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

by Dave Meltzer

  As spot show attendance fell, it became harder to sell shows to local promoters (in its heyday, the group would sell its spot shows usually for $20,000 to $25,000 to local promoters and do the big shows on its own). To keep up the 250-show schedule, they began promoting more and more of the shows on their own and without being local and knowing the localities, that became an overall financial drain. In addition, many of the local promoters if crowds were poor had stiffed the office on its guarantee, causing more of a drain.

  Still, those who remember the groups history aren’t nearly so negative about the future, citing that there were occasions in both the 70s and the 80s (before the Crush Gals) that the company was in every bit as bad a financial position and near closing, and in both cases ended up rebounding stronger than ever.

  Word of the problems reached the public this past week after one of the company’s traditional biggest show of the year on 8/20 at Budokan Hall, where then-champion Kyoko Inoue, Fukawa and Tamada joined Kong, who had made the announcement several weeks back, in announcing they were leaving the promotion. There was tremendous heat on Inoue, who held the WWWA championship at the time, because she made the announcement unbeknownst to anyone in the company over the p.a. just as the show was getting started.

  As all the wrestlers before the show were introduced, Inoue said something to the effect that she would be leaving the promotion after finishing up her current commitments, which apparently majorly upset her long-time rival both in and out of the ring for the top spot, Manami Toyota (who have had something of a Bret Hart/Shawn Michaels rivalry behind-the-scenes since their situations and positions in the company are actually remarkably similar) and Yumiko Hotta, who was scheduled to challenge her for the title that night.

  The crowd, announced at 9,100 but estimated to us at around 6,000, was comprised of largely smart fans who have something of a knowledge of the business and Inoue’s announcement told everyone that there would be a title change in the main event and largely killed the heat during the match and the expected surprise reaction to the switch when Hotta got the submission with the armbreaker in 18:33. It was clear that Inoue was doing this on purpose since logic would say her own announcement would have carried far more weight and emotion had she done it after losing the title, not to mention would have made for a better match.

  Kong, who wrestled to a 30:00 time limit draw with Toyota in her final major match with the company, is expected to fare well outside the company. Virtually all the women promotions in Japan are interested in using her as a freelancer on major shows, and several of the smaller mens groups including Big Japan and Social Pro Wrestling Federation are interested in booking tag matches involving well-known Kong and Kyoko Inoue on their shows. The big fight in her case is which company can get her to do the first job in cleanly putting over one of their own.

  Kong this past week did an angle in FMW for a match with Shark Tsuchiya, and has a prominent match on 9/20 for Gaea against Chigusa Nagayo. In addition, because of her unique look, Kong has a measure of celebrity status and is expected to fare well doing appearances, television shows and television commercials outside of wrestling. Inoue and the other women really can only be celebrities within the wrestling world.

  It appears that Toyota, Hotta, Tomoko Watanabe, Kaoru Ito, Kumiko Maekawa and heels Etsuko Mita and Mima Shimoda will remain with the company and try to rebuild it, although from all accounts the company isn’t going to be able to run the kind of scheduled it has in the past nor remain on the level it had with the depleted office staff.

  SEPTEMBER 22

  Etsuko Mita, Mima Shimoda, Chaparita Asari, Saya Endo and Yuka Shiina will all officially leave AJW as rumored after the company’s big show on 9/21 in Kawasaki. The loss of Mita & Shimoda is a big one since the company had been almost everything around them as the top heels. In addition, the group after this week will be down to a skeleton crew with only 11 women on the roster, one of whom, Tomoko Watanabe, is currently out of action after an operation on 9/4 after suffering a broken rib although she was expected to return on 9/21.

  Largely due to losses in real estate as opposed to pro wrestling, the AJW company is $22,000,000 in debt and none of the employees have been paid in nearly five months. The Matsunaga Brothers, who have owned the company since its inception in 1968, have gotten so deep in debt with bank loans that they’ve been no longer able to even handle the interest on the debt, let alone the principle. If they declare bankruptcy as a protection against the debt, by Japanese law they won’t be able to start up the business again for three years.

