One idea discussed for Unforgiven was to have The Undertaker face the winner of the WWE Championship Scramble Match, with the idea being that Vickie Guerrero would give him a title shot as a peace offering to save her soul.
Despite Shane McMahon’s best efforts to get WWE onto TV Azteca or Televisa in Mexico, they have now signed a deal with the much smaller TVC Deportes cable channel. The deal starts with Raw on 06 October.
Vince McMahon was reportedly in a foul mood following SummerSlam and throughout that week’s TV tapings, which may well have had something to do with his 63rd birthday being on 24 August. Everyone was walking on egg shells around him that week, with Bruce Prichard in particular catching an earful in front of everyone backstage. Vince ordered multiple rewrites of the shows, so much that Smackdown was still being scripted at 7pm on the day of taping. Vince was also fuming about R-Truth’s debut Smackdown match with Kenny Dykstra. He didn’t want Ron Killings to sell anything for Dykstra but there was a communication lapse and the agents told Killings to sell big for a big babyface comeback during the match.
As you may well have expected, Chris Jericho and Shawn Michaels are collaborating with one another on their angle and it is more or less out of the hands of the creative teams. However, Colt Cobana (Scotty Goldman), Jay Bradley (Ryan Braddock) and Shawn Spears (Gavin Spears) have been getting no love whatsoever from creative. The writers have never been high on any of them and so they have been left to flounder when making their debuts. Primo Colon’s Raw debut, where he was brushed off backstage by Mike Adamle, was originally meant to provide Colon with more time to get himself over. It was then condensed due to time constraints stemming from the hectic and perpetual rewriting process, so Colon was left looking foolish having been left high and dry by Adamle.
In a curious trivia note regarding the WWE creative team, the major 2004 push for Chris Benoit was originally booked for John Cena. It was Cena who was to have won the Royal Rumble and then the World Heavyweight Title at WrestleMania XX, yet Triple H convinced Vince McMahon that Cena was not ready for it and so the plans were altered. By the following year Triple H and many others had changed his mind completely about Cena.
Credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 01 September 2008 (subscribe here)
