______________________________________________________________________ I do not offer subscriptions to a mailing list! I do not e-mail images! _________________________________________________________________ I appreciate the positive feedback on the tape list search option I added last week. I've played around with some searches (locally and on the web) and there are some minor problems with the tape file data that I'll hopefully work out when I next update the list on the web. Keep in mind that the tape data files are generated by a program I've written. The input for that program is several flat ASCii files on my PC. Those input files have the minor formatting errors here and there that lead to the small problems that can surface online. _________________________________________________________________ Pictures of the Week Fourteen new pictures. Go to the Pics page to see the full selection, with thumbnails or without. To view any of the pictures, click on the thumbnail. Steve Williams suplexes Mistuharu Misawa 1996 All Japan Tag Tournament opening ceremonies Hayabusa moomsaults Taka Michinoku Hayabusa & Masato Tanaka after a loss Akira Hokuto, The Dangerous Queen Akira Hokuta suplexes Meiko Satomura Michinoku Pro's Kaientai DX Tiger King & Tiger Mask Kendo Ka Shin training with Stu Hart Jushin Liger elbow drops Yuji Yasuraoka WCW Nitro images from 96/11/11 Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Kimo Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Kimo Bam Bam Bigelow after facing Kimo _________________________________________________________________ RAW was a lacklustre taped show. Throughout the show, there were supernatural disruptions credited to Undertaker. Steve Blackman & Ken Shamrock beat Faarooq & Rocky Maivia by DQ when the NOD interfered. Barry Windham COR Owen Hart when Chyna low-blowed Hart. Aguila beat Brian Christopher by DQ when Jerry Lawler interfered. Do you see the pattern yet? In the only exception, Chainsaw Charlie & Cactus Jack pinned the Quebecers. Goldust faced Marc Mero in a match where Sable & Luna were handcuffed at ringside. The ref bumped and Goldust & Luna humiliated Sable by poking her chest with a pin and watching her fly around the arena. Actually, they smeared make-up on her face. Savio Vega got a DQ win over Hunter Hearst Helmsley, I guess, when Steve Austin interfered, only to take another superkick from Shawn Michaels, who made a surprise appearance. Weak show wrestling-wise. To push story-lines in other ways, they also did an angle where Steve Austin took over the show, demanding to see Vince. He lambasted Vince when he finally came to the ring. A very long segment. Next week's RAW airs in the US on Tuesday night. TSN is airing the show at midnight Monday as is usual. Nitro was a live three-hour show, condensed to two hours in Canada, once again featuring "the biggest match in the history of WCW," a saying that becomes annoying, oh, the second time you hear it. Starting 03/25/98 at 3:00pm EST, Nitro will be three hours on TSN; it's unclear how long they'll stick with the full program at that time. What aired here: * The Cat (Ernest Miller) beat Damian with a spin kick off the top rope. Repackaging Miller in boxing shorts with gloves and changing his name made all the difference in getting him over, he said sarcastically. * Sick Boy beat Lenny Lane with a Hunter Hearst Helmsley Pedigree piledriver. * Brian Adams beat Kaos with a tilt-a-whirl powerslam. * Raven & Saturn beat Chris Benoit & Diamond Dallas Page by countout. Up to this point, I had decided the show would be completely worthless. As it turns out, it had about three minutes of worth, when Benoit made the hot tag and looked absolutely tremendous doing anything. The other guys were on a whole other level, way below Benoit. * Davey Boy Smith beat Konnan with the powerslam in a short match. * Chris Jericho got a Lion Tamer submission from Disco Inferno. * Booker T beat Chavo Guerrero Jr. with the side kick. Eddie Guerrero cheered on Chavo and then beat him up after the match. * Ric Flair beat Curt Hennig by DQ when the NWO midcarders interfered. Bret Hart made the save. It was great watching Mark Curtis (Brian Hildebrand) during this match; he's easily the best referee in wrestling, IMO. Ric Flair was incredibly over. * Scott Steiner & Scott Norton DCOR Rick Steiner & Lex Luger. There's no truth to the rumour that former Vicious & Delicious tag member Scott Norton will be naming this new team Juicy & Juicier. Scott Steiner ran away from everybody when push