______________________________________________________________________ I do not offer subscriptions to a mailing list! I do not e-mail images! ______________________________________________________________________ - WCW had SuperBrawl this past Sunday, 02/21/99. The show really had little promise on paper, even with an 11th hour addition of a Saturn vs. Chris Jericho match. You have to wonder how they could run with the line-up they went with, particularly when we all knew they were going to deliver finishes that nobody wanted to see: Rey unmasking, Ric Flair getting screwed thanks to his son David, the Horsemen losing the tag tourney finals. Anyhow, the show earned a thumbs down from me, even though it had one darn good match and a few really good performances. I re-read the previous sentence and realize that I'm harder on WCW than I am on the WWF; how could St. Valentine's Day Massacre get a thumbs in the middle from me when these two shows were pretty much equally bad? Quick run-down: * Booker T beat Disco Inferno: Well, there was good heat throughout the match, which was actually surprisingly okay. Disco frustrates me because he spends too much time pandering to the crowd. Booker T worked really hard in this match. They received loud Ric Flair reactions for the chop spots. It was really just a glorified squash, with T winning with the Harlem Hangover. 14 minutes with ring entrances. * Chris Jericho DQ Perry Saturn: Wonderful WCW logic. Saturn lost a dress match a month ago and has to wear a dress for 90 days, right? Well, no, this was a return dress match, giving Saturn a chance to overcome the obligation. Ugh. It's like they didn't think about the stipulation before instituting it. They went into the crowd for a few seconds. Ralphus came out in a dress. Saturn hit a pescado on Jericho and then stripped Ralphus. Saturn was wearing eye make-up and earrings, which was just too weird. Oh, Scott Dickenson was the referee. Saturn hit a frog splash and signalled for the DVD, but ended up being schoolboyed by Jericho for a two count. Jericho's Lion Tamer was countered with a roll-up. A Jericho cross body was rolled through by Saturn and turned into the Rings of Saturn, which Jericho escaped by going to the ropes. Saturn did a suplex/power bomb move, but missed a moonsault afterwards. Finally, Saturn did manage to hit the DVD, but he paused instead of going for a cover, instead opting to DVD Dickenson and walk away. As you can tell, there were some really good moments in the match, with counters to patented spots and some quick exchanges. But that finish sucked and brought the whole thing down for me (similar to the Mankind vs. Rock draw). 16 minutes with entrances. * Billy Kidman beat Chavo Guerrero Jr.: Really good. Even before he made it true again on this show, I had the feeling that Kidman is the show for me. It's been that way through the tail end of 1998. Chavo did a running somersault tope, without using his hands on the ropes. They did the dropkick counter to a cross body block spot that Jushin Liger introduced. Chavo did a top rope frankensteiner and a DDT on Kidman, who was draped across the rope. Billy countered a powerbomb with a facecrusher. Kidman won with the shooting star. This would easily be the match of the night on a typical Monday night battle, but it wasn't up to Kidman's recent PPV offerings. 11 minutes with entrances. The show was good to this point, but not great, and about to roll steadily downhill. * Barry Windham & Curt Hennig beat Chris Benoit & Dean Malenko to win the tag titles: The commentators had to explain that Benoit & Malenko had to beat Windham & Hennig twice to win the tourney, but Hennig & Windham only had to win once to take the titles. Bobby Heenan prattled on about how that had no bearing on Benoit & Malenko because they'd only think about winning one match and when that one match was over they'd only think about winning one match. It was extremely annoying commentary, since if Benoit & Malenko did win the first match, that first win was made meaningless by Heenan. As a result, it seemed like we shouldn't really care for Benoit & Malenko, when it should have made them seem heroic for facing such stiff odds. Benoit & Malenko got a great reaction, which of course signalled what the result would be. The match was slow at points, because Hennig & Windham don't do much at all. Benoit hit a top rope head butt, but Barry Windham made the save. That signalled the commentators to start stupid dialog number two during this match, with all this crap about "saves" and DQs after two saves. The commentary was so inane that one's perception of the match was affected. Windham just stinks and the match seemed long and boring when he was on offence. They did a long heat segment on Benoit, which was only good when Benoit made his comebacks. It says something when Benoit can't make a wrestler look good. Hot tag to Dean, who hit his cloverleaf, which Hennig broke up. That was momentary, as Dean put the hold on again and got the win. They announced that there would be a 30 second break before the much-anticipated second fall took place. Windham removed his belt, but the referee didn't see him use it to choke out Dean. They scored the pin in three minutes. Really brutal and sad. Loud, loud boos because nobody wanted to see this result. It doesn't really matter if they switch the titles to Benoit & Malenko reasonably quickly because they've damaged the value of the titles already. 