- Sabu has been calling around looking at getting back in the ring. It was just a few months ago when he was telling people he wouldn’t be able to ever bump again, but now he’s saying with a few months of rest, he feels better, although he still has to limit what he does.
- “Get Smart” did $2,272,394 over the weekend for No. 11, and its domestic total is now $124,186,385 and is at around $190 million worldwide.
- Bret Hart is in need of a full knee replacement. It’s been something he’s been told he would need for probably 11 years, but he was putting it off until he really had no choice. When he was in Italy on his recent trip, with all the walking on uneven pavement, it had become brutal. Unlike others who get asked this question, Hart was adamant about if he was 20, would he have chosen UFC or pro wrestling: “I’d never do UFC. I wasn’t good enough and I was smarter than that. I have a lot of respect for UFC guys, but I still think they’re not getting the money they deserve, especially when I see them taking all those head shots. You can see the brain cells just vanishing when they get hit five, six times. It’s the kind of brain damage you carry around forever. You can’t put a price tag on your brain and I know that better than anyone else.” On Hulk Hogan’s comments about the problems with John Graziano being God’s will and some sort of retribution or karma on him: “I think he showed his true colors. He’s washed up. He exposed himself. It’s pretty callous. I think he dug himself an even bigger hole on Larry King. He was always selfish. Everything Hogan did was for Hogan.” Hart was respectful to Hogan during the WCW days but the straw that broke the camel’s back was when Hart agreed to do the WWE DVD, and one of the producers played him the clips of the “hit-piece” DVD WWE was going to do on him (similar to Ultimate Warrior) until he agreed. The comments by Michaels he expected and didn’t bother him that much. He was not happy with comments by Roddy Piper but since the two have always been close, he’s willing to say Piper was tricked into it and was led by the questioning, but Hogan’s portrayal of him upset him the most. When asked the wrestlers he considers friends, he said Austin, Edge, Jericho and Piper.
- Sylvan Grenier said in SlamWrestling he’d decided to take time off from wrestling and not work indies due to injuries and because he’s started three businesses in Montreal and doesn’t have much free time. He’s got a security company that he started before wrestling and continued to run while in WWE, a supplement company and not sure what the third company is, although he did say he’s thinking of opening a gym, and after all that, said he’s going to start taking indie bookings. His claim for appearing on the Signature Pharmacy list of clients is that the WWE told him he needed to get an American doctor instead of a Canadian doctor. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, the WWE trying to get wrestlers away from drug supplying doctors tells a guy living in Montreal to get a doctor who lives nowhere near Montreal. One of the biggest red flags that should be known at this point is having your personal physician more than, say, a 30 minute drive from your home. I mean, how many people routinely drive two hours in each direction to see their personal doctor? Let alone a guy in Montreal needing to have one in the U.S. He asked around about a doctor, and lo and behold, the doctor he picked ended up being with Signature Pharmacy and thus, when the bust came, his name was out. He noted he did nothing illegal, and technically, that would be correct, as it’s the doctors who were filling the prescriptions without visits from the patients who are the ones in trouble in that case.
- Bret Hart’s autobiography is now available for U.S. pre-ordering through amazon.com. The actual U.S. release date is 10/8. It can also be ordered today at amazon.ca and they ship into the U.S.
