Wrestling Observer Flashback – 04.07.97

Wrestling Observer Flashback – 04.07.97

OK, now that the archive posts have stopped for the moment, I can go back to these again and they shouldn’t be knocked off the front page immediately.

The only big story this week is the death of Dr. Bill Miller, followed by a review of the Extreme Fighting Championships PPV, so this should be a relatively quick one.

– Hey, Dr. Bill Miller died and the Extreme Fighting Championship promotion had a PPV. (See?)

– Apparently a new UWFI offshoot will debut in Japan on 5/4, called “Kingdom”. Top stars will be Takada and Yoji Anjyo and they’ll run the Tokyo Dome. (This new promotion went nowhere, with only a couple of shows, but it DID directly lead to the creation of PRIDE Fighting once it died in 1998 for good)

– Anyway we’re like a third of the way into the issue and that’s literally the only three stories so far. Just to let you know what I’m dealing with here for material this week.

– The big story from All Japan is that the TV show this week was weird and mostly paid tribute to referee Joe Higuchi.

(COME ON DAVE GIVE ME SOMETHING TO GODDAMN WORK WITH HERE!)

– Off to AAA (I’m doing AAA newsbites, that’s how far we’ve fallen with this issue!) where Fake Razor and Fake Diesel are still headlining the shows, and building up to a feud between Razor and Cibernetico. Anyway, this leads to the king of Dave Meltzer run-on sentences, and see if you can decipher this one without using ChatGPT:

“Just so you know that bad announcing when it comes to foreign talent is a Universal, on the same weekend that apparently Howard Finkel (who I thought never makes a mistake ring announcing–I didn’t see Shotgun because it doesn’t air but this is what’s been told to me) announced Histeria as the winner in a match against Venum (which Venum won), that when showing a clip of Diesel using a tombstone piledriver (martinete) on Perro Aguayo from Pachuca, the announcers called the angle as if it was Ramon that did the piledriver.”

That is certainly a series of words.

– Dave also notes that they’re introducing two new masked wrestlers named Scarecrow and Schizophrenia, and we can make our own jokes about who might be under those masks. (I’m gonna admit it, I’m stumped as to what he’s going for there.).

– Back to All Japan, where Kenta Kobashi finally got his first singles win over Misawa on 3/28 in front of a mid-sized crowd of 3200 on a non-televised show. Given fans had been waiting years to see that result, it was weird to just throw it out on a small show like that.

– Jumbo Tsuruta got his professor degree on 3/25 and will now be a full-time professor at various colleges in Tokyo. (Featuring such classes as “Suplex Theory 101” and “Advanced Chop Techniques”)

– To New Japan, where Masa Saito quit New Japan and joined the New World Order, thanks to the influence of Eric Bischoff and Sonny Onoo. However, the big push for the 25^th Anniversary show was trying to get Naoya Ogawa over as a main event guy, since tickets for the Tokyo Dome show aren’t doing great. (Haha good luck there, fellas)

– WCW is pushing for the whole nWo crew to come over for an Osaka Dome show on 5/3. This would include Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and the Outsiders. The problem is that outside of Buff Bagwell, the Japanese audiences don’t really care about any of the nWo guys. Basically the fans there just want to buy the nWo shirts but don’t care about the matches with the Americans. (Lot of that going around.)

– To Memphis, where there’s an “awful lot of people” who think that the promotion is on its last legs with around $10,000 in total business each week and shows drawing under 500.

– Lots of praise for Bret Hart’s South African friend The Comandant, who is likely getting a WWF run as a manager soon with the Truth Commission. (Boy that sure didn’t work out the way they wanted.)

– The USWA announced that they’re holding try-outs for wrestlers on 4/25. (By coincidence, $4.25 is exactly what Larry Burton is offering for payoffs.)

– Manager Elliott Pollock did an interview saying that he was at Wrestlemania and the WWF wrestlers are laughing at the USWA. (It was supposed to be an angle but really they probably worked themselves into a shoot with that one because USWA was a complete joke by that point.) So apparently Razor and Diesel will be coming into Memphis to represent the WWF. (Point proven.)

– To ECW, where Sandman suffered three cracked ribs on a weekend show, but he’s still expected to work the PPV. (Really how could you tell the difference anyway?).

– It appears that a lot of cable company opposition to ECW on PPV is cooling off because it’s clear now that ECW is theater and not sport.

– Apparently merchandise sales for the Pittsburgh show were huge, but they searched fans for weapons and had to confiscate a ton of knives. (That checks out.).

– Apparently Tommy Rich is now managing Tracy Smothers & Little Guido and they’re calling themselves “The FBI”.

– Lots of rumors flying about Rob Van Dam leaving for WCW, and he even told people they would “hear about it from Mike Tenay on Nitro”. (HOLY SHIT, HE’S TOTALLY GOING, GUYS! HE’S SHOOTING! Anyway we all know what this was leading to.)

– Sabu is also sending out feelers to the WWF, but they’re just not that into him.

– Paul Heyman is getting kind of sick of all this talk and called a meeting for everyone in advance of the PPV, saying that anyone who wanted to leave should just come see him and he’d get them a meeting with Vince or a release so they could go to WCW. Also he noted that anyone who showed up on Nitro on 4/14 could consider their professional relationship with him to be OVER and to never speak to him again. (Hilarious take considering how many people treated him like a doormat and then got welcomed back with open arms after their Big Two career failed.)

