- Dave Meltzer's review of the 02/04 ECW show caused the usual uproar in the newsgroup. I only saw a partial sentence typed in verbatim, so for anybody trying to follow the story, here we go (any grammar errors are probably Dave's ;-)): The most talked about smaller promotion in the world is without a doubt the Philadephia-based Extreme Championship Wrestling. The ironies are many. ECW is a group that has never drawn much more than 1000 to any show in its history. Yet it was one of two American promotions to be invited to the multi-promotion Tokyo Dome show. It finished third for best promotion and won best television show in the Observer balloting. Among its relatively small core of fans are people who regularly drive hundreds of miles to the converted Bingo Hall for it's major show each month. The irony doesn't end there. Promoters involved with much larger organtizations such as Eric Bischoff this past weekend with WCW (when plugging the PPV in Baltimore on World Wide noted that they're runnig the Blatimore Arena and not a Bingo Hall) and Ron Skoler are clearly bothered with the attention ECW receives. ECW is talked od as being the best wrestling in the United States and among groups that regularly run house shows it probably delivers the best house show product. An asterisk has to be put by that statement when comparison are made with other groups, because judging from the physical punishment many of the guys take, they couldn't possibly work at that level if they were doing four or five shows a week and survive very long. Despite not having six figure contracts, it has two of the four most exciting performers that work regularly in the United States as regulars on top in Sabu and Chris Benoit. It has, if not the best best television show, certainly the most creative and inventive show. The episode that aired on 1/31 was among the best one hour U.S. TV shows I've ever seen. Its followers, remarkably similar in some ways and in other ways completely different to the mid-80s WWF fans and FMW Korakuen Hall fans, some of whom will defend it to no end, ignore its shortcomings, overstate its strengths and go crazy at even the hint any other wrestling ot wrestler could be better. Most fans, however, simply appear to be appreciative that they can see matches in their area where they know going in that everyone will work extremely hard, that shortcuts will be minimized or non-existent, that even though run-ins and outside interference will occur, that they will see a winner and a loser in just about every match and that something unpredictable is almost guaranteed to take place at almost any time on the show. There is probably more of what can best be called Team Unity, not just among the wrestlers but among the fans and the wrestlers combined, of any promotion I've ever seen in the United States. Every match on the show isn't always good, but every match does at least have something and nothing on the show comes off as something being done to kill or waste time. Fans from approximately 20 states and four countries were among the 790 (paid was probably slightly more because some who bought advanced tickets, particularly from out-of-town, may not have wanted to challenge the weather conditions) or so fans, a figure held down by a severe snowstorm which cause the WWF to cancel all its American house show dates over the weekend, at the ECW Arena on 02/04 for booker Paul Heyman's latest concoction. Realistically, the group can best be compared with the IWA in Japan, both in quality and in style, although the booking is far more creative. The 02/04 show reminded me a lot of a show I saw of IWA some ten weeks earlier in Korakuen Hall. A lot of hard from guys who are fairly inexperienced. A very over tag team on top in an excellent gimmick match main event. One excellently wrestled match in mid-card. A lot of blood, stiff chair shots and suicidal performances in between, and even a former big name who is somewhat out of place being used because they were once stars in the city. Head Hunters are Public Enemy from a role standpoint. Dick Slater is Tully Blanchard. Chris Benoit vs. Al Snow is like Silver King & El Texano vs. Super Astro & Takashi Okano. Cactus Jack is Cactus Jack. Terry Funk is Sabu. Ian Rotten is Shoji Nakamaki, although Rotten hasn't been bodyslammed on broken glass or taken bumps on a bed of nails 2000 thumb tacks yet. But then again, he hasn't been asked either." Now, there's the obvious line about ECW fans who "go crazy" for the reasons Meltzer listed that upset some, but I'm surprised that the comparison to the IWA didn't upset people. To me, accepting that comparison is accepting the "ECW is just brawling & violence" criticism that I don't think applies. I think ECW is predominantly brawling & violence, but it has some great Jr. Heavyweight style matches in the mix. I have no doubt that Benoit vs. Snow on 02/04 would get me on the edge of my seat. Maybe the IWA Lucha match takes that role, as Meltzer says. The IWA was one of my three picks for worst promotion in our r.s.p-w awards: any promotion with two Jasons (of horror movie fame; Tracy Smothers? Oh