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

by Dave Meltzer

  Road Wild was ruined before it ever started. The setting was strike one. The backstage maneuvering was strike two. And the results of that maneuvering, the lame hastily-put together finishes up and down the show, were strike three. Booker Terry Taylor had put together a show and subsequent bookings for the next couple of months built around three title changes on this show—Chris Jericho to regain the cruiserweight title from Alex Wright, The Steiners to finally win the tag team titles from Kevin Nash & Scott Hall, and Hulk Hogan to regain the WCW heavyweight title from Lex Luger. The fact that some fans knew this ahead of time, which has caused WCW and other promotions in the past to change long-term plans, had absolutely nothing to do with the fact two of the three never took place. And the result is there are cards booked with matches that make no sense and will likely have to be re-done.

  What exactly happened wasn’t clear. The belief is that Hall & Nash went to Bischoff and told him that they thought there had been too many title changes of late and it was ruining the credibility of the titles. At least that’s where everyone was placing the blame. On the surface, they have a valid point. Bischoff agreed. Which may have been the correct thing to do. The problem was, if that was the case, it needed to have been done before all the plans were made. And the fact that it was Hall & Nash who came to that conclusion at the same time they were going to drop the titles does give that viewpoint something of a conflict of interest. The whole idea beforehand for Hall & Nash to lose the titles was to then put them into singles programs, with the Nash-Giant program thought to be a potential big moneymaker.

  So just before the beginning of the show, the three title changes had been switched to zero. This threw the 8/21 Clash of the Champions, the company’s next major show (not to mention all the upcoming house shows) for a loop since it was supposed to be built around three title matches, all of which became almost obsolete. The Steiners were to defend the tag titles against Dean Malenko & Chris Benoit. Well, the Steiners don’t have the belts. Chris Jericho’s cruiserweight title defense against Eddie Guerrero is out, since Jericho didn’t win the title back as planned. And Ultimo Dragon’s TV title defense against Alex Wright, which was booked that way because Wright was going to lose the cruiser belt and then be elevated to TV champ, also looks to be in jeopardy because he didn’t lose the cruiser belt, and one would think if Bischoff believes Hall & Nash to have a valid point, that point would be undermined by having Wright beat Dragon.

  Oh yeah, you’re asking. What about Hogan beating Luger? Wasn’t the one good thing done on Monday the post-match celebration really getting the emphasis back on the world title belt as the focal point of the promotion? If that’s the case, why kill it all by changing the title back five nights later with such a ridiculous cliché of a finish? Yet another NWO star dresses up as Sting and causes Lex Luger to lose. The announcers again destroy whatever credibility they have left by all acting as if it was the real Sting doing it despite it being the same angle they’ve done a million times over the past year. What gives? Well, there is one ultimate authority in WCW, and when he showed up, zero title changes moved back to one although at this point with the show about to start, nobody had figured out a finish to accomplish this.

  All the changes meant all new finishes, most of which were really bad, particularly in the Steiners vs. Hall & Nash. The fact the work rate wasn’t too hot, largely because of the setting the matches taking place meant the fliers were mostly kept off the show, didn’t help matters. The one title change that probably made the least sense to take place on that night of the three (although Hogan did have to regain the belt shortly because the big money match they’ve been building for more than one year is Hogan vs. Sting and Hogan needs to be champion for that match to reach its money potential) was the one that did because it specifically involved Hogan, Hogan’s creative control of his programs, and Hogan not winning back the belt.

  If you’re keeping score, Hall & Nash won their power struggle with Taylor, who has now become this month’s version of Kevin Sullivan, a booker who does all the work, takes all the heat, and then gets overruled almost all the time. But Hogan beat Hall & Nash again, because even though they were able to maintain their tag belts they were supposed to lose, they weren’t able to keep Luger with the belt he was supposed to lose.

  And everyone else in WCW were the big losers. Several of the wrestlers who were told what they’d be doing on the show and after the show ended up feeling lied to. Those involved with promotion were advertising matches that make no sense now and will probably have to be changed. And the booking team has to change its basic game plan, to a game plan that once implemented, may be changed again to render it useless once again, if any part of the plan gives any of the stars a bug up their ass.

  So much for As the World Turns. But As the World Turns was far more entertaining than the mess on the dirt. Road Wild on 8/10 in Sturgis, SD drew a crowd estimated by various sources live as between 6,000 and 10,000. Judging from the overhead shots it looked in the 6,000 to 7,000 range—larger than last year but obviously smaller than the 9,500 at the beach in 1995. Tony Schiavone was in the Pinocchio role, having to say over and over again that the crowd was 20,000. Can you believe one week earlier in Auburn Hills at the Palace when they really had nearly 18,000 in the building, not one announcer mentioned a crowd figure? This time, when they half less than half of that, they give the ridiculous lie that was apparent to everyone viewing.

