Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling From: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze) Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 03/16 Message-ID: Sender: news@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (USENET News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: jeeves.uwaterloo.ca Organization: University of Waterloo Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 01:46:29 GMT Lines: 324 - WCW will have "WCW Uncensored" on Sunday night. Announced line-up has: - Hulk Hogan vs. Vader in a strap match - Sting vs. Big Bubba Rogers - Randy Savage vs. Avalanche - Harlem Heat vs. Nasty Boys in a tornado match - Dustin Rhodes vs. Blacktop Bully in a "King of The Road" match - Arn Anderson vs. Johnny B. Badd in a wrestler vs. boxer match - Meng vs. Jim Duggan in a martial arts match. The "King of The Road" match will take place in the back of a truck. They have been hinting that Hulk Hogan will have an ultimate surprise for Vader at this show, which was supposed to be the unveiling of the Road Warriors. Joe Pedicino reported earlier this week that the Warriors' return will have to be postponed and that "Reo, Lord of The Jungle" will apparently be the new surprise. - Alundra Blayze will be signing autographs at "Energy Work Outs" on Dixon Rd. in Mississauga, ON, Saturday starting at 2pm. She's in town with the rest of the crew for the tour which hits Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto for a rare Saturday night show. The main is Diesel & Ramon vs. Michaels & Double J, along with Bret vs. Owen, Undertaker vs. IRS (rumoured to be replaced by UT vs. Kama). Alundra takes on Bull and Hakushi takes on 1-2-3 Kid, two reasons to perhaps hit the show. I will be in Toronto for the weekend, but chances are that I won't hit the show. The WWF is in London, ON, on Sunday night with a Luger vs. Bundy main. - "Canada's National Newspaper," The Globe And Mail, has a "Quote of The Day" on the front page every day. Today's, from New York Rangers general manager Neil Smith, was, "Our game against Buffalo was right out of the WWF. You were looking for Hulk Hogan to come out for a shift." - As alread mentioned in the group, Meltzer and others (presumably regurgitating Meltzer) have reported that WCW has talked about creating a new Four Horsemen comprised of Ric Flair, Vader, Steve Austin, and Arn Anderson (the likely four). This group would eventually feud with the Road Warriors. What an absolute shock! A WCW storyline that doesn't (yet) involve Hulk Hogan. It can't happen. Speaking of Hogan, he was voted "Personality of The Year" in Florida. There's no truth to the rumour that he also won "Ego of The Year." - Meltzer alos reported that the WWF commentators were hinting that Ted DiBiase was going to steal Mantaur away from Jim Cornette. That's an unmitigated lie; Cornette is paying Ted to take him. ;-) - The WWF has followed suit and will had several cheaply priced PPVs to their line-up this year and even more next year, bringing this year's total to 9 PPVs. Including UFCs and a possible AAA show, there could be as many as 24 PPVs this year. - This past week's Lucha Libre on Telelatino aired EMLL stuff instead of AAA, which we had received the past couple of weeks. It's scary how poor the EMLL guys compare to the AAA guys. The only shining light on the show was seeing Reyna Jubuki, although she didn't even hint at what she is capable of. Since Meltzer mentioned the Telelatino show the week after I did here, saying that it aired the Galavision show, I should mention that it doesn't really. There is a weekly show that runs between 40 and 45 minutes, with only about one minute of commercials, airing some things that aired on Galavision two weekends before. - The WWF has WrestleMania XI on 04/02/95. Tentative line-up has: - Diesel (with Roddy Piper) vs. Shawn Michaels (with Sid Vicious) for the WWF Title - Bam Bam Bigelow (with $1-million team) vs. Lawrence Taylor (with NFL cronies) - Men On a Mission vs. Smoking Gunns for the WWF Tag Titles - Jeff Jarrett vs. Razor Ramon for the IC Title - Lex Luger vs. Tatanka (strap match?) - Undertaker vs. King Kong Bundy - Bret Hart vs. Bob Backlund - WCW has Slamboree on 05/21/95. - Hulk Hogan & Randy Savage vs. Vader & Ric Flair - Sting vs. Big Bubba Rogers - Kevin Sullivan vs. The Man With No Name - Interview: This is the fourth installment of the Bill Watts interview which was published in the great sheet, The Wrestler Flyer, in 04/93. Clark: So before you went in there you had a much different picture of what it would be like in that position? Watts: Yeah, I didn't realize because I didn't know the inner-workings of Turner