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• Next weekend we’ve got the NWA Great American Bash in Baltimore, which ought to be the biggest money-making non-WWF show in history in this country. They’re building things up great, and Dave can’t see it being less than a major success. Fans seem absolutely certain this is the end of Ric Flair’s title reign, which is exactly the right thing you want to be promoting with this show. Based on the tv ads, it looks like only four matches are going to air on ppv: Flair vs. Luger, Arn & Tully vs. Sting & Nikita, Midnights vs. Fantastics, and the tower of doom. No word on tv about who will be in the tower of doom, which Dave thinks devalues the fact that the Road Warriors are in the match. So Baltimore is going to make a lot of money, but it remains to be seen whether that will help, hurt, or have any effect at all on the rest of the Bash tour.
  
• Here’s the deal with what Score/FNN’s wrestling line-up looks like for July. Memphis moves to Sundays and Continental to Saturdays, but Continental is pre-empted this weekend and for the weekends of the 17th, 24th, and 31st. There’s talk of putting them on mid-week during that period, but no definitive word yet. July 3 for Memphis has Lawler vs. Kerry Von Erich in a title for title match. And on July 21 they’re going to have a two hour Jerry Lawler special showing his wins over Rick Rude, Bam Bam Bigelow, Kimala, Randy Savage, and Hulk Hogan.
  
• World Class is taking a risk by running four shows in the Metroplex in an eight day period to combat the July 4 Great American Bash. They’ve got the Sportatorium on July 1, July 4, and July 8, and a Fort Worth Show on July 3. The cards aren’t being pushed too hard (the July 3 lineup won’t even be announced until the July 2 tv show), but Kimala will challenge for the World Class title and Kevin Von Erich challenges Terry Taylor for the Texas title in his last match for the company. They’re also going super cheap for entry fee: $5 tickets for everyone and 50 cents for all concessions, discounts on merch, and two hours of autograph signings before the show starts. That’s an effective way to hurt your competition, but Dave thinks in the long term they might be better off letting Crockett run unopposed because this might just kill the town for them. The July 1 show will be headlined by the Von Erichs defending the tag titles against King Parsons and Terry Taylor.
  
• Just a funny moment from WCCW’s June 19 show, involving the Terry Gordy vs. Kerry Von Erich title match. They went to a time limit draw, but first had a double disqualification when Parsons and Scandor akbar came down to attack both of them until Kevin Von Erich and Michael Hayes came to make the save. This was about 18 minutes into the match (both Kerry and Gordy were bleeding by 10 minutes in, despite next to nothing happening in those ten minutes). After the ring was cleared out, Kerry took the mic and said they’d wrestle the last 15 minutes to finish out the time limit (so 18 + 15 = 60 in Von Erich math). The next 15 minutes had Gordy with the spike on Kerry for 7 straight minutes, then Kerry with the claw on Gordy for 7 straight minutes, and then a bunch of near falls for one minute.
  
• Dave got to watch the tv shows from All Japan’s last tour. Rip Rogers was a jobber, but he got over like Rover with the gay gimmick. He might actually be the first wrestler in Japan to do that act, and little flourishes like hiding a mirror in his trunks and always combing his hair helped him. He also did great work in the ring, so showmanship and ringwork go great together.
  
• Dave says the match where Tenryu and Hara dropped the PWF tag titles to Tsuruta and Yatsu on June 4 was good, but no match of the year candidate to him. As for the June 10 unification match with the Road Warriors, Dave gives it 3.5 stars and says Hawk impressed him a lot. There was a point where he was on the top rope but slipped and fell and the crowd started laughing, but Hawk immediately just started pounding on Yatsu outside the ring and was so vicious it shut the fans up good. Recovering from missing a move like that can be really hard and Dave’s seen a lot of wrestlers get psyched out from it and the crowd’s reaction, so major credit to Hawk.
  
• Inoki’s comeback to New Japan will be on August 8 for the big prime time special on TV-Asahi. He still wants Hogan or Backlund for his opponent, but that’s super unlikely and Dave thinks he’ll wind up going against the IWGP champion.
  
• Dave’s not sure, but he’s heard the August 8 New Japan show might not wind up in Sumo Hall but rather in Yokohama, about an hour out of Tokyo. Apparently Sumo Hall got upset about their decision to re-allow pro wrestling leaking out. Tokyo Sports broke the news before the deal was completed. So they’re canceling the plan, and that means New Japan is losing out on several hundred thousand dollars of potential profit by having to go to Yokohama rather than Sumo Hall.
  
