Won Aug.9.2004 Part.2

[Guest JJW]

Ken Timbs, a Georgia native who gained his most fame as a headliner in

Mexico in the late 80s, passed away on 8/1 after a lengthy battle with

cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure. He was 53.

 

Timbs was never a major star in the U.S., although he held the tag team

titles twice for Southwest Championship Wrestling with Eric Embry as the

Fabulous Blonds in 1983-84. He went to Mexico in 1988, under the name

Fabuloso Blondy, and immediately got involved in what turned out to be

his most famous feud with Hall of Famer Lizmark Sr. The program lasted

three years, and included two reigns as NWA world light heavyweight

champion. He was during that period among the country's top heels, as

he'd wave the U.S. flag and come out to the song, "Born in the USA" by

Bruce Springsteen, and take a page out of the Nikolai Volkoff repertoire

by singing the U.S. national anthem before his matches. In 1991, he added

coming to the ring while riding a motorcycle while waving the U.S. flag,

years before Undertaker started doing the gimmick. It was kind of funny

at the time, since Timbs had never been a major singles star in the U.S.,

but was suddenly a money drawing headliner in Mexico during the

beginnings of a wrestling boom. He also weighed 235 pounds, so he was

hardly a light heavyweight. EMLL booker Antonio Pena nicknamed him, "El

Gringo Loco," paving the way for the later Gringos Locos group of Love

Machine & Eddy Guerrero (and later Louie Spicolli and Konnan).

 

The NWA light heavyweight belt was popularized first by Gori Guerrero,

the father of Eddie, and later by Ray Mendoza. Blondy won the title on

June 24, 1988, in Mexico City, from Lizmark. At the time, he was the

first American to hold the title since Chavo Guerrero Sr. in 1977. He

dropped it back on December 9, 1988, at the Arena Mexico year-end

spectacular. He regained the title on February 14, 1990, from Pirata

Morgan, before dropping it on March 21, 1990, in Lizmark's home city of

Acapulco. He also defeated Popitekus in 1988 at Arena Mexico in a hair

vs. hair match, and in 1989 formed a foreign trio with Rick Patterson &

Mike Stone to feud with the original Infernales of El Satanico & Masakre

& MS 1. Aside from his title win, the highest profile match of his career

would have been when he beat Satanico on April 7, 1989 in a hair vs. hair

match. In 1990, he formed a heel trio with the Power Twins, who wearing

doing a Los Angeles Police Department gimmick, building to a match

against all three of the famed Rodriguez Brothers, Mil Mascaras & Dos

Caras & El Sicodelico. He dropped his hair on December 7, 1990, to Ringo

Mendoza. He also won the hair of El Brazo on February 12, 1993. He was

also FILL light heavyweight champion in Monterrey, where he feuded with

Latin Lover and Hector Garza. He left Mexico in 1993.

 

He also wrestled in South America, and was at one time the heavyweight

champion of Guatemala. His shtick was borrowed from Nikolai Volkoff in

WWF, in that he would sing the U.S. national anthem before his matches to

enrage the fans in Mexico and South America. He was brought back for a

PPV by the short-lived OCESA promotion in Mexico in 1998 where he teamed

joined other former foreign headliners from the glory days, The Head

Hunters & Solomon Grundy, losing a cage match to Cien Caras & Tinieblas

Jr. & Rayo de Jalisco Jr. & Pierroth Jr.

 

He started wrestling in 1978 as a job guy on Georgia Championship

Wrestling along with brother Ed. He also worked television jobs for Jim

Crockett Promotions before getting his break as a pushed commodity in San

Antonio.

 

He and Embry worked as The Blondes, a takeoff on the 70s tag team the

Hollywood Blondes. They were a fast moving and crisp combination. Timbs

came in a few months before the Blondes formed, first teaming with Bob

Sweetan when Southwest Championship Wrestling was still on the USA

Network in the time slot that Vince McMahon grabbed a few months later

for All-American Wrestling, his first national weekly TV show. On August

29, 1983, in San Antonio, he and Sweetan lost in the finals of a

tournament for the vacant Southwest tag team titles to Bobby Jaggers &

Buddy Moreno (Omar Atlas). He and Embry formed the top heel team in the

territory, beating Moreno & Scott Casey (Jaggers was legitimately

suspended for fighting in the crowd by the Texas Department of Labor and

Standards, which regulated wrestling at the time) on September 26, 1983.