Broadcasting. If all you were doing was dealing with the wrestling it wouldn't have been quite as hard. It still would have been hard, but not quite as hard. But hell, you had to overcomc Turner Broadcasting. I said many times, I felt my biggest thing, to overcome there was Turner Broadcasting. As a matter of fact, they had Bothan Allen do a study and one of their guys said, "I'm just amazed at the lack of cooperation between companies and the lack of communication within companies here at Turner Broadcading." Clark: Were there other things you did that you felt were positive? Watts: We were excited. We had our direction set almost a year out. But, several times we just had to change it because things happened. With Flair, we actually could then look at planning pay-per-views a year or a year and a half ahead and know we were going to draw money and be on target because Flair gave us another ingredient. Hell, when I got there, it was either Sting and somebody or you didn't have anything. With Flair, it didn't take anything away from Sting. I thought we had really rebuilt Sting and he bacame our "Raider of the Lost Ark" type of guy. We put him in some real provocative danger scenes that were easy to market I was really excited about Barry Windham's attitude and the direction we were going to go with him, and his intensity and his excitement about it. He's always had all the ability, he's just always been taken to a certain point and dropped. So he never did really feel that anybody was ever going to do anything for him. So he always just did what he could to get by. Barry was really pumped and really busting his ass in the ring. He's one of the best workers in the business. He just needed to be motivated on a regular basis and have a goal, and he was starting to get that way. I was looking at all the positive aspects. Clark: On the other side, do you feel there were some negative things that you did in there? Watts: I'm sure. You know, when you get so caught up in getting shot down everyday, I think you get paranoid and you get caught up in paranoia. I think for damn sure there were some things. If I had to do again, there are a couple things I'd do different. I don't think anybody does anything exactly the way they want to or they're just lying about it. There were some things negative I did. I don't want to get into them, that's negative. I mean, hell, I made a lot of mistakes. There's no sense in going into those things. It's not going to do any good for anybody. Nobody's going to study this thing on how to do it anyway because nobody's going to get to do anything there. And if Ted sells TBS, where will WCW be? Clark: What would you describe as your method to motivate the talent to work harder and take pride in their jobs? Having to do with contracts and then motivating them? Watts: That's a hard thing having to deal with them contractually in one hand, in a business sense, and coaching them in the other sense. So that's a tough deal wearing both hats. But, it's necessary. It's like Mike Ditka said, "I'm used to dealing with self-motivating athletes. Now it's become where you're a babysitter." And Mike Ditka is a great coach. The people that hired me at TBS said, "Ditka, it's passed him by, he's a dinosaur." I said, "You all are crazy." How many guys can take somebody to the Superbowl? Let's stop and look at management for Ditka. What has management done for him? Name me one star that you could build a team with that management has signed for Ditka since he won the Superbowl. Then, let's name the Superbowl stars that management lost. Ditka's a hands on guy. He's a dressing room mentality guy. And they said, "See, he can't get a job." Can't get a job, he's getting paid $900,000 to lay out this year. He'll get a job. That's their understanding of this business. They just don't understand it. They told us in one of the meetings, they said, "This is no different than a widget business. We're tired of people telling us it's unique." Let me tell you, there are very few people in wrestling that ever really understood it anyway that were successful year after year after year. So, that's what you're battling there. To motivate wrestlers, I'd tell them when they did good. I was constantly telling them when they did good. I would also tell them when they did bad, and tell them why they did bad. One of the greatest things that the young guys, the kids with their heads screwed on right, appreciated- we used to bring them right out of the ring and show them their match. Ole would sit there and go over their match right then on tape. You've got to realize, I came in when they used to do three balls shots in a match. Nobody got beat, nobody