Hunter's Torn Quad

From the WO.com update: So, she might actually be telling the truth on this one, and is innocent.

Random testing wouldn't work if the guys are careful enough to make sure they always have a means on them, including a whizzinator, to circumvent the test. The only way to be 100% sure that the piss in the test came from the individual is to watch it come out. I also think this is a good step in WWE at least appearing to take the testing seriously, though they can always find ways to minimize the effect of a failed test if they really want to.

Does Eddie's work in Mexico not count in his favor? What about AAA's excursions into LA or CA, when he was part of the success?

That's a good qualification if you were arguing for Morton to be included as a singles guy, but it doesn't do anything for the RnR's as a team. As for the Midnight's inclusion, I think their main event program with Bill Watts and Stagger Lee in Mid-South makes a good qualification; it drew $1.2m for 14 dates, set gate records in every city but one, which was New Orleans at the Superdome, and even then they only missed out on the record by $6,000 with a crowd over 20,000. Good argument for the Midnights. The problem I think is that the big star in that pairing is Bill Watts, and Stagger Lee (Junkyard Dog) is on the list as it is. The Junkyard Dog and Bill Watts had many other main event feuds in Mid South. The Midnights did not. But how many of those feuds set the kinds of records that the feud with Express did? Don't forget that adding the MX, and the RnR's to Mid-South, helped the territory to it's best year in business. You can't discount the MX's contribution to that success, or to the the success of the feud with Watts.

That's a good qualification if you were arguing for Morton to be included as a singles guy, but it doesn't do anything for the RnR's as a team. As for the Midnight's inclusion, I think their main event program with Bill Watts and Stagger Lee in Mid-South makes a good qualification; it drew $1.2m for 14 dates, set gate records in every city but one, which was New Orleans at the Superdome, and even then they only missed out on the record by $6,000 with a crowd over 20,000.

How much do you think his personal problems have affected his career? They affected his career greatly. Hall had a ton of unrealized potential because he just couldn't beat his demons. He could have done so much more in his career than he did, but his problems always dragged him down. Do you think Hall was ever main event material? Not for anything more than a short-term run, at least as a singles. Hall had great charisma, but main event charisma? Maybe. But his in-ring talent, mic work, and everything else just wasn't at that level. I think the best level for Hall is about where he reached in real life, where he was a strong upper midcard guy who could be put in the main event if needed, and be seen as a threat, but who's primary role is to elevate the next top main eventer. What effect has his membership in The Kliq had on his career and his legacy? I think it clouds his talents and achievements to some degree, but Hall didn't need help to affect his career. What were some of Hall's best matches? I think his best match was the Action Zone tag match teaming with Kid against Shawn and Diesel. His ladder matches with Shawn were, to me, overrated to a degree, even though they were still really good. I think his best matches were against Kliq members, and considering they were just about his only good matches, to me it says more about his motivation than his actual talent ability. Some of the most memorable angles he was involved in? Other than the nWo, nothing stands out. What was his better run; in WCW with the nWo or in WWF as Razor Ramon? As Scott Hall in WCW. It was more high profile, more memorable, and the storyline he's most remembered for. Providing that he's sober, do you think Hall could still serve a purpose for WWE or TNA, be it in a wrestling or non-wrestling capacity? A warning poster for what happens when you let your demons ruin your life. Scott Hall should never be in wrestling again. Ever. Even if Hall wants to beat his demons, he simply cannot beat them when he's in the wrestling business. For the good of his personal life and peace of mind, Scott Hall should never be involved in the wrestling business again. Do you think Hall has had a lasting impact on the business? Maybe as a warning to people that even with a ton of potential and ability, if you can't beat your demons, you're never going to reach the heights you could.

What I remember from the Raw with Maven as GM was the main event when Maven faced HHH, with Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit were at ringside. What makes it memorable is that top heel Hunter was booked like he was the top babyface, and Maven, Jericho and Benoit, all faces, were booked like heels. You had the heel valiantly fighting off the interference of the cheating babyfaces, and also kicking out of their signature moves, with Maven looking like a chump because he couldn't win even with two top names helping him out. Maven was a good talker, though, and had real potential.

It's a Raw ending you'll either really love or really hate.

It's the money match because they're the two top stars of Raw. The first match was two years ago, so it's not like they went back to it right away. While a rematch usually means the loser of the first match getting his win back, that has very little bearing on whether it's going to be successful.

I guess New Japan are pulling out all the stops to get Nakamura over. A high profile win over Muto should do wonders.

