Eighties Puerto Rican star Brad Batten has passed away. He was only 56? That's fairly young.
On this week's Smackdown:
- Seth Rollins and Kane vs. Ryback and Big Show
- Luke Harper vs. Cesaro
- Los Maradores vs. The Miz and Damien Mizdow
- The Dean Ambrose Survival Kit
- Triple H and John Cena raise the stakes for Survivor Series
Harper vs. Cesaro should be great!
WWE has made a new distribution agreement with Warner Bros.. That's great!
Everything else from yesterday is after the break.
Here's a rundown of the continuation of ECW Exposed on the WWE Network. Some thoughts:
- I like Heyman's philosophy of being devoted to the here and now.
- I'm glad Heyman has moved on from the grudges of the ECW era. It's not healthy to dwell on things you can't change.
- Heyman has previously talked about ECW morphing into something like ROH, with some MMA influences. There would still have been crazy hardcore matches here and there, but overall they would have changed styles. It would have been interesting to see how that turned out.
- Nice words from Heyman about his kids.
John Cena is part of a new Foot Locker campaign. It's always Cena.
Here's the official press release on TNA's new TV deal. From this, I'm taking Gail and Angle are back under contract. That would be embarrassing otherwise. I wonder if Team 3D will come back as well. As far as this deal goes, the impression is one of "either TNA took this deal or they didn't have a TV home in 2015". It's definitely a big step back from the Spike deal, but they'll be the focus of the new channel and have opportunities to make more content. We'll see how that works out.
Update: This piece has an analysis of Spike vs. Destination America, and a look at TNA's problems going forward. It looks like TNA will take a big hit in viewership. My initial guess was about 600,000 viewers based on the coverage of Spike vs. DA, but that's implying TNA can get a big part of their audience to switch over. That might take time.
Spike issued a statement on severing ties with TNA. It looks like they'll be pre-empted on December 31, but air a number of "Best Of" shows before then. TNA's going to be pretty cold going into 2015, as "Best Of" shows generally don't draw all that well. Maybe they'll pull out a higher audience than expected, though.
For my take on yesterday's PWInsider.com questions:
1. NBCU is much more profitable than the Network, so WWE is somewhat subservient to them.
2. Cheating to win and no-selling it would be good. I like him as the obnoxious douchebag, for sure. I've seen a number of people online pitch him recruiting some Bolievers (people who aren't currently doing anything like Otunga) to turn their lives around by following him. That's a pretty good idea, too. All in all, I hope Bo's got a good road ahead of him.
3. I'm glad someone brought this idea up! I don't think WWE should do it, but it could make sense logically. Would that turn Brock or Rollins face?
4. The commitment is no longer a requirement.
5. Not really sure what this has to do with wrestling, unless it's a reference to Curtis Axel's time in NXT.
More wrestling tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment