______________________________________________________________________ I do not offer subscriptions to a mailing list! I do not e-mail images! _________________________________________________________________ Pictures of the Week Five new pictures. Go to the Pics page to see the full selection, with thumbnails or without. I've entered into a series of pictures from the Gong valet special from late 1997. A lot of pictures could be taken from that magazine. Is there an interest? Or should I return to action shots? To view any of the pictures, click on the thumbnail. Sable Sunny Sunny Sunny Sunny _________________________________________________________________ - The WWF had WrestleMania XIV on Sunday. The show was a real mixed bag, displaying the huge talent difference between the WWF and WCW. There were some entertaining moments here and there, but even on this high-profile show the WWF had tremendous difficulty putting together a mostly-strong show. I want to give the show a thumbs up because there were three * * * -or-so matches amidst a really great atmosphere, but I don't think the actual wrestling warrants a positive review. The average wrestling level was borderline okay, but there were definitely no great matches. Some of the finishes were atrociously dated. Details: * The show opened with a brutal new wave rendition of the American national anthem; boy, I wish those five minutes were given to one of the matches. * Legion of Doom won a 15-team Battle Royal to earn a tag title shot on 04/26: The teams were Faarooq & Kama, R'n'R Express, Midnight Express, Godwinns, D-Lo Brown & Mark Henry, Quebecers, Savio Vega & Miguel Perez, Jesus Castillo & Jose Estrada Jr., Headbangers, Steve Blackman & Flash Funk, Skull & Eight Ball, Sniper & Recon, Brian Christoper & Scott Taylor, Chainz & Bradshaw, and Legion of Doom. This was just a horrible match by any standard. Hawk, in particular, delivered an absolutely lousy performance, which says a lot given his recent level. There was so much standing around by people who obviously didn't feel it was important to try to eliminate anybody. Mark Henry missed his script and decided to stay in for a long while after D-Lo had been eliminated. The commentators noticed, mentioned it, and then seemed embarrassed enough to ignore it. Barry Windham interfered. It came down to LOD (who were accompanied to the ring by Sunny), Midnight Express, Godwinns & Skull & Eight Ball. LOD won by (not really) simultaneously clotheslining the MEs out of the ring. For opposing reasons, the match was both too long and too short. Except for Sunny, nobody looked good at all. The match was an easy DUD and may even deserve a negative star rating. * Taka Michinoku beat Aguila to retain the Lightheavyweight Title: Sometimes carefully choreographed matches can actually be okay (see Hulk Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior a few years earlier); I think this match hit that mark, but was severely lacking as well. They did a lot of high spots, with no transitions or psychology attached; it was a Sabu-like stunt man show that lasted about seven minutes. Aguila went for a moonsault off the top turnbuckle out of the ring onto Taka Michinoku and Jim Ross called it an Asai moonsault. Taka did the Shinjiro Otani rub-your-boots-across-opponent's-face spot that Konnan did on the last WCW PPV (the first two times I've seen the spot in North America). Otani still does it better than anybody. Aguila didn't embarrass himself, but it was clear that he was a bit out of it at times, just not ready for this role. Taka did the Liger dropkick counter to an Aguila high spot and hit the Michinoku driver for the win. Short, okay match. * Hunter Hearst Helmsley beat Owen Hart to retain the European Title: Chyna was handcuffed to Sgt. Slaughter at ringside; of course they used the handcuffs with the long chain connecting wrists, so you knew that Chyna would interfere anyhow. Owen did a great job, particularly considering his ankle injury. Helmsley is a passable worker, but he's nothing great. With entrances and the pre-match arguing over handcuffing Chyna, the match went 18 minutes. The first ten minutes of the actual match were pretty lousy, building nothing, but the final few minutes were pretty good. Owen had a small cut on the bridge of his nose. Chyna threw powder into Slaughter's eyes and