The Wrestling Observer Yearbook '97: The Last Time WWF Was Number Two

by Dave Meltzer

  The talent would largely be split between the two shows rather than having the same wrestlers headline both shows. Whether that means Tenay turns heel and is revealed as the WCW turncoat that gave Hogan and Bischoff the info every week as to when Sting wasn’t going to be around for all their grandstand challenges (there had been talk internally for months about turning Tenay heel) or he’ll be used to counterbalance Bischoff & Rude is unknown, although if it’s the latter, he’s probably not the right person for the job since his forte is his ability to impart information while remaining non-confrontational at all times.

  The original idea of the show being called Thunder appears to have been dropped as on checking the availability of the name, ESPN owned the “Thunder” name for television for a motor sports show. In theory, splitting the talent at the shows should create more of an opportunity for the second-level talent such as the Chris Benoits, Eddie Guerreros, Marcus Bagwells and Rey Misterio Jr.’s and such, many if not most of whom have been largely unhappy with the lack of upward mobility among those without the right friends no matter how much their matches get over.

  There are even greater risks involved in this change than the risks Bischoff took when creating the Nitro show in 1995. At that time, WCW literally had nothing to lose when putting on a show opposite the WWF. The WWF was considered the industry leader, and just being a competitive second would have been considered a success. As it was, WCW gained attention early by putting on PPV-marquee level matches every week on television like Hogan vs. Sting, Hogan vs. Luger, Flair vs. Savage, etc. and were dueling evenly for months with the WWF that concentrated on the old formula of a few squashes, a few competitive matches, and saving the marquee matches for where the company would make the most money.

  But the tables turned in the summer of 1996, when three things happened—Nitro expanded to two hours going on one hour earlier than Raw and giving them a jump-start, the NWO angle got off the ground with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall jumping and Hulk Hogan going heel, and the company started blowing away its competition inside the ring by signing so many smaller wrestlers who could do things the larger more plodding wrestlers on the other show couldn’t do, making WWF, in comparison, look like slow-motion wrestling. Since that time, WCW has dominated every Monday with no end seemingly in sight.

  The game changes again in January. Will the WWF be moved a step lower down the totem pole, or will it be the greatest Christmas present Vince McMahon ever received?

  The pressure is on Bischoff because if it doesn’t work, he’s given back the store and screwed up a proven winning formula. Even if it becomes obvious after a few weeks and they make the necessary changes back to the 1997 formula, it would have to be an admission of failure and wrestling promoters are often very slow to make that admission.

  It’s risky to be sure, since previous attempts to do all-NWO programming have been nothing short of a disaster. The NWO segments in the empty arena on the Saturday night show were funny for a few weeks, but lived out their shelf life in less than one month. Attempts to “take over” Nitro for 30 to 45 minute segments have, without exception, all been disasters. Even the five minute segment on 11/24 where Bischoff and Rude did the commentary during the Hogan-Giant match came off poorly. The NWO PPV show was not only among the worst PPV shows of all-time, but far more importantly—and something that has been forgotten by most—is that it died on the buy rate, and that’s with a Hogan vs. Giant main event which on paper should have done nearly twice as many buys as it did if it were advertised as a typical WCW event, and a huge advertising budget.

  It is known that behind-the-scenes Kevin Nash was trying to get the NWO show to be the Thursday show. From a risk standpoint, it’s better for his and the NWO’s position. Even if the new show were to bomb on Thursday, let’s say, do about a 2.0 to 2.5 consistent rating, it can always be explained as being a new night for wrestling fans and the competition of going against blockbuster network programming in “Seinfeld” and “Friends.” With no wrestling track record to judge it against, anything can be said to be a success.

  More importantly, without competing wrestling programming, and also because even though “Seinfeld” and “Friends” are two of the hottest shows on television, when it comes to the demographic that watches WCW wrestling, Monday Night Football is far bigger competition, the actual potential for the ratings in the long run may be greater on Thursday than Monday, although not right away. Because TV viewership is based so much on people being creatures of habit, the Thursday show, like Nitro, is likely to build an audience rather than, like running consistent house shows in a market, do a blockbuster early and then subsequent crowds trickle downward. Of course, come January, the football competition becomes a moot point.

