Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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Bandit
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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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1/11/99

- Smiley came out and tried to kidnap Pepe and rip off his neck brace.

-The fans live were furious since they'd been promised a Goldberg vs. Nash main event which never took place, and instead got a main event where the two guys didn't touch. Overall the Georgia Dome was an absolute disaster of a show and it would probably take 18 pages to list all the reasons why. During the show on two occasions, the chimpanzees running WCW told Schiavone to say that Raw was taped and that Foley would be winning the title on the opposition show so don't switch channels. Nitro was beyond awful, and he was telling people there's a world title change going to happen on the other channel? Who runs this circus? He also knocked Foley, laughing about a company that would make him champ, which isn't going to help Schiavone's rep with wrestling fans since Foley is so universally respected. WWF shot back when they heard what was being said, since even though the show is taped, the commentary is done live, and said they weren't going to present a main event that starts two minutes before the show goes off the air and consists of nothing but walking and talking.

1/18/99

-With the WWF doing everything to get the word out about its title change, and WCW doing them the favor of making sure the ratings gap would be as much as possible by announcing the WWF's change as well, Raw set its all-time record with a 5.76 rating (hours of 5.67 and 5.85), even beating marks set on nights that Nitro was pre-empted for basketball and it went unopposed, with an 8.08 share to Nitro's 4.96 rating (hours of 5.55, 4.57 and 4.78) and a 6.92 share. With Nitro doing a 4.68 in the head-to-head two plus hours, that meant a combined rating of 10.54, which translates into 7,852,000 homes and probably around 11.78 million total viewers.

-Buy rate estimates for Starrcade are in the 1.15 range which is a $5.11 million show.

- They did a WAY TOO LONG Bischoff video at the WCW office with Flair eventually after about a six month conversation that was only noteworthy for seeing the first television appearance of the legendary Janie Engle (and I swear she looks exactly like Dory Sr. would if he was a woman) and for Bischoff saying when he came in 1991 that when Flair and Jim Ross ran the company they couldn't draw 400 fans if they paid the fans to attend. I must say that was really classy knocking Ross considering his present medical condition not to mention how bad it sounds considering the current success of Titan. Anyway, this segment drew a 6.4 rating.

-Gene interviewed Chavo Guerrero Jr., who said Eddie would be fine, and had a cake saying it was Pepe's birthday. Smiley came out mad because he wasn't invited to Pepe's party. Geez, you'd think his stick horse friends would be mad because none of them put the poor guy in a neck brace. Smiley wound up putting Chavo's face in the cake and bodyslamming him on the cake and Chavo did a great job of getting cake all over the place. He then stole Pepe and put him in a shredder. Where's the SPCA when you need them?

-Gene interviewed Giant, who looked like he had just woken up four minutes earlier.

-Then they showed this WAY TOO LONG video of Bischoff setting up the ring.

-Nash pinned Giant in a terrible match in 6:28 when he used a wrench left under the ring by Bischoff. Since nothing was happening in the ring, I was taking notes on other stuff. So was the crowd which was hot for Flair-Hennig and saw these guys doing a sluggish match and the fans wound up sluggish as well. Michael Buffer said Nash was "considered by many as the best big man in the sport." I know he says it every time he announces a Nash match. Just wondering who those many are. I can't only figure the combined IQ of the many is less than that of a few. When Giant went up for a slam, Heenan said how you'll never see anyone else in the sport who can slam Giant. Like we haven't seen that done 50 times in the last three years in every high profile match the guy has been in. Next thing you know, when Flair flips into the turnbuckles on the PPV they'll act like nobody has ever seen that one before either. Bischoff showed up and called Nash the NWO Corporate Giant. I guess that's meant as a knock since Giant will probably go into WWF with the name Titan or something similar as the WWF Corporate Giant to turn Kane back face.

-The FOX network deal fell apart because Hogan asked for a huge guarantee and they wouldn't go for it.

-Brian Adams is going to be given a new gimmick where he's going to do a foreign accent or something.

-Guerrera ran away from Gene who tried to interview him in the parking lot because the NWO was after him. He said how they had hurt Eddie. How much you wanna bet when Eddie comes back, that angle will be forgotten? They did a deal, which was taped but didn't air yet and may never air, where they had Parka on the ground and drew those chalk lines around him except he was still laying there. Gene muttered the immortal line to Juvi as he was talking Spanish, "Don't talk Mexican to me."

-DDP is pushing to get Erik Watts in and get a push for Van Hammer.

1/25/99

-Konnan did a strong interview, although I still can't believe he gets away with that tossing salad and peeling potatoes stuff.

-Robbie Rage and Perry Saturn have both expressed interest in doing matches for Shooto, which is a totally real group promoting matches with similar rules to UFC (but without the stand-ups). Bill Goldberg has also talked about wanting to do it, but recognizes with his position, that WCW would never let him.

-Hogan was on the morning radio show Mancow in Chicago claiming that he came back so soon because "I sat back for a couple of months and watched the ratings plummet and these so-called superstars of five-to-nine years try to carry the load. So, I'm back and ready to put money back in everyone's pockets." For the record, for the only complete month he was gone, WCW averaged 10,243 and $236,944 per show, did a 1.15 buy rate and averaged 3.6 on ratings of all shows. The last full month he was around (October) averaged 7,559 and $159,310 per show, the PPV did a .78 buy rate with the legendary Hogan vs. Warrior match and the TV shows averaged 3.4. But aside from people reading this, nobody else will ever know. Because WWF ratings and business have been so incredible, a lot of people have lost sight on just how good WCW ratings still are, and the house show business is still good although they have destroyed a lot of cities whose fans have figured out about all the no-shows and people going through the motions at the non-TV tapings. Hogan claimed when he was making his Ninja movies that McMahon came and visited him and he's hinted to other wrestlers that he has an open invitation to go back. Hogan also claimed Hart was faking his groin injury. My feeling is that Hart is paying the price for everything he wrote while he was on top in the WWF as he came into an organization where the people he had ripped on hard had major power.

-Hall and Nash were on Mark Madden's radio show in Pittsburgh and the subject of Shane Douglas came up. Hall said if there was any power he had, he'd use it to keep Douglas out, and Nash said that since Hall is his friend and he does have power, he intimated that Douglas would be out of luck. Apparently Hall still bears a grudge over the night in Orlando where Douglas wouldn't let him in the ECW dressing room when he showed up with Justin Credible.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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2/1/99

-Flair sent Bischoff to work at the concession stand. The similarities between Bischoff and McMahon were amazing, as now Bischoff is using a TV show watched by millions to be his psychiatric release as he was complaining about internal audits (WCW is in the midst of an internal audit) and disappearing money.

-The lowlight was when Smiley got behind Saturn, who was bent over, and went to lift his dress. I was afraid we were actually going to see somebody toss someone's salad as Konnan has been threatening.

-Several WCW wrestlers taped a segment for MTV on 1/23 in Big Bear, CA which is a Battle Royal that airs on 2/7. Larry Zbyszko, rocker Rob Zombie and Jimmy Hart did the announcing. Zbyszko uttered his line of the year when introduced to Zombie, saying the last time he worked with a Zombie was when he wrestled Dusty Rhodes.

-New York Times critic Anita Gates reviewed an episode of WCW Saturday Night. She wrote that shows like World's Wildest Police Videos and pro wrestling are coveted by advertisers because they reach males 18-34 that have money to spend, haven't developed the spending patterns that are had to break like folks 35 and older have, and don't watch a lot of television. The episode she reviewed was the one a few weeks back on Goldberg. To show how closely she watched it, she described Goldberg as "a 300-pound-plus wrestler with stringy hair, wearing a one-piece Spandex ensemble in an orange-and-black print." We're figuring she got Goldberg confused with Page, which would be hard since she talked about Goldberg ending the show beating Hogan.

2/8/99

-The show opened with the angle where Kimberly was injured so she can get cosmetic surgery that she doesn't need. Do you ever have a dream where you wake up in the middle of the night and all the women in the world have faces that look like these Cher looking alien beings? Not a pretty thought.

-They did the first of a zillion videos of the NWO guys trying to get over as being cool, well, Steiner, Bagwell, Nash and Hall get to be cool and the other guys are like the poor kids in high school who try to be cool and aren't. And Flair ordered Bischoff to stand in a dunk tank for the next three hours, while all the WCW people who hate him, and that was a long line, got to throw softballs to knock him in. Luckily for Bischoff, nobody who hates him has much of an arm, and these segments were dying of embarrassment as guys kept missing the target with pitch after pitch on live TV.

-The uncool pissed off NWO guys found a bunch of lost women in their dressing room. We have no idea what happened next, because the next time we saw them, they were with the rest of the guys and there were no women, except Steiner was holding a Nitro girls outfit coming from the bathroom, but he was fully clothed.

-At 9 p.m., with Raw starting, they trot out Kenny Kaos vs. Van Hammer.

-Sandman, who was never identified by the announcers (I think they were told that they couldn't call him Sandman, they couldn't call him Jim Fullington, they couldn't mention ECW or Raven videos, couldn't explain what the hell Sandman was talking about to the 95% of the audience that had no idea) came out with a cane and wrapped in barbed wire, but without cigs and with a new physique. Some people in the crowd knew him and most didn't. Luckily for him he did a good interview talking about being extreme, at least to those who do know. I can't imagine what anyone else was thinking. Poor Mike Tenay, he had to come up with a line as they were pounding on each other that perhaps these two have crossed paths before. Poor Schiavone, having to call a match without mentioning the name of the participant. You know how lame it makes him look, and he doesn't need help on that account.

-They told Virgil, I mean Vincent, I mean Vince, to tell DDP that Steiner will fight him at SuperBrawl and to slap around DDP. Vince then told Disco that when he slaps him, everyone is going to jump DDP. Disco went in like an idiot singing "Song Song Blue" by Neil Diamond, slapped him, and got banged. You know, diamond cutter. It's not like Page was having sex with him or anything. That would be on the other channel. Nash was telling Vince how smart he was. Page then drove off.

-Do you ever wonder what happens to Steiner's urine specimens? They probably come back with saying this isn't a member of the human species.

-There was a minor skirmish at the bar after the show between Ernest Miller and Kidman. Miller was behaving in a toned down manner of his TV persona bragging about how tough he is, which apparently isn't that unusual. Kidman must have said something because Miller threw a punch at him but it was quickly broken up.

-DDP was on Regis & Kathy Lee on 1/26. Heard it wasn't good. DDP seemed nervous and was trying to get over the diamond cutter as this finisher. Ray Lloyd, the former Glacier, was a plant in the audience trying out his new gimmick as a high school PE Coach with a whistle (you know, that lame John Tolos WWF gimmick) and challenged him. Of course Page banged him and Regis covered him and Page counted three. Crowd didn't pop for the cutter even though Page spent his interview trying to pre-program for the one spot.

-Goldberg was offered a guest shot on E.R., but WCW nixed it because the filming would conflict with a Monday Nitro.

-We don't have a lot of notes on the Waco taping other than it was considered a fiasco in taping, but may wind up being a good television show when it airs on 2/24. The company invested big money just on the set and the open. The show began with Disco, Jericho and Johnny Swinger wearing sombreros and making racial remarks to heat the crowd. Problem was the crowd was 70% Anglo. They started stomping the sombreros and called the crowd wetbacks. The WCW production staff freaked thinking you can't put that kind of racial stuff on television (they don't even use that language in the WWF), and it went downhill from there. Super Boy, a Los Angeles indie wrestler, and Kendo, a wrestler from Mexico, actually were the best workers on the card. Silver King, who was doing a Cowboy gimmick, had been learning rope tricks and apparently trying them in the ring, somehow wound up by accident nearly tying himself up with his own rope. I swear they should put that on Nitro because at least he could get over as a comedy figure.

-Guess with Sandman on Nitro in his old role and no reference to the Raven videos means that idea has been scrapped. Apparently there were people who didn't like the videos. Wouldn't you think they showed have previewed them ahead of time and come to that decision rather than airing three or four and then abruptly stopping referring to them.

2/15/99

-Raven is now a rich happy guy pulling a work on his mom.

-There was some heat about Hogan calling the camera man a "jiggly, jiggly, jew" on Nitro on 2/1, but evidently not enough for the segment not to have been replayed on every show during the week.

-Horace has H-bomb on his tights, which is of course after the wrestlers' nicknames for the drug Halcyon. Hey, WWF has Test, they can gave H-bomb.

-Bigelow did an interview with a cardboard cut-out of a USA Today talking about Goldberg talking before Congress. Bigelow isn't over and the interview was bad until Bigelow said about Goldberg saying everyone in WCW would adopt a pet this year saying he'd adopt his old lady and put her on a leash.

-They showed the Mad TV angle with Hart and Sasso. It was weird. It was like they were doing this fake sketch where Hart played a wrestler bullying reporters while Sasso, playing the role of an overweight Jesse Ventura, was speaking. Then Bret snapped and tried to do an angle where he shot on Sasso hitting him with a wrestlers' chair shot and putting him in the sharpshooter while the rest of the comedy ensemble reacted like they weren't going according to the script.

-Hart did this Mexican spot where he faked getting a low blow and started selling his groin. Schiavone said Piper kicked him low. Heenan, who knew the spot, said he didn't think so. Schiavone, when he figured out what the angle was, said only an idiot like Heenan would say that he kicked him in the groin when he didn't.

-Finally Nash & Hall no contest Flair & Steve McMichael. McMichael worked most of the match which tells you about the match. Finish saw Flair put Hall in the figure four. At that point literally everyone in the stands started looking to the back. You know things are bad with your booking when the big finishing move is on and people turn their heads away from the ring. Hogan took a bucket and took literally forever to get to the ring. Finally he got there and went to throw it at Flair, but McMichael jumped in the way to protect Flair. Hall, Nash and Disco were about to do unmentionable things to Flair (like try and talk him into a six month feud with more matches of this quality), but Goldberg ran in and, wouldn't you know it, speared Disco. This was a night where you couldn't wait for the show to end, and they do this before their largest audience in a long time.

-Fans were chanting "Redemption" by the end of the show, which is the name of the WWF PPV show in the same building on 4/25.

-The B&W guys were in the limo making fun of Vince, as in Vince McMahon, saying that his ego is so big he wants to be world champion and Adams said if Vince was world champion it would kill the business. It would have been funny if the line was delivered by a guy who is at the top of the list of those killing the business right now.

-Riggs' eye was talked about being fixed. It's explained that Raven never let him go to a doctor, but when he left the flock, they found out his eye was okay. Okay, so why was he still wearing the patch if his eye was okay?

-Horace Hogan & Adams beat Meng & Barbarian in 16:43. That's what the clock said. I thought it was lasting about six weeks. I kept falling asleep and would wake up and they were still there. It was like being in the movie "Groundhog Day," except I wasn't getting a chance to score with Andie McDowell.

