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Actually I think it would have been a mistake to bring him back straight away. They sold out Budokan in September, November, January and March without him. In the short term they didn't need him. Obviously they waited way too long to bring him back, but they didn't really need him until Kobashi got cancer.

Dave Meltzer on why WWE has consigned the sneaky Japanese heel to the dustbin of wrestling history:

It's one big happy family as the McMahons celebrate Linda's win at the Republican State Convention in Hartford, Connecticut

But poor Gary Michael Cappetta may not be making enough money from a normal job in these tough economic times! I think he's a headmaster at a private school or something. at least he was back in 2002-2003. So I imagine he's not doing too bad for himself. I was being sarcastic with the knowledge that Cappetta was a teacher and probably doing OK for himself - making fun of Dixie Carter for possibly bringing Cappetta in at a time when she needs to make financial cutbacks. Dixie Carter is far too nice to ever be a succesful wrestling promoter.

I think it serves as a useful reminder for hardcore fans not to get their hopes too high up about Danielson's future within the company. I'd blame the scripting myself. I don't think Cole was scripted to properly sell the attack. Mild mannered Daniel Bryan being fired and freaking out was pretty out of left field too and was WWE Creative's attempt to shock the audience into caring about Bryan after they killed his heat with a botched modern day 1-2-3 Kid losing streak gimmick. Wasn't the original plan for Bryan was to be the Rookie who actually won the competition? Suggesting that Cole is a poor replacement for Jim Ross is dumb if Ross isn't coming back.

Cappetta's book was self published initially before ECW Press re-released it in 2006.

But poor Gary Michael Cappetta may not be making enough money from a normal job in these tough economic times!

Apparently 4,783 words is not enough for Warrior to bury Ted DiBiase, he's coming back later for Part II!

Is that why Dave wanted Gary Cappetta's contact info on Monday?

It looks like Irv Muchnick is going to take that angle, as he's got a story upcoming on Friday at BeyondChron entitled ‘Connecticut Senate Race Serves Up a Trio of Vietnam War Sanctimony’.

I agree with John that Linda is unlikely to be a candidate who could fully capitalize on this blunder. The Democrats have largely ignored Linda up to this point. There are plenty of skeletons in her family closet for them to expose, once they put their minds to it. Linda is also a political novice, she's very likely to make a serious gaffe herself once the media start probing her more.

Am I the only person to find the Daniel Bryan attacks Michael Cole angle to be pretty lame? For a disgruntled midget feuding with the lead announcer, Tazz was so much better in the role. And well, we all know what happened to Tazz afterwards.

Linda McMahon caught gloating that she exposed Dick Blumenthal to be a lying carny just like her

I wasn't aware of that, so that's a very good question rovert that I can't answer for certain, but I'm a cynic so I'd suggest that it was a cover story.

Todd Martin's Raw is Moon Landing Hoax Shoot report for May 17th

Interesting, because Meltzer now promotes the idea that ratings and house show business aren't as highly correlated as you'd think. Has Meltzer ever admitted that the focus on increasing TV ratings at the time may have been misplaced?

I get the sense that they didn't make a consistent profit even in the good times (months with a big DVD release like Kobashi vs. Joe were profitable, those without they struggled). Which is why their business strategy has kept mutating over the years. First, the golden carrot was PPV, then it was TV, then it was Ric Flair, now it's Internet PPV.

Yeah, OJ's right. Gotch and Hackenschmidt were carnies through and through. They'd be trying to peddle the lost art of catch wrestling to gullible amateur fighters if they were alive today.

Well, Flair wasn't really ready to pass the torch. Also, with all the uncertainty over the future of the company it was politically savvy of him to keep an iron grasp on the title. I think there's a tendency by Flair Fans to point to how Luger flopped as WCW World champion in late 1991 and as the top babyface in the WWF in the summer of 1993 to argue that Luger was never THE MAN to build around, but by then, as you rightly point out, the damage had already been done.

More evidence that TNA is desperate: TNA planning to implement major budget cutbacks immediately.

In the big picture, what did this *really* mean? Did Angle with his performance make those wrestlers bigger stars to the TNA audience or did he just get himself over? Will any casual fans or even hardcore ones fondly remember these matches in 5, 10, 15 years down the line? TNA's PPVs are the American mainstream wrestling equivalent of an empty forest. I mean Jeff Jarrett did a good job of carrying an assortment of wrestlers in the early days of TNA, without the need I might add of taking nutty risks on a surgically repaired neck. Is anyone championing him for the Observer Hall Of Fame?

[WON 100] Shawn Michaels and Nobuhiko Takada... These posts by Dave are from April 2003:

Yeah, that's why I'm confused. My gut feeling is that Dave is lulled into a false sense of security by Vince McMahon's straightforwardness on conference calls. Just because he speaks surprisingly honestly most of the time, doesn't mean he's always truthful. He may just be picking and choosing his spots. The fact that they've got a stock answer for dealing with this question that every high ranking corporate official utters when asked about it suggests that they're aware of the issue and not in internal denial.

Is Vince McMahon actually schizophrenic or is it just Dave and Bryan's reporting about him that makes it seem that way? I mean we go from Vince McMahon apparently trying to get UFC banned in Europe because he's so scared about what happened in North America repeating itself in their largest overseas market to Vince McMahon supposedly being in complete denial over UFC 111 costing him tons of WrestleMania buys in North America to the WWE creative team writing a "fuck you" segment at UFC on Raw.

Would one of his contacts been James Bell, WWE's former senior vice president of licensing and merchandising, who certainly knew a thing or two about secret financial kickbacks?