hit a low blow on Owen so Helmsley could hit the pedigree piledriver. Weak ending: here's Slaughter, who has overruled decisions before, accepting the powder-to-the-face routine from Chyna; man, does he look like a putz now. * Sable & Marc Mero beat Luna & Goldust when Sable pinned Luna: The crowd was really into seeing the catfight between the women. The men delivered an okay performance, but Dustin was a lot sadder than usual. The extra weight is slowly turning him into his dad, not just in appearance but in work as well. Dustin was too heavy to be TKOed by Mero. Sable eventually tagged in and attacked Luna with some kicks. The crowd was into it. Luna's breast popped a bit out of her swim suit, and again when she tried to fix things up. Sable powerbombed her and ended up pinning her after a TKO. * Rocky Maivia beat Ken Shamrock by reverse-decision to retain the IC Title: The last-minute stipulation was that Rocky would lose the title if he was DQed; of course this led one to suspect that Faarooq would end up costing Rocky the title, destorying the NOD in the process. Nope. The opening even suggested this: Rocky, the champ, came in first. * * ish action, with Shamrock eventually snapping and getting an ankle lock submission. Shamrock refused to release the hold, beating up the Nation of Domination (minus Faarooq) when they interfered. Shamrock tried a pitiful German suplex on Mark Henry. Shamrock returned to the ankle lock. Faarooq came down to ringside and then decided not to save Rocky, who ended up being stretchered out. Shamrock suplexed a few officials and, somewhere along the line, the decision was reversed. Lame finish again. I guess the thinking is that Rocky & Faarooq will need the title in their feud to get that issue over, but Shamrock can likely move on to other things and be over without the title. * Terry Funk & Cactus Jack beat the New Age Outlaws for the Tag Titles in a dumpster match: Garbage wrestling comes to WrestleMania. Many people on the net will call this the best match of the show, which, IMO, makes a strongly negative statement about the show. There were a couple of spectacular bumps (one off a ladder into the dumpster), but this was mostly the usual uninspired brawling/garbage stuff that ECW delivers minus the blood; there was nobody here to give the match any focus (like Chris Benoit did for the garbagy triangle match with DDP & Raven). The finish was bad: they had brawled to the back area, where Cactus laid out both Outlaws on a pallet (the wooden platforms upon which things are stacked for shipping or storage). Chainsaw Charlie then lifted the pallet with a forklift, raising them up to the height of a nearby open dumpster. When he drove to the opening of the dumpster, the Outlaws rolled off the pallet into the dumpster to lose the match. I guess we're supposed to think that they were "dumped" into the dumpster by Terry, but there was absolutely no reason for them to roll off the pallet. Anyhow, Cactus took some bumps and Terry looked absolutely sad, further prostituting his legend. * Undertaker beat Kane: Kane piledrove Pete Rose before the match. The first few minutes were punch-kick-clothesline-slam stuff. Undertaker's matches have improved in recent time because they no longer rely on all of the supernatural crap. The improvement didn't carry over to this match. Kane screwed up a lot of stuff that they had also been screwing up in practice run-ins on the road leading up to WrestleMania. He wanted to put Undertaker in a "Tree of Woe" in the corner, but missed hooking the foot, so there was an embarrassing moment when Kane didn't really know what to do instead. Undertaker got up onto Kane's shoulders and they screwed up the spot (as they have been at the houses). They also did a very shaky tombstone piledriver counter spot. Undertaker did a spectacular plancha, crashing through the Spanish announcing team's table. Finally, and thankfully, Undertaker hit a third tombstone on Kane and got the pin. Paul Bearer & Kane laid Undertaker out and then Bearer told Kane it was time to leave. That made sense: Kane so wants to destroy Undertaker that he's set him on fire at an earlier show, yet when he has him laid out he walks off. * Steve Austin beat Shawn Michaels to win the WWF Title: Mike Tyson's ringside enforcer role barely came into play. They started off slowly, leading