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Stone Cold Steve Austin may be mostly retired from the squared circle these days, but he proved with a simple guest-hosting job on Monday Night Raw tonight that he still carries with him more charisma than ninety percent of the current WWE roster combined.

Sure, Austin’s staying in shape making movies instead of retiring to perform auto insurance reviews and the like, but does he still have “it” – that hard-to-define ability to transform an arena into an electric power plant? You bet.

Even though he did nothing physical and wrestled no one, Austin simply carries credibility – even now. Something much of the current WWE roster would do well to learn from and emulate. Anyone who’d watch Impact instead of Austin is just a loon.

Raw easily won its first showdown with TNA Impact on Monday night, now that the second coming of Monday Night Wars has begun officially and in earnest. Raw drew a 3.4 rating and 5.1 million viewers, while Impact managed only a 1.0 rating and 1.4 million viewers head-to-head with Raw.

It’s early and no first-night-upset was expected. A monkey wrench was also thrown into the works, also; History Channel’s runaway hit, Pawn Stars, had its second-season finale on Monday and drew a strong, record-setting 5.8 million viewers, allowing it to edge Raw as the most-watched show in all of cable.

Pawn Stars draws heavily on the same male demographic that Raw and Impact draw, so once next Monday rolls around and Pawn Stars is no longer around during its hiatus, it will be intriguing to see what gains are made by both Raw and Impact. At least we won’t have to see The Old Man on Pawn Stars trying to underbid for a set of 1920s incontinence products. Heh.

The lack of a lineup of guest hosts beyond WrestleMania led us to speculate last week that the concept may be coming to an end; not so! At least, not yet, at any rate.

You can bet your sell merchant account that following Stone Cold’s appearance, the final pre-WrestleMania guest host will be Pete Rose; and the first post-WrestleMania guest host will be two of the stars of the movie Hot Tub Time Machine.

So while changes to Raw may be forthcoming, the guest host concept will live at least one episode past WrestleMania, at any rate…

Jim Ross’ future with WWE should be determined in the next few weeks. Now recovered from his latest bout with Bells Palsy, WWE is laying the groundwork for a potential Ross return to WWE Monday Night Raw. However, Ross has been wondering out loud on his blog whether he can keep up the schedule he used to keep when announcing full-time.

One can expect WWE will want him around at least in the short term, with WrestleMania coming up and Ross being a favorite of several important veterans including, most importantly, Bret Hart.

Also, the risk of releasing Ross right now is higher than ever; with TNA Impact moving permanently to Monday nights, it would take only a couple used travel trailers to get wrestling fans to check out TNA Impact broadcasts with Ross on the play-by-play; he’s be an immediate and meteoric improvement over Mike Tenay.

So it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out; while WWE seems to be wanting to go younger than Ross, his importance to the success of WWE… or TNA… has never been higher.

The WWE has released a total of seven on-air talents so far this year, with five of them coming in the month of February. Maybe some of them can find a new career in insurance advertising.

Anyway, Tommy Dreamer was the first talent released in 2010, followed by Eric Escobar later in January.

That was mild until WWE decided to cut the ECW-brand one-hour show on SciFi, ending the ECW brand for now under the WWE banner. Cutting that show meant imminent layoffs, especially since the replacement show, WWE NXT, will feature developmental talents working with veterans to become the WWE stars of tomorrow. That means some veterans would be cut, and that’s exactly what happened in late February.

The cuts include wrestlers Gregory Helms, Paul Burchill and Charlie Haas, as well as referee Scott Armstrong. Also, WWE Diva Maria was released to allow her time to participate in Celebrity Apprentice, which kicks off on NBC later this month. She also has an album coming out on iTunes in April.

Helms had legal troubles in January that may have contributed to his release; Burchill just never caught on, and Haas had similarly struggled to attract a following.

Expect more releases between now and WrestleMania as the company trims the fat after dropping the ECW show, consolidating talent to Raw and SmackDown, as well as Superstars and NXT.

The Harris County medical examiner’s office in Houston, TX, has released the official cause of death for Umaga, whose real name was Eddie Fatu. The official COD is listed as “acute toxicity,” which means a toxic mix of over-the-counter drugs in a short amount of time.

Specifically, it was a lethal combination of painkillers (hydrocodone), muscle relaxers (carisoprodol), and anti-anxiety medication (diazepam), according to the coroner’s report.

It should be noted that Umaga had been released by WWE for months prior to his death. Most reports were that WWE released Umaga for violating the company’s wellness policy. Kind of hard to secure insurance quotes under those conditions.

