Tag: judgement day

May 26, 2003 Observer Newsletter: WWE Judgment Day review, WM 19 buyrate

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

WWE had two very disappointing buy rates for Wrestlemania and Backlash, and almost assuredly a third for Judgment Day, has just produced two of the company’s worst PPV shows in years, in two successive months. It now follows with the very risky attempt at doing a singular brand PPV starting next month.

This show brought up the inevitable comparisons with WCW, and most were unfavorable even to the dying days of that product. At least with WCW, you could count on one or two very good undercard matches before the bad main event.

At Judgment Day on 5/18 at the Charlotte Coliseum, you had a Brock Lesnar vs. Big Show main event that had to exceed everyone’s expectations, but couldn’t come close to saving what had been a booking atrocity up to that point.

ust for a sobering comparison, on February 21, 1999, the WCW SuperBrawl PPV, headlined by Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair, drew a 1.15 buy rate, which at the time was about 455,000 buys.

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May 27, 2002 Observer Newsletter: Death of Davey Boy Smith

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The death of Davey Boy Smith on 5/17 while on vacation in Fairmont, BC with girlfriend Andrea Hart has taken both the saga of the Hart family and of pro wrestling in 2002 to levels far beyond just tragic.

Results of the autopsy were pending at press time, but the death was believed to have come a heart attack stemming from a drug overdose.

Smith was no longer a legal member of the Hart family, having divorced Stu’s daughter Diana and taken up with Bruce’s wife Andrea. Davey and Diana were married for almost 17 years and have two children, one of whom, Harry, 16, has been wrestling for years and even teamed with his father on 5/10 and 5/11 in Brandon and Winnipeg (contrary to a lot of stories, the first time the two teamed was last year in Calgary). Even with all the bad blood and even threats, arrests and problems far too numerous to mention, he was considered by most a family member.

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May 28, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Decline in Monday night wrestling ratings

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

Less than two months after the biggest show in the history of the industry, the entire wrestling industry seemed to hit a panic.

The Monday night audience for wrestling has declined to a scary degree coming off the end of Nitro and folding of WCW, down to a 4.2 rating on 5/21, for the best Raw show in a long time. This number was equivalent to the audience the show used to draw the few times a year it aired from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on tennis or dog show night. The WWF not only has lost all of the former Nitro audience, as well as having dropped about 16 percent of its own core audience over a seven week period. House show business, on a strong run for the past few years, have started showing more signs of weakening than in any period in the last five years. Moreover, never in recent years had so much been said about the boring state of the WWF, with stagnation setting in.

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May 29, 2000 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: WWF Judgment Day review, Super J-Cup, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

It took a lot of guts in this day and age to attempt a 60:00 match. Nowadays, it’s considered gutsy to put on a 10:00 match on television and you never see anything but PPV main events last more than 20:00. The participants, Rock and HHH, went 36:28 at Wrestlemania. Several times during the broadcast of this show it was noted that both of their longest matches was a 30:04 PPV draw in 1998 which was a ***1/4 match. The Mania match was generally considered a disappointing match, as it dragged toward the end.

So if the two felt they had something to prove, they proved it. It was far from the best 60:00 match in wrestling history, but it was, despite a timing snafu at the finish, an excellent match capping off the Judgment Day PPV on 5/21 at Freedom Hall in Louisville, KY.

Helmsley won the WWF title, via a DQ in the 11th fall, which actually ended at 60:08, which wasn’t supposed how it was supposed to happen. A sellout crowd of 16,827 in the building, which was 15,886 paying $596,050 and another $130,256 in merchandise, saw, with a few seconds remaining on the scoreboard clock, panicked officials turn the clock off which negated the buzzer going off at the 60:00 mark, realizing they were in a position where it would be at least ten seconds from the scheduled DQ and then hit the buzzer after the tombstone on HHH by the returning Undertaker, which caused Rock to be disqualified in the final fall and thus lose six falls to five in a match where the title could change hands via DQ.

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