-hearted reprises of a final match and final interview with virtually no emotional impact. If there was anything amazing by the show, it was just how little significance Foley's appearance truly played in it. The show was doing the same buy rate either way. He played no part in the finish. His appearance was strictly to, on one TV show, change the focus away from the obvious, and make people think there might be a different happy ending than the one they weren't getting, and maybe as an excuse for Linda McMahon to be programmed into the storylines. As it turned out, it was a comeback not at all for ego, but strictly for money, as no matter what the paycheck, his fond farewell memory will not be this match, or the half-hearted standing ovation he got leaving the Pond, but No Way Out, the last great performance his body had left in it, one month earlier. At least this time, in every interview, he made it clear that this will be his last match "for a while," and "maybe" ever, so at least these interviews leaves the door open for what everyone expects will be his comebacks. Hopefully they won't be for diminishing returns, as this comeback already had little significance emotionally, and he won't be like Verne Gagne or Funk, whose spectacular sendoffs are no longer memories for anyone.
1. Big Bossman (Ray Traylor) & Bull Buchanan (Barry Buchanan) beat Godfather (Charles Wright) & D-Lo Brown (Accie Connor) in 9:05. Ice T came out and delivered the new rap into for Godfather, which seemed like it was longer than the Bret Hart-Shawn Michaels Wrestlemania match. Anyway, never have I been so impressed with the rap talent of Konnan than after that performance. Crowd was dead. Buchanan looked really good, but few probably noticed. At one point he jumped all the way to the top rope to come off with an elbow drive, which is impressive for a guy who is probably a legit 6-6. At one point a mistimed clothesline hit the ref, who made it worse by not selling it, since it wasn't supposed to happen. Brown did deliver a Frankensteiner off the top on Buchanan. Lots of mistimed spots as the match worse on. Finally Bossman delivered the Bossman slam on Brown, and Buchanan followed with a legdrop off the top rope. The fans did ooh for the finish because the agility of Buchanan on the move was impressive. 1/4*
2. Bob Holly (Robert Howard) wound up as holding the prestigious Hardcore title, that changed hands ten times in the 15:00 long 13-man free for all over Crash Holly (Erin O'Grady), Tazz (Peter Senercia), Viscera (Nelson Frazier), Rodney (Rodney Lionheart), Pete Gas, Joey Abs (Jason Ahrndt), Taka Michinoku (Takeo Yoshida), Sho Funaki, Head Bangers (Glen Ruth & Charles Warrington) and Acolytes (Ron Simmons & John Layfield). The match had little heat and you can only watch so much of broiler pan, road sign and garbage can lid shots, some of which were really stiff and resulted in some legitimate lumps on people's noggins later that day, and some of which looked like backyard play wrestling, without it being redundant, even with Crash and Gas doing major league blade jobs and the frequent falls. Tazz got the title first pinning Crash after a suplex in :26. Viscera then got the title pinning Tazz with a powerslam after smashing his back on the post in 1:00. Posse was delivering weak object spots on Viscera. O'Grady bladed big time. It was funny because the cameras for several minutes shied away from airing his face, when the whole idea is that this is a TV production. Gas bladed as well. The Acolytes slammed Viscera off the top and Faarooq hit him with some 2x4 shots, followed by Bradshaw doing a shoulderblock off the rope before both Taka & Funaki jumped on him at 7:51 for the pin. I figured they were watching WCW and thus both men would be hardcore champion for the next minute, but instead it was just Funaki, who ran backstage, I guess figuring, like Darva, he didn't really want to win. Rodney pinned him backstage in 8:11. Abs pinned Rodney after a side salto in 8:24. Mosh pinned Abs in 8:46. Gas got his second championship reign, and people say titles aren't important anymore, pinning Mosh after a fire extinguisher shot in 9:29. Tazz suplexed Gars on the floor and Bob Holly broke up the pin. I guess Bob wasn't supposed to because Tazz didn't sell the break up and the ref kept counting, so Tazz got the title in 10:17. Crash Holly got it back pinning Tazz in 14:20 after two broiler pan shots. Taz immediately got the choke on Crash and it looked as if they were going to do a finish where Crash would go out but keep the title on the time limit expiring. Just before that, Bob came in and hit Crash with a glass cookie jar and covered him. Ref Tim White counted to two, Crash may have rolled his shoulder but definitely didn't kick out, and the bell rang. The announcers acted as if Crash won because that would be the logical conclusion. It was then announced that somehow Bob actually pinned him. We don't have complete details as to what happened, other than Bob was supposed to win based on what we'd been told the day before, and that the finish didn't go down exactly as planned. On the finish, some of the glass got in Tazz's eye, although he sold it at the finish more than it really was. Most of the glass came out, and fortunately for him, none cut the eyeball. One small piece of the glass had to be taken out of his eye. 1/2*
3. Test (Andrew Martin) & Albert (Matt Bloom) beat Al Snow (Allan Sarven) & Steve Blackman in 7:05. No heat. This was so bad that even Jim Ross, about four minutes in, started with his code words about how the teams were having a style clash and even did the dreaded bowling shoe reference, which means he knows it's in the toilet. Snow & Blackman came out with a little guy in a cheese costume. At one point he chased after Trish Stratus. It's really clear Stratus needed to be sent to Memphis or Ohio Valley for a few months as she's not ready for Broadway. Test pinned Blackman with an elbow off the top rope. After the match, they brought the cheese guy in and Snow & Blackman beat him up, I guess to get their heat back, but in this case, there was no heat to get back. Actually this was an excuse to tell cutting cheese jokes, which got old, maybe on the first one, but certainly on the second. They took the cheese guy out on a stretcher, and Jerry Lawler made a reference that maybe he should be taken out as part of a cracker. -*1/4
4. Edge (Adam Copeland) & Christian (Jay Reso) won the WWF tag titles in a three-way ladder match over Matt & Jeff Hardy and the Dudleys (Mark Lomonica & Devon Hughes) in 22:29. Although this featured every bit of the effort of the previous C&E vs. Hardys ladder match, the spots seemed too set up and it came across as a tremendous stunt show and never had the intensity of a match. The crowd didn't want to see a match once they see the ladders and tables to begin with. Fans were chanting for the tables from the start, which were kept out of the match early since they were going so long. Jeff missed a firebird splash and crashed onto the ladder. Buh Buh came off the top rope with a senton onto the ladder which was on Jeff. Edge jumped off the top holding the ladder onto Matt. D-Von did a legdrop on the ladder onto Edge. Buh Buh put the ladder around his neck and twirled around knocking everyone down in the process. Christian did a plancha to the floor off the ladder. Edge speared Jeff coming off the top rope while Jeff was climbing the ladder in a spectacular spot. Matt used a B.T. bomb on Edge taking Edge off the ladder. Three ladders were set up. Buh Buh gave Christian a diamond cutter off nearly the top of a ladder. Hardys both did simultaneous leaps off the ladder onto Buh Buh. Edge & Christian did a double superplex on D-Von off nearly the top of the ladder. They did a big spot where everyone was on the ladder and they tipped the ladders. Jeff and Christian both went from mid-ring all the way to the floor on their bump while Edge and Matt both crotched themselves when their ladder tipped to the other side of the ring. The Dudleys gave Christian a sandwich lariat with ladders and gave Edge a 3-D. They brought out tables, putting one on the top of the ladder and one under the ladder basically setting up the final fireworks explosion of the match. When the Hardys made the comeback, and didn't take a bump into the ladder, the fans booed. For better or for worse, it showed the fans didn't care a lick about who won this match, even nearly 20:00 in, but were just into seeing explosions. D-Von splashed through a table when Jeff moved. Buh Buh bombed Matt through a table. Jeff ran across the barricade into a ladder shot by Christian. Buh Buh brought out a 13-foot ladder (the others looked to be around 8-feet) and put it in the entrance way area. It wound up with the spot of the show, where Jeff came from the top of the ladder with a swanton onto Buh Buh through a table. Christian and Matt climbed the ladder and brawled on the table. It wasn't sturdy and they were afraid to stand up, so the brawling with scared guys on their knees kind of took the edge of the finish. Edge climbed up and Matt took a bump through the last standing table and Edge & Christian grabbed the belts. You can't fault the effort which was tremendous from all six. At times, particularly toward the finish, the match dragged because of long set-up times for spots. It is what wrestling is becoming so by that standard it was an excellent match, even if it didn't get excellent heat or build much, but in a business that probably needs to tone down before things get worse, this being the example of an excellent match is only going to make things escalate. ****
5. Terri (Terri Boatright) beat Kat (Stacey Carter) in 2:25 in a match where the object was to throw the opponent out of the ring. It was a T&A spectacle that delivered Terri in a flesh colored g-string after the match. Moolah and Mae Young were at ringside and Val Venis was ref. Ross said ahead of time the match shouldn't be rated on the star system. It's one of those deals that if it worked, fine. But it didn't, as the crowd was quiet and actually booed the ending. Basically Terri was thrown out of the ring twice but Venis missed it. On the second time, Moolah threw Terri back in, as Mae was trying to sexually molest Venis, and Moolah threw Kat out and Venis signalled for the bell. Kat pants'd Terri after. -*
6. Too Cool (Brian Lawler & Scott Taylor) & Chyna (Joanie Lauer) beat Dean Malenko (Dean Simon) & Perry Saturn (Perry Satullo) & Eddy Guerrero in 9:38. It was a better than average match. The focus was put on Chyna and Guerrero. All the Radicals had to sell for some lame looking offense by Chyna. Chyna did an impressive handspring elbow into the corner on Malenko and another on Saturn, and a double low blow spot. While doing this, she ripped her pants on the side and they started falling. The poor woman was having to reverse a power bomb into a power bomb of her own while trying to keep her pants from falling down, so it wasn't a very smooth power bomb. They want right to the finish where Chyna went for a press-slam, although Guerrero didn't get himself high enough to make the move work, and a reverse DDT like move for the pin. **1/2
7. Chris Benoit ended up as IC champ and Chris Jericho (Chris Irvine) as European champ in two three-way matches where double champ Kurt Angle lost both belts without getting pinned in 13:35. This was technically the best wrestling on the show, and didn't have much heat, but the wrestling from all three was well below the standard you'd expect from them. I don't know if it was nerves, or a reaction to the dead crowd and it was good, but you'd expect great in this setting. First fall saw Benoit pin Jericho after a diving head-butt in 7:54 to win the IC belt (the IC belt should have been the second fall, because the European title is traditionally considered a joke so the emotional climax had already taken place and they still had to go out there). Because the European belt doesn't mean much, when the match picked up, it just didn't seem important. They did some big moves, including Angle missing a Kenta Kobashi style moonsault and Jericho putting him in the walls but Benoit saved. Jericho did a double bomb on Angle, and Benoit followed with a rolling german suplex on Jericho and a dragon suplex. Tim White got bumped. Benoit used the crossface on Jericho, who was tapping like crazy, thereby signalling that he was going over. Jericho put the Walls on Benoit but Angle hit him with the belt but Benoit saved Jericho. Benoit then missed the diving head-butt on Jericho and Jericho hit the quebrada for the pin in 5:41. **3/4
8. Kane (Glen Jacobs) & Rikishi Phatu (Solofa Fatu Jr.) beat Road Dogg (Brian James) & X-Pac (Sean Waltman) in 4:16. This match was basically rushed, I guess so they could hurry up and do their Pete Rose joke. Pretty much before it built to anything, Rikishi rubbed his butt in Tori's face and Kane pinned X-Pac after a tombstone. After the match, a Chicken, the same gimmick Rose used last year (they spent the entire show building up the idea that Rose was returning for revenge on Kane) got in the ring and danced with Too Cool and Rikishi while Kane watched. Kane then went after the chicken, making sure he didn't interrupt the dance number, and was about to choke slam him when Rose showed up with a baseball bat. Rikishi stopped him and grabbed the bat while Kane choke slammed him. Rikishi then rubbed his butt nowhere near the approximate vicinity of Rose's face. *
9. Hunter Hearst Helmsley retained the WWF title in the four-way over Mick Foley, Rock (Dwayne Johnson) and Big Show (Paul Wight) in 36:28 of the match with a McMahon family member in every corner. Show dominated everyone early, a clear sign he was going out first. He was out by 4:41, when Foley hit Show with a chair and Rock pinned him after a rock bottom. Foley may have injured his shoulder as Show fell backwards on him with a splash. The match actually stopped for nearly 2:30 as they did histrionics based on Show being eliminated. Rock & Foley doubled on HHH until Rock accidentally hit Foley with the bell when HHH moved. HHH was beating on both until Foley came back with a 2x4 in barbed wire and then used a double arm DDT and Socko claw on HHH. Rock laid out HHH with the belt, but Foley set up the claw and put it on Rock. It was amazing to see how quickly the fans turned on Foley, which made it clear Rock had to be the face there at the end, which is clearly what the spot was designed to do. HHH used a double low blow. Fans did believe when Foley used a double arm DDT on Rock that Rock actually might lose. HHH put Rock on the spanish announcers table. Foley went for a plancha off the middle ropes onto the table on Rock, but landed short, and may have broken his ribs. The table was supposed to break, and HHH went into panic mode and kept trying to break the table, which finally collapsed but didn't break. HHH delivered a pedigree to Foley, who kicked out. HHH knocked down ref Earl Hebner and did a pedigree on a chair for the pin in 19:41. The fans gave Foley a half-hearted standing ovation as he left. It was an attempt to replay the same scene from last month it looked like a pale imitation. As the match continued, Rock hit HHH with barbed wire but he kicked out. They brawled to the back. Rock suplexed HHH on the floor by the entry way. Rock picked up the steps and HHH hit the steps with a chair, knocking Rock down and hitting the steps with more chairs. He piledrove Rock on the steps. Ross was overreacting with a "stop the match" scream after the move that the crowd didn't even pop for. Rock came back, flipping HHH over the top rope and put him through the English language table. Vince threw the killer punch on HHH. Shane jumped Vince and hit him with a TV monitor. Vince bladed. The crowd wasn't popping for any of this and the match was dragging. He came back with some really atrocious looking punches but Shane stopped him with a low blow and a chair shot. Vince bladed a second time because he didn't get much blood the first time. Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco carried Vince out. Ross was exclaiming how Vince was losing blood by the quart, which made him look bad since Gas and Crash in the hardcore match bled five times as much, as Gas ended up needing 10 stitches. HHH hit Rock with a barbed wire board and set up the pedigree, but Rock catapulted him into Shane and hit the rock bottom. Vince came back and hit Shane with a low blow and a terrible punch that Shane sold like he was Derrick Dukes taking a dive for Mark Gastineau. Vince entered the ring with a chair, and turned on Rock. Rock kicked out of the first pin, but after a second chair shot, HHH got the pin. After the match, Vince (who guaranteed earlier in the show to "make things right" which is where a lot of people figured out the turn) hugged Stephanie. Rock made his comeback to end the show doing a rock bottom on Shane, Vince (who mistimed his jump and tried to overcompensate and may have hurt himself) and Stephanie (who in her first major pro bump, showed she was a better worker than Rikishi and both Harris twins) before laying out Stephanie with the people's elbow. ***
The odds of success of the XFL increased greatly this past week with the announcement of the deal where NBC would become 50% owner of the league, and broadcast the games every Saturday night from February through April from 8-11 p.m. Eastern time.
