Slightly early happy fourth of July everyone! And belated Happy Canada day to our northern neighbors! And just happy days all around to everyone else! This is a chapter a loooong time coming. But I just kept kicking the idea around in my head, unhappy with it until things felt like they fell into place.
Without further ado the long awaited next chapter of Spellslinger!
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“So… what exactly are we doing again?” Fenrina asked as she helped Steve fit some parts onto a large contraption he was assembling.
“We’re going to stop Scott, and fight his army of skeletons.” Steve reminded her as he slapped some pieces together and wrapped plenty of his special flexible fabric of aquatic bird binding around the parts to hold them in place.
“No, I mean yeah. I get that. But… like how? And what’s this for?” Fenrina asked as she lifted a giant wheel up so Steve could bolt it to the side of his project.
“This is what will help us break through his army. I call it… Spellslinger’s automatic fossil fuel external combusting self propelled mobile engine! Or the SAFFECSPME for short.” Steve grinned and proudly posed before his machine.
“Steve you are just… terrible at naming things.” Sherry sighed with a slow shake of her head as she looked up at his rather haphazardly slapped together invention.
“I am not! You take that back female with whom I have relations!” He huffed. “I’m so tired of all these stupid artifacts we find that are just like… The orb of wonder! The circlet of insight! The Staff of penetrat- Actually that one is rather self explanatory… Regardless! When I name something people don’t have to be like oh I wonder what that does. No! They know exactly what it does right from the get go! Hah!” He once more set his hands on his hips and struck a proud pose.
“Why not like… take some of the words and stick them together? Like… auto...mobile. That sorta means the same thing right?” Fenrina suggested with a shrug.
“The automobile?” Steve asked as he gave Fenrina as confused look. “Pfft. What’s that even mean? It’ll never catch on. Unlike SAFFECSPME!”
“Safakspm?” Fenrina tried.
“No. SAFFECSPME.” Steve corrected her.
“Safeskspem?” She tried again.
“We’ll deal with that later.” Steve waved a hand dismissively. “What’s important now is waiting on word from the Archon that she’s finished up the spell we’ve been working on. Then we… well we wait for some of the skeletons to get here. I don’t have any more fossils so we need to smash them up and toss them in there.” He pointed to the large scoop at the front of his vehicle full of large spiked grinders. “Then inside I have a reserve of arcane water to mix with the ground up fossils, which then combusts here, which is why I’ve got the pipe to make sure most of the explosion is external. And then it’ll start moving forward.” He explained with a slow nod.
“How do we… steer it? And… where do we sit?” Sherry asked as she eyed the machine with a very nervous expression.
“Uh… I’ve got a wheel like on a ship, and I’ve made… seats.” Steve gave another vague wave at the machine. The seats he had bolted or strapped into place were more of the just fit wherever style over the actually made with purpose style. “Oh also, since this is super dangerous don’t forget safety first. Goggles everyone.” He went around to hand them each goggles.
“These will help us if it explodes?” Fenrina asked as she strapped them onto her face.
“Oh no. Not at all. They’re just to keep sand out of your eyes when we’re going fast.” He explained.
“Well, I do like to go fast.” Fenrina nodded with her usual levels of confidence and complete lack of concern.
“Can I mention that so far you’ve yet to mention how we’re going to defeat Scott. Or how we’re going to assemble the rest of Fenrina’s people. Or! Or how you’re even going to cast your spell!” Sherry reminded them even as she put on her own goggles.
“The Archon is casting that spell I mentioned. It’ll round up all of the people who’ve become…. Were-huskies and drop them near us. Don’t worry about it. Also I still need a better name than werehusky. As for casting the spell? Once we’ve mashed up that many of Scott’s skeletons I should have lots of power to use.” Steve shrugged. “As usual our best plans just sort of… happen. Without planning.”
“That makes them not plans.” Sherry drly remarked. “What about Scott? You heard the Archon she said he had powerful magicks with a K. Even with all four of us I’m not sure we can breach such old spell barriers.” Sherry then reminded him.
“Yeah but that’s why Steve is going to finger bang him.” Fenrina reminded them with a shrug.
“Ugh…” Steve groaned at that. “Just… stop saying that.”
“You guys won’t say what’s wrong with finger banging people! So until you do I’m just going to finger bang bang all day!” Fenrina wagged her fingers at the others.
“The finger that I’ve sabotaged will strip away his shields and then he’s like a basic skeleton. Uh… that is alive and talks and stuff. We can smash him real easy then. Larry could even deal with it… if he hadn’t forgotten all his spells for fighting undead and replaced them with party tricks.” Steve glared at the dwarf then.
“Larry insists it so unfair to shame a cleric for choosing to fight boredom at parties of sexy elves instead of fighting boring unsexy undead.” Both Sherry and Steve rolled their eyes as Larry tried to defend his practice of quick casting more… gimmicky spells. Such as transmute water to wine, and greater mood lighting.
“Regardless we need to hold them from getting past this part of the Hamak desert because if they get down into the casinos around Sinner’s Meadow a whole lot of gamblers, plus all the poor bastards the sunbinders buried with their pharaohs over the centuries, will become zombies. Or… skeletons maybe. Something undead. Although it might be hard to tell the difference compared with their usual behavior…” Steve mused idly as he rubbed his beard. Steve, Sherry, and Larry all looked out across the reddish sands of the desert before them knowing a vast horde of undead should be approaching them quickly from the valley of the dead where Scott and the rest of his Dicks had been buried, and conveniently lost to time until now.
“So, Steve, out of curiosity, what if Scott has some extra warriors buried at different points around the desert as a vanguard with like skeleton chariots and stuff and we start getting attacked before the Archon has her spell ready?” Fenrina asked.
“That sounds like an oddly specific worry Fenrina… but I guess we’d just have to ride around smashing skeletons until she’s ready. Why?” Steve asked and looked over to see the canine looking behind them.
“Because I think that hill is a tomb.” She pointed and the others looked around to see a mass of skeletons rushing up towards them, some on chariots being pulled by skeleton horses as well.
“Oh shit!” Steve hissed out as Sherry and Larry turned to quickly set up to face the oncoming attack. “Get ready and remember the plan!” Steve shouted.
“What plan?!” Sherry hissed back.
“That’s easy!” Fenrina grinned as she got out front with her shield raised. “Stuff the bad skeletons into the mashing bit! Drive around and find Scott! And then-
Spellslinger Fingerbangs-
“Don’t you dare!” Steve interrupted her before she could finish, and began to cast a fireball at the charging chariots. “The plan is-
Spellslinger Slaps a Dick
“They keep splintering into tiny pieces! I can’t even get a decent snack!” Fenrina growled out as another pair of skeletons rushed up at her only for her sword to cleave through both of them as a cloud of dust erupted in their place.
“We’ve got to somehow get them straight into the grinder!” Steve shouted and hurled a vine spear into the spoke of one of the chariots, causing the whole thing to tumble over as the skeletal horses shattered.
“Maybe Sherry’s whip? It doesn’t seem to destroy them as much!” Fenrina called out.
“The problem is when I whip them they just make these moaning sounds!” Sherry called back as she held a contingent of skeletal warriors at bay to the side of the machine.
“So… they’re immune to the whip?” Steve asked with a glance over.
“No, it still works but it’s really creepy and I don’t like it!” Sherry growled back. “And they don’t run from it they just stick around to get whipped more!”
“I’ve got an idea!” Fenrina announced and used her shield to smash apart another skeleton before rushing over to grab Larry. “Fastball special!”
“Larry hates this idea!” The dwarf shouted just before she spun and hurled him into the driver of one of the chariots knocking the skeleton out as Larry tumbled into the chariot. The dwarf quickly grabbed the reins then, but it wasn’t easy as he had to keep hopping to see over the horses.
“Into the machine!” Fenrina yelled at him even as she used her shield to shove several of the warriors in front of Steve’s engine. Realizing what she was doing Steve quickly pulled several reagents from his belt and stuffed them into his mouth before vomiting ice all over them to stick them in place.
“Ugh… I hate the flavor.” He muttered as he spit out a final snowball.
“Stop moaning and get back you creepy shits!” Sherry screamed on the other side of the machine as she kept furiously cracking her whip at the possibly masochistic vanguard of skeletons to try and herd them in front of the engine. Just as they were all in position Larry drove the skeletal horses into the grinder at the front of the machine, shoving the herd of warriors in at the same time as the dwarf hurled himself free of the wreckage at the last moment. For a second nothing seemed to happen as the grinders slowly turned, but then they began to pick up speed and the entire machine started to roll forward slowly.
“Hop on!” Steve called out as everyone jumped onto the nearest seat available. Steve tried to slip into the seat behind the steering wheel but to his surprise Fenrina picked him up before he could fully sit down and tossed him onto the front where he grabbed the nearest set to stop from sliding off. “Fenrina! The hell?!”
“All of you cast magic and stuff! What am I gonna do in here? Ask you to drive closer so I can hit them with my sword?” She snorted and pulled a lever to disengage the brakes. Steve was rather impressed at how much more focused she’d been lately. “Besides this way I can make it go as fast as I want!” She grinned wide as he immediately retracted his thought and sighed.
“Well… aim for the main cluster to get more fossils for fuel!” He hollered and pointed at the group still pouring out of the hill tomb. As they began to roll downhill the machine started to pick up speed both from smashing into more of the now fleeing skeletons, and the downhill course. Steve meant to start casting something to help thin the horde but instead he spent most of his time trying to avoid the sword and spears that were flying past him as the warriors got mulched by the grinder. He’d need to adjust his design a bit for the next one.
Thankfully Fenrina didn’t seem to need any help as his machine plowed through much of the vanguard as they tried to leave the tomb and by now it seemed to be fully charged as a gout of flame erupted from the back pipe making the entire thing shudder a moment. There were several more jerks as explosions rocked the SAFFECSPME forward and Steve desperately clutched the sides of his seat to steady himself. “Steve you asshole slow down!” Sherry screamed to the side.
“I’m not driving!” He yelled back.
“Sorry, force of habit! Fenrina!” The demon looked over but the husky was busy letting out a howl and then letting her tongue dangle in the wind as the machine shot out across the desert, rattling and bouncing over the terrain.
While Steve had planned for the goggles to shield his eyes he’d not given as much thought to his mouth and was coughing as his position at the front of the machine made him a magnet for dirt, sand, and bugs. He quickly pulled a cloth from one of his pouches to wrap around his face. When he looked to one side he saw Sherry had cut part of her shirt to do the same. But when he looked to the other side he saw Larry had in face pulled a rather large pair of panties over his face and then pulled his goggles down over it. “What the-”
“These are not Larry’s panties. For Larry does not wear panties. Except right now. As a mask.” He replied before Steve could even ask. Though that didn’t really answer much of anything. Steve wanted to ask more but then Fenrina spoke up as she glanced back.
“Hey Steve what if the skeletons saw what sort of machine we made and somehow like banded together into similar machines but made out of bones and stuff and came chasing after us to stop us and were covered in spikes and more skeletons and stuff?” She asked in one long breathless sentence.
“Uh… that’s… not really… possible?” Steve tried to think of what sort of magic could do something like that but wasn’t sure if it could be done. Especially not so quickly.
“Okay, then I guess I’m hallucinating.” Fenrina shrugged and Steve leaned out to the side to see several skeletal vehicles suddenly chasing after them.
