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WRESTLING GLOBE NEWSLETTER
Friday January 29, 2010
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Wrestling Globe Newsletter by Mike Aldren - All the latest professional wrestling news, gossip and occasional opinion direct to you here at RRO.
WORLD WRESTLING ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
1/28 Superstars TV results: The Bella Twins over Katie Lea & Jillian Hall; Chris Masters over Chavo Guerrero & Primo Colon to win a Rumble spot; and DH Smith over Matt Hardy.
Just the one house show this weekend ahead of Sunday's Royal Rumble pay-per-view in Atlanta. It's a Supershow tomorrow night at the Coliseum in Macon with John Cena vs. Sheamus; DX & Kofi Kingston vs. Randy Orton & Legacy; Rey Mysterio vs. Finlay; The Big Show vs. Mark Henry; plus Christian, MVP, The Miz, John Morrison, Drew McIntyre, and a bunch of Divas.
The advertised line up for Smackdown TV tonight includes DX vs. CM Punk & Luke Gallows for the tag titles; Drew McIntyre vs. John Morrison in a No DQ match for the IC title; and R-Truth vs. Chris Jericho. There is also a Michaels-Mysterio match which is said to be very good.
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Some separating fact from fiction regarding the arrests of Chris Jericho and Gregory 'Hurricane' Helms early yesterday morning in Northern Kentucky. Ashley Storer, the young women who was traveling in a cab with Jericho and Helms, said that she was sat between the pair when they began play fighting. She said she caught an accidental elbow to the cheek by Helms, became very upset due to heavy intoxication, and the cab driver then pulled over at a gas station and called the police. She told TMZ that when the cops arrived everything was blown out of proportion: "I was crying and drunk and tired from being out all night and I just wanted to leave". The incident followed a night of drinking a few hours removed from WWE's Smackdown television taping at US Bank Arena in Cincinnati. Those close to Matt Hardy told us he was the only one in the group who hadn't been drinking, although it doesn't explain why he fled the scene and hightailed it home to North Carolina leaving his friends to deal with the aftermath. One source familiar with what happened noted that Hardy had chased after Helms after he ran away but Helms returned alone. The police said they are not pursuing any sort of action against Hardy. Another note of interest is that Christian and CM Punk were said to have posted bond for Jericho and Helms around 90 minutes after they were booked into Kenton County Detention Center. The pair are scheduled to appear in Kenton District Court on February 16 to answer public intoxication charges or they can pay a small fine to dispose of the charges.
Jim Ross via his blog at www.jrsbarbq.com wrote regarding the arrests: "TMZ making a semi big deal about a situation that Chris Jericho and Gregory Helms found themselves in this week. Both these guys are great people and are credits to the biz and I suggest that this well could be much to do about not much. No one should rush to judgment about this issue especially since neither individual has addressed there side of this overblown story."
Helms has been pulled from Sunday's Rumble match likely as punishment for the events of this past week. Jericho is still listed at press time. Well, you didn't think they would punish a main event guy did you?
Regarding Helms being Thursday's WWE.com Superstar of the Day--its either a rib from someone in the office or a just a freak coincidence. When a reporter friend of mine called a WWE media rep yesterday to get comment on the arrest story the rep was shocked. A short time later the Superstar of the Day was changed to Cody Rhodes.
TMZ cameras at http://www.tmz.com/videos/ filmed Randy Orton walking through an airport yesterday and asked him about wrestlers always getting in trouble with the law. He said its not true. "We represent the WWE in a very positive manner," he said. "Getting in trouble isn't positive now, is it?"
Psych on Wednesday night with John Cena did 4.4 million viewers helping to increase ratings for the show and draw a young demo. The show was up 51 percent in adults 18-34 compared to the one-year-ago season premiere.
Author and journalist Bob Calhoun compares Obama's State of the Union speech to a recent John Cena promo at http://tinyurl.com/ybcxx2n.
WWE The Music Volume 10 is doing well on Amazon where its exclusively available. Its currently the No.1 listed album ahead of Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and rock band Muse.
Matty Hardy is working on a new book on his career and the wrestling business.
Joey Styles wrote a nice piece on the passing of Georgiann Makropoulos at http://tinyurl.com/yajwp7j.
WWE has added a Raw house show on April 10 at the O2 in Dublin, Ireland. Tickets go on sale February 4.
