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

by Dave Meltzer

  It would turn a great phrase to say that 16 months of work was exposed about halfway through Sting’s walk down the aisle and before he ever got in the ring. The mythical super hero turned human right before the fans’ very eyes. It wasn’t as if it was a bad wrestling match that did it, although the match itself was bad. But you could see the big initial pop after all the hype and special effects didn’t even last until Sting made it to the ring. The match itself was a struggle. The finish was totally botched up. Sting did leave as champion. But after WCW’s most successful quarter in history, the record-breaking show raised more questions about the future than answers the record revenue will provide.

  And that was hardly the only question. Probably the most important question of all regarded Kevin Nash, scheduled to wrestle The Giant for the second straight PPV show. The day before the show, WCW received word that Nash had suffered a mild heart attack at his home in Phoenix. Nash, who is 39, has a family history of heart problems including his father dying of a heart attack before the age of 40.

  Nobody was exactly clear as to the actual story, as there were also reports it was thought to be a heart attack but actually a bad case of indigestion (which medically that mistake is not unusual to be made) causing massive chest pains, or massive chest pains from an anxiety attack suffered due to stress because his father-in-law has a serious health problem, which coincidentally enough is the exact same problem Undertaker had a few weeks ago which caused his blood pressure and heartbeat to go through the roof and caused him to miss a house show, and the health problem is said to be the same life-threatening health problem that Undertaker’s father is undergoing. The only thing anyone seemed to know for sure is that Nash was undergoing tests to see what kind of a problem it actually was.

  A man who legitimately has a bad heart is one hell of a risk, even with the style he works, in the ring, yet there didn’t seem to be nearly the concern one would expect from a lot of parties close to the situation if a superstar in the business was suffering a serious health problem that could keep him out of action for a long time. The reports were that Nash’s father-in-law was in bad health with a life threatening bowel problem, the same condition as Undertaker’s father. Others were openly questioning it believing that Nash had somehow found out the finish (and he was supposed to do the job) and everything else was a cover reason. Others speculated that even though there was probably some truth to some of the stories it was a combination of both the former and the latter.

  It’s really become a screwed up business when someone may have suffered a legitimate major health scare and his friend at the same time may have suffered a legitimate dislocated knee (Hunter Hearst Helmsley), but since they were friends and their group is building up a tremendous track record of excuses to avoid doing jobs (Helmsley was scheduled to drop the European title to Owen Hart at the Nassau Coliseum on 12/29 but showed up injured from the show the previous day in Hamilton, ONT; although at the same time Scott Hall has actually done a lot more jobs than he’s given credit for) so many within the industry don’t believe a thing anymore.

  It’s a problem that ultimately was industry created. When promoters create an environment where the wrestlers themselves feel they are being manipulated and worked and doing angles specifically to fool the boys breeds that problem even worse, it is only natural for the wrestlers themselves once they get in a position of power to try and play the game back. In an industry that needs some level of trust for a cohesive product, but never really has true trust because the business is built on a house of lies, even though the health of the industry is near peak levels, the foundation of the industry has never been so completely screwed up.

  Nash had managed to postpone his first PPV match with The Giant, originally scheduled for World War III, claiming his knee hadn’t recovered from arthroscopic surgery a few months back and his entire ring time over the past several months consisted of the cameo at the end of the Battle Royal. He got out of numerous other booked house show matches with Giant (he did a few just before his injury) due to the knee surgery. But he had also told people that he wasn’t going to work a program with The Giant and in recent weeks before any of these problems surfaced had told people he wasn’t doing the match at Starrcade for a variety of reasons, among them because he didn’t think it had been promoted correctly and because he didn’t want to do the program to begin with.

