Hunter's Torn Quad

Da Meltz.

If Edge and Foley lose at ONS, then no way is Edge doing the job.

It was simply them running low on time, so they rushed through the match. It didn't do Bomb any favors, so they should have just cancelled the match. I doubt anybody would have complained.

I have record of Candido working a dark match during that time but not the others. Henry doesn't make any sense considering he had to have been in heavy training at that time for the 96 Olympics. Spellbinder, and Candido, got tryouts on the same night, which I believe was the first Raw taping of the year. And Mark Henry did an angle at the same taping, but I don't think it aired. Lex Luger was wrestling Tatanka when King Kong Bundy interefered, and Henry ran in, took his shirt off and the heels ran off.

--Shawn Michaels will be having an MRI done on his knee later this week, which is why the Spirit Squad destroyed the knee last night. They are hopeful he will still be able to wrestle at Vengeance on 6/25, since the show is built around him. Da Meltz. The Heyman promo was classic old school in getting over the date of the PPV.

UFC drew a 1.9 rating on Thursday. Da Meltz.

That's a great point. Vicki and Chavo have the ultimate say so in this situation. . Unless she really needs the money, Vicki should put her foot down and stop this. Chavo can't really say no or he'll be given the usual punishment people get for speaking out.

I thought they were over that type of deal. Guess not. WWE almost never pass up the chance to exploit things that are better left alone.

--Johnny Nitro & Melina are being moved to Raw as opposed to being suspended. --Vickie Guerrero was asked to come to last night's show and was there going over scripts for possible involvement in the upcoming Chavo Guerrero storyline Da Meltz.

Cameras, lighting, etc. What makes this funnier is that Rey isn't getting the surgery for a while now.

Undertaker vs. Khali wasn’t bad as much as it was incredibly boring. Undertaker, to his credit, tried everything he could to get something out of Khali, but Khali is just beyond hope when it comes to trying to work even a half decent match with the guy. And after how strong Khali was put over Undertaker, where do you go with him? He can’t lose to anybody or that rare clean and decisive pinfall loss from Undertaker will have been wasted, and at the same time Khali isn’t someone you can push to the top simply because there’s no way, even more after Sunday, that the people will buy anyone having any kind of competitive match against him. Not only that, it seems obvious that when Undertaker finally gets his climactic win over Khali it’s going to require something special and/or spectacular, in which case how is anyone else supposed to credibly beat Khali? It’ll have taken Undertaker pulling out all the stops to beat Khali, so how are we meant to believe that anything less can get the job done? The Khali program makes for a harmless short-term deal for Undertaker, but it can’t be prolonged for long, because they’ll be booking themselves into a corner when it comes to what they can do with Khali until it does finish. And Da Meltz said on The Law on Sunday that when JBL was going over, the plan was for him to face Mark Henry, presumably on the next Smackdown PPV.