got hurt, they're hitting them in the nuts. And we're family entertainment. And I stopped that. They didn't like that. I startcd making them be on time. They didn't like that. I started making them show up. They didn't like that. I started making them stay when there was a championship match, until the end of the card. They didn't like that, they said, "Why should we watch the matches?" Why should you when you're getting paid no matter what? In the old days you'd watch the matches to see what the guy's doing so you could do it better. Who likes discipline? If you were out there playing football, would you want to run wind sprints? No. So then, if you were the boss up there, you'd call up the guys and say, "Gee, what do you think about Bill making you run wind spnats?" They say, "We don't like it. We don't want to do that. We shouldn't have to do it." See, that's TBS' concept, they call down to the guys and they ask them if they like what I'm doing to make them have discipline. They've never been fined there for missing matches. Ron Simmons got fined three times. The last one was $5,OOO. Shit, he was the world's champion and missed three engagements. Scotty Steiner, I fined him $10,000 for missing his TV title. I said, "Ron, I gave you a better deal. You're world's champion and I only fined you half as much." Ron understood it. He didn't like it, but he understood it. I said, "Look at the opportunity I've given you, and you've missed three times." Clark: You think most of the talent was motivated by your methods? Watts: Why deal with most. You've got to understand, you don't deal with most. Youll never please everybody. There's no human alive that pleases everybody. Do you think Jimmy Johnson pleases everybody? No. You lay down the rules the way they need to be and you get the guys to conform. You don't ask them if they like what the hell you're doing. You've already got the tail wagging the dog, why would you go ask the tail what the hell it's doing. In the wrestling business, I've seen talent and they're never fully happy. I've never seen many of them lay down in the ring. I don't think the talent was laying down in the ring over a lack of motivation. I think they were trying. I think most of them don't know what they're doing. Hell, we couldn't even lay out a finish. Our finishes had to be so simplistic, I couldn't believe it. I even laid out one myself one time and Mike Graham said, "Those guys can't do it." I said, "Mike, that's so simple anybody could do it." They screwed it up. The business has regressed because there was no challenge mentally. How can you challenge anybody mentally to do anything when they get paid the same no matter what they do. That's what people that have never been there don't understand, they don't understand that. They don't understand what it takes to go big time because they didn't have to. If you're getting paid guarantecd no matter what you do or whether you're sick or you're hurt or whatever, there's no edge. There's no edge. It came out in the Atlanta paper, funny thing, that there's about ten guaranteed contracts in the NFL and most of thosc are quarterbacks. Pierce Holt just got the new one with thc Atlanta Falcons where they guaranteed, even if they cut hun, put him on waivers, didn't play him, if he gets hurr, he gets paid. To me, that's dumber than naming shit. Clark: Do you think some of guys didn't like your methods because you were coming in there and making major, major changes? Watts: I think some of them got an attitude problem and I think some of them conformed. Some conformed and some got an attitude problem. But that happens with anybody in anything. So, it was no worse or no better. We would have eventually cleaned house and had guys that had the right attitude. But that takes time. It's nothing I haven't had to do hefore. Before that, since it was a wrestling company, I was supported. Here, they cried to the bosses and they would wring their hands and hold their hands, "Oh, we're sorry, Bill's just too hard on you, this, that and the other thing." I mean, it's fucking ridiculous. It's like a babysitting job, it's like Ditka said. Clark: Did you find yourself having a hard time dealing with the office personnel on a day in and day out basis? Watts: No, I ignored most of it. What the fuck, I don't have time to deal with the office personnel. That's what they would say, that I don't accept their input. Why would I make a "Master of the Snapping Hold." And I didn't have the time. Maybe in a year I'd have had time. You put people in charge and you delegate things, and you don't have time to listen to everybody. I mean, that's ludicrous. That's not even sane. Nobody does