I do not offer subscriptions to a mailing list! I do not e-mail images! _________________________________________________________________ Flash - 97/08/14: I'm completely swamped with grading final exams and calculating final grades. Today's update is postponed until Friday (late?) afternoon. _________________________________________________________________ - The WWF had SummerSlam this past Sunday. I'd rate it a mild thumbs up show or perhaps a thumbs in the middle event, nowhere near the Calgary In Your House, instead featuring two good matches and a title change that offers much more promise than the situation prior to the show. Quickly, * Mankind beat Hunter Hearst Helmsley in a cage match: this was the second best match on the show. Mankind took some crazy bumps; Helmsley was as mediocre as always. The match turned into something worthwhile, but it was not great by any stretch. Mankind did an elbow from the top of the cage before climbing out and collapsing. I thought the post-match bit with Mankind waking up to Dude Love's music was lame and reasonably embarrassing. * Goldust beat Brian Pillman: a weak match. Pillman still has good presence, but he hobbles after taking a couple of steps on his ankle. It's kind of sad to watch. Finish saw Goldust execute a poor sunset flip into the ring, with Pillman and he bumbling around to get into position for Marlena to hit Pillman with her purse to set up the pin. Pillman wears a dress the next night. * Hawk & Animal beat Godwinns: a poor match. The Legion of Doom is just terrible, worse than almost any of the old men that WCW uses as star headliners. They pinned Phinneas after a clothesline. * Davey Boy Smith DQ Ken Shamrock for the European Title: the WWF has managed to misuse Shamrock and turn him into nothing more than another wrestler in record time, blowing a golden opportunity, IMO. The dog food stipulation took this match down another notch and hurts the image of the promotion and the two wrestlers involved even more. They didn't do much before Smith smeared dog food on Shamrock's face leading to Shamrock freaking out and getting DQed. Shamrock bled from the mouth. The post-match angle was excellent, with Shamrock choking out Smith and Smith acting like he was dead. Afterwards, Shamrock suplexed everybody before screaming a battle cry. * Los Boricuas (Savio Vega & Miguel Perez & Jose Estrada Jr. & Jesus Castillo) beat Disciples of Apocalypse (Crush & Brian Lee & Harris Twins): Another terrible match. These guys all pound each other and nobody sells; it is bad wrestling. Of course, the Nation of Domination came down to ring side, complete with their inflatable Ahmed Johnson doll ("injure knee and inflate by another 30 pounds"). Johnson delivered a crappy power bomb on Brian Lee, which the Boricuas used to lead to the pin. At this point, I was getting depressed. All of the past four matches were reasonably poor and the main event would surely not be special; hopefully, Steve Austin & Owen Hart were ready to work. * Steve Austin beat Owen Hart for the Intercontinental Title: a great match with a lousy finish, due to injury. Owen Hart was the star wrestler on the PPV, outworking everybody and his brother. Hopefully, he'll get an even higher profile because of this performance. The match was building into something wonderful when Austin took a bad bump on a piledriver, presumably thinking that Owen would deliver a tombstone and shield him, while Owen instead delivered a typical piledriver, jamming Austin's neck and knocking him silly. They had to go to the finish immediately, with Austin getting a cheap and weak-looking schoolboy on Owen for the pin after Owen ceased his attack for numerous seconds. I'd still put this at the **** mark, but it could have been even more highly rated if not for the finish. * Bret Hart beat Undertaker for the WWF Title: Shawn Michaels was the referee and actually turned out to be the second best worker on the show, behind Owen Hart. Bret managed to lift the match out of the gutter, but I don't think he was fully healed. They booked many distractions to stretch things out because the in-ring wrestling was weak. Paul Bearer came out. Owen Hart & Brian Pillman came out. Michaels had the expected friction with both wrestlers but delivered a remarkable performance in his role. The finish saw Michaels take a bump outside, Bret use a chair for a two count, Michaels see the chair and accuse Bret of cheating, Bret spit on Michaels, and Michaels smack Undertaker accidentally with the chair leading to the pin. It was well-booked, IMO. After the finish, Pillman & Owen & Davey Boy Smith came out to celebrate with Bret. It would have been more effective to have Smith not appear after the earlier angle; it was stupid to sell things like he was dead and then have him come out looking chipper. In additional notes, Sunny & Sable assisted Todd in the $1-million dollar prize contest. Two fans invited to the arena and two fans phoned at home each picked a number from one to one hundred. If the associated key opened the on-stage casket, the key's owner would win the money. The segment was memorable for two reasons: Sunny's wardrobe and the first caller. Todd made the mistake of asking the first caller if he was watching the show and the guy said he wasn't. Todd didn't know how to react. Also, there was no mention made of Jim Neidhart at any point in the night, despite the stipulation that he would shave his goatee on RAW if any Hart Foundation member lost his match. Neidhart was fired by the promotion and that stipulation was dropped. The commentators had a hard time trying to explain the stipulations in the final two matches. In each case, somebody had to win the title to avoid a serious stipulation. One of the commentators mused, as I did a while back, that the opponent should just get DQed to force the stipulation into effect. If Owen got DQed on purpose, Austin would have had to kiss his butt. If Undertaker got DQed on purpose, Bret would not have been able to work in the USA again. They danced around it in the commentary until they all sounded like fools and exposed the stipulations as nonsensical. RAW