Sacrifice Notes Sacrifice was the expected good show and almost all the matches were above average, though it lacked the one killer match. The crowd was a problem, as they had to show up at 3pm to get the best seats and, with waiting out in the hot sun, it drained them. TNA will attempt to do PPV’s away from Orlando, with talk of the first one held away being the September PPV. Response to the PPV to the Observer, which has mirrored the buy rates, were like Lockdown in that they were both down 27% from Destination X and Against All Odds and down 33% from Final Resolution (Sting’s return, and it got 50,000 buys) Says TNA has created or lucked into it’s first intense angle with Joe vs. Steiner. Said you could see it was a different kind of heat while the fans chanted “Joe is gonna kill you at Steiner”. Dave attributes it to the fans liking and believing in Joe, but Steiner’s portrayal is such that they aren’t sure (I presume he means they aren’t sure Joe can take Steiner). Also said there was a crowd intensity that showed it could have the potential to be something different than anything the company as done since coming to Spike. Said the angle saw the crowd come alive in a big way, after being tired for a while, whenever Joe and Steiner were in together. Said Joe was portrayed as a big star in the company, which he called a breakthrough. Joe didn’t work a lot with Steiner has they are saving it for the singles program. Says the long term plan appears to be Joe becoming the top face, but they are building it up slowly. Said Christian vs. Abyss died after the tag match, saying it showed the match order was wrong. Dave thinks TNA will do what WWE does, and put a filler match on to give the crowd time to get their wind back before the main event. Says Christian is a good talker, but this reign seems to show that he is not a viable face World champion. Dave doesn’t think it’s the midcarder perception from WWE holding over but that Christian lacks that main star presence. Thinks that while hardcore fans believed he was better than he was treated in WWE, it hasn’t helped TNA to have a world champion who got beaten so much on Raw and Smackdown. Thinks his ultimate, as in what would eventually be, programs with Joe or Sting would fit into what he’s best at, but they are months away. Says turning him heel is the right move, but it might not be the right time, and it might not even work still. Dave thinks there are for viable candidates to put the belt on if they want to take it off of him; Jarrett, but it’s the wrong time, Monty Brown, but needs to improve a lot and get over more, Abyss, who might be the right type of champion but fits in with the contenders, and Steiner, who looks good on paper but would self-destruct in his first title match (I assume Dave means he’ll be exposed). Dave thinks Joe is the guy who should have the belt eventually, but that it many months down the line. Says Christian is lacking a believability aspect, and while a good worker, isn’t outstanding or charismatic enough to overcome his lack of being physically intimidating force. Says Christian was set for a long babyface run as champion, and it’ll be obvious on 6/18, the next PPV, if they’re sticking with the plan or changing things. For 6/18, there is talk of Joe vs. Steiner in a singles, and probable rematches with Styles and Daniels vs. AMW and Team 3D vs. The James Gang in a Last Man Standing match, and Rhino vs. Bobby Roode and Scott D’Amore in a handicap match. Dave also guesses at a Raven vs. Larry Zbyszko hair match, and that Cornette is scheduled to debut as the new authority figure. Dave rips into the Kevin Nash angle, saying it’s blowing up in their faces. Says Nash will do the job but will do it in the manner he usually does, in that it won’t get the other guy over a lick. Says Nash can put over Joe and it’ll mean something but Nash putting over Sabin won’t help Sabin any more than Hurricane was helped when he beat Rock. Says Nash is making it cool for people to laugh at the X-Division. “If you even joke that these little guys really aren’t tough, people pick up on it. If you expose in an angle that management pushes this stuff that shouldn’t be more than filler, you bury the company in the way you killed the last one. If you make the announcer out to be uncool, you’ve basically killed him, which was another way they killed WCW.” Says the funny part is that when the angle was first suggest people laughed at how stupid it was and what it did in WCW and yet are doing it anyway. References to how WCW would bury the cruiserweights for a while then give one of them a fluke win that nobody would buy. Says that angle came out on TV as everyone should have seen it; Nash came across a cool babyface and was cheered while the X-Division as a unit was buried. The New Japan and TNA relationship is on shaky ground. The plan was for a three-way tie with Japan, Canada and the US to set up a three-way match on Impact with Liger, Williams and Sabin. Liger was set to beat Williams and a Japan guy would come second in the rumble. Then New Japan told TNA they didn’t want Liger wrestling two straight days, so New Japan was taken out of the playoff. New Japan insisted Liger’s win come due to interference, but TNA wasn’t happy as they felt Liger was going to be the babyface. They argued that they had booked a number of screwjob finishes already and felt the opener should end clean, but agreed on CTU being at ringside, and then the Japanese did their finish anyway. Ratings: Liger vs. Williams: **1/4 AMW vs. Styles and Daniels: ***3/4 Raven vs. A1: ½* Roode vs. Rhino: **1/2 James Gang vs. Team 3D: **1/2 (Dave joked about Kip being gassed out by the finish when he looked in the best shape, while Bubba, who doesn’t look in shape, wasn’t tired at all) The Rumble: ***1/4 Joe and Sting vs. Steiner and Jarrett: ***1/2 Christian vs. Abyss: **1/2 Other news Cornette had his knee operation on 5/9 and the damage was much worse than originally thought. He had to have torn cartilage reattached and be given a full ACL transplant. His recovery time will be longer, but he’ll still appear on the 6/18 PPV. Cornett was told that if he hadn’t been injured and got the surgery then he was a year away from needing a full knee replacement. Goldberg got his first money offer from TNA this week but turned it down. With his son just being born, it’ll be unlikely to get him to do anything, as he’s not only received offers from all over the place, but he still sees his market value as it was in 1998. They are going an angle with LAX complaining about working conditions to play off the Latin worker issues making the news. Homicide should be getting a chance to show off his stuff soon with his shoulder now better. There is talk of a Homicide/Sen She vs. Daniels/Styles match or program so they can see Homicide working with good people. Juventud Guerrera has been calling for work again. The TV main events for 6/1 and 6/8 will either be Sting vs. Jarrett and Steiner vs. Raven or Sting vs. Steiner and Raven vs. Jarrett. Dave thinks the latter two matches more likely, as Jarrett will almost certainly be in KOTM. The loser of Sting vs. Steiner would likely face Joe, making Steiner the obvious winner, though that may change if Joe can’t wrestle in time. Brian Lee was backstage looking for work, claiming to have been clean for over a year, and looking much bigger than when he was last here.

I asked Meltzer why Joe isn't using the choke as his finisher so much anymore, and he said it's simply that some people refuse to lose to it.

Here's a little more detailed recap: Bear in mind that the ECW stuff was written just before news came out that the Sci-Fi Channel deal was revealed to be the choice, and that the Judgment Day talk was written before the PPV.

JD Tease/Spoiler Da Meltz.

Whoa the possibility of ECW being live? It has to be more than one hour if it ends up being live, as it wouldn't seem justifiable cost-wise to only do an hour.... Doing more than one hour increases the risk of burning out the crowd before the stars come out for Smackdown. This is where taping on a third night would help, but that isn't happening for the time being.

