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

by Dave Meltzer

  However, he never officially announced a retirement and used 1996 as his final run for glory, capturing the G-1 tournament in a week where he secretly screwed up his knee on the first night and struggled through the week to complete his planned comeback story after he had announced beforehand would be his final G-1 tournament, in highly dramatic fashion.

  This set up his final world title challenge at the 1/4 Tokyo Dome, which even with the weakest undercard for a Dome show in years, his challenge to Shinya Hashimoto’s IWGP heavyweight title resulted in a sellout of 62,500 fans—the fifth time in his career he headlined a show that drew more than 50,000 fans, a figure that only two or three men in history can claim. But even last year the general feeling was that Choshu’s final push of himself in the G-1 tournament and challenging Hashimoto in the Dome main event was his final hurrah, and that he would be out of the ring by the end of 1997.

  The humor in the press conference was Choshu after being asked if he would ever make a comeback from his retirement and he responded something to the effect of, “Never. Unless New Japan becomes a poor company (business hits the skids).”

  Choshu will concentrate on his primary duties of the past several years as being the head booker for New Japan and the most powerful force in its front office and would also like to help train new wrestlers for the company. While Choshu’s career resume as a wrestler firmly establishes himself as a Hall of Famer in this industry, his records set while being a booker actually blow away his credentials in the ring.

  As a wrestler, he came from an amateur background which included winning the Japanese collegiate championships at Senshu College, placing highly in American tournaments in the early 70s while with the vaunted New York Athletic Club, and going to the 1972 Olympics in Greco-roman wrestling representing South Korea (something that was largely kept secretive for most of his career due to the racial problems between Japanese and Koreans).

  He left amateur wrestling with a decent amount of fanfare in late 1973 for New Japan, which heavily publicized his signing, and debuted on August 8, 1974 in Tokyo beating El Bello Greco of Mexico under his real name. He was rechristened Riki Choshu in April 1977, having to do with the most famous name ever in Japanese wrestling being Rikidozan.

  After returning from Mexico where he held the UWA world heavyweight title, he very much changed the entire face and course of Japanese wrestling with his 1982 angle where he turned on Tatsumi Fujinami and formed the Ishingun group, the single most successful predecessor to the current WCW/NWO booking concept. This led to one of the most successful years when it came to house show business of any wrestling company in history.

  New Japan in 1983 sold out 90 percent of its house show dates and earned a profit that year of $9 million. Before that angle, Japanese wrestling generally revolved around a patterned Japanese natives vs. Gaijins, or foreigners, as the top attractions. But when Choshu and his group “pulled out” of New Japan to form their own company but still worked within the New Japan company, which included the likes of Yoshiaki Yatsu, Masa Saito, Animal Hamaguchi, Killer Khan, Kuniaki Kobayashi and numerous others began doing basically an NWO against the traditional group of Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Kengo Kimura, Seiji Sakaguchi and Akira Maeda, the box office success couldn’t be denied and its success directly carries over to the main angle that changed American wrestling 14 years later. It led to a greatly lessened importance on American talent in the Japanese marketplace, and resulted in a boom period where record gates were set by Japanese vs. Japanese in angles that were worked to appear to be inter-promotional.

  Choshu and company, in one of the biggest stories in the history of Japanese wrestling, changed the entire power balance of the business in Japan in late 1984 when they quit New Japan to join All Japan, leading All Japan to a year of incredible business and television ratings. But in 1987, Choshu, and most of the rest of his group, jumped back to New Japan, which ultimately changed the balance of power back to where it has largely stayed the past decade.

  This was strongly against Japanese culture at the time where a worker, once he left college, would join a company and stay with the company for life. The public accepted Choshu’s first jump because of all the problems in New Japan with an embezzlement scandal that rocked the company. But many soured on Choshu and the wrestling industry by late 1987 when he jumped back, because there were no allegations of improprieties when it came to All Japan, and his behavior was seen as like a greedy American athlete as opposed to a pure sportsman as Japanese in those days liked to consider their national hero athletes to be, and many blamed Choshu’s actions for a short-term decline in wrestling’s popularity.

