9aTH0taY

1Christy interviewed Hall, Nash and Eric Young. Eric did a promo saying the reason he joined the Band was because the roster was full of wannabes and pretenders. There was no one else here smart enough, good enough and cool enough to hang with these guys on a regular basis. Hall said he wanted to say that he really doubted Eric at first, but he more than proved himself. Nash said Hall and Nash weren't the champs, THE BAND were the champs, Freebird-style. He said Ink Inc. had a great future, but tonight was not their night.
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35. The Band vs. Ink Inc. for the Tag Titles. What a battle. Hall was horrendous here. They should have found Rick Bogner, the Fake Razor Ramon, he'd have been a much better worker. He did some spots with Shannon, if you can call them that. Nash then worked with Jesse. Nash looked like Diesel in his prime next to Hall. Nash cut him off for some heat. Hall put on an abdominal stretch and didn't even grapevine the leg. Jesse hiptossed free. Kind of. Hall did a forward roll. Shannon got a hot tag. They tried. Jesse tagged in and hit a flipping neckbreaker. Shannon wiped out Hall with a dive. Ref bump. Oh God. Eric Young ran out with a stick. Jesse speared him anyway. Brother Ray ran down and speared Eric, then wacked him with the stick. He got in the ring and yelled at the downed Nash, but then turned and wacked Jesse right in the head HARD with the stick. Eric put Nash on top and the ref woke up to count the pin. Hall and Nash, still tag champs in 2010. Match sucked. (DUD)
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5~~~~~
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7Christy was trying to get word from Simon Diamond about what was going on. He said he was not at liberty to say what happened but you wouldn't BELIEVE what he’d just heard. What a tease.
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9Matt Morgan & Himself vs. Generation Me. Matt, the heel, stormed down to the ring to take on both of these guys one-on-two. People were cheering him and chanting "MORGAN!" as he ran wild on them. Gee, I wonder why. He laid them out, grabbed the mic and said he'd warned Hogan that if he didn't tell him who his partner was going to be at the PPV there was going to be bloodshed. He was about to boot one of the Buck's head into the post when Joe's music hit and he ran down and destroyed Morgan with the muscle-buster. Suddenly, Wolfpac's music hit and out came Hall, Nash and Eric Young. Nash had a briefcase. Forgot? So did they until last week. It was the Feast or Fired tag briefcase. Nash cashed in and they immediately won the titles. Outsiders, tag team champions in 2010. And you wonder why nobody watches this show.
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11Machine Guns vs. Ink Inc. (Shannon Moore & Jesse Neal) vs. Beer Money vs. Team 3-D in a random four-way for no reason. Guns looked great early. Tenay said they were waiting for an update on the Chelsea situation. She knows the name of the accuser, and if true it could send shockwaves through TNA. They were waiting for the person to be taken into custody before they could announce the name. Who could possibly care? Thankfully we got a good match at this point. It may have gotten more time than all of the matches on Raw put together. Shannon got one of his earrings ripped out and was bleeding all over the place. Finish was Jesse pinning Bubba clean, which was the right finish to set up his team getting the tag title shot at the PPV.
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13~~~~~~
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15May 25 Figure Four Weekly: WWE injury woes, departures, PPV recap, Impact ratings, new faces, more
162010-05-25
17May18 2010 Figure Four Weekly: Overeem back, TNA Sacrifice and turmoil, tons of TNA and WWE scoops
182010-05-18
19May 10 2010 Figure Four Weekly: Newsworthy UFC, Kimbo and Daley axed, Mania buyrate, WWE biz, Drew
202010-05-11
21May 4 2010 Figure Four Weekly: War ends, TNA back to Thursday, Bubba debacle, Ross, Tito/Jenna, more
222010-05-04
23
24~~~~
25
26About Us  |   ContactYour Account  |   Logout
27HOMERADIO ARCHIVENEWSLETTER ARCHIVETHE BOARDNEWSUFC NEWSWWE NEWSJAPAN NEWSROH NEWSTNA NEWSMEXICO NEWSINDIE NEWS
28MAY 10 2010 FIGURE FOUR WEEKLY: NEWSWORTHY UFC, KIMBO AND DALEY AXED, MANIA BUYRATE, WWE BIZ, DREW
29BY OBSERVER STAFF | STAFF@WRESTLINGOBSERVER.COM | @WONF4W
30TWITTERFACEBOOKGOOGLE+
31The biggest story coming out of UFC 113 was Dana White handing the biggest US MMA draw of all time to Strikeforce on a silver platter. Perhaps a gold platter, actually.
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33White announced that Kimbo Slice was cut after his second round loss to Matt Mitrione. Mitrione looked horrible on Ultimate Fighter, but has improved to the point that he is now merely a bad fighter. Kimbo, who got tired fast despite all of his supposed hardcore training, couldn't do a thing with him. Obviously, if anyone else in the company put on a performance like that they'd be done for as well.
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35But Kimbo is different. He got a gigantic reaction coming out. He's actually only 4-2 in pro fights, which isn't the worst record in the world. And most importantly, he has been in three of the four most-watched MMA fights in US history. His CBS fight with James Thompson did 7.281 million viewers, his fight with Seth Petruzelli did 6.451 million, and his TUF fight with Roy Nelson did 6.1 million between its initial airing and immediate replay. The only non-Kimbo fight in the top four was Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock which did 6.524 million live.
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37And they cut him.
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39Kimbo Slice vs. James Toney was the most obvious match that could have been made, and that match would have meant more for business than all but a few bouts UFC could promote. Why they cut him before doing that match is a mystery. Worse, now that he's gone, Strikeforce can put together their most obvious match possible, Kimbo vs. Herschel Walker, which could do huge business if they manage to get another prime-time special on CBS. And hey, if Strikeforce goes to CBS and says they can put that match together, that could actually convince leery CBS officials to give it one more shot. It would be pretty ironic if Dana, in his quest to destroy Strikeforce, inadvertently just provided them with the ability to keep going when hope seemed lost.
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41"I said that I have a lot of respect for Kimbo and how he's handled this whole thing," Dana said after the show, "a lot of trash-talking for a couple of years, by me. He took me up on my challenge. He came in to The Ultimate Fighter, and tonight he got beat by Matt Mitrione. Mitrione was 1-0, and he came in and took Kimbo out tonight. I've got nothing but respect for Kimbo. I like him as a person. He carried himself really well."
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43Slice wasn't the only guy fired as Paul Daley was cut after sucker-punching Josh Koscheck after their fight. Not making this up. Essentially, Koscheck had trolled him in the weeks leading up the fight, and then, in the final 30 seconds before the bell rang, he trashed talked him and told him how shitty he was as he held him down and dominated him. Daley flipped his lid and was even more upset because he thought Koscheck was basically playing pro-wrestler and selling an illegal knee to the head that actually didn't make contact earlier in the fight. So when it was over he stood up, he waited for the ref to separate them, and then he walked over and punched Josh in the face. Ref Dan Miragliotta and White both chewed him out afterwards and told him it was complete bullshit, and then Dana cut him later that night.
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45"He's done. I don't give a fuck if he's the best 170-pounder in the world. He'll never come back here again. There's no excuse for that. These guys are professional athletes. You don't ever hit a guy blatantly after the bell like that, whether you're frustrated or not. It was probably one of the dumbest things I've ever seen because he is a talented guy, and he is one of the best 170-pounders in the world."
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47Daley originally said that the reason this happened was because he hadn't heard the bell and didn't know the round was over, but then on Monday he issued a statement saying he was very sorry for what he had done and he hoped to someday be able to prove himself to fans again. The problem for Daley was that not only did he do something unprofessional, but he did it a week after Dana had gone nuts saying that Strikeforce was a low-rent rinky-dink promotion for allowing a post-show gang beating to break out after their last CBS show (Jason Miller vs. the entire Cesar Gracie team), and that something like that would never, ever happen in UFC.
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49"Josh implemented his game plan perfectly taking me down and staying on top of me for the majority of the fight," Daley wrote in part. "I was also frustrated about him claiming (and acting like) I knee’d him in the head on the ground when it was clear for all to see in the video replay that I didn’t connect at all with the knee I threw. Then finally, the verbal abuse Josh hit me with in the final 30 seconds of the fight simply pushed me over the edge and my frustrations came out as I knew I’d lost the fight, was unhappy with my own performance and had then been ridiculed by my opponent to top things off. This is certainly no excuse for my actions; I fully deserve to be punished for what I did and hope that everyone I have disappointed can forgive my rash decision. I feel very disappointed in myself for losing my cool and hope that I am able to address my temperament and bounce back from this low point in my career."
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51Thanks to his win, Koscheck will now head to the next season of Ultimate Fighter, where he'll coach one team opposite Georges St. Pierre, hopefully leading to fireworks and a fight between the two at the end of 2010. Koscheck was THE greatest heel in the history of the world for a combination of a boring fight (actually it was the same fight GSP has been having but because it's Josh Koscheck and not GSP he's hated for it), the pro-wrestling selling, and the post-match promo burying the local sports team. If they can run this event in Montreal or Toronto (long shot as it's still not legal in Ontario) it will be one of the biggest live event gates of the last few years, and most likely the biggest PPV event in the history of Canada regardless of where it's held. It should easily break 1 million buys in the US as well, particularly with 12 weeks of strong hype and a good Countdown show or 24/7-style series.
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53The main event of the show proved that, yes, Shogun Rua should have beaten Lyoto Machida via decision in their first title fight on October 24, 2009, in Los Angeles. That fight illustrated the issues in the traditional 10-point must system where the winner gets 10 points and the loser almost always gets 9 points unless he is nearly killed. When a round is close and a judge isn't giving the loser less than nine points no matter how badly he's battered, you can have a fight where it appears one guy won three of the five rounds and he still loses the fight. The first fight was scored 48-47 for Lyoto based on that criteria. Since that time I have been experimenting with a system where more 10-10s are given for even rounds, a 10-9 is given for a round a guy wins, a 10-8 is given for a round a guy dominates, and a 10-7 is given for a one-sided asskicking. Giving out 10-8s in the first right resulted in a draw on my scorecard, and giving out 10-7s for even more one-sided rounds resulted in a win by Shogun. But none of that mattered here as Shogun took a page out of the last episode of Ultimate Fighter, where Chuck's locker room had "NEVER LEAVE IT IN THE HANDS OF THE JUDGES" written above the door, and finished the fight. And I mean, decisively. First round knockout. What was most amazing about it was that the story of the last fight was Shogun taking Machida apart with leg kicks. It had always been said that nobody knew if Machida could really take a punch because he was so good standing that nobody ever hit him. Well, Shogun decided to focus on his hands instead of his feet, and he not only managed to hit Lyoto but he knocked him clean out in three minutes.
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55The worst injury on the show saw Jason MacDonald's leg buckle as he took a fall and he broke his tibia and fibia and dislocated his ankle in his undercard fight with John Salter. The fight was immediately stopped and he was taken backstage for treatment. He underwent surgery the next day.
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57The show did very well, drawing 17,647 to the Bell Centre in Montreal for a $3.27 million gate. Bonuses of $65,000 went to Rua for best knockout, Alan Belcher for best submission and Jeremy Stephens and Sam Stout for best fight.
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591. Patrick Cote vs. Alan Belcher. Cote got a kick to the nuts almost immediately. He turned his back for a time out and Belcher was still coming, so Mario Yamasaki jumped in there and literally grabbed his arm to stop him. Belcher made a big comeback after the nut shot. He got a takedown and the place went nuts. Hometown hero here. He nearly got a kimura but Belcher managed to escape. He looked like he was hurting bad before he finally got out. Belcher spent the rest of the round on top. Close round but Cote came closer on the submission so his round. 10-9. Belcher came out for the second without his mouthpiece. What an idiot. Cote started unloading on him in the second. "COTE!" They had a long clinch on the fence. Cote was in position to take a piledriver. "PILEDRIVER!" I screamed. So Belcher then proceeded to PICK HIM UP AND PILEDRIVE HIM RIGHT ON HIS FACE. Cote looked like he was out for a moment. Belcher then put him in a rear-naked choke for the submission.
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612. Kimbo Slice vs. Matt Mitrione. Kimbo was mega over. Mitrione came out to Mike Brown's "SIMPLE MAN.” Simple-minded, maybe. He stood there in the corner before the fight with a goofy grin on his face looking shit-faced drunk. Matt threw a wild Crocop high kick early but failed. He tried another one and Kimbo caught his leg in position for a captured suplex. He slammed him instead, HARD. Mitrione tried a triangle and got slammed again. He wouldn't let go. So Kimbo put him on his head and kind of pushed his fist into Mitrione's head until he let go. Kimbo ended up in side control. Mitrione stood up. Kimbo got another takedown. Matt failed on another triangle. Kimbo let him up. We got more slobberknocking. Matt took him down with a leg kick and tried a gator roll. Kimbo held on until the round ended. Crowd went nuts to see him survive. 10-8 Mitrione. Time for round two. Matt was taking him apart with leg kicks. Kimbo was limping bad. Kimbo actually threw a leg kick at one point. It didn't work. Kimbo basically fell down to take the fight off the feet. Meathead got the mount and was just pounding on him. He didn't have much power so he couldn't finish the fight. He kept trying submissions but he didn't know how to do any, so he'd try, fail, throw some punches, try another one, fail, wash, rinse, repeat. The ref finally stopped it. Sucks to be Kimbo.
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633. Sam Stout vs. Jeremy Stephens. Stout was the hometown hero here. Stephens got a takedown early but they stood right back up. They were both trading shots early but Stephens was getting the better of it. He landed a good one, rocked him, tried a guillotine but couldn't get it. Fans seemed bored but it wasn't a bad fight. 10-9 Stephens. More of the same in the second. They were still active and throwing but this fight ground to a halt. Stout kept trying stupid spinning backfists. 10-10 round. Stout hit him with a HARD knee in the third and followed him down to the ground. He was landing hard elbows from the guard. Stephens was in big trouble but he survived. By the time they got back to his feet Stephens had recovered. Stout 10-9 so 19-19 draw. Judges gave it to Stephens via split decision.
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65a. Tom Lawlor vs. Joe Doerksen. Lawlor was out there in the Dan Severn gimmick he used during the weigh-ins, with his hair died jet black and the big-ass moustache. Awesome. He rocked Doerksen with a shot early but Joe survived. He was hurt, though. Lawlor stayed on him and continued the pounding. This looked like a fisticuff battle from 1910. Good competitive round but Lawlor was the one who nearly finished it. 10-9 Lawlor. Doerksen made a huge comeback in the second, knocked him down and then got his back and choked him out. Huge win for Doerksen and a great finish.
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674. Josh Koscheck vs. Paul Daley. Koscheck turned his back on Daley during the staredown. Daley had a low stance, trying to avoid the takedown. It failed. Koscheck took him down and when Daley tried to stand up he got slammed back down. Crowd did not like that one bit. Koscheck proceeded to maul him from the top, then got his back and went for a choke. He didn't get it, there was a scramble, and as he was either standing up or about to stand up Daley seemingly nailed him in the face with an illegal knee. Koscheck took this huge bump and dramatically grabbed his face. They showed a replay and the angle was such that it didn't look like it got him hard, so the fans booed thinking Koscheck was full of shit. This was hilarious. Koscheck was in the corner selling and talking with the doctor, who was shining a light in his eye. They showed a bunch of replays and Rogan was like, that was a miss. The fans were getting more and more upset. Then they took a point away and Rogan started going nuts, saying they needed to show the judges the replay because that was clearly a miss. Well, sure as shit, they watched the replay and decided not to take the point after all. So shouldn't Koscheck be DQ'd for LYING like they do in Mexico? Live there were chants of "BULLSHIT!" and "FUCK YOU KOSCHECK!" So anyway, 10-9 Kosheck. Josh took him down again in the second and mauled him. People were chanting "GSP!" Koscheck got his back and crossed his feet. DON'T CROSS YOUR FEET! Rogan noted that clearly Daley didn't know the footlock from that position. THAT'S RIGHT~! They showed GSP doing commentary with the French announcing team and the place went batshit. 10-8 Koscheck. First few minutes of the third were on the feet and Daley landed a hard knee. Koscheck got full mount and controlled him. I cannot fathom being able to control a guy as well as Koscheck can and still not finish the dude. I mean, fuck. Go to Brazil and learn some submissions or something. So then the craziest fucking thing happened. The horn sounded, the fight was over, both guys were broken up, and then Daley walked over to him and punched him right in the face. I am not making this up. He punched him right in the fucking face after the fight. Koscheck didn't really sell it. Ref Dan Miragliotta grabbed Daley and cut a promo on him. What in the HELL was that? They actually let Daley stay in the ring as they announced that Koscheck won 30-27. So then Rogan went to interview Koscheck. The fans were booing like crazy. Koscheck grabbed the mic and said, "Hey, don't worry, Pittsburgh Penguins are going to kick your ass next week! YEAH! And then I'm going to beat St. Pierre, so you guys are going to lose twice, so how about that?" Then he plugged his afterparty. THIS WAS THE BEST FUCKING THING I'VE EVER SEEN. People will pay A BILLION DOLLARS to see GSP kill him.
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695. Lyoto Machida vs. Shogun Rua for the 205-pound title. Buffer said Lyoto was a lot of things as champion, including "undisputed.” Really? Undisputed? So why are they having a rematch? There was a great moment as the ref told them to touch gloves before the fight and both guys just stood there because they didn't know what he was saying. Then they figured it out and touched gloves. Mega lols. Shogun threw a leg kick pretty much immediately. They noted that Lyoto broke his hand in the first fight and it hadn't been tested since. Lyoto got a takedown 1:30 in. Shogun tried a sweep but then stood right back up. He landed a few knees in the clinch. Lyoto's right knee was already red. Shogun landed several hard shots, so Lyoto got a bodylock and took him down again. Shogun stood up but Lyoto gave him a hard knee. He was bleeding from the nose. Shogun then landed a series of shots and knocked him out. Well, he sure didn't leave it in the hands of the judges that time. Place went apeshit for that.
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71Rogan interviewed Shogun afterwards, who said "THANK YOU FOR EVERYBODY!" He promised to put on a good show every time he was here. He said Lyoto was a great fighter, and this time he focused more on his punches than his kicks. They showed a shot of Machida's face and he had a HYOOGE mouse under his eye. Everyone gasped. Machida then said, "Congratulations all the moms in the world on Mother's Day tomorrow!" What a nice man.
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73b. Marcus Davis vs. Jonathan Goulet. Davis rocked him with a shot early and then pulled guillotine. He had it on SO FUCKING TIGHT and Goulet managed to survive and pop his head out. That was fucking insane. I mean, 99 out of 100 men would have tapped to that but Goulet was number 100. Davis squeezed so hard that he was spent after this. The guillotine was so close, though, that I have to give the first round to Davis, just barely, 10-9. Davis then came out and rocked him early in the second. Goulet then lunged into a punch and knocked himself out. Sucks to be him, he was starting to take control at the end of the first.
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77WrestleMania XXVI underperforms
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81Despite headlines to the contrary, WWE's first quarter 2010 report was largely positive.
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83The one major negative was the WrestleMania XXVI buyrate. We had estimated at least 1 million buys, perhaps even close to the record of 1.25 set for the Donald Trump show in 2007. Instead, the number ended up being 885,000, a big disappointment, even bigger when you consider that this comes out to about 515,000 buys domestically, and of late the final numbers have come in lower than the original estimates. In other words, WrestleMania 2010 could finish below 500,000 buys domestic.
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85Where we went wrong in our prediction was the assumption that if there was one WWE show every year that was going to do really well even with a UFC PPV running on the same weekend, it was WrestleMania. Every other time UFC had run a major show up against a WWE event on the same weekend the WWE event had taken a big hit. They key, as it turns out, is that it has to be a strong UFC. Tito Ortiz vs. Forrest Griffin ran head-to-head with a very poorly promoted Survivor Series in 2009 and Survivor Series ended up doing such a poor number that WWE decided it must have been the Survivor Series name that was the issue and announced that it would be changed for 2010 (we still don't have a new name by the way). On the flip side, UFC ran Cain Velasquez vs. Antonio Nogueira up against WWE's Elimination Chamber PPV and the UFC show didn't have a strong enough line-up to make a difference, as Elimination Chamber did better this year than last year. The real question answered over Mania weekend was how big a star Georges St. Pierre was. Dan Hardy was a weak opponent, but in the end, with the show drawing 775,000 buys, GSP is a big enough superstar to not only carry a PPV on his own, but put a big dent in WWE's biggest show of the year in the process.
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87For all the talk of other reasons Mania didn't do well, and there is merit to a degree to some of them, UFC was far and away the overriding factor, particularly when you consider that UFC is only on PPV in Canada and the United States and free everywhere else it airs in the world, and sure enough, WrestleMania did great all over the world but took a big hit in the US and particularly Canada where GSP is a megastar.
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89Vince McMahon on the investor's call totally blew off any suggestions that UFC had anything to do with their number. I don't believe for one second that he doesn't think that UFC is competition for WWE, but he can't say that, and so instead he basically said that they didn't present an attraction that enough people wanted to see. It's funny, because this year's main events, particularly Undertaker vs. Michaels II and Cena vs. Batista, were promoted very well and there was far more interest going into the show this year than their was for at least the last two years. He also claimed that more people were getting together to watch parties, so there were less orders per home around the country. First off, that's bullshit because there were FAR more people congregating together for pro-wrestling during the Monday Night Wars than there are these days. And second, yeah, there are people congregating together, but they are congregating together en masse for UFC shows, and when you convince all your friends to come over for pizza and beer on Saturday night to watch GSP fight, good luck getting them all together to come over again the next day for two nights in a row of that.
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91Vince also claimed that last year's Mania did better because it was WrestleMania 25 and people bought it for the nostalgia. As if. Someone must have told him about how big UFC 100 was.
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93With all that said, business overall for WWE is very strong and this was one of the biggest quarters in company history. A lot of people blamed the Mania number on the storylines going into the show, but the problem is that the storylines leading to Mania started months in advance this year, some even as early as the Slammy Awards in November, and both Royal Rumble and Elimination Chamber were both up in 2010 over 2009. Only Mania was down. The company itself took in net incomes of $24.75 million over the $10.32 million last year (this is misleading as last year's Mania took place in quarter two, not quarter one like this year), and that was an increase over the $22 million that analysts were expecting. Total revenues were $138.73 million as compared to $107.82 million last year. Revenues from inside North America were up 28 percent and revenues outside North America were up 33 percent. TV rights fees were up to $29.4 million as compared to $24.9 million last year thanks to the addition of Superstars. The only major area that was down were consumer products at $30.7 million as compared to $33.1 million in 2009.
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95Vince in the conference call also talked about the film business, which we've discussed here in recent weeks, and also said -- and this is fascinating -- that when Smackdown moves to Syfy it will start doing the same ratings as Raw. Unless he plans to do another draft this fall and send over guys like John Cena, Edge, Batista if he's still around, HHH, etc., no way in hell that's happening. What's funny about the ratings is that the same thing happens every time a new show starts. Sunday Night Heat used to do ratings in the FOURS. Smackdown used to do legitimately more viewers than Raw. ECW started in the mid twos. And the same thing happened to all of them. Ratings started to drop a bit so Vince moved the stars off the show, moved guys who weren't stars on, lost interest in the booking, and the next thing you know, self-fulfilling prophecy, ratings tanked. They already made the decision in the draft that since MyNetworkTV is lame-duck network and Syfy is available in even less homes, they were going to take most of the marketable people off the show and put them on Raw. Smackdown is a glorified ECW at this point, and how, with that mindset, he expects them to be doing the ratings of Raw this fall is beyond me.
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97International business continues to be super strong. Excluding WrestleMania, domestic revenues this year were actually down 3 percent from last year. However, that was more than made up by international revenues, which were up a whopping 19 percent. Vince noted in the call that Mexico is one of their best markets right now and is almost tied for number two alongside the UK (US is still number one). After the last tour of Mexico with almost all sellouts at high ticket prices, by the end of quarter two the shift may have occurred. It should be noted that even domestically with increased ticket prices, house show business is doing very well and was up 33 percent in attendance from last year. Of course, North America includes Mexico, which is going nuts.
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99Royal Rumble did 462,000 buys this year and 450,000 buys last year. Chamber did 285,000 this year and 272,000 last year. Take note that both of the shows this year were $5 more than last year. As much as people talk about price increases being bad, they made no difference whatsoever in terms of WWE buys. While less people are realistically getting together to watch shows, people are still getting together and a $5 total increase isn't making much of a difference for dudes chipping in.
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101Merchandise was up over $1 per head, which usually means more over characters in the company, which is funny because you'd think the exact opposite watching the TV.
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103Classics on Demand was down as they lost subscribers this year. Home videos were down as they had no hot DVD titles (John Morrison DVD?) and shipped far fewer units. Prices also dropped which indicates less demand. For all the talk of how awesome the Mattel deal has been, they went from $500,000 to $600,000 in toys and novelties and from $19.8 million to $19.9 million in licensing. Toys were up a bit and video games were slightly down so it all evened out. Magazines fell almost $1 million as nobody is buying them. Oddly enough, with nobody buying print, WWE.com simultaneously lost $500,000 over last year, so those people didn't go online. WWE Shop was even with last year. They sold more things but sold less per order.
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105Vince in the conference call, when talking about Mania, said he would not allow anyone to claim that Mania and other facets of business were down due to the economy. He used an analogy that Bobo Brazil used to tell him, which was basically that promoters will make all sorts of goofy excuses for why a show didn't draw, but the reason shows don't draw is because the promoters didn't provide them with a product they wanted to see, bottom line.
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107He also noted that they were doing very well with the plans for the upcoming WWE Network, that the model for the channel was set and that they were currently knocking on doors to see which cable providers were interested in carrying it. Last I heard he's about 16 months premature with that statement. They did just hire approximately 40 people to work on it about a month back and it is absolutely moving forward.
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111In House Notes
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117Very special thanks to the following people for their help over the years in producing Figure Four Weekly: Gladys "Granny" Gibson, Dave Meltzer, Tony Leder, Alex Marvez, Zack Arnold, Colin Vassallo, Kris Zellner, Manuel Gonzalez, Craig Proper, Vincent Verhei, Keith Lipinski, Robert Bihari, The Cubs Fan, Kyle Wolf, Devin Cutting, Shawn Garrett, Bob Barnett, Mike Lano, Adam Lebow, Mike Sempervive, Adam Summers, Mike Coughlin, Karl Stern, Steve "Dr. Lucha~!" Sims, Mike K, Forrest Lynn. Thanks also to everyone who sent in news over the past week.
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128Regarding the Drew McIntyre firing, I have now heard from at least five people in WWE, including people on the creative team, who have no idea what the long-term plan is or why they did the firing angle. People originally speculated that he failed a Wellness test, but that's largely because nobody could figure out any other good reason for it. My first thought when I heard about it was that they did the draft and then a week later decided they didn't want him on Smackdown after all and had to shoot an angle to get him on Raw. That would be bad both because it shows either a complete lack of long-term planning or not being able to make up one's mind, plus Raw is the worst place for him right now because he can be a top guy on Smackdown and he'll get lost in the shuffle on Raw. It's obviously an angle because he not only worked the Mexico shows this week but he did so as IC Champion. It seemed like a way to bring Vince McMahon back to reinstate him and perhaps fire Teddy Long. That makes no sense if you consider that the idea behind WrestleMania was to write the Vince character out of storylines, although we were told a few days ago that there was talk of bringing Vince back (probably because ratings haven't been great). The day after it went down, Matt Hardy sent a weird tweet saying, "As a favor to me, if ur a fan of mine-Let Drew McIntyre hear 'We want Matt' over & over again. This thing with him & I is just beginning. RT.” Let him hear it where? He's fired. And why would he write that it was just beginning after the angle just aired that had him fired? Matt needs to ixnay the tweeting immediately because it's going to do him way more harm than good long-term. We can confirm that McIntyre and Tiffany got married a few weeks back in Vegas, and the feeling is that the company wasn't going to split the two of them up yet (meaning he's probably not going to Raw).
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130Superstars, which was pre-empted for baseball and ended up airing two hours later than usual, only did an 0.28. The replay did an 0.14, meaning nobody who missed the show due to baseball cared enough to watch the replay.
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132It appears the WWE film Big Red will be renamed Eighth Grade. Killing Karma will be renamed Inside Out.
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134Melina tweeted that she'd be back from her knee injury in late June.
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136Brett DiBiase suffered a knee injury at the FCW tapings last week and undergoes surgery next Tuesday.
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138Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step foot on the moon, will be the guest host of Raw on May 17th. The info went up on his Web site but then they took it down a few hours later, likely so that WWE could make the announcement first.
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140WrestleMania XXVI came out on Blu Ray last week -- kind of. Apparently the wide Blu-Ray debut won't be for a few months, and the disc that came out on Tuesday was exclusive to Best Buy. What is even stranger is that I heard from people who went to Best Buy to get it only to be told that they were sold out. This happened to my buddy Craig, and when he asked for more details they told him that only two had arrived total. Yes, two discs. Not sure how widespread that was.
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142WWE had another super successful tour of Mexico. It actually did much better than I figured going in. There were a lot of unsold tickets in the weeks leading up to this tour to that point that people thought they might actually have reached the oversaturation point, but apparently there was huge last-minute walk-up business because every single show except one ended up selling out, and that's with high ticket prices (a week's wages for a family of four in good seats) and the company now coming South of the border every three to four months. I'm not sure if they saw the early numbers and decided they might be oversaturating the market, but they did announce that they weren't returning until October, so that's a solid five months and that should be enough time to do good business again. Arena Monterrey on May 5th drew a sold-out 17,000 fans for a show headlined by Cena & Orton beating Batista & Sheamus. Show lasted less than two and a half hours, the shortest Arena Monterrey show ever. May 6th in Aguascalientes did a sellout 16,000-plus for a show headlined by Cena & Orton & Show beating Miz & Batista & Sheamus when Cena pinned Batista. Dos Caras Jr., it should be noted, worked this show, and for those wondering, yes, he did so under his mask. They unmasked him in Florida and he did the UK tour unmasked, and all the lucha magazines blurred out his face. The feeling was if he worked Mexico without the mask he'd officially be considered unmasked, but since he didn't, I guess they'll protect his identity until he shows up unmasked on TV. May 6th at Palacio de Los Deportes before 20,000-plus saw Swagger beat Undertaker in the main event. Match was said to be horrible. Drew McIntyre worked the undercard, defending his title. Keep in mind this show took place before Smackdown aired but after they'd taped him being fired. Edge and Jericho also teamed up on this show (yes, already) losing to Hart Dynasty. May 7th in Puebla before a sellout 10,000-plus saw Orton & Cena & Show over Miz & Sheamus & Batista when Cena pinned Dave. Caras' opponent on these shows, by the way, was Regal, and he was pushed as a babyface. There were a fair number of fans who didn't know who he was, which surprised some people. Kane was also super over the entire tour, more over than he is anywhere else on Earth. May 7th in Queretaro before a sellout 16,000-plus saw Rey beat Swagger via DQ when Swagger hit him with the belt. Rey hit the 619 afterwards to send the fans home happy. Final Raw show was at Palacio de los Deportes for another sellout with Cena & Orton & Show beating Batista & Sheamus & Miz in the same match. Caras beat Chavo on this show. Only non-sellout was in Leon for Smackdown for a show headlined by Rey beating Swagger with the belt shot finish. Drew worked this show, which would be after Smackdown aired, and successfully defended his belt. May 9th at Arena Monterrey for a sellout show was the exact same Rey vs. Swagger match, pretty much move-for-move.
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144The Raw crew in Mexico was told to stay in their hotels because there was fear of people getting kidnapped. Welcome to Mexico~!.
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146Beth Phoenix hurt her ankle at the Superstars tapings, and while she said she was fine and 100 percent they pulled her from the Mexico tour.
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148Kane hurt his ankle at the Leon show but is apparently fine.
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150The Vickie deal was a last-minute decision for Raw made the Thursday prior. It was supposed to be a one-week thing but they were stunned with how over she was as a heel and now there is talk of bringing her back full-time for the role. The guest host deal will continue but they want to have someone with a clue be the one who makes all the match announcements and such as opposed to someone who has the potential to screw up people's names. It took them a year to figure this out?.
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152As of Monday the belief was that the Colons weren't going to be part of Ted DiBiase's group, but this stuff changes fast.
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154This won't be the last time they mention Twitter on Raw as the company has big plans for it and want all of the main eventers to be set up with accounts.
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156NXT did an 0.81 this week and 1.008 million viewers.
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158A guy named Zavr Peygumbari, 22, who is not, in fact, a subscriber (I checked) got himself in a lot of hot water a few weeks back when he repeatedly called the WWE offices (as in, nearly two dozen times in a week) threatening to come down to Titan Towers with a machete and a machine gun because he was so upset at the company for firing Mickie James. He was arrested and held on $250,000 bond, but then they determined that he was most likely mentally unstable and harmless and lowered the bail to $5,000. In court he apologized for what he had done, saying it was childish and foolish, but then got very distressed when he was told that now he could no longer attend WWE events. Not making any of this story up. I wish someone would have asked him what he needed a machete for if he was heading down there with a machine gun. Maybe he thought there was thick foliage surrounding the building that he'd have to chop through to get inside. So anyway, all clear. He's back in court on May 25th. It didn't help that this all happened the day before the car bomb was found in Times Square.