why, Tracy?), a Leatherface, casket matches, bed of nails matches, thumb tack matches, etc., is a gore promotion. I thought that comparison was the most contentious thing in the above paragraphs. - WCW has brought Tom Zenk back into the fold. Zenk quit All Japan because his pay raise request was squashed. Despite enjoying some success in WCW, his last run with company saw him work as nothing more than a glorified jobber. I wonder if he'll be used in the Cruiserweight division. - The strangest occurrence at the Orlando tapings was Butcher's face turn, taking on the moniker "The Man With No Name." Meltzer reports that that idea can be credited to Paul E. Dangerously, who was going to use the gimmick with 911, but thought better of it. - WCW has SuperBrawl on Sunday. Line-up has: * Hulk Hogan vs. Vader for the WCW Title * Sting & Randy Savage vs. Big Bubba & Avalanche * Jim Duggan vs. Bunkhouse Buck * Dave Sullivan vs. Kevin Sullivan * Nasty Boys vs. Harlem Heat for the WCW Tag Titles * Dustin Rhodes vs. Blacktop Bully * Alex Wright vs. Paul Roma * Koko B. Ware vs. Tito Santana (Cruiserweight tourney match?) Everything except the final match has been announced on TV, so maybe it will be dark or won't happen at all. There has been more talk about Tito coming in. We should expect an appearance from the Steiners and the "surprise" of Ric Flair as Vader's manager. On last week's WCW Saturday Night, Flair gave a good interview (marred only by the on-screen graphic "Rick Flair" in the lead-in) saying that he promised not to wrestle but that that didn't rule him out of participating in a sport that he needs and that needs him. Did everyone notice how they insultingly cut away from the Hogan vs. Vader Clash confrontation before Hogan popped up from Vader's power bomb? Maybe we all imagined that happening. - There's a little confusion about the Hogan vs. Vader series. Originally, everybody figured that it would be feature a series of non-finishes. After Meltzer reported that Vader wanted to extend his current contract, more people are now expecting Vader to eventually do a clean job for Hogan. For what it's worth, in pre-taped interviews Hogan talks about his victory over Vader at SuperBrawl. - WCW will have a PPV on 03/19/95 called "WCW Uncensored." Rumored line-up has: * Hulk Hogan vs. Vader for the WCW Title - The WWF has WrestleMania XI on 04/02/95. Tentative line-up has: * Diesel vs. Shawn Michaels for the WWF Title * Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Lawrence Taylor * Undertaker vs. King Kong Bundy * Bret Hart vs. Bob Backlund It's now being rumoured that Sid Justice (Vicious) will make his debut as Michaels' bodyguard at this show, facilitating the title change and generating a dreadful-sounding Diesel vs. Sid feud. Everybody is reporting that Taylor will get $100K for his match. - WCW has Slamboree on 05/21/95. * Hulk Hogan & Randy Savage vs. Vader & Ric Flair * Sting vs. Big Bubba Rogers * Kevin Sullivan vs. The Man With No Name - Okay, here's the beginning of another interview with Bill Watts from John Clark's wonderful Wrestling Flyer. This interview was printed in the 04/24/93 issue. If there's interest I'll present the other pieces of it over the next many weeks. Clark: First, could you please tell me about your education earlier in your life and how you got started in the wrestling business? Watts: I wrestled in high school and I played football. I was the first All-American high school football player in Putnam City, to the best of my knowledge, and I was in the Jim Thorpe High School Football Hall of Fame here in Oklahoma. I was recruited to Oklahoma University by Bud Wilkinson on a football scholarship, and I wrestled in the off season. Then, I think it must have been my sophomore year, I was in a car-train wreck and I was unconscious for a couple of weeks. I came out of the hospital under 200 pounds, I weighed about 245 norrnslly. Of course, Oklahoma University believed in small and quick at that time, they had Wahoo McDaniel down to 188 pounds. They had me down to 215 or 229 pounds, I was the biggest man on the team. They just didn't realize that kids were starting to grow. I got on weight training after the car wreck, it took me like six months to even be able to get back to where I could do a simple somersault and come up in a hitting position. My ribs were crushed and I had a whole lot of internal injuries. It was amazing that I was alive. But, a friend of mine got me on weight training by accident. You've got to realize, back then weight training was tabooed for athletes because coaches had no knowledge of it. They saw the typical guy that got into weight training was the timid, non athletic guy that wanted to build up his body. When he did that, he had no natural coordination or no athletic coordination. So the coaches saw this guy build up his body and then they'd watch him be totally uncoordinated, and they would then surmise that the weight training made him uncoordinated. So they said, "Don't lift weights." I had gotten back to my normal body weight of about 245. We started out on weight training and worked really, really hard, and