From: hekunze@barrow.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 04/24 Date: 1997/04/25 Message-ID: X-Deja-AN: 237228459 Sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner) Organization: University of Waterloo Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling [Wrestling TidBits] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm still way behind in responding to e-mail and I don't think this coming week will be any better. I've still got to get a grip on the courses I'm teaching this summer and lecture begin in ten days. On the bright side, I delivered my PhD thesis for leather binding today. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pictures of The Week [Aja Kong vs. Yumiko Hotta] It's been a while since we've checked out Aja Kong. Aja remains one of my favourites in All Japan Women. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ - ]The WWF had an In Your House PPV this past Sunday. It becomes increasingly apparent that the only story line that actually delivers anything in the ring is Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin. It seems that even the powers that be realize this is the case, so they bumped this match to main event status for the PPV and made the WWF Title match second from the top. After all, it would be impossible for almost any WWF pairing to follow Austin & Bret when they are "on." The freshly-promoted main event delivered a good match. They continue to work a mix of brawling and wrestling, but what separates it from other guys/promotions that try to do this style is the quality of both the brawling and the wrestling. This is excellent feud-of-the-year style stuff, that may be stopped from getting that award if Bret's absence cools things down too much and gets the promotions on a different track. This match was not close to their WrestleMania match, and was really killed by the cheap run-in finish, but it was easily the only noteworthy thing (besides one Mankind bump) on the show. If you watched the In Your House, excluding the main event, you'd have to think the promotion was close to death. The wrestling was absolutely think the promotion was close to death. The wrestling was absolutely nothing special, a lot of it poor and uninspired, [Jun Akiyama vs. Patriot] but the baddest sign was the acts that were being pushed: o Sultan beat Flash Funk in the "Free For All" opener. Why is Sultan being pushed ahead of Funk? It's a mystery. We always complain that WCW talent plays second fiddle to the generally less-talented headliners and that guys like Rey Misterio Jr., Dean Malenko, etc., are misused, but the WWF is equally guilty of wasting Funk, Al Snow, and Furnas & LaFon. In this case, though, you can't say that Sultan has more potential to draw money than Funk. o The Legion of Doom beat Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith by DQ. They referred to the LOD as the Road Warriors throughout the match, which struck me as a break from tradition. Maybe they want to avoid the confusion of having an LOD and an NOD. Why is the Legion of Doom being pushed? They have shown their general laziness and terribleness in three promotions in recent times (WCW, New Japan, AWF) and they are no different here, even if a few WWF hardcore fans think they are suddenly working harder (they are not). This match had the horrible false finish where the wrong wrestler gets pinned, new champs are announced, and a second referee comes out and gets the first referee to overturn the decision. Worse yet, if the champs don't continue the match in 10 seconds, they lose their titles. Ugh. Not only is Vince pushing wrestlers who had their best days in the mid-1980s, he's recycling bad booking ideas from that time-frame too. As an opening match, this set a terrible tone for the show. o Rocky Maivia retained the IC Title over Savio Vega, losing by countout when Crush hit a heart punch on Rocky and Rocky was counted out. Savio was upset after the match, maybe because Crush cost him the match, or maybe because he knew how poor the match was. Hopefully, Vince will end the Rocky experiment soon. There was a time when the IC Title match was the good wrestling match on WWF shows; not any more. I'm not saying that Rocky has no potential, but the champion should be versatile enough to get reasonable quality matches out of a range of opponents. Rocky still needs a lot of time before he's in that place. o Jesse James beat Rockabilly (Billy Gunn). Gunn debuted as Honky Tonk Man's new protege in a horribly embarrassing spot, made worse because Gunn actually tried to imitate HTM's trademark