  On Monday, there is a track record to live up to. Anything below consistent numbers between 3.8 and 4.0, particularly with no football competition, is a decline, and that’s a hell of a standard to have to live up to. By all rights, with no football competition, all things being equal, the ratings should increase from the current level in January by about .3 every week. Anything below what the WWF does, which would mean the show would have to go into an almost immediate free-fall which is an unlikely scenario, will be nothing short of outright disaster.

  DECEMBER 22

  As best we can tell, the plan is for Nitro to remain as it is on Mondays, as in why mess with a successful formula, and the new formula show will be NWO Thunder on Thursdays. Being that this is 90s wrestling, nothing is for sure until it happens, including Sting winning the title at Starrcade, although Hogan not doing the job on this show, and he has the contractual right not to (which means he’s going to hold the company up for whatever he can get), after all this build-up would let a lot of the air out of the Sting balloon.

  DECEMBER 29

  If there was a chance that the NWO was going to take over Nitro, it almost surely ended on Tuesday afternoon when the ratings came in. And now the prospects for the Thursday NWO show also have to be questioned.

  On the 12/22 Nitro from Macon, GA, at the one hour mark of the three-hour show, the NWO, mainly Marcus Bagwell, Konnan and Scott Norton took over the show and they spent about 20 minute tearing down all the WCW equipment and replacing it with new NWO equipment. The rest of the show had a new graphics package saying NWO Nitro, new lighting, new banners and a new insignia for the entrance area. Obviously this is all designed to get people to believe that Eric Bischoff is going to beat Larry Zbyszko and that the NWO is going to take over Nitro starting on 12/29 in Baltimore. It would seem silly to put together all the graphics, logos, banners, etc. saying NWO Monday Nitro just for one television show, although since at the time it was a swerve, it in theory was a brilliant idea. Except it wasn’t.

  Although Nitro defeated Raw on 12/22, it was the closest margin over the head-to-head period of the entire 1997 calendar year. The approximate head-to-head numbers over the 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. period had Nitro at a 3.3—about .8 lower than its average over the past few months, and Raw at 3.15, about .4 above its average. Overall Nitro did about a 3.5 rating (4.0 first hour; 3.6 second hour; 3.0 third hour) while Raw’s 3.15 was a 3.1 first hour and 3.2 second hour, which means that for the first time probably in all of 1997 in a head-to-head full hour, Raw beat Nitro 3.2 to 3.0 which shows just what a disaster the show was for WCW. Quarter hour breakdowns weren’t available at press time.

  Raw was by no means a blow-away show, in fact it was a bad show, just not bad on the same level as Nitro. Considering just how much of the audience tuned out Nitro when the NWO took over, the message was clear that it was people switching over to WWF because they didn’t like WCW and not visa versa.

  This was the second crushing business blow for the NWO gimmick, the first being the NWO Souled Out PPV show which did a poor buy rate despite a Hogan vs. Giant main event and tons of advertising going into the show. NWO is cool as an outside force, but despite what the survey says most weeks, it wasn’t what people are coming to see all by itself. The quarter hour
breakdowns of personnel, where Ric Flair is the top ratings getter and the two biggest ratings losers are Scott Hall and Eric Bischoff should tell the story.

  Zbyszko was scheduled to win the match likely not all along, as word we were given is that Bischoff was at first scheduled to win due to interference from Scott Hall, but that about the same time the Observer cover story came out, reality hit and the decision was made to make Bret Hart referee to lead to a Zbyszko win, giving the NWO the Thursday show. Again, this puts less pressure on the NWO show because it has no great ratings track record to blow or have to live up to while trying a new concept, and if the concept doesn’t fly, it won’t make it appear Vince McMahon is winning once again.

