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

by Dave Meltzer

  WCW only has itself to blame. After the idiotic angle they ran to glorify fans hitting the ring at Havoc in Las Vegas, it was inevitable what would happen and the fiascoes in both Charlotte and Little Rock on 12/15 were not isolated instances, but the result of fans reacting as the promotions on television have “educated” them to act. If they don’t get “educated” differently, this industry is going to blow its current level success, not due to risque programming or gutless booking of talent that thinks it is above the business, but due to an unforeseen tragedy taking place at one of its live events.

  WCW officials after the Charlotte event said that they were going to institute a policy similar to the NFL, NHL and many concert acts in that drinking will be banned after the mid-point of the show at all their arena events. In addition, they are going to beef up security at the shows.

  DECEMBER 29

  After major problems screwed up shows over the past week in Charlotte, Memphis and Little Rock, it is apparent that changes have to be made given the current climate among wrestling fans and the direction of the promotions.

  The World Wrestling Federation was forced into making a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” decision when crowds, apparently fueled by alcohol, became unruly throwing things at the wrestlers and creating a dangerous environment in both Memphis and Little Rock. The end damning result in both cities was the main event in each city being canceled, which in both cases made the crowds that much more upset and resulted in significant problems both nights among fans after the call to end the show.

  The other call, given the behavior of the crowd throwing things could have meant serious injury from an errant or on target bottle, to either fans at ringside or wrestlers in the ring, although the call that was made almost guaranteed fairly serious problems, just not to the wrestlers.

  In Charlotte, WCW at a live Nitro had so many problems with fans hitting the ring while the lights were being turned off for the climactic angle of the show involving Sting, that the angle never made it to the ring and ended up being botched to the point that there was an audible voice, which may have been Eric Bischoff’s, in the ring swearing over a live mic about the angle.

  The problems wouldn’t be front page news if they were isolated incidents, or if one could truly say that it wasn’t the result of problems that have been festering not only in WWF and WCW, but also in ECW for more than the past year.

  The wrestling audience has in many cases changed from being a family mainstream suburbia crowd, if it truly ever was that, to a crowd largely consisting of the old stereotype white trash fans from another era. The fact is, and don’t let anyone fool you about this, this new direction is working. WCW and ECW are doing record business for those companies and WWF is the most profitable the company has been since its business took a nosedive in the wake of the 1991-92 scandals. In November the WWF averaged 7,440 fans per show and over the month grossed $2.4 million in 20 house shows.

  That’s the best month for business since we started keeping a monthly tab on things in 1992, and without question, the $123,455 per show average would be the best average over a one month period in the history of the promotion and rank just behind WCW’s September mark of this year as the best month, money-wise on a per show basis, in the history of the business. That is in some sense a misleading statement because prices for tickets are higher than ever but nonetheless is hardly misleading in showing that the popularity of pro wrestling at this point is on the rise.

  Interest is the highest it has been since it lost semi-regular network television in this country nearly seven years ago. Merchandise is selling like never before, which shows the level of loyalties either to companies or to the top talent in that companies to be at a level that surpasses even the mid-80s peak period. While there are exceptions, generally the crowds at the arenas are hot. Everything should be great, but the direction that has made things hot is the same direction that has caused all the problems.

  The current direction of wrestling, best exemplified by its coolest star in its universe, Steve Austin, is one of glorifying, among many things, defiance of authority. The crowds that go to see the top stars, whether they be Austin, Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash & Scott Hall, Shawn Michaels or whomever else, are going to see their heroes that have been popularized in both companies by doing weekly anti-social behavior and getting away with it. No rules and no limits. Fans who rally behind those wrestling cultural symbols, whether they be young kids, or more violent prone older teens and early 20s males, are going to emulate that behavior.

  And the problems aren’t limited to the characterizations of the top stars. WCW glorified fans throwing things by capturing it on camera, starting with the Hulk Hogan turn in Daytona Beach. Fans at ringside, not to mention the NWO wrestlers, were getting hit by whatever fans had at their disposal to throw. Fans were taught, from television, as they always are and probably always will be, that the people who are important to pay attention to are the ones who get all the interview time, what holds are important and what holds aren’t, and more importantly when it comes to these problems, that with your purchase price of a ticket to a pro wrestling event comes with it the right to use the heel wrestlers (that in many cases those same fans cheer for) as target practice at the end of the show.

  Not that in recent weeks the WWF, with Degeneration X basically copying the NWO gimmick and trying to take it to the next step, hasn’t taken over in giving its audience that feeling. Both companies as well have glorified fans hitting the ring. Nitro is a live television show and it’s no secret that it draws big ratings to the point that a lot of fans believe the most important result of the week is not the winner or loser of the PPV match on Sunday, but the result of the ratings on Monday. Any drunk punk who wants to impress his friends knows he can hit the ring on Nitro, and the worst that will happen to him is he might take a few worked punches from Hulk Hogan, or get snatched by a 150-pound referee, neither of which on television looks to be all that awful a fate for a story you can brag about to your friends for weeks.

