Slobberknocker Central Monday Night Recap #278 March 12th, 2001 The Opening Word: Just a couple different things on my mind going into this week ... People need to seriously relax about the XFL cheerleader skit, or just come out and admit already that they will always, for the rest of their lives, criticize anything and everything Vince McMahon involves himself with. Save us the trouble of trying to guess who you really are. I saw the cheerleader skit, and when it was done I knew I had seen a joke that few would get and only Vince McMahon would find funny. I got the joke, I just didn't think it was that funny--kind of like most of the last twenty-five years of "Saturday Night Live". In fact, look no further than that show for inspiration for the gag. What, did people not notice the repeated plugs for it during the game? What viewers are the XFL trying to attract now? Well, the league has tanked with McMahon's wrestling fans, as well as sports fans whose football interest peaked in January. So why not go for SNL fans? That's exactly who that joke was supposed to appeal to. It's funny to see McMahon and the WWF and the XFL being criticized for its sexual content, then tuning into SNL and seeing an opening monologue featuring Conan O'Brien's sidekick Max Weinberg having sex with a woman on his desk, the nudity barely pixelated out. Say, didn't at least one of the WWF's current writers previously write for the Conan O'Brien show? And wasn't Conan O'Brien a past SNL writer? Are we all finally seeing the big picture here? Apparently not. Remember when I joked about Phil Mushnick last week? Some joke--Phil went ahead and lived down to expectations, blasting McMahon for the Trish Stratus angle, tenuously tying it in to that high school shooting in California last week. Oh sure, he didn't come right out and say one caused the other, he just insinuated it's the WWF that's causing the disaffected youth of America to go out an kill each other. This from the man who's compared the WWF to a Columbian drug cartel, and blasted the United Nations for taking money from Ted Turner, who once owned WCW. Kudos to you, Mr. Mushnick! You keep on tilting at that windmill. Let me get off Vince McMahon critics, because that's not quite what I want to write about this week. Forget those who are out to get McMahon because they think he's the devil. Let's instead get on Vince McMahon's case because he's letting the WWF go all to hell. Ah, maybe I'm just bitter because pro wrestling looks to be on the verge of slipping into the toilet for the next couple of years. ECW is dead, dead DEAD. OFFICIALLY dead. R.I.P. And WCW, none of their fans will admit it, but that company is pretty damn close to dead too, maybe as close as three weeks. Even if Fusient does take the plunge and buy the company, the odds are about a hundred-to-one of them turning the company around and delivering a product remotely competitive with the WWF. Hell, things are starting to look bad for the WWF itself, what with the XFL draining the coffers, and TV ratings going back into another slump like in January. It's always been said that WCW will only beat the WWF if the WWF helps them out by going into a nosedive, like they did in the mid-90's. If things don't change WCW might get its wish. The problem for them is this time around they don't have a Ted Turner willing to spend endless amounts of money. They now have an owner who, if it can't sell them, will shut them down, and prospective new owners who must figure out some week to stop the company's losing two million dollars EVERY WEEK. You know what I did this past weekend? I watched a bunch of old wrestling tapes. Now, I haven't done that since about 1996, around the time the battle between the WWF and WCW was really heating up. That means for the first time in half a decade I couldn't get a satisfactory wrestling fix, and that's with more wrestling on TV than ever before. I didn't get to see SmackDown! until late Saturday night, because the main UPN station in all of Minnesota decided to show high school hockey instead. It wasn't worth the extra two night wait. So on Sunday I threw in some old tapes. One of them had some Jerry "The King" Lawler matches from the 80's. Lawler was feuding with Austin Idol--I wonder whatever happened to that guy? You know who Idol's manager was? Paul "E. Dangerously" Heyman. Talk about ironic. Or something. I hope Vince McMahon learns a lesson from this XFL debacle. He needs to realize he can't, like a pied