by Dave Meltzer
In addition, a generation ago, Baba did a similar experiment and signed an Olympic gold medalist in judo, Anton Geesink of the Netherlands, to a huge money (at the time) deal and pushed him immediately to the top of the cards as the No. 2 babyface in the company behind Baba himself. While the 6-foot-8 Geesink’s presence in pro wrestling drew a lot of publicity in the early 70s, he never got the knack of it, was a poor worker, and his career was over within a few years. But All Japan did get good short-term results at the gate and in casual interest from the two similar experiments in its history in Geesink and a retired sumo grand champion named Hiroshi Wajima in the 80s, who was also a flop in the ring and only lasted a few years but garnered a lot of early interest.
However, New Japan jumped at the chance since some of the biggest matches in the history of the company have involved bringing in outsiders from other sports, including former judo stars like Willem Ruska, Allen Coage (Badnews Allen) and Shota Chochyashivili with ballyhooed mixed matches against Antonio Inoki.
APRIL 21
The pro wrestling debut of Naoya Ogawa, a national sports hero in Japan for being the country’s No. 1 heavyweight judo player for much of the past decade, was considered a major success.
The 4/12 Tokyo Dome, the show originally added to the schedule because of the belief it was going to be the largest gate in history almost automatically with a Shinya Hashimoto vs. Ken Shamrock IWGP title main event. Ogawa was to debut on the undercard. The show changed its face with Shamrock signing with WWF and Ogawa moved to the main event. While Ogawa’s name wasn’t as strong with the ticket buying pro wrestling fans in Japan as Shamrock’s, he was far better known to the general public.
New Japan garnered tons of mainstream publicity which led to a crowd announced at 60,500, which everyone was thrilled with since the show’s advance wasn’t promising at all. This would probably be a gate around $5 million which will make it wind up as almost surely the second biggest money show of 1997 behind only the 1/4 Dome show when it comes to total revenue. The show wasn’t sold out but was fairly close to capacity and we’re told that announced figure sounded about right.
More than 50 magazines and 250 press photographers covered the main event, and a photo of the finish appeared in color on the front page of a few sports newspapers the next morning. Stories of Ogawa training with Antonio Inoki and Satoru Sayama for his pro wrestling debut ran daily in many newspapers all week leading up to the match, and it spurred enough general public curiosity interest that the television show airing on tape the next afternoon with the main matches from the Dome drew a 13.0 overall rating (Hashimoto vs. Ogawa itself drew a 13.6 rating), making it the highest rated pro wrestling television show in Japan in many years.
Ogawa used the same choke sleeper that was his main finisher in winning seven national titles and three world titles in judo in what was billed as a martial arts match, in 9:25, and referee Masao Hattori stopped the match. This was a disputed finish in that Riki Choshu and Kensuke Sasaki immediately hit the ring screaming that Hashimoto hadn’t tapped out. Hashimoto then after the match asked for a rematch, putting up his IWGP title, which will headline the 5/3 Osaka Dome show. Hashimoto also requested to be pulled off the house show schedule for April so he could train uninterrupted for the rematch.
For those interested in “what would have happened” trivia, the plan originally if Shamrock was there was for Hashimoto to pin Shamrock on this card, but for Shamrock to capture the title in the rematch in Osaka. It was pretty well known by insiders that Ogawa was going to win the non-title match to set up the title match, and put him on the map from the start of his career as a big time player in Japanese wrestling.
Ogawa, now 29, was the youngest world champion in the history of judo at the age of 19 in 1987. He followed it up with world title wins in 1989 and 1991. In 1992, he won the silver medal at 209 pounds at the Barcelona Olympics losing to Russian David Khakhalesheivili, who currently works for RINGS and is the current heavyweight world champion in Sambo. He placed fifth in the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, and officially retired from competitive judo last September and began negotiating first with All Japan which didn’t come close to meeting his money figures, and later New Japan, which did, to go into pro wrestling.
