Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUSLY:


1-7-2002	1-14-2002	1-21-2002	1-28-2002
2-4-2002	2-11-2002	2-18-2002	2-25-2002
3-4-2002	3-11-2002	3-18-2002	3-25-2002
4-1-2002	4-8-2002	4-15-2002	4-22-2002
4-29-2002	5-6-2002	5-13-2002	5-20-2002
5-27-2002	6-3-2002	6-10-2002	6-17-2002
6-24-2002	7-1-2002	7-8-2002	7-15-2002

WWE hit the reset button again with a new storyline assigning general managers to each brand, and it featured the shocking debut of Eric Bischoff. The new storyline will have Bischoff as the heel GM of Raw, while Stephanie McMahon will be the babyface GM of Smackdown, while Vince McMahon will take more of a backseat role and reduce his TV presence. Of course, just 5 weeks ago, Vince panicked and blew up the existing "feuding GMs" storyline between himself and Ric Flair, so now we're re-starting it with new people I guess. It feels like a last-ditch effort to save the brand extension, which has been an utter flop since day one, with no effort to differentiate the shows and only resulting in diluting the talent and falling ratings.
Bischoff and McMahon struck a secret deal about 10 days prior to his debut. Bischoff had talks with WWE last year about coming in during the original Invasion angle, except they only wanted him to do a one-off match with Vince for the PPV (which Vince would obviously have won), but Bischoff turned down that offer. But this time, they agreed to a more long-term deal. Bischoff didn't know he was going to debut on Raw until just a day or two prior, when Vince called him and told him to be there. The whole thing was kept secret and almost no one other than Vince himself knew about it. This is believed to be a unique contract, in which it's a short-term deal with the option to renew it for longer-term if the angle gets over. His only role is as a television character, it's strictly a performance contract. Bischoff is not going to be a part of management or creative.
When Bischoff walked across the screen in the backstage segment, almost everyone in the company was just as shocked as the viewers at home. Bischoff's debut saw him come out and hug Vince, which Dave thinks about is the dumbest possible way to introduce him. Sure, the Invasion angle is over but WCW's corpse isn't completely cold yet. It's only been a year or so. There is probably still plenty of money to be made in Bischoff as an outsider trying to destroy Vince McMahon and the WWE. But as always, that would involve Vince allowing himself or WWE to look vulnerable against an "outsider" and his utter refusal to do that is a big part of what tanked the Invasion. But that's par for the course. Bischoff cut a promo, giving the fake "WWE version" of the Monday Night Wars history (Dave points out multiple inaccuracies that WWE still clings on today, such as claiming they stole Hulk Hogan from WWF. Of course, Hulk had been in NJPW and hadn't worked for WWF for nearly a year at the time WCW signed him. Things like that.). Dave thinks it became one of those promos full of old stuff or inside references where so much of it is about things that the average fan doesn't know or care about. Dave thinks most of this audience in 2002 isn't familiar with Alundra Blayze, they don't know Raw used to be taped instead of live, and they don't care about 83-week TV ratings streaks (Dave also notes that Bischoff said 84 on this show, which is incorrect). And once again, it became one of those promos talking about how much WWE sucks lately, which is something you don't want to keep pointing out to the fans who are still watching because you just make them feel dumb for supporting something that even the people producing it knows sucks. Shit like that is partly what drove off WCW fans. Bischoff also gloated about almost putting WWE out of business, and to the many guys in the locker room who remember that vividly, it wasn't a joke or a storyline. Those are guys who really were fighting for their job against a guy who really was trying to put them out of business. Bischoff has tremendous heat from the locker room, with a lot of people who worked for him in WCW or who resent him from the WWE side....they don't want Bischoff there.

WATCH: Eric Bischoff debuts in on WWE Raw - 2002

This angle was going to take place regardless, but it's thought that the injury to Kevin Nash may have moved things up a couple of weeks because Vince once again panicked when his plans went down in flames. Nash had surgery last week. Because of the location of the tear, it's not quite as serious as the tear Triple H suffered last year. But Nash is also 10 years older. However, he has vowed to return, noting he doesn't want his career to end like that. With his age and his track record of injuries (this is his 22nd surgery, dating back to his collegiate basketball days), Dave isn't sure how much Nash will be able to offer if/when he returns next year. Also, while nobody wanted Nash to get hurt, the mood in the locker room was said to be much happier this week without him around, as the whole Nash/X-Pac/Shawn/Triple H group isn't very well liked these days (the more things change...)
Speaking of X-Pac, a weird situation with him this week led to him being suspended by WWE. The day of the Raw when Nash tore his quad, X-Pac missed his flight to the show. Why? Well, he was hospitalized earlier that day in Minneapolis. Again, you ask, why? No idea. Sounds like X-Pac sure would like to know also. He called WWE saying he was in the emergency room and had no idea how he got there. He left the ER and made new travel arrangements and he got to Raw 90 minutes before the show started. And then he went out there that night and worked his match (and Dave says looked more impressive than he had in a long time). However, after the match, he still couldn't explain to WWE officials how or why he was in the hospital earlier that day and so they were naturally suspicious. As a result, X-Pac has been suspended and removed from all upcoming bookings until they get a medical report on what the deal is. Dave says X-Pac has been acting out of control for weeks now and it's been well-documented (threatening to quit if match finishes weren't changed week after week). The feeling backstage was that as long as Nash was around to go to bat for him, he was basically protected, but no longer. With Hall fired, Nash out for probably a year, X-Pac suspended, and Hogan a babyface, the feeling within the company is that the NWO angle is dead. Shawn Michaels is still expected to appear at upcoming house shows and Raws in some new role, since much of the advertising for those shows was based around him appearing, but this is probably the end of the road for the NWO. (This kinda flew under the radar, but yeah, X-Pac never wrestled another match in WWE. The match where Nash tore his quad remains to this day the last time X-Pac ever worked a match in a WWE ring. He gets released soon after this and we all know in retrospect that he was dealing with some drug issues throughout this time).
Dave provides some details on Vince Russo's first (and only) creative meeting when he was briefly rehired by WWE last month. Russo apparently proposed a Raw vs. Smackdown feud that would eventually lead to reviving one of them as WCW and reigniting the WCW vs. WWE war. This time, they would have Eric Bischoff leading the WCW side, while Russo suggested Mick Foley as the leader of the WWE side. It was pretty much made clear to Russo during the meeting that if they were to do a Raw vs. Smackdown angle, it would be Stephanie in charge of the WWE side, not Foley, and sure enough, that's what is expected to happen (but without the whole WCW-revival part). Russo's idea was pretty much a combination of the 2001 Invasion angle and the 2000 WCW Bischoff/Russo angle. Dave notes that Russo wanted to essentially start from scratch again, strip everyone of their belts the way they did in 2000, and bring in Bret Hart and Goldberg to be involved as well.
A big recap of UFC's debut show in England, which featured rising star Frank Mir getting beat in what should have been an upset, but word is Mir didn't take the fight seriously and barely trained. As a result, he got murked in the first round. Also, while in England, some people in Tito Ortiz's camp got into a big drunken bar brawl with fellow fighter Lee Murray. Chuck Liddell was somewhere involved too. Anyway, long story short, some people tell the story that Murray knocked Ortiz out. Ortiz denies it (to this day, this is a famous MMA story and both men tell different versions, so depending on who you believe I guess).
TNA's 4th show ended with a strong angle that actually got them some national publicity. It involved Tennessee Titans players Frank Miller and Zach Piller hopping the rail and attacking Jeff Jarrett and some other wrestlers, resulting in a big brawl to end the show. So how much of it was real or shoot? Well, Russo is involved, so who knows. The official story is that Jarrett and Piller were supposed to shove each other from across the rail, but that's it. From NFL sources, Dave has actually heard the same thing. It was supposed to stop at a shoving confrontation, and then Malice would come pull Jarrett away. That was the story as Russo allegedly wrote it. But reportedly, Piller had been drinking and he ended up hopping the rail and straight up overpowered Jarrett like it was nothing and took him down. Whether this was a shoot or a work is still unknown, but it ended up getting them coverage on SportsCenter and Dave says it's possible it was a work that only a few people were in on. If it was a work, nobody else was in on it. Ron Harris, who works backstage, almost rushed to the ring to save Jarrett and Malice (who wasn't supposed to touch the football players) got involved and broke it up quickly. After the show, the players were backstage laughing and joking with Jarrett and Miller has been openly telling people it was all planned and they were told to make it look as real as possible, but it's still unknown if jumping the rail and tackling Jarrett was part of the plan or not. Several other Titans players were at ringside with them and saw it unfold, but mostly didn't get involved. So now after the publicity, TNA is trying to see if they can make a match out of this. Either way, it's starting to feel like an elaborate work that none of the rest of the roster was clued in on, which is exactly the kind of shit Russo used to do constantly in WCW that soured morale among the locker room, and for this to happen on Russo's first night in, with an angle he wrote, sure feels a little familiar.

WATCH: Tennessee Titans/TNA brawl

Puerto Rico's IWA had its most successful show in company history, drawing more than 11,000 fans (without a single WWE name on the card) to see the payoff of an angle with Savio Vega fighting for control of the company. WHO SAID SAVIO AIN'T A DRAW?!
On the other side of things, WWC has postponed its anniversary show from August to September in order to give themselves more time to build up big angles and storylines. Seems like something they probably should have been planning earlier? IWA has become the dominant promotion in Puerto Rico and WWC felt they didn't have the build-up necessary to do a big-money show right now. Especially after this IWA show did such big business, anything less would be an embarrassment.
Bischoff's debut on Raw was a pretty big hit. How big, you ask? During Bischoff's in-ring promo after his debut, Raw added nearly 1.1 million new viewers from the previous segment. Meaning that as soon as Bischoff walked across the screen backstage, tons of wrestling fans started calling their friends telling them, "Holy shit, Eric Bischoff is on Raw, turn it on!" The bad news is that as soon as Bischoff's promo was over, a lot of them tuned right back out, leading to a huge drop-off for the rest of the show. On the flip side, this week's Smackdown, featuring the heavily-hyped return of The Rock ended up being the 7th lowest rated episode of the show in history (4th if you don't count holidays). Rock's not a draw, bet he won't even be in the business in a couple more years.
Kenta Kobashi is finally back in the ring, wrestling undercard prelim tag matches for NOAH. Even though he's in tags and doing limited in-ring work, his knees are said to be already killing him and one of them totally locked up on him after one of his recent matches. But he still hasn't missed any dates.
NJPW announced that Kensuke Sasaki will face Pancrase star Minoru Suzuki at the Tokyo Dome in October. This match was actually planned for the big Tokyo Dome show back in May, but negotiations fell apart because Pancrase didn't like the idea of Suzuki doing a worked pro-wrestling match. Suzuki started his career in NJPW back in 1988 and was being groomed to be a big star for the company, but he quit and joined UWF because he preferred to work shoot-style matches. In 1993, he and a few other guys all started Pancrase, which he's been doing ever since. These days, Suzuki's days of fighting for them at a top level are over and he usually only competes against nobodies or in catch wrestling (grappling and submission only, no striking). Anyway, for those curious, this didn't happen. Not sure why yet, I haven't gotten that far, but Suzuki doesn't return to NJPW until 2003.
Goldberg is said to be leaning very much against going to WWE anytime soon and is instead eyeing his options of working big shows in Japan. He's contemplating an offer to make an appearance at Toryumon's show in Tokyo in September, but only an appearance. He doesn't plan to wrestle until later in the year (don't think the Toryumon appearance happens, but he does end up working a few matches in Japan here soon).
Bret Hart is still hoping to make his scheduled appearance for Jacques Rougeau's upcoming indie show in Montreal. If you recall, Rougeau's big show there last year drew over 11,000 fans and he's got himself another big stadium to fill this year and Bret was expected to be the biggest draw. Whether he'll be healthy enough to make the show, following his recent stroke, remains to be seen but he's determined to try. As of this week, Hart is able to lift his left arm over his head. Just a week ago, he couldn't move it at all. His grip strength is also coming back and he's able to walk short distances. His vocal cords were also damaged but have started strengthening again and he's able to talk again (though he can't cut a wrestling promo yet, Dave says, so he might not be doing much other than coming out and waving to the crowd if he does make it). He's still having some vision problems also, but not too bad all things considered.
Dave says that "no matter what you may hear," a lot of people involved in TNA behind the scenes are very unhappy about Vince Russo being brought in. He also says that a lot of people associate Russo and Ed Ferrara together, but they actually had a major falling out awhile back and hadn't been on speaking terms until now. When it became clear Russo was coming back, Ferrara reached out to Russo and the two sides made up. He goes on record saying for sure that neither Mike Tenay or Bill Behrens are happy about Russo's arrival, among others, but says everyone is being professional.
Notes from TNA Weekly PPV: Crowd of about 1,500, only about half paid. Dave says it was easily the best of the 4 shows they've had so far. About 85% of it was written and booked by Jerry Jarrett and the original writing team before Russo was hired, but Russo did make some changes. Dave says some people are beginning to get tired of Don West on commentary already and he definitely brings a ton of enthusiasm (but nothing else, Dave adds) to the table. During the Ken Shamrock vs. Omori match, the crowd was distracted by one of the cage dancers near the entrance who was apparently showing her ass to the crowd. Former WCW wrestler Crowbar (real name Chris Ford) worked a tag match under the name Tempest and Dave notes that when Ford worked a try-out match for WWE awhile back, he also signed over the name Crowbar to them when he did (guessing Dave is mistaken about this. He never used the name Crowbar in TNA, but he's been using it everywhere else ever since for the last 18 years). Brian Christopher is now going by his real name, Brian Lawler, and cut a promo on Jerry Lawler about being a bad father. It got a lot of heat but now they've made fans want to see a match that they can't deliver. K-Krush faced NASCAR driver Hermie Sadler and got DQ'd. Dave says Krush was absolutely awesome here, actually carrying Sadler to a watchable match. Sadler was awful of course, but the Gayda/Stratus match from Raw was light years worse, so hey, who cares? TNA tried to bring in Hermie's more famous older brother Elliott Sadler, but that fell through because Elliott has some type of affiliation with WWE, though Dave isn't sure what (I did the research and apparently Elliott drove a Summerslam-themed car during a race around this time, so I assume that's it).
More notes from TNA Weekly PPV, since this recap is huge and big, unbroken paragraphs suck: Mark and Jay Brisco worked a brief match until Malice ran in and destroyed everyone (Dave says this was a Russo addition to the show. Dave also says the Briscos will be great some day and notes that on this show, the announcers lied and said both of them are 18, when in fact, Mark Brisco is still 17 and therefore not even allowed to wrestle in many commission states). Former porn star and ECW valet Jasmine St. Claire debuted and gave Jeremy Borash a lap dance, took off her underwear, and was about to strip nude until a big angle stopped it. And yes, in case it wasn't obvious, this was another Russo addition. AJ Styles and Jerry Lynn are the tag team champions and ended up in a big brawl backstage. If you've been paying attention to the show the last 2 weeks, you would have recognized that they were doing a slow build with these two partners having friction, but Russo convinced Jarrett to hurry up and pull the trigger on the split, so here we are. Dave thinks this had no impact at all because it felt completely rushed, the story hadn't progressed far enough yet for these two to already be coming to blows. Another interview with the Dupps saying "shit" repeatedly was, yes, another Russo addition. Try not to cut yourself on all this edginess. Shamrock vs. NOAH star Takao Omori ended in a no contest because of politics. Shamrock was supposed to win clean, but then NOAH decided they didn't want Omori to do a job, so this is what we got. Dave thinks TNA should have said screw them then and just not used Omori because it's not like TNA's fanbase knows who the fuck he is anyway. Omori was said to have been spaced out all day beforehand and looked bad in the match. Crowd didn't care and they pumped in a ton of fake crowd noise for it. Jeff Jarrett ran in and took everyone out with chair shots, including "NWA rep" Harley Race, who ate a brutal unprotected chair shot to the head from Jeff and Dave thinks that's not good for anyone's brain, especially a guy pushing 60. Race was there basically to help Omori since Harley's small promotion in St. Louis has a relationship with NOAH. And finally, the 6-man X-Division #1 contenders match was excellent. Dave thinks WWE really missed the boat on Jerry Lynn and K-Krush. He admits Lynn probably couldn't have ever been a top guy in WWE or anything, but he makes everybody he wrestles look like a million bucks and guys like that are priceless to have on your roster. They also pumped a bunch of crowd noise in for this match, and at one point, the fake crowd noise loop stopped and there was a moment where it went from a loud roaring crowd to dead silence in a blink. Also, a fight in the stands distracted the crowd near the end. But great match otherwise. Show ended with the Titans players angle.
In other news, The Shane Twins have been working as the masked penis wrestlers The Johnsons in TNA but the penis aspect of it has been played down to almost nothing. Upcoming plans were for the team to unmask and revert back to the Shane Twins, but when Russo came aboard, that plan got scrapped and they will remain The Johnsons for now. Because dammit, Russo will get to make penis jokes on TV or he's going to die trying.
Many of the key names in TNA (Shamrock, AJ Styles, Jerry Lynn, Mike Tenay, among others) have now signed 1-year contracts. Scott Hall was rumored to have also signed a 1-year deal, but Hall is telling people it's not true and he's only committed for 4 more dates. Low-Ki is signed through the end of the year.
At the recent K-1 vs. PRIDE show, there was a huge upset when PRIDE fighter Quinton Jackson knocked out Cyril Abidi, one of the top kickboxers in the world. The "plan" was for Abidi to win and then go on to a bigger money match with Don Frye, but that's what happens when you try to plan things around a shoot.
And I'm sorry, I know this ain't an MMA recap, but this is too good: at the UFC press conference for the UK show this week, Dana White showed up with a bag filled with $250,000 in cash and challenged UK boxing promoter Frank Warren to put up any fighter in his stable and White would find a UFC fighter of the same weight to fight him, winner takes all the money. If you recall, Warren made some statements a few weeks back calling UFC fighters unskilled steroid freaks and claiming that his boxers could beat any of them in a real fight. So Dana showed up with a whole bag of cash, doing Dana things.
Notes from Raw: Vince came out to the NWO music and said that's the last time we'll ever hear it and that the NWO is dead, so as expected, that's it for that gimmick. Tommy Dreamer is back to his old ECW gimmick and is already 1000x more over than the jobber-eating-gross-stuff gimmick WWE gave him. There was a Coach/Booker T segment backstage which is when Eric Bischoff walked through the shot, leaving everybody with their mouths hanging open, and then his promo. Another hype video for Rey Mysterio debuting on Smackdown next week. Former WCW wrestler and recent developmental guy Johnny The Bull made his Raw debut winning the hardcore title, and Dave is baffled how he got the call up because he's one of the worst guys they have in developmental and is nowhere near ready. But it's all about how he looks. Undertaker & Lesnar beat RVD & Flair in the main event and afterward, Lesnar turned on Undertaker in a good angle, though Dave doesn't have high hopes for the inevitable match.

WATCH: Rey Mysterio debut vignette

Notes from Smackdown: it was a pretty bad show and for a pretty surprising reason. It was all built around Rock and he was awful. Rather than trying to sell a PPV, he came off like he was trying too hard to be a funny, "cool" guy and became a parody of himself. Dave is a huge Rock fan and thinks it was painful. He did a big in-ring promo segment with rapper Busta Rhymes that was just an elaborate plug for his new Halloween: Resurrection movie ("coming out in July?" Dave asks incredulously and, right, wtf?). Even Rock using Angle's own ankle lock against him at the end of the show looked hilariously fake and Dave has no interest in the Rock/Angle match at Vengeance after this show. Edge & Hogan defending the tag titles was a super heated match and Dave can't understand it. The live crowds are still nuclear hot for Hogan, but it's not translating at all into TV ratings or ticket sales. But man, the people who do buy tickets sure do love him. They seem to be slow-burning a Randy Orton heel turn. The Nidia segment at the buffet was great and Dave thinks they may have stumbled across a pretty great gimmick with her.

WATCH: The Rock & Busta Rhymes Smackdown segment

The crew got a little backstage pep talk before Raw this week, mostly given by the agents (John Laurinaitis, Arn Anderson, and Fit Finlay) as well as Triple H. In particular, Triple H talked about there being too many people in the locker room who think they deserve a push ahead of the newer guys because they've been there longer. He said too many guys are sitting back waiting for someone to give them a push rather than breaking out from the pack and earning the push. He said he got over on his own when management was trying to hold him down after the MSG curtain call incident. Said too many guys are being lazy, playing cards and playing video games backstage rather than watching the matches and learning. He said just because you've had a few good matches on TV doesn't mean you know how to work or deserve a push, and also said everyone needs to work harder at house shows because attendance is down and it was guys like him who worked hard to re-build the company the last time business was down. Needless to say, for a locker room full of people who feel like they bust their asses only to get their legs cut off and hit a glass ceiling (often at the hands of the same guy giving the speech), this went over just about as well as you'd expect with the rest of the locker room. Not that anything Triple H said is wrong. Dave agrees with most of it. But considering who the messenger was, it was not well-received.
Lots of backstage talk about last week's Bradshaw/Trish Stratus vs. Chris Nowinski/Jackie Gayda match, which was among the worst matches anyone has seen in years. Fit Finlay is the usual trainer and agent for the women and usually goes over their matches and spots with them, but in this case, Sgt. Slaughter put together this match. Gayda missed a few spots early in the match and seemed to panic and it all fell apart from there. Backstage, she was fully aware of how bad it was and was said to be extremely upset. There's been talk of sending her down to OVW for more training, but she'll probably still be on TV because she's fresh off winning Tough Enough.
Steve Austin hasn't had any contact with anyone in WWE except for Jack Lanza, who was the agent Austin often worked with for his matches. All that's known now is Austin told Lanza he's still training hard and Lanza felt like he's getting antsy sitting at home and may be ready to return already (I think he's got bigger problems at home). But Austin and Vince still have not spoken and there's still a lot of bad feelings there.
In light of recent events, Dave digs up the transcript from an old Prodigy online chat from 1996, in which Eric Bischoff was asked if he would ever work for Vince McMahon. His response: "I would rather chew off my fingers."
Writer Brian Gewertz reportedly has some heat over Raw's declining ratings. The problem is, no matter who it is (Gewertz, Heyman, Russo, or even Stephanie), the final approval for everything you see on television comes down to Vince McMahon. He deserves the credit when it's good and the blame when it's bad, end of story. It's a common occurrence for Vince to rip up a script and tell the writers to come up with something new, so any bad segment that makes it to TV is on him, and resulting in lots of last minute changes. Some people are even blaming Gewertz for Kevin Nash's recent injury because Gewertz wrote the match into the script the day of the show, so Nash wasn't even aware he was going to be wrestling until a couple hours before they went on the air and I guess he didn't have time to properly stretch and get ready, and ended up tearing his quad 10 seconds in. Same thing with Cena's debut, that was a day-of decision, and luckily Cena was already on the road with the crew working dark matches, so he was available. But again, Dave says you can't blame Gewertz for either of those things because, once again, it's Vince who is constantly changing his mind and forcing last minute rewrites and whatnot every week. How is Gewertz or any other writer supposed to build long-term stories under those conditions? (Man, this sure feels familiar)
Latest on DDP, he and wife Kimberly are planning on moving from Atlanta to Los Angeles to try their hand at acting careers. They've both saved a lot of money from their years in wrestling and can afford to take a chance on this kind of thing I guess. (DDP has done a handful of acting roles, mostly in the mid-00s, but obviously nothing of note. And Kimberly Page did a few movies, including a starring role with DDP in a movie called The Scam Artist that I can't find anywhere, and of course, her most famous role as "chick who's tit fell out" in The 40 Year Old Virgin).
Randy Orton suffered a concussion in a house show match with Batista. Orton was trying to sell a clothesline by flying in the air and taking a big flat back bump, but hit his head on the mat coming down and was knocked unconscious. He should be back in a week or so though, because it's not like concussions are serious injuries or anything. EMT's helped him out of the ring and he walked to the back under his own power but he was knocked clean the fuck out for a bit there.
This week's episode of WWE Confidential featured Big Show and Bradshaw playing a game of HORSE with the winner "getting a shot to sexually harass Linda Miles." So obviously they're out of ideas for this show. (Yeah JBL is on some full-blown Jerry Lawler shit with Miles here).

WATCH: JBL perving on Linda Miles for 5 minutes under the guise of playing basketball

John Cena is still finishing up in OVW and working the upcoming big Six Flags show in Louisville. Despite being a big babyface on TV, he's still a heel in OVW and is playing a gimmick where his main roster success is going to his head.
The New York Daily News ran a story on the "Sex, Lies & Headlocks" book that is coming out soon about Vince McMahon and noted several revelations in the book, such as Vince being paranoid about his office being bugged in 1993 prior to the steroid trial and how he wouldn't sit or talk near windows because he thought the FBI was listening in. It also talked about how Vince gave a job interview to Matt Lauer to host the WBF Bodystars show but didn't think Lauer had the right look, among other things. When asked for comment, WWE responded "No one in WWE has any interest in reading it. No one cares to." Dave says that's 2002 carny talk for, "Can you get us an advance copy?"

NEXT WEDNESDAY: Raw appears to turn a corner (lol no), WWE making major cutbacks and severing developmental ties, TNA also making major budget cuts, WWE Vengeance fallout, and more...