The only problem I have with Hunter getting the belt back, is that if his reign is of any length, there's nothing new or compelling do with him. The only new feuds he can do are with JBL, and that doesn't exactly have a lot of promise, and Regal, and while the matches with Regal should be really good, it doesn't have a lot of life to it, and at best it's good for one 'B' PPV main event. Anything else he can do, he's already done.

The Tomko one doesn't make sense on the surface, unless TNA really are big on control. As for the hair shaving, I wonder if they would have gone through with the shaving if they weren't upset with the behavior of the women.

After eight years and four months, Keiji Muto is again the IWGP Heavyweight Champion! 6,000 fans watched the spectacle of Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Keiji Muto today, the young ace of the industry vs. the living legend, for Japanese pro wrestling's top prize. Nakamura aimed for an arm, while Muto aimed for a leg, not too surprising given their trademark moves, and it was a grueling technical battle over 20 minutes. Even Muto's Shining Wizard and Nakamura's Landslide couldn't finish this match, and it was old school Muto that made the difference, a Schmidt-style backbreaker and moonsault press, the professional wrestling master defeating the man who it was said had no enemies left after defeating Tanahashi twice and submitting the mighty Kurt Angle. Osaka rose with "Muto" chants after the match, the legend's popularity as always overwhelming, the crowd treating him as one of their own, rather than an outside as has always been the case in his returns. Nakamura's RISE second-in-command, Hirooki Goto, who fell to the Great Muta at the Tokyo Dome on January 4th, challenged Muto to a match after his celebration. After their no contest with Nakamura & Bernard in March not counting as a defense, GBH's Togi Makabe & Toru Yano made their second V1 defense of the IWGP Tag Team Title against the on-fire "Friendship" tag of Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Takashi Iizuka. But the unexpected happened as suddenly Iizuka betrayed his tag partner, choking a bloody Tenzan out with a sleeper hold. Makabe dropped the King Kong knee on GBH's former leader for the win, while Iizuka mysteriously exited, it would seem a GBH member now - although he did not confirm that tonight. Wataru Inoue made a successful V3 defense of the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title, ending his three match series with TNA superstar, Christopher Daniels. Wataru's V1 defense of the title was against Daniels at the Tokyo Dome in January, before Daniels won a non-title rematch at Sumo Hall in February, setting up this third and decisive battle, again for the title. Well, in their closest and longest match yet, Wataru pulled through, pinning the Fallen Angel after his Oracion Flame. ZERO1-MAX's ace combination of Masato Tanaka & Shinjiro Otani earned quick revenge for their promotion's 3-1 series loss on the Hakata double header, beating Koji Kanemoto & Ryusuke Taguchi today, Tanaka pinning Taguchi. Nagata's music hit after the match and he intruded, getting into a showdown with Tanaka. NJPW, 4/27/08 (WPW/PPV) Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium 6,000 Fans - No Vacancy 1. Jado, Gedo & Karl Anderson beat Yujiro, Mitsuhide Hirasawa & Kazuchika Okada (5:30) when Anderson used the Gun Stun on Okada. 2. Milano Collection AT & Minoru beat Shiro Koshinaka & AKIRA (6:14) when Milano used the Victoria Milanese on AKIRA. 3. Hirooki Goto & Giant Bernard beat Tomohiro Ishii & Tomoaki Honma (8:33) when Bernard used the Bernard Driver on Honma. 4. New Japan vs. ZERO1-MAX: Masato Tanaka ZERO1-MAX & Shinjiro Otani ZERO1-MAX beat Koji Kanemoto & Ryusuke Taguchi (12:56) when Tanaka used the Sliding D on Taguchi. 5. Riki Choshu, Masahiro Chono & Jushin Thunder Liger beat Manabu Nakanishi, Tiger Mask & Tetsuya Naito (8:52) when Chono used a Shining Yakuza kick on Naito. 6. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title: Wataru Inoue © beat Christopher Daniels TNA Wrestling (19:28) with the Oracion Flame (3rd defense). 7. IWGP Tag Team Title: Togi Makabe & Toru Yano © beat Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Takashi Iizuka (15:14) when Makabe used a top rope King Kong kneedrop on Tenzan (1st defense). 8. IWGP Heavyweight Title: Keiji Muto All Japan beat Shinsuke Nakamura © (22:34) with a moonsault press to become the 49th champion. All from SSS. Quite the surprise on the surface.

One presumes Hunter is/was planned to win tonight, but who knows if that will happen now. The best thing about the WWE Title match is that you can make a good case for three of the four participants winning, so you can't really be sure who might win.

