Wrestling Observer Flashback – 02.03.97

Wrestling Observer Flashback – 02.03.97

Man, all of a sudden Dave thinks the Royal Rumble might have been underrated for some strange reason.

– But first, Dr. Jerry Graham suffered a stroke on 12/15 and passed away on 1/24 as a result, at the age of 68. Sadly, despite the large amount of fake Graham family members in the world of wrestling, the convalescent home was unable to find any legitimate family members to notify, and he passed alone. After a top run as a heel team with Eddie Graham in the WWF, Jerry ballooned to 400 pounds and still got chance after chance from friend Vince McMahon Sr, who would bring him back until addictions got the best of him again.

– In a very fitting tribute to the man, Dave notes that Graham would frequently be arrested in California for drunk and disorderly, where he would give the police his standard alias of Big Dick Hertz.

– In a story that ended up having huge repercussions for the sport, New York state reversed their previous decision to regulate UFC in the state and have now moved to ban it entirely instead. Apparently Governor Pataki and mayor Rudy Guilliani are worried about the effect that fighting would have on impressionable youth in the area. (Yes, Rudy Guilliani, famous for his strong moral stances these days.).

– To Memphis, which continues to rapidly fall apart, this time resulting in Dave Brown abruptly quitting after more than 30 years as the voice of the promotion. Apparently there was a blow up with new general manager Larry Burton, who now heat with pretty much everyone in the entire territory except for Jerry Lawler. Brown was so pissed off that he didn’t even do the 1/25 show, deciding instead that it was time to just “take his Saturday mornings back” and leave for good.

– And now, it’s time to talk about nWo Souled Out.

– Dave calls the show at worst a turning point in the wrestling war, and at best a really bad night for a hot gimmick. In fact, he calls it the single worst PPV show in the history of wrestling.

(Indeed there are more to come…)

– On the bright side, the show sold out Cedar Rapids, IA, with 5120 paying $68209. Unfortunately they likely all felt ripped off just like home viewers. But what the show really proved was that just sticking the NWO name on a bunch of wrestlers on a show branded as an NWO show can’t get anyone over. Hall and Nash were wildly over, but everyone else was either booed or ignored. In particular, Ted Dibiase and Eric Bischoff came off as a couple of doofuses in their 40s trying to act like cool teenagers. “Sweet?” notes Dave, “NOT!”

(I bet that’s why Eric has been carrying a grudge against Dave for the past 30 years.).

– Dave also rips on the beauty pageant and “washed up” band Jackal. (HEY! Those guys are awesome and they spawned an even better spinoff band called 40 Foot Ringo, leave them alone.). Also they managed to kill the Nick Patrick gag dead over the course of the show. Dave is pretty sure that if someone wanted to put on the worst show possible on purpose, they could have put on worse matches, but they’d have trouble putting on a worse show overall. (A little show called HEROES OF WRESTLING would disagree with him on that one.).

1. Masahiro Chono pinned Chris Jericho in 11:09 after a Yakuza Kick. Bischoff ragged on other promotions “giving away tickets at 7-11 to get people to come to their show”. Dave notes that this is a pretty sick burn against the WWF for only getting 48,000 paid for the Rumble. Jericho fell through a table and Chono put him away with the kick for the pin. **
2. Big Bubba beat Hugh Morrus in a Mexican Death Match in 9:03. Morrus was subbing for Konnan, which is why there were no Mexicans in this Mexican death match. (Honestly the least of the issues with it.). Dave notes that Morrus was dressed like a Dudley Boy, and they should limit ripping off gimmicks to good ones. Bubba ran him down with a motorcycle and won by countout in 9:03 thanks to Patrick not counting anything for Morrus.
3. Jeff Jarrett beat Michael Wallstreet in 9:22. Match was boring, neither guy is over, and Jarrett looked like the ultimate geek. Debra made Mongo hit Wallstreet with the briefcase and then forced Nick Patrick into making the count. DUD
4. Buff Bagwell pinned Scotty Riggs in 13:51. Dave calls Riggs so “not over that he’s under”. He does think that Bagwell looks very good in his new role, which saw him debut the Buff Blockbuster in a very cool finish. *1/4
5. Scott Norton beat DDP via countout in 9:39. Sting showed up in the balcony but otherwise wasn’t involved in the show. (Smart man.). The NWO showed up in the middle of the match and gave DDP a shirt, but he tore it up and ran into the crowd, thus losing the match by countout. ½*.
6. The Steiners beat Scott Hall & Kevin Nash to apparently win the tag team titles in 14:43. “Better than you’d think” notes Dave in glowing praise. Mostly heat on Rick in a basic tag team match. After a ref bump, Hall gave Scott the Edge, but Rick bulldogged Hall off the top and referee Randy Anderson ran in from the crowd and made the pin, giving them the titles. **1/4
7. Eddie Guerrero beat Syxx in a ladder match to “win” the US title back in 13:48. An excellent match killed by the announcers. Bischoff spent all his time putting over his own karate skills and pretending Scott Hall invented ladder matches. Dave notes that this wasn’t as good as the famous ladder matches, but it was on the level of the house show ladder matches. Guerrero kicked Syxx off the ladder and climbed down with the belt to win. ****
8. Hulk Hogan and the Giant went to no decision in 11:00. Hogan was moving in underwater slo-mo. Giant got the chokeslam but Nick Patrick said Hogan kicked out at 2, and then tried again and injured his shoulder so he couldn’t finish the count. And then all the NWO jobbers ran in and got beat up before the Outsiders sprayed “NWO 4 Life” on the Giant’s ass and back to end the show. -*1/2

