Hunter's Torn Quad

Jim Ross Jim Cornette Gordon Solie Bill Watts Dusty Rhodes Bob Caudle New Jack

Dangerous A Coffey Loss

Vince's vision saw one of the worst one-hour televison shows in modern wrestling history. If that is Vince's vision, this will fail. But the bad part about the show...it actually got a good rating!! Which makes his point valid in his eyes... A month or so of shows that bad and the rating will fall faster than XFL numbers. Of course, at that point the excuses will come flying.

Don't be silly. Lillian kept grabbing at her wrist even as she was carried off and was wearing a cast for the USA special. Shawn would have done handstands to the back instead of being helped, and he would have cartwheeled his way to the ring for the USA special.

Vince's vision saw one of the worst one-hour televison shows in modern wrestling history. If that is Vince's vision, this will fail.

Bob Jackson.

According the recent WON, Joe Rogan won't be commentating on the next UFC PPV due to a stand-up booking he has that night. Also, Randy Couture will be the permanent third guy on commentary.

Brock is set to sign a deal with Heroes or, as an outside chance, UFC, very soon.

Dave didn’t think they played up the history of the WWE Title enough to make the Van Dam title win as significant as it could have been. Pointed out the aspect of a Raw star pretty much winning the belt for Van Dam wasn’t played up and on Raw nobody even sold the idea that the WWE belt going to ECW was much of a deal. Van Dam’s reign is likely transitional, between Cena and Edge, with Van Dam versus Edge headlining Vengeance. The finish to Van Dam vs. Cena was an idea of Michael Hayes, after Vince wanted people to come up with a finish where Van Dam won but Cena was protected. Hayes idea was also to keep Raw as the premier brand, Vince also said that Cena is the future of the company and is to be protected in booking the same way as Austin or Hogan were when they were carrying the promotion. Dave thinks it would have been better for Angle to interfere instead of Edge to set up a Van Dam vs. Angle match down the line and also because it could have been used as part of the long-term build to the match. The most important thing is to establish ECW and to put Van Dam at a higher level than he’s been at so far. Also, the initial storylines have to compelling. Dave thinks Cena is better as a challenger anyway, Says they can do a disputed finish for Van Dam vs. Edge, possibly with Cena going after Edge but Van Dam getting it instead, so Van Dam has the same ‘out’ that Cena had and so gets protected while losing. Felt there was a risk that ECW fans would see the Van Dam vs. Cena finish the way everyone else did, with Edge stealing the title from Cena and giving it to Van Dam but they instead chanted “Thank You, Edge” With linking ECW to Raw and Raw doing angles to build to the ECW TV, Dave thinks the rating should be strong enough in the beginning to make ECW a big success for Sci-Fi. With the promotional department behind ECW, Dave thinks it’s virtually a no-lose situation, with the only way it will fail is through the booking falling apart, in-fighting, wrestling hitting the skids or Sci-Fi executives not being impressed enough. Or if the first TV was indicative of the future, because you can only make one first impression and the Dave said the first show could not have been worse. The first show was said to be heavily influenced by Vince and his vision of what ECW was, with Heyman and others trying to get changes made but with “little success”. Thinks Cena was the star of the show, with fans wanting to boo him more than they wanted to cheer Van Dam. Dave thinks Cena played the role of a Bret Hart in 1997 heel, where he’s the heel who works heel, but does so in a way where he’s seen as the babyface and it’s the fans who are the heels. It was likely Terry Funk’s last major match, and while Dave didn’t enjoy watching Funk do what he did, Funk gave the fans what they wanted. Thought three ECW wrestlers came off as stars for the new version; Van Dam, Sabu and Sandman, with Sandman coming off as an effective nostalgia act. The other two stars were Angle and Show, with Show going to be remade as a monster. The rest of the top of the roster will be filled in over the next few weeks by newcomers, with Dave thinking that success will depend on whether those people get over or not. In the UK, where ONS was a TV special and not a PPV, it did 73,000 viewers, with last year being 163,000. The prime-time reply the next night did even worse, with only 34,000 viewers. Dave isn’t sure where then go from here stylistically, as WWE has toned things down greatly over the past few years and they can’t replicate at house shows what they did at the PPV. Said there is no reason to do four house shows a week other than the WWE mentality of that’s just how things are done here, and that it may be a way of showing that guys seen as not belonging in the big leagues can’t physically hang in the big league. Dave thinks the big questions is TV tapings, with the question being how will ECW fans react to the Smackdown stuff they’ll have to sit through, and what the Smackdown fans will think if the ECW fans crap on the WWE stuff. Says the best move is to tape separately, which will be done on occasion, specifically when there are Raw and Smackdown supershows, when the ECW TV will be taped in a smaller venue. The