October 12, 1998 Wrestling Observer Newsletter.txt
Wrestling Observer Newsletter
PO Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228 ISSN1083-9593 October 12, 1998
WWF BREAK DOWN FINAL POLL RESULTS
Thumbs up 43 (30.9%)
Thumbs down 33 (23.7%)
In the middle 63 (45.3%)
BEST MATCH POLL
Maivia vs. Mankind vs. Shamrock 93
Owen Hart vs. Edge 14
Austin vs. Undertaker vs. Kane 11
WORST MATCH POLL
Vader vs. Bradshaw 51
D-Lo Brown vs. Gangrel 19
Marc Mero vs. Darren Drozdov 15
Val Venis vs. Dustin Runnels 10
Based on phone calls, letters and fax messages to the Observer as of Tuesday,
10/6. Statistical margin of error: +-100%
The man who many, if not most, wrestling experts believe to be the greatest
wrestler that has ever lived and many in his native country believe to be the
greatest athlete alive has signed to take the plunge into the pro wrestling
world according to a press conference on 10/6 in Japan.
Alexander "The Experiment" Karelin, the Russian Greco-roman superheavyweight who
has won an unprecedented 11 consecutive world championships, was announced by
RINGS President Akira Maeda as being his opponent on a big show in mid-February,
most likely at the Tokyo Dome. Karelin broke the record set by another legendary
Russian, freestyle superheavyweight Alexander Medved who wrestled in the 60s and
early 70s and captured ten world titles.
According to Maeda, who called Karelin the toughest fighter in the world and
compared his record and his credentials favorably to Rickson Gracie, he said
he'd been trying to get Karelin early in the year but talks fell apart. He said
they tried to make contact for Karelin to come to the show when RINGS promoted
on 4/25 in Russia but it also didn't happen. He said they had continued to
pursue Karelin through their Russian RINGS contacts and that he had signed a
contract for the match last week.
The announcement was held off until just five days before the KRS Tokyo Dome
show with Rickson Gracie vs. Nobuhiko Takada, the timing of which certainly was
no coincidence as it was an attempt for Maeda to steal the spotlight. Karelin,
31, captured Olympic gold medals in 1988, 1992 and 1996 along with every world
championship since and in between, and is the favorite to make it four golds in
2000. He's been undefeated in wrestling since the 1987 world championships where
he as a 19-year-old lost to the eventual winner. He's been the top rated
superheavyweight in Greco-roman on the national team since the age of 17,
captured his first European championship at 18 in 1986, and since that time has
won all ten other European championship tournaments that he's entered.
Many different pro wrestling companies, fighting organizations and several NFL
football teams over the years have attempted to sign him, particularly after his
second Olympic title where he looked like the most physically dominant athlete
in the world as he destroyed everyone in competition, including WWF, New Japan,
UFC and RINGS. RINGS has been talking the most seriously about it on and off for
the past several months, as Maeda was looking for an opponent for a major
retirement match. Maeda had his retirement show on 7/20 in Yokohama, but at the
time left the door open for one major match of this magnitude. In 1988, Karelin
came to Japan and appeared in a New Japan ring for an exhibition during a pro
wrestling card at Tokyo Sumo Hall throwing Hiroshi Hase around the ring,
however, when the Soviets sent several former amateur champions into pro
wrestling starting out at the first show ever at the Tokyo Dome (which from an
official standpoint would have been the first Soviet athletes ever to go into
Western professional sports), due to Russia's economic collapse, they kept
Karelin off that team. Maeda's announcement is that rules would still be
determined, he insisted the match would be a shoot (of course even if it won't
be, and if it will be it will be probably the first ever for Maeda, he has to
say that). He said the rules haven't been determine but the match would be two
five minute rounds (which in RINGS vernacular indicates it'll be a shoot) and if
there is no submission or knockout, that they would go into another five minute
overtime.
While Karelin is the premier Greco-roman wrestler in the world, and most would
say the greatest ever, no matter what your specialty, when taken out of your
specialty, you become only human. For example, if Karelin faced a world
freestyle champion under freestyle rules, the odds are that he would lose
because he's playing somebody elses game. Of course Maeda, 39, while a Hall of
Fame pro wrestler, is not a world class fighter in any way except for his
contrived pro wrestling reputation and would be long since past his prime since
he hasn't kept himself in shape even if he at one time had been. If and when
this match actually takes place, Karelin would join a very small group of
Olympic gold medalists in wrestling that went on to pro wrestling.
Maeda put the knock on Gracie's contrived 400-0 claimed fighting record, noting
that Karelin, who has more than 300 wins without a loss over the past 12 years
in going against exclusively world-class competition, is legitimately the most
impressive verifiable real record of any athlete in a combat type of sport.
Kurt Angle, who signed in August with the World Wrestling Federation, who
captured a gold in freestyle at 220 in the 1996 games, is attempting to make pro
wrestling a full-time career. Historically, the most successful of those was
Henri DeGlane, who captured a gold medal in 1924 representing France, and later
migrated to Montreal where he was a headliner and captured a version of the
World heavyweight title in the famed 1931 "Battle of the Bite" match beating
Strangler Lewis via DQ in Montreal one of pro wrestling's most famous
double-cross finishes in history. Danny Hodge would have been however he
captured a very controversial silver medal in 1956 before becoming the dominant
junior heavyweight in the pro wrestling world from 1960-1976 when he was forced
to retire due to a broken neck from an auto accident. The list of other Olympic
gold medalists that have turned to pro wrestling is short, among them being
David Gobedjichvili, who captured two freestyle gold medals as a
superheavyweight and did one pro wrestling match in Japan, losing via submission
to Minoru Suzuki at the Tokyo Dome in 1990 for the old Pro Wrestling Fujiwara
Gumi promotion; Wilfred Dietrich of Germany, the 1960 gold medalist in
Greco-roman as a superheavyweight who is legendary for being the only wrestler
ever to medal in five different Olympics (1956-1972) best known in the U.S. for
his giving 420-pound Chris Taylor an overhead belly-to-belly suplex in Olympic
competition in 1972, who went pro briefly in Europe for the Catch Wrestling
Association in the late 70s and had a famous match with Antonio Inoki; and
Americans Robin Reed (134) and Russell Vis (145) in 1924 and Pete Mehringer
(191.5) in 1932, all of whom briefly tried pro wrestling in the U.S. but were
never major stars. Kevin Jackson in 1992 (181), Kenny Monday in 1988 (163) and
Mark Schultz in 1984 (181) captured Olympic gold medals and all fought in either
the UFC or Extreme Fighting in recent years.
***********************************************************
Both Raw and Nitro have garnered more mainstream publicity stemming from how the
Monday night wrestling ratings war has affected the ratings for Monday Night
Football.
While not noted in many circles, the 9/28 MNF game drew an 11.1 rating for the
Detroit Lions vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers game which is the second lowest rating in
the 29-year history of the show (a 1986 show which went head-to-head against the
seventh game of the World Series that year did an 8.8). While the two pro
wrestling shows certainly were a factor, an even bigger factor was the San
Francisco Giants vs. Chicago Cubs baseball game on ESPN, WGN and KTVU which drew
an 8.1 rating on ESPN alone and a 9.3 rating overall within the cable universe
and a 7.6 within the entire broadcast universe. We have a slight correction in
the figures listed here last week since the ratings weren't officially available
but the actual numbers were Raw with a 4.67 rating (4.39 first hour; 4.94 second
hour) and 6.9 share to Nitro's 3.99 rating (4.20 first hour; 3.90 second hour;
3.88 third hour) and 5.8 share. The actual combined head-to-head ratings was an
8.54 cable universe rating or just slightly behind baseball.
The Los Angeles Times noted on 10/5 that among the reasons NFL ratings going
into this past weekend were down 13 percent from a 14.9 to a 12.9 was the
popularity of Monday night wrestling. It stated that more teenage boys watched
pro wrestling on 9/28 than football. It also noted that they are selling NWO
replica t-shirts at New York Jets (Jet World Order) and Jacksonville Jaguar
(Jaguar World Order) home games. The Hollywood Reporter got more specific with
the same story, noting that on 9/28, there were 966,000 boys 12-17 watching Raw,
683,000 watching the NFL, 503,000 watching Nitro (that's over the three hours as
opposed to head-to-head two) and just 196,000 watching the Giants-Cubs game. The
most watched network non-sports show among teenage boys during that time frame
was "Everybody Loves Raymond" with 363,000 viewers.
Raw peaked with a 5.52 rating for the segment where Austin dove off the Zamboni
and the backstage fracas followed by Undertaker & Kane destroying McMahon's
ankle. Nitro ending three minutes early because of the screw-up gave Raw nine
unopposed minutes that it most likely would have lost as in the 12 minutes
before Nitro went off, Nitro (Hogan vs. Hart and Hogan vs. Sting) did a 5.15
rating while Raw (Shamrock vs. Mankind vs. Rock) did a 3.85 for the 12 minutes
and with the three unopposed minutes wound up with a 4.28 quarter and a 6.1
over-run. Had everything stayed as it was going and had Nitro gone off the air
the same time as Raw, the margin would have closed most likely to a 4.56 to 4.10
for the night which is still a sizeable win. Raw won six of the eight quarters
including a 4.2 to 3.8 win when Raw presented Outlaws vs. Southern Justice and
Owen Hart vs. Dan Severn while Nitro featured Chavo Guerrero Jr. vs. Disco
Inferno and the brief Four Horsemen/Bischoff angle. Nitro's other quarter win
was by a 4.0 to 3.9 margin with the Jericho-Goldberg angle and DDP interview
opposing Vader vs. Al Snow. In the demos for the head-to-head two hours, Nitro
maintained a slight edge in males 25-54 and 55+ but got routed 426,000 to
255,000 among males 18-24, an age group Nitro has owned. Raw, which generally
trails greatly among women, also won women 25-54 and even 18-24 handily, an age
group WCW usually more than doubles WWF in, along with solidly winning kids and
drawing more than double the number of teenagers as WCW.
An interesting note regarding 9/21, when Raw won by the 4.0 to 3.9 rating is as
we've mentioned before, the ratings are determined by the percentage of homes
with television sets in the U.S. that have the sets tuned to the particular
show. Nitro traditionally draws more viewers per set, so when the overall
difference of a Raw win is 0.2 or less, Nitro most likely actually had more
viewers, which also relates to 10/5 because of the closeness of the night but at
press time we don't have total viewer numbers. For 9/21, Nitro actually did have
more viewers (4,306,500 to 4,301,600) although in the head-to-head two hours Raw
did win as the Nitro average against Raw was 4,086,300.
On 10/5, Raw did a 4.549 rating (4.52 first hour; 4.59 second hour) and a 6.82
share. Nitro did a 4.546 rating (4.81 first hour; 4.34 second hour; 4.49 third
hour) and a 6.80 share. Over the head-to-head 124 minutes, the Nitro average was
a 4.42 so it appears to be one of those nights where more people watched Nitro
but that Raw won the ratings. Exact viewer numbers won't be available until
after press time but based on the usual break-down, one would expect the total
viewers going head-to-head to be expected to be around 4,872,700 for Nitro and
4,882,800 for Raw or a slight win in that comparison for Raw, but considering
all three hours of Nitro the total average audience would be expected to be
5,015,800. The point being, over the last three weeks even though Raw had more
viewers head-to-head each week, it's close enough to where Nitro can
legitimately claim to have had more viewers overall two of the past three weeks.
Basically, the momentum in Raw's favor isn't nearly as much as it seems to be.
Monday Night Football, matching two undefeated teams, did its biggest rating of
the season with a 17.0.
On 10/5, each side took four of the eight head-to-head quarters while Nitro won
the over-run. Raw's biggest advantage came in the fifth quarter with a 5.32
(Shamrock vs. Kane, Venis vs. Gangrel) to a 3.87 (Hogan & Bischoff interview).
It should be noted that was the point in the show where Jim Ross was talking
about Raw has action in the ring, no 45-year-olds dueling on the mic). Nitro's
biggest edge was in the over-run with a 5.44 (Sting vs. Hart backstage brawl) to
a 4.49 (Undertaker vs. Maivia). By quarters, Nitro won 4.6 (Wolfpac vs. B&W
backstage brawl, Garza vs. Damian) to 4.1 (X-Pac vs. Brown, McMahon in hospital
bed); Raw took a 4.8 (Bangers vs. ICP, McMahon & Mankind in hospital) to 4.0
(beginning of Psicosis vs. Kidman), Raw did a 5.0 (Vader vs. Mero) to 4.0
(ending of Psicosis vs. Kidman, Warrior interview), Nitro did a 4.8 (Steiners &
Bagwell angle with Judy Bagwell, Rick Steiner vs. Adams) to 4.4 (Hart interview,
beginning of Shamrock vs. Kane), Raw did a 5.3 (Shamrock vs. Kane, Venis vs.
Gangrel) to 3.9 (Hogan interview), Raw did a 4.58 (Jarrett vs. Snow) to 4.55
(Page vs. Kanyon), Nitro did a 4.7 (Disciple vs. Lane, Hogan & Bischoff
interview, Nash attacking Hall, Bischoff & Arn) to 4.2 (Road Dog vs. Henry),
Nitro did another 4.7 (Horseman angle with Bischoff, beginning of Sting-Hart
brawl) to 4.4 (Austin attacks McMahon, Undertaker vs. Maivia beginning) before
the over-run which featured the conclusion of both headline matches.
***********************************************************
The two most important shows of the year in the free fighting genre will be
taking place 10/11 in Tokyo and 10/16 in Sao Paolo, Brazil, the KRS Pride Four
Show and UFC Brazil respectively.
The former may spell the end of the road as a serious headliner for one of the
biggest pro wrestling stars of this era. The latter, many suspect, may spell the
end of the road for a company that revolutionized the world of martial arts,
certainly helped change the world of pro wrestling, particularly overseas, and
was responsible in bringing the two worlds closer together. In both cases, the
shows only underscore the problems this industry is having and just how
difficult it is to maintain this type of a sport financially.
It was only three years ago when the four UFC events of the year averaged a 1.01
buy rate, numbers even more impressive when you consider that WWF averaged an
0.75 and WCW an 0.63 during the same year. Since that time, the fall of UFC,
which at the time was unquestionably "the show" in that sport and many believed
at the time was going to, without any television, surpass worked pro wrestling
and challenge boxing for PPV supremacy, the latter many believe was its
downfall, has been well documented.
In some ways, at least financially speaking as certainly not for fight quality,
UFC has been replaced as the big show by KRS, an oft-criticized promotion that
after three tries over the last year has yet to put on a good show, and since
the first show has had problems drawing. But because its pay scale is
considerably higher as its promoters for whatever reason, many believe unsavory,
aren't nearly as concerned over the bottom line, has been able to pull many of
the most marketable heavyweights away from UFC.
However, while KRS has proven it has the resources to pay big money to fighters,
it has yet to prove it can make money promoting the sport, nor has it been able
to put on one show that hasn't been a disappointment, between holding matches in
a wrestling ring as opposed to an enclosed cage environment not being as
conducive to good matches and having longer time limits which have resulted in
some marathon boring matches, two of which lasted more than 40 minutes (they
have since amended the rules to where matches have three ten minute rounds and
if no decision is rendered, an additional ten minute overtime which means a
total of a 40 minute time limit). In trying to largely attract pro wrestling
fans, it has also promoted several worked matches on its shows, mainly involving
pro wrestlers Takada (who was given a win on the last show to build up this main
event) and Koji Kitao. Many of the rival shoot groups, whether they be Pancrase
and Shooto in Japan or UFC in the United States, have privately, and often not
so privately, decried KRS' entrance into the market because of the belief they
are paying the top fighters more than they are worth from a marketing standpoint
and thus make it difficult for any of the aforementioned groups to keep its most
marketable fights, and maintain good business relations with the ones they've
been able to keep when word gets around how much some of the top fighters who
have limited if any drawing power such as Mark Kerr and Marco Ruas are earning
once they've left UFC for Japan. The situation with Bas Rutten is typical.
Rutten was the top foreign fighter in Pancrase once Ken Shamrock left the
promotion in 1996. He took a hiatus from the promotion to heal up and move to
the more lucrative shows with less rules. Rutten picked exposure over short-term
money in being convinced by UFC booker John Perretti to sign, figuring that in
the long run, winning that group's heavyweight title would be worth more than
the short-term higher money offer from KRS. However, when SEG lost Randy Couture
when economic dictated they had to cut back everyone's money, Rutten, who was
asked to fight for less than he'd been contracted to as well, also pulled out.
Rutten originally took the 9/14 Pancrase PPV fight largely as a tune-up for his
UFC title match, but at this point it appears he has his eye on KRS, and in
fact, challenged Rickson Gracie twice in recent months, on the most recent KRS
(where he was in Kerr's corner) and Pancrase PPV shows.
KRS put itself on the map promotionally last year when it signed the Rickson
Gracie vs. Nobuhiko Takada match for the Tokyo Dome. The match had its own back
story that was a shoot, that led to the match being a natural as far as drawing
big money but not a natural for other reasons, the main one being Takada had a
great reputation that needed protecting as the believed to be world's greatest
fighter at least to his loyal pro wrestling fans.
