Greetings and welcome to the post Smackdown news and rumors here from the one and only People's Wrestling Website. The news and rumors have slowed down in the last week prior to WrestleMania coming up in a few weeks. With that said I am going straight to the news and rumors. Smackdown was a show that had nothing to brag about as the nWo and Austin feud continued without anything significant taking place. Triple H and Kane were able to defeat Angle and Jericho in a tag team matchup, and Ric Flair still hasn't said yes to Undertaker's WrestleMania challenge.
I'm not sure where to begin so I will start out talking about the Undertaker and Ric Flair. Flair obviously wasn't happy about Undertaker beating up Arn Anderson on RAW. On Smackdown, Flair has still refused to accept Undertaker's challenge meaning he won't give in. As the story will continue, the Undertaker will not stop at nothing until Flair says yes. There have been some ideas as of late that somehow, Ric Flair's real life son and former WCW wrestler David Flair could be incorporated into this storyline somehow. The most obvious idea now is that Undertaker attacks on David in hopes of that being the final blow to getting Ric to say yes. David Flair is under contract to the WWF and has been working, I believe, at HWA.
Believe it or not, WrestleMania is closer then you may think as it falls on March 17th this year. That is very early date compared to the previous years when it fell in early April. With WrestleMania falling on the 17th, that leaves two more weeks of TV left to hype it, which means The Rock should return sometime in that time span. I do not know what the Rock's schedule is or has been during his time off, but he could virtually return at anytime in the next two weeks. I would expect him to return on the final RAW before the 17th and that would be the 11th. That would therefore give a week's hype between the big Rock vs. Hogan match. The WWF may return the Rock sooner if they feel more hype is necessary.
Hulk Hogan wrestled his first WWF match since 1993 last night in Tampa, Florida against Rikishi. Hogan picked up the win with a leg dorp after Rikishi missed a Bonzai Drop. The match was said to be an entertaining one, which is a good sign for WrestleMania.
Last night's match with Angle and Jericho and HHH and Kane was meant only to build up WrestleMania. The HHH and Jericho match will take place but it is most likely that after Kane costing Angle the win on Smackdown, the two will too wrestle at WrestleMania. I would expect Angle to make some sort of challenge to Kane on RAW.
I would expect some sort of tag team match at WrestleMania with The Hardys with Lita vs. The Dudleys with Jazz in some sort of gimmick match as the result of their tag team match on Smackdown. Hopefully the WWF won't take that route as I simply am sick of both tag teams wrestling each other. It's been mentioned elsewhere, but it indeed is true; the WWF tag team division needs an extra boost as the four prominent tag teams are Chuck and Billy, the APA, the Dudleys, and the Hardys. The bottom line is, the WWF needs to establish newer tag teams before the tag team titles mean absolutely nothing.
In a somewhat interesting development, it appears the APA vs. Billy and Chuck match set to take place at WrestleMania is no more. The match was taken off the WrestleMania.com website which is most likely the reason why the tag team wrestled last night. The WWF has two more weeks to setup a new match for the Tag Team Titles, it will be interesting to see what they do if the original match indeed will not take place.
The 24/7 rule for the Hardcore Title is still in effect as, following his loss to Maven last night in an official match, Goldust used a ref to beat Maven after the match in the back. Some may ask if the WWF was going to put the belt on Goldust anyways, why not just let him win in the ring? The Tough Enough 2 casting special was last night, and most likely the WWF thought a clean win by Maven would make him look better and make the fans more interested in the show. So in other words, it was kind of a promotional thing for Tough Enough 2. Maven losing the Hardcore Title while hurt in the back doesn't really make him look bad.
It is still early too predict this, from what we saw last night, one can predict Booker T will be jealous of Edge and that will lead up to a match at WrestleMania. All night, Booker T was talking about his Japanese commercial to only find out that Edge was awarded the part. Last night we saw something out of Edge that we haven't seen for a while, and that was the cool funny character that he was when he was still teamed with Christian. With the mic skills these two have, a feud between the two should make for some great promos and the wrestling shouldn't be bad either.
In other news, there is an update from the case involving the World Wrestling Federation vs. World Wildlife Fund (WWF vs. WWF). The Federation lost their Civl Court appeal the other day to overturn a decision that the Federation breeched a contract signed years back between the two organizations. The Federation had limited rights to the "WWF" initials. Now that the Federation has lost this appeal, severe consequences could take part for the Federation including losing WWF.com and their other domains. We'll see what happens with this in the upcoming weeks.
In some other notes, I really enjoyed the Hulk Hogan video segment from Smackdown. It was put together nicely and it goes to show you how big Hulkamania really was back in the day. Kind of makes me think twice before saying The Rock is the biggest superstar in proffessional wrestling ever.
In ratings news, Smackdown scored only a 3.9 final rating this week, down from last week's 4.5, which was even going up against the Olympics.
Bret Hart was apparently offered a spot in WrestleMania as a special guest referee for the Chris Jericho vs. Triple H title match, according to Dave Meltzer. However, Hart turned the proposal after giving it some brief consideration. Hart is expected to reveal this in his next Calgary Sun column.
That is it for this update. I appreciate everyone who did send me instant messages when I have been online. I do recieve a lot of IMs at a time so that does mean it may take me a while to respond to each message. Thanks to everyone that has e-mailed and IMed me their feedback, it is greatly appreciated. Have a good weekend.
Martin Hawrysko
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