Hunter's Torn Quad

There was ZERO chance of that happening. I've read, or heard somewhere, out of Bret's mouth, he was going to do it, because he was offered a lot of money to do so, and was already angry with Vince and company. Every shred of evidence points that Bret never had that intention and even Eric Bischoff supports against that idea was suggested. It would have been a massive legal lawsuit that Turner wasn't going to back. It was a hoax, created by McMahon-supporters to paint Vince in a positive light and make it look like Vince had no choice in the matter. The difference between Medusa and Bret? Medusa, wasn't under contract...and because of that incident certain actions against WCW were taken. Also, whether the WWF could have sued over it happening, it would still be a huge event for WCW, and they might have seen it as worth any potential financial/legal backlash. Turner higher ups would have squashed anything that could open the company up to a lawsuit they would have no chance of winning.

There was ZERO chance of that happening. I've read, or heard somewhere, out of Bret's mouth, he was going to do it, because he was offered a lot of money to do so, and was already angry with Vince and company. Bret actually cared about the belt and wasn't about to disgrace it. He never had any intention, they offered him alot to do it and he turned them down. He didn't like it when Medusa did it and he wasn't about to do it to the belt he actually gave a damn about. And that little lawsuit thing. Stupid enter key, I hate you. They didn't offer him anything to do it because they'd open themselves up to a lawsuit they would have lost.

There was ZERO chance of that happening. I've read, or heard somewhere, out of Bret's mouth, he was going to do it, because he was offered a lot of money to do so, and was already angry with Vince and company. Again, there was ZERO chance of that happening. Doing so would have opened up Bret, Eric Bischoff and WCW to a lawsuit which they would have lost. The idea of Bret taking the WWF title to WCW is a complete myth.

There was ZERO chance of that happening.

Bret has gotten over it as much as he can with Vince obsessively bringing it up on a regular basis and constantly wanting Bret to be part of a Montreal angle, which he knows Bret wants nothing to do with. Bret should have known far before now that Vince is a mentally unstable ego-manical sociopath. Hell, I work for one; but that doesn't mean I go and piss myself silly every time he does something stupid just because he's a rich, obnoxious jerk, which is almost every day. Bret doesn't "piss himself silly" over Vince rehashing Montreal. He, like everyone else, is tired of Vince bringing it back up on a regular basis.

It isn't going to happen. Bret has gotten over it as much as he can with Vince obsessively bringing it up on a regular basis and constantly wanting Bret to be part of a Montreal angle, which he knows Bret wants nothing to do with.

Yeah, Shawn has no ego anymore. Hey, douchebag, he said he woudl skip it and he will. You cant just let him do the right thing and not be a dick about it. Your such a fucking cunt. Because Shawn has a long history of doing the right thing doesn't he?

Yeah, Shawn has no ego anymore.

I'm assuming that is supposed to read "Noble & Kid Kash". That's sure to produce some great matches, but where does that leave MNM? If Noble and Kash have been teaming, then I guess it is. MNM will probably be used to try and build up another team, probably the former penises.