“Oh what the fuck!” He gasped out. One of the smaller skeletal vehicles raced up ahead as he saw a skeletal trumpeter on it blaring some ear piercing tune. “That’s impossible! You guys are cheating!” He yelled over at them even as every skelton aboard the undead machine flipped him off.
“Doot doot motherfucker!” One of the more well armored skeletons simply screamed back at him as they started to jump across to board their ride. The trio had to quickly try and fend off the attackers from their already precarious seats.
“How can a skeleton even play trumpet! You don’t have lips!” Steve screamed as the skeletal minstrel jumped across and played trumpet in his face even as he chopped the skeleton’s legs off at the knees sending the upper body tumbling off the side. Thankfully with the speed Fenrina was going across the desert all they really had to do was shove them back off the sides and they’d be smashed to bits from the impact.
Yet the reanimated bones didn’t seem to have any issues with suicidally trying to ram their new bone-mobiles into the DOOM engine. Thankfully Steve had made his SAFFECSPM to be sturdy, though he was quickly making notes about what to add for the next version. Like something to strap him into his seat as the impacts from the skeletal riders would nearly knock him off the front and off the side. “Fenrina ram back!” Steve called out to her, but as she swerved to hit one of the bone-mobiles all the skeletons atop it just jumped over onto their ride. “New plan! Don’t do that!”
“Haha! Death to the fleshy bois! Fuck flesh!” One of the skeletons cried out as he tried to decapitate Steve with an old sickle sword. Though Steve got his own sword up to parry the attack.
“Yeah death to the fleshy bois! And… whatever this furry one is! Fuck the furry!” Another skeleton yelled as he tried to stab Fenrina with a spear, but she just grabbed the spear and used it to fling the skeleton off the engine.
“Larry insists you don’t use that term. It doesn’t mean what you think it does!” The dwarf advised even as he smashed apart another skeleton with his hammer as it tried to jump across.
“Why what does it mean?” Fenrina asked with a frown.
“Yeah, fleshy boi! What’s it mean?” The skeleton from earlier asked before Steve quickly conjured a large stone fish to smash him apart.
“Larry does not wish to explain right now. Larry simply… knows things that would suggest you don’t use that term.” The dwarf gave the others an odd look and Steve frowned a moment before narrowly ducking to avoid an arrow shot at them from a nearby bone-mobile.
“Larry do we want to know?” He asked and the dwarf just shook his head. “I swear you’re worse than bards sometimes…” Steve muttered even as he began to fast a fireball to lob back at the skeleton archers.
“Yeah well I’m tired of fighting all these boney bois and getting nothing to eat!” Fenrina growled out and as two of the skeletal vehicles pulled up alongside she yanked on the brake, making Steve let out a startled squeal and nearly roll off the front of the engine and into the grinder, but he caught himself on the edge. The two skeletal vehicles though smashed into each other in a mass eruption of bones which Fenrina then drove through, snagging a wayward femur in her mouth. “Mmhgnrnrng… uch etter…”
“Damnit Fenrina! Can you stop thinking about food for two seconds and focus!” Steve yelled and scrambled to pull himself back into his seat.
“‘Ere ‘e goi’ ‘nywa?” She asked as she kept chewing on the femur, causing little sparks to sizzle around her teeth.
“Uh…” Steve looked forward across the desert as he saw a massive lightning bolt from some cliffs ahead and the clouds began to grow impossibly dark. “Yeah my bet is that way.”
“Also ‘at ‘o I ‘o if ‘I ‘ee’ a ‘ig ‘orado ‘ats s’arkly?” She asked, refusing to give up her snack.
“What do you do if you see a big tornado that’s all sparkly? I don’t know… why do you ask?” Steve was watching Fenrina as he pulled himself back into his seat and then saw her point past him. When he looked back he saw an absolutely massive sand tornado crackling with purple lightning. “Oh for fuck’s sake! Stop asking questions like that Fenrina!”
“Hat? It ‘ot’ ‘I ‘ault!” She huffed.
“I swear it somehow is!” Steve hissed. “Get away from it! Towards the cliffs!” He pointed towards the beam in the sky pulling in more and more dark clouds. But as they got closer to the cliff he saw a tide of skeletons riding an entire fleet of bone-mobiles out towards them. “Never mind! Towards the tornado! Towards the tornado!” He screamed as he waved towards the tornado. Fenrina veered off towards the swirling vortex of sand and lightning as Steven feverishly pulled reagents from his pouches and frantically etched runes into the hood.
Even as they approached the massive storm the skeletons were overtaking them. Sherry had summoned her bone wings and was using them to operate a massive flaming bow to smash apart approaching riders with spear sized flaming bolts, and Larry was tossing holy orbs up into the air before using his hammer like a bat to smack them at the oncoming horde. It was still going to be extremely close as the tornado bore down upon them and the tide of skeletons grew ever closer. “Larry!” Steve screamed to be heard over the howling wind. “Bubble us!”
“Larry would have to use up a lot of energy to shield us all! Plus Larry does not appreciate the divine protection being called a bubble!” The dwarf protested, taking a momentary break from lobbing the holy bombs at the skeletons.
“Larry so help me you will bubble us all right now or I’ll tell the Archon what you did in the faculty lounge!” Steve screamed back. The dwarf went wide eyed a moment and set his hands on the engine before a golden sphere shimmered around them just as several of the bone-mobiles smashed into them. Thankfully with the bubble up they were instead blasted apart instead, and Fenrina was free to drive them straight into the vortex.
As the sand and lightning swept over them the bubble crackled and broke apart quickly, but Steve already had his hands up in the air and was shouting out virtually every protective weather ward he knew to create a break in the wind for them barrel through as the storm overtook Scott’s army and began to tear them apart. Steve could feel the drain of energy from shielding them as they thankfully burst out of the sand into the eye of the storm.
Yet even as the sky above them was clear and blue they suddenly saw several more vehicles ahead of them. Except they weren’t the bone-mobiles. They seemed to be made of rusty metal, and several were completely covered in spikes, plus their wheels were very small and made of some material Steve didn’t recognize at all. Not to mention instead of angry undead skeletons they seemed to be crewed by humans wearing bits of strange spiker armor that Steve also didn’t recognize. It didn’t seem like metal.
“Wha? Where did these guys come from?” Steve frowned in confusion. Before he could even try and call out to them one of the spiked vehicles saw him and a rider lobbed a spear at them which exploded just as it hit the sand. More of the rides howled out as he saw them grab at their crotches for some reason and wiggle their tongues in the air. “Okay they’re not friendly.” He growled and quickly lobbed a fireball right back, igniting the vehicle as it exploded in a shower of metal spikes that Fenrina had to dodge.
Several of the spiked hostile rides began to veer off towards him but a sleek black vehicle at the front dropped back and slammed into one, making it spin out and flip over a dune as the riders were tossed screaming into the storm as it moved. Forcing many of the others to drop back as they chased after them. “Oi you beautiful cunt!” Steve frowned as the rider of the sleek black machine came up next to him. Unlike the strange spiked armor the others wore this one was in black leather armor that was a little odd, but still something he was more familiar with.
“What!” Steve called back, unsure about the insult.
“Yeah! Thanks cunt! These mad mates been on me since a piss up in woop woop last night. Fuckin’ hoons ‘mirite?” The rider called back.
“What?” Was all Steve could respond with.
“Oi! Is that a Sheila dingo with tits drivin yer claptrap? Now that’s a bloody awesome mutant it is!” The black clad driver continued.
“What!?” Steve echoed from before, entirely confused.
“Right cunt! ‘Moff to the bottle-o! Hoo roo!” The driver called out before driving into the wall of sand ahead of them.
“I am so lost.” Steve muttered before raising his hands to chant out more wards as Fenrina took them back through the vortex of sand and lightning. This time as they neared the end his arms were truly getting tired and when they burst back out into the sun he let out a relieved gasp and sagged back down into his seat. Fenrina was taking them straight towards the cliff the shadows were growing out of but he didn’t see any more skeletons just yet so he used the time to catch his breath.
“Sherry… did that guy sound like a Drow to you?” Steve asked as he glanced back at the demon.
“You know more about them then me.” She replied with a shrug. “Also why were those other guys all wearing assless chaps?”
“Were they?” Steve frowned. “I think I was focused on other things.” He shook his head slowly and grabbed a rejuvenation potion off his belt as Sherry entered a narrow crack in the cliffs towards the shadow light on the far end. “Alright… uh… maybe slow it down a bit.” Steve urged Fenrina as they sped through the rocky walls with very little room on either side.
“Sure thing!” Fenrina called out, apparently done with her femur at some point. However right after that Steve heard a snap and Fenrina reached forward to hand him a stick. “Hey, can you hold onto this for me?” She asked.
Steve took the lever and looked at it in his hands a moment before realizing what it was. “Fenrina! This is the brake lever!”
“Yeah. It broke.” She replied and then took her hands off the wheel to give him a big shrug as her tongue dangled from her mouth.
“Damnit Fenrina.” Steve sighed, but before he could do anything else they exited the small canyon and came into a clearing with a rather steep drop off as the SAFFECSPM was launched off it into a pit below. The members of DOOM cried out and tumbled off the machine as it plummeted. Thankfully Sherry was quick to get her bone wings out and grab Steve while Fenrina grabbed onto Larry as the dwarf frantically cast another bubble around them so they’d bounce off the ground and roll to a stop while Sherry brought Steve down in a mostly controlled descent as they all landed around the wreckage of Steve’s machine.
“My my my… you really are a tenacious shit sucker.” Steve looked around as he heard that voice and saw Scott standing above them upon a rather short pyramid.
“Is this your pyramid Scott? It’s… a little small.” Steve called back.
“It’s not about the size of the pyramid but how you use it!” Scott screamed back. Around them Steve saw more skeletal warriors start to rush forward from around the pyramid.
“We’ve just got done destroying entire legions of your shitty warriors! What’s a few more?” Steve called up to Scott only to see larger skeletons start to rush out of the pyramid itself. Their armor and weapons obviously superior to the lesser skeletons they’d been fighting. “Well, fine! The more the merrier!” He continued even as black lightning struck the ground and ten foot tall half jackal half human mummies began to burst out of the ground. “I uh… I still think… we’ve got this.” He muttered at the end.
“Do you? Do you really?” Scott asked as the ground around them began to rumble. Besides the pyramid the ground began to shift as sand fell away to reveal an absolutely massive snake rising up. Then the ground around them shifted as Steve realized much of the ground around them was just the coiled tail of this gargantuan snake.
“That… that is… that is a very very big snake.” Steve muttered as he watched it rise up, clad in a rather dazzling jeweled headpiece that constituted the complete output of at least one gold mine, and the centerpiece was a ruby the size of Larry.
“Your pathetic struggle ends here fool!” Scott called back at the snake’s massive forked tongue flicked out a moment and its maw started to open.
“You’re such a dick Scott.” Steve huffed.
“Yes. I’m the king of the dicks! No one is more dick than I! Scott!” The skeleton replied with a maniacal cackle as shadow lightning struck behind him to create an inverse flash of light to highlight his malevolence.
“But you still haven’t found your actual dick I see.” Steve waved at the skeleton’s crotch. “You… dickless wonder!”
“No… That miserable bastard of mine Eddy… I don’t know what he did with it! Him and that treacherous vizier Sigmund. They had the creepiest ideas about mothers.” The skeleton shuddered for a moment and then waved a hand. “But enough of this mindless prattle! You die now and shall be nothing more than snake shit soon! Strike my servant!” He called as the snake hissed out and rose up.