  But upon his return, Choshu picked up a power base within New Japan, and with Antonio Inoki leaving the company to become a senator, by 1989, he became the most powerful entity in the front office and the group’s lead booker (although he was not officially given the title until 1991). His first major show that he booked was the very first wrestling show ever at the Tokyo Dome on April 24, 1989 which drew what at the time was a Japanese record crowd of 53,800 fans and an all-time pro wrestling record of a $2.8 million gate, records that have been shattered many times since then.

  The Choshu booking philosophy was apparent on that show as Inoki lost his first ever mixed match to Russian judo champion Shota Chochyashivili, and Choshu, the odds-on-favorite, lost in the first round of a one-night tournament for the vacant IWGP heavyweight title to unheralded 23-year-old Hashimoto. The creation of Hashimoto as a major star dates back to this match, which in the long run created his atypical long-time world champion and one of the biggest drawing major show headliners in history. He also established Big Van Vader, already a long-time headliner, as the monster foreign superstar as he beat Hashimoto in the finals to win the title on what at the time was the biggest show ever.

  It was approximately from this period that Choshu instituted the almost all clean finish philosophy, largely following in the steps of the highly successful UWF office, and eliminated the famous Japanese double count out finish that was in vogue in many if not most of the main events between big names during the 70s and most of the 80s in Japan.

  Choshu’s loss to Hashimoto became symbolic of New Japan booking, later spreading to assistant bookers Hiroshi Hase and Keiichi Yamada (Jushin Liger) in that the bookers themselves set the example for rest of the company by putting people over in the cleanest fashion possible, often to lesser level stars and lesser workers to create new stars and new programs.

  This was probably best exemplified in the very first G-1 tournament in the summer of 1991, where Choshu put Hashimoto, Bam Bam Bigelow and Masahiro Chono over clean in going 0-3, setting the stage for New Japan’s big run with Hashimoto, Keiji Muto and Chono as the top stars and he more in the shadows, and the shocking story of the top star in the group doing three jobs, along with career performances by most of the talent, in one week created one of the biggest tournaments in the industry that is now in its seventh year. The memories of that paid major dividends five summers later when Choshu, who had never won a G-1, announced just before the 1996 tournament that it would be his final one.

  In addition, strong style, or more believable wrestling, became the core of the New Japan philosophy, which led to a run of popularity among hardcore fans and gates the likes of which had never been seen before in pro wrestling history.

  There was a downside. In the long run that hurt it as a television entity as the work became more technical and the characters became less outlandish. Since that time, Choshu has produced and booked 16 shows that have drawn in excess of 50,000 fans and drawn live gates that no other booker in pro wrestling history has ever approached. However, there have been signs, particularly in recent months, of the Choshu booking philosophy going stale as New Japan has been in a rut of late with no fresh storylines.

  In addition, New Japan had to cancel a Tokyo Dome show in October of 1996 because of its inability to do business with Royce Gracie, who the show was to be built around, a
nd nearly found themselves in the same situation this past April after adding another Dome show when they believed they had put together a Hashimoto vs. Ken Shamrock match that fell through when Shamrock went to WWF and resulted in the company having to heavily paper this past April’s show.

  In addition, even though the angle to set up the October 9, 1995 Tokyo Dome show was among the greatest and most important angles in history, the follow-up of the New Japan vs. UWFI feud, with New Japan basically destroying the financially strapped smaller office, served only to cut the legs out of what could have been a far stronger program when it came to longevity. Still, even with the flaws, mistakes and current staleness, any listing of the great bookers in the history of the industry that wouldn’t have Choshu in or near the top spot for his eight-year run would have to be laughable for its ignorance.

  Although Choshu was able to pull out a classic dramatic match with Hashimoto in the first round of the G-1 tournament last August, and an excellent Dome world title match main event in January, for the most part he has been very limited in the ring for the past year. Even in his heyday, he was really a guy who built a match around a few signature spots. The Saito suplex, a move popularized by its namesake and one of Choshu’s pro wrestling mentors. The lariat, popularized already in Japan by Stan Hansen. And the sasorigatamae (scorpion deathlock). The latter move Choshu didn’t invent, but he was the one who popularized the move worldwide it and made in the in vogue move in wrestling in the mid-80s which led to Sting and Bret Hart making it their trademark move later in the decade.