In the deal, NBC and WWFE would each share half of the start-up costs for the league, estimated at about $100 million. NBC would provide the time slot. The TV advertising revenue, instead of going to NBC as it would for any other sports or entertainment package, would go to the XFL, which basically means half NBC and half WWFE. In addition, NBC purchased 2.3 million shares of WWFE at $13 a share, roughly a 30% discount as to what the stock was trading for at the time, meaning it owns approximately 3 percent of the stock, of which another 17% is owned by the public through the IPO and the other 80% is owned by the McMahon family and whatever major star wrestlers will be given stock free (as opposed to being given the right to purchase the stock for $17) in two years as part of a deal if they don't leave the company.
The move was somewhat shocking, since NBC had just backed out of a similar deal with Time Warner when both sides cited there was no way to financially make the league work. Dick Ebersol, who put the deal together with McMahon and has a business relationship dating back to being co-owners of the NBC Saturday Night Main Event shows in the 80s, claimed the model they are working on indicate the league would be profitable by its third season. He indicated that it gets NBC into the football business with only an $80 million outlay ($50 million for its share of the start-up costs of the league and the $30 million it paid for WWFE stock), a tremendously low figure, with no future rights fees having to be negotiated in the future, as compared with the billion dollar NFL deal where the networks consider their football package as a loss leader in many cases. Ebersol is somewhat under the gun for a success at NBC Sports these days because of the NBA's strong ratings decline. While it was a given the XFL would get television coverage, being the number of cable networks there are out there and figuring UPN, the NBC prime time coverage is an interesting attempt, which has led to a decent amount of media criticism of NBC for being in business with McMahon, but still makes the league's success both financially and as a TV entity far from a lock.
Saturday night is the lowest rated night of television per week. The fact that McMahon's wrestlers led to Saturday Night Live drawing its best rating in nearly one year, and its best among males 12-24 in nearly six years, brought up what Ebersol and others are pointing out about McMahon's success in delivery that demographic. Raw on Mondays, within that one demographic, draws significantly more viewers than Monday Night Football. In overall viewership, Monday Night Football drew just over three times as many viewers as Raw this past season. NBC is going in with the idea that because McMahon knows how to deliver viewers in that age group, viewers that the NFL and all other football at this point doesn't deliver, that McMahon promoting football would deliver those viewers, who at this point don't even watch TV on Saturday nights, based on the fact The Rock delivered those viewers once. NBC is also hoping that XFL skewing young, as a lead-in to the 11 p.m. news, would increase the number of younger viewers to Saturday Night Live. According to an article in Media Week, media buyers are questioning NBC's de-emphasis of the 25-49 demo while trying to increase the 12-24 as a Saturday night TV strategy, noting that even if ratings go up, better ratings while focusing on a demo with far less income may still result in less advertiser income. The article also suggests the strategy itself to increase ratings is also questionable, wondering how many 17-to-24 year-olds will stay home on Saturday night to watch television.
While making any generalization before the product is rolled out is dangerous, if NBC wanted young male viewers on Saturday Night, it would have been much safer to put on McMahon's wrestling shows, with a proven track record to those viewers, which NBC indicated it had no interest in, as opposed to going on the assumption the audience for entertainment soap opera pro wrestling would cross over to sport pro football, something they largely didn't do for boxing, movies or bodybuilding failed ventures McMahon promoted in the past. While having Rock and Stone Cold appear on the early live telecasts and do shtick at the stadiums will help jump start and give it curiosity among the fans, it still has to put on an entertaining product to keep them. It's actually very close to an equivalent to Aaron Spelling, who has promoted many successful television shows to the young demographic, suddenly starting up a baseball league, and the network that bought it expecting the people who grew up watching 90210 to suddenly become fans of minor league baseball.
The deal doesn't in any way preclude a deal that many believe is close to being done, for McMahon to sign an exclusive national deal for his wrestling shows with CBS, which would, in turn, buy another $100 million in McMahon's personal WWFE stock. The XFL is still expected to sign a second deal with a smaller network or cable carrier for its second-tier games, including talk of USA network broadcasting a prime time mid-week and Sunday afternoon game every week.
This football league will be unique among sports models. It will be the first attempt at doing a major league where the network itself would own the league as opposed to paying rights fees for it. In major markets, this model is being done with certain teams, most notably when Ted Turner owned the Braves, Hawks and TBS, where the stations that broadcast the games in some cases own the teams or the proposed New York conglomerate of teams and cable station, but there is no such national deal in existence with a major sports league. Turner tried to create his own Olympics in non-Olympic years, the Goodwill Games, which was a financial failure of epic proportions. NBC's involvement has to end speculation that the games would eventually be "worked," and stars created in the manner they are in pro wrestling, because while WWF can survive such a scandal, NBC can't. However, it doesn't preclude, with no individual ownership of teams, also almost unique in the major sports world (there is a soccer league where the league itself owns many of the teams and the WNBA is owned by the NBA), that the rosters can't be manipulated to give the major market teams a competitive advantage. If major market teams do well and this catches on, it should help the ratings, particularly in the playoffs. Ebersol was actually asked about this at the press conference and reacted as if the question was an insult, but when working with the WWF, it becomes a very logical question. One of the complaints about the NFL is that the league has become so well balanced and teams on top one year don't last, that there are fewer marquee teams than in the past which has led to lower Monday Night Football ratings which in the past were based on marquee team match-ups. Actually the lower ratings are probably even more to do with competition from 100 stations in a market as opposed to 20 in the past, plus the Monday night wrestling boom is a factor. The NBA's mid-80s and early-90s popularity boom was built around the Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, who dominated the network broadcasts of the league, and has declined greatly without the same calibre of marquee drawing power teams. In a sport where the shelf-life of players is small due to injuries, it will survive based partially on local community involvement with the local team.
NBC had been drawing a 5.6 rating for its Saturday night line-up, and Ebersol said they are making a conservative projection that the football would draw a 4.5, but with a younger skewing demographic. If they do get the demographic that the wrestling gets, they will be a success among advertisers which means the league will probably make it. WWF draws one of the demos advertisers covet most, but still doesn't quite earn in advertising revenue what it could for what it delivers because many blue chip advertisers don't want an association with wrestling because of its negative connotations to many. The question is, can the XFL deliver a weekly audience of WWF fans, as opposed to simply the die-hard football fans who will watch anything, on a night when one would think it would be so difficult to draw those viewers that all the networks have for the most part given up on them in the first place. If it doesn't draw the former, it won't be a success.
There were some rule changes that were expected officially announced, such as no fair catches and one foot in bounds required for a complete pass, shorter halftimes and cameras in locker rooms, on sidelines and in helmets as well as locker room, huddles being miked and players being encouraged to copy wrestlers' playing to the crowd between plays in manners such as sack and touchdown dances. The Saturday night games start on February 3, 2001 and continue through the first championship game set for April 21.
While many comparisons have been made to the old AFL in the 60s particularly after the NBC announcement, since the AFL broadcast and really made by NBC and eventually merged with the NFL and thus was a huge success, people who romanticize about the comparison miss several basic historical points. There is far more sports competition today, but far more of an appetite for sports and televised sports, but also more successful sports. There is more competition, but it is still easier to make a sports league a success. The AFL in its infancy consisted of former NFL players who couldn't make the grade (some of whom, like George Blanda, lasted more than 15 years and ended up in the Hall of Fame after he was believed to have been washed up by the NFL) and in the early years, college players that the NFL didn't want and had high scoring games with bad defense, setting impressive statistical records that stood up for decades. But the league was not a success at the time. At the time, both leagues kept their salary structures low and the AFL was a huge money loser and actually in those early years considered a joke, a stigma it never fully erased until 1969 when an AFL team won the Super Bowl for the first time in a giant upset. The reason the AFL succeeded was long before that game. It gained a lot of publicity when it started outbidding the NFL for some top college players (most notable was the record offer Joe Namath, who was the quarterback of that famous game, received coming out of college), and then started offering huge, by the standard of the time, money contracts going after the NFL's biggest stars. The AFL signed John Brodie for an unheard of at the time figure and set its sights on more marquee quarterbacks. Rather than let the bidding war escalate for stars and the main NFL franchises lose their franchise quarterbacks because they didn't want to actually spend big money to keep big them, the NFL allowed the AFL to become part of the league in 1966, which set up the first Super Bowl, and that was the how that league succeeded, and not because it had high scoring wilder games because during that early 60s romantic AFL period, the league lost its ass and didn't draw.
Where the XFL model differed from the Time Warner/NBC model that was dropped is that the XFL plans on keeping salaries low, supposedly in the $50,000 to $100,000 range, and not compete with the NFL for talent, which did in leagues like the USFL (which had network television coverage on ABC and was a financial failure of gigantic proportions), the WFL (which had network coverage and failed just as badly). The WLAF, which had national coverage on ABC as well, although not in prime time, and played in the spring, so there was no direct competition with NFL and college football seasons, and had as high if not a higher calibre of play than the XFL and also kept salaries low and was sponsored by the NFL, failed miserably in the United States just a few years ago. This isn't to say the XFL is doomed because others failed either, just that even with this deal, there are no guarantees. One can point to Arena Football, which draws well in some markets using players that aren't of top calibre in most cases and doesn't pay the players well, as a model since it seems like it's doing okay. But it is far easier to draw 8,000 or 12,000 fans in a 16,000-seat arena and look impressive than what even drawing 25,000 people would look like in a 70,000-seat stadium. The International Hockey League sells out in some markets and it considered successful with players not deemed good enough for the major league in a sport not as popular or as TV friendly as football, but it would also die having to compete in network prime time, as would most sports regularly with the exception of baseball and basketball playoffs, college bowl games and the NFL. Most Arena league teams don't make money even with TV rights fees both nationally and locally, and the profit seems to be in the selling of the franchises. If NBC and WWFE own all the teams, that aspect of the money making, which is actually one of the biggest money makers for NFL owners as well, many of whom lose money annually but make the big score selling at far higher prices than they bought, is out the window, unless the idea is to actually make the money by selling the franchises later.
The other aspect is quality of play. There is no question the players won't be of NFL calibre, because they aren't bidding for them. The idea they are going with is they'll get the best players the NFL doesn't get, sign them up long-term with options so the NFL can't steal the stars easily, or at least quickly, because they'll pay better money than the World League, Arena League or Canadian League, which would be its competitors for the same players. On paper, that sounds like they'll have the second best players of any pro league, which may mean nothing since Canadian, USFL, WFL and WLAF each had them as some point and failed miserably in this country. But that's not even a guarantee. For third-rate players who don't have any hopes of playing in the NFL, this will be their best bet. For every player who makes the final cut of an NFL roster or is on the practice squad, there are 10-15 of fairly similar "second-rate" talent, which is what the XFL is looking at. But those players if they have any true competitive belief in their ability, also believe they are good enough to play in the NFL. Many, particularly those with agents looking long-term and with confidence in their ability, will take a one-year deal in a World League because it's NFL affiliated for less money because of the chance of advancing to the NFL and making big money, as opposed to slightly more money for the first year in the XFL but no chance of ever making really big money in a short football career.
There is also the question of public perception. Ultimately, people still have to buy tickets to fill stadiums, as much to make money as for the perception that there is any true value in the product. Whether it's on network TV on Saturday night or not, a 60,000-seat stadium with 15,000 in the building will be perceived as a loser quickly and it will negatively affect ratings with only a few week lag. Papering houses to fill stadiums will come out quickly in today's environment, and like it was with the USFL, will become a quick black eye for the league. There will be opening curiosity, but there was opening curiosity for RollerJam, whose first week drew almost twice as many viewers on USA as ECW's best week ever did, but curiosity only lasts so long unless you have a product people care about.
What NBC has done for the XFL, is that if they open by being taken more seriously by the media, and if they can create an interest in the product and then deliver an entertaining product, the odds of making it have been greatly increased. The good p.r. of not hiring felons may be negated by the bad p.r. of not drug testing (the other football failed leagues also didn't drug test and were known in the business as heavy drug leagues, as this will become without testing, but it never became a media issue nor would it have because those leagues were never successful, which it would have been had they lasted). Every marriage has its honeymoon period, like the NBC/WWFE merger has right now. McMahon himself can do just about anything within pro wrestling with little or no media awareness. About the only wrestling promotional move that really garnered any mainstream publicity has been his continuing with the show after the Owen Hart death (there has been a lot regarding content but that wasn't a singular promotional move). It's believed to be beneath the dignity of most of the media to focus much on wrestling aside from "one-time" stories because it's still, with all its current popularity, considered beneath their dignity to cover wrestling seriously. That will not happen in football, particularly if it shows signs of being a success, and particularly because the NFL has tremendous media advantages and will be quick to fuel the negativity if this becomes a viable entity. If something like this were to happen, such as the aftermath as the Hart death, even in wrestling at this point, it would no longer be a minor media story. It would be a huge black eye, not just on McMahon, who, quite frankly, has proven he can take it, but on NBC, which may not be nearly as willing.
Vince Russo was on WCW Live on 3/28. He said that on 1/14, Bill Busch told him the company wanted to focus less on ratings and entertainment and more on wrestling. He didn't agree, refused to work as part of a committee and told Busch he was hired for his style of writing. He said they presented the idea of Tank Abbott winning the title on the Souled Out PPV show, where he would first win a Battle Royal and then beat Sid Vicious, when he found out on two days before the show that Bret Hart was going to miss the show.
He claimed he and Busch were so far apart that he knew the idea would be rejected and it didn't matter. He said he wants Konnan and Shane Douglas back, and said they did the right thing by standing up to Busch and said Douglas was an impact player who could make a difference (there are things being done to get Douglas back but the WCW legal department at this point is a roadblock because of Douglas' behavior in dealing with the department and his threatening a lawsuit).
He claimed he boosted ratings from 2.5 to 3.5 in 12 weeks (he simply can't make an honest claim that he boosted ratings for Nitro. Ratings dropped every month he was on the job until January, and that was illusory growth caused by the show cutting to two hours and NFL season ending. The first week Russo wrote television the rating was a 3.30 and the average for that month was 3.08. It is true that an absolutely horrible lame duck show written by Nash the week earlier did a 2.61, but that was a one week aberration as the show was averaging much higher numbers than that. The average rating in September, the month before he took over, was a 3.38. His final three hour show with football competition on 12/27, a heavily hyped New Years Evil show from the Astrodome, which is the only way to make a direct fair comparison, was a 2.86 and the monthly average was 2.98 so the only accurate statement about ratings is they dropped 12% over a less than three month period. They have realistically dropped far faster, the equivalent to 20%, over the following three months after he left, and given what everyone in TV programming knows about the "lag effect" of ratings, some of the drop during his period can be attributed to the horrible product before him, just as some of the drop after he left can be attributed to the product he produced. The 1/10 show in the two hour format did a 3.38, but had that been a three-hour show with football competition it was equivalent to a 2.9 under the old standards. That number does look great today when compared with the 2.5s and 2.6s of late. Russo did increase the ratings of Thunder head-to-head with Smackdown from a 2.06 over the four weeks prior to his arrival to a 2.32 averaging his last four weeks, an 11% gain. Most of that gain was because of a pushed television policy of "making Thunder special again" after the previous regime by Nash seemed to have the goal to kill the show so that the guys could get another day off each week. The increase was considered disappointing at the time because of the increase in expense in bringing all the top stars to the show when before, virtually none of them would appear. Russo's best talent as a writer is in promoting his own writing ability, as the increases in Nitro ratings early on came largely because of the promotion of new writers from New York coming in, just as I expect an increase for the first few weeks out of the curiosity and the hype on 4/10. It didn't last the first time and dropped to lower levels quickly enough. The "make Thunder special" campaign also increased ratings, which declined when the people who took over didn't make Thunder special. To Russo's credit, he worked much harder on writing than his successors did, who basically gave very little thought to Thunder and that explains its ratings decline and why after the few week increase from the hype, the ratings should plateau at higher than the current level because realistically the company just being "bad" would be an improvement over what it has been of late. The Thunder number has since dropped to a 2.00 average over the four weeks leading to Sullivan's ouster, a 14% drop even with the ratings advantage the new bookers had of moving to Wednesday and not having competition from Smackdown. The only claim regarding Nitro ratings he can make is that the new crew did even worse when it came to ratings falling and buy rates falling, but part of that was the hand they were dealt with coming in and even more large a part is that they did a really bad job. When it came to the arena business, the Sullivan crew did better as they temporarily stopped the decline, although going in the direction they were headed they had just hit the point where selling tickets for events was just about impossible so while arena business did fall faster under Russo's watch, I'd almost tab the Sullivan regime as doing equal if not more damage but we're arguing over which tornado did more damage).
He said he and Bischoff would be the main creative forces with help from Bill Banks, Ed Ferrara and Terry Taylor. He claimed he wanted to bring Bischoff back to TV when he was writing but nobody else liked the idea and everyone was undermining him. He is correct that people were undermining him, because the unfortunate nature of the corporate structure where nobody respects authority, because of how fleeting it is, combined with the natural instincts of people in a cutthroat business almost guarantee that happening. If he even gets a short honeymoon period, after that, it is guaranteed to happen again. He claimed he made no mistakes at all creatively in his first tenure as booker. He said the NWO needs to be brought back and made a big impact with Bischoff. He said he plans on rebuilding the cruiserweight division (like he did when he was there before?) and adding more personality to the wrestlers.
He claimed WWF turned it around in the ratings when DX went to the WCW arena with a rocket launcher. (Somehow, I thought a better attribution was the popularity of the Austin character which the entire shows were built around because nobody else was anywhere close to as over, bringing in Mike Tyson and at the same time McMahon's heel heat coming off Survivor Series 1997 may have been slightly more important reasons). He said that WCW will now go after WWF and that No. 2 should throw rocks and stones at No. 1.
He wants Thunder moved back to Thursday to go head-up with Smackdown and Nitro in the same two hour block as Raw. He said he and Hogan were on the same page. He blamed Jim Ross for the period the WWF was losing in the ratings and called him lazy and said all he wanted to do was announce instead of handle the talent relations department (that's a pretty stupid thing to say these days given the talent roster the WWF has amassed and that the ratings are through the roof and the current WWF is probably hotter than any wrestling company has been in the history of U.S. wrestling with Ross in the same position he was in before). He said he would use Terry Funk well, that he and Bischoff would fight against standards and practices so things will be different. He said titles have to start meaning more (let's see, if he made no mistakes creatively, and nobody did more to destroy titles, there is a major contradiction here). He blamed Sullivan and Bill Busch for losing the Radicals (Busch doomed himself from day one in the handling of that situation). He said WWF booking was old and stale when Bischoff made the NWO, which led to the creation of the Stone Cold Steve Austin character (never mind that the Stone Cold Steve Austin character debuted a few months before the NWO).
He said the Scott Steiner unscripted promo on Flair was the best interview of the year (in code words, that means Flair needs to go home because they aren't on the same page at all, and I guess poor Mick Foley's retirement interview on Smackdown and Flair's return interview and Arn Anderson's promo have to settle for No. 2 through 4 and I hope that means when wrestlers and agents go against his script on live television and screw up his angles and shows he will praise them accordingly, not to mention how someone can say what the best interview of the year was when he in the same interview claimed not to have watched any television for three months). He said he's in favor of three man announcing teams instead of two (I agree with that one if it's the right chemistry, the number of announcers is far less important than giving credibility to the role of the announcers which Russo failed at doing in his previous regime). And saving the best for last, he said he wants to bring Warrior back for a match with Goldberg because, as he said, "In all honesty, there isn't anybody out there that wouldn't love to see a Goldberg vs. Warrior match."
Vince McMahon came out publicly in favor of regulation of so-called "extreme wrestling" in New Jersey. Assembly Minority Leader Joseph Doria, who is also the mayor of Bayonne, was originally going to introduce a bill on 3/27 that would ban anyone under the age of 19 from attending the shows and would allow local communities to ban the shows completely if they so desired, but wording as to what exactly constitutes extreme wrestling and first amendment concerns as well as the legislature shutting down will keep the bill from being finalized and introduced until May. Governor Christine Whitman indicated support of the bill.
Even though the bill is to regulate what is called "extreme wrestling," the bill is trying to be worded where it would not affect WWF or WCW, and ECW is of course attempting at getting itself in that category even though its name seemingly implies semantically to being what the bill is all about.
"We want nothing to do with them (promotions such as Jersey All Pro Wrestling, whose shows in Bayonne that Doria was unable to shut down prompted this issue, and ironically, which, in a few weeks is featuring many WWF stars as part of an autograph show in conjunction with its next major show)," said Steve Karel of ECW to Strictly ECW.com. "We're a fully accredited wrestling company like WWF and WCW, and don't want to be associated with those groups."
Extreme wrestling, in the AP article attempting to differentiate it from pro wrestling, stated that extreme wrestling attempts to draw blood and cause bodily injury resulting in maiming one's opponent, whatever that is meant to mean.
McMahon stated, "Extreme wrestling is a profoundly disturbing trend which has no other objective but to cause serious injury to an opponent in an effort to annihilate them. We share the Governor's concern that young people could be exposed to such a horrible spectacle as extreme wrestling. Extreme wrestling has no relation whatsoever to World Wrestling Federation's entertainment programming and the bill differentiates it as such. At the WWF, every effort is made by the athletes--who are trained professionals, unlike the local amateurs of extreme wrestling--not to cause harm to themselves or their opponent in our ongoing weekly action adventure series."
"I support regulation as long as it's fair," said ECW owner Paul Heyman, whose company is expected to be bypassed by the bill as well even with the name being a bullseye. "It's a necessary evil as without it you have people who are unqualified participating and someone may drop dead in the ring. It's too dangerous in today's environment (not to have regulation). A fair commission is to the benefit of the promoter, wrestler and consumer."
To show the lawmakers have studied the issue thoroughly, the difference between the category of pro wrestling and extreme wrestling seems to be this: "If you pretend to hit your foe and he spews fake blood, it's `pro' and it's legal. If you actually hit your foe and the red spray from his face is real blood, it's `extreme' and it would be illegal." In other words, from that wording, all forms of pro wrestling are exactly the same and either could be judged collectively as fine or not fine depending on how you take the statement since fake blood rarely exists in pro wrestling and almost never within the confines of the ring, but boxing and kickboxing by those terms clearly need to be shut down. Jennifer Sarnelli, a researcher for the Assembly Democrats claimed in her carefully researched report, "`Pro' Wrestling may highlight fake violence with occasional accidents, `extreme' wrestling features deliberate injury. Legally we can make a distinction between the two because one of them is a health and safety violation and one of them is not."