On December 7, 1994, Yoji Anjoh, at the time a pro wrestler for Takada's since
deceased UWFI promotion, showed up unannounced at Gracie's Jiu Jitsu school in
Santa Monica, CA with Japanese photographers and former Japanese wrestler Shinji
Sasazaki in hand, and issued a challenge on the spot. Gracie was at home while
Anjoh was creating this scene, got a phone call, literally drove to his gym
while taping up his hands, and gave Anjoh a horrible beating. There was clamor
from Japanese wrestling fans for Takada as the top star in the stable of a
supposed shoot group which was at the time selling out almost every show, to
challenge Gracie for revenge. The reality was known at the time that Takada
would have no chance in such a situation, so Takada never addressed it. By not
addressing it, it led to the many Takada pro wrestling fans (Takada may have
been at the time the biggest drawing card in pro wrestling and certainly by any
standard from 1990-96 was not only one of the biggest draws but also one of the
best workers in the entire business) wondering why. Not only did Takada lose a
great deal of popularity by his ignoring the issue, but fans lost confidence in
the UWFI fighters as being the real deal when none stepped forward to publicly
attempt to avenge Anjoh. Ironically at about the same time, another UWFI
fighter, Dan Severn, who UWFI basically told not to enter UFC, ignored their
wishes, made himself a name in that game, and while it could have brought back
prestige to UWFI, the end result turned out to be Severn never working for the
group again. UWFI, for both the aforementioned incident and also due to outside
business problems, by late 1995 had one foot in the promotional grave, basically
was saved by New Japan, which turned the interpromotional feud into the biggest
money feuds (at least up until that point in time) in pro wrestling history with
Takada selling out three consecutive Tokyo Domes in seven months. But that feud
was booked by New Japan more for short-term ego gratification than long-term
business (they were the ones in charge, and they were the ones going over in no
uncertain terms, and you thought that mentality was strictly American?) and when
UWFI was used up, the company had little life left and folded. At this point,
Takada was taking indie pro wrestling gigs at $27,000 per shot, but was quickly
outliving his marketability with that kind of a price tag including taking a
ridiculous match against Abdullah the Butcher and when he and Giant Baba failed
to come to terms, the only avenue left for big money was the match left on the
table.
The problem was that, in a pro wrestling, vernacular, Gracie wouldn't do
business. He wouldn't lose. He wouldn't even "carry" Takada for one round before
trying to beat him in their match which was postponed several times before
finally taking place on October 11, 1997 at the Dome. Of course the build-up for
the Gracie-Takada I was far more interesting than the match itself, which Gracie
won in 4:33 with an armbar submission in a match that Takada didn't get one
offensive move in on before a crowd estimated at between 35,000 and 37,000,
believed to be 98 percent pro wrestling fans. The entire match, from the moment
Takada, who was paid $180,000 for the slaughter, began walking to the ring to
the ending of the show, was like the last of the Takada marks witnessing the
athletic funeral of their one-time hero, who was as aware of what was happening
as anyone, being exposed as not only not being the greatest shooter, but not
even being competitive against a smaller man. If this was pro wrestling, the
thing to do would be to have Takada try to save face, challenge for a rematch,
train all year, and count the money for the rematch, just as Antonio Inoki would
have done in the same situation except Inoki wouldn't have ever been foolish
enough to be in the same situation.
From a promotional standpoint, this show is not without some flair. KRS has been
promoting the show for months, one year to the day of their first meeting, same
time, same building, same participants. At first, it appeared the legend of the
first match, which some would say from a historical standpoint was one of the
most important pro wrestling matches of this generation (Takada was without
question the biggest pro wrestling name ever to do a legit shoot and from at
least a legend standpoint, nobody is bigger than the Gracies when it comes to
fighting), grew to make it something more than it really was and would make a
rematch even bigger than their first meeting. Perhaps people would buy a rematch
and believe, that like in his pro wrestling days, that the few matches Takada
lost after being a headliner to the likes of perceived tough monsters Vader and
Gary Albright, he always came back and avenged. But in recent months it appears
nobody is really believing it. While Takada deserves praise in that two of his
students, Hiromitsu Kanehara (now of RINGS) and Kazushi Sakuraba are world-class
in their weight, the truth is that Takada, 36, was in training regularly tapping
out to near beginners at the famed Beverly Hills Jiu Jitsu Club where he was
training under Ruas. Ruas himself said that Takada had no chance at all against
Gracie and ripped on Takada as far as being a true fighter, going so far as to
call him a wimp. No doubt Gracie, whose age is listed at 38 (turns 39 next
month) but other sources claim he's actually 40, who had built up a reputation
as the world's greatest fighter long before almost anyone in the U.S. had ever
even heard of his younger brother, although the reality is he's been totally
untested since this sport even existed on a world-wide basis, will be asked once
again before the fight to do the right thing for business. Most likely, once
again, he'll refuse, although there were rumors floating around Japan in the
days before the match that were shocking in that regard.
There was even discussion about another plan, which may have had some credence
if only because last year Takada's people themselves agreed to do UFC provided
Ken Shamrock would be his opponent, no doubt looking for a big-name pro wrestler
with a legit reputation in Japan to rehabilitate him, and then just days after
the deal was put together, pulled out of the match claiming an injury in some
circles, and professing to know nothing about the match in the first place in
other circles. Perhaps Takada in the last days before the show could come up
with another injury, and the Japanese promoters, figuring just about the only
person in Japan with the marketability to take his place on such a major show
would be Masakatsu Funaki, would slide him is as a replacement. However, if
there was going to be anything to that, it fell apart when Funaki was knocked
out by Semmy Schiltt on 9/14.
The end result, unless Gracie gives in to the outside pressure, at that point
will be a formality. Realistically, just like any pro wrestling match, this one
will be decided beforehand, because no decision beforehand is basically a win
for Gracie. To the pro wrestling fans who once idolized Takada, they had their
hearts broken when he tapped out to Keiji Muto, when he even got involved in
that farce with Abby, and when he couldn't do a thing against Gracie. If this
event draws, it'll be wrestling fans that support it. But will wrestling fans
support the Emperor of Shoot Style pro wrestling after it's been revealed he
isn't wearing any clothes one more time?
In another part of the world, UFC will struggle clinging barely to existence on
10/16 in the 8,500-seat Ginasio da Portuguesa in Sao Paolo, Brazil in a show
available on PPV in the U.S. primarily to dish owners. As with most of the
recent shows, the line-up has some intriguing and competitive matches on paper.
But more important than good matches at this point is if SEG will be able to
swing a deal where Brazilian TV station Globosport will make a long term
commitment to the end and Brazil will become its home away from home.
For American PPV purposes, the main event is Frank Shamrock (4-1) vs. John Lober
(3-1-1) for the middleweight title. However in marketing the show in Brazil for
the live television special, they were building the show around Vitor Belfort,
who they'll attempt to market as a national hero, against Jerry Bohlander, a
match that won't be taking place due to Bohlander blowing out his knee last week
training for the match. The result of all this is that Belfort (5-1) will
instead face Vanderlei da Silva of Brazil (8-1), a dangerous 22-year-old who in
his last match on 8/23 knocked out world class wrestler Mike Van Arsdale in 4:00
whose only loss came in a match stopped due to cuts. da Silva, who Belfort isn't
crazy about having to face to the point some feel he may change his mind and try
and back out, is a national Muay Thai champion who has looked impressive in Vale
Tudo outings in Brazil with his lone drawback being he's been cut often, leading
one to believe this match will wind up being a stand-up war. Originally after
Bohlander was injured, Belfort's opponent was set to be Roni Roberts, a
22-year-old from Modesto, CA who has a 3-0 MMA record, however that fell apart
within a matter of days when Roberts broke his hand in training.
The idea of this show is to pit the two winners, hopefully for UFC being
Shamrock and Belfort, into a match that if it were to take place would almost
surely be the biggest match of 1999. Lober can't be discounted out since he beat
Shamrock in their previous meeting, although despite that win most have him as a
pretty heavy underdog once again. Shamrock's only MMA loss was on a split
decision in January 1997 in Honolulu after a brutal 30:00 match which so both
men exhausted at the finish, which included Shamrock knocking some of Lober's
teeth out and Lober dislocating Shamrock's jaw, the repercussions of which has
turned it into a very legitimate grudge match as neither is happy about how the
first match ended. Since that time, Shamrock has won seven matches in a row in a
variety of styles including wins over Olympic wrestlers in his weight class,
1992 gold medalist Kevin Jackson and many time national Greco-roman champion Dan
Henderson, and over previously unbeaten Extreme Fighting Champion Igor
Zinoviev--all three in less than 50 seconds, along with two top Japanese
heavyweights, Shooto heavyweight champion Enson Inoue and RINGS star Tsuyoshi
Kohsaka, in matches he was giving up considerable weight. Lober, since beating
Shamrock, has struggled, having his shinbone broken in a Pancrase match in
December against Ryushi Yanagisawa, and since coming back has lost Pancrase
rules matches to Minoru Suzuki and Joe Pardo.
The remainder of the UFC show has Tank Abbott (8-6) facing undefeated Pedro
Rizzo (4-0), primarily a kickboxer who is the top protege of Ruas; Kohsaka (1-0)
facing Lions Den fighter Pete Williams (4-0), who is coming off a big win over
Mark Coleman in an intriguing match-up. Williams has the edge standing up,
particularly with a greater reach and more experience. Kohsaka is better on the
ground, however Williams' Lions' Den training should make getting him in a
submission very difficult. Kohsaka has a major edge in experience as well; Pat
Miletich (20-1-2) faces Mikey Burnette (1-0) for the new UFC lightweight
(under-170) title. Burnette, a member of Lions Den, has fearsome punching power,
very good wrestling ability and incredible, nearly freakish strength for his
size. However, he's only had one MMA fight, although in it he knocked silly
famed Brazilian Eugenio Tadeu. Miletich is a good all-around fighter with far
more experience with 23 fights and his only loss was due to a broken nose, but
has been training on a very bad elbow suffered in surviving against much-larger
Severn for a time limit draw in a match with no judges on 8/23; The other top
match has Jeremy Horn (9-3-3), who went in unheralded and was ahead on points
before submitting to Shamrock in a title match on the last show, facing
Brazilian Ebenezer Fontes Braca (6-3), whose record includes losses to former
NCAA champion Kevin Randelman and a decision loss to Dan Severn.
To MMA fans, the Takada-Gracie match is considered a bad joke, most of whom
don't understand the realities of business and that if Takada wasn't there, the
promotion wouldn't be there either. There are a few intriguing matches on the
show for the serious fans. Igor Vovchanchin (22-1), the Soviet knockout artist
who has won tournaments in Russia, Brazil and Israel and has destroyed some much
larger world class wrestlers in a matter of seconds, faces former UFC star Gary
Goodridge (9-6) of Canada in a match that promises to be a slugfest; Kerr (9-0),
who has the best record of any heavyweight in the world, faces Brazilian Luta
Livre myth Hugo Duarte (5-1), the latter looking to avenge his very
controversial quick loss to Abbott on the last UFC; Sakuraba (3-0) faces Allan
Goes (3-1) in the match with the most interest among insiders; and Ruas (7-1-1)
faces much smaller pro wrestler Alexander Otsuka of Battlarts.
***********************************************************
This is the third issue of the current four-issue set. If you've got a (1) on
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Renewal rates within the United States, Canada and Mexico are $10 for four
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Rates for the rest of the world are $13 for four issues (which includes $8 for
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All subscription renewals should be sent to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter,
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Copyright 1998 Wrestling Observer. All material in this publication is
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The first Observer book in eight years is now completed and the comments from
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collection of some of the best articles in the Observer over the past ten years,
obituaries on the lives of Bruiser Brody, Paul Boesch, Buddy Rogers, Andre the
Giant, Steve Schumann, Kerry Von Erich, Dino Bravo, Oro, Boris Malenko, Art
"Love Machine" Barr, Eddie Gilbert, John Studd, Ray Stevens, Dick Murdoch, Fritz
Von Erich, Jerry Graham, Brian Pillman, Louie Spicolli and Junkyard Dog. The
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For the most up-to-date wrestling information, we have daily updates on the
Wrestling Observer Hotline (900-903-9030/99 cents per minute/children under 18
need parents permission before calling). I'm on option one. Bruce Mitchell is on
option two. Steve Beverly (Tuesday through Saturday) and Georgiann Makropolous
(Sunday and Monday) are on option three. Bryan Alvarez is on four. Steven Prazak
(Thursday through Sunday) and Mike Mooneyham (Monday through Wednesday share
option five.
The new message schedule is Monday--Meltzer on one, Mooneyham on five;
Tuesday--Mitchell on two (Raw report), Beverly on three, Alvarez on four (Nitro
report); Wednesday--Meltzer on one, Alvarez on four (Taped Raw report every
other week); Thursday--Mitchell on two, Prazak on five; Friday--Meltzer on one,
Beverly on three; Saturday--Mitchell on two, Beverly on three; 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 and there are option eight reports up later that evening
to get a different perspective. On option seven, we immediately run down the
major angles and results before getting into the details of the show.
Upcoming shows covered will be 10/11 KRS Pride Four (option seven only,
available by 2 p.m. Eastern time on 10/11), 10/16 UFC Brazil (option seven
only), 10/18 WWF Judgement Day, 10/25 WCW Halloween Havoc, 11/1 ECW November to
Remember, 11/15 WWF Survivor Series, 11/22 WCW World War III, 12/6 WWF Capital
Carnage (we should have an option seven report within 30 minutes of the
completion of the show), 12/13 WWF In Your House and 12/27 WCW Starrcade.
For those in the Phoenix area, I'm on between 10 and 11 a.m. every Wednesday on
KUSA (1060 AM) running down the latest wrestling info and taking calls.
***********************************************************
MAJOR EVENTS CALENDAR 10/9 TO 11/9
10/9 WWF Pittsburgh Civic Arena (Austin vs. Undertaker vs. Mankind vs. Kane)
10/10 WWF Cleveland Gund Arena (Austin vs. Undertaker vs. Mankind vs. Kane)
10/10 ECW Philadelphia ECW Arena
10/10 LLPW L-1 Championships Tokyo Sumo Hall (Kandori vs. Gundarenko)
10/11 KRS Pride Four Tokyo Dome (Rickson Gracie vs. Takada)
10/11 All Japan Nagoya Aiichi Gym (Kawada & Taue vs. Kobashi & Akiyama)
10/11 WCW Milwaukee Arena (Goldberg vs. Giant)
10/12 WWF Raw/Shotgun/Heat tapings Uniondale, NY Nassau Coliseum
10/12 WCW Nitro Chicago United Center
10/12 All Japan Osaka Chuo Gymnasium (Misawa & Omori & Ogawa vs. Kawada & Taue &
Inoue)
10/16 UFC Brazil PPV Sao Paolo, Brazil Ginasio da Portuguesa (Frank Shamrock vs.
Lober)
10/18 WWF Judgement Day PPV Chicago Rosemont Horizon (Undertaker vs. Kane)
10/18 New Japan Kobe World Memorial Hall (Tenryu & Koshinaka vs. Muto & Tenzan)
10/19 WCW Nitro Minneapolis Target Center
10/19 WWF Raw/Shotgun/Heat tapings Milwaukee Bradley Center
10/20 WWF Raw/Shotgun/Heat tapings Madison, WI Kohl Center
10/22 WCW Thunder Albuquerque, NM Tingley Coliseum
10/23 RINGS Battle Dimension tournament first round Nagoya Aiichi Gym
10/23 WWF Charlotte, NC Coliseum (Austin vs. Maivia vs. Mankind vs. Kane)
10/24 UFO debut show Tokyo Sumo Hall (Ogawa vs. Frye)
10/24 New Japan Fukuoka International Center Arena (Liger vs. Samurai)
10/24 WWF Greensboro, NC Coliseum (Austin vs. Maivia vs. Mankind vs. Kane)
10/24 OCESA Storm of Storms Mexico only PPV Mexico City Palacio de los Desportes
(Rayo & Cien Caras & Tinieblas Sr. & Jr. vs. Grundy & Blondy & Killer & Quinn)
10/24 USWF Battle of the Belts II Amarillo, TX Fairgrounds Arena (Tanner vs.
Lydick)
10/24 NWA 50th Anniversary show Cherry Hill, NJ Hilton (Severn vs. Regal)
10/25 WCW Halloween Havoc PPV Las Vegas MGM Grand Garden Arena (Hogan vs.
Warrior)
10/25 WWF New York Madison Square Garden (Austin & Mankind vs. Undertaker &
Kane)
10/25 Shooto Vale Tudo Open Japan Tokyo Bay NK Hall (Enson Inoue vs. Couture)
10/26 WCW Nitro Phoenix, AZ America West Arena
10/26 New Japan Nagasaki City Gymnasium (Fujinami & Hashimoto & Nagata vs.
Norton & Muto & NWO Sting)
10/26 Pancrase Tokyo Korakuen Hall
10/28 K-1 Tokyo Yoyogi Gym
10/30 New Japan Hiroshima Sun Plaza Arena (Norton vs. Hashimoto)
10/31 All Japan Tokyo Budokan Hall (Kobashi vs. Misawa)
11/1 ECW November to Remember PPV New Orleans UNO Lakefront Arena (Sabu & Taz &
Van Dam vs. Douglas & Candido & Bigelow)
11/1 Michinoku Pro Chiba Makuhari Mecce
11/1 WWF Sunday Night Heat/Superastros tapings Austin, TX Frank Irwin Center
11/2 WWF Raw/Shotgun tapings Houston Compaq Center
11/2 WCW Nitro Fort Lauderdale, FL NCR Center
11/3 WWF Raw/Shotgun/Heat tapings Dallas Reunion Arena
11/5 WCW Thunder tapings Memphis Mid South Coliseum
11/7 WWF Toronto Sky Dome aft. show (Austin vs. Maivia vs. Undertaker vs. Kane)
11/7 WWF Buffalo Marine Midland Arena eve. show (Austin vs. Maivia vs.
Undertaker vs. Kane)
11/7 WCW Pittsburgh Palumbo Center
11/8 WWF Montreal Molson Center (Austin vs. Maivia vs. Undertaker vs. Kane)
11/9 WCW Nitro Uniondale, NY Nassau Coliseum
RESULTS
9/13 Monterrey (FILL): Los Orientals I & II & Angel del Espacio b Diluvio Negro
II & Gran Houdini & La Mascara, Pimpinela Escarlata & Arandu & Llamarada b Super
Parka & Silver Star & Panterita del Ring, Pirata Morgan & Dr. Wagner Jr. &
Bestia Salvaje b La Parka & Zorro & Mascara Sagrada
9/24 Farmington, NH (World Wrestling Alliance - 470): Tim McNeany b Nick Fisher,
Bart Gunn b Mongolian, Giant Silva b Andrew Martin, Matt & Jeff Hardy b Glenn
Kulka & Tom Howard, Kurt Angle b Christian Cage, Brandi Alexander b Brittany
Brown-DQ, Silva b Tom Prichard, Bart Gunn b Shawn Stasiak, Jeff Jarrett b Mike
Hollow
9/25 Tijuana (AAA): Shamu b Tarot, Angel de Tijuana & Ebola 2000 & Faraon de
Occidente b Neon & Firebird & Acertijo, Los Mohicanos AAA I & II & III b Shazam
& Fifth Dimension & El Sagrado, Depredator b Sindrome-DQ, Pentagon b
Thunderbird, Sangre Chicana & Fuhrer & El Hijo del Enfermero b Perro Aguayo Jr.
