|
Issue # 348
Date:
Monday October 11th, 1999 2:17 pm
The Wrestling Booking Sheet
GORDON SOLIE SERIOUSLY ILL
Reported by Scott Teal
& Bob Ryder at:
http://www.1wrestling.com
"The Dean of Wrestling
Announcers", Gordon Solie, did not do the
play-by-play for 'The
Heroes of Wrestling' PPV because of a growth on
his vocal cords so big
that it has displaced his heart and lungs,
leading to his
hospitalization. Cards and letters can be sent to him
at:
1428 Stroud Ct, New Port
Richey FL 34655 or c/o Don and Dotty
Curtis at
1222 Clock St, Jacksonville
FL 32211.
Speaking as somebody
who always enjoyed his work, Mr. Solie will be in
my thoughts. Let's all
hope for a positive resolution to this one.
NEW JAPAN TOKYO DOME RESULTS
October 11th, 1999,
58,500 paid in attendance
Reported by Zach
Arnold at:
http://www.1wrestling.com
* Hiroyoshi Tenzan
defeated Tatsutoshi Goto in 11:01
* Kazuyuki Fujita
defeated Sean McCully in 2:35
* IWGP Jr. Tag Team
Champions Shinjiro Ohtani & Tatsuhito
Takaiwa defeated
Minoru Tanaka & Koji
Kanemoto in 18:32
* Jushin Liger
defeated KendoKa Shin in 16:08 to capture the IWGP
Junior Heavyweight
Championship
* Tatsumi Fujinami &
Shiro Koshinaka defeated Takashi Iizuka & Osamu
Kidoh in 9:31
* Kimo defeated Yuji
Nagata in 3:54 with a choke sleeper.
* Masahiro Chono & Don
Frye defeated Scott Norton & Satoshi Kojima in
17:01
* Gen'ichiro Tenryu
defeated Kensuke Sasaki in
14:49
* IWGP World
Heavyweight Champion Keiji Mutoh successfully retained his
title by defeated
Manabu Nakanishi in 20 minutes with a juji-gatame
(cross-arm scissors.)
* In the NWA World
Title Match main event, Naoya Ogawa TKO'd Shin'ya
Hashimoto in
13:10 seconds with the STO
finisher.
BEYOND THE
MAT
We forgot to include
the address to contact Universal Studios regarding
the 'Beyond The Mat'
documentary. Go to
http://www.universalstudios.co
m/fp/contact_form.html
to lobby for the
nationwide release of the film.
===========================================
WILL HULK HOGAN HELP
OR HINDER WCW'S RECOVERY?
By Steve Appy
With the internet on
fire with rumors concerning Hulk Hogan's future
with WCW, there are
very valid arguments for and against Hogan's role
in a possible WCW
recovery. Despite being the biggest American
wrestling star of his
generation, Hogan has not been drawing the
numbers/money for over
a year. Name recognition does not translate
into dollars, the only
real yardstick in this business.
September's Fall Brawl
had the lowest buyrate in WCW's history (a
dismal 0.3). While the
lack of general interest in WCW's product was
the main cause, the
Hogan/Sting headline match still generated zero
interest. Hogan
programs with The Warrior & Kevin Nash were huge
disappointments as
well; his only relatively successful program of the
past year involved his
Superbrawl match against Ric Flair (I'll skip
the ironies in that
one).
Fans no longer want to
see
Hollywood, and while the
yellow & red clad
Hulkster is good for
nostalgia, this character no longer has the legs
to keep Hogan the
franchise star in a profitable promotion.
Does Hogan have any
future value to WCW? Yes, but not on his own
terms. Keep Hogan
strong; if you make him a complete job boy a victory
over him will be
meaningless. Put over Goldberg again strong. After
that, work a program
with Benoit that sees them trade victories, with
Benoit the ultimate
victor. If not Benoit, make it Bagwell. Or
Kidman. Although he
will not enjoy putting over a performer who is
under 6' feet tall,
demand it. If he refuses, let him leave. Don't
book him at all, and
learn a valuable lesson. Never give creative
control to anybody;
they will abuse the privilege, as well they should
if they are dealing
with management spineless enough to parcel it out.
