Tag: classic

October 13, 2003 Observer Newsletter: Wrestling history book Chokehold detailed, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

I  don’t expect too many people, other than historians and the most hardcore of fans, to be reading the book “Chokehold,” written by Jim Wilson and Weldon Johnson . But decades from now, it will probably be considered the most important book on pro wrestling covering the second half of the 20th century.

The 556-page book is a combination of the career of Wilson and the unauthorized history of the National Wrestling Alliance. It’s also a look at scandals, court cases and double-crosses that have plagued the industry from Dick Shikat shooting on Danno O’Mahoney to steal the world heavyweight title on March 2, 1936, in Madison Square Garden, which ended up changing the power structure of the business, to current WWE. The book has more about what really goes on behind the scenes in pro wrestling than any other book, and far more on what the pro wrestling business really was in the 70s.

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October 6, 2003 Observer Newsletter: UFC turns 10, UFC 44 review, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

With the Ultimate Fighting Championship about to celebrate its 10th anniversary, there has been considerable debate over the past year on who would be ranked as the greatest fighter in its history.

Up until a few months ago, the debate had come down to two names. The first was 180-pound Royce Gracie, who dominated the early shows, going 11-0-1 (some list a loss to Harold Howard, but that match technically never got started, as Gracie was injured in a previous match that night with Kimo). Gracie’s skill level was ahead of the curve, winning three of the first four tournaments and never officially losing in the octagon before bowing out when the competition caught up. The other was Frank Shamrock, who went unbeaten from 1997-99 as what was then called the middleweight (now light heavyweight champion), despite usually giving up ten pounds because he was small for his weight division. Gracie tapped out larger wrestlers Ken Shamrock and Dan Severn (the latter of whom had only had maybe two or three training sessions in the sport before entering the tournament) in his most famous wins.

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September 29, 2003 Observer Newsletter: Unforgiven review, HHH taking time off

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

Unforgiven on 9/21 at the Giant Center in Hershey, PA, was one of those nights where the elementary mistakes bit WWE in the ass.

The show was supposed to be the coronation of Bill Goldberg as WWE Raw champion. Well, in wrestling, dating back to such luminaries as Lou Thesz, Strangler Lewis and Stephanie McMahon, there is the saying “We can do it the hard way or the easy way.” Well, in this case, nobody was whispering that before a title change, but they could do it the smart way or the dumb way. Well, the dumb way was going to pacify the ego of the boyfriend, and few thought anything different would happen.

HHH, still bothered by a slightly torn groin, gutted his way by carrying Goldberg for 14:57 before dropping the title clean to him. Unfortunately, it was more guts than brains. The match was too long and dull. The crowd, hot for Goldberg at the start, cooled off watching him sell. 

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September 22, 2003 Observer Newsletter: Iron Man match, decline of popularity in early 90s

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The attempt by Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar to make modern television wrestling history with the most widely viewed 60:00 match ever in the U.S. turned into an emotional experience in the days before the match that took place on 9/16 in Raleigh.

Lesnar blew out his knee while wrestling a tune-up match in Richmond on 9/14, and the next night in Greenville, NC, he and Angle only did about a 1:00 match, with much interference, to protect him. The exact nature of the injury hasn’t been determined. The first diagnosis was floating cartilage in the knee, which caused it to lock, but there was some fear by the next night that it was a torn ACL. The company was going on the belief that the injury was not that serious since the original plan of Lesnar going over to win his third WWE championship wasn’t changed. Then, on 9/15, Angle’s older sister died from heart problems. The Angle family has had a long history with angina, to the point Angle himself has done TV commercials for angina awareness.

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September 15, 2003 Observer Newsletter: History of the Iron Man match, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

On 9/16 in Raleigh, Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle will do something that hasn’t been done in the U.S. in nearly 17 years. They will do a 60:00 match on free television.

It wasn’t that many years ago when it would have never happened. There was a belief for a while that in these days of shorter attention spans and hundreds of television alternatives, that no television match should ever go much over ten minutes. In the history of Raw, Thunder, Nitro and Smackdown, no match has ever legitimately gone 30 minutes. Lesnar and Angle will be doubling that.

The Iron man match, which is expected, given the direction of past and future booking and what happened at SummerSlam, to be the title change, is one hell of a risk. While most 60 minute matches historically are remembered fondly, very few have been done in recent years. And also, if for some reason the crowd isn’t with it, it’s going to be a long and painful process.

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September 8, 2003 Observer Newsletter: Pancrase 10th Anniversary show, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

On September 21, 1993, pro wrestling changed. Perhaps forever.