“Hold on I got this.” Sherry said to Steve’s surprise and pushed him aside to step closer to the snake. Her own forked tongue flicked out and she began to hiss at the massive snake. “Hiisss. Hiss hiss hiiisss. Hiss hissss hisss hiss?”
The snake stopped then and seemed to wriggle a moment as it… blushed? “HISSSS HISS HISSS HISSSSS HIIIISSISISS.”
“What is this?” Scott demanded to know even as the two started to talk.
“Snake tongue.” Steve replied.
“I didn’t mean what language you insufferable turd!” Scott yelled back. Meanwhile the snake and Sherry kept talking.
“Hisss hiss hiss hisss. Hhissisiss? Hiss hiss.” Sherry said with an exaggerated toss of her hair.
“HISSS HISS HIIISS HISSSISIS. HISS.” The massive snake rolled its eyes and gave Scott a look even as Sherry gave Steve a similar look that made him squirm.
“The judgement I feel is somehow worse than being eaten by that giant snake.” He muttered.
“Stop dithering about whelp! I command you to eat them! Eat them right now! Do your fucking job and obey me!” The opulently decorated skeleton began to jump up and down as he screamed. This just made the big snake give Sherry a knowing look.
“HISS. HISSS HISSSS HIIIISS. HIISSISIS.” It said as Sherry then laughed and waved a hand.
“Hiiisss! Hisss hiss hiss.” With that the big snake rose up and started to slither out of the canyon that Fenrina had just drove them down to leave the clearing.
“Stop! I fucking order you to stop! Get back here you insolent upsized worm! I’ll have you made into boots for my entire army! Get back here right fucking now!” He screamed but the snake just slithered off into the desert leaving them in a now emptier clearing with the short pyramid at the center. Though this did help highlight just how many hundreds of regular skeletons were still around them, dozens of the elite guard, and twenty or so of the big jackalpeople mummies.
“I guess dick’s just don’t know how to talk to ladies.” Steve joked as the others chuckled.
“Forget this fucking foreplay!” Scott called out and pointed a jeweled scepter at them. “I’m still king dick here! Even if I have to track down that traitor and skin her later you won’t be more than a fleshy lump once my warriors are done eviscerating you! There’s four against an army! Was this your plan you festering maggot!?”
“Uh… No. My plan… was…” Steve floundered a moment as he tried to think of what to say. But then against the dark sky above them he saw a green light. When he looked up a massive sphere was hurtling through the air towards them. “Hah! That was my plan dickwad! Behold! The Orb of Donelaps! Eh… why is it all fuzzy?” He wondered for a moment, somewhat stealing his own thunder as the now fuzzy green orb smashed into the ground behind much of the skeletal army.
The fuzz became readily apparent however as the sphere poured open to reveal hundreds of cheering werehusky barbarians who came charging out with all manner of weapon at hand. A mighty battlecry rose up from their ranks and echoed out all around them as they descended upon the unprepared skeletons. “Fooooood!”
“Yeah! Food!” Fenrina cried out as she pumped her sword in the air.
“Why am I not surprised?” Steve asked with a roll of his eyes as the barbarians clashed with the skeletons and mostly focused on ripping them apart to chew on their many bones.
“Steve we’ve still got most of an army between them and us.” Sherry reminded him and he looked around as the ten foot tall jackalpeople mummies closed in.
“Oh shit right.” They backed up against the wreckage of his SAFFECSPM and prepared to fend off the attackers as he yelled up at Scott. “Are you not going to face me yourself Scott? Man to man?”
“No!” The skeleton called back immediately.
“What? Why not!” Steve yelled back.
“Because I’m a dick! How do you not get this?!” The skeleton shrugged as he looked back down on them.
“Oh yeah! Well you might change your mind when you realize you can’t do this!” Steve called out and flipped Scott off.
“Yes I can!” Scott quickly extended a hand to flip Steve off in return.
“Uh… let's try that again. You can’t do this!” Steve now extended both hands to give Scott the double bird.
“This is getting tiresome.” The skeletal king sighed and then set his scepter into a stand so he could double bird Steve in return, only to discover his missing finger. “What! How dare you abscond with my second favorite finger!”
“Yeah! I bet you’d like to demonstrate how you feel with your hands! Except you can’t!” Steve taunted as he waved Scott’s finger at him.
“Murder him and retrieve my finger! I’m coming down there!” Scott screamed and began to stomp down the pyramid towards them.
“Alright guys! If we work together we can-” Steve started only to be jostled as Fenrina bounced off him and then leapt at the nearest mummy as she swiped across his chest, landing besides him and driving her blade into his knee before twisting the blade to pop the mummified leg apart and then spinning away to start attacking the next one.
“Sorry Steve already busy!” She called out as he stood there.
“Fuck… I didn’t teach her… any of that.” He muttered and then looked up as one of the ten foot tall mummies approached him. “Right right… I’ve got this…” He muttered and tried to think about not only what he could cast, but what might work. He’d been going through his supplies alarmingly quickly so far.
“I uh…” The mummy stomped closer as it raised a massive sickle above him. “Uhhhh uhh.. I cast rock!” He slapped together some ingredients and then tossed a pebble at the mummy which bounced off its head. The mummy actually stopped and seemed to give him a confused look. “I cast bigger rock!” Steve shouted and rubbed his hands with the remains of the ingredients and pointed at the mummy as a boulder flew out of the sky and smashed mummy’s skull off completely.
“Hah! I got one guys!” Even as he looked over Fenrina was somehow dueling three of the mummies all at the same time, parrying blows with her sword and shield as she deftly kicked, bashed, and stabbed them in return. Sherry was using her bonewing bow once more to impale mummies and Scott’s elite guard. Larry had initiated a holy poetry slam as he hurled divine insults about how ugly the mummies were to crush their spirits, just before he used his hammer to crush their bones for good measure. “Seriously? When did I become the slacker? When did this happen?” Steve asked no one.
“Shitsucker!” Steve looked back and let out a rather unmanly squeal of surprise as he narrowly leaned out of the way of a blast of green energy from the magical staff the skeletal king held. “You die now!” Scott called out and began to wave his hands to no doubt follow up with a spell.
“Hah! Eat disintegration!” Steve yelled back and grabbed the last of his prepared reagent pouches as he cast the words and fired back at Scott with a golden beam of pure energy before the skeleton could react. However the entire beam just seemed to course around the skeleton as shadowy orbs appeared to deflect the magic. “Uh… well… That was the last of the spells I had planned for today… If you could just… wait for my team to finish up…” Steve suggested and to his surprise Scott stopped casting.
“Oh sure.” He nodded.
“Really?” Steve asked in surprise.
“NO!” Scott screamed and raised his hands as a series of shadow bolts began to fly out towards Steve, making him curse and fling himself around to very narrowly avoid getting impaled. Once the cascade of bolts was over Scott began to cast once more but Steve just tossed his finger at him.
“Here! Take it!” He hollered and backed up as Scott grabbed the finger.
“Yes! Now I can properly flip off children with both hands!” Scott cackled a moment but his cackling was cut short as the finger began to sizzle. “Wait… No!” At the last moment the skeleton reached to grab his arm but it was too late as the finger erupted in a pulse of energy that knocked Scott flat. The shadowy bubbles around him shimmered before they vanished with a distinct POP.
“Huh… I don’t know what I expected… but that wasn’t it.” Steve muttered.
“Alright! Steve! You did it! How do you like that Scott? Steve fingerbanged the shit out of you!” Fenrina called out as she cleaved through the last of the mummies.
“Ugh.” Steve groaned.
“Uuugghh… your dog is disgusting.” Scott muttered as he began to get up.
“Yeah she is at times.” Steve nodded.
“Why won’t anyone tell me what it means!? OOoooo I wanna knoooow!” Fenrina wailed with a howl.
“Anyway it’s you and me now Scott! Man against skeleton!” Steve grinned and charged forward as he hauled off and punched Scott in the face, making the skeleton’s head spin around wildly. “How ya like that! No more magic! Just punching!”
“Yeah Steve fist him good!” Fenrina encouraged as she began to bound over.
“Oh for fuck’s sake… Please just… stop.” Steve groaned out and tried to focus on punching Scott’s spinning skull once more. But this time as he tried he gasped in pain as Scott’s teeth clamped around his knuckles. “Aaahhh! Oowww! OW! Stop it!” He tried to pry his hand free of Scott’s mouth but the skeleton growled and chewed harder for a moment until finally letting go. Steve staggered back clutching his now bloody hand.
“What’s wrong Steve? Didn’t know I was a biter?!” Scott asked with a cackle. By now Fenrina had charged over, but to his surprise when she swung to smash Scott apart with her sword the skeleton parried the blow with his arm. Every blow she swun was parried by the one armed skeleton as she even tried to shield bash, and kick only to be countered at every turn. “Fools! I am a warrior king! I’m more than just magic! Even my bones have been enchanted! Nothing you wield can harm me!” Rolling past Fenrina Scott plucked his staff up from the ground and spun it around before smashing it into the werehusky, sending her flying in a burst of magic energy as shs slammed into the side of the SAFFECSPM with a howl.
Steve looked around a moment in desperation and found Scott’s other arm that had been blown free by the fingerbanging earlier. Picking it up he wielded it like a flail and charged at the skeleton who was leveling his staff at Fenrina. Steve lashed out with the arm to slap Scott with it, knocking the skeleton aside and causing his magical bolts to fly wildly into the air. “Quit hitting yourself! Quit hitting yourself!” Steve began to chant then as he slapped Scott with his own arm, knocking the villain back step by step, getting him closer to the front of the engine.
“Motherless-” Scott began to hiss even as Steve slapped him across the face once more. But the king had enough as he slammed his staff into the ground and Steve was sent flying back with an energy pulse. “Enough!” Scott bellowed.
“That’s what you think!” Sherry called out as a fire spear shot through Scott’s ribs. But the skeleton just stood there entirely unimpressed.
“Oh no. Fire. What is it going to do? Burn me to the bone?” He asked and snapped the spear apart to toss it aside.
“Larry! We need divine magic here!” Sherry called out but the air around them flickered and grew… not exactly dark… but not exactly light. It was… moody. Nicely so. Steve slowly picked himself up and looked over as he and Sherry both saw the dwarf sitting on a rock a little ways away with some candles out, drinking from his waterskin. “What… Is he?” Sherry started.
“Larry! Did you just use the last of your magic to have a fucking wine break?!” Steve shouted at the dwarf who just held up a finger and kept upending his entire waterskin having turned it into wine. “Fucking healer’s union and their mandatory breaks!” Steve hissed.
“It doesn’t matter.” Sherry called out and pointed behind Scott as the army of barbarian werehuskies got closer, tearing apart the skeletons with ease. “You’re done Scott.”
“A dick isn’t done until there’s nothing left!” Scott screamed back and drove his staff into the ground. “It might take me a thousand years but I can dig myself out eventually! Can you?!” He asked as the cliffs all around them began to shake and rumble. The shadowlighting from the dark sky coursing out and striking at the rocks as it became clear he planned to bury everyone here with him.
Fenrina slowly pulled herself up besides the machine then and raised a hand. “Steve! Bone me!”
“Ugghh…” Steve groaned.
“Uuuugghhh…” Sherry shuddered.
Larry just kept drinking wine.
“Okay… even I think that was especially crass.” Scott sighed.
“What? Why are you all…” Fenrina looked confused and waved her hand. “Steve! The bone! In your hand! Throw it to me! BONE ME!”
“Oh. OH!” Steve hastily reached back and hurled the arm towards her. Scott tried to reach up and grab it but it just cleared his fingers allowing Fenrina to snatch it out of the sky and shove it into the grinder at the front of the engine. The whole thing crackled as Scott’s extremely potent fossilized remains sent a surge of energy through it and the wreckage of Steve’s machine drove forward.
“Noooo!” Scott screamed out just before the grinder slammed into him, but the wreck was halted against the staff stuck into the ground. The engine shuddered and sparks rose up around it as it was filled with energy.
[Continued in Comments]

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Apr. 3, 2000

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE:
1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999


1-3-2000	1-10-2000	1-17-2000	1-24-2000
1-31-2000	2-7-2000	2-14-2000	2-21-2000
2-28-2000	3-6-2000	3-13-2000	3-20-2000
3-27-2000

★★ READ THIS THREAD ★★

★★ Be The Match ★★

WCW has made the decision to bring back Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo in a last-ditch effort to save WCW. The decision has been in the works for about a month and people are already doubting whether or not the two can co-exist with each other. Dave recaps what led us to this point. First, the group of Bill Busch, Kevin Sullivan, JJ Dillon, and others pretty much pulled the coup last year that got Bischoff canned and Russo was hired soon after. But once it became clear that Russo desperately needs someone to filter his insane ideas, those people also pretty much forced Russo out in favor of Sullivan as the head booker. But the company continued free-falling under Sullivan. Bischoff and Russo had been in talks with Brad Seigel and pitched an idea where they would lead competing factions of older and younger wrestlers fighting over power for the company. Bischoff tried a similar angle to this last year but it never got off the ground because, aside from Ric Flair, none of the older wrestlers (like Savage, Hogan, Piper, etc.) wanted to be portrayed as "old" and didn't want to be forced to put over younger stars that hadn't established themselves. Bischoff was officially hired back into WCW as the head of creative on 3/22, but due to the company losing so much money on his watch last year, he was not given control over the business end of things. Bill Busch informed Siegel that he would quit if Bischoff was brought back, and he made good on his word and walked out when he was told. Bob Mould, a somewhat famous musician who has also been part of WCW's creative and management team, also quit when he heard the news. Kevin Sullivan has been told he's essentially being sent home to sit out the rest of his contract and he no longer has any power either. Sullivan has argued that he was handicapped after inheriting the mess Russo and Bischoff left behind, plus the injuries to Goldberg and Bret Hart, and while that's true, Sullivan never really made any major changes either and it was clear things weren't going to improve with him booking.
The initial idea was to cancel this week's TV tapings and shut down for a week and then return on 4/10 with a fresh start and new storylines. But they ended up not cancelling the tapings and as a result, this week's Nitro is expected to be the lowest rated in the show's history. There was also talk of shutting down for several weeks and cancelling next week's PPV, which Dave thinks might not be the worst idea so they can take the time to slap a fresh coat of paint on the company and basically reboot. But it doesn't look like that will happen either. On Nitro this week, the announcers played it up big, labeling Russo as the man who turned WWF around and Bischoff as the one who turned WCW around several years ago and literally calling them the geniuses responsible for the current pro wrestling boom. Dave says you can't argue with Bischoff's initial success. He took WCW, which was in the red for about $6 million per year and turned it into a $200 million dollar company by 1998. But even at their peak, it was clear WCW had no future because they built around stars who were past their prime and never had a focus on creating future stars to sustain that success. WWF capitalized on that failure and by the end of 1999, WCW was back in the red again, way worse than they were before Bischoff took over. After a series of dumb, expensive investments (KISS, Master P, Megadeth, Dennis Rodman the 2nd time, etc.), losing stars like Chris Jericho, and continuing to rely on old 80s relics, and blowing through millions of Turner's dollars with nothing to show for it, the company lost faith in Bischoff's business judgement. At one point, Bischoff just turned the whole thing over to Kevin Nash as the new booker, who seemingly had no interest in doing anything other than pushing himself and his friends, which sunk the company to even further lows.
As for Russo, it's true that WWF did pretty huge numbers during the time he became more involved in creative and when he left the company, he did a good job of convincing everyone that he was the genius behind WWF's turnaround. But within a few months of his departure, it became clear just which Vince deserved the credit for WWF's success. WWF never missed a beat when Russo left and TV ratings and house show business continued to increase (and keep in mind, WWF hasn't had Austin or Undertaker for the last 6 months either, plus McMahon has kept himself off TV until recently also). Meanwhile, in WCW, when Russo took over, the company just skidded further off the rails. Russo did play a major part in pushing WWF to move away from the failing family-friendly approach. But really, they pretty much just copied Paul Heyman's formula so...ya know. To be fair to Russo, he seemed to be the only person in WCW who realized how badly the company needed a drastic change and he really did try to push new people like Benoit, Bagwell, and Jarrett to the top. But then he brought back Piper, brought in George Steele and Jimmy Snuka, and booked dangerous angles like the one that got Goldberg injured. He came in with a lot of hype and ratings initially went up a bit out of curiosity, but they quickly plummeted again. He booked a tired rehash of the Montreal Screwjob finish at Starrcade, rendered all the belts meaningless, booked absurd screwjob endings to nearly every match on TV and PPV, and essentially booked the company like a monkey throwing his poop at random. As a result, WCW has now fallen behind ECW in both PPV buyrates and live show attendance and TV ratings have continued to plummet.
Here's some cold hard numbers for those Russo supporters out there who still, somehow, defend this guy 20 years later: when Russo took over WCW in Oct. 99, they were averaging 4,628 people per show. By January (his last month in power), average attendance was down to 3,593. Nitro's ratings in Oct. 99 were averaging 3.08. By January, the average was....3.10. Oh, you say! But that's higher! Yes, on paper, 3.10 looks higher than 3.08. But the reality is, during that time, Nitro went from three hours back down to two. On paper, that should have led to a significant increase in the average. If Nitro was still three hours, that 3.10 would be equivalent to a 2.9. So even though it looks like ratings slightly increased on Russo's watch, they actually went down. The loss of that third hour gives the illusion that they didn't. Oh and in Oct. 99, the Halloween Havoc buyrate was 0.52. In January, the PPV buyrate was 0.26. TL;DR - by literally every single metric, WCW business got worse under Vince Russo. But hey, it got even worse since he left, so...take solace in that?
Quick note just at press time, it's been reported that they will announce the XFL will air in prime time on NBC due to a deal between Vince McMahon and Dick Ebersol. The two men were business partners back in the 80s and put together Saturday Night Main Event. If this ends up being true, it would be huge for both the XFL and WWF and is expected to play a part in WWF's new TV deal. More on this next week.
With Wrestlemania just around the corner, Dave takes a long in-depth look at the biggest annual show in the business. He starts by talking about the 3 biggest annual events in wrestling. NJPW's Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show has been the biggest wrestling event in the world for much of the last decade since starting in 1992 because NJPW was the biggest and most successful company. But NJPW is struggling these days and WWF has surpassed them as the top company. WCW has Starrcade, but the only year that show was ever the biggest was in 1997 (Sting/Hogan) and never really reached the heights of Wrestlemania or the Tokyo Dome show. From here, Dave recaps the entire history of Wrestlemania. Risking it all on WM1, the Mr. T and Cyndi LaupeMTV crossover promotion, the 3-arena debacle of WM2 (where 2 of the 3 arenas weren't even sold out), WM3 which is the most historically famous wrestling event ever and all the folklore surrounding that ("While the 93,173 number is a work repeated so often even those who should know better believe it's the truth. According to Zane Bresloff, who promoted the event, the actual number in the building was 78,000, but the event did sellout weeks in advance and it is realistic to believe the potential if the building was larger could have been 100,000 tickets," Dave says and I'm sure that won't lead to a tired ass discussion in the comments.) The next 2 WM events at Trump Plaza, which were held because Trump paid for them, hoping to do the same kind of business that major boxing events usually do. But the crowds sucked because they mostly weren't wrestling fans, they were high rolling casino comps. Dave also takes a moment here to detail the history of WWF and Jim Crockett running shows against each other's major events to attempt to hurt them, like Vince creating Survivor Series solely to try to hurt the 1987 Starrcade buyrate, and how Crockett retaliated by airing Clash of the Champions on free TV against WM4 and so on and so forth for the next couple of years. Then there's WM6 with Hogan/Warrior, the WM7 drama with the venue being changed due to low ticket sales and turned out to be a huge flop on PPV. WM8 with over 60,000 fans except a LOT of them were papered and it flopped on PPV. WM9 with Hogan returning to win the title, but it didn't help business and he refused to put Bret over later that year. WM10 with 2 of the greatest WM matches in history, WM11 with Lawrence Taylor, WM12 with the ironman match, WM13 which had the Bret/Austin classic but was the moment WWF hit the bottom of the barrel with the lowest WM buyrate ever, WM14 with Mike Tyson and the crowning of Austin as the new top star which did record business, and finally WM15 which mostly sucked but ended up being the biggest money show in wrestling history...until next week when WM16 inevitably breaks that record. Anyway, Dave goes into more in-depth recap of each Wrestlemania here, but you already know the stories on most of this so I...actually have no idea why I just wrote this big ass paragraph.
Last year's Wrestlemania featured Austin/Rock main eventing and broke a bazillion records. This year's plan was originally to do a rematch, with the roles reversed (Austin as heel) but Austin getting injured screwed that up. This year's WM is still expected to become the biggest money grossing event in the history of professional wrestling. As for this year's plans, it's still up in the air. As of a few weeks ago, the plan has always been for Rock to win the title, essentially his coronation as the new top star and face of the company. But that may not happen anymore because Rock is scheduled to film The Mummy 2 movie and will be out for a couple of months soon after Wrestlemania. It's not in the company's best interest to build toward Rock's big moment for an entire year, only to have him win the title and then have to lose it again a month later. The company is pushing the idea that Foley will win and that's what they want everyone to believe, for the big feel good story. Dave thinks the only chance of Triple H retaining will be if Foley turns heel and helps cost Rock the match. Usually a heel retaining the title at Wrestlemania seems like something they'd never do, but Triple H (who was only supposed to be a transitional champion to begin with) has been a huge success as champion and has become a legit main eventer and top star. And Big Show pretty much isn't even in the discussion. Though for what it's worth, Dave says Big Show will probably become the tallest wrestler to ever headline a Wrestlemania, so hey, that's something! Of course, in kayfabe, Andre The Giant was billed at 7'4 (he wasn't) so even though Big Show is legitimately slightly taller than Andre was, they can't admit that without breaking the Andre mystique.
Despite all the huge paragraphs above, they're really only 2 stories. I guess this is a slow week because Dave writes huge pieces about a former WCW jobber turned boxer who was exposed for fixing his matches and all the legal issues with that. And then he writes a big historical piece about Frank Gotch that stems from a letter someone wrote the week before. All really interesting stuff, but none of it newsworthy at all.
Ratings news, Monday stuff is still the same. Thunder ratings reached a pretty horrible low and bottomed out with the main event of Hulk Hogan vs. Dustin Rhodes doing a terrible 1.91 rating. WWF Sunday Night Heat did a lower than usual rating because the Oscars were on. ECW did a pretty bad rating for the 2nd week in a row and was actually close to their all-time low, which isn't good news and kinda surprising since just a few weeks back, they were reaching all-time highs on TNN.
Dave recently ran a poll on the radio show, asking fans which was better*: Wrestling With Shadows or Beyond The Mat? With 37% of the vote, Wrestling With Shadows wins, compared to 21% for Beyond The Mat. The other percentages were people who haven't seen one or the other. What say we, Wreddit?
AJPW pulled a huge surprise in their annual Champion Carnival tournament. Jun Akiyama, who was expected to easily make it to the finals of the tournament, ended up losing to Takao Omori in a 7 second match in the very first round. It's the shortest match in AJPW history. It's a single elimination tournament, which means Akiyama has been eliminated. Dave isn't really sure what the plan is here, but it damn sure makes the tournament hard to predict now. He speculates that this means Steve Williams will probably end up in the finals against either Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi, or maaaaybe Vader (Williams didn't make the finals either. It ended up being Kobashi vs. Omori, because AJPW apparently decided to strap a rocket to Omori and try to make a main eventer out of him. Prior to this, it looks like he was just sort of languishing in the midcard).

