From: hekunze@barrow.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 10/03 Date: 1996/10/04 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 187513638 sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner) organization: University of Waterloo newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling [Wrestling TidBits] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Shiryu ] The WWF's [In Yout House ] was reviewed in this past week's Observer. In much agreement with my write-up last week, Dave Meltzer gave the following ratings: Savio Vega vs. Justin Bradshaw in a strap match *1/4 Jim Cornette vs. Jose Lothario -* Smoking Gunns vs. Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith for the Tag Titles **1/4 Mark Henry vs. Jerry Lawler DUD Undertaker vs. Goldust in a match that must end by pinfall *1/2 Shawn Michaels vs. Mankind for the WWF Title ****3/4 Regarding the main event, he wrote "As he went for the pin, Michaels strangely got up and started punching Vader for the DQ. My guess is that Vader was supposed to interfere at the count of two but was a tad bit slow and they had to improvise. [...] A super match but the weak ending kept it from being a match of the year." [ - ] 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) [ Mima Shimoda ] [ - ] 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 Everybody expects Harlem Heat to regain the Tag Titles from Public Enemy before this PPV; if that doesn't happen then Public Enemy is in the tag match here. Either way, everybody expects the NWO to get the tag titles and the US Title here. There is talk that Ric Flair wants to take time off after this show, but he is still under contract with WCW for two more years, and with his position right now, it seems doubtful they'll let him get any extended time off. The "two out of three falls" stipulation has yet to be announced on TV; ditto the Liger match. Since these are the reasons I would watch, I hope they become reality. [ Mima Shimoda ] [ RAW ] this past week continued the flat angle of introducing new versions of previous WWF gimmicks, when Razor Ramon II faced Savio Vega in a match that saw Diesel II interfere. Diesel II looked terrible and Ramon II was not much better. My opinion of the original guys was not stellar, but it was possible for the real stars to carry them to a good match. The new guys don't seem to have that in them. The Observer reports that lots of fans walked out of the building during Diesel II's and Ramon II's attack of Vega, and that after the build up the crowd was flat and deflated. "On television they can sweeten the sound, but I don't know if its salvageable as an angle. After the show some in WWF were talking about dropping the angle completely, even before the ratings came in. [...] It appears the end result of this will be the WWF's main angle, attempting to create its own outside group led by Ross which will probably include the heels that used to work for WCW like Brian Pillman, Steve Austin, Vader, along with Razor Ramon and Diesel, if they can be salvaged, perhaps Mankind, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Faarooq and others to face Team WWF." Regarding the ECW/WWF cooperation at the [In Your House ] and on [RAW], the Observer writes, "The question is where it goes from here. The only plan originally that McMahon and Heyman made was to do the angle on the PPV as an attempt to spike the ratings the next night, which obviously didn't work, nor could it possibly have worked. The PPV was probably only seen in 100000 or so homes at best, virtually all of whom religiously watch Raw anyway. If you shoot an angle on Raw or Nitro, which reaches millions, if done successfully, it can help a buy rate on a PPV. It's a lot more difficult to do it the other way around because of simple numbers. At least right now, the ECW audience is too small to make any difference in a national rating and the nature of what they did pretty well guaranteed that almost nobody would get it or remember it except the hardcore percentage of the audience, which is already watching to begin with." [ Lance Storm ] [ - ] Apparently, Hulk Hogan wanted to piledrive Elizabeth at Fall Brawl during the post-match melee with Randy Savage and the NWO, but everybody was too worried to do it. Last night, I was dubbing some old Saturday Night's Main Event shows, including the break up of the Mega Powers episode, where Savage pushed Elizabeth aside and demolished Hogan while Liz was draping herself across Hogan. It was a little weird to see the opposite of the current angle. [ - ] Terry Gordy, Dan Kroffat, and Doug Furnas are all reported as going to the WWF. Gordy will work as a masked wrestler. [ - ] Super Calo will be out for a little while with an elbow injury. [ - ] It has been announced in Japan that the incomparable Hiro Hase, who worked in and booked for New Japan, will wrestle in All Japan in January. It has also been announced that New Japan heel Masa Chono may be a new NWO member. [ - ] [Nitro ] beat [RAW ] on 09/23 with a 3.5 rating (5.2 share) against a 2.0 rating (2.9 share). Nitro's two hour broadcast rating is averaged. This must be very disappointing for the WWF, since this was the live RAW with the big build up to the return of Diesel and Razor Ramon. The Observer writes, "For the past several weeks, ever since the introduction of the Razor/Diesel angle, the WWF television has reeked of desperation. The TV is put together constantly begging viewers in every commerical break not to tune away and leading the viewers along with teases the rest of the show that end with all the sincerity of a 900 line pitch. It's failed, miserably, in fact, despite it being for the most part the talk of the inside of the wrestling industry. The decision making processes. the constant striving for attention and attempts to be the thing talked about on Tuesday on the hotlines and internet, the one audience WWF is successful in being talk about on, is killing its adult audience, and that's the audience it needs to win on Mondays." 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. [ - ] 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. [ - ] The WWF has [In Yout 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