Up to that point in time, pro wrestling had been 99.9% worked matches (All Japan Women in the 80s and 90s used to run one shoot match per card at Korakuen Hall and even had a shoot championship) since as far back as anyone can remember, and probably, even farther back than that. In the minds of nearly everyone in the industry, shoots and pro wrestling were diametrically opposed. For as long as anyone could remember, there were all the reasons why you couldn’t do them. They were boring and nobody would pay for a ticket. It was always noted that amateur wrestling, with rare exceptions, is not a spectator sport. People would get hurt too often and you couldn’t work the traditional 20-30 shows per month. And worst, if you don’t fix outcomes, you can’t protect and build stars. One major promoter told me a few years into this, when UFC had its initial U.

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September 1, 2003 Observer Newsletter: SummerSlam review

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

While SummerSlam is generally talked about as WWE’s No. 2 event of the year, behind only Wrestlemania, this year is probably going to be the exception.

If SummerSlam on 8/24 in Phoenix turns out to better than the No. 4 event of this year for business and interest, I think everyone will be celebrating, because that would mean 450,000 buys. As a show, it got mixed reviews, but that would be largely due to the last two minutes of the show. After finally making Bill Goldberg the monster that people wanted him to be, the company had HHH, who should not have been in the ring, pin him to end the show. The logic behind it was that it would lead to more interest in HHH vs. Goldberg when they finally do their singles match on 9/21 in Hershey, PA, at the Unforgiven PPV, where, as things are scheduled right now, and based on the booking that has already transpired they’ve pretty well backed themselves into the corner on this finish, HHH will finally drop the title. Of course, that was also how they were scheduled for June, and again for SummerSlam before HHH suffered a partially torn groin which made the idea of him doing a real match out of the question.

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August 25, 2003 Observer Newsletter: 2003 Hall of Fame class

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The single most controversial candidate in the history of the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame balloting, Shawn Michaels, heads the list of four new members for 2003 in the Hall of Fame.

Michaels, 38, who had come close in three of the past four elections, got through easily this year, and was joined by Chris Benoit in being voted in on balloting from reporters, historians, as well as current and past wrestling figures. Two others, early 1900s world champion Earl Caddock, and famous Mexican promoter Francisco Flores were also added as overlooked figures from the past.

Michaels’ return to active wrestling after (with one exception) a more than four year hiatus largely due to lower back surgery, spelled the difference, as in particular his respect among past wrestling major players changed and gave him enough votes to make it by an easy 13 vote margin. Michaels got mentioned on 119 of the 177 ballots that came from or listed wrestlers from the U.S. and Canada region, or 67%.

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August 18, 2003 Observer: Hall of Fame preview, PRIDE Total Elimination, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

he 2003 Hall of Fame issue will be next week, so this week we’ll look at the candidates, their strengths and weaknesses and how they’ve done in previous years.

I should note that all voting has been completed. At the time this article was written, nothing had been tabulated. We had more participation this year than any other year. There should be some differences because as a percentage, more people within the industry participated this year including many of the both the biggest current names and biggest names of all-time. Ballots are sent to active stars, retired legends, those who work in the industry and have a long-time association with the product, historians and current reporters.

The rules of the balloting are that it is broken into three categories, the U.S. and Canada, Mexico and Japan. To be elected, you have to get 60% of the vote from your specific region. As history has shown, that is a very difficult figure to achieve.

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August 11, 2003 Observer Newsletter: WWE revenue breakdown, Australia tour mishaps

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

New filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission give an even more detailed look at World Wrestling Entertainment business than the recent investors conference.

Among the notes are the importance to the overall revenue as well as profitability of the different revenue streams over the past year, as well as with the restructuring after stock buybacks from Viacom and General Electric (NBC).

The McMahon family currently owns 54,780,207 shares of stock, which represents 80% ownership. The other major stockholder is Gladwyne Partners, LLC, a financial group headed by Michael B. Solomon, which owns 2,582,773 shares, or 4%. The remaining 16% of the company is owned by the various trading stockholders.

The WWE annual stockholders meeting takes place on 9/19 in Stamford, CT at the Westin Hotel. Among the items on the agenda is management bonuses. According to information sent to stockholders, as far as base salary, Vince McMahon earned $1,085,000 (he also earned another $855,500 as a wrestler and will get $8,764,833 in stock dividends this coming year; the previous year those numbers were $1 million in salary and $929,965 as talent), and is listed to earn the same base salary this coming year.

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August 4, 2003 Observer Newsletter: WWE Vengeance review, All Japan in trouble, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The first Smackdown brand-only PPV in the U.S. (there have been Smackdown only brand PPV shows in the U.K.) on 7/27 at the Pepsi Arena in Denver, was largely considered an in-ring success, with every match that on paper looked good delivering.

The show drew approximately 9,500 paid (far more than that were actually in the building, although much of the upper deck was blocked off) and a house in the $475,000 range for a show headlined by Kurt Angle capturing what could be called his fourth or fifth-ever so-called world title (depending if you consider a six-day run as WCW champion when WWE recognized the title in 2001) in a three-way over Brock Lesnar and Big Show. The only surprise in the finish was that he pinned Lesnar. In most cases, it’s better for the title for the champion to get pinned, but they have pinned Lesnar, who had been booked as something special, so many times of late that I didn’t expect it to happen.

