QuestionMan

WWE TABOO TUESDAY POLL RESULTS Thumbs up ------------------------ 49 (40.2%) Thumbs in the middle ----------- 19 (15.6%) Thumbs down -------------------- 54 (44.3%) BEST MATCH POLL Randy Orton vs. Ric Flair -------- 97 Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels ---- 28 WORST MATCH POLL Christy Hemme vs. Carmella -- 96 Eugene vs. Eric Bischoff -------- 20 Gene Snitsky vs. Kane --------- 14 When Taboo Tuesday was first announced, I was skeptical, as it reminded me of a conversation many years ago with Houston promoter Paul Boesch. He said that you have to be in control of your storylines, not in those exact words. He said at one point, he did a gimmick in his program where he asked fans to vote for the match they most wanted to see. At the end of the night, the votes were clear, the fans wanted a match they could never see the way the business was at the time, where the area's top two faces (forgive me but I don't know who they were at the time) would face each other in a singles match. He thought since the fans spoke, he should deliver the match and since they wanted it the most, it would draw great. The match bombed, and a lesson was learned. This was an era where most promoters (and there were exceptions) had learned that if you put the two most over faces against each other, the box office was usually disappointing, which explained why 98% of the main events in that era were face vs. heel. Of course, times do change. Steve Austin vs. The Rock at Wrestlemania X-7 at the Astrodome was probably the biggest drawing single match in wrestling history (if Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant was around when technology had advanced, it very well may have been bigger, but it wasn't) and it was the two super faces of the time against each other. But still, what fans tell you they want to see and what they will pay to say aren't always the same. With 14 PPV shows per year, I think the company needs more "concept shows" to differentiate, especially with PPVs becoming routine with the lack of depth caused by not mixing up talent, and splitting talent in two. Ultimately, I liked the idea. When it was over, in execution, I didn't think much of the concept. My only thought was that anyone who watched that show and couldn't realize just how great Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels are, today, as performers, well, they don't really understand what working is. Flair and Michaels, through their working ability, facials, emotions, and intensity, saved a show that was in the toilet after Carmella and Christy Hemme's debut match, and a series of bad matches before a lackluster crowd. Proving Boesch's axiom right on this night (and there are no universal truths or laws in wrestling, just things that are correct more often than not), the Bradley Center did not sell well for a show where the fans were theoretically picking the main event. There were tickets available in every price range, even close up ringside, the day of the show. The night before, at Raw in Chicago, they were handing out coupons for $10 tickets for people who wanted to attend live in Milwaukee (Milwaukee is a little less than 2 hours away from Chicago). Ultimately, what we did learn was this: the company can fully manipulate these things as it saw fit. By only opening up the voting for a one day period, starting during the Raw show the night before, most of the voting results were pre-ordained based on comments and actions on Raw. While most if not all of the results were probably "anticipated," its true none were known until the show began. Shelton Benjamin won the voting among the IC title contenders that Batista (who was pushed for the spot the prior week) was not put in, and won the voting handily. Everyone knew that Eric Bischoff vs. Eugene would be a hair match and Ric Flair vs. Randy Orton would be a cage match. Jerry Lawler pushed the idea for the women's Battle Royal to be a schoolgirl match. Kane vs. Gene Snitsky actually in storyline pushed a pipe legal from the original angle, but no direction was pushed the past two weeks and it really didn't matter it wound up a chain match. In the Carmella vs. Christy match, it was made clear not to vote for an aerobics challenge, leaving voting as either a lingerie pillow fight (which won) or an evening gown match. The big one almost got too cute. As noted before, the plan was for Michaels to get the match with HHH, but it was going to be legit when it came to voting and they believed in a fair vote, Chris Benoit could win, but Edge would have no chance. So they booked a three-way, putting Edge, the total heel over the last few weeks, over Benoit, to favor Michaels. Instead, Edge nearly won. Michaels ended up with 39% to 33% for Edge and 28% for Benoit. Worse, Michaels tore his meniscus in his left knee in the match at Raw in Chicago, and the doctors recommended surgery, which he will be getting this week. He knew going in this would be his last match for probably a couple of months. He did nothing stupid, and he had to rely on everything but his athletic ability, but could still pull it off. We were told after the trainer examined Michaels the night before that Michaels would probably not be able to wrestle on the PPV, and he was the favorite to win the voting. But knowing the mentality of WWE main event wrestlers, I never expected Michaels to not wrestle. They turned the injury into a storyline angle, and the basis of the match. It wasn't match of the year, or even the show, but it was a great dramatic performance by Michaels when he wasn't able to do much physically, and a great storyline finish. Edge, which "deserved" to win the voting, had earlier walked out and left the arena in the tag title match, which Benoit, single-handedly, still won. So Edge & Benoit are tag champs again. When Michaels, after hobbling around and selling his knee the entire match, made his comeback and was about to hit the superkick, Edge showed back up, speared Michaels, causing HHH to pin him. While the obvious Michaels-Edge program may have to be held off due to the surgery (and the way things have been booked of late, it may even be forgotten by the time he gets back), this did establish Edge as being of the level of those in the world title picture. It's a position fans hadn't accepted him in up to this point. After the show went off the air, Vince McMahon introduced Pat Patterson, telling fans it was Patterson's last night with the company and he'd given his life for wrestling. Patterson thanked the fans. Vince made him sing "My Way," which he does constantly at karaoke bars that he's a constant at after shows. Shane and Stephanie McMahon came out at that point and Patterson left with the p.a. playing "My Way" by Sinatra. A. Sgt. Slaughter defeated Mohammad Hassan via DQ. They did one dark match in the building. Mark Magnus came out as Mohammad Hassan. They brought out two total unknowns and Sgt. Slaughter and asked fans to pick the opponent. You know who they picked. Slaughter is now 56, so it went very quickly before Khosrow Daivari interfered for the DQ. Hassan, even without any television exposure, got a lot of heat, including when he did the old school prayer rug gimmick. 1. Shelton Benjamin pinned Chris Jericho in 10:55 to win the Intercontinental Title. Benjamin got 37% of the vote to 20% for Batista and 7% for Jonathan Coachman. This change was probably to get over the concept the fans vote meant something, as they had to have the fans pick a title change on this show. Crowd was dead to the point Jerry Lawler brought it up saying it's because the crowd hadn't chosen a favorite. It was a good match. Benjamin got near falls with his spin kick and with a clothesline off the top. He missed a Stinger splash and Jericho used the walls. Jericho got a near fall with the Lionsault. Benjamin scored a clean pin with his exploder powerslam move. **3/4 2. Trish Stratus kept the Women's Title in a Battle Royal in 5:30. They amended the Battle Royal rules where you're eliminated when your feet hit the floor, even if you go under the bottom rope. 53% voted school girl outfits, 30% voted French maid outfits, and 17% voted Nurses outfits. This wasn't meant to be a wrestling match, just an excuse to deliver as many panty shots, ass shots, and crotch shots as possible in a short amount of time under the guise of wrestling. In that sense, it delivered, but as wrestling, or as a Battle Royal, it was bad. Victoria was the first schoolgirl to wear an ultra short skirt and a heavy knee brace, which I'd think would be written up by the fashion police. Nidia is from Puerto Rico, I guess preparing a cheap pop for the January Raw PPV show in San Juan. Nidia's shirt came off. Jazz looked totally out of place in this. Eliminations were Nidia, Jazz, Gail Kim, Victoria, and surprisingly Stacy Keibler, so they ended with two heels in there. Stratus threw out Molly to win. DUD 3. Gene Snitsky pinned Kane in 14:17. It was 30% chair, 29% pipe, and 41% chain as the weapon of choice. The match was designed to make Snitsky into a serious killer, and couldn't have been booked better. Snitsky dominated, choking Kane with a chain for long periods of time. It had no heat most of the way even though it was booked for heat. Kane isn't the best at selling, and Snitsky's offense is terrible, and then Snitsky blew up. Snitsky used a chair to the throat three times, and then put a chair around Kane's neck, and came off the top rope with a stomp to the chair. It was the same angle Kane had done a few months back to Michaels. Kane bit the condom and there was a lot of blood coming out of his mouth. Ref Chris Kay called for help. Snitsky left, apparently forgetting to pin Kane. Jim Ross even said the match was over. Snitsky then came back and did nothing, but cover Kane for the pin. Kane went out on a stretcher. The injury angle is, like with John Cena, to explain his doing the movie "Eye Scream Man" in Australia. He'll be gone for a few months, so Snitsky winning was really the only logical finish. They went so far as to have Snitsky knock Kane off the stretcher and beat on him even more. I don't think anyone had ever seen Kane manhandled like that. People didn't believe for a second in Kane's injuries, as there was none of the clapping you get when you carry a guy out, but when Snitsky attacked him on the stretcher, even though Kidman just did it two weeks ago with Paul London, it got some heat. *3/4 4. Eugene pinned Eric Bischoff in 2:01 in a hair match. Hair match got 59%, servant got 20%, and wearing a dress for a month got 21%. Match was terrible. Eugene channeled Hulk Hogan, cupping his ear to get reaction (and got the biggest pop thus far in the show doing so), and then used a legdrop for the pin. I can't imagine them doing this unless Vince has decided he's going to call Hogan for Mania. Well, a 2.96 does that to you. Coachman claimed the fans live had voted for the servant match, even though they hadn't, and Coachman said Bischoff would have to be Eugene's servant for five minutes. Out comes Vince McMahon to right the wrong, and get more revenge on Bischoff for 1997. Bischoff walked off and McMahon said he'd fire him if he didn't get his head shaved. Eugene tried to use the electric razor, but that wasn't working. He used scissors and the razor for a while, making Bischoff look like a mess. McMahon, seeing the gray roots, made fun of Bischoff for dying his hair. As if Vince hasn't done that for 15 years, so that made it kind of funny. He also ordered Coach to take off his shirt, and pants, and put on a dress. Well, for all you aspiring WWE announcers, don't forget being made a fool out of is part of the job. Coachman had to wear the dress the rest of the show, long after the joke had played out. DUD Edge was really mad at Michaels for not dropping out, noting that he could win the title, but Michaels will go on there, and with one leg, ultimately lose. They did a very good job on the last day with the hand they were dealt. 5. Chris Benoit & Edge beat La Resistance to win the World Tag Titles in 16:15. Edge was a heel to the point the crowd didn't even cheer him against La Resistance. This was a good match, although Sylvain Grenier was doing everything humanly possible to make that not be the case. Mostly the heat was on Benoit. Edge finally walked off and left, didn't shower, jumped in a car, and drove off. He missed Benoit making a comeback on both guys, finishing with two German suplexes and a crossface on Conway. So Edge was half the tag champs even though he was long gone. **3/4 6. Christy Hemme pinned Carmella in 1:48. They both came out in regular clothes and had a changing booth that you could see silhouette of their bodies in. Fans voted 10% for the aerobics match, 57% for the lingerie pillow fight, and 33% for an evening gown match. They then went to change into new lingerie. Shouldn't they have had it on underneath their clothes or is that too simple? Hemme was playing stripper tease while Carmella made sure nobody could see her change even via shadow. I presume this was Carmella’s last appearance (at least that was the plan two weeks ago), and they found falsies in her bra and made fun of her. They hit each other with pillows with feathers flying everywhere. Carmella was knocked out by three unanswered hits with a soft pillow. This was as bad as the night in San Jose where Mick Foley and Owen Hart decided to have the worst match possible and sold popcorn bag shots. But in their case, they were at least trying to get negative stars. -* 7. HHH pinned Shawn Michaels in 14:05 to keep the World Title. Michaels spent the entire match limping and overselling his real injury. It was so simple, but effective, entirely due to the facial emotions of Michaels and somewhat the announcing. He moved a dead crowd into giving him a standing ovation for a match where he did virtually nothing except for bad looking punches (which for storyline they had to be) and one elbow off the top that came off as a move of courage as opposed to a spot he does in every match. Michaels selling made a figure four spot by HHH work, with him begging the ref not to stop the match as the ref teased stoppage. The only negative was Michaels did three reverse atomic drops with HHH landing on the bad knee. Michaels got a near fall after a low blow and DDT, before another with the elbow off the top. Michaels went for the superkick, but the ref didn't see Edge spear Michaels. HHH crawled over for the pin. Michaels was helped out of the ring to a big pop. ***½ Uncle Eric was walking around backstage with a gray crewcut. He wasn't shaved bald and didn't really look that bad. Still, they made it out that everyone was laughing at him backstage. Kind of funny, as two of the people laughing were Steve Keirn and Mike Mondo. He looked at them and said he'd fire them if they laughed then looked at Mondo (who they are looking at giving a developmental contract) and Bischoff said, "I haven't even hired you yet, and I’ll still fire you." 8. Randy Orton pinned Ric Flair in a cage match in 10:35. Here's a trivia note. With the exception of Royal Rumbles, this was the first time Flair had ever been in the main-event on a WWE PPV and it was the first time he had ever done a cage match in WWE. It was also his first PPV main event since WCW Uncensored on March 19th, 2000, when he drew a microscopic buy rate in the death's doors of WCW for a strap match where he put over Hulk Hogan. It was pretty much a lock when they put him on last that he was going to steal the show. It was an old school cage match, with tons of blood, and really, that was most of the bout. Orton juiced first. It was a great brawl from both sides, with the usual hard chops from Flair. No face first bump, but he was slammed off the top. The two were drenched in blood. Flair didn't do much, but his facials, and his intensity while bloodied brought the crowd up far more than anyone else did all night. Flair used a brass knuckles shot for a near fall. Orton came back with the RKO for the pin. The post-match was even better, as Flair willed the spirit of a Terry Funk turn. He put out his hand for Orton to shake. At first, the people didn't want to see it. They ended up hugging and the crowd thought they were seeing something special. ***½

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.

You sound like a Bret Hart sympathist.

