Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling From: hekunze@jeeves.waterloo.edu (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 03/12 Message-ID: <1992Mar12.153503.2350@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Sender: news@watdragon.waterloo.edu (USENET News System) Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1992 15:35:03 GMT Lines: 148 - The WWF has WrestleMania VIII on PPV, Sunday, April 5th, with the following line-up: - Ric Flair vs. Randy Savage for the WWF Title - Hulk Hogan vs. Sid Justice - Roddy Piper vs. Bret Hart for the IC Title - Ted DiBiase & I.R.S. vs. Natural Disasters for the Tag Titles - Undertaker vs. Jake Roberts - Shawn Michaels vs. Tito Santana - Owen Hart vs. Berzerker - Tatanka vs. Rick Martel - Big Boss Man & Davey Boy Smith & Virgil vs. Nasty Boys & Mountie - The 20/20 story on steroids airs tomorrow night on ABC at 10:00pm EST. - There's talk that both Keiji Muto and Tatsumi Fujinami will come in to WCW for tours this summer. Fujinami is expected to win the Japanese NWA Title tournament and come in for a unification bout with Sting. Muto has already dropped the IWGP tag belts that he held with hiro Hase to the big team of Bam Bam Bigelow and Big Van Vader. There's talk that Muto will have a program with Steve Austin. - There has been some talk about on the net about Sting not having enough heel opponents to make the early part of his title run interesting. I don't know about that. Certainly Sting-Rude will last for a little while. They've already taped angles to set up Sting-Vader. Then there's Fujinami's tour and the NWA title thing. Maybe Muto. There's talk of a Barry Windham heel turn. But even so, has anybody given thought to the idea of a face-face title match? How about Sting vs. Ricky Steamboat? Or Sting vs. Nikita Koloff as face vs. face, with Nikita turning heel during/after the match to set up a longer feud. I think there is a world of potential here. - Speaking of the IWGP tag titles, at WrestleWar '92 the Steiners will face the makeshift team of Tatsumi Fujinami & Takayuki Iizuka with the winner getting an IWGP tag title shot. Looks like we may get to see Vader work in the style that got him over in Japan if we get to see the title defence against the Steiners. I would guess that the match will be used to get Fujinami over so that when he comes back later in the year there may be some recognition among the fans. Iizuka has come into his own in the past year and a half. Matches with him from '89 had him cast as a high tier jobber, but matches from a year ago had him getting a little more pushed. He resembles Muto in build and appearance. - There are differing reports about Jim Neidhart's plans, although they could be consecutively true. One report has him joining the ICWA, while the second has him joining WCW. The WCW rumour says that he'll be renamed the "Pit Bull" Jim Neidhart and will be teamed with the Junkfood Dog. No doubt their motto will be "Guts 'n' Glory". - With Neidhart gone, some of us were hoping to see Owen Hart get a singles push. I was personally hoping for a Hart-Michaels match. Rumour here has it that Koko B. Ware will be pulled back in to the group (he has been working with smaller groups while still under contract to the WWF, a policy the WWF put in place after trimming their house show schedule) to form a team with Owen. - I was a little suprised that WCW aired the Lex Luger vs. Masa Chono match as part of the taped Supershow II PPV. After seeing how massive Luger was at SuperBrawl II, it's clear that the rumours of him joining the WBF may be true. The WBF is undergoing some problems right now, with Vince claiming that he is going to make steroid testing a part of the organization. This was enough to scare Vince's only WBF household name, Lou Ferrigno, out of his contract. Current talk has Lex making his first WBF appearance in June of this year. - There is talk that the LOD will return to the WWF after WrestleMania. Apparently, Hawk wants out and Animal wants to stay, but neither guy wants to split the team. Local newspaper columnist, Norm DaCosta, says he spoke to Animal, mentioning that there were rumours that the LOD quit the WWF because of the steroid issue and noting that they were rumoured to be two of the louder voices against testing. Sez Animal: "We've never refused to take a steroid test. We've never been caught doing anything dirty. We were one of the first to volunteer for steroid testing." - Gorilla Monsoon is apparently hospitalized with cancer. - Videotape: Last week, I mentioned the idea of making a custom video for people in the group, trying to fill as many interests as possible. I received mail from about 20 people about the video, and had e-mail conversations with some of them to discuss things further. I think that if 20 people responded to the feeler, that many more will respond to the actual "tape available" posting. I asked for help with the logistics of such a venture. There were two suggestions: 1. Just set an arbitrary price to "weed out" those people that aren't as interested in obtaining a copy of such a tape. This would shrink the recipient list down to something that I could manage. 2. Create a list of interested parties. I mail the tape to the first person, who mails it to the second and so on, who mails it back to me. Somehow, the list members figure out a way to reimburse me my cost. Option (2.) is apparently a common one in the music newsgroups. Of course, it was immediately criticized by almost everybody I spoke with because they either didn't have access to two VCRs so they couldn't dub the tape, they didn't want to wait for the taped to get mailed to a bunch of other people before they got it, they felt that if they were mid-list, they'd have to count on the honesty of a bunch of other people whereas in option (1.) they only had to trust me. I've traded with about a dozen people on the net since the newsgroup was created. Some of them are still around. I haven't gypped anybody, although I've been gypped a couple of times. It looks like (1.) is the way this will go. In discussing this option, people felt that a 6 hour tape of matches that interested them and were reviewed by me as being great was worth a lot. I know that there are mail order places that charge $20 for 4 hour and 6 hour tapes, but the match quality on those varies. My cost will be around $13 per mailing. That said, people comfortably suggested $25 as a price that might disuade some people. Price aside, we still have to decide what to put on the tape. I say "we", because I would like the more interested people on the net to play a role in match selection for this tape. Before I explain my strategy for this, let me discuss my current obligations workwise. I'm in the midst of finishing up my Masters thesis. I have a little more writing to do, but I should finish that in the next few days. My written work then gets poured over by three readers, whose revisions I will have to incorporate into the final version of my thesis. Then I have to present the work, defend it, and I've got a degree. After that, I'm taking about a month off before starting my PhD. I don't want to do any dubbing and mailing prior to getting my degree, although I do want to prepare the master tape early. So, what I think I will do is this: People interested in getting this tape that want to have a say in what appears on it should e-mail me. After some short grace period, everybody who e-mailed me will receive a master list of all my videos to read over. Through e-mail, we'll chat with each other, perhaps always in a group, or whatever, and I'll field questions about matches and such, until we decide to vote on what will fill the tape. I don't know how I'll do the vote yet. We'll probably deliberate for a couple of weeks anyhow. We could do the discussion in the newsgroup. Lord knows that it would increase the wrestling-related content in the group, but there probably are enough uninterested people to warrant moving it off-line for this phase. I'm not really sure what people want to see: High flyers? Technical wrestlers? Shooting? (legit shoots or worked shoots?) Women? "Power" wrestlers? Americans working Japanese matches (like Hansen, Williams, etc.)? Lucha Libre? Gimmick matches (from FMW, like barbed wire, mines, etc.)? Old North American footage? Old Japanese matches or current matches? If you want to be part of the match selection process, drop me some mail. Any comments or suggestions can also be directed to me via e-mail. Sorry to ramble on so long about this. Thanks for your attention. Herb...