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July 28, 2003 Observer Newsletter: Big week in Japanese wrestling, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

One of the biggest weeks in Japanese wrestling in recent memory included a WWE tour, four straight nights of major arena shows in the Tokyo market, and three straight nights of PPV action.

The results ranged from super hot sellout crowds, one surprising crowd, down to really an expected poor show.

The WWE was the highlight of the week, running shows on 7/17 and 7/18 at the Yokohama Arena (which is about 30 minutes outside of Tokyo) and 7/19 at the Kobe World Memorial Hall (nowhere near Tokyo). The latter two shows sold out well in advance, as soon as tickets were put on sale, with 15,750 paying $1.3 million on the 7/18 show, and 8,008 on 7/19. If there was a chink in the armor, it was shown when an added show in Yokohama was nowhere near full, even though it was the only show with an advertised line-up and was said to have been the best of the four big shows in the Tokyo area.

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July 21, 2003 Observer Newsletter: Best major show live event draws in history

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

BIGGEST MAJOR SHOW LIVE EVENT DRAWS IN HISTORY (based on headlining shows that have verifiably drawn in excess of 30,000 fans)

1. Shinya Hashimoto 11, Hulk Hogan 11, Keiji Muto 11, Genichiro Tenryu 11; 5. Nobuhiko Takada 10; 6. Atsushi Onita 8; 7. Antonio Inoki 7; 8. Kensuke Sasaki 6; 9. Tatsumi Fujinami 5, Riki Choshu 5, Masahiro Chono 5, 12. Yuji Nagata 4, Mitsuharu Misawa 4, Toshiaki Kawada 4, Naoya Ogawa 4, Kazushi Sakuraba 4, 16. Ric Flair 3, Don Frye 3, Hayabusa 3, Rock 3, Jim Londos 3, Bill Goldberg 3, Rickson Gracie 3, Bob Sapp 3; 25. Bruno Sammartino 2, Mr. Pogo 2, Scott Norton 2, Stan Hansen 2, Vader 2, Terry Funk 2, Danno O’Mahoney 2, Rikidozan 2, Lou Thesz 2, Royce Gracie 2, Mirko Cro Cop 2, Hiroshi Hase 2, Jun Akiyama 2, Sid Vicious 2

In looking at this list, this in no way should be construed as a legitimate ranking of the biggest draws ever, but it is still an interesting guide.

The list is heavily Japanese skewed simply because their companies, when business is hot, had to rely on large stadium gates as opposed to PPV to make money on the biggest angles or hottest periods. A similar list (we had one last week but didn’t include the Japanese in it) for PPV would be heavily U.S. skewed.

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July 14, 2003 Observer Newsletter: WWE releases updated PPV buyrate information, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

World Wrestling Entertainment’s decision to publicly release updated PPV buy information has led to a few interesting findings.

While most figures are in the ballpark of what had been reported, and keep in mind all shows within the past year will have numbers constantly change, there were two shows of note over the past two plus years, one big and one small. It should be noted that all buys are approximate because of both the nature of PPV accounting, and also because the WWE released the information in a graph.

The big one was the July 22, 2001, Invasion PPV from Cleveland, headlined by a supposed WWF team of Kurt Angle & Steve Austin & Chris Jericho & Undertaker & Kane against a supposed combined WCW and ECW team of Diamond Dallas Page & Rhyno & Dudleys & Booker T which did about 760,000 buys (the last number we had received on the show was 726,400), making it the fifth most buys for a pro wrestling PPV in history, trailing only the Wrestlemania shows from 1999-2002.

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July 7, 2003 Observer Newsletter: Hulk Hogan leaving WWE

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

Hulk Hogan officially made public that he was parting ways with WWE once again on 6/30 in an interview that morning on the Bubba the Love Sponge show.

The split doesn’t appear to be an angle, but nothing can be ruled out absolutely, given Hogan’s track record in WCW. Hogan quit after the Smackdown tapings on 6/24 in Madison Square Garden. Hogan, who from all accounts, tore down the house live, and basically on his own did the Hogan posing routine after the TV taping ended for several minutes, was unhappy about how creative was handling the Mr. America character. He had come off losing to Vince McMahon in the arm wrestling match that didn’t seen to serve a purpose, and then losing to Big Show’s choke slam in the six-man tag, which was to set up Show for Zach Gowen and Stephanie McMahon. There had been talk that the booking plan for Mr. America had been for him to beat Vince McMahon in a hair vs mask match on 7/27 at the Vengeance PPV in Denver, although that has not been confirmed by anyone who would know other than Vince had talked about it.

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