& Blue Demon Jr. & Octagon
9/25 Milford, MA (World Wrestling Alliance - 500): Bulldozer b Tim McNeany,
Mongolian b Nick Fisher, Giant Silva b Tom Howard, Christian Cage & Shawn
Stasiak b Matt & Jeff Hardy, Kurt Angle b Tom Prichard, Brittany Brown b Brandi
Alexander, Bart Gunn b Andrew Martin, Al Snow b Cage, Jeff Jarrett b Mike Hollow
9/25 Squamish, BC (ICW): Layne Fontaine b Justin Shephard, Bob Miller b Rick
Richards, Jason Sterling b Steve Rivers-DQ, Fabulous Fabio b Ken Johnson, Combat
Girl b Tijuana Kid, Tim Flowers b Badnews Allen, Flowers won Battle Royal
9/26 Millville, NJ (NWA): Judas Young b Lizard, Rik Ratchett b Christian York,
Jose Rivera Jr. b Rocco Dorsey, Doug Gilbert NC Harley Lewis
9/26 Jackson, MS (Western Tennessee Wrestling - 400): Samantha d Derrick King,
Lance Jade b Kid Wikkid, Big Bubba b Heinrich Franz Keller, Wolfie D & Jamie
Dundee b Billy Travis & Bulldog Raines, Bill Dundee b Brickhouse Brown, Dundee
won Battle Royal
9/27 Erie, PA (WCW - 2,273): Silver King b Super Calo, Steve McMichael b Scotty
Riggs, Konnan b Sick Boy, Wrath b Perry Saturn, Bret Hart & Sting b Stevie Ray &
Vincent, Scott Hall b Kevin Nash-COR
9/28 Toyama (FMW): Ricky Fuji b Flying Kid Ichihara, Hisakatsu Oya & Mohammad
Yone b Yoshinori Sasaki & Hideki Hosaka, Super Leather b Yukihiro Kanemura, Hido
b Mr. Pogo, Hiskatsu Oya b Tetsuhiro Kuroda, Hiromichi Fuyuki & Koji Nakagawa &
Gedo b Ricky Fuji & Daisuke Ikeda & Hayabusa
9/28 Omuta (All Japan women): Miyuki Fujii b Sachie Nishibori, Takako Inoue b
Nanae Takahashi, Zap T b Momoe Nakanishi, Zap I b Miho Wakizawa, Yumiko Hotta &
Kumiko Maekawa b Manami Toyota & Emi Motokawa
9/29 East Lansing, MI (WWF Raw/Heat/Shotgun tapings - 9,846): Andrew Martin b
Steve Boz, X-Pac b Owen Hart, Golga & Kurrgan b Head Bangers, Shoichi Funaki b
Matt Hardy, DOA b Ken Shamrock & Mankind, Rocky Maivia NC Jeff Jarrett, European
title: D-Lo Brown b X-Pac to win title **1/4, Marc Mero b Vader, Shamrock b Kane
*1/2, Val Venis b Gangrel-COR, Al Snow b Jarrett-DQ, Jesse Jammes b Mark Henry,
Undertaker b Maivia **1/4, Jacqueline b Starla Sexton, Snow b Shamrock-DQ,
Funaki & Taka Michinoku & Mens Teioh & Dick Togo b Brian Christopher & Scott
Taylor & Hardys, Jammes b Jarrett-DQ, Edge b Vader, Steve Austin b Brown
9/29 Osaka (FMW - 1,950 sellout): Super Leather b Hido, Hisakatsu Oya b Flying
Kid Ichihara, Great Pogo b Mr. Pogo, Hideki Hosaka & Tetsuhiro Kuroda b
Yoshinori Sasaki & Atsushi Onita, Elimination match: Hido & Gedo & Yukihiro
Kanemura & Koji Nakagawa & Hiromichi Fuyuki b Mohammad Yone & Leather & Ricky
Fuji & Daisuke Ikeda & Hayabusa
9/29 Saga (All Japan women): Mika Harukai b Miyuki Fujii, Sachie Nishibori b Zap
Isozaki, Yumiko Hotta & Manami Toyota b Kumiko Maekawa & Miho Wakizawa, Zap I b
Emi Motokawa, Zap T & Takako Inoue b Momoe Nakanishi & Nanae Takahashi
9/29 Mexico City Arena Coliseo (EMLL): Pequeno Pierroth & Fierito b Bracito de
Oro & Ultimo Dragoncito, Brandon & Filoso b Guerrero del Futuro & Damian El
Guerrero, Mascara Magica & Sendero & Atlantico b Valentin Mayo & Rencor Latino &
Arkangel, Lizmark Sr. & Pantera & Ringo Mendoza b Rey Bucanero & Violencia &
Villano III-DQ, Cien Caras & Blue Panther & Dr. Wagner Jr. b Rayo de Jalisco Jr.
& Head Hunters
9/29 Smyrna, TN (Music City Wrestling TV taping): Shannon Moore b Joey Matthews,
Wolfe D b Corey Williams, Bill Behrens won Battle Royal, Colorado Kid b Don
York, Recon b Shabba Shabazz-DQ, Flash Flanagan b Karl Von Brauner, Bart Sawyer
b Mr. Miami-DQ, Shane Helms b Christian York
9/29 Hannover, Germany (CWA): Christian Eckstein b Eddy Steinblock, Bruiser
Mastino b Karsten Kretschmar, Tony St. Clair b Cannonball Grizzly, Rhino
Richards b Franz Schumann-DQ, Ice Train & Texas Claw Trimble b Robbie Brookside
& Joe Legend
9/29 Vienna, Austria (WWA - 100): Gary Mountain b Pete Johnson, Hubert Fritz b
Killer Ninja (Axl Future), Freddy Barne b Dirty Harry-DQ, Adam Pearce DCOR Craig
the Waverider, Viktor Kruger b Skullcrusher, Mick Tierney b Billy Joe Eaton
9/30 Grand Rapids, MI (WWF - 6,501): Head Bangers b Golga & Kurrgan, DOA b
Faarooq & Scorpio, Edge b Gangrel, Val Venis & Sable b Marc Mero & Jacqueline,
Jesse Jammes b Dennis Knight, Billy Gunn b Jeff Jarrett, Brian Christopher &
Scott Taylor b Matt & Jeff Hardy, European title: X-Pac b D-Lo Brown-DQ, Ken
Shamrock & Steve Blackman b Owen Hart & Mark Henry, Rocky Maivia won Triple
Threat match over Mankind and Kane
9/30 Nara (FMW): Ricky Fuji b Flying Kid Ichihara, Super Leather b Gosaku
Goshogawara, Tetsuhiro Kuroda b Mohammad Yone, Yukihiro Kanemura b Hideki
Hosaka, Daisuke Ikeda & Hiskatsu Oya & Hayabusa b Hido & Gedo & Koji Nakagawa
9/30 Tsujyo (All Japan women): Mika Harukai b Zap Isozaki, Sachie Nishibori b
Miyuki Fujii, Takako Inoue b Momoe Nakanishi, Manami Toyota b Emi Motokawa,
Yumiko Hotta b Nanae Takahashi, Zaps I & T b Kumiko Maekawa & Miho Wakizawa
9/30 Hannover, Germany (CWA): Robbie Brookside b Karsten Kretschmar, Rhino
Richards b Texas Claw Trimble, Tony St. Clair b Bruiser Mastino-DQ, Joe Legend b
Christian Eckstein, Ice Train & Rico de Cuba b Kim Ball & Eddy Steinblock
9/30 Vienna, Austria (WWA - 250): Viktor Kruger b Dave Vicious, Dirty Harry &
Hubert Fritz b Ninjas, Ian Rotten b Freddy Barne, Ulf Hermann b Mick Tierney,
Adam Pearce d Craig the Waverider, Billy Joe Eaton b Michael Kovac
10/1 Hampton, VA (WWF - 8,852): Brian Christopher & Scott Taylor b Jeff & Matt
Hardy, DOA b Faarooq & Scorpio, Edge b Gangrel, Sable & Val Venis b Marc Mero &
Jacqueline, WWF tag titles: New Age Outlaws b Dennis Knight & Jeff Jarrett, Head
Bangers b Kurrgan & Golga, European title: D-Lo Brown b X-Pac-DQ, Steve Blackman
& Ken Shamrock b Owen Hart & Mark Henry, Triple Threat cage match: Rocky Maivia
won over Kane and Mankind
10/1 Gyobashi (All Japan women): Mika Harukai b Miyuki Fujii, Zap Isozaki b
Sachie Nishibori, Zap T b Miho Wakizawa, Takako Inoue b Emi Motokawa, Zap I b
Nanae Takahashi, Yumiko Hotta & Manami Toyota b Momoe Nakanishi & Kumiko Maekawa
10/1 Ryuo (JD): Toshiyo Muto b Nana, Fung Suzuki b Masami Iizuka, Jaguar Yokota
& Sachie Abe b Ryura & Echicera, Cooga b Yuko Kosugi, Lioness Asuka & Bloody b
Sumie Sakai & Megumi Yabushita
10/1 Vienna, Austria (WWA - 350): Ninja #2 (Adam Pearce) b Ninja #1 (Axl
Future), Craig the Waverider b Chris the Bambikiler, Michael Kovac b
Skullcrusher, Dave Vicious & Axl Future b Dirty Harry & Hubert Fritz, Viktor
Kruger b Ian Rotten, Billy Joe Eaton b Ulf Hermann
10/1 Richmond, VA (Ultimate Championship Wrestling): Everett DeVore won Royal
Rumble, Doink the Clown (Jerry Lee) b Mercenary of Mayhem (Kevin Dalton),
Leilani Kai b Foxy Lady, Rock & Roll Express DCOR Latin Lover (not original) &
Mr. Big Stuff, Lou Thesz referee: Craig Pittman b Barry Windham, Demolition Ax b
One Man Gang-DQ
10/2 Richmond, VA (WWF - 10,596 sellout): Brian Christopher & Scott Taylor b
Matt & Jeff Hardy *3/4, Mark Henry b Golga 1/4*, DOA b Faarooq & Scorpio 3/4*,
Edge b Gangrel *1/4, Steve Blackman b Owen Hart *, WWF tag titles: New Age
Outlaws b Jeff Jarrett & Dennis Knight *, European title: D-Lo Brown b X-Pac-DQ
*, Val Venis & Sable b Marc Mero & Jacqueline *1/4, Rocky Maivia b Ken Shamrock
3/4*, Fatal Four way/Gerald Brisco ref: Steve Austin won over Undertaker, Kane
and Mankind **
10/2 Florence, SC (WCW - 4,312): Scotty Riggs b Sick Boy, Barbarian b Jim
Neidhart, WCW TV title: Chris Jericho b Juventud Guerrera, Dean Malenko b Raven,
Rick Steiner b Chris Kanyon, Lex Luger b Stevie Ray-DQ, Kevin Nash & Luger b
Scott Hall & Ray
10/2 Mexico City Arena Mexico (EMLL): Yoshihiro Tajiri & Olimpus b Rencor Latino
& Reyes Veloz, Mr. Aguila & El Hijo del Solitario & Olimpico b Ultimo Guerrero &
Zumbido & Halcon Negro Jr., Shocker & Head Hunters b El Boricua & Ricky Santana
& Gran Markus Jr.-DQ, Fuerza Guerrera & Bestia Salvaje & Scorpio Jr. b Felino &
La Fiera & El Hijo del Santo, Pierroth Jr. & Mascara Ano 2000 & Apolo Dantes b
Emilio Charles Jr. & Atlantis & Rayo de Jalisco Jr.
10/2 Osaka (JD): Echicera b Jaguar Yokota, Cooga & Sumie Sakai b Hiromi Yagi &
Megumi Yabushita, Bloody & Ryura b Sugar Sato & Mayumi Ozaki-DQ, Lioness Asuka b
Yuko Kosugi, TWF tag title finals: Cooga & Sakai b Ryura & Bloody
10/2 Tokuyama (FMW): Tetsuhiro Kuroda b Hido, Hideki Hosaka b Flying Kid
Ichihara, Hisakatsu Oya b Super Leather, Tetsuhiro Kuroda b Ricky Fuji, Gedo &
Koji Nakagawa & Hiromichi Fuyuki b Mohammad Yone & Daisuke Ikeda & Hayabusa
10/2 Beppu (All Japan women): Miyuki Fujii b Sachie Nishibori, Zap T b Momoe
Nakanishi, Manami Toyota b Nanae Takahashi, Yumiko Hotta b Miho Wakizawa, Takako
Inoue & Zap I b Emi Motokawa & Kumiko Maekawa
10/2 Vienna, Austria (WWA - 750): Hair vs. mask: Axl Future b Killer Ninja
(unmasked as Billy Joe Eaton), Freddy Barne b Hubert Fritz-COR, Adam Pearce won
triangle match over Craig the Waverider and Chris the Bambikiller, Ulf Hermann &
Michael Kovac b Ian Rotten & Skullcrusher, Viktor Kruger b Eaton
10/3 Fayetteville, NC (WWF - 10,279 sellout): Matt & Jeff Hardy b Brian
Christopher & Scott Taylor, DOA b Faarooq & Scorpio, Mark Henry b Golga, Edge b
Gangrel, Steve Blackman b Owen Hart, WWF tag titles: New Age Outlaws b Jeff
Jarrett & Dennis Knight, Val Venis & Sable b Marc Mero & Jacqueline, European
title: D-Lo Brown b X-Pac, Rocky Maivia b Ken Shamrock, Four way/Gerald Brisco
ref: Steve Austin won over Undertaker, Kane and Mankind
10/3 Charleston, SC (WCW - 5,572): Sick Boy b Scotty Riggs, Jim Neidhart b
Barbarian, Perry Saturn b David Finlay, Steve McMichael & Dean Malenko b Raven &
Chris Kanyon, WCW TV title: Chris Jericho b Juventud Guerrera, Lex Luger & Rick
Steiner b Stevie Ray & Vincent-DQ, Kevin Nash & Luger & Rick Steiner b Ray &
Vincent & Scott Hall
10/3 Kawasaki (All Japan - 2,400): Satoru Asako & Makoto Hashi b Masamichi
Marufuji & Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Giant Kimala II b Takeshi Morishima, Giant Baba &
Rusher Kimura & Mitsuo Momota b Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Haruka Eigen & Masa Fuchi,
Akira Taue & Tamon Honda b Masahito Kakihara & Yoshihiro Takayama, Gary Albright
& Maunukea Mossman b Jinsei Shinzaki & Jun Izumida, Stan Hansen b Takao Omori,
Johnny Ace & Wolf Hawkfield & Johnny Smith b Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama &
Kentaro Shiga, Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa b Toshiaki Kawada & Masao
Inoue
10/3 Memphis (Memphis Power Pro): Lance Jade b Tony Falk, Samantha b Vicious
Vicki, Bill Dundee b Ashley Hudson, Ladder match: Kid Wikkid b Derrick King,
Brandon Baxter b Randy Hales, Sid Vicious b Bodyguard (Beau James), Vicious b
Bulldog Raines, Vicious b Rex King, Vicious b Tom Prichard, Giant Silva b
Streak-DQ, Vicious won Battle Royal, Jerry Lawler & Vicious NC Road Warrior Hawk
& Bart Gunn
10/3 Dalton, GA (ECW - 1,475): Tracy Smothers & Little Guido b Blue Meanie &
Super Nova, Justin Credible NC Balls Mahoney, Jerry Lynn b Mikey Whipwreck,
Lance Storm b Chris Chetti, Masato Tanaka NC Buh Buh Ray Dudley, Tommy Dreamer &
New Jack & John Kronus & Spike Dudley b Credible & Jack Victory & Rod Price &
One Man Gang, ECW tag titles: Sabu & Rob Van Dam b Bam Bam Bigelow & Shane
Douglas
10/3 Memphis (Memphis Power Pro TV - 150 sellout/all freebies): Kidd Wikkid &
Ashley Hudson & Bulldog Raines & Billy Travis & Rex King b Yellowjacket (Kevin
Lawler) & Lance Jade & Blade & Derrick King & Bill Dundee, Streak b Tom
Prichard, Jerry Lawler NC Giant Silva
10/3 Nashville, TN (Music City Wrestling Anniversary show - 450): Atomic Dog b
Kyle Von Brauner (Chad Manning), Lord Humongous b Corey Williams, Silky Boom
Boom & Frenchy Riviera b Todd Morton & Chris Michaels, Lone Eagle b Little Josh,
Bart Sawyer DCOR Brickhouse Brown, Robert Gibson b Steven Dunn & Reno Riggins,
NA title: Colorado Kid b Bill Behrens, Al Snow b Flash Flanagan-DQ
10/3 Nagasaki (All Japan women): Mika Harikai b Miyuki Fujii, Sachie Nishibori b
Zap Isozaki, Zap T b Emi Motokawa, Yumiko Hotta b Nanae Takahashi, Manami Toyota
b Kumiko Maekawa, Zap I & Takako Inoue b Momoe Nakanishi & Miho Wakizawa
10/3 Sendai (JWP): Tomoko Kuzumi b Kayuko Haruyama, Chikako Shiratori & Yuki Lee
b Rieko Amano & Tomiko Sai, Dynamite Kansai b Commando Boirshoi, Devil Masami b
Erika Watanabe, Cuty Suzuki & Kanako Motoya b Hikari Fukuoka & Tomoko Miyaguchi
10/3 Sapporo (Gaea): Sakura Hirota b Rina Ishii, Sugar Sato & Mayumi Ozaki b
Kaoru & Toshie Uematsu, Maiko Matsumoto b Rie Nakamura, Aja Kong & Chikayo
Nagashima b Toshiyo Yamada & Meiko Satomura, Chigusa Nagayo b Sonoko Kato
10/3 Vienna, Austria (WWA - 1,100): Craig the Waverider b Chris the Bambikiller,
Dave Vicious b Axl Future, Chain match: Freddy Barne b Hubert Fritz, Death
match: Ian Rotten b Ulf Hermann, Street fight: Michael Kovac & Adam Pearce b
Billy Joe Eaton & Skullcrusher, Shootfight: Viktor Kruger b Mick Tierney
10/3 Erie, PA (Steel City Wrestling): Julio Sanchez b Jimmy Cicero, Rage b
Blade, Mark Mest b Vladmir Vampyre, Reckless Youth b Don Montoya, Cue Ball
Carmichael b Lord Zoltan, Mike Quackenbush b Christian York, Lou Marconi b
Dennis Gregory
10/3 Wallingford, CT (NWA New England - 250): Knuckles Nelson b Slick Wagner
Brown, Jay Jaillette b Ron Zombie-DQ, Zombie & Jay Kobain b Jaillette & Jeff
Mangles, Tiny the Terrible b Half Nelson, Knuckles Nelson & Erich Sbraccia b
Mercenary & Steve Bradley, Curtis Slamdawgg b Tre, Paul Zine b Joel Davis, King
Kong Bundy b Jason Rage
10/3 Blanchester, OH (Heartland Wrestling Association - 200): Cody Hawk b G.Q.
