Hunter's Torn Quad

The finish was going to be Austin accidentally costing Rock the match, but not turning heel. The idea, before Austin went down, was for Austin to get the belt back at the Rumble before turning heel going into a WM 2000 main event against Rock.

The gun angle was the idea of Jake Roberts. The Bret Hart heel turn was McMahon's idea, with Bret coming up with the pro-Canada part of the storyline. Russo came onto the writing team proper the week after the Raw from Europe that held the European title match with Owen and Davey Boy. And you can ignore Russo's 'shoot' interview. The guy is in work mode from start to finish.

Some people in the debate over Rock/Dwayne leaving wrestling have displayed an incredible level of selfishness and shown that all they care about is what someone can do for them. How dare Dwayne do what is best for himself, his career and his family. How dare he take working 250 days a year, taking bumps every night, being on the road every night, being away from his family every night, risking serious injury every night and trade it in for earning more money for himself and his family for less risk and less time away from the people he loves. Man, he is one selfish bastard for putting himself and his family first. More on the heat between Rock and Shawn: Early in the Rock’s run in 1997, Bret was booked to beat Rock clean via submission. The finish was heavily pushed for by Shawn and Hunter, because Hunter and Rock were vying for the same spot and they wanted to take Rock down a peg, and were also bad mouthing him to everyone. Bret knew why they pushed for the finish but he also saw Rock as the future and he felt there was no reason to beat him clean so he changed the finish to a DQ or something. Rock never forgot this and it’s a big reason why Bret is one of the people that he’ll speak very highly of.

Cable show, most certainly Raw would be the most episodic TV show on Cable history and if it isn't #2 period on all of TV it's damn close (with 60 minutes ahead). You also can't count soap opera. It's probably just for primetime programing. As for things like SportsCenter, I think that has to fall in line with regular news programing. Saturday Night did far more than Raw ever has, being that it's lineage stretched back so many years. The line is the official one, but it's not even close to being true. They used to keep redefining the criteria for trying to make Raw sound like it had done far more than it really had, but I guess they're stopping that and flat out lying. I think King was overzerolus there... He's spouting the official company li(n)e.

Not even close to being a fact.

For Raw on 8/28 on Sci-Fi, DX vs. Regal. Finlay and Kennedy lost about 123,000 viewers, making it the most unsuccessful TV main event of the year. For Smackdown on 8/25, the Vickie Guerrero angle lost 140,000, which is a surprise because, even though the angle is terrible, the Mexican family soap operas have always done well. London and Kendrick vs. James and Stevens gained 659,000 viewers, while the following women’s segment, with Marshall vs. Hall, lost 434,000 viewers. In regards to Kurt Angle, Dave said that even though Kurt appears down and out right now, historically, people who are driven enough and talented enough to be the best in their profession can come back when it physically looks impossible. If Angle does take the long time off and acknowledges that he can’t take bumps without pain medication, the right move is to not take bumps and, presumably, walk away. Says you can’t count Angle out, even if the sane reaction is to hope he doesn’t wrestle again. John Laurinaitis is now getting advice from different writers over the house show booking, which he handles. There is increased talk about Batista’s star fading. The reason Kennedy got the US title is because there were concerns about Batista losing steam and it is felt that Finlay is best on Smackdown at getting someone over, so while Kennedy and Lashley feud over the US title, Finlay works with Batista to try and get him back over. The official view internally is that this proves how great Triple H is because he got Batista over, whereas, and Dave has espoused this part from day one, there is also the thinking that what kept Batista hot was playing off of Triple H and Flair and without them he’s floundering. That said, since coming back from the injury Batista has seemed slower, more tentative and less confident. Unforgiven on 9/17 has sold out to the tune of 14,600 tickets. Cryme Tyme are Shad Gaspard and Devon Driscoll, from OVW. Gaspard has the WWE look and does good interviews, but has never gotten it in the ring and has had some terrible matches in OVW. On JBL ripping into Matt Hardy in commentary on the 9/1 Smackdown, Dave points out that whenever something happens like the Hardy deal and it goes public, long after the person has publicly stopped talking about it, it’s the company that can’t let it go. Dave said that bringing up Cena might be coming to Smackdown, which isn’t going to happen unless plans change as Cena is getting the belt back at Unforgiven, only makes Smackdown look more like the ‘B’ show. Called Booker’s role campy and said while he doesn’t mind how overdone it is, when Booker does the British accent he calls it the antithesis of a money drawing main eventer. Referred to the DX angle on Raw where Vince repeatedly hit Triple H with the pipe before Triple H juiced, and said it was funny because if a young guy did that the agents would tell him that you only do the one shot before juicing, and Dave mentioned it because that exact thing happened when a young guy did the same thing. The Mexico tour has changed yet again. After being pressured into adding Rey Mysterio vs. Chavo Guerrero, Flair, Wilson, Harry Smith and Pradius were all taken off the shows. The line up for all four cities, and it’s a bad idea to repeat the same line up like this, is now Edge vs. Cena for the title in a streetfight, DX vs. Cade and Murdoch (Flair will sub if either Shawn or Hunter don’t make it), Mysterio vs. Guerrero, Kane vs. Umaga, Carlito vs. Orton, Nitro vs. Hardy for the IC Title, SS vs. Highlanders for the tag titles, Lita vs. James for the Women’s title, and Benjamin vs. Venis. Rick Martel was offered an agents job but turned it down. Wrestling DVD sales for 8/13 to 8/19 saw WM 22 at #1, TNA Lockdown at #2 and Vengeance (DX vs. SS) at #3. Wrestlemania 21 was at #9, and is now in its 66th straight week in the top 20. John Cena will in the new season of Punk’d. One of the Deep South wrestlers wrote to John Laurinaitis to complain about Bill DeMott being abusive in training. Laurinaitis told the guy he’d come down to Deep South to sort it out but when he got there, Laurinaitis told everyone that anyone who didn’t like it there could leave. At the ECW house show in Bethlehem, PA, Test was serenaded with chants of, “Shoot ‘em up Test, shoot ‘em up”, as well as other steroid chants.

