Greetings TPWW readers, and welcome to today's News and Rumors report, delivered by yours truly, Corey Silvia. I've been scouring the Internet for a while now trying to dig up some information for you all, and come up relatively dry again and again. When we're this close to the biggest holiday of the year, things tend to slow down, I guess. I've got what I could find however, and it should still be a pretty worthwhile report. Without anymore excuses, let's get right into it with the N+R for Sunday, December 17, 2000.
Since tonight is Starcade, and I didn't do my usual analysis yesterday, here is the complete card, along with my predictions:
- Sid vs. Scott Steiner - I predict: Scott Steiner
- Insiders vs. The Perfect Event - I predict: Insiders
- Goldberg vs. Lex Luger - I predict: Goldberg
- Lance Storm vs. The Cat - I predict: Lance Storm
- General Rection vs. Shane Douglas - I predict: General Rection
- Terry Funk vs. Crowbar - I predict: Crowbar
- Jung Dragons vs. Three Count vs. Knoble/Karagias - I predict: Knoble/Karagias
- Mike Awesome vs. Bam Bam - I predict: Mike Awesome
- Jeff Jarrett/Harris Bros. vs. Filthy Animals - I predict: Jarrett/Harris Bros.
- Kronic vs. Reno/Big Vito - I predict: Kronic
After tomorrow, Nitro will be preempted until the New Year. Due to the perpetually awful "best of" shows, we won't be seeing a live episode of Nitro for two weeks. That's got to sting, especially with the .8 gain Raw got last week without competition from Nitro.
The following was taken straight from Juventud Guerrera's website about XPW and his match with Kid Kaos: "The XPW show was in the middle of a Metalfest, a two day thrash and deathmetal festival. I liked that music when I was 17 but now it's a little too brutal for my tastes...I didn't have a clue what they were saying. The match itself was good though. I worked against a young worker by the name of Kid Kaos. During the match Kaos went to do a moonsault to the outside. Unfortunately the barriers were too close (I tried to move it but music fans don't know to GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY and he crashed into it ... OOPS! It reminded me of the car vs car match I had in Mexico with Rey where I did the same thing. Sometimes when you are young and hungry you don't pay attention to the risks".
Tank Abbot has been working an angle as of late with Sabu, in NWA Wildside Championship Wrestling. There's two for the "where are they now" portfolio.
Lance Storm will be wrestling at the pay per view tonight with two ailments. In addition to the torn rib cartilage, he's also going through a pretty rough bout with the flu. Not sure how well the match will be, particularly since the Cat is his opponent.
Lodi (another "where are they now" name) recently taped an episode of the Jenny Jones show, alongside some other top Indy talent. I'm not a big fan of the show myself, but that should be pretty interesting nonetheless.
WCW ticket sales for Starcade have been pathetic thus far. Only 3000 tickets have been sold as of right now, and although WCW is papering the event heavily, it won't be enough to fill up the MCI Center. It can't be all that good for morale in WCW to wrestle the biggest pay per view of the year in front of 3000 paying customers.
Bam Bam banged up his knee pretty badly earlier this week, but he should be ready to go tonight against Mike Awesome. Both men are wrestling with some fairly serious injuries, and would have a hard enough time bumping if they were healthy. This is not looking to be a great match up, to say the very least.
There is a pretty good chance that the Dudley Boyz may make a return appearance at ECW's Guilty as Charged in January. There have been some talks of allowing the WWF to use Tajiri in their Hardcore division as retribution, but nothing has been finalized.
As of now, it's all but confirmed that the Rock will take Kurt Angle's title at the Royal Rumble. Unless the WWF throws a curveball, it looks as though it will be the Rock vs. Steve Austin at Wrestlemania, with Stone Cold winning the Royal Rumble contest as well.
Lita will be hosting Raw from WWF New York tomorrow night. It should be pretty interesting if Dean Malenko shows up in response.
Tazz has updated his online commentary, which is available at Tazmission.com, as always.
Time for the WWF injury report: Al Snow is working with a sprained wrist, Eddie Guerrero is working with a pulled hamstring, and Rikishi is being kept off television due to his troublesome knee injury.
Tazz and Jackie may be paired up in the new year, since the WWF apparently feels it will get Tazz over. There were talks about placing Tori alongside the Human Suplex Machine, but she is apparently being saved for another project.
That's pretty much it for today, guys. I told you all there wasn't that much available, and as you can tell, I wasn't kidding you. Hope you all had a great weekend, and be sure to catch WWF Heat tonight on MTV.
Corey Silvia
Corey@tpww.net