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What if King Dice was in Super Smash Brothers?
https://preview.redd.it/ub0a2k4e6ie61.jpg?width=1146&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d0b5c5986ba0614ac87b0d47ca3c3b51b3a902d1 The right hand man of the devil himself, King Dice is the casino head and leader of numerous gambling-themed monsters whose powers and tricks he'd use in Smash Brothers along with some rubber hose-fighting. King Dice will be a superweight fighter with two jumps and no other movement options Jab: King Dice will do two straight jabs before ending with a sidekick Dash Attack: King Dice will transform into a giant version of his head that rolls forward, if you just so happen to hit the foe with the six side of this dice, this will launch the opponent Forward Tilt: King Dice thrusts an open forward that stops the enemy in their tracks, projectiles included but this has a small chance to fail depending on how fast the projectile moves Up Tilt: King Dice's head bounces up and spins Down Tilt: King Dice will stomp the ground in front of him Forward Smash: King Dice releases a small deck of cards that serves as a short series of weak but fast projectiles Up Smash: King Dice's head jumps up a higher distance and has three sharp spikes pop out from the top and sides Down Smash: King Dice will enlarge his gloves to massive proportions to clap the foes Grabs: King Dice will thrust one hand to grab the foe by the shoulder and begins grinding their feet Forward Throw: King Dice will turn his free hand into a mallet and smacks the foe away Back Throw: King Dice will scoop the foe with his hands and launches them behind him Up Throw: King Dice has a magic hat pop out under him that sucks the enemy in, and launches them in the air with some confetti flying out Down Throw: King Dice pulls out a giant 8-ball that crushes the foe Neutral Aerial: King Dice will throw some dominos to either side of him as weak projectiles Forward Aerial: King Dice takes his head and swings it like a flail Back Aerial: King Dice bends his legs behind him with a buzzsaw spinning between his feet Up Aerial: King Dice will enlarge his hands to clap the air above him Down Aerial: King Dice spins down for a drilling kick, moving similarly to how he shifts into the ground Neutral Special: King Dice throws a bottle of an undisclosed beverage that serves as a gravity-affected projectile that does basic damage, but will have a chance to be stunned. If it lands on the ground, it shatters and leaves the floor slippery for ten seconds so that dashing enemies will trip Side Special: King Dice rides a skeleton horse similar to Wario's motorcycle, and will fall apart the moment it hits someone. However, this initial attack does massive damage, even with its large end lag as King Dice is stunned from the loss of his prized racing horse Up Special: King Dice will use the power of the cruelest gambling machine, a claw game. This has him fling his arm in the air as it takes the form of a catching claw, and this will either insta-grab enemies or latch onto platforms Down Special: King Dice pulls out a giant spinning di, this will spin around for numbers 1-4. Each number will summon one of his minibosses, but anyone can summon them based on what number faces the screen when it is hit. The glowing di will just disappear after ten seconds.
Mr. Wheezy is a stationary summon that shoots fire balls that bounce across the floor for weak damage, but far traveling distance. He can take 15% damage before disappearing
Pirouletta spins across the stage for flinching damage, but can also serve as a wall. She takes 15% damage
Chips Bettigan will bounce up and down, doing damage by head butting foes above him, or bury foes too close to the ground when he lands. He takes 15% damage
Hopus Pocus will teleport between stages and shoots card suits as projectiles that do minor damage but have a chance to launch foes
Final Smash: Right Handed Royal Smash King Dice gets a Tommy Gun that he shoots at a short distance to create a smoke cloud that traps any foes caught in it for a cinematic final smash where they are stuck in King Dice's board game where he summons a stampede of playing cards that crush the enemy Alternate Colors:
Basic colors
Black suit and di spots based on the clubs, spades, and devil himself
Red suit and di spots referencing hearts, diamonds, and Cuphead
Blue suit and di spots referencing Mugman
Yellow suit and di spots referencing Ms. Chalice
A gray-toned outfit and spots based on the 2nd anniversary poster
A green-toned outfit and spots
A black and white colored skin
Taunts:
King Dice waggles his finger at the camera
King Dice shuffles a deck of cards
King Dice pulls out two contracts before stashing them away
Victory Animations:
King Dice laughs menacingly before swallowing the camera
A di falls on the floor, King Dice's head appears on it, and it rises up for him to give a bow
King Dice raises a leg as he whips out a cane and top hat and sings a "Hi-De-Ho!"
Intro Animation: King Dice spins out from a hole in the ground
King Dice Bets It All! The right hand man of the devil himself, King Dice is the casino head and leader of numerous gambling-themed monsters whose powers and tricks he'd use in Smash Brothers along with some rubber hose-fighting. King Dice will be a superweight fighter with two jumps and no other movement options Jab: King Dice will do two straight jabs before ending with a sidekick Dash Attack: King Dice will transform into a giant version of his head that rolls forward, if you just so happen to hit the foe with the six side of this dice, this will launch the opponent Forward Tilt: King Dice thrusts an open forward that stops the enemy in their tracks, projectiles included but this has a small chance to fail depending on how fast the projectile moves Up Tilt: King Dice's head bounces up and spins Down Tilt: King Dice will stomp the ground in front of him Forward Smash: King Dice releases a small deck of cards that serves as a short series of weak but fast projectiles Up Smash: King Dice's head jumps up a higher distance and has three sharp spikes pop out from the top and sides Down Smash: King Dice will enlarge his gloves to massive proportions to clap the foes Grabs: King Dice will thrust one hand to grab the foe by the shoulder and begins grinding their feet Forward Throw: King Dice will turn his free hand into a mallet and smacks the foe away Back Throw: King Dice will scoop the foe with his hands and launches them behind him Up Throw: King Dice has a magic hat pop out under him that sucks the enemy in, and launches them in the air with some confetti flying out Down Throw: King Dice pulls out a giant 8-ball that crushes the foe Neutral Aerial: King Dice will throw some dominos to either side of him as weak projectiles Forward Aerial: King Dice takes his head and swings it like a flail Back Aerial: King Dice bends his legs behind him with a buzzsaw spinning between his feet Up Aerial: King Dice will enlarge his hands to clap the air above him Down Aerial: King Dice spins down for a drilling kick, moving similarly to how he shifts into the ground Neutral Special: King Dice throws a bottle of an undisclosed beverage that serves as a gravity-affected projectile that does basic damage, but will have a chance to be stunned. If it lands on the ground, it shatters and leaves the floor slippery for ten seconds so that dashing enemies will trip Side Special: King Dice rides a skeleton horse similar to Wario's motorcycle, and will fall apart the moment it hits someone. However, this initial attack does massive damage, even with its large end lag as King Dice is stunned from the loss of his prized racing horse Up Special: King Dice will use the power of the cruelest gambling machine, a claw game. This has him fling his arm in the air as it takes the form of a catching claw, and this will either insta-grab enemies or latch onto platforms Down Special: King Dice pulls out a giant spinning di, this will spin around for numbers 1-4. Each number will summon one of his minibosses, but anyone can summon them based on what number faces the screen when it is hit. The glowing di will just disappear after ten seconds.
Mr. Wheezy is a stationary summon that shoots fire balls that bounce across the floor for weak damage, but far traveling distance. He can take 15% damage before disappearing
Pirouletta spins across the stage for flinching damage, but can also serve as a wall. She takes 15% damage
Chips Bettigan will bounce up and down, doing damage by head butting foes above him, or bury foes too close to the ground when he lands. He takes 15% damage
Hopus Pocus will teleport between stages and shoots card suits as projectiles that do minor damage but have a chance to launch foes
Final Smash: Right Handed Royal Smash King Dice gets a Tommy Gun that he shoots at a short distance to create a smoke cloud that traps any foes caught in it for a cinematic final smash where they are stuck in King Dice's board game where he summons a stampede of playing cards that crush the enemy Alternate Colors:
Basic colors
Black suit and di spots based on the clubs, spades, and devil himself
Red suit and di spots referencing hearts, diamonds, and Cuphead
Blue suit and di spots referencing Mugman
Yellow suit and di spots referencing Ms. Chalice
A gray-toned outfit and spots based on the 2nd anniversary poster
A green-toned outfit and spots
A black and white colored skin
Taunts:
King Dice waggles his finger at the camera
King Dice shuffles a deck of cards
King Dice pulls out two contracts before stashing them away
Victory Animations:
King Dice laughs menacingly before swallowing the camera
A di falls on the floor, King Dice's head appears on it, and it rises up for him to give a bow
King Dice raises a leg as he whips out a cane and top hat and sings a "Hi-De-Ho!"
Intro Animation: King Dice spins out from a hole in the ground I seriously overestimated how hard it would be to do his moveset, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. So now it's only one more to go..... I wonder if you can do a DLC for a DLC wishlist, give me some ideas please before a dancing %$#@* takes the stage.
