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July Wrasslin |OT| Dirty Harry

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Net_Wrecker said:
He's also the longest running weekly episodic Marine preacher on television!
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He's the #1 rated wrestler in the 3-7 demographic on Monday nights!

thanks for the limits, now just gotta find one that matches those
 
Man i've not been this excited about a WWE PPV since both HBK Vs Taker match's at Mania :).

I really really want to believe that something awesome is going to come out of Punk Vs Cena

but i cant help but feel like there so going to MAJORLY fuck this up in some way :-(
 
I'm sorry I didn't ask him to publish 2 issues in one week

The main event for UFC 133 on 8/6 in Philadelphia is now official, with Rashad Evans facing Tito Ortiz in a rematch of their July 7, 2007, fight that was a draw and at the time was expected to be rematched at the time. Ortiz went into the fight with back problems, which worsened, and Evans moved in another direction.
The match is actually a plus for the show when it comes to business, as Ortiz suddenly became hot coming off his upset win over Ryan Bader, and a win here would lead to what would have been a completely improbable idea even two months ago that Ortiz could be challenging for the championship.
Dana White explained the situation, where Ortiz first turned down the fight, and acknowledged as much publicly, and White was under the impression it would be Evans vs. Lyoto Machida.
“We’ve been aware of this because Phil Davis let us know he was getting an MRI. We already started to be ready just in case. I first called Tito, but he said it was too soon, he had family commitments, he’d gone off his diet and he was relaxing. Then we called Machida, and he agreed to take the fight, so we thought we had it covered.
“Then Davis had to pull out and we checked with Machida’s camp and they agreed to take the fight. Then we heard back from them and they said he’d do it, but he wanted the same deal (financially) that Anderson Silva has (which would include a significant PPV cut and would be a seven figure number). I told them, `When you accomplish all the things Anderson’s accomplished, then you can have the same deal. I said no way.”
Machida’s side had a different version of the story. Edouardo Cruz of Fighters Only magazine spoke with Fabiola Machida, the wife of the former light heavyweight champion, who said, “No, he won’t accept the fight at all. There are only three weeks for the preparation, Edouardo, and it just isn’t possible in the career of an athlete, three weeks of preparation. He has only been maintaining his conditioning and that doesn’t prepare you for a fight at all. So he didn’t accept for a professional matter–to accept would be to kick (meaning show no respect for) his profession.”
Ed Soares, the manager of Machida, said to Tatame, “It won’t happen. I think he doesn’t have enough time to get ready.”
White said that after the conversation, he and Ortiz were back talking and Ortiz was more open to the idea. It wasn’t clear what changed things but UFC needed a main event. Machida would be the right fight from a sports standpoint. Machida, the former champion, did more damage to Rampage Jackson in their fight last year and it was only the unique nature of the scoring system that gave Jackson the win. Jackson himself admitted he got his ass kicked and lost. That win gave Jackson the shot at Jon Jones on 9/24 in Denver. Evans was originally supposed to get the shot, since he beat Jackson, but the timing didn’t work out. It was expected that Jones would have hand surgery and be out for several months, and Evans who hadn’t fought since May, agreed to face Davis in the interim. Then Jones at the last minute decided against surgery, making him available to fight only seven weeks later. But advertising and promotion was already out for Evans vs. Davis.
Part of the incentive for Ortiz to take the fight, and no doubt they made it financially worth it to him, was that with a win, he’d be in line for a title shot.
Unlike most breaks UFC has suffered this year, which haven’t been good, from a financial standpoint, this is a positive. Ortiz is hot, and Ortiz vs. Evans will do more business than Evans vs. Davis ever would have, and for that matter, than Machida vs Evans would do. How much more is subject to conjecture. Evans vs. Davis would do baseline numbers, probably in the 250,000 to 275,000 range. It’s hard to figure what Evans vs. Ortiz will do. The Ortiz comeback story has potential, but the public has to buy at least the possibility he can beat Evans for it to work. And they have to like him. UFC crowds usually don’t like him, but his win was kind of a magic moment at the last show. At the same time, the number of people who saw the last show wasn’t huge. Evans is very effective in the role of an antagonist (heel in pro wrestling parlance) against somebody people really like, and Davis did not fight into that role.
Evans was agreeable to face Machida, or anyone else. even though Machida knocked him out in the second round and won the title from him. Machida may be the single most dangerous fighter for Evans’ style (and possibly for Jones’ style as well) as far as blocking him from a title shot he had earned.
He said Ortiz went to talk it over with his camp, and on the evening on 7/13, Ortiz called White and told him he was in.
White said that only one other fighter was called about taking the fight, which was Vladimir Matyushenko, who was schedule to face Alexander Gustafsson in a Spike TV fight on that same show. Matyushenko was agreeable to it.
The 2007 meeting of the two fighters in Sacramento has been talked about a lot because it ended in a draw and with the controversy over the second round. The fight got over well to the live crowd bigger than anything on the show that night. But it wasn’t because of action or the quality of the fight. It was a dull fight that the live crowd was into because of Ortiz’s presence and star power. To the television viewers, it was not a good fight, and was voted worst fight of the night.
Ortiz won the first round with a takedown right away and little damage from there. In the second round, Evans he went for several takedowns but Ortiz would grab the fence to avoid going down. After a few times, ref John McCarthy warned Ortiz to stop grabbing the fence. Ortiz at that point let go of the fence. Evans went for another takedown, and Ortiz once again grabbed the fence to block it, and McCarthy stopped the action and docked Ortiz one point, which was the key to the match.
Late in the round, Ortiz got a takedown, and Evans got up. The Evans got a takedown on Ortiz, but Ortiz swept him and locked Evans in a guillotine. At that point, the horn sounded. The pro-Ortiz crowd went crazy, thinking McCarthy broke it up because Evans tapped, and not because the round had ended. But since both had a takedown, but Ortiz had the sweep and guillotine, he won the round, but with the docking of a point, it was a 9-9 round.
Evans got a high slam takedown and connected with punches to take the third round, making the fight end as a draw.
Those pro-Evans have since that time argued that if Ortiz had not grabbed the fence so often in the second round, Evans would have taken him down and outright won the decision. Ortiz, and those on his side, cite the fact that Ortiz did win the first and second round, and that if you took away the penalty point, he would have been the winner.



