WRESTLING GLOBE NEWSLETTER
Sunday January 24, 2010
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Wrestling Globe Newsletter by Mike Aldren - All the latest professional wrestling news, gossip and occasional opinion direct to you. WGN is read by industry power players, many top wrestlers and thousands of fans from all around the world.
WORLD WRESTLING ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
1/22 Smackdown TV results from Greenville, SC: Finlay over Batista via DQ; John Morrison & R-Truth over Drew McIntyre & Chris Jericho; Cryme Tyme vs. Mike Knox & Charlie Haas was a no contest; and Great Khali & Matt Hardy over The Hart Dynasty. Dolph Ziggler vs. Jimmy Yang that was taped Tuesday didn't air due to time constraints.
1/22 Raw house show results from Cape Girardeau, MO: Yoshi Tatsu over Zack Ryder; Legacy over Evan Bourne & Mark Henry in a three-way; Gail Kim & The Bella Twins over Maryse, Alicia Fox & Jilian Hall with Santino as guest referee; Primo over Johnny Curtis; The Miz over Jack Swagger, MVP, and Carlito in a four-way; Big Show over Chris Masters; Randy Orton over Kofi Kingston; and John Cena over Sheamus via DQ. The show drew an estimated 5,500 in a 8,000 seat arena. Kelly Kelly was doing the deal with upgrading people to better seats.
1/23 Raw house show results from Evansville, IN: Yoshi Tatsu over Zack Ryder; Mark Henry over Jack Swagger in an over the top rope challenge; Legacy over Evan Bourne & Primo; Chris Masters over Johnny Curtis; The Miz over MVP & Calito in a three-way; Gail Kim & The Bella Twins over Maryse, Alicia Fox & Jilian Hall with Santino as guest referee; Randy Orton over Kofi Kingston; Triple H w/ Hornswoggle over Big Show in a street fight; and John Cena over Sheamus via DQ. Show drew an estimated 7,000.
The Raw crew runs this afternoon in Champaign, IL, while SD/ECW runs Cleveland with The Undertaker vs. Chris Jericho as the main event. Raw TV is Monday from Columbus with James Roday and Dule Hill of Psych fame. The SD/ECW tapings are Tuesday in Cincinnati with Drew McIntyre vs. John Morrison for the IC title; and DX vs. The Straight EDGE Society for the tag titles. We're looking for reader reports from all these shows to you2us@wrestlingglobe.com as well as the SD/ECW show from last night in Hammond, IN.
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The current line up for next Sunday's Royal Rumble: The Undertaker vs. Rey Mysterio for the World title; Sheamus vs. Randy Orton for the WWE title; Christian vs. Ezekiel Jackson for the ECW title; Michelle McCool vs. Mickie James for the Women's title; and the 30-man Rumble match has 24 names announced thus far. There is one surprise planned or at least was as of last week. That leaves five spots for over 20 guys including Matt Hardy, John Morrison, Dolph Ziggler, R-Truth, Drew McIntyre, Chavo, Finlay, Kozlov, The Hart Dynasty, and Cryme Tyme.
John Cena was switched to the Rumble match due to his back issues. The feeling was he couldn't perform at the level he wants in a singles title match at a major pay-per-view. After some shows of late he has been undergoing heat and ice therapy, and some other treatments, according to those who would know.
The Daily Star in the UK at http://tinyurl.com/y8bys94 has a story on Kelly Kelly, who publicly talks about the death of boyfriend Andrew "Test" Martin for the first time. She said: "I like to talk about him – to tell the world how great a man he was. He was a big part of my life, we were together for two-and-a- half years. When I first started [in ECW], Andrew looked after me. We were there together, we had some good times and some hard times – he wanted more than anything to be healthy. I honestly could not say enough about him – he was the love of my life. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about Andrew. He was an amazing person who had so much love to give the world – he loved wrestling." She also puts over Katie Lea for helping her develop in the ring. "I learned a lot from her – she is an amazing wrestler," Kelly said.
Superstars this past week with Chris Jericho vs. Kane did a 1.1 rating which is a good number.
Cheech & Chong were announced as Raw guest hosts for March 1 in Oklahoma City. For those who don't know they are basically a couple of pot head hippies from the 1970s who made some movies and released a string of comedy albums. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. Perhaps another demonstration of how out of touch the WWE is with pop culture although I'll take that back if they book the cast of Jersey Shore in 2010. I mean seriously, Cheech & Chong?
Jim Ross at www.jrsbarbq.com puts over former wrestling announcers Kevin Kelly and Tony Schiavone in his latest blog: "An emailer asked me who I felt like was an underrated, wrestling announcer that I can recall and Kevin Kelly's name came to mind. I always thought that Kevin did a really good job. I also think that Tony Schiavone is underrated and was an excellent announcer particularly during the Crockett era but Tony's passion for the product seemed to be beaten out of him by the end of the WCW days." Ross was also pushing again for Jerry Lawler to get his Wrestlemania match.
Former announcer Jonathan Coachman is now hosting Sportscenter Saturday on ESPN Radio.
The WWE website at http://tinyurl.com/yewe5l7 has a where are they now on Dan Spivey. Today he runs a construction company, Spivey Utility Construction, out of Odessa, FL. He talks about working for All-Japan during the 80s, teaming with Sid Eudy as The Skyscrapers in WCW, and the ill-fated Waylon Mercy gimmick during mid-90s WWF.
