Hey there! My name’s Eddie, and some of you might know me from my column, The Prime Cut, here at TBL. As Martin mentioned in his latest Mark My Words, he’s been doing a lot as of lately and needed some help with this section. So I come along to help out. 🙂 Now, I may not be as good as him, but I’ll do my best and I hope you’ll like it. Here we go…
If you are still in the dark, or your computer has been having problems these past couple of days and you don’t know about it, the WWE presented their annual No Mercy PPV on Sunday. The Undertaker and Brock Lesnar went through a crazy Hell In A Cell Match with Brock coming on top and Undertaker becoming just another sacrificial lamb in the route of the WWE Champion, the monster that is Brock Lesnar. Elsewhere on the show, we crowned the new WWE Tag Team Champions as Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit fought Edge and Rey Mysterio in what was a very good encounter. Kane and Triple H continued their saga in a match that didn’t do much for anyone. In other highlights, Tajiri faced Jamie Noble for the Cruiserweight Championship, and Trish defended her women’s championship against Victoria. Chris Jericho and Christian defended their tag team gold against Booker T and Goldust in a match which saw the middle rope actually snapping, yet the two teams managed to finish and make the best out of it. If this wordy recap didn’t do it for you, you can go right ahead and check out the No Mercy Report as posted on the TBL Newsboard.
Come Monday night, many people tuned in to see some of the fallout from No Mercy, as RAW hit the air at 9. I know that probably everyone has a lot to say on the Triple H/Katie Vick segment that aired, so I’ll leave my comments for later on the in report where we talk about this again. For now, to me, the segment didn’t entertain, nor was it funny, nor did it make me like the show better. It was simply useless and tasteless in my opinion, and that’s all I’ll say here. The main event of the program saw Kane teaming up with RVD to take on the “powerful” (ah the irony) duo of Ric Flair and Triple H. What I thought was a great match on the show had Chris Jericho and Christian team up with Victoria to take on Booker T, Goldust, and Trish. Al Snow and Chris Nowinski continued their own little thing they’ve had going as well. Yes, you guessed it right, there is indeed a full RAW Report posted and you can go right ahead and check it out if you missed the show.
Now that we have the TV part of this News and Rumors report out of the way, on to the good stuff you all came to read about…
First off, following the vicious Hell In A Cell match on Sunday night, The Undertaker, as he mentioned in an interview for WWE.com, is having some swelling in the lower back, and according to ‘Taker himself, the pain he’s feeling is worse on his bad left side, where he had the hip problems about three years ago. Undertaker also needed 18 stitches to the head to close up the laceration from the bout. For those of you who saw the match, it was definitely brutal and The Undertaker’s blading was scary at one point because the Dead Man lost a lot of blood. Definitely hats off to ‘Taker for finishing the match and doing a great job! Due to these injuries, as well as his wife Sara ready to give birth to their child anytime now, The Undertaker has been said to be taking some time off in the near future, maybe even beginning this week. The latest to update on that is that the Dead Man will miss the European Tour, as confirmed by WWE. Booker T will replace him. In somewhat of a personal plug, you might have noticed that this week’s Top Story here at TBL has been The Prime Cut column by yours truly which compared Undertaker and Kane.
WWE.com let the whole world know on their site that on Monday Night RAW they aired “The Most Controversial Segment” ever. Triple H, in a Kane mask, was shown doing things too explicit to type or talk about with a mannequin which we are supposed to think of as Kate Vick in this little reenactment. This whole “murder” storyline has been an attempt to get the attention of the media and the type of fans who are after “soap opera” type of storylines. What the saddest part about it is that the WWE has gotten nothing! Nilch! Very little media coverage has been done, and the RAW rating is down from last week. No matter what way you look at it, the “murder” storyline hasn’t done anything for the WWE so far, and I highly doubt it will do much in the near future. There has to be a way for the writers to at least try and make the best out of it, but I am seriously starting to doubt if that’s the case and point here. It’s just out of my mind how a company which can run an amazing wrestling show that displays physicality and entertainment just on the right level (SmackDown!), and at the same time air a product which is a complete opposite and has been suffering a downfall for a while (RAW).
The Katie Vick/Kane/HHH drama continued today on-line over at WWE.com, where a poll was set up for the fans to vote on whether the segment had a bad taste or not. The controversy here was that in the afternoon, the poll was showing about 80% of the WWE fans who voted stating the segment had a bad taste to it. That is definitely a strong message from the fans and the WWE was hopefully listening.
