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3SEPTEMBER 17, 2018 WRESTLING OBSERVER NEWSLETTER: THE STORY OF DAVE MELTZER, MORE
4BY OBSERVER STAFF | STAFF@WRESTLINGOBSERVER.COM | @WONF4W
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6Wrestling Observer Newsletter
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8PO Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228 ISSN10839593 September 17, 2018
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10 
11
12It was nearly 30 years ago when I wrote an issue about myself. Some people point that out as their favorite issue of the Observer. I've always thought it was the worst issue I ever did. And I vowed that I would never do it again.
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14It was a lesson that no matter how people try to frame things. I’m not the story. There are people, some jealous, some outright frauds, who may try and make me the story, and when I see it, the transparency is obvious.
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16I'm a guy who covers the news, analyzes it, gives opinions on it, and more, tries to figure out where it all leads. I've been writing about wrestling since 1971, and consistently doing this newsletter since the start of 1983.
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18People can discuss my opinions on stories, but the surest sign of con men in this business, or any business, is when they try to divert the story by making a very real and very ethical reporter who is chronicling history as it is as the story.
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20I learned that lesson as a kid and it was reinforced working with Frank Deford. It's a lesson many don't understand today because reporting has changed, and journalistic standards have largely disappeared.
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22But a number of circumstances led me to change this. One is, I was in England this week and in being so busy meeting people, doing panels and watching shows, and at the same time trying to sight-see with my son, that I had no time to follow the wrestling news at all.
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24The second is that I expected to catch up on the long flight home, but much to my chagrin, neither flight had any Internet. I still can't get over that one. Then, some delays led to the trip lasting far too long, killing a day I didn't have to kill. And also, with all the long trips, and thinking, having to reflect upon life and career when thinking about what to say for a Hall of Fame acceptance speech.
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26There was the unique situation of spending so much time with, as well as doing a panel interview with Pat Patterson, a unique pro wrestling personality, and one of the most influential men in the modern business. Patterson broke into pro wrestling as a teenager in Montreal and by his mid-20s was one of the best workers of his generation in the business. For decades, the team of Ray Stevens & Pat Patterson were considered the greatest tag team in pro wrestling history. I can remember when Brian Pillman called me up just before he was about to start teaming with Steve Austin, desperate for tapes of what everyone in the business 25 years ago thought was the best tag team of all-time. But virtually none existed, and absolutely none of their mid-60s heyday. A generation later, few fans even know they exist because of the unique nature of pro wrestling history. Even Patterson’s own history has been limited to being the guy who invented the Royal Rumble and was the first Intercontinental champion, or to wrestlers from the last generation who worked with him, he was a once great worker who was a savant when it came to finishes. And a few, just maybe, remember he had a famous alley fight match in 1981 in Madison Square Garden with Sgt. Slaughter.
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28From a unique personal level, he was in the main event of the first pro wrestling television show I ever saw, and the first live show I ever saw. He was also my grandfather’s favorite wrestler, and pretty much the favorite wrestler of almost every fan where I grew up at over about a six year period of time.
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30For the next six years, he was in the main event of the vast majority of live events I attended. At first the top heel in San Francisco, he went babyface and was the area's most popular wrestler, until he left the territory. The territory immediately declined, had one last big run, and then was done a few years later.
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32I've been asked for years to come to England for various events, and always wanted to do so. It's just the time demands of doing a weekly newsletter made that next to impossible. And usually when I was asked, it was on fairly short-notice so I just couldn't do it. But this time I was asked months ago, and it was one of those things that inevitably I was going to do, so this was the time. As much as anything, the key to the deal for me was the ability to take my son to England. When my father passed away, so many memories were of us on trips and him taking me to sports events, wrestling matches and such in different places. So suddenly things like that grew in importance.
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34In the end, life is not about money or power. Life is about memories. I can look back and have great memories of every trip I've ever taken. I have almost no memories of the next week and struggling to catch up on my work when I get back, as hard as it is. Plus, my son is at the right age to where he's old enough to appreciate it, but not too old to where he no longer wants to go on his father's business trips.
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36They did a Hall of Fame celebration for wrestling media. This was the first class they did. And they put me in the main event position. It was on the same bill as Martin Goldsmith, the guy who conceived of the idea and personally told it to Vince McMahon of the biggest pro wrestling event ever held in Europe, the 1992 SummerSlam show at Wembley Stadium that drew a legitimate 79,127 fans and 78,927 paid. Although it never got credit as such because company versions of wrestling history very often isn't just skewed history, but actually made up history. It set a company attendance record for pro wrestling that lasted at least until the WrestleMania at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX. At the time it also set the all-time record gate mark, and all-time event merchandise mark (nearly tripling the prior record for that set at WrestleMania III). But those records have long since been broken.
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38Also put in was Fin Martin, who headed the country's most popular wrestling magazine and Colt Cabana, who started going to England in 2004 to learn a new style, became one of the pioneers of making a legitimate living as an independent wrestler who was never previously a major promotion star, and being the first pro wrestler to become a podcast host.
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40He was one of the first modern generation stars to embrace the old European style in his repertoire and became one of the first Americans who was a student of an old-style that many feared at the time would die out.
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42Because of my weekly workload, there is no down time. My only real time for thinking is long bike rides, and on those, I'm always thinking of the future and the present, and any thoughts of the past only have to do with how they relate to the present and the future.
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44So this weekend was my first chance to really reflect upon my life and career. People have always asked me to write a book. Aside from compilations of previous articles, I've never had the time. A number of wrestlers, and people in wrestling, Lou Thesz, Jim Barnett, Ric Flair, Terry Funk, Billy Graham and others asked me to write their autobiographies. For years, executives at Harper Collins would contact me once a year trying to convince me to do the definitive work on Vince McMahon. It took a number of years, but eventually they stopped asking.
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46When people would ask me to write a book about myself. I always thought maybe but probably never. But over the years, I’ve interviewed tons of older pro wrestlers. Every longtime wrestling historian knows about these conversations, the ones where you realize that you remember far more about their careers than they do. So waiting too long probably isn’t a good idea.
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48My thoughts always were that my loyalty and priority is the readers of this publication because they are the ones who have allowed me to live what I consider overall a very unique and somewhat lucky life.
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50I've been inducted or honored into different Halls of Fames or given awards on different stages. Being honored at the Tragos/Thesz Hall of Fame in Waterloo, IA, in 2016 was a big deal to me, but that was so much more for my parents than for me. For one, my parents, who were not wrestling fans at all, very much knew the name Lou Thesz, and my mother in particular loved meeting Lou's widow, Charlie, who picked my family up at the airport and spent much time with them.
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52I can't say enough about my parents. In hindsight, I can say they were the most wonderful parents in the world. I'm nowhere near the father to my kids than my father was to me, but I'm so much better of one from trying to be. I think they had somewhat of an idea of my job and such, and helped me out greatly with it. My mother actually loved talking to readers, but she was never around wrestling fans and readers much in a social setting, and certainly nothing approximating that. It’s not that I was trying to prove to them I was a success, but more just wanted them to be able to experience and understand it better.
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54I was honored going there but at the same time I felt it was something I had long since deserved. I'd had friends tell me for years I should have been the first honoree. Really, if it wasn’t for Larry Matysik, when he was honored, convincing the people involved who made those decisions, the value of the newsletters when it comes to wrestling reporting and journalism, it wouldn’t have happened for me, or for Wade Keller for that matter.
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56I’d like to think Thesz himself, had he not passed away, would have pushed for it much earlier. When Matysik was deservedly awarded for his writings and contributions to St. Louis wrestling, he pushed them to honor me, and just as hard, pushed me to accept. He told me that in his mind, unless I'm in it, his induction wouldn't be legitimate.
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58It took a few years to make that work, just the timing issue and other commitments, UFC events that I had to cover in conjunction with our own conventions that ran on the same weekends. They moved their schedule around to avoid that conflict and it happened.
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60In hindsight, this ended up far more important. A few months later, on my birthday no less, my mother suffered a serious stroke that was nearly fatal. She was the star athlete in our family and passed along to me somewhat lucky genetics. My dad passed along an unbelievable work rate. My brother and sister-in-law extensively studied my father's life over the past year. Me and my brother are completely different people. He, like my father, are two of the smartest people I've ever met. We both thought we were nothing like him, only to find out that in so many ways, we were both so much like him. He was a comedy writer long before I was born. My brother ended up a comedian and I ended up a writer. He was a star employee at IBM when the company was a giant in the business world, filled with awards, helping develop different computer languages. Nobody worked harder or more hours there. He didn't fit into the structure and his boss, who ended up being one of his lifelong best friends, was told that when it comes to managing him, don't give him directions and just let him be. But try to get him to work less hours because they felt it actually set the wrong example for other employees with his working so hard and so long, and more, because they felt it couldn't be good for his health.
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62Just hours before I was to give my speech, we had a family medical emergency. Me and my son felt the need to immediately go home. But as it was, there were no flights out until the morning. Plus, my parents strongly felt the need to honor the commitment, especially since Chael Sonnen didn't come due to the funeral of his wrestling coach that happened the same day, and Lex Luger didn't show up, because after making the commitment, he got a booking that he figured would pay more.
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64Then we came home to a second tragedy. I have a cousin, who is more like my older sister, who wasn't there. She had talked about coming in. She lives in New York and we don't see each other much. She wouldn't tell me until I got home the next day that she had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, was getting extensive treatments and there was no way based on the timing of the treatments that she could travel. It was a year of pure hell for her, Thankfully in both cases, things worked out.
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66But the next year I lost my father, also to pancreatic cancer. Just before his death he told me that I was one day going to die from the same disease, as every member of his family on his father’s side had. But he told me the good news was that most died in their 60s, but he didn’t until 90. All those years of endless long bicycle rides because I had a daughter at 49, thus had to play the odds on trying to avoid a heart attack or stroke for a really long time, and none of that was going to matter, since there was no amount of training that is going to beat cancer.
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68Unlike my cousin, who was in overall great shape, and was able with withstand the extensive surgery and the chemotherapy and radiation treatments, my father was too old. I was first told he'd be alive for several more months. Then, a week or so later, he was hospitalized and I was told to come up immediately. I got there, and saw my mother, who had not been able to leave the rehab center since her stroke. That's when it hit me. A doctor explained everything to the family, and for whatever reason, called me out of the room privately and told me he only had a few weeks left to live.
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70My son and I were scheduled to go to Los Angeles for the first two New Japan shows in Long Beach that weekend. He told us to go. Really, everyone did. We got home and canceled our plans. Things got worse the next day and he was moved to hospice care. The next day there were all kinds of things he wanted to discuss with me regarding business and such so I planned to see him that night. During the day, we were told we'd better come up. When we got there, he was fading fast. He chose to die in his new place that he had just moved into the week my mother had the stroke. They had chosen a retirement place that they loved. Luckily next door was the facility that my mother had to stay in so he could walk to see her every day until the last few days of his life.
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72He never complained. He had pretty advanced cancer but he had not lost weight and told me, whether true or not, that he was never in any pain.
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74There was nothing he loved more than going out to dinner and to the movies with his grandchildren. In hindsight, I have two memories that made me think things weren't good, but he wouldn't tell me. The first was when he asked me if it was okay if he didn't go to the Cauliflower Alley Club event where they were honoring me. I was surprised, partially because it was all my mother talked about at the rehab center, largely because she had a roommate at the time whose sons were huge wrestling fans, and they very much knew who I was and what the Cauliflower Alley Club was. Again, this was a bigger deal to her than me, but she couldn't go. The other time was after dinner, when we were going to a movie, he asked if he could skip it because we always got back late from the movies.
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76A ton of people, family friends, several friends I grew up with, all came to see him that Thursday night. My brother went to a lot of wrestling with me as kids, but he had his other likes. He followed wrestling still, read the newsletter and such, but never watched it. There was a famous story about Giant Baba, maybe a week or so before he died of cancer, which was being kept secret from the world, being in the hospital watching a match with Mitsuharu Misawa vs Toshiaki Kawada in 1999. When it was over, he said it was the best match he'd ever seen in his life. That was his last newspaper quote.
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78It was actually my brother who had made the suggestion of wanting to see the Meltzer driver. He’d heard about it but never saw it. We ended up watching the Young Bucks & Adam Cole vs. Ricochet & Will Ospreay & Matt Sydal from PWG. My brother had seen none of the current style wrestling, nor did any of our childhood friends that were there watched much wrestling in probably decades. I think there was the idea, even though my dad wasn't a fan, for that to be the last match, and perhaps the last big piece of entertainment he would see. That was kind of the story me and my brother both wanted, for him to see the Meltzer driver. But he was already asleep by that time and would never wake up.
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80Of all the quotes about life that have been said be people in many different fields, the two that stand out to me right now are ones made by wrestlers. One was Ray Stevens, a legendary pro wrestler, the Shawn Michaels or Kenny Omega or Ric Flair or Okada of his era. He lived to drink, chase women, drive fast cars fast boats, fast go-karts, really anything having to do with speed, because he lived by the philosophy, “We're all just passing through.” The other was by Johnny Weaver, who for years was the top babyface in the Carolinas, until he wasn't. He talked about how, for years, he'd have women chase him but in hindsight, it all went so fast. One day every woman at the matches in the Carolinas wants him, and then one day the women were coming up to him and saying,“Hey, Johnny, can you introduce us to Ricky Steamboat.”
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82My cousin tells me that I was typing at the age of three, and writing sports at the age of four. I don't remember any of this. My earliest memory was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And I remember my first day of kindergarten, and my birthday shortly after where I was walking down the street putting birthday party invitations in the mailboxes of my friends and a kitten that looked exactly like the one on the Little Friskies bag followed me everywhere, including home. By and large, for the next ten years or so, including a move to California, that cat continued to followed me everywhere.
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84Everyone knew I was going to be a sportswriter. Every morning when I was six years old, I'd read the morning paper and study the box scores and would write a daily major league baseball update.
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86After fourth grade, our family moved from Wappingers Falls, NY, to San Jose. A number of industries came to the Bay Area. On the first day of fifth grade, roughly half the class were in their first day of school in California, and like me, didn’t know one person. So on the first day, the teacher paired people off, basically ordered everyone to have one friend that they would learn about.
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88I was paired off with Steve Kornreich, who came from Maryland and his father was a lawyer who worked for NASA. It was such a weird break, because by coincidence, we were the two biggest sports fans in the class, and he ended up being my best friend until my early 20s, even though he moved several times. He was also a tape trader with me when before the Observer, and whenever I’d go to the East Coast, he and his brothers would go to the matches with me. We were all ringside at the 1989 and 1990 Great American Bashes in Baltimore.
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90We played baseball in the street in front of his house, which was around the corner from my house, all summer long. We played football in the street all winter long. Tackle football in the street. There was a field within walking distance. How stupid was that? We played on Saturdays and Sundays until 4:30 p.m., when he and everyone else would go to his house to watch television, and I’d go home. This happened for months.
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92The games would end because everyone would watch the end of the Bowling on ABC, and be ready to go at 5 p.m. when Big Time Wrestling aired. On Sundays, the games would end due to Bay Bombers Roller Derby. After that was Roller Games from Philadelphia. I had no interest in any of that stuff.
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94When I lived in Wappingers Falls, I never heard of pro wrestling. I played sports with all the neighborhood kids all the time from at least second grade and it was never brought up. There was no mention of wrestling in the local newspaper. If they ran shows, I never heard about it. I never heard of Bruno Sammartino or Gorilla Monsoon until I lived in California. The only thing I remembered about wrestling was that Jim Nance and Curley Culp, who were both AFL superstars, were also NCAA heavyweight champions, and that Ernie Ladd and Wahoo McDaniel, who were both well-known football players, were pro wrestlers in the off-season. The football announcers would bring that up to tell viewers how tough those four guys were.
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96The first I heard of pro wrestling was in fifth grade on the playground. Every guy in the class watched it but me. Kids would play fight on the playground and pretend to be wrestlers. The three names talked about were Pepper Gomez, Peter Maivia and Pampero Firpo. Gomez was not even in the territory at the time. They had done an angle where Pat Patterson broke his leg, and he was at the time wrestling in the AWA. But he did a spot where he’d point to the sky and say “look up,” and his opponent would look up, and Gomez would punch him in the stomach. He also was the man with the cast iron stomach, where his opponent would punch him in the stomach, he’d flex his abs (he was a former champion bodybuilder) and the opponent would sell like his hand was broken. Maivia would do fiery comebacks where his long hair would fly into his face and deliver head-butts, which every kid imitated.
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98But Firpo was the one imitated the most, not any of his moves, but his interviews. He would call Walt Harris, “Mr. Harreese,” and use the guttural voice that Randy Savage would see when he was breaking in and copied, from his interview pattern, cadence and the “Oh yeah.” The promo he did repeated over and over was, “Two nights ago I was wrestling in St. Louis and I bit off my opponents ear. It was very tasty.” That line was repeated by everyone for months. Every promo he did was copied. Every kid constantly said, “Mr. Harreeese.”
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100One day after baseball, I went to the Kornreich house, and stayed for bowling and wrestling, largely to see this Pampero Firpo. “Mr. Harreese” was gone, as KTVU canceled wrestling. Instead, I saw them building a match for the world tag team championship at the Cow Palace, with Pat Patterson & Billy Graham facing Maivia & Ray Stevens, the U.S. champion. I didn’t know wrestling, but the idea that the world tag team championship was being defended at the Cow Palace seemed huge. The announcer wasn’t Walt Harris anymore, but Hank Renner, or “liverlips” as Patterson & Graham called him.
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102It was kind of weird that I’d read the newspapers and they weren’t covering it. And then, when it happened, there was maybe a three graph story with results the next morning. How could a world championship take place in San Francisco and the newspaper and TV sports people didn’t even acknowledge it. And it was also weird, how a few days before, those same wrestlers were all wrestling in San Jose.
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104The next day I stayed for Roller Derby and Roller Games. All my friends knew the stars and I knew nothing. Kornreich was an expert. He had wrestling magazines. He knew all the Roller Derby and Roller Games players and where they came from. He told me about Bruno Sammartino, who he grew up with, how Sammartino was one of the strongest men in the world, that he had beaten Buddy Rogers to win the WWWF title in 48 seconds by making him submit, and that was back in 1963 and he had kept his title ever since, and how he lifted up Haystacks Calhoun, who weighed 601 pounds. In those days, it was rare for a match in the Shire territory to last less than ten minutes, so beating a world champion in 48 seconds sounded unreal let alone never losing it in nearly eight years, or lifting up a 600 pound human. He showed me all his magazines.
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106Then we went to a show a few weeks later at the San Jose Civic Auditorium. Stevens & Maivia & Rocky Johnson vs. Patterson & Graham & Paul DeMarco was the main event. It was awesome. Back-and-forth, two out of three falls, they fought out of the ring and smashed each others heads into the concrete walls. The place was loaded with mostly young kids of our age in the bleachers and adults, usually older people, at ringside. The kids would run all over the place getting so wound up by seeing the brawls. It was years later before I realized the reason it was so awesome was because Stevens and Patterson were two of the best workers in the world, and Maivia, Johnson and DeMarco were not far behind. San Francisco, under Roy Shire, was a worker territory.
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108Some of the other kids in school were there as well. We all became friends and would talk about the matches. Then one of the older kids told us how stupid we were and how all that stuff was fake. It never occurred to us, and really those guys wrestling in that era were really good at it. Steve and I said we were going to the next show, going to watch close, to find out if that was true.
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110So we went. We studied and never spoke during the show. But there was a midget match that made it very clear. When it was over, I said to him, I think it’s fake. He said he thought the same thing. He said, “but I had a great time.” I said that I did as well. So he said, “So it really doesn’t matter, does it?” And I said that every movie we went to was fake as well. In the 70s, to a lot of people that was an issue. To us, it never was again.
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112We started going to both all the time. Roller Derby was Monday nights all summer in San Jose. Wrestling was two or three Wednesdays a month. We'd go to the Cow Palace for the big wrestling shows, major Roller Derby games, and some Warriors, A's and Giants games.
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114There was also the world's largest sports library in the world at the time housed in Santa Clara, CA. A local sports collector bought anything and everything, got old, sold his collection to a local sportswriter and world renowned sports trivia expert. His name was Wes Mathis of the San Jose Mercury. I'd call him up at the library to ask questions. He knew all sports, and first told me about territories. He told us that the U.S. Champion we saw on TV was one of many, that there were maybe five at the time and even more world tag team champions. We'd go to the library and study the old NBA programs, as well as the Roller Derby stuff that dated back to the 40s and wrestling material that went back earlier than that.
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116Very quickly, I realized wrestling magazine stories were fake. Well, the Norm Keitzer magazines were more real, but even then, they were dated and only seemed to touch the surface. The Keitzer magazines had a fan club column by Jim Melby, the same Jim Melby whose name is on the reporter award at the Tragos/Thesz Hall of Fame and on the historian award for the Cauliflower Alley Club.
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118So I sent away for the various newsletters. There were a bunch. Most were written by kids who understood far less about wrestling than I'd already picked up, between becoming friends at the live shows with the hardcore fans who taught me that the actual game was the attendance. It was all about creating matches that would draw, and doing finishes that would lead to people spending money for the next show. The wrestlers made their livings based on the size of the crowd. If we saw a bad crowd, that meant that the finish on the previous show didn’t work. When we saw a good crowd, it meant that it did. At the Cow Palace, where the guys made their biggest money, the attendance and gate were important and it wasn’t long before Steve and I would watch the TV, think how much we wanted to see the main event, and used that to predict the house. It came natural to both of us as we were almost always close.
