411 Weekend News Report 6.02.01

Archive

Thanks to all those who emailed me looking for a weekend news report last week. You know, Torch didn’t post one item for three days, I posted tons of stuff, but you still wanted the report! It was a holiday weekend for crying out loud.

Anyway, I’m Widro, and let’s get to your wrestling news for the first weekend in June.

The Longest Ross Report Ever

Jim Ross, or whoever actually writes the Ross Report, went buck wild this week with a super long (11 WWF.com pages) column.

Much of it talked about the sudden proliferation of injuries in the WWF.

Here is the rundown of injuries, copied and pasted Scherer-style from the newsboard:

**K-Kwik’s back muscle and ribs are just about healed, and he should be back soon.

**Chris Benoit had an MRI on Friday to check out a possible pinched nerve in his shoulder.

**Val Venis is having a lump on his hip surgically removed on Monday, which was a formation from his childhood.

**Scotty 2 Hotty is rehabbing with the OVW promotion and could be back on TV soon.

**Eddie Guerrero seemed to hyperextend his knee on SmackDown! He appears to be OK and won’t miss any time.

**X-Pac has some stiffness in his neck, which is being monitored closely because of his past neck problems.

Also, Jim Ross talked about how he felt bad he had to fire Brian Christopher (but obviously not too bad since he actually did fire him), how HHH could be back on TV in a non-wrestling capacity within a month or so, and Rikishi will be out for 4 months.

Check it out at WWF.com

Smackdown

WWF Smackdown was a great show this week on UPN, capped by the stellar 10 German Suplex performance by Benoit and Austin in the main event.

And finally, after weeks and weeks of plummeting ratings, there was a slight upturn for the UPN broadcast. It settled in at around a 4.2, which is up from last week’s 3.9. Not a huge increase, but it ‘stops the bleeding’ and the ratings built to the end of the show, indicating that the current main event storyline is of interest to the majority of fans.

Hogan Back On TV Later Rather Than Sooner

Dave Scherer has been on top of the story with Hulk Hogan and Universal, and reported first that the deal was done to begin airing the show on Fox Sports Net. Then later in the day, he rescinded, saying that the shows will be taped for TV, but then the final produced product would be shopped around at various cable outlets.

Then, in an interview at the Observer Jimmy Hart talked a bit about the new promotion, in addition to having all positive things to say about pretty much everyone he’s worked with.
On the new promotion:

We want to make it a two-day shoot. We want to do everything we did not do in WCW. We don’t want to try and rush 29 interviews into the same show. We want to do everything first class We want to prove that you can market to people besides younger kids. We want to prove that having a few girls is fine but managers aren’t dead. If you’re over 40, they do not have to put you on the shelf. We’ve found some good kids to mix in.

And you can click here to read the whole thing.

Dudley Boyzzzz

According to the Torch Newsletter, a certain Bubba Ray Dudley has been taking things a little too serious lately, caring only about his in ring spots and actually politicking backstage to preserve his heat and his spot. Uh oh, don’t like hearing that kind of stuff.

But his half brother Dvon has no such attitude problems, so maybe it evens itself out.

Maybe.

Site Issues

OK you’ll notice I took down the ads again, since they slipped in a pop up. I don’t know what to do about it, so for now they’re gone. I know we all hate pop ups, but we might have to have one eventually. Not insane 1wrestling pop ups, but maybe one for each total visit to the site.

Bryce McNeil is the only new column since last we posted a news report. It seems our Foot On the Rope author didn’t have a good topic, so he went with the tried and true ‘random ramblings’ style, and brought up some intriguing stuff, including his boredom with the WCW Invasion so far. Check it out by clicking here

In shameless plugging of old columns news, I wrote two columns in the span of a week, and I got an crazy amount of email about both. You can read my article on steroids here and my column about last week’s Raw, which was posted before anyone else’s similar column, by clicking here

We should have rankings posted sometime this weekend, along with Jakked and Heat reports back this week, and Ben Morse PROMISES me a new edition of The Mean soon.

I will continue to post all the news on the newsboard for the rest of the weekend, and Hyatte will start his unbelievable SIXTH week doing the Midnight News in the wee hours between Sunday and Monday.

This is Widro too.

Jonathan Widro is the owner and founder of Inside Pulse. Over a decade ago he burst onto the scene with a pro-WCW reporting style that earned him the nickname WCWidro. Check him out on Twitter for mostly inane non sequiturs