1997 March
Mar 3, 97
"SuperBrawl sold out nearly two weeks in advance with 13,324 in the building (12,145 paying $192,000). The gate was the third highest in the history of World Championship Wrestling (behind only the Ilio DiPaolo show in Buffalo, NY and the Hogan-Savage match in Las Vegas last Halloween Havoc), although had they booked a larger building, it would have easily broken the company's gate record. It was the largest live gate ever in Northern California. The $93,000 in merchandise sales was the second largest in company history behind only the Nitro in Chicago in January."
"The number of signs brought to the show was the most I've ever seen and what was impressive is that it was across the board, not just for the megastars like Hogan, Piper, Hall, Nash, Sting and Flair, but significant for guys like Dean Malenko, Debra McMichael, Konnan, Rey Misterio Jr., Juventud Guerrera, Four Horsemen, etc."
"There were numerous fans with Sting face-paint, more than I've ever seen at a WCW show."
"The idea was to set the stage for a triangular feud with Malenko, Syxx and Guerrero, however with Syxx getting injured legit later in the show, that has to be postponed for a while and it'll instead just be a Malenko vs. Guerrero feud."
"Ref Mickey Jay counted to three even though Juventud Guerrera kicked out of Konnan's Splash mountain or power drop. The match was actually scheduled to go about two more minutes with the hottest spots yet to come when the ref made the error and there was tremendous heat about it backstage."
"Bagwell has really come into his own in his new heel role. It's a shame they've typecast him as a mid-card guy because he's got headliner ability and charisma in his new heel role."
"Eddie Guerrero retained the U.S. title pinning Chris Jericho (Chris Irvine) in 12:02. The fans live treated this match like it was intermission. People were leaving once it got started, chanting boring even when they were doing great moves and generally not paying attention which killed what could have been the best match on the show. The work itself was really good but both wrestled like it was in Japan and didn't play to the crowd. Fans were actually booing the kick out of near falls similar to the live crowd reaction in the Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels Wrestlemania match last year (speaking of that match, it boggles my mind how a match where the crowd live was bored stiff to the point thousands walked out during the match and fans booed the kick out of near falls could be considered a match of the year candidate no matter how good technically the two were)."
"Woman was wearing a very unflattering outfit with pants way too tight which in her case was not a positive."
"Syxx and Hall came out wearing Aztecas t-shirts which the announcers had no clue about. It's the new t-shirts for the Promo Azteca promotion with a pattern largely copied after NWO, but using the Promo Azteca insignia on the front. Something of a pay back since the Promo Azteca wrestlers that work WCW have all worn NWO t-shirts on television in Mexico."
"Luger made it to the ring, tagged in, clotheslined Syxx over the top rope to the floor (I believe this is the spot where Syxx separated his shoulder and will be out of action for a few weeks)."
"At one point Hogan was trying to cut Piper off with a low blow and Piper, whose ego at this point may be the most out of control of everyone in the company, and you can imagine what a statement that is, didn't even sell the low blow."
"There was surprisingly little heat live for the post-match considering the magnitude of stars involved and the Savage turn. The crowd reaction was more of one deflated by the finish than one mad at the turn."
"Ice Train pinned La Parka. I think that's becoming a practical joke since they do that match now at every taping."
"It's a shame WCW hasn't figured out something to do with Dragon and seen to have a problem about putting him over in any way. You'd think even if his ability wasn't enough for a break, that since he gives the boss' best friend a reason to be on TV, that would be a reason to get a push as well."
"NWO hotline bombed. In its entire first month it did about the same business as WCW hotline does on a normal strong day."
"After WCW booked the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, NY for two dates this year, WWF went back and booked three days and the Arena canceled WCW's two dates. Tons of heat over this one. There is again that lawsuit talk that surfaces all the time regarding arena exclusivity but never transpires."
"There were so many complaints about the Steiners car crash angle that it won't air on television again and they were barely even acknowleding it on television this past weekend after making a big deal of it the week before."
Mar 10, 97
"In front of the first legitimate turnaway crowd at the Omni for pro wrestling in so long that nobody can even remember the last time (even for the live Starrcades in 1985 and 1986 when Starrcade was considered the NWA card of the year, the Omni didn't actually sellout so I think you'd have to go back to the 70s), it was the night when Roddy Piper proved himself to not be bullet proof and WCW unleashed an ill-fated angle that failed by Loch Ness proportions, a failure that virtually everyone in the organization immediately recognized as it was going on. Ironically, while this was going on, WCW was enjoying its greatest advantage in the history of the Monday Night Wars with an incredible three point lead, tripling the audience for Raw at the same time."