-The Advanced Auto Parts segment was the best part of Thunder because we at least saw some cool looking monster truck spots.

-There was a brawl backstage where Stevie Ray was choking Vince. This was meant apparently as a spoof on this incident six years ago where Kevin Wacholz, who wrestled as Nailz, jumped on Vince McMahon and was choking him out because he was mad about an $8,000 payoff for the Wembley Stadium show. See, Wacholz was backstage in Minneapolis and you get the drift.

-Wildcat Willie was fired. It was said he'd been booed in every town he'd perform in all year.

2/22/99

-Saturn will be doing a Marilyn Manson gimmick, which I guess leaves Vampiro (remember him? I didn't think so. I think he's with Sandman and Mikey Whipwreck collecting their $2,500 to $4,000 per week while waiting for someone to come up with an idea on how to use them MONTHS after they were put under contract. Remember them? I didn't think so either?) who was scheduled to use that exact gimmick, out in the cold.

-THIS NEW CONCEPT IS A LOSER! I can't express just how screwed up this company is right now. The 2/15 Nitro may have been the worst episode of the show in history. Because it was a holiday week, we don't have the ratings at press time but you can bet it's something like 6.0 to 3.9 or some record setting margin (in reality probably not quite that bad) because you couldn't have more of a gap between not only the quality of the two shows, but how hot the respective companies are. Remember when Eric Bischoff made that statement about Tuesdays not being any fun anymore. This was the first week in years where I didn't even have any curiosity about the ratings because there's always something every week to learn because of the constantly changing tastes of the public and the constantly changing products. There's nothing to learn this week. It's a blow out. Everyone already knows it. One show was great. The other was horrible. The ratings will show that and there is nothing else to learn

-They showed so many clips of Scott Steiner and Kimberly and Ric Flair and Bret Hart and Roddy Piper that I thought I was having nightmares about having been a horrible human being and being sent to Hell, and when I got there, I was sent to this room with all the evil wrestling promoters past and present and they made me sit in the chair next to people like Fritz Von Erich, Herb Abrams and Nick Gulas and forced us to watch Nitro episodes like this 24 hours a day. And we have to listen, and aren't allowed to switch the channel to see Mankind vs. Rock in a world title change in a ladder match on the other station, are an interview with the Nitro Girls on how Kimberly is doing ("Please, Kimberly, hurry back, we love you") and the long-awaited match of Bret Hart vs. Will Sasso. Finally I woke up Tuesday morning and realized it was a bad nightmare although I can't figure out why I have all these notes on a piece of paper describing this crap from a dream

-Here come Meng & Barbarian against Horace Hogan & Brian Adams for a match that lasts six weeks. It's the year 2025 and we're wheeling out what's left of Hogan and Piper and putting them in the ring to fight for the world title.

-Lawyers announced that Page was being sued for $1 million and could be sent to jail for 15 years (let's see, that means he'll be 77 when he gets out, and he'll probably come right from prison to challenge Hollywood Scum Hogan for the title.)

-Then all the NWO guys, wearing masks, beat up Flair in the most horrible looking fight scene in the history of television. It should been titled "A bunch of white boy jabronis try to do a bad Kung Fu Theater." The fight scenes were so bad looking I was expecting these bad audio dubs where the guy is speaking one language and you hear it in English where the sound doesn't match the lips. They taped it the day before and actually edited in close-ups of the lame punches missing rather than go with the almost as bad long shots where at least the punches didn't look bad. Flair had his eye jabbed out with a stick. Somehow through all this, he didn't have any bruises or cuts. They beat up Flair for like 12 minutes straight. Flair threw the single worst punch of his career on Hogan. Hogan punched him something like 400 times. Every punch looked terrible, too. It was being filmed by a helicopter with a spotlight. I know WCW is making a mint because wrestling is so hot, but I'll bet if someone with common sense was running that division, they could easily save $30 million of wasted money on production and helicopters for skits that result in one million people hitting their remote to switch to another channel.

-Hart beat Will Sasso of Mad TV with the sharpshooter in 3:40. Sasso was accompanied by Debra Wilson of the Mad TV cast. Here's the story on this. WCW had promised Mad TV an angle where Bret would wrestle Will Sasso on the Monday after they'd do a skit on a Saturday theoretically for cross-promotion in a tag match with Sasso & Piper vs. Hart & Bischoff. Then there was a booking change and the new people in charge didn't want some guy they had never heard of and probably nobody else had either being a celebrity guest, not to mention Hart isn't exactly on the favorites list of these bookers and they wanted the belt off him ASAP. So they did the angle last week where Sasso cost Hart the title as a grudging way to fulfill the commitment and put Sasso on Nitro. Then Mad TV was complaining and I don't know if they had the deal in writing or what, but it turned into a major heated issue and WCW was sort of forced to have this match on Nitro this week.

-Announcers only "know" what's going on during the matches. Who comes up with this at the meetings. Hey Eric, I've got this great concept that's going to beat Vince in the ratings. Every week we'll make the announcers more and more ignorant. People will tune in like crazy when their friends at work say, "Hey, I watched Nitro last night. I didn't watch that lame ass Raw with the ladder match and the storylines that make sense. I watched Nitro with the announcers who had no idea what was going on in all those horrible skits. I saw this guy drive a half dead Ric Flair in his turnip truck to the building except his truck overheated. And those announcers, they didn't even know where Ric Flair was. But I did. I'm so smart. They're so dumb. We should all watch Nitro because then we can be smarter than those dumb announcers."

-Michael Buffer came out for absolutely no reason. See, he was there to announce the main event. But get this. There was no main event. Get that lame pretty boy out of the ring and back to ring announcing losers like de la Hoya who had a match over the weekend that people will be talking about for the next 30 years. Hogan challenged Flair again. Flair at this moment fell out of the turnip truck, grabbed a hoe (you know, a rake, not a prostitute, that's the other station) and kept falling down. Heenan wondered if he was drunk. I guess he never read USA Today in that article about Scott Hall because he'd realize WCW would never EVER allow anyone to perform on their show when they were impaired. The whole NWO beat up Flair. Benoit & Malenko came to make the save. They were beat up as well. The credits ran. At that moment I woke up. Pam saw Bobby in the shower. The whole last year never happened. Hopefully they can start from scratch next week and pretend, like I am, that it was all a dream. Except they think it was great television. They'll find out when the ratings come in.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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3/1/99

-After the biggest gap in the history of the Monday night ratings on 2/15, WCW went into its own version of a panic attack with morale hitting rock bottom. Everyone was pointing fingers everywhere, as when the ratings came in, nobody could any longer pretend the new concept of pro wrestling television started one week featuring bad mini-movies that the announcers live don't see was a success.

-Benoit & Malenko have been called "vanilla midgets," and are clearly being programmed in a manner to make sure they don't get over as well.

-They did a Bagwell & Scott Steiner video of them picking up on a blond at a health club and they had this big van with them painted on it to go to spring break

-Rey Misterio Jr. pinned Kevin Nash in 2:40. Nash had him up for the power bomb and Misterio Jr. punched him in the head a few times and landed on top for the pin. It was like the fastest three count in history. The crowd popped big while Tenay and Schiavone tried to sell it as if it was the biggest upset in the history of Nitro. I think Heenan was just enjoying Happy Hour.

-The show ended with two ratings killing videos. The first was the Nitro Girls on location in bikinis. A real weakness of Nash writing television is he doesn't seem to have a clue about positioning. It seems he thought seeing babes in bikinis, since wrestlers live the strip club lifestyle, would mean more than a main event to build to at the end of the show. But if that was the case, a TV show called "The Best of L.A. strippers" would be doing 4.5's on cable and it isn't.

-You don't want to know how much money that awful skit where Flair was beaten cost between the helicopters and everything else.

-Ralphus went at one point to kiss Juvi. I'm sure there's a story there that I don't want to know.

-Hardcore Hak (Jim "Sandman" Fullington's new ring name) beat Damian. Kevin Sullivan asked him for a ring name that afternoon since the geniuses running the company still hadn't come up with one. He said his nickname was Hack, so there you go.

-Hector Garza ripped his scrotum in the Thunder match with Psicosis to add to his many other injuries.

-Scott Hall was run over after the PPV show by a WCW employee.

-There was a lot of heat stemming from the recent Jenny Jones show. Didn't see the show, but apparently indie wrestler Rasta the Voodoo Man really outwitted Bagwell and wound up as the star of the show, causing WCW to attempt to get Rasta's stuff edited off the show.

3/8/99

-There is still nothing decided about when Sting will return to television or what role he'll play. He himself wants to do the white face paint gimmick from the ceiling that he used in 1997. Then again, who wouldn't want that gig? Never wrestle. Make a million a year. Everyone bumps for you. Unless you're afraid of heights, it's the greatest job in wrestling history except the job Rodman got.

3/15/99

-With Eric Bischoff on vacation in France (it would be more apropos if he was in Rome playing the fiddle), apparently for several weeks, Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash turned the Nitro show into their personal vehicle to get themselves over which is hardly different from bookers of the past who still perform, but what is different is the lengths they have gone to bury virtually all the talent and put on what many would say was the single worst major league promotion television show in history on 3/8.

-The show opened with one solid hour of video features on Hogan, Nash, Scott Steiner, Buff Bagwell and Torrie Wilson, most of which (actually the Steiner & Buff segment where they played Boston cops was kind of funny in a perverse way) were as bad as the Eric Bischoff monologues before the Jay Leno match, featuring dated references to where Nash's former gimmick of being the world's oldest street hoodlum was unmasked to be a 40-year-old man whose idea of pop culture was the circa mid-60s movie "The Graduate."

-There were "steroid" chants big-time in the Bagwell-Steiner match and Scott lost it and went into the crowd after fans legit. I guess since he was appointed by the police he thought the fans were alerting him to the fact an illegal drug deal was going on somewhere in the building.

-Hogan will face Flair in a first blood match, a stipulation that Eric Bischoff will not allow to be spoken on television because the words "blood" are banned from WCW television. However they can still use blood, blade and do a first blood match so it's a case of doing a stipulation match in a PPV main event where the stipulation itself can't be said on TV.

-Then they played a video on A.C. Jazz of the Nitro Girls.

-They did a segment where Hogan & Nash met Torrie Wilson as a shooting range where she was trying to be either La Femme Nikita or Bridgitte Neilsen in Beverly Hills Cop II. This led to another horrible sketch where Wilson was going to bring out this woman so hot that David Flair could never resist, way hotter than her and her name was Mrs. Robinson (reference to the 60s movie The Graduate) and they offered her $20,000 to seduce David. Never mind that we've already established that Ric doesn't care. Luckily for the storyline, one thing you need to know (and this is a shoot) than in the Fliehr household on Monday's they watch Raw and only switch to Nitro when Ric is on so it actually makes perfect sense.

-I'd put a lot of money into marketing a headache reliever and advertise it as the Nitro painkiller every Monday night throughout the show.

-Thunder in Winston-Salem on 3/4 drew 4,198 fans in a 15,177-seat building making it the first totally disastrous turnout for a major TV taping in a long time.

-Then, in a hilarious spot that aired twice on the show, they aired a promo piece for Nitro that had never aired before, and it had two clips of Sean Waltman, who hasn't even been with the company in one year.

-Then they taped more matches for next week with Hak over Barbarian in what was said to have been absolutely atrocious.

3/22/99

-Stevie Ray beat Vince in what was billed as a Harlem Street Fight for control of the NWO black & white in 6:30. It was made clear in the commentary that whoever wins really isn't in control of anything. It climaxed, or lack thereof, in the worst looking bonking heads spot in history (their heads came nowhere close but they still sold it.) You could train hamsters to do better spots than those two.

-They showed a horrible video of Mrs. Robinson trying to seduce David Flair. It was like a bad porno, except without any sex. Then, after David utters the immortal line from a 32 year old movie, "Are you trying to seduce me Mrs. Robinson?" they show Nash and Torrie Wilson watching on a video camera as Flair blew her off because he loved Torrie. Nash was talking about the plan backfiring, which seems to be the case a lot for him this year.

-Stevie Ray told Horace that Hollywood made him the boss and ended up decking Horace when he didn't believe him. Those suckas need to start watching the replay of Nitro instead of passing out after they go back to their hotel room and they'd see what idiots Hollywood is making them out to be.

3/29/99

-The annual Spring Break-Out Nitro on 3/22 in Panama City, FL before 2,500 college kids on a week long beer binge, totally sex starved and spending all day in the sun. How that results in a show that has no crowd heat is beyond my comprehension, but then again, considering it started out with Van Hammer vs. Bull Pain and didn't get better, maybe it's understandable.

-Steiner did an interview and called himself the Missionary Man.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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4/5/99

-Kevin Sullivan, 49, passed out before the show and was literally asleep on the floor backstage and lost control of his bodily functions.

-The fans booed DDP even before he gave them a reason to, I think he called Scott Scum Steiner and they're so sick of everyone being scum I guess.

-Raven's "sister" Chastity in WCW appeared in a porno called "Live Bait" which is out on commercial tape wherever tapes like that are out

-Ralphus has been dropped. They thought it had run its course. Of course, this company thought the same thing about Brian Pillman & Steve Austin as a tag team

4/12/99

-The changes in Nitro reminded me of putting a nice fresh coat of paint on a house that was just hit by a tornado.

-Believe it or not, one of the reasons Ralphus is gone is it was believed his head was getting too big because he was featured on television.

-The NWO Battle Royal was so much worse than you could ever imagine. The crowd went dead, like they had each individually had their hands covered in novocaine. The wrestling was so bad that it was no worse than watching the women in WWF go at it, except nobody wanted to see these guys rip their clothes off. Stevie Ray won in 7:35, so he's the boss. The plan was for Ray to win and re-name the Black & White into a new group that would be a modern version of the Black Panthers. Let's see, that's a 30-year-old term, and Adams, Norton & Horace are white.

-Thunder was basically everyone just goofing off because nobody cares.

-Raven & Saturn did an interview where they talked about being friends in high school and both liked Beulah McGillicuddy. Saturn said, "That was Tommy."

-Smiley went to do the big wiggle, but the cameras cut to a crowd shot. Scott Steiner can say what he says on TV, but Smiley can't even do a lewd dance. Which is more gross, Smiley dancing or those ring outfits they used to have Giant run around in.

-Adams delivered a superkick and Schiavone noted that was from his judo background. So now we know Schiavone doesn't know much about wrestling and knows nothing about judo.

-Flair brought in Ed Leslie, and called him Ed. He said in 30 days his contract expires and asked what his plans were after wrestling. Leslie looked shocked, I guess figuring with all the money this company wastes, that a guy who brings nothing to do the table would surely be renewed. I mean, the only guys WCW has ever fired were Sean Waltman, Vader and Steve Austin and boy are their careers dead today.

