by Dave Meltzer
Earlier this year Misterio Jr. and Santo had a classic match in Tijuana which resulted in Santo capturing the WWA middleweight title from Misterio Jr., and at the last Tijuana show, Psicosis scored a clean win over Santo in a match for a title belt that Psicosis was defending, not to mention Misterio Jr. and Psicosis’ rivalry in that city dating back many years. However, since Santo has been put over big as a face in Tijuana, the crowd turned on Misterio Jr. when he attacked Santo. In their singles match earlier in the year, even though it was a total face vs. face style and Misterio Jr. definitely had his fans, it was Santo that was the more popular by a small degree.
Misterio Jr. and Santo exchanged words, and eventually Rey Misterio hit the ring, and first attacked Psicosis, but then also attacked Santo. Damian and Halloween then hit the ring and began fighting with Santo, who had no allies, and also helping Psicosis against the Misterios, at which point the crowd began chanting for Konnan to make the save, apparently they believed, for Santo. Konnan started attacking the rudos, but then also joined in with the other faces in attacking Santo, which caused the crowd to go nuts since it appeared Santo was alone against everyone.
A fan hit the ring and gave Misterio a dropkick. Another fan went to hit Misterio with a chair, but he ended up taking the chair from the fan which caused more fans to begin throwing chairs at the ring. Supposedly it wound up with more than 200 fans throwing chairs, and much of the rest of the audience, seeing that a riot was breaking out, leaving the building while this was all going on, before everything was calmed down. The idea they were apparently trying to portray is it being everyone for themselves for the triangle match, but with nobody helping Santo, it came off to the crowd that their long-time local heroes like Konnan and the Misterios had turned heel on Santo.
The next night at the ECW show at the National Guard Armory in Plymouth Meeting, PA saw a very different type of crowd disturbance. According to several witnesses, a group of three or five (the police claimed three people but some ringsiders said it was actually five) big tough-looking guys were at ringside at the ECW show looking for trouble from the start of the night. It was more likely coincidental the timing of this disturbance and the WCW angle, although there is always a possibility that the WCW angle glorifying fans fighting wrestlers may have put the idea into someone’s head and that this is another example, and this may have been one harder to avoid than most, of problems that are happening with far too much frequency at ECW events.
The ring-leader, wearing a shirt that said “Fite Me” on the front and “Antichrist 3:16” on the back, were harassing the wrestlers throughout the show. One person close to the situation all night described those few as the worst group of wrestling fans ever to attend an ECW show. During the first match on the card, ECW security asked them to quit leaning over the rail and spitting and they shouted down security. The feeling was they should have been removed then and there, although Paul Heyman, defending his security team (which many fans close to the situation were critical of for not doing anything when it became apparent something bad was going to go down), claimed they were misbehaving but not doing anything that would warrant being thrown out. Others close to the situation said security realized to throw them out would end up starting a big fight and perhaps they were trying to avoid that.
The fans did cause some minor changes regarding working the matches in that the wrestlers were all avoiding where the fans were, and even Taz, whose gimmick is to stand up to fans, was avoiding doing anything near them. With just a few matches left in the show, with Axl Rotten & Balls Mahoney vs. New Jack & John Kronus wrestling in the ring, and time running out on Mr. Fite Me and his group, trouble started.
According to reports filed by two Plymouth, PA detectives who happened to be at the matches, Richard Lefler, 26, and Mark Cheskey, 23 of Conshohocken, were spitting on wrestler Jon Rechner (Mahoney). According to the report, when Rechner was outside the ring in their vicinity, Lefler punched him in the back. When Rechner turned around to see who hit him, Lefler punched him in the face. At that point Lefler grabbed his hair allowing Cheskey to get in a shot on him. At this point Rechner started covering his face and throwing wild blows to protect himself.
The ECW dressing room emptied at this point and it was ten to 20 minutes before the situation started getting back to order, with Mahoney, Axl Rotten, John Kronus, Shane Douglas, Tommy Dreamer and Buh Buh Ray and Big Dick Dudley among others joining in the fray. Reports are the Dudleys were going through the crowd like buzzsaws and that Big Dick seemed impervious to anything thrown at him almost like his pro wrestling gimmick.
By the time the incident was over, about half the crowd of 800 fans were outside the building either trying to get away from the near riot or some trying to get close to it as the five fans and the wrestlers fought. There were fans injured being too close to the wild swinging wrestlers and fans, although there were no reports of serious injuries although ambulance units were on the scene.
Just as the situation was calming down, approximately 40 police officers from several different neighboring municipalities including East Norristown, Norristown, Whitemarsh, Conshohocken, West Conshohocken and Whitpain, several dressed in riot gear and one with a police dog, arrived on the scene. Various reports from the scene claim that the wrestlers, who were trying to protect their own and whose actions were defended in the police report, in their exuberance, made things worse as far as getting the crowd all panicked, and that when the police arrived, the situation was calming down and their arrival made them worse again.
Others said it was simply a bad situation. There was additional heat since ECW, according to a local newspaper story, had failed to get a permit to hold the wrestling show in the city, which was expressly specified in the contract they signed with the building.