Divining wooly views gathered amidst shaven sheep hither Withered over swithering stalls denial state of dither Truth be told frank pens naif soliloquy Safe as house path hath proven treachery Steer clear of herd social immunity Distanced readily available data parsed trendily Blinks recount lost meanings earned from strife learned through catastrophe Graft retained splices tour de force movie Analyzed improvised differently Can't regain past yet relive history Elder protocols reference frames with specificity Documentary denotes concise recusant heresy Fish stink emanates spoils unquestioned head Rather than responsible gods chose dead Lightning rod shields guide flash EMP spread Relevance revivalist revived rival survivalist Diatribe analogous corroborates ridiculous Atoms congress fortuitous naught sea Devoid self restraint officiates ye Fitting new attire inspiring streaking Who protects us whilst we pay for havoc employ they reeking Hypocritically childish generally speaking Handshake implies word registers advice Modern intelligence is artifice Every three steps forward step back twice Deities influence me aloof aligned schism in rhyme Mother Hera ewe chimera godspeed breeds failed design Bell weather brethren splay scapegoat supine Veil of illusions enmesh conscious mind Can't feel my legs good help is hard to find Hawk departs from pleather glove turtle returns grounded dove Counteract abet anyone lapped them twice yet still they won Titans once asked before taking QE With us or against me democracy Issuance debt free usury for ye Soon to be impacting all interested negatively Cyclops blissfully fail to see plague kills with leniency World saved through open window tsunami Backdrops distinct radicle uprooted Restless tartarus not I confuted Reputed gambler prophet of doom rigged mind meld welds my tomb Despondent preach not gloom be democratic or leave cocoon Imploding race exploding time and space Unfathomable depths shallow measures Glasses adorned rose reflective pleasures Erratic compass static attained gains unsustainable Emphatically all ages deal unascertainable Sentiment key to public interest Democracy assess Big apple bests Guiding hand meaning Pantheist behest Seeking one's fulfillment complements of demagoguery Building baseless pyramid in name of Great Recovery Hallucination merits upheaval Remit repreival persecute venal Sufferance from nescience trumps all evil Yon morrows martyr covets this abysmal cross commuted Tread on entrenched fear submit control guiltily included Govern is to rule as meant to intents Resourceful proxy heir establishment Record rallys infer where loans were sent Pristine colosseums reared commerraderie Fed rum bread Dropping said crumbs returns dread Which nevermore nary imbeds Insolvent casino scenario House always wins with my reservation Sharing the bulk ignites indignation Transparency Which critiques subtly speaks Feds peak repent Weak covenants contained slain whence Green peripherals were went Theses Ben delivered on depression Maestro museum managed impression Keynesian intervention harped dystopian opium Appeal to supremacy bandwagon psychology Latin arguementum ad nauseum Better than expected mass approval Refuse discard fantasy removal If you audited our books write off markets on the morrow No one do we answer to where wheelbarrows go we borrow Sciences religious mythology Philosophised finance dichotomy Genetic archetypal entities Conversations incidental informations monumental Facets fawned fastidious selfless attires instrumental Minions mimic Socratic opinions Authority inbred majority Consider selves distinct minority Yield to ye inferiors subjectively superior Mechanisms failing sublimation with interior Greeks conceived benefits in politics Propaganda versed all in rhetoric Dwelled anarchic run redeem autarkic World perceptions inconsistent to obtained views of my own Optimism timeless shown fantastically overblown Fate collapses upon observation Ostriches banked on unexamined lives Perturbations quantum fluctuations Foregone measures austere pleasures enforced authenticity Cessation trepidation ensures no future certainty Whilst known speed and position now in sync One makes ye taller yet none make me shrink Doth not know thyself yore on the brink Fulfillment will not quail forbidden face of foreign dangers Entrainment derailed arranged marriage twixt incomplete strangers Birds of a feather flock with the weather One marked to market worth two under Bush Lemmings allegedly demand a push An existential exercise spins nihilistic nightmares Nonconformed confirmed uncomfort spirals condescending stairs Slaughter abolished pig sucklers now fly Fed up rich bullshit Which lies upon lye Doth need not for lipstick ride we bone dry Left to right wrong motivations paved by best intention Pound me with the cure denounce flesh as impure meets prevention Overdue elixir panacea Gold in led stead transmutes alchemist Fed Spirits confirmed in actions idea Though hungry swine will freely plow fall submissive tow the line No offence is meant whence I commence casting pearls before thine Lead thee to sustenance soon thou shall find You feed a seed of rage contented caged That Which hath been remains yet to be seen One finds upon a wander from yon cave we've left regression Whence without luminescence stem outlandish such obsessions Actualized self's realization Fasting of heart leaves no trace of ego I fell here from Olympus apropos Upshot in authenticity shows secure survivors test Where indiscretions excesses discretely are repressed Desperate knowledge grievous awareness I first blew reed pipes but then I digress Values eroded integrity Climate corroded ideals irresponsibility Satisfied my agency autonomous capacity Bet Dow hath finally had a bad day Bear in mind they will say twas anway Old high still standing gold stones throw away Shorting shooting slope of hope enormous towers treacherous Each new era crashes in increasing half glass emptiness Overabundance deserts time delay Accounts inner morality decay Strength in pessimism fear forfeits right Dusk withdraws from sight as shade is drawn over dawn's early light Narcissistic psychopaths inherited the earth our plight Quarrying light inspired murky night flee Ye gods laugh heartily ridicule me Reckoning another day mine shall be Subsequently I subsist shifting this rock as Sisyphus Future pulls upon me as due ration to minus remiss I'm half crazy bicycle built for two Network circuitry daisy chained to you How do I know what is reel to be true Gather input sensations scrutinize for degradation Dissembling dissemblance as lacking in resemblance Singularity prophesied end be Less threat than icons presently envied Graven is our image in our idol Misunderstood system holds revolutions banked on bridle Give me dominion over doe I care not who makes law Hegellian dialectic shock and awe Fixed moments instability move becomes necessity Moses leads bull rush reeds deceptive swaith Crisis opportunity incompetence seasons good faith Fallow plot begot furlough shrieks foul wraith Yay though I plod through the valley of death Evil gives comfort my rod and my staff No fear preparest for my enemies Parasitic symbiotes surviving vicariously Job gyrations exploitations sloth thrive ubiquitously Unnatural select evolution Bad apple genes rot barrel pollution Big bang extends concussions extrusion Elude intrusion neath tapestry relay inscribed decree Conspiracy theories deliquesced evidence coalesced Duress dressed as justice undue process Reduce the law to writ for oversight Infinitely rules stretch fractally tight Dollar press lever Wizards tweak whence practised Which deceiver Feeding frenzy at the top on last chair hot potato drops Animal farm irrigation believer Cuckoos in nested loops launched retriever Social ecological equity Fauna all created equal although some are more than most Perched aloft nights sleepless roosters backdate options after posts Tell a vision avulsed exclusive boasts Foxes bird box hens fake news oven roasts Occupy Wall Street greeting champagne toasts 5G technology expandable densification Cameras considering Laws actual ramifications Depressions perpetuate FOMO motes FIFO Ponzi scheme boat redeems fresh float Gloat sessions connoted roat smote through goat Destructions need demands feed for Which Fed never hesitates Beyond salvations hope for damnation destined reprobates Wolf in sheep's clothing with diplomacy Bragging best ever broke economy Pre warned of bubble in candidacy Memories impeach me markets relapse collapse candor Black and white deliberations compromise grey matters or Burning empire riddled Nero fiddled No new under the sun any longer What doth not kill my will makes ye stronger Suicidal quarantine commit sheer to absurdity Crash course in urgency suspends to decade Odyssey Engulf journey as is illusory Entailed magical curtailed mystery Reproduced sequence spawns duplicity Great truths infect minds space whilst time distorts fabrics ablation Balanced scales duration dual edged knife grinds calibration Wildlife exhumed landslide menagerie Submission supports popularity War of attrition print press edition Release Kraken abridged dictations unredacted memo Cognitive mind is least informed second thought tis last to know Feedback iterates habitually Zombie apocalyptic shopping spree Animal myriad corroboree Discrepancies adorable approaching deplorable Configured integrations simulate exaggerations Conceptual reorganization New century frail clings frayed to pale past Dot com bust imprints last iconoclast Tragic disposition anchored significance within story Spherical lyrical expository mourning glory Expansion dominates fertility Appropriate most apt utility Bubble envelops errs infinity Bold ignorance advanced hind sights distilled new high arrogance Underlying trauma repeats cycle till addressed complete Sublates convergence becoming congeals Cavernous kingdom stalagmite conceals Peer not in mirror prefer not appeal Sew a thought in hope to reap an action something real to feel Neverland begotten old whilst kid futures are oversold Life lived not lest bits of bites record it Biased suggestions imbue news reported Syrinx sears titans with my brand of creed Written word ceded all forgotten need to practise recall Calculated math skills lost computer brought thoughts holocost Ensconced by lantern hung from beam of straw Helios heals blow of iced ages thaw Loyal to natural attributes raw Extraordinary delusional madness of ye crowds Trot proudly upon road to serfdom congregations praised aloud Brave was this new world before eighty four Hunger games in store jaybird tweets that score Jehovah bore witnesses door to door Insure myself against four horseman paid my tithe expired spent Sow ears flying high on credit barely do I afford rent Time unwinds quickly at least doth for me April showers levee spring bankruptcy Litres live forever in latency Bailing water steady rising deep subterraneously Foresee floods invest in arks of financial calamity Extraneously Rome's blaze radiates Simultaneously Fed Witches toiled Slow perniciously satiates frogs boiled Crisis constructs messenger of sordid too tongued character Stocks which rise so should slide chosen goose footing egg opposed side Federal innovates imbibed bribed state Reserves umpire status hunched hind home plate Falling knife of fear impaled atmosphere Short bets squeezed rife barren years unfruitful bleeds contango wine Inverse ETFs unprecedented reverse splits declined Nothing it's equal creature without fear Can't fill hide with harpoons or head with spears Mire strive dire try pull in Leviathan Endless procrastination doth avert intent deflation Unclear when routes passage appears clear as destination Sorrows station seems my inculcation Divides built up babble between nations Seven trumpets summon revelation Electrostatic circumstance transmits catalytic twist Substitute reacted chemical transmits platonic tryst Ironically passion not my goal Ionically bonded blending coal Mirrored dipole roll poised down rabbit hole Experiment first ever repeats Laws defraud endeavor Mississippi reflating dollar debt exchange creating Wealth effect transfers helicopter drop Fracking reserves crack too big to stop Ineptitude or evilly adept Calm filled the room as elephants silently drowned in tar pits History Which hails tense whence Fed injections flew to market Lucrative house flipping stained soil carpet Real reign swamp purge comes to street again Broken window theory frisk fallacy Destructions need graciates feed for Which Fed never hesitates Seven headed hydra twixt blaspheming regime duplicates Purgatory epic allegory Apathy lacks worry for avoidance Dreams annoyance recurring clairvoyance Complacent consternation burns concerned capitulation Catacomb further catenates future pyroclastic blasts Install a new partition date saved last God creates man's imaged eternity Man made device for immortality Only way to beat life be articulate as dead machine Foiling might be finding wanting nothing just as pleasing Emoted thoughts and deeds confer disease Viral joy contained anxious unease Communicable known uncertainties Mention stoic abstention receive lepers reprehension Addend subconscious attention suchness sought destination Protectionist tribal groupthink ensues Misdirect blame profane color thou choose Divide and conquer plan by Jove we use Minting for a living tis nothing short of scintillating Weaponry mass produce we entropy disintegrating Rebirth essential in this finite trap Technicals crucial analysis map Impulse mined collective wiretapped caps Souls endless extrapolating each threshold encapsulating Mutually affecting Titans ever overreaching Battles march business no fight beseeching Cyanide reaction gold is leaching Settle for distraction Athene’s teaching Shares fabricate infrastructure bonds for manufactured war Master in ways of deception weaving fleece her predilection Declined vine illustrates interjection Fundamentally ye add furthermore Whole vacuus nature I find abhor Each new day opportune to go by street sideshow pundits shout Marginally most will comply seek aggressive salesman clout Run through stampede proceed in funnel out Mosaic tile code mixed mirage mud grout Worm abated hook ate some fat cat’s trout Informed when glad relate when mad great is not the worst we've had Next quarter rates Which inflates translates to direct tabled fate Disinformation chads dangling depart Troublesome travel when horse pushes cart Trojans craft driftwood regifted as art Taken rate decision interest always is a given Approached encroachment infringements lunged impingement I expunged Spell manifests as living hell digests Calcareous sponge absorbed rimstone plunge Cookbook to serve lamb seals underhand Sinter sauntered asunder plotting pillage of my plunder Attack technique intervenes quoth slighted victim claims obscene Cried mystified feeling such waste sprayed mace Save face retrace find safety inside shrouded space Access filter modified denied trash storage verified Angels four spew brimstone fire scorched ingress half expected less Trick talk turns back clock players profiles rotate roles resume Covertly campaigned defiling my name Creations Instigate destruction Erupts surreptitious instruction Bewildered heard shocked embrace loomed Gates of Hell gauge WHO won race Military missionary hold prostrate to vaccinate Chaotic Kronos ordered time consumed