I don't know what
Russo & Ferrara feel about Hogan; my hunch is that he
doesn't figure
prominently into their plans. If that is true, we will
probably see a flare
up of Hogan's knee injury, or maybe he'll just
walk. The true test of
Hogan's character (and we all have our own
judgment of it so far)
will be if his ego allows him to elevate the
future of this
industry. We should be in for an interesting few months
either way.
===========================================
THE WORLD FAMOUS IRON
SHEIK
Written by reader:
Bruce Mitchell (bmitchel)
For the record, there
was a day when ol' Kosrow (Iron Sheik) was a good
worker who threw a
great suplex. Of course that was around '79 or so.
-Old Man Bruce
===========================================
THE BIG SCHWAG ON G
vs. E
Written by reader: The
Big Schwag (TastyBear)
First off The Big
Schwag was wonderful last night portraying
Testicules on GvsE..
That guy I beat up wasn't that bad either..What
was his name ooohh
yeah Mankind. Let me tell you something, until you
have had Mr. Socco
Down Your Throat and experienced that pain....You
are not in the same
class as the Schwag.
Hopefully the WWF will
realize that Big Schwag is the next great thing
in the wrestling world
since puppies. Now back to the Heroes Of
Wrestling. It was slow
slow slow slow slow slow slow
slow..Thats all I
gotta say..OOOHH. Did anybody notice that Jake The
Snake didn't look like
he was there. Too bad for the fans. Well, you
already have had too
much of the Schwag for one week..Seeyah and thanks
for making The Big
Schwag the best and biggest pro wrestling manager
today…
===========================================
GIVING THE FANS WHAT
THEY WANT
Written by reader:
William (madspector)
A call for a smarter
world of wrestling
For those of you who
are always waving the "sports entertainment" fraud
or using the term
"giving fans want they want" this ones for you.
Instead of constantly
calling today's fans phony bandwagon jumpers or
exposing the Clown
King of
Connecticut (Vince McMahon
for those who
still worship him) I
though I would give some valid reasons on why
these things bother me
and if you are a fan, why they should bother
you. Here it goes…
"Giving fans what they
want" This term has been twisted around to mean
whatever the promoters
want it to. They'll tell you that 2
minute matches,
retarded long drawn out story lines, mud wrestling,
grown men talking to
their "socked" hands, and a host of other
goofiness associated
with today's wrestling is "what the fans want"
Why do I disagree with
this? Its simple, its called NOT LOWERING THE
SPORT TO
FIT THE FAN.
If you have cater to
what they have already admitted is the short
attention spans of the
fan base, then you targeted the wrong audience.
If you have to exclude
all but about a half hour of
Wrestling to please
your fans than you haven't really done anything
genuine as far as
wrestling fans are concerned. Tthe only thing that
they have really
succeeded in doing is distracting people who don't
care about matches,
who don't care about seeing the type of clinic that
Hart and Benoit put on
last Monday into watching their show.
You see, if you have
to change the sport so much that its not even
remotely close to the
product you started with, and in fact it ends up
being something of a
joke of itself, then everyone who calls themselves
a fan needs to
reevaluate just what they are a fan of. Don't lower the
sport to the fan,
bring the fan up to the sport, it has been and will
be around a lot longer
than we are.
===========================================
IN DEFENSE OF AUSTIN
Written by reader:
Derek (TBirdy2)
I just have a short
little blurb in rebuttal to the small article
written by JKASMULDER
on Austin.
Why is it that when
some people always complain about Austin's in-ring
work and ability they
seem to forget that the man suffered an almost
career ending injury
in the ring courtesy of the late Owen Hart.
People need to catch a
glimpse of how devastating that piledriver was,
and to see how much
heart Austin put forth in order to go on in that
match. People also
should watch Austin's first year of matches in the
WWF, even go a little
back to his ECW and WCW days to see that in fact
this man is a good
technical wrestler. His matches with Bret Hart were
excellent!!
I am betting that
these days, with Austin being the top draw in the
WWF, that senior
management instructs him to take it a little easy in
the ring. It is not
very often that a man like him comes around who can
be partially credited
with the resurgance of the popularity of
wrestling in the 90s.