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160There was a riot in India at the Tau Devi Lal Stadium after thousands of people showed up for an appearance by the Great Khali and he wasn't there. The people went nuts, a full-scale riot broke out, there were no police officers present and so the fans pretty much tore the place apart. Later it turned out that the promoter had lied and Khali was never supposed to show up in the first place, so he was arrested and is in hot water now.
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166UFC
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169UFC officially announced Brock Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin for UFC 116 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Saturday July 3rd. Tickets go on sale on May 13th. Will be interesting to see how they sell. Lesnar is a HUGE PPV draw but he's not nearly as big a live-event draw, plus the tickets are scaled super expensive at $1,000 for ringside, $750, $500, $300, $200 and $100. Each person is limited to eight tickets. If they all sell it'll be a $5 million gate.
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171Semi-main for the Lesnar/Carwin show looks to be Wanderlei Silva vs. Yoshihiro Akiyama, which would be a gigantic match in Japan but won't mean a whole hell of a lot in the US, or at least not much more than Wanderlei Silva versus anyone would mean.
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173Carwin on the fight: "I have wanted a chance to compete against Brock since my college wrestling days. He is an elite athlete who is always dangerous. His college wrestling background makes him extremely tough. I will be the first fighter he has faced who is equal in size. He won’t be able to bully me or hold me down as he has others in the past. This is the biggest fight of my life. I think it can go down as one of the greatest fights in UFC history. I expect to have my hand raised and to become the REAL UFC heavyweight champion." Carwin won the Interim title by completely destroying Frank Mir a few months back.
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175They will also be doing the Stephan Bonnar vs. Krzysztof Soszynski rematch on the show. KS won the first fight after Bonnar got busted open by an illegal headbutt and was bleeding like a stuck pig, and the ref ruled that he was bleeding as the result of a legal strike and thus awarded the match to KS. Had he known it came from an illegal headbutt it would have been a no-contest. That fight took place in Australia and while Bonnar petitioned to have it overturned, the Combat Sports Authority of New South Wales said no such luck. They've also officially announced Brendan Schaub vs. Chris Tuscherer, Matt Brown vs. Chris Lytle and Kendall Grove vs. Goran Reljic. Rumored fights include Kurt Pellegrino vs. George Sotiropoulos, Cheick Kongo vs. Roy Nelson, Jon Madsen vs. Karlos Vemola, and Julio Paulino vs. Daniel Roberts.
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177No confirmed numbers for Aldo vs. Faber yet, but the belief within the industry is that it will finish at around 150,000 buys, which is 100,000 less than my original (lofty) prediction of 250,000, but double what they were predicting going in. Actually, the guy who called it exactly was Dana a few days before the show, but he also at the time admitted that he was just pulling that number out of his ass. So his ass was dead-on. Anyway, he did admit to reporters that they were very happy with how the show did and that it was the second-biggest MMA PPV of all time not promoted by UFC, meaning it beat Affliction 1. Tom Atencio claimed over 100,000 buys for that show, but final industry estimates were in the 75,000 range.
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179Reed Harris of WEC said this week that Dana White gave them the OK to do a PPV a year ago but they held on and waited until they had what they felt was a strong enough main event. He's been talking openly about doing two to three PPVs a year, but as noted two weeks ago I don't see a single match anywhere in the near future that is going to be strong enough to do anything close to the numbers they did for this show. Maybe if Miguel Torres goes on a winning streak, takes back the 135-pound title and Urijah Faber challenges him for it, but other than that there's nothing.
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181BJ Penn is the heavy favorite in his rematch with Frankie Edgar tentatively scheduled for August in Boston. He's up -340 to +260. Penn didn't make any excuses but apparently he had a sinus infection leading up the fight, and that makes training for cardio incredibly hard.
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183Next UFC Prelims will be for 115 on June 12th at the GM Place.
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185TUF this past Wednesday did a 1.3 rating and 1.7 million viewers, even with the week before.
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187Despite winning a decision that most everyone felt he lost, Machida was still the favorite going into the fight on Saturday. He was listed as -200 to Rua's +160, so a lot of people probably made a lot of money there. I would guess the oddsmakers probably heard the rumors that Rua had a bad knee and figured that would play a factor in the fight. Dana insisted that the story of the bad knee was false, although it's not like Rua would have told him those rumors were true before the fight (he may have afterwards if he lost). Koscheck was favored over Daley -278 vs. +218, and Kimbo and Mitrione were about even at -120 vs. -128.
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189Police are trying to investigate who leaked the photo of Tito Ortiz sitting in the clink after being arrested on the domestic abuse charge last week. The photo was up on TMZ.com that afternoon.
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191Forrest Griffin blew out his shoulder and is out of the semi-main event on the May 29th show. He'll be replaced by Jason Brilz in the fight with Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. For as much as people talk about having too many fighters under contract, when you run as many shows as they do it can be really hard to find replacements on short notice, even when the short notice is four weeks. The rest of the televised card has Michael Bisping vs. Dan Miller (now the semi-main), Todd Duffee vs. Mike Russow, and John Hathaway vs. Diego Sanchez. They will air Dong Hyun Kim vs. Amir Sadollah and Efrain Escudero vs. Dan Lauzon in the prelims.
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197TNA
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200Jeff Hardy's trial has now been pushed back twice. New date is June 3rd.
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202TNA morale was way down this week as one would expect. There is no faith in management and no faith in the booking team. So yeah, nothing new, really.
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204The final Monday Impact did an 0.8 rating with an 0.7 in males 18-to-49, an 0.5 in persons 18-to-49, an 0.7 in males 18-to-34, and 1.1 million viewers. That's still down about half a million viewers from what they were doing before the wars. I mean, imagine that. Quarters were 0.92, 0.90, 0.93, 0.87 and then BAM~!, Raw came on the air and they dropped to an 0.66, then an 0.56. That's a terrible plunge. Last two quarters recovered a little, but only to 0.66 and 0.77. Raw going head-to-head did a 3.05 rating (3.1) with a 2.9 in the first hour and a 3.2 in the second hour. First hour did 4.1 million viewers and the second hour did 4.6 million. They did a 1.91 in persons 18-to-49, a 2.64 in males 18-to-49, and 4.3 million viewers.
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206Impact on Thursday did an 0.71 and 973,000 viewers. For the record, my official prediction is that this Thursday's show does a 1.1. While it appears they've eroded their audience, that's not a guarantee. You have to remember that there has only been one Thursday during the entire War 2.0 that Impact didn't air. I know that there were people in WWE who, when asked about Impact moving off Monday, said it wasn't a big deal to them at all because they never stopped watching it on Thursday. I would guess, based on replay numbers, that the hardest of the hardcore followed the show to Monday but many of the Thursday viewers just continued to watch it in the old time slot. With Mondays gone, I would be all of those people will be back together watching on the same day and it will do close to what it was doing before this whole failed experiment. If it does less than a 1.1, especially after week three, then the war did far more damage -- FAR MORE -- than I would have predicted going in.
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208Bischoff has been talking about doing some sort of Tough Enough-style show on Spike this summer. There's a revolutionary idea.
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210Speaking of Eric, the voting page TNA has set up at polldaddy.com has his name misspelled "Bishoff.” It's like I'm writing Death of WCW all over again every week. And yes, they are running a poll at POLLDADDY.COM. Sounds like a porn site. Gets better. People were stuffing the ballot boxes, which was how Desmond Wolfe won last week. So TNA switched it up so that you could only vote once. Fans immediately discovered that all you had to do was clear your cache and cookies on your browser and you could vote again. At press time, Desmond Wolfe was running away with the voting again. My hope was that he'd win and get a title shot every month for like a full year. At press time Desmond was running away with it again and in second place was Matt Morgan. Nobody else was getting any votes at all. And best of all, they put the new poll up the same day they taped TV, and at TV they announced that Jeff Hardy won -- ten days before voting ended. So basically, the poll is already a complete sham. You'd think that if you thought about it for ten seconds you'd realize that you can't do online voting like this in 2010, but they don't think and so they once again look like idiots.
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212The Web site also said: "The Committee listened, and as you have just witnessed, your voice was heard loud and clear as Desmond Wolfe took on the Whole F’n Show Rob Van Dam for the TNA Heavyweight Title. And, what a match it was!" Yeah, hell of a match.
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214Bubba buried Dixie again this weekend saying she was fucking hot but also a fucking mark and needed to take herself out of the booking mix completely. Well, she should, but everyone else on the booking team should also take themselves out of the booking mix completely.
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216Christy Hemme got married this week to someone not in the business.
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218Bischoff on his Twitter wrote: "Before the internet gets ahold of it: Its true. I am getting married to a woman I have been having an affair with for some time. While everyone will be quick to judge, at some point one just does what one needs to do. Hope everyone understands. EB.” Everyone figures he's renewing his vows.
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224Strikeforce
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227Strikeforce officially announced the return of Fedor Emelianenko, versus Fabricio Werdum on Saturday, June 26th at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. The show will air live on Showtime at 10 ET/PT. There is a ticket pre-sale May 10th and they go on sale to the general public on May 14th. Fedor should destroy him, likely via KO quickly. But it's a fight. This event is shaping up to be one of the bigger shows in company history as in addition to Fedor vs. Werdum they're also planning a Cung Le vs. Scott Smith fight and the next title defense for Mrs. Cyborg.
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231Other Wrestling
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234Kinji Shibuya passed away on May 3rd, one week before his 89th birthday. It's never a good thing when someone passes away but it is nice to hear about a guy in this business who didn't die of a drug overdose when he was under 40. Shibuya was born in Utah and played football for the University of Hawaii, but that didn't stop promoters from giving him the stereotypical salt-throwing Japanese gimmick when he got into wrestling. He was fine with that as long as it was a way for him to make good money. "The meaner I acted in the ring, the richer I walked out of it," the man who was well known for being the nicest guy outside the ring once said. "Playing the bad guy was fun. I would have been a run-of-the-mill wrestler without the dirty stuff. As a villain, I became a champion." His biggest fame came in the ’60s and ’70s. Although he worked all over the world he was best known for his San Francisco run, where he was one of the 10 biggest stars of that era. He was so well-known from his wrestling gigs that when he went into acting they always had him play himself. Aside from the salt-throwing, the gimmick was also that he knew all of the deadly Asian martial arts. He could cripple a man with his nerve holds and legend had it (in the wrestling magazines at least) that he once killed a man with the deadly KARATE CHOP. He was said to be a really good wrestler by his peers. He wrestled for 25 years before retiring to Hayward, Calif., where he remained a fixture around town until the end.
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236El Supremo, real name Salvador Cuevas, 55, passed away last week. He is best known for being in what should have been the main event of the EMLL 52nd anniversary show. Basically, they spent months building up a Supremo vs. El Dorado mask vs. mask match for September 19th, 1985, which Supremo was scheduled to win. However, the day before the show a massive earthquake, the biggest in centuries, hit Mexico City and caused massive, widespread destruction and destroyed parts of Arena Mexico. The show was canceled and for whatever reason they not only never rebooked the match, but Supremo and Dorado never even wrestled each other again.
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238The latest in the Mistico saga is that he teamed up with La Sombra on May 4th at Arena Mexico. Sombra and Volador Jr. were his old tag partners and so far the ONLY time he has played rudo is when he's opposing Volador. The question was whether he would play rudo when teaming with Sombra and the answer is no, so basically, he is a full-fledged babyface when teaming with and opposing anyone in the entire company with the exception of Volador.
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240Los Perros/Viva La Lucha (Kevin Kleinrock) taped a PPV in Mexico last week headlined by Hijo Del Santo & Latin (can't go by Latin Lover since AAA owns the name) & Marco Corleone beating Blue Demon Jr. & Perro Aguayo Jr. & Hijo del Lizmark. They drew a full house and the crowd was said to be great, especially for the main event. I'm not sure what kind of market there is going to be for something like this because it's not like ROH or DGUSA are doing blow-away numbers, and one would think there would be a bigger market for those two groups than for a group like Perros del Mal that I think even a lot of hardcore indy fans wouldn't know a lot about. But Smackdown does do huge numbers in the Hispanic demos when Rey is heavily featured and Mexico is currently the third biggest PPV market behind the US and UK for WWE right now, so with the right marketing it might end up doing OK. Groon XXX suffered a knee injury on this show and now there is talk that he might have to retire. This is the original Gronda, the big jacked up bodybuilder that has had heart issues in his early 20s, torn all sorts of muscles, etc.
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242CMLL Friday was said to have been the worst major show of the year attendance-wise, likely due to competition from WWE and the fact that the main event was Hector Garza & Fantasma & La Mascara vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi & Taichi Ichikari & Shigeo Okumura for the CMLL World Trios Titles, which the Japanese won after Tanahashi pinned Mascara with the high fly flow. Besides the title change, the match was notable for Hector completing his heel turn once and for all, which had been a long time coming.
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244Didn't get much of a report from the ROH show on Friday night in Manassas except that it seemed like a B-show before the big show Saturday night. The guys all worked hard, though. Main event was Delirious & Tyler Black beating Rhett Titus & Austin Aries. Not even sure who Delirious beat (report didn't say) but I would presume it would be Aries since the TV angle is that Aries put him out of action (prior to Delirious heading to Japan).
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246Notes from the ROH Supercard of Honor show on Saturday night. Said to be a fantastic show. It was a complete sellout with a line around the block and people turned away, and one person who works there said it was better overall than the Big Bang PPV. In the top matches, Sara Del Ray beat Amazing (Awesome) Kong in a match where people said it was patently obvious how badly TNA had dropped the ball with Kong. There were chants of "PLEASE COME BACK" and "FUCK BUBBA!" Chris Daniels beat Eddie Edwards and then challenged Edwards’ tag partner, Davey Richards, to a match afterwards. Austin Aries beat Delirious via DQ in a quick match which saw Kenny King and Rhett Titus go after Daizee Haze but Delirious made the save. Kevin Steen beat Colt Cabana in a death match with tables, ladders, chairs, barbed wire, the whole nine yards. Kings of Wrestling beat Motor City Machine Guns via DQ. Guns were supposed to lose but TNA called either the day before or the day of the show and said no dice. So they did the DQ finish, which the fans hated. Match was said to have been better than the KOW vs. Briscoes match until the finish which took it down a notch. Bricoes ran in for the DQ, and even though they are babyfaces people booed since it resulted in the DQ. They gave Del Ray the Jay driller afterwards. Main was Tyler Black beating Roderick Strong to retain the WWE Title. The hardcore fan backlash against Tyler is apparently growing with each passing show and he was really hated here. Said to be a very good championship match. They return September 11 with Terry Funk as a special guest, same night as EVOLVE runs in Rahway, N.J.
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248Next ROH Internet-only PPV will be Death Before Dishonor VIII from the Ted Reeve Arena on June 19th. No main event yet but they've announced that Tyler Black, Kings of Wrestling, Davey Richards, Kevin Steen, Austin Aries and the Briscoes will all be working the show.
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250Syd Eick of ROH was in court on May 29th over an incident where he allegedly spat on former ROH owner Rob Feinstein in a pizzeria on March 23rd. Eick allegedly walked into the place and challenged Rob to a fight. The pizza owner stepped between them and the spitting occurred. Eick ended up paying a near-$500 fine.
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252The DGUSA show in Windsor on Friday was said to be a good show that didn't draw well. We got several reports, all saying it drew between 100 and 200 fans. Top matches saw Gran Akuma & Akira Tozawa beat Mike Quackenbush & Jigsaw, CIMA beat Jimmy Jacobs, Naruki Doi beat Masaaki Mochizuki, Tyson Dux & Jon Bolen beat Brad Martin & Xtremo, Masato Yoshino beat Dragon Kid in a best-of-three-falls match, and YAMATO & Shingo beat BxB Hulk & Pac when YAMATO pinned Open the Dream Gate Champion Hulk.
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254The Saturday night DGUSA show in Mississauga, which was a PPV taping, drew about 500 and was said to be an excellent show. Top matches saw Jon Moxley beat Jimmy Jacobs in a no-DQ match. Apparently Moxley ran into the guardrail and his nipple was nearly sliced clean off. He was hurting really bad but he got medical attention afterwards and should be fine. Naruki Doi & Pac beat Mike Quackenbush & Jigsaw in a very good match. Yamato & Shingo beat CIMA & Dragon Kid in what was said to be a ****1/4 match when Shingo pinned Dragon Kid. Best match of the night. Main event was also very good but not in the league of the first match, probably in the ***1/2 range, with BxB Hulk beating Masato Yoshino in about fifteen minutes. They shot a bunch of angles as well to set up matches on future shows and we'll talk about those when we get the DVD.
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256Don Frye underwent back surgery several weeks back and then suffered complications and had to undergo a second surgery two weeks later. And then, no joke, he had more complications and is now scheduled to undergo a third one. That has to suck.
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260Vinny's DVD Review and Karaoke Thingamajigger
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264History of the Intercontinental Championship
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267X-Pac vs. Chris Jericho vs. Eddie Guerrero. From Smackdown, October 12, 2000. They did three-way stuff until Eddie and X-Pac started double-teaming the babyface. They made a hell of a team. That should surprise nobody. Cole and Lawler were plugging the rest of the matches on this show, and Chris Benoit’s name was not edited out. Then they started asking how Eddie could break Chyna’s heart. Cole was like, she’s a wonderful woman. Lawler said screw that, she was in Playboy, which he described as “puppies galore.” Well, that’s fair. And then suddenly the match ended out of nowhere, not five minutes in. I had to go back and check what happened. X-Pac hit an X factor on Jericho, but Eddie dropkicked him in the head and stole the pin. Then X-Pac and Jericho brawled. A slightly better than average TV match. **1/4.
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269Grisham listed some of the IC champions from 2000, including Rikishi and Billy Gunn. Then in 2001 Hunter reclaimed the belt, and as a former world champion, he was expected to dominate the division.
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271Jeff Hardy vs. Triple H. From Smackdown, April 12, 2001. They showed clips from earlier in the show of Jeff attacking Hunter and Austin with a chair and laying out Steph with a twist of fate. Yes, a twist of fate to Stephanie to set up an IC match on the same show. Dumb. Early on this looked like a fast-forward version of Shawn-Diesel, with Hunter getting most of the offense and Jeff busting out occasional dropkicks and dives. Jeff tried a dive off the dasherboards and Hunter was supposed to slam him, but it didn’t quite work. So they tried the same thing off the apron and this time Hunter hit a big powerslam. I think they figured the first one would be edited out and, well, it wasn’t. Hunter worked Jeff over in the corner, screaming at him about wanting to be in the big leagues. Jeff made a comeback and went up top, but Hunter shoved the ref into the ropes. The ref got pissed and shoved Hunter back, so Hunter shoved him down. He went for a superplex, but Matt Hardy ran down and KILLED HUNTER IN THE HEAD with a chair. Jesus. Jeff followed with a senton. The ref crawled over and made the cover, and I was certain a fast count was coming just to give Hunter every possible excuse in the world, but no, he counted regularly and Jeff won. Regardless, Hunter was awesome in this match, much more agile and athletic than he is today (I know, shocking), and also working really hard and putting a smart match together. So yeah, he was the man. ***1/4.
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273Rob Van Dam vs. Jeff Hardy. A ladder match from Monday night Raw, July 22, 2002, to merge Jeff’s European title and Rob’s IC belt. TNA! TNA! TNA! Rob forgot what he was doing and made a cover a minute in. Maybe it was worked forgetfulness. Following tradition, the first guy to go for a ladder (Jeff) had it dropkicked back into him, really hard this time. Rob went to climb, but Jeff pulled him down by one leg, and Rob landed awkwardly. Jim Ross noted that Jeff had “a lot of strange personality traits.” Indeed. They swung ladders at each other for a bit. Rob laid Jeff on a ladder and hit a cartwheel into a moonsault. There’s a gymnastics name for that. Roundoff? Handspring? Anyway. Rob went to climb, but Jeff hit a legsweep off the ladder. Then he laid a ladder on top of Rob and hit a senton. Ow, ow, ow. Then they both climbed a ladder, and Rob hit a sunset flip powerbomb. Both guys climbed ladders right next to each other. Jeff hit a sidekick to Jeff’s ladder, knocking it over, and Jeff landed damn near upside down. I know full well that Jeff is alive and (sort of) well here in 2010, and I still screamed watching this. Rob had the belt almost within reach, but chose to hit a splash off the ladder instead. Then he climbed back up and won. They worked this at a TV pace, not a PPV pace, going from one spot to the next without giving the big moves the time they needed to sink in. It was good, and the crowd loved it, but it should have been better. ***3/4.
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275Grisham summarized 2002 to 2004, saying there were 12 champions over that time, including Booker T and Randy Orton.
276
277Randy Orton vs. Edge. From Vengeance, July 11, 2004. RVD vs. Jeff. Orton vs. Edge. Was anything accomplished in the last decade? Actually, yes. A wellness policy was established. This match was quite clearly before that. THESE MEN WERE HUGE. They did very basic stuff early, headlocks and tackles and the like. And then they did a CRISS-CROSS. This spot did not get over in 2004. Lawler asked Ross if Edge would make a credible champion. “Well, he’s already won it four times.” Orton teased walking away, but Edge went and got him. Ross said Orton was running away. Lawler said he was “getting his exercise.” That was fucking funny right there. Orton finally sidestepped Edge and tossed him over the ropes for the heat. He worked Edge’s surgically repaired neck over. Edge made a comeback, so Randy went to grab his belt, but Edge cut him off with a sliding dropkick and a pescado. Orton was working total heel here, but the crowd was pretty split. If anything Randy had a bigger following. He was obviously the bigger star at this point. Edge went for the spear, but Randy kicked him in the head. He worked over the neck again as the crowd chanted “LET’S GO ORTON!” He told them to shut their freakin’ mouths, he didn’t need their help. Six years later and, well, you know. So they chanted “ORTON SUCKS!” This was like a Cena reaction, before the Cena reaction existed. He went to a LONG chinlock, in what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to get BORING chants. If so, it worked. Edge fought free, until Orton put him in ANOTHER chinlock. Now there were LOUD chants of BORING! Lawler and Ross started talking about dudes with long hair and whether they got chicks. Orton finally went for something off the middle rope and Edge caught him with a dropkick to the belly. He made a comeback to a lukewarm reaction. He was SO just the guy in there with Orton at that point. Orton cut him off with a thumb to the eye and yanked off the turnbuckle pad. Edge hit a small package, but the ref was distracted dealing with the buckle pad. They traded nearfalls off basic moves like schoolboys and Orton’s 14th dropkick of the match. Orton did get to kick out of the Impaler. He hit a schoolboy and put his foot on the ropes, but Edge still kicked out. So Orton went for the RKO, but Edge shoved him off and set up for the spear. Now the crowd was REALLY going crazy. But Orton leapfrogged him and Edge hit the corners. Orton went for the RKO, but Edge turned it into a backslide for a nearfall. Shortly thereafter Orton was shoved into the exposed buckle, turned around and ate a spear for the pin. Last two minutes or so of this were fantastic. First 15 minutes were just killing time to get to that point. Their match at PPV next week should be better. ***1/2.
278
279
280
281Bryan's TV Reviews
282
283
284
285NXT
286
287
288All the dudes were at ringside. The Teacher was there saying the time was upon us -- NEXT WEEK THE PRO'S POLL WOULD BE REVEALED. That sounds lewd. One of them, he said, would have their dreams crushed when they were eliminated. Stryker said Otunga won the challenge last week and got a shot against the Pro of this choice and he chose R-Truth. This week's challenge was a fucking OBSTACLE COURSE. How lame. They had to do monkey bars, climb a ladder, ring a bell, over a barricade, up the stairs to the concourse, drink a beverage, come down to the ring, juggle for five seconds, "do the dizzy bat challenge,” and then push a cart over the finish line. Their prize would get an immunity pass, meaning next week they couldn't be eliminated. Daniel went first. He had his ribs all taped up and was selling the beating from Batista. He proceeded to run the course. The fans CHEERED the monkey bars. Bryan said he didn't like soda but still drank the entire thing. People were screaming at him to guzzle it. It took him FOREVER to drink it. Stryker was screaming at him to hurry up. It took him 2:45.5. And he was the first of EIGHT MEN. Miz came out afterwards to tell him that he did a shitty job. He said the FANS could have done a better job on than he did. He told Bryan not to ever use injuries as excuses. He said he didn't care if Bryan was hurt or tired, tonight he was going to put his winless record up against Michael Tarver's winless record. If Bryan didn't win, he said, he had no idea how the Pros would not eliminate him next week. Tarver vs. Daniel. Daniel did what he could with the guy. People got into all of his comebacks, so he's still more over than he should be given his push, or, more appropriately, lack of push. "Michael," Josh said, nonchalantly after commercial, "you said something really stupid before the break.” Cole had said that Tarver did everything he could to try to win this and Josh noted that, no, he really hadn't, and in fact he'd walked out of a lot of challenges. Cole said, "Yeah, that was kind of stupid." This was a great thing here. Daniel made a big comeback and applied an armbar, but Tarver stacked him and then slammed him for the pin. Fuck this was dumb. Not just because it was another loss for Daniel, but because I'd be stunned if Tarver wasn't cut next week, meaning Tarver beat Daniel on the way out. That makes zero sense. Carlito gave Daniel the backstabber after for good measure.
289
290Punk and his crew screamed at Darren Young backstage. He told Punk that he wanted to make an impact, a statement. Punk said he wasn't going to do that using him. He told him to figure out who he wanted to be and what he was, and he could start by winning the obstacle course challenge.
291
292Heath Slater did the course. He did it in 1:36.9. Darren Young was next. He fell off the monkey bars. Straighten your arms, dipshit. How can you not swing on the monkey bars? Daniel Bryan wasn't trying because of the losing gimmick and he still did better than this geek. Darren fell down going over the barricade. I can't believe nobody killed themselves doing this. His time was 2:07.8. He barely beat Daniel.
293
294Justin Gabriel was next. Couldn't do the monkey bars or the rope ladder. This little deal here really exposed a lack of athletic ability with some of these guys. He finished at 1:29.0.
295
296David Otunga was next. Oh God. This guy may kill himself. He also struggled on the monkey bars but did better than I figured. He finished at 1:35.0. After he was done and tired they told him his match with R-Truth was up now. Otunga vs. Truth. Otunga booted him in the gut, sent him into the post and got the heat. Truth reversed an abdominal stretch, made a comeback, killed Otunga with a kick and then hit the spinning forearm for the pin. Truth danced afterwards. Always awesome.
297
298Wade Barrett went next. Fell off the monkey bars and almost broke his leg. He tried again, failed, and just walked off the set.
299
300Skip Sheffield went next. He did fine on the monkey bars but had trouble on the rope climb. He finished at 1:31.2. I will say, Sheffield is more athletic than one would think give his size.
301
302Michael Tarver went last. He fell off the monkey bars. HOW HARD ARE THE FUCKING MONKEY BARS? He fell twice and made it on the third try. He took like two minutes to drink the soda. The ref finally disqualified him. Gabriel won the whole thing meaning he got immunity. He cut a promo on Otunga, saying Otunga's ego outweighed his talent. Otunga did a promo saying the ratings went up when he was on TV. That's not true. Striker asked Tarver who should be eliminated next week and he said himself. He had some sort of explanation for this statement that involved yelling and spittle, but I'm not sure what exactly he was saying. Sheffield said he did his best every week and if anyone should be eliminated it was Tarver. This made Tarver upset. Didn't Tarver say he himself should be eliminated? So what's he so upset about? Slater said he thought Tarver should be axed as well. Otunga made a gay joke, saying he was having words with Justin GAYbriel. In 2010. Barrett said he was the only man in this competition. He said since Tarver requested his release he wouldn't miss him. Bryan was asked and said to be quite honest, he was the only guy here who wouldn't won a match and if there was anyone who should be eliminated next week it should be him. Darren was asked last and he said he wanted it more than anyone. As he was rattling them off he got to Barrett and Barrett pie-faced him. They got into a pullapart and that's how the show went off the air. Not much to this.
303
304
305
306Smackdown
307
308
309Show opened with Matt Hardy lurching down to the ring. They showed clips of Drew McIntyre stomping on his head on the steps last week, beating him up after the match and then giving him the DDT backstage on the floor. Matt was in the middle of ranting when Drew came out on the ramp. Matt said he wasn't going anywhere and dared him to make him go away. Drew said nine months ago Vince McMahon himself looked him in the eye and told him he was the future of this company. "That makes me the chosen one," he said, "and that makes me completely untouchable." Matt told him to come down and they'd see how untouchable he was. So McIntyre took his jacket off, jumped into the ring and they brawled. A bunch of geeks hit the ring to break it up. Drew jumped Matt from behind and took over on him. More geeks hit the ring. Drew kept pounding on him. Teddy came out and told Drew to knock it off. Drew just stared at him and refused to quit. So Teddy announced he was suspended. Drew kept fighting, so Teddy said all right, you're stripped of the title. Drew said OK, hold on, I'll stop. He backed off briefly, but then went right back to work. So Teddy announced that Drew was FIRED. Even that didn't stop him, so finally a million guys dragged him out of the building. Matt, meanwhile, was left in a heap of death. That was certainly something different.
310
311Josh interviewed Teddy backstage. He wanted to know what Teddy's thoughts were on this. After expressing his power in such a decisive manner, Teddy was now acting like a completely indecisive pussy. He sweated and stammered and said he didn't know, nothing like that had ever happened before. Josh wanted to know what was next. Teddy didn't know. Josh wanted to know what was going to happen to the title. Teddy said he had no idea. "I don't know what I'm going to do." Way to go, dude.
312
313Luke Gallows vs. MVP. Match was OK. MVP looked like he was moving in slow motion. He went for the playmaker but Serena distracted him. Rey ended up running in through the crowd and laying out Punk with a DDT outside. Gallows, distracted, ate the gold standard or whatever they used to call Shelton's finisher for the pin. They called it the PLAY OF THE DAY here. MVP has a long way to go to get back to where he was before they killed him off. They went to commercial and when they came back Punk was going nuts in the ring. He said Rey was a coward, a man who attacked people from behind because he didn't have the ability to face a man head-on. He said he hurt him and he cost Luke Gallows his match, so he wanted him to come out right now so he could say something to him. Rey came right out. He said yes, I attacked you from behind, just like that masked mystery man has been doing to me week after week. He wanted to know where the guy was. Punk said he was nothing but a coward and he had no idea what Rey was talking about with this mystery man. You're seeing things, he said. "A masked man?" He told him he must be on drugs. Rey told him he was out there to shave Punk's head. Punk said he beat Rey at the PPV. Rey said yeah, but I beat you at Mania. He challenged him to a third match at the next PPV, where if he lost he joined the Straight Edge Society, but if Punk lost he shaved his head. "And I'm the barber!" Why don't they put the mask on the line? Isn't the idea to let people know that if they PAY they will see a HEAD SHAVING? Jesus these people have lost their minds. Rey said they didn't even have to wrestle if Punk didn't want to. He said he'd go down right now and pledge himself to the Straight Edge Society if Punk just shaved his head. Punk refused. Rey said there was just one thing he didn't understand. He said he understood don't smoke, don't drink, don't use drugs, etc. "That's the good part in your message. I agree with you. But the messenger is bad!" He said everyone out there wearing a Rey Mysterio mask represented the good in his message. He said if Punk was serious about saving and helping people they could do some good together. "So why don't you be brave enough and lead by example -- shave your head!" Punk said this had nothing to do with him shaving his head because his hair was a symbol of purity. "I don't care if you don't like it, I am better than everybody!" Rey wanted to know what made Punk any different from Luke and Serena. He said it looked like they did all the work, so why were they bald and he was not. "You don't care about them. The only person you care about is yourself. And you call yourself a savior. Let me give you a bit of information. There is nothing you can do to be saved from the 619!" This was one of Rey's best promos of all time. Great stuff.
314
315Layla & Michelle vs. Kelly & Tiffany. My GOD what a team. They showed clips of the Mean Girls being mean to Kelly on Superstars, yelling at her and caller her names and putting stuff on her. Tiffany ran wild with monkey flips early. Heels distracted her and Michelle laid her out with a dropkick. Kelly got the hot tag and ran wild with the most horrible dropkicks ever. They said you could watch her and see she was clearly a gymnast. That was funny. She tried her roundoff back handspring but ran into the ropes doing it. Broke down into an awful four-way. Crowd didn't care at all. Layla then pinned Tiffany with the neckbreaker. Layla on the win streak here.
316
317Josh interviewed Teddy, who was clutching the Intercontinental title. He said since the belt was now vacant he'd selected four deserving individuals to compete in a tournament. Two of the matches would take place tonight and the finals would be next week. Not at the PPV. He signed Christian vs. Cody and Kofi vs. Dolph.