seven months later I weighed 315 pounds. I gained 70 pounds in seven months. I never took a steroid in my life, I was just at the perfect growth age and worked so hard at it It just transformed me into a superman. So, I was way too big for Oklahoma football, but they wanted me to stay on a wrestling scholarship. But I signed pro with the Houston Oilers in the old American Football League in the second year of the league. Then I got released there, I had an altercation with the head coach. I thought Bud Wilkinson should have had a different philosophy than curse or demean people. Back then a lot of pro football coaches treated you like a slave. In the off season there, I came back home and Jack Brisco was wrestling at Oklahoma State University, Wahoo McDaniel had gotten into pro wrestling, and Dale Louis, a heavyweight at Oklahoma University, had gotten into pro wrestling. And Jack had always been trying to talk me into going into pro wrestling, but the pro wrestling in Oklahoma was junior heavyweight wrestling and very far behind the times. The only athlete that we considered a head was Danny Hodge, he was so head and shoulders above everybody. But, you didn't really respect pro wrestling when you we're an amateur. Wahoo and I were out imbibing in a few brews one evening and he had to cash a check. I asked him what he got it for and he said for wrestling. I said, "How long? For a month?" He said no. I said, "A week?" He said, "No, for one match." I said, "My gosh." Because you've got to realize, back in the late 50s when you were in college, they told you that if you worked hard and got to where you were making $25,000 a year, you were financially secure and successful. And Wahoo had, it seemed like the check was for $l,500, $l,000, $500, I don't know. But I said, "My gosh, who do I have to kill to get that?" I went to see Leroy McGuirk but they had junior heavyweights and they didn't want me. They had me work out with Sputnik Monroe, who was a great old hand. The old tradition was they stretched you first. I don't think Sputnik could stretch anybody, but he sure couldn't stretch me. I guzzled him pretty good. The next day they had a work out set up with everybody there and none of them decided that they could handle the situation. So they just told me that they just didn't have anything for me. So Wahoo hdped me get started, he sent me up to a guy named Bawk Eskison in Indianapolis. When I got there, Wahoo was getting, ready to go back and go play pro ball again. Bawk Eskison wasn't really paying much attention to business, of course I didn't realize that then. Jim Barnette owned it and he wouldn't use me. There was a professional football league there, Continental Football League, and a friend of mine was the defensive line coach and he asked me to stay there and play ball. I did, and Dale Louis started wrestling there. Dale talked to Bawk Eskison again and so finally I broke into wrestling and had my first match in Portsmouth, Ohio in 1962. Bill Miller was a big help to me, as were Mark Starr, George & Sandy Scott, The Von Brauners, Karl Gotch, Art Nelson and people like that. As a matter of fact, it was Art Nelson who called me and said, "Take your bag when you go down to Portsmouth tonight and ride down with Dale because I'm not going to show up. He'll have to use you." Stan Nelson, his partner, called me five minutes later vith the same story, so I rode down, and that's how I got my first match. My second match was with Joe Blanchard and my third match was with Don Leo Jonathan. What a phenomenal athlete Don Leo was, it was just mind-boggling. He was 6"8', 308, he could do nip-ups. I mean, unbelievable balance. A natural athlete. That was my third match and I had met Barnette, he had come back to a big show in Indianapolis, and I was hoping he would discover me. But I think that's when he was in the middle of the most torrid part of his affair with Rockettes, so I don't think he had wrestling on the mind! And that's where I saw Dick the Bruiser wrestle. I had about ten matches and then I came home on the Christmas holiday and got into an altercation in a bar where several guys jumped on me and broke my fist. So, LeRoy made me a special referee with a cast on. I created so much excitement as a special referee that when my cast came off, a couple of his guys that were top-half said everything was stale there then. They said, "Man, book him against us." We started drawing a lot of money which created a lot of jealousy among the junior heavyweights. So LeRoy said, "Man, you're out-drawing my junior heavyweights, you've got to get out of here." He sent me to Texas for Morris Seigel. The first night in I won the Texas Championship. That's a whole another story, it really wasn't supposed to be that way, but that's what happened. I stayed there for a while. After that, I went up to play ball. Verne Gagne called me and Norm Van Brocklin wanted me to come play with the Minnesota Vikings. I went up and worked out with the Vikings. I met Verne, met The Crusher, met Larry Hennig. They wanted me to stay up there and be on the taxi squad, work out and get my timing and