Greetings TPWW readers, and welcome to today's edition of the News and Rumors. I'll be your host for this afternoon/evening, and hopefully you'll find a few of today's top stories interesting. Most of the news today circles around Vince's foray into football, although there are some wrestling related tidbits as well (obviously). Without any further ado, let's head into the stories.
Zap2It.com reports that the "XFL slammed NBC into the lead on Saturday with an estimated 10.3 rating/17 share, though final numbers may change by Tuesday because of the live nature of the broadcast." That rating is two-and-a-half times the audience of last week's NBC ratings. It beat CBS's strong second place showing of 7.2 and 6.4 for its "The District" and "My Best Friend's Wedding." Vince McMahon has to be thrilled with that rating, although now the question is whether the viewers will return next week and for the rest of the season.
Here are a few more stats to put the XFL ratings into perspective as stated in an AP report today, courtesy of the Pro Wrestling Torch.
-The rating of 10.3 was more than double what advertisers were told to expect.
-McMahon set expectations relatively low, saying before the rating came out: "As long as (the rating is) somewhere between 3, 4, 5, we're gold."
-The season average for the XFL timeslot before was 4.2 with movies.
-The full national ratings are expected Tuesday.
-For comparison, the XFL fell short of matching game one of last year's World Series, which drew a 14.0 overnight rating on Fox.
-NBC tried Saturday night broadcasts of NBA games last year and averaged less than a 4.0 rating, well under half of the XFL rating.
-Las Vegas drew the highest rating of 17.7 since their hometeam was playing and they don't have a pro football team in the NFL.
-The Minneapolis/St. Paul market drew a 14.9 rating, second place in the country, due no doubt to the desire to see a New York football team get soundly beaten two weekends in a row as revenge for shutting out the Vikings three weeks ago. Or it may have had something to do with Minnesota's governor commentating.
I personally thought the XFL game last night was pretty mediocre. I enjoyed the camera work a great deal, as the game was shot from just about every perspective imaginable. The idea of having EVERYTHING mic'd was not a good one. It got aggravating after the first thirty minutes, let alone three hours in. I thought Jerry Lawler and Jim Ross did a much better job on the commentating end than Jesse Ventura and Matt Vasgersian, which is interesting as they were supposed to be the "B team" commentators. Ross was very excited and edgy, although Lawler's horny old man shtick is not well received in these confines. To non-wrestling fans they probably came off as abrasive and obnoxious, but I thought they carried themselves very well for the majority of the game. The cheerleaders could not dance, and there costumes were no more revealing than the average NFL cheerleader's. Once again, that turned out to be no big thing. Tony Siragusa and David Spade were in attendance, and that proved to be pretty interesting (being a big David Spade fan, anyhow). The quality of play wasn't excellent, although that can be forgiven. These guys had never played with each other before last night, and I'd imagine that they'll gel much better together as time goes on. Neither game was all that exciting, although the Chicago-Orlando game was certainly more competitive than the Las Vegas-New York blow out. I don't think the gameplay quality was any worse than your average college football game, although many sports purists seem to have found fault in it. All in all, it was an interesting product. It's not the type of program I'll be watching religiously every week, but it's not bad fare for the occasional free Saturday night, although I doubt I'll watch more than a couple games here and there.
Here's a spoiler free preview of tonight's Heat telecast:
- Test vs. Perry Saturn
- Albert vs. K Kwick
- Chris Benoit vs. Crash Holly
- Scenes from Kurt Angle's Washington appearance
- Scenes from Chris Jericho's charity hockey game
- Dean Malenko will guest host from WWF New York
X-Pac returned to action last night at a Greeensboro, North Carolina house show in an opening contest against Val Venis. He got a victory over the RTC member following an X-Factor, for those of you who are wondering.
We also had a few title changes at the house show last night, all of which centered around the Hardcore title. It seems that Raven lost the Hardcore title to K Kwick, who then lost it to Crash. Not surprisingly, Raven then pinned Crash following an Evenflow DDT. I highly doubt they'll make mention of this on Raw tomorrow, as it was probably just to shock the fans in North Carolina.
Chyna will apparently be at WWF New York tomorrow night at Raw in order to further her angle with the RTC/Billy Gunn. Personally, I'm really tired of this injury angle already, and I just hope it gets resolved and put to bed as quickly and quietly as possible.
There are some talks to placing a WWF diva alongside Tiger Ali Singh and Lo Down in order to get them over with the crowd. The WWF is somewhat desperate for heel tag teams right now (at least until Credible debuts) and the thought is that Lo Down could be a solid asset to the division. Then again, we all saw how well sticking Terri with Saturn worked, didn't we?
If you haven't stopped by WWFshopzone.com recently, I strongly advise you do. In addition to the much anticipated WWF the Music Volume 5, the WWF is also releasing new T-shirts for Kurt Angle, Rikishi, and Too Cool. Rikishi's isn't that great, and Too Cool's is pretty ugly if you ask me, but Angle's new shirt should be a big hit. There is also a pretty good deal going on at the site right now, with a lot of shirts going for 50% off. I picked up Chris Jericho's Jerichoholic shirt for just $12.50. Interesting, no?
At this point it is just a rumor, but there are stories circulating that both Daffney and Major Gunns have been in contact with the WWF recently. The story a few days ago said that two of the five ladies released had been in contact with another promotion, so who knows?
In a semi related bit, Lance Storm has officially announced that Major Gunns is no longer a member of Team Canada and the group now consists of just Elix Skipper, Mike Awesome, and of course Lance Storm. I wouldn't be shocked to see the group disband before long, as Mike Awesome and Lance Storm seem destined for a big time feud.
Lance Storm also wrote in his commentary this week that he is writing his autobiography on his chronicle 10-year journey that he took to get to the top, according to his official newsletter. Storm's autobiography includes information on his childhood days, going to University and then leaving to train in Calgary to become a wrestler and then on to ECW and finally WCW where he is now. That should be an interesting read, since it's no secret that Lance Storm is one of the most popular wrestlers in the business today (on the internet at least).
Contrary to Internet rumors, Miss Hancock has NOT been released from her WCW contract. She is still working for WCW as of now, and was not released with the latest crop of female valets.
ECW's latest DVD/Video offering, entitled "Deep Impact" will be released on home video on April 10. I picked up Path of Destruction on DVD a while back, and I have to say ECW home videos never disappoint.
That's all for this afternoon, folks. Hope you enjoyed the XFL and wrestling tidbits for today. Be sure to check out Sunday Night Heat tonight if you're interested, and enjoy the Monday Night broadcast of your preference. I'll see you back here again next weekend, so until then…
Corey Silvia
Corey@tpww.net