- Hulk Hogan retained the WCW Title by DQ against Vader on SuperBrawl Sunday when Ric Flair stormed the ring. After a ref bump, Vader had Hogan pinned and an irate Flair at ringside hit the ring to do a mock 3 count. Vader was by far the star of the show and the wrestling PPV product was noticeably worse than last year at this time. The Flair & Vader vs. Hogan & co. feud could actually be quite good and this wasn't a bad beginning for the story line. - There's still talk that Jesse Ventura will be talked back into the role of Monday Night RAW colour commentator. In the mean time, there's talk that the interim weeks of colour commentary will be fielded by a various folks from Jerry Lawler down to Duke Droese. - According to the Observer, WCW will run 9 PPVs and 2 Clashes in 1995, and maybe go to 10 or 11 PPVs in 1996. Prices are going to increase to $27.50 by May which makes this idea a pretty expensive experiment for loyal fans. The TV product is sure to become even more devoted to pushing the next PPV since it will only ever be one month away. - There's continuued talk that Rick Rude would like to return to WCW. The Steiners were originally going to debut in an interview at SuperBrawl, but they will only come in to immediately get a tag title feud and Harlem Heat hasn't been built up to that level yet. We can expect to see the Heat pushed like mad for the next few months to set up the Steiners' return. - 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 (with Roddy Piper) vs. Shawn Michaels (with Sid Vicious) for the WWF Title * Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Lawrence Taylor * Undertaker vs. King Kong Bundy * Bret Hart vs. Bob Backlund Although it's apparently true that one of the little boys from "Home Improvement" (not sure which, but it isn't Tim Allen) will be at WrestleMania, the rumour that Dink will shove him at ringside to set up a match at King of The Ring are unsubstantiated. - 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 - Here's the second portion of the interview with Bill Watts from John Clark's wonderful Wrestling Flyer. This interview was printed in the 04/24/93 issue. Clark: What are a few of your greatest experiences during your life? Watts: The birth of my children and to live vicariously in them. Oh, there's a lot of big experiences. The ones I think I relate to business wise was naturally to at such a young age go to New York City and be successful, to sell out the Garden like that. I think we sold it out like three or four times. Also to sell out the Cow Palace in San Francisco, the HIC in Honolulu. You start building a confidence that you knew what you were doing. Verne Gagne, we were both babyfaces, decided to book us against each other in Minneapolis at the big building there and it drew a huge gate. I thought it wouldn't draw with two babyface wrestlers against each other. There's been so many exciting times. One of the most exciting times for me was whan Dusty Rhodes truly started believing he was the "American Dream." I'll never forget it. It was at an interview session at the Sportatorium in Tampa, Florida. He cut an interview where I knew he was where I was trying to get him to be. Goose-bumps broke out on my arm, just went right down my arm. I knew I had created a superstar. But he had all of it, it was just a point of guiding him and encouraging him and conjoling him. Whan I went to WCW, they wanted me to fire Dusty. I said, "Well wait a minute, I want to see where his head's at, he's one of the most creative men in the business. All he needs is some guidance to force him to follow through and to have some continuity. And we were getting all those systems in place because Dusty's a fabulous guy. He loves the business and he's very creative. But whan you're under the gun like that, sometimes it gets so big and there was so much television. Gosh, if you had seen what we produced in October, November and December in television, pay-per-views, Clashes and extra television hours, its mind-boggling. The staff that writes Roseanne and all the top NBC shows couldn't do that, and we produced all that stuff. It's stupid, it is so stupid. In one of my first two weeks there. I presented a game plan to succeed for WCW, and they rejected it because they were afraid to go that strong. To me it was simple, you took WCW and you put it head up with WWF, make it run aside. You run our Clash of the Champions the night they run their pay-per-views and you run our pay-per-views right up against the night they air their big cable deals. To give the people a choice. They were scared to death of that. Everything you'd come up with that would be a concept for them, they'd reject it. Do you realize that I made the first black world's heavyweight champion in the history of the business with a major operation. And I know I've heard the guys say Iceman Parsons was for Dallas. Shit, Dallas was a regional thing just like mine was. There's never been a major worldwide organization like the NWA, WWF, or WCW that's had a black world champion. So I made Ron Simmons the world's champion, he's got all the credentials in the world. And we thought with Turner Broadcasting we ought to be able to get Simmons in Ted Turner's box at the Braves games which is picked up nationwide on TV every time they play a game. Shit, we couldn't do that. Would I be able to get him on the sideline of the Atlanta Falcons? Hell, they've got every country western singer and even a guy named Zeus who played some bit part in a movie, was down there with the Buffalo Bills playing. We couldn't do that. We thought we could get him with the Atlanta Hawks right in the good seats where the crowd would pick him up. We couldn't do that. We figured we could get him on Larry King Live. Vince was on there. We couldn't do that. Nothing on CNN. Do you realize TBS just produced a big documentary on the history of Harley Davidsons? They had James Caan, they had the guy that played J.R. Ewing on Dallas, all these different stars talking about their Harley experiences. There's nobody that rides Harleys anymore than the wrestlers for WCW. Sting is a big Harley rider, Barry Windham is a big Harley rider. I am