Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling From: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 11/17 Message-ID: Sender: news@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (USENET News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: jeeves.uwaterloo.ca Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 01:24:40 GMT Lines: 183 { I've been completely swamped with midterm marking and student anxiety this past week. Jeez, it's crazy. Hopefully, you'll still find this post worthwhile. Please don't forget to vote in the year-end awards. } - WCW had Clash of Champions XXIX last night. As expected, they set up the Starrcade PPV matches with the usual "heels demolish the babyfaces" angle. In other events, Harlem Heat debuted their new manager, Sherri Martel. Vader and Jim Duggan established their rivalry. Steve Austin was apparently supposed to debut his manager as Harley Race but that was never clearly spelled out, although one could guess that Vader & Austin were unified against Duggan and hence shared Vader's manager. Marcus Bagwell & Patriot won the Tag Titles. All in all, a show with some good moments, but overall nothing special. And Honky Tonk Man didn't sing the national anthem. ;-) - WWF has Survivor Series on 11/23/94. The tentative line-up has: - Bret Hart vs. Bob Backlund for the WWF Title in a submission match (sharpshooter and chicken wing are the only way to win, with corner men Davey Boy Smith & Owen Hart, respectively, having towels to throw in) - Undertaker vs. Yokozuna in a casket match with Chuck Norris as ref - Davey Boy Smith & Razor Ramon & Fatu & Barbarian & 1-2-3 Kid vs. Jim Neidhart & Owen Hart & Shawn Michaels & Diesel & Jeff Jarrett - Doink & Dink & Wink & Pink vs. Jerry Lawler & Queasy & Wheezy & Cheesy - Lex Luger & Adam Bomb & Mabel & Smoking Gunns vs. Tatanka & King Kong Bundy & Bam Bam Bigelow & Heavenly Bodies - Alundra Blayze vs. Bull Nakano for the Women's title Everybody is predicting that Bret Hart will lose the WWF title in some sort of screwing finish and that Bob Backlund may even retain the title for a good half a year or more. Who would have guessed that a year ago? - As has been reported on the net many times over, Randy Savage and the WWF have parted company. Savage started up with the WWF in 05/85, already acknowledged as one of the top guys that had never worked for any "major" promotion, and along with Bret Hart was one of the only wrestlers who was pushed at that time and stayed with the company since. Throughout the 1980s and even in the early 1990s, Savage could be a tremendous performer, rivalling practically anybody in the world on a good night, but, having just re-read the Observer reports from 1985 through early 1987, he was terribly inconsistent and the good nights were not all that frequent. A particularly good night was his WrestleMania III match in 1987 against Rick Steamboat, certainly one of the best matches in the modern history of the WWF. In recent years, he'd all but disappeared from the WWF rings and his few appearances revealed rather little of his former ability. Savage left the WWF to jump to WCW, which makes Vince McMahon's acklowledgement of contract troubles and praise of Savage on Monday Night RAW quite surprising. The lure of a big money contract, rumoured to be in the $400K per year range (basically, the same salary as Ric Flair - something to think about), combined with an apparent mending of fences with Hulk Hogan led to Savage's jump. Reports are that Savage will debut in WCW at Starrcade, but not wrestle there, and begin in the new year as Hulk Hogan's tag team partner. At some point, it's expected that "Elizabeth" Heulette (ex-Poffo) will be worked into the story line, with Savage eventually, you guessed it, turning on Hogan. Bringing in Savage and pushing him as Hogan's tag partner makes one wonder about Sting's status as a top babyface. Obviously, WCW brass thinks that reworked Hogan feuds will capture some percentage of their former glory and, really, it is perversely interesting when they tie their story lines into old WWF story lines. Can this idea draw well for PPVs? We'll see at Starrcade. Rather, those that order will see at Starrcade. - The following article ran in the Globe & Mail this week. One quick scan brings it to you (any typos due to OCR problems): Shrieking with delight, the small girl escaped her mother's grasp, and jumped up on a chair to see her hero, Tiger Jeet Singh, hurl his mortal enemy, the Butcher, from the ting. "TIGER!" she screamed, her voice drowned by the cheers of 5,000 Indian wrestling fans. From ringside, Vinay Bawa, a gas station owner from Mississauga, Ont., looked gleeful as he watched another convert, another fan sold on wrestling. But then, just as Mr. Bawa was admiring the success of his newest venture, his two wrestling stars began to bop each other with metal chairs and tables, tumbling through the audience and knocking children over with each set of chairs. As the crowd screamed, Butcher revealed a kitchen fork and stabbed Tiger Jeet Singh in the forehead, hard enough to draw blood. Suddenly, Mr. Bawa's show in New Delhi's Indira Gandhi Stadium was a melee of Moghul magnitude. Riot police were called for. Some