The Decemberists

Piper underwent disc surgery this past week. Doctors in Oregon discovered a mass of tissue near his spine that was causing him great pain. It was removed and the doctors did a biopsy on it. Results are not yet it, but so far all seems to be going well. Piper was in intense pain on the tour, which was why he and Flair dropped the tag titles to Edge and Orton. The orginial plan was to keep the title of Piper and Flair for a few more weeks. There are zero plans to have tag titles stay on top guys in the future. Edge and Orton only got the belts due to Pipers injury and when they're done with them they'll go back to Highlander level guys. There are movements to make Raw and Smackdown more different. Brian Gewirtz is under a ton of pressure from Vince to get ratings up (not realising that actually rates are holding up very well against the NFL). This is one of the reasons why all the top ECW and Smackdown have been on Raw recently. Smackdown boss Michael Hayes has been told to make Smackdown a late 80s WWF style show. It would be simple and basic, with the idea that kids should be able to understand everything that's going on. Raw should be more edgey and late 90s WWF. Of course, it would make more sense for them to both be 2006/7 style wrestling shows, but the WWE don't seem to have stumbled upon what that is yet. JR signed his new contract on 11/20. WWE and Pride officials had a meeting on 11/17. No deal was struck but talks will continue. There is no way the WWE should, under any circumstances, allow any of its talent to fight on a Pride show. Hopefully they've learned their lesson from the Brawl For All and Angle/Puder to know that pro wrestlers shooting spells problems. Worryingly, Vince's ideas are very close to the ideas that Antonio Inoki on cross branding MMA and wrestling. McMahon though has no idea what happened with New Japan though after Inoki's MMA adventures. The problem with doing any cross promotion though is that there's no way the WWE will let their guys get destroyed in any shoots, and there's also no way they'll let Pride guys win in works. If they weren't willing to have "WCW" guys beat WWF guys in the Invasion there's no chance they'll let guys they don't even own beat WWE talent. The other possibly benefitial senario is that the WWE would work with Pride to increase their US exposure, but keeping the talent competely seperate. MaMahon has finally released that they are competing with UFC for PPV buys and if they can somehow help Pride get over stronger than UFC then they would help both parties, particualarly if the WWE could get a cut of Pride income as a way of paying them back for helping them get on USA at 11:05pm after Raw. The idea of WWE opening up it's own MMA group is not impossible either, although it would have a huge start off cost. They would have to raid some big names from the UFC and to do so would mean offering guaranteed contracts, and unlike in WBF they won't be able to get the top names for £250,000 a year. The top MMA guys earn significantly more than HHH and Undertaker do, and there would be absolute hell in the WWE locker room if the WWE was spending that sort of money on MMA fighters as they'd feel it was coming out of their paychecks - as was the feeling with the WBF and XFL. The company's limit vision when it comes to what draws though would certianly count against them though in any MMA venture as of all the UFC's big draws maybe only Tito Ortiz would have close to what Vince and Steph would consider 'the look'. Plus there would be a negative sigma of it being own by Vince McMahon, who obviously doesn't have the best public image, but that would be overcomeable if the product was good enough. Another problem would be that McMahon and the other WWE higher ups just don't know the first thing about MMA. Vince's biggest passion in life, ahead of even wrestling, is bodybuidling, but he couldn't even promote that successfully. The company offically signed Monty Brown on 11/15. The idea is to put him on Raw. This is mainly because in their eyes Smackdown has a young up and coming African Amercian star (MVP), ECW has one (Lashley) and now Raw will have Brown (and before you ask, no, Shelton Benjamin doesn't count.) There is now talk of the Smackdown main event at Wrestlemania being Undertaker vs Batista in a winning streak vs title match. The current plan would be Big Dave going over(!) and Vince has OK'd this. Although it goes without saying a lot can happen between now and then... The Undertaker broke a rib on 11/8 in Germany but is working through it. 'The Marine' did $233,173 in its first weekend in Puerto Rico, making it the number 1 box office draw. Internationally the movie did little in Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica, did decently in Indonesia but strongly in the Philippines where pro wrestling is very strong. It did $247,854 in the US this week, leaving it with a domestic gross of $18,354,170 at press time. The total international gross is $686,708. Strangly, in the ladder match on Raw, JR and King didn't kayfabe the size of the ladders. Normally they call the 8ft ladder 10 or 12ft and 12ft is is said to be 15 or 20ft but not this time. Van Dam seems to be making more of an effort to start working WWE Style. WWE has booked a Mexico tour from 3/15 to 3/18. The arenas aren't finalised but it looks like the 3/15 and 3/16 shows will be at Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City, where the last two events sold out, and the final event will probably be at the Arena Coliseo in Monterrey. Brooke Hogan's album fell to No. 116 in the Billboard charts. Josh Matthews is now working part-time as a 24/7 presenter and half-time as a 24/7 editor. This is to punish him, apparantly, because he asked for a talent contract after being told there were plans to have him be a Smackdown wrestler. Kevin Dunn stepped in and told him that although there were plans for him to wrestle it had been decided else where that he no future as a wrestler and was more valuable as an annoucer. He was taken off Smackdown to teach him a lesson, I'd imagine, not to have the cheek to ask for a wrestlers contract after being told he was going to be a wrestler. Flair told the Baltimore Sun that he has a little over a year left on his contract and will competely leave it up to Vince over when he retires. Jim Ross stated on his website that if Oklahoma are playing a bowl game on 1/1 he will miss Raw to attend.

My Observer normally turns up on Friday or Saturday, but this week I've had to wait till today. But better late than never. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Company officials are (were) expecting a rating between 1.0 and 1.1 for the 11/16 special. Anything above 1.0 would be considered a success, anything below 0.9 a major disappointed. Interally they're more concerned about quarter-to-quarter growth, as they can no longer fall back on the excuse that ratings fall as people are going to bed as they have work the next day and it's 11:30pm or whatever. The feeling is the first hour will be low as there's no UFC lead in, but the second hour will do better as there's the cage match and Angle. Kurt Angle was out and about signing autographs last week and was constantly being asked by fans why he hadn't been on WWE TV recently. He had to explain over and over again that he had now signed with TNA, and then had to explain what TNA was, what channel it was on,etc etc etc. This sums up TNA's biggest problem right now, which is not the booking, the talent or the match quality, but the visability they have when it comes to casual wrestling fans. In reality we're talking about a 14 month old promotion (you can't really count the Wednesday PPV and FSN days) in terms of visability. Comparisons to WCW when it was about to explode in 1995 are dumb. WCW had been on national TV since the invention of cable, and alway had a roster filled with good regional draws and by 1995 had a significant number of national "superstars" on the roster too. TNA, on the other hand, has Angle. Angle's contract is for four dates a month - two TV tapings, one PPV and one house show. However he will work more when asked and clearly the contract will be changed should they get a regular two hour show and start doing one taping a week. Angle was doing a ton of media this last week. On 11/9 he was on the Bubba the Love Sponge show and was asked about Puder. He called him a 'moron' and 'a peice of shit' and that he'd be quite happy to take him on in a no rules fight, with eye gouging legal. Angle claimed Dana White wanted to make the match and told him that it would be the highest buy rate in UFC history, all because of Angle. He claimed that White had asked him to toy with Puder for a few minutes and not to knock him out in 40 seconds. He said that when they had their skirmish in WWE Angle couldn't even do 5 push ups because of his injuries but was still able to dominate Puder. He said that in the WWE Puder had a match with Shelton Benjamin and Benjamin told him Puder really sucks. What actually happened was on the afternoon on the 2005 Royal Rumble Benjamin and Puder were playing around in the ring with some amature wrestling and Benjamin, being way out of Puder's class as far as wrestling goes, took him down easilly a couple of times. Puder than asked Benjamin if he wanted to try some submissions and Benjamin declined saying he didn't know anything about them. Vince turned up and thought things were breaking down in the ring and there was shooting going on right before a major PPV and got mad at everyone. Angle claimed Puder had no fight training (he's actually part of the number 2 fight team in the country) and that he can't take a punch. Angle said if Dixie Carter allowed it he'd pull down his pants and rub his balls in Puder's face after he beats him. In other interviews Angle admitted failing a steroid test because Dr David Black wouldn't accept the prescription (or the date of the prescription expired accoriding to another interview) as he will only accept those written by surgeons. Angle said he was one of eight guys who failed for steroids due to prescriptions not being from surgeons but he was the only one suspended. He claimed the suspension cost him $125,000 (the figure Meltzer heard was $83,000) and Vince claimed he'd make it up for him. Angle claimed he failed the test due to getting a cortisone shot in his neck. Now that seems odd as cortisone is a corticosteroid which would not be illegal in WWE's drug policy, and it does not register with Deca or another steroid which would be a policy violation. Angle appeared on 11/4 on Spikes's "Casino Cinema" show and noted he had broken his neck four times in total. Beth O asked him why his mother would let him back in a wrestling ring. He said "I'm 32 years old. I don't need to ask my mother!". Kurt was born Decemeber 9, 1968, so that makes him almost 38.... On 11/11 they had a house show scheduled for East Hartford, CT. There were problems as apparently someone called the local inspectors as the building they were running didn't have the right permits for the show. The company found out on 11/9 and were told that they could appeal and get everything sorted out, but all government offices were closed on 11/10 or the holiday weekend they were unable to save the show. They then moved the show ten miles to a tennis club in Bloomfield, CT. The afternoon police and local fire officals from an entirely different city than the first crew showed up and told them their weren't enough exits to accomodate the expected 800 strong crowd and they couldn't run a show their either. When TNA's website blamed local authorities on shutting down the show, Bloomfield police captian Jeff Blatter said TNA was attempting to 'manipulate their own fan base into believing the Bloomfield police department, or other town officials, was responsible for cancelling of their Saturday event is midleading and disingenuous". They said that TNA failed to notify the city of it's plans to hold the show nor applied for proper permits. He denied that Vince McMahon had anything to do with it, saying that the supervisors didn't even know who Vince McMahon was. On 11/10 they drew on 500 fans to the old ECW Arena, even with Angle headlining. That's less than ROH drew six days earlier. They overpriced tickets with the cheapest being $35 and the best seats going for $125. There is talk in Australia of showing Impact on the PPV channel Main Event for free to try and increase buys on the PPV's which currently are bought buy about 2,000 each month and are on a two month tape delay. However if this doesn't increase buy rates then TNA may well find themselves out of the market. Konnan is getting hip replacement surgery done very soon. He needs a cane to get around backstage Rey Mysterio's contract with WWE expires around the time he's due to return from injury (May/June). Angle is planning to try and get him to agree to jump over to TNA.