They feuded with the Rock & Roll Express, just before Ricky Morton &

Robert Gibson hit it big working for Bill Watts. They lost the titles in

April, 1984, to Al Perez & Manny Fernandez, but regained them on June 13,

1984, in San Antonio. However, Timbs left the territory the next month

for Memphis, and Embry began teaming with Dan Greer, who passed away a

few months back.

 

Timbs, who had nine children, eight sons and one daughter, ranging in age

from 27 to 4, left the road in the mid-90s. He wrestled independent shows

in the Georgia area for several years. In recent years, he had spent a

lot of time on the Internet, often getting into message board wars with

people, often claiming that I killed pro wrestling.

 

He had been battling high blood pressure for some time. He was diagnosed

with congestive heart failure last year and was given six months to live.

He was in major pain for the past several months. He was so into Internet

posting that long after he was too weak to even type, he had his wife of

28 years, Juanita Timbs, post for him using his name. He lapsed into a

coma on 7/30 and passed away at 5:10 a.m. on 8/1.

***************************************************************

 

WWE's experiment of doing three PPV shows in six weeks is now over, the

results of the final card, Vengeance on 7/11 in Hartford, headlined by

Chris Benoit vs. HHH, were disappointing. The preliminary estimates are

220,000 buys and a 0.41 buy rate, and this is for the stronger Raw brand.

It was down 39% from the Smackdown brand Vengeance from 2003 headlined by

Vince McMahon vs. Zach Gowen, although that was an unusual feud that was

a huge television success. It would be ahead of only the May PPV with the

first JBL vs. Eddie Guerrero match (205,000 buys) for the lowest company

buy rate in more than seven years.

 

All told, the three shows in six weeks did about 715,000 buys, compared

to 750,000 buys for the two shows during the same period last year. With

late buys, the three show number will likely end up closer to 800,000.

From a profit standpoint, figuring in costs of doing the extra show, last

year would have been better. However, that's not the answer to whether

the experiment worked, because this year wasn't going to do as well as

last year under any circumstances. Last year's June show featured the

return of Mick Foley, that did huge, and the July show featured the freak

show match that drew. This year, the three shows were HHH vs. Shawn

Michaels in a Hell in a Cell, which really should have done better; JBL

vs. Eddie Guerrero in a bullrope match, which did shockingly well; and

HHH vs. Benoit.

****************************************************************

 

Sean O'Haire (real name Sean Haire, 33) was arrested on 7/27 on charges

of assault and battery as well as violation of conditions of a bond and

was taken into the Beaufort County Detention Center. He was later

released, and wrestled over the weekend for UPW in Anaheim.

 

The arrest stemmed from a 6/12 incident involving two women at about 2:30

a.m. that night at Club Hypnotic in his hometown of Hilton Head Island,

SC. Haire was accused of punching Ivy Rowland with an uppercut to the

face that knocked her hat off her head, and then shoving her to the

floor. Haire was also accused of punching Deidre Clancy in her face,

knocking her to the ground, and kicking her both in the head and the back

when she was down. The 6-6, 265-pound Haire told the Carolina Morning

News that he was acting in self-defense. He said he was in the club's VIP

room when one of the women started dancing with him, and he blew her off.

He said she then pushed him, and he told a bouncer to "Get this stupid

bitch away from me," and flicked off her hat. He claimed three man and

the other woman all started throwing punches at him. He said his shirt

was ripped and one of the punches by one of the women split his lip. "I'm

a professional fighter," said Haire, who had a kickboxing background

before going into pro wrestling. "If I was going to assault these people,

they'd be in the hospital." Clancy was taken to the emergency room of a

local hospital after the incident.

 

The violation of bond was from a prior assault and battery charge with

another woman, Tamara Coleman, 26, stemming from an alleged incident at

Club Insomnia in Hilton Head. The condition of his bond on that charge

was that he would have no contact with her. According to the police

report, on 7/24, at 4:15 p.m., Coleman received a phone call from Haire's

cell phone, the number of which came up on her caller ID. She recognized

the number and he didn't leave a message. Coleman was with Tara Norman,

who was an ex-girlfriend of Haire's, when the call came in, and she also

recognized the number as his current cell phone number. Deputy Shane

Clevenger of the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office was called, and then

dialed the number Coleman gave him. Haire answered. He denied making the

call and said he was in Charlotte.

