Two of my favourite activities come together

Found this in my email today. My love of professional wrestling meets my love of Skillet.

SKILLET’S “MONSTER” TO BE USED IN “25th Anniversary of WrestleMania – World Television Premiere” THIS WEEKEND ON NBC

August 28, 2009
**As they near the close of an exciting street week, SKILLET’s active rock single “Monster” (currently #26 on the Active Rock BDS/Billboard chart and #28 on the Mediabase chart) will be used during the “25th Anniversary of WrestleMania – World Television Premiere” this Sunday, August 29th on NBC at 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT).  This Special will feature all the action from the original April 5, 2009 Pay Per View broadcast, but condensed to one hour.  Unforgettable performances will be highlighted from WWE Superstars including Triple H, Randy Orton, John Cena, Big Show, Edge, Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Jeff Hardy and many others.
**WWE programming reaches nearly 16 million people per week in the U.S., and is available to nearly 500 million homes worldwide.  "WWE Superstars" is the newest addition to WWEs line up, a one-hour show, which recently premiered on April 16th, 2009 and has been WGN America’s most-watched Thursday telecast every week since its premiere.

Preach it, brother Dave!

Lesnar backlash brims with double standards - UFC - Yahoo! Sports

There have been 61 fighters in Ultimate Fighting Championship history whio were pro wrestlers at one point or another. There are nine on the current UFC roster. Of the six fighters in the UFC Hall of Fame, three – Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn and Mark Coleman – dabbled in wrestling.

But UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar is the only one vilified for it.

SummerSlam poster

Umm ... what?

EDIT: There's strong opinion on the Net that this is not the actual SummerSlam poster, but a very good Photoshop fake.

The WWE hates Montreal, part MXVIII

London Bound...Bret Hart...Chuck Liddell...Retirement Rumors Galore...Awesome Midnight Express Book | J.R.'s Family Bar-B-Q

The fans booed the amazing Anderson Silva Saturday night for not brawling with his opponent which showed how many casual/uninformed fans were in attendance.

Wrestlemania 25 live coverage

My good friend Scott Keith is doing live coverage of Wrestlemania here.

The UT-Shawn Michaels match was an easy 5 stars. Just a tremendous, fantastic match. Nice to see that Scott agrees.

Oops!

It turns out my live Twittering of the WWE HOF last night resulted in me basically spamming Facebook with status updates, because I have Twitter update my Facebook status. And that resulted in the news feed of all my friends being filled with nothing but my tweets.

Frankly, I blame Facebook for allowing this to happen.

WWE Hall of Fame 2009 Liveblog/Twitter!

Welcome to my liveblogging and Twittering of the WWE Hall of Fame 2009 webcast from wwe.com.

While we kill time, here's the link to last year's liveblog.

I've never Twittered and liveblogged at the same time, so this will be an interesting experiment.

• The Score is supposed to be showing the USA network portion of the show tomorrow (Sunday) at 5 eastern time, I think. Check local listings would be the suggestion (4:35 p.m.)
• Meanwhile, TSN is supposed to be showing the world men's curling championships, but it's delayed. (4:36 p.m.)
• Waiting ... (4:58 p.m.)
• Feed is buffering from WWE.com (5 p.m.)
• I'm getting great audio and not so great video. Which, I suppose, is fine, considering the HOF involves people standing in front of a microphone. (5:01)
• Love the "How on earth are you gonna stop this guy!" from Gorilla Monsoon in the Shawn-UT video. (5:03)
• Here we go! The HOF is on and live! (5:03)
• Opening with the Funks. This should be fun. (5:06)
• Holy crap, that NWA belt looked really beat up. (5:07)
• Dusty is inducting the Funks. Let's see if Big Dust can stick to the 3-minute limit on the inductions.
• Wow! Dusty just named dropped Lou Thesz!
• Pat Patterson is looking very old.
• Only Dusty can link Terry Funk to Tommy Dreamer and make it work.
• Man, the guys of today just can't deliver promos like Dusty can. He's got no notes, and he's delivering an entirely fluid and brilliant induction speech. (5:10)
• I think Dusty's already gone over the 3 minute limit.
• OK, not by much.
• ARGH! My feed