26 minutes with entrances * Scott Hall & Kevin Nash beat Konnan & Rey Misterio Jr.: Big Crappy had to pick a new partner to replace Lex Luger, so Hall was put in here and his own singles match later. They had a barber's chair in the aisle, which was actually a good touch. Hall & Nash sold for Rey, which seemed like a miracle and actually made the match better than the anticipated junk. The selling didn't last that long. The Nash/Rey size difference was incredible. Nash even bumped for a Rey spin kick. Luger, at ringside, pulled out Konnan and banged him into the steps. Rey hit a moonsault on Nash, hitting in the head with his knee and knocking him out. Improbably, then, Rey had Nash pinned, but the referee wasn't available because Liz had him distracted. Hall came in, edged Rey, put Nash on top, and that was that. Rey unmasked and looked more like a teenager than Kaz Hayashi does. The crowd didn't want this finish either. The match was nothing special, on par with the Chyna tag match a week earlier. 19 minutes with ring entrances. * Scott Steiner beat Diamond Dallas Page: Buff removed the turnbuckle cover so the referee tossed him out. Steiner still ended up nailing DDP into the exposed turnbuckle and hit the Recliner afterwards. The Recliner looked horrible. DDP blacked out instead of giving up, a finish which has annoyed me since Dusty blacked out in the figure four. The crowd actually seemed happy with this finish, which means they either turned on DDP or they like Steiner, gasp. DDP did a stretcher job to get over the finish so that he can go on vacation. Steiner gets Kimberly Page for 30 days. 21 minutes with entrances, way too long. * Scott Hall beat Roddy Piper to win the US title: Piper looks really beat up. Guys with hip replacements shouldn't wrestle. Or maybe we should praise an old fart like Piper for still getting in the ring because he loves it and not because he has to, the same reason that some people have given me in e-mail for why we should praise Vince McMahon's cage match performance. And don't flame my by saying that Vince was never an in-ring worker; neither was Piper, if you get my drift. The way I see it, either way it wasn't great wrestling, so there's no reason to praise anything. This match was bad. Hall put on the abdominal stretch and Disco Inferno reached in to grab Hall's hand and give him extra leverage. Heenan chimed in to explain that Hall was grabbing Disco's hand to avoid a hip toss escape from the stretch, which of course explained why Piper sold more when Hall & Disco were cheating. Tony talked about leverage and cheating and the like, but, when Hall was hip tossed out of the hold, Heenan acted like he was right all along. Kevin Nash walked in, stepping over the top rope to come in to the ring. Piper was supposed to kick the top rope to crotch Nash, but ended up kicking the second rope. Nash must have thought that that looked bad, so he didn't sell it. Piper hesitated because Nash didn't sell it. Time stood still. Piper finally kicked the top rope and Nash sold the low blow. It wasn't really dragged out that long, but it was dragged out long enough to look pretty bad. Hall somehow got on top of Piper and used the ropes to get the pin. Piper got up, acting like he didn't know he'd lost. After a crummy match, the last thing I need to see is Piper prolong things. Piper didn't want to give up the title, but ended up giving it up and running away from the Outsiders. It made Piper look really bad to lose to a guy that had already worked a match earlier in the night. 