Wrestling Observer Flashback–10.21.91

Previously on the Flashback… http://blogofdoom.com/index.php/2017/01/16/wrestling-observer-flashback-10-14-91/

Remember a couple of weeks ago when Eddie Gilbert passed along a message to Jim Herd to “kiss his ass”?  Well, he expands on that a little bit this week.

– So this thing with the rumored Luger-Lawler title match is just getting completely out of hand now.  After the whole thing was dropped, with Jarrett making accusations that Eddie Gilbert blabbed the storyline to everyone, Eddie went on a radio show and VENTED.  (I am HEAVILY paraphrasing here, but the full version is CLASSIC.)  He bitched that Jim Herd hired both he and Cactus after the Philly show, with Jack promised a big run against Sting and Eddie promised a match against Brian Pillman at the Clash, and then Jim Ross immediately reneged and changed the Pillman match to Richard Morton instead.  Eddie had wanted to play heel and they were killing his artistic integrity.  Gilbert claims that it’s no secret both Lawler and Jarrett hate Dangerously (them and many other people in the business at that point) and Gilbert innocently asked Lawler if it was true that he’d be wrestling Lex Luger in Memphis.  From that, the WCW brass somehow got the CRAZY idea that it had been leaked from Dangerously because they’re CRAZY, and so Gilbert claims that Paul was “suspended for talking to Eddie Gilbert”. 

– Eddie went on to say that if they spent as much time booking the details of their shows as they do worrying about stupid shit like this, they’d be a lot more successful.  (But not as much fun to bash after the fact.)  So anyway, Gilbert’s theory is that LAWLER is the one who actually blabbed, because he didn’t want to do the job to Luger, and they just used Dangerously as the scapegoat.  Furthermore, Jim Herd was only hired in the first place because Jack Petrik had worked with him before and wanted a friend running WCW, regardless of how little talent for running a wrestling company he had.  You wouldn’t see this kind of nonsense happening in the WWF!  (He’s not wrong.)  Really, Herd needs to hire someone like Bill Watts to run the company and get it out of the red, someone who can see the new generation of talent.  (Well, not quite..)

(Actually, because Dave was copying Gilbert’s radio show interview, I’m going to break one of my own rules and copy it here as well, which is something I tend to avoid doing, but Eddie’s rant is so fantastic my paraphrasing can’t really do it justice.  So here you go…)

“To say that I’m outraged is just a small way of putting my feelings on WCW, Jim Herd, a man that I had a lot of respect for until this week and looked up to a lot in the business in Jerry Lawler and Jerry Jarrett. I think that the only thing Paul E. Dangerously is guilty of at this point in time is being my friend. I think WCW has taken it out on Paul because of his friendship with me. Whatever this thing they have toward me, I don’t understand. When Cactus Jack and myself were supposed to start up together, and to be very honest it was because of our matches in Philadelphia, everything was fine. Cactus was supposed to be starting back. He was supposed to be getting this big push against Sting. Then all of a sudden, two weeks before I was supposed to start, they called me up, Magnum T.A. called me up and tells me I’ll be starting there and I’ll be wrestling Brian Pillman at the Clash of Champions in a lightheavyweight title tournament match. I was very happy. A week later, they have their guy Jim Ross call me, to give me this lecture, like General George Patton or something. He told me that I’d be wrestling Ricky Morton. I knew then what they were doing was giving me a job, but tying my hands so I really couldn’t do what I do best. Now, the situation has happened, it’s no secret that Jerry Lawler and Jerry Jarrett do not care for Paul E. Dangerously. The only thing that I knew was that WCW was going to be doing a television taping in Memphis. I called Jerry Lawler and I was talking to him about my bookings in Memphis and what we were supposed to be doing there. I asked him, “Are you going to be wrestling Lex Luger in Memphis at the WCW taping?” He said, “How do you know this.” I said, “Well, I’ve got sources and I found out.” He got all upset and he said, “Well, whoever told you needs to be fired.” From that, somehow, it got back that Jerry Jarrett supposedly and allegedly called Jim Herd and called for the firing of Paul E. Dangerously. How Paul E.’s name, from me talking to Lawler, came up between Jerry Jarrett and Jim Herd, the only thing I can think of is that either someone between the time I talked to Jerry Lawler, then Jerry Lawler called Jerry Jarrett all upset saying he didn’t want to do the thing now, which I still didn’t know what the thing was that they were going to do, myself. I didn’t know Jerry Lawler was going to challenge Lex Luger at the WCW taping. I didn’t know how they were going to get into it. It was still a secret. Jerry Jarrett then calls up and somehow Paul E. takes the rap for it. All the heat was put on Paul E. Paul E. gets called in without them (WCW) even checking on the story, without them even having proof that Paul E. had done anything wrong, suspended him for talking to Eddie Gilbert. If that had been true, nothing had been done wrong. The only thing I had done was talk to Jerry Lawler and ask him if there’s going to be a WCW taping in Memphis. He said, “Yes,” got all upset, and called the whole thing off.

