Wrestling Observer Flashback – 03.10.97

Wrestling Observer Flashback – 03.10.97

The lineup for Wrestlemania 13 is now set! People don’t seem to care! Dave sure loves him some Ken Shamrock though. LET’S FLASHBACK!

– In the top story, the WWF announced the complete WM13 card on Chicago TV over the past weekend, and it’s pretty whack, as the kids say. Really sus. Not exactly the bee’s knees. (OK I made those up.) Besides the submission match and WWF title match, we’ve got Rocky v. Sultan, Owen & Davey v. Vader & Mankind, LOD & Ahmed v. NOD, Hunter v. Goldust, Flash Funk v. Fake Diesel and a four corners tag match. Response has been underwhelming so far.

– There’s a feeling of momentum lacking going into this one with a lackluster lineup, and Dave thinks it’s a safe bet that the buyrate is going to be way down from anything in recent history for the show. (Yup. Also you might say “It just doesn’t feel like WM season”). Tickets are doing fine, but again, not Wrestlemania numbers.

– There’s an argument that Shawn exiting the show beforehand is hurting the build, but the decision was already made to go with Undertaker v. Sid before any of that happened and at best he’d have been in the semi-main against Bret Hart. Dave isn’t sure where Austin would have fit in. (Really? WEEKS of building to the Bulldog match that went nowhere didn’t clue him in at the time?)

– Dave wants to talk some more about Ken Shamrock’s jump to the WWF and it’s his newsletter, so why not. Some people have portrayed his new career as being afraid of Mark Coleman or whatever, but really it’s about the money. Because, as Dave notes, no holds barred fighting in general is hanging on by a thread at the moment with UFC buyrates stagnant and other fighting leagues dropping like flies. (What a crazy time when someone would be forced to jump FROM UFC because the promotion wasn’t making money.).

– Why WWF and not New Japan, where he’d be pushed to World champion immediately? Money money and money.

– Meanwhile in the WWF, they’re not looking for a “top guy” to build around, and in fact the long term plan is to build around a group of “top guys” who can all take turns at the top and headline shows as needed. (Unless of course one guy suddenly got over to the point where they’d have no choice but to build the entire company around him, and maybe one other guy, to the exclusion of nearly everyone else. BUT HOW LIKELY IS THAT?)

– Years earlier, George Scott tried to turn Shamrock into the modern Ricky Steamboat in North Carolina, but then the promotion went under. (There’s a lesson there, I guess.) Regardless pushing Ken as a white meat babyface is not the key to making him a star. (Didn’t stop them from trying)

– Basically they need to educate the fanbase about submissions and portray Ken as the master of them. (It kind of worked but ironically didn’t pay off until Kurt Angle eclipsed Shamrock as the true master of them a few years later.).

– Oh yeah let’s move onto the 3/3 Nitro from the Omni, which was billed as “The Nitro You Would Never Forget” and it certainly lived up to that promise. Despite a sellout of the Omni, the first legit one since the days of the Dusty booking Starrcades, and a whopping three point ratings win over RAW on the night, the only thing people were talking about was Roddy Piper dropping one of the biggest turds of the Monday Night Wars. And it was so bad that the normally clueless WCW brass actually saw how bad it was WHILE IT WAS GOING ON and immediately scrambled for damage control before the show was even over.

– BUT FIRST! Dave would like to drop this week’s BECAUSE WCW moment of zen. The Omni was actually a legit sellout of 13693, which is pretty impressive, but the problem is that since it was based in Atlanta, all the WCW executives and sponsors and beancounters all demanded free tickets for themselves and their families and friends, so in fact the company ended up being forced by TBS to hold back THREE THOUSAND tickets for freebies, leaving only 10,000 for actual fans to buy. (God how did this poor company EVER make money? It’s a literal miracle they were ever allowed to turn a profit at all. Also not making a equivalency here, but there’s sure some parallels with the way TKO is treating WWE shows in this fashion as well.)

– Also while Dave avoids talking about the Piper thing for a bit longer, the ratings were a clobbering unlike anything seen so far.

– So Nitro destroyed RAW despite the Piper…whatever it was…particularly the quarter hour with the Piper…thing…where Nitro actually TRIPLED RAW, 4.5 to 1.5 at one point. Dave credits the Piper segment as being so terrible and such a car wreck that people were actually unable to look away from the segment, thus increasing ratings.

(Oh my god it’s like the secret origin of a terrible Bond villain or something)

– OK let’s talk about the Piper segment, unless Dave has more tangents about ratings or attendance or Ken fucking Shamrock to get into beforehand.

