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

by Dave Meltzer

  If Belfort wins his match and don’t think SEG is going to risk putting him in against anyone they think has a decent chance of beating him like Kerr, it sets up the obvious match with Smith for December. This would be interesting because it would be the first main event featuring two fighters with both world-class striking ability and considerable ground experience in one package.

  The local publicity in the Birmingham media was all favorable and there were no last minute attempts to get the show moved out of town. One major area politician who attended the show was interviewed on the local news saying not only that he enjoyed it but that there was nothing to the stories about brutality. It was certainly among the least brutal shows in UFC history with a few bumps being raised but no significant blood spilled. The most serious catastrophe didn’t take place in the ring, but in the stands where the wife of Joe Moreiera went into premature labor while watching her husband’s fight and gave birth almost on the spot.

  22 – Steve Austin Injured at SummerSlam

  AUGUST 11

  There was an injury that appeared to be major at the time involving the WWF’s hottest star, Steve Austin, which wound up with Austin hospitalized after his arms and legs went numb in the middle of his match with Owen Hart where he was scheduled to win the IC title.

  The two did an impromptu and totally unconvincing finish after Austin feared his neck was broken and was paralyzed from the waist down for several seconds and whispered to Hart that he couldn’t move after taking a tombstone piledriver with his head too low. Hart stalled for as long as he could, trying to get a “USA” chant going to chanting Canada and with major concern all over his face, tried to stall waiting for Austin to recover. Austin managed to roll toward him, using almost only his stomach muscles and got his arms up for a weak schoolboy finish, ending the match some six to eight minutes early. Apparently the original finish was for Austin to win using his stone cold stunner. The weak finish was explained on television as Hart having sympathy for a beaten opponent and that’s why he was stalling so long after Austin was obviously injured.

  Austin could barely get up after the match, limped with his left leg dangling out of the ring where he almost collapsed after getting backstage, and was rushed to the emergency room at Meadowlands Hospital where he was released at about 1 a.m., having apparently suffered a “stinger” in his neck, an injury more common in football. Austin had been having some legitimate neck problems earlier in the week stemming from the constant aggravation his neck has taken from wrestling. Austin appeared at Raw the next night but clearly wasn’t walking well, with his activity limited to doing an interview and interfering in the Dude Love vs. Owen Hart main event by hitting Hart with a Slammy Award leading to Love’s victory.

  We haven’t heard any long-term prognosis when it comes to Austin other than we’re told that it’s possible he could be back in action this coming weekend but the most likely situation is he’ll be out for a few weeks. The original plan for the Raw main event was for Shawn Michaels to solidify his heel turn by costing Austin & Love the tag team titles which would revert back to Owen & Davey Boy Smith. Instead Michaels solidified his turn by doing a total heel interview.

  AUGUST 18

  Steve Austin went in for an MRI on 8/8 and was told by one of the leading neck specialists in the country that he should retire and that he’d be risking paralysis to continue.

  The MRI showed what’s known in football as a stinger, trauma to the C-4 and C-5 vertebrae. Since he’s not going to retire, he’s going to get a second opinion from a Philadelphia doctor who is reputed to be the leading neck specialist in the United States.

  Those who have talked with Austin say he really doesn’t feel that bad now. He has some pain, but he’s ready to go back to work. When the injury happened, he was scared out of his mind, fearing not only the end of his career but paralysis since he couldn’t move for a few seconds.

  He will likely attend the weekend house shows but it’s questionable if he’ll wrestle on them. WWF is going on the assumption he’ll be back for the PPV. Until he comes back, the plan is for the triangle main events of Bret Hart, Austin and Undertaker to be singles title matches with Bret vs. Undertaker.

  AUGUST 25

  The latest on Steve Austin is that, as said on television, he had an appointment with one of the leading neck specialists in the country on 8/19 in Philadelphia. At press time we don’t have any details on what the doctor recommended.

  Everything regarding Austin is up in the air right now so this is all what would be tabbed semi-educated speculation. He won’t be wrestling for sure until 9/7. He may work that PPV show but the odds may also be against that happening. At that point the tag titles will go to the winner of the four-way match. He probably will return to the ring but have to modify his style to where he doesn’t take any moves that would be dangerous to his neck such as high angle suplexes on the back, DDTs, piledrivers or power bombs.