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Jun. 24, 2002


1-7-2002	1-14-2002	1-21-2002	1-28-2002
2-4-2002	2-11-2002	2-18-2002	2-25-2002
3-4-2002	3-11-2002	3-18-2002	3-25-2002
4-1-2002	4-8-2002	4-15-2002	4-22-2002
4-29-2002	5-6-2002	5-13-2002	5-20-2002
5-27-2002	6-3-2002	6-10-2002	6-17-2002

We open with a ton of details on Steve Austin walking out on WWE last week, and the story took a darker turn this week when Austin was accused of allegedly beating his wife Debra. Looks like Dave is just going to run through the whole last couple of weeks first though, before we get to all that. No wrestler in the history of the business has generated more money than Austin has in the past 5 years, leading the way for WWE to become listed on the New York Stock Exchange and valued at more than $1 billion. Hulk Hogan, Antonio Inoki, Gorgeous George, Jim Londos....no one in the history of wrestling, even adjusted for inflation, has been a bigger money-maker than Steve Austin. Throughout it all, he had a reputation as a pro's pro, always working hard and being unselfish in trying to help the company and his co-workers grow. But over the last few months, things had changed. The company is nose-diving, Austin had become paranoid and distrustful of the locker room, particularly when the NWO guys were brought in. He refused to work with Hogan at Wrestlemania and wasn't happy about working with Hall either, and insisted on decisively winning their match and blowing off the feud. He went home after Wrestlemania, no-showing Raw the night after, but things seemed to be patched up soon after. When he came back, he still wasn't happy and spoke out publicly against the brand extension and the overall creative direction of the company. A lot of people in the locker room supported Austin, feeling he was completely justified in his complaints because everyone realizes the wheels are falling off the company lately. The Sunday night before Raw last week, Austin was told by Jim Ross that the plan was for him to face Brock Lesnar, with the idea that Eddie Guerrero would cost him the match. Austin pointed out the obvious: him vs. Lesnar is a huge money match that should be built up for months on PPV. Lesnar should go through the whole locker room before he gets to Austin last. No first, on free TV, with no build-up. Austin hated the idea and said he wasn't coming if that was the plan. Ross told Vince, who called Austin and left a voicemail. He told Austin to call him back, no matter what time. Austin did call back, at 2am, and they discussed the plan. According to Vince, Austin had reluctantly agreed to it. Austin evidently felt otherwise, because he showed up to Raw that day, found out the Lesnar match was still booked, and decided, "fuck that", got on a plane and went home with Debra.
Raw that night was mostly built around the angle where Ric Flair would have to be Austin's personal assistant after he lost their match last week. Because much of the show was written around that, they had to re-write the whole show at the last minute in a panic, abruptly turning Flair babyface again and ending the huge dual-ownership angle with no build-up (it really sounds like Vince was determined to give away something huge on TV that week without building it up. "Ok, fine, Austin walked out. What else can we ruin this week and throw away a perfectly good PPV money opportunity?"). Meanwhile, Austin was ignoring all phone calls until he finally answered one from Jim Ross, who told Austin he was being unprofessional and to come try and talk it out with Vince. But Austin refused, saying he refused to work with McMahon anymore, and hung up.
So then came the burial. Vince McMahon and Jim Ross taped interviews for this week's episode of WWE Confidential in which they completely buried Austin, with Vince vowing to never bring him back. Basically everything you can imagine: Austin turned his back on the fans, he betrayed the little kids with Stone Cold shirts and all the fans who made him rich. WWE invested so much in Austin only for him to turn his back on them and so on and so forth. Jim Ross in particular dumped a lot of dirt on Austin's grave here, which Dave seems taken aback by. Austin saved Jim Ross' announcing career by insisting that JR be brought back for his Wrestlemania 15 match with Rock. At the time, Ross was still suffering from Bells palsy and Vince had no intention of ever bringing him back, but Austin insisted and the crowd reaction led to Ross being brought back permanently. So for Ross to be burying his good friend like this seems to rub Dave the wrong way (for what it's worth, it rubbed JR the wrong way too. He's gone on record a million times since then saying he wished he hadn't done it and he's apologized to Austin profusely for it). Ross talked openly about some of Austin's personal business, like his previous divorce or when his kids went to live in England, and hinted that Austin's issues were more than just professional burnout. At the time this was being filmed, nobody knew just how true that was.

WATCH: WWE Confidential: The Steve Austine episode

The night before WWE Confidential aired, at 4am, Austin's wife Debra called 911 to their home in San Antonio, claiming Austin had attacked her. Austin drove away in his yellow Corvette before the police arrived. When they showed up, they found Debra crying with a large welt on her face. She said Austin had hit her several times after an argument then left when she made the 911 call. She said she was worried about the call because of how famous Austin is and knowing word would get out. She also showed them several marks on her back where she said Austin hit her. Austin called the house twice while police were there and they spoke to him and advised him to come home. Austin was cordial to the officers on the phone but refused to come back home while they were there. Debra declined to press charges and because she refused to seek medical attention, under Texas law, the police pretty much consider it a dead issue unless she changes her mind. Austin later returned home after they left. The national news media didn't pick up on it until Monday, at which point it became a huge story. They even had a news helicopter following Austin driving around town (with an open beer in his Corvette), talking with his neighbors in his yard, and also showed him flipping off the news cameras (I can't find footage of any of this). Because Austin is a wrestler and play fighting is what they do, the media treated this very serious issue as if were almost a joke, which Dave seems disgusted by.
With Austin being all over the news that day, this led to the unannounced surprise return of The Rock on Raw, after they spent the whole show teasing that Austin would show up. Rock wasn't scheduled to return until next month, to build for a match at Summerslam, but knowing the company was in a tough situation, Rock agreed to come back early. The plan appears to be for Rock to challenge for the WWE title at Fully Loaded next month. There's also been talk about Rock winning the title and then dropping it to Brock Lesnar at Summerslam, which is a surefire way to create a new superstar (indeed, that's exactly what happens). Rock's return, since it came as a complete surprise, was a flop in the ratings. If they had built it up just one week, they could have made some money on it, but not building up anything seems to be the M.O. for WWE these days. Between the Shawn Michaels return, the FlaiVince blow-off, and now this, that's 3 Raws in a row where they gave away major moments that should/could have been built up for bigger ratings or PPV money. Dave calls WWE a junkie pawning its $2,500 ring for $500 just to get a quick fix. And that's not even getting into the smaller details, such as the fact that Rock is a Smackdown guy, so why the fuck is he returning on Raw anyway? But again, the wheels are totally off the WWE train here in 2002. It's clear to see in retrospect how WWE was falling from their peak and Vince was desperately clawing at any idea he could think of to stop the bleeding.
So back to Austin. Even after the story broke, Vince went on Raw and changed his tune, saying he hoped Austin would some day come back to WWE but time would tell and for now, he's gone. Dave says if you think this is going to end Austin's career, look at Mike Tyson, Jimmy Snuka, Invader I, and Chris Adams. All of whom did even more heinous things than Austin and their careers were just fine. Dave is pretty sure he'll be back. Rock came out on Raw, gave a big rah-rah speech in which he also pretty much buried Austin for "taking his ball and going home" and did the whole "get the F out" tagline. And that's it on the Austin saga for now.
It's officially super-duper extra official now: the World Wrestling Federation is dead. WWE lost its final appeal in the UK's highest court in their battle against the World Wildlife Fund. Vince McMahon had already thrown in the towel and the company has already been renamed to WWE, but the final appeal was never dropped and was still going through the system. In the highly unlikely event that they somehow won the case, they planned to revert back to the WWF initials. But of course, they didn't win. Just like every single lower court before them, the court handed the wrestling company its final defeat. So WWF is dead. WWE it is.
Motoko Baba officially announced that she will be retiring as AJPW president at the end of September. It's expected that Keiji Muto will take over the role, which has been heavily rumored ever since he jumped ship from NJPW.
A rookie named Trevor Rhodes, who was trained by Harley Race, will be working the upcoming tour for Pro Wrestling NOAH (this would be future WWE star Trevor Murdoch).
NJPW held its annual stockholders meeting and Antonio Inoki couldn't even be bothered to attend. Masa Chono and Tatsuo Kawamura were named to the board of directors, to replace Riki Choshu. Speaking of, Choshu was also there and sold all his stock in the company and left without speaking to reporters.
In a radio interview, Jesse Ventura announced that he will not be running for a second term as Minnesota's governor. Ventura didn't go into all the reasons why, but he did acknowledge a recent controversy as playing a part. There's been some news stories this week noting that Ventura's 22-year-old son used the governor's mansion for a late night weekend party awhile back. Cleaning crew members of the mansion went public saying that when their parents are gone, this kid basically throws wild parties there that they have to clean up after. Ventura shot back, basically claiming his son is being slandered and denied it, but said the attacks on his family made him not want to run again. The news stories talked about some of the alleged damage and Dave actually sides with Ventura here. The damage doesn't sound that bad (some empty beer cans, a broken pool cue, and some tables that were scuffed up. "Geez, that's my house whenever there is a fight night," Dave writes. Doesn't sound like that wild of a party. A 22-year old brings his friends over to watch sports and drink some beer. Dave doesn't think that should be a huge controversy or anything. Neighbors near the mansion have said there's been no issue with noise or disturbances.
Major League Wrestling had its debut show at the old ECW Arena and the MLW championship was won by Shane Douglas. They did an angle where they basically tried to re-create the famous Shane Douglas/NWA title incident, where Shane was gonna throw the belt down, but they did an angle where he was told he'd be fined and suspended for life from wrestling if he didn't defend the belt. Angle didn't get over at all and most people there hated it and it led to pretty mediocre reviews for the show overall. Bam Bam Bigelow was supposed to work the show, but when he arrived, he found out they wanted him to do a job to AJPW wrestler Taiyo Kea in the first round of the title tournament. Bam Bam said fuck that and bounced. Steve Corino also managed to get a "fuck Paul Heyman!" chant going, in the ECW Arena nonetheless, which is an interesting note.
Sandman will be doing a celebrity boxing match in Philly soon, going against Tony Luke, who owns a bunch of sandwich shops in the area and is known as "The King of Sandwiches" in Philadelphia. Sure, why not?
There was a recent news story about Sputnik Monroe from a reporter who was in Memphis for the Tyson/Lewis boxing match. The reporter went to the Memphis Rock 'n Soul museum and saw the big display they had there for Monroe, including his ring jacket, trunks, boots, etc. Dave recaps the history of Monroe, who is credited with desegregating wrestling in Memphis during the Jim Crow days of the 1950s. Monroe was a white wrestler who hung out in the black part of town and, as a result, became the black fans' favorite wrestler. He was a huge draw in Memphis at a time when black fans weren't allowed to sit in the main seats, only the nosebleeds in the balcony. Monroe's popularity was so big that one week, they turned away more than 1,000 black fans even though they had room in the arena. Just not in the "colored" section. So Monroe told the promoter he was quitting if they didn't let in his black fans. And since Monroe was such a huge draw, the promoter caved, and just like that, black fans were allowed to sit with white fans anywhere in the arena. It actually had a domino effect, because it was the first sporting event in Memphis to desegregate and it led to other sporting and entertainment events in the city following suit. In the 50s and 60s, Memphis was one of the only wrestling territories in America that was desegregated like this (fun fact: I used to live in Memphis and just went to that museum back in 2018. For starters, I highly recommend it if you're ever in town. In fact, I have a million recommendations for anyone who ever visits Memphis. That city is my heart and soul. Also, the Sputnik Monroe exhibit is still there).
The TNA debut show hasn't happened at press time, but Ken Shamrock is expected to win the NWA title in the battle royal gimmick. If he doesn't, it's because there was a last minute change, but as of now, it's absolutely going to be Shamrock.
Good news for TNA, the company reached an agreement with Dish Network, which adds another 7-8 million potential homes to their exposure. The only PPV provider in the U.S. not carrying them now is Cablevision.
The TNA cruiserweight title has been renamed the "X" title. The idea is that it's not necessarily going to be limited to just small guys and will act more as a secondary title to the NWA belt, not exclusively a cruiserweight thing.
Disco Inferno turned down an offer to join TNA because they wanted him to change his name to Ad Man and have a gimmick where people print/draw ads on his body, like they do in boxing sometimes. Or like a NASCAR. The idea is he would be covered in ads and every week, he'd lose a match and a "sponsor" would drop out and eventually, he'd have no sponsors left because he keeps losing. Gee, hard to see why he turned that gimmick down.
Random other TNA notes: Ed Ferrara is involved in writing the shows along with Jeff and Jerry Jarrett (and, let's be honest, Vince Russo, though that's still top secret. Shhhh, don't tell anybody). Jeff Jarrett was in the pits for the recent NASCAR Kroger 300 race with Hermie Sadler, who is scheduled to be at TNA's debut show. Former ECW manager Sinister Minister will be part of this company, using his real name James Mitchell. K-Krush (Ron Killings, aka R-Truth) is expected to be one of the main heels in the promotion.
Okay, fine. Let's talk Russo. Officially, he's still not involved, but he has submitted a bunch of ideas, many of which are expected to be implemented on the debut show. But "officially" he's not part of the company (he's still gotta have a quick cup of coffee in WWE before they kick him to the curb again, at which point he finally decides to join TNA for real).
The WWA promotion is in deep trouble. They have a show scheduled for Ireland soon and ticket sales for that show are pretty decent. But every other show on their books looks to be dying. They have 3 shows scheduled for Germany next month and all 3 shows have less than 500 tickets sold each. The German promoters are wanting to cancel the tour but WWA promoter Andrew McManus has a contract that will result in a lot of financial penalties for him if the shows are canceled, so he's fighting it. Lex Luger is booked for the tour, which would be his first time wrestling since WCW went down. They're also still promoting names like Jeff Jarrett and other TNA contracted talent, but with their new plan of running live every week, it's going to be hard for any of them to get overseas, work the tour, and still do the TNA tapings.
XWF is making one last grasp to survive. Even though they've been saying this for almost a year now, the promotion is claiming once again to be very close to getting a TV deal. If it goes through, the plan is to hold a press conference to announce it and then tape 5 weeks of TV to air in Sept. and Oct., with plans to air a PPV some time in late-October. Dave says this sounds like desperation to him and he's not buying that a TV deal is close. Especially since they lost all their top stars, like Hogan, Curt Hennig, and Jerry Lawler, all of whom were involved at the beginning but have all since returned to WWE (though Hennig has since been fired by WWE again, so he's available). But even if this miraculously happens, most of the marketable names left out there have already signed short-term deals with TNA that will last through October, so they wouldn't be available either. So XWF will be struggling to fill a roster with names anyone even cares about (obviously this never happens).
UFC will make its TV debut as part of a 30-minute segment on Fox Sports' "The Best Damn Sports Show Period." It will be hosted by Fear Factor host Joe Rogan, who is a huge UFC fan and has a lot of martial arts experience himself. The idea is to show one full fight in its entirety (Robbie Lawler vs. Steve Berger), with highlights of other fights to fill out the rest of the time. Dave criticizes them for not putting Chuck Liddell vs. Vitor Belfort on the show, or at least airing highlights, but that's not the plan as of press time. Obviously, that's a strong PPV draw and that's where the money is, but you only get one chance to make a good impression and Dave thinks it would be in UFC's best interest to give TV viewers a taste of their best foot forward and try to get somebody like Liddell over with a new, large audience.
Dave says the Bob Sapp fight in K-1 that was talked about last week, in which Sapp basically mauled his opponent in such a way that he got DQ'd, was at least partially a work. Had it not been, Sapp would have been immediately fired, not given a rematch with the same opponent 6 weeks later. There's a pretty good chance that his opponent didn't know and that the people who ran in to separate them after the fight didn't know either, but Dave seems pretty confident that Sapp was instructed by someone higher up in K-1 to do what he did.
Rock's next movie, "Helldorado" is expected to film between September until around Christmas. WWE is hopeful Rock can make some appearances on TV during the those months in between filming dates, but that's going to be difficult to pull off (indeed, he never shows up during this time).
Speaking of Rock, he worked the Honalulu, HI house show over the weekend, which drew an easy sellout crowd, the first sellout for a house show in a long time. Due to Rock being on the card, tickets sold out in 2 hours and scalpers were making a ton of money. In fact, the show was such a big deal that a local radio station was giving away tickets for the craziest stunt fans could pull and 2 fans walked through downtown Honolulu completely naked in order to score tickets. Rock beat Jericho in the main event in a great match. It was WWE's first time there in 8 years (Dave corrects himself from before, when he said 14 years in a previous issue and someone here on Reddit called him out on it haha). Rock got a reaction like Antonio Inoki in Japan, he was basically a god in this city. A lot of his friends and family were there as well and backstage, Rock told people that the show was bigger to him than even his 4 Wrestlemania main events and called it the biggest night of his career. When talking about his grandfather, Rock got emotional and began crying and talked about his history promoting in Hawaii. Bruce Willis, for whatever reason, was in attendance, and during the match, they did an angle where Rock held Jericho for Willis to punch him which got a huge pop. Genichiro Tenryu and Motoko Baba were there as well, meeting with John Laurinaitis (Johnny Ace, who spent much of his career in AJPW). They were there to discuss doing business with WWE as well as to get some photo ops for the magazines back in Japan so they can get that WWE-rub. (Sure enough, here's an article from just a couple months ago where Rock says once again, to this day, that the match with Jericho in Hawaii was the most meaningful match of his career. I can't find any footage of the damn thing though, which is a shame).

