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I think people have been too quick to write it off as a work. Now I do believe that they're probably correct, but given that he failed his WWE physical and has been terrible on the mic since returning, they may have decided to cut their losses on Nash before it's too late. That might be wishful thinking on my part.

I think if they wanted a shoot Hunter friend to be inserted into the angle and play the "are they in cahoots or not?" game, then WWE creative should have looked to Sheamus.

Wasn't Panther vs. Villano V unusual in the sense that it wasn't shown on TV in full, whereas most of the big matches from AAA/CMLL are?

It's not that I don't think it could be a misleading ad. When I saw the TV ad I thought it could very well be that and I made sure to word the article carefully and express some doubt about it. Having said that, Facebook event page says it's The Rock's "return to action after 8 years" and TheGarden.com (which I didn't check last night) says "The People's Champion-The Rock returns to action for the first time in 8 years to join John Cena and all your favorite WWE Superstars at "Survivor Series.". That's much more overt than the local TV ad was. If it's just "he will be there and will likely get involved physically," then, well, he already did that at Wrestlemania, so it wouldn't be the first time he did that in 8 years and that would just be stupid. Since his last match happened to be at MSG, why not "The Rock returns to the world's most famous arena after 8 years?" This show is not going to have any problems drawing live or on PPV. Hell, it especially goes for the live event in the building. The last MSG house show before the renovation (standard Raw line up plus HHH vs Sheamus) was easily the biggest house show of the year. This is going to be a big 4 PPV at MSG with The Rock doing SOMETHING. The show will sell out. There is no reason to do any deceptive early advertising (and the wording of the ads, especially the Facebook & MSG pages, is absolutely deceptive) for this show. Yes, it's wrestling and it's in their nature to lie even when they don't need to (I forget what it was specifically about but there was something during Linda McMahon's campaign where this was especially noticeable) but it seems really extraneous to do so here. This type of false advertising is not something that WWE has done in a very long time. All I can think of recently is merging singles matches into tags via a show-opening angle. If the last MSG show is any indication, then fans react positively to those, anyway. The Rock may not work a match on the show, but I think we need to let this play out a little more before making a definitive judgment. Your scepticism, which is a lot more obvious with your in depth explanation, didn't quite shine through enough for me in your original post. That might be my fault for not putting enough emphasis when reading your article on where you indicate some uncertainty. Also, my reply was a bit more blunt than I was originally playing around with in my head, adding something similar to your final sentence.

Apparently the NBC deal included plans to help them start their own network, while the FOX deal doesn't. John's noted the value of having your own network many times, so this may turn out to be a long term mistake by Zuffa.

Even though he doesn't write about it much anymore, I'm guessing he still tries to watch the biggest matches from AAA and CMLL. He would know who Navarro and Terry are, but I'm guessing he hasn't seen them work in years.

Meltzer thinks it's just highly misleading advertising. I'm surprised you bought into it so much, Bix.

Though it certainly fits all the stories about Barnett, can we be sure that Watts is talking about him? This probably explains why Watts has always been a bit of a homophobe.

According to the Torch archives, Nash's last WCW contract expired early 2002.

That's the point, ATM Eric was so stupid he tossed Nash and Hall a load of cash their way to keep them happy, even though there was no legal way possible for them to turn up on Raw.

I don't think Dave would be against putting Rose on the ballot. Indeed, I thought Dave's obituary in 2009 built a strong case that he was maybe an overlooked candidate for the HOF and put him over strong as a worker, so I'm surprised that he wasn't put on the ballot after his death. The problem with the High Flyers, Blackwell and even Rose as HOF candidates is that a lot of the voters put great stock in getting over as headliners in multiple territories, especially places like New York and St. Louis. They'd be very hard to get elected given the electorate's current mentality.

I'm not sure if Nash is being entirely honest with the details, but I believe the gist of the story to be true (i.e. WCW were stupid enough to give significant raises to Hall and Nash over the fake Razor Ramon and Diesel angle), because it was mentioned in PowerSlam magazine in the UK at the time. I think this is one of those ridiculous wrestling stories that is actually true.

It's hard to know whether Dana made the right move or not when we don't know the details of the other deals on the table. I think Spike would have been pretty desperate to keep them and would have offered them a huge hike in rights fees too. NBC offered them almost as much as Fox did and you'd have been on the ground floor of their new sports network, which may have paid off big in the long run. ESPN would have been the best channel to hype the PPVs to hardcore sports fans, which may have been worth a small hit in the rights fees too. They were also negotiating with CBS and Turner. The FOX deal was a good one (though not good enough to be locked in for seven years), but I'm sceptical that it was the best one for the future of the company. I get a sense that to some degree that Dana marked out for FOX like Vince McMahon marked out for the USA network in 2005, which may explain the length of the contract. Dana had more suitors, so I'm sure he hasn't taken a significantly worse deal to end up on a more premium platform by playing hardball with their current network. But I'm sure Zuffa are thinking that this is the TV deal that will get them to the next level. Maybe it will, but the timing doesn't seem right with all the business indicators being down from a year ago. They may find out, like WWE did when they last moved networks and with their NBC specials, that they have their loyal core audience, but outside of that core audience there isn't much interest in seeing their TV product.

No, WWE Creative are too incompetent to book without the brand extension, according to Dave Meltzer. So they need that structure still in place for booking house shows in advance, even though the top guys will now appear on both shows.

It depends how it's done. Triple H knows full well how to work a match where he doesn't really put his opponent over despite doing the job.

Bix and I don't get it either, because surely whatever money he gets from the extra clicks, he doesn't need.

Mark Madden has become as out of touch as Ole Anderson was in 1993.

I think if you looked at their career records closely, the gap between them in terms of longevity and high profile matches wouldn't be that large. Edge spent a long time on the disabled list throughout his career and didn't become a real headliner until he beat John Cena for the title at New Year's Revolution 2006, a year after it became clear that Batista was becoming the hottest star in wrestling.

Of course you're "seriously deranged" in their eyes, you've called them out on their usage of spyware while writing for a competing website. When you've got no defence for such activity other than greed, you have to resort to smears and name calling. Can someone please point out to them the hypocrisy of them singling out someone who spreads news from their site in their own words, while continuing to post WWE and TNA TV taping spoilers?

Is Triple H trying to stop The Rock vs. John Cena at WWE WrestleMania?

I thought that argument in Ring Of Hell was really flaky. I wouldn't equate being awkward around other children and being obsessed with working out and wrestling from an early age to being "truly fucked up in the head". It makes him sound autistic, but other than that he had a very normal, boring upbringing. All the really disturbing behaviour cited in Ring Of Hell happened after he had broken into the business and got worse over time. I think there's a lot stronger evidence that wrestling impacted his mental state (through the concussions, steroids, pain pills, deaths, etc) than there is that he was always really "fucked up in the head".

I'll break kayfabe for a second and will just say that Bix was MASSIVELY under-appreciated by SBNation (not a criticism, just an observation) and is going somewhere that'll hopefully treat him a lot better. So yeah, I'll be following him at Bleacher Report and everyone else should too!

To be fair, part of the problem was that there really wasn't a good choice for a new ace after Kobashi. Not all of the blame can be laid at the feet of Misawa's booking, but some of it has to lie on the shoulders of the talent. Also, a lot of athletes started going into MMA instead of wrestling.

It's hard to see Punk fluffing the big promo like Matt Hardy did.

Billy Gunn on paper seems like a pretty poor choice for a WWE trainer, so maybe in this case we should be thankful that Triple H is so petty.