Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 16:06:39 -0400 From: Rick Scaia Organization: Vikings' Anonymous X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (Win95; I) Mime-Version: 1.0 To: nfd@aimnet.com Subject: The News From Dayton -- 04/14/97 X-Url: file:///a|/nonav.htm Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-nfd@majordomo.aimnet.com Precedence: list THE NEWS FROM DAYTON For the week of April 14, 1997 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ECW News on Eve of PPV! / Hogan gets Pinned! Read on for more on today's Headline Stories! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The News From Dayton is compiled weekly by: Rick Scaia (ag725@freenet.carleton.ca) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The News -- For the Week of April 14, 1997 The News From Dayton, as always, remains a combination of the weekly Dayton Daily News pro wrestling column, penned by Alex Marvez, and other pieces of information I feel are unique and worth passing on to you, the Home Viewer. If you are reading the NFD on one of the RSPW newsgroups, or anywhere on the web other than the revamped News From Dayton Web Site, or if you are linking directly here without checking out the main News From Dayton Headlines Page, I strongly encourage you to make the jump to the NFD on the web at http://homepages.udayton.edu/~scaiarij/wrestling/nfd.htm I think you'll find the trip worthwhile, as there are many exclusive features to the NFD Web Site, along with updates on breaking news, so that you don't have to wait a full week for the NFD's take on the latest rumors. THE ALEX MARVEZ COLUMN * The deserving top item of Alex's column this week is tonight's pay-per-view debut of Extreme Championship Wrestling. ECW's Barely Legal will kick off at 9:00pm tonight (after a 30 minute countdown show starting at 8:30) on Request PPV. It is truly unfortunately that almost half of the US's PPV households will be shut out of the event for various reasons, as Barely Legal promises to be an exciting show. The top matches (along with Alex's predictions) are: o Sabu vs. Taz -- There is over a year and a half of build-up behind this match, as this pair will finally meet in the top match of the PPV. Alex says there was word that Sabu might quit ECW if he didn't get a win over Taz, but that might have been smoothed over after a meeting this past week with Paul E. Dangerously. o Sandman vs. Terry Funk vs. Stevie Richards (Winner gets title shot at Raven) -- After perfectly building up to a victory by Funk, Alex suggests that ECW might actually throw us a big league swerve... The scenario he suggests is that Funk will win the Three Way Dance, but be too injured to continue to face Raven. Stepping in for Funk would be Terry's long time protege and friend, Tommy Dreamer. Dreamer actually has an over 2-year-long feud simmering with Raven, during which Dreamer has never pinned Raven. Alex says that long-awaited event might take place tonight on PPV, as Dreamer would pin Raven for the ECW Title. [Note: If ECW's already thinking towards a second PPV, this would be an ingenious way to build to the next PPV main event... imagine a teacher vs. student match for the ECW title between Dreamer and Funk!] Also on the PPV, we'll see an ECW TV Title match between champ Shane Douglas and Pitbull #2, with the Mysterious Masked Man at ringside, and an ECW Tag Title match, pitting the champion Dudleys against the Eliminators (Alex says that the Gangstas involvement on the PPV might be limited to a suicidal spot planned by New Jack, in which he would leap from the ceiling of the ECW Arena onto a wrestler or wrestlers!!). A full rundown of the line-up is available in the NFD Updates. Another possibility for the show would be involvement of WWF performers. While this has been wildly rumored by other online info sources, Alex chooses to perpetuate it by suggesting that the WWF's "fake" Razor Ramon and Diesel might crash the show somehow. Alex also says that we can expect a ton of WCW bashing, as Turner's crew bring Monday Nitro into town the next night (and will likely attempt to satiate the Philly crowd with some quasi-"extreme" booking, like a Philly Street Fight with the Public Enemy and an appearance by Kimona Wanalaya). * Randy Savage tore ligaments in his ankle last Sunday at Spring Stampede, necessitating that he be pulled from upcoming shows... most important for local fans is that Savage will not headline this Friday's Dayton house show against Dallas Page, as previously scheduled. This is a show that, at one time, was to include Savage/DDP, Malenko/Syxx in a Ladder Match, and a main event of the Outsiders vs. Luger/Giant. Injuries to Savage and Syxx, along with Scott Hall's problems and Dean Malenko being pulled from the card mean that the card now is headlined by Kevin Nash taking on DDP, with a chance that the match might be changed to include Sting's return to the ring (DDP/Sting vs. Nash/Bagwell). Also, Giant and Luger will now take part in a triangle match against the Public Enemy and Harlem Heat while Chris Jericho vs. Jeff Jarrett is to be the other big match. And it gets worse! Jericho suffered a broken nose on Nitro last week, and MAY miss the show this Friday... one thing that hasn't changed is that tickets for the June 2 Nitro eminating from Dayton's Hara Arena will still go on sale during intermission of this Friday's show. * Dr. Bill Miller, who was a regular