Mad Dog

The rumor has floated around on various sites and he confirmed it in today's Ross Report in his usual babbling way. I think Ross has had to go along with Lawler since at least 2002. He's been a parody of himself and I think you can blame a lot of the lower card guys not getting over on the fact that the announcers just ignore them to talk about Triple H or Austin during their matches. Normally I would see this as a positive but Lawler's probably still going to be around and the fact that the WWF doesn't have one good announcer under contract, not counting Cole and Tazz, has me worried. I think they'll manage to stick someone in there that'll have me wishing Ross was back by the end of their first show. EDIT: Ouch I messed up on my spelling.

I think the WWF should've watched the Piper's Pit segment from Victory Road last year. It starts out with Piper and Snuka but then has Kid Kash come out. It then has Kash/Kazarian/Shane beating down Snuka and has him saved by Dutt/Garza eventually. It set up a 6 man tag at the next PPV with just current wrestlers and by the end of the actual segment it was more focused on the fact that Kash nailed Dutt with a coconut.

Also new IWGP Title belt:

Chuck would murder him in a match but you might still be able to hype it as something decent.

I think this is huge for New Japan. Brock Lesnar and Matt Morgan could be megastars for them. They've been wanting to put the IWGP Title on Lesnar for awhile so you might see that happen here.

Brandon Vera has the potential to be a pretty marketable guy for them. Let him run his mouth and feed him some cans and you might have a star on your hands.

I wouldn't be happy if I was the WWF to be honest. They'll spin it as a success but you know they were hoping for a 5. It's going to fall right back into the 3s when it's business as usual next week. UFC have to be happy though. It seems they have a built in 1.5 worth of audience.

WWF ignores TNA talent for the most part. They've had shots at just about everyone in the promotion at some point but have passed on everyone. They just prefer sending legal threats. TNA's been smart in that they have everyone under written contracts so the WWF can't touch them. I think a lot of the contracts came up last month so they're probably locking everyone up for another 2-3 years.

$29.95

If they can convert just 10% of these viewers into new PPV buyers the companies set financially.

From the Observer site: Not a bad start. Keeping people throughout the entire show is a positive sign for them. They outperformed Velocity.

Think about it. They knew about this show for months and this is the best effort they could put forth. This was a horribly rushed show and it honestly looked like they needed 4 hours instead of 3. They had months to book this show and it seemed like they thought they could just have all these names out there and that would be enough. Vince and co. really seem to have forgotten how to run a wrestling company.

Bischoff just came out said Vince wasn't there anymore and ended the match.

Tonight's really reminding me of how tiring those 3 hour Nitros used to be.

So they can say they brought in all of these oldies to build new stars.

If this is the best effort the WWF can put out anymore then wow they're really fucked.

This is nothing new. They had some real winners against WCW too.

It's even worse when you consider the absolute shit that they've put on the last two PPVs. Not that I'm watching. I haven't tuned into Raw since maybe June.

Why are they blowing their load on free tv like this. They're going to give away at least 3 PPV calibur matches for free.

The show isn't until the 23rd.

The new production to the show is awesome. I loved the new camera angles and the fact that they turned the lights down. I thought it was a pretty good first show, better than what the spoilers told.

The NWA website is one of the most god awful sites on the net so I wouldn't take anything on there very seriously. The member list is never accurate. You can also wander over to the champions section and still see TNA listed. Essentially the deal is that the Jarretts or TNA, I'm not sure, will have the rights to the NWA name after so many years. There was some reason or another why TNA was cutting back on using the NWA name but I don't really recall. I found this to be disturbing:

I actually thought, aside from the Jarrett thing, that West came off really well in that interview and even seems to be developing a decent mind for wrestling.

Indy feds can never hold my interest because of the constant harping on sports entertainment and slipping the smart lingo in there. I find smart lingo to be more insulting than a lot of what the WWF does. It totally ruins the illusions. Also it makes RoH in particular look stupid when they're preaching about no sports entertainment here and they have two gay wrestlers making out with plants in the crowd 5 minutes later. Also trying to make every match a MOTYC totally kills my interest as well. You have the announcers calling it that 2 minutes into the match. It also sucks when you just finish a match and know you'll be sitting through another 15-20 minutes because of "workrate." When you use MOTYC to describe the main event of every show you've had this year how am I supposed to know what's worth watching. It also makes the matches less exciting because you know nothing's going to happen until the 20 minute mark because most indy workers think match length = quality. I think it's a big part of why I like TNA so much. They aren't stuck on the WWF constantly. Yeah, they take jabs but it's rare. They seem to get it as far as not being insulting towards the people watching.