Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling From: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 12/31 (posted 01/01) Message-ID: Sender: news@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (USENET News System) Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 19:33:49 GMT Lines: 167 { First off, Happy New Year to everybody reading this. I'm posting this a day late since I didn't get time to do it yesterday. I'll be back to my regular Thursday schedule next week. } - WWF has it's annual Royal Rumble PPV on 01/24/93 (or is that 01/23/93?) from Sacramento. The line-up will include: - Bret Hart vs. Razor Ramon for the WWF Title - 30-man Royal Rumble, the winner of which will get a WWF Title shot at WrestleMania. 29 of the participants of the Rumble will be: Bob Backlund, Berzerker, Carlitos Colon, Crush, Damien Demento, Ted DiBiase, Jim Duggan, Earthquake, Head Shrinker Fatu, Ric Flair, Owen Hart, Curt Hennig, Jerry Lawler, Rick Martel, Nasty Boy Brian Nobbs, Repo-Man, Nasty Boy Jerry Saggs, Head Shrinker Samu, Tito Santana, Randy Savage, Papa Shango, Irwin R. Shyster, Tatanka, Genichiro Tenryu, Typhoon, Undertaker, Virgil, Koko B. Ware, Yokozuna. No word on who will be replacing Nailz, who was to be the final participant. Potential other matches have been reported here as: - Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Janetty for the IC Title - Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Big Boss Man - Max Moon vs. Terry Taylor - Steiner Brothers vs. Beverly Brothers With Razor Ramon jobbing for the Undertaker at current house shows, one would guess that it's extremely unlikely that he figures into the title picture. Eveybody is betting that either Curt Hennig or Yokozuna will win the Rumble. Yokozuna will get put over by Randy Savage and Big Boss Man at the house shows prior to WrestleMania. Curt Hennig is currently being put over by Repo Man as the house shows. Rumour has it that Max Moon was canned by the WWF last week, so his prelim match above could be history. - Nailz, who was canned by the WWF for demanding more money and allegedly assaulting Vince McMahon, has filed sexual assault charges against Vince McMahon. Meltzer reports that nobody inside really believes Nailz' claim and everybody else is just reporting the facts in the previous sentence. - Lucky Crush gets to feud with Doink the Clown when the Doinker hits the ring in upcoming weeks. - WCW & New Japan co-promote the third annual SuperShow from Tokyo Dome on 01/04/93. Full line-up: - Riki Choshu vs. Genichiro Tenryu - Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Takashi Ishikawa - Hell Raisers: Kensuke Sasaki & Road Warrior Hawk vs. Steiners for the IWGP Tag Titles - Masa Chono vs. Great Muta for the NWA & IWGP Titles - Antonio Inoki & Shinya Hashimoto vs. Scott Norton & Dustin Rhodes - Sting vs. Hiro Hase - Ron Simmons vs. Tony Halme for the WCW Title - Jushin Riger vs. El Ultimo Dragon (Yoshihiro Asai) for the IWGP Jr. Title - Norio Honaga & Super Strong Machine & Tatsutoshi Goto & Hiro Saito vs. Kengo Kimura & Shiro Koshinaka & Akitoshi Saito & Kabuki - Michiyoshi Ohara & Takayuki Iizuka & Akira Nogami vs. Nobukazu Hirai & Koki Kitahara & Masao Orihara It seems doubtful that we'll ever see more than a clip of anything fromt this show on North American TV. - WCW is running a tournament to determine the number one contender for Rick Rude's US Title. All but the final match-up has already taken place. The following occurred: Dustin Rhodes -\ |-- Dustin Rhodes -\ Vinnie Vegas -/ | |-- Dustin Rhodes -\ Tony Atlas -\ | \ |-- Tony Atlas -/ | Van Hammer -/ | |-- Final Barry Windham -\ | |-- Barry Windham -\ | Johnny B. Badd -/ | / |-- Rick Steamboat -/ Rick Steamboat -\ | |-- Rick Steamboat -/ Dan Spivey -/ The first round matches will air this weekend (01/02/93) and the second round matches will air next weekend. The final will air the weekend after. - Varied reports are that Rick Rude is either suffering from a shoulder injury or a ruptured disc. In either case, it's estimated that he'll be out for another month. He's apparently showing up at the house shows he's been