came to shove. * Sting & Randy Savage & Giant beat Hulk Hogan & Kevin Nash & Scott Hall by DQ when the Disciple interfered in the biggest match ever in Nitro history this week. They actually had a ten-minute match before the went to the finish, a nice change from the two-minute mains of most weeks. The match stunk, though. Who's surprised? At the finish, they finally split off into their Uncensored pairings. Disciple came in and hit the Cold Stoned Stunner, which Hogan seemed to call the Apocalypse. Overall, I found very little of quality in this show: Benoit looked awesome; Ric Flair, while slipping from greatness, was still fun to watch; Chris Jericho was good; Eddie Guerrero looked super. Regarding the "Hitman is a Herb" sign displayed in the crowd last week on Nitro (image in last week's TidBits), several readers pointed out that the same sign was displayed earlier in the show with other wrestlers' names in place of "Hitman." I was also reminded that in late 1997, just prior to the Starrcade main event, there was a "Sting lives in Herb's basement" sign in the crowd. When I asked for the meaning of the sign last week, I never once meant to suggest it had anything to do with me; I just didn't understand the meaning. E-mail suggestions ranged from Burger King references to marijuana references to herbivore references to insults at me. One person who I've never heard of even wrote a little essay with the thesis that Bret Hart and I have shown similar attitudes towards wrestling; apparently, I'm important enough to this guy for him to create a mock version of this site. Wow! That's even weirder than the sign I asked about. Thunder this week was a night of challenges that seemed mildly interesting, but ended up not delivering anything. At the start of the show, Giant challenged anybody in the NWO to take him on one-one-one, basically challenging the entire group. Sting also accepted a challenge from Randy Savage, offering to face him on the show. Dean Malenko accepted a challenge from Chris Jericho. Eddie Guerrero later accepted a challenge from Chavo Guerrero Jr. This, of course, led to Tony Schiavone declaring this night the biggest Thursday ever in WCW history. Until next week, I guess. Matches: * Raven beat Brad Armstrong with his evenflow DDT: it was a one move match, preceded by a lengthy Raven interview, suggesting that he might want to recruit Armstrong. In the efforts of various forces to get Raven over, there's a strong chance that he'll add even more members to the flock. * Jim Duggan beat Kendall Windham: This was the match I was waiting to see ever since these two gladiators reappeared in WCW. And, boy, I wasn't disappointed. That's because I expected this piece of crap to suck terribly. There's a lesson in this: set your expectations low. The lesson has one proviso: does not work for garbage wrestling. * Scott Steiner got a Steiner recliner submission from Johnny Grunge. * Eddie Guerrero beat Chavo Guerrero Jr.: a good short match. They teased a few finishes. Eddie looked awesome. Chavo did a nice somersault tope. The agreed-upon stipulation was that the loser would have to follow the advice of the winner. * Konnan beat Lizmark Jr. with the Tequila Sunrise submission: Lizmark looked pretty good, although he was getting up on his own from pin attempts. Juventud Guerrera ran in afterwards. * Perry Saturn beat Disco Inferno with the Rings of Saturn: fast-paced, mildly sloppy match, but it was okay. Disco is able to get something out of Saturn that many others haven't been able to. * Giant faced Hulk Hogan & Curt Hennig & Konnan & Scott Steiner & Vincent & Scott Norton & Brian Adams & Scott Hall: stupid challenge match. The NWO side worked as a tag team. Two minutes in, Konnan was in the ring and was getting slaughtered. Everybody came in; clotheslines for all! Giant powerbombed Konnan. The NWO retreated while Giant was chained up to be led off by security. Can you see the angle a mile away? Of course, Kevin Nash came out to taunt a chained Giant, tossing coffee in his face again. Giant snapped the chains and chased after Nash. * Dean Malenko beat Chris Jericho to win the Cruiserweight Title: Not! In a sort of neat angle that failed to deliver, Dean actually beat Lenny Lane, who was wearing Jericho's gear, including the Juventud Guerrera mask that Jericho has been sporting. When Lane tapped out, Dean took the mask of, with the commentators saying he was doing so out of respect for Juvi. Just as we saw that the fallen wrestler is Lenny Lane, Chris Jericho hit the ring