  The neck injury is expected to completely heal, although it was clear from the television interview it was far from healed at this point, but he’ll always be susceptible to re-injury which is why he’ll likely have to modify his style.

  SEPTEMBER 1

  After his exam by noted Philadelphia neck specialist Dr. Joseph Torg, the current prognosis on Steve Austin is that he’ll be out of action for a minimum of two months. Austin aggravated an already injured neck when his head was too low when Owen Hart gave him a tombstone piledriver at SummerSlam on 8/3 in the match where Austin was given the IC title.

  Among other injuries, Austin, 32, suffered a bruise of the spine along with his fairly significant neck problems that were a combination of both the recent jar and the cumulative effect of the wear-and-tear of his wrestling career. The injury has resulted in continual tingling in his shoulders, similar to if one sleeps wrong on their shoulders and wakes up with their limb asleep.

  The feeling was that Austin would eventually be able to wrestle although the first doctor he saw in Texas recommended he retire and warned him that suffering another serious injury of the type would put him at risk of paralysis. Due to that, he’ll likely have to modify his style in the ring and not take certain bumps that could potentially aggravate the injury. The basic prognosis was that after laying off and doing rehab for the next two months, he’d be re-examined and at that time he’d have a better idea of when he could return to the ring.

  When it comes to WWF current plans, Austin will have to relinquish both the tag team and probably the IC title belts. The original plan was for Austin & Dude Love to drop the tag titles to Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith on the 8/4 Raw show due to outside interference from Shawn Michaels, but Austin’s injury thwarted those plans.

  The tag title will now go to the winner of the “Fatal Four Way” a four corners tag team match on the 9/7 Ground Zero PPV from Louisville, KY. With Austin out of the match, the advertised four teams will be Hart & Smith, Godwinns, Legion of Doom and Head Bangers. However, I’ve got a suspicion that the day of the show that they’ll shoot an angle to get the Head Bangers out and put Dude Love back in the match and given him a new partner, with the best bet being Vader, although that is all speculation and officially Head Bangers are the fourth team.

  As of press time, no decision has been made regarding the IC title. Since the WWF hadn’t advertised any major matches nor made long-term plans regarding the belt, there is no hurry to make a decision. The position seems to be to wait about two weeks to see how Austin is progressing and have a better idea when he could return, and make a decision at that point.

  On the WWF One Night Only England PPV from Birmingham, England on 9/20, Austin was scheduled to challenge for the WWF title against Bret Hart. That match has been changed to Hart defending against Undertaker (whose undercard match with Ahmed Johnson was also going to have to be dropped since Johnson won’t be back from his knee injury by that time of that show). The only other change on the England PPV show is that the Owen Hart vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley match has been changed
to Hart vs. Ken Shamrock. This means that both Shamrock and Vader (who is working a dark match in England) will have the unenviable schedule of working within a one week period in England, Madison Square Garden, Albany, NY and Kawasaki Baseball Stadium in Japan.

  The Austin injury has spooked a lot of wrestlers in both WWF and WCW as to the dangers in the current style of wrestling. With the American style being harder hitting, faster paced and with more high risk maneuvers than ever before, the injury rate has skyrocketed. Austin’s injury, while just another one on the list, seems to carry more weight because it was so visually scary, it came on such a high profile card, it was from a maneuver that is delivered regularly in pro wrestling where the person taking the bump wasn’t at fault and because Austin was one of the highest profile wrestlers and arguably the hottest wrestler in the entire business at the time. Not to mention that the wrestler delivering the move has a reputation for being one of the most competent people in the business to work with.

  In many ways the U.S. is experiencing what Japan did several years ago when it started down the similar stiffer and more fast-paced style path. Eventually, because the wear and tear on the wrestlers was such that top stars were literally risking premature ends to their career not from any move but just from the accumulation of daily pounding, that submissions were put over strong to enable to holds to mean something. WCW, and to a far lesser extent WWF, have also started down that road which may be a necessity for a combination of maintaining the now expected intensity level of the matches while at the same time preserving the species.

