kjh

It wasn't their decision - it was Spike TV's.

There is one key difference to Brian Pillman in 1996. Shields is still under contract to Strikeforce for another couple of months. Pillman never appeared on WWF television while under contract to WCW. Probably the closest wrestling comparison is Mike Awesome turning up on Nitro while he was still ECW champion. I don't blame Shields for taking the better contract and I'm sure Dave doesn't either. But he's right to point out that it was highly disrespectful to Strikeforce, the company that put him on the map, to appear on UFC programming with Dana White mouthing "I've got him" while he was still under contract to Strikeforce. Not to mention that such behaviour could open up UFC to a lawsuit from Strikeforce over contract tampering.

Tara, unhappy with pay and badmouthing behind her back, to leave TNA next month

"It's my extreme pleasure to conduct this interview" - Kal Rudman with Don Muraco:

From today's news update by Dave, I found this amusing:

So quiet, in fact, that I as a subscriber had no idea they had done this until I read this post. Rat bastards! I don't know how the price rise really works. If you sign up now it's $10.99 a month. I'm not sure how it affects recurring PayPal customers. I expect at some point PayPal will stop the payment and force you to sign up at the higher rate. I'm sure Dave could pull off some big names to do shoot interviews. Not sure he could pull off Ross or Austin, given that Ross is looking at doing his own book projects and Austin seems like a guy who wouldn't want to do a shoot interview.

Dave and Bryan weren't exactly enamored with the prospect when they guessed, on their radio show reviewing the Draft, that Show would be feuding with Swagger right off the bat.

Hmm, I'm not sure I'd be that confident in the success of the project, Talon. Wade Keller dipped his toe in the shoot interview business with Big Vision Entertainment and he only ended up doing a couple of DVDs with them. Maybe this will work out better for Bryan and Dave, as they've quietly increased the online subscription by $1 to cover some of the costs of doing this.

It matches the Torch's coverage in their archive section. With the benefit of hindsight, I'd say The Rock's side of the story was closer to the truth than Triple H's.

Part of that was also him having the good fortune to face smark super villain John Cena, some good fortune that Batista has too.

TNA Impact slumps to their worst rating in history going head to head with the first two hours of WWE Raw's Draft show

The "proud patriot" Stephanie McMahon comment was really dumb because the organization who tried to destroy her family, her father's reputation, her mother's reputation and the World Wrestling Federation was the U.S. Government.

Well that quibble and the fact that Batista was soon shipped to Smackdown to flounder on his own where he couldn't overshadow Hunter and was already a heat magnet for this Hunter inspired propaganda in an interview with the UK Sun months earlier:

I think the story Dave Meltzer at the time and Matthew Randazzo in Ring Of Hell had was that the plan was always to put the belt back on Hunter quickly, regardless of how Benoit got over as World champion. Before Summerslam, plans changed at the last moment and they used Randy Orton as the bridge to get from Benoit to Hunter, which turned out wonderfully for Benoit, Orton and Eugene.

Would it hurt Bryan to thank the person responsible by their real name? Thanking "The Cancer on our board" makes the project sound so unprofessional. I also really hope Dave has brushed Bryan up on Abby's career history, otherwise this project won't reach its full potential.

It's probably worth adding that he didn't attend Brian Pillman's ten bell salute. Made sure to eulogize Eddy and be the guy to put over his best friend Chris Benoit in a tribute match despite screwing with both their careers. Eulogized Chris and choked back tears when he almost certainly was one of the few people on that show who already knew he was a murderer.

McMahon campaign drops $5 'bounty' for Republican registrations

Probably because Dynamite hadn't fully recovered from his back injury when they booked the match.

I thought the story was Rock refused to put Booker T over in a singles match to make him the number one contender to HHH's World title, because he suspected HHH wouldn't put Booker over at Mania, so they did a twenty man Battle Royal instead. There may be something to what you say about Hurricane too though. Same reason that Angle never paired up with Steph properly. It wasn't credible for super stud HHH to have his ex wife shacked up with another wrestler. He also might have been paranoid about fiction becoming reality again.

Ditch, she's limiting campaign contributions to $100 and has been very open about wanting to self finance her campaign, so that number sounds a lot worse than it actually is in reality.

This has the added douchebag bonus points of Triple H in a creative meeting saying it wasn't credible for him to lose to Angle because he was too small or some other similar such nonsense, only for Gerald Brisco to pipe up that he's an Olympic Gold medalist in amateur wrestling.

To be fair to Hunter, he did do the job to Cena in a meaningless Triple Threat tag team match at Madison Square Garden on a Raw just before last year's Survivor Series. Flair and Steamboast pushed for one last match between them at WM for years. The other story was separate. Flair's last match in the Greensboro Coliseum (his home arena for years) on the retirement run was against HHH. HHH said he couldn't do a job because he had a match with Regal next the week that would be jeopardized or whatever if he lost to Flair, so the finish was some sort of shmoz. The Regal match the next week was a 3 minute nothing match. Yes, I should have made that clearer. These were the two examples I could easily find on the Observer message board of Dave Meltzer giving examples of HHH burying his idol and best friend Ric Flair, but I get the sense it was a general trend and explained other strange creative decisions regarding Flair (not being allowed to Whooo anymore, not being given enough opportunities to talk, etc). And jobbing to his girlfriend Chyna like Jeff Jarrett did on the way out the door.

Yeah, Dave Meltzer on several occasions has teased on his message board that Triple H buried Flair in creative meetings and refused to put him over. Like:

The worst thing about this wasn't that he was beaten so easily, but he was beaten so easily in a storyline where Triple H played a wink wink racist.

To add to tomk's point, most children of former wrestling stars don't have great athletic credentials that would allow them to jump to MMA once WWE have gotten them over. That mentality is starting to change now that they realize that the cupboard is so bare without recruiting legitimate athletes, but Angle, Brock and Lashley bailing on the company had a lot to do with FCW becoming a haven for the children of ex wrestlers.