QuestionMan

Piper even said that O'Haire wasn't given a chance to get over on his own.

Imagine a gothic Sable. Nevermind. That's going way too far.

I think you are confusing the shovel incident to a Austin/Taker match in 1999. That match was either the highest rated segment in the history of Raw, or the highest rated match, with This is your Life being the highest. No, during The Rock vs. Steve Austin the night after Survivor Series '98, Undertaker did a run-in and broke a shovel over Austin's face, setting up the Buried Alive match at In Your House: Rock Bottom.

They also specified Kevin Nash or Chris Jericho would end up 100% bald. Hell, they even showed photoshopped pictures of them bald. And you saw how that turned out.

It wasn't even really an interview. Benoit immediately dedicated the title win to the Dynamite Kid, but was cut off when Nash came on. Nash said something along the lines of, "Benoit, you better enjoy that WCW Title for the next 80 minutes. Because at midnight, I'm the commissioner, and I'm going to make your life a living hell."

that might not be too far off, I mean Stevie & Molly do have some history together from their "RTC" days. Maybe Stevie is upset about Victoria's new wardrope apparel and decides to turn and go with the more clean cut Molly!?! Ivory was the female representation of the RTC. Not Molly.

HHH wins.

I'm sure Vince Russo was salivating at this rumor.

You're welcome.

70 candid pictures from last night's RAW taping My camera died after The Rock and Mick Foley attacked Evolution, so I couldn't get any pictures of the post-show shenanigans with Rock, Foley, Steve Austin, and Lilian Garcia. They didn't do much anyways. They just stood around the ring talking. Nothing worth taking a picture of. One picture would have covered the entire 25 minute ordeal, so just imagine all 4 of them standing in a wrestling ring that is doused with beer and you're set. If you're on dial-up, consider this your warning, these aren't exactly small pictures. ENJOY!

That "Cane Randy" sign ruled.

J.R. always calls him Hurricane Helms. It's nothing new. And I'm sure Jamal's release if I remember was due to some incident where he attacked a police officer.

shit My sentiments exactly.

Well, he DID win his 2nd NWA Title with a flying bodypress... Also, when Test and Eddie Guerrero were feuding over the European Title, they should have had Test act all confused and dumb when Eddie said, "Esse." Esse...Test...Yes, I am channeling Brian Gewirtz.

Yes, that is him.

Yes, it can be that far below. Before December 2003, WWE's corporate website listed Royal Rumble 2002 at 470,000 buys. The updated figures they got that month raised the buy rate all the way up to 625,000. So, yes, it can usually be largely below.

Because it sucked the first time. And besides, why should The Easter Bunny get a WM payoff?

Edge, who has been talked about a lot here on the site this past week, has suffered an injury as he prepares to return to WWE from his 2003 neck surgery. He was scheduled to start his rehab at Ohio Valley Wrestling last week, but somewhere along the way suffered a badly sprained ankle. As a preventive measure, he is wearing a boot and is expected to be good to go within a month. credit: Dave Scherer/PWInsider

This is probably going to be a battle royal where pinfalls and submissions eliminate people as opposed to going over the top rope, since cruiserweights need to use the top rope for some of their spots. Heh, I remember the Battlebowl at Slamboree '96 and all of a sudden DDP started pinning people and eliminating them. I was so confused I thought my brain was going to explode.

I wonder if Edge is going to come back considerably bulked up like Eddie Guerrero did that one time.

Were there ECW chants? Since these were two top ECW teams (Hell, Doring & Roadkill were the final ECW Tag Champs) and this was only about two months after ECW passed away.

Yeah, those seats were probably purchased, but the people didn't show up. Sucks for them. They missed a hell of a wrestling moment.

Just for the record, Kenzo Suzuki sucks. He had a match on TNA a while ago with Perry Saturn and it was unbelievably horrible. He's like the Japanese Nathan Jones. Everyone that saw his stuff in MLW said he sucked too. Vince only signed him because he's ..... big.

