Enigma

The best was when Stamboli press-slammed Rikishi over his head and held him there for about 3 seconds. I was in awe of that.

NOTE: My WON subscription has expired and I don't have the $90 to put down for more issues right now, so this will be the one of the last posts I will make about WON-related stories until I get a new subscription. If you enjoyed them and have the money, support Meltzer and get a subscription. The stuff I post is probably 20% of the actual newsletter, so there's lots of great stuff that doesn't make it here. Tough Enough, after two weeks of unscripted stuff with two wrestlers, has ended up with two furious wrestlers with the position they were put in and what will go down as one of the more famous one minute periods in modern pro wrestling history. On 10/26 in Omaha, Big Show was really mad last week because the guys weren't selling his slams, due to the fact nobody had taught most of them the art of selling yet, nor had anyone told them ahead of time to do so, since the idea was everything on the "Tough Enough" segments is supposed to be a swerve on the guys. Show was also not particularly keen on going out for the second segment where he was to slam the guys, and several internally said he was complaining that night in the dressing room about the unpredictability of having to intimidate some big guys. One course said it was the two big unknowns, Justice Smith and Dan Rodimer, who were almost as big as he was, and in far better shape than he was, and he had no idea of their background or what they'd do when pushed, in particular because Show tried to intimidate Rodimer in the dressing room, and he laughed in his face. Show then went to the smallest guy in his sight (ironically Daniel Puder) to try to intimidate the guys. Another person there concurred Show was complaining, and didn't want to go out to the ring, but said it was due to Puder. He threw him into the lockers, but that was with a locker room full of wrestlers, no fans watching (so it could have been edited out), and with knowledge the trainees were told not to fight back. But the trainees were also told ahead of time that no matter what the wrestlers said, nobody would do anything physical to them, so their guards were down by being lied to. In the ring, there wouldn't be that luxury net and there would be seven guys and only him in there. The person there who said Show's complaining about going out was directed at Puder, saying he didn't think it was a good idea because he had just thrown the guy into the lockers and Show said, "That one boy knows what he's doing." As it turned out, he came out and put on a good enough show or bluff and seemed to have almost everyone intimidated. Nobody was uncooperative in the least with Show, although Rodimer, when Show tried to intimidate him, went nose-to-nose with him, which got a lot of heat from the audience. After Show slammed him, Show still dropped a knee hard on Rodimer's sternum when Rodimer was wide open. On 11/2 in St. Louis, we came a few seconds away from having the Steve Williams-Bart Gunn finish. Quite frankly, and I was actually almost ready to cry watching this, because you could see that if exactly what they didn't want to happen actually did, they'd have created a new star in one night, and had everyone who watched the show intrigued because they'd want to know if it was real or wasn't (it was totally real by the way, but when it comes to business, that's immaterial). I've heard from a few people internally, and there are those who recognized it, but I think most, because they only think within the grain, didn't see it then and even after all the talk still didn't understand it. It was said the two strongest on the idea of addressing and pushing the situation hard during the show were Paul Heyman and Tazz. It's so frustrating watching a company going down have something controversial and that people were talking about handed to them, and then miss the boat. It was a 42-second shoot with Angle and Tough Enough contestant Daniel Puder. They had the guys train all day to kill their legs, eat a big meal of pasta and milk to set up a few guys puking (they aired one guy puking on the air, but more than one did). Then they had them in the ring and Angle was browbeating them, saying they weren't Tough Enough and acting all military sergeant in their face. Angle looked like a midget, because he's 5’10’’ and the smallest Tough Enough guy is Mike the Miz, and he's more than 6’ and most were 6’3’’ and up. It was a weird visual because one of their top stars was looking so small against the giants that were recruited, and I can't believe they even let that happen. But you can see how little these things are being thought through nowadays by what happened next, and really, by so much of what has been happening in the company of late. Angle told Nick Mitchell, "I'll punch your face in. I'll make you dizzy. I'll knock you out," largely doing the drill sergeant role scripted for him to do, and then pie-faced Mitchell. Angle then told Justice Smith, "I didn't know they could stack crap that high." For Angle (or Brian Gewirtz, if he was the one scripting this) to be stealing a line from Mitchell that Mitchell had just done on the same show the week before…wow, was that bad. When he got to Puder, Angle said in a bully tone, both again no doubt doing what he was told, "Oh yeah, you're the UFC guy. You ever fight an Olympic champion?" Puder said, "No, sir." Angle said, "You don't want to because I'll beat your ass. You'd better pray you don't make it, boy." They had all the guys do squat thrusts and were eliminating them as they started gassing. Justice Smith, a favorite because of his size, was the first to gas, as known by those who have followed the contest, but this time the fans saw it for themselves. It came down to Puder, who didn't seem to tire a bit, and Chris Nawrocki. Nawrocki was dying, drenched in sweat. And then they eliminated Puder, which everyone saw was weird and the crowd booed heavily. The story was that John Laurinaitis on the headsets told the ref to get rid of the blond guy, but he meant Nawrocki. The ref kicked out the wrong blond guy. It would have made a funnier story if Laurinaitis was the one in the ring getting orders from Vince, but this will have to do. One person backstage said that more important from a business standpoint than what happened with Angle and Puder in their shoot was the crowd reaction when Puder was eliminated. He said he saw immediately they had a star because of how the crowd took to Puder and how much they are booing over a meaningless squat thrust contest. Others watching pointed to the spot where Puder raised his hand to volunteer to face Angle as when he got over. The live crowd was said to have been furious by Puder's elimination because they thought he was being screwed. There was said to have been a decision by either Vince McMahon or Kevin Dunn to turn down the sound for the television airing to make it less noticeable. It was also said that in the ring when they squared off, they also toned down the audio and the UFC chants in particular were far louder live than they came across on television. Watching the tape, you can sense the spots the audio was turned down, most noticeably after the bogus pinfall, as the crowd noise was way down and even then you could hear loud booing and small "bullshit" chants. Instead of recognizing this as something hot stumbled onto, it appeared to be a fear that a "UFC guy" was getting over in a WWE ring. Puder has never fought in UFC, nor claimed to have, but did use the term "Ultimate Fighter" as the generic term for an MMA fighter. When Angle addressed while he was trying to intimidate everyone, he called him "UFC guy," which led to the loud "UFC" chants during the match. Others were critical of Laurinaitis calling to eliminate "the blonde guy," because he should have said the name Puder or Nawrocki, and some questioned if he even knew their names even though he was the agent producing that segment. Vince was also on the headsets at the time and he was said to have been steaming mad because the scripted plan of Angle wrestling more than one guy was falling apart. Nawrocki was totally dead, not that it would have made much of a difference since he clearly had never wrestled. It took Angle all of three seconds to get the dead Nawrocki down, who quickly grabbed the ropes. They were reset in the center, Angle got him down immediately, turned him over, including a brief crossface, and pinned him easily in 26 seconds. Nawrocki ended up in the hospital with a broken rib, although I didn't see Angle doing anything deliberately to hurt him, he certainly wasn't going easy on him and was shooting on basically a defenseless guy who was all blown up, and had zero skill. In Angle's defense, it was what he was told to do for the segment. He then was brow beating everyone and said, "Does anyone else want to wrestle me?" Puder raised his hand while everyone else backed down. My sense was it was at that moment they had something. The crowd was buzzing when they got in the ring. Puder blocked his takedown for a few seconds and the crowd was pretty strong with "UFC" chants. They believed it was real and unlike the Brawl For All, were intrigued by it. Puder, who was coached in wrestling by Danny Chaid, the same Danny Chaid that Kurt Angle beat in the finals of the 1996 Olympic trials for the spot in the 220 pound weight class (and you can imagine the writers pulling their hair out over the potential of playing that into the angle), has trained for years with the AKA team in San Jose, one of the top MMA teams in the world. He was coached in submissions for years by Frank Shamrock. Puder has only had four fights, is 4-0 with three knockout wins, but all but one were on very small shows and he's faced no high-profile fighters. The book on him is great athletic ability with his fighting strength being his base in wrestling. He had an excellent record in high school as the 2000 Central California champion at 215 pounds, and was a good enough prospect in that sport that he was recruited by the University of Oklahoma, which when it comes to college wrestling, is the big tune. Puder had a good record for one year at Menlo College before giving up the sport. He's also strong on submissions, has good cardio and suspect stand-up (although three knockout wins would seem to contradict that; he has done amateur boxing and did not excel at that). Puder was Shamrock's training partner for the Tito Ortiz fight and is the guy Shamrock worked with in his line of training videos. I've heard stories where he's eaten alive, in training, a few low level Pride and UFC fighters, through his being coached by former New Japan wrestler Brian Johnston, who also trains many of the Japanese fighters. Puder's wrestling ability is good enough that in training, he was, within the last year, able to handle easily Shinsuke Nakamura in training when Nakamura trained in San Jose for one of the Alexey Ignashov fights, although training and fights are two different things and his fighting experience is limited. Angle was struggling for the take down, got Puder in a front headlock and leaned on him, but Puder popped his head out to escape. They were struggling with Angle trying hard for a takedown, knowing he was in a real battle, and Puder trying mainly to defend, before going for a Kimura. At the 36 second mark, he had the Kimura locked in. People may say differently, but Angle was toast. He'd have had his shoulder ripped out if Puder had put full pressure on, which he didn't, because he likely figured he'd be out for hurting a star. Puder went on his back in a half guard, but kept the hold on and did make sure Angle couldn't get out of it, and Angle was done. Jimmy Korderas then counted a fast three count on Puder, even though he had one shoulder clearly up (both shoulders did touch at one point, so if you're scoring this by touch fall amateur rules, he was pinned even though he was in full control of Angle with the Kimura, but by pro three second rules, he was not). It was a panic move by Korderas, and for that matter, the company itself, to save Angle, thinking this was about to be a major embarrassment to pro wrestling. In a sense, given their mind set, they were very lucky. In that position, and with that hold, doing a sweep would be relatively easy (tempered by he fact Angle's balance on top would be nothing Puder was used to dealing with, but Puder was the one in control at that point), and Puder on top for a pin would have made the higher-ups want to shoot themselves with the mentality they had at that moment. Korderas was given the word on his earpiece by Gerald Brisco, an ex-college wrestler at Oklahoma State, who was the first guy on the headsets to recognize immediately when Angle was checkmated, to count to three immediately and get out of this, before most others had any idea something was wrong. Laurinaitis also understood, and one source said was in a visible panic in fear of what Vince's reaction would be to this. What they didn't realize is it would have been the opposite, as they'd have created the biggest wrestling news story in a long time and a controversy that would have been huge. But, it's easy to say that with 20/20 hindsight. Even without that happening, and the tap would have been gigantic, by portraying it as exactly what it was to fans on the TV show in commentary, they still had what would have been the most talked about thing in wrestling in months, because of the same Hart-McMahon furor over who was right, what was and wasn't real, and if it was a brilliant work or something real on TV. In fact, my wife, watching the bogus three count's first reaction was, "Oh my God, this is going to be like that match in Montreal." I didn't even think it would be any big deal because without a somewhat trained eye, the footage on TV was not all that spectacular and the commentary buried what it was. As it turned out, at our local high school, according to my brother-in-law, for the first time since the Rock & Eugene angle, WWE wrestling was a significant topic of