piper, lead wrestling fans to other places of interest. None of us are going to care about "Tough Enough" on MTV. Most of us aren't going to give that bounty hunter show he's producing a second look. We're only going to buy so many "WWF: The Music" volumes or wrestler biographies before we shout "enough already!" Focus on the WWF Vince, because dammit--it's starting to stumble, and with ECW gone and WCW circling the bowl, the WWF has to shoulder an even greater burden of satisfying the fix of wrestling fans. With only one wrestling promotion out there fans are going to start losing interest. I know this can happen because it did before ... to me. Back in 1992 all the Twins Cities stations I could get stopped carrying WWF shows (and at the time my cable company didn't carry the USA Network). That left WCW. I'm sure those who watched back then remember how bad it was. By 1993 I had stopped watching wrestling almost entirely. It took Hulk Hogan going to WCW, and finally getting the USA Network in 1994, for me to get interested in wrestling again. (Wow ... I just read a piece by Don LeBarba on 1Wrestling.com telling a similar story. We both lost interest in wrestling at about the same time, for nearly the same length of time.) This week marks the 278th installment of the Monday Night Recap. While I foresee writing #'s 279 and 280, I'm not sure if there's going to be a 281. If come April 2nd WCW is gone, and the WWF is recovering from another disappointing WrestleMania, what's the point of going on? Whatever happens, it looks like WCW will be going away after March 26th. Whether they come back, with Fusient as its new owners, or someone else, or AOL Time Warner deciding to keep it going, we'll just have to wait and see. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- WCW Monday Nitro: Live/Taped: Live. Length: Two Hours. Location: Knoxville, Tennessee. Hosted By: Tony Schiavone & Scott Hudson. HOUR ONE: - Hmm ... Knoxville, Tennessee. If they were bringing in Jerry "The King" Lawler, tonight would be the night to do it. Or, knowing that we fans know that, teasing that to be the case (even if it really isn't). Either one explains that "main event-level wrestler and wrestling personality have been spotted in Tennessee speaking with promotion officials" blurb on WCW's website. - Yet another cold start, making the show look not so much unpredictable as sloppy. Jeff Jarrett is on his way to the ring. Just after his pyro goes off Dustin Rhodes appears in the ring behind Jarrett, and he starts pounding on him. He puts him away with a kick to the nuts, now dubbed the "Dust Buster". Schiavone starts screaming about a limousine arriving, and them patching into the security camera, as Dustin is walking back up the aisle. They show the limo on the big screen. Schiavone starts identifying various Magnificent 7 members, and for some reason thinks it's really noteworthy that Buff Bagwell is carrying a camcorder. (Hmm ... Buff ... a camcorder ... it really must be spring break coming soon.) Why couldn't they just have shown Bagwell grabbing a random cameraman and telling him to film them, rather than all this hokey, contrived Camcorder business? A commercial break here marks this as one of the lamest openers to Nitro ever. - A replay shows Dustin's kick didn't come within a country mile of Jarrett's testicles. Marvelous production work there. - Buff's "camcorder" comes to life, as we've somehow patched into what it's taping. The picture is cluttered with frames and target crosshairs and "recording" with a blinking light--all things you see when you look into the viewfinder of a camcorder, but stuff that isn't actually recorded. Buff tapes Ric Flair, Animal, Midajah(!), Scott & Rick Steiner and Lex Luger. Flair says he's making a documentary. He's survived, while guys like Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and Roddy Piper haven't. They're not coming back, now that Flair has mentioned them, are they? By the way, imagine all this being taped as if it were Michael J. Fox working as an MTV cameraman. The picture keeps swooping and weaving and zooming in-and-out for no reason. Jarrett comes in and complains about not having backup. They tell him not to arrive at the arena before them. Flair then takes Scott Steiner aside and says he has a plan. The camera keeps cutting out as if the battery is running low. - Can you believe they trashed a limo last week! On Thunder!! To hype the Kanyon/M.I. Smooth feud!!! - Oh for the love of ... there's