Raw/Impact Ratings, Tyson Guest Hosts Raw, & More - January 11, 2010

Welcome to the “I loved the Mike Tyson’s Punchout NES references tonight” edition of The Wrestling List. One thing is for sure about last week in the world of wrestling. It was exciting again. People were talking about it and really enjoying all the craziness of it. Wrestling was really fun again.

The ratings are in for last week’s head to head wrestling battle between TNA and WWE. One number did surprise and the other didn’t. First, TNA did a 1.5 which was the highest rating ever in the history of the show. One thing that I found interesting was that the show only lost half a million viewers from hour one till when the show went head to head with Raw. Fans stuck with the show for the most part. Obviously, TNA is very excited about this and Hulk Hogan is already talking in interviews about going to Spike TV about going live every Monday night. We’ll see if that happens but I have to think that Spike would give it consideration. I think that is an excellent number for TNA. They brought their usual audience over from Thursday and gained on it. I had predicted between a 1.5 and a 2.0. Now, WWE Raw did a 3.6 rating. This number did surprise me. It surprised me because it wasn’t higher. In fact, it did the same exact number as the week before. No jump at all. I was stunned over that. I really thought that Raw would go up over a 4 easily with the return of Bret Hart. I don’t know if those fans are just gone or if there is too many years in between or why that number didn’t rise. Even though Raw had more viewers, I say that TNA was the winner last week. They increased their audience and had a lot of people talking. Even with Bret Hart on the show, WWE couldn’t raise their audience.

Let’s get into tonight’s Raw from Minneapolis. Solid show and I enjoyed it. Good crowd as well which was vocal on who they liked and didn’t like. Lots of mixed reactions tonight from that crowd. Very anti-Cena group in the house and a very pro-Orton group there as well. I noticed that even the Miz and MVP were getting mixed reactions in their face off. There really wasn’t anything writing wise on this show that I just didn’t like so I’m happy with it. Mike Tyson was the guest host for tonight’s show. The show opened with him in the ring talking about his appearances with the company back in 1998. Doesn’t Austin vs. Tyson seem forever ago??!! I’ll never forget watching that go down that night. Now, that was exciting. Anyway, back to tonight. Basically, we got all the main players in the ring together. Sheamus interrupted Tyson and talked trash of how Tyson was an ex-champion while he is the current WWE champion. Randy Orton arrives and wants a title shot from Tyson. John Cena arrives and wants the same thing. Kofi Kingston gets involved as well saying that everyone had had a title shot while he hadn’t gotten even one yet. Tyson makes a triple threat match between Orton, Cena, and Kofi with the winner facing Sheamus for the WWE title at The Royal Rumble. So, the match takes place and most of it features a doubleteam on Orton. When Orton is thrown from the ring, Cena and Kofi get ready to face off. Sheamus shows up on the ramp and that distraction gets Orton back on the advantage. Later on, Cena hooks a STF on Kofi but it is broken up by Orton. Cena ends up taking a trouble in paradise kick from Kofi knocking him from the ring. Cody makes his way to ringside and nails the steps into Cena. As the ref is distracted with that, Dibiase gets in the ring and gets Kofi off of the offense. Orton then hits a RKO seconds later and gets the win. It will be Sheamus defending the belt against Orton at the Rumble. Shawn Michaels was shown talking to Triple H saying that he got closure with Bret last week and was going to do the same with Tyson this week over WrestleMania 14. Shawn talks to Tyson but Jericho walks in. Jericho and Tyson are on the same page with Tyson saying that he enjoyed knocking Shawn out and wanted to do it again. So, Tyson makes a match giving Jericho yet another chance to get back on Raw. It will be Jericho and Tyson against DX. The match takes place at the end of the show. I should point out that before the match, Shawn demanded that Undertaker give him an answer on next week’s Raw about the challenge for WrestleMania. Tyson and Shawn grapple for a while with Tyson continuing to overpower Shawn. Triple H gets in and powers with him better. Jericho later gets in the ring and DX gets control. When Tyson gets tagged back in, Hornswoggle arrives in boxing gear. Earlier in the night, Tyson had threatened Hornswoggle on if he showed up in the match. The two teams face off. Then, Tyson stands behind Jericho. He takes his shirt off and there is a DX shirt. Very reminiscent of 1998 with what he did there. Tyson turns and joins back with DX. Tyson knocks out Jericho and then Shawn pins Jericho. Tyson brings his son into the ring and they pose with DX. In other action, Legacy defeated Mark Henry and Evan Bourne when Cody pinned Bourne with the crossrhodes. MVP and The Miz had a good verbal exchange in the ring with the two just basically ripping on each other. I liked that neither backed down from one another. The fight was on and it stayed even but MVP ended up knocking Miz from the ring. Vince McMahon made a speech in the ring saying that Bret’s closure was what happened to him last week. Vince announced that Bret would never be back in WWE. The Divas championship tournament continued with Alicia Fox pinning Kelly Kelly and then Eve defeating Katie Lea as they move on in the tournament. Maryse did commentary on the Eve/Katie match as she would face the winner. Eve and Maryse did a bit of a faceoff after the match. The rest of the tournament bracket has Maryse against Eve and also Gail Kim against Alicia Fox. Jack Swagger called out anyone to face him and try to throw him over the top rope as he hyped his chances in the Rumble match. So, Santino accepts the challenge. Swagger throws him out but Santino holds on eliminating Swagger. Not looking good for Swagger’s future when Santino is getting put over on him.