WATCH: The Rock, in 2020, talks about the Hawaii match with Jericho being his most meaningful match

Notes from Raw: X-Pac lost in a King of the Ring qualifier match to RVD and Dave says it's a good thing nobody in WWE pays attention to their own storylines because just a week or two ago, the story was that if anyone in the NWO loses a match going forward, they're out of the group. But of course, that wasn't even acknowledged or remembered here. Raven lost to Jeff Hardy in 3 minutes and Dave's not sure that Raven made the right move by giving up his safe commentary job because they sure don't seem to see much in him as a wrestler. The "Molly Holly is fat" storyline continued because fuck this company. Lawler even tried to get a "She's a fat ass" chant going. Backstage, X-Pac was shown crying after his loss, "sort of like real life," Dave jokes. They teased Austin showing up by playing his music and having Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit come out instead. They did a thing with Jackie Gayda teasing her being on the WWE Lingerie Special that airs next week and had Vince hitting on her backstage, making it very apparent why she was chosen to win Tough Enough over the obvious most deserving finalist, Kenny. And in the main event, Nash and Shawn Michaels were on commentary burying the match, making fun of Jim Ross, etc. And of course, the show closed with Rock doing his surprise return and promo where he pretty much buried Austin for leaving.

WATCH: The Rock makes surprise return to Raw to bury Austin

Coming out of Raw, a TON of fans still seemed to think the Austin thing was an angle. Vince's first promo, which was a total shoot about Austin being gone, didn't get over that way, with most fans in the arena expecting an angle and waiting for him to show up. There were constant "We want Austin!" chants and many people that Dave has heard from even thought the Confidential episode was all a work.
Notes from Smackdown: all the mentions of Austin on commentary weren't done live during the show, but were later dubbed in. Mostly it was just an effort to plug the Confidential episode about him, and it was such a last minute decision to do that episode that they had to edit the plugs in after the show was taped. The wall of security guards in the ring during the Triple H/Undertaker contract signing was copying the same thing they did before the Tyson/Lewis fight because it's a pretty cool visual. Nidia is doing a hillbilly gimmick now. Hurricane seems to be dropping his gimmick and going back to Gregory Helms. Word is most of the agents hated the Hurricane character for whatever dumb reason.
Dave talks about the upcoming Hogan vs. Kurt Angle match at King of the Ring and is curious to see how it goes. He thinks the most likely ending is Vince costing Hogan the match and Angle pinning him, but he's curious to see if Hogan is really going to try to put Angle over or is it gonna be another Kidman situation. That being said, WWE is protecting Angle and there's serious talk of giving Angle a run as the top guy, in the wake of Austin and Rock leaving and Undertaker and Triple H being so banged up. The idea is to put the belt on Angle and have him take on all comers, heel and face, like an old-school Lou Thesz-type champion. Either way, this Hogan match is going to be a test of how good Angle is because if he can't carry Hogan to a good match, then no one can. It's also going to be a test of whether Hogan is really the team player he claims to be now (yeah Dave's gonna be shocked at how this one ends I bet).
At the latest WWE tapings in Atlanta, Dusty Rhodes was backstage visiting and introducing his 16-year-old son Cody Runnels to everyone. Cody has been training with his father to be a wrestler. Good luck kid.
Former 50s-80s promoter Jim Barnett was also backstage at Raw and since it was his birthday, the McMahons got him a cake and orchestrated everyone singing happy birthday to him. Barnett was there because he was just hired as a consultant, which is curious timing. Barnett hadn't been officially hired by TNA or anything, but he had agreed to appear at their debut show as part of an angle with old NWA champions. So when WWE swooped in this past week and hired him, it got a lot of people talking but Dave says there's nothing to it. If Vince McMahon was trying to poach people from TNA, he wouldn't start by hiring a 78-year-old guy to be a consultant.
The local FOX station in Los Angeles, like everyone else, covered the Steve Austin/Debra story on the "Good Day L.A." morning newscast. The story was presented as a big joke, even using the headline "Smackdown At Home." Well, one of the anchors, Jillian Barberie, refused to play along, presenting the story as the serious issue it is and afterwards, criticized the station's writing team live on the air, calling them low class for making light of a woman being beaten by her husband.
Random WWE news and notes: Bubba Ray Dudley missed the UK PPV and TV this week due to the death of his mother. Edge and Chris Jericho have joined Kurt Angle as part of the Get Tough on Angina campaign that Angle has already been doing commercials for. A commercial for Summerslam was filmed this week with a bunch of guys chasing Trish Stratus in an ice cream truck.

WATCH: Trish Stratus Summerslam 2002 ice cream truck commercial

Rey Mysterio made his WWE debut at a house show in San Diego, beating Chavo Guerrero. Mysterio was wearing his mask again and was said to be more impressive than anyone else on the show. The mask actually did come off by accident at one point though. Mysterio also looked substantially bigger than he did in WCW because, well, he's coming to WWE and you know how that goes.

NEXT WEDNESDAY: Bret Hart injured in bicycle accident, WWE re-hires Vince Russo, King of the Ring fallout, and more coverage of TNA's debut than you could ever possibly want, and a ton more...

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Jun. 17, 2002


1-7-2002	1-14-2002	1-21-2002	1-28-2002
2-4-2002	2-11-2002	2-18-2002	2-25-2002
3-4-2002	3-11-2002	3-18-2002	3-25-2002
4-1-2002	4-8-2002	4-15-2002	4-22-2002
4-29-2002	5-6-2002	5-13-2002	5-20-2002
5-27-2002	6-3-2002	6-10-2002

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Some of you may have missed last week's post because I didn't do it on Wednesday. Ended up posting it Thursday instead, so it's there in the archives below if you missed it. I know this 2002 series of Rewinds doesn't really have the momentum or appeal that it had back when I was posting them 3 times a week for years on end. Sorry about that, like I said before, I just decided to post these on a whim when the virus started and didn't really prepare for it so it's all kinda haphazard. But just didn't want anyone to miss the one from last week if it flew under the radar.

