______________________________________________________________________ We are approaching a holiday weekend in Canada, with Monday being Victoria Day. As a result, I expect that I will debut the new-look web pages next week. I'm hoping to also have a short tape update ready. On the long weekend, I will find the time to watch, among other things, the ECW PPV that just arrived in the mail. Based on Observer match ratings (see the table below), it was the worst PPV in a very long time. ______________________________________________________________________ I do not offer subscriptions to a mailing list! I do not e-mail images! _________________________________________________________________ RAW was a live show this week. They claimed that the show was airing live in Canada, even though it came on at midnight EST. Strangely, though, we finally saw another Val Venis promo in Canada. Once again, the show was very entertaining, with some things that worked and other that didn't, featuring very little good wrestling, as usual. They announced that at Over The Edge for the Steve Austin vs. Dude Love match Jerry Brisco will be guest timekeeper, Pat Patterson will be guest ring announcer, and Vince McMahon would be guest referee. They debut the "Vince as ref" gimmick on 05/23 in Toronto, where Hunter Hearst Helmsley challenges Austin and Dude Love plays timekeeper. All of this seems to be building to Austin vs. Vince at SummerSlam. Anyhow, they are starting to drag the story line developments out a bit, so while Vince was still great on the mic, the segment did drag a little. Degeneration X once again "invaded" WCW's home area, this time travelling to Atlanta and making fun of the spartan WCW head office. They also went to CNN Center and played around with the guards and people. These actions, combined with Nitro's response, has led many people to believe that the promotions will work together at some point, but that just seems too unlikely. Dustin Rhodes burned up his Goldust outfit, saying that Goldust died this night. Al Snow surfaced, working his ECW gimmick. Barry Windham continued his plummet, losing to the returning Vader in short order. Hawk faced Skull in a horrible match that ended with the twins switching to get the screwy win. They really are going to push an LOD vs. DOA feud. Jeff Jarrett and Faarooq went to a DQ when Steve Blackman interfered. Sable confronted Marc Mero, eventually kicking him low. Terry Funk & Too Cold Scorpio faced all three Kaientai members, named (Dick) Togo, (Mens) Teioh, and Sho Funaki. Wally Yamaguchi managed the Michinoku guys, who danced circles around Funk & Scorpio. Funk has never looked older. The main event was Rocky Maivia & D-Lo Brown vs. Steve Austin and surprise partner Vince McMahon. It was built up throughout the show that Austin would have a mystery partner and face an unknown team. McMahon tried his best to stop Austin from getting any offence in. As is usual with Austin, the match had no finish, with everybody running in. In particular, Dude Love and disgruntled Dustin Rhodes came in, building to their upcoming program. Nitro aired in full in Canada this week. TSN runs a mailing list that notifies people of wrestling line-up changes. On Wednesday before noon, I received an e-mail saying that Nitro would air at 3:00pm that afternoon. One of the reasons that RAW routinely beats Nitro in the ratings on TSN is the comparative stability of its time slot. There was a lot of crummy stuff on the show, as usual, with the usual nonsensical interviews and story line developments, but at least there was a little good wrestling. Disco Inferno beat Barry Horowitz. Kidman beat Juventud Guerrera with the seven year itch (shooting star press) after Reese interfered to stop Juvi's offence. Afterwards, the carried out Juvi, just like they did with Scotty Riggs a long time ago. It looks like they finally noticed that Juvi gets a great crowd reaction, so they put him in this story line. In answer to the DX invades WCW stuff on RAW, Eric Bischoff did an interview saying that DX got their marching orders from Vince McMahon, so if Vince had something to say he was welcome to show up at Slamboree this Sunday. Eric was careful to say that he was sure that Vince would not be there. Scott Norton beat Yuji Nagata. Hugh Morrus beat Jim Powers. El Ultimo Dragon beat Johnny Swinger. Chavo Jr. & Eddie Guerrero came in. There were lots of incomprehensible interviews between the matches. Kevin Nash & Konnan did their shtick, Dusty Rhodes did his bit. JJ Dillon announced that Raven would be getting a squadron of four riot cops to guard him from the attacks of crazed fans (Mortis without his