After the first weekend where there were signs that business is coming up, there is a lot of optimism leading into WrestleMania. The packed house of 14,572 and somewhere in the $400,000 range for RAW on 2/23/04 in Omaha, NB, the biggest RAW crowd in months, topped off a weekend with two SmackDown house shows that sold out in advance. This made, including Stockton, CA on 2/16/04, every house show a sellout since the title change to Eddie Guerrero. Of course, they were all small buildings with less than 2,500 in paid attendance, but WWE only sold out a few house shows in all of 2003. While it’s too early to say house show business has turned a corner, by standards of the last few months, this was a very successful weekend. RAW drew the second biggest crowd of the year (behind Rumble) in Omaha. Some of that was due to it being one of the first events in the new Quest Arena, but if you’ve got a dead product, just being an early event won’t save you. It was the largest Omaha crowd in recent memory. The theoretical city record, believe it or not, was for the historical July 4th, 1916 five-hour draw with Strangler Lewis vs. Joe Stecher, which the papers at the time listed as 18,000, but who knows what the real number would have been. 2/20/04 in Evansville, IN for a RAW house show was a big success with 4,000 fans and a $130,000 house. 2/21/04 RAW in Springfield, IL drew 4,700 and $153,000, which is great nowadays for a medium-market house show. 2/22/04 in Springfield, MO for SmackDown drew a sellout well in advance of 2,400. That has always been a good city for wrestling. 2/22/04 in Valparaiso, IN for RAW drew 2,000, which was the only bad house show of the week. Live reports from Omaha indicated some of the top section was tarped, but they were turning people away at the gates. 2/23/04 SmackDown in Joplin, MO drew a legit sellout days in advance of 2,200. With The Rock’s return imminent, there are people salivating at the reaction he’ll be getting since the belief is they’ve set the table perfectly for his return with the Mick Foley angle with Evolution, leading to their tag match against Randy Orton & Batista. Also this past week, it was official that Steve Austin will ref Bill Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar, a Cruiserweight Battle Royal called the Cruiserweight Open for the title, plus a match where the object is to strip the women from their evening gowns with Torrie Wilson & Sable vs. Jackie Gayda & Stacy Keibler. On his radio show on 2/24/04, Harley Race said that he would be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and will be appearing at WrestleMania. The negatives going in are the health of both Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair. Michaels is working on a torn ACL, but at this point he’s working through it since he’s got a lot of big matches. He isn’t booked on any house shows until WrestleMania, but is scheduled for the 3/1/04 Atlanta, GA RAW, teaming with Chris Benoit vs. Orton & Batista. The reason Flair has seemed off in his recent TV matches is that he’s far more injured than he had been letting on. Flair, who turned 55 on 2/25/04, has been working with an as-of-yet undiagnosed neck injury and has a variety of back injuries. He had both a CATSCAN and an MRI done this past week, but both were inconclusive about his neck problems, which are believed to either be a ruptured C-8 disc or a severely pinched nerve. That is probably why they did the Tag Team Title change without even establishing RVD & Booker T. as a team first. Flair was pulled from the weekend house shows and the word among the wrestlers on the RAW side as that this might be the end for him. Flair was telling friends he thinks with some time off to rest the neck injury that he’ll be back, and at TV this week was telling management that he’d be able to wrestle at WrestleMania if needed. At this point there is no match booked for him. His grip strength in one hand is very weak, even though his arm strength is starting to come back and he’s been able to lift at least moderate weight. The feeling is he doesn’t have too many German suplexes left to be taken. Flair really shouldn’t be a full-time active competitor at this point and just work the occasional match where there is a real purpose to it. The Rock’s return is scheduled for a surprise appearance on the 3/1/04 RAW coming from Atlanta to set up the Mania match. If a story in a Samoan newspaper is correct, he may have something of a new look. According to the Samoa Observer, Rock will be getting the dangerous and traditional Samoan chief tattoos and actually should have them by the time you read this. I’m wondering if the Hollywood types would like him to have such an island look, not to mention take the significant risks the process entails. We’ll know come Mania. It’s a painful process that covers much of the lower half of his body. For those who remember his grandfather, Peter Maivia had similar tattoos. Maivia’s wrestling fame in Samoa, when tapes of his California matches aired on television in American Samoa and became an incredible hit, he was named High Chief in the 70s and underwent the tattoos as part of the ceremony. Samoa’s leading tattoo artist, Suluape Petolo, left on 2/18/04 to do the job that takes several days and is exceedingly painful since no anesthetic is used. The tattoo is a traditional Samoan design from the waist to the knees, using a multi-pronged needle taped by a piece of wood to pierce the skin. Blood loss is constant in the procedure, although usually not a great deal. However, there have been people who have died from infections in the process. The angle to set up his return was an old-school Southern angle taken to the extreme. Foley used no make-up on the 2/23/04 RAW skit with Jim Ross. When they were in the ring on 2/16/04, Foley basically told Orton to bust his eye hardway. He apparently never told him until they got in the ring. Orton had no experience at doing so, and it’s risky because if you do it wrong, you can ruin someone’s vision. Busting the bone above the eye with a bare knuckle shot to cause juice was something old-time wrestlers used to do for believability, but hasn’t really been a big part of the business since the 70s (and wasn’t that common even then). Orton hit Foley with seven hard shots in the temple, and he legit injured his hand (which probably should have been wrapped up when he wrestled on 2/23/04, not so much because it was still hurting but to get over the angle) doing so. Foley had major swelling near his temple from all the punches that the cameras on RAW this week were ordered to avoid, to concentrate shooting the blacked and bloodshot eye. The eye didn’t get discolored after the beating, as Foley likely wanted it to, since this angle has been his creation from the start. Many people in the company were skeptical at the first part of it when he walked out on Orton, disappeared for six weeks and was constantly branded a coward. But he got the company to agree to it. His left eye started getting blackened on 2/18/04 when the blood went down to the eye and settled. I’m guessing Foley was hoping for hardway juice out of the angle, but that didn’t happen. He actually did an interview with Jonathan Coachman in mid-week. Vince McMahon hated the interview so much he wouldn’t let it air. He called Foley back a few days later and had Jim Ross do the second interview, which went a lot better. It was Foley’s idea, because he felt that him being pounded on for so long with nobody saving him made no sense, so he came up with the idea that the wrestlers in the back thought he had violated a wrestlers’ code when he walked out in Tampa, FL. Foley is unique, in that he didn’t want to use make-up for the angle, but nowadays, you can do it with make-up and it is often done. I wonder whether risking eyesight problems to make it more legit, when 75-90% of the audience will believe it was make-up anyway, is worth it, even though it allowed him to cut a great interview since, to him, it was closer to real than anyone knew. The company has talked about expanding to 14 PPVs per year for some time, and they’ve scheduled shows two weeks apart in June. The second June show is not a definite, and the PPV companies have been specifically told the date is tentative. It would be a very interesting experiment. Upcoming PPVs are SmackDown Judgment Day on 5/16/04 from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA, which I’m guessing is Guerrero vs. Angle in a rematch if they can carry it that far. The program at this point isn’t supposed to end at Mania. Like San Francisco, CA, the approach is going to be to heavily market the show to the Hispanic audience and put both Guerrero and Rey Mysterio in top positions. 6/13/04 Bad Blood, which is a RAW show, will be from Freedom Hall in Louisville, KY. 6/27/04, if it takes place, will be a SmackDown PPV show in Norfolk, VA. If the call is made to do the show, and it goes well, they will do it again at another point this year because the tentative plan is 14 PPV events in 2004. They could expand up to 20 (you wouldn’t want two shows in January, March, August, or November because it would greatly detract from the traditional big shows). My guess is we’re getting more shows in 2005. The business had 30 or more when WCW and ECW were in business and in 1998, both WCW and the WWF were doing pretty well on that schedule. PPV is so profitable at this point that even though it would probably cut down on the average buys per show, overall the company would be taking in more revenue with more shows. Bret Hart and Vince McMahon spoke on 2/20/04 to get Mania settled. Bret declined doing the show, so that should put an end to those rumors. They left things open as to doing something in the future. I think it has been inevitable for some time that Hart would at some point make one appearance on WWE television, but I can’t ever imagine him ever coming back for a storyline. As we had expected, it is also official that Bruno Sammartino turned own the invitation to go into the Hall of Fame. As far as movie news goes, from sources at New Line, the company is high on HHH as has been written every other week since he got