318
319Kofi vs. Dolph in an IC Title tourney match. Kofi hit a big tope to the outside early. Dolph got the heat by giving him a FAME ASSER and driving his neck into the ropes. Match was OK. Crowd was bored. So bored that they did THE WAVE. The Teacher actually said, seriously, that Kofi was hoping to win the title and take it back to Ghana where "Prince Nana will be waiting!" They did get into the comeback and nearfalls at the end. Dolph went for the sleeper, which actually got him a lot of heat. Kofi sent him face-first into the ropes to escape, which Dolph took with his TEETH, and then hit the wacky kick head-on for the pin. Last few minutes were really good.
320
321Christian vs. Cody Rhodes in an IC Title tourney match. A lot of running by Cody early, but then he jumped Christian outside and tossed him into the steps. Pretty much the great TV match you always get with Christian. They worked really hard and were taking big bumps including a gigantic superplex. Christian made his big comeback and Heath Slater was outside urging him on, telling him it was all about the title. Cody hit a big moonsault, with no kneepads I might add. Christian ended up sending him shoulder-first into the post and hitting the killswitch for the pin. Great TV match right there.
322
323Jack Swagger came out and did a promo saying he was now going to remind us all how awesome he really was. First high school athlete nominated for an Espy. That's a new one. In contention for the Heisman Trophy in 2002. He wasn't getting nearly the heat he got last week. State singles champion in tennis in singles and doubles. They went to commercial as he was explaining how awesome he was at chess, not checkers. National Honor Society, President in fact. Where was Big Show when all this was going down?, he asked. WWE, probably, making millions. Kane vs. Swagger. Kane outwrestled him early. KANE. Just when it started out came Big Show in a giant, and I mean GIANT suit. He did commentary and was good. Obviously the idea here was that Swagger was facing a big man much like he was going to at the PPV. Kane went for the chokeslam but Swagger fought free and tossed Kane ribs-first into an exposed buckle multiple times. And then the ref DQ'd him. WHAT? Isn't the point of this match to show that Swagger can beat a giant? How fucking stupid. "This is a disqualification, correct?" asked Show. They confirmed that it was. They played this up like Swagger had proven he was tough. No, he proved he was an idiot. Crowd chanted "BIG SHOW!" Show stood up and they had a staredown. The staredown lead to Kane sneaking up and booting Swagger. He cleared off the table, but before he could use it Swagger cut him off and sent him into the post. Show then gave Swagger a chokeslam through the table. He celebrated with the belt as the show went off the air. Too much stuff going on at the end there, but not a disaster or anything. Rest of the show was good.
324
325
326
327Raw
328
329
330Show opened with Orton coming down to the ring. He said he was going to tell Edge why he didn't accept his offer to join him last week. He said he knew him. He knew Edge saw him as a threat and was going to try to keep him under his thumb. Suddenly, MEAT LOAF came out. MEAT FUCKING LOAF. Orton looked like he was ready to kill someone. Meat started screaming about how Randy Orton was the man. He said he couldn't wait to come out here and see him. He started plugging his new CD. On this CD, he said, he had a song that needed to be his new theme, written by Jon Bon Jovi. The reason for this, he said, was that when he was 15 years old in St. Louis in 1995 this was what he was doing. Fans were chanting "RKO!" Meat asked to play the song. Orton said sure, why don't you hum me a few bars. Meat Loaf started signing this song. It fucking sucked. Orton hated it. So Meat Loaf said let's try a different one. He started signing another song. THIS FUCKING SUCKS. Orton finally gave him the RKO. People cheered, but it was far less of a reaction than you'd think. Too much turn the channel heat. Edge came out and said it was clear Orton didn't like celebrities. He said he didn't like them either, how they walked on this show and acted like they ran things. He said he called WWE headquarters and complained, and guess what? They tweeted him back, he said, and agreed, so from here on now guest celebrity hosts would have no authority on Monday Night Raw. But, he said, that wasn't enough for him. He needed more than that. This show needs a permanent GM, he said, and you'll never guess who they picked to be the new permanent GM of Raw? Yes, Vickie Guerrero. She came out and was hated. Whatever happened to her and Edge breaking up? Even fans who almost never watch Raw remember them breaking up, and here they are back together again. She said she wanted to state for the record that despite her personal relationship with Edge in the past, she was there tonight to be a true professional. The heat was unreal. She said speaking of professionalism, Orton attacking celebrities was something WWE didn't condone. "You will be reprimanded!" she said. He told her to come down and reprimand him to his face. Edge called him a bully. Tonight, he said, he'd find out what it meant to be bullied. She said due to his behavioral issues Orton would be facing Edge and a partner of his choice in a two-on-one handicap match. Edge said Orton would learn how he dealt with threats.
331
332Harry vs. Jericho where if Jericho won than he and Miz got a tag title match at Over the Limit. Good match but it was quick. Harry made a comeback and put him in the sharpshooter. Jericho got the ropes. As the ref was pulling Harry off Jericho poked his eyes and then hit the codebreaker for the pin. Pretty basic vanilla booking here. So Jericho and Miz face Hart Dynasty for the belts in Detroit.
333
334Flava Flav came out with R-Truth. They rapped his song together and danced in the ring. OK, that was the best part of Raw in months. MORE DANCING, LESS BULLSHIT. Flav plugged his new show, which he said was an updated version of the TWILIGHT ZONE. This I gotta see. Flava Flav hosting Twilight Zone 2010. He kept ranting and raving and so finally they just rang the bell to start the match. Truth vs. Regal. The Colons hit the ring pretty much immediately and attacked him for the DQ. Announcers said Primo and Carlito reunited on Superstars. News to me. Flav did commentary and alerted us that the heels had BROKEN TRUTH'S BACK. Colons walked up on the ramp and there was Ted DiBiase in a suit with his belt and pay winda envelopes for both guys.
335
336Since Eve does jiu jitsu, they did a skit where Maryse was in the ring training with a judo black belt or something. He was showing her hips throws but she wasn't picking it up fast enough. He told her to try harder and she was insulted so she cut a promo on him and kicked his leg out of his leg. The fuck was this, besides a big fuck you to UFC for beating them on Mania weekend?.
337
338Orton said he was not concerned about the three-way tonight, but he wanted Vickie to come down to ringside during the match so he could make sure tonight would be a night she never forgot.
339
340They did a skit with Mark Henry and Buzz Aldrin to plug his appearance as Raw guest host for next week's COMMERCIAL FREE RAW. Oh God. Henry hit him with a chair and said that was one small step for Raw, one giant leap for the WWE Universe.
341
342Alicia and Gail were at ringside. Zach Attack was in the ring flirting with them. He said to celebrate them blowing up this building he was going to get his first win on Raw tonight. Evan Bourne vs. Woo Woo Guy. Short match. Evan went up top and Alicia tried to interfere. Gail yanked her off the apron. Despite the distraction Evan still hit the shooting star for the pin. Evan left the ring afterwards and offered his arm to Gail and she looked right and left and then said, "Hell, why not?" and they left together. I LOL'd.
343
344Cena came out to his usual massive mixed reaction. He said he wanted to thank Sheamus. Because of his outburst he gave him a week to think about the match he was going to have with Big Dave at the PPV. Maybe Dave was right, he said. He beat Dave at the PPV but it was an intellectual victory and didn't involve athleticism or skill. That's true. Some critics called him a coward, he said. He was many things, he noted, but he was not a coward. Therefore, tonight he was going to prove it. He said he stood before the people with a great advantage, as he could choose any match he wanted at the PPV. He could blindfold Dave, or handcuff him or have him jump on one leg. Those would be cowardly acts. But at the PPV they would have a fair but competitive match, and also a brutal one. It would be the last time he faced Dave for the title, he said. If Dave won, he said, he was going to forfeit his rematch clause. With that said, there was only one match the two of them could have. In two weeks at Over the Limit with the title on the line they would square off in an I Quit match. He asked Sheamus to come out so he could thank him in person. Out he came onto the ramp. He said Cena better hope he didn't come to the ring or he'd beat him so bad he wouldn't be able to face Dave at the PPV. Cena took his shirt off and said let's do this. So Sheamus went to fight. Sheamus is going to be a huge babyface one of these days. Batista managed to sneak into the ring, then he and Sheamus double-teamed Cena. Batista sent him into the post outside and then Sheamus gave him the boot of doom. Batista set up for the bomb but Mark Henry hit the ring to make the save. Yet another Mark Henry push fourteen years after his debut. He cleared the ring of the heels.
345
346Edge met with Vickie and said he had found a partner for later. He said listen, I know we talked earlier but I want to make sure we're clear about why I said those horrible things about you the last time we were on Raw together. He said I was just trying to get the people to have some sympathy for you. I've learned we'll always be hated, he said, so we have something in common and can be friends even if we're not married. He asked her to please be at ringside for the match with Orton. She said hell no. He begged. She said he needed to guarantee nothing happened. Edge said listen, if he raises one finger at you, fire him. He told her to be there to show the world that nobody could intimidate her, and also so she could be there when he beat him.
347
348Miz vs. Tyson Kidd. If Miz and Jericho won a tag title match earlier then why is this necessary? Kidd pinned him in less than a minute. No idea what's going on. They said that with his win Miz was going to have to defend the title against a member of the Hart Dynasty next week. Miz did a promo saying he may have lost but he got to decide who he was going to defend the belt against. He said it wouldn't be against Tyson, it wouldn't be against Harry, and no, it wouldn't be against Natalya either. Next week, he said, live on Monday Night Raw he was going to defend the title against BRET HART.
349
350Josh alerted Batista that he was going to have to face Mark Henry later. Dave said he was facing Cena in two weeks in an I Quit match, but he wasn't going to make Cena say "I Quit", he was going to make him scream it. "Don't believe me? Just watch what I do to Mark Henry tonight".
351
352Santino & Goldust & Yoshi Tatsu & John Morrison vs. All Eight NXT Rookies. Everyone involved in this looked stupid. Otunga still can't hit the ropes. Heat on Yoshi until he tagged Morrison, who ran wild on Heath. He went for the moonsault but Heath got the knees up. Danielson tagged in and immediately got backdropped. Santino tagged in and Daniel immediately hit him with the unbreakable small package for the pin. Everyone jumped up and down and celebrated and put him on their shoulders, and even Michael Cole was going nuts. So all those weeks of losses on NXT ended up leading to him getting a win over Santino on Raw? I don't know what's going on with this company right now. Clearly they changed their minds with the idea that he would beat Miz for the US Title. I wonder if that means Bret wins it and retires it next week or something.
353
354Flav was fucking with the Bellas backstage. He plugged his show again. Vladimir and Santino showed up. Flav told Vlad to speak English. Santino wanted to team with Vlad but Vlad doesn't want to because Santino always loses. Regal walked up and told Vlad to pay no attention to this fool. Somehow this led to Regal rapping. Well, he recited a poem. Regal almost saved this.
355
356Batista came to the ring for his match with Henry and sat down in a chair in the middle of the ring. Henry came out, got into the ring, and Dave immediately jumped him and beat the crap out of him with the chair. What a jerk. He put him in a wacky lucha hold and held on until Henry passed out. They sent out a trainer to check on him but Dave scared him off. "He'll be OK!" he told the guy. Cole told him that would be completely legal in an "I Quit" match. What, the guy going unconscious? How do you quit when you are out? This was a stupid way to build up an I Quit match.
357
358Orton vs. Edge and his mystery partner Ted DiBiase. The Orton vs. Ted feud continues. Vickie was at ringside as promised. Orton sold for awhile and then made his own one-man comeback. He knocked Edge off the apron and into the announcer's table. Orton set up for the RKO but Ted shoved him off. Orton backdropped him outside. Truth ended up running down the ramp and distracting Ted allowing Orton to hit the RKO for the pin. I guess the idea is to try to slowly get new guys into the mix. We'll see how it works. Orton caught sight of Vickie at ringside afterwards. With both Ted and Edge down, this was his chance. Luckily for her this was Randy Orton and so he was moving as slowly as humanly possible. She started screaming for Edge to save her. "Don't do it," she said. "I am WARNING YOU!" She was stammering and then started shaking and crying. It was like she was building up to firing him, but instead she started screaming, "I RESIGN!" WHAT? Edge got up at this point and Orton laid him out with the RKO. Vickie ran to the back and I guess that's the end of her for this week at least. A show long self-contained storyline that made no sense at all. This show largely sucked and it didn't help that there was about 8 minutes of wrestling in the whole entire show. Lame.
359
360wrestling news
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370MAY 4 2010 FIGURE FOUR WEEKLY: WAR ENDS, TNA BACK TO THURSDAY, BUBBA DEBACLE, ROSS, TITO/JENNA, MORE
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373After TNA drew its lowest number in Spike TV history last week, the network made the decision to move the show back to its old Thursday night time slot, ending the "new Monday Night Wars" less than two months after they began.
374
375The TNA show going up against the WWE draft did an 0.5 rating with an 0.5 in males 18-49, an 0.61 in males 18-34, and 739,000 viewers. Raw going head-to-head did a 3.06 rating and 4.6 million viewers. The first hour did a 2.6 and the second two hours did 3.3s. In other words, as usual, 25% of the Raw viewers forgot the show started an hour earlier.
376
377Many things to note here. First off, TNA's number is a complete and utter disaster. It was obvious the rating was going to be down from the week before, both because the show was going up against the draft and also because the show with RVD beating Jeff Hardy and AJ Styles in the same night to win the title was the kind of show that was going to pop a good number, but also the kind of show you couldn't do every week, or even every month. However, a fall from an 0.95 to an 0.50 is beyond horrendous. Worse, it's not like Raw did a 4.5. The show did a 3.06, horrible for a draft show. In the normal two hours it did a 3.3, but in the head-to-head hours with TNA it only did a 2.95. So TNA did an 0.5 going head-to-head for two hours against a Raw that did a 2.95 during that same period.
378
379The TNA replay did 895,000 viewers, so a replay of a taped show beat Impact's first-run on Monday. There was no way possible to spin this. TNA had to give up on Monday. They could have tried to hang on at 8-10 for a few more weeks but the reality is nothing was about to change.
380
381The only reason TNA is still in business is because they've got a good contract with Spike TV. An 0.5 is WELL below the station average, so if something happens and Spike cancels them, unless Panda wants to blow another $35 million while airing stuff on Fox Sports Net, they're done. The move to Monday, this "WAR", eroded their audience to half of what they were doing on Thursday. I mean, think about this. They claimed that the reason they were stuck at a 1.1 was because Thursday was a terrible night to run a wrestling show, and that the only way to grow was to go head-to-head with Raw on Mondays. This is not a hindsight is 20/20 issue. For every reason that I wrote about back in late December, this move to Monday was a disaster. They managed, and I'll admit I thought this was impossible, to run off some of the 1.5 million viewers that watched the show loyally every single week. I mean, that's an astounding fact. But it's not like we didn't see it coming.
382
383Let's look at what I wrote in this very newsletter in late-2009:
384
385"The only similarities [between 1995 and today] are that WWE is number one and the other group is, at present, a distant number two. Nitro was not WCW Saturday Night moved to another day and time, and had it been I highly doubt they'd have beaten Raw on day one, or probably ever been competitive. Eric Bischoff changed nationally televised TV wrestling forever and Nitro set the standard for professional wrestling on Monday nights. Sure, it all crashed and burned just a few years later, but for a short time there it was absolutely revolutionary, at least on the big stage (both sides stole a lot of concepts from ECW, and Bischoff stole concepts from Japan). There are so many differences today that for people to even compare this to 1995 seems absurd.
386
387"What does TNA have that WWE cannot compete with? What makes them different? TNA has great wrestlers, but it's not like WWE is badly lacking in the talent department. WWE has the far bigger stars. TNA's biggest star, Hulk Hogan, can't physically wrestle more than maybe once a year. Nearly everyone that anyone in 2010 considers a megastar is either signed with WWE or, in the case of Hulk Hogan, can't move, or, in the case of Ric Flair, is long past their prime (and I love Flair). Rob Van Dam and Mr. Anderson could be considered big free agents, but are main events featuring the two of them going to pull viewers from Raw? Impact is hardly revolutionary, and if anything, is written like WWE television in 1997. Impact is doing the same ratings they've been doing for years, their television is such that their buyrates have not grown at all and are 10 percent of what would be considered an average WWE B-show buyrate, and their house shows of late have drawn between 300 and 500 paid, which is less than a lot of well-promoted indies with no national stars at all have drawn recently."
388
389"As noted, WWF was in dire financial straights in 1995 and 1996, and WCW was the promotion that had seemingly unlimited money behind it. I mean, even if TNA had some stars, a revolutionary concept, better wrestlers, etc., it's still the EXACT OPPOSITE of 1995 in that WWE is going to gross more than a half billion dollars in 2009 and TNA is still struggling just to break even. Unlike 1995, TNA isn't going to win a single bidding war that WWE cares about at all. There is no dollar amount that TNA could offer John Cena where WWE, if they were actually concerned, could not say, 'We'll double that.' The resource disparity between the two sides is actually kind of depressing, and there is a reason that, during WCW's most successful two-year period, Bischoff got the nickname 'ATM Eric.'
390
391"Prior to the first Raw vs. Nitro battle, almost everyone in the world thought WCW was going to get killed. They didn't, and some people have ignored all the reasons why in believing that history is going to repeat itself here. I will never say it is absolutely impossible that Impact will beat Raw on January 4th and launch a new glory period for American pro-wrestling. But I see absolutely zero evidence that such a thing is probable, and my feeling is that the story of 2010 will be how TNA will respond if they get slaughtered again, and if the signing of Hogan and this head-to-head shot was simply an experiment they thought it would be worth it to try and that they'll move on from with different ideas, or, as some people in the industry suspect, it is a last-ditch desperate effort by the Carter family before pulling the plug."
392
393What a fucking prophet I turned out to be. Or not. Actually, I just thought about it for a few seconds and then banged those paragraphs out in about ten minutes. I'd like to take credit for being a genius, but realistically the best I can take credit for is not being a complete idiot.
394
395So let's think about this for another 30 seconds and come up with a solution. They got the hell off Mondays, which is the best move for all concerned. They're back to Thursdays, a perfectly fine night where Smackdown once aired before millions of viewers every single week. I mean, Smackdown still does 3.2 million viewers on FRIDAY for God's sake, on a dead network. Now what? First things first, get rid of the morons who have been writing this show for years and find some people with a clue. It's not that hard. Some of them have worked there before. Cornette. Dutch. Axe some dead weight and get Spike to chip in to make Paul Heyman a good offer. And I mean good, like seven figures. A booker with a clue is going to do more for this product long-term than any wrestler in the world as has been evidenced by a million name wrestlers coming in and being booked such that the show is doing an 0.5 on Mondays. I mean, funny that I wrote months ago, before either of them had even signed, that "Rob Van Dam and Mr. Anderson could be considered big free agents, but are main events featuring the two of them going to pull viewers from Raw?" They both ended up signing and the answer, as was patently obvious, was no. Any why is that? Because the people writing this show don't have any idea how to make stars. The show where RVD won the title was great, but guess what? Does anyone remembers RVD's debut? The one where he got a flash pin on Sting, then Sting beat the shit out of him with his bat for about five straight minutes and made him look like such a tool that Chris Jericho could not help but go against company policy and publicly comment on it on Twitter? I remember people trying to tell me at the time that it wasn't that bad, or that it was actually good, but here is a fun fact for you. His debut on that show did a 1.07 rating, the highest thing on the program. And after that beating, you know how many quarters ever hit a 1.07 again on Monday night? Zero. Not a single one. His debut was the most-watched thing on that show, but after they destroyed him and made him look like an idiot they never did another 1.07 the entire time they ran Monday nights, because, as I've said a million times, these people have no idea what they're doing.
396
397Get Jeff Jarrett the hell out of there. He was the guy who brought in Vince Russo, not once but twice. Hell of a resume right there. Russo needs to be kept as far away from professional wrestling as possible. You can't replace Dixie, but for fuck's sake she needs to be as far away from this product as possible. Quit worrying about trying to make everyone one big happy family. That's done wonders. Nobody has gotten over, people are all pissed off, they're quitting and now they're burying the company publicly. Successful wrestling companies have pecking orders, and when you have a pecking order there are going to be people that are happy, people that grumble, and people that are pissed off. If you don't have that, you don't have a main event, midcard and undercard, and then you don't have the very structure you need to run a successful wrestling company.
398
399Hogan and Bischoff aren't going to be around forever so there had better be a contingency plan. Hogan signed for a year, but who knows, he could be gone in the next few months as well. He hasn't meant a thing for business and continuing to build the show around him is a disaster. Bischoff has brought nothing to the table, not a single thing. For all the talk about what a genius he was in WCW, this run has made it abundantly clear that he was a one-trick pony fifteen years ago. He's been there now for over six months, and not only is this content-wise the exact same show it was before he came in, but the ratings have been cut in half. His revolutionary idea to turn the company around was apparently to keep the same guy who killed WCW in charge of writing the scripts and then bring in a bunch of old or cast-off WWE wrestlers and push a bunch of concepts from the 1990s, which was the decade BEFORE the decade we just got out of.
400
401But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First things first. Two simple things. Now that they're back on Thursday, try to rebuild the company to where it can maintain those loyal 1.5 million viewers that were there before they made this move. Then find someone who can write TV that will result in more than 1% of those diehard fans buying PPVs. You do 1.5 million viewers on Thursday and find someone who can write TV that convinces 2.5% of those people to consistently buy your PPVs and you'll have accomplished more than everything else that has been done in the last 8 years. And that is not some impossible pie-in-the-sky fantasy dream like trying to go head-to-head with Raw on Monday nights.
402
403One last thing. I wrote this March 8th. This was patently obvious then.
404
405"I don't even have the energy to write about why TNA has been the biggest failure of this generation, largely because I've been writing about it every single week in the Impact report for years now. The story of TNA is the story of a group of people who never learn a thing. They never learn a thing from their failures, and more astoundingly they never learn a thing from their few successes. They're run by a woman who has no idea what she's doing and the TV has been written for years by a guy who has no idea what he's doing. It's the classic story of doing the same thing over and over and over again and hoping that somehow things will change. Vince Russo needs to be fired immediately and never go anywhere near a wrestling promotion ever again. I would say he's the single biggest reason this company is in the shape it's in, but the reality is that Dixie Carter is the one who hired him and has kept him employed through one failure after another, so ultimately she's the one to blame. I can understand getting into the wrestling business in the mid 2000s and having limited understanding of its history, but one would think a wise business person would surround themselves with people who know more than they do. And even if you make a mistake and initially surround yourself with people who don't know what they're doing, which Dixie did, you'd think that when it became crystal clear that these people didn't know what they were doing you'd get rid of them and give other people a chance. People can make all the excuses they want, but the reason TNA is in the state it's in is so simple that I think the simplicity blinds people. When you hire everyone responsible for the death of WCW, from the bookers to the production guys to the top stars, why would you possibly think that the result is going to be any different this time around?"
406
407It's a broken record, but hey, it's now May 4th and, shockingly, as they're forced off Monday nights with their tail between their legs, NOTHING HAS CHANGED. So I guess the big question is whether anything changes when they move back to Thursdays next week. I boldly predict that the answer is no.
408
409
410In House Notes
411The number next to your name on the address label indicates which issue your Figure Four Weekly subscription expires with. Thus, if you have a [776] next to your name, this is the final issue of your current subscription.
412
413Very special thanks to the following people for their help over the years in producing Figure Four Weekly: Gladys "Granny" Gibson, Dave Meltzer, Tony Leder, Alex Marvez, Zack Arnold, Colin Vassallo, Kris Zellner, Manuel Gonzalez, Craig Proper, Vincent Verhei, Keith Lipinski, Robert Bihari, The Cubs Fan, Kyle Wolf, Devin Cutting, Shawn Garrett, Bob Barnett, Mike Lano, Adam Lebow, Mike Sempervive, Adam Summers, Mike Coughlin, Karl Stern, Steve "Dr. Lucha~!" Sims, Mike K, Forrest Lynn. Thanks also to everyone who sent in news over the past week.
414
415Worldwide renewal rates due to rising postage costs are $100 per one-year subscription (52 issues), $55 per six-month subscription (26 issues), $30 per three-month subscription (12 issues), and $12 per one month subscription.
416
417To order through the mail, send a check, money order or cash payable to Figure Four Weekly to PO BOX 426, Woodinville, WA 98072. To order with a credit card, send your Visa or Master Card order with your name, address, phone number, Visa or Master Card number, expiration date AND CVR number (three-digit security code on the back of the card) to figure4@ix.netcom.com, or you can order by faxing that information to 530-730-2920. You can also subscribe via paypal at www.paypal.com using the bryan@wrestlingobserver.com address, or subscribe via credit card by mail. Please include all the information listed above, particularly the CVR security code that many people forget.
418
419
420WWE
421Jim Ross' WWE talent contract expired Friday and they never made him another offer. Maybe they'll claim it was "a clerical error" like when Rock's contract expired. That's a true story, by the way. Ross on his blog wrote: "This matter is much more simple than many perceive. My WWE 'talent contract' has ended after a 17+ year run with the company. However, I am still a WWE employee handling the same talent relations functions that I have executed for the company for the past few years including since moving to Oklahoma. I simply do not have a 'talent contract' as WWE has no plans to utilize me as an on air talent at this time. The WWE engaged in talks with me on Thursday of this week to discuss a new job description that would include what I am now doing along with other talent relations oriented matters. I am considering this offer and I trust that a decision will be made soon regarding this opportunity." As noted last week, if I were Ross there is no way I'd take a chance on TNA, especially if my contract with WWE expired the week that they drew an 0.5 on Monday nights. He has interest in doing commentary on an MMA show but I don't think any talks are serious at this point. He's not the only one.
422
423This doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot, but the line-up for the June 19th WWE show at Madison Square Garden has Cena vs. Sheamus for the Raw title, Big Show vs. Jack Swagger for the World Title, Undertaker & Kane vs. Punk & Gallows, Orton vs. Edge (and if this isn't the most ass-backwards booking with Edge as the heel and Orton as the face, although Edge is a better heel than babyface), Harts vs. Primo & Carlito for the tag titles, Miz vs. Mark Henry for the US Title, Kofi vs. Drew for the IC Title, and Eve & Beth & Kelly vs. Maryse & Michelle & Layla with Santino as the guest referee. Poor MVP is listed as "ALSO APPEARING" along with the Bellas.
424
425Over The Limit posters feature Edge, and show the PPV having some sort of racing theme. It's in Detroit.
426
427More on NXT. It's going to last all summer as there are 14 weeks of the show left. There is still interest in Daniel Bryan despite the ridiculous booking and long-term the plan is for him to have a match with Miz for the US title. If any of the other guys end up winning they will likely ask for a Unified Tag Title shot with their mentor. Which is going to make David Otunga look like an even bigger moron for walking out on Cena during his Unified Tag Title match.
428
429Speaking of Bryan, he's been sick for weeks and has lost 15 pounds. He noted in his blog that he'd suffered from a weak immune system for most of his life.
430
431Regarding Funaki, apparently he didn't leave WWE because he broke his neck. He did suffer a neck injury but that was over a year ago. I guess they just saw him in the WrestleMania battle royal and realized he was still employed after all these years and there wasn't much to do with him and so that was the end of that. He's already got dates booked in Japan, which was where he first made his name before coming to WWE.
432
433Cena passed his 1,000th day as a world champion last week, which is still an impressive feat in 2010.
434
435That awful NXT this week did an 0.79 and 1.069 million viewers. And believe it or not, that still beat Impact on Monday. Apparently the NXT lead-in did awful numbers because it wasn't on last week and if it's not on this week I'd presume they decided to drop it. Or maybe they tried to convince themselves that airing the replay convinced people to only watch every other week or something.
436
437Linda McMahon has stated that if she is elected to the US Senate she won't accept the $174,000 per year salary. Her spokesman said, "There's an enormous amount of work that needs to be done to get this country back on track beginning with job creation and tightening of government's fiscal belt. Her refusal to take a salary, I think, is an important symbolic gesture that underscores her principles on this." What a noble act from a person who has said she's willing to spend $30 million of her own money on the campaign.
438
439WWE released Tony Atlas. They had zero ideas for him after they got rid of Abraham Washington and his show.
440
441Jericho to WWE.com on his thoughts on being drafted back to Raw: "I've spent most of the year on Smackdown, Raw and NXT, so what's the difference?".
442
443I got the new issue of the WWE comic book in the mail and the main storyline is that HHH and Y2J are KILLED BY TERRORISTS at WrestleMania. The way it's written leads me to believe that they weren't actually killed and will be found miraculously alive in issue three, but still, a great comic book for the youngsters there.
444
445WWE officially paid mid-six figures for the rights to turn John Capouya's excellent book on Gorgeous George into a movie. The movie was Vince's idea, and the story it will tell is that the former George Wagner was nothing until he and his wife came up with the idea for the outlandish, flamboyant Gorgeous George character who then became the precursor to guys like Superstar Billy Graham, Hulk Hogan and the Rock. Vince had previously not wanted to make any movies about wrestlers. This is one of eight other WWE films that the company is all financing and producing in a very short period of time. By shooting them all back to back in Louisiana, with 20- to 25-day shoots, a week of rest, and then right back to work on the next film, they hope to save about $1 million per production.
446
447Matt Hardy is taking a few weeks off house shows to heal up some lingering injuries.
448
449An old lady was booted out of the Johnson City Smackdown show after she got so mad at Punk that she slapped him and told him he wasn't Jesus. Well, she got him there.
450
451
452UFC
453Latest on Jenna and Tito. Apparently they are back together and trying to work it out. After saying she wasn't going to press charges, then she was, she finally decided not to and said they were going to make it work for their little twins. He also backed off on claiming she was addicted to Oxycontin. The new story is that he found two Oxycontin pills and that's how this whole thing exploded, and as it turns out they were old pills, not new, and she wasn't back on drugs. Supposedly he found the pills in her pants pocket, though, and while I guess you don't have to wash your pants every single time you wear them, well, that's a long-ass time without washing your pants. Anyway, she took a drug test the next day in Las Vegas and tested clean for everything. The general feeling among fighters in UFC is that Jenna is out of her mind and they feel bad for Tito. Tito was expected to move back home the day after we went to press.
454
455Mike Brown claims the story about him having issues with his long-time girlfriend and that's why he did so poorly in his fight with Manny Gamburyan aren't true. He said there were issues but they didn't affect his training camp at all.
456
457David Loiseau, who was cut from UFC in April of 2009, was called last week about coming in as a last-minute replacement for Nick Catone in a fight against John Satler on the UFC 113 show in Montreal. He's from Montreal so he'd be a big local star. Well, no sooner should this announcement be made than the Quebec Athletic Commission announced that they were refusing to sanction him due to rumors that he was involved in organized crime. I am not making this up. Loiseau immediately went and talked to the police and had them clear up the fact that he was not, in fact, suspected of such behavior, but by that time it was too late for him to get licensed. It was a real disaster for him as this was his big shot back with the company. But then Vancouver Athletic Commission Chairman Mirko Mladenovic called UFC and said he'd have no problem licensing him, so now it looks like Loiseau will get his next shot back with the company at the UFC 115 show in Vancouver on June 12th.
458
459Final WE -- er, Aldo vs. Faber numbers for last week were 12,555 paid for a $954,635 gate. This was a little less than the company's projections last week.
460
461Ultimate Fighter held up really well for this week for what I thought was an awful show (nothing happened in the house and then the fight was one of the worst ever with two guys who realistically did not belong on the show at all), doing 1.8 million viewers. I can only presume that a lot of casual fans tuned in after hearing about what happened with Tito and Jenna. I know that on our board, there wasn't even a TUF thread so there appears to be less hardcore interest in the show this season and perhaps more casual fan interest due to various things. Last week was up likely due to the tease of Tito punching a hole in the door.
462
463
464TNA
465Jeff Hardy goes back to court on drug charges on May 10th. He has been indicted on charges of trafficking in opium, two counts of possession with intent to sell and deliver a controlled substance, maintaining a place for a controlled substance, and a misdemeanor count of possession of drug paraphernalia.