Steve Austin walked out of WWE this week and threw everything into upheaval. As a result, Raw featured Vince McMahon challenging Ric Flair to a match for ownership of the entire company. It was the ultimate final blow-off to a huge long-term angle, and they did it with only 2 hours of build-up. With Vince now in charge of both shows, questions are swirling about whether this spells the end of the brand split, only a few months in. The reason this all happened is because, only 6 hours before Raw went on the air, Steve Austin showed up to the arena and found out he was scheduled to wrestle (and Dave thinks put over, though he hasn't confirmed that yet) Brock Lesner. Dave immediately points out the obvious, that an Austin vs. Lesnar match is something you should build up ahead of time, not throw it on free TV with no build up at all. Plus, he's still so new, he's incredibly green, and he's spent the last few months selling way too much for people like the Hardyz and Bubba Ray Dudley. Hell, before he debuted in WWE, he wasn't even the most over guy in OVW. He's nowhere near the level you'd expect for him to be winning matches with Steve Austin un-hyped on free TV. In fact, Lesnar should probably go through just about everyone else on the roster before putting him against Austin. That's a potential Wrestlemania-level match and Dave seems befuddled that they would just book it for Raw like this.
Apparently Austin felt the same way because he and his wife Debra left the building and flew home before Vince McMahon even arrived to the arena, the second time since Wrestlemania that he has walked out on the company. A source who was there when McMahon learned of the news said that, for the first time anyone could remember, Vince seemed to drop his "game face" and there seemed to be genuine panic about what to do. Rock has one foot out the door to Hollywood. Undertaker and Triple H are banged up and won't be around forever (bet). Business is already collapsing. And now the biggest star the company's ever had just walked out the door. Last time Austin walked out after Wrestlemania, he was only away for 2 weeks. This time, there's a feeling it could be much longer. Those close to Austin say he's been unhappy for months and this decision wasn't anything specifically to do with the Lesnar match. That just happened to be the final straw. Austin made news last week when he went on the WWE's Byte This show and voiced his frustrations with the company's creative direction. Plans had been put into motion over the last couple weeks for Austin to feud with Eddie Guerrero and then Chris Benoit, which he was happy about (he was enjoying his recent house show matches with Eddie and Benoit is one of Austin's favorite opponents) but that's out the window now. Austin and Vince McMahon reportedly haven't been on good terms for several months now and word is the night before Raw, the two of them had a very heated conversation over the phone that left Austin pissed off and frustrated even before this went down.
And that's the deal on Austin. He has more money than he'll ever be able to spend and doesn't have any financial need to wrestle. He only does so because he enjoys it. And if he doesn't enjoy it anymore, then by all means, it's his right to leave and he doesn't owe the business anything if he wants to hang up the boots. But Dave does feel like Austin owes WWE at least a few weeks to write him out of storylines since he's such an important piece of the company. Walking out from a live TV taping is unprofessional and it leaves guys like Guerrero and Benoit left hanging, thus screwing up their future plans and money-making potential too (yeah, that's something that doesn't get talked about much. Austin walking out fucked Guerrero over pretty hard here. It would take him another 2 years to get back into that main event scene that he would have been involved in here). That being said, pretty much everyone in the locker room sympathizes with Austin and agrees with his complaints about the creative direction of the company, but not many of them were defending the way he walked out. And given that this is the second time he's done it, the feeling is he shouldn't be allowed back without facing some actual punishment this time.
So anyway, the day of Raw, they went into panic mode and had to re-write the entire show. And with the feeling Austin won't be coming back anytime soon, Vince felt they needed to do something big. So they went with blowing off the dual-owners angle in a match that was designed to turn Flair babyface again and establish Vince as the heel owner of everything. There was also discussion of turning Undertaker babyface again, since he's been getting more cheers than RVD when they work together at house shows lately but they decided against that for now (they end up doing it in a couple weeks). So now Flair has been abruptly turned back, after only turning heel a few weeks prior. The brand split may or may not be dead. And there we stand.
In what would have been a major story during any other week, DDP has officially retired from wrestling at age 46. Unfortunately, Austin's walk-out overshadowed everything. The decision on DDP's retirement was actually made by Vince McMahon and Jim Ross, who pretty much made the choice for him after they got his medical reports. DDP has been advised by multiple doctors that his spine is shot and he needs to retire. For the company's own liability, WWE decided to listen to the doctors and DDP agreed. There has been talk of finding ways for DDP to work the remainder of his contract for the company in a non-wrestling capacity. (He obviously ends up wrestling a handful of matches in the years since, but for the most part, this really was the end of DDP's in-ring career as a full-time wrestler).
There were a couple of moments on Raw this week where Shawn Michaels was cutting a promo and made a comment about Austin "losing his top spot" and another comment later about Rock "stealing Triple H's spot." A lot of people in the company backstage were upset, feeling like this was the same ol' Shawn, going into business for himself and trashing on Austin and Rock and yada yada. Not the case. Those comments were actually scripted for Shawn to say because they want to get over the idea that Shawn on the mic is a loose cannon and you never know when he might start "shooting" and say something he's not supposed to. It's all very dumb, you see. Almost like Vince Russo is coming back any day now or something.
Dave gives a big preview and rundown of the Jarrett family's new NWA-TNA promotion, which has its debut show next week on PPV. Not all cable systems are carrying it, however. Cablevision and Dish Network both declined to carry it, but DirecTV is. This cuts down on the number of available homes for the show and probably cuts 20-30% off their potential revenue. The main PPV provider in Canada, Viewer's Choice, has also declined to carry it. Steep mountain to climb here. Dave expects them to do decent numbers for their first show but predicts an XFL-like collapse after that. By week 3, Dave is scared for their chances. From here, Dave gives the whole history of other promotions who've tried to make it on PPV in the U.S., with varying degrees of success and failure. UWFI, UFC, ECW, WCW, PRIDE, etc, WWF has even toyed with similar ideas. In 1991, they did the one-off Tuesday In Texas PPV as a test to see if they could run PPVs back-to-back (Survivor Series was only the week prior) and it was a flop. The original concept for Shotgun Saturday Night was for it to be a weekly Saturday night PPV with a similar >$10 price point, but that idea got scrapped before it got off the ground and it became just another TV show. Dave doesn't think TNA is going to make it without a TV deal. This PPV exclusive plan just has too much working against it. The Jarretts have talked about the millions of disenfranchised fans that stopped watching after WCW died, and it's true. Those people are out there. But those millions of fans all checked out between 1999-2001, and TNA isn't going to win them back by using the same people and the same concepts that ran those viewers away from WCW. All your wacky booking ideas, your Vince Russos, your Jeff Jarretts as champion, bringing in guys that even WWE won't touch (Scott Hall), etc. Those are all the same things that ran away those WCW viewers. Dave just doesn't see how this experiment can work in its current form.
Vince McMahon himself was the latest guest on WWE's Byte This show and needless to say, it was interesting. Vince denied the idea that the wrestling business is "cyclical" and said it's more like a series of peaks and valleys that have slowly been trending upwards over the years. Vince also admitted WWE doesn't always make the best decisions but says their batting average is good overall. Vince also said he's proud to have the word "wrestling" in their company name, which is a pretty big about-face from all the years he's tried to publicly claim they were "sports entertainment, not wrestling." He admitted things are rough right now but said there are huge changes coming soon that will change the entire industry but wouldn't elaborate on what he had planned (I think time has proven that the answer to this was nothing whatsoever. They had no idea what they were doing during this time and were just making shit up as they went along). Vince acknowledged that Austin has been frustrated lately and said Austin is the most demanding of all the wrestlers in WWE. Vince also said he pays no attention to the internet because everyone thinks they're a booker. He also complained that it's hard to live up to people's expectations because fans all think they know everything now. Acknowledged ratings being down and played it off like, yes, WWE is sick. But it's only a cold, not pneumonia or anything, so don't panic.
More notes from Vince on Byte This because huge unbroken paragraphs suck: he hinted at producing movies starring WWE talent. Dave thinks that's a bad idea. "No Holds Barred," anyone? Criticized backyard wrestling, which Dave actually agrees with him 100% on. Was asked about bringing Vince Russo back and said he hasn't given it any thought but he has an open door policy (see you next week, Russo! Jeez, it almost makes you wonder if Vince got the idea from this interview or something). When asked about the recent Jim Cornette/Ed Ferrara incident, Vince basically seemed disinterested but said he admires Cornette's passion for wrestling but felt spitting in Ferrara's face was unprofessional. When asked about NWA-TNA, Vince said he didn't understand how they could do it without television. Trying to get people to pay $9.95 a week for a 2 hour show (a minor league product at that, because anything other than WWE is basically minor leagues at this point), when they already get Raw and Smackdown on free television. Otherwise, he said he has no opinions on it because he hasn't seen it, but Vince seems to share Dave's opinion. He doesn't see this PPV model as sustainable and doesn't seem particularly threatened by it.
NJPW's latest Best of the Super Juniors tournament is in the books and was a disappointment, just like everything else in NJPW lately. Koji Kanemoto won a pretty boring tournament. There was only one new name involved, which was Michinoku Pro wrestler Curry Man (Christopher Daniels under a mask). He's talented and charismatic but he's not even that big a star in Michinoku Pro, much less to the NJPW audience. Otherwise, it was more of the same, with no real notable matches.
Zero-1 in Japan is hoping to put together a working relationship with NWA-TNA. Specifically, they're hoping they can do a Shinya Hashimoto vs. Ken Shamrock feud, perhaps over the NWA title.
While training for his comeback, Kenta Kobashi messed up his shoulder doing bench presses, because of course he did. Doctors have told him not to return too soon but he still plans to be back in the ring by next month. Because of course he does.
NJPW's latest show at Budokan Hall was a disaster. From photos Dave saw, he figures there couldn't have been more than 3,500 fans in the building. Even at its weakest after the NOAH exodus, AJPW never fell below 7,000 at Budokan and this show looked to be half that. It's likely the smallest crowd NJPW has ever drawn to that arena. The whole show was said to be terrible because of the depressing atmosphere of a building that was 2/3 empty.
This week's World Cup game between Japan and Russia did a 66.1 TV rating, making it the #2 highest rated sports broadcast in the history of Japan. This is notable because by doing so, it surpassed the Rikidozan vs. Destroyer match from 1963, which did a 64.0 rating, knocking it down to #3 (for what it's worth, it's believed that a Rikidozan vs. Lou Thesz match in 1957 was actually watched by even more people, but official ratings weren't kept as detailed back then, so it can't be counted for sure).
Dave has read some excerpts from the new Shaun Assael book on Vince McMahon called "Sex, Lies, and Headlocks." From what he's read, Dave says it's a very good and accurate portrayal of how the WWE has grown to what it is today. Vince's former close friend and VP of Titan Sports during the expansion era Jim Troy and Jim Barnett were both interviewed for it, among others. If you're a hardcore fan who's been following the Observer for years, there's nothing new here that you probably don't already know from a major story standpoint, but there's some interesting details at least that were new to Dave. But to the average fan, this should be pretty eye-opening. Dave expects to have a full review soon.
CZW held its second annual Best of the Best tournament at the old ECW Arena and the show got rave reviews. Particularly British wrestlers Jodie Fleisch and Jonny Storm, who tore the house down in their match. Trent Acid defeated Fleisch to win the tournament.
The Coen brothers, producers of the movie "Fargo", have had talks with Bobby Heenan about doing a movie based on his life (this pretty obviously went nowhere).
New Jack is no longer working with XPW and has jumped ship to work with a rival local promoter in Southern California. Perhaps not coincidentally, the last check New Jack received from XPW promoter Rob Black for $800 ended up bouncing. Dave says New Jack probably isn't the guy you want to write bad checks to.
NWA-TNA has changed its taping plans and no longer plans to tour, and they will now be live every week. The first two shows will be taped this week in Huntsville and after that, all future shows will be live from Nashville at the 9,000-seat Municipal Auditorium. Apparently the rent for that building is really cheap because a newer, more modern arena was just built nearby, so TNA can afford it. That being said, with as much trouble as they're having selling tickets for the debut show in Huntsville, Dave thinks it's pretty optimistic to start trying to run live tapings in the same 9,000-seat building every week. He thinks they would be much better off running a small 800-seat building every week, with a smaller, more intimate atmosphere that would come across a lot better on TV than a big cavernous arena that, inevitably, is going to be mostly empty (to this day, 18 years later, TNA/Impact has never once drawn a crowd of 9,000 fans. Never even really close actually).
Various other TNA notes: Dave runs down the list of confirmed names for TNA's first taping. Rick Steiner, K-Krush (formerly K-Kwik in WWF), Konnan, Steve Corino, The Harris Brothers, Psicosis, and a bunch of others. Don Frye has talked to Jeff Jarrett about coming in to work a match with Ken Shamrock. Jackie Fargo is going to be there doing something. They made an offer to Shane Douglas but he only agreed to come in if they didn't hire Francine (some kind of falling out between them). TNA decided they'd rather have Francine. They're expected to be doing some kind of old school vs. new school angle so....yay. More latter-years WCW shit. Mike & Todd Shane are coming in as a tag team called Dick & Rod Johnson and will have costumes that apparently look like penises, just in case you were still on the fence about whether Vince Russo is involved. The top stars are basically making around $3,500 per week which is a pretty decent salary for one day's work every week. The guys without name value, on the other hand, are getting $300 per show and are covering their own transportation. Just in case you were still on the fence about whether Jerry Jarrett is involved.
Ken Shamrock did an interview and acknowledged that he hasn't done pro-wrestling in a few years and knows he's going to be rusty. He also said he's worried because with only 1 show per week, he won't really be able to get enough matches under his belt to get good again. He also said he's signed a 3 fight deal with UFC and will be fighting Tito Ortiz in September, which turns out to be a pretty huge damn deal.
Dave saw the K-1 match with former WCW developmental wrestler Bob Sapp vs. some dude. Doesn't matter. What matters is Bob Sapp is enormous ("makes Brock Lesnar look like Jerry Lynn"). And he mauled this poor guy. In fact, it looked like Sapp was trying to get DQ'd, as he started kicking and kneeing the guy while he was down and just treating it like a street fight, violating lots of rules in the process. He was DQ'd but then K-1 booked Sapp and this other dude for a rematch in July. That leads Dave to think this was planned as an effort to get Sapp over as a lunatic, but if it was a work, somebody should have told the other guy because Sapp fucked him right on up. "This was like everyone feared Mike Tyson would behave, but 1,000 times worse and from a man far more scary." Furthermore, Sapp came out in a full Ric Flair robe and to Ric Flair' ring music, and the arena went insane. Sapp has massive superstar appeal in Japan right now and promoting him as a violent psychopath who has no regards for the rules in a shoot fight appears to be getting over huge.

WATCH: Bob Sapp vs. some dude. Doesn't matter. K-1

Edge will not need surgery for his torn labrum injury, so he'll only miss a few weeks of action instead of a few months. Edge is in the midst of the biggest push of his career and this is his chance to finally break through to the next level so needless to say, good news.
Notes from Raw: show opened with Vince walking out, which was unexpected since this is Flair's show. He said Austin wasn't there and made a point of saying Austin was too much of a coward to be there. Pretty well buried Austin and buried Raw as a bad show (blaming Flair in kayfabe for all the show's real life problems. Sorta like last year when they actually turned the bad ratings into a storyline by trying to blame it on Corbin. Some things never change). They're doing a storyline with Trish making fun of Molly Holly for allegedly having a fat ass because, again, some things never change. Former Tough Enough contestant Chris Nowinski debuted doing the Harvard grad gimmick like the heel jock in every teen movie. "The heel jock." Never change Dave. Shawn Michaels made his big return, cut his promo joining the NWO and turning heel on the fans before superkicking Booker T out of the group. So theoretically, this should mean Booker T should have to work his way through the entire NWO one by one before getting to Shawn at the end, in what should be Shawn's first match back. "I'm not holding my breath," Dave says. And of course, Vince beat Flair to take control of both shows. Horrible match but considering it was a last minute panic move, understandable under the circumstances. Lesnar ran in and helped Vince win the match.

WATCH: Vince McMahon opening promo with Ric Flair on Raw
WATCH: Ric Flair vs. Vince McMahon for sole ownership of WWE

Notes from Smackdown: during a big pull-apart brawl, several agents ran in to break it up. Among them were Dean Malenko and Fit Finlay, appearing on TV for the first time in their new backstage roles, and John Lauranitis who was also shown on TV last week. More gay jokes with Billy and Chuck and Rico, which Dave calls Russo-esque. Not quite yet. Jamie Noble was introduced with Nidia from Tough Enough season 1 as his valet, in a feud with Hurricane. There was a big effort to make Bob Holly a star this week, starting a feud with he and Kurt Angle and they really pushed Holly hard as a star and Angle busted his ass to try and get him over. And they did a show-long angle with Maven in the hospital (he's legit injured) and Torrie Wilson shows up, it's implied that she gives him a blowjob, and then Dr. Tajiri shows up, mists Torrie and beats up Maven. Dave is at least happy that they're trying to make an angle out of Maven's injury so he has a storyline to come back to, which is more effort than they put into most stuff these days.
Various WWE notes: referee Tim White suffered a torn rotator cuff in the Backlash Hell in a Cell match and will need surgery that will keep him out of the ring for months. Rey Mysterio is scheduled to debut on WWE house shows this week and, as of now, is expected to be wearing his mask again. Terry Taylor has been reaching out to get hired, but the company won't return his calls (they eventually re-hire him in September).
There's been a lot of praise for the new Spiderman comic "Tangled Web" which was written by Raven (I had to research this, but yeah. "Tangled Web" was a Spiderman anthology series that lasted about 2 years and had 22 issues. Each issue was written by different authors. Issue 14 was called "The Last Shoot" and sure enough, it was co-written by Raven alongside Brian Azzarello, who is the mind behind one of my favorite comic series of all time, 100 Bullets. And I had no idea. Wild).
The long-discussed plan of having Arn Anderson as Chris Benoit's manager seems to be off the table now. The thought is Anderson has been devalued so much in recent months (they pretty much wheel him out every time they need someone to take a beating for heat in a Flair feud) that he wouldn't be effective as a manager for a strong, serious heel.
Tough Enough II winner Linda Miles made her in-ring debut on Velocity, against Ivory. She was accompanied by fellow winner Jackie Gayda, who turned heel on her and cost Linda the match. Dave thinks it's waaaaaay too early to put these 2 women in a feud against each other considering how green they both still are.