  Pinocchio statement No. 2, repeated often on Nitro the next night was that the Hogan-Luger match was the most watched title match in pro wrestling history. Whoa! Pro wrestling history takes in a lot and while the audience was the largest ever for a competitive situation on cable since the Monday night wars began in late 1995 which doesn’t exactly constitute the beginning of time, that statement isn’t even close to true. There have been title matches with ten times the television audience of Hogan-Luger. The very preliminary buy rate estimate coming from Request is 0.77 (the very preliminary numbers are always higher than they turn out because the people who report back the quickest are the ones who are the happiest), which has to be considered good. This would be roughly the same as the preliminary figures for SummerSlam at an 0.79 buy rate.

  ECW Hardcore Heaven

  One would have thought the inauguration of Shane Douglas as the theoretical long-term standard bearer as ECW champion would have been the most memorable part of the company’s second PPV show on 8/16 from the Fort Lauderdale War Memorial Auditorium. But instead, despite Douglas winning the title in what was generally conceded to have been the best match on the show, the lasting thought was what ECW feared most. The show looked minor league.

  The wrestling was for the most part okay, although nobody except Sabu came out of the show as breaking out of the pack. But the production, lighting, look and sound came off more like a Herb Abrams PPV than the alternative to WWF and WCW that ECW attempts to present itself as. The overall reaction to the show was mixed, and really it would be almost impossible not to get some positive reaction to the show considering ECW does have its fan base which is as fanatical to its product as any fan base for a wrestling promotion in the world. There were many who loved the show. But those who didn’t like the show, and that appeared to have been the majority, reacted nearly as vociferously with numerous callers saying it was the best PPV show of the year and almost as many others saying it was the worst.

  The show seemed thrown together in spots, unlike the first ECW PPV show in April which was planned out far in advance and was one of the best shows of the year. Reports were that Request TV didn’t get a script until literally the last minute. ECW officials were frantically trying to find “surprises” during the last week, to the point they were even looking for Jim Duggan’s phone number. As it was, they got Jake Roberts and Dory Funk, who were both good for nice pops, but played no part into any real storyline development.

  Paul Heyman described the card as a good live house show but a terrible PPV television show. Reports from tho
se who attended the show live would concur as among those there it got almost all thumbs ups. The show suffered with an attempt to get creative that fell totally flat in the show-long Sandman ambulance ride. Heyman said that the next PPV show, which will be 11/30 from Monaca, PA (suburban Pittsburgh) would be more like an ECW Arena or television shoot with two or three cameras, with more concentration on planning ahead of time and of the show quality itself and less on making sure not to offend people.

  Heyman felt he had to be careful when it came to what aired on television since they were under the gun with many cable systems to back up their claim that they were no different then the other wrestling groups on PPV, thus pulling back the camera shots from the blood ala WCW, cutting back on the swearing so as not to give whomever his enemies are ammunition to hurt future events and to get over the hump with Viewers Choice and some of the other companies that to this point are refusing to carry the show. The only swearing came in the first few minutes when Rick Rude said “F*** you (Tod) Gordon.” They even toned down not using phrases like this being the “most extreme” wrestling in the world and toned down referring to Dreamer as “the innovator of violence.”

  Once again several, perhaps many, ECW fans who are supposedly such loyal pro-company advocates don’t have any clue of the big picture. With the company trying to tone down slightly in order to be on the right side of some cable company executive’s “offensive” compass (which is also not selling out, but simply trying to conduct business in today’s real world climate rather than some mixed up fantasy about what hardcore is supposed to mean) many fans were out there doing crude chants trying to get themselves over and not having one clue about how their actions could potentially effect the PPV future of the company they profess to care so much about, particularly because there is a possibility, although unlikely at present but there had been negotiations up until about a month or two ago, for Viewers Choice to take over Request and VC has yet to approve of running ECW PPV events.

  If everything in regards to that scenario would go wrong for ECW, and the odds are strongly against it, they could lose PPV exposure. The objections there are to the show, whether valid or not and since it’s PPV where you have to make a conscious choice to order the show so really like with UFC, these decisions not to carry the events are really unsettling and kind of scary, have to do with violence and obscenities. But if the people who profess to love the product so much can’t figure out the score, they can potentially be the cause of it taking a giant step backwards as well.

  Very early estimates indicate the show did between an 0.20 and 0.23 buy rate, or about 35,000 buys, which would be an estimated 13 to 20 percent drop from the first show but would also make a profit crudely estimated by those who really don’t know the costs of around $90,000. For a second show, it held up far better than Pancrase, EFC or UWFI but didn’t show the growth momentum of UFC at the same stage (UFC went from about 80,000 buys to 100,000 buys in a significantly larger universe from show one to show two).

  On Monday, Michael Klein at Viewers Choice said that they hadn’t made a decision about carrying the next show but that they have discussions with ECW scheduled for the future. Others in Viewers Choice did confirm that they’ve agreed to carry the 10/17 UFC show, which saves that product from the almost sure extinction that a decision by VC not to carry it would have resulted in. There were rumors that VC would put ECW on, but on its Hot Choice Channel which is a secondary channel that would be in just over half the PPV homes that the major VC channels are. While it wouldn’t clear ECW universally besides the systems such as Time Warner and Cablevision that have decided system-wide not to carry the event, it would at least up the exposure by several million homes from what it was for this show.

