by Dave Meltzer
WCW World War 3
For a company with more talent depth than perhaps any wrestling company in history, there is really no excuse to present a line-up that appeared going in to be so weak on paper as WCW did for World War III on 11/23.
And the line-up was every bit the precursor for the show. Sure, the show did great business—a near sellout crowd of 17,128, with 15,735 paying $407,831 plus another $139,191 in merchandise, at the Palace in Auburn Hills, MI. The gate figure destroyed the record set just a few weeks earlier at Halloween Havoc in Las Vegas of $297,508. It fell just shy of the company’s all-time attendance records set on 6/9 in Boston of 18,003 fans and 16,025 paid. But most of the tickets were purchased before the matches were announced, largely coming off a successful 8/4 Nitro appearance in the same building which actually drew more people into the building because it was somewhat papered.
With the three-ring 60 man Battle Royal gimmick, which has never worked in the past from a television standpoint on top and too many of the heavy hitters off the undercard, it was a poor show from a company with far too much talent to have an excuse for such a card. It wasn’t as if it was big names getting a lot of heat while shortcutting their way through bad matches, but it was a lot of people who aren’t over being put in a position above their league but from a working and perception standpoint, and the crowd responding in kind.
The Battle Royal itself was shot better than the distracting three-ring 20:00 long test patterns with multiple announcing teams from the previous two years, but the match itself may have been the worst of the three. Certainly it was the most uneventful, with only one slim fabric of a storyline presented, the constant near eliminations of Rey Misterio Jr., and the ball was even dropped on that one as he went out before the finals and the cameras didn’t catch nor did the announcers notice when he was eliminated after all the teases. The entire NWO being together at the finish was the same as last year, but last year at least had a more exciting finish.
Misterio Jr. and Eddie Guerrero stole the show, but in the words of Jim Cornette, it was petty theft. They had what would have been an incredible match had any two other wrestlers in this world done it with inventing new moves and some incredible spots, but due to a little sloppiness and hesitation after missed spots by Misterio Jr., it fell well short of the match of the year standard they had set last month and that people were going in with the inflated expectations of.
The other good match on paper from last month, Ultimo Dragon vs. Yuji Nagata was good, but again, not nearly on the level as their previous match, perhaps due to Dragon not being 100% after elbow surgery, and lacked heat. Ric Flair vs. Curt Hennig had the expected good psychology, and the selling of the legs was as good as anything you would see in pro wrestling (partially because some of the pain appeared to be real), but Hennig these days is inconsistent at best, and Flair has his good days and his bad days, and this was one of those days where he made the effort to have a good day but somehow didn’t.
ECW November to Remember
Extreme Championship Wrestling’s third PPV show seemed to finalize a lot of answers to lingering questions.
Can the company over the long haul make a go of it? At its level, yes. Can the company remain a PPV entity? Again, at its level, yes, although there are potential monkey wrenches in the road they’ll have to dodge, but if left to a free economy, probably yes but at a certain level. Is the company a legitimate threat to WWF or WCW as far as being a major mainstream entity? Absolutely not.
The November to Remember PPV, billed ahead of time as ECW’s showcase event of the year, fell far short of the mark in that regard. As a promotion, it was the most successful by far in company history. For a group that has only drawn 2,000 fans on two occasions in its nearly five year history, it destroyed all existing company records with a sellout crowd of 4,634 (4,218 paying about $103,900, plus another $43,930 in merchandise which are phenomenal figures for a company of that size) at the Golden Dome in Monaca, PA on 11/30.