to attack Dean. We go to commercial...that's the part that didn't deliver. Really, they should have let them work a match for a few minutes, perhaps forcing Jericho into it, before Jericho could run away or get DQed or whatever. * Lex Luger beat Scott Norton by DQ when the Steiners both came in. * Sting beat Randy Savage by DQ when the NWO ran in: non match because they went to the finish two minutes in. Sting hit the Scorpion that quickly. Scott Hall broke it up. Savage decked Hall. Hogan came in. Savage decked Hogan. Sting fought Hall. More NWO guys came out. Sting attached straps to both he and Savage and they floated up to the ceiling. The post-match attack was weak-looking. Tony Schiavone suggested that Ed Leslie's name might be Apocalypse, although on Nitro I was given the impression that that was the name of his Cold Stoned Stunner finisher. Throughout the show, with story lines, interviews, and promo packages, they did a good job of hyping Uncensored on Sunday. In that sense, this show reminded me of Monday Night RAW this week. Of course, the difference is that Thunder at least had a really good short match. - WCW has Uncensored on Sunday. Line-up has: * Sting vs. Scott Hall for the WCW Title * Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage in a cage match * Bret Hart vs. Curt Hennig * Kevin Nash vs. Giant * Lex Luger vs. Scott Steiner * Eddie Guerrero vs. Booker T for the TV Title * Dean Malenko vs. Chris Jericho for the Cruiserweight Title * Diamond Dallas Page vs. Chris Benoit vs. Raven for the US Title * Juventud Guerrera vs. Konnan It's expected that Eddie Guerrero will win the TV Title on this show. It also would not be a surprise if Chris Benoit were to come out of the show with the US Title to placate him for being in such a crummy program. - I had the chance to watch the ECW Living Dangerously PPV this past Monday on Canadian tape delay. All in all, it seemed a pretty shaky effort that once again looked noticeably minor league compared to WCW or the WWF. The most over wrestler of the night was Ric Flair, with loud "Wooh"s echoing from the crowd with every chop. Quick run-down: * Chris Chetti & Jerry Lynn beat Tracy Smothers & Little Guido: this was a throwaway opener. They all looked okay at times, but it didn't seem like those times coincided all that much; so, the match ended up being weak. The FBI gimmick of Smothers & Guido came across as being bush league. * Masato Tanaka beat Doug Furnas: Bad match. Wing Kanemura was supposed to be Tanaka's opponent, so on paper this looked like an improvement. Even if they didn't have long to plan out a match, there's really no excuse for somebody who we know can be pretty good (Furnas) facing somebody who shows signs of being a good worker (Tanaka). Hmmm, one of those assumptions must be wrong. Before the match, they ran promos on Kanemura, calling him one of the most decorated wrestlers in Japanese history, and Tanaka, calling him the single most sought after wrestler in Japan. I didn't know this was a comedy match! Well, the communication in the match seemed to break down before it even started. Maybe they were rattled by the "boring" chant from the crowd. The match ran under 6:00. The finish was atrocious, with the wrestlers flubbing a collision off the ropes and standing there for way too many seconds before Tanaka hit a poor spinning elbow for the pin. An utter disappointment. * Rob Van Dam beat 2 Cold Scorpio: I guess this was supposed to be the strong wrestling match on the show, but it really showed the holes in both guys' abilities. There were no transitions, no psychology, no building to anything. There was very, very little selling of substance. There were numerous twisting, somersault high spots. There were tables and a chair. There were missed moves. In the end, it was like watching two rookie gymnasts work one of their first matches. The crowd really raked the guys over the coals, chanting "boring!" and "this match sucks!" For a second, I thought the New Jersey fans in the house might be quality wrestling fans, that they could see through the stunt man side of the match and see how weak it was as a wrestling match. Then they chanted "We want Sandman!" I'm hoping this was an "if you can't beat them, join them" type reaction. Anyhow, Van Dam finally got a cradle for the pin. After the match, Van Dam said that Scorpio had given him a good match, telling Scorpio to shake his hand. Scorpio took the microphone and said something like "I'll shake your hand even if you don't shake mine," making the