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

by Dave Meltzer

  Helmsley was scheduled to win the tournament last year to start his climb to major stardom, but the plans changed after Helmsley, Shawn Michaels, Diesel (Kevin Nash) and Razor Ramon (Scott Hall) got in the ring for their infamous curtain call in Hall & Nash’s final appearance in the WWF before leaving for WCW. Since Hall and Nash were leaving and Michaels was a headliner and top draw that the company seemingly was afraid to discipline, which has led to a year plus worth of future problems by not nipping the original problems in the bud, it was Helmsley whose fate was changed and punished. Not only did he not win at King of the Ring, but he basically spent the entire summer as a jobber before getting a chance to be rebuilt later in the year in the angle where Mr. Perfect was supposed to manage him and he’d get the rub from Perfect’s star stature, which also, like most of the WWF’s long term plans, didn’t materialize in the storyline the way it did when it was first scripted.

  The show drew 9,312 fans paying $202,963 in the 16,000-seat arena, although Vince McMahon several times announced it as a capacity crowd on the air while Jim Ross’ one crowd reference during the broadcast was a more realistic 10,000 fans. The show also did $74,672 in merchandise business.

  WCW The Great American Bash

  World Championship Wrestling shattered all attendance and gate records for the Quad Cities with its Great American Bash PPV show on 6/15 from the Mark of the Quad in Moline, IL.

  The show drew 9,613 fans (8,538 paying $142,118), which would have broken the area’s attendance record set back in the early 60s. The show was about 500 tickets shy of a legitimate sellout and drew an additional $66,000 in merchandise.

  It was a rather uneventful show as far as advancing the storyline, and got a mixed response. I thought it was a good show, mixing up good, bad and average matches, most of which came across better than they figured to be on paper, with largely strong booking that had a purpose and storylines within the matches.

  Some of the finishes left something to be desired, and it was an overall very good announcing performance by Tony Schiavone as the host, and although The Brain is showing that his brain isn’t what it once was, at no point was Dusty Rhodes his stereotypical overbearing personality and Mike Tenay did a great job in the opener. From an organizational standpoint, it’s a night-and-day difference with Terry Taylor running things as the announcers fed the eventual storylines much better than when they appeared to go out and call matches with no clue as to what is going on.

  Not to say that even under these circumstances that Bobby Heenan was all there, although he only made one major faux pas, still not understanding the tap submission rule, which was one of the main things this show was designed to get over. In particular, after the replay showed Meng tapping for Chris Benoit’s crossface, Heenan was still asking if Meng had submitted or if the referee had stopped the match because Meng had passed out. You’d think after not understanding the tap out on Nitro two weeks back with Barbarian, that he’d have figured it out by now.

  With three tap out finishes and only one DQ ending, the booking was often solid in that several undercard matches built up a specific story and paid off on it at the end. However, matches one (Ultimo Dragon vs. Psicosis), four (Glacier vs. Wrath) and seven (Steve McMichael vs. Kevin Greene) had almost the same finish, the old outside interference backfires, which was a little much for one card. Going off the air without an explanation as to what happened to Ric Flair when he simply disappeared defied all credibility. And exactly how many referees were knocked out in the Diamond Dallas Page vs. Randy Savage match? Which was only made worse because as Savage was dropping referees, it was looking way too similar to the Steve Austin vs. Shawn Michaels match that took place seven days earlier.

  Tony Schiavone opened the show describing it as the 13th consecutive year that the Great American Bash has been broadcast “to your home.” Actually it was the eighth. The first Bash PPV was in 1988, although there were Great American Bash house shows starting with the Charlotte Baseball Stadium show on July 6, 1985 where Ric Flair vs. Nikita Koloff drew 27,000 fans. In both 1986 and 1987 there were Bash summer tours of arenas, and the first Bash PPV was headlined by Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger in 1988. However, there was no Great American Bash, as the name was dropped by WCW, in 1993 or 1994 stemming from debacles of shows under that name in 1991 (among the worst PPV shows ever) and 1992, and the name was brought back in 1995.