  23 – First Three-Hour WCW Nitro

  AUGUST 11

  The results of the first experiment are in and it looks as though we are in for a lot of three-hour long Nitros.

  The 100th edition of Nitro, on 8/4 from Auburn Hills, MI, headlined by Lex Luger winning the WCW title from Hulk Hogan by submission with the torture rack in 11:25, drew a record setting 4.34 rating (4.13 first hour, 4.25 second hour, 4.65 third hour) and 7.39 share. It’s generally expected that Hogan will regain the title on the 8/9 PPV show, since the promotion is being built around a Hogan vs. Sting title match at Starrcade after a Hogan vs. Roddy Piper cage title match at Halloween Havoc. The old Nitro record was set August 26, 1996 from Palmetto, FL for an unopposed show when Raw was pre-empted that did a 4.3 rating and 7.2 share with Sting & Lex Luger vs. Chris Benoit & Steve McMichael as the main event.

  As a live show, the total crowd of 17,616 fans at the Palace would have been the second largest in company history (trailing the record setting 18,003 fans at the Fleet Center in Boston on 6/9), as was the live gate of $240,519 (the Boston set company record is $243,946). It was basically a sellout, in that all the tickets originally planned to be sold were gone a few days ahead of time, but on the day of the show they opened up obstructed view seating, some of which went unsold so it wasn’t a turnaway crowd. The only reason the gate record wasn’t broken is because the show had 4,258 comp tickets so the paid attendance was 13,356 (Boston record was 16,025), which would somewhere near the top in company history as well.

  As would be expected, with the replay now starting immediately after the live show ends, it also set a record doing a 2.31 rating and an incredible 6.58 share for a replay show. Since a two-hour show would have the replay start at a more favorable 10 p.m. time slot, that rating record likely won’t last more than a week or two although the share record is going to be tough to beat.

  Nitro’s first hour whipped the debuting “Walker: Texas Ranger” series on USA, which did a 2.3, by nearly two full points. Raw, moved back one hour, did slightly higher than it had been averaging in the old slot, with a 2.66 rating (2.60 first hour; 2.73 second hour) and 4.36 share, although whatever minuscule gain from the average it would have been is likely more due to curiosity stemming from angles at SummerSlam than the new time slot being a positive.

  For Raw and Nitro combined between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m., the total rating was 7.11 and an 11.86 share meaning a total of 5,065,000 total homes. That share figure is phenomenal because it shows just how mainstream pro wrestling really is at this point. It’s the first time the five million homes barrier had even been broken when it comes to viewing pro wrestling at one time in the history of cable television (virtually all the NBC specials in the WWF’s heyday drew far larger audiences than the combined audience of both these shows).

  That destroyed—by a full 13 percent—the all-time record combined rating of 6.27 (4,470,000 homes) set the previous week. However, the Hogan-Luger match (3,614,000 homes) fell short of the Hogan-Flair record set on the August 24, 1994 Clash of the Champions (4,126,000 homes) as the most watched match in the history of cable television.

  From a show quality standpoint, WCW easily won the week, although largely by default as WWF offered little more than Sgt. Slaughter, an explanation as to the physical condition of Steve Austin and the mental condition of Shawn Michaels. The WWF’s matches, with the exception of Brian Christopher vs. Taka Michinoku, ranged from bad to baaaaad. Granted, the three hours of WCW seemed at times like an endurance test more than a wrestling show, but the viewer patterns with the ratings generally growing throughout the three hours tells the important story.

  Viewers stayed with the show and grew with it, through the teases for the Steiners surprise, Sting being offered a contract, and the Hogan-Luger match with Luger guaranteeing victory (the general pro wrestling rule is if a babyface either guarantees victory or swears to God that he’s going to win, than he’s either going to win or he’s going to turn heel). The overall wrestling in WCW ranged from very good short matches (Jarrett & Malenko vs. Chavo & Hector Guerrero and Chris Benoit vs. Syxx); a heated world title change that offered little in regard to wrestling but had been built up great and featured an awesome post-match textbook example of how to get a title belt back over, average wrestling with big names (Flair vs. Page); solid wrestling with no names (Villanos vs. Garza & Lizmark);and bad wrestling regardless of names (Public Enemy vs. Voltage, Barbarian vs. Wrath, Silver King & Damian vs. Ernest Miller & Glacier).