-Chris Benoit was on the FAN in Toronto and asked if he thought that there was a conspiracy to destroy the company from within and he said, "It appears that way."

-WCW took out a huge ad in USA Today on 4/2 with the new logo which read "Looks like something a bird left on the hood of my car," and never mentioned anything about wrestling.

-They are contemplating a new slogan for WCW, "Shut up and wrestle." I'm not making that up

-How about this one? WCW ordered a ton of new business cards, stationary, etc. with the new logo and the address on all the cards was spelled "Altanta."

-Flair is about to be dropped from the Time Magazine Man of the Century internet balloting where he's currently in second place behind Jesus Christ.

4/19/99

-Chastity brought out the fire extinguisher. Bigelow got it from her and sprayed her in the part of her body that half the wrestling universe has seen in recent weeks at their adult video racks

-Riggs came out with a mirror that read "Better looking each day." Obviously that doesn't refer to his career prospects.

-After the match Konnan looked right into the camera and said, "not tired," which I guess was a reference to Kevin Nash going on television a few months back and saying Konnan lacked heart and conditioning.

-Steiner basically threatened everyone in the first two rows of ringside for the first few minutes.

-La Parka & Dandy went to a no decision with the Master Blasters. For the five people who cared, Kevin Nash's first pro match was on September 5, 1990 in Asheville, SC on a Clash of the Champions as part of a tag team called The Master Blasters (his partner, who was awful, was so embarrassed by his performance that he went home and was never seen again). These Blasters were two huge muscle guys, one a friend of Raven's and the other a friend of Goldberg's who I believe played pro football a few years back. Of course they were green. Nash came out and beat all four up at once.

4/26/99

-Flair was going crazy thinking he was President of the U.S. signing papers he wasn't even looking at while Arn Anderson looked in disgust. Flair kept talking about partying after the show. Charles Robinson was backstage as Flair's stooge saying he Flair's body looked better than Sting and what a great job Flair did in that match.

-They did skits with Roddy Piper (who was shockingly lucid) leading to Ric Flair being committed to a mental hospital.

-Piper got David Flair to sign Flair into a mental hospital for 72 hours (since they had already taped Thunder and Flair was still President on that show). David was strategically drinking a Surge. By the end of Monday nights, I'm going to be having nightmares that I'm being attacked by thugs who force me to watch wrestling for hours on end and they are forcing Surge's down my throat.

-I'm trying to figure out what drug the guys who write the TV are on so I can try it while watching and maybe these "high concepts" will make sense. I think they also need to legalize it in the U.S. so everyone can take it and understand these "high concepts" and the ratings will come back.

-They had the goofiest looking doctors in history cart Flair out on a stretcher and throw him into a mental hospital truck. At the same time, everyone switched to Raw.

-Nash proposed an idea of a new Horseman with himself, Lex Luger, Rick Steiner and Flair with Anderson as manager, but Bischoff nixed it. Think the idea, since Luger and Nash have been trying to get Flair out of the picture, was for Nash to be in the Horseman as world champion and Flair being in the background in his own group.

-The biggest news is the corporate types, no doubt spurred on by the "Outside the Lines" show and all the negative pub regarding drugs in wrestling, particularly the terribly loud steroid chants during Scott Steiner matches, ordered a drug test in Orlando and then surprised everyone with a second drug test at Nitro in Gainesville. A lot of guys were said to be scampering for the drug masking pills backstage. Rumor has it that word got out and there were a few no-shows.

-There was an incident after Thunder where Disco Inferno was riding Hugh Morrus and Arn Anderson got so mad he slapped Disco in the face.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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5/3/99

-I know if you look with a microscope you can find very minor storyline snafus anywhere, but Nitro's snafus are unlike anything I've ever seen on television.

-On Thursday's Thunder they announce Flair's out of the mental hospital and backstage making changes in the card. On Sunday he wrestles in Minneapolis. But on Monday, one week later, he's been in the nut house for the entire week and still there, running around in the same underwear like he's never left.

-Flair was in the nut house with this bald guy playing the role of a nut pretending to be a doctor. I swear it was supposed to be Gary Hart given the role.

-Sting was told not to wear his trench coat due to the Columbine high school shooting.

-They showed Hogan going in for knee surgery. Hogan was walking into the hospital. These guys have no clue!!! If Hogan can walk, then he can wrestle. If he's having surgery, fans have to believe he's really hurt. He should least limp bad, and I know he knows how to do it because he'd do it for five or ten seconds before stopping after being in figure fours all those years. Really he should be in a wheelchair unable to walk. He wouldn't sell the injury, and thus, if he doesn't care and it's not portrayed like it's a big deal, nobody else cares, and if they don't care, they don't buy tickets.

-They showed Flair going crazy in the mental hospital when Scott Hall walked in. Now that was funny.

-The four-way with Goldberg, Nash, Page and Sting went 7:47 with Savage throwing an object to Page, who hit Nash with it and gave him the diamond cutter for the pin. That Nash is so generous to do the job in this situation. Of course he's getting the strap in two weeks.

-Because nobody wants to do house shows anymore since the highest paid guys don't do them, WCW is planning on an incentive plan for the guys that are doing the house shows. The plan isn't completed but it will be guys getting bonused a certain amount for every show they work (probably $500 and up, depending upon their position on the card).

-WCW is coming out with Goldberg, Hogan, Savage and Sting Car Air Fresheners. Nash, too. The company that is marketing them wanted the first four and WCW begged them to include Nash.

5/10/99

-Juventud Guerrera (Anibal Edouardo Gonzalez) and Jerry Flynn (William Brenneman) were both arrested at 2 a.m. on 4/29 in State College, PA the night before Nitro on drunken driving charges. Guerrera was arrested at gunpoint and charged with a DUI, fleeing police, reckless driving and running several stop signs and released on $10,000 unsecured bail. Flynn was charged with a DUI and released on $5,000 unsecured bail.

-The Charlotte Nitro on 5/3 was kind of the epitome of everything that's wrong with the company. Nitro, which used to be a first day sellout, now in Ric Flair's home city, they had to have Elliot Murnick go around town and hand out free tickets to have an acceptable sized crowd for television in the big Coliseum. They drew 9,705 fans in a building that was set up for 18,000, but only 6,379 were paid for $187,275.

-The show opened with Arn Anderson breaking Flair out of the mental hospital with all the mental patients. Scott Hall was the bus driver although nobody actually saw that.

-Flair practically molested Gorgeous George.

-Piper came in the back and beat up Flair while the nut house guys tried to save Flair by hitting Piper with a beach ball. Thankfully Piper didn't sell it.

-Meng destroyed David with the death grip in 3:24. It was bad, as David is so hesitant in there and even in Charlotte nobody cared about him. David went out on a stretcher while Ric, unconcerned that his son was dead, was trying to pick up on Torrie.

-They showed another George workout video. 2.9 quarter.

-DDP did an interview and compared himself to Elway, Gretzky and Jordan, except that they all retired while he's in his prime. And they're all ten years younger than he is.

-A police officer gave the order to round up the mental patients because they didn't have releases. Somebody should have told him they can't do that. Who will book Nitro?

-Finally, Flair came out after all this mess in Charlotte, the city of his matches with Steamboat and Vader and Wahoo and everyone else, to almost no crowd reaction. He and Page were out there for 13:20 struggling to get heat as nobody cared about either of them. Savage came out and threw an object to Page and he hit Flair with it and pinned him. Scott Dickinson ran in to count the pin after Robinson was taken out. The crowd was throwing things even before the finish, and threw a lot more afterwards. Remember in the old days when business was down in a city, they tried to come up with ways to up the house next time. In WCW, they booked the show almost with the very idea of making sure none of these fans would ever want to come back.

-Due to the Columbine High School tragedy, WCW has dropped the Alex Wright Berlyn gimmick and will bring him back with a new gimmick.

-Bagwell came out doing a Scott Steiner imitation. It was more annoying than funny and didn't get over, even though Bagwell really ripped on Scott bad, like saying he watches BET trying to come up with things to say. He also said something funny about being on parole. Anyway, I hope the guy has made out his will.

-Nitro got destroyed by three points in the ratings. They had to give away thousands of tickets in a city they should easily sellout, for Nitro, just to get a half house. And Flair was destroyed first as a character, and then as a wrestler in front of a crowd which came specifically to cheer him.

5/17/99

-While there was a crowd of 20,516 fans at the TWA Dome in St. Louis for Slamboree, a card which on paper was loaded up with so-called name marquee matches, only 13,789 paid for a gate of $494,795 and another $86,678 in merchandise in the same building where WCW drew nearly 30,000 paid and more than $900,000 in the midst of a horrible winter snow storm less than six months earlier for a Nitro.

-Buff Bagwell got bruised up for real, but he lived through Scott Steiner's rage,.

-Konnan pinned Stevie Ray in 6:10. At least it was short. Vince and Horace were interfering freely from the outside. Boy were these guys in different matches. I couldn't believe how messed up some of the spots were. The worst were a spot where Ray was supposed to give Konnan a short clothesline, and Konnan was there, and Ray swung and held up twice before doing it. What was that? Then there was the time where Ray came off the top and Konnan put up his foot to the face, and Ray totally missed the foot and sold it. And the finale was Ray forgetting to duck low enough on Konnan's low leapfrog spot and they nearly killed each other on that.

-Flair vs. Piper for control of the company wound up with Eric Bischoff returning from his storyline hiatus to reverse the decision and to an immediate babyface pop. We needn't waste time thinking about why Bischoff, last we saw as a bathroom attendant, now has the power to reverse decisions and order matches to continue. Because if the booking team didn't waste any time coming up with a semi-coherent storyline reason, why should we worry about it? Flair had been promised a PPV win in real life in exchange for doing TV jobs for Sting, Nash and Page in succession, and didn't get it, and was talking loudly and publicly again about thinking he'd been double-crossed and wanting to be somewhere else and was talking openly about leaving although that isn't unusual either. Flair was told just before the match that they wanted to keep him as a heel in the same role, but plans were changed and Bischoff wanted to be portrayed again as the man running the company, but this time in a babyface role.

-There was actually an amazing amount of press regarding tying in the fact that was reported here many weeks back that WCW's Chastity once appeared in a porn movie called "Live Bait" for a brief cameo. The news hit TV Guide Online and Richard Johnson's page six column in the New York Post with the Murdoch newspaper using it as a way to rip Ted Turner. The way the item was ordered, with the lead being that "one of the female stars of Ted Turner's family friendly World Championship Wrestling organization has an X-rated past," the word family friendly being the key, certainly seems to indicate which direction the story was planted. Jay Leno, Craig Kilborn and even Saturday Night Live over the weekend were doing jokes about Chastity.

-There had been talk of Hall doing a run-in to help Flair beat Piper on the PPV and joining the Horsemen.

-David Letterman's top ten list on 5/4 was of slogans for the new WCW Nitro cologne: 10) Finally!; 9) Because when you're sitting on your ass all day watching wrestling, you've got to small your best!; 8) This stuff can make you Governor; 7) Give a bottle to that nancy boy son of yours...it couldn't hurt!; 6) The perfect gift for...uh...it's really hard to say; 5) If you actually bought Michael Jordan's cologne, you might as well buy this!; 4) The exciting scent of the lowest common denominator; 3) Like a piledriver up your nose; 2) Sometimes you just want to smell phony and 1) Attract them white trash babes!

5/24/99

-There was a full page ad in USA Today on 5/17, largely just a photo of Nash, described even internally as an embarrassment, as it didn't even have the starting time for Nitro listed.

-Eric Bischoff told some of the wrestlers on 5/17 before Nitro that they were going to focus the company around ten wrestlers, who weren't named but are believed to be Hogan, Page, Savage, Flair, Nash, Hall, Sting, Hart, Piper and Goldberg, all but Goldberg being past 40, and that everyone else would have to wait for their push.

-Flair was then backstage and told Buddy Lee Parker that everyone who runs a company pushes their kid and talked about Gagne, Watts and Von Erich (how come he didn't mention McMahon?) so he was going to push his kid. He told Parker that when Arn gives the signal, you lay down for the figure four and Flair would make him an Executive in the company. He brought out David Flair and Torrie Wilson. They made it clear that in storyline, Wilson slept with Ric so he'd promise to give David a push. Okay, that explains why Ric is pushing David after everything that went down. But explain why David now loves Ric again. The migraines are coming. David Flair beat Parker in 2:41 with the figure four. This was so bad. Fans were booing this, and not for the reasons they were supposed to. From what we're told, David hasn't even been training to be a wrestler at the Power Plant.

-Piper did an interview that died a royal death. He was given a comedy routine to read 10 reasons Flair shouldn't be President. It wasn't funny and he knew it, and it never ended. Being wrestling fans, the only line that got over was Flair thinking Y2K had something to do with K.Y. jelly. Bischoff came out to no reaction. Now in the storyline, Bischoff holds a prominent executive position in the company. Anyway, Piper yelled at Bischoff who kept apologizing saying he'd do better.

-Finally, Nash beat Page via DQ in 6:24. To show how over these two guys are, besides the obvious 2.4 rating, the crowd was chanting "Goldberg" while watching a world title rematch.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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6/7/99

-Based on last year's PPV revenue, the company is about $12 million behind budget in PPV revenue for this year.

-Nitro on 5/31 at the Astrodome in Houston drew 15,004

-Flair did an interview saying the elbow off the top was now banned. J.J. Dillon agreed with him. I guess they forgot the announcement made last week that the elbow off the top was banned. To make things more confusing, when Savage wrestled later in the show, guess what his winning move was?

-Hogan came back on 5/24 and suggested doing an old vs. new angle, largely because he wants to shoot on the new guys about never drawing money. Of course, in WCW's scheme of things, guys like Nash, who are 40, are the young team.

-They are going to send DJ Ran and some of the Nitro girls to the house shows feeling that will help attendance.

-WCW spent literally tons of money on TV ads to air in most markets early in the Raw show to plug Hogan's return on Nitro and the Tonight show segment that ended up having to be canceled. With all that advertising, the Hogan segment only did a 3.7 quarter which was the second highest segment (with no hype and being totally overexposed, the Flair segment did a 3.9)

6/14/99

-Several of the wrestlers have urged Bischoff to sign Master P, whose bodyguard is trying to get into wrestling, with the belief he is WWF bound if they don't make a deal.

-Hak came out with a cigarette to wrestle Prince Iaukea. Bischoff, who did commentary for the first hour, said it looked like Hak had been drinking for four straight days. J.J. Dillon came out and told him he couldn't smoke and he blew smoke in Dillon's face. Bischoff got up and confronted Hak, who blew the smoke in his face. Bischoff slapped Hak and they had a pull-apart.

-Bischoff said the Higher Power was initialed V.M. and that on the other station they just keep recycling the same crap. An interesting choice of words. By the way, Bischoff figured it was VM, and didn't know, and backstage when Raw was on and so many people were watching Raw instead of paying attention to their own live show, he was relieved that it was VM so he didn't look bad.

