Hola.
I didn’t think I’d have this column finished until Friday night, but a steady influx of Dr. Pepper and the news that I’m going to see the Rolling Stones on Sunday has me in a state where sleep is nigh impossible.
THE SONIC DEATH MONKEYS
This is my weekly look at my Yahoo fantasy football team. If fantasy football isn’t your thing, then skip on down to where it says “Top Story” and start reading from there. I realize most of you don’t care about fantasy football in general or my team in particular, but I’ve gotten a few emails from people giving me tips and asking for advice on their own personal teams, so I’m keeping the feature.
WEEK SIX RECAP: I won 83-69, pushing my record up to 4-2 and 4th overall. We’ve got one team that’s undefeated and it’s going to be extremely hard to beat them because of the stacked lineup they’ve got. He’s got Donovan McNabb, the guy who is killing everyone else in the NFL in terms of fantasy points this season, but the rest of his team is killer as well. Hopefully someone will be able to sneak up on him when McNabb has a bye week, because I don’t see him losing otherwise.
Here’s the lineup I used for Week Six, with the actual points they scored in parentheses:
QB — Drew Bledsoe (14)
WR — Terry Glenn (4)
WR — Andre Johnson (7)
RB — Tiki Barber (22)
RB — Reggie Bush (5)
TE — Ben Troupe (0)
W/R — Marion Barber III (11)
K — Mike Vanderjagt (10)
D — San Diego (10)
Here’s my lineup for Week Seven as it currently stands. This might change over the next few days, but here’s what I’m going with thus far.
QB — Drew Bledsoe
WR — Terry Glenn
WR — Andre Johnson
RB — Tiki Barber
RB — Laurence Maroney
TE — Alex Smith
W/R — Joseph Addai
K — Jay Feely
D — San Diego
I think I’ve got what amounts to a solid team for the week. I’ve decided to keep my core guys (Barber, Glenn, Johnson and San Diego) in the lineup every week and play the matchups with the rest of the roster, which is why I picked up Jay Feely and Alex Smith this week.
AROUND THE PULSE
Let’s take our weekly look at the things that interest me around Inside Pulse.
— David Ditch is a must-read for me for two reasons. 1.) I would have no idea what’s going on in Japan if it weren’t for Puroresu Pulse and 2.) he is kind enough to give me a plug every single week. This week he examines the Japanese industry and points out that there’s no chance of a Ring of Honor-like promotion taking hold over there. Thanks again, David, and right back at you.
— Joel Geraghty continues his TNA 2006 series with a Victory Road recap. No, Joel, you’re not the only one who misses Jeff’s old catchphrases; he needs to bring back “ain’t I great” in order for the circle to truly be complete.
— Gregory Wind brings you the lowdown on the recent allofmp3.com happenings. He was wrong on one count, though; they haven’t fully switched to an ad-supported model yet and probably won’t completely do so until they can no longer accept any kind of credit card payments. Visa has already shut them down, and the other card companies are expected to do so as well; at that point, allofmp3.com will likely become ad-supported, which means you’ll be able to download as much music as you like, for free, as long as you don’t mind looking at ads. Personally, I hope they keep taking payments, because the current system of paying 80 cents for a DRM-free album works quite fine with me, thanks.
— For the love of God, please don’t go see Saw 3 next week. If you do, there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll have more Saw sequels, and the world doesn’t need that. We’ve already got WWE Films providing us with a solid stream of crappy movies; we don’t need Hollywood to do the same.
— My old boss Gloomchen nominates Dave Mustaine for President. Anything’s better than what we’ve currently got, I suppose; my vote for the Texas gubernatorial race will be going to Kinky Friedman, and it’s not just because Jesse Ventura is campaigning for him. A Kinky/Jesse presidential ticket would be better than awesome.
— I was extremely sad to see the Mets lose, but probably not as much as Matthew and Daniels. Once Beltran struck out, I officially lost interest in the 2006 baseball season; it wouldn’t have mattered if the Mets won anyway, because neither one of those NL teams will beat the Tigers right now.
>> WWE NOTEBOOK <<
— Nobody should be surprised that The Marine failed to live up to internal WWE expectations. WWE Films is generally considered to be a laughingstock in the film industry, and nothing they release is going to gain any kind of traction. See No Evil performed above expectations because horror fans will generally see a bad horror flick before action fans will go see a bad action movie, which is what The Marine ended up being. I saw the flick on Tuesday, and was truly amazed at how truly bad it was. Vince McMahon feels that the Steve Austin movie has the potential to do monster numbers, but everyone else in the company understands at this point that Austin’s name doesn’t mean much outside of the wrestling community anymore. If they’d released the Austin film in 1999, there’s a very good chance that it would have done blockbuster numbers, because wrestling was as hot as it’s ever been and Austin was a well-known name in pop culture. The funny thing is that it won’t matter if the films continue to bomb, because Vince now has a home distribution deal with the Weinstein brothers and he’ll just release the movies straight to DVD if he can’t get them into theaters. Going that route will allow them to use much smaller production budgets and give them a much better chance to actually make a profit instead of losing big money like they will with the Cena flick.