- Stacey Keibler will have a major role in the ABC Family network TV series “Samurai Girl” that debuts next month. They shot six episodes which will all air the weekend of 9/5 through 9/7. She’ll play the rival of the lead star who is the former fiancee of the girl who stars in the show as a Japanese teenager whose father is the head of a Yakuza. Keibler did an interview with WrestleZone.com talking about leaving WWE. She said: “I left the business because of the lifestyle. You don’t have a car or hotel paid for. You get dropped off on a Friday and you have to get around the state. A different city each night. You are away from friends and family. It was really tiring. I wanted to be more normal and sleep in my own bed every night.” She said her dream was always to be an actress and appearing on “Dancing with the Stars” got her noticed. She said even before going on the show she had mentally decided to take a year off wrestling to try her luck in Hollywood, but said the show was great timing or “I would have been any other blonde walking around the streets of Los Angeles. I thank my lucky stars.” She said WWE wanted to renegotiate her contract while she was on the show. She asked for a raise and also wanted first class air travel (which in WWE is reserved only for people who have held the world title or someone they consider special). “They asked me who I thought I was. They told me I was no different from another other Diva.” She said they told her absolutely not when it came to the first class. That probably would have coincided with WWE in the middle of her “Dancing with the Stars” run suddenly no longer pushing her on their shows, because they realized she wasn’t coming back.
- Jesse Ventura was on Howard Stern on 7/29 for 90 minutes, which is some kind of a record. Ventura, 57, noted he had a hip replacement six months ago from all the bumps from wrestling. Ventura said that wrestling shouldn’t be able to get away with calling its wrestlers independent contractors because Vince tells them when they are working, who they are working with, everything to do and who wins and loses. When asked about the Iron Sheik, Ventura said Sheik was another one (like Hogan) who wouldn’t back him when he tried to unionize wrestlers and that if the unionization would have taken place, perhaps today Sheik would have money needed for health care and his retirement. Sheik said that Jesse used to be his medicine man (drug dealer) and Jesse denied it. He said the only drugs he ever did in wrestling were testosterone, and only because it was required for wrestling, because you needed it to get big, stay big and to help recover from the nightly beatings. He did his usual spiel about believing 9/11 was an inside job and that Osama bin Laden is dead already but they pretend he’s alive so the country has an enemy. He said he would have won the senate had he run, and he flipped a coin to make his decision not to run, and that if he ran for president, he’d be assassinated. He said if he was a Senator he would demand WWE get investigated for failing to pay proper taxes due to categorizing the wrestlers as independent contractors. He claimed the day after he did Larry King, at 4 p.m., one hour before the deadline to file, he was talking with his wife and they were talking about what to do and she told him to flip a coin, so he did. Well, it makes for a good story. When the subject of UFC came up, he said he doesn’t believe they are real, saying they were “working stiff” because they go 25 minutes and real fights are over in 30 seconds. He noted that living in Mexico now, he has a different perspective saying the U.S. to those outside the country comes off as an arrogant country.
- The Boston Herald ran a story on the health problems of Walter “Killer” Kowalski, one of the all-time great heels in wrestling history. Kowalski, 81, is bedridden due to problems with his knees and living in a nursing home in Everett, MA. He would love to hear from any old fans c/o the Everett Nursing Home, 289 Elm St., Everett, MA 02149. Because of his age, overall health and having a pacemaker, doctors won’t operate on him.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported former WCW announcer and highly rated Pittsburgh sports talk host Mark Madden would be signing with WXDX, a rock station that carries the Pittsburgh Penguins, to do afternoon drive-time. The story said Madden reached a buyout deal with ESPN Radio, which was paying him on the rest of his contract after letting him go after he told a joke about Sen. Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer.
- Jeff Van Camp, who worked as Lord Humongous in Mid South Wrestling and Alabama in the 80s, is running for sheriff of Santa Rosa County in upstate Florida. Van Camp was pushed from the start due to his size and groomed for stardom as a wrestler, but the road schedule of Mid South and low payoffs caused him to quit the business and go into a career in law enforcement.
- Former WCW wrestler and artist Lash LeRoux is running for municipal election in Oxford, AL.
- Balls Mahoney was on tour of Ireland a few weeks back, did a brawl outside the building and onto a main street of town which I guess started people on the street enough that police were called and a near riot outside nearly took place. On the same tour, Doug Basham suffered a damaged eye socket, a swollen elbow and a bruised pec, although he didn’t miss any dates.
