Scotty Goldman gets endeavored, Freddie Prinze, Jr. decides WWE isn’t “all that†and Vince McMahon is trying to outsmart the Internet nerds again.
Opening Witty Banter
Mickey Rourke got hosed last night at the Oscars. I invested my time in watching entire Oscars broadcast, (which admittedly was a much better show than I thought it would be) only to see Rourke lose to Sean Penn. Oh well. Does this mean Mickey is back on for WrestleMania now? And for the record I’m not going to report on any the rumors flying around all week that Jericho will work Hogan or Austin at WrestleMania XXV. I can’t stand Hogan rumors and Austin has all but said he’s not gonna wrestle on this short of notice. I kind of like being surprised on which route they are taking with the Jericho angle. As long he keeps cutting great promos like he has been doing it will be entertaining.
Enough of that, now let’s take some ‘E…
The News of the Week
Lately Vince McMahon has been getting angry again about Internet leaks, stemming from the rumor of Christian being Jeff Hardy’s assailant. Hence Matt Hardy’s last minute insertion into the role and Christian main eventing the c-show. Apparently his paranoia has gotten so back that he made the crew cover the Elimination Chamber in a giant tarp on Sunday afternoon before No Way Out while the crews were doing walk-thrus of the two matches. He didn’t want the Edge surprise to be leaked especially.
I’m all for WWE trying to keep surprises going on in today’s WWE, but I really wish they wouldn’t have scrapped Christian in the assailant role. I just think the possibilities of a Hardyz-E & C feud revisited would be fantastic.
According to Pwinsider, Freddie Prinze Jr. has left the WWE creative team. Prinze joined the company in July 2008 after being a long-time fan of wrestling and WWE in general. He was well-liked by the wrestlers because he was knowledgeable and passionate from a fan perspective. However he hadn’t been around very much at TV tapings over the past couple of months, and pretty much everyone saw his departure coming.
That’s too bad that Prinze didn’t last very long in his role, but I think it was kind of expected. I mean I just can’t picture a guy of Prinze’s (cough) celebrity (cough) working under WWE’s demanding schedule for very long. Plus I just can’t picture him being out on the road for a wrestling show while he was married to Sarah Michelle Gellar. It just seems she and their Hollywood friends would just make fun of him.
Following in the trend of its other big four contemporaries, Survivor Series will be released in anthology form later this year.
This is great stuff as the original team concept Survivor Series are still some of favorite shows. I really, really wish thy would go back to filling the card with four or five elimination matches to help it stand out like it used to. I think the million dollar question is however, will Benoit and his matches be included?
More has come out on the MyNetworkTV-SmackDown deal in that if MNTV completely fails, WWE will be able to transfer to WGN.
That’s great foresight from WWE and a really good out for the company. Right now they look like kings on MyNetwork being the only original programming there, but they could be able to produce amazing synergy between SD and Superstars if they were both on WGN.
On Friday it was announced that Scotty Goldman is the latest talent to get future endeavored. The only explanation he got was the infamous “creative had nothing for you.â€
He confirmed the release on Friday on MySpace:
“SEEYA!!!!!
Yes. I was released by WWE. There’s only two things that are on my mind right now.
1) Move back to Chicago.
2) Go to England and Professionally Wrestle Johnny Saint.
There’ll be a lot more to come, but for now, sit tight.
Goodbye Scotty Goldman. Hello (again) Colt Cabana!
GOOD TIMES, GREAT MEMORIES!â€
Okay I’m not a big Ring of Honor guy so I didn’t really get to experience all of Colt Cabana’s goodness, but I like so many of my Internet contemporaries wholeheartedly disagree with this release. They claim creative had nothing for him and they didn’t like his look, but didn’t they, you know, look at him before they signed to a contract? Plus I thought they were just getting behind him with his new web show. If they weren’t going to use him in a meaningful wrestling capacity on SmackDown then they should have kept him around just for his endless charisma and promo ability. And if I remember right creative had it in for him the minute they were told to debut him on TV. And sadly we never got to see Scotty be on the air with CM Punk even one time during his WWE run.
This little tidbit just cracked me, Jerry Lawler was interviewed this past week by The Sun and he gave this little tidbit about what Vince McMahon thought about Chris Jericho’s recent troubles.
“Vince and I were talking and Jericho walked by and he said, ‘Watch out! Jericho will hit you! He’ll knock you right down!’ Then he adds, ‘Especially if you’re a girl!’ We used to be able to get the fans so riled up that they literally wanted to physically attack you after the matches. That hasn’t happened in a long time, so it’s almost like hats off to Chris Jericho – for doing his job.â€
I almost expected them to show the YouTube clip of the incident last week on RAW when Jericho was dealing on the fans.
Coming soon to a bookshelf near you include a Rey Mysterio autobiography entitled “Behind the Mask,†co-written by Jeremy Roberts (who also helped been Batista and Eric Bischoff’s books) and an Iron Sheik book, co-written by longtime WWE scribe Keith Elliot Greenberg. Mysterio’s book is planned for a November or December release, while Sheik’s is also planned for sometime in the fall.
I would imagine Rey’s will probably read fairly dull and non-descript like Batista’s; a quick two-hour read at Barnes & Noble. Iron Sheik’s could be interesting if written like Classy Freddie Blassie’s or it could be another quickie read like Andre the Giant’s; depending on the tone of the book.
Lita was backstage at last weekend’s WWE shows, and said she would be open to a return if she didn’t have to go on the road full-time.
Everyone already stole all the good Lita=open jokes. But I do think she would provide an interesting dynamic as a TV character on SmackDown mixed in with Edge, Vickie and The Hardyz.
Weekly Paul London Update
Paul London made his grand wrestling return on Saturday at a PWG show in southern California. He came out midway through the show and addressed his recent radio show comments and apologized to Matt Sydal. He then teamed with the Young Bucks in the main event and got the pin fall for his team over Joey Ryan, Scott Lost and Karl Anderson. After the match he gave an emotional promo and stayed in the ring for autographs and pictures. That, along with the surprise PWG return of Colt Cabana, made for a very memorable indy show.
The Road to…WrestleMania XXV
With No Way Out officially in the books it’s officially time for WrestleMania. We are still six weeks away but it’s now time for every fanboy to guess the card up until the official line-up is announced.
rumored matches:
World Heavyweight Championship
John Cena v. Edge (c)
WWE Championship
Triple H (c) v. Randy Orton
Undertaker v. Shawn Michaels
Money in the Bank V
Class of 2009 Hall of Fame
Stone Cold Steve Austin
Terry Funk & Dory Funk, Jr. (inducted by Dusty Rhodes)
Wrestler of the Week
Week of February 16 – 22: Edge
For the second week in a row I have to give some love to Edge. I have a feeling that going into WrestleMania that WOTW is probably going to just be a combination of Edge, Orton and Jericho. I don’t know if there has been a time since the brand expansion started that there has been such a wealth of legitimate, stand-alone, heat-drawing, top card heels like those three. It’s amazing how everyone in WWE seemingly steps up their game come WrestleMania season and it looks as if this year is no different. Edge kicked off the week with a great promo on RAW against old rival John Cena and then put on a great TV main event against Jeff Hardy. It’s amazing that he was won eight world titles in three years and he hasn’t experienced a violent backlash like Triple H did back in the day. He’s truly one of the modern greats.
RAW’s On Tonight!
RAW looks to be another loaded show tonight as Triple H will be looking for revenge on Randy Orton after he dumped Stephanie McMahon on her face. Plus with no World Championship on RAW what will John Cena use to hold up his jean shorts? Shawn Michaels will battle JBL one more time, this time for the right to challenge Undertaker’s win streak at WrestleMania. Shouldn’t Undertaker have something to say about that too? And apparently Vladimir Kozlov will also make his debut on the red brand to challenge Michaels and/or JBL…for the right to challenge Undertaker. I think it would be easier if Undertaker just came out and did a nice game of “eenie, meanie, miney, mo†to pick his opponent. Chris Jericho I’m sure will also be out at some point to yell at the fans and the business’ legends. Who will be out to challenge him this week? I’ve got my money on Nikolai Volkoff.
On Last Week’s Episode…
SD!
How They Rated
SmackDown! (2.13.09) – 2.2
A.M. RAW (2.15.09) – .7
RAW (2.16.09) – 4.1
ECW (2.17.09) – 1.2
This is Boring, What Else is There to Read?
Marshall looks at TNA’s recent releases and signings among other things in quite a heavy week of TNA news.
Wiswell brings up a lot of big Ring of Honor news, including the new play-by-play guy, new music for the talent and Ric Flair making an appearance or two.
For more relevant, interesting and exciting wrestling information from your truly, check out my gig as the Pro Wrestling Examiner over at Examiner.com.
