From: hekunze@barrow.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 11/28 Date: 1996/11/29 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 201324475 sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner) organization: University of Waterloo newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling [Wrestling TidBits] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you aren't reading this on my web page, click here to make the leap. There are other items to browse. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- For those that are curious, I have received some snail mail from Curtis. He's alive and well and enjoying himself in Korea. He anticipates that he'll be able to make the trip to Japan at least once in the next year to see some house shows. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Picture of The Week This week's pictures features Sunny, again not just once, but twice. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Ric Flair vs. Eddy Guerrero ] [ - ] WCW had World War III on Sunday. It's another in a stream of minor thumbs up PPVs from both companies. In this case, the highlights were: * Rey Misterio Jr vs. El Ultimo Dragon. This was a tremendous match with a good Japanese Jr. flavour to it. It was nice to hear and see the crowd respond to the moves during the course of the match; we are still way behind in educating fans on submissions and mat wrestling though. They are building for a Dragon vs. Malenko match at Starrcade. Rumour has it that Dragon wants permanent work in WCW, which would still allow him to appear in New Japan. Dragon, real name Yoshihiro Asai, has very bad ankles from all of the high risk spots he did along the way to becoming a Jr. heavyweight star, so a less stressful position with WCW, where he would not have to work that style of match on a nightly basis, is quite appealing. With its current roster, the WWF is incapable of delivering a match of this style and, right now, that is what separates the two promotions for me. * Dean Malenko vs. Psicosis. I was somewhat disappointed by this match, actually, but it was still very good. Malenko shows no personality at all, never ackowledging fans or anything else. I still like his work, but I tend to like his opponents (Rey Jr., Psicosis, Eddie Guerrero, soon Ultimo Dragon) better. Lowlights of the evening: * The main event. It was atrocious last year and was equally bad this year. I bet a lot gets lost in the transition to TV, with the three screens being impossible to watch, but I bet I wouldn't even like it live. It's the sort of match you fast forward over or skip until you get to the final handful of survivors. In this case, it came down to the NWO (Giant, Hall, Nash, Syxx) and Lex Luger. Luger eliminated Hall and dumped Syxx out onto him. He put Nash in the torture rack and Giant dumped both of them out of the ring. Afterwards, Giant, Hall & Syxx posed before remembering to help Nash up and into the ring. This seems to be leading to a feud with Giant vs. Nash, presumably with Giant turning back to WCW. There's another stranger possiblity that comes to mind too. On Nitro, Sting silently gave Luger a baseball bat after shoving him; maybe this was Sting's way of suggesting that Luger was a part of the NWO (they have used bats on the WCW guys in a few angles). Maybe something will come of this in the Giant vs. Luger match at Starrcade. * The drawn-out contract signing. It's not that this was any worse than any other contract signing angles of years gone by; it's just that I don't want to pay to see it. This should have been on Nitro for free and some of the other matches should have been given some extra time. * The abandoning of the once-advertised Chris Benoit vs. Kevin Sullivan match. It's not that I particularly like watching Sullivan, but I missed seeing Benoit deliver a great performance. I was indifferent to pretty much everything else. The French Canadians did their own stupid, contrived spot with a table and the ring steps that thankfully failed. Those spots stink when they connect because it is painful to watch the victim of them have to pretend to be out of it for five minutes while the equipment is set up. The original line-up of sixty wrestlers for the battle royal didn't even include the Giant, which really has to leave one wondering about the planning that's going into things. [ Rick Steiner suplexes Scott Norton ] [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 12/15/96. Line up for this show has: * Bret Hart vs. Sid for the WWF