Masters III-DQ, Xtrekmist b Guy Quebec, Shark Boy b Bobby Kane, Chip Fairway &
Hawk b Brian Taylor & Sean Casey, Terik the Great b Chad Collyer, Ricky Morton b
Kingdom James, Shark Boy won Battle Royal
10/3 Pikeville, KY (American Championship Wrestling - 180): Big Mr. Jones b Mark
Vegas, Kevin Kirby b Wa-chee-DQ, Scotty Piper b Billy Badd, Rick Michaels b
Ethan Storm, Jay Eagle & Johnny Red Cloud b Rusty Riddle & David Jericho, Chazz
Rocco DDQ Barry Windham, Michaels won Battle Royal
10/4 East Rutherford, NJ Continental Airlines Arena (WWF - 14,017): Brian
Christopher & Scott Taylor b Matt & Jeff Hardy *1/2, Steve Blackman b Owen Hart
*, DOA b Faarooq & Scorpio DUD, Edge b Gangrel DUD, Val Venis & Sable b Marc
Mero & Jacqueline **1/2, WWF tag titles: New Age Outlaws b Jeff Jarrett & Dennis
Knight *1/2, Head Bangers b Kurrgan & Golga *, Rocky Maivia b Ken Shamrock ***,
Four way/Gerald Brisco ref: Steve Austin won over Mankind, Undertaker and Kane
***1/2
10/4 Tokyo Korakuen Hall aft. show (All Japan - 2,100 sellout): Takeshi
Morishima b Makoto Hashi, Yoshinobu Kanemaru b Masamichi Marufuji, Jun Izumida &
Haruka Eigen & Masa Fuchi b Giant Baba & Rusher Kimura & Mitsuo Momota, Maunukea
Mossman & Johnny Ace b Giant Kimala II & Wolf Hawkfield, Jinsei Shinzaki &
Satoru Asako b Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Masao Inoue, Toshiaki Kawada & Takao Omori b
Stan Hansen & Johnny Smith, Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa b Akira Taue &
Tamon Honda, Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama & Kentaro Shiga b Gary Albright &
Masahito Kakihara & Yoshihiro Takayama
10/4 Tokyo Korakuen Hall eve. show (Pancrase - 2,050 sellout): Kousei Kubota b
Satoshi Hasegawa, Ikuhisa Minowa d Travis Fulton, Osami Shibuya b Katsoumi
Inagaki, Yuki Kondo b Daisuke Ishii, Jason Godsey b Kengo Watanabe
10/4 Marietta, GA (ECW - 2,311): Chris Chetti b Danny Doring, Blue Meanie &
Super Nova b Amish Roadkill & Kevin Northcutt, Bam Bam Bigelow b Chris Walker,
Jerry Lynn b Mikey Whipwreck, Little Guido & Tracy Smothers b Tommy Rogers &
Sammy Solo, Chris Candido & Tammy Lynn Sytch b Lance Storm & Tammy Lynn Bytch,
Masato Tanaka b Balls Mahoney, ECW tag titles: Sabu & Rob Van Dam b Buh Buh Ray
& D-Von Dudley, Spike Dudley & New Jack & John Kronus & Tommy Dreamer b Justin
Credible & Jack Victory & Rod Price & One Man Gang
10/4 Mexico City Arena Coliseo (EMLL): Fiero & Enemigo Publico b Angel de Plata
& Sombra de Plata, El Jeque & Fugaz b Mano Negra Jr. & La Flecha, Mogur &
Americo Rocca & El Hijo del Gladiador b Kid Guzman & Ultraman Jr. & Super Kendo,
El Boricua & Ricky Santana & Gran Markus Jr. b Pantera & Mr. Aguila & Brazo de
Oro, Brazo de Plata & Lizmark Sr. & Tinieblas Jr. b Cien Caras & Villano III &
Apolo Dantes-DQ
10/4 Naucalpan (IWRG): Fantasy & Arquero I b Maligno & Mercurio, Mini Crazy Boy
& Mini Gran Cochisse & Bracito de Oro b Mini Konnan & Dragoncito de Oro & Mini
Elektra, Oficial & Guardian & Vigilante b Micke Segura & Mega & General, Star
Boy & Kanda & Halcon 2000 b Dr. Cerebro & Predicador & Shima Nobunaga-DQ, IC
middleweight title: Mr. Niebla b Magnum Tokyo to win title
10/4 Hakata (All Japan women - 400): Mika Harikai b Mayumi Takahashi, Kayo Noumi
b Zap Isozaki, Emi Motokawa b Miho Wakizawa, Takako Inoue & Zap T b Miyuki Fujii
& Sachie Nishibori, Zap I b Kumiko Maekawa, Manami Toyota & Yumiko Hotta b Nanae
Takahashi & Momoe Nakanishi
10/4 Omiya (Arsion): Rie Tamada b Jesse Bennett, Mary Apache b Lady Metal,
Reggie Bennett b Faby Apache, Michiko Omukai d Mikiko Futagami, Mika Akino &
Mariko Yoshida b Yumi Fukawa & Ayako Hamada
10/4 Takigawa (Gaea): Sugar Sato & Chikayo Nagashima b Rina Ishii & Sakura
Hirota, Maiko Matsumoto b Sonoko Kato, Chigusa Nagayo b Rie Nakamura, Meiko
Satomura & Toshiyo Yamada b Kaoru & Toshie Uematsu, Hirota won Battle Royal
10/4 Terryville, CT (North East Wrestling - 1,275 sellout): Ray Odyssey b T.W.
Sledge, Johnny Handsome b Juan Xavier, Teddy Reade b Julio T, Primo Carnera III
b Ralph Mosca, Jake Roberts b King Kong Bundy, Tiger Khan b Tony DeVito, Sid
Vicious b Johnny Diamond
10/4 Mount Washington, PA (Steel City Wrestling): Big Neal the Real Deal b
Vladimir Vampyre, Battman b Don Montoya, Reckless Youth b Christian York, Mark
Mest b Mad Russian, Mike Quackenbush b Julio Sanchez, Bushwhackers b High
Society, Rage b Chris Logan & Blade, Lou Marconi b Dennis Gregory, Tony Lutz b
Shirley Doe
10/5 Columbia, SC (WCW Nitro - 8,782 sellout): Perry Saturn b Lizmark Jr.,
Ernest Miller b Kaz Hayashi, Juventud Guerrera b Jerry Flynn, Wrath b Villano V,
Hector Garza NC Damian, WCW cruiserweight title: Billy Kidman b Psicosis ***1/2,
Rick Steiner b Brian Adams 1/4*, Diamond Dallas Page b Chris Kanyon-DQ ***1/4,
Disciple b Lenny Lane, WCW title: Bill Goldberg b Disco Inferno
10/5 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (Battlarts - 2,000 sellout): Masaaki Mochizuki b Ryuji
Hijikata, Naohiro Hoshikawa & Masato Yakushiji b Ikuto Hidaka & Minoru Fujita,
Alexander Otsuka & Mohammad Yone b Masao Orihara & Takeshi Ono, Minoru Tanaka b
Katsumi Usuda, Hisakatsu Oya b Greg Valentine, Bob Backlund b Daisuke Ikeda,
Yuki Ishikawa b Mitsuhiro Matsunaga
10/6 Gainesville, GA (WCW Saturday Night tapings - 1,800 sellout): Tam Pong b
Paul Cox, Bret Hamner b Nick Dinsmore, Raven & Chris Kanyon b Scott & Steve
Armstrong, Chavo Guerrero Jr. b Mike Sanders, David Finlay b Johnny Swinger,
Stevie Ray b Dinsmore, Van Hammer b Mike Tolbert, Rick Steiner b Al Greene,
Jerry Flynn b Rick Fuller, Ernest Miller b Kaz Hayashi, Alex Wright DCOR Davey
Boy Smith, WCW cruiserweight title: Billy Kidman b Lenny Lane, Vincent b Barry
Horowitz, Wrath b Rex King, Meng b Hard Body Harrison, Scott Steiner b Cox,
Hamner b Barry Darsow-COR, Perry Saturn b Gambler, Konnan b Lodi, WCW TV title:
Chris Jericho d Finlay, WCW tag titles: Scott Hall b Disorderly Conduct, Wright
DCOR Smith
10/6 Niigata (All Japan - 2,150): Johnny Ace b Masao Inoue, Tsuyoshi Kikuchi &
Haruka Eigen & Masa Fuchi b Giant Baba & Rusher Kimura & Mitsuo Momota, Stan
Hansen & Maunukea Mossman b Masahito Kakihara & Yoshihiro Takayama, Toshiaki
Kawada & Akira Taue b Gary Albright & Giant Kimala II, All-Asian tag title: Jun
Izumida & Tamon Honda b Johnny Smith & Wolf Hawkfield to win titles, Kenta
Kobashi & Jinsei Shinzaki & Jun Akiyama b Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa &
Takao Omori
10/6 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (FMW - 2,050 sellout): Super Leather b Gosaku
Goshogawara, Hayato Nanjyo b Flying Kid Ichihara, Ricky Fuji & Daisuke Ikeda b
Hido & Gedo, Hiromichi Fuyuki b Hisakatsu Oya, Tetsuhiro Kuroda b Yukihiro
Kanemura, Ind. world & World Brass Knux titles: Hayabusa b Koji Nakagawa
Special thanks to: Dan Parris, Bobby Baum, Scott Despres, Andrew Ebbeskotte,
Peter Jedlicska, Max Jackson, Dominick Valenti, Steve "Dr. Lucha" Sims, Chuck
Morris, Tim Noel, Chris Thomas, Trent Van Drisse, Brady Laber, Barry Johns,
Scott Despres, Gene Restaino, Michael Omansky, Rich Palladino, Phyllis Lee,
Steve Johnson, Bill Walkowitz, Michael Carpenter, Joe Silva, Mike Henry, Ron
Lemieux, Bruce Buchanan, Steven Prazak
JAPANESE TELEVISION RUNDOWN
9/19 NEW JAPAN: 1. Jushin Liger pinned Great Sasuke to retain the IWGP title in
17:13. The last 10:00 aired on television. This stemmed from the Osaka Dome
where Sasuke pinned Liger in a non-title match. It was better than you'd think
from these two and a noticeable improvement from the previous match. Sasuke did
his running flip dive crashing onto the guard rail. It's a wonder he has any
knees left at this point. Liger suplexed him over the top rope and he took the
bump all the way on his back. Liger gave him a hard power bomb on the floor.
While Liger was waiting for him to recover, he started doing jumping jacks in
the ring ala Love Machine. Liger delivered a released german suplex and Sasuke
started grabbing his shoulder as a sell, followed by a brainbuster and a running
Liger bomb. Big pop for the kick out. Sasuke came back and went for a
Frankensteiner off the top but Liger hooked the ropes and Sasuke landed on his
head. Liger came off the top but was met with a dropkick and fell out of the
ring. Sasuke did his patented Asai moonsault spot where he destroys himself on
the guard rail. After a quebrada in the ring, Sasuke got a near fall with a
german suplex. He ducked a palm blow (shoda) and hit a Frankensteiner, and the
two traded near falls with quick cradles back-and-forth until Liger finally hit
the palm, then a running palm. Liger set him up for a super fisherman buster but
Sasuke reversed in mid-air and landed on top for a near fall. Sasuke hit a
somersault senton off the top for a near fall. The next move was really weird.
Sasuke went for a moonsault apparently expecting Liger to move. Liger didn't
move and Sasuke landed with what basically appeared to be a legdrop to the back.
Sasuke still sold it as a miss, Liger hit the palm and grabbed an armbar in the
middle for the submission. After the match Tiger Mask and Naohiro Hoshikawa
attacked Liger, but El Samurai and Kendo Ka Shin saved. Shinjiro Otani and Koji
Kanemoto got involved and at first sided with New Japan against the Michinoku
Pro guys, but before long Otani and Ka Shin were kicking at each other. ****; 2.
Otani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa won a non-title match over Ka Shin & Kanemoto in
12:31. Only the last 3:30 aired. The wrestling was good, but it was basically
all story. Kanemoto accidentally kicked Ka Shin once, and accidentally
dropkicked him a second time. Otani then had Kanemoto pinned after his
springboard dropkick but Ka Shin saved Kanemoto, but then delivered a
neckbreaker, turning on him. Otani then pinned Kanemoto with a dragon suplex; 3.
Brian Adams & NWO Sting beat Shinya Hashimoto & Junji Hirata in 13:08. Only the
last 3:00 aired. It was slightly below average. Adams is far more effective in
Japan because he's so big, not diluted by having a whole bunch of guys his size
around at which point he becomes just another big guy who isn't any good. Not
saying he's any good. Finish saw Sting use the Stinger splash and scorpion death
drop on Hirata; 4. Masahiro Chono & Hiroyoshi Tenzan beat Scott Norton & Michael
Wallstreet in 7:07. This match was basically to build some heat for the
Norton-Chono match that never took place due to Chono's injury. Wallstreet, with
his beard, t-shirt and pants, looks like a much taller version of Tommy Dreamer.
Norton played semi-monster although he bumped for Chono's Yakuza kick. Finish
saw Chono make Wallstreet submit to the STF. After the match Chono and Norton
did a stare-down until the entire NWO pulled them apart. *1/4; 5. In a tag team
tournament match, Kensuke Sasaki & Yuji Nagata beat Keiji Muto & Hiro Saito in
13:45. Most of the match had Nagata vs. Muto and it was good, although since
this show was taped on the opening night of the tour, the fans were not at this
point "accepting" Nagata as a main eventer even though he works well. Sasaki and
Saito were kept as bit players in the match but neither looked good. Finish saw
Nagata pin Saito after a belly-to-belly superplex and a bridging back suplex.
Fans weren't ready for this as a finish yet as Nagata wasn't over yet although
less than two weeks later he was. **3/4
9/20 ALL JAPAN: This was the TV show to elevate Yoshinari Ogawa to star status.
First they aired an edited tape of the Korakuen Hall match where Mitsuharu
Misawa & Jun Akiyama & Satoru Asako lost to Ogawa & Toshiaki Kawada & Takao
Omori. They mainly focused on spots with Akiyama vs. Ogawa to build up their
singles match, ending with the big upset when Ogawa pinned Akiyama after a
jawbreaker and a cross-legged folding press to a big pop. 1. Akiyama pinned
Ogawa in 11:10. It started out hot with the crowd into Ogawa as the new star and
getting some nearly near falls. They showed many shots of Misawa watching the
match from the back. The match was slow in the first half, but picked up and
turned into a pretty good match. Akiyama did his Blue Thunder, a move that
starts as a back suplex but is turned into a forward power bomb. Ogawa got all
sorts of near falls including blocking an exploder into an inside cradle which
popped the crowd big, and the same spot from the tag match with the jawbreaker
and folding press. Akiyama came back and scored the pin after two exploders.
***1/4
9/26 NEW JAPAN: 1. Liger & Samurai beat Otani & Takaiwa in a non-title match in
15:35. The last 6:00 aired. The match had already picked up to where it had
great heat when TV started and it was excellent when Liger was in with Otani. It
was a bit off when Samurai was in with Takaiwa although Takaiwa shows great
fire. Takaiwa did the double bomb into a death valley driver but Liger saved
Samurai. When Takaiwa tried a death valley driver off the top, Samurai
maneuvered it into a swinging reverse DDT, which sounds better than it actually
was. At least they realized that and set the spot up again, and this time the
spot was awesome for the pin. Samurai grabbed one of the tag title belts after
the match and was doing an interview with the belt when Riki Choshu just walked
up and took the belt from him. ***3/4; 2. Muto & Norton & NWO Sting beat Manabu
Nakanishi & Hirata & Tatsumi Fujinami in 12:36. The last 6:30 aired. Muto was
real good and worked one great sequence where he and Fujinami traded dragon
screws. Most of the match seemed like a Nitro match that went nowhere. At one
point Fujinami came off the top with a Bombs Away kneedrop on Norton, who
basically got right up to no sell lariat spots. Norton didn't sell a suplex and
came back to power bomb Hirata. The last few minutes were okay. *1/4; 3. Sasaki
& Nagata beat Tenryu & Koshinaka in 14:56 of a tag tourney match. The last 8:30
aired. Some of the match was great, in particular a few standing exchanges with
Tenryu and Nagata. In other parts it was actually embarrassing, including a spot
where Sasaki was supposed to take an enzuigiri from Tenryu on the apron as he
came into the ropes. He knew it, but Tenryu forgot. Sasaki just stood there, and
then Tenryu did the enzuigiri and everyone picked up on it. The match actually
fell apart for a small period before it started getting great heat as Nagata
kept kicking out of pins. The last few minutes were very good, ending when
Nagata pinned Koshinaka for the first time with a bridging back suplex. **1/2;
4. Hashimoto & Kazuo Yamazaki beat Chono & Tenzan in 23:54 in the match to
determine who went to the tag tourney finals. The last 13:30 aired. Most of the
match consisted of Chono & Tenzan stomping on Hashimoto, and then Yamazaki.
