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

by Dave Meltzer

  The WWF claimed it was USA Today that made the mistake in the 11/24 listings of a Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels match on Raw, and that their P.R. department simply wrote that Shawn Michaels would challenge Bret Hart, and that was the storyline theme of the show, but never indicated there would be a match. However, we’ve received several newspaper TV listings that weren’t USA Today that also had listed for Raw in that time slot a Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels match.

  The other story is that, whether this is to save Patterson’s credibility with the boys or whatever, is that Patterson really didn’t know, and when he suggested the key spot to Hart, it was unknowingly relaying a message from McMahon and that he felt McMahon set him up as well. Of course Patterson and McMahon have both been around this business their entire lives and understand manipulation as well as anyone.

  Michaels, in an article in the 11/23 Charleston Post-Courier stated about Hart:

  At one time Bret was a fantastic wrestler. But I’ve been in the ring with a lot of people. He ranks up there with exceptionally average. His brother Owen is ten times the talent he is.

  The man’s very different. He sees the wrestling business very differently. He really believes he’s a hero in Canada. We all love the feeling you get when you have the adulation of the fans, but you have to learn to control that. This is the wrestling business. This isn’t real life. My God. Get a grip.

  I’ve never had a problem with Bret Hart. He mostly had a problem with me. There’s nothing I can really do about that. I’m just having fun and trying to be entertaining and controversial. Bret is from the old school, which is fine, but obviously it doesn’t mix. He takes it much more seriously than I do. You should be able to have fun at your job. I don’t take things that seriously.

  I didn’t even have a problem when he attacked me in the dressing room. I just defended myself and that was it, I left. The situation got out of hand. At that time I needed to stay away—my good old fake knee injury. Bret was harboring a lot of bitter, bitter feelings that were really his problems. He’s the guy who has to work through them. Not us.

  The world should know this was not Bret Hart leaving, this was Vince McMahon asking him to leave. He simply didn’t feel Bret was giving what he was getting. He was always late. He only did personal appearances in Canada when he felt like it. As WWF champion, I did everything. The Undertaker still does everything. Steve Austin does everything. There’s a lot of legwork that comes with working in the WWF. Bret didn’t want to do any of it. It wasn’t convenient for him. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted but he wasn’t willing to give.

  DECEMBER 15

  The never-ending saga of the Survivor Series finish has now become both the catalyst and focal point for both new angles and instances that aren’t angles at all in the WWF, and perhaps even an angle in WCW.

  Among them, Vince McMahon’s going from babyface television announcer to almost a dictatorial heel owner role as a television persona, stemming from such a strong negative backlash to him from the Hart-Michaels finish; Owen Hart’s getting a huge raise to return to feud with Shawn Michaels; Jim Neidhart’s leaving and the possible departure of Davey Boy Smith; McMahon threatening Bret Hart with a lawsuit; and yet another angle spoof where Steve Austin voluntarily “gave up” the Intercontinental title rather than wrestle (i.e. “do a job” for Rocky Maivia).

  McMahon showed up on yet another in the almost monthly “new-look” Monday Night Raws on 12/8 from Portland, ME, an even more harder edged, strange insider type show designed to throw out constant “shocks” ala ECW, complete with Marc Mero doing an interview before a match with Salvatore Sincere calling Sincere a “jobber” and a “jabroni” and explaining those were terms used for a guy who is paid to lose, and saying that Sincere was just a silly marketing gimmick and that he was really Tom Brandi; Shawn Michaels playing strip poker for about 30 minutes, including drinking Jack Daniels and smoking a cigar and finally getting down to his BVD’s, and actually putting his hand on and shaking whatever it was that he had in there right in front of the camera (and pulling down his underwear and mooning the live crowd during a commercial break); Goldust “flashing” Vader and Sable, wearing ultra high heels, taking off a potato sack to reveal as skimpy a swimsuit as possible. All in all, it was almost like the joke of “I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out,” in this case, I went to the variety show and they did some wrestling matches as there was a total of 14 minutes of wrestling on the two hour show.