  WCW, with no first hour opposition, started strong at 4.0 for the Hogan interview with Curt Hennig vs. Mortis match and stayed in the 4.1/4.2 until 9:45 p.m. when a combination of Silver King & Damian vs. Glacier & Ernest Miller and a J.J. Dillon-Eric Bischoff confrontation drew a 4.6. WWF started at 2.6 for the Hart Foundation opening interview and introduction of Sgt. Slaughter, stayed that way with Ken Shamrock vs. Kama Mustafa, and grew to 2.8 for Michinoku vs. Christopher and Helmsley vs. Vader. While WCW grew to 4.6 at 9:45-10 p.m., WWF fell to 2.4 for Patriot vs. Sultan and Patriot/Bret Hart angle. WWF’s one surge was the 3.2 for the Michaels interview, while WCW actually dropped down to a 4.2 for Flair vs. Page. The Hogan-Luger title switch did 4.9 (which also included the angle where Sting was offered the contract by Dillon) and 5.2 quarters respectively while WWF consistently fell in the second hour after the Michaels interview, with a 2.5 (Godwinns vs. Head Bangers and Pillman in a dress) and 2.4 (Owen Hart vs. Dude Love) closing the show.

  On the replay Nitro still held up to a 2.15 rating and 8.95 share between 1:30 and 2 a.m. for the replay of the Hogan-Luger match. The WWF pulled something of a bait and switch, which may have hurt it from a letdown factor in the final half hour, since they did the show opening angle building toward an Owen vs. Steve Austin match, and plugged it as the main event throughout the show, before making the switch to Dude Love in the last half hour citing Austin’s legit injury.

  24 – Sabu Captures ECW Title

  AUGUST 18

  In what apparently was among the most gruesome matches in the recent history of American wrestling, Sabu captured the ECW heavyweight title for the first time beating Terry Funk in a barbed wire match on 8/9 at the ECW Arena before a packed house of about 1,400 fans.

  The last-minute change was apparently to shake things up for the 8/17 Hardcore Heaven PPV show, which will now be headlined by Sabu, Funk and Shane Douglas in a three-way dance for the title in a rematch of one of the mo
st famous matches in ECW history. With Sandman out of action, although he will be at the PPV and likely will participate in some sort of an angle, it left Sabu without an opponent so he was inserted into the match before the title change took place, although the title change will likely be the public explanation as to why he was put in the match.

  Both wrestlers along with manager Bill Alfonso were covered with blood by the finish of the match. Most of the cuts were blade induced, including it being obvious that ref John “Pee Wee” Moore was slicing up Sabu’s back after it would hit the barbed wire. The most serious looking of the injuries was Sabu going for his leap off the chair into the spinning hip into the corner and Funk moved and Sabu’s arm was ripped to shreds in a sickening manner. He reportedly received 75 stitches after the match backstage but didn’t go to the hospital afterwards. Sabu quickly screamed for Alfonso to get some tape and Alfonso ran to the back and brought back tape. Sabu was actually taping up the wound while selling for Funk’s offense.

  At another point, Sabu crotched himself on the barbed wire. The finish saw both wrestlers tied up together in the barbed wire after Sabu had legdropped Funk through a table, due to outside help from Rob Van Dam, and scored the pin. Tommy Dreamer also got involved hitting Van Dam with a garbage can lid. Both men were so wrapped up in the barbed wire with each other that officials needed wire cutters to get both of them out of it after the match ended.

  Virtually the entire dressing room emptied to watch the title change from the stage area, reminiscent of the old days in wrestling when a super worker like a Harley Race, Jack Brisco, Dory Funk or Lou Thesz type would come to a territory and all the wrestlers would stay and watch the main event which was considered within the profession the ultimate show of respect to a top wrestler.