From: hekunze@barrow.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 05/17 Date: 1996/05/18 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 155381318 sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner) organization: University of Waterloo newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling Wrestling TidBits "Herb's Wrestling Stuff" is now listed in the "top 5% of all web sites" as selected by pointcom.com. To check the review, click on the point logo on the main page. Apologies for not having any in-line images this week. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ - ] I had the chance to see this week's WCW World Wide Wrestling last night. While the wrestling in the Dean Malenko vs. Shinjiro Otani title change was very good (and the Jushin Liger vs. Brad Armstrong match was good too), I just don't know how the cruiserweight division will play if the commentators aren't brought up to speed (or forced to improve) with the potential of the style. The first match above started with Dusty Rhodes making a "send me a tonic" joke as a play on Otani's name before pointing out that we'll see a lot more mat wrestling in the cruiserweight matches. Wonderful. To his credit, Tony Schiavone now calls German and dragon suplexes, but still has trouble keeping up with faster spots and his descriptions just crumble. In the Liger match, the on-screen graphic identified him as "Jushin' Liger", so I guess we should believe it's a nickname for "Jushing Liger" (like Flyin' Brian). They tried to convince us that Brad Armstrong, despite being well-known to long-time fans, was at the peak of his career now and that he'd had tremendous success for the past six months. Why bother to actually book those successes and re-build the guy when you can just say it and pretend it's the case? [ - ] Tonight's Ultimate Fighting Championship has been advertised in print to air in Canada on Viewer's Choice Canada. VCC has decided to drop the show after the Extreme Fighting Championship fiasco in Quebec a couple of weeks ago. No decision has been made as to whether the UFC ban will be permanent. The cable people I spoke with were a little hesitant to talk about things. [ - ] WCW has Slamboree on Sunday. Line-up has: * Battle Bowl, featuring a "blind draw" 16-man tag tournament with the winning teams then entering a Battle Royal for a the Battle Bowl ring and a shot at the WCW Title. Announced matches are: o Hawk & Booker T vs. Animal & Lex Luger o Kevin Sullivan & Chris Benoit vs. Public Enemy o Stevie Ray & Bubba Rogers vs. Scott Norton & Ice Train o Alex Wright & Disco Inferno vs. Dick Slater & Bobby Eaton o Steve Regal & Dave Taylor vs. V.K. Wallstreet & Jim Duggan o Booty Man & Rick Steiner vs. Craig Pittman & Scott Steiner o Ric Flair & Randy Savage vs. Eddy Guerrero & Arn Anderson o Barbarian & Diamond Dallas Page vs. Meng & Hugh Morrus * No Hulk Hogan * Sting vs. Giant * Konnan vs. Jushin Liger for the US Title * Dean Malenko vs. Brad Armstrong for the Cruiserweight title The cruiserweight match may be bumped to a later PPV. Hopefully, WCW will run at least one of the above matches on the free Main Event before the PPV. Otherwise time constraints may hurt the potentially good matches. There is much talk that Konnan will drop the title to Liger who will in turn drop it to Eddy Guerrero. [ - ] Koji Kanemoto has had to drop out of the upcoming Top of The Super Junior tournament due to injury. [ - ] Bobby Eaton will be ousted from the Blue Bloods and Steve Regal & Dave Taylor will apparently become the team. [ - ] The Observer reports that Japanese opinion of the New Japan Tokyo Dome show on 04/29 labelled the only two negatives as the Randy Savage vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan match and the Lex Luger vs. Masa Chono match. "Luger-Chono was said to have stunk up the building with some blown spots that were embarrassing. Luger was described as `the model of everthing that doesn't get over in Japan.' Savage got a big pop coming out but was slow and unimpressive during the match and the fans booed the match. The general concensus was that the once-great Savage is no good any more and all of his repertoire that's left is the music, the costume and saying `Oh Yeah!'" [ - ] Did you know that Madusa Miceli (Alundra Blayze) was going to marry one of the Harris Twins (Bruise Brothers, Brothers Blu)? There will be a Madusa vs. Akira Hokuto match on an upcoming WCW World Wide show. [ - ] Also at the World Wide Wrestling tapings: Diamond Dallas Page pinned Dave Taylor & Kensuke Sasaki in separate matches, Mike Enos debuted as Dick Slater's tag partner forming the team Down & Dirty (since Mike is definitely down on his luck getting that spot), and Big Bubba Rogers became a biker. [ - ] The Observer reports "1-2-3 Kid will be out of action for a while. He showed up in no condition to work for the Superstars taping and will be out of action for several weeks. He may have suffered yet another concussion, which would be around No. 13, during the European tour, and when the numbers get that high, it's very serious business because the brain just can't take that many concussions without damage. There is serious concern about his future." [ - ] [RAW] beat [Nitro] on 05/06 with a 4.1 rating (5.2 share) against a 1.9 rating (3.8 share). It's important to note that Nitro was on earlier than usual. The Monday ratings show a pretty even battle to date. [ - ] The PPV buy rates of the past six months (year or so) show that the WWF has an average buy rate of 0.75 (0.75) and average gross of $1.94-million ($1.74-million), while WCW has an average buy rate of 0.55 (0.57) and average gross of $1.59-million ($1.59-million). The details are an interesting read. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House] on 05/26/96. [ - ] The World Wrestling Peace Festival takes place in Los Angeles on 06/01/96. New Japan, WCW, AAA, EMLL, and others are going to put on a joint card featuring: * Antonio Inoki & Dan Severn vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Oleg Taktarov * Chris Benoit vs. Alex Wright * Giant vs. Sting * Lex Luger vs. Masa Saito * Akira Hoktuo & Lola Gonzales vs. Bull Nakano & Neftali * Dos Caras & Hector Garza vs. Gran Markus Jr. & Dr. Wagner Jr. * Octagon & El Ultimo Dragon vs. Heavy Metal & Psicosis * Atlantis & El Hijo del Santo vs. Silver King & Negro Casas * Konnan & Perro Aguayo vs. Cibernetico & Pierroth Jr. * Great Sasuke vs. Jushin Liger [ - ] WCW has Great American Bash on 06/16/96. [ - ] The WWF has King of The Ring on 06/23/96. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House] on 07/21/96. [ - ] WCW has Quake At The Lake on 07/07/96. [ - ] WCW has a PPV on 08/11/96. [ - ] WCW has Clash of Champions XXXIII on 08/14/96. [ - ] The WWF has SummerSlam on 08/18/96. [ - ] WCW has Fall Brawl 09/15/96. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House] on 09/22/96. [ - ] WCW has Halloween Havoc 10/27/96 from Caeser's Palace. It will be an outdoor show. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House] on 10/20/96. [ - ] The WWF has Survivor Series on 11/17/96. [ - ] WCW has World War III 11/24/96. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House] on 12/15/96. [ - ] WCW has Starrcade on 12/29/96. [ - ] WWW: My home page is at http://barrow.uwaterloo.ca/~hekunze. The wrestling portion includes this post, tape lists, awards history, Japanese wrestling stuff, and other things. The tape list has recently been updated and will hopefully get another update this weekend. A lot of stuff accumulated at the end of this past term. [ - ] 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. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Click here to return. E-mail: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca