Queries on Jeff Hardy, Goldust, and Teddy Hart, Flair to return to the ring in September?, interesting note on Samoa Joe's contract status, WWE/Mattel at Comic-Con recap, Dana White-WWE meeting update, Questions on ROH going mainstream, pushing Punk on his way out, Punk's future and why MITB was set up the way it was, ESPN looks at top entrance music in wrestling, new WWE action figures from Comic-Con, new sponsorship deal for TNA, transcript of recent Sin Cara interview, WWE stars to compete on FCW show, Finlay interview, the main event for next week's Impact Wrestling and Impact Wrestling's rating

To answer a couple of queries sent to the blog recently:
1. No, Jeff Hardy won't be appearing at Summerslam. He's still under contract to TNA. Even if he were to leave, he's still involved in a pretty hairly legal situation that I don't think WWE would want to be associated with. Not to mention that I'm fairly certain that he'd be one failed Wellness test away from being fired if he returned.

2. I haven't seen anything about Goldust returning to the ring soon. The last I read was that he's been an agent lately.

Update: He told a fan on Twitter recently that he's not ready to return to the ring yet, so there's your answer.

3. And as for why Teddy Hart's not in WWE, it's almost certainly related to his history of attitude problems.

Ric Flair said recently that he'll be returning to the ring in September to face the winner of Sting/Angle at Hardcore Justice. He's had solid matches with both in the past, but I'd be surprised if they can pull it off in 2011. There are a number of errors in the article as well: He's never been World Champion in TNA or PWI (whatever that is), Mick Foley's no longer in TNA, and the show's called Impact Wrestling now.

Update: In other Flair news, his lawyer claimed that he's only been kept off of Impact Wrestling because of his shoulder-cuff injury. I know he's made at least one appearance since then, in an angle with Bobby Roode and Immortal, so there seems to be a conflict of information here.

After the break, I look at Samoa Joe's recent status in the wrestling world, and all of the rest of the day's news and questions.
After Stone Cold remarked on Twitter that WWE should sign Samoa Joe when his contract's up, it was noted that Joe's contract had actually expired several months back. WWE had the opportunity to snag him away, and was aware of his free agency, but didn't show any interest in him. Joe has since signed back with TNA. That could have been a potentially sizable gain for WWE, and could have really been a hit to TNA as well. I think he would have been a pretty good fit on Smackdown. A feud with Daniel Bryan would be pretty awesome.

Here's a rundown of what happened at WWE's Mattel panel at Comic-Con. I like some of those action figure ideas.

Dana White briefly mentioned his meeting at WWE HQ recently, noting that it was a combination of business and pleasure. Interesting. White's a noted fan of McMahon's.

As for PWInsider.com's questions of the day:
1. For the first part, I generally like WWE, TNA has its good parts, and ROH quite simply isn't my cup of tea. It might be someone else's though. It sounds deceptively simple (and in some ways it is), but ROH needs to do what anything else needs to do to go mainstream: get a lot of people to spend a lot of money on their product. Some people are going to love that style of wrestling and some aren't. Some people will fall in love with their characters and some won't. They need to either change things to draw in the people who aren't into that style, or find more and more would-be fans of their current style. Get the name out there, and leave people wanting more (then giving them more the next time) so they keep coming back. That kind of thing.

2. They answered it much better than I could, but the gist of it was that they did it for the same reason they do everything: to make money. The angle got a lot of people talking and signs look good for Punk making a comeback, so this was a successful gamble by the company.

3. Again, what they said: taking time off now, and after that it's TBD/TBA. Stay tuned!

4. It's like a rollercoaster: the big thrills are bigger when you've had some downtime between them. This is also why they generally don't do matches with non-stop big moves.

5. Stranger things have happened, but the odds don't seem good.

ESPN.com has an article looking at some of the top entrance music in wrestling history, with some pretty good picks. I give Bill Simmons props for knowing his stuff about the specifics of what makes a good intro song. I don't really have a problem with Sheamus' music, though. There are some pretty bad/generic songs out there right now that could be done better.

Here are some pictures of Mattel's new action figures shown at Comic-Con. Some of those are pretty awesome. That last Drew McIntyre figure looks like it should be packaged with Silent Bob.

TNA has announced a sponsorship deal with Direct Auto insurance that covers plenty of ground, similar to WWE's with K-Mart. It's all about making money, and this is a pretty good deal for TNA.

For those of us who don't understand Spanish, here's an English transcript of Sin Cara's recent interview. It is rather odd if he was suspended because of a legitimate medical use of steroids. I think that's VERY different from using them to "get big". But I suppose that I can see WWE's position. "Wrestler not suspended for taking steroids" wouldn't be a good headline for them to deal with. Maybe this explains why they waited a month to suspend him? Things are looking different from when this story first came out.

Sheamus, Drew McIntyre, Santino Marella, Vladimir Kozlov, and The Usos all competed at 7/23's FCW show. That's pretty cool. Hopefully everything benefited from their presence.

Alex Marvez had a typically negatively-worded interview with Finlay recently. Good insight from Finlay. The suggestion that WWE should have fired Miz for Finlay's decision to have him interrupt the Star-Spangled Banner is quite frankly stupid. Miz was just doing what he was told to by his boss. I wouldn't ask that website to fire a different columnist for Marvez' dumb suggestion.

The next edition of Impact Wrestling will be headlined by Kurt Angle vs. Mr. Anderson in a steel cage match. That really should be saved for something bigger, like their September PPV. If you're going to do an important gimmick match, why not promote it better?

This week's Impact Wrestling got a 1.25 rating. Not bad at all.

That's all for Friday's news. More to come tomorrow. Thanks for reading!