Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling From: hekunze@violet.waterloo.edu (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 07/02 Message-ID: Sender: news@watdragon.waterloo.edu (USENET News System) Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1992 02:47:00 GMT Lines: 90 - WCW has The Great American Bash PPV scheduled for July 12. The show will feature the final rounds of the NWA Tag Team Title tournament, with the following structure: Steve Williams & Terry Gordy (4) --\ |--\ Jushin Riger & Brian Pillman \ | | |--/ | Rick Steamboat & Nikita Koloff / | |-- NWA Tag Titles Hiroshi Hase & Akira Nogami (2) \ | |--\ | The Freebirds / | | |--/ Dustin Rhodes & Barry Windham \ | |--/ Rick Rude & Steve Austin (6) / where (#) gives the seeding of that team. The only other announced match for the show is: - Sting vs. Big Van Vader for the WCW Title - The WWF has it's SummerSlam PPV scheduled for August 31st (to be taped at Wembley Stadium in London, England, on August 29th). The following partial line-up has been announced: - Randy Savage vs. Ultimate Warrior for the WWF Title - Bret Hart vs. Davey Boy Smith for the IC Title - Money Inc. vs. Legion of Doom for the WWF Tag Titles - Undertaker vs. Kamala - Several reports claim that Wembley Stadium was sold out in mere hours (6 or 8 or 10, depending on the story) after tickets went on sale for SummerSlam. Honest estimates say that the building had sold in the neighbourhood of 70000 by the end of the weekend. The place holds just over 80000 and seems to be a sure sell-out. - I saw the "Rocko" sketch today while catching up on the syndies from last weekend. Paul Ellering will now have this stupid puppet at ringside to remind the LOD where they came from. The puppet was originally going to be called "Freckles," with it's real-life counterpart eventually being played by Bob Backlund. Bob has turned down the WWF's offer to join the circus. Fair guess would be that at SummerSlam, the LOD will be on the verge of defeating Money Inc. for the WWF Tag Titles when the Genius sneak attacks Paul Ellering and the Beverly Brothers run off with "Rocko". The distraught LOD will get counted out chasing the doll thieves while Ted DiBiase laughs about buying the Beverley's services. Perhaps later, Ted will once again have possession of the doll and will have hired Papa Shango to put a curse on it in order to take away the LOD's good luck charm. Shango's curse could get interrupted by an LOD run-in and the partial curse may somehow mysteriously bring the doll to life. Once we see the doll's face, we may be able to guess as to who gets the role of being "Rocko." - Curtis Hughes will be returning to WCW with a new gimmick. - Spent some time today catching up on the past weekend's wrestling. On WCW Saturday Night, Terry Taylor was guest commentating after his match with Dustin Rhodes and was going on about Rhodes not deserving his position in the company and riding his dad's coat tails to get where he is. At one point, he said something like "In the match we just had, Dustin put a head scissors on me and I thought I was tangled in the ropes." That had me rolling. - There was an interesting article in the local newspaper about NBC's Olympic PPV deal. For $125, subscribers will have access to 3 uninterrupted channels broadcasting various Olympic events. They said that NBC needs to have 2 million households order the deal just to break even. Think about that. The PPV universe includes around 40 million homes. So NBC needs a 5% buy rate to break even. They projected a 10% buy rate! The buy rates for the more recent WCW PPVs have all been 1% or less. The buy rate for recent WWF PPVs wasn't much better (with the flagship WrestleMania PPV getting just over a 2% buy rate). The WBF championship got a whopping 3000 buys, translating to a 0.0075% buy rate. So far NBC has received 5000 orders for the deal. The network maintains that PPV buys are by nature impulsive last-minute things. - Speaking of the WBF, the new commercials that Vince is airing in his WWF syndies for the WBF Superstars show are pretty cheesy. Looks like Vince has decided that bodybuilding may not sell and figures that Cameo's body may sell and has converted the ad into a T&A display. - Videotape: I'm almost done the first batch of video requesters and will notify on Monday the next batch of people in the queue. Be patient. If you don't know what I'm talking about with this "videotape" stuff, send me e-mail and I'll clue you in. I won't be posting all the gruesome details yet again. Herb...