In the sale in Sinclair Broadcasting, Sinclair bought all of the assets from Cary Silkin–the ring, the tape library, the contracts and the inventory (unsold DVDs and merchandise) and then started a new company.


The debut TV taping will be 8/13 in Chicago, where they will tape shows for 9/24, 10/1 and 10/8. There are financial reasons to do multiple tapings, but going that far in advance is going to be interesting. The idea is not the hardcore ROH fan, where they will know what happened long before the shows air. The idea would be that type of fan will want to watch the show anyway. But the idea of TV is to create new fans. How viable Saturday night prime time TV will be is the big question, even if the product ends up being good. A key is production. When TNA taped in Fayetteville, their guys all felt like big stars to me watching it because of the setting. If the crowd reacts, and more importantly, if TV captures that, it’s a positive. What is interesting to me is that the Kings of Wrestling are going to appear at the first tapings even though the company is under the impression the odds are they will sign with WWE. They will have title defenses of all three titles as TV main events.


Last word on Colt Cabana is that he still may be used even though he hasn’t signed a contract, but he would not be used as a regular.


Kid Kash, 42, has signed a contract here. When he came in for a TV appearance, we were given the impression they were considering bringing him in for a role largely to be a solid worker who knows how to get over as a heel and put over the younger X Division guys.