  WWF In Your House 16: Canadian Stampede

  It figured going in that the Canadian Stampede PPV show on 7/6 in Calgary’s Saddledome would have a unique bizarro world atmosphere with the heels being cheered. But I’m not sure anyone could have expected what actually took place.

  In a show that due to generally weak hype going in, a change in the title match over the last week due to an injury, and coming at the end of a major holiday weekend, figured to be one of the last anticipated PPV shows in WWF history, turned out to be one of its best shows ever. The crowd atmosphere, which put the show over the top even more than the consistently good wrestling, equaled or exceeded nearly any major show in history.

  Every match was good, with two of the four matches being excellent. The risk of doing a four-match card, which was not in the original cards but ended up that way after a series of injuries racked a company already plagued with depth problems, paid off at the end with a show the level that even the most optimistic going in couldn’t have dreamed would turn out the way it did.

  The show drew a paid attendance of 10,974 (12,151 in the building) and gate of $229,598 along with another $65,000 in merchandise, the latter two figures being the largest in each category in the long and illustrious history of pro wrestling in Calgary. It was the third largest crowd ever for wrestling in Calgary trailing a 1991 card (Hulk Hogan vs. Sgt. Slaughter and Ultimate Warrior vs. Undertaker) that drew 11,153 and a 1987 show Hogan vs. King Kong Bundy) which holds the record of 12,034.

  The largest crowds for Stampede Wrestling were at the 7,500-seat Calgary Corral since the Saddledome wasn’t built in 1984 and Stu Hart only ran one show there. Among the well-known matches that packed the old Corral in the Stampede days were George & Sandy Scott vs. Bill & Dan Miller (1958), Archie “Stomper” Gouldie vs. Dan Kroffat (1973), Al Mills vs. Stu Hart (1958) and Dory Funk Jr. vs. Billy Robinson (1969).

  The atmosphere with the Harts being portrayed as the first family of wrestling, in their home towns, working as total babyfaces and being portrayed in the commentary as such which was really weird, ended up with the Hart Family being put over as babyfaces not only by the fans but also by the promotion and the storyline to the degree that almost nobody ever in wrestling PPV history has ever been put over. The only comparison would have been in 1993 when Ric Flair beat Vader in Charlotte for the WCW title, and with all due respect to the magic of that night, this night in a city known for its wrestling crowds being reserved from all the years of seeing guys like Dynamite Kid work matches that were a generation ahead of its time, blew it away.

  The amount of media publicity, both with it being the first major match with Bret returning from knee surgery, the first PPV show ever in Calgary and being part of the annual Stampede, was unprecedented in local wrestling annals. Both the Calgary show and the Edmonton show the next night received front page newspaper coverage the next morning. There were stories in the newspaper every day, with features on many of the top wrestlers and numerous autograph sessions including one session for Owen, Bret and Davey Boy which drew an estimated 8,000 people.

  For the rest of the world, it was strange at the same time to see Bret Hart, the WWF’s lead heel, being presented as a home town legend, getting a Hogan in his prime response, and being shown and portrayed as a role model who had lines a mile long waiting for autographs at public appearances over the weekend and accommodated everyone who asked.

  Or how about seeing Owen Hart, the pesky little brother, work a spectacular babyface like performance climaxing with him saving the day and leading the good guys to victory, and then celebrating not only with his entire
family in the ring, but hugging his baby.

  Or seeing Davey Boy Smith walking his wife down the aisle and kissing her before the match started to a thunderous ovation. Some main event heel.

  And what about Brian Pillman, the loose cannon? There he was helping 82-year-old Stu Hart into the ring so the father figure of Calgary wrestling could receive a well-deserved sendoff at the end of the night. Hey, where was the cheap shot clothesline.

  In the WWF’s quest to overdo things and explain to the rest of the world why the locals were behaving this way and cheering the wrong guys, they probably succeeded in a sense of having an awful lot of fans wondering why they were the ones rooting against the real babyfaces. Those Canadian fans, who in the clips hardly came off as brain surgeons, still seemed in their less than infinite wisdom, to be on the right side. The WWF trying to make sense of the aftermath and move things back to as they were is going to be intriguing. It’s almost like you had this dream that you saw one of the best wrestling PPV shows ever, but then you wake up the next morning, and it was almost like it never happened.