stupid mannerisms. One of the few WWF wrestlers with superstar potential is now saddled with a Red-Rooster-like gimmick. Hopefully, if they try to force this gimmick, they'll at least tone it down a bit and give Billy a chance. They didn't do anything to explain why Gunn, who had rejected the HTM's offer on TV, had done an about-face. Rockabilly lost to a simple small package in a somewhat screwy finish (don't act surprised!). o Undertaker pinned Mankind, retaining his WWF Title. I thought this was a nothing match. Unlike the Hart-Austin match that was to the follow (or the one at WrestleMania), this match featured mediocre brawling and poor wrestling. The only cool thing in the whole match was Mankind's daredevil bump head-first through a ringside table, cool because it was different and it was a table spot that didn't seem contrived. The post-match was hilarious: Mankind was clearly supposed to light some flash paper and accidentally "burn" Paul Bearer while trying to "burn" Undertaker, but everything just fell apart. Undertaker picked up the lighter and the paper and "burned" Bearer himself, with the commentators pretending that they had no idea how the fire was created. This makes it two champions who can't have good matches with a wide variety of opponents. o Steve Austin beat Bret Hart by DQ with the cheap run-in finish. Before this match, the show was an easy thumbs down. One amazing bump and no good wrestling does not make for a very strong show! An injured Hart and Austin somehow managed to make me look past the earlier crap and just enjoy their excellent performances. The match was good, but the poor finish brought it down a notch. Overall, I'd give the show no more than a thumbs-in-the-middle. The one match that delivered something good was solid, but not spectacular enough to save an otherwise dreary show. The signs for the future are uncertain. Bret Hart will be out for a while. Austin needs time off too. The tag champs have only one worthy set of opponents (Furnas & LaFon) who go unpushed. The other champions are poor wrestlers that don't deliver good matches. [ RAW ] this week was a very entertaining show if you ignored all of the wrestling matches. Fortunately, the evening was arranged in a way that the wrestling was completely secondary to the story line of the night: the continuing saga of Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin. Austin challenged Hart to a street fight throughout the show, getting the match at roughly the halfway mark. Since these guys are in no shape to wrestle a match that focuses on actual wrestling, they did a short street fight, with the commentators pushing the intensity of the rivalry. Hart sold an injured knee and wrist, both legitimately needing surgery, and was stretchered out and taken away in an ambulance, after one more beating by Austin. Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith appeared throughout as well, making the stretcher segments by yelling at the paramedics, and later vowing vengeance against Austin. The show closed with Austin talking about his upcoming WWF Title match against the Undertaker, who Austin may just be able to carry to his best performance ever, with Austin getting attacked by Smith & Owen. Shawn Michaels made the save for the second time in the evening, but Brian Pillman finally re-appeared to attack Austin in an otherwise empty ring. So, it looks like Pillman will be slated to fill Bret's spot while Bret recovers from his injury. What else happened on the show? Well, there were some wrestling matches, but all of them were secondary to the point of the show. Rockabilly avenged his loss against Jesse James the previous night by pinning him this time in a match that should have been much better than it was, but these guys spend too much time not wrestling. Undertaker faced Hunter Hearst Helmsley, ending with Mankind showing up with a blow torch and a melee. Dustin & Terri Rhodes were in the crowd in street clothes, referred to as Dustin & Terri by Jim Ross, and got involved as well, attacking Helmsley & Chyna. It was a mess that did nothing for me. Tiger Ali Singh debuted on TV and was nothing special at all; if they try to push him in North America, I'll be surprised if he gets over. For somebody with several years experience, he didn't show much ability. I was more impressed with his opponent, Salvatore Sincere. Jim Ross rambled about his father & Muhammed Ali giving him his name and had the audacity to say that the Canadian viewers must be excited to see Tiger Ali Singh enter into wrestling; even Jim has fallen for