  Both groups in recent months, WCW with the Vegas fan angle and WWF with the original Steve Blackman angle before Survivor Series, have glorified fans hitting the ring to attack heel wrestlers. ECW, which has actually had more crowd problems then both the other groups put together over the past year, took crowd participation one step farther by encouraging fans to bring weapons to hand to their favorite wrestlers to use in the matches. It is no wonder that in their trips into small town grungy suburbs of Philadelphia that local toughs would think a ticket to ECW wrestling enables them to bully fans and try to start a fight with the local scrub wrestlers who they believe to not really be big-time and don’t respect as stars. The company is almost lucky situations haven’t been worse, because there have been numerous situations where they came one step from being full-scale riots.

  Which brings us to Little Rock. We have a lot more details on what took place on 12/15. It was a strange show, headlined by Ken Shamrock, with Danny Hodge in his corner, against Hunter Hearst Helmsley, with Michaels and Chyna in his. Earlier in the show they were going to do a special presentation to Hodge.

  For reasons that make absolutely no sense other than he simply wanted to do it and has the juice to do what he wants, Michaels asked to present the award to Hodge as the top star of the WWF today. Forgetting that Michaels as a heel has been on television every week and even though Hodge was probably the biggest wrestling star in the area at one point, it’s been more than 20 years since he was regularly featured on television. And forget the storyline that they were on opposite sides in the main event later in the show and the presentation was planned, nor did it lead to an angle to heat up the main event, but simply something Michaels talked agent Jack Lanza into doing out of respect for Hodge and ignoring the storyline itself.

  Michaels felt his ability with words and to control the crowd would result in it being a dignified presentation. It ended up being target practice, which made everyone associated with the show tha
t grew up watching Hodge totally embarrassed with the fans’ treatment of the 65-year-old two-sport Hall of Famer. It probably did wonders for Michaels temperament for later in the show. As DX went out for the main event, it was more target practice.

  From later reports, we understand that Helmsley got something thrown that hit him in the eye hard enough that his eye started swelling badly. Chyna was also hit with something in either her back or her neck hard enough that she was hurt. Although Michaels didn’t get nailed with anything worse than paper, when Helmsley got nailed, he took it upon himself to call off the show. Shamrock never even made an appearance. And Michaels never got to work his angle where he would put Hodge over, and where Hodge’s participation would lead to Shamrock winning at the end.

  Problems were made worse when fans went to the box office demanding refunds since the main event never took place and basically the entire show was changed from what was advertised and by all accounts was a poor show. As detailed last week, a riot took place afterwards, first in the building, and then outside the building.

  At one point when leaving the arena, rowdy fans began pounding on the rental car driven by Charles Skaggs (Flash Funk) and Charles Wright (Kama Mustafa). They got out of their cars which nearly started an incident that would have benefited nobody, but as it turned out, were talked by other wrestlers into getting back in and leaving the area. Michaels and company needed a police escort to get out of the parking lot. All in all there were about 13 arrests, mainly for misdemeanor alcohol charges including several who were underage, and another for disorderly conduct.

  Historically in wrestling, situations with top heels carrying that kind of heat, or near riots aren’t that unusual. In the past, they usually resulted from screw-job finishes rather than simply public appearances and it is so rare I couldn’t even remember the last time it happened that a major league promotion canceled its main event because the crowd was so unruly, let alone it happening on two consecutive nights.

  But I can remember seeing it every three weeks at the Cow Palace growing up with situations that could have gotten as bad as the worst situations of today, with trashier and more violent fans, some of whom were carrying knives which were regularly pulled out in the parking lot as fans argued leaving the arena. The difference seemed to be that the numbers of security in those days was much larger than today, and when there were even hints of problems, they reacted far more quickly and FAR more aggressively.

  I’m not sure if it’s better for all concerned to see a hoard of security guards crack open the head of someone who threw a cup at the ring which was a routine occurrence at the Cow Palace in the 70s, but that usually quelled any problems when it came to people throwing things at wrestlers in a hurry. Fans never hit the ring in those days, because they were stopped and pounded on long before crossing the demilitarized zone. I’m not advocating security being as overly aggressive as it was in those days, but that did keep people in line at a time when the heel wrestlers aggravated fans to a greater degree than the heels of today usually do.

  There is a problem. Hopefully this past week was just a series of weird coincidences resulting from a full moon, but deep down anyone who believes that is fooling themselves. Solutions aren’t as easy.

  Alcohol isn’t the problem, but alcohol fuels the problem. I’ve been to numerous sports and entertainment events in this area where alcohol sales are cut off about halfway through the show. This won’t eliminate problems, but at least might cut down on a percentage of them when fans are completely out of control after three straight hours of unbridled drinking.

  Fans hate to be searched at the door. It gives them the feeling going in that this isn’t a safe environment to take their kids. But this also happens routinely at concerts and sporting events. In Memphis, WWF officials blamed fans not being searched, which had been routine policy at the WCW matches at the Mid South Coliseum, which allowed them to smuggle bottles into the building that they later used for their target practice.