• New Japan put the Fujinami/Vader match from May 8 on their May 27 tv show. Dave watched it, and gives it 4 stars and says that Fujinami worked a miracle. Vader’s improved tremendously, but this was still a great effort by both guys. They also showed part of the match where Owen Hart won the jr. title from Hiroshi Hase and what they showed was super. Dave talks about some of the really cool moves Owen does, but there’s a tear in the paper that this was scanned from, so I have no idea what he’s trying to describe. Suffice it to say, Owen Hart innovated the move that Heath Slater used to beat Curt Hawkins at Great Balls of Fire.
  
• UWF announced their August 13 card. Maeda will fight a karate champion, name to be announced, though they are saying he’s Dutch. Caser Takeshi, the most famous martial arts champion in Japan, will face a former Thai muay thai champion named Paryhap Premchai. Nobuhiko Takada will wrestle Kazuo Yamazaki, with the winner facing Maeda in September. Also on the card will be Norman Smiley vs. Yoji Anjo and Shigeo Miyato vs. Tetsu Nakano, and two more martial arts matches.
  
• Gong Magazine published a letter from Steve Williams in their June 30 issue. It’s one part call-out for a potential match with Maeda, one part establishing character motivation, and one part Jim Ross wet dream. Williams has the same kind of appeal as Maeda, so there’s no doubt they’d go over like gangbusters with UWF’s target audience. The letter reads:
  

Dear all my Japanese fans: I am looking forward to go to Japan again. However, I have a very important thing to do right now and that is to prove myself against the best World champion nowadays--Ric Flair. I think he is good enough to spend my time on. Also, I promise to all of you that I’ll go to Japan as soon as possible. I want to wrestle Choshu, Fujinami and Inoki again. However, I heard that Maeda left New Japan. I wonder why he never came after me like he did to Choshu. I think it’s because he’s a smart man. I enjoy teasing him in the ring all the time. Please tell Maeda about it. I am ready anytime, and I think most smart fans know that I am tougher. But let me show all the people.

• Southern Championship Wrestling has a new champion: Chris Adams.
  
• Dave has a lot of not kind things to say about Tommy Rich. He’s 32 but he looks 42, he’s out of shape, his promos are gibberish, and he’s just not cut out to be a babyface. Tell us how you really feel, Dave.
  
• Over in USA Wrestling, Hector Guerrero and Ricky Morton are feuding after Guerrero threw hot sauce in Morton’s face. I’m getting flash forwards to Jericho and Kane.
  
• [Stampede] Chris Benoit regained the Commonwealth Mid-Heavyweight Title on June 17, beating Johnny Smith under strange circumstances. According to two reports Dave got, this wasn’t supposed to happen and if you don’t watch Stampede, it’s a bit involved to explain. And as we all know, everyone reading these rewinds is super up to speed on everything about Stampede. Okay, so Dave explains that they have two regular refs. Jurgen Hermann isn’t really a heel ref, but more of a bumbling ref. The other ref is usually a Hart brother, Wayne or, more recently, Dean, whose deal isn’t that he’s a face ref, but the competent one. So on June 17, Jurgen was supposed to referee the match, but Dean wound up doing it because Jurgen was unable to be there for reasons unrelated to the business. So the finish involved a foreign object spot where Smith’s manager threw it in, but Benoit got to it and used it, while the referee was apparently supposed to figure it out and reverse the decision but that part didn’t happen. So… uh, more on that in the future maybe?
  
• The big thing in Memphis this weekend was Jeff Jarrett’s return from a “broken arm.” He came out in a sling and did an interview where Robert Fuller and the Stud Stable came out to attack him. Jerry Jarrett came out and ordered the heels away because of Jeff’s injury, so they attacked Jerry and Jeff had to make the save using his cast. Later on Jerry did an interview and talked about how he knew Robert’s father and that for him to have turned out how he has makes him a “bastard child” and he wonders “who the milkman was.” I wanted to make a joke about most of this subreddit being too young to know what a milkman was, but fuck it, I honestly couldn’t come up with anything good but I’ll at least tell you I tried because there’s no sense crying over spilled milk.
  
• Lawler, as AWA champ, will be doing some matches in Continental this week against Austin Idol and Eddie Gilbert. Dave gives Lawler credit for raising the prestige of the AWA title by defending it around the remaining territories as much as he has.
  
• Continental has also really started turning around of late. Dave watched the show they put on tv on June 19 and is amazed that they managed to get both Willie B. Hert and Lord Humongous over as faces. This Lord Humongous is our beloved Sid, and he’s pretty green, but you can certainly expect him in WWF in the future. Dave hopes he gets at least two more years under his belt first so he can learn something, but he’s already better than Warrior.
  
