The Wrestling Professor sent this in:
Hello and welcome to the Armpit wrestling quiz for the week of September 15, 2010. Every 9/11 that goes by is another painful reminder of one of the most tragic days in our country’s history.
Hard to believe it happened 9 years ago. 2001 was overall a pretty bad year for just about everything, including the complete collapse of the pro wrestling business following WrestleMania 17. Very bad memories for a lot of us, and this week we will take a look at the pro wrestling business in 2001. And I warn you, it’s not pretty.
Here are the answers from 2 weeks ago:
-The Raw angle was Floyd Mayweather punching out the Big Show.
-The media cared about LT-Bigelow at WrestleMania 11, but the world title match was between Shawn Michaels and Diesel (Kevin Nash).
-Rodman/Hogan vs. Malone/DDP headlined Bash at the Beach. Whereas 2001 sucked for everything, 1998 was awesome for everything.
-The North Carolina NFL player referenced was Kevin Greene. His in-ring abilities and personality were tailor made for pro wrestling.
-The UFC champ who wrestled for the WWF around the same time Ken Shamrock did was “The Beast” Dan Severn.
Here are this week’s questions. No winners will be declared. We’re just doing this for fun and to honor the forgotten world of wrestling history.
1. 2001 started off great, with WWF business still at its peak. But like any peak, what follows is a valley. For the WWF, WrestleMania 17 was that peak. An incredible show that did incredible business. Unfortunately, it was marred by a heel turn people didn’t want to see, and business subsequently nosedived. Who turned heel at WM17, sending business into a tailspin?
2. Thanks to the magic of trading tapes, I had the fortune of watching ECW grow from the very first day Paul Heyman was given creative control, right as it happened. His first year produced television so good that it became a model for how to turn a promotion from an unknown indie into a worldwide phenomenon. It only got better from there, but along the way, ECW went from creative brilliance to a product that got a reputation as violent garbage wrestling. That wasn’t always a fair assessment, but sometimes it was. But it all came to an end in early 2001, as ECW went belly up in the pro wrestling recession. Name the city and state in which ECW held its very last show.
3. Not to be outdone, WCW went belly up in 2001 too. Well, that’s what happens when you put Vince Russo in charge. Even though WCW’s ratings and buyrates outperformed ECW’s, there has never been a WCW revival, yet there have been tons of ECW revivals. You could argue that TNA is nothing but a revival of the worst of WCW, and you’d be correct, except now it’s also a revival of the worst of ECW too. WCW was almost saved, however. Name the company that almost bought WCW, spearheaded by Eric Bischoff.
4. The company referred to in question #3 actually did go public saying that had purchased WCW, but later retracted. With the deal dead, Vince McMahon stepped in and bought WCW for an embarrassing amount. Why did Bischoff’s investors pull out of the WCW deal?
5. WWF had big plans for WCW, though it didn’t purchase the contracts of its most marketable stars like Bill Goldberg (whom they hired later anyway). There was talk of giving WCW its own show and everything, but those plans went out the window when a “WCW match” was featured on Raw and bombed. Arn Anderson and Scott Hudson were brought in to announce the match, which featured which two competitors?
Answers will be posted next time.
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