  WCW Bash at the Beach

  So now Dennis Rodman is a bona fide pro wrestler. And the scary part was, he wasn’t all that bad.

  After doing a couple of angles, Rodman’s first appearance as a participant in a pro wrestling match at WCW’s Bash at the Beach PPV saw him tear down the house by doing a simple arm drag on Lex Luger. In the tag match at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, FL, where Rodman teamed with Hulk Hogan against Luger & The Giant, it wasn’t until the 6:30 mark before Rodman tagged in. Rodman, teased his first lock-up seemingly forever (actually it was more than two minutes later), and hit Luger with an arm drag, and then came back and took an arm drag from Luger. The funny part is that Luger probably had to be taught the move this week as well.

  After just a few days of practice this past week under the eyes of Terry Taylor and the WCW staff (although from his two minute early stall, it seemed his wrestling hero was more like Larry Zbyszko), Rodman, 36, was not only not an embarrassment in the ring, but actually showed far more aptitude than most trained pro wrestlers with months of training in their first match. His offense, while limited, looked decent. His athletic ability, which is world class, he was able to translate better into wrestling than expected, was naturally his strong point with some high and well timed leap frog spots. His selling was pretty good, certainly for someone in their first match. His ability to work the crowd was very good as he’s a natural ham, and he obviously he wasn’t about to be intimidated because there was a sellout crowd watching him. And his psychology was there.

  Many people joked he was the best of the four participants in the tag match, which wouldn’t have been much of an exaggeration, but in reality he was already better in his first match than a main eventer like Sid or Ultimate Warrior after years in the ring. Guess that’s the advantage of having real athletic ability.

  To the mainstream, the circus of Rodman’s pro wrestling debut was the big story, making CNN, ESPN, television sports show highlight reels, feature stories in several newspapers and some tiny mentions in the sports briefs in others. From a WCW standpoint, it’s this type of publicity needed to transfer the years of having the New York advantage that has made the WWF the “name brand” to those who really don’t follow pro wrestling. Even though WCW is ahead of WWF when it comes to television viewership and is now in the lead when it comes to PPV revenue, WWF is still the name brand.

  Witness the many media stories back in March when Rodman debuted for WCW doing an angle at the Uncensored PPV show on 3/16 that listed Rodman appearing on a WWF show. There probably were sportscasters around the country that mentioned WWF in association with Rodman this time out, but the number dwindled and those mistakes, embarrassing to the WCW empire, certainly weren’t in nearly as many high profile positions like their home town Atlanta Journal Constitution as the previous appearance.

  The show was actually a bigger deal with the Japanese media. There were likely as many Japanese media present for this show as any U.S. pro wrestling show ever. Part of the lure was Rodman. Part of the lure was Great Muta & Masahiro Chono working as a tag team against the Steiners. And most of it was that hoards of sports media from Japan were already in the U.S. for the debut of Hideki Irabu with the New York Yankees a few days earlier and most of them used Rodman doing pro wrestling as the second stop since they were already in the country.

  Virtually all the Japanese sports newspapers had large photos from the match on the front page of the sports section on 7/15, and news of the match was even carried on the nightly NHK (equivalent to PBS) news, a station that virtually never touches pro wrestling (although they did cover Naoya Ogawa’s early matches with New Japan). This card was also taped to be the 7/26 “World Pro Wrestling” television show in Japan, focusing on the Rodman and Steiners matches and the entire wrestling television crew from TV-Asahi was there including announcers Tsuji and Masa Saito.

