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Linda McMahon won the GOP primary for the US Senate seat currently held by retiring Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, who, it was determined early on, didn’t stand a chance of being re-elected. So the Dems nominated Richard Blumenthal, a popular Connecticut Democrat, after realizing the GOP was well on its way to nominating someone with the name recognition of Linda McMahon.

McMahon received approximately 49 percent of the vote, while Rob Simmons got 28 percent and Peter Schiff 23 percent. The national Democratic machine was quick to attack McMahon along all the predictable lines of attack for a former CEO of a company like WWE. Whether voters in Connecticut will respond to such fear-mongering or vote on the issues remains to be seen.

McMahon might be more resilient to criticism if she had run a medical assistant school rather than WWE; yet her company’s product has certainly kept her in touch with blue-collar voters.

I enjoy Royal Pains more than just about any other series on USA, expect when Psych is on. Then it’s Pysch. Of course.

And, as a WWE-watcher, I was pleased to see Big Show Paul Wight on last week’s episode of Royal Pains. The good news is that his acting was a couple steps up from wooden – though only a couple. And he made for an interesting foil for Hank Lawson, Ph.D., in terms of his medical case.

Hopefully, Big Show won’t let this exposure go to his head; he could easily be a wrestler of Andre the Giant’s stature; but he doesn’t work as hard as Andre did. Big Show’s been a hidden comedy gem ever since a memorable co-guest-hosting job on Saturday Night Live a few Wrestlemanias ago.

Nice to see Show scratching that itch again. Let’s just hope he stays primarily in the ring before he ends up hocking iPhone accessories on eBay or something…

Connecticut Democrats, faced with an electorate so ticked off with incumbent Senator Chris Dodd that they’re even polling as willing to elect a former WWE CEO over Dodd, have dealt a smackdown to Linda McMahon’s US Senate bid. On Wednesday, Dodd is expected to retire his seat, tossing the election wide open.

Dodd’s replacement on the Dem side is expected to be Connecticut state attorney general Richard Blumenthal, described by many as one of the state’s most popular politicians, and a solid Dem in solidly blue Connecticut.

While both McMahon and fellow GOP contender Rob Simmons had been polling well ahead of Dodd in recent months, they are not expected to fare as well against Blumenthal, once the switcharoo is complete.

This emergency evacuation of Dodd’s seat is a desperation move on the Dem’s part to try and secure the seat to remain in Dem hands and help maintain their 60-vote control of the US Senate in the upcoming midterms.

While McMahon or Simmons could still pull it off is an open question, it’s gone from being a sure thing to an uphill fight overnight.

Connecticut Democratic US Senator Chris Dodd’s days may be numbered.

Former WWE CEO Linda McMahon’s opponents for the GOP nomination to face Dodd are dropping quickly by the wayside; what used to be a field of five is down to two serious contenders. In one corner, McMahon with a $50 million campaign war chest out of her own personal fortune; in the other corner, Rob Simmons, a more experienced Republican politician in Connecticut, though it remains to be seen whether he has the financial wherewithal to stand up to McMahon in the long term.

Simmons, however, is also independently wealthy and can sustain a campaign.

Both candidates received encouraging news last week, though, when it was announced in a statewide straw poll that both McMahon and Simmons would win in a hypothetical race against the incumbent, Dodd. Maybe if Dodd loses his Senate seat, he can fall back into a second profession, like medical assistant training school. You think?

Now is certainly the time to start delivering on what could become one of the marquee feuds of the year; Randy Orton and John Cena are both at exactly the right stages in their careers to headline PPVs all the way between now and Wrestlemania.

While most feuds last less time than that these days, rarely do the top two stars in the company peak at just the right time to be ideal opponents; Austin was older than The Rock, for example, and Andre was older than Hogan by a lot. And even though he’s a long-time wrestler himself, Chris Jericho was much younger last year than Shawn Michaels, who likes to rent his hotels near Disneyland.

While there are a few years separating Orton and Cena, it’s certainly a fitting feud that has enough potential that one could find enough variations on the theme to last through the next WrestleMania. After that, the feud should be back-burnered for a while, but definitely these two superstars have the potential to headline more than even just one WrestleMania.

Hopefully this doesn’t bode an ill wind for Linda McMahon’s chances against Chris Dodd, but Jerry “the King” Lawler was solidly rejected by the populace of Memphis as a candidate for mayor recently. Out of a wide field of candidates, Lawler finished in a very distant fifth place with only four percent of the vote.

Lawler, who at one point promoted himself during his in-ring wrestling career as the “King of Memphis,” saw that popularity in sports entertainment doesn’t necessarily translate into political success. Call it the Reverse Ventura Principle.

While Lawler may be able to walk down the streets of Memphis and still need identity theft protection, apparently he’s not quite popular enough to get those looks of recognition translated into votes at the polls.

There was a time when Jim Ross and WWE were as inseparable as auto mechanics and truck accessories; but even though his current contract expires come 2010, WWE apparently has not even begun negotiating an extension for Ross, who currently is the lead announcer on SmackDown.

So, the gossips are speculating – as they do – that the WWE’s only straight-talker may soon be talking up TNA instead of WWE. If it comes to pass, it would certainly go a long way toward improving the announcing quality at TNA.

