Enigma

May 2003 was when I broke my habit of watching Raw obsessively every Monday and stopped watching Smackdown altogether. I haven't "recovered".

I'm assuming you weren't around in 1998, but DX was just as hot of a ratings commodity as Stone Cold Steve Austin was and 2nd to only Austin in merchandising.

WWE would still have to pay the band that originally produced the song, Metallica.

The first one, One Night Only, was great. But after that, they pretty much became house shows aired on PPV. After the brand extension and before the brand exclusive PPVs, they became brand-only house shows aired on PPV. Although Insurexxion in May 2003 is famous to me for Kevin Nash actually executing a drop toe hold in his World Title match against Triple H.

Those are some shitty pictures. Was it really that dark or was the cameraman a retard?

Heyman's got a boner for the Bodies song. He used it all the time when he took over OVW.

You still have to get through Metallica if someone makes a cover of the song.

What are you talking about? WWE told me the Wachovia Center is the home of ECW!

I DON'T KNOWWWWWWWW

Crash Holly was at Stevie Richards' house when he died, yet no one questioned Stevie about killing Crash.

I went to college with Lex Luger's son, Brian Pfhol, at Mercer University in Macon, GA. He started there in fall 2003 and came there on a basketball scholarship. He was terrible at basketball, but an interesting guy. Brian absolutely LOATHED pro wrestling and got very agitated whenever anyone pointed out that Lex Luger was his dad. There were some fans at an away game that knew this. They started chanting "LUGER" at him and doing the torture rack sign whenever he missed a shot. It was an incredible sight to see. He looked like he wanted to eat the basketball and spit the pieces on them.

Interesting Wresting Trademark News WWE is close to finalizing "World Wrestling Federation" trademark. It's going through the "opposition" phase. Meanwhile, Anheuser Busch Inc. is opposing the 'ECW One Night Stand' trademark. No reason given why; while WWE is opposing Bubba Ray Dudley Inc.'s trademark of 'The Deadly Brothers'. Again no reason given why, but its probably obvious why. In non-WWE trademark news, a company in Italy called Tod's S.p.A is opposing "Hulk Hogan", "Hollywood Hulk Hogan" and "Brooke Hogan" because they own a trademark to "Hogan". As well, another company based in Chicago called Stealth Industries Inc is opposing "Hulk Hogan" and "Hollywood Hogan" because they own a trademark to "Hulk". NFL Properties LLC, Baltimore Ravens Limited Partnership and Scott Levy himself are opposing TNA's trademark of "RAVEN".

Does anyone know if Test still has short hair or if he grew it back out?

Because without pyro, they're just wrestlers, not Superstars or Rebels.

I just hate WWE's insisting that ECW use stupid buzzwords to define who those people are. Instead of "Superstars" and "Divas", we get "Rebels" and "Vixens". Seriously, shut the fuck up. They are wrestlers and ladies.

This show is an improvement, but there's still tons wrong. The main problem is the atmosphere. This project will never ever be branded a true success until the shows are given their own tapings in arenas ECW used to run. The Smackdown environment is completely wrong for ECW and will never, ever work. You run the risk of dead crowds like this.

It was Sylvester Terkay.

Edge's shirt may be one of the best wrestling t-shirts I've ever seen. I totally would wear that in public.

I had no idea the Wachovia Center was the home of ECW.

The story Heyman tells is that 13 seconds after the PPV went off the air, all the power in the arena went out. Of course, I'm willing to bet it's just Heyman hyperbole to make the PPV seem even more legendary. Anyways, that was a PPV. ECW taped TV there all the time. WWE just won't run there because they can't do their cute little pyro show for ECW rebel The Big Show.

PWInsider said WWE decided over the weekend to not do the 7/4 show from the ECW Arena due to "production restrictions". The main one being... ...they couldn't use pyro.

From PWInsider: We've got a new chapter in the "on-again/off-again" saga of whether WWE will present ECW on SciFi from the old ECW Arena in South Philadelphia. Ticketmaster.com is now listing "ECW Live" on July 4th from the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia. WWE is running at Wachovia Center the night before (July 3rd) with a "Supershow" Raw broadcast/Smackdown taping. The decision not to run television from the ECW Arena was made last week due to production concerns, mainly not being able to use pyrotechnics in the building. It will be interesting to see what size crowd ECW will be able to draw there on July 4th, the night after a Supershow in the same building.

From Dave Meltzer: As things stood as of late last night, ECW was going live as after last week, with Smackdown being taped beforehand. They aren't concerned about lewd chants getting through. The plan was to do a completely different presentation as last week, with the Angle & RVD vs. Orton & Edge match scheduled to go long and designed to be a top level match. John Cena is also scheduled to appear to do an angle with Sabu. Stemming from the reaction to last week, this is is said to be close to 100% Heyman and he was given a lot of leeway this week. There is a lot of internal pressure on this show and the ratings pattern as to how ECW is presented. There is no ratings pressure at all from Sci-Fi unless the bottom falls out, as they are so far above what Sci-Fi expected it's not even funny.

I was absolutely shocked HHH didn't make a joke about Barbie Blank being unable to unhook her bra on the ECW show when he was trying to get the cheerleaders to take their tops off.

The WWE vs. ECW stuff is supposed to end after Vengeance (after Edge wins the title from RVD), but I bet that will change if the ratings ever start to die. NBC Universal reportedly does not trust ECW to make it on it's own without WWE involvement, which is why they wanted established stars (Angle/Big Show) to be part of the brand.