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Morgan's a *lot* better than John Heindrich on Raw and light-years better than Nathan Jones. He's still green though. Like I said, great charisma, cuts a really good promo. Good power moves (if WWE lets him use all of them, a decent moveset). We'll see what Eddy/Angle/Benoit can get out of him soon enough I would think. Luckily he's the last serious "hoss" project WWE has in OVW. And he's the best of the lot.

Matt Morgan's not ready yet, but he's got massive potential and is light-years beyond Nathan Jones. He cuts a helluva promo and is okay in the ring and getting better.

Wrestlers that "Jimmy Hart" has managed: Jerry Lawler Austin Idol Masao Ito The First Family (Memphis) Randy Savage Rick Rude Eddie Gilbert Lanny Poffo Kamala King Kong Bundy The Funk Brothers King Kong Bundy The Glamour Girls Rougeau Brothers Rhythm & Blues Hart Foundation Earthquake Dino Bravo Money Inc Nasty Boys Natural Disasters Hulk Hogan Brutus Beefcake The Dungeon of Doom The Giant Kevin Sulligan Lex Luger Ric Flair Konnan Meng Barbarian The First Family WCW Brian Knobbs Hugh Morrus Jerry Flynn Barbarian Terry Funk is probably my favorite option out of that list. Vader was in the Dungeon of Doom for a bit too.

As long as they'd keep him away from Rikishi, Albert, Big Slow, Taker, and Nathan Jones it would be cool, fat chance though. I'm still waiting on Benoit v.s. Tajiri, so I think he'll be stuck in the CW division.... we'll see how he does but it's going to take an effort for him to get over with the slow apparent shift of Smackdown away from long matches since Heyman got demoted.

WWE Creative Change Petition & June 9th Raw Boycott http://www.petitiononline.com/rawwwe/ Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone who has already signed this petition, now well over one thousand (1160 to be exact), and in particular everyone from the Smart Marks I’d like to give all our signees an update on our progress. Some said “it’ll be a miracle if we reach 100”. We sure proved them wrong already. I’m confident that I’ll be writing you another update in a week or two talking about our 10,000th. Let me give a quick summary for those who haven’t heard about our petition… WWE sucks right now (and more particularly Raw), so we’ve decided to boycott Raw’s June 9th showing (which airs on June 13th for those of you in the UK). The company has been on a slow decline and is not making decisions in its long-term interests… it’s practically WCW all over again. The petition documents our qualms with the current product and many of the bad creative decisions and directions the WWE is taking. These are the reasons the boycott is taking place. The petition/boycott serves multiple functions because it is calling for creative change, contains user comments, and is a signup sheet for boycotting Raw. The users are also signing up not only to boycott the June 9th showing of Raw, but also to boycott other house shows that day, and to boycott buying WWE merchandise that day.. It’s been decided that the petition will be sent to WWE, TNN, TSN, and the WWE’s various sponsors. The WWE will get it via snail mail. The date is so far out so we can slowly ramp up our promotion for the petition. This petition is not intended to run the WWE out of business, but to help it turn business around. Those of you who have talked to me personally know that the plan is to slowly increase exposure for this petition as we get more and more signatures. So far our only promotion has been several message boards and an appearance I made on WrestleThis! Radio, but we’ve reached a critical mass of signatures where more people will take the petition seriously. At this point, we’re moving to our second phase of promotion. Now I’d like to encourage you to e-mail columnists about the petition, and some of the smaller websites. Please hold off on notifying the larger sites for another couple weeks, again unless you run one. We have a Yahoo Group set up at http://groups.yahoo.com/rawboycott to discuss the petition and promotion efforts for it. The URL is buried in the petition, so I don’t think many people know about it. We’d like to see a lot more of you guys join us there and give your thoughts on this effort. If you’ve been thinking about signing when you saw the first message and dismissed this as something doomed to failure, think again. Not just myself, but several others are in this for the next month or so and we’re not going to accept failure. To close, here’s sort of a FAQ listing reasons given why people have not signed and giving my replies. Reason: This petition won’t work; WWE won’t listen to its fans! Response: If the WWE doesn’t listen to its fans, why did it put online surveys up (surveys.wwe.com)? Do they feel like running some surveys and analyzing them just to lose money? I think the surveys are a positive step forward, but they present fans with a very limited number of choices (mostly ambiguous yes/no questions). They are not sufficient tools to get our entire message across, but I encourage you to fill them out. Reason: This petition won’t work, online petitions never work, and people don’t take them seriously! Response: http://www.petitiononline.com/BAMMO49/peti...n_response.html & http://www.petitiononline.com/CNN1214/peti...n_response.html are two examples of online petitions getting tangible results. Both have *only* just over 6000 signatures. Both AOL/TW and Microsoft are also larger companies by a couple orders of magnitude (at the least), than the WWE. Both AOL and Microsoft also had many more revenue streams… they wouldn’t be hurt by Talkback Live! going off the air or a few thousand WebTV users leaving their service. Don’t forget that the WWE has shareholders to answer to like those two companies above. They’re not private. Reason: You’ll never get enough signatures Response: So far we’ve achieved 1100 signatures after several message board posts. Large sites get tens of thousands of unique visitors every day and we haven’t even targeted them yet. Tens of thousands of signatures is very achievable, and it’s already been documented that only 6000 signatures is enough to get a response from a larger company than WWE. Reason: Boycotting Raw isn’t going to make a difference; I don’t have a Nielsen box! Response: Firstly, a cable television ratings point is only 780,000 people. I’ve scouted out a lot of message boards, and believe it or not, there’s a couple with other 30,000 registered users, one with 26,000, and one with 15,000. That’s over 0.1 in the ratings right there. I feel at the least there’s at the very least 400,000 in the Internet “smark” fanbase. That’s half of a cable ratings point. There are more newsboards than you can believe and many more places where wrestling is being discussed. All those people are reading news ripped from the Torch and the Observer like the rest of us. Now it’s impossible for all of them to sign, but a good portion will if they know about it. Many of the online fans also have friends and family who don’t read the Internet sites who might not watch the show. Even if we don’t make a difference in the ratings, the petition is being sent to the WWE, its sponsors, and TNN and TSN. All of these groups have an interest in keeping Raw successful. Finally, Internet fans spend a disproportionate amount of money than the “casual” fans on wrestling. We buy merchandise, tapes, DVDs, video games, action figures, tickets to house shows, and PPVs. A casual fan might get a pay-per-view or two a year. The WWE would be seriously hurt financially by a large portion of online fans not buying a PPV in the future. For instance, Backlash was estimated at 425,000 to 500,000 buys (wrestlingobserver.com). The WWE doesn’t want to alienate that much of their audience, but at this point they figure us “hardcore” fans will buy their stuff and watch no matter what they shovel out. This petition and boycott intends to change that. Reason: You’re stupid for starting this petition and you’re wasting your time. Response: Funny, people start petitions to keep sports coaches or to get them fired all the time. This is just as important. For me, the experience of meeting with other fans online is worth my time invested alone, and the humor value from some of the comments others have made on WWE’s situation. Reason: Stephanie McMahon, Lou Thesz, and the Iraqi Information Minister obviously didn’t sign the petition; it’s going to get laughed at once people see those or someone cussing at Triple H. Response: Currently, I can’t edit the petition until it closes, but once it does I can edit the bogus names and comments out of the petition. This will be done before it is submitted to the various companies. Trust me, all the “jokers” will get edited out. Jeff Wahlman Petition Author WWE Creative Change Petition & June 9th Raw Boycott http://www.petitiononline.com/rawwwe/

All of the stupid comments and/or bogus names will be deleted once the petition closes, as I said in my post.