  In response to all the protests to Cablevision from ECW fans including Joey Styles, who resides in Stamford, CT, the company issued a release defending its position. It claimed that by reviewing videotapes of the television show that the level of violence is incompatible with its own standards on violence on television. The strange double-standard of that reasoning is those same television shows air on Cablevision on broadcast and cable channels that anyone has access to with no steps taken to avoid them airing, yet PPV, where one has to go through specific steps to pay and see it, is being kept off the airwaves. It defended its broadcasting adult entertainment channels on PPV because it has a standard of violence that those also have to adhere to.

  The angle where Sandman showed up and took Sabu out of the three-way title match appears to build up a singles match between the two at the next PPV, which will likely be a ladder match. The usage of Sunny just before the finish in the Jerry Lawler vs. Tommy Dreamer match may result in a Chris Candido & Sunny vs. Dreamer & Beulah match either on that show or an arena show later this year to be marketed for videotape. Because of Sunny’s name in the WWF, the novelty of her doing a wrestling match on PPV would be a coup as far as getting some mainstream fans who don’t know much about ECW curious about getting the show.

  Roberts may or may not return to ECW, but Heyman said that he wouldn’t be putting Roberts in the ring as a wrestler and would likely never advertise him as appearing on a show ahead of time due to his track record, but may use him once every few months as a surprise in an angle since he’ll get a big pop and he recognizes his major star power in small doses. Apparently Heyman was frantically calling WWF at the last minute trying to get the okay to use Sunny because his original plan was for Roberts to be the ultimate surprise, but then Roberts arrived so late that they were afraid he wasn’t going to get there and they changed the plans and then he arrived. There was apparently some thought of using Roberts to go into Roberts vs. Dreamer, but that appears to be totally out the window.

  Although the crowd, which packed the 1,800-seat auditorium, came off as dead, except for a few big pops for carefully choreographed spots, the crowd at the end of the show did seem to be enjoying it at the end when the wrestlers were in the crowd as the show went off the air and the fans chanted “ECW.” A little less than half the crowd chanted for the encore curtain call, similar to what happened at the ECW Arena for the first PPV. It’s not known exactly what was paid and papered in the crowd. ECW offered free tickets to anyone who flew down from Philadelphia as part of a travel package, which drew 101 people and there were also 40 people who flew in from Tokyo, although they paid for their ringside tickets. The actual advance one week out was 800 tickets (we had reported 1,000 last week) and we were told the market was going to be heavily papered in the final days to fill the building.

  Before the show went on the air, they shot an angle in the building where two members of the rap band “Insane Clown Posse” were in the ring putting over their favorite wrestler, Rob Van Dam. Van Dam then turned on them, giving one a spin kick and another a Tiger driver and put him in a camel clutch. Sabu came out in a suit, trying to look like The Sheik (and he is looking more and more like him by the day) and joined in until Sandman made the save. That didn’t last long as Sabu threw a chair at Sandman and Van Dam kicked a chair into Sandman’s head. Sabu came off the top rope with a chair and then put the chair on Sandman while he and Van Dam both came off the top rope at the same time onto him. Sandman did a stretcher job and was taken out in an ambulance.

  As the show went on, they did a storyline where they had a helicopter which they called the “Extreme Chopper” follow the ambulance, which supposedly Sandman had commandeered and was driving (and he actually was driving it). The story was that since Sandman didn’t know Florida, he was totally lost trying to find the building and supposedly we were told how he was stopping for directions at convenience stores to get directions, beer and cigarettes. Supposedly he mistakenly went to the Knight Center (another building wrestling used to be held at in nearby Miami before the Arena was built) before, just as the main event started, he showed back up at the right building. At this point he started caning supposed police officers.

  The lack of believability of these segments that played
throughout the show made it again seem like an Abrams show in that they were copying bad ideas that WWF and WCW had done in the past and doing low rent (not that renting the chopper for the show was all that cheap) versions of them. To make matters worse, Lance Wright, who was doing the remote from the helicopter, froze, and never got across the points he was supposed to get across.

  There was the strong insinuation that Sandman was drinking while driving and even though this is all fantasy (although Sandman really was driving), it rubs me the wrong way really badly to glorify drinking while driving even if the gimmick of the performer is to be a drunk and the nature of the audience they play to.

  There was a lot of talk before hand about doing that segment totally as a pre-tape (which is how WWF or WCW would have done it) in case of screw-ups, but it was done live. No doubt the Posse angle was pre-taped in case using non wrestlers in an angle looked bad.

  There were complaints from the fans live about the audience as a whole, in that they were said to have been really rude to the Japanese fan contingent with chants of “USA” at them and “We Want a War.” Much of live the crowd also knew Jake Roberts was there because of the nature of how the wrestlers had to enter the arena.

  WWF In Your House 17: Ground Zero

  About the only thing to say about the WWF Ground Zero PPV show on 9/7 from Louisville, KY, is that it was the first three-hour In Your House show presented at a $29.95 price tag. How that increase in price on a monthly basis affects the buy rates and overall PPV revenue, which should increase significantly, is a lot more of a story than what turned out to be a wilder product and maybe an overall slightly-above average show.