everything back. I said, "Fine, as long as you'll let me wrestle professionally." Jim Finks was the general manager at that time and he never let anybody from the Vikings wrestle. I told them, "I'm sorry, but I can make a hell of a lot more money wrestling than playing football." You've got to remember back then a lineman made $8,000-$12,000 a year. So, I came home. From there, I think Lou Thesz took me to the west coast for a deal with Strongbow. Then I went to Vancouver, British Columbia for a few weeks. I was there when they shot John F. Kennedy. I started drawing money there against Kiniski and Jonathan, but I was getting paid real badly. Rob Fenton was the promoter and I jumped him about it, and he said, "Kid, as green as you are, you're lucky to get to be on the card." I said, "You're paying four or five guys more than I. And when I got here, there was nobody in the building, now that I'rm here, we're drawing money. If you're going to screw me, I'm not going to stay." So, I went home. LeRoy booked me and then I did some stuff for Dory Funk Sr. where I was driving from Springfield, Missouri on a Wednesday night all the way to Amarillo, Texas. I worked a "mark out of the crowd" deal where I was razzing all the guys on the card, and none of them knew who I was. I had them all pissed off- Fritz Von Erich, Killer Karl Cox, Mike DiBiase- Ted DiBiase's dad. Dory wanted me to jump in the ring on a certain deal and I said, "Are you going to tell anybody?" Dory said, "No, we want to really make it realistic." I said, "Well I've got news for you, if any of them come at me, I'm going to knock them out." So that's what I did. Then they all came running out of the dressing room, they thought I had jumped in on DiBiase. Killer Karl Cox realized that that wasn't it and gave me the old Hi sign. So that'fs how that started I met Wild Red Berry by accident, it seemed like he was home, Pittsburgh, Kansas, for the Christmas holiday. They brought him over to Joplin, Missouri and teamed him with me for a holiday show, and we had a little situation happen. The promoter was so damn dumb he wouldn't even have wrestling put on TV there, all he did was have a live interview on the Saturday night news. We were doing an interview and we got all excited, and it sold out. Well, Red Berry got so excited about it that he went back and told Vince McMahon Sr. about it. I was wrestling the next Thursday in Wichita Falls, Texas on a 4-H farm that didn't even have a telephone. All of a sudden, the police came and got me for an emergency call. I thought something had happened to my parents or something. Well, it was New York (WWWF) calling, their offices were in Washington, DC. Of course I was so naive, I said, "I don't know if I can come up there or not, you'll have to ask Mr. McGuirk, that's who I'm working for." They said, We'll take care of Mr. McGuirk." They called LeRoy and he realized that it was a big opportunity for me, but I didn't know anything back then. I went to Washington, DC and got over real big in New York. I decided that Sammartino was making all the money, instead of being his partner I'd rather be against him. I turned against him. We sold out Madison Square Garden, it was the largest crowd that was ever in the old Garden for any event in its history. And of course, the reason for that, because we sold out more often than that, is because the fire marshal wasn't there that night and they filled the building. But, it did make the paper that it was the largest crowd there ever. I think it sold out at like 3 o'clock in the afternoon. They ran the Garden every three weeks back then and there was only one main evant. I had quite a run there. We sold out the old arena in Washington, DC four times with Bobo Brazil who was a big star, and usually you only get to wrestle them one time. The match tht established me in New York was going to a twenty minute broadway with Killer Kowalski in Washington, DC. It was so good that Vince Sr. was standing there and was just amazed by it. Killer Kowalski was a great performer at that time, he had become a vegetarian so he was not near as big as he used to be, but he had great endurance. There, the great ones there were Bruno Sammartino- who to me is one of the quality guys that's ever been in this business, Gene Kiniski, Waldo Von Erich, Dr. Bill Miller, Jerry Graham- by then he pretty much lost control of himself with his alcohol, Don McClarity, Pedro Morales, Gorilla Monsoon- he and I were the tag champions at one time there. So I already had ideas and I'd get to the people who'd influence the decision makers about my ideas. Although I didn't realize that I had this ability, it was just me trying to make a living. I had a two year run there and than I went to Califonnia for Roy Shires, and I was going to work there a few weeks and then go to Japan. But I won the North American title there. The next week, he flipped out. Roy was the kind of promoter, he was a genius, but he never told you anything, you had no idea of what to expect. I got along with him real well, I just didn't understand him. We evantually became great friends and had a lot of