conversation at school, as the wrestling team members (one of which was him) were going crazy about what they'd seen on WWE, and all saw it as Puder schooling Angle and the big bad wolves screwing him. Angle, like most of the top WWE talent, is cold as hell right now. Anything to get him in a program or a controversy people care about is a plus for him. A lot of people thought if Angle tapped, it would have killed his career and made WWE look bad because an unknown fighter tapped their big Olympic star. This was said to have been the strong belief of McMahon and Dunn, and they expressed that belief to where almost everyone in power agreed with them and the consensus of the agents was that they avoided something terrible. Most of those we've contacted about it in the company expressed a totally different viewpoint. But, the only difference being this was a shoot, and in reality, it doesn't matter as an angle, no matter whether real or not, when airing on a pro wrestling TV show, becomes storyline. This is almost the exact angle that Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat did in the late-70s on Mid Atlantic TV, except Flair lost cleanly to the unknown. Steamboat, at the time a nice-looking guy, great natural athlete, good body, who at the time couldn't act or do a promo to save his life, had little pro wrestling experience and no name in the business. That angle alone turned him into an instant territorial superstar. And in losing to the unknown, it made Flair a bigger star because the Flair losing to an unknown was so shocking and the program caught on. Now, this isn't to say this would turn into one of wrestling's all-time legendary feuds, although its origins would make it a legendary story, because what George Scott and Mid Atlantic hoped for came true, that this green unknown guy turned into one of the greatest workers who ever lived, and odds of that here are about the same as shooting a hole in one. In that instance, Scott and Flair were either lucky as hell, or had a great eye for undeveloped talent. It was probably a little bit of both. Puder is a long way from being ready to do a pro wrestling match, but he's already a far better promo than Steamboat was at that point in time (although it's doubtful he has the potential on promos to equal the promo potential Maven showed that got him over on the first "Tough Enough.") Timing is everything in this business, and anyone with experience in wrestling seeing Maven come out of "Tough Enough" and seeing Maven today can tell you about lucking into something hot, squashing it, then figuring it out after it was squashed, and then going with it. The moment was gone forever. Every attempt to resurrect it is doomed to failure, like this current one is. Of course, today is much harder than even three years ago to do this because popularity is lower so creating new stars is harder. Maven had something like 13 weeks of training when he had his first match on Smackdown against Tazz, and people were behind him huge right out of the chute. A few years later, even though he's being pushed this week in one of those pushes that will likely be dropped in a few weeks when it doesn't take, internally, many consider Maven a flop. It has to be a cleverly written TV program, and they'd have to do it with smoke and mirrors, with one of the guys being so green. They couldn't have them do a standard pro wrestling match next week, or for a few months, if ever. But that's just as well, because the longer you build something up without having a match, the better off it is. Before writing off the idea because of his inexperience, Heyman, said to be a huge backer right now of pushing Puder and the controversy of the match, is on their writing staff, and he made Johnny Grunge a short term major star to where people thought he was half of the best tag team in the United States, and made 911 a cult hero, and I'd be shocked if two months from now, Puder isn't a lot better in the ring than Johnny Grunge or 911 ever were combined. The entire JYD phenomenon was built on charisma and very careful booking to cover up that the guy selling all the tickets actually had almost no ability. Phrases like "JYD doesn't get paid by the hour," by Bill Watts made his 90 second squash wins where he did little more than dance to the ring, howl, and hit a powerslam, into one of the great regional draws of the past 25 years. Although Eric Bischoff had no clue how JYD got over, the same strategy worked in covering up Bill Goldberg for more than one year. Booking wrestling has always been about having an eye for stars and then figuring out their strengths, accentuating them, knowing their weaknesses, and making sure the people don't see them. Modern WWE has been, for reasons I've never been able to figure, about accentuating everyone's weaknesses and making sure the public sees them, and then using those weaknesses to explain why they can't get over. There are those who point the finger for this problem at HHH, because he's the one who keeps pushing on Vince that the guys on top have to be guys "who can do it all." But the bottom line is, for every Ric Flair who could "do it all" and was a marketable headliner (and Flair on top got stale as a draw numerous times during his career even when he was at his peak as a worker), there are Hulk Hogans and JYDs and Crushers who got over every bit as big, and stayed strong as draws for years because they who were protected by promoters from exposing what they couldn't do. This has also been blamed on agents not fighting hard enough to not let the fans see people's weaknesses. Great working has always been about that as well. Plenty of people had less training than Puder would have two to four months from now, and were far worse athletes, who did just fine when carried by good workers. Wrestling has a long history of using virtually untrained NFL players as local drawing cards. The general consensus of opinion is that once Puder is established as a pro wrestler, the interest in this specific angle will be minimal, and it has to be done right now, and in a different style, with no pro wrestling moves, similar to the Naoya Ogawa vs. Shinya Hashimoto second program in Japan or the original Don Frye pro wrestling style. Of course this may flop, as every experiment runs that chance, but it sure didn't flop to the live crowd in St. Louis. But the most important lesson in wrestling booking is, "What works…works." You can make an argument for anyone or anything not being able to work, but if there can be interest created in something, or there inherently already is, or is working despite your arguments, you make sure and figure out why it's working and learn from it as well as try and keep it going. If something is working and you spend time convincing yourself why it won't work, then you miss the entire point. Very little the company has done in the past few years has touched any kind of a nerve or had any legitimate intrigue. If you sense it does and the time is right, and sometimes things are handed to you, you go with it and hide the flaws. Not only that, but there is a solid chance this guy is getting, rightly or wrongly, a $1 million contract (he seems to be the clear internal favorite, but there is still the situation that Mike the Miz is going to get a ton of votes because he's a known TV star). If that's the case, you'd at least want to do something that at least attempts to make it less of a waste than what will be the less than trivial one-year career of one of the higher paid women performers in history, Christy Hemme. Then again, considering the potentially heated Bob Holly vs. Matt Cappotelli feud, which could have made Holly into a high middle heel instead of a floundering face, and made Cappotelli into a young star, they also didn't do, so nobody should be surprised. That came from a total chickenshit move by the wrestler which was also "real." Jim Cornette booked a short program out of it, and had it turn into a match with among the most interest as he's booked in the past few years and Holly was good enough and more, the issue was so strong, that they had a hell of a heated few matches, including a great TV match. In that case, there was a major downside. Holly was out for months recovering from neck surgery when the real momentum would have been there, but I'm guessing even if he wasn't, they'd have dropped the ball on an easy one. But they still could have done it later, as Cornette did. Holly came back as a babyface because they had no opponent for Lesnar for the Rumble (well, there were other ideas pitched, but Holly was the one decided on). I can understand because at the time that was far more important, and he did have a natural storyline mere, even though it didn't quite take as people don’t buy Holly as a WWE Title contender (it probably would have taken more to the fans if the WWE Title wasn’t involved). But he hasn't meant crap as far as being in any program since. They never turned him, and now it's way too late because everyone has forgotten it. The other point is Holly came out of that with the whole world believing he was "really" a heel, and he was one of the few of whom they would believe it, because of what they'd seen, and that's hard to pull off these days. Angle, with his ego bruised, was pissed, and refused to shake Puder's hand (although he was playing bad guy and may have done that anyway), and whispered to him this was the entertainment business and it's not about hurting people (ironic since he had just hurt someone who had to be hospitalized and it was questionable at the time if Nawrocki would be able to continue in the competition from his broken rib), and that they were doing a wrestling match. "Don't you know any better? It's not a fucking UFC match. It's an amateur wrestling contest." A lot have used this logic to defend Angle, whose real defense is he should have never been put in that position untrained and injured in the first place. But it doesn't hold up. It was, quite frankly, never specified what exactly they were doing. Nawrocki got a rope break, which doesn't exist in amateur wrestling. Angle was brutalizing Nawrocki with a quick crossface, threatening to punch out Mitchell, even if in character, and his comment to Puder was "have you ever fought (not wrestled) an Olympic champion." Angle continued, "Stay off your back. Are you stupid? Are you fucking stupid? Alright, well, better luck next time and get out of my face." When Korderas was counting three, in the background you can see Charles Robinson indicating to Korderas that Puder had his shoulder up. Apparently, Puder had already asked one of the two ref if he could do submissions and been told they were okay. Trainers had been bullying and hurting students on "Tough Enough" and at wrestling schools in these situations forever. This will probably end up going down in wrestling lore like the stories of when Stu Hart would torture people in the dungeon, and then, a great athlete named Luther Lindsay reversed the tables on Stu (and who knows how true this is after 50 years), or when Dick Hutton, an amateur wrestler of similar credentials to Angle, was sleeping in a dressing room and a tough ref shooter type gave him a hot foot (lighting his foot on fire) as a prank. When Hutton woke up, he charged at the guy who did it, without thinking, and left himself open for a guillotine and was choked out. At the time, everyone in wrestling was scared to death of Hutton and nobody ever challenged him. And while he was always respected, he was never looked at by the wrestlers with quite the same awe again. Another famous story like this, but with the roles reversed, involved Lou Thesz when he was NWA champion in the early 50s when he was a fairly major television star and something of a mainstream sports figure in our culture. Prior to a big show in Buffalo, for publicity, he was training with the University of Buffalo wrestling team with television news cameras covering it. He was goaded into a one-on-one session with their heavyweight, Don Beitleman (who later would become a major pro wrestling star as Don Curtis, and in later life, became one of Thesz' closest friends). Beitleman took Thesz down and put him on his back. Strangler Lewis, who was Thesz' manager, and was virtually blind by that time, couldn't see what happened, but sensed something was very wrong, and the 260-pound man staggered like he mistakenly got in the way of the TV camera. Thesz ended up catching Beitleman in a top wristlock, and Beitleman screamed in pain, ending the match. A shouting match ensued because the college wrestling people, looking at embarrassing the pro champion, screamed the move was illegal. Thesz responded, "Maybe in your rules, but not in mine." While I doubt Thesz did many workouts with college wrestling teams after that, the end result solidified Thesz' standing as the right guy to have the belt, because of how he got out of the jam. What was interesting is that I don't think anyone live, and 98% of wrestling fans watching, really saw fully what happened, but it all took place in a 42 second period. The crowd live came alive big-time when the two locked up, more because they could see Puder genuinely blocking Angle for a few seconds before going down, but the rest happened so quickly that without either MMA knowledge or announcers commentary explaining it, it was too deep for them, other than the recognition of the fast count and Puder's shoulder getting up before the three. While Tazz did call the Kimura a keylock, he never acted like Angle was in trouble and when it was over, totally blew Puder off, saying, "Well, so much for UFC," just implying Angle pinned him quick and Puder was no competition. "Well, so much for UFC," was said to have been a line fed to Tazz to say on his headsets, I believe from Vince himself. However, on the MMA boards, this was huge. In fact, it was probably the biggest topic of discussion of 2004, with more different threads, different takes, and more responses to the threads then any topic I've ever seen. Just one of the literally dozens of threads on the sherdog.com site, probably