From: hekunze@barrow.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 09/26 Date: 1996/09/27 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 185680258 sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner) organization: University of Waterloo newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling [Wrestling TidBits] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Sunny ] The WWF had [In Your House] on Sunday. I found the majority of the show to be pretty bad, but it was saved by a tremendous main event. Moving the IC Title tournament final match from the PPV to the subsequent Monday Night RAW killed the undercard of the show and exposed the lack of depth in the company right now. The absence of Marc Mero and Steve Austin was very noticeable and the undercard ached for a match of the quality that these guys routinely deliver. As it was, the Smoking Gunns' title loss to Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith was okay, but certainly not near what these teams could do, and, considering that we all knew going in that this was the title change, you'd expect Smith & Hart would really work. Everything else on the undercard was worse than this, but they at least kept the terrible (non-)matches very short. Shawn Michaels vs. Mankind was a great match (****1/4), but I'd still easily place it behind the Psicosis vs. Rey Misterio Jr. match from WCW's Bash at the Beach (****3/4) and even the somewhat disappointing Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Juventud Guerrera 03/09 ECW Arena match (****1/2, two out of three falls, but only 15 minutes long). On an international scale, there have been quite a few matches from All Japan, New Japan, and All Japan Women, that I'd place above this match as well, so, in the end, it will have trouble getting into my "Top 15" for the year. [ - ] On the live Monday Night RAW this week, Mero went on to win the IC Title in his biggest career win to date, delivering a stellar performance against a reasonably lame Farooq (Ron Simmons), but still making it a good match. This made his absence the previous night even more obvious. The other key event on the show saw Jim Ross deliver his much awaited heel turn, delivering a "shoot" interview that even put the heroes of that genre, Shane Douglas and Brian Pillman, to shame. It says something when Jim Ross and Nick Patrick can deliver more cogent interviews than the great majority of the wrestlers in their promotions. He ended up bringing out the fake Razor Ramon. The doppelgangers will continue to surface in the WWF, with the fake Diesel and the fake Double J in upcoming weeks, as Vince tries to take control of his character gimmicks that are helping the NWA angle in WCW. I bet he's kicking himself over letting Jeff Jarrett work under his real name. The quote of the evening occurred during the IC Title match when Sable and Sunny were starting to tease a fight with each other and special referee Pat Patterson went to ringside to break it up. With that threesome in the shot, one of the announcers said, "The queens of the WWF are at ringside," or something to that effect. [ - ] Of course, there is a lot of excitement in r.s.p-w over the appearance of several ECW wrestlers at Sunday's In Your House and on Monday's live RAW. On Sunday, Sandman, Tommy Dreamer, and Paul E. Dangerously appeared at ringside and caused a bit of a ruckus, with Sandman spitting beer on Savio Vega. Once again, Paul broke kayfabe by appearing with and holding back Sandman and Dreamer, guys that he's not tied too in ECW storylines. No doubt, the great majority of people watching had no clue who these guys were anyhow, so it wasn't a major transgression. On Monday night, from the television audience's standpoint, Taz appeared at ringside, between the ring and the guard rail carrying a pro-ECW sign; they could have at least shown him climb over the guard rail, since his appearance as an "outsider" comes off poorly without it. In both cases, Vince McMahon made mention of a a small, local promotion in Phildelphia and suggested that the wrestlers were trying to make a name for themselves at the WWF's expense. This leads to much musing over a potential WWF and ECW talent arrangement. Are the two promotions going to run an invasion angles of their own? Rumour has it that the ECW guys will continue to appear on the live RAWs, since "smart" fans would figure out the thing was a work if the antics of "outsiders" appeared on taped shows. I suppose this could build to a Survivor Series match and maybe the involvement of the ECW guys in the Royal Rumble, but is it going to be something that becomes the focus of the promotion? You've got to think "no." ECW, despite all of the praise and all of the emotional fans that support it, is a totally unproven, small, local promotion that manages to draw its 1000-or-so regular fans to a monthly Arena card in Philly. None of the guys in the promotion have a record of being able to draw money in North America; there are no names that are recognizable as top-flight stars to the casual North American fan. I think that's part of its appeal to its diehard fans, actually. The only exception that could maybe be argued is Steve Williams, who has appeared at the Arena via All Japan. The WWF and WCW together draw 4-million fans to their TV sets on Monday Night to watch RAW and Nitro. A very small portion of that viewing audience actually orders the PPV shows, so both promotions are (or should be) trying to draw more of those TV-watching fans to order. WCW decided to run an angle involving two wrestlers that are recognizable to the current WWF audience (Scott Hall & Kevin Nash) along with the most recognizable wrestler ever in North America (Hulk Hogan). The angle received positive reviews from many people in the newsgroup, but most importantly boosted buys a bit, but perhaps not as much as one might expect. If the WWF & ECW agreement extends to an interpromotional angle of some sort, we'll see