Stow stoked fumes subsidies gave the gods room Whilst land of the fraud is home to the knave Babylon of living nonexistent through the golden age Cassandra of this stage ilk ignores inklings of alarmed sage Chicken little forebodes sky is falling Rope a dope fades rationalisation Brittle doth be fragile ye recalling Loquacious news needs slews feigned of disambiguation Mendacious or fallacious contagious be implications Butterfly flapped wing doth not move a thing But a gnat perhaps who's too GAD to fly Financing is how but where is the why Important that all patriots patronize conquesting troops Dodge ye head stoop as pooping eagle swoops Most dismissive uninspired missive Perceptually far too derisive Guiding hand not apparent visual Missing cash flows continual residual bottom lines Pinnochio hopes to know Which ideal conjures growth sublime Dendrites potentially stimulate spine Titanic torrents mist venetian blinds Decidedly distort bilked disincline Writhe in through chasm in awe open wide Formless figures summon uniform pride Dismiss discontent conveyors subside Tributaries dispersed springs knowledge trees freeze molten ore Splintering sparks displaced thick dark coruscate tangible floor Cumulus clouds of primordial dust Question our senses in sun god we trust Sifted silts produce thunderbolts of Zeus Oval elliptical orbits the folds tidal tendency Blue sphere girds spoken word breathed clay Boulder Forge Company Quality moulding is job number one Caste mass producing consumes many sons My duty to ensure we always run Figured would be a piece of cake more at work than give and take Thought this would be my big break but not knowing literally Apprenticed construction now I maintain Composite skill same commissioning game Swim or wallow in Uranus disdain I made the trade not for reward nor deemed security Only gospel guarantee is confidence in mastery Tasked to sit in a chair contemplate stare Crosswords in wait for a breakdown repair I study craves of machines which behave Rhythmic clang links chain react percussional power set free Insatiable harmony piques morbid curiosity Beast belly bowel bubbles belch smelt death To quota of product do I owe breath Economic cauldron of corrosion We operate Vesuvius ungodly hours breathing brine Facilitate yon amplidyne oxygenate lavas shine Steering eather into three cyclops cells Myopically they motion for me when cycles in chaos my sirens knell Lion hearted as Hephaestus take knee before crucibles hearth Examine vitals symptoms prognosis deduce further impart Volt amps transcend times root of three powers Frequently electrons ebb in order Arc bath gives rise to hot molten showers May bring flowers demonstrate my will in accord rewards her Athena is truth incarnate dream she is a movement Immaculate perfection possessed no need for improvement in her coveralls Wert she to eaten apple I befall Sand disseminates beneath hourglass curves she manipulates How could I anticipate Rapt hints had she to intimate Roots hypotenuse squares summed pendulum Enlightened visions profound pit this plum On que she hooks her thunderbolts so ample in restriction Destabilized my volts despite my amping up conviction Magnetisms repulsive attraction Bipolar feedback generates action Machining floral dissatisfaction Narcissus is spring can't this robot tool be taught anything Recommence imaging thine vault undermined after fault Intuit as her nuclear annihilates tumult June accusations forced violation Vulnerable to invalidation Confrontations repudiation consents allegation Placate June”s wells breached swell fore July conflagration Use wu wei to vacate situation But weightless behemoth ate all greenbacks Can’t manage exit not even a crack Inward forays shunned malfunction unknown overgrown morass Cult of quantity all students get a pass coach seat class God’s walled over all access to egress Those who cannot do are experts at best Past practise succeeds failures teach what needs Viridescent pools dilate grey eyed dubious stressed madness Feeling she was slighted by my passage through her nucleus Disinterested I had disinterred Down period Kondratieff winter Intrinsic tragedy all fairy tales end inherently Gave me what I wished for in a way I was not hoping for Destiny permits paths forbade How shallow wilt thou will wade PCB cesspools black bile pitches glue Smoldering sand dune trenches shore magmas excess residue Admit this time smashing cymbals whilst cyclops wert drumming too Keep the fantasy alive in my head Earthquake take other route instead Always say they never saw it coming They did In Herculaneum still their brains steamed in their skulls Summer solstice solace lulls lava ladles plentiful Cumulative studies validations Inseminate process degradation Trying not to mention my invention Bending toward normalcy absorption emits diffraction Inverted perceptions withdraw inflections from emptiness Perplexing she rejects ram intellect Anecdotal evidence cached respect Zip plans to stockpile cognizance combined Designed secret punishment to circumvent I resigned Recollect for instance cognitive lessons in dissonance Logic accepts one view perceived of two Pit of mine stomach whence knot always knew Treasonous betrayed lion taming shrew Spite cleaved interface continued dutiful onward pace Humiliations goal wert to replace cheers with disgrace Orchestrations untold meticulous Malevolence is still in existence Narrative streams unfold conspicuous Childish bliss unscrupulous epidemic Narcissus Invasive species multiplied since Zeus supplied his sun’s abyss Affect change rather than effect ere cause Gaslight obfuscates reasonable laws Tall tales half truths edged lies by omission Unwary reprehense motive intents of recognition Splitting of the faculty augments a new reality Fight freeze or flee options only three Trials choose middle choice typically Stockholm syndrome captors figured friendlies Volunteer for brunt of blame acquiesced toxic shame domain Raging stirs steroid cortisol adrenaline cocktail brain Idealize devalue sudden discard Benevolent dictatorship abstained Without the faintest regret or regard Figured she was playing me but never thought she'd try so hard Had a little influence pummeling blacksmith into bard Feeling flashback symptoms PTSD Reflux acid regurgitates anxiously Facilities shut down my apogee Estranged entanglement is indiscriminate vicinity Projection deflects inspection detects proffered rejection Upon reflection I/O failed connection Reverse detail switched doppler direction Attacked mine tranquility enacted thine stability Great relationships determined by good portability Amor Fati defeat of agony Heroic transitions affirmation Chinks of crevasse evasive to bypass Labyrinth strings web of deceit light and dark unlikely meet Shadows reconnection Schadenfreude revels surrection Maze ambled afore trapped in Minotaur Disintegrating reintegration Unfurled divest individuation Emergence of self under siege August surfacing intrigues Sun god aims retribution penetrating air dilution Perpetrating vengeful execution Cyclop's blindsided coming attraction Apollo's exaction vents extraction Redress reclaimed door discharged from mine chore Concussions cavitations roar gaff retrieved my staff from shore Gangplank fastened transit for deck from wreck Embodied under mass gravitation Nothingness consistent contradiction In retrospect ahead investigate that Which is suspect Chastened flaming embers titillate orange September moon Hastened retreat not an instant too soon Burgeoning three wave prosperity shewn Wave five trait mimics Echo past monsoon Perpetually parallel dramas punctual insane Aphrodite's inception purged migraine foam seethed fire in vain Twain hath liquidity trickled down drain Consult oracle ogle tangent plane Bow to stern brood tempestuous coxswain Demurrage fee aptly sought to regain lay of way terrain Masked my gnashing lion waves stumble as they spread before me Mountain rubble crumbles bloodied red sea Locusts cannibalistic commotion Uncanny notion overt devotion Fixed betwixt twin scorpions stings subtle by a hares degree One longs to age as seas submit one hole subliminally Desire loves desire more than that desired Overtime I find wanting displeasing Fuel to fire Aphrodite’s teasing Symptomatically nymphomaniac releasing Random cosmos berth patterned beyond cyclic perimeter Doth not feel momentum ye be the tide Volume reduced ambient limiter Futile to resist flow fatal to ride Impressed by the strung rope ladder of unquestioned good status Doctors orders therapeutic regressive Hedonism Bureaucracy forced parentalism Founding fathers Titan nepotism The health preventative catechism Give only to take away to give again another day Rewards gods some token compensation Anyone here not get paid besides me Red light starboard wax eared crew rendezvous Bounded by my sacrifice to irresponsibility None of the other prize winning players gamble here but me Battened down fear gauge groups psychopathy Ever since world went into bankruptcy Call for Panic Zeus black masked his swan song Yarn for youthful innocence gone stick slip traction moves this throng Tread borderline separating time providing till from when Uneven Titans tip unbalanced ships Dualities tune unity in trine One thing I did learn when within confine Whom hath desire for nothing believes doth not need anything Misinterpretation required missing zero still a thing Axons bemoan sequence of no return Feeling slight injustice step forward commandeer ambition Venus akin to mine headache just better known rendition Under spotlight favorite position Internally propelled by externals Take this Autumnal equinox swear on the cross tis vernal All the gods explicitly sing chants how lucky I must be Bring Mordor back to toss this precious ring Prospect she fertilized inferring seed Open union upon Which we agreed Karma conflates heavens gates contrived in Pandemonium Green shoots elate consummate concerns inspire Pavlovian Theories cosigned conspiracies maligned Impermanence ineffably refined Ignorance binds energy disinclined Universal conception pride of self love contraception Trying to be pliable but find it reprehensible All dispensable Great Complacent Sea Sizing words wisely rids ostensible Lies the only guise now found comprehensible Prophylactic allude to didactic Though whilst I work at chore she’s Ares whore I snagged them embarrassingly naked afore gods before Yellen Helen neither nor wert worth war Bowl of wrath judgement ignored poor decor Titans empathizing with swimming clothes In her throws she extolled excitement being extra exposed Far be it from she to assume joint responsibility Exponential debt credits game theory On that we agree tis rigged currency Opportunistic imperialists Propaganda grasshoppers enlist ants backbone socialist Can't remember when gathered last had a say any matter Other nations forfeit right to do it Export of inflation needs conduit Concert donates borders New World Order Blockchain came about when drunk bartender could not reach the spout Yahweh will control all money now they have it figured out Waiting for my minute to be clever Stamp my name on the gods minds forever My switchblade really needs to cut them off No clue what the gods know only that they need to run the show Narcissistic parasites charisma lands entitlement Vampires nourish roots to stunt encouragement Protocol enticing invitation Condemnation staged cooperation Intolerable acts left no coercive tea leaves intact Coven of bag passing Witches gave chase across red waters Need another nine stitches sons twixt daughters Waiting in the balance moment of force Hatch guillotine MRI triggered source Soaked up dripped Wyrmwood postulated solvent tasted good Full equilibrium half ballast set assail for malice Octobers placid benign chilled chalice Brain scan photocell senses light all is well If instead bulb shows dead off with thee head Also as a godsend bonus honed mom’s splendid jury throne Captive chaperone audience fettered judgement chains inlaid Skipping to a Witch hunt after masquerade Topside upper deck on the promenade Propellor fashion later ohm made blade Behooved turtle jail sac tail flailed back satyromaniac Passionate parade personifying Nature of tirade Horney gimp hind quarters brace graced limp Llama spitting image of Obama Clinton's dole out cigars contribute scars All guests in attendance dressed as promised change we forget lest Salubrious familiar strangers grooving Harvey Danger Politically free redundancy Reagan closed asylums threw away key Identity hath no cost found when lost Consolidations vibrate quantized sinusoidal noise Pullback hull triangulate alow by my device and Echo Feel lonely frost amongst the other masks Survival is appeasing to their tasks Remember November elect Semper Meaning faithful to all members not just only archaic On the way to office run your head through photovoltaic Vanishing quickly old liquidity Seven plagues capsized immortality The line hath paid out to the bitter end Too big to sail exhale replications glorification Night zeniths elevation nadirs sun's regeneration
Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives. PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE: 1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999
Bret Hart officially announced his retirement this week due to concussions he suffered starting back at Starrcade from a Goldberg kick. Doctors actually speculated that Hart may have had a concussion going into the match, but the kick magnified the damage. Following the Goldberg match, Hart continued to wrestle for a couple of weeks and got rocked again several times, particularly in a hardcore match with Terry Funk. Doctors said he's suffered about 10% brain damage, some of which may be permanent. Despite the injury, there was always the possibility that he could have remained an on-screen character in some role. But Hart was fired by WCW last week, which basically left him with no real options, since he has no intention of ever working for WWF again and said he doesn't want to end his career by working his way down the minor league food chain like so many other wrestlers do. Dave says Hart will be remembered for many things, and while his career had no shortage of memorable moments, the name Bret Hart will always be mostly associated with what happened in Montreal 3 years ago and with the death of his brother Owen. The first was the most historically influential match in modern times and Owen's death was the biggest mainstream news story in wrestling history. The last 3 years of Bret's life have been hell, from a disappointing WCW run, injuries, and the utter destruction of the Hart family in the wake of Owen's death. Dave thinks it's sad because if this was Japan or Mexico, the wrestling culture there is different. If a star on the level of Bret Hart retired there, they would have elaborate retirement ceremonies and make a huge deal of it. But here in America, he was double-crossed out of the WWF to avoid giving him a fond farewell, and then he was unceremoniously fired from WCW rather than having a chance to officially retire in the ring or give a speech for his fans. Then again, with the state of WCW, nobody would have believed a Bret Hart retirement speech anyway, since everyone would just suspect an angle. But it sucks that he's having to hang up the boots while unemployed and with no outlet to be given the send-off he deserves.