  For more on this mystery, in local advertising for the 1/8 Thursday show in Daytona Beach and the 1/15 show in Lakeland, the advertising only lists WCW wrestlers like Luger, Page, Giant, etc. and no NWO wrestlers are listed in the local advertising. So either they are going to great lengths to fool people or they are doing some major league false advertising in those markets. Probably it’s the former causing the latter. At the same time, when the show ended, they were strongly teasing that Bret Hart was against the NWO and with Sting, and usually they like to swerve in that direction as well. Having said all that, it was probably the single worst Nitro as if we weren’t Bischoff’d to death last week, we were overdosing on it this week between four interview segments, all except the first pre-taped one that had already aired on Saturday night were bad, and some even worse play-by-play announcing.

  This hardly bodes well for adding the Thursday show doing two hours live every week with this format. Rick Rude’s forte simply isn’t announcing. He was bad in ECW, and that’s with Paul Heyman feeding him lines in carefully produced segments. Going in live without a net is even worse. Bischoff’s new character is such that he’s always been a turn-off in lengthy segments. When he went into this heel role, he gave up for a long time, until people have forgotten the role, any chance of being effective as the lead broadcaster. Bobby Heenan has been largely worthless for a long time, it’s just that Tony Schiavone and to a lesser extent Mike Tenay have done a great job of carrying him to where some haven’t noticed. But in the second hour without Schiavone, it was all too clear.

  But this rating may have been a positive in that it was the wake-up call needed before the show goes on live on 1/8, and it’s always best to do the format tinkering before the debut show then debut with a bad show. At the same time, WCW needs on 12/29 from Baltimore to get Nitro back on track before the ratings erosion turns into a pattern, and to get some mileage out of Bret Hart who they’ve invested heavily in and due to having to keep his positioning secret for the PPV show, have been unable to let loose to do an interview or start a wrestling program.

  4 – Shawn Michaels Loses His Smile

  FEBRUARY 24

  Perhaps the strangest week in World Wrestling Federation history ended up with three WWF title changes, the tease of the end of Shawn Michaels’ career, a strange twist in the working relationship with ECW, the beginning of the live Raw, a television special, a PPV event, a surprise IC title switch, numerous long-term plans switched, steroids appeared back to being somewhat in vogue, and perhaps not even limited to the male performers, and the beginning of WrestleMania hype all crammed into five days.

  When the dust settled, Sid was back with the WWF title—a belt that Shawn Michaels never lost and that Bret Hart never beat anyone for in becoming a one-day wonder, and probably wondering himself if he made the worst career move of his career, as second guessers and many in the industry were saying by the end of the week. Undertaker vs. Sid will headline WrestleMania on 3/23 in Chicago, at least as of this week.

  Michaels’ career was teased as being over due to a knee injury portrayed on television Thursday as being so bad even reconstructive surgery may not to able to repair the damage as a teary-eyed Michaels, whose problem was clearly in the interview not a knee injury, said farewell to the WWF in a classic interview repeated to death on television and PPV about 100 times in the ensuing weekend.

  It wound up only to have noted orthopedic surgeon Dr. Jim Andrews say Michaels’ knee injury wouldn’t even require surgery at all, and that after four to six weeks of rehab, he may be able to return. And at press time, it appears the plan is for Michaels to now be put back into the WrestleMania mix, although not as a wrestler, perhaps doing announcing or as a special referee, wrestle a few major shows during the summer and return full-time in the fall.

  We’re not sure whether plans had been changed at the last minute where Michaels was scheduled to drop the title to Sid on the 2/13 special, but we do know that Michaels’ short-term departure threw a total monkey wrench in all the house show and WrestleMania plans. To the WWF’s credit, they didn’t pressure Michaels into staying at a time when it appeared emotionally he needed the break, but it was surprising they didn’t do an angle to build heat on an opponent for his eventual return.

  Rocky Maivia, the former Dwayne Johnson, with less than one year in the pros, was surprisingly given the IC title on 2/13 from Hunter Hearst Helmsley. There had been some question that Maivia’s push was going to wind up in a Van Hammer/Erik Watts like situation, that fans wouldn’t buy a green wrestler being shoved down their throats and push back. If there was any doubt, during the match even before the title had changed there were chants of “Rocky sux.”

