Hello, everyone, and welcome once more to your site, the People's Wrestling Website. All the senior staff members apologize regarding the lack of updates, but we're back to normal today and as usual, providing nothing short of the best news and rumors from around the world of wrestling. Let's drop the fluff and get straight to the news.
As is par for the course, the midweek wrestling television programs were taped last night by the WWF and WCW. Frankly, after perusing the taping results, my initial impression is...bleh. They seem rather lackluster, but I pray my thoughts are off-base and that both shows are excellent. We shall see. You can find the WWF SmackDown!/HeAT taping spoilers HERE, and the WCW Thunder/WorldWide spoilers HERE. Enjoy.
Big news this midweek came from the television ratings. RAW is WAR dropped considerably from its near-record setting high last week, and descended to a disappointing 6.2 composite rating. WCW Monday Nitro had a slight gain, rising from 2.5 last week to a 2.8 composite rating. I think this just shows how many fans of The Rock there are of the WWF, and just how detrimental it would be to the WWF it would be were they to lose him for any extended period of time. RAW was, on the whole, a mediocre show, attempting to have Chris Jericho carry the federation on his back, running a gauntlet and ultimately losing his Intercontinental title to Chris Benoit. Nitro was a better show, but nothing spectacular, and viewer awareness isn't going to rise if Russo & Company don't start putting out better television programming.
On Monday afternoon, Trish Stratus's webpage stated that she would be appearing nude on RAW is WAR that night. On Gettin' RAW on WWF.com, it was revealed that the site was hacked and the news was proliferated throughout the internet. While I'm not entirely convinced it wasn't an intentional ratings ploy, I'll take Swineford's word for it.
SKY Box Office edited parts of the Arm Wrestling Challenge between The Kat and Terri on the Insurrection Pay-Per-View replay. When Terri Runnels took off her shorts revealing a thong bottom, they edited it to the point when The Kat took a break to get her arm massaged. Yet another case of censorship by the wonderful United Kingdom media.
WWF.com stated that the Run DMC "D-Generation X" music video will premiere on MTV this coming Monday at 11:15 AM.
Very early estimates on the Backlash PPV on 4/30 are that it did 625,000 buys. Some estimates have ranged from 600,000 to 650,000, which would be about a 1.65 buy rate. I'm not sure, but if I recall correctly, that is a new record for a non-Big Five (Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, KOTR, SummerSlam, Survivor Series) Pay-Per-View. In other PPV news, professional wrestling accounted for 77% of all PPV revenue in the year of 1999. Eat your heart out, Lennox Lewis.
Last night, IGN64 posted some of the biggest news in a while, regarding wrestling videogames. The next Nintendo 64 game, entitled WWF No Mercy, will be developed by its AKI/Asmik team, and will continue using the same engine which has churned out WCW vs. nWo World Tour, WCW/nWo Revenge, and WWF WrestleMania 2000. The big news, however, is that the game will feature the first-ever Ladder Match in a wrestling game. We'll see more as E3 unfolds, beginning tomorrow. More on that later.
The Blue Meanie posted on his website that he was leaving the WWF's Memphis Championship Wrestling organization, recently. Not sure what that means, if he's been "called up" from the minors, so to speak, or if he's quit.
The Big Red Machine, Kane, will be throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at tonight's Cincinnati Reds game, at Cinergy Field. Kane should be returning to WWF television very, very soon, possibly at Judgment Day with The Undertaker.
It's been confirmed that Kid Rock will be appearing on an upcoming installment of RAW is WAR. I dunno about this one. Do the names Chad Brock, KISS, Megadeth, and Master P ring a bell? They should, as they were all musical acts booked by Eric Bischoff during WCW's financially and creatively disastrous year of 1999. Time will tell.
Moving on to World Championship Wrestling...there were relatively no injuries during Sunday's Slamboree Pay-Per-View. The only one was a broken tooth, received by Scott Steiner.
In the big WCW news for today, Buff Bagwell was arrested last night on charges of assault. Bagwell was arrested after he allegedly hit an employee of WCW as the crewmember was carrying equipment. The crewman was attempting to pass through a doorway that Buff and some other wrestlers were blocking, and after some verbal exchanges, Bagwell nailed him with his fist. No word yet on whether or not formal charges will be filed, but a legal situation such as this will not bode well for Bagwell's future in WCW. As I recall, he just signed a new 3-year deal with WCW in March.
Not sure where to put this, so I guess I'll put it in the WCW section...On-again, off-again WCW employee Randy Savage will be appearing on five upcoming episodes of WSL RollerJam. The shows, which will air this fall according to a press release, will be taped this Friday and Saturday.
Shane Helms of 3-Count will be having surgery on his nose on Friday. Hope to see him back in action soon, as Helms is simply one of the most entertaining athletes in WCW, by far.
Diamond Dallas Page will be appearing on CBS's "The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn" tonight. I believe it's a rerun of his earlier appearance on the show.
Goldberg will be sitting courtside tonight at the Los Angeles Lakers game.
According to WCW Live!, the name of Crowbar's finishing move will be revealed tonight on WCW Thunder.
The one year anniversary party of the Nitro Grill will be two Sundays from now, May 28. Many big-time names are being brought in for the event, since Nitro the next night is in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Nitro Grill has been floundering as of late, not unlike WWF New York.
In ECW news..the lawsuit filed by Raymond Schweitzer was dismissed by a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania jury on Monday after the jury returned from deliberations with a vote of 7 to 1 against the lawsuit. He named in the lawsuit, Extreme Championship Wrestling, Terry Funk, Mick Foley, Paul Heyman, Tod Gordon and other corporations.
The lawsuit came from a incident at the ECW Arena in October 1995 when a rag that was placed on fire, fell off a chair that it had been rapped around. When the chair was swung, the rag flew off and fell on Terry Funk. Raymond Schweitzer was sitting front row during the show and now claims that he has suffered flashbacks from the incident. One flashback occured while riding a motorcycle that caused him to get into an accident.
Lawyers for ECW and other parties claimed that Schweitzer placed himself into harm's way by leaning over the guardrail and trying to pat out the fire. Dave Scherer notes that Schweitzer was known for getting into the matches more physically than others and gained the nickname "Wannabe."
ECW on TNN drew only a 0.8 rating last Friday night, once again down substantially from its recent peak. I'd blame the NBA Playoffs once again. My prediction? Lakers/Knicks in The Finals, Lakers in six.
As I said earlier, we can be expecting to see a LOT of wrestling videogame news coming from the floor of the Electronics Entertainment Expo, or E3 as many fans know it. E3 takes place from May 11th-13th in Los Angeles, and I've just finished haranguing with two friends of mine - Erik Lombadier of Electronics Boutique in Fox Valley, and Peter Watkins of Electronics Boutique in Lombard, and I will be getting live email updates from the floor of the show as they find them. E3 is the show where all of the big developers and publishers show off their upcoming titles, and wrestling games have historically had a large presence there. Mick Foley will be appearing this year at E3, coincidentally. Anyway, I'll be posting these updates as I receive them on TPWW Games (which WILL be renovated soon, damn the delays) and I'll overview some of the news in my Friday report.
I'm gonna close out this report. I'll see you all on Friday, and enjoy WCW Thunder and WWF SmackDown!. Have a great day, everybody.
Tim Brechlin
Tim@tpww.net