— The first two releases under the deal with the Weinstein brothers will be the Piper and AWA DVD’s, which are both due out next month. They’re putting together DVD’s for ladder matches and Hell In A Cell matches, which Jim Ross has alluded to on his blog.
— WWE Corporate pegs the Unforgiven buyrate at somewhere in the vicinity of 285,000 buys, which is more than Unforgiven 2005 did at 225,000 buys. That number doesn’t count late cable returns, which will most likely push the final number up to somewhere around 315,000 buys. Unforgiven is currently the second highest single-brand PPV of the year in terms of buyrate, with Great American Bash coming in at 330,000 buys; it’s followed closely by ECW One Night Stand 2006, which far exceeded the internal expectations for that show.
— Randy Orton was injured during his match with Triple H this past Monday night on Raw, so they had to cut out a bunch of spots and do an abbreviated version of the match. Orton is fine now and won’t miss any time.
— Brent Alright and Francine were released from the company. Francine is an interesting case because nobody expected her to be kept around in the first place, and when she did, she amazingly had a diva attitude and was pretty much rude to everybody in the company. They wanted her to do some pro wrestling training with Fit Finlay and Steve Keirn before shows on the road, and she flat-out refused to participate.She’s 38 years old and not at all attractive, so when you combine that with the attitude it becomes amazing that they kept her around this long at all.
— Albright was a different story; he’s a great worker, but Stephanie McMahon was dismayed that he didn’t catch on with the fans when he was paired with Chris Benoit, and once Stephanie doesn’t like you it’s pretty tough to hold on to your job. He’s also a victim of the Chris Masters Wellness Policy in that his once amazing physique has drastically changed from what it was when they originally signed him to a developmental deal. He’s a good enough worker that he’ll be able to take bookings immediately and has actually done so with Ring of Honor. There’s a feeling amongst some of the WWE agents that he’ll be brought back whenever he develops some semblance of a character to supplement his in-ring work.
— Pat Patterson is back with the company as an agent, but won’t be traveling to house shows. He’ll be at most of the television tapings to help with finishes, as he’s generally regarded as being the best idea man for finishes in the history of the business. Patterson had been out for two months with an abdominal aneurism; I did not even know that there was such a thing as an abdominal anuerism. I’d make a joke about how he got an abdominal aneurism in the first place, but I’d rather not, so you can fill in the blanks.
>> TNA NOTEBOOK <<
— Kurt Angle didn’t come up hot on his urinalysis for any kind of pain medication or narcotic. It’s been speculated that Angle failed the test for pain killers, but the truth is that it wasn’t anything in that vein. He failed the test for Soma, which is a prescription-only sleep medication that a lot of wrestlers have trouble with. A Soma overdose is what killed Louie Spiccoli, and there’s been numerous incidents of wrestlers taking too much of the stuff in order to help them overcome insomnia due to the erratic schedules they keep. Angle failed the test twice for Somas; the first time he was able to produce a prescription for it but had a huge quantity in his system and got nailed for it. Angle has claimed that he was taking 60 Percocets a day; as an Army medic, I can tell you that this is not only extremely strange but also extremely likely to lead to your death. I’ve got a pretty severe back injury and have been prescribed Percocet for the pain, and I can’t imagine taking more than 10 a day. When I first injured my back, I was taking three of them every four hours, and when I quit cold turkey-style, I became as sick as I can ever really remember. I’m not sure I believe Kurt when he says he quit them cold turkey, although if he did want time off from the road in order to quit the drug and Vince McMahon wouldn’t let him, then I totally understand where Angle’s anger towards WWE and Vince McMahon is coming from. I’ll have more on this story next week.
— Dixie Carter is pushing extremely hard to bring Chris Jericho into the company. David Sahadi is the one who approached Jericho about putting the Fozzy music video on Impact, but he was instructed to do so by Carter as a means of buttering Jericho up for contract talks. Jericho and Carter have spoken several times about a potential deal, but he hasn’t shown any kind of interest in returning to wrestling in the near future. He’s telling friends that he is going to return to the ring at some point, which is a different story than the one he’s been telling everyone since he left World Wrestling Entertainment. Carter will have to push extremely hard in order to bring him in and will have to pay him the same kind of money or even more than Kurt Angle is getting. Carter has a short list of about three or four people that she wants to sign in the next six months, and Jericho and Bill Goldberg are on top of that list.