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120I was told that we were lucky, that there was wrestling all over the world, but Roy Shire was a booking genius in the way everything led to the next thing and that we had Stevens and Patterson here, and they were better than the guys hyped up in the wrestling magazines.
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122They told me to watch the way those two controlled the crowds and how they made their opponents look good. And that if they had a singles match, you had to go because it was the best stuff around. Still, in the magazines, Bruno Sammartino was mythical, Mil Mascaras was colorful, and Jack Brisco was going to unseat Dory Funk Jr. and win the NWA world title, which was the most important of the big three world titles.
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124Wes Mathis told me the two greatest wrestlers of all-time were Strangler Lewis and Lou Thesz. Lewis had already passed away. Thesz was so great he was still world champion at 49 years old and even in his 50s, was still in amazing shape.
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126' I got a bunch of newsletters. Two piqued my interest the most. One was by a guy named Ron Dobratz, which did what was really the forerunner to the Observer in a way, called Wrestling Information Bulletin. The other was Wrestling Mat News, put together by Mike Tenay and Steve Guiremand. That was far more interesting to read because they would talk about main event matches that were boring, guys who were overrated, and inside news. For all the talk about promoters hating them, they were in tight with Jeff Walton of the Los Angeles office and the newsletter was actually printed in the wrestling office.
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128So in 1971, I did a newsletter covering results from Northern and Southern California, the California Wrestling Report. I sent a copy to James Melby. He sent me back a letter saying how much he liked it, encouraged me to continue, and he would plug it monthly as one of his favorite newsletters. I did it for several years, later, after Dobratz stopped, I decided to cover the business worldwide, calling it the International Wrestling Gazette. It became the top newsletter of that era.
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130The area hardcore fans knew me and would talk to me at the matches. The high school girls, who had their license and were several years older than me, used to drive me to the area matches. I'd talk about the storylines in different territories from people who send me results. They'd f*** the area wrestlers and give me whatever inside info they could gather about guys coming or going, or who guys liked and hated to work with. One of the great stories in those days is that masked wrestlers who were with the women groupies, called AR's (short for arena rats, the term used here although in most places they were simply called rats, granted a negative demeaning term, but as a kid, they were my, by the terms of society at the time, my immoral friends and rides) would always have sex with their masks on. But if they'd fall asleep, or take a shower to clean up if they had to get back to their wives, my friends would look at their wallets and find out their real names. Usually from there, given another friend was an expert on real names, we'd find out their wrestling names. Roy Shire hated the whole crew. He hated the one group of fans who went to every city because he'd do the same finishes all week, but in those days, almost all fans only except form a few went to one local arena. He knew that exposed the business. He hated the women, but they were a key to keeping the wrestlers happy because being one of the perks of being a wrestler in the territorial days meant access to young women.
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132Obviously, from those type of contacts one of the first thing I learned about personal lives of wrestlers at a young age was that Pat Patterson was gay. It didn’t really affect me. Maybe in some ways it helped me not care about things like that. I just know with me and my friends, there was no stigma whatsoever about it. Gay slurs were real big in those days in a lot of places. But with us, they were the same as racial and ethnic slurs, utterly contemptible. I’d shoot photos at the time, sometimes for newsletters or Japanese magazines, similar to how Paul Heyman, Jim Cornette and Eddie Gilbert started, all at roughly the same time period. In 1973, Steve and I met Jack Laskin, a former pro wrestler from Hamilton, Ontario, who lived in San Jose at the time, and hosted wrestling from San Antonio, which aired on a local channel. San Antonio wrestling was cool, because it was taped every Wednesday at the arena, rather than the TV studio, so we saw bigger stars and higher quality matches. Their guys were not as good overall as most of the guys in Northern California, unless it was guys like Black Gordman & Goliath, Terry Funk or Red Bastien. He invited us on his show a few times and pushed the newsletter. He had done a lot of territories, and knew a lot of the guys, and we’d keep him up to date on what was happening. I remember him being shocked that Billy Robinson was a star in the AWA. He knew Robinson from wrestling in England not that many years earlier. He said that if it was real, there was not a man alive who could beat Robinson, and called him the greatest wrestler he was ever in the ring with. He also said that while a great guy to hang out with, he couldn’t draw flies. He said he had a knee injury once and Robinson carried him to a 30 minute draw that may have been the best match of his career.
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134My father, through his work, was always traveling. At first, I hated to travel because my life was about my friends and sports on television. But after becoming a wrestling fan, I loved when we'd spend weekends visiting relatives in Los Angeles. That meant Friday night at the Olympic Auditorium and Saturday with all my cousins, who were fans as well, watching TV wrestling. Florida was even better. My grandparents apartment was about a mile walk from the Miami Beach Convention Hall, where they had matches every Wednesday night. They staggered the tapes. Miami Beach got the up to date show that was taped a few days earlier in Tampa. West Palm Beach got it a week late, and Fort Lauderdale got it two weeks late. We could get all three stations on TV, so the first week in Florida gave me three weeks worth of storyline progression to catch up on. Plus, Florida wrestling was even better than San Francisco, and in the 70s, Gordon Solie was the absolute master of wrestling announcing. We’d get audio tapes of Florida wrestling and Steve and I always felt nobody expanded our vocabulary more than listening to Gordon Solie call wrestling matches.
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136Wherever my dad would go, I'd want to go. It was new wrestling. My grandfather who lived in Miami would come to California and go to matches with me to see Patterson. One summer I spent six weeks in Florida. I was still in my phase of wanting to learn everything about wrestling and I'd learn more there than anywhere since it was the best wrestling in the country at the time. I got there and Dusty Rhodes had just turned babyface. It was amazing. Every week was a sellout. That's not wrestler talk, it really was, and he was one of the most charismatic people I've ever seen anywhere. He was very clear not the worker Stevens or Patterson was, but he got the crowd much hotter than even they could.
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138I also got audio tapes of other territories like the AWA, since it aired in Hawaii, which had the great interviews like Stevens & Nick Bockwinkel & Bobby Heenan, Crusher, Mad Dog Vachon and Superstar Billy Graham. We also had family in New York. Sammartino was an amazing promo, as were Lou Albano and Ernie Roth, the Grand Wizard. I had a good friend who would write up the monthly MSG shows. The wrestling there was not nearly as good as most other places, but Vince McMahon's father and Shire were far better at hyping title matches as must-see. St. Louis, which seemed the most important of all, didn't hype nearly as hard. They drew well, but that wasn't Muchnick's style. But they had shows loaded with top talent from all over the country and Muchnick, Vince Sr. and Shire were all very logical bookers. Wins and losses mattered and matches had stakes. We’d see the results and try and predict what the next matches would be, and because it was logical, it was predictable.
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140Some will find this funny. But my father had a several week business trip to Japan. He wanted me to go and I'm sure there are reasons I didn't, but for what my life was to be, I'm sure I'd have seen several wrestling shows and learned a ton back around 1975 that would have created far more lasting memories than whatever I chose to do instead.
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142Stevens left San Francisco in 1971 for the AWA, although he’d come back a few times a year. Patterson became the top star. Eventually Patterson and Shire had a falling out. It's sad, because he doesn't seem to remember why. In some ways it's also sad that I know today far more about Pat Patterson's run in San Francisco then he remembers. Wrestling went down. I started going less and less. I still followed it, but there were other things in life in high school. I'd still go every now and then, but found it depressing. Crowds were lower. Still, the Battle Royal was always a big deal and my friends and I never missed one of them. We'd travel to Sacramento a few times for TV tapings and the big events, like the annual Sacramento Battle Royal. But, as I later understood when my son outgrew the imaginary dragons that hid under his bed that I could never see, one night it happened and Jackie Paper came no more. The high school girls I went to wrestling with got real boyfriends and moved on. My friends were no longer interested in going. I still watched wrestling, but it wasn’t a big part of my life.
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144Besides, by then, I already had my role models. They were not wrestlers. They were three people. Frank Deford, the best sportswriter in the country who I discovered reading Sports Illustrated and even more, his book “Five Strides on the Banked Track”, about the history of Roller Derby. I read that book over-and-over. For years I had it memorized, both the information and the way he could turn a phrase. He was the best and if I was to be the best, he was the guy I had to study.
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146The second was Scott Ostler of the Los Angeles Times, who was the funniest sportswriter in the country at the time. When I started sportswriting in high school, it was both about the news, which had to be accurate, but also about being funny.
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148The third wasn't a real person, it was Oscar Madison, a sportswriter/notorious slob played by Jack Klugman, in one of the greatest performances of a character in the history of American television on a TV show made from a popular movie,”The Odd Couple.”
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150In my high school yearbook after my senior year, my newspaper class teacher wrote that some day I would win a Pulitzer Prize. Decades later she told me that she taught journalism for 40 years, and there were only two people she ever wrote that to. And she told me she was very disappointed that I never won one, saying she really believed I would. The other guy didn’t either.
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152In 1979, WTCG, which became WTBS, which became TBS, started on local cable. That meant three hours weekly of Georgia Championship Wrestling. This was a golden era as you had faster paced action with far better talent than we saw in California, as both promotions went downhill hard. The shows aired on Saturdays at 3:05 p.m. Pacific, which was terrible in the summer. The beach was a 40 minute drive, and I'd go every Saturday in the summer and at 2 p.m., just when things were hopping, I'd drive home. I started getting some newsletters again. I worked various jobs to save to get a video tape recorder, this monstrous looking giant box that would save my social life, because now I didn't have to rush home from the beach in the summer and could watch wrestling later. Then I quickly got into a network of people who traded tapes. Within a few years I got pretty much every territory's shows.
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154Watching all the tapes made me more interested again. In college, I played on a volleyball team where we all were fans of Georgia wrestling. Our team name was the Fabulous Freebirds. The guy running the league was Dave Korner, a wrestling fan who was part of a group of guys, who like me, all wanted to be sportswriters. During lunch break, I'd bring tapes from New York, Japan, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, and we'd show them. A lot of people didn't care, but girls loved The Von Erichs and everyone loved Tiger Mask. The guys loved the Funks against Bruiser Brody and a variety of partners. Interviews with Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair were a must. Because that generation of people in Northern California grew up with him, we'd always get requests to play, over-and-over, the Pat Patterson vs. Sgt. Slaughter alley fight from Madison Square Garden.
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156At that point, the Wrestling Observer was born. I spelled it Observor at first, like some secret code, until Dobratz wrote me to tell me that was stupid. He also told me I was wasting my time going back into writing about wrestling. The promoters hated it, and there was no money in it. While in college, I worked twice a week covering high school sports for the Oakland Tribune. The editor used to cover wrestling in the 50s with Leo Nomellini, and all of the older reporters knew about the heyday of Stevens and Gomez, Bobo Brazil, Kinji Shibuya, Cowboy Bob Ellis, and Wilbur Snyder. Wrestling was a huge part of San Francisco culture in the early and mid-60s.
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158I had the ability to tell stories quickly on deadline. The star columnist for the Oakland Tribune was Dave Newhouse. He was a good writer,. His perspectives on sports were fair and he was one of the most respected sportswriters in Northern California. He knew about me doing the Observer, as did pretty much the whole sports staff. One day, in my box, I had a long letter from him. The gist of it was that he thought I had real potential at this, worked fast, my facts were accurate, and was creative. But he said I was squandering it by spending so much time on pro wrestling, which he said was a dead-end road. He said that I was becoming known in the community as the pro wrestling expert, which was not a good thing, and would be a stigma that would hold back my career.
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160I had a number of lucky breaks in life. I think I’d have been an NFL reporter or Baseball reporter, and been successful at it for decades, although I don’t know what would have happened when newspapers started failing and cutting back. In the long run, I probably would have had more respect, until recent years, but I wouldn’t have had the long-term success I had with wrestling.
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162After college, I had a few job offers, and took the lowest paying one, in Wichita Falls, TX, because Mark Nulty, who send me my videos from Texas worked at the paper and it had an opening. I’d been to Texas for some shows a few months earlier and met Nulty, and also met Matysik, who was putting together a promotion to work opposite the NWA office and me with Paul Boesch and Joe Blanchard to try and get talent. Less than a year later he would be working for Vince McMahon.
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164Plus, I was close enough to go to Oklahoma City and Dallas for matches, and the Dallas office had spot shows within driving distance fairly often. The spot shows weren't as glamorous as people who watch old episodes of World Class wrestling from the heyday might think. But the crowds were hot and the stars were local celebrities. As far as my life goes, with the exception of the Attitude Era, maybe, I never lived in a place where wrestling was more over to the public. Everyone knew of the Von Erichs, whether you watched wrestling or not. And the Saturday night two hour show, which by today's standards would seem boring, did 8 to 12 ratings, beating Saturday Night Live. I'm sure Memphis had to be the same or better given their attendance history and the name value of Jerry Lawler, but I never lived there. The Sunday morning World Class show which was syndicated, was miles ahead production-wise of anything in wrestling.
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166I left Texas after a year. I was there for the death of David Von Erich and the Texas Stadium show where Kerry beat Ric Flair for the NWA title in memory of David. I saw the Last Stampede in Oklahoma City and other big events.
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168I came back, went part-time with the Oakland Tribune and then full time wrote for a soccer magazine. At first I thought I'd give up the newsletter, but after about two weeks, changed my mind. In 1986, I wrote a Who's Who in Wrestling Book, did the newsletter, and worked probably 60 hours a week for a newspaper in Turlock, CA. Something had to give. I remember being exhausted and almost going out of my mind.
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170I quit newspaper work in 1987. My father was furious. He had run his own business in the 50s and in that era in the U.S., it was better to work for a big business than run a small one. At the time I made the call, I was making far less with the Observer than newspaper work, and that didn't pay well either. He told me that if I was going to run my own business, I’d work endless hours and there was no guarantee of income. Newspapers would always be around. I mean, in 1987, that did sound like a safe bet. Who would have ever thought a wrestling newsletters would flourish, but even more, that newspapers would die under the weight of the Internet and lead to no barriers of entry and unskilled, untrained, unprincipled people would replace the real reporters.
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172Ted Robinson, a sportscaster who did the only sports talk show in the San Francisco market, became a subscriber. He was a wrestling fan who came from the Twin Cities where he was friends with Gene Okerlund, and he invited me on his show. The response was amazing. The shows I did were flooded with calls, and they were intelligent calls. He'd put me on every four to six weeks. There were other sports talk guys who would put me on, Bob Matthews in Rochester, NY who gave me the nickname I was known for in that part of the country, “Deep Chokehold,” Eddie Schwartz, who was a talk show host in Chicago, and I was regularly doing two or three shows in different markets per week.
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174Later, Tenay came along with the Wrestling Insiders radio show, and Jody MacDonald on WFAN had me on regularly when he did shows with his friend Rich Mancuso.
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176When I think about those years it's really something in hindsight. I met almost every one of my favorite wrestlers years later. Terry Funk was like a mentor. Ric Flair became a friend. I never met Scott Ostler, although I did talk to him once or twice when he did stories on pro wrestling, notably the murder of Bruiser Brody. John Cherwa, who was the sports editor of the Los Angeles Times, was supposed to bring him to meet me one year at the Cauliflower Alley Club. Cherwa was friends with Tenay, and when I got there, Mike said, “We couldn't get you Scott Ostler, so we had to settle for Jim Murray,” who was one of the most legendary sportswriters of all-time. Later, Houston Mitchell, who was a major guy on Cherwa's staff, became a good friend. Mitchell is a Hall of Fame expert and has been a huge part of helping me with the Observer Hall of Fame. He also helped get me my job with Yahoo Sports covering MMA years ago, along with Dave Doyle, who was a subscriber from his own childhood and first learned of MMA though reading the Observer.
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178Things change. Robinson moved back to Minneapolis, and while he did come back to the Bay Area, he never did sports talk radio again. He kept in touch for a while. I did real well with the Observer, and he read it for years. But one day, maybe 15 or more years ago, he said that he was really surprised, because he thought from knowing me when I was young, that he thought I'd be so much bigger than I ever became. He said he was really surprised.
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180In 1989, Deford called me up. I already knew he was starting a national daily sports newspaper, The National, which was a cult favorite during its brief run. It's remembered now by people as this legendary paper that came at the wrong time. If it was now, it probably would be an Internet sensation and a huge success. Deford was going to get the best sportswriters in the country, pay them far more than they had made elsewhere, and have the all-star team of sports coverage. Emilio Azcarraga, a Mexican billionaire, was behind it. Sports newspapers were huge in Japan and Mexico, but not in the U.S. As a concept, The National probably could have worked, but it was plagued with distribution problems. You could only get it in certain markets. The deadlines were too early so they couldn't get West Coast scores in. People don't remember it as an XFL level failure, but as a business, it was.
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182Deford said he felt pro wrestling was popular but under reported. He used to feel that way about Roller Derby, where he'd see the big crowds they drew and the ratings they'd draw and how little coverage they'd get. It inspired him to write a book on the subject, and he wrote multiple articles in Sports Illustrated on it.
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184But Roller Derby died almost 16years earlier, so the under reported pseudo sport was pro wrestling. The two things we talked about was he felt Roller Derby would return to prominence some day, which it never did and I argued it never would. He felt that in his lifetime, with its historical ups and downs, Roller Derby always comes back. And he hated boxing, because of how hard it hit him when a boxer died in the ring. He knew I enjoyed boxing and told me that there would come a day, just like it happened for Howard Cosell, that I’d agree with him and see how cruel boxing was. He said I’d get to a certain age and see all the broken hearts, dreams, hopes and brains it left in the dust only for its promoters to make a killing, and even the stars you think had it made would end up as tragic figures. He noted he already lived though generations and saw what happened to his original boxing heroes and I would too.
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186Deford had a hand in the last chance for Roller Derby. He wrote a story on the death of Joan Weston, and a television executive at TNN read the story and remembered dits popularity and wanted to bring it back, which led to the short-lived TNN Roller Jam.
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188He told me that Cherwa and Dick Ebersol (an Observer subscriber although he used the name of his secretary to get it, and ironically he was one of Vince McMahon's best friends) had both told him if he was going to do a wrestling column, I was the only person to do it. When word got out of me being hired, he told me he couldn't believe how many people tried to stab me in the back. He told me he knew he made the right choice based on that reaction. He told me before my first column that there were people in that business who desperately wanted me to fail, and to make sure that you don’t.
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190One of that all-star team of reporters was Steve Guiremand, one of the people who made me want to do a newsletter in the first place.
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192Because of the weekly column in The National, the Observer became very successful, and even more so, after The National folded. Deford was a key figure in my life. He received extensive criticism for having a wrestling column. Cosell ripped him and me heavily in one of his books on what was wrong with sports, over the idea of the column, which Deford noted that he probably never read or understood.
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194I do have my own Cosell story. When growing up in New York, Cosell was my favorite sports personality, largely because he was such a backer of Muhammad Ali. While today this may sound weird because of how Ali was viewed later in his career and for the rest of his life, but nobody was more hated in the sports world, and by many, in the entire country, than Ali. He was viewed by most of America as a draft dodger who refused to serve in the Vietnam War, saying he had nothing against the Vietnamese. He was also part of some fairly militant black groups at a time when there was far more of a major racial divide than today. Cosell was one of the very few in the media to back Ali, regularly speaking of how his being banned from boxing for three years, in his prime, was unfair.
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196In college, I was sent by San Jose State to represent them in a state journalism contest in the sports category. It took place in Stockton. Cosell was doing a boxing match that weekend in Stockton. One of the other guys San Jose State sent when he heard that Cosell was in town, said why don't we do an interview with him. I didn't think that was possible. He thought that if Cosell heard that two college reporters who were good enough to be sent to the state contest were in town that he'd definitely want to talk with them. We called where he was staying and told our story. The person at ABC sounded favorable, seeing our persistence and seemed more sold on it than I expected. Then the person called back and apologized and said that Cosell actually said he had no intention of doing anything of the sort, and was actually quite rude about the suggestion. It hasn't always been possible, especially due to my schedule, but if a college reporter wants to talk with me, I always try. I think back that a long time ago, that policy led me to once doing a radio show with a college reporter who was a longtime subscriber from Syracuse named Ariel Helwani.
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198The National was a fun and interesting learning experience. Decades later when stories were written about the paper for nostalgia purposes, my name would be mentioned as one of the all-star team of reporters who got big money offers to come and what a coup it was that Deford was able to sign me. I guess that’s good that people looking at the paper seeing my name thought that’s how it must have gone down.
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200Subscriptions roughly doubled during that period. I think that in the long run, I probably would have ended up in the same place had their not been The National but I’ll never know for sure. But the experience of working with Deford had a value later no money ever could have duplicated.
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202Deford was hands on with me. Whether this was the reason or not, Deford noted that the paper's best selling day was the day my column ran. When asked who the best writer was on his all-star team, he would never give an answer during the run of the paper, but always said based on circulation, that I was the most popular, and if I'd miss a week, or it was delayed a day, they got more complaints than anything else. When the paper folded, he called me. He said that of all the people on the staff, he felt the worst for me. He said they, meaning the established sports media, don't know how good you are and that unfortunately, you have no place there. He said that everyone from the paper will be able to get good jobs in sportswriting and he knew I wouldn't.