the most popular MMA gossip site, had more than 800 responses and 27,500 views within days, when the biggest MMA stories of the year usually top out at 2-3 threads with 200 responses max on the big one. Everyone, particularly those who had trained in submissions or had watched a lot of fights, realized that an unknown fighter had embarrassed Angle on Smackdown and had he wanted to, he could have torn his shoulder out, although nobody could figure out why it aired, since it was a taped show. Without seeing it in context, many thought they were doing a pro wrestling match and suddenly Puder had double-crossed Angle, like the Rikidozan and Masahiko Kimura (whom the Kimura moved was named after since he popularized it in his days as a judo world champion) match. Others didn't care how Puder did it, thinking it was this wet dream of a fake wrestling superstar getting the revenge from the insecure world of real hating popular fakers. Others thought it had to be a brilliant work by McMahon to create a new superstar. Many of them who idolized Angle believed it had to have been a work, because there is no way some "no-name MMA fighter" could stop his takedown. Most who saw it recognized what it was as far as being a shoot, but it got so crazy we had arguments as to whether a shoot under pro wrestling rules would have submissions legal. After it was over, Angle was furious in the locker room, trying to say it wasn't supposed to be a submission deal. He was also mad at management because he was given no advance notice over what he was supposed to do, so it wasn't as if he'd been training, even for a week, to get ready to do shooting. In addition, the writers (well, writer, as the idea for the segment was said to be largely Brian Gewirtz) who put him in that situation may not have realized Angle's neck was thrashed from an injury two days earlier. Gewirtz, who has no athletic background, would have had no concept about the difference between great pro wrestling shape by a shooter, and being in shape to do a shoot against a real competitor. The way the segment was scripted, Angle was supposed to both stretch (and yes, that means using torture holds) and pin several guys. It was stopped at two, both because everyone else had backed down, and because Angle himself called an audible because he was hurt. After calming down, Angle expressed interest in also turning it into a major angle, but the company wasn't interested. Everyone at this point was aware of Puder's background, and when this segment was put together, I was told there was a backstage expectation Puder was probably going to win the squat thrust drill to begin with because those who were close to the competition had it well established he was in the best condition of the group. Angle went out there expecting to thrash several people, but that Puder would likely be the one non-pushover, but all he knew was UFC fighter, and was totally unaware of the extent of Puder's wrestling background. Still, even with his injuries, with lead time to get back in shape, a 35-year-old Olympic gold medalist is going to beat a 23-year-old who never even had Division I experience in straight wrestling. There was some curiosity about him and Angle before it ever started. It was believed they'd have a confrontation and everyone would get a laugh out of Angle destroying him. It was also clear because Angle was not in training that he was blowing up fast in there (and he was legendary for stamina, and has the most stamina of anyone on the roster under the parameters of pro wrestling, but stamina for high level competitive shooting or wrestling is a whole different ball game). Puder was a younger guy, with no serious injuries, who was training daily for fighting before leaving for Tough Enough. Even if Angle destroyed Puder, as expected, his condition is such that it wasn't worth the injury risk, although Angle, perhaps wanting to prove something, also expressed interest in doing a shoot match of a worked feud. Well, if Puder wins the thing, this will have been the night he won it because he broke out of the pack, as our third week poll had Puder with 57% of the vote to 20% for Mike Mizanin and 9% for Dan Rodimer, a complete turnaround. Rodimer's stock has fallen greatly as nobody internally even mentions his name anymore, but it is said to be a given if Rodimer doesn't win or quit, that he'll get a developmental contract. The feeling is it's also close to, if not a lock, Puder will as well. There were guys backstage who thought it was hilarious, including one major star wrestler who said he thought it was one of the greatest moments ever on Smackdown, which says something, because the natural inclination among wrestlers is to be pissed if an outsider upstages one of them. Others thought it was stupid and irresponsible to put Angle in that position, which I'm guessing is the majority viewpoint with 20/20 hindsight. But the former tells you just how much the feeling has changed with some people on Angle. Many MMA fighters would have tapped before the ref saved Angle just because they knew it was locked, even though 100% full pressure wasn't being applied, although Puder could have done it at will. Angle, in that split second, since it was competitive and his mind in competition is like no other; would have very likely taken the injury rather than tapped, as he wrestled on a broken neck at Mania and in the Olympics. At his age and with his injuries and wanting career longevity, I'd temper saying I'm sure of that, although one person close to the situation said at that moment, "He (Angle) was in the zone, and he wasn't tapping." Angle ended up with a minor shoulder injury and a jammed neck. His neck was bothering him going into this as he was whiplashed pretty bad on the 10/31 house show in Louisville. Because of being hurt, he took no bumps in Cape Girardeau the night before this. His not wrestling in a match on Smackdown was how it was scripted, and that was said to have been laid out before Angle was hurt in Louisville. He didn't miss any house shows, but at the Smackdown shows on 11/6 in Miami and 11/7 in Fort Myers, he was clearly hurt as he worked in three-on-two handicap matches, worked only about 30 seconds both nights, and again took no bumps. There was a feeling is Puder internally "made himself” with the company. However, one person internally tempered Puder being labeled the big favorite coming out of this by noting because of commentary, it was portrayed that he was punked out for the second week in a row, which could hurt him in the voting, and Mike the Miz has a huge advantage in this as a popularity contest. The feeling the opportunity to do something with this and make him a star will be blown this week if this doesn't become a TV controversy, and despite differences of opinion, those in charge are strongly against doing so. The question was if, in Corpus Christi, Puder has any momentum to the casual fan, it would only be because the audience saw through the "force feed burial" by Tazz. As it turned out, there was some support for him, but the segment involving Moolah and Mae Young was reported to be nothing short of a disaster, with the audience booing it heavily, and everyone and the entire contest coming off badly tainted. Even though Puder was, ruled the winner of the sex test, earning a lap dance from Mae Young, it was Mike the Miz who got the best reaction. After the St. Louis episode aired, when MMA boards started going crazy with the idea a shootfighter really beat Angle on a WWE TV show, the WWE web site pulled the footage, cutting the "Tough Enough" video after Angle destroyed Nawrocki. They did that very late Thursday, and it was only after the internet furor and what they would have considered bad pub, which seems to indicate the company itself didn't understand what it was. To prove the company's reaction to all this, the footage of the Angle vs. Puder match was replaced by these words on their web site, "Angle mauled Nawrocki before taking volunteers, next pinning Daniel Puder in a slightly tougher, but still relatively easy match." Apparently, the reason it aired as is, was few in the company thought anyone would notice anything other than Angle pinning Puder because the ref counted three and Tazz called it like it was a burial, and the crowd sound was turned down enough that the boos weren't so overwhelming. And they were 98% correct. It wasn't until it became so huge on MMA boards that they saw how people were seeing this, and instead of exploiting it, got scared. It did air on the weekend" Afterburn" show, but that was because that show was put together on Thursday. That show was sent out to stations before the MMA community went so nuts on it and created the controversy, and they wouldn't have been able to pull that footage like they did on the web site. On the WWE's own web site, it also changed the Puder bio in the "Tough Enough" section to eliminate his wrestling and MMA background, and he's simply listed as a college student who owns a print company. Except for the Miz, who has no athletic background, he's the only contestant not listed with having a major sports background. On the "Tough Enough" replay segment on Raw, they went from showing the training session before the show, the pasta eating contest, the barfing, and cut then right to Torrie Wilson teasing the guys about next week, with no hint Angle had ever even been involved in the segment. There were people pushing to do commentary that would have gotten it over as to a worked version of what the shoot was to fans and push it hard as a major angle. The argument was that no angles the company is doing are over, and there was nothing they could do that had the potential to get people talking about Smackdown as this. Without the announcers pushing it, there is no angle. One source claimed Tazz pitched as hard as he could from a position of having no booking power to have the company jump on it and play it up huge in the commentary. Vince and Dunn were adamant about not doing it and not acknowledging anything happened in commentary. No reason was given. One major star close to the situation was confused about the reaction, as Vince, when pressed by those who thought this whole $1 million "Tough Enough" thing was a dumb idea, had responded that nobody is coming into the business who is that special star who can carry the company, so he thought if he offered a million dollars, he'd find one or two. Then when it worked out better than he could have ever dreamed, because it wasn't his idea, he not only didn't want to pull the trigger, but wanted it covered up. But when it's over, he's still paying out $1 million, which is about two years worth of the entire developmental budget for OVW and all its contracted talent. One person with experience at tons of booking meetings for a few big companies was more adamant about the potential of this one, believing with proper follow-up, it could turn into a mainstream news story, said after being in meetings for years, the mentality in almost every bookers meeting is that if it wasn't our idea to begin with, we're not going to let it work. Others closer to the situation claim that wasn't the case. "It wasn't a pride of authorship issue," insisted someone in WWE responding to this point of view. "Vince and Kevin didn't see how potentially huge this was. All they could see was an established star was being hurt by an unknown." Certainly, WWE, McMahon and Dunn, have become legendary for leaving millions on the table over the past three years with their handling of the Invasion, the introduction of Bill Goldberg, and the potential of an Eric Bischoff vs. Vince McMahon feud, Rob Van Dam as a top babyface, and even the potential of ECW as a cult thing to bring emotion on TV. Another person suggested doing something would compromise the credibility of "Tough Enough," which is Dunn's baby, because doing anything out of this would kill the drama as to who would win, and the million dollar last week payoff would at that point be a formality. It is said that is also a big issue here, and Vince truly believes Tough Enough needs to be fair and balanced, and any acknowledgment of what happened would be so strong as to clinch the result of the competition six weeks early. I think at this point, they wished, by their taking it off the web site, that they never showed it in the first place, but apparently they didn't truly realize what it was they were showing. The usual wrestling line of thinking was an outsider embarrassed our top shooter so we have to portray it as something different. They didn't realize is the "outsider" was someone they have under contract (all Tough Enough competitors are under contract to the company), so he's not really an outsider (again this where the mentality that screwed the Invasion angle, Goldberg, etc. all comes into play again). They are desperate to create new stars, the audience live got behind the new guy more than any new guy they've pushed in a long time. He can't work yet, but this business has been built forever on guys who can work making those who can't, look like they are world beaters. If Angle truly is the closest modern wrestler to Ric Flair in his prime, and he's never truly been put in a position to be, this would be his chance to prove it, because Flair has done it many times over. It's just one of the oldest wrestling angles in the world to instantly make a new star by having an unknown portrayed as a jobber beat a top star. Jim Cornette does all the time to introduce new guys in OVW. Of course the "dummies" in charge when Nikita, JYD, Luger, Goldberg, Kerry Von Erich and God knows how many others who started out pushed huge and were horrible when they started that if they worried that the guys weren't ready when they were already getting over, well, they'd have missed what turned out to be the best money drawing period in every one of their careers except Kerry (whose best drawing period came three years later, but it was that early push when he was clueless in the ring but portrayed as a world beater that made him a star and set up his big drawing years).

NOTE: My WON subscription has expired and I don't have the $90 to put down for more issues right now, so this will be the one of the last posts I will make about WON-related stories until I get a new subscription. If you enjoyed them and have the money, support Meltzer and get a subscription. The stuff I post is probably 20% of the actual newsletter, so there's lots of great stuff that doesn't make it here. The ax fell this week on ten WWE under-card wrestlers, with rumors of a few more on the way. Andrew Martin (Test), Matt Bloom (A-Train), Monty Sopp (Billy Gunn), Nidia Guenard, Carli Begnaud (Jazz), Rodney Begnaud (Rodney Mack), Gail Kim, Jon Hugger (Johnny Stamboli), Rico Costantino, Desmond Thompson (Lamont), and Chuck Palumbo were on the list that decimated the women's division and the Heat roster in particular. We've been told the cuts are not so much financial as that none of the wrestlers on the list were over, nor were they going to get over. The roster is stale, and this is a way to open the doors for new, fresh talent. A few of the wrestlers, most likely Gunn and Test, because they have been around for so long and got contracts during the boom period, probably had significant downside guarantees in the $200,000 range. But I'd suspect, based on new contracts, most on the list were getting less than $ 100,000 downside. Since most were not going on the road full-time (which at this point mostly means $500 per night unless it's an overseas tour, doing anywhere from five-to-sixteen nights per month), they likely would be earning high five to very low six figures. However, others have said the cuts were largely due to the under performance of the recent PPV shows, the company's leading revenue source, plus the realization that house show numbers are not going to increase. In order to maintain profitability at the house shows, it appears they are going to book fewer people on the shows, with less four-way tags and more singles matches. They had already cut way back on taking the top developmental talent on the road, which is a learning experience of working in front of crowds of at least a few thousand every night who don't know who you are as opposed to one hundred people close to the situation who practically know you in Louisville. From this week's tapings, it appears the decimated Heat show will use contracted wrestlers against local jobbers, instead of other contracted wrestlers. The women cuts come as no surprise since Vince McMahon had already talked of hiring some of the cut divas from the Diva Search. However, the cutting of women wrestlers for non-wrestlers shows the company doesn't believe in the women's division, which is now limited to an endless cycle of Trish Stratus and Molly Holly as heels and Victoria and Lita as babyfaces, with Stacy Keibler thrown in, and most likely, frequent turns to freshen things up that will ultimately kill most of them over the long haul. It was only a few months ago when the women's match on Monday night was often stealing the show, but due to the repetitive nature and lack of depth, it was bound to get stale. The cutting of Kim, 28, was the second-most criticized both in and out of the company (firing Test, because he still had nine months of rehab left after neck surgery was the most controversial), both because she works hard in the ring, does lots of unique submission moves, and is very pretty. Her downfall is that she is "cold" in front of the camera as a heel, and was criticized for lacking personality. Ironically, when she first came to WWE as an unknown working house shows, she got over as a babyface strong with her personality. The feeling was with her high¬flying moves, cuteness, submissions, and perfect gymnastics like body, she was totally miscast as a heel and as a garden variety slut when she could have had a unique personality among the women. It was also a surprise since the San Francisco Chronicle had just one week done a major feature on her as one of the country's five most famous women athletes of Korean heritage. The cutting of Kim also exposed just how little time was put into the decision. The idea it was a thought out process was exposed when Kim was put in an angle on the 11/2 Raw show, where she helped Stratus in a beat down of Lita. She was given a new ring outfit, with a more conservative top, but working in an ultra short skirt instead of the jeans pants, with the idea of it being more conducive to do panty shots instead of boob shots. That alone is a sad statement considering it is clear how hard she's worked learning new moves and studying Toryumon tapes, an extra mile virtually none of the locker room has gone. She was cut two days later, exposing any thought process on these cuts was less than two days as if they had considered cutting her, they would have never done an angle with her two days earlier on Raw. Worse, there is no way any rational human can explain cutting Kim and not cutting Linda Miles, who likely has a higher contract (the Tough Enough deals for winners came with staggered annual raises each year built in) and isn't even being used in developmental. (Note from S_D: This was obviously written before Miles was announced as bring fired.) Test, 29, did have heat over personal life issues and hadn't been highly regarded internally for a long time. Because of his size and look, Japan does have interest in him, but the problem is this comes at a time when there are few spots open to foreigners that pay anything. I could see TNA going for him, but he'll come with the tag “WWE reject” and he doesn't work the style of most of the promotion, and even though he has size, his star power can't hang with the useless in-ring workers the company is collecting. A-Train, 32, was a good worker for his size, but lacked charisma, and his size couldn't be his gimmick in a company that already had too many big men. Like with Test, many attempts to push him had failed. He was well liked generally, but after the switch from Smackdown to Raw that was supposed to revitalize him, he was instead buried and never used. He only appeared on RAW once since the trade, being defeated easily by Chris Jericho. His issues with Japan are the same as Test's. Gunn, 41, has had his run. He's been repackaged a million times with the same non-result. He has name recognition, but is beyond stale, and not a good worker. I can see TNA taking him with the idea of reviving the New Age Outlaws, although reports he had signed a contract are not true. I wouldn't recommend it, though. He's also at a point, between his age, training methods, and years in the ring, where his body is going to continue to break down due to injuries on a regular basis. Nidia, 25, was really good in her role as Jamie Noble's girlfriend, but her career fell apart as they needlessly broke the act up and had no idea where to go with either after the feud. As a wrestler, she tries. She's short, and with her overdone boob job, it makes her look fat, particularly next to mostly thin women. She also becomes the first Tough Enough winner to be fired. Jazz, 30, was the unique woman performer in that she looked athletic, heavily muscled, and was not in any way traditionally sexy. Her character was portrayed as the bad-ass among the women, but it's been clear for months it wasn't a character they had any plans for. She never fit into their idea of a woman wrestler even though she had a good feud with Stratus at one point. The sad part about Rodney is you have both husband and wife being fired from their jobs on the same day. At 32, he wasn't young. The only time he showed charisma was in OVW when he was doing a complete replica of his childhood idol, JYD. They weren't doing anything with him and he'd been around long enough that there was little chance he was going to ever mean much. He was brought in to basically be a cheaper version of D-Lo Brown, whom when he was fired, Rodney came in and stepped right into the angle he was in the middle of. Stamboli, 27, quite frankly is a miracle he lasted as long as he did without facing the ax. He had nothing going for him except a physique. He survived the cuts of much of the ex-WCW talent that was trained at the Power Plant that WWE thought had been poorly trained (ironic now with the decision to go with Jody Hamilton as a new trainer for a Georgia territory), who were better workers or had more personality like Sean O'Haire and Rick Cornell (Reno). The only question is timing. The FBI gimmick got over shockingly huge on the recent European tour, even though it's never been seriously pushed. But it just goes to prove the axiom that it doesn't matter if you get over big at house shows, because in WWE in most cases they've already decided your slot and good work in the slot rarely brings you to the next slot as much as improving your body does. If you're looking for similarities in talent losing enthusiasm like WWE, this is it. That actually relates more to Costantino. Rico, given an embarrassing gimmick from day one, made the most of every bad situation he was put in. He almost always got over beyond his level at house shows. But he became the odd man out. The gimmick of the gay guy having this hot chick that he's obviously doing nothing with, and this straight man having the hots for her on the side, was ruined when they created an angle out of the real life engagement of Charlie Haas and Jackie Gayda. Between that, and being 43, he was the highest profile wrestler cut. His age had always worked against him from his first day in WWE camp. Ironically, he was one of the fastest to improve in OVW, where he was a bigger star and more over in that promotion that virtually everyone, including Brock Lesnar, who were brought in to WWE and given all the chances. Palumbo, 33, also shows how little long-term is thought about, since he had just debuted his new "Custom Chucky P” character. Palumbo was tall and muscular, as well as good looking, basically everything they like. He was coordinated, and decent enough athletically. But he never improved and had a rep for being someone who didn't pay attention in the ring. For a guy who looks like him to not make it in WWE, particularly since he appeared to have future superstar written all over him four years ago, shows a real lack of something. He had a lot of heat in the Smackdown locker room for non-wrestling related issues (not drugs), and was buried when he was switched to RAW.

