Wrestling Observer Flashback – 12.16.96
Can I make it more than two weeks in a row? TUNE INTO NITRO TO FIND OUT!
– In our top story this week, UFC presented the Ultimate Ultimate 2! Dave is really into this shit all of a sudden. I’m not.
– Anyway, moving on.
– Hey, let’s jump right to Konnan’s Promo Azteca group because there’s like 10 pages of UFC discussion to start the issue and ain’t no one got time for that. So Vampiro continues to slag Konnan to anyone who will listen, but now he’s blaming Perro Aguayo for saying shit on behalf of Konnan and saying that fans all treat Aguayo “like a God” and so they all take his side of the story like it’s gospel. Apparently the whole “Konnan is copying my arm tattoo gimmick” is TOTALLY OVERBLOWN and Vampiro is just working an angle, according to Vampiro.
– Well I’m sure we’re all glad that has been cleared up.
– In the continuing love story between Antonio Pena and Vince McMahon, Pena’s “Super Luchas” magazine is now giving “extensive coverage” to the WWF as Pena does everything in his power to suck up to Vince McMahon in advance of the Royal Rumble.
– With the All Japan tour not going great, Sabu is trying to get into AAA instead.
– To Japan, where Kenta Kobashi’s first Triple Crown title defense will be against Misawa in January. Dave is pretty sure Misawa will be winning it at that point.
– Back to Sabu, as the reasoning for him doing all the jobs on the All Japan tour is that Baba is testing him in advance of offering him a deal moving forward. Supposedly there’s a 26 week deal on the table for him, although he hasn’t signed yet.
– Dory Funk Jr. made a grandstand challenge in the Japanese media, declaring himself a free agent and seemingly angling for a match with either Baba or Inoki in a “shoot” fight. If it happens, it will likely be against Inoki because the relationship with Baba fell apart over promises to book Dory on the most recent tour, which never happened. (They didn’t seriously run Dory Funk Jr. v. Antonio Inoki in 1997, did they?)
– New Japan will be trying to push the young team of Manabu Nakanishi & Satoshi Kojima as a main event tag team, as they went over current tag team champions Chono & Tenzan in a non-title match to begin the push. (Maybe they should try mixing those teams up a bit and see if it works better?)
– After that last bit about Funk and Inoki, Dave also notes that Tokyo Pro Wrestling did a show on 12/7, and during an Abdullah the Butcher match on the undercard, HARLEY RACE ran out and brawled with Abby to apparently set up a future match with them for the promotion. (Could he even move properly at that point? He could hardly even make it onto TV by the end of his WCW run)
– Memphis is back around 300 fans for their last show. It is what it is. (Sounds like an AEW taping, AM I RIGHT FELLAS?)
– A guy named Larry Burton, who was previously involved in wrestling as real life manager of Matt Borne, is a friend of Jerry Lawler and has been running some aspects of the Memphis promotion and apparently drawing heat as a result. (Low key big story with that one, as Burton was the guy who teamed up with Lawler to essentially run a grift on a series of investors, each of which was convinced that they were buying some significant percentage of the USWA territory, to the point where the “ownership” of the footage and trademarks is so muddied with legal nonsense today that we’ll never see it resolved again.).
– The current direction for the promotion, to give you an idea of why they’re on their deathbed, is that a good portion of the heel side is working on behalf of “The Nation of Domination”, with Randy Hales now introduced as “Randy X” in a spoof Malcolm X. Also PG-13 have become white rappers as a part of the group. (Well at least one of those did make it to WWF.).
– To ECW, where Paul Heyman has finally decided for real that the date of the first ECW PPV will absolutely be 3/30 and it’s set in stone. Or maybe 4/13.
– JT Smith has left the promotion again, so David Morton Tyler Jericho has been teaming with Little Guido as Davey Paisano, and they’re the new FBI.
– Debuting on the last show was the former Boo Radley in SMW, now going by the name “Balls Mahoney”, doing a vaguely gay gimmick. Paul Heyman apparently told him NOT to play it gay but he did it anyway. (Oh yeah, I forgot that the initial character was pretty different from what it turned into!).
