Tuesday, December 05, 2006

IWW notes 12/3/06

Roddy Piper –
Lymphoma Cancer
Age 52
Left the UK Tour from great pain & mass in his back
Drank seven red bulls at a Fan Fest shortly before his recent surgery

Jim Ross –
Contract Expired 10/29
Signed One-Year Contract Extension

Dave Taylor – Returning to TV despite a torn meniscus

Wrestlemania in Detroit (rumors) – Batista vs Undertaker (TITLE VS STREAK)

Hardy Boyz –
Unknown how long they’ll stay together
They were very hot on RAW & ECW
Helped draw RAW 3.8 (3.6 / 3.9)
Helped draw ECW 1.8 (up from 1.6 avg)

ECW PPV (THIS SUNDAY) –
Hardyz vs MNM
Bob Holly vs Sandman
RVD vs Big Show vs Sabu vs CM Punk vs Test vs Lashley
(EXTREME ELIMINATION CHAMBER)
Candace – Broke her nose while wrestling Victoria on RAW. Same town where Victoria broke Beth Phoenix’s jaw! Also where Charlie Haas knocked Lillian Garcia off the apron.

Ric Flair –
He might have some time off to deal with his divorce with Beth but overall isn’t expected to be leaving the company anytime soon. Who knows what he’s going do? Some speculate that 2007 will be his last year, but honestly they’ve been saying that for almost two decades.

Rey Mysterio –
Contract with WWE until Spring 2007
Unlikely to jump to TNA
Rumored to have a low downside guarantee like <$100k

Chris Benoit – Just resigned a long-term contract and unlikely to go anywhere

Monty Brown – Signed with WWE

Trish Stratus –
Shooting new reality show with Erik Estrada, Latoya Jackson, Wee Man (Jackass), and Jack Osbourne (Ozzy’s Son) working the streets of Muncie, IN as “legit police officers”.

WWE is going after E-Feds

Indy Wrestler Nick Berk (maybe from OVW?) was the guy pretending to be Kramer on the CT skit.

“We Want Angle” chants in Philly at RAW on Monday Night.

UFC is either in the final stages of purchasing or has already purchased the Lemoore, CA-based World Extreme Cagefighting promotion. Why?

Tim Sylvia wanted to fight Fedor when he heard that Chuck might fight Liddell a few months ago. In other news, Luke Cuomo is challenging the Sun to a no-holds barred match.

TNA on Thanksgiving Quarter hour ratings were 0.87, 0.85, 0.85 and 0.88. Could be a lot worse!

See No Evil DVD has been released. Again, why was this not ready in time for Halloween?
The Marine (10/13 release) DVD/UMD is rumored to be released in 1/30/07. There will be both PG-13 and UNRATED versions. If there is any nudity on the unrated version, the person will probably still be on fire. IMDB has the movie grossing $18.3m thus far versus the $15-$20m budget including advertising.

TNA’s Houseshow in Mexico at Monterray drew about 4200 fans (in a 18k building). They said they’d return in May 2007 for a “Champions Cup”. All wrestlers were TNA though some AAA appeared:
* AMW beat Naturals in a match with a Powder finish.
* Ron Killings beat Robert Rude.
Jeff Jarrett & Konnan (with AAA’s Cibernetico, Javier Gonzalez, Joaquin Roldan) did promos.
* AJ Styles beat Eric Young & Petey Williams in a three-way.
* LAX (Konnan & Senshi) beat Kip James & BG James.
* Christian beat Rhino in a Monster’s Ball match that involved crowd brawling.
* Angle beating Abyss. Abyss was said to look so bad that he made Angle look bad.
No TNA merchandise was available for purchasing and Fans were not happy about that.

TNA Conference Call: don’t expect Warrior or Goldberg anytime soon. Called the Dupp Cup the worst thing TNA ever did. (That’s worse than midgets in garbage cans doing unmentionable things?)

Meltzer suggested that TNA Genesis was looking at their best buyrate ever, probably 50-60k based on feedback. It’s always difficult to predict purely on internet feedback but I’d expect this is true because:
a) Joe/Angle was a big deal match that people hadn’t seen before. This was Kurt Angle’s first appearance on TNA PPV. This was a match that appealed to new/casual fans. Even Biff Chedderhead (Biff from Tampa) made the effort to attend the PPV which he’s never bothered to do anytime in the past.
b) TNA’s audience is very much on the internet, much more than WWE’s audience. This means that internet feedback is a much better representation of who was buying the PPVs. In WWE, the “internet” audience represents a smaller percentage and therefore their feedback levels aren’t necessarily as indiciative of the audience as a whole.
c) We’re dealing with a much smaller buyrate numbers. Consider this - A weak WWE PPV will do over a 150,000 buys. When WWE presented the first ECW: ONS, there was an enormous outpouring of feedback to wrestling sites leading many people to speculate that this PPV would do BIG FOUR (RR, SS, SurvSeries, WM) #s. In the end, it posted remarkable but not incredible numbers. However, the estimating process for a WWE PPV involves a much bigger multiplier.

“Samoa Joe beat Forrest Griffin of UFC last week. Seriously. It was in a charity video game tournament, though. Joe earned $6,000 for the Autism Society of America and Forrest won $4,000 for the USO.”

Director’s Cut of “Heroes of World Class” will be released next month at rightherepictures.com

WSX (MTV promotion) is scheduled to debut at the end of January 2007.

Michelle McCool was hospitalized for about a week over Thanksgiving due to an enlarged kidney and electrolyte imbalance.

IFL announced today that they are now a publicly traded company.

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