-La Parka & Silver King beat Damian & Ciclope in 7:14 when Parka power bombed Damian through a table and then onto two chairs for the pin. This was a total complete disaster. By this point, Bischoff was gone, so Tony Schiavone and Bobby Heenan laughed their way through the match, saying over and over in the most demeaning tone possible that this was a "Mexican Hardcore match." These guys were out there killing themselves for no reason at all. Topes into baseball bat swinging chair shots. The announcers laughed like it was funny. Tope con hilo into a chair. Even funnier. Asai moonsault onto a garbage can. Why that was downright hilarious.

-Savage's girls seduced Nash. Stupid Nash jumped in the limo and they slammed the door. Savage drove it a few yards and jumped out and a hum-vee ran into the limo. They spent $50,000 to get a 2.7 quarter. They also never updated Nash's condition on the air, so the millions (it's still millions) of viewers have no idea if he's going to be in the main event on the PPV in six days. They told people to click on to the WCW web site, where Bischoff tried to hint that it was Sable who was the driver. Was this bad taste or what? Heenan even said, "It doesn't look good," using the same tone Lawler did when he came back from being near Owen Hart. This is one sick business.

-WCW continues to have interest in signing Yokozuna despite the fact he's banned in every commission state due to his weight.

6/21/99

-Arn Anderson was never discussed with about the possibility of Sid coming in ahead of time and the only reason he knew before Sid arrived in Baltimore was because Randy Savage had told him. When Sid arrived, Anderson was told that if he wanted to, he could have nothing to do with him.

-Master P, who Bischoff tried to get over as a life long wrestling fan and not some guy who has come into wrestling to collect a paycheck, didn't even know the name of the guy he was doing his program with (Curt Hennig) and referred to him as "the cowboy guy."

-The big show for WCW is not a PPV, but the 7/5 show at the Georgia Dome. If the combination of Master P and Dennis Rodman fails to sell a ton of tickets (and it may) or spark a sizeable television rating (which it won't), the die will already be cast. WCW already destroyed all the marketability potential of Tank Abbott in two television appearances and appears to have already given up on him after giving him a three-year contract. Sid Vicious understands the business well enough that he won't be destroyed personally, but his track record shows it isn't like he's going to help the company in the long run either.

-Sting put on the scorpion and if you look back at the tape, you'll see every head in the building turn to the back. There was no run-in, but fans are conditioned to believe that every finish involves a run-in. This is what killed Crockett in 1987-88 and that company was on fire in 1986.

-WCW forgot to tell Flair he was booked, and it was so incredibly stupid because Jason Hervey was in Charlotte at the request of management and they gave Flair off Thunder because they were producing an upcoming Flair home video for TriMark, but never informed the people writing the show about Flair having the day off, or some sort of typical miscommunication. Anyway, when they panicked since Flair wasn't there at 6 p.m., they called him and told him to get to Syracuse. At a cost of thousands of dollars (by the way in the money wasting department this was a mere pittance as compared to the $100,000+, and not $50,000 as listed last week for that skit where they destroyed the limo on Nitro for a 2.7 quarter), they chartered a flight from Charlotte to Syracuse to get Flair to Thunder, but due to a weather problems, it couldn't get off the ground until 7 p.m. The show was put together with the idea Flair would do several interviews building to the Benoit match and it was supposed to be a show built around Flair vs. Benoit. So virtually the entire Thunder show was filling time. Flair finally arrived at 9:55 p.m., but they had already changed plans for the show because they had to be off the air at 10:03 p.m. because TBS decreed that the Chimp movie had to start on time.

-I couldn't believe Windham would actually go out in public let alone wrestle in those shorts that were eight sizes too small.

-Bischoff was desperately trying to sell the idea that if Van Hammer was more aggressive in the ring he could be another Chris Benoit.

-Nash did an interview and Rena Mero was shown. Bischoff out of nowhere said, "It's on."

-Konnan even did a tope.

6/28/99

-Nash was upset after his interview on Nitro last week because Sable stole the spotlight and fans were chanting for her while he was out there doing his interview

-Nitro at the Superdome in New Orleans drew 17,249, which was 15,593 paying $346,424. Realistically they were going to draw about 13-14,000 paid without all the late local push by Master P. So much for him coming in and selling out the Dome.

-Master P came out and rapped and the less said about that the better.

-They did an angle where it was Master P's brother's birthday. Konnan & Misterio Jr. weren't even out there to get the rub although it was just as well they weren't because this was an incredibly bad angle. Hennig came out, and now is talking like a Texan. Master P still hasn't figured out his name and just knows he's a Cowboy. He gave P's brother a cowboy hat, which he stomped into the ground and they threw the birthday cake on Hennig. They couldn't even get that right.

-Willie Nelson is expected to do a WCW vignette with Hennig. Certain people are recognizing Hennig is about to turn face against their wishes, so they are going to do a deal where Hennig tries to buddy up to Nelson but he shoots him down trying to get the country fans to think of Hennig as being uncool as well.

-Disco Inferno was asked to do a program with Van Hammer but he thought it was worthless.

-Isn't it amazing that Nash is the first booker in history that has ever been able to kill both Piper and Flair?

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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7/5/99

-Konnan has serious heat after bashing WCW in a USA Today article about pro wrestling. He was quoted as saying "I think WCW is very stale because fresh faces are held back. You have a lot of wrestlers that wield a lot of power. If you don't conform or be part of their clique, if you're not drinking or training with them, you get cut out. That's just bad business. I hate the politics and hypocrisy. I want to wrestle and have fun."

-The Master P deal has turned into a colossal joke and may have already fallen apart. Last week in New Orleans, Master P kept making demands on WCW for more limo's and more perks, trying to negotiate contracts (apparently Swole signed a huge money contract and Eric Bischoff actually believed the guy used to work for New Japan Pro Wrestling although reports since he worked one show this past week were that he wasn't bad for a newcomer), showing less than zero respect for Bischoff and then the next morning, one of his bodyguards was arrested at the airport for carrying a gun. There must have been a blow-up because by late week, it was said that both his and Dennis Rodman's appearances for 7/5 at the Georgia Dome were in jeopardy.

-Piper went crazy cutting a promo on Howard Stern blaming Stern for all the problems with kids in the United States.

-Nash said in exchange for giving David the title match, if he won, he wanted Torrie Wilson for 72 hours and said all he would need is 72 hours and she'd be ruined.

-Hennig & Duncum Jr. & Barry & Kendall Windham beat Stevie Ray & Horace Hogan & Vincent & Brian Adams in 7:55 when Duncum & Kendall used a double bulldog on Vincent and Duncum pinned him. Barry is still washing his shorts in too much warm water. This match was terrible, but Adams actually did a good dropkick and didn't look like the worst wrestler in the world in this match. Unfortunately, Stevie Ray did.

-Remind me if I'm ever hired to run a wrestling company not to give the guy who gives my dog obedience lessons the U.S. title.

-I can just imagine the guys in the War room putting on this show. Let's see, Vince is putting Austin vs. Undertaker on top and we've got David Flair vs. Nash, so we need a really strong semifinal to give us a boost so we'll put Sid against Scott Putski.

-Nash vs. David was beyond bad. They had all the heels as lumberjacks, Arn as ref. Basically everyone jumped Nash, who sold very little considering it was a 16-on-1 beating. David put the figure four on him but Nash broke it like it was a joke and started beating up everyone. David got the taser but Nash got it away and zapped David and Anderson and threatened everyone else. He then carried Gorgeous George out over his shoulder and Torrie Wilson came running away with Nash to give the impression Mr. Cool Guy is almost as cool as Tommy Dreamer and going to do his own three-way dance.

-For those curious, Tank Abbott is still being flown to every Nitro and is still under contract. They just don't use him. Among the people at Nitro who flew home because they weren't booked on the show were the real Sting, Rick Steiner, Konnan, Rey Misterio Jr., Kidman, Knobs and a slew of others.

-They claimed David was undefeated with a 7-0 record and was chasing Goldberg's streak. Didn't Meng destroy him. Sorry I remembered.

-Apparently when Sting said, "I've got two words for you," and the crowd responded "Suck it" in New Orleans on 6/21, he thought the cameras were off. Boy did that come off as one lame finish of a TV show.

7/12/99

-Also on the show is Disco Inferno vs. Ernest Miller with the loser not being able to dance anymore. The plan is for Disco to lose but dance anyway.

-Ric stripped Scott Steiner of the U.S. title. You want to know the reason? He said Scott was so busy with all his hoochies that he didn't have time to defend the title. That sure makes the belt seem important.

-Lenny Lane & Lodi did their act hinting they are lovers and Lodi saying how he knows all of Lenny's measurements. They showed a closet in the corner with the word "closet" on it. This stuff is bad. I think only people who consider pornos as high class entertainment can enjoy these WCW skits.

-Piper came out and said he was the original Highlander and the original Bret Hart. Then he stopped making sense. This was one of Piper's worst interviews. He called out a short fake Sting. The crowd was sick of fake Stings. Piper attacked him which made him a total face. He then ripped on Bagwell and challenged him to a ten round boxing match. J.J. Dillon came out with Mills Lane (of Judge Mills Lane and ref of many famous boxing matches including the Tyson-Holyfield second match, by the way, he did a WWF Raw angle last year), who they announced as referee for Piper-Bagwell. Lane didn't know if the PPV was in California or Florida, and he still did the second best interview of the entire show. He had no idea what was going on but at least sounded enthused about it.

-The cameras focused on Hennig, who unfortunately, was trying to get heat on Swole who didn't really know what he was doing and Hennig seemingly was in a conversation with him in the corner trying to explain it was time to bump, and eventually he did.

-They did a show long angle with Nash and Savage where Nash was to give back Gorgeous George and Savage was to give back the title belt that he stole at Nitro. They finally met in this back alley looking place. Savage, Sid and NWO Sting all beat up Nash and left him laying, and grabbed the girl, who was all covered up and wearing a hood and left. Like 20 minutes later, they stopped the car and took her hood off and it was Torrie Wilson, not Gorgeous George. Like they couldn't tell that the girl in the hood was a foot taller than George. She noted that Big Sexy was a lot smarter than those guys think. The ratings the next day sure didn't say that.

-There are reports that Swole signed a one-year contract for $400,000, which is said to be not all that much less than Jericho was offered. Master P is said to be getting $200,000 per appearance.

7/19/99

-Ernest Miller pinned Disco Inferno (Glen Gilbertti) in 8:07. The stipulations for this match were supposed to be that the loser wouldn't be allowed to dance in WCW ever again. The stips were announced on WCW Saturday Night and on the pre-game show, but never on either Nitro or Thunder nor talked about before or during the match itself. Miller challenged Disco to a dance contest at the beginning and attacked him while dancing. Disco came back stomping on Cat's hat. The match was pretty bad. Disco used the last dance (stunner) but Sonny Onoo had the ref distracted. This gave Miller a chance to put on his red dancing shoe and kick Disco in the side of the head for the pin. After the pin, Schiavone said that there was a stipulation that the loser couldn't dance, but that stipulation was removed and that Disco can still dance. 1/2*

-Schiavone talked about Van Hammer being a young star. Isn't he, like 39 years old?

-Before Bagwell came out Schiavone screamed, "Listen to this ovation," and then he came out and got only a tepid reaction. Bagwell said since he knew Piper would have Flair in the corner, that he had a secret weapon in his corner and called out his mother Judy. That'll really get him over with the guys who think he's an annoying pretty boy, bringing his mommy to help him fight. There was no reaction at all for Judy. All I could think about was how far Flair has fallen knowing that sometime in the next 15:00 he was going to have to sell for a nearly 60-year-old woman.

-Even through Piper is 19 years older, it was pretty clear he'd destroy him in a boxing match. Second round saw Flair put something on Piper's gloves which he used to blind Bagwell. Bagwell was selling and went down again. In the third round, Judy bit Piper's ear. We knew with Mills Lane that was coming. She then dumped water and put a bucket on his head. Bagwell did the old haymaker to the bucket gimmick and Piper was stunned, and Bagwell delivered the blockbuster. Lane counted 1-2-3 without hitting the mat. A pin in a boxing match? After everything else on the show, it made perfect sense. Judy chased Flair around the ring after the match. 1/2*

-Vampiro got a big pyro ring introduction and is getting a push now because the booking committee was very impressed at him for winding up last week on Nitro getting a fat lip and a black eye from Rick Steiner punches and never complaining, so he's getting a little push. Konnan is getting buried because of the USA Today remarks.

-Miller came out with a cape that read "Godfather of Soul." Of course he meant James Brown. They don't realize that most of the wrestling fans probably think he's talking about the guy on the other station pimpin' ho's nationwide.

-Can someone explain to me Asya's purpose unless she's there to shame all the guys who don't into taking roids because a woman on the show is more muscular than almost all of them.

-Finlay hit Regal with a chair when Kidman moved. Kidman went for the shooting star press and didn't get enough distance, and nearly killed himself going down. Bischoff was supposed to run in and count the fall since they're building to him having a more prominent television role as babyface President. Kidman had the wind knocked out of him and from his landing could have been seriously hurt. Regal, in a scene reminiscent of the night Austin beat Owen Hart for the IC title, basically cradled himself for the pin. Bischoff shoved down David Taylor after the match. The British Pub Posse then yelled at Eric but I guess they saw those karate videos he did when he was chasing down Vince, and walked off wanting no part of him. Bischoff actually sold saying when Finlay was threatening him he saw his life pass before his eyes. I usually see the same thing about halfway into a three-hour Nitro.

-The Triad did their same catch phrases. Batta-bing. Batta-boom. Batta-boring.

-Shane Douglas has signed and will, as things stand at this moment, be part of a new Four Horsemen.

-Misterio Jr. has to quit doing that "Hootie Hoo" because that's dying a brutal death.

-The head honchos that actually watched the Georgia Dome Nitro were also very upset about the Lodi & Lenny Lane characters which is why they weren't on Nitro this week.

-On BBC2 in the U.K. on 7/6 on the Louis Thoreaux Weird World show, the host went to a Nitro event and to the Power Plant. The host made the usual remarks about it being fake, so trainer Buddy Lee Parker made him do calisthenics until he puked and was laying the smack down on his candy ass and swearing pretty heavily at him.

-You know things are bad when I don't even find Flair entertaining anymore.

-Benoit pinned Kanyon in 10:28 with a diving head-butt. Best TV match from any company in weeks. Someone explain to me why during a match of this calibre with the great into it that they break from the match to show Jimmy Hart trying to recruit Mikey Whipwreck into the Battle Royal.

-Bret Hart got a lot of heat this week for a remark, meant as a joke but it didn't come off well at all, in his Calgary Sun column, saying he was at the Calgary Stampede over the weekend and saw two dogs having the time of their lives rolling in manure and said it reminded him of the British Bulldog who would do anything to get a job in the WWF.