R-Truth kayfabes in the New Zealand Herald at http://tinyurl.com/y9sojcy.
The Miz at http://tinyurl.com/yevwlah talks about trying to break through the glass ceiling.
TNA WRESTLING NEWS
1/23 house show results from Glasgow, Scotland: Amazing Red over Chris Sabin; Eric Young over Suicide; Hernandez over Rhino; Kurt Angle over Daniels & Desmond Wolfe in a three-way; Hamada over Sarita; Team 3D over Beer Money & The British Invasion in a three-way Tables match; and AJ Styles over Samoa Joe.
A packed house but not sold out. They used the six-sided ring plus a large video screen. Jeremy Borash was ring announcer doing his carny deal promising that the next time TNA returns to Glasgow they will tape television here. The Pope didn't work as he came down sick and the doctor wouldn't clear him. Neither Red or Doug Williams carried the X-title. D-Lo Brown was watching the matches from the crowd. Another interesting note is that the people treated Styles like a heel even though those promos with Flair haven't yet aired in the UK. The three-way between Angle, Daniels and Wolfe was said to be match of the night. One of our readers wrote: 'PPV quality match... Wolfe got so much heat, just for being English, Angle was over, there's no question. Daniels got a few cheers here and there. You would easily put this exact match on TV or a PPV, it was that good. Brilliant seeing Wolfe live, lots of "Nigel" chants and a few people chanting ROH. Angle won after an Angle Slam on Wolfe. I've seen Angle live before, even in a cage match with John Cena, but this was by far the best match I've seen him take part in live.'
Dixie Carter noted she was heading to Paris to take in TNA's debut in France on Monday at Le Zenith De Paris. The remaining dates are all in the UK with stops in Bournemouth, Cardiff, Coventry, Manchester, and London. We're looking for readers reports from all these shows to you2us@wrestlingglobe.com.
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Impact this past week did a 1.3 rating [rounded up from 1.26] and 1.9 million viewers. That's an increase of 100,000 viewers from last week. Highest rated quarter hours were Q1 of hour one with Ric Flair/AJ Styles cutting a promo tied with Q3 and Q4 of hour two with the Ken Anderson-Abyss confrontation and the re-creation of the Montreal Screwjob with Kurt Angle and Hulk Hogan.
We had reports that Beer Money were ejected from a night club the other night in Glasgow called Lauders. Nothing serious.
Wes Sims was officially announced by Strikeforce as Bobby Lashley's opponent in Florida on January 30. Lashley makes his Strikeforce debut undefeated at 4-0 while Sims, 30, holds a pro MMA record of 22-12-1, with two no contests.
Mick Foley has a new blog on the TNA website featuring an excerpt from his forthcoming book. He talks about WWE and TNA wrestlers [without mentioning names] wishing they had gone into MMA rather than pro wrestling and recalls a story involving Brock Lesnar.
Tara and her custom car business was profiled on Louisville Life on Kentucky Education Television at http://tinyurl.com/yavyz2v. The story mentions her as a former WWE Diva, now a TNA Knockout, and features some clips from Impact.
OTHER WRESTLING NEWS
The legendary Gene Kiniski, 81, took a turn for the worse and is currently hospitalized in the Whatcome County area of Washington with pneumonia. He has been battling cancer which recently spread to his immune system. Kiniski was NWA champ from 1966 to 1969, and the only man to hold the NWA, AWA and WWA world championships.
Many readers asked about the Lipstick and Dynamite documentary on 50s and 60s women's wrestling. It's currently available free of charge at http://tinyurl.com/yjc48cw. Well worth going out of you way to see.
Tooth Fairy with Dwayne Johnson opened Friday at No. 4 at the U.S. box office taking in an estimated $3.5 million, behind Avatar [$9.1 million], Legion [$6.7 million], and The Book of Eli [4.9 million]. His last movie, Race to Witch Mountain, did $6.7 million on its opening day. Tooth Fairy is currently projected at doing $14 million this weekend... Sports Illustrated interviewed Johnson about the film at http://tinyurl.com/ybr4ddp.
Former Diva Candice Michelle did a Q&A for her fansite Candi-Shop.org. Nothing of real note. She said her biggest regret while in WWE was not listening to her body and returning too soon from injury, which actually pretty much killed her wrestling career. She said she was thrilled to become a mother and giving birth will be her greatest achievement in life.
The BBC News website at http://tinyurl.com/yju8z2x has a story on 1960s British grappler Tony Edwards, 69, who fought off street robbers by throwing his groceries at them. Edwards said: "My head sort of went back 40 years and I thought, 'I know what's going to happen here', but [the robbers] didn't, but [they] did when the soup landed!" His attackers ran away leaving Edwards with minor bruising.
Joey Kovar of MTV Real World Hollywood fame says he's training to become a pro wrestler and was looking at getting into TNA.
A fun story at http://tinyurl.com/y98956o about a new indy group in West Virginia who say they are different from WWE.
Mike Bucci [Simon Dean in WWE] gives tips on how indy wrestlers can get noticed by WWE at http://tinyurl.com/yd6eo4w.
Mike Mooneyham, who has the longest running weekly pro wrestling column in the world, talks all the latest news at http://tinyurl.com/yccznuu.
Today's Diva of the Day is Velvet Sky at http://www.thewrestlingpress.com/DailyDiva.
