looked like a fluke, but it was really a carefully crafted plan from a man whose career has been dominated by a label of having great athletic talent but no strategy.
Kevin Randleman has been an athlete who has stood out in everything he’s ever tried. He was a two-time NCAA wrestling champion in college at Ohio State, and probably would have been a three-time champ and potential Olympian had he not dropped out of school and wrestling prior to his senior year. He was a college contemporary of Kurt Angle, and at the time, considered the better wrestler of the two. He got into the fighting game at the age of 25, and despite being undersized, held the UFC heavyweight title. As a pro wrestler, few men in history have shown as much athletic ability, charisma and potential so early in their careers.
The scrambling in the days leading up to the shows was incredible, but ultimately, when the dust cleared, the feeling was it was overkill, and all three promotions and networks spent a ton to divide up an audience already small because of the traditional NHK musical show. It was a ton of publicity, but because of the expenses, did at least some companies, if not all, more harm than good in the long run.
The biggest victim, although it was likely of his own doing, was Antonio Inoki. Unfortunately, Inoki has had 35 years as a national celebrity and almost that long as a cultural icon. Even when he does wrong, which is frequently, or looks to be down and out for good, he’s the proverbial cat, who not only lives, but becomes bigger with every resurrection. In his case, and some would argue it’s partially of his own doing, he’s managed to jump off being associated with a struggling pro wrestling business into a thriving new business.
In a show that really only came together about three weeks ago, WWE took 15 performers and 19 technicians to Baghdad, Iraq, over the weekend for a three-day, two-night trip which culminated in the company’s first television taping in a war zone.
The heavily pushed Christmas edition of Smackdown was originally the brainchild of John “Bradshaw” Layfield, who has gone on numerous USO- sponsored tours of military bases in both Afghanistan and the Middle East since the U.S. was involved in military actions. Layfield presented the idea to the Armed Forces Entertainment, which approved the event. The rules were that WWE could bring only 33 people on the tour (there were actually 34 as Layfield was already in Iraq on a USO tour). McMahon himself picked the talent that would be going, not all of whom were thrilled about the idea going in because of safety concerns.
The TV schedule for New Year’s Eve in Japan at this point looks to be the K-1 show on TBS from 9-11:30 p.m., the Inoki show on NTV from 8-11:15 p.m. and the Pride show on Fuji Network from 6:30-11:30 p.m. as a five hour special. As things stand right now, none of the shows are scheduled to air in the U.S. as the next Pride PPV dates are 12/21 (tape of the 10/5 show headlined by Mirko Cro Cop vs. Dos Caras Jr.) and 2/8 (tape of the 2/1 show at Osaka Castle Hall tentatively featuring a return world heavyweight title match with Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Fedor Emelianenko, which won’t air same day because of the Super Bowl).
The Inoki Bom Ba Ye show from Kobe Wings Stadium announced a Mirko Cro Cop vs. Yoshihiro Takayama main event, as was expected. The feeling in Japan is this will be an entertaining homicide since Takayama can take a punch, and his face swells up impressively with each shot.
What will likely turn out to be the most heavily publicized non-boxing combat sports match of all-time will headline the biggest one-night promotional war in history.
The 11/6 announcement by K-1 of a New Year’s Eve match pitting Bob Sapp against legendary sumo Akebono (Chad Rowan) was the biggest press conference in company history. More than 17 television stations and 300 reporters attended the press conference where promoter Sadaharu Tanigawa announced the ultimate checkmate in a brewing New Year’s Eve war. The news was so big in Japan that three of Japan’s six networks (TBS, NTV and TV-Asahi) broke into regular programming to telecast the press conference live. It was carried in major newspapers throughout the U.S. and was the topic of conversation on numerous sports talk shows (many of which reported, including the London Times, Los Angeles Times and New York Post that Akebono’s opponent would be Mike Tyson; and the Los Angeles Times reported that K-1 was “so brutal that it is illegal just about everywhere”).
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.
Perhaps the biggest problem facing the pro wrestling industry is the rash of young deaths, a subject reported on frequently, largely because the deaths are so happening with more and more frequency.
There is also no easy answer to the question. The HBO “Real Sports” segment on the subject that aired on 6/24 will become a controversial story because of the reaction of Vince McMahon in the interview taped on 6/12. McMahon, going back to his first Bob Costas show form, acted threatening, made childish faces and voices and attempted to slap papers out of the hands of reporter Armen Keteyian. This would have, and did, reflect badly on the CEO of a publicly traded company when he was talking about the XFL, like with Costas. When talking about deaths of wrestlers under the age of 45 since 1997, 15 of whom worked for him during their careers, it was a televised self destruction that spoke more than the past two years of missed opportunities combined about a profession that is often sick, and is running on such a fast track, that it really doesn’t care.
While it won’t be confirmed by either side due to confidentiality, Bill Goldberg signed his contract with WWE this week and will be debuting very shortly.
Sources close to the situation say that the belief is Goldberg signed his contract over the weekend, but WWE has asked him to keep it quiet. Others have confirmed the signature. Vince McMahon denied he had signed at the Mania press conference but given that they want it quiet, he would have had to whether true or not. More than one friend of Goldberg’s has said that Goldberg has said told them in the past week that he is going in, and point to his living in the gym over the past week to get his body back in pro wrestling cosmetic shape as quickly as possible.