466
467Dixie Carter announced this week that the company was severing ties with Bubba the Love Sponge after Bubba, real name Todd Clem, 44, ambushed Awesome Kong on the radio and repeatedly called her a "black bitch.” Basically, what happened was that Bubba and this other radio host named Cowhead are friends and do a show on the same station in Tampa. They devised a diabolical plan. First, they worked a feud for three days on the air. Then Cowhead invited Kong to come to the studio and bury Bubba on the air. Unbeknownst to her, it was all a plan, and the idea was that she'd come to the studio and then Bubba would leap out and bury her face-to-face. A SURPRISE face-to-face confrontation, not cowardly at all. Kong ended up moving, though, and couldn't make it to the studio. So she called in, and in the middle of the interview Bubba show up and ambushed her. He went off on her, asking her about the lawsuit she filed. She said she never filed a lawsuit as he well knew. He said her lawyer had said some horrible things about him and called her a "fake bitch." She told him to come meet her face to face and actually gave her address on the air. They then proceeded to start screaming over each other and since they were in studio all you could hear was Bubba ranting and Kong saying something incomprehensible in the background. He called her a little pussy bitch, and the "big fake black bitch that you are." "How color-blind are you, bitch?" Bubba told her to come to his studio tomorrow. "Why don't we sanction something and we can give proceeds to HAITI!" he screamed, then sarcastically started shouting, "HAAAAAAAAAAITI!" He said, "You stupid bitch, I'll kick your ass right now!" at which point she hung up on him. Cowhead actually said they should take a camera and go to her apartment and kick her ass. Seriously, two grown men. Bubba said he wanted a sanctioned live event and he'd send every frikkin dollar to "HAIIIIIIIIIITTIIIIIIIIIIII!" He came off like the world's biggest asshole. After he was fired Bubba then went on his Twitter and went nuts on the fans, writing stuff such as, "Shut the fuck up, mark -- Maybe you should get your GED and stop worrying about men in tights." "You're entire life is pointless. Go back to screwing your sister and watching TNA you white trash simpleton." "Bubba Army, you guys are simply the best. Nobody could ask for better fans. TNA fans are nothing but a bunch of little cowardly cunts." "You love oiled up men in tights. You are a douche nozzle that thinks wrestling is real. Get a fucking life. Go away.” On his radio show Monday Bubba said that Dixie fired him via e-mail, saying the company had zero tolerance for racial insensitivity. That likely stems from the Konnan lawsuit. Bubba went off on her, calling her a "mark bitch" who made stupid decisions based on what online fans wanted. He said TNA was below him (now that he's been fired?) and that the product sucks. Well, it did for a long, long time. He said he was now looking to get an attorney to file charges against Kong for attacking him backstage. He said he couldn't figure out how his comments were racially insensitive when TNA had a character called The Black Pope (not a name they use on TV), a wrestler called Black Machismo, and noted that Awesome Kong was, in fact, called Awesome Kong, which one would conclude was a take-off of King Kong, who was a giant ape. He didn't mention that Kong was Kong before she came to TNA. He also talked about Orlando Jordan's bisexual gimmick and Chelsea dry-humping D'Angelo Dinero, though I have no idea what that has to do with anything. He said Kong told him he could kiss her "black ass" on the radio yet he was the one called racially insensitive. He said this whole thing could affect his friendship with Hulk Hogan because now Hogan was going to have to steer clear of him. He asked if he deserved to be hit three times for his comments about Haiti in January ("fuck Haiti"), and said while he hadn't "mobilized the Bubba Army yet" a full-scale war was now in effect. He tried to claim that the reason he was fired was because of something Kevin Eck wrote in the Baltimore Sun. Yeah, doubtful. He vowed that TNA would "feel the wrath of Bubba" and that he was "not going to go out as the racist bitch" they were portraying him as. Kong responded on Twitter: "Kongfucious says: Karma is a bitch -- named Kong!!!!".
468
469Abyss was announced this week as working TripleMania.
470
471Tara explained her imminent TNA departure on her MySpace: "It appears that I'm winding down at TNA. Unfortunately some organizations 'leak' information to wrestling websites to put their spin on a situation, to make sure they come out in the best light. Not me. I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna put my name on it. And I'm going to stand behind it. I came to TNA last year because I still had a lot of wrestling left in me. I was paid a fraction of what I thought I deserved. But I wanted to show I was still at the top of my game. Now my contract is up in May. I want a modest pay increase. They don't want to pay me what I think is fair. I have no problem going my own way. But about 12 hours after the conversation where we didn't agree on pay, unnamed sources claim that I am hard to work with and that I don't give my best effort. My only response is that TNA made an aggressive effort to re-sign me, among other things saying that they want to build the women's division around me. And I think wrestling fans see, both on TV and at live events, that I always give 100%. I take pride in that. Smearing me on the way out the door is an act of second rate character. I take pride in making my best effort to elevate my own wrestling and the entire TNA Women's Division. If people were rubbed the wrong way in the process, I stand behind my work and my positive intentions. In closing I will say this. In the few weeks that I have left in TNA, I will be the same wrestler that you have seen for the past ten years. After that, I haven't decided if I will stay in wrestling, or finally make the jump to MMA. I do have a lot of irons in the fire. We'll see where life takes me. But wherever that is, there's gonna be competition, and I'm gonna give it my all." And then they still used her on TV despite the fact that the last angle she shot before this tirade involved a brawl with Angelina Love, who hurt her biceps during it and will be out of action for at least a month or more.
472
473Regarding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Wells Fargo, saying they never spoke to him about the need for an umbrella policy, resulting in him having to pay a gigantic out-of-pocket settlement to the family of John Graziano, Wells Fargo last week said they had clear evidence of an attempt to get him such a policy and he turned it down.
474
475Homicide did an interview this week saying he had no faith in anybody in TNA. He said every six to eight months someone would tell him they were going to give him a call about some idea and then they never called. He said there was a lot of political BS going on, and all he knew was he was going to show up, get paid and take care of his family. He said Dixie was in charge but he had no idea who the real boss was. That sounds familiar. He said Hogan did come up and talk to him, asking him where he came from, why his name was Homicide, etc. Homicide said Hogan told him he loved the character, but if he loved it so much he needed to do something about it.
476
477Flair got an endorsement deal for a $5 South Carolina lottery scratch ticket.
478
479
480Strikeforce
481Robbie Lawler's opponent for the June 26th Strikeforce show at the Nokia theatre in California appears to be Renato Babalu Sobral. They wanted him to fight Jason "Mayhem" Miller but have changed their minds because an investigation by Tennessee Athletic Commission executive director Jeffrey Mullen is still ongoing into the post-show brawl on CBS two weeks ago. This Mayhem thing is pissing me off. Miller didn't start the fight. He didn't do anything except get in the ring and ask when he was getting his rematch. Guys do that all the time, and in fact, on the scale of stupid things people do in the cage, this was FAR less stupid than when Gilbert Melendez on the same show was asked if he thought he was the number-one lightweight in the world and he said he figured he was at least in the top three. Miller asked a question. Melendez shoved him. Then Shields shoved him. Then the entire Cesar Gracie camp jumped him and stomped a mudhole in him. The only blows he threw would have been in legitimate self-defense as those dudes were trying to kill him.
482
483Lashley and KJ Noons are also scheduled to fight on that show.
484
485Nick Diaz was going to fight but he's also off all future events until Tennessee makes a decision.
486
487Fedor Emelianenko vs. Fabricio Werdum may headline but that's not official yet.
488
489The show, it should be noted, airs on a Wednesday. It's not a CBS show. We'll see how that night does but I wouldn't have run it on that date. They chose this date because they want to run the show in association with the E3 video game convention. They couldn't run that same week on Saturday? UFC runs a show in association with the Arnold Classic every year and they don't run them on weird days as a result. I don't want to directly compare Strikeforce to TNA because that is totally unfair, but they both make some weird decisions for some weird reasons that somehow seem to make sense only to them.
490
491Kid Yamamoto, one of the biggest mainstream MMA names in all of Japan, was scheduled to do a dark match on the May 15th Strikeforce show in St. Louis. Don't ask me to explain this. Ask the people running TNA, they'd probably be able to explain it much better than I could. DREAM ended up pulling him off the show so that he could fight on the DREAM 14 event on the 29th.
492
493
494Other Wrestling
495At the CMLL show at Arena Mexico on Sunday, Volador Jr. beat Mistico with a small package in the third fall. Mistico was back playing full rudo heel, so I guess he'll be doing that when feuding with Volador and not when he's working with anyone else. Glad CMLL has been paying attention to how well that Randy Orton face turn got over after he went back and forth and back and forth for months. They challenged each other to a mask match and both accepted, though no date has been set.
496
497At the AAA show on April 30 at Plaza de Toros, LA Park challenged La Parka to a match at TripleMania but didn't bother to mention what kind of stipulation he wanted. Last we heard it would be name vs. name. Main was Park & Zorro & A Surprise Luchador (ended up being Nicho el Millonario) over La Parka & Cibernetico & Heavy Metal when Vampiro ran in and helped Zorro's team win (meaning nothing at all was settled in Parka vs. Park).
498
499Hector Garza & Polvora beat Volador Jr. & Delta in the finals of the CMLL Torneo La Gran Alternativa tournament, so Polvora gets the big push up the cards to presumably become a future superstar. This is somewhat surprising in that Delta got the big push last week and was the one who got the rave reviews from fans and reporters. I would assume he gets a huge push as well. Polvora got put over strong, fouling and pinning Volador in the third fall. Somehow this lead to Volador challenging Hector for a singles match. Well, Hector did distract the ref. Main on the show was Mistico & Strong Man & La Mascara & Hijo del Fantasma beating Ultimo Guerrero & Dragon Rojo Jr. & Taichi & Okumura in two straight falls in 11 minutes. Presumably they rushed this because the match started at 11:21, which is the latest people can remember them ever starting a main event at Arena Mexico.
500
501La Parka was battling a respiratory tract infection last week and was in bad shape.
502
503Scorpio Jr. was also hospitalized last week and we didn't get an update on him. He was also having breathing issues.
504
505Super Porky and Hector Garza are set to feud. Garza is supposedly training Porky and has helped him lose 110 pounds (find that hard to believe) but Porky is upset at how hard Hector is riding him and stuff he does in their tag matches. Porky claims Hector is jealous of him and worried that Porky will become the bigger sex symbol of the two. I love Mexico.
506
507Regarding the invasion angle, booker Panico did an interview saying the reason Los Vipers got matches against the CMLL guys was because independents are always welcome in the company and will be given the chance to show whether or not they belong.
508
509Vampiro did a promo saying yes, he was aligned with Dorian Roldan, but that didn't mean he was a member of La Legion and he still hated Konnan and would never lower himself to align with him. He said he was loyal to Dorian because Dorian looked out for him when his father Joaquin didn't want to book him. He said AAA would always be his home and he wanted the AAA that Antonio Pena created to live on, and not the version that Joaquin was pushing.
510
511TMZ ran a weird story last week. Apparently a woman named Gabriela Targos claimed that Joanie "Chyna" Lauer called her on Saturday and asked her to come to her hotel room and hang out. When she got there, Chyna "for no reason" went nuts, attacked her, beat the crap out of her and then threatened to kill her. She escaped and fled to a local diner where she found some cops eating dinner. They took a police report and there must not have been much to it because that's the last that was reported and no arrests were made.
512
513Rock's next film is called Protection and he'll be starring alongside Clive Owen. He plays a mercenary so this is not a family project like, for example, Tooth Fairy.
514
515EVOLVE ran their third show on Saturday night in Rahway, N.J. Most reports said they drew between 150 and 200. They've added a rule where there must be a winner and there are no time limits. Guys can still get counted out of the ring, but if that happens then whoever gets back into the ring first is declared the winner. In the top matches, Chris Hero beat Bobby Fish in a very good match; Brodie Lee beat Gran Akuma, Chris Dickinson and Hallowicked in a four-way Chikara-regulars match when Brodie pinned Dickinson; TJP beat Kyle O'Reilly in a good match with an MMA flavor to it; Jimmy Jacobs beat Brad Allen in a match said to be fine; and Chuck Taylor beat Claudio Castagnoli in the main event. The storyline there is that Chuck wasn't even on the roster on show one and had to win a qualifying match to even get future bouts, and now he's 2-0 and beat a big name in the main event. Show was said to be good and top-to-bottom the wrestling was better than on the earlier shows. Hopefully they sell some DVDs because they're obviously not going to make much money at the gate with indy attendance being the way it is these days. Next Rahway show is September 11th, and their fourth show appears to be taking place in July.
516
517In a follow-up to the Jorge Rivera story last week, he did send an apology to Chikara via e-mail, saying the whole thing was a big misunderstanding and that the real reason Valiente and Turbo weren't there was due to visa issues on their end. Chikara decided they'd heard the "one big understanding" story enough times and aren't going to be doing business with him again. They were really happy that El Oriental figured out what was going on when Jorge tried to talk him out of going, and said the Perros Del Mal guys were upstanding folks who told them they wanted nothing to do with the trouble Jorge was causing. Chikara noted that they'd also lent him $1,400 for gear at one point and that money simply vanished and no new gear was ever seen.
518
519Jushin Liger beat Negro Casas at the New Japan PPV in Fukuoka to win the CMLL Middleweight title.
520
521
522Bryan's Friend Vince's DVD Review, Karaoke Showcase and MORE~!
523
524History of the Intercontinental Championship
525Triple H vs. the Rock. Best two out of three falls, from In Your House: Fully Loaded, July 26, 1998. They came out with DX and the Nation. Hunter (introduced as “Triple H, Hunter Hearst Helmsley”) was such a degenerate that he had a big fancy robe. It was kind of amazing to see what some of these guys looked like 12 years ago, Hunter and Mark Henry in particular. Sgt. Slaughter came down and evicted everyone except Chyna. Those of you who hate the way they blur out the old WWF scratch logo will have to skip this match, because it’s everywhere. They were particularly lazy about it in the corners, blurring the entire corner rather than each individual turnbuckle. It was also on the t-shirt of everyone at ringside, on the referee’s chest, on the ring apron, hanging over the ring from several banners, and there was an enormous one over the entranceway. Rock attacked and Hunter attempted to bump like Mr. Perfect. He failed. Chyna hit a cheap shot and everyone cheered. Wrestling sure was weird in the late ’90s. They brawled up the aisleway and the ref politely did not count them out. Hunter ended up going into the stairs for the heat. Jim Ross noted that Chyna had a “stern and stoic” expression. You don’t say. So they ended up outside the ring for like two minutes straight with no ramifications. Rock did some inconsequential offense until Hunter hit a neckbreaker and made a comeback. Even when he crossed in front of the corners, they left the blurring in. What a half-assed job this was. They traded chops in the corner. Hunter was throwing them left-handed. Then he took his cool corner bump over the ropes to the floor. So they started brawling out there again. They were right in front of the scratch logo, so they threw up random blurry trapezoids to obscure it. Rock took the ref while Mark Henry returned and hit a splash on the floor. Billy Gunn ran down and chased him away, but the damage was done. Lawler said that on this show, Henry had beaten VADER. That’s so wrong. Then Chyna took the ref while Rocky hit a belt shot. What a shitty valet. And that was not the finish here in the first fall. So he went to a chinlock. I do not want to watch three falls of this. They lied there on the mat as the crowd chanted “BORING!” In the introductions for this Grisham noted that these same two men would have some great matches for the WWE title, but some people thought their Intercontinental matches were even better. That was a boldfaced lie. Ross said we were 15 minutes in and nobody had won a fall yet. They brawled on the floor AGAIN. Rock screwed up his floatover DDT but covered it well. It wasn’t the finish either. So it was time for MORE CHINLOCKING! Ross noted that Hunter was being forced to carry the weight of Rock, “the larger athlete.” Yes, Hunter used to be smaller than Rock. Lawler kept talking about a bikini match and Ross noted that he was more interested in that than this encounter. Well, hell, so am I. Wikipedia says Jacqueline defeated Sable by DQ. I assume this is the one where Sable had the handprints on her boobs. Now she’s married to Brock Lesnar. Weird. Anyway, the match aimlessly wandered on. Godfather came down to the ring, but the New Age Outlaws ran down and cut him off. And they all left peacefully. Rock took the ref for like an hour. He flexed. He looked around. He flexed again. He said “DAMMIT!” quite loudly. Finally D-Lo Brown tried to interfere, but Hunter cut him off, only to turn around and eat a Rock Bottom for the pinfall. And thus ends the FIRST FALL. This fucking blows. They opened the second fall by BRAWLING ON THE FLOOR!!! There were children out there telling Rock to suck it. Lawler was appalled. Rock hit the People’s Elbow, but Hunter kicked out. D-Lo climbed on the apron, but Chyna jerked him off. (I am forced to make dirty jokes to amuse myself.) While the ref was distracted, X-Pac ran down and hit Rock with an X Factor. The ref turned and counted, but ROCK KICKED OUT. So Hunter grabbed a chair, then Rock took it away. Hunter ducked and the ref took a MONSTER chairshot to the back. That was vile. With the ref out, Chyna jumped in and hit a low blow and a DDT on the chair. Crowd loved that. That finally ended the second fall. JUST ONE TO GO. So there was a one-minute rest period and both guys were down the entire time. When the bell rang Hunter crawled over and made a cover, but there was no ref. What? Where did he go? He was right there at the end of the last fall. So Earl Hebner ran down and counted, but Rock kicked out. They announced there were two minutes left in the time limit. They BRAWLED ON THE FLOOR more, including Rocky taking a nasty bump off a clothesline on the unpadded walkway. Hunter ran wild some more and hit the pedigree, but then the time limit conveniently expired. They had six wrestlers and a girl interfering, multiple referees, lots of weapon shots and floor brawling, and despite all that smoke and mirrors it was STILL way too long. *1/4, I guess.
526
527Grisham said there were 10 different IC champs in 1999, including such luminaries as Val Venis and D-Lo Brown. And then there was Chyna.
528
529Jeff Jarrett vs. Chyna. A “Good Housekeeping” match from No Mercy, October 17, 1999. Speaking of faces from the past, Jeff had Miss Kitty (the Kat, Stacy Carter) with him. Lawler was quite happy to see her, especially when she bent over and her skirt rose above her thong. Well, that made me happy too. Chyna came out to Hunter’s old song and entrance. They were still lazily blurring the logo, wiping out her entire arm as she held up a pushbroom. She was wearing a thong over pantyhose. I’d forgotten just how lewd the WWF used to be. Chyna beat Jeff up for a while. Mostly she was hitting him with weapon shots, including a salami and a toilet seat. Also, trash cans, a broom, and another broom. She laid him on a table and went for an elbow off the apron, but Jarrett dodged. Chyna landed with her spine straight up and down and almost overshot the table. That would have fucked her up bad. Jeff waylaid her in the head with a trashcan and then hit her with a fish. Yes, a fish. Don’t ask me. Chyna took Hunter’s corner bump to the floor. That scared me, but she pulled it off fine. Jarrett and Kitty put eggs and other stuff into a bowl. Jarrett filled his hands with flour, but Chyna threw it into his face, blinding him. She then dumped the bowl over Kitty’s head, but Jarrett cut her off and hooked the figure-four. Chyna struggled and reached for the ropes. In this match in which every weapon on earth was legal, reaching the ropes meant your opponent had to release the hold. The best part of this was Kitty in the background trying to maintain her dignity while cleaning eggs out of her hair. Chyna cut Jarrett off with a low blow and applied tongs to his scrotum. Then she hit him with pies and the kitchen sink, but Jarrett kicked out. She went for a pedigree into a cake, but Jarrett hit a slingshot, which resulted in a ref bump. Yes, in a match where all weapons are legal, they had to do a ref bump so Jarrett could hit a belt shot. So he did, and made the cover and won. Kitty jumped up and down with joy, adding a full star to my rating. Ref Teddy Long then overruled himself, saying that Jeff could not use the belt because IT WAS NOT A HOUSEHOLD ITEM. Holy FUCK this is stupid. Lawler pointed out that it’s an item in Jeff Jarrett’s household. Jarrett went to put Teddy in the figure-four, but Chyna killed him with a guitar shot and won. This match was dangerous. It was sloppy. It was gimmicky. It was a prime example, maybe the first example, of Vince Russo hating wrestling so much he felt the need to disguise it. It had one of the worst excuses to restart a match I’ve ever seen. And it was still significantly better than the Rock-Hunter match. **1/2. That’s the end of Disc Two, so it cut back to the menu, which included highlights of a lot of IC champs and matches that were not on this disc. Like Marty Jannetty beating Shawn Michaels. Wasn’t that like *****? Why isn’t that on here?.
530
531Grisham opened Disc Three by telling us Chris Jericho defeated Chyna to win the title. He passed over that whole “co-champions” bit. They also showed Kurt Angle winning the European title from Val Venis.
532
533Chris Jericho vs. Kurt Angle. From No Way Out, February 27, 2000. I believe that was an awesome show. Angle cut a prematch promo in an amazingly high-pitched and ungravelly voice. He vowed to win the championship and leave Connecticut like the Hartford Whalers. Chyna came out to be in Jericho’s corner. Were they friends at some point? I’ve completely forgotten. She now had her own entrance song and pyro bazooka. Jericho cut a promo saying Kurt was a jackass, and that his three I’s stood for idiot, imbecile, and ignoramus. He said his I was the Intercontinental title, and it would stay around his waist. I think this was the debut (on this collection, at least) of the new, slimmer belt they’re still using to this day It’s not nearly as cool. The athleticism here was the best on this collection since the Jarrett-Razor match. It was funny to watch Angle. He was still green here, and some things like running the ropes still weren’t natural for him, but he’s such a gifted athlete that he looks better awkward than most guys do at their best. They went back and forth for a bit, then Angle got the heat with a middle-rope belly-to-belly. Jericho fought back and hit his butterfly backbreaker, but Angle cut him off with a German suplex. Jericho hit his facebuster to set up the Lionsault, but Angle forgot the spot and got to his feet. So Jericho gave him a stiff forearm to the face. That was brave. Angle tried a jumping rana (!) but Jericho countered with a double powerbomb (!!!). There is a spot they will never repeat again. Kurt busted out a cross armbreaker, teasing a move into MMA ten years ago, and hit the Angle slam for a nearfall. He went to hit Jericho with the belt, but Jericho ducked and hooked the Boston crab. Angle got the ropes. They brawled on the floor. Angle grabbed his own belt. Chyna tried to cut him off. Jericho ended up shoving Angle into Chyna, who was pushed into the stairs. As the ref was tending to her, Jericho went for the Lionsault, but Angle lifted the belt into his face to win and become Euro-Continental champion. Another ref ran down and they got into an argument, but nothing became of it. Ah, it was nice and refreshing to just see a good wrestling match again. ***1/2.
534
535
536ROH with Bryan's Friend Vince
537Show opened with a video recap of Roderick Strong’s hunt for a one-on-one title match with Tyler Black, which we were told he would receiver THIS SATURDAY in New York.
538
539Joey Ryan vs. Roderick Strong in a Pick 6 match. Ryan was accompanied by Prince Nana and “Ernesto” Osiris. Roderick was wearing green trunks, which I think is the first time I’ve ever seen him in anything other than black. They opened with stalling. Then Ryan punched Roddy a lot. Nobody really cared. So Ryan went to a chinlock. This is not the best match either of these guys have had. Also a strange way to build a contender, by having him get his ass kicked from the opening bell. Crowd finally started chanting “JOEY SUCKS!” as the announcers plugged Chris Daniels’ return at this weekend’s shows. Ryan continued to attack with punches and choking. Five minutes in Strong’s offense had consisted entirely of one chop. Nana interfered for no reason during the heat. Hogewood was outraged by this and pointed out that Ryan didn’t need any help. Roddy finally dodged a corner charge and hit a back suplex and the crowd fired up. He made a comeback until Nana and Osiris interfered. “I do not like what the Embassy has done in this match at all,” said Hogewood. Word. So anyway, Ryan cut Strong off with a low blow and a superkick. He went for the moustache ride, but Strong evaded it. He ducked a second superkick and hooked the Stronghold for the win. So going into his title shot, he got his ass kicked virtually bell to bell and only won because Ryan made one mistake? This perplexed me.
540
541Hogewood and Prazak plugged the New York shows, then they showed highlights of the TV title tournament final. They aired a promo by Edwards after the match. He said he and Davey would always be the American Wolves, and the hunt would never end.
542
543Dark City Fight Club vs. Caleb Cuddly & Pee Wee. I am not making that second team up, although I may be getting Caleb Cuddly’s name wrong. There were no graphics, but that’s what it sounded like. Pee Wee’s gear has a cartoon of a guy giving a wink and an enormous thumb’s up. “I don’t know about those trunks,” said Hogewood, the best announcer in wrestling.” Pee Wee oversold everything, which is hard to do in a squash match. Prazak made some jokes about Pee Wee’s Big Adventure that went miles and miles over Hogewood’s head. DCFC won with a double team that consisted of several powerbombs and neckbreakers. Tyler Durden interviewed them afterwards and pointed out they had not won the tag titles. They said this match proved they were not a second-rate tag team, and they would be the next champions, and they dared anybody to do something about it.
544
545Kings of Wrestling cut a promo backstage. Claudio was wearing his title belt around his waist, over his suit. Awesome. Hero said they had been top contenders for a long time before getting a shot, so they were going to make the Briscoes wait for a rematch. Claudio said the Briscoes were now at the back of the line and would have to fight their way through the pack for another title shot. We then got a Briscoes promo, which is always great news. They demanded a title shot from Jim Cornette. He said if they gave him some time and space, he would make them as happy as he could.
546
547They showed clips of Necro Butcher punching the timekeeper “Giuseppe,” and thus being banned from television.
548
549Colt Cabana hosted The Art Of Wrestling. This week’s guest was Sonjay Dutt. Dutt talked about swaggerism, then told Cabana that his SWAGGA was WACK. He brought in Peter Rosenberg, a New York DJ, to help him give Colt a makeover. The result was basically Colt Cabana dressed up like JTG. This was wacky.
550
551Cornette had a discussion with Necro Butcher. He told Necro he was an insurance liability and a PR nightmare, and he couldn’t risk injury to fans to TV crew or anything. He said he was willing to lift Necro’s suspension, if Necro could agree to leave his matches inside the barricade. He said all of Necro’s matches would be under BUTCHER’S RULES, and anything would go within the confines of the ringside area. Necro accepted this offer.
552
553Austin Aries cut a promo about ROH’s first year on HDNet. Jeez, it’s been a year already? He said when they started they didn’t know how long they would last, and then A-DOUBLE showed up and everyone started watching. He said he had his own television camera. “Look at this,” he said, showing a camera, “the Digi Super 75SX.” He said they tried to shoot him in a Digi Super 45, but it couldn’t capture his glory, so they had to upgrade. He said the camera guy had to train for six weeks how to shoot Austin. They panned over to the camera guy, who was just some HDNet lackey who had no idea what to make of this goofiness. He bragged about his accomplishments, winning two world titles and beating legends like Jushin Liger. He said he wouldn’t be like Tyler Black and Roderick Strong, getting up title shot after title shot until he finally won once. He said he had gotten his shot, it hadn’t worked out, and now he was setting new goals. He said he wasn’t world champion, but he was still the most important thing in ROH, and the reason we would tune in each week. This was tremendous stuff.
554
555Necro Butcher vs. Robby Wolf. Butcher came out with a chair and opened the match by throwing it into Wolf’s gut. Good times. He went to work outside, pulling up the pretty black mats and hitting a chair-assisted bodyslam on the concrete floor. He wrapped a chair around Wolf’s neck and through him into the post. In the ring, he threw some chops and very slow punches. He used more plunder outside the ring. Even Hogewood was calling for mercy here. Necro set up two chairs back-to-back in the ring and dropped Wolf on them for the pin.
556
557They plugged a Pick 6 contender series battle royal for next week featuring Rhett Titus, Joey Ryan, Austin Aries, Jerry Lynn, Eddie Kingston and Rasche Brown. They said the winner would replace Claudio in the Pick 6, since Claudio was now competing in the tag team division.
558
559Tyler Black cut a promo backstage. He said that he had been friends with Roddy, but now he didn’t know him. He hoped that after the title match they could find a way to be friends again, but if not, he could live with that, because he would do whatever he had to to retain his title.
560
561Austin Aries vs.Delirious in a Pick 6 match. We were treated to A-DOUBLE CAM, shot in HD on the Digi Super 75SX. Aries went after the mask early but got his fingers bitten for his troubles. Kenny King tripped Delirious, so Daizee Haze tripped Aries. Delirous hit a tope onto King and Aries, and he almost went right between them into the fans. He hit King with a fan’s hat, and when King recovered he just put the hat on. Sucks to be the fan. Aries worked Delirious over and went for the brainbuster, but Delirious escaped. Delirious hit a cobra clutch suplex. That scared. I meant to type “that scared me,” but somehow “that scared” just says it all. Delirious escaped another brainbuster, but Aries hit the Ric Flair kneebuster and then dropped Delirious right on his head. Delirious made a comeback but missed shadows over hell. Aries followed with a kick to the throat. The ref stepped in. A second ref hit the ring, then Daizee, then the doctor and Cornette and other officials. Then they all just left. Aries laid out Daizee with an axehandle to the back, then King held Delirious’ throat over the guardrail and Aries hit an axehandle from the top rope. THEY’RE REDOING THE SAVAGE-STEAMBOAT ANGLE! Jerry Lynn ran down with a chair to make the save. So Delirious is playing Ricky Steamboat while Jerry Lynn is playing George Steele. That seems, um, backwards. Show ended with the building quiet, except for one fan who was cursing very loudly.
562
563
564Bryan's TV Reviews
565
566NXT
567We got a WINK MARTINDALE reference from Michael Cole here in 2010. I remember Wink from Tic Tac Dough when I was six years old and refused to go to school functions because I wanted to watch that show. They introduced all the guys. Bryan got the WWE generic short haircut. He looks more and more annoyed with this bullshit every week. Stryker said tonight they were going to test their likeability and salesmanship by having them go into the crowd and sell WWE merchandise, and whoever sold the most was the winner. Skip was given WWE programs and change, and was told to sell them for $15. He went to sell. Nobody wanted to buy. He found two totally desperate kids. This was death TV. Someone offered a dollar and he refused to take it. What an idiot. He made $60. Thankfully they went right to a match as opposed to showing eight of these hideous segments in a row.
568
569Heath Slater & Christian vs. Chris Jericho & Wade Barrett. Jericho worked over Christian and Slater of all people got the hot tag. He ran wild on Y2J and it broke down into a four-way. Jericho did a dive onto Barrett. Slater tried another small package on Jericho but Jericho kicked out and then hit the codebreaker for the pin. Just so everyone knows last week's upset was a total fluke and the rookies don't get over. Because, you know, why would you want new guys to get over on this show?.
570
571It was Daniel Bryan's turn to sell shit. Daniel said he wasn't exactly a capitalist, so he proceeded to give away all the stuff. People liked that. Cole said he must be a Communist. The best part was that Cole, who tries every week to claim that Daniel has no charisma, was howling with laughter as he was giving the stuff away. When he was over, Cole said, "Ladies and gentleman, this guy is an absolute tool." His delivery here was phenomenal, I have to say. This segment enjoyed.
572
573Carlito was shown chewing Tarver out backstage. He told him to carry his bags. Tarver was appalled. Well, he acted appalled. Don't know what he really was.
574
575Justin Gabriel was next. People were actually buying from him. The guy is very likeable. So likeable that he sold 22 programs, putting him far in the lead. Christ, hire that guy for the merchandising department.
576
577Michael Tarver vs. Darren Young in a battle of losers. This wasn't much. They cut to Luke Gallows outside and a human being could not look more bored. Carlito was at least pretending like he was watching the match. Gallows tripped up Tarver and Darren did his goofy finisher for the pin. Someone held up a giant sign that read "FAIL!" That about says it all.
578
579Otunga was up next. He had to beat $210. How does 22 programs times $15 come out to $210? Otunga had a bunch of kids acting as personal assistants to help him sell his stuff. A street team so to speak.
580
581They did a deal on Gabriel and pretty much everyone put him over. Punk did take the opportunity to bury Matt Hardy, saying he couldn't teach Gabriel a thing about wrestling but he could probably teach him something about Facebook and Twitter. I howled.
582
583Truth was trying to tell Otunga how he fucked up his match last week. Otunga said that was all well and good but all Truth had to do was grab his hands on the sunset flip and he'd have been fine. Truth said he didn't play that, and if Otunga couldn't roll with the big dogs he needed to stay home.
584
585Heath Slater was next. He didn't beat Otunga's $315. Darren went next. Another fail. He was begging people to help him out. They just looked at him. Stryker announced that he'd lost before even counting the money. I call shenanigans on this fucking contest. This was the worst TV in history. Tarver was next. He was all pissed off about losing to Darren and quit. They showed him quitting for 60 seconds. THIS SHOW FUCKING SUCKS. Wade also quit, but he took the money with him when he left. So he quit and was a thief. Cole said to stay tuned for the winner. I thought they already told us it was Otunga.
586
587So yeah, the winner was Otunga.
588
589The pros talked about Daniel Bryan. They all put him over except Miz of course. This show is so goofy, because we're supposed to think it's real but here are all these pros raving about a guy and saying he's far and away number one and meanwhile he loses every single match every week, sometimes in a minute.
590
591Otunga challenged his own mentor, R-Truth, for next week. He said it was time the student beat the Teacher.
592
593Miz vs. Skip Sheffield was scheduled to be the main event but his face and jaw were all fucked up from Show punching him the night before. I'm sure some of it was make-up but his face was also swollen and it's hard to fake that. He demanded Daniel do the match. So of course Sheffield beat him in like a minute. Daniel did look good for the minute before he was beaten, hitting a bunch of hard kicks and trying an ankle lock. Sheffield finally clotheslined and hit him with a wacky jawbreaker for the pin. This show is so lame.