Everything was fine but nothing was that special either. It picked up toward the
finish when Hashimoto hot tagged in and kicked the hell out of both guys. It
ended with Yamazaki using a kneebar on Tenzan for the submission finish. This
was the match where Chono wound up with his neck totally destroyed and it
probably happened early on, although he didn't show overt signs of it, as he
didn't do much and appeared to be hurt. **3/4
TELEVISION RATINGS RUNDOWN
Latest update on all WWF and WCW performers that have appeared as a main focal
point of a segment at least seven times since the two groups have been going
head-to-head from 9-11 p.m. on 1/26. Ratings for the first hour of Nitro, for
Thunder or Sunday Night Heat, and for Raw and Nitro programs when they aren't
head-to-head aren't factored in. Updated as of 9/28.
Performer Up/down Total pts Qtr percentage
Kanyon 5-2 +28 +4.00
Roddy Piper 9-1-1 +43 +3.91
Randy Savage 13-4-1 +65 +3.61
Ric Flair 12-1-2 +48 +3.20
Hulk Hogan 30-20 +158 +3.16
Kevin Nash 28-12-3 +136 +3.16
Rick Steiner 8-3-1 +36 +3.00
The Giant 22-8-4 +100 +2.94
Arn Anderson 6-1-2 +26 +2.89
Bill Goldberg 20-8-2 +85 +2.83
Steve Austin 29-13-4 +129 +2.80
Warrior 3-3-1 +19 +2.71
Vince McMahon 21-10-2 +76 +2.30
Lex Luger 21-10-3 +78 +2.29
Sting 19-15-3 +84 +2.27
Marcus Bagwell 11-4 +33 +2.20
Mick Foley 27-10-4 +81 +1.96
Steve McMichael 8-4-2 +26 +1.86
Undertaker 31-15-6 +93 +1.72
Bret Hart 23-14-2 +65 +1.67
Stevie Ray 9-4-2 +25 +1.67
Brian Adams 9-5 +23 +1.64
Eric Bischoff 15-11-4 +48 +1.60
Billy Gunn 29-12-6 +75 +1.60
Rocky Maivia 23-17-2 +66 +1.57
Scott Hall 14-12-3 +44 +1.52
Jesse Jammes 29-13-6 +71 +1.51
Dallas Page 15-11-2 +41 +1.46
Perry Saturn 10-6 +22 +1.38
Konnan 15-14-1 +40 +1.33
Chris Benoit 12-7-3 +29 +1.32
Eddie Guerrero 6-5-1 +15 +1.25
Kane 31-16-3 +62 +1.24
Scott Steiner 11-9-2 +27 +1.23
Raven 7-7 +16 +1.14
Triple H 31-20-3 +61 +1.13
Chris Jericho 17-6-1 +27 +1.13
Terry Funk 13-4 +19 +1.12
Chavo Guerrero Jr. 8-7 +16 +1.07
X-Pac 20-15-4 +35 +0.90
Owen Hart 16-18-2 +30 +0.83
Mark Henry 11-6 +14 +0.82
Marc Mero 16-12-3 +25 +0.81
Shawn Michaels 9-7 +11 +0.69
Jacqueline 8-5-2 +9 +0.60
Paul Bearer 16-9 +13 +0.52
Juventud Guerrera 6-5-1 +6 +0.50
D-Lo Brown 9-10-1 +9 +0.45
Ken Shamrock 14-14 +10 +0.36
Dean Malenko 9-5-3 +5 +0.29
Sable 15-12-1 +5 +0.18
Golga 5-5-1 +2 +0.18
Giant Silva 4-5-1 +0 +0.00
Dan Severn 7-6-2 -1 -0.07
Booker T 9-9-2 -2 -0.10
LOD Hawk 7-10-4 -3 -0.14
Goldust Runnels 9-9 -5 -0.28
Faarooq 8-10-2 -8 -0.40
Kurrgan 4-7-1 -5 -0.42
Darren Drozdov 3-7-2 -5 -0.42
Kaientai 6-4-1 -5 -0.45
Curt Hennig 11-12-2 -12 -0.48
LOD Animal 6-10-4 -11 -0.55
Head Bangers 6-7-1 -8 -0.57
Luna 7-11-1 -12 -0.63
Steve Blackman 8-9-2 -12 -0.63
Scorpio 4-6 -8 -0.80
Scott Norton 2-7-2 -11 -1.00
Godfather 5-7-1 -14 -1.08
Billy Kidman 3-6-2 -12 -1.09
Barry Windham 4-6 -11 -1.10
Vader 5-5-1 -13 -1.18
Davey Boy Smith 3-7 -12 -1.20
Psicosis 2-4-1 -10 -1.43
Jeff Jarrett 7-17-3 -50 -1.85
Val Venis 6-13-2 -42 -2.00
Eight Ball 4-12-4 -43 -2.15
Skull 4-11-4 -41 -2.16
Ultimo Dragon 3-6 -20 -2.22
Bradshaw 3-11 -34 -2.43
Taka Michinoku 4-9-1 -40 -2.86
Dennis Knight 1-8 -28 -3.00
Bart Gunn 1-8-2 -34 -3.09
Mark Canterbury 1-9 -32 -3.20
Brian Christopher 2-6 -26 -3.25
Chainz 1-8-3 -42 -3.50
MEXICO: Pimpinela Escarlata captured the IWC heavyweight title from La Parka in
the main event of a big show on 9/14 in Nuevo Laredo before a sellout crowd
estimated at between 13,000 and 16,000. For those of you into really weird
trivia, this would appear to make Pimpinela the first wrestler playing a gay
gimmick (and the gimmick is a shoot) to capture a version of the world
heavyweight title. Parka, who is probably more than anyone else the top draw in
Nuevo Laredo, which is the hottest pro wrestling city in North America right
now, had to drop the title since he's basically given word that due to his WCW
contract that he can't wrestle in Mexico any longer. They had a match with the
belt 15 feet above the ring and was described as the best match of the year in
that city, going over 40:00. The finish saw both men bloody, collapsing on the
mat. Pirata Morgan, Dr. Wagner Jr. and Bestia Salvaje all hit the ring with a
ladder. Zorro, Mascara Sagrada (AAA version), and minis Octagoncito and Super
Munequito then hit the ring so you had a nine-way brawl while Parka and Pimpi
were doing ladder match spots until they were both knocked out again. The
original Mohicano I then came out of the stands and hit the ring, handing Pimpi
a Pepsi bottle, which he cracked on Parka's head (bottle didn't break, but Parka
was bleeding bad from the back of his head), then climbed the ladder and got the
belt
El Hijo del Santo is now out of action, apparently needing rest after
legitimately being so banged up. With most of the top Mexican draws out of the
country with WCW, Santo is the most in-demand wrestler in the country. On 10/4,
Santo notified all promoters in Mexico that he's too injured to wrestle. His
claim is, and this part is basically an angle, is he injured his shoulder and
back in a mask vs. mask match on 9/27 in Juarez beating Gacela del Ring (upping
his record to 52-0 with his mask at stake, I guess he ought to challenge de la
Hoya, Gracie, Goldberg and Karelin and put his mask up) and they are claiming he
suffered an ankle injury on 10/2 at Arena Mexico while submitting to the
scorpion deathlock of Bestia Salvaje, probably as an angle to heat up a Santo
vs. Salvaje feud. However, for 10/9 at Arena Mexico, they are advertising Santo
& Negro Casas & Atlantis vs. Pierroth Jr. & Scorpio Jr. & Bestia Salvaje as the
main event although are saying that Santo will only wrestle if he obtains
medical clearance, plus Emilio Charles Jr. & Head Hunters vs. Boricua & Ricky
Santana & Gran Markus Jr
The Brazo de Plata heart attack story from last week was just another one-night
angle and as ghoulish as this sounds being that he's had two legit heart attacks
and is only 35, he works heart attacks for comedy spots as part of his basic
repertoire
Radames Coco's 10/24 PPV line-up billed as "The War of the Nations" at the
30,000-seat Palacio de los Desportes in Mexico City was announced as Rayo de
Jalisco Jr. & Cien Caras & Tinieblas Jr. & Pierroth Jr. vs Head Hunters &
Salomon Grundy & Fabuloso Blondy in what is billed as Mexico vs. USA in what
looks to be the among the worst PPV main events in history, plus three Mexico
vs. Japan tag matches with Negro Casas & Scorpio Jr. vs Yoshihiro Tajiri &
Magnum Tokyo, Atlantis & Brazo de Oro vs. Mitsunobu Kikuzawa & Nozawa, Felino &
Fuerza Guerrera vs. Tsubasa & Fujin, Villano III & Brazo de Plata & original
Mascara Sagrada & Tinieblas Sr. vs. Born Killer & Tigre Canadiense (Mike
Lozansky) & American Destroyer & Heartbreaker (Killer is billed as Canadian and
Destroyer & Heartbreaker as American, and I'd guess all may have worked of late
in Puerto Rico) and Mascara Magica & Super Astro & Tormenta Star vs. La Morgue &
Guerrero del Futuro & Arkangel. And for a spectacular, the line-up is
underwhelming. The storyline theme of the show is that Mexican rudos and
tecnicos have to forget their differences and fight for the country against the
foreign teams, which is why natural enemies like Scorpio & Casas, Atlantis &
Pierroth and Fuerza & Felino are teaming
Casas hasn't been at Arena Mexico the past two weeks because he's wrestling in
Panama
TV announcer Dr. Alfonso Morales has been named the new editor of Box y Lucha
Arkangel beat Torero on 9/25 in Acapulco to win the Mexican national
welterweight title. Torero appears to be fading from the scene as he's spending
most of his time running his restaurant in Mexico City
Cien Caras pinned Rayo in a trios match on 9/29 at Arena Coliseo and then
challenged Rayo for his CMLL heavyweight title
Super Luchas ripped again on poor Villano IV, claiming that by wrestling without
the mask in WCW last year that he shamed his father and his brothers. The
magazine also ripped on the DF commission for not suspending ref Babe Richard
after he attacked their reporter. They also had a listing of the six most
in-demand wrestlers in the country by independent promoters claiming in order
they are Santo, Konnan, Vampiro, Perro Aguayo, Cien Caras and Negro Casas. The
Konnan name is interesting only because he hasn't even appeared on TV in Mexico
in close to one year and hasn't worked any house shows in Mexico in recent
memory
Ovaciones reported that not only was EMLL finishing up Santana and Boricua, but
also said they were finishing up Head Hunters all after the 10/11 Arena Coliseo
show
10/2 at Arena Mexico saw Fuerza Guerrera & Bestia Salvaje & Scorpio Jr. over
Santo & Felino & La Fiera when Salvaje made Santo submit in the third fall.
Santo did a stretcher job and as they were taking him off on the stretcher, the
heels in a final humiliation, unmasked him. The main event saw Pierroth Jr's
first match back teaming with Mascara Ano 2000 & Apolo Dantes to beat Emilio
Charles Jr. & Atlantis & Rayo when Pierroth Jr. kicked Rayo low and pinned him.
The show didn't draw well being built around Pierroth's return
Mr. Niebla beat Magnum Tokyo to win the IWRG middleweight title on 10/4 in
Naucalpan. Apparently there is major heat between EMLL and Niebla for continuing
to work on indie shows even though he needs the knee operation
CMLL on 10/9 in Tijuana has Mil Mascaras & Lizmark Sr. & Rayo Jr. vs. Cien Caras
& Universo 2000 & Morgan on top.
ALL JAPAN: The new tour opened on 10/3 before a disappointing crowd of 2,400 at
Kawasaki City Gym. The main theme at this point is to get Mitsuharu Misawa &
Yoshinari Ogawa over as a tag team. They beat Toshiaki Kawada & Masao Inoue when
Ogawa did his new finishing combination of a jawbreaker and a figure four into a
jackknife cradle on Inoue. At the TV taping on 10/4 at Korakuen Hall, they beat
Akira Taue & Tamon Honda when Ogawa actually scored the pin on Taue which I
guess is an example of Misawa's booking. The main event on the show was the
first attempt at a new Misawa-style angle as Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama &
Kentaro Shiga beat Gary Albright & Yoshihiro Takayama & Masahito Kakihara.
However, there was a spot where Takayama (I can't believe they're going to try
and push him again) "knocked out" Kobashi and he and Kakihara claimed the only
reason he didn't beat Kobashi is because of the All Japan biased referees
On the 10/6 show in Niigata before a disappointing crowd of 2,150 (Niigata is
Baba's home town and All Japan has traditionally packed the 3,700 seat gym for
years) saw Kobashi team with Jinsei Shinzaki for the first time & Akiyama to
beat Misawa & Ogawa & Takao Omori when Kobashi pinned Misawa after two lariats.
Traditional All Japan booking would mean since Kobashi scored the pin against
the challenger before the title match in a tag match, that Misawa is going to
win the title, which is exactly what they did on the previous tour with Taue.
We'll see. Also Honda & Jun Izumida captured the All-Asian tag team titles from
Johnny Smith & Wolf Hawkfield when Izumida pinned Smith after a diving head-butt
in 23:11.
NEW JAPAN: Antonio Inoki's UFO promotion held a press conference on 10/7 to
announce its rules and its 10/24 Sumo Hall card. It appears the rules are
similar to the defunct Kingdom group, where the wrestlers will wear UFC style
gloves and do a shoot style, perhaps even with some shoot matches although one
would presume most of the matches if not all will be worked. The ring will be
too hard to take bumps although the style wouldn't allow for "bumps" anyway. No
pinfalls. Matches can only end with a submission, knockout, ref or doctor stop
or throwing in the towel. Half the body has to be under the ropes to constitute
a rope break which can save a foe from a submission hold. Three knockdowns ends
the fight. Head-butts are legal but low blows, attacking the eyes and attacking
the fingers or toes are illegal. Some matches will be fought with rounds and
some won't. The first line-up has Don Frye vs. Naoya Ogawa, Brian Johnston vs.
Gerard Gordeau (first UFC finalist and has done worked pro wrestling for the old
UWF, New Japan and RINGS), Joe Charles (former UFC) vs. Mark Hall (UFC &
Kingdom), Orlando Weit (UFC/Kingdom) vs. Jason Blaze (?), Satoru Sayama in a new
Tiger Mask outfit vs. X (Inoki and Sayama want it to be Kendo Ka Shin but New
Japan has a big show the same night in Fukuoka and Ka Shin is in a jr. tag team
title match on the show), Igor Meindert (New Japan former Russian wrestler) vs.
Tom Glanville (Extreme Fighting), Kazunari Murakami (Extreme Fighting/KRS) vs.
X, Kevin Carr (?) vs. Moti Horenstein (UFC/Kingdom/Shidokan Karate champion) and
the Michinoku Pro version of Tiger Mask vs. Ikuto Hidaka (Big Japan/Michinoku
Pro). Don't know how they'll draw with a line-up like that although perhaps
they'll get a big house the first time out just based on curiosity
The main theme for the next tour which opens 10/9 is that Keiji Muto and
Hiroyoshi Tenzan will be trying to recruit Yuji Nagata into joining the NWO.
Masahiro Chono held a press conference basically stating that as the plan. Chono
also said that he's in great pain and the doctor told him to stay out for three
or four more months but that he's planning on returning for the tag team
tournament in late November
WAR will be running a major show on 12/11 at Tokyo Komazawa Olympic Park Gym and
Genichiro Tenryu stated that he wants to defend his J-1 Rikidozan belt on the
show against Shinya Hashimoto
Apparently there is truth to the story about Osamu Nishimura having a health
problem and being out of action, but we're unclear as to what the actual problem
is.
OTHER JAPAN NOTES: Jaguar Yokota (Rimi Yokota), 37, will have her final match on
12/26 at Tokyo Ariake Coliseum as part of the interpromotional show that
Japanese TBS will be carrying as their experiment to see if womens wrestling can
be prime time television fare once again. Her opponent will be decided in a fans
balloting so there is a good chance of the first ever meeting of Yokota vs.
Manami Toyota as the main event. There are many (me not being one of them
although in the pre-1985 era I'd agree) that believe Yokota is the greatest
woman wrestler of all-time. Anyway, she's for certain top three or four. She was
revolutionary in her heyday, debuting at the age of 15 in 1977, winning the WWWA
title at the age of 19 on February 25, 1981 from Jackie Sato, losing and
regaining the title against La Galactica in 1983 and vacating the title when she
retired for the first time at the end of 1985. She remained in retirement until
the Tokyo Dome show on November 20, 1994 and after working some big shows for
AJW, left to become one of the top stars (along with Lioness Asuka and Bison
Kimura) when the JD promotion formed
Battlarts drew a sellout 2,000 on 10/5 at Korakuen Hall to see Bob Backlund's
return to Japan after being gone for something like eight or nine years.
