Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling From: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 07/15 Message-ID: Sender: news@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (USENET News System) Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 19:05:41 GMT Lines: 177 { A long post today. I had my first massage therapy treatment today, so putting the finishing touches on this post has really zonked me. } - WCW has this year's Beach Blast PPV on Sunday from Gulfport, MS. Lin-up includes: - Sting & Davey Boy Smith vs. Van Vader & Sid Vicious - Ric Flair vs. Barry Windham for the NWA Title (rumoured to be a cage match, but WCW hasn't mentioned that) - Rick Rude vs. Dustin Rhodes to decide the vacant US Title in a 30-minute Iron Man challenge match - Arn Anderson & Paul Roma vs. Brian Pillman & Steve Austin for the Tag Titles - Maxx Payne vs. Johnny B. Badd - 2 Cold Scorpio & Marcus Bagwell vs. Tex Slazenger & Shanghi Pierce - Erik Watts vs. Lord Steve Regal Maybe the Erik Watts match will be the dark match -- we can hope. - In case you missed it, the title lineages in WCW were clearly defined at the Orlando tapings for World Wide Wrestling. They go as follows: - NWA Title: Barry Windham --> Ric Flair --> Rick Rude - TV Title: Paul Orndorff --> Rick Steamboat --> Steve Regal - Tag Titles: Pillman & Austin --> Anderson & Roma --> Nasty Boys None of the changes happened at the tapings, so they'll either happen at Clashes, PPVs or WCW Saturday Night tapings. - The Nasty Boys are heels again in WCW. The Hollywood Blonds, Pillman & Austin, will turn face and feud with the Nasty Boys once they win the tag titles. Chris Benoit & Bobby Eaton will also do a face turn. Harlem Heat & the Colossal Kongs will no doubt be heel tag teams, so the face turns will help balance the mix. - Along with the other tag teams mentioned last week, Thunder & Lightning are in WCW. The Blackhearts are gone. So is Jim Neidhart. - Rumours of Terry Funk coming in as WCW booker are on and off and depend on who you believe is more reliable. Certainly, though, the other changes (no more mini-movie and no more searching for Cactus Jack should be in effect this weekend). In the 05/27/91 Observer, the transcript of Funk's appearance on John Arezzi's radio show was presented. I'll present several excerpts below, most spelling and grammar errors intact. A caller asked, "Do you think you'll ever replace Dusty Rhodes as booker because I don't think he's going to be in for long?" And Funk replied, "A lot of things would have to change. It's a very difficult thing to be the booker in that area because you have so much television to produce. I wouldn't necessarily blame anything on Dusty or anyone else. It's just a matter of the system they have and the system they have is TBS. They want television product. If they only had three pay-per-views, or possibly even one, I see that as the ultimate way to do the largest amount of dollars. You need to have occasional pay-per-views because when you produce so many, it's hard to have quality. You eventually lose, which is what's happening to them. They've diluted their own product." Funk also said, "I think the time is right for a new organization. The one way they could succeed at that is get a national television show but only do one show a week. It could be astronomical the amount of dollars they could produce." Regarding the great quality of Bill Watts' UWF shows from the late 80s, "It was his commentary. That was the most important thing to Bill. This day and age, times have changed, the commentators have to promote so many different shows and so many different pay-per-views that they don't think as much about what's going on in the ring and promote the match itself. What caused that, and I'm sure Bill liked it that way, but they had to do it that way at the time because of the FCC ruling that you couldn't talk about the live cards and make a program a commercial for live cards. Now you can say anything you want to about anything forever. [...] It was very easy to produce televsion shows of interest then. You didn't have to produce seven television shows a week. You could put your best guys against your best guys because you had one hour of television and in that one hour you could focus your entire creative energy and booking process for that one particular hour. That's what's needed now. Not five hours or four hours. But they look at it today and there's so much money to be made in syndication. At least they think there is. But the really big money would be made by focussing everything into one hour and producing the very best hour of television and getting it aired throughout the country. That's why Japan is so successful. They produce one hour of TV a week." And addressing an issue on which I've posted strong opinions many times, Funk said, "[Japanese fans] don't want or like people walking around the ring, looking at the fans, waving to them. They want to see great wrestling. In Japan, when you give them great wrestling, they show their appreciation. The fans in Philadelphia are very much the same. So are you hardcore fans and you independent fans. They're very much like a Japanese fan. I think you're finding more and more fans getting that way across the country and are there right now. But the numbers keep increasing. I think that is what will eventually change the sport to being a lot more physical and a lot more wrestling. Not less entertaining, in fact, more entertaining because the most entertaining thing is good wrestling. As the American fan progresses, they'll progress to being a Japanese-type fan. Once they learn more about wrestling and become more familiar with it and become more knowledgable about it and the individuals they'll react and understand which individuals are the ones busting their tails in the ring." Jeez, I couldn't have said it better myself. ;-) Finally, somebody asked whether Funk had ever wrestled Jushin Riger. He said, "I've never wrestled him because there are two different organizations over there. It's like the old NFL and AFL. Very seldom do guys cross over. Riger is a very valuable piece of talent for the other organization. I think he's phenomenal, just excellent. It's terrific to get a smaller guy like that into the profession. They are just as popular. Sometimes they are even more entertaining because of the amout of moves they can do and their quickness than the heavier guys. I think there should be a lighter weight division and a heavier weight division in the United States. To fulfill what every fan wants out of professional wrestling it's necessary to give them both." Sure sounds like Terry Funk has got a great head on his shoulders. - Meltzer had a nice paragraph in the Observer this past week, pointing out that Bret Hart and Lex Luger were the two top babyface choices for the WWF when Hulk Hogan ran out on the WWF. In every category -- work rate, charisma, psychology, interviews, crowd appeal --, Bret Hart has the advantage over Luger. Hart didn't make tons of money on his first run on top, though, which might be attributable to the choice of opponents, save Ric Flair. On the other hand, Luger didn't get over as a drawing card with his massive heel push, so there is some balance there. The only real advantage that Luger has is "The Look." A sad moment for wrestling, please. - The WWF taped a match with Ted DiBiase vs. The Lightning Kid. Since Ted is only with the company until the end of the month, you can guess the ending: Ted was pinned cleanly when he was distracted by Razor Ramon. - Jacques Rougeau is back in the WWF with a tag team partner I believe will be named Pierre. Don't know any specifics yet. - The WWF has SummerSlam on 08/30/93. Tentative matches include: - Yokozuna vs. Lex Luger for the WWF Title - Jerry Lawler vs. Bret Hart to decide the King of the WWF - Shawn Michaels vs. Curt Hennig for the IC Title - Steiners vs. Headshrinkers for the Tag Titles - WCW now has a Clash of Champions scheduled for 08/18/93. The 09/93 Clash from Roanoke got scrapped and the date got moved up because it's easier to draw against re-runs than pilots. Rumoured line-up includes: - Rick Rude & The Equalizer vs. Dustin Rhodes & Hawk - WCW has the Fall Brawl PPV on 09/19/93. Tentative matches include: - Sid Vicious & Van Vader & Harlem Heat vs. Ric Flair & Davey Boy Smith & Sting & Hawk in a Wargames match - WCW has Halloween Havoc on PPV on 10/24/93 (tentative date). Tentative line-up will include: - Big Van Vader vs. Cactus Jack - Sting vs. Sid Vicious - E-mail TidBits: If your site has a slow feed or you don't read news frequently enough and you want to get this posting as e-mail every week, send me e-mail saying so. - Videos: The compilation tapes (Japan 1981-1983 & Japan 1984-1987) will remain available until the beginning of August. They won't be available while I'm in Edmonton and will be available again in the new year. Curtis, Gary Will, two lurkers (Michael & Kenneth) and I got together to watch some stuff on Tuesday afternoon. Highlight was the tag final from Dream Slam II (an easy ***** match, and I rarely rate that high) which Curtis and I had already seen. Curtis and I also got into the Bull vs. Aja name-calling again while watching their cage match from 09/01/90 (which would set up WrestleMarinpiad on 11/14/90). We also watched a bit of stuff with Los Brazos. I also had the chance to watch some more Hamada's UWF from 06/90. There was some great stuff with Yoshihiro Asai (now Ultimo Dragon), Gran Hamada & Kendo. These guys can really work. For info on tape discussions, send e-mail with a body consisting solely of the word "help" to Majordomo@cc.gatech.edu. That id handles subscription and unsubscription requests among other administrivia. The list id is rspwtape@cc.gatech.edu. Mail sent to this id will be sent to all current subscribers. Herb...