2010 Pro Wrestling Thread

I say HBK costs Undertaker the title at EC, probably to Jericho. Then he costs him the rematch as well. That sets up Edge-Jericho and Taker-HBK. Then Taker faces off with the Mania winner after.

Though I do like the ideal of HBK getting into the Smackdown EC and winning the title to force Undertaker to face him.

 

Provided Undertaker finally loses at Mania.

 

Cue up another WM possibility -- The Rock. (apologies for the crappy link format. And hell, apologies if this is a DB, but I hadn't seen it before)

http://www.cinematical.com/2010/02/01/fan-rant-did-the-rock-fumble-the-passing-of-the-torch/?icid=main|main|dl5|link6|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cinematical.com%2F2010%2F02%2F01%2Ffan-rant-did-the-rock-fumble-the-passing-of-the-torch%2F

Johnson may finally be recognizing that his film career didn't go exactly as planned. The Rock wrestled his last match alongside tag team partner Mick Foley at Wrestlemania XX in 2005, and, just months ago, Johnson told Moviefone, "I've retired -- that was my very last match. What a perfect place to end my career."

What a difference a flop movie makes. The Rock is returning to the WWE in 2010, and what was originally planned as just a guest host spot for their weekly Raw television show, has expanded in the wake of The Tooth Fairy's box office failure. Last week, Johnson told Live Audio Wrestling, "I'm doing another movie, but after that, we're going to create something special, unique, something badass for the fans. If the match was right and we could create something really unique and cool for the fans and for my opponent and for the company, I would do it in a second."

 

Except they wrestled on the tribute show after Eddie Guerrero died a few years ago.

 

Sadly, I never saw the show.

From what the announcers were describing, it was the first time MBK and Rey had ever fought. Unless they were doing some revisionist history.

 

I think they don't consider anything that happens during tribute shows (Owen, Eddy, 9/11) as part of canon. In those shows, you get a lot of random matchups that aren't part of storylines.

 

A bunch of websites are reporting that tonight is ECW's final night. Beginning in its time slot next week is something called WWE NXT (as in Next Generation) and that it'll be exclusively developmental wrestlers. I can't tell if it'll be a distinct promotion (like Florida Championship Wrestling) or if it'll be like Superstars for young workers. Given that ECW was the former, I'd imagine the latter.

On the one hand, it's long past time to retire the ECW name. It hasn't been the ECW of our youth in years, and as long as it has that branding, we'll instinctively wish for it to come back. And in theory, a show devoted to nothing but developmental workers could be entertaining, in a "tomorrow's stars today" way. On the other hand, the only time ECW has gotten ratings to move up in the last few months was for the Homecoming series of matches, in which CM Punk, Kane, Kofi Kingston and some other recogniziable names appeared. Take them and the few names left in ECW (Christian, Shelton Benjamin, William Regal, Goldust) out, and you're left with very little. Hell, they might as well show FCW in that slot, though I'd imagine the production values would be well below what SyFy would want.

I'll be shocked if SyFy renews WWE ______ for next season, which could be pretty interesting for WWE. If MyNetwork goes under, they're going to need a new home for Smackdown. WGN? Getting better ratings for Superstars, a C-show, than you'd expect, and they have good clearance, so maybe that's where it'd end up. Or SyFy, if they don't give up on WWE completely.

 

Between Lost and having to write a story, I missed ECW. Anybody know what happened?

 

The Chairman announced ECW will be going off the air in three weeks, but a brand new, exciting and never before seen show will be taking its place. No name was given for the show.

 

Just getting back into wrestling. Any sites you guys recommend that I should check out?

 

I call bullshit on this one. You don't know what you're talking about. How can you be so naive?
It's 1,153,435,667,430,432,019,576,239,411,911,001 times.

 

I'm partial to the Ring Posts blog, which is run by a former WCW Magazine editor and a current editor at the Baltimore Sun:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/sports/wrestling/blog/