Whoa, that sucks about Piper. Hope he kicks its ass.

If fucking only! Certainly better than... It's TNA attempted to go to 'war' with Vince. Voodoo Kin Mafia vs Vince K McMahon. It sucks.

Punk?

Joe happy? $$$ WWE are not going to want him now they've already got there Samoan guy - as the last thing we want is to confuse the fans! They couldn't cope with two guys from the same place. And although I'm sure he can make a living from just doing the indies, I'd imagine the money from TNA comes in very handy.

Cornette/LAX - Awesome Nash - Awesome Joe/Angle - Fine Movement - Promising Everything else - Really stupid How hard is it to have some bloody logic and continuity in characters. Petey at least said "I've had some problems with this county in the past" but I don't think anyone else mentioned him captaining Team Canada for God knows how long. I guess the argument is that they're presuming they've got a bigger audience so the knew fans won't know about it, but they are still going to have more people who do know about it than who don't. God damn you, Russo.

Good times.

Does anyone else remember Steel Cage Challenge on the NES? I think it was the follow up to Superstars. At the time it was really fun and I alway marked out that could have matches in the steal cage for the first time.

Well they were both just involved with their most bought PPV of their 4 year existance.

Normally my Observer arrives Friday or Saturday. Well this week it didn't turn up till today, but better later than never I guess -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wrestlemania 23 is already the all-time record holder for the largest gate in North American and WWE pro wrestling history. The company sold out it's first allotment of nearly 50,000 tickets on 11/11 even with no matches announced, hinted, or even planned out. The current advance is $4,350,000, which breaks the all-time record set of $3,846,033 set on March 17th 2002 for Wrestlemania X-8 headlined by Hulk Hogan vs The Rock. There will be about 28,000 more tickets put on sale at different intervals over the next several months, and are also likely to be sold quickly upon release. Ford Field is being set up for 78,000 fans, so this will be end up being one of the three biggest crowds in company history and five biggest crowds in what is at least verifiable pro wrestling history. Interestingly the current record is based on the exchange of the $6,143,822 Canadian drew for X8. With the current rate that would be $5,429,910 - a number that would challenge even the biggest Japanese gates of all time. The all-time pro wrestling gate record is just over $7,000,000 and was set by New Japan Pro Wrestling on the 4th of April 1998 for the retirement of Antonio Inoki, who beat Don Frye in the main event after Frye had won a tournament of 'shootfighters' earlier in the show to win the honor. All-Time $2 Million Gate Club (not including Japan) 1. $4,350,000 - 4/1/07 WWE Wrestlemania 23, Detroit Ford Field 2. $3,846,033 - 3/17/02 WWF Wrestlemania X-8, Toronto Sky Dome (Hogan vs Rock) 3. $3,530,905 - 4/1/01 WWF Wrestlemania X-7, Houston Astrodome (Austin vs Rock) 4. $3,490,857 - 4/1/90 WWF Wrestlemania VI, Toronto Sky Dome (Hogan vs Warrior) 5. $3,452,123 - 7/8/06 UFC 61, Las Vegas Manadalay Bay Events Center (Ortiz vs Ken Shamrock) 6. $3,447,600 - 2/4/06 UFC 57, Las Vegas Manadalay Bay Events Center (Couture vs Liddell) 7. $3,073,080 - 8/26/06 UFC 62, Las Vegas Manadalay Bay Events Center (Liddell vs Sobral) 8. $3,020,000 - 8/10/02 WWE Global Warning, Melbourne, Australia, Colonial Stadium (Rock vs HHH vs Lesnar) 9. $2,900,090 - 5/27/06 UFC 60, Los Angeles Staples Center (Huges vs Royce Gracie) 10. $2,760,635 - 3/30/03 WWE Wrestlemania 19, Seattle Safeco Field (Hogan vs McMahon) 11. $2,575,450 - 4/16/05 UFC 52, Las Vegas Manadalay Bay Events Center (Couture vs Liddell) 12. $2,500,000 - 4/2/06 WWE Wrestlemania 22, Chicago All-State Arena (Cena vs HHH) 13. $2,401,000 - 3/14/04 WWE Wrestlemania 20, New York Madison Square Garden (HHH vs Benoit vs Michaels) 14. $2,336,550 - 8/20/05 UFC 54, Las Vegas MGM Grand Arena (Liddell vs Horn) 15. $2,191,450 - 4/16/06 UFC 59, Anaheim Arrowhead Pond (Ortiz vs Griffin) 