Dave recaps Bret's career, starting as a teenager in the Amarillo territory with Dory Funk, his time in Japan, and then starting in Stampede and working his way up the ladder there (he started as an opening match jobber). Forming the Hart Foundation with Neidhart, their years together in WWF, his singles run, becoming IC and WWF champion when business was down and Vince needed someone who wasn't exploding with steroids to be the face of the company. As WWF champion, business was weak in the U.S. but Hart was a huge draw when WWF toured internationally (which they did a lot more back then because U.S. business was so bad). And then of course, Shawn Michaels, the Screwjob, and off to WCW where he was the hottest star in the business upon arrival. But from there, he was the victim of injuries and horrible booking and Hart in WCW never clicked. Dave goes on and on about the countless times WCW dropped the ball with how they booked Bret. Anyway, Hart has ruled out ever wrestling again, for fear of more brain damage and not wanting to live the rest of his life as a drooling vegetable. He also shot down the idea of ever being a manager because he's unhappy with the direction of the business and says he's leaving the industry entirely, not just the in-ring part. He plans to spend the next year working on a book about his life and doing some acting. Luckily, he should be well off financially. He earned north of 7 figures during his last four years in the business and has a Lloyds of London disability policy that will pay him the equivalent of 6 months salary, which will be another million or so.
Bret Hart announced his retirement in his Calgary Sun column and since you can't just easily find this online anymore, here's what Bret wrote:
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That'll be the beginning." -- Louis La'Amour. I'm really sorry to have to say that my professional wrestling career is over--forever. Although I've expected it to end for some time now, I could in no way ever prepare for it. I suppose it doesn't do much good to speak negatively about how this or that has gone for me. I feel it is more fitting right now to remember the more positive aspects of my long and great career. I have not one regret. I'm proud of all my achievements, especially my seven World Heavyweight Championships. I will miss the cities, the countries, especially the people--all colours, all religions, all ages, all languages. I've always tried my absolute best in every match, in every city, big or small, in countries all around the world. I cannot begin to explain how proud I am to have touched so many people with the ability to wrestle. My heart is filled with memories. Like when I was mobbed at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem by Palestinian children, tears in their eyes, kissing my hands. In Belfast, Ireland, being cheered on by both Catholic and Protestant fans, the emotions that poured out as I walked around the ring high-fiving our victory together. The time I was in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, where they waved Canadian flags and chanted O Canada! I could go on endlessly, but maybe it's easier to say I was privileged to be the only world champion who really travelled the world. I hope that my fans who have kept the faith, believing in me, may in some small way take some lesson from me that will help them in their lifetime. I will never forget how touched I was in Rochester, N.Y. in one of my last matches, when a bunch of die-hard fans held up a sign that read: Parking $10, Program $5, Ticket $35, watching Bret Hitman Hart wrestle--priceless." I'm forever grateful for the doors that opened bringing me to America. Thank you for having me, for giving me so much. I thank all my fans everywhere. I owe you all for everything I am. As for the wrestlers, it would mean a lot to me to always be remembered as "one of the boys." I've made great friendships that will last my lifetime and look forward to an easier life filled with reminiscing. To all of you who worked with me, carried me, and trusted me, those who allowed my success to continue while theirs did not, all from a deep sense of tradition and honour. I tried to always work hard to be champion in your eyes first. My greatest accomplishment is knowing that I never seriously harmed one wrestler. It may not seem important, but I want it remembered that in all the years I never, ever refused to lose to another wrestler--except once--and that was that fateful day in Montreal, where it's clear that I stood up for "the boys." I could begin to list all the great wrestlers I either watched or worked with, but it would take forever. I will simply say that I'd give anything to climb into the ring with so many of you just one more time. To most people, wrestling is stupid, it's fake, it doesn't mean anything. When I think about it, I'm reminded of a quote by George Braque: "Art is a sound turned to light." I drift back to a time when I was 23 years old, wrestling for my father, in Regina, making $150 a night. It looked like it was going to be a near full crowd on hand to see me take on my arch rival, The Dynamite Kid, in a ladder match. The title and a bag supposedly containing $5,000 dangled from a string above the ring. Whoever could climb the ladder and grab it first would be the winner. We were both so young when I look back on it now, so intense, when the bell rang, we tore into each other, ferociously, eventually spilling out onto the floor. I went to slam Dynamite's head into a steel chair. He, of course, had his hands up for protection, but I had no idea he would hit it so hard. His head bounced back, I tried to turn, but our heads smashed. I split the back of his head open and shattered my face, one of those rare accidents. I could tell it was bad. I could poke my finger through a gaping hole in the middle of my nose. The blood poured. We fought on. I remember Dynamite jumping up high, gripping that heavy steel ladder coming down straight down on my head. I didn't move. The crowd gasped. I dreamed a smile--because he never even touched me. He really was the best. Finally, I had him right where I wanted him, but the referee was down. That's when J.R. Foley crept up on the apron and whacked me across the back with his heavy walking stick. Down I went. The crowd was furious--so unfair. Dynamite began to climb to the top, his fingers reaching. Suddenly, I jumped up, throwing a perfect desperation drop kick, just like he asked me. "...just barely touch the ladder with your toes. I'll control how I go over." Sure enough, the ladder wobbled and tipped, he grimaced, over they both went, with amazing timing. Dynamite leapt off, straddling the top rope, bouncing up and out right on top of J.R. Foley. But the ladder hit the top rope with such force, bouncing all the way back, heading right toward me. I was lucky I saw it. I rolled and rolled as fast as I could. It crashed with a thud, missing my head by only inches. I sat up, checking to see if Dynamite was hurt. He appeared to be all right, but still both of us knew we'd be going for some stitches. He was riding with me, so he had to duck down when we drove past the fans on the way to the Pasqua Hospital. From there, we drove back home, all night, so that we could wrestle the following night, too tired to say a word to each other. But if I can stop right there...to somehow try and explain just what it is that I will miss the most about wrestling, I loved it all so much. I stood that big steel ladder up, one step up, climbing higher and higher, the crowd soaring with me, louder and louder, the blood dripping off my nose...reaching...I pulled that belt down and there it was--it happened. The crowd exploded. We blew the roof off...so loud I could not hear a single sound except the beating of my own heart. If you're lucky enough to find a way of life you live, you also have to find the courage to finally say goodbye. I'll put my guns in the ground. I can't shoot them any more.
The WWF/Owen Hart lawsuit was verbally settled out of court, pending a court approval scheduled later this week. Various sources have pegged the settlement at $18 million. It's believed Stu and Helen Hart will receive somewhere between $2-3 million, with the rest going to Martha Hart and her two young children. Martha told the Calgary Sun that the whole ordeal has been a nightmare and she can't say much more for legal reasons but that she's satisfied with the settlement. It's believed that WWF may file suit against the company that manufactured the rigging equipment, but Vince McMahon would only say that they are exploring their options on that. Martha Hart had previously vowed she would never settle before the case went to court, but those close to her say she was tired of the stress and was particularly upset that the case had torn the Hart family apart. Stu and Helen in particular were eager to settle and get it over with. The first round of settlement talks went poorly, with McMahon reportedly offering $17 million and refusing to budge, while Martha's initial asking price was said to be $32 million. It ended with Martha "cutting a promo" on Vince (oh Dave...) and talks broke off. The case was made more complicated by different Hart members' inability to stop talking to the media against lawyers' advice. At one point, Ellie Neidhart (Nattie's mom), who has sided against her parents and with WWF in the case, took a document from Stu Hart regarding all of the Hart children getting money out of the case and passed it on to WWF's lawyers, which engulfed the Hart lawyers in a storm of controversy and nearly blew up their whole case. The original Feb. 2001 court date was postponed indefinitely following that and with no new court date in sight so it was likely to continue dragging on for months and maybe even years. So ultimately, Martha decided to settle (yeah I think to this day, Martha blames Ellie for almost destroying the case and that's why she was forced to settle). As of press time, Bret Hart hasn't yet commented on the settlement, but he knew it was coming. He was on the Observer Live online show the day before it was finalized and said he understood Martha's position and would support whatever decision she made.
