411 Weekend News Report 6.23.01

Archive

Wow another week gone by, and another week of no girlfriend for me. What? Where’d that bitterness come from? You don’t care about my life? What about my cool new blonde hair?

Alrighty, we’ll get to the news.

I’d Rather Be In Chyna

In the weekend’s biggest story, it looks as if the WWF and Chyna are parting company. Her contract expires on November 30, 2001, and negotiations aren’t going well.

For some reason, Chyna has seemingly learned nothing from WWF divas past, like Sunny and Sable, and believes her hype. She reportedly has had a big head backstage, and is asking way more than she is worth. It is unknown whether the WWF even wants her back at this point. Why would they? She has peaked already…

Here is a free tip from me to Chyna: your career is over the minute you leave the WWF so work on mending fences if you want to continue making money.

Ross Report

So in addition to the Chyna stuff, Jim Ross had a lot to say about either stories we’ve covered this week, or stuff he has covered already.

HHH is training, Rikishi is recovering, Benoit could be injured and WCW is shaping up!

We also have stuff about the cancelled developemental deal with Memphis Championship Wrestling and how most of the guys there were fired. Ross tries to soften the blow saying that they still have bright futures, but could use a YEAR IN JAPAN before coming back. Pete Gas in All Japan? It might happen, remember Bart Gunn is a star there.

It’s not really worth it, but you can read the Ross Report at WWF.com

King of the Ring

Yeah we have a PPV this weekend. Remember when we had PPVs like every week? I once did 19 straight PPV coverages here at 411 I digress

The card looks like this:

WWF World Title
Steve Austin (c) vs. Chris Jericho vs. Chris Benoit

WWF Light Heavyweight Title
Jeff Hardy (c) vs. X-Pac

Street Fight
Kurt Angle vs. Shane McMahon

King of the Ring Tournament

Kurt Angle vs. Christian

Rhyno vs. Edge

Winners square off to determine the 2001 King of the Ring.

Some sort of confrontation between the Undertaker and DDP is expected, and other possible last minute matches.

Smackdown Ratings

We have the final WWF Smackdown Rating and while its up from last week’s all time low, it’s still pretty low. The show finished at 3.6, which is still very low, but not 3.2 low.

Um, no credit necessary, it’s everywhere.

WCW Nitro Is War

The Torch made its triumphant return to posting something interesting this week with a number of stories about the WWF handing all of Raw over to the new WCW.

It actually makes great sense to give either Raw or Smackdown to the new WCW. As the WWF product cools, and two major stars are out, much of the WWF roster is being overexposed, and could use the reduction from 4 to 2 weekly hours of TV. The WWF can boost the ratings of Smackdown if they make it the only major WWF show of the week. Smackdown would be more likely to be cancelled than Raw, which still would be a top rated show even in the low 3s.

Smackdown would probably become a live show, and Raw would remain a live show for WCW, possibly undergoing a name change.

More should be known in the next few weeks, although signs point to a WWF Invasion PPV with a WWF vs. WCW tag match with Raw on the line. Perhaps Larry Zybsyco will interfere.

Buff Stuff

A major reason Vince McMahon changed his mind about hiring Buff Bagwell was the pop he got in the arena the night of the last WCW Nitro.

McMahon called out several WCW names that night, and Bagwell’s reaction was quite positive.

In addition, Johnny Ace pushed hard for Bagwell.

Buff is telling people that he got a 3 year contact with the WWF with a yearly downside guarantee of $200,000, but some are doubting he had enough leverage to get such a high guaranteed amount.

This is cut and paste from my newsboard post! I got it from the Torch Newsletter originally.

Site Stuff

So Ben Morse, who loves me, did a brand new Mean for us all to enjoy. This week’s is extra long, all about Scott Steiner. You can click here and such.

And 411’s newest head of Indy stuff Josh Nason has a new column, and it’s substantially shorter than Morse. The Fight Club is all about how wrestlers should embrace the web wrestling community more than bashing it.

Danny Birdwell is doing our Tough Enough reports for 411, and the first one is already getting praise from readers.

411’s Fan Forum, which is an unheralded but large part of the site, is now re-open for new user registration! There are nearly 2000 people already registered, and with a new moderator, we felt it was time to allow some new blood on the forum. The forum is taking up more server space than ever and recently had to be pruned a bit, but still has over three months and over 10,000 posts to go through!

PK is gathering the staff’s PPV predictions, and the updated KOTR Roundtable will be up on Saturday afternoon.

Hyatte is taking off next week. You gotta give him credit, he did make it through nearly two months and missed very few days. Next week’s Midnight News will be handled by a rotating team of Craig Letawsky, PK and myself.

And of course, 411 will have FULL coverage of King of the Ring this Sunday evening starting at 8PM Eastern. I’ll be posting match by match coverage of the event as it happens, so check us out if you aren’t ordering the PPV.

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