Wrestling Observer Flashback – 03.03.97 (Part 2)

Wrestling Observer Flashback – 03.03.87 (Part 2)

I’m gonna be honest, I’m not sure how much more of this one I can stretch into a full Flashback, but I’ll do my best and maybe use triple spacing or something.

WHEN WE LAST LEFT OFF: SUPERBRAWL VII HAPPENED! KEN SHAMROCK SIGNED WITH THE WWF! ERIC BISCHOFF TRIED TO BUY NEW JAPAN!

– In what Dave describes as “yet another of the weekly versions of the most important Monday night in history”, the WWF loaded up the 02/24 episode of RAW with every crazy twist and gimmick they could think up. We had:

– The debut of ECW wrestlers on WWF TV!

– Ken Shamrock debuts!

– The return of the Road Warriors!

– The return to the Manhattan Center!

– Sadly for them, WCW countered their attempts at ratings by merely existing, and once again destroyed them with a 2.97 rating to RAW’s 2.43. (Well at least they’d figure out a way to counter WCW existing within a few years.)

– Oddly enough, Dave HATED the Manhattan Center RAW, noting that it “was a romantic myth that couldn’t hold up to the fantasy”. (Much like CM Punk’s morals.) Also the smaller building looked bush league next to WCW’s Sacramento arena show for Nitro. Even worse, the crowd basically ignored everything WWF-related on the RAW show and only cheered for the ECW appearances, which had a tired-looking Vince coming off even more tired and beleaguered. Even scarier, the ratings were better specifically for the ECW segments, and even more specifically for the BWO segments, which actually got the RAW show as close to beating Nitro as it was ever going to get on the night. (See? They should have put the ECW title on Stevie at Barely Legal! I’ll die on that hill!)

– Even more mind-boggling was Vince’s decision to allow Paul Heyman the chance to plug his Barely Legal PPV on WWF TV, with a flat and lackluster Wrestlemania still coming up and in need of excitement. Dave praised the work of Jerry Lawler in burying ECW as a heel to set up a feud with them, although he does note that Lawler legitimately hates ECW and Heyman and thinks they really are a bunch of bush league crap. (Yeah I think we all figured that out.). And if he ever does go to ECW, which he would because he’s a pro, he’d instantly be the hottest heel in their history. (Ding ding ding!)

– They’re planned to return on 3/10, but the feeling among people in the industry is that they should just pull the plug on the relationship now because there’s not really any way for the WWF to “win” in this case.

And now for…

– To Japan, where yet another startup company looks to launch with a Tokyo Dome show on 6/20, headlined by Takada v. Rickson Gracie. There’s some question about this whole deal since no one can figure out exactly where the money is coming from here and the people running it have no promotional experience. But it’s supposed to be replacing the UWFI and might be named “W-1” or “U-MAX”. (Sounds like a rejected pair of names for a new streaming service. But believe it or not, this is the initial planning stages of the company that came to be the Pride Fighting Championships later in the year!)

– Speaking of fighting leagues, with Ken Shamrock gone to the WWF and Bas Rutten with one foot out the door, this seems to be hints of the end for Pancrase coming soon. (It wasn’t, but I guess they went through a drastic change in presentation by the end of the year and shifted from a pro wrestling presentation to a more standard mixed martial arts promotion)

– In FMW, the original Mr. Pogo passed the Mr. Pogo name and gimmick to a new generation of Mr. Pogo, now being played by Gosaku Goshogawara, who is now working as Mr. Pogo and using the same weapons. Because the original Pogo is retired for good, you see. (Unsurprisingly, the original was back by July and the other guy was back to being a jobber after like a month.).

– Apparently the WCW Women’s Cruiserweight title is a thing that’s being contested in a real tournament in Japan on Gaea shows, with the finals being Sonoko Kato v. Meiko Satomura. (WHAT? She’s been around THAT long?!) The title has literally been mentioned one time on WCW TV, on an episode of Worldwide, and then never acknowledged again. (I feel like this warrants a WCW Deep Cuts episode from Tom)

– Fuyuki is starting a new promotion called PLAY on 3/29 with IWA guys on top. (CHECK THE ADJECTIVE!)

– To Memphis, where switching from weekday to weekend shows has actually juiced attendance from 300 to 1200 without doing literally anything else.

– To ECW, where they did the Cyberslam show on 2/21, featuring Sunny making an appearance and managing to kill Chris Candido’s match with Sabu by getting into a screaming match with a heckler. The crowd was already kind of killed off because they opened with a RVD & Sabu v. Eliminators ladder match and no one could follow it.

– The former Kloudi, who now goes by Jimmy Shoulders, debuts with a new gimmick in April. (Even Heyman couldn’t save THAT career, I’d bet.)

– To WCW, where they launched an NWO Hotline and it completely bombed, doing the same business in one month as the normal WCW Hotline does in a day. (Was it hair care tips from Kevin Nash?)

– WCW booked the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany for a pair of dates later in the year, and then by a STAGGERING COINCIDENCE, the WWF decided they wanted to book three dates at the arena, at which point the arena cancelled the WCW shows. (Good thing we’re past that kind of petty behavior now!)

– Big Bubba suffered an unknown back injury and he’ll be out for six weeks. (Probably hurt himself laying down on the mat while the ref counted three every week.)

– Apparently the main event of Uncensored is going to be “some kind of three team deal with the heavyweight and tag titles at stake with Piper’s team, Hogan’s team and Luger’s team.” (Gosh that severely undersells the ridiculous nature of what it ended up turning into.)

– A very interesting legal battle going on between Mark Madden and the WWF right now over his Hotline reports, as Mark is claiming “journalistic shield” to prevent revealing his sources to Jerry McDevitt in discovery. However, the WWF’s argument is that Madden is clearly doing the hotline reports as entertainment and not real reporting, so it shouldn’t apply. Basically the WWF is suing for defamation over things said on the hotline, but if they admit that Madden is not a real journalist, then it’s not defamation by definition because you can’t sue for something that’s part of the show. (I don’t actually know how this one turned out, but regardless, no one confuses Mark Madden with a real journalist anyway.)

– To the WWF, where Marc Mero tore his ACL and he’s going to be out for at least six months. (And that one pretty much derailed the rest of his career and he was never able to fully recover from it.)

– The Shotgun Saturday Night experiment is now over completely, as that show and Superstars are now exactly the same, just with different voiceovers.

– Even though Paul Heyman and Jerry Lawler took some REALLY inside shots at each other on RAW (Heyman joked about the “neighborhood watch” for Lawler and Lawler responded by bringing up the time he cracked Heyman’s jaw in 1987 with one punch) they’re 100% professional behind the scenes and worked it all out in advance.

– 2/20 in Knoxville was an SMW reunion show, unofficially. They even had Freddy Joe Floyd working as “Tracy Smothers” on the show and TL Hopper working as “Dirty White Boy”. DWB even got a win over Buddy Landel in the main event!

– Miguel Perez debuted for the WWF on 2/22, after making himself something of a star with WCW execs after a great tryout on Nitro some months back. But then they offered him a Disney taping gig and forgot to make an actual contract offer, so he went to the WWF and they signed him instead. (That math checks out.).

– Yokozuna has apparently lost more than 200 pounds via fluid loss, and they’re hopeful that adding liposuction will bring him down to a manageable weight again. (I think someone got worked with that report)

– Dan Severn had a meeting with the WWF but nothing is happening yet.

– Brian Pillman will hopefully be starting after Wrestlemania.

– And finally, Davey Boy Smith is expected to win the new European title in the tournament. (That’s the kind of hard hitting prediction that makes the Observer so great sometimes.)

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