To wrap it up on this whole angle, Brian Solomon, the controversial columnist over at WWE who wrote the column “Shut Up and Wrestle” has written another column on the whole thing. You can check that out by clicking here.
Here is a quick look at the Ratings Report for this past week:
— WWE RAW scored a 3.7 rating, off of hours 3.5 and 3.9
— WWE Velocity drew a 0.7 rating
— WWE Confidential did a 0.6 score
— WWE Sunday Night Heat drew a 1.0 rating
The only important things to note there is that the RAW rating is down from last week’s 3.8 mark and that the Saturday shows have gone down in ratings as of lately. RAW usually scores a slightly higher rating on “after-PPV” nights, and the 3.7 is somewhat of a disappointment. Confidential’s 0.6 score is the show’s lowest and it’s gone to that spot several times in the past. I have no idea why the Saturday shows have fallen down as of lately, but the WWE and TNN wouldn’t be happy about it.
If you saw RAW, The Big Show was “drafted” from the program and he should show up on SmackDown! as early as this week’s show. The plan for Show right now is to wrestle on SmackDown! and seeing as how WWE has pushed him on RAW as well as WWE.com today, I’d suggest that Show gets at least some kind of a short-term feud, to get into SmackDown! with a bang.
The PWTorch Newsletter reported earlier this week that as of lately there has been some heat on The Hurricane backstage. Apparently, Gregory Helms is very close with Brian Gerwetz, who happens to be a huge comics fan. Sources also report that The Hurricane’s natural shy persona and his habit of being generaly quiet backstage haven’t made him popular backstage with the boys.
Ever since Ric Flair entered WWE, the rumor has had it that at a later time, the company might come up with a new updated version of the Four Hoursemen. The latest rumor on that issue is that if such a group is to exist, the WWE would choose Ric Flair, Triple H, Randy Orton, and Batista as the four members. It might sound odd, but that’s apparently a good way to bring in Orton and Batista to main-stream TV. I wonder how is that possible with the Triple H Effect enforced on RAW.
As reported on the Newsboard, the WWE will be giving Nathan Jones, a 7-ft tall Aussie wrestler, a try-out with the company. The WWE has had their eye on Jones for quite some time now due to his size and skills. It was believed that he needed more worked at the time he was evaluated. Jones has been working for the WWA. You can visit his site by clicking here.
In an interesting newsbid, former WCW Champion Sting will be soon making a wrestling return it seems. The WWA promotion is headed to UK for yet another tour from November 28th to December 7th. The advertisements running in the local media for the event have a picture with Sting on front. He’s not alone either, as Scott Steiner and Lex Luger are joining him. This promises to be a good tour for WWA, and hopefully they won’t have problems like they have had in the past.
Sources state today that Mick Foley will NOT appear on Byte This! this Friday. It’s everyone’s best guess that the reason for that could have very well been the Katie Vick/Triple H segment on RAW on Monday night. After all, Foley has little kids and becoming a family man and a father was one of his goals upon retiring from wrestling. The show will still happen on Friday night from The World in New York and the guests will be Eric Bischoff and Steve O, from MTV’s Jackass.
In a Bret Hart update, all of his fans were told via the newsletter on his site that Bret is doing just great and his rehab is tough, but going good. If you’ve forgotten, Bret Hart suffered a stroke due to a motorcycle accident few months back. His new site, BretHart.com, is also to debut soon. I am guessing more on that when his new sites gets going.
Shawn Michaels’s appearance on RAW is definitely a positive sign that HBK will indeed wrestle one last match and it seems that Clique politics have determined it will be against Triple H. Hey, nothing wrong with that. Let’s face it, Shawn is the only man who can defeat Triple H anyway! I would guess WrestleMania XIX or the Royal Rumble would be the desired date for the bout, with probably WrestleMania getting the show. Depends on how bad ratings go until then. Don’t forget, that another Clique member in Kevin Nash is supposed to make a return around January as well.
TheBalrogsLair.com is a site open to your opinions! Just as Joe Balrog himself said in a recent post, feel free to e-mail any one of us, especially Martin or Joe, with your comments or suggestions! That’s greatly appreciated!
Well, folks, that will do it for my first News and Rumors report. Hope you haven’t fallen asleep and I’ll probably be back for another one of these bad boys soon. Until then, keep checking on the main page for updates, and check out the debut of From The Hip. Thanks for reading and have a great week! Oh, feel free to write me too! My e-mail is Levski11@aol.com. Once again, Thanks!
Eddie
(Note From Martin: Great props for Eddie with his first report. He will be returning for many more! Michael & I update the latest from Smackdown on Sunday.)
