Tag: wwf

June 25, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Plans to relaunch WCW, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The future of pro wrestling in North America will likely be determined by decisions and actions over the next three months based on the success of the introduction of WCW as a full-time promotion.

The World Wrestling Federation is planning a significant overhaul in aspects of its television as well as significant roster changes due to both the declining ratings pattern and the debut of WCW.

Details of the plans have not been released publicly since much of the end result will be explained through television storylines. What is known is WCW will have its own television show, far sooner than most expect it, and the plans that have been in place for more than one month regarding television appear to be still going through. There is talk of restructuring exactly how the lower rated shows, such as Heat, Superstars, Metal/Jakked and Livewire would be handled as well, since all have shown strong ratings declines in recent months and the Heat at WWF New York on MTV has been a failure to the point that even those in the company publicly have made fun of its ratings.

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June 18, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Potential Awards winners halfway through 2001

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

We’re roughly halfway through certainly one of the most unique years in the history of pro wrestling. We’ve had arguably the biggest news story of the past 15 years, the combination of the cancellation of pro wrestling on the Turner networks and the purchase of the name WCW by WWFE. In reality, we’ve had the folding of WCW and ECW and other companies, most notably RINGS, seemingly teetering on the edge. After seemingly having the midas touch for the past few years when it comes to promotion, Vince McMahon had his biggest and most publicized flop of his career with the XFL, and followed that with the quickest ratings decline of a show in a constant time slot in the history of the industry. We’ve heard a million rumors about start-ups in the U.S., none of which have gotten off the ground. Even the re-launched WCW brand is hardly viewed with the excitement it was even a few weeks ago.

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June 11, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Potential for Goldberg to sign with WWF, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

Probably the most important talent decision that will be made in a long time by WWFE is the question regarding the potential of hiring Bill Goldberg.

At this point, the WWF policy seems to be that Goldberg’s contract is ridiculously high, and therefore he’s not under consideration at this point. At the same time, nearly everyone who is not in the WWF decision making department that closely follows wrestling believes it is inevitable they will make an attempt to hire Goldberg at some point, probably if or when the WCW acquisition fails to be able to draw at house shows, PPVs or simply doesn’t get off to a strong start. The feeling seems to be that WWF is going to make a strong attempt to hire him at some point, even though they don’t seem to know it (sort of like the feeling come early next year when Kevin Nash is available), so therefore, they might as well do it now because WCW needs to make a strong first impression or it’ll have a tough time getting off the ground.

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June 4, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Hart family/WWF issues resurface, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The complicated mess that involves the Hart Family and the WWF, which seemingly was over from a public standpoint when the WWF agreed to an $18 million settlement in the wrongful death claim in the Owen Hart case, reared its ugly head this past week.

Ugly was the word, with the family ripped apart, combined with television booking that appeared either strangely vindictive or subtly manipulative when Raw for the first time ever came to a sold out Calgary Saddledome before one of the hottest crowds in a long time on 5/28.

The show, to a casual viewer unaware of the backstage politics, seemed to be built along the idea that they would tease the fantasy confrontation between Vince McMahon and Bret Hart throughout the show, particularly once the main event started, with references throughout the show that something strange was about to happen. Several members of the Hart family were at ringside, including Stu, announced very early in the show.

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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 21, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: XFL disbanded, plus tons of news

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

If wrestling seems to move fast, the entire history of the XFL was like that of a lightning bolt.

Vince McMahon went from being the toast of the television world when huge ratings came in for opening night. And within one week, it became the butt of jokes, set record low ratings, lost millions and failed faster than you can say USFL.

McMahon and Dick Ebersol announced on 5/10 at a hastily put together press conference less than three weeks after the championship game that they were disbanding the league after McMahon a few hours earlier had gotten word from UPN that they were not going to pick the league up for a second season. NBC has pretty well made that decision during the season, but had yet to publicly acknowledge it. McMahon said that they, without UPN or NBC, looked into cutting the league into six times and going ahead with a second season, but felt it wouldn’t be economically viable, and shut it down.

