From: hekunze@barrow.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 09/05 Date: 1996/09/05 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 178863336 sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner) organization: University of Waterloo newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling [Wrestling TidBits] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picture of the Week This week's picture is a collage of the Best of the Super Junior match between Black Tiger and Dean Malenko from 06/01/96. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Sunny] [ - ] Juventud Guerrera's debut on Nitro two weeks back (which aired in Southern Ontario this past Saturday) was reasonably spectacular, with Billy Kidman also looking great. Tony Schiavone showed more improvement than I thought he had in him. I'm looking forward to the Mike Tenay run on Nitro commentary. Juventud worked four times at the recent Disney tapings, beating Hardwork Bobby Walker, losing to Konnan, and losing twice to Rey Misterio Jr. (one of the these was a squash, but the other was apparently as good as you'd expect). [ - ] The AAA minis will likely work the 09/16 Nitro. [ - ] WCW has Fall Brawl 09/15/96. Tentative line-up has: * Ric Flair & Arn Anderson & Sting & Lex Luger vs. Hulk Hogan & the man formerly known as Razor Ramon & the man formerly known as Diesel & the man formerly known as 1-2-3 Kid in a War Games match * Giant vs. Randy Savage * Harlem Heat vs. Steiners for the WCW Tag Titles * Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Super Calo for the WCW Cruiserweight Title * Konnan vs. Juventud Guerrera for the Mexican Title * Chris Benoit vs. Chris Jericho * Diamond Dallas Page vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. * Scott Norton vs. Ice Train in a submission match It's unclear if the Giant's recent jump to the NWO will alter the top two matches above. Dusty Rhodes is trying to position himself as the coach of the WCW team in the feud with the NWO. The tag title match has been switched from the Nasty Boys to the Steiners challenging Harlem Heat. [ - ] According to the Observer, "there is another Outsider on the booking sheet starting on 09/28 in Columbus, OH, as Outsider #4 (assumed to be [Sean] Waltman) faces Jim Powers and #5 teams with Hall & Nash vs. Flair & Anderson & Benoit. I don't believe Jeff Jarrett is free for another week. Davey Boy Smith's original contract was up this week and I hadn't heard that he had officially signed but he's certainly being pushed in WWF as if he's in their long term plans since they seem to be grooming him for the tag team title [he has re-signed]. Whoever #5 is had to be a big name because he's going to work a singles program with Sting." [Sable] [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House] on 09/22/96. Tentative line-up has: * Shawn Michaels vs. Mankind for the WWF Title * Faarooq Asad vs. Marc Mero in the IC Tourney final * Smoking Gunns vs. Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith for the Tag Titles * Undertaker vs. Goldust in a match that must end by pinfall * Mark Henry vs. Jerry Lawler * Jim Cornette vs. Jose Lothario It's expected that Mero will win the IC Title. [ - ] Everybody is talking about Bret Hart's future. Since he doesn't have a contract with any promotion right now, he is free to go wherever he please. It seems apparent that the WWF is anticipating his return, since they have been mentioning him in promos and interviews. It would appear that the plan is to have him work against Steve Austin (Austin is already deriding him in interviews), and the Observer suggests that Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart is the plan for WrestleMania. However, despite Eric Bischoff dismissing questions about Bret Hart, WCW is also talking to him about coming in. Hart wants to set himself up for a career after wrestling and there's talk that going to WCW, with the connections of Turner and Hogan, would be a better strategic move. In either case, Hart can seemingly write his own ticket if he desires. [ - ] I found the time this past week to catch up on a little Japanese TV. While several of the New Japan Jr. Heavyweight matches (from the Best of the Super Junior III and the Skydiving J) were excellent, the highlight for me was the Wild Pegasus (Chris Benoit) vs. Black Tiger (Eddy Guerrero) match. They aired the last 9:00 or so of the 20:00 match and it was great. The first several minutes had Benoit work off of a front facelock. Guerrero would make a break, try something, and wind up back in the facelock. Sounds boring, right? The reaction of the fans was incredible. Each time Benoit slapped the facelock back on, they were a little louder. The wrestlers expertly built the crowd. In the end, and