Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling From: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 02/03 Message-ID: Sender: news@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (USENET News System) Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Thu, 3 Feb 1994 15:45:44 GMT Lines: 126 - Last week, I reported the Dusty Rhodes was out as booker for WCW and that WCW has returned to a booking committee consisting of Greg Gagne, Mike Graham, Robert Fuller and Ric Flair. This was confirmed in this week's Observer along with some more details. Meltzer also lists Eric Bischoff and Bill Shaw as part of the committee, but my perception is that they are part of the heirarchy through which the committee must pass ideas. This was the problems with Rhodes, who found that too many of his ideas were overruled and ended up resigning the post. Dusty has been given the job title "Senior Consultant," whatever that means. Meltzer guesses that he could surface as a manager or perhaps an announcer. Finally, Meltzer noted that booking committee runs tend to be chaotic and are often only temproary while a new booker is sought. Kick up that campaign, Terry Funk. ;-) - WCW Clash of Champions XXVI will be rebroadcast tomorrow night (Friday) at 10:05 EST on WTBS. - Arn Anderson has filed a civil suit against Sid Vicious based on the scissor assault in Blackburne, England. In accordance with North Carolina law, it can only be reported that the suit is seeking in excess of $10000 in damages. - Barry Darsow (most recently the WWF's Repo-Man) is in WCW and will team with Arn Anderson. - As I mentioned last week, Kevin Sullivan is in WCW as wrestler. He will team with the Equalizer to feud with Cactus Jack & Maxx Payne. Somehow, that doesn't seem like title-feud material, so perhaps WCW has abandoned any rumoured ideas of giving the belts to Cactus & Maxx. - The WWF is planning a four-day tour of Japan in May. There could be flak with Rodney Anoia appearing as Yokozuna. - Meltzer reports that Cactus Jack mentioned on Wrestling Insiders that he didn't deserve the "Bruiser Brody (Best Brawler) Award" in the Observer year-end poll. He said Vader earned it. Well, r.s.p-w knew that all along. ;-) - The Undertaker will be back in November (Survivor Series?). - WCW has SuperBrawl IV on 02/20/94. Rumoured line-up includes: - Ric Flair vs. Big Van Vader in a Thunderdome cage match - Brian Pillman & Sting & Dustin Rhodes vs. Steve Austin & Paul Orndorff Rick Rude in the Thunderdome cage - Steve Regal vs. Arn Anderson for the TV Title - Nasty Boys vs. Maxx Payne & Cactus Jack for the WCW Tag Titles - Johnny B. Badd vs. Michaels Hayes - Harlem Heat vs. Thunder & Lightning - Diamond Dallas Page vs. Terry Taylor - Jungle Jim Steele vs. Equalizer On WCW Saturday Night, 01/29/94 TV, they aired a strange "press conference" where WCW commissioner Nick Bockwinkel announced that Ric Flair would not be wrestling Vader at SuperBrawl because of the "injury" Flair suffered at the Clash. This was a great angle, which will no doubt lead to Flair wrestling "against doctor's orders," although I think that it may come off as rushed. The whole angle came off as very real. Rick Steamboat & Vader yelled at each other a bit during the angle. Interestingly enough, Rick Steamboat isn't on this card... I somehow doubt that they would go against all of their advertising for this show (the paper ad has this labelled as "Vader's revenge against Ric Flair"). - The WWF has WrestleMania X on 03/20/94 from MSG in New York. Announced matches include: - Lex Luger vs. Yokozuna for the WWF Title - Bret Hart vs. winner of above match for the WWF Title - Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart - The WWF has the King of the Ring PPV in 07/94 from Baltimore. - Awards: To summarize, last year's awards post was surrounded by a bit of controversy due to length and the inclusion of comments. While only a couple of people really complained, there was a short thread discussing the awards and offering suggestions for restructuring. I offered to run a quick survey to see how/if I should change the awards this year. Here are the results of that survey, which had 18 respondents ("maybe"s recorded as .5 of a "yes"): No Yes 16 2 1. The Awards post is too long! If yes, 1a. Don't include award descriptions. 1b. Don't include participation stats. 1 1c. Don't include scores of vote-getters with limited support. 2 1d. Don't include comments in the body of the awards post. If no, 2 13 1e. A summary post only listing the top three scorers in each award would eliminate the need to limit the size of the complete post. 18 2. The comments from people on how they voted are a good idea. If yes, 6 8 2a. The length of comments should be limited. 6 6.5 2b. The length limit of comments for "important" awards should be longer. 4 10.5 2c. Herb, as editor, doesn't have concrete length limits. 4 10 2d. Comments should be in the awards results post. 14 2e. Inflammatory (ie. profane, directly insulting, etc.) comments can be ignored (this would have to be at Herb's discretion...). 6 11 3. The current list of Awards should be changed. If yes, 7 3 3a. Remove the "Worst..." awards. 6 2 3b. Remove the awards with lowest participation stats. 2 8 3c. Split the "important" awards into two: Japan and non-Japan. 7 1.5 3d. Split the "important" awards into two: men and women. 6 3.5 3e. Run a new vote on what awards to include. My conclusion: - It seems clear that the length of the complete awards post is *not* an issue as long as I post a bulletin version as well. This is no problem. - The complete awards post will have comments in the body of the post, inflammatory comments will not be included, comment length will be limited (but somewhat generously so, to please both sides and not need 2c) except for "important" awards. - "Important" awards will be split into two: North America & non-NA (which several people thought was a better label than "Japan & non-Japan"). The only thing that remains is to decide what awards are "important," but I'm too tired to initiate that now. ;-) The ballot will no doubt increase to include a total of 50 awards or so. - Videos: I have posted something about the availability of videos. If you missed it, I'll send it to you in e-mail upon request. Herb...