Robert S

His grandfather and his uncle were literally making money, so it runs in the family.

classic chicken/egg problem

DSF showed the 97 WWF Raw, Shotgun and Superstars tapings from Berlin (with the Bulldog vs. Owen Hart European Championship tournament final) as a single show (I think before any of it even aired in the US). In the same year, there was a WCW house show that first aired on a pay-TV platform related to DSF (I think to kick-off that channel) and I guess with some delay also on DSF itself (maybe on New Year's Eve, where they usually aired PPV's for 6 hours straight starting at midnight). I think 97 was also the year where DSF stopped showing WCW PPVs (and moving them to the pay-TV platform), though Souled Out definitely still was on free TV.

It's kinda similar in the German speaking market. There was a WWF boom from 92 to let's say 96, especially in 94 and 95. In 94 alone, they ran 46 shows in Germany, Switzerland and Austria doing very good business. When domestic business picked up again, they seemingly did not even care when they lost TV in early 98. When they got back on TV by the end of that year, it was on a fringe station in a death-slot (though that was not solely WWF's fault; the station that they were on from 93 to summer of 95 tried to move programming from 10 pm to Sunday afternoon as they were doing such good ratings especially with kids and teenagers, that station almost got its license removed for that so most later TV station were very careful about when to air wrestling, even though 9 pm would have been perfectly fine according to all rules). It took them forever to get back to a level, where running shows became profitable again. Regarding ECW in German: do you remember the TV station? The only ECW on German free-TV that I remember was as part of a 1 h show (on DSF), that was usually 1/4 h new WCW, 1/4 h old WCW, 1/4 h ECW and 1/4 h SMW or something similar (I think they even had a AAA match or two there). That would have been ca. in 98 and 99. Initially, that show included some WWF as well, which apparently was the reason for WWF cancelling their contract with DSF (for two years, from early 96 to early 98, WCW and WWF were on the same free TV station, as insane as that sounds considering that was the time of the Monday Night Wars).

Sounds more like a Funkasaurus gimmick.

In sports they actually often do. Just some very common examples from football (the real one): - a contract last x years, but the club and/or the played has the option to extend the contract by a year or two at the end of the initial period - a contract is cancelled if a player does not play x number of games within a season (often used by clubs to be able to get rid of players suspected to be injury prone or when hiring players where they are not 100% sure about their quality) - a player can leave at any time (well, usually there are two windows per year) if he gets an offer from a club playing in a higher or better league or similar (or maybe getting an offer from a club that offers him a salary of at least x) - a player can leave if he finds a club willing to pay a fixed sum The third example could actually be how it might be for Jay: he might be able to get out of this contract if he gets an offer from WWE (maybe with some side conditions like he can only do that after 3 years of his contract are over). I mean I agree with you, most likely the story itself is not true or White was stretching the truth, just saying.

I would assume that a seven year deal would have some kind of cancellation clause.

Considering his appearence at Survivor Series, are we sure that Vince is not already a robot-mummy controlled by Triple H and Stephanie?

That was for the 97 thing, but I think they planned something similar in 2000 (I suppose with a New Blood TV show, or maybe one show for Bischoff and one for Russo).

I recently read the following Cornette quote: Anyone wager a guess from when this comment is?

Mid 90ies WWF? Have you seen the War Raiders?

I am too lazy to look it up, but wasn't the initial idea to do some roster split like WWE eventually did? I know that was already the plan for Starrcade 97 (the Bischoff vs. Zbyszko match) but I think they wanted to do something similar in 2000.

IIRC Goldberg's heel turn happened on a PPV (GAB 2000, I think), where Bischoff (during that short Bischoff + Russo run in the spring of 2000) hinted at something industry-changing happening.

Well, in German there is the phrase "es war nicht alles schlecht", meaning "not everything was bad". Nowadays, the phrase is mostly applied in an ironic way, as for a long time (at least into the 90ies) there was a vocal ultra rightwing section of the population that used phrases like "Hitler built the Autobahn" or "during the Nazi time, the economy was doing well and there was no unemployment" (often following a phrase like "I am no Nazi but ..." or "Sure, there were horrible crimes in the 3rd Reich but ..."). (and I am aware that by this posting I am confirming Godwin's law once again)