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Archive for May, 2010

The next three guest hosts for Raw have been announced; apparently the guest host concept is alive and well, despite Raw naming Bret Hard the new Raw general manager.

Next Monday, Ashton Kutcher will appear to host and promote his new movie, The Killers. After that, there will be a three-hour Raw on June 7 featuring the cast of the new A-Team movie, which includes UFC fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson in the Mister T role, as well as Bradley Cooper and Sharlto Copley.

Finally, Royal Pains star Mark Feuerstein will host on June 14 in a tidy cross-promotion between Raw and the USA dramedy. With a lineup like this, it looks like Bret Hart won’t have to work too hard as the new Raw GM after all. Guess he won’t have to peruse the PA job listings any time soon, then! Good deal!

Carlito Colon, son of legendary Puerto Rican wrestling promoter Carlos Colon, was released from WWE last week, and Carlos has stepped forward with details on his son’s WWE release.

Officially, WWE stated that Carlito had a first-offense violation of the company’s wellness policy and that he was released when he refused to submit to WWE’s rehab program. In order to fend off rumors of his son possibly using illegal narcotic drugs such as cocaine or marijuana, Carlos revealed to the Primera Hora newspaper that his son had developed an addiction to painkillers in the course of dealing with back pain related to an injury.

Painkillers and other prescription drugs, when abused, can lead to untimely deaths just as easily as illicit narcotics. Painkillers may seem as harmless as the best natural acne treatment compared to cocaine, but the untimely deaths of wrestlers like Eddit “Umaga” Fatu and Andrew “Test” Martin are the most recent reminders that the WWE Wellness Policy includes painkiller abuse in their guidelines for good reason.

According to Carlos’ account, Carlito did not recognize his own addiction when confronted by WWE with the violation, and refused rehab because of that. Carlos also claims that WWE is willing to accept Carlito back into their employ if he agrees to submit to rehab.

That claim has not been verified by WWE, which simply has released its brief PR statement on Carlito’s release and has made no further on-record comment on the matter, per WWE policy.

Former WWE and TNA wrestler Bobby Lashley has been pulled from June’s big Strikeforce card, due to a knee injury. Lashley, who has posted an impressive 5-0 record in his MMA career thus far, was scheduled to headline the card.

The fight, scheduled for Los Angeles, has no HGH connections; Lashley is considered a rising Strikeforce star, though he has not yet drawn the interest of UFC President Dana White.

The injury is believed to be minor; Lashley’s fight will be rescheduled once his injury and rehab process have been more closely evaluated.

In becoming Raw general manager, Bret Hart announced he was vacating the US Title he won off The Miz last week and that Miz would face top contender R-Truth to determine the new champ. R-Truth, coming off a nice win over Ted DiBiase Jr. at the Over the Top PPV, put on a show and was awarded the title.

This win sets up a natural feud over the US title between R-Truth and the Miz, which ought to make for more good matches, if this title match was any indicator. They displayed good in-ring chemistry and told a good tale from a ring psychology standpoint without over-relying on high-spots.

The Miz, who has obviously been laying off the weight loss diet supplements since his Real World New Orleans days, has matured into a solid heel, though he hasn’t yet rid himself of that youthful, Real World look.

From US Champ to new GM of Raw, Bret “the Hitman” Hart’s return to WWE has been nothing short of a complete success for both the former grappler and the company, which used Hart’s return to fend off and completely rebuff a challenge by TNA Impact to Raw’s Monday Night dominance.

Now, with the “guest host” concept gone by the wayside and Hart ensconced as a face authority figure, Raw might have a chance to return to some great, stable storytelling with a fresh perspective, rather than offering guest-hosting duties to just about everyone and their grandma as a unique mothers day gift.

Hart is a brilliant foil for the company’s heels, with great mic skills and instant credibility; and the ongoing power-struggle between Hart and McMahon could fuel some interesting PPV storylines. Well chosen, WWE!

So far, moving back to Thursdays has been a mixed bag for TNA Impact.

Before moving to Mondays, Impact averaged a 1.2 rating on Thursday nights. On Mondays, they fell to an average rating of 0.78 or so. On their first Thursday back, Impact scored only a 0.9 rating, up marginally from their Monday night average, but still down 25 percent from previous Thursday night performances.