  And Nash wasn’t the only problem on the show. Konnan called and said that his girlfriend had given birth to a premature stillborn child and that he couldn’t leave Mexico. This left a hole in the six-man tag match. The company wanted Randy Savage to fill the spot, and in negotiations to get him to fill the spot literally a few hours before the show was going on the air, had to agree to change the originally planned finish of The Steiners & Ray Traylor going over. To get Savage to agree, the finish was changed to where Savage got to score the pin using the elbow off the top on Scott Steiner. This left Scott Steiner visibly livid to the point he had major words with booker Terry Taylor and they tried to alleviate him by letting him do so many big moves at the end for saves before doing the job, although he still wasn’t happy at all.

  Dean Malenko was originally mad because he had asked for Starrcade off because his wife was due at about that time. He was told if his wife was in labor or had given birth, that he didn’t have to do the show and that Rey Misterio Jr. would sub for him in the match against Eddie Guerrero. Apparently he was also unhappy about Guerrero vs. Malenko being advertised on the television the previous weekend when he believed the company had a good idea that he wasn’t going to be there. Malenko’s wife Julie gave birth to a girl on 12/25, and the plan was to put Misterio Jr. against Guerrero in the match.

  However, with Konnan and Nash both no-showing at basically the 11th hour and the company knowing basically all along that the advertised Raven vs. Chris Benoit match also wasn’t going to take place due to Raven not being fully recovered from his inflamed pancreas, at that point they felt it important not to have another no-show and actually chartered a jet on the last day for Malenko to come in for the show.

  It is too early to get any kind of a realistic estimate on the buy rate. WCW sources were predicting ahead of time 500,000 buys, which would be about a 1.7 which would be the most buys for any PPV show in this industry dating back to the heyday of the WWF on PPV around seven years ago. WCW’s all-time record was probably around 310,000 buys for the Hogan-Piper Halloween Havoc cage match. Due to the holidays, even preliminary estimates are sketchy at best but the early numbers are looking to be in the 1.55 range which would be around 435,000 buys.

  The show destroyed WCW’s all-time gate record doing an even $543,000 (as it turns out, the old record set for World War III on 11/23 in Auburn Hills was actually $395,831 and not the $407,831 which was originally listed here) and also setting the company all-time one-night merchandise record at $161,961. The paid attendance for the sold out show was a company record of 16,052, breaking the old mark of 16,025 set for the Nitro on 6/9 in Boston. The total in the building was in the 17,500 range, falling slightly short of the company record of 18,003 set for the Nitro in Boston. On the broadcast, Tony Schiavone, using his best Monsoonian figures, numerous times gave the attendance at 24,000. Even though it was the biggest WCW paid attendance in history, it was not even the biggest of the weekend in North American pro wrestling as the WWF drew a sellout of 18,304 (16,620 paid) for its 12/26 house show at the Rosemont Horizon in suburban Chicago headlined by Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels, and they even had the match.

  The show was bad. Despite it being a full house, the crowd heat wasn’t there. It appeared the people came only to see the main event, and they recognized quickly it wasn’t what they had bargained for. Nearly every match on the show was worse than one would think it would be (Bischoff-Zbyszko was the only one that would have been better, and that’s only because how high could expectations have been going in), and only one or two of the matches looked good on paper to begin with. The main events wer
e fiascos, particularly after all the hype. Of course the title change itself got a big pop, but when does a world title change not get a big pop? And to WCW’s credit, the one thing that did come off well was the post-match celebration with the ring filling up with WCW wrestlers to celebrate Sting’s win.

  The other big story was the finish. The story was scheduled to be that since Hogan was doing the job, he’d dominate on offense. Since Nick Patrick was going to turn heel as a ref (in a role that was originally designed for Earl Hebner however WCW either never made a strong enough effort to contact Dave and Earl Hebner or they turned down the offer, but it’s obvious that was what the original role in this match was booked for), he had to play it straight the entire match.

  After a lackluster match, which even saw “boring” chants two minutes in, Hogan delivered his foot to the face and leg drop finish. At this point the plan was for Patrick to deliver a fast count and have Sting still kick out before three, but Patrick would rule it as a pin, leading to Bret Hart’s avenging the wrong done to him at Survivor Series and getting the match restarted and taking over as ref leading to Sting winning with the scorpion submission in the middle.