the WWF try to run an angle with a promotion filled with wrestlers that are for the greatest part not recognizable at all to a large majority of the viewers they get on Monday night (the exceptions are Shane Douglas, who may be remembered by WWF fans and can certainly be built up again based on his previous run with the WWF, and perhaps Steve Williams, who I just think could be put over very quickly, but Williams is hardly a core regular of ECW). The core of the ECW promotion - Sandman, Raven, Sabu, Taz, Eliminators, Raven, Dudleys, Rob van Damme, etc. -, excluding Douglas, are not recognizable and have never shown any drawing power on a national scale. Already, Vince has referred to ECW as a "local promotion" a few times. That's not a good sign. No matter how an angle is spun, can anybody honestly think that Vince is going to let his New Generation be seen as being on the same level as a bunch of "unknown" "local promotion" wrestlers? It doesn't elevate the WWF, so why would Vince do it? He has no reason to ECW's welfare at heart, if that welfare isn't also his own. There is so much risk attached to putting ECW guys over as being equal to WWF guys, with the vague hope that a PPV featuring interpromotional matches might just draw better than the current stuff, it's bad business to try it. Vince does very little bad business. With that in mind, it's doubtful that Vince is going to start making table bumps, cane shots, and blood a regular event in the promotion. He already feels nervous enough to run a "Graphic Violence" before the TV shows as they are now! He'd shoot himself in the foot if he turned the promotion into a blood and gore show. Whatever boost he might get from vampire fans would be beaten by the losses in reduced exposure on TV and on PPV. In the end, we'll have to wait and see how things develop. There is the potential for some great matches, strangely enough, IMO, not involving the majority of guys that are in the core list above, but really involving some of the All Japan Americans that ECW has used recently. I, for one, could care less about a Godwinns vs. Dudleys feud, for example. So far, the appearance of the ECW guys has fallen flat, with the RAW episode after IYH not popping a big rating, even though the live RAW usually does do better: fans don't know these guys from a hole in the wall. If this becomes a major angle that doesn't boost business even though it gives a few people on the internet an orgasm, it's still a failure. A strange part of all of this is that ECW has been built on talking trash about WCW and the WWF. Joey Styles and the fans have routinely dogged those promotions. The fans have chanted "You sold out!" at guys that have performed insane stunts for them for a long time before finally getting a shot at real money in one of the "big two," so one has to wonder how they will react to Paul Heyman working an angle with the WWF, especially if that angle leads to the WWF wrestlers defeating the ECW wrestlers at some point. We're told they are the "smartest" fans in the world; let's see if they are smart enough to be unhypocritcal. [ - ] The Observer reports that a "woman called the WCW office last week complaining because her five year old had spray painted NWO on her one year old." [ - ] New Japan's annual Super Grade Tag League tournament begins on 10/12 with Masahiro Chono & Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Riki Choshu & Kensuke Sasaki, Shinya Hashimoto & Scott Norton, Satoshi Kojima & Kurosawa, Tatsumi Fujinami & Shiro Koshinaka, Rick Steiner & ?, Keiji Muto & ?, and Steve Regal & Dave Taylor. [ - ] The AWF Warriors of Wrestling TV show started this past weekend. It was a pretty poor show, but the crowd is really hot. Reports are that ECW's Kimona will surface here as a ring girl who eventually gets involved. In my neck of the woods, we can see the show on Buffalo TV station WIVB (channel 4, CBS affiliate) at 1:00am on the weekend. [ - ] [Nitro] beat [RAW] on 09/16 with a 3.6 rating (5.3 share) against a 2.1 rating (3.0 share). Nitro's two hour broadcast rating is averaged. 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. [ - ] WCW has Halloween Havoc 10/27/96. Tentative line-up has: * Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage for the WCW Title * Harlem Heat vs. Scott Hall & Kevin Nash for the Tag Titles * Ric Flair vs. Giant for the US Title * Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Dean Malenko for the Cruiserweight title in a two out of three falls match. * Jushin Liger vs. El Ultimo Dragon for the eight unified Jr. Titles * Lex Luger vs. Arn Anderson * Diamond Dallas Page vs. Eddy Guerrero [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House] on 10/20/96. This show doesn't feature Shawn Michaels, so it is anticipated that he will drop the title before this show, the new champion will get one defence here, and then Michaels will regain the belt on one of the next two shows. Tentative line-up has: * Vader vs. Sid * Undertaker vs. Mankind in a buried alive match, where the loser is the person dumped into a grave on the set (reminiscent of the Cactus Jack vs. Vader match at Halloween Havoc years back) [ - ] The WWF has Survivor Series on 11/17/96. [ - ] WCW has World War III 11/24/96. Current plan is to have a 60-man three-ring battle royal as they did last year, with Hulk Hogan being stripped of the title and the winner of the match becoming champion. There is talk that they'll vacate the title every year and the winner of this match become new champion. Yet another way for somebody to lose his title without losing face, sigh. And this match is always promoted as being the opportunity for anybody to win; it sort of sucks that ability plays such a small role in who has the title. It weakens the title. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House] on 12/15/96. [ - ] WCW has Starrcade on 12/29/96. The show will be from Nashville. [ - ] 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