There was great intensity in the match since New Japan wrestlers Choshu, Sasaki, Satoshi Kojima and Takashi Iizuka were all in Hashimoto’s corner doing the gimmick of representing their world champion in the battle against the top judo star in the country, who had Inoki in his corner, which guaranteed heat. It’s the gimmick the New Japan promotion has specialized in almost from the inception of the company, and really the direction WWF should have taken Shamrock, as the outsider challenging the champion of the WWF, for maximum initial impact and value.
The wrestlers were screaming at Hashimoto to throw kicks, which he did, but Ogawa snatched him in a cross armlock and Hashimoto made it to the ropes. Hashimoto came back with hard chops and thigh and chest kicks but Ogawa caught a kick and took him down going for an armlock but Hashimoto escaped. Hashimoto, who was a high school champion in judo before getting into pro wrestling, did some judo spots of his own but Ogawa ended up on top in “his” game catching the arm again and Hashimoto again went for the ropes to break it.
Hashimoto unloaded with the hard kicks and finally knocked Ogawa down past the 6:00 mark and did his chops to the shoulder and kicks to the stomach and Ogawa rolled out of the ring. Hashimoto got his trademark bloody nose at this point. Hashimoto unleashed more kicks and knocked Ogawa down for a count of seven. Ogawa made the comeback using a judo throw which will become his trademark pro wrestling winning move called the STO (Special Tornado Ogawa) and clamped on the sleeper with a body scissors on the mat for the finish.
The match was said to have been successful in that it accomplished what it set out to do—appear believable and come off real looking and get Ogawa over to set up his career and the impending rematch. Obviously Ogawa in his first pro match didn’t have a classic good match.
MAY 12
The first pro wrestling event at the new Osaka Dome, New Japan’s “Strong Style Evolution” headlined by the Shinya Hashimoto vs. Naoya Ogawa rematch for the IWGP heavyweight title broke just about every record for pro wrestling in that city.
The show drew basically a full house of 53,000 fans (a number that was said to look legit as there were scattered empty seats and about 8-9,000 seats on the field in a building that holds 45,000 for baseball), which translated into an approximately $4 million house, another $800,000 in merchandise sales and another $400,000 paid by TV-Asahi for the television rights to the show.
Because the dollar has gotten much stronger against the yen over the past few years, a gate of 500 million yen, as this show drew, would be $4 million today as opposed to a couple of years ago when the same size gate would be a near all-time record $6 million. This is one of the reasons the Muto-Takada 1995 gate record really isn’t in any jeopardy until there are global economic changes well out of the realm of the pro wrestling industry.
Besides the Hashimoto-Ogawa rematch pitting New Japan’s world heavyweight champion against a multi-time world champion in judo, coming off Ogawa’s victory on 4/12 at the Tokyo Dome, the show also featured numerous WCW performers including Senior Vice President Eric Bischoff, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, with the NWO contingent going 3-0. Hashimoto retained his title in 10:20 of the main event, billed as being under martial arts rules, when he made a comeback on Ogawa and destroyed him with brutal leg kick after brutal kick until Ogawa’s second, Tiger King (Satoru Sayama) threw in the towel so they did a martial arts style finish as opposed to a traditional pro wrestling finish.
The finish was set up a few days before the match when they did an angle where Ogawa injured his knee doing mountain climbing with his trainers Sayama and Antonio Inoki and Hashimoto worked on the “injury.” To sell the power of the leg kicks, the 1992 Olympic games silver medalist was unable to get back to his feet after the match and did a stretcher job, all
owing New Japan Pro Wrestling to once again “prove” their top fighter was superior to a world champion in another combat sport. Ogawa, now having been defeated by the top New Japan wrestler, will join New Japan full-time starting with the next tour in two weeks.
We’ve had a mixed response from those who attended the show live. The basic feeling is that the regular wrestling fans who attend all the big shows thought it was a so-so event, and in particular didn’t get into the American style matches with the NWO wrestlers saying it was like they cut a hole through the middle of the card. However, the NWO merchandise sold like crazy, particularly to kids, who popped big for all of their ring entrances although didn’t react much to the matches themselves, and the majority of the fans who attend events like this that draw crowds in those kind of numbers were probably attending their first or second ever live show and those type of fans respond to star power and the spectacle of attending a major event. The matches will air on 5/10, 5/17 and 5/24 on the New Japan television show.
