Hello and welcome to today's news and rumors right here at TPWW. I'll have to admit that I'm not in the best of moods right now for a variety of reasons, but nonetheless, without further delay, here are today's news and rumors.
Since there was no report yesterday, I'll start things off in today's report by talking about Monday's Raw is War. Something about the show really bothered me, but I guess not being in a "wrestling mood" helped give me that feeling. Even so, I don't know why exactly, but I really wasn't into Monday's show at all. The first hour was so unbelievably boring that I felt like changing the channel and watching something else. I guess the only reason I didn't is that I'll watching wrestling no matter how bad it is or how much it bores me. Anyway, the first hour of last night's show was composed of two long interview segments, both of which were to hype the main event for this Sunday's PPV. My question is why did the WWF waste 30-40 minutes of the show on something that they could have done in just 15 minutes or even less? There were only two short matches in the whole first hour and ten minutes. That ain't good. The thing that has been missing on almost every single Raw and Smackdown over the last few months is the drama. There have been absolutely no dramatic happenings. It's just been the same old-same old, business as usual routine week in and week out. But honestly, I can see why this is happening. First off, the WWF has definitely bit off more than they can chew with all their other "projects" lately. With the XFL and WCW, among many other things, not enough time at all is being devoted to making the WWF product better. Not enough time is being devoted to sitting down and coming up with fresh, new angles that will catch the interest of the viewers. For the last few months, it's just been find a main event for a PPV, then have a series of tag team matches on every Raw and Smackdown to build up to that PPV match with hardly any interesting angles to put everything together. If you take a look at shows like The Sopranos or HBO's Oz, something interesting happens every single week that will make you anxiously await next week's episode. I remember when Raw used to be that way. Some will argue that the WWF can't be compared to shows like The Sopranos, but hey, doesn't the WWF market itself as an "entertainment" show or a "soap opera"?
Ahh, "sort of" went on a rant there. Must be my mood seeping into the report. One last thought before I get into today's news... I don't know how many more times I can take Jim Ross calling Steve Austin the "Bionic Redneck." What makes him so BIONIC? Because he turned heel he suddenly has some weird, electronic powers? Anyway...
Many people have been wondering which wrestlers were on the list of the 24 wrestlers picked up by the WWF. In actuality, the WWF has not released an official list, so anything going around is pretty much just an educated guess. I'm pretty sure that the following wrestlers have all been picked up by the WWF: Lance Storm, Mike Awesome, Hugh Morrus, Stacy Keibler, Shane Helms, Shannon Moore, Elix Skipper, Kid Romeo, Chavo Guerrero Jr, Kaz Hayashi, Yang, Jaime Knoble, Sean O'Haire, Mark Jindrak, Chuck Palumbo, Shawn Stasiak, Mike Sanders, and Kwee Wee. That's 18, meaning there are 6 others. We can only speculate, but it's safe to say that the other 6 were lower card wrestlers, who were being paid a reasonable-low amount of money.
As of now, the WWF also reportedly has great interest in - but has not yet signed - Billy Kidman, Kanyon, and Rey Mysterio Jr, according to Dave Meltzer. The reason is that their contracts exceeded $300,000, so they would have to be re-worked if they were to sign with the WWF. The only wrestlers picked up with contracts over $200,000 were Lance Storm and Mike Awesome, but those contracts are also expected to be re-worked.
The WWF also has reportedly spoken to Goldberg, Booker T, Scott Steiner, Ric Flair, an Diamond Dallas Page about coming into the WWF. However, as has been stated on several occasions, that all depends on whether or not the wrestlers are willing to take a big paycut to come work in the new WCW. As of now, Time Warner is offering them 30%-50% of their current contracts to buy them out and allow them to work elsewhere (WCW).