Hunter was never going to end it, either.

The closest the streak has come to ending was when Orton faced Undertaker last year, but even then it wasn't a strongly pushed idea. It's never been seriously considered at any point that the streak end.

He didn't. But he also couldn't be the top pushed guy on Raw with Lesnar around so.....

Malenko and Kidman did know the rules. Malenko simply forgot the rules of the match for a moment, but that's all it took.

It's a true story.

Kane was never going to end the streak.

Because you'd never do something like that yourself..... Orton is relatively safe, in that he's unlikely to get shoved down the card below a certain level, because the powers that be view him as someone they can push in a strong program. However, because of his behavior, Orton is also unlikely, unless circumstances allow for no other option, to get the tip-top push that he has been set for in the past. Orton will keep his job unless he goes too crazy, but if he becomes a liability, then he can still be fired, and if WWE will fire Kurt Angle, then they'll certainly fire Orton if they feel they have to.

Dave's stuff is copyrighted. He prints that part in every newsletter. It might not be in the HoF issue, though it probably is, but the HoF issue is copyrighted material. As for why WON is not meant to be copied and pasted or scanned, a previous instance of it happening wound up with Dave contacting Admin over it and the post in question deleted, hence the rule being put into effect.

Plenty of people want to give Miz a break. Just not the kind you're thinking of. Funny Miz story from a recent Observer. Jonny Fairplay runs a poker game at his house every week, and Miz sometimes takes part. When people are calling up to see who is going to be there, they'll ask of Miz is going to be there and if he is they'll skip the game. And these are people who can tolerate being around Jonny Fairplay every week.

The trouble with that is if they don't see you as a top player then it doesn't matter because they won't let you get above the level they've already slotted you in. The only way around that is if you fluke into proving yourself in the ratings, like Edge did.

If the non-US audience really is 40% of the number of buys, then, domestically, JD did 138,600 and Vengeance did 187,800 approximately, and that means the ECW PPV, which was a free special in the UK, outdrew both the WWE PPV's domestically, and by a huge margin.

Meltzer.

TNA’s Best of the X-Division Volume 2 four-hour DVD comes out in October. From F4W.

More from F4W on the drug testing. Everyone from Raw and ECW has passed. The best theory as to why, coutesy of Lance Storm, is that because Lashley's enzyme level went back to normal after a week, and so the Raw crew had plenty of time to get off whatever they had to in order to pass. Apparently, almost eveyone has gotten off whatever they've been on except marijuana, which they are not testing for.

It goes into detail on the Angle deal, and also mentions that more than one source is saying Angle is "heavily addicted to painkillers and a walking wreck."

No. Madden hates Hogan, and was simply going crazy because he thought Hogan was really getting double crossed. Well, Hogan was double crossed in the second half of the angle, but in the first part Hogan was in on it and Madden didn't know that.

It was by no means a guarantee that WM 3 was going to be financial success. Same with WM 1. And, contrary to what you keep saying elsewhere, Dave does not hate Monsoon. He disliked his commentary style, but that was it. It was not, and never was, personal. Straight from Dave:

Beans is actually a nickname for his daughter, and not her actual name.