performer throughout Ohio in the 1950s and 1960s, died recently of a heart attack. Miller was a veterinarian, and was 69 years old. * Alex Marvez's column appears every Sunday in the Dayton Daily News. In addition to sharing his wrestling thoughts there, Alex is also once again lurking about the America OnLine Grandstand Wrestling Area, and can be e-mailed with questions at "alex_marvez@coxohio.com". Also, Alex can also be heard on Mondays and Fridays on WING-FM (102.9) at 7:20 a.m. talking about wrestling and other sports. IN OTHER NEWS... * Counting down to the ECW PPV has resulted in a lot of backstage tensions in the fledgling promotion. Most of the heat has been between the Sandman and Shane Douglas... the most accurate reports of the troubles so far come courtesy of the Wrestling Lariat, which reports that problems started two weeks ago when Douglas was nominally "in charge" of ECW shows being promoted in his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Since Douglas put together the shows and had a lot of friends and support from the crowd, he got a little big-headed, apparently, and started bossing people around and talking about guys behind their backs. When Sandman told some of the guys what Douglas had been saying, Douglas came after Sandman for repeating Shane's comments. Tracey Smothers, who is reported a really nice guy (not to mention a guy who helped Douglas break into the business), was chatting with Sandman at the time, and tried to break it up, but wound up scrapping a little with Douglas before the situation was defused. Eventually, Sandman and Douglas came to a verbal truce after nearly coming to blows again... however, the end result, in the words of the Lariat's Dave Scherer, was that the locker room was united. AGAINST Douglas. Reportedly, last weekend's shows also were a bit tense, with Douglas at the crux of the problem... all this surfaces as rumors persist that Douglas is going to be quitting wrestling soon to pursue his medical degree. If backstage problems and Douglas' ambitions to continue his schooling continue to overshadow everything else, it wouldn't surprise me to see something like Douglas suffer a "broken neck" at the hands of the Pitbulls to explain his departure. The other big issue causing some tension in the ECW locker room is reportedly the fact that a lot of guys are sneaking around and thinking about leaving the promotion after the PPV. Paul E. is said to have called a meeting in which he said that anyone who wanted out of thier contracts could leave right now (before the PPV)... nobody took Paul E. up on the offer, but rumors persist that we can expect Rob Van Dam in WCW before mid-summer. Also, there are now a ton of rumors that have reached critical mass and have become self-perpetuating regarding plans of Sabu and Stevie Richards to look into moving up. [Stevie Richards reportedly took a ton of heat for jobbing to Disco Inferno in an MEWF Title match a few weeks back... in ECW, he's being pushed as a contender to Raven's title, and he's off jobbing to a former WCW jobber on an indie card.] Hopefully, things will settle down after the PPV, and we'll have a better idea of what to expect in coming weeks. * The number of guys that Hulk Hogan has been pinned by since 1984 can be counted on your hands (and you'll have fingers left over). Andre the Giant... Ultimate Warrior... Yokozuna... Ric Flair... Jacques Rougeau... JACQUES ROUGEAU?!?! Yes, Jacques Rougeau. The life-long mid-card tag team wrestler, who is none-the-less hugely popular in his native French Canadian province of Quebec, got a clean pinfall win over Hulk Hogan on Friday night on an indepedent card in Montreal that featured a ton of WCW wrestlers. Because this was not actually a WCW event, the Hogan/Rougeau match was a non-title affair, and Rougeau's win will likely never be mentioned on TV. Also on the card, Rougeau's tag partner Karl Oulette got a DQ win over the Giant. According to NFD Reader "B.M.boy", who provided on-the-scene results, the crowd was a disappointingly small 8,000, and despite the shock of seeing their hometown boy Jacques pin Hogan, the crowd was mostly disappointed in the quality of the show. * The line-up for May's WCW Slamboree PPV is shaping up a little different from what I reported from the Charlotte Observer last week. Hulk Hogan will NOT be involved in the show... instead, it looks like the "double main event" will pit Hall/Nash/Syxx against Flair/Piper/Kevin Greene, and Mongo McMichael against Reggie White in a singles match. This may continue to change as we approach the May 18 date, as Scott Hall's status is still unknown. * BTW, if I haven't made it clear previously in the "Updates" section, Lex Luger is, according to *my* sources, not ill and has not been diagnosed with cancer. That story was broken by the RealNews Wrestling Sheet, which has had as respectable a reputation as any online sheet, and I passed it along here, given credit to the original source. If my passing it along caused or furthered any confusion, I apologize for my role in it. This is only the NFD Weekly Edition. Make sure you stop by the NFD Web Site for breaking news and updates throughout the week!!! The Web Site is located at http://homepages.udayton.edu/~scaiarij/wrestling/nfd.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The News From Dayton is Copyright 1995, 1997 by Rick Scaia. 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