  McMahon, who was heavily booed coming out based on the response to his “Why Bret Why?” interview, came out and began a heel turn in confronting Austin, making it clear he expected Austin to do as he said since he was his boss. McMahon, with the ring surrounded by agents ala the Hart scenario, claimed Austin “endangered the lives of the fans” by driving the truck (which they are giving away in a Royal Rumble marketing gimmick) into the arena and claimed he used the truck as a weapon in his match.

  During the show they showed McMahon talked with agents, Gerald Brisco in particular, trying to give the impression they were plotting to screw Austin out of the title since earlier in the show McMahon called Rocky Maivia “the people’s champion.” Then at the end, with McMahon in the ring and the ring once again surrounded by agents, Austin, in fantasy to “foil” the double-cross (and in reality to avoid doing a job on television while getting the belt to Maivia), voluntarily handed the belt to Maivia. He then gave Maivia a stone cold stunner after congratulating him on being the new champion, grabbed the belt and walked off and, actually using the term ratings ploy, said that next week on the show he’d show everyone what he was going to do with the belt. Before leaving, while bouncing off the ropes, he “accidentally” knocked into the ropes that McMahon, who was standing on the apron, was holding onto, resulting in McMahon taking a pratfall on the floor and getting up, just as the show was going off the air, spewing a string of expletives at Austin that were edited off the broadcast in the seven second delay mode. The one thing getting old is weekly opening the show promising a wrestling match with Austin as the headline event (or last week with Hart vs. Michaels), and always finding a way not to deliver it.

  The show basically held the same ratings level as the previous shows since Survivor Series, doing a 2.99 rating (2.78 first hour; 3.20 second hour) and 4.59 share. Monday Nitro on 12/8, a lackluster show before a sellout crowd of 16,848—15,101 paying $251,698 in the Marine Midland Arena in Buffalo, NY, did a 4.24 rating and 6.42 share. It was the third largest gate in the history of WCW and largest ever for a Nitro, trailing only PPV gates the past two months in Las Vegas and Auburn Hills, MI. The Nitro replay did a 1.70 rating and 3.18 share.

  Quarter-hours told an interesting story as there was more switching back-and-forth than ever before. Nitro did huge unopposed, then took an unusually large drop from its 5.0 peak for Chris Benoit vs. Lodi, to a 3.7, when football and Raw began despite having the “star power” of Ric Flair, who has delivered the strongest ratings boosts of any wrestler in the business thus far this season, and Randy Savage in the first quarter. Both shows stayed steady in the first opposed 60 minutes with WCW having a 3.80 to 2.78 cumulative lead. Then at the 10-10:15 p.m. mark, WCW grew to a 4.6 while Raw fell to a 2.4—WCW having Scott Hall vs. Diamond Dallas Page and more likely the draw was that everyone knew they were doing a big Sting angle to close the show since it was teased twice earlier in the show. WWF had the strip poker game in mid-ring. It was more likely this big difference was a positive reaction to WCW than a negative reaction to the strip poker angle because once WCW went off the air with the live show, the Raw audience grew nearly a point even though the strip poker angle was still going on.

  As noted many times, when WCW ends, Raw has often not grown at all, and usually only grows slightly, but this week it went up nearly a full point to a 3.3 and ended up peaking at a 3.7 for the teased but not delivered Austin vs. Maivia IC title match. This says that the WCW audience is remaining at a very strong level, and the WWF base audience really hasn’t g
rown to a great degree in the past five weeks, but that the WCW audience is more curious than before in watching WWF as long as WCW isn’t on the air opposing them. To counter this, expect WCW to “go long” on Nitros once again to keep from providing WWF with too much “unopposed” time once Nitro goes off the air.

  For 12/1, Nitro did a 3.80 rating (3.90 first hour; 3.72 second hour) and 5.66 share to Raw’s 3.01 rating (2.75 first hour; 3.28 second hour) and 4.53 share and the Nitro replay did a 1.70 rating and 3.08 share.

  Another new-look of the show was yet another in the almost weekly change in the announcers situation. McMahon has gone from his interviewer role to a television role as the heel owner of the company, seemingly replacing Sgt. Slaughter’s commissioner role that looks to have been dropped since his character was too cartoonish for the more serious direction the company is going. The Jim Ross/Jim Cornette first hour announcing team became Ross along with Michael Cole and Kevin Kelly, with Cole and Kelly almost dominating the announcing to the point Ross was strangely quiet to the point he could be compared with Bruno Sammartino’s role in his last days with the company. However, Ross was as lively as usual in the second hour doing the announcing with Jerry Lawler.

  The situation with the remainder of the Hart Foundation was largely squared away during the week. McMahon, to soothe the hard feelings, offered Owen Hart a huge raise to return in a more prominent role as a singles headliner to work against Shawn Michaels. He offered Davey Boy Smith some form of a release opportunity after Smith came through arthroscopic knee surgery on 12/4. At the same time Jim Neidhart, who wasn’t under contract to the WWF, followed Bret as expected in making the move to WCW.

  This led to even more problems with McMahon and Bret Hart, with McMahon at one point personally and at another point lawyer-to-lawyer threatening to sue Bret Hart for tortuous interference with contracted personnel because Bret had voiced his opinion to Owen that he thought it would be in bad taste to try and exploit the reality and trivialize it by making it a wrestling angle. Bret Hart had previously stated something, I believe on the TSN “Off the Record” show earlier in the week, to the effect of that he wondered if McMahon were to at this point give all his contracted wrestlers freedom to negotiate elsewhere that how many on their own volition would choose to stay.

  McMahon and Hart, in their first discussion, described as not cordial in the least, since the Survivor Series, largely regarding the subject of Owen returning and doing the angle, saw Bret Hart say he should give Owen the opportunity to negotiate elsewhere and McMahon said that he wouldn’t, although the words on both sides may have been a lot stronger than that and the conversation ended on a bad note with the lawsuit threat.

  Bret Hart had decided ahead of time not to bring up the subject of his last day in the WWF ever again after doing three interviews this week (a TSN “Off the Record” interview on 12/3, a taped 10:00 feature on Headline Sports in Canada which aired on 12/8, and a Prodigy Internet interview on 12/7). Although advised against it by lawyers due to the threats made by McMahon over the weekend, Hart blistered McMahon and the WWF for what went down in his final day with the company in the Prodigy interview. McMahon had this past week offered Smith some sort of an escape clause allowing him to negotiate elsewhere, and indications were that WCW would be seriously interested in him.

  There has been some thought given in the WWF to the idea of not wanting unhappy wrestlers around and even if they are under contract, to give them the opportunity to leave. Of the two, it appeared there was more heat with Smith and the office over suspicions of the timing of his knee surgery whereas Owen Hart was largely seen by everyone on both sides as being someone put in a bad position through things that he had no control over.

  The belief is the McMahon/Bret conversation originally was agreed to for both sides to take pressure off Owen for being caught in the middle of wanting to do the right thing for making as much money for his company (doing the angle) and removing the stress on his family and letting the memory of what happened die out (not doing the angle).

  Smith’s knee surgery turned out not to be as serious as some had feared, and he’d likely be able to return to wrestling within the next two months.

  Among the highlights of Hart’s Prodigy interview were:

  Saying he thought Jim Neidhart made mistake in judgement in going along with the angles in his final two weeks in the WWF, and said he thought the WWF humiliated Neidhart out of spite against him which he claimed was a bad reflection more on the WWF than anyone else.

  He thanked Mick Foley for his show of defiance in missing the Ottawa show and said that he received calls from nearly every wrestler in the WWF with the exception of only a handful who felt the same way he did about the situation.

  He claimed that when he swore on TV before WrestleMania that he was misled by the referee and thought they were off the air. He said McMahon didn’t set up the situation where he swore, that he explained to McMahon afterwards that he thought they were off the air and was never reprimanded by McMahon for it. McMahon had noted when Hart complained about the direction of the company that Hart had done things on his own that contradicted that viewpoint, and WWF officials had noted that the incident where Hart swore on the air got them more heat from the USA network than anything they did in 1997.