  Problems cited by fans in both Memphis and Little Rock included fans becoming impatient and unruly due to poor action and bad matches. As wrestling gets more and more spectacular on television and PPV, the physical toll it takes makes it impossible for a regular house show to be of the quality fans are used to seeing weekly on television. In addition, fans in those cities grew up on a wilder style of wrestling and a tame house show after seeing all that wildness on television doesn’t cut it.

  But that’s a catch-22 that can’t be answered. The injury rate in this business is already alarming. The idea that wrestlers should take the risks they do on PPV at the nightly house shows is unreasonable, especially when there are very few wrestlers in their early 20s in the major league promotions whose bodies can recover fast enough from that kind of punishment, even if the road schedule itself isn’t anywhere near as taxing as it was during the “good old days.”

  So then we move to television. Do we change back to the 80s style of television where evil are slapstick villains that are made to look like fools by superheroes, standing in a chorus line taking bionic elbows or having their biggest moves not sold by babyfaces who then put them away like impotent refuse? That wouldn’t play today, particularly with long-term contracts, little new talent being developed and little movement between two groups, so the idea of heels being fed to babyfaces and moved out for new heels just is no longer feasible.

  If the Steve Austins, NWOs and Shawn Michaels types weren’t drawing money, you could say to lighten up the product. But they are, so that isn’t the answer. However, once people pay their money at the arena show and are rowdy to the point things can be out of control, the wrestlers need to know to immediately tone the show down rather than antagonize the crowd and make it worse. If the crowd is already out of control, the monologue spots insulting the members of the audience can be dropped in favor of starting the wrestling match.

  But there are changes that should be implemented yesterday. If fans start throwing things, particularly at television tapings because that’s where all the behavior is learned, it needs to be stopped before it’s raining debris. Go to a commercial. Announce in the building the show will be stopped if the fans can’t police themselves.

  I was at an ECW show in 1996 in New York where the fans were throwing more stuff that at nearly any Nitro and where it was bad enough that the commission wanted to stop the show, which no doubt would have created New York’s version of the Little Rock massacre. Paul Heyman got in the ring and told the fans that if they can’t police themselves, the show is going to be over. The problem stopped immediately. If it doesn’t stop and it’s a live shoot, go to the talking heads, keep the stars out of the ring and keep the cameras away from the “action” until it’s over. It’ll make for boring television. Once.

  Sure, some fans will take it as empowering them to shut down a national broadcast, but those dozen fans will soon be discouraged by the 10,000 others whose neighbors aren’t getting to see them hold up their posters with the cameras on. And it discourages it as being acceptable behavior. It won’t stop it completely, because doing unacceptable behavior is what fans want their wrestling heroes of today to do so it’s a catch-22 unless one changes the product to a product that would be less successful financially, and in a business like this, that isn’t going to happen, particularly during a period where there is no company that has a true monopolistic hold.

  NEVER run angles where fans come out of the stands to be part of the show. Maybe when fans respect the product again. But not today when fans have no respect and see that as a license showing it’s okay to follow. There are plenty of swerves to fool the marks that can be done without spots which encourage dangerous follow-ups by the audience.

  39 – The Demise of the USWA

  JANUARY 6

  The story about Jerry Jarrett selling his 50 percent of the company to Jerry Lawler is confirmed. Lawler appears to be running the business end of USWA along with Larry Burton, who is General Manager of the promotion, and Elliot
t Pollock, a legitimate sports agent, who is USWA commissioner. Jarrett has been devoting almost all his time to business other than pro wrestling so his selling really isn’t as big a deal other than symbolically in that he was the last of the mohicans so to speak, the last remaining promoter from the late 70s early 80s era of regional wrestling to finally be out of the ownership end of the business.

  JANUARY 27

  Lots of turmoil behind the scenes largely revolving around Larry Burton, who is Jerry Lawler’s friend who has been running a lot of the business and some think may have put up some if not most of the money Lawler bought out Jerry Jarrett with. Burton has had heat among the wrestlers because they see him as a Hollywood mark outsider telling them how to run Tennessee wrestling business for a while, but apparently the heat really got a lot worse over the past week with lots of wrestlers talking about quitting although I’m not sure of anyone who has actually left.

  FEBRUARY 3

  After more than 30-years of being one of the most popular wrestling television announcing institutions ever on a regional basis, Dave Brown abruptly called it quits on 1/23 after a blow-up with USWA General Manager Larry Burton.

  Brown, the long-time sidekick to Lance Russell, was the single longest running pro wrestling announcer on any single show still active. His career in Memphis television wrestling dated back as far as anyone can remember, to at least 1970. The two were without question, from a general public perspective, the most well-known pairing to host local wrestling television anywhere in the country during the modern era. Brown is even more famous locally for being the most popular television weatherman and perhaps the most famous local news personality in the Memphis market for the past two decades.

  Brown and Russell hosted Championship Wrestling during its peak in the late 70s and early 80s when it was often the highest rated show of any kind in the Memphis market. At its peak in the early 80s during the days of the Fabulous Ones, the Saturday morning live television show on Ch. 5 in Memphis drew a 23 rating and an incredible Super Bowl like 70 share, beating out every prime time network show in the market for total viewing audience. It also got high ratings in the markets it was syndicated to on a week delay.