Today's news starts with a question someone submitted to the blog sometime yesterday: Why wasn't the 4/25/11 Raw 3 hours long? Simply put, WWE doesn't get to decide when the show is 3 hours and when it isn't. That's up to the USA honchos. I haven't read anything about WWE asking for extra air time for the show that night or anything. The Creative teams are probably glad that they didn't have to write an extra hour's worth of stuff then!
Jim Ross underwent X-rays today on his hand following the punches he laid on Michael Cole on Raw. Cole's tooth apparently went to the bone in his fist. Ouch.
PWInsider.com has some questions up today: For the first one, the only reason that rumor had any credibility was because Hogan said it on his Twitter page. However, it didn't originate from any major, reliable news source.
Question #2 was pretty thought-provoking. I'll look at it and the other questions and news (barring the draft, which is getting its own post) after the break. What if the Jarretts had bought WCW in 2001 instead of WWF?
Well, part of the answer to that depends on how much money they had at the time. I'm not sure how much it took to make TNA a year later. We'll use that as a starting point, though (Note that they didn't have Panda Energy behind them until later on). Let's see. They'd have the rights to the WCW name and all that, which in 2001 didn't mean all that much without some of the major stars there. But it'd still have more name value than a startup company. Keep in mind that WCW was losing millions of dollars per month at the time. They'd really have to scale down everything. Presumably they'd use what they used in the early days of TNA arena-wise.
They wouldn't have TV for a while at least (Time Warner didn't want it on their channels and no one else was interested), which meant no ad revenue from that. They could still do PPVs as WCW though. How house shows would do is anyone's guess since the brand wasn't really drawing in 2001. So much so that they were going to tape Nitro and Thunder at the same location every week had the company survived. So it might have been wise to do most shows on a small-scale.
Anyway, depending on how much money they had, they could indeed have signed any WCW star they could afford. However, a good number of those wrestlers were getting big paychecks from AOL Time Warner whether they worked or not and were perfectly content to keep them. So the Jarretts would need some pretty big offers there. That is, if some of those wrestlers were uninjured and motivated enough to stick with this theoretical new WCW. DVDs weren't as big as video tapes then, but theoretically those weren't selling well since, well, pretty much all of their business was down. The internet in 2001 wasn't nearly as big of a deal as it is now. A lot of people didn't even have computers then. Downloading wrestling matches on a dial-up connection for a Windows 98 wouldn't be so great. That might work in time, but to start it in 2001 probably would be too risky.
Anyway, I guess theoretically WCW could have made a comeback at some point with the Jarretts at the helm. It would have some similarities to TNA just based on the people involved. I think it could be a bigger deal due to all the history and name value, but those first few years would be critical.
For the 3rd question, part of why 2011 Eric Bischoff isn't as good as 1998 Eric Bischoff is because... well, 2011 Eric Bischoff isn't 1998 Eric Bischoff. To some degree, ex-WCW and ex-WWE names are going to get flak just because we've seen so much of them over the years. That being said, I wouldn't mind a bit if they changed who got promo time in the group. Would they be more successful? It's hard to tell. It'll take time for the fans to accept some people as main event level mouthpieces.
To #4, I can't believe I'm seeing a KroniK question! They really disappeared when their WWF run ended. Anyway, from what I've heard/read, they had really bad attitudes so WWF wasn't keen on pushing them. The story goes that WWF wanted to send them to developmental for more work, and they weren't happy about it so they purposely made their match suck. I don't know if that's a fact, though. Even without all that going against them, I don't know that they'd do well. The track record for InVasion talents in WWE isn't all that great.
For #5, is it a good thing that Edge keeps coming back after his retirement speech? It depends on how they use him going forward. He's still able to contribute to the product, so I don't really have a problem with it.
PWInsider.com has a report on a situation between C.M. Punk and WWE. They wouldn't post something like this unless they felt pretty confident in it. If Punk's burned out, maybe he could take some time off? I definitely want him to be in the company long-term. He's a fantastic talent and should be taken care of. Hopefully he just needs a break and WWE will realize what they have with him. They would be really dropping the ball if they let him go because they weren't using him right.
WWE.com caught up with a number of Superstars after they were drafted on Monday:
Mark Henry teared up talking about losing 58 lbs. recently. I hope he continues to get in better shape, for his own sake as well as for the purposes of being a better worker.
Big Show says that he should be retired by now. Hard to argue with that one from an in-ring standpoint, though he does still have a sizable fanbase and is a good public face for WWE.
John Cena pointed out the irony of Miz beating him, then him coming back to Raw, and
Rey Mysterio talked up his new home.
Raw drew a 3.5 rating on Monday night, which is a good sign.
Tough Enough got a 1.73 before Raw and a 1.09 after. It continues to do solid replay numbers, no matter the timeslot.
The Chicago Tribune has an article on Rima Fakih's elimination from Tough Enough, incorrectly stating that the show started with 12 contestants.
Finally, Chris Jericho was eliminated from Dancing With The Stars this week. He scored the lowest on Monday's show.
That's all for Tuesday's news. I'll have more tomorrow.
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