A lot of WCW's audience were fans who lost interest when the likes of Hogan, Savage and Piper stopped being relevant, and tuned into Nitro when it become a vehicle for Hogan and friends and they were able to see the stars they grew up with be main event players again. They just quit watching. It wasn't that they went to another sport as much as the only wrestling on offer was of a style they hated and had no interest in watching. Nothing will bring them back. They're gone for good. You can't bring them back by putting the stars of that era back on top because they're either too old, too injured or too dead. You can bring that style of fan, the one who wants a wrestling orientated product with serious storylines and little comedic bullshit, but that means putting on a product that you're not seeing at the national level. TNA could, but they're content to be WWE-lite, and while they might show flashes of having a clue, they always revert to the same bullshit that's been passe for almost a decade. Fans left in stages with each bungle driving off it's own segment of fans. A large chunk of fans turned off when WCW died and the style of wrestling they wanted died with it. The Attitude Era fans largely tuned out when the anti-hero that got them interested did the one thing guaranteed to turn them off. Those are probably the two incidents that saw off the biggest number of fans.

From PWI Impact: *Booker T calls out Sting and apologizes to him for disrespecting him last week. Robert Roode and James Storm get involved and it ends up becoming a tag match main event later in the show. *Jim Cornette announces there will be a "Deuces Wild" tournament for the held-up TNA Tag Team championships that will culminate at the Sacrifice PPV. Four teams will meet over the next two weeks and eight singles competitors will also be paired up at random as well. Very confusing. *Deuces Wild Qualification: Team 3D defeated Black Reign & Rellik. 3D were playing babyface roles. *Backstage, Jim Cornette tells all the TNA Knockouts to meet him in the ring. *It appears the tournament is 8 teams win qualifying rounds then face 4 teams comprised of randomly selected singles competitors. *Deuces Wild Qualification: Christian Cage and Rhino defeat the Motor City Machineguns in a good match. *The TNA Knockouts come to the ring. Jim Cornette announces a "Makeover Battle Royal" for the Sacrifice PPV. The last two competitors will compete right then in a Ladder Match. The winner is the person who grabs a Knockouts title shot contract from above the Ring. The loser will have their head shaved in a "Britney Spears Makeover." *Booker T and Sting defeated Robert Roode and James Storm. *TNA champion Samoa Joe defeated Kurt Angle after Scott Steiner hit Angle with a pipe after a referee bump. Jim Cornette announced there would be a three-way at Sacrifice. Xplosion: *Jay Lethal and Sonjay Dutt defeated Johnny Devine & Petey Williams.

My take is that Savage uses the piledriver because it worked before in putting Flair out of action, and because he wants to put Flair out of action again, why not go with what he knows will do the job? They can even have Solie get all technical to explain how the piledriver impacts the neck more than any other move so there's a storyline logic to doing what, as you said, is basically a repeat of the Funk angle.

They were hoping to break the 1.2 million mark set last year, and I believe were considering 1.4 million a possibility.

Not sure about the storyline reason, but the real reason was because the Southern Boys gimmick was deemed 'too Southern' and they wanted something less regional.

Bryan Alvarez says the rumored number for Wrestlemania buys is in the 950,000 range worldwide, which would be around 665,000 buys domestically.

Appears that last week's bad rating was no coincidence. If you can't get a good rating on a night when you run a tournament, well... The ratings aren't quite as bad as they looked; they don't take into account the people who record Raw on DVR and watch it within a week. If you add those people to the numbers, the add around .3 to the final rating. Last week's rating of a 3.2 was really closer to 3.5 when you add in the people who didn't watch Raw live.

How much of the tournament should be shown on the PPV? Quarterfinals on? Semi-finals on? If the focus of the PPV is strictly on the tournament and maybe a WWE/World title match, then the quarterfinals on make it to PPV. If there are more than a few undercard matches then adding seven singles bouts means you'll be trying to squeeze too many matches into too little space, and things get rushed. Since the last KOTR PPV in 2002, do you think the WWE has been better at building young superstars? Worse? Taken at face value, then this one is a no-brainer, because WWE have been terrible at building young superstars. The ones with the talent don't get chosen because they don't have the required look, or the ones that have the required look don't have the talent. Least favorite? The entire 1995 PPV was putrefyingly bad and one of the all-time worst PPV's ever. 1999 was right down there as well.

Five Star Kalib Starnes mockery

Shawn isn't in that line up, so he's probably in the KotR. Same with Batista.