this week had a few suprise angles and one very good match. Sgt. Slaughter debuted as the new commissioner of the WWF, enforcing the stipulations of the previous night and even augmenting them. Now, Brian Pillman has to wear a dress on RAW until he wins a match. Hmmm, it seems ever more likely that Jim Cornette's fingerprints are on this one (remember Chris Candido's bonnet in SMW?). I'm not particularly excited by Slaughter being the commissioner. Slaughter pulled Steve Austin from his re-match against Owen Hart and replaced him with Dude Love, who won with Austin's assistance and was mobbed by a pair of groupies. The good match of the show saw the return of Taka Michinoku, who beat Brian Christopher in a very good match when Taka was in charge. Christopher still seems to have no place in the ring with the faster style that the division will need to get over. Taka looked incredible again. - WCW has Road Wild on Saturday. Tentative line-up has: * Hulk Hogan vs. Lex Luger for the WCW Title * Steiners vs. Kevin Nash & Scott Hall * Giant vs. Randy Savage * Diamond Dallas Page vs. Curt Hennig * Ric Flair vs. Syxx * Chris Jericho vs. Alex Wright for the Cruiserweight title * Konnan vs. Rey Misterio Jr. in a Mexican death match * Buff Bagwell & Scott Norton vs. Harlem Heat * Chris Benoit & Steve McMichael vs. Jeff Jarrett & Dean Malenko in an elimination tag match - New Japan Pro-Wrestling has a major show at the Nagoya Dome on 08/10/97. Line-up has: * Shinya Hashimoto vs. Masa Chono for the IWGP Title * Manabu Nakanishi & Satoshi Kojima vs. Kensuke Sasaki & Kazuo Yamazaki for the IWGP Tag Titles * El Samurai vs. Shinjiro Otani for the J Crown * Riki Choshu vs. Tatsumi Fujinami * Great Muta vs. Naoya Ogawa (Antonio Inoki referee) * Don Frye vs. Cal Worsham (both are UFC veterans) * Jushin Liger vs. Koji Kanemoto - ECW has its second PPV on 08/17/97. Tentative line-up has: * Terry Funk vs. Shane Douglas for the ECW Title * Sabu vs. Sandman * Dudleys vs. Gangstas for the ECW Tag Titles * Taz vs. Chris Candido for the TV Title * Tommy Dreamer vs. Jerry Lawler The Observer reports that the tag title match listed here will definitely not take place. - WCW has a Clash of Champions on 08/21/97, live on WTBS. Tentative line-up has: * Scott Hall & Randy Savage vs. Giant & Diamond Dallas Page * Ric Flair & Curt Hennig vs. Syxx & Konnan - I did manage to watch a few more tapes earlier in the week, but I don't have time to write up detailed. I'll try to do so for next week's update. - It's expected that Glen Jacobs (Isaac Yankem, Diesel II) will be brought in to the WWF play the Undertaker's brother. - Besides Bret Hart getting the WWF Title and improving the WWF when it comes to prospective main event matches, the firing of Jim Neidhart also improves the average match level in the promotion. Well, good things happen in threes apparently, since the promotion has also canned the worse-than-awful Sid. - From the Observer: "On the lawsuit front in regard to the proposed suit against WCW [by ECW...], to the best of our knowledge, no lawsuit has been filed at press time. Sources within WCW have made the following points in defence against the charges by ECW. They claim that Stevie Richards wasn't under contract (as had been mentioned here) and his intent to negotiate deal with ECW expired on 6/10 and he never signed a new deal. He had used the name Stevie Richards before ever wrestling in ECW so they have no right to claim the rights to that ring name. They clainm Scott Levy came up with the Raven name and character with the help of Diamond Dallas Page and that Page offered him to Paul Heyman more than two years ago. Heyman at first was reluctant figuring LEvy was going to establish a new gimmick and go back to WWF, but Heyman was promised that Levy would stay a minimum of four months in ECW with the fimmick and wound of staying closer to two-and-a-half years. Although Levy has acknowledged several times that he did a non-compete on PPV contract with Heyman that expires on 10/13, he claims not to have a copy of the contract although the claim is that as part of that deal Heyman acknowledged that all intellectual and mark rights of the Raven name and character were Levy's and not ECW's which would kill that point. Nick Lambros of WCW apparently asked Heyman to send a copy of the contract because they informed Heyman they were planning on using Levy on the 7/13 PPV show. In the letter it is specifically stated that if Heyman didn't respond in ten days, they were going to put Raven on the show. Heyman never responded nor sent WCW a copy of the contract which from a legal standpoing, because of the warning, WCW feels it was in the clear to use Levy on the show, a point agreed with by one contract lawyer I spoke with regarding that point." - - RAW 08/04 with a 4.4 rating against a 2.7 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 0.59 (0.52) and average gross of $1.51-million ($1.32-million), while WCW has an average buy rate of 0.69 (0.67) and average gross of $2.12-million ($2.02-million). The WCW numbers a bit lower than last week. The inflated Bash at the Beach buy rate was not corroborated by independent sources. The details as they stand are available. - All Japan has a show at Budokan on 09/06/97. Partial line-up has * Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Jun Akiyama for the Triple Crown * Hayabusa & Jinsei Shinzaki vs. Kenta Kobashi & Kentaro Shiga - The WWF has Ground Zero on 09/07/97. - WCW has Fall Brawl on 09/14/97. - FMW has a show in Kawasaki Stadium on 9/28/97. They have announced that Ken Shamrock will appear, and it now seems like he will face Vader. - The WWF has a PPV on 10/05/97. - WCW has Halloween Havoc on 10/26/97. Tentative line-up has: * Hulk Hogan vs. Roddy Piper * Giant vs. Kevin Nash * Diamond Dallas Page vs. Randy Savage - The WWF has Survivor Series on 11/09/97. - WCW has World War III on 11/23/97. - FMW has a major show in Kawasaki Stadium on 11/28/97. - The WWF has a PPV on 12/07/97. - WCW has Starrcade on 12/28/97. - 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. ______________________________________________________________________