"While there have been a few shows with larger ratings gaps overall, there was never a period like the quarter between 9:15 and 9:30 p.m., when WCW had the Piper debacle going head-up against a WWF title match with Sid vs. Mankind. WCW held a 4.5 to 1.5 edge, a margin unprecedented in the history of the Monday Night Wars."
"The shock was that the fans picked up on how bad it was with Piper--the man who could give interviews that were total nonsense and his personal charisma was such that fans would think they were classics--the man who could go out and do almost nothing in the ring and his presence was such fans thought they were seeing a classic match--and the man who could do the world's most embarrassing pretty boy music video on a wrestling show and still get over as a tough guy with absolutely no negative effects on his popularity--as the main focal point."
"The original plan for the Uncensored main event was a three-team deal with the NWO team, the WCW team, and finally introducing Sting's team. However, with Piper getting such a huge reaction and the success of the show at the Cow Palace with Piper's name clearly being the key one in making the difference and popping the huge event, WCW decided to prolong the Sting angle once again and use a Piper team as a replacement."
"Piper's idea, that they decided to accept since he has full creative control of his own angles under contract, was to do the show that he originally wasn't scheduled to be part of provided he could pick his team as a shoot to give some of his friends work in wrestling. So he outdid Hogan in that regard. Piper wanted to pick John Tenta, who was his friend who he wanted to help get back into WCW as a shoot since WCW had stopped using him, and also get work for his bodyguard/gofer and a friend of his from his straight-to-video action movies. The idea was a disaster from the start."
"Piper was totally blown up and the guy's acting skills in doing a live kick boxing fight scene made Glacier look like Peter Aerts."
"Backstage while this was going on, the thought process was largely that they were in danger of not only ruining their upcoming PPV, making it a trifecta for the Uncensored gimmick, but of destroying Piper's future drawing power. There was talk of changing the planned finish of the show, where all three teams would be in the ring brawling with each other as the show went off the air, to having Piper's team destroyed and end the gimmick right there. But for whatever reason, probably because nobody could figure out how to exactly break the news to Piper, the originally planned show ending took place."
"The plan, and this can certainly change on seven days notice since it requires Piper's okaying it, is to attempt to get Piper to agree to dump the teammates from the show, and have Ric Flair and Arn Anderson go to him and give him Chris Benoit (whose injury angle will be shortened), Jeff Jarrett and Steve McMichael, which would pull the latter two away from their scheduled match with Public Enemy."
"The Omni show was also to be the night where Ted Turner fired Eric Bischoff from his post at WCW in an angle. As it turned out, Turner decided, having nothing to do with the story getting out in the New York Daily News, that he didn't want to do a wrestling angle after all and sent Dr. Harvey Schiller, who runs TBS Sports, in his place. Schiller did a better job than you'd expect given an outsider doing an angle. The problem was at the end of the show, Bischoff and Hogan were no longer even selling the angle from the first hour, and were apparently trying to set up a subsequent angle themselves involving Turner, for a later date."
"During the show, Jacquelyn challenged any male wrestler. Best bet is Disco Inferno, who is about the only guy who can get away with it."
"Syxx vs. Ultimo Dragon appears to have been dropped from Uncensored because of Syxx's shoulder separation."
"Yuji Nagata finally debuted on 3/3 at the Omni in a match before the show went on the air. Naturally he did a job for Ernest Miller, a Power Plant guy with all of about three pro matches."
"The taped match with Chris Benoit where his ribs were taped that was to air this past Saturday was pulled from the Saturday Night show because they wanted to sell his injury for several more weeks."
Mar 17, 97
"They are trying to give Guerrero that dreaded edge since he's no longer over and the feeling is that kind of babyface doesn't get over nowadays."
"Disco Inferno (Glen Gilbertti) was fired on 3/4 when he refused to do a program which would have ended with him putting over Jacquelyn in the single match at Uncensored. The vast majority of the wrestlers were totally in support of Disco on that one and felt that putting over a woman in a singles match was a career killer."
"Randy Anderson, who along with Arn Anderson (no relation although the two have been friends going back to their high school days more than 20 years ago) are both from Rome, GA originally, was given the key to the city and the Mayor called him Pee Wee Hermann instead of Anderson."
"After seeing Mortis, we now know why La Parka isn't allowed to use his Mexican gimmick in the States. Parka was told it wouldn't get over, but actually they had already copied the Parka look for their own creation and then when they brought Parka in, they had to tone down his costume."
"At the American Film Market '97 which is going on this week, only two movies with wrestlers were screened. "Bad Pack," a Magnificent Seven knockoff, stars Roddy Piper along with bodybuilder Ralf Moeller and is said to be no good (shocker, huh?). The other was Hogan's "Santa with Muscles," whose first screening attracted all of seven people and whose second screening attracted zero."