17 minutes with a ring entrance. * Goldberg beat Bam Bam Bigelow: Question: Bigelow came in as an outsider and they got really excited about him invading WCW to challenge Goldberg, right, saying that he didn't even work for WCW? Why has been appearing at shows for so long? Does he have a contract now (in the story line sense)? If he's an invader, why is he always at the TV tapings and on TV? Anyhow, Bigelow worked over Goldberg's leg. Goldberg's selling was one-dimensional and simple, but that puts him one dimension ahead of Rock. The crowd was deflated a bit because they didn't want to see Goldberg selling to Bigelow. We all knew that Bigelow had no chance to win, so nobody wanted a competitive match. Bammer hit the head butt off the top. He went to the top rope for a moonsault, but Goldberg knocked him off and tried for a spear. Bigelow snuck out of the ring, but ended up getting speared shortly after returning to the ring. Golderg followed it up with a side kick, another spear, and the jackhammer on the Bam Bam man. Speaking of Emeril Lagasse, I've got to give him credit for inspiring the awesome kicked-up dinner I threw together on Sunday night: garlic stuffed roast fillet of beef with bordelaise sauce and potato gaufrettes. Wow. 15 minutes with entrances. * Hulk Hogan pinned Ric Flair: I guess the rationale was that the co-main event had a clean finish, but the screw job in this match still managed to piss me off. Hogan came out alone to suggest that the match would actually have a finish. Ha ha, what a swerve. Flair was chaired and bladed. I guess the subset of e-mailers that praise Vince would also praise Flair and Hogan for being 50ish and blading when they don't really have to but still do because they love it so much. Hogan whipped Flair with belt; there looked to be some stiff shots to the face. Flair bled like crazy. Flair returned the belt favour on Hogan, who bladed as well. That blonde chick that has been talking to me on TV for two weeks came out. She's Tori Wilson, a fitness competitor. Ric Flair thrusted at her, so she slapped him in response. The referee bumped. Hogan did his patented series of spots that set up the leg drop finish, except Flair managed to roll out of the way. A masked man came out and started skulking his way to ringside. Any idiot who has seen David Flair could have figured out who it was, but the commentators, particularly Tony, who says he's great friends with the Flair family, didn't have a clue. Hard to believe that WCW would let their head commentator look like a moron. Flair hit the figure four, but the masked man stunned him. Hogan covered for the three count. My blonde friend unmasked the skulker to reveal David Flair. Kevin Nash came out, with hugs all around. Bad bad show. I don't understand why they can't get their act together. Instead of focusing on the quality roster that could make them have a better or at least good and different product than the WWF, they bury all of the guys that should be on top. It seems like Hogan, Flair, Piper, and a few others could still have their effect on buy rates without having to be the headliners. Why not put them in mid-card legend grudge matches and let the young, good workers carry the show? That way, fans who want to see the old stars might actually get turned on to the new guys, who have upward mobility and don't get their legs cut out from under them at every turn. They need to be separated completely from the regular crew to make their appearances more special. Separate the cruisers from the mix too, so they aren't used as jobber fodder for the heavyweights who can't get over anyhow. It's so damn frustrating. I managed to live with it for a long while, but at this point it seems like the guys that should be the leaders are on the edge of being burned out and burned up. Addendum: Shortly after putting this update on the web, I was informed in e-mail that I missed a couple of things while watching WCW TV. I'm not surprised. Firstly, Chris Jericho apaprently taunted Perry Saturn into accepting the dress stipulation for the remainder of his career. This of course does nothing to explain why Jericho would then turn around and accept a match to remove the humiliating stipulation or why Saturn wouldn't take the chance at victory that he had. I guess he's going with a cross-dressing gimmick. And Scott Steiner's claim to Kimberly is apparently only in his mind. Keep in mind that everything could change tomorrow. RAW RAW on 02/22/99 aired on tape overnight in Canada. TSN aired curling live over RAW's usual timeslot. It's the usual formula: 20-minute long interview segment to set the stage for the rest of the show, a few 2- to 4-minute long matches over the show, more story line developments than you can shake a stick it, and commentary that focuses on building those story lines. The same people will love it, the same people will hate it, and, as always, I think it's a fast-paced, sometimes chaotic, entertaining show that has ever less to do with actual wrestling. Plot developments this week: The Giant Paul Wight is now called Big Nasty, likely a way to tease smart fans who believe that Kevin Nash & co. will be jumping ship in the future. Big Nasty vs. Big Sexy, those fans are thinking. Paul Wight will of course be reffing