All we can say here at ProWrestlingViews, though, is… say it ain’t so, guys! WWE and Jim Ross simply should not part ways.

US Democratic Senator Chris Dodd and the Connecticut Democratic Party is behind a YouTube effort to minimize and discredit Linda McMahon, even though she’s not yet even the GOP’s nominee. Already, they are mining over 4396841 scenes from Raw, Smackdown, ECW and various PPVs over the past 25 years to come up with some really damning stuff.

Of course, they found the infamous “Katie Vick” storyline in which Triple H accuses Kane, who he was to face at a PPV, of being a murderer and necrophiliac. Katie Vick was the name given to Kane’s alleged victim, and Triple H in a sketch intended to demean Kane through comedy, tactlessly simulates the supposed murder of Vick.

Tacky and tasteless? Sure. But it’s interesting that Dodd and the Connecticut Dems are already pulling out the big guns like this, when Linda hasn’t even won a straw poll among the state’s GOP faithful. Seems a bit premature. Could they be worried about her potential appeal if she does secure the nomination?

Oh well… you can always trust a Democrat to stab you in the back.

Former WWE wrestler Chris Nowinski is calling for the federal government to declare the WWE an “unsafe work environment,” as well as calling for the McMahon family to be drummed out of the industry. What’s all the uproar about?

Well, Nowinski is a kid who was a Top Three finalist on the first season of the MTV/WWE reality show, Tough Enough. Though he didn’t win, Nowinski was indeed ultimately hired by WWE and wrestled as a heel under the moniker, Chris Harvard. His career was short and injury-interrupted; he lasted only two years, retiring from the ring in 2004.

Since then, the Harvard graduate has gone on to write books on brain injury in the NFL, other professional sports, and he was a leading activist in the effort to study the brain of Chris Benoit following the Benoit Family Tragedy of 2007. His book, Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis, is a surprisingly careful and scholarly effort.

While his campaign to drum the McMahon family out of their own company is clearly a case of tilting at windmills, Nowinski’s research has borne fruit; the autopsy of Benoit’s brain showed the 41-year-old had suffered such head trauma in his career that he possessed the equivalent of a brain of an 80-year-old man with dementia.

That’s startling, and while his solution’s a bit preposterous, credit should go to Nowinski for shining some light on the very real and prevalent problem of brain injury in pro wrestlers, as well as pro athletes. Makes a lot more sense than hawking weight-loss pills for a living!

In a Slam Wrestling interview, John Cena revealed which young superstars he suspects will form the future of WWE. His favorites include: The Miz, John Morrison, Sheamus, Cody Rhodes, Ted DiBiase, Jr., and Kofi Kingston.

I’ll give Cena Morrison, Rhodes and DiBiase… but The Miz needs a more serious persona to succeed at the top of the card, Sheamus has too much to prove yet, and Kingston just doesn’t seem to have that “star charisma” that the best WWE superstars possess by the barrel-full.

While the office supply of young talent is there, I would say that if Cena is right about half those guys, he’s not doing bad. Morrison’s almost too much of a veteran to be included in that lineup, but seems to be on a career path that could mirror Edge. Meanwhile, it would be hard to imagine Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase Jr. NOT headlining a WrestleMania about five years or so down the line.

The first film was a vehicle for John Cena, but the WWE Films sequel, The Marine 2, will star Legacy member Ted DiBiase Jr., it has been revealed. Footage of the new flick is making its way around the usual Internet sites, from IGN.com to YouTube.

While DiBiase is just old enough to no longer need a natural acne treatment every day, he’s certainly being given a big boost by being highlighted in this film. Apparently the McMahon family has faith in this kid. And that’s a good thing, as the stars of tomorrow need to be built today, while the stars of today are still at the top of their game.

Former WWE CEO Linda McMahon, wife of WWE owner Vince McMahon, resigned from the WWE recently to run against Democratic incumbent Senator Chris Dodd in Connecticut. McMahon, who is running as a Republican, will have to beat back a couple of other GOP hopefuls before she is ensured of facing off with Dodd, but with her name recognition, winning the party endorsement is not seen as too big a hurdle at this point.

McMahon is expected to run as a fiscal conservative and a government spending fat burner, but if she runs also as a social conservative, it may prove a hard sell to a public largely unaware of her on-screen roles on WWE.

In her WWE persona, McMahon has often played the cuckolded wife to husband Vince’s flagrant philandering ways, and that just includes the sketches that can be repeated in relatively socially-acceptable terms. Far more challenging will be defending the general content of WWE programming, a line of attack Dodd’s campaign is almost certain to leverage against the GOP challenger.

However, if Linda McMahon can focus on her fiscal experience turning WWE into a multi-billion-dollar company and how she plans to bring fiscal restraint to Washington, compared to Dodd’s tax-and-spend record, she could stand a chance. Word is McMahon plans to spend up to $30 million of her own personal fortune on the campaign, and will take little to no public money in seeking elective office.

McMahon has not run for public office prior to this campaign; she will rely on her private-sector experience in WWE to prove her qualifications as a leader. And that $30 million war chest may be enough to put pressure on the incumbency advantage Dodd enjoys.