Performance Center notes, Interviews with Natalya/Big E/Steele/Striker, WWE signings work indies, Doink passes away, WWE fine, Impact audience, and Questions on Suicide, Kevin Sullivan, Mickie, MITB, and the Briscoes

Jim Ross gave some details about the Performance Center. Was this all HHH's idea? It sounds awesome. A far cry from DSW for instance.

Here's a press release on "Total Divas". Reality shows are heavily manipulated and feature people at their most stressed out, so take everything on there with a grain (or more than a grain) of salt.

Big E Langston talked. Yeah, Bleacher Report isn't exactly hard-hitting journalism. He came across well.

George "The Animal" Steele talked about his book and career. Sounds really interesting! I loved the pillow story, and he has good points about the WWE brand.

Everything else from yesterday is after the break.

Matt Striker talked about his time in WWE and more. I think his passion added to his role as an announcer and interviewer. It was refreshing to see and hear him because he sounded like he actually cared about the product. It's tough to accept that a lot of people don't care about wrestling history, but I think he's right in a lot of ways.


Sami Callihan and Samuray Del Sol worked against each other this weekend ahead of heading to WWE. People who've seen them seem to be pretty high on both, so hopefully they bring something good to the table.

And, in incredibly sad news, Matt Osbourne (best known as Doink the Clown) passed away. PWInsider.com has details on his career, as always doing a fantastic job in covering it. Here's some footage of the shooting between Duggan and Doink. Osbourne updated his gimmick after The Dark Knight came up. The ECW gimmick was pretty cool.

Here's another story (with photos) of Osbourne as Doink, including WWE's statement on his passing. Doink could be pretty creepy at times.

Update: TMZ.com has a story on his passing.

And some wrestlers posted memories of him.

WWE has fined Daniel Bryan and Randy Orton from their chair shot to the head on Raw, which is good because that's unnecessarily dangerous.

Impact's audience this week was 1.11 million. I wish I knew why the numbers aren't higher, and I bet TNA does, too. Maybe the Aces and Eights angle is going on too long?

For my take on yesterday's PWInsider.com questions:
1. For what it's worth, Suicide is listed as part of the TNA roster on the official website while TJ Perkins isn't. Time will tell if that's a clue.

2. I was wondering the same thing! Maybe one or two of them should go under different professional names?

3. This is the biggest push she's gotten in quite a while, and her character's fresh now, so maybe it might actually HELP sales?

4. Bryan seems like a likely candidate. It wouldn't shock me if Axel or Lesnar cost Punk the match. It's not like Punk needs the briefcase to get in the title picture.

5. TNA's live event schedule isn't as lax as it used to be. I don't know if they'd be willing to risk being lost in the shuffle there. TNA's having some financial problems and I don't know if they'd be willing to invest in the Briscoes.

More wrestling tomorrow.