Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.

★ Complete Wrestling Observer Rewind 1991-2002 - Reddit archive

★ www.rewinder.pro - Mobile-friendly archive

★ Rewind Highlights - YouTube playlist

• WWE financials time baby! Pull out that calculator, put on some spectacles, and let's crunch some goddamn numbers, you poindexters! WWE had its most profitable quarter in years this time around, due in large part to cost cutting done earlier this year and due to the near $6 million settlement they got from Lewmar, Inc in the Owen Hart lawsuit. Also, because of the way the dates fall on the calendar, they get to count 4 PPVs for the quarter instead of 3, so that helps too. They also received a hefty tax break related to the closure of the Times Square restaurant. Basically, the numbers look great this time, but it's mostly due to a few lucky breaks coming through at the right time. None of the increased revenue is due to any sort of increase in business. That's still plummeting, thank you very much.

• Among the interesting notes from Linda McMahon on the investor's call: the company is looking at doing a line of urban wear, with John Cena as the focus. Sure. There was talk of monetizing the video library and Linda said they are working to clean up the tapes and removing "WWF" references, with hopes to then release it on some sort of video-on-demand service. WWE Magazine is being renamed Smackdown Magazine and will be exclusive to that brand, while Raw Magazine will continue to exist as is.

• WWE's Survivor Series is in the books and it was possibly the bloodiest WWE show in recent years and featured an epic Shawn Michaels performance. The hook of the Raw main event is that Steve Austin's career is now allegedly over, but they've done this angle too many times now. In the last couple of months, Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler, Goldberg, and Stephanie McMahon have all had their careers put on the line in matches. In the case of Lawler and Ross, it was overturned a week later. Needless to say, nobody is buying for a second that this is the end of Austin in WWE (he'll be back in a month). The show put several pieces in place for Wrestlemania, which shows good long-term planning that has been lacking lately. Tajiri vs. Jamie Noble got bumped to the Heat pre-show in order to make room for a last-minute addition of Mark Cuban getting RKO'd by Randy Orton. Speaking of Orton, he and John Cena were both the final survivors for their teams in their respective matches, as the company continues to try and make Orton and Cena into big stars (it works out okay).

WATCH: Randy Orton RKO's Mark Cuban at Survivor Series

• Other notes from the PPV: Kurt Angle did very little bump taking in his match, to protect him due to his current neck issues. Matt Morgan got pinned clean by Angle, as did Nathan Jones, which doesn't do a lot for either man and Dave is befuddled why they rushed Morgan to the main roster, only to put him on a team of guys that make him look small, and then jobbed him out to the guy who could barely even work the match. Benoit tapped out Lesnar to keep him strong but Dave thinks they're jobbing Lesnar too much. It also wasn't played up as a huge deal and then they jumped straight into the Lesnar vs. Goldberg build for later in the show so it didn't end up mattering. Benoit is the house show feud for Lesnar right now, but as far as TV goes, he's got the Bob Holly feud and then Goldberg at Wrestlemania. So there are no immediate plans to do any Lesnar/Benoit story. Shawn Michaels wasn't the only bloody mess on the show. Vince also bladed in the Buried Alive match but he went too deep and it was a bloodbath. Vince had to get stitches later, but he was leaving puddles everywhere. This was, of course, the setup for Kane to cost Undertaker the match and bury him alive. As mentioned before, Undertaker has started growing his hair out again and is expected to be off TV until Wrestlemania. Despite him denying it to anyone who asks, the plan is 100% for him to return as his old Dead Man gimmick. And in the main event, Goldberg pinned Triple H clean to retain the title in a brief, typical Goldberg-style match. Dave says it would have worked wonders if they'd booked him like this from the start but now it's too late. As it stands, Goldberg's last match is scheduled to be at Wrestlemania, apparently against Lesnar, and he has shown no inkling of wanting to stay beyond that.

• Regarding Crash Holly's death. There was a brief mention last week that Holly's estranged wife chose to bury him in North Carolina, rather than allowing his body to be shipped back to California to be buried in the family plot his parents have. Turns out, his family was unsurprisingly pretty upset about that. Holly and his wife were in the midst of a divorce when he died and were not on good terms with each other, but were still legally married, thus she had the call on such things. Also, Holly was Catholic but his wife gave him a Baptist funeral. At the funeral, there was a big altercation between her and other family members that led to police being called and resulted in Holly's own mother being removed from the service and leading to a tense and uncomfortable funeral afterward. In attendance from the wrestling world, all the North Carolina crew (Hardys, Lita, Shane Helms, etc.) were there, as well as Stevie Richards, who was his best friend, along with a couple of old APW guys. A few days later, Holly's mother held a second funeral service in California.

• There was no official representation from WWE or TNA at Holly's funeral and there were a lot of people making negative comments that WWE didn't event acknowledge his death on TV. Of course, he wasn't under WWE contract at the time of his death, but he had been for the last several years and just left a couple months ago and most fans viewed him as a WWE wrestler. They didn't ignore Hawk's death like this, and he wasn't under contract either. But coming so soon on the heels of Hawk's death, yet another wrestler dying before 40 is an awful look. With all the media attention surrounding that issue in recent months, Dave suspects WWE is running scared from this one. In fact, later in the week, WWE removed the news story about Crash Holly's death from their website as well and Stevie Richards' tribute to him on Heat this week (coming out to his music and whatnot) was edited off the show. Dave thinks it's hard to say what should and shouldn't be done in situations like this but it's clear WWE is trying desperately to not draw attention to it.

• Remember the 60 minute ironman match between Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar a few months ago that aired on network TV? Well Dave has done some research here about previous 60-minute matches in wrestling history and has decided to write FORTY-ONE paragraphs about it. That's not a typo. This is a bunch of 1950s-60s NWA stuff and whatnot. Interesting stuff, but no. Let's move along...

• Rey Mysterio returned to Tijuana, in a rare indie appearance allowed by WWE. He was on the show because his uncle, the original Rey Misterio Sr. was headlining in a hair vs. mask match against Dr. Wagner Jr. The WWE Mysterio worked the undercard and if you recall, Mexico has weird bylaws regarding wrestling and rules they have to follow. Back a few years ago, when Rey lost his mask in WCW, he also worked a show in Mexico where he lost it there as well and, as a result, he technically shouldn't have been allowed to wear his mask this time. But of course, he did and nobody cared.

• Kenta Kobashi has been vocal about there not being any good challengers for his GHC championship. The biggest match they have on paper is against Jun Akiyama, but NOAH is hoping to run the Tokyo Dome next year and they're trying to hold that match off until then. They could do Kobashi vs. Misawa again, but that would violate their pledge earlier this year that the match they had in March would be their final time against each other. Yoshihiro Takayama would be a big one, but he's the current NWF champ in NJPW and as a result, neither one will be willing to do a job so....no match (this is interesting because Kim Justice's Wrestling Road channel on YouTube has a fantastic video about Kobashi's entire title reign here and goes into a lot of detail on this exact thing. That whole channel is incredible, BTW).

WATCH: Reign of Fire: Chronicling Kenta Kobashi's Legendary GHC Title Reign

• NJPW is the unfortunate victim of Japan's New Year's Eve MMA festivities. PRIDE, K-1, and Antonio Inoki are all holding major competing shows that night and NJPW will be lending wrestlers to two of those three (K-1 and Inoki). Wrestlers that, if history is any indication, will probably get embarrassed by real MMA fighters. And then those same wrestlers will have to walk into the Tokyo Dome 4 days later and try to convince people to take them seriously again when NJPW holds its biggest show of the year, which has been buried under the publicity of the 3 MMA shows.