Other notes from Raw. How great was Cena’s references to Mike Tyson’s Punchout? Cena said he beat Tyson and it took him two years of his childhood to finally beat Tyson after getting through Piston Honda twice and then Super Macho Man. Then, I loved the line of how he compared his triple threat match to Punchout saying that it would be him, Bald Bull (Orton), Von Kaiser (Kofi) battling to see who would face Soda Popininski (Sheamus). Did you hear the “you screwed Shawn” chants from the crowd at Tyson after they showed the WM14 footage? I thought that was funny. I really like Kofi’s SOS move that he does and also that nasty looking backbreaker that Katie does. Wow, the women’s division is really hurting on Raw with Melina hurt and then Mickie and Beth being moved to Smackdown. Did you hear the “boring” chant at Vince? That crowd was not afraid to be vocal on things tonight like I said. I love those crowds. Isn’t it kind of funny to see WWE show footage from back in the attitude era and play it during this PG era of WWE? They have to cover up so much and it was almost like that highlight package of Austin/Tyson was tamed down taking some of the intensity out of it.

Next week’s Raw will be guest hosted by Don Johnson and Jon Heder.

Here is an article where Bret Hart talks about his return to WWE. http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/BACK+RING/2425695/story.html

A couple of new shows from TNA to tell about. TNA is set to launch a new internet show with Jeremy Borash which will be a pre show and post show to Impact. It appears that it will be called TNA Live based on what Borash posted on his Twitter account and will begin this Thursday. TNA will premiere TNA Epics this Thursday night following Impact. The show will be a monthly special and will be hosted by Mick Foley. The show will focus one superstar and include some of their best matches. The first episode will be on Kurt Angle with these matches including Angle vs. Samoa Joe from Genesis 2006, Angle vs. AJ Styles from Hard Justice 2008 in a last man standing match, and Angle vs. Jeff Jarrett from Genesis 2009.

Tony Halme, better known as Ludvig Borga in the WWF in the mid 90’s, passed away over the weekend. He passed away in his apartment at the age of 47. My thoughts and prayers obviously go out to his family and friends.

There has been problems recently with WWE Classics On Demand. The update for January was barely anything on cable systems across the country. People were getting part two of WCW Spring Stampede 1997 but missing part one. Basically, hardly anything showed up that was supposed to be there. Add with that that we weren’t even sure what we were supposed to be getting. A lot of times there are just various subscribers from certain cable companies that won’t get a full update. Last week, nobody got the full update. It was enough to where WWE.com posted info about it saying that there was problems and they were working on it. The full update did show up but another problem lately has been programs looking like they are streaming video. There is a Prime Time Wrestling episode up there now that looks like I’m streaming it instead of its usual quality. I would like to see WWE be more customer friendly with this service. Most of the time, they just leave you hanging on what the problem is. However, WWE Classics.com which is available on WWE.com as a streaming service is fantastic with their customer service. They post on the forum about any issues and take subscriber feedback along with interacting with subscribers. I just wish WWE Classics On Demand was that way too. It’s hard enough to get info sometimes on what programming is going to show up much less figure out problems. Sometimes, it feels like they are trying to keep it as a secret to us in case our programming that we’re supposed to get doesn’t show up.

Seth Green was on The View recently and he and Sherri Sheppard got into a discussion of their involvement with WWE. Seth talked about how great of a time that he had as being a guest host on Raw and how it was a dream come true for him. He commented on how being in the ring with those guys in the main event was one of the best moments of his life. He was nervous about it but said all of them kept telling him that they would take care out of him out there. He joked about Randy Orton giving him a stiffer kick in the chest and how he loved it saying how it was great that he got kicked by the viper. It was a really funny segment and you can really tell how much of a fan that he is.

WWE has announced the guest hosts for the next several weeks. James Roday and Dule Hill will guest host on Raw on January 25. Raw on February 1 will be guest hosted by William Shatner.

The TNA Genesis PPV is this Sunday night on PPV. Headlining the PPV will be AJ Styles defending the TNA title against Kurt Angle. Also, this will mark Hulk Hogan’s return to PPV. Where will TNA go with the company’s direction? Well, we’ll have to wait and see. I’m excited to see what will happen on this show and also on this week’s Impact.

That is it for this week. Wishing all of you a great week!! Take care and God bless!!