Here is the WWE stuff from WON, but with a little more detail: “It took 15 years for WWE to return to NBC. But it only took one night for the people involved in negotiating the deal to be embarrassed” SNME drew a 3.11 final rating and 5.15 million viewers (combined live and same-day video/TiVO watching) Out of 82 prime time shows on the big four networks during the week, SNMW was 80, only beating The Loop on Fox on Thursday a repeat airing of Conviction on NBC that followed after. Various market rating ranged from 1.8 in San Francisco to 3.8 in Los Angeles. Blaming the NCAA game holds no water. Early rounds have never affected WWE ratings. Only the Final college basketball national championship, a strong NBA final, Monday Night Football, the World Series (or Red Sox-Yankees playoff games) have ever been shown to have any serious effect on WWE ratings in the past. Only possible silver lining as that the 18-49 age group was the best Saturday Night number for NBC since the Olympics. WWE did not see SNME as much of a priority as they did with the 10/3 Homecoming show. Some thought they should have followed the 10/3 format on hyping and delivering a debut show. The rating showed that pro wrestling has a strong and loyal cable-sized or UPN sized audience, but picked up few new viewers. It could be that fans weren’t that interested in what was advertised, or it could be that three prime time shows in one week is too much. Compared it to how Nitro killed the Clash concept by giving away weekly what used to be a special event. The commercial side of things was bad as well. It’s worth it for UPN because even with lower ad rates it only costs them $750,000 per week for the show, less then most 30 minutes shows, so it still winds up making money for them. With NBV being unable to get numbers even comparable to rerun Saturday night programming it changes the economics. Said the commercials that did air made it look like NBC had become cable programming for the night. Dave called the show entertaining. Said dragged about 90 minutes in with the Undertaker-Mark Henry segment, but the rating generally rose, going from 2.8 to 3.6, showing that few people were turning off. Blaming only having three matches is missing the point, because the real problem was not enough was there to interest people enough into giving it a look in the first place. QH breakdowns were: 2.8 (opening interviews and beginning of Raw vs. SD match), 2.7 (match finish; Booker T/Sharmell angle), 2.8 (Foley/Edge/Lita segment, 3.0 (JBL promo), 3.5 (beer drinking contest, women’s match), 3.2 (Henry and Daivari promo), 3.3 (Undertaker/Henry angle, start of Michaels vs. Shane), and 3.6 (main event) With two hours on Monday and two more on Friday, either the casual audience had their fill or this is the extent of the audience right now. Total viewership was slightly higher than the average Raw this season but lower than in recent weeks, including likely less than the Raw two nights later. It was also below the typical Thursday night SD, but well above Friday numbers. Equaling the Raw number is disastrous because Raw is available in 82% of homes while NBC is in virtually every home. Saturday night didn’t help but you can only use that as an excuse when the number is equal to or bigger than the 4.7 that NBC pulled the previous Saturday. The best thing on the show may have been the beer drinking contest, which had nothing to do with Wrestlemania, or the Booker T/Sharmell angle, which has nothing important to do with WM. Shawn vs. Shane was probably Shawn’s best match in a while, but the finish was a groaner of major proportions with live reports saying the kids didn’t care, because they were there for Cena, and the adults who were fans for a long time were long since sick of it. The finish was designed to tease Bret Hart appearing, as doing that for Summerslam helped that get a big buy rate (And before anyone jumps in, on a recent WOL Dave said that HBK/Hogan was a part of what drew the buy rate as well, but that the Bret deal also helped a lot) As of Saturday, no plans involving Bret were being written or talked about for WM, but they’ll still make a push for him to do something. The finish to the streetfight changed about five times in the 24hrs leading up to the match, with one description of how it ended up that way being that the yes men on creative pushed for it feeling that it would put them over with Vince with them knowing how he obsess over Montreal. Also mentions that Vince has become even more insulated from everyone except Stephanie, HHH and the “old guard yes men”. Said the streetfight couldn’t have been better and had excellent heat down the home stretch until the finish. Said it was almost surreal watching Ross announce is if everything that went down last year had never happened. Said Ross was the same Ross, which is better than Michael Cole or the castrated version of Joey Styles. SNME aired