WCW: There is a huge deal that hasn't been finalized at press time but if it is, has potentially huge positive repercussions as it regards this company's position in the wrestling war

Eric Bischoff had another meeting with talent before Nitro on 12/14. He officially told talent that Kevin Nash and Diamond Dallas Page would be joining in the booking team with himself, Kevin Sullivan and Dusty Rhodes, and that Terry Taylor would be moving over to production. Bischoff heavily stressed all the wrestlers being easy to find at least two segments before they go on television for any fine-tuning of what they need to do, and the need for wrestlers to hit their time marks better since it's a live television shoot. He, without saying names, talked about people doing interviews or matches for longer than they are scheduled and how it messes with the timing of the show. He spoke about big changes coming in January with the company. He said that they are going to re-invent wrestling early next year, claiming they did so once and will do it again and told everyone he didn't want them attempting to compete on a vulgarity level with WWF. He claimed that he watched both shows on 12/7 and he believes WCW has a better television show but that WWF is gaining attention of teenagers because it's more vulgar (the point he's missing is that WWF is gaining the attention of teenagers to a huge degree for its shock value and swearing, but it is also the better television show most weeks, particularly from a storyline standpoint). He really emphasized not tolerating changing finishes, and he got to put his foot down on 12/14 when Stevie Ray complained about doing a job for Konnan. Ray went up the ladder to complain, and when it got to Bischoff, he totally put his foot down about it

Bret Hart's torn groin hasn't healed much and it looks like the original plan for Hart vs. Scott Hall for the U.S. title at Starrcade may be changed to Hall vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

Despite the angle, Ric Flair is scheduled to work a full-time house show schedule starting at Starrcade. Flair had minor surgery last month to remove a cataract from his right eye

Everyone is noticing just how rapidly Bill Goldberg is cooling off. A few months back his merchandise was huge, and now it's actually nicknamed "Coldberg.

For whatever reason, WCW has either decided not to, or simply never decided to, promote the Hart movie on its television even though it sponsored at least one of its Grand Openings. The one mention on 12/7 by Gene Okerlund, in passing without saying when it airs or what it is, was something Okerlund decided to do on his own

12/14 Nitro from Tampa drew a sellout 13,187 (10,464 paying $206,232). Raven was supposed to wrestle Scott Putski, but he started blaming his mother for everything. Kanyon came out and said that Raven had a great childhood, that he went to an Ivy League school and was Pre-med, had a $3.2 million trust fund, and basically was a spoiled and not deprived kid. This got old live in a hurry and Raven walked out. Eddie Guerrero no contest with Villano V in 6:13. Good TV match, particularly the work of Villano. Art Flores interfered and Guerrero frog splashed him and refused to pin him, and instead the LWO came out and they offered him a shirt and he took it. While there are rumors everywhere that the LWO will be broken up in a few weeks, reported on the WCW hotline, and it may be true, that would really be strange if it was because on 12/15, they were sending all of them to El Paso to shoot a series of vignettes where they wash Eddie's car and basically get over that Eddie is using them even worse than Bischoff did. Wrath gave Al Greene the melt down in 3:43. Bischoff did an interview. Flair came out and challenged him and chased him. One thing. Compared to the WWF's usual chase scenes, this was far more believable because in WWF, everyone moves in such slow motion that there's no intensity, and both these guys were running like they were training to set Age group records in the 100. And Flair came back from that and wasn't even breathing hard, but then he had the worked heart attack and was carried out. You could tell when they segued that right into the backstage brawl with Goldberg, Nash and Bigelow, that it was a work. The announcers' reactions were a total giveaway. None of the fans believed it live as they didn't act concerned at all, as everyone did that night when Bagwell was really hurt. They had both Dusty Rhodes and Arn Anderson come out and acted concerned. Bigelow first attacked Hall before they had the three-way deal backstage, and Taylor ordered a three-way match that would have no outside interference as the main event. Kidman offered a title shot to Misterio Jr., and they had a very good match with so-so heat before the LWO attacked both guys. Rey & Kidman did some great double-team spots after the match, first on Damian & Ciclope, then on La Parka & Psicosis before the entire group destroyed them and Guerrero frog splashed both of them. Chris Jericho & Ralphus did an interview. The first half was almost identical to a very good interview that aired two days earlier. He then brought out a Konnan spoof guy and it was a riot from that point on. Barry Windham pinned Emery Hale with a superplex in 2:30. Hale took good bumps for his size but overall didn't look as good as last week. Pretty dead match. Norman Smiley pinned Perry Saturn due to outside interference with a kick from Ernest Miller in 4:52. They piped in this unbelievably fake sounding crowd noise to make up for the lack of heat. Smiley and Saturn didn't mix well, but the crowd noise mixed even worse. The first ref was knocked out so Scott Dickinson ran in, saw Miller interfere, but fast counted Saturn anyway. It was revenge for Saturn giving him a DVD last week. Tony Schiavone went on-and-on about Dickinson being friends with Mike Tenay. Hart did an interview challenging Page. As Page came out, The Giant clocked him from behind with a chair and destroyed him, ripping up the set and choke slamming him off the set and through a table. Konnan kept the TV title beating Ray in 3:06 with a facebuster after Ray and Booker T argued. This actually wasn't a bad match, which is a miracle. Bischoff did a somber interview apologizing to all of Flair's friends, fans, family, etc. Actually this interview was so bizarre that it may have gotten a few people believing the angle, but not too many as it appeared. Ray and T argued again with Ray giving T a t-shirt and T not turning it down. Raven's mom showed up backstage and asked Kanyon to bring her to him, but Kanyon wanted $50 because he was broke and she's rich. Hall beat Horace Hogan via DQ in 6:25 when Scott Norton, Ray, Vincent and Brian Adams did a run-in. Disco Inferno wearing a Wolfpac shirt ran in, but got destroyed. Scott Steiner beat Van Hammer in 1:23 with the camel clutch. Steiner & Bagwell then tried to recruit Lex Luger to join the Black & White. They said it was Nash who cost him the title shot by eliminating him in the Battle Royal. They said that Konnan never asked him to be in the video and that Sting had left him. Luger never answered. Finally the three-way with no interference ended with no contest when Hall ran in to attack Bigelow in 5:00. Unfortunately, this left Nash vs. Goldberg for a few seconds and it wasn't pretty. This definitely hurt the build-up for their Starrcade match as it just didn't seem very exciting, let alone any good, when they faced off