The downward spiral of Davey Boy Smith hit a new low this week when he was arrested on 2 separate occasions for allegedly threatening the life of his estranged wife, Diana Hart-Smith. Dave talks about Smith's worsening drug problems in recent years along with all his health issues in between and how he's been in and out of the hospital constantly in the last two years. He also had a motorcycle accident a few weeks ago, multiple rehab stints, etc. Anyway, Smith was arrested on Oct. 25th and again on Oct. 26th. The first time, it was on 2 counts of threatening to kill his wife and her sister Ellie (again...Nattie's mom). After being released the next day, he allegedly threatened his wife again and was arrested again. She thought he was still in custody and went back to the house and was surprised to find him there and that led to the second arrest. Police have been to their house several times in the last few months for domestic disputes. There was also an incident a while back with Smith getting into a fight with Diana's new boyfriend, a Stampede wrestler who wrestles under the name Dick Butkus Jr. during which 85-year-old Stu Hart had to get involved and help break it up. Anyway, Smith spent this past weekend behind bars in Calgary, spending his time signing autographs for other inmates, but was released on the 30th on bail. But he faces 5 charges related to all his threats. Part of the conditions for his release were paying a $10,000 fine and he's not allowed to have any contact with Diana, Ellie, Bruce Hart, or Diana's new boyfriend. (Dave later mentions that Davey Boy is shacking up with Bruce's estranged wife Andrea now. Man, this fuckin' family, I tell ya...) He's also not allowed to drink or take any non-prescribed drugs and is ordered to stay away from where his wife is staying, along with staying away from Bruce Hart's home and Stu Hart's home. He was also ordered to enter rehab, even though he denied in court that he still has a drug problem.
Davey Boy is still under WWF contract, though he hasn't wrestled a match in months. But the WWF has suspended him pending the company's own investigation of the charges. In the past, he blamed his drug issues and back problems from taking a bump on Ultimate Warrior's trap door in the ring when he was in WCW. Dave recaps the series of events that led to him getting rehired by WWF and talks about how they hired Jim Neidhart back as well and it was no secret that Smith, Diana, and Neidhart's wife Ellie were all planning to testify against the family in the Owen Hart case if it had gone to trial. So it wasn't exactly a coincidence that both Smith and Neidhart got jobs that neither of them really had any business getting (Neidhart was hired as a trainer, which everyone knew he wasn't qualified for and Smith was brought back as a wrestler despite a crippling back injury and more crippling drug problem). Neidhart was quietly released a few weeks ago and with the Owen Hart lawsuit finally settled, it probably doesn't look good for Smith (indeed, he never stepped foot in the WWF again).
WCW Halloween Havoc is in the books and was possibly the worst wrestling PPV of the year. At this point, you'd think everyone in WCW would be putting their best foot forward to impress potential buyers, especially if that buyer ends up being the WWF and Vince becomes their new boss. But it was almost all bad matches and abysmal booking. The only bright side is that it was in Vegas and a lot of the tickets were sold to casinos for giveaways, so the show ended up being one of the biggest live gates WCW has had in awhile, even if the crowd wasn't exactly all wrestling fans. Russo is now out of the picture (claiming post-concussion syndrome and stress), but the show was booked by guys like Ed Ferrara and Bill Banks, who are basically mini-Russos and are just keeping his chair warm. So it wasn't quite the same scattershot chaos as most Russo-booked shows, but it still had the same lack of understanding about what makes a good wrestling show that Russo has perfected. Everyone involved (Ferrara, Banks, Terry Taylor, Johnny Ace, etc.) were told to continue Russo's stories rather than changing direction so everything mostly stayed the same.
Other notes from Halloween Havoc: the opening tag title three-way match was the best and really only good match on the show., due to Mysterio, Kidman, and Alex Wright's performances. In typical WCW fashion, they had a top notch snafu showing Palumbo and Stasiak in their street clothes backstage, just seconds after being in their gear and doing a run-in on the previous match. So they put up a thing on the screen that said "taped earlier in the day" to cover for it, but then during the segment, Palumbo and Stasiak were talking about what they just did in the ring minutes earlier. David Flair looked totally lost in his first blood match with Bagwell and even though he's been a midcard star in WCW for over a year now, Dave says if he went to OVW, he'd still be the worst guy on the roster. David Flair is just not ready for the big leagues and it shows. Negative star. Mike Sanders vs. The Cat in a kickboxing match was a total clusterfuck that Cat apparently refused to do the job for since it's "his" gimmick match, so he lost by count-out instead, even though the time limit for the last round had already expired and it was just a mess. Negative half star. Mike Awesome vs. Vampiro is negative 2.5 stars. That's three matches in a row in the negatives, with 2 DUD rankings book-ending them. Dave expected Awesome/Vampiro to actually be good but it had more blown spots than any match he's seen on PPV in years. They were apparently supposed to do a table spot to end the match but they couldn't find any tables under the ring and the match fell apart and Vampiro ended up taking a top rope powerbomb that gave him a concussion and shook him up badly (didn't stop WCW from having him take another powerbomb at the Thunder taping the next day, even though he told them beforehand about the concussion, but we'll get there). And babyface world champion Booker T was booed by a good chunk of the crowd during his match with Scott Steiner.
The latest PRIDE event in Japan drew a sellout crowd mostly due to so many pro wrestlers being involved. It also saw Naoya Ogawa defeat Masaaki Satake in a match most people believed was worked. Ogawa is Antonio Inoki's protege and he's keeping Ogawa protected. Dave says it definitely helps Ogawa keep his name and star power in a highly publicized match, but it doesn't say a lot for PRIDE's credibility. There's also suspicion that Nobuhiko Takada's fight against Igor Vovchanchyn was somewhat worked. Takada lost, but Igor is one of the top ranked heavyweights in the world and Takada went nearly 2 full rounds with him. Most people suspect the finish wasn't worked, but that Igor was told to take it easy on him because Takada is still a big draw and they wanted him to look strong in defeat against a guy he had no chance with. There were several other wrestlers on the card as well. Inoki came out at intermission and announced he was putting together his own show at the Osaka Dome for New Year's Eve (this ends up being the Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye show, which also sees Inoki come out of retirement for his final "match" ever. More on all this in a bit).
Genichiro Tenryu, at age 51, defeated Toshiaki Kawada to win the tournament and be crowned AJPW's newest Triple Crown champion, filling the vacancy left over after previous champion Kobashi left for NOAH. This complicates the AJPW/NJPW angle. There's 2 Tokyo Dome shows coming up in January. The first is NJPW's Jan. 4th show and there's another one near the end of the month that's an AJPW show, but will have some NJPW involvement. But Motoko Baba wants to protect the champion because she's hoping AJPW will still survive after the NJPW angle is over. In the past, companies like UWFI and WAR were desperate to survive and started working with NJPW, only to be devoured by NJPW's booking and left to die after the angle ran its course. Mrs. Baba is hoping to avoid the same fate, so she's not going to let Tenryu work a NJPW show and lose (remember, at the last show, NJPW's champion Kensuke Sasaki lost to Kawada and they won't let that happen 2 times in a row). Now that he's not the champion, it frees Kawada up to have a rematch with Sasaki, where he will presumably return the favor and do the job, but it won't be to unify the titles anymore.
Let's look at some various poll results. Every issue has results for the polls they run online every day or so. Usually I skip over these because they're boring but they're kinda interesting this week. "How should WCW handle the situation with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall" got 55% of voters saying Nash should be suspended for going off script on live TV. As for the future of ECW, 30% of voters think it won't last much longer, while most everyone else thinks it will struggle but continue to survive. Whoops. And finally, Bret Hart's greatest match was 35% for the match with Owen at WM10 and 33% for the match with Austin at WM13.
Stan Hansen has an autobiography that was released in Japanese that is selling like crazy in Japan. Hansen is near the end of his career, but he's probably the most popular American wrestler in Japanese history and has been a top star there since the 70s. (Hansen had an English autobiography released in 2012 called The Last Outlaw. I'm not sure if it's the same book translated to English or if there's another one out there in Japanese from 12 years earlier).
NOAH will hold tournaments early next year to crown their first heavyweight, tag team, and junior heavyweight champions.
Shinya Hashimoto was pulled out of upcoming NJPW shows because they're apparently doing an angle where he is starting his own promotion, in order to do a feud with NJPW (turns out this wasn't an angle at all. Hashimoto really did get fired from NJPW around this time and started Pro Wrestling Zero-One. The real story there is murky and no one seems to know for sure exactly what led to his firing. I think he ended up doing one or two more matches for NJPW over the next year or so, but otherwise, this is the end of Hashimoto in NJPW).
Dave recently had a chance to read the book "Bodyslams!" by former WCW ring announcer Gary Michael Cappetta and liked it. It's not better than Mick Foley's book or anything, but Dave gives it credit for accuracy. Mostly it glosses over a lot of the scandalous stuff and is more about Cappetta's personal experiences rather than giving much detail on what was happening in the business at the time. Dave thinks the book could have gone into more detail on the things going on behind the scenes in WCW during pivotal periods like when Jim Herd, Kip Frey, or Bill Watts was in charge. Overall, definitely better than The Rock's farce of a book but still lacking what made Foley's and Dynamite Kid's books so fascinating.
Steve Allen, the famous comedian and first ever host of the Tonight Show, died last week at age 78. This is only relevant here because most recently, Allen has been one of the lead spokespeople for the PTC and has been one of the most vocal opponents of WWF programming. Ironically enough, early in his career, Allen worked on TV as a wrestling announcer in the 1950s, though he never took it seriously, and in 1990, he appeared at Wrestlemania 6.
The documentary "Gaea Girls", which is about a young woman trying to get into Japanese women's wrestling, has been winning some awards and been admitted to some film festivals.
"Walker: Texas Ranger" this week did an episode loosely based on Owen Hart's death. It's about a wrestler, in costume, who fell from the ceiling during a show. Although in the case of this show, it was a murder ordered by a ruthless promoter trying to take over the territory of another promoter, who's a kind, older guy. The obvious parallels were a more evil version of Vince McMahon and a gentler version of Stu Hart. Dave thought the episode sucked and also got really sad by it. Dave says he hasn't watched Over The Edge again since Owen's death and seeing it fictionally re-enacted for a TV show was really depressing.