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204For years, Deford got the Observer. A few years later, Brian Pillman was at a sports dinner in Cincinnati that Deford was at. He asked Deford about me. He called me up after and said how Deford told him that in his opinion, I was the best sports reporter in the country, noting I had the hardest sport to cover and did it so well. Later he said that publicly on a few occasions, including in a New York Times story. When I wrote my story in the Observer on Ann Calvello, he told me that I should win an award for it. Later he told me after the Observer story on Ali after his death, that every boxing writer in America, and even people who didn’t cover boxing, all did their Ali stories and how I captured the real story better than anyone. When Deford died, tons of sportswriters did stories on him, but the general feeling is that Bob Ryan and myself did the best work.
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206The fact he backed me up led to that weird situation, where Deford was at a birthday party for John Filippelli, one of his good friends, who worked at the time in TV production for WWF. They went bowling and Patterson and McMahon stole both his and his wife's shoes, so they had to go home in their bowling shoes. McMahon months later sent him a note asking if he ever got his shoes back. Deford later wrote in one of his books about what a miserable human being Rodney Dangerfield was, but said that in all his time covering news and sports, the worst guy was Vince McMahon. In 2007, when Deford wrote a story after the Chris Benoit situation, McMahon personally was brought in front of a Congressional committee to talk about the issues with pro wrestling. They brought up Deford's writing about Benoit, and McMahon tried to claim that he only wrote that story because he was still mad that he stole Deford's shoes at a party 15 years earlier.
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208In 1993, I almost died due to peritonitis. My appendix burst in the middle of playing Trivial Pursuit on Thanksgiving night with some of my friends. It was painful as hell. I didn't complain, drove home at about midnight and went to the hospital the next morning.
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210They did some tests. They couldn't find anything wrong with me. They told me that maybe I had a bad muscle strain. I didn’t buy it, but the truth is, by two days later I didn’t feel that bad. I had like a 100.5 fever every day, but it wasn't really all that painful, just like a nagging thing and that went away a few days later. I could work just fine. I was a little run down, but it was like a bug that lingered. I was scheduled to fly to Japan on December 2, 1993, to go for the Takada vs. Vader UWFI world champion vs. WCW world champion match at Jingu Stadium in Tokyo, the All Japan tag tournament finals at Budokan Hall, the All Japan women tag team tournament finals and some big shows from other promotions.
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212My mom didn’t feel comfortable with me going, since I had the mild fever. My feeling was I could be a little run down in the U.S., or a little run down in Japan. At that point in time, I’d have more fun being run down in Japan.
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214I was packed and ready to go that morning. I took my temperature, and it was 102. The night before, my mother had talked with a close family friend who was my doctor as a child and told him everything and he figured that I may have had an appendix burst that didn't show up on the tests because I took the tests too early. He said to go in for testing.
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216So I went in for testing. I remember thinking I'd delay my late afternoon flight by a day, go the next day, since I had a day leeway and could still make the Takada-Vader show and all the rest of the big shows. I went home and very quickly got a call from the hospital and they said I needed to come in. I said I've got some calls to make, have to change my flight to Japan and I’ll come in a few hours.
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218They said, you don't understand, you need to come in now. They told me I had peritonitis. I didn’t know what it was, but they made it clear it wasn’t good. I’ve always thought if that fever had taken a few more hours to spike, I’d have for sure gotten on the plane to Japan and would have died on the plane. I left my apartment and it dawned on me that I might die. I was kind of calm about it, but that thought was in my head. When my appendix burst, poison started being spread in my body slowly. By this point, it was bad and they needed to get it out. I needed to get my appendix removed as well, but they couldn't do it then, nor, because of all the damage, could they for several more months.
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220I was feeling worse and worse. That night, my temperature hit 104.5. I was both conscious and somewhat delirious. Then it hit 105.7. At that point it felt like I was being choked to death. My thought was that if I went to sleep, I may never wake up. And I didn't want to die. This was a night in my life and I've relived many times and will never forget. I didn’t think about it too much until the last few years, but because of my kids, I actually think about it all the time.
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222This year is the 25th anniversary. This is also my favorite time in my life, even dealing with a lot of deaths of people close to me. The one thing I'm certain of is that if had kids than, I'd have survived for sure. But I had no kids. My fever hit 106.5 and I was awake enough to hear doctors say it was touch and go, and that I could suffer brain damage. I had a vision in my brain at that moment, a discussion with myself, and ultimately, I decided that the possibility of living a charmed life was enough to make sure to stay alive for.
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224My temperature went down, and by the next morning my life wasn't in danger. Still, it took 17 days before I could leave the hospital.
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226But overall the 1990s were a wonderful period. Except for the present, the greatest time of my life was 1989 to 1991. Working with Deford was a dream come true. My decision to leave traditional sportswriting, which everyone thought was wrong, was proving to be right.
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228Even nearly dying in 1993 and multiple surgeries in 1994 related to it weren't fun, but it really wasn't that bad. During the 90s I made regular trips to Japan and Mexico.
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230Tenay, whose newsletter led to one of my key life decisions, had dropped out of wrestling soon after. In the 80s, he dropped back in and by the 90s, he and his wife Karen were my traveling buddies. We want to many UFC events and pro wrestling events Most importantly, he had a dish and started following Lucha Libre and we went to Tijuana all the time. We'd meet in San Diego, which is one of my favorite cities in the world A few times we'd meet up with Doug Furnas, who lived there. We'd go to Tijuana for shows and then hang out in San Diego again. Through the Wrestling Insiders radio show, Tenay became friends with Zane Bresloff, who knew even more people in wrestling in that era than I did. Tenay landed a slot on the WCW Hotline. We hadn't started our hotline yet. Jim Herd and Lance Russell were in charge of the hotline. Gene Okerlund was the star, plugging himself constantly with often misleading headlines and it did huge business. They never had the guts to call me to do it, although I couldn't have done so. Steve Beverly was on it, who did a newsletter at the time, although he had constant headaches with it from people getting mad he was revealing too much.
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232Gary Juster and Eric Bischoff had heard of the big crowds that AAA was drawing in Los Angeles, and made a partnership to do a live PPV from the Los Angeles Sports Arena in 1994. Tony Schiavone was the voice of WCW at the time, and he, not knowing the product, wanted nothing to do with the show. Chris Cruise, who was another play-to-play announcer, saw the chance to be he lead announcer on a PPV show and was more willing to study the product. Bresloff pushed for Tenay to do the color. The show was great, really legendary in many ways. It was so good that Bischoff, likely pushed by Bresloff who had become great friends with him by that time, created the character of Mike Tenay as the professor, and put him in Nitro and led to his long career there. When the Jarretts wanted a Gordon Solie/Lance Russell cross as a host for their new company, Tenay was their choice.
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234I really loved that period of time. The Observer was going well. It was a huge job, but not overwhelming as it would become years later. I had time to live a balanced life. Other times in the 90s weren't so great, in particular the death of Brian Pillman in 1997 and Owen Hart in 1999.
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236Technically, I met Brian Pillman's son at his house right after Brian's death. I don't think anyone understood how big it was for me to meet him as an adult, 21 years later, last week. I hope things work out for him. It's very clear how badly he wants to be exactly like the father that he has virtually no memories of.
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238The 1997 Survivor Series was the second biggest story I'd ever cover. It was the catalyst for the Mr. McMahon character and the comeback of WWF, which somehow led to the collapse of a WCW that had so much talent and exposure and corporate backing that it should have stayed out in front. At the time, that hardly looked like it was going to happen. WCW had more talent depth than any company in history ever had. And it was getting Bret Hart, who came out of the Survivor Series as the hottest character in wrestling. Steve Austin, who had broken through as a major star, was coming off a broken neck suffered from a sit-out piledriver by Owen Hart. Many doctors told him to retire. If it was now, there's a good chance he'd have been waved off, but things were different then. Austin did return, and became the biggest short-term draw in U.S. pro wrestling history. You can't overstate how big Austin, whose career could have been over, and McMahon, who was not planning on being a wrestling heel character, was. Still, WCW may have self-destructed anyway, as they were doing nothing to plan for their future. Bischoff and even Bresloff had seen the magic of Hulk Hogan for so long that they didn't realize everything, even Hulk Hogan, had a shelf life.
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240Bischoff didn’t recognize the big picture as things started to go down. When Austin and Rock got hot, he believed it was temporary, saying, “Where Hogan goes, so goes the money.” That was correct from 1982 to the summer of 1998, but all things end, and they didn’t realize that or plan for that day. They had not seen nor gotten ready the next generation, and suddenly they needed it.
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242Bryan Alvarez and I first got in contract in the late 90s. We were doing a 900 hotline as a secondary business to the newsletter, as was he. His hotline ended up having serious chargebacks, and when you had those type of lines, those could cost you considerable money. He couldn't afford to keep it going. Someone left our hotline and he found out, and asked if he could take the spot. So we went with him.
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244Later, when I was hired by Eyada, an attempt to do Internet radio that was way ahead of its time, I debuted as a host. The first day was terrible. I had two hours, only one or two phone calls, no guests, and nobody to talk with. And I had to do this five days a week.
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246I had met Bob Meyrowitz, who started Eyada, from the UFC. He chose some key sports people and radio veterans to build the station around, knew my success with pro wrestling and offered me a job. I never took it seriously. I never said “No,” because I never expected it to happen. Then one day, his people showed up at my house and built me a radio studio and a few days later we were on the air.
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248I asked Bryan to join me, just so I'd have somebody to talk with on the second day of the show. For a trivia note, the first guest ever on that show was Chris Benoit. I know that Benoit loved Bryan's newsletter. Benoit would later have a profound impact on all of our lives in probably the single darkest hour ever associated with wrestling and the biggest mainstream news story that I've ever covered. Hopefully nothing even remotely close to that will ever happen again.
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250Bryan was funny and he stayed for the run of the show. Had Eyada been better managed, or come a few years later, things for both of us could have been different. That Eyada period was brutal, doing a newsletter as well as ten hours of radio per week, plus the craziness of all the TV that WCW and WWF were producing. It was a whirlwind. At a lot of times it was fun. I loved the show. We were told that our success had established that Internet radio was viable. But it was hard to sell advertising and nobody trusted the numbers. I had contract escalators that could have made life perfect, a good living and just doing the show. But Eyada burned through money, much like The National.
251
252Meyrowitz saw the end was near but believed in the crew. He was raising money to purchase a national chain of radio stations. Wrestling Observer Live with Bryan and I was, at least according to the stats we were given, the show that established Internet radio could work. This time, on traditional radio, we'd be promoted even harder as stars on the new station. Meyrowitz needed to raise $50 million for the purchase. He was getting good backing. He was up to $42 million or so, and then it stalled. He couldn't make the deal. Eyada was done.
253
254Still, Meyrowitz did try and syndicate our show for a time, but it never had enough affiliates to make it viable. One station in Sacramento that put us on said that two guys seriously discussing the business of pro wrestling was something nobody would be interested in. They wanted hosts ogling over hot women, and basically do a clown show. Even though we had success and wrestling had just come off its hottest period, few radio stations wanted that kind of a show. I got tired of having a two hour commitment every Sunday and close to three hours of commute time to the studios for no money when I wanted to spend what little time with family. Bryan took over the show, was popular enough to make it a daily one hour show, and it still exists 19 years later.
255
256We never met each other the entire time we were on Eyada. We first met in 2001, when he was an independent wrestler and was booked on the King of Indies weekend, a series of shows that Roland Alexander put together that put people like Bryan Danielson, Samoa Joe, A.J . Styles, Brian Kendrick, Doug Williams and Low Ki on the map. This was the show that when Gabe Sapolsky, Doug Gentry and Rob Feinstein saw a tape of the show, they decided there was enough untapped talent that they could form a promotion. That was the beginning of Ring of Honor.
257
258The other things I remember about that weekend were my wife, who was pregnant, got food poisoning and Bryan found a book in my house on the life of Frank Gotch, who for the next several years became a comedic segment in his newsletter with the weekly Frank Gotch report, where he would put himself in the shoes of Frank Gotch, use 1900s language, and give Gotch's observations of the modern wrestling scene.
259
260Life is a journey. You can make some of your own breaks and certainly there are things that can improve your odds. But most of your life is luck and fate. Right place. Right time. There are moments and times in life that you want to last forever. And they don't. And there are bad times as well. They don't last forever unless you allow them to and dwell on them. Everyone has both. It is your attitude in dealing with them that ultimately determines your life.
261
262Scott Williams, who called me every week on Monday night with advice on the lead stories of the issue died suddenly. When Terry Funk wanted to do an autobiography, I suggested Scott to him. The two ended up close friends. He did a number of other books, including Bill Watts and Jim Duggan. He was involved with Jim Ross' autobiography originally as well. His name followed mine on the Tragos/Thesz Melby award list. Many of the previous winners insisted that be the case.
263
264Dave Korner, one of my best friends in college, battled brain cancer for decades. He was one of the key people involved in me deciding to do a newsletter and was one of the first subscribers to the Observer. When Brad Muster was a star at Stanford, he went on the practice field and met him and we all became good friends. He’d come and go. I wouldn’t hear from him for years and then he’d be at my door. In recent years, he was part of a group of guys who would come over for PPV shows. Sometimes he was too sick to come. Other times he had other things to do. Sometimes he’d have a date, and in recent years, he would joke that given the time he has left, a hot date comes before a PPV show and getting together with the guys. In 2016 he told me, in front of a few friends, that he expected he was going to die, let me know he was happy with his life and not to feel sorry for him. He’d beaten cancer so many times that I just figured he overreacting. He didn’t seem that sick. At the 2017 WrestleMania, I’d gotten back from Orlando and he didn’t come over. The thing with him is he didn’t just show up unannounced, he’d e-mail me, whether he was coming or not, to let me know and also let me know he was bringing sandwiches. But he didn’t e-mail me. I got asked if he was coming early in the show. I said he never e-mailed me and then it kind of hit me. This wasn’t good. It was a week or two later I got a text from Muster saying “It’s too bad about DK.” I thought, Dynamite Kid must have passed away. He didn’t know I didn’t know. He had actually passed away a week before WrestleMania.
265
266It always scares me when I’ve seen people who were absolute experts in this field, and they stop paying attention, and this thing moves and changes so fast that if you don’t pay attention, it passes you by. The day you think you know pro wrestling is the day you are no longer of any value. They day you stop learning is the day time starts passing you by. Memories are wonderful. The past is a wonderful tool to learn from. But you can’t live in the past. And you can’t expect the future to be like the past.
267
268Anyway, to me that deal in Manchester at some point became real. I’ve worked really hard for 47 years. I’ve been really lucky and my life was completely shaped by a serious of absolute flukes. Maybe everyone’s is when you think about it. My fifth grade teacher hooks me up with a different person to be your first new friend in California. Go to the gym an hour earlier or later one day and don’t meet my wife and never have kids. Follow political science or the stock market or the NFL or baseball instead of pro wrestling. Decide that it is less than a ten percent chance of happily ever after one night in the hospital and close your eyes and go to sleep and don’t wake up. Pampero Firpo never cuts a promo about biting off his opponents’ ear. Mike Tenay writes his newsletter about baseball or hockey. Some crazy guy named Ted Turner doesn’t do something completely ridiculous like try and get his UHF station in Atlanta onto a satellite and be transmitted around the world, and the station just happens to have wrestling on it with Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair promos. Wrestling goes the way of Roller Derby. Emilio Azcarraga doesn’t contact Frank Deford about doing a sports newspaper. Bob Meyrowitz doesn’t meet me at a UFC show and essentially introduces Bryan Alvarez and I, ahead of the curve, both to each other and to the world of Internet talk. What if I followed the advice of the people who really were looking out for me the most?
269
270But in the end, the last two weeks have been eye opening. Meeting people from all over the U.S., and the world, who came from foreign countries to meet me, who have subscribed for two years or 32 years. That stuff, that isn’t a fluke. Getting there may have been luck and circumstance. Staying there was not. The support of the readers of this publication is something so very different. In reality, a lot of things opened doors, but you guys kept the door opened through some fun times and really ugly times. You are the ones really responsible for all this. The readers of this publication are the most helpful and supportive group you could ever hope for. As much as any of you told me how excited you were to meet me, I was every bit as excited and even more grateful. And don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.
271
272One of the biggest weekends of the year as far as big events go is 9/14 to 9/17.
273
274Among the events are the year’s biggest boxing match, the Gennady Golovkin vs. Canelo Alvarez fight from Las Vegas; WWE Hell in a Cell; two New Japan big shows including a Kenny Omega vs. Tomohiro Ishii IWGP title match; PWG Battle of Los Angeles; UFC’s debut in Russia and the CMLL Anniversary show.
275
276At press time there have been eight matches announced for Hell in a Cell which takes place on 9/16 at the AT&T Center in San Antonio. The event isn’t sold out at press time, but it is close enough that it is basically a lock it will end up sold out, which would be 12,000 tickets. But it’s not a high demand ticket in the sense that price for entry on the secondary market is just $29.99, much lower than most WWE PPV shows, even though there are only about 1,000 tickets left on the secondary market.
277
278The show has two Hell in a Cell matches, neither of which make much sense in the sense both are first-time PPV matches in their current feud incarnations. A.J. Styles vs. Samoa Joe, given the first match ending and storyline would seem like a natural for Hell in a Cell, but they are just having a singles match for the WWE title.
279
280The Hell in a Cell matches are Roman Reigns vs. Braun Strowman for the Universal title, which is the show’s main event, and Jeff Hardy vs. Randy Orton with no title at stake, for no reason other than perhaps an already injured Hardy taking a crazy bump, which isn’t going to happen most likely with Reigns or Strowman or Orton.
281
282Mick Foley was announced as special referee for Reigns vs. Strowman. While doing a one-man show this week after his Raw appearances, Foley basically said that the explanation wasn’t too far from what was said on the show, although Stephanie McMahon was used in storyline instead of Vince McMahon.
283
284Foley has been doing a 20th anniversary talk show tour revolving around his most famous career match, a 1998 Hell in a Cell match at SummerSlam in Pittsburgh against The Undertaker. He said that he suggested to McMahon that he should be part of the show, and was put in as referee. Foley physically was moving far better than he has in about 20 years after hip replacement surgery. Still, he had been ruled out by WWE from ever wrestling again and with all his concussions, taking bumps was not allowed at all. Whether things have changed is unknown, but at best he’s going to be very limited in what he’s allowed to do.
285
286The other matches announced are Daniel Bryan & Brie Bella vs. The Miz & Maryse; Styles vs. Joe for the WWE title; Ronda Rousey vs. Alexa Bliss for the Raw women’s title; Charlotte Flair vs. Becky Lynch for the Smackdown women’s title; Drew McIntyre & Dolph Ziggler vs. Dean Ambrose & Seth Rollins for the Raw tag titles; and New Day vs. Rusev & Aiden English for the Smackdown tag titles.
287
288With the cruiserweight title match already announced for the 9/18 tapings, that would seem to indicate that won’t be added. While not announced, they did shoot an angle for Bobby Lashley vs. Kevin Owens, and have been pushing Naomi & Asuka vs. The Iconics (although that could be only for Australia).
289
290On paper, it looks like a normal show. Styles vs. Joe was strong the first time. The cell limits Reigns vs. Strowman but they will probably be allowed out and allowed to use weapons and such. The Raw tag title match is likely to be very good, although the Rollins vs. Ziggler series leading into it was a disappointment.
291
292CMLL’s 85th anniversary show, making it the longest-lasting pro wrestling company in the history of the pro wrestling industry, takes place on 9/14 at Arena Mexico.
293
294At one point this looked to be one of the biggest events of the year, when the idea was L.A. Park vs. Rush in a mask vs. hair match.
295
296Instead, the main event sends Volador Jr. & Matt Taven vs. Rush & Cavernario in a double hair vs. hair match. This comes after months of building for Rush vs. L.A. Park in a hair vs. mask match. If Volador & Taven win, then Rush will end up with his head shaved, and one can argue if that is the end result, than they may as well have done the match with Park. Still, with Park vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. in a mask vs. hair match scheduled to headline the 2019 TripleMania, that would pretty well give you the finish of this one. The difference if Rush loses is that it would be ultimately to Volador, another top CMLL guy, as opposed to the top heel losing to an outsider who regularly headlines for their opposition.
297
298The show will stream live in the U.S. on Honor Club, and won’t be airing live on the usual Marca Claro Facebook page that the usual Friday night Arena Mexico shows air on. Whether it will later air on the CMLL YouTube page is not clear.
299
300The last build for the show was on 9/7 at Arena Mexico with Caristico & Taven & Volador beating Cavernario & Rush & Bestia del Ring in a quick match that went two straight falls. The first fall was via DQ. The show was not hot at all although the headliners did brawl after the match.
301
302The show drew 7,000 fans, the smallest Friday night crowd in months, probably because it was the week before the big show. Still, if the momentum was strong for the main event this coming week as opposed to a match that comes across as thrown together just a few weeks before the show, the momentum would lead to a bigger crowd.
303
304The big thing on the show was the debut of Gilbert El Boricua, better known as Mesias in Mexico and Mil Muertes in the U.S. He ended up on the losing end teaming with Mephisto & Negro Casas against Atlantis & Park & Mistico. From most reports the stars of the show were the returning micros who worked in a prelim. Neither the micros nor Gilbert are on the Anniversary show.