Of the three ECW PPV’s to date, this would have to rank in the middle as far as a show. It was nowhere near the quality of the “Barely Legal” show in April. It was superior to the “Hardcore Heaven” in August, although that is more due to production improvements than a major improvement in the quality of the show itself. Based on the response here, the general feeling is that to its audience, ECW can do no wrong even when nearly everything goes wrong, as in August. To people who are fans of WWF or WCW and try to judge it by those standards, it naturally doesn’t come close when it comes to production, but also the difference in wrestling quality for the most part is noticeable, even with a generally much higher level of effort and considering the somewhat inconsistent product of late by the WWF and WCW. But those people aren’t for the most part interested in buying the show to begin with. It’s a niche group buying, and a successful one, every bit like FMW in Japan, and in its own way like shoot groups in Japan as well although as diametrically opposite from that as possible, although with not quite the same level of popularity.
ECW throws in enough swerves and turns into every match for those into constant gratification to have something to hold onto, and has enough consistent “hot” spots during the match (although not done in a manner building a match) to satisfy people who buy the show for “highlight reel” spots or attend to chant “ECW.” The crowd reactions couldn’t touch most WCW and WWF Monday night shows, but is still better than most of what qualifies as pro wrestling, and they did react to spots designed to get the big reactions, the suicidal spots, the low blows and the run-ins. Reports from those live said the crowd heat was never all that good throughout the show except for the Dreamer finish, but that the show was killed live by the Sabu-Sandman match and dead for the last two matches.
But that is missing the point as well. The human toll makes the injury rate in WWF or WCW, or for that matter in a Demolition Derby, seem tame. Some people would argue that what they do isn’t even pro wrestling, because things like making it look somewhat plausible (not that any pro wrestling except shoot style looks the slightest bit plausible to begin with) and working without holes big enough to shoot Dusty Rhodes through doesn’t exist here.
But that would also be missing the entire point and looking at this business with blinders on. Pro wrestling is whatever enough people are willing to buy. What works economically is what pro wrestling is. Pro wrestling is not limited to what the WWF, WCW or even New Japan and All Japan are doing. ECW, or FMW, or IWA, are all pro wrestling as long as they can survive economically. They cease to be pro wrestling when they can’t survive, not when they stop working under standards set and associated with pro wrestling in times past or even times present elsewhere. On that account, ECW is a big success coming from nowhere and being a genuine player, albeit a secondary player, in the PPV industry. No, they aren’t New Japan, or even WWF. Nor are they RINGS or Kingdom or for that matter Lucha Libre, nor are RINGS and Kingdom anything like WCW. But they are all pro wrestling, just as Country, Top 40, Rap and Classical music are all under the umbrella as music.
At the same time, missed and blown spots are missed and blown spots and just because they’re done by wrestlers who are over with the crowd and forgiven in an ECW ring as opposed to by wrestlers who are over with the mainstream in WCW and the fans don’t groan because they are superstars doesn’t make them any less blown in either setting.
The injury toll for the show was huge, and probably contributed to a great deal of the show being an overall disappointment. Tommy Rogers injured his neck early in his match with Chris Candido. He’s scheduled to undergo a myelogram (shooting a large needle in his spine) this coming week.
Tommy Dreamer injured his good ankle because he’s spent so long favoring the bad one, early in his match with Rob Van Dam, and was practically immobile the entire match, although that didn’t stop him from working a long match. He was hospitalized after the match, but was mobile by the next day and will still be working this weekend.
Sandman i
njured his shoulder, then his arm, and banged up his ribs in acting like the sloppiest most inebriated kamikaze pilot in a match with Sabu that was either a demolition derby classic or the single worst match of 1997, depending upon how you view pro wrestling. His injury list included both wrists being swollen, sore ribs and a badly bruised up side and at press time it was recommended that he not wrestle this coming weekend although his condition for the weekend was listed as iffy at press time.
Shane Douglas, who was going to need elbow surgery to clear up bone chips to begin with before the match took place, in taking so many big bumps, made the injury even worse. He’ll be undergoing an elbow operation this week, although that was actually planned before the match and the spots in the match where Bigelow destroyed his arm were to be used as the storyline reason for the elbow injury.