As expected, preliminary figures show No Mercy as the least successful PPV show in company history when it comes to buy rate. The preliminary estimates of the 10/3 show from the Meadowlands headlined by the JBL vs. Undertaker Last Ride Match for the WWE Title were 190,000 buys, or a 0.34 buy rate. While the number of buys would have been above many of the shows during the company’s dark ages, the lowest buy rate in company history is believed to have been a 0.35 for the December 15th, 1996 In Your House PPV headlined by Bret Hart vs. Davey Boy Smith for the WWF Title (which was a hell of a match). The show was down about 30% from last year’s 270,000 buys for the Smackdown No Mercy show with a double main event of Vince McMahon vs. Stephanie McMahon in an I Quit/Loser Leaves Town Match and The Undertaker vs. Brock Lesnar in a Biker Chain Match for the WWE Title, a number that was considered terrible at the time. The show this year was expected to do the lowest number in years going in, since far more hype was directed at Taboo Tuesday just two weeks later, as well as a lackluster line-up for the show. WWE did a major marketing survey this past week. The company has hired people to call 50,000 people on their merchandise list for their thoughts on everything. Among the questions being asked about where, for those who attended Wrestlemania, how much money they spent on hotels, tickets, in New York if they attended any Broadway shows, bars, bought clothes, food all weekend, food at the show, merchandise at the show, etc. I think they are trying to gather stats here on how much a Wrestlemania means to a local economy to get better deals from host cities. They also ask about age, profession, and household income. They also ask how many PPV shows you've purchased over the past year and how many live shows you've attended. They also asked for opinions on the following people, and who they asked about is very interesting: HHH, Hulk Hogan, John Cena, Randy Orton, The Rock, Mick Foley, Kurt Angle, The Undertaker, and Sting. They then asked about thoughts on current storylines as well as suggestions for improvement of the company. I'll tell you what they need to do. They need to spend every Monday and Thursday night in a home with a popular high school kid who always has lots of friends over and you'll learn real fast why people watch, why they don't watch, and who they do and don't care about, and when bullshit click (the term for this is bullshit, change the channel, and start watching something else) happens. WWE filed a lawsuit on 10/19 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District in New York against Jakks Pacific, Inc., its foreign subsidiaries, THQ Inc., Stanley Shenker & Associates, Inc., and Bell Licensing, LLC. The suit also mentions, by name, Jack Friedman (CEO and Chairman of the Board), Stephen Berman (Executive VP and COO) and Joel Bennett, the three highest ranking executives of Jakks Pacific, and Shenker and James Bell. The suit alleges a violation of the RICO act, violations of anti-bribery provisions, and is looking to get its videogames license with THQ and toy license with Jakks ruled void due to the violations. This was a countersuit from Shenker's suit against the WWF, claiming his company was owed commissions while serving as the WWF's agent for licensing. The WWF discovered irregularities in his licensing program in 1998, which led to firing Bell in 2000, who served as the WWF's Senior Vice President of Licensing and Merchandising. The claim is that Bell, who negotiated the deals with Shenker's company, was also getting kickbacks of Shenker's commissions, and claimed Shenker was getting kickbacks from licensees into a foreign bank account. Bell's job with the WWF specifically noted he couldn't personally accept fees, commissions, or property for any transaction he did for the company, or use his position directly or indirectly for outside financial gain. The claim was in 1996, when Shenker, through Bell was working as a WWF agent, he also started working as an agent for Jakks, and that Jakks legal counsel told the Friedman that it was conflict of interest to do so without letting the WWF know. However, the suit claims, they never told the WWF, and in or around 1998, they claim Shenker and Bell agreed to split bribe money from Jakks to get the license, using money laundered through foreign companies and a bank account in Hong Kong, so none of the money was recorded anywhere on the Jakks financial books. The lease was signed in 1997, and was to end at the end of 1999. Shenker's agency was to get an 11% commission on deals they got for the WWF. The WWF had its videogame deal at the time with Acclaim, and thus, if that license was renewed, Shenker wouldn't get a commission. The suit claims Jakks agreed to pay money to a foreign bank account to Stanley Stanfull (an alias Shenker used) with the understanding Shenker would pay half that money to Bell in order to get the license. The suit claims an $80,000 payment was made in 1998 to the Stanfull account in Hong Kong, which was never signed by company officials. It claims an agent in Hong Kong of Jakks made a $40,000 payment to Stanfull two weeks later. It alleged Bell then received $20,000 from Shenker. Bell then formed his own company, Bell Consulting, which he served as president, while still working for the WWF and never informing the WWF he had formed his own company, and used the company to receive the $20,000. In March, Acclaim contacted the WWF and complained that Bell wouldn't even listen to a proposal to keep the license (which is why Acclaim lost the WWF license and ended up with the ECW license). At the time, Jakks didn't even have a videogame division. After the deal was made, it claims another $40,000 was transferred from a foreign company to the Stanfull bank account, both in Hong Kong. A few days later, a $20,000 payment was allegedly sent from Shenker to Bell Consulting. THQ then proposed a deal far superior to that of Jakks for the videogames license. Neither Shenker, nor Bell, it claimed, let the WWF officials know of the THQ offer because it would jeopardize their deal with Jakks, but then went back to Jakks and told them about the THQ offer and said they would need to up their offer. The suit claimed Jakks then went to THQ to be a partner in the license, and Jakks would get money from THQ for the license Jakks had obtained. The WWF claimed it should have been their money. Shenker and Bell then recommended to the WWF that the license should be signed for ten years, with a five year right of renewal for Jakks, and claimed they stood to get a percentage of those profits as well. The suit also claims a third payment of $20,000 was made to Shenker at this point, and the WWF's suit claimed Shenker and Bell split commissions on other licensing deals until the WWF fired Bell and stopped doing business with Shenker in 2000. Shenker then sued the WWF for breach of contract. The WWF claimed it learned of the payments in discovery in Shenker's lawsuit. In that litigation, Shenker and Bell both denied any payments were made to Bell relating to licenses. The WWF claims total payments were more than $1 million to Bell Licensing. When the WWF found evidence of payments by Shenker to Bell, Bell came up with invoices listing he had gotten the payments for "developmental projects" unrelated to the WWF. However, the company obtained two invoices from Bell Licensing for consulting services for the WWF licenses. This led to Shenker suit being thrown out of court in 2003, and the court opinion claimed Shenker and Bell committed fraud upon the court when it came to Shenker's claims against the WWF. When this came out, one year ago, Friedman called Linda McMahon, and claimed the payments to Stanfull were for a perfume deal and a mechanical dinosaur project, and had nothing to do with the WWF. The WWF won a default judgment in a case against Shenker and a partial summary judgment against Bell. Jakks and the WWF started working together in 1995, and the current deal Bell and Shenker were involved in putting together doesn't expire until 2009. Jakks Pacific was aware this was coming, as a few days earlier, in its quarterly report, it said, "WWE has raised questions about the validity of the licenses as a result of certain transactions between the company and (a former) licensing consultant that occurred more than six years ago." Jakks said it planned to fight any litigation WWE might launch. THQ noted the lawsuit has no effect on the Smackdown vs. Raw videogame which is set to be released on 11/2, and said they believed their license is valid because the alleged wrongdoing took place involving Jakks Pacific officials, and not their officials, and THQ claimed they were never aware of any of that, feeling there is no reason to terminate the videogames license. Jakks Pacific stock dropped 22% the day the lawsuit was announced. WWE claims the defendants tried to launder the bribe money through foreign companies and foreign bank accounts, as well as falsified corporate accounting records and also claimed serial perjury, destruction of physical evidence and false responses to subpoenas. There is no target date for Mick Foley to return, but he's not scheduled to go on TV to plug the new children's book "Tales from Wrescal Lane" that came out earlier this week. The idea he pitched to Vince McMahon to return on 10/4 in Madison Square Garden was made obsolete because it involved something to do with an HHH vs. Orton program. At this point it looks like he'll be back around February 2005. He has pitched to people like Samoa Joe to call WWE. Foley has also been pitched the idea of doing a full-time radio show where he'd talk about current events, although it has not been finalized. The Taboo Tuesday concept may have come from Chuck Mullen of Munhall, PA. He had a job interview with the company in late-2002, and was offered a job in early-2003, which he turned down, because he wasn't interested in working for the company by that time. During his lengthy interview process, he brought up the idea of an interactive PPV show. He was told that it wasn't a bad idea, but not something the company needed to do at the time, saying they had a solid entertainment based presentation. If you want to know about the current mindset, this tells you what you need to know: John Laurinaitis was talking with Wildside promoter Bill Behrens, trying to get him on board in the proposed training program to be run by Jody Hamilton (or Behrens was calling them trying to get on board, depending upon which version you'd want to believe), in the course of the conversation, Laurinaitis said he wanted to stock the program with guys who are at least 6’2’’ and 250 pounds, and he noted the company is looking for big guys to bring in and whether they can work or not isn't considered of prime importance. When Behrens called up trying to get them to look at his guys, Tommy Dreamer said he'd look, even though virtually none of whom fit the standard. Then, before he even left the office he was getting calls from people in Georgia about looking at them. Several wrestlers heard about this, or perhaps Laurinaitis has said the same thing elsewhere, because there are existing WWE stars who don't fit that size requirement who were most unhappy about the apparent direction, feeling part of the problem is they bring up these tall muscled up guys who aren't good workers and don't get over, and that it's another example of a company looking at all the wrong things as problems and all the wrong things as solutions. There is a feeling that one of the current problems is so many people in the business look and dress like fans, which in fact, they are, but people aren't going to pay to see people just like them. That's true in the independent world, but the truth is, independent wrestling has never drawn well and it's always been a deal where the biggest crowds are drawn by the guys who have had major TV exposure in the past. There is a very different feeling among current fans, as until the modern era, even though people knew wrestling wasn't real, they did believe wrestlers were really tough guys and there was an illusion that some of it might be. Well into the 90s, people would always debate on who was and wasn't tough, and while it really doesn't matter in a business of illusion, the fact is, nobody cares today. When the popularity is down, like it is, people look at what is different from the past, and there are a lot smaller guys around today than before, because fans are more into action than tests of strengths, and the smaller guys can do more. But now people have seen smaller guys do so much incredible stuff that they don't care about the incredible stuff, either. When you have older people running things, the natural inclination is to make it like it was, so the feeling becomes it's too many small guys as the problem. The funny thing was, opening the door to small guys opened up the business and was a key in WCW beating the WWF for a while, and in ECW getting established, and the hottest period in the history of the business was 1998-2000, but people in charge who are older trying to look at what is "right" are reverting back to ideas from the 70s. I think you need a mix of divergent types, and one of the problems is everyone is being taught to work the same way, too many people look alike and wrestle alike, and you don't have differentiation of characters. I've always thought it was hilarious about people recruiting wrestlers who, if some of the biggest stars of today came to their door, they'd turn them away on the first day. It's funny that if Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Mick Foley, Rey Mysterio, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Juventud Guerrera (forget that he's a screw up outside the ring, if his head was on straight, he'd be an unbelievable talent), and probably even Ric Flair, Roddy Piper, and Randy Savage showed up at the Power Plant, or came through one of their training school doors today as they looked when they first broke in, or sent in a Tough Enough application, most if not all when they were breaking in, wouldn't have gotten a second look. Yet a lot of those guys are all far bigger stars and had far more successful careers than 99.9% of the 6’5’’ and 280-pound jacked up types they are looking for. Not that stuff like that doesn't happen in all sports, although I don't think in any of those sports, such a percentage of the real top players would fit into the category where physically they'd have never been even given a look because of size and ended up doing great like in wrestling. When Kurt Angle came out of high school, even though he was the national age group heavyweight champion, he couldn't get a wrestling or football scholarship to Penn State because they thought he was too small to compete at the major college level in football or wrestle heavyweights in college. This was even though when he was 17-years-old, he lost by only one point to 27-year-old Dan Severn, who at that point in time was probably better than virtually all college heavyweights and ranked in the top ten in the world. On the other end, Bob Sapp would have never been drafted into the NFL based on his college football ability, but he was a third round pick because his size, bench press strength, and speed were so overwhelming, but he couldn't remember plays, and not only did he not make it in the NFL, but didn't even make it in NFL Europe. And everyone knows the story about the 1994 When World's Collide PPV, where the WWF brass watched the show, which included Mysterio, Guerrero, Art Barr, Benoit, and others, and the one they called for a job out of it was Louie Spicolli, because he was juiced up to about 265 pounds. Here's more on the Jamie Noble firing. The reason WWE had its hands tied and was forced to get rid of him was because Noble's doctor's report he sent the company (since he was looking for them to pay his medical bills as they do for wrestlers who are injured on the job) specifically stated that his infection (or his cyst, as apparently he's told other wrestlers) was caused by a steroid shot. While everyone knows that much of the roster uses steroids, it is against company bylaws, it is also a felony, and when Noble foolishly sent the document in, not realizing the ramifications, it established that the company knew he was doing steroids and there was a paper trail they couldn't ignore. To do nothing would have insurance ramifications. The feeling was Noble should have been smart enough to have not tried to get the company to pay for it. Noble was told, and other wrestlers are under the impression, he'll eventually be brought back. In OVW, with Gene Snitsky called up, they are never going to acknowledge there was a Mean Gene Mondo. How is this for an interesting trivia note? If you ask “What was Superstar Billy Graham's Madison Square Garden debut?”, the answer would seem to be his nine-second win over Domenic DeNucci, announced at the time as setting a record for the fastest pin, on December 15th, 1975, to set up the first Graham-Bruno Sammartino match on January 12th, 1976. But that actually wasn't the case. On October 21st, 1966, several