Although Eugene wasn’t on RAW, there are no immediate plans to drop his character or gimmick. He is expected to return to TV within the next two weeks. WWE creative wanted to focus on Randy Orton and eventually Hunter turning on him, and not sidetrack Hunter’s focus on follow-up on the Eugene storyline. WWE often takes that approach after major PPVs – setting aside a secondary storyline in order to focus on moving a major storyline forward. Eugene is not being blamed for business being down despite how ill-received he was in Toronto.
Raw was not rewritten any more than usual following Summerslam despite the crowd response the night before causing some people to wonder if would be. Orton’s turn was always scheduled, it was just a matter of when with Unforgiven being another possibility. The decision to turn him on last night’s Raw was made before Summerslam, as evidenced by how they didn’t hint at any dissension between Hunter and Orton if Orton were to win the title. WWE’s wanted Hunter’s turn to blindside the audience completely. Had they planned to play out tension between Hunter and Orton, they would have begun planting seeds for that on Summerslam.
Several wrestlers on Smackdown violated the mandatory dress code. There will be fines for repeated violations. The dress code requires slacks and a dress shirt, but tie and jacket are optional.
The music for the Orton video vignette sound familiar? Mike M. who runs MavenHuffman.com says that we have heard it before. The theme music used in the video is by a band called “Mercy Drive.” The song is titled “Away.” For those who recognize the name, that’s because it’s the same band that does Maven’s entrance music currently (the Tough Enough theme as well). According to Mike, the kicker is that this exact song was put up on his website, WWEMaven.com, in a contest to see which song would fit Maven best as new theme music. You can see the archived poll at the following address HERE. What makes this even more stunning is that this was a special promotion setup between Mercy Drive’s management team, DeFab Management. I guess creative gets ideas everywhere, including superstar’s websites. It’s a shame that the song was wasted on one single video vignette. For the record, “Away” came in third with 1528 votes.
Credit: Wade Keller, PWTorch.com