-Lanny Poffo is still under contract making $75,000 per year.

7/26/99

-Lenny Lane & Lodi did a segment with J.J. Dillon. They were afraid Dillon thought they were gay but he thought they were brothers, and those lame announcers thought they were as well. The announcers should pretend to think they are but let the audience know they know because the announcers have to sell the product. Think about this logically. If you go to an auto dealership to buy a car and you recognize that the salesman is absolutely the most naive person on Earth, you know, a guy who would see a 7-foot-tall guy in make-up and think it's Sting, would you buy the car from him?

-Lodi drank Heenan's drink at ringside which they purported as being water.

-The next segment was really weird. Robert Wuhl, who plays the character "Arliss," showed up in his Arliss character and they called him Arliss rather than Robert Wuhl. That would be like that horrible angle when Lawler was selling for Bill Shatner that instead of calling him Bill Shatner they'd call him Captain Kirk. He was acting like he was a famous sports agent, which is the role he plays. They are doing a wrestling segment on Arliss that was taped months ago but airs on 7/25, head-to-head with WWF Fully Loaded.

-Bagwell came out in black face with a fake Sonny Onoo.

-Shane Douglas showed up and cut a promo. Douglas did a good promo but most of the fans had no idea what he was talking about. He said there was a cancer in WCW and you all know who it is? I figure he meant Flair, but probably 90% of the TV audience didn't know what he was talking about and the announcers never brought it up. Maybe all the guys have spent too much time in the sun and there's a skin cancer epidemic and that's what he was talking about.

-KISS is receiving $500,000 to perform two songs on Nitro on 8/23, plus Gene Simmons will introduce a new wrestler, the Kiss Demon, who will be played by Dale Torborg as a kid who grew up idolizing Gene Simmons. Remember that because some day it'll be next to Oz, The Ding Dongs, those dancing bears with Matt Borne and Glacier in the WCW Gimmick Hall of Fame. They are also talking about a group of wrestlers as the Kiss Warriors, who will be made up as the other members of the band.

-On WCW Live, Hogan said, among other things, that Pat Patterson made a pass at him on a road trip when he worked in the WWF, he went into more detail about why people supposedly went to Jesse's room when they wanted to party (marijuana references), said he thought Paul Wight was the guy he was going to pass the torch to but that Wight didn't have the work ethic and now he thinks it'll be Goldberg, said the Master P thing was a flop and the only thing positive about it is it got Curt Hennig over and said even his kids and their friends knew Master P wasn't any good. He said there should be more clean finishes, no more mystery theater (bad vignettes and they are dropping the who drove the hum-vee angle at least for now), said that Rodman has been doing a lot of partying and didn't have high hopes for him this time but said he was okay the first time but not the second time. He said they have to get Flair and Piper back to being Flair and Piper and not the role they are in.

-They've talked with Disco Inferno about taking a bump on his head and doing an amnesia gimmick where he thinks he's one of the established stars like Hogan and Savage and does promos mad at Benoit and Malenko for thinking they can take the main event spots from people like him and Hogan.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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8/2/99

-On Thunder when Nash issued the challenge, it was for Nash and a mystery partner who he'd been friends with for nine years and was having drinks with him at his home in Scottsdale, AZ against Hogan & Sting. It turned out to be Sid, who in the typical paying attention to storyline, was in Moline in the very next match while Nash claimed his partner (who they wanted people to think was going to be Scott Hall) was sitting there with him.

-Reminds me of a conversation I had just last week when pointing out to someone in WCW about something on the last PPV that made no sense in the storyline and the response was, "with our buy rates, nobody sees the PPVs anyway."

-They announced Chad Brock would be performing on the 8/9 Nitro. Chad Brock is a country singer of zero name value who had a top-ten song recently and once trained at the Power Plant and got a few try-out matches for WCW, then went back to country and had a hit. He's interested in getting back in wrestling now. It's scary to even think about how that quarter hour will do.

-Sting asked the fans if he should team with Hogan, and they booed heavily. Sting, listening to the advice of the fans, then agreed to team with Hogan. They booed even heavier.

-Annoying (v), Hervey, Jason -- former child two-bit actor who goes on television and acts as if he's a Hollywood mogul and above everyone else. Everyone thought he was terrible in the booth, except Bischoff, who thought he was great and the initial reports were he'd be back there next week. Maybe when he's done they can find Steve McMichael and that little dog.

-These things change on a daily basis, but an idea floated last week was for Douglas to screw Benoit and company at the end and the new Horseman would be Douglas, Barry Windham, Hennig and Dustin Rhodes managed by Flair.

-Sid was missing spots all over the place to the point it made Nash look like a good worker.

-Thunder on 7/22 in Moline, IL opened with somebody's idea of a bad practical joke as Van Hammer beat Kaz Hayashi with a cobra clutch slam in a bad size comedy match in 5:34.

-I don't know what they did for all those years in the Power Plant with Chase Tatum because they sure didn't teach him to wrestle. He has no concept of how and when to sell.

-Apparently last week Bischoff was shocked on Tuesday when the ratings came in, not so much at the overall number but seeing just how badly Hogan vs. Sid got creamed by Undertaker vs. HHH. On a radio show this past week, the host brought up that the Raw main event beat the Nitro main event by four ratings points. Hogan's response was that it was Malenko, Benoit, Saturn and Douglas that brought the rating down and he had to make up lost ground. For the record, the Rednecks vs. Benoit & Saturn with the run-ins by Malenko and Douglas drew a 3.3 quarter. The final quarter was the ring intros and beginning of Hogan vs. Sid which did a 2.9. WWF 7.0 quarter against Hogan and Sid and the 7.7 over-run against Hogan and Sid.

-Master P is officially gone. Konnan and Misterio Jr. have been pulled out of the No Limit Soldiers which will now become a jobber group.

-The Power Plant training methods have come under more and more criticism because of how many new stars WWF has created as compared with WCW. Instead of working in the ring, it seems Buddy Lee Parker is like a boot camp instructor who gets guys into great condition but they don't learn in-ring wrestling enough, so you see these Chase Tatum and Chip Minton looking characters who look like a million dollars and after years of training can't even do an acceptable TV squash match.

-The 7/26 Hollywood Reporter had a short item about the WCW movie. David Arquette (Scream 3) stars in the movie. People who have read the script say it's awful, somewhat taken out of the Bret Hart deal (isn't everything) about two wrestling fans who find out ahead of time that the promoter is about to screw their favorite wrestler in a match and they try to warn him ahead of time. Rose McGowan plays a Nitro Girl in the comedy written by Stephen Brill, who wrote "Mighty Ducks." Bischoff will be the Executive Producer and several WCW wrestlers will appear in the movie.

8/9/99

-Lodi's sign read that when Lenny & Lodi are in town, somebody's going down.

-Sid & Steiner literally killed Goldberg with a shovel. He had this gigantic knot on the back of his head that they literally had to super glue the cut closed (Dr. Sabu's medical treatment)

-Rodman was supposed to be the face in all this but the problem was they let him talk with a live mic. First, no face comes out with two huge bodyguards (Swoll & Teddy "4x4" Reade). Then he talked about how he already had sex with Savage's girlfriend. The crowd didn't like that. Then in his infinite wisdom of how to play babyface, he said in front of a crowd of 99.9% white guys from South Dakota that once you've had black, you'll never go back. You can imagine the response but he got more heat than anyone on the show for it, which would be good if the idea was to turn Savage face. Rodman and Savage were calling each other all sorts of nasty words like asshole and bitch that were being edited out while Bischoff was undergoing a coronary at ringside. Rodman wanted to talk again after this angle, which was actually really good, but Bischoff wouldn't let them turn on his mic and went to a commercial.

-Jason Hervey wasn't back on commentary because it was basically unanimous that it didn't work

-Rodman was on a radio show saying he's making $1 million for his four Nitro and one PPV stint with WCW

8/16/99

-Hennig was getting over with the "Rap is Crap" entrance music so what do they do? You guessed it. They gave him new entrance music that'll never get over.

-Thursday on Thunder, Savage had promised to reveal who drove the hummer and introduce a new bodyguard on Nitro now that Sid is with Nash. He did neither, nor were either ever brought up.

-Rodman came out. The guy has amazing presence and charisma. Unfortunately, he has no brain. He said he loved being in Idaho. See, despite his clever remarks, he is supposed to be the face here. Because of his clever remarks, the people stood up to see him but didn't cheer for him. Anyway, he called Gorgeous George his bitch. As you can imagine, the fans booed that. Gene took his mic away and wouldn't let him talk.

-Bagwell started shooting a movie called "Terror Tract" in Los Angeles which stars John Ritter.

8/23/99

-Tenay noted ICP were long-time wrestling fans who had worked indies and their first album named "The Great Milenko" was actually a tribute to Dean's father (and a tribute to the fact they can't spell.)

-Sid Vicious is now 55-0. Yeah, even though he loses nearly every house show match, and has been on the losing side of tag matches nearly every week on Nitro, he is undefeated.

-Lodi had a sign saying he about he and Lenny that "We dive with Greg Louganis."

-By this point in the show, they had Sid's winning streak for some reason up to 59, because as Heenan noted, he'd beaten up nine people on the show (actually it was eight and, you know, 55+9=59).

-Schiavone tried to get Harlem Heat over as being the greatest tag team in the history of wrestling. I mean, he used those exact words.

-Bigelow looked like he'd just come out on the bad end of a serious street fight. After seeing his face, I think I'd rather get in a street fight than have a nice worked match with Stevie Ray.

-The reason there was no live introduction of Chad Brock was because every mention of his name to the live crowd had been heavily booed and Dave Penzer was told specifically not to introduce him.

-Kimberly has to be the least most well known person in the 50+ year history of TV Guide to ever get a cover shot. I think Kevin Nash is probably the second least known person to make the cover.

-Larry King on 8/13 has a forgettable full hour on wrestling. Rena Mero was the guest for the first 30 minutes and she said nothing. King was pulling teeth just get a bad interview. She wouldn't even say she was ever angry with the WWF ("Well, I wouldn't say I was angry.") She said that her husband had retired from wrestling and is now CEO of Rena Productions. The jokes are too easy from that one. The funniest thing was a caller called up and yelled at her because she had talked of wrestling being scripted, acting like she'd betrayed the world. At first she defended herself by saying that the heads of the companies freely admit to it as well (like the truth isn't a good enough reason). The caller, a father who was so livid he was almost in tears because his kids heroes were wrestlers was hilarious.

-Mark Madden on the web broadcast of the Hogan-Nash match instead of calling it loser must retire, was calling it "loser gets time off."

-The 7/19 Rockford Register Star had an article on Rockford-born Gorgeous George, real name Stephanie Bellars. The funny part of the article is that in doing the background research on her, the newspaper uncovered her criminal record. They noted that WCW, Savage, her father and George broke off all communication with the paper when they discovered it. Bellars, 23, spent time in jail as a teenager for burglarizing a home and slashing a girl's face with a broken beer bottle.

8/30/99

-There is absolutely nothing on the drawing board for the 9/12 Fall Brawl PPV. WCW was supposed to cut its first PPV channel promotional piece for the show this past week but canceled filming because nothing had been decided.

-Nitro in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Garden Arena drew approximately 8,900 paying $180,000. Tony Schiavone opened the show talking about a crowd of 18,000 fans.

-Hogan vs. Sting was an 80s style match and kind of boring. Schiavone was screaming like the match was an all-time classic. Only in WCW do guys actually have all-time classics and the announcers don't put the matches over, but they do put borefests like this over. Schiavone's nose was longer then the stem of the state of Idaho by the end of this. He talked about the crowd going crazy when they sat there. He talked about how much Hogan was being cheered when he was met with a mixture of slight boos and indifference. He talked about how much Sting was being cheered when he was met with indifference.

-In the Turner company, there have been diversity meetings as it regards race relations. Things were okay in the office until the No Limit Soldiers vs. Cowboys angle, because the office is basically made up of Country music fans and African Americans, and the angle somehow polarized the office personnel. Two weeks ago, one of Bischoff's secretaries wrote a very nasty racial joke on her computer and e-mailed it to some of her friends, but apparently either pushed the wrong button and e-mailed it to everyone, both black and white, in the office by accident, or somehow everyone in the office had read the joke. When she wasn't fired for the joke, there were a lot of complaints about how racial harmony was made out to be such a big thing in the company and by not firing the secretary it sent a powerful message.

-Sid noted that he can't wait to get to 76, because then he'll break Goldberg's record. Wasn't Goldberg's fake record something like 172?

-Dave Thomas (not the Wendy's Dave Thomas, but a guy who used to write Second City TV out of Canada which is the troupe John Candy came from) is a name thrown around as becoming a new scriptwriter.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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9/5/99

-For those keeping track, now Sid is 75-0.

-Luger did an interview and said before the show was over he was going to expose Hogan for the phony that he is. I figured George Zahorian was being brought in for a promo.

-Scotty Riggs beat Lash Laroux in 3:53 with a Rocker dropper. Fans were chanting for Sid to end this.

-Robbie Kellum owned the rights to the name Gorgeous George III, and WCW bought those rights from him originally to give to Lanny Poffo years ago but never wound up using him (Poffo is still under a $75,000 per year contract with the company) and gave the name to Savage's girlfriend. I wonder if 40 years from now there will be a female valet in wrestling called Hulk Hogan.

-I guess they didn't learn from the rating after all. WCW has added a New Years Eve PPV from the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, AZ (the 70,000 seat stadium) which will be a combination full-length wrestling show and a full-length KISS concert. Boy are the wrestlers going to be pissed having to spend the biggest New Years Eve in history working.

-When Bischoff goes heel as company President, he's going to have a black woman bodybuilder and two midgets as part of his entourage.

-Flair and Goldberg joined such celebs as Michael Jordan for the Jimmy V (for the late famous college basketball coach Jimmy Valvano of North Carolina State who died from cancer) Celebrity Golf Classic over the weekend in Cary, NC. It was said that Goldberg had a following for autographs that rivalled Jordan. Of the 101 celebrities in attendance, they had the largest followings, but the top selling auction item was a Flair robe at $28,000, sold to Darius Rucker, the lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish.

9/12/99

-In this week's edition of the sins coming home to roost, Monday Nitro drew only 3,818 paid and another 4,605 comps to the 16,483-seat Miami Arena on 9/6 for a gate of $107,134 for the fourth anniversary of the debut of Nitro. In honor of it being the fourth anniversary, they put on a show that when it was over, made you feel like you'd been watching this show alone for about two of those years.

-At this point in the show, the guy on the 1-800-CALL-ATT commercials was the most charismatic performer on the show.

-Al Greene vs. Barry Horowitz went 2:54 before Sid gave the match a mercy killing.