While release is a legitimate punishment for such a violation, it’s a shame that in the end, it makes WWE simply look like they are distancing themselves from a wrestler on a destructive path before it blows up. WWE does offer even released wrestlers access to rehab services, but once a wrestler is out of a company’s employment, follow-up and accountability tend to suffer.

While there are no easy answers in the death of Umaga, it is tragic that his was another in a long list of preventable, premature deaths among professional wrestling performers.

Moving TNA Impact to Monday nights could help improve WWE’s product overall. One has to admit that Vince McMahon and company were never more creative and interesting than when they were fending off a credible threat from Ted Turner’s WCW promotion.

So, with some good fortune tossed in, TNA will spark a new round of Monday Night Wars that will re-ignite national interest in professional wrestling in general, and a new burst of creative energy that will push more interesting products out of both TNA and WWE.

A new round of Monday Night Wars could be just what WWE needed; moreso than even how teens need an effective way to treat acne!

Use your old birth announcements if you have to, but get the word out: Spike TV just approved a permanent move to Monday nights for TNA Impact!

This move places TNA center-stage to challenge WWE directly for audience share on Monday nights, and marks this as the beginning of a new round of Monday Night Wars… the first since WWE bought out WCW several years ago.

The first Impact to air on Mondays will take place on Monday, March 8 on Spike TV. It will be interesting to see how WWE responds to this new challenge from the ratings-starved but momentum-driven upstart promotion.

The Rock is starting to talk more openly about the nature of his role in a possible return to WWE, on a limited basis, in 2010. While Duane Johnson is in the middle of shooting his latest movie, once production wraps, he is in talks with Vince McMahon to come in and do a guest-host job that could evolve into a limited-run storyline.

The Rock seemingly ruled out John Cena as his potential opponent, but did say he’d want to do something special. By special, he outlined these criteria:

1. It would have to benefit everyone, long-term, including WWE, his opponent and Johnson himself.

2. He would want to rip up the family-friendly script of current WWE product and push the edge back to Attitude-era edginess.

3. His return would not last long; either a one-off or a limited run engagement that would include a couple weeks of build-up, and then a PPV capper.

If handled well, such a storyline could help elevate one of WWE’s up-and-comers; the best potential opponents, in my mind, are Ted DiBiase Jr., Cody Rhodes, Sheamus or MVP. If the program is run against Cena or Randy Orton, I doubt that would benefit WWE quite as much for the future. If Rock returns, perhaps he’ll have a run-in with Stephanie McMahon, calling to mind his role as a face in the McMahon-Helmsley Era storylines. I’m sure Rock would have some great mic-time gifts for her.

Chris Jericho and Gregory Helms were arrested last Wednesday on charges of public intoxication, which carry with it minor civil fines if they decide not to contest the charges. Ironically, Jericho has been recently mentioned by Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff as a wish-list wrestler of current WWE superstars.

That would fit with their recent acquisition of Jeff Hardy, who signed with TNA on the same day he was arraigned on drug charges.

I’m a bit behind on minor updates like these, due to the stability of my desktop computer; but I’m taking it to Best Buy tomorrow for servicing so I wanted to get this up before all I have to work on is a slow, out-of-date laptop.

Even a couple weeks removed from Bret Hart’s history-making return to a WWE ring and I’m still in amazement at how well the moment was handled, right from Bret’s opening words.

“Well, I guess hell froze over.”

From that moment to the confrontation with Shawn Michaels, to the moment Michaels teased a possible SuperKick, to the smart decision not to go that route but deliver a hug of genuine friendship, everything was handled just right.

By eschewing the predictable sports entertainment moment, that opening segment of Raw became the best of what sports entertainment can be. It was enough to cure a teen of acnezine!

OK, so it took me a month to finally spit this out, but here goes: What was WWE thinking when they chose Dennis Miller as the host of the Slammy Awards?

Now, I enjoy the humor of Miller as much as anyone, and have since his early days as the Weekend Update host of Saturday Night Live, but really, Miller’s thinking-man’s humor is just a few notches too high to be a good fit for wrestling audiences; hell, it’s a few notches too high for a Yale Law crowd.

Most of the jokes went over flat with an audience that wanted action, not verbal wit. The boos were heard even through WWE’s muting. His humor was political rather than wrestling-focused, which made the whole affair even more painful. It went over like a natural colon cleansing.

There are a lot of good venues for Miller, but Raw was now one of them. Paging Frank Caliendo, anyone?