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Also because most of their top stars jumped ship to the opposition, so they were forced to push new acts. I'm not sure The Rock would have broken through as much as he did if Hall, Nash and Michaels were still there throwing obstacles in his way to the top.

I'd got the impression that Laurinaitis forced him out so he could put someone in his spot who would be loyal and subservient to him, rather than someone who was outspoken about planned changes in developmental policies and reluctant to change. This may just be Dr. Tom's version of events though.

Bill Demott's replacement as head trainer of Deep South Wrestling is Dr. Tom Prichard It must be quite embarrassing for John Laurinaitis that the person he forced out of the company when he was made head of talent relations now heads up his pet project that up to this point has been a monumental disaster.

He does the announcing for the international version of Heat, so I assume he does it for the web version as well. I can't recall how much he sucks, but he does do the god awful catchphrase "It's time for the MAIN EVENT~!!" every week in an annoying Buffer-esque tone.

Chuck Liddell is an awful professional wrestler, he doesn't know how to bump or sell, he squashes some of his opponents refusing to give them any significant offense and injures his opponents in every match.

I think the original criteria was that they also needed to have strong match quality (hence Hogan never winning the award in the mid 80s). Of course, match quality isn't as important in MMA, so the criteria of the award has mutated so shootfighters can be included too. Personally I will be very surprised if a shootfighter wins the award in the near future, because enough of the voters feel like shoe, Loss and jdw and won't vote for them out of principle, that it will be a struggle for one to win.

I mentioned this in another thread, but ratings were probably going to go up regardless of Russo's booking in the short term. But lets put this record rating in perspective. The repeat of UFC Unleashed shown immediately after Impact drew a 1.0 rating, only a tenth of a ratings point lower than TNA's first run programming. It doesn't say anything good that fights that have already been shown on TV several times almost outdrew TNA's record rating. The truth of the matter is TNA is almost certainly still swimming in a sea of red ink, despite their record ratings. PPV buys have returned to the same level after a brief boost from Angle's debut in the promotion, but now they have another big money contract they have to pay for every month. If TNA aren't struggling financially they would still be able to afford to pay for the hotel rooms and rental cars of their talent and help pay for Konnan's hip replacement surgery. The record ratings are just a carrot that encourages the Carters to keep plugging money into the promotion in the short term, but long term their revenue needs to increase significantly for the company to survive and thrive.

Even the ratings and viewership going up slightly isn't any shining endorsement for his booking. That had to be expected given the earlier time slot when a lot more people watch TV and the acquisition of Kurt Angle. Really Russo was put in a position where he couldn't fail from a ratings perspective in the short term.

So much for TNA protecting Kurt Angle from himself, as they allowed him to wrestle with a concussion. I suppose trying to boost ratings by a few hundredths of a ratings point is more important than his long term health and well being.

Can I have access to both folders, please? PM'd you. -- Loss, 01/16

He STILL doesn't really grasp that fact, but that isn't surprising given that he's always booked the sort of product he wants to see rather than adapting his booking to what the fans want. He knows fans are turned off by things like Big Dick Johnson and Rosie O' Donnell vs Donald Trump, so he knocks WWE for that, but doesn't realise the knocks ring hollow when his shows are full of mediocre comedy segments like that and have even less wrestling than any WWE show. TNA will never be a true alternative with Russo at the helm, because he won't change and he's the one who inspired Vince McMahon to more heavily feature his smutty, perverse, juvenile sense of humour in his TV shows.

Maybe my expectations are low, but I thought this was a decent line up, all things considering. By the way, on Raw they made Cena vs Umaga a Last Man Standing match.

Not long after Punk first signed with WWE he had a bad dark match with someone and HHH, HBK and the Raw agents decreed on the basis of that one match that he didn't know how to work and had a good laugh at how insiders and smart marks thought he was something special in the ring.

By the wording in the Torch I wouldn't say Vince "wants" them for WrestleMania, but has thrown their names out for consideration to be used at the show. Last year they considered Sid for a spot on the show, but that didn't go anywhere, so I wouldn't read too much into it. That said, I would be very surprised if Foley wasn't on the show in some fashion, as he's under contract and he's got another book coming out a few weeks before WrestleMania.

I like how Kurt Angle plays heel on the first show and then that's completely dropped over the next two shows and he's booked as a babyface again. It looks like they want to set up Sting vs Angle in February, so what do they do - they have the religious good guy make the save for the woman beater. They could have got a good three weeks of TV out of that angle alone by having all the babyfaces like Jim Cornette, Sting, Rhino and Mike Tenay act shocked and disgusted at Angle's reprehensible actions, Joe cutting promos vowing vengeance and a couple of stiff brawls to set up a big gimmick match main event. Instead we get another dozen angles because Russo is afraid if he pauses for breath everyone will change the channel.

To be fair Triple H has waited a year to get his win back from John Cena.

Erm, I wouldn't put too much stock in that, given that Meltzer would probably point to the Misawa match as one piece of evidence that he was the best heavyweight in the world this year.

I never bought the stories that Marufuji would have a lengthy run and would be pushed as NOAH's ace, as it was fairly obvious that Morishima was being groomed for that spot even before Marufuji won the title. In terms of making Morishima a draw, it's better that he beats Misawa for the title than Marufuji. So yeah, this isn't as bad as Verne or WWE, it's more of a sad necessity.

The reality is he's probably waiting to hear more before saying it's one thing or the other. Unlike Keller or Scherer, Meltzer tends to wait until he's heard more of the story before making any statements rather than rushing out rumor or hurriedly gathered word-of-mouth in an attempt to be the first to break the story. I'm sure Meltzer didn't know for sure whether it was a work or a shoot when the story broke, but I'm sure he knows better by now and he still hasn't updated his original story, which does lead credence to my belief that he's holding stuff back for the newsletter. Speaking of Keller and Scherer, the last time people were laughing about them reporting that a story was a shoot too quickly was over the backstage fight between Booker and Batista, and that time they were right and Meltzer was wrong when he strongly suggested it was just an elaborate angle.

Nah, Meltzer's probably just leaving all the juicy details for this week's Observer. Really what would the point be of it being an elaborate work? It just further destroys the roster's morale and pisses off the few remaining ECW loyalists, at a time when they can ill afford to do that.

I was just joshing with the bitter and jaded comments. And I know it's free in the UK, but so was the Great American Bash, which also had a weak line up and little buzz, and that still drew 225,000 buys.

Gee, I'm Mr Positive for once voting for 200,000 to 225,000 buys, instead of being a bitter jaded cynic. Even the weakest PPVs of the last couple of years have drawn about 220,000 to 225,000 buys due to international business and I think this will be no different due to the novelty of the gimmick match main event.

Yeah, I'd be very surprised if Angle lost too. I could see them doing the WrestleMania 13 Bret vs Austin finish with Joe passing out from blood loss while Angle has the ankle lock applied.

The Torch reported a similar story at the time. From the 10/29/94 Torch newsletter: "Flair did get a two year contract extension before Havoc. He is looking forward to concentrating on booking without worrying about his in-ring role. It almost turned into a holdout situation with Flair since it appeared for a while WCW wasn't moving as quickly as he would have liked on the extension. For obvious reasons he wanted his extension done before he lost at Havoc for leverage purposes."