  A funny thing happened. Patrick didn’t count fast. Why is a bigger mystery than the weird gravitational pull from the alignment of the stars that resulted in Kevin Nash, Royce Gracie and Hunter Hearst Helmsley all coming up injured within days of each other just prior to all having to suffer either symbolic worked or realistic beatings. You can mistime a ref bump. You can blow a move. But how do you blow a fast count? The only reasonable answer to this is Hogan changed the spot in the ring and Patrick didn’t want to cross Hogan because of all the power he wields even though the plan was different.

  Coming off the Hart-Michaels deal which has been the catalyst for everything in the business since, is Bischoff, Hogan and nobody else, perhaps Sting, decided to do a non fast count when there was supposed to be a fast count an angle (is your head spinning yet), but that doesn’t make sense either because why did they have the announcers sell it as a fast count the next day so hard when it wasn’t and if that was the case the guy who got screwed and made a fool of would have been Hart, who if anything, this company wasn’t trying to portray in that matter after the last company did? Sting did try to kick out but Hogan didn’t sell it by flying off, giving the first assumption some more validity.

  I’d say coming in the wake of the Hart-Michaels deal that the most likely scenario is that Hogan, who no doubt was negotiating for all he was worth as far as getting whatever he could out of doing the job, apparently was able to manipulate the finish into appearing that he actually won the match cleanly and he was screwed by Hart, which wasn’t the idea the fans were supposed to have. On TV the next night, they didn’t even acknowledge the original story wasn’t executed in the original manner, trying to sell the entire show that Patrick gave a fast count and Hart wouldn’t stand for it.

  By all appearances, Hogan pinned Sting pretty much clean (he did hold the tights but that’s a normal heel finish). Hart then came out and prevented the ref from ringing the bell, punched out Patrick, who told Hart he had counted three trying to say he’d never let a ref screw a wrestler like that, playing off the Survivor Series finish (amazing how one finish can be the backbone of the top angles in two promotions at the same time), and got in the ring to take over as referee. As both Marcus Bagwell and Scott Norton failed in run-ins, teased by having a similar run-in finish cost Lex Luger his match with Bagwell, Sting clamped on the scorpion after signaling that the hold was almost a tribute to Hart by the eye contact made, and Hart ruled it was a submission and called for the bell.

  With the finish from the previous night messed up and thus really unable to ever be shown on television (basically it’s okay to have the fans spend $28 to buy the replay to see a fast count that isn’t but never to see it for free), it was decided after the dust settled to change directions once again. A match was held on Nitro the next night in Baltimore, with the gimmick being that the finish wouldn’t be shown on television and likely used as a tease for the debut of the Thursday show and they’d basically do the same finish with a few minor ramifications. So on Nitro the next night, they hyped a Sting-Hogan title rematch for the main event. About six minutes into the match, at about 10:04 p.m., just as ref Randy Anderson was bumped after being in the wrong place when Sting did the Stinger splash, the show abruptly went off the air.

  Naturally there were more complaints about this the next day at Turner Broadcasting than anything WCW has ever pulled in its history, although that reaction was by design and not unexpected. Nitro had set a precedent for the last 18 months at least of staying with the main event until the finish (broken once before as a way to garner ratings for the debut of the Robin Hood series by pretending Hogan and The Giant were doing a 40 minute match and showing taped clips purported as being live as the show was on the air). This actually would have been the earliest the show had gone off the air in recent memory despite having nothing but the Nitro replay to follow on TNT and it being billed as the biggest match in Nitro history.

  After the show went off the air, with Anderson down, Nick Patrick did a run-in as referee. Hogan again hit the legdrop and this time Patrick did the planned fast count (the clip that will be used forever more) and just as he was hitting three for the super fast count this time, Sting kicked out although it was basically a dead heat as to which happened first. Sting got up and clotheslined Patrick. The match continued with Sting getting Hogan in the scorpion and Anderson reviving and calling for the bell. It should be noted that both nights when Hogan “submitted” to the scorpion, in neither instance did he tap out.