-Vincent came in wanting to join the Rednecks because he's from Southern New York City.

-They had a Battle Royal with the winner to get a WCW title shot at the Hogan-Sting winner next week on Nitro. This was unbelievable incompetence as the show wore on. It was said to be a 12 man Battle Royal, although only 11 guys came out.

-Heenan brought up that Page was the one who injured Hogan's leg and the two haven't touched since then. Schiavone didn't bother correcting him. Even their own announcers don't know what last week's main event was.

-Schiavone was calling Blitzkrieg "Psicosis."

-Benoit and Malenko both got up and didn't wrestle each other. Schiavone said with the title shot at stake this would have to be sorted out and he'd explain it after the break. Naturally nothing was said about it again.

-Hogan & Sting & Goldberg beat Sid & Page & Steiner in 4:24. Late in the week they had decided to make this a War Games match, since they traditionally do War Games on the September PPV but weren't going to this year. Unfortunately, they had already sold tickets for a normal, as opposed to a two-ring set-up, and these kind of changes can't be made last minute. Some day this company will get someone in charge who can plan things out in advance and they may turn it around.

-They are doing an angle with Barry Darsow where he took a bump on his head and has amnesia and one week was Krusher Kruschev, and will also be the Golfer guy and Blacktop Bully as well as himself over the next few weeks.

-Viewers Choice and cable analysts Paul Kagan and Associates sold WCW on the idea that a New Years Eve pro wrestling PPV show would do a 2.0 buy rate, citing the huge buy rate a New Years Eve Howard Stern special did (1.5) a few years ago and going with the logic pro wrestling as the hottest thing on PPV would do far better than entertainment specials on PPV. I don't even want to get into how faulty their logic is, from Stern spending months of hyping his special which got far more mainstream hype than another pro wrestling PPV in a universe of 30 per year will get, to WCW not being a hot product these days. So WCW will be doing PPVs on both 12/19 and 12/31. KISS will perform and be hyped as equal to WCW on the billing. When KISS performed at Nitro in Vegas on 8/23, they lip synched.

9/19/99

-The Revolution isn't being cheered because nobody knows what they are revolting against.

-They did a Cat-Bo (a take off on Billy Blanks ultra-successful Tae Bo workout tapes) commercial which was a better comedy sketch than 99% of what is on real comedy shows. If you call the 800 number listed on the Cat Bo commercials, you just get a tape telling you to make sure and watch Nitro every Monday night on TNT.

-Saturn beat Sid via DQ in 5:10 when Steiner interfered. When Bischoff saw that Sid got beat (he wasn't there), he apparently called in and blew a gasket and apparently the chain of command led to Mike Graham, who ended up in major hot water taking the blame for calling for that finish. Seriously, even by WCW standards, my jaw dropped at the stupidity of that finish.

-Violent J is no longer doing the moonsault after a request by Hugh Morrus.

-Berlyn (Alex Wright) pinned Jim Duggan in 7:58. Uda Luddendorf wasn't there. Berlyn was accompanied by this 6-6 looking bodyguard who looks like Dustin Runnels gassed up and without the implants (actually Dustin doesn't have implants, Dusty might tho). They announced Buff Bagwell hadn't arrived. I can't say for certainty what the actual story was here, other than Bagwell was definitely there of course. The feeling of most of the wrestlers was that Bagwell complained about doing the job (the booked finish was for Berlyn to win due to outside interference from the bodyguard, which wound up being the exact finish they did the next night on Nitro). Duggan didn't know he was going out there until just a few minutes before. He was put out there because Bagwell refused to do a job to Wright. Match had some heat because of USA vs. foreigner, but no heat for the match, which was beyond awful. Berlyn had a great TV entrance, but the guy desperately needs a tan (they thought him not having a tan would represent that white aryan supremacy but it just makes him look like a jobber with a unique haircut). Duggan made things worse by not selling well. Partially, Duggan, due to age and all his injuries and medical problems can't bump much, but when he would go down, he'd never stay down. It actually got so bad that for about ten seconds, it turned into a shoot or something vaguely resembling it due to a lack of cooperation. There was a lot of heat afterwards as if Duggan was put there by the people in power to ruin Wright's debut with the new character. Duggan's version apparently was that he was given so little lead time that he didn't know what he was supposed to be doing. The bodyguard clotheslined Duggan and Berlyn won with a neckbreaker, a finish that looked real weak in its context. After the match, they showed Bagwell arriving and Mike Graham yelling at him for missing his match. Bagwell went to the ring to hug Duggan, but Duggan shoved him. -*

9/26/99

-Although wrestlers were singing "Ding, Dong, the Witch is dead," Friday night in Baltimore, when the word of Eric Bischoff's re-assignment within Turner (read that as a nice way of saying firing) reached the wrestlers, once the initial happiness wore off and reality set in, the reality is little has changed.

-Bischoff was blamed for making bad deals in a desperate attempt to turn the ratings around, from the $1 million giveaway on Nitro which was one of the first things to have the plug pulled on, to the Master P debacle of being paid $200,000 per appearance plus expenses, to ratings disasters like signing KISS and Megadeath for $500,000 and $250,000 for one shot, to the $1 million Dennis Rodman deal which resulted in another poor buy rate and down the line. At the same time, the gap between the WWF and WCW was spreading, and adding insult to injury, Chris Jericho, who many of the headliners in the company had convinced Bischoff could never be effective as more than a mid-card player, signed with WWF and almost immediately became one of their most over performers. With the company falling behind in many ways because it had an aged feel with virtually every headliner except Bill Goldberg being near or past 40, the result was to give a bigger push to the older wrestlers like Hogan and Savage, whose status as the most pushed stars with the company led to the problem to begin with.

-The Demon gimmick, which WCW spent $600,000 to get off the ground, has been dropped since it was based on a deal Bischoff made with Gene Simmons.

-Many point to Bischoff's close association with Hervey and Mandalay as part of the reason for his departure. There had been serious heat on Bischoff's cutting a bad video deal with Hervey to market the company videos when the feeling is it should have been done in house, and the videos were embarrassingly bad as compared with WWF home videos. He was also going to produce a weekly cartoon for Nitro.

-In recent weeks Bischoff had been under fire not only from talent, but from his office staff for refusal to fire one of his personal secretaries who wrote a racial joke that accidentally was seen by the numerous African Americans who work in the office, this after the company has spent money to ease racial relations and the African-Americans saw the result as when push came to shove, the easing racial relations was a work.

-Lenny Lane kept the cruiser belt beating Shaggy 2 Dope in 4:02. C.G. Afi ran in and Lodi punched him and the security took him away. He said that was it and vowed revenge on Lodi for breaking his heart. I guess he can do the lesbian angle with Lodi that Vince Russo wanted Sable to do with Tori.

-As best we can tell regarding the Nitro Girls, there were big problems in the camp between Kimberly, who runs the troupe, and everyone else, to the point several of the women complained to Human Resources at Turner about their treatment by her.

-Biggest locker room joke is that Page is now going to buy a house next door to Bill Busch.

-There was heat on Benoit for doing the interview on 9/13 where he said that Sid had tapped out the night before but the ref didn't see it. Sid did tap out to the crossface, but he wasn't supposed to. Benoit wasn't supposed to bring it up because it would hurt Sid's invincibility, and I guess the end result is that Benoit is going to have to do another job for Sid down the line.

-C.G. Afi, the Lodi fan who runs in every week, got popped in the eye legit by security on 9/13 at the Chapel Hill, NC Nitro. While Doug Dillenger and WCW security were clued into the angle, local security wasn't and one of them that chased him down, punched him in the eye. He got a black eye and was complaining a lot. A lot of veterans who were used to working the old territories where they had to fight their way out of fan riots were really mad about him complaining about taking one punch.

-Bret Hart filmed a hip hop video this past week.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

Post by Big Boss Man »

I thought most of the wackiness went down in 2000 but seems in 1999 too. How Bisch was still in charge burning through money like the KLF amazes me. I mean he blew a ton on Master P,Kiss, Megadeth etc. The business was in a boom period so just a smart restructure of things would have worked like phasing out Hulk and friends but nope they hung around and near bankrupted WCW. I mean you had on paper a great roster, arguably of older guys but ones who fans would tune in to see. Bret should have stayed at home, did Big Kev intentional sabotage WCW like tearing it down from the inside?. Didn't they lose like 80m in 99 or 00?

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

Post by Bandit »

Big Boss Man wrote:Didn't they lose like 80m in 99 or 00?
They lost $65 million in 2000 because they based salaries off of contracts signed in 1998 and early 1999 when business was strong. But PPV buys and live gates died off in the summer of 1999, so the budget was shot.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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Are you ready for some Russo, bros?

10/4/99

-The E! Network piece interviewed many WCW wrestlers, most prominently Bill Goldberg, Diamond Dallas Page and Randy Savage, with all three coming across roughly the same as they do on most interviews (Goldberg as this normal guy who through some fluke he can't even figure out made it huge in this world he really never aspired to be a part of; Page as the same self-promoter we always see; and Savage as the middle-aged guy who can't leave his character behind). It also had many clips of Eric Bischoff speaking for WCW, with no mention that he's since been bounced from the company.

-WCW had a meeting with Hogan this past week where he was told that they were going to start this week promoting Goldberg as the top star of the company. Anyway, the idea is that the television shows will end with Goldberg. Technically, Nitro's final scene was Sid finding his car smashed up, but the show appeared to be built completely around Hogan anyway. A lot of people continue to question the booking where all the faces get laid out for Hogan to make the save, when it would be better to create a younger star by having Hogan and Flair laid out for the new star to save them, whether it be Goldberg or even taking someone else to elevate.

-They teased the debut of a new mystery character with a weird voice and a promo showing only a mirror. My assumption is this is the beginning of the push for the return of Dustin Runnels in a new weird character that is supposed to be a cross between Goldust and Undertaker.

-David Flair tried to call Torrie Wilson up. As the show later revealed, Torrie stood him up and was with Billy Kidman while the rest of the Filthy Animals laughed in the background. She told David she was stuck at the airport. Think about this. WWF has spent time successfully promoting women who either can't do interviews to save their lives or who have mens voices, and Chyna who has both traits, and WCW can't figure out an angle to get the beautiful Torrie Wilson over.

-Sid showed up and said he couldn't wrestle because he was suffering from allergies.

-They brought a make-up person in because they wanted Hart's mouth all messed up on camera to sell the baseball bat shot. Hart refused to get made up, and then downplayed the injury sheepishly saying he had a few stitches. This was a mess. Gene noted how Sting hit him with the bat. Hart at least remembered it was actually Luger, the problem being that Luger already had his funeral on that show. Hart also didn't sell Hogan's injury. Flair came out and put on a show. Flair also called the guy Lex Luger. Hart called Hogan the Elvis Presley of wrestling, which is kind of a fair comparison, you know, a guy that got incredibly huge, did a bunch of bad movies, and then when he got older became a parody of himself.

-Sid went from 86-0 on Monday to 99-0 on Thursday.

-Part of ICP's deal was going to be to pass out sample CD's at the house shows. However, before this was agreed to, they went to a house show in Michigan to pass out sample CD's, and the WCW office got numerous complaints from parents since when the kids got home and played the thing, it was all the ICP swearing rap. It really shocked me that WCW would allow them to promote their music as part of the deal in the first place since the Turner organization is so squeamish about things like that.

10/11/99

-Vince Russo and Ed Ferrera, the men who were responsible for writing the WWF television shows that have been drawing huge ratings for the past year abruptly quit the company and signed on with WCW over the weekend. The move is being lauded as the best possible move for WCW, because they have writers with proven track records in the world of pro wrestling. Russo and Ferrera were responsible for a lot of conceptual changes within the WWF, including less emphasis on in the ring, increased soap opera with an emphasis on raunchiness and basically aiming the product at teenage boys, a strategy that ended up being a huge hit among not only teenage boys, but younger kids and males in their 20s. How they'll fit into the Turner system, which just days earlier nixed the relatively tame in comparison to WWF standards, Lenny & Lodi tag team, because of a decree from the Standards and Practices becomes a big question. In addition, WCW skews much older in its demographics, partially because of its older faces on top, although even among the older demographics WWF had surpassed WCW. Russo's official title will be the Creative Supervisor and he's been given full authority on all matters when it comes to creativity and booking. Exactly what this will mean isn't clear. Russo and Ferrera start officially with the company on 10/11, but since the plans for Halloween Havoc are already laid out, no changes are expected until after the next PPV.

-Russo is in a unique position to cement his reputation. If nothing else, this maneuver will probably answer the question as to who is really responsible for the success of the Raw show. Russo and Ferrara came up with many of the ideas, but McMahon was still the final editor, tweaking ideas and throwing out ones he didn't think would work.

-Russo said when he saw the future, this was the perfect time to leave. WWF ratings and business were at their highest level (the PPVs were flattening but the rest of business is still at its highest level), but the only future he saw was him getting burned out and then being the one to take the blame for the fall and getting replaced anyway.

-Scott Norton was given an $800,000 per year contract by Bischoff, which given his market value, was ridiculous on paper, although some of that (certainly not all) could be justified since they make money sending him to Japan

-They did a show long skit with Goldberg and Sid. Sid tried to outsmart Goldberg but wound up with another car being smashed. All the wrestlers every week come out in limo's, but when you see a superstar wrestler in a cheap car, somehow it's going to end up destroyed by the end of the show.

-Psicosis came out as cruiserweight champion. In the formats, Lenny Lane was supposed to defend the title as Lenny Lane as opposed to simply Lenny. I guess he was red flagged and Psicosis got a win in a match that never took place. Anyway, they announced Psicosis had won the title, pointing out that he never held the title as a masked wrestler (actually he did for one week) trying to get over how losing the mask has changed his career. Disco then pinned him with the stunner in 3:54 to win the title.

-Hall & Nash showed up to a pretty big pop and Gene Okerlund interviewed them. After all those months gone from TV, Nash still hasn't come up with anything to say on a promo. Nash had a black girl with him I guess to show he's cool. Hall acted like he was totally wasted. At least I hope he was acting. He did have a funny line about how Nash is working a retirement angle and said he'd be back wrestling when it was fun, and when Okerlund said something like it was, Hall told Okerlund that he hadn't been in the dressing room lately.

-They have Sid at 120-0.

-Benoit did an interview very much unlike a typical pro wrestling interview. Throughout the show Schiavone talked about how when the match took place he'd treat it differently than a typical match. Heenan said he wouldn't. Too bad Heenan lived up to his word.

-Kidman was coming out of a shower with Torrie Wilson. Schiavone and Heenan said that Kidman was their hero. Should be noted that during Misterio Jr's match Schiavone said that no other members of the filthy Animals were there. Must have been a really long shower. It'll be interesting to see if they can figure out something to do with Wilson. The current plan, and remember all plans are off the books, is for Wilson to double-cross Kidman next and wind up with Douglas, because Douglas and Francine worked as a combination. Anyway, Wilson is the most potentially marketable woman in this business, but instead of pushing her like the next Sable, they've got her in the role of the next Terri Runnels.