16. $2,100,000 - 4/30/05 WWE Wrestlemania 21, Los Angeles Staples Center (HHH vs Batista) 17. $2,056,444 - 10/21/06 Pride Real Deal (Emelianenko vs Coleman) Steve Austin was in Connecticut this week to view an early cut of his movie 'The Condemmed' which will be released on 4/27, just a few weeks after Wrestlemania. There is nothing formal planned, but common sense would suggest that Austin will return as a major part of TV as a regular early next year (the tentative return date is around February). Austin once against turned down the idea of having a match at Mania earlier this week. Hulk Hogan has not fully committed to Mania either. The chances of him wrestling have been cut further with the Big Show now no longer being a certainty to still be around by then. However with the advance being as big as it is, and with it being the 20 years since WMIII something will probably be worked out so Hogan can claim he drew the house. Hogan is super cautious about who he faces as he doesn't want a repeat of the Orton programme earlier in the year which he felt fizzled out before the match took place - obviously this was Orton's fault and nothing to do with the Hulkster. However the only part of that feud which flopped was Hogan beating up the fake-Hogan, which had nothing to do with Orton. Smackdown on 11/10 did a 2.66 final rating and 4.33 million viewers. The show did a 2.9 in New York (3.2 for Kennedy/Undertaker angle), 3.6 in LA (4.4 for Booker vs Lashley), 3.1 in Chicago (3.8 for Batista vs Finlay), 2.6 in Philadelphia (2.9 for Kennedy/Undertaker), 1.8 in Boston (2.0 for Hardy & Yang vs Helms & Sylvan), 3.6 in Detroit (3.9 for Batista vs Finlay), 1.8 in DC (2.1 for Kennedy/Undertaker), 3.6 in Detroit (3.9 for Batista vs Finlay), 3.7 in Atlanta (4.4 for Kennedy/Undertaker) and 3.9 in Houston (4.4 for Undertaker/Kennedy). Booker vs Lashley gained no viewers, Hardy & Yang vs Helms & Sylvan lost 162,000, Kennedy/Undertaker gained 485,000, Benoit vs Janes and Boogeyman vs Dalton lost 162,000, Batista vs Finlay gained 324,000. The final number for Smackdown on 11/3 was a 2.80 rating and 4.63 million viewers. Of those viewers 21% spoke Spanish and not English are their primary language. The show did a 5.3 among Hispanic households, and 2.51 in English language households. Nobody with any power backstage seems to have made the connection of Smackdown's recent success and the appointment of Michael Hayes as head writer. If you haven't noticed, WWE will have three PPV's in four weeks. Survior Series is 11/26, ECW a week later and then the Smackdown Armageddon show two weeks after that. On the 12/10, which is the only Sunday without a WWE show, TNA have a PPV. 'The Marine' held up far better than expected this past weekend, at No. 19 in the charts grossing $705,576. At press the total domestic gross is $17,979,486 and $686,708 overseas. Steph has decided that she wants Daniel Rodimer on Raw by January and that he will be THE NEXT BIG THING~! and be the biggest start in the history of the world etc etc etc. The feeling of people who have actually seen Rodimer work is that having him good enough to be on the main roster by January 2008 would be pushing it... However, Rodimer has 'the look' more than anyone else in developmental and more than most of the main roster. He's the guy the company wanted to win Tough Enough in 2004 and push hard from that but he sucked so bad he got eliminated very early on. He's actually not a bad athelete, he played college football at the Uni of South Florida, but he certianly wasn't any sort of star there. Comparisons are being made to Chris Masters, although in his defence Rodimer does have more natural charisma and is bigger. Plus Masters at least had a few years in UPW and OVW before being rushed up because of his physique, but Rodimer has only been in OVW for a few months. He gets over there as he's 6'6 and 300lbs and has a bit of the SuperStar Billy Graham thing going for him, but as over as he gets personally as soon as the bell rings any connection he has with the crowd goes quckly. With the dropping of ECW house shows the whole dynamic of the brand has changed. The biggest change is that Champion doen't actually