Why is this in the WWE thread

A friend who works for the company. Read: I read it on another site. Read: I can read Viacom press releases.

Debra Williams, the former Mrs. Steve Austin, is backstage at tonight's Raw taping in Austin, Texas. The word going around the back was that she was looking to see if there was any chance that she could come back to WWE. I believe she has been working in real estate in recent months. According to one source, Williams has had some facial surgery but was still said to look "hot." Unfortunately, the same source noted that Williams' attitude was, "worse than even before when she was with Austin." credit: Mike Johnson/PWInsider

"The WWE has released Rico. We wish him the best in his future endeavors." -- WWE.Com

I bet a lot of the Heat/Velocity guys are really scared right now.

Yes

"People don't care about women's wrestling." -- Bischoff on RAW July 2002

And you know what that means *chuckles* AWESOME reference. I used to love it when the Thrillers and Coach Nash would do that.

December 12th Armageddon is a Smackdown PPV according to WWE.Com's calendar. The January 9th Puerto Rico PPV is a RAW PPV.

This is all designed to get American superstars Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho over, of course.

Bret Hart's wife was so ugly. I'd sleep with Sunny too.

Rikishi was told that once the heat on him died down, he would be brought back as long as he didn't do anything with TNA. Noble was told that he was being fired to keep WWE out of trouble due to the nature of his firing, and would be brought back soon.

"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!" -- Test

New Arab-American Characters Make Debut on World Wresting Entertainment's Monday Night Raw STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 1, 2004--The following statement was issued earlier today by World Wrestling Entertainment on parents.wwe.com: WWE® is introducing two new Arab-American characters on Monday Night RAW. Muhammad Hassan and Khosrow Daivari are U.S. citizens who have grown up in America. They love their country. However, they now face a new and different kind of relationship with their fellow U.S. citizens as a result of being Arab-American in a United States still struggling with the tragic events of September 11, 2001. RAW will explore the challenges Hassan and Daivari face as Hassan tries to make his mark as a new WWE Superstar under the guidance of Daivari as his manager. Trademarks: The names of all World Wrestling Entertainment televised and live programming, talent names, images, likenesses, slogans and wrestling moves and all World Wrestling Entertainment logos are trademarks which are the exclusive property of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Link to Press Release