Scott Hall was arrested this week for probation violation while he was already in court for a child custody hearing. This charge stems from some 1998 case where he keyed up a limo outside a strip club in Orlando. At the time, Hall had been given probation and ordered to complete a bunch of community service by April of 2000. He never completed the community service, so....probation violation. Hall was in court with his estranged wife Dana and he filed for sole custody of their 2 children, claiming Dana is "emotionally and mentally unstable and an unfit parent" but then Hall got arrested at the courthouse and the hearing was postponed. Speaking of, Dana herself has had 2 contempt-of-court charges against her recently for refusing to let Hall have visitation with their kids when she was supposed to.
PPV news: CMLL in Mexico is holding a big year end show in December and are negotiating for it to air on PPV in the U.S., which would be the first Lucha Libre PPV to air here since When Worlds Collide in 1994. And remember a few months back when a promoter in Australia brought in Dennis Rodman and a bunch of other kinda big name stars and ran a show? Well it will also air on PPV in the U.S. and Canada and Mexico next month. That show was headlined by Rodman vs. Curt Hennig which ended in a double-count out because apparently Rodman refused to do the job. Word is that show was terrible, like this year's version of Heroes of Wrestling, but Australia is so starved for live wrestling that the crowd heat was still off-the-charts.
Juventud Guerrera worked an indie show in Puerto Rico and right now, he's trying to get hired in WWF, or at least stay out of trouble long enough to get rehired by WCW. Guerrera has reached out to WWF through friends he has there, but after what happened with him last month in Australia, WWF apparently isn't interested.
The latest OVW show saw Nick Dinsmore win the OVW title from Rob Conway. On the same show, Brock Lesnar wrestled a dark match against former UFC fighter Ron Waterman. Lesnar won and hey, who knows, maybe he's got a future in beating up UFC fighters.
Ted Dibiase and Nikita Koloff are on a church tour together where they wrestle matches against each other and then preach sermons or something.
The lines between wrestling and MMA got blurrier this week when Atsushi Onita went to the PRIDE offices and met with their promoter. Onita then issued a challenge to Antonio Inoki for a match, saying he wants to retire (of course) and his last match has to be with Inoki. PRIDE officials put out a statement saying they wouldn't promote one of Onita's exploding barbed wire matches, but that they would gladly promote Inoki vs. Onita under PRIDE rules in their ring. Inoki responded, telling reporters that he's retired. There's rumor that Onita will be appearing at Inoki's New Year's Eve show to set up some kind of angle.
Paul Heyman and Sabu have a court date scheduled for later this month over their issues. If you remember, Sabu left ECW to go try to go to WCW but his contract prevented it. Heyman then sued Sabu for breach of contract when he started working other shows (particularly for XPW). Meanwhile, Sabu has also filed some legal paperwork to try to get out of his contract, so hopefully that will all be settled soon.
Speaking of ECW, there doesn't seem to be anything new happening on the TV front. Negotiations with USA have apparently stalled. So....not great news. The latest episode of ECW Hardcore TV shows the signs of how things are going. The in-ring action was good but the show is beginning to look more and more low-budget by the week, as the company continues struggling to stay afloat. The announcers weren't flown in (it was dubbed in later in post-production) and the lighting was terrible.
Still nothing new on the sale of WCW but rumors are flying like crazy because everyone is paranoid. For the first time, in an interview, Linda McMahon acknowledged that it's true that WWF is in discussions to purchase WCW but word is no substantial progress has been made yet.
Notes from Nitro: it was a sad episode because the crowd was tiny and it almost felt like a bad indie show, especially because the small crowd was pretty dead. It was a disaster, with a total of 1,454 fans in the building and only 768 of them paid. Even worse, they tried to paper it but only 33% of the free tickets that were given out were used. WCW literally can't even give this shit away. Ric Flair returned as the new CEO of WCW and got almost no pop at all from the crowd, then cut a boring promo. Dave thinks it's sad that this is where things have gotten for him. The greatest of all time, cutting middling promos in front of a small crowd for a dying company. Then Jarrett came out to talk and the mic went dead. The fans chanted for Scott Hall all through the Kronik/Palumbo & Stasiak match. Kevin Nash was on commentary but after last week, he was finally ordered to stop talking about Hall. So instead of mentioning Hall himself, when the crowd started chanting, Nash kept asking, "What are they chanting?" but the other announcers wouldn't acknowledge him.
Thunder was taped immediately after Nitro and the only notable thing there was a Lance Storm vs. Norman Smiley match that was apparently so bad that Storm went on his website afterward and pre-emptively apologized to the fans for the match. As of press time, it hasn't aired yet so I guess we'll see (the 2000 Thunders aren't on the Network and I can't find this online, so no idea how bad it was or wasn't).
Backstage morale in WCW isn't great, which probably goes without saying. Word is much of the crew, wrestlers and backstage employees alike, are so drained by all the negativity and sale rumors that everyone has pretty much mentally quit. They're all just going through the motions every week now while waiting to see what's going to happen with their jobs.
Buff Bagwell did an interview with the Observer website a few days before the Halloween Havoc PPV and had plenty of interesting things to say. He ripped on Vince Russo for the way he booked himself along with guys like Luger and DDP and basically just how awful Russo's booking is. He also complained about WCW fining people for showing up late. He complained about not getting a big raise like everyone else got back in 1998 because he was out with a neck injury when Bischoff was giving raises and complained about being underpaid compared to all the other "A-talent" like himself. Talked about how screwed up WCW is, saying Lex Luger is being paid $1.3 million a year to do jobs for Hugh Morrus. "Are you kidding me? Hugh is a great guy and all that, but he's not A-talent. I love him to death, but he's never going to draw a dime. We're talking about drawing money and he's never going to draw a fuckin' dime. And Luger is putting him over at house shows? Nothing is adding up. I know for a fact that if they try to get me to job for (David) Flair at Havoc, I'm going to walk out the door. I'm not doing it." In response to all this, WCW put Hugh Morrus over big on Nitro while they had Bagwell job to Luger in 2 minutes on the same show. Well, at least someone in WCW gets punished for the shit they say.
IMPORTANT NOTE:For only the second time ever in writing these Rewinds, I have hit the 40,000 character limit. So once again, the rest of this Rewind will be posted in a comment below, so keep scrolling. Upvote it for visibility I guess?
Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives. PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE: 1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999
The Delaware Supreme Court ruled against the USA Network in their appeal to prevent WWF from accepting the Viacom deal. The decision makes it official that WWF is moving to TNN next week and ends the 17-year WWF/USA relationship. The appeal process has been lingering for over a month and because of it, USA, Viacom, WWF and ECW were all pretty much paralyzed and waiting to see how things turn out. But now that it's all finalized, ECW's final TNN show will air on 9/22 and the first Raw on TNN will air on 9/25. It doesn't give Viacom much of an opportunity to promote the move. They had set aside $7 million to promote Raw's TNN debut but because of the lingering court proceedings, they kept having to delay it and now there's almost no time. On Raw's final show on USA, Jim Ross mentioned repeatedly that this was the last episode on the network and plugged the move to TNN (and hyping that Austin will be there live). But that's pretty much it so far. During the next few days, you can expect Viacom to bombard all media outlets with as much promotion as they can cram into the short amount of time, but it's going to be impossible to promote it as much as they'd hoped to. And considering they're moving from the #1 rated network to the #15 rated network, they need all the promotion they can get.
Needless to say, this all gives WCW a golden opportunity to put their best foot forward for Nitro on 9/25 and hopefully gain some much-needed ground (in case you're want spoilers for next week, Russo uses this opportunity to make himself the WCW champion). In the short run, Raw's ratings will almost certainly fall, but in the long-run, being with Viacom is going to be hugely beneficial to WWF. As for ECW, this opens the door for them to continue negotiations with USA. They desperately need a TV deal, on a strong network, and most importantly, they need outside financial support if they are going to survive. Having a TV deal is useless if you can't afford the production costs. As mentioned last week, ECW missed payroll and has had to cancel several house shows due to the financial crunch they're under.
Also this week, TNN announced that it's renaming itself The National Network (instead of The Nashville Network) and will be moving its base of operations from Nashville to New York. They're planning to debut a new logo and target their programming to a more diverse audience. Dave recaps the history of WWF on the USA Network, dating back to 1982 when they aired monthly WWF MSG shows. Then WWF got a weekly show called All-American Wrestling on the network in 1983, which then became Prime Time Wrestling and Tuesday Night Titans, the creation of Raw in 1993, the Monday night wars, and now to this.
There was a frightening moment at WCW's Fall Brawl PPV with Paul Orndorff suffering a stinger that left him motionless in the ring. The good news is that it was only temporary paralysis. He was treated and released from the hospital that same night. It was reminiscent of the injuries suffered by Droz and Buff Bagwell in recent years, but fortunately for Orndorff, it didn't end up being as bad. There was immediate suspicion that the whole thing was a work, which Dave thinks is a pretty sad reflection of WCW these days. When Orndorff went down, everyone else in the match basically panicked and continued working the match on the other side of the ring, taking bumps that kept jarring the ring, all while the EMTs and trainer were trying to tend to Orndorff. Finally, almost 2 minutes after he collapsed, referee Charles Robinson finally took charge and ordered the match stopped. The match was scheduled to go several more minutes and run-ins were scheduled, but it all got scrapped when Robinson ended it. The injury happened when Orndorff tried to piledrive Mark Jindrak but Jindrak didn't go up correctly for the move. Orndorff had to deadweight lift him and when he did so, his hamstring went out. He completed the piledriver but landed awkwardly, causing something with his neck and spine to jam up and that was it. Dave talks about Orndorff's health problems over the year, specifically his arm injury that caused his right arm to atrophy severely and never recover. He retired twice before due to health issues (87 and 94) only to return both times when he probably shouldn't have. (This was his final match for 17 years. But it looks like he came out of retirement last year and worked a 6-man tag match at an indie show in Canada. But otherwise, this Fall Brawl match was the end of the road for Orndorff).
This whole thing brings up questions about Nitro this week, which has a match scheduled between Booker T and Vince Russo. Just a few weeks ago, Russo suffered a concussion during an angle and has been dealing with headaches and such ever since, and it's probably not a good idea for him to be in the ring. They could probably work around it, but Dave thinks it's bad enough to have untrained people in there doing moves anyway, much less ones who are already injured. Dave notes the recent example of Kurt Angle wrestling on Smackdown 2 days after getting severely concussed at Summerslam, which he never should have done and led to him getting another concussion because you're always more susceptible to further concussions during the period after suffering one. Russo has openly claimed to have had 3 concussions in the last year and has only worked about 6 matches. If that's true, he probably shouldn't be in there taking bumps again. But maybe they'll book something safe that doesn't require it. Either way, Dave is just concerned about the overall safety of all these guys.