-Juventud Guerrera pinned Kidman in 11:51 when Psicosis crotched Kidman and Guerrera used a super Juvi driver off the middle ropes on him. Kidman was remarkably alert in the ring after taking a 90 minute shower with Torrie Wilson.

-Pam Hildebrand was at Nitro in Atlanta on 9/27. They burned the ashes of Brian Hildebrand in the pyro that night, which was as he had requested.

10/18/99

-Russo’s deal in WCW is heavily incentive based. A raise is involved (we don’t have any reliable figures other than most figures that have been reported are said to be nowhere close to accurate and Russo described the raise as small), but the pay goes up based on if television ratings and PPV buy rates increase and he is coming in at a time when the numbers have hit rock bottom. The WCW Fall Brawl PPV in reality did far worse than has been reported anywhere (slightly less than 0.30) and was the lowest buy rate for any PPV show ever for either WWF or WCW and probably even UFC as well.

-They showed Benoit & Hart arriving and being taunted by Liz and Luger. There were some comments about needing security to break it up and Liz said they didn’t need security, they needed immigration. Now that was a funny line. It was also the only one on the show.

-Knobs beat Stevie Ray in a street fight in 3:53 when Ray had him pinned after a garbage can shot but Jimmy Hart clocked Ray with a garbage can and reversed the pile. Booker T and Morrus were brawling to the back at this point. Not as bad as it sounded on paper. Then again, decapitation sounded better than that match sounded on paper.

-I wish that dork with the red hair would get over Betty and find a girl with a personality. That’s regarding the Mayhem video game commercial they played 4,000 times in three hours on this night, sometimes twice in the same break, which tells you about how well the real ads are selling these days.

-Jimmy Hart, Hugh Morrus, Disco inferno, Vampiro and Ernest Miller are scheduled to tape an episode of “Family Feud” with Louie Anderson on 10/15.

-Lenny & Lodi’s characters were dropped because of a letter from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). GLAAD entertainment media director Scott Seomin wrote to TNT President Brad Seigel that “The character of Lenny is presented with the intention to incite the crowd to the most base homophobic behavior.” Seomin wrote his first letter about Lenny & Lodi in September and said he was immediately called by a Turner executive who told him the character would be dropped and that standards and practices had hired an executive whose job it would be to keep an eye on WCW. Two weeks later, Lenny was back on Nitro, and GLAAD fired off another letter to Terri Tingle, the head of standards and practices at Turner. “How many gay bashings and gay murders have to be committed in this country for you to remove such hurtful portrayals from your broadcasts,” Seomin wrote in his second letter.

10/25/99

-Nitro's increase was mainly from a 45 minute period starting with Billy Kidman vs. David Flair, Mona vs. Madusa in a stripper match and Sting vs. Bret Hart in a WCW title match, which drew 3.3, 3.2 and 3.5 quarters, much better than WCW had been doing in head-to-head periods in recent weeks. After the Hart-Sting match, which drew WCW's quarter hour rating to within 1.6 points of WWF, its closest margin in months (Raw had Test vs. Bulldog at 5.1), WCW's rating dropped every quarter hour for the rest of the show, indicating, as many noted once the show was over, that there was something about throwing so many angles out there early that made the show drag in the third hour.

-Wrestlers didn't know if they were supposed to be the faces or heels in segments, as witnessed by Flair thinking he was the heel against the Filthy Animals in their segment, and the Filthy Animals thinking they were turning heel against Flair by jumping him, resulting in a confused crowd which sided with Flair since they went four-on-one on him. Nobody could get straight answers and that segment apparently changed five different times during the show.

-It is clear they are booking with the idea that the entire wrestling audience is on the internet.

-Russo's name was brought up early in the show as they were trying to get over the idea it was a new WCW plus they need his name over for future angles both on the show and on the horizon.

-Bagwell then came out later in the show, without his gimmick, wearing an "I'm doing a job" face, wrestling La Parka in a grudge match from Thursday, and doing nothing on offense and visibly showing he wasn't allowed to, and making Parka look like an idiot, and then laying down for the pin, getting right up and going something to the effect of, "Russo, did I do the job right?" They shot to backstage where the undercard wrestlers watching the monitor were popping seeing the bigger star have to lay down for the underused foreigner who gets no respect. At this point Jarrett ran in and clocked Bagwell with the guitar with Jarrett saying he's actually the chosen one because he's closest with the guy who has the stroke.

-This angle was done in this manner to create the idea that there is a booker who tells people to lose, since the original plan (which may be changed since they book for the internet and this will get out before the match) was something along the lines of Hogan vs. Sting with Hogan doing the same thing, trying to exercise his creative control and refusing to do the job for the match, somehow Russo, or whomever will play the Vince McMahon role, will get his way at the end and Hogan will leave, only to come back later as an anti-authority babyface ala Steve Austin, or how Russo would have scripted a return of Bret Hart to the WWF had he had the chance (Sting's interview building the Hart match up seemed to be Russo still trying to fight the fight about Montreal, with Sting saying how it's wrestling and in wrestling everyone gets screwed and lied to, almost trying to make it as this perversely romantic thing about the business)

-Torrie Wilson has the potential as a marketing gold mine but I can also see politically where Kimberly may somehow manipulate her way into the Sable spot.

-I'm not sure what the idea of the lawyers with Sid were supposed to be on Nitro, except they wanted to show that lawyers are the physically toughest men on the planet (did you see the little bald lawyer pop right up from Goldberg's spear?)

-Booker T looked really goofy in these shiny short shorts, almost like they were leftovers from the Lenny & Lodi characters.

-Kimberly undressed and put on lingerie in her hotel room expecting David Flair to be there and she for some reason was going to spike his drink, but instead Ric came out acting all crazed. We never did find out what happened here.

-Flair showed up and challenged all the Animals. They came out and kicked his ass, making him look like a real idiot. David tried to make the save and they laid him out as well. Then they stole Ric's wallet, his watch, his rings, etc.

-Fans in the building were said to be totally confused during the Bagwell match.

-Nash & Hall have also proposed the idea, which Nash talked about on the air, about the second hour of WCW Saturday Night being their own variety show which they would host along with Mark Madden.

-Thunder was Nash's lame duck show and came off that way, and he even joked it was being thrown together at the last minute (true) although it wasn't all his fault, because there were numerous no-shows. Hall, who as Nash said, nobody had seen since the wee hours of Tuesday a.m. and WCW even got complaints from the hotel that night about Hall's behavior, headed the list which was why Nash was out there on his own. It's time to give up the ghost and fire Hall.

-The idea was to put Kevin Nash & Scott Hall on the announcing team for the show and turn the announcing into a shoot (which is definitely his philosophy). I don't disagree with the philosophy but it was apparent within five minutes that we can add color commentary to the list of things (wrestling, doing interviews and booking) that Nash can't handle. He started by saying that everyone said he was a bad booker but he was smart enough to book himself into a retirement angle so he doesn't have to take any bumps and still makes big money so they're trying to get something out of their investment in him by making him an announcer.

-You could see Larry Zbyszko being less than enthralled with the announcing going down the toilet and eventually he started making comebacks on Nash (it's considered something of a no-no in WCW to on-air make fun of the true weaknesses of the top talent) and was carving him up like a Thanksgiving turkey. So much for the myth about Nash having a quick wit.

-Nash spent the rest of the show mocking Tenay's call of Duggan's finisher as the "old glory" by calling Misterio Jr's move an "old glory huracanrana" and the like so many times Tenay even told Nash he wore the joke out. Nash said that he didn't think he had and continued with the line the rest of the show.

-Meng beat Luther Biggs in 1:19 after a Tongan death grip. Nash noted how whenever there's a package on somebody (they aired a Meng piece before the match), it's almost a sure bet that guy is going to win.

-Jim Cornette's comments on Vince Russo's departure in Mike Mooneyham's Wrestling Observer Hotline report on 10/11 were, "He has no respect for the wrestling business or anybody in it. And that's going to be more obvious there where they won't have anyone to control him. I think Ultimate Warrior deserved the money he made more than Russo. I have always in the past thought The Ultimate Warrior was the epitome of a guy making money with no talent. Sable deserved her money more than Russo. At least she didn't try to make the entire business a joke, just her part of it, because of her lack of talent. He is a great self-promoter who has made all the Internet people believe he is a genius responsible for the WWF turnaround. He went crazy with all the pressure and decided to stab in the back the guy who brought him into the business (McMahon) and take a big-money deal, which I'm sure they offered because they're grasping at straws. He'll be out of the business in two years because without the WWF organization behind him, he'll fall flat on his face. They'll pay him until the end of his contract, and then he'll be done. He burned the bridge behind him and he won't be back. He knows he doesn't know what he's doing. He knew WCW was desperate and finally realized it was time to cash in. He doesn't care about being in the wrestling business. He hates wrestling. He likes entertainment. He thinks he's a TV writer now, and it's gone to his head. He's got a head the size of Texas."

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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Bandit wrote:
Big Boss Man wrote:Didn't they lose like 80m in 99 or 00?
They lost $65 million in 2000 because they based salaries off of contracts signed in 1998 and early 1999 when business was strong. But PPV buys and live gates died off in the summer of 1999, so the budget was shot.
OK cool, thanks. Surely Business 101 would suggest their finance dept should have took note of the drop off in business and adjusted the budget(s) accordingly?!.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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The big contracts were guaranteed money. So they were only able to cut the mid-card guys. I think Scott Norton was the only big money deal that wasn't guaranteed that they were able to cut and he went to New Japan full time. Those contracts were why almost none of the top stars came to WWE when WCW closed, because they were still owed money by AOL Time Warner guaranteed. DDP and Booker took buy outs for half of the money owed to be able to go to WWE. The others like Lance Storm and Buff didn't have guarantees, so they stopped being paid as soon as WCW closed so were able to go to WWE fast.

But the big issue is Bischoff was a fucking idiot in paying the celebs so much money. I like Megadeth, but they aren't worth a quarter of a million dollars to play one song. Especially since it was "Crush Em" which is probably their worst song. And with Master P he was getting 200K plus expenses for his entourage who did nothing for WCW, yet they were getting plane tickets, hotels, meals and limo's paid for on top of P's money. That is insane.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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Thanks. Yea I think Crush Em was Goldberg new theme for a while so that made sense but to pay them quarter a mil for one song, well great for Megadeth but not smart for WCW. Bischoff was like Brewsters Millions throwing money around :lol: The whole Master P and No Limit was out of left field. He could have got ICP for less and they were fans and could bump. I know P had No Limit sports were he had like a sports agency and he was a NBA fan but signing with WCW didn't make much sense. Did Vince want him for the WWF and EB sign him instead?. Surprised Vinny Ru didn't try to restart the East v West feud and had Suge on Nitro and Puffy on Raw.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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No, Vince wouldn't have signed him. He has this bizarre "if I haven't heard of it nobody else has" belief. But yet he doesn't watch TV, only has a few bands he likes (AC/DC and Kid Rock, who he only likes because he met him when he and Joe C were on Raw in 2000 and Vince thought he was really cool), and only goes to the movies twice a year and Linda picks it. So he wouldn't have known Master P just like he didn't know Tom Green who was also everywhere like P was in 1999. Although if Vince met Master P he would have liked him and they would have bonded talking about marketing.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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Thanks didnt Konnan and/or Rey push for them to sign Master P or did Bischoff just hear his Make em say Uhhhh! song and thought he'd sign him as he was popular at the time?. It's like if Vince signed Cardi B now. Did WCW ever profit from using a celeb, Im guessing maybe from Karl Malone and Dennis Rodman.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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Konnan, Rey and Nash.

Yes, they profited from the first two Rodman matches and Jay Leno, although Road Wild 98 did a little over half the buyrate BATB 98 did Leno was significantly cheaper.

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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

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11/8/99

-There was a meeting called before the 10/25 Nitro with Bill Busch where they talked about having major problems with the standards and practices department. At the meeting, Ric Flair's name was never mentioned nor was he buried personally but there was tremendous heat on him for the blade job on the PPV. We've already gone through the story of what happened regarding them basically begging to do one match with heavy juice for storyline (and trying to convince standards and practices they would be using fake blood rather than a blade job.)

-They were bleeping out the word "screw," which is the basis of every WWF angle for the past two years.

-They showed the WCW title tournament bracketing. Somehow DDP is in the second round even though his match with David Flair never took place.

-Asya is now dressed like Chyna and promoted the some way. She looks more attractive in the outfit if you don't mind the mustache.

-Kimberly quit the Nitro Girls in what would have been one of the worst pieces of acting on either show, except that Stephanie McMahon was let loose doing color commentary on the other show.

-They did the Kidcam (Kidman's video camera) spying on Luger & Liz, with the idea that Liz was changing. Anyway, she wasn't. Luger was just pumping up. This was a production nightmare. The video and audio were way off track. It looked like one of the 70s Kung Fu movies dubbed into English. They don't know how to edit, because when it was over, you could see one camera man filming the sound guy with the boom mic underneath Kidman and them yelling, "Cut. That's a wrap." They also held the camera on Liz to where she dropped character, started laughing and drinking a soda. At first I thought they were trying to spoof wrestling angles by showing it was an angle, but that wasn't the case.

-A.C. Jazz and Spice of the Nitro Girls started their angle during a routine when they had a really lame pull-apart which made Moolah and Mae Young look like Flair and Steamboat. This followed with the worst backstage fight between the two of them. They looked like fans in the second row pretending to do really bad wrestling moves on each other when they mug for the crowd.

-Bagwell beat Stevie Ray via DQ in a strap match when the Harris Twins, who are now called Creative Control, interfered. Let's see. If Bagwell was booked to lose and he was having the advantage and those twins started pounding on them, why did the ref, who obviously knows the finish ahead of time, rule him the winner?

-Nash had been shown putting make-up on to do a Vince McMahon spoof. Anyway, he came out live. He looked nothing like McMahon except he was wearing a McMahon style suit. Heenan and Schiavone tried to sell it like he looked exactly like McMahon, which was made more pathetic since the crowd at first reacted like they had no idea who he wa or who he was spoofing. Eventually the crowd figured it up. Nash was lame, stumbling over his words, but was funny introducing Hall as being sober and having more than one catch phrase and talking about his trouser snake. Hall ripped on McMahon's clothes. These guys needed Jason Sensation bad.

-The next production miscue saw the director actually giving Sting & Luger a countdown for another pre-tape where Luger convinced Sting to be his partner and go for the tag title.