too. Not one wrestler in the show. So here you have all this stuff that could be put together to build wrestling and you can't get shit, you can't get any cooperation at all. The head of TBS Sports doesn't particularly care for wrestling, in my opinion. Ric Flair told me a story one time that when he was on the sidelines when Steve Spurior was the coach, because he's a friend of Spurior's, the TBS crew was shooting the game and the crew told him later that when they picked him up on the sidelines, that the head of TBS Sports said, "Don't pick him up. I don't want to show a wrestler on our broadcast."' How stupid can you be? We couldn't get shit for Ron Simmons. Bobby Bowden did a nationwide uplink before our pay-per-view to help promote Ron Simmons. He took a day of his holiday and did it. They retired his number at Florida State. Bobby Bowden did everything for Ron Simmons but TBS didn't do shit for him. Here's how stupid they are- you do a three hour pay-per-view, two hours and fifty minutes. When they produced it on cassette they want to cut it down to two hours. I said, "How dumb can you be?" Who would go buy a movie with a third of it gone? See what I mean, they're penny wise and dollar foolish. Vince doesn't do that and he's the best marketer in the world. I said, "You've got to copy Vince's strengths and you've got to ignore his weaknesses." But they wouldn't do it. Did you ever go to the top rental deals in Atlanta? None of WCW's shit is on the shelves, all of Vince's stuff is on the shelves. "It costs more to do a three hour tape. Well, they don't want three hour rentals." Well, they damn sure have all of Vince's three hour rentals. You see what I mean, it was inane. One hand doesn't know what the other one is doing. They've got a director of marketing there, the only thing that was brought to me to get me to pass it on the market was a game, with no specified advantage to it except some percentage of something. It was a very nefarions deal and they wanted me to make a wrestler "The Master of the Snapping Hold." What wrestler would want that laid on him? One hand doesn't know what the other is doing. Who did they shit on when I resigned? Jim Ross, probably the most valuable guy at WCW. A guy, who to me is the best commentator in the business. A guy who during one pay-per-view passed a kidney stone and never left the booth. He busted his ass. He lives, eats, breathes it, contributes to the booking mettings. His 900 line did $500000 a year, he wrote Missy did about $200000 a year. And they take him off the air. And he's got a radio show on WSB that's clear-channeled, it reachs forty states or something that, it's the top sports show. Brother I'm te1ling you, the guy that made that decision, and I know who it is, you do too, but we won't call it, the guy wouldn't have enough brains to piss out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel. But he's a very, very powerful person at Turner Broadcasting, so that's what you get into. It's just like when we met one time with the executives of TBS, they wanted more programming. And I said, "Let's pull some of the old, great matches out. We can't produce anymore with the number of guys we have. We've mixed it so many ways that nobody gives a shit anyway." Hell, when I got there every star we had had been a star in 1987. That's the same problem Vince has got, it's stale. People are crying for new talent. But it takes time to develop new talent when your system has been shut down. They said, "No, don't do it." I said, "We're going to do it anyway." Ross and I pulled out a series on Ric Flair that rebuilt the NWA title. Because after the Chono-Rude match in Phily, it stunk the joint out. We wanted to rebuild the prestige. We pulled the one where Steamboat beat him and the one where he beat Steamboat and all that. It got such a rating that the TBS guys then said, "We want Ric Flair on every week." Really for me, it was a deal saying, "Hey Ric, we've ot a place for you here. We'd like to see you come back." Because no matter what anybody says, I think Ric Flair because of his attitude always has the best match on the card. I think Ric Flair has two or three years of great performance left in the ring and then he can be a great broadcaster. That's one of the things that depressed Flair, because everybody else had put matches on there of of him getting killed. It caused such a rift with some of our talent that's never drawn any money, and they were mad because we put Flair on. I mean, most of these guys talk about the money they've drawn... I got a kick out of one guy that's one of WCW's stars. "Well, I drew all this money for Vince and he didn't pay me right, so I quit." And I thought, "You did, huh?" When Vince McMahon was drawing money, anybody he put against Hogan drew money, anybody he put on the card drew money. It was his operation that was drawing the money. When a wrestler has never figured a program, an angle, or a finish comes and tells me he draws money, I look at him and think, "Boy, I don't know what shit you'veyou're smoking but it sure is making your head big." It's just like when I got there, they wanted a clean program, so did the public. I instituted the steroid testing on November 11, because if you remember by the Havoc I had two guys that I lost to personal problems. So I wanted drug testing. We tested on November 11. We were supposed to have a drug program. We'd already met with a real good law firm who was drawing a real comprehensive, thorough drug program up. It was supposed to be ready by the test. You probably know of how many guys tested positive on it, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who was on roids. You also know who refused to take the test. In February, there was still no written program. So then I really raised hell. They got the program written immediately because it was all ready, and we had to do was sign off on it. It was supposed to be in place February 15. Of course, I resigned on the tenth and they've never seen it. For me, if you were positive, we were going to get rid of you. You've either got to have a drug program or not. But see, some people say, "We have a no smoking program at Turner