  The women who have left the company, those mentioned along with the likes of Aja Kong and Kyoko Inoue, are attempting to get a sponsor to open up on their own, with a January target date. Until that point they will attempt to get booked with other companies, but at this point only Kong and Inoue have gotten any bookings.

  OCTOBER 27

  The 29-year-old All Japan Womens wrestling promotion officially filed for bankruptcy on 10/21 and held a press conference later that afternoon in their Tokyo offices.

  The bankruptcy documents filed listed the company as being 1.6 billion yen in debt (approximately $13.6 million) and they’ve bounced some checks of late with the banks they were doing business with canceling their line of credit. The news came just days after the company’s traditional Wrestlemarinpiad show on 10/18 at the Yokohama Bunka Gym drew a poor crowd (it was announced as 2,350 but the real number was closer to 1,000 to 1,500) and canceling its planned biggest card of the year on 11/2 at Tokyo Sumo Hall due to virtually no advance sales.

  The Sumo Hall cancellation was covered as a pretty major story in the Japanese press as tickets had been on sale for the show since 8/31. The company was down to 13 wrestlers, most of whom hadn’t gotten paid in several months.

  Exactly what this means was unclear at press time whether the group would be able to continue its schedule as at the press conference they indicated they would continue to try and keep the promotion going and run more than 200 house shows in 1998, but the feeling is strong that this really signals the end of the promotion.

  The AJW office, founded in 1968 by the four Matsunaga Brothers, would be the third oldest continuing wrestling promotion in the world, trailing only the EMLL in Mexico (founded in the 1930s) and the World Wrestling Federation (which as a WWWF name dates back to 1963 but was founded as Capital Sports by Vince McMahon Sr. in the 50s). The group ran between 200 and 250 house shows per year and had occasional specials, which had been running monthly of late, on the Fuji Network, the top network in Japan, but airing past midnight.

  Over the years the promotion, which from the early 70s to the present was generally considered the top womens wrestling promotion in the world, has had its ups and downs, with the ups for the most part built around young rock idol type headliners that would burn out quickly. By the late 70s, the workrate among their best wrestlers was close to the level of the top men from the same era.

  During the 80s, with headliners like Jaguar Yokota, Chigusa Nagayo, Lioness Asuka, Devil Masami and later Manami Toyota, Kyoko Inoue and Akira Hokuto, it presented a quality of matches unsurpassed anywhere in the world. From a business standpoint, it peaked in the mid-80s behind the Crush Gals phenomenon, and then broke all of the Crush Gals attendance records during a big run of inter-promotional matches from 1992-94.

  In recent years, due largely to the lack of new talent replenishing the promotion, the interest level has gone way down and the parent corporation itself, largely due to real estate debts, has been in bad financial straits for a few years.

  NOVEMBER 24

  Two new women promotions that had been rumored to be ready to begin made their official announcements this past week. Kyoko Inoue announced that her new promotion, no name given, would debut on 1/9 at Korakuen Hall and that Inoue would have Etsuko Mita, Mima Shimoda, Yuka Shiina, Yoshiko Tamura, Misae Genki, Saya Endo and Tiny Mouse, all former AJW wrestlers who left when they weren’t getting paid. In addition, Aja Kong and
Hiroshi “Rossy” Ogawa, the latter a long-time publicist and booker for AJW before leaving when the money ran out, announced they would be starting up in February a promotion called “Arsion.” Former AJW wrestler Sakie Hasegawa will work in the front office, while Kong will be the President and the booker. The only names announced for this group as wrestlers were former AJW wrestlers Mariko Yoshida, Rie Tamada and Yumi Fukawa.

  DECEMBER 1

  Of all the new womens wrestling offices being created in Japan in the aftermath of the economic collapse of the All Japan Womens office, it appears the most ambitious is going to be the Arsion promotion headed by Hiroshi “Rossy” Ogawa, a key member of the AJW front office for years and booker Aja Kong.