WATCH: Jun Akiyama vs. Takao Omori - AJPW 2000

Oh hey, in the very next paragraph, Dave breaks down the next tournament matches and wonders whether AJPW may end up pushing Omori to the finals in order to try to make him a star (yup).
Speaking of Kobashi, he blew his knee out last week and doctors have told him he needs surgery. As anyone who follows AJPW and Kobashi in particular knows, he's naturally ignoring that advice and continuing to wrestle. Because Kobashi.
Shawn Michaels will be returning to the ring next week for his own TWA promotion in Texas. Michaels is billing it as his final match, coming out of retirement to face Venom for the TWA title. The match is said to be a "bunkhouse brawl" instead of a regular wrestling match because Michaels has said his back can't stand up to doing a normal match.
A website called TokyoPop.com is going to start airing live matches from FMW online (that seems like it would have sucked with 2000-era internet technology. Anyway, TokyoPop.com still exists. It's an anime/manga site).
Dave recently caught up on some Memphis Championship Wrestling and gives his thoughts on some of the people there. K-Krush has good charisma (that would be R-Truth). Bobcat looks like every other blonde valet (she's most famous for being the Godfather's ho that won the hardcore title). Blue Meanie has lost so much weight that he doesn't even look like the same person. Lance Russell is still an incredible announcer. So on and so forth. Anyway, Dustin Diamond (Screech from Saved By The Bell) appeared yet again, continuing his angle of being obsessed with the Kat which once again led to Screech getting beat down and doing a stretcher job.
ECW has a PPV scheduled for next month but have not yet picked a location. Heyman wants to run the show in a new market because the first-time crowds are usually the best. Heyman had negotiated with the Mandalay Bay casino and hotel in Las Vegas to do it there, but the talks fell through. Both Jerry Lynn and RVD are expected to be back from their injuries by then.
Notes from the most recent ECW TV taping: Dusty Rhodes came out with 2 strippers who flashed the crowd, but of course that won't air on TV. Cyrus made fun of Mick Foley's "retirement." And the show ended strangely. Sandman and Super Crazy were beat down after the main event and left laying. And....that was supposed to be the end of the show. But the crowd was expecting to be sent home happy and didn't leave and kept chanting for Sandman (who was helped out of the ring, selling an injury) and Raven (who was at the show but didn't work due to illness). Heyman called an audible and sent Mikey Whipwreck out to tell the crowd to leave, which led to Raven making an unplanned run-in to give him a DDT, which is about all he could physically do. Then, with Raven in the ring, the crowd began chanting for Sandman to come back out, so Raven went with it and called for him to come out. But by this point, Sandman was already in the showers and thought he was done for the night and he legitimately didn't want to come back out. Ultimately, he did and he caned Raven to send everyone home happy, but he was upset about it and he had words with Heyman and Raven immediately after backstage.
New Jack and Tommy Dreamer will be appearing together in a small role in the CBS TV drama Early Edition.

WATCH: New Jack & Tommy Dreamer on Early Edition

Every angle done on WCW TV this week was meaningless because the company is starting over with a clean slate in 2 weeks under Bischoff and Russo. Spring Stampede takes place on the 16th and there are no matches planned as of yet and there won't be until 6 days before the show when WCW resets. Word is Russo will be doing most of the writing. In an interview with 1wrestling.com, Russo said he hasn't watched a single second of WCW TV since he was relieved of his duties back in January.
Notes from Nitro: it was the spring break show, so the crowd at least seemed to be having fun which is a break from normal WCW shows. Someone in the front row had an "I wish I was at Raw" sign that somehow never got confiscated and was there for the entire show on camera. At the very beginning of the show, a woman in the front row flashed Gene Okerlund, leading to him saying, "Young lady, you're very proud of those, aren't you?" on TV. DDP made his big return and pretty much just plugged the Ready To Rumble movie. Sid Vicious missed the show due to a shoulder injury. Dave can understand not wrestling with an injury but Sid is the WCW champion, and Dave thinks he should at least show up and cut a promo or something. But then again, nothing in WCW matters right now until Russo and Bischoff reboot it anyway. Sting and Luger fought onto the beach all the way to the ocean. And to his credit, Hogan did a promo during the show where he really put over Vampiro as the wrestler of the future and later in the main event, he worked against The Wall and allowed Wall to no-sell the leg drop. So kudos to WCW for finally making an effort to push some new people, even if it all gets wiped away in 2 weeks.
Notes from Thunder: the show drew 1,700 paid fans. Literally 24 hours earlier, Raw sold out a different arena in the same city for Raw with over 12,500 paid fans. Lots of rumors were going around saying Bobby Heenan had been fired, but he was doing commentary on this show, so obviously that wasn't true. Chris Candido is already doing jobs to Chavo Guerrero so he clearly isn't getting any sort of push after debuting just a couple weeks ago. And no real storyline progression, just tons of hype about what the future for WCW holds under Bischoff and Russo. WCW is basically in a holding pattern right now and nothing matters until the reboot.
Hogan appeared on another radio station doing an interview where he buries everybody. He said Bret Hart is in Canada and "can't remember what WCW is." He said DDP was out injured with a broken fingernail and said WCW needs people who will crawl through broken glass with one arm in a sling to sacrifice and get in the ring. He said Kidman needs to start training like Torrie Wilson. He did praise Vampiro again though, so Hogan seems to like him. Anyway, WCW head Bill Busch was on WCW's live internet show and admitted that Hogan has full creative control in his contract and also said that he still has 6 guaranteed PPV main event matches in his deal.
Tammy Sytch is expected to make her WCW debut at the Spring Stampede PPV.
Variety ran a big story about some marketing changes that WCW is making. New hires to take over various marketing jobs, new marketing strategies and promotions that the company is planning to run, etc. Dave says that's all well and good, but nowhere in the article did it mention the idea of maybe putting on good shows that people want to see. All the marketing geniuses in the world can't save a product as terrible as WCW is right now.
Brad Armstrong will be out of action for several months with a knee injury suffered in the dumbest way possible. For some reason, before a show, Armstrong was goofing around in the parking lot with Juventud Guerrera and Psicosis and they decided--just for shits and giggles--to do the ol' famous wrestling angle of hitting someone with their car. You know, one of those dumb "you drive at me, I'll jump up on the hood like the stuntmen do in the movies" type of things. So.....they did it. And now Armstrong needs knee surgery because of course he does (that was pretty much it for him. He never wrestled in WCW again and in fact, he didn't wrestle anywhere for another 4 years before returning to the ring in 2004 and working indie shows periodically until 2011. Died a year later).
Les Thatcher's Heartland Wrestling Association have signed a deal with WCW to act as a developmental territory for them. Power Plant wrestlers will go work shows for him for a little while before debuting on WCW TV.
Various WCW notes: Mexican wrestlers Halloween and Damian are joining Sonny Onoo's racial discrimination lawsuit against WCW. Although with Bischoff returning to the company, Dave expects this lawsuit to ultimately disappear. Christopher Daniels starts with WCW next week. Dave thinks he has a ton of potential. Some people within the company are pushing for Shane Douglas to return. Konnan's suspension ends this week so he should be back soon.
The legal red tape behind the scenes on WWF's new TV deal is still being sorted out. The FCC is expected to allow the Viacom purchase of UPN to go through, which will mean Viacom will own 2 networks (CBS and UPN) which used to be against the law but that's being changed now. Those in the TV industry pretty much believe this to be a done deal. The news has boosted WWF stock up to $17.31 per share (as I write this, WWF just announced the new FOX deal for Smackdown, which boosted the stock up to damn near $60 per share)(10/24 update: currently $80.64).
The Rock was on Jay Leno's Tonight Show recently and movie critic Roger Ebert appeared also. Ebert told Rock that he has talent and told him to get into acting and get as far away from wrestling as he can. Rock laughed it off and said he was working on it.
Notes from Smackdown: it was in San Antonio and a tag team called American Force 2000 worked a dark match. The team consists of two trainees from Shawn Michaels' wrestling school, Spanky and American Dragon. Lots of cool high spots but they weren't very fluid and screwed some stuff up. They also hyped up the Shawn Michaels vs. Venom match next week in TWA for the live crowd.
A lot of the WWF wrestlers are using new entrance music right now to promote the new WWF Aggression CD. It's basically rap remixes of everyone's theme music and Dave thinks it sucks because the fans don't know these songs. So now even when the Rock is making his entrance, the crowd doesn't pop because it's an unfamiliar. Luckily it's temporary and they'll go back to the real versions eventually. Speaking of, WWF The Music Vol. 4, which was released 6 months ago, is still hanging on in the top 200 charts. It's at #152 this week and sold over 10,000 copies. In 2018, any album that is still moving 10k copies six months after it came out would be the best selling album of the year.
WWF claims they have enough money set aside to fund the XFL for at least 3 seasons. They're hoping to expand to 16 teams by 2005. WWF has once again emphasized that they will own all the teams and aren't interested in outside investors. They also again promised that this is going to be legit and the games won't be fixed. Advertisers are said to be hesitant, because they don't have a lot of hope that this whole XFL thing is going to succeed.
Shawn Michaels is said to be itching to get back on television in the WWF, but right now, they have no interest. Business is booming so much these days and they've attracted so many new fans in just the last year or two alone that Michaels isn't considered a top star anymore and WWF doesn't feel the need to use him in any way.
USA Today ran a story about Mick Foley's alleged last match coming up at Wrestlemania. Foley was quoted as saying, "I was much more successful and, going over my taxes now, obviously a lot more profitable being more of a comedy character in 1999 than I ever was being the King of Hardcore. If I'd known I could make more money making people laugh than making people wince, I'd have done it a long time ago." He also said that if it hadn't been for Austin getting injured, he would have retired last year. He said he hated going back on his word so soon after he retired and says he spent 20 minutes trying to talk Vince McMahon out of bringing him back for the match. But ultimately, he admitted that the money was too much to turn down. "It may take some people a while to forgive me, but not as long as it would take me to forgive myself if I didn't do this. Realistically, it's probably going to be the most money that I've ever made. So 15 years from now, when everyone has forgiven me, my kids' college will be taken care of." But Foley super duper swears this time that Wrestlemania will be his final match. "By leaving now, I'm probably giving up on the most profitable year in my career. But I was named after Mickey Mantle. I grew up hearing about how Mickey Mantle stuck around one season too long. I didn't want people to make the same comments about Mickey Foley."