years before Graham started as a pro wrestler, 23-year-old former teenage bodybuilding champ Wayne Coleman (Graham’s real name), weighting 224.25 pounds, was in a mid-card boxing match, losing in a first round TKO in a scheduled four-rounder against Willis Miles, who outweighed him by 32 pounds. Chuck Wepner, who did wrestling matches with both Antonio Inoki and Andre the Giant, and whose destruction at the hands of Muhammad Ali was the inspiration for the Rocky movies, knocked out Dave Centi in the main event. As of the latest information, WWE is averaging $9.16 per person in merchandise at the live events. That figure is misleading in a sense, because it includes the overseas shows that do far better than domestic per head. Because live attendance is down, even though the average per person was $8.09 one year ago, the total arena merchandise is down 14%. It would make sense to a degree as attendance goes down, because the percentage of your real serious fans goes up (the casual stop going), that merchandise per head would increase. However, when WCW was going down, that didn't happen, as they were doing $5 per head at the end, so that's another major difference between the declines of the two companies. Some other financial notes: Of the $7,468,000 net income from the last quarter, $4,112,000 went to the stockholders as dividends, the majority to Vince McMahon. Profits for the quarter, based on the presentation of live events, were $3.9 million, while the profit margin on the presentation of PPV events (this doesn't include company salary costs and administration costs and such, just the costs of doing the events themselves) was $10.3 million. Profits from producing television were $8.9 million. Actual break even per house show event is $157,303 and 3,451 per show, which basically means overseas is saving that aspect of the business because the domestic shows aren't hitting it, although that's misleading, because the costs of going overseas, which is where most of the profit is made, spike up those averages. The rank and file domestic shows usually don't come close to that figure, but the Raw & Smackdown tapings almost always exceed it. The average cost of production of a television show is now up to $496,000. A break-even PPV show would be 110,000 buys, a figure they have yet to fail to double. As noted before, because talent costs are based on a percentage, they probably could break even on 100,000 buys or less if it ever got bad, and of course, once it got to that level, they'd be slashing costs anyway. The profit margin on merchandise for the quarter was $700,000, but licensing is $2.2 million, magazines are $900,000 and home videos profit margin was $3.3 million and Internet profit margin was $100,000. More notes on Ray Gordy: He was brought to OVW for a week or so look. Reports were they thought he was a good worker, showed up in good shape, and the only negative is he's short. No word if he's going to get a deal or not. A funny deal on Sunday Night Heat on 10/10 in the show taped from MSG: Danny Doring & Arch Kincaid lost to Rhyno & Tajiri. Fans were chanting "ECW," probably not just for Doring, since everyone but Kincaid was an ECW alumnus. Doring was announced under his ECW name and his tights had "Doring" written on them. However, when the show aired, for whatever reason, they called him Dan Morrison, his real name, which I can only figure was because they didn't want people thinking ECW. John Cena is on the cover of the current issue of Muscle & Fitness magazine. The "You Screwed Bret" chants were a big deal in Europe, particularly at the Raw Manchester tapings. When Earl Hebner came out on Raw, there was a loud "You screwed Bret" chant, made worse as a fan dressed as Hart started screaming at Hebner. A second loud chant was easily audible on Raw for a fairly long period of time during the main event. In Frankfurt, while Shawn Michaels was over like a god, there was an irate fan with a Hart banner that got into it with him. A lot of wrestlers were very upset when the news of Pat Patterson leaving broke, as much for the feeling of what caused it as for the feeling that it has led to more of a feeling of futility that the people in charge don't want to hear what is really happening. It was not necessarily widespread, as people internally were aware of how things were going down and subtle messages were being sent to talent. As soon as HHH & Stephanie McMahon found out Patterson felt HHH should be moved from the top spot (given a rest basically just because he's been there for so many years) and said so vocally, and the TV show should focus more on building more people, HHH started complaining about Patterson being the agent in charge of his matches. That's a major deal since HHH's matches were the main events. HHH complained Patterson was confusing who people were and didn't know what things the wrestlers did anymore. To ease things, Vince McMahon made sure there was always another agent, and took Patterson off the headsets in the truck. Several saw that as a major slap in the face to Patterson, and that was what led to him wanting out. The current political situation right now is Raw is totally dominated by HHH. Smackdown is more of a WCW-like political situation with different factions. Undertaker is the HHH of the show, because Vince McMahon feels he's the biggest star and respects his stardom and tenure, and Kurt Angle has aligned with him. Those close to the situation say HHH is getting more involved in the Smackdown politics. Dean Malenko and John Laurinaitis understand their role is dependent upon being loyalty to Stephanie McMahon (a.k.a. HHH). The writers are in a different situation. David Lagana is anything but an office kiss-ass, and has been described to me as more of the victim of all the politics. Paul Heyman is Paul Heyman, but he's been vocal about his guys, and has fought over several issues to get things more wrestling logic oriented and does come up with a lot of ideas, and at least from people we hear from, he's the one the wrestlers wish was in charge because they have more confidence is his ability to turn it around than anyone else. Dan Madigan, the other current Smackdown writer, is said to be a horror film buff, hence his Booker T ideas, and that is the source of his ideas for the show, but he's not connected strongly politically with any faction either. The attempt to get Randy Orton over on mainstream shows probably has to be questioned after his 10/14 appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show. While Orton was good enough to mention Taboo Tuesday, and that it was on PPV (when Stephanie McMahon did the same show just before a PPV she didn't even get that out) and even the fan voting aspect of the show and his match. It was clear Kimmel saw him as someone to make fun of and Orton wasn't quick enough to handle it well. Kimmel started making fun of Ric Flair when Orton talked about his opponent, saying he was 85 years old, and when Orton couldn't come back, Kimmel was really on him. It was the first time Kimmel had made fun of a wrestler and treated one like he was a joke as opposed to a big star. There is concern (although, truthfully, that may not be the accurate word with a lot of people since many had already given up on him) that Test may have to retire from wrestling after his neck surgery. On the fan who hit the ring in Manchester, Shawn Michaels grabbed the guy by the leg. Edge didn't sit on him, and was paying more attention to the match. HHH jumped in ready to help out, but they didn't need his help. The fan had run about 50 feet, past several security people, and it was said to say the security was lapsing would be an understatement. One report said the Raw crowd was an older crowd as Smackdown drew lots of kids, but the Manchester paper actually reported Smackdown drew an older and more respectful crowd. The reason Stacy Keibler got booed is that Manchester United is actually not all that popular in Manchester, and most of the local fans support Manchester City, who have a Yankees/Red Sox like rivalry. It was also said Edge was booed far more live than it came across on TV. In Frankfurt, WWE comped a lot of injured soldiers and marines free tickets, and allowed a number of legitimate war heroes to meet the wrestlers. Some talked about the economic crunch hitting them as business has declined. One wrestler, when asked if he made good money as a wrestler, replied, "I used to." Carlito Caribbean Cool's title win on his TV debut was probably the second highest profile of something like that. Spyros Arion, who was brought to the WWWF after Bruno Sammartino saw him as the top star when he toured Australia, debuted on December 8, 1966 at Vince Sr.'s old Washington, DC tapings. He beat Angelo Savoldi (who worked in the office at the time). Later in the show, Baron Mikel Scicluna & Smasher Don Sloan were defending the U.S. tag titles (forerunner of the current WWE tag titles) against Antonio Pugliese (Tony Parisi, doing a gimmick where he was Bruno's cousin) & Miguel Perez (the father of the current IWA star). Parisi & Perez won the first fall. In the second fall, Perez was injured, counted out, and couldn't continue. Now I recognize this makes no sense, but Arion came out and replaced Perez in the third fall. Arion destroyed both champs and won, and like Carlito, the idea was to make him a superstar in one night. Christian won the old WWF light heavyweight title from Taka Michinoku on October 18, 1998, in Chicago, in his TV debut. Gail Kim won a Battle Royal to win the women's title on June 30, 2003, in her TV debut. Jerry Lynn beat Crash Holly to win the light heavyweight Title on April 29, 2001, in the Heat match before the Backlash PPV that year in Chicago in his WWF TV debut. Technically, Billy Kidman won the WCW (now WWE) cruiserweight title from Gregory Helms on July 3, 2001, in Tacoma, in his WWE debut. Although Christian did eventually become a star, really, Arion is the only one where the idea of making him an instant star by giving him a belt the first night in really accomplished much. Then again, all the belts with the exception of the one Arion won weren't star maker belts to begin with. Jim Crockett Promotions in July of 1985 brought in the Rock & Roll Express, and I think they were only in the territory a week or two when they beat The Russians for the NWA lag titles, and were an instant sensation. The San Juan Star ran an article on 10/8 about Carly Colon getting the U.S. title. They actually compared it with Puerto Rico beating the U.S. in basketball at the Olympics. Colon compared his gimmick to Razor Ramon, but said because he's much smaller, he has to wrestle faster and do more high flying. More bad news when it comes to U.K. ratings: The 9/23 episode of Raw drew less than 140,000 viewers (which is what the No. 10 show on the station did and they only list the top 10). Smackdown the next night drew 80,000 viewers, while Velocity drew 40,000 and Afterburn drew 30,000. Raw also failed to make the top ten on 9/30, while Smackdown fell to 60,000 viewers and the No Mercy PPV was viewed by 130,000 viewers (they air free, but live they start at 1am UK time), well down from the routine 250,000 that the PPVs have done in the past. Sean Herbert, the program director at UK’s The Wrestling Channel, noted that staffers were threatened outside of WWE events in both Sheffield and London. He wrote on the company's web site, "Tonight at the WWE event at Wembley, TWC staff was physically threatened by WWE security for giving away free TWC & wrestling merchandise to fans. The same thing happened last night at Sheffield. TWC teams were outside these events giving away free T-shirts, bags, mouse mats, TWC stress balls, pens, caps, etc. to wrestling fans, and were told to leave immediately or it would 'get nasty.' A huge group of wrestling fans accumulated and this only aggravated them more. Needless to say, we didn't want to lower ourselves to that level, and we left quietly." There continues to be heat on Brian Gewirtz among wrestlers, because he jokes about how he got the angle through to put the Goldust wig on Goldberg and the reason nobody nixed it was because deep down, HHH hated Goldberg. Brock Lesnar is still training, hoping that an NFL team calls him for later this season. Vince McMahon did an interview in the Rockford Register Star promoting the Smackdown taping there. Vince hates the media, but, recognizing he was talking to a member of the media, explained he meant the media in the big cities only. "Most everyone approaches the story they want to tell so that Mr. McMahon can prove their point," he said. Luckily, as his behavior on the HBO special showed, when the pressure is on, Vince is his own worst enemy these days. When asked about the brand extension diluting the product and causing interest and crowds to drop, he said, "To a certain extent, Mr. Feltz (letter writer), is right. It was designed that way. (???-McMahon and I discussed the extension before it happened and I don't recall him saying the design was to dilute the product and cause interest to drop, the idea was to slow down storylines by only having to advance them once a week instead of twice). When we separated into two, fans would not be able to see all their favorites at once. That is a negative. The positive of the brand separation it that is allows new stars such as Randy Orton and John Cena...to emerge. The brand extension is working well for us. As far as interest waning, some of our live events have not been populated as well as we want. But in the long run, the talent will be stronger and both brands will be stronger as a result." McMahon also said they are going to bring more women into the promotion (women that can't wrestle it should be noted, as they are talking about others from the Diva Search getting contracts). He indicated a few people from the Diva Search who didn’t win will be put on Smackdown. That’s fresh meat for new bikini contests. Which is irony considering an ad/story the company took out in this week's Ad Week. It talked about the company's attempts to broaden its fan base an interviewed Kurt Schneider, the company's EVP of marketing. They talked about the JBL/Mick Foley debate and Taboo Tuesday, as well as the company's online fantasy game and that next week they will be starting an interactive trivia game on Raw. "We are a lifestyle brand," said Schneider. They talked about adding the show Experience to regain 6-12 year old viewers (this past Sunday morning, Experience was the oldest viewership of WWE program, with the average viewer being a 44 year old man), the new 24/7 concept which noted they are hoping for DirecTV and EchoStar satellite companies to carry it, and said WWE sees its core viewers as those between 12 and 34 (even though the average TV viewer of Raw is 37 and of the "B" shows, even older). It talked about the success of Wrestlemania this past year, and wrote, "Despite its proven ratings power, World Wrestling Entertainment's unique brand of surrealism has been supplanted on some of its fans’ TV screens by an increasingly bizarre array of reality shows. The extreme stunts of those programs have distracted some WWE viewers." Schneider said, "We lost some fickle fans to reality shows, but there's only so much you can take of girls in bikinis eating rats." For some reason, I found that quote hilarious. Japanese star Predator (Sylvester Terkay) spent the past week in OVW, apparently just to visit and worked the 10/13 TV taping in a dark match. Terkay worked OVW as The Collector and Sly Scraper a few years back, but was cut because he couldn't get the hang of it. He ended up becoming a big star with Zero-One, largely due to looking like Bruiser Brody, playing upon the sympathy and nostalgia of that character. He left Zero-One for K-1, where he's 1-1 in MMA. He's not at this point looking to get back in, as he's get 17 months left on his K-l contract. Largely due to the presidential and vice presidential debates on Fox News, football as well Major League baseball playoffs on ESPN, for the first time in recent memory, the 10/4 Raw show had neither hour place in the top 15 rankings in cable for the week, and 10/11 had the two hours place No. 15 and No. 21. The plan right now is for both the Raw and Smackdown brand to do Far East tours in February, including the company's first ever Raw & Smackdown tapings in Japan. The new WWE CD called "Theme Addict Volume 6" of entrance music will be released on 11/16. It will have themes for Evolution, Carlito Caribbean Cool, Theodore R. Long, Christian, Heidenreich, Chavo Guerrero, Undertaker, Eugene, Victoria, Shelton Benjamin, Billy Kidman, the new Smackdown theme, Gail Kim, JBL, and John Cena. Apparently WWE was unable to get the licensing rights from "Mercy Drive" to publish the Randy Orton theme. The original plan for the women's Battle Royal on Taboo Tuesday was to choose between French Maid, Bra & Panties, or Bikini stipulations. Evidently that was before they decided to do two women's matches. The paid attendance for the 10/4 live Raw in Madison Square Garden was about 7,000 and the Smackdown TV the next night in Boston was 4,500. Needless to say, those are horrible figures.