  At a press conference on 11/19, besides former AJW wrestles Rie Tamada, Yumi Fukawa and Mariko Yoshida, Ogawa said that his promotion would steal JWP champion Hikari Fukuoka and its best younger wrestler, Tomoko Kuzumi, and also take Mikiko Futagami and Michiko Omukai from LLPW. Arsion also announced that it would set up a U.S. office and have Reggie Bennett run it and become the top foreign star for the group and also use former AJW star Sakie Hasegawa in the front office. Bennett had become a top star with AJW as a full-time regular until about one year ago when she became the first casualty of the AJW economic woes.

  As the week went on, JWP President Masatoshi Yamamoto said that Fukuoka and Kuzumi would be staying with his group. JWP is now working closely with both LLPW and AJW to the point that Yamamoto in response to Ogawa’s press conference, appeared at the AJW house show at Korakuen Hall on 11/21 and announced the two groups would work together for a combined major house show in early 1998 and stated the two wrestlers wouldn’t be leaving his group. However, Rumi Saito (Rumi Kazama), the LLPW President admitted that Futagami and Omukai would be leaving her company for Arsion.

  28 – Shinya Hashimoto’s Reigns Comes to an End

  SEPTEMBER 8

  Shinya Hashimoto’s run as the longest reigning heavyweight champion in a major league promotion came to an end on the same day that Akira Maeda stepped foot in a New Japan ring for the first time in more than ten years.

  Kensuke Sasaki captured the IWGP title from Hashimoto before an overflow crowd of 18,000 fans on 8/31 at the Yokohama Arena. Maeda, who started his career in New Japan before being fired from the promotion in 1987 for his infamous shoot-kick on Riki Choshu that in some ways contributed to making him one of the more enduring lasting legends in Japanese pro wrestling history, showed up unannounced in the ring to congratulate Choshu in his retirement ceremony and got a huge reaction from the crowd.

  Obviously that was another lifetime ago in the careers of both wrestlers, as Maeda, in a shoot, kicked Choshu hard in the eye, breaking his orbital bone, during a six-man tag match while Choshu was basically defenseless as he was holding a wrestler in a scorpion deathlock. Maeda was fired from New Japan, not exactly from that incident which caused both wrestlers to have to miss the important tag team tournament that year, but for refusal to accept the punishment (a fine, a tour of Mexico and having to return and put Choshu over clean) handed down by New Japan.

  Instead, Maeda got the financial backing to start his own promotion, the UWF, which became the hottest wrestling promotion in the world for a short time and in many ways was revolutionary in paving the way for groups such as K-1, UFC, RINGS and Pancrase which all catered and garnered interest in Japan from a fan base originally created by Maeda’s UWF, which split into several promotions a few years later. On 7/6, Maeda, who himself will be retiring next year, surprisingly showed up at a major WAR show, his first time at a traditional pro wrestling event since 1987, to congratulate Genichiro Tenryu, who was celebrating his 20th year as an active pro wrestler.

  Sasaki, who in August won both the IWGP title, the IWGP tag team title (with Kazuo Yamazaki on 8/10 at the Nagoya Dome) and the G-1 Climax tournament (beating Hiroyoshi Tenzan in the finals on 8/3 at Tokyo Sumo Hall), is being given the biggest push in a long time within the New Japan organization. He was also put over in a tournament in September of 1996 involving the top names from both New Japan and WCW.

  Sasaki captured the IWGP title for the first time in his career on a show honoring his mentor, who will be retiring on 1/4 at the Tokyo Dome. After winning the title, Sasaki immediately challenged Choshu for what will almost surely be the Tokyo Dome main event and be a sure sellout. Sasaki, who is generally considered the worst worker and least over of the big four who are programmed by Choshu to dominate the New Japan singles scene (Hashimoto, Sasaki, Great Muta and Masahiro Chono), has never beaten Choshu in a singles match. Originally he was supposed to get his first career win over Choshu in the 1996 G-1 tournament, but an injury to Junji Hirata screwed up the plans and made it necessary for Choshu to beat Sasaki to get the necessary points to reach the finals, since the end result of that tournament was for Choshu to go over.

  Hashimoto had held the IWGP title, New Japan’s belt which was created in 1983 as being a championship considered one step in stature above a world heavyweight title, since April 29, 1996 when he defeated Nobuhiko Takada at the Tokyo Dome before 65,000 fans and $5.9 million, the second largest crowd in Japanese wrestling history and second largest gate in all of pro wrestling history.