Can someone give me any reason to believe that this angle has any potential upside? Kevin Nash is one of the most selfish, lazy and unproductive individuals that wrestling has ever seen, and that covers a lot of ground. Everyone knows how arrogant and self-centered he is, and yet TNA, for some reason that defies all logic, is using Nash in angle that essentially buries the X-Division. How does that make any kind of sense? “Ah, but it’s going to end with Nash putting Chris Sabin over?” Has nobody seen Nash’s idea of ‘putting someone over’? If you want to see a prime example of how Nash ‘puts someone over’, go and watch a tape of Rey Mysterio pinning him on Nitro a few years ago. Did that help Rey at all? Did it get Rey any more over than he was before? No, it didn’t. It buried him even further and he wound up getting pinned by Nash clean anyway just a few weeks later, so if Rey got anything out of that it was all for nothing anyway. How is this angle getting over the X-Division, when it seems to involve Nash coming out every week and burying the X-Division? While the weaknesses he points out do have a grain of truth to them, the absolute last thing you ever do to a division that is the cornerstone of your promotion, or at least meant to be, is have a guy portrayed as a superstar, and a heel at that, bring them up and talk about them at length. For one thing, it’s beyond stupid to bring up and highlight the flaws of any of the wrestlers that are meant to be a major part of your company, and it’s also stupid for a heel to say anything that the fans, deep down, know are true. Heels are meant to lie. They aren’t meant to say things that the crowd, however reluctantly they might want to, have to admit are true. But that’s just typical Nash; playing the cool heel, saying all the hel things but doing it with a wink and a nod and getting the people to cheer him. Heels are not meant to do that sort of thing, and Nash is supposed to be a heel. And let’s even assume that, by some freak occurrence, Nash really does put Sabin over. So what? All he did was a beat someone who openly and proudly admits to being mediocre and past it. How is beating someone like that meant to do anything for Sabin or anyone else? And even if Nash could somehow still go, what does beating him really do to get someone over to any degree, especially after the burial his division has suffered leading up to the ‘big’ moment? Beating Nash doesn’t do anything for anyone, and this angle is just so insufferably stupid and inane that I can’t believe that TNA are going through with it, as they have enough people on staff who watched this same bullshit happen in WCW to know what the end result will be, and I can’t believe that there are actually people out there who think this angle is a good angle to run.

--The final details of the ECW TV project will be hammered out tomorrow with a press release coming Tuesday morning to announce ECW on the Sci-Fi Network. It will be Tuesday but the time slot is not definite. It will either be live or on a few hour tape delay. These are just two of the many issues to be finalized tomorrow. Da Meltz

I haven't seen Andre vs. Hogan in a long time, and, to be honest, I have no real desire to see it again. I do remember being pleasently surprised by how it wasn't as bad as a lot of people said. It wasn't good or great by any stretch of the imagination, though it was clearly good enough that it 'worked' for the live crowd, For me, this is one of those matches that gets a little overrated simply because it wasn't as bad as a lot of people expected it to be. If you like this match, or even love it, and can explain why, then that's fine. If you disliked the match or even hated it, and can explain why, then that's fine as well. If you try to tell someone that their opinion of the match is wrong, then you're wasting your time, because a persons opinion is dependent on personal taste. However, challenging their reasoning for reaching that opinion, that's fair game.

If RVD wins the belt and gets stripped of it the next night on Raw, then I think it's more likely that Vince will just declare that Cena is still the champion.

I don't think Hulk vs. Andre is quite as bad as some have said, but it's way too much of a stretch to call it pretty good.

I think Vince will want that feel good pop to end the PPV, so I think we might see the WWE ref get bumped and an ECW ref make the three count and the PPV ends with Van Dam the WWE Champion. Then, the next night on Raw, Vince can strip Van Dam of the belt and they can segue into Van Dam walking out and joining ECW as the uncrowned WWE Champion.

The most recent match that I've given ***** to is Joe vs. Kobashi. I watched it again a couple of months ago, and I still have no problems giving it five stars. I also gave five stars to Joe vs. Daniels vs. Styles from September last year. I thought a lot of that was down the the excitement and the bang-bang-bang from all the great spots, but when I watched it again I was surprised to find that I thought it was still as good.

RVD isn't losing, because doing that would kill this version of ECW, and that isn't happening while Vince considers it a pet project. However. they also don't want RVD beating Cena, so that would leave a disputed finish as the most likely outcome, with the real question being what kind of disputed finish do we get.

I think a lot of that mindset, that Austin was great in 2001, comes from Austin working as hard as he did. Austin was coming off of a very serious neck injury and I think that because he worked as hard as he did, where a lot of people would have played it safe and coasted by, it caused a lot pf people to overrate how good Austin really was. Austin worked incredibly hard in 2001, but he wasn't great, and I think people got the two confused. As for his match with Rock at WM X-7, at the time I thought it was excellent stuff and I had at ****1/2-***** range, but watching it last year it was clear that, like with a lot of matches touted as great, that it loses something as time goes by. Austin and Rock work hard, they don't blow anything badly, if at all, and the crowd are going pretty crazy, but without that emotion of watching the match after the weeks of build, the match doesn't come off as great as it once did. I think their WM X5 match, while not as good, ages better.