ECW TV has to be done on Tuesdays as WWE are committed to being live on Sci-Fi. Smackdown could be taped on Wednesday, but that would mean a Wednesday to Saturday house show run and they’d be competing against themselves on Friday nights, but ECW and Smackdown would be doing that a lot on Mondays anyway, and Raw regularly runs house shows on Fridays as it is. One Night Stand: Tazz vs. Jerry Lawler: No Rating. There was a lot of unhappiness with both Tazz and Lawler going into this match. Tazz didn’t want to wrestle and refused to do an actual match. Lawler was pissed off about that, and felt that, with Tazz not wanting to wrestle, and not going to wrestle ever again, that he should win via screwjob. Tazz balked, and Lawler wound up agreeing to lose, but he refused to tap out. Lawler insisted on the choke being used so he could use the storyline of choking being illegal in wrestling, presumably to save face. Dave said that since MMA became popular, the only people who think chokes are illegal are wrestlers still living in the 80s. Kurt Angle vs. Randy Orton: ***. Said the crowd were initially hesitant to cheer Angle. Dave remarked the crowd was similar to when he saw Goldberg vs. HHH at house shows; the fans went nuts when Goldberg was on offense, but when HHH was on offense there was no heat, because the fans weren’t condition to the ‘new’ Goldberg and turned on the match and started booing Goldberg when he would sell. With this match, the crowd were hot when Angle was on offense but when he wasn’t they got quiet or chanted something. The FBI vs. Super Crazy and Tajiri: **1/4. Felt the match was good until the end when it began to fall apart. Rey Mysterio vs. Sabu: ***1/4. Dave pointed out that after spending weeks saying how Mysterio got his break in ECW, Tazz and Styles were now saying Rey was in there for a cup of coffee. Dave said that early on Sabu looked like he was forgetting the spots. Dave was shocked at the finish as he figured it was a tease to lead to them restarting the match saying they don’t do this sort of thing in ECW but the match ended and neither man showed up again. Edge, Mick Foley and Lita vs. Tommy Dreamer, Terry Funk and Beulah: No Rating. Dave thinks they didn’t want to beat Dreamer as he just lost on Wednesday, and that they, for some reason, didn’t want to beat Funk, even though Funk would have wanted to lose. Dave called it a “blood and weapons-fest of catastrophic proportions”. Said the weapons shots started tame but that it built up from there. Dave didn’t rate the match because he felt the wrestling and such didn’t look good, but they went above and beyond to give the fans the kind of spectacle they wanted to see. Balls Mahoney vs. Masato Tanaka: *1/4. Called the match a disappointment, because you book Tanaka either to have a great match or do the crazy chair shot stuff. Dave thinks a lot of veterans figured that Tanaka getting up from the chair shots would make them look bad when they sold the one chair shot. Dave agrees with that, but it made the Tanaka match completely different from last year when he and Awesome had their match which put the show over the top. Rob Van Dam vs. John Cena: ***1/4. Said Cena isn’t much of a wrestler but he’s a great talker and shows tremendous poise in the ring. Dave commented that a lot of guys would have broken under the fan reaction but Cena took it in his stride. Said the crowd was super hot for this one. ECW vs. WWE on USA The show drew 4,700 and $150,000. It got a 3.05 rating and 3.84 million viewers. USA considered the numbers a success. Everyone was hoping for a 3.0 going in, and because internally the show was considered a success, the ratings were considered to having Paul Heyman some muscle when it came to political battles to get his vision of ECW across. With less hype and on a weaker network, albeit on a better night to draw, it did about the same as the return of Saturday Night’s Main Event on NBC in March. The highlights were the promos, which were old school intense promos, rather than the overwritten cute stuff that often fails to entertain. Said Cena’s promo was great, but that Foley’s was the best of the night. Said the WWE guys in the battle royal were pretty much a team of midcarders, and that it came off like a bad version of the Invasion angle. Said that even though Van Dam was put over Rey, that by the end of the show it felt like Angle and Show were the stars of ECW and the originals weren’t to be around long. There are a lot of differing viewpoints regarding the ECW relaunch, and that this show gave evidence for all sides. As a complete show, it felt more low rent, which it was somewhat meant to, but was more interesting to watch than any WWE TV show in a long time. Dave said that a lot of Smackdown shows have had better wrestling, but couldn’t match the angles or promos. Dave also said that a problem is that the stereotypical ECW brawling style is passé and while novel at first, has been done to death. Inside of wrestling, the most talked about deal was the announcing. The idea behind the announcing was to build all night to a Tazz/Lawler confrontation to set up their PPV match. Dave said it couldn’t have worked any better, but that it got in the way of the announcing. Ross played straight man early, as did Styles. As the show went on, Lawler was killing Tazz in a battle of wits. Styles praised Ross through the show, saying he’s not a sports