Javy's WWF News and Rumours | ||||||||||||||||||||
| For March 3, 2000 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Last night, another edition of Smackdown! came your way on UPN. The show offered a pretty good mix of developing storylines with both the midcard and main event wrestlers, and there were a few segments that I found extremely entertaining, although the whole main event situation at this point is already boring me. The one surprise about last night's show was the lack of airtime given to Triple H and Stephanie. Instead, we were treated in lengthy segments involving Shane McMahon and the Big Show. Shane explained in greater detail why he turned on The Rock at No Way Out. He talked about how Stone Cold Steve Austin had gotten popular to the point that he dominated the WWF, and there was no way that Shane would allow The Rock to get to that same point, and that's why he did what he did last Sunday. The Rock then appeared on the scene and said that he felt like amusing himself, so he challenged Shane and The Big Show to a match later in the night. But just as Shane was licking his chops at the thought of a 2-on-1 scenario, Offspring fans everywhere rejoiced at the sound... of the music... oh yes... Shane and the Big Show would have to contend with that lethal, invincible, 190-pound Scotty Too Hotty! Nah, now that would just be silly. In reality, it was Rikishi Phatu that next appeared, volunteering his tag team services to the People's Champ. The Rock accepted, and Rikishi promised that the Show would take the Rock Bottom, and Shane would take Rikishi's bottom! OK, fast forward to match time. Shane enters the ring... and turns on the Big Show by gorilla pressing him!!!! Well... OK, so maybe that didn't happen... he jackhammered the Show instead! Alright, alright, so Shane actually pulled himself from the match, and stated that Triple H would be taking his place. Now, this is one thing I don't understand. Shane's goal when he returned was to guide the Big Show to the WWF title, held by Triple H. Shane actually stated last night during his ring intro of the WWF champ that the DX leader will only be the champion until Wrestlemania. So he stayed in character even though it's hard to believe that these guys are at odds when they keep teaming up! Anyway, the match concluded when the Big Show attempted to hit The Rock with a chair but nailed Triple H instead (how many times have we seen THAT happen?), after which the Rock delivered the Rock Bottom and People's Elbow to Triple H for the pin. Afterwards, Shane jawed away at his sister Stephanie, prompting Triple H to shove him down, and thus angering the Big Show, which Triple H found to be reason enough to exit the ring. Can't say I blame him, since if a guy of 7'2" and 450 pounds was pissed at me, I wouldn't exactly be standing around like David Puddy from Seinfeld looking for a high-five. I think it's time now for the WWF to elevate a couple of people into main event contention in order to spice things up. I'm already bored with this Triple H vs. Big Show vs. Rock scenario. And even though some people are getting excited about the likely Triple H vs. Rock main event at Wrestlemania, how many times have we seen these two go at it already? Dating all the way back to 1998 when Triple H led DX, and The Rock led The Nation, these guys have feuded over, and over, and over again. I really enjoyed the main event to Smackdown! last week, primarily because it included Kurt Angle and Chris Jericho in there with The Rock and the Big Show. And it was good to see Rikishi thrown into the mix this week. So this is what I want to see more of. I realize that Angle and Jericho are engulfed in a midcard feud over the IC title, but that doesn't mean that they can't compete with the main eventers. The Honky Tonk Man did it when he was IC champ, and so did Randy Savage and the Ultimate Warrior. So why can't these two guys? Speaking of Kurt Angle, he totally stole the show last night, and I can't help but love this guy more and more every week. First, he did a segment in which he's talking to D-Lo Brown backstage about how great he is, but D-Lo's not even paying attention to him (he's playing the new Smackdown! video game instead). Then, Sgt. Slaughter entered the picture to talk to D-Lo, and this angered Angle, who promptly challenged the former WWF champion. What followed was a pretty sad match that only stayed entertaining because Angle was a part of it. I mean, Sgt. Slaughter looked horrible in there, and was literally immobile for most of the match, even appearing to stand in place at times when he was running! Angle got the win, and the over dramatic celebration was on! I almost fell off the couch laughing when he was in the back going nuts near a concession stand employee, gleefully