real-estate-scammer Tiger Jeet Singh's lying self-promotion. Actually, there was one exciting thing mentioned during the non-Austin portions of the show: Ken Shamrock will face Vader at the next In Your House. Vader is the only person in the promotion that could possibly work a great match with Shamrock; this is a match that will garner international interest. There are a lot of people calling this the best RAW ever and just as many comparing it to ECW in style. I disagree with the first comment and agree with the second. Here are some comments I made in one of the few e-mails I've been able to respond to. There's no argument that the Steve Austin vs. Bret Hart story line is great. I would argue that it is great because it has emotion in it, brawling, and damn good wrestling. That's what separates it from stuff in other promotions. ECW generally doesn't have the same quality wrestling because of greenness and sloppiness. WCW has some hot story lines, but the only one that promises fair-to-good wrestling (not damn good wrestling!) is Page vs. Savage. The unfortunate part about having such a great lead angle (that even gets pushed ahead of the WWF Title match at IYH) is that it exposes the limited talent underneath. And that's where I take issue with some of the praise. How can this past week's RAW be a "top 10" episode when it had generally poor wrestling matches from top to bottom, with only two exciting non-wrestling-match items: the Hart angle, and the announcement that Vader vs. Shamrock is on 05/11. There have been other RAWs with great wrestling matches and better-than-average story lines that should rank ahead of this one, as good as the angle was this time. I agree completely that the show was "ECWish" in feel because they did a great job of masking the fact that the wrestling was nothing special. ECW's biggest strength (for me) is that one match on the show that pushes wrestling ahead of everything else. Its second strength is convincing its hardcore fans that the other stuff is good wrestling. [Toshiaki Kawada vs. Dan Kroffat] [ - ] All Japan's Champion Carnival ended this past Saturday night. As expected, going into the finals, Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi, and Mitsuhara Misawa were all tied for the lead with 19 points, so a mini-tournament had to take place at the final; this was reported incorrectly in many places as a triangle match despite the fact that Shohei Baba is the most no-nonsense booker in the world. The mini-tournament rules were simple, everybody would wrestle everybody in turn until somebody won two successive matches. In the first match, Misawa drew Kobashi over 30 minutes. Next, Kawada beat an injured Misawa in 6:09 with a powerbomb. Finally, Kawada pinned Kobashi in 21:27 to win the tournament. [ - ]Thanks to people that responded to my ECW tape request last week. First come, first served. The tape hasn't arrived yet, so I can't offer any comments on the show. While preliminary reports had the PPV drawing buys in the high 20K range, more recent data suggests that the promotion broke the 40K barrier by a bit, scoring in the neighbourhood of a 0.26 buy rate. You'd think that that would be enough to get the remainder of the universe to pick up a second show, although I'd bet that we don't get it in Canada. Of course, second shows from smaller promotions or different fighting ventures have had trouble matching their initial buy rates. ECW's situation may also be affected by the movement of some of its wrestlers to other promotions. [ - ] There is a lot of talk that the WWF & Japan's FMW have reached some sort of agreement. Right now, it may be no more than FMW getting to use Cactus Jack (Mankind) on their shows. It is reported that Atushi Onita & Vince McMahon will be meeting to work out the details of the agreement. [ - ] The Observer lists the Crush vs. Ahmed Johnson match from last week's Monday Night RAW as a worst match of the year contender at -**. [Taka Michinoku vs. a Headhunter] [ - ]FMW announced the line-up for the 04/29/97 Yokohama Arena show. The show marks the eighth anniversary of the promotion and will feature the retirement of female wrestler Megumi Kudo. Line-up for the show as announced by FMW on 04/05/97 includes: o Megumi Kudo vs. Shark Tsuchiya for Shark's WWA World women's & Independent women's Title in a no rope, barbed wire, electrified, bomb, barricade, double hell death match. o Atsushi Onita & Masato Tanaka & Wing Kanemura vs. Terry Funk & Gladiator & Cactus Jack in a Texas Tornado Street Fight o Hayabusa vs. Mr. Gannosuke in a mask vs. hair match o