  He called Dory Funk Jr., “conceivably the greatest worker of all-time.”

  He claimed that Roddy Piper, Curt Hennig, Davey Boy Smith, Owen Hart, Shawn Michaels, Diesel, Razor Ramon, Yokozuna, Bam Bam Bigelow, Isaac Yankem and Hakushi among others all had the greatest matches of their career against him. He said his pick as his best match ever was the 1992 Wembley Stadium match against Smith.

  He claimed that Michaels was crying and weeping like a baby in the dressing room after the match and sat in the corner biting his nails. Michaels and Helmsley did get out of the dressing room in Montreal as quick as possible, both showing up at the hotel still in their wrestling outfits.

  Said that he knew he’d sound like a hypocrite now, but called Ric Flair one of the greatest performers in history. He said he’s regretted for a long time some of the comments that he’s made about him in the past, and said all he really ever meant is that Flair wasn’t the greatest wrestler he ever worked with and that he may not have been in the top five, but was in the top 20. He said he never met a wrestler, particularly at his age, who could wrestle the pace Flair could and has been wanting to apologize to him for a long time (on a radio show about one year ago Hart did echo these same comments in regards to Flair, who Hart could empathize a lot more with once he turned 40 and was working nightly while banged up). “I know that sounds like crap, but it’s all true.”

  Blamed his previous problems with Hulk Hogan on Vince McMahon putting thoughts and words into his head and that after realizing the kind of person McMahon was, wanted to talk with Hogan to find out the real story of what happened when Hogan left the WWF in 1993.

  He said he would not attend a WWF Hall of Fame banquet if he were invited to be an inductee.

  He said he wasn’t proud of his actions in the dressing room after the match (hitting McMahon) although he thought he handled himself pretty cooly under the circumstances.

  On Earl Hebner: “I know that people think that Earl Hebner was just doing his job. Maybe he was. But all he had to do was tell me that the day before as a friend and a man of his word. I told him if he was uncomfortable with me to just say so and that I wouldn’t hold it against him, because I suspected something like this was being drawn up. He got tears in his eyes and told me he could never do something like that, and he swore on his children that he would never let it happen and he’d quit his job first. We talked for over a half-hour and I left that room, the bathroom in Detroit, feeling in my heart that he was a close friend and no matter what pressure Vince McMahon put to bear on him, he would never be a part of or be involved in a conspiracy to tear down a guy with the reputation as good as mine. When I finally saw the match back, when I came home, nothing broke my heart
more than seeing Earl Hebner sell me out without even any hesitation. It’s one thing to get screwed over by my enemies. I already sensed who they were and what they had in mind. But it’s a much more hurtful thing when you get screwed over by a very good friend. I hear Earl Hebner is drinking himself into oblivion racked with guilt for the role he played, and all I can say is, “Have another drink on me, Earl, keep biting your nails like your buddy Shawn and keep looking over your shoulder because sooner or later what goes around comes around.”

  He claimed he wouldn’t let his kids watch Raw ever since the McMahon interview with Melanie Pillman the day after Brian’s death.

  Compared the WWF having his brother Owen do an angle based on his final match in the WWF to “a pimp forcing someone into prostitution.”

  JANUARY 5

  Davey Boy Smith officially agreed to a deal with WCW on either 12/24 or 12/25 after paying the WWF $150,000 to buy out the final 32 months of his original five-year contract. He may debut for an interview or an angle on the 1/8 Thunder show, although he probably won’t be able to wrestle in the ring due to recovering from arthroscopic knee surgery for two or three weeks.

  He had the surgery on 12/4, and his recovery slowed by getting a staph infection which ended up in both legs. He began training on 12/25. When his knee was examined, they found he did have a torn anterior cruciate ligament along with the other damage and he was told he needed reconstructive surgery which would have meant six to eight months on the shelf, but he decided against the surgery because he didn’t want to be out of action for that long. The rest of the damage besides the ACL tear was repaired in the scope.