ProWrestlingViews.com

Archive for the ‘WWE’ Category

It might take a bathroom fan to air out fan displeasure over how abruptly Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson dropped his WWE career in favor of making movies, but current WWE/movie crossover star John Cena, a seven-time champion, told CBS News that he has no intention of leaving pro wrestling any time soon in favor of acting.

“I’ve filmed three movies now with not sacrificing my WWE schedule at all. I have a system that makes it work,” Cena said. “The first movie I filmed was in Australia. And I still flew back and forth and made all of my WWE commitments. So, if I can be that far from home, and still not miss anything, I know it can be done.”

While some naysayers of Cena’s might welcome his departure, wrestling fans will be relieved that Cena will continue to balance both of his career ambitions.

Team WWE beat Team Nexus at SummerSlam, in a rousing 34-minute spectacle of a five-on-five match. The action was fast and the heat was solid, but then John Cena cleaned house at the end to give Team WWE the PPV win.

However, on Monday Night Raw, the storyline developed as the night was dedicated to Team WWE facing Team Nexus individually. The good news is that many veteran WWE stars jobbed to Nexus to help the newbie heel division regain their heat.

That is, until the main event, where Cena bested Darren Young, pinning him solidly and sending him on his way with a nice Branson vacation package. So it appears WWE wants to slowly focus in on Cena as the one man Team Nexus will struggle to beat.

Can’t say that does much for me in terms of making Chris Jericho, Randy Orton and the like remain credible, but hey, at least a lot of young blood performers are being featured prominently and given a chance to rise to the occasion and prove themselves worthy of being next-generation WWE superstars.

Vinnie Mac was blaming retirements and injuries as the primary reason for lackluster second quarter results in WWE business. Among the talent lost to retirement or injury were such top-draw stars as Shawn Michaels, Triple H, Batista and Undertaker. While WWE has been quietly brewing new talent, few of them are ready to step up now that they’re needed, because WWE over-relied on the veterans for too long.

While the WWE are wholesale distributors of wrestling talent worldwide, they often have too few spots available to really nurture young performers into the business. While the Nexus angle has helped, for every Randy Orton that has worked out well for WWE, there are several Shelton Benjamins who fizzle.

It’s the nature of the biz, but to beat it, they need to develop more developmental promotions and widen the talent base.

Jim Ross today denied, via his blog, that he is the mystery GM on RAW. Which means… there’s still a chance he is, of course. But not likely.

One doesn’t need new vga cables to see that most WWE mysteries like this are usually resolved in a much more disappointing way than the speculation that surrounds them surmises; just like when “Who Is the Higher Power” mystery was revealed to be… Vinnie Mac himself, which everyone pretty much guessed would be the safe route to go.

Oh well… it’s probably Steph this time…

It’s a song-and-dance as old as log beds, but a new interview with Vince McMahon in the Connecticut Post this week has the WWE’s owner claiming that he wants to fade his Mr. McMahon character out over time. Apparently now that he’s retirement age, Vinnie Mac is not as interested as being in the spotlight or even in the ring, as he once was.

Sure, he’ll probably never withdraw completely as long as he draws breath, and that’s fine. But it’s nice to hear McMahon talking about “developing new, young faces” who can become the future of the company.

Of course, behind the scenes we all know that Stephanie McMahon Levesque is the future of the company, a point made ever more clear at the start of 2010 when her brother Shane left his duties in WWE to go off and do his own thing. That has turned out, so far, to be an investment in International Sports Management (ISM), a small sports agency that manages some cricket and golf stars in Europe.

WWE NXT wrestler Bryan Danielson, known on-air as Daniel Bryan, was released Friday from WWE. While some speculate this could be a work by WWE to sell the NXT Invasion angle, there is also evidence to argue against that.