594
595
596Smackdown
597A happy Teddy Long came out to talk about how successful Smackdown had been in the draft. This has to be put Teddy high in the running for the most positive guy in the business today. He introduced the newest draftee Kofi Kingston. They were so happy together. Chris Jericho then came out. He was drafted to Raw Monday. Here he was on Smackdown. He proceeded to do his usual farewell promo that I think we've seen a dozen times in the last year. He said the fans could boo all they wanted but there would be an empty hole in their lives on Friday from now on. He's right about that. He told everyone to move on with their lives. He should moderate our board. Kofi told him to shut up. A troll. Kofi vs. Jericho. Jericho powerbombed him out of the corner and they immediately went to commercial. They had a pretty fun match. Kofi went for the wacky kick but Jericho caught the leg and put him in the walls. Great spot. Kofi got the ropes. Jericho hit the codebreaker but Kofi fell outside. Jericho threw him back in but Kofi kicked out. Jericho taunted him and told him to get up, so Kofi jumped up and gave him the wacky kick for the pin. Yeah, Kofi beat the guy on his way out. Smackdown is quickly going to become my favorite WWE show.
598
599Swagger did a promo about how he want to the Rose Bowl and then got to spend time with the greatest president ever, George Bush. This was LOLworthy.
600
601Jericho was shown backstage bitching someone out, telling him he should have known better than to leave him, just like he'd warned. Suddenly, a huge fist flew into the screen and it was Big Show punching him out. Well, Jericho left in style.
602
603Chavo did a promo saying it was true and we didn't need to adjust our sets, he was back on Smackdown. He said there were now two Guerreros on Smackdown, himself and Vickie, and they were like THIS. Kane vs. Chavo. Kane chokeslammed him immediately and then said "WELCOME TO SMACKDOWN~!".
604
605Shad alerted us that it was no longer Cryme Tyme, it was HIS TIME.
606
607John Morrison vs. Cody Rhodes in his Smackdown debut. Crowd didn't seem all that into Cody but they chanted "MORRISON!" Cody has clearly been watching his Ric Flair tapes as he's stolen the knee drop to the forehead and the multiple short punches to the head. Also, no kneepads. He missed a second knee and Morrison made his comeback. Morrison hit the springboard kick but Cody kicked out. They noted this was Morrison's last match before going to Raw. I'd completely forgotten he was drafted. They traded nearfalls. Morrison hit the running knee but Cody got the ropes. He finally hit the crossroads for the clean pin. Wow, guys are actually doing jobs on the way out. Match wasn't bad but it just didn't click like it probably should have.
608
609Swagger had another note for us. He said he lead the Oklahoma Sooners to three national championships. Then they cut away. Who is writing these things for him, Matt Stryker?.
610
611Edge came out to do his goodbye promo. He said unfortunately this Monday he was drafted to Raw. To be honest, he said, he didn't want to go. He said Smackdown had always felt like it was his show, his home, and the people felt like his family. Through all of his injuries, his trials, his tribulations, the people had supported him when he probably didn't deserve it. Their support, he said, got him back as quickly as he did from his Achilles tendon injury. He said he wanted to come back and tell everyone from the bottom of his heart that he loved them. Christian's music hit. Edge said wow, Christian, my best friend! Christian said that's right, we've been friends since childhood, we came up together in WWE, we won titles together, and as a result I know you better than anyone, probably better than you know yourself. And, he said, he knew that every word that came out of Edge's mouth before he came out here was a load of crap. Christian said that Edge had an amazing career and come back from several near-career-ending injuries and the fans respected him. But the problem was that Edge never really respected them back. He did what he always did, use them to get what he wanted. Edge said this wasn't about him, this was about Christian. He said he'd won the title nine different times, and Christian never had. "I've never been World Champion," Christian said. "Yet." Yay ECW Title. He said Edge was just trying to change the subject, so what he was going to do was look Edge in the eyes right now and tell him to his face what he really was: "YOU ARE A LIAR!" Edge said Christian was right, he was a master psychologist, he played the crowd like they were marks and he loved every second of it. Christian said ever since he'd returned people had been asking when they were going to see Edge and Christian reunite. But then it dawned on him, after all these years, that Edge had used him too, used him to get to the top. He said when he first came back he thought that was a possibility. But, he said, he didn't want to see Edge and Christian anymore -- he wanted to see Edge versus Christian right here, right now. Edge took off his jacket like he was going to fight, but then said "No!" and started to walk out. But then he turned and jumped Christian from behind. He went for the spear but Christian kicked him and they had a pullapart. Christian went for the killswitch but Edge escaped and bailed outside. Christian said he had a better chant than "SPEAR!" He did a horrible rendition of the goodbye song. I mean, awful. So we don't get the match? That sucks.
612
613Josh interviewed Edge and wanted to know if they were ever going to see a match with him and Christian. Edge said it would be bad news for Christian if they did. As he walked off he ran into Show. Show said yeah, it was too bad we weren't ever going to see that match, and also too bad the people weren't going to see Show vs. Edge. Then he punched him out.
614
615Michelle & Layla vs. Beth & Kelly's New Boobs. Kelly ran wild on Michelle early until Vickie cut her off outside. VICKIE. What a monumental collision that was. This match SO fucking sucked. Beth finally got the hot tag and nearly killed poor Layla. She hit a slingshot suplex and then tagged in Kelly, who hit her leaping legdrop thingy for the pin. That's the best finisher they can come up with for her? She's going to kill someone or herself.
616
617Swagger did another goofy promo. I wasn't even listening at this point.
618
619THE MASTERPIECE CHRIS MASTERS IS BACK. He looked sternly at the camera and danced his pecs. Cried with laughter, I did.
620
621Dolph Ziggler came out and cut a boring promo about how he'd beaten up the midget after the midget beat him via count out. He said he'd put him to sleep and now he was in leprechaun heaven. And that was that.
622
623Matt did a promo about how Drew had hit him in the head and messed him up both physically and psychologically, but he'd never quit, he'd never give up. Drew rushed in and laid him out with a shot from behind, then gave him the underhook DDT on the floor.
624
625JTG did an ’80s-style studio promo. Not quite sure what he said but I think he wants to win some titles.
626
627Punk came out and did a promo gloating about how he'd kept his hair at the PPV Sunday. He was talking about how he'd done this by being straight-edge when suddenly MVP's music hit. "I WAS TALKING!" Punk noted. MVP said he was BACK! People kind of cared. MVP apologized for everyone having to listen to this douchebag. He told Punk to do the people a favor and shut up. Of course, the heels jumped him and were stomping a mudhole in him when Rey made the save. It was a great save. Gallows ended up saving Punk to set up the tag match. Gallows & Punk vs. MVP & Rey. Heat on the little fellow. It was fine. MVP made a big comeback on Gallows. This actually killed the crowd. They loved Rey and they hate Punk but they don't give a shit about the other two and so this was the worst two guys to put together for the comeback. Rey hit the 619 on Gallows and MVP hit basically a downward spiral for the pin. Great, another guy using that move for a finisher. The masked guy ran in after the match and laid out Rey as MVP was busy celebrating. Stryker noted the guy was wearing a Straight Edge Society sweatshirt.
628
629More Swagger stats.
630
631Swagger came out with his title for the final segment. He started to speak and the people booed like crazy. I couldn't believe this heat. Apparently he couldn't either because he was trying so hard to not smile and did all right until he got to talking about how he became an Eagle Scout and the people were seemingly getting ready to riot. He rattled off all of his achievements, then said his crown jewel was when he won the World Heavyweight Title. He said when he won it 30 days ago he sat down with his father for another man-to-man talk, and his father told him, "Son, I told you so. I told you so!" Because his father, you see, had told him when he was a little boy that someday he'd be the best. He vowed to be champion until he retired. Suddenly, out came Teddy Long. He said he wanted to introduce the world to the new number-one contender: Big Show. He did some comedy, and thankfully he's a funny guy, then got serious and punched Swagger out. And that was the end of that. Show kind of fell off in hour two, but this was fine professional wrestling television.
632
633
634Impact
635Show opened with Flair and Bischoff in a limo. Hogan said Flair was going to shit when he found out who Hogan was going to give the Hall of Fame ring to. Bischoff said what are we going to do about Sting? Hogan said he was ready for this and Bischoff needed to just hold on for the ride.
636
637Show has a brand new open. Or I just noticed it.
638
639Taz and Tenay opened up the show. Tenay said they had huge news right off the top. He said earlier today Dixie Carter made the following announcement: Based on the feedback they'd been receiving, TNA had listened to the fans and was moving Impact back home to Thursday night's on Spike TV beginning May the 13th. Yeah. The CLAMORING from fans. Also, TNA Reaction will be starting soon in the 7-8 time slot. They didn't say when it was going to start but it won't be until June 24th. They pushed this like it was great news. Well, it is great news. Maybe they'll survive now.
640
641Jay Lethal came down to Ric Flair's theme sporting the Hall of Fame ring. He did a Flair impersonation. It wasn't quite as good as the Randy Savage impersonation but it was pretty fucking awesome. People were going "WHOO!" and such. He did all the mannerisms, catch-phrases etc. Flair finally came out, irate. Fans chanted "DOUBLE VISION!" Flair told Lethal that as it regarded this business Lethal was standing in front of GOD right now. He stomped on Machismo's glasses and started taking his clothes off. Machismo said if this was about the ring, here, he could have it back. People were booing. He said he meant no disrespect, he'd just always wanted to do that. He said he'd always wanted to be Flair, even if it was just for two minutes. He said he was going to take this footage and frame it and hang it on the wall. How is he going to do that? He totally put over Flair like he was the greatest of all time. People were standing and applauding. What is going on? Flair said thanks for giving him the ring back. Yes, all that stuff they did last week with Abyss vs. Flair in the ring vs. ring match and Flair got the ring back in the very first segment of the next show. Flair said that still wasn't enough and started slapping him around. He went into full CRAZY FLAIR mode. Machismo finally slapped him back and they got into a huge brawl. I'm still not sure what was going on at the beginning of this segment. Machismo gave him a backdrop and put on the figure four but Nigel, Beer Money and AJ all hit the ring and stomped a mudhole in him. Abyss waddled down to make the save, followed by Team 3-D. Heels took over until RVD finally ran down. He had a chair so everyone got out of their fast before he could start swinging. Back in the limo, Hogan got a call and then said "OH MY GOD, MACHISMO IS BEING AN IDIOT!" They turned around to head back to the Impact Zone. Why were they leaving?.
642
643After commercial RVD told the heels to get back into the ring for a fair fight. Flair sent his troops back there. They fought all over the place forever. The babyfaces had the advantage. Then the heels did. Then the babyfaces did. Back and forth. Hogan finally stormed out and started throwing punches at the heels. He was beating up everyone by himself. Awesome. They bumped all over the place like crazy. Hogan was finally in the ring with Flair. They did all their spots and Hogan sent him packing. They went to commercial and came back and the riot was still going on. This was 30 minutes of the show right here. Hogan did a promo saying he wasn't mad about this, but the TNA fans wanted action, brother. He said even if he didn't like Desmond, he was going to put him in an action-packed match tonight -- versus RVD for the title. He didn't mention the poll on the website so this made no sense if you didn't know about that. He also signed AJ vs. Abyss in a Monster's Ball match. He didn't explain what that meant either. Also, he said, he was signing Machine Guns vs. Beer Money vs. 3-D.
644
645They showed Sting in the rafters.
646
647Another commercial.
648
649Beautiful People were bebopping backstage. They were talking about their match tonight where, once again, they're doing a tag match with all the belts on the line. Get rid of Russo for FUCK sake.
650
651The ring announcer introduced us to London & Kendrick, "the first team". The first team in what? No explanation. Douglas complained that he'd been stripped of the title due to a volcano. He was nice enough to explain that this was, in fact, a tag match that was about to start. He was wearing the X belt, and said if Frankie wanted it he'd have to beat him for it at the PPV. Since this is TNA I presume Douglas beats him. Jesse & Shannon vs. Douglas & Kendrick. Neal isn't bad when they just let him wrestle. Better than he should be given his experience level. Morgan was doing commentary and he said he was giving Hogan seven days to reveal who his tag partner was going to be at Sacrifice, otherwise there was trouble. Are they unaware that there is no new Impact for 10 days? Shannon made a hot tag on Kendrick, then Jesse tagged in and speared Kendrick for the pin. Kendrick went after Doug afterwards but Joe came down and killed both of them. He tossed Kendrick back into the ring and hit the muscle buster. What message is this sending about the X-Division except that the guys in it all suck? Tenay said we still didn't know who was behind that abduction several months ago. Yes, that storyline lives on. He grabbed the mic, but then threw it down and walked off.
652
653Flair kicked out Borash and then started yelling at his guys. He said five dudes just kicked their ass again. AJ said he didn't appreciate being in a hardcore match. Flair told AJ he was a racehorse and needed to go out there and kick that elephant's ass. He bitched out Beer Money for not having won the titles yet. He said if they thought they were the best they needed to prove it and stop drinking so much. He told Nigel he needed to get it together or he'd be torn apart by RVD. He said he hoped he was giving it to Chelsea better than he was giving it to him.
654
655Hogan did a promo backstage. He said he didn't expect to walk into TNA and have everything go awry. Should have been paying more attention. He said he needed to find out what was up with the guy with the black bat.
656
657Announcers built up the show. Tenay plugged Monster's Ball. Again, neither guy explained what this match was. Taz finally explained that the fans had voted on TNA.com (it's actually TNAwrestling.com) and that's how Desmond got his title shot.
658
659TO THE BACK! Mr. Anderson and Pope were brawling backstage. Pope looked like he could still barely move. Anderson rammed a box into him repeatedly, apparently killing him.
660
661Anderson came out wearing a frock and Pope's glasses. He said he had a great sermon prepared but as his music hit he had an epiphany. His epiphany was that he wasn't going to heaven but would rather burn in hell. Jeff Hardy came out. He did a promo about how the congregation and the creatures of the night were one and the same. He said Pope wasn't going to be able to compete tonight, next week or at Sacrifice thanks to Anderson. Jeff determined that by what happened five minutes earlier. He challenged Anderson to a match at the PPV. He better hope he can make it. Anderson was as ungodly annoying as ever. He said he had something going on that night and couldn't do it. He did have one funny line where he said he was sick of Jeff and all the sinners. He tried to attack him but Hardy booted him in the gut and laid him out with a twist of fate. He ripped off the frock and Anderson was wearing a pair of trunks that said "SPEAK INTO" on the ass and "THE MIC" over his cock. Get it? Jeff then manipulated his mouth like he was Charlie McCarthy and had Kennedy announce that he would, in fact, face Jeff at the PPV. Jeff's closing promo was at least good.
662
663Beautiful People vs. Tara & Taylor & Sarita with all of the titles on the line. Yes, they put Tara back on TV after she buried the company online. She couldn't get along with her partners. You know, because that's what they do in TNA, not get along. They got into a fight with each other. BP's then pinned Sarita as Tara and Taylor were brawling. This about sucked in every conceivable way.
664
665Tara flipped out backstage saying she'd worked her ass off and nobody respected her at all. She said she only got respect when she was champion. She challenged Madison to a match at the PPV. Christy said you haven't won a lot of matches lately so why would they grant that match? Same reason anyone gets a title match in TNA -- just because. Tara said if Madison would accept she'd put her career on the line. Trivia fact. Even though she has been in the company since January of 2009 and is the current Women's champion, Madison Rayne has NEVER WON A SINGLES MATCH IN TNA. I am not making this up. And you wonder why people say this show is stupid. So beating Tara for her career would be her first.
666
667Beer Money vs. Machine Guns vs. 3-D. Fun match. Beer Money did their "BEER MONEY!" deal and now the fans add "SUCKS!" LOL. Bubba made the hot tag and ran wild. Suddenly, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall SNUCK DOWN TO THE RING. This was a DQ. They were not sneaky enough. They went right after 3-D for killing their friend. The announcers said Syxx-Pac's beating was so severe he might never return to TNA. Apparently they found legit health problems when he was trying to get licensed for the last PPV, so that might be true. Eric Young ran down next and wacked the babyfaces with a cane. Didn't Nash turn on him last month? Guns beat him up and hit a move on Hall, but then Nash made the save and Beer Money beat them up. Announcers had no idea what the fuck was going on with Eric. Join the club. This was stupid.
668
669Orlando Jordan, who they thankfully named this week, was doing his O-Zone interview segment. His catch phrase is, "Don't worry, it'll be our little secret." Lovely. His first guest was Rob Terry. Actually, a Rob Terry cutout. They cut to a shot of the announcers. Tenay looked completely bored and Taz just stared into the camera for awhile, then smiled as they cut away. Only in TNA. Orlando was cutting a promo on the cutout talking about how amazing it was. Fans were hating this, and it was not good hate. They wanted this to end immediately. It just kept going. Orlando said the cutout fantasized about him. The real Rob Terry finally came out, beat up the cutout of himself, threw Orlando onto the couch and then told him, "DON'T MAKE ME COME BACK!" He was about to leave when Jordan attacked him and put the boots to him. He choked him out with a chain and left him laying, then dropped what appeared to be a very heavy flower-pot on him. What a feud this is going to be. They plugged Monster's Ball again, and still no explanation of the rules. This is awesome. AJ vs. Abyss. Penzer finally, when introducing both guys, said it was no DQ and weapons were not only legal "but encouraged". They had a pretty good match. AJ kicked out of the shock treatment so Abyss spread out the tacks. Flair and Chelsea rushed down to ringside. Chelsea had a coat on and Flair was telling her to take it off. Abyss tried to protect her, allowing AJ to hit him from behind. AJ ended up hitting him in the gut with brass knux (how would that hurt Abyss?) and then gave him a springboard high cross into the tacks for the pin. Chelsea then revealed she'd been in on the ruse.
670
671RVD vs. Desmond. This was revenge for all the fans that voted for Desmond in the poll that TNA created that allowed people to stuff the ballot box by voting as many times as they wanted. First, he got no entrance. Then, this went like 4 minutes and then RVD pinned him clean with the frog splash. Nigel did get some offense in early, but came off looking like a geek in the end. This made Chelsea sad. AJ then ran down and laid out RVD with a flying forearm. AJ said he was cashing in his rematch at Sacrifice. Crowd chanted "AJ SUCKS!" After this match they put up a new poll to determine who would get a title shot next time and Desmond is running away with it again. Fucking hilarious. Not like they don't deserve everything they get with this stupid idea.
672
673Backstage, Hogan found Jarrett down. "Oh man, Sting just knocked the hell out of me! Oh geez!".
674
675Hogan came out to end the show. He said when he first came to TNA he knew what he was in for -- total nonstop action and great talent. But he had no idea that the guy he was going to count on the most, Sting, was going to be the one to change. He called Sting out. He said he knew who Sting was and what he was all about, but then said he didn't know what he was all about and wanted him to fill him in. Sting said he couldn't wait to tell him. TNA made him tick, he said. Hell of a heel here. "TNA!" the fans chanted. Sting said his agenda was the same today as it was five years ago -- and then my DVR cut out. Apparently the deal ended with Jarrett coming out and attacking Sting to set up a match at the PPV. Maybe I'll watch Thursday's replay. Doubtful.
676
677
678Raw
679Show opened with my favorite wrestler, Big Dave Batista, coming down to the ring. Dave said last week he became the number-one contender again but what should have happened is that he should have become the champion. He wanted to know if people even knew what a last man standing match was. He said of course they didn't, so he was going to explain it very slowly so that they could understand it. "A last man standing match is, now pay attention, pay attention, when you beat your opponent so brutally and so decisively that he is unable to stand before the count of ten -- can you count to ten? That is not what happened last week, I did not lose, I'm going to show you exactly what happened." They showed clips of Cena taping his feet up. Cole called his ingenious. Cole and Russo, two peas in a pod. He said this was by far the most embarrassing moment of Cena's career. No, no, he said, that was the most embarrassing moment of Cena's LIFE. To stoop that low, he said. "DUCT TAPE, ARE YOU SERIOUS, REALLY? DUCT TAPE? THAT'S SOMETHING HORNSWAGGLE WOULD DO!" And what do we have tonight, he asked? MORE GAMES. He said there would be a beat the clock match tonight with Cena with the winner getting to choose the stips for the PPV. He said his match was Miz. MIZ? The fuck sense does that make? Sheamus came out instead. My other favorite wrestler. He said if they were talking about pathetic, what was pathetic was Dave losing and then getting another shot at the next PPV. Unlike you, he said, I actually won my match at Extreme Rules, and not only that I did something you wanted to do but never could. "I took out Triple H!" He said maybe that was the problem. Maybe the reason he didn't get a shot at the next PPV was because he took out the son-in-law. What he did know was that he deserved to be in that title match, not Dave. He said if Dave wanted to fight like a man they could fight like men one-on-one tonight. If you win, he said, I'll shut up and walk away. If I win, I get what's rightfully mine, John Cena at Over the Limit for the title. Dave said he had his chance and he blew it. "You lost, I won, get over it!" Sheamus said he never got pinned. "YOU LOST!" Dave thundered. He told him to hit the bricks, he had a match to win. "IN OTHER WORDS, GET OUT OF MY RING!" Sheamus said if Dave thought for one second this was over, he was wrong. He said he would be WWE Champion again and it would be sooner than Dave thought. After commercial Miz came out and said there was nothing he'd like more than to face Dave right now and prove that he was a deserving US Champion. Unfortunately, he said, the trauma to his face after Big Show punched him wouldn't allow him to do that. He said he had a doctor's note to prove it. It was a note that read, and I quote, "DOCTOR'S NOTE". The announcers were cackling. He said Dave would have to find someone else to compete. "Lucky for you, though, I have just the guy." Poor Daniel. Miz told him to try not to get pinned in 30 seconds. Daniel grabbed the mic and said he was sick of this. He said he'd do Miz one better and make Batista tap out. Dave found this hilarious. Dave vs. Bryan in a beat the clock match. Dave went right for the powerbomb but Daniel turned it into a sunset flip for a nearfall. He went for an ankle lock but Dave slid outside. Daniel kept fighting back with desperation submission attempts, including a rear-naked choke and a guillotine. There was the most awesome moment every when Daniel put him in an UMA PLATA with a crossface and the place went fucking nuts thinking there would be a submission. I am not making this up. Batista finally speared him out of his boots and hit the bomb for the pin. This was great. Match went 5:06. Batista gave him two extra powerbombs for good measure.
680
681Eve was doing a photo shoot when Wayne Brady walked up. He said he loved WWE and Eve was his favorite wrestler. Jillian walked up and said she'd sing his song tonight. She started signing and he danced with her until he danced her out the door. After he left, Maryse rushed in and hit her with the belt and put her through the backdrop.
682
683Edge was bragging to a stagehand and telling him what footage he wanted for his Cutting Edge deal tonight. This dude was telling him he didn't know if they could use that stuff. Why not? Josh walked up and asked if Edge thought Orton was going to try something dangerous. Edge said WWE was PG lately but he was RATED R. I see, that's why he can't use that stuff. It's not PG-rated. He said it was time to start an era of controversy again.
684
685Ted Jr. came out and did a promo. He said you'd think a guy like Truth from the streets would relish the opportunity to never have to worry about cash again. He said Truth made money now, but what was he going to do after WWE? Sing? "He's only got one song and it's terrible!" He said he WAS going to hire a personal associate and his first job would be to help him slap some sense into this wannabe rapper.
686
687DiBiase vs. Morrison. Morrison ran wild immediately and so DiBiase walked out. Morrison grabbed the mic and said that wasn't the way "THE MONDAY NIGHT DELIGHT JOHN MORRISON" is going to debut on Raw. He wanted it restarted right here, right now. I could not have written a more generic promo. DiBiase kept walking. Morrison said listen, let's keep going, and if I lose I'll be your Virgil! This spoke to DiBiase. They actually had a pretty damn good match. Morrison made a comeback but DiBiase cut him off and went for the dream street. Morrison ran up the corner and kicked off, landing in pinning position. DiBiase went after him post-match but Truth ran down and made the save. Fun stuff.
688
689John Cena vs. Chris Jericho Beat the Clock. Jericho came out on the ramp before the match and said he wasn't going to pull himself out of this match with a flimsy excuse like the one Miz came up with, even though he'd also been KO'd by the 500-pound behemoth. He said he didn't need the ego boost of beating Cena again, but he'd hand-picked an opponent who had been begging to humiliate Cena for a long time. It was WADE BARRETT. The time to beat was 5:06. Cena did his goofy mat-wrestling shooter gimmick early. He threw Barrett over the top onto Jericho and the people went nuts. That was hilarious. Cena made a big comeback with 1:48 left but Barrett booted him in the jaw. Barrett is still kind of green but he did all right here. Cena put him in the STFU with 35 seconds left. Barrett tapped at the 28 second mark. Shouldn't Batista want to kill Jericho now? So yes, the babyface gets to choose the stip going into the PPV. TNA Booking Alert â„¢. Cena was about to announce the PPV stip when Sheamus ran in and booted him to death. At least they're making us wait for it.
690
691Maryse vs. Nikki Bella. Nikki did a FLYING MARE early. Awesome. She's put on some weight and is noticeably heavier than her twin. Maryse killed her with a DDT for the pin quickly. Maryse said something in French afterwards, then translated by saying she wanted to show us her newest photo shoot, "Maryse, The Sexiest of Sexy!" It was shots of her posing with an unconscious Eve. So then who should hit the ring but Eve, totally healed. Well that was dumb.
692
693ZACH RYDER was in the ring. Gail and Alicia were at ringside. He said the biggest news coming out of the Draft was that he was still on Raw. He said he was single and ready to mingle (since Rosa got sent to Smackdown) and that's why the girls were at ringside, to watch him kick ass. He said he beat Primo on Superstars and was going to do it again here. Suddenly, who should appear on the big screen but Wayne Brady. He said he had a better opponent -- Mark Henry. This went way too long, and by way too long I mean 2 minutes. Henry won clean with the world's strongest slam. Gail shook her head and giggled and Alicia was APPALLED. They left with Henry. So is Alicia a babyface now?.
694
695Jericho and Miz were talking about how horrible Big Show was for punching him. They agreed they had both carried him and brought him back to prominence. Miz said there's nothing we can do about it, he's on Smackdown now. Jericho was like, as if. He said he had an idea.
696
697Koslov did a promo with Wayne backstage. He said he was glad he was not foolish like MacGruber and had given him competition tonight. Santino walked up and asked to be Koslov's tag team partner. Regal walked up and told Koslov to ignore Santino because they had a match to prepare for. After everyone left, Goldust walked in. Brady had no idea what to make of him. This was our usual really stupid segment. At least it was short.
698
699Harts vs. Regal & Koslov. Jericho and Miz were out there doing commentary. They said they were scouting, I guess because they decided they'd show Big Show what a fool he was by teaming up and winning the tag titles. Koslov yanked Tyson off the top rope and nearly killed him for the heat. I mean, it was brutal. Match didn't have great heat but it was OK. Harry got the hot tag, ran wild on Regal and put him in the sharpshooter for the submission. Regal tapped almost before the hold was turned over. Jericho hit the ring after the match and laid out Harry with the codebreaker. Good angle to set up what should be a GREAT feud.
700
701Edge came out for the Cutting Edge. Like it or not, he said, the most controversial superstar in WWE history was back on Raw. Lots of people cheered him. So he turned on them. They didn't want to boo him. He basically said he speared Orton because he was unhappy and angry and had to get stuff off his chest. Yes, he said, he cost the guy the title shot, but at the end of the night he was the most talked-about guy on any brand. He called out Orton. Wayne came out instead. He said he came to Jacksonville not to challenge anyone, but to tell any other guest host that wanted to come on Raw, "You're not me!" To all the Mini Mes, to Cheech and or Chong, "to Bob Barker -- I'm BOB DARKER!" So he cut this weird-ass promo and then Orton's music hit. Orton got in the ring and Brady tried to shake his hand, but Orton grabbed him and hit the RKO. Good pop, not great. They didn't hate Brady enough. Edge said he knew Orton wanted to RKO but it wasn't going not happen and he had two reasons why. He said number one, Orton was in the wrong place at the wrong time last week and Orton would have done the same thing. He said the last time Orton was a guest on the show years ago -- "RKO!" -- the two of them became a tag team. "We became RATED RKO!" He said they dominated DX, the entire show, and he knew that it could happen again. "Only this time bigger and better!" He said Cena and Batista were going to beat the pulp out of each other and then the two of them could swoop in and pick the bones. Who could stop them, he asked? Edge wanted to know if he was too big a superstar now to share the spotlight. He said he wasn't planning on spearing him last week but now he was glad he did. He said he did everything a person was supposed to, gave the people everything he had, and the people didn't fully accept him. Seems like they did to me. He said it wasn't fair that they didn't support him but they fully accepted Orton. Now THAT was funny. This was not fair, he said, the fact he wasn't champion was not fair. "THE FACT THAT I GOT DRAFTED TO RAW DUE TO A BATTLE ROYAL IS NOT FAIR!" Well, that's true. He said Orton was GOING to listen to him. "YOU WILL JOIN ME!" That spear was just the tip of the iceberg, he said, and he'd do it week after week until Orton was an afterthought on this show. He demanded Orton say something. Orton went for the RKO but Edge shoved him off, booted him and then set up for the spear. As he went for it Randy turned it into an RKO in mid-air. I cannot BELIEVE they gave that spot away for free. What a fucking awesome finish to a PPV match that would have been. And that was the end of the show.
702
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716There were several big stories coming out of the WE -- er, the Aldo vs. Faber PPV on Saturday night from Sacramento. One was that, well, it was a WEC show where they never mentioned the WEC name anywhere. Another was how awesome it was. And a third interesting thing was that it is 2010, almost two decades after UFC 1, and despite so many guys training so many different styles and becoming such great all-around fighters as compared to the dark days, there are still guys like GSP, Anderson Silva and Jose Aldo Jr. who are so far and away the best guys in their division that fans start clamoring for them to do weird things, like move up in weight to fight guys 15 to 20 pounds heavier.
717
718Aldo, the WEC 145-pound champion, completely and utterly destroyed Urijah Faber. He beat the piss out of him to such a degree that Faber had to be carried back to his corner between rounds four and five. Faber's hometown newspaper, in a completely astounding move, actually published an article Monday begging Faber to retire before he embarrassed himself further, but that's complete bullshit. Faber's record hasn't been great of late, but it's not like he's losing to geeks. He was the most dominant 145-pound champion in company history before running into a guy, Mike Brown, who he couldn't figure out, and he lost here to a guy that destroyed Brown and looks to have no weaknesses whatsoever, a guy who it appears nobody in this division is going to be able to touch.
719
720Aldo destroyed him with leg kicks for five rounds. He probably could have finished him earlier, and in a sense it was kind of like a far more exciting version of Anderson Silva vs. Damian Maia. Aldo didn't dick around like Silva did, but he was at such a different level in rounds three, four and five that it was almost astounding he couldn't finish it. But that is just a testament to what a tough motherfucker Faber is. There is no better way to say it. He's a tough motherfucker and he was the best babyface in the history of the universe in this fight, here in his hometown. It was too bad he got destroyed the way he did, because he was far and away WEC's biggest drawing card and realistically the only guy with whom they can headline a PPV.
721
722And that's the problem. Early estimates are that this show did significantly better than WEC was predicting two months ago. I had predicted 250,000 buys. I figured that UFC was going to take over promotion of the show and push it like a UFC event (although I didn't think they'd do so to the level they did), and I figured that if they aired a great hype special on Versus and Spike, that 25 percent of the 1 million people willing to watch Urijah for free would pay to see him challenge for the title against Aldo. In the end I probably overshot the target, but early trending patterns suggest it might have done in the 150,000 to 200,000 range. Break-even was around 50,000 and 75,000 was going to be considered a success, so this may have been a complete home run.
723
724But what next? I doubt people are paying to see Faber vs. Aldo again because Faber wasn't even competitive. Would people pay to see him face Mike Brown a third time? Doubtful, especially after Brown was destroyed by Manny Gamburyan. Aldo vs. Gamburyan on PPV? No buys. There isn't a single match right now that I would think has much of a chance of breaking 75,000 buys, and really probably 50,000. Even with the UFC hype machine behind it.
725
726Dana White explained that the reason there was no mention of WEC or even UFC in any of the commercials was because they were promoting this show across various platforms and that would have made it difficult in dealing with Spike, Versus, MTV, etc. They didn't outright call it a UFC PPV but they hyped it up in all the commercials exactly as they do UFC shows, and we had reports of people going to local bars and seeing signs that read, "UFC THIS WEEKEND!" and "UFC TONIGHT!" One could argue that it was in a sense false advertising, but we heard zero complaints about it afterwards (though that also could have had to do with the fact that everyone who comes to our site knows the difference between UFC and WEC, and also because the show was so fucking great). Dana's explanation makes sense in terms of pre-show promotion, but it doesn't explain at all why there was zero mention of the WEC name on the PPV. The only place you would have seen it was in the programs live at the building, and on the belts if you squinted really hard.