Too keep moaning about Austin being one of the
worst in the ring when
we all know he suffered that neck injury just
doesn't make sense.
-Thanks,
Derek (TBirdy2)
===========================================
ABILITY
AND GREAT WORKERS
Written by reader:
Nick "the Stick" Delmenico (COaker12)
Since everyone has
been bashing every single wrestler's actual
wrestling ability, I
think its time to throw my two cents in. Steve
Austin USED to be a
good wrestler. Just watch his 1996 King of the
Ring match against
Marc Mero. It wasn't spectacular, but it was a good
match. Since his
character has changed since then, so has his in-ring
product. In '96 JR
called him "cold and calculating" and said Austin
was a great technical
wrestler, yada yada yada. But now he's just a
tough SOB who kicks
ass.
As for the Undertaker,
he was never spectacular, either, but I do think
that he is capable of
putting on a decent match. Four guys who could
always put on a
stellar match are Bret and Owen Hart, Chris Benoit, and
Shawn Michaels. Bret
vs. Owen at WrestleMania X was excellent, as was
Bret vs. Benoit on
Nitro, and HBK's ladder matches with Razor Ramon
were classics, too. To
end with Austin, his wrestling style changed
with his character,
plain and simple.
-Nick "the Stick"
Delmenico
===========================================
TELEVISED WRESTLING IN
CANADA
Written by reader:
anvil
Hi, I live in Canada
and we have a real problem here with our wrestling
programming and I was
hoping to get help from you and your readers.
The problem is by the
time we see RAW, usually on Monday night we have
already received the
newsletter so we do not have the opportunity to
see it live. If
something more "important" comes up IE golf, baseball
etc. we may or may not
get to see it at all or they put it on so late
nobody in there right
mind will stay up to watch it.
Now onto NITRO. The
situation with Nitro is ten times worse..... If we
are lucky we get to
see it Wednesday from 4:00 to 7:00 for the 3-hour
broadcast or Thursday
morning from 1:00am to 3:00am for a two hour
broadcast and with the
baseball playoffs. Nitro was a no-show last week
as it was on once
Thursday morning between 5:30am to 7:30am. That is
ridiculous!
TSN (The Sports Network) is
the network that carries WWF and WCW
programming in Canada
and I feel that they think wrestling has no fans
writing the network.
It does no good as all you get back is a standard
form letter; I'm am
not sure if a human even reads the e-mail
I have put up a
website at
http://browse.to/tsnsucks or
http://tsnsucks.tripod.com or
http://user.fundy.net/anvil/noname3.htm with a quick
explanation of my
personal frustration
with
TSN and a message-board that
I would like
everybody to sign,
Canadians, Americans wherever you are from we need
all the support we can
get.
All I ask is if you
can mention the problem we are having and hopefully
post the url's so
people can show there support for the Canadian
wrestling fan. I
appreciate your time.
-John
webmaster
http://browse.to/tsnsucks
===========================================
The staff of The
Wrestling Booking Sheet
Editor: Steve
Appy
Columnist:
Mark George
Columnist: SamJerry
Columnist: Fritz
Capp
Columnist: Rick Phelps
Columnist: Cindy
Barnes
Columnist: Josh Hewitt
Columnist: Swami
Columnist: Tom Misnik
Columnist: Nate Pelley
Columnist: Robert Troy (Osiris)
Columnist:
Tom
Kirkbride
Columnist: Ryan S. Oaks
Columnist: Darren Kramer
Any submissions sent in by readers or columnists become the
property of The Wrestling Booking Sheet, and are subject to
editing due to grammar, spelling, or content. Any
information taken from The Wrestling Booking Sheet must be
credited properly, with our E-Mail address listed. We have
no problem if you want to use our stuff; just credit it
properly.
Copyright- Steve
Appy of The Wrestling Booking Sheet ©1998, 1999, 2000
"When you're young and you
pick up a guitar, it feels so powerful. It feels
like you pulled the sword from the stone. I used to believe
that it could save the world. But I don't really believe
that anymore." - Bruce Springsteen
"The greatest challenge of
adulthood is holding on to your idealism
after you lose your innocence and believing in the power of
the human
spirit after you come crashing into the limits of the real
adult
world." - Bruce Springsteen |