– The latest member of the BWO is video dealer Rob Feinstein, who is going by “3 1/2” (I’m assuming because that’s the age of…)
(Duly noted.)
– Meanwhile, Shane Douglas has a ton of heat on him right now from the fans, but that didn’t stop him from going into the crowd with Francine in a match with Tommy Dreamer, triggering a brawl that doesn’t appear to be an angle. To his credit, Tommy is very good at defusing these kinds of sitations and managed to calm down the rabid crowd and get the match back into the ring, although not before someone threw a bottle at Douglas and possibly injured him.
– Terry Funk returns to ECW on 1/11, although with Lance Storm potentially. Mike Awesome has also been talking about coming in.
– Speaking of Rob Feinstein, he’s been trying to sell tapes of the Mass Transit incident but both Paul Heyman and Tod Gordon have made it clear that it’s not going to happen. (Yeah well I literally have a tape of the Mass Transit incident that I got from RF Video so I guess we know who won THAT argument.).
– In a uniquely bizarre situation even by pro wrestling standards, a 12/8 indie show in Woodbridge VA featured a no-show…from the promoter. So with no one to run the show and no one paying the talent, the BWO guys who were booked there just kind of took over the show and did joke matches to amuse themselves. This included two of the guys, Stevie Richards and Blue Meanie, doing a match and pretending to be Hogan v. Warrior at WM6 after losing a 30 second match to the Gangstas, and then later passing a hat around the crowd and answering questions for $1 each. Axl Rotten was asked how he got the scars on his arm, and he answered that he taped a razor blade to his fingers and cut it himself while someone else pretended to hit him with a baseball bat.
(I mean…he was certainly being honest about that one!).
– To WCW, where the crew was all clowning on Lee Marshall after Nitro’s live airing. As usual Marshall had done a “WCW Road Report” from Pensacola, but then miraculously appeared for the live crowd in record time in North Carolina. Even ring announcer Dave Penzer was cracking jokes about it for the crowd.
– The new nWo Nitro show has been delayed until 12/23 due to a holdup involving the graphics package. (Maybe they should sign CM Punk for it. I hear he’s available.)
– The whole Benoit v. Sullivan feud continues to get weirder, as they constantly make allusions to Benoit stealing Nancy Sullivan from Kevin, despite the fact that no one on TV has ever said that Nancy and Kevin are even married in the first place. Dave notes that Kevin’s interview on Nitro “was just on the verge of making sense” when it came to an abrupt end.
– WCW’s Germany tour is a complete disaster, with most of the crowds drawing less than 1000 people. (Which once again confirms my theory, Germans hate WCW.).
– With AAA making the big play to get their guys into the WWF, Bischoff made sure to get all the AAA wrestlers in WCW signed to contracts. This includes Rey Mysterio, Psicosis, Juventud Guerrera, Super Calo, La Parka, Villano IV, Halloween and Damian. (Really dodged a bullet of having them all show up in the Royal Rumble like Pena promised!).
– Hogan’s latest hustle is going on the road and selling “Thunder Mixers”, which are actually just cheap blenders.
– David Sammartino got a tryout on the WCW Saturday Night tapings and looked…OK.
– To the WWF, where they’re doing this new thing where they go to the Middle East and put on sold shows for rich oil barons, thus making tons of money despite middling crowds. (I don’t think that strategy will ever catch on.).
– Despite the wild promises from Pena, the only AAA talent currently being used are Mil Mascaras, Pierroth and Cibernetico.
– The WWF recently took out an ad in the Hollywood Reporter advertising for a Director of Media Relations. (Oh man the jokes just write themselves with that one.).
– Dave still doesn’t know what the deal with this Shotgun Saturday Night thing is going to be exactly, since they’re keeping everything about it super secret and it’s only got clearance on something like 10 or 20 stations at the moment. Dave thinks it’ll be done from New York nightclubs in some fashion and involve AAA talent in the first show.
– And final, initial reports on Braccus after the house show tryouts are said to be “encouraging”. (Duly noted. I’ll guess we’ll just let it play out and see where it goes).
And that’s the news and I’M OUTTA HERE.