Title * Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith vs. Razor Ramon & Diesel for the WWF Tag Titles * Marc Mero vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley for the IC Title * Shawn Michaels vs. Mankind * Steve Austin vs. Goldust * Flash Funk vs. Leif Cassidy Most talk is that Bret Hart will win the title here. The plan is to build up Shawn Michaels, Sid, and Steve Austin as potential Royal Rumble winners and legitimate title threats for Bret Hart at WrestleMania. Vince has purposely changed plans this past year when knowledge of them became widespread on the net, even though people reading this stuff make up a minor chunk of paying fans, so it is possible that things will turn out differently. The tag title match promises to be absolutely terrible, IMO. The new Ramon is just lousy and Glen Jacobs' Diesel is not much better. Still, the show has three matches that would seem to have to be good and one more that could also be good; that's much better than the usual situation of the recent past. [ - ] WCW has Starrcade on 12/29/96. Tentative line-up features: * Hollywood Hulk Hogan vs. Roddy Piper * Scott Hall & Kevin Nash vs. Barbarian & Meng for the Tag Titles * El Ultimo Dragon vs. Dean Malenko for the J Crown * Eddie Guerrero vs. Diamond Dallas Page for the US Title * Madusa vs. Akira Hokuto for the Women's Title * Lex Luger vs. Giant * Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Jushin Liger * Chris Benoit vs. Big Bubba Rumour has it that the main event will be a non-title match with Piper going over. This will set up a title match for February. The US Title and Women's Title matches will be tournament finals to crown new champions. [ Giant throws a dropkick ] [ - RAW ] this week was nothing too special. The Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart match had been built up as something to tune in to see, but they delivered a nothing match. The post-match angle had Steve Austin attack Bret with Owen's help only to be interrupted by Davey Boy Smith, who ended up being laid out by Austin, with Owen complaining about it. This begins Smith's babyface turn. The other feature match had Marc Mero face Billy Gunn. It was also nothing too special and also ended with interference. There's some excitement over what airs in Canada. Because of the Pillman gun incident on a past RAW, CKVR, a station which carries RAW at 9pm EST on Mondays, balked and asked for a "custom" edition of the show. The show features commentary from Kevin Kelly & Jim Ross, who sound like they'd rather be anywhere else in the world. The live broadcasts will not air on CKVR because they can't possible get a custom version of the show in time and can't screen the live one in time to verify that it passes standards. RAW also airs on TSN. This past week, TSN edited the finish of the Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart match because the chair shots by Austin crossed some line (those shots did air on CKVR). [ - ] Apparently, Justin Bradshaw will be turning face in the near future. [ - ] Dave Meltzer writes in the Observer about the 11/18/96 ECW November to Remember show: "ECW's good points and bad points have been beaten to death. It's noteworthy in that no promotion of its size, probably in history, has done a better job when it comes to marketing creative T-shirts, selling videotapes and using television to maximize its strengths and obscure its weaknesses. It is alive, which is a feat in intself and if the truth were to be known, one year ago at this time the odds weren't all that great that would be the case today. And there don't appear to be any signs that it won't be alive one year from now, or that this weekend's show was the zenith when it comes to popularity for this company. "I left the ECW Arena with the same feeling I have at every show but one that I've attended from the promotion. It was a good show. The wrestlers worked very hard. A lot of thought was put into the storylines. And the wrestling itself is incredibly overrated in some circles. It's great independent level wrestling, and that's a compliment because it's an independent level promotion. But a few weeks back I attended a local indie show at a gym in Hayward, CA, and I can't say there was much of a difference overall when it came to work rate between the two shows. The guys take more risks than WWF or WCW guys and a few of them are better but overall the level of the work isn't at major league level. The local indie guys worked as hard as they could, took some risks, and