FLASHBACK
- Steiner, Page fight backstage at Nitro
- from Bryan Alvarez "Figure Four Weekly" (details below)
WCW couldn’t have two weeks of television pre-emptions coming at a worse
time, since the company, already in turmoil, is coming off one of its worst
weekends ever.....
The Nitro problems actually started the previous day when Sid arrived
and was given the booking sheet. He had been under the impression that
he and Steiner were going to go to a double countout to lead to another
match in January. When he looked at the sheet, he discovered that the plan
had changed and he was going to be doing the job to Steiner via the Recliner.
Sid told friends this didn’t really bother him, and if past history is
any indication, if it had bothered him he would have just walked out and
not done the match.
So the next day, Sid showed up for Nitro and found WCW hadn’t booked
anything for him to get his heat back on Steiner. He was also told he was
going to be facing Steiner again in a four-way in January along with Rick
Steiner and Jeff Jarrett, and perhaps told he was going to be doing the
job on that show as well. Regardless of what he was told, he spontaneously
developed pain in his arm and shoulder and left the building.
With Sid gone, the show had to be rewritten. That also left only three
guys for the scheduled January four-way main event, Steiner, Jarrett and
Rick Steiner. Unfortunately, the person in WCW who was supposed to call
Rick either lost his number or called the wrong house or just plain forgot
to call, because Rick never got the message that he was supposed to be
at Nitro. Since both Nitro and Thunder are taped on the same night, they
had to put Robbie Rage under a mask and have him attack
Scott at the end of the show, and since Nitro is pre-empted for two
weeks, Rick won’t appear on TV until January 8th, the final Nitro before
the PPV.
The problems were only beginning. A few weeks ago, Dallas Page called
Mark Madden to ask him about some comments that Madden had made about him
on the air, and during the phone conversation Kimberly got on the line
and cut a promo on Madden. Madden responded by going on his website and
saying he was going to shoot on Page on the air, which he did two
weeks ago on Nitro. Madden was subsequently suspended for one week
with pay, and neither he nor Page had talked to each other since.
So Page approached Madden in the cafeteria before Nitro. Page told friends
earlier that it was the Christmas season and that there was too much negativity
in the locker room, so he was going to bury the hatchet with Madden. He
approached Madden and stuck his hand out to shake, and Madden responded
by sticking both hands up in the air as if he were being robbed. Madden
told Page that he’d cost him a week off TV. Page said he didn’t cost Madden
anything since Madden was the one who made the unscripted comments on the
air in the first place. Madden said he had to go do his radio show, and
walked off. Witnesses say Captain Rection immediately went up to Page and
asked how he could forgive Madden, and Page said it was Christmas. Rection
reportedly said: "You’re a better man than me."
Nitro began, and Scott Steiner came out to cut a promo regarding the
Sin PPV. Suddenly, he strayed from the script and went off on a tirade
directed at Page, saying Page didn’t have the balls to fight him. Page
told others that as soon as he heard Steiner say people were afraid to
fight him, he knew Steiner was going to mention his name. There had been
rumors all week that Page refused to work with Steiner and had gotten a
scheduled house show match against him changed. The show in question had
actually been booked over a month in advance with Page vs. Steiner on top,
but in the meantime, it got changed to Steiner vs. Sid and Page & Nash
vs. Thrillers, since those were the current programs at the time. Page
may not have wanted to work with Steiner, but the card was changed for
reasons other than Page requesting it be changed.
Page was stretching in the locker room when Steiner made his comments.
Ironically, this was the same building where, earlier in the year, a verbal
incident occurred between Steiner and Kimberly that resulted in her quitting
the company for good. As soon as Steiner said Page had no balls, everyone
in the locker room immediately turned and looked over at him, as if to
see what he was going to do about it. One witness said: "The air was totally
sucked out of the room." Page finished tying his boots and walked down
the stairs near the curtain. As soon as Steiner walked backstage, Page
reportedly said: "So, I don’t have the balls to face you, huh?" They started
swearing at each other and a fight broke out. Steiner took Page down and
started pounding on his face, with multiple witnesses saying he went straight
for Page’s eye. One source said that Steiner had been cutting his fingernails
earlier in the day, and if he hadn’t it would have been a lot uglier. The
other wrestlers immediately jumped in to break it up and it reportedly
took them over a full minute to pry Steiner off of him. Page was bleeding
and had marks all over his face. He later told friends that Steiner wasn’t
just scary, he was a killer, and that he was glad he walked away from the
fight. Page and Kevin Nash immediately grabbed their stuff and left the
building, with some sources saying their last words were: "We’ll be back
when there are new owners." Steiner then responded by cutting another promo,
this time focusing on Kimberly and saying some very bad things about her.
Since Nash and Page were scheduled to do a segment later, Mike Sanders
was told to go out with the Thrillers at about 9:30 EST and cut a promo
to "kill time". He was quite successful.
If this situation had happened in the WWF, all three guys would probably
have been fired. I say "probably", because if this were the WWF, Steiner
would have been fired a long, long time ago for about a dozen different
reasons, not the least of which was threatening to beat up Terry Taylor,
a member of the booking committee. The heat between Page and Steiner would
therefore never have gotten to the point where Page would have actually
decided to get into a fight with him. I’m not sure if Nash would have been
fired or not, because for some reason I don’t think he’d have made unscripted
comments on the air about Scott Hall if Vince told him not to. Maybe he
would have. But if all three guys had been in a WWF locker room last night,
and what went down at Nitro instead went down at Raw, they’d all have been
canned for sure
But this is WCW. As of press time, nobody has been fired, fined, suspended
with or without pay, or even reprimanded. Page refused to take phone calls
from anyone in the company, so who knows what they’ll say when they finally
get hold of him. Steiner finished Nitro and worked the Thunder tapings.
The company, through its own incompetence, has created an environment where
it’s really hard to blame the three guys in question for what they did.
Steiner has cut unscripted promos before, most notably regarding Ric Flair,
and given a slap on the wrist. In fact, after the incident with Taylor,
he was "suspended" over the July 4th weekend. With pay. Then he got pushed
as the top guy. Then he won the World Title. Nash has gone off and done
his own thing for years. He got four World Titles. Also the job as head
booker. Page has followed the non-existent rules for most of his career,
but did cut unscripted promos with Nash regarding Scott Hall, but it’s
also hard to call those unscripted because neither of them were told what
to say in the first place, and never told directly not to mention Hall’s
name. Page, in the weeks following these comments, won the Tag Titles.
With Nash.
WCW has created an environment where top guys can do their own thing,
and in a roundabout way get rewarded for it. Then management appears shocked
when the top guys go off and continue doing their own thing. It sets a
bad example for the younger guys, like the Thrillers, who are "paying their
dues" as top guys in WCW and see Page, Sid, Nash and Steiner as role models.
In a way, the younger guys have been kept in their place, with Madden’s
one-week suspension being a pretty good
example, but if they’re pushed as top guys they’re going to feel they
can act the same way the other top guys do. I don’t personally think Page
or Nash care if they’re fired, and I doubt Sid or Steiner even think they
actually could be fired. It’s one of the factors that has helped destroy
the company, and the sad thing is, they’re probably both right."
Source - Bryan
Alvarez's - Figure Four Weekly
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