post match scene as amateurish as the match. * New Jack & Spike Dudley beat Buh Buh Ray Dudley & Devon Dudley and Axl Rotten & Balls Mahoney in a three-way dance: garbage style match, with the requisite sloppiness, no-selling, and nonsensical brawling. Of course, everybody bladed. The pre-match scene, with Joel Gertner announcing his guys was funny. He's got good presence. The match had the daredevil stunt of the show, with New Jack & Spike both diving off the balcony onto the other Dudleys on tables. * Tommy Dreamer pinned Justin Credible: Mediocre match at best. Dreamer can't do much at all. Justin sometimes tries. Joey Styles, exposed by this time for hyping stuff that wasn't anywhere near the level that deserved such hype, tried to make me care. Beulah, who it had been teased might be leaving Dreamer, came out and story line took over, thankfully. Beulah hit the low blows before getting stopped by Nicole Bass, who put her in a bear hug. Mikey Whippreck came in to break it up. Nicole dropped Beulah and flashed a silicon enhancement. Dreamer got the pin off of a DDT. * Bam Bam Bigelow beat Taz for the TV Title: Bigelow was a one man show for the first 7 minutes-or-so before he ran out of gas from taking so many dramatic bumps to put Taz over. Unfortunately, the match went 14 minutes, so the second half was bad. The finish was cool. Taz hit the choke and Bigelow dropped back, with both wrestlers breaking through the mat and crashing to the floor. Eventually, Bigelow climbed out of the hole, dragged Taz out, and pinned him. Good finish. * Sabu pinned Sandman in a dueling cane match: throughout the show, they said that the PPV carriers would not let them show this match because of its content. Styles even hyped that the whole match would eventually be on ECW home video. Before the PPV, there was talk that they were going to tape the match so that they could present it with appropriate editing if necessary (Sabu & Sandman had had a -*** classic at the last PPV and nobody wanted a repeat). When they started this angle of not being able to broadcast the match, I was happy, thinking that they might give some more time to the guys that can actually work. Oh well. At this point in the show, they aired the match under direct order from Paul Heyman, with Styles acting like the company might go under because of it. The match was a garbagy, table-breaking cluster of the usual no selling, no psychology, no tranisition (hard to have transitions when there are no wrestling moves) ilk. There were no dueling canes in the match. There was no blood (the earlier three way dance had blood from everybody). All of the hype for this match mirrored WCW's hype for the Starrcade main event as the match of the century. * Al Snow & Lance Storm beat Shane Douglas & Chris Candido: After the ten-minute break for the previous taped match, the best they could do was put up yellow crime scene tape around the gaping hole in the ring. It looked so sadly amateurish. Sure, fixing the hole up would reveal that they were prepared for such an eventuality, but that minor kayfabe break is worth it when the other choice is looking third-rate. Sunny came out and completely overshadowed everybody else that had appeared on the show. After her WWF experience, she has incredible presence. There wasn't much of a match here, with the whole booking relying on story line. It's always depressing when good workers get shafted into non-wrestling matches. This time around, Storm came out alone and announced his mystery partner was Sunny. Styles played that up as brilliant since Candido surely wouldn't hit her. Of course, Sunny turned on Lance at the first possible opportunity, planting a weak cookie sheet shot on him. Lance's real partner then emerged to a tremendous-looking entrance: fans were waving styrofoam heads throughout the arena. They did some goofy stuff, like zooming in and out of the ring, turning the camera upside down, etc., all failed experiments that should have been tried in private and discarded. Snow hit a Northern Lights bomb for the pin on Douglas, presumably setting up a title shot at the next PPV. All in all, this wasn't a great show. I typed the above run-down in on Monday night. Lo and behold, the Observer with the review of this show arrived on Tuesday. Things seem similar. Regarding Van Dam vs. Scorpio, Dave Meltzer writes: This was supposed to be the four-star classic, but it just exposed how overrated both wrestlers are by insider fans. Van Dam has certain great talents. He has a major league personality, rap