DrVenkman PhD

I'm with you on this question. I checked before I went to work and . . . bupkis. It's the only WWE-related thing I look forward to on a monthly basis. According to this guy, he thinks they will be up "in a couple of days", but has no more information on it.

They could, in theory, have Angle pissed that his matches lately are ending in count out. The "wrestling machine" needs a place where he can fight to the finish and elevate his game to be more intense than ever. Most likely, the route will be "I'm a good guy now so I love ECW! Yeah!" or something lame.

I received a book in the mail today called World Wrestling Insanity. It appears to be anti WWE so I suspect I should write a review without reading it that bashes the hell out of it... then maybe read it later and laugh. Time will tell.. I still have several unread books from ECW Press lying around my computer room and bedroom. I don't ask for these, either, they just have me on a mailing list from when I did a book review in 2003. Also, where the hell are the June 24/7Online matches?

Fantasy gets extreme June 1, 2006 The newest season of WWE Fantasy is only a few weeks old, but it’s already the most played season ever. And now, believe it or not, WWE.com’s popular Fantasy Game is getting even better. Effective immediately, due to the overwhelming demand from the fans, ECW Superstars will be available to choose for your Fantasy roster. The addition of the ECW brand into the Fantasy Game gives new meaning to the term “fantasy.” When the game first debuted a few years ago, fans were elated to have the opportunity to put both RAW and SmackDown Superstars on the same roster where they served as the General Manager. But now, the possibilities are near endless. Mike A., a Fantasy Game player from Springfield, Mass., already has plans for next week’s roster. “I’m a huge fan of both WWE and ECW. And now, I have the best of both worlds in one game. Thank you. Next week, I’m taking Triple H, Undertaker and Sabu, that’s for sure. Who knows after that, I’ll have to do some research.” Now you too can have Superstars from three different brands on one roster. But be wise when choosing your team. You still have the $30 million salary cap. While it may seem like a lot to spend, the green goes fast when you’re buying the top Superstars. Remember, WWE vs. ECW Head to Head is right around the corner (June 7 at 9/8 CT on USA). So start scouting your for your roster now. --- Guess I'm changing my roster. I already had it set for this week, but now there's PPV points to be had. Raw, SD, WWE vs. ECW, ONS... this is a big week.

- Randy Orton is not terrible - The Spirit Squad is a good heel stable - Snitsky and Goldust skits ARE funny - The double Kane angle IS good TV (Vince apparently hates it though) - Snitsky CAN have decent matches these days - Shoot fights are boring - HHH is a solid worker - Estrada is not the promo man the OVW marks have made me assume he was. While I'm sure WWE is to blame, he joins list of people I've heard nothing but good things about from the OVW community that I could care less about when they were on WWE TV (Heartbreakers, The Damaja, etc.).

Agent Confidential - Television production By Ricky Steamboat June 1, 2006 Today’s televised sports-entertainment events are so much different than they were back when I wrestled. In my era, we’d be in a small studio with about 50, 60 or 70 people and there was one camera mounted on a tripod sitting on top of a trunk. Then there would be one guy with a handheld camera running around the ring. Back then, I wasn’t as much into the production level as much as I am now, but I’m pretty sure that the cameraman with the handheld running around the ring had no communications to the production truck. So if that cameraman was able to get any kind of key shots, it was pretty much by accident. Looking back, I’m sure that there were many shots that were missed which didn’t help the small companies during that time. Coming back to WWE and now being on the production side of it, I’m just astounded with what they are able to do and how the cameras are able to pick it up. The guys today have a much better luxury of being able to take whatever skills they possess and just have them magnified and multiplied many times over. Guys like myself and those who wrestled 25 years ago didn’t have this luxury. We didn’t have the luxuries of all the different camera angles being able to pick up everything we did in the ring. In today’s level of wrestling, guys can do something simple but have it mean so much. It’s like taking something that’s about a half an inch wide, which is a small item, and you end up growing it to three feet. That is what we’re capable of doing now and that’s what we’re able to do for today’s Superstars. A lot of it has to do with emotion and being able to read the Superstar’s face and mannerisms. If you come in with two or three different angles of a guy’s anger and also the other guy who is on his hands and knees crawling and showing that pain in his face, then we are giving our viewing audience the “wow” factor. It’s almost like we are able to put the fans right in the ring with the Superstars. I wish that myself and the other guys that really knew our business well had the same luxuries back when we wrestled. We really knew how to express our body languages and movements in the ring. We had lots of guys that I would say were four and five-star wrestlers. They could go out there and, as the old expression goes, have a broom stick thrown in the ring with them and the son-of-a-gun could entertain the fans with a broomstick. They were that good. We don’t have as much of that today. That’s where guys such as myself, Arn Anderson, Dean Malenko, Steve Keirn and Tim Horner, who just came aboard, come in. One of our many job descriptions is to sit down and explain to the Superstars 30 years of experience in however much time we are given to work with that person. All the guys from my era wish that we would have had the production level that everybody has now. God, everybody looks at me and says “oh, Ricky Steamboat, you’re a Superstar.” And I of course thank them for it, but the guys from my day all sit at the round-table discussions and talk about what we could’ve become if we had the level of production that is available today. We’re called Superstars now, but what would we be? It’s just amazing.

Angle and RVD are now listed as "ECW", which I find odd since their current plan is to not include ECW in Fantasy. I wonder if they will be including the Sci-Fi shows... or if they are just pointing out that those two are no longer part of Raw and SmackDown. They've also dropped the rule about not allowing Maria, Kristal, and Coach to be picked for rosters.

The Battle Royal on the WM22 DVD is pretty surreal when Cole and Tazz just start mocking it. I did enjoy how it reunited Eugene and Regal briefly though. The part in the "Chicago Buzz" extra where Eugene is wearing a big sombrero at an autograph session, stating he wants to join the Mexicools, is pretty good. Also, check out the "Cena addresses Chicago" extra when the camera zooms in on someone holding a pro Cena sign (I think, I forgot what exactly it is they take a shot of and zoom in on). In doing a close-up and zooming in on that guy, they end up zooming in on a Samoa Joe t-shirt. Good stuff.

Yo

As of today, NewsRadio will be airing in Canada on the channel formerly known as Prime. I think it's one sometime this afternoon, then on Saturday and Sunday.

I generally only pick the $5M guys if I suspect a title defense or win is forthcoming, be in a specialty match, or generally make it worthwhile. I suspected HHH would be using a weapon, showing up one or more times before his match, have the last match, win, and maybe even have it changed to a handicap match. Well, it wasn't a handicap match but it was scored as specialty, so he came through. Last summer I used to pick Cena a lot and would be pissed when his only appearance would be a promo, so I've learned to not depend on the $5M guys for every week picks. I do suspect Ortonsault will jump back but felt the need to strike while the iron was hot with my gloating (and I think I'm about to fall hard after the SD scoring comes in).

Bret's 30 minute speech from the Hall of Fame is great. The Owen/Duggan story caused much laughter. I was surprised that they left in Bret saying "shit" since WWE normally bleeps language on their DVDs these days (the ECW one being the exception). I read in the other WM22 DVD thread (which I think could be merged with this one) that the FU Cena chants are edited (or perhaps just lower volume, like some of the chants during Goldberg/Lesnar). Does anyone know, before I try it myself later, if switching to spanish audio restores them (similar to WMXX).

Scrob - I'm sure it's a mistake that will be fixed, but you now have 0 points on Fantasy. Too bad the tag champs aren't on TV this week, and Finlay vs jobber sounds like a sure Finlay victory so yep, you may overtake me.

I'm still in first in our league but they may change after SD (I only have 3 guys - Lashley, Booker, and Kendrick - hoping for two title defenses there). Unless Finlay does some huge numbers compared to Kendrick, I'm at least guaranteed to still be ahead of my current rival Scroby. The mighty seem to have fallen, Ortonsault. It's early though.

The cartoon from 6 years ago was in colour and was awesome, so who cares (the B&W thing was even referenced).

Probably not... they just show every PPV at Scott's bar though. Apparently they didn't show Judgment Day, though.

His bar did.

Totally the Totally Spies.

Ortonsault and Leena: I demand praise for my Week 1 victory in the TSM Fantasy league. I have a 3 day weekend, which is nice since I live in Canada and don't have a holiday this weekend. I just asked for an extra day off and got it, despite the fact took a week off to go on vacation last week. Good stuff.

Thanks Bobby Lashley, JBL, Rey, and Brian Kendrick! They shot me right up to 1st in the league for the week #1 (and 227th overall, which isn't bad). Answer to above: Uh, just don't pick RVD.

At a Royal Rumble party at his bar, Scott D'amore quipped "Hey look it's Monty Brown without the charimsa" when Lashley came out.

It's a teaser for the upcoming "Grand Theft Auto: Mushroom Kingdom" Mario Kart Wii: Grand Theft Mushroom. I can't wait to see this Bowser death. Well I think people may have oversold it now so don't get too excited.

Agent Confidential - In-ring injuries By Steve Keirn May 25, 2006 In the short time that I’ve been back with WWE, I’ve noticed that some of the injuries the guys are sustaining now are more life threatening than they were back in my era. As an example, I’ve noticed more broken necks of young wrestlers in the last 10 years than I had seen in my first 20 years in the wrestling business. The only one that I recall from my era was Bruno Sammartino when he was dropped on his head by Stan Hanson in Madison Square Garden. Of course there were broken arms, legs, ribs, fingers, noses, teeth knocked out, and injuries like that, but people weren’t breaking their necks. When I came back from a broken arm or broken leg, it didn’t really seem to have a bearing in my mind outside of being aware that I had broken my leg or arm. But now, these young wrestlers are recovering from broken necks, not knowing their future and having doctors telling them they may be crippled for life if they do more damage to their spine. To me what has happened to the young talent is just like what happened to action movies. When I was a young guy, I would go to action movies and watch Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson chase one bad guy, beat up a couple along the way and kill the bad guy in the end. Then as time went on, the action movies had to out-do each other. Pretty soon you had the younger stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal coming along. They would kill about 300 people in the beginning of the movie and progress through and by the end, they had sunk submarines and shot helicopters out of the air. I think that's what happened in our form of entertainment too. The guys and girls of today are trying to out-do themselves constantly and looking for high-risk maneuvers to do. At some point they are taking the risk of being crippled for life. As an agent, I tell them to stay away from the high-risk maneuvers. I tell them that their career is going to go from a long career to a short career with a bad ending if they keep it up. But the simple fact is that the talent is trying to step up to impress the audiences with things they've never seen. And when they do things people have never seen – moonsaults from the top rope to the floor, dives over the top rope, hitting the floor or the rails – there is a higher risk of injury, in my opinion. Everything in our business is an opinion. And it is my opinion that you don’t really have to do those things. In 35 years in this business I’ve witnessed some of the greatest wrestlers in the world and half of the ones that I witnessed were never really high-risk maneuver guys. They were more character, and maybe had more charisma. They utilized their facial expressions more, and entertained the audience just as well. So what I think has happened is that the young starts of today think they have to entertain the audience far better than those in the past. They watched stuff the guys and the girls did in the past and say to themselves “I could do better than those guys” and “high-risk moves would make the audience appreciate my efforts more.” But their not taking into consideration what the downside is of crippling themselves.

Makes sense.

Side question: What exactly is supposed to be kept in that slot above the game slot in the game cases?