— In all likelihood, Monty Brown will not be returning to the company. His contract has expired and he has told numerous people internally that he’ll either go to WWE or stop wrestling altogether to work on his personal training business, which makes far more money than TNA has ever paid him. Brown hasn’t entirely decided if he wants to go to WWE at all, but if they offer him enough money and don’t force him to go to developmental he’ll probably sign. Brown is one of those guys where he literally does not care if he never wrestles again; he’s got not passion for the business, which is one of the reasons he refused to try and get any better on his promos and in-ring work by doing indie dates around the country. Brown makes six figures as a personal trainer, which is amazing because that’s the kind of job everyone dreams about, and he’s making great money doing it. He doesn’t get clientele because of his TNA reputation and in fact doesn’t even tell his trainees about his wrestling career. Of course, now that I’ve reported this, look for Brown to show up at Bound For Glory.
— Bobby Roode is expected to announce Tracy Brooks as his manager at Bound For Glory, which would be a huge disappointment if anyone actually cared about the angle in the first place. The original idea was to get Jake Roberts on board as his manager and completely change Roode’s gimmick, but they decided to nix that idea and instead play up the Rick Rude aspects of his character.
— Jake Roberts is said to be clean and sober backstage at TNA shows, but nobody believes it’ll last very long. Roberts is also extremely out of shape and was gassed just from carrying the snake to the ring on Impact, which made his interview come off extremely poor live. Thanks to the wonders of editing, they were able to mostly salvage the interview, but it still came off like Jake had lung cancer and was just trying to catch a breath so he can talk. Jake is still highly respected for his wrestling mind and if he’s able to stay clean, there’s a pretty good chance that he’ll get a shot at a better contract and a place with the writing team that’s currently headed by Vince Russo.
— Kurt Angle will be working the TNA house show in Lisbon, Portugal on October 31. It’ll be his second TNA match with the first one being next Wednesday in Monterrey against Christian Cage.
— Simon Diamond got married last weekend.
— Scott D’Amore is working with Hermie Sadler’s UWF promotion on doing a ton of TNA house shows in that area in 2007. The TNA/UWF show that was scheduled for Friday in Toledo has been cancelled because the company wanted the roster well rested for the PPV on Sunday. They’re still doing the shows in Philadelphia and Hartford on November 10 and 11 as of press time.
— The seeds are being planted for a Jeff Jarrett face turn. The last person I spoke with told me that the tentative idea is for Jarrett to retain the belt against Sting in some sort of screwy fashion so that Sting doesn’t have to retire and turn into a sympathetic babyface, which is why they had B.G. James talking about what a great man he is. Kurt Angle will likely win the belt from Jarrett and then they’ll do a slow build to Samoa Joe finally winning the belt from Angle. Ideally, they’d put that match off until Bound For Glory 2007, but I’m not sure they can actually hold off that long. For his part, Angle prefers to work as a heel, but they don’t want to turn him too quickly and cause a fan backlash; the working plan right now is for him to keep doing the shooter gimmick in a tweener role while working with the babyface Samoa Joe. My concern is that they’ll waste all kinds of marquee matchups with Angle by putting him out there with Styles, Joe, Daniels and other TNA guys like they did with Christian instead of stretching his usefulness out as long as they possibly can.
— Final Resolution 2007 is on January 14.
— Kevin Nash was brought back to the company after his overtures to Vince McMahon for a proposed nWo vs. DX angle fell on deaf ears. The story going around backstage is that Nash wanted to get into WWE for one last run, but WWE never seriously considered it. Nash knew that WWE wouldn’t consider bringing in Scott Hall in his current condition, and he proposed bringing in Sean Waltman to team with him as the nWo against Shawn Michaels and Triple H. McMahon never even remotely considered doing the angle, and Nash is said to have quickly realized that his efforts to sign with his former company would be futile.
THE END
Thanks for reading my stuff again, and thanks for sending me compliments, feedback and questions. If you want to read more of my inane ramblings on days that are not Friday, then bookmark my blog. I’ll be back next week with more coverage on Kurt Angle and TNA’s immediate future, plus photos from the Rolling Stones concert.
J. Botter started writing online about wrestling in 1995, which makes him a virtual granddaddy in the wrestling community. He loves photography, long walks on the beach, and Veronica Mars. Some of the news in this report was taken from the excellent Figure Four Weekly newsletter, and some of it is from his own sources within the industry.