  But he got by through having tag team partners who were incredible workers, a great sense of timing and drama, and a level of charisma matched by only a few performers in the history of the business.

  In the Hashimoto series, the real storyline was a shoot. You had a legend, whose body was aching from two decades plus in the ring mainly as a headliner, who was going to suck it up and take as much brutality as possible to deliver a few memorable moments on the way out. While it paled in comparison to what Terry Funk has done many times over, Choshu will go out with fan’s final remembrances of his wrestling career as the week in August where he won the G-1 setting up his last world title shot, where he put Hashimoto over one more time and not with the memory of someone who stuck around years too long to where they were a shadow of their former legend.

  Besides the UWA heavyweight title, Choshu also held the PWF heavyweight title (one of the belts part of the current All Japan Triple Crown), and International tag team titles (part of today’s Double tag team title with All Japan) during his tenure in All Japan. With New Japan, he held basically every heavyweight title in the company including three reigns as IWGP heavyweight champion, although none since 1992.

  19 – WWF vs. WCW: The Battle of Los Angeles

  JUNE 9

  Sending the likes of Ric Flair, Sting, Eric Bischoff and Bobby Heenan to Los Angeles on 5/30 for the biggest first-day promotion in WCW history resulted in what would have to be called a solid but not spectacular first day of sales for WCW’s show on 6/28 at the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles.

  The show, billed as “Saturday Nitro” in which the WCW announcing team will all appear for a non-televised card, that goes head-to-head with a WWF event the same night at the Anaheim Pond, sold just under 4,000 tickets for $98,000 the first day and as of 6/2 the numbers had increased to 5,054 tickets and $120,651. The WWF show, which has had tickets on sale for several weeks, had sold around 3,000 tickets as of 6/2. Although the WWF line-up for the show would have to be considered as somewhat loaded, this appears to be more of a war from the WCW side as opposed to WWF, which aside from the bikini tanning contest with Sable, Marlena, Sunny and Chyna, is running the same card for Anaheim that it is doing all weekend.

  The WCW house show has a stronger line-up than virtually any PPV it has run in recent months, climaxing with a non-match confrontation at the end of the show with Hulk Hogan and Sting. The revised card consists of Scott Hall & Kevin Nash defending the WCW tag team titles against The Giant & Lex Luger, Ric Flair vs. Roddy Piper, Diamond Dallas Page vs. Randy Savage, Syxx vs. Rey Misterio Jr. for the cruiserweight title, Hector Garza & Lizmark Jr. & Juventud Guerrera vs. Konnan & La Parka & Villano IV, Dean Malenko vs. Eddie Guerrero, Rick & Scott Steiner vs. Scott Norton & Masahiro Chono and Ultimo Dragon vs. Psicosis.

  The WWF show is headlined by a triangle match for the WWF title, which at last word would be the return of Bret Hart although that isn’t a definite. The last line-up we had for the show was the triangle match for the WWF title with Undertaker, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels (I’d suspect that Steve Austin would replace Hart in the triangle match should Hart not be ready by that date), Steve Austin vs. Brian Pillman in a no DQ match, Davey Boy Smith vs. Sid for the European title, Owen Hart vs. Goldust for the IC title, Legion of Doom vs. Godwinns, Rocky Maivia vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Vader & Mankind vs. Faarooq & Crush, Flash Funk vs. Rockabilly, Blackjacks vs. Doug Furnas & Phil LaFon and the tanning contest. The only major change from the originally planned line-up is eliminating the Ken Shamrock vs. Vader match.

  WCW did even better the same day in Detroit for promotion of its 8/4 Monday Nitro date at the Piston Palace in Auburn Hills, MI with sales as of 6/2 topping 6,200 tickets and $144,000, which already beat the 5,088 tickets and $103,749 that the WWF ended up doing for its 5/23 house show in the same building.