Jinsei Shinzaki vs. Super Leather [ - ]New Japan has a major show on 05/03/97 in the Osaka Dome. Line-up has: o Shinya Hashimoto vs. Naoyi Ogawa for the IWGP Title o Riki Choshu & Kensuke Sasaki vs. Manabu Nakanishi & Satoshi Kojima for the IWGP Tag Titles o Shiro Koshinaka vs. Kengo Kimura o El Gran Hamada & Super Delfin & Great Sasuke & Norio Honga & El Samurai vs. Dick Togo & Mens Teoh & Hanzo Nakajima & Shinjiro Otani & Koji Kanemoto o Antonio Inoki & Tiger King (Satoru Sayama) vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Jushin Liger o Rick Steiner & Scott Steiner & Keiji Muto vs. Scott Hall & Kevin Nash & Masa Chono o Lex Luger & Giant vs. Scott Norton & Marcus Bagwell o Syxx & NWO Sting vs. Tadao Yasuda & Junji Hirata o Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan o Tokimitsu Ishizawa vs Kazuo Yamazaki [ - ] [Nitro ]beat [RAW ] on 04/21 with a 3.38 rating against a 2.75 rating. The detailed ratings are a click away. [ - ]The PPV buy rates of the past six months (year or so) show that the WWF has an average buy rate of 0.55 (0.54) and average gross of $1.42-million ($1.41-million), while WCW has an average buy rate of 0.70 (0.65) and average gross of $2.05-million ($1.92-million). The details as they stand are available. [ - ]The WWF has [In Your House ] on 05/11/97. Tentative line-up has: o Undertaker vs. Steve Austin for the WWF Title o Ahmed Johnson vs. Faarooq & Crush & Savio Vega (in three separate matches) o Ken Shamrock vs. Vader o Sid vs. Mankind o Flash Funk vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley [ - ]WCW has Slamboree on 05/18/97. Tentative line-up has: o Ric Flair & Roddy Piper & Kevin Greene vs. Scott Hall & Kevin Nash & Syxx There's a lot of real heat behind the scenes regarding this main event, as evidenced by recent grandstanding interviews on Nitro. The Observer writes, "To translate into reality, what they said stems from a meeting a week earlier where Kevin Nash, Bischoff, Flair and Piper were together to talk about problems with the Charlotte main event feeling with a star like Greene involved, that Syxx wasn't a big enough pro-wrestling name from a main event credibility standpoint to be in such a main event position. Nash argued that given the `talent' in the match, that Syxx would be the only one who could make the match and pretty much insulted the current age and condition of Flair and Piper in doing so and called Flair a comedy act. It wound up with Flair and Piper feeling that Nash had no respect for who they were in the business and what they'd accomplised and what they'd gone through in the old days to get there. There is still considerable heat from the Uncensored PPV when Nash cut off Piper and wouldn't sell for him with the feeling that Nash didn't respect Piper's status as a legend, although Nash's side is apparently that he was setting Piper up for a spot where he would sell for him but Piper couldn't improvise and instead began doing spots with Savage, who he trusted to make him look good. And of course Nash felt that Flair and Piper had no respect for the current stars as stars and felt the only real stars were the guys from their generation. So that explains the interview. No doubt you can figure Flair is frustrated when the company he saved (make no mistake about it, without Flair, Turner never would have bought out Crockett and the company would have been out of business completely by the end of 1989) and carried is paying more money to Nash than to him, but that's the reality of being in the right place at the right time. You can also say time marches on, but the reality is that Flair is probably more over now than he's been in years." [ - ] The WWF has King of The Ring on 06/08/97. [ -]WCW has the Great American Bash on 06/15/97. [ - ]The WWF has [In Your House ] on 07/06/97. [ - ]WCW has Bash at the Beach on 07/13/97. [ - ] The WWF has SummerSlam on 08/03/97. [ - ]WCW has Hog Wild on 08/09/97. [ - ]The WWF has [In Your House ] on 09/07/97. [ - ]WCW has Fall Brawl on 09/14/97. [ - ]The WWF has [In Your House ] on 10/05/97. [ - ]WCW has Halloween Havoc on 10/26/97. [ - ] The WWF has Survivor Series on 11/09/97. [ - ]WCW has World War III on 11/23/97. [ - ]The WWF has [In Your House ] on 12/07/97. [ - ]WCW has Starrcade on 12/28/97. [ - ]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. I will be adding a tape update some time this weekend. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to: Masaki Aso. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Click here to return. E-mail: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca