QuestionMan

What did they name that infernal spawn (the antichrist designation goes to HHH/Steph's child)? There wasn't a name given.

The booking for WrestleMania is starting to come together with a couple of strong RAW programs in recent weeks. The 2/16/04 show was strong in setting up fans wanting Mick Foley to have a partner since he continually is getting the beat-down from Evolution. At first I thought there could have been better usage of The Rock. Between Foley’s work in laying the program out and Randy Orton becoming a superstar in front of our eyes, this program seems to be gaining a lot of steam. There are a lot of different theories on booking, and the Shawn Michaels pinning of Chris Benoit on RAW, after distraction from HHH, has been questioned. There is a general booking philosophy that if somebody is about to win a world title, you beat them once or twice before winning, to set up immediate challengers when they get the belt. However, that rule doesn’t always work out. If you have a weak challenger, and by weak, I mean someone who isn’t long-term established as a main eventer and championship caliber, that doesn’t work, because losses to top guys more emphasize that they aren’t at that level. Not that this was the turning point, but a big mistake in late 2001, was when they were going to have Chris Jericho be the surprise winner of the Undisputed WWF Title tournament, a few days before, Steve Austin pinned him clean with the Stunner in a TV match. Instead, what it did was establish that Jericho was the weak link in the four-man tournament. Even though Jericho beat Austin and Rock on the same night, and beat Rock and Austin second times on the following PPVs, a lot of people never saw him as a champion (how he was portrayed once winning didn’t help matters). With Eddie Guerrero, before winning the title, on SmackDown!, he pinned Brock Lesnar in a tag match. I thought that was necessary because I think a lot of fans really didn’t think of Guerrero as someone in the league with Lesnar, since he had never had a high profile title challenge, or even a PPV main event, and people had seen him on a national basis since 1995. By beating Lesnar (which probably should have been done a few weeks earlier and pushed every week after that point), it at least left people with the visual that he was in Lesnar’s league and it was a real title challenge. Of course, in the long run, that made no sense, because his pin was never referred to once on the PPV, while Tazz was put in the role of trying to say Guerrero had no chance to make it seem like a bigger upset when he won. The only problem was, they had already seen him win three days earlier. This comes from one set of people writing one story, and another set trying to have the announcers tell the opposite story. With Benoit again, a challenger who has only had one singles PPV main event in his WWF/E career, and that was way back in 2000, he wasn’t in the position that, say HHH, would be in a few weeks before challenging for a title he was going to win. The loss certainly makes it expected Benoit will win the title at Mania (then again, Booker T. for a time was going to win the title from HHH at Mania last year and we saw how that ended up). If it is a Ladder Match, which hasn’t been announced, it leaves things open-ended, as he’ll climb a ladder, but not pin or make either guy quit. Really, just through traditional booking, the SmackDown! side has months worth of PPVs coming off this. Benoit can win at Mania, and then go into Edmonton as champion. Because it’s Canada, where it is very easy for Michaels to be a heel because the people naturally hate him anyway, Benoit vs. Michaels is easy to set up by Michaels’ win this past week. In Edmonton, the perfect finish is Benoit winning with the Sharpshooter. With Edge switching over to RAW, and Edge having to make an impact right away to get him up and running, he should beat HHH on the same show. That makes sense since HHH is a long-established headliner, who can still get a title shot as the former champion. Since we all know HHH is getting the belt back sooner than later, when that happens, he’s at least made Edge ready to theoretically headline, possibly at SummerSlam in Toronto. A Japanese publication, but the rumor does make sense based on the angle where Bill Goldberg accidentally speared Austin, listed Austin as the referee in Goldberg vs. Lesnar. CREDIT: Dave Meltzer & the Wrestling Observer Newsletter

To geniusMoment's credit, it has gotten progressively worse. TNA has been total garbage since Dutch Mantell started as main booker.

Can't WWE get in trouble for firing someone based on a lisp? That seems like a touchy subject.

Good. I hope Hollywood keeps him.

Shawn Michaels suffered a torn ACL, either in his RAW match a few weeks back with Randy Orton, or in his singles match with Ric Flair in Hiroshima. He’s working through it because he’s in a major Mania program. Flair turns 55 years old on 2/25/04. Vince & Linda McMahon are now grandparents, as Shane and wife Marissa had their first child, a nine-pound boy, this past week. We’ll have the complete financial rundown next week, but the quarter ending 1/23/04 saw the company take in $79.1 million in revenue (that’s way down from usual, but misleading since the 1/25/04 Rumble is not figured into these numbers), but due to cost cutting and cutbacks in performer’s fees (payoffs), the company still made an $8.9 million profit. The figure would have been closer to $14.2 million with Rumble figure in. But the profit margin is because they cut back more than $18 million in payroll and administrative expenses. Next quarter will be hugely profitable because it’ll have four PPV events, which make the most money for the company, including probably the two biggest of the year in Mania and Rumble. This profit was achieved with live attendance down 27% for the quarter from bad numbers at the same time a year ago, a decline in PPV revenue and a $3 million decline in TV revenue (of which $2.7 million of the decline was because of Tough Enough being cancelled.) The only revenue increases anywhere came from the Flair DVD set (which legitimately had sold 89,000 copies as of 1/23/04, so the USA Today figures of 110,000 by 12/31/03 were inflated) and the Austin book. The company set another record when it comes to international business, by selling out two RAW shows in Dublin, Ireland at The Point, to the tune of $450,000 a piece. The shows are on 5/26/04 and 5/27/04, and tickets for the first date were sold out in six minutes. A few hours later, they added a second date, which sold out in two hours plus. While WWE has sold out consecutive dates in the same arena numerous times, this is the first time they put tickets for both events on sale on the same day. These are the first two WWE dates in Dublin since 1995, although they did run Belfast (Northern Ireland, as opposed to Ireland itself) in 2002. The next day, they put tickets on sale for the March SmackDown tour of the UK on 3/18/04 in Newcastle, 3/19/04 in Sheffield, 3/20/04 in Aberdeen, Scotland, and 3/21/04 in Glasgow, Scotland. There were some ticket problems, as Aberdeen and Glasgow were listed as sellouts on the first day, but there were tickets available for both shows the next day. Chris “Kanyon” Klucsaritis was released from his contract on 2/9/04. The move wasn’t surprising since the company really hasn’t done a thing with him in the past few years. He had knee and shoulder injuries, but has been recovered from some time. He got great reactions and did some strong dark matches at tapings last year with Shark Boy and Chad Collyer, so his ring work wasn’t the problem. Others in the company didn’t like his doing matches with big moves and near falls in dark matches. He’s about 6’3’’, which they like. His catch phrase is okay, but it’s a relic from WCW, so that didn’t help him. My feeling is they just felt he didn’t look or talk like a star, and it’s his look and accent/lisp that did him in. He posted something on his web site about it, saying he hasn’t been happy for the past year about the direction of his career (how could he have been?). He didn’t hint at what he’d do next. Ernest Miller was given the word in Tacoma on 2/10/04 that he was being released. This one was a little more of a surprise, since Vince himself was a fan of The Cat gimmick at first. I knew his push was done when they did the angle where Vince gave him a low blow and laid him out, with no retribution written in. This is typical Vince symbolic way of telling everyone this is nobody to care about. Since just the week before they had taped an angle to put he, Lamont, and Orlando Jordan together as a prelim trio on house shows (which was cut from the show) against The F.B.I. and later worked them against Tajiri’s team, the decision was more abrupt on this one. Miller’s style is totally different than the style they want guys to use. For that matter, Miller’s style would be different from the style anyone would want anyone to use. I think they wanted him to adapt, and he wasn’t really listening. The company is doing a $5 million ad campaign for WrestleMania, between TV ads, print ads, a four-page ad section in both the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and the Entertainment Weekly Oscars issue, plus pizza box ads, billboards, and taxis. To make up $5 million, they would have to do 220,000 extra buys. If you figure with no outside ad campaign they’d do 550,000 minimum, to make it worthwhile, they’d have to get that up to 770,000. Of course, this is misleading, because in their contract with Turner Broadcasting when buying WCW, it called for them to spend millions in ads with the company over the next several years. That was the hidden cost. Most of the TV ads will be on TBS, TNT, and the Cartoon Network. Most of the magazine ads are AOL Time Warner property, plus they are buying a lot of online advertising on AOL. In WWE’s lawsuit against 37 Canadian bars for illegally airing PPV events, there is belief that the total damages could come to more than $1 million. Damages will be calculated by a combination of $1,500 for every illegal showing of a PPV by a bar, plus a rate to be determined, believed to be $10 to $20 per patron at the bar, times three (treble damages), as well as WWE’s court costs. Sherma Huffman, the aunt who raised Maven and who he refers to as his mother, passed away on 2/12/04 after a long bout with bone marrow cancer. There was an episode of “Tough Enough” where Maven visited her in the hospital. The SmackDown! tour of South Africa, with shows on 2/26/04 in Cape Town, 2/27/04 in Durban, 2/28/04 in Johannesburg, and 2/29/04 in East Rand are all sold out. There is nothing new on Bret Hart and WrestleMania. It appears unlikely anything will happen. Linda Miles got even more heat on her this past week. The feeling is that she doesn’t take wrestling seriously enough. Unlike most on the roster, she didn’t grow up a fan. She was a good college basketball player who sent in a tape to “Tough Enough,” and her natural athletic ability and look got her picked. They want to move her from being a valet to being a wrestler, as noted, and are trying to train her before the matches. The feeling is she’s not taking the business seriously enough. Well, after being a college basketball star that was almost good enough to go to the WNBA, and then being put in many situations where they have her model lingerie and give her a boob job, you can see that if you didn’t grow up respecting wrestling, it may be hard for her to do so. On 2/9/04 in Regina, she was supposed to train, but (not her fault) it took forever to get through customs and they barely got people there in time to start the show. She promised to come the next day for a session with the Bashams, Haas, & Benjamin. They all came, for her benefit, but she no-showed. She got mad at being fined, which also didn’t go over well, and complained she wasn’t making enough to afford it. They have asked her to watch every match on the show and study them. WWE Originals fell to No. 57 on the charts this week to 20,961 sales. Total sales up to this point have been 123,155. The actual ticket prices for the 4/3/04 show in Monterrey, Mexico, the company’s first-ever show in that country, are going to range from $155 down to $9. It is part of a RAW loop which will include shows in border cities Hidalgo and Laredo as well as a Houston RAW that week. The heavily-hyped “Monday Night War” DVD is off to a strong start, as it sold out at many retailers, as well as Amazon.com, that are awaiting new orders. SmackDown as of late last year was averaging $34,333 for a 30-second ad. Out of 124 shows on prime time network television, it was in spot No. 121, ahead of only the dying Rock Me, Baby, the nearly dead Mullets, and UPN Night at the Movies. The upside is the cost of the show is far less than just about any show on television, so it is profitable even though it’s 3.4 rating delivers ad rates of a show that would do well below a 2.0 Percy Pringle III (Paul Bearer) on his web site suddenly announced he was no longer taking independent bookings, which is going to fuel the rumor mill. The Angle line to Big Show on the 2/5/04 SmackDown