• ROH and 3PW were in a bit of a local beef, if you recall. But that seems to be squashed now, as ROH's Rob Feinstein sat down with 3PW's Blue Meanie and Jasmine St. Clair and they squashed all their differences. So no more tattling to the fire marshal on each other's shows and all that bullshit.

• A new book about Jesse Ventura is coming out, and it was written by the former residence manager at the Minnesota governor's mansion, who was fired by Ventura. So needless to say, it doesn't paint a flattering picture. He accuses Ventura of being a gloomy recluse who is often rude to everyone and spends most of his days watching TV. Claimed his wife was much more politically savvy than him and basically painted her as the brains behind his political success and says she spent much of her time arguing with Ventura to get him to do the right things. In particular, there's a picture in the book of Ventura from his 50th birthday party wearing a punk hula skirt that he is allegedly furious about having released publicly (and weirdly enough, I can't seem to find this pic. Anyone?)

• There's been a lot of talk in TNA about the need to get away from the Nashville Fairgrounds because the crowds are awful. After last week's show, pretty much everyone all came to the same conclusion immediately: we gotta get the hell outta here. But they can't afford to tour so it's tricky. Part of the issue is the part of town the Nashville Fairgrounds is located in, and there's been talk of just moving to a nicer, easier-to-access part of Nashville. Dixie Carter has even floated the idea of building their own small arena somewhere (around mid-2004, they begin the transition to Universal Studios in Florida).

• Kurt Angle underwent neck surgery for a second time this week, same doctor as before. This was an arthroscopic procedure, not as serious as last time, and Angle's pushing to be back before the end of the year. Basically, there was a small piece of bone fragment pressing on a nerve which was causing numbness in Angle's hand.

• Stephanie McMahon hired 2 outside "storyline consultants" to work with her on the creative team. Neither has any experience in wrestling, but their main purpose is to evaluate meetings and the overall writing process and try to come up with ways to improve the creative department. One of the consultants is named Steve Borden, for what it's worth. No relation.

• There are new WWE ads running on Adult Swim/Cartoon Network as well as all over TBS and TNT this month. That's part of the WCW deal actually. When WWE purchased the remnants of WCW in 2001, part of the agreement was that WWE would spend several millions in advertising on networks owned by AOL-Time Warner.

• Goldberg will be starring in a low budget movie called "Santa's Sleigh", where he will portray Santa Claus. The movie starts filming in February but he shouldn't miss any WWE events. Dave jokes about Goldberg following in Hogan's footsteps ("Santa With Muscles") but what Dave doesn't seem to know here is that this movie is actually called "Santa's Slay" and it's actually a delightfully fun horror comedy.

• Notes from 11/13 Smackdown: remember the story last week about how newly babyface Cena turned heel again on Chris Benoit after their tag team match? And how it was a big argument before the show with Michael Hayes pushing for it and others against it and Vince had to make the final call? Well....they backtracked. After all the drama, they decided to edit out Cena's attack on Benoit. So instead, the show ended with the two standing tall as a team. No heel turn unless you were there in the arena that night. But that means there's a lost John Cena heel turn out there that we never got to see still in WWE's vaults. Unfortunately, it involves Benoit, so we're probably never seeing it.

• Notes from 11/17 Raw: a mediocre show saved by a hot crowd that made even the bad stuff watchable. Dave notes that Scott Steiner is in so much pain that he can barely move and is awful in the ring, but to his credit, he's proven everyone wrong who said he would get injured and miss time constantly and wouldn't be able to hold up to the WWE schedule. He's hanging in there, but it's killing him slowly and everyone can see it. Matt Hardy showed up on Raw (they even gave a decent storyline explanation to explain the switch from Smackdown) and acted like he was going to propose to Lita. Then a few minutes later in a mixed tag match, he turned heel and allowed her to get pinned and then dumped her. Probably would have saved himself a whole lot of future stress if this really was the end of their relationship. Later, when discussing Lance Storm's gimmick of being a ladies man because he has a huge dick, Dave notes, "I can sure see why women would hate this show the way women are portrayed." Then Jackie Gayda apparently touched his dick by accident and acted shocked at how big it was. Also, her breast was exposed during this segment which got a lot of traction online. And that's about it.