to Helmsley & Chyna getting booted from ring side. Of course, anybody who's been paying attention wasn't fooled into thinking that Tyson was part of Michaels' team. The only real question in this match was whether Tyson would throw a punch at HHH or Michaels. Michaels put on a great show, a little below average. He grimaced numerous times and held his back, maybe because he was really in pain or maybe to give an explanation for his long absence after WrestleMania. The match didn't really build all that much, but the crowd was rabid for Austin. Eventually, they did the requisite ref bump to pull Tyson into the match. Tyson stayed outside the ring instead of climbing in as a replacement official, probably because they didn't want him to get in the way during the good multiple reversal finish. Austin ended up hitting his stunner and Tyson came in to count the win for his friend, Cold Stoned. Afterwards, Michaels confronted Tyson, who blocked a punch and decked Michaels. Overall, the show had some entertaining moments, but no great match. Already, WWF cheerleaders have called this the best PPV of the year so far, some going so far as to suggest that nothing will rival it for the rest of the year, either. Don't be fooled by either of these weak claims. While it's easy to point out the handful of entertaining moments, only a few of them happened during actual matches. There was a time that several of these finishes on an event from either promotion would have been severely criticized, leading to a panning of the show. Nowadays, though, because of injuries, a thin talent roster, and a careful spinning of the WWF as the outfinanced underdog, the WWF gets judged by much lighter standards by most people and, suddenly, a show with the failings of WrestleMania gets PPV of the year props. RAW was a live show, following on the heels of WrestleMania. Surely, this was the night where we would learn whether the hype of WrestleMania and the money spent on Mike Tyson translated into increased television interest as people who didn't buy the PPV would tune in to see what happened. As a result, one would expect a carefully-planned, strong show. The show opened with a montage from WrestleMania that was extremely well-done. They did announce that the Tag Titles were being held up because of controversy in the match at the PPV (the dumpster that decided the match was not legal). That came off weakly to me, since it surely meant that the New Age Outlaws would recapture the titles, effectively turning three of the title matches at WrestleMania into ultimate screw jobs. Vince McMahon asked Steve Austin to conform, but Austin stunned him. As a result, in a non-unique moment, McMahon called the police and had Austin arrested. The wrestling on the show was bad. I liked a couple of the directions that they debuted on this show, but they did several horrible things as well, IMO. LOD 2000 won a squash over Jose Estrada Jr. & Jesus Castillo. Apparently, the LOD has moved into the future by delivering one-minute squashes with three power moves that leave the LOD winded. Hey, wait, that's LOD 1984. No, LOD 2000 = LOD 1984 + Sunny. Kurrgan beat Chainz in an embarrassment. Jeff Jarrett beat Aguila with the figure-four. Why, why, why do both the WWF and WCW use the lighter guys as cannon fodder for the heavies? Once again, we learned that all of the flashy moves that Aguila does have no real effect when he's in with a legit heavyweight. Rocky Maivia & Faarooq lost to Ken Shamrock & Steve Blackman when Rocky walked out, leaving Faarooq to lose. Afterwards, Rocky & the NOD beat up Faarooq, establishing a new program for the Rock, a program with absolutely no promise. Hunter Hearst Helmsley & Chyna debuted Sean Waltman as a new DX member, after HHH dissed Shawn Michaels for screwing up at WrestleMania. Waltman delivered a shoot interview to a strong reaction, which is great, but, given his health problems, is he worth $350K a year? Anyhow, it looks like in Michaels absence, HHH is taking the helm of DX. I don't wish failure on the WWF, but I don't think that Helmsley is any where near good enough to rise to Michaels' spot. On the overnight one-and-a-half-hour TSN broadcast of RAW, they did air the Val Venis promo. It was edited off the two-hour version of the show that aired the next day. He had the usual pauses in his presentation