• Billy Jack Haynes’ OWF is looking to be in rough shape. Haynes dropped the belt to Rip Oliver on June 4, but he lost it a week later to Blackstudd Williams, and though it’s unconfirmed to Dave, the office’s telephone hotline says Williams dropped it to Haynes three days later. Hotshotting the title, a bunch of guys quitting, shows getting canceled, crowds under 400. It’s not a good spot to be in.
  
• Chris Adams managed to hold onto a wrestling ring long enough to run a set of shows over the past week. He had shows in Royce City and Amarillo, Texas and at Dogpatch, USA (which Dave believes is an amusement park in Arkansas). At the Royce City show the big news was Bruiser Brody beat Jeep Swenson in a wild brawl that saw Brody bust up Swenson’s nose and jaw with some stiff kicks to the face.
  

• The Great American Bash tour has begun, and the early shows have drawn well and that’s as expected. With all the gimmick matches and something like 11 War Games set for the tour, they’ll be drawing well, but not so well that we see multiple shows with gates in excess of $250,000 as we have in the past.
  
• Dave’s not clear on the details, but new developments have emerged in the Turner buyout of the NWA. It looks like the JCP stockholders aren’t all in agreement about selling the company. Jim Crockett wants to sell, David Crockett doesn’t, and Ole Anderson is trying to become a key player and sway wrestlers into leaving to start their own company or maybe partner with Turner themselves, which feels like a bit of a long shot. Anyway, Dave promises updates as he gets them.
  
• Some discontent among the NWA roster as they’ve learned that the payoffs for the Bash ppv won’t be arriving for several months. The date they’ve been told is October 1.
  
• [Memphis] The Lawler vs. Von Erich title for title match on June 27 drew 4,000 fans. The match had interference, and after they ran off the heels, Von Erich requested to continue the match and it ended in a double count out.
  
• Jimmy Valiant is back in Memphis for a bit and seems to have finally left the NWA. It seems the only reason he was in the NWA as long as he was was because he was waiting for that big payday that they’d intended to have happen in May and which will now be in October once the company gets the money from the Bash ppv. Just tired of waiting.
  
• [Stampede] Joshi wrestlers Mika Komatsu and Yumi Ogura are coming in for a three week tour. Unfortunately, they won’t be on tv because their dates coincide with the time frame in which Stampede isn’t doing new tv tapings.
  
• Last week there was that weird finish with the Stampede North American Title match between Chris Benoit and Johnny Smith, and it has finally been clarified. They’ve announced that rather than a reversal of the decision, the belt has been held up, and the two had a match under English rules on June 24 (five minute rounds to a finish), with Smith superplexing Benoit to regain the title. On the same show they did some kind of tournament for the tv title, but rather than having advancing rounds of the tournament, they had a panel of judges award to the winners of the matches, and Steve Blackman got the most points and was awarded the title.
  
• Jerry Lawler still has conflicting bookings for July 16. AWA has him facing Curt Hennig in Las Vegas, while WCCW has him facing Kerry Von Erich in Kansas City with both titles on the line. It’s unclear which he’ll do.
  
• Billy Jack Haynes’ OWF appears to be on the verge of death. Several wrestlers have left and a bunch of shows have been canceled. At some point before the June 24 show, Haynes dropped the title to Kevin Kelly, meaning they’ve had the title hot potato between guys five times in the past month. A young Vince Russo is surely eyeing this promotion closely and taking notes on how to book title changes.
  
• The June 24 issue of Tokyo Sports reported a rumor that Inoki is selling New Japan to Ted Turner to be part of a new international NWA. Dave doesn’t give credence to the story, but he does think it would make a lot of sense for one party to own promotions in both the U.S. and Japan because it would facilitate talent flow very easily to keep things from getting stale. Dave thinks this is just Inoki trying to start some rumors to get attention back on himself. There’s still talk of him wrestling Hogan on August 8, but yet again Dave just doesn’t think this is going to happen (it’s not going to happen).
  
• Speaking of New Japan, Tatsumi Fujinami is getting the rocket strapped to his ass. He pinned Riki Choshu to regain the IWGP title on June 24 and handed Vader his first pinfall loss in Japan in his first title defense two days later. They’re scheduled for another rematch on the next tour, so Dave thinks they might put the belt on Vader since he’s lost to Fujinami three times in a row now, and Vader will drop the belt to Inoki on August 8. Not quite, but we’ll get there. Also on the June 24 show, Owen Hart dropped the jr. title to Shiro Koshinaka.
  
