From: hekunze@barrow.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 01/16 Date: 1997/01/17 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 210354020 sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner) organization: University of Waterloo newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling [Wrestling TidBits] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are on the web and you aren't reading this on my web page, click here to make the leap. There are other items to browse. I do not offer subscriptions to a mailing list! I do not e-mail images! My personal deadline for submitting my doctoral thesis is approaching (I will defend in March and want to submit long before then), so I've been working darn hard. The unwatched tape stack grows! Sigh. Sorry for the limited news this week. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pictures of The Week This week's pictures feature Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon , two times , and Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ Scott Hall & Kevin Nash ] [ - RAW ] this past week was another dry show, IMO. It's weird to watch the two versions of the shows that air here. The USA version is really cohesive because of Vince McMahon's focussed commentary; but, the Canadian version, with Kevin Kelly & Ray Rougeau commentating, is terribly muddled. For example, this past week, Vader appeared to watch the Undertaker's match and eventually interfered. From the start, McMahon pointed out that Vader was facing Undertaker at the Rumble and that it was a bad sign to see him watching; when he ran in, McMahon made it seem like he was going to kill the Undertaker. On the Canadian show, they just sort of ignored Vader watching the match and when he ran in, Rougeau said, "Is he going to help the Undertaker?" "No! No! He attacked him!" Does he not get clued into the story lines? Kevin Kelly is an okay second string commentator, but he has a hell of time carrying Rougeau, especially when Ray makes these stupid outbursts. "Yes, Ray, Vader and Undertaker will be meeting at the Rumble..." [ - ] Correction from last week: The Flying Nunns were the Headbangers. [ - ] On Tuesday, TSN aired the first of two WWF specials, exclusives for Canadian fans. The "Rock and Rumble" special was a total waste of time, just recapping all of the issues at the Rumble without any new things. [ - ] The WWF has the Royal Rumble on Sunday. Tentative line-up has: * Royal Rumble, which will include some AAA wrestlers, Terry Funk, and everybody in the other matches on this show except Sid, Shawn, and the six Mexicans * Shawn Michaels vs. Sid for the WWF Title * Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Goldust for the IC Title * Ahmed Johnson vs. Faarooq * Undertaker vs. Vader * El Canek & Perro Aguayo & Hector Garza vs. Jerry Estrada & Fuerza Guerrera & Heavy Metal [ Toshiyo Yamada v Reggie Bennett ] [ - ] The Observer awards issue had a section that was pretty interesting. Wrestlers were scored based on their performances this year, leading to an overall ranking system that mixes different styles and weights. The idea is to look at the performances of wrestlers on major shows; for WCW & the WWF this means PPVs and for All Japan & New Japan it means Budokan Hall shows (16000 fans) or the Dome shows. They had to work at least three major shows. For each such wrestler, the star ratings for those big show matches were averaged to get a score. In addition, I guess as a tie-splitting device, the percentage of major matches at **** or better were given. It leads to interesting rankings (that only include people from these top four promotions). Here's the first few {average: name (#matches at **** or better, %)}: * 4.31: Kenta Kobashi (4,100%) * 4.25: Shinjiro Otani (6,75%) * 4.17: Mitsuhara Misawa (2,67%) * 4.14: Rey Misterio, Jr. (5,72%) * 4.13: Ultimo Dragon (3,50%) * 4.05: Akira Taue (3,75%) * 4.00: Shawn Michaels (6,75%) * 3.96: Great Sasuke (4,67%) * 3.88: Jushin Liger (6,67%) (4.29 and 100% before brain tumour) * 3.79: Chris Benoit (5,56%) * 3.75: Nobuhiko Takada (1,25%) * 3.54: Keiji Muto (3,43%) * 3.50: Toshiaki Kawada (2,50%) * 3.44: Dean Malenko (4,50%) * 3.39: Shiro Koshinaka (1,11%) * 3.39: Eddie Guerrero (2,28%) (shouldn't these last two be flipped?) * 3.30: El Samurai (2,40%) * 3.25: Tsuyoshi Kikuchi * 3.20: Bret Hart (2,40%) * 3.05: Mankind (1,40%) And for tag teams: * 4.56: Misawa & Kawada (7,88%) * 4.38: Kawada & Taue (6,75%) * 3.83: Kobashi & Patriot (1,33%) * 3.75: Williams & Ace (4,67%) * 3.50: Yamazaki & Iizuka (1,25%) * 3.08: Steiners * 3.07: Hashimoto & Hirata (1,14%) * 2.93: Chono & Tenzan (1,14%) * 2.92: Fujinami & Koshinaka * 2.67: Hart & Smith The argument against this method of ranking wrestlers is that rankings benefit from having great opponents and suffer from having lousy opponents. But isn't what you deliver a funciton of who you wrestler? Al Snow is a great wrestler, but he's only had one good WWF match. Ditto Vader. [ - ] NWO has a Clash of Champions on 01/21/97. Tentative line-up has: * Chris Benoit vs. Kevin Sullivan in a falls count anywhere match * Dean Malenko vs. El Ultimo Dragon for the WCW Cruiserweight Title * Steve Regal vs. Rey Misterio Jr. for the TV Title * Steiners vs. Amazing French Canadians * Konnan & Juventud Guerrera & Psicosis vs. La Parka & Chavo Guerrero Jr. & Super Calo * Eddie Guerrero vs. Scott Norton * Masa Chono vs. Alex Wright * Lex Luger vs. Scott Hall * Scotty Riggs vs. Mike Enos * Ice Train vs. Bobby Eaton [ Rey Misterio vs. Dean Malenko ] [ - ] NWO has NWO Souled Out on 01/25/97. Tentative line-up has: * Hulk Hogan vs. Giant for the Title * Kevin Nash & Scott Hall vs. Steiners for the Tag Titles * Syxx vs. Eddie Guerrero in a ladder match for the US Title * Marcus Bagwell vs. Scotty Riggs * Masa Chono vs. Chris Jericho [ - ] 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. [ - ] The WWF has WrestleMania on 03/23/97. [ - ] The WWF has In Your House on 04/20/97. [ Aja Kong ] [ - ] [Nitro ] beat [RAW ] on 12/30 with a 3.6 rating (5.6 share) against a 1.6 rating (2.6 share). Nitro's two hour broadcast rating is averaged. That is the worst RAW rating ever. 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 [In Your House ] on 05/11/97. [ - ] The WWF has King of The Ring on 06/08/97. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 07/06/97. [ - ] The WWF has SummerSlam on 08/03/97. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 09/07/97. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 10/05/97. [ - ] The WWF has Survivor Series on 11/09/97. [ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 12/07/97. [ - ] 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