Jericho discusses a potential return, Australian ratings, a Savage baseball piece, confusion about Raw taping, Questions on Flair, Orton as "Super Cena", WWE buying TNA and comparisons to the Invasion, wrestlers using cups, and Sheamus, Hogan and Mickie James interviews, Sean Waltman blogs, Miz interview, UK ratings, surprising name not at Impact Wrestling tapings, TNA ejects reporter, Raw dark match, Raw technical difficulties update, news on Kharma and JR, and more on Cena vs. R-Truth

Chris Jericho talked to The Sun about wrestling and other topics. He's a smart man. I think his DWTS appearance did help the mainstream's perception of WWE to a degree. Hopefully more people figure out that it's not a bunch of oily guys on steroids doing obviously fake fighting.

WWE Raw was the only wrestling show in the Top 100 in Australia this past week, drawing 27,000 viewers. Keep in mind that Impact Wrestling isn't on the air there.

This piece goes into memories of Randy Savage from his minor league baseball colleagues.

Triple H was locally advertised for the 5/31 Raw taping, but didn't appear. It's not known who made the mix-up, but I haven't seen WWE advertise him for any taping on their website.

PWInsider.com has new questions. Here's my take on them:
1. I suppose it could, but it would take commitment from Flair. I really hope he gets his act together. I agree that it's a pretty sad situation.

More answers and news after the break, starting with another complaint about Randy Orton.


2. Here's the thing: plenty of wrestlers have done that and will continue to do so. It didn't start with Cena by any stretch. Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, The Rock, C.M. Punk, and Rey Mysterio (among others I'm sure) have had finishing sequences of moves. The crowd's really into it, and that's what matters. I disagree about people other than Cena and Orton not mattering much. So would The Miz, R-Truth, Alberto Del Rio, Big Show, Christian, Sheamus, and Mark Henry, all of whom are currently portrayed as important people. Top babyfaces occasionally hold championships. It happens. Then sometimes they go a long time without holding them, like Cena not being champion from June 2010 to May 2011 or Orton going from September 2010 to May 2011 without it. It'd be different if they were holding them for most of the year, but they aren't. Cena's last reign (barring the recent "reversed decision" where he sort of kind of dropped it to The Miz) was less than 3 months. Orton's was barely 2. Let's keep things in perspective here.

3. I'd keep it as it's own brand for a while, unless it was just totally close to worthless at that point. If they still had the Spike deal (or if WWE could still get it on the air somewhere), I'd again mostly keep it as a "third brand" between Raw and Smackdown. People who should stay in the company would stay on the show; people who should go I'd want to go. It'd be interesting if they could do PPVs with just that brand but I'm not so sure it would work too well, even with the WWE name. But yeah, basically I'd use it as a 3rd brand since then they'd have tons of people on their roster and only so much room to use them all. I've actually thought of this one in some detail before. It'd be WWE Impact (since WWE's name is worth so much more than TNA's) and be treated similarly to Raw or Smackdown. What would actually happen? WWE would keep the people they wanted and cut the rest presumably. A good deal of it depends on if TNA's still on TV and PPV when they buy it.

As for the analogy with WCW's purchase, there are some important things to remember about how that went down: WCW was losing an insane amount of money at that point. Millions per month. If Eric Bischoff and his investors bought it, it'd be a little bit like Impact is now as far as them taping a lot of shows in a fairly small arena because they were losing money pretty much everywhere they were going. They were getting kicked off of TV and PPV because they were losing money there, too, so Vince couldn't just tell people "hey, put Nitro on the air" because it didn't have a good track record of drawing money for networks the past however many months and years. The brand simply wasn't worth as much as it was at its height. Smackdown was drawing money and WCW wasn't, so they decided to not go with any separate WCW brand.

And for how he booked the talent? A lot of the people that fans wanted signed were already under contract to AOL Time Warner. These contracts weren't included in the buyout. They tried to sign some of those guys, but felt it was too expensive to do so. Not to mention that a good number of these talents didn't have good track records. They could either stay home and make a lot of money from their guaranteed AOL Time Warner contracts, without working a single day, or they could take a pay cut and work in WWF, where they wouldn't have been treated as lavishly (i.e. given creative control, etc.).