show about eating crap for breakfast was taken from the “Happy Gilmore” movie, and originally said by Adam Sandler. So anyway, the credit for the line shouldn’t have gone to the writers as much as credit to whoever happened to see that movie. Matt Morgan is going to be given hands-on training from Tom Pritchard from this point forwards. Morgan is very well liked among just about everyone, but the reality is he was not ready when he was brought up, which has often been a broken record about guys when it comes to big guys. There is also some dissatisfaction that he isn’t picking up things quicker, but I don’t think they realized how far from ready he was when they brought him in. Ron Simmons, who turns 45 in May and is the company’s oldest active wrestler aside from Flair, is once again talking about retiring. There had been talk of him becoming a road agent at some point back in 2002, but it never happened, and he ended up coming back. There was some heat with Torrie Wilson from the other SmackDown women. Apparently, Wilson asked Jim Ross and John Laurinaitis backstage at No Way Out to change the Tiny Teddy deals at the house shows to tag team matches with Sable & Wilson wrestling as a team, since it makes more sense for them to be teaming than fighting each other with the Playboy pub, and she’s right. They agreed, but the word never got to the other three women. Wilson got to Stockton and told the other three women about the change, and they were mad about not being told, and that Wilson went to management without talking with them. Then, when everyone was upset, Wilson called RAW and got Laurinaitis (since Ross was on the air), which got her more heat. Paul Heyman, who is working with Laurinaitis and Ross in booking the house shows now, tried to compromise by having it be a Tiny Teddy tag team match, but came up with spots to pacify Dawn Marie and Nidia, since they had to lose. It all worked out by the time they got in the ring. The new deal is that Wilson and Sable win, and then are about to kiss when they are jumped by Dawn and Nidia. WWE.Com said that Todd Grisham, the Arizona-based announcer hired three weeks ago, would be starting on RAW within the next few weeks. One of the reasons Grisham got the job is he did an interview at his regular station with Eric Bischoff, and the two set up a scuffle to air on television. I guess WWE TV people liked that kind of guy. Zach Gowen did an interview on “Get in the Ring” radio after being fired. He had nothing bad to say, just saying he made enough money to pay for his college and he’s going back to school and doing some independents. He said the past year was the best year of his life, and admitted he was rushed into main events before he was ready. He said his goal was to become a high school math teacher. Gowen’s con man side came out as he was asked about the story about meeting Hulk Hogan in the hospital. He claimed Mike Tenay made it up and he just went along with it. And the moon is also made of Swiss cheese. Gowen said he’d love to return to TNA, but they haven’t called. With RAW having the weekend off, Jonathan Coachman worked the 2/14/04 Memphis TV show for Jerry Lawler. If I were Vince McMahon, I would be 100 stages of furious over this one. The World Wildlife Fund has sold the rights to the WWF.Com web site name to a group calling themselves Web Wrestling Forum, which is a pro wrestling message board. Granted, Vince asked for problems when he agreed not to market the WWF initials outside of North America and then did so. But if the Fund really believed the web site was such a major issue in market confusion, it wouldn’t have sold the domain name to a pro wrestling group. Superstar Billy Graham was released from the hospital on 2/12/04 and doesn’t have to undergo surgery, so it appears he’s a definite for both the Hall of Fame banquet (already sold out) and Mania. 2/2/04 RAW TV taping in State College, PA drew 4,100 and 2/3/04 SmackDown taping in Cleveland drew 4,600. Only house show of the week was 2/16/04 in Stockton before a second straight legit turn away crowd of 2,200. They played the old-time Civic Auditorium instead of the 5,000-seat college gym they used to run at. CREDIT: Dave Meltzer & the Wrestling Observer Newsletter

