Vickie Guerrero is expected to become the General Manager of Smackdown. Vince McMahon asked her about taking on the role and she accepted, although she won’t be appearing at very many house shows as she’s raising her daughters. Teddy Long will still be on TV in a new role. Vickie was originally meant to confront Rey Mysterio at the San Diego show where Vince and Umaga appeared. She was to have apologised to Mysterio for her behaviour, yet he would have been sceptical and not fully accepted it. There was a last-minute decision to just go straight to the Vince/Umaga confrontation instead.
Chris Benoit has not been pushed hard on Smackdown recently because the brand’s creative team received word that he was going to be moved to Raw after WrestleMania.
Planned main-event heel pushes for Daniel Rodimer and Vladmir Kozlov have been scrapped. After a few weeks of introducing Kozlov on-screen one agent in a meeting said that he wasn’t anywhere near ready for what they wanted from him. All the other agents then agreed, which made Vince McMahon angry. He said something along the lines of “God damn, why are we pushing him then?” He then went on a tirade about wasting TV time on pushes for people who are going to fail, that he only wants to give TV builds to guys who are ready to be stars now, and that he was mad they spent months pushing the guy, that nobody spoke up about it, and then when the first person spoke up, everybody agreed. The flip side is that Ted Dibiase was let go from his agent duties for being too honest and everybody is well aware of why he was released. The day after that meeting Stephanie sent a memo to the creative team, telling them to stop all plans for Rodimer. She feared that Vince would be mad about her plans to give a monster heel push to a tall guy with a good look who is still a long way from being ready.
The Marine is a genuine home video hit, with a three-week total of $16 million. By comparison, Gridiron Gang has done $17 million in five weeks. The Marine was due to be released theatrically in Australia last month but that wound up being canceled.
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