and look. He's a fantastic athlete. He does some very unique maneuvers and has a willingness to take great punishment, has a great workrate and takes good bumps. Before he's the next Chris Jericho, let alone the next Shawn Michaels, he needs to learn selling and psychology, but more important, transitions. This match had the feel of two guys who were minor leaguers on the indie scene trying to display every moonsault they know, but not being able to do it within the context of doing a match. Basically the difference between an opening match Promo Azteca rookie flier doing corkscrew planchas and shooting star presses and watching Rey Misterio Jr. and Psicosis do less sophisticated moves, but not setting them up so amateurishly. And where Van Dam really needs work is to learn what he does that looks good and what he does that doesn't, and eliminate the latter, rather than doing everything. If you look at every great worker in this business, whether they be Misawa, Michaels, Hart, Kobashi, Benoit or Guerrero, they do what they can do. We don't know what they do that doesn't look good, because we never see them do it because they've figured out in the midst of a heated struggle if they throw a spin kick that misses by a foot and a half, and their opponent still sells it, it kills everything they've built up to that point. Why did Ric Flair never throw a dropkick after winning the world title? Because he didn't have a world champion calibre dropkick. Why does Misawa never do a moonsault? Why can Benoit do no wrong (unless he's against Page)? Why does Van Dam ever throw a punch? It makes time stand still in his matches with those lame arm punches with no body movement. It's more lame than watching Glacier throw kicks after seeing Dragon on the same TV show. If a match is nothing but a collection of acrobatic moves and making it look like a match isn't important, than this was the four-star match it was supposed to be. Based on match quality figures (see the table below), out of the five pro-wrestling PPVs so far this year, this PPV comes in either fourth, ahead of only the WWF's No Way Out, or last, if you weigh in peak match rating as being particularly important. Actually, the discussion about ECW and the PPV in general in the Observer is interesting: The show established that even with wrestlers working their butts off, the company simply doesn't have the quality of depth to compete from a wrestling standpoint with even a mid-level WCW PPV, and it doesn't have the quality of headliners or the financial resources to compete with anything better than a mid-level WWF show either. It's a foregone conclusion it can't compete on a show production basis. It can, at least at its best, and from all accounts this show was closer to that level that the previous two, compete in terms of crowd reactions, but has yet to master getting that enthusiasm across on television for an entire show. It can compete in story telling, but in trying so hard to get across its stories, it has sacrificed the credibility of its lone announcer, Joey Styles, to the point that his credibility is quickly, if they don't change pace and pull him out of the quicksand, going to wind up at the level of Gene Okerlund on a 900 line. Doug Furnas as half of the most successful foreign tag team in the history of Japanese wrestling? Yeah, wait until the outcry if Jim Ross were to say that the Head Bangers are considered by most experts as the greatest tag team in the long and storied history of the National Wrestling Alliance. Or if Mike Tenay were to have attempted to present Gedo as "one of the most decorated athletes in the history of Japan," the exact words ECW used for Wing Kanemura, a wrestler of about the same level, who wasn't even there to begin with. But was it entertaining? If you're an ECW fan, it was, and if you don't like the show, you're probably not going to like most of what ECW offers. With its previous three shows, ECW established itself as to what level is stands as a business, a distant but profitable third promotion. The first PPV was among the best PPV shows of the year, but if you take Terry Funk and the Michinoku Pro wrestlers out of that mix, it would have been an entirely different story. The second and third shows never captured ECW when it is good ECW. With this show ECW established what it both can and can't do in comparison with how it looks in a competitive environment when it puts on what is by its standards, a representation of good ECW. Guys working as hard, if not harder, but