9 – Dennis Rodman Signs For WCW
FEBRUARY 10
Dennis Rodman’s people told WCW that he had a $500,000 offer to do WrestleMania and be in Goldust’s corner, to set up the two as a tag team for SummerSlam. Since he’d previously worked for WCW, they gave them the opportunity to match the offer. The belief is WCW would have but Rodman’s NBA probation may not allow him to be part of pro wrestling angles.
MARCH 17
Dennis Rodman became the latest media star of the moment brought into pro wrestling as a publicity stunt in an announcement made by WCW over the weekend.
Rodman, the regularly suspended current leading anti-hero of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, who has a movie coming out this week, will be part of the NWO group and appear on the WCW Uncensored PPV show on 3/16 in Charleston, SC and make what is believed to be two additional appearances with WCW as a participant in matches, the first of which is tentatively planned for the 7/13 Bash at the Beach PPV in Daytona Beach.
WCW was able to outmaneuver the WWF, which was also pursuing Rodman. The WWF had offered Rodman a two-show deal reportedly for a $1 million fee. The first of which would have been WrestleMania, to appear in Goldust’s corner to attempt to help the faltering Goldust character get over stronger as both a babyface and as a mainstream bizarre cult figure. The second of which was the SummerSlam PPV in August where he and Goldust would have formed a tag team.
However Rodman’s representatives, since Rodman worked a WCW PPV in July of 1995 as Hulk Hogan’s corner man for the Bash at the Beach in Huntington Beach, CA, went to WCW to match the offer. WCW pulled the deal off for an undisclosed figure although you’d have to figure they at least matched the WWF’s offer if not topped it in some fashion, since there were several incentives for WCW to do so. Besides nixing a WWF publicity ploy with a star that would have gotten them mainstream play, WCW was able to get a front page story in the Chicago Sun-Times just two weeks before WrestleMania with the breaking of the story, although WCW had for the most part completed the deal more than a week earlier.
In the Chicago market, where Rodman has to be one of the two biggest sports celebrities right now behind only Michael Jordan, WCW stole much of WWF’s local thunder as they built for WrestleMania, although Mania is going to sellout or come close to it anyway. Rodman, who has been a fan of Hogan’s for years, taped a segment with Hogan that promoted both Rodman’s movie that comes out this coming weekend and the Uncensored PPV two days later, which aired toward the end of the 3/10 Monday Nitro television show.
Rodman’s contract with the Chicago Bulls wouldn’t prohibit him from passive participation in something like pro wrestling (ie he could be in the corner, but not get physically involved to any real degree) during the season. When the season ends, Rodman will be an unrestricted free agent, and thus without an NBA contract, would be free to perform in a pro wrestling match.
WCW got some mainstream pub over the next few days, although not nearly as much as they pretended on the Nitro show. Most newspapers didn’t carry the story, and aside from the Sun-Times, the few that did just ran a line or two in the AP sports rundown. It did get play, treated as a joke, on both the NBC and ABC radio network top of the hour newscasts on Saturday morning.
Perhaps the most play was Hogan & Rodman appearing on the Howard Stern show on 3/10, with reports from the show saying Stern pretty much blew off Hogan’s attempts to plug the WCW PPV to concentrate on talking to Rodman. Apparently something on that show must have been said by Stern about Roddy Piper, since Piper lashed into Stern (among others) that evening on Nitro. It is expected over the next week that some of the entertainment television shows with carry the story.
Actually there was more mainstream press for the story in Japan, where Rodman appears on many television commercials. It was carried in prominent fashion in the sports pages, and on 3/9, New Japan President Seiji Sakaguchi said that he’d like to have Rodman wrestle at one of the Dome shows this year in a tag team match with Scott Hall and/or Kevin Nash but thought that his price would be too high and gave the indication that he didn’t believe there was a realistic chance of it happening.
