Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling From: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 02/04 Message-ID: Sender: news@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (USENET News System) Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 19:23:38 GMT Lines: 207 { First off, my news feed died some time last Friday. As a result, news articles dated that far back have just started trickling in over the last day or two. I have no real idea what's been discussed on the net in the past week. As a result, I won't mention anything regarding Andre the Giant's death, since I would think that's been hashed to death on the net. Please excuse things in this post which are "old news". Hopefully, my feed will be up to speed in the next few days. } - WCW has SuperBrawl III on 02/21/93 from Asheville, NC. The line-up will include: - Sting vs. Big Van Vader in a strap match - Great Muta vs. Barry Windham for the NWA Title - Ricky Steamboat & Shane Douglas vs. Brian Pillman & Steve Austin for the WCW Tag Titles in a 2 out of 3 falls match - Cactus Jack vs. Paul Orndorff - Dustin Rhodes vs. Ron Simmons for the US Title - Rock'n'Roll Express vs. Wrecking Crew Ron Simmons' status with WCW is in question. It's contract renewal time for Ron these days and rumours have him a little unhappy with Bill Watts' new offer. Talk is that Bill wants Simmons to stay on and turn heel - it's well known that Watts respects Simmons a fair bit, so things may get resolved. Also, talk persists that the R'n'R Express will face the Heavenly Bodies at the PPV and not he Wrecking Crew. Finally, I guess we can expect to see Chris Benoit make his PPV debut. Since he's had some practice with 2 Cold Scorpio at the house shows of late, we can only hope for that pairing. In any case, on paper we've got one heck of a show possible. - WCW will air an edited mini-PPV of the 01/04/93 Tokyo Dome show. The 1:50 show will air 03/07/93 with a "cheap" price tag. Matches that will air are: - Sting vs. Hiro Hase - Ron Simmons vs. Tony Halme - Great Muta vs. Masa Chono for the NWA Title - Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu - Dustin Rhodes & Scott Norton vs. Shinya Hashimoto & Masa Saito - Jushin Riger vs. Ultimo Dragon The match times for these matches (bell to bell) total just over 1:30, so if this is all that airs we may not see any heavily edited matches. - Tides turn. Despite his mistakes - and there were many, with a few still kicking around - Bill Watts has somehow set the stage for what appears to be the return to glory for WCW. Glory for the fans of pro-wrestling with a little workrate and stiff action, that is. Glory for the WCW ledgers? Time will tell. Here's what seems to be in the cards for WCW in the next little while: - Ric Flair returns. His official return date (i.e. first appearance that will air) is SuperBrawl III on 02/21/93. There is still talk that he will capture the WCW Title from Big Van Vader on 02/14/93. - Working arrangement with Smoky Mountain Wrestling. The return of Jim Cornette (& Stan Lane) to WTBS airs this weekend on WCW Saturday Night. (Bobby Eaton will sat in SMW until April). - More new talent ("new" as far as WCW and the WWF are concerned anyhow). 2 Cold Scorpio, Chris Benoit, Max Pain, Robbie V (who got a 1 year contract after his Battle of the Underdogs match), Wrecking Crew, Steve Regal (from England), Erik Watts. Some of them will work out and some of them won't, but as long as the faces don't change every time we tune in to WCW, fostering new talent is a great thing. - Great workrate on top. Brian Pillman, Barry Windham, Ricky Steamboat, Shane Douglas, Steve Austin, Dustin Rhodes, Paul Orndorff, Cactus Jack, Big Van Vader, & Sting have all been working their asses off as of late. - Working arrangement with New Japan Pro-Wrestling. - Jake Roberts returns. No date yet, but the rumour is strong. - Davey Boy Smith debuts in WCW. No official date yet. There's talk that the Dynamite Kid, who's worked in Japan recently, may come out of retirement to join Davey once again. - Eddie Gilbert returns to WCW. No date yet. Will he feud with Cactus Jack again? - Sid Vicious returns to WCW. No date yet. Hey, you take the bad with the good. - Rick Rude returns to WCW after an injury. Apparently Rude and Bill Watts have reached a new contract agreement amidst rumours of personal differences. Rude, who has a Lloyds of London insurance policy, was in a tough situation with his injury. The policy would kick in with big payments after Rude had been out for three months. I guess Watts made him an offer that beat waiting for his insurance. No official return date yet. - In the biggest rumour of the week, Hawk & Animal, The Road Warriors, are said to be reuniting in WCW rings in the very near future. - With the influx of talent that Watts has somehow managed to create, he's given himself a better position when it to comes to negotiating contracts. Before, he really "needed" to sign some names. - Marty Janetty was fired after Royal Rumble. No real reason has been given anywhere. - Bam Bam Bigelow no-showed Toronto this past Sunday. Bret Hart instead defended the WWF title against Yokozuna, with Bret winning by count-out. The Bammer has apparently also missed some other house shows recently. Also, at the TV tapings in San Jose after the Royal Rumble, Earthquake - who has left the WWF and active wrestling for at least one year - made a very strong showing against Bigelow, leaving him laying after EQ had lost the match by count-out. Bigelow lost his first match to Hart later that night and was scheduled to job for Hart at the house shows prior to WrestleMania, with the idea being to get over the idea that Hart can beat a big guy. Maybe Bam Bam figured that this would kill him way him to early into his WWF tenure? - Honky Tonk Man, who was rumoured to be heading into WCW, has surfaced in USWA recently. I guess he didn't like Bill Watts' rules. - WWF has WrestleMania on 04/04/93 at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Talk now is that Hulk Hogan is not going to appear at WrestleMania. The tentative line-up looks like this: - Bret Hart vs. Yokozuna for the WWF Title - Steiners vs. Money, Inc. for the WWF Tag Titles - Tatanka vs. Shawn Michaels for the IC Title - Curt Hennig vs. Lex Luger - Crush vs. Doink the Clown - Giant Gonzales vs. Kamala or Undertaker? - Crush returned to the WWF rings, showing no ill side effects from his beating at the hands of Doink the Clown. It's doubtful that the beating will as much attention as was presumably planned when they ran the angle. It seems that Vince the Clown^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H got a fair bit of bad press because of the timing of the angle and was forced to tone it down a bit. - Once Bret Hart drops the title to Yokozuna at WrestleMania, there is talk that he'll form a tag team with his brother Owen. - Brutus Beefcake returned to the WWF on Monday night and got into it with the tag champs, Ted DiBiase & I.R.S. Rumour has it that Vince is hoping to negotiate the return of Hulk Hogan through this scenario. The idea is that Beefcake will get "injured" and Hulk will come back to tag up with him for a short stint. Hogan's movie "Mr. Nanny" drew no crowd at its preview showings and won't get wide release until June when the kiddies are out of school. I guess it works to Hogan's advantage to put himself into the spotlight by that time since he can't afford to have another movie bomb at the box office. Also, Vince McMahon has given Hogan's brother, Mike Bollea (aka. Horace Boulder in FMW), a spot on the undercard of a few house shows working as the Predator. - E-mail TidBits: This is the first week that I'm sending this post to a mailing list at the same time that post it. If your site has a slow feed or you don't read news frequently enough and you want to get this posting as e-mail every week, send me e-mail saying so. I have no plans currently to make this mailing list into anything more than this. - Videos: I finally got around to watching some of the assorted 1987-1988 North American TV stuff that I have on tape. I got this stuff from a guy who wanted out of the trading "business." There were some pretty good things in there. There are about 8 tapes which I plan to watch in chronological order. Right now, I'm at early 1988, just prior to the first Clash of Champions, with Sting having challenged Flair. In the WWF, Andre has just beaten Hogan thanks to the evil twin Hebners. In the AWA, Curt Hennig is successfully defending his AWA Title after beating Nick Bockwinkel with the help of Larry Zbyszko. Larry and Nick are feuding; one match had Nick knock Larry out with a roll of dimes (a la Curt Hennig winning the title) and when the ref sees the dimes he asks Nick if he used anything. Nick answers "yes" and gestures that he did in fact hit Larry with a loaded fist. The referee awards the match to Nick anyhow because he didn't see it and everybody laughs appropriately. Actually, it was a pretty neat finish. I've been asked by several people whether the tape I compiled at the request of the net is still available for purchase. It is. I'll still sell dubs only because I said I would keep it available as long as I'm around the net. I've become more-than-slightly disenchanted with the idea of selling tapes, though. PLEASE DO NOT SEND AN "Add me to the video list" NOTE IN RESPONSE TO FOLLOWING. Read to the end first. The only other system of getting tapes distributed from those that "have" to those that "have not" is the "chain" approach. In this approach, I send a dub to person A on the list of recipients. He watches it or dubs it or whatever and mails it to person B on the list ASAP. We continue until person Z mails it back to me. This was proposed when I made my first compilation tape, but people were worried about being at the end of the list and having to wait to long to see the tape, plus having to trust everybody along the way. Of course, people with only one VCR would not be able to dub the tape unless they rented or borrowed a second VCR. That's a problem I can't control. We can solve the other problems by making the distribution list very short (say 10 people) and having everybody promise to mail the tape within two days of receiving it. We could track the progress of the tape with an e-mail mailing list. Somebody could still screw the rest of us, but we could castigate that person by publicly announcing on the net what's happened - and unfortunately killing the idea of me offering this service again. What about cost? Well, the postage costs are shared equally among all of the people that would get the tape. So that only leaves me. I've dished out $4.65 on postage (Canada-to-US assumed), a few pennies on other supplies, and time in building the tape. With that in mind, I'd ask that each person add a "donation" to the package - with the mandatory minimum donation being $2 - before mailing it to on the next person. Thus when the tape comes home to me, I'll have at least $20 in the envelope, with profit from the 10 people being at least around $13. The big question: What if 50, 75, or 100 people want to see the tape? The big answer: Too bad. Well, not really. I would build a list of names interested in being involved in the process at some point. The first tape I build would be sent to the first 10 people on the list. When (and if?) that tape returns to me, I would put a new list of matches on it and mail that to #11 on the list and it would go round to #20 before returning to me. This would continue until either (i) the tape and minimum $20 does not get returned to me (ii) I decide to stop - sorry no guarantees that I would do this even more than once or twice. To everybody that bothered to read this far, what is your opinion on this? Should the same matches get sent around to everybody on the queue or should different matches be on each tape that goes round to the next 10 people? How should matches be chosen for the tapes? Again, please don't send any "add me to the video list" notes - people sending a note with that body will never get added to a list. Just let me know your opinions on this (you can say whether you are interested, of course, but I don't want any "junk mail"). Herb...