on about a 50 minute tape delay (I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on here bring that point up, even though spoilers were coming up on the Observer site before SNME started airing) The message during the Raw vs. SD match, loud and clear, was that the Raw wrestlers are on a higher plane than Smackdown wrestlers. The match was even laid out specifically for the audience to come to that conclusion. HHH was almost exclusively referred to as “The Game”, and was made into the big star, and kind of top babyface, when he laid out both Rey Mysterio and John Cena with pedigrees. The later was perhaps the biggest pop of the show, due to Cena being so heavily booed. Match ratings: Raw vs. SD match: **1/4 (Dave mentions that even against three SD main event guys on his own, Cena still won clean) Women’s match: no rating Shane vs. Shawn: ***1/4 Talked about the drug testing and reiterated that it’s usually the dumb users who get caught, and also said that, for now, the wrestlers are taking the testing seriously as many of them have changed physically in the last month or so. Hunter vs. Cena was the plan since pretty much WM a year ago with Hunter winning always the planned result, although it could it always change up to the last minute. Mysterio was put in the SD three-way because of the response he was getting going into No Way Out and the belief that he is a genuine drawing card, and is similar to Cena in that he brings in the kids, but unlike Cena there is no backlash. Hogan vs. Austin was talked about until November when Austin pulled out of Taboo Tuesday. Dave says he’d be shocked if they gave the match away with no build up, but thinks it would be a great idea to start a tease for next year’s WM at the Hall of Fame. The reason behind Chuck Palumbo and others being re-signed is because Vince told John Laurinaitis that the downsides on the payroll are low enough after the ten recent firings that they have room for some additions. He only wanted guys who were 6-2 or taller, to work the midcard, and wanted naturally big guys. It’s been months since Jamal and Charlie Haas were signed and Jamal isn’t even at developmental and Haas was only at OVW briefly and is still working Indies. No Way Out is listed at 180,000b buys. London and Kendrick may be winning the tag title soon as post-WM house show advertising as them defending the belts against Noble. Says Lashley getting pinned on Smackdown on 3/17 was weak thinks he could be just a year away from superstar potential, although he does need to work on his promos. Says if they had just had Finlay work with him for 10:00 every night at house shows and kept him on OVW and then debuted him in one year they could have made him a huge draw from day one. As it is, they are now playing catch up, and that is not easy. Compares it to Kurt Angle and how Angle could have been a big draw but they kept him in the nerd role for so long it from the get go that it killed his drawing potential. Chris Cage (Chris Pavone) was fired when they taped a series of vignettes if Cage and Miz partying at South Padre Island in Texas and Cage kept partying even after returning to Louisville and wound up being hospitalized. There are rumblings of a Cena/HHH double turn at WM, but TV seems to indicate they are still working their asses off at getting Cena cheered. People have been pushing Hunter to turn face but he’s been negative to it, though his playing the cool heel may have meaning to it. Carlito is getting bad reactions from the press who interview him due to his staying in character the whole time. During one telephone interview, Carlito was asked about the handling of the death of Eddie Guerrero when a voice suddenly cut in and said that Carlito was not on Smackdown and so was not able to answer the question. The reporter was never told that somebody would be listening in on the interview. Close friends of Hawk were very offended by the promo Animal did when he turned heel, over his saying he had to carry the Road Warriors because Hawk was always drugged up. Dave mentions that the sad part is that it’s pretty much true that Animal was always looking after Hawk and making sure he didn’t do anything really stupid, so a lot of the anger could be because what Animal said was true. Anti-Cena signs were confiscated before the Raw in Memphis. Dusty Rhodes was pushing for Barry Windham to be made an agent, but Windham has a bad reputation and is seen as unreliable. Rhodes is also high on Roadkill, and there is an idea to bring in Roadkill and Kasey James in as a tag team at some point. Ken Doane has incredible heat with everyone in OVW, to the point that people not only let the air out of his tires and the like, but that they do it right in front of him. A number of wrestlers even confronted him and told him to shape up because he’s got a lot of talent, and Doane got even more heat when he responded with, “Yeah, whatever”.