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May 7, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Career of Johnny Valentine

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The plight of Hall of Fame wrestler Johnny Valentine, with his death in the early morning hours of 4/24, and legendary rival Wahoo McDaniel, brought home to many of their contemporaries the lack of care the profession takes to its own.

McDaniel, 63, one of the biggest stars from the late 60s through the mid 80s, has been in poor health the past few years, nearly passing away at one point and needing regular kidney dialysis. While a huge star in his day, with his name coming up a lot over the past week with people’s memories of Valentine, he’s largely been forgotten in his profession, which except for the few older fans who have stuck around for the long haul and a very tiny percentage of current fans, have no interest in history of knowledge of wrestling’s past. His few older fans left in the Carolinas were saddened the last time McDaniel appeared in front of the public at a major wrestling show, when Ricky McDaniel was getting a try-out for the WWF and Wahoo was in his corner at the Greensboro Coliseum, a building he headlined for years, that he went almost totally unnoticed by the audience.

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April 30, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Death of Johnny Valentine, WCW Nitro delayed

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

If you ask most wrestlers from the 50s through the 70s to do word association, and give the term, “physical toughness,” probably the name that would be mentioned most often, would be Johnny Valentine.

Valentine, who likely went more places and held more regional titles at a time when they really meant being the top man in a territory that did real business, than any wrestler of his era, passed away at the age of 72 at about 3 a.m. on 4/24, the same day as Lou Thesz’ 85th birthday, in Dallas. He’d been suffering numerous physical problems with his back and his heart which dated back, some of which dated back to the 70s, over the past year, which had gone heavily publicized.

Valentine was known in the 70s as the greatest wrestler never to hold the NWA world heavyweight title. He’s largely credited with driving a rebirth of the Mid Atlantic territory in the early 70s which eventually spawned wrestlers like Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat, who were to take the business to new heights as far as in-ring quality was concerned.

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April 23, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Relaunch of WCW, more

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The Saturday morning tradition of Memphis studio wrestling, which dates back more than three decades, will continue in some form for at least two more months, but the final live show may have taken place over the weekend.

As mentioned last week, WMC-TV, which has housed the show in its television studios since the late 70s made the decision to cancel the show and informed Randy Hales of it last week. Even before WMC-TV got the show, it was a huge hit in Memphis, as it earlier aired live on a rival station in the market at their TV studio for many years dating back from when Lance Russell was a TV program director in the 60s and made the call to put studio wrestling, which was always strong in the market, on Saturday mornings. The decision was thought to be foolhardy at the time since Saturday mornings were thought to be the province of young children, and wrestling at the time drew an audience of largely adult males, who were thought not to be watching television during that time.

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April 16, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Wrestlemania X7 shatters records

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

While there are no final figures in, there is little doubt that Wrestlemania X-Seven from 4/1 at the Reliant Astrodome in Houston was the biggest revenue producing event in the history of pro wrestling.

At press time there was no estimate regarding PPV internally sent out within Titan Sports, but the earliest company projections show a major increase over last year’s record breaking 824,000 buys. The latest projections by the company were in the neighborhood of a 2.4 percent buy rate and one million total buys, which cable industry sources indicate a similar range.

From a buy rate standpoint, it would be the best buy rate a pro wrestling PPV show has done in the U.S. since SummerSlam of 1991, at a time when PPV was still in its infancy, fewer homes were hooked up, and buy rates across the board were far larger.

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April 30, 2018 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: The story of Bruno Sammartino continued

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The death of Bruno Sammartino on 4/18 was the result of multiple organ failure due to heart issues, which ironically and unknowingly to him, dated back to his childhood.

When he nearly died due to rheumatic fever at the age of 12, it damaged a portion of his heart. Through a lifetime of training, he was able to build up the get the non-damaged part of his heart so strong that it compensated for the damaged portion and he was never aware of an issue until recent years.

A few years ago, he noted that his pants were getting tighter and he was starting to get a gut. He just chalked it up to getting older but found out that one of his heart valves, from the childhood damage, wasn’t functioning well and the gut was the buildup of fluid in his abdomen. He had an operation to get a new heart valve put in that was believed at the time was taking care of the problem.

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April 9, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: WrestleMania X-Seven reviewed

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

Wrestlemania X-Seven, in almost every way, was the culmination of the wrestling boom.

Much like the fantasy of Wrestlemania III which was the high peak of the 1980s wrestling boom at the Pontiac Silverdome, this show, 14 years later, was all-around greatest major show the World Wrestling Federation ever produced. While Wrestlemania III was a good show overall, in front of the record crowd, it had an atrocious main event that time and memories have been very kind to, and really only one great match. The in-ring standards of the WWF with the new crew of wrestlers has gone through the roof in the past two years, blowing away the quality of any previous time period.

From a business standpoint, the show on 4/1 at the Reliant Astrodome was most likely the biggest money overall revenue generating pro wrestling event of all-time.

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Bruno Sammartino passes away at 82

Posted on by Josh Nason

Bruno Sammartino, one of the most popular and well-known wrestlers of all time, has passed away. He was 82 years old.

Details are light as of this writing, but Pittsburgh’s local CBS affiliate said that his wife and two children were by his side and that “he died peacefully after battling health issues for the past several months.”

A legendary drawing card in the Northeast United States, Sammartino first won the WWWF world title in May 1963 with a 48 second win over Buddy Rogers at Madison Square Garden. He would hold the title for almost eight years before dropping the belt to Ivan Koloff in 1971. He would retain the title two years later for a reign that would last nearly four years.

He retired from full time competition in 1981 and did some broadcasting for the WWF before returning to wrestle alongside his son, David, in the mid-80s before leaving the organization in the late 80s.

His estrangement with Vince McMahon and WWF due to the direction of the business lasted until 2013 when Paul “HHH” Levesque helped broker a peace that would see him inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. He did a few appearances with the company and even inducted old foe Larry Zbyszko into the Hall of Fame in 2015.

He was a frequent guest on Wrestling Observer Radio and our Dave Meltzer will have much, much more on this story in the days and weeks ahead.

April 2, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Final episode of WCW Monday Nitro

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

The purchase of World Championship Wrestling by WWF Entertainment this past week combined with the ending of all wrestling programming on the Turner networks changes the entire landscape of the pro wrestling industry forever.

The final episode of Nitro, at least on TNT, the show which forever changed television wrestling from the squash match/interview format to the idea of weekly blow-out almost PPV-like shows, started with the almost surreal image of Vince McMahon addressing the audience after purchasing the show. Perhaps even more telling, and the final moment of 29 years of wrestling on the Turner networks was a music video promoting the Steve Austin vs. Rock match at Wrestlemania. It was an amazing climax to the story, which ended a few days earlier, of wrestling on stations that had been the centerpiece of the opposition to McMahon for the past 16 years.

In between was the big television angle, simulcast on both Raw and Nitro, with Vince in Cleveland for Raw and son Shane in Panama City for Nitro.

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March 26, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: The imminent collapse of WCW

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

Even to the end, they couldn’t be completely honest to their own employees. There is no hiatus, and by the end of the day, TBS Inc. publicly announced it would no longer air wrestling on its stations after a 29-year run.

This clears the way for an expected purchase of what is left of the company, the name and trademarks owned by the company and the videotape library by the WWF, plus however they negotiate contracts of wrestlers, which is expected to go down within two weeks. The combination of the purchase and the end of wrestling on the Turner networks, may mark the biggest news story in the modern era of wrestling. If not the biggest, it ends the challenging story for first place, as the final end of the wrestling war started when Vince McMahon raided Hulk Hogan, David Shults, Roddy Piper and Gene Okerlund from Verne Gagne and Jim Crockett in December of 1983, signalling the start of the wrestling war, which he appeared to have won many times, but it was never final until now.

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