generally not as good. Despite attempting to market them as such, necessary to create stars, there are really no Franchises, Show Stoppers and Shows. Bloodier to be sure. A lot more amateurish performances (see: Wright, Lance) by people who come off a lot better when edited. And more than its fair share of creativity. But with all the promises of being different, better wrestling and politically incorrect, they brought nothing to the table that the WWF doesn't other than more blood, an impressive balcony leap and a great ring entrance at the end of the show. Joey Styles desperately needs a broadcast sidekick on these shows, and he's in a bad position in that the more the product is exposed, the more his credibility gets exposed. If they put in a clown to hype it, Styles can do his job without coming across as a transparent shill. They brought out a world famous hardcore porn star, who was wearing more than Sable usually shows every week on Raw, let alone all the dead women on Silk Stalkings, and whose acting ability make Sable look like Meryl Streep. You can't brag about how different things are and than have them be exactly the same. Well, of course you can, when you're selling illusion which is what pro wrestling is based on. Most obvious case in point. After teasing the audience for nearly two hours with lures of graphic titillation about how sick the Sabu vs. Sandman match was and why it can't be aired, when it finally was aired, it was tamer than most of the matches that were already on the show. The main event actually delivered less than most Hogan matches, although it wasn't the fault of the wrestlers as there was a hole in the ring at the time, which only served to make the company look that much less professional. The idea of keeping the hole in the ring, as they never even attempted to fix it as the taped match was airing, was to give the ring breaking angle more credibility as something that happened not on the script since there were no provisions for it. But can you imagine if they were to do a gimmick on a WWF or WCW PPV show where the ring breaks, that they wouldn't have made provisions for it to be fixed in time for Hogan or Michaels' match and thus end the show 20 minutes early (actually it was timed out to end 10 minutes early to begin with so it actually as it was timed out only ended 10 minutes early)? Sanjay Mohanta, resident garbage wrestling guru, asked me to check out some stuff on a tape he passed me, but, after watching the ECW show, I had my fill. I'll try to get to it for next week. - Problems abound for WCW. The deal with New Japan seems to be in major trouble. Apparently, a souvenir book with the NWO logo was being sold in Japan, and WCW demanded that it be pulled. WCW also apparently complained that Rick Bogner was brought into NWO Japan without first running it through WCW offices. Since it's Rick Bogner (Razor Ramon II), you could argue that it's a quality control issue; then you look at the rest of the NWO roster and lose the argument. Masa Chono has been pushing to abandon the NWO name while keeping the same talent split in effect. In fact, the current tour is being run without display of the NWO logo. New Japan pays a ridiculous figure to use WCW talent and rarely gets anybody noteworthy. There's status attached to having a link to a US promotion, but it seems like everybody is questioning whether New Japan should bother. New Japan has canceled May bookings for WCW/NWO wrestlers. WCW has also tried cracking down on the Mexican wrestlers, telling them that they can no longer work Mexican shots on their nights off. This would hurt more guys than can be listed. Since WCW does have exclusive worldwide rights to the guys under contract, you can't argue that the demand isn't within the promotion's rights. Still, it comes off as yet again not respecting what the Mexican guys bring to the table. The lack of pushes, the taking of Juventud's mask, and now this crackdown would completely kill morale amongst the Mexicans. As a result, it's strongly expected that Eric Bischoff will not follow through with the threat. - Eric Bischoff's appearance on TSN's "Off The Record" is slated for 03/18/98. - In recent house cleaning, WCW got rid of Steve Regal, David Taylor, NWO's Vincent, and Syxx. Syxx was fired, but the others may still be used, although their contracts were not renewed. - The WWF has WrestleMania XIV on 03/29/98. Tentative line-up seems to include: * Steve Austin vs. Shawn Michaels with Mike Tyson as a ringside enforcer * Undertaker vs. Kane * Terry Funk & Cactus Jack vs. New Age Outlaws for the Tag Titles * Owen Hart vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley for the European Title * Rocky Maivia vs. Ken Shamrock for the IC Title * Taka Michinoku vs. Aguila for the Lightheavyweight Title * 15-team Battle Royal Pete Rose and Gennifer Flowers will appear as celebrity guests. The Observer reports that Aguila & Taka Michinoku are going to have to carefully choreograph their entire match since Aguila is only really experienced in trios matches and won't be used to going so long in a singles match. The Observer writes "[Aguila's] not ready for this." It's expected that the battle royal will be used as a vehicle to get the new-image Road Warriors over again. It's also expected that the new Midnight Express will debut for this match. - - RAW 03/09 with a 4.9 rating against a 3.6 rating. The detailed ratings are a click away. - PPV buy rates and revenue (in millions) for the WWF and WCW are presented in the following table. WCW WWF Past 6 Months Past Year Past 6 Months Past Year Average Buy Rate 0.89 1.09 0.64 0.63 Average PPV Revenue $2.85 $3.73 $1.93 $2.26 The 1998 PPV summary sheet looks like this: Date Show Buy Rate Gross Average Match Rating Median Match Rating Peak Match Rating matches >= * * * * 98/01/18 WWF Royal Rumble 0.97 (1) $3.62 2.38 * * 1/2 * * * 1/2 0% (0 of 6) 98/02/15 WWF IYH No Way Out 0.45 $1.67 1.46 * 1/2 * * * 1/2 0% (0 of 6) WWF Average 0.69 $2.31 1.92 * * 1/4 * * * 1/2 0% (0 of 12) 98/01/25 WCW Souled Out 1.02 (2) $3.81 1.92 * * * * * 11.1% (1 of 9) 98/02/22 WCW SuperBrawl 1.5 (3) $5.60 1.68 * 1/4 * * * 3/4 0% (0 of 10) WCW Average 1.26 $4.71 1.79 * 1/4 * * * 3/4 5.2% (1 of 19) 98/03/01 ECW Living Dangerously 1.56 * 1/2 * * * 1/4 0 (0 of 8) Footnotes: (1) WWF claims 1.03; (2) WCW claims 1.1; (3) preliminary figure Detailed data is available. - New Japan has a major show in the Tokyo Dome on 04/04/98. Line-up has * Antonio Inoki's retirement match. Since the majority of wrestlers in the company don't want to be involved with this, the tournament to decide Inoki's final challenger includes Naoya Ogawa, Kazuo Yamazaki, Don Frye, David Beneteau, Yoshiaki Fujiwra, Brian Johnston, Igor Meindart, and Kazayuki Fujita. They've lined up all of these guys with shooting reputations so that one of them can eventually put Inoki over. To let the losing shooter keep some face, they are acutally going to hold the semi-final and final of the tournament on this show as well (allowing fatigue to be a factor in the eventual loss). The quarter-final matches take place on 03/22/98. There's already a strong rumour that Inoki will start up a new promotion, the World Martial Arts Alliance, after "retiring." * Kensuke Sasaki vs. Tatsumi Fujinami for the IWGP Title * Keiji Muto & Masa Chono vs. Shinya Hashimoto & Osamu Nishimura for the IWGP Tag Titles * Jushin Liger vs. Kendo Ka Shin for the IWGP Jr. Title * Shinjiro Otani & Koji Kanemoto vs. Tatsuhito Takaiwa & Yuji Yusaroaka - The WWF has In Your House on 04/26/98. - All Japan has a Tokyo Dome show on 05/01/98. Baba has suggested that he might use Vader or the Undertaker from the WWF; he's also suggested that we should not be surprised if no WWF guys appear. It's expected that FMW's Gladiator will work this show; he's the only outsider from the group that worked the February tour that is pretty much a definite for the show. Line-up has: * Mitsuhara Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada for the Triple Crown * Akira Taue vs. Koji Kitao * Jun Akiyama vs. Hiro Hase * Kenta Kobashi & Maunakea Mossman vs. Gladiator & Hideki Hosaka Does anybody else read that line-up and think that there has to be better way to use Kobashi? There's apparently already pressure, internally, from the press, and from fans, to change the match. - WCW has Slamboree on 05/17/98. - The WWF has In Your House on 05/31/98. - The WWF has King of the Ring on 06/28/98. - The WWF has In Your House on 07/26/98. - The WWF has SummerSlam on 08/30/98. - The WWF has In Your House on 09/27/98. - The WWF has In Your House on 10/18/98. - The WWF has Survivor Series on 11/15/98. - The WWF has In Your House on 12/13/98. - 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. ______________________________________________________________________ If you have any feedback regarding my web pages, please send me e-mail. Don't forget to delete the leading "x" from my e-mail address; that "x" is my web spider spam guard. ______________________________________________________________________