Oh yeah, other notes from Fall Brawl: crowd was 8,600 although only about half of that (4,311) was paid, the rest were freebies. Dave notes all the excitement people in WCW had last week when the Nitro rating was higher than usual, and points out how it obviously didn't mean dick when it comes to ticket sales. TV ratings are nice but it's a vanity metric. The real numbers that matter are the ones that make money. Ticket sales and PPV buys. And, well, those are still horrible. There was a guy in the crowd facing the hard cam who was seen constantly throughout the show wearing a Destroyer mask. Destroyer was a famous wrestler back in 60s and 70s who wore a red and white mask. Anyway....turns out that was the real Destroyer (real name Dick Beyer), just sitting in the crowd at a WCW PPV at 70 years old, still doing his old gimmick. Kevin Nash cut a promo earlier on the pre-show claiming he was hungover from hanging out at the bar last night and essentially telegraphing that he was going to lose his match (he did). Right after the Orndorff match, Shane Douglas cut a pre-match promo saying Kidman would be joining Paul Orndorff at the hospital. Even his partner Torrie Wilson seemed to drop her TV smile and give him a "what an asshole" look for that one. The scaffold for the scaffold match was way wider than any other ones before and the area underneath was padded and safe, but Torrie still seemed legitimately terrified up there. After Madusa took a bump off the scaffold (which the crowd booed because it was clearly gimmicked for safety), the announcers also tried to compare her injuries to Orndorff's injury earlier in the night. Dave is just disgusted. Torrie never took a bump off the scaffold, which was the original plan but she refused, and good for her Dave says. It would have meant nothing for the match anyway. Negative 1 star. They did a segment with David Flair beating up a mailman in his yard and Dave says the whole segment was actually hilarious and more interestingly, it was all David Flair's idea. ICP did commentary on Vampiro's match again, which once again was funny. Mike Awesome came out with former child actor Gary Coleman. There's been a lot of news stories lately about Coleman working as a security guard for $6 an hour these days, so at least WCW probably didn't have to spend a lot to get him. Naturally, he got involved in the match and it was hilarious because he knew he was going to take a guitar shot from Jarrett. So he had a hat on with a towel folded up in it to cushion the blow. But during the chaos, his hat got knocked off. So just before the guitar shot, he picked up his hat, calmly put the towel back in, put it back on, and took the hit. Goldberg vs. Scott Steiner was a shockingly good match and Dave gives it 4.25 stars. And of course, Booker T won the title from Nash in the main event.
We get the usual long obituary for Professor Toru Tanaka, one of the biggest heels of the 60s and 70s, who died at age 70 in California. Dave recaps his career and of course, he was a Hawaiian who got booked as a typical salt throwing Japanese heel. Worked for WWWF feuding with Sammartino, won titles in all the territories, etc. He also tells an interesting story from 1977 when Pat Patterson returned to the San Francisco territory after being gone for 8 months and was supposed to face Mr. Fuji in a show that ended up drawing 12,000 people. But Fuji had a falling out with promoter Roy Shire and left the territory 2 weeks before the match. So Shire brought in Tanaka and put him under a mask and tried to pass him off as the real Fuji. The crowd didn't buy it and the media got ahold of the story and started claiming fraud and the athletic commission got involved. Shire nearly lost his promoter's license but he claimed he didn't know and thought it was the real Fuji under the mask. Tanaka and Shire were both fined but the commission seemed to buy the story (others backed it up to protect Shire) and let them off with just the fine. The real Fuji caught all the heat and was legitimately banned by the commission for life from wrestling in California, but that was overturned in 1984.
The current plan for AJPW's Triple Crown title is to hold a tournament soon, which is expected to be won by Toshiaki Kawada, who will then defend the title against NJPW champion Sasaki in a title vs. title match at the Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show. And the plan from there is for Kawada to get the surprising win, since most people don't expect NJPW to book their champion to lose to AJPW's champion. But the way Riki Choshu (NJPW booker) sees it, AJPW is pretty much doomed and he's not too concerned about them as competition anymore, and he's well aware that this inter-promotional feud is the only thing keeping AJPW alive right now. But there's still money in an AJPW/NJPW feud and they want to prolong it, so Kawada will have to win. The idea is to keep Kawada strong because NJPW loves the gimmick of a strongly booked outsider coming in and shaking things up. In the past, that person has been Naoya Ogawa but Choshu is tired of the headache that comes with dealing with Antonio Inoki and Ogawa because Inoki is intent on making Ogawa an unbeatable superman and NJPW can never get him to put anyone over. Choshu is pretty much trying to do anything he can to get Inoki's influence as far away from the company as possible. So the idea is to keep Kawada strong and milk this angle for all it's worth.
New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman officially signed into law the bill to regulate so-called "extreme wrestling." The bill bans children under 18 from attending extreme wrestling shows. It also adds an athletic commission tax to promotions running extreme shows, mandates an ambulance and 2 doctors must be on hand at every event, and even though it's a state law, the city officials where the show is to be held must specifically give permission for the event. This bill doesn't affect ECW, which was categorized as one of the 3 major companies which are exempt from the law. The bill is a not-so-subtle effort to drive Jersey All Pro Wrestling and Combat Zone Wrestling specifically out of the state, JAPW in particular. They're planning to still run shows but will be forced to get rid of bladejobs, no more light tubes or thumb tacks or barbed wire, etc. JAPW owner Frank Iadeavia has said they are considering legal action. But at this point, if they want to continue to run shows as they have, they're going to be forced to leave the state of New Jersey to do so.
Raw did well in the ratings again, facing stiff competition from the Olympics and Monday Night Football. But they had one segment that was a major bomb. Mick Foley came out, cutting a promo once again trying to get George W. Bush and Al Gore to appear on Smackdown for a debate. The segment was right before the main event and caused a full 700,000 homes to change the channel, which is an unheard of drop for a Raw episode. That led to the Rock/Undertaker main event that followed to be the lowest rated Raw main event of the year.
The Wrestling Observer Hotline has been officially killed off. 1-900 hotline numbers have been dying anyway and the numbers were down and Dave says more importantly, he needed to stop because he's so busy with the newsletter and the Eyada online radio show and wants to concentrate fully on those and the daily hotline stuff took up too much time.
Motoko Baba threatened a lawsuit against Nippon TV over their decision to drop AJPW and start airing NOAH instead, and due to the lawsuit, NOAH currently isn't airing on NTV, which is a major blow for the fledgling new company. In the meantime, Misawa has started negotiations with TV Tokyo, which is another one of the major networks in Japan.
Former WWF and ECW wrestler Nicole Bass made headlines after being arrested in New York after getting into an argument with someone on a street corner. It turned into a fight and when the police tried to break it up, she allegedly bit one of the cops. Bass was one of several people arrested.
Notes from OVW: Jim Ross did announcing on some of the shows there this week, because he was down there scouting talent. Shelton Benjamin is showing a lot of promise and Jim Cornette says Benjamin is progressing even faster than Kurt Angle and believes he's guaranteed to be a big star. Brock Lesnar still hasn't debuted on TV there yet but Bob Orton's son Randy Orton recently did. They're also strongly pushing Leviathan (real name Dave Bautista) and Jim Cornette predicts he will headline Wrestlemania within the next 5 years. (yup, exactly 5 years later in fact)
Ed Farhat, better known as The Sheik, is said to be in very grave condition. He's down to 150 pounds and can only communicate through blinking his eyes or lightly squeezing if you hold his hand (he ended up living another 2+ years after this. His Wikipedia page says he was working with a biographer and did extensive interviews before he died, with plans to have a book on his life released. But it says the interviews "provided a highly explosive look" into the business and as a result, the interviews and draft of the book were sealed at the time of his death and to this day it's never been released. Interesting. When I originally wrote this up a few months ago, I tweeted Dave about this and he responded saying he didn't know anything about it either. I'd love to find out more.)
The latest revival of Stampede Wrestling is in bad shape. They have no more shows scheduled and have only done 10 shows in the last few months. Their TV show has been airing old tapes rather than new episodes lately.
Ken Shamrock broke his silence on his recent PRIDE loss to Kazuyuki Fujita. Shamrock pretty much blamed himself and admitted he wasn't in proper shape to fight and said things happened which contributed to him not having time to train properly (he doesn't go into detail but I think Dave mentioned something in an earlier Observer but I can't find it right now. But I think Shamrock was going through some personal shit around this time. Something like a divorce or a custody battle or something. That doesn't get mentioned here, it's just something I vaguely remember reading awhile back, I might be wrong).
Nobuhiko Takada has announced he's going to face Igor Vovchanchyn at next month's PRIDE show and that if he doesn't win, he'll retire. Takada had a reputation as a shoot fighter from his years as the founder and star of UWFi, which was a worked shoot promotion. But then he started doing real shoots and it's been bad news ever since, including 2 high profile losses to Rickson Gracie. He's had a couple of wins, but they were worked matches. His real MMA fights have all been losses and Dave says the real fighters in PRIDE have pretty much no respect for Takada as an actual fighter. He doesn't like Takada's chances next month (indeed, Takada gets punched into submission in the 2nd round. But he still didn't retire).
Notes from Nitro: the building was mostly full, with not that many freebies. But only because it was a small arena that only holds about 5,000 people. It was also in Canada and the crowd was pretty much only there to see Lance Storm (who ended up jobbing to Jim Duggan in an undercard match) and Bret Hart (who wasn't there at all). They hated Goldberg with a passion, probably due to the Hart stuff, and booed him mercilessly.
On his personal website, Mark Madden apologized to Lou Thesz for his comment on Nitro last week where he joked that Lou Thesz beats up women. Madden said he was only joking and that he has a ton of respect for Thesz.
Pamela Paulshock apparently injured her ankle doing an angle on Thunder last week. Dave thinks it's bad enough when they have untrained wrestlers in there getting hurt, but now untrained ring announcers are getting hurt too.
WCW is pitching an angle for Vampiro to team with singer Billy Idol in a feud against Mike Awesome and David Cassidy, of Partridge Family fame (Never happened but.....yeah. That was a thing evidently).
Dave only has a couple of thoughts on this week's Thunder: he begs someone in WCW to PLEASE send Major Gunns to get acting lessons. He also wants someone to save Mike Awesome from a gimmick worse than the Red Rooster. And finally, I guess there's been a lot of commercials for the new Meet The Parents movie and Dave thinks it looks funny.
