Hunter's Torn Quad

Ted DiBiase Curt Hennig Terry Taylor Jeff Hardy

Tito Ortiz's current UFC contract includes a stipulation where, after his third fight, he gets a three three-minute round boxing match with Dana White.

It's in the UFC section, so I'll also C&P this part into the MMA folder. Tito Ortiz's current UFC contract includes a stipulation where, after his third fight, he gets a three three-minute round boxing match with Dana White.

Dave called Monday’s Raw “funny as hell” and that the return was just as over, with HHH and Shawn, as DX, refreshed, but Dave also questions how long it can last. Dave brings up a point he’s mentioned a number of times before, that when he first saw the DX entrance on Raw he knew WCW were in trouble. The internal reaction to the show was that it was a success, but there is a lot of skepticism as to how far it can go, with the general feeling that revivals like this work for the first few weeks but then it fades fast. Dave mentioned it brings a reminder of redoing the Freebirds in 1990 which was a big introduction and some funny interviews, but after that was just a midcard act. One reaction, though, was consistent; with HHH turning 38 next month and Shawn turning 41 (he’ll have turned 41 by the time you read this), by all logic they are too old for the roles they are playing. Dave says they need a hot program, which would likely build to a match with the McMahon’s at Summerslam and then move on after that. One insider said that Shawn isn’t comfortable with his new role, as he feels people will see it as a contradiction of what he’s been preaching the past few years. That was played into when HHH brought out cheerleaders to take their tops off, but first put a blindfold on Shawn. The show was written specifically for HHH to get all the funny lines and Shawn just to react to them. Dave said that the Raw was close to the type of Raw that put it on the map as something other than Monday Night Wrestling. Dave felt it was great TV for numbers, which he wrote before getting the rating. Dave said what killed this type of television was advertisers pulling out, which isn’t going to happen today, as WWE doesn’t have the enemies it used to. Dave also thinks they went through so much material in one night that they may burn out. Talking about the return to MSG, Dave says WWE can’t make the profit they can running at MSG than they can at either Nassau Coliseum or the Continental Airlines Arena, and he thinks it was the fact they have a live Raw on that date as the reason they wanted to run Manhattan. Vince was furious about the negative reaction to the debut ECW show. During the agents meeting, Vince’s reaction over the first TV show was that he didn’t realize that the ECW brand was ‘tainted’, and that the Hammerstein crowds weren’t an indication of where the overall popularity of ECW really stood. Vince now feels that they can’t build from that base crowd and now have to build using the WWE audience. Paul Heyman pushed for more creative control on the second show, and because of the reaction to the first show, they mostly went with his script. He booked the long tag main event of RVD/Angle vs. Edge/Orton to carry the show, and he put Mike Hettinga (Mike Knox) on the show to get him a role quickly, as Heyman is a big a fan of his. The idea is for Knox to get a big rub right away from having the super hot girlfriend. From the meeting, its felt Vince as already written off the original audience coming back to be built on. Sabu’s attitude, which caused some initial worry, has been considered excellent since coming in. It is possible he realizes that this is his last chance to make good money so he’s changes his attitude. The original idea was for him to get an early push because he was an ECW name with nothing planned long-term. His work with Cena has been much better than anticipated, and Sabu has also clicked with the main talent that is willing to work with him and treat him as main event wrestler. Sabu is also considered the top new player. Dave says it’s amazing that, when looking back, the two guys who caused Jim Cornette to go ballistic and then get fired, Kevin Fertig and John Carelli, both get their careers saved by Heyman. Shelly Martinez was originally going to be Paul Burchill’s valet but that idea got scrapped. Her tarot card reader gimmick is a concession to Sci-Fi. At one point, Tim Arson (The Zombie) was also going to be The Cook, as spoof on The Food Network, as a character for Sandman to come out and cane. The 7/4 taping at the old ECW Arena was moved to the Wachovia Center, which hosts a four-hour plus Raw/Smackdown taping the night before. The ECW show will have one hour of dark matches and then a live one-hour show. The only vague reason given was that it would cost too much to upgrade the ECW Arena to do a good quality taping, and it would save money to move to the Wachovia Center. Dave thinks they will load up the Raw show and shoot a big angle as well, but questions how much walk-up business they’ll do the next night when they come back to the same building. Dave thinks they could do enough to turn people away at the ECW Arena, which they could trumpet on TV, but that same crowd at the Wachovia Center won’t look good on TV. Dave speculates it could be that with the Raw guys working ECW, they don’t want to make them look ‘cheap’ by working in an “Indy looking building”. More on the firings of Dustin Runnels and Mikey Batts; Dustin missed the 6/12 Raw due to a court appearance to do with his ex. At that show, it was decided to fire him, as it was assumed he missed the date for the same reason almost everyone else misses shows. Runnels said he attempted to call the office ahead of time, and when they found out why he really missed the show the heat was then for not telling them ahead of time. Runnels was desperate to keep his job, to the point where he even said he would work for free for a month, but Vince made the call to fire him. With Batts, it’s stranger. The official reason was that he wasn’t improving enough, wasn’t dedicated and his size. However, the whispers are that it has do to with other things. When then newest Venus Swimwear models (one of whom debuted on ECW) were brought into OVW, talent relations gave word that nobody was to mess with them. Nobody could figure that one out, given that every woman who shows up in wrestling hooks up with someone, and nothing was said about the other women who have come to OVW. The problem came when at least two guys hooked up with the new women, and on 6/10 word came down that somebody was going to be made an example of. Then Batts was let go. That isn’t the official reason, but people are putting the timing down to it being the real reason. Why that sort of thing gets heat for one person but not for another is the idea that if you are a star then it’s expected for you to get a hot girlfriend, but if you’re not a star then it’s frowned upon, more so if it’s felt you’re flaunting it. Instead of WWE getting preempted for the US open this year, Raw will air from 2300 to 0100 on 8/28 and probably the next week as well. The Miz will host the Diva Search this year, Dave liked JBL commentating on Smackdown, but thinks he talks too much and can get repetitive. Dave also thinks his ant-foreigner and anti-gay tirades will get old fast, and brings up that JBL was anti-foreigner with Sylvan, who is Canadian but JBL called him French, but wasn’t anti-foreigner with Regal or Finlay. Dave said he hopes JBL is not a one-trick pony, but for the first time out JBL was great. Dave thinks Regal and Finlay should be the tag champions, and that they could be the best tag team in the company in a long time. Said you could tell that JBL’s commentary on Matt Hardy was managements opinion of Hardy, and that it was 14:00 of non-stop “he cried on the internet about losing his girl”. Dave also said that Hardy is not getting a push no matter how much the crowd pops for him and that management just won’t push him. Vito is now wearing his dress at the airport and on planes. There was talk of Justin Credible forming a new Impact Players tag team with a new partner, but it was first mentioned a few weeks ago and hasn’t been mentioned again since.