It appears at this point that the children 18-and-under provision for attendance may be modified to only ban children 18-and-under without a parent from attending and extreme wrestling would be put under the athletic commission jurisdiction but pro wrestling would not. The NBC affiliate in New York when reporting on this actually ran a clip of a Royce Gracie vs. Gerard Gordeau match from the first UFC in Denver in 1993 and billed it as a clip of an extreme wrestling show that took place in 1999 in New Jersey.
At the 4/1 Combat Zone Wrestling show, one of the groups targeted as being "extreme wrestling," President John Danzig came out before the show and gave a speech and stressed how CZW is entertainment and that the Governor is trying to keep them from entertaining the fans, which led to a "CZW" chant.
And if the semantics legislative battles over what constitutes extreme wrestling and pro wrestling aren't silly enough, California's State Athletic Commission has gotten into debates on rules of MMA for legalization that are even sillier.
In the 3/31 meeting in Sacramento, in what was thought ahead of time to be the hearing that would allow the sport in the state, instead, in what appeared to be a set-up spot to some, Al Ducheny, one of the commissioners, said he was concerned about choke holds and asked if there was a doctor in attendance who could provide an opinion whether they were dangerous. Dr. John Howard, a boxing physician who later admitted that he has no experience with any sports such as jiu jitsu, judo and MMA that allow chokes and sleepers, stated that all chokes including sleeper chokes on the carotid artery present a serious safety risk to fighters.
Paul Smith, an IFC promoter, and Jeff Blatnick, representing UFC, said that chokes have been safely used in competition judo dating back to 1882, including in the Olympics. While not brought up in the hearing, judo has been a college competition sport and chokes are taught in college classes throughout the state, and San Jose State University has won more than 20 national championships in the sport. So being fair, the commission voted 3-2 to ban all chokes and sleepers in any sports competition, which would have killed not only MMA, but also Jiu Jitsu and judo tournaments and would bring up a double standard of several college teams in the state competing in a sport that is illegal in the state. After enough noise was made about this, the commission tabled its vote and referred the issue to the Commission's Committee of Ringside Physicians, a group that largely presides over boxing matches to get an opinion on the safety of chokes and sleeper holds the next day, and a final vote will take place on 4/28. The next day at an emergency meeting, two of the three doctors present on the board of ringside physicians, told the commissioners that carotid artery sleeper hold do not present a danger to fighter safety, which led to two of the three commissioners that voted to ban all chokes and sleepers indicating they would change their vote at the next meeting when the final MMA rules package will be finalized while one commissioner is still indicating he will vote against chokes.
There have been illegal shows in Southern California including one covered on the Fox Files TV show in a report that ended up being heavily criticized in Brill's Content for its inaccuracies, and legal shows on Indian reservation because the commission doesn't govern Indian land within the California boundaries.
In another debate on MMA rules at the hearing, the commission discussed a rule provision that while it would be legal to throw closed fist punches, including on the ground, open handed strikes would be illegal. When it was asked why, given open handed strikes aren't as dangerous as fists, the response was, "we don't have to give you a reason." Another rule difference from traditional MMA was the suggestion to ban all knees to the head, whether standing or on the ground. Neither of these rules is etched in stone. The final rules are expected to be adopted in the 4/28 meeting.
There were no major surprises in the opening round of the Super J Cup held on 4/1 in Sendai before 4,159 fans.
Based on the results, the quarterfinals, which will be held along with the semifinals and finals on 4/9 at Tokyo Sumo Hall, will feature Jushin Liger (New Japan) vs. Mens Teioh (Big Japan), Gran Hamada (Michinoku Pro) vs. Ricky Fuji (FMW), Great Sasuke (Michinoku Pro) vs. Naoki Sano (Battlarts/Team Takada) and Onryo (Wrestle Dream Factory) vs. Cima (Toryumon).
Looking at the bracketing, that would appear to build toward Liger vs. Hamada and Sasuke vs. Cima as the semifinals. From a name standpoint, that leads to a Liger vs. Sasuke final, since Sasuke is the promoter and second biggest name in the tournament, and Liger is the biggest star. However, if the plan is to create a star, Cima is the most complete of the younger Japanese junior heavyweights, reminiscent of Eddy Guerrero at the same stage of his career, and giving him the upset over Sasuke but a loss to Liger would accomplish much in helping him make his name.
The Liger vs. Tiger Mask (Michinoku Pro) first round match was said to be the show stealer, with Liger winning in 12:13 with the palm thrust. Liger, who won the second Super J Cup in 1995 (Chris Benoit won the first in 1994), will wrestle IWGP heavyweight champion Kensuke Sasaki in a non-title match at the New Japan Tokyo Dome show two days before the finals at Sumo Hall. After the match, which was highlighted with Tiger doing a Tiger suplex off the top rope on Liger, Liger said that he'd like to bring Tiger Mask to New Japan to wrestle on some major shows.
Complete first round results saw: 1. Cima pinned Ricky Marvin (EMLL) in 5:41 with a flying body press; 2. Fuji beat Sasuke the Great (Masao Orihara under a mask, who wrestles for many indies but uses the evil Sasuke gimmick for Michinoku Pro) via DQ in 4:48; 3. Sano pinned Suwa (Toryumon) with a Tiger suplex in 7:38; 4. Teioh pinned Katsumi Usuda (Battlarts) with a tornado crunch in 9:36; 5. Onryo pinned Curry Man (Christopher Daniels of Michinoku Pro, who recently won the Super 8 tournament for Jim Kettner in Wilmington, DE) in 5:57; 6. Hamada beat Shinya Makabe (New Japan) with an armbar submission in 10:34; 7. Great Sasuke pinned Kaz Hayashi (WCW), who formerly worked for Michinoku Pro as Shiryu, in 9:39. Hayashi was said to have made a great showing for himself in this match; 8. Liger pinned Tiger Mask.
What is easily the greatest reference work ever published on pro wrestling, the fourth and likely final edition of "Wrestling Title Histories," has just been completed.
The book is exactly what the title indicates. It is a listing of the title histories of virtually every major pro wrestling championship dating back to the World Collar-and-elbow championship in 1867. It is the greatest published research work ever done on the industry and is a must have for anyone interested in the history of this business.
This is the fourth edition of the book, expanded to 440 pages and updated through 1999. This edition is far more comprehensive than previous editions, containing 60% more material than the last book, published five years ago. The book is not a history of wrestling per se, but dates and places, and a lot of fact above fiction when it comes to history, is either confirmed or debunked in the book. The book, which is list priced at $64.95 in the United States and $89.95 in Canada at bookstores, is available from Gary Will, who put it together with Royal Duncan with help from numerous historians around the world, for $57 in the U.S. currency or $78 in Canadian currency from Will at P.O. Box 40005, Waterloo, ON N2J 4V1 Canada. In the rest of the world, the book is available for $60 U.S. for surface delivery or $70 U.S. for airmail delivery or you can get details at www.garywill.com/wrestling.
While championships have never meant less, up until the past decade they were the backbone of a history of wrestling in various parts of the country, and for that matter, the world, as to who was on top and who were the big stars at any given point in time. Today, title have dropped as far as significance to the point that the idea of running a list of who held the major titles in a year-end rundown, once an annual staple of this publication, was abandoned this year because of the general feeling that a title change, even a world title change, is no longer more than a one line news story within the industry. Certainly in the 80s, virtually every casual fan that viewed both major companies knew who almost all the champions were, and today, only the most serious fans know, and few really care, and as Will noted, Steve Austin has never held the WWF title at any point for longer than three months as opposed to multi-year long reigns of champions in the past. As Will noted in his introduction and in a letter to this publication recently, the WWF title changed hands more times in 1999 than it did in the decade of the 60s and 70s combined. The WCW title changed hands almost as many times in 1999 as the old NWA title did during that same 60s and 70s period. In 1999, the WWF's two major singles titles were won by a non-wrestler and a woman and its womens title was held by a man; WCW's cruiserweight title was held by a woman and a television writer, and its TV title was decided, in storyline fashion, by the man doing the garbage finding the belt in the trash can. While such stories may be comedy to the people who write the shows and momentary comedy for some of the audience, the result of this comedy pop, if effective, and often times it's not even effective comedy, has been a long-term that all the titles in the United States, except perhaps the WWF heavyweight title have no true value today, except perhaps as an ego boost or part of an ego-driven fight. In the world the All Japan Triple Crown belongs on the list as far as importance to the company more than any other (I'd argue the WWF being of more significance even though it's not treated as such simply because of how much money is at stake in that company) and possibly the IWGP heavyweight title but even that is marginal. Some would argue the ECW title. It's an argument I'd disagree with even though ECW does the best job of presenting its titles as important in its storylines and protecting the champions, but to the average fan they're still considered minor league and thus not important. Nobody would argue that the ECW title defended itself adds paying customers or ads TV viewers, as the WWF title does and Triple Crown does even more demonstrably, and the proof is that on house shows, they don't even advertise specific title matches for the live shows with the knowledge it doesn't sell ticket one, and that pretty well makes the point Paul Heyman himself, who protects the value of his title better than any promoter with national exposure except All and New Japan, recognizes it doesn't mean money. Most all the titles today have zero drawing power either at the gate or to move TV ratings or buy rates, and thus no real business significance, a far cry from the days when the world champion would come to town, the promoters would raise the prices on the show, and the crowds would generally increase very significantly.
Pro wrestling world titles have, certainly since the early part of the century, been, in reality, nothing more than a prop created by a promoter or group of promoters. But at many times in history the title was a very valuable prop, worth hundreds of thousands, and at times even millions of dollars to the company not because it was or wasn't real like a boxing title (and today boxing titles are similarly almost meaningless except when a charismatic fighter has one or the most recognized heavyweight title because of the proliferation of too many of them), but because fans spent ticket money because of the belief, again, not that it was or wasn't a real contest that wasn't predetermined, but that its significance was real.
But we can still learn a lot today from the titles and histories. Such as this note. With the exception of Chris Benoit's one-day reign which isn't even recognized by WCW, the last time a wrestler under the age of 39 held the WCW title was Bill Goldberg in late 1998. With the exception of Goldberg and Paul Wight (for four months in 1996), you'd have to go back to Sting in 1993 (when he was 34 years old) for the last WCW champion who was under 35, or a total of 31 of the last 34 title changes which is part of where the perception of the company and product that is killing it today does come from. In contrast, with the exception of the Vince McMahon gimmick, the last 40-year-old WWF champ was Bret Hart (40 at the time), 21 switches ago. Before that, for a 40-year-old WWF champ you'd have to go back to Bob Backlund's three day transitional reign in 1994 and Ric Flair's two reigns in 1992. Hulk Hogan was two months shy of his 40th birthday the last time he lost the WWF title.
Due to a delay at Neilsen, the 4/3 ratings weren't available at press time.
Smackdown on 3/30 leading into Wrestlemania had its most impressive rating ever with a 5.32 rating and 8.4 share. It is actually the second highest Smackdown in history as on 1/27 it did a 5.43, but that was head-to-head with the President's State of the Union address on all the major networks so there was zero entertainment competition. Thunder on 3/29 drew a 2.05 rating and 3.3 share. The audience peaked with a 2.67 at the open of the show due to a strong lead-in from Ripley's Believe it or not, and declined throughout the show with the Wall vs. Vampiro main event ending at a 1.6.
Weekend ratings saw everybody down huge, which on 4/2 can be blamed on Wrestlemania, but there is no explanation for 4/1. Livewire did a 1.3, Superstars did a 1.3 and Sunday Night Heat going head-up against the 12-hour did what is believed to be its record low 2.07 rating. WCW Saturday Night fell below one million homes for one of the few times in the past 15 years (921,000) setting it's all-time record low with a 1.16 rating, making it the lowest rated show on TBS from Family Ties at 7:30 a.m. that day which did a 1.21 until "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance" which started at 1 a.m.
ECW on TNN on 3/31 rebounded from two low weeks to a 1.11 rating and a 1.9 share. RollerJam that followed did an 0.67
The 3/28 three-hour AAA/EMLL block on Galavision drew a 1.6 Hispanic rating (which was a 3.2 rating among the prime young male demographic).