several spectacular moves later, Guerrero went over. Anybody wondering about criticisms of matches filled with high spots need only see this match to understand what a match with great spots and great psychology looks like. For some reason this also brings to mind the women's gymnastics competition that aired on FOX on Tuesday night. The idea was to take the US women's team and face them against a composite team featuring strong performers from other countries; unfortunately, the idea seemed to fall flat, since the final entrant on the opposition team was a Canadian athlete from nearby Cambridge, ON, that was not quite at the same level of her team mates (she had placed 28th in the Olympic overall ratings). The show, offensively titled "USA vs. the world," featured some fine performances, but the same disparity in the depth of the performances as in high spot filled wrestling matches was apparent. Svetlana Boginskaya and her former Russian counterparts had the moves and the style, experience, legitimate dance skills, etc., clearly outclassing their own team mates (from China & Canada) and the US team. [ - ] The Observer reports on Glacier, who debuted at the recent WCW Disney tapings: "He looked so-so, wearing a ring outfit that was described as similar to the Max Moon gimmick in the WWF. He mainly does kick boxing moves (this is Bischoff's idea since he comes from a kick boxing background) and is designed to attract young kids. They taped a match with regular lighting, then tried out a gimmick where all the ring lights were turned down and they wrestling in blue lighting with the gimmick that Glacier has super powers, but since his blood runs cold and his name is Glacier, that his weakness is the lights so his matches must be done in blue light or he loses his powers. Hey, I'm not coming up with these scripts, just reporting them. He missed his finish both times." Glacier will work with Big Bubba at house shows. [Mima Shimoda] [ - ] Regarding the All Japan Women match at the ECW Arena on 12/13, the Observer writes, "The deal with the Japanese women is that All Japan women is putting together a vacation package where Manami Toyota, Toshiyo Yamada, Etsuko Mita, and Mima Shimoda will go with fans on a December vacation to New York. They did something like this on a beach vacation last year with Takako Inoue and others, and they like to have them do one wrestling show as part of the package, so they were looking for an area indie to do their tag match and the 12/13 ECW date at the Arena fit into the schedule, so it's not like it's any political deal of working against WWF or WCW, who they were working with last year, although WCW now appears to be working with Gaea and JWP as opposed to AJW and WWF appears to have no interest in womens wrestling." [ - ] Also from the WCW tapings, * Konnan teamed with Kevin Sullivan, leading to the conclusion that he'll join the Dungeon of Doom, and * Harlem Heat worked without Sherri or Colonel Parker. [ - ] [Nitro] ran unopposed on 08/26 with a 4.3 rating (7.2 share). Nitro's two hour broadcast rating is averaged. Following ten consecutive weeks of beating the WWF's Monday Night RAW, this marked WCW's highest rating (and share) since its inception. One cannot simply credit RAW's absence for Nitro's success since Nitro drew exceptionally well in its first hour, which has always run unopposed and theoretically could attract cross-over viewers, setting a record for the hourly breakdowns as well. It would appear that NWO angle is clicking. The detailed ratings are a click away. [ - ] The PPV buy rates of the past six month (year or so) show that the WWF has an average buy rate of 0.71 (0.67) and average gross of $1.95-million ($1.71-million), while WCW has an average buy rate of 0.60 (0.54) and average gross of $1.82-million ($1.61-million). The details are an interesting read. [Kimberly] [ - ] WCW has Halloween Havoc 10/27/96. Tentative line-up has: * Sting & Lex Luger & Randy Savage & Giant vs. Hulk Hogan & the man formerly known as Razor Ramon & the man formerly known as Diesel & the man formerly known as 1-2-3 Kid in a War Games match * Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Dean Malenko for the Cruiserweight title in a two out of three falls match. This is the first show that Jeff Jarrett can work. [ - ] 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. The Observer reports that there are very serious talks about doing the show live from Tokyo. [ - ] 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. [ - ] 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. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to: Masaki Aso. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Click here to return. E-mail: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca