Wrestling Observer Live 2-9
by Frank Healy
Wrestling Observer Live with guest Tony Jones
WOL Recap 2/9
Hosts: Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez
by Frank Healy
Dave starts off the show and says independent wrestler Tony Jones will be up in a half hour but first Bryan and Dave will talk about today’s news. Dave says the WOW PPV had so many complaints and thus there were lack of replays of the pay per view but it was cancelled by DirecTV. They say WCW has had
totally unwatchable shows over the years. Dave moves on to reviewing this weeks Smackdown. Dave says EMLL was way better than Smackdown from a technical standpoint. Dave says he has no interest in this weeks XFL game with Ventura and Ross because it’s going to be a scripted shoot. Bryan won’t be watching
anyway. Dave says Smackdown was the best American show in weeks and did the same rating as last week even though last week's show had a lot more hype. Bryan says that Rock/Big Show was better than he expected. Dave says Big Show worked as hard as he could. He says he wasn’t lazy at all. Bryan says he was flabby last night. They talk a little about the XFL and how non
football fans would be sick of the hype of the XFL on WWF television now. Bryan says he fast forwards through both shows as he tapes them anyway. EMLL debuts March 30th on PPV in USA.
Dave and Bryan dicuss some Ross Report news bits. Michaels, Rhino and Al Snow have all signed multi year contracts but there is no start date for Rhino while Shawn Michaels could even turn up on Monday. Dave mentions that Chyna got to #3 in the New York Times Best Sellers list. Bryan says he loves the line where Dave said that Ross didn’t mention whether it was in the
Fiction or Non Fiction category. Ross praised a lot of people and said should work harder on the Light Heavyweight division. Dave says that Ross got moved to A commentator and he says it doesn’t matter that Ross only does a contrived sport that is wrestling. Dave talks some more about the XFL and how in a short period of time Vince will have a lot of detractors from the
sports media because of the XFL. Aysa the WCW version of Chyna says that when she went to WCW she didn’t know who Chyna was, says Dave. Dave and Bryan say that everyone else in WCW did. She says Chyna like her got hired for her amazon status.
Dave goes through some up and coming guests, Wednesday will have Honky Tonk Man, Thursday Rick Bassman, Friday Jim Herd and they will talk about the sale of WCW. Also look out for Cody Monk, Bad News Allen and Bobby Heenan coming soon. Dave says he doesn’t think any women like Jackie paved the way for Chyna to become what she has in the business. Bryan says he is still trying to find out what Chyna said about her in her book. Dave says they both must have read it pretty fast. Email asks for Abdullah the Butcher to be a guest on WOL. Dave says Abdullah may be a boring guest as he was on RF. They talk about Stu Hart and Strangler Lewis. Bryan says he doesn’t think Stu could
have held his own in a match. He says your grandma could have held a guy in those positions that Stu did in the Dungeon. Dave thinks Strangler who has had 6-10 shoots his whole life and Stu probably never wrestled each other much and definitely not in a shoot situation anyway.
Tony Jones joins the show. They discuss a little bit of what Dave and Bryan were talking about and Tony talks about how Kurt Angle was the guy who was the man to beat in college wrestling when he was active. Tony says being out of action even for a short while makes a big difference. Dave mentions that Tony has
been in APW, UPW, Urban Wrestling and his background in San Francisco State. It has been 4 years since Tony started with Roland Alexander in All Pro Wrestling (featured on Beyond the Mat). Dave asks about Urban Wrestling but Tony says it’s up in the air. Tony says a lot of the guys have not had any interaction with the company since October. Tony says he can’t even speculate on what is happening. Tony says he listens to the show on Eyada while working on his own website (www.shootertonyjones.com.com) and gets all the news from Dave. Dave says Mike Modest thinks that a deal is close to being announced but doesn’t know exactly when. Tony said he heard that too. Dave asks what was it like working for UPW and doing the North California versus South California angle with APW and UPW. Tony says it was unbelievable. He says that when Roland when through the curtain the place went crazy because Roland Alexander was the fat promoter from Beyond the Mat. They said they cut a promo where Roland talked about how great APW was
and how they were taking over UPW too. Tony says that there was a woman in the front row screaming, so he went down to her, when he went back in the ring, she threw a piece of ice at him, when he turned back and looked at her she threw another. Modest said to Jones that the place was going crazy and then he got hit.
Dave asks Tony about Beyond the Mat which Tony was featured in. Dave asks Tony what was his feeling was with the finished product. Tony says when he watched it he was happy with it. He says Barry Blaustein portrayed as best he could. Tony tells of when Barry wanted to film every aspect of his room. Tony says that maybe something was missing from the movie. He says that it
wasn’t a well rounded wrestling documentary. He says they weren’t too many behind the scenes aspects touched apon. He says it’s a lot of hard work and you have to watch what you eat etc. Dave says the sales of Chyna’s contrived book will blow away all the good writers because of the hype machine of Vince McMahon. Tony says Vince is a genious. Dave says they went from her
being a beast animal to sex symbol. Tony says it’s all about people you know too. Tony talks a little about the scene in Beyond the Mat featuring his WWF try out. He says Jim Cornette gave them a prep talk off camera. He says after the match Jim Ross gave him some pointers to beef up a little and make
some changes. Dave asks Tony did he feel pressured to take steriods because a lot of people took it that way seeing what JR said. Tony says there is always that kind of pressure even when he was in college. But he didn’t really feel that with Jim Ross.
Dave gives his address and Bryan’ address for their respective newsletters. Dave mentions this weeks WCW Nitro. There will be more qualifying matches on Nitro. Dave goes over how they got the figure (54 million) for the XFL. Bryan says that maybe they counted the relatives of all the people who watched. Dave asks about Tonys time in Japan with Battle Arts. He says the matches were stiff – the slaps, chops etc were brutal but you still have to do the job. Tony talks about where he was caught by a guy there and choked out, that was after about an hour of wrestling against a number of different guys. Tony says Battle Arts wanted him to go back, but couldn’t because he was under contract to Urban and they wouldn’t give him clearance to go. Tony says Terry Taylor has helped him a lot. He says Terry got him into Dojo. Tony says when Terry left WWF, he had to phone up Bruce Prichard and then he trained with Tom Prichard. He then got in contact with Terry again when he was in WCW and Terry got him to wrestle in front of Flair, Terry, Kevin Sullivan and Mike Graham. But he says he was surprised because they had him
wrestle in front of no crowd. Dave says WCW does that sometimes. Terry told him he looked really good. He says that the Power Plant was brutal, and if he hadn’t had proper wrestling experience it would be near impossible. On the second and thrid day of the Plant they did a lot of sparring. Bryan asks was there anyone else there. Tony says there was a guy Adam Pearce and Roche (sp?) Brown who was a black guy 6’3 who had a developmental deal with WWF. He says that one guy twisted his angle. Tony says it was very brutal but he didn’t think it was done on purpose. Dave says that Rock is reportedly part of the XFL broadcasting team this weekend. Jim via email asks Tony if Roland would get a cut of his contract if he signed with WCW or WWF. Tony says that if Roland got the gig for him and he then ended up with them Roland would get a cut of his contract. But
if Tony was to do all the leg work, all the paper work, Roland legally wouldn’t be entitled to anything. But Tony says that one would probably feel guilty if he thought that promoter helped his career out so much and didn’t give him anything. Dave asks how would he compare the training methods of the organizations he has wrestled in. Tony says in APW he was thought to wrestle old style, where you would work 20-25 minutes. He says in UPW you are trained to go for a 6-8 minute WWF or WCW match. He says WCW trains you straight to television like UPW. Tony says WCW and WWF encourage you to stomp the foot when you go for a punch. Tony thinks there are different ways of doing things and organizations have their own methods.
Chris from NY is on the phone and he asks Tony how did he feel when Vince thought he made a mistake when Tony was going for a fisherman buster as shown on Beyond the Mat. Tony says Roland got an email from a guy who had seen a trailer for Beyond the Mat and it said that Vince thought that he messed up a spot. When Roland told Tony he said no way he couldn’t have thought that. Tony says though that Vince McMahon is the man as regards
wrestling. He says he felt bad but can’t say anything. Chris asks about when in the video they cut back and forth to Tony and Roland where Roland said he is the best promoter regarding payments and Tony said there was no excuse for not paying someone. Tony says Roland and him have a kinda brother
rivalary going on. They may shout at each other but they still care about each other. Tony talks about the money he used to get in his first year. Tony says he wasn’t concerned with the money but the exposure. Tony says he may have been labelled as a guy who paid only $25 to every guy. Dave says it came off badly because Roland was bragging about being a great pay off guy.
Chris asks has Tony suffered any racism since coming in to the sport. Tony says the worst he has experienced was when he was an amateur and when he went to Oregon to wrestle University of Oregon. He said some guy screamed out in the crowd a racial comment. The rest of the crowd laughed like it was acceptable. His coach and his team mates just shook their heads. Caller
Chris mentions D’lo Brown and how articilate he is and how strange it sounds when he says that he is tried to be a hip hop type character on WWF television.
Email from Kevin talks about the new owners of WCW. He asks about the WCW turn around and if there will be resources there for them. Dave says when the WWF was doing the Body Building thing (with Lex Luger etc) they weren’t doing too well. Dave says Vince was very much into the body building. Dave says a lot of Vince's focus has gone into making the XFL look good and has
taken away from the WWF, Dave says it’s impossible not to. Dave says the sports media doesn’t understand wrestling, or sports entertainment. Email asks which hurts the wrestlers more the Steroids of the 80’s or video games/extreme spots of the 90’s. Bryan and Tony agree that it’s the 90’s. Bryan says through the 90’s not only are the wrestlers destroying their bodies, but their heads with the chair shots too. Tony says Dynamite Kid was
ahead of his time but it is the norm today. Dave thinks the wrestlers won’t last as long nowadays.
Tony says you have to do a crazy finish to a spot to get a pop. He says the fans are too smart now. Tony says a sparring partner in college, when he lifted he up he put his angle sideways and when he brought he down he snapped his sparring partners ankle. Tony says that was the sickest thing he has seen to this day until the Sid Vicious thing. We are out of time and Dave says he will be back on Monday.