need to be able to draw anymore (if it ever mattered at all) because'll he'll be working on the undercard of Raw or Smackdown live events. The underneath guys like Guido are going to get screwed as they just won't get any bookings when the ECW roster is dished out to Raw and Smackdown and many of them signed up for only $500 a week basic, which is less than developmental talent gets. Rey Mysterio's contract ends right around the time he's due to come back, around May/June time. Angle is likely to make a play to get him into TNA. Rapper "The Game" has claimed that HHH has threatened a lawsuit against him for use of the same. His response was to challenge HHH to a fight, saying "If I was Vince McMahon, I would tell him to shut the fuck up and sit down before they sell me some more albums." Ashley Massaro will be posing in Playboy for the annual WWE woman gets naked just before Wrestlemania issue. This explains why her contract was renewed recently. The company has began what is being called a "Bikini Model Signing Spree!". Johnny Ace has been told to sign '10-15' bikini models, regardless of if they have ever seen pro wrestling before in their lives. You'd think the people running the company would be following the trends of audience who either don't care or out right switch off when the woman are on these days. But for some people backstage the ratings are secondary compared to the chance of getting some 'fresh meat' backstage for certian people to hit on... There is talk of WWE going back to doing a PPV event from Europe, with either the fall of 2007 or the spring on 2008 being looked at as a venture between the company and its in TV provider in the UK, BSkyB. No word yet if this would be broadcast live only in Europe,as PPV shows from 1997-2003 were. By the end though these shows were just televised house shows. According to those in WWE the Bob Sapp deal is dead. Sapp's idea was to try and mix WWE and Pride, with the idea that doing Pride would give him 'real' credibility, which doing WWE would get him over in the US and help sell him Pride appearence on US PPV. WWE though wanted him full-time 365 days a year and Sapp wouldn't commit to the number of house show dates that they wanted. He apparantly also requested time off to prepare for Pride fights and for movie rolls, both of which the WWE felt they couldn't agree to. Pretty much everything you see Lashley do in ECW for the next month or so is pretty much what Sapp was planned to do. Edge is now an 11 time World Tag Team champion in the WWE. Although considering Billy Gunn is number 2 with 10 titles it's questionable how much of a honor this is. JBL is itching to get back in the ring and will probably work a Foley-like schedule from 2007 onwards. There was an article in the Halifax Chronicle Herald about actor James Rogres, which is currently in Nova Scotia shooting a movie called "Outlander" (he's a very minor charcter, not even in the top twenty in the acting credits) where it claims he's signed a three year deal with WWE. Meltzer has been told it's actually a three month contract and he'll be trained personally by Booker in Houston. He's 6'2 with really long hair. The Score, the Canadian station that airs both Raw and Smackdown, released its financial books for the year. The company took in $29,075,000 and made a profit of $13,036,000. The World Wildlife Fund has failed in an attempt to get the rights to WWF.com. Gregory Ricks of Texas had purchased thte domain name in 2003 and used it as a WWE forum. In the orginial case, that the Fund won, which resulted in the WWF becoming the WWE in 2002, it only banned WWE from using the web site name because Vince had signed a deal with the Fund in 1994 saying he would not market the initals outside North America, and then proceeded to ignore the terms he had agreed to. A man named Frank Baach opened up a WWF.com website and then sold it to Ricks for a reported $10,000 in January 2003. The World Intellectual Property Organization ruled against the Fund in their claim to rights to the site. One of the reasons the WIPO ruled against the Fund was that it took them three years to make the claim. Claudio Castagnoli is heading to OVW in January.