It was a wild week for World Wrestling Entertainment, as it had its biggest house show week in company history, a Hollywood Reporter story broke regarding its attempt to up its rights fees and possibly leave Spike TV, and behind-the-scenes creative problems led to the resignation of the No. 2 man on the creative side from the original expansion period, Pat Patterson. The company's 12-show European tour grossed an estimated $7.4 million, by far the biggest week when it comes to live shows in company history. Even with lackluster business elsewhere, it virtually guarantees a strong quarter. The company played to sellout crowds on nine of the 12 shows, including both Smackdown shows on 10/7 and 10/8 in Belfast, Northern Ireland shows playing to full houses, and grossing about $1.1 million on the two nights. The company topped $1 million for the Raw taping and was expected to come close to that number for the Smackdown tapings in Manchester. They also did nearly $950,000 for a sold out Raw show on 10/8 at Wembley Arena in London. To put this week in perspective, the company took in more money this week at live events than it would have in ten weeks of U.S. shows. While expenses are different, the company revenue was equivalent to a PPV show that did more than 500,000 buys, or roughly, by today's standards, this week was almost like doing two additional PPV shows this quarter. And that's not including the merchandise, which, per person, was far more than domestic levels. Even during the peak of the Rock/Steve Austin era, the company took in more money this past week than it would in roughly five weeks of U.S. shows at a time they were selling out nearly 70% of the live events. The Hollywood Reporter on 10/12 had a front page story, noting WWE's five-year contract with Viacom, for Raw and the other cable shows on Spike TV, expires in September 2005, and the company has opened talks with TBS, USA Network, and FX, which could cause a lot of interesting changes in the wrestling landscape. Spike had the right to match any offer, and even with ratings for the WWE package cut in half from just a few years ago (the "B" shows have declined far more than Raw), the company is attempting to get a raise from $28 million to $40 million per year for its cable package. Five years ago this week, on the USA Network, Raw drew a 6.09 rating and the "B" shows saw Live Wire at 1.5, Superstars at 1.8, and Heat at 3.57, or a total of 12.96 ratings points. For the first week of October this year on Spike TV, the four shows combined did 4.96 ratings points, a total audience decline of 62% Spike makes a convenient scapegoat to outsiders for some of the decline. Within the TV industry, Bonnie Hammer, who still works at USA, is given a lot of credit for the success of Raw, since it was under her watch that it grew from doing low 2's and being near cancellation in late-1996, to being the hottest show on cable television two years later. A lot of people seem to take credit for that period. But the reality is, the week Raw switched from USA to Spike, the rating fell from 5.6 to 5.4 (although part of the 5.4 was a hotshot return of Steve Austin), but the switch also came at a time of the change from Chris Kreski to Stephanie McMahon as head writer after a very successful 2000, and the greater influence of HHH on the booking. For Spike, retaining Raw is a huge deal, because losing the show takes Spike from a network that battles weekly for a top ten position in the prime time cable ratings, to a network that wouldn't crack the top 25, and has no hits on its schedule aside from CSI reruns (and CSI draws a significantly older audience than Spike's avowed goal to become a programming habit for young male viewers, a demo that has dropped double digits on the network over the past year, largely due to wrestling's popularity decline in that demo). USA and TBS both remain at the top of the cable ratings charts even though both lost highly rated wrestling shows years ago. USA is said to be the front runner, as the network never wanted to lose wrestling, to the point it sued to retain the rights, claiming it had matched Viacom's offer. The court decision went against USA because the judge ruled it hadn't completely matched the Viacom offer. It was unable to match Viacom's book deal since Viacom owned Simon & Schuster nor would it guarantee no preemptions of Raw (USA would preempt Raw annually for the highly-rated dog show that once beat Nitro in the ratings in early-2000, and the far lower-rated U.S. Open tennis tournament, both of which had blue chip high-level advertising money that Raw, even with its high ratings, couldn't bring in), and Spike had no such commitments. According to a source in Spike TV when asked about the company having knowledge of negotiations with the outside, it was confirmed they were aware USA wants the package back badly, and it will probably require a price increase to keep it. Spike is interested in keeping it, so the end result will be a raise in rights fees to WWE even though the audience it delivers is barely one-third of what it was when the negotiations took place five years ago with TNN (now Spike). The article quoted an executive familiar with the negotiations saying WWE "is desperate to get out of there," which, not in those words, echoes comments made to me at times in recent years. WWE had to have been unhappy with the Viacom deal, as the lure of television specials on CBS, talked about but never spelled out in the contract, never materialized. In addition, one can use 20/20 hindsight and say Viacom had a hand in screwing up the industry by insisting on enforcing its non-compete clause, and thus not allowing Vince McMahon to buy the WCW brand, and keep it on the Turner Networks as a separate entity. McMahon had argued at the time it was a deal that everyone would win in. In addition, the idea of Heat moving from USA to MTV was a chance to reach a mainstream teenage and young adult audience, but instead, Heat's ratings declined greatly on MTV, partially due to WWE's own format change of the show. Eventually MTV dumped the show, and Spike picked it up, but ratings are down 81% from its USA network peak, although most if not all of that decline has nothing to do with the network the show is on. Additionally, even though ratings were good, MTV wouldn't pick up a fourth season of "Tough Enough." The article also talked about the average viewer of Raw increasing from 27 to 34 years old (actually the increase is far more pronounced, from 24 at the peak of WWF's trouncing of WCW in the Monday Night Wars, to 36.8 for the 10/11 show). A move to FX would block any pie-in-the-sky dreams of TNA getting on the network. When TNA opened to surprisingly good numbers in a terrible time slot on FSN, plus the show looked far better than anyone expected going in from a production standpoint, there was talk of an FX prime time show. But when it was unable to maintain its original audience, it seems far less likely. A TBS move would kill wrestling's other pie-in-the-sky dream, that Ted Turner would start his own wrestling company because Hulk Hogan, Bill Goldberg, Steve Austin, Sting, Randy Savage, Roddy Piper, and Mick Foley are all technically free agents, although few would expect Austin or Foley at this point to work against McMahon, and most figure Hogan would publicly lean toward a start up, but then back out, and use it to get back with WWE (XWF anybody?). However, because FX (high-end dramas) and TBS (comedy) are now themed networks, and wrestling doesn't fit into either networks' proposed direction, the interest doesn't seem as strong, which is why USA is considered the front runner. Spike sources have indicated they think it will end up with only USA and them making serious offers. If Spike were to lose WWE, it could open up another wrestling franchise to a strong time slot in competition. When USA lost the WWF, there were negotiations to get ECW, which lost TNN (now Spike) when the WWF signed on. The deal got as far as Barry Diller, who was running the network. There was some content and advertising issues, as the PTC had made a dent into WWF in 2000 and Diller didn't want those problems, and wrestling in general, while a huge ratings hit at the time, had a very negative connotation in much of the television world. It has a different negative connotation today, but people are willing to bid high on it due to a belief by some in the industry that all they have to do is find a new Rock and everything will rebound to where it was just a few years ago. Ultimately, Diller's feeling at the time was USA, trying to be the No. 1 cable network, didn't want a No. 3 wrestling promotion. Spike, a network nowhere near as successful, would likely not have that attitude. The problem is, there isn't even a real No. 2 promotion. It's one thing to grab a show doing a 0.9 already on a weaker network, and another to grab a promotion doing a 0.2. The possibility would be there because of so many big name free agents that movement would be made to start something, but with the kind of money that group of names would want, and the schedule they'd want to keep, that would seriously persuade people to not try. And still, the most likely scenario is the show stays with Spike, which would only drop out of the bidding war if they got a more high profile package, such as an NFL package they are hoping to negotiate for. However, the NFL package Spike is attempting to get for 2006 would be the cable part of a major CBS bid, so much of the money to get it would come from CBS. . While all this was going on, Pat Patterson, 64, gave notice and told Vince McMahon on 10/5 that he was retiring from the industry, with his last day of work being the Taboo Tuesday PPV. While this is hardly the first time Patterson has said he was leaving the company, only to return, the situation is very much different. His first resignation, forced by McMahon in 1992, came at the height of a homosexual sex scandal involving WWF executive Terry Garvin and head of the ring crew, Mel Phillips. As part of an out-of-court settlement with Tom Cole, who claimed he and other underage boys had been abused while working on the ring crew and that he was fired after turning down Garvin's sexual advances, which had already turned into the biggest media black eye in company history, McMahon promised Cole that Patterson, Garvin, and Phillips would never work for the company again. However, Patterson's name was left out of the settlement, and while it was going on, McMahon claimed Patterson was an innocent victim of circumstances. Those in the company insist Patterson never really left, and the resignation was only for the public, but either way, a few months later, he was officially introduced to everyone as being back. At other points Patterson had talked of retiring to his home in Florida and had even done so. But Patterson has lived his entire life for and around wrestling, and knows little else. He grew up as a huge wrestling fan in Montreal, worked full-time as a wrestler since starting as a teenager, and became one of the greatest workers of the 60s and 70s, before ending his active career and being McMahon's top booking confidante during the 80s. In his other retirements, he got bored playing golf and quickly returned to the only world he'd ever really lived in. In recent months, and moreso in recent weeks, Patterson had become vocal about the direction of the product to everyone. A few weeks back, he confided to long-time friend Nick Bockwinkel that he was ready to quit, so it was not a shock, nor a decision made in haste. Internally, because Patterson was there from a major architect during the big run in the 80s, as Vice President of Talent Relations, filling roles similar to those of both Stephanie McMahon and John Laurinaitis in today's company, this represented something big. Also, Patterson was one of the few people in the company who would vocally disagree with McMahon, because he was one of the few people it was believed McMahon would never fire. He's confided to people that he thinks the company is being run into the ground, and even though he was a big part of a lot of the toilet humor and cartoon aspects that categorized the 80s, he now has been asking "Why are we doing this stupid Hollywood crap?" Another person very close to the situation said, "He's been beyond vocal about HHH, HHH's power over the Raw show, and HHH's burying of opponents... He's said it loud enough to make sure everyone hears." He expressed concern because of the belief HHH, in his role, should be making new stars, and the only person someone could argue he's really tried to make over the past two years was Randy Orton, and to a degree, Chris Benoit. He was heavily involved in the screwing up of Bill Goldberg and got Scott Steiner, who was on fire, off on the wrong foot, by working matches that exposed their weaknesses (although Steiner wasn't going to make it long-term regardless of what HHH did, nor would Goldberg, although they left millions on the table by screwing him up). He buried in meetings an admittedly overrated Rob Van Dam (although fans had not caught on to this yet and Van Dam had enormous potential at the time) when he was on fire. Benoit got the monster push this year largely because HHH needed a new strong opponent after Shawn Michaels ran his course, and Benoit's role on Raw diminished greatly when he wasn't working with HHH, even though he held the title belt. There was never a period, no matter if Benoit or Goldberg held the belt, where the show wasn't booked around HHH, and HHH was then portrayed as bigger than the belt. Even though HHH did do a great job in making Shelton Benjamin earlier this year by putting him over in a great match, the follow-up, were HHH made it seem unimportant, translated to the audience believing it was unimportant, and Benjamin didn't get the elevation from it that was expected. HHH also pulled Edge from Smackdown, with the idea of making him a new opponent, but when Edge didn't get over like expected in his program with Kane, they rushed the Randy Orton face turn, and even though they've done everything to get Orton over, thus far it's been a disappointment. Patterson's concern, when sent on the road to study problems with the Raw product, were that HHH was over, but not enough other people overall were, and blamed it on them not getting adequate exposure to be viewed as stars with the one man dominating. The argument is that for the most part, the McMahon family company has always been built around a singular star, but during most of the history, that singular star can be argued was doing better business. The other side is that while popularity has declined, it's still a far stronger business model overall than at any time except during the 1998-2000 era. One source claimed that McMahon's reaction to Patterson leaving is that he lost his passion for wrestling after the death of long-time life-partner Louie Dondero (for those of you completely in the dark, Patterson is openly gay), but that happened many years ago. There was an incident some time back, when a lot of the controversy over HHH being a detriment first came out internally, that the agents decided to go together to McMahon and express their real viewpoint. However, at the meeting, Stephanie was there, and everyone involved change their tune, realizing whoever said anything would be the one hung out to dry immediately. It's eerily similar to the brokers who would tell Fritz Von Erich about his son's drug problems, and wind up being the ones fired for doing so. Within the company, Patterson is acknowledged as the best finish man in the industry, even by others who are pretty strong in that regard