This is what we've got for Survivor series, which is only two weeks away. JBL defends the WWE title against Booker T, and there is said to at least be some internally who want a title change here. TV was clearly building up some sort of an elimination match with Evolution and a partner (Edge?) vs. Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Maven, & Randy Orton and one source did confirm that was in the planning stages. Shelton Benjamin vs. Christian for the IC title was pushed on Raw. I've heard talk of a major gimmick match on the show, and they'd better put some serious stipulations if they've got an elimination match with HHH and Orton, or else this Survivor Series will be a huge disappointment on PPV. The Undertaker vs. Heidenreich in some type of match is a virtual certainty. Kurt Angle, Mark Jindrak, Luther Reigns, and one of the Dudleys face Rey Mysterio, RVD, Eddie Guerrero, & The Big Show in an elimination match. I don't see any way right now they can come close to last year's numbers, since they put Austin's career on the line. It’ll probably Trish Stratus vs. Lita for the women's title. Some interesting notes regarding Taboo Tuesday: For 99% of those involved, the entire show was done on the fly. Nobody knew for sure their stipulations ahead of time, although Ric Flair & Randy Orton and Eric Bischoff & Eugene basically had a very good idea. The production people and even the announcers not only had no clue who was winning the various polls, but no idea of finishes or anything. It was like an episode of Nitro. Some found it exciting, but from people who worked Nitro, it's not something you want to make a habit. The original plan was to have HHH in the ring and announce his opponent. That would have required the match be held earlier in the card, because the tag title match would have had to have followed. So that was changed, and HHH & Michaels were able to have time to work out their match. The women’s Battle Royal, as far as the match went, they could work out, since it was just a vote on what they'd wear. The ones with the toughest deal were the IC title wrestlers. All had to get suited up, even though people like Rodney Mack and Rosey had to know there wasn't a prayer they'd be working. Chris Jericho went out with no idea who he'd be working with until Shelton Benjamin's name was called, and virtually nobody, including Benjamin and Jericho, knew that Vince McMahon had decided to change the title until Vince relayed the info through the ref to both of them as they were ready to start the match. Based on our response level, it doesn't look like the show did well. We got more than for Unforgiven, but below any other recent show. Going up against the Yankees/Red Sox ALCS Game 6 didn't help. I think the concept was good, but the Tuesday night idea was a bad one. Bruce Prichard returned at Raw on 10/25. He was backstage producing pre-taped segments and was also in the agents meeting going over the show. He's at this point not on the writing team. It was Prichard's spot, when he left on sabbatical that Paul Heyman got on the Smackdown writing team. Prichard and John Laurinaitis appeared to be the most unpopular people when it came to talent, at least on the Smackdown side. One thing about Laurinaitis is that he does appear to be far more honest than most if put in that position. I know of examples of when talent would ask him about things, and he'd say things that were direct and without being soft for politics. He told one wrestler outright, and this was wonderful for morale, but the truth, that he didn't see him as someone who could draw. In the recent problems between Ric Flair and Mick Foley, they started when Foley called up Laurinaitis to complain about Flair's statements about him on a U.K. promotional trip because he thought they were wrong for business. Foley asked Laurinaitis if Flair was serious in what he said, or saying it because they had planned to do a program later in the year. I think most in wrestling would have just told Foley that of course, Flair was working the comments, and working the comments in the book, to build a money feud. Instead, and you can judge if this was good or bad, Laurinaitis called Flair, Flair said he was serious, and Laurinaitis told Foley the truth. If Laurinaitis had lied, they'd probably have that match at a major PPV and have some of the best interviews of the year plugging it. So, under the circumstances, you really have to say he told the truth when I've got to think most would have either outright lied, or at least softened it enough to save the program. Vince McMahon wasn't at Raw or Smackdown this week because he was recovering from an undisclosed surgery, and just the fact it was undisclosed has people worried. He is scheduled to return this week. Stephanie McMahon was in charge and the atmosphere was described as chaotic. Vince was involved in the creative process by phone, but it slowed everything down; the scripts weren't finalized until about 7 p.m., which isn't Nitro, but it's unheard of for Raw. The same situation took place before Smackdown in Omaha. David Lagana was on vacation so Paul Heyman was doing even more dealing with wrestlers than usual. There were people noting that when Vince couldn't be there, he didn't send Shane McMahon, but instead, sent HHH to Smackdown to help Stephanie. Carl Sanderson, the Olympic gold medalist, was at the Raw show in Des Moines. I don't believe there is any interest from either side in him doing WWE, as he's far too shy and doesn't like the limelight. Jim Ross mentioned him during the broadcast and several spoke with him backstage. Surprisingly, since Sanderson was sitting front row at the show, he was never shown on camera, even though a lot of the wrestlers, most notably Randy Orton, ended up acknowledging him in front of the crowd after the show went off the air. Shawn Michaels had surgery to repair his meniscus in his left knee on 10/21 in San Antonio and will be out for a few months. Edge missed the Raw shows this weekend, I believe due to his honeymoon, as he was married last week for the second time. He has long since divorced the sister of Val Venis, Alana Morley. The next DVD release that will be heavily pushed is "The Rise and Fall of ECW," which comes out on 11/21. It features a lot of comments from Paul Heyman, who it was said was having problems originally with the project because of the portrayal of ECW. The DVD features some of the most monumental matches in company history, including Raven & Stevie Richards vs. The Pitbulls (this is the match where they broke tons of tables and heat was off the charts), Rey Mysterio vs. Psicosis 2/3 falls (some have said this was the best match in company history), The Sandman vs. Mikey Whipwreck ladder match from 1995, 2 Cold Scorpio vs. Sabu 30:00 draw from 1996 (I was at that match live, and it didn't get over well in the building, and the two had at least one singles match five times as good earlier), Raven vs. Tommy Dreamer from the 1997 Wrestlepalooza PPV), Tazz vs. Bam Bam Bigelow from the 1998 Living Dangerously PPV, and RVD vs. Jerry Lynn from 1999 Hardcore Heaven PPV. Johnny Devine was upset at WWE creative, believing they used the fact he'd been stabbed in a fight and had surgery as the impetus for the John Cena stabbed in the kidney and in danger of losing it storyline on Smackdown with Carlito Caribbean Cool. They did come up with the stabbing only a week or two after it happened to Devine. I can certainly see where he'd think that, because when I heard it, it was one of two things that immediately popped into my head. Timing is awfully coincidental with that one, but being that it was a Puerto Rican wrestler whose last name is Colon lends credence to the Bruiser Brody theory, which more people inside wrestling have suggested to me. It could simply be a coincidence with both. Eddie Guerrero was booked on house shows against Carlito Caribbean Cool, and since it's a title match he actually argued that he should do the job. The company plans were the DQ finish they did in Minneapolis. Right now, a great percentage of the wrestlers have been fans all their lives, and the mentality is the fans deserve winners and losers in matches as much as possible, particularly on the house shows, where nobody gets hurt seriously by doing jobs. Trish Stratus has been having numbness in her hand. In many cases, like Ric Flair, Kurt Angle, Arn Anderson, Chris Benoit, and others, that's the first sign of major neck problems. WWE signed Brian Carlucci, or Brian Danovich, as he was called on Tough Enough, to a developmental deal, off of his gutsy showing at Tough Enough. On the show, John Laurinaitis said the company would pay for his surgery for a torn pectoral and biceps and when he was healthy he'd start at OVW. Danovich made the final 25 at the tryouts. Some attributed the tear to his failure to warm-up properly, but he went right in on 225 on the bench cold, and on his 11th rep, he, on camera, tore his left side of his body up. Nevertheless, and this was gutsy as hell, he, with basically one arm, did the obstacle course the next day, which required climbing walls and pulling things, and finished it, which a lot of credentialed athletes with no injuries passed out or quit on. Danovich was heavily featured on the first episode, with him noting that all the great athletes are trying wrestling coming from other sports, but he's got no sports background because from childhood, all he ever wanted to be was a pro wrestler. It made for great TV clips having him gut his way through the same obstacle course that they showed others quitting on, but it was borderline criminal watching him pull himself up and having him do push-ups on a torn pectoral and watching him scream in pain. Jackie Gayda got a contract partially through going back and training on a torn ACL that needed surgery and working through serious injuries is considered gutsy, and it is, but that's what leads to permanent and chronic injuries, worse injuries, and major pain pill addictions. It's funny that the injury may have been a lucky break for him, because it got him the TV time and the contract. That’s how Matt Morgan got his contract, having to quit out from Tough Enough 2 due to a back injury. It's so strange how fate works. They couldn't pick him for the final eight because he needs surgery. Carlucci came to Les Thatcher's school more than three years ago and did nothing but make enemies due to his cocky attitude. He's apparently had a change of heart of late, but a guy who has been around three years and has made no name for himself on the independent scene isn't what I'd call a fast learner. Bill DeMott knew him from the HWA days and wasn't exactly a fan of his at the time. He was a contender for the final eight had he not been hurt. They showed a football player, who seemed to think he was a real athlete and in great shape, quitting when he gassed out on the obstacle course. To me, Marty Wright was far and away the best guy there from the tape shown. He was the 40-year-old guy, who claimed he was 30, and looked it, but lied and Laurinaitis does not like a liar. So he was cut. Lying is not acceptable in wrestling, unless you get to the superstar level, or you're a promoter. He came off as scary and intimidating just through his look and his talking was great, and his physique blew away everyone else that was 15 years younger than he was. He was said to have been amped up like crazy, because he couldn't sit still the whole time he was there. There were so many ironies when he was talking about setting a good example for kids. It was interesting to see of the five guys pushed, two of them ended up cut. It seemed to me from week one, that, as we noted last week, Daniel Rodimer was the favorite. I can see Mike the Miz getting a lot of votes because a lot of people are going to recognize him from Real World. Daniel Puder was the third of the eight finalists who had a background segment shown. John Minton Jr. did a great promo, and they did a little with him, showing clips of his father, but his lack of a bodybuilder body looked to have killed him. Wes Sims didn't even make TV. I found this way more compelling then the Diva Search. Another person I saw in the background was King Adamo of Zero-One, who would have had by far the most big league experience. He's kind of your 70s stereotypical happy Samoan character at about 5’9’’ and 350 pounds. The Tough Enough guys got their first double-cross, or hazing, at the Smackdown tapings behind the scenes. They were told to go into the dressing room and were told, no matter what happened, they couldn't do anything physical or they'd be gone, but that nothing physical would be done to them. When they got in, they had the wrestlers start screaming at them like they were intruders, and they weren't wrestlers and didn't belong there. The Big Show stood up to scare everyone and kick them out until they pay their dues. Based on what I heard, the tape only showed this and not the rest of the incident. They tried to see what Daniel Rodimer, their favorite, would do impromptu, and he backed down. Show then went to Daniel Puder, who didn't back down, so Show threw him hard into a locker. This was before they went in the ring in Omaha. That's probably why Show told Puder he had a lot of heart when they were in the ring and Puder didn't back down the second time before Show slammed him. There is a very different attitude toward "Tough Enough" this time out. In the previous seasons, there was an emphasis to weed out the weak. This time, they don't want anyone to quit as the whole idea is to draw ratings with one person voted off by the audience every week, although it didn't take more than a day or two before that plan was botched when John Meyer quit. In fact, Al Snow and John “Big” Gaburick begged him to stay, as opposed to what they'd have done in previous years, but ultimately agreed when he said it wasn't for him. He owned his own ad agency and was in his 30s and it was evident on the first day, when he was slow to pick things up, that he had no chance to win. They at first talked about bringing an alternate into Omaha so they'd have eight to start out with, but last word was they would start with seven and not vote the first week. Based on the timetable of when the show is supposed to conclude, if someone quits and they don't put an alternate in, they'd have to avoid a vote for a week. They are doing internet voting instead of phone voting, like they did for the Divas. Mike the Miz is pushing himself on his web site that gets 25,000 visitors per month, so everyone acknowledges his facial recognition from MTV and his web site popularity give him a huge advantage. His MTV stuff on the Real World vs. Road Rules challenge still airs, so aside from him being ahead of everyone in both wrestling and personality, he's got a TV following and a recognition factor than nobody else has. Knowing what the company wants (bigger guys than him), and how they manipulate all voting, it will be very interesting to see how they attempt to counter this. Technically, in their rules, they can change the rules of this contest at their discretion, and they can ignore the voting, although will look foolish doing so. An Observer poll regarding the favorites saw Miz at 55%, compared with 14% for Rodimer, the company favorite, and 11% for Puder, the MMA fighter who looks to be the best athlete. A correction from last week on Nick Mitchell: he didn't get a lot of TV time, but he was another good physique and nice look guy. He's not in his 30s, but actually in his early 20s. The dates we had wrong on him playing Indoor Football were wrong, as he played in the 2004 season with the Beaumont Drillers. All eight competitors were brought to Stamford on 10/23 to start training. Chris Nawrocki and Meyer were having trouble picking up the bumps, and Meyer also got destroyed in like 30 seconds in a wrestling match with Puder, leading to Meyer quitting and after it happened, nobody wanted to wrestle him. Nawrocki came to practice hung over on his second day. Mike the Miz was well ahead of everyone because he's got two years experience, and trained as hard as anyone. He also got drunk the first night when they did a night out when the company swerved the guys by saying they'd pay for everyone's drinks to see who would get irresponsible knowing they had a full day of practice the next day. From what I'm told, he would get drunk a lot on the MTV reality series' he'd been on. Mitchell and Ryan Reeves, among the novices, picked up the wrestling training the quickest. Daniel Rodimer, the favorite, was in the middle of the pack as far as picking things up, but overall doing well. The expectation is anyone who is impressive in picking things up and doesn't win will be offered a developmental deal, since they are looking at stocking multiple small territories with prospects within a year. Wes Sims complained so much about being cut early from not doing well in the drills, that his size worked against him (and in the bench press with his long arms, it's a valid point even though nobody wanted to hear it), and when John Laurinaitis told him he should go to OVW on his own and try out, his reaction was such that he buried himself even deeper. The whole WWE lawsuit to get out of the Jakks and THQ contracts is to put the deals back on the board and take offers from all the major videogame and toy companies. There is an idea of using Matt Morgan as a masked heel. He's not scheduled to be brought up any time soon, but the office asked he get practice with it, which is why he did the deal where he said he was leaving if he lost to Chris Cage. He's coming up under a mask as The Blue Print (his OVW nickname). In OVW, they are going to not hide that it's Morgan, since he's the most over guy in the company and at his size and with his promo ability, putting a mask isn't going to camouflage him. At least the company is getting guys to work with their new gimmicks in training rather than bringing guys up with no warning and putting them in totally new roles as they've done in the past. Barrabas the Prophesizer (not to be confused with the Puerto Rican star of the past), who just started on OVW TV, and was brought to WWE tapings a few weeks back, was already brought up and will use the name Jesus Aguilera, or simply Jesus, as a bodyguard for Carlito Caribbean Cool. He's a Southern California guy whose real name is Aaron Aguilera. He's only wrestled once in OVW (I saw him wrestle a few times years ago since he started in Southern California). He was a developmental prospect years ago, hurt his back, and was cut. His selling and feeding the babyface's comebacks are fine, but he looks green on offense and shows little emotion. But he came to TV a few weeks back, and he's 6’4’’ or 6’5’’, so there you go. As things stand right now, Carmella DeCesare is done, although it wouldn't shock me for her to wind up on Smackdown based on Vince's statement that a few of the Diva Search contestants would likely be "signed by Teddy Long" for that show within the next month. Bobby Heenan, like everyone else, got one of the standard $10,000 contracts for merchandising rights and such as they try and re-market old stars and use them in some capacity with the launch of WWE 24/7. He hadn't signed, but with TNA not having shown any interest in him, inevitably he'll likely be involved in that project. The movie "Doom," which The Rock has the lead role in that he's filming in Prague right now, is scheduled for an August 2005 release. 10/18 Smackdown brand house show in Minneapolis drew 4,000, which is good for a house show these days, but Minneapolis is one of those traditional wrestling markets. 10/22 Raw house show in Green Bay drew 2,100. 10/23 Raw show in Madison, WI drew an estimated 1,500. The 10/23 Smackdown show in Ottawa drew an estimated 2,250. 10/24 Raw show in Cedar Rapids also drew an estimated 1,500. 10/24 Smackdown in Montreal drew an estimated 4,000.