Jeff Wilen has his Royal Rumble predictions at www.go386.com/jawbreaker/.
TNA WRESTLING NEWS
1/28 Impact TV results from Orlando, FL: Desmond Wolfe over Sean Morley; Hernandez over Daniels; The Beautiful People over Tara, Hamada & Awesome Kong; The Machine Guns & Brian Kendrick over Generation Me & Amazing Red; Doug Williams over Amazing Red; and Mr. Ken Anderson over Jeff Jarrett.
1/28 house show results from Coventry, England: Suicide defeated Chris Sabin; The Beautiful People over Taylor Wilder & Sarita; The Pope over Desmond Wolfe; Team 3D & Beer Money over The British Invasion & Eric Young; Amazing Red over Hamada; Kurt Angle & Hernandez over Rhino & Daniels; and AJ Styles over Samoa Joe. The show drew an estimated 1,300 which is poor as they sold out the same facility in 2008. There were also people disappointed that they changed the advertised main event from Wolfe vs. Styles. One reader wrote: I’m not sure if I enjoyed it as much as the show from 2008 but that’s not to say it was bad at all, it was still a decent night of entertainment with better in ring action than your average WWE house show.
The TNA crew run tonight in Manchester at the M.E.N Arena and the tour wraps Saturday night in London at Wembley Arena. We're looking for reader reports from both shows to you2us@wrestlingglobe.com.
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Regarding the Honky Tonk Man claiming to be in talks with TNA--the deal may be this. Jakks Pacific who signed with TNA to produce action figures are tapping up WWE legends who's contracts with WWE are expired or about to expire. Jakks are hoping that TNA will work with them on a cross-promotional deal and occasionally feature some of the legends to help drive sales of their figures. On a related note, Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff appeared on the Bubba The Love Sponge radio show this morning for what they billed as A State of TNA Address. We'll have a lot more on this in the next newsletter, but when asked about Honky Tonk Man negotiating with TNA, Bischoff said he would "rather drive a rusty ice pick through my thigh" and said that Honky "couldn't draw flies if he were rolled in horse s--t."
Vince Russo wrote an apology the other night on his blog for using the term "fake wrestling on a fake wrestling show" while ranting about a note I wrote here drawing attention to the fact that Impact last Thursday only had 16 minutes of wrestling. He wrote that its his job as a writer to get ratings and feels that he is succeeding but realized afterwards that his comments may cause offence to others in the wrestling business. Taz and Jim Cornette were among those who spoke publicly about Russo's blog. Cornette said: "I'm not sure which aspect of this heartfelt apology has me more completely astonished--that he was completely gobsmacked to find out that his comments would be offensive to anyone who has ever performed, promoted or been involved in pro wrestling AND everyone who's ever bought a ticket or considered themselves a fan--or that he is firmly, steadfastly, blindly and delusionally convinced that he has at least once in his life ever written a wrestling show that people could possibly believe was real." Wrestling Observer editor Dave Meltzer also raised a brilliant point about people [like Russo] attempting to correlate ratings equaling success: "Historically, I'm not saying there is no correlation, because at times there is and at times there isn't, but ratings and success of a company are not the same thing. In March, UFC will do a Countdown show that gets maybe an 0.7 rating and a few days later get maybe 750,000 [pay-per-view] buys, which grosses $34 million for a company that uses its time to get stars over for a video game that sold more than 3 million copies. Is that show more or less successful than a TNA show that does a 1.3 rating and leads to a PPV that does 20,000 buys and grosses $700,000 and does a video game that sold a few hundred thousand copies?"
Spike TV may have jumped the gun with their faux pas about Impact airing live on Monday, March 1. The schedule on Spike.com has been changed. Impact is no longer listed on March 1 at 9pm. It's been replaced with TBD. Universal Studios recently updated the TNA schedule on their website, replacing the March 8 and 9 tapings with March 1 and 2.
Samoa Joe worked the main event against Styles last night in Coventry after dislocating a rib Wednesday night in Cardiff.
TNA may be doing something tonight in Manchester with players from the Manchester City soccer team. City are the second best team in Manchester behind rivals Manchester United who absolutely obliterated them on Wednesday night in the semi-final of the Carling Cup.
Video game maker South Peak Interactive recently acquired the TNA video game franchise from the ashes of Midway. They are planning to announce its future plans for the franchise at E3 in June. They are also sponsoring the current UK tour.