said "Oh my God!", dumped bags of popcorn/chips all over himself, then paused when he saw the employee before continuing on with his celebration. It was my hilight of the whole show, and I say that this guy will be main eventing PPVs in six months. Another pretty entertaining match-up last night saw Chris Jericho team up with Too Cool to take on The Radicals. Now, here's another thing I can't understand. Once again, Chyna didn't wrestle in this match, yet once again, she gets her own entrance. Why is that? Just because she's seconding Jericho at ringside, she gets a separate intro? If that's the case, why don't the Big Show and Shane McMahon go to the ring separately? Why doesn't Stephanie go the ring before Triple H? I know that Chyna has the whole Johnny B. Badd bazooka thing going on, but come on! OK, back to the match. It was a pretty good six-man tag, and I think the fact that Jericho knows the Radicals so well backstage played a part in that. Chyna did a good job preventing Eddy Guerrero from interfering, but ended up eating a right hand from Dean Malenko as a result. Then while Jericho, Malenko and Chyna brawled up the rampway, Too Cool got Saturn in a compromising position and had him beat after the Hip Hop Drop (aka Tennessee Jam) from Grandmaster Sexay. But Guerrero got the referee's attention long enough for Chris Benoit to nail GM with his headbutt off the top, and that was it as a groggy Saturn made a weak cover and got the pin. For weeks now I've heard rumours that Edge and Christian will be breaking up, and we got a tease of that last night. The two of them took on The Road Dogg and X-Pac, and Christian was beaten after Edge became distracted by Terri (who slapped him to put an end to speculation that she's recruiting the team) thus leaving Christian to fend for himself. Christian was irate at his "older brother" (even though in reality Christian is older) and shoved Edge down after the match. In the "Watch for the Stiff Shots" match of the night, Tazz challenged Crash Holly for the Hardcore Championship. In recent days I've discussed the real-life problems that have existed between these two. Anyway, Crash got the upset win thanks to interference by the Bossman and Prince Albert and afterwards, an overconfident Crash said that from now on, he would defend the Hardcore belt 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of where he is. What he means is, if he were walking through the airport (for example) and had a wrestler attack him and pin him (with a referee somehow nearby), he would lose the title. His challenge was tested early when the Mean Street Posse attacked him in the parking lost as he left the arena. The Posse brought a referee with them, and the ref actually counted during pin attempts to show that Crash's challenge will stick. Unfortunately for the Posse, they kept arguing which each other over who would get the pin, and this allowed Crash to get into his car and drive away. Now I don't know about you, but this one sounds a little obvious to me. If Crash can be pinned anywhere, who better to beat him for the title than a "family member" that supposedly sees him outside the ring? Of course I can't forget to mention the comedy segments last night featuring Head Cheese members Steve Blackman and Al Snow. They were shown at a restaurant last night (wearing matching Hawaiian shirts that Blackman of course hated but Snow loved) where Snow was setting Blackman up on a blind date. The girl turned out to be Blackman's total opposite (in other words, a big time talker), and for the rest of the night we were treated to comedic bits that saw an annoyed Blackman sitting at a table with the gabbing girl while in the background a happy Al Snow dances away to the tune "Personality". I never thought I'd see the day that the WWF would use a guy's lack of charisma to get him over, but it's working! Another split was teased last night between Essa Rios and Lita. The WWF Light Heavyweight Champion put the belt on the line against Jeff Hardy in what turned out to be a pretty good aerial match. In the end, Matt Hardy interfered and attacked Rios while Lita had the referee distracted, so she tried the return the favour by attacking Jeff, only to be caught by the referee and thus disqualifying Rios from the match. Essa grabbed the mic afterwards and spoke to her in Spanish, prompting her to slap him and leave the ring. I honestly don't understand where this angle's going, or if it'll go anywhere at all. These two just started appearing on television together last month and I think they work very well together, and ALREADY there's tension? Scroll down for part 2 of this update. | |||||||||||||||||||
