JoeDirt

What do you see as the major feuds in the upcoming months? We thought Edge was being brought back to RAW to feud with HHH...but now HHH is gone. Will he be brought back to RAW to feud with Edge, or will Edge feud with somebody like Kane? (Hopefully not over spilled coffee!) Eddie/HHH in a lengthy feud? Could be interesting if the goal is putting Eddie over as champ...but is that honestly going to happen? I just don't see HHH feuding with anyone but the champ on Smackdown...no way he'd "lower" himself to a feud with Cena or Misterio. Jericho/Christian seems good for now, and hopefully they don't blow it off at Backlash. Might as well continue it a bit. After Benoit/HBK at Backlash...then what? What do you think will happen?

Hopefully a nice midcard singles push.

We could only hope. Anybody think Michaels is walking out the champ? I don't think so...not after how they've played up Benoit's homecoming and all that...but after announcing him from Atlanta every week, who knows...maybe a heel turn is in the works.

Here ya go. Sorry.

With Benoit/HBK the main event in Edmonton...how cool would it be to have Bret involved in the show?

If that happened, it would make what happened last night mean nothing. I'm not jaded enough to think they would pull that. Didn't Vince say once they're announced, all trades are final? He said once announced, the draft picks are final. He also said if they weren't happy with their picks, they had until midnight (switched back to tonight) to make trades with each other.

They'll be announcing the trades on the website tonight at 9:00, right? And not just at the Smackdown tapings?

Last night in a backstage segment. HBK told Bischoff to trade him to SD after HHH got drafted. Bischoff said he'd give HBK a world title shot instead. HBK said that would work, because he'd win the title to make HHH mad, or something. Yes, Benoit was the background to all of this.

I think an Eddie/HHH feud from now until Summerslam would be great if booked correctly...I just don't know that I have the confidence for them to do that...and I _really_ don't want SD turning into the Hunter/Steph show again.

From pwinsider.com Orlando Jordan beat Chuck Palumbo with a roll up. Both guys got a decent response coming out. People knew who Jordan was, strangely. Boring match in which absolutely nothing happened. The World's Greatest Tag Team beat Billy Gunn and Hardcore Holly. Someone needs to tell me why Billy Gunn is still employed. Another boring match, in which nothing much happened. At one point Holly mooned WGTT to reveal he was wearing a thong. Billy Kidman beat Bradshaw (!!!) with a roll up. Bradshaw came out and started talking about how bad Scotland was, I have to agree with him. Kidman came out to absolutely no reaction. Another nothing match. Kidman teased the Shooting Star but didn't actually do it, which is good for his health as he can barely hit the thing these days. Jamie Noble beat Nidia in a match where Noble was blindfolded. Noble was introduced as Jamie "By God" Noble: The Redneck Messiah. From what I hear this was the same match that took place at No Way Out and is the same match they've been doing on this UK tour. After the match Noble challenged Fit Finlay (who was at ringside) to a match, stating that he was in front of his home town. Note: Finlay is Irish, not Scottish. Finlay accepted and... Fit Finlay beat Jamie Noble. Basically a squash with Finlay getting in a few power moves and then scoring the quick pinfall. Paul Heyman came out and started running down Scotland. Some fan yelled "You Suck!" to which he replied "Yes I do, but it was your mother who taught me how". He also said "Stop chanting ECW, it's dead and I wish you all were". He started talking about how Cena was going to drop the US title which of course brought out Cena. Cena dissed Heyman for a while before Rhyno ran out. John Cena over Rhyno. Basically Cena nailed the FU and got the count and that was that. I guess Rhyno is injured, hence the short match. Chavo Guerrero Jr defeated Rey Mysterio Jr and Little Guido (I'm not calling him "Nunzio"). Rey got a great response coming out, he then picked a kid from ringside that was dressed as him and put him on his shoulders. The kid must have been over the moon. Decent match which saw Guido eliminated first. Chavo got the win with a cheap roll up. After the match Guido came back and attacked Rey, with help from Chavo. Rey then got the best of them and hit a double 619. Intermission. Rikishi & Scotty Too Hotty beat The Bashams. Boring match. Scotty hit the worm then Rikishi nailed one of The Bashams with a superkick and got the pinfall. Torrie Wilson beat Dawn Marie. Sadly this wasn't a bra and panties match. Dawn looked ridiculously hot. Pretty dreadful match which saw Torrie get the win fairly quickly. Eddy Guerrero beat The Big Show. Not a bad match, here. Great to see Eddy in person. Show bumped the ref and Eddy was ready to nail Show with the belt but Chavo came out and stopped him. This then brought out Rikishi and Scotty, then The Bashams, then WGTT, then Cena. Cena hit Big Show with the FU then Eddy nailed the frog splash for the pin. After the match the faces brought out Nidia and Torrie and they all danced to send everyone away happy. Overall, a fairly uneventful yet pleasing show. Although it wasn't worth The FWA show on Friday is likely to blow it out the water. I laughed as I seen people who bought APA shirts (For a pop) at the show, seen as the team is now forever defunct.