Backlund, who was over huge as a babyface doing all his late 70s spots that fans
remember when he teamed and feuded with Antonio Inoki, beat Daisuke Ikeda in the
first round of the B Cup tournament. Other tournament matches saw Yuki Ishikawa
over Mitsuhiro Matsunaga and Hisakatsu Oya over Greg Valentine. Backlund will
return for a big show in November at Sumo Hall which will feature the semifinals
and finals of the tournament and see a Backlund vs. Great Sasuke match
Actually Sasuke himself is doing an angle where he's now drinking and smoking
ala Sandman or Scott Hall, but unlike in the U.S. where it's all tolerated, he
was fired by the promotion. No word on whether or not his New Japan dates in
October are affected but word has it that his 10/9 New Japan date is canceled
but he's still being advertised for the 10/18 New Japan show in Kobe
Pancrase ran on 10/4 at Korakuen Hall before a sellout 2,050 with Jason Godsey
destroying Kengo Watanabe in 1:28, nailing him with many palm blows and
bloodying him up, and putting him away with a choke. While Watanabe, who is the
focal point of the promotion, was expected to lose to the more experienced
foreigner, he was supposed to put up a great fight in doing so. An Osaka TV
station was filming a documentary on Watanabe going from being a rugby star into
Pancrase which finished with the Godsey match and aired early this week. Travis
Fulton of Extreme Challenge debuted on the show going to a 13:00 draw with
Ikuhisa Minowa. We had several reports saying it was an excellent show. Pancrase
is making another rules amendment allowing seconds to verbally coach from
ringside. Seconds are allowed at ringside under the old rules but weren't
allowed to yell instructions as the fight was in progress
Esther Moreno is headed into Arsion for singles match with Aja Kong on 10/7 at
Korakuen Hall. Arsion will be opening up its tag team tournament on 10/7 with
Michiko Omukai & Yumi Fukawa, Tiger Dream (Candy Okutsu as the womens version of
Tiger Mask) & Ayako Hamada, Mikiko Futagami & Lady Metal, Reggie & Jesse
Bennett, Mary & Faby Apache, Rie Tamada & Hiromi Yagi and Mika Akino & Mariko
Yoshida
JD will be promoting a series of interpromotional matches on 11/10 at Korakuen
Hall billed as the third Junior All-Star Wars, headlined by JD's Sumie Sakai &
Yuko Kosugi challenging AJW's Momoe Nakanishi & Nanae Takahashi for the
All-Japan tag titles
Big Japan is doing a junior heavyweight tournament from 10/15 to 11/6 with Ryuji
Yamakawa, Masayoshi Motegi, Katsumi Usuda, Tomoaki Honma, Minoru Fujita, Ikuto
Hidaka, Fantastik and Yukinojo Echigo. Shadow WX (Satoru Shiga), who captured
the death match championship from Matsunaga in the alligator match deal last
week, will make his first defense of the title on 10/31 in Sapporo against the
winner of the 10/15 Narita match between Gennosuke Kobayashi s. Tomoaki Honma
Atsushi Onita is claiming he's going to start his "new" USO promotion in
December to crown the best streetfighter in the world and issued a challenge to
former rival Tarzan Goto. After Great Pogo beat Mr. Pogo last week, Mr. Pogo
lost the Pogo name and is back to his old ring name of Gosaku Goshogawara.
Hayabusa retained his Independent world heavyweight and World Brass Knux belts
beating Koji Nakagawa in the 10/6 Korakuen Hall main event. After the match
Hiromichi Fuyuki challenged Hayabusa and that title match will be the co-feature
to Onita vs. Great Pogo on the 11/20 PPV show from Yokohama Bunka Gym
FULL has a show on 10/21 in Kawasaki headlined by Dos Caras vs. Giant Dos Caras
(Kenji Takano) in a mask vs. mask match and they'll also run 10/22 at Korakuen
Hall for the Toyonobori Memorial show
All Japan women are planning an 11/29 show at Yokohama Arena as the company 30th
anniversary show and were trying to put together Manami Toyota vs. Kyoko Inoue
as the main event but Inoue said she won't do the show because AJW owes her so
much money from when she formerly worked for them
Inoue will be fighting a male lighter weight Muay Thai kickboxer named Palin Yar
Giabusabar from Thailand, who is 17-years-old and got a ton of TV pub earlier
this year in Japan when he appeared on the last shootboxing big show because he
looks facially like a woman on the 11/14 Shootboxing big show at Budokan Hall.
It's a total promotional stunt as Inoue's Neo Ladies promotion is in a lot of
trouble and she figures this kind of freak show publicity if she wins, and it's
a Vale Tudo rules match and the kickboxer is much smaller and has no wrestling
experience that it may get her over more to the general public and save her
company
Weekly Fight claimed that Terry Funk only was paid half of what he was promised
for working the recent IWA Great Kabuki retirement week and that Funk is now
attempting to get back into FMW.
HERE AND THERE: The NWA 50th Anniversary weekend, which includes a wrestling
show, a fan convention, a Cauliflower Alley Club banquet and even seminars for
the various NWA promoters to trade ideas on 10/24 in Cherry Hill, NJ will
include Jim Cornette, Yokozuna, Abdullah the Butcher, Missy Hyatt, Stevie
Richards, Tod gordon, Doug Gilbert, Barry Windham, Tully Blanchard, Dan Severn,
Harley Race, Killer Kowalski and Fred Blassie. This is not specifically a Dennis
Coraluzzo promotion but an event in which all the different NWA promoters from
around North America will be co-promoting, each sending in their own talent
under the proviso than anyone sent in has to do whatever finish they are given
as a way to get the different smaller promotions to open up working relations
with each other. Blassie has been added to the list of those being honored. Jim
Ross will be presenting an award to Gordon Solie. Scorpio will replace Al Snow
on the card in a cage match with Hot Stuff International (Richards & Scorpio &
Pit Bulls & Gordon vs. Gilbert & Lance Diamond & Steve Corino & Rik Ratchett &
Coraluzzo). The WWF initially canceled Dan Severn appearing due to the angle
they are running with him, but have changed their mind as they are bringing him
back to TV earlier than originally planned so he'll be "working against doctors
orders." NWA President Howard Brody did try and work an angle with ECW but the
sides couldn't come to an agreement. Brody offered them a Severn vs. Shane
Douglas title vs. title match on a PPV with Douglas going over on the proviso
that Douglas drop the strap back three months later, although that wouldn't have
to be on an ECW PPV. If you think about history, it's almost hard to stop
laughing about that one. Brody's feeling is that the heat isn't between ECW and
NWA, it's ECW and Coraluzzo and although Coraluzzo was against working with ECW,
he wanted to open relations. Heyman asked for them to strip Severn of the title
and have Brody present Taz as the new NWA champion (which would replace the FTW
belt and give it some sort of legitimacy whatever that means) so the planned
March PPV match against Douglas would be title vs. title which Brody turned down
The 10/3 Memphis TV show included some WWF talent as they ran the big house show
later that night at the Mid South Coliseum. The show opened with Billy Travis,
Tom Prichard, Road Warrior Hawk and Giant Silva coming out of a limo. Travis
challenged Sid Vicious to a match at the Coliseum. Prichard did an interview
saying he hated Lawler and that Silva would take his crown on television. Hawk
said that he and Animal were still having problems (Animal isn't fully recovered
from his recent knee surgery but is expected back somewhere between 10/8 and
10/12) so he brought in a short-haired much-larger version of Bart Gunn as his
partner. Gunn talked about knocking out Jim Ross' boy Steve Williams and
everyone else and said he'd do the same to Sid if he showed up. Even though the
deal was that Sid was going to have to win four matches at the Coliseum to get a
job with the promotion, on TV they were already advertising him for later spot
shows. Hales wouldn't let Sid in the building claiming that he had so many stars
in town that there was no time for Sid. Sid was in the back beating up security,
and choke slammed Ashley Hudson in to the bed of a pick-up truck and whipped
Tony Falk with his lifting belt. Outside the building Sid said he'd beat all
four guys, which he did, win the Battle Royal, which he did, and by winning the
Royal would be Lawler's partner against Hawk & Gunn in the main event (which was
a no contest) and Lawler said with Sid as a partner he liked his odds. Streak
pinned Prichard but after the match Silva and Prichard beat up Streak. Lawler no
contest Silva in a match where Lawler did a good job of carrying Silva. Stacey
attacked Hales. Baxter helped Stacey. Lawler threw fire at Silva. Hawk & Gunn
beat up Lawler and finally Streak opened the door of the building to Sid who
came in and cleaned house to end the show
Lou Thesz, 82, worked as a guest referee on an indie show on 10/1 in Richmond,
VA for a match between Craig Pittman and Barry Windham
A few changes to the USWF show on 10/24 in Amarillo. The main event for the
heavyweight title will be Evan Tanner vs. former UWFI pro wrestler Gene Lydick,
replacing Larry Parker
Music City's first Anniversary show took place on 10/3 in Nashville before 450
fans. In the top bouts, Robert Gibson faced the Tennessee Volunteerz by himself
when Jason Gibson no-showed, but Al Snow interfered helping Gibson to the win.
Colorado Kid faced the winner of a Battle Royal earlier in the week, which was
won by Bill Behrens, the owner of the company who plays a TV role as heel
promoter (where have we seen that one before?). That match on 9/29 saw two guys
left and Behrens jumped in the ring and started yelling at both of them for not
fighting harder, and they got tangled up and went over together so it was
declared Behrens had won and thus had to face Kid. Behrens did a People's elbow
before getting beat. Main event saw Snow vs. Flash Flanagan go about 20:00
before the Volz attacked Snow and Flanagan saved him to set up a tag match on
10/10
North East Wrestling on 10/4 in Terryville, CT drew 1,275 fans in a match where
Sid Vicious beat John Diamond to win the group's vacant title and Jake Roberts
pinned King Kong Bundy. Sid's foe was scheduled to be NEW champ Bam Bam Bigelow,
but they announced Bigelow had taken a job as Vince McMahon's new bodyguard and
McMahon pulled him from doing the show, and that he was stripped of the title.
In actuality he was working ECW and he isn't going to WWF. Chris Candido and
Tammy Sytch were also advertised on the show but both were in Georgia for ECW as
well
Peach State Wrestling on 10/15 in LaGrange, GA is doing a benefit show for
Richard Wade, the husband of Joyce Grable who piled up heavy medical bills after
suffering a heart attack and has lost 50% function of his brain. All the
wrestling are working the show free and all the gate goes to Wade's fund. Randy
Rose, Masked Superstar (Bill Eadie) and local icon Chic Donovan headline in a
three way, plus appearing on the card will be 75-year-old Mae Young and 60s
female midget Diamond Lil
Rocky Maivia will be appearing at the R.F. Video store at the Franklin Mills
Mall in Philadelphia on 10/11 from Noon-2 p.m
In the Jackyl's pro wrestling column in the Winnipeg Sun this past week, it told
of the story of when Badnews Allen backed down Andre the Giant while in Japan.
According to the story, Allen, who won a bronze medal in the 1976 Olympics in
judo and no doubt was one of the toughest men in the world, was sleeping in the
tour bus when he sort of heard Andre tell a racial joke. Allen woke up and told
Andre to keep his racist remarks to himself. Andre told him to take a flying
leap. Allen took off his earrings, and according to the story, Hulk Hogan, on
the same bus, dove under his seat thinking Allen was going for a gun figuring
that nobody would challenge Andre to a fight without a weapon. Allen told the
driver to stop the bus and challenged Andre to go outside, which Andre didn't.
He challenged him to another fight the next morning in the hotel lobby and Andre
simply apologized for his remarks and promised not to tell anymore racial jokes
in front of him
Ringside Wrestling is looking for wrestlers 220 pounds or less to work as junior
heavyweights. Please send photos and resumes to Ringside Wrestling c/o Scott
Despres, 23 Cross Rd., Westminster, MA 01473
Empire Pro Wrestling on 10/17 in Parker, AZ at the Parker Theater Club Showroom
Good to report that former wrestler and current Monster Factory wrestling school
owner and WWA promoter Larry Sharpe (Larry Weil)'s leukemia is in remission
The Wellington Evening Post, the national newspaper in New Zealand ran a story
on Steve Rickard, a long-time local wrestling star and promoter
All Pro Wrestling has shows 10/9 in San Jose, CA at Mount Pleasant High (Maxx
Justice vs. Vic Grimes plus Christopher Daniels vs. Suicide Kid), 10/10 at the
gym in Hayward, 10/17 in North Highlands, CA and 11/7 in Pinole, CA
Franz Schumann turned heel for CWA in Hannover, Germany in a chain match against
Tony St. Clair. Schumann has been one of the top faces for the group dating back
to 1986 and is the current middleweight champion. Cannonball Grizzly won the
group's Iron Man (gimmick match) tournament
NWA New England on 10/17 in Melrose, MA at the Middle School has Kevin Sullivan,
Barry Windham and Bundy
Emily Dole, who wrestled some in Japan and also years ago with the GLOW womens
promotion as the huge Samoan Mount Fuji, was one of seven family members awarded
more than $1 million in a $24 million judgement against the Los Angeles County
sheriff's deputies during he raid of a bridal shower in 1989. Deputies in riot
gear came to the family home in Cerritos, CA after a call about people fighting
in the street with knives and sticks. The deputies in their report claimed when
they showed up, they were hit with rocks and bottles. However, a neighbor had
videotaped the entire scene and there was no evidence of such. 36 people at the
party, including two elderly men and one pregnant woman, were arrested and
beaten. Three were eventually put on trial for rioting and acquitted.
MMA: Jeff Blatnick's Mixed Martial Arts Council (MMAC) completed its 15-page UFC
rule book on 10/6 put together by Blatnick and Joe Silva. They will provide an
official top five ranking in each weight class. The idea is to get all the
promoters and not just UFC to join the council and make it a real national
governing body of the entire sport like doesn't exist in either boxing, pro
wrestling or kickboxing including mandatory expulsion of promoters who don't pay
purses within seven working days after an event. The rules specifically don't
allow matches to take place in a boxing/pro wrestling ring and they must be in
an area surrounded by a barrier no less than five-and-a-half feet tall. Refusing
to take a drug test will result in a suspension of at least three events and a
forfeiture of 25% of the purse for the event. Judges are not allowed to rule a
match a draw as they have to pick a winner. Illegal moves are biting, attacking
the eyes, striking to the throat, fish hooking, hair pulling, head butting,
elbows to the back of head or neck, pressure point strikes, groin attacks, small
joint manipulation, kicking a downed opponent, spitting, holding onto the fence
to stall, faking an injury, unwillingness to fight, throwing the opponent over
the top of the cage and outside interference from the corner. First foul will
mandate a $500 fine, second another $500 and third a $1,000 fine and an
automatic DQ. There can be one non-penalized warning given on a foul.
ECW: Negotiations with WWOR in New York have fallen through so ECW isn't close
at this point to getting a New York TV outlet which will hurt with a PPV coming
and New York being not only the largest market, but an ECW target market
Weekend saw shows on 10/3 in Dalton, GA before 1,475 and 10/4 in Marietta, GA
before 2,311. Crowd enthusiasm was really high which made both shows real good
and it was a different crowd than the Northeast regulars as they were more into
face vs. heel and wrestling and there didn't appear to be the somewhat prevalent
element at the Northeast arenas that are there largely for blood and little
else. The Dalton show was a TV taping which opened with Justin Credible vs.
Balls Mahoney. Axl Rotten at ringside attacked Jason but Credible hit him in the
stomach (remember Rotten has legit internal problems) with a cane so Rotten was
coughing up blood (angle) before Tommy Dreamer made the save. This set up a
singles match later in the show, which wound up as an eight-man when New Jack &
Kronus & Spike Dudley helped Dreamer while Jack Victory, Rod Price & One Man
Gang helped Credible, ending when Spike pinned Gang after giving him the Acid
drop onto a ladder. Gang is in to work every city once against Spike and put him
over as the giant killer but there are no long-term plans for him. Fans were
really into the Jerry Lynn vs. Mikey Whipwreck matches both nights. Masato
Tanaka vs. Buh Buh Ray Dudley ended up with Shane Douglas' Triple Threat
attacking Tanaka, and Taz' threat evened it up. There was an angle done where
Chris Candido & Tammy Fytch got into a brawl with Lance Storm & Tammy Lynn Bytch
which wound up in the heel Bytch stripped to her bra and panties. The main event
saw Sabu & Rob Van Dam keep the tag titles beating Douglas & Bam Bam Bigelow in
about 5:00 when Taz choked out Douglas and he was pinned. The match was kept
short because it's pretty clear Douglas is nowhere near ready. Tracy Smothers,
who has worked in the South most of his career, did a great job underneath at
getting the crowd going. In Marietta, New Jack dove off the same balcony he dove
off at the PPV with an elbow drop in the same singles match that turned into an
eight-man from the night before
The PPV show was officially switched to the UNO Lakefront Arena. The only
matches finalized at this point are the Triple Threat vs. Triple Threat, Masato
Tanaka vs. Justin Credible and Lance Storm vs. Jerry Lynn. There will be
something involving Dreamer vs. Victory in either a singles or a tag but the
scaffold match idea appears to have been dropped. Despite stories to the
contrary, neither Terry Funk nor Vader are signed for the card although Paul
Heyman does have an interest in both of them appearing
Mike Awesome is getting reconstructive surgery on both knees and was in Atlanta
saying he'd be out of action about nine months
Candido, Fytch, Van Dam and Credible have all reportedly signed five year
contracts
Kevin Northcutt, a friend of Gang's and Sammy Solo, a friend of Van Dam's, both
worked in Marietta. Northcutt didn't look good. Solo was totally green but
appeared have a martial arts background and came off as a great athlete who
didn't know how to do pro wrestling
In Marietta when Buh Buh Ray Dudley challenged the fans to get in the ring, they
threw everything that wasn't nailed down at him and the scene was said to be
worse than ever at WCW events. In the next match, when Sabu did one of his chair
spots, the slippery chair from all the garbage thrown messed up a spot that
could have been really dangerous
On TV, ECW did a unique send-off to Sandman, making a big deal about it and not
burying him at all and really praising him, although it was really just an angle
to set up Credible as being the jerk who ruins the farewell and transfers the
heat to him as a top heel
Steven Prazak of the Wrestling Observer Hotline was offered a job being the
regular interviewer on the ECW TV show and there is a good chance he'll start in
late November after his wedding at the end of the month.