To the surprise of nobody, Douglas regained the ECW title from Bam Bam Bigelow in the main event of a match that went far too long, largely due to them giving Sabu vs. Sandman the hook after “only” 21 minutes. What was a surprise was the lack of crowd reaction for most of the match, particularly with Douglas challenging for the title in his hometown. The attempt to work a match similar to Ric Flair vs. Vader from Starrcade ‘93, the hometown babyface against the monster, largely failed even though it was the most professional looking match of the show as Bigelow’s offense and demeanor and ability to get over as a monster was not at the Vader level of ‘93, and Douglas simply isn’t over in his home city anywhere close to Flair in his.
The surprises turned out to be the return of Stevie Richards, which was, despite attempts to hide it, figured to be an inevitability at some point although maybe not this week; and appearances by WWF performers Brakkus, Al Snow, Doug Furnas and Phil LaFon, all in cameo roles. There were hints of a WWF vs. ECW feud, although it’s not been made clear if that’ll be the focus of the promotion. As it turned out, neither porn star Jenna Jameson or the Insane Clown Posse rap group appeared on the show as advertised.
During the final week before the show, there were talks with WCW regarding Chris Benoit and also talks with Dan Severn. Depending on who you wish to believe, the Benoit situation went something like this. Either a) As a settlement offering in a proposed lawsuit by ECW against WCW that still has yet to be filed, WCW and ECW made an agreement that Benoit would work this PPV. This fell through by the end of the week when Paul Heyman never called Eric Bischoff back to confirm details; or b) There had been negotiations on WCW providing talent to ECW in exchange for ECW dropping the proposed legal action, and that dates on both Benoit and Eddie Guerrero had been talked about, but that no settlement terms have been reached and that ECW was interested in Benoit and Guerrero for big market house shows but not looking at using Benoit on this PPV show.
In regards to Severn, Candido called Severn two nights before the show and offered an angle which would result in a confrontation with Taz. Severn turned down the offer because it came as such a last minute thing but left the lines of communication open and ECW is still considering using Severn against Taz, although Paul Heyman recognizes how carefully everything would have to be put together in such an angle so as not to expose everything Taz has been built up as and at the same time get Severn, who has yet to do a job in a pro wrestling scenario since he first made his name in UFC, to agree to the scenario. Brakkus, who was trained by Candido, was a last minute decision to fill that hole.
An appearance by Benoit would have been interesting politically since Furnas, LaFon, Snow and Brakkus from WWF were on the show. There was a similar situation in Puerto Rico on Thanksgiving night where there was actually a singles match between a WCW wrestler (La Parka, although he was booked through Promo Azteca, which sent a crew of wrestlers to Puerto Rico for the weekend, and not WCW) against a WWF wrestler (Jesus “Huracan” Castillo), although there is a very good chance that neither the WWF nor WCW were aware of this taking place before the fact since it was in Puerto Rico and both got their bookings independently of their U.S. offices.
There was some concern expressed by WWF regarding the relationship between the groups, something to the effect that WWF gave ECW free television commercials for the PPV that aired on its weekend USA Network show and sends them talent free of charge. There is no problem when it comes to the storyline knocks at WWF and Vince McMahon on television or riling the ECW fans against WWF fans for a storyline inter-promotional feud. Where the potential problems exist is the idea that inside the ECW dressing room, some of the wrestlers seem to be under the impression the worked feud is a shoot and that some of the wrestlers in ECW see and talk about the WWF as an enemy promotion when the WWF sees it as them doing many favors for ECW.
From a political standpoint, there was a lot of blood on the show, most of it blading and some of it appeared to be hardway (Van Dam in particular). There were no camera close-ups of the blood, which caused some complaints from people who bought the show figuring it was guaranteed blood, but that caution needs to be there at this point in time due to the realities of maintaining a PPV presence. If you don’t get that by now, get your hand out of the sand and into reality. The spot where Sabu came off the top rope on Beulah could be a problem if it gets a bug under the wrong person’s butt. The one surprise was Sabu pulling out a fork and hitting Sandman with it, since after the Erich Kulas incident, it was believed that one of the few stipulations Request made was no stabbing like motions with blunt instruments to the head.
