Kevin Nash left the building early at the TNA tapings last night, unhappy with a planned finish for his match for the night. He must have been very angry to do this, and I fully expect him to use the “WWE needs a road agent” tag line. Also, Tomko is now gone from the company as he wants to work full time in Japan. We’ll keep you updated on both of these situations.
Make sure to catch SmackDown! this Friday night. It was a forgettable show for the most part from what I understand, however, the final segment of the program is a must-see. I don’t want to spoil anything for those of you who like being surprised, so all I’m going to say is that the show ends with a Cutting Edge segment that features an amazing promo and gimmick.
Monday Night RAW scored a 3.6 rating this week, which is very good. The bottom line is that they really did shake things up by introducing all these new characters, and by sticking to them in last few weeks — even when booking them poorly for the most part — it has made quite a difference in the ratings, which have been great since the Draft. SmackDown!’s numbers have also been slightly up.
Todd Grisham is going to replace Mike Adamle as ECW announcer for the time being. This probably also explains the awkward/goofy segment with Todd and Shane McMahon on RAW, if you follow WWE logic/booking. All I have to say is I don’t know what Tazz did in his past life to deserve the last few years of his career, but I’m sorry for “The Tazz.” Grisham continues to do work on Fox Soccer Channel, where of course he’s pretty good, as most bad wrestling announcers tend to have a strong sports announcing background (see: Jonathan Coachman).
For those wondering, Elite XC scored a 1.7 rating on Saturday, which was way down from their debut showing on CBS. With no Kimbo Slice, and no Gary Shaw over-the-top promotion and with a tough main event that wasn’t going to draw much, this fall was expected.
This leads us into a pretty major strange development from today. Gary Shaw and Doug DeLuca apparently resigned from the Elite XC board last week, which wasn’t officially announced until today. It has been pointed out that their resignations were tendered before the preliminary ratings for the second show on CBS came out. In the case of DeLuca, he was still actually doing promotional work for Elite XC after he resigned. With Shaw, it’s a bit weird, as over the weekend his son Jared was telling everyone Gary wasn’t at the show but is still with the company and any other rumors are blown out of proportion. The public word Shaw had put out there in the weeks of the CBS show (which he wasn’t heavily involved with this time around) is that he’s spending more time with the family, as well as focusing on his boxing business. This leaves a gap in the company that will be the topic of discussion in the days to come.
James Irvin failed the drug test for his match with Anderson Silva from the UFC special on Saturday, July 19. He tested positive for Methadone and Oxymorphone, which can’t be good news, as both are on the list of banned substances for fighters in Nevada. He will most likely be fined, as well as suspended pending a hearing. Dana White might want to address the topic of test failures more seriously. While he’s always been clear that enhancements have no part in UFC, his speech doesn’t seem to work when it comes to the fighters. Then again, one might argue nothing will ever work, as it’s human nature to do whatever it takes to be best at what you do.
In another drug failure — and this one is quite amazing — Justin Levens became the first official Affliction bust as he tested positive for Oxymorphone. What’s so ridiculous about this test failure is that the cut-off line for the test is 120 ng/ML, and he tested at 10, 141 ng/ML. Not quite sure how he’ll explain that one.
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