by Dave Meltzer
The match was so bloody that only the finish, which apparently was shot in a manner where the blood didn’t look that bad, will air on television although it’ll be pushed hard for videotapes sales.
Besides the change in the main event, there are a few other minor changes in the PPV line-up which is tentatively scheduled as a six-match show. The other matches listed last week, Taz vs. Chris Candido for the TV title, Tommy Dreamer vs. Jerry Lawler, the Dudleys defending the tag team titles against PG-13 and Spike Dudley vs. Bam Bam Bigelow (set up at the ECW Arena where Dudley scored a pin on Bigelow without outside interference) all remain. In the tag title match, the match itself is likely an angle to set up a feud with Dudleys vs. New Jack & John Kronus. The Rob Van Dam vs. Balls Mahoney match has been switched to Van Dam vs. Al Snow, who is expected to start with ECW as a regular even though he will remain under WWF contract as part of the two company’s new working agreement. If any of the matches go short, another match may be added at the last minute to the show but it will most likely be a six-match plus angles stemming from the six matches show.
Approximately 1,000 tickets had been sold to the 1,800-seat Fort Lauderdale War Memorial Auditorium as of press time which has to be considered somewhat disappointing since ECW hasn’t been in Florida in years and this is a PPV show. With much of the crew going down early for promotional work, the building still should wound up being packed.
While there doesn’t appear to be the anticipation of this show as compared with ECW’s first PPV show on 4/13, most likely the show will do similar business. ECW was buoyed by last minute plugs on WWF’s Raw on 8/11 in return for Rick Rude starting up as the new “bodyguard” manager for Shawn Michaels, and its arena and overall business along with the ECW name is stronger now than it was before the first PPV show.
The first PPV show was generally considered very good, so it’s doubtful many first-time buyers were turned off by the show itself, at least when it came to the in-ring product itself. Some wrestling fans who were looking primarily at the glitz aspects and wowed by things like production values and the major league atmosphere they’ve seen on WWF and WCW may have considered it second rate but those into harder violence and blood likely would have enjoyed it more.
However, the hoped for new clearances for this show for the most part didn’t take place. Request TV is claiming a universe of 17.6 million for this show (they claimed 17 million for the first show), although those numbers have to be considered with a grain of salt (Multi Channel News in an article this week on the last UFC show said the universe was 21 million when the real figure was just under 15 million). The only real major difference is that DirecTV is carrying this show, which didn’t carry the first show, and Time Warner, which carried the first show, isn’t carrying this show.
Paul Heyman before the first PPV show said that the show wasn’t about drawing a good buy rate, but about putting on the kind of the show which would increase the universe for subsequent shows. By that standard, even though the first show did an acceptable and profitable buy rate and had to be considered a success from a product standpoint, it didn’t accomplish its objectives because for the most part the people who passed on show No. 1, are still on the pass list although there are negotiations ongoing that could change that for the third show.
The 7/27 UFC show, at less than 15 million homes, was carried by the larger servicing Viewers Choice and not Request, (ECW is being carried by Request and not Viewers Choice), and had all the satellite services cleared while ECW has most but not all. Most companies that decided against carrying UFC also aren’t carrying ECW (TCI being the most notable exception as they are carrying ECW in their systems that subscribe to Request).
Heyman also instituted a number of new company rules at the Arena show. The main ones were there can be no wrestling or fighting over the guard rail unless specifically authorized; There can be no fighting near tables or using tables unless specifically authorized; There can be no using the house mic during the show unless specifically authorized; There can be no crotch shots of any kind unless specifically authorized; And there can be no touching of fans under any circumstance.
There are several likely reasons for the changes. One is that ECW has come close on several occasions to fan problems that were one step from becoming incidents that could have threatened their future. ECW is under major pressure from Request to not have any incidents garner negative publicity for the company or Request’s deal to carry the PPV would be in jeopardy. In addition, in the case of the tables and crotch shots, Heyman will continue to use those spots but lessen usage of them to attempt to make the spots mean more. Wrestlers in all U.S. promotions use not only low blows, but crotch shots on the ropes because they are the one move almost guaranteed to get a response from any crowd, but then that leads to wrestlers relying on them and they lose their value when it comes from using then in angles and finishes.
Heyman’s own background from Memphis in 1987 where they drew several huge houses based on one crotch shot angle, and used Dreamer in several of those in recent weeks, plus used it for a finish where Spike Dudley beat Bigelow at the Arena, wants to protect the spot. Ditto the tables. The fighting in the crowd and touching fans is more a response to problems of late that needed to be addressed because they were happening too frequently again, rather than changes made for booking reasons.
25 – The Death of Plum Mariko
AUGUST 25
When you actually think about all the risks wrestlers take in the ring, the injuries that do happen and the accidents that can happen, it’s actually almost an unbelievable statistic when it comes to the mortality rate in the profession from in-ring injuries.
The death of Japanese woman wrestler Plum Mariko (real name Mariko Umeda) on 8/16 stemming from an in-ring accident in a match the night before was actually the first death stemming from an incident inside the ring in the history of pro wrestling in Japan. It is the first death stemming from an incident in the ring at least in a major promotion since the Mexican wrestler Oro passed away on October 26, 1993 of a brain aneurysm suffered after taking a routine bump off a chop in the middle of a match.