I actually started an Internet-Wide online petition last week, not knowing there was a huge thread on this forum about a similar effort scheduled for May 5. I e-mailed Brian, the guy who started that thread about it, but I haven't heard anything back from him. I thought I should get a post up before I get on the radio and talk about it. My current plan is to get the word out about my petition to a bunch of other message boards, and hit the message boards I've already hit again. I'm also planning on getting it plugged in some columns. I'm avoiding sending it to the big sites yet until there's enough signatures to show that this will go somewhere. Hopefully next week it should reach critical mass so that some of the big sites will start plugging it when I let them know about it (3,000 or so signatures). Still, that date will be five weeks out so there will be plenty of time to let everyone know about it. I'm planning on sending it via e-mail & snail mail to WWE, plus to TNN, TSN, and the advertisers. With the "comments" field it also functions as a way to let your voice be heard. It's really as much of a creative change petition as it is a sign-up to boycott Raw, so it functions in both ways. It's worth a shot, and I feel strongly if I can reach a critical mass of signatures it will overcome the "this won't work" crowd. From posting on just a handful of message boards, I've already garnered over 565 signatures and counting (just had to change that from 560 to 565). I'm going to be appearing on WrestleThis radio 1360 am out of Philly from 7-8 p.m. tonight to chat about this petition. You can also listen to it live on the Internet. WrestleThis Radio I'd definately like to touch base with the people on here and merge our tents together, with whoever was interested about the previous date. If it's still on, I'll be more than happy to plug it on the radio and let people know about both dates in the future. If there's anything else that may be more effective, let me know. I will be able to get the e-mails of a lot of the people who signed my petition once it closes. A link to my petition is below. I think if we combine our efforts we can get somewhere with this. Even if you don't buy it, it's worth the three seconds of your time it takes to sign up. WWE Creative Change Petition & Raw Boycott June 9

Thanks to everyone who signed so far, we now have 655 and counting.

That's why I'm sending to them via snail mail and it's going to their advertisers, and TNN/TSN.

As someone who has actually seen a lot of OVW, I can tell you about the guys Danny Davis and Cornette actually trained. The best workers haven't been called up yet from OVW, so I'll get to them later. - Batista: Really sucks, but Cornette is a master at booking monsters and he was really over in OVW. Good charisma. He's got a couple more moves than what you've seen on Raw. Admittedly nothing more than a roid monster, but his Leviathan gimmick was a lot better than what he has now. - Rodney Mack: LOL, I don't really know why he got called up. Nothing special at all. - Randy Orton: Really solid, he's never looked green to me. Pretty young too. - John Cena: Awesome, as you guys have found out. I think him and Lesnar will come close to **** tonight. Has had a boatload of ***+ matches in OVW and on WWE TV already. Carriable. - Brock Lesnar: Best big man since Vader, and he could be better than him. Never was heel in OVW so he needed some work getting adjusted to wrestling that style. On the short list of guys who have had a great match with Taker. - Shelton Benjamin: Incredible potential, did a 450 splash in OVW. Probably the best hops of any wrestler I've ever seen. Good wrestler already. - Rico: Awesome but misused. Good worker. Trained in OVW for a stopover after HWA lost their developmental deal: - Charlie Haas: Solid but not a great worker Never were in OVW: - Three Minute Warning. Awful, simply awful. Not called up full-time yet: Damaja, Doug "The Machine" Bashem, Rob Conway, Nick Dinsmore (all really good workers with some or good charisma/mic skills). These guys are the core of OVW and they've worked matches I'd rate as **** between them a few times (a 30-minute Ironman match sticks out). All four are better workers, IMHO, than anyone the WWE has called up so far. Matt Morgan (the "hoss" that got hurt during Tough Enough II, he's got great charisma and shows a ton of potential, but he's still very green.) Eric Angle (looks like his brother in the ring so far. If he got healthy it would help him tremendously) Jackie Gayda (Cornette takes her out of the ring and makes her the next Tammy Sytch) Linda Miles (haven't seen enough of her) Rene Dupree (loads of potential, but too early for him to come up). The Montreal ref who's coming in with Rene has never wrestled in OVW, so I can't judge him.

He's only going to be out 6 weeks with that surgery, so assuming it all goes well (he still had some tingling in his arm, from his neck healing) he might wrestle on the May PPV.