WATCH: Linda Miles vs. Ivory - WWE Velocity 2002

The Rock, Vince McMahon, Undertaker, Jerry Lawler, Jm Ross, Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, and Shane McMahon were all in Memphis at the Mike Tyson/Lennox Lewis fight last week. Rock could be seen on camera a few rows deep throughout the fight, while Vince was shown on camera as a celebrity in attendance before the fight. The others were never shown on-camera, but they were all there. The PPV is estimated to have done 1.8 million buys and grossed a record $103 million, which are numbers that WWE can only dream of. Prior to the PPV, Rock co-hosted a pre-show party with guests such as Halle Berry and Britney Spears.

NEXT WEDNESDAY: Steve Austin accused of abusing Debra, much more on that situation and Austin's walkout, Jesse Ventura not running for re-election, Rock wrestles in Hawaii, and more...

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Apr. 1, 2002


1-7-2002	1-14-2002	1-21-2002	1-28-2002
2-4-2002	2-11-2002	2-18-2002	2-25-2002
3-4-2002	3-11-2002	3-18-2002	3-25-2002

NOTE: Sorry about no post on Friday. Real life shit got in the way.

WWF finally took the plunge and went through with the long-rumored brand split this week, all while Steve Austin was sitting at home. Austin walked out after Wrestlemania and didn't appear on TV this week for the draft. He was expected to be the #1 pick fro Raw, so they changed the angle and explained that he couldn't be drafted due to a contract situation. Austin still has a year left on his WWF deal, so he can't go anywhere, but he isn't hurting for money so he can sit at home and be just fine. Austin's issues date back a couple of months and he was vocally unhappy about working with Scott Hall and the NWO in general. Morale in the company has sank since those guys came in, got main event spots, and started getting everything they wanted creatively and professionally. Some in the locker room see Austin's walkout as him protesting the state of the company, with an unhappy locker room that no longer has any leverage since all the other companies are dead, and Austin is the one guy with enough "fuck you" clout that he can stand up to Vince. Most of the wrestlers are said to be on his side, though the NWO guys and Triple H and co. obviously don't feel the same. But it goes back further than that. Austin was telling people 6 months ago that he would go home if the job stopped being fun.
Anyway, Dave breaks down the rosters of each show. Triple H and Jazz (men and women's champs) will float between both shows and work about half the house shows for each brand. Raw gets the IC, Euro, and Hardcore champions. Smackdown gets tag titles and cruiserweights. Several notable names were undrafted. Rhyno, Mike Awesome, Steve Blackman, and Chris Kanyon are all injured and weren't placed anywhere. Developmental names like Randy Orton and Ron Waterman are expected to be called up soon, among others. If Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio are brought in, they'll likely be on SD with the cruiserweight division (Dave says Guerrero canceled his NJPW bookings for April which is a pretty solid sign that he'll be returning soon). Many of the lower-card wrestlers had no idea where they were going to end up and had to log on to wwf.com later that night to legitimately find out their futures. Tag teams like the Dudleyz and the APA were split up in the draft. Dave can't see the logic in splitting the Dudleyz and hopes it's the beginning of an angle that eventually reunites them. As for the APA, that's fine. Faarooq's career is winding down anyway and they've been talking about pushing Bradshaw as a single's star for over a year.
Raw is missing its top draw (Austin) and is pretty weak overall. Lumbering giants like Undertaker, Kevin Nash, and Big Show all ended up on Raw so don't expect a lot of great matches coming out of that brand. Plus they drafted Brock Lesnar to that brand, so his impressive size isn't going to stand out as much among those guys. With the cruiserweight division, plus guys like Jericho, Benoit, and Angle, you can bet Smackdown is going to have the better matches. Plus they have The Rock and Hogan for star power. But much like Raw, Smackdown might be in danger of not having its top draw either. Rock is expected to be gone for much of the summer to film another movie and he's continuing to get more and more movie offers, which means more time away from wrestling. And Hogan can't be a long-term weekly top draw anymore, no matter how much nostalgia popularity he has right now. Which means it's vital that they finally commit to pushing Angle, Jericho, and Benoit as real top stars.

WATCH: Linda McMahon introduces the first WWF Draft

Dave reviews the latest UFC show, with Josh Barnett winning the heavyweight title from Randy Couture in an upset. Long detailed recap full of the usual news and stuff, but it's MMA sooooo...
And the next story is about Cael Sanderson of Iowa State becoming, record-wise, the single greatest collegiate wrestler in U.S. history by winning his 4th NCAA championship and ending his college record at 159-0. So MMA and college wrestling. On to the next...
AJPW notes: after long negotiations, AJPW failed to secure a new TV deal. The normal TV season in Japan is starting next week and they were hoping to have a deal signed by now, but no luck. Also, they're interested in bringing in Super Crazy for their junior heavyweight division but it'll likely depend on whether he gets an offer from WWF instead (neither happens right now. He spends the next 2 years bouncing around NJPW, CMLL, and Zero-1 before he finally ends up in WWE in 2005).
Already halfway through the issue and past the major stories. This seems like a slow issue wrestling-wise, but the UFC and Cael Sanderson stories were both big chunks so....sorry this one kinda blows.
NOAH junior champion Naomichi Marufuji dislocated his knee when landing wrong on a moonsault and had to be stretchered out at a recent show. No word on how long he'll be out of action for (must have been a pretty bad injury. Looks like he comes back 2 weeks later, wrestles a match to drop the title, and then is out of action for the next 10 months).
Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Masahiro Chono won the vacant tag team titles at the latest NJPW show, beating Nagata and Manabu Nakanishi in a tournament final match. The titles were, of course, vacated when Keiji Muto jumped ship to AJPW, leaving his partner Taiyo Kea and the belts behind. Nagata ate the pin here. And in fact, Nagata also recently did several submission jobs to Tadao Yasuda at some shows and Dave jokes that Nagata is getting the Chris Jericho push. You know, beat him to death for months on end until the fans see him as a midcarder, then put the title on him with almost no build-up, and then wonder why he's not over and blame him when business is down (indeed, Nagata wins the IWGP title just a week or two after this and even though he holds it for 13 months, business goes in the toilet. And it's through no fault of Nagata's).
Antonio Inoki announced that he is bringing in Chyna to the NJPW 30th anniversary show at the Tokyo Dome in May. Remember a week or so ago when Inoki talked about how successful WWF's recent show in Japan was and admitted that maybe he has some stuff to learn from it? This is it. Inoki realized the huge popularity WWF has in Japan right now and reached out to one of their biggest stars of the last few years to bring in as a celebrity guest. The idea they teased in the press is that she would come in and work a match and probably defeat one of NJPW's lower card guys, which Dave thinks would be a horrible idea (yeah, that would suck. Better idea: how about she goes over Yuji Nagata and Jushin Liger in her first match, how's that sound Dave? Because that's exactly what we get. Fuckin' Inoki, man...)
NJPW's latest show in Tokyo did a disappointing attendance number and Dave says that's what happens when you make Tadao Yasuda your world champion. No matter how much publicity he got off his upset MMA victory a few months ago, and no matter how nice his underdog comeback story is, he flat out sucks as a pro wrestler and the crowd sees it and don't buy him as champion. Even worse, they had him go over Tenzan by submission. With NJPW's depleted roster, Tenzan is one of the only cool, not-washed-up wrestlers they have left. Anyway, this sets up a Yasuda match with Nagata at the next show in Tokyo and if NJPW has any smarts at all, they'll get that belt off him and onto Nagata ASAP (they do, thankfully).
Bobby Heenan is currently recovering from surgery to remove his lymph nodes. following his recent cancer diagnosis and is said to be in good spirits.
Various notes: Goldberg filmed an episode of the HBO show Arli$$ recently. Ken Patera did an interview and said the strongest men in wrestling from his era were Andre The Giant, Bruno Sammartino, Ivan Putski, Billy Graham, and Tony Atlas, in that order, and praised Bruno for being extra impressive because he never used steroids. Shane Douglas' Time Warner contract is expiring in a few weeks and it's rumored he'll be working with XPW as a wrestlebooker.
Jerry Jarrett's new promotion is expected to start in June and there continue to be rumors that Vince Russo will be ghost-writing the show. Dave says the differences between a Russo show and a Jarrett show should be pretty glaringly obvious within the first few minutes of the first show, so we'll just have to wait and see (I don't know if he was involved in the very first shows or not, but he joins the company within the first month).
Remember the WCW KISS Demon? Well his real name is Dale Torborg and he now works as a coach for the Florida Marlins baseball team (his father Jeff is the manager of the team). Anyway, Torborg recently got into a confrontation with relief pitcher Antonio Alfonseca that is rumored to have gotten physical and resulted in Alfonseca locking himself in a trainer's office to get away. Everyone on the team is being hush-hush about the incident. Alfonseca apparently has a bit of a reputation of being hard to deal with, but since the incident, he's allegedly been on his best behavior because apparently the KISS Demon put the fear of god in him (here's a news article from it at the time. Alfonseca ends up being traded to a new team a few days later, although the Marlins denied this incident had anything to do with it).