booked on just to show the fans that the injury is legit. The final match in the #1 contender tourney above will air on 01/16/93 and the championship shot is supposed to air on 01/23/93. Will they have Rude forfeit the title because of the injury? Will he work injured? Will he keep the title? Who the hell knows? When business resumes in the new year, WCW will be booked by a diverse committee, so we can only guess how things are going to get flipped around. - Arn Anderson is staying with WCW and it's possible that Bobby Eaton will too. - WCW's World Wide Wrestling was only off the air for one week in my area. I guess there was some sort of foul-up and the show was unavailable that one week. It's back in its usual midnight time slot. - WCW has a Clash of Champions on 01/13/93 from Milwaukee. The tentative line-up includes: - Sting & Dustin Rhodes & Van Hammer & Ron Simmons vs. Rick Rude & Barbarian & Barry Windham & Big Van Vader in a Thunderdome cage match - Rick Steamboat & Shane Douglas vs. Brian Pillman & Steve Austin for the NWA & WCW Tag Titles - Cactus Jack vs. Erik Watts - Tony Atlas vs. Van Hammer in an arm-wrestling match - 2 Cold Scorpio vs. Scotty Flamingo - Brad Armstrong vs. Chris Benoit Maybe the last two matches will set the stage for the resurrection of the WCW Lightheavyweight title. Benoit is only in for the one shot. - The Steiners will work their first WWF Toronto house show on 01/31/93. On the same card, Bret Hart faces Bam Bam Bigelow for the WWF Title. - WCW has a SuperBrawl on 02/27/93 from Asheville, NC. - WWF has WrestleMania on 04/04/93 at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. The promo tape includes some footage of Hulk Hogan and rumour has him appearing but not wrestling. The talk is that he'll either do commentary or be a guest referee. My guess is that he'll give Bret Hart the Hulkster's seal of approval. The main event will have the WWF champ defend against the winner of the Royal Rumble. - Videos: In a recent tape deal, I received all of the weekly Smoky Mountain shows from 02/22/92 through to 08/22/92. I managed to watch 10 shows or so while in Toronto before Christmas. Then I flew to Montreal to spend Christmas with my girlfriend and her family. While I was gone, my parents watched all of the SMW tapes. Yep, it's wrestling the way they like it and the way it used to be. They've asked me to look into getting more tapes of the stuff. So, is there anybody (Clay?) out there that has high quality copies of the SMW shows (original or 1st gen?) ideally starting at 08/29/92 (hey, I can hope)? If so and you're interested in trading, drop me some e-mail. I have hundreds of tapes to trade from all over. Also, I received a few goodies in the mail the Friday after my last TidBits. There were five tapes in total: 3 had 1980-1981 wrestling from England with Sammy Lee (Satoru Sayama, aka Tiger Mask I), Young David (Davey Boy Smith), Dynamite Kid, Kwik Kick Lee (Akira Maeda), Mark Rocco and, yes, a match with Steve DiSalvo; one tape had Calgary Stampede wrestling from 1979, 1981 and 1982; and the other had some current All Japan Women stuff. The AJW tape also had an SP dub of the camcorder footage of the infamous shoot kick from 11/19/87. For the uninitiated, the match had Akira Maeda & Nobuhiko Takada & Osamu Kido vs. Riki Choshu & Masa Saito & Hiro Saito. The match was quite good and there was a lot of heat for both Maeda and Takada. Choshu was the most popular guy in New Japan at the time and the place popped like crazy when he was in with either of the big shooters. After some 10 minutes of good action, Choshu had Kido in the scorpion death lock and Maeda just came in and nailed Choshu in the face with a vicious kick from the blind side. The kick broke some bones in Choshu's cheek. The injury knocked Choshu out of the tag tourney which was going on at the same time. It also got Maeda suspended. Maeda had had a reputation as a shooter before the incident and was now certifiably "real." This belief in Maeda's authenticity led to the creation of the second UWF, which was the most successful wrestling promotion in the history of the sport. Herb...