"Last we've heard is that Arn Anderson is expected to be out for about four months and may undergo surgery to fuse three vertebrae in his neck. The neck injury, which is apparently a flaring up of an injury seven years ago caused in a match against the Steiners, has caused his hand to go numb."
"Ted Turner wasn't at the 3/3 Nitro in Atlanta because 1) An office assistant died and he was attending her funeral; 2) He was out of town on business and canceled at the last minute; or 3) He didn't want to do it and sent Harvey Schiller in his place. They are keeping the possibilities of doing something with Turner alive in the storyline."
Mar 24, 97
"WCW Uncensored was the typical WCW PPV show of the past year. The lines are familiar. Good undercard. Terrible main event. Booking with more holes in it than.....swiss cheese. Well, in this case, the undercard wasn't as good as most of the shows of the past year. But some of the angles were very good, actually two of them were excellent. The booking holes were large enough to fit The Giant in some of them."
"The Atlanta Constitution ran a nine-paragraph preview to the PPV show in its Sunday sports section, complete with a Rodman photo, but in every reference, called the promotion he was working for the "WWF," even to the point of saying he would be training at the WWF Power Plant in Atlanta, and that the WWF had a television show called Monday Nitro on TNT that was delivering good ratings."
"Hogan made sure to surgically bind himself to Rodman's side as much as possible at the PPV show, so when the horde of photographers, particularly shooting for every major sports paper in Japan, got their shots of Rodman wearing his NWO t-shirt, guess whose face is side-by-side. Actually the main event seemed more of a backdrop to the real story, the NWO guys posing for photos with Rodman and everyone who has power trying to get themselves hooked up with him for photo ops--which wound up being Hogan, Randy Savage, to a lesser extent Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, and of course, Roddy Piper."
"Sting finally attacked the entire NWO, dropping them all on the back of their heads with Scorpion death drops (a much cooler name for the same move than slop drop), including, just as the show went off the air, Hogan himself. Sting got a thunderous pop, as he should have since they spent six months building up to that moment, as he soaked it in while the credits ran, and true to form of keeping their storylines consistent, the final name in the credits was the WCW Senior Vice President--Eric Bischoff. You mean he really wasn't suspended in real life? Next thing you're gonna tell me is that Kevin Sullivan isn't really doing Jacquelyn."
"If I was as incompetent at my job as Dusty Rhodes is at his, how long would I last? Rhodes, whose announcing has gotten progressively worse, if that's even possible, was well past the point of unbearable. He ruins it completely for Tony Schiavone, who really appears to be trying to catch up in a rapidly changing world that Rhodes wants to single-handedly drag back to 1975. The fact that Bobby Heenan has been living off his name and reputation for the past year only makes things worse for Schiavone for having to carry 600 plus pounds of dead weight through all these endless hours of television every month."
"Malenko has gotten very popular of late while Guerrero's popularity has gone down in the past year. Fans booed the hell out of Guerrero when he would do the exact same thing Malenko was cheered for doing seconds earlier."
"Easily the best match on the show. It was even more impressive when you consider that Guerrero had torn his pec about four minutes before the finish. At press time, he hadn't been checked by a doctor. If he doesn't need surgery, he could be back in anywhere from three-to-six weeks, which postpones the planned triangle feud once again. If he does need surgery, it's about a six month recovery period."
"Mortis used the old Rocker dropper which Heenan said he'd never seen before. Jeez, it was only the move in the biggest money pro wrestling lawsuit and biggest lawsuit judgement ever in Heenan's home town of Tampa. Next thing you know he'll see Nick Bockwinkel or Blackjack Lanza in an angle and not recognize them."
"It's hard to get over these guys as martial arts and kicking experts in a promotion with guys like best kicker in the business (Dragon), Syxx and Sonny Onno whose stuff looks so much better."
"The NWO did an interview. They appeared to be pretending to be stoned. They pretend very well."
"The Iaukea underdog gimmick is totally dead and nobody cares, and they seem to have come close to succeeding in killing Misterio Jr. by having him do too many jobs for a gimmick performer and ruining his illusion by putting him in too often with the heavyweights."
"The problem seems to be the guys doing interviews selling the shows on Monday television are on a different page than the guys putting the shows together on Sunday."
"At least the WWF had the tiny balls to announce its screw-job way of keeping top talent from doing jobs in its Final Four on the weekend of the show, so those ordering at least knew before making the call. WCW didn't even give them that courtesy. Not that anyone actually expected we'd see 11 of these guys do jobs and anyone with a brain figured it was Battle Royal rules, but the way it was handled was classic bait-and-switch."