How all this schedule juggling has affected ratings to begin with is open to questioning, also. However, the real test will come a few weeks from now, once viewers “find” the show again. Hopefully for TNA, all this chaos won’t negatively affect the buy-rate for tonight’s PPV, which isn’t as big a concern as proper funding for Mesothelioma Cancer, but certainly matters to TNA employees.

And here I thought Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were dead, or at least spending their days perusing www.appetitesuppressants.net. Not so! They apparently still work for TNA, considering they cashed in their “let’s rip off WWE’s Money In the Bank gimmick” briefcases to pin Matt Morgan and claim the tag belts.

The victory sets up Hall and Nash to face off with Ink Inc. (Shannon Moore and Jesse Neal) and the TNA Sacrifice PPV, which if memory serves is up this Sunday. Can Hall and Nash as champs up TNA’s buy-rate? I’m not sure the odds are all that good…

Rob Van Dam may no longer be the whole F’N show, but TNA President and owner Dixie Carter meets with his approval. He’s also fine with Impact’s move back to Thursday nights after only two or three months on Monday night, so long as it doesn’t involve him reading Lipovox reviews on air.

“Dixie (Carter) never said, ‘Hey, we’re going to beat the hell out of them on Monday nights, we’re going to take over and own it,’” RVD told Matt Bishop of Slam Wrestling.

It’s nice to know at least some of TNA’s talent don’t see this as the demoralizing defeat that it so obviously is.

WWE Women’s champ Beth Phoenix suffered a torn ACL during a WWE Superstars taping this week, and initial assessments have her out for as long as six months before she’ll be ready to return.

This creates a huge hole in the Smackdown brand’s women’s division, where both Mickie James and Maria Kanellis were recently released. Of course, it will provide an opportunity for some current B-list women’s talent to step up, but at the moment, Phoenix’s injury leaves Smackdown’s women’s division sorely lacking in top-flight talent.

Maybe some of their younger women wrestlers, working in Ohio and hawking the best acne treatment, can provide an infusion of talent. Hopefully some of them are ready.

Bret Hart will get a chance to once again wear WWE gold next week on Raw; he will be facing current US champ, The Miz. My tv stands are still shaking from shock and surprise.

Hart famously left WWE around 1997 to join the competition, WCW, and exited the company angry when he felt Vince McMahon welched on a promise to allow him to leave WWE undefeated as champ. A vacated title was his preferred way to exit.

When Vinnie Mac booked Shawn Michaels to win instead, in front of a pro-Hart Montreal audience, the incident became known as the Montreal Screw-Job. The event festered well over a decade and was only healed 12 years later, in 2009, when McMahon successfully negotiated to bring Bret back in a limited role, in a storyline that involved him getting retribution on McMahon for perceived wrongs.

It made for good TV and good ratings; but now Hart has apparently earned a title shot by being a good company man in his return to WWE. While it’s unlikely a title change will occur, it’s definitely decent of Hart to willingly give “the rub” to a young turk like The Miz. Classy move, Bret!

It was Monday Night Wars II, and it lasted… about two months.

Spike TV pre-empted Monday’s TNA Impact! with a re-airing of Star Wars III. The Star Wars rerun captured about a half-million viewers. Compare that the Impact, which was drawing around 1.1 million viewers, and you can decide for yourself if moving Impact! back to Thursday nights is a good move for Spike TV.

You can show all the slideshows you want that Impact does better numbers than any other programming on Monday night, but all Spike TV cared about, in the end, was how badly WWE Raw was beating them each and every week.

On Monday, by comparison, Raw drew 4.43 million viewers on USA.

If the angle had involved Vince McMahon, it would have felt like a stale retread; but Friday’s Smackdown, which opened with a very strong segment featuring an altercation outside the ring between IC Champ Drew McIntyre and Matt Hardy, felt fresher and more energetic that anything that’s aired on Smackdown in quite some time.

The show opened with Hardy coming to the ring to challenge McIntyre, a standard storyline on many wrestlers’ resumes-, and when McIntyre responded by coming to the ring and engaging Hardy in an unsanctioned altercation, the authority figures, including Teddy Long, showed up to try and put things in order.

McIntyre ignored Long’s orders to story in a matter of minutes went from champ to suspended to fired and stripped of his title. Sure, it’s a storyline and it’ll be interesting to see where things go from here as Hardy was given an injury angle to play up as a result of the conflict with McIntyre, but kudos to WWE for relying on someone other than Vinnie Mac to sell this angle. Well done.