Hey … yo… For those of you that remember me, I’m back. For those of you who have no clue who I am, I’m Mike Christopher, former writer of The Whole F’n Column, former News and Rumor Reporter, one of the few surviving members of the original TPWW way back in the day, and I’m back bringing you the Peoples’ News and Rumors hopefully every Wednesday here at TPWW.net. Unfortunately, I am no better at fancy intros than Triple A, so let’s get right into it.
Because there wasn’t a report yesterday, I’ll give my thoughts and a few newsbits from Raw is War on Monday night. To me it seemed like RAW on Monday night was the usual WWF show over the past month or so. It was just there. Nothing earth shattering. The main event heels went over at the end of the show again, which has happened now for the past week or so of TV. With the way RAW went off the air last night with Austin and HHH killing the Undertaker and Kane, it appears that Judgment day is shaping up to be Austin vs. Undertaker and possible HHH vs. Kane in singles matches. For those of you who are satisfied with the current main event angle, that’s great, but for the rest of us it looks like we may have to endure another month of this angle. However, things may shake up a bit with the apparent push of Test. On Raw Austin and HHH killed Kane with a steel chair, and he may indeed be out of action for the rest of the month. Thus, it may be Test’s turn to step up and face HHH, either with an IC Title match on a future Raw or Smackdown, or maybe even a match at Judgment day. We’ll have to see how the storylines play out with Kane.
One other noteworthy event on RAW was the way Steve Austin was booked. Instead of the cowardly, run away from UT and Kane heel that he’s been portraying the past few weeks, Monday night Austin was actually booked as a serious, legitimate heel. Hopefully they continue this for the coming weeks. Also, if I am correct, this is the third straight show (Smackdown, Backlash, then Raw) that the heels went over huge. I mean huge. They absolutely obliterated the top faces on three straight shows, and unless this trend changes it appears that the WWF may be setting up a huge babyface to return/debut to finally save the good guys. If this trend does continue, I fully expect something HUGE to happen down the road. Perhaps the WWF is setting up a huge debut by Goldberg (doubtful)? Perhaps it’s the return of the Heart Break Kid, Shawn Michaels. They could even keep doing it until the summer when The Rock can make a return. You never know, but if something doesn’t happen so that the good guys can get their heat back, expect something huge to go down.
The ratings are in, and Raw’s ratings continued to drop again this week. Raw scored a 5.0 composite off hours of 4.7 and 5.2. This is down from last weeks 5.1 composite. In other ratings news, both Livewire and Superstars did a 0.9, while Heat did a 1.1 rating with a 0.8 replay. Those are the lowest I have seen those numbers in a long time. It appears that the WWF really needs to shake things up or they could seriously be in trouble.
Jerry "The King" Lawler recently did an interview with RFVideo.com, and a few interesting tidbits were contained in it. Lawler said that it is almost a sure thing that he will be starting a promotion in Memphis with Cory Maclin, Dave Brown, and Jimmy Hart, and when you hear the name Jimmy Hart you know there is someone not far behind him. If you didn’t pick up on what I mean, it looks like Hulk Hogan will be involved as well. It appears that Lawler has talked to Hogan about doing a Hogan vs. Lawler match at the Mid South Coliseum sometime down the road. Most of the other talents will be made up of local talents, and it appears that this future promotion will be booked like the old school Memphis territory was booked. The last note of interest from the interview was that Lawler sounded skeptical that he will ever return to either the WWF or WCW, but added "never say never". This is the wrestling business and that phrase can be applied to just about anything when you think about it.
Yesterday, Adam Geller of the Associated Press did an interview with Linda McMahon. The most noteworthy part of the story was that she confirmed that the XFL will be back next year. Joy.
In a pretty interesting story, Bob Ryder reported that at this time Terry Taylor is not expected to return to the WWF or the new WCW. Instead, he is going to open a wrestling school in Atlanta, using a wrestling ring that Vince McMahon is going to send to him to use. Currently, Taylor is finalizing plans for the new school, and more information will be made available in the future.
In some good news for the TNN network, April’s numbers for ratings are in, and this month TNN moved into one of the top ten slots of the top rated cable networks, up 67% from last years numbers in April, obviously with numbers from the WWF machine. TNN averaged a 1.0 number. Surprisingly, the Lifetime network took first place last month with an average number of 1.9, nearly doubling TNN. If only TNN would realize that reruns of old shows from the 80’s and early 90’s that are the exact opposite of "pop" don’t draw ratings they could possibly move up to the number one position. But what do I know.
Last night the Rock was on The Tonight Show, with Jay Leno. Highlights of the show included the Rock talking about his new movie, The Mummy Returns, and holding a wrestling fan up-side-down who couldn’t stop hiccuping. As you can tell, nothing earth shattering took place, but the Rock once again came across as a real class act.
Yesterday, Dave Scherer reported that the state of Ohio’s Legislature proposed a plan to add a 5% tax to wrestling tickets sold in the state of Ohio. Today, Scherer reported that apparently their legislature came to their senses and dropped this proposed plan. For anyone who is wondering why that plan would have been really stupid is that the WWF, who controls all of professional wrestling in the United States, would just stop coming to Ohio all together. When the WWF heard of this proposed tax, spokesman Judd Everhart said, "We have had a very long history of playing in Ohio and would hate to see anything jeopardize that. When we are making plans for events, and typically, we have about 10 in Ohio every year, we have to look at what makes sense from a business point of view." Apparently that was all it took for the plan to be dropped.
Dave Scherer also reported today that there is a rumor going around that the group of wrestlers with Hulk Hogan starting up with Universal Studios in Florida actually has a good chance of getting started soon, and the key to the whole situation is Hogan himself. If he is healthy and ready to go this could actually go down. Apparently Hogan appearing in the Memphis promotion fighting against Lawler will be a one time deal.
Well, that’s about all the news making the rounds right now. I hope you enjoyed my first report back here at TPWW, with many to come. I’ll be back next Wednesday with another batch of N & R. Until then keep checking back for more N & R and all the other updates. I’m out… later.
Mike Christopher
Mike@tpww.net
AOL Screen Name: MikeCTPWW