security at ringside guarding three chairs set up for "WCW's new owners," who are "rumored" to be appearing tonight. And yes, this *is* followed by another commercial. - Something's happening backstage. Something's happening backstage. Something's happening backstage. An hour or two later the switch away from the crowd shot to the Buff-Cam. Midajah has been laid out. Steiner yells at everybody as if they had something to do with it. - Recap of the Cruiserweight Tag Team Tournament. - ELIX SKIPPER/KID ROMEO vs. THE JUNG DRAGONS Skipper & Romeo should be called "Copyright Infringement" because of the entrance themes. Good match with lots of high spots, which Skipper & Romeo win when Skipper pins Yang. More fun with the Magnificent 7 backstage. Who laid out Midajah has now become a full-blown mystery, and the fact that Diamond Dallas Page is the obvious suspect escaping everyone. - TEAM CANADA vs. THE MAMALUKES Ugly, short match with several blown moves. Mike Awesome pins Big Vito. Konnan & Hugh Morrus do a post-match run-in for the hell of it. - Stacy Kiebler (Miss Hancock) makes her return, pushing a baby carriage to the ring. That's three of the women WCW supposedly fired back on TV in the last two weeks. You can tell the dress she's wearing is coming off soon. Stacy says having her baby made her think, and she wants us to meet her new baby. Out comes Shawn Stasiak. Stasiak has "Mecca" on his trunks, as in "Mecca of Manhood". (Isn't that offensive in the same vein as Chris Jericho being called the "Ayatollah of Rock & Roll-a"?) Shawn starts talking, and just as I'm pointing out to my brother that he's just a fake laugh away from sounding like Shane Douglas ... he does the fake laugh. Stacy tears off the baggy maternity dress, revealing a little black number that shows more leg, but actually looks less sexy. Go figure. Stacy grabs a bundle out of the baby carriage, which turns out to be a stack of glossy photos of Stasiak. Shawn starts tossing them to the crowd, and bless them--some fans actually throw them back! Stasiak then rips on the fans for being bald, tattooed and toothless. That's the cue for Bam Bam Bigelow(!) to come out. It's a good thing that Bigelow decided to show up tonight for the first time in months, and that he just happened to be close to both a monitor and the stage, and that the production people had his entrance music and video on hand to cue up in the approximately six seconds that passed from Stasiak making the insult to Bigelow coming out. I'm beginning to suspect wrestling is fake. Bigelow challenges Stasiak to a match at Greed. Talk about pulling an undercard from your ass. Plus one point for resolving the Hancock pregnancy, minus one point for the smarmy way they did it. Bagwell has taken the tape from his "camcorder" and the Magnificent 7 is watching it to see who beat up Midajah. Replay of some of the stuff we saw earlier, only this time there's a "low battery" added to the picture that I don't remember being there before. Somehow the signal running from the VCR playing the tape to the TV they're watching is also being routed directly to us viewers, as opposed to the Buff-Cam taping the picture off the TV screen. Amazing. At this point we're only one step away from seeing things through the wrestlers' eyes and hearing what they think. On the tape, one by one everyone filters out. Bagwell is the last out, saying he has to get a new battery. So of course he leaves the camera running and he sets it down. Moments later a hand appears over the lens, and turns it towards the wall. We then hear Midajah screaming and stuff being broken. Back live, Steiner complains that we can't see anything. I still say DDP is the obvious suspect, though it has to be someone who was in the room, because how would DDP know the camera was running and needed to be turned away? Now we know why it had to be a camcorder and not a live cameraman. It had to be a camcorder so the battery could run low so Buff could put it down while still running so it could be turned to the wall as Midajah was attacked. My head hurts. I should note that Schiavone can't decide which is more earth shattering: Midajah getting laid out (why don't they just ask her who did it?); or the new owners arriving tonight. - I'm having a real hard time paying attention to Booker T there in the ring. He's all sweaty, his eyes are bugging out, and his hair is sticking up like worms. Scott Steiner comes out to rebut, then Diamond Dallas Page is out, and finally Lex Luger sneaks in and attacks Booker T. HOUR TWO: BOOKER T vs. LEX LUGER Luger immediately locks in the Torture Rack, and the ref calls for the bell. That's just to start the match, though. In any case it tips that Luger is going to do the job, but needed an ego stroker to save face. Sure enough, Booker hits the Rock Bottom and scores the pin. Rick Steiner then runs in, then Ernest "The Cat" Miller, then Kanyon, and good god let's just move on. Who beat up Midajah? Will the new owners show up? What about Ric Flair's documentary? - Clips from Thunder are shown. - EVAN KARAGIAS vs. SHANE HELMS The upper deck fans must be making a whole lotta noise, as the ones we can see at ringside are just sitting there, not moving, not reacting to anything in this match. Who beat up Midajah? Technically sound yet boring match. Helms wins with the Vertebreaker. Chavo Guerrero, Jr. then runs in and leaves Helms laying. - Spring Break-Out clips. - M.I. Smooth asks Disco Inferno to let him have his match against Kanyon tonight. Disco tells him to go warm up the limo instead. Smooth flattens Disco with one punch. This scene is courtesy Arena Security Cam, which is apparently WCW's way of explaining all these improbable backstage encounters being caught on tape. - Dusty & Dustin Rhodes, in an interview taped last week, say Ric Flair will have to kiss Dusty's ass if they lose at Greed. Ric Flair & Jeff Jarrett then offer their point of view. - 1-800-COLLECT ... AOL ... 1-800-COLLECT ... AOL ... 1-800-COLLECT ... AOL ... 1-800-COLLECT ... AOL ... 1-800-COLLECT ... AOL ... 1-800-COLLECT ... AOL ... 1-800-COLLECT ... AOL ... 1-800-COLLECT ... AOL ... - Will the new owners show up? - KANYON vs. M.I. SMOOTH If you haven't yet figured out the magnificent pun that is Smooth's name, say out loud "am I smooth?" Smooth takes a full NINETY seconds to limp from the stage to the ring. Why is he limping if he has a concussion and two slipped disks? For the next four minutes Kanyon stomps on, kicks and whacks Smooth with chairshots. Smooth won't stay down. Kanyon eventually runs away, and no decision is announced. No crowd reaction for Smooth's superhuman effort. Why? Because it's M.I. SMOOTH! - In a replay of last week the Steiner Brothers come out to cut a promo, then they go to a commercial. - RICK STEINER vs. DIAMOND DALLAS PAGE Schiavone starts screaming that something is happening backstage. I guess we can't see it, though, because the only cameras in the building are pointed at the ring, the security cameras, or Bagwell's camcorder. We see Scott Hudson sprint to the back. Rick Steiner dominates the entire match, only to be laid out by a Diamond Cutter. Animal then runs in, causing a DQ. God, the sale must have gone through, 'cuz that finish stinks of Bischoff. Animal blows the ONE THING he's called upon to do this week: a powerbomb. Cut to the back, where Booker T and the Cat have been laid out and are being attended to by EMT's. Like the cutaway last week we are shown this far too briefly for it to have any effect. The Magnificent 7 stomp on DDP until security comes out to break it up. DDP staggers up the ramp, only to be attacked by Scott Steiner, wielding a lead pipe. He slaps on the Steiner Recliner, and Rick lays in some kicks, as the show fades out. - This Wednesday: Nothing announced. - Next week: Nothing announced. Comments: It should be an FCC violation for a show to be this bad. The perfect finish would have been for a camera to turn to Tony Schiavone, and to have him say "from all of us, to all of you," while extending his middle finger. I'm not even going to bother with the whole "new owners" thing, as I have neither the energy nor inclination to spare WCW another moment's thought this week. Here's the card for Greed: * Scott Steiner vs. Diamond Dallas Page. World Heavyweight Title Match. * Rick Steiner vs. Booker T. United States Title Match. * Dusty Rhodes & Dustin Rhodes vs. Ric Flair & Jeff Jarrett. * Chuck Palumbo & Sean O'Haire vs. Totally Buffed. Tag Team Title Match. * Chavo Guerrero, Jr. vs. Shane Helms. Cruiserweight Title Match. * Elix Skipper & Kid Romeo vs. Billy Kidman & Rey Mysterio, Jr. Cruiserweight Tag Team Title Match. * Team Canada vs. Hugh Morrus & Konnan. * Kanyon vs. Ernest "The Cat" Miller. * Shawn Stasiak vs. Bam Bam Bigelow. $30 to see Dusty Rhodes' ass. Unbelievable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- WWF RAW is WAR: Live/Taped: Live. Length: Two Hours+. Location: Los Angeles, California. Hosted By: Jim