of the 300 police on hand, alraost instinctively, began to swat fans with their big cane sticks. One smacked a reporter across the leg. Another bopped a photographer in the mouth. A fan stole the Warrior's American flag. Veggie burgers and masala potato chips flew in all directions. "Perhaps they went a bit over-board," Mr. Bawa admitted later. "But these wrestlers, how can you control them?" For Mr. Bawa, a New Delhi native who has lived in Canada for 21 years, the wrestling riot was another lesson in his new career as entertainment promoter. As founder of the World Martial Arts Wrestling Force (WmWF), Mr. Bawa is exporting to India what he believes is one of Canada's hidden economic, if not cultural, gems. "Indians love wrestling," he said. So much so that a few nights later, during a match in the Punjabi city of Ludhiana, where 40,000 people had paid to see WmWF wrestling, two members of the crowd jumped into the ring and took on the pros, before police could cart them away. Getting the product to market, however, has not been easy for Mr. Bawa. India's plague scare in September scared off wrestlers and sponsors alike, forcing a one-month delay in the WmWF tour. That was followed by riots in Uttar Pradesh, India's biggest state, which precluded any matches there. "I lost several million dollars because of the plague," said Mr. Bawa, who refuses to discuss more precise financial numbers, except to say he will gross less than half the $4-million to $5-million he had expected from the tour, because the government would not allow him to hold a public event during the plague scare. Then, just three days before the new WmWF was to launch itself in Bombay on Oct. 29, local officials told the organizers they needed permits from 14 different departments. One was to allow the WmWF to broadcast the event to other parts of Asia, but last week the Indian government turned down Mr. Bawa's request, which cost him a major sponsorship. "Things," he sighed, "are not easy to do in India." When Mr. Bawa finally got the show off the ground in New Delhi this month, he learned his local promoter was selling some of the free VIP invitations for 1,000 rupees ($44) each, double the top ticket price. What's more, Mr. Bawa's main attraction, the Punjabi native Jaglit Singh Hans, aka Tiger Jeet Singh, is to appear in Canadian court on Dec. 14 to face fraud charges involving an Edmonton real estate deal. For Mr. Bawa, though, the problems pale next to India's insatiable appetite for action, and the willingness of the middle class to pay for it. "We're not looking at someone who drives a rickshaw," he said, sipping tea in New Delhi's Maurya Sheraton Hotel, where he has lived for seven weeks. "There are 100 million Indians with family incomes of more than $39,000 (U.S.) a year. One hundred million!" In seven shows in New Delhi, Punjab state and Bombay over the past 10 days, Mr. Bawa's WmWF has attracted more than 100,000 wrestling fans, most of them children and adolescents whose tastes have, been shaped by satellite television broadcasts of the more famous World Wrestling Federation (WWF). "The television networks used to show whatever the government wanted you to see," said B.K. Jain, managing director of Ashlin Entertainment Ltd., the New Delhi promoter for WmWF. "This is what the children want to see." While Mr. Bawa clearly is exploiting the WWF fame -- his entourage includes Demolition Ax, Repoman, Iran Sheikh and Hollywood Blonde, who took on Miss Fuji and won in what was billed as India's first-ever professional women's wrestling match -- he believes his more aggressive brand of wrestling will make its own name in the subcontinent. He even plans to return to India with more wrestlers in February. "I enjoy every minute of it," Mr. Bawa said, laughing at the barrage of problems he has faced. "There's no business without headaches." - Based on talk and occurrences do you realize that it's possible that WCW could have the following tag teams all working for it: - Marcus Bagwell & Patriot - Paul Orndorff & Paul Roma - Harlem Heat - Nasty Boys - Steve Regal & Jean Paul Levesque - Arn Anderson & Bunkhouse Buck - Fantastics: Tommy Rogers & Bobby Fulton - Former Destruction Crew & Beverly Brothers: Mike Enos & Wayne Bloom - Road Warriors - Steiner Brothers It's not like that's anywhere near my top ten, but it's still a hell of a lot of people and I've probably missed some. - WCW has Starrcade '94 on 12/27/94. Tentative line-up has: - Hulk Hogan vs. Butcher for the WCW Title - Sting vs. Avalanche - Jim Duggan vs. Vader - WCW has a Clash of Champions on 01/25/95. Randy Savage & Hulk Hogan will apparently work a tag match. - Awards: The votes are already coming in faster than in previous years. I will be reposting the ballot after this post. - 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. Basically, all of the tapes in my video collection are available. My tape list is on the r.s.p-w ftp site (128.227.59.59) in the file herbtape.zip. I have made a total of five compilation tapes for the net: R.s.p-w 1, Japan 1981-1983, Japan 1984-1987, VideoMarinepiad I, and VideoMarinepiad II. If you are interested in details on any of these, just send some e-mail or browse the ftp site. Herb...