In all the time I've been a fan of pro wrestling, I've never been more concerned, or more scared, about its future. Not that the business won't be around, because WWE has so much money, but that pro wrestling, unless the problems are addressed, will end up at a lower level of popularity than at any time in recent memory. To look at the 1992-1995 period in the U.S. and say things were far worse, and in ways they were far worse, misses a major point. Yes, revenues were far lower, and about the only promoter in the U.S. running at a profit was Jerry Jarrett with the USWA. And while his company hadn't started losing money because he had guys working five nights a week for $125 per week, it eventually did and by then was already headed down the path that would end up as extinction. But it felt like there were people interested in wrestling, and more, there were so many things about wrestling being done internationally, in particular in Japan and Mexico, that were revolutionary at the time. There were many great wrestlers around who, often because of size, had not been exposed to the U.S. fan base. There were ideas that could shake things up, such as the UWFI vs. New Japan feud in Japan that Eric Bischoff saw at a sold out Tokyo Dome which led to the NWO angle that was one of the things that started the ball rolling. There was ECW as a cult favorite, using both ideas from Japan, creating new talent, and some new ideas that started getting a cult following. Today, there is none of that. While Mexico is doing fine, the smaller guys doing incredible high spots that was one of the new innovations of the late 90s, has already been done in the U.S. Ultimately, for a number of reasons, some due to people who didn't understand the style or thought it was wrong, or who thought small guys couldn't get over in the U.S., and on some points may have been right, it wasn't booked to succeed. And that can kill anything. Today, the public has seen every great high flying move and due to so many injuries, WWE has shied away from "holy shit" moments, so it has not been booked as something important, and it isn't. The ECW hardcore, taken from FMW in Japan, with the table breaking and heavy usage of weapons and blood, came, was hot, but has been passé for some time. Long-term, it becomes numbing and worse, both WWE and WCW turned it into a comedy feeling rather than a brutal deal, and naturally, that killed it dead. But what that period had was so many stars, and with new match-ups on the WWE side, and dream match-ups on the WCW side, every week, the hotness of the product enabled others pushed to become big stars. There is no new style, new angle, or new wrestlers making their mark overseas that can be imported to make things fresh. The worst thing done by WWE over the past three years is not only not really making new stars, although they have tried and even came close with Brock Lesnar, but he was victimized by being flip-flopped from heel to face too quickly, but for reasons that sounded very good at the time, they took people who were stars to the fans, and portrayed them as being fake stars who weren't really big-time. Whether it was Rob Van Dam, Diamond Dallas Page, Booker T, or Bill Goldberg, it doesn't matter now, because the damage has long since been done and time will tell if the very expensive lessons of opportunities squandered has been learned from. In 2001, when things started declining, any fan with a halfway decent understanding of booking could have come up with money scenarios that somehow the professionals couldn't, or wouldn't, see. Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero were pushed as mid-carders for so long that it was going to be difficult, even with Benoit getting a huge booking push early this year, for them to be able to carry the top. Others, Triple H and The Undertaker, who are portrayed the strongest, are stale from so many years at the top and people not believing in their opponents as real challengers. Within the front office of the company, they've been told by management that Randy Orton on the Raw brand and John Cena on the Smackdown brand are being groomed, it takes time, but they'll be the new stars to turn it around, and that things are six months to a year away from turning around. That was also the line about the brand extension, a few steps back but ultimately steps forward, and now, two plus years in, there have been no steps forward. A few new stars have been made that would have been made anyway, and PPV is weakening due to less talent depth on shows and weaker and repeat main events. The only benefit is I believe it slowed up the inevitable burning out of talent by being in angles once a week instead of twice, and with two brands, allowed more people to work house shows and thus speed up their learning curve for new guys. It also has created so many titles that NOBODY knows who the champs are, NOBODY cares. All belts are meaningless, and that is not a good thing. It's still very early in the game for Orton, and he's got a great look and for his age and experience level, is a great wrestler, but his first taste at the top and his face turn were not successful. Even the most optimistic realize there is nothing on the horizon that is going to change things, and as many have stated since the summer of 2001, the best thing to do is plan long-term (which they are doing to a degree with HHH vs. Orton's Wrestlemania rematch, and Kurt Angle vs. The Undertaker, which no hints have even been started on) and hope that brings anticipation. If you look at the company's most successful shows in the past three years, they have all involved either long-term angles or old stars returning. Cena has not crossed over to teenagers like they expected, even though his rap skills and charisma says he should. They are taking a big gamble with Cena, and the odds are against it succeeding, but at the same time, sometimes you just have to roll the dice. Using Mike Tyson was a huge financial gamble. Wrestlemania I was an even bigger gamble, as it could have killed the company, and instead, made the company. If Cena's movie flops, it will be very difficult for him to be the superstar they want him to be. The gamble is, if it catches on, he'll be seen as a much bigger star and cooler personality. Given WWE's track record with non-wrestling ventures (which is beyond awful), and that when wrestling was "in," Hulk Hogan, the biggest draw in wrestling, and Roddy Piper, who was near the top, both went into film careers. Hogan survived being a joke on the screen, but he was already an established super draw in wrestling. Piper maintained stardom until the end at WCW, but his movie career didn't make him a bigger star in wrestling, and his drawing power peak was all before he went to Hollywood. Neither were big stars in Hollywood, and they were the coolest wrestlers with huge followings when wrestling was in. Cena, like Kane, are stars with no drawing power within wrestling, when wrestling is cold. As far as the 2005 bottom line, the expansion into doing three movies next year has a lot of people concerned. The time is wrong to put wrestlers in movies when wrestling itself is so cold. The stars involved aren't even selling tickets when they wrestle, so how can they be expected to sell tickets in a movie theatre? And movies are a high risk venture and, while these aren't big budget movies, they are still $10 million investments that can easily be next year's version of WWF New York. We've already seen the WCW pattern. Ratings fall. House shows fall greatly. PPV falls. Suddenly, even the live Nitros, Thunders, and PPV live events can't sell tickets. And things continue to fall. You shoot angle after angle and nobody cares. You bring back legends, but it doesn't work. Then you find good-looking muscular young guys as your new stars and even have the old stars put them over, but you're so deep in the hole that nobody cares, but the old stars know how to lose without putting people over. Morale is horrible. Long-term creative is thinking a week ahead. Angles that should draw are done with such frequency that they are killed, and nobody believes or cares about anything. Sound familiar? Like a live Raw a few weeks ago in Madison Square Garden drawing 7,000 paid. Or a PPV live event in a city that was on fire like Portland, OR, drawing 6,500. Or a PPV hyped with a huge local media blitz, Taboo Tuesday last week in Milwaukee, drawing barely 3,500 paid, by far the smallest paid attendance for a WWE PPV show in history, and even at the end of WCW's run, their PPV shows were doing as well as that. The word from Cleveland is Survivor Series, one of the "big four," is on the verge of tanking. For a while, it appeared the declines had leveled off. But even in previous bad periods, the PPV events were always a hot ticket. Over the past year, the house show business has been consistently bad, but Monday Raws were a hot ticket and PPVs often sold out, and until recently, always did well. Now, aside from Wrestlemania, there is nothing guaranteed to be able to sell out a major arena. The idea of a sellout in North America for a house show is becoming an endangered species. PPV has not fallen like WCW, because the company has a long-time history of presenting better shows, most notably the main events that have more often than not delivered. Also, they are the only game in town, so there is no real PPV wrestling competition, only competition from big boxing and UFC as shows that do any real business, and neither have any affect on purchases of a wrestling PPV. The "bare minimum" of 260,000 buys has fallen to 190,000, and it won't get better until shows are of the caliber they once were. The big drops in the bottom number each took place during the period when they were promoting more than one PPV per month, over the summer (base falling to 225,000) and this month (dropping farther to 190,000). If there is one change that is really clear to me, it's that the experiment of doing two PPV shows certain months is going to be, long-term, a major mistake. Once people start skipping a show, and that is happening with sizeable numbers, it becomes easier to just save money unless something really strong is promised, and that's hard to do when you have the same headliner roster every month. You'd think with so many TV viewers, that just on a percentage basis, it will always be above the 100,000 buys range to where it's healthy, and with good TV and good shows, it probably would. But the lessons of WCW, falling to as low as 55,000 buys while still doing 2.5 ratings, tells you bad shows and bad booking can sink things quite a bit lower. Worse, at this point, they aren't recognizing the problem. The 2005 PPV scheduled starts 1/9 with New Yew's Revolution in San Juan, a Raw show. Royal Rumble is 1/30 in Fresno. No Way Out, a Smackdown show, is 2/20 in Pittsburgh. Wrestlemania is 4/3 in Los Angeles. Backlash, a Raw show, is 5/1 in Manchester, NH. Judgment Day, a Smackdown show, is 5/22 in Minneapolis at Target Center. Bad Blood, a Raw show, is 6/12 in Detroit. Great American Bash, a Smackdown show, is 6/26 in Las Vegas, so that's three shows in seven weeks and I expect them to achieve a new bottom point at that time. Vengeance, a Raw show, is 7/24. SummerSlam is 8/21. Unforgiven, a Smackdown show, is 9/18. No Mercy, a Raw show, is 10/9. The plans for a second Taboo Tuesday have been changed, and they will have an as yet unnamed Smackdown show on 10/30, which almost has to be a Halloween theme (Havoc?). The year will end with Survivor Series on 11/27, which goes to Thanksgiving weekend for the first time in years, and the Raw Armageddon show on 12/18. International is still strong, and it may be for a while. Even when business was weak in North America in the 90s, most of the international tours did great business, and WCW, even at the end when they were a joke, drew huge crowds in England and Australia. But I've never felt such a malaise and lack of interest, and saw less that could turn things around. In that bad period, there were far more stars people cared about than