The incident made a lot of local press, both in the newspapers and was carried as a top local news item on most of the area radio stations.
Wrestlers Rechner and Jerome Young (New Jack) went to the police station for questioning, largely to have complaints filed against the two fans, who were expected to be arrested on charges of assault, disorderly conduct and harassment and the two fans were taken to jail that night. Paul Heyman said that he was going to order Rechner to testify against the fans to get them put away, even if it meant him missing a major show. Just as the dressing room emptied, Heyman grabbed New Jack to keep him from joining in on the fight, largely because any problems with New Jack could reflect badly on the company at this point with the Erich Kulas legal and civil situations still pending.
There were reports that the police wanted the show stopped at that point, however Paul Heyman denied that being a problem. After everything got under a little bit of control, Dreamer got on the p.a. and got the fans who had remained in the building back into the show by saying that they didn’t want to let the action of three people ruin the night for everyone else, and they went through with the three-way dance main event with Sabu going over Douglas and Dreamer.
Not to be outdone, the WWF on its live Raw show on 11/3 did its own fan out of the audience angle with similar results, in this case glorifying it even more allowing the fan (former Stampede wrestling performer Steve Blackman, a one-time roommate of Brian Pillman in Calgary in 1988, who for the past decade has been living in Pennsylvania teaching martial arts), obviously a wrestler doing a martial arts gimmick the way the heels sold for him, who it appeared would wind up being the fourth member of the Team USA replacing Del Wilkes in the Survivor Series.
Fan out of the audience angles are as old as carnival wrestling itself, in fact the mark who isn’t really a mark out of the audience was one of the classic carnival wrestling cons, but in this day and age with real fan violence becoming such a serious problem, encouraging and glorifying it in any company at this point in time, and to an extent all three major U.S. companies have, is irresponsible almost to mind-boggling levels.
Just as an example over the past week of something we know happened specifically due to the i
ncident in Las Vegas. The very next night, at the WCW taping in San Diego, during the commercial break, a fan threw something and nailed Johnny Grunge and security did throw him out. But those sitting near the fan reported that the fan had been talking the entire show about doing a run-in for self-publicity, talking over-and-over again about how the fan who did the same thing the night before really didn’t get hurt or didn’t appear to get in trouble.
DECEMBER 22
More problems occurred at WWF house shows on 12/14 in Memphis and 12/15 in Little Rock, when, due to actions and decisions that appeared at least to people at the show to be by Michaels, the main event didn’t take place at either show, resulting in a near riot in Memphis and a full-blown riot in Little Rock. In Memphis, the scheduled main event of Jerry Lawler & Jeff Jarrett vs. Michaels & Helmsley never took place.
Before a crowd of 5,078 fans at the Pyramid, Michaels, came out for his once per week scheduled arena match and was met with so much garbage thrown his way that he simply refused to wrestle and the show ended without the match ever taking place. As it was described to us, the show itself was poor and the crowd, many of whom had been drinking heavily, were getting unruly even before the main event. Michaels was hit with a few cokes, and a large wad of tobacco juice nailed Helmsley in the face, at which point Michaels grabbed the house mic and said, “Well, that just cost you your main event,” and walked out of the ring with Helmsley and Chyna.
When the crowd realized what had happened, they got even more unruly. There was an attempt by Dude Love, who was at the event but couldn’t wrestle due to fractured ribs, to get the crowd to chant “HBK” to get Michaels to change his mind and wrestle but he refused to come back out. Finally Lawler tried to apologize to the crowd, but the crowd pelted the home town hero with debris after chanting for Lawler and Jarrett to wrestle each other and Lawler responding by saying that since he didn’t have a contract to wrestle Jarrett that match “couldn’t” take place. That combined with no refunds being offered when some fans began demanding them at the box office made the mood of the fans even worse with the general feeling leaving the building among many fans according to our reports is the WWF had killed the city for themselves and fans swearing that they’d stick with WCW.
Of course with the big promotions running so infrequently in specific markets, usually the fans forget a bad show by the time the next show comes to town. However, WBII, the Memphis area television station that broadcasts the syndicated show in the market, received more than 130 complaining phone calls from fans that attended the house show by early the next morning due to the main event fiasco, and in addition that morning, another group of fans who attended the show were picketing the television station from the start of business until noon, claiming to be in protest against the tactics of the WWF.
Based on the report we had of the incident, the fans actions could not be blamed strictly or even largely on Michaels inciting them as much as a few fans being drunk and out of control. However, this situation came close to happening in other cities where Michaels’ gimmick is to incite the audience into throwing things at him, including in at least a one recent case by saying things like he’s heard the fans in (insert city) have terrible aim, thereby making himself the target for every object every idiot has nearby. It was Michaels who decided to walk out when the fans were so unruly.
The WWF backed Michaels up in Memphis claiming WWF officials were the ones who decided to end the show early for the safety of all concerned, although that decision actually made the arena even more unsafe because it only made the fans behavior worse.