305
306The full card for this weekend, which won’t air live on the Marca Clara website, the usual home for Friday night shows, has Jarochita & Marcela & Princesa Sugehit facing Dalys & Reyna Isis & Maligna to open, Angel de Oro & Audaz & Niebla Roja facing Negro Casas & Felino & Mephisto, Atlantis & Mistico & Soberano Jr. vs. Cuatrero & Forastero & Sanson, Ultimo Guerrero & Gran Guerrero & Euforia defend the CMLL trios titles against The Klan, of Ciber the Main Man & Scharly Rockstar & The Chris, Caristico & L.A. Park & El Hijo de L.A. Park vs. Diamante Azul & King Phoenix (Fenix) & Penta 0M and the main event.
307
308It’s really not that much better than a typical Friday night show except for the hair stipulation in the main event. The trios title match has taken place in some form several times and hasn’t been that good. The semi has the three outsiders in Park, Phoenix and Penta, but they’ve been on shows several times of late so that’s really nothing new. By all rights the main event should be good, but it was put together late and doesn’t have the feel of an anniversary main event.
309
310Julio Cesar Rivera claimed that 70 percent of the Anniversary tickets were sold eight days out, which would be around 11,000 tickets
311
312 
313
314Tyron Woodley retained the UFC welterweight title with a dominant second round win over Darren Till to headline UFC 228 on 9/8 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
315
316The show, which was entertaining overall, was marred by the second title match falling out when women’s flyweight champion Nicco Montano fell victim to the weight cutting disease and ended up hospitalized and was supposedly one hour from going into cardiac arrest, forcing her defense against Valentina Shevchenko to be canceled.
317
318Montano showed up five days before the fight at 145 pounds, although that isn’t all that unusual for a fighter, even in the lighter divisions, to cut that much weight. But it’s clearly a problem waiting to happen and another example of a broken system that is going to lead to many tragedies if it isn’t fixed.
319
320UFC then stripped Montano of the title, and made it clear they were going to put Shevchenko in the fight for the vacant title, but not Montano, It’s not necessarily a wrong decision. If Montano failed to make weight, she would have been stripped of the title. And in a sense you can say that being hospitalized for weight cutting issues meant failing to make weight. But the situation also was that Montano was a champion that nobody cared about. One has to question how it would have been handled if it was a champion who was popular. And that’s the reason UFC badly needs bylaws and guidelines regarding championships for different situations such as this one.
321
322As far as who gets the match with Shevchenko for the vacant title, nobody really stands out. Those in the division currently that could be put in the fight include Liz Carmouche, Katlyn Chookagian, Jessica Eye and Sijara Eubanks. Probably the best business move would be to put Joanna Jedrzejczyk in the fight with Shevchenko. Jedrzejczyk has had troubles cutting to 115, so 125 makes sense. Plus, with Rose Namajunas as champion, and having two wins over her, it will be hard for her to get a title shot at strawweight until Namajunas loses. The problem is Jedrzejczyk hasn’t even fought at 125 yet.
323
324After his win, Woodley pushed that he’d be ready for the 11/3 date in Madison Square Garden. Colby Covington, who was the interim champion before it was stripped for no apparent reason other than, due to injuries, he wouldn’t have been ready on time. That makes him the logical contender and he has indicated being ready by November.
325
326Obviously the biggest fight possible in that division would be Woodley vs. Georges St-Pierre. St-Pierre hasn’t pushed for that fight, plus there’s a question of how big it would be, and if UFC would allow St-Pierre to challenge for another title after he won the middleweight title and then immediately vacated it, even though it was in his contract that if he won, he would defend against Robert Whittaker.
327
328The show was overall strong, including a great prelim fight with Irene Aldana vs. Lucie Pudilova, wins by veterans Jim Miller and Diego Sanchez, a great knockout by Geoff Neal that didn’t even end up with a bonus, and strong wins by title contenders Aljamain Sterling and Jimmie Rivera at bantamweight, as well as Jessica Andrade and Tatiana Suarez at strawweight.
329
330Neal garnered some pub because after a head kick that was one of the most devastating looking knockouts of the year, he didn’t get a bonus (they went to Aldana vs. Pudilova for best fight and to Woodley and Andrade), and he returned to work as few days later as a waiter at Moxie’s Grille and Bar in Dallas. It was his UFC debut fight.
331
332While Andrade deserves the next title shot at Rosa Namajunas with her first round title stoppage of Karolina Kowalkiewicz in what was an exciting short fight, Suarez once again looked like a potential superstar with her story of beating cancer that cost her an Olympic dream, and coming back with the most dominant wrestling in the division in running through Carla Esparza. Suarez got nine takedowns, with most ending up in side control, over Esparza, herself a good wrestler, before getting the third round finish in a Khabib Nurmagomedov style.
333
334Both Daniel Cormier and Joe Rogan pushed the idea of Suarez vs. Jedrzejczyk, but that’s the last fight I’d make right now. Suarez could get derailed with a loss and Jedrzejczyk was able to stop Andrade when Andrade had a similar style. But a win won’t get Jedrzejczyk a title shot. She probably should instead go against the Claudia Gadelha vs. Nina Ansaroff winner, and if she can win that, face the Namajunas vs. Andrade winner.
335
336Even though it was an interesting show, the business signs aren’t good. We don’t have a PPV number and Google searches at 400,000 to 500,000 would indicate a weak number.
337
338The prelims, on FX rather than FS 1, did 560,000 viewers, the second lowest for a show with true national coverage (FS 2 doesn’t have true national coverage) in many years. The only show that did worse was UFC 115 last September, at 418,000, but that’s with the show starting an hour late because golf went long and also a show that preceded a 100,000-buy show with Amanda Nunes vs. Shevchenko as the main event.
339
340The prelims peaked at 683,000 viewers for Suarez vs. Esparza.
341
342The show had boxing competition, although the key fights on Showtime were after the prelims were over and against the PPV show. The biggest competition was college football, with an ESPN game with Clemson vs. Texas A&M doing 4,486,000 viewers; a Stanford vs. USC game on FOX did 2,290,000 viewers and a Penn State vs. Pitt game on ABC doing 3,286,000 viewers.
343
344The show drew 14,073 fans paying $1,714,556.
345
3461. Jarred Brooks (14-2) beat Roberto Sanchez (8-2) via split decision on scores of 29-28, 28-29 and 29-28 in a flyweight fight. Sanchez got a takedown, worked for a choke and landed punches and elbows from the top in the first round. Brooks was on top in round two and Sanchez tried a late armbar attempt. Brooks got a takedown into side control and did some ground and pound. Brooks got on top a second time and did more ground and pound t take the key round.
347
3482. Irene Aldana (9-4) best Lucie Pudilova (8-3) via split decision on scores of 29-28, 28-29 and 29-28 in a women’s bantamweight fight. They went back-and-forth with punches and kicks and Pudilova had Aldana in trouble in the first round. Pudilova came out hard in the second round but Aldana came back late in the round. They went back-and-forth in the third round until Aldana started taking over. Pudilova bled heavily and did get good shots in to make it close.
349
3503. Jim Miller (29-12, 1 no contest) beat Alex White (12-5) in 1:29 in a lightweight fight. Miller landed low kicks and punches to put White down, landed punches on the ground and got the choke for the finish.
351
3524. Diego Sanchez (28-11) beat Craig White (14-9) via decision on straight 30-27 scores in a welterweight fight. Sanchez got an immediate takedown and landed elbows and punches throughout the round to dominate the round. In the second round, White landed a knee but Sanchez used it to get the takedown. Sanchez continued to land punches from the top the rest of the round. In the third round, White knocked Sanchez down but Sanchez got up and took White down. Sanchez landed from the top and White wasn’t able to get back up and Sanchez landed elbows to take the round.
353
3545. Darren Stewart (9-3, 1 no contest) beat Charles Byrd (10-5) at 2:17 of the second round in a middleweight fight. Both kept the fight standing for most of the way. Byrd got some good shots in he first round, but in the second round, Stewart came back. Stewart landed big punches and the fight was stopped after he put Byrd down with a right.
355
3566. Geoff Neal (10-2) beat Frank Camacho (21-7) at 1:23 of the second round in a welterweight fight. Neal looked good here as he was too fast for Camacho, although Camacho stayed in taking a lot of straight lefts. Neal dropped him in the first round and almost got a finish. In the second round, Neal landed punches and a flying knee, and Camacho got all fired up and came back. The crowd was loving this. Neal then landed a tremendous head kick that knocked Camacho out.
357
3587. Aljamain Sterling (16-3) beat Cody Stamann (17-2) in 3:42 of the second round in a bantamweight fight. Sterling landed well but Stamann blocked his takedown. Stamann got two takedowns in the first round but Sterling landed better. Sterling got punches and ended up on top. Sterling got a takedown and moved to mount. Sterling then got a submission with a stump puller kneebar.
359
3608. Tatiana Suarez (7-0) beat Carla Esparza (13-6) at 4:33 of the third round in a women’s strawweight fight. The story here was simple. Suarez was just too strong for Esparza. She’s tall and has a powerful upper back and was able to get nine takedowns on an All-American wrestler. She continually pounded on Esparza from side control all three rounds. Late in the second round, Esparza was able to start defending some takedowns, but eventually Suarez would get her down. Suarez continued to land punches and elbows from the top until it was stopped.
361
3629. Abdul Razak Alhassan (10-1) beat Niko Price (12-2, 1 no contest) in :43 of a welterweight fight. Both were throwing big punches and Alhassan was getting the better of it and put Price down with hard punches.
363
36410. Jimmie Rivera (22-2) beat John Dodson (20-10) via scores of 30-27, 30-27 and 29-28 in a bantamweight fight. This fight was kind of dull. Rivera was just quicker and Dodson never cut loose. Dodson got some offense in with a head kick and punches in the first round but Rivera controlled most of the round. Rivera landed more in the second round. Rivera landed a left that made Dodson stumble in the third round and worked the body. The crowd wasn’t happy with this.
365
36611. Zabit Magomedsharipov (16-1) beat Brandon Davis (9-6) at 3:46 of the second round in a featherweight fight. Magomedsharipov continues to impress. Davis did well in the first round blocking takedowns and landing. In the second, Magomedsharipov got a takedown and got back control. He got several more takedowns and finally got a kneebar submission.
367
36812. Jessica Andrade (19-6) beat Karolina Kowalkiewicz (12-3) at 1:58 of a women’s strawweight fight. These two came out swinging and Andrade landed hard first. This was super exciting from the start and Andrade landed a right that knocked Kowalkiewicz out.
369
37013. Tyron Woodley (19-3-1) beat Darren Till (17-1-1) to retain the UFC welterweight title at 4:19 of the second round. The first round was slow as Woodley kept going for takedowns and till blocked. Woodley was the one pressuring and Till did little on offense but defended the takedowns well. In the second round, Woodley landed a big fight that put Till down and he landed punch after punch on the ground. Till was in jeopardy of being finished but Till managed to stay in it. Woodley continually landed punches elbows from the top until he got a D’arce choke for the submission.
371
372Both Revolution Pro and Impact ran shows over the weekend as part of Wrestle Mediacon in Manchester, England.
373
374Revolution Pro’s annual British J Cup, won by Canadian wrestler El Phantasmo, took place on 9/8 and 9/9, drawing about 500 and 700 fans respectively, the latter show including a lot of standing room.
375
376The wrestling was solid across the board, but nothing was off the charts and the quiet crowd hurt. I kept being told all weekend that this wasn’t a good example of British wrestling because of the crowd, and I’ve seen enough British wrestling of late to know that. I’m not sure if it was the venue, or a tired audience, because usually when I’ve been to shows in conjunction with conventions, they usually don’t get great heat. The first night crowd was very tired coming in and the second afternoon crowd was better, but still a crowd that had seen a lot of different panel discussions and such before the show started.
377
378The Impact show on 9/9 was hotter at least in the few matches I saw, and had what I was told was the best match of the weekend, with LAX vs. Jody Fleisch & Jonnny Storm. The best thing on the Revolution Pro shows was the J Cup final where Phantasmo won a four-way elimination match over Rich Swann (who did three hard matches between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. on two different shows), Rocky Romero and Kushida. It was interesting seeing Kushida, who is technically excellent and was viewed as one of the best in the world last year, but he’s kind of fallen by the wayside in the New Japan jr. division due to the incredible work of Will Ospreay and Hiromu Takahashi.
379
380Phantasmo is really good, obviously, because they wouldn’t have put him over if he wasn’t. His rope walking stuff is impressive but everything he did was on.
381
382One thing notable was being around Pat Patterson during both shows. He hated them. I guess things have changed a lot but you would notice it more not watching for decades, because Patterson watches no wrestling except WWE, and he really doesn’t watch that all that closely either. And part of it was the building, since the matches didn’t have a lot of heat. But he watched the shows and felt that every match was the same, that there was no drama in the matches, that the art form of pro wrestling seems like it’s dead, and felt that if these type of shows would take place around the country that they would die, and kept calling it a circus.
383
384From the first night:
385
3861. Jushin Liger pinned Kyle Fletcher in 10:27 with a shotei and brainbuster after Fletcher missed a moonsault. Fletcher is the younger member of Aussie Open, a heavily pushed tag team. He’s 19 or 20 and has potential to be a star. ***
387
3882. Phantasmo pinned Bandido in 10:46. There were good moves here but it wasn’t as good as I expected. There was fun Lucha stuff but they never fully got the crowd. Phantasmo held Bandido’s hand like Undertaker would and then walked the ropes on three sides and part of te fourth. They traded crazy DDT spots. Phantasmo won with a swanton and moonsault. ***1/4
389
3903. Rocky Romero beat Kip Sabian in 15:27 with sliced bread. There was nothing wrong with the match but it went long and this audience didn’t seem to have much patience for long matches. **
391
3924. Sho pinned Dean Allmark in 10:49. Allmark missed a moonsault and Sho hit three German suplexes, a power bomb into a back stabber and got the pin with a package piledriver. ***1/4
393
3945. In a non-tournament heavyweight match, the Great O-Kharn beat Mark Davis in 8:33 with a claw slam. The crowd wasn’t much into this. The O’Kharn gimmick doesn’t seem to get over. *1/2
395
3966. David Starr pinned Tiger Mask in 10:00 when he pulled the mask and got the pin using the ropes. The crowd was dead for this match. There was a ref bump earlier and Starr used a low blow, but Tiger Mask recovered and did a double arm superplex but no ref to count, as well as a Tiger driver with no ref. **1/4
397
3987. Kushida beat Chris Ridgeway in 12:06 with back to the future. The one real notable thing all weekend is that when Kushida would work for the hoverboard lock it got no reaction, so this was not a fan base that followed 2016-2017 New Japan that closely. Ridgeway did stuff kicks. Good match. ***
399
4008. Yoh beat Ryusuke Taguchi in 11:48. Taguchi did his comedy early. They traded reverse atomic drops and both sold their asses. The finish didn’t work as both men were on the ground and the ref counted ten and Taguchi didn’t get up to beat the count. You could say this is good for educational purposes to establish a new way to win. But nobody thought this was the finish. *1/2
401
4029. Rich Swann beat Flamita in 13:14. Lots of good high flying here. Swann won with a 450. Flamita had done the same move earlier. Swann jumped from the mat to the pulling Flamita off the top rope with a huracanrana. Swann did a flip dive. ***1/4
403
40410. Chris Brookes & Jonathan Gresham of CCK beat Walter & Timothy Thatcher in 20:22. Brookes & Gresham make quite a visual as Brooks is probably 6-foot-5 or more, because he’s got a good three inches on Walter. Gresham is very short, although technically really good. Gresham looks so tiny next to Brookes and from a power standpoint it looks crazy him battling Walter. Still, the way they worked together made sense as Walter treated him like he was too small unless speed was thrown in. Walter no sold him, Gresham gave him a low blow but Walter came right back with a high kick and finally hit the first chop which he now often saves to make people want it more. Brookes jumped over Thatcher with a missile dropkick on Walter. There was a hot tag spot but the audience didn’t react big. There was a spot where Brookes had the octopus on Walter while Gresham had it on Thatcher at the same time, but both powered out. Walter & Thatcher each got a choke at another point. Gresham was selling the ankle outside the ring ad suddenly Brookes pinned Walter using the trunks. ***3/4
405
406 
407
408Second show results:
409
4101. Phantasmo pinned Liger. Liger hit the brainbuster and tried to pick Phantasmo up. Phantasmo went dead weight and Liger asked to ref to declare him the winner via stoppage, but Phantasmo then surprised him with a roll-up. A lot of comedy early. I missed this match as was doing an interview elsewhere but it went over well.
411
4122. Kushida beat Starr in 8:41. Starr is the British jr. champion so this sets up a title match for 10/14. The ref was distracted and Starr used a low blow and shoulderbreaker for a near fall. Starr went for a belt shot but the ref took the belt away and Kushida punched him and hit back to the future for the pin. ***
413
4143. Brooks & Gresham & Ridgeway beat Tiger Mask & Taguchi & Allmark in 13:39 when Ridgeway beat Allmark via choke. Gresham and Allmark against each other was so good. Taguchi did his usual hip attacks and comedy stuff. ***1/4
415
4164. Swann pinned Yoh in 13:23 with a 450. Swann did the jump to the top Frankensteiner but it was missed up as he missed and then Yoh flew ver anyway. Swann did a running flip dive over the top and a frog splash. The crowd was really into Yoh and this had some of the best reactions thus far. Swann sold his leg a lot from the dragon screw and figure four spots by Yoh. ***½
417
4185. Romero pinned Sho in 10:50 with a jackknife cradle. This was worked like both guys knew everything the other would do since Romero is like their coach. Sho seems like a future superstar so I was little surprised he lost this one. Good elbow exchange. ***1/4
419
4206. Aussie Open of Fletcher & Davis beat Flamita & Bandido in 14:49. So this was the Progress tag champs losing on a Rev Pro show. There was a huge height difference here as Flamita & Bandido are a lot smaller than you’d think, especially Flamita, but they mostly work with smaller guys so it isn’t as noticeable. Fletcher is tall and Davis is a big guy. Lots of cool spots in this match but it was rough at times as in certain spots, but the good stuff was great. There was a comedy spot where Fletcher, Flamita and Bandido all did nip ups while Davis, who was the big guy, had to wait and concentrate to do it. ***½
421
4227. Walter & Thatcher beat LAX from Impact in 12:11. Solid match. It wasn’t as spectacular as the prior match but it didn’t have the flaws the prior match had. It was a double submission finish with Thatcher with a crossface and Walter with a scorpion deathlock. ***1/4
423
4248. Phantasmo won the four-way elimination match over Romero, Swann and Kushida in 16:25 to win the J Cup. Phantasmo did his rope walking spot. Romero swept his leg while he was rope walking and he jumped up and landed back no the ropes. Romero did a tope and Kushida did a running tope con giro. Phantasmo did a moonsault to the floor. Swann followed with a Phoenix splash. Swann did his jump up huracanrana but in landing Kushida got an armbar on Romero and then Phantasmo did a moonsault on them to break up the armbar. Kushida was eliminated in 10:42 when Starr came out and hit him with a belt shot while he had the hoverboard lock on Romero so Romero pinned him with a jackknife cradle. Phantasmo immediately pinned Romero in 11:05 after a superkick. This left Swann and Phantasmo. Their stuff was great. Phantasmo did a ropewalk enzuigiri and a super huracanrana. He also did a frog splash. Swann got a near fall with a 450 off the middle rope. Phantasmo finally won with a swanton followed by a moonsault. ****
425
426 
427
428Impact ran a later show on 9/9, before about 700 fans. The show seemed to have the best atmosphere of the three events.
429
430 
431
4321. Rich Swann won a three-way over Matt Sydal and Trevor Lee when Swann pinned Sydal. All three guys looked top notch here. This was better than any of the tournament matches except the finals.
433
4342. Adam Maxted & Robbie X beat Lucas Steele & Jake McCluskey when X pinned McCluskey with a shooting star press. X and McCluskey are small guys who are really good. X in particular looked great. Maxted, a World of Sport guy and reality show star, has the bodybuilder look. Steele is a young guy with a great look, but he’s still green. But he absolutely looks like a star, tall, good physique, great hair, the kind of guy Vince McMahon would love.
435
4363. Su Yung beat Lana Austin. Austin is from Manchester, so the crowd was behind her.
437
4384. LAX beat Jody Fleisch & Jonny Storm to keep the Impact tag titles. People raved about this as being the best match of the weekend. Fleisch & Storm were two of the U.K.’s best guys before the independent boom, so their career timing was off. They were said to have looked great here.
439
4405. Joe Hendry beat Eli Drake. Hendry, although local, is a heel mostly in Manchester and Drake was cheered more. Henry won with a cradle.
441
4426. Eddie Edwards & Justin Sysum beat Moose & Nathan Cruz when Edwards used kendo stick shots to win.
443
4447. Sami Callihan beat Jimmy Havoc in a barbed wire baseball bat match. Havoc was the most over guy on the show. Tons of weapons shots as well as stapler being used and each giving the other paper cuts and pouring lemon juice ont he cuts. Havoc cut Callihan on his tongue. Callihan took Havoc’s boots off and he had to walk on a ring with thumbtacks with no boots. Havoc missed a double foot stomp off the top rope and landed on thumbtacks. Callihan won with a piledriver.