mask); this was in response to Raven's unsafe work environment petition. Jerry Flynn lost to Perry Saturn. Dave Finlay beat Rage in a match that was interesting only because Finlay works so stiffly. Lenny Lane lost to Diamond Dallas Page. In the key and most incomprehensible interview segment of the show, Hulk Hogan came out with his entourage and announced that his segment of the NWO (which they are calling NWO Hollywood, versus NWO Wolfpac) had acquired somebody: out came the Giant in an NWO t-shirt. This makes a lot of sense. As usual with WCW, leave your brain at the door when watching. In the NWO Hollywood vs. NWO Wolfpac feud, Hulk Hogan felt that he needed a major player on his side. Sting refused to turn. Hogan next wanted Hall (perhaps to dilute the power of the Nash/Hall pair). It looks like this stupid turn was the result. Chris Jericho did another really funny interview putting down the Malenkos. Joe Malenko came out to defend his family and of course ended up being attacked by Jericho. They announced that there would be a cruiserweight battle royal at Slamboree with the winner getting a title shot later in the night. Jericho seemed perturbed before realizing that his opponent that night would have wrestled once earlier. Glacier beat Sick Boy. Perry Saturn came in and superkicked Glacier, which I guess sets up something between them. Yay! Despite the generally boring interviews tonight, the inexplicable Giant turn, and the return to too many jobber matches making this episode of Nitro seem worse than RAW, the next match was heads above anything the WWF gave us this evening: Chris Benoit beat Booker T with the crippler crossface. Really good match, but a little short. Benoit now fights Finlay for the TV Title on Sunday. They didn't mention that Benoit and Booker T exchanged the TV title a couple of times before Finlay won the belt last week. The Observer explains that Benoit won the belt at the 04/30 Augusta show because neither Ric Flair vs. Curt Hennig nor Diamond Dallas Page vs. Raven could take place as advertised; in a hasty decision, after a large number of fans asked for refunds, they figured they had to give the remaining fans a title change to keep them happy. It worked so well, they did the same thing the next three days, leading to the 05/04 Nitro where Finlay won the title. These last-second decisions wouldn't happen if the company was truthful in its advertising. In the main event, Randy Savage faced Hulk Hogan in the usual bad Hogan match. Bret Hart saved Hogan from losing the title, setting up his match against Savage on Sunday and furthering his marriage of convenience with Hogan that is really just an obsession to win the title from Hogan. Nash & Giant both come out. Sting lurked in the rafter. They ended the show wondering what will happen with the scheduled tag title match on Sunday, when Nash & Scott Hall are supposed to defend against Giant & Sting. Thunder this week was a throwaway show building to Slamboree on Sunday. The show opened with a training video of Eric Bischoff, who again challenged Vince McMahon to turn up at Slamboree. It almost seems like this action and the recent "invasions" by DX are a way of playing with a "real" interfederation feud story line (that will never happen) after the in-house story lines have lost their steam. With the NWO splitting into factions, Mike Tenay actually tried to sell the idea that we now see the top three wrestling promotions on WCW TV. Yikes. They ran a nice interview with Mando Guerrero (Eddie's older brother, Chavo's uncle) who talked about the effect the feud is having on the family. Chavo Jr. then lost to Reese when Eddie screwed things up for him; El Ultimo Dragon came out and put Eddie in the dragon sleeper and this time Chavo didn't save him. Dave Finlay beat Kaos. Goldberg beat Sick Boy. Perry Saturn beat Chris Adams with his really lousy death valley driver; Tony said the move's name several times during the match and then didn't recognize it when it happened. Chris Benoit beat Rage. Kevin Nash & Dusty Rhodes (subbing for Scott Hall, who will be at the PPV they promised) faced Public Enemy. Nash now uses the power bomb without any police involvement, but that's okay 'cause this is WCW. Sting and Randy Savage went to a no decision when everybody ran in. Giant said that Sting would have to consider joining the NWO when he & Sting win the tag titles on Sunday. A really uninspired, pedestrian show. The only really interesting part saw Eric Bischoff come out to read some text from Vince McMahon's attorney, in response to Bischoff's challenge on Monday night. This was a backhanded way of satisfying any legal obligation to tell