Professional wrestling thread

Austin's last two interview segments have both bombed. The Rock is The Rock, though. Too bad he made it as a Hollywood star, he'll never come back full-time to WWE. Good for him, bad for us. A Rock-Cena feud would have been nice, or at least the build would have.

Wonder if Joe's going to pull a Shane Douglas and trash the NWA belt when he finally wins it to kickstart the TNA title era?

And if you think the NWA title has taken a beating, consider: The AWA title still (apparently) exists, and its holder, last I checked, was some dumbass named Ric Converse. Nick Bockwinkel and Verne Gagne, this is not.

 

MM, good point on the TNA/NWA thing, but I think they can distance themselves without resorting to something like that ... oh, wait, Russo's still there. Maybe that will be the plan after all. Ugh.

 

From Meltzer:

--WWE sent out a press release today announcing that from this poin forward, all PPV events will feature wrestlers from all three brands. This decision was actually made back in January based on the decline of PPV numbers domestically in 2007 as compared to the huge growth in UFC numbers at the same period of time. No Way Out was the first show of the new policy, but they are announcing it stars with Backlash. Backlash will be branded a Raw/Smackdown/ECW show as opposed to being a Raw show with Smackdown & ECW stars on it. In particular, the numbers for the single brand shows in November and December caused the change.

I guess that makes sense, but wasn't the whole point of the brand split(s) to get new people on the PPVs? Plus it hurts the specialness of intermingling brands on the Big 4 PPVs. But I think that boat long since set sail.

 

Just do away with the brand split already. It isn't working.

RAW doesn't have the star power it used to, but that's because all the star power in on SmackDown. Just do away with the split, please.

 

How doesn't RAW have the star power any more? Last I checked, they had Cena, HBK, Edge (the best heel in wrestling right now), Orton, Triple H when he's healthy, Jeff Hardy, Nitro, Umaga, Ric Flair, and Carlito when he really wants to work. That sounds pretty good to me. And if Smackdown has all the star power, why don't they get the ratings.

The brand split isn't going away and there are going to be more brands if this current plan works out. Meltzer reported a couple of weeks ago that WWE is looking to do brands in Latin America, Europe, Australia, Asia, etc. Each region would have its own stable of wrestlers, champion, etc. For example, the Latin market would have a stable of Carlito, Rey Mysterio, Mistico (if they can ever sign him), etc. Europe would have Finlay, Regal, Paul Churchill (who is or was recently the OVW champion). I guess the talks to do this are preliminary, but it could really happen and Shane is going to head it up because apparently he's the one who has been spearheading the international success they've been having lately.

So the brands are not going away anytime soon if this happens.

 

Won't that just make things worse?

Weren't SD's ratings better than Raw's, at least for a while a few months back?

 

I've heard a little about that. There's a lot of flaws in their concept -- which of course doesn't mean they're not going to go in full blast. They're going to have to convince a lot of people to move overseas, and give them pretty big raises to do so. Their Pacific Rim group would be Australia mixed in with the Asian markets, which are divided by a pretty big chasm. For some reason they'd have Raw and ECW as the touring brands, which makes little sense given how horribly they've botched ECW's return -- hell, why not try to bring back the WCW name at this point?

And who's to say they won't drop it on a whim to follow something else? Vince was all hot and bothered about Wrestling Society X, and we all saw what happened there.

More power to them if they can pull it off. I have grave doubts.

 

There certainly are huge flaws to this concept as Meat mentioned. My question is do they really have enough money to do all this? I mean you're talking about paying the salaries of probably over 200 wrestlers, which includes all the guys they have in OVW and Deep South. That is a ton of cash. And how would PPVs work? There are definitely a lot of questions here. And if they go ahead with this and it tanks, are we looking at the end of WWE after all this time. It certainly is a possibility.

 

Where does Khali fit into this split as far as international? Oh, maybe he's just the village idiot!

 

Agreed. I mean how much longer are they going to continue pushing this guy? I hate to see people get hurt, but I'm hoping somehow, someway Khali blows out a knee. That is next to impossible to happen because he rarely moves, but I can only hope.

 

I've never been a huge Jeff Hardy fan, but he is certainly getting worked hard the last several weeks on Raw. Umaga a few times, Khali a few times and so forth. Punishment or a sign of better things to come for him?

 

They want someone who can bump like a pinball on crack, and Rey's still hurt. Jeff takes monster bumps, and there you go.