Great disappointment. Jericho could and should have been made a main event player off of that angle, but instead had his legs cut off from under him and was buried in less than two hours.

--TNA did a 1.1 on Thursday, which has to be considered very strong for a show that followed a repeat of Ultimate Fighter. Da Meltz

--The UFC special on Saturday night did a 2.0 rating, but also set the company's all-time viewership record with an average of 2.8 million viewers over the three hours. The Kendall Grove vs. Ed Herman match also squeaked ahead of the Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar match from last year as the most-watched live UFC match in history.

And because it belongs here too: --Yes, that was the Imposter Kane blow-off last night. If you ever were believing that things were planned out long-term in WWE, just check the results from Vengeance the night before. I'm sure it must have happened, but off the top of my head, I can't ever recall someone put over a major superstar clean in the middle, who was dropped one night later so fast they didn't even bother with him losing a match on the way out. Anyway, this one goes down in history right next to the Gobbledy Gooker, Linda McMahon's divorce from Vince and taking half the company after seeing him with Torrie Wilson on Raw, Linda McMahon's heel turn years later, DDP with the shining teeth, DDP as the Stalker, DDP as the homeless guy, DDP as the lottery winner, a bunch of DDP gimmicks I've forgotten, Oz, Richard & Rod Johnson, The Ding Dongs and the last episode of Seinfeld, the desperation XFL radio and TV ads where they brought up how bad the ratings and gimmicks were, Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW, Eric Bischoff's insane "shoot" promos as WCW was collapsing in 1999, David Arquette, Ed Ferrara and Vince Russo holding title gold and The Mullets in all-time gimmick hell. That Charlotte crowd will now go down in forgotten history for killing a character, although this one was really stillborn. It won't go down like the Tacoma crowd, which killed an entire several years worth of plans in one night. Funny, for the first four months of this year when just about every TV crowd was treating John Cena like he was the living incarnation of a Booker T vs. Buff Bagwell match, they decided that they know better than the crowd what the crowd will pay to see. And in that case, he was probably right.

---Yes, that was the Imposter Kane blow-off last night. If you ever were believing that things were planned out long-term in WWE, just check the results from Vengeance the night before. I'm sure it must have happened, but off the top of my head, I can't ever recall someone put over a major superstar clean in the middle, who was dropped one night later so fast they didn't even bother with him losing a match on the way out. Anyway, this one goes down in history right next to the Gobbledy Gooker, Linda McMahon's divorce from Vince and taking half the company after seeing him with Torrie Wilson on Raw, Linda McMahon's heel turn years later, DDP with the shining teeth, DDP as the Stalker, DDP as the homeless guy, DDP as the lottery winner, a bunch of DDP gimmicks I've forgotten, Oz, Richard & Rod Johnson, The Ding Dongs and the last episode of Seinfeld, the desperation XFL radio and TV ads where they brought up how bad the ratings and gimmicks were, Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW, Eric Bischoff's insane "shoot" promos as WCW was collapsing in 1999, David Arquette, Ed Ferrara and Vince Russo holding title gold and The Mullets in all-time gimmick hell. That Charlotte crowd will now go down in forgotten history for killing a character, although this one was really stillborn. It won't go down like the Tacoma crowd, which killed an entire several years worth of plans in one night. Funny, for the first four months of this year when just about every TV crowd was treating John Cena like he was the living incarnation of a Booker T vs. Buff Bagwell match, they decided that they know better than the crowd what the crowd will pay to see. And in that case, he was probably right. Da Meltz