the main event at WrestleMania, so to build for that they had Mankind ref a match between Rock & Giant, who faked an argument to set up Mankind. From a confusion standpoint, we had wrestlers making a match for RAW again, even though Vince is cast as the guy who puts together matches, and Shawn Michaels is apparently the guy that sometimes puts together matches. Anyhow, remember back to the late 1980s and even the surrounding period. The WWF put Danny Davis into a heel referee rule; some fans complained that that gimmick hurt the product, while others said it wasn't really a main event angle anyhow. The WWF did the evil twin referee gimmick with Earl and Dave Hebner. Recently, in WCW, we had a ref who helped the NWO and then reformed himself and a referee who just hates Perry Saturn. In the WWF, we've had a referee screw a world champion out of his title, and we've had a whole slew of guest referees (Billy Gunn, Vince McMahon, Mankind...) who have been involved in wonderful screw job finishes. While some people will say that that makes an entertaining story line, I think it is really just a way to avoid delivering a real finish, and it really does annoy me every time it happens, particularly when it is a pattern. Really, the build for WrestleMania isn't so much about whether Steve Austin or Rock is a better wrestler, or even about which one of the two will kick the other's ass; it's about whether the evil referee will manage to deliver a screw job that his evil boss demands. As for wrestling, if you can call it that, Undertaker and Kane had their second embarrassing inferno match. Hey, I guess somebody stumbled across the inferno match structure backstage and decided it would be good to dust it off. The Giant vs. Rock match never took, which probably left fans as happy as the weekly RAW and Nitro crowds who get screwed out of hyped matches. Bob Holly beat Bart Gunn in a hardcore match, which seemed like a stupid way to go. Here, Gunn could have been built up after miraculously getting over after last year's BrawlforAll, yet they kept him off TV for so long, let him go to All Japan to stink up their ring, and then brought him back to job in his first match back. Worse yet, for some reason the guys that put the RAW stage together need watermelons, bananas, and flour, all of which were used in the brawl, none of which made sense. Public Enemy debuted and ended up getting a bloodbath from Gangrel & Edge. Oh, I should mention that since the show was taped, the crowd noise was obviously sweetened a lot of the time. Sure, the fans got into Rock's shtick and the entrances, as usual, but during actual matches, when WWF fans hibernate, they added some noise. Nitro Nitro on 02/22/99 was a live show which aired at 3:30am Tuesday morning on TSN. It wasn't even listed in my TV guide, but TSN thankfully does a pretty good job keeping their online TV schedule up-to-date. It was a 2:30 show as it aired here. It was a terrible show. For weeks on end, WCW has delivered shows with maybe one or two good or even great matches, but the rest of the stuff just sucks. It's usually a mix of ideas and execution that brings everything down, as sometimes one or the other of those two things actually are good. Maybe the piss-poor PPV the night before coloured things a bit, but I had a couple of days to recover from it and still thought Nitro was pretty darn bad. It's more than the wrestling, which often was okay, but the formula of showing so many flashbacks, etc., combined with enough bad wrestling that brought the show into the gutter. To its credit, though, Nitro is still about wrestling a lot of the time. Alas, right from the start they hyped a mediated meeting between the Flair men, one that would never be delivered just to make sure that we'd be really happy with the company. Wrestling-wise, Jerry Flynn beat Mike Enos, Booker T beat Bret Hart (whose fortunes have nosedived due to frigging politics) in a match that showed again how badly Bret Hart is being used. I mean, Bret was damn awesome in this match when it came to positioning and the like. A problem is that he stalls at the beginning to the point that the local casual fans I met on Monday afternoon were all comparing his tactics to Hulk Hogan. That's the kiss of death. And now Booker T meets reality when he gets in the ring with Scott Hall, as this was a number one contender match. The Hart vs. T match went 17 minutes. Disco Inferno beat Kaz Hayashi, who wore full Glacier garb. Hugh Morrus beat Chris Jerhico; more stuff that nobody wanted to see. Sure, Perry Saturn interfered, but the misuse of great or potentially great wrestlers in WCW is staggering. Big Crappy, the Workrate Killer, Kevin Nash was challenged by an unmasked Rey Misterio Jr. Nash, to his credit, bumped