Ross & Paul Heyman. WWF RAW: - Kurt Angle is in the parking area waiting for someone to arrive. - Tonight: Big Show vs. the Undertaker in a Hardcore Title match. - THE HARDY BOYZ (w/ Lita) vs. X-PAC/JUSTIN CREDIBLE Jeff Hardy gets dumped out onto Lita, which is sure to add fuel to the Hardyz split. Our heroes get the win via DQ when Albert(!) runs in to break up a Matt Hardy pin attempt. Albert then chucks Jeff three rows back into the crowd (well, a cleared-out section, but you get the drift). On the surface Albert seems like an odd addition to X-Pac's team ... and it's just as odd when you look deeper. Actually if they give Albert a new look, and add a woman to the group, there could be some potential there. They should steal Tori away from Raven. Of course X-Pac has a stormy past with Tori, but that could work its way into the storyline. Albert can play Diesel to X-Pac's Shawn Michaels. Does that make Credible Triple H? Angle greets the late-arriving William Regal, new commissioner of the WWF. Angle demands a rematch against the Rock, but Regal is in a hurry, as he has an announcement to make in front of the crowd. - Actor Dennis Hopper is in the crowd. - Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko & Perry Saturn are going to take care of Chris Benoit tonight. They split up. Saturn is then jumped by Benoit, who puts him into a wall, then makes him squeal with the Crippler Crossface. - Commissioner Regal makes his way to the ring. This is the first night of the Regal Regime. Our new commish can't stand suck-ups and brown-nosers. His first official act is to book the match Kurt Angle requested. Regal then uses his name ("anagram?"--I think he means "acronym"): "R" is for "respect". "E" is for "education". "G" is for--at which point Chris Jericho comes out. "'G' is for 'Good God Regal, would you please SHUT THE HELL UP!'" Jericho cues up a clip of him spoiling Regal's first night back in the WWF, where he was giving the fans a lesson in table manners. Jericho gives his own "anagram" using "Y2J". Regal isn't pleased about being besmirched in this manner. - CHRISTIAN vs. D-VON DUDLEY Christian pulls out a move I don't think I've seen before. He does like a reverse DDT (Slop Drop?) onto his knee! Brutal. Late in the match The ref nearly gets crunched in the corner by D-Von, but the Dudley Boy puts on the brakes. Christian follows with a clothesline and the ref bites it anyway. Christian then has a chair, but Buh-Buh Ray Dudley runs out and grabs it. The Dudleyz then deliver the 3-D. I can't believe how crazy crowds (this one included) get over that move. D-Von covers and gets the pin. That earns the Dudley Boyz a rematch against the Hardy Boyz. Another limo has arrived. Paul Heyman starts shouting that whoever that is should be seriously fined for arriving so late. Vince McMahon & Trish Stratus exit the limo. Jim Ross: "Never mind, right?" Vince says to Trish that since they're in Hollywood, maybe the two of them should do a Hollywood sex scene out in the middle of the ring. What?! - Dean Malenko just passes through a door when it's slammed shut behind him by someone. It's Benoit, and he lays in a beating. He then lets Eddie in. - The Coach gets comments from Regal in his office, which is adorned with an antique desk, old rotary-style phone, and a picture of the Queen Mother on the wall. Regal announces that Jericho will be facing the entire Right To Censor later tonight. - Michael Cole gets comments from Kurt Angle. Angle vows to break the Rock's ankle, and if Debra gets in his way ... *snap!* - CHRIS BENOIT vs. EDDIE GUERRERO Ohmygod this is a sweet match. Very stiff, with lots of chops by both men. Benoit busts out the Rolling German Suplex. Guerrero unleashes a vertical suplex, holds on, and delivers a second. Fast forward through some near falls to the finish. Guerrero misses a Frog Splash. Benoit in for the German Suplex, but Eddie grabs the rope. Benoit starts punching. Fireman's carry by Guerrero, and a pin cover, but Benoit escapes and locks on the Crippler Crossface for the win. Wow. I think I missed a crucial move or two there, but I can't check my tape right now because my brother has confiscated it, and has locked himself in a room to watch it over and over. Vince & Trish ... NEXT! WWF WAR ZONE: - I'm going to have to blow through this hour because I'm already like a day late with this thing, and I can't get my tape back from my brother. I'll have to rely on the notes I took as the show aired. Vince & Trish