entertainment announcer, and, not to knock him, that’s why he’s been fired so many times, to get heat. Somewhere in all of this, Styles did a turnaround and went after Ross, who didn’t acknowledge it, figuring his role was to just call the action. In the brawl between Tazz and Lawler, Styles and Ross were only meant to be background, but they wound up getting involved. From then on, the announcing was flat out bickering, but Ross still tried to stay out of it. This all took away from the finish of the Sabu vs. Cena main event, with the idea of the finish of Cena having Sabu in the STFU that Sabu had never tapped out in his career and would this be the first time. After the show, Ross was complaining to a lot of people backstage about what happened, feeling that things had gone to heel. The feeling afterwards was that Styles was just doing what Vince was telling him to do, and that Vince was having fun playing puppet master by telling Ross not to respond and play straight while telling Styles to kill Ross when Ross wouldn’t expect it, and at a time when Ross would think his role was not to come back on it, so Ross would have to call the action and just sit there and take his lumps. The big joke inside wrestling was Lawler killing Tazz in the argument. In their brawl it was very spirited, but Dave said that Lawler didn’t put Tazz over one bit. Dave said the worst thing was, and this was the big joke, that after coming back from commercials, Lawler wasn’t breathing hard and Tazz couldn’t even talk at all. Said the announcing format didn’t allow for Ross or Styles to be at their best, but that Styles was Miz-level annoying by the end of the night. Dave even joked that by the end of the night he expected Styles to say that ECW invented the internet and music accompanying wrestlers. Dave’s points against Styles included: Styles claim that ECW gave Mysterio his break in the US, when Rey got his US start with AAA, and was on many Los Angeles shows that drew 10,000 or more long before going to ECW. The claim that ECW invented tapping out, when tapping out had already been done overseas and that Dan Severn was doing it in the US. When Dreamer used the Death Valley Driver, Styles called it an innovation and a move that Dreamer invented, which Dave called Todd Grisham level bad. Rob Van Dam vs. Rey Mysterio: ***1/4 Mickie James vs. Jazz: No Rating The Battle Royal: No Rating. Dave thought they should have had Sandman and Angle were fighting back-to-back trying to survive and let at least one original ECW guy stay until the end, to avoid it becoming an “Ode to the Invasion” Battle Royal. Edge vs. Tommy Dreamer: No Rating John Cena vs. Sabu: No Rating Quarter hours, with a .1 averaging 120,000 viewers: RVD vs. Rey gained from 2.7 to 2.9, Jazz vs. James fell to 2.8, the Battle Royal grew to 3.2, Dreamer vs. Edge fell to 3.1, the Foley promo went to 3.2, the Tazz/Lawler deal and Cena vs. Sabu was also at 3.2 Other News: Orton was pulled from a long-term ECW feud with Angle and put on Raw because Hunter wanted a heel to work with on top. Creative’s idea was for Hunter to feud with Edge, but Hunter nixed it, which Edge was said to be incredibly pissed off about. Edge may have calmed down, as it looks like he’ll be defending against Cena over the summer. Hunter’s reasoning is that time isn’t right for a feud with Edge and he’s said to be not against doing it later. More than a few people have questioned this move. If the idea is that Hunter needs someone to beat in his first babyface singles run and he doesn’t want to beat Edge so quickly, then there is logic to his thinking. Dave said time will tell on what Hunter’s motive really is. Vengeance on 6/25 has: Hunter and Michaels vs. Spirit Squad in the real main event, Edge vs. Van Dam, Foley vs. Flair 2/3 falls, Angle vs. Orton, Cena vs. Sabu and Benjamin vs. Carlito vs. Nitro for the IC Title. More on Animal getting fired: after feeling Dave Lagana, the Smackdown head writer (at the time) was blowing him off, Animal went straight to Vince, which is considered a breach of protocol and was a reason used to let him go. Dave said they had no plans for him, that his nostalgia run lasted longer than first thought, but that he was dead in the water after turning him heel and dropping the Road Warrior look. The creative on ECW right now is Heyman submits scripts to Vince at the end of the week. Then, the other writers will have their input on the script before the final product goes to air, with the Raw writers having more input due to the Raw/ECW angle tie-ins. Officially, Heyman is the lead writer and there are no other official writers. NBC wants Raw/ECW Monday-to-Tuesday angles to keep some of the Raw audience for ratings. Dreamer has no creative part in ECW, and is just talent relations and a wrestler. At one point, Dreamer was just going to do the PPV and go back to his office role, but the feeling was Dreamer was needed at first for authenticity. Internally, there is a lot of feeling that the new hired talent either shouldn’t be there or just won’t last, with the Axl Rotten situation backing up the position of those who feel that way. Some inside also say that Gewirtz and Hayes are Heyman’s biggest enemies, fighting to make sure Raw isn’t weakened. Stephanie McMahon is Heyman’s official supervisor. Masato Tanaka is not coming in full-time for ECW, but Heyman is working to get him in between tours for