WWF In Your House 19: D-Generation X
The WWF D-Generation X concept as the top heel contingent is of course almost a total knockoff on the WCW concept of the NWO.
The trendy misspellings, the gestures designed to get heels over as cult babyfaces, the personalities (ironically key members of both groups, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Syxx in WCW and Shawn Michaels and Hunter Hearst Helmsley in WWF, were all members of the so-called Kliq that was riding high in WWF during Nash’s reign as WWF champion) are all basically the same. In fact, there would be no D-Generation X heel group in WWF as the company never would have gone in such a direction had WCW not been so successful taking the same direction, and now WWF is trying to take that direction one step farther.
And so it was fitting that the WWF’s PPV named after its top heel contingent was about the same as WCW’s in January, the infamous NWO Souled Out show. Really, the only difference between the shows is that the Souled Out show had better wrestling in the undercard, and the WWF show had a stronger main event in the ring, which sounds like a broken record since it’s the same comparison every month between the PPV shows of the two groups—and the WWF show did have better announcing, but that is hardly huge praise when one considers what it is being compared with.
DX had a good, but not great opener, a good main event with a weak finish, a “surprise” appearance by Owen Hart which was only a matter of time before it happened, and one of the worst mid-cards in the history of PPV, a collection of matches that each in their own way proved to be more unsatisfying than the one before it.
The show on 12/7 at the Springfield, MA Civic Center drew a sellout 6,358 fans paying $112,864 with another $44,000 in merchandise. There was nothing on the show that came off as all that heated with the exception of Steve Austin’s match with Rocky Maivia. And when the show was over, with the exception of the return of Hart, who will wind up doing an angle based on the double-cross of his brother and feud with DX, and perhaps the strangest sight was of Jim Cornette doing the Mean Gene, Todd Pettengill, Dok role as the pre-show pitchmaster to hype last minute buys. With Sunny on the shelf due to a broken foot (as has been reported she was stepped on by her horse), it was The Jackal who was with Kevin Kelly in the 900 line room.
Not that WWF is alone in this or that WCW hasn’t had more of a problem with it in recent years, but there were more physiques than at anytime in the past three or four years with the telltale side effects (swollen nipples, crater like acne of the back) and more muscular physiques associated with steroid use. And it’s not just limited to the women. A
nd the guy who wrecked his rental car wasn’t even on the show.
WCW Starrcade
For nearly 16 months, Sting, one of the most popular wrestlers in the country over the past decade, was kept on the shelf with a new stoic brooding character taken from “The Crow” movie as an attempt for him to reach the “franchise” level of drawing card that had been long predicted for him and that he had never reached despite being thrust into that position numerous times.
With carefully orchestrated theatrics and regular run-ins as time was running out on Monday nights, some segments of which were actually totally botched up, Sting had become the No. 2 merchandise seller in the business behind Steve Austin. All this while never wrestling a match. At first, Sting was to make his triumphant return to the ring in February 1997 at the Cow Palace for SuperBrawl, but the gimmick was working so well they decided to hold him out for almost all of 1997—climaxing with his winning the WCW title from Hulk Hogan at Starrcade.
It was obvious the gimmick was paying off big. Anticipation for the match reached a level unseen in pro wrestling in this country in many years. The signing of the contract during a break-in on a Hogan movie on TNT drew one of the largest made-for-cable movie ratings in history. Nitro’s numbers grew throughout the year, peaking to an unheard of 4.1 average during the final quarter of 1997 despite head-up competition from Monday Night Football (whose ratings declined 10 percent over the previous year this season). When tickets for the first pro wrestling show ever scheduled for 12/28 at the MCI Arena in Washington, DC were put on sale two months earlier, WCW had already broken its all-time gate record. And the buy rate record was almost sure to follow.