themselves. Still, most of the recent finishes have lacked creativity with the over reliance on ref bumps, which is a key to a lot of Patterson finishes, and the belt shot and face kick out spot. Patterson also not only created, but usually had a strong hand in the layout of the annual Royal Rumble, the company's No. 2 event of the year, a lot of which was taken because the heyday of his wrestling career was in Northern California, working for Roy Shire, who was a genius in both promotion and layout of the annual January Battle Royal, which the Rumble was an offshoot of. Another major star with experience in the spotlight noted when Benoit got the title, that HHH was still portrayed as the star, and his matches were the PPV main events and Benoit would be in the sub-main match, which showed HHH was more important than the belt, categorized it as "bullshit," even though Michaels vs. HHH in a Hell in a Cell drew the company's only good buy rate after Backlash. It's been noted that even though the company considers HHH its biggest star, and the Raw brand has numerous advantages over the Smackdown brand (as noted by getting Edge and Benoit this year as HHH opponents the company did nothing to help Eddie Guerrero when he desperately needed a top foe when Angle and Big Show went down with injuries and Brock Lesnar quit), Raw is also more "popular" with the fan base the company management understands. But there hasn't been much of a difference lately when it comes to business, because Smackdown's ratings are bolstered by its huge Hispanic TV audience, an audience the company has but doesn't really understand, and Smackdown outdraws Raw when the tour hits Hispanic markets. The Smackdown brand may also have its share of backstage fireworks regarding the writing team. David Lagana is the current head writer, with help from Paul Heyman and Dan Madigan (whose most notable claim to fame was getting Vince McMahon to turn Booker T into a voodoo character, before McMahon was talked out of the idea by others a week after it started). There is belief that a newcomer, Sean Conaway, who is a writer's assistant, is being groomed by Stephanie for the head writing spot. A lot has been said about him being Stephanie's "overwhelming" favorite and there is the "Future head writer" nickname already attached to him. Lagana was said to have fallen victim to Brian Gewirtz and Michael Hayes offering suggestions that others feel were detrimental to the show. Heyman's disdain for Gewirtz is well known, and they even had an altercation at one point backstage at the 2003 Royal Rumble that got both Heyman and Gewirtz suspended with pay for a week. A recent example was on 10/7, with the show built around Carlito Caribbean Cool beating John Cena for the U.S. title. Cena was at first scheduled to do a promo where he'd put over how important it was to win the title and how important it was to him, so it increased the value of the belt, since the climax of the show was Carlito's shocking win. However Gewirtz got the interview scripted to where Cena's main thrust wasn't to get over the belt, but tell lame gay jokes aimed at Michael Cole, which didn't get over, even in Boston, before the planned angle. While a lot of the wrestlers want Heyman in the head writer position, the reasons he was taken off remain the reasons it is unlikely he'll ever be given that power again, largely the company heads felt it was difficult to deal with him and at times when they were trying to find him, he wasn't available. Heyman's role of late has been mainly going to bat for his allies, Big Show, Eddie Guerrero, Rob Van Dam, Rey Mysterio, Booker T, and Carlito, and make sure they aren't forgotten. With the Smackdown ratings up of late (even with its lesser star power, on a realistic basis, Smackdown over the past four weeks has beaten Raw by a 3.71 to 3.56 level; although that's more due to seasonal ratings patterns; although Raw getting a new strong lead-in has helped, but not as much as the bite taken by the NFL, which traditionally hurts wrestling far more than the highly rated reality shows, comedies and crime dramas on Thursday) and some aspects of the show improved in recent weeks, Lagana hasn't been feeling as much pressure, but Conaway is very aggressive in wanting to move up and there are predictions it's going to happen soon. Heyman had attempted a month or more back to get a trade made for Kurt Angle to Raw for Benoit. The idea was to get Angle off Smackdown, breaking his political base with Undertaker, and also to start an Angle vs. Michaels program for Wrestlemania, and give Angle all fresh opponents, including, at some point, HHH and Ric Flair. The idea would be to bring Benoit in as a heel and have Heyman do his talking, to climax with Benoit vs. Undertaker at Wrestlemania. That way Undertaker, who has never lost at Mania, but has had mostly terrible matches on the big show (Jimmy Snuka, Jake Roberts, Giant Gonzalez, King Kong Bundy, Kevin Nash, Sid Vicious, Kane twice, Big Bossman, and a handicap match with Show & A-Train made for ten bad matches, as opposed to two good but nowhere near as close to classic matches with HHH and Ric Flair), can have at least the classic match he wants at the big show, which is why he’s working with Angle. But the suggestion was turned down. ================================================================================ ============================== This is where the Taboo Tuesday show stands, as of press time. HHH defends against either Shawn Michaels, Chris Benoit, or Edge (they are pushing Michaels the strongest and burying Edge as a contender by heeling him); La Resistance defends the tag titles against the two who don't face HHH (Benoit & Edge?), Chris Jericho defends the IC title against anyone on the roster (Batista now being pushed), Eugene vs. Eric Bischoff in a stipulation match (hair vs. hair being pushed), Carmella DeCesare vs. Christy Hemme (either an aerobics contest, a lingerie pillow fight, or an evening gown match), a Battle Royal for the women's title with Trish Stratus, Jazz, Gail Kim, Molly, Stacy Keibler, Nidia, and Victoria with all the women either dressing as French maids, Schoolgirls or Nurses), Ric Flair vs. Randy Orton (pushing a cage match), and Kane vs. Gene Snitsky (pushing a pipe as the legal weapon). The National Enquirer ran a story about Steve Austin's countersuit against former girlfriend Brenda Tess Broussard. Austin is asking for $125 million, which probably a way to make Broussard, who as noted here before, is insane, drop her $10 million suit against Austin. Austin's lawsuit claims she never told him about her porn past (rumor has it Austin read it first in the Observer), claims she's really 51 (police reports on her that we've seen list a different age and birthday than her web site does, as she's claimed in the ads on a web site that led to her prostitution bust to be 26, her personal modeling web site had her at 36, police reports say she's 37, and if she's 51, well, she's got the world's greatest surgeon and voice coach), and abused drugs and alcohol. He also charged in the suit she once put a gun in his mouth, has been harassing Jeannie Clarke (Austin’s ex-wife who lives with his children in England) and her kids, that she broke into his house and carved up his furniture and as well as the walls, stole an expensive painting, a rifle, thousands of dollars, and stole his eight different wrestling championship belts. Her lawyer, Bryan Altaian, denied all the claims, saying it's all fantasy, that she's 39 (yet another new age), she was never a porn star (she appeared in some porn movies but was not a star in those movies), and never put a gun in his mouth. The voting for Taboo Tuesday will start right at 10pm Eastern time, or halfway through next week's Raw show. They will also have a Chris Benoit vs. Shawn Michaels vs. Edge main event. The voting will continue throughout the Taboo Tuesday show. The main event, which will be the HHH match, won't have the opponent announced because voting will continue, until right before the start of the match. Mick Foley's children's book "Tales from Wrescal Lane," which is something he wrote years ago to teach children lessons in life using characters like The Rock, Kurt Angle, Shane & Stephanie McMahon, HHH, and others as if they grew up as playmates on a street comes out on 10/26, which means don't be surprised to see him on Raw on 10/25. Using that cast of characters, one could certainly write a very different book of lessons in life as well. Rulon Gardner decided against trying pro wrestling. He told people at the Real Pro Wrestling tapings of his decision, saying he was committed to RPW, but wouldn't say anything negative about WWE. He said Kurt Angle was the person who got the ball rolling on the deal. Gardner talked to a number of people backstage at the Phoenix Smackdown tapings, some who were really encouraging him to try it. Gardner's wife was for him doing it but his mother wasn't, and ultimately he felt he'd fit in better coaching and teaching amateur wrestling, and for him, it was probably the right call. Booker T was pulled from the European tour at the last minute when he showed up hurting in Boston. He was believed to have had at the time a liver issue and went to get an MRI. He was also believed to have possibly suffered a broken rib. Charlie Haas was injured on the 10/8 show in Belfast. They were doing a bikini contest when Heidenreich interrupted it and stopped it. Haas made the save for his fiancé, and was beating on Heidenreich. They started a match and Haas did a dive and blew his knee out, and couldn't continue. They had gone around 30 seconds when this happened. Fit Finlay, who had been introduced earlier (so to a lot of people this looked to be an angle set up), decided impromptu, since the match couldn't continue, that he'd go in there and put Heidenreich over. Finlay was introduced earlier to set up his coming out at the end of the show to clean house on JBL, who was supposed to end the show insulting Northern Ireland. The last word we had was the knee had locked up and there was a chance he'd need surgery, although this belief was it would only have to be scoped, which would mean maybe a month out. They weren't going to know anything for sure until the tour was over and they sent him to a doctor, but the feeling was at press time that he had cartilage damage and couldn't fully extend his knee. The Undertaker's neck was bothering him coming back from Europe after getting whiplash when the ropes broke when he was doing a spot on the 10/10 show in Torino, Italy. Eddie Guerrero's shoulder was messed up from the constant pounding, although neither is expected to miss any time. Some more notes on Tough Enough: The final eight picked from the 10/15 and 10/16 tryouts be announced with tryout clips on the 10/21 Smackdown, with the second part of the competition with fans voting them out starting on 10/28. Al Snow and Bill DeMott will be in charge of judging, likely with input from John “Big” Gaburick and Kevin Dunn. Snow and DeMott will train the survivors during the week, and they'll be brought to the Smackdown tapings every Tuesday for the voting, where fans will vote them off weekly, similar to Diva Search. The finals are scheduled for the 12/16 Smackdown. The contract, as noted before, is not a $1 million first prize, but a four-year contract at $4,808 per week. The $1 million is far from guaranteed. If the person quits, obviously, they stop getting paid. WWE also has the contractual ability to cancel the contract after the first year, so it's not a Mark Henry situation. The company sent out a press release saying that of the 50 people, competitors will include Mike Mizanin (UPW wrestler who has been featured on several MTV reality shows including "Real World"), UFC champions (well, Kenny Sims has never won a UFC match and he's the biggest name), military personnel, national caliber track & field members, and former NFL and Arena League footballers. Shawn Daivari's ring name at this point is planned on being Khosrow Daivari. The name Khosrow came because it's the real middle name of the Iron Sheik. Vince McMahon had a meeting with the production people to go over advertising plans for Wrestlemania. In the meeting, Vince said that Hollywood comes up with a lot of their ideas from WWE. The Mania commercials are going to be outsourced this year and done by a New York firm. He said the theme of Mania advertising would be to show famous movie scenes and somehow insert wrestlers into the scenes. Internally, the feeling was they are spending money using highly paid New York people for stuff that they've always had the company production people handle, with a lot less cost. Anyway, it didn't go over well as you'd expect. Carmella DeCesare and Christy Hemme have been brought to Trax in Stamford with company officials to plan out their entire match ahead of time. Well, that's a hell of a lot smarter than having them wing and it guaranteed stinks out the joint. Funniest line of last week was Kurt Angle on the Fox & Friends morning talk show promoting No Mercy. He was asked if he was going to beat Big Show. His response was, he wasn't sure, because he wouldn't know until Vince McMahon told him the finish the day of the match. Mick Foley did a couple of college speaking engagements this past week. He told wrestling stories, and was also passionate about the current election. He did Q&A's. At one, he was asked who the most overrated world champion ever was, and people started screaming out Ric Flair, because Flair ripped him in his book. His response was that Flair is a lot of things, some good and some bad, but overrated as a wrestler is definitely not one of them. I saw the edited clips of the debate they showed on Experience. Both Foley and JBL acquitted themselves very well, but to me, clearly, Foley was the more prepared of the two and his side won the debate based on what was shown. It was expressed to me how much Vince McMahon has changed to this degree. It's well known that Vince, and most of the front office staff, leans strongly conservative in their beliefs, and they promoted something with full knowledge there was a good chance their political point of view would not win, and did nothing to manipulate it, and even after what can be "the dreaded" editing process, it came across that way. Shawn Michaels has been bothered by a bad knee. In fact, that played into the match in Sheffield where they did a knee injury angle to take him out of the match early, with the idea of basically giving him a night off. Paul London had surgery on 10/7 from the broken nose he got in a Smackdown match with Booker T. That was one of the reasons they did the heavy stretcher job and coughing up blood angle, because they knew he was getting surgery and worked his absence into the storyline. Fox News Network business reporter Merideth Whitney, JBL's fiancé, went with him on the European tour. The communications issues continued. Carlito Caribbean Cool was booked on this past week's OVW taping and it wasn't until just before show time that they got word that not only was he in Europe on the tour, but was also the WWE U.S. champion, and presumably wouldn't be back. I can just imagine what the guys in training think when a guy who didn't get over in developmental was suddenly U.S. champion while guys who do get over aren't even given a thought, although at this point, they probably all simply accept it as part of wrestling. For a comparison with wrestling, the Trinidad vs. Mayorga boxing match did 470,000 buys on PPV. 9/27 Raw TV taping in Kansas City drew 6,500. 9/28 Smackdown taping in Wichita drew 4,200. 10/3 Raw house show in Binghamton drew 2,700.