OBSERVER POLL RESULTS
Traditional Observer PPV poll results based on phone calls, fax messages and e-mails to the Observer as of Tuesday, 4/4:
WWF WRESTLEMANIA XVI: Thumbs up 183 (33.4%), Thumbs down 263 (48.0%), In the middle 102 (18.6%). BEST MATCH: Christian & Edge vs. Hardys vs. Dudleys 311, Chris Benoit vs. Kurt Angle vs. Chris Jericho 43, HHH vs. Mick Foley vs. Rock vs. Big Show 30; WORST MATCH: Terri vs. Kat 127, Al Snow & Steve Blackman vs. Test & Albert 109, HHH vs. Mick Foley vs. Rock vs. Big Show 25, Road Dogg & X-Pac vs. Kane & Rikishi 24, Godfather & D-Lo Brown vs. Bull Buchanan & Big Bossman 19
EYADA POLL RESULTS
Results of the poll question on the eyada.com web site. New questions will be up every day at approximately 3 p.m. Eastern time with the results being announced at the start of the Wrestling Observer Live internet audio show the following day as well as each week here.
For Wrestlemania, will you buy: a) The 12-hour package for $49.95 41%; b) The four-hour package for $34.95 29%; c) Not buy the show at all 30%
What was the best match in the history of Wrestlemania?: a) Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage 1987 27.3%; b) Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart 1994 12.5%; c) Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon 24.6%; d) Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels 1996 10.8%; e) Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin 1997 24.8%
What was the worst match in the history of Wrestlemania?: a) Andre the Giant vs. John Studd 1985 8%; b) Roddy Piper vs. Mr. T 1986 14%; c) Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant 1987 14%; d) Jake Roberts vs. Rick Martel 1991 24%; e) Undertaker vs. Giant Gonzalez 1993 40%
What did you think of Wrestlemania? a) Thumbs up 45%; b) Thumbs down 20%; c) Thumbs in the middle 23%; 3) Didn't see the show 12%
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I'm on option one. Bruce Mitchell is on option two. Georgiann Makropolous is on option three. Bryan Alvarez is on options four and six. Mike Mooneyham is on option five.
New message schedule is: Monday--Meltzer on one, Mooneyham on five; Tuesday--Mitchell on two (Raw report), Alvarez on four (Nitro report); Wednesday--Meltzer on one, Alvarez on four and six (Thunder and Smackdown taping report); Thursday--Mitchell on two (Thunder report); Friday--Meltzer on one, Alvarez on four (Smackdown report); Saturday--Mitchell on two; and Sunday--Makropolous on three, Alvarez on four.
For PPV coverage, I'm on option seven approximately 20 minutes after the completion of the show. We run down the major angles and results right at the start before getting into the details of the show. There are option eight reports up later in the evening to get a different perspective. The reports stay up through the next PPV event.
Upcoming shows covered will be 4/7 New Japan Tokyo Dome (option seven only, up by 2 p.m. Eastern time on Friday), 4/14 UFC Japan (option seven only, up by 2 p.m. Eastern time on Friday), 4/16 WCW Spring Stampede, 4/30 WWF Backlash, 5/1 DSE Tokyo Dome tournament (option seven only), 5/5 New Japan Fukuoka Dome (option seven only), 5/6 WWF U.K. only PPV (option seven only), 5/7 WCW Slamboree, 5/14 ECW Living Dangerously and 5/21 WWF Judgment Day.
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RESULTS
3/28 San Antonio (WWF Smackdown/Heat tapings - 7,600 sellout): Spanky & American Dragon b Board of Education, Dupps b Scott Vick & ?, Godfather & D-Lo Brown b Joey Abs & Rodney, Al Snow b Viscera, Bradshaw NC Bull Buchanan, Val Venis b Bob Holly, Non-title: Rikishi Phatu & Kane b Dudleys, Hardcore title: Crash Holly NC Tazz, Road Dogg & X-Pac b Edge & Christian, Non-title: Rock b Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho b Eddy Guerrero-DQ, Lightheavyweight title: Dean Malenko b Scotty 2 Hotty, Hardys b Test & Prince Albert, Womens title: Stephanie McMahon b Jacqueline to win title
3/28 Houston (WCW Thunder/World Wide tapings - 5,727/1,701 paid): Lenny Lane & Rave b Los Villanos IV & V, David Finlay b Chuck Palumbo, Hugh Morrus b Norman Smiley, Chris Candido b Chavo Guerrero Jr., Jim Duggan b Barbarian, Dustin Rhodes b Mr. Jones-DQ, Silver King & Dandy b Shannon Moore & Shane Helms, Tank Abbott b Disco Inferno, U.S. title: Booker b Jeff Jarrett-DQ, Big Vito & Johnny the Bull b Stevie Ray & Big T-DQ, Ron Harris b Billy Kidman, Brian Knobs b Dog, Buff Bagwell b La Parka, Wall b Vampiro-DQ
3/28 Mexico City Arena Coliseo (EMLL): La Flecha & Sombra de Plata b El Jeque & Principe Negro, Pequeno Pierroth & Espectrito I b Bracito de Oro & Tzuki, Brandon & Kung Fu Jr. & ? b Sangre Azteca & Virus & Dr. O'Borman Jr., Felino & Ringo Mendoza & Olimpico b Rencor Latino & Fuerza Guerrera & Arkangel, Brazo de Plata & Lizmark Sr. & Mr. Niebla b Scorpio Jr. & Apolo Dantes & Shocker
3/29 Fukui (All Japan - 2,000): Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Masao Inoue b Masamichi Marufuji & Daisuke Ikeda, Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Haruka Eigen & Masa Fuchi b Makoto Hashi & Rusher Kimura & Mitsuo Momota, Yoshihiro Takayama & Takao Omori b Takeshi Morishima & Jun Akiyama, Kenta Kobashi & Kentaro Shiga b Maunukea Mossman & Vader, Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada b Steve Williams & Johnny Smith, Jun Izumida b Wolf Hawkfield, Johnny Ace & Mike Barton & Too Cold Scorpio b Tamon Honda & Yoshinari Ogawa & Mitsuharu Misawa
3/29 Niigata (FMW): Tracy Smothers b Ricky Fuji, Azusa Kudo & Emi Motokawa b Kaori Nakayama & Yuka Nakamura, Hisakatsu Oya & Jado b Willie Takayama & Hideki Hosaka, Tetsuhiro Kuroda & Koji Nakagawa & Gedo & Yoshinori Sasaki b Kodo Fuyuki & Kyoko Inoue & Chocoball Mukai & Crazy Boy, Masato Tanaka & Balls Mahoney b H & Kintaro Kanemura
3/30 Osaka (All Japan - 1,650): Takao Omori b Takeshi Morishima, Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Haruka Eigen & Masa Fuchi b Masamichi Marufuji & Mitsuo Momota & Rusher Kimura, Jun Akiyama & Maunukea Mossman b Makoto Hashi & Johnny Smith, Johnny Ace & Mike Barton b Jun Izumida & Tamon Honda, Too Cold Scorpio & Wolf Hawkfield & Steve Williams b Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Kentaro Shiga & Kenta Kobashi, Vader b Yoshihiro Takayama, Daisuke Ikeda & Yoshinari Ogawa & Mitsuharu Misawa b Masao Inoue & Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada
3/30 Baltimore (WCW - 6,044/1,733 paid): TV title: Jim Duggan b David Finlay -1/2*, Jung Dragon b 3 Count **, Maestro b Mike Jones 1/4*, Ernest Miller b Maestro DUD, Big Vito & Johnny the Bull b Mike Rotunda & Rick Steiner *, Hardcore title: Brian Knobs b Demon DUD, Wall b David Flair DUD, Cruiserweight title: Billy Kidman b Artist to win title 1/2*, Vampiro b Lex Luger-DQ, Vampiro & Sting b Ric Flair & Lex Luger *
ECW: TNN tapings took place on 3/31 in Richmond, VA. Crowd wasn't as big as the previous show in Richmond (approximately 3,000) and was heavily papered to where it seemed many didn't even know or care about most of the characters. According to one report, the show was also oversold and that some fans who actually purchased tickets were turned away because there was no room and many paying customers had to stand and couldn't see anything. There were pops for some ring entrances, but once the bell rang, everyone sat down, there was no noise except for the dangerous spots and overall there was no heat the entire show and people were walking out during the Awesome vs. Rhino main event and the matches ranged from * to *1/2 stars according to our reports. Corino, now dressing like Kendall Windham, pinned Kid Kash after a ref bump and Rhino's interference. Crazy retained the TV title beating Whipwreck, now with red hair described as looking like Beetlejuice. After the match Guido and Tajiri both ran in. Tajiri laid out Guido with kicks and laid out Crazy with the mist. C.W. Anderson & Bill Whiles beat Doring & Roadkill. Electra promised she would show her goods if the Dangerous Alliance lost. Described as similar to their PPV match. Lou E. shoved Roadkill off the top rope through a table, gave Doring a phone shot and Anderson pinned him after a spinebuster. After the match, Doring took Electra's coat off leaving her in her bra and panties. Chetti beat Credible clean when Storm's interference backfired and he superkicked Credible. They double-team stuff piledrove Chetti after the match. It's clear that from the previous weekend, where Chetti & Nova had good arena bouts with the Impact Players, that Heyman is now trying to turn it into a genuine program where people take Chetti & Nova seriously as tag title contenders. As evidenced by Nova pinning Storm in 5:00. After a ref bump, Credible & Storm set up a stuff piledriver, but Credible got crotched. The finish turned into a cluster. Dawn Marie and Jazz ended up involved and then Jason took a Jazz stinger and Credible caned Jazz ending with Nova hitting the flatliner on Storm for the pin. In the TNN open, Styles & Gertner brought out Raven & Francine. Raven denied putting the hit on Dreamer but Styles said that's what the Baldies claimed. Francine got on the mic and said she's a baldie so Styles accused her. Baldies came out and said Raven stunk, and Raven said that's because it was the smell of Angel's mom since he only had $10. Grimes sliced Raven open with a pizza cutter and put him through a table. Tajiri pinned Guido. Dreamer & Sandman & Raven (back babyface already) beat Baldies. It was actually 3-on-2 with Dreamer & Raven as a team. They used ladder and barbed wire and Grimes took a bump on the barbed wire. Raven then came from the back and hit the DDT on Grimes for the pin. After the match Raven & Dreamer went to square off when Awesome came out and said that Jeff Jones was the one who put the hit on Dreamer. Abrupt storyline change. Awesome then put both Raven & Dreamer through tables. Awesome beat Rhino in the main event. No crowd heat for this one even with a chair and four table breaks
Norfolk for a house show the next night was more notable for what happened as the show ended. After Dreamer beat Tajiri, the Network came out and laid out Dreamer. Sandman made the save, said he was drunk out of his mind and said he had seven beers, one of him, one for Dreamer and one each for five people in the audience. Three of them were women, one of whom looked very young. Sandman said he'd get in trouble if she took her shirt off so he poured beer down her shirt and drank it off her boobs. The girl started posing with one of her breasts showing as she leaned over the ropes. Sandman then took the shirt off the second woman, who was in a bra and poured beer down her bra and drank it. He pulled the shirt off the third girl, who wasn't wearing a bra, and then pranced her around the ring. Where this becomes an issue is it's against Virginia state law to have topless entertainment, even in strip clubs
Paul Heyman is starting prelim discussions about bringing in several of the Toryumon wrestlers such as Magnum Tokyo, Dragon Kid and Cima in
TNN show on 3/31 taped in Kansas City was a so-so show. It opened with Styles and Gertner both saying this time they were going to beat up Cyrus. Cyrus came out with Tajiri, so they both backed off, but then turned on Tajiri blaming him for losing to Crazy, who he called Super Chico (isn't that Bryan Alvarez?). When Tajiri acted like he was going to turn on Cyrus, Cyrus said he'd revoke his work visa and he'd have to go back to Big Japan putting over Abdullah the Butcher in thumb tack matches. Doring & Roadkill did an interview when Angel interrupted and said he was looking for Dreamer to put a hit on him. Doring punched him but the Baldies laid out Doring & Roadkill. Tajiri beat Guido in about 7:00 with a brainbuster off the middle rope. They teased in commentary a potential face turn for Tajiri on Cyrus. They tried to break a table, which didn't break on two occasions causing Styles to talk about how this isn't WCW with pre-sawed tables. Match was okay, but nowhere close to their usual level. Vandenburg did an interview as a card reader. His delivery was good and it ended with he and Whipwreck laughing uncontrollably on the ground. Dreamer & Doring & Roadkill beat The Baldies. This was one of those bouts where technically it looked real bad, but it was okay because they brought in the tables, a ladder and a guard rail among other things. Grimes bladed immediately. Doring and Angel looked like they were in their first match trying to work together. Angel has a lot of potential as a character but his in-ring stuff looked really bad. Grimes missed a senton and hit the guard rail, and Dreamer DDT's him on the guard rail, Doring legdropped him off the top and Roadkill got the pin with a splash off the top in 8:04. Main event was Crazy vs. Rhino for the TV title. The whole show was built up for Crazy vs. Cyrus, but at the last minute he said he lied and brought out Rhino. A fight in the crowd killed the match because nobody was paying attention. They brought in a table in the corner that was sitting there forever as they waited in a rest hold for the crowd to pay attention. Finally Rhino speared him through the table. Rhino got a few more near falls until Crazy was supposed to win with a sunset flip through a table, but again, the table didn't break, but it was the pin anyway at 8:26. Just okay. All the network guys jumped Crazy. Fans chanted for Sandman to make the save. His music played and he took forever to come down, but the whole Sandman act is his entrance and the fans singing so logic simply has to go out the window. Poor Crazy had to lay there dead while all the heels ignored him even though it was taking Sandman forever to show up. Sandman got some offense in until Rhino speared Crazy into Sandman putting both through a table and caned Sandman
ECW is back on the Bravo Channel in the U.K. with one hour slots on both Saturday and Sunday nights at 11 p.m. This past weekend they aired episodes of Hardcore TV from three and four weeks earlier.