  While the title change, described as a good match, ending in 16:54 when Sasaki got the pin with his wife’s patented finisher, the Northern Lights bomb, was the main event, there is little doubt it was Choshu who drew the house. The match took place just one week after a well reported tragedy in the Hashimoto family where his mother-in-law died being hit by a car in protecting the life of his two-year-old daughter.

  The crowd went crazy for Choshu, as it has in all his matches since he announced his farewell series. All Choshu merchandise sold out in record time at the show, which likely drew the biggest non-Dome or outdoor stadium show gate ever in Japanese wrestling history. Choshu was put in an old generation superstars vs. NWO six-man tag, teaming with Tenryu and long-time rival Tatsumi Fujinami against Muta & Tenzan & Hiro Saito (taking the place of an injured Chono). Muta’s face was painted with black lettering that said “Bye Bye Choshu.”

  After Choshu pinned Saito after his lariat in 8:56, they had a retirement ceremony in the ring. Among those honoring Choshu were Tenryu, Fujinami, Maeda, long-time tag team partner Animal Hamaguchi and his daughter, current world champion in womens freestyle wrestling Kyoko Hamaguchi, along with Antonio Inoki.

  During the ceremony, Choshu said emphatically that unlike virtually every wrestler who announces his retirement and then comes back, he will never wrestle again after 1/4, to the point that most believed him. It is generally expected that after retiring in January, that Choshu will when it comes to duties, will take over as President (maybe not in name right away, but eventually in name as well) of the company from Seiji Sakaguchi.

  29 – Tod Gordon Leaves ECW

  MAY 26

  Tod Gordon got attention that he likely didn’t want this past week. His family business, Carver W. Reed Jewelers, was a hot commodity when it was revealed that murder suspect Craig Rabinowitz allegedly hocked the engagement ring of his wife that he’s suspected of murdering with Gordon. Several TV stations along with “Good Morning America” and People Magazine were wanting to talk with Gordon, who was ducking everyone saying his loans are all confidential. One TV station showed up at the 5/11 ECW show but Gordon ducked that reporter as well. All of the hocked jewelry is now in police hands. According to a short item in the Philadelphia Daily News on 5/14, Rabinowitz took out a $1,250 loan in 1994 and had been paying interest, and returned on 5/2—after he was under suspicion for his wife’s death—for a second $1,000 loan.

  SEPTEMBER 15

  For numerous reasons, the biggest one being that this is the pro wrestling industry, it was almost a given that ECW Founder Tod Gordon and the prime decision maker, Paul Heyman, would eventually split. Like most business separations of the type, it probably wouldn’t be pleasant.

  Still, the circumstances surrounding the split w
ound up being strange, even by pro wrestling standards, complete with alleged backstabbing, intrigue, secrets, leaks and all the elements of a good wrestling angle.

  The split officially and somewhat quietly as far as the company went appeared to take place over the weekend, although many insiders knew it was coming for more than one week and reportedly Heyman had informed the WWF of the goings on and probable end result at least two weeks earlier. It was no secret to anyone at the ECW shows this weekend that Gordon was out, allegedly for failing in an attempt to get numerous ECW wrestlers to join him in jumping to WCW to do a new version of the NWO angle using the ECW wrestlers as the outsiders. Such a scenario may very well have been discussed.

  There is little doubt that two things did occur. One, that Gordon and WCW booker Terry Taylor had a conversation or more regarding the availability of ECW talent as WCW is looking to expand its talent roster in 1998 because of its more ambitious schedule, and that Taylor contacted at least one (Shane Douglas) if not more ECW wrestlers after the conversation with Gordon.

  Douglas claimed to have been offered $300,000 per year to sign (which begs the logical question that if that was true, what kept him from signing although Douglas has in part blamed his failed WWF stint on heat from Scott Hall and Kevin Nash). Supposedly Scott Levy (Raven) contacted Tommy Dreamer who was given an indication he could get a $200,000 per year contract should he want it, although there have been denials of that story as well with people close to Levy claiming that Heyman and Kevin Sullivan were spreading the story about Levy contacting ECW wrestlers.