Chris Jericho talked about his next WWE return and more. I'm a little surprised he's just doing a few live event appearances. I wouldn't be surprised to see him make a surprise Rumble appearance, too, but apparently he won't be back full-time for Mania season. I doubt we've seen his last run, though.
WWE is advertising "Raw Reunion" for the Monday before Royal Rumble (Jan. 19). It will feature Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Shawn Michaels. Hopefully at least one of those guys takes an F5 or something.
C.M. Punk talked a bit more about WWE topics in an interview about going to UFC. I hope he does well there.
Everything else from yesterday is after the break.
WWE Network is now available in HD on Eastlink in Canada. The rollout there continues to be kind of slow. The UK is also notably absent.
RollingStone.com named Dolph Ziggler their WWE wrestler of the year. Glad to see him get some mainstream press. I'm sure WWE will continue to push the wrestlers they want to in spite of this.
Mick Foley was asked to be part of next week's Christmas-themed Raw, but had a prior commitment. I would definitely prefer him to Hogan!
Tuesday's live Smackdown special got 2.03 million viewers. I guess a lot of people either didn't know about the special or prefer to watch it Friday.
For my take on yesterday's PWInsider.com questions:
1. She's been on some of the secondary shows lately. They can only focus on so many performers at a time. Maybe if they didn't feature certain stars multiple times a week, there'd be more time for Paige and some other underutilized names.
2. WWE already has a sizable writing team, and I imagine producers and talent pitch things, too. But if the higher-ups don't want to use a talent, it's an uphill battle to get them featured. I don't see that changing just because they get fan suggestions. I could only imagine what that would open the door to!
3. I definitely think they should have protected and showcased Charlotte more, but it's hardly the end of the world. Hopefully by the time she returns to the big stage, fans will be willing to give her a chance as a higher-level talent. He's right about a small percentage of fans seeing the first match between the two of them, by the way. Most of the audience first saw Charlotte on Raw.
4. They need to be careful with how much speaking they have him do, and how much they tell us about him. I do think he needs more characterization, though. Some more promos and segments would help in that regard. He's got a lot going for him, in both wrestling talent and intangibles.
5. It's possible we see Bubba Ray Dudley come back to WWE, but I strongly doubt he'd be what he was in TNA. Honestly, he was a big fish in a small pond in TNA having one last big run because that company didn't have a lot of other wrestlers with name value to put the strap on, and did such a poor job building up stars of their own. A Dudleys nostalgia run in WWE or him working with some mid-level names for a while could work (similar to what Goldust is doing). But if he comes out as "Bully Ray" and asks the crowd if they know who he is, most of the WWE audience is either going to answer "Yeah, you're Bubba Ray Dudley", or "No". He hasn't been in WWE since 2005, and a fraction of that audience watches/cares about TNA.
More wrestling tomorrow.
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