Zero-One. Heyman pushed for the 6/24 ECW Arena date to be moved to 7/4, so the return to the building would be televised. At one point, that was going to happen, but in the end it was decided to have go with both dates. The 6/24 show sold out immediately, and the 7/4 was then announced after that. Heyman felt it would be a big mistake to not tape the first show back at the ECW Arena. WWE has scheduled a mega five-hour plus show for 7/3 at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, for Raw, Smackdown and ECW. The 6/25 ECW house show in Elizabeth PA was cancelled when the venue change its mind on having the show there. The show was moved to Belle Vernon PA at the Rostraver Ice Garden. With it being the day of Vengeance, that means no Angle, Sabu or RVD. The names listed as being there are Dreamer, Sandman, Show, Heyman, FBI, Roadkill, Credible, Richards, Snow, Doring, Mahoney, Jazz, CW Anderson, Francine and Tazz. Current Smackdown house show plans, which would likely mirror the Bash PPV, are Batista vs. Mark Henry in the main event over Mysterio vs. Booker for the title. Also, London and Kendrick with the Pitbulls. Probably something at the PPV with Khali and Undertaker. Lashley is working with Regal, with Regal being used as hands-on teacher, Helms against Crazy and Hall against McCool. The long-term plan is for Miz to be a heel within a few weeks, as he’s booked on house shows against Matt Hardy. Lillian Garcia got huge heat for screaming so loudly and more when she was injured when it turned out she only had a sprained wrist. She didn’t help herself the next night in Toledo when ring announcing at a house show, when she opened up by telling her fans she was ok. Lance Storm was taken off the PPV when he made it clear he wasn’t going to wrestle four days a week and was only going to wrestle when he wanted to. WWE is offering free tickets to all members of the US Military, including the National Guard, to live events anywhere in the world. They have to go to the box office in uniform and with military ID, and as long as the show is not sold out they’ll be let in. ECW’s debut on Sci-Fi Said the show was a classic tale of good news and bad news: Good news: 3.31 million people watched the show. Bad news: 3.31 million people watched the show. Called the show a reminder of WCW at its self-destructive worst and that if this years One Night Stand symbolized hope for a resurrection then the debut on Sci-Fi represented a symbolic beheading. Said the core ECW wrestlers came off even more minor league in front of the Smackdown fans. The show was horribly booked, due to the idea that unless you had a WWE pedigree (except for Sandman and Sabu) you were considered worthless. That tale was told by Big Show tossing out every ECW guy in the battle royal bar one all by himself, Show only selling for Dreamer, and Kurt Angle squashing former ECW Champion Justin Credible in less then two-minutes while giving him nothing. Styles, who wasn’t being directed, brought up Credible’s title past which only emphasized the burial of ECW’s history. ECW died five years ago, and that this is, has been and forever will be WWE using the initials because they can. A major WWE star of recent years even speculated that Vince was basically getting back at all those years of fans chanting “ECW” at his shows and is killing it off for good. Dave points out that, while Vince doesn’t want this to fail, he does want it to be his vision. Dave once again reiterates that the original nostalgia buzz does well but that it never lasts. Of the 5,100 there only a few hundred were there to see ECW. The fans that were there for ECW tried to get chants and the like going but the Smackdown fans weren’t into it at all and the few ECW fans were the dying loyalists. This venture would require work to fail, as it has the WWE machine behind it and has the benefit of being promoted by angles on Raw. The new ECW is pretty much a Raw spinoff, with NBC Universal hoping to use angles and stars on Raw to build to ratings for ECW. The show drew a 2.79 rating with 3.31 million viewers. It drew more viewers than Raw and a slightly younger average audience. The show did a 3.10 in Males 18-34, which is a little below Raw, far ahead of Smackdown and a little above Ultimate Fighter. The rating started at 2.6, peaked at a 2.9 for Angle’s match the striptease from Kelly, before falling to a 2.7 for the Battle Royal. Sci-Fi was hoping for a 1.4, which is unlikely to happen unless they have a string of bad shows. Barring a total collapse over the next few weeks, a renewal is virtually assured. The rating was drawn largely due to the promotion on Raw of Cena and Edge showing up. The biggest complaint was the one we all knew going in, that ECW and Smackdown don’t work on the same night, which WWE were aware of when they had Joey Styles ask the crowd not to chant anything lewd. The show was taped ahead of time due to NBC Universal seeing the tape of One Night Stand and wanting to edit out anything unsavory from the fans. The feeling is that unless the ratings nosedive next week, the booking will stay in the same vein as week one. Internally, virtually everyone conceded the show was a complete disaster. One person in the middle of all this said that Heyman was fighting all week with Vince and Kevin Dunn on the direction of the new ECW, and that the rating, to Vince and Dunn, validates their position on the new ECW.

