[SD] Booking Confusion On Smackdown

Archive

– Early indications have Judgement Day 2006 drawing a 9.800 paid attendance for a $560,000 gate.

– There was said to be a great deal of unrest at the 30th May Smackdown taping, since Vince McMahon kept rewriting the show all through the afternoon. This left many people unsure of what they were meant to be doing, drawing a number of comparisons to latter-day Nitro tapings. None of the agents were particularly keen on informing Roddy Piper that his Piper’s Pit segment had been changed from The Undertaker to The Great Khali, which ruined the lines Piper had been rehearsing (though this was due to Undertaker not wanting to do the segment, preferring to sell the mystery of his easy loss to Khali). It was Vince’s decision to do the Angle/Mysterio match. Angle was not originally meant to be on the show, having jumped to ECW, but Vince wanted to do a ‘farewell’ match for him. The agents were against having Mysterio lose on TV again, especially against an opponent he would not be able to have a rematch with, but none wanted to disagree with Vince over it.

– Following JBL’s injury, it was planned to have Mark Henry defeat Rey Mysterio for the World Heavyweight Title and build to a match with Batista at SummerSlam. As of now, those plans have been scrapped.

– In a recent interview with the Oregonian paper, Mysterio expressed an interest in making a movie with the WWE Films department.

Credit: Wrestling Observer newsletter (click here for subscription information)