READ: 2002 ESPN article about Torborg incident

Ring of Honor has announced some new rules for its promotion. For starters, they're bringing back tag ropes (yeah, during this era, that was a small thing that sorta just got ignored by everyone for years). They're also not doing any count-outs. ROH booker Gabe Sapolsky said that outside-the-ring counts always go really slow and referees have to stall or find excuses to break the count and no one likes count-out finishes anyway, so why even have them? So now, you can fight on the floor all you want. Dave says AJPW pretty much did the same thing in the 90s. ROH also wants to have very little outside interference or ref bumps and clean finishes.
Apparently, Jake Roberts is being investigated in England by the RSPCA for animal cruelty. After a recent show there, someone complained that he was being cruel to his snake at the show. The next night, the RSPCA sent an agent to another show Jake was working to watch and they weren't happy with what they saw either, so they've opened an investigation (yeah, as a kid, this was of course the coolest thing ever. But as an adult, I hate watching the way animals have been used in wrestling over the years. Jake used to just throw that snake around like it was nothing, fling it across the ring, people would fall on it, land on it, step on it, whatever. Remember the scene where Jake locked Ultimate Warrior in a room full of snakes? Go back and watch it now, Warrior is just kicking the shit out of these poor little snakes. Or another example, I remember watching a British Bulldogs match a few months ago and they had Matilda the bulldog jump off the ring apron to the mat below. That's a 3-4 foot jump. As someone who has owned bulldogs, that is terrible for their spines. As a kid, all this stuff was whatever. But as an animal-loving adult, watching all that old footage now makes me real uncomfortable).
An indie promotion in Pittsburg called IWC had a tournament called the Super Indy Tournament featuring Chris Hero, Christopher Daniels, Low-Ki, Colt Cabana, and some kid named CM Punk.
Early estimates for the WWA PPV in Las Vegas are around 31,000 PPV buys. Keep in mind, early estimates are always about 10-25% higher than what the final number ends up being. WWA needed 35,000 just to break-even on this show so even with the inflated number, they didn't do it. So the show is undoubtedly a money-loser, but no idea just how badly yet (spoiler: pretty badly).
Notes from Raw: it was the WWF Draft show! Dave calls it "the latest Russo-like reset of the promotion." Rock was drafted #1 for Smackdown while Undertaker was drafted #1 for Raw. It was announced that Austin wasn't eligible for being drafted and will be a free agent, so they'll figure that out later. Dave says, if you follow the storylines, it makes no sense why Ric Flair would pick Undertaker as his #1 pick (this being the guy he just had a bloodbath with at Wrestlemania and they didn't even bother to explain why Flair picked him). With his next pick, Flair selected the NWO. Once again, just a few weeks ago, Flair was ready to sign over his share of the company and leave the WWF entirely to keep Vince from bringing in the NWO. And now, with no explanation, he's drafted them to Raw. Billy & Chuck and the NWO got drafted together as a team, but the Dudleyz got split apart. Why?! None of this makes sense and Dave is so frustrated with how little thought they put into this after having a year to plan it. (Rewinderman short rant: everybody talks about all the reasons WWE has declined in popularity over the last 20 years and there's always different theories. Bad booking, not creating new stars, not pushing the right people, etc. etc. But I have my own theory that I never hear anyone say: I think it's the lack of attention to detail. Ever since WCW went out of business, Vince has been painting in broad, dumbed down brush strokes, over-explaining dumb, simple storylines, with none of the attention to detail that makes people get invested in a story. Anyway, enough of my opinions). Brock Lesnar came out and beat up a bunch of people again, which he's been doing on every show since his debut. In this case, he threw Rikishi around like a rag doll and Dave says that's one strong fella. They did an angle where Stephanie lost a match and was forced to "leave the WWF" and she was dragged out by security while the crowd sang the goodbye song to her. But Dave says they did this exact same thing with Stephanie in November and that lasted all of 5 weeks before she was back so don't get too excited (sure enough, she'll be back 3 months after this).
Notes from Smackdown: Rico Constantino debuted as the stylist for Billy & Chuck and Dave says that's a dead-end gimmick if there ever was one. He also got a haircut and looks like a totally different person from his OVW days. Rico is a fantastic wrestler and everyone from OVW to front office guys like Jim Ross have gone to bat for him and said he's ready to be a star. But he's small and he's on the older side, so this is clearly where Vince sees him (yeah, even Bruce Prichard later said that pretty much everyone in the company saw star-potential in Rico.....except Vince). Edge vs. Booker T had a rematch that was much better than their Wrestlemania match. And X-Pac debuted (with "a new physique", wink wink) and joined the NWO and they beat down Hogan and got major heat because Hogan is so over right now.
Kevin Nash and Scott Hall showed up several hours late to the Smackdown tapings in Ottawa and the first thing Nash did upon arrival was complain loudly to anyone who would listen about Rock calling him "Big Daddy Bitch" the night before on Raw, saying Rock double-crossed him and Nash hadn't approved that line. Considering all the times Nash went against the script in WCW, needless to say, there were lots of rolled eyes at that. Especially after showing up late also. To make it up to him, during the tag match on Smackdown, they had a spot where Nash yelled "Who's the bitch now?" at him and Michael Cole made sure to bring attention to it on commentary so nobody missed it, so now they're even and now everything is okay I guess. Dave says Nash and Rock smoothed things over between them later because Nash is smart enough to know that making an enemy of The Rock isn't in his best interest. But he was extremely pissed about the line.
Variety reported the new movie Rock is going to be filming later this year will be called Helldorado. It's an action-adventure movie and Rock plays a bounty hunter who heads to the Amazon jungle to capture someone and ends up joining the guy to trying to retrieve something from a local mine (close enough. The movie ends up being renamed The Rundown).
Paul Heyman has dropped significant weight since he was last on TV back in November. Even if they're not a wrestler, Vince wants everyone on television to be "cosmetically presentable."
Assorted WWF notes: Lita is filming an episode of the FOX show "Dark Angel" soon (spoiler: this turns out very poorly for Lita). Steve Blackman is still out with a neck injury and now he gets crippling migraine headaches when he tries to work out or take bumps and Dave says it's possibly career-threatening (indeed, it forces him to retire). Chris Jericho's band Fozzy will be performing at WWF New York next week. The Rock is about to be featured on every TV show and on the cover of every magazine in existence over the next few weeks as part of the Scorpion King promotion.
Dave talks about the current second season of Tough Enough and how interest is way down from the first season. He also kinda gives it a brief review and just says it's boring and nothing really entertaining happens. In the first season, Tazz was the hard ass tough guy trainer to Al Snow's nice guy routine. When Tazz did it, it felt like he was doing it to teach the students respect and was trying to do it in a positive way. This season, Bob Holly is the "bad cop" and he comes across like a complete asshole who is bullying people without any intention of doing it in a way that makes them work harder or become better wrestlers (yeah, you think it's bad now, just wait until season 3 when he starts beating the shit out of Matt Cappotelli).
WWF is going to be working with the Ozzfest concert tour this summer. WWF wrestlers will sign autographs and introduce bands at many of the tour stops and several of the bands will perform on Raw later this year. "That's what happens when there's no Nitro," Dave deadpans.
Regarding the multiple hardcore title changes at Wrestlemania 18, there was discussions about having some of them happen at the CN Tower in Toronto. With the idea that they would brawl into the elevator and end up fighting out onto the outdoor observation deck (like, 100 floors up). But a few weeks before the show, for whatever reason, WWF changed their mind and decided not to pursue it.
Bret Hart recently agreed to work Jacques Rougeau's next indie event at the Molson Center. If you recall, just a few months ago, Rougeau drew a crowd of more than 10,000 to one of his indie shows there. When Vince McMahon found out Hart was going to work the show, he tried to pull a power move and get the Molson Center to give him an exclusivity deal, which would block Rougeau (and anyone else) from being able to run the building. Didn't work and Rougeau's show will go forward as planned as of now (Vince used to do that shit all the time in the 80s to Jim Crockett).
Rey Mysterio hasn't signed with WWF yet but it's considered just a formality. They gave him a low-ball contract offer, far less than he would make just working indies. Of course, it's just his downside guarantee. When you factor in gate money, merch money, video game money, etc. then he stands to make far more than he would on the indies. But if he gets hurt, he'll be sitting at home making very little money. On the other hand, if he gets hurt on the indies, he'll be making no money so better than nothing. Anyway, sounds like Rey shot down the first low-ball offer but they're expected to agree on a deal soon.
Dave has seen more of the TSN Off The Record interviews they did with several WWF stars last week. Ric Flair talked about how much of a disaster WCW was and put over Vince. Dave says that this isn't just Flair publicly kissing the boss's ass. Privately for years, Flair has only said good things about Vince McMahon, dating back to his first run in the early 90s. Even all the years he was in WCW, Flair only had good things to say about him. During the interview, Flair was asked to name someone who could have been an all-time great but didn't have the work ethic. Flair said he couldn't think of anyone off the top of his head, leading Dave to write, "I was screaming Barry Windham but nobody heard me." Jim Ross was next and blamed the environment in WCW for the backstage problems Hall and Nash caused. Dave points out that Hall and Nash caused all those same problems in WWF before they left in 1996 so that doesn't exactly check out. Undertaker's interview was interesting for the rare experience of seeing him out of character, just being Mark Calaway. When asked about something he hates about how the business has changed, Undertaker talked about the internet spoiling things and how it hurts the product when fans know about things in advance. Dave, of course, disputes this and gives an example using the show Friends. Before this season of the show started, TV Guide reported that Ross was going to wind up being the father of Rachel's baby and it was common knowledge. But the ratings were still through the roof for the "reveal." He also jokes that they could have swerved everybody and made it Gunther instead. Then he says if Russo was writing the show, he would have made himself a character called The Scriptwriter and made himself the father of Rachel's baby. (I've never watched Friends, these references are lost on me)
Latest on WWF pay cuts: aside from the very top guys, the company is trying to get most of the roster down to $125,000-or-less per year downside guarantees. Those who work full schedules will still make a lot more than that with PPV/ticket/merch percentages, plus they're doing more house shows this year and with the split rosters, more guys should be working more dates. Plus they raised the price of PPVs so the PPV pay-offs will be bigger. So these pay cuts won't really hurt the full-time stars. But of course, if you get hurt and you're sitting at home only collecting your downside, that's gonna be a lot less money now. So that sucks. On the flip side, WCW used to do the opposite, where guys were hurt and they still collected their full salary, which led to a lot of guys milking "injuries" so they could stay home and cash big ol' checks. So then WCW decided to start cutting people's pay in half when they were out for too long, and that led to people who were legitimately injured coming back too soon because they had bills to pay. So there's a delicate balance that you have to strike there. Also, as part of the new contracts they're trying to get everyone to sign, they're attempting to lock everyone into 3-to-5 year deals because Vince wants to make sure nobody can jump ship and help one of these new start-up promotions like XWF or WWA or the new Jarrett company get off the ground.
Ric Flair is still working on his autobiography that Mark Madden was helping to ghost-write for him. WWF is now attempting to buy the rights for that book away from the original publisher so they can publish it on their own. No word if Mark Madden will still be included or if they'll re-do it (WWF did eventually get it and released it. It has another author listed but still says "edited by" Mark Madden so who knows how much of his contributions made it into the final product).
After Naoya Ogawa took pictures with several WWF names at Wrestlemania, he went back to Japan and I guess got the media stirred up about possibly working with them. Some media outlets have talked about WWF running a Tokyo Dome event headlined by Ogawa vs. The Rock. Dave says this is pure bullshit.

WEDNESDAY: AJPW Triple Crown champion Toshiaki Kawada injured, more on WWF pay cuts, business analysis, the history of wrestling/shoot fighting, more on Steve Austin walking out, and more...

Watching ONE Championship’s Top 5 P4P fighters video on YouTube made me wonder: What would a hypothetical main card for a cross-promoted event with the UFC look like? What are the Top 5 fights I’d want to see of ONE vs UFC fighters?

I am very much aware that a cross-promotion involving the UFC is astronomically unlikely, but I think the thought experiment is interesting. The UFC would absolutely be the host, so I’ll use their structure of a 5-fight Main Card and a Featured Prelim. Filling out a full Prelim Card would go deeper than I really want to though.
I have also been fairly lenient with weight classes, since ONE has all their weight classes shifted up 10-20 lbs. This is all just fun.
Featured Prelim
ONE Garry “The Lion Killer” Tonon vs Sodiq “Super” Yusuff UFC
Battle of the Featherweight Prospects to cap off the Undercard.
Garry Tonon is probably the most well known ONE prospect among Western fans, and especially Jiu Jitsu fans, but he’s essentially untested against quality competition. He has 5 Fights and 5 finishes including a 3 different submissions from 3 different positions and grappling entries (an RNC, a Guillotine and an Outside Heel Hook) and 2 TKO’s. Garry Tonon is one of the most prized BJJ players in the sport right as perhaps only Rodolfo Viera, Gilbert Burns, Ryan Hall and Mackenzie Dern hold better BJJ resumes.
Yusuff on the other hand is a heavy-handed power puncher who recently entered the UFC Featherweight rankings at 15 following a decision win over Andre Fili. Yusuff holds an 11-1 record, 4-0 in the UFC with 2 TKO’s and 2 decisions. The win against Andre Fili should truly put him on every fans radar. Fili is a sneaky gatekeeper for the Featherweight rankings as his only UFC losses have come against Yusuff, Michael Johnson, Calvin Kattar, Godofredo Castro and Max Holloway (Castro is the only one who has not been a ranked UFC featherweight). That’s a bigger win than most fans probably recognised at the time.
Ryan Hall or Kron Gracie would also have been an interesting fight for Garry here, but they may as well just take their gloves off and grapple. Plus you can find Kron vs Garry in BJJ on YouTube right now if you want.
Main Card
Fight 1
ONE Martin “The Situation-Asian” Nguyen vs Alexander “The Great” Volkanovski UFC
This ones for the Aussie’s. I’ll admit to being biased on this one, but it’d still be a kick-ass fight.
Martin Nguyen, the first Australian to win an MMA belt in a major promotion outside of Australia, versus Alexander Volkanovski, the current Australian UFC Champion. I’m just indulging myself, but it would probably also be a barn burner.
Nguyen is 13-3 for his career 9 TKO’s and 3 Submissions. Martin is a Double Champ in ONE, having held the Featherweight and Lightweight titles, and also made a run at the Bantamweight strap but narrowly missing out on the vaunted TRIPLE C after losing a split decision to Bibiano Fernandez.
Volkanovski is the favourite and current UFC 145lb Champion. Volk is, to use a common Aussie phrase, a nugget. A former Rugby League Player, the Champ didn’t start MMA until age 22 in an effort to stay fit for Rugby. He competed in Greco-Roman Wrestling at 97kg (214 lbs).
Volk made his amateur MMA debut at Middleweight standing just 5’6” (168cm). For context, current MW Champ Israel Adesanya - Volkanovski’s current teammate - is 6’4”, 10 inches/28cm taller. Nonetheless, Volk went 4-0 as an amateur MW before abandoning Rugby and turning Pro.
As a Pro, Volk won the strap in minor Australian promotions at 170, 155 and 145 before entering the UFC, where he debuted as a lightweight in 2016, just 7 years after starting MMA. He is a perfect 8-0 in the UFC with 3 TKO’s and 5 unanimous decisions. His only career loss came almost 7 years ago with a TKO loss at AFC 5.
Both fighters are capable on the ground and on their feet. This would be a great fight.
Fight 2
ONE Roman Kryklia vs Israel “The Last Stylebender” Adesanya UFC
Hear me out.
This is a Kickboxing Matchup.
ONE is a very different organisation. Not only do they have MMA fights, they also hold Muay Thai and Kickboxing fights interspersed within their events, and have reigning Champions for those sports.
Roman Kryklia is the ONE 225lb LHW Kickboxing Champion. The Ukrainian has a 45-7 Kickboxing Record with 24 KO’s. He is a Ukrainian Master of Sport in Kickboxing and, at 28, is entering the prime of his career. Standing at 6’ 6.5”, Kryklia is a towering HW with hard hands.
Adesanya was one of the best Kickboxers in the world before making the transition to MMA. He holds a 75-5 Kickboxing record with 29 KO’s. This includes multiple KO wins at Heavyweight. Adesanya is also a perfect 19-0 in MMA, 8-0 in the UFC with 3 KO’s and 5 decisions. His full Kickboxing record is difficult to find, so I can’t say just how many HW fights he’s had, but video of some impressive KO’s at that weight can be found on a YouTube.
This honestly isn’t fair for Israel. Roman is much bigger, and Israel - brilliant as he is as a striker - hasn’t been a specialised kickboxer in 3 years. He has fought at HW, but would need time to get back to that size and to train for a specialised Kickboxing fight again. Betting lines would be skewed towards Israel because of the media hype and public money, so this would be the place for the gamblers to make their money betting on Roman.
Fight 3
ONE Xiong Jing Nan vs Weili “Magnum” Zhang UFC
These women would square off for the title of best fighter in China.
I weighed up putting Angela Lee in here, who ONE promotes to the moon and back because she looks like this, as wel as being the ONE Atomweight (115 lb) Champion. But given how Lee faired when she went up a class to fight Xiong for the ONE SW belt, I feel Xiong would be the more well matched fighter to meet Weili’s physicality.
It would surprise most to look at her and say that Xiong Jing Nan hits like a truck, but she does. She is 14-2 in her MMA career with 10 KO’s. Since joining ONE she is 5-1, with her only loss coming against Angela Lee for the ONE 115 lb AW belt, losing by submission. This fight was an immediate rematch, however, of a fight that Xiong won at 125 lb SW - her third successful defence of the belt.
On the other side, Weili Zhang is the Straw Weight Queen. Coming off one of the greatest fights I’ve ever seen against Joanna, she is all heart, skill and determination. She would and should be an overwhelming favourite in this matchup, because I don’t see a single woman at that weight who can stand with her.
After losing her first Pro fight, Zhang is on a 21 fight win streak dating back to April 2014. She is 21-1 with 10 KO’s and 7 Submissions. The first Chinese UFC Champion captured the title with a spectacular KO win over Jessica Andrade in front of her native crowd, and followed it up with the greatest WMMA Fight of All Time, a split decision win over former Champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk.
Co-Main
ONE “The Burmese Python” Aung La N Sang vs Daniel “DC” Cormier UFC
Aung is a veteran of the game. The Champ-Champ at 205 and 225 - the Middle and LHW limits at ONE - Aung has 37 Pro Fights with a 26-10-0-1 record. However since joining ONE, he has gone 11-1, and avenged his only loss to Vitaly Bigdash in an immediate rematch to capture the MW strap.
Aung is on a tear at the moment with a stream of 6 straight finishes, including most recently against current ONE HW Champion Brandon Vera to defend his LHW strap.
Oh yeah, Aung defends both belts simultaneously. He has 3 defences of the MW belt and 1 defence of the LHW belt, fighting at both weights in 2018 and 2019. He also has a win against Alain Ngalani who, though not a great fighter, is absolutely terrifying, and anyone who dares to stand in front of him should be commended.
DC would obviously be the red hot favourite here though. However Aung is well rounded with skills on the ground and on the feet. I think this would actually be an excellent fight. Or it could totally blow as DC wins in a blowout.
Only one thing would stop it from being the Main Event......
Main Event
ONE Demetrius “Mighty Mouse” Johnson vs Henry “Triple C/The MessengeKing of Cringe” Cejudo
This one writes itself.
Mighty Mouse, the super-skilled, dominant P4P Great, against the Champ-Champ-Champ, the man he lost his belt to before being shipped out of the UFC in a revolutionary MMA trade. Dana’s red-headed stepchild is gone for good...
Or so we thought...
NANI???
Mighty Mouse is back for revenge. And this time, it’s personal. He’s eyeing off the King of Cringe, the Triple C, the man who took what was rightfully his: Henry Cejudo.
This would absolutely have to happen in our imaginary Cross-Promotion, and it should Headline the show. With a storyline that juicy, every Combat Sports fan in the world would tune in.
That’s my Hypothetical Cross-Promotional ONE-UFC Card. I would expect the UFC to take out 4 of these 6 fights, with Roman and Mighty Mouse taking 2 home for ONE. But these would be fun and competitive fights, for the most part, or at least fights that would get the Asian market to tune in for the UFC - the ultimate aim of a cross-promo.
Surely the fights would have to be commentated by Rogan, Anik, Cruz and the GOAT Michael Schiavello.
What fights would you have on this hypothetical card?
How does Conor McGregor fit into all of this?
Should Dana vs Chatri be the Real Main Event?