7) Shane Hagadorn over Mitch Franklin to retain the Top of the Class Trophy 8) Adam Pearce over Claudio Castagnoli via DQ Hero caused the DQ when he hit the ring a KO'd Pearce with the CZW World Title. 9) Homicide over Chris Hero via pinfall Crowd chanted **** John Cena during Homicide/Hero match. After the match Homicide did challenge Bryan Danielson to a ROH World Title Match at Final Battle 2006 and it was implied that it will be in NYC. And in the main event, KENTA pinned Danielson after the Go 2 Sleep.

2) Jake Crist over Marcos Ricky Reyes was out with Julius Smokes and stated that since Jim Cornette won't book The Rottweilers, that they'd book themselves. Reyes challenged Dave Crist to a match. 3) Ricky Reyes over Dave Crist After the match, Chris Hero hit the ring from the crowd and KO'd Smokes with the CZW World Title. This led to Homicide coming out and challenging Hero for later tonight with his "open challenge." 4) Davey Richards over Jimmy Rave Prior to the match, some people in the crowd threw TP directly at the hanging chandeliers in the New Yorker, so both guys had the match with shards of glass in the ring. This led to both getting pretty cut up and a fear that the athletic commission possibly stopping the match. 5) Austin Aries & Roderick Strong over Nigel McGuinness & Colt Cabana when Strong made Nigel tap to the Stronghold After the match, it was confirmed that ROH will debut at The Manhattan Center Ballroom on 9/16/06 with KENTA and Marufuji already booked. 6) BJ Whitmer and Jimmy Jacobs fought to a No-Contest. If you've seen Dragon Gate Challenge, you know the bump that nearly killed Jimmy. Well, it was topped here. BJ went to powerbomb Jimmy from the top again and instead of losing his balance, he INTENTIONALLY threw Jacobs and himself over the ringside barricade and ended up with both crashing in the ringside area. Neither man could continue. I imagine this will lead to Danielson v. Jacobs v. Whitmer next week in Detroit because this match was for a title shot. INTERMISSION