727
728Not getting the brand name over to new viewers on PPV strongly suggests that there are plans of merging WEC into UFC as soon as the current Versus contract expires, whenever that might be. It's probably for the best. UFC would be adding two weight divisions, 135 and 145, and that's two more champions for people to have to remember, but I think that's OK. It gives all those guys a chance to actually make decent money for what they put themselves through, and my God, if you're an avid WEC fan there is no bigger group of underpaid guys than the guys on these shows. Aside from a few shows in the last six months, you pretty much were guaranteed a great show and awesome fights every time WEC ran an event. Some of the guys backstage were going out of their minds when told the bonuses for the night were $65,000 (highest bonuses prior to this for WEC were $10,000 for big shows), and it would be really great to see them all get a chance to vie for that kind of money on a regular basis. Not to mention, lighter weight fighters historically put on the best fights as WEC has vividly illustrated, and adding a great fight to the undercard of a UFC show is never a bad idea.
729
730Nothing was official at press time. Dana said he had big plans for the future but that was the extent of the talk. WEC officials downplayed rumors that they were upset with how things went down. The company is owned by Zuffa so they can't be too upset, but in a sense they should have gotten some credit for building this up to the point where they finally had enough stars to run a PPV that in the end might have exceeded nearly everyone's expectations.
731
732Buy the replay if you can. It was one of the best shows of the year.
733
734The show drew 14,114 to the Arco Arena for a $1 million gate. Bonuses were paid to Manny for best knockout, Garcia vs. Zombie for best fight, and Ben Henderson for best submission.
735
736They had Bruce Buffer do the ring announcing on the show. I used to hate Buffer. Now I think he's awesome and can't imagine UFC without him. With that said, the normal WEC announcer, Joe Martinez, is fucking GREAT and I was sad to not see him here. I don't have a problem with Todd Harris and Frank Mir, but Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg are the superior crew so I was fine with this.
737
738a. Anthony Pettis vs. Alex Karalexis. WEC ring girl Brittney is by far the cutest Zuffa has since getting rid of Logan. I missed this one due to scheduling issues.
739
740b. Leonard Garcia vs. Chan Sung Jung. Jung was known as "THE KOREAN ZOMBIE." Jung was very skinny. Garcia hit a hard leg kick early. We were one minute into the round and both guys just started wildly swinging, I mean gigantic haymakers that largely missed by miles. People went nuts. Goldberg called this "reckless abandonship." Jung rocked him and knocked him on his ass. He tried desperately to finish it but then Garcia hooked him for both an armbar and a umaplata. That didn't work but it was exciting. Rogan and Goldberg were laughing at the name "KOREAN ZOMBIE." From observing this fight he may very well be a zombie. Both guys swung wildly for the last 30 seconds. 10-8 ZOMBIE. Leonard came out swinging in the second and was actually landing shots. He rocked the Zombie. They both tried spinning backfists and missed. Garcia tried a spinning kick and paid for it. They briefly rested against the fence. Zombie leaped onto Garcia's back and did a forward roll, getting his back in the process. He had a body triangle but Garcia stood right up. The last minute of this round was the wildest, craziest brawl maybe of all time. Both guys were too tired to land a knockout shot, so they just swung at each other, landing shot after shot, and Garcia, as he was being obliterated, was cackling. This was Takayama/Frye 2010. 10-9 Garcia. They didn't do much for the first three minutes of the round, then Zombie went after him and we got some wild swinging action. They had another wild swinging flurry with a minute left. Very close round, 10-10, so 29-27 Jung. Judges scored it 29-28 Garcia, 29-28 Jung and 29-28 Garcia.
741
7421. Antonio Banuelos vs. Scott Jorgensen. All on the feet early. Antonio dropped him with a shot early and pounced, but Scott survived and pulled guard. Jorgensen went for an armbar as Banuelos was pounding on him but didn't get it. Did allow him to get to his feet. Not sure why he was so desperate to stand up since he was doing a hell of a lot better on the ground. These guys were keeping quite the pace. Jorgensen looked at the clock with 30 seconds left. 10-9 Banuelos. Good round. Jorgensen was picking up the pace in the second. Banuelos was bleeding from the nose. It may have been broken because he was breathing out of his mouth and checking his nose constantly. Jorgensen dropped him with a shot and went to work on him. He pounded the shit out of him from the back as blood poured out of Banuelos' nose. 10-8 Jorgensen. Jorgensen continued the beating in the third. I can't say it's too bad because breaking a dude's nose with punches is as legal as anything, but the broken nose was the end of Banuelos in this fight. There were actually people booing with 2:30 left in the round. That was astounding. Jorgensen dropped him again and went for a choke, but didn't have it. So he just beat the holy fuck out of the poor guy. The last 15 seconds was the most awesome thing of all time. Jorgensen put him in a rear-naked and it looked like it was over but Banuelos fought back with strikes, and actually punched his way out of the rear-naked. He was throwing elbows and shots and then Jorgensen tried an armbar but didn't get it at the bell. That was fucking awesome. 10-8 Jorgensen. So 29-26 Jorgensen. Judges gave it to Jorgensen
743
7442. Anthony Njokuani vs. Shane Roller. Roller went for a takedown immediately and Anthony just yanked his arm off. Roller would not give up and finally got him down. Roller got the mount and then got his back. He kept going for the choke but Njokuani did a great job defending. He fought and fought but Roller finally snuck it in for the submission.
745
746Dana was shown with a shit-eating grin sitting in the front row with Jake Shields. I howled. God Dana is great.
747
748Rogan interviewed Kimbo via satellite. He's facing Matt Mitrione on May 8th in what should be a fucking hilarious fight. Rogan commented him on going from a backyard geek to a seasoned MMA fighter. Kimbo said it took a lot of commitmentship. That's all you need to know about this fabulous interview.
749
7503. Mike Brown vs. Manny Gamburyan. Manny got booed. Brown got cheered and looked so happy. Not a whole hell of a lot was happening but then Manny hit him with a killer right hand. Mike actually ducked into it. He got flattened and then Manny followed it up with a series of hammer fists, knocking him completely limp. Shortly after the ref stopped it Brown tried to get up and the ref had to basically pin him down while explaining to him what happened. Huge upset here. Dana later said that Brown had suffered a terrible break-up with his long-time girlfriend and skipped out on training for nearly two weeks, and he knew going in he was probably going to lose.
751
752c. Demerious Johnson vs. Brad Pickett. They traded early, then Pickett took him down, got side control and started pounding on him. Johnson managed to get back into the guard and stand up but Pickett took him back down. Johnson kept standing back up and Pickett kept taking him down, over and over again. One of the takedowns was a fucking great slam. Johnson waylaid him with a series of shots just as the round was ended. 10-9 Pickett. Pickett was like an MMA version of Austin Aries. Johnson was losing the fight but he wasn't giving up here. Pickett tried a high-angle German suplex and would have gotten it except that Johnson's foot got hooked on the cage and prevented it. Pickett got a final takedown in the last couple seconds, a pro wrestling-style POWERSLAM, and had the mount when the horn sounded. 10-8 Pickett. And so we're onto the third. Johnson actually got a takedown of his own and went for an anaconda. Pickett did a switch and pounded on him from the top. There were some amazing scrambles, even here deep into the third. A hell of a fucking round. 10-9 Pickett, so 30-26.
753
7544. Ben Henderson vs. Donald Cerrone for the 155-pound title. Two of the security guys accompanying Cerrone looked morbidly obese. They were going a mile a minute from the opening bell (the fighters, not the fat security guys). Henderson clinched with him, delivered a bunch of elbows and got the takedown. In the middle of the scramble Henderson hooked him in a guillotine and tapped him out at the two-minute mark of round one. Holy shit. In a way that's disappointing since their last five-rounder was so awesome, but Henderson sure as shit proved he deserved the belt here.
755
756Rogan interviewed Henderson, who thanked Christ for allowing him to choke the holy fuck out of Donald Cerrone. Rogan then interviewed Cerrone who was humble in defeat and said he would be back. Not sure why they rushed through the postmatch since they just saved 25 minutes of time here.
757
758d. Brandon Visher vs. Tyler Toner. All on the feet early. Toner clipped him with a knee at one point but Visher survived. Toner then hit him with a second shot and knocked him on his ass. Brandon turtled up and Visher landed a series of shots to the side of his head. Visher wasn't doing a goddamn thing so referee Herb Dean stopped it.
759
760Tyler did a promo afterwards and was so excited to have won in WEC that he had no idea what to say and was just really excited. A fun natural reaction.
761
762e. Chad Mendes vs. Anthony Morrison. Mendez got a takedown early and put him in a guillotine 3 minutes into the first round. Night of the guillotine here.
763
7645. Jose Aldo Jr. vs. Urijah Faber. When Urijah came out Rogan said this was the loudest reaction he'd ever heard in his life, and he even compared it to the GSP reaction in Montreal. He said there might have been more people in Montreal by a thousand or so but "these people are trying harder." Aldo was booed like crazy. There were a bunch of dudes in the front row with "NO WAY JOSE" shirts on. That was awesome. Abe Belardo was listed as one of the three judges. Aldo refused to look at him during the staredown. The people were going so nuts that the camera was shaking. Aldo didn't try his crazy flying knee. Aldo was going for hard leg kicks early. "FABER!" He hit one hard enough to knock Faber on his ass. Faber wasn't checking them. He was regularly switching stances. The fans went nuts every time Faber threw something that even came within a foot of Aldo. Faber rushed in and took a knee to the sternum. That will teach him. Faber actually scored with a FRONT KICK. "FABER!" Very close round but Aldo landed the harder shots. 10-9 Aldo. Aldo was taking him apart with kicks early. Crowd was quieter than you'd think, probably all on edge. I think they all knew how dangerous Aldo was. Aldo was killing him with leg kicks. Urijah responded with, no joke, a punch to Aldo's leg. Wasn't quite as effective. Urijah was clearly being effected by the kicks. He wasn't even pretending to no-sell it, visibly grimacing and limping back to his corner. 10-9 Aldo and Urijah was in deep trouble going into the third. Aldo was working like a mini Anderson Silva right now, but an Anderson Silva who was actually working. Aldo knocked him down with a kick and from the ground Urijah tried to rush in for a takedown. He got hold of the leg but Aldo slipped out. Aldo hit him with a Mirko Crocop kick right to the face and followed it up with a series of shots. Urijah survived. Say what you will about him but he's a tough motherfucker. Faber finally got kicked so hard that he fell down and didn't get up. Aldo went after him and was beating the shit out of him when the bell sounded. His corner actually carried him back to his corner between rounds three and four. 10-8 Aldo. Faber got sent to the ground again and Aldo was nice enough to go after him. Aldo got his back. Faber fought out and as he was standing up he tried to hook his bread and butter guillotine. He didn't get it and unfortunately that meant he had to stand up. Urijah's leg appeared to be broken in 20 places. Urijah fell down again and Aldo went after him. He little-brother'd him and was landing elbow after elbow. Urijah wouldn't quit and kept trying to buck but he only had one leg. The crowd was going nuts with 20 seconds left, hoping he'd survive the round. Ref Josh Rosenthal was letting it continue, an arguable point. 10-7 Aldo, and that's being generous. Urijah came out for the fifth round. This was like the gutsiest thing in history. Faber went for a takedown, got his ankle and was literally hanging on for dear life as Aldo dragged him across the cage. Aldo wouldn't let him get up but also didn't go down to the ground with him. People booed. Faber finally switched stances. He tried a takedown and missed it and ended up doing a diving forward roll. The dude wouldn't give up. I don't know if Aldo was tired or what but he wasn't even attempting to finish the fight in this round. The last 30 seconds was Faber lying on his back and Aldo not letting him up. A shitty ending to what had been a hell of a one-sided dramatic fight. The crowd was pretty much stunned into silence. 10-9 Aldo. The judges scored it 49-45, 49-45 and 50-45. How the fuck do you get a 49-45 score? Turns out two of the judges gave round one to Faber. Those judges were Doc Hamilton and Abe Belardo. Figures.
765
766Aldo tried to cut a pro-Sacramento promo, saying he held this city near and dear to his heart because this was where his first fights took place. He asked the people to please accept him. He said the reason he didn't do as much in rounds three and four was because he was conscious of the danger of Urijah's right hand and since Urijah kept switching his stance and he didn't want to move out of his comfort zone. He was very humble and concluded, "Thank you my friends, I thank you for coming!" They cheered him.
767
768Rogan interviewed Urijah next, who was being held up by his trainers. He actually got some boos. He said he trained a lot of defensive leg kicks but Aldo was just really good with them. He said he lost so much mobility early that he was unable to take him to the ground. "I tried my best," he said. That was sad.
769
770Dana at the press conference said Aldo was thinking of cutting to 135, winning that title, and then moving up to 155 and challenging whoever is UFC champ at the time for their title. That would make him the first man in history to win titles in three different divisions.
771
772
773Extreme Rules
774The story of Extreme Rules was an attempt to get some new guys over. And they have to.
775
776Shawn Michaels is done. Undertaker is on hiatus for the foreseeable future, unless they freak out and give him another emergency phone call like they did last Monday when the Raw crew got stuck in Ireland. HHH is not only suffering quad and neck problems, but he will be leaving imminently to film a movie for WWE. And Dave Batista, one half of the main event here, has a few weeks left before he wraps up his WWE career for the time being.
777
778Batista has been talking about taking time off for well over a year now. His contract is coming due and he has not re-signed. As noted last week, he hasn't signed a renewal and since they only want WWE stars working in their films, they replaced him in Killing Karma with Hunter. Batista was extremely upset about this because his plan after wrestling was to go into acting and that was a potential first vehicle that the company pulled out from underneath him. He has agreed to stay through the next PPV, which was why they did the disputed finish Sunday, and after that he's finished.
779
780Obviously TNA wants him. The question is whether they can afford a guy who was making an easy $2 million per year with WWE over the last several years. He may not even want to go there. The schedule, particularly if he doesn't work house shows, is a lot easier, and it would keep his name out there to a degree while he tries to make it in Hollywood. But he's not going to be a game-changer for them because it's clear no single person can be right now, and after all the recent big-money hirings that haven't meant a thing Panda and Spike may get cold feet on signing yet another one.
781
782While he made a lot of money in his career, Batista was also known as a big spender. That's not to say he lived beyond his means, but he's got less money than he would have had he been more frugal with it, and as a result one would think that if he doesn't quickly start making big money in Hollywood he'll angle for a WWE return. He's in his early 40s and realistically only has a few more big money years left, so my guess is that if he doesn't hook up with a big project in the first six months he'll probably return sometime around Royal Rumble in order to get into the mix for next year's WrestleMania. But that's all speculation on my part.
783
784With these departures there is a major need to create stars, and they really tried hard on this show by giving Sheamus and Swagger pinfall wins over HHH and Randy Orton respectively. The Sheamus win was done pretty well, although he had to attack HHH with a pipe and injure him before the match, and then despite being injured Hunter still went in there and went toe-to-toe with him until he injured himself doing -- and why not? -- his own finisher. In a perfect world it would have been booked to put Sheamus over stronger, but he was facing HHH and this was not a perfect world and so realistically this was the best we could have hoped for.
785
786Swagger got a clean win over Orton in another streetfight, but they worked it like a midcard match and not a bout for the World Heavyweight Title. I blame most of the problems on Orton, who is, let's be fair, a fucking awful babyface, and he was the guy leading this match. Swagger on Friday had a much better match with John Morrison despite losing in the end, and until the finish he came off as far more of a world champion than he did here with Orton on PPV. The win over Orton was something, but Swagger needs a hell of a lot more in the coming weeks, especially after losing to Orton twice on TV followed by two more losses against Undertaker on Raw and Morrison Smackdown. It was weird because this show was "booked right" in the sense that the right guys won, and that's almost astounding since the booking on all the TV leading up to this show was so bad that people were making jokes about how the Raw and Impact creative teams must have switched places.
787
788Overall I thought it was a really good show with some great wrestling and only a couple matches we could have done without. It was a solid lead-in to the Draft show Monday night.
789
790They tried to claim that Hunter vs. Sheamus was opening the show. As if. They played Hunter's music but he never came out. They cut to the announcers who were befuddled. They cut backstage and Sheamus and Hunter were having a pullapart. Dudes were trying to break it up. It's very important to do ring intros before you let guys have a street fight. Sheamus ended up hitting him in the back of the neck twice with his steel pipe. They sold it like Hunter was done for. DONE FOR. Teddy Long was back there screaming for a trainer. He's the last authority figure they've got. This angle was supposed to take place on Raw, but since Sheamus wasn't in the country they had to do it here.
791
792Miz and Big Show came out and said the show didn't start the way everyone expected, so they figured they should come out and kick it off with some excitement. He said they were the best tag team ever, and tomorrow on Raw Bret was going to come out and reveal that they were the best tag team of all time. Miz begged for competition. Big Show had come out all happy, but when Miz started begging for competition he wasn't so happy. Teddy Long finally came out and said if they wanted competition he had a team for them. He said if this team won tonight they'd get a tag title match on Raw. Miz cut a promo on him so Teddy said listen, I'm adding another team. You beat the first team and you'll face them next, and I'm going to continue adding teams until you lose. Show was not happy about that.
793
7941. ShowMiz vs. Truth & Morrison. So Morrison beat the WORLD CHAMPION on Smackdown and he can't even get a tag title shot two days later. Good guys ran wild early and it was fun. Show then tagged in and killed Truth. Morrison got the hot tag and ran wild on Show. Truth dove onto Miz outside. Show tried a chokeslam on Morrison but Morrison turned it into a triangle choke in the ropes. Show was teasing like he was going to submit but since Morrison was in the ropes the ref counted five and DQ'd him. That was fucking lame.
795
7961b. ShowMiz vs. Mark Henry & MVP. MVP ran wild on Miz and hit the ballin elbow. Show broke it up. MVP low-bridged him, then hit the playmaker on Miz. Show, outside, punched MVP behind the ref's back, then Miz rolled on top for the pin. Short and not much.
797
7981c. ShowMiz vs. Harts. Bret came out with the Harts and told them to hussle into the ring. They did and immediately hit the springboard Hart attack for the pin on Miz. Crowd went nuts for that.
799
800Todd was about to do an update on Hunter when Sheamus walked up. He said if Hunter was too much of a coward to fight he should just come out and announce it. He said later tonight he was going to go to the ring and call him out, and Hunter either accepted and got killed or forfeited. "Either way," he said, "I win."
801
8022. Rey vs. CM Punk in the hair match. Rey ran wild early, giving him a spinning headscissors on the floor and sending him gut-first into the apron. Punk got the heat and was doing some hardcore gloating. He put Rey in a figure four headscissors. Rey did a backward roll out of a sunset flip and kicked Punk in the head for a nearfall. That was cool. Luke Gallows gave Rey a punch to the face behind the ref's back. Crowd was super into this match. Rey finally did a sit down splash off a powerbomb attempt and made his big comeback. Punk went for the GTS but Rey armdragged out and set up for the 619. Sarita cut him off. The ref got pissed off and ejected them. On the Extreme Rules PPV. Rey dropkicked him in the back of the head outside and hit an Asai moonsault. Rey went up top and hit a springboard silla. He tried following it up with a springboard high cross but got dropkicked in the gut. Punk hit a springboard clothesline and Rey kicked out. Punk went for the GTS but Rey turned it into a huracanrana for an awesome nearfall. Punk tried the flying knee into the corner but Rey avoided it, hit the 619 and was about to go for the springboard when a mystery masked man ran out, gave Rey a fallaway powerbomb outside, then slid under the ring and hid. This was the former Joey Mercury, who will be the newest member of the Straight Edge Society. Punk then pulled Rey into the ring and hit the GTS for the pin. Kind of a lame finish to an otherwise great match. (***1/2)
803
8043. JTG vs. Shad in a strap match. Every strap match you ever saw. You had to touch all four corners to win. They strapped each other a lot. These were some awfully hard strap shots to be delivering in front of a crowd that didn't care. Shad tied him up and started dragging him from corner to corner. Every time he hit a corner JTG would hit one as well. He was alerting fans not to say anything about it. So Shad hit the third one and was going to the fourth when JTG cut him off, did a spot, and then dove and hit the last turnbuckle. It looked cool but I'm not sure why that didn't cause the thing to reset. Not that I wanted that to happen. (*)
805
806Todd was backstage saying that he'd heard Hunter suffered nerve damage in his neck and arm.
807
8084. Jack Swagger vs. Randy Orton for the World Title in an Extreme Rules match (streetfight). So yeah, this was every no-DQ match you've ever seen. They fought in the ring early, then they spilled outside, then they went back into the ring to work, etc. Not a whole lot of gimmicks used early, though they did throw each other into the barricade and such. Swagger went for the Vader bomb in the corner but Orton hit him in the gut with the belt and made his big comeback. He set up for the draping DDT but Swagger backdropped him outside. Swagger tried to get a trash can but Orton grabbed it out of his hands and then fucking WAYLAID him with two shots to the head. I realize an aluminum garbage can has a lot more give than a steel chair, but Jesus. Lawler said he'd never seen anyone hit harder with a garbage can. Orton put his head on the steps and stomped on it. That's not very nice. Back in the ring Orton missed a knee and Swagger got a chair. Orton cut him off, hit the draping DDT and went for the RKO. But then he saw the chair. He went for the RKO through it but Swagger put on the brakes, slammed him through the chair and hit the doctor bomb for the pin. Christ they put the guy over. Match was good but was missing something. Like, a good babyface. Orton needs to turn back heel immediately, because he either hates being a heel with a passion or if he doesn't he sure fucking looks like he does. (***)
809
810As Orton was leaving the ring Orton ran outside and laid him out with an RKO on the floor. Spot looked brutal. Cole said mentally Orton hadn't changed a bit. Lawler said he was as vicious as he'd always been. He did get some "RANDY!" chants for that.
811
812Sheamus' music hit and out he came. He did a promo saying he'd warned Hunter that if he showed up at the PPV it would be the biggest mistake of his life. He said if Hunter was a man he'd come out right now and fight, otherwise he wanted the ref to count him out and ring the bell. They cut backstage where Todd Grisham said it looked like there wasn't going to be a match after all. The door, however, swung open and HHH lurched out. He's getting a little heavy around the midsection. Probably can't train like he used to be able to with all of his injuries. They said he was suffering nerve damage down his left arm. He got into the ring and they rang the bell.
813
8145. HHH vs. Sheamus in a streetfight (Extreme Rules). So, of course, the first thing Hunter did was attack him and beat the crap out of him. Way to sell nerve damage to the arm. He shook it out here and there. That was about the extent of it. Hunter hit a spinebuster and set up for the pedigree, but that was when his arm gave out. Doing his own move. Sheamus laid him out with a lariat and got the heat. He ran him into the dasher boards and such outside. Hunter gave him an elbow to the neck on the apron and it took the announcers 30 seconds to notice Sheamus had focused on the bad neck. Stryker of all people finally picked up on it. Where the fuck is Jim Ross? Sheamus put him in a long rear-chinlock. Hunter backdropped his way free. He rolled outside and ate a neckbreaker on the floor. I wonder how that felt on Hunter's legit bad neck? I love it when guys have an injury and so they make it part of the match, and their opponent spends 20 minutes working it over. Obviously the goal is to not actually work over the injury, because it's fake, but shit happens. All it takes is one shot laid in a little too hard and you've made things worse. Hunter hit a DDT and sold his own neck. Lawler said Hunter might have a stinger. Sheamus continued to hit moves, Hunter continued to kick out, and Sheamus had no idea what to make of this. He finally got his pipe. Took him long enough, here in this streetfight. This did result in tons of heat. Hunter ducked under, hit him in the gut and tried a comeback. Sheamus managed to wallop him with the pipe in the middle of it but Hunter kicked out. They ended up outside and Hunter got a kendo stick and began beating on Sheamus with it, including a shot right to the back of the head. Sheamus was taking a beating here. Hunter went for another pedigree but Sheamus gave him a backdrop on the stage. Hunter must be leaving, he's doing way too much stuff here otherwise. Sheamus' back was covered in welts. He gave Hunter a desperation kick to the face. Sheamus hit a second one in the ring but Hunter kicked out. He crawled to the corner, refusing to quit, and gave Sheamus a crotch chop. Sheamus gave him another kick in the corner, which looked brutal, and then a final one in mid-ring for the pinfall. Stryker called this "a legitimate pinfall." This was the right finish and a very good match. Sheamus gave him an extra boot to the face on the ramp for good measure. They did the big injury angle deal with Hunter afterwards, stretcher, cervical collar, the whole nine yards. Hunter deserves credit for this, not just for putting the guy over but taking his finisher multiple times, which looked stupid stiff. Post-match stuff was strong. (***1/2)
815
816Josh interviewed Edge about the cage match tonight. He said he wasn't going to let Jericho escape the cage tonight, and he wasn't even going to try.
817
8186. Michelle vs. Beth in the Extreme Makeover match (Extreme Rules, streetfight). Stryker called Michelle "the greatest Diva athlete in the history of WWE." God bless Michelle but please. They botched some stuff early. Layla tried to hit Beth with a broom but failed. Beth went after her, and the distraction allowed Michelle to spray her in the eyes with stuff. Michelle threw an ironing board into the ring and beat on Beth with it. Layla and Vickie were outside trying to interfere. Why didn't they just interfere? It's no-DQ. Michelle took a dropkick off the apron and landed bad on her ass. Michelle tried to spray the stuff again but sprayed Vickie and Layla on accident. Beth threw Michelle on a table outside that had make-up all over it. The outside the ring area was a complete mess. Hopefully no one trips and dies. Beth hit her repeatedly with a bucket. All this hitting people with stuff was getting old. The girls kept trying to interfere from outside. This was TNA-level stupid. GET IN THE FUCKING RING, THERE'S NO DQ. Beth hit her with the Glam slam out of nowhere for the pin. They gave Beth the belt afterwards. Swear to God I didn't even know the belt was on the line. (**1/2)
819
820Josh interviewed Jericho and wanted to know if losing to an NXT rookie was going to effect him tonight. Jericho said one loss didn't change the fact that he'd accrued the most accolades of anyone in the history of this company. He said one loss didn't change the fact that he was the best wrestler of this or any other generation, and it didn't change the fact that he was the man. He vowed to end Edge's career forever. Forever, you see, not end it for just the next few months. He said he'd make sure the people never chanted "SPEAR!" again.
821
8227. Jericho vs. Punk in a cage match. This cage match started outside the ring. This business has passed me by. Thankfully they quickly got back inside. They said you could win by pinfall, submission or escaping the cage. It looked like Jericho got busted open early, but it was more a scratch. Edge tried the spear but Jericho moved and Edge speared the cage for the heat. It consisted largely of a headlock. Jericho went for a charge and he got sent into the cage, then Edge made his comeback. As basic a cage match as you can imagine at this point. Jericho missed the lionsault and immediately went to climb. Edge cut him off. They both fell off the cage but landed in such a way where Jericho put him immediately in the walls. Edge got the ropes. The ref noted there were no rope breaks in a cage match. Edge climbed up the ropes to escape. More nearfalls and then Edge set up for the spear. Jericho responded by trying desperately to bail outside the door. Edge stopped him. Jericho teased hitting him with a chair that was outside, but slammed the cage door on his head instead. Jericho made it all the way to the steps and had the chance to win, but changed his mind, told the ref to lock the door, and grabbed the chair. He missed, of course, and Edge speared him. Jericho kicked out. Edge went to pick him up but ate the codebreaker. Jericho didn't cover and went to climb instead. They fought on top of the cage, then ended up back on the top rope. Jericho basically gave him a super codebreaker. It took too long to set up and didn't get much of a reaction. Jericho screamed, and I quote, "STAY DOWN, YOU STUPID IDIOT, STAY DOWN!" He clipped Edge's ankle and told him he'd given him a chance but he was too stupid to take it. Edge ended up fighting back, laying him out and daring him to try to go out the door. He slammed the cage door on Jericho's ankle, poetic justice, then started twisting and yanking it. It appeared there were some people actually chanting "BORING!" during this. After doing as much damage as possible he set up for and hit the final spear for the clean pin. A fine blowoff match here. (***1/2)
823
8248. Cena vs. Batista in a last man standing match. Dave looked pissed off before the match, but once the bell rang he was a pro. He was doing all sorts of stuff, including a LOW DROPKICK to Cena's ankle as he worked it over. A low dropkick. Well, that's how you win a last man STANDING match, by making sure he can't stand no more. The women and children chanted "CENA!" Dave did a FIGURE FOUR. Cena reversed it. Big double clothesline spot setting up Cena's comeback. All the dudes booed. He set up for the five knuckle shuffle but Dave ducked outside and stabbed Cena in the gut with a turnbuckle. Dave got a chair, but Cena slipped underneath and gave him the FU onto it. Ref started counting. I forgot the stips until this point. Dave was up at nine, then shoved the official into the ropes, causing Cena to get crotched on the top rope. Dave speared him, then hit another one. Cena was up at nine. A table ended up in the corner and Batista booted him through it. He ran him into the post outside. In the greatest moment ever, a young child yelled, "I HATE YOU BATISTA!" and he yelled "SHUT UP!" He tossed Cena through the dasher boards. Cena was up by nine, so Dave destroyed the announcer's table and set the steps up next to it. He went for the powerbomb but Cena cut him off, slipped behind, and then gave him the FU though the table. It appeared to be over but Dave made it up at ten. At least, that's what the ref said. He didn't look up to me. Cena set up a table in the ring and tossed Dave inside. He went for the FU but Dave shoved him off and hit the spinebuster through the table. Cena was up at nine. Dave hit the Batista bomb and demanded the ref count. Another nine. Dave finally put the steps in the ring. Cena did a drop toehold and put him in the STFU. Dave tapped but no submissions. Batista went limp. The ref gave the count and Batista was up by nine. So Cena pulled him into the post and duct-taped his feet together. Well, that's cheating. Dave could not escape DUCT TAPE and so he didn't make it up by ten. Hardly a decisive win for a guy about to leave the company. Other than that this was great. (****)
825
826
8272010 Draft Raw
828This year's Draft Raw show was more notable for its pro-wrestling than for any of the guys that got drafted. I don't know if they took a page out of TNA's playbook last week or if the writing crew was just totally burnt out (the latter is more likely), but we had several good, long matches, much longer than usual for shows of these type, fewer backstage goofy skits, solid booking and no guest host. Like at the PPV, it was like the writing crew that switched places with TNA for a week switched places back and started writing WWE TV again. Most of the picks were for the best, only one was really questionable (both Edge and Jericho going to Raw after doing a blow-off at the PPV, although that can at least be explained by Edge going heel), and they will be doing more the day after we go to press in the supplemental draft.
829
830More than ever, with Smackdown going to Syfy this will be the year where most of the major players are going to end up on Raw, and Smackdown will be far more of a B-show than it's ever been in the past. I actually think this is a really stupid idea. Granted, far fewer homes have Syfy than MyNetworkTV, but at the same time, USA isn't in significantly more homes than Syfy. We have seen in the past that wrestling fans are going to find Smackdown. That's not an issue. What we've also seen is that shows like Sunday Night Heat and Superstars and ECW do very well early on when they are new shows and the superstars are wrestling there every week. As soon as they start pulling the superstars the ratings start to drop, and pretty soon it's reached the point that even if you put superstars back on the show it's no longer effective. Smackdown should be kept strong, not stronger than Raw and maybe not even 50/50 in terms of stars. But if they drop below 60/40, it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy when ratings tank.
831
832We'll have supplemental draft results next week.
833
834Jerry Lawler, Michael Cole and Matt Stryker did the show. I'm begging for the day when Lawler can take no more and punches Stryker out. He was abysmal on this show.
835
8361. ShowMiz vs. Hart Dynasty for the title. Miz did a promo before the match saying last night they'd had to face three teams in succession and the Harts ended up being handed a tag title match tonight. He buried the Harts, buried Stu, called himself a technical master of the ring, and more. He demanded Bret come out and declare to the world that ShowMiz was the best tag team in WWE history. So Bret came out on the ramp. He said he was a man of his word. "I do declare that ShowMiz is the greatest tag team of all time. I also declare that the Moutine was the greatest Intercontinental Champion of all time. In fact, I also declare that David Arquette was the greatest World Champion of all time." He said he could say anything he wanted, like Miz was a horse-faced idiot. He said the truth was that talk was cheap and it was all about results. He said they'd have no choice tonight but to declare the Harts the new Unified Tag Team Champions of the World. Good promo by both guys. Tyson and Miz worked together early and it was good stuff. Harry did his long delayed suplex. People were into this. Heat on Tyson. Harry got the hot tag and ran wild on Miz. Finish was awesome. Miz tried to get the pin using the ropes but Bret shoved his feet off. Tyson did a dive off the apron onto Show. Harry got a nearfall with a cradle, then Tyson got a blind tag and they hit the Hart attack. Tyson then put Miz in the sharpshooter in the middle of the ring for the submission. Fans went nuts and this was awesome. (***1/2)
837
838They showed clips during the break of Show being so mad at Miz for losing the tag titles that he punched him right in the face. And I mean he fucking KILLED the poor guy. God that had to suck.
