Wrestling Observer Flashback – 02.10.97

Wrestling Observer Flashback – 02.10.97

Guys, it sounds like the USA Network might want to expand RAW to TWO HOURS? That’s crazy. Let’s hit the Flashback.

– After an experiment on the 02/03 show with going two hours, there’s been extensive talks between WWF and USA about making RAW into a permanent two hour show, going live head to head with Nitro. The holdup appears to be who will pay the extra $100,000 per week it’ll cost. (As opposed to now, when TV executives literally drive a dump truck of money up to Nick Khan’s house and pour it into his pool). The test show was the Skydome RAW from Toronto, which wasn’t even known to be a two hour show until 1/29.

– The push seems to be coming more from USA than the WWF, mostly because La Femme Nikita is getting murdered by Robin Hood in the ratings.

– So originally, the plan for the 2/3 show was to air the entire 1997 Royal Rumble in the one hour RAW timeslot, with the idea being that the most popular wrestling show in USA history was the 1988 Royal Rumble and they wanted to duplicate that success. But then for some CRAZY reason, probably because they’re CRAZY, the PPV companies complained very loudly about doing that. So “Royal Rumble Monday” ended up being a few 30 second clips of the show. But since they now wanted a two hour RAW and the Skydome show had a huge advance for a house show, it was turned into a TV taping instead.

– Over to Nitro, where WCW did the first sellout of the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis since March 1986, which had featured Jerry Lawler & Dutch Mantel v. Bill Dundee & Buddy Landel as a main event. “Hey, you should have seen the television show building up that match” notes Dave. (I did! Those shows were AMAZING although the blog stopped caring after the first couple of them, so I dropped them.).

– Meanwhile, the WWF drew 22,000 to Skydome, which Vince McMahon claimed was “the largest crowd in the history of Monday night television”. Vince also called it a “capacity crowd”, which is a laughable claim on its face given that it was in THE SKYDOME. (Also may I just take a moment to say FUCK YOU to Rogers for buying the rights to every goddamn arena and stadium in Canada? It’s bad enough that they have a near monopoly on cable service without also rubbing it in our faces by destroying all the cool arena names.).

– On the WWF side, Vince and JR spent the show snarking at Nitro for not delivering what they advertise, although remember that THEIR OWN SHOW was advertised as being the entire Royal Rumble match and then only ended up being a few 30 second clips, so they were hardly in a position to talk shit. (Never stopped anyone in wrestling before. Can you imagine if Twitter was around in 1997? My god.).

– Dave hated both shows, by the way. The Toronto show was dark and poorly mic’d. Nitro was Nitro.

– Also noted is that if the switch to two hour RAW goes through, that’s basically going to kill off Shotgun Saturday Night in its present format. Not a big loss because the show was terrible anyway, and talent hated the travel and expenses involved in going to New York when the downside guarantee was too low to pay for everything involved in getting there.

– Dave actually reviewed RAW, complete with star ratings! Best part was him complaining about the new fangled three-way rules, where it’s just all three guys in the ring at the same time, “aka the same totally illogical and lame WCW rules”. (You tell ‘em, Dave! I’m sure it’s just a fad anyway).

– Next up, Dave has an interesting business analysis, where he notes that although the perception is that WCW was getting creamed by WWF for years and then came from behind to take over, that’s actually just gaslighting by the WWF PR machine. In fact, WCW was beating WWF in cable ratings pretty handily over the years if you take into account that RAW was the only show for the WWF and WCW had all kinds of TBS programming added together. It’s just that now it’s much more pronounced with the head to head aspect of Nitro.

– Also, in another weird stat, the WWF had a really strong year at the box office, while less people were watching on TV than ever before, showing that there’s really no correlation between people wanting to watch on TV and people wanting to pay money to see the shows live. The live numbers are once place where WWF was beating WCW consistently over the past year, also thanks to WWF charging higher ticket prices. (Man, looking at the gate totals over the years for WCW during the hot streak, one thing is abundantly clear: THEY SHOULD HAVE CHARGED HIGHER PRICES. WCW absolutely left millions of dollars on the table because they undercharged for their tickets and suddenly lost all that revenue when the product cooled off.).

– To AAA, where “Razor Ramon” and “Diesel” are now stinking up Mexico in six-man matches with Jake Roberts. Razor in particular is said to look terrible, nearly killing Pierroth with his version of the Razor’s Edge at one point. Also the crowds don’t care about them and Jake hasn’t meant anything to the promotion in years.