445
446Smackdown on 9/11 did a 1.58 rating and 2,229,000 viewers (1.55 viewers per home), down four percent from the prior week.
447
448Smackdown was seventh for the night on cable.
449
450The show did a 0.49 in 12-17 (down 3.9 percent), 0.57 in 18-34 (down 3.4 percent), 0.87 in 35-49 (down 8.4 percent) and 0.94 in 50+ (down 2.1 percent).
451
452The show did 56.9 percent males in 18-49 and 43.1 percent males in 12-17. That is probably the lowest percentage of male viewers, particularly with teenagers, in the history of either Raw or Smackdown.
453
454Among teenagers, Women were up 6.4 percent from last week while teenage boys were down 14.8 percent. In 18-49, women were up 1.8 percent from last week while men were down 11.9 percent.
455
456Raw on 9/10 did a 1.86 rating and 2,735,000 viewers (1.62 viewers per home), a number that has to be considered good considering it only fell five percent going against the first week of Monday Night Football.
457
458There was no real major story of the ratings. The first two hours were steady and the third hour drop was at usual levels, and the drop was mostly viewers over the age of 50, as women 18-49 fell three percent from hour two to three and men 18-49 fell two percent, but the over 50 second-to-third hour drop was ten percent.
459
460Raw was seventh for the night on cable, trailing only news shows and the two football games. The first game, the New York Jets vs. Detroit Lions, did 10,336,000 viewers against the first two plus hours of Raw, while the Los Angeles Rams vs. Oakland Raiders second game did 9,607,000 viewers against the last 55 minutes of Raw.
461
462The first hour did 2,818,000 viewers. The second hour did 2,801,000 viewers. The third hour did 2,601,000 viewers.
463
464The show did a 0.59 in 12-17 (down 9.2 percent from last week), 0.67 in 18-34 (down 15.2 percent), 1.11 in 35-49 (down 3.5 percent) and 1.14 in 50+ (up 0.9 percent)
465
466The audience was 62.0 percent male in 18-49 and 50.0 percent male in 12-17.
467
468Even though Impact went against the NFL season opener on 9/6, it was up five percent from the prior week, doing 236,000 viewers.
469
470The Impact ratings pattern is notable as the show was consistently beating 275,000 viewers most of the year, leading to Slammiversary. Slammiversary got the best reaction to any Impact PPV in a long time, yet ratings collapsed the second Thursday after the show to 248,000, and fell to 1768,000 the week after before settling in at 210,000 to 225,000 the last three weeks of August.
471
472The Philadelphia Eagles vs. Atlanta Falcons game, which was to go against Impact but was delayed until 9:05 p.m. due to a weather delay, did 19 million viewers. That’s well above what most Thursdays are going to do, but perhaps Impact wasn’t hurt badly due to the weather delay meaning the first hour didn’t go against the NFL.
473
474The second episode of the new season of Ultimate Fighter on 9/5 did 195,000 viewers.
475
476Lucha Underground on 9/5 did 100,000 viewers, a 20 percent increase from 83,000 the week before.
477
478Smackdown on 9/4 did a 1.68 rating and 2,319,000 viewers (1.52 viewers per home), down one percent from the prior week. So it’s a holding steady pattern.
479
480Smackdown was in 10th place on cable for the night, trailing mostly Fox News and Mayans MC on FX.
481
482The demos were almost the same as the show did a 0.51 in 12-17 (up 2.0 percent), 0.59 in 18-34 (up 7.3 percent), 0.95 in 35-49 (identical to the prior week) and 0.96 in 50+ (also identical to the prior week).
483
484The audience was 60.4 percent male in 18-49 and 48.6 percent male in 12-17.
485
486Raw on 9/3 did a 1.94 rating and 2,866,000 viewers, which was a well above usual 1.63 viewers per home.
487
488This is the second issue of the current set. If you’ve got a (1) on your address label it means your subscription will expire with next week’s double issue.
489
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491
492For Canada and Mexico, the rates are $13.50 for four issues (which includes $6 for postage and handling), $24 for eight, $34 for 12, $44 for 16, $66 or 24, $88 for 32, $110 for 40 issues, $143 for 52 and $176 for 64.
493
494For Europe, you can get the fastest delivery and best rates by sending to Moonsault, P.O. Box 3075, Barnet, Herts EN4 9YR, England, or by sending e-mail orders to moonsault@mediaplusint.com. Rates are £9 per set of four issues. U.K. readers ordering at least six sets can get them for £8.50 per set.
495
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497
498You can also get the Observer on the web at www.wrestlingobserver.com for $10.99 per month for a premium membership that includes daily audio updates, Figure Four Weekly, special articles and a message board. If you are a premium member and still want hard copies of the Observer, you can get them for $8 per set in the U.S., $9 per set in Canada and $11.50 per set for the rest of the world.
499
500All subscription renewals should be sent to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, P.O. Box 1228, Campbell, CA 95009-1228. You can also renew via Visa or MasterCard by sending your name, address, phone number, Visa or MasterCard number (and include the three or four digit security code on the card) and expiration date to Dave@wrestlingobserver.com or by fax to (408)244-3402. You can also renew at www.paypal.com using dave@wrestlingobserver.com as the pay to address. For all credit card or paypal orders, please add a $1 processing fee. If there are any subscription problems, you can contact us and we will attempt to rectify them immediately, but please include with your name a full address as well a phone number you can be contacted at.
501
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503
504This publication is copyright material and no portion of the Observer may be reprinted without the expressed consent of publisher/writer Dave Meltzer. The Observer is also produced by Derek Sabato.
505
506Fax messages can be sent to the Observer 24 hours a day at (408) 244-3402. Phone messages can be left 24 hours a day at (408) 244-2455. E-mails can be sent to Dave@wrestlingobserver.com
507
508CMLL: L.A. Park will be appearing on the 9/17 show in Puebla for CMLL. Park has only worked Friday nights at Arena Mexico on this run and hasn’t worked a Monday show in that building in 14 years so they should draw a good house with Park & his son & Ultimo Guerrero headlining against Rush & Cavernario & Bestia del Ring
509
510Two interesting notes about 9/21, the Friday after the anniversary show. One is that Park is working for AAA that night so he won’t be on the card. The other is that Volador Jr. is working for The Crash in Tijuana. The general rule of thumb when it comes to hair matches is that the loser of a hair match at Arena Mexico always works the next week with the idea that fans will come to see him bald. So with Volador booked in Tijuana instead, that would indicate a Volador & Taven win. But nothing is certain. Plus, Crash has false advertised talent in the past, including Fenix just this past Saturday
511
512Volador Jr. did an ESPN interview and was asked about the recent 2:00 main event trios match where Mr. Niebla showed up in no condition to perform. Volador said he knew something was wrong when Niebla came out from the side entrance rather than the usual entrance (where he’d have to walk down the stairs) and then he fell off the top rope. He said that he made the call seeing that to end the match as soon as possible, thinking things could get worse. He said he didn’t want to risk Niebla exposing the business, which is a weird term for a wrestler to use in a major media interview in Mexico. He said he was also afraid of somebody getting hurt. He said that there have been no consequences toward him for calling the audible in the ring
513
514Volador Jr. and Cavernario had a singles match on 9/11 at Arena Mexico which Volador won in two straight falls with the second fall via DQ for a low blow
515
516Niebla has been removed from all bookings since that match, but he is not in rehab. He’s out looking for indie bookings until CMLL brings him back. He’s tight with the promotion and anyone else would have been fired a half dozen mishaps back, but CMLL always brings him back
517
518Rush said that his uncle, who wrestled as Septiembre Negro Jr., is battling cancer.
519
520AAA: The next major show is Heroes Inmortales which takes place on 10/3 in San Luis Potosi. The lineup announced is Mamba & Maximo & Pimpinela Escarlata vs. Juventud Guerrera & Puma King & Taurus vs. Aerostar & Drago & Laredo Kid, Faby Apache defends the Reina de Reinas title in a four-way against Starfire, Kiera and a mystery opponent, Rey Escorpion & El Texano Jr. defend the tag titles against Andrew Everett & DJZ and Flamita & Bandido, the Antonio Pena Cup match with L.A. Park, Chessman, Pagano, El Hijo del Vikingo, Super Fly, Parka Negra, El Hijo del Fantasma, Dragon Bane, La Mascara, Averno, El Hijo de L.A. Park, Angelikal and Nino Hamburguesa, L.A. Park & Psycho Clown vs. Killer Kross & Murder Clown and a main event of Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Jeff Jarrett in a hair vs. hair match
521
522They did a TV taping on 9/7 in Cancun headlined by Brian Cage & El Hijo del Fantasma over Fenix & Psycho Clown when Fantasma pinned Psycho. They also taped on 9/8 8 Merida headlined by Pagano & Psycho Clown over L.A. Park & El Hijo del Fantasma when Psycho pinned Fantasma. Fenix won a three-way over Laredo Kid and Brian Cage in what was said to be a great match.
523
524Scarlett Bordeaux from Impact was brought in for the weekend in an opening trios match
525
526El Hijo del Fantasma said that he was staying in AAA and not going to WWE
527
528Dark Scoria & Dark Cuervo, who haven’t been used much of late, noted that they have left the promotion. Since Konnan was put in charge of creative, they haven’t been used. They teased the idea of getting back together with Ozz and Escoria for bookings
529
5309/30 in Uriangato is a TV taping with Wagner Jr. & Psycho vs. Jarrett & El Hijo del Fantasma, La Mascara & Rey Escorpion & El Texano Jr. vs. Maximo & Mamba & Pimpinela Escarlata and La Parka & Murder Clown vs. Monsther Clown & Taurus
531
532THE CRASH: They ran a 9/8 show at the Auditorio in Tijuana where Volador Jr. & Caristico beat Penta 0M & Daga. Daga subbed for Fenix, who worked that night for AAA. After the match, Volador pulled off Caristico’s mask, while Daga attacked his partner as well. Daga had already worked a great match earlier in the night beating Hechicero. The CMLL trio of Cuatrero & Sanson & Forastero lost to Bestia 666 & Jacob Fatu & Mecha Wolf in a match with Garza Jr. as referee. Cima & T-Hawk came in from China to beat Rey Horus & Soberano Jr. Princesa Sugehit beat Tessa Blanchard via submission and then challenged Blanchard for her Crash women’s title. They are back with a show on 9/21 with Gilbert El Boricua vs. Mecha Wolf 450 which would be a big deal match in Puerto Rico, but not so big in Tijuana. Also Penta 0M & Caristico vs. Daga & Volador Jr., Bandido & Flamita & Rey Horus vs. Angel de Oro & Niebla Roja & Templario, Soberano Jr. vs. ACH, plus Blanchard in a men and women’s mixed trios match.
533
534DRAGON GATE: Shingo Takagi’s contract expires on 10/7 and he’s decided to become a free agent. He will be working for a variety of companies at that time. He’s been wanting to leave for a while, but the previous people in power, notably Takashi Okamura, wouldn’t let him out of his contract. With the new management of the company, they made an agreement that he can leave on good terms and it’s open for him to return at some point or for big shows. Takagi, who did great in All Japan’s Champion Carnival this year, grew up as a fan of Atsushi Onita and ended up in Dragon Gate because at the time he was getting into pro wrestling, it was the only option for him at the size he was. Right now the Japanese market for a free agent of his name value is good, and the belief is he can make the same money doing the matches that he wants to do
535
536They had a big show on 9/9 in Sendai called The Gates of Origin 2018 which drew a full house of 1,596 fans with four title matches. Masato Yoshino retained the Open the Dream Gate title over Takashi Yoshida in 22:27 with the Sol Nasciente. Yamato & BxB Hulk kept the Open the Twin Gate titles over Don Fujii & Ryo Saito in 25:27 when Yamato beat Saito with Galleria. Eita beat Punch Tominaga in 14:01 via superkick to keep the Open the Brave Gate title. And Kzy & Susumu Yokosuka & Genki Horiguchi beat Kagetora & Yosuke Santa Maria & U-T in 16:35 to keep the Open the Triangle Gate title
537
538They also sold out Korakuen Hall on 9/6 with 1,780 fans. Willie Mack retained both the House of Hardcore and the Heritage championship beating Shun Skywalker. The main event saw Big R Shimizu & Takagi & Eita & Yoshida & Yasushi Kanda beating Naruki Doi & Yoshino & Ben K & Yamato & Hulk in 28:35.
539
540PRO WRESTLING NOAH: The biggest show of the week was 9/9 in Osaka which drew 920 fans and was headlined by Naomichi Marufuji & Akitoshi Saito beating Kenou & Kaito Kiyomiya in 24:25 when Saito pinned Kenou.
541
542NEW JAPAN: Chris Jericho has been teasing the idea of an IC title defense against Evil on Twitter. If it does happen, it should be in the next two months or so, because his Tokyo Dome match should clearly be against Tetsuya Naito
543
544The 9/30 Long Beach show is barely two weeks away and there are about 2,400 tickets sold, coming after a first show at the Walker Pyramid that sold out instantly. There was no way to get the traveling fans so soon after All In, but there was a feeling that after doing 6,333 paid in San Francisco, a different market, with largely local fans, in what is right now not considered as good a market as Southern California, that this is a disappointment. Part of it is only three matches still announced, Juice Robinson vs. Cody for the U.S. title, which is notable with the idea that the NWA world champion is challenging for the U.S. belt, Young Bucks vs. Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa for the IWGP tag titles and Will Ospreay vs. Marty Scurll in a semifinal of the IWGP jr. title tournament
545
546There are two somewhat major shows this week, a 9/15 show in Hiroshima at 5 a.m. Eastern which is built around the Kenny Omega vs. Tomohiro Ishii IWGP title match. Another key is that when the match is over, most likely they will shoot a challenge or angle to build for the 10/8 King of Pro Wrestling main event, which, based on Kota Ibushi’s G-1 tournament win over Omega that knocked Omega out of the finals, that makes the most sense
547
548The rest of the Hiroshima show has Jushin Liger & Tiger Mask & Kushida vs. Rocky Romero & Sho & Yoh, Toa Henare vs. Bad Luck Fale, Michael Elgin & Ayato Yoshida vs. Lance Archer & Davey Boy Smith Jr., Baretta & Chuckie T & Will Ospreay vs. Ibushi & Yujiro Takahashi & Chase Owens, Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa & Taiji Ishimori defend the six-man titles against Juice Robinson & David Finlay & Ryusuke Taguchi, Hirooki Goto & Toru Yano & Gedo vs. Takashi Iizuka & Taichi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Tetsuya Naito & Evil & Bushi & Seiya Sanada vs. Minoru Suzuki & Zack Sabre Jr. & Desperado & Taka Michinoku, and Hiroshi Tanahashi & Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma vs. Kazuchika Okada & Jay White & Yoshi-Hashi. I worry about Honma in the semi-main (and he even did a main event this past week as part of a multi-man match). If you understand Japan, you would know that they are going to put him there and it has been a nice story that he’s been able to come back. But he’s not steady on his feet and I’m not sure putting him in at this stage with the top guys is the right thing
549
5509/17 in Beppu at 5 a.m. Eastern has Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima & Yota Tsuji vs. Yuji Nagata & Manabu Nakanishi & Yuya Uemura, Finlay & Ren Narita vs. Henare & Shota Umino, Iizuka vs. Yoshida, Liger & Tiger Mask & Kushida & Taguchi vs. Ospreay & Romero & Sho & Yoh, Baretta & Chuckie vs. Archer & Smith Jr., Evil & Sanada & Bushi vs. Sabre & Kanemaru & Desperado, Tanahashi & Makabe & Honma & Robinson vs. Okada & White & Yano & Yoshi-Hashi, Goto vs. Taichi for the Never title and Naito vs. Suzuki in a grudge match
551
552What is the biggest match of the month really is the Okada vs. Tanahashi singles match where the winner likely goes into the main event at the Tokyo Dome
553
554This week had three shows on New Japan World and seven shows overall, six of which were sellouts in smaller buildings. The 9/7 show at Korakuen Hall before 1,712 paid featured what on paper looked to be one of the year’s best tag team matches, as Kenny Omega & Kota Ibushi beat Will Ospreay & Tomohiro Ishii in 19:30 with The Golden Lovers doing the double golden trigger (double knee to the face) on Ospreay which was the only finish possible given it’s not the time for Omega to lose in a tag match. When you’ve got four of the six best wrestlers in the world in 2018 in one match, and they are all motivated, well, that’s what you had here. I’d go ****3/4, although when I was in the U.K., everyone who came up to me that had seen it went higher. The idea of the match was to get you more interested in Omega vs. Ishii, and they were great together, but when it was over, the idea of an Ibushi vs. Ospreay singles match came across bigger than anything given their respective styles and how they’d mesh. Omega pushed the idea of Ospreay moving to heavyweight, which should be the long-term goal. Ospreay has been turning down indie matches of late trying to save his body for the New Japan tours. Okada said a few months ago that by the time Ospreay is 30, he will surpass everyone, but the immediate caveat to that is the big if, and that’s how well his body holds up. He worked hard and crisp but the other great thing about this match is that aside from Omega & Ibushi’s double golden triangle spot and Ospreay’s space flying Tiger drop, it was about quickness, explosiveness and balance and while hard hitting, the hard hitting was to the chest. This is probably the best version of the style because it’s fantastic but at no point did it feel overly dangerous. Honma was pinned for the first time since his return in a six-man tag where Okada & Yano & Yoshi-Hashi beat Tanahashi & Makabe & Honma when Yano pinned Honma after a low blow and schoolboy
555
5569/8 at Korakuen Hall drew 1,715 paid with a Tanahashi & Robinson win over Okada & Baretta in 21:35 in what was said to have been a good but not great match with Robinson pinning Baretta with pulp friction. Ishii & Yano & Ospreay beat Omega & Ibushi & Takahashi in 9:15 when Bushi, Ospreay and Omega all did dives and Yano pinned Tanahashi with a schoolboy. Heard it was a great short match. Suzuki and Naito continued to tease their singles match with a brawl after an eight-man tag. There was an angle building Goto vs. Taichi for the Never title as Taichi was DQ’d in a tag, teaming with Kanemaru against Goto & Yoshi-Hashi, for hitting Goto with the mic stand and leaving him laying with a last ride power bomb
557
5589/9 in Togane before 2,250 was built around the return of Kojima after surgery to repair a torn ACL in January. It was the Kojima generation team of himself & Tenzan & Nakanishi & Nagata beating Makabe & Honma & Robinson & Finlay in the main event in 16:50 when Kojima pinned Finlay after a lariat. Ishii & Ospreay & Yano & Baretta beat Omega & Ibushi & Takahashi & Owens in what was said to be an entertaining comedy match when Baretta pinned Owens after the dudebuster
559
560The only non-sellout was 9/12 in Kyoto before 1,497 fans for an elimination match where Ishii & Yano & Yoshi-Hashi & Ospreay beat Omega & Ibushi & Takahashi & Owens in 20:31. Ospreay and Ibushi both went over the top rope together to eliminate them. Yano pinned Takahashi with a schoolboy. Owens pinned Yano immediately with a schoolboy. Yoshi-Hashi threw Owens over the top. Omega pinned Yoshi-Hashi with the One Winged Angel. This left Omega vs. Ishii and they went 3:12 before Ishii knocked Omega over the top rope to win
561
562They ran 9/13 in Osaka, drawing a sellout of 1,209 fans, for a show headlined by an Omega & Ibushi vs. Ishii & Ospreay match. This wasn’t put on New Japan World, but it had the same finish of Ibushi pinning Ospreay after the double-team Golden trigger (knees to the face)
563
564Four students out of the Fale Dojo in New Zealand, Michael Richards, Andrew Villalobos, Ben Payne and Nathan McCarter, will be starting here as young boys. Given the huge percentage of success of New Japan trainees, one would think we’ll be talking a lot about at least some of these four for years to come.