Dwayne Johnson did a ten minute long promo in the mountains responding to Cena’s Australia promo about him not being around. Keep in mind this is all an angle at this point, even though there was legitimate heat at one point between the two of them when Cena made the original remarks years ago. Now both are just playing it to build a match. But those are the best kinds of angles anyway, because they are both to an extent saying what they believe, maybe exaggerating some, but it gives the match a realistic feel which will help draw. If they go back-and-forth too much they may burn it out, but every month or two, to do things to keep it in the news is smart business. The stuff about him not being there every week, or even on TV semi-regularly is funny. If he were to wrestle even one match before Mania, it would hurt Mania. If he’d wrestle many matches before Mania, it would hurt Mania significantly. If he was a regular on TV, and it got silly, it would hurt the angle, similar to the Bret vs. Vince thing which started so strong in January but by the Mania day it had been compromised to where it didn’t do anywhere near the business it looked to be doing based on the talk when Hart first came back. The key here is to avoid like the plague any fake car accidents, boat explosions or anything more than the two just cutting realistic promos on each other and a few physical angles, and I mean very few, all of which should have one thing that makes them memorable. And if they don’t have something to make them memorable, there is no point in even doing them. Johnson did say he would be back to kick Cena’s ass before the end of the year, hinting at Survivor Series on 11/20 in Madison Square Garden, saying he would kick Cena’s ass in the same place where he debuted (Johnson’s first major WWF match was at the 1996 Survivor Series in MSG). Timing wise, Survivor Series is usually where they set the seeds for the Mania angles (if they now what they are by then), so it makes more sense timing wise than SummerSlam even though SummerSlam is the bigger show. Johnson said that nobody when he said he would never leave, thought that he would be a weekly character on TV. He pushed the idea that he was doing wrestling because he loved doing wrestling, not because it was his job or for the money. Johnson went off on Cena trying to act like he was some street rapper when he was someone who grew up in the suburbs and went to private school in real life. Cena is going to push the idea that Johnson isn’t around full-time, the same point he made when he first brought all this up years ago. Cena said he’d rather wrestle 100 Punks than one Rock because Punk has passion for wrestling and Rock doesn’t. The very idea Punk would turn down the kind of opportunities Johnson had in the movies if they were offered to him, at least at first, is laughable, but this isn’t a debate, it’s back-and-forth promos to build a match.


WWE has become like UFC when it comes to tickets. WWE tickets always sold out from best seats first to worst (and cheapest) last, as has been the case for everything dating back at least to the late 90s for WWE and WCW. UFC is different, because of pricing, the cheap seats go first and best seats go last, if at all. For Money in the Bank, at press time there were ringsides open past row five, but those cost $300 and I’m guessing they won’t be sold if they haven’t been bought by this late a date. But there are very few tickets available for the show.


Regarding Randy Savage in the WWE Hall of Fame next year, there is an interesting twist. Savage before his death said on several occasions that if he was asked, he would be happy to accept, and it was always Vince not wanting to induct him, not him not wanting to induct him. With the attempt to do a physical Hall of Fame, the omissions of people like Lou Thesz, Bruno Sammartino, Gene Kiniski, Johnny Valentine and Randy Savage, among others becomes worse. However, in an interview this past week, Lanny Poffo said that his brother’s wishes were: “He said if the Hall of Fame ever comes calling, that it would be all three of us (Randy Savage, Lanny Poffo and father Angelo Poffo) or nothing.”


Former wrestler and producer Fit Finlay was interviewed by Fighting Spirit magazine and took full blame for the incident that led to his being fired. He said that he made the call to have Miz interrupt the national anthem, feeling it was before WrestleMania and they were trying to get more heat on Miz since he was in a headliner position. He said he made a spur-of-the-moment call, sitting by the music technician, telling him to play Miz’s music halfway through the anthem thinking it would get heat, which it did. He didn’t think about that National Guard people were at the show and how they’d react to it. He said he never meant to insult anyone, and just thought of it as part of the show, trying to get people to boo Miz.


The company is doing research with focus groups trying to garner information why fans have left. They are looking at both men and women between the ages of 18 and 54, who described themselves as former wrestling fans, trying to get a handle on what their thoughts are, whether they are still fans and why, or whether they are no longer fans and why.
 
Rated-Rsuperstar said:
I think I figured it out. Devon and Pope are face. Devon's sons are the heels and Devon's 22 year old wife is the mastermind.
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Until it's revealed that Devon's wife is pregnant. Devon gets suspicious thinking it's Pope's until it's revealed that the baby is actually one of Devon's sons!
 
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