I’m really sick of tired of WCW and the things they’re doing. If they would put as much energy into the direction their headed, booking their TVs, booking their house shows as they do in picking out small little things like this, they’d be very successful. But they don’t do that. They’re very personal about things they do. There were very personal feelings involved in the Ric Flair situation when he left there. It doesn’t matter what differences I’ve ever had with Ric Flair personally or professionally. I still respect the man as a wrestler. But they got rid of him over personal feelings between himself and Dusty Rhodes, I feel, and I think that’s the popular feeling with everyone, and Jim Herd’s feelings toward him. The situation with me throughout the past three years with those people has been very personal. It has not been business. If it had been, I’d have been brought back as a heel and been used the right way. Paul E. Dangerously being suspended was very personal. It was not a business decision. This man has a lot of talent. I don’t see how they could even think of sending him home without even checking out the story. When you talk about Jim Ross, I have to watch my steps here. I think that if there was an internal investigation, they need to look at people like him. I think he has used other people as scapegoats. I think that he has gotten out of situations in the past by using other people to take the downfall. He’s also cost, I think, in a way, a lot of people’s future’s there. I talked to Lawler and I wanted to make sure he knew that Jim Ross had it on his Saturday night hotline. I think Jim Ross should be reprimanded as well. Nothing is ever talked about Jim Ross bad. No one ever questions what he does. I think that people should start doing that.

What Jerry Lawler actually did is that he’s actually the one who got the whole story out. As this past week has gone by, and I’ve heard different conflicting reports and stories out of Memphis from different people who have talked to Jerry Lawler is that he wanted from the start to back out of it. I think that eventually he knew he was going to be a beaten man by Lex Luger for a world title. And he wouldn’t be, and I’ve heard these words that came out of there that supposedly, he said, that he wouldn’t be the king of anything if he lost to Lex Luger. I also had heard that supposedly Jerry Jarrett may be waiting to see what happens with Jim Herd’s job come the first of the year. All of a sudden this starts making a lot more sense to me. All of a sudden Jerry Lawler is finding a reason to back out of the situation by trying to put it on somebody else’s shoulders. Jerry Lawler and Jerry Jarrett don’t like Paul E. Dangerously at all. If Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler decided that’s who they wanted to take the rap, or if it was someone in the WCW office who decided that they wanted Paul E. to take the rap, it was wrong. It’s not business. It’s the inner politics of the business. You don’t ever hear, and you won’t ever hear of something like this happening in the WWF with Vince McMahon. I’m not kissing anyone’s rear end here. I’m stating a plain fact. If you read Wade Keller’s Torch, Dave Meltzer’s Observer, or Steve Beverly’s Matwatch, when you read about the WWF you never hear, see or read about internal problems with any of their announcers, any of their assistant bookers, or anyone in their office because it’s run the right way. They’re all worried about the direction of the company. They’re not worried about cutting each others throat. In the WCW office, everyone there is after each other’s throat. In that steering committee now, the reason why that committee won’t work now, the reason why it hasn’t worked in the past, is because everyone in the committee wants to get ahead of each other. They’re not worried about the direction of WCW and they won’t ever be worried about it.

I’m very serious about this. The reason Jack Petrik hired Jim Herd wasn’t for any other reason but for being his close friend. He was someone he could trust to run a company for him. He’d been the director of a wrestling show before. That was it. That was his only knowledge of the wrestling business. What I’m going to call for because we need to do it now, we can’t wait any longer, we need a wrestling person. I don’t care if it’s Bill Watts. I don’t care if it’s even Jimmy Crockett. We need a wrestling person running the company. It’s like no other business. You can’t make any decisions about a wrestling company unless you know wrestling. You can’t be swayed because that has happened hundreds of times with Jim Herd. Back in my time in the committee when I was in there, when we would make a decision, we would leave there, then someone would get around Jim Herd and maybe they would take him out for a couple of drinks and have him go back on the decision. He didn’t know the decision he was making because he didn’t know the wrestling business. To run that company, you need a person at the head of it who knows wrestling who can make the decisions where everyone can respect that person. I don’t care who it is, as long as they’re a wrestling person. What I’m going to call for is for Jack Petrik at the first of the year when Jim Herd’s contract is up to decide if he wants a friend to run that company and watch it go downhill. Or does he want to hire a man, like Bill Watts, or anyone else, to run the company and get it out of the red. And get it back to making money and get people to come out to the matches again. And the boys will be proud of the job they’re doing and quit reading all these newsletters where they report the house shows are so bad, and the ratings are bad, and the TV shows are bad. We need something done now. I’ve sat back on this thing. We’ve had to go through all the old bookers. They’re not looking at the new generation of the business we’re in. They don’t respect the newsletters. They don’t respect the young generation. We need it done now or there isn’t going to be a WCW around.