hit the ring. Clips are shown of Trish's recent humiliations and degradations. Dennis Hopper seems to enjoy it. Vince says he and Trish are going to do a sex scene. Trish lays down on the mat. Vince lays down next to her. She then whispers in his ear, and Vince says that's a good idea, that they'll go off and continue this somewhere else. The crowd boos. Vince's music starts playing, and he yells for it to be cut because he's not finished. Out comes Shane McMahon! Big crowd pop. Shane doesn't seem pleased with the actions of his father. Vince says they haven't talked for some time, and offers his hand. Shane refuses it. So Vince asks for a hug ... and Shane punches him! Shane's pounding on Vince. Here comes Regal to pull Shane off. Shane spears Regal! That could be a decent match, between those two. Vince & Trish make their escape, and are shortly thereafter seen piling into their limo. - CHRIS JERICHO vs. RIGHT TO CENSOR (w/ Ivory) Jericho almost manages to survive here, and the RTC members tease some kind of dissention, but in the end Venis kills Jericho with a wicked clothesline and gets the pin. Commissioner Regal watched the match in his office and made faces. Steve Austin bursts in on Kurt Angle and warns him nothing better happen to Debra. - XFL announcer Dick Butkis is shown in the crowd. That's followed by some XFL clips. THAT is followed by Jim Ross begging the fans to contact their local news media outlets and demand that the XFL get the coverage it deserves. Oh, that is so ... oh ... dear god ... have SOME dignity. - The Undertaker is in the back on his motorcycle, getting ready for his match against the Big Show, when he's attacked from behind by Triple H. He's just about to deliver a final chairshot when Kane enters the area. Triple H departs. Kane is then blindsided by the Big Show, who chokeslams him through a table. Hey, is that a big roll of paper towels underneath the Undertaker's front tire? - The APA is at WWF New York. - Now Austin warns the Rock that nothin' better happen to Debra. - Recap of Chyna's injury at the Royal Rumble. Chyna will face Ivory for the Women's Championship at WrestleMania. - TEST vs. RAVEN Squash. Test retains the European Title by pin after a big boot to the face. Angle ... the Rock ... Debra & Stone Cold ... NEXT!!! - KURT ANGLE vs. THE ROCK (w/ Debra) How can you complain about the same two guys facing each other so many times if they always have great matches? Angle hits some nice suplexes early. Remember when we used to complain that the Rock never sold? Angle hits the Olympic Slam a number of times, and each time Ross calls it the "Angle Slam". Whuzzup with that? I should note that Heyman is doing a really good job on commentary here, as he also did earlier during the Benoit match. After a brief excursion to the floor Angle is rolled back in, clipping referee Earl Hebner in the process. Rock with a People's Elbow and a cover, but the ref is slow in making the count, and Angle kicks out. Rock goes over to yell at Hebner, and ends up in the Angle ankle submission. The crowd goes buts. The Rock reaches the rope, but Angle won't relinquish the hold. Rock starts tapping out. The bell rings, Angle having been DQ'ed for disobeying the referee. Not a great finish, but a great match anyway. Debra enters the ring to try to talk some sense into Angle. He knocks her down and goes for the ankle! Here comes Stone Cold! Angle is sent packing. Austin barely bothers to check on his wife as he lines his sights on the Rock, and catches him with the Stone Cold Stunner! MONSTER pop from the crowd. WrestleMania's going to be great if they don't get too cute and let this match just happen. Austin stalks off, without a second look at either the Rock or Debra. Interesting ... - This Thursday: Nothing announced. - Next week: Nothing announced. Comments: The second hour went on autopilot there for awhile, and the stuff with Ross and the XFL was really embarrassing, but otherwise this was one tremendous installment of RAW. Two great matches, plus a decent angle in the return of Shane McMahon ... you can't ask for much more than that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Bottom Line: Vince McMahon should buy WCW. I know, we've been though all this before, but hear me out. We all know WCW is doomed. Either it gets shut down a few weeks from now, or Fusient buys it and racks up a ton of losses before giving up. Maybe a miracle happens and WCW is able to limp along for a few years, and they happen