Broadcasting." Of course, that means, "Just don't smoke in front of me." To me, that's hypocritical. So here's the funny thing, the three things that all the sheets were addressing when I got there were the three things I acted on. The funny thing is, as soon as I'd signed Flair, they started knocking the fact that Flair couldn't even help us. They dropped the roid issue because we started complying, we faced it and we were addressing it. It's still a joke with the WWF. They all say how tough the policy is there. I guarantee it's selective. It seemed like somebody said Paul E. DanSoronsly said I was anti-Semetic. I wasn't anti-Semetic. I didn't even know he was Jewish when I went there. I've never been anti-Semetic. I believe in God and I read the Bible. I'm profane and I'm a lot of bad things, but I do believe in God and I do believe in the Bible. It says if you curse a Jew that you are cursed of God, so I would never be anti-Semetic because it's against God's word. I'm not anti-Black. I have my opinions about a lot of things. And then there's people that denigrate and dilute and try to scare you into not having an opinion. And all of that stuff. I don't think that the people that make the decisions at Turaer Broadcasting ever supported me philosophically, because they don't understand it. So, they didn't support it. Therefore, I think that I was the guy they were in so many ways told to hire. So they had to discredit me and the only way to do it was to sand bag me. Nobody that I wanted to fire corporately at WCW could I fire. I went on record right off wanting to remove several people that were anti what we were doing. You couldn't fire them. Well, if you've got people that you want to get out of there and tou know they're not foing anything and they know they're not, and they know you don't like them, what does that do? They turn against you. So then, they're crying and knocking you all the time so the guy that's up in the North Tower is listening to them, all my detractors. He said, "Well, you intimidate people." Yeah, I intimidate people when they're not doing their job. He said, "You've got a dressing room mentality." Who do you think I'm working with, rocket scientists? What do you think they're used to? Here you've got a bunch of people that hadn't been doing their job and then collecting all this damn money, and I'm trying to make them go to work. I mean, the mess the syndication is in is so stupid. Why would you pay Turner Programming Servies to syndicate your shows, you can't control what they do, and most of them don't like wrestling. And it's not the right image, they'd rather syndicate CNN or the Wonder Years or the movie packages or the cartoon network, not wrestling. They think all wrestling is wrestling, they don't even understand the difference and don't care to learn. They got paid $600000 last year to syndicate our programs and then it goes to $1.2 million this year. And they've lost 30% of our network, we're under-delivering unbelievably. Here's what they say- "The ratings are down and we can't sell it." Shit, the ratings were down before I got there, the difference was, they also lost the key stations because they didn't maintain and service the relationship at the station. So WCW has to have its own syndicator, a very strong person that answers to WCW and that has wrestling as their only interest. It's a twelve million dollar income stream that's under-delivering. But, they don't want to do that. They want to do it their own way or they go hire some idiot who should never be hired or they go hire somebody that's been fired in the past or something like that. Not the right people. So you see what I mean, they say, "Well, you're running it, but we're going to tell you what you can and can't do, and we really don't like what you're doing. We don't believe in what you're doing." Let me tell you, no matter what Vince was doing promotionally, I would go in a different direction to give the viewing fan an alternative. Otherwise, you're just a copy of him. But certainly, the things he does well marketing wise and positioning wise, we should emulate. But we didn't and they don't. And then they hire a guy to be in charge of television production who has never produced a show in his life, who was a fill-in for another wrestling promotion because their top announcer was hired by the WWF. And this guy sells them a bill of goods on what he'd going to do for wrestling. Well, check their ratings since I've gone. Since October we didn't have below a 2.0 on WCW Saturday and it was averaging a 2.6 for eight weeks, and then I think it did a 2.8 and a 2.7 or something like that. Then it did a 3.1 the Saturday after the last pay-per-view because everybody knew Flair would be there. I'm just assuming and I'll guarantee you it's probably fallen since then. Somebody told me the other day they had a production setup at Center Stage with no truck. That's all that finger pointing. We wanted to spend money ever since I went there to improve the graphics packages and change the sets on all the shows. We were told, "No, you've got to cut costs, you can't spend any of this money." Kip Frey spent more money on one set than we wanted to spend on all of them. But then they were going to go hire a television production guy and let him spend the money. And then they said we hadn't had any ideas. We've had all those ideas, everything I did there I documented my opinions on and everything else for whatever it's worth. But, it was ignored. I think that WCW is positioned to fail. I think Ted Turner realizes the value of wrestling, he knows what wrestling has done for his station. It was what made it a superstation, it was the first program that had over 100000 homes watching it, and he understands it. But he is so insulated and he's so busy with other things and it's so minor to him and he turns it over constantly to people who do not understand it and they're more concerned with how you dress and how you talk than what the hell you're doing. - Booking Prediction Tourney: The "WCW Uncensored" ballot will be posted in a few weeks, about a week before the PPV. - 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.