Scott D'Amore announced on Joe Aiello's "No Holds Barred" radio show in Winnipeg that TNA has closed a deal for Impact to air every Monday at 4 p.m. starting on 11/8. These will be the episodes that air on Friday in the U.S., so it would be the first time Canada has gotten up-to-date TNA on regular TV. It's a six-week trial deal, which will be renewed based on ratings. Jeff Jarrett will be going on Off the Record probably the week before the show to promote the debut. The Victory Road main event is Jeff Jarrett vs. Jeff Hardy, so they went with the original plan. Hardy asked for a ladder match. The final on 10/12 in Orlando saw a ref bump, Hardy using a Swanton but no ref, Abyss hitting Hardy with a black hole slam and Raven hitting Monty Brown with a chair and a DDT, allowing Hardy to win. Always good to make sure your challenger going for the belt has somebody else win it for him. Even though this isn't Vince Russo, if there was one thing Russo's WCW stint showed, was when every big match has tons of outside interference, nobody gets over winning or losing and basically nobody cares. Dusty Rhodes and Russo agreed there would be a fan voting (their first time they did one of those it was totally bogus) over who is the Director of Authority, either Russo or Rhodes. They announced Chris Sabin, Alex Shelley, Jerrelle Clark, Shark Boy, Chad Collyer, Amazing Red, Sonjay Dutt, Michael Shane, and Frankie Kazarian to the X Division gauntlet Rumble rules match on PPV. Jarrett mentioned Scott Hall & Kevin Nash, but not Sean Waltman, by name, on the show. He claimed Hall would come in on his side but Nash would come in against him. It looks like they are going to do a three-way with Raven, Brown, and Abyss, since they had a brawl on the show. Bobby Roode & Eric Young won the NWA tag titles from James Storm & Christopher Daniels. Later, Storm & Chris Harris challenged Roode & Young for a title match on the PPV. Johnny Swinger & Glenn Gilberti returned on Xplosion. They've given up on the idea of Terry Funk doing the PPV, as Dusty Rhodes was talked about last week for a tag match teaming with Ron Killings against Kid Kash & Dallas, although nothing was done this week in that direction. There were a lot of people surprised at how little apparent heat there was on both Kid Kash and Jeff Hardy from the prior week, and Dutch Mantel is apparently a supporter of Kash. Jeff Jarrett and Jeff Hardy had made up, as evidenced by Hardy winning the deal. As it turned out, Hardy never did return a call after no-showing the 9/27 taping. After not hearing from Jeff, they called Matt Hardy, who is at home rehabbing his knee. Matt was the intermediary and apologized for his brother's not calling. They finally got a hold of Jeff, who gave an excuse that was said to be beyond lame, but they accepted it because it's see no evil, hear no evil here. As it turned out, the Orlando crowd turned bad against Hardy in the match with Abyss, which wasn't very good. Roddy Piper was really down, talking a lot about how sad he was about Ray Traylor passing away, and talked about it in his TV interview as well, claiming Traylor had at one point saved his life. Piper said he'd have a mystery guest on a Piper's Pit on the PPV. They have an idea who they want, but it's not finalized. I just hope all of the "big names" brought in on 11/7 have programs figured out long-term for them and they've committed to working at least semi-regularly. The company needs names in storylines who are serious about making something work that the odds are against working, and not guys who are going to treat it like a chance to make a big payoff and treat it like a short vacation party. There was also a ton of heat on former TNA wrestler Legend (Joe E. Legend, whom also wrestled in the WWF as Just Joe), who ripped on Jeff Jarrett and Dutch Mantel on the internet. They were mad because they felt Legend went way over the line as he brought up Jarrett's wife's Jill's cancer of the back, and said it was karma. There are a lot of cruel things said in this business, but bringing that into your beef, if the beef is legit or not, seems way too cruel for me. Legend said he was going to beat Jarrett's ass when Jarrett came to Switzerland, which was scheduled 10/2, but Jarrett canceled with both his wife and father's health issues. The story that Vince Russo agreed to work until they could finish up his storyline aren't true, and in fact, those in the company say he specifically stated he was done at the PPV. The current TNA and "Best Damn Sports Show Period" deal is this. BDSSP is looking at doing a wrestling week, but TNA wouldn't be part of the entire week. The person putting it together is from New York and wanted loose stars he grew up on, like Bruno Sammartino types, as guests. The Wednesday show of the week (probably the Wednesday before the PPV, but this isn't finalized) is planned as being a TNA show. There are mixed signals regarding Diamond Dallas Page. The situation right now is they are talking with him about debuting on the PPV, but it is not yet confirmed. Either way, do not expect it to be announced ahead of time if he is. There was some heat on Raven for his match with Monty Brown. Impact is taped live-to-tape, which means they time it and do it like it's a live show. Raven, who called the match as the veteran, went 40 seconds to a minute long and they edited some things out of the show to make up for the missed time, most notably an NYC video package that nobody missed. Brown was mad because he thought Raven called the match to make him look bad and took too much of it. Brown didn't come out of it looking like a championship contender, although some of the fault would be how long they booked the match for, since even had it ended on time, it still was too long for Brown. The 10/12 tournament final of Jeff Hardy vs. Monty Brown was two guys who both looked bad and didn't get over in their matches. The big Monsters Bash type deal on 10/9 in Orlando drew a police estimated 10,300 people to a deal with three wrestling matches and a lot of other activities all day. They had Jeff Jarrett & Johnny B. Badd vs. DJ Russ Rollins & Dusty Rhodes. Jimmy Hart managed the heels. Rollins and Badd juiced and they even went through tables. The finish saw, after a ref bump, Hart throw Jarrett's guitar into the ring over the head of Jarrett. Rollins got it and used it. Hart then ran into the ring, ripped off his shirt and had a ref shirt underneath, and then counted as Rollins scored the pin, then put on a Monsters ring jacket to end up as a face. The whole Rollins/Hart connection was something set up by the late Zane Bresloff in WCW. Jonny Fairplay was brought in to wrestle two women. As it turned out, both women were drinking heavily before the match, but I guess everyone survived. Fairplay walked out after they did a few quick spots. At least three of the more heavily pushed guys are talking openly about going to WWE when their contracts expire over frustration with the company. There is clearly a lack of faith in the company's future. Several wrestlers this week were openly talking because at TV this past week, management was talking about how the TV ratings are rising, when a lot of the wrestlers realize that isn't the case. Here is the planned deal for Victory Road. They are offering a package with a Q&A and autograph session on 11/6, the PPV on 11/7, and a post-show PPV party for $49. They are saying the $49 guarantees you to get into Victory Road, which makes it sound, to me, if they can't sell out the 850 or so seats for a PPV, they'll round up people at the park. Here is the Jerrelle Clark story. At the 9/28 tapings, he and Mikey Batts beat David Young & Lex Lovett when he pinned Lovett after his 630. Many in the company thought he had changed the finish, as the original finish was supposed to be a roll-up. They wanted to protect Lovett because there have been thoughts of doing something with him down the line. Terry Taylor, not knowing the finish was a roll-up, or any of this, told him he could do the 630. He never went back to management or the original agent to clear it. Supposedly, as retribution, management told Michael Shane & Kazarian (& Tract) to work very stiff with him on 10/5. Clark came out of the match with one broken rib and two cracked ribs from very hard chops and kicks to the chest from a hard kick by Kazarian. Clark, showing his lack of savvy, then came home and didn't tell the story, but did address a lot on his web site, saying he was feeling dejected, and listed a bunch of lessons he learned at the show the day before, including don't get on the massage table, that if a second agent changes what the first agent did, make sure to report to the first agent. He also said he was reprimanded for getting in more than two moves on a hot tag, and said "everyone knows what's going on but you" in reference to the fact a lot of the wrestlers, as well as tag partner Batts, knew about retribution coming in the match, but he had no idea. He went to the doctor after the show who told him he needed to take some time off, to let his ribs heal, so naturally, because he needs the money, he's not taking any time off including working independent shots. As of this point, there are plans for a Mexican minis singles match on the PPV featuring Mascarita Sagrada. His opponent hasn't been decided upon. The original Espectrito was talked with, but he said he had a prior booking he couldn't get out of. The TNA Gut Check at the Atlanta Fitness Expo on 10/8 and 10/99 was said to have been a disappointment. They had slots for 100 men and 100 women to try-out, since this was a big national bodybuilding and fitness convention and there was a time not all that many years ago when tons of bodybuilders and fitness women wanted to be pro wrestlers. After all the weeks of TV advertising, they had about 30 men and 3 women who showed up, and a lot of the guys were already independent pro wrestlers including Hawk Younkins of Tough Enough 2, Scott Starr from Memphis, Brad Martin from Ontario, and Carolinas independents Krazy K, Tank Lewis, and Jesse Lee. Among those from TNA there were A.J. Styles, Rick Santel, Matt Catalano, Bart Sawyer, Walt Wilson, Jeff Hammonds, and Atlanta-based wrestlers David Young, Glen Gilberti, Don Harris, and Swinger. Hawk was the center of attention, but not in a good way, as he was awful in the fitness drills, plus he was said to have worn an embarrassing looking outfit. Scott D'Amore, Elix Skipper, Trinity, and Jerry Lynn ran things. A few guys dropped out during training. Krazy K, who is the guy who worked with Jeff Hardy on the ROH show, and Starr were the standouts, along with a 5’6’’ bodybuilder named John Bolen. Bolen ended up puking in a garbage can. Everyone cut promos and most weren't good. Only two women were left by the end, with the winner being Jamie D, a Michigan independent wrestler who has a resemblance to Trinity, and who D'Amore probably knew from that scene. But she was said to have been the deserving winner, as she was a hell of an athlete. Neither K nor Starr ended up making the final three, and Bolen won, with Martin, who has worked in the past for D'Amore's Border City Wrestling, finishing second. Starr was furious having driven in from Mississippi, because he was the best at most of the in-ring drills. It was noted how interesting it was they picked the bodybuilder when the TNA product isn't about bodybuilding muscles. The winners got $4,000 plus will be trained at the TNA Asylum Gym.