  J.J. Dillon grabbed the belt and went to give it to Sting, but at this point Bischoff and Dillon ended up in a tug-of-war over the belt, ending when Bischoff KO’d Dillon with a kick. Sting then dropped Bischoff using the reverse DDT to the biggest pop of the night. As the NWO guys came for the run-in on Sting, they were cut off by the WCW guys, with the biggest reaction coming again to Hart fighting with Hall, but also out there were Lex Luger, Diamond Dallas Page, Ray Traylor, The Giant, The Steiners, Jim Duggan (?) and others.

  What I expect to happen from this is that they’ll talk about the controversial ending on the weekend television and also on Nitro and tease that the clip will air on the first Thursday show on 1/8. At that point they’ll announce the title is held up and set up a rematch either for the Souled Out PPV on 1/24 or SuperBrawl at the Cow Palace on 2/22, with it more likely being at the latter, and whatever finish likely setting up a Hogan-Bret Hart match. At this point the only matches official for Souled Out are Luger vs. Savage and Zbyszko vs. Hall and I’d guess Ultimo Dragon defending the cruiserweight title against Eddie Guerrero.

  In the much-hyped match for Nitro, WCW President Bischoff had his first pro wrestling match at the age of 41. Going into the match with what was said to have been a serious knee injury, perhaps a broken kneecap suffered in training for the match that may require surgery (although he was not limping on television the next night), Bischoff did reasonably well for his first match. However, it was nothing close to reasonably well for the semi-main event on the biggest show in company history. Even with 44-year-old announcer Larry Zbyszko somewhat smaller than in his active days (and maybe in a little better shape), he was so much larger than Bischoff that his attempts to sell Bischoff’s weak-appearing offense turned the match from a heat seeking missile into an almost ridiculous farce within two minutes.

  To make things worse, on a night where so much went wrong, in the finish, where Bischoff was supposed to kick Zbyszko in the head in a loaded kick pad with Scott Hall putting an object in the pad, the object went flying out of Bischoff’s kick pad into the air just before the kick made contact with Zbyszko’s head. Zbyszko had to sell that blow as a knockoff, and Hart, who had teased a heel turn as ref throughout the match, suddenly “shocked” everyone by punching out Bischoff, as he did McMahon, when Bischoff offered him the huge money, thus, I guess,
showing publicly that he wasn’t a sellout (the announcers never explain what the storylines are since everything is dual storyline nowadays so who knows what the real idea behind that was).

  Hall did a run-in but was quickly put in the scorpion by Hart, which actually got the biggest pop of the show up to that point. Zbyszko then choked Bischoff with his black belt, and Hart got off a laid out Hall, and raised Zbyszko’s hand signifying that WCW retained Nitro. As for the big question about Thursday, well, if you’ve got any good ideas for a Thursday night show, email them to Eric quickly because they’re starting on 1/8. And if you’ve heard any rumors of the concept, they’re only rumors because everything right now is up in the air.

  45 – The Big Shows Directory: Domestic PPV Events

  The most interesting thing to note when it comes to big shows from 1997 is that when it comes to traditional pro wrestling, out of 27 PPV shows from WWF, WCW and ECW, only nine of them were any good and none since September. During a period when competition should elevate the product, it has when it comes to less wrestling and more angles on television, but when it comes to the PPV and house shows, that hasn’t been the case.

  Now more than at any time in the past, house shows are something that the stars try and get out of doing and all but the youngest, hungriest or a few dedicated types use them to largely go through the motions knowing there is no emphasis from the company and having good or bad matches doesn’t affect your stock because the fans don’t remember because cities are run so infrequently, and the promoters don’t care at all.

  Both WWF and WCW only had four good shows out of 12 PPV shows based on readers’ reaction, and if you look back at these shows, it isn’t a case of so much product making standards too high for reader satisfaction. If anything, based on the shows and poll results and comparisons to prior years, standards in some ways are easier than ever.