The Sun at www.the-sun.co.uk/wrestling has new interviews up with Dixie Carter and Rob Terry talking about his Global Championship win the other night in Cardiff.
Desmond Wolfe at http://tinyurl.com/ydqhevb talks about wrestling this weekend at Wembley Arena. He notes skipping school to go to WWF and WCW shows at the arena as a teenager... Another interview with Wolfe at http://tinyurl.com/ydymvzr where he talks about his first impressions of TNA. He said: "TNA is more about longevity and looking after yourself. Not that ROH wasn’t, it was just that they had a style the fans expected to see and couldn’t see anywhere else. It’s the same with the old ECW, guys were dropping like flies there, but it’s difficult to change style without losing your fan base."
The Miami Herald has a big feature on Bobby Lashley ahead of his Strikeforce debut on Saturday. A good read but nothing regarding TNA that he hasn't said in other interviews. He said he pushed TNA to give his wife Kristal some television time: "She's been acting for a long time, and I sort of pushed for it in TNA a little bit, because she's wanted to get back out there and do some stuff on TV. When they actually put her on TV, I think a lot of people were really happy with what she was doing. We'll see if she continues to do it..." Story is at http://tinyurl.com/yls7smm.
Lashley just signed a deal with EA Sports to be in their next MMA video game.
OTHER WRESTLING NEWS
Ring of Honor debuts in Los Angeles tonight as part of the WrestleReunion convention at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport with Jay & Mark Briscoe & The Young Bucks vs. The American Wolves, Chris Hero & Claudio Castagnoli; ROH champ Austin Aries vs. Jushin Liger; Jerry Lynn vs. Kenny King; Roderick Strong vs. Delirious; Tyler Black vs. Joey Ryan; The Human Tornado vs. Kevin Steen; The Necro Butcher vs. Erick Stevens; El Generico & Colt Cabana vs. Scott Lost & Scorpio Sky; and a bonus match of Larry Zbyszko vs. Scotty 2 Hotty with Johnny Fairplay as special referee. More info at www.wrestlereunion.com.
Florida indy wrestler Chasyn Rance will be part of the third season of VH-1 reality series Tool Academy. The show features "unsuspecting bad boys/girls" who have been sent to "relationship boot camp". The contestants, all of whom have been nominated by their respective partners, initially think they are taking part in a competition for a title. However, shortly after arriving they find out the truth: they are actually being entered into a charm school which focuses on teaching them how to behave as boyfriends/girlfriends. Each week, one contestant is eliminated and his partner must choose whether or not to stay with him. The last contestant remaining wins a $100,000 prize. The new season premieres on Valentines Day at 9pm.
Former WWE wrestler Ken Doane is part of another reality show, Seducing Cindy, that premieres Saturday night on Fox Reality at 9pm. The show follows the newly-single Cindy Margolis on her search for love.
Kevin Nash and April Hunter filmed sex scenes this past week for the movie Ultimate Death Match 3. The movie was shot in Portland with TNA's Abyss, Tommy Dreamer, Al Snow, Shane Douglas, and many other wrestlers. Hunter said of her scene: "Nash is a hottie. I don't normally like the older guys that much, but he's an exception to the rule. He was such a professional!" You can check out April Hunter at www.AprilHunter.com.
Brooke Hogan is enjoying a lot of positive press right now for a photshoot she did in a bikini for Life & Style magazine without the help of photo retouching. She told Entertainment Tonight: "It's to show young girls that these pictures that you're seeing ... everybody has been Photoshopped so much... I'm not perfect, but I am proud of my body. I work really, really hard at it."
Tommy Dreamer vs. Tajiri headlines at the SMASH 1 event on March 26 in Shinjuku, Japan. SMASH is a new group in Japan fusing pro wrestling, kickboxing and MMA.
Alex Marvez has a story on Rob Van Dam at http://tinyurl.com/y9loqks.
OVW on Saturday night in Louisville has a show with every match being held inside a cage. More info at www.ovwrestling.com.
Time Out Chicago has a blurb on Scott "Colt Cabana" Colton and his new comedy improv showcase at http://tinyurl.com/yzacv8h.
Today's Diva of the Day is Lita at http://www.thewrestlingpress.com/DailyDiva.