• The June 19 New Japan tv show had a very interesting match. Choshu beat Yoshiaki Fujiwara in a 12-minute match in front of a crowd that was decidedly pro-Fujiwara. It’s highly likely Fujiwara will be joining UWF when his contract expires in April, so no surprise in Choshu winning. What was interesting is that Fujiwara made Choshu work a more mat-based style, which Choshu is really quite good at when you can get him to actually do it. Anyway, the fans seem to have out smart-marked themselves, because as Dave puts it “when Choshu gained the pinfall with the lariat, the place went totally silent because the fans who were there ‘believed’ that Choshu couldn’t legitimately beat Fujiwara and thus the pinfall was for the political reasons we spoke of earlier and the good match became a sham in their eyes.”
  
• In All Japan Women, Bull Nakano earned a title shot against Chigusa Nagayo for the world title on June 26. She won it in a tournament, and the match took place on July 2, though Dave hasn’t got a result yet.
  
• In JWP, they’re going full hype train for Shinobu Kandori vs. Devil Masami, and this report gets kind of weird. Masami is coming out of retirement and has gained some weight, and Dave compares her thighs to those of Doug Furnas, saying she now has the biggest thighs he’s ever seen in wrestling. Really, Dave?
  
• Hulk Hogan will be returning to his WWF tour schedule after he wraps taping for No Holds Barred on July 30. He’s only going to be doing the A-show house shows and tv, so Dave thinks the smart move is not to put the title on him any time soon, especially if he still draws well without the belt. Next Wrestlemania is the earliest Dave would consider putting the belt back on him. Looks like his first major feud is going to be with the Big Bossman.
  
• Dave got a chance to watch the DiBiase vs. Savage cage match from the last Madison Square Garden show and gives it 4.5 stars. He says it’s the best match in the garden in years (the last one of that quality he can remember is Slaughter vs. Sheik in a boot camp match in the summer of 1984). Dave’s not generally a fan of WWF cage matches and thinks they spent too much time trying to escape, but says you can’t deny they went all out. DiBiase and Savage have been tearing it up so much it’s got some people wondering if WWF is going back to a more traditional style, but Dave notes that it only looks that way if you only watch the main events of the MSG shows. The undercard is awful, and the other big matches like Andre/Duggan and Beefcake/Honkytonk aren’t good at all. So no, they’re not putting a renewed emphasis on match quality or workrate.
  

• Other notes from the PPV: Benoit vs. Angle was the clear highlight, the best technical match in WWE in ages. Then there's Triple H/RVD, and Dave says a lot of people in the company are accusing Triple H of working the match in a way to purposely expose RVD's weaknesses. Triple H has apparently spoken out against RVD in creative meetings recently some felt this was Triple H's way of putting the brakes on that push. The way the match ended sets RVD up for a feud with Ric Flair now, meaning no rematch with Triple H, and that leaves Kane as the only halfway credible challenger for his title. Lance Storm took a scary bump off the top rope during the opening match and was shaken up for a moment but ended up being fine. Dave jokes that Ric Flair came out to Bob Sapp's entrance music (Sapp has been copying Flair's entrance for his MMA fights in Japan. Aren't jokes better when they're explained?!). The announcers spent half the match talking about how Flair isn't the wrestler he once was and how you can't beat father time. How does saying that help anyone? Some idiot in the crowd had a sign that said "Guerrero moed my lawn" and Dave mocks them for misspelling it. Dave gives Benoit/Angle 4.5 stars and calls it a MOTY candidate. The Stephanie/HLA segment took place ending with lesbian Rikishi giving Bischoff a stinkface. LesnaTaker was a good match until the finish killed the whole damn PPV.
  
• WWE confirmed what's been known for months, officially announcing Seattle's Safeco Field as the home for Wrestlemania 19. They had a big press conference with all the top stars except Rock and Hogan, and they all cut short promos and teased potential matches and angles. They also had a press conference and the only notable things were Vince being asked about the downturn in business, which is said was temporary and wrestling is cyclical and how things will be hotter than ever when Wrestlemania comes.
  
• Mitsuharu Misawa became the first ever 2-time GHC heavyweight champion, winning NOAH's top title in what was said to be one of the best matches of the year. His opponent, Yoshihiro Takayama, suffered serious injuries from the bout and word is he'll likely be out of action the rest of the year. The show, which only had 2 weeks of promotion, sold out Budokan Hall and out-drew AJPW's recent shows in the same building that featured Goldberg. Takayama (who is kinda like a Japanese Mick Foley and has built a career on being able to take ungodly punishment) suffered a broken nose, dislocated AC joint, torn ligaments in his shoulder, broken right eye socket, and more. Takayama was basically trying to re-create his brutal MMA fight with Don Frye and so he told Misawa to beat the shit out of him and, well....he did. Harley Race was there and congratulated Misawa after the victory in the ring. Anyway, on this same show, Kenta Kobashi wrestled his first singles match in almost 2 years, and looked great. There's word he may be back in the title picture soon, which no one ever expected to happen again after all the knee surgeries.
  