a lot for Rey, which made this memorable. And Rey even got the surprise pin after cannonballing Nash out of a powerbomb attempt. The main event saw Scott Steiner face Goldberg, which ended with the usual DQ run-in crap. This DQ run-in crap could have been special amidst a clean finish-based product because it marked the return of Rick Steiner, but it ended up being just another cop-out ending. As for storylines, David Flair is the new Space Mountain, yikes. The Horsemen brawled with Hennig & Windham, further killing off the value of the tag titles with every move involving the, ahem, champs. And Konnan's new music video aired (in the third hour, no less...nice to have friends), using the father of Da Funk's George Clinton's "Atomic Dog" hook ("Bow wow wow, yippee yo, yippee yay"). "Why must I be like that, why must I chase the cat? Nothing but the dog in me." Makes one think of David Flair. You know that Nitro will get clobbered in the ratings battle with RAW. But they'll still get 4.0 plus or minus 0.2, as always, and I'd bet on "minus" for this show. At the risk of repeating myself, they've got to use the stable and good-sized audience that they are drawing to make some of the young guys that should be the next generation of stars into stars in the eyes of the current viewers. - The current issue of the tabloid the National Examiner has a story on pro-wrestling, giving what they call a "crash course" in the sport. They have short profiles on 10 wrestlers. There's not much new here. They report that: * Goldberg was born on 12/27/66, has a live-in girlfriend named Lisa Shekter, and has 10 animals at their home outside Atlanta. * Chris Jericho was born on 09/11/70. * Hunter Hearst Hemlsley was born on 07/27/69 and has "reportedly romanced" Chyna. * Steve Austin was born on 12/18/64. He got his nickname when his wife tole him "to drink your tea before it gets stone cold." His wife his Jeannie Clark, and they have two daughters plus Jeannie's daughter from a previous marriage. Of course, Austin has revealed that he is getting divorced. * Mankind was born on 06/07/66. * Diamond Dallas Page was born on 04/05/49 (no typo there; they say he's 49, not the usually-reported 39). * Undertaker was born on 03/24/65. He lives in Nashville with his wife and two sons. * Rocky Maivia was born on 05/02/72. * Bret Hart was born on 07/02/57. He's divorved from his wife Julie and has five children. * Kevin Nash was born on 07/09/59. He's married and lives in Phoenix. - Tickets for WCW's 03/29/99 Nitro show in Toronto went on sale last Friday. Tickets for the WCW show in Kitchener the next night went on sale this past Monday. The rumoured main event for the Nitro show is Bret Hart vs. Goldberg, although a lot can happen in a month. The Kitchener show is being advertised as a house show and a Worldwide TV taping. I would never pay money to see a RAW or Nitro live; it just isn't worth it. But since it's a five-minute drive to the arena in Kitchener, I couldn't resist going. Tickets went on sale at 10am. I was lucky enough to be able to make my way to the box office on Monday morning. I arrived there at 9:10am. To avoid fighting and line-up trouble, they handed out raffle-style tickets to people as they came into the foyer. That way, when the box office opened, they could just call out numbers in sequence and everybody would get their tickets ahead of people who came later. They have a ten-ticket limit per person to combat scalping. Anyhow, 50 minutes before the box office was slated to opened, I arrived to find that I was the 97th person in line. Crazy. Turns out the first person arrived at the building at 3:30am. I mingled through the crowd, working the room a bit and chatting with different clusters of fans. It was pretty entertaining. Women were raving about seeing Scott Steiner's butt the night before on PPV and about how sexy Kevin Nash and Scott Hall are. One woman went to the Air Canada Centre on Friday to line up for Nitro tickets. She got there six hours before tickets went on sale but still ended up in the "300 section." I have no idea what that means, but she seemed incredulous, so I guess that she didn't get great seats. The Observer reports that once the box office opened, tickets sold out in one hour. Two guys were discussing how they think that the current wrestling is staged, but that wrestling was real "in the day. You remember, when Koko B. Ware was a star." There was talk about blading, with somebody saying that they saw a show on TV (presumably the NBC special) that showed guys cutting themselves. They said that Flair must have received a bonus for cutting himself the night before and said that they would be afraid to cut themselves with a knife like that. I didn't have the heart to start a seminar on