that all green guys hav, but he (Sean Morley) has great potential. Sable & Luna made a deal for an evening gown match at Unforgiven. In short order, Marc Mero beat Taka Michinoku, confirming, just in case you didn't come to that conclusion during the Aguila vs. JJ match, that the lightheavyweights have no chance against anybody a bit heavier. What a waste. The first good bit of news (okay, maybe the evening gown match was good news on some level) was the debut of the original Kaientai DX members from Michinoku Pro. The heavyset guy who did the top rope senton was Dick Togo. The blond guy is Mens Teioh, who used to be known as Terry Boy, modelling himself after Terry Funk complete with step-over toe hold. The rusty-haired guy was Shoichi Funaki, who formed a tremendous team with Taka Michinoku for more than a year in Japan. Instantly, there is hope for good matches. The Midnight Express won the NWA Tag Titles, beating the Headbangers. Dan Severn turned up and Jim Cornette did all of the talking for him (smart move). He was announced as being NWA champion and they really hyped his record versus Ken Shamrock's record. There's tremendous potential there. In an incredibly hokey moment, they announced that Kane & Undertaker would have an inferno match at Unforgiven, a match wherein the loser gets set on fire. In a steel cage match, the New Age Outlaws beat Chainsaw Charlie & Cactus Jack to reclaim the WWF Tag Titles. Cactus was pinned while Terry was handcuffed to the cage, spreadeagled a la Bob Armstrong. Helmsley & Waltman got involved, suggesting that the New Age Outlaws are also now members of DX. Cactus & Terry will move into a feud with each other. In discussing last week's RAW, the Observer comments: Even though the WWF's storylines are as good and often better than WCW, the gap between the companies when it comes to wrestling talent is incredibly huge. Nitro this week was a three-hour show, condensed to two hours for Canada, once again. With the exception of one match, what we saw was a crappy show. Once again, when they edit the show down to two hours, they keep all of the interviews that build to the poor main events, instead chopping away whatever good cruiserweight matches were on the show. Argh. What aired here: * Wayne Bloom & Mike Enos and High Voltage went to a no decision when Giant walked in and choke-slammed everybody. Enos & Bloom did a surprisingly good job. * Perry Saturn beat Dave Finlay. * Chris Jericho beat Marty Jannetty. Afterwards, in a really funny moment, Jericho started to read a list of the 1004 moves he knows, including "armbar" a few times and making up a lot of strangely-named moves. * Buff Bagwell COR Raven when Diamond Dallas Page showed up and scared Raven away. Bagwell looked okay, but there was no chance to see how he worked. Raven did a stupid shootish interview; DDP followed suit. * Jim Neidhart DQ Curt Hennig when Rick Rude interfered. Brian Adams and Davey Boy Smith came in. Bret Hart also joined in. They announced Smith vs. Hennig for Spring Stampede. * Chris Benoit drew Booker T over 9:40, so Booker retained the TV Title. Good match. Great work from Benoit. It looks like they are setting up an "entended time limit" match between the two. The crowd booed the finish; this sort of booking doesn't work any more. * Bill Goldberg beat Ray Traylor in a hot short match. Goldberg always gets compared to Ultimate Warrior, because they both had loads of one-minute squashes. The difference, to me anyhow, is that UW threw three missed clotheslines, shook the ropes, did a gorilla slam, and a splash for the pin. It's hardly a defence, 'cause I could surely live happily without him, but Goldberg at least does a few neat grappling spots, like the neat single leg trip takedown in this match. In this match, Goldberg no-sold Traylor's sidewalk slam. * Kevin Nash & Randy Savage beat Sting & Lex Luger when the Disciple interfered to set up a pin. Ho-hum. * Roddy Piper DQ Hulk Hogan in a bad match, as opposed to the bat match they will have at the PPV. Hogan took an absolutely pathetic tumble down the steel ramp. The crowd chanted "Hogan sucks." Piper looked as sad as Terry Funk does. After the DQ, Kevin Nash came in to hold Piper and help Hogan. Hogan hit Nash by mistake before the Giant came in to chase off the NWO. - Lots of talk that WCW will bring in the Ultimate Warrior