there. He will be offered significant movie work in the future. Even though HHH has gotten positive praise both from the director and from those at New Line for his work in “Blade: Trinity,” and he was given more time in the film that originally planned, he was not one of the eight listed leads in the movie, which is scheduled for an 8/13/04 release. David Goyer, who ran the film, had praised HHH in several interviews. He said he was resistant to him at first, and New Line pretty much wanted him in. “I was REALLY skeptical,” he said. Goyer went on to say that he did a great job, was super cool, loved him so much he wrote more stuff for him, and praised him for having good comedic timing and for his ability to make fun of himself. “He totally got it and understands how to make the transition.” The experience has opened a lot of eyes about using WWE people in the future. There has been talk of Chris Jericho in the Freddy vs. Jason sequel, but it’s far from a done deal. There is now interest in Eddie Guerrero. If the ratings after winning the title support him as a mainline ratings-moving top player, it would help his case. This week saw a major noticeable upswing of arena business. Tickets were put on sale for 4/18/04 Backlash in Edmonton and they sold 7,000 tickets on the first day, which was considered very strong. The Cow Palace sellout for No Way Out, which is being largely credited to Eddie Guerrero because such a high percentage of the audience was Hispanic, was the first SmackDown PPV sellout in history. It was also the first sellout for wrestling in the building since the Hogan/Sting match from February 1998. Bill Goldberg began shooting “Santa’s Slay,” a $4 million horror comedy where he plays the lead role (his new look with the bushy grayish beard was for his role as a heel Santa). The storyline is that Santa Goldberg has only been doing what he’s been doing because he lost a bet, but the time limit on the bet expired. The movie will take two months to film, and Goldberg will be in Edmonton the entire period. The only day he’ll be leaving is to attend Mania. At this point, it is still scheduled as his last show. I’m guessing there is a plan that Steve Austin will stun Goldberg on the way out, just to do it. Since Goldberg and Austin are friends, there isn’t going to be any problems regarding that. Goldberg still wants to wrestle in the U.S., but I can’t see him considering TNA, or them being able to afford him. It is the movie shooting as opposed to Mania that is keeping him off the 3/7 Hustle II show, but he is scheduled for the May Hustle show. The idea of a June tour of Japan, which had been reported there, is premature. There is no confirmed return date for Japan or confirmed arenas for a SmackDown tour, but there will probably be one more tour this year. It’s definitely not going to be in June. A bio special on The Rock will be airing on A&E on 4/4/04. Chris Jericho, Trish Stratus, The Big Show, and Eddie Guerrero will be on Mad TV on 3/13/04. Jericho also filmed a Stacker 2 TV commercial this past week. Stratus did an Oxygen (women’s fitness magazine) cover shoot and story this past week. Right after Sky Television was reprimanded about WWE programming having ad placing for WWE Unscripted, and both Sky and WWE promised not to let it happen again, just a week later, they plugged the Playboy issue on SmackDown with Michael Cole pushing it in voice-overs. Whether anything will come of it or not depends largely on if someone filed a complaint. On every other show as of late, the Playboy stuff has been edited out, so it wasn’t someone trying to defy as much as an oversight. Edge, just as he was starting training to return, sprained his foot or ankle. He’s now in a soft cast and it’ll be two-to-four weeks before he can start back training on it. Luckily, the plan was for him not to start at Mania, because with everything else going on, it would get lost in the shuffle. I know people realize this, but we’ll see how the execution of it goes, that his return needs to be pushed as a big deal. That’s why I think it’s incumbent that HHH puts him over in a meaningful way (which means the opposite of the deal he did years ago with Jeff Hardy and the I-C Title) on Edge’s return. Brock Lesnar is leasing a small plane and hired one of his childhood friends, who is a licensed pilot, to take him to all his shows. The company is paying him what would have been the cost of his first class tickets to the tours. Stacy Keibler did a radio interview in Baltimore this past week with some highlights. She talked about turning down Playboy, saying she’s been told if she ever changes her mind (read that as starting to get a little older and worried about long-term income), the option would be open to her. It is interesting to note that Victoria has made it clear she wants to pose for Playboy, and I’m guessing her new costuming to show her ass while she wrestles is a way to get her noticed, as has been her recent make over to appear more glamorous. Keibler said she’s not interested at this time because she’s moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting. Test