JR and Lawler keep going on about how bad it is that an ECW guy has the WWE Title. Apart from them, nobody else seems to care. And if nobody else cares, why should we, especially when the whole point of the storyline is that an outsider has the WWE Title?

In light of others continuing the tradition, and because I've been bored, I figured I should bring the original back to life. Only nominate people in wrestling.

WWE also change their minds all the time.

This thread would be a whole lot better if more people tried, even half-heatedly, to back up what they're saying. Most people are saying stuff just to be contrary, and I doubt they mean half of it.

Give Batista a few weeks back on TV and he'll be super over again.

Ron Simmons got the belt because Watts thought he could make money with him.

Well one of the matches will be at the top of the 2nd hour, while the other closes the show. I'd say odds are 50/50. I'll be stunned if the Hunter and Vince Show doesn't close Raw.

According to the latest WO.com update, it'll be DX versus Vince and Shane tonight. No guesses as to whether the WWE Title match will be in the main event slot.

Sting Sid Scott Norton Ultimate Warrior

If they're taking the belt off Van Dam and putting it back on Cena then I think they'll go the obvious route and have Edge cost Van Dam the belt and then they'll use that as a reason to keep Edge in the title picture.

Goldberg Brock Lesnar

I always thought Steiner should have ended the streak. Steiner had been an mid-carder for about a year and was getting pretty good heat in his feud with Page and Rick Steiner. Steiner was a credible enough name to beat Goldberg but wasn't a "star" just yet but putting him over Goldberg (I would have done it at SuperBrawl instead of 1998 Starrcade) would have put him there. Steiner was a loose cannon but he was a heat machine that actually worked well with Goldberg when he was older in 2000, so I'd imagine Steiner/Goldberg in 1999 would have just as good if not better. If they had spent 1999 having Goldberg going through the top heels and Steiner going through the to babyfaces, and I mean all clean wins, then by the time Starrcade 1999 rolled around you would have, with smart booking, been able to have a main event that people would have both wanted to see and not been sure what the result would be, because both men had been pushed so strong for a whole year.

Kevin Nash ending Goldberg’s streak was beyond terrible. Why should it have to have been a big name to end the streak? The big name is already big, so what does he gain from ending the streak? When it came time for the streak to end, it should have been a guy who was just on the edge of being a main event player because being the first one to beat Goldberg would have made him for life. The way it was ended made Goldberg look like every other incompetent babyface who gets outsmarted by interference he should have seen coming a mile away. What they did at the Georgia Dome Nitro was a new level of brainless insanity, but it does not make what happened at Starrcade any less idiotic than it already was.

WWE announced its return to Madison Square Garden for the Raw shoot on 9/11, which will mark 17 months since the prior show at the building. Da Meltz This will lead to a morale boost internally, as Vince places a lot of stock in what happens at MSG and WWE not running their for so long had to have hit him hard.

I personally don't believe that people are coming to see Cena at house shows. Do you happen to have the numbers at hand to show it? As for TV ratings, they went up when Cena lost the belt (to Edge), and I think that sends a powerful message. The rating for the first Raw after Cena dropped the belt were up from the week before, but Raw’s rating usually spikes the day after PPV’s anyway. The next week the rating was the same, so Cena dropping the title did not appear to bring in enough viewers to make any difference. The rating went up the following week, but the day after Cena got the belt back the overall rating was the same, and stayed at that level for the next week as well. Cena getting the belt back did not turn off a significant level of fans. The next week was a Thursday special Raw, so the rating for that, a 3.3, does not really count either way. Raw was back to 4’s the week after that. When the Cena-Edge program was going on, even when Cena was the champion again, it spiked the ratings. It was a ratings draw to the point that a tag match involving Maria and Lita as their respective partners, and after Cena got the belt back, gained 638,000 viewers. Cena dropping the title did not bring people back like you think it did, and Cena being the champion again did not turn people off either. Cena is WWE’s top merchandise seller as well, so he brings in the dollars in that department too. As for house shows, a lot of merchandise sales come from them, and if people are going to buy a wrestler’s merchandise at house shows, then they’re also likely going to pay to see him wrestle at house shows as well.

Lex Luger Buff Bagwell Rick Steiner Jerry Lynn