- Tony Schiavone will be the lead radio announcer for the Gwinnett Braves, the Atlanta Braves AAA farm team that plays in the metro area. Schiavone has been working as sports director for WSB radio, although it was WDUN, the newstalk station, is carrying the games. Schiavone’s original love was baseball, although he did grow up as a big wrestling fan in Raleigh. He actually got into wrestling because he was doing the radio announcing for the minor league Charlotte Orioles, who were owned by Frances Crockett, Jim’s sister, and when they found out he had so much interest in wrestling, they brought him in for their regional syndicated show. In 1986, when they took over the TBS time slots, Jim Crockett decided to go with his guy, Schiavone, instead of Gordon Solie, who had been a fixture on the station since the end of 1972. Even though Solie was well past his announcing prime by that time, Solie had a lot of popularity and those were big shoes to fill
- Reggie Parks, the 60s and 70s wrestler known for his physique, who is now best known for making championship belts for pro wrestling, boxing and MMA, has made two championship belts for Madonna and is working on a third one. One she wore on the cover of her album. The third belt may be for a Madonna statute in a wax museum. He’s also made title belts for the 2007 Tennessee Titans defensive line and the 1989 Oakland A’s. He made his first title belt in 1962 for promoter Joe Dusek in Omaha when he was working the territory. Parks stopped making WWF title belts about ten years ago over a royalties dispute over sales of replica belts. He said UFC was now his biggest client. He said it takes four people about two weeks to make a custom championship belt, which costs $1,000. He said one particularly elaborate belt for a Japanese promotion cost $12,000. His business started booming with the advent of the Internet and people buying belts from him and his team are usually working on about 20 belts at a time. Now 73, he dates back to being a carnival wrestler before turning pro.
- Ed Koskey is now the head writer for ECW, joining Michael Hayes as head writer of Smackdown and Brian Gewirtz as head writer of Raw.
- Foley’s contract expires I believe at the end of the summer. I don’t see anyone on the horizon being groomed for the color role, plus who had have better on-air chemistry with Ross so I presume they’ll offer him a new deal. Vince is way more critical of announcing talent, particularly as the show goes on, than he is of main event wrestling talent, so there is likely some culture shock, if that’s the right term, with Foley in the role. Basically the announcers have to learn to react positively to negativity, but since most like the job (the hours are great for the money you’re paid, you get the perks of being featured on television every week, and you’re not getting your body destroyed like almost everyone else on the show–although I suppose Jim Ross’ worsening eye that doesn’t allow him to drive at night stemming from a match contradicts that) you never see anyone voluntarily leaving the position.
- Jonathan Coachman is starting with ESPN imminently, but he was removed from the position, although most figured he wasn’t going to sign a new deal when this one came due because he had real sports opportunities elsewhere.
- To me, Smackdown has become easily the best wrestling show on TV due to Edge and Vickie Guerrero. They’ve been so incredible the past two weeks. Having said that, and I don’t know if it’s being on Friday or what, but Smackdown is the one show that hasn’t benefitted from the draft as far as a noticeable ratings upturn. It’s interesting about Smackdown, because when things go bad and Raw and ECW show noticeable drops, Smackdown also doesn’t. It’s seems like, good or bad, they are going to be at a certain level based more of seasonal viewing patterns like a network show, while Raw and ECW go up and down based on star power in segments, angles and overall company momentum.