– The proxy war between WWF and WCW continues in Mexico as well, with Antonio Pena getting named as “President of WWF Latino” in a new announcement, which was supposed to be one-upping Konnan before his announcement of WCW Latino. Pena, classy as ever, did a press conference where he ran down Konnan and WCW, calling Eric Bischoff a “second rate wrestling announcer who doesn’t know anything about wrestling”. (That’s unfair. He’s more third-rate as an announcer.). He also went after Kevin Sullivan with the hot and spicy takes, calling him an “old man who has now business wrestling and is only on television because he’s the booker.” (Well…I mean…he’s not WRONG). Also he went after Nancy, calling her a no-talent who is only on TV because she’s married to the booker. (OK, that’s a bit much now.).

– Funny bit from All Japan, as Dave talks about Yoshihiro Takayama coming in and describes him as “a tall, geeky wrestler from UWFi”.

– To Memphis, where the exodus continues. Randy Hales and Cory Maclin have both left the promotion in protest of new “general manager” Larry Burton. With everyone leaving in disgust, they ended up hiring a couple of local sports hosts to run the TV show. Apparently they were so bad that fans thought they were doing a spoof of Lance Russell and Dave Brown.

– Randy Hales in particular was very bitter in his departure, telling people that he’s upset at being 35 years old and having spent his life on the road giving his life and weekends to a business that gave him nothing back and left him with nothing to show for it. (Yeah…that’s pretty much wrestling in a nutshell unless you’re Roman Reigns or John Cena, I’m afraid.).

– They’re so hard up for talent in Memphis that they brought back Billy Travis on the last show, and actually had him go on TV and admit that he’s been in drug rehab for the past two years. And then did an angle with PG-13 where they made fun of Travis and pretended that they were giving him money for drugs. (It must have been even harder to be a drug addict while working for Jerry Jarrett, because payoffs would have been barely enough to cover your daily fix. You’d need a second job just to get high).

– To ECW, where Paul Heyman officially announced to the fans that the first PPV would air on 4/13 and be called “Barely Legal”. They were in New York state, and deliberately toned down the blood and brawling on the show so as not to get lumped in with the UFC as a part of the witch hunt from New York politicians. (Turned out to be a smart move on their part.).

– In one interesting angle from the show that ended up having much longer term impact than anyone expected at the time, Buh Buh Dudley turned heel to join with estranged brother D-Von and Joel Gertner, forming a new tag team as a result. (I would never in a million years have guessed that they would help change the business as a team and be around for decades afterwards.).

– In a shocking coincence of timing, Dennis Coraluzzo is going to be promoting an Eddie Gilbert Memorial Brawl on 4/12 in New Jersey, which is (checks notes) the night before the ECW PPV. It’ll be headlined by Dan Severn and Jim Cornette and have a convention honoring Gilbert along with Dick Murdoch.

– Apparently there’s a new documentary being executive produced by Ron Howard, said to be a cross between “Hoop Dreams” and “Pumping Iron”, following young wrestlers who haven’t made it to the big time and have a passion for pro wrestling. (So yeah…this ended up going in a COMPLETELY different direction and turned into “Beyond the Mat” when all was said and done!).

– To WCW, where Dave wants to reiterate how much he hated Nitro.

– Expect Curt Hennig to debut in May.

– Dennis Rodman came to WCW and said that he had a $500,000 offer to do Summerslam in a match where he’d be in Goldust’s corner, and gave WCW the chance to match it. (Turned out to be money well spent on WCW’s part.).

– Arn Anderson is out with a hand injury of some kind, which might be serious enough to keep him out for a while. (Or, as it turned out, forever. Hopefully they’ve got someone to take his spot.).

– Rey Mysterio saw a doctor recently, who told him to get knee surgery that would keep him out 4 to 6 months but prolong his career in the long term. Rey decided against it and will instead work with a heavy knee brace because “that’s how 22 year olds think”. (On one hand, the doctor was right, but on the other hand, Rey is still around 25 years later, so I guess we’re all right!).

– To the WWF, where Blackjack Lanza is doing vignettes from his ranch, leading to the introduction of Bradshaw and Windham as the New Blackjacks. Apparently Mulligan wants nothing to do with it.

– Marc Mero and Sable aren’t as over as the WWF would like, so they’ll be getting character makeovers soon. (Well one of them certainly got over.).

– And finally Bret Hart went off on Hulk Hogan in his Calgary Sun column, saying that seeing himself plod along like Hogan as an old pathetic embarrassment would be too much for him to take. And he would never go to WCW and get lost in the shuffle under Hulk, much like Hall and Nash are currently experiencing. “They smile when they go to the bank but they cry themselves to sleep”, Bret finishes.

Dave: “Somehow, I don’t picture those two guys right now crying themselves to sleep over their career choice.”

AND THAT’S THE NEWS AND I’M OUTTA HERE.