Is that the goofy kid from "Real World Back to New York"? Yes.

I went against the grain and voted for everything WWE was not pushing for. HHH's opponent: Edge Jericho's opponent: Steven Richards Diva outfits: French Maids Christy vs. Carmella: Aerobics Challenge (haha, this would be so horrible I HAD to vote for it) Snitsky vs. Kane: Steel Chair Bischoff vs. Eugene: Loser has to be the winner's servant Flair vs. Orton: Submission Match

Did they offer more than $500 a week?

Good idea in theory, but I think we all know that if HHH & HBK became the tag champs, their Tag Title matches would main event the PPVs (a la Fully Loaded 98; yeah, sure Austin was the WWF Champ at the time, but this is HHH we're dealing with).

This was in this week's edition of the Observer: Shawn Michaels has been bothered by a bad knee. In fact, that played into the match in Sheffield where they did a knee injury angle to take him out of the match early, with the idea of basically giving him a night off.

Bradshaw is one of the (if not THE) most vastly improved characters of 2004, but he still shouldn't be anywhere near the WWE Title. And Vince does sound to be a good person. Eddie Guerrero and William Regal credit Vince for saving their lives. And he paid $15,000 for Waltman to go to rehab.

WWE NO MERCY POLL RESULTS Thumbs up -- 67 (39.9%) Thumbs in the middle -- 51 (30.4%) Thumbs down -- 50 (29.8%) BEST MATCH POLL Paul London vs. Billy Kidman -- 140 JBL vs. Undertaker -- 17 Kurt Angle vs. Big Show -- 14 WORST MATCH POLL Eddie Guerrero vs. Luther Reigns -- 62 JBL vs. Undertaker -- 34 The Dudley Boys & Dawn Marie vs. Rico, Charlie Haas, & Miss Jackie -- 27 Booker T vs. John Cena -- 18 Spike Dudley vs. Nunzio -- 12 There has been a saying in WWE seemingly for generations that go something like this: How goes the Garden, goes business. Of course, times are very different from when Vince Sr. used to say that, because the Garden was the key profit center for the company. Now, because of its history, the company still considers it as its most important arena stop, but arena shows are far down on the list of where company profits come from. Still, as much as this shouldn't be a surprise, the idea that the Meadowlands (Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, NJ) drew 10,000 paid for a PPV show (a little under $700,000) and MSG drew an estimated 7,500 for a live Raw the next night is just the latest point hammered home about the loss of popularity. What is worse, our poll indications, which are usually fairly accurate, seem to show No Mercy on 10/3 from East Rutherford, will likely fall well below the recent "bottom level" of PPV shows of 220-235,000 buys. Our response level was down 21% from Judgment Day, which was the low point for this year. One show is not cause for concern, but there is nothing on the horizon, no angle, no match-up, no wrestler coming in, that is going to change things. And that's the scary part, because you can't fool yourself into thinking things fell from the top and now they are steady. And unlike declines in the past, not only is there no easy answer (bring back a star from the past, signing someone from the rival company, or a can't-miss guy in training), nor even a hard one. There is a recognition that good wrestling matches, or even great matches, aren't going to turn business around. Sure, you can bring back Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, and Mick Foley, and in the past, all have meant one huge return buy rate. But this time, in all three cases, it'll be diminishing returns from last year. So they are reaching; tranquilizer guns, miscarriages, seemingly killing Paul Bearer, and now Undertaker. Worse, in the past when they've staged those special effects car wreck scenes where somebody should die, the audience live usually applauds, I guess feeling they are seeing something spectacular. This time, when the show ended with the idea that Heidenreich had driven a truck into the hearse Undertaker was in, it was dead silent, and then people began to boo, and it wasn't the right kind of booing. Then, there was a "bullshit" chant. Once again, they gave the audience something it didn't want to see. It's a hard audience to please, but that's a cop out to a degree, because if you give the audience a great show, they love it. But it's harder when there are no new match-ups and no new talent people care about. But when you get to the point that PPV is nothing special, which happened to WCW, that's a hard thing to turn around. For the good of the business, nobody should want the brand extension to end. It does allow for, in theory, more people to get pushed and have jobs, as well as allows for two different types of TV shows, even if that isn't always the case. But Smackdown's future doesn't look bright. They've done a good job of protecting Heidenreich by not having him wrestle on TV, and he's got a good look, but there's a moment of truth and it's a far harder audience to bluff. Worse, killing Undertaker came off as such a replay. They just did it a year ago to build for WrestleMania. The car crash stunt was right out of 2003 with Kane and Shane McMahon, and before that, a needless 2002 angle with The Rock and Hulk Hogan that actually detracted from a sure hit. It's become like when Vince Russo was booking WCW at the end, and you had the guy falling from a great height into a gimmicked pit far too often in the hopes of getting fans to chant "Holy Shit" like they did in ECW, where guys did bumps with far less in the way of safety measures. The problem was people had seen it, they knew the gimmick, as they did here, and nobody really cared. It was the old jump cut and having two hearses, one with Undertaker, and the empty one that got hit. It was filmed at about 3 p.m. that afternoon. Last year, the gimmick was teasing the end of people's career to draw buy rates, including heavy hitters like Vince, Steve Austin, and Jim Ross. In one case, Stephanie McMahon, who lost to Vince, has actually been gone from TV for almost a year now. This year, it's the death teases, although they just did it on 6/28 with Paul Bearer. As a show, No Mercy looked uninteresting on paper. The general reaction was in the middle. There were no great matches, but certainly no awful matches either. John Cena won the U.S. title, but was only in for two shows (PPV and Boston), before heading back to Australia to film "The Marine." He dropped the belt immediately on Smackdown to Carlito Caribbean Cool, who knocked Cena out with his chain to start a new program. I guess the idea was Booker, who is probably turning, can lose before the turn because of the idea your losses are forgotten when you make the switch. JBL worked hard in the main event but he's a disaster as champion. The New York crowd was hot for a lot of the characters on the show, and then JBL came out with the belt in the main event and it was quiet. He and Undertaker were able to get the crowd into their match by the finish with the blood and broken tables, even if people hated the finish. But the people were not into it until the blood. When it was over, there was no great match to talk about and nothing that made you feel you did anything but watch a decent show. When you have four hours of TV, which is usually decent, PPV has to be better than decent, and the same guys in the same basic spots on the card working the same style matches is getting old. They are trying, if anything, too hard. They rushed Heidenreich on because they were looking for a big guy for Undertaker. Gene Snitsky may have only been planned for a brief stay but the character is working, although whether he'll be able to stand the test of time after people really see him wrestle is a question. They've done the weeks of vignettes for Carlito and Simon Dean. Carlito is a smaller guy who is nothing more than a decent worker and has never shown charisma before, although the vignettes gave him the best chance he could have, and clearly they are giving him a big-time push. Dean is a bona fide character, different from the pack, but the gimmick seems to limit him to prelim level. They need more movement of Raw to Smackdown to freshen up the top. The idea should be when a PPV is over you should be looking forward to seeing the new angles created play out next month. Even though I thought there was nothing wrong with this show, when it was over, I don't think anyone had those emotions when it came to the next Smackdown show. The next PPV is Taboo Tuesday on 10/19 in Milwaukee, an experiment in a lot of ways. This will be the first PPV in WWE history where people won't know the title matches going in. The plan is to book a hot Raw on 10/18 in Chicago to spur last minute voting. They will also have voting in the Bradley Center the night of the show. I think conceptually they've done a good job with making this feel like a different show, but the Tuesday is a big question mark. The results of the voting won't be announced until the PPV is underway. While clearly people are going to be led, and already have been, the story is they are willing to change if the legit results are different. The line-up, as it stands right now, is HHH vs. Chris Benoit, Shawn Michaels, or Edge. As noted, they are hoping for Michaels, but have not tipped their hand or pushed. Thus far on TV, Benoit has gotten no push, and was the guy left laying for Randy Orton to make a save in a TV match he didn't win with Batista. Michaels got a good TV win over Christian, while Edge got actual physical contact cleaning house on HHH in the first segment of the show. In his later interview, he pushed the idea the other two had gotten tons of matches with HHH and tons of title matches in their career, and he's gotten zero world title matches (well, at least recently) and zero matches with HHH, as well as listed his titles won and noted his last IC title he never lost. Chris Jericho will defend the IC title against anyone else on the roster, although TV was pushing Rhyno for the slot. Ric Flair vs. Orton will be either falls count anywhere, a submission rules match, or a cage match (one would think a cage). Eric Bischoff vs. Eugene will be loser becomes a servant for the winner, loser wears a dress, or loser gets his head shaved (they are strongly pushing hair vs. hair). Kane vs. Snitsky will be a chain match, a chair match, or a pipe match (strongly pushing a pipe match). There is also a Battle Royal for the Women’s title with fans voting on what the women will wear. There is also a Carmella DeCesare vs. Christy Hemme match, although they haven't listed the possible stipulations for that (Jeff Garcia on a pole? Loser spends a night in jail? Loser gets a restraining order put on them?). A. Mark Jindrak pinned Scotty 2 Hotty in 2:45 after a left hook when he ducked a bulldog in the Heat match. The good thing is the crowd was into everything. 1. Eddie Guerrero pinned Luther Reigns in 13:21. Crowd was hot for Guerrero opening the PPV. Jindrak was at ringside interfering. Guerrero climbed up the ropes and did Spanky's sliced bread #2 finisher. Still, Reigns looked green. Overall, it was an acceptable opener. Guerrero got a retractable police baton from a gimmicked security guard and put it in his boot. He dropkicked Reigns into Jindrak but missed a frog splash. With the ref distracted, he hit Reigns with the baton (no mention of this being a tribute to Ray Traylor, if it was. Traylor has never been mentioned on a broadcast except for graphics before Raw and Smackdown this week). Guerrero got the pin with a frog splash. *1/2 2. Spike Dudley pinned Nunzio to retain the cruiserweight title in 8:48. The Dudleys were in Spike's corner and Johnny Stamboli was in Nunzio's corner. Michael Cole's new thing is to say Nunzio is a protege of Billy Robinson, as Joey Styles also used to say in ECW. For younger fans, they probably need to mention who Robinson is and why that's significant to his style. D-Von interfered, shoving Nunzio off the top rope. Nunzio did a great block of a la magistral into his own cradle. Nunzio did his Sicilian slice (legdrop off the top) finisher but Spike got his feet on the rope. Spike took a nasty back drop on the floor. Both Dudleys interfered at the finish as Bubba crotched Nunzio on the post and Spike pinned him. **3/4 3. Billy Kidman pinned Paul London in 10:36. This was impressive, because the people weren't into these guys at the start, nor seemed to get into their snug Japanese style work with the hard kicks to the back. But they had the best match on the show and at least got themselves over to the live crowd. London got another bloody nose, as his nose appeared to be busted from a TV spot with Booker. London did a moonsault from the middle rope over the top rope onto Kidman on the floor. There was some good near falls by London. Kidman teased doing a shooting star press, but then walked off. They noted Kidman would be fired if he got counted out, so he reluctantly got back in. London then did this awesome looking shooting star, but Kidman got his knees up. Kidman then did a shooting star, crashing with his knees on London's chest, which was clearly by design. London bit a condom filled with blood or however they did it and had tons of blood coming from his mouth to sell internal injuries. They put London on a stretcher and strapped him in. Kidman then attacked him, and with London unable to move, gave him another shooting star press. Wouldn't you know it, the crowd cheered Kidman like crazy for it. London went out on a stretcher. I don't think they could have done much better in this situation. ***1/2 4. Kenzo Suzuki & Rene Dupree beat Rey Mysterio & Rob Van Dam in 9:13. It started with Suzuki saying Bruce Springsteen was from New Jersey, and started singing "Born in the USA." Boy did that ever die. Cole claimed Suzuki used to play baseball with Ichiro Suzuki. I have no idea if it's true, but most of Cole's recent trivia has been correct. He also said Suzuki once won the Young Lions tournament in New Japan Pro Wrestling. That was in 2000, and Suzuki beat Shinya Makabe in the finals in a tournament Masakazu Fukuda was scheduled to win, but Fukuda ended up dying from a brain hemorrhage a short time earlier. Mysterio and RVD did a double flip dive. Mysterio's didn't quite reach Suzuki and he landed on the back of his head on the floor like he'd been power bombed. He looked shaken up for a while, but was working fine later in the match. RVD was shoved off the top rope by Dupree into the barricade. Mysterio & Van Dam kept the match entertaining. Finish saw Mysterio hit the 619, but as he set up dropping the time, Dupree tripped him. RVD did the running flip block off the apron onto Dupree but Suzuki pinned Mysterio using the ropes. This result was changed and the original plan for the match was the title switch. **3/4 5. Big Show beat Kurt Angle twice. I guess we'll find out, but this seemed to build up JBL vs. Show as the next title program, and for Angle to do this so clean and put Show over so strong, Angle should have a title win in the planning stages. The first match went 3:45 with Show, being used smarter than at any time since WCW (except for maybe the heel turn under Heyman period with Lesnar, although Lesnar threw Show around so much he destroyed Show's back). He works like a monster. He's shaved his head so he looks scarier, but there are way too many guys with shaved heads these days. Angle got almost no offense in, and just walked out for the count out. Teddy Long came out and told Angle he'd be fired if he didn't get back in the ring and there had to be a clean finish. Angle countered a choke slam into an ankle lock which was a nice looking transition. When Show kicked out, Angle took out ref Brian Hebner. Angle went for a chair but Show punched it into his face. Show did a one-man flapjack and a choke slam for the pin in the second match at 9:25. *** 6. John Cena pinned Booker T to win the U.S. title in the final of the best-of-five series in 10:20. This best-of-five thing was a disappointment, if only because it brings up natural comparisons to Magnum T.A. vs. Nikita Koloff and Booker vs. Chris Benoit, which were both memorable. This never got momentum, probably because the matches weren't special. They noted that because it was a best-of-five, that a title could change via DQ or countout. Booker got out of an FU and hit the book end for a near fall. Booker went for a chair, but ref Charles Robinson told him if he used it he'd be DQ'd, so he put it down. Booker missed an ax kick and Cena won clean with the FU. **1/4 7. Rico, Charlie Haas, & Miss Jackie beat The Dudleys & Dawn Marie in 8:47. This is the traditional death spot on the show, with the idea you have a cold match after a hot match and before the main event. This worked really well as a comedy interlude. They way rushed this Jackie vs. Dawn Marie angle with the idea that Dawn wants Haas off Haas & Jackie being engaged. Dawn was the center of attention, with her shirt that said Charlie loved her being ripped off by Jackie and she worked most of the match in her bra. At another point, Jackie momentarily pulled down her shorts. There was a comedy spot where Bubba wanted to French kiss Jackie. For some reason, he closed his eyes, and Rico kissed him. No tongue. Bubba found out and acted like he was going to vomit. Bubba walked out of the match. Rico was on the top rope when Bubba came back out and swept Rico's leg and he crotched himself. This was the 30th time on the show they had someone trip someone on the top rope. Bubba set up the wazzup spot, which needs a new name, but what commercial is hot these days? D-Von refused to come off because Rico would enjoy the head in the groin spot and D-Von freaked out. Finish saw Jackie spear Dawn while Rico pinned D-Von after a moonsault. **1/4 8. JBL beat Undertaker in a last ride match in 20:35. Crowd was into the match early with Undertaker on top. JBL came back with aggressive brawling after hitting Undertaker with the ring steps. Undertaker used a triangle and JBL tapped. I don't know what it is about Undertaker and submissions, but the crowd dies for them. They at least tried to establish it in a match where JBL could tap, but people still didn't care. They didn't really even tease Taker winning with JBL being out, as he took JBL out of the ring, but JBL revived and reversed a whip, sending Taker into the ring steps and he did the smashing his knees on the steps spot. JBL even took a backdrop, when Undertaker reversed a piledriver, off the top of the ring steps to the floor. They brawled in the crowd. Undertaker gave JBL a tombstone on the ring steps. JBL juiced heavy. JBL came back with a hard chair shot to Taker's head, as they tried to recreate his hot Los Angeles match with Guerrero. Undertaker came back to choke slam JBL through the Spanish announcers' table and then carried him to the hearse near the entrance way. Heidenreich came out of the back of the hearse wearing big red gloves and started throwing punches, and then did the ether on a towel gimmick to smother Undertaker. Undertaker was put in the hearse, but before he could get far, the camera in hearse showed Undertaker sitting up. Yes, ether doesn't work on him, and he came out the door and started pounding on Heidenreich. JBL laid him out with a clothesline. Yes, one clothesline is greater than ether. Just don't let Jim Cornette know. He was put in the hearse and this time it drove away. Fans hated this finish, and it didn't appear to be the right kind of heat. They cut to the pre-tape, where it was revealed Paul Heyman was driving the hearse, and he parked it and ran out, putting it in position for a truck driven by Heidenreich to crash into it. As much as JBL shouldn't be champion, he sure worked hard here. The match wasn't bad, but it's wasn't close to the level fans expect from a WWE PPV main event. After the show went on the air, JBL told the booing audience that they lived in a state where the governor was a child molester. **1/2

Ordering Taboo Tuesday on WWE.Com for $34.95 will get you streaming access to the following video: October 22nd, 1992 - WWF Saturday Night's Main Event Shawn Michaels vs. The British Bulldog for the Intercontinental Championship Hot off the heels of his amazing Intercontinental Championship victory over Bret Hart, the British Bulldog puts the gold on the line against the Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels in this classic encounter from 1992. October 4th, 1993 - WWF Monday Night RAW Battle Royal By mid-1993, Shawn Michaels was on top of the world. He had successfully broken away from Marty Jannetty and was enjoying a successful reign as Intercontinental Champion. Then as a result of inactivity, HBK was stripped of the title. This battle royal was designed to determine the top two contenders for the vacated championship. October 9th, 1995 - WCW Monday Nitro Arn Anderson vs. Ric Flair in a Steel Cage Match Future Hall of Famer Ric Flair steps into one of the most feared structures in all of sports-entertainment to battle long-time friend and former Four Horsemen cohort Arn Anderson. Don’t miss this WCW Monday Nitro instant classic. October 13th, 1997 - WCW Monday Nitro The Steiner Brothers vs. Scott Hall & Syxx Upon arriving to WCW, The Outsiders – Scott Hall and Kevin Nash – made an immediate impact on the tag team scene. In this match against the Steiners, The Outsiders’ Tag Team Championship is on the line. However, Syxx, best known as X-Pac to WWE fans, fills in for an injured Kevin Nash. October 2nd, 2000 - WCW Monday Nitro Mike Sanders vs. Elix Skipper for the WCW Cruiserweight Championship The WCW Cruiserweight Championship has been held by such greats as Brian Pillman, Rey Mysterio, and Chris Jericho. On October 2nd, 2000, WCW’s top cruiserweight at the time, Elix Skipper, defends the gold against the always-cocky Mike Sanders. October 20th, 2002- WWE No Mercy 2002 Triple H vs. Kane In a truly historic match, World Heavyweight Champion Triple H battled Intercontinental Champion Kane at No Mercy 2002 to unify the two championships. In the end, there was only one true champion. Watch to find out which man walked out with all the gold. October 19th, 2003 - WWE No Mercy 2003 Mr. McMahon vs. Stephanie McMahon Prior to this match, fans needed a scorecard to keep track of the relationship between Mr. McMahon and his daughter Stephanie. In October 2003, at No Mercy, the scorecard etched its final marking, as the two McMahons battled in an “I Quit” Match. The loser of the match would be gone from SmackDown! Don’t miss this thrilling family feud.

They've been putting extras with the webcast since Bad Blood.