respect for each other. I had been staying with him for about a year and a half and I was only wrestling about three nights a week, and evaything was real close. I got to wrestle guys like Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson, they were probably the best team in the world at that time. Dominic DeNucci was out there, Joe Scarpa- Jay Strongbow- he was my partner for a while, Jim Haiti was my partner for a while. Then I got into a multi-level business and quit wrestling for a while. I always had wondered if I could make money if something happened to me in wrestling. Athletes have always got to figure if they get an injury or something, so I built a good multi-level business. I found out that I could be successful with another business. Then in 1968 I went to Verne and stayed there until 1970. Up there, The Crusher was one of the all-time greats. Dick Beyer was up there as Dr. X, he was great. Larry Hennig and Harley Race was the best team in that era. Jack Lanza, Bobby Heenan, Billy Red Lyons, Red Bastien, it was a great crew. Of course, Verne Gagne was ahead of his time and he had a real feel for the business and he believed in the athletic type of it. LeRoy McGuirk and I stayed in touch by phone and he was having a lot of trouble by then. He asked me to come home to run his business for him. He still wasn't sure of me as a young guy so he made a partnership arrangement with Fritz Von Erich, Verne Gagne, myself, and gave Danny Hodge a small piece for Danny's long time loyalty to him. So that's how I started a promotion in 1970. Wha I started in 1962, I'll never forger Art Nelson said, "Kid, you've got a college education, you're a smart kid, get out of this business and go home, the business is in terrible shape, you can't make over S25,000 a year." The key word to me was $25,000 a year, I'd been taught in college if you made $25,000 a year, you were rich. So I stayed in the business. The business was just starting to explode right around 70, it really started to get big. Verne's area got hot, Chicago, Winnipeg. So here I came back to Oklahoma and it was the shits. It was horrible. They had over-the-hill guys, never-was-beens, and LeRoy being blind, I had the stooge system tbere where he'd keep everybody fighting each other. That would keep him in power so to speak. I was his partner and had to put up with all his stooges. It took me a while to deal with it but I learned a tremendous amount from LeRoy. It was very frustrating. LeRoy was a great man in his day. And by that time, he drank pretty heavy and it started to effect him and he just had a lot of psychological problems. But I still learned a hell of a lot under him. In 1973, Eddie Graham ssked me to come to Atlanta. There was a trade between two stock holders, Lester Welch and Buddy Fuller. Lester had stock in Florida and Lenny had stock in Georgia, Buddy went to Florida and Lester came to Georgia. Ray Gunkel was alive then and decided that he didn't want to go for it so he was going to break away and form an opposition. The partnership was Ray Gunkel, Paul Jones, and Buddy Fuller. He was going to go against Paul and Buddy's tradee, Lester. So they took all the boys, only one guy didn't go, that guy was Bob Armstrong. When I got there, a bunch of us came in and put a show on with Paul in the old city auditorium. It was amazing, it had Jack Brisco, Dory Funk Jr., Hiro Matsuda, Fritz Von Erich, but nobody in Atlanta knew them. Back in the regionalized days, they didn't get the nation wide exposure. It was like, the crowd was in a vacuum and would just sit there and watch. I went out and they put me against Bob Armstrong. Because they knew Bob, we had a hell of a match and it got a good crowd reaction. Eddie Graham was getting interested in my career and asked me to come down and run it, although Lester was the general partner and Paul was the promoter, he knew they had to have someone strong to run it in booking. Eddie gave me some stock, he also gave Jack Brisco and Buddy Colt some stock. He gave them small pieces and gave me 10% of the ownership. I started running that and we did very, very well. The whole time, Anne Gunkel was setting up an anti-trust suit which we were all very naive about. We didn't know what the hell anti-trust was. Ray wrestled in Savannah, Georgia, had a heart attack and died. Anne, her booker was Tom Renesto- he and Jody Hamilton were the Assasins- and they went on with Ray's plans. We were competitive and did very, very well. Jim Barnette wanted to come back from Australia and Eddie brought Jim in, and Jim bought Lester Welsh out. Jim came in and things were more stable. And we had Jerry Jarrett come in as booker. And I went to Florida in 1974, Eddie gave me ownership to come down there and book it. It was the hardest I ever worked in my life but it was the most rewarding. It was the largest bottom-line profit for the stockholders ever in the history of Florida. Eddie Graham was a genius, he had a lot of devils he fought- but we all do- but that period of time he was just such a supportive man and he stimulated my thought process and I learned so much. He used to