While there have been a few heart attack deaths in the locker room after a match over the past several decades, with names like Larry Cameron, Killer Mal Kirk (who I believe actually died of his heart attack in the ring), Ray Gunkel, Luis Hernandez, Jay Youngblood and Mike DiBiase coming to mind, deaths from actual in-ring injuries are astonishingly rare. This is not to lessen the tragedy when such a rare occurrence does take place, particularly in a case where many in hindsight seem to feel it was preventable.
Mariko, 29, was working a tag match on the JWP card on 8/15 at the Hiroshima Astell Plaza teaming with Boirshoi Kid against Mayumi Ozaki & Rieko Amano. Ozaki delivered Liger bomb on Mariko, who landed higher on her back and on the back of her head, which is not unusual for such a power bomb landing, but what was rare was she was knocked completely out and the match had to be ended at that point.
She never woke up again, and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance for an emergency brain operation that night. She officially died at 6:25 p.m. the next day, with the cause of death believed to have been from an abscess in the brain and a fractured skull, a condition she may have gone into the ring with since she had been complaining of for some time—and company officials after the fact admitted—she had been unusually tired as well of late, although she had refused to miss any matches. The belief is the injury was the final blow in a cumulative group of injuries resulting in brain trauma, such as repeated moves such as piledrivers, suplexes landing on the back and head and power bombs as opposed to a singular injury during her career.
The death has resulted in a lot of introspection within the Japanese wrestling world both from inside and outside. There are questions, both from the amount of punishment that the women pro wrestlers with their smaller size and frames, and for that matter, even the men, are expected to endure, combined with the fact that Japanese wrestling isn’t re
gulated. In fact, despite the physical nature of most of the major offices, only New Japan Pro Wrestling has a doctor at its shows who checks out the wrestlers before putting them in the ring and can administer to them in case of an accident.
Since this story is a major mainstream media story in Japan, there has become a lot of talk about some form of regulation of wrestling such as the commission system in some states in the United States (although most commissions when it comes to governing the actions and safeguarding the participants within pro wrestling are a joke), and of mandating a doctor at ringside both for immediate attention to injuries and for checking out participants ahead of time.
Mariko, who had suffered numerous serious injuries over the past three years wrestling a style not really designed to allow for long careers, was wrestling despite numerous concussions that made it impossible for her to remember complicated finishes and thus kept her out of the main events. And despite having what after the fact became known that she was working with tremendous head pain in recent weeks, continued to wrestle because that’s the mentality within the Japanese wrestling world. The police in Hiroshima wanted to investigate the death but her parents asked them not to do so because she loved pro wrestling and it was her decision to continue on despite suffering constant injuries.
Mariko’s death came just one day before the 11th year anniversary of her pro wrestling debut which was on the inaugural card of the first JWP promotion on August 17, 1986 at Korakuen Hall. Her debut was the same night as the pro debut of Dynamite Kansai, Ozaki, Shinobu Kandori, Harley Saito and Rumi Kazama among others with the formation of the group that originally was considered opposition to All Japan women forming in the wake of a peak in womens wrestling popularity from the Crush Gals. JWP had scheduled two Korakuen Hall shows on 8/17, an afternoon and evening show as the anniversary of both the start of the promotion but also of the debuts of Kansai, Ozaki and Mariko, but the shows turned out to be more tragic then celebratory. At the show, they held a 10 count memorial announcing her death. Her funeral took place on 8/19 in Tokyo.
All the women from the initial JWP wrestling class, which also included Cuty Suzuki and Eagle Sawai, were trained by former New Japan wrestler Kotetsu Yamamoto (at the time between stints working for that company in the front office), Atsushi Onita and Gran Hamada, the latter two of whom were unemployed as pro wrestlers during that time period.
That first JWP folded five years later, and basically splintered into two different promotions, one of which is today’s LLPW and the other being the second incarnation of JWP which re-started in 1992. During her career she held both the JWP and UWA jr. championships, and during the early 90s was considered a second-tier star with the group and a good undercard worker with a submission expert gimmick. With her training in sambo, the shooter gimmick was based in reality as despite her small size (5’2”, 132 pounds) and pretty looks, she was at one point considered the “policewoman” in JWP to protect Ozaki and mainly Cutie Suzuki outside the ring as they hung out together publicly. Suzuki at the time was the big draw for the company for her early run as something of a mainstream popular picture book model who eventually did what would be considered softcore porn videos.
She suffered several major injuries that kept her out of action for long periods of time before coming back to the ring on October 13, 1996, although she didn’t get any kind of a push on her most recent comeback. Her first major injury was on April 10, 1994 in a match at Korakuen Hall against Hikari Fukuoka, where she suffered a broken nose and broken left collarbone and was out of action for 16 months. Shortly after her return, on December 9, 1995, she broke her right collarbone and was out another ten months. Her most recent return was on JWP’s biggest show of 1996 at Sumo Hall, and blew an important spot in the match which ended her chance of getting a push. She worked only on-and-off since that point without any kind of a push, with reports being that she was unable to memorize the complicated series of spots worked in matches within the current style.