Yep. Which is weird, since I thought brands were ALWAYS allowed to make trades...which is why having a trade deadline is weird. But I know what they mean.

I don't really see a point to that... They'd be much more effective pushed as singles, IMO. Though SD is still lacking in the heel department...

It was sold as a way to shake up the brands. It did nothing of that nature. We saw a bunch of mid-carders and unproven talent move. That doesn't shake anything up. It's just stupid. Yeah, they definitely hyped more than it delivered. We'll see how the trades shake out, and where the angles lead, though. Probably shouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt, but you kinda have to.

1) RVD 2) Bubba Ray Dudley 3) D-Von Dudley 4) Spike Dudley 5) Tajiri 6) Rhyno 7) Nunzio (Little Guido) 8) Al Snow 9) Lance Storm 10) Steven Richards 11) Tommy Dreamer Then you could add: 12) Matt Morgan 13) Jon Heidenreich (Might as well do something with him) 14) Paul London 15) Nick Dinsmore 16) Johnny Jeter 17) Nova Add 4-5 more guys and you're good to go. Not the best roster or anything, but it could be fun...maybe...

The draft wasn't great by any means, but I don't think it was AWFUL...worst case we're pretty much where we were a week ago, except with HHH on SD and ECW coming back.

HHH's ego wouldn't allow him to be traded straight up for Booker T.

Meltz: "A-Train on the WWE web site is listed now as being on Raw. Booker T was listed earlier tonight as being on Smackdown, but that was taken down." If that's a trade, I'd say SD got the better end of the deal.

2-3 months i think?