FRIDAY: Wrestlemania 16 fallout, XFL/NBC partnership, Vince Russo gives interview full of bullshit, New Jersey attempting to ban extreme wrestling, and more...

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Sept. 25, 2000


1-3-2000	1-10-2000	1-17-2000	1-24-2000
1-31-2000	2-7-2000	2-14-2000	2-21-2000
2-28-2000	3-6-2000	3-13-2000	3-20-2000
3-27-2000	4-3-2000	4-10-2000	4-17-2000
4-24-2000	5-1-2000	5-8-2000	5-15-2000
5-22-2000	5-29-2000	6-5-2000	6-12-2000
6-19-2000	6-26-2000	7-3-2000	7-10-2000
7-17-2000	7-24-2000	7-31-2000	8-7-2000
8-14-2000	8-21-2000	8-28-2000	9-4-2000
9-11-2000	9-18-2000

The Delaware Supreme Court ruled against the USA Network in their appeal to prevent WWF from accepting the Viacom deal. The decision makes it official that WWF is moving to TNN next week and ends the 17-year WWF/USA relationship. The appeal process has been lingering for over a month and because of it, USA, Viacom, WWF and ECW were all pretty much paralyzed and waiting to see how things turn out. But now that it's all finalized, ECW's final TNN show will air on 9/22 and the first Raw on TNN will air on 9/25. It doesn't give Viacom much of an opportunity to promote the move. They had set aside $7 million to promote Raw's TNN debut but because of the lingering court proceedings, they kept having to delay it and now there's almost no time. On Raw's final show on USA, Jim Ross mentioned repeatedly that this was the last episode on the network and plugged the move to TNN (and hyping that Austin will be there live). But that's pretty much it so far. During the next few days, you can expect Viacom to bombard all media outlets with as much promotion as they can cram into the short amount of time, but it's going to be impossible to promote it as much as they'd hoped to. And considering they're moving from the #1 rated network to the #15 rated network, they need all the promotion they can get.
Needless to say, this all gives WCW a golden opportunity to put their best foot forward for Nitro on 9/25 and hopefully gain some much-needed ground (in case you're want spoilers for next week, Russo uses this opportunity to make himself the WCW champion). In the short run, Raw's ratings will almost certainly fall, but in the long-run, being with Viacom is going to be hugely beneficial to WWF. As for ECW, this opens the door for them to continue negotiations with USA. They desperately need a TV deal, on a strong network, and most importantly, they need outside financial support if they are going to survive. Having a TV deal is useless if you can't afford the production costs. As mentioned last week, ECW missed payroll and has had to cancel several house shows due to the financial crunch they're under.
Also this week, TNN announced that it's renaming itself The National Network (instead of The Nashville Network) and will be moving its base of operations from Nashville to New York. They're planning to debut a new logo and target their programming to a more diverse audience. Dave recaps the history of WWF on the USA Network, dating back to 1982 when they aired monthly WWF MSG shows. Then WWF got a weekly show called All-American Wrestling on the network in 1983, which then became Prime Time Wrestling and Tuesday Night Titans, the creation of Raw in 1993, the Monday night wars, and now to this.
There was a frightening moment at WCW's Fall Brawl PPV with Paul Orndorff suffering a stinger that left him motionless in the ring. The good news is that it was only temporary paralysis. He was treated and released from the hospital that same night. It was reminiscent of the injuries suffered by Droz and Buff Bagwell in recent years, but fortunately for Orndorff, it didn't end up being as bad. There was immediate suspicion that the whole thing was a work, which Dave thinks is a pretty sad reflection of WCW these days. When Orndorff went down, everyone else in the match basically panicked and continued working the match on the other side of the ring, taking bumps that kept jarring the ring, all while the EMTs and trainer were trying to tend to Orndorff. Finally, almost 2 minutes after he collapsed, referee Charles Robinson finally took charge and ordered the match stopped. The match was scheduled to go several more minutes and run-ins were scheduled, but it all got scrapped when Robinson ended it. The injury happened when Orndorff tried to piledrive Mark Jindrak but Jindrak didn't go up correctly for the move. Orndorff had to deadweight lift him and when he did so, his hamstring went out. He completed the piledriver but landed awkwardly, causing something with his neck and spine to jam up and that was it. Dave talks about Orndorff's health problems over the year, specifically his arm injury that caused his right arm to atrophy severely and never recover. He retired twice before due to health issues (87 and 94) only to return both times when he probably shouldn't have. (This was his final match for 17 years. But it looks like he came out of retirement last year and worked a 6-man tag match at an indie show in Canada. But otherwise, this Fall Brawl match was the end of the road for Orndorff).

WATCH: Paul Orndorff injury at Fall Brawl 2000

This whole thing brings up questions about Nitro this week, which has a match scheduled between Booker T and Vince Russo. Just a few weeks ago, Russo suffered a concussion during an angle and has been dealing with headaches and such ever since, and it's probably not a good idea for him to be in the ring. They could probably work around it, but Dave thinks it's bad enough to have untrained people in there doing moves anyway, much less ones who are already injured. Dave notes the recent example of Kurt Angle wrestling on Smackdown 2 days after getting severely concussed at Summerslam, which he never should have done and led to him getting another concussion because you're always more susceptible to further concussions during the period after suffering one. Russo has openly claimed to have had 3 concussions in the last year and has only worked about 6 matches. If that's true, he probably shouldn't be in there taking bumps again. But maybe they'll book something safe that doesn't require it. Either way, Dave is just concerned about the overall safety of all these guys.
Oh yeah, other notes from Fall Brawl: crowd was 8,600 although only about half of that (4,311) was paid, the rest were freebies. Dave notes all the excitement people in WCW had last week when the Nitro rating was higher than usual, and points out how it obviously didn't mean dick when it comes to ticket sales. TV ratings are nice but it's a vanity metric. The real numbers that matter are the ones that make money. Ticket sales and PPV buys. And, well, those are still horrible. There was a guy in the crowd facing the hard cam who was seen constantly throughout the show wearing a Destroyer mask. Destroyer was a famous wrestler back in 60s and 70s who wore a red and white mask. Anyway....turns out that was the real Destroyer (real name Dick Beyer), just sitting in the crowd at a WCW PPV at 70 years old, still doing his old gimmick. Kevin Nash cut a promo earlier on the pre-show claiming he was hungover from hanging out at the bar last night and essentially telegraphing that he was going to lose his match (he did). Right after the Orndorff match, Shane Douglas cut a pre-match promo saying Kidman would be joining Paul Orndorff at the hospital. Even his partner Torrie Wilson seemed to drop her TV smile and give him a "what an asshole" look for that one. The scaffold for the scaffold match was way wider than any other ones before and the area underneath was padded and safe, but Torrie still seemed legitimately terrified up there. After Madusa took a bump off the scaffold (which the crowd booed because it was clearly gimmicked for safety), the announcers also tried to compare her injuries to Orndorff's injury earlier in the night. Dave is just disgusted. Torrie never took a bump off the scaffold, which was the original plan but she refused, and good for her Dave says. It would have meant nothing for the match anyway. Negative 1 star. They did a segment with David Flair beating up a mailman in his yard and Dave says the whole segment was actually hilarious and more interestingly, it was all David Flair's idea. ICP did commentary on Vampiro's match again, which once again was funny. Mike Awesome came out with former child actor Gary Coleman. There's been a lot of news stories lately about Coleman working as a security guard for $6 an hour these days, so at least WCW probably didn't have to spend a lot to get him. Naturally, he got involved in the match and it was hilarious because he knew he was going to take a guitar shot from Jarrett. So he had a hat on with a towel folded up in it to cushion the blow. But during the chaos, his hat got knocked off. So just before the guitar shot, he picked up his hat, calmly put the towel back in, put it back on, and took the hit. Goldberg vs. Scott Steiner was a shockingly good match and Dave gives it 4.25 stars. And of course, Booker T won the title from Nash in the main event.