They blamed the problem on local security that didn’t search fans as they entered the arena as they routinely had done for other wrestling events in the city, and that allowed fans to bring bottles of alcohol into the building with them resulting in several drunk and unruly fans who had empty bottles in their possession.
The reports the WWF received from the agents on the road were the fans were throwing empty bottles, and there were Internet reports saying Michaels was hit with a bottle or with flying ice, although several live sources have denied Michaels was hit with either a bottle or ice.
The throwing of things began to get out of hand in the previous match between Shamrock and Phineas Godwinn, with Henry Godwinns’ antics at ringside starting fans in the mood to pelt the ring, and when Michaels and Helmsley came out for their main event, they might as well had painted bullseyes on their faces.
Little Rock was even worse. According to several reports, the undercard for the show at the Barton Coliseum was terrible and even the densest marks were getting restless about the poor quality of the matches, in particular a terrible match with Kane vs. Chainz and an Undertaker vs. Rocky Maivia casket match that only lasted two minutes due to Undertaker being injured and having high blood pressure. In addition, fans were upset because the card that was taking place was completely different than the line-up that was advertised with no explanations given.
The scheduled main event was to be Shamrock, with Danny Hodge, one of the greatest real wrestlers who ever lived and was also the top pro wrestler in the area during the 60s and 70s as the perennial NWA world junior heavyweight champion, as his manager for one night only, against Helmsley, with Michaels in his corner, which drew 6,449 fans. We’re not clear if that was going to happen as we received a report that Helmsley was going to face Dude Love in the main event, although that may not have been correct since Dude has fractured ribs and was supposed to only make appearances and not wrestle this week.
Since fans had no idea what was going to take place because everything had been changed, my impression is that the show was stopped when Michaels and the rest of DX walked out, and that neither Shamrock nor Hodge actually came out for the main event match before the show ended. Michaels and Helmsley came to the ring and began riling up the crowd that was already mad about the poor undercard.
Naturally they became target practice again, and when a piece of paper hit Michaels, he told the crowd that they had just lost their main event and walked out with Helmsley and Chyna. Fans, thinking it was just part of the act, didn’t react right away. After several minutes, DX failed to come back in the ring, no opponent for Helmsley appeared, and the ring announcer said that they had refused to come out and the show was over.
At this point, a real riot started, with chairs and whiskey bottles being thrown everywhere including at police trying to get the crowd out of the building. The situation got so bad that the police had to spray the building with tear gas to get the fans outside. Several fans tried to get refunds and were unsuccessful and at that point a second riot took place in the parking lot before the police broke it up. At least one fan was rushed to the hospital but there didn’t appear to be any serious injuries to fans either night.
This incident was so out of hand it was reported on the news later that night with at least one report giving the impression that the WWF wouldn’t be allowed back in the city although with this all happening at deadline it is really too soon to figure out how this is going to unfold locally. The reports from this event live pointed the finger directly at Michaels for the problem starting, although the behavior of the fans was the actual real problem but unlike in Memphis, the real problems didn’t occur until the fans realized that they weren’t going to see the main event and that DX walking out wasn’t simply part of the show to get heat.
Crowds pelting Michaels with garbage have become commonplace since he made his latest heel turn, but these were the first situations where a show ended abruptly and a main event never took place, although situations beforehand with Michaels and at some WCW house shows on the West Coast a few months ago threatened to get to this level and ECW was having fan problems on almost a regular basis of late and came close on a few occasions from nearly having a show stopped on them before the main event.
The actions of the wrestlers have encouraged fans throwing objects so even though it is a minority of fans, some if not most drunk and engaged in mob mentali
ty, that are ruining things and making conditions dangerous for the rest of the fans and the wrestlers. The fact is Michaels’ act encourages it, and in Little Rock, basically caused the riot by walking out.
Supposedly the difference between a professional top heel is they can rile the crowd up to a certain point, but calm them down before things get out of control. That fine line is easier to write about than totally control, but if the WWF hasn’t gotten the message that the DX act at least on the road shows needs to be toned down, then whatever happens is being asked for at this point because Memphis was a warning. Actually there were many warnings before Memphis that clearly have been ignored by the WWF. Little Rock was no longer a warning. Little Rock was caused by ignoring warnings.
Hopefully 12/15 can be a wake up call for both WWF and WCW, because on the live Nitro that night in Charlotte, about a half-dozen fans at different points in the show hopped the guard rail and security was having a field day trying to stop them before hitting the ring, and at least three made it into the ring, one stomped on by Randy Savage, another pulled out by security and another snatched by ref Randy Anderson. It was described as the single most unruly crowd in the history of Charlotte wrestling, blamed in some part by being a three hour show with fans drinking for the entire three hours and lots of incidents of fans throwing things at the wrestlers.
As mentioned before, some day the drunk fan or fan looking to impress his friends on television isn’t going to be smaller than Randy Anderson and the situation is going to get worse than it already has. In Charlotte, the main angle to end the show was totally botched up because so many fans were hitting the ring, ruining the built-up climax to the show.