WCW: This week's Scott Hall arrest was on 10/1 outside a strip club in Orlando,
FL called the Diamond Mine where he allegedly scratched up a $65,000 white limo
with his keys (which explains the angle on Nitro where they destroyed the limo)
making a seven foot long scratch, doing $2,000 worth of damage. Allegedly while
Hall was doing this, the driver was still in the car and called the police. Hall
was arrested on third degree assault charges and taken to jail where he was
released on $500 bail. The humor in this has long since ceased being funny
Despite reports to the contrary, Rick Rude is not suffering from cancer. Rude
had a cyst removed on his testicles and had to spend eight or nine days in the
hospital
The situation with The Giant as everything has shaken out, is that he returned
at Nitro on 10/5 and was seen momentarily as part of the backstage brawl. He was
claiming to not even know where all the rumors of his leaving got started,
although at the last house show he worked in Fairfax, VA, after being injured
after the match he said backstage to the other wrestlers he was sick of things
and sick of Hogan holding him down and he was leaving for WWF where he had a $1
million per year offer on the table. At the time everyone thought it was just a
ploy to get a raise from Eric Bischoff, but when he wasn't at Nitro on 9/28, his
friends were telling people he was gone. The belief is that he got friends to
start the rumors because basically everyone in the company by the end of the
week believed he was gone to WWF to the point it was even reported as fact on
WCW's own hotline. There are some who believe his saying he's saying is a double
work and he's really leaving. Either way, he celebrated by no-showing the
Saturday night tapings the next night. WWF sources that would know totally
denied there were any negotiations, although indicated they would be interested
in him if he was available. Somehow my feeling is if he were to go there, he'd
have to greatly adjust his lifestyle because the WWF is pretty much keeping
Shawn Michaels home nowadays because nobody wants to be around him until he gets
his ego under control and with all potential Giant had to be one of the great
attractions of this era, he's hardly the proven commodity Michaels is and unless
he gets himself in shape and shows some interest in improving, he never will be
Referee Mark "Shooter" Curtis (Brian Hildebrand) was scheduled for arthroscopic
surgery on his stomach on 10/7 as he's been unable to keep food down and his
weight has dropped from 135 to 120. Curtis, who suffered from stomach cancer
within the past year, is under the impression that it's either scar tissue from
the original surgery forming a blockage of his intestine or that in the chemo
and radiation that part of his intestine was fried and it needs to be removed.
He's expected out of action about six weeks
Villano IV, who came back too early from the neck injury on Nitro on 9/21 from
taking a mistimed double team move by Raven & Kanyon on the trap door, was said
to be in really great pain over the weekend and was scheduled for an MRI on his
neck on 10/6
Nitro on 10/5 in Columbia, SC drew a sellout 8,782 paying $156,060. Fans live
hated the show and were booing heavily at the end. The show opened with the
laughter. While the laughter is part of a cross-promotion for the "Bride of
Chucky" movie, there is more to it than that. Perry Saturn pinned Lizmark Jr.
with the death valley driver in 2:27. Ernest Miller beat Kaz Hayashi in 2:35
with a kick to the chest. After the match, Sonny Onoo, who has been managing
Hayashi for all of two weeks, dumped him for Miller, no doubt so Onoo can be
part of the upcoming Jackie Chan angle. All they need to do is add Ed Leslie as
a bodyguard and they'll have a trifecta of total incompetents for Chan to play
with. Juventud Guerrera pinned Jerry Flynn after a Juvi driver in 3:07. This
visually looked ridiculous because Flynn had ten inches in height and 85 pounds,
but Flynn did a great job and Juvi is one of the best in the game right now so
they had a great short match. This was a rare occasion when something like this
works, and not just because the small guy won, but because the big guy worked
the match to not make the small guy look like a small guy. Wrath pinned Villano
V with the melt down in 2:15. They worked together better than you'd think given
the size and style differences. Wrath really got over doing a leap frog which
popped the crowd and differentiated him from all the other big slugs in the
company, similar to how Bruiser Brody made himself different from the big slugs
by doing leap frog and dropkick spots 15 years ago. They had a big brawl
backstage with the Wolfpac showing up in a humvee limo and started attacking
everyone in sight. Bagwell was even involved physically. There were a million
cops around who couldn't break up anything. Remind me never to vacation in
Columbia with a police force that incompetent. Sting fought backstage with Bret
Hart. Eventually they were in the parking lot and Sting used a forklift to
pick-up, turn over and smash Hogan's limo and Nash, Luger and Konnan smashed out
the headlights and windows with sledge hammers. Where were the cops while this
was going on? Right there watching. Sting was looking for a knife, theoretically
to slash the tires and not a wrestler's throat, but nobody had one so he let the
air out of the tires instead. It was a real wild scene but it looked sloppy and
totally unplanned as compared with the WWF chaos from the previous week. Damian
was wrestling Hector Garza when Eddie Guerrero showed up. The match ended for no
reason and Eddie told them how Bischoff doesn't take care of people who aren't
kissing the same ass (Hogan's) that he's kissing and said while this building
was sold out how the Mexicans are sleeping four to a hotel room and riding seven
guys in a rental car while the other guys get limos. He said that Hogan's
couldn't lace either of their boots. This segment was dying until the coup de
grace. He offered them NWO replica t-shirts, called LWO (Latin World Order)
colored like the Mexican flag. The whole place groaned. Getting all these guys
who have been portrayed forever as the lowest rung of jobbers in a group will
mean nothing, but naming them LWO was the dumbest idea imaginable. Wait, this is
WCW. So to get the idea that these guys now mean something, Kidman pinned
Psicosis in 10:40 with the shooting star press to keep the cruiser title. Great
TV match. Easily the best match on either show even with Larry Zbyszko doing his
best to kill every one of Psicosis' moves. I wonder if when Argentina Rocca or
Satoru Sayama or Dynamite Kid or Jushin Liger were first getting over as the
revolutionary wrestlers of their day that one of the announcers were saying how
stupid the new moves are and going on-and-on about how they aren't going to have
long careers. As bad as Ed Whalen was, even he wasn't that ignorant about what
his job is, although he was plenty ignorant. While there is truth in the latter
statement about crazy things shortening a career, it isn't as if the pioneers of
this style like Lizmark Sr. and Perro Aguayo and Gran Hamada all didn't last one
hell of a lot longer in the ring than people like Larry Zbyszko and the other
unfortunate reality is that without those moves, these guys are all too small to
make it in pro wrestling doing the basics of working old American style so maybe
they should be praised for risking their bodies to create an opening for
themselves. They aired a taped Warrior interview. Warrior was there, but after
the problems the previous week, they didn't dare put him before a live crowd so
everyone could see him get booed out of the place. Even taped and pre-produced,
his interview still sucked and boy did he look old in the close-ups. Scott
Steiner did a pre-produced interview and this was a lot better than his live
ones. As sick as this sounds, it was the best interview on the show. Then
Steiner came out with Bagwell. This thing was going to die but it was saved by
Judy Bagwell, who was over huge with the crowd as she was yelling at Marcus and
grabbing him by the ear and taking him to the back. Scott and Brian Adams then
attacked Rick to lead to Rick coming back and pinning Adams with a bulldog off
the top in 5:36 of a bad match. Hogan did an interview. He never once even
acknowledged the fact his limo was destroyed, thereby ruining the long-term
effects of that angle. He basically obsessed about how history will view him and
challenged Warrior, who never showed. Page beat Kanyon via DQ in 7:19 of a real
good match. Raven gave Page a diamond cutter but Page kicked out of Kanyon's
pin. Match was very well put together and well executed. Raven interfered for
the DQ (geez, Page is getting a title match on PPV, can't he at least beat
Kanyon clean?). Goldberg made the save and he jackhammer'd Lodi while Page gave
the cutter to Kanyon, which allowed them each to do their move and Raven to
escape unscathed. Goldberg and Page did a stare-down after the match until they
were pulled apart. Disciple beat Lenny Lane with the stunner (without Tenay
there the best they could do was one of those Vince McMahon "whatta move"
descriptions) in 2:05. Crowd died. He got on the mic and said he'd never carry
Hogan's bags again, to get over as a face. Everyone booed him. How long before
they take the hint and give this guy the hook? Hogan then ran around backstage
looking for his estranged Disciple. He wound up in his dressing room and saw
Warrior in the mirror. Hogan started talking to Warrior. Now we all saw Warrior
in the mirror as well, even though it was supposed to be Hogan's dream. Bischoff
couldn't see him and thought Hogan was going nuts. Then Warrior disappeared, but
Hogan still saw him and Bischoff thought he was going even nuttier. Throughout
the show, Mike Tenay and a camera crew were chasing down Nash, Konnan and Luger
in their search for Hall as a local tavern. They went to two places, one of
which was deserted, another of which had maybe 15 people at. It's like, they are
big stars, don't they hang out in places that have at least one personally who
even vaguely resembles a pretty girl? Finally they found Hall in a third place.
Without any provocation, Nash attacked Hall and was pounding him on the pool
table and took him into the bathroom and closed the door. Was that scary or
what? When they let Tenay in, Hall was asleep over the toilet. Boy after seeing
that for 20 seconds, it really builds up anticipation to see them do a bar fight
on the next PPV. Bischoff started doing a promo on Flair. Arn Anderson came out
with 10-year-old Reid Fliehr, who was nervous and Arn had to carry him through.
He started by saying "Mean, Gene!" which would have been cute had Mean Gene been
there, but since he wasn't, well
He did get a pop saying he was there to take care of his dad's light work. Reid
took Bischoff down twice which the crowd really didn't get into until Anderson
started laughing at Bischoff for it. This reminded me too much of seeing Chris
Von Erich and Gino Hernandez' angle in 1985 and you know how that story ends.
Bischoff got on the cell phone and called Flair and they acted as if Beth was
yelling at him. Finally Flair showed up, the NWO surrounded the place, but the
Horsemen cleaned house, Bischoff slid out and Ric and Reid strutted in the ring
together. Flair's oldest son David was also in the ring by this point with the
rest of the Horsemen. The show ended with Sting vs. Hart. The entire match took
place backstage which infuriated the crowd to no end as they don't have the
giant screens in the building like Titan does when they do a lot of the show
backstage or on location. It was a very good believable brawl, particularly some
very good selling by Hart, although again didn't seem that well planned out as
they were looking for things to do to stretch time. The worst part was when
Sting finally got the scorpion on Hart and Zbyszko started claiming it wasn't
being applied properly so he and Schiavone had this discussion over the finer
points of the scorpion while Hart was selling like this was the end of his
career. Finally it was broken up and the show ended. Goldberg destroyed Disco
Inferno quickly in a dark match
While the merchandise is down and PPV is falling, the advances for house shows
continue to be great. Tickets went on sale over the weekend for the 11/2 Nitro
in Fort Lauderdale and the first day they sold 12,000 tickets out of 14,000 put
on sale for $283,000
People Magazine interviewed Goldberg for a story that should run very soon, and
he'll also appear with Regis & Kathy Lee in November
The main event on the 9/27 show in Erie, PA wound up as Hall vs. Nash, and it
barely took place as Nash refused to wrestle Hall while he was drunk and walked
off for the COR. Bet the fans there loved that creativity, or creative way of
nobody taking any bumps on a house show
It appears the Hall vs. Nash Bar Fight match will take place at Havoc
Think of all the training that poor Dale Torborg had to go through for the past
few years at the Power Plant just to become the member of a pit crew every
weekend
A lot more has been made about the Vince McMahon/Kevin Nash meeting than there
really is, although I guess it makes for great speculation. According to
different people who were there, Nash was coming off a plane and bumped into
Shane McMahon who mentioned to him that his dad was at another gate. Nash went
to the gate, they talked, and basically Nash said to Vince to "save me a spot"
for 29 months from now when his contract runs out. Basically it was exactly as
it was reported on the WWF web site
The Bret Hart movie is scheduled to air on A&E on either 12/18 or 12/20. It will
air about five weeks earlier in Canada. There is going to be a Canadian preview
screening of the movie on 11/10 in Toronto which is one year plus one day of
last year's Survivor Series. There will also be an American Grand Opening
screening in mid-December in Los Angeles
They will be running another show at the Georgia Dome on 1/4 and will be doing
SuperBrawl on the West Coast again in late February, probably at the Oakland
Arena
A correction from last issue. Apparently it wasn't Terry Taylor that worked with
Steve McMichael on the house show in Utica, NY. It was Barry Darsow trying out a
golfer gimmick
QVC, another Time Warner network, will be doing a WCW segment with Nash and
Goldberg at 8 p.m. Eastern on 10/13, similar to the very successful WWF deal a
few weeks back on Home Shopping Network
One of the reasons WCW has won the final quarter every Monday of late is because
of the great job Tony Schiavone has been doing in building up the importance of
the Nitro main events throughout the show
The streak where Arn Anderson was in the highest rated quarter hour of the show
ended at six
Barry Windham was backstage at Nitro in Columbia
The taped Thunder on 10/1 drew a 3.59 rating and 5.7 share which is basically an
average show, once again showing that being on tape has no effect on the ratings
WCW Saturday Night on 10/3 did a 2.1
House shows for the week were 10/2 in Florence, SC drew 4,312 paying $87,355,
10/3 in Charleston, SC drew 5,572 paying $106,576 and 10/4 in Savannah, GA drew
5,554 paying $94,860. We don't have the merchandise in at press time for Nitro
in Columbia but for the three weekend house shows it was $88,779 or $5.75 per
night so you can see that arm of revenue is declining greatly of late
WCW Saturday Night was taped on 10/6 in Gainesville, GA before a sellout 1,800.
There was chaos backstage as several wrestlers who were supposed to work
including most of the Mexicans, Benoit and Giant all no-showed. The entire
Mexican contingent was scheduled to sign three-year contracts that afternoon and
then get drug tested. We don't know what happened, except that Konnan and
Psicosis were the only ones who arrived and Psicosis didn't even work. One of
Ultimo Dragon's students from Naucalpan was brought in for a try-out and given
the ring name "Tam Pong" in someone's idea of a practical joke. They also gave a
try-out to Bret Hamner, another juiced up Power Plant guy who didn't show much.
The show for 10/10 was headlined by Bulldog DCOR Alex Wright in one minute. For
the second week, they did an angle after Kidman kept the cruiser belt beating
Lenny Lane, that Disco came out and weighed himself at 215 to prove he was a
cruiserweight. Scott Steiner, who arrived late for the show and was yelled at,
then yelled over the p.a. at the crowd "blow me." Darsow did his Payne Stewart
gimmick and was supposed to wrestle Hamner, and blew it off saying that he had
an early tee time and left. Jericho kept the TV title going to a draw with David
Finlay. Hall & Giant were scheduled to defend the tag titles against Disorderly
Conduct, but since Giant no-showed Hall came out and did a promo saying that
since Nash was the size of two guys, he told Giant to stay home, and while still
acting totally loaded, beat Conduct in a handicap match. Finale saw a rematch
with Bulldog and Wright going a DCOR, this time in 2:00. It was supposed to go
longer and maybe have a different finish, but get this. They ran out of tape and
just signalled for the guys to go home.
WWF: Vader (Leon White) will be finishing up at the end of the month as both
sides have agreed to a contract release which will allow him to work anywhere in
the world except WCW. It appears it was a mutual deal. Vader has from the start
always had a mixed political situation as some in the office were high on him
and others didn't see anything in him. Over the past two-and-a-half years, he's
had some great showings and some not so great ones, and due to all the bumps he
takes at his size and his age and past problems with his knees, back and
shoulder, he's been hurt a lot. The office got on him about dropping weight and
his push pretty much stalled because they wanted him under 350. Basically when
he missed the shows a few weekends back due to blood pressure problems and a
potassium imbalance from crash dieting, even his supporters had given up and
he's been jobbed out ever since. He at the same time requested a lighter
schedule and they came to a mutual agreement it was time for him to leave. Most
likely he'll wind up in Japan but there are political problems there. The
natural fit is New Japan, where from 1987 to 1994, he was the top foreign
drawing card and is basically a legend in that world. However, with the WCW
connection with New Japan booking talent and Bischoff's hatred of Vader, he may
pressure the company into not using him. An even better fit would be for UFO,
which desperately needs marquee talent and he wouldn't have to work long tours
and just fly in for big shows and then be a key part of the eventual feud with
New Japan, but again, that's in reality New Japan and the same problem may
exist. All Japan could use him but there's the problem of his surviving a
full-time gig with that physical of a style for those three week tours
Ray Traylor has signed and should debut in about a month as The Big Boss Man
once again, probably as a heel enforcer for McMahon. Traylor, 36, is said to be
down to 290 pounds (he's wrestled most of his career at between 340 and 390).
He's recuperating from back surgery which as recently as two months ago he was
fearing would be career ending, but received a clean bill from his doctor to
return to the ring. The jury is out on this one as it's been years since he's
been a top name, but at one point he was a great worker for a guy of his size
and while he's older, there are plenty of guys who have had a lot of great years
in the ring that are quite a bit older
The 10/18 Chicago PPV show is sold out which makes five straight sellouts at the
Rosemont Horizon. Even more impressive is that WCW has already sold out the
United Center, which would be its fourth or fifth straight sellout in that
building, for a show six days earlier, making Chicago unquestionably the hottest
wrestling city in the country. Remember all those morons who thought those
exposes in the Chicago Sun Times in the summer of 1997 would kill the business
in Chicago and since then there hasn't been an empty seat for either group in 16
months. What is definite on the show is Undertaker vs. Kane with Austin as ref,
Shamrock vs. Mankind, Rock vs. Mark Henry and some sort of a gimmick match with
X-Pac vs. D-Lo Brown and Goldust vs. Val Venis. The original plan was to put
Southern Justice against New Age Outlaws for the tag title, but with Mark
Canterbury injured, it either may be Dennis Knight & Jeff Jarrett as they've
done in the house shows or switching it to two singles matches. They had talked
of Jarrett vs. Al Snow, or Snow vs. Scorpio. It appears at this point that
Jacqueline vs. Sable for the womens title will be a Raw match rather than a PPV
match
Preliminary indications are that the Break Down PPV did an 0.86 buy rate which
would be about 300,000 buys or a $3.86 million gross which isn't bad for a show
with an unimpressive line-up going in
The Raw taping on 9/29 in East Lansing, MI drew 9,846 paying $197,566. In a
try-out match, Andrew Martin beat Steve Boz. For the Heat show that aired on
10/5, Road Dog came out with a womens blow-up doll dressed like Billy Gunn, who
wasn't at the taping. McMahon was doing a series of interviews from his hospital
bed. X-Pac beat a disinterested Owen Hart. Golga & Kurrgan beat Head Bangers
when Insane Clown Posse interfered. Shoichi Funaki beat Matt Hardy. DOA beat Ken
Shamrock & Mankind when Shamrock clocked Mankind with a chair and he was pinned.