people that this was a grandstand challenge by Eric. The lawyer wrote that Eric had no authority to suggest that Vince would be at Slamboree, to which Eric responded that he in fact said that Vince did not have the guts to come to Slamboree. True and cute. The letter also called Vince McMahon a top performer in Titan and the reason for the ratings boost the promotion has seen, a statement that Eric said would really make some WWF wrestlers happy. There were numerous "McMahon fears Bischoff" signs in the crowd. Sort of weird but perversely interesting. - WCW has Slamboree on Sunday. Tentative line-up has: * Bret Hart vs. Randy Savage * Bill Goldberg vs. the entire Flock in a gauntlet match (he must beat each one in turn or return the US Title to WCW) * Scott Hall & Kevin Nash vs. Sting & Giant for the Tag Titles * Chris Jericho vs. battle royal winner for the Cruiserweight Title * Chris Benoit vs. Dave Finlay for the TV Title * Diamond Dallas Page vs. Raven in a bowery death match (covered cage) * Brian Adams vs. Lex Luger * 15-man Cruiserweight battle royal to determine challenger for later The switch to Benoit vs. Finlay from Benoit vs. Booker is a good one from a match quality standpoint. Some line-up changes from last week. Lex Luger came out a challenge to Brian Adams and Scott Steiner for injuring Rick Steiner. Gene Okerlund seemed to indicate that he would face Adams at the PPV, replacing Konnan, who has the "NWO split" issue with Adams, coming out of a TV match. I would imagine that the Goldberg vs. the Flock match excludes Raven. - The WWF has In Your House on 05/31/98. Tentative line-up has: * Steve Austin vs. Dude Love for the WWF Title (Vince referee) * Rocky Maivia vs. Faarooq for the IC Title * Legion of Doom vs. Skull & Eight Ball * Hunter Hearst Helmsley & Billy Gunn & Road Dog vs. Owen Hart & D-Lo Brown & Kama Mustafa * Vader vs. Kane - After the All Japan Dome show, Giant Baba announced that Mitsuharu Misawa would take some time off to heal his numerous injuries. It's expected that he'll miss the next two tours. Toshiaki Kawada was also injured in winning the title, but he'll be on the next tour, leading to his first defence on 06/12 in Budokan Hall against Kenta Kobashi. - After his refusal to job to Scott Norton on TV a few weeks back, it looks like Davey Boy Smith is done with WCW. - Tiger Ali Singh will re-debut in the WWF shortly. They really have high hopes for this guy in Canada. - In discussing the Brian Pillman memorial show which raised some $25K for Brian's family, Meltzer writes the following. Think about it; I'm not going to break it down. Also interesting is that Woman for the first time publicly appeared with Benoit since her WCW firing and also managed him at the show, and she was said to have lost a lot of weight and was in tremendous shape. If you've ever tried to figure out the Benoit mystery (why he gets such a great crowd reaction, why he almost always has great matches and whe he's in the position he's in and used the way he is), that detail being revealed may prove to be an important part of the answer to that mystery. - RAW beat Nitro 05/11 with a 4.7 rating against a 4.3 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 1.05 0.89 0.93 0.74 Average PPV Revenue $3.71 $3.02 $3.58 $2.55 Here's the 1998 summary sheet: 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 7) 98/03/29 WWF WrestleMania 2.2 (4) $9.52 1.81 * 1/2 * * * 1/4 0% (0 of 8) 98/04/19 WWF IYH Unforgiven 1.75 * * * * * 14% (1 of 7) WWF Average 1.21 $4.94 1.83 * 1/2 * * * 1/2 3.6% (1 of 28) 98/01/25 WCW Souled Out 1.02 (2) $3.81 1.88 * * * * * 11.1% (1 of 9) 98/02/22 WCW SuperBrawl 1.1 (3) $4.12 1.68 * 1/4 * * * 3/4 0% (0 of 10) 98/03/15 WCW Uncensored 1.1 $4.12 1.69 * * 1/2 * * * 3/4 0% (0 of 9) 98/04/19 WCW Spring Stampede 0.7 $2.62 2.4 * * 1/2 * * * * 20% (2 of 10) WCW Average 0.98 $3.67 1.92 * 1/2 * * * 3/4 7.9% (3 of 38) 98/03/01 ECW Living Dangerously 0.23 $0.42 1.56 * 1/2 * * * 1/4 0% (0 of 8) 98/05/03 ECW WrestlePalooza 0.64 1/2 * * 0% (0 of 7) ECW Average 1.13 * 1/4 * * 1/2 0% (0 of 15) Footnotes: (1) WWF claims 1.03; (2) WCW claims 1.1; (3) preliminary figure; (4) possibly WWF figure; Detailed data is available. - New Japan has a big show on 06/05/98. Shinya Hashimoto will challenge Tatsumi Fujinami for the IWGP Title and is expected to recapture the belt. The promotion has nobody at Hashimoto's level to carry things. - WCW has the Great American Bash on 06/14/98. - 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. Jerry Springer is expected to be involved in the show. - 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. 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