Thought it was a good show. Sabin/Daniels, Cage/AJ and Angle/Joe were all good-to-great matches and any show with three matches of that quality is a good show. My thinking to why Angle/Joe was relativly short is they are trying to avoid what I felt happened with Angle/Michaels - a fucking great first match, but then the rematches fall short of that quality. If they're able to get the first then second rematches of Angle/Joe better and longer each time then that this match went 12-15m won't matter at all long term. But it was a hell of a 12 minute match so I find it hard to complain about the length at all anyway as it wasn't as if they had a bad match because of it. And it'll be interesting to see if they can get the regulars at the Impact Zone to actually treat AJ as a heel if that's the way the do end up going.

JR is working without a contract. Vince still wants to replace him but, like this time last year, has no idea who he wants to replace him with. Coach was deemed a failure and is better in the executive assistant role and as long as Styles is doing ECW it seems unlikely they'll want him jumping over to Raw again. Big Show's back problems have got much worse recently and he's going to be leaving the company, at least temporarilly, in a few weeks or so. He was taken off the European Tour, and the Elminiation Chamber match may well end up being his last, although he's committed to the company untill "early December". They have decided against Cena vs Umaga at the Survivor Series after all, and instead will go with Cena & Kane & Sabu & Van Dam & Lashley vs Show & Test & MVP & Umaga & Finlay. If you're wondering what the WWE thinks is it's competiton, the only shows that they keep track of rating for are Impact and Ultimate Fighter. All the major 2007 PPV's are based on historical anniversaries. Obviously Wrestlemania is the 20th anniversay of WMIII in Detroit and the 10th anniversary in Montreal for the Survivor Series, but also the Royal Rumble will be held in San Antonio for the 10th anniversary of Shawn Michaels beating Sid for the title infront of 60,525 (48,000 paid). And SummerSlam is the 10th anniversary of the same show at the Continental Arena where Bret Hart beat Undertaker with HBK as the special guest referee and where Owen Hart broke Steve Austin's neck. Brooke Hogan's album is now officially a flop as it fell to 72 on the charts, selling 13,756 copies. A 54% drop off. K-Fed's album did even worse though, selling 6,485 units in its first week of release, propelling him to 151 on the chart. Mysterio had his surgery on 11/8. His left knee was cleaned up and he had his ACL repaired. It was not as complicated as thought and the whole op was done inside 90 minutes. There is an outside chance he'll be back for Mania, but May is more of a possibility. Claudio Castagnoli signed his contract and should be starting around 1/1. That gives ROH about six weeks for a tag title change. Maria was interviewed in the Winnipeg Sun. She confirmed she's still with CM Punk and said that Playboy had been after her since she was 19 (she's 25 now) but she has refused to do it so far as her sister is still in high school. The writing team went to OVW last week to check up on how it was all going. Unsurprisingly they reported back that it was basically falling apart. The difference between how the develpmental system was when it was ran by JR and Tom Pritchard and OVW by Cornette and now is scary and considering how much they rely on developmentals to get their talent you'd have thought they'd put much more effort in to getting it right.

Billy Bragg - I Dreamt I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night

Well... It's more than they had been recently getting at 11pm I guess. But as long as the 1.0 doesn't start going down then it's a reasonable number to build on and the more it's on at 9pm then the more word can spread and more will hopefully start watching. Of course if they aren't able to keep up a good of good/decent shows then it'll all be for nothing. And they have to keep up the advertising they've been doing this last week. They can't just now go back to what they were doing before if they want to grow, they need to keep buying local ads during Raw etc etc, not just stop now the prime time debut's out the way.