565
566HERE AND THERE: C.M. Punk did an interview with Ariel Helwani on 9/9, and was asked about All In. He noted that he was in the middle of a shoot for a movie, “Girl On The Third Floor,” where he has a lead role. He said when he was done, he was going to talk to Duke Roufas about going back in training for another fight, although he knows it won’t be with the UFC and said that he hasn’t spoken to Dana White since his loss to Mike Jackson. He said “I think so” when asked if he would fight again. Punk turns 40 next month. He said that he has talked to people in UFC about training in Las Vegas at their gym. Cody said that Punk had turned down an offer to do the All In show. Punk said that it was a vague offer that was made and said they never came back with any kind of a real offer and he couldn’t have done it anyway because the show was on a shoot day for the movie. He said that he’s not been contacted by any other promotion and said that there was nothing in pro wrestling right now that interests him
567
568We don’t have details, but Larry Matysik, 72, was hospitalized this past week and Herb Simmons, his close friend, said to please keep him in your prayers. He later wrote that Matysik had returned to his nursing home but still needed the prayers. Matysik’s physical condition has gone downhill badly over the past year from a series of health issues
569
570Cody vs. Nick Aldis for the NWA title is now officially set for the 10/21 NWA 70th anniversary show in Las Vegas, which will be a Fite TV iPPV and will be promoted by both Billy Corgan’s NWA and Jeff Jarrett’s GFW. At the Wrestlecon in Manchester, Aldis beat Doug Williams on 9/9 in a match to determine who would get the title shot. They are going to be shooting footage with both men at the upcoming Championship Wrestling from Hollywood tapings to build the match
571
572Things are not going well for Pete Polaco, 44, best known as Justin Credible in ECW and WWE. His wife had taken out an order pr protection against him in March and he has been arrested twice since then for violating it. He was released from the New Haven Correctional Center after the second arrest on $50,000 bond over the weekend. He was bailed out by the people involved in doing a documentary on his life and went to rehab. He had earlier gone through WWE sponsored rehab, thanked them and said he had turned his life around
573
574I never thought the day would come when a wrestling TV show would win an Emmy. GLOW on Netflix saw stunt coordinator Shauna Duggins win an Emmy for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series of Variety show. Betty Gilpin is also up for a nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. That award will be announced on live television on 9/17
575
576BOLA takes place 9/14 to 9/16 at the Globe Theater in Los Angeles, has had some changes with the Matt Riddle pullout and he was the favorite, plus Travis Banks’ injury. The name I’m hearing the most when it comes to predictions is Bandido ever since Riddle pulled out. The 9/14 show has first round matches of Adam Brooks vs. Rey Horus, Flamita vs. Puma King, Joey Janela vs. David Starr, Bandido vs. T-Hawk of Oriental Pro Wrestling in China, Cima (who heads Oriental Pro since leaving Dragon Gate) vs. Jodie Fleisch and Brody King vs. PCO. I was told LAX vs. Fleisch & Jonny Storm at the Impact show in Manchester, UK was the best match f the entire weekend. Fleisch was a great flyer years back but that was before the U.K. had a buzz so guys from his era weren’t talked about much, although we did write about him, and he did great into Michinoku Pro in Japan, but never got a big break. The main event the first night is Walter & Timothy Thatcher vs. Ilja Dragunov & Shingo Takagi. The 9/15 show is Trevor Lee vs Marko Stunt (a late replacement for Chris Brookes who apparently was injured over the weekend), Robbie Eagles vs. DJZ, Darby Allin vs. Jeff Cobb, Dragunov vs. Takagi, Sammy Guevara vs. Jonah Rock and Walter vs. Thatcher. The main event is Cima & Zachary Wentz & Dezmond Xavier vs. Bandido & Flamita & Horus. The 9/16 show has a PWG tag title match with Xavier & Wentz defending against Penta 0M & Rey Fenix
577
578MLW did TV tapings on 9/6 in Fort Lauderdale before 903 fans at the War Memorial. Among the highlights saw the New Hart Foundation of Brian Pillman Jr. & Teddy Hart & Davey Boy Smith Jr. beat Col. Robert Parker’s Stud Stable & Mike Parrow. After the match the Stud Stable turned on Parrow. PCO went to a double DQ with Brody King. L.A. Park, managed by Salina de la Renta, beat Pentagon Jr., managed by Konnan in a death match. They used all kinds of weapons including fire. This got the most reaction on the show. The ref was hit with a fireball. Park won after a low blow and Park said he wanted Pentagon & Fenix’s tag titles. Smith Jr. also beat ACH. ACH was sick with the flu over the weekend. Tom Lawlor beat Joey Janela via DQ when James Storm hit Lawlor in the head with a beer bottle. This was supposed to be the start of a Storm vs. Lawlor feud, but the word now is that Storm won’t be back as things just weren’t working out so this match wont’ be airing. Hart pinned Rich Swann in a match with a lot of action, ending with a Canadian Destroyer and double knees backbreaker. Low Ki beat Fenix to keep the MLW title. Fenix had the match won when De La Renta pulled off his mask, and as he covered up, Low Ki did the double foot stomp off the top rope on him. In the War Games, the face team of Kotto Brazil & John Hennigan & Tommy Dreamer & Barrington Hughes & Shane Strickland beat Sawyer Fulton & Leon Scott & Sami Callihan & Jimmy Havoc & Abyss. Callihan took out Strickland before the match so the heels had a five-on-four edge. The finish saw Fulton choked out with barbed wire. Fulton’s cheek was cut open badly from a head-to-head collision with Brazil. The War Games match will air on the company’s 9/14 TV show
579
580Konnan is now working as a senior agent for MLW and will be on almost all of the shows. MSL is head of talent relations, Bruce Prichard is a senior producer and Alex Greenfield is also a senior producer. Brian Pillman Jr. signed a three-year deal. They may try and work a deal to send him to New Japan as a trainee with the idea that for him to become a good worker and gain experience, he will progress far faster there than in U.S. Pillman Jr. & Teddy Hart & Smith Jr. face ACH & Rich Swann and a mystery partner on the 10/4 show in New York. They are also looking at airing some Fred Yehi matches from wXw in Germany on their Bein Sports TV show. The company is also looking at moving tapings from Thursdays to Saturdays, which will be easier to draw fans, but tougher to get talent. Indie talent gets the majority of their bookings on Fridays and Saturdays and very little on Thursday, so they can get a lot more talent on those days, especially with the guys who are in demand, many will have Saturday bookings. But the key guys they are building around are under contract which means they’ll have priority on their dates and even the Mexicans who are in high demand are getting their dates well ahead of time
581
582MLW wanted to run Center Stage in Atlanta and this was the first time they’ve tried to run a venue where the venue told them they wouldn’t rent to them based on a deal with other companies. The two companies that run Center Stage are ROH, which has no history of trying to block people, and WWE, which runs NXT shows there, and certainly does have a past history but it’s not as if there’s any direct tie that this came from WWE, just that they were told they couldn’t run the venue
583
584Shane Strickland got engaged this past week
585
586Evolve ran twice over the weekend, a 9/7 show in Joppa, MD and 9/8 in Queens, with the big thing being Velveteen Dream as the big star. WWE allowed them to use Dream because Evolve has an affiliation with WWE and was hurt badly with the losses of Keith Lee and Matt Riddle at about the same time. Dream drew the biggest crowd Evolve has done to date in Joppa, although it was not a big number. It was also a quiet crowd, with a lot of people coming specifically for Dream and not knowing the other people on the show. Dream beat Austin Theory in the main event. The best matches on that show were said to be Darby Allin over Anthony Henry and Joey Janela keeping the WWN title over AR Fox. The company did get some negative feedback on Penelope Ford doing spots with The Skulk as the WWN crowd hates run-ins. Gabe Sapolsky had figured that Ford came off so strong at All In that people would want to see her do similar stuff. It did get over strong with the live crowd. The second night was one of their better Queens crowds and hot with Dream vs. Allin as the main event. Dream’s matches didn’t air on the streaming service. Dream worked as the heel and got the crowd to turn on him. J.D. Drake beat Janela in a non-title match with a moonsault after Janela and Ford collided. Ford had done a flip dive during the match onto Drake. Stokley Hathaway, who lost a loser leaves town match to Tracy Williams, was there, grabbed the mic and said that he was a man or his word and can’t do anything. We were told this show was great
587
588Allin was in an auto accident on 9/7 while at the airport to fly to the Joppa show. Police came and he told them he didn’t have time to see a doctor and got on his plane in San Diego and flew and worked both shows. The Queens show was the last one with Tracy Williams. His storyline exit was that Evolve champion Shane Strickland injured his arm in a title match to put over Strickland stronger as a heel. Right now the injury was a storyline for him to leave, but it’s obviously open ended in the sense at some point it would give him a storyline to return.
589
590David Arquette is continuing to wrestle as he’s booked on the 9/14 Northeast Wrestling show in Poughkeepsie NY at the Hudson Valley Community Center, teaming with Hurricane Helms against King Brian Antony & Anthony Battle. Arquette built the show up doing a surprise appearance on the 9/7 NEW show in Bethany, CT. There was a cake in the ring and Arquette came out to push his match. Anthony & Battle then put his face in the cake. The show was Flip Gordon’s last with the promotion, as he lost a three-way to Brad Hollister and Christian Casanova. Gordon put Casanova through a table with a Michinoku driver off the top rope.
591
592EUROPE: The update on the Progress Wrestling 9/30 show at SSE Wembley in London is the top matches are Walter defending the Progress title against Tyler Bate, Matt Riddle vs. Mark Haskins, Jimmy Havoc vs. Paul Robinson, Mark Andrews vs. Eddie Dennis in a TLC match, Doug Williams defends the Atlas title and retires if he loses in a match with Trent Seven, Pete Dunne vs. Ilja Dragunov, Bandido & Flamita defend the Progress tag titles against a number of teams
593
594Revolution Pro’s Global Wars 2018 show will be 10/14 in Brixton at the Rec Center with Minoru Suzuki vs. Tomohiro Ishii for the British heavyweight title, Tetsuya Naito vs. Chris Brookes, Evil & Seiya Sanada vs. Walter & Timothy Thatcher and David Starr vs. Kushida for the British cruiserweight title. Starr, because he works so extensively in Europe, is planning on moving to the U.K. shortly
595
596They also taped a second day of TV on 9/6 at York Hall in London before 500 fans. The name of the TV show appears to be World of Pro Wrestling. Kip Sabian won a three-way over A-Kid and Kurtis Chapman to get a shot at Starr’s title. They are doing an undefeated gimmick for Great O-Kharn managed by Gideon Gray. Jonny Storm & Jody Fleisch won a quarterfinal match in the No. 1 contenders tag team tournament over Chuck Mambo & Cassius. Good match and Mambo got strong reviews. So the final four were Storm & Fleisch, Aussie Open, The Hunter Brothers and Sho & Yoh. The winners face Minoru Suzuki & Zack Sabre Jr. for the titles. CCK of Chris Brookes & Jonathan Gresham beat Jushin Liger & Phantasmo. Kushida beat Josh Bodom. Sabre beat Rocky Romero in a great 20:00 match. The Hunter Brothers beat Storm & Fleisch to advance to the finals of the tournament in a great match. Colt Cabana beat James Mason in a match that combined wrestling with comedy. Sha Samuels attacked Cabana but Dan Magee made the save. Sabian beat Starr via count out so Starr kept his cruiserweight title. Starr was just a walk out count out which just makes titles and the rules look stupid. Sabre beat Chris Ridgeway. They did a knockout finish. Aussie Open beat Sho & Yoh in the other semifinal, so the tournament final, which will evidently be at the next tapings, is Aussie Open vs. Hunter Brothers. Said to be a great match.
597
598Walter vs. Will Ospreay is the main event announced for OTT on 10/13 at Dublin National Stadium. Minoru Suzuki vs. Timothy Thatcher s also on that show, as is Tetsuya Naito
599
600World of Sport was up to 500,000 viewers on 9/8, which is a 25 percent increase from the series low of 400,000 the week before. But it’s still the second lowest, and next week will probably do worse because it’s being moved up another half hour to 4 p.m. However, a Saturday late night replay doubled from the week before. Whether this is accurate or not, they are going with the idea that the traditional Saturday afternoon show is the one that the non-hardcore fans are watching and the hardcore fans watch the late night show. Even though the first-run ratings have dropped from 937,000 to as low as 400,000, those with the project expect it to be renewed for at least a second season as ITV and Martin Goldsmith have the early 2019 tour which will need TV to make it work. My gut is the tour may be used as a barometer for the future as if ITV can make money off touring and merchandise with the project they may keep them on in spite of falling ratings. More bad news is that the 9/22 show is moving to 2:30 p.m., before soccer instead of after it. The move may be because the BBC is starting the new season of “Strictly Come Dancing,” the top rated show in the country, and ITV probably doesn’t want any weak programming on the early evening schedule that night. The show this week was said to have been pretty bad. It was built around Adam Maxted beating Nathan Cruz in a loser leaves WOS ladder match. The match was said to have been killed by the editing and perhaps restrictions on violence on shows that air in that time slot. The U.K. is very strict on that. Most of the bumps taken on the ladders weren’t shown on TV or edited out. Cruz vowed that he would return. A four-way with Crater, who has been pushed as a monster heel, against Liam Slater, Robbie X and Gabriel Kidd ended when all three worked together to pin Crater. No winner was announced, but Crater lost the match. It feels weird that they pushed the guy as a monster and then had his first loss be this way. Martin Kirby beat Grado in a comedy match. Kirby took a toothbrush from Grado’s fanny pack and teased putting it down his won trunks. They fought over the toothbrush until Grado put it in Kirby’s armpit and then his mouth. Kirby still won with his feet on the ropes. Justin Sysum & Joe Hendry beat Rampage Brown & Sha Samuels in the main event. Sysum pinned Samuels with a 450 in a good match. They announced a battle of real life couples next week with Will Ospreay & Bea Priestley vs. Stevie Boy & Kay Lee Ray
601
602wXw announced the blocks for the upcoming World Tag League which takes place from 10/5 to 10/7 in Oberhausen, Germany. The A block will be Penta 0M & Rey Fenix, Walter & Timothy Thatcher, Chris Brookes & Jonathan Gresham and Hideyoshi Kamitani & Daichi Hashimoto of Big Japan. The B block has wXw tag champs Avalanche & Julian Nero, Jeff Cobb & Angelico, Aussie Open and Jay Skillett & Francis Kaspin. Also on 10/5 will be David Starr vs. Jurn Simmons in a hair vs. hair match. ROH’s Coast 2 Coast will be in Germany that weekend as well as Fred Yehi, who is a current regular for the group. 10/6 will have a wXw title match with champ Absolute Andy defending against Ilja Dragunov and Bobby Gunns, plus Marius Al-Ani defends the Shotgun title against the winner of a four-way the night before with Julian Pace vs. Lucky Kid vs. Emil Sitoci vs. Yehi
603
604Stu Bennett, who is the authority figure on the show, has signed on to co-star with Vinnie Jones in a sequel to the movie “Vengeance” that Bennett starred in. Jones plays Sean Teague, an elite level special forces operator turned mercenary, who is being chased down by John Gold, played to Bennett.
605
606ROH: Final Battle, which is the company’s traditional biggest show of the year, although now the biggest show really is the night before Mania show, was announced for 12/14 at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. One would expect the show to sell out in advance, even though it can’t be considered as big in the market given the MSG show in April
607
608More notes on the All In rating from 6-7 p.m. on Sunday on WGN America. The 196,000 number was down from the 227,000 number that Blue Bloods did in the same time slot the prior week. However, it drew a much younger audience, with 107,000 of the viewers 18-49 whereas Blue Bloods had 75,000, and 72,000 of those 18-49 viewers (67.3 percent) being male as opposed to Blue Bloods where it was 25,000 males in the demo and only 34.7 percent of the viewers being male
609
610There are no ROH shows until the 9/28 PPV from the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas and the TV tapings in the same location the next day
611
612Adam Birch (Joey Mercury) was released over the past week and no charges were filed against him by the Schaumburg Police Department. IMPACT: Bound for Glory on 10/14 at the Melrose Center in Long Island City, NY, is now sold out. MLW sold the place out with about 900 fans when it ran the building
613
614The company is taping television at the Fronton in Mexico City on 9/13 and 9/14. It is going to be very interesting because Pentagon Jr. and Fenix are booked for both these tapings and the CMLL Anniversary show. It looks to be a disaster as just as we were going to press on the first night, there was almost nobody there, even with some of the Mexican talent going on their Facebook page to tell fans they can get in for free. Working multiple shows in the same city on the same day is not that unusual in Mexico, but not when it comes to two events of that stature from companies that would be seen as competition
615
616Due to his size and look, both New Japan and WWE have interest in Killer Kross.
617
618UFC: Michael Chiesa officially filed a lawsuit on 9/10 against Conor McGregor, McGregor Sports and Entertainment, The Barclays Center, BSE (the company that owns the Barclays Center), cohorts of McGregor and others in New York State Supreme Court regarding the Dolly throwing incident in early April backstage at the building. Chiesa was cut from broken glass and removed from the show. As part of the lawsuit, Chiesa is claiming that if he hadn’t been injured and pulled from the show, that he would have been picked over Al Iaquinta, since he was the highest ranked lightweight at the time available, for the title fight after both Tony Ferguson was injured and then Max Holloway had medical problems due to his last minute weight cut, and champion Khabib Nurmagomedov needed an opponent. It has been expected that multiple lawsuits would be filed, with Chiesa and Ray Borg unable to fight and perhaps Rose Namajunas, who fought and won the title, but from all accounts suffered legit emotional distress. Chiesa’s attorney, Joseph Murrway said that the fighter was attacked, assaulted and/or battered by McGregor and unnamed cohorts resulting in serious personal economic and other injury. The complaint listed McGregor, who threw the dolly through the window, and McGregor Sports and Entertainment, as defendants along with the building, stating that the arena failed to adequately perform their security duty. It is notable that UFC was not named in the suit, since they would have been part of providing security backstage. He also claimed emotional distress, pain and suffering, future medical costs, economic loss and believed it would continue to lead to future suffering. The take that he would have gotten the Nurmagomedov fight would mean his economic loss would be greater than for his scheduled undercard fight with Anthony Pettis. Chiesa is also now planning on moving to welterweight so he won’t have to endure as bad of a weight cut
619
620After refusing everything up to this point as far as publicity tours and press conferences, McGregor has agreed to a press conference on 9/20 at Radio City Music Hall in New York to promote the fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov. Hopefully UFC can get a Madison Square Garden main event done to announce by that date
621
622For what it’s worth, the number going around this past week on Endeavor buying the ten percent of stock from Flash Entertainment was $700 million, which tells you just how badly Endeavor didn’t want partners in the venture. That also greatly increases the already huge company debt. Flash made a killing as they purchased their ten percent for between $150 million and $175 million. That price does leave the company with a $7 billion valuation. WWE may be overvalued at that price, but UFC definitely is. It seems that Endeavor wants to make sure it has no partners (other than Dana White). There’s likely a big picture reason for this, and the one speculated on the most is Endeavor going public and wanting all its ducks in a row before doing so
623
624As of right now, Vivid Seats has secondary price average tickets for UFC 229 at $982, which would make it the fourth most expensive ticket average in history. The biggest ever was GSP vs. Michael Bisping at MSG at $1,310, followed by McGregor vs. Eddie Alvarez in MSG at $1,092, and UFC 200 was $1,005
625
626Fabricio Werdum was suspended for two years by USADA for testing positive for the steroid trenbolone and trenbolone metabolites epitrenbolone in an out-of-competition test on 4/25. Werdum was removed from a scheduled fight with Aleksei Oleinik that was to be the main event for the 9/15 show in Moscow when the test game back on 5/22. His suspension will end on May 22, 2020, at which point he’ll be 43.
627
628Junior Dos Santos vs. Tai Tuivasa is officially the main event for the 12/2 show in Adelaide, Australia
629
630Luke Rockhold vs. Chris Weidman is now official for the 11/3 show in Madison Square Garden, which is still missing a main event with seven weeks to go
631
632T.J. Dillashaw was on Joe Rogan’s podcast and talked about a potential champion vs. champion fight with Henry Cejudo, saying he’s up for it, Cejudo is as well (Demetrious Johnson wasn’t as champion which is why it didn’t happen) as is UFC. What’s notable is that Dillashaw said he wants to move down to 125 rather than have Cejudo move up to 135. Wouldn’t one think the fight would be better where the guys didn’t have to deplete themselves to hit a 125 target given they are both 150 pound guys?
633
634Mark Hunt, who has a lawsuit out against Brock Lesnar, is obviously furious Lesnar is talking in and getting a title shot at Daniel Cormier. “The motherf***er’s a cheater. How is that controversy? F***ing little c*** Is f***ing cheating, using steroids.” “He’s cheating and trying to hurt me and you say, `Oh, we’re gong t be nice here.’ F*** that cheater. How are you gonna be nice to the guy that is taking shortcuts? Don’t give him that. Why would you want to give him that short of shit?