to discover the next Rock or Triple H, or the WWF totally collapses and they get the real Rock or Triple H, but let's face it--when your only hope is to pray for a miracle, it's not smart money to bet on your success. At least if Vince buys the company it'll be a sure thing for a couple of years. A WWF versus WCW feud will be pure money. And maybe when that runs its course Vince will keep WCW around as a farm league to feed the WWF. If he doesn't, and he shuts WCW down, at worst it will have just been the inevitable delayed. Then we can pray for those miracles again, like Hulk Hogan starting a new company with all that newly-unemployed talent, or someone buys the WCW name from Vince and tries to make a go of it, or maybe ... and maybe ... and maybe ... Assuming Vince was really serious about buying WCW, he would own it now were it not for Viacom putting the breaks on the deal. They've got the WWF exclusively on their networks (TNN, UPN, MTV), and they didn't want Vince doing shows on competing networks (TNT, TBS). They would have wanted what essentially amounted to a monetary kickback. The cost of that would have eaten up whatever profits Vince could have wrung out of WCW, so he pulled his bid to buy the company. Things have changed since then. Business has taken a downturn for the WWF. They're not in bad shape right now--far from it, actually--but in six months, a year, two years, things might not be so good. Vince could go to Viacom and argue that he NEEDS to buy WCW, not just for the good of the wrestling business, but to make the WWF/Viacom partnership economically viable for both sides. With WCW completely gone the WWF will continue to lose viewers. It would take an extraordinary burst of creativity (there are those miracles again) for the WWF to rise back up to that viewership level they were at during their peak. They've already dropped from the 5-plus ratings they were doing on USA to the low-to-mid-4's on TNN. By next year they could be down to the 3's, and from there it's not a far drop to the mid-2's they were doing before Monday Nitro came along and kickstarted the entire business. If the WWF can't turn things around soon we're going to start hearing about Viacom wanting to renegotiate their deal. As it stands they're currently paying something like four or five times as much money to air WWF shows as USA did, yet the ratings have gone down. Even if USA was getting WWF programming at a bargain it's going to be hard to convince Viacom that they aren't being gouged. Having to negotiate a new less-lucrative deal, on top of the losses incurred by the XFL, is going to be bad news for the value of WWF stock, which is already hovering near record low levels. I know people don't want McMahon to own WCW because he would then have a monopoly and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. Wake up people: Vince McMahon HAS the monopoly on the wrestling business. He has for some time. WCW may have been profitable for a year or two out of its decade-plus of existence, but it was never cost-effective. It took a lot of luck, a curious timing of circumstances, and Eric Bischoff wringing a boatload of money out of Ted Turner to ever-so-briefly put WCW on top of the business. For 82 weeks WCW was on top of the WWF in the Monday night ratings. The WWF matched that mark and passed it, what ... six months ago? People forget that before The Streak the WWF was kicking WCW's butt for YEARS. That's not going to change. The question now is will the WWF be strong on top, or are we going back to the early 90's, when the WWF began the slump that left them vulnerable to WCW several years later. Maybe the McMahon-haters out there are hoping for that day when, in the year 2006, WCW rises from the ashes (or someone else comes along with a new company) and puts the struggling WWF in its place. Call me selfish, but I'd rather see an interesting WWF *and* WCW for the next couple of years, rather than losing interest and following things from afar, casually, waiting for the business to become interesting again. I think Vince McMahon could do that by buying WCW. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Slobberknocker Central" and "Monday Night Recap" are copyright 2001 by John Petrie, and all opinions expressed therein are his own, and not those of "USLink". Check the "Slobberknocker Central" main page for info on how to receive the "Recap" free via E-Mail every week. Volume One, Number 278 of the "Monday Night Recap", March 12th, 2001.