– BREAKING NEWS: Terry Funk is talking about “slowing down” in regards to his US wrestling career, starting around September. (Better mark that one down, he sounds serious this time.)

– As your random Missy Hyatt note for the week, she was on a Howard Stern Easter special this week, with Howard “finger painting her boobs”.

– WCW Nitro on 3/31 was a complete mess, because Hogan and his crew were in Chicago hanging out with Dennis Rodman, and Scott Hall is back in rehab while his marriage falls apart. WCW made no effort to inform fans about the absense, advertising him for all the shows and then just not acknowledging he wasn’t there.

– They seem to be building up to Hall and Nash eventually splitting from the nWo and feuding with Hogan & Savage, which Dave notes will OBVIOUSLY make a shitload of money, but not yet. (Yup, only a complete moron would do a whole nWo split and not bother to book an Outsiders v. Megapowers match on PPV or TV at any point. Good thing WCW is way smarter than that!)

– WCW introduced a “Women’s Cruiserweight title” tournament with GAEA wrestlers Toshie Uematsu and Meiko Satomura facing off in the first round. (I mean, aside from the insanity of Meiko still being active 28 years later, that title tournament of course never paid off with anything on US TV and I don’t think was even mentioned again after the brief tournament ended. Uematsu won the title, by the way)

– There was actually a second women’s match on the same show, with Akira Hokuto beating Debbie Combs to retain her Women’s title. “Like you need two womens matches on the same show” notes Dave. (Wait, is he booking AEW now? IT ALL MAKES SENSE!)

– DDP pinned new guy Lance Ringo, who showed potential. (Don’t get excited, it’s just Sick Boy from the Flock.)

– The long term plan is to hold off on Sting v. Hogan until Starrcade now, and promote it like the biggest match in the history of the promotion. (Well they certainly succeeded in that. The followup, however..)

– Curt Hennig has been training with Wayne Bloom and Brad Rheingans for his comeback in WCW, which Dave notes “should be any week now.” (More on that later…)

– The National Enquirer ran a story about Rey Mysterio and Jennifer Aniston being an item, but it was just fake news to draw publicity for Rey and WCW. (These days I’m shocked the Enquirer doesn’t have White House credentials given they’ve got more credibility than most of the mainstream outlets who think transcription is reporting. This has been Scott’s Grumpy Old Man rant of the week!)

– To the WWF, where Wrestlemania 13 looks to have done a 0.77 buyrate, which can’t be spun as anything but a complete disaster. (I dunno, Vince is pretty good at spinning bullshit.). It’s the lowest buyrate for WM of all time and actually got beat by several WCW shows from the past few months.

– In Your House was supposed to be Undertaker v. Vader, but Vader suffered an injury at Final Four and so it’s now “Taker’s Revenge” with a match against Mankind instead.

– Dave kind of undersells a giant angle as he recaps the formation of the Hart Foundation on the 3/31 RAW in Peoria, but it’s not like he could have foreseen the gigantic domino effect that whole thing would have on the entire wrestling business by the end of the year.

– TRUE WCW STORY TIME: When the booking comittee was laying out Nitro, they got to the women’s title match and someone quipped “Well we’re sure to lose that quarter hour, unless we’re somehow up against Sid.” And then guess who was in the opposing segment on RAW after all?

– RUMOR OF THE WEEK: Honky’s mystery man might be Brian Christopher. (HAHAHA, that’s so hilariously lame that there’s no chance they could ever find someone stupider for that role. JUST GO AHEAD AND TRY TO FIND SOMEONE WORSE, I DARE YOU.)

– Curt and Larry Hennig met with Vince and his muppet Bruce Pritchard this week in an effort to make peace over the Lloyd’s of London thing, and the WWF side was an hour late in showing up for the meeting and just barely avoided the Hennigs walking out on them. Suffice it to say the meeting was NOT a success and Bruce lied his ass off to the Hennigs and claimed to have nothing to do with stooging them out, to the point where they actually PULLED OUT THE SIGNED LETTER WITH HIS SIGNATURE ON IT, and then things got even worse from there and he ain’t coming back any time soon. In fact WCW actually put Larry Hennig on TV as a result of that meeting to show that the war is over and they’ve won.

– WWF has pulled their contract offer to Dr. Death as a result of his recent arrest. (Well never say never.)

– Del Wilkes is probably coming in, although he hasn’t officially signed yet.

– Jim Cornette is going to be put back on the road as a manager, probably with the heel Furnas & Lafon and opposing the New Blackjacks. Dave doesn’t think that sounds like a good combination for anyone. (At least it’s not like they could find anything WORSE for him to do!)

(Well, shit.)

– Speaking of terrible ideas, Tiger Ali Singh will debut on the Kuwait tour.

– Lots of internal heat on both Hunter and Shawn for various off-color remarks they made at various points, and Shawn’s rebellious actions where he shouts out the nWo guys off-script. (What a pair of…what’s the word I’m looking for here…I dunno, I’ll ask ChatGPT later.)

– Lots of rumors about Disco Inferno coming in, but it ain’t happening.

– And finally, Bret Hart remains a babyface in Canada despite his heel turn and formation of a heel stable, as he apologized in the Calgary Sun for the actions he’s going to be taking on TV, but promised that his issues are only with American fans and “it’ll come out in the end that it’s all part of a master plan like Charles Bronson in Death Wish”. (Confirmation that Bret’s plan was to have that bitch Julie murdered by street punks at his earliest opportunity, I guess.)

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