The original plan was to have Goldberg vs. Bigelow singles at Nitro in St. Louis, and the triangle match with Nash to headline Nitro in Atlanta

Keiji Muto, who is in Minnesota undergoing treatment on his bad knees, is scheduled to shoot an angle with Norton at the 12/21 Nitro to set up their Tokyo Dome IWGP title match

First day ticket sales for San Diego (1,053) and Los Angeles (4,166) for loaded house shows on 1/29 and 1/30 were disappointing as was Indianapolis (2,734) for Thunder on 1/21. Souled Out on 1/17 in Charleston, WV sold out in like one hour. Nitro in Columbus on 1/18 did 9,975 tickets the first day and Nitro in Dallas on 1/25 at Reunion Arena sold 9,743 tickets for $303,350 on the first day. Business overall is still very good, but they are clearly trailing WWF by more than in a long time, and not nearly as hot a live event product as they were a few months back

On 11/27 in the UK, Nitro had 270,000 viewers, Raw had 250,000 and Thunder had 100,000, which is its lowest total to date. ECW averages 85,000 viewers for 1996 shows that air five nights per week on the Bravo Channel

The Diamond Dallas Page charity show in Asbury Park, NJ on 12/12 drew about 1,500 fans at very high ticket prices ($100 ringside). Page beat Giant via DQ and after the match, Giant got in the ring, did a babyface speech and he and Page both hugged. Also working the show for Page were Wrath, Lodi, Kidman, Disco Inferno, Alex Wright, Glacier, Konnan, Saturn, Raven and Kanyon. Disco was running down New Jersey and Bigelow did an unannounced run-in giving him the Greetings from Asbury Park. In the local TV ads for the show, they pushed WCW names, but in the background aired footage from Raw

Hogan and Randy Savage had a meeting on 12/11 with Bischoff about angles for their return. WCW has some tentative big plans for early 1999 that no doubt they want to be part of. A scenario was discussed where Hogan & Savage would return as a face tag team to feud with Hall & Nash. If that happens, it won't last long because nobody is going to cheer Hogan no matter how heelish Hall & Nash get. The President deal seems to have lost all steam so Hogan is probably now sitting back and waiting for this regime to fail. One of the deals also is that just like nobody wanted to see Hall vs. Nash, so their feud bombed, nobody wants to see Hogan & Savage together as a team, only against each other

Savage was in Tampa for Nitro and was said to look to be the biggest and most cut up anyone had ever seen him, and he's 46. He also looked to have grown new hair

Hogan is booked on Stern this week. Stern made Hogan look bad a few years back the last time he was on, and with this President thing, well, if Hogan thought Jay Leno made him look bad

Wrath's contract has expired and he has given 90 days notice. Since everyone knows what kind of big money WCW is offering guys, Wrath is looking to get a huge raise

Giant is strongly leaning toward leaving again

McMichael no-showed Nitro on 12/14

The 11/22 National Enquirer had a story on Scott Hall as told by Dana. Nothing you don't already know. I wouldn't take seriously much in the Enquirer, but it was largely accurate

The 12/14 Sports Illustrated noted that the Eagles vs. Rams NFL game on 12/3 on ESPN did a 4.5 rating, the lowest rating ever for an NFL game on that network and that Thunder on TBS head-to-head drew a 3.9 (actually it was a 3.7 but it's really amazing just how close wrestling came to football, and even though it was a poor marquee football game, exactly how much marquee value does a Thunder show have?)

TNT airs a Best of Nitro special (dating back to its debut in 1995) on 12/30 at 8 p.m. and replayed on 12/31 at 5 p.m

Sting is doing a TV movie called "Shutter Speed" as a pilot for a potential series

Vampiro's debut has been pushed back to SuperBrawl in San Francisco

Only show this week was Tampa, which did $50,419 in merchandise or a record low week for the year of $4.82 per head

Thunder on 12/10 did a very strong 3.93 rating and 6.2 share. There's no reasonable explanation as to why as the TV main was Konnan & Luger vs. Ray & Vincent & Horace. WCW Saturday Night on 12/12 did a 2.6 rating.