Various WCW notes: DDP is likely being brought back soon, though Kimberly won't be. Nitro Girl Spice was released. She was being groomed to co-host WCW's Saturday morning show, but then the show got canned and they didn't have anything else for her. And after being world champion for a couple of months, WCW has finally decided to start making some Booker T merch. Seems like a good idea to finally get around to. The Harris Twins taped segments for both the Maury Povich and Jenny Jones shows, no word on what they are or when they'll air. Goldberg will be on an episode of The Daily Show this week. Gene Okerlund is expected to be given a grumpy old man gimmick where he swears a lot.
Next month might be a surprisingly good month for WCW ticket wise. They have shows in Australia that are expected to do big numbers because Australia is so starved for wrestling that even WCW can do big business there. And they have a PPV in Las Vegas which will do good because the casinos are buying up a lot of tickets to give away.
Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner are reportedly being total team players right now, because there's concern that a regime change could come at any time (a lot of people are pushing for Johnny Ace to replace Vince Russo) and they're basically being on their best behavior until they see who their next new boss might be. The only person right now who's really stirring up shit is Goldberg, who is said to be openly pissed about pretty much everything and isn't shy about expressing it (yeah, even Goldberg has since admitted that he was frustrated and probably wasn't very pleasant to be around back then).
Scott Hall is expected to return to Nitro next week. Brad Siegel reportedly gave up on fighting with Nash about it and is willing to bring Hall back. Siegel and Hall spoke last week and Hall was basically told this is his last chance and if he fucks up one time, he's gone for good. Of course, Scott Steiner has been told that a dozen times in the past, so you know how that goes (Hall doesn't end up coming back. Not sure if it fell through or Dave got bad info or what, but it never happens).
They held a Miss WCW Pageant in Las Vegas last week with Carrot Top as one of the judges and of course there was a bikini contest. Nitro Girl Chae ended up winning over Torrie Wilson, Major Gunns, Baby, Chiquita, Midajah and Stacy Keibler. Pamela Paulshock was supposed to be in it but no-showed due to her ankle injury (there's some good catty drama coming out of this in the next week or two).
So the deal with Konnan is....pretty messed up, actually. He had tricep surgery a few months ago and has no business back in the ring yet. But WCW cut his paycheck in half so....he came back and he's wrestling. But here's the problem. The doctors still haven't given him a medical release yet because, well, they're doctors and he's still fucked up. They're like, "Dude...no." Anyway, because he doesn't have his medical release, WCW is still only giving him half his pay. But they're still allowing him to wrestle. He's hoping to get a medical release this week so he can start getting full checks again. Dave just thinks this whole policy is so screwed up on so many ways.
Disqo Inferno has been bringing out some plastic duck to the ring called the Disqo Duck. (I should stop for a second and explain something for the younger readers. R&B singer Sisqo had a HUGE hit called "Thong Song" around this time and WCW, in their infinite wisdom, capitalized by changing the spelling of Disco to Disqo.) Anyway, the duck is fucking stupid and apparently at Nitro this week, Konnan literally handcuffed himself to the duck backstage to try and keep Disqo Inferno from taking it out to the ring. Someone had to try to save him from himself.
Jeremy Borash will be doing announcing at this week's Thunder tapings. Dave says there's a lot of heat here because Borash is close to Vince Russo, so he's getting a lot of chances to do things like commentary even though he hasn't really earned it yet and hasn't shown any real aptitude for it. Dave says if Borash ends up replacing one of the main announcers on Nitro, there'll probably be a meltdown.
Steve Austin and Debra got married last week in Las Vegas (fun fact: same wedding chapel Triple H and a drugged out Stephanie McMahon got married in. Funner fact: also the same wedding chapel I got married in).
The plan for Sunday Night Heat, now that it's moving to MTV, is for it to be more of a humor and skit type show, with a lot of Tom Green-style humor (oh man, 2000 was such a weird time). They want to bring in musical guests and celebrities for it and will do a lot of the stuff from the WWF New York restaurant as well as at MTV's Times Square headquarters.
Notes from Raw: a lot of the show was built around trying to seemingly bury Kurt Angle, by turning him into a goofy heel character and implying that he's gay. They showed a lot of footage of him crying at the Olympics and had Triple H make fun of him and all that stuff. Dave thinks it's a pretty weird thing to do one week before the biggest match of Angle's career (he's got a No DQ match with Triple H at next week's PPV) and sure didn't do him any favors for people taking him seriously. Hugh Hefner was on to plug Chyna's upcoming Playboy appearance and Dave thinks it's nice that Playboy and WWF could come together again in the interest of making money after all the nasty legal issues they had with the Sable fallout. And finally, Steve Regal debuted.
Since we were talking about WCW's injury policy, Dave decides to let us know what WWF's policy is. A WWF wrestler that is out with an injury receives their downside guarantee. WWF contracts give you a guarantee (say, $300,000 per year for example) but you can make a lot more money on the road because everyone gets a cut of house show gates and PPV revenue and whatnot. So if you're injured and not on the road, you won't get all that extra money, but you still make the $300,000 guarantee. Of course, that leads to the same incentive for guys to sometimes come back before they're ready, because they're losing money by being at home, but from everyone who talks to Dave, there's not nearly as much pressure from the WWF to hurry up and come back as there is in WCW.
Various WWF notes: Big Boss Man will be out for a few weeks after having his knee scoped. Grand Master Sexay needed 14 stitches in his ear after getting legit cut from the belt shot on Raw. Tori should be back in Oct. or early November after shoulder surgery. Billy Gunn should be back in a few weeks. Road Dogg's wife had surgery for a collapsed lung so he's out tending to her. Davey Boy Smith was in a motorcycle accident last week and Dave says if you know how many times Smith has been in and out of the hospital this year, it would scare you to death.
Four different wrestling promotions have videos in the Billboard Top 20 charts....and none of them are WCW. Of course, WWF is all over the charts with their various releases taking up 12 of the 20 spots. ECW has videos at #5 and #7. XPW, which currently isn't running new shows and doesn't even have a building to run shows in right now, has videos at #12 and #19. And Insane Clown Posse's JCW promotion has a video at #13. All that, but no WCW.
Kurt Angle and Taka Michinoku worked a UPW show in California along with a few other WWF developmental signees who started out at the UPW school (I decided to look it up and see who else of note worked that show: Franie Kazarian, Simon Dean, Rocky Romero, Mike Knox, Vic Grimes, Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe, and John Cena were all on the card. 2000/2001-era UPW had a ton of future stars come through the doors).
One of the XFL teams is already moving before it even starts. The San Jose Demons have now been renamed the San Francisco Demons and will be playing in San Fran after negotiations with Spartan Stadium in San Jose fell apart. Dave thinks it might be a bad move. San Jose is a wealthier community with a large population and their hockey and soccer franchises do huge business. San Francisco already has a major team in every sport and he doesn't know if a B-level football team is going to draw as well there as it would have in San Jose. He also notes that in the spring, the weather is a lot warmer in San Jose at night than it is in San Francisco, and California isn't exactly the type of place where people want to sit out in the cold weather at night and watch football games. This isn't Green Bay or Chicago where freezing to death for football is almost a tradition (the cities are, like, an hour apart so I can't imagine the weather is that much different? Although I guess San Francisco is right there on the bay so maybe wind? I dunno. Anyone from the area care to chime in?)
A New York newspaper reported that Vince McMahon tried to stop VH1 from airing an episode of "The List" because the show featured appearances by Kevin Nash, Booker T, Scott Steiner, Sting, and other WCW stars. VH1 is owned by Viacom, which now owns 3% of WWF's stock and McMahon decided to try to throw his weight around and get the episode canned. Didn't work and it actually was one of the highest rated episodes of the show ever. But he did succeed in getting VH1 to agree to not air reruns of that episode. A WWF spokesman responded to the story, saying, "It is highly unlikely that took place. It's not something we would do." But of course, you'll note that they didn't outright deny it and the idea that Vince McMahon wouldn't do something like that is laughable since he has a long history of doing exactly that sort of thing.
The Slam! Wrestling website wrote an article criticizing the WWF policy of not allowing wrestlers to do interviews with other websites without company approval because they see all other websites as competition to their own WWF.com site. The article noted they had an interview with Gerald Brisco awhile back and Brisco told them he could talk freely about his pre-WWF years but if it has to do with WWF, he'd have to clear it with the office. Jim Ross responded on his WWF website column, saying not a single interview request has come across their desk from any other wrestling websites. Dave talks about when the policy was put in place and says WWF told him he could still get anyone he wanted to interview on the Observer website, but he would need to go through the office first. Since that time, Dave says he's talked to wrestlers who agreed to appear, but when he tried to get it cleared by the office, it stalled and has been pending approval ever since with no answer sooooooo......
WWF is wanting Big Show to drop down to 400 pounds. At his heaviest in WCW he was 505 and currently weighs a legit 480.
Someone writes in with a conspiracy theory. He thinks Shane McMahon's death-defying fall from the TitanTron at Summerslam was done to prove a point given the upcoming Owen Hart wrongful death lawsuit, with the idea being that the WWF side can point to it as an example that, "See! Even Vince McMahon's son is sometimes asked to perform stunts like this and they're usually done safely." Dave responds, saying that normally he'd think that's reading too much into things. But the day after Summerslam, several people in WWF as well as a couple of legal experts he talked to all had basically the same theory and said they wouldn't be surprised if it gets brought up in the trial. But time will tell, Dave says.
Dave Lagana writes in, talking his experience working on "Friends" and talking about how most TV shows are written by writing teams and how stories are crafted in TV writing rooms and so on and so forth. Basically, it leads to the one big question every writer, booker, and performer should ask themselves: how will the audience react to the long-term story? Not how loud the momentary pop is or how much you were able to swerve the audience with a surprise that doesn't make any sense, etc. The point he's trying to make is that Vince Russo is doing literally everything wrong and he has no idea how to write television. He's also pretty fed up with Russo's constant everything-is-a-shoot booking, where they openly acknowledge scripts and bookers and shit in every segment. He's not the only one.
Lots of letters talking about what a total trainwreck WCW is. Russo isn't the only problem. From management to marketing, the ball is being dropped everywhere. None of the stories are coherent. Characters change gimmicks or go from face to heel from week-to-week with no explanation, fans have no idea what's happening. Wrestlers themselves are out of control backstage. Merchandising is dead. Basically, the ship is sinking and the worst part is that nobody seems to care. Everyone is just drilling more holes in the ship. Even when they luck into something that works, they always manage to fuck it up immediately. So there's all that. But also, a lot of piling on Russo from a lot of people who think he's killing the company.
MONDAY:Raw debuts on TNN, Steve Austin returns, ECW not yet cancelled on TNN after all, WWF Unforgiven fallout, and more...
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