839
840They said we'd hear from Sheamus later. They also said that Hunter was suffering from nerve damage and that things didn't look good.
841
842Josh interviewed Jack Swagger backstage. He said he dominated Orton last night and proved he was the World Champion. He said he went toe-to-toe with the Viper and cut his head off. He said he wasn't just the most athletically gifted champion ever as a former NCAA Champion, but he was also the smartest. He said he got a 4.0 GPA and a degree in finance and if he was running Wall Street the country wouldn't be in the shape it was in. For the record, he never won the NCAA Title but he was an academic All American and did get a BA in Finance. Edge walked up and said after beating Jericho he was the new number-one contender, so Swagger had better hope he got drafted to Raw, otherwise his days as champ were numbered.
843
8442. Maryse & Eve vs. Michelle & Layla in a DRAFT BATTEL~! Eve tried to get a tag early but Maryse booted her in the gut instead. They ended up fighting. Lawler was yelling at them for being stupid, since the losers of this match lost a draft pick. Heels worked over Eve. These matches were getting a lot more time than usual. Maryse got a blind tag but was too busy bitching at Eve afterwards. She walked into a boot from Michelle for the pin. Eve was standing right there and I think she was pretending like she couldn't break it up, but there was nothing between her and the pinfall except air. Perhaps dark matter? I don't know. It was stupid-looking. So Smackdown got a draft pick and Kelly is going to Smackdown. They got this off to a rocking start.
845
8463. CM Punk vs. Evan Bourne in a DRAFT BATTEL~! This was an ROH special in WWE. There were loud "CM PUNK!" chants. Punk worked him over for a bit and then Evan made a comeback. They did a wheel kick spot that didn't work. Evan went for a tope but Serena blocked him. So he did a springboard over her and onto Punk and Gallows. He hit a running silla into the corner and went up top for the shooting star. Serena took the ref and the hooded guy ran out of the crowd and crotched Evan, leading to the pin. Cole said it was the same guy from last night. The Teacher said we couldn't see his face so how did we know it was the same guy? Cole responded, "Well, how many guys run around arenas in hoods?" A ton, actually. Anyway, Smackdown won a draft pick and got Big Show. How convenient.
847
848Teddy welcomed Big Show to Smackdown. Show just glared at him for a long time, then put his arm around him and gave him a big smile. This caused Teddy to start dancing like a fool.
849
850Sheamus came out to comment on killing Hunter. He said the good news was that HHH wasn't going to be drafted to Smackdown. The bad news, he said, was that Hunter was never going to wrestle again. He said he knew Hunter wanted to leave on his own terms but he made the mistake of underestimating Sheamus. He said he ended his career and now he was moving on to something bigger, the WWE title. He was in the middle of challenging Cena when Orton came out. He did a promo saying nobody had despised HHH as much as he had. He said he did terrible things to him and his family, but when it was time to fight he did it like a man, face-to-face. He said he didn't jump him from behind with a pipe. He said if that's how Sheamus wanted to handle his business, fine, he got the job done. But don't for one second thing you deserve a title shot, he said. Sheamus said you had your match last night and you lost. He told him to hit the bricks before he put Orton on the sidelines like he'd done to HHH. Orton said he had a better idea -- "How about I hit you with an RKO right here right now and then punt your head off?" Sheamus said he didn't deal with losers; he was going to face Cena for the title and there was nothing Orton could do about it. Cena came out and said these two geeks couldn't figure their shit out so this was a job for the guest host. No guest host. Some goofy comedy with Cena. It was hit and miss. He said he'd been told that the only person who could announce a number-one contender tonight was -- himself. So he signed Orton vs. Sheamus for later with the winner getting the shot. Orton went for the RKO on Sheamus but Sheamus slipped outside and bailed for higher ground.
851
8524. Raw vs. Smackdown DRAFT BATTEL ROYLE~! It was five on five with Rey, Kane, Drew, Shad and R-Truth vs. Santino & Henry & Yoshi & MVP & Some guy so generic I couldn't identify him. Is that Ted DiBiase? Rey looked like such a geek in there. That was in fact the Million Dollar Champion Ted DiBiase. They said the winner of this got THREE draft picks. Match was pretty lame until it came down to Rey, Santino and Ted DiBiase, two-on-one advantage Raw. Rey and Ted did some great teases. Ted finally booted Rey off the apron for the win. They did this entire 2 minute sequence with Santino just laying there in the corner. Santino then started celebrating, so Ted laid him out with the slam. Raw won three picks and got John Morrison and R-Truth (what a coincidence) and Edge. Smackdown gutted as usual.
853
854Jericho came out and cut a promo saying last night at Extreme Rules he was the victim of an unfair attack at the hands of Edge, who tried to break his leg. He demanded Teddy Long or the Raw guest host or the WWE brain trust fine and ban Edge effective immediately. He said it wasn't all Edge's fault he lost because part of it was his own fault since he was off his game due to losing to an unnamed geek rookie on NXT last week. He said he'd never lose to an unaccomplished nobody again. He said Slater owed him an apology for costing him his match last night and demanded he come out right now. Slater came out to FUCKING WILD AND YOUNG. Heath came out and said he was sorry Jericho was unable to beat Edge last night and him last week, and he was sorry he wasn't going to be able to beat his pro, Christian.
855
8565. Christian vs. Edge in a DRAFT BATTEL~! Good match, good heat. Christian made a big comeback and ran wild. He went for the killswitch but Jericho cut him off. Christian tried a dropkick, Jericho caught him and tried the walls, and Christian turned it into a cradle. This was how Heath beat Jericho but Jericho learned his lesson and kicked out this time. More nearfalls and submission attempts. Jericho finally got the walls on but Christian got the ropes. Jericho thought he won but the ref told him otherwise. Christian came off the top but Jericho hit him with a codebreaker in mid-air for the pin. Good match. (***)
857
858Jericho booted Slater and stomped a mudhole in him afterwards, then gave him a codebreaker as well. He won a draft pick for Smackdown and got Kofi Kingston. Teacher went nuts for this one. Kofi then hit the ring and laid out Jericho with his wacky kick.
859
8606. Jack Swagger vs. John Morrison in another non-title match with the winner getting a draft pick. Shouldn't Morrison be getting a title shot? Match sucked early. Morrison did something that I think was supposed to be Muay Thai knees, but he had the worst clinch I've ever seen in my life. Swagger took over and schooled him on the mat. Another really long match. Swagger once again came off so much more as a champion in this match than he did on Sunday with Orton. Morrison made his big comeback and ran wild. He hit his running knee and springboard kick, but Swagger rolled outside. Swagger tried to shoot underneath and hit the doctor bomb but Morrison grabbed the ropes and cut him off. He went for the starship pain but Swagger cut him off in mid-move and hoisted him up into the doctor bomb for the pin. The Teacher was acting all wacky, screaming about how Smackdown got a draft pick and speaking carny. I'm waiting for the day that Lawler just punches this dude out. Another good mach. So Smackdown got their draft pick and got Christian. He came out and gestured to Swagger that he was going to take the title. Good to see Christian on a show where he could get a push. (***)
861
862DiBiase had a meeting with Carlito backstage. DiBiase was trying to talk him into joining up with him, presumably in his second-generation team. Carlito said he'd rather sit on the sidelines than take DiBiase's offer. "That's not cool!" After he left, DiBiase ran into Truth and told him he'd been looking for someone to watch his back and carry his bags. "You want yourself a Virgil!" Truth said. That was funny. Ted said he was nothing like his father. "What I'm saying is, we'd have a different relationship." Ted said it would be the kind of relationship where he told Truth what to do, Truth did it, and he'd pay him a lot of money. Truth said the lot of money part was interesting and he'd have to think about it for awhile. Ted said, sure, no problem. Truth then slapped him across the face. "TRUTH DON'T PLAY THAT!" This was actually an awesome little segment.
863
864We got a John Cena loves the Troops video package.
865
8667. Dolph vs. Hornswoggle in a DRAFT BATTEL~! Dolph chased him outside. The ref started to count. Dolph threw him in the ring. The midget threw stuff at him so he couldn't get back in and Dolph was counted out. He DESTROYED the little bugger afterwards, shoving him down right onto his head and then manhandling him with the sleeper and shoving him down hard. Lawler got in the ring to tend to the poor guy afterwards. They said this led us to the final pick of the night. Raw got Chris Jericho. Well, that begs the question why they blew off the feud in the cage match.
867
868Batista came out and flipped his lid. He said this Orton vs. Sheamus was complete bullshit. He said he was the number one contender and that duct tape finish last night was a complete joke. I agree with the guy. He said he wasn't leaving until Cena came out tonight and gave him a title shot. Sheamus' music hit and he came out. He got right into the ring with a mic. He said Batista lost last night, and he was just like Orton, a loser. Orton was out next. Batista was pacing back and forth with steam coming out of his ears. Orton grabbed a mic and said he'd been listening to Dave whine and bitch and moan for seven years. He said he'd face Sheamus tonight, beat him, and then face Batista and beat him too. Batista all but said, "LOL." He reared his head back and went "HAW HAW HAW! I'M THE MAN!" It was fucking awesome. I am SO sad Big Dave is leaving. He's my favorite wrestler in WWE right now. Cena finally came out. Oh great, more comedy. He said the solution was simple, this match was now a triple threat. "RING THE BELL~!"
869
8708. Batista vs. Orton vs. Sheamus. Well, good thing Batista was all suited up. The usual deal early where one guy would chill outside while the other two did spots in the ring. Sheamus in particular spent a lot of time out there. They actually cut to commercial right as Batista hit the spinebuster and set up for the powerbomb on Orton. I guess he didn't hit it because when they came back the match was still going on and Sheamus was working over Orton. They showed a spot during commercial of Dave going headfirst into the post. I need an animated .gif of this. He fake ran, meaning he moved his arms and legs quickly but wasn't moving forward much at all, and then put his forehead on the post and took this giant bump. It was the funniest thing I've seen in ages. The first three-quarters of this match came off as them just doing stuff until it was time to go home. They finally started doing three-way spots, breaking up pins and such. Orton hit the draping DDT on Batista and set up for the RKO, but Sheamus broke it up. He went for the Edge on Orton but Dave speared him out of his boots. Sheamus kicked out. Great nearfall. Orton and Sheamus laid out Batista and then Orton hit the RKO on Sheamus. Before he could go for the pin Edge hit the ring and laid out Orton with a spear. Was that a heel turn? There were some boos but nobody likes Orton enough. Dave then put his hand on Orton for the pin. Another good match. (***1/4)
871
872
873In House Notes
874The number next to your name on the address label indicates which issue your Figure Four Weekly subscription expires with. Thus, if you have a [775] next to your name, this is the final issue of your current subscription.
875
876Very special thanks to the following people for their help over the years in producing Figure Four Weekly: Gladys "Granny" Gibson, Dave Meltzer, Tony Leder, Alex Marvez, Zack Arnold, Colin Vassallo, Kris Zellner, Manuel Gonzalez, Craig Proper, Vincent Verhei, Keith Lipinski, Robert Bihari, The Cubs Fan, Kyle Wolf, Devin Cutting, Shawn Garrett, Bob Barnett, Mike Lano, Adam Lebow, Mike Sempervive, Adam Summers, Mike Coughlin, Karl Stern, Steve "Dr. Lucha~!" Sims, Mike K, Forrest Lynn. Thanks also to everyone who sent in news over the past week.
877
878Worldwide renewal rates due to rising postage costs are $100 per one-year subscription (52 issues), $55 per six-month subscription (26 issues), $30 per three-month subscription (12 issues), and $12 per one month subscription.
879
880To order through the mail, send a check, money order or cash payable to Figure Four Weekly to PO BOX 426, Woodinville, WA 98072. To order with a credit card, send your Visa or Master Card order with your name, address, phone number, Visa or Master Card number, expiration date AND CVR number (three-digit security code on the back of the card) to figure4@ix.netcom.com, or you can order by faxing that information to 530-730-2920. You can also subscribe via paypal at www.paypal.com using the bryan@wrestlingobserver.com address, or subscribe via credit card by mail. Please include all the information listed above, particularly the CVR security code that many people forget.
881
882
883WWE
884WWE axed a number of people last week. The two biggest shockers were Mickie James and Shelton Benjamin. I'm actually more shocked by Shelton because as soon as Mickie started talking about going into country music and releasing an album I figured her days were numbered. Her contract was also coming up, and an expiring deal plus exploring other options is a recipe for future endeavorment. There was also a straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back deal during the European tour as she was late several times and held up the entire busload of wrestlers en route from place to place. That did not endear her to many there at the end. Shelton has been working on other projects as well, and while I'm not sure exactly what they are, they were things that WWE saw as also potentially looking at life after wrestling. He never hit his full potential in WWE for a variety of reasons. There is interest in him from the TNA side, particularly since Charlie Haas was also just released. Since nearly everything in TNA has to be a rehash of something done before, there was talk over the weekend of reforming Team Angle with Kurt, Shelton and Haas, an idea from nearly a decade ago in WWE. The one plus for both of them on outside endeavors is that they used their real names in WWE and can continue to use them now that they're gone.
885
886Also released were Kung Fu Naki, Jimmy Yang, Katie Lea Burchill, Mike Knox and Slam Master J. Tatsu on his blog said Funaki left the company due to a lingering neck issue. He was one of those guys that people were baffled was still employed in 2010, since his heyday was the '90s and he'd done nothing of any note for years. Knox was a pretty good big man worker and had improved a lot of late. Unfortunately, while his big thick beard was cool he had also gained weight of late and it's not easy for Vince McMahon to overlook things like that. Jimmy Yang, who was picked up by the company when WCW went under, and after all of these years is still only 28, tweeted upon being released, "Three strikes and you're out. I hear Florida is a nice place to visit." I don't know if that means he was the first guy to ever fail a Wellness test three times and get released, but I do know that before the firings went down I was told that the most recent set of drug test results came back and that there was at least one failure. It was not specified who that was, though, and WWE hasn't made anything official, which is questionable to say the least. Anyway, regarding the comment about Florida we're told that TNA isn't interested, so it sucks to be him. J, real name Ray Gordy, was the son of Terry Gordy. He was a good worker with a good physique who was also unfortunately fairly short. They couldn't come up with a thing for him to do after they split him with Festus, who went on to become Luke Gallows. They never even did the Gallows vs. J feud, which would have made sense given J apparently drugged him up every day and that's why he acted the way he did. I'm actually surprised Katie lasted as long as she did after they got rid of Paul Burchill. Nothing wrong with her but she wasn't a standout worker (although you'd never know that, and that doesn't mean she still wasn't better than half the crew) and she didn't really have the look WWE wants in their women.
887
888We're told there might be a few more to come in the next few weeks.
889
890Latest on Jim Ross is that there is nothing new with his contract expiring in a week. He was in Las Vegas for this week's Cauliflower Alley Club banquet, where he received the Art Abrams Award. He was probably asked about WWE all week, poor guy. The ball, as he's noted many times, is in their court. Lots of rumors that TNA is going to make him a big offer. This is pure speculation on my part, but regarding rumors of both Jim Ross and Paul Heyman to TNA, my only question is why would either guy want to do that? TNA is one thing when you are looking for a job in this business or you need the money. Heyman has all sorts of projects and Ross is not hurting for cash. They'd have to go to TNA with the idea that they were going to make some sort of difference. Granted, last week's show was really good, but still, this company was founded in 2002, it's now 2010, they're doing a 1.0 on a good week on Monday nights in prime time, and that's below -- far below in fact -- what WCW was doing the week before they died. TNA has picked up a ton of people over the years and this is the end result, and that has a lot to do with the people running the company not having a clue what they're doing. Why would Ross or Heyman want to deal with all the bullshit for a job that realistically, no matter how good they might be, isn't going to make any difference whatsoever? I haven't talked to either guy, but they're both smart guys and if they don't go to TNA my guess would be that something like that was the deciding factor. I mean, personally, you couldn't pay me enough to go there and I don't have anything resembling the legacy in this business that Heyman and Ross have.
891
892Hunter was actually supposed to pin Luke Gallows last week, but Punk opted to take the win instead. I guess his feeling was that Gallows had already lost and since there is a chance they'll be breaking up and feuding he didn't want Gallows to do another job and look like a complete geek (Gallows lost to Darren Young two days earlier). My question still remains why Hunter had to have anything to do with the finish since the PPV match was Rey vs. Punk.
893
894When the Raw guys were on the tarmac about to fly home from Europe, a huge ash cloud blew over and they had to wait nearly three more hours before they could take off. It was a rib by God at that point.
895
896Syfy shot a commercial for Smackdown that will be airing later this summer with Rey, Kofi, Cody and Jack Swagger all part of the shoot. Of course, about a year ago they shot an ECW commercial that listed Evan Bourne as champion and that never happened. Plans change, but those guys being involved in the shoot at least indicates at one point that's where they were going.
897
898The WWE supplemental draft is taking place Wednesday. I know on our site, Tuesday is by far the biggest day of the week. To me you'd want to do the supplemental draft on Tuesday both for that reason and because they tape Smackdown Tuesday night, meaning that Friday's taping will either be for a show where the Draft is spoiled or it "won't count.".
899
900We'll see if anything comes of this, but one of the ideas talked about for the summer is a week where Raw takes over Smackdown and vice versa. You know, if they wanted to actually get the Bragging Rights concept over they could do a deal where the winning side gets to take over the losing side's show for one month or until the next PPV. At least at that point people would buy into the stip that this is something important. Last year they fucked it up and gave the winning brand a trophy that Chris Jericho carried around for two weeks and then we never saw it again. What's funny is that something similar to this idea has been suggested -- except their idea is to have Raw take over Smackdown and vice versa as the GO-HOME WEEK FOR BRAGGING RIGHTS. I mean, can you fuck this up any worse?.
901
902WWE is talking with Rob Zombie about hosting on June 28th, and Pamela Anderson for another future date.
903
904There was some sort of an incident at the bar in Belfast involving Mark Henry, Chavo Guerrero Jr. and a fan named James McClay. The problem is that there have been a half dozen different versions of what happened. McClay claims that he was trying to get signatures for a birthday card for his son and for an autograph book he's putting together, and that Mark was a real jerk about it and threw a drink at him. Chavo, McClay said, was trying to egg Henry into kicking the guy's ass. Cena and Orton had to calm Henry down and keep it from escalating. We got another report saying that Mark ended up arrested over this. That's not exactly true. He was cited by the police in the bar, but he was too big for the squad car so they didn't take him downtown. A third report, which was actually backed up by other WWE sources, said that McCray was largely full of it, instigated the whole thing by calling Henry an asshole, and that Chavo was actually trying to calm Henry down and keep him from attacking him. Regardless, McCray ended up thrown out of the bar by WWE security. McCray was so devastated by this incident that he said he couldn't wait for WrestleMania in Atlanta. And you wonder why the Mania hotels are on lockdown and kept secret.
905
906Superstars did an 0.64 rating and 647,000 viewers.
907
908Michael Tarver isn't using the punch anymore because someone figured out that was Big Show's finisher.
909
910The new stable with Ted and Brett DiBiase and Joe Hennig will probably be starting within the next two weeks.
911
912Creative, as you'd expect, was out of their minds this week. They had to rewrite Raw on the fly when it turned out the Raw crew wasn't going to be back in the states in time for the show courtesy the volcano, and then they had to put together a three-hour PPV and a three-hour draft show for successive nights, and that's not counting NXT and Smackdown for this coming week. Everyone figured they'd have a more normal schedule post-Mania.
913
914Most of the people in creative don't watch FCW TV, so NXT has been their first opportunity to see most of these guys. Think about that, by the way -- most of creative doesn't watch developmental TV.
915
916Still no name for the new PPV that will replace Survivor Series although they would like one by the end of this month. We're told it will not be a War Games-style show at this point.
917
918For an idea on how things work in WWE, a few days before the draft we heard Shad would go to Raw, Kofi, Chavo, MVP, Katie Lea and Gail Kim would go to Smackdown, and there would probably be a shake-up with Cena, Rey and Edge.
919
920WWE has hired nearly two dozen people to go through all of the video footage and get it ready for the new WWE Network that the company is hoping to launch within the next 18 months.
921
922WWE's negotiations with Goldberg haven't fallen through, but they're not going well. Goldberg has been tweeting various things such as if WWE wants to do a deal with him they need to realize he's not just another wrestler. They wanted him both for merchandising purposes and because they need stars for next year's Hall of Fame inductions in Atlanta. He has said he'd be open to the idea of one more match so his 3-year-old son would have a chance to see him wrestle live, and after the success of the Bret Hart thing this year (well, it could have been a bigger success, but it did show that a guy could come in for a three-month program and make some money) I think WWE would be open to the idea as well. "What they've put forth right now is something that I will not accept," Goldberg told monstersandcritics.com. "So is it something that I'm striving for? Absolutely not. Is it something that I would like to happen because I've got a little boy and it would wonderful for him to walk in the toy store and to be able to pick up a, you know, his -- excuse me, like he says, a baby-daddy figure, you know, that would be awesome.".
923
924Joey Mercury, who re-signed last year, did a job for Shelton at the Smackdown tapings this week, which tells you how far in advance they thought out Shelton's firing.
925
926Jericho's next autobiography, entitled "Undisputed: How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps," will be out in February of 2011.
927
928Smackdown did a 1.9 and 3.065 million viewers last week.
929
930NXT was down to an 0.88 rating and 1.2 million viewers this week. It lost to Impact.
931
932Shad and his girlfriend had their son on Thursday.
933
934Kofi beat Dolph Ziggler in the pre-show match at the PPV.
935
936
937UFC
938In a very troubling story, TMZ.com is reporting that Tito Ortiz was arrested and charged with felony domestic violence at the home he shares with Jenna Jameson in Huntington Beach, Calif. The article, which came out shortly before we went to press so we don't have tons of details, said at 9:53 a.m. Monday police received a 911 call claiming a disturbance at the house. Ten officers showed up and took Ortiz into custody, and Jameson was to described as sporting "visible injuries." Ortiz was released just before press time on $25,000 bail. Dana White told TMZ that he was going to be fair and see how this played out, but there was a possibility Ortiz could be released over it because he found domestic violence to be one of the worst crimes in the world. Jenna was shown walking around later in the day with her arm all wrapped up, and the belief is that Tito didn't hit her, but rather threw her down in the middle of an argument. Tito called a press conference that night and said the same thing, that he never hit her and never even laid a hand on her, and that all of these allegations were stemming from her being addicted to Oxycontin and not wanting to get help. He said he had family members who suffered from addiction and was almost in tears saying he hoped she ended up OK. Jenna, who earlier had said she wasn't going to press charges and would go back to him for the sake of the children, heard this and responded that he was just trying to save his career. She took out a restraining order against him, left her children with her parents, and went to Las Vegas. She also said she was getting off Twitter forever because people were being too mean to her. I know online, when this story broke it was one MMA-related joke after another, which is pretty distressing if this was actually a case of domestic violence, although anyone thinking the Internet is going to react any differently is crazy. We'll have more next week.
939
940It's not signed, but White said he was working on Randy Couture vs. James Toney for UFC's August 28th Boston debut at the Gardens. The issue will be whether Massachusetts will even sanction Toney, who is obviously 0-0 in MMA, to fight. Couture is 46 now and would be 47 when that fight took place, but he's also a one-of-a-kind freak, plus a guy who has been doing MMA for more than a decade and was the first-ever UFC champion in two different weight divisions. Toney is 41, but it's been a hard 41 years, and questions remain about whether he'll actually take training seriously, whether he can make weight, whether he can pass all his tests, etc. Big risk to take, but obviously Dana was willing to take the risk since he signed the guy in the first place. A better idea would be Toney challenging the winner of Kimbo Slice vs. Matt Mitrione, but that's not going to happen.
941
942Chael Sonnen claims he's getting his shot at Anderson Silva's title on August 7th at UFC 117 in Oakland. Dana White confirmed Sunday night that if the fight became official it would, in fact, headline the show. They better have a great fucking semi-main is all I've got to say. I can buy that Silva has somewhat of the old-school heel thing about him where people will pay to see someone beat his ass. But I also believe that they're not going to pay if they don't think the challenger has a chance of beating his ass, and the jury is WAY out on Chael Sonnen. If it were Brock Lesnar vs. Anderson Silva, sure, that would be gigantic. At this point Silva vs. Chael may be no buys. Chael is a great promo, though, so he may be able to turn that around. "I don't care if he is better. He is better, but I'm tougher," Sonnen said last week. "For 25 minutes, we're going to find out who's tougher. Seven minutes in, we're both going to be tired. Ten minutes in, we're both going to be hurting. Fifteen minutes in, we're both going to want to be out of there, but one of us is going to stick around and grind it our for 25 minutes, and I propose it's me.".
943
944Dana this week said he was getting cold feet on running Hawaii because the only good place to do it was Aloha Stadium and he wasn't sure about running an open air arena in a tropical climate.
945
946TUF Finale on June 19th at the Pearl at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas will be headlined by Keith Jardine vs. Matt Hamill.
947
948Paul Buentello was officially released by UFC this week.
949
950TUF on Wednesday did its biggest audience to date, 2 million viewers and a 1.5 rating for the show built around two fights, Jamie Yager vs. Charles Blanchard (giving Team Ortiz their first win and the ability to choose the fights) and Kyacey Uscola vs. Rich Attonito (which Uscola lost via DQ for an illegal PRIDE knee to the skull). The previous high was the debut four weeks ago which did 1.9 million viewers.
951
952Everyone who fought in Abu Dhabi passed their drug tests. UFC flew in a tester from Quest Laboratories in the UK to administer them.
953
954
955TNA
956Impact last week was up slightly to a 1.0 rating with an 0.87 in males 18-to-49, an 0.90 in males 18-to-34, an 0.60 in persons 18-to-49, and 1.3 million viewers. Not sure what it means that this is now considered a success, seeing as to how it's still way below what they were doing on Thursday nights. The demos were up 30 percent, 29 percent and 28 percent respectively. The Impact replay on Thursday did an 0.7 rating and 863,000 viewers, so I guess if Spike is happy adding the two numbers together and claiming 2 million viewers every week, then more power to TNA. It was funny that they aired commercials for this Monday's show on the replay talking about RVD winning the title and all that. Problem was, as noted, these aired DURING the show, so they spoiled the rest of the show for anyone watching. Impact quarters were 0.91, 1.02, 1.04, 1.02, 0.82, 0.95, 0.87 and 0.94. For all the talk about how important the 8-to-9 unopposed hour would be, well, it wasn't, at least not this week. They put RVD vs. Hardy on at the top of the hour to try to keep people from jumping ship, but that didn't work as they fell from a 1.02 to an 0.82, losing 260,000 viewers, when Raw started. Raw did a 3.05 rating off hours of 3.0 and 3.1. First hour did 4.1 million viewers and hour two did 4.2 million.
957
958Angelina Love got her arm caught in Tara's knee brace at the tapings last week and suffered a partially-torn biceps and torn elbow ligament. She won't need surgery and will only be out about a month or so. D'Angelo Dinero suffered a separated shoulder at Lockdown, which is a shitty injury.
959
960Daffney also suffered an injury when she was facing a very large female wrestler named Betsy Ruth from the Team 3-D school that they're hoping to eventually groom into Awesome Kong's replacement. The girl did a sit-down splash on Daffney, bruising her sternum and causing temporary spinal trauma (basically a stinger). Daffney couldn't move and the other girl, not knowing she was hurt, picked her up and gave her a powerbomb for good measure. Daffney laid there unmoving and they finally figured out something was wrong. They spent 20 minutes getting her out of the ring, stabilized and to the hospital, where she later ended up being OK. They were really worried in the ring as they asked her to wiggle a toe and she couldn't, though a few minutes later she tried again and was able to do so.
961
962Hogan filed a lawsuit against Wells Fargo Insurance Services this week, saying they failed to upgrade his insurance when his exposure to risk grew and thus he had to pay an enormous amount of money to settle the out-of-court lawsuit filed by the family of John Graziano. How is the insurance company supposed to know that his exposure to risk has grown?.
963
964Eric Bischoff did a post ranting about sheet writers and Internet sites and mentioned the major sites he went to for news and basically went out of his way to list everyone but us. Then he spent the entire deal ranting about something we'd reported on Sunday. Great comedy writes itself.
965
966
967Strikeforce
968Final Strikeforce rating ended up being a 1.8 with 2.9 million viewers, just slightly more than I'd predicted going in. UFC 110, going head-to-head on Spike, did a 1.0, on the low end of free PPV replays on Spike, but they did beat Strikeforce in the coveted male 18-to-34 demo (1.4 to 1.26). The Fedor vs. Rogers show, in comparison, did 4.04 million viewers, so this was a substantial drop.
969
970Vadim Finklestein, the other great heel manager alongside Ed Soares (Anderson Silva's manager), said Fedor Emelianenko was ready to fight at any time and could have fought on the Strikeforce on CBS show if Strikeforce could have gotten their act together. He told MMA Junkie they were just trying to get the terms they'd agreed to originally and weren't trying to renegotiate the deal. He did admit that they weren't happy with the amount of promotion M-1 had gotten for the Fedor vs. Rogers show, and that there were "some financial terms the Russian company did not find satisfactory." He said Dana was full of shit about negotiating with Emelianenko, saying there were zero talks between his company and UFC. He said rumors that Fedor was trying to hand-pick opponents was untrue. "The communication that Fedor has with me basically entails Fedor asking, 'Who is next? Just tell me the name of the person and the date.'" I believe that one hundred percent, by the way. Maybe his management team doesn't want him facing certain guys, but I would bet good money Fedor doesn't give a fuck who he faces. Although he did at one point say he didn't want a fight with Tim Sylvia (seriously), but in the end he took the fight and destroyed him in seconds.
971
972May 15th Strikeforce show from the Scottrade Center in St. Louis features Jacare Souza vs. Joey Villasenor and Kevin Randleman vs. Roger Gracie.
973
974
975Other Wrestling
976Chikara ran their King of Trios tournament this weekend, one of the biggest indy events of the year. Claudio Castagnoli & Ares & Tursas defeated The Colony to win the tournament. We're told it was a great weekend with some great wrestling and fun action. They drew about 400 to 500 a night at $20 a head with almost no comps, so financially they probably came out well ahead even with all the talent they flew in. One indy promoter noted to us that the weekend deal with the meet-and-greet on Saturday was a great idea because they would maybe have drawn 700 to 900 for a one-night show, so by going three nights they came out ahead. The only negative is that they did a LOT of promotion, including a billboard on I-95 (really), and they still only drew largely regulars and no new fans. On the flip side, because there were so many regulars they were into everything, all the storylines, submissions, etc. Osaka Pro guys were said to be the standouts. The big backstage news of the weekend was the parting of ways between Chikara and Jorge "Skayde" Rivera, who they'd always pushed on their shows as a living legend. Apparently the company purchased airfare for him, Turbo and Valiente in January. After the deal was agreed to and the non-refundable plane tickets were purchased Rivera contacted Chikara and demanded a raise to over double what he was making, plus double what Turbo, his trainee, was making as well. If they didn't meet the demands, he said, he wasn't getting on the plane. Chikara didn't want to lose out on the plane tickets so they agreed to it. Rivera then told Turbo and Valiente not to go to the airport and to go take other bookings in Mexico instead. He then went to the airport last week and tried to convince Oriental of Perros Del Mal, who was also working on the show, to not get on the plane. He then e-mailed Chikara from the airport trying to get the finishes of the tournament changed, saying if it didn't happen he wasn't coming. Chikara had learned that Turbo and Valiente had, in fact, gone out and gotten other bookings, so they just canceled out on the entire team. They lost almost $1,000 in airfare off the entire deal and were not happy about that at all. The Los Perros guys did show up as promised.
977
978CMLL at Arena Mexico Friday featured Block B of the Torneo Gran Alternativa tournament. Veteran Volador Jr., 29, and Delta, 28, beat Ultimo Guerrero, 38, and Puma King, 19, when Delta eliminated both Puma and Guerrero in the third fall to win the match. Said to be a great match, in the **** range. Delta ended up pinning Felino, Averno, and El Ultimo Guerrero all in one night and we got a lot of really good reviews about him. He's probably be the favorite to win in next week's finale, which pits his team against Hector Garza and Polvoro. Puma King was said to look really good as well. Main was Mistico & Blue Panther & Strong Man beating Atlantis & Rey Bucanero & Dragon Rojo Jr. Mistico was out there in a Mexican World Cup soccer jersey to ensure he was a babyface. I'm told the whole heel turn idea may not be dead yet and that we should wait to pass judgment until after this coming Friday's Arena Mexico show.
979
980Hiroshi Tanahashi heads to CMLL on May 7th.
981
982Los Vipers did interviews saying that now that CMLL knew they were invading they were going to have to mix things up and come up with surprises. They said there were more invasions to come and more wrestlers coming, and said neither heels nor babyfaces were safe. Not sure where the angle is heading but they're doing a good job with it.