• Just as the Bob Sapp thing was helping NJPW build momentum for the Tokyo Dome show, Kensuke Sasaki had to go and ruin it all by announcing he's leaving the company. Sasaki has spent his entire 16+ year career in NJPW and has been a major star for much of the last decade, a 3-time IWGP champion, and was one of the top four stars that carried NJPW throughout the record-setting business in the 90s, even though he never quite reached the success or ability as Muto, Chono, and Hashimoto. Publicly, Sasaki has said he is upset over the way NJPW handled the planned Pancrase match he was booked for against Minoru Suzuki, claiming that NJPW pulled him from the match against his wishes and replaced him with Jushin Liger. He put in his notice with the company and an attempt to talk him out of leaving failed, so NJPW has pulled him off all advertised shows.
  
• After a trial that lasted more than 2 weeks, a jury took only 4 hours to rule in favor of WWE and concluding that Nicole Bass did not suffer any sexual harassment. The jury gave statements afterward saying they felt Bass was lying about her claims that Steve Lombardi (Brooklyn Brawler) had groped her and rubbed himself against her on a flight in 1999. Despite it being a crowded flight, Bass was unable to come up with any witness to corroborate the story. Vince and Linda McMahon, Jim Ross, Triple H, and Rena Mero (Sable) and others all testified. WWE attempted to introduce evidence showing Bass doing softcore porn bondage wrestling videos and video of her multiple appearances on Howard Stern's show, but the judge blocked that. Sable and Alicia Webb (Ryan Shamrock) testified on behalf of Bass, in particular about claims that wrestlers would frequently go into the women's dressing rooms uninvited. In particular, Webb testified that Triple H once came in while she was using the bathroom. In his testimony, Triple H claimed he couldn't recall such an incident. Bass claimed that Triple H was a frequent intruder into the women's locker room. Triple H denied purposely intruding but did admit to being in there at times due to his relationship with Chyna but he was always invited and always knocked and made sure everyone was clothed before he entered. Everyone on the WWE side noted that Bass was a terrible wrestler, which is why they say she was fired, with Jim Ross testifying that she couldn't even take a simple back bump properly. Ivory testified and admitted she had shot down a lesbian storyline between her and Bass, saying, "I told them I don't have anything against lesbians, but I don't want to be a lesbian on TV, especially if Nicole is going to be my girlfriend." Anyway, that's pretty much it. Jury didn't believe her and ruled unanimously against Bass. Also, one final unrelated note, Triple H testified that his downside guarantee on his current WWE contract is $400,000 in case you were curious.
  
• Lots of issues with Chyna and NJPW. The promotion has to push her prominently because she's Inoki's pet project and he owns majority interest in the company. But no one likes working with her in the ring and she's rubbing people the wrong way by pitching ideas and giving advice on how they should be doing things and giving off the vibe that she thinks she knows more about wrestling than the Japanese do because she was a big star during WWF's peak. But they're all stuck with her because Inoki.
  
• Brian Adams, formerly known as Crush, will make his professional boxing debut on an undercard match at an upcoming event in Las Vegas. Randy Savage will be in his corner. He's 36, which is too late for him to ever make any kind of serious attempt at being a boxer, and they're mostly selling this on the hype that Savage will be in his corner more than anything (Adams ends up getting injured in training and never actually has a pro boxing match).
  
• Ring of Honor and XPW held competing shows in Philadelphia on 10/5, less than a mile apart from each other. Each group drew around 400-450 fans. During the week before, XPW began offering more money to advertised ROH stars to come work the XPW show instead. Some guys earning $100 for the ROH show were offered $500 to do XPW. Homicide's tag team partner Boogalou was the only one who accepted the offer and worked the XPW show under a mask (hope it was worth it, ROH never used him again). As the ROH show was going on, XPW called up Steve Corino (who was working the ROH show) and offered him $1000 to leave and come to the XPW show right then and do a run-in. He declined. This has resulted in former rivals ROH and CZW beginning to work together, out of a mutual desire to get rid of XPW. In another note from the ROH show, Insane Clown Posse showed up the day of the show and asked if they could work a match and they did. Crowd didn't like it at all and chanted, "Don't come back!" at them when it was over.