It’s doubtful Rodman’s appearance in Charleston, SC in the corner will have any effect on the buy rate for the show, since Rodman already did a similar thing in Los Angeles and it had no effect at that time. His match in July will probably garner a lot of mainstream press, and if he appears on Nitros frequently building up the event, he may cause a positive effect on television ratings similar to the Lawrence Taylor deal in the WWF, which spiked the Raw ratings for its duration but resulted in a disappointing buy rate on PPV.
It seems to be at this point that a major celebrity in wrestling causes a lot of talk and mainstream curiosity which is good for ratings, but that those type of people aren’t going to spend $27.95 to see someone on television in an activity still largely considered a joke that they are used to seeing regularly on television for free. However, the mainstream pub, whether the buy rate is strong for the July show or not, does get the name brand WCW over and buys the company great publicity. It’s certainly a better investment in that regard than buying a bunch of race cars.
10 – Dr. Death Arrested
MARCH 24
Steve Williams, the top American star of All Japan Pro Wrestling who also works for ECW and was involved in serious negotiations with the World Wrestling Federation over the past week was arrested on the morning of 3/17 at the Laredo, TX International Airport on drug possession charges.
Williams was caught for at least a third time in his pro wrestling career coming through airports with drugs, in this case inspectors found undeclared pharmaceutical drugs inside luggage belonging to Williams and two traveling companions who are not involved in pro wrestling. The three were charged with a felony possession of a controlled substance and were released from Webb County jail after posting $25,000 bond each.
Drugs seized included 80 boxes of Neo-Percodan, 17 boxes of Valium, 16 boxes of Halcion, 15 boxes of Tamegesic, 26 boxes of Darvon and eight boxes of Ritrovil. The drugs are all pain killer type drugs, most of which are very popular today with more pro wrestlers than you’d think, for obvious and not so obvious reasons. Laredo is a city just across from the Mexican border.
The story ran on the AP wire and was carried in numerous newspapers around the country. While we haven’t received any official word of this, one would think it would be very likely that this arrest would at least temporarily kill the WWF’s current interest in bringing him in. We say temporarily since WWF brought Crush back more than one year after his arrest on steroid and weapons charges and actually used that arrest as part of his angle. The general belief is that Williams was being brought in as a potential opponent for Ken Shamrock. It is also unclear how this will effect his position with All Japan, but the arrest received significant play in Japan as well, since Williams is the third most popular foreign wrestler in the country.
The WWF already signed Del Wilkes, another of All Japan’s top foreign s
tars, who is better known as The Patriot, to a multi-year contract.
Wilkes, who was last week voted in Weekly Pro Wrestling Magazine as the fifth most popular foreign wrestler in the country, is believed to have signed sometime within the past ten days. He hadn’t worked All Japan since the December tag team tournament, where he was the partner of Kenta Kobashi, due to an injury, but apparently during his recuperation had decided to explore the WWF option and the two sides had on-again off-again talks for at least a month or two.
Those close to Williams believed it was most likely that he would be signing with Titan, which has been after him on-and-off for the past two years, but that was all before the arrest and there is no word on how or if the situation in regard to Titan’s interest in him will change or how this would affect his status with All Japan, where he was scheduled to return for the Champion Carnival tour, which no doubt he would play a major role in, beginning 3/22.
The news of Williams’ arrest will almost surely be carried in a somewhat prominent role in many sports sections in Japan on 3/19, and at press time we do know that All Japan was very concerned with both the story itself and the press reaction to the story in Japan. If he were to not be able to appear on this tour, it would require a major re-doing of all the booking since these tours are very carefully planned.
The situation with Williams, who turns 37 in May, negotiating seriously with Titan points out a major shift and change in the wrestling structure over the past few years. The job Williams and the other American regulars had with All Japan as recently as a few years ago was considered one of the most plum positions in the entire industry. The money was very good, you had basically 24-30 weeks a year off, there was far less political b.s. as in the States. Job security was considered much better than in the U.S. where positions change rapidly every time the wind changes, the situation was favorable since it was an athletic environment with virtually no gimmicks or screwiness involved. The funny thing is that All Japan really hasn’t changed all that much, but the industry as a whole has changed greatly.