When the Japanese women wrestlers were taking the standard of pro wrestling to the next level that many of the top male workers have reached since that time, during the 1992 to 1994 period, there was some discussion behind-the-scenes and even articles written in Japan about the potential of a death or major injury because of all the high risk moves, particularly the alarming frequency in which women wrestlers suffered injuries serious enough in the ring that it was commonplace for them to have to be carried out of the ring after a match because of an inability to leave under their own power. It became a non-issue publicly over the past three years because nothing as serious as was feared ever occurred.
While this was the first death from a ring injury from a match in Japanese wrestling history, in the past decade there had been two other deaths of trainees who had never had a professional match in the dojos, one with New Japan of a national champion amateur under circumstances so suspicious that it was largely responsible for Hiroshi Hase, the mentor of the young wrestler, leaving the company, and the other in the dojo of the old UWF.
SEPTEMBER 1
A few more notes on the death of Plum Mariko. The death is now thought to have not been related to the Liger-bomb from Mayumi Ozaki or landing wrong, although she was knocked out from the move, but from injuries she went into the ring with. She died the next day on the operating table from a combination fractured skull, brain hemorrhage, aneurysm and was also believed to have been suffering from post-concussion syndrome. Reportedly there were 50,000 bouquets of flowers sent to her funeral, which was attended by about 500 people.
After the anniversary shows at Korakuen Hall the next day, JWP went back on tour on 8/20 to Fukui where it drew a much larger than usual crowd with tons of press and Ozaki, in the first minute of her singles match with Kanako Motoya, symbolically used the Liger bomb. She said to the press after that she believed that Mariko would have wanted her to continue using the move.
According to wrestling historian Gary Will, there have been approximately 36 deaths since 1950 of pro wrestlers either in the ring or the dressing room or hospital immediately after a match, but only five this decade, one each in England, South Africa, Mexico (Oro), Germany (Larry Cameron) and Japan (Mariko). Virtually all of the deaths were heart attacks and only two conclusively appear to be from injuries.
The last recorded death due to a ring injury (and in hindsight Mariko’s death doesn’t neatly fit into that category either anymore than Malcolm Kirk’s 1987 death of a heart attack at the time Big Daddy gave him a big splash does) was Sangre India in a match in Mexico City on December 25, 1979 after hitting his head on the floor missing a tope. The other injury related death appears to have been a wrestler named Curtis Peterson in 1951 in Richland Center, WI from a broken neck.
26 – Arn Anderson Retires
SEPTEMBER 1
Perhaps it was only fitting that the official announcement on 8/25 of the end of the wrestling career of Arn Anderson was largely an angle to get someone else—in this case Curt Hennig—over. Because in many ways that was the story of his career.
Anderson, born Martin Lunde, in one of the best interviews of this or any other year, announced on the live WCW Nitro show from Columbia, SC that he recognized he had nothing left to give due to neck injuries and he wouldn’t be coming back. This announcement was confirmation of what nearly everyone had speculated since he had major neck surgery a few months back which resulted in the strength in one of his hands being so weak he couldn’t even button his own shirt.
Anderson received an incredible standing ovation, that overwhelmed even the reaction to Sting earlier in the show, when he showed up on camera for the first time since his operation before fans in one of his old stomping grounds. And the fans who reacted that way had no idea of what he was there for, while long-time partner Ric Flair was in the background fighting hard to hold back tears.
Anderson labeled himself an average wrestler, with average size, skill and speed, who achieved success through a lot of hard work. Although a
t his peak Anderson was considered among the best workers in the world, he always low-keyed his talents and would refer to himself as a solid journeyman wrestler.
In looking back over the nearly 15-year career of Lunde, 39, asks the question of whether he was one of the luckiest or unluckiest wrestlers when it comes to his level of success. On one hand, while a solid worker, he was unspectacular, not the slightest bit glamorous or muscular in an era where that meant a lot more than ability, so you could say he came along in the wrong era for his strengths.
But he was still a prominent star everywhere he went due to the respect most in the profession had for him. He was one of the best interviewers in history. But the real truth is, his break in wrestling came due to his looks, his uncanny facial resemblance to Ole Anderson. The other truth is without a great deal of ability that “luck” would have only taken him so far before the business spit him out like virtually all his contemporaries. It was his non-glamorous look that made him almost a “meat and potatoes” wrestler, a wrestler with tremendous charisma based on the fact that he looked, based on the standards of his era, like he shouldn’t have any charisma.
But due to his ability, respect the fans—particularly in the Southeast—had for him, his long-time affiliation with Flair and perhaps most importantly, the Four Horseman name, Anderson lasted longer as a major player in this profession despite being written off numerous times than 90 percent of the pretty boys lavished with major pushes and in many cases bigger money contracts that he spent his career putting over. His career was made putting over a collection of stars of the past and “Where are they nows?” and then getting on television the next Saturday and doing such a strong interview that after a few years fans actually forgot he made his mark while almost always putting people over.