  Yet another head-to-head confrontation will be taking place even sooner, with WWF running its King of the Ring PPV in Providence, RI on 6/8 and a Raw taping on 6/9 in Hartford, CT, while WCW debuts at the Fleet Center in Boston with a Nitro taping. King of the Ring, with the card somewhat revised this past week, had sold 6,650 tickets for $159,132 as of 6/2, so the show isn’t expected to sellout the 16,000-seat Civic Center even though it had been advertised until 6/2 that the card would feature the first return match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels since their WrestleMania main event more than one year ago.

  With Hart’s knee not recovered enough to put him back even in a short gimmick match and Brian Pillman’s ankle not 100% and the feeling would be not have him overextend himself in a match that would have to carry the show, both were pulled from the card. As announced on the 6/2 Raw show, Michaels vs. Austin will be the match to carry the show while the other non-tournament matches will be Undertaker defending the WWF title against Faarooq, Legion of Doom & Sid vs. Jim Neidhart & Owen Hart & Smith and Crush vs. Goldust. King of the Ring matches will be Jerry Lawler vs. Mankind and Ahmed Johnson vs. Helmsley with the winners meeting for the KOR championship. Pillman vs. Austin will headline the Raw taping in Hartford, CT where there won’t be as much pressure on the two to have a match to carry the show, and more importantly, won’t have to do a 20 minute match.

  WCW will break company records for both attendance and live gate on 6/9. As of 6/2, there were 15,350 tickets sold for $231,946, the latter breaking the company’s all-time gate record set last October for the Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage match in Las Vegas. The company record for tickets is 15,834 set for the January Nitro in Chicago.

  As of 6/2, there were no tickets available, however they are going to open up hundreds or perhaps thousands of killed off seats this week in those curious problems as how every week they can’t get the building ticketing situation straight and after announcing a sellout locally and pulling ticket sales off the market, they almost routinely have several hundred seats to fill at the last minute. However, when it comes to dollars, the biggest upcoming advance of all belongs to the WWF, not WCW, for the 8/2 SummerSlam PPV show at the Meadowlands which has sold 9,298 tickets for more than $321,000.

  JUNE 30

  The battle of Los Angeles is just days away and how it’s going depends upon who you choose to ask.

  WWF officials claim to be thrilled because according to ticket outlets as of 6/23—five days before the two shows—they were only 190 tickets behind WCW—and they play the market regularly while WCW is running its first show in the market in two years, a
nd hyping it huge on television as “The show Eric Bischoff doesn’t want you to see”, now claiming Bischoff is keeping the show from being on PPV and doing a live Internet audio commentary. WCW officials claim the ticket counts aren’t even close, with them well ahead. Both sides claim the other is papering the market heavily.

  The WCW card officially changed on 6/24 after they finally got around to doing the Ric Flair-Roddy Piper angle the previous night on Nitro, with Flair vs. Piper added to the show, and the Kevin Nash & Scott Hall tag team title defense changed to Lex Luger & The Giant, as has been reported here from the start. The headline event is actually not a match, but promising the first elusive Hulk Hogan vs. Sting confrontation. The WWF card will be headlined by the first wrestling appearance of Bret Hart since knee surgery, in a triangle match for the WWF title with Steve Austin and Undertaker.

  WWF officials claimed 5,643 tickets sold and $107,433 as of 6/23, and claimed WCW had sold 5,833 tickets and $135,257. WCW claimed they had sold 8,660 tickets and expect that another 1,000 to 1,500 more season ticket holders to all Forum events will show up with the Forum adding $44 per season ticket holder to the gross, which puts the gross at theoretically more than $200,000 with only $12 and $10 tickets remaining which they expect most of the late sales, if they are significant, to be Mexican mat fans.

  Both groups have tons of last minute promotion with WWF sending Sunny to Los Angeles all week to promote the Anaheim show, and sending Ken Shamrock (who was added to the show in a singles match against Jim Neidhart) and Chyna to Venice Beach, a nearly two hour drive to the Anaheim Pond, the afternoon of the show, to push late buys. WCW is heavily promoting late buys at the Mexican market, which traditionally buys tickets the night of the show, but also has phone-in radio appearances by Hogan and has Randy Savage in town during the week.