later in the year. Yet, in an online chat, Eric Bischoff denied having ever spoken to UW. - - RAW 03/30 with a 4.2 rating against a 3.8 rating. As expected, the interest in the results from WrestleMania led to a boost in viewership for RAW this week. The big question is whether this smaller ratings difference can be maintained. The detailed ratings are a click away. - PPV buy rates and revenue (in millions) for the WWF and WCW are presented in the following table. WCW WWF Past 6 Months Past Year Past 6 Months Past Year Average Buy Rate 1.02 0.86 0.63 0.64 Average PPV Revenue $3.50 $2.74 $2.26 $1.93 The 1998 PPV summary sheet looks like this: Date Show Buy Rate Gross Average Match Rating Median Match Rating Peak Match Rating matches >= * * * * 98/01/18 WWF Royal Rumble 0.97 (1) $3.62 2.38 * * 1/2 * * * 1/2 0% (0 of 6) 98/02/15 WWF IYH No Way Out 0.45 $1.67 1.46 * 1/2 * * * 1/2 0% (0 of 6) 98/03/29 WWF WrestleMania 1.78 (4) $7.7 2.09 * * * * * 0% (0 of 8) WWF Average 0.69 $2.31 1.92 * * 1/4 * * * 1/2 0% (0 of 12) 98/01/25 WCW Souled Out 1.02 (2) $3.81 1.92 * * * * * 11.1% (1 of 9) 98/02/22 WCW SuperBrawl 1.1 (3) $4.12 1.68 * 1/4 * * * 3/4 0% (0 of 10) 98/03/15 WCW Uncensored 1.69 * * 1/2 * * * 3/4 0% (0 of 9) WCW Average 1.06 $3.97 1.76 * 1/2 * * * 3/4 3.6% (1 of 28) 98/03/01 ECW Living Dangerously 0.23 $0.42 1.56 * 1/2 * * * 1/4 0% (0 of 8) Footnotes: (1) WWF claims 1.03; (2) WCW claims 1.1; (3) preliminary figure; (4) very preliminary figures not included in average; Detailed data is available. - New Japan has a major show in the Tokyo Dome on 04/04/98. Line-up has * Antonio Inoki's retirement match. The semi-finals and final of the tournament to determine Inoki's challenger take place on this show as well. Semi-finalists are Naoya Ogawa, Brian Johnston, Don Frye, and Igor Meindart. * Kensuke Sasaki vs. Tatsumi Fujinami for the IWGP Title * Keiji Muto & Masa Chono vs. Shinya Hashimoto & Osamu Nishimura for the IWGP Tag Titles * Jushin Liger vs. Kendo Ka Shin for the IWGP Jr. Title * Shinjiro Otani & Koji Kanemoto vs. Tatsuhito Takaiwa & Yuji Yusaroaka - WCW has Spring Stampede on 04/19/98. Tentative line-up has * Roddy Piper & Giant vs. Hulk Hogan & Kevin Nash in a bat match * Sting vs. Randy Savage for the WCW Title * Diamond Dallas Page vs. Raven for the US Title * Davey Boy Smith vs. Curt Hennig It doesn't look like Page will lose the title to Raven here; the May booking sheets have Page vs. Kevin Nash for the US Title headlining. - The WWF has In Your House: The Unforgiven on 04/26/98. Line-up has * Undertaker vs. Kane in an inferno match (loser must be set on fire) * Luna vs. Sable in an evening gown match (loser must have gown ripped off) * LOD 2000 vs. New Age Outlaws for the WWF Tag Titles - All Japan has a Tokyo Dome show on 05/01/98. Line-up has: * Mitsuhara Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada for the Triple Crown * Kenta Kobashi & Johnny Ace vs. Stan Hansen & Vader * Jun Akiyama vs. Hiro Hase * Wolf Hawkfield & Johnny Smith vs. Jado & Gedo * Tamon Honda & Masao Inoue vs. Headhunters * Jumbo Tsuruta & Rusher Kimura & Mitsuo Momota vs. Masa Fuchi & Haruka Eigen & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi * Maunakea Mossman vs. Daisuke Ikeda * Steve Williams & Gary Albright vs. Yoshihiro Takayama & Masahito Kakihara * Akira Taue & Takao Omori & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Gladiator & Hideki Hosaka & Tetsuhiro Kuroda * Giant Baba & Hayabusa & Kentaro Shiga vs. Giant Kimala II & Ryakaku Izumida & Jinsei Shinzaki * Satoru Asako vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru On 03/27, as part of the Champion Carnival tournament, Kenta Kobashi pinned Toshiaki Kawada for the first time ever, so it seems definite that Kawada will win the Triple Crown on this show. Kawada & Mitsuharu Misawa went to a time limit draw in their Champion Carnival match. - WCW has Slamboree on 05/17/98. - The WWF has In Your House on 05/31/98. - The WWF has King of the Ring on 06/28/98. - The WWF has In Your House on 07/26/98. - The WWF has SummerSlam on 08/30/98. - The WWF has In Your House on 09/27/98. - The WWF has In Your House on 10/18/98. - The WWF has Survivor Series on 11/15/98. - The WWF has In Your House on 12/13/98. - 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. ______________________________________________________________________