Vince's need to get Bret involved in WM will prevent that. Until Bret physically leaves Chicago and is on the plane, Vince won't stop trying to get Bret to be a part of WM. Vince's obsession over Montreal is the only thing stronger than his need to show up people who he feels slighted by.

It's only fitting that WWE bring back a guy who's first gimmick saw him raise creatures that roll around in their own crap. He can babysit the writing team so that Bradshaw and Orlando don't get them drunk.

I say we get blood in Foley vs Edge. Foley can get away with it if he wants. He has creative control, so if he wants to bleed he can.

Is there anybody else who likes Orton's "Burn In My Light" theme?

How about adding in what order you'd have the matches? What would you open with, and what would you end with? Give a finish for the last match, as that will be the the final image of the PPV.

Watched most of the PPV the last couple of days, and it wasn’t ECW’s best effort. Mikey Whipwreck vs. Justin Credible was poor, and while they tried hard, it wasn’t enough to make the match anything other than sub-par. You had the usual run-in interference that plagued a lot of ECW matches, unnecessarily most of the time, with Jason hitting the ring and the referee just going along with it, which was an ongoing theme of the whole night. Taz vs. Pitbull #2 was a squash to write out the Pitbulls as major players due to legal trouble they had gotten into earlier that year. They’d run their course as well and weren’t of any real value anyway, so it was no great loss. They were put with Lance Wright, he of Hype Central ‘fame’, with Lance doing a gimmick where he’d been sent to ECW at the command of Vince McMahon, and to this end, after the match, Brakkus showed up to face off with Taz, and the result saw Taz choke out a security guy who was keeping them apart. Paul Heyman was on color for this match, and screamed for the production guys to play anything they had at hand when the guard got choked out, trying to treat the incident as a shoot. Tommy Dreamer vs. Rob Van Dam was a reasonably entertaining highspot match with both guys working hard and bumping hard. You had the interference as usual, but at least it made some sort of storyline sense, with run-ins from Sabu, Dan Kroffat and Doug Furnas, playing on the WWF vs. ECW theme, as well as the surprise return of Stevie Richards, who superkicked Dreamer. The match ended apparently in a no-contest, and with Van Dam, Kroffat and Furnas and Richards parading around a WWF banner. This saw Sandman show up and his match with Sabu followed. Sandman and Sabu was a Tables and Ladders match, and has gained almost cult like status for being incredibly bad with an almost non-stop procession of botched spots. I can tell you right now that the match is nowhere near as bad as people have claimed over the years. I remember Dave Meltzer gave it -*** which I thought was grossly unfair back then and I think is just as unfair now. Don’t get me wrong, the match isn’t that good, and there are some badly blown spots, but it’s still above, just, the DUD zone, and far from the worst brawl you’ll see. It’s not the best brawl you’ll see either, but there are plenty worse out there. The match does go on a little too long, and would have done even had everything gone to plan, and the finish saw Sabu use a ladder for an Arabian press to get the pin. The main event was Shane Douglas vs. Bam Bam Bigelow in a low rent version of Ric Flair vs. Vader from Starrcade ’93. The booking going into this match was all over the place. Douglas and Bigelow were top heels in the Triple Threat stable and the storyline at the time had Rick Rude, who was aligned with the Triple Threat, brining in outside names for Douglas to defend the ECW World title against, because Douglas wanted Rude to find the best international talent for Douglas to test his skills against. At a TV taping in New York, Rude reveals that Douglas’s opponent is Bigelow, turning both Bigelow and Rude instant babyface, and Bigelow pins Douglas for the ECW World title. However, with N2R taking place in Pittsburgh, which is the home state of Douglas, the big storyline of the PPV sees Douglas, a top heel, having to be a one night top babyface to play the hometown hero, while Bigelow, now a top babyface, having to be a one night top heel. The match itself wasn’t very good and Bigelow, who was pretty good in Japan, looked terrible here. Bigelow, playing the Vader role, controlled most of the match and it was painful to watch because he didn’t do much for the first 10 minutes other than punch, kick or headbutt Douglas around. Things sort of picked up as the match wore on, and there were some decent spots somewhere in all the mess, but the match wasn’t even a house show quality main event let alone a PPV quality main event, and if Douglas or Bigelow were looking to show they were better, or even as good as, Flair and Vader, then to say they failed miserably would be an understatement. Had N2R been somewhere else and they just wrestled a normal match, with no hometown hero storyline, then it might have been decent. Instead, we got a 25 minute match that felt like 45 minutes and just never went anywhere.

He's an asshole face who talks down to the audience. He does it effectively. He, actually knows how to play a heel. The Hardy thing gave him something that he didn't have before. The fans now have an identifiable reason to hate Edge. They can relate to being screwed over by a friend and which makes Edge even easier to hate because most, if not all of them, have been been stabbed in the back by a friend.

How about because they all know he screwed his best friend's girlfriend while the friend was at home injured?

Because he's someone they hate?

I think some of that is because the fight has been worn out of people when it comes to people being held back. Even if RVD did the same interview people would be just as likely to nod, acknowledge that he, along with other people, are being held back, and move on.

The biggest problem going this hotshot route is that eventually that people are going to stop popping for the lesbian kisses. They'll want something stronger, but WWE can't go any further. If they book it right, Trish/Mickie will get mega heel heat when they STOP the kissing that the crowd came to see, and instead act like 90% of the pretend bi-sexual ("hey guys look at me I kissed my girlfriend that must mean I'm bi") real life cock teases and start cutting promos about how they arent there to 'entertain' the perves. Chances are that the heat in question will see the people that tuned in to see the kissing tune right back out once they realise that they'll get no more kissing, and any ratings gained will be lost.

The finish for that match was actually dependant on Show’s decision, as WCW still wasn’t sure until just before then if he was going. If Show had stuck around, he was going to win somehow, but if he was leaving, which he did, it was going to be a clean loss. The deal for Show coming in to WWE was put together about a year before he jumped, but for obvious reasons it was kept very quiet.

That reminds of when Undertaker was a heel in early 2002 and kept getting cheered, especially when he made his entrance. For his match against Hogan at JD that year they gave him new music and took away his bike so he wouldn't get cheered, but it worked too well and he got absolutely no reaction at all when he came out and the crowd was silent until Hogan made his entrance. Undertaker didn’t even get pops for his big spots. And I liked Orton’s “Hey” music.

My point is that if someone really is the character they portray, albeit with the volume up, then I wouldn’t have much of a problem with because that is who they really are. My problem is having a stereotypical character just because it’s a stereotype and because the people writing this want to amuse themselves.

The biggest problem going this hotshot route is that eventually that people are going to stop popping for the lesbian kisses. They'll want something stronger, but WWE can't go any further. They're going to hit a wall when it comes to this sort of thing, and then what will they do? They'll have to go back to either trying to actually book wrestling, or they'll go into something even worse.