WWE General Discussion - February 2008

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS! 0]

Speaking of Kidman, he will now be training down in FCW, which is now officially the sole WWE developmental promotion.

 

WWE SEVERS TIES WITH OHIO VALLEY WRESTLING; ALL DEVELOPMENTAL TALENTS BEING MOVED TO FLORIDA

by Mike Johnson @ 12:39:26 PM on 2/7/2008

 

In a meeting with contracted developmental talent today, World Wrestling Entertainment's Ty Bailey and John Laurinaitis announced that the company was severing its ties with the Louisville, Kentucky-based Ohio Valley Wrestling and that all of the wrestlers stationed there would be heading to Florida Championship Wrestling, which at this point, would be the company's the sole remaining developmental territory.

 

Laurinaitis told the talents that WWE had decided they wanted all of their developmental talent in one place and from a logistical standpoint, it didn't make business sense to have talents in Kentucky, particularly since so many WWE names live in Florida, giving the developmental talents access to learning from a multitude of current and former stars who reside within a close proximity of FCW.

 

Talent were told that there will be no releases stemming from OVW shutting down and that they will all be relocated to Tampa after finishing a few more weeks in OVW.

 

Laurinaitis praised Danny Davis and the track record he had for helping the development of a number of stars including Batista, John Cena and Randy Orton, among others. There's no word yet on the status of OVW trainer Al Snow at this point and he was never mentioned during the talent meeting. Snow and Davis were present during the meeting.

 

Talent were told the trainers in FCW would be Tom Prichard, Steve Keirn, former WWE star Billy Kidman and one other name I haven't confirmed.

 

The move had been suspected for some time as the amount of contracted talents working in Louisville had dwindled greatly in the last year and morale in OVW overall had fallen.

 

Credit: PWinsider.com

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

WWE should be opening more developmental territories. They need more avenues for wrestlers to train and cut their teeth in front of a crowd. I'd suggest having at least 3 or so across the country. Shutting down OVW seems like a bad idea to me.

[cabbageboy 0]

I don't know if that means OVW is actually going to shut down though. Bear in mind OVW was a regional independent promotion before landing a WWF development deal.

 

I figure the first real blow to OVW was when Cornette was fired for smacking the trainee (which we later learned was Santino). They managed to keep things going with Heyman booking but once Heyman left to do the ECW revival then OVW was basically screwed. From there it was the debacle of the Greg Gagne regime that wrecked the territory and in my opinion OVW never recovered.

 

Once FCW was announced as a new development league I knew OVW's days as #1 development league were done. Bit by bit the main stars in OVW were sent down to FL. Cause let's face it, if you are a WWE executive are you really going to want to mess with coming down to Louisville for something other than the Derby? Or would you rather forget that trip and go down to Florida?

 

OVW's legacy is a decidedly mixed bag. While it was fun to have a feeder league right down the road from me, did OVW really produce that many solid workers? I almost feel that OVW's restrictive style held back the more advanced workers and didn't give the newer rookies a chance to learn much besides the absolute basics.

[tbondrage99 0]

OVW had a good run and I would be sad to hear that they wont get any more developmental talent anymore but FCW will just be the same thing now anyways, I'm just going to have to remember to say the new initials when talking to my friends about the developmental talent now instead. I just think they should had Al Snow training instead of Billy Kidman.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

With all the talent OVW helped bring along and the myriad of decent-to-solid workers they produced, I'm amazed people still question their contribution or legacy.

[Thanks for the Fish 0]

FCW is going to have a sizeable roster and will be tough for all of the talent to get used regularly. OVW knew this was coming, which is likely why Derby City wrestling was started. I assume there will be some sizeable cuts after the Florida guys get a looksee at what the former OVW kids have to offer. It will be interesting to see the new angles/gimmicks/characters the OVW wrestlers are given by the FCW bookers. OVW had 22 developmental wrestlers, which will be added to the current FCW roster of 25ish to make a whopping roster for developmental purposes.

 

With all of the British wrestlers being brought in, I have a feeling that they will look to start a British federation sooner than later that will act as a quasi-developmental, though be run with some wwe names. Either that or they realize that their training is rather homogeneous and that they'll be producing by in large the same wrestler and figure British trained wrestlers will offer something different both to the school and possibly to the main roster down the line.

 

OVW had a much better website than the current Florida Championship offering. I don't believe it's been updated(other than removing the bios of released talent) since it opened for crying out loud. Also FCW bookers don't seem to know how to develop characters/gimmicks for the workers and everybody is pretty generic and bland - typical indie stuff. At least the wwe seems to realize this - according to the Heyman interview they offered him a lot of money to book their developmental territories in order to create characters/gimmicks and new stars for the wwe to use, of course he obviously refused.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

With all the talent OVW helped bring along and the myriad of decent-to-solid workers they produced, I'm amazed people still question their contribution or legacy.