MisawaGQ

We'll know if Jeff isn't winning if he throws another tantrum and refuses to take part in the match.

Botched shooting star press Watch that instead. More bang for your retard dollar.

It's easy to dislike TNA if you automatically assume that Jeff Jarrett will eventually end up with the World title. If you look at what has happened the past couple of months, TNA knows what they have in Samoa Joe and it is pretty easy to see that his run will eventually culminate with a World title reign. Whoever walks out of Slammiversary with the World title, will likely be the transitional champion to Samoa Joe. I don't dislike TNA, but I find some of their booking very annoying. As for assuming Jarrett will eventually wind up with the World title, that's a given. It will happen, and I'm concerned that it'll be done in a way that only benefits Jeff.

Sting would make a good short-term champion to transition the belt to Joe. The problem is that I think it more likely he'll transition the belt to Jarrett, and beating Sting for the title would mean more for Joe than beating Jarrett for the title.

As for the future, well now you're only speculating and acting like it's fact. Given how Jeff has kept himself in the main event scene for way too long, to the point even the most loyal TNA fans began turning against him, and shows no sign of taking himself out, it's a fair conclusion that Jeff will have many more reigns as TNA/NWA Champion, simply because Jeff makes the final calls and TNA has long been shown to be his playground. Whenever anyone with perceived name value comes in, who do they either team with or feud against? After Christian's first NWA Title defense, whose issue took the spotlight after the match?

I felt the same as GQ. I watched the match and waited for this ****+ match that had been pimped by just about everyone and it never arrived. Everything was well executed and there was nothing blown, but the match did absolutely nothing for me.

It was still a silly thing to tease with anyway, because it was never going to happen and just makes the promotion look like blatant liars. If they must have some generic blonde strip off, the least they could have done was make her seem important for a few weeks and build to it. Make the act of seeing her near-nude mean something and not come off like a bait-and-switch deal. Yet not so boring and meaningless enough to ignore.

I don't think people expected something so incredibly awful and without merit. I didn't expect it to be THAT bad, and it probably won't continue to be... With the rating it got, I expect an even worse show next week as Vince goes further into the realms of complete idiocy and nonsensical garbage.

In other words, instead of raping and sodomizing the corpse of ECW they just raped it and pissed down its throat.

I believe the last sub-1000 attendance for a show was in 2004 during JBL's title reign. They drew about 950 for a house show in Canada.

Any hopes like that weren't just dashed last night, they were skull-fucked to death.

I don't think people expected something so incredibly awful and without merit.

That was WCW Thunder-level terrible. Just the absolute worst possible start to the 'new' ECW.