(checks to make sure)

– Nope, we’re clear. So the idea was it was a 20 minute long angle, in which Piper had the simple job of introducing a four man team for Uncensored, where he’d bring out six contenders and fans would vote on them. Somehow this simple idea got turned into an epic catastrophe. Basically what happened was that the normally bulletproof Piper, who could normally ramble for 10 minutes about nothing and still get over with the fans, got exposed here and the crowd stopped buying into him. The original idea for the match was for the third team to be Sting’s group of four, but since Piper did such a good number for Superbrawl, they postponed the Sting angle yet again (keep in mind we’re only in MARCH at this point and Dave is already complaining about how drawn out the Sting angle has become!) and swapped Piper in instead. So Piper, working with complete creative control of his contract, decided to work the show in exchange for being allowed to pick four of his friends to work with as favors to them. (Truly this must be the biggest controversy about creative control in 1997.) Piper actually wanted to get John Tenta onto the show because WCW had stopped using him. (He could always go back to the WWF, I guess. Couldn’t be any worse than this for him!)

– Piper brought out a guy from the Power Plant and the fans didn’t really understand the concept about voting thumbs up or thumbs down, but Piper beat him up and he got a thumbs down anyway. Second guy was another huge bodybuilder from the Power Plant who also got dispatched easily. Then the segment went barrelling downhill, as Piper brought out his legit gofer and bodyguard, who was dressed like a leprechaun boxer of some kind. Dave notes that the joke backstage is that he was Piper’s own version of Brutus Beefcake. The fans booed it soundly but they were supposed to cheer (BIZARROWORLD!) So Piper chastised the crowd for being “too hard” on the guy and gave him another shot, but now the dude was so blown up that he couldn’t even lift his arms and had to take his gloves off. Next up, Piper brought out an actor friend who was really tall, doing a martial arts gimmick, but now PIPER was the one who was completely blown up. And then poor John Tenta came out at the end as a “sumo wrestler” and the segment was already dead in the water ages ago and WCW was panicking. The fear was that it may have destroyed Piper’s future drawing power for good. (And there was something to that. He certainly reached that level again for WCW.).

– So the working plan, if someone can talk Piper into it, is to dump the whole team of losers and swap in the Four Horsemen as the third team before the PPV.

– Also, this was supposed to be the show where Ted Turner appeared on TV to fire Eric Bischoff, but then Ted decided he wanted nothing to do with a wrestling angle and sent Harvey Schiller instead. Unfortunately, despite being fired, Bischoff completely no-sold the angle by the end of the show and just pretended himself and Hogan were still working an angle with Ted Turner. (Sounds like a very Hogan way to play it, actually.).

– Meanwhile, RAW featured a European title tournament that culminated in a ****1/2 classic with British Bulldog beating Owen Hart in the finals of a show taped 2/26 in Germany. Dave thought that the show was lacking atmosphere and kind of took the match down a notch as a result. The European title will carry on and be the fourth singles title in the WWF moving forward. (OH MY GOD! Can you imagine FOUR singles titles in a promotion? Talk about overkill.)

– RAW was the better show overall but Dave is still mystified as to why Vince is letting Paul Heyman walk all over his show and promote ECW Barely Legal when Wrestlemania is dying on the vine. But the plan is for ECW guys to return on the 3/10 show despite all the nay-sayers backstage saying nay. Apparently Bret Hart really hates ECW as a shoot as well. (Bret Hart hates something? Do tell.)

– For the record, Paul Heyman 100% denies the WWF having any financial stake in his company whatsoever. Although others in the WWF have a different take…

– Dave is notably skeptical of Paul’s claims here, although he does stress that no one can PROVE anything at this point. Plus they’re not making money hand over fist, but they don’t exactly NEED the WWF to survive at the moment. (Yeah that story would sure change over time.)

– Finally, here’s Bret Hart’s take on the situation from his Calgary Sun column:

“…to call ECW second rate isn’t accurate because to me, it doesn’t even rate. It is interesting ECW wants to be on Raw. ECW cult guru, Paul E. Dangerously (Paul Heyman) has brainwashed his followers into believing ECW is a rebel group that won’t dilute the extreme nature of its style to conform to TV censors or arena administrators. While this philosophy has cultivated ECW’s loyal following in their home area, it has kept them from expanding into other venues and limited them to poor TV time slots in only a few markets. It is not surprising Heyman is now trying to convince the cable companies his product is similar to WWF and WCW. What better way to show them that ECW has the WWF’s stamp of approval than to be on Raw. The style of ECW matches on Raw was changed to make them acceptable to censors and fans. You’d think ECW followers would be outraged the ECW matches on Raw weren’t hardcore. You’d think they’d turn on Paul E. for selling out everything he has been preaching to them. Instead, they all waved at the cameras.”

(But what if GOLDBERG worked there? Makes you think.)

AND THAT’S THE NEWS…