WATCH: Fall Brawl 2000 highlights

We get the usual long obituary for Professor Toru Tanaka, one of the biggest heels of the 60s and 70s, who died at age 70 in California. Dave recaps his career and of course, he was a Hawaiian who got booked as a typical salt throwing Japanese heel. Worked for WWWF feuding with Sammartino, won titles in all the territories, etc. He also tells an interesting story from 1977 when Pat Patterson returned to the San Francisco territory after being gone for 8 months and was supposed to face Mr. Fuji in a show that ended up drawing 12,000 people. But Fuji had a falling out with promoter Roy Shire and left the territory 2 weeks before the match. So Shire brought in Tanaka and put him under a mask and tried to pass him off as the real Fuji. The crowd didn't buy it and the media got ahold of the story and started claiming fraud and the athletic commission got involved. Shire nearly lost his promoter's license but he claimed he didn't know and thought it was the real Fuji under the mask. Tanaka and Shire were both fined but the commission seemed to buy the story (others backed it up to protect Shire) and let them off with just the fine. The real Fuji caught all the heat and was legitimately banned by the commission for life from wrestling in California, but that was overturned in 1984.
The current plan for AJPW's Triple Crown title is to hold a tournament soon, which is expected to be won by Toshiaki Kawada, who will then defend the title against NJPW champion Sasaki in a title vs. title match at the Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show. And the plan from there is for Kawada to get the surprising win, since most people don't expect NJPW to book their champion to lose to AJPW's champion. But the way Riki Choshu (NJPW booker) sees it, AJPW is pretty much doomed and he's not too concerned about them as competition anymore, and he's well aware that this inter-promotional feud is the only thing keeping AJPW alive right now. But there's still money in an AJPW/NJPW feud and they want to prolong it, so Kawada will have to win. The idea is to keep Kawada strong because NJPW loves the gimmick of a strongly booked outsider coming in and shaking things up. In the past, that person has been Naoya Ogawa but Choshu is tired of the headache that comes with dealing with Antonio Inoki and Ogawa because Inoki is intent on making Ogawa an unbeatable superman and NJPW can never get him to put anyone over. Choshu is pretty much trying to do anything he can to get Inoki's influence as far away from the company as possible. So the idea is to keep Kawada strong and milk this angle for all it's worth.
New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman officially signed into law the bill to regulate so-called "extreme wrestling." The bill bans children under 18 from attending extreme wrestling shows. It also adds an athletic commission tax to promotions running extreme shows, mandates an ambulance and 2 doctors must be on hand at every event, and even though it's a state law, the city officials where the show is to be held must specifically give permission for the event. This bill doesn't affect ECW, which was categorized as one of the 3 major companies which are exempt from the law. The bill is a not-so-subtle effort to drive Jersey All Pro Wrestling and Combat Zone Wrestling specifically out of the state, JAPW in particular. They're planning to still run shows but will be forced to get rid of bladejobs, no more light tubes or thumb tacks or barbed wire, etc. JAPW owner Frank Iadeavia has said they are considering legal action. But at this point, if they want to continue to run shows as they have, they're going to be forced to leave the state of New Jersey to do so.
Raw did well in the ratings again, facing stiff competition from the Olympics and Monday Night Football. But they had one segment that was a major bomb. Mick Foley came out, cutting a promo once again trying to get George W. Bush and Al Gore to appear on Smackdown for a debate. The segment was right before the main event and caused a full 700,000 homes to change the channel, which is an unheard of drop for a Raw episode. That led to the Rock/Undertaker main event that followed to be the lowest rated Raw main event of the year.
The Wrestling Observer Hotline has been officially killed off. 1-900 hotline numbers have been dying anyway and the numbers were down and Dave says more importantly, he needed to stop because he's so busy with the newsletter and the Eyada online radio show and wants to concentrate fully on those and the daily hotline stuff took up too much time.
Motoko Baba threatened a lawsuit against Nippon TV over their decision to drop AJPW and start airing NOAH instead, and due to the lawsuit, NOAH currently isn't airing on NTV, which is a major blow for the fledgling new company. In the meantime, Misawa has started negotiations with TV Tokyo, which is another one of the major networks in Japan.
Former WWF and ECW wrestler Nicole Bass made headlines after being arrested in New York after getting into an argument with someone on a street corner. It turned into a fight and when the police tried to break it up, she allegedly bit one of the cops. Bass was one of several people arrested.
Notes from OVW: Jim Ross did announcing on some of the shows there this week, because he was down there scouting talent. Shelton Benjamin is showing a lot of promise and Jim Cornette says Benjamin is progressing even faster than Kurt Angle and believes he's guaranteed to be a big star. Brock Lesnar still hasn't debuted on TV there yet but Bob Orton's son Randy Orton recently did. They're also strongly pushing Leviathan (real name Dave Bautista) and Jim Cornette predicts he will headline Wrestlemania within the next 5 years. (yup, exactly 5 years later in fact)
Ed Farhat, better known as The Sheik, is said to be in very grave condition. He's down to 150 pounds and can only communicate through blinking his eyes or lightly squeezing if you hold his hand (he ended up living another 2+ years after this. His Wikipedia page says he was working with a biographer and did extensive interviews before he died, with plans to have a book on his life released. But it says the interviews "provided a highly explosive look" into the business and as a result, the interviews and draft of the book were sealed at the time of his death and to this day it's never been released. Interesting. When I originally wrote this up a few months ago, I tweeted Dave about this and he responded saying he didn't know anything about it either. I'd love to find out more.)
The latest revival of Stampede Wrestling is in bad shape. They have no more shows scheduled and have only done 10 shows in the last few months. Their TV show has been airing old tapes rather than new episodes lately.
Ken Shamrock broke his silence on his recent PRIDE loss to Kazuyuki Fujita. Shamrock pretty much blamed himself and admitted he wasn't in proper shape to fight and said things happened which contributed to him not having time to train properly (he doesn't go into detail but I think Dave mentioned something in an earlier Observer but I can't find it right now. But I think Shamrock was going through some personal shit around this time. Something like a divorce or a custody battle or something. That doesn't get mentioned here, it's just something I vaguely remember reading awhile back, I might be wrong).
Nobuhiko Takada has announced he's going to face Igor Vovchanchyn at next month's PRIDE show and that if he doesn't win, he'll retire. Takada had a reputation as a shoot fighter from his years as the founder and star of UWFi, which was a worked shoot promotion. But then he started doing real shoots and it's been bad news ever since, including 2 high profile losses to Rickson Gracie. He's had a couple of wins, but they were worked matches. His real MMA fights have all been losses and Dave says the real fighters in PRIDE have pretty much no respect for Takada as an actual fighter. He doesn't like Takada's chances next month (indeed, Takada gets punched into submission in the 2nd round. But he still didn't retire).
Notes from Nitro: the building was mostly full, with not that many freebies. But only because it was a small arena that only holds about 5,000 people. It was also in Canada and the crowd was pretty much only there to see Lance Storm (who ended up jobbing to Jim Duggan in an undercard match) and Bret Hart (who wasn't there at all). They hated Goldberg with a passion, probably due to the Hart stuff, and booed him mercilessly.
On his personal website, Mark Madden apologized to Lou Thesz for his comment on Nitro last week where he joked that Lou Thesz beats up women. Madden said he was only joking and that he has a ton of respect for Thesz.
Pamela Paulshock apparently injured her ankle doing an angle on Thunder last week. Dave thinks it's bad enough when they have untrained wrestlers in there getting hurt, but now untrained ring announcers are getting hurt too.
WCW is pitching an angle for Vampiro to team with singer Billy Idol in a feud against Mike Awesome and David Cassidy, of Partridge Family fame (Never happened but.....yeah. That was a thing evidently).
Dave only has a couple of thoughts on this week's Thunder: he begs someone in WCW to PLEASE send Major Gunns to get acting lessons. He also wants someone to save Mike Awesome from a gimmick worse than the Red Rooster. And finally, I guess there's been a lot of commercials for the new Meet The Parents movie and Dave thinks it looks funny.
Various WCW notes: DDP is likely being brought back soon, though Kimberly won't be. Nitro Girl Spice was released. She was being groomed to co-host WCW's Saturday morning show, but then the show got canned and they didn't have anything else for her. And after being world champion for a couple of months, WCW has finally decided to start making some Booker T merch. Seems like a good idea to finally get around to. The Harris Twins taped segments for both the Maury Povich and Jenny Jones shows, no word on what they are or when they'll air. Goldberg will be on an episode of The Daily Show this week. Gene Okerlund is expected to be given a grumpy old man gimmick where he swears a lot.
Next month might be a surprisingly good month for WCW ticket wise. They have shows in Australia that are expected to do big numbers because Australia is so starved for wrestling that even WCW can do big business there. And they have a PPV in Las Vegas which will do good because the casinos are buying up a lot of tickets to give away.
Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner are reportedly being total team players right now, because there's concern that a regime change could come at any time (a lot of people are pushing for Johnny Ace to replace Vince Russo) and they're basically being on their best behavior until they see who their next new boss might be. The only person right now who's really stirring up shit is Goldberg, who is said to be openly pissed about pretty much everything and isn't shy about expressing it (yeah, even Goldberg has since admitted that he was frustrated and probably wasn't very pleasant to be around back then).
Scott Hall is expected to return to Nitro next week. Brad Siegel reportedly gave up on fighting with Nash about it and is willing to bring Hall back. Siegel and Hall spoke last week and Hall was basically told this is his last chance and if he fucks up one time, he's gone for good. Of course, Scott Steiner has been told that a dozen times in the past, so you know how that goes (Hall doesn't end up coming back. Not sure if it fell through or Dave got bad info or what, but it never happens).
They held a Miss WCW Pageant in Las Vegas last week with Carrot Top as one of the judges and of course there was a bikini contest. Nitro Girl Chae ended up winning over Torrie Wilson, Major Gunns, Baby, Chiquita, Midajah and Stacy Keibler. Pamela Paulshock was supposed to be in it but no-showed due to her ankle injury (there's some good catty drama coming out of this in the next week or two).
So the deal with Konnan is....pretty messed up, actually. He had tricep surgery a few months ago and has no business back in the ring yet. But WCW cut his paycheck in half so....he came back and he's wrestling. But here's the problem. The doctors still haven't given him a medical release yet because, well, they're doctors and he's still fucked up. They're like, "Dude...no." Anyway, because he doesn't have his medical release, WCW is still only giving him half his pay. But they're still allowing him to wrestle. He's hoping to get a medical release this week so he can start getting full checks again. Dave just thinks this whole policy is so screwed up on so many ways.
Disqo Inferno has been bringing out some plastic duck to the ring called the Disqo Duck. (I should stop for a second and explain something for the younger readers. R&B singer Sisqo had a HUGE hit called "Thong Song" around this time and WCW, in their infinite wisdom, capitalized by changing the spelling of Disco to Disqo.) Anyway, the duck is fucking stupid and apparently at Nitro this week, Konnan literally handcuffed himself to the duck backstage to try and keep Disqo Inferno from taking it out to the ring. Someone had to try to save him from himself.
Jeremy Borash will be doing announcing at this week's Thunder tapings. Dave says there's a lot of heat here because Borash is close to Vince Russo, so he's getting a lot of chances to do things like commentary even though he hasn't really earned it yet and hasn't shown any real aptitude for it. Dave says if Borash ends up replacing one of the main announcers on Nitro, there'll probably be a meltdown.
Steve Austin and Debra got married last week in Las Vegas (fun fact: same wedding chapel Triple H and a drugged out Stephanie McMahon got married in. Funner fact: also the same wedding chapel I got married in).
The plan for Sunday Night Heat, now that it's moving to MTV, is for it to be more of a humor and skit type show, with a lot of Tom Green-style humor (oh man, 2000 was such a weird time). They want to bring in musical guests and celebrities for it and will do a lot of the stuff from the WWF New York restaurant as well as at MTV's Times Square headquarters.
Notes from Raw: a lot of the show was built around trying to seemingly bury Kurt Angle, by turning him into a goofy heel character and implying that he's gay. They showed a lot of footage of him crying at the Olympics and had Triple H make fun of him and all that stuff. Dave thinks it's a pretty weird thing to do one week before the biggest match of Angle's career (he's got a No DQ match with Triple H at next week's PPV) and sure didn't do him any favors for people taking him seriously. Hugh Hefner was on to plug Chyna's upcoming Playboy appearance and Dave thinks it's nice that Playboy and WWF could come together again in the interest of making money after all the nasty legal issues they had with the Sable fallout. And finally, Steve Regal debuted.
Since we were talking about WCW's injury policy, Dave decides to let us know what WWF's policy is. A WWF wrestler that is out with an injury receives their downside guarantee. WWF contracts give you a guarantee (say, $300,000 per year for example) but you can make a lot more money on the road because everyone gets a cut of house show gates and PPV revenue and whatnot. So if you're injured and not on the road, you won't get all that extra money, but you still make the $300,000 guarantee. Of course, that leads to the same incentive for guys to sometimes come back before they're ready, because they're losing money by being at home, but from everyone who talks to Dave, there's not nearly as much pressure from the WWF to hurry up and come back as there is in WCW.
Various WWF notes: Big Boss Man will be out for a few weeks after having his knee scoped. Grand Master Sexay needed 14 stitches in his ear after getting legit cut from the belt shot on Raw. Tori should be back in Oct. or early November after shoulder surgery. Billy Gunn should be back in a few weeks. Road Dogg's wife had surgery for a collapsed lung so he's out tending to her. Davey Boy Smith was in a motorcycle accident last week and Dave says if you know how many times Smith has been in and out of the hospital this year, it would scare you to death.
Four different wrestling promotions have videos in the Billboard Top 20 charts....and none of them are WCW. Of course, WWF is all over the charts with their various releases taking up 12 of the 20 spots. ECW has videos at #5 and #7. XPW, which currently isn't running new shows and doesn't even have a building to run shows in right now, has videos at #12 and #19. And Insane Clown Posse's JCW promotion has a video at #13. All that, but no WCW.
Kurt Angle and Taka Michinoku worked a UPW show in California along with a few other WWF developmental signees who started out at the UPW school (I decided to look it up and see who else of note worked that show: Franie Kazarian, Simon Dean, Rocky Romero, Mike Knox, Vic Grimes, Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe, and John Cena were all on the card. 2000/2001-era UPW had a ton of future stars come through the doors).
One of the XFL teams is already moving before it even starts. The San Jose Demons have now been renamed the San Francisco Demons and will be playing in San Fran after negotiations with Spartan Stadium in San Jose fell apart. Dave thinks it might be a bad move. San Jose is a wealthier community with a large population and their hockey and soccer franchises do huge business. San Francisco already has a major team in every sport and he doesn't know if a B-level football team is going to draw as well there as it would have in San Jose. He also notes that in the spring, the weather is a lot warmer in San Jose at night than it is in San Francisco, and California isn't exactly the type of place where people want to sit out in the cold weather at night and watch football games. This isn't Green Bay or Chicago where freezing to death for football is almost a tradition (the cities are, like, an hour apart so I can't imagine the weather is that much different? Although I guess San Francisco is right there on the bay so maybe wind? I dunno. Anyone from the area care to chime in?)
A New York newspaper reported that Vince McMahon tried to stop VH1 from airing an episode of "The List" because the show featured appearances by Kevin Nash, Booker T, Scott Steiner, Sting, and other WCW stars. VH1 is owned by Viacom, which now owns 3% of WWF's stock and McMahon decided to try to throw his weight around and get the episode canned. Didn't work and it actually was one of the highest rated episodes of the show ever. But he did succeed in getting VH1 to agree to not air reruns of that episode. A WWF spokesman responded to the story, saying, "It is highly unlikely that took place. It's not something we would do." But of course, you'll note that they didn't outright deny it and the idea that Vince McMahon wouldn't do something like that is laughable since he has a long history of doing exactly that sort of thing.
The Slam! Wrestling website wrote an article criticizing the WWF policy of not allowing wrestlers to do interviews with other websites without company approval because they see all other websites as competition to their own WWF.com site. The article noted they had an interview with Gerald Brisco awhile back and Brisco told them he could talk freely about his pre-WWF years but if it has to do with WWF, he'd have to clear it with the office. Jim Ross responded on his WWF website column, saying not a single interview request has come across their desk from any other wrestling websites. Dave talks about when the policy was put in place and says WWF told him he could still get anyone he wanted to interview on the Observer website, but he would need to go through the office first. Since that time, Dave says he's talked to wrestlers who agreed to appear, but when he tried to get it cleared by the office, it stalled and has been pending approval ever since with no answer sooooooo......
WWF is wanting Big Show to drop down to 400 pounds. At his heaviest in WCW he was 505 and currently weighs a legit 480.
Someone writes in with a conspiracy theory. He thinks Shane McMahon's death-defying fall from the TitanTron at Summerslam was done to prove a point given the upcoming Owen Hart wrongful death lawsuit, with the idea being that the WWF side can point to it as an example that, "See! Even Vince McMahon's son is sometimes asked to perform stunts like this and they're usually done safely." Dave responds, saying that normally he'd think that's reading too much into things. But the day after Summerslam, several people in WWF as well as a couple of legal experts he talked to all had basically the same theory and said they wouldn't be surprised if it gets brought up in the trial. But time will tell, Dave says.
Dave Lagana writes in, talking his experience working on "Friends" and talking about how most TV shows are written by writing teams and how stories are crafted in TV writing rooms and so on and so forth. Basically, it leads to the one big question every writer, booker, and performer should ask themselves: how will the audience react to the long-term story? Not how loud the momentary pop is or how much you were able to swerve the audience with a surprise that doesn't make any sense, etc. The point he's trying to make is that Vince Russo is doing literally everything wrong and he has no idea how to write television. He's also pretty fed up with Russo's constant everything-is-a-shoot booking, where they openly acknowledge scripts and bookers and shit in every segment. He's not the only one.
Lots of letters talking about what a total trainwreck WCW is. Russo isn't the only problem. From management to marketing, the ball is being dropped everywhere. None of the stories are coherent. Characters change gimmicks or go from face to heel from week-to-week with no explanation, fans have no idea what's happening. Wrestlers themselves are out of control backstage. Merchandising is dead. Basically, the ship is sinking and the worst part is that nobody seems to care. Everyone is just drilling more holes in the ship. Even when they luck into something that works, they always manage to fuck it up immediately. So there's all that. But also, a lot of piling on Russo from a lot of people who think he's killing the company.

