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They've got to be very careful how far they push ECW as heels though, because if they push it too far you risk the WWE audience rejecting ECW matches out of hand when they start taping their shows in front of them. That said, the adult male fans will probably embrace ECW if John Cena is flying the flag for sports entertainment.

Bad cooks spoil great recipes.

Despite the hardcore male fans turning on him Cena is still more successful than Sting at the same point in my view. His feud with Edge has done great house show business recently (at least by current standards) and he is still WWE's top merchandise seller by a big margin, while Sting's first title run was a major disappointment. Getting the "right" reaction is all well and good, but it means little if business stagnates under your watch.

I assume it's the latter. Bret has been open to doing further merchandise projects with WWE since he did the DVD, so I assume that this falls in that category. I do know they were thinking of working on a coffee table book of his career consisting largely of pictures.

Don't they do that with the majority of them? I just think that this will have much more BS than the average WWE release. I can't wait to see Vince blame the XFL's failure on the spiteful media who didn't give it a fair shake or how they get around Hunter and Steph being married in real life.

Yes it was. It looks like the DVD will score highly in the unintentional hilarity department as they mix work and shoot together into a confusing mess.

But poor Hunter needs a crutch for his face turn to have a chance of being successful, long term storylines be damned. Let's not forget that it's also a bit silly for the owner's son in law and his best friend to play anti authority faces.

Gordy List ------------- 1. Was he ever regarded as the best draw in the world? Was he ever regarded as the best draw in his country or his promotion? 2. Was he an international draw, national draw and/or regional draw? 3. How many years did he have as a top draw? 4. Was he ever regarded as the best worker in the world? Was he ever regarded as the best worker in his country or in his promotion? 5. Was he ever the best worker in his class (sex or weight)? Was he ever one of the top workers in his class? 6. How many years did he have as a top worker? 7. Was he a good worker before his prime? Was he a good worker after his prime? 8. Did he have a large body of excellent matches? Did he have a excellent matches against a variety of opponents? 9. Did he ever anchor his promotion(s)? 10. Was he effective when pushed at the top of cards? 11. Was he valuable to his promotion before his prime? Was he still valuable to his promotion after his prime? 12. Did he have an impact on a number of strong promotional runs? 13. Was he involved in a number of memorable rivalries, feuds or storylines? 14. Was he effective working on the mic, working storylines or working angles? 15. Did he play his role(s) effectively during his career? 16. What titles and tournaments did he win? What was the importance of the reigns? 17. Did he win many honors and awards? 18. Did he get mainstream exposure due to his wrestling fame? Did he get a heavily featured by the wrestling media? 19. Was he a top tag team wrestler? 20. Was he innovative? 21. Was he influential? 22. Did he make the people and workers around him better? 23. Did he do what was best for the promotion? Did he show a commitment to wrestling? 24. Is there any reason to believe that he was better or worse than he appeared?

There probably is, but I don't think WWE will be savvy enough to find it in time and he'll drop the title soon and they'll eventually reluctantly turn him heel.

I don't really think there is a fundamental shift in the audience, it's just a backlash by the hardcore fans to bad and shortsighted booking by a company that really doesn't know where it's heading or what it's doing. Really Rey being booed shouldn't be that surprising given that they went completely overboard on the Eddy exploitation in such a sickening manner. The layout of the match also didn't help which seemed more focussed on protecting Angle and making him look unstoppable, than putting over Rey.

Actually Bob Ryder doesn't have any real power within the company currently and hasn't for some time. All he does now is the travel arrangements for the talent. Poor Kanyon, I have absolutely no idea why TNA wouldn't want to use someone who makes public all his private business dealings with them while bitching and moaning about their treatment of him.

According to Dave Meltzer his suspension doesn't start until April 12th, so maybe he'll be benched after all.

I'd send Edge over to Smackdown and give him the push planned for Orton, because we all know he can't be the top heel on Raw while Hunter and Vince are around.