today. The stars created in the late-80s were far younger. And while a new group of stars was created in the late-90s, the nature of so much in the way of television main events and not protecting stars in booking and portrayal has stripped most of them of the kind of marketability needed in a star-driven business. The excuses that The Rock and Steve Austin are gone, and reality shows have cut into ratings (the latter I think is total bullshit and the former misses the point that while things would be better with Rock and Austin around, we'd still be in a decline right now because they also would be stale from so many straight years if they were around all the time) sound good to outsiders, but the reality is different. By not elevating enough talent, and not creating enough new talent, combined with overexposure, things got stale. Anyone could have seen this coming three plus years ago, and many astute people in the business saw it in 2000, when numbers were still hot and the next generation was getting positioned as guys who were cool because business was hot, but no threat to the top, exactly how things were two years earlier in WCW. We're paying for not being able to follow the crazy falls and high spot oriented matches with a toned down work style. We're paying for running through so many ideas and angles so fast years ago that nobody cares about anything. We're paying for stopping people's ascension to where people stopped having an emotional attachment to them, which is needed for the top guys to do business. We're paying for people seeing so many variations of wrestling and now, when most of the variations are shunned and you only see the basic WWE style, things become too similar, even when they are done well. And wrestling, at least the North American version has always thrived on variety of characters and it's become a business of conformity. And there's always the humane reasons regarding talent that often result in declines after success. Successful companies don't want to put the people who worked so hard and so well for them on the unemployment line, since there are no territories to ship them out to. Success and stability breed an attitude where it is hard for newcomers to break through or to drop stale performers, because the stale performers have a track record of drawing and are better performers, but a fresh business needs to constantly turn over talent anyway. WWE is still profitable, because of increasing prices, so what is happening is a far smaller base of fans is being asked to spend far more per person, higher house show prices, higher PPV prices, and more PPV shows, to support the machine. The 24/7 project is not going to be supported by a new fan base, although it will be interesting to see if they can garner interest from the departed fan base for nostalgia. But nostalgia has a short shelf life. What is happening with the loss of popularity and decline in numbers of fans and the reasons for the decline mirror similar circumstances after great success for Jim Crockett Promotions and WCW. The talent is largely a pat hand for years. And it's charismatic talent that was on fire during the good years. But it's the same guys against each other, and the only changes are babyface-to-heel switches, that often involve situations the public doesn't accept and don't work. Yes, Crockett ran up big debt expanding nationally and paying for so much TV time, but the crowds in the core cities were also dropping. WCW ran in even bigger debt with insane expenses, but what killed the company was revenue dropped when people stopped buying the PPVs, and going to the arenas. WCW's decline was sped up by producing horrible television, and also going against a cooler competitor with a new generation of younger stars that was blowing them away in competition. Crockett's decline came when there was a competitor that simply had more exposure and bigger stars, and the U.S. usually doesn't support what it considers a minor league brand. The fact WWE, with no competition, is losing interest every year is far more unsettling. WWE is in no danger of disappearing with its huge war chest and well run financial side. But as WCW showed, having all the money in the world can't make a disinterested public care, or keep revenues from falling. Wall Street, which WWE has to answer to, will get very negative since it wants to see company expansion into new fields, and WWE never does well with that. They also want to see revenue growth, and doing so by adding to the number of PPV events is going to work against them in the long run. TNA is spending real money, and they can't even make 10,000 of the staunchest wrestling fans in the U.S. care. What concerns me the most is, in the past, so many people would come up with so many ideas to turn things around, and there were far more "wrestling" fans that enjoyed "pro wrestling" as opposed to simply WWE fans, losing interest in that product, and so few with any interest in anything else. While most wouldn't have worked, the fact was, some of them did. Now, nobody is coming up with any ideas other than copying the past. When the New York audience booed the car crash angle at Unforgiven, you could see special effects is not what is wanted, and is being rejected. Well, especially when we've seen guys in car crashes many times over the years, and somehow, they survive without much more than a scratch. When great match after great match early this year on Raw didn't help ratings, you could see great wrestling matches wasn't going to turn this around, but at least people don't reject that. The company, whenever business is down, turns to big men, as we've seen by the new hiring policy, and who is being brought in. This happened in the 90s with the efforts to replace Hulk Hogan with Lex Luger, and using people like Kevin Nash, Yokozuna, King Mabel, Sid Vicious, Ludvig Borga, and Papa Shango in main event positions, none of whom drew, and with the exception of Nash, none of whom is even remembered well today, and none of whom was part of the company's turnaround (Nash was part of WCW's turnaround). The people who turned around the company were, for the most part, the great performers. They'd be better off secretly funding TNA to be a competitor, and slipping real talent to them that is stale, and helping them get real television and giving work and experience to young wrestlers, who could then be brought up having made at least a small name. They did some of that with ECW, but not in a way to help ECW much, and that's not happening today. When TNA went to McMahon a few years ago with that idea, they didn't call back. And as a public company and with a smarter fan base, it's hard to keep something like that on the down-low. Is there a Mike Tyson or even a Dennis Rodman in sports today? No to the former, but as far as the latter, there is Shaquille O’Neal (a huge fan, like Karl Malone was), Kobe Bryant (a controversial figure who makes the news with everything he does, more than Rodman), and others just as big. Shaq & Orton vs. Kobe & HHH would be bigger than the Rodman-Malone show WCW put together and would get the public into it. But those guys aren't hurting for money, and would have to endure tremendous criticism for doing it (way more than Malone and Rodman took because wrestling was far more accepted by the public in 1998). It's not happening, but it would at least make WWE a topic of conversation again, but even that idea is a rehash of something from the past. And when they are done, it's still the same product. Rodman & Malone didn't help WCW one bit long-run. Tyson did, because Austin worked so well with him, and immediately had the program with McMahon to follow up with. Also, unlike in the early and mid-90s, international isn't looking much better. New Japan is compared by Japanese in the know to WCW, with the frequent direction changes and no ideas, as well as now operating in the red. All Japan is a glorified independent with many wrestlers way behind on pay. Women's wrestling is almost dead now, and will be deader by the end of next year when the biggest women's group, Gaea, is no more. Pride doesn't have the drawing cards to make next year as successful as the past few, as the money players (Ogawa, Yoshida, and Sakuraba) aren't going to be major factors. K-l had business success with the Bob Sapp and Akebono freak show, but you can't follow that, and its strength now looks to be its middleweights. NOAH seems stable, as it does well on big shows, but its nightly business isn't strong. But its big shows have been carried by Kenta Kobashi, who in many ways is reminiscent of a 2001 Keiji Mutoh as the guy whose knees are shot who is gutting out great matches. But the long-run of that isn't pretty, as the 2004 Keiji Mutoh shows. They have a good product that satisfies its fan base by putting on largely strong big shows, but they have set the bar high, and have gone through every marquee match on top and have to look outside for fresh big show main events. Some look at NOAH's success in at least maintaining its level during a general downturn world wide as an example that if you don't insult your audience and give them a good product, you will do fine. Sadly, that's only the case when you've got stars, and Japan's future when it comes to new stars is bleak, partially because the TV audience is down, and the network shows, at 30 minutes airing after midnight, makes it difficult to create new fans and without lots of people seeing you on television, you don't create mainstream stars. Plus, PPV looks like it will never become a lucrative revenue stream in Japan for pro wrestling. Additionally, American culture can be exported all over the world and it's seen as a big deal. Japanese culture doesn't play well outside that country, making huge international business that is propping up WWE right now, next to impossible. In 2005, if nothing else, the TV situation looks stronger for U.S. competition. TNA is at least on TV, but the TV hasn't caught people's interest. UFC will have some TV, a reality show right after Raw, and at least one live special on Spike TV although it will be two reality show fighter matches. The rating of that special is going to be very important to the company's future, as well as how the reality show goes over. UFC is a PPV driven business, and there are so many PPV events, that very few become special. Aside from Randy Couture vs. Chuck Liddell, there is no UFC money fight people care about for next year until they make new stars, and even that one is one that has been done before. Real Pro Wrestling will be on PAX, but that network averages a 0.5 in prime time and I shudder to think what it gets on a Sunday afternoon. And in what will be among the biggest news stories of next year, WWE will have some interesting TV negotiations.

Taking Heidenreich as a threat to the Undertaker is something I can't take seriously. Why? Pop in the DVD of Armageddon 2003 and watch him job to Rico.

You guys are forgetting they were up against the Yankees/Red Sox ALCS Game 6. You know they'll use that excuse.

Are you not realizing that the overall PPV production cost is doubled due to doing two? Basically, they put in the cost of two PPVs for a buy rate that equals one PPV. How in the world can anyone call that a success?

No matter how they may try to look at it, the two-PPVs-in-a-month experiment was a bust for WWE. In numbers released by the company, the 10/3 No Mercy PPV did about 190,000 buys while Taboo Tuesday did about 170,000 buys. These are the first two shows in company history to do less than 225,000 buys and say a lot about the state of WWE’s business. While WWE will still make money from the shows, it’s becoming pretty clear that there is a saturation point for WWE events and they have probably found it. Credit: PWInsider/Dave Scherer

Just like "Spike".

I can't wait to see how they're going to spin the whole Mike Awesome jumps to WCW with the ECW Title deal. Expect tons of verbal masturbation about how a WWE wrestler beat a WCW wrestler for an ECW Title and how that makes WWE rule all.