  We know Rodman drew the media to the show. We also know, what the media didn’t, that Rodman didn’t draw the fans to the show although he was a major curiosity point once they got there. What nobody knows yet is Rodman’s PPV drawing power. Rodman received a deal that was likely in the $1.5 to $2 million range for reportedly three appearances. The original WCW reports we had received on the Rodman deal were two matches plus the original angle and a Chicago Tribune story on 7/14 reported that Rodman has one more match with WCW on his contract and that the date hasn’t been agreed on but indicated it would be before basketball season starts in the fall, although I’m not sure when that would be since the August (Hogan vs. Luger) and October PPV shows are already largely booked without him. September will be War Games, November will be that horrible three-ring Battle Royal gimmick and December will be Hogan vs. Sting.

  New Japan is interested in using him for a Dome show but that price tag is still more than they’ve ever paid anyone (although they offered more to Royce Gracie but that’s a totally different situation) and they sellout their Dome shows without him. WCW signed Rodman earlier this year after beating a $1 million offer for two appearances by WWF which wanted to pair Rodman and Goldust as a tag team, shooting the angle at WrestleMania for a match at SummerSlam. To be worth the $750,000 Rodman was paid for this specific appearance, which would rank as among the largest one-day payoffs ever in pro wrestling, WCW needs to draw 83,900 more orders on PPV than it would have without him. Figuring WCW’s average PPV shows with Hogan are doing about 200,000 buys, they need to get it up to 284,000 buys or a 1.01 buy rate to make it worth their while. The very preliminary numbers indicate WCW will wind up right about at that figure. Logic would say that for a gimmick like that, a second appearance wouldn’t garner anywhere close to that level of curiosity buys.

  Of course everything is synergistic and you can argue if they fall short on the buy rate, which would rank with the two Hogan-Flair matches and the first Hogan-Piper as the biggest money matches in company history, they can make it up in ratings. However the Nitro from Chicago with Rodman live saw no ratings bump at all due to Rodman appearing and this week the number was up only one-tenth of a point despite more mainstream pub than ever for WCW from the show the previous night. Mainstream curiosity often translates into more revenue but generally translates better into television ratings for free. If it did, the Bash would have sold out Daytona Beach the first day tickets went on sale.

  Usually something like this would be more likely to swell television ratings because it appeals more to the curiosity of the casual person on the street interest that has no interest in spending money on wrestling. The best example of this would be the Lawrence Taylor angle in WWF two years ago, which started a great period of ratings for Monday Night Raw, but drew a hugely disappointing buy rate for WrestleMania—where the money was supposed to have been made on the deal.

  As a live show, the Bash drew a sellout of 7,851 fans (6,354 paying $150,870), selling out three days in advance. While media reports will attribute it to Rodman dra
wing the sellout, the reality isn’t nearly as romantic. The fact was this show was, while not a hard sell since it did sellout and the advance was solid, it wasn’t selling tickets at the same level of most major WCW events in recent months that get no national publicity despite the Rodman hype locally which started with his angle in March. In fact, the real ticket sales movement didn’t come until after the announcement of the Ric Flair vs. Roddy Piper match. The crowd live was said to have been not nearly as hot as most major WCW house shows, but still decent with only the Flair and Hogan matches drawing major crowd heat.

  If the Rodman debut was a success, it was tempered a little by a lower profile failure—the debut of Curt Hennig. Hennig, 39, one of the great workers of his era but now out of action for a few years, showed up probably the heaviest he has ever appeared, and looked slow and unimpressive and killed what had been up to this point a hot angle involving Diamond Dallas Page and Randy Savage. Hennig wasn’t in the ring much, but his appearance as Page’s mystery partner was such a letdown that there was no heat at all for the match.

  Part of that was due to a major mistake WCW made before the show went on the air and in television hype weeks ago. Page alluded in his first interview regarding a mystery partner by looking at the sky it would be Sting. Since fans have been waiting for Sting’s first match for months, anyone but Sting was going to be a letdown of sorts. It was made worse at the building when before the show, ring announcer Dave Penzer asked the crowd who they thought would be the mystery partner and 90% of the reaction screamed “Sting.” In addition, when Hennig did his first interview on the 7/7 Nitro in Memphis, it was a total heel promo. Many people called the turn ahead of time, which only served to make Page look stupid to the fans for trusting a guy who had already done a heel promo as opposed to Page being betrayed.