I got the DVDs last week and saw some of the first disc over the weekend. I thought I should give my opinions on the matches I saw, especially as Loss was getting fed up of speaking to himself. Kojima vs Tenzan (02/20/05). I thought this was a pretty good effort for such a long match, though it took a long time to really get going and towards the end they blew a few spots that hurt their momentum slightly. I thought Tenzan sold the exhaustion angle at the end of the match really well, but I still found the finish to be anticlimactic and I disliked its contrived worked shoot nature. Ultimo Guerrero vs Mistico (02/26/05). Just a really fun match and my favourite so far. Mistico's bumping was awesome and they made his spectacular high spots count by not overdoing them and fitting them in the context of the story they were trying to tell. A bit too short and basic to be a MOTYC though. Spanky vs Danielson (04/02/05). By the sounds of things I enjoyed this more than Loss did. I really liked how Spanky frustrated Danielson by keeping up with him on the mat and how that led to Danielson stiffing the hell out of Spanky with strikes. Personally I thought most of Spanky's short offensive flurries were well timed, crisp and exciting. The only things that annoyed me were the commentary early on which seemed more focused on shilling DVDs than the match itself and Spanky getting out of the Cattle Mutilation so easily. Shawn vs Angle (04/03/05). Conversely to Loss I liked this less than the first time I watched it, but it still holds up as a good WWE style big match. I probably liked it less because on second viewing the shock of people kicking out of finishers just isn't there anymore and this match relied on things like that to a really large degree in the finishing stretch.

I know Misterio got the big entrance, but one thing that was really clear from the event was that Rey or indeed any other Smackdown star wasn't in the same stratosphere as Cena or Hunter. So at best he was pushed as the third biggest star, but if he was considered that they'd give his match much more time, not protect Angle in the match so much and given him a segment prior to the match. I thought it was pretty obvious he's only going to keep the belt warm for Orton and they only gave him the belt to have that moment with Chavo and Vickie Guerrero after the match. I felt the nostalgia more in the type of matches they had. Lots of "holy shit" high spots. They really seemed to be harkening back to the Attitude era in the show. Vince giving Shawn the finger after such a beating was a spot straight out of his cage match with Austin and then you had the crotch chops.

I enjoyed the show a lot, but it came across more as a nostalgia stunt show to put over Foley, Taker, Shawn, Vince and Hunter, than a show that set the company up for the year ahead and made any new stars. Putting over Cena was a good short term move though, as WWE has fucked up his babyface push so much that there is probably more money in Hunter chasing Cena for another month than vice versa.

There is more to the story than Rude just quitting in protest. He rung up Eric Bischoff almost immediately after Montreal and convinced him that it was all a shoot - the match finish, Bret punching Vince, etc, not some sort of elaborate work. He talked about it in this Calgary Sun column when Rude died.

The same thing happened to Scott Hall in the spring of 1996.

It probably only makes the difference of a few tenths of a ratings point and even accounting for that the ratings are still very poor. Dave Meltzer mentioned a few weeks ago how NBC would be furious with a rating between 3.0 and 3.9 and that's what they got.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying the show, but it was a complete failure in its aim, which was to hype WrestleMania in front of viewers who hadn't watched wrestling in years. A 3.2 rating suggests that not even all their regular viewers tuned in and that they drew little in the way of new viewers and so the show will ultimately do little to help the WrestleMania buy rate. Wrestling being a mainstream fad was over years ago, this really shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

I see Bret Hart's phone will be ringing off the hook for the next 2 weeks.

And if not they must be psychos out to extort money.

Fuckin' A. Yeah, Loss is spot on. The odds on him getting humiliated again on TV are awfully high, because the McMahons still hate him and he'll have to be punished eventually for their embarrassing turnaround. Though I'm sure we'll have the same outburst of disgust if that happens from the people who will inevitably congratulate him now for leaving his self respect at the doorstep.