-Guerrero beat Saturn in 5:29 in a pole match with the key to a cage, with Torrie Wilson in it, on the pole. Saturn was KO'd and Eddie was supposed to climb the pole. The pole was slippery and he kept slipping when trying to climb. This was one of those moments when time stood still. Kidman and Misterio Jr. ran to the corner and were clearly in a panic about Eddie not being able to climb the pole. Finally Guerrero jumped off the top rope and came down with the key and opened the cage.

-Sid cut a promo on Nash saying how he (Vince) had ruined his career over the previous two years. Then they all laughed.

-At this point on my TV, with 40 minutes to go in the show, an ad ran for the 11/1 Backstage Blast WCW PPV which started at 5 p.m.

-In this segment's production screw up, they listed the movie as being named "Slam" instead of "Ready to Rumble."

-Madusa beat Evan Karagis in 2:11. Basically Madusa seduced him, he laid down on his back, she started kissing him and he didn't kick out. I was just glad it was over by that point.

-Benoit delivered a head-butt off the top of the cage. Thank God the camera caught that awesome move. The camera missed Saturn coming off the cage with an elbow drop. Apparently the cameras also missed, which they did at least show on replay, the reason Revolution was able to get in the cage was Asya had literally ripped the chain apart with her bare paws.

-Nash, as Vince, was at this point knocked out on the dressing room floor and Hall screamed that Bret did it.

-Visiting the "Ready to Rumble" set on 10/29 were Pee Wee Herman and Marilyn Manson.

-In the Hall & Nash match against the strippers on 10/25, the original plan was for the skinny girl with the ridiculous implants who goes by the stage name of Mika, to wear a bikini, but she looked so ridiculous in it that they made her go out there in clothes.

-Curly Bill did a terrible interview, reminiscent of one of those real campy bad Iron Sheik level interviews from the 80s. He did note that Curt Hennig was no longer part of the West Texas Rednecks. They never did an angle to explain this.

-Bagwell beat Scotty Riggs in 4:18 with an inside cradle. The story of this match is that Riggs was supposed to win. You know, wink, wink, those evil powers that be (who were mentioned more times on the show than Sting, Luger, Flair, Hogan and Goldberg added with the total number of chops Sid took from Benoit in the main event combined) are ordering Bagwell to do jobs, but he ain't do no more jobs. So you see, Bagwell went against the script and pinned Riggs. Why ref Mickey Jay would count isn't really explained. In fact, what I just wrote was never explained. They just had Mike Tenay throw really vague hints with the idea that the millions....and millions, okay, well it is Thunder so it isn't that many millions, of casual fans watching would be so confused they'd have no idea what was going on, and probably not care either.

11/15/99

-Russo is also trying to shop a comedy based on wrestling called "Rope Opera.

-The only thing that came close to sticking was the image of David Flair stalking Kimberly, and when they added them in a singles match on the PPV, all I could think of was all those fans in Canada deciding whether to buy WWF or WCW tickets that weekend and what choice they are going to make.

-Sid did an interview saying he wasn't as dumb as he looks, that if Hall & Nash got into a battle of wits with him they'd surely lose and other stuff that must have everyone backstage rolling in hysterics. Sid claimed he had the brain of a psychopath. I thought he was going to say brain of a seven-year-old.

-Ever since Sting started being an actor, his interviews have actually gotten worse because he thinks he's a thespian giving a line rather than a wrestler doing a promo.

-By the way, those bookers who pay such great attention to detail, not only forgot Flair was run over, as it was never mentioned during the show, but he came out without a scratch.

-Filthy Animals did an interview calling Asya a mutt. She's not a mutt because dogs don't need to shave.

-Sting threatened to shake Liz up and down until her breasts fell out of her top.

-Benoit beat Madusa via DQ in 1:49 when Jarrett interfered causing her to lose. It was real bad. Jarrett explained that the Powers that Be came up with this plan to get Madusa out and she got screwed. Let's see, she'd already lost in the tournament and they put her back in after she was eliminated, and now they wanted to screw her.

-Duggan got a job cleaning Russo's toilet.

-Nash was dressed as the Grand Wizard of wrestling. He sounded nothing like him and acted gay.

-Dustin Runnels came out in the gimmick he had planned as a cross between Goldust and Undertaker. He arrived on a zip line and then said it was a stupid gimmick the creative team came up with, that he's his own man, you know, the speech Chaz gave when he stopped beating Beaver Cleavage.

-Bagwell beat Vampiro in 1:21. You haven't lived until you saw the Misfits attack Buff. Well, just imagine the Nitro Girls in a street rumble. Total amateur hour.

-With the way they had Booker T dressed and him talking in third person, they actually want to turn him into The Rock.

-The chyron under Malenko, as he was walking to the ring, listed his name as Asya. I didn't think you could confuse them unless Malenko went crazy on the gas.

-Knobs beat Bigelow via count out in 2:52. You may ask how you can have a count out in a falls count anywhere match.

-Bill Busch should have watched this episode of Nitro straight through before he made those comments to Entertainment Weekly about them adding logic to the shows.

-The name "Ready to Rumble" for the WCW movie involved striking a deal with the Buffer Brothers (Bruce and Michael) since Michael has the phrase trademarked for commercial usage. The word is that WCW paid Michael $500,000 for his appearance in the movie and the rights to use the phrase. So much for keeping the budget in check.

-True story. Hart was in England to promote "Wrestling with Shadows" and appeared on their version of MTV with a host who did no research when a caller asked Hart how he thought he compared with the all-time great legends of wrestling, Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior and Earthquake. He rolled his eyes and got that whattamark look on his face and asked the caller how he thought he compared with those three greats. The caller said he was up there, but Hogan was the greatest because he was 60-years-old and was still wrestling.

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Bandit
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Re: Dirt Sheet Lulz & Knowledge Droppings

Post by Bandit »

11/22/99

-They had scheduled an A.C. Jazz vs. Spice mud wrestling match for the show, but A.C. Jazz refused to do it and quit the company.

-Hall & Nash came out with Nash doing a Sid impression. It was at least better than his Vince and Wizard impressions. Sid came out as a face to respond. Sid challenged Nash to a match but Nash said he was still retired. Later he did an interview saying how it was a lame angle that is why he's retired.

-Creative Control, who are now called Gerald and Patrick (you know, Gerald Brisco & Patrick Patterson), beat Booker T in a handicap match in 2:56. They never even mentioned Stevie Ray's name on the show. The lights went out as Booker was getting pounded, and Ann Marie Crooks, who it appears will be called Midnight, made the save pounding on the two giant twins.

-Russo yelled at DOA, or the Blu Brothers, talking about Dutch Mantel (wasn't his name Uncle Zeb?), just to make sure the other 95% of the fans who only watch casually realize the two bald twins are rejects from the WWF who failed with several different gimmicks.

-In a totally horrible segment, Evan Karagis beat ref Johnny Boone in 2:47 when Madusa grabbed Boone's face, put it in her boobs and he basically passed out. Madusa was at ringside doing the worst job of color commentary since the days of Herb Abrams.

-Russo yelled at the Luchadores. Juvi had a pinata. Russo said they would do a pinata on a pole match with a check for $10,000 in the pinata. This led to a disaster of mammoth proportions.

-Ed Ferrara came out with the same black shirt Ross often wears, his cowboy hat, talked about his barbecue sauce while the poor Mexicans were placed in an utterly racist (pinata on a pole match, made even sillier because the pinata fell from the pole with all the money and nobody could touch it and the wrestlers had to ignore it and keep going for their five minutes until Dr. Death would destroy them all--for real it should be noted, as three of them ended up in the hospital after the match--Dandy with a possible broken collarbone, which is a pretty serious injury for a wrestler, Juventud Guerrera with a possible AC joint separation, which is one of those nagging injuries that is no fun whatsoever, and Psicosis re-injuring his bad ankle).

-If anyone was happier to be there than Williams, it was Tony Schiavone. According to those who know him, claim he hates Ross more than any human being on Earth, dating back to the TBS decision ten years ago to go from co-lead announcers on WCW Saturday Night (which at the time was the company's flagship wrestling show), to a singular announcer, leading to Schiavone being taken off the show. Schiavone has always blamed the demotion on Ross' backstage manipulations, making the blow more unfair in his mind, even though Ross was generally considered by far the better wrestling announcer of the two. Since that point, the two have had histories of jumping back and forth between promotions due to demotions under the other. In fact, Schiavone worked heavily with Ferrara on scripting the parody and setting up spots.

-David Flair came out with a tire iron and chased after Kimberly who got away.

-Hall & Nash came out and tried to sexually molest Torrie Wilson. The Filthy Animals came out and boy was it obvious they're jibronis. When do four babyfaces come out to save the girl and get beaten up by two heels without even getting an offensive move in.

-Luger put Ex-lax in brownies for Sting, but Duggan ended up eating them. You know the gag that came out of that.

-Chavo Guerrero Jr. tried to sell Amway products to Villano 5.

-Prince Iaukea beat Disco in a non-title match, further helping restore the prestige of the cruiserweight title. Disco was distracted by getting a fish wrapped in a newspaper ("Godfather I") to insinuate he'd be sleeping with the fishes if he didn't pay his gambling debts. Disco attacked Iaukea after the match with a loaded fish.

-On WCW Live, Madusa was claiming she was having an affair with Karagis. When asked about her husband (former Cincinnati Bengals lineman Ken Blackman), she claimed it was okay because they have an open marriage.

-The current plan now is to keep Juventud Guerrera and do an illegal immigrant angle with him although depending upon the severity of his shoulder injury, this also could be out the window. This idea was actually suggested by a fan on the WCW internet show and Russo decided to do it, where they decide to use Guerrera after all but he can't produce a green card, and he's running from the authorities. Actually that's the first step in a storyline that may get controversial, since the end result was scheduled to be Guerrera falling in love with a transvestite bodyguard ala the controversial Mark Henry angle.

-Apparently the Dustin Runnels "Seven" character was nixed by standards and practices because it too closely resembled a pedophile character in the movie "Powder."

11/29/99

-Evan Karagis won the WCW cruiserweight title from Disco Inferno in 8:00. Madusa came out with Karagis. Tony Maranera was announcing and boy was he bad. They were missing spot after spot and the fans turned on the match. Between Madusa looking like an aging movie star who lives at the plastic surgeons, Karagis' nervousness and Maranera, it was like Disco was trying to carry an anchor tied to Yokozuna and he was, in fact, swimming with the fishes here. Fans were chanting "boring" heavily. Disco was trying to pick up on Madusa and she gave him a weak slap. Maranera tried to hit on Madusa but Karagis went after him. Disco went to hit Karagis with a chair but hit Maranera. Karagis used a springboard crossbody and Disco acted like he was going to roll through, but didn't, and it ended up being what appeared to be a miscommunication screwed up pin. Evan started making out with his mom after the match. -*

-Wall got mad, took the dog collar off and gave it to Berlyn and then walked off. Tony Schiavone, paying so much attention to the match, then noted how Berlyn had walked off.

-David Flair was seen stroking his crowbar. Boy was that weird.

-David Flair went to a non-decision with Kimberly in a match that never really took place. This match/angle/atrocity was living proof that at least a semblance of wrestling ability is needed when you are inside the ring to entertain the audience. Kimberly threw a low blow. Flair didn't sell it as he had a protective cup on. Flair decked Nick Patrick and threatened Kimberly. Fans were hating this. Kimberly was on her knees threatening or promising David, which distracted him just long enough so she could pull his cup out and give him a low blow and put the cup in his mouth. He recovered. Kanyon showed up and was laying out Flair until Flair came back and nailed him with the tire iron. DDP ran in and put the diamond cutter on Flair and was limping around to sell his injury, then took the tire iron and was about to kill Flair with it. Arn Anderson ran in and took the tire iron and hovered over Flair. Flair got up and turned on Anderson and laid him out with a 2x4, ending with Anderson doing a stretcher job. Judging from the crowd reaction, literally nobody bought the stretcher job. Everyone left the ring and the entire crowd started booing heavily. -**

-Hall & Nash took credit for turning the company around. Actually, Nash does deserve a ton of credit for turning the company around, or actually blame.

-Luger set up a Liz vs. Meng match.

-Creative Control did a deal where neither of them wanted to be Patrick (Patterson.)

-Brad Armstrong came out in a role as a guy always stoned called Buzzkill.

-Apparently ECW was able to buy ad time for a November To Remember commercial, to show you how bad ad sales have gotten.

-Hart beat Jarrett to keep the title in 8:37. Heenan called one of the two participants in the match "Jeff Hart." NBA star Grant Hill was at ringside laughing at them as they tried to do a serious title match.

-Duggan got mad at Russo, who told him to clean the toilet, since he'd had the runs for a week. Duggan later cleaned it with Russo's own toothbrush.

-Tigress beat Spice in 1:57. A total calamity that the fans hated. This was going to stink no matter what, but leave it to WCW to do a match that has no value but to show skin, and then not show skin. This was worse than amateur hour. Sky ran in when Spice couldn't continue after a fingernail to the eye. Sky gave one of the girls the weakest hit with a make-up kit to where the fans booed that as well.

-Juventud Guerrera gave Russo some bad tequila, causing Russo to want to brush his teeth. We never saw what happened but Duggan had already used that toothbrush to scrape up Russo's bowel movement.

-Malenko beat Benoit in a capture the flag match in 3:37. It takes some booking genius to put these two in a bad match. Fans were chanting "USA" but Malenko was playing heel. That was weird. First Schiavone said the object was to capture your opponents flag. Then he corrected himself saying the object was to get your own flag and wave it. Both guys could have easily done so, but I guess we just have to suspend our disbelief and pretend, like in that pinata match. Anyway, Malenko then grabbed Benoit's Canadian flag and the bell rang to end the match. Schiavone's credibility is bad enough without them making him look like a complete buffoon. Malenko threatened to burn the Canadian flag. Nobody cared.

-The New York Times ran a piece on Russo and Ferrara. Russo had an interesting quote which is sort of funny given the current product, "There is one word that we start and end every conversation with: logic. Once you lose the logic of the situation, then you lose the realism and you lose the audience. It's all about, `If you were in this situation yourself, how would you handle it?" Ferrara was quoted as saying he doesn't know one family that watches Nitro from 10 to 11 p.m. on Monday nights. Russo had an interesting quote as it pertained to Raw, he said the ratings got so high that it got to the point they were writing the shows to entertain themselves.

-It is believed the storyline will be Hogan doing a worked age discrimination lawsuit against WCW, with the feeling that a real lawsuit got Flair over huge as a babyface. The out of court settlement would be that Hogan has to start as a preliminary wrestler, and the storyline would be for Hogan to work from the opening match back to the main event (a late-80s Antonio Inoki storyline when there was a lot of pressure on him to move down from the main events in favor of the younger guys, a storyline that never finished because Inoki stepped away to run for Senate). The idea is he could be back on top as a babyface because Russo would be such a strong heel and Russo wouldn't "want him" in main events.

-Elizabeth's name may be changed to "The Hot Package."

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