WCW: The 4/3 taped Nitro was a two-hour show designed to start the company fresh and build up Bischoff and Russo as the saviors and if people believed the version of wrestling history spewed on them, than it served its purpose. It was some real history mixed in with fabricated history and some real and ridiculous claims. What was funny about the show is they pushed in clips and music video packages many wrestlers, including Jericho, Malenko, Benoit and Giant that are with the opposition, actually far more than most of the wrestlers still with the company. As the history has it, nobody had ever beaten Vince McMahon or even came close before Bischoff came along. Actually through most of the 80s and early 90s, the top rated wrestling TV show was WCW Saturday Night. At one point in 1985, the highest rated wrestling TV show on cable was Mid South Wrestling during a 13-week run on TBS until Ted Turner inked his deal with Jim Crockett Jr. which resulted in him getting rid of both Bill Watts and McMahon's shows from the station. There were periods when WWF Prime Time Wrestling, and later Raw, was also the highest rated but over the course of the year, in most cases the NWA on TBS drew higher ratings overall than WWF on USA. Even into the 90s, that remained the case. In 1992 for the year, WCW, without a prime time show, beat out WWF in the ratings by a 2.17 to 2.15 margin. In 1993, WCW beat out WWF 2.18 to 2.05--both before Bischoff ever came at the helm. In 1994, still before Nitro ever aired, the average WCW rating on TBS was 2.12, average WWF rating on USA was 1.99. These stats are generally forgotten because until 1995, literally nobody in wrestling paid attention to TV ratings because very little of wrestling's income was generated by ratings as much as selling tickets and PPV orders. WWF generally did stronger PPV numbers (there were occasions when a WCW show did as well or better than a WWF show the same month but generally speaking WWF numbers were much stronger) and on a national basis were always stronger on house shows, but there were many individual markets where Crockett was dominant, including most of the South, although by 1993, even with WCW doing better TV ratings, its arena business was deep in the toilet. When Bischoff took over as head of WCW, WWF, through the success of Raw, had become the highest rated cable show most weeks. They did a lengthy Hulk Hogan Memorial show as the man who made WCW. The storyline was that Bischoff had the balls to go head-up with McMahon on Monday night, a decision most in the industry felt was foolish, and that's accurate. The storyline was next that while WCW had as good a show, they were losing in the ratings until the NWO idea. That's not true either. The first time WCW beat WWF on Monday night was the very first time they went head-to-head, on the first Nitro on September 11, 1995 at the Mall of America, which beat Raw by a solid .3 in its first week. It went back and forth, actually quite evenly for several months, with Raw slightly ahead early and Nitro slightly gaining and going ahead in a close race. The turnaround of WCW, both in the ratings and at the house shows, was more from the Ric Flair vs. Randy Savage feud after Elizabeth went with Flair. By the time the NWO angle was shot, WCW was winning more Mondays than it was losing. On June 10, 1996, which was the debut of Nash, Raw won 2.7 to 2.6 for the last time in nearly two years. One month later it Nitro ahead 3.3 to 2.6 and a month after that, the margin was 3.3 to 2.0 and it was rarely close for until the ascension of Vince McMahon as a heel and Steve Austin as a babyface. While the show promised to analyze what was good and bad, they didn't even attempt. They showed the segment where the NWO took over Nitro, which was a disastrous show which saw Raw nearly break the Nitro win streak. In every segment shown, with no exceptions, the heels were cool and dominant and WCW represented stodgy out of touch men represented by J.J. Dillon, which is why the WCW brand name was uncool even when the ratings were being dominated by the company. It implied it was the NWO angle that turned the company around, and made the show a ratings hit, and clearly that was a major part of the story, but during late 1996 and 1997, and consistently through early 1999 when Goldberg passed him after he made an ill-advised heel turn, the biggest quarter hour draw during the entire glory period was Flair, who was given no credit for the turnaround of the company and was given less air time than the people who are now in WWF, mainly with clips of the heart attack angle and his return to beat Bischoff, and that was seemingly more to push Bischoff as a performer. The storyline was that WWF was creatively dormant when Russo took over writing the TV. Russo was described as an admirer and fan of Bischoff, which would be news to anyone who ever talked with Russo or read his writing during that time period. The storyline of the demise of WCW was that the pressure had gotten to Bischoff, and he was burned out, acting as if he left voluntarily, and somewhat trying to blame a legit knee injury to Hogan and implying other wrestlers (showing Bret Hart and DDP) "claimed" injuries, almost implying they were faking injuries. At this point, it was said, Russo had used his crash TV to rebuild the WWF. One day, with WCW down, the magnanimous Russo, realizing he had gone as far as he could with the WWF, left to rebuild WCW. Madden described Bischoff's leaving and Russo coming in a few weeks later as if, using this exact analogy (and this isn't Madden's fault, as clearly this was written for him by the very people he was putting over), that Babe Ruth had stepped aside and Mickey Mantle stepped in. It mentioned October 4, 1999 in Kansas City as the day they got the word about Russo coming in, and naturally, made no mention of what many consider one of the two or three highlight moments in the history of Nitro which took place that night. To give an example of how Russo turned the company around, they showed clips of the Nitro Girls food fight and Madusa's feuds with Oklahoma and Evan Karagias. They never gave a reason for Russo losing power, and implied it was Russo who was responsible for the creation of new WCW stars such as Vampiro, Wall and Artist. They did say for the past three months the company had struggled and implied that every other person working for the company was clueless, and granted, the product they presented would make you come to that conclusion, but not just the past three months, but the past 18 months. They concluded by stating the teaming of Russo with Bischoff was the biggest news in the history of sports entertainment
Billy Kidman won the cruiserweight title from Artist at the 3/30 house show in Baltimore but it was one of those deals to pop the fans live that in the long run works against return attendance, where Artist regained it on 3/31 in Pittsburgh and when the big title change the fans saw live is never acknowledged on television, fans in both cities feel swerved. Reports are the Baltimore match wasn't good. On that show, the main event was supposed to be Sid Vicious vs. Lex Luger for the title. With Sid's shoulder injury, they not only announced the injury but offered refunds. Sting was brought in as a replacement and they did the deal where Luger vs. Vampiro in a singles match turned into a tag with Sting and Ric Flair, ending with both faces going over simultaneously with their moves
Bret Hart's appearance on "Off the Record" aired on 4/4. There was nothing major he said on the show that he didn't already say on Wrestling Observer Live on 3/27. Basically, he had no animosity toward Bulldog going back to WWF, the problem was him publicly saying Vince McMahon shouldn't in any way be held responsible for Owen Hart's death the day after it happened even though he had threatened to sue WCW over his back injury and Hart felt it was a double standard. He also questioned McMahon's convenient timing in helping Smith with his drug problem, noting he wasn't there helping him before and Smith's problems go back years. He talked about his meeting with McMahon when McMahon came to Calgary for Owen's funeral, and said McMahon, through Carl DeMarco, had begged him several times for the meeting which he didn't want to have, and said McMahon knew he couldn't talk about Owen because of the legal issues, and then went on "Off the Record" and blamed Hart not caring about Owen when he never talked about him in their conversation. When Michael Landsberg brought up going back to the WWF and brought up in wrestling you never say never and what a big money making angle it would be, Hart said absolutely never
Bischoff in an interview on wrestlingobserver.com with Alex Marvez said WCW wouldn't be able to take its product to the level WWF did because they can't do anything to embarrass Ted Turner or Terry McGuirk. He said he and Russo have agreed they have to blow up WCW and start from scratch next week. He said they are going to change directions in a way nobody expects. From the production, the rumors going around is they will ignore the last year and put everyone in the position they were in one year ago, get the title off Sid and onto Scott Steiner and prepare a Steiner vs. Goldberg program. He said whatever is going to happen regarding Scott Hall is in Brad Siegel's hands
Kevin Nash had the cast taken off his ankle this past week. Apparently Scott Hall underwent neck surgery on or about 3/28 for the injuries from the power bomb and guitar shots a month earlier at SuperBrawl at the Cow Palace. This is what is being reported by one friend of Hall's, although two other close friends of his knew nothing about it, but also indicated that almost nobody has heard from him in a long time either
Madden, who does a sports talk radio show in Pittsburgh as his "real job," was recently voted in a local independent newspaper poll as "The best reason to kill your radio.
The United Kingdom consumer affair television show "Watchdog" on BBC1 on 3/31 ran a report on the WCW tour due to numerous consumer complaints. The main complaints were that Sting and Goldberg were not only advertised, but actually on the printed tickets, and didn't appear, and there were also complaints about the Harris Twins vs. Mamalukes as a main event the third night. There were so many complaints that they are doing a follow-up on 4/7 trying to get WCW's side. Many newspapers in the U.K. have already written similar stories about WCW false advertising of talent
At the WCW merchandise table, they sell Rey Misterio Jr. and Psicosis masks, which is hilarious and sad at the same time
Shane Helms has to wear the protective mask until he has reconstructive surgery on his nose. He's trying to delay the surgery so as not to miss any television time
There was interest in bringing Marc and Rena Mero in. Marc can legally be brought in right now but Rena still has about 18 months before she can legally work here. I guess they don't realize that nobody is going to care about Rena Mero in 18 months nor does anyone care today, so they'll probably sign her the moment her non-compete ends
There are people within the company nervous about an incident that took place during the festivities at South Padre Island getting out. There was a WCW sponsored wet t-shirt contest with about 15 contestants, as it turned out, just about every one ended up topless and 13 or 14 of them ended up bottomless. There were 500 to 700 people there, many with both cameras and video cameras, and at least one wrestler was taking the bottoms off the contestants
Bill Banks on wcw.com said something about Michael Modest being signed to a contract. At press time he hadn't been offered an actual contract although Kevin Sullivan before he lost power had told him one was forthcoming
House show on 3/26 in Waco, TX drew 1,924 paying $41,464. Thunder tapings on 3/28 in Houston at Astro Arena drew 1,701 paid and 4,026 comps for a $38,056 house. WCW Saturday Night taping on 3/29 in Beaumont, TX drew 1,074 paying $24,200. House show 3/30 in Baltimore drew just 1,733 paid for a gate of $50,735. House show 3/31 in Pittsburgh drew 1,684 paying $35,913. House show 4/1 in Johnstown, PA drew about 800 paying $17,000 and 4/2 in Youngstown, OH drew about 1,000 paying $19,000. Even by today's standards, they did three major market cities that all drew less than 2,000 paid and you've got to go back to 1993 for business to hit that level. There were a lot of complains about the behavior of Rick Steiner at the Baltimore show. The feeling was that there was far too much mic time and the crowd was getting bored, particularly Three Count going far too long both before and after their match, and Steiner's swearing well past the point of anyone caring. In Johnstown, PA, they used Funk over Rhodes in a bunkhouse match as the main event. Bagwell and Psicosis both no-showed and Guerrera, who wasn't scheduled to wrestle, but was to appear, missed the show as his elbow flared up
With TNT having been replaced by TCM (Turner Classic Movies) in India, which doesn't get TBS, WCW no longer has any TV exposure in the country, with a population of approximately one billion and a long storied wrestling history
They ran Houston one day after Raw had sold the building out. The feeling was that with WWF sellout out ahead of time, that those turned away from getting WWF tickets would buy WCW tickets, a theory that turned out not to be well founded. The original plan was for both groups to run head-to-head on 3/28 in San Antonio, but WCW moved out of the Alamodome for reasons that don't take a great deal of thought to figure out.