635
636This week’s show is 9/15 in Moscow at the Olympic Stadium. It’s a pure Fight Pass show that starts at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time. From the opener on up, it’s Terrion Ware (17-8) vs. Merab Dvalishvili (7-4), Stefan Sekluic (12-2) vs. Ramazen Emeev (17-3), Adam Yandlev (9-0) vs. Jordan Johnson (9-0), Magomed Ankalaev (8-1) vs. Marcin Prachnio (13-3), Mairbek Taisumov (26-5) vs. Desmond Green (21-7), Rustam Khabilov (22-3) vs. Kajan Johnson (23-12-1), Petr Yan (9-1) vs. Jin Soo Son (9-2), Khalid Murtazaliev (13-2) vs. C.B. Dolloway (17-8), Thiago Alves (22-12) vs. Alexey Kunchenko (18-0), Andrei Arlovski (27-16) vs. Shamil Abdurakhimov (18-4), Nikita Krylov (24-5) vs. Jan Blachowicz (22-7) and Mark Hunt (13-12-1) vs. Aleksei Oleinik (56-11-1). This would be one of the oldest main events in UFC history with Hunt now 44 and Oleinik 41. Hunt has one fight after this left on his contract and would like to be added to the 11/22 show in Adelaide and is considering retiring on that show
637
638Emeev is making his UFC debut and was a champion on the Russian circuit. A lot of people have speculated that matching Khabilov with Johnson, given their records, is a way to hand Johnson a loss so he can be cut since he’s one of the guys who has been most vocal on union activities. Krylov’s UFC return against Blachowicz is probably the most interesting fight
639
640On the 10/5 Quintet show from Las Vegas with the team format submission wrestling Survival Series type shows, they announced that there would be a match in the Team Sakuraba vs. Team Alpha Male series with Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Urijah Faber. Josh Barnett, how is on Team Sakuraba said he is interested in fighting again (although it won’t be with UFC, as both sides agreed to a release since Barnett wouldn’t agree to future USADA testing) but in doing press for Quintet, said he doesn’t want to sign an exclusive contract with anyone
641
642B.J. Penn, at 39, is doing another fight, facing Ryan Hall, a submission expert on 12/29 in Las Vegas. It would be Penn’s first fight in a year-and-a-half, since his June 2017 loss to Dennis Siver. Penn has lost five in a row, retired for a while, and his last win was in 2010 against Matt Hughes, and last win against someone still in his prime would have been in 2009 against Diego Sanchez. There is also talk of Gilbert Melendez vs. Arnold Allen on that show
643
644Jose Aldo did an interview where he said that UFC had talked to him about facing Donald Cerrone, in a match where he’d move up to 155 and Cerrone would come back down from 170, for the 9/22 Sao Paulo main event. He said he considered it but felt it was too soon coming back from his 7/28 fight with Jeremy Stephens, since he did take some big punches that night
645
646The card announced so far for 10/27 in Moncton, New Brunswick has Volkhan Oezdemir vs. Anthony Smith as the main event, plus Misha Cirkunov vs. Patrick Cummins, Gian Villante vs. Ed Herman, Artem Lobov vs. Zubaira Tukhugov, Gavin Tucker vs. Andrew Soukhamthath, Nordine Taleb vs. Sean Strickland, Sarah Moras vs. Talita Bernardo, Thibault Gouti vs. Nasrat Haqparast, Alex Garcia vs. Court McGee, Stevie Ray vs. Jessin Ayari, Arjan Bhullar vs. Marcelo Golm, Calvin Kattar vs. Chris Fishgold and Te Edwards vs. Don Madge. That’s a lot of unknowns there
647
648Guido Cannetti vs. Marlon Vera has been added to the 11/17 show in Buenos Aires.
649
650BELLATOR: The first major U.S. promotion, believe it or not, to even run Hawaii will be Bellator on 12/15 which is running the Blaisdell Center in Honolulu. The main event has Honolulu’s Ilima-Lei Macfarlane defending her flyweight title against Valerie Letourneau. The show will air on DAZN and will air on the same day as a UFC show on FOX go head-to-head with UFC. There will also be a welterweight tournament fight on that show with Ed Ruth (6-0) vs. Neiman Gracie (8-0) as well as Lyoto Machida’s debut with the promotion against Rafael Carvalho. UFC has never done Honolulu. At first they felt the local tax on MMA (ten percent) was too high, and that the Blaisdell Center was too small, and didn’t want to risk the weather to do an outdoor show at Aloha Stadium
651
652Erick Silva, who was recently cut by UFC, has signed here and will face Lorenz Larkin in a welterweight Grand Prix alternates match on 10/12 at the Mohegan Sun Casino, which is the card with the Matt Mitrione vs. Ryan Bader heavyweight tournament semifinal
653
654Brennan Ward, who was scheduled to face Andre Fialho on that show, pulled out of the show due to an injury and then announced his retirement.
655
656WWE: Simone Johnson, 17, the daughter of Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia, has been doing some training at the Performance Center while also attending high school. Dwayne Johnson had mentioned her interest in becoming a wrestler back in May while she did an interview in 2017 saying that she was interested in going to the WWE. Johnson, if she continues to pursue this, would be a fourth generation wrestler, and would be the first that I could come up with in WWE history, with her great grandfather being Peter Maivia and grandfather being Rocky Johnson. Zelina Vega mentioned her training on a podcast interview with Lilian Garcia and Ryan Satin of Pro Wrestling Sheet later reported that she had been there for several months. The only fourth generation wrestler I can think of is David Finlay in New Japan
657
658While WWE did not publicize this, which surprised some people, Matt Riddle has started training at the Performance Center. Riddle may start on television at the next tapings and there is at least talk of him facing Kassius Ohno at the Los Angeles Takeover show
659
660Regarding Neville, while he’s said nothing publicly and WWE has told us that he is free and clear to work anywhere he wants, when he has been contacted by promoters, he has said that he can’t accept dates yet but will be able to very soon
661
662The situation with Walter is back alive. His name came up several times this past week and the belief was that talks had gotten serious between the sides. They had wanted him at the time we reported it earlier this year, at the same time they went after Keith Lee. Because he had a contract and was an employee (not an independent contractor) with wXw in Germany, and had made it clear he didn’t want to be away from home for long periods of time, so that talk ended up not leading to a deal. That’s the reason he’s never hooked up with New Japan either and while he does work in the U.S., a lot of companies have tried to bring him in and not been able to. But those at WWE confirmed that they felt he was a talented big guy, and that a guy like that is valuable and at some point they would push hard to get him. The latest idea, and we have no confirmation of him taking it or not, although in time that will be obvious because if he does take the offer he’d likely be U.K. tapings and disappear from Revolution Pro (where he was still working as of this weekend and is still booked on shows in the future), would be to sign one of the U.K. style deals as opposed to the NXT/WWE deal that was offered. This would allow him to continue to work for his home promotion, wXw, and other European indies. The way it was described to us is WWE would use him similarly to how they use people like Tyler Bate and Pete Dunne in the sense they would fly him in to do some NXT TV along with being a major star for their U.K. offshoot if he takes the deal, as opposed to just working U.K. tapings
663
664As far as Lio Rush managing Lashley, the anti-manager sentiment Vince McMahon has had for a long time seems to have dissipated with the success of Paul Heyman. Right now they are back thinking along the lines of managers, which is where Drake Maverick’s move also fit in, and there are talks of bringing in managers from the indies for future roles aside from people already under contract
665
666Renee Young started this past week as the official third person on the Raw announcing team with Michael Cole & Corey Graves, replacing Jonathan Coachman. Coachman will remain with the company hosting the PPV pre-game show panels, so it’s something of a switch. It’s been almost unanimous in the opinion that Young was better in the role than Coachman and the switch only makes sense. Plus, diversity in these roles has been a part of it for some time now, and having a woman as a full-time announcer makes sense with the company’s positioning of women. While she is an improvement as she never says the outright stuff that has you shaking your head like Coachman would do, the stuff that makes no common sense or the sports analogies that make no sense at the time he says them, Young is not as good in delivering scripted lines. When she says stuff that’s clearly not her and clearly being told, it is far too obvious in her delivery and it comes off very fake. They really need to let her just be herself because she’s bad at WWE corporate fake speak in that setting. Most are, but with her it’s more noticeable. Coachman commented on Twitter saying, “A sincere congratulations to Renee Young for a much deserved move to the table on Raw. To be part of a team means understanding your strengths and using them to help the team grow. I have always embraced with positivity any role asked of me. That will not change.” This wasn’t a last minute decision, as Kayla Braxton from NXT has been brought up and is doing the backstage interviews on television that Young previously would have been doing
667
668Dwayne Johnson began filming the movie “Hobbs and Shaw,” this past week with Jason Statham, who played Deckard Shaw, a lead villain in a few Fast & Furious movies. The movie is scheduled to be released on August 2, 2019. This was the movie that led to heat between Johnson and some of the Fast & Furious cast members which came out in news stories at the end of last year. The next Fast & Furious movie was moved back from 2019 to 2020 so Johnson and Statham could do this movie, which led to the regular Fast & Furious cast, well, furious
669
670According to a report we got, after a three-way tag title match on the 9/7 Raw show Birmingham where Ziggler & McIntyre retained over The B Team and Matt Hardy & Wyatt, a fan after the match begged Hardy not to retire. His response was, “Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice. This was probably my last match ever.” Hardy did work the rest of the weekend shows. He had already been pulled off television and reports from the weekend were that he was moving like he was hurting. Hardy had pretty much indicated that he wasn’t going to be wrestling for a while and has been learning the role of a producer while being out of action. Hardy then, after his match on 9/9 in Biloxi, wrote that it was the last match of Woken Matt Hardy. The last we heard, retirement was a possibility but not official, likely depending on how his body reacts to rest and injury rehab
671
672John Nallen, the Senior Executive Vice President and CFO for FOX, put over the Smackdown deal at the Goldman Sachs Communications Conference because it’s live programming 50 to 52 weeks a year. He said that Smackdown means they’ve got Friday nights booked for five straight years without having to come up with any other programming
673
674Ric Flair, 69, and Wendy Barlow, 58, his long-time girlfriend, had their commitment ceremony on 9/12. Among the people who attended were Undertaker, Ziggler, Fit Finlay, Shane Helms, Dennis Rodman, Mark Carrano, Michelle McCool, Ata Johnson, Conrad Thompson, daughter Ashley Fliehr (Charlotte) and Michael Hayes. Ric’s daughter Megan will marry podcaster Conrad Thompson shortly as well. Barlow played Fifi the Maid on “A Flair for the Gold” segments in WCW in 1993 when they first met, and reconnected a long time later, after Flair’s fourth marriage fell through
675
676This past week has seen more talk regarding Penta 0M & Rey Fenix, and at this point it does look like not only is nothing happening in this direction soon, nor can it because of their Lucha Underground contracts. Both have started making commitments to promoters for next year, which indicates they aren’t planning on doing anything here anytime soon. WWE has had interest, obviously, since they are Mexican stars who can work great with Americans and have names on the indie scene. Some of the talk was because of teases by MLW where they teased before their tapings that 2019 would be a momentous year for Penta and Fenix and find out “what’s NXT” tonight which was at their 12/6 show in Fort Lauderdale. So essentially the renewed rumors sprung from MLW teasing an angle. There was reality to all this. On the MLW tapings, Salina de la Renta, their estranged manager said that she was with “Hunter” all week and offered to get them a deal to go to WWE, where she would enroll them in English classes, probably have them rebranded with new names and where they would learn a safer arsenal of moves. Obviously that was a total insider angle. Konnan then pleaded with them not to go. Penta and Fenix ripped up the “contracts” and the live crowd did a “F*** Hunter” and “Please don’t go” chant. That said, when they are free and clear from their current Lucha Underground contract, they could go. The reason it’s been out there is because there is some reality to it, MLW worked it for the angle. For WWE, do they want to use a gimmick that, even with a name change, is essentially a gimmick AAA created? There’s always the question, because of how good Gran Metalik is and how he’s used, whether guys like that can be stars in WWE although one would think they’d be big stars in NXT at first. They are under contract with Lucha Underground until a few months after the season ends. At that point, I expect they’ll have the option to go almost anywhere. The belief right now is that Lucha Underground is solid for another season, and that El Rey is paying them enough to continue as flagship programming going forward. With Konnan having a strong hand in creative in AAA and them being his guys, and Fenix being world champion right now, obviously they’ll be able to get a joint deal from both groups which would also likely have them working for Impact as well, just like they are now, and be able to do U.S. indies. But they are in talks about a deal with AAA and Impact right now. AAA does want them exclusively for Mexico if they can get that deal done, to keep them from also working for The Crash and CMLL. Right now because of their status, they are right now able to work big shows for AAA, The Crash and CMLL because they aren’t under contract to anyone in Mexico and are big enough names that the other groups will use them because they sell tickets. The stories about them not committing to indie dates in 2019 had made people think they are WWE-bound, particularly coming off the situation of missing California shots for promoters they’ve worked regularly for. But this past week they made a commitment to work all MLW dates in 2019, so that would seem to indicate they’ve made a real life decision not to go. On 9/7, on a PCW Ultra show in Southern California, after Penta defeated Hammerstone to keep that group’s title in the main even (after kicking out of being hit with a sledge hammer since Hammerstone is big with blond hair and does a HHH knock off character calling himself Single H) Penta said that he’s not going anywhere and hopes to be champion for that group for years to come
677
678WWE has been able to get a number of nominations for the People’s Choice Awards and is pushing its fan base through social media to vote for them. John Cena is nominated for Comedy Movie Star of the Year, which is a stretch to say the least, but they’re pushing it. It’s for his performance in the movie “Blockers.” Raw is up for Best Television Show, which is the biggest stretch of all. Nikki Bella is up for Best Reality Show contestant for her performance on Dancing With The Stars, even though she came nowhere close to the finals. She’s also been nominated for Reality TV star of the year for Total Bellas. Nia Jax has been nominated for Game Changer of the Year. Okay. Dwayne Johnson is nominated for Male Movie Star of the Year, which, at least as far as popularity goes, is not a stretch, although it’s mainly for his role in “Skyscraper.” He’s also been nominated for Action Movie Star of the Year for his role in “Rampage.
679
680The first episode of Mixed Match Challenge on 9/18, airing after Smackdown, will have Strowman & Bliss vs. Owens & Natalya and Styles & Flair vs. Jimmy Uso & Naomi. Unlike the first season, this is not single elimination, but a round-robin where each team will have four matches, broken up into a Raw block and a Smackdown block, and then there will be playoffs but it hasn’t been said if it’ll be a final four or just the winners in each block with the championship match on the 12/16 TLC PPV show in San Jose
681
682Expect more main roster guys to work NXT house shows. Harper worked this past weekend in Buffalo, near his home, for a North American title match with Ricochet. Breeze has also worked shows. Others who creative doesn’t have a current program for on the main roster have been talked about as well
683
684The company announced a May 10, 2019 date in Helsinki, Finland, the first time in that country in ten years, with the Smackdown crew
685
686Total Divas starts back on 9/19 with the first two weeks being episodes taped around WrestleMania in New Orleans
687
688Stephanie McMahon spoke at the Sports Business Journal Game Changer conference on 9/12 and said “We’re successful for one reason only: We listen to our audience.” You can just imagine the reaction that drew. It was enough that reporter Katie Rosenberg, who tweeted that line, noted she woke up to a number of fans saying the opposite. Every writer I’ve ever spoken to, and most people who have run creative, have always said either these words or something approximating them, that the show is written for “the audience of one,” which is Vince McMahon
689
690PW Insider reported Edge for the 1,000th episode of Raw. Edge said that was news to him. Historically when it comes to reports on guys on big shows and guys or women denying it is about 90 percent or better than they end up on the shows. Dave Bautista, who is one of those guys nowadays who says whatever he thinks and doesn’t care (considering he’s risking his future of his meal ticket role as Drax by coming out so strongly against Disney for firing James Gunn), wrote about the 1,000th episode of Smackdown on 10/16 in Washington, DC, saying,“Surprise, surprise. I wasn’t invited: And it’s in my hometown. I guess by now I shouldn’t be shocked anymore.” To be honest, the way WWE works, a lot of people in that situation are called late in the game because they don’t plan the shows out until the last few weeks and also the farther ahead of time they invite people, the more likely it is that the news gets out before WWE can release it first
691
692TV this week is 9/17 in Dallas and 9/18 in Tulsa. Because it’s a PPV weekend, no matches have been announced for Raw or Smackdown, but Undertaker will be on Raw. 205 Live has announced Lio Rush (who was also on Raw in an angle that seemed to build toward managing Lashley) vs. Noam Dar and Alexander vs. Gulak for the cruiserweight title
693
694The most-watched shows of the past week on the WWE Network were: 1. Mae Young Classic episode from 9/5; 2. NXT from 9/5; 3. SummerSlam 2018; 4. Hell in a Cell 2017; 5. Story Time episode 3; 6. This Week in WWE; 7. 205 Live from 9/4; 8. NXT Takeover Brooklyn; 9. NXT from 8/30; 10. Takeover Chicago preshow. The Takeover Chicago preshow is actually something people don’t watch but it gets ranked every week before if you watch a show, after its over, it automatically clicks to Takeover Chicago and it counts you
695
696WWE stock closed on 9/12 at $86.09 per share giving the company a market value of $6.713 billion. Right now the Wall Street consensus is WWE profits will be $62.4 million in 2018, $103 million in 2019 and $257 million in 2020. So even in 2020 with the new deals they would be trading at what is estimated at 26 times profits, which is well over what most entertainment stocks do and means they would be overvalued, unless the price is high with the belief that they are in a selling mode and can get that kind of a price. WWE has been open for business when it comes to a sale since at least 2016, although selling it at $7 billion would be harder to get prospective owners than it would have been at $2 billion or $3 billion. For example, right now Sinclair is trading at five times profits, FOX at 19, Disney at 14 and CBS at 15
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698Notes from the 9/10 Raw tapings in New Orleans. The one thing about watching the show taped rather than live is how much filler is in a three hour broadcast. The show drew 7,600 fans. Crews pinned Ryder and Moon pinned Dana Brooke for Main Event. Raw opened with Strowman & McIntyre & Ziggler out doing an interview. All the heels on the roster were surrounding the ring, with the idea they were going to keep The Shield from attacking. Gulak was one of the guys out there for some reason. They haven’t used cruiserweights on Monday in ages. I guess they just keep flying him in a day early. Strowman said the only reason Reigns still has the title is that he’s a coward who can’t handle business on his own. He said that Reigns has The Hounds of Justice, while he has his Dogs of War. Ziggler then talked to the guys at ringside and said we all need to stick together and stand up to the bullying of The Shield and stand up for ourselves. The Shield came out and destroyed all the heels at ringside by hitting them with axe handles. But that enabled Strowman & Ziggler & McIntyre to escape the ring while The Shield were taking out everyone else. The Riott Squad defaced the Bellas dressing room. Corbin was backstage yelling at The Shield. There were supposed police officers there (local indie guys) . Corbin said he wasn’t going to have them locked up like last week but told them they had to vacate the premises or Reigns would be stripped of the title and go to jail for a long time. The problem is that Reigns did come back, so in theory, he should have been stripped. The Shield left on their own. Nikki Bella pinned Riott in 9:12. Brie Bella was in Nikki’s corner while Morgan and Logan were in Riott’s corner. Match was solid. Morgan tried to interfere but Brie pulled her out of the ring, and Nikki used the rack attack 2.0 for the pin. There was a long Connor’s Cure segment. They had a lot of kids out there dressed up as super heroes who were battling cancer. Big Show was out, in his wrestling gear for some reason. The live crowd gave them a big hand. They were pushing to get people to donate to their charity. Drake Maverick came out with the AOP. The new doctrine is that they are no longer the Authors of Pain, just AOP, and thus, their old finisher is dropped because it was called the last chapter, which had to do with authors, and they are no longer authors. I know that sounds silly but that’s how it works here. Maverick no longer wears the AOP complete outfit but still wears the same pants and tank top. They beat Nathan Bradley & Ronnie Ace (who uses the name Johnny Flex in Wildkat Wrestling). Ronnie Ace is a takeoff of Johnny Ace. Rezar pinned Ace after a super collider and double power bomb in 1:21. They did a long Hardy-Orton feature. Can’t remember the last time Raw did a big feature on a Smackdown angle. HHH arrived. Then he came out for a promo. Fans chanted for him. He noted that Undertaker received 81 percent of fans vote on who will win the match in Melbourne. He said he would have expected that. But he said what he didn’t expect was that Michaels giving his opinion would bother Undertaker so much. He said it was laughable how much Undertaker was bothered. He said he was rattled so badly he made an appearance. I guess we’re supposed to believe that when Michaels made the interview, that Undertaker was at wherever Undertaker lives and through magic he one minute later was in the building. HHH said that this made him really mad because he thought Undertaker respected both he and Michaels. Then he said he watched the interview a second time. He said he realized Undertaker hadn’t lost respect for he and Michaels, and it was that he had lost respect for himself. He pointed out Undertaker didn’t show up when he was out there. He said that after the four matches they had at Mania (didn’t HHH have three and Michaels had two, which in my book adds up to five) that Undertaker’s aura went away and then his streak went away, and now he’s just a guy living off his reputation. He said those matches were the epic moments of his greatness and he blames those matches for his demise. This was a good promo. McIntyre & Ziggler kept the tag titles over Dallas & Axel in 8:49. Dallas & Axel tried to cheerlead for the fans to chant “B Team, B Team, go go go,” which got going very lightly. The B Team was less comedic than usual and they tried to push them as a more serious tag team. The finish saw Ziggler eye rake Dallas and then tag McIntyre as they did the Claymore kick/Zig Zag finisher on him. Ambrose & Rollins then hit the ring. Rollins set up the curb stomp on Ziggler but McIntyre pulled Ziggler out of the ring to safety. They did a long video piece on the Undertaker vs. Foley Hell in a Cell match from 1998 in Pittsburgh. It was a good video piece. It also looks greatly out of place in 2018 when there is more concern about in ring safety, because that much was more unsafe than