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Yeah, I think the problem won't be getting enough providers, but getting a decent carriage fee. I really think by announcing their launch date before getting deals in place that they've killed their negotiating leverage. When push comes to shove I can see them forced to provide it for free to providers (like Oprah's network), in order to get it into a decent number of homes for April. WWE is sitting on $162.8M of cash, cash equivalents and short term assets, which should be enough to fund the network for a few years. Of course, a few years ago they had $266.4M with much of that $100+M being frittered away on the dividend that their profits couldn't cover.

Ouch!

Good article by Sharon Glencross on the WWE network. Given that Oprah has to offer her network to providers for free, I guess WWE will be forced to do the same and they'll lose a ton of money (as in ten of millions of dollars) in the first year alone on the project.

The injuries aren't going to stop with the ramped up schedule. Could be a trying year for UFC as they already have had to risk two big money matches in their effort to keep drawing ratings on FOX.

From Dave:

I went into detail about what Orton said about his drug overdose in my DVD review at Cageside Seats. Personally, I think it's best to avoid the seedy stuff if the participants aren't willing to be honest about it. There was a lot of BS about how Orton and WWE handled the situation at the time:

I think the "Vince changes his mind all the time" meme is a bit overblown. A lot of the time it's just changing his mind on when to implement a plan rather than scrapping it altogether. Sometimes they're thrown a curve ball by events out of their control too (Kevin Nash's medical issues, R-Truth's Wellness suspension, etc). But in this case, I find it hard to believe that they haven't got all their i's dotted and t's crossed before executing a major marketing campaign for a big name return. If Jericho shows up on January 2nd, then he was the plan from day one and Meltzer dropped the ball on the story.

I should have trusted those in the company over Jericho when I pushed that he wasn't coming back. But Jericho told me WWE's creative team are so incompetent that they'd shoot videos for his return even when he was determined never to wrestle for them ever again and he hadn't signed with them. A story about WWE's creative team being incompetent, it must be true! I have no way of proving where Jericho will be on that day. He's going to lie to me until he shows up on Raw and then lie to me again about how WWE gave him an offer he couldn't refuse at the last minute because they're so incompetent to shoot videos without having the payoff finalised. But I'm still going to cross my fingers that he doesn't show up and he's been telling me the truth all along. Remember I was the one, not PWInsider, who first reported that he was coming back in January until Jericho told me all about the video game controversy. Did I mention how incompetent WWE are, I might have forgotten? Clearly, WWE are stupid enough to upset someone by not including them in their video game just as they're about to re-sign with the company! The video game story must be true, even if it is a storm in a teacup and he ends up coming back in January, just as I originally reported.

That's what happens when you're too close to a source. Remember the time when Dave insisted that Batista vs. Booker was a work at the time that it happened?

Didn't JCP loan Magnum to Watts for seasoning before getting the big push there?

Yeah, this kills the angle dead, which is ironic when Flair a few years later was more than happy to play the "real World champion" gimmick on WWF TV. Of course, that angle wasn't as successful as it should have been, as the WWF portrayed that to be a phony moniker, which I guess is karma.

It really is ridiculous that they don't moderate the whole board, so things like this are nipped in the bud earlier. It's amusing that for all the times they talk down to their readership and subscriber base that they're so laissez-faire on this issue.

Surely if you want to know what subscribers want to read in the Observer and on the site, then you'd do a poll about that, rather than trying to infer it from questions like "What shows are you most interested in" and "What was your favourite recent show"?

He has a slight point though, as towing the company line in public is at odds with what got him over in the first place, which was being a "truth sayer" willing to stick up for the much maligned hardcore fans. Coming off as a company shill does him nor his company any favours whatsoever.

Surely a holiday gift guide should, you know, actually recommend certain DVDs from "obscure" indy promotions, rather than simply list all the indy promotions that presumably gave the writer free DVDs to review?

Jeff Hardy's suspension was almost four years ago when the company was still on edge about the congressional interviews. That means nothing about the credibility of the policy *today*, especially when Jeff was busted for steroids and pain pills shortly after his WWE run ended over a year later. Rey Mysterio and Sin Cara were clearly cases of screwing with guys they were unhappy with.

John, I have more details in the blog post I did tonight at Cageside Seats: Is Chris Jericho working the boys over his WWE falling out?

If Chris Jericho turns up on Raw in six weeks time, then I just want to make it clear that this story is legit and I wasn't worked by a friendly conman.

In the same issue of the Observer where they covered Bret's win, Meltzer vaguely talked about long-term uncertainty over Warrior's future. Sounds like Vince had just caught wind of Warrior receiving HGH from the UK and was forced to elevate a babyface to fill his spot for when the inevitable happened (Warrior walking out on the promotion rather than be publicly suspended). If not, then Warrior was a headache to deal with at the best of times.

Ben Miller tweeted this to Jonathan Snowden: So can someone explain to me why Joe Babinsack's bad columns leak through again?

The other thing to note is that they were probably looking for somebody to appeal to the European market. With the El Matador gimmick, they could push Santana as a Spanish babyface. He was also looking for someone reliable at a time when they were under scrutiny. Bret was clearly the best candidate, but it's probably not too surprising that Santana's name got a brief mention, as he ticks all those boxes too.

Well, he did strip naked at an ECW show once...

The difference with Tanahashi to the previous generation (Nagata, Akiyama, Tenzan, Kojima, etc) is the promotion decided to make him the top star of the promotion and stuck with it. Did any of them have a five year run as ace? I wouldn't call him a no-brainer, but if Tanahashi isn't HOF worthy, then nobody in Japan is post 2005.

So Vince thought Viacom owned it... or is Court confused? Since Vince's primary tv partner (Comcast / NBC Universal) owns Universal HD, it's basically impossible to think that Vince (and/or people in the WWE) don't know that Universal HD = Universal. I kinda call bullshit on that one. Sorry, that was *me* getting mixed up, as Viacom buying Bellator was mentioned earlier in the interview and I'm not that familiar with the conglomerate media structure in America. Court said Vince had discussions with Bonnie Hammer about it, but they didn't get very far.

I did a More Wrestling Than Wrestling post about the lawsuit at Cageside Seats: UFC admits to being sports entertainment to get legalized in New York.