Sharing my story

Whole-History Ratings - My Year-Long Journey to Create an MMA Rating System & a Thankyou to r/MMA

Previous Posts & Full Ratings
This isn't really going to be the usual kind of post I make about the rating system, so if you're here to see any specific data or expecting numbers and charts, I'm sorry to disappoint today! This is the story of how the Whole-History ratings came about and why I'm still working on them today. I've also left thanks to those people who left comments that kept me working on this despite all the failure and changes this project has gone through.
EDIT: If you don’t want to read the whole story, just skip to the last section 🙂

Finding a Problem

It's been over a year since I started my journey to find a more effective ranking or rating system for MMA. I don't know the date that I started working on the project, but my first post about it was back on the 4th of September, 2018. This whole project was inspired by seeing a video on youtube that chronicled the entire history of the UFC rankings for some specific divisions. I noticed that there were a lot of times that rankings changed with no reasonable justification that I could see. I'd only been watching MMA for about a year at that point (thanks to Bisping vs GSP) so there was a lot of discovery to be done.
Being curious about how these rankings were generated, I was quite shocked to see that they were generated through a few individuals voting for who should be in which position. Further investigation showed me that even the most popular unofficial rankings on Tapology were generated by community votes. This seemed naturally wrong to me as those rankings could be easily subject to popularity, exposure and general bias or out-of-cage events.

First Steps

Being a football fan, I'm used to having league tables generated seasonally by awarding 3 points for a win and 1 point for a draw, with goal difference being used to distinguish teams with the same number of points. This was my first idea for implementing a ranking system. I decided to award 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw and then bonus points based on the round that a fight ended, taking the last 5 fights within 2 years to calculate this.
After putting all of this together, building a dataset and creating the first iteration of my rankings website, I proudly posted them here. Inevitably, these rankings got heavily criticised by the community here, pointing out many issues and flaws with what I'd done, plenty of new arrivals to the UFC who were nowhere near being ranked had just as many points as champions and the deeper the division was, the more outlandish the ratings were.
While this was very disheartening to me, having put a lot of work and time into writing this whole system and spending money on hosting for the website, one comment caught my interest, someone mentioned the Elo system to me, which isn't something I'd heard of before or had any knowledge of. For a while, however, I took the site down and ceased work on the ranking system, believing that there was no way I could do anything approaching a reasonable job at making a ranking system.

Needing a Project

At the early point of 2019, I reached the last year of my degree, I'd been working part-time from home on a degree in Computing and IT for 5 years at that point and for the last module, I would be required to plan and produce a project of my choosing and report on it. Struggling to think of what to do, I remembered my pitiful attempt at a ranking system for MMA from months earlier and since there was still no good system I could find, I decided to restart the project and use that for my degree.
Remembering the Elo system mentioned before, I went and investigated it, writing my own implementation of Elo, in some cases adding various modifiers and constantly trying to tweak it to produce reasonably accurate results. While it worked better than the points system I had made before, it also was horribly flawed. If you believe that Donald Cerrone is the best fighter in the world, you might have agreed with it, but I didn't and so I had to continue my journey.
The next thing I looked into was TrueSkill, which is Microsoft's ranking system used for various online games. It's similar to Elo but instead of simply having a single rating value, it would also track a confidence value as well, the more games you play, the less your rating should move because the system would become more confident that it had the correct value for you and If you lost where you were expected to win, your confidence would decrease. This seemed like a possible improvement.
Digging around online led me to find an old abandoned implementation of TrueSkill that I carefully updated and included in my project. This seemed like it was a lot more accurate to me than the Elo system, however, there were still many major issues with it. The obvious one was that while it was easy for someone to climb the rankings early in their career, once they got a strong certainty, it would take a long time for them to drop once they started losing. I still have this system running on the website and even today Fedor Emelianenko is the number 6 ranked fighter in the world pound-for-pound.
At this point, I was starting to get a bit worried overall, both the systems I had looked at had failed me and I was thinking that perhaps I should try to find something else for my final project or even delay it and try again next year.

Discovering Whole-History

Searching around for anything to try and help me achieve my goals, I stumbled across a whitepaper by Rémi Coulom titled 'Whole-History Rating: A Bayesian Rating System for Players of Time-Varying Strength' which I read through. I understood very little of the mathematics that I was looking at, but what I did understand was that this rating system seemed to propose a solution for all of the issues present in the systems I'd tried before.
With Elo and TrueSkill, you store a value or two to represent the rating of each fighter, then, when a new fight happens, you take the ratings of both fighters and the result and it gives you their new values. It's a linear rating system that goes forward in time and would theoretically get more accurate as more fights happen. This isn't how Whole-History works at all.
With Whole-History ratings, you generate everything in one go, you input the data for every fight that has ever happened and then you iterate over that data, generating ratings for every single fight that happened at the same time. With each iteration, the ratings are smoothed out to form what would be a line graph of that fighters estimated skill over time. If you take a fighter on any given day, their rating is influenced not only by the fights that happened before that day, but also all the fights that happened afterwards as well.
The way I like to describe it is that if you were a boxer and you fought and beat Floyd Mayweather in his debut fight, under other rating systems, you'd gain very few points for that win since Floyd would only have a low, default rating. As time goes on and Floyd wins his next 50 fights, in hindsight, your win against him looks far more impressive than it did at the time, but your rating wouldn't change. In Whole-History, your rating will be increased to reflect that your win indicated that you were more skilled than originally assumed.
The same goes the other way around if you are the first person to defeat an undefeated fighter, normal rating systems will reward you greatly for it, but if they then go on to lose their next 10 fights in a row and everyone realises that actually, time caught up with them and they aren't as good anymore, your rating would be reduced to reflect that.

The Work Begins

Once I discovered this rating system, I set about implementing it. I searched around and found an implementation of this rating system on Github that is being used for an online Go website and over the course of a month or so, carefully ported this library into the language that the rest of my project was using and also implemented the ability to have drawn results, something that the original system didn't do at all.
Armed with my new ranking system, on the 2nd of March this year, I posted the ratings and predictions for UFC 235.
The response was not as bad as before, but still very mixed. I was criticised for Walker being given a very low rating, which was simply a result of only having two of his fights in my data and another commenter said that it 'sounds like a system Robin Black would come up with' which I took to mean that it wasn't very good.
As the results for that event came in, I finally felt like I was onto something. The ratings successfully predicted that Usman would beat Woodley, Askren beating Lawler and that Munhoz would beat Garbrandt among other correct predictions. In fact, it correctly predicted 8 of the 12 fights on the card and I posted the next day with my results and some thoughts on why some fights were predicted wrong and what to do next.
I continued posting predictions for the next few events with varying success and to varying responses. I was asked to stop posting by one person because I was apparently 'losing people money' when they were betting on the rating system, something I never asked or told anyone to do. Some cards had really poor predictions, others had more accurate predictions and the biggest factor seemed to be how many of their fights I had in my data. The next step seemed obvious, to try and compile the most complete set of fight history I possibly could.

Expanding The Data

With the first round of testing complete, I went back to my dataset and completely rewrote my data gathering application. This was the biggest task in the entire project and was the point I came closest to abandoning the entire thing.
I wrote multiple processors that would gather all the new results from multiple different sources and store each of them, which worked just fine. The problem though was finding a way to match up the duplicated data in each set and to, at the same time, work out where data was directly contradicting. There were and still are many places that had one person fighting someone at an event and then the other source had them fighting a completely different opponent at the same event.
There was also the issue of nicknames, some places used nicknames in place of real names while others would just use their actual name. Some other people have the same name as each other but are completely different people. This was a massive undertaking and after months, I still don't believe I've been able to get it working perfectly, but it does work and I'm yet to see the same fighter show up twice in my data. I'll save you all the tedious details of exactly how I did it, but it consisted of many late nights and all of the coffee that Cuba has ever produced.
Finally, I set up the website to actually display the results for everyone to see and browse as they want. There are ratings from amateur fighters with only a single fight in obscure promotions all the way up to the very top of the UFC and all of that data is used to calculate the ratings (which is why the fighter records might seem wrong if you look at the site, they include amateur and exhibition fights in the overall record).

Finishing Up

With the rating system now roughly complete save for some minor tweaks here and there, I wrote and submitted my final report in September this year and I'm due to get the results on Monday next week.
The rating system has an overall predictive accuracy of 66% as I've posted before and with the data, I've been able to produce plenty of what I hope are interesting graphs and posts on this subreddit. I plan to continue doing so for as long as people show interest.
The reason I'm making this post isn't just to share how this all came about, but more to thank everyone who left positive and supportive comments along the way, as well as the people who gave me helpful suggestions and made me think about solutions to the problems I was having. I'm not a confident person and I'm very easily dissuaded by negative feedback, so without those comments, I doubt I'd still be working on it today and I certainly wouldn't be paying £70 a month on hosting to keep the rating site running.
I can't thank everyone who has given me support as there's been plenty of comments and discussions outside of my actual posts, but having gone back through all of the previous posts, I'd like to thank u/throwawaybjj44, u/blownclutch3000, u/WonkDog, u/ALAVG, u/BasiPrime37, u/JapanSage, u/creatorsellor, u/PatriotScum, u/iamkingofkings123, u/SteveXmetal, u/czv3, u/weighinsJoannajizz, u/S18P120, u/xyzxyz94, u/RIZIN_Max, u/cambodiadashcam, u/kneeco28, u/branduNe, u/Junesfoshiz, u/Mckenzieajm, u/DiarrheaMonkey-, u/laydowndead, u/ricosuave3355, u/340g and u/2049509468 as all of you have either given me supportive comments, shown interest in this project or made me think about something I need to do differently and it's because of you that I'm still doing this right now. Also, thank you to MMA because without this place I'd have nowhere to share this project in the first place!
The project isn't over, but the first year is! I hope I can keep on improving the ratings next year and keep your interest as well as maybe improve that 66% accuracy to something even better!

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Top 20 Knockouts in UFC History - YouTube

The UFC celebrated its first 20 years by creating the Top 20 Knockouts in UFC History, 1993-2013. If you like to see or even put some money on a UFC match from time to time, you should definitely watch this video and check out these 5 ways to do it ! Enjoy. Please check out my other video's ... What is the best UFC fight of all time? Comment below!! JOIN THE TYTSPORTS TEAM and SUBSCRIBE! http://bit.ly/1CxYDM3 Conor McGregor is currently the big... 👊 Click here to subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AllThingsMMA?sub_confirmation=1 💎 Check out our Merchandise: https://teespring.com/stores... Watch Brock Lesnar TOP 5 Bloodiest Knockouts in UFC & MMA Don't forget to like, Share & Subscribe to our channel. Like Us On Facebook: https://www.facebook.c...

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UFC 253: Adesanya vs Costa Statistical Companion - a suite of interactive tools providing access to extensive historical statistics on the UFC careers of all fighters on the card

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Jul. 22, 2002