Edge is the company’s MVP once again as an all-around performer and it’s pretty amazing watching how much Guerrero has improved. The Edge/Alicia Fox deal where he seduced her seemed to be a spoof of the Edge/Amy Dumas thing from a few years back, which in its own way, because it forced the heel turn and put Edge with Lita, really put Edge’s career into overdrive in the first place. The opening segment with MVP and Jeff Hardy was weird. It reminded me of a TNA segment except MVP had better delivery than most in TNA would have. The whole deal is that they have lost focus of their audience and assume they are more into stuffing instead of potatoes than they are. There is a hardcore audience that knows Jeff Hardy was suspended twice and that his trailer burned down and his dog died. But if you were just a casual TV viewer, which is the vast majority of the people watching, you’d have watched the MVP Lounge segment on the 7/25 show and not had a clue what they are talking about. Suspension. Termination. In WWE, they have the announcers completely lay out during these segments, but at some point, whether it’s the wrestlers, or the announcers, they have to background for the fan who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Jeff Hardy telling MVP that he had made his mistakes (MVP spent years in prison before training to be a pro wrestler but I’d guess less than 5% of the TV audience would know that since it’s never been pushed on TV ). MVP is also the first person of non-Samoan heritage on a wrestling show than I’ve ever seen correctly pronounce “Samoan.” The deal is that we all grew up in school and listening to wrestling announcers and football announcers pronounce it wrong so the American pronunciation of the word is actually the wrong one. It was interesting to watch Richards come out in Philadelphia. He came out all enthused and nobody knew who he was, and then when they announced he was from Philadelphia, then the people popped. It really showed me how much the audience has turned over in recent years. They had Kozlov sell more for Richards than anyone to date, and it’s sure been a good idea that he hasn’t sold much, because he looked downright lost at times. Jim Ross told a story about Kozlov being recruited as a young boy because of his size and being groomed for athletic stardom, actually saying Kozlov was large for his size (meaning large for his age). By the way, none of that is true. I’m guessing Ross used the story about the real-life Alexander Karelin, who was schooled from childhood by the government in Greco-Roman wrestling because he was so large as a six-year-old. They also did a Ron Killings vignette with his new name of R-Truth. They showed where he grew up and he mentioned hanging with a bad crowd, winding up in prison, learning from his experience and not blaming anyone but himself for his problems. He showed a lot of charisma in the vignette, but you never know what’ll happen. They filmed eight different vignettes, so it could be as long as two months before he starts on TV. Or it could be next week knowing how quickly things change. I can recall how Monty Brown looked like a superstar waiting to happen in TNA, and then when he jumped, people thought he’d break through and then he came here and they were so adamant of not having him do anything that got him over in TNA that he ended up being a lost soul and never went anywhere. Kendrick is getting a shot as a heel. This is a real indication of how much WWE has changed, because of guy of Kendrick’s size even a year ago would have never been able to do anything past the Noble-level as a heel. The idea is for Kendrick to be someone and create a Michaels/Diesel element, as that is who Kendrick & Ezekiel (“Big Zeke”) are patterned after. Ezekiel has a good look. Jim Ross is trying to push that Kendrick reminds him of the late Brian Pillman. Kendrick is now “The Brian Kendrick” as his shiranui (sliced bread #2) finisher is now “The Kendrick,” which is a spoof on “The Tazz” line by Adamle.
The original booking idea coming out of the wedding and split was for Vickie to go babyface, which is why we had noted that would likely to evaluated because everyone in the company was amazed at the level of heel heat Vickie has been getting the past few months and there was no fan groundswell for a change. Because of that, the actual plan was to do a Kurt/Karen like one-week split, which actually would have been the second time repeating that angle in a one-month period. Vickie would have reinstated Undertaker when she was mad at Edge, so it wouldn’t be that they were working together to swerve the audience, but then at the end, Edge and Vickie would have gotten back together like they did in their previous split. Thankfully that would have changed because one of the reasons, besides simply being in a more major league setting and doing better paced angles, that Edge & Vickie are so much more over than Kurt & Karen, is that the audiences hasn’t been burned out by all the fake turns and swerves. The problem essentially is they want to keep them together. But they decided to postpone the wedding a week because of the New York pre-emption, so needed an angle there, and still needed the angle to get Undertaker back to headline SummerSlam.
- Ted DiBiase said he’s happy with his sons doing pro wrestling because of changes in the business since the days he was there. He noted the change in the schedule, the drug testing and difference in the lifestyles of the wrestlers.