"And poor Scott Steiner. He gets run off the road and nearly killed. Then they send his brother to the hospital. With revenge on his mind, when he finally gets in, he goes after Chris Benoit and Jeff Jarrett, and after doing two moves to Hall & Nash, gets punted over the top and walks away like a whipped dog, in the same camera shot as when Hogan and Rodman are coming down the aisle."
"At 4:55, Giant missed a charge at Hall and went over the top and was eliminated. None of the announcers recognized the elimination and it wasn't until Michael Buffer announced it (it's really scary when he's the quickest on the draw), that any of them realized the top rope rule."
"Luger made the big comeback, but not until they all ignored Luger and got together in a corner so they could pose for more photos with Rodman. Yes, now it's the photographers from outside the ring who call the spots. When the photographers were done with their photos, it was time to continue the match."
"Psicosis was scheduled for the 3/10 Nitro to work against Dragon but couldn't get across the border and finally everything was settled and he returned for the PPV show. Think of how many jobs he saved himself by having all those paperwork problems."
"The first Page-Savage match saw Page win clean with the diamond cutter, which both says how professional Savage is and what kind of a push Page is getting."
"Bischoff and Hogan attended the Bulls-Knicks NBA game on 3/9 to shoot promos with Rodman. Bischoff in an NWO t-shirt was visible behind the Knicks bench the entire game. The announcers never once during the game brought up Rodman's wrestling deal."
Mar 31, 97
"Scott Hall, 37, voluntarily checked himself into rehab this past week, missing his WCW house show main event booking in Minneapolis, MN on 3/22 and his Nitro booking on 3/24 in Duluth, MN."
"At the CAC, Larry Hennig introduced his son, who was being awarded, as a future WWF champion, and the two talked highly about Vince McMahon. The reports we received is that Hennig, whose Titan contract expires in a few weeks (he's been sitting out until the contract expires when he's legally able to sign his new WCW deal) and was expected to join WCW immediately as a full-time wrestler at that point, was in Titan Towers on 3/18. According to WWF sources, Hennig was expected to make a surprise appearance at Wrestlemania, largely to return the Lex Luger favor from the original Nitro. When Eric Bischoff got the word about the CAC banquet and the Titan rumors, he contacted Hennig, which I believe was on 3/21, who told him something to the effect of it being him just screwing with McMahon, which Hennig has probably now done as much if not more than any wrestler alive."
"There were those in WCW worried until Mania ended that Hennig still might make a surprise appearance since he's still under contract to Titan. WCW wanted to put it back in Titan's face by opening Nitro with Curt Hennig, however, due to the WWF contract, they are still legally unable to do so, so they did what they figured was the next best thing and put Larry Hennig there to open the show and make it clear that Curt was on his way to their side."
"Scott Hudson will no longer be part of the hotline after 4/1 since he'll be starting with WCW as a television announcer on TBS."
"Mortis has a great ring entrance and has great presence in the ring. The martial arts gimmick isn't a plus but you can't miss the guy's potential."
"La Parka was finally allowed to do what he does in Mexico (
My Note: The dancing)"
"To counter the Miss Slammy bikini contest, WCW is going to have Sherri and Nancy in a pie-eating contest."
"Prince Iaukea kept the TV title going to a no contest with Randy Savage in 3:15 when Page and the rest of the NWO all hit the ring. They ended up destroying both Page and Iaukea and spray painted NWO on both of their backs and Eric Bischoff kicked Page as well. Nash had been very vocal of late about he and Hall selling too much and putting people over too much so you knew they were going to have to end the show in this fashion."
"WWF apparently made an offer to the huge bodybuilder (second guy who came out) in the Roddy Piper angle who looked good in 40 seconds. He works indies around Georgia as Big Foot. There was real heat in WCW about WWF making offers to guys who haven't even turned pro from their own Power Plant."
"Dusty was really horrid here because he thought Ciclope was Parka because of the horns on his costume (of course it's Psicosis, not Parka who is the one with the horns)."
"If there is anything that comes out anywhere (and this may wind up in something like the National Enquirer) regarding Rey Misterio Jr. and one of the women from the cast of "Friends," it is a 100% work."
"There seem to be major sides being drawn between the Hogan camp, which Hall & Nash are part of, and the Sullivan camp, which the key members are the Horsemen."
"Supposedly as a parting shot on the way to being fired, Bischoff told Disco Inferno that for the rest of his life he'd never get another job making $80,000 a year. There is a non-compete clause in his contract so he can't go to Titan for at least three or four months, so my feeling is the rumors of him being Honky Tonk Man's secret protege won't be the case."