say, "Why are you a college guy, come down here and work for me. I didn't even get to junior high." And I said, "I came to get my Ph.d." We used to laugh about it. Of course, that's where I made Dusty Rhodes the "American Dream" in 1974. We had Pak Song, we had Gary Hart- he was at his height, Buddy Colte, Mike Graham was a young babyface, Bobby Duncum, we brought in Dick Murdoch, Terry Funk, and we just literally tore Florida wide open. We really had it hot. And then I went home in 1975 and LeRoy and I bought Verne and Fritz out. We were partners until 1979. LeRoy was impossible, so we split up. In 1979, I formed Mid South and I took Louisiana and Mississippi, and he took Oklahoma and whatever else we had- it was only part of Missouri and part of Texas. And then after a couple years, I came back up here and bought LeRoy out of the old company. In Louisiana, the largest they'd ever done back around 1970 was $400,000 gross. And I took it to over two million doDars a year in a fairly small state. It was real successful and everything was going great. Vince decided on his new game plan, which basically I did the same thing. I tried to convince a huge New York Stock Exchange firm called Kenny National Services to do a very similar operation, but Vince was in the media areas, he had New York already, California was on its ass because the promoter really didn't do a very good job for many, many years. So Vince all of a sudden had that and he had a million dollar warchest. I totally disagree with him philosophically about wrestling, but without a doubt, he's one of the smartest in marketing and he knows how to position himself and his talent better than anybody in the business. He just took the thing to a completely different deal. I think he's hurt himself because in his rise to power, which is very intoxicating, he crushed a lot of people. I think he killed off the independents. And to me, the independents were very important. I tried to tell him, "Leave everybody there, by golly." Then you've got a changeover in talent when you want. Give them a bone when you come into their area and co-promote it with them. You can still take all the damn money and you've got the big nationwide operation." It would have been much healthier to keep everybody going, but he didn't see it that way. Naturally, he was in a position to dictate so he changed the very fiber of this business. As I said, he's a genius. Hitler was too, he destroyed Germany. So, the only guy that can stop Vince is Vince. And he's been doing that pretty good for the last couple of years. And the only person that can compete with him is Turner Broadcasting. But unfortunately, they haven't got a clue as to what the hell they're doing. And so they're no threat. And with their tremendous assets and their position in the media with their broadcast, they should just dictate wrestling worldwide. But they shoot themselves in the foot. They keep wanting to reduce wrestling to a business that's like producing widgets. They don't think it's unique. They think if they keep putting corporate people in charge that don't know what the hell they are doing. And they want to reduce it to their corporate understanding- it's got to walk like a corporation, talk like a corporation, and dress like a corporation. It will never work. So when they have no leadership like that... I mean, whan I got there in May, they said, "Be sure to hold the losses this year below $l.8 million. That was the big buy word. Bill Shaw said, "We can't lose over a million eight because that's what I promised the board." We lost $421,000. Quite a difference from that to $l.8 million. I said, "I'd like a letter of commendation to everybody in WCW for the fine job we've done." Well hell, they wouldn't write it because that would have acknowledged what a fabulous job had been done. Irregardless of what everybody said, we'd come in and cut some costs and we'd done some things. They were scared to death they were going to lose over $l.8 million and that's still even with a bunch of funny bookeeping that's not exactly kosher as far as showing a true operational picture. They were projecting a net operating loss in 1993 of $6 million. I turned in a budget that was going to make a quarter of a million dollars profit. But they want to sand bag it and they slowly, just slowly encroach upon everything you're doing. You have to justify why you're there or why you do something a certain way everyday, and they don't understand it anyway. So Vince is the only one that can stop himself. One thing that's so key for Vince is that Vince is in the wrestling business and he understands the wrestling business. His problems are pretty easy to identify. Without a doubt, he understands marketing, he understands positioning, and he understands the wrestling business, so he's the only one that can stop himself. - Booking Prediction Tourney: The SuperBrawl ballot was posted this week and entries have been coming in. Look for the results early next week. - 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 (istrain.health.ufl.edu) 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.