WWF: Raw on 4/3 from the Staples Center in Los Angeles drew a sellout 13,435 paying $493,237 for a good show. Shane apologized to Vince and challenged Rock to a singles match. HHH & Stephanie came out with Stephanie doing a big-time sell job from the rock bottom the previous night. Stephanie's acting was worse than usual. HHH challenged Rock to a non-title match. Vince came out and shook hands with Shane and hugged Stephanie. Vince challenged Rock and then called the audience phonies for having plastic cosmetic surgeries, which has some irony because every woman in the company has had half a dozen of them. His insulting the audience didn't get as much heat as you'd think. Guerrero beat Jericho to win the European title in 5:38 in a good match. After a ref bump, Jericho did the double bomb and quebrada but no ref. Chyna counted to three, raised Jericho's hand, then DDT's Jericho and put Guerrero on to for the pin. Chyna and Guerrero left together. The camera shooting of Chyna and Guerrero, and this isn't WCW so there are no accidents, is to use Chyna to make Guerrero a player, but also make sure he isn't too much of one. They shot low and had Chyna wear huge heels to accentuate making Guerrero look like a midget next to her and thus make it difficult to take him as a serious headliner. Guerrero is showing so much personality he's going to make it anyway, but maybe not all the way to the top. If Chyna wore lower heels and the camera took different shots, Guerrero wouldn't look like a joke because they actually don't have more than a two or three inch difference in real height, but it's shot to make it look like almost a foot. Dogg & X-Pac beat T&A when Dogg pinned Albert after X-Pac gave him the X factor in 3:35. Hot TV match. Angle was doing the Backlund gimmick where he's gone nuts about losing both belts without being pinned himself and chicken winged Howard Finkel. Benoit pinned Tazz in an IC title match with a german suplex in 3:21. Tazz had the Tazmission on when Saturn came out. Tazz suplexed Saturn off the ropes and slipped in doing the move so Saturn nearly landed real bad. This distracted Tazz for Benoit to get the pin. Tazz and Saturn brawled to the back afterwards. This was even better then the two previous bouts. Michael Cole put over the ladder match at Mania big and brought out Edge & Christian. They called out the Hardys. Everyone was overselling their injuries. Finally the Dudleys came out. Edge & Christian first laid out the Hardys and the Dudleys made the save and basically worked face style. Show beat Rikishi via DQ in 1:18 when Grandmaster interfered for no apparent reason. Show was clowning around trying a new persona where he's more over the top. Shane, Vince and HHH drew straws on who would get the Rock, and Shane won, and they acted as if Vince & HHH had double-crossed Shane. Show did an interview and danced in the ring like Rikishi, really bad. He made Brian Christopher look like a dancing fool. The fans liked it anyway. Crash regained the hardcore title from Bob in 3:01 when the Acolytes destroyed Bob and Crash got on top. The Posse attacked Crash but instead of pinning him, ended up fighting each other again while Crash got away. Angle beat Venis in a solid match in 4:19 with the chicken wing. Angle wanted to wear gloves because he didn't want to touch Venis because he was afraid of diseases. It was funny, but he never got the gloves on. They pushed Ft. Lauderdale next week because it's the only TV taping that they were having problems selling out since--well, Miami. Throughout the show they kept pushing that Pete Rose should be in the baseball Hall of Fame. It actually got annoying by this point in the show. Maybe they'll induct him into the WWF Hall of Fame as a publicity stunt. Kane pinned Buchanan in 1:15 after a choke slam. Only thing notable was Buchanan did his leap to the top rope, slipped and fell. It was as noticeable a missed spot in a while. Bossman & Buchanan handcuffed Kane to the ropes and Buchanan delivered a chair shot to the hand so Kane will be selling a hand injury. Rock beat Shane by pinning HHH in 5:19. Sounds like a WCW main event finish. Vince & HHH were interfering freely. After a ref bump, HHH did the pedigree and put Shane on top but Rock kicked out. They did a 3-on-1 for a while and the McMahons both left, leaving Rock with HHH. HHH shoved down the ref but Rock gave him the rock bottom
Notes from the 4/4 taping in San Jose before a sold out house of about 13,000. They had three dark matches. First saw Team Extreme with manager El Jefe beat The Ballard Brothers who also had a manager in 5:54. Fans were popping big for about 2:00. All four were green but they did some cool moves. One of the Extreme guys didn't have a major league look (read that, didn't look drugged up) but showed potential. D-Lo Brown, no longer doing the Godfather Jr. role, pinned Pete Gas in 4:00 with a power bomb. Seeing him live, Gas is really terrible. He blew up immediately, he kept being out of position and blew spots. Brown didn't look thrilled trying to work with him. Kat & Mae Young beat Terri & Moolah in 4:00. Kat & Terri look absolutely tiny in person. Terri is looking almost anorexic like she's down in the 90 pound range. Fans actually popped the first time Moolah squared off with Young but it was so bad. They also popped for Young & Kat doing a double bronco buster. Kat did the worst spear in history on Moolah, and Young did a splash for the pin. Heat started. Esse Rios beat Funaki in 5:02 after a moonsault. Lita did a moonsault as well. Rios & Lita have a great look together. After all these years, Rios still can't punch and kick to save his life. The fans started a "USA, USA" chant. Lots of missed spots. Lita did a spinning head scissors on Funaki that popped the crowd. Crash pinned Mark Henry to keep the hardcore title in 2:41. Crash used a drop toe hold and ref Jack Doan did a super fast three. Doan then took off his shirt and started choking Crash with it while Jimmy Korderas ran in as a ref. The spot where the ref attacked Crash was funny. Crash made a comeback and DDT'd Doan on a broiler pan and then left instead of pinning him. Crash got one of the biggest reactions, comparable to Jericho and Rikishi, of anyone on the show and he did a great job working with Henry. Venis & Stevie Richards beat Head Bangers when Venis pinned Mosh with the money shot in 4:01. Richards came out as Venis, with a towel, but "forgot" to put trunks on. He had to run to the back while Venis worked the match by himself, which is just as well because Venis and Bangers worked well, and when Richards was in, it looked minor league. Richards wore Val Venis trunks and had this giant exposed area on his upper thighs with no tan which was clearly a planned joke to make him look like a goof. Viscera pinned Jericho in 5:21 with a splash after Guerrero & Chyna came out after a ref bump and Guerrero hit him with the title belt. Believe it or not, this was a very good match, maybe the best Viscera match I've ever seen, and he wasn't the reason for it. Jericho was that good. Smackdown started with Lillian Garcia singing the national anthem. She sings well enough to be a professional, which she was in the New York night club scene because she had average singing talent and great looks, before joining WWF. If McMahon can market wrestlers who can't wrestle, he can certainly market a singer who had a marginally good voice. The crowd popped very big for her singing, although it was as much for her looks. She seemed more genuinely happy getting the big crowd response than anyone on the show. Benoit pinned Rikishi in 1:54 with a Northern lights suplex. Everyone was stunned Benoit actually pinned Rikishi. After the match Rikishi gave Benoit a Samoan drop, the butt in the face, a belly to belly and a banzai. Rikishi wasn't moving well and his knee had a big brace on it. Vince & Shane came out for an interview. Vince kept saying he was in Sacramento which didn't get as much heat as you'd think. He complained about what happened on Raw the previous night. He called out Earl Hebner and asked him why he made the count and how could HHH be pinned when he wasn't even in the match (because this is wrestling) and Hebner said because Rock told him to. McMahon threatened to punch him out if he did something like that again. He called out Lillian Garcia, who the crowd had been pre-conditioned by her singing to love by this point. McMahon acted like he was hitting on her and had her sing "Do you know the way to San Jose" which made her even more a face. Of course he turned on her saying women with marginal talent and good looks are a dime a dozen and she could be easily replaced. He announced that in the main event on the show, he and Shane would wrestle Rock. He also brought up being mad at Jim Ross' commentary, but Ross was never brought out, but clearly they are going to do an angle with Vince and Ross. Caryn Mawr came out for the first of her three appearances where she insults the crowd for being fat. For someone the crowd had never seen before, she got a really good reaction and had total star quality. Vince & Shane came out again. Seems Vince forgot one of his lines, to make it clear Rock didn't win the title on Monday, said his line and left, obviously to splice this in with the other interview. Dudleys beat Test & Albert in 5:16. Fans were chanting for a table. The 3-D was super over, which was used on Test. They teased the Dudleys attacking Stratus but Hardys made the save and they had a pull-apart. Angle was trying to get a tag partner for later in the show against Edge & Christian. He first went to Scotty 2 Hotty, who spoke in urban slang, which Angle acted was like another language and he couldn't understand him either being Angle plays the straight-laced type. Tazz vs. Saturn never made it to the ring as they just traded punches to the back. Neither throws good punches so it didn't play to their strengths. Bossman & Buchanan beat Snow & Blackman in 4:41 when Buchanan did the legdrop off the top on Snow. Not good and the crowd didn't like it. Snow did an Asai moonsault early. Blackman cleaned house doing karate movie kicks after the match. Guerrero & Chyna came out. Guerrero got a shockingly huge reaction. Jericho came out was first double-teamed, then made his own comeback and power bombed Guerrero until Chyna dragged Guerrero to safety. Angle went to Rios, who spoke in spanish, and Angle couldn't understand a word he was saying. This segment was funny. Malenko beat Taka Michinoku to keep the lightheavyweight title in 5:02 with a super stomach block and cloverleaf. Wrestling was pretty good. Crowd wasn't into it and a fight in the stands at this point killed the match live. Stephanie talked Vince into switching the main event to having Rock vs. Dogg & X-Pac. Stephanie & Shane look to be almost the only people, male or female, in the promotion who don't have visible telltale signs of steroid use. Show beat Godfather. Show came out dressed like Godfather and even did a dropkick and missed an elbow drop off the top. Still, this wasn't good. Finish saw one of the ho's distract the ref, allowing Show to hit Godfather with his walking stick for the pin. The woman, who is far prettier facially than any woman in the WWF right now and under the lights didn't have that weird look the women get when they've had lots of facial surgery done with implants the size of several European countries (seriously, her proportions are three times more ridiculous than Sable, Stratus or Chyna) then started making out big-time with Show. She's clearly a new character designed to make Show worth his contract. Christian & Edge beat Angle & Bob Holly, who agreed to be his partner, in a tag title defense in 6:35. Angle got a total face pop coming out first, but the fans treated Christian & Edge as huge faces even though they just turned this week. The wrestling was good, very good in spots, but it was marred because there was a beach ball being bounced around in the crowd and when security confiscated it, the crowd started the loudest boos of the night which on TV will appear to be for no reason. Edge & Christian used the stacked up superplex on Holly for the pin. Angle then blamed Holly for losing, and Holly beat up Angle and left him laying. Main event was next. Shane was ring announcer and kicked out Earl Hebner as ref and replaced him with HHH. Stephanie announced. Most of the match was Dogg & X-Pac pounding on Rock. Rock finally hit a rock bottom but HHH was nowhere to make the count. Hebner ran out with Vince on his heels. Hebner counted to two when Vince pulled him out of the ring and decked him. Rock chased Vince to the back and decked Vince. All the heels chased Rock, as the match had one of those non-endings. Rock came back with a chair and laid Vince, HHH, X-Pac and Road Dogg out with it to end the show
Some notes from the eight hour Wrestlemania pregame show. The show was very well produced from all accounts. Most of the reaction we've heard on it was largely based on the honesty of the history. There were people who either were surprised it was as honest as it was, but recognized there were outright lies and exaggerations, while others felt it was the typical manipulation and another attempt to re-write history. They heavily downplayed Hogan's contributions and tried to portray him as a star during the 80s, but Andre as the star, and ran a lot of his footage in black & white to make it seem even more ancient. Some of the wrestlers, such as Jericho, came across as having really been wrestling fans growing up while a lot of the suits, most notably Pat Patterson and Gerald Brisco, were out there trying to rewrite history. They were more respectful to Bret Hart, although they played up Shawn Michaels bigger, but praised the Hart vs. Steve Austin match. In one of the funniest segments, Patterson and Brisco were talking about themselves wanting to see a 60:00 match before the Michaels-Hart match and felt they were the only two wrestlers around who could pull it off. McMahon, they claimed, was against it, because he was afraid the audience wouldn't have the patience and people would walk out during the match. They acted as if the match was a huge triumph where they were proven right, but the funny thing is that even though it was a great match, the fans live did start leaving in droves from the 30:00 mark on, and the arena was 1/3 empty by the last 10:00. The show was used to push the McMahon family as the reason for Wrestlemania's success and downplay the contribution of the performers. McMahon even claimed credit for saving Andre's life, saying Andre was "ready to die" with nothing left to live for before the angle turning him heel and that angle kept him alive (funny that he lived six more years, many years after his heel run ended and had many years being "kept alive" working in Japan long after McMahon stopped using him). Kerwin Silfies then buried Hogan, saying it was Andre who drew the house at Wrestlemania III. Vince even took credit for creating the Hulk Hogan character and insinuated Terry Bollea would have been nothing in the wrestling business otherwise. The Rock did an interview ripping on SuperBrawl. When Undertaker vs. Nash was aired, the footage was edited to where Nash was never shown getting any offense
The WWF rap Armageddon CD opened at a strong No. 8 selling 109,539 units. The WWF Music Vol. 4 remained at No. 166 with 8,740 units sold
Among the new wrestlers starting out in the Ohio Valley developmental territory besides Sylvester Terkey (the original UFO Big Van Vader in Japan) are Shelton Benjamin, a former All-American football player at North Carolina State, and David Nelson, an agile former bodybuilding champion from California
RC Cola is beginning a huge advertising campaign based on attracting teenagers through WWF programming, for its brand "Edge," based around Rock, Austin, Chyna, Undertaker and Edge. They started with TV spots this week, will include product placement as you'll see RC Edge cans placed on the show and wrestlers drinking the drink on Raw and Smackdown as well as sponsorship of the September Unforgiven show
KBHK-TV, Ch. 44 in San Francisco, the local UPN affiliate, aired commercials for "Ready to Rumble" not only on the station but during the Smackdown show itself, as did several other UPN affiliates. Not sure if this was a national spot or a local spot but the significance of Continued on page 18.