Brock Lesnar is getting massive heat backstage from other wrestlers regarding his recent purchase of a $400,000 plane to make his travel schedule easier and more convenient. Lesnar did get WWE management's approval on the plane, but many wrestlers are upset because Lesnar has "individualized" himself from the other talent. One wrestler asked "Who the fuck is he to buy a plane?" Another problem is that wrestlers are starting to question how Lesnar can afford a $400,000 plane. Due to poor house show gates, mid and under-card wrestlers have been getting low payoffs, which has people wondering how the guy headlining the shows (Lesnar) can make enough to buy a plane. Lesnar has always had a bad reputation backstage, mainly for getting an ego so fast at such a young age, but the plane situation has made things much worse. Despite the heat, Lesnar remains one of Vince McMahon's favorite wrestlers and has five years left on his WWE contract. CREDIT: Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter

When I went to Royal Rumble 2002, the ringside seats were $350. So, I'd say for a lesser PPV like Bad Blood, around $250.

Pardon me, but he had a pretty damn great WWF Title match with The Rock at Royal Rumble 2002. His match at No Way Out against Steve Austin wasn't that great, but Austin later admitted himself that he wasn't into the match because he knew of the ending (the nWo run-in) so he felt like putting no effort forth. And we all know what happened against Triple H at WrestleMania 18. Jericho was set up to fail because: 1) They never gave him any clean victories (he had to cheat to beat MAVEN, think about that), 2) They never gave him any credible beat downs that established him as a feared Champion, and 3) They often put him in positions where he was clearly pinned after a ref bump. I think we all know wHHHo was behind all this anyways, so it's not like it should shock anyone. Hunter's had a bounty on Jericho's career since August 9th, 1999. Was Jericho given the ball? Yes. But HHH and the WWF (hey, they're the ones who let HHH run wild) soaked that ball in butter.

Is it just me, or does he look like Mideon in this picture?

Whenever I think of Lita, I always remember a RAW in March 2002 right before WM18. It was The Hardy Boys vs. Billy & Chuck. Lita got on the ring apron and went to do a 'rana on Rico and completely missed. Both her legs were on Rico's shoulder and Rico just said, "Eh, fuck it," and did a pity somersault sell.

I seriously think she was high tonight. She was messing up EVERYTHING.

Screw Bob Holly.

Michael Cole said Angle/Eddie would be the main event at Mania on Smackdown.

I wish Shawn would crawl back into wherever he was from 1998-2002.

Regarding which is the better wrestling family, I don't think it's fair to say either is better. Wrestling-wise, I think they are equally as awesome. However, if you are talking about which is the better all-around FAMILY, when it comes to family unity and longevity, the Guerreros have it all over the Harts.

I can say this: I always go to Hooters to watch the pay-per-views. There was a huge crowd there for Royal Rumble. I had to park at the Burger King across the street. I wasn't expecting that many people to show up for No Way Out because: 1) it's not a Big 4 PPV and 2) it wasn't really promoted that well. But I'll be damned if that crowd there wasn't LARGER than it was for Royal Rumble. My friends and I were shocked. Folks, it looks like Eddie is indeed proving his worth. Smackdown's rating is going to be very interesting.

Well, they moved Big Show to SD under pretty much the same circumstances (no cred, jobbing left & right, no direction on Raw), and it turned out pretty good for him. It could work, provided the WWE *wants* to build up Booker, which I highly doubt. When Big Show jumped and immediately challenged Lesnar for the title, I was thinking, "Wasn't this the same guy who a month ago was getting pinned by Jeff Hardy and getting brutalized by Tommy Dreamer with a chair?"

The promos for the March 1st Raw at the Gwinnett Center are airing in the greater Atlanta market. At the end of the promo the narrator poses the question, "Is this the night The Rock returns to Raw?" Should prove to be an interesting show. Credit: PWInsider And remember, the reports about two weeks ago were that they were building local advertising for the March 2nd Smackdown in Savannah, GA completely around Eddie Guerrero, and he ended up winning the WWE Title. WWE tends to leak out storyline info so that they can go on and get local advertising done, so there's about a 99% chance that this is when Rock will return.

Yeah, there really wasn't that much build up. It was like...WELCOME TO RAW! And, by the way, Rock vs. Flair tonight.

I seem to remember a Rock vs. Flair match on RAW in August 2002 (Jericho made his RAW debut after the match, attacking Flair) during Rock's most recent run with the title. I also remember it not being very good.

You know what this means, right? BOB HOLLY CAN DRAW!!!!!!!!!

Dave Bautista is the only guy I know that could tear his triceps while jogging. And local TV ads for the Atlanta RAW on March 1st end with the announcer saying, "Is this the night when The Rock returns to WWE?" so it looks like he's coming back on this night.

What made it even more pathetic was that J.R. was selling it as the most brutal thing Foley had ever endured in his career. As if punches, kicks, and stomps were so much more devastating than getting his ear ripped off or Vader's powerbomb on the concrete or all those explosion barbed wire fire matches in Japan.

The word I have gotten is that Tommy Dreamer is the latest worker to be sent to OVW to work with the young talent there. I believe he will be going down there in the next few weeks and will not be attending Raw. I am under the impression that he has been off recently to be with his wife (Beulah McGillicuddy from ECW), who is about to give birth to twins. Credit: www.pwinsider.com