Early estimates for BFG are between 45,000 and 50,000 domestic buys, which TNA are very happy about. That's about the low end of what ECW were doing on PPV. When the final number comes in it should be the highest in TNA history. Only three PPV matches have been decided for Genesis as of now. AMW vs LAX, Abyss vs Sting and Angle vs Joe. The feeling is that those three matches alone should be enough to get people to buy the PPV, particularly Angle vs Joe. The thinking is do the next on the road PPV in either January or February, probably in a border town such as Hidalgo as that's one of the best mid-sized WWE cities and there's a rabid fanbase. Thanks to Angle being super positive about TNA and Christian not having a bad word to say about the promotion either there's an icreasing number of near-top WWE guys quietly discussing the possibility of jumping over should the chance present itself when their contracts expire. The drop in pay is made up for by the much easier schedule, but ironicly many TNA guys are complaining about being booked by the office on too many indy dates. There is scheduled to be a major marketing push for the two hour special next week. They've bought local cable company ads during Raw (they're unable to buy national advertising on USA as the WWE contract forbids USA from advertising other wrestling companies). The ads will be focused around major markets during Raw and Smackdown, and on ESPN and Comedy Central. Radio advertising in major markets has also been bought. The ads are based around the theme "Now that Kurt Angle has jumped to TNA, TNA is making the jump to Prime Time". TNA and Bob Sapp have a mutual interest in each other, but nothing formal has been discussed. TNA were curious about Scott Hall, as he's a name always asked about by those at the Impact tapings, but following reports of Hall at a recent fan fest with Nash and Waltman they've decided against making a move for him. WFA officials have been contacting TNA with regards to trying to arrange at MMA match between Angle and Daniel Puder and a cross promotional fued. Nash has been telling people he has not signed any contract with TNA, but has a handshake deal with Jarrett that he won't be returning to the WWE. So Cal Val will be joining Raven's new Flock. She was planned a long time ago to be Raven's girlfriend, so that might be how she gets in. The group will be called 'The Movement'. Senshi is likely to end up as part of LAX. Konnan has been pushing for him to join for months but has always had the idea rebuffed. But he's managed to convince Russo.

McClaren Out.

Monty Brown was officially offered a deal. Interally it was said that Brown had all but signed and Johnny Ace has been telling people to start making plans for him. A K-1 official on Japanese radio said that Bob Sapp had signed with WWE and woudl be in ECW, but Dave has been told negotiations have cooled off and Sapp may want to talk to TNA. It appears Lashley may get the roled planned for Sapp in ECW. Lashley is tight with Hayman and Paul has convinced both Bobby and Vince that he should make the jump. There is skepticism from people internally because Lashley is going to be pushed as ECW's top star but the feeling is that he's not ready for that sort of position, even on the C show, and won't be able to draw. It wouln't be a surprised if Lashley was the final entrant in the Extreme Elimination Chamber and goes on to win the belt. Washington pollsters and political advisers have found the Democrats are more likely to be wrestling fans than Republicans. It's funny because pro-wrestling angles almost always based on pushing a more conservative mind-set in the babyfaces. While there are always exceptions, most wrestlers and promoters over history have tending to be Republicans. The Marine did $1,037,524 this past weekend so at press time it had totalled $17,017,379 and will probably close at just over £18,000,000. The movie has done just $332,082 overseas. The Brooke Hogan album looks to officially be a one-week novelty record. By week two it had fallen out of the top 50, which means less than 16,000 units sold. Bischoff is scheduled to be a part-time performer from now on. The CW Network overall has faced some very rough times. Ratings for almost all of the shows are way down. The only shows that haven't fallen greatly are Smackdown, Next Top Model, Veronica Mars (which is a low rated show, but stays on air due to being popular with critics) and One Tree Hill. Smackdown, now doing better than this time last year, is loved at the Network. Hulk Hogan has said they will be honoring Andre the Giant at WM this year, which makes perfect sense. Hogan Knows Best on 10/22 was the 10th highest rated cable show of the week in the 18-34 demographic. It had 1,068,000 viewers in that demo. Raw the same week had 1,186,000, TNA had roughly 400,000 and Ultimate Fighter had about 650,000. Mysterio is having knee surgery on 11/8 and could be out till May at the earliest. He's been working for a year on a torn ACL and torn patella tendon in his left knee. The orginial idea was for him to work throught to Wrestlemania, but then the decision was made right after the Royal Rumble to nix the planned Orton vs Angle title match where Randy would win the title and go instead with the three way with Rey winning the belt. He was then only going to hold the belt for a very short time (which they didn't tell him about) and drop it to JBL. However as JBL's back was much worse than first thought he ended up holding it much longer than planned. In the preview for the new Smackdown vs Raw game on IGN they wrote "One of the biggest feuds building in WWE right now is the battle between DX and Edge/Orton. That's why we threw the four wrestlers in the ring together in WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007 and let them have at it in a TLC match. Can the young stars get the win, or does the videogame try to bury them just like in real life?" Vito dieted down to 209lb for his Playgirl shoot. Keith Walker has signed a devolpmental deal. He's a big powerhouse guy (unsurprisingly) who has toured for Pro Wrestling NOAH in the past. Lashley was interviewed in The Sun UK newspaper where he got mad at Batista for calling the No Mercy a 'transitional' event and calling Smackdown the B show. In Dave's opinion though Lashley's negative words on Batista were created by the interviewer looking for a story. Lashley said he was tougher than Brock Lesnar and would beat him in a shoot. Lashley says he rejected a soilder gimmick when he was called up as he didn't think his promo skills were good enough for that sort of role. When asked who the best guy in the business was the first name out of his mouth was.... HHH. After that he also mentioned Booker, Benoit, JBL, Michaels, Orton, Benjamin and Angle. He called Samoa Joe "unbelievable". He credited Booker and Benoit for helping him out the most, and said his best friends backstage were Orton, Benjamin, Kennedy and Helms. He said JBL really hates the Miz. Who would have ever guessed? He blamed his elevated liver enzymes on him not fasting for 10 hours before the the test as he was supposed to(!?). Lashley also said that Batista was still living off his former association with HHH and Flair and doesn't have it anymore and that eventally the fans will catch on to it. Jerry Lawler's mother, Hazel, successfully came through dangerous surgery to open up her carotid artery after suffering a stroke. Debbie Killion, who was probably the best Amercian woman wrestler to ever work full time in Japan when she competed as Debbie Malenko, has applied to Laurinatis for a job. She's now 35 though so probably shouldn't hold her breath. The 12/26 ECW show will be a Best of 2006 show. Claudio Castagnoli, TJ Wilson and Nattie Neidhart have been offered deals and have either signed or expected to. The writers have been put under pressure from Vince to make Raw more 'edgy' due to the success of Smackdown recently. Dave says holding off the K-Fed/Cena 'match' till 1/1 is actually great planning as it gives them plenty of time to build up the match on Access Hollywood type shows and then have the ending be an introduction of a surprise celebrity character to build up for a Wrestlemania angle. With K-Fed and Brittney getting divorced (and reports are that he knew about this before he showed up in the WWE) he's going to be huge news for the next couple of months and that should help matters even more. However, 1/1 might be just too far off for him to mean as much as he could.