THE READERS PAGES
BISCHOFF
If Vince Russo works as Eric Bischoff's head writer, and Bischoff gets veto power, it is doomed for failure. If WCW does well, Russo will want Bischoff's job. He'll say he wrote the stuff and claim to be the brains behind the success.
Adam Terapelle
With all the talk about how to fix WCW, it seems that the most important obstacle to improving things there has either been missed or only briefly mentioned.
There is a reason guys like Hogan and the old guys are still on top. The corporate culture of Time Warner necessitates it. Nobody in WCW is willing to take chances on younger talent because if they deviate from the established stars, it will be their decision that is criticized if those young stars fail. Going with established stars leaves one less area for criticism from above.
To rebuild WCW's shattered fan base, even more of the current fans have to be lost first. The part that has to be lost are the casual fans who watch for Hogan, Luger, Flair and Sting. These fans will stop watching for a while when Kidman and Booker are headlining. The numbers will drop when the product is revamped. But if a WCW executive was willing to lose part of the fan base for a few months while creating new stars and putting them in credible storylines, the lower numbers would indicate to executives they were doing a poor job. This would likely result in termination before the fruits of their efforts could be seen. The corporate culture of Time Warner demands immediate results, and thus is not conducive to rebuilding the company. I believe WCW may never recover because of this monkey on their backs.
Paul Galbraith
Vince Russo coming back will be as big or an even bigger disaster as his previous tenure. It's funny, on a 1wrestling.com interview, Russo claimed that the WWF hasn't improved its ratings since he left. He's too egotistical to realize that the proof of his worthlessness is the fact the ratings haven't dropped a notch since he left. There is no way he and Eric Bischoff can work together. Their philosophies are totally different. Russo believes in pushing young talent while Bischoff doesn't respect anyone as a star who wasn't a WWF star in the 80s. Just like Russo's initial jump to WCW, this is all much ado about nothing.
Sam Nord
DM: In Russo's last four weeks with the WWF (eliminating the U.S. Open tennis Mondays when Raw was out of its usual time slot), Raw averaged a 6.17 rating and Smackdown averaged a 4.13. Over the four weeks between 3/2 and 3/27, Raw averaged 6.45 rating and Smackdown averaged a 4.80. It is fair to bring up that with the elimination of Nitro's third hour and football season ending, Raw's Monday increase should have very close to that much. Smackdown also no longer has head-to-head competition from Thunder, but comparing when Thunder was pre-empted and how it affected ratings, the increase is considerably more than can be attributed to factoring Thunder out. But the blanket statement that the ratings haven't gone up since he left is untrue.
BEYOND THE MAT
Before I start the point of this letter, I want to point out an erroneous statement made by you. You wrote in the Observer that Hulk Hogan was the WWF performer that carried the company by himself, whereas the current boom with Steve Austin and Rock as the top stars is more of a team effort. When Hogan would leave, business would drop as opposed to when Austin left, business didn't miss a beat. That's true, but in the beginning of the WWF comeback, Austin was the sole reason for it. Unlike Hogan, Austin was a professional and helped others build around him.
Anyway, the movie was incredible. Barry Blaustein's tone in the beginning reminded me of Steve Allen's narration in "The Unreal Story of Professional Wrestling." Unlike Allen, he wa just easing the non-wrestling fans into it. The only other part I frowned on was the end when Mick Foley's family is screaming tears at ringside, he started playing "Stand by Me" and showing him playing with his kids. That was unnecessary because I was crying at that point already and it just came off as a cheap overdramatization, which Paul Jay was a lot more guilty of. If you let the story do its own work, the reaction of the viewer will come. Just don't tell them what they should be felling, and why, during the course of the scene. It was still the best scene in the movie.
The rest was all good. Jake Roberts stole the show. Very open and aware of why he's where he is, yet he's still there. People might think that the more intelligent you are, the easier it s to kick addiction. Not true. In fact, it's more difficult. You are more insightful into yourself and how you got there, and that weight is heavier. The impact of immensity of your every day life is more frightening, and the end result is always the same. You come down and have you see the rest of your life as an infinite highway of shame, self-loathing and pain. Robert Downey Jr. said at any given time, he was 45 minutes away from relapsing, because that's how long it took him to score. You can never be cured. You can only be sober today.
The first ECW PPV show was their zenith. Regardless of getting on TNN, that show was also the beginning of their descent. ECW at the time was fresh, had good characters and good storylines.
Terry Funk is the man. To me, Funk retiring isn't a big deal. What's a big deal is seeing a good man with character leaving wrestling, and like Foley, us praying we can see the day when you can't count those types gone.
Of course Foley's life story was best told by Foley. But I enjoyed seeing his family, father and lifestyle. It sort of gave a picture of the people he wrote about. Ever knowing what was going to happen at the end, and the build for that moment, I could feel a cry coming on. I must be getting soft, so I guess I need to watch more ECW. I applaud Blaustein for showing Foley the type.
This was the 12th best film of 1999 and Vince McMahon won't push it because the audience isn't left with "a good feeling." Good God, I'm a movie buff and if you leave a theater with any feeling nowadays, it's a hell of an accomplishment. The last time I felt like this was when I saw "Braveheart." Vince could have added points to his stock if he didn't want to pretend this movie was never made. He totally dropped the ball. The movie is the biggest opportunity pro wrestling has had to gain mainstream respectability since the 50s. Mainstream respect equals money.
Rob Smith
Sarasota, Florida
I saw "Beyond the Mat" in the only movie house showing it in San Francisco. There were about 35-40 people there for the 11 p.m. show, 90% being guys between the ages of 16 and 30.
I sat next to some guys who were obviously there to see the big names and didn't anticipate seeing any real life stories. One idiot laughed at Roland Alexander when he swelled up with tears talking about Michael Modest. Never mind that it was clear Alexander has put his heart and soul into the product and he's trying his damndest to help his guys establish their dreams. But to the audience, Roland Alexander was a fool.
The audience winced at Mick Foley's gash, but disturbingly laughed out loud every time they showed Collette Foley crying and hugging her children during the chair shot sequence. There was also a buzz of excitement when the Jake Roberts segment started, since obviously, nobody had a clue where that was going. They were dead silent by the time it was over.
I've come to the conclusion that no matter how many wrestling fans are out there now, the majority of them have little or no respect for the sacrifices the wrestlers make to entertain people. It's easy for them to sit in their chairs and have guys like Foley get their brains bashed in, and not care at all about the personal ramifications to the guy. These wrestlers are destroying their bodies nightly, and granted, it really is a strange and unique subculture, but the fans don't seem to care about a Michael Modest or a Tony Jones. They want instant selfish gratification from established stars, and whatever it takes to give them that indulgence is the only thing they are interested in.
Darren Chan
San Francisco, California
"Is it a risk they should have taken? That's, that's not for me to decide, you know, it's for them to decide. Or if they're gonna do it on an ECW show then it for the boss to decide." -- Joel Gertner, Wrestling Observer Live
I was shocked that Gertner had the courage to mention "the boss," particularly since Paul Heyman has run from taking responsibility for that bump the same way he's run from responsibility for all the other bumps. The idea that Heyman cares about his workers is a sick joke. Heyman is no better than a pimp who allows his whores to work without condoms so that they can earn more money for him. Someone is going to die. Clearly everything short of that happening has had no impact on Heyman's philosophy. In fact, Joey Styles' comments about Vic Grimes and the scaffolding during the Dreamer vs. Grimes match showed that not only are Heyman and his henchmen courting injury and death, they are teasing it to try and improve their ratings.
Frank Jewett
Continued from page 16. it is that KBHK-TV didn't run any spots for "Beyond the Mat." In other words, if there was pressure on local stations not to run spots for "Beyond" but not for "Rumble," a far more high profile film put on by the competition wrestling group, the argument about not taking commercials because they categorized it as a competing product the same way they don't take ads for WCW PPV events suddenly is out the window
On the Rec sports video charts, WWF dominated with 14 of the top 15 videos with only Super Bowl 2000 as No. 6 being a non-WWF. One through five were Rock, Austin vs. McMahon, Best of Raw, Austin, and WWF memorable moments of 1999 while 7-15 were Royal Rumble 2000, HHH & Chyna, Women of WWF, Wrestlemania 15, Armageddon, Best of Wrestlemania 1-14, DX, 1998 King of the Ring and Three faces of Foley. WCW's Sting video was No. 17
The national British newspaper The Guardian in listing the 50 most powerful men in sports in the world, listed Vince McMahon at No. 39, the first time I've ever seen his name in such a list, and ahead of such heavyweights as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Leigh Steinberg. Rupert Murdoch was No. 1. Ted Turner was No. 5 and in his profile, WCW was never mentioned, talking instead about the Braves, Hawks, Thrashers, HBO and AOL. Dick Ebersol was No. 10
THQ and WWF are working together to publish a WWF online game as part of THQ's strategy to develop content specifically for the internet
Kurt Angle was interviewed on the LAW and praised MMA calling it one of the best sports out there and talked about wrestling against Mark Kerr and Mark Coleman. Angle said he'd fight if the money was right, and said that Kerr had the talent but not the work ethic, and if Kerr had the work ethic, Kerr would have beaten him in the Olympic trials in 1996. He said Ken Shamrock and Steve
Blackman were the toughest guys in the WWF and said he thought if they had gone into it that Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho and Christian would have all been great amateur wrestlers
Rock & Foley's book rank No. 6 and No. 8 respectively on the U.K. non-fiction best sellers list
The 4/4 Philadelphia Daily News ran a column by John Smallwood on Pete Rose at Wrestlemania saying that by performing at the show he had sunk to an all-time low. Let's see, a guy gets banned for life for gambling on his own sport, but because he does an acting gig he's sunk lower. The reporter was clear to say he had nothing against wrestling, or even athletes like Malone, Tyson, Greene, Rodman, etc. doing wrestling as referees or participants, but more about Rikishi rubbing his butt in Pete's face for money, which, admittedly, is sinking pretty low for one of the greatest baseball players of all-time, except that he'd sunk lower many times before. It said that Rose didn't do anything wrong, said he made an honest buck and provided fans with some entertainment, but said as a baseball fan it was disturbing to see him delve even farther into his role as a cartoon character. The article concluded by saying McMahon made a rare marketing blunder at Mania, and that Rose should have come out with Godfather as part of the ho train
The Axxess from most accounts was a great presentation with the exception of gigantic lines for autographs. They had something like 15,000 fans show up on 4/1 Smackdown tapings on 3/28 in San Antonio drew a sellout 7,600 paying $240,219. Arena merchandise for the Raw and Smackdown shows was $224,589 or $10.68 per head which is the highest weekly figure going back to the merchandise peak of a few years back. The WWF has been trending upward, which is due to Rock merchandise being out of control, but another part of that reason is that San Antonio, for whatever reason, for both WWF and WCW as well as for other sports and concerts is the No. 1 per cap merchandise city in the country. WWF actually did $12.78 per head at the Freeman Coliseum, a figure they've done very few times in history (I actually can't recall once off the top of my head) for a non-PPV event.
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