threw some 90s moves. Their matches by and large built better and had more psychology. Overall, the real green guys on the Hayward indie were worlds away from being even the worst wrestler on the ECW show, but the guys with a little experience weren't that far off. Robert Thompson and Steve Rizzono worked a more solid match than anything at November to Remember with the exception of a match with a legend like Terry Funk or a wrestler with world class potential like Chris Candito. ECW had more blood, more broken tables, more low blows, more topes and more risks and God knows tons better storylines. But in doing so many spots with high margins of error, I also groaned ten times as much at the ECW Arena over missed spots than I did at the local show, and some of those guys had only five or six matches under their belt. Granted, you'll never see as many wild moves in any WWF or perhaps even WCW, ALl Japan, or New Japan match as Sabu & Rob van Dam vs. The Eliminators, but the top guys in that promotion will never miss as many spots as they did as well, and they'll control the crowd a lot better. "It may have been a bad night, because it was very cold in the building, but the ECW crowd heat wasn't there except in a few carefully designed spots. It was similar to the FMW Onita-Pogo thing described in last week's issue. Hard chair shots. Seen that. Low blows like crazy. Seen that. Hard chops. Whoo! Topes. Yawn. Topes where tables break. "ECW! ECW! ECW!" Outside interference. Yawn. Women taking bumps. Yawn. Terry Funk doing a moonsault to the floor. "ECW! ECW! ECW!" Loser leaves town matches. Yawn. Raven vs. Sandman. Yawn. The Blue World Order. Great show open. Sabu and Taz in the same ring looking at each other. Incredible heat. Lights go out just as they lock up. Groan (although it was the right kind of groan in that people will pay money to see them finally go at it)." The match review goes on to give: * Stevie Richards vs. David Tyler Morton Jerrico. 9:25. *1/4 * Acl Rotten vs. Hack Myers. 4:25. 1/4* * Buh Buh Ray Dudley vs. D-Von Dudley. 10:20. 1/2* * Eliminators vs. Sabu & Rob Van Dam. 26:55 (announced as 30:00). *** * Chris Candito vs. Mikey Whipwreck. 11:54. **3/4 * Gangstas vs. Eliminators vs. Sabu & Rob Van Dam. 8:54. ***1/4 * Sandman vs. Raven. 15:07. -* * Terry Funk & Tommy Dreamer vs. Shane Douglas & Brian Lee. 26:12. **** * In general, Meltzer praised the angles and storylines and complained about the sloppiness of supposed star wrestlers (excepting Funk and Candito, with Candito's match being "the best match for pure work on the show"). He complained a lot about Sabu's sloppiness, criticizing table spots where the victim has to lie there forever while Sabu fumbles in setting things up. He brutalized Sandman vs. Raven, saying that "This match was considerably worse than the Hogan-Savage match on the last WCW PPV show," which is saying something. Meltzer reports that Heyman hinted he may run a PPV in March or April, which means he'd have to make a definite decision reasonably soon. These things need to be fixed at least 90 days in advance. [ Jushin Liger ] [ - ] [Nitro ] beat [RAW ] on 11/11 with a 3.5 rating (5.2 share) against a 2.5 rating (3.6 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 0.53 (0.65) and average gross of $1.39-million ($1.69-million), while WCW has an average buy rate of 0.60 (0.57) and average gross of $1.82-million ($1.69-million). The details are an interesting read. [ - ] The WWF has the Royal Rumble on 01/18/97. There is talk that severl AAA wrestlers will appear on the show, although with most of the great workers joining Konnan in his new splinter group in Mexico (and working with WCW) and with the Rumble never really allowing great work anyhow, this is not particularly exciting. [ - ] NWO has a PPV on 01/25/97. [ - ] WCW has SuperBrawl on 02/23/97. Tentative line-up has: * Hollywood Hulk Hogan vs. Roddy Piper for the WCW Title [ - ] WCW has Uncensored on 03/16/97. [ - ] Rec.sport.pro-wrestling: I received a few e-mails from people in response to the news last week of the discussion of a moderated pro-wrestling newsgroup. Unfortunately, since that time things have declined to the point where it just seems like it will be impossible to please everybody with such a proposal. [ - ] Software: I've received a fair bit of e-mail, but, no, I'm not yet ready to talk about what I've been playing around with. I'll mention it here first when I feel things are far enough along. [ - ] 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