OVW produced Cena, Batista and Orton. Even if they only produced one of those guys, I'd consider the whole thing a success.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

Didn't Batista slam OVW as a poor training ground once he was called up, creating some mini-controversy?

[Thanks for the Fish 0]

With all the talent OVW helped bring along and the myriad of decent-to-solid workers they produced, I'm amazed people still question their contribution or legacy.

OVW produced Cena, Batista and Orton. Even if they only produced one of those guys, I'd consider the whole thing a success.

 

Here's the list from the OVW site -

Beth Phoenix

Bobby Lashley

Carlito

Charlie Haas

Cody Rhodes

DH Smith

Jillian Hall

John Cena

Lance Cade

Maria

Melina

Mickie

Ken Kennedy

Randy Orton

Highlanders

London

Santino

Benjamin

Snitsky

 

Batista

Kurt Hawkins

Zach Ryder

Cherry

Deuce

Domino

McIntyre

Festus

Jesse

Ken Dykstra

Maryse

Mark Henry

Victoria

 

AAE

Boogeyman

CM Punk

Elijah Burke

Morrison

Kelly Kelly

Kevin Thorn

Mike Mizanin

 

That's 41 current workers - three world champions - Cena, Orton, Batista and three ECW champions - Punk, Morrison, Lashley along with a slew of tag champions and womens champions. Looking at the active roster, wwe has about 90 wrestlers (not counting referees or interviewers/broadcasters/GM's) - so basically half the current roster came up through OVW.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

That's really impressive. Think about how little they actually invest out of pocket into OVW and compare that to how much money some of these guys have made for the company. The return on investment is outstanding.

[Black Lushus 0]

I don't think OVW should take credit for CM Punk...perhaps Paul London as well. Otherwise, that's pretty solid work for them.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

WWE should be opening more developmental territories. They need more avenues for wrestlers to train and cut their teeth in front of a crowd. I'd suggest having at least 3 or so across the country. Shutting down OVW seems like a bad idea to me.

 

Eh...they've basically already tried having multiple developmental territories. Remember Deep South Wrestling a couple years back?

 

I think people that call for WWE to open up all these little regional training grounds are pining back to the days of the old territories. They only need so many guys in training at once.

 

[Brocklock 0]

I don't think OVW should take credit for CM Punk...perhaps Paul London as well. Otherwise, that's pretty solid work for them.

 

I don't even recall London even wrestling in OVW. I thought he finished his Indy Bookings in July and went straight to Smackdown in August or September.

 

Out of that list I wouldn't consider London, Punk, Carlito (Trained by his father), Cade (Trained by Shawn Michaels), Mickie James (Wrestled on the indies for a while before OVW), Kennedy (Ditto), DH Smith (Trained in the Dungeon), or Mark Henry (That one's obvious, he just went to OVW to lose weight, succeeded and then they wanted him to gain it all back) to be products of OVW. Some of them were around for a while before they even went to OVW.

 

OVW did also produce Brock Lesnar, Nick Dinsemore, Rob Conway, The Bashams, Brent Albright, and Rico.

 

 

[Black Lushus 0]

I always thought they sent the "hot indy signings" to OVW to unlearn everything and learn the "WWEStlye"?

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

I think people that call for WWE to open up all these little regional training grounds are pining back to the days of the old territories. They only need so many guys in training at once.

People calling for WWE to open up more training places aren't 'pining' for anything. They're realizing that the current WWE developmental system, even with OVW, is wholly inadequate when it comes to training and preparing talent for when they're called up to the main roster. As great as OVW was at what they did, there's only so much you can learn in the one place with the same set of teachers. Much better for developing talent that they're able to go from once school to another and learn different styles from a variety of teachers. If a guy can learn from three or four different schools, and thus pick up three or four different ways of doing things, he'll probably be more well rounded than someone who was only able to learn one way of doing things from one school.

 

They only need so many guys in training at once.

 

Because it's a sure thing that the small group they have now are going to make it in some fashion? Much better for the company to have a large developmental talent pool so that there is a better chance of someone picking things up well enough to be ready to get called up to the main roster. All you need is one or two strong upper midcard or main event talents to make it, and the whole system pays for itself. This has far more chance of happening with a large and well stocked developmental system.

 

I always thought they sent the "hot indy signings" to OVW to unlearn everything and learn the "WWEStlye"?

 

That is true. While some people who came from OVW were trained elsewhere, people shouldn't disregard what they picked up in OVW.

[geniusMoment 0]

Did Kurt "The Measuring Stick" Angle go through OVW?

[Neil-o-Mac 0]

I thought he went through Memphis.

[haVoc 0]

Someone explain how it became Ohio Valley Wrestling if it's located in Louisville, Kentucky.

