Hunter's Torn Quad

By the way, where does WON get this news from anyway? Sources within the company. Shouldn't you take it with a grain of salt rather than as official? Dave has an excellent track record when it comes to WWE news. Is he always correct? No. But he's right far more often than he is wrong. And it's not like the behavior reported goes against the track record of WWE. It's not like WWE has come out and said all of this. You expect them to come out and say that Vince hates ECW and think nobody on the brand, bar Lashley presumably, can work? They're not going to say anything about half of this.

1/27/07 rvd420 - multiple time PBP.

If Anderson and Finlay argue that Holly should get pushed ahead of Punk because of tenure, what happens if Howard Finkel gets brought back for a gimmick match or something? Does he get to beat Batista because he's been around for twenty seven years while Batista's only been there for five?

It's going to be funny watching either man sell for the other.

Before the last PPV there was a disagreement with Nash and Backlund. Nash wanted to put one over on Backlund by talking about "gimmicks" (wrestler talk for getting high on somas or other forms of downers) and other drug references that he thought Backlund wouldn't get. Backlund though did get what he was talking about and threatened to leave unless Nash changed it. Nash being his usual dickish self. Morale is down again. There is now a real divide between the star group (Nash, Sting, Angle, Christian, Jarrett) and the rest of the roster. The star group not only get more money but also have a seperate dressing room to the rest of the workers. One of the few things TNA had over WWE was a more unified locker room. Now, they're losing that. Brother Ray has a lot of heat over the last PPV match with LAX over eating up Homicide. I'm dying for Ray to pull this shit with Rick Steiner when they wrestle shortly. Of course, Ray won't, because Rick would fight back and I doubt Ray has the balls do try it against someone willing to dish it out. There is still talk of adding members to LAX. Konnan has been pushing hard for Senshi, but his attitude is such that TNA aren't sure about pushing him. The booking committee have suggested bringing Apolo and Machete back to the group. If they have to add people, make it just one person or they risk watering things down, and make it Senshi. Dutch Mantel, Vince Russo and Jeff Jarrett have asked Mike Tenay to rejoin the booking committee. They have also asked Jim Cornette to join the committee and Cornette has agreed in principle but they haven't come to a deal over money yet. Even with Tenay and Cornette involved though Russo will still be in charge and will continue to have the greatest impact in the shows. That TNA appears to be somewhat accepting of their booking shortfalls is enough to generate a small glimmer of hope that they might yet have some long-term hope. Steiner is planned to be Christian's consultant. On what? How to cycle?

Let's all stop the pointless bashing of MMA and wrestling. If you really want to talk about the differences, or similarities, then make a thread for it.

Vince knew that Bret was going to stay.

Shit like this wouldn't happen if you just gave the guys bullet points and then let them get on with it instead of giving them scripts you insist they follow word for word.

Batista's move was a lateral move rather than an upwards one. If I was a suspicious person, I might think that Hunter did so much to put Batista over because he knew that Batista was moving to Smackdown anyway, and so Batista wouldn't be around to be seen as now being higher than him on the food chain.

To be fair, I think the cameras or a camera that was close by just picked his voice up. The fault lies with Thorne. You don't call spots when your opponent is half way across the ring and you have to raise your voice so you can be heard. And 1.5 was the rating.

You didn't know? I was almost expecting nobody to catch that Impact was on last night because I don't think TNA did much, if anything, to make it known about the change.

He tried with Rikio, but Rikio just didn't have it. He put Hunter over for three months straight, getting beaten clean by him, getting laid out by him, getting left a bloody mess, etc. Foley made Hunter a star.

Kevin Thorne very loudly calling a spot

Rock lost to Hurricane clean all right, but he didn't put him over. There is a difference. The focus that night was all on Rock and Austin, and it was Austin's music that ended the show while Hurricane sped to the back like Earl Hebner out of Montreal. I like Rock, though, and he did put Lesnar over huge.

Nova's promo that turned him babyface in OVW. He's trying to tell the Jersey Shore Crew about what WWE told him when he tried to get them into WWE but when it's not good news JSC tell Nova he hasn't put in the sacrifices or earned his spot, Nova goes off on them and gives an incredible and emotional promo about how he's sacrificed by missing his grandmother's funeral to wrestle on a show for $50 and he's sacrificed by the company he was working for going out of business and him being owed over $50,000. It's really great stuff and shows what Nova could do on the mic.