– Of minor note in Mexico, fake Razor & Diesel have now been sent to AAA and are teaming with Jake Roberts in what Dave notes are going to be horrendous matches. (Razor of course never returned from his excursion south of the border, while Diesel came back a changed man.).

– Lance Storm should be debuting in ECW soon, but otherwise nothing is happening at the moment.

– Tito Santana and his wife opened up a beauty salon in New Jersey, and Tito is working on becoming a teacher.

– To WCW, where Bischoff reversed the tag title change as expected and gave the belts back to the Outsiders. Oh and laughed at Randy Anderson for having cancer. (That’s certainly a “joke” that didn’t age well.).

– Ace Darling & Devon Storm teaming up on Nitro as “The Extreme” was a cheap dig at ECW, in case it wasn’t obvious. The also appeared on the WCW Saturday Night tapings first as “The Extremists” and then “The Extreme Team”.

– Randy Savage’s new contract is reportedly for reduced dates, and $1,000,000 per year. (He’s no Mercedes Mone but not bad.). The rate is justified by the Slim Jims sponsorship covering roughly $500,000 per year by itself. Nash and Hall are both claiming that they got raises as a result of Savage’s new contract, which would bring them to $900,000 per year.

– WCW is doing huge advances in San Francisco and Atlanta for upcoming shows, with people literally camping out in advance of the box office opening for pre-sales. With over 3300 tickets sold on the first day for both shows, it smashes previous records for one day sales in both. (But can they sell out Wembley?).

– Jacques Rougeau will be holding a joint press conference on 2/4 with WCW, to announce a show on 4/11 in Montreal. Main events are Jacques v. Hogan and The Giant v. Pierre Carl Ouellet. This probably explains why Jacques Sr. was at the Rumble, in order for the WWF to head off any Rougeau-related excitement and pretend like they were still the hip thing in Montreal.

– To the WWF, where the 1/20 RAW threw everything at the wall and still got murdered by Nitro. This was a major cause of concern for the USA, and rumors are circulating that major changes to the show are in the works. The show might go live more frequently, as well as expanding out to two hours to compete with WCW. Which is funny, notes Dave, because when Nitro was launched live at two hours every week, everyone on the WWF side laughed at them for wasting so much money for nothing.

– There’s some confusion about what the buyrate for the Royal Rumble actually was, with the WWF claiming at .08, which was supposedly a 20% drop from last year. However, last year was claimed to be a 0.12, so the math ain’t mathing there. More reputable sources claim that it’s actually 0.06. For reference, Dave notes, every 0.01 represents $325,000 in revenue for the company. (That’s actually a handy bit of math!).

– The WWF is demanding a retraction from Spin magazine after they did a story about the steroid trials and noted “Vince McMahon barely escaped conviction in a 1994 federal drug trafficking trial”. (Man we long for the days when the worst thing you could say about Vince was that he might have dealt drugs.).

– The WWF did a press conference in Toronto on 1/27 and introduced the world to TIGER ALI SINGH. There was also talk of former football man Glenn Kulka debuting at the event, but that proved to be untrue.

– The live caller format of Livewire appears to be dead for a million reasons you can already guess, with the show going back to the previous Mania format of wacky hosts presenting matches from RAW. Specifically the production of Shotgun every week was killing the production crew and Livewire was the show chosen to go.

– With TV stations balking at the language and violence on the previous Shotgun shows, the latest one was very toned down, but the matches were all really bad.

– The roster has been decimated by the flu lately, including Shawn Michaels, British Bulldog and Vader. (Hopefully wrestling won’t face anything like that again for a long time.).

– The Skydome RAW show on 1/31 had an advance of 19440 tickets. (None of which were given out at 7-11 I’m assuming. Also what a waste of a huge crowd that show was.).

– And finally, Sunny surpassed Elle MacPherson and Teri Hatcher to become the most downloaded celebrity on America Online this week. (And now she can tell that to the guards to hopefully get some extra commissary for the week.).

And that’s the news and I’m OUTTA HERE.