Funny little thing in the 15th November WON. TNA recently tried to trademark the name "Raven". However, someone filed a notice contesting their right to do so.... Scott Levy.

Bob Sapp He does MMA and wrestling in Japan. Not particularly good at either but he's pretty massive and has a good amount of charisma. In New Japan he did a gimmick where he always ate banana's because he's black, and therefore like a monkey. Really.

It's going to have to be Test if Big Show goes through with his current plan to retire after Mania.... Test vs Lashley for two/three months. It's a scary thought.

It's going to be Raven, Matt Bentley, Frainkie Kazarian and So Cal Val I think. All that's been done on TV so far though is Bentley standing where Raven normally stands in the crowd with some odd face paint on.

Sting has been offered the same terms for 2007 as he was for 2006. TNA feel the money is worth it to have the star power on the show and it will help the companies long term growth. Scott Steiner isn't being used due to a contract dispute. The problem is that TNA wants to control his indy bookings and take his pay from them, only to then give him the money from them in monthly balloon payments. The Ultimate X Tag match was moved from the Main Event possition as Jeff wanted to be in the ring when the Angle announcement was made. AJ, Konnan and Daniels were not happy about that at all. Cornette has agreed to stay with Russo with the following conditions, a) Russo isn't allowed to talk to him b) Russo isn't allowed to have anything to do with Cornette's on screen segments c) Russo isn't allowed in the same room as him. Dave says Christian comes across as a wrestler playing a heel, rather than as a heel which is hurting his angle with Rhino. Says that Joe is now a just a better working Raven. The former hot babyface who failed when faced with Jeff and as a result of that is now struggling to mean anything. Sabin, Dutt and Lethal asked backstage for advise about the negative reaction they were getting for the Jackass stuff during their matches. The crowd reaction has not gone unnoticed, and the plan now is to just do the Jackass stuff backstage and no longer infront of an audience. Dory Funk was supposed to be one of the legends with Cornette in the ring on Impact. He was at the tapings, but not used.

Now that would be awesome. Shame Bagwell's seemingly signed with TNA

From being quite excited about Monday nights, to utterly deflated about Russo I'm now more... well just interested rather than any thing anything emotional. Two hours at all one would hope would be better in terms of them being able to focus more on what's going on. The worst thing about Impact is how quickly the attention changes so there's no chance to take in what you've just saw. But of course, Russo is Russo and not really who I would want as the head writer, frankly. And Luger and Buff won't draw a single fucking person outside of their own families.