• Big Show was at a Houston Rockets game doing promo work and was shown at one point next to Houston star Yao Ming. Big Show looked to be at least 6-7 inches shorter than Ming. This reminds Dave of a famous WWF story from years ago where NBA star Manute Bol wanted to meet Andre The Giant. So they met but Andre refused to take a picture with him or to even stand up from his chair, because he didn't want to expose how much taller Bol was (and thus expose that Andre wasn't really the 7'4 he was always portrayed as).

• Mick Foley has been hinting at coming back to work a match with Triple H or Randy Orton. He also said he's in talks to work Wrestlemania and said he could probably work a regular schedule of doing a couple matches a year if WWE was interested. When asked if he had any regrets from his career, Foley had an interesting answer: "For many, many years, I thought every paying person deserved the best match I could give them. I should’ve taken it a little easier at those high school gyms and armories so I’d have a little fuel left in the tank when I hit the big time."

• Kurt Angle has been putting over Chris Benoit big time in interviews, pushing hard for him to be pushed as a main event star. He feels Benoit's promos are solid now and even admits that Benoit is the best active wrestler in the company (it's happening).

• WWE's Raw roster is doing a tour of Japan in February. Interestingly, Bill Goldberg will not be able to work the tour because his contract with Dream Stage (PRIDE/W-1) blocks him from working for other promotions in Japan.

• Don Callis and Scott D'Amore met with Rhyno this week, just as friends since they all know each other, but it led to a lot of speculation about Rhyno jumping to TNA when his WWE contract expires in a few months. Rhyno has kinda been in the dog house since a house show a couple months ago where Vince McMahon came out and literally stopped the match because the crowd was chanting boring (similar to the way Inoki did that time. Google the story, Rhyno has talked about this) and hasn't been doing anything of note lately. But Rhyno also has a 1-year-old daughter and unless the wrestling landscape changes drastically soon, Dave doesn't see Rhyno walking away from a WWE job to go take a chance on fledgling TNA.

• Ricky Steamboat has said he'd like to do one last match against Ric Flair, pitching the idea for them to do a match at Wrestlemania 20. Steamboat left WWE on bad terms both times he was with the company, particularly the last time in 1991 when Vince wanted Steamboat to get squashed like a jobber by Undertaker on his way out, and Steamboat wasn't having that. Claimed he was retiring and then ended up in WCW a couple months later. Dave says that Steamboat has told him personally that he pitched to have a match with Flair in the later years of WCW as well, but that never happened. There was even discussions of doing it at one of the Brian Pillman memorial shows a couple years back but that didn't go anywhere either.

• This also led to some talk about different times Steamboat pitched doing a heel run because he's never really been a heel and he's always wanted to. During his second WWF run, he pitched the idea of being a masked heel who would eventually be revealed as Steamboat but Pat Patterson rejected that idea. He was apparently gonna do something as a heel in TNA when they first started but then he screwed up AJ Styles name and they ended up not bringing him back (and yes, Dave says, that really is the reason, as silly as it sounds). So Steamboat still hasn't gotten to do that heel run. (It's not too late Tony Khan....)

• Remember that Chokehold book that Dave reviewed a few weeks back about the history of the NWA and all that? Dave loved the book and gave it a big in-depth review, but of course, he picked apart some of it. Well, both authors of the book have written letters in response and Dave publishes them. Even though Dave raved about the book, one of the authors in particular has, like, 10 different bullet points of contention that he has about Dave's review. To his credit, Dave just posts their letters and doesn't try to argue back with them. Thank god Twitter didn't exist in 2003.

FRIDAY: more on Japan's New Year's Eve MMA festivites, more horrible details on Crash Holly's death, NJPW's Tokyo Dome show looking dire, WWE faces criticism over portrayal of women, and more...