Welcome to the "who on creative thought that Meatloaf singing to Randy Orton was a good idea?" edition of The Wrestling List.
Raw last night was an all right show for me. No opinion either way on it but I did have an advantage this week and that was not having a bad taste of one hour of last week's TNA Impact in me. This week's Raw was the last show in Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh as they will be going over to the new building soon. Lots of WWE events held in that building. That opening segment with Randy Orton and Meatloaf had me scared. Wow, I thought they were about to blow it with Randy Orton. Orton was very Austin like with how they were booking him especially in that segment. I just hope that they keep him more heel like and not turn him into a big time play to the fans babyface. It is nice to have Edge slip over into the role of the heel that I love to cheer. Well, I always cheer Edge no matter what role which goes back to his debut in 1998. However, it's fun to have a heel to get behind like Orton was before this face turn. I liked the matches with the Hart Dynasty and Jericho/Miz. Jericho defeated DH Smith which resulted in Jericho and Miz getting a tag title shot at Over The Limit. Tyson Kidd defeated The Miz which means that Miz has to defend the US title next week on Raw against a member of The Hart Dynasty. Miz chose Bret Hart to defend against. Ted Dibiase was in full Million Dollar Man gear last night with the suit. He paid off the recently reunited Colons to attack R Truth. Vickie Guerrero was a one night Raw GM. How about the heat that she got upon her return to Raw? It was hilarious including Edge saying "excuse her". LOL. Just when I thought they were doing away with the guest host concept, they have Vickie quit and run out getting away from Orton. Flavor Flav did a solid job at guest host for the night. Fans were into him and he had fun entertaining them.
Raw will be commercial free next week taking place from Toronto. Buzz Aldrin will be the guest host. Place your bets on how long it takes for Jerry Lawler to say the words "Bizarro Land" in reference to when the Toronto fans don't do what WWE wants them to do. I love the Canadian crowds cause they do not do what they are told to do. They cheer who they like and this doesn't always revolve around country lines. I always laugh at how WWE goes into panic mode to their announcers to explain why the fans aren't doing like they want. Insert the name "Bizarro Land". Toronto is especially a vocal crowd and Bret Hart will be on the show taking on The Miz for the US title. I can't wait to hear the reaction to Bret as this will be the first show for Bret in Canada since returning to WWE. It should be incredible to watch.
WWE released their quarterly numbers last week including buyrate numbers. Royal Rumble was up to 462,000 buys from last year's 450,000 buys. The Elimination Chamber PPV got 285,000 buys as compared to last year's No Way Out which had 272,000 buys. WrestleMania was down from last year doing 885,000 buys as compared to last year's 960,000 buys. Vince basically took the blame for the WrestleMania buyrate going down saying maybe the event wasn't what everyone was wanting to see with how they built the show. He did also say that he thought group viewers might have hurt the buys. I am never really big into the whole group get togethers are hurting buys theory because people have been doing that for a long time back to the boom period. Sure, that can effect it some but not that big of number. I thought WrestleMania was a great show. One of the best top to bottom WrestleMania's of all time. I think the price may be effecting buys because that is a lot of money to be charging people for the show. The budget for WWE Studio movies is going down which will help them make their money back easier. Vince continued to talk about a WWE Network happening. This has been talked about for a while now and it does sound like they are determined to make it happen. I do wonder how the network would do with getting on to various cable/satellite systems. This is in the early stages but it will be an interesting story to follow.
So, is WWE Global Headquarters going to be the new Jack Tunney? The last several weeks have had superstars referencing getting in touch with WWE Global Headquarters for decision making. Now, all we need is for bad decisions to be made and it will be just like the old days of WWF storylines. LOL. Remember when Hogan lost to The Undertaker in controversial fashion and Tunney said that he could do nothing cause the referee's decision was final? Then, a few days later Hogan won the title back under controversial actions. This time Tunney stripped Hogan of the title despite the referee declaring Hogan the new champion. Ahh, the old days. LOL.
It's interesting that WWE Classics On Demand is getting promoted again. WWE seems to care about it and then not care about it. They'll promote it hard and then not promote it. With the promotion of it, I'd really like for them to fix their video problem that they've got going on. The video looks really weird on most of the programs and it's been like this for months. The recent PPV events look fine but the archive programming stuff looks really odd. Many have complained about it and WWE has given no answers.
Classics On Demand is currently airing in the process of airing all the old Bobby Heenan Show episodes from back in the Prime Time Wrestling days. The first episode had the debut of Jamison. He would be around for a long time after that appearance.
WWE released Tony Atlas last week. He had recently been appearing on The Abraham Washington Show which was awful segments every time I saw them. I just never found the segments funny. WWE is actually having a talk show kind of feature on the shorties section of Classics On Demand this month. Guess what show is on there and does not stand up against the others at all? LOL. I think Atlas did very well being paired up with Mark Henry. It was good for both of them and it seemed like they both went downhill when they were split up.
In the new WWE Magazine, there is talk that WWE is currently working on a 1993 Monday Night Raw DVD set which will include every episode of Raw from its first year. I'm hoping that this set sells well so maybe they'll do more season sets of various classic shows.
WWE recently had Mean Gene back in his old place of the Event Center. WWE has a Vintage Collection show that runs overseas which shows classic programming. So, Mean Gene hosted this new episode from the old Event Center which has of course been upgraded a ton since the last time that we saw it. It was a great nostalgia kind of thing to see that clip on WWE.com cause I remember watching all his Update segments from that place and also hosting shows from there including All American Wrestling and others.
The TNA Sacrifice PPV is this Sunday and here is the lineup for it. TNA Champion Rob Van Dam defends the title against AJ Styles. Sting vs. Jeff Jarrett. Jeff Hardy vs. Mr. Anderson. TNA X-Division Champion Kazarian defends against Doug Williams. Desmond Wolfe vs. Abyss with the stipulation of the ring vs. Chelsea. Matt Morgan and a partner will defend the tag team titles against Shannon Moore and Jesse Neal. TNA Knockouts Champion Madison Rayne will defend the title against Tara which also has Tara's career on the line.
That is all for this week. Take care and God bless!!
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