2009 Running Pro Wrestling Thread

From www.f4wonline.com daily report:

Apparently there were only 17 women in the 18-woman battle royal on Raw last night, which was why only one team was announced over the PA. Molly Holly, Victoria, Tammy Sytch (Sunny) and Torrie Wilson have all been added to the 25-woman Mania match. If you add those to last night's 17, that's 21 total. I would suspect Santino to be in there for number 22, and I know that Vickie Guerrero is getting a crash course in wrestling to compete as well, so she'll be 23.

 

Oh, and Steve Austin will be inducted into the HOF Saturday by Vinny Mac.

 

I'd have to agree although I do enjoy an occasional TLC, Ultimate X and Elimination Chamber match.

 

Punjabi Prison match, anyone?

Bueller?

 

Agree completely. Not just the concept of the match, either, which is great, but the way they use it to push the midcard guys to the upper tier. They've rarely had more than one or two participants you'd think of as top of the card guys (no beltless Edge or Triple H, for example, using the match to get yet another title shot).

 

Well KENNEDYYYYY! did lose it to Edge on a SmackDown in 2007. But they've pushed guys like Rob Van Dam (2006) and CM Punk (2008) very wisely, and of course Edge propelled to stardom in large part because of the win in 2005.

I remember Jericho was the one who pitched the MITB idea to Bischoff back in the day.

 

To be fair to Kennedy, he only lost it to Edge because he was injured and couldn't last until the next PPV to defend it.

 

I was really bummed out about that whole deal. Not because I was a Kennedy fan, but because he had vowed to hold onto the briefcase for an entire year and guarantee himself a main event spot at the next WrestleMania. I thought there was no way in hell they would have the discipline to follow through with that plan. Now we'll never know.

 

Unless this year's winner does it. If Christian wins, as many expect to happen this Sunday, perhaps they could try this angle again.

 

Here's an interesting article from the Houston Business Journal about the economic impact WM is supposed to have.

http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2009/03/30/story1.html?b=1238385600%5E1800777&ana=e_bjt

 

That's a good read. With the economy the way it is, I'm sure Houston is salivating over the thousands of people who will be pouring into the city over the next few days for the various pre-WrestleMania events, the WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and the actual event itself. About 2/3 of people came from outside of central Florida last year and booked hotels for 3.8 nights, which are impressive numbers. It's not going to be a Super Bowl-esque coup, but it's still going to be $50 million dollars or so pumped into local business and the city economy.

 

Kinda sucks that with the criteria for hosting a WM now, there's only a select number of cities that can host it.

Basically, you either need to have a domed stadium (or outdoor if you're in a warm-weather town), or be a giant market like NY, LA or Chicago (where you can get away with charging astronomical prices for even the worst seats in the house).

I can think of a lot of cities that don't have those facilities that could really use economic boost a WM would bring. Living in Cleveland, it makes me think more and more that the city made a mistake when it made the new Browns stadium an open-air building. A retractable-roof deal like what Indy just got, and the city could've gotten a lot more events like WM, the Final Four and God only knows what else. But hey, at least we can go freeze our asses off watching the Browns playing another meaningless December game in the open air, "the way football was meant to be played."