will be moving with her and break into acting as well, and I’m sure some people will find that one funny, considering Test has the rep for being just about the worst actor in the company. She said after she rejected the Playboy offer that the creative team came up with her current storyline. She said she had never turned down a storyline before, but the creative team has wanted this storyline with Jackie Gayda to go into a lesbian direction and she doesn’t want to do that. She said she usually doesn’t know what she’s doing on RAW until she gets to the building on the day of the show. She said it’s difficult when she’s booked to wrestle, because it’s short notice and hard to prepare. She said she only does the things in the ring she is comfortable doing and said she’s lucky to have never suffered a serious injury. She also said her original training, at the WCW Power Plant, she thinks was done wrong because she has neck and back pain she thinks isn’t normal for a 24-year-old to have. After getting out of the hospital last week, Superstar Billy Graham went to the gym on 2/20/04 for his first workout, planning only to lift terribly light weights and stretch. He aggravated a previous hernia, which saw his intestine pushed through his skin like he was in “The Exorcist,” and was rushed to the hospital. He needs surgery but he won’t be ready for it for about three months. He appeared on our radio show and was in good spirits and this won’t keep him from going to WrestleMania, but his doctors have told him he can’t lift anything, not even groceries, and he’ll have to stay out of the gym for a few more months. A clarification on the WWF.Com web site story: The World Wildlife Fund did not actually sell the site to a pro wrestling message board. They sold the site to a guy who bought it because it delivered good traffic. After it was sold, the new owner, who supposedly knew nothing about pro wrestling, recognized the people who logged on were looking for a pro wrestling site and then turned it into one. In more attempts to make it more sports-like and have a realistic feel, Trish Stratus was told not to do that signal where she points in the air before delivering her Stratusfaction finisher. Overall I agree with the new direction and am impressed it’s working so well, but I’m scared they’re taking it too far. At the Portland, OR RAW, there was talk of doing an angle where Randy Orton would take out Buddy Rose and Col. DeBeers, who were at the show, but it didn’t happen. The company did huge merchandising business on the Japan tour. The Osaka show may have done an all-time company record for per capita merchandise as it’s rumored to have been $30 per head (if true, that would be around $210,000), which would be the most I’ve ever heard of. WWE Originals fell to No. 104 on the charts this past week with 19,256 sales. Kenzo Suzuki, who formerly worked for New Japan and World Japan, is training in OVW. He was told by John Laurinaitis that he would be starting after Mania on the RAW crew using “Kenzo” as his ring name. He hasn’t wrestled in OVW, but said he enjoys going to the tapings every Wednesday night and studying what makes U.S. fans react. When Shaquille O’Neal, after getting the NBA All-Star MVP Award on 2/15/04, said, “Can you dig that,” it probably was a Booker T. reference. O’Neal is a huge fan and the last time he was at a live event, which wasn’t that long ago, he told people how he always Tivos RAW. Those who have talked with him at the shows backstage say he’s pretty knowledgeable about the industry and the storylines. The company managed to piss off people inside the industry in Mexico this past week the same way they did in Japan before the last tour. In an article in El Norte hyping the 4/3/04 debut in Monterrey, they sent a photo of HHH and Michaels training together in a gym. Talk about how times change. There was a VH-1 show this past week called “Illest Minority Moments” and talked about WWE’s portrayal of minorities over history, and it was praising them. Wu-Tang Clan, the producer of The RZA, said his first experience seeing Samoans as watching the tag team of “Sika & Tika.” Eddie Guerrero and Randy Savage praised Vince for creating diverse characters for everyone and being a pioneer, which was hilarious as they played clips of the Iron Sheik and Kamala on the screen. The show hammered TV’s portrayal of minorities in general, which made it even weirder. Tom Allan, 75, who worked as a ref on WWF shows in the 80s when Jack Tunney assigned the refs in that part of the country, passed away on 2/3/04 after a lengthy battle with cancer. Allan, who was from Hamilton, Ontario, started refereeing in Ontario in the 60s after meeting wrestlers in the gym. 2/9/04 RAW TV in Portland, OR drew 9,866 paying $350,090, which was a huge success, but the paid for the 2/10/04 SmackDown tapings in Tacoma, WA was only 3,200. CREDIT: Dave Meltzer/Wrestling Observer Newsletter

The FCC doesn't regulate basic cable, so as long as they kept the really edgy stuff to RAW and left Smackdown toned down, it wouldn't be a problem.