MONDAY: Raw debuts on TNN, Steve Austin returns, ECW not yet cancelled on TNN after all, WWF Unforgiven fallout, and more...

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Informed RVers have rated 7 campgrounds near Thunder Bay, Ontario. Access 22 trusted reviews, 4 photos & 13 tips from fellow RVers. Find the best campgrounds & rv parks near Thunder Bay, Ontario. Gateway Casinos Thunder Bay In this establishment, you will feel at ease with the air conditioned playroom and the world-class gaming of the Gateway Casinos Thunder Bay. Several slot machines and ga … Canada • Ontario • Casinos in Thunder Bay Casinos in Thunder Bay, current page Featured Thunder Bay Casinos. Estimated price for 1 night/2 adults Prince Arthur Waterfront Hotel & Suites. 2.0 out of 5.0. $73. Per night/room. Jan 30 - Jan 31 Hotels near Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre Thunder Bay, Canada 28 contributions 2 helpful votes breakfast deal we went for the $4.99 breakfast deal . it was very good & you can’t beat the price . i wasn’t sure what to expect for that cheap of a price but i was pleasantly surprised that it was a full breakfast . Top Thunder Bay Casinos: See reviews and photos of casinos & gambling attractions in Thunder Bay, Canada on Tripadvisor. Top Thunder Bay Casinos: See reviews and photos of casinos & gambling attractions in Thunder Bay, Canada on Tripadvisor. Jan 26, 2021 - OLG Casino Thunder Bay with 450 slot machines plus 14 table games including Texas Hold'em Poker and more! Dine at our full service Getaway restaurant. Mon to Wed 9am to 4am and 24 hours Thurs to Sun Getting around Thunder Bay is easier with these transportation options: You can fly into the closest airport, which is Thunder Bay, ON (YQT-Thunder Bay Intl.), located 3.6 mi (5.8 km) from the city center. If you’d like to venture out around the area, you may want a rental car for your journey. Top Thunder Bay Casinos: See reviews and photos of casinos in Thunder Bay, Canada on Tripadvisor. Those who have been trespassed and/or self-excluded from Gateway Casinos Thunder Bay or any Ontario gaming property may not visit, participate in promotions and/or redeem offers. Offers do not apply to employees of Gateway Casinos & Entertainment.

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