Last week Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) finalized his deal with the WWF, inking his first WWF contract since before his long-run in the ’90s with WCW. He has never been a heel in the WWF, but as part of the NWO, he will be introduced into the WWF as a heel. There are no confirmed details on the terms of his contract other than it’s supposedly similar in scope in terms of pay and schedule as the contracts of Hall and Nash.. Nash’s contract requires 12 days of work per month, although he has said he’d be willing to work more dates on a per request basis if the circumstances are right. Hall is limited to 10 dates per month maximum.
Vince McMahon, nearly six years ago, told us in an exclusive interview that he would never work with Hulk Hogan again. “No,” he said when asked about ever working with either Hogan or Randy Savage in the future. “I have no idea why I’d like to do business with them again. They shook my hand and said I’m with you forever. No amount of money, not for a million dollars, would I ever work with them again.” Hogan has taken shots at Vince McMahon on television and during mainstream media interviews. McMahon took note of such comments. “Reasoning makes me wonder how he could be angry with me considering what he became and the money he made (in the WWF),” McMahon said. “From a gut standpoint, I don’t understand all the vitriol. Why would someone feel as he feels? It’s almost hard to believe.” After the initial XFL press conference late in 2000, McMahon told us that he didn’t expect to work with Hogan again, but “never say never.”
Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and Hulk Hogan will not be appearing at any live events until the Feb. 17 “No Way Out” PPV. The initials of the PPV being “NWO” is just a convenient coincidence, but it isn’t dictating the timing of angles. Hall, Nash, and Hogan met with Vince McMahon in New York this past weekend and began to go into detail on plans for their introduction into WWF storylines. They discussed a number of possibilities for their matches at WrestleMania, but nothing was set in stone yet regarding that issue. At this time, the working plan is for Hall, Nash, and Hogan along with possibly Shawn Michaels and X-Pac (a member of the original NWO as “Syxx”) to debut at the No Way Out PPV, and then become a weekly presence on television after that leading up to main event matches at WrestleMania. Despite the influx of new stars, though, Chris Jericho is slated to defend against Triple H at WrestleMania (although that doesn’t rule out an intermediate title change between now and then). That would leave Steve Austin, Rock, and Undertaker to take on Scott Hall, Hulk Hogan, and Kevin Nash in either singles or tag matches in the other top billed matches at WrestleMania. Shawn Michaels and X-Pac may also be in that mix.
There continues to be fear among wrestlers in the WWF that Nash, Hall, and Hogan will disrupt the chemistry in the locker room and halt the progress of younger wrestlers. “Nash won’t be as open and arrogant with his influence, but it’s in his nature to stir sh– and he will this time, he’ll just be more clever and covert,” says one veteran wrestler. One tentative defender of Nash and Hall says they’ll be influential, but not necessarily in a negative way: “If they see somebody they believe can become a star, I think they’ll work to elevate them. They’re going to protect their turf, but they’ll also be interested in developing new opponents for themselves and proving their critics wrong.” In his latest commentary at WWF.com, Droz publicly expresses a concern that many wrestlers in the WWF feel regarding the pending arrivals of Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Hulk Hogan. In his column “My Two Cents,” Droz says the NWO mention on Smackdown last week may have peaked many fans’ interests, “but it brought an unnerving feeling to myself and I am sure many of the other wrestlers in the Federation.” He continued: “Seeing how the ‘NWO’ thing stood for ‘Now We’re Old’ for a lot of people for the simple fact of how it was produced while it was under Turner’s control. We all know that Vince is a Master of keeping things ‘cutting edge,’ but to me this seems like it could do more harm than good. Only time will tell if this move will pan out. For now we are left with many question marks.”
While it’s well known that Triple H is in favor of Nash, Hall, and Hogan coming in, the positions of Rock and Steve Austin are less common knowledge. The betting line is that Rock is okay with it since it will give him fresh opponents and he’s never experienced the negative side of their politicking before. Austin, who has been phone buddies with Nash over the years, may be more leery just because it’s competition for his main event slots, but it also gives him fresh opponents to work with. Undertaker is said to be okay with it, especially since he will probably get a clean win over Hulk Hogan sometime in the next year or so. He was around during the days when the “Clique” ran the locker room. He’ll protect his turf, but won’t be looking for trouble. Taker didn’t express opposition last year when told that Hulk Hogan might be brought in for a match with Triple H at WrestleMania (Taker was informed of the situation because he was the “back-up” opponent for Triple H if the Hogan negotiations didn’t result in a deal; they didn’t, thus Taker wrestled Hunter instead).
In anticipation of splitting the roster into two separate divisions after WrestleMania, the WWF is changing its schedule beginning in late March. As part of the new schedule, there may be Monday night and Tuesday night house shows. The division of wrestlers who work Smackdown each week will also work the usual weekend house show schedule. With there being a gap between Sunday and the Tuesday Smackdown tapings, Mondays may be filled with a small house show for the Smackdown crew to give them a chance to earn revenue on what would otherwise be a dead day (but not enough time to fly home for a day off). Same goes for running a house show with the Raw crew on Tuesdays while Smackdown is taped elsewhere by the Smackdown crew. The number of house shows each month will increase to about 30 on average, up from 22. The challenge for the WWF will be to promote Nash, Hall, and Hogan as major players on television, yet not end up with fans feeling cheated when they don‘t appear at house shows. The WWF, though, has been doing split shows for several months where at least half of the top names don’t appear at any given house show. The WWF will begin elevating a number of wrestlers from the developmental territories to the national WWF divisions once the split takes place. Randy Orton is considered the top prospect in terms of being well rounded in the ring and marketable. The Alliance wrestlers will also be brought back at that point, many of whom may fit into a cruiserweight division, tentatively scheduled to be part of one of the divisions. The plan is for the two divisions to have distinctive traits beyond separate rosters. For instance, one division will likely feature a cruiserweight division (Smackdown) while the other will feature hardcore matches and raunchier content (Raw, due to it being on cable and in a later timeslot).