983
984TripleMania tickets, for the show featuring Electro Shock vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. for the heavyweight title and LA Park vs. La Parka, range from $126 US own to $15 US.
985
986Evolve 3 on May 1st in Rahway, N.J., has Claudio Castagnoli vs. Chuck Taylor; Jimmy Jacobs vs. Brad Allen; Chris Hero vs. Bobby Fish; Jon Moxley vs. Drake Younger; Johnny Gargano vs. Ricochet; Kyle O'Reilly vs. TJP; Up in Smoke vs. Aeroform vs. Team Beyond; Mercedes Martinez vs. Brittney Savage; Gran Akuma vs. Hallowicked vs. Brodie Lee vs. Chris Dickinson; and Sami Callahan vs. Adam Cole.
987
988On Apprentice Sunday night Sharon Osbourne called WWE and asked them for a $10,000 donation for her charity. She ended up getting $10,000 from WWE, $10,000 from Vince and $10,000 from Cena. And then WWE never promoted the show.
989
990Goldberg on Ellen report from our Ellen Correspondent: "Another bald wrestler on Ellen. The Rock was the first. This time we got a white guy wearing a white T-shirt and jeans -- he seemed to walk well and even did a little shoulder jig. He admits that he was 'misinformed by his own stupidity' over the project manager position that ultimately got him fired and kicked off Celebrity Apprentice and that it was 'probably one of the stupider things' he has ever done. I’m not sure how a big time professional wrestler thinks THIS is the stupidest decision he ever made but OK. I'm not familiar with his career so maybe he was a perfect wrestler and I just don’t know about it. After talking over who he thought would win the show (Bret Michaels -- uh-oh) I notice he is wearing something on the back of his neck. At first I thought it was a giant tribal tattoo on his upper back with two points going onto his neck but it just didn’t move right. In fact it wasn’t part of his body at all. He was wearing glasses on the BACK of his neck. How gravity doesn’t send them falling to the ground I don’t understand. Maybe he has a turtlehead and his glasses rest comfortably in the awkward sway of his neck. His charity was Sons of the Fallen, a group for kids whose fathers have died in the war. He didn’t make a dime for the organization so Ellen skips on to her favorite topic: Animals. This guy has a miniature horse named Squeaky. What a tough guy. In fact in addition to this miniature horse he also has a regular sized horse that wears a hat, a seahorse, and three dogs. After Ellen comments on his physique the interview is over and Ellen’s show moves on to Lisa Kudrow. No fairy costumes this time. This guy still has his dignity.".
991
992
993Vincent A V's DVD Review and Karaoke Showcase
994
995History of the Intercontinental Championship
996Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon. Ladder match from Wrestlemania X, March 20, 1994. Grisham introduced the match with banter so banal, I’m not bothering to recap it here. Shawn made a lot of unfortunate fashion choices in his career, but the circular sunglasses with the flip-up target finder are not among them. Vince McMahon’s disapproval of Shawn’s suggestive disrobing was pretty funny. As the match began, Vince plugged the conference call they were doing, where you could call in and listen to Stan Lane talking to Johnny Polo. I’ll pass, thanks. Razor actually used a chokeslam early. Don’t remember him ever doing that. They were doing this cool camera shot zooming smoothly down the aisle, and then right when they got to ringside they bumped into a ref. I laughed. About two minutes in Shawn threw Razor outside and Diesel laid him out. The ref didn’t see it, but did the math and ejected Diesel. Razor ran wild for a bit. They brawled on the floor and Razor pulled up the pretty black mats. He teased a Razor’s Edge in the ring, but got backdropped over the ropes to the concrete that he himself had exposed. Oh, cruel irony. Shawn took advantage to retrieve the ladder. Razor threw some really great punches, and Shawn did a spit-sell for every one. Razor cut Shawn off and tried to get the ladder in the ring, but became the first man to have the ladder dropkicked into him. That would soon become a tradition. Shawn started using the ladder as a weapon, and fans started losing their minds at the devastation. Most of them literally had never seen anything like this before, and they were squealing in terror. Shawn did at one point throw the ladder into Razor’s back, and that looked like it sucked a gargantuan cock. Shawn went for the belts, the first time anyone had done so in the match, and people were jumping up and down in joy or terror. Razor cut him off by pulling his trunks down, and Shawn responded with a move that defined his entire 1990s run, dropping an elbow off the ladder with his ass hanging out. He followed with a splash off the ladder. Well, first he pulled his pants up, then he did a splash off the ladder. He went for the belts again, but Razor tipped the ladder. Shawn necked the ropes and did a spit-sell again. How much saliva did that man produce? Several minutes into a ladder match at Wrestlemania, they did a headlock-dropdown-shoulder tackle spot. Wrestling has changed. Shawn got whipped into the ladder in the corner and bumped over the top to the floor. Razor attacked him with the ladder on the floor, then slingshot him into it. Shawn landing on the ladder and then pulling it back down on top of him was pretty funny. Razor ended up alone in the ring with the ladder and everyone went crazy. He started to climb, but Shawn knocked him down with an axhandle off the top. The reactions for these teased finishes were insane. I don’t know if it was the novelty of the match, or just the change in wrestling in general, but the fans were totally believing these false finishes when it was clear, watching this in 2010, that this match had a LONG way to go. Both guys fought on top of the ladder, but Razor hit a bodyslam from up there. Shawn responded by kicking the ladder out from under him. He hit a piledriver, then rode the ladder down onto him in the spot they’ve replayed a million times since then. He went to climb, but Razor shoulderblocked the ladder. Shawn crotched the ropes and then put on a fantastic display of catching his own leg in them. Razor took advantage, climbing the ladder and winning, resulting in a white-hot pop. This was safer than just about every ladder match that followed, but is also better than most of them, with better build to the big spots and better wrestling before the ladder got involved. It was two guys trying to win a match rather than two guys trading crazy stunts, like most of them. Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty much required viewing. ****.
997
998Jeff Jarrett vs. Razor Ramon. From the Royal Rumble, January 22, 1995. Grisham described Jarrett as “a star from Nashville” who was “a cross between the Honky Tonk Man and Ric Flair.” He came out to his deliberately shitty country tune with his blinking hat and the Roadie using a small flashlight to guide the way through the smoke. Re-read that sentence. Wrestling in the ’90s often sucked. Jesus, even his boots blinked. Razor’s back was surprisingly hairy considering this was PPV and all. Razor hit the fallaway slam early and followed with the chokeslam again. I guess he did that move all the time. I’d completely forgotten. Vince explained to us that Jarrett was using the WWF as a stepping stone to get into a country music career. What a phenomenally stupid angle, burying your own company. Razor used a top wristlock and Vince identified it. Imagine any of that happening with, just for example, Cena vs. Batista with Michael Cole on commentary. These last two matches made it abundantly obvious how much everyone’s fundamentals suck today. Just things like punches and running the ropes, guys were SO MUCH BETTER back then. And then Jarrett hit a really shitty clothesline. Well, can’t win ’em all. They traded nearfalls with backslides and sunset flips, and the fans bought it. Jarrett started getting nearfalls with his feet on the ropes, and Vince and the fans were steaming mad. Razor missed a clothesline and LAUNCHED himself over the top rope to the floor. He sold his leg, so Roadie clipped him while Jarrett took the ref. Lawler talked about that move being illegal in football, then noted that Laurence Taylor was at ringside. Razor couldn’t get to his feet and was counted out. Jarrett was outraged. He said nobody paid to see Jarrett get his hand raised, they paid see him win the title. He said that if Razor left, that proved he was yellow, just like his gear. He said Razor wasn’t CHICO, he was CHICKEN. So Razor limped back to the ring and the match continued. Jarrett, needless to say, started kicking the knee. Tim White was the ref, and he had about the fastest count I ever saw. Jarrett hooked the figure-four and everyone went CRAZY stomping their feet, which fans need to start doing again. That’s right, fans, I’m calling you out. Razor fought free and made a big punchy comeback. He went for the Razor’s Edge, but his knee gave out and Jarrett immediately small packaged him for the pin. This was going really awesome up to the countout. After that it slowed down and dragged a lot. ***1/4.
999
1000Grisham recapped the convoluted path the belt took after that point. He noted that after a disputed finish with Bob Holly, Jarrett became a two-time champion without ever losing it. “Does that make sense?” he asked. Well, no, not really. He said Michaels became a three-time champ (the match where he won it from Jarrett was FUCKING GOLD), only to forfeit the belt to Dean Douglas, who was champion for one day. Actually, I think it was about fifteen minutes. Then in 1996, Goldust, Triple H, and Rocky Maivia would all win the belt. Rocky won the belt from Hunter just three months into his WWE career. Steve Austin also won the belt in 1996. They showed clips of Austin pinning Owen Hart after being dropped on his head to win the belt.
1001
1002Steve Austin vs. Rocky Maivia. From In Your House: Degeneration X, December 7, 1997. Grisham told us this was by far the most requested match in the online poll they ran to pick the matches for this set. I guarantee it won’t be the best. Rocky came down with his Nation of Domination Brethren. Austin responded by driving his truck down to the ring. He unloaded on Rocky with punches. Literally everyone in the crowd was standing to watch this. The Nation jumped Austin, and the match hadn’t started yet, so it was not a DQ. D-Lo charged Austin, but ended up getting backdropped into the truck's windshield. Austin stunned him on top of the truck for good measure. The match finally began and they traded punches. Austin got dumped outside and Faarooq and Kama jumped him immediately. They did a million spots as the ref had to pretend to be distracted for like an hour. Faarooq took a chairshot and Kama got sent into the truck, so they were both taken out. Jim Ross was on commentary. An amazing contrast between this match and the last. Razor Ramon and Double J were total cartoon characters, but once the match started it was all about the wrestling. Here the whole tone of the product was much darker ( figuratively and literally -- by this point they weren't lighting the fans as much) and more adult. Ironically, they had Jim Ross here to call the matches after they had become much less sport and more carnival. Anyway. Austin started his comeback after Rocky missed the People’s Elbow (or, as Ross called it, “Maivia driving his exposed elbow into the mat.”). Kama got involved again, and a distracted Austin accidentally stunned the ref. (It looked better than it sounds). Austin’s reaction was awesome, as he knew he’d fucked up. Rock pulled out brass knuckles, but Austin stunned him and a second ref ran down to make the count. Only after winning the match did Austin remove his vest. I was right, this clusterfuck was not the best match on the DVD. *3/4.
1003
1004
1005Bryan's TV Reviews
1006
1007ROH on HDNet
1008We'll double up next week.
1009
1010
1011NXT
1012Show opened with the Teacher introducing us to all the NXT guys. In three weeks they'll have the second PRO'S POLL, and whoever is ranked in last place is going to be eliminated. Last week, he said, they tested the guy's creativity. This week they would test their "balance and striking ability." It was the American Gladiators jousting deal. The winner, he said, would get a special feature on WWE.com tonight. What a prize. Will they also have to do a job in the main event like usual? Heath Slater vs. David Otunga opened. Slater won. Otunga had a complete lack of balance and striking ability. Slater was awarded by them playing "WILD AND YOUNG." Fuckers. Wade Barrett vs. Skip Sheffield was next. They had what appeared to be a tie, but the ref ruled that Sheffield won. Next was Michael Tarver vs. Daniel Bryan. "LET'S GO BRYAN!" Amazing how over the guy still is in spite of this shitty booking. Tarver just dropped his wand and jumped off the deal. Stryker actually cackled, going, "What is WRONG with this guy?" Young beat Gabriel in the last one. Gabriel looked like he took a dive. This segment was about lame.
1013
1014They said Jericho vs. Heath Slater headlined tonight.
1015
1016They did a Wade Barrett video package. Everyone said they liked him.
1017
1018David Otunga vs. Justin Gabriel. Matt Hardy and, yes, R-Truth were out there with their rookies. So Truth is still alive. I think Gabriel has a ton of potential. Otunga is at least big. Some of the spots they did were indy-level goofy. Do these guys have agents? There was a drop toehold out of nowhere that lead to nothing. Gabriel hit a big senton to the outside, then started his comeback. Truth smiled at this. He's supposed to be Otunga's mentor but they don't get along. Gabriel went for the 450 but Otunga tossed him outside. Finish was actually great. Gabriel went for a sunset flip and Otunga reached for Truth, begging him to grab his arms. Truth was like, "Fuck you, geek!", so Otunga got rolled up and pinned. Hardy and Truth cackled afterwards.
1019
1020It was time for the semi-finals of the jousting competition. They even had brackets for this. That killed me. Sheffield vs. Slater. Sheffield owned him to go to the finals. Next up was Daniel vs. Darren. Darren beat him quickly as well. Cole took the opportunity to bury him, saying he hadn't won a single match or a single competition and was a loser through and through. They sure know how to get a guy over.
1021
1022Carlito and Michael Tarver came out. Tarver actually cut a promo. "If silence is golden than my words are invaluable," he said. He talked about not playing by anyone's rules. He didn't come here to dance on a balloon like a little monkey for our entertainment, he said. He issued an open challenge to any of the NXT rookies backstage. Sheffield accepted. He told Tarver to shut his mouth and said he was going to make his mentor William Regal proud tonight. Before the match could start out came CM Punk. My God a three-way? That sounds horrendous. That's exactly what happened. Darren vs. Tarver vs. Sheffield. Oh my God. Heels attacked Darren but he made his own comeback and sent them outside. This match would have been great had it ended right here, but it continued. Became pretty boring. Tarver and Sheffield worked together until they both wanted a pin, then they fought. Darren made a big comeback on Tarver. It was OK. He did nearly kill him with a backdrop. Darren went up top but Luke Gallows ran out and shoved him off, then demanded Tarver capitalize. Tarver was too slow and Darren pinned him anyone with his goofy finisher. This was so much better than I expected that it's not even funny. So thumbs up to all three guys.
1023
1024It was time for the jousting finale. They both went down and declared victory. The ref gave it to Sheffield. Darren was not happy. They showed a replay and it was definitely a tie. Stryker then alerted them that they had to do a rematch. Crowd booed. Sheffield owned him on round two and won a feature on WWE.com.
1025
1026Jericho vs. Heath Slater. Jericho worked him over a bit, then went for the lionsault and missed. Heath made a big but heatless comeback. In fact, the only real reaction was light booing. Apparently fans do not want to see rookies running wild on multi-time World Champions like Chris Jericho. Jericho went for the lionsault. Big pop. Slater turned it into a small package for the pin. The finish was well done and Jericho's reaction to losing was awesome. This was a great example of why WWE needs to put Jim Ross back into the booth. I don't think Josh said a word when it happened and Michael Cole did his normally fake freakout about how it was the biggest upset in NXT history. Jericho was tearing everything apart as the show went off the air.
1027
1028
1029Smackdown
1030JACK SWAGGA~! came down to the ring to open the show. He said he was on a roll. Clearly he didn't watch Raw Monday when he got his ass handed to him by Undertaker. He noted that he beat Jericho and Edge both last week. He claimed he dominated Undertaker like no other superstar had been able to do, including Shawn Michaels. Blatant lie, that. The clips were all of him dominating and not a single one of the tombstone finish. He said he hoped to become a permanent member of the Smackdown roster next week, a place that respected him, a place where he could be a role model for the entire universe. He meant the WWE Universe but I like to pretend he meant the COSMOS. He said he was the antidote to Randy Orton's venom and would prove it on Sunday. He said he wasn't going to play around, he was going right for the viper's neck and he was going to cut his head off.
1031
1032Swagger vs. Morrison. Morrison ran wild early until Swagger shot underneath and gave him an awesome amateur-style slam for the heat. Morrison went for his springboard kick but got booted out of mid-air. Swagger used a crossface chicken wing and an awesome wheelbarrow suplex. Swagger had a bloody lip. Morrison made his big comeback and the people went nuts. He hit his springboard kick but Swagger kicked out. Swagger hit the gut wrench powerbomb but Morrison got his hand on the ropes. Swagger lifted him up but Morrison slipped behind, hit a Pele kick, then hit the twisting moonsault for the pin. Match was awesome, but Jesus, who is booking this shit? Swagger is going to have a half dozen number-one contenders before the Draft show is over at this rate.
1033
1034Punk did a promo ranting and raving about how Rey had lopped off part of his hair on Raw. Teddy told him he hoped he beat Rey on Sunday because he would be one goddamn ugly bald guy otherwise. Punk said well, wait until you see what I do to that little fool tonight. Teddy said he'd do him a favor and help him out, and signed Punk & Gallows vs. Rey & Kane for later.
1035
1036Truth & Matt vs. Drew & Dolph Ziggler. This was a match we needed to see. Matt and Truth tried to do a double-team early and it was fucked up like you wouldn't believe. Drew gave Matt a curb stomp the steps and was selling it like he'd suffered a concussion. He continued to wrestle. What a wonderful message this was sending. The ref ended up deciding he was unfit to continue and so he called off the match. This made Dolph upset. Don't ask me why. This was also an odd storyline to run right before the Extreme Rules PPV, which is supposed to be super dangerous. Will they call all those matches off? They also explained that if the ref had seen Drew do the curb stomp it would be an immediate DQ and maybe a fine. There's a new rule for you. Dolph and Drew went after Matt afterwards and Drew threw him back-of-the-head-first into the steps. Matt was claiming on his Twitter that art imitated life and his head was fucked up but who knows what to think about those things.
1037
1038Jericho and Wade Barrett came out. He did a promo inside a steel cage hyping up the match with Edge on Sunday. He said the fans could chant "SPEAR" all they wanted and they probably should, because it was the last time they'd ever get a chance to do so because he was going to kill Edge. He said the fans would no longer be chanting "SPEAR!", they'd be chanting "GOOD BYE EDGE!" This was a great promo. Edge came out and did a promo basically saying that he'd suffered every injury under the sun and come back from all of them, so he had a toughness Jericho could only imagine. He said nothing was going to stop him from spearing Jericho on Sunday, and nothing was going to stop him from spearing him right now. He attacked both guys, like a fool quite frankly, and was quickly overwhelmed. Jericho clipped his ankle and went for the walls. Edge fought free, laid out Barrett and set up for the spear. Jericho slipped out and ran for his life. Barrett was stuck in the ring, so Edge beat him up, tossed him into the side, and then speared him out of his boots.
1039
1040JTG vs. Mike Knox. Shad did commentary wearing a SUIT. They announced that the two former tag partners would be squaring off Sunday in a STRAP MATCH. JTG looks a lot greener doing singles matches than he did doing tags. The new straightened hair has got to go. He needs to go back to the braids. He did a big dive to the outside, then got back in and hit Knox with his wacky clothesline for the pin. And that, my friends, was the end of Mike Knox's WWE run. Shad, in his suit, his the ring afterwards, booted JTG and then strapped the shit out of him. "IT'S MY TIME!", he screamed repeatedly. What a jerk.
1041
1042Michelle & Layla vs. Mickie & Beth & Mickie. They did the goofiest spot early, a deal where Beth did a giant swing on Layla and then Michelle tagged in and basically jumped rope over Layla. We also got a Hiroshi Hase reference from the Teacher. Mickie got the hot tag and ran wild. Broke down into a four-way and Beth and Michelle ended up outside. Layla then hit Mickie with a neckbreaker for the clean pin. Beth hit the ring afterwards and they clipped her leg, then the heels set up an ironing board in the corner and threw Beth through it. Michelle gave Beth a superkick RIGHT to the fuckin face for good measure. Then they painted her up with lipstick. What bitchy women.
1043
1044Punk and his Straight Edge Society came out. He did a promo saying before the night was over someone in the building was going to get their head shaved and join the society. Rey & Kane vs. Gallows & Punk. They had a fun little match. Good guys made their big comeback and Rey did a splash off Kane's shoulders onto Punk for a nearfall. Rey set up for the 619 but Gallows pulled him outside. Kane ran to make the save for his little buddy. Punk cut Rey off as he was coming into the ring. Rey went for a quebrada but Punk caught him and went for the GTS. Rey turned it into a sunset flip but Punk sat down into it and got the pin. Rey booted Punk out of the ring afterwards and Punk fell right into the barber's chair. What a coincidence. Rey went to shave his head with the special super-loud clippers, but Serena jumped in the way and served as a distraction long enough for Punk to flee. This was a fun show, and as a go-home show it was 1,000 times better than Raw.
1045
1046
1047Impact
1048Show opened with Hogan coming down to the ring. People were going batty. If only the people running TNA knew what they were doing this show would be better than Raw pretty much every week. Hogan said he was on a big high ever since RVD won the title last week. He said he knew what it was like to be World Champion, but to be TNA World Champion right now was bigger than he ever thought it could be. He said when you were RVD, the TNA hood ornament, you had a huge target on your back and everyone was looking to make a name at your expense. He said Eric had invented a new top ten ranking system that would include input from all the fans. He ran down what RVD had accomplished last week beating both Hardy and AJ on the same night, putting the latter two over as among the greatest wrestlers of our time. He said the fans could boo all they wanted but they couldn't deny how awesome AJ was. He said when RVD won he knew the game had changed here in TNA. Nothing but love and respect, he said, then called out RVD. People went nuts for him and Hogan was in the ring doing his thumbs up deal. Hogan was totally and unselfishly putting these guys over. RVD did a promo saying the reason he was here was because he knew Dixie, Hogan and Bischoff would give him a fair opportunity to just be RVD. He said TNA was the place all the wrestlers wanted to be. Fans chanted "RVD!" He said a lot of people would never understand his connection with the fans, or his connection "with Mother Earth's finest". Weed, you know. He said they didn't understand the balance it took to be such a cool, laid back dude and at the same time kick so much ass. He said you didn't have to understand what it was like to be RVD, you just had to understand that he was one of the toughest guys ever, he was the best at what he did, and he'd be the best World Champion TNA ever had. "And that's why I'm the whole f'n show!" Out came AJ and Flair. Hogan said nobody invited either of these ex-champs out there. People chanted "EX WORLD CHAMP!" AJ said Hogan sounded like a Hallmark greeting card. He said yes, RVD was right, there were millions of people that didn't understand RVD's lifestyle. He said he was a hippie freak from SoCal that nobody understood. He said if RVD thought he was the best athlete or the best champion then he must be high right now. "Might be," said Taz. A wonderful message, this. He said it was bullshit that he was stuck in a tag match tonight as opposed to getting his rematch for the title. He said he'd get his rematch when he wanted it, on his terms. Flair said Hogan had a personal problem, that being Flair and AJ. He said tonight he was going to finish Abyss and take his ring. "You make a mockery of Ric Flair, you die!" he added. I hope Dixie wasn't watching because that sounds like a terroristic threat. "I specialize in big guys," he added, then went "WHOO~!".
1049
1050The Knockouts were bitching backstage. Madison couldn't believe she had to face not one but two former champions tonight. How about naming those former champions? Velvet said the minute they had things going their way TNA management went out of their way to try to screw with them. Madison finally revealed she would be facing Angelina and Tara.
1051
1052Madison vs. Angelina vs. Tara in a three-way for the Women's Title. The Beautiful People did their entire entrance and then the ref kicked out Velvet and Lacey. Match was choreographed and clunky in spots. It was also the match where Angelina got hurt. It happened right at the finish where Madison was supposed to run her into Angelina. The collision was sloppy and she ended up catching her biceps on Tara's knee brace. Madison immediately rolled her up for the pin. At least they went right to the finish, but then they did a post-match brawl where Angelina had to be in there running and swinging and such and that had to suck. Tara ended up in the corner weeping and saying she was sorry, but then turned on Angelina and knocked her out of the ring again.
1053
1054Kazarian vs. Shannon Moore for the X-title. Taz was still talking about what bullshit it was that they stripped Doug of the title. Tenay said TNA just wanted to provide a title match for the people in St. Louis and the PPV buyers. How noble. How about not making your titles come off as jokes? Not a single person bought a ticket or bought the PPV to see that belt defended. They had a decent match. Lots of flips and such. The ref took a bump. That wasn't needed. Kazarian went for a top rope frankensteiner but Shannon shoved him off. Shannon went up top but Morgan ran down and tossed him off. Shannon took a silly stupid bump to the floor. Morgan threw Shannon in and ran backstage. Kazarian covered him and got the pin. After the match, Joe's music hit and he walked down the ramp looking very unhappy. He gave Kazarian a superkick, then pounded the crap out of him in the corner and laid him out with the muscle buster.
1055
1056We got a promo with Abyss. Like with the RVD backstage deal last week when he was walking to the ring it appeared this was either shot on film or at 24 fps. They shouldn't do this for most segments, but for a segment here and there it's AWESOME. He talked about his match with Flair tonight and basically said whether he retained the ring or not he'd never forget what it meant to him.
1057
1058Morgan was backstage trying to convince Jesse Neal to be his partner tonight. Jesse said we all saw what you did to Red last week. Morgan tried to claim that Jesse was different. Morgan gave him a guilt trip about his childhood friend who died on the USS Cole. Lovely. It's still fucking TNA.
1059
1060Jeff Hardy & Jeff Jarrett vs. AJ & Sting. Jeff and Sting worked together early. Babyfaces were running the heels into the buckles, and ended up trying to run them into the same buckle on accident. That was hilarious. Good heat. They said it was a falls count anywhere anything goes tag team match. They brawled all over ringside and into the crowd for awhile, then this falls count anywhere anything goes tag team match broke down into a TAG MATCH. Dudes standing on the apron, waiting for tags, ref trying to prevent illegal interference, whole nine yards. Is this shit THAT hard to figure out? Here: figure4@ix.netcom.com. Email the scripts to me and in 5 minutes I'll send them back and tell you why people watch this show and say it's stupid. Jesus. Anyway, Sting just walked out as Hardy was making a comeback on AJ. So now it was Jeff & Jeff vs. AJ two-on-one advantage babyfaces. The love I had for this show last week is quickly wearing off. So instead of winning the match, Jarrett went to find out where Sting was. What an idiot babyface. He paid for it by having Sting hit him with a bat and then pin him on the stairs. Don't ask how that's possible.
1061
1062Jesse Neal asked Team 3-D what their thoughts were on him teaming with Morgan against them. This was as stupid a conversation on TV as you'd think reading it here. Bubba was like, wow, you moron, look what he did to Red last week. Jesse said he wanted to go out there and become tag champs. D-Von wanted to know how he planned on doing that. "By beating you guys," he said. This was his plan. They laughed at him and told him to give it a go.
1063
1064The Pope came out in an eye patch and a shoulder sling. He cut a promo saying AJ tried to end his career and take food off his family's table. The Pimp has a family? He said AJ might not have the gold right now but he hadn't forgotten about him. Pope said he had no excuses, but he also wanted AJ to know that it was going to be tooth for tooth, eye for eye. He said he didn't expect him to come out but he wanted him to know he was watching him and wasn't done with him. Pope was great here. As he was about to leave, out came Mr. Anderson. He did a goofy promo basically calling Pope a cult leader. He said he got it, the people were gullible, a bunch of marks and rubes. Pope told him to shut it. Anderson told him to suck it up and challenged him to a match at Sacrifice. He started making chicken noises. Total turn the channel heat. Pope slapped him so Anderson booted him, stomped a mudhole in him and went for the BAD EYE. Geeks ran in to break it up.
1065
1066Hernandez & Jesse Neal vs. Team 3-D. Tenay said the champions were teaming for the first time ever here. Explain that to first-time fans. Before the match they showed Team 3-D having put X-Pac through a table. There was a pool of blood under his head. Yummy. They were 1 minute into this match when the Wolfpac music hit. Out came Hall and Nash with blood on their hands. 3-D and Jesse attacked them for the DQ, then Morgan went out there and, as expected, beat the piss out of Neal. I love moronic babyfaces. Morgan laid out Jesse with a chokeslam and posed with both belts. This would be a hell of a way to get Morgan over as a mega babyface if they knew what they were doing, the guy who outsmarts everyone else and is a one man tag team championship team.
1067
1068After commercial Jesse was screaming at Morgan, saying he wasn't done. Now he's mad. He wanted Morgan out so he could kick his ass. Morgan, backstage, told Christy they were still tag team champs and Jesse needed to remember that. He said he was leaving. Hogan walked up and told him that Morgan could either go to the ring and deal with Jesse or stay back here and deal with him. I'd deal with Hogan, actually. Morgan chose otherwise. So he's not that smart. Jesse attacked him. Morgan begged off, but then low-blowed Jesse and hit him with the belt, laying him out AGAIN. A completely impotent imbecile, that Jesse Neal. But there's MORE. Out came Shannon Moore to send Morgan packing. Really. What is this building towards?.
1069
1070Bischoff was backstage to reveal his revolutionary ranking system. It was a ranking system that wasn't that revolutionary. The way it worked, he said, was there was a top ten and you could go to TNAWrestling.com and vote on who you thought deserved a title shot. Jay Lethal walked in and was ranting about the Hart Foundation when they cut away.
1071
1072Orlando Jordan did a promo backstage. He was talking about passion and art and such. He said Rob Terry had the best body in TNA. Next week, he said, he would premiere the O Zone with Rob Terry. This was an astounding promo. They didn't introduce him, they just cut backstage and he was there. He then did an entire promo without a single time mentioning his own name. People tuning in would have no fucking idea who this dude was in the multicolored tights. They cut back to the announcers and neither of them identified him either. So yeah, on this entire show not one single person said the name "Orlando Jordan".
1073
1074Flair did a promo backstage hyping up the main event. He talked about his Hall of Fame ring, being presented it in front of 18,000 people, how Abyss would never get that honor, and how he was using Steve Austin's catch phrase before Steve Austin. Because this is the minor leagues. Flair looked really old.
1075
1076The cameraman was interviewing Nash and Hall backstage. Nash didn't want to talk and was upset. He said they were concerned about their friend, not a stupid interview. Next time, they said, they'd have a third man to take out 3-D. So are they babyfaces now?.
1077
1078Flair vs. Abyss. Flair came out first. That's just wrong. This was a ring vs. ring match. They brawled outside and Flair gigged. He took his body slam off the top and Taz asked if he'd ever hit that move before. Abyss beat the crap out of him forever. Flair tried a mule kick but got Abyss and the ref. He put on the fakest-looking brass knux ever. He hit Abyss in the jaw but Abyss didn't sell it. So Flair hit him in the nuts. This led to Flair getting the pin. But then the ref saw the knux outside and said "ring the bell!" No announcement that it was restarted. The announcers had to speculate. Abyss quickly hit the black hole slam for the pin. Hogan came out after the match, they ripped the ring off Flair's hand, and then Hogan said next week he knew exactly who he was going to give it to. Show wasn't awful, but a step down from last week and lots of logic holes, particularly in hour two.
1079
1080wrestling news
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1085
1086~~~~~~
1087
1088Friday with Scott Hall - May 3, 2013 ... 
1089The Outsiders (professional wrestling) - Wikipedia
1090https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsiders_(professional_wrestling)
1091 
1092Cached
1093Similar
1094 
1095The Outsiders were a professional wrestling tag team consisting of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, ... Hall turned on Nash during this match, costing them the title as well as .... Tag Team Champion Matt Morgan had been attacked by Samoa Joe, Nash cashed .... PWTorch. Retrieved 2010-02-05. ^ Caldwell, James (2010-03-21). 
1096List of Impact World Tag Team Champions - Wikipedia
1097https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Impact_World_Tag_Team_Champions
1098 
1099Cached
1100 
1101The Impact World Tag Team Championship is a professional wrestling championship contested ... have held the championship by themselves—Samoa Joe, Kurt Angle and Matt Morgan. .... Orlando, FL, 1, 7001410000000000000♤41, Nash, choosing Hall as his partner, invoked his Feast or Fired title opportunity to ... 
1102Scott Hall - Wikipedia
1103
1104~~~~
1105
1106 This was a four way Full Metal Mayhem Tag Team match, which also included Beer Money, Inc. and Team 3D and was contested also for the IWGP Tag Team Championship. [18] 16 Hernandez (2)  and Matt Morgan January 17, 2010  Genesis Orlando, FL 1 7001780000000000000â™  78 [19] 17 Matt Morgan April 5, 2010  Impact! Orlando, FL 1 7001290000000000000â™  29 Morgan declares himself sole champion after (kayfabe) injuring Hernandez and putting him out of action indefinitely. Impact Wrestling recognizes this as a continuation of his first reign. [20] 18 The Band 
1107(Eric Young (2) , Kevin Nash and Scott Hall)  May 4, 2010  Impact! Orlando, FL 1 7001410000000000000â™  41 Nash, choosing Hall as his partner, invoked his Feast or Fired title opportunity to challenge Matt Morgan for the championship and win the title. This episode aired on tape delay on May 13, 2010. Young was also recognized as a champion and the three defended the championship under the Freebird rule. [21][22]
1108[23][24] — Vacated June 14, 2010  Impact! Orlando, FL — — The Band was stripped of the championship due to Scott Hall's legal problems. This episode aired on tape delay on June 17, 2010. [25][26] 19 The Motor City Machine Guns 
1109(Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin)  July 11, 2010  Victory Road Orlando, FL 1 7002182000000000000â™  182 Defeated Beer Money, Inc. (James Storm and Robert Roode) to win the vacant championship. [27] 20 Beer Money, Inc.