pro-wrestling, so I just had fun listening to this stuff. Kitchener-Waterloo has two universities, so there were quite a few university students there to go along with the cigarette-addicted biker dudes. As 10am rolled closer, the cluster of early arrivers decided that the earliest of the lot should buy all of their tickets. They had overheard the people in front of them say that they were each buying 10 tickets to sell to scalpers. As a result, the raffle tickets were freed up and I was offered number 32. By the time my number was called, ringside seats were already at row N. Since the seats are not raised, I didn't want to bother with ringside. One side of raised seating already had the centre stage section sold out. I went to the other side of the arena and got a fifth row seat. Good enough. - The early Observer poll results for the WWF's St. Valentine Day's Massacre PPV, with only 150 fans responding, was split with 47.3% thumbs up, 29.1% thumbs down, and 23.6% thumbs in the middle. Meltzer himself wrote that "the show itself was horrible for most of the first three hours. This was a show where you couldn't attribute the lack of heat for most of the matches to the fact the show was so long, but because there was little excitement in them. [...] It was a show that on paper didn't look good, and while McMahon's performance was a success, that was the lone saving grace because Rock and Mankind, on paper the one-match show, wasn't good enough to carry an otherwise weak event by itself." - Goldberg was on the Tonight Show this past Friday. He said he would put $100K of his own money on the line if Steve Austin wanted to test him. Jay Leno hammed it up, gasping that a wrestler would actually make a challenge to another wrestler. Goldberg still came off pretty well, because he's such a laid back guy when he's out of character. - The following newspaper column was sent to me by a reader: Profanity Found in TV Wrestling By DAVID BAUDER AP Television Writer NEW YORK (AP) - A popular two-hour wrestling show on cable television averages only 36 minutes of actual wrestling - leaving plenty of time for crotch grabbing, obscene gestures and simulated sexual activity, according to a study. A detailed Indiana University study of 50 ``WWF Raw'' episodes last year on the USA network turned up a staggering amount of profane or risque incidents. For instance, researchers counted 1,658 instances of a character grabbing or pointing to their own crotch - or roughly eight every half hour, not counting slow-motion instant replays. ``I could see where an adult would be very concerned with the frequency at which these behaviors were aired, particularly at this time of day,'' said Walter Gantz, professor at Indiana's Department of Telecommunications. For the past year, wrestling programs on USA or TNT have consistently been among the highest-rated shows each week on basic cable. But they're far from the goofy fun of the old days. The syndicated news show ``Inside Edition'' commissioned the Indiana University study for a two-part report airing this week. Reporter Matt Meagher said he became interested in looking at wrestling when his wife, a middle school teacher, told him about her students imitating the behavior seen on the shows. Researchers counted 157 instances of wrestlers or audience members making an obscene gesture and 434 times when people either said a sexually charged slogan or displayed one on a sign. There were 128 episodes of simulated sexual activity and 47 references to Satanic activity. One segment featured people supposedly draining blood from a ``dead'' wrestler and drinking it, Gantz said. There were also 609 instances of wrestlers or other being struck by objects like garbage cans or nightsticks. ``Somehow they managed not to hurt each other,'' Gantz said. ``I'm not certain that a 10-year-old realizes that they are skilled at doing this.'' Jim Byrne, senior vice president of marketing for the World Wrestling Federation, said they were ``responsible broadcasters.'' WWF places a parental warning on ``WWF Raw'' and provides calmer programs during hours when children are more likely to watch, he said. ``WWF Raw'' has plots like those in ``NYPD Blue'' and ``Beverly Hills 90210,'' he said. ``The fans are tuning in for the story lines and the fact that we are somewhat edgy makes it more attractive,'' he said. A USA network representative had no immediate comment on the study. Last night on Politically Incorrect, Bill Maher actually mentioned the article, talking specifically about WWF RAW, calling it the number one show on cable TV. He ran down the indecent behaviour mentioned in the article (including the crotch grabs) and concluded with the punchline "sounds like a party at Madonna's house." I'd imagine that