WWE announced the ramifications of the new five-year contract with Sky in the U.K. which runs from January 2005-2010. The various Sky stations will carry all seven first-run shows, Raw, Smackdown, Heat, Velocity, Bottom Line, Afterburn, and Experience. They will also get six of the 14 PPVs as free TV specials. The other eight PPV shows, including the big four of Mania, Rumble, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series would air on Sky Box Office, which means Setanta Sports is being shut out in the new deal. The WWE Classics show, which of late was airing old WCW World Wide shows weekly (they were in 1992, the time of Bill Watts' arrival as of this past weekend) are being axed. The show didn't do much in the way of ratings. In exchange, and this hasn't been announced so it may not be finalized, Sky will be getting another hour of old footage from the proposed WWE 24/7 channel. Marianna Komlos, who worked in 1999-2000 under the name Marianna as well as the mother of Beaver Cleavage, passed away on 9/26 from breast cancer at the age of 35. She had several health problems over the past few year and the descriptions of her death by her fiancé on a bodybuilding web site described her last few hours as really horrible. Komlos was a competitive bodybuilder/nude fitness model, who was a big enough star in that world to have graced the cover of the November 1997 issue of Flex Magazine even though she actually only competed in three bodybuilding contests and no fitness contests. She had a number of magazine layouts and was a contemporary in that world of Torrie Wilson, Victoria (Lisa Marie Varon), and Trish Stratus. She was brought in during a period when both companies were at war recruiting fitness models to try and copy the Sable phenomenon. Komlos had sent in photos and was constantly calling Bruce Prichard looking for work. She had an in because she had met The Rock at a bodybuilding show and he'd get her backstage whenever they were running near where she lived, so a lot of company officials had an idea who she was. WCW had used Torrie Wilson, and then overloaded with people like Tylene "Major Gunns" Buck, Melinda "Midajah" O'Hearn, April Hunter, and others, and both companies were after Stratus. Russo came up with the idea of Beaver Cleavage, and they were looking for a blond with big breasts, and Prichard put two and two together. The angle was former Headbanger Mosh (Charles Warrington) being remade as Beaver Cleavage, doing an illusion of the mother/son incest angle and using music similar to the old "Leaver it to Beaver" TV show. The angle was heavily criticized, a total flop, and quickly dropped. They were remade as Chaz & Marianna, boyfriend and girlfriend. Quickly, they did an angle where Marianna accused Chaz of beating her and even called the "police," but it came out in a male-written soap opera, that the woman was a vindictive bitch who was caught on camera by GTV making it all up because she was mad about being broken up with. At about that time in 2000 in real life, Komlos' sister was found to have breast cancer. She wasn't being used and officially quit to go back home to Vancouver and help her out. In 2002, Komlos was diagnosed with breast cancer, which was already at Stage 4 and the cancer had spread. According to medical literature, breast implants have no link to breast cancer, although they may be associated with other problems. Silicon implants often impede X-rays of the breast in early detection of breast cancer, which is so important in the treatment. Saline implants do not impede X-rays and early detection. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment, and eventually needed both of her breasts removed. Last year she was training to box when the cancer returned and led to a string of health problems. I didn't get to see the Mick Foley/JBL debate in Miami the day before the Bush/Kerry debate. The reports I read indicated both did very well. Foley was the more popular, because the student crowd was more Democratic leaning plus he was more popular. It was actually Foley, two members of the college debating team, and a local state senator against JBL, with similar partners, and the two wrestlers were apparently the standouts. JBL, who based on audience reaction, was getting beat, gave a few one-liners to save face trying to say the odds were stacked against him. At one point when one his college partners was speechless at one point that he knew he was in trouble when before the debate, he was all excited to meet Foley. At another point, he chalked up a negative response to the fact he's a bad guy on TV. The highlights will air on the 10/10 Experience show. The Rock is paying some attention to wrestling (a couple of weeks ago, he stayed up all night watching tapes; he also took some old Championship Wrestling from Florida tapes from the 80s tapes with him when he want to Prague on 10/4 to start filming the movie "Doom."). There are no plans at this point for him, other than possible drop-ins when Raw comes to South Florida or Southern California. With him being out of the country for a while, that won't happen any time soon. Jamie Noble was fired for disciplinary reason having nothing to do with being small or not thinking he had talent. He suffered an infection on his ass cheek and when the company got the doctor's report on it, they discovered something where they felt they had no choice but to let him go. A&E is doing lots of advertising for its 11/5 biography special on Rock, including a huge ad in Newsweek this week to go along with ads on buses in several major cities. Rey Mysterio missed the weekend before last and the TV tapings because of a family vacation he'd put in for months ago. He wasn't able to change his plans even though he was in a title match at the PPV (which, when he made his vacation plans, he was of the impression they had no plans for him). The company was totally understanding about it, although it was indicated to me, had this been Raw, which the people in charge for some reason care far more about, it would have been different. Real bad news for WWE is that Raw drew less than 100,000 viewers, the lowest in its history, on its third week in the new Thursday night time slot in the U.K. That is less than half of what it was averaging in the traditional Friday night slot. Jeffrey Dupree, who is the one year younger of brother of Rene Dupree, will be starting soon in OVW. The 10/25 Smackdown brand house show in Topeka was canceled. The company has sent out numerous contracts to various retired wrestlers or their families similar to the one noted last week offered to the widow of the late Bruiser Brody. We've been hearing from several more superstars from the past. What WWE is sending out is a five-year merchandising contract, which includes such things as video games, merchandise, and even book rights. The former wrestlers (or families of ex-wrestlers if they are deceased) get a $10,000 advance upon signing the contract and at that point, they will get a percentage of anything with their likeness. It's all part of trying to use the history of wrestling as a new marketing tool with the roll-out of the WWE 24/7 deal. The station is having a test roll-out in Pennsylvania and they will have tons of stuff for just $7 per month, including old PPV shows, MSG shows from the 70s and 80s, Nitro from the beginning, old Prime Time Wrestling shows, old ECW shows, as well as profiles on Hall of Famers all each month. Some view this as WWE attempting to buy up and recreate the history of wrestling. Another point of all this is they will sign up as many former stars as possible, making it impossible for TNA to use them. What may be a mistake is, as best we can tell, they are offering the same $10,000 deal to people long gone from the business or families who have long since gotten any money from wrestling that would gladly sign, and some major names of the recent past who have real marketability and made huge money, to where $10,000 would almost seem like an insulting offer, although the bigger names would likely have far more opportunity to make money through merchandise. WWE did well over Christmas with dolls of older wrestlers and everyone knows retro sports jerseys are huge. I don't know if Bruno Sammartino got sent a contract or not, although as everyone knows, he was one of the first people talked with about signing on. Jacqueline Moore (Jacqueline), who was fired in August, is doing a movie called "Night Fever." One of the reasons the WWE house show in Memphis drew well above average is that on the Memphis TV, they were pushing an angle very hard where Jerry Lawler would confront Steve Keirn (WWE agent) about how the Fabulous Ones were born. The segment was taped for Memphis TV, so both sides got something out of it. The angle saw Lawler (a heel) about to reveal how the Fabulous Ones were really created when Cory Maclin came from the audience and jumped Lawler. Anyway, on Memphis TV, they did finish the story as Lawler said in the early 80s (he said 1985, but it was really 1982), Jerry Jarrett was watching MTV and Lawler claimed he bet him $5,000 he could take two of the most useless wrestlers, dress them up, put them in music videos, and make big stars out of them. Lawler said he lost $5,000 on the bet. This is all supposed to lead to Lawler & Rock & Roll Express vs. Maclin & Fabulous Ones. HHH will be one of the hosts of the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding contest on 10/30 in Las Vegas. HHH is a huge bodybuilding fan and even did the announcing two years ago when the Olympia was on PPV. It's going to be back on PPV this year, but I believe HHH's role will be for the live audience. Several years ago as a present, Stephanie McMahon gave HHH life-sized posters of all the Olympia winners. Teddy Long, Chris and Nancy Benoit, as well as former Knoxville promoter Bob Polk and Georgia office worker Bobby Simmons were also at the Jim Barnett funeral. Long and the Benoits arrived late due to a miscommunication regarding the starting time. The McMahon family as well as the families of the Briscos and Dory Funk all sent flowers. Todd Romero, who we wrote about a few weeks ago, how now signed the deal to be a new announcer for WWE. He was a Kansas City sports anchor (as was Jonathan Coachman), who was let go for that job in February 2003, and has worked in real estate since then. He intends to continue his real estate job. He said he's being groomed for a play-by-play job and that he hopes this will get him close to his ultimate goal, which is an NFL play-by-play job. I'm not sure if that was my goal, that this would be the path I'd take, but working for WWE definitely beats being out of the business completely. There has been some talk in the Kansas City media on Romero going to WWE, with nothing indicating he has a long-time interest in the product. Right now, they've wanted a play-by-play guy ready to take over at some point for Jim Ross, since every time they've given Coachman the shot, he's been a disaster. But they really need to be looking at people who have at least some product knowledge, and if this guy's goal is NFL and he's looking at this as a stepping stone broadcast job, well, I guess he's probably good looking or something, and that's just how things are decided here. Upcoming house show line-ups have Chavo Guerrero returning as a babyface, although it seems he's going to get no push since he's working prelims with Carlito, who has been pushed so hard on TV. Because this actually became an internet headline because Honky Tonk Man reported that Kane had given notice and was leaving, here is the situation. Kane's contract is nowhere close to expiring. He was asked at TV and said he had no contractual or other problems with the company. He has not given notice. Nothing has changed regarding production of the movie in Australia he's scheduled to do shortly (if he had given notice, they would be in a panic there, so that’s the guaranteed sign nobody believes there are significant problems). He has made millions over the past eight years, but is also in the process of building a huge new home. Several sources indicated there was no story and nobody, at least in power, was even talking about it after Kane gave the reassurance there was nothing to it. After the Ric Flair deal, as noted, that was the only major topic of conversation. Terry Gordy's son Ray spent a few weeks in Louisville being evaluated by WWE officials. 9/20 Raw tapings in Tucson drew 3,500 but the big success was the 9/21 Smackdown tapings in Phoenix at 6,600. The only weekend show we got a report on was 10/1 in Portland for Raw which drew an estimated 2,000 and the 10/2 house show in Burlington, VT drew a nearly full house.

They should start putting all the extras they put with the webcast on the DVD release of the PPV.

According to Edge, Venis is not being used in a high-profile role because Venis is going to eventually need the 12-month recovery neck surgery and WWE does not want to put him in a high-profile angle in case he has to suddenly leave to get the surgery.

I remember when everyone thought the WWF was going to die when Vince Russo left. heh.

Meltzer just confirmed it. His last day is Taboo Tuesday.

Good to see George W. Bush reviews wrestling video games in his spare time.

Don't forget pedigree'ing Hurricane 5 straight weeks after Rock put him over.

Vince gets mad at Flair for talking about making virgins bleed, yet he thinks it's hilarious when the DivaSearch girls call each other cum-guzzling gutter sluts and talking about having cocks in mouths. There's no double-standard here or anything.

Jerry Jarrett was hospitalized over the weekend with an irregular heartbeat. He had a similar escapade where he slumped into a chair at a Nashville show and was rushed to the hospital, and needed triple bypass surgery. There were people who remarked of late that he rushed getting back in the swing of things and were worried about his health. The decision was made to hold the Victory Road PPV on 11/7 in Orlando, which makes for easier travel with the taping two nights later in the same city. Internally, people are talking about the new TV time slots as being something that will happen, but not right away. For the present time, the two things being talked about are trying to get a midnight Friday night replay time slot for Impact as well as negotiations for a two-hour prime-time special with a Halloween theme. The working idea, if it can get approved, would be doing a tie-in with "Best Damn Sports Show Period," and it would be used as a Clash of the Champions type show to shoot the major angles for the PPV. Andy Douglas and Johnny Devine both ended up in the hospital after being stabbed in an early morning of 9/26 night club fight. The two were leaving the Mix Factory Night club in Nashville, and got into a fight with several people. One had a knife, with Douglas getting stabbed in the thigh and Devine in the stomach. Douglas needed stitches and was released, and was wrestling a few days later. Devine underwent several hours of surgery on 9/26, due to internal injuries, which resulted in his gall bladder having to be removed. He's been told he has to rest four to six weeks before he can start training to get back in shape for a comeback. The men who attacked the wrestlers fled the scene and local police officers are investigating. There is definitely the idea to increase the star power starting with 11/7, with Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Sean Waltman, and Roddy Piper scheduled and they're going to attempt to bring in Sting as well. Piper was announced as returning at the 10/5 Impact tapings. Because of that type of negotiating, that may lead to being late in putting together matches. Right now the idea is they will have a tournament with first round matches of Monty Brown vs. Raven and Abyss vs. Jeff Hardy on 10/5 to determine who gets the shot at Jeff Jarrett. Petey Williams vs. A.J. Styles for the X title is decided. They are strongly hinting that the Outsiders will be coming in to align with Jarrett, which probably means they aren't. Sean Waltman & Joanie Laurer are back together. Laurer has been trying to peddle her sex tape to a known distributor but thus far has gotten no offers. The IWA/TNA deal seems to have been finalized. Jerry Jarrett and Savio Vega did most of the talking. Dutch Mantel was the big problem in the finalization, as Vega and Victor Quinones didn't want Mantel involved, to the point Vega wouldn't even allow Mantel into the talks. However, Jerry was insistent that Mantel be cut into the deal, as apparently he was adamant about making sure since they were cutting Mantel out of his WWC deal, that he got a new deal. IWA was resistant, but ultimately, the agreement was that Mantel would get paid for occasional trips in and helping book, but he'd only be used when Jeff was brought in. Konnan, Michael Shane and Hotstuff Hernandez will be sent to IWA from 10/14 to 10/17, including the Loubriel Stadium show with the Ray Gonzalez vs. Apolo main event. Some time back, Terry Funk and Raven had wanted to work a program, but it fell on deaf ears. A.J. Styles earned the X title match winning a six-way over Alex Shelley, Kid Kash, Amazing Red, Frankie Kazarian, and Chris Sabin when Styles pinned Shelley with a Styles clash in a hot match. Russ Rollins of the local Monsters of the Midway morning show debuted teaming with Johnny B. Badd beating Bruce Steele & Rod Steel in what was apparently a dark match. The crowd was way up from recent weeks due to Rollins, who had a section of fans called the "Monster mafia." They didn't put him on until after Impact was over, and when his match was over and before Xplosion started, most of the fans that came because he was there went home. Everything Rollins did go over. They even set up Jarrett and Rollins having a square-off. Badd, Rollins' trainer, got Jarrett's guitar, and if you know swerve booking that everyone sees coming, of course, Badd hit Rollins and left with Jarrett. Jerry Lynn just had shoulder surgery. All of the talent is being asked to arrive on Monday to Orlando, even though TV isn't until Tuesday. This past week, Jeff Hardy was the only one who didn't come a day early. Jonny Fairplay wasn't there, and the feeling was negative toward him being on the PPV, although the Monsters local radio show is building up something locally on 10/9 where Fairplay will wrestle women. Jimmy Hart was on the radio on 9/28, plugging the show that night and saying he would unveil the new Hart Foundation. And that didn't happen either, unless the new Hart Foundation is simply Fairplay who he'll manage in that appearance. There is also legit heat between Vince Russo and Jerry Jarrett. When it comes to those two, you always have to be suspicious of a work, I guess. Jarrett wrote something in his new book (I haven't read it yet, but probably will within a week or two) about reading some of Russo's early scripts and saying they looked like something put together by someone on LSD. Russo found out and was upset, both publicly, responding saying that shows why he thinks the wrestling business is the worst business in the world. He also wrote a private e-mail to Jerry, saying he couldn't understand how one Christian could do that to another Christian. B.G. James missed the 9/21 show because of problems with his home in Pensacola from the hurricane. Larry Zbyszko was used as the authority figure on the 9/21 show because Russo wasn't there. Russo had made family plans on that day before the schedule had changed. Goldylocks is done for now, if not for good. The 9/8 deal with Abyss was scheduled to be her blow-off to begin with, but then she got on everyone's bad side because she refused to do much of anything in the blow off. She refused to take a choke slam, a black hole slam or a rack drop, and they finally got her to agree to take a weak looking backbreaker, a hold that hadn't been put over. There is a possibility she'll be brought back for a new role, but everyone was talking about it like that was the end for her. There has been no talk of late regarding either Spanky or Jim Mitchell. Mitchell's contract expired this past week and is now a free agent. WWE run must have done a number on Spanky when it comes to the business, as he went from a guy who drove non-stop once from Cincinnati to Los Angeles to win a jr. title at the last minute when the guy scheduled to win pulled out (which got him his original spot in Zero-One) and a guy who was working his ass off on independent shows to a guy who seems to have lost interest in doing much of anything outside of Zero-One. The story is he was the one who lost interest in TNA, even though he lives near Atlanta and it's only one day a week right now, and would somewhat keep his name alive in the U.S. He's done virtually no independent dates either. One of the issues with TNA and the Zero-One guys is Zero-One doesn't contact guys about dates until the last minute, as compared to All Japan, New Japan and NOAH, where guys know their schedules usually far enough ahead of time that booking plans can be made. Low Ki switching to NOAH should have made things easier, but he wasn't willing to sign a TNA contract. Jerry Jarrett, who never appeared on TV for TNA, was already on TV for Bert Prentice's group which got the Xplosion time slot in Nashville. They talked about them bringing wrestling back to the Fairgrounds on 10/2. It was funny because they were knocking TNA. Prentice emphasized that this is old-school, rock-em, sock-em rasslin' and they weren't giving tickets away for free. Jarrett pushed his book and then they showed a trailer of the Sting movie, since Prentice has a small role in it and is in the trailer.

SteveyP93 needs to get laid.