that, if you're running a company. I made Brenda Smith office manger, I thought she did a great job. Nobody else did, but I did. But, I listened to a lot of problems and I coped with a lot of problems. You're working eighteen to twenty hours a day, you didn't have time to listen to all the little nit-picking. You'd get so sidetracked doing that. What everybody wants to do, John, is they want to digress and they want to analyse the bacteria accountability and human kindness of my regime. So they want to pull it apart into little bitty pieces but none of them know what the hell the overall picture was anyway. So really, I could never explain to you the whole thing or justify it or anything else. I don't have to. But, I could never do it and make you understand it anyway unless you'd been there. If you hadn't been to the show, you dont understand what it is until you get there. You can only be an outsider looking in. That's why I always said that Meltzer and Keller ought to start their own wrestling promotion. Because they're experts on it, they'd have to be instant successes. But, I haven't seen anything start out yet in their name. The other thing is, thank God there's not been many statues or memorials erected to critics in the world. Because critics generally don't accomplish anything, they're just tearing down things. So no matter whether I did good or did bad, at least I was there. I know I did something good. I know I was in the right direction. I know I did some things bad but I know most of all I had no support. If I was there, Dusty Rhodes would still be where he is. I was bringing in a booking committee. They started saying that I had to have Sharon Sidello on my booking committee. For what? So then all of a sudden, I'm anti-women. I'm not anti-women, never have been. But, what the hell is she going to contribute to my booking committee. Clarlc: What kind of communication did you have with your bosses on the job you were doing? Watts: They knew exactly what I thought at all times, they just didn't agree. But they don't tell you that, they go behind your back. The guys that I thought were doing their job, I got along with great Dennis Brent, Tony Schiavone, I got along with them great. But you've got to understand it's a political game there. If they think you're in control, then they'd listen to you and to the things they're told to do. If they think you're not, they just nod and then they don't do a thing. Clark: What was an average day at WCW like for you? Watts: Generally, you'd start with meetings with your key department heads. The biggest thing you had there was producing television. It took precedent over everything because it's a television company. And we were producing so damn much with basically a minimum of expense for that type of thing. If you had compared our television production to the WWF's in budget and in equipment used and everything else, it would be like a Volkswagon compared to a Rolls Royce. Our production staff was overworked. A lot of the stuff that we had to do editing-wise, post production-wise, it had to be hired out because we just didn't have the capacity. It was just a constant grind, when you're doing that and the pay-per-views and the Clashes. You had so much production so you really spent a lot of time just trying to keep the television fed and keep up with the injuries and the talent and everything else. Actually, the house shows, which were already so disastrous, were the last and least important at WCW. Which basically is the way it should be with a television company and the potential of pay-per-view. You were dealing with the contracts, with all the legalities, and trying to work in through Turner Broadcasting legal to get the contracts done. It was generally a twelve to fifteen hour day of putting out fires. - Booking Prediction Tourney: Apologies for the Uncensored screw-up (forgetting Duggan vs. Meng on the ballot). I'll try to get results posted within a couple of days of the event. - WWW: This post is presented weekly, presumably with some short delay, on Mark Long's r.s.p-w home page on the Web. That page contains a lot of interesting wrestling info, so give it a try at: http://www.luc.edu/~mlong/wrestling.html - 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. Basically, all of the tapes in my video collection are available. My tape list is on the r.s.p-w ftp site (istrain.health.ufl.edu) in the file herbtape.zip. I have made a total of five compilation tapes for the net: R.s.p-w 1, Japan 1981-1983, Japan 1984-1987, VideoMarinepiad I, and VideoMarinepiad II. If you are interested in details on any of these, just send some e-mail or browse the ftp site. Herb...