 

 

 

[JPopStarKami 0]

Wrestlezone.com is reporting they fired Al Snow, too.

[haVoc 0]

Haunted America

 

The Kemper Arena

 

By: Rob Lefebvre, Anchor Staff

 

Issue date: 2/5/08 Section: Lifestyles

 

On May 23, 1999, Owen Hart, brother of WWE Hall-of-Famer Bret Hart, died at a WWE pay-per-view (then known as the WWF) event when he fell from the rafters attempting a wrestling gimmick. He was supposed to be lowered into the arena on a cable when the release mechanism had somehow been triggered, having him fall nearly 80 feet on the ring ropes and then into the ring. While he did not die immediately from the fall, he was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.

 

In the years since his death, there have been multiple reports of sightings of (the ghost of) Owen Hart. Employees have claimed to have seen him in the rafters wearing the costume he was wearing for his gimmick as well as the cable before he began the descent. There have also been reports of flickering lights and other power sources that seem to go on and off in some areas of the arena.

 

Owen Hart's death was an absolute tragedy for the wrestling world. For someone to lie about seeing the ghost of a person like Owen Hart would take a lot of nerve. However, it would not be the first time someone has. If he is haunting the Kemper Arena, it would make sense for him to be in the rafters, constantly reliving the events that led to his unfortunate demise. However, it would not make sense as it was known amongst the workers of WWF that he was afraid of heights, and had only done such a stunt very few times. The flickering lights and power losses could also be caused by faulty wiring or failing bulbs. But it is said that ghosts need energy to manifest and that they gather it from batteries and other appliances, so it could be Owen taking energy from the lights and outlets.

 

So, does the Kemper Arena still have someone performing there? There has been no way to prove if such a haunting exists as no one has attempted to investigate and have preferred to leave the issue alone. But someday, someone may try and evidence may be obtained to prove that Owen Hart ('s spirit) may still be among us.

 

LINK

 

[Dandy 0]

The Ohio Valley is not exclusive to the state of Ohio. It may have something to do with the name of a river.

[The Truthiness 0]

Its not like they were training the guys in 2 different styles CHP.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

Its not like they were training the guys in 2 different styles CHP.

The point was that a series of different schools headed by teachers who specialize in different styles makes for a better education.

[The Truthiness 0]

Its not like they were training the guys in 2 different styles CHP.

The point was that a series of different schools headed by teachers who specialize in different styles makes for a better education.

Or not. I mean I really don't see the problem with the WWE style.

 

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

Its not like they were training the guys in 2 different styles CHP.

The point was that a series of different schools headed by teachers who specialize in different styles makes for a better education.

Or not. I mean I really don't see the problem with the WWE style.

A wrestler learning different styles, so he can be a more well-rounded talent, doesn't make for a better education? Ok.

[Hawk 34 0]

You can't tell me that having schools/training camps around the country with different trainers who specialize in certain things wouldn't be more beneficiary for talent. Learning how to perform professional wrestling is not unlike any other trade. The more you study from different sources, the more skills you develop. In a just world, they'd have at least 4 schools set up with different practices and have those talents cycle around those schools like they were territories. Now they'll have to cut a great deal of people because they decided to put all their eggs into one basket.

 

 

[The Truthiness 0]

Its not like they were training the guys in 2 different styles CHP.

The point was that a series of different schools headed by teachers who specialize in different styles makes for a better education.

Or not. I mean I really don't see the problem with the WWE style.

A wrestler learning different styles, so he can be a more well-rounded talent, doesn't make for a better education? Ok.

Let say you a had a high flyer school, a technical school, a striking school, and a submission school. Than Khali walks in, does he really need to go to the high flyer school, the submission school, or the Technical school? All he needs to know is how to slam people and hit hard. I think one school is good enough, Cena, Batista, Orton, and Brock all went to one school, all are awesome, all are different, and they all work(ed) the WWE style.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

Someone explain how it became Ohio Valley Wrestling if it's located in Louisville, Kentucky.

 

Louisville, Kentucky is almost smack in the middle of the Ohio river basin (sometimes known as the Ohio Valley). It has nothing to do with the state of Ohio really.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Someone explain how it became Ohio Valley Wrestling if it's located in Louisville, Kentucky.

 

Louisville, Kentucky is almost smack in the middle of the Ohio river basin (sometimes known as the Ohio Valley). It has nothing to do with the state of Ohio really.

Exactly. The Ohio Valley is different from the state of Ohio.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Its not like they were training the guys in 2 different styles CHP.

The point was that a series of different schools headed by teachers who specialize in different styles makes for a better education.

Or not. I mean I really don't see the problem with the WWE style.

A wrestler learning different styles, so he can be a more well-rounded talent, doesn't make for a better education? Ok.

 

Maybe in smart mark happy fairy fantasy booking land, but not in the real world view of WWE.