I hadn’t talked to Paul E. Dangerously for three or four weeks because of his schedule and my schedule before this situation even happened. I don’t want to cause anything bad to happen to him. I think a lot of what happened to him is because of his friendship with me and that’s what really puts me on the edge about this situation. It’s what’s caused me to speak out.”

– WCW’s official stance is that the suspension of Dangerously was for “philosophical differences, pending a review”.  Paul’s legal team immediately jumped on that one, stating that there’s no differences and no valid grounds to break the contract and he will be suing them immediately.

– Jerry Jarrett did an interview in response and said that Gilbert was lying about everything.

– OK, so the angle, if it had happened, would have seen WCW doing a taping on 11/11 in Memphis, where a tournament would be announced to crown a new NWA World champion. Flair is reportedly open to selling the belt back to WCW for $50,200, which would include the original $25K deposit plus interest and such.  Lawler would win the tournament and the belt, which would set up a unification match against Luger sometime early in the new year to steal the thunder from Flair v. Hogan, and Luger would win that.  As Dave points out, taking this deal would be completely not beneficial to Lawler, because he’d be going out and jobbing to Luger and there’s no chance of him getting that win back.  So it’s likely that Lawler or Jarrett is just scapegoating Gilbert so they can back out of the deal.  In fact, due to the logistics of WCW, Dangerously probably COULDN’T have known about the angle in advance.  Regardless, he was blamed for the leak, and Jim Herd also gave him flak for his sub-par announcing job, calling him “nothing but a self-promoter”.  (He’s not wrong.) 

– As for Herd, Dave doesn’t know his fate when his contract expires, but he hasn’t heard about WCW looking for a replacement at any point.  But after Herd handed Vince McMahon a Wrestlemania main event on a silver platter (TWICE!  Sid and then Flair!) Jack Petrik should have acted and made “the necessary changes”.

– OK, back to steroids, because we haven’t heard enough about THAT subject already.  Hulk was on CBS This Morning, once again back to telling “the big lie” about steroid use and drug testing in the WWF, to the point where he’s almost setting himself up to the scapegoat if things go south for Vince McMahon.  Basically he was grandstanding and talking about how the WWF drug testing is “superior” to the NFL and other sports, which Dave notes is ridiculous because it’s been months and they haven’t actually tested ONE PERSON for steroids in that time. 

– Meanwhile, all the controversy isn’t selling tickets for Suburban Commando, as it’s a huge disappointment thus far.  The movie opened in 7th place with $1.9 million, and then fell to $1.1 million in the second week.  Break-even is somewhere between $10-20 million, and the film has zero chance of making it there.  Basically, without the WWF machine behind the movie, it has revealed Hogan to be not the star they thought him to be. 

– It’s sounding like Scott Steiner will work Halloween Havoc, but won’t be doing much.  He’ll return for real on 11/20, but will be false advertised as appearing in tag team matches on the road against the Enforcers and subbed out when the show starts. 

– Sid Justice was injured and did something to his bicep, so he’s out for a long while and will be replaced by Randy Savage on the road for the moment.  This puts Savage in an incredible position of bargaining strength now, since he doesn’t want to come back full-time but they desperately need him.

– Oh, speaking of Sid, it’s time for…

– I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for these to get to this point.

– So Sid walks into a bar in Atlanta, where several WCW wrestlers are having drinks.  (NOW do you know where we’re going?) He has words with Mike Graham and everyone’s pissed off, because Sid won’t shut up about how great the WWF is and how messed up WCW is.  So Sid is yapping at Graham and a fight looks imminent, at which point he turns his attention to Brian Pillman for some reason and starts in on HIM as well. There was apparently some pent up hostility from Sid over being asked to do a program with Pillman around the time of the WarGames when he felt like “little guys” shouldn’t mix with “big guys”.  So Pilllman is NOT the guy to back down and he gets in Sid’s face and is ready to fuck him up, so Sid suddenly pulls off his shirt and shows his injured bicep to stress how he’s not in condition to fight, then leaves the bar to apparently end the hostilities.  But then, in the moment that would define him for years to come, he comes running back in with a SQUEEGEE (the thing you clean car windows with, Dave clarifies, just so there’s no doubt here), brandishing it like a weapon until finally he was pulled off and hauled out of the bar, lest he shine Pillman’s windows or something. 