almost any match anywhere these days. Corbin was yelling at Ambrose & Rollins because they were supposed to leave. Rollins said that The Shield was supposed to leave, but went with the idea that if Reigns isn’t with them, they’re not The Shield. And they weren’t dressed like The Shield. Somehow in this segment they brought out a police officer and Rollins threatened Corbin with a charge of falsifying a police report. An officer started reading Corbin his rights. Corbin then wanted to speak to Rollins privately. So they evidently made a deal off camera where Ambrose & Rollins would get a tag title match and they wouldn’t press charges on Corbin. Yes, none of this makes a lick of sense. Owens vs. Breeze was scheduled to be next but it never started. Owens gave Breeze a sick power bomb on the apron. Owens then did a promo saying that he did quit, that he was happy being gone, but Corbin called him up and begged him to reconsider and return. Owens said that Corbin recognizes his value as the MVP of Raw. He said he agreed to come back but on one condition, that he’s not held responsible for what he does to his opponents. Owens said that from now on, his job is to do whatever he wants to do. He said they should blame Lashley because he’s the sick maniac who intentionally injured his best friend, Zayn. He said that he quit because of Lashley but that’s also the reason he’s back. He said this was only the beginning. Roode & Gable beat The Ascension in 3:16. Gable pinned Viktor after a Chaos Theory suplex. Even now it feels like there is a tease of a feud and a Roode heel turn. I’d like to see them do a Mr. Wrestling II/Magnum T.A. dynamic out of this. When Gable won, you got the impression Roode wasn’t happy that it was once again Gable winning the match. They pushed fans to vote in the People’s Choice Awards. It’s interesting that they didn’t encourage any voting for Cena or Rock, but did push Nikki Bella for Best Reality Show star, Nia Jax for Game changer and Raw for best TV show. Raw as best TV show? Who does the nominations? Of all the dozens of wrestling television shows, Raw is most weeks closer to the worst than the best. I have no clue what makes Jax a Game changer either. But they may do well because nobody else in the body of their television shows pushes mobilizing their fans to vote for those awards. Strowman & Ziggler & McIntyre were with Corbin. Corbin told Ziggler & McIntyre about the tag title match. He also told Strowman that Stephanie wants him winning the title, so the idea is Reigns winning foils the McMahons. That’s the idea to get him cheered. Natalya & Rousey beat Bliss & James in 13:42. Bliss ran from Rousey early. James missed a kick on Natalya that Natalya sold. Graves even called attention to it, but not in those words. But he felt he had to cover for the selling of the missed move. Bliss threw a punch at Natalya and it missed, but Natalya didn’t overtly sell it. Rousey & Natalya did the old Hart attack as a tribute to Jim Neidhart. Renee Young said that this was only Rousey’s second tag team match of her career. Not sure why they want to mess with Young’s credibility this early in the game, on week as official permanent commentator. The line added nothing and was just simply something untrue to say for no positive value. It was Rousey 11th tag team match to date. A commentator shouldn’t lie unless it advances a storyline, and even then it should be only on rare occasions, because of the audience thinks the commentator is a liar, their value in selling the product decreases badly. Ultimately, that is the role of the announcer, to sell the product and its angles to the public. Rousey got a big pop for her hot tag, but ended up selling a lot. The story they were trying to sell is Rousey is going into her title match with Bliss with bad ribs, probably since the audience doesn’t think Bliss can win, so they create a injury angle to raise doubt. For that reason, the match had to go long and Rousey had to sell a lot, even though it felt like under normal circumstances at this stage that they shouldn’t be selling as much as she did. Rousey pinned James after three judo throws and an armbar submission. Bliss kicked Rousey in the ribs after the match. Elias was backstage and mad that the guy backstage didn’t get him a drink that tasted good so he spit the drink in the guys’ face. While doing this, Strowman was there and asking different people where Reigns was at. He threw one guy into some metal poles that flew everywhere. He was Buku Dao of Wildkat Wrestling. Rousey & Natalya were backstage. Rousey said that she never once pulled out of a fight due to injury even though she was hurt because on her worst day, she’s still the best. Her mom actually taught her a saying that you have to train so hard that on your worst day, you are better than your opponent on their best day. Elias came out and got easy heat bringing up that the New Orleans Saints lost their first game and that Drew Brees, the Saints superstar quarterback told him that he’s sick of representing this rundown filthy city and just wants the season to be over. Foley came out. Foley is moving so much better than he has in probably 20 years after getting new body parts put in. It was something seeing Foley able to no longer be bent over and move like a regular person again. Foley plugged Nita Strauss, who was the guitar player who played Nakamura’s entrance in the past. He also has a new perm. Elias said that he was a child and attended the Hell in a Cell in Pittsburgh and the Undertaker vs. Foley match but said that after that, Foley’s career was never the same. Foley did a great promo leading to him saying he would referee the Reigns vs. Strowman Hell in a Cell match. He said that he talked to Stephanie and wanted to be on the show because of it begin the 20th anniversary of that match. Foley said that Stephanie also gave him the power to make one match on the show so he was making Balor vs. Elias. Balor pinned Elias with an inside cradle in 10:17. The match was okay, but not nearly the level of most Balor matches that get time. Backstage Lashley was doing curls with 50s while Lio Rush was there with him. They teased the idea of Rush becoming his manager. Lashley had his ribs all taped up to sell the attack from Owens. Strowman was still looking for Reigns. Charly Caruso suggested to just go to the ring and Reigns will find him. Strowman went to the ring. He said that if Foley gets in his way, Foley’s injuries from Hell in a Cell will look like a paper cut in comparison. Reigns came out and they brawled. The brawl ended when Reigns gave Strowman a Samoan drop off the announcers table and onto a gimmicked up table. The show ended with Reigns holding the belt overhead in the air
699
700Notes from the 9/11 tapings in Lafayette. The show drew 4,700 fans. Crowd was quiet a lot and nothing seemed to get out of second gear. As usual, the best stuff was 205 Live matches that people didn’t care about. They announced Bryan vs. Miz as the dark match, so while there were a lot less people in the building once Smackdown ended, it was far better than last week. Smackdown opened with a Jeff Hardy interview. He talked about his match with Orton at Hell in a Cell, and got in a line about how he was going to make Orton fade away and become obsolete. Hardy beat Nakamura in a non-title match in 15:33. The match was okay, but not as good as you’d think given the names. Hardy hit the twist of fate and went to the top rope for the swanton when Orton knocked Hardy off the top rope, where he was crotched, for the DQ. Orton was beating down Hardy slamming his head into the ring steps and gave him three chair shots. Hardy then came back and laid out Orton with seven chair shots, a twist of fate and a swanton. Kayla Braxton interviewed Miz & Maryse. Maryse said that it took Bryan three years to come back, while it only took her five months to come back after giving birth. I’m not sure how that is analogous to a brain injury. Miz claimed that Bryan and Brie Bella had a marriage of convenience because neither could do any better. He also claimed that Brie is carrying the marriage financially. Styles did an interview that was taped, saying that his biggest weakness is his temper and when people talk about his family it gets him mad. He said Joe has known him for 20 years and figured that if Joe went after his heart, that Joe would have the advantage. But he said Joe also has a family, but the difference is, he would never mess with Joe’s family because he has integrity, which he said was a strength. He said that Joe’s strength is in running his mouth and intimidation, and that Joe is a real piece of garbage. He said that Joe’s strengths will be his weaknesses in he match, because once the bell rings, nobody has the upper hand on A.J. Styles. He said this was the house that A.J. Styles built and it’s not for rent and not for sale. Charlotte Flair did an interview. Charlotte beat Deville in 9:18 with the figure eight. Charlotte nearly lost Deville’s legs in the figure four. Charlotte also did a power bomb out of a triangle. Lynch was at ringside in disguise and hopped the rail and attacked her. At first this got a minor pop. But most of the beat down didn’t get much of a response. Lynch put Charlotte in the disarmer on the ramp. Joe did an interview that was taped reading a fable built around Styles, his wife, his daughter and Joe. Very few people could have pulled this one off, but Joe did. This may have been taped last week because Joe had a huge gash on his forehead that looked exactly the same as a week ago, so either it never healed at all in a week’s time, or it was taped a week ago. Lynch said that she was going to break Charlotte’s arm after winning the title. Kofi Kingston played the nerdish Kramer Kingsman reporter doing a standup while Sheamus & Cesaro were getting ready for their match with Rusev & English. Rusev & English beat Sheamus & Cesaro to earn the title shot in 13:33. The New Day was at a separate table with tons of pancakes and batter and doing commentary although they rarely went to them. English sang at the beginning. The finish saw Sheamus set up the brogue kick on Rusev, but English jumped in the way and shoved Rusev out of the way, basically taking the bullet for Rusev. Rusev then hit the side kick on Sheamus for the pin. Between Rusev and English and Bayley and Banks, WWE has spent weeks in each case building slow-building turns and then stopping them and doing the opposite. I guess it makes things less predictable but why get the audience invested in a story to lead to a match and never even do the match? I guess in this case it’s not so bad because nobody really wanted to see Rusev vs. English in the first place, and the turn would only hurt both acts, since English would be dead on his own, and while Rusev wouldn’t be dead without English, especially with Lana, the cult Rusev stuff with the “Rusev Day” chants are largely based on English’s singing before his matches. Carmella is now a babyface. She was out as the second of R-Truth dancing and rapping with him, and feuding with Vega. Please don’t ask how or why. Almas beat R-Truth in 2:29. Vega was on the apron getting ready to interfere when Carmella pulled her out of the ring. But in the confusion, Almas did a rolling reverse cradle on R-Truth using the pants to hold the pin. Asuka & Naomi did an interview. It was the height of lame, with the big punch line that both were hungry and Asuka wanted to eat teriyaki. Main event saw Brie Bella beat Maryse in 4:39 via DQ. The first 3:30 of this was Maryse stalling. Miz grabbed the mic and said they were leaving. As they were on the way out, Bella grabbed her and threw her into the ring. Bryan and Miz went at it outside the ring allowing Maryse to superkick Brie for a near fall. Brie then put Maryse in the yes lock but Miz pulled Brie out of the ring for the DQ. Bryan attacked Miz but Miz threw Bryan into Brie outside the ring, knocking her over. The idea was the Brie injured her back in landing. Miz attacked Bryan and threw him into the ring steps. Maryse was beating up the injured Brie. Brie made a comeback and Miz tried to save Maryse. Bryan came back. Brie punched Miz and Bryan clotheslines Miz over the top. 205 Live opened with Buddy Murphy pinning Gran Metalik in 10:45. They had a good match, but not as good as other matches both guys have had. And it was the usual lack of crowd reaction. Metalik did a moonsault off the top rope to the floor. Murphy rammed Metalik’s head into the post. There’s something that just feels too fake about the idea of running someone’s head into a post in a promotion that doesn’t allow blood. Metalik hit a middle rope moonsault. He then went to the top rope but Murphy crotched him. Murphy kicked out of the Metalik driver in the middle of the ring. Later, Metalik’s right knee went out and he was selling, Murphy used a knee to the head and Murphy’s law for the pin. It all made sense since they are pushing Murphy getting a title shot on the 10/6 show in Melbourne. Murphy cut a promo saying that you can’t stop the unstoppable, and that he was the biggest, the fastest and the strongest cruiserweight and would win the title in his hometown. Mustafa Ali was warming up. Cedric Alexander came out. Ali said he’d like to team with Alexander. Alexander said he was okay since he’s teaming with Tozawa. Tozawa did his comedy facial and chant. Ali was in the ring for a match when Hideo Itami came out and spoke first in Japanese. The idea was for him to get heat by speaking Japanese and he got no heat at all. But it did lead to “What” chants that got annoying. Itami was laughing at Ali saying that he missed him when he was gone and hoped he was feeling better. Ali pinned Michael Thompson in 1:45 with a superkick, a tornado DDT and the 054, which is the inverted 450. Drake Maverick was backstage with Jack Gallagher & Drew Gulak. They brought up the AOP and Maverick said he could call them right now. Gulak & Gallagher backed down at the mention of AOP. Gulak said that he was looking to make it a more positive working environment when he won the title. Noam Dar did an interview about Lio Rush. He said that Rush brags about being in WWE at 23, but he was in WWE when he was 22 and on the main roster. This set up a match for next week. Gallagher & Gulak beat Alexander & Tozawa in 12:38. They worked on Tozawa early. Tozawa gave Gulak a DDT and Gulak landed at a bad angle. The crowd wasn’t much into this which sounds like a broken record. But the wrestling was good. Tozawa hit a missile dropkick, a head kick and a tope on Gallagher. He went up for a senton but Gulak pulled Gallagher out of the ring so Tozawa missed. Gulak threw Alexander int the post and Gallagher head-butted Tozawa, tagged Gulak who put the Gu lock on Tozawa for the submission. Maverick then announced based on his performance that Gulak would get a title match with Alexander next week. Bryan beat Miz in the dark match. Very little to the match. Miz apologized to Bryan for what happened to Brie Bella and got some heat running down Lafayette. Bryan then attacked Miz and won quickly with the running knee to end the show
701
702The NXT outside of Florida tour opened on 9/6 in Buffalo, a show which saw both Harper and Breeze on it. The show sold out the Buffalo Riverworks, which is the same building ROH runs when it comes to Buffalo. Heavy Machinery beat Wesley Blake & Jaxson Ryker. Nikki Cross & Dakota Kai beat Aliyah & Vanessa Borne. Marcel Barthel cut a heel promo. Fans didn’t know who he was since he’s not a TV regular, but he got good heat by the time he was over. Breeze came to the ring and pinned Barthel in a quick match with the beauty shot. Dominik Dijakovic beat Dan Matha in seconds after Matha insulted the Buffalo Bills. After the match, Lars Sullivan came out and gave Matha two freak accidents. The War Raiders beat tag champs Roderick Strong & Kyle O’Reilly via DQ when O’Reilly was being pinned and Strong hit the ref to save the title. This was O’Reilly’s first match back since Takeover. The crowd cheered both teams. Ricochet pinned Harper to retain the North American title. Harper got the biggest reaction on the show. The crowd was split during this match Harper worked as a babyface and shook Ricochet’s hand after the match. Shayna Baszler beat Candice LeRae. The crowd didn’t react to this match as they were following a match that was very over, and by that point, the crowd was waiting for the main event. When a fan heckled Baszler saying that she was only in WWE because of Rousey, the crowd turned on the fan, which was the most reaction the match ever got. Baszler won with the choke. The main event was a three-way where Tommaso Ciampa won over both Adam Cole and Johnny Gargano. The match was said to have been great. After the match, the Undisputed Era all beat down on Gargano and Ciampa left the ring. The War Raiders made the save
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7049/7 in Pittsburgh saw Heavy Machinery again beat Ryker & Blake when Ryker was pinned by Dozovic after the compactor, the double-team world’s strongest slam. Kai pinned Aliyah after running kicks in the corner. Breeze pinned Matha with the beauty shot. Breeze was over huge, as it almost always is when someone from the main roster, even if they are doing nothing on the main roster, comes in for an NXT show. Barthel came out for an interview and Sullivan came out and destroyed him immediately. Gargano beat Sullivan via DQ for shoving the referee. Sullivan attacked Gargano after the match, but Gargano made his own comeback and the crowd went crazy for him. Cross & LeRae beat Baszler & Borne when Baszler and Borne collided, then Baszler walked out on Borne and Cross pinned Borne after the swinging fisherman neckbreaker. Ciampa beat Dijakovic in a great match with a draping DDT. Dijakovic got over huge as a babyface in this match even though most of the crowd didn’t really react to him at first since he’s not pushed on TV. Main event saw Ricochet & War Raiders over Cole & Strong & O’Reilly when Ricochet pinned O’Reilly after the vertigo driver. Ricochet did a running flip dive off the concert stage onto everyone in a match highlight
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7069/8 in Warren, OH, saw Heavy Machinery beat Ryker & Blake. Cross & Kai beat Borne & Aliyah when Cross pinned Aliyah. Barthel was out getting heat when Sullivan came out and pinned him in 30 seconds with the freak accident. Dijakovic beat Matha. Fans chose this as the bathroom break. War Raiders beat Cole & Strong via DQ when Strong hit the ref to save the title. Ricochet pinned Breeze to retain the North American title in what was said to be the best thing on the show. Baszler beat LeRae. The crowd chanted really sexist things as Baszler. Ciampa beat Cole and Gargano to keep the title in the main event
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708The 9/9 show in Royal Oak, MI was the exact same show as Pittsburgh. That’s unusual since NXT usually mixes up the talent on every show so the talent gets more experience working with different people
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710The Florida loop was the lowest drawing weekend in years. They only did 100 fans on 9/6 in Crystal River, 150 on 9/7 in Daytona Beach and 200 on 9/8 in Cocoa. One Florida regular said that part of the reason was they announced nothing ahead of time as far as matches or stars. Since fans knew all the stars were
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712advertised on out of state shows and nobody was advertised on in-state shows, they just skipped is as these are all regular stops on the circuit and always draw well above these numbers
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714Crystal River opened with Brennan Williams over Mahabali Shera. MJ Jenkins & Jessie Elaban beat Reina Gonzalez & Kavita Devi via DQ. Luke Menzies beat Mansoor Al-Shehail. Mansoor is another new signee. He was one of the local Saudi heroes in the angle with the Daivaris at the Greatest Royal Rumble. He’s actually a California indie guy. Keith Lee beat Humberto Carrillo (Ultimo Ninja in Mexico). Rinku Singh beat Kona Reeves via count out. Lacey Evans beat Lacey Lane. Main event saw Fabian Aichner beat Raul Mendoza in a 2/3 fall match
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716Daytona saw Babatunde Aiyegbusi over Menzies. Williams beat Rocky. Taynari Conti beat Gonzalez. Aichner beat Carrillo. Nese beat Reeves. Io Shirai beat Bianca Belair. After the match, Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir attacked and laid out Shirai until Kacy Catanzaro made the save. Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch went to a time limit draw with The Street Profits. They asked for an overtime period and Lorcan & Burch won
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718Cocoa saw Singh beat Reeves. Lacey Evans beat Elaban. Williams beat Jeet Rama. Keith Lee beat Aichner. Aiyegbusi beat Rocky. Shafir & Duke beat Shirai & Catanzaro. Burch & Lorcan won the main event over Carrillo & Mendoza
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720The Raw crew opened on 9/7 in Birmingham, AL, before 4,000 fans. They also ran 9/8 in Mobile, AL. 9/9 in Biloxi, MS drew 4,500
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722Birmingham opened with Kayla Braxton hosting the show. She had been doing a very good job in this role on NXT. Corbin announced he would face Balor in the opener and beat him easily. Balor won via schoolboy in 9:10. Corbin attacked Balor after the match with a chair and then announced he was restarting this as a no DQ match. Corbin hit him with a chair and pinned him quickly with the End of Days. Not sure the need to do this at house shows when the entire scenario was already done on television. Alexander retained the cruiserweight title over Murphy with the lumbar check in 12:47. Roode & Gable beat Rawley & Mahal in 10:59 when Roode pinned Mahal with the Glorious DDT. McIntyre & Ziggler retained the tag titles in a three-way over The B Team and Wyatt & Matt Hardy. Ziggler pinned Matt after the combination Claymore kick and Zig Zag finish. Hardy left the ring to some applause and some of the fans figured it could be the last time he wrestles in the city. Owens pinned Ryder in 7:54 with a pop up power bomb. Ryder got little reaction. Owens was booed heavily after bringing up that his best friend Zayn had surgery in Birmingham and this was the worst town he’s ever been to. In a match with Dana Brooke as referee, Banks & Bayley & Natalya & Moon beat Morgan & Logan & Fox & Bliss in11:29 when Moon pinned Logan after the eclipse. Main event saw Reigns over Strowman via DQ in a Universal title match in 9:23. It started out 70 percent for Reigns and 30 percent for Strowman, but as the match went on, with Strowman working heel, it was closer to 90 percent for Reigns. If nothing else, the association with Ziggler & McIntyre had worked in getting Strowman booed, because the last time he was a heel working with Reigns, he got cheered a lot. Reigns hit the Superman punch and set up the spear, when McIntyre & Ziggler hit the ring. Strowman, doing a Bubba Ray Dudley imitation, told McIntyre to get the table. Then the Shield entrance music played. Rollins & Ambrose didn’t even work on the undercard and made the save. The Shield cleaned house and it ended with Ziggler taking the Shield power bomb onto a table. In this case, the table didn’t break. So they stopped for a second. Instead of doing it again on that table, they got a second table and did the power bomb successfully on that one
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724Mobile the next night was the same show. Biloxi was the same show as well
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726Smackdown opened on 9/8 in Amarillo. Orton only worked the 9/10 show and Bryan was off the weekend. Joe worked the main event in Amarillo and was at TV, but didn’t work the other shows, so Miz was moved into the main event position on those shows and they shook things up. Amarillo had a three-way for the tag titles with New Day retaining over Sanity and Usos. Anderson pinned Harper. Rusev & Lana beat Almas & Vega with the same double accolade submission. Miz pinned R-Truth. Charlotte beat Carmella with the figure eight to keep the women’s title. Asuka & Naomi beat Rose & Deville with a double finish over Asuka over Rose with the Asuka lock and Naomi over Deville with the rear view. Nakamura pinned Jeff Hardy to keep the U.S. belt. Styles pinned Joe in the WWE title main event
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7289/9 in Lubbock was mostly the same. With Joe out of action, Miz moved to the main event. Miz did a lot of early stalling to get heat with Miz working on the leg but Styles came back with the phenomenal forearm for the win. So R-Truth, who had wrestled Miz was moved to Harper and pinned him with a roll-up. Anderson, who had wrestled Harper, moved to the tag title match making it a four-way with New Day over Gallows & Anderson, Sanity and Usos
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730. 9/10 in Beaumont, TX was the same show except Orton was added and the U.S. title match was made a three-way with Nakamura over Orton and Hardy. The finish saw Orton give Hardy the RKO and then Nakamura gave Orton the Kinshasa, and Nakamura pinned Hardy. Kingston & Woods worked as the New Day while Young & Dain worked as Sanity. The show also drew 750 fans, maybe the smallest main roster crowd of the year.
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