the usual suspects are criticizing the report or the research rather than addressing the small but growing snowball. NBC's Dateline, Inside Edition, reports like this, the Winnipeg problem, other minor problems with holding house shows in certain venues. While it's nice to snipe at each individual item that shows the political problems involved in running with the current product, the real issue is which one of the straws will break the camel's back, the camel being the WWF or the USA network. A couple of quick points for potential e-mail flamers to think about. With the numbers in the above report -- 8 crotch chops a half-hour, for example -- I hope that people, including Jim Byrne, will find a new excuse besides "It's no worse than NYPD Blue." I get at least one e-mail a week saying that RAW is no worse than NYPD Blue. That's news to me. I'd say that RAW is easily more offensive or, in code words, edgy, for an adult audience, but I'm not complaining about that. My problem is that RAW can't have its cake and eat it too: it can't market its product at children like it unquestionably does, it can't draw 30-35% children viewers, with the greatest viewership during the second hour of RAW, and then say it is a responsible broadcaster. If it were responsible, the WWF would admit that a sizeable percentage of its viewers, particularly during the most risque moments, are children and act in accordance with that. Yes, parents are responsible for what their children view, but the network and the WWF are equally responsible. And even if you don't believe that, the public relations problem that could arise from this situation should sway you and the WWF. After all, the promotion has abandoned angles/gimmicks in the past because they didn't want to offend their audience, in the process admitting that they know who their audience is. Secondly, the Observer makes an important point about the time-zone changes leading to the raunchy RAW stuff airing during kids' TV hours. Again, if the network and the WWF were really responsible broadcasters, they'd fix that, wouldn't they? - Happy Birthday to Ric Flair, who turns 50 today. - Sandman debuted on WCW Saturday Night this past weekend, working on the ring name Hack. That's an accurate description of what he does to every wrestling move he tries, all two or three of them. - The WWF has WrestleMania XV on 03/28/99. Tentative line-up has * Steve Austin vs. Rocky Maivia for the WWF Title with Paul Wight as referee * Billy Gunn vs. Ken Shamrock vs. Val Venis for the IC Title * Undertaker vs. Big Boss Man in a Hell in the Cell match * X-Pac vs. Shane McMahon for the European Title * Sable vs. Terri Power - Preliminary estimates for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre PPV have the buy rate at a 1.2. - PPV buy rates, revenue (in millions), and match statistics for the WWF, WCW, and ECW are presented in the following 1998 summary sheet (the PPV draw(s) are listed, as well as the quality matches): Show Data Match Rating Data Show Details Buy Rate Gross Mean Median Peak % >= * * * * WWF 99/02/14: St. Valentine's Day Massacre Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon Mankind vs. Rocky Maivia 1.2 $5.33 1.28 * 1/4 * * * 3/4 Mankind vs. Rocky Maivia 0.0% (0 of 8) 99/01/24: Royal Rumble Mankind vs. Rocky Maivia Royal Rumble 1.57 $6.97 1.83 * 1/2 * * * 3/4 Mankind vs. Rocky Maivia 0.0% (0 of 6) Last 6 1.13 $5.01 1.42 1.33 3.46 1.9% (1 of 54) 1999 1.39 $6.15 1.52 1.38/FONT> 3.75 0.0% (0 of 14) 1998 1.02 $4.42 1.60 1.63 3.65 4.0% (4 of 101) Show Data Match Rating Data Show Details Buy Rate Gross Mean Median Peak % >= * * * * WCW 99/01/17: Souled Out Bill Goldberg vs. Scott Hall Ric Flair & David Flair vs. Curt Hennig & Barry Windham 1.83 * 1/2 * * * * Billy Kidman vs. Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Juventud Guerrera vs. Psicosis 11.1% (1 of 9) Last 6 0.82 $3.66 1.20 1.33 3.75 3.6% (2 of 55) 1999 1.83 1.5 4 11.1% (1 of 9) 1998 0.93 $3.96 1.54 1.73 3.73 4.5% (5 of 111) Show Data Match Rating Data Show Details Buy Rate Gross Mean Median Peak % >= * * * * ECW 99/01/10: Guilty As Charged Shane Douglas vs. Taz 0.2 $0.42 1.68 * * 1/2 * * * 1/2 Yoshihiro Tajiri vs. Super Crazy 0.0% (0 of 7) Last 6 0.22 $0.42 1.93 2 3.42 5.3% (1 of 19) 1999 0.2 $0.42 1.68 2.5 3.5 0.0% (0 of 7) 1998 0.23 $0.43 1.56 1.5 3.00 3.7% (1 of 27) Longer-term data is available. The data now runs back to 1991. A table of wrestlers who have delivered quality matches is also online. - The WWF has In Your House on 04/25/99. - The WWF has In Your House on 05/23/99. - The WWF has King of the Ring on 06/27/99. - The WWF has In Your House on 07/25/99. - 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. ______________________________________________________________________