It couldn't have been that memorable a match then. As for the finish, they probably didn't want to beat Tomko in his first match, but I don't think it would have mattered if Abyss had won clean because Tomko is strictly a bit player and doesn't need protecting.

Hogan already tried passing the torch to the Ultimate Warrior, Goldberg and the Rock, but none of them could carry it. Re: Hogan 'passing the torch' to Goldberg. Passing the torch to someone doesn't mean losing to them clean and then staying in the top matches while the guy you 'passed the torch' to is in the semi-main events, when he's even able to get on the PPV. And as for Hogan 'passing the torch' to Rock, that's a good one. That was a joke. Have you never heard a Hogan interview? And a good one. I've tried listening to a Hogan interview, but my head explodes from trying to make any kind of sense of what he says.

For what it's worth, Striker had a rep for being a heat magnet before going to WWE. Most people who knew him beforehand felt it was just a matter of time before he got into hot water. I think what got him heat was that he was a new guy in the locker room and he probably should have kept his head down and his mouth shut before trying to be funny or cute.

The rating was another 4.0 this week, only down a .1 from last week so that's not too bad.

Hogan already tried passing the torch to the Ultimate Warrior, Goldberg and the Rock, but none of them could carry it. Re: Hogan 'passing the torch' to Goldberg. Passing the torch to someone doesn't mean losing to them clean and then staying in the top matches while the guy you 'passed the torch' to is in the semi-main events, when he's even able to get on the PPV. And as for Hogan 'passing the torch' to Rock, that's a good one.

The ring was meant to break.

It wasn't Striker doing impressions that got him heat. He was first on Raw, and got heat there though I don't know why. When he went to Smackdown, to tape stuff for WWE.com and do a dark match, he said something that got back to JBL that for some reason had JBL all fired up and when he was told to try and defuse the situation he said something else that saw Bob Holly tell Striker he had 24 hours to learn how to fight. Apparently, Striker said something to the effect of that even though he was sent to Atlanta he was able to talk his way out of it by telling DeMott and Jody Hamilton that he had business to take care of in New York. He was trying to be smart but it wound up with people hating him even more. What set Guerrero off on him is when Striker was asked what he was doing on Smackdown, Striker joked back with something like "just taking their money", which didn't sit too well and when Guerrero told Striker he needed to smarten up Striker again tried to be funny and it backfired in a big way because Guerrero got mad at Striker and walked off, and when Benoit found out what Striker had done, which he felt was disrespecting Guerrero, he threw Striker's bags out of the locker room and told him to dress somewhere else.

Throw me some names.

Why not save Shawn's last title shot for a feud later in the year? Because the timing is perfect to do it now. He can win the Rumble in his hometown, and he can dedicate the win to Hunter who the people know is his best friend and is injured. It'll mean a whole lot more now, when the emotion behind is more real because of Hunter and it can be built around it happening at Wrestlemania, then holding it off and going with it later in the year. If you do that storyline, you have to give Shawn the belt, which would be bad for business. Not only would you effectively turn the crowd against your #1 babyface, you'd be presenting a show in the year 2007 where the big moments are Hogan slamming a giant and Shawn Michaels and Undertaker winning your world titles. Shawn having the belt could be good for business because you can in some great directions. You can have Shawn dedicate his reign to Hunter, and have Edge screw him out of the belt which gives Shawn a strong program and if Hunter comes back soon enough you can go back to DX vs. RKO which they're going to anyway so adding the dynamic of Edge, or Orton, ruining Shawn's dream adds heat to it. Add in Cena to the storyline and you get a third dimension of Cena wanting his belt back which allows for the twist of Cena helping DX in their fight against Edge when it was Shawn who beat him for the belt, but you can also add in speculation of whether Cena is really going to save Shawn because of Shawn beating him for the belt. It can make for a strong program to last well into the year, and that's good for business. Not to mention that if Vince does have Batista beat Undertaker, then that crowd are going to be, if not irate then very deflated, and Shawn winning the title will give the night a great feel good ending that will bring the crowd right back up.