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Archive for November 2nd, 2009

The Associated Press and other news sources indicate that Connecticut Democrats and others connected to incumbent US Senator Chris Dodd’s re-election campaign are already alleging illegal activity against Republican Senate hopeful Linda McMahon, wife of WWE co-founder Vince McMahon and herself the former CEO of WWE.

The allegations? Well, Dodd’s campaign has been trying to discredit McMahon by highlighting tawdry scenes from past WWE broadcasts, including a “simulated rape scene” in a sketch involving promoting a match between Triple H and Kane; the sketch was performed as part of the controversial WWE Attitude era.

The videos Connecticut Dems were using to back their misleading allegations were found on YouTube.com. Apparently, WWE asked YouTube to remove the videos and YouTube complied. Dems allege this is “illegal campaigning” in behalf of WWE for Linda McMahon.

Unfortunately for Dodd and the Dems, the law seems to be on WWE’s side; YouTube.com often has copyrighted material available on their site without proper permission being obtained, and while they try to contain it themselves, the volume of material uploaded makes it a massive task.

However, whenever any copyright holder requests specific material to be taken down, YouTube always complies quickly. WWE’s position is that they asked YouTube to take the offending videos down because they were copyrighted material used without permission, not as a campaign favor.

Our view at ProWrestlingViews? Dodd’s campaign has to be scared of Linda’s name recognition if they’re nitpicking over YouTube copyrighted material removal issues like this. It’s a huge stretch to call that “illegal campaign activity,” even if WWE did target those videos revealed to exist on YouTube by the Dems’ campaign charges. They’d find traction easier complaining about WWE’s past history of promoting unhealthy weight loss supplements. But not by much.

According to numerous online reports, Jim Ross has suffered another attack of Bell’s Palsy and, at least for the time being while he recovers, is out of action as the Smackdown play-by-play announcer. His role will temporarily be filled by Matt Striker as color commentator while Todd Grisham takes over play-by-play.

Ross is said to be waiting on test results to determine the severity of this latest attack; Ross has suffered from Bells’ Palsey for years, but has overcome previous attacks to return to his announcing role in WWE. If he is unable to continue in an announcing role, one would hope the McMahons would offer him a choice of jobs in administration of WWE matters, as they often due with WWE greats past their prime.

But who knows? Perhaps Ross can overcome this attack, also. Time will tell the tale.

Hulk Hogan, not content yet with his place in wrestling history, has announced he’s moving to upstart WWE rival, TNA. Can I go back to sleep now? You woke me for this?

This would have been huge news about 20 years ago, long before TNA was conceived. Might have even been interesting when TNA was first starting up. But now? Yawn. It’s about as exciting as term insurance quotes. Which isn’t to say boring, but isn’t to say world-shaking, either.