| For March 3, 2000-Part 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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The Monday night ratings are in, and this week they're indicative of a few things: WWF Raw is War: Hour 1: 6.5 (9.3 market share) Hour 2 (unopposed): 6.5 (10.5 market share) Composite: 6.5 (9.9 market share) WCW Monday Nitro: Hour 1 (unopposed): 3.0 (4.3 share) Hour 2: 2.2 (3.1 share) Composite: 2.6 (3.7 share) Head-to-head: Raw - 6.5 vs. Nitro - 2.2 Of course the main thing that the ratings tell you is that there really is no competition whatsoever anymore. The story's been the same for weeks, and isn't about to change any time soon. But the key evidence to prove this is the fact that Raw's second hour (which ran unopposed) didn't do any higher of a rating than the first hour, which ran head-to-head with Nitro's second hour. So this goes to show that Nitro doesn't have any impact on Raw's numbers at all anymore, and Nitro's remaining viewer base (which continues to drop) is predominantly made up of hardcore WCW fans that don't switch over to Raw after Nitro ends. By all accounts, it looks like Nitro's hyped Sid Vicious vs. Tank Abbott match was a bust. It was meant to propel one guy into a major feud (down the road) with Goldberg, but instead all it did was kill off a potential monster heel in Abbott by having him lose cleanly. Sid hasn't proven himself to be a ratings winner, and he's already gotten his ass whipped by Goldberg, but WCW chose to give him the nod anyway for some reason. In other words, I guess I'm saying that it would've been a smarter move to have Abbott win. As for the rating of that match, it wasn't impressive at all, doing a 2.7 compared to the 6.5 that Raw did in the same segment (the start of Raw's second hour). It's time for WCW to realize that they've got to make some moves with management (they've gotta start there before they deal with their on-air talent) before ECW creeps up and suddenly becomes the #2 promotion in wrestling. Another interesting ratings note here is that Raw's opening segment, which typically only does in the high 5's, produced a solid 6.7 for the Triple H/Big Show/Rock interview spot. Raw's second hour actually dropped off from hour #1 (probably due to the fact that the show was rather uneventful this week) but spiked up to a 7.2 for the overrun of the Rock vs. Big Show/Triple H match. The weekend digits: * WWF Sunday Night Heat: 3.2 (5.2 share) * WWF Livewire: 1.7 (5.0 share) * WWF Superstars: 1.7 (4.6 share) * WCW Saturday Night: 1.3 (2.6 share) * ECW on TNN: 1.1 (1.8 share) Scroll down for part 3 of today's update | |||||||||||||||||||
| For March 3, 2000 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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This situation is heating up fast when it came to be known that the WWF had been approached by both CBS and FOX about moving WWF programming off of the USA Network and adding it to their respective lineups. Nothing panned out at the time, but according to this LA Times' story, CBS is now expressing great interest in landing a sure ratings winner in the WWF, plus FOX is still showing interest as well. The speculation is that CBS would keep Smackdown! on UPN (which Viacom owns along with CBS) or move it to CBS, and would put Raw is War on TNN (which would then leave ECW's future in question). The XFL would also receive a television deal. As for FOX, they would reportedly put Smackdown! on FOX and Raw on their FX cable network. This thing could potentially turn into a bidding war for Vince McMahon, and if he follows it through it could turn into a pretty lucrative deal for the WWF. Could you imagine if Smackdown! were to air on CBS, which is available everywhere in the U.S. and Canada, unlike UPN? It would be enormous for the WWF. Stay tuned as this one continues to heat up. You know, you think back to '96 when WCW started the whole nWo angle, and wrestlers were jumping ship from the WWF to WCW faster than Rikishi can go through a bowl 'a Jello. At the time the WWF appeared to be in financial difficulty, unable to afford the guys they had, let alone any new guys. Vince McMahon was running around blaming Ted Turner for all his troubles, and WCW appeared to be like a bottomless money pit that would keep scooping up WWF wrestlers upon the expiry of their contracts. Some three and a half years later, and this situation has done a complete 180. Not because WCW doesn't have the money anymore, but because the WWF has more money than they did before, plus they've got the superior production values and higher locker room morale. It's amazing how things have turned around. Hey if you want to check Javy's World of Wrestling's Superstar of the month you can by clicking the link below. Well that's it for today. Enjoy Smackdown! See ya tomorrow. Javy | |||||||||||||||||||
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