Dwayne Johnson has not decided upon a Guest Host date for WWE Raw. It looked likely that he would be on the show in January to promote The Tooth Fairy, yet his publicity schedule is filling up rapidly and leaves little time to do Raw. Chances are that he will not be on the January 4th show to go head-to-head with Hulk Hogan’s TNA Impact, or against the UFC live show on January 11th. This movie is likely to be his last family comedy for a while as he wants to move on to other types of movies now. His next one, The Other Guys with Samuel L. Jackson, will be out in the summer. He starts shooting Faster, with Billy Bob Thornton, on January 22nd. There is a chance he will not be available for Raw until March at the earliest.
The Little People’s Court skit wound up being bumped from Raw last week due to a timing issue. Talent relations struggled to get answers from the creative team about how many midgets to book, how many would have speaking roles, how many men and women they wanted, et cetera. It was Vince McMahon’s idea and the other writers were hesitant to give firm answers without his agreement, yet by the time Vince got back to them it was the weekend and too late to arrange it all for Monday. A number of the writers were deliberately dragging their feet about it because they were down on the whole idea. There is also some consideration of the TLC match having a Hornswoggle run-in at the finish.
The Carlito promo on John Cena being unpopular backstage on Raw last week has at least some basis in reality. Cena has quite a few backstage detractors at the moment who feel that he is a kiss ass. The ongoing, one-sided war of words with The Rock did not help him at all in such regards, although almost all of that was Vince McMahon speaking through Cena. His hard work and role as a company representative has bred some jealousy among his peers.
Amy Hennig has not been getting positive reports from Harley Race’s training camp. The trainers recognise her athletic ability and conditioning but feel she does not listen to their advice on actual wrestling skills. The perception of her is that she wants to get by on being Curt Hennig’s daughter, whereas her brother Joe is the opposite and wants to make it as an individual. When Joe was in Florida Championship Wrestling the WWE trainers wanted him to copy all the Mr Perfect mannerisms, which he was not into at all. Apparently Go Shiozaki cut a promo on Amy at Race’s camp for always trying to be Mr Perfect instead of being Amy Hennig.
Gerald Brisco is not expected to return to work as an agent for WWE. Instead, chances are that he will help out with developmental, where his son Wes wrestles. This is partly to do with health concerns about being on the road in a high-pressure environment at his age. Brisco might also be used as a talent scout for independent wrestling shows and the NCAA.
Credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 7th December 2009 (subscribe here)