- Since we’ve talked about taped viewing of Raw and Smackdown a lot, for ECW, on 7/1 the split was 95% live and 5% tape and on 6/24 it was 92% live and 8% tape, so it’s closer to Raw levels of people watching after the fact that Smackdown levels.
- For the week from 7/14 to 7/20, Raw was the No. 7 most watched sports program (hey, they list it as sport when it’s convenient for them when it comes to TV ratings, but when you call it sport to compare the treatment to athletes who draw the same TV ratings, then it’s not sport, it’s entertainment, although it’s not like entertainers on TV shows that do that kind of ratings are paying for their hotels and rental cars either ) trailing only shows related to Major League Baseball’s All-Star game and Home Run Derby. Smackdown was No. 9. The UFC special with Anderson Silva vs. James Irvin was No. 13, with British Open coverage and Legends Celebrity Softball on ESPN ahead.
- Best selling pro wrestling and MMA DVDs from the 8/3 issue of Billboard: 1. Ric Flair: The Definitive Collection (which was also No. 2 on the TV charts behind only the fourth season of Stargate Atlantis); 2. The Rock: The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment; 4. WWE One Night Stand; 5. Wrestlemania 24; 7. Twist of Fate: The Matt & Jeff Hardy Story; 8. UFC 82 Silva vs. Henderson; 10. The Legacy of Stone Cold Steve Austin.
- In the useless trivia department, when Punk retained the world title at the Bash, he became only the third wrestler in history to have his first WWE world title match on PPV (this would be only doing the WWE & World title and obviously not including the ECW title) going in as champion. Essentially that would mean a guy won the title not on PPV. The first was Hulk Hogan at the Wrestling Classic PPV, but that’s a trick question because Hogan won the title the first time in 1984 before there was PPV. The other was Bret Hart, who won the title in a dark match at a TV taping in Saskatoon in 1992 when the company was panicking about having no babyfaces over and needing to create a new babyface star immediately, and Hart beat Flair. Hart had never had a world title match on PPV, but came in as champion and defended against Michaels at the 1992 Survivor Series.
- The movie “The Condemned” starring Steve Austin has a dubious distinction. Of all movies with a major theatrical release in the last 27 years, it had the 19th worst second-to-third week drop. Theaters are obligated to give major movies two weeks, so in week three, that’s when you see big drops among the flops because theaters stop carrying it. The movie fell 76% in weekend No. 3.
- Mae Young was called to appear on Raw, believed to originally be for an angle involving DiBiase & Rhodes, but that was before they changed to take Duggan out and put Cole in, based on the line that Young would show Duggan that you are never too old to be in wrestling. Since she was there and there was no spot on Raw for her, they had her do the Kiss Cam segment. She came out with a ref. They put the camera on two women, and the two women went at it big-time with tongues, which may or may not have been planted. Then they showed two men in cowboy hats and the crowd started laughing. Young then started kissing the ref, knocking him over and they were rolling around the ring and then cut to a sign, which may or may not have been planted given that she was not advertised to be there (although we did list it on our web site ahead of time), which read, “85 and still A-Mae-Zing.” When Young was there, she was begging and pleading to be taken on the December “Tribute to the Troops” show. I don’t count on that happening. At the show, when they showed John McCain on the screen, the people booed like crazy, and when they showed Barack Obama, he may as well have been The Rock given the reaction.
- On one of the Raw bumpers this week they noted that last week’s Raw was the highest rated show on cable TV for Monday night. That wasn’t close to true as The Closer on TNT that week did a 6.6 rating and 7.1 million viewers and Saving Grace, also on TNT, did a 4.3 rating, so Raw was third for the night.
ing losers. Everyone in that match has no future whatsoever in the business.
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No, Michael Cole only regards JBL as a heel. The days of referring to history have long since past. In WWE's mind, if it's not current it's not relevant. They have chosen to become one-dimensional.