For one, Danielson had been warned before about his on-air conduct not conforming to WWE policy, and his actions last Monday included two more violations; first, he was seen choking out a WWE ref; ever since the Chris Benoit family tragedy, WWE has strictly banned all its personnel from performing any maneuver that simulates strangulation. Also, he used the name of Jesus as a profanity during the angle, another violation since WWE made the decision to stick to a strictly TV PG style of presentation.

Danielson is arguably the stand-out of the weak first season of WWE NXT with the best ab workout, and was the main star of the NXT Invasion angle, which included him spitting in the face of John Cena. If his release is legit and they decide not to bring him back in 90 days, Danielson is sure to be a hot, young free agent that would draw a competitive offer from TNA, or he could choose to bring some of his new exposure back to his old home of ROH.

Either way, it will be interesting to see where Danielson ends up NXT.

WWE wrestler Edge (Adam Copeland) was showing his cocoa butter stretch mark when he was interviewed by the Asheville, NC Citizen-Times recently, and revealed that he and his current girlfriend have a place in Asheville and plan to “settle down” there sooner than later.

Copeland has been in wrestling, according to the interview, for nearly 20 years. He must be counting from the time he began training and appearing on the indy scene, because Edge wrestled his first WWE match in 1996, signed his first WWE developmental contract in 1997 and began competing for the company in 1998. That means that as of 2010, Edge’s WWE career has spanned a mere 14 years at best.

Still, Edge has suffered some career-shortening injuries and at age 36, he isn’t getting any younger. His indy debut was in 1992, according to Wikipedia, so if he retired in 2012, he will indeed have completed two decades in the business. Here’s a quote from the interview:

“I’m coming up on my 20th year, and I’ve definitely had some injuries that have shortened my career,” Edge said. “That’s part of the reason I bought up here – we want to retire and listen to the wind in the trees, and we want to do it fairly soon. I may have two more years. With each injury, it’s harder and harder to come back.”

Edge is still considered young by industry vets like Undertaker and Kane, so this interview makes it all the more apparent that WWE needs to continue to emphasize the development of the next generation of stars; much like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock and Mick Foley nearly a decade ago, WWE will face a crisis if the next generation isn’t ready to step forward when folks like Edge start calling it quits.

Of course, pro wrestling retirements rarely last forever; but once a superstar begins to wind down, so does his ability to draw. Time for Ted DiBiase Jr., Sheamus, Cody Rhodes and the like to step up and prove the WWE will be in good hands two to five years from now, just as Edge and Christian and even John Cena did when Austin, Rock and Foley were winding down.

WWE wrestler Chris Jericho has been announced as the host of the ABC reality-game show Downfall, for a six-episode summer run on the Disney-owned network. It’s been decades since Jericho needed acne treatment, but the show is expected to have some appeal to the acne-afflicted crowd.

Downfall is described as a trivia show in which contestants are perched atop the roof of a Los Angeles high rise and as the answer questions, the “largest conveyor belt ever seen on TV’ will send cash, prizes, personal possessions, friends and family over the side of the building.

Sounds suspenseful and tacky. A perfect fit for the alphabet net.

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!

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.

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.

Seven former WWE personalities are probably phoning up TNA as we speak; McMahon’s company announced the release of seven superstars last week.

The biggest names were former University of Minnesota college wrestler and one-time Brock Lesnar buddy, Shelton Benjamin, as well as former top WWE diva Mickie James. Other releases were less notable, but include Mike Knox, diva Katie Lea Burchill, Slam Master J, Fu Naki and Jimmy Wang Yang.

James is a bit of a shock; as a frequent Womens/Diva champion, James helped carry the load of the women’s division for quite some time following the back-to-back retirements of Lita (Amy Dumas) and Trish Stratus (Patricia Anne Stratigias). Guess she won’t be sending Stephanie McMahon any baby shower invitations after this.

Benjamin is the biggest shock from the men’s side, if only because he started out so strong several years ago; but his career fizzled slowly after Lesnar, his fellow Gopher, quit WWE.