I haven’t logged a WWE non-PPV in a while and since I’m more interested in this “special” Raw mostly because I expect there to be a lot of history, I figured I might as well pull out the old timely recap.

It should also only take them about 25 months to get to the 1000th episode.

6:03PM – Bret is back! Wait, I thought the General Manager never wanted Bret on WWE TV again?

6:06PM – Hart says that he and the Undertaker were the only two guys who were on the first Raw and who are still with the company. Kane’s music plays and he walks out. Talk about a bait and switch.

6:09PM – Kane brings up Shawn MIchaels and how Bret must’ve loved watching the Undertaker retire him. Jeez, the writers must hate us tonight. Isn’t is supposed to be a celebration?

6:12PM – Kane attacks Bret, the Hart Dynasty come in, and the Undertaker appears and sends Kane walking away. My iPod Touch notification sounds, I mean, the GM e-mails Michael Cole and says that Bret Hart will face Taker. Sigh.

6:13PM – They only thing I remember about the very first raw is Bobby Heenan trying to get inside the building.

6:18PM – Dream nerd tag match – Kaval and Daniel Bryan vs. Michael McGillicuddy and Kofi Kingston vs. The Miz and Alex Riley. Ok, maybe only a dream nerd tag team.

6:22PM – Miz had to skull crush poor Kaval for the finale. Then he had to clip Bryan with his briefcase. I wonder if this was their way of trying to get people to vote for Alex Riley for tomorrow’s NXT season finale?

6:31PM – Melina pinned Layla in a tag match with Melina and Eve vs. LayCool. Eve didn’t even get in the match. Maybe they’re running low on time. LayCool challenged Melina to a title unification match. I’m guessing this is at Night Of Champions. I say they keep the Diva belt over the women’s title. Melina accepted as long as it’s a Lumberjack match. King or Cole made sure to use the term Lumberjills. Melina must’ve messed up.

6:40PM – So far, out of four of the historic packages they’ve shown, two have been from the last two years. What an utter fail. No one wants to see that stuff. We want to see Austin, Rock, Foley, and HBK. Well, it’s better than the HHH hype that I expect to be coming shortly.
Continue Reading »

March 8th, when TNA returns to Monday Nights, this time permanently (unless they tank), at 9PM to compete with WWE.

This is interesting because the last time TNA went head to head with WWE on Monday Nights was the infamous January 4th show when they made their debuts. Apparently, rather than try to pop a buyrate by having Flair’s first televised match since his retirement on this hemisphere and Hogan’s last in forever, they are planning to throw haymakers at WWE.

The planned match as of this writing is AJ Styles and Ric Flair vs. Abyss and Hulk Hogan. Sources close to TNA have speculated that the Abyss feud with AJ is only a placeholder until The Pope can retake the primary feud.

This is an interesting strategy to examine considering that the rumors of RVD coming in and Jeff Hardy returning on that date are going to be running rampant as we approach March 8th, but just to seal the deal, will have Hogan and Flair make a dual debut. I wonder if this is just a desperation tactic for that night. The issue is – how will they be able to follow it up afterward?

Rumors are also flying that the final Thursday Impact is set to be headlined by AJ Styles vs. Desmond Wolfe vs. Abyss vs. The Pope in a non-title four-way. Should be a fun match, but I wouldn’t have Pope and AJ touch until Lockdown. Oh well, this is TNA.

Brother, if it wasn’t 1995-esque before… it sure as hell is now!

Usually, Smackdown isn’t a newsworthy show. It’s just a good wrestling show heavy on the matches and not as heavy on the angles. But come Mania time, Smackdown can be just as newsworthy and angle-worthy as Raw, in addition to having the strong wrestling. Last Friday’s show was really good in this way.

They were able to keep the intrigue alive of who Edge was going to challenge, as he teased spearing The Undertaker at the end of the show. He also went face to face with Chris Jericho, giving Chris Jericho the “how dare you?” for being happy that Edge was injured and unable to continue doing his childhood dream. Edge was in total babyface mode. CM Punk was also made strong as he danced with Jericho, Edge, and Taker in the main event segment.

The other intriguing angle from Smackdown was Dave Batista losing to Punk in the match to be the participant in the Smackdown Elimination Chamber. After showing footage of Batista attacking John Cena after Raw went off the air, Batista walked out of his match and was counted out, taking him out of the chamber match and adding more intrigue to the John Cena/Vince McMahon/Bret Hart storyline. Why did Batista opt out? Did Vince want him to opt out? We got a little bit of progression on Monday when Vince admitted that he paid Batista to attack Bret Hart, but it’s not yet transparent.

Now that both Elimination Chambers are set, here are the main events for the formerly known as No Way Out PPV.
Continue Reading »

Here’s a video of what happened when Raw went off-air. It’s awesome to see stuff like this.

After watching Bob Barker do a tremendous job at being a game show host last night on Raw, I started to wonder how much WWE was going to continue to bend over so that these celebrity GMs don’t look like idiots on national TV.

They are definitely working hard to try to make the celebrity segments look half way decent, but it’s at the expense of their own PPV product.

Now, I completely understand that the WWE is going to make the USA network happy by both looking more major league by having “celebrities” on their shows, and by slightly increasing the ratings any way they can. Hell, they used to do it themselves at WrestleMania every year by booking celebrity guests.

But by using up so much time during the show to make the celebrities entertaining, it seems to me that they are sacrificing their own ability to make money from their PPVs. Again, making USA happy is definitely a major goal as is making your brand look more major league. But after watching the Bob Barker show last night, I’m not sure that I necessarily wanted to watch the upcoming Breaking Point PPV show this weekend, or buy Barker’s book instead.

I think they need to slow down the celebrity hosts and possibly use them twice a month at most, and never during the last week of a serious build to a PPV show. This way, they won’t go through as many hosts, and there will be a better balance in both trying to be entertaining and “Hollywood”, and giving us compelling reasons to buy their PPV shows. Both major angles coming out of the show with Randy Orton and John Cena and DX and Legacy were serious and as important as you can expect when half of the show was about goofy “The Price Is Right” segments. I just wonder how much more compelling they would’ve been if they were given more time and energy.

In no way do I think they should discontinue the celebrity host idea, especially with my girl Trish hosting next week, but the bloom will soon be off the rose and these “celebs” might not mean much unless they slow it down. I think a happy medium should be found.

I’m interested in what others think about the celebrity host idea and whether or not they should continue to do it every week.

Fox 5 News in Las Vegas is reporting that the home of Floyd Mayweather Jr. was raided and searched by authorities in the Las Vegas area today after his vehicle was found in the vicinity of an incident involving gunfire at a location called the Crystal Palace Skating Center.

The authorities obtained a search warrant for Mayweather’s home prior to arriving. Mayweather is not a suspect for any crime thus-far and there is no proof of any connection between Money May and the shootings.

Mayweather is scheduled to come out of retirement and make his big return against Juan Manuel Marquez at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 19th. In addition, Floyd is scheduled to be the guest host on tonight’s edition of WWE Raw. I am not sure as of yet if this writing if anything has changed with regard to that and he is still scheduled to appear.

The Fox 5 Story can be read here.