 

Haire is well known to law enforcement officials in Buford County with a

series of similar incidents. He's described as someone whose name is well

known, is never in big trouble, but is constantly in little trouble,

frequently getting into problems that someone with a cooler head would be

able to avoid. He has a reputation in the city of having anger management

issues, although a Sheriff's department spokesperson downplayed his

recent troubles, saying that if he wasn't a pro wrestler, the recent

arrest would be something that nobody would be talking about.

Under his wrestling name, Sean O'Haire, he will make his MMA debut on a

9/18 show in Long Beach, which will also include MMA matches for Tom

Howard and Matt Tyler (a 6-10, 335 pounder from UPW who I believe did one

Zero-One tour as the giant Apocalypse). O'Haire is also going to Las

Vegas this weekend to meet with officials from both K-1 and UFC. O'Haire

was a product of the Power Plant in Atlanta, and began wrestling in 1999

for WCW. He got a good push as WCW tag team champion with current WWE

wrestler Mark Jindrak on two occasions in the dying days of the company.

He and Chuck Palumbo were the last WCW tag team champions when the

organization folded, beating Kevin Nash & Diamond Dallas Page on the

January 14, 2001, PPV show in Indianapolis. Eric Bischoff, who loved his

size, look, agility and martial arts background, was planning to make him

into a singles superstar with a Bill Goldberg-like push when he expected

to take over WCW that year. When it fell through and WCW folded, O'Haire

was picked up by WWF. WWF officials were impressed with O'Haire's

physique and look, and at first were planning on making him a major

player.

 

As WCW tag team champion, he and Palumbo came into WWF recognized as the

champs. He was ostracized at first when the WWF was burying all things,

including a real-life gang beatdown with many WWF guys on the two ex-WCW

guys on a live Raw episode orchestrated by John Layfield as a painful

initiation. Quickly, he was given the label by WWF wrestlers as somebody

who didn't know how to work. After dropping the belts on August 7, 2001,

in Los Angeles, to Undertaker & Kane, he was soon sent to the Heartland

Wrestling Association, as due to his Power Plant training of learning all

high spots to work the short action matches that Eric Bischoff believed

is what the TV audience wanted, he didn't adapt well when WWF officials

tried to slow him down and do more mat based wrestling. He was brought

back with a unique devil-like gimmick in some strong vignettes in 2003,

and then given the role of Roddy Piper's bodyguard, which even included

getting a television count out win over Hulk Hogan. When Piper was fired,

O'Haire's role disappeared. Eventually he was sent to OVW, where he

actually got over strong as Jim Ross' personal babyface enforcer, to feud

with Inspector Impact (now Luther Reigns). But the company felt he wasn't

progressing and he was cut after doing an injury angle on a WWE house

show in Louisville on 3/29. He was given a shot with New Japan Pro

Wrestling, doing a high profile match on New Japan's 5/3 Tokyo Dome show,

losing to Hiroshi Tanahashi, but the match was a disappointment and he

wasn't brought back.

******************************************************************

 

The only details we've got at press time is the 8/2 Raw show did a 3.8

rating. We should have a complete rundown next week.

Smackdown on 7/29 drew a 3.12 rating (3.55 realistic rating; est. 4.74

million viewers).

 

The show did a 4.3 in New York, 4.0 in Los Angeles, 3.9 in Chicago, 2.3

in Philadelphia, 4.1 in San Francisco (which may be a season high), 2.7

in Boston, 3.6 in Dallas, 2.0 in DC, 2.6 in Detroit, 3.3 in Atlanta and

6.4 in Houston.

 

In the segment rundowns, Mysterio's title loss to Spike gained 66,000

viewers, which isn't good for early in the show. The Angle-Teddy Long

skit gained 62,000 viewers, which also isn't good for early in the show.

Kidman & London vs. Dudleys gained 6,000 viewers. The Guerrero promo with

Angle coming out in the low rider was the star segment of the show,

gaining 498,000 viewers. The JBL political package gained 157,000

viewers. The 8-man elimination main event with Haas vs. Dupree vs Suzuki

vs. Gunn vs. Reigns vs. Cena vs. RVD vs. Booker, gained 6,000 viewers,

which is terrible for a main event that went 23:23, peaking at 3.40. The

show was up 11% from last week among teenagers, but offset by a 17%

decline by those over 35.

 

TNA Impact on 7/23 did a 0.26 rating, leaving the average since its

inception at 0.27..

Galavision Lucha Libre on 7/24 did a 1.06 rating among Hispanic homes in

the Galavision universe, and the 7/25 show did a 1.25.