– It goes without saying that Brian Pillman is currently the biggest hero in the WCW locker room.  (The Arn story MIGHT be better in some respects, but this was the original and classic one that turned him into a laughingstock and killed his badass image with smart fans for good, so I’d say it wins.) 

– Next up on the “Because WCW” list of stupidity, apparently Starrcade is being advertised to cable companies as something called “Battle Brawl”, which will be a bunch of blind-draw tag teams competing for some nebulous prize, which Dave thinks is “suicidal”.  Running a PPV with no matches announced is ridiculous, especially when you’re asking people to pay $20 for it.  (To this day I don’t understand the thinking there, either.) 

– In yet another sad ending to a wrestler’s life, Steve Schummann (aka Lance Idol from Calgary, who we discussed a few months back as the guy who faked his suicide to avoid paying his wrestlers) finally died from his fourth heart attack at the age of 32.  He had cut out drinking and drugs and red meat after the heart attack that he suffered before the summer (when we last discussed him) but he went back to the cocaine and booze and this time wasn’t faking it.

– Yoshihiro Asai has signed a full-time contract with EMLL, jumping from UWA, and will be a masked wrestler called “The Ultimate Dragon”.

– After a strong start, Global is dropping quickly in terms of live attendance at the Sportatorium, and their main TV show outside of ESPN was moved and now goes head-to-head with World Championship Wrestling on Saturday, which is not good for them.

– Eddie Gilbert, after winning the GWF TV title tournament, is already back in Memphis doing title v. title matches with Jerry Lawler that of course end up in a DQ.

– A wrestler in Wichita, KS, site of recent pro-life protests, decided to give himself a new gimmick of “Dr. Fetus, The Abortionist”.  (That’s quite the specific profession for a wrestler.  Wonder if that would fly in the WWF?)

– (Eh, forget I said anything.) 

– Main event of the Clash on 11/19 is likely Rick Steiner v. Lex Luger for the WCW title. 

– Ranger Ross and the NAACP are bitching about Todd Champion getting the spot in the Patriots, because he’s portraying a military man and Ross was a legit military guy but didn’t get the spot because he’s black or whatever. 

– WCW wrestlers will participate in a softball game in Chattanooga the day before Halloween Havoc.  (Oh I bet NOW Sid is regretting not signing with WCW!) 

– The York Foundation won the six-man titles from Dustin Rhodes & Tom Zenk & Big Josh on 10/8, for those who still care about those titles.  (Not WCW, who retired the belts a month later.) 

– WCW used Mike George under a mask to do 30 second jobs to Van Hammer at house shows, which George remarked was the most humiliating thing to happen to him in 23 years as a wrestler.  (But at least he didn’t try to defend himself with a squeegee.) 

– As expected, after all the brouhaha that WCW made about getting into St. Louis’s arena and breaking the WWF’s exclusivity, they drew shit numbers and are being kicked out of the building in favor of the WWF again.  This pretty much banishes them from the city in general, because there’s nowhere else to book.  The blame is going to Jim Herd, like everything else in 1991, but really it’s Dusty’s fault.

– People backstage are not taking Van Hammer’s insane push very well, so someone greased up his guitar strap with Vaseline before a show and when he was swinging his guitar around, it slipped and hit him in the face, giving him a black eye.  He’s also got heat with management for changing his plane tickets, twice, in the last week and missing shows as a result.  And because he travels with Johnny B. Badd, that also caused to Badd to no-show as well. 

– Sapphire was backstage for the WCW show in St. Louis, and she’s not looking well. 

– 10/13 at the Greensboro Coliseum drew 500 fans, an all-time low in the 32 year history of the building.  (Dusty Rhodes working his magic!) 

– If Rick Rude signs, he’ll be the WCW Halloween Phantom at Havoc 91.

– Owen Hart will be coming back to the WWF to team with Neidhart as the Hart Foundation, more than likely.

– Konnan should be debuting next week in the Max Moon gimmick.

– The Rockers are still planning on leaving for WCW, but they’re booked through December on house shows, so who knows.

– WCW tried to get a restraining order to prevent Ric Flair from calling himself the World heavyweight champion on TV, because he’s not actually World champion with any sanctioning body.  The case was thrown out immediately. 

– Although house shows are generally strong for the WWF, ratings on Prime Time continue to plummet, and they don’t have any viable excuses left.

– And finally, Davey Boy Smith did an angle on the weekend where he powerslammed Slick, which is Slick’s farewell to the company.  (Turn out the lights, the party’s over!)