Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling From: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 01/05 Message-ID: Sender: news@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (USENET News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: jeeves.uwaterloo.ca Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Fri, 6 Jan 1995 04:03:17 GMT Lines: 132 { I hope everybody had a good holiday. I'll do a little catch up here to cover a few of the things that happened during my two weeks off } - WCW held Starrcade on 12/27/94. I didn't see it. Nothing of note happened during the show, but some interesting things must have happened before the show. Sure, Hulk Hogan agreed to work a program with Vader for the WCW Title, but it was surprising to hear how Hogan's friends fared on the show. Honky Tonk Man quit right before the show, presumably because he balked at jobbing for Johnny B. Badd on a PPV. Jim Duggan lost the US Title to Vader, which, even if it was a little screwy, was unexpected by me anyhow. At the end of the PPV, Vader accosted Hogan, accused him of hiding, and challenged him to a match. I saw this part on TV when I returned home and it came off really well. I was impressed by WCW again when I say the print ad for this show in the local paper a couple days beforehand and it was still the old ad featuring Hogan, *Flair*, and Vader in the "three main events." - Reports have WCW losing $4-million in 1994. Is Ted Turner worried? Who knows? He's too busying working out a deal to buy NBC. - The WWF has already fired Charlie Minn, replacing him with Stephanie Wiand and Tamara Murphy (Tammy Fytch from SMW). Tamara is doing a straight announcing role, but there is talk that she'll eventually get worked into a heel managing spot. - Two newcomers of sorts to the WWF both debut this weekend. Kama, doing a tough guy kickboxing gimmick, is Charles Wright, formerly Papa Shango. In the video they aired to introduce the new character, they didn't go any extra effort to hide all of the tatoos he has from his forearms on up. I guess that speaks to how over they thought Shango was. Mantaur, who apparently stinks, wears a buffalo head to the ring and is the brother of long-time rspw "favourite" Paul "P.N. News" Neu. Didn't we once joke that the WWF could hire Paul & his brother as a rapping team and call them "Meat & Potatoes?" Also appearing at recent WWF tapings was Maxx Payne as a guitar playing Blacksmith. There is talk that Jean Paul Levesque may jump to the WWF and talk that the Bruise Brothers, Ron & Ron Harris, have been approached. Chris Candido will start up in the WWF in March, after finishing out his SMW commitments. I saw the debut match of Hakushi (Ginsei Shinzaki) and several subsequent matches with him. Even though he's supposed to be a heel and a white-faced Akio Sato and the commentators try to make that point, he has drawn zero crowd reaction in the matches I've seen. This isn't surprising, since he's doing handspring elbows and planchas, stuff to which a WWF audience has no idea how to react when a heel does the moves. It brings to mind the Candido story from SMW (read my fanweek summary if this makes no sense). - Pat Patterson gave up a lot of his power on the WWF booking scene. In a weird surprise, Jim Ross will take a large role in the booking of the company and Dusty Rhodes will also take a part of it. Ross, who has been doing the TV commentary for SMW, in fact will move to Stamford, since the WWF work will be how he spends the majority of his time. He's only needed once a month for SMW TV tapings and perhaps on one or two major shows a year. The reduction in power of Patterson is evident in his plans to relocate to Florida. Dusty will bring along his son of a son of plumber to once again work for the WWF. I don't even want to speculate at what this change could bring about. - WCW will run their second "WCW All-Nighter" special on 01/20/95, from 12:05am to 6:00am (I'm not sure if that's 12:05am on 01/21). The show is slated to feature the best matches from the many Clash of Champions specials over the years, concentrating on recent years. There is talk that the show will pay special tribute to former WCW employee Rick Steamboat. The show will also air the Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair retirement match from Halloween Havoc. - The WWF's Royal Rumble PPV takes place on 01/22/95, featuring sexy silicone-supplemented surfstar Pamela Anderson (from Baywatch, "they're not just just lifeguards, they're friends," blech). Announced matches are: - Diesel vs. Bret Hart for the WWF Title - Razor Ramon vs. Jeff Jarrett for the IC Title - Undertaker vs. I.R.S. - Final match of the WWF Tag Team tourney (most likely bet is: Bam Bam Bigelow & Tatanka vs. Smoking Gunns, although there's talk that 1-2-3 Kid & Bob Holly will somehow become replacement finalists) - Royal Rumble, with announced participants: Lex Luger, King Kong Bundy, Doink, Bob Backlund, Kwang, Duke Droese, Dick Murdoch, Henry Godwinn, Aldo Montoya, British Bulldog, Mo, Mabel, 1-2-3 Kid, Bob Holly, Shawn Michaels, Crush, Mantaur, Owen Hart, Jim Neidhart. This year, the Rumble match will have wrestlers enter the ring in one minute intervals (traditionally two minutes, last year 1.5 minutes); maybe soon we'll be back at a normal battle royal where they all start in the ring together. There is a lot of talk that Jeff Jarrett will win the IC Title at this show. After all, it's been rumoured for quite a while that Razor Ramon was going to take a vacation. It also seems like they are building to a Bushwhackers & Howard Finkel vs. Well Dunn & Harvey Wippleman match for this show, a match which would seem to be an obvious hopeful for "Worst Match" of the year, even ahead of the dreadful sounding (IMO) UT vs. I.R.S. match. - WCW has a Clash of Champions on 01/25/95. Tentative line-up has - Hulk Hogan & Randy Savage vs. Kevin Sullivan & Butcher - Sting vs. Avalanche with Guardian Angel as referee - Harlem Heat vs. Stars & Stripes for the WCW Tag Titles - Alex Wright vs. Bobby Eaton Harlem Heat won the WCW Tag Titles at a TV taping slated to air this weekend on WCW Saturday Night, so they will go into the Clash as the champions. They will continue to push Alex Wright hard at this show by airing a video on him. We can also expect Vader to appear and do something to set up his match with Hulk Hogan at SuperBrawl in February. - WCW has SuperBrawl on 02/19/95. Tentative line-up has: - Hulk Hogan vs. Vader for the WCW Title - AAA is reportedly planning another PPV for 04/23/95. - Awards: I hope everybody enjoyed the awards. I received some e-mail feedback but missed any newsgroup discussion or comments. I will likely post the awards results again in the next few days in case some students missed them over the holidays. - 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...