From PWI... Off-Air Raw Report from Detroit, Michigan: Dark Match Travis Tomko defeated Lenny Lane - Lane didn't do the gay gimmick, and was actually announced as being from Detroit, and most people seemed to actually buy it, as Lenny was way over. Guess that shows how many people who watched WCW are still watching wrestling. Al Snow and Coach are introduced to start Heat, they both come out to Coach's music. Al did the funny thing where he points to Coach, and everyone boos, then raises his arms and everyone cheers. Heat Matches: Garrison Cade defeated Val Venis - crowd seemed to die whenever Cade was on offense, but they were into Val. I did find Jindrak's absence conspicuous, and speculated that he was going to be drafted, which turned out to be the case. Lita defeated Jazz with a DDT - also conspicuous by his absence in this match was Teddy Long, which got me thinking draft again. I guess only the smart fan picks up on things like this, but I'm still surprised that they gave us 2 possible draft spoilers on Heat, and both of them turned out to be right on the money. The Hurricane defeated Joey Matthews - I like Joey but you know he's not going any to win any match where he enters the ring while Lita's music is still playing (not that he was going to win on Heat anyway, but it still doesn't make him look good). Also not making Joey look good was the "You're a Jobber" chant that he got after Lita's music stopped and before Hurricane's started. Good match actually, Hurricane won with the Shining Wizard (which is really more of a Shining Enzuguri, but I guess I'm nitpicking). Matt Hardy Version 1.0 defeated Lance Storm - Matt was over. Prior to the match, Matt grabs the mic and gives us all an extra Matt Fact: "Matt hates things that are dull and boring, like Lance Storm". Please don't tell me we're going back to THAT gimmick. Nice match that Matt takes with the Twist of Fate. Lilian Garcia delivers a beautiful rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, as always, and then introduces our announce teams. First JR comes out to Boomer Sooner, then the King comes out to his music, followed by Tazz and Cole coming out together to Tazz's music. Off Camera stuff from the broadcast: Mark Jindrak came out to the podium and made a speech with Paul Heyman during the commercial break after he was selected. Nothing of importance was said, basically just him talking about how great and how under appreciated he is, and how he is looking forward to going to Smackdown. He also made sure to rip Detroit while he was at it. During the commercial break before World title match, a vignette was aired to the live crowd with Rhyno running into the Bashams backstage. The Bashams talked about how excited he must be not only to be going to Raw, but to be getting a World title shot right here in his hometown. Rhyno said he was excited about the title shot, but could care less about being in Detroit. Rhyno ran down the local teams "The Lions haven't won a game in like, ten years... The Red Wings got swept in the first round of the playoffs... and don't even get me started on the Tigers". He then said how Detroit sports fans have no respect. These people have no respect for him, and he has no respect for them. This was all done, obviously, to get people to boo Rhyno in his hometown, where he usually gets pops. And it worked, though an unfortunate side effect of the vignette were some "Let's Go Red Wings" chants directed at Rhyno during the match, which is usually reserved for matches the audience doesn't care for. Don't know if any of those were audible over the broadcast or not, as they weren't THAT loud, but just in case I wanted to make it clear that the chants weren't because people were bored. The "A--hole" chant during the main event was directed at the moron who tried to jump in the ring. After the show went off the air: There was a long fun bit after the show. The ring slowly clears, as wrestlers begin to fight their way back up the ramp. The last two men remaining in the ring are Big Show and Kane. They do the thing where the ring clears, then the two back up and bump into each other. They tease a confrontation, and each man grabs the other's throat attempting the choke slam. Then Austin hits the ring and stuns them both. Austin drinks some beer, and then HHH and Chris Benoit fight their way back into the ring. Benoit gets HHH in the crossface. Austin pours beer on HHH while he is in the crossface, and HHH taps. Austin helps HHH up, then stuns him. Austin and Benoit proceed to drink beers in the ring for the next several minutes. Benoit drops more than half of the beers that Austin tosses him, much to Austin and the crowd's amusement. After a while of that, Austin hops on the ATV and drives up the ramp, only to knock over both tumblers with it, before driving back down to the ring. Austin drinks some more beer, and tosses more beer to Benoit, who is 3/4 of the way up the ramp. Benoit continues to drop most of the beer. The two have several more beers in this fashion, before Benoit leaves, then Austin goes over and shares a beer with Lilian Garcia, who looked like she was actually drinking it for a while and not spilling it everywhere like everyone else does... but then her mouth started overflowing, and of course it ran all down her shirt, much to the crowd's enjoyment. Austin then saluted the crowd, and drove back up the ramp and exited for real this time. Lilian thanked us all for coming. All in all a fun show to be at live, as we got to see both rosters and lots of extracurricular stuff.

Since I don't want to look it up... When was Test IC champ?

No one has replaced him on the SD side yet...maybe he's a replacement pick since Heyman quit?

From 411... Bio for new GM online at WWE.com? The following is a potential spoiler for Smackdown: A link to Stephanie McMahon's bio is live on WWE.com. While it does not refer to her as the GM of Smackdown, the bio does include updated information on Stephanie, including her mother throwing in the towel during the "I Quit" match vs. Vince last year. To read the bio, click here. As reported here earlier, the new GM of Smackdown will be announced at tomorrow's SD tapings, as will any trades that are made before the trade deadline. Besides Stephanie, other rumored GMs (some of which are a stretch) include: - Theodore Long (drafted to SD on Monday night) - Shane McMahon (bio removed from the RAW site) - Vince McMahon (bio is still on the SD site) - Kurt Angle (if his ring-time is limited due to injury) - William Regal (currently injured and on RAW roster) [Credit: WWE.com]

Also on the RAW where HHH faced Test for the title, Vince originally booked it for Test to win it...which would have sort have made sense, as they could have blown it off at Armageddon instead of having the stupid HHH/Vince match. Test, former WWF champion. Eerie.

Add in a few guys like Matt Morgan, Nova, Johnny Jeter, Nick Dinsmore, Joey Matthews, and a few other guys and give them a shot.

HBK is "aligned with Bischoff" now, that could very well make him a heel in a week. As for the back-up heels... well they got a few to choose from...they just need to push someone. Rhyno, Orton (sorry), or Shelton Benjamin will be pushed in the coming weeks. Christian/Jericho is a nice little feud, too. Hopefully X gets over even more as a heel with Trish. I don't get why they jobbed out Rhyno to Cena the past few weeks if they were going to give him a big push on RAW.