Jarrett NC Rock when Southern Justice attacked Rock, Austin saved him stunning
everyone and Rock and Austin had a stare-down until they were pulled apart. Raw
opened with Brown regaining the European strap from X-Pac in 5:16 with a frog
splash when Henry interfered. Bangers challenged ICP and basically destroyed
them. ICP took good bumps for non-wrestlers, although both have done a lot of
indie wrestling around Michigan. They took some hard chairs before Oddities
broke it up. Bangers got a lot of cheers but also a fair share of boos. McMahon
was in the hospital when the nurse said there was a big visitor. McMahon freaked
out thinking it was Austin, but it was Mankind giving his chocolate. McMahon was
totally overacting, let alone the believability of a guy hooked up with all
those tubes because they broke their ankle. Mankind said he brought a guest and
McMahon freaked again thinking it was Austin. He said he was giving him some
female companionship but instead it was a rather large woman dressed in a clown
making a dog out of a balloon. This segment was awesome. Sable came out and
high-fived Terri Power and challenged Jacqueline for the belt. Mero beat Vader
when Jacqueline distracted Vader and Mero hit him with a low blow and shooting
star in 4:13. After the match Mero said Sable couldn't satisfy him, she slapped
him, Jacqueline jumped her and cut off some of her extensions. Steven Regal
drank Orange Juice. These segments are so campy they're almost good. Edge was
supposed to wrestle Owen. Owen did two interviews in the building, and they
heavily edited both of them to where he basically walked out and said nothing
but "it's over." What was edited out, which means it's been changed is him first
saying he'd never be back and later saying fans would never see him in the WWF
again. The plan seems to be to bring him back for Survivor Series in a new role.
Hart does have a groin injury but he's been working on it and this is just an
angle and not an injury cover. Shamrock beat Kane when Undertaker shoved the
ropes and Kane crotched himself. Val beat Gangrel. Christian Cage is simply
known as Christian, and he came to ringside with Gangrel. He's supposed to be
Edge's brother but under the spell on Gangrel. The crowd loved Venis but totally
died when he started wrestling and they didn't care about either guy at that
point. Terri Runnels was with Venis and the only crowd reactions to the match
were when, off camera, she teased she was going to take her top off. Edge came
out to recapture his brother, sort of like Hogan with Ed Leslie I guess, and
Gangrel gave him the implant DDT on the floor and both guys stomped on him.
Venis got a letter and Gold glitter fell from the sky and Goldust said he'd
return for next week's Raw at Nassau Coliseum. Snow beat Jarrett via DQ when
Slaughter shook the ropes for a lame DQ. Road Dog pinned Henry when X-Pac
interfered. Henry is now suing Chyna for sexual harassment. Austin, dressed as a
doctor, beat up Vince in the hospital room. It was a comedy bit with Vince
getting beaten up and his underwear showing. Finally Taker pinned Rock in a
slightly better than average match. Kane came out and scared away Henry and
D-Lo, leading to Rock firing them. After the match, Ross stated that only in the
WWF are you going to see action like that. Unfortunately he said that ending a
night where WCW had three matches that were better. For Heat on 10/11,
Jacqueline kept the title beating Starla Sexton. Shamrock beat Snow with the
ankle lock, but refused to release it after the bell and the decision was
reversed. Scorpio did a run-in but he got beat up as well until Mankind made the
save. Kaientai beat Hardys & Too Much when the latter two teams couldn't get
along. Road Dog beat Jarrett via DQ for a guitar shot. Rock fired the Nation and
challenged Henry to a match on the PPV. Edge beat Vader and finally Austin
pinned Brown after a stunner. Rock attacked Austin after the match, but also
attacked Brown and Henry
Jim Cornette is now the regular co-host on heat with Shane McMahon
Injury update. Helmsley is staying six days a week in Birmingham after his
arthroscopic knee surgery working on rehabilitation. The surgery procedure he
went was somewhat experimental and there is a decent chance he made need
full-blown reconstructive surgery if this doesn't rehab well, in which case he'd
be out of action probably until next Spring. They are hopeful this rehab goes
well and he'll be back for Survivor Series, but that's just a fingers crossed
target date
Canterbury re-injured the neck he broke last year against the Road Warriors and
is suffering numbness and stingers. He is undergoing two weeks of traction
before anything further will be determined
Savio Vega will be out at least another three months due to neck and spine
problems
Animal is scheduled to return at TV on 10/12 after knee surgery or perhaps start
on the road on 10/8
Godfather is also expected back at the next TV
Steve Blackman returned this past week at the house shows but isn't anymore than
60 percent
Rolling Stone is doing an article on Austin
Playboy is preparing a wrestling article combined with a photo spread of Sable
Don't know anything regarding Jim Carrey appearing on Raw but it doesn't appear
anything is imminent. I think Carrey will probably do it to promote the movie,
and if he does, he'll be Carrey pretending to be Kaufman and insist on being
called Andy (as was the case when he was filming the movie) on TV if he appears.
Speaking of the movie "Man on Continued on page 16.
THE READERS PAGES
WWF
I'm totally disgusted at the match on Raw between Jacqueline and Sable. How the
hell can Vince McMahon allow such a blatant act of sexual exploitation on his
television show? And to show an instant replay of Jacqueline's exposed breast?
Have they crossed the line of decency?
What makes the situation even more disgusting was that it was put on what up to
that point was in my opinion the best television wrestling show in years. This
has got to stop soon because when wrestling goes into decline, incidents like
this may cause stations to put wrestling programming on at 4 a.m.
Robert Silva Jr.
Bronx, New York
I don't like to see any group (blacks, whites, Germans, Japanese, gays, Arabs,
Jews, etc.) take shit just to make a buck for a wrestling promoter. Wrestling
can bend minds. It can just as easily bend minds in a good direction as it can
in the direction of evil.
What do the WCW and WWF tell eight-year-old boys watching their television with
their portrayals of women, especially with Chyna on her knees. The difference is
my middle-aged buddies at work just talk. The kids are still learning and that
is not good.
The Maine legislature passed a gay rights law in 1997 only to have it overturned
by a vote of the people. I've studied homosexuality for some time now,
particularly because I was assaulted twice in my younger years by homosexual men
and because of Bill Clinton's attempt to make the Armed Forces accept gays.
Based on what I've learned, at least eight percent of the world's population is
gay. I suspect this has been true since the dawn of time, hence it is part of
the "plan" of which God/Nature has dumped on us. All inherent qualities which
come with birth are natural. There is some debate as to whether homosexuals are
"born that way," but after years of observation, I'm convinced many are. I
believe they have no choice. I believe nature made that choice for them.
King Ripper Collins could still tear up an arena today, just as could a Bobo
Brazil coco-butt. It's probably better that both are a part of wrestling's past.
Some other angles, like a goose-stepping Waldo Von Erich, are also things of the
past. Unfortunately, Vince McMahon hasn't realized this with his Japanese
caricatures. World War II ended 53 years ago. I don't like the Kaientai scripts
and I don't like the sexually orientated material, especially when it advocates
violence against women.
Bottom line through all this philosophical crap is that wrestling can follow, or
lead. They typically aim at the LCD (lowest common denominator). In my work
place, the people who are totally hooked on wrestling are the janitors and the
kids, who then convince Mom and Dad to pay the bucks to put their little fannies
in the seats.
The WWF does not offend me and I have met and like Vince McMahon and Howard
Finkel. I like their sleazier entertainment and my wife enjoys the new style
compared to the 1983 style. My youngest son is 19. He was mildly amused by Mr.
Yamaguchi san's choppy-choppy your pee pee" line. My sister, however, whose
three kids range from 9 through 13 was not amused. She said that her youngest
daughter, in a $2,500 a year tuition Catholic grade school, had a friend
bringing into class photos of Sable. She is believing this is how real women
need to look. The WWF is teaching her that unless she has a chest like Sable,
Chyna or Jacqueline and flashes it to the boys on demand, she won't attract
attention from boys.
People like the WWF and a lot of people still like Bill Clinton, although the
cigar thing really turned off a lot of female voters. Based on your stats, the
kids will bankroll the WWF now, and later as teenagers. The McMahons have always
had a knack for bringing out the "Animal House" side of people.
Michael Abbey
Fairfield, Maine
ANDERSON/FLAIR
I was happy, but certainly not surprised, that you included some well-earned
praise for Arn Anderson for his dynamic contributions to the angle that
re-introduced the Four Horsemen on the 9/14 Nitro. The ability to simply speak
coherently is so foreign to so many of today's top wrestling stars that is' just
amazing. Unless someone has a catch phrase or two to fall back on when their
brain starts to cramp up, the interviewer, when there is one, or someone in the
front row might as well just throw a life preserver into the ring. Brian Adams,
Scott Steiner, Lex Luger, Jim Hellwig and Jacqueline couldn't formulate a
coherent sentence together if they were spotted both the subject and the
predicate. By melding wrestling shtick, history and the right amount of personal
emotion, Anderson made the 9/14 show even more memorable than it would have been
without it. It was the segment of a lifetime.
The mark of a true pro in any business is the ability to rise to the occasion in
the clutch, when all the lights are on, and live up to, and possibly exceed, all
expectations of performance and not being afraid to show a little emotion when
your efforts are being recognized by people who just want to say thanks. Thanks
to Arn Anderson for being such a pro and thanks to Ric Flair for being the same.
Shawn Flanagan
Los Angeles, California
Was it just me, or was the return of Ric Flair more compelling than many of
today's actual matches? The first time I saw it, I was near tears. When I
watched it again, I was in tears. Flair is a once in a lifetime performer and I
hope there will be a place in the business for him as long as he wants to be a
part of it. Hulk Hogan can do all the political maneuvering he wants. He'll
never get the respect and long term devotion from fans that Flair has. After
most of today's so-called superstars are long forgotten, people will still talk
about Flair.
John Murton
Chicago, Illinois
DM: The return of Flair wasn't more compelling than many of today's matches, it
was more compelling than all of today's matches.
PIMPINELA ESCARLATA
I know that in about five weeks you're going to open up the 1998 Wrestling
Observer Newsletter annual awards. It's a pity there isn't some sort of
honorable mention award for Pimpinela Escarlata. There aren't 50 fans in the
United States who really understand what he's done over the last three years.
Best heel? Most Underrated? I guess, considering his work rate and his drawing
power he deserves consideration for Wrestler of the Year though that has been
the case for the past two years. At what about Cesar Johnson? A while back it
was estimated in Super Luchas that he is drawing about 10,000 fans to his shows
every Monday night at the Plaza de Toros in Nuevo Laredo. If that's so, and
considering he runs occasional holiday and super shows, this one promoter
running just one arena is drawing between 500,000 and 600,000 fans per year.
That's more than any full-time promotion in the world except EMLL (which due to
the sheer number of shows are the No. 1 promotion in the world when it comes to
ticket sales by a large margin), WCW, WWF and maybe New Japan depending how much
New Japan inflates their numbers. I'm excluding AAA because I don't get regular
enough information, but I suspect they may draw about 1,000,000 fans per year
but I don't have enough info to say that for sure. In Johnson's favor for Best
Promoter is that he has one arena, runs one show a week, has far less talent
quality wise than EMLL, New Japan, WWF or WCW, is working with a terrible
economy and has had the same guys on top for two to three years, relying largely
on La Parka and Pimpinela as his top draws, and runs an outdoor building which
can be susceptible to bad weather and the entire metropolitan area of Nuevo
Laredo and Laredo is only about 1,000,000 people max. Could any other promoter
do so well under these conditions? And 1998 hasn't been any different than 1997
or 1996. But for a name nobody knows, he may be the best promoter in the
business right now.
Steve "Dr. Lucha" Sims
Chula Vista, California
HALL OF FAME
A wrestling Hall of Fame without Hans Schmidt is as complete as a baseball Hall
of Fame without Pete Rose. Schmidt headlined major markets such as New York,
Chicago and Buffalo for nearly two decades (early 50s to late 60s). He had
mainstream attention in an Esquire Magazine article in the 50s and was mentioned
in Jack Brickhouse's book. When I ask people who watched wrestling on network TV
in the 50s about who they remember, the names they typically say are Verne
Gagne, Gorgeous George, Antonino Rocca and Schmidt. Perhaps he is being
neglected because he doesn't participate in the Cauliflower Alley Club or
reunion circuits. Schmidt should be a given in any serious attempt to assemble a
wrestling Hall of Fame.
Dr. Bob Bryla
Utica, New York
DM: Two years ago when I started the project, I brought the name of Hans Schmidt
up to people who were major fans in that era and wrestlers from that era mainly
because of the stories of how much of the gate Jim Barnett used to charge local
promoters for Schmidt during that heyday of wrestling on television which meant
at his peak he was a hell of a draw. All I can say is the response was unanimous
that while he had a run as a draw, he didn't belong and much of the response was
pretty strong in that view and that he was a poor worker even by the standards
of his time who had a run after World War II doing the Nazi gimmick but aside
from having a good gimmick for his time, nobody seemed impressed by him. I've
seen tapes of him, but aside from a few real standouts like Rogers, Thesz and
O'Connor, most of the 50s guys viewed today aren't impressive. If you ask
today's fans in 20 years about the decade of the 90s in wrestling, a lot of
people will mention names like Sting, Luger and Ultimate Warrior right behind
Hogan, but none would even be considered for a Hall of Fame inductee.
***********************************************************
Continued from page 14. the Moon," Lance Russell played himself as the ring
announcer for the wrestling matches. Jim Ross didn't play Dave Brown, but simply
played an unnamed pro wrestling announcer as Brown wasn't at the Mid South
Coliseum for the famous matches. Newsweek ran a short item on the Lawler/Carrey
angle, not only treating it as if it was a shoot, but treating Lawler's angle
with Kaufman as if it was a shoot as well, claiming in 1982 Lawler choked
Kaufman and left him with four compressed vertebrae
USA has renewed Heat for two more seasons. Don't believe there are any plans to
increase the show to two hours as has been rumored
The hopes are for Michaels to be able to work Royal Rumble, if not December, to
be able to have time to shoot and put together a major angle involving him for
Mania
Christopher Daniels will be invited to the next WWF training camp which means
he'll probably be at the NWA 50th anniversary show in the Battle Royal
Rock was signed to a long-term contract extension
If the Outlaws are broken up, Billy Gunn will be given a major singles heel push
Expect Kurt Angle to debut with a major push early in 1999
When Motley Crue appears on the 10/26 Raw (taped 10/20 in Madison, WI), they'll
play two songs during the show
Erin O'Grady, Mick Tierney, Vic Grimes, Matt Bloom and Shawn Stasiak will all be
sent to Memphis to work as regulars there as part of their developmental
contracts, probably before the end of this month
Kickboxing legend Joe Lewis has contacted WWF
about getting involved but there doesn't appear to be interest
House shows this past week saw 9/30 in Grand Rapids, MI draw 6,501 paying
$143,446, 10/1 in Hampton, VA drew 8,852 paying $159,685, 10/2 in Richmond, VA
drew a sellout 10,596 paying $231,611, 10/3 in Fayetteville, NC drew a sellout
10,279 paying $186,798 and 10/4 at the Continental Airlines Arena in East
Rutherford, NJ drew 14,017 paying $322,971. Merchandise for the week was
$407,108 or $8.23 per head. The house shows in mid-week were headlined by
three-way cage matches where Rock beat Mankind and Kane. Starting in Richmond
they turned into four-ways with Gerald Brisco as ref and Austin won over
Undertaker, Mankind and Kane. After the 10/18 PPV, the house show mains will
remain as the four ways except Rock will replace Mankind in the top echelon. The
original plan for Break Down in the No. 1 contenders three way was for Mankind
to win by taking another insane bump and set up another title run with
Undertaker and tags with Austin & Mankind vs. Taker & Kane, but with Rock
getting over so big, they changed the finish. At the shows, Outlaws teased
dissension beating Jarrett & Knight. They had X-Pac regaining the European belt
from Brown until Patterson came out to reverse the decision. In Richmond in the
four-way, Austin threw Brisco, who wouldn't count as he had Kane beat, out of
the ring. Earl Hebner ran in and counted. Patterson & Brisco attacked Earl but
Austin gave them both stunners. Earl & Dave Hebner then put the boots to
Patterson & Brisco and the show ended with Austin and the Hebners all chugging a
beer ala Sandman in mid-ring
At the East Rutherford show, the Brown vs. X-Pac match didn't take place because
X-Pac had a bruised hip so they did an angle and didn't have the match. X-Pac is
expected to be back in action this coming weekend
What's scary is the Bone Crunching buddy of Michaels looks more like Vic Grimes
than Michaels, and I don't think there are any two people in this world who look
any more different than Grimes and Michaels
The episode of Pacific Blue that Sable appears will be on 10/11 and it'll
probably do a strong rating which they'll credit to Mario Lopez. In the ads,
Sable only has one line which is, "I'm so hot I want to take my clothes off.
For this coming weekend, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Hershey should all be either
close to or complete sellouts while Nassau at press time had only a few tickets
left so the sellout was a formality
Weekend ratings saw Live Wire do a 1.7, Superstars a 1.7 and Heat a 3.84 and 6.3
share.
WRESTLING OBSERVER NEWSLETTER October 12, 1998
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