So, they ended up signing just a few wrestlers. No Sting (who was said to be "phoning it in" in WCW). No Flair. No Hogan (who had left a year ago anyway). No Goldberg (who was injured). No Hall and Nash (the former with a checkered criminal background; the latter allegedly pulling strings behind the scenes), No Bret Hart (who had retired due to a legitimate injury). No Jarrett (who had heat with WWF for a stunt he pulled when he jumped to WCW). No Steiner (who was said to be a bully and had problems with management).

That left them with Billy Kidman, Booker T., the team of Brian Adams and Bryan Clark (who performed very poorly against Kane and Undertaker and didn't last long as a result), Buff Bagwell (cut before the Invasion story began for a poor attitude), Chavo Guerrero, Chuck Palumbo, DDP, Evan Karagias, Bill DeMott, Hurricane Helms, Jamie Noble, Johnny Stamboli , Kanyon, Kaz Hayashi (who went to Japan after 1 match), Lash LeRoux, Mark Jindrak, Mike Sanders, Primetime, Reno, Sean O'Haire, Shawn Stasiak, Jimmy Wang Yang, along with The Dudley Boyz, Jazz, Justin Credible, Lance Storm, Mike Awesome, RVD, Raven, Rhino, Tommy Dreamer from ECW. There are some good names there for sure, but hardly a dream roster. Going up against Undertaker, Kane, Stone Cold, The Rock, and Kurt Angle among others, most didn't have a good chance of sticking around. It's understandable that a good number of them were sent to developmental territories.

Anyway, long story short, a lot of WWF fans weren't going to accept that roster as equal to WWF's, and a good number of WCW/ECW fans weren't going to watch WWF. Not to mention that the WWF roster would resent being portrayed as equals to a bunch of outsiders from bankrupt companies "taking their spots".

Oh, and as far as WWE only getting a few guys over, that would be news to a good number of people on the roster who still draw pretty nice crowds, reactions, and ratings.

4. I get a sense that the person who answered these questions there is particularly jaded to wrestling these days. Sorry that he gave such a poor answer. I haven't seen that spot in a long time (that I remember), but presumably they don't wear cups in kayfabe because not many people use low blows. Now, if someone faces an opponent known for low blows (like Chyna back in the day), they might wear a cup. Maybe they're uncomfortable?

5. Albinos don't have red hair, do they? It's not that uncommon for someone from that area to have pale skin.

Hulk Hogan was the subject of a near hour-long interview with HDNet's The Voice, not to be confused with the singing show.

Slam! had an interview with Mickie James. It was a good read. I especially like how she put over Tara, Rayne, and TNA. That's good PR.

Sean Waltman, perhaps best known as X-Pac, has a blog up about Randy Savage and Chyna among other things. He also has a pretty interesting video with Kevin Nash up discussing a number of subjects. It gets pretty emotional in places.

The Miz had a Q&A with the New York Post.

Here's a look at WWE and TNA's ratings in the UK from some weeks back. TNA is actually consistently beating WWE there. Different strokes for different folks, indeed. I wonder what they see in it that a lot of people here don't?

Tommy Dreamer won't be used at this week's Impact Wrestling tapings. He was listed as a producer (agent), not a performer, but he isn't in town for them. This surprised a good number of talents in the company. He hasn't given a reason for this on Twitter, either. He's presently in NY.

A correspondent for PWInsider.com was thrown out of the Impact Wrestling tapings. A lot of good that did, because the results of the show were still disseminated over the web.

Drew McIntyre beat Chris Masters in Raw's dark match. Not really sure why that wasn't taped for Superstars...

WWE's technical difficulties on Raw were legitimate. There are, however, videos of the segment that was cut is on WWE.com. It was a pretty good segment. I hope they replay it on Smackdown. Zack Ryder got a nice reaction too.

Kharma is legitimately pregnant and will indeed miss a good amount of time. The reason I didn't post this earlier is because there were conflicting rumors about the background of her "crying" angle. I want to be more sure of something before I post it.

Jim Ross responded to what she said on Raw on his Twitter account.

After Raw went off the air, the anonymous Raw GM decreed that R-Truth will face John Cena at Capitol Punishment if and only if R-Truth apologizes for his actions on Raw. That's a good hook for next week. My guess is he refuses, but Cena wants the match anyway. I'd be fine with that.

That's all for tonight. More news to come tomorrow.