It is known that internally within WWE, scenarios are being worked on for his imminent debut. It isn’t clear what the compromises regarding creativity and scheduling turned out to be, as money terms were agreed upon by both sides long ago.
Following up on the angle where Brock Lesnar went exclusively to Smackdown, Raw opened on 9/2 in Milwaukee with Eric Bischoff announcing HHH as the new Raw world champion and giving him the old WCW heavyweight title belt.
There are a lot of different ways of looking at this in theory. You can say with two champions, there are twice as many potential title defenses and you can have the world champion at every house show. On the other hand, the title itself was just rebuilt enough to where it finally appeared to have drawn at SummerSlam and a new top star was created. Now, that title is diluted. You may call it two world titles, but it in reality becomes two IC titles instead of one world title. The argument is that this finally establishes the Raw/Smackdown split. But what made the title special is that it meant something being the one thing above the split.
It’s been a long time since there were major shows put head-to-head with a PPV in the United States. There was actually a short period of time, when PPV was in its infancy and the WCW vs. WWF war was still mired in that old school do anything to hurt the opposition, even if it hurts yourself, mentality when it was commonplace. Eventually, because the wrestling industry would have never stopped, the cable television industry forced a truce.
The first time was Thanksgiving of 1987. Jim Crockett Promotions planned its first-ever PPV event, Starrcade, its traditional big show of the year. Starrcade had been successful for years, dating back to its inception in 1983, as a closed-circuit event, mainly to the various arenas around the Carolinas. By 1985, when Crockett took over the promotion of Atlanta, after buying the contract for TBS from Vince McMahon and the subsequent folding of Ole Anderson’s Championship Wrestling from Georgia, Starrcade became so big it was held in two locations.
Lee and I talked for nearly forty minutes, touching on several topics:
– The inspiration for writing the book
– Who was the most helpful interview of all the people he talked to and what fighter(s) he wished he had been able to talk to
– Why he decided to crowdsource the funding for the project
– What fights he’d recommend to a PRIDE newbie and what his favorite fight is of all time
Also, we discuss this weekend’s UFC China event featuring Curtis Blaydes vs. Francis Ngannou II and Alistair Overeem, and the weekend’s biggest event: Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz III. We also touch on UFC Argentina from this past weekend.
Paul Heyman, who hadn’t appeared at an ECW event since the Hardcore Heaven PPV, surprisingly, after missing the TV taping on 6/2 in New Orleans, flew to Pensacola, FL for the house show for a lengthy ECW team meeting.
The one hour long meeting was largely a pep talk, since most of the wrestlers hadn’t even spoken to Heyman in a month, and with smaller crowds, slightly declining ratings and late checks, morale had hit a new low.
Heyman went through a story about where he saw the wrestling business in the U.S. headed. The theory he had was that WWF and USA Network would settle their lawsuit before going to trial because both have so much dirt on the other that would come out in court that both sides stock prices would drop and suffer public embarrassment. At that point he figured USA Network would get a strong settlement and WWF would go to CBS Viacom, moving Raw to TNN on Monday nights. He talked about the chance that ECW would get on USA Network or possibly FOX.
Former Pride Grand Prix Champion and 12 fight UFC vet Wanderlei Silva was released today from his UFC contract. Silva last fought in March 2013, knocking out Brian Stann in the 2nd round of a Fuel TV show from Japan. He was then scheduled to fight Chael Sonnen in a fight stemming off the two of them coaching on TUF Brazil. The fight was put off several times due to injuries and then drug testing issues with both fighters.
In Silva’s case, he was approached at his gym by drug testers and famously ran out the back door to avoid the test. He was eventually given a lifetime ban by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. That ban has since been rescinded and both sides are currently in negotiations for a more appropriate punishment. In the meantime Silva has still been at odds with the organization he’s under contract to, including accusing the UFC of fixing fights.
This morning, word actually came out that Silva was taking back those claims, saying that he’d been misunderstood. A few hours later, word came out that Silva had been released.
For several years in the early 2000’s, “The Axe Murderer” was one of the most feared fighters in any weight class. After losing to Tito Ortiz at UFC 25 in April 2000, Silva had a stretch of 18 fights in a row where he didn’t suffer a loss before losing a split decision to the much larger Mark Hunt on the 2004 Pride year-end show. 14 of those fights ended with Silva KO’ing his opponent, most in the first round.
Silva returned to UFC in December 2007 after Zuffa bought Pride and absorbed the fighter contracts. He went 4-5 after his return with 3 knockouts. All but one of those fights was in the Main Event or co-Main event position. He leaves the UFC with an overall record of 35-12-1 and would almost certainly be highly sought after by either Rizin Fighting or Bellator MMA.
Wrestling Observer Live with Bryan Alvarez and Mike Sempervive returns today to talk tons of topics including NXT Takeover Respect, an awesome show, Asuka, Bailey and Sasha and more, plus the new PRIDE rebirth in Japan, text questions and tons more! A fun show as always so check it out~!