  The before-the-camera working relationship with ECW (which has been going on behind-the-scenes to some extent for months now), which had a test run before planned angles were abruptly dropped a few months back, will pick up with a new twist on 2/24 at the Manhattan Center for the second live two hour Raw show. However, this time it appears ECW won’t be the heels or the invaders but that ECW will become, like AAA, a babyface promotion working with the WWF. The exposure in that position pretty well guarantees that whatever chance there was that ECW would totally flop on PPV is now exceedingly slim, because the exposure on a wrestling show with actual large mainstream viewership should at least arouse enough curiosity to do a break-even buy rate.

  But the biggest story was not the three WWF title changes, the Michaels vacancy on Thursday, the Hart win under Battle Royal rules on Sunday and the Sid win over Hart due to Steve Austin’s outside interference on Monday; but the entire strange circumstances involving Michaels, the wrestler who carried the WWF in the ring throughout 1996, and appeared to be breaking down emotionally from pressure at the same time he was wowing crowds in the ring.

  On the Raw special, it was announced at the beginning of the show that Michaels would be vacating his title. In a memorable, but now totally over played and emotional interview, Michaels talked about a knee injury so bad it may be beyond surgical repair, how he wouldn’t return to wrestling if he was anything less than 100%, and then broke down talking about this past year as being the top man in the business being the happiest year of his life because he got to do everything he dreamed of, and saying it would be okay if it never happened again because at least he got to do it for one year, thanked Vince McMahon for letting it happen, broke down even worse, said he needed to go home to find his smile because he lost it somewhere, and ended it by saying that he needed to go home now as he hugged McMahon in the ring.

  This sent shock waves throughout the industry because it was all totally unexpected—apparently the WWF higher-ups received word at about 6 p.m. the previous night from Michaels that he was taking time off when Michaels informed WWF officials that his doctor in San Antonio had told him his knee injury could be career ending. WWF sources claim that they chose this tact rather than do an angle on Michaels’ knee with a wrestler like Sid or Steve Austin to give him a grudge match upon his return, because they were afraid of doing any further damage to the knee.

  Perhaps the real-life situation involving Brian Pillman, where both he and the WWF wanted to use him so much when he should have been rehabbing that his ankle healed improperly and he wound up having to have everything redone and start from scr
atch in an ordeal that will end up keeping him out of the ring for more than one year when all is said and done. Of course, at that same point in time, even with all the damage to Pillman’s ankle, they still did the in-ring angle for the storyline explanation and the grudge match built up for the eventual return.

  It was announced with the title vacant, that the Final Four match on the Sunday PPV, which was to determine who would get the title shot at WrestleMania, would instead be for the title, and that the original title contender, Sid, would get the winner the next day. One day before the match, the rules of the Final Four were amended to being Battle Royal rules, which meant eliminations would be by throwing someone over the top rope as well as pins or submissions, although as it turned out all eliminations were over the top, which allowed them to placate more delicate egos and saved all three from doing jobs in a match set up originally to where at least three key performers were going to have to do jobs.

  Bret Hart captured the title for the fourth time, clotheslining Undertaker over the top when Undertaker was distracted by Austin. The next night it was announced the Hart-Sid winner would face Undertaker at WrestleMania for the title in the main event. After two re-starts due to Austin jumping both men before the match started, in a gimmick designed to get off to a ratings jump on the most important Monday night ratings war to date (well, at least until next Monday), the match, which started at the beginning of the show wound up as the final match on the show with Sid winning when Austin hit Hart over the head with a chair as Hart had the sharpshooter on Sid.

  It appears the top matches at WrestleMania will be Sid vs. Undertaker, Bret Hart vs. Austin, Hunter Hearst Helmsley vs. Goldust and a Chicago Street fight with Ahmed Johnson vs. Faarooq. The original plan was for Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith vs. Doug Furnas & Phil Lafon with the tag team title switch that occurs on nearly every WrestleMania, but that may have already changed. It may be that Hart & Smith, who are more valuable than ever because they need people who can carry time every week with the two-hour live show, will be getting some perks in exchange for dropping the straps.