In a rumor that's a little scary to think about, according to Bob Ryder, there is a real possibility that the WWF may decide not to run WCW as a separate promotion at all. According to Ryder, a source claims that the WWF may have bitten off more than they can chew in purchasing WCW, and the work and responsibility that goes in running the promotion may have caused the WWF to rethink things. However, please take this only as a very slight possibility, which I actually won't think will happen. Jim Ross himself has been quoted as saying things were looking good. But of course, with the start date being pushed back twice already plus a poor timeslot given by TNN, it will surely be hard to get WCW's ratings up, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility completely. Everyone thought WCW's sale to Fusient (which I sooooo wish actually went through) was a sure thing, but unfortunately (for some), it wasn't. I don't want to end this paragraph on a pessimistic note, so again, I'll say that my gut feeling is that the WWF will go through with keeping WCW as a separate company.
Monday's Raw pulled in a 5.1 rating for the second consecutive week, off hours of 4.9 and 5.1. In other ratings, Sunday night Heat drew a 1.7, and Livewire and Superstars both drew a 1.1.
In great news for New Yorkers, the WWF has officially announced that Raw is War on June 25 will take place at the world's most famous arena, Madison Square Garden. Since ECW isn't coming to town anytime soon (duh), I think I might check that out.
On the subject of WWF live events, it has been announced that this year's WWF Fully Loaded PPV will take place in Cleveland, Ohio at the Gund Arena. Tickets go on sale June 16 for those interested. Big thanks to Dustin Strah and Weadz for both sending in that bit of news.
The Undertaker may be getting new theme music soon. On this past edition of WWF.com's Byte This, Undertaker stated that Limp Bizkit will be recording a customized entrance theme for the Dead Man, replacing his current theme, "Rollin'". Not sure when that will debut, but we'll obviously know it when we hear it.
On the subject of theme music, a recent Rolling Stone article stated that Test may also be receiving new music, performed by Slayer, according to Dave Scherer.
The WWF has sent both D'Lo Brown and Chaz to IWA in Puerto Rico to work on their wrestling skills, according to Dave Scherer. The WWF has already sent down the Mean Street Posse and Tiger Ali Singh to name a few.
Here is the announced final card for the WWF's UK PPV, WWF Insurrextion on May 5th from London, England:
- Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. The Undertaker - WWF Title
- Triple H vs. Kane - Intercontinental Title
- Chris Benoit vs. William Regal - Queen's Cup
- The Dudleys vs. E&C; vs. The Hardys vs. X-Factor - Elimination
- Kurt Angle vs. Chris Jericho
- The Big Show vs. Bradshaw
- Lita vs. Trish vs. Molly vs. Jacky vs. Ivory - Battle Royal
- Test vs. Eddie Guerrero - European Title
- Crash vs. Spike Dudley vs. Dean Malenko - Light Heavyweight Title
- Rhyno vs. Grandmaster Sexay
- Hardcore Holly vs. Perry Saturn
The card definitely looks stacked, so it should hopefully be a good one.
Speaking of Insurrextion, if you're looking for tickets to the show, I may have your man: Vikram Sangar from London sent along the following e-mail: "I have 2 tickets to Insurrextion at Earls Court, London on Saturday 5th May. They are located near to aisle a few rows from ringside. If anyone is interested please contact me at: vdomain@usa.net. I would really appreciate if you could put this up on your website as the person I was selling them to has pulled out at the last minute."
Finally, an important site related announcement... You may have noticed that TPWW has been running slow over the last day or so. The reason is that our current host is moving its sites to new, hopefully faster and better servers. But, with every server switch comes some downtime, and that is what we have been experiencing lately. However, for lack of better terms, the "worst" is yet to come. When TPWW is actually moved to a new server, we may experience about 24 hours or so of downtime. Hopefully it will be a lot less than that, but if so, although it sucks, there's really nothing that can be done about it. So, if you aren't able to get into the site anytime within the next week or two, you'll hopefully know the reason why. Try again later that day or the next day and we should be back up if everything goes smoothly.
Finally, we're working on a lot of things to help make TPWW a better overall site. We have been lacking lately in the update department, which we're obviously well aware of. Most of that has been due to the current overall state of wrestling, but some also has to due with a bit of laziness on my part. Nonetheless, we're working on a few things to hopefully speed things up and bring things back to life around here soon. Once server and other site related issues are worked out, you can expect a few changes to help bring TPWW back to how it was. Nothing more to say, so until next time, later.
Triple A
TripleA99@aol.com