Wrestling Observer Newsletter ECW Flashback - January 1996:
January 2nd, 1996 – As for ECW, even though they’ve never sold 1500 tickets for a show, they’ve become the most crazily influential group in the world. But if they want to continue their growth, they need to move away from what has made them popular and find something that’s actually marketable. Also while having the audience chant “Show your tits” might make for a charming ambiance at house shows, it’s not so great for TV and PPV.
– The Public Enemy is supposed to debut at the Clash of Champions on 1/23 in Vegas against the Nasty Boys, but there’s a legal holdup over whether they can in fact legally call them Public Enemy. So if you’ll recall from our last issue, WCW made a deal with Def Jam Records for the rights to the name, but now Paul Heyman is claiming that HE made a deal with Def Jam first and he has all the merchandising rights from that deal. However, he does admit that he gave them the rights to “Flyboy Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge” so they can have those.
– Rey Mysterio Jr. did a small show in Compton on 12/22 against Damian and Psicosis and ended up destroying his ankle while doing a rana onto the floor, to the point where his ankles were hurting so badly that he wasn’t able to drive home due to pain from pressing on the gas pedal being too much to take. He likely won’t miss any shows.
– Also on that show, a fan on the balcony was throwing stuff at Psicosis, so he went up there and punched the guy out. Police were called and tried to arrest him, but he simply unmasked and everyone pretended that he had already left the building.
– Steve Austin, Dr. Tom and Public Enemy are all finishing up with ECW this week, although only TPE will be on the 1/5 Arena show, doing their last ECW match.
– Rey Mysterio is going to working that show, teaming with 911 against the Eliminators. Dave thinks this is a huge mistake because it’ll expose Rey as being the size of a small child next to all of them and no one will ever take him seriously. Evidence cited was something that happened with Tiger Mask in New Japan a decade earlier
– The Bruise Brothers might be coming into ECW, but Ron Harris wants to go into police work full-time and is taking his exam at the end of February.
– And finally, highlights from Vince McMahon’s internet chat:
- He hasn’t spoken to Paul Heyman in years and doesn’t watch ECW.
- Public Enemy went to WCW because Ted Turner is throwing his money around to keep people from going to the WWF.
– Mikey Whipwreck beat Scorpio in a singles match to win both the tag team titles and the TV title, and picked Cactus Jack to be his partner. Jack is scheduled to start with the WWF soon, but until then he’s doing a gimmick where he tries to bring Mikey into Raven’s team, but Raven doesn’t want him.
– Also, the crowd chanted “Please don’t go” at the Public Enemy after they lost to the Gangstas in their final match in that building with the promotion, but then Johnny Grunge made the “money money” gesture with his fingers to indicate why they were leaving. And then the fans immediately turned on them and chanted “You sold out”.
– Also, for the guy who asked about it earlier, the main event of the show was Sabu v. Cactus Jack. Jack wanted an “NCAA rules match” with points for takedowns, but 911 came out and chokeslammed the ref, taking over duties himself and ruining the match in the process because he couldn’t get down fast enough to make counts. It also upset the fanbase because it was advertised as a death match but ended in a pinfall.
– Apparently Paul Heyman is talking about bringing in Rob Van Dam to work with Sabu. Shane Douglas is also coming back right away, although WCW actually tried to sign him, which Dave finds mind-boggling.
– Apparently the legal stuff with Public Enemy is worked out and they’ll be Public Enemy.
– John Rickner, who did one WWF TV taping as Xanta Claus, has been fired already because the gimmick just wasn’t working. Dave feels like maybe someone should have thought about that before introducing a Christmas gimmick. (Xanta Claus would become Balls Mahoney in ECW in 97)
January 15th, 1996 – Meanwhile, Public Enemy finished up with ECW at “House Party 96” on 1/5 at the ECW Arena, ending with a typical bloody brawl against the Gangstas.
– In order to distract fans from PE’s departure, Paul Heyman debuted a big angle where Beulah announced she was pregnant and Tommy Dreamer was the father!
– Also on the show, Rob Van Dam debuted and Shane Douglas returned. Apparently Douglas’s new gimmick is that he’s going to teach Buh Buh Ray Dudley to speak English.
– The ECW show opened with a risky move, putting Rey Mysterio in a tag team with 911 against the Eliminators, but it paid off with a **** opener. The Eliminators also debuted a new finisher, the old Midnight Express “high low” move that was called the Double Goozle.
– The crowd was very mean to Konnan in his ECW title match with Sandman, chanting “US Chump” and singing about how he performs various sexual acts on Eric Bischoff.
– Public Enemy was supposed to debut on the 1/8 WCW Nitro but Rocco Rock was snowed in, so they had Johnny Grunge team with Bobby Eaton in a dark match with the Nasty Boys and it was…not good.
– Cactus Jack started doing promos over the weekend, but he’s not in the Rumble and might not be in until after Wrestlemania.
– Sabu was also supposed to work the Rumble and do a wacky spot where he’d throw a guy over the top but then do a plancha because he doesn’t understand the rules, but Heyman vetoed the move because he wants to do a PPV in the next couple of months with Sabu v. Taz on top.
– There was talk of debuting Steve Austin with a name a little less silly than “Ringmaster”, but that’s what they went with on RAW in the end.
– Al Snow might get a new gimmick at the next set of tapings.
January 23rd, 1996 – Hey, remember how Sabu was supposed to be in the Royal Rumble and then wasn’t? Well it got stranger this week. So a deal had apparently been brokered through JJ Dillon and Paul Heyman, with JJ offering Sabu the standard $5000 that outsiders get, plus he would be able to bring his own table and break it. So then the deal kind of died and Heyman did a skit at the next ECW show where he exposed the deal, just in case Sabu changed his mind and did the show after all. That way Heyman could portray him as a traitor and justify getting rid of him. So then Dennis Coraluzzo got into Sabu’s ear and told him he should do the show anyway if Heyman was going to treat him like that, and apparently Sabu thought this would be a good person to listen to and agreed to do it. But instead of calling them back himself, Sabu got the Sheik to negotiate on his behalf (with Sheik securing himself another $3000 as a part of the deal) and the WWF announced on their hotline that Sabu was going to be in the match. In exchange, Bruce Prichard offered a bunch of WWF guys to ECW for a future show, but Heyman declined because he still wants to do the PPV and doesn’t want to be viewed as a feeder system for the bigger promotion.
– Paul Heyman is apparently planning to sue WCW over a Terry Taylor hotline report about the ECW champion being a drug addict.
– Public Enemy finally debuted on Nitro, and beat the American Males in a horrendous match where everything was mistimed.
January 29th, 1996 – Meanwhile, Woman is also now a regular character on the show, although she was trying to retain her job with ECW at the same time. The deal was going to be Kevin Sullivan sending Public Enemy back to ECW for shows in exchange for Woman being able to do the WCW gig, but that appears to have fallen through. Of course, Sullivan had been swearing up and down for weeks that there was no plans to bring Woman into WCW in the first place, even though plans had been in place for months to have her as a part of the Hogan-Savage stuff. WCW themselves even admitted it was true. (To be fair, it’s not like anyone in WCW knew what anyone else in WCW was doing at any given moment anyway) But as of last writing, Paul Heyman was going to write her out of ECW on the 1/27 show and she’ll start full-time with WCW instead on the 1/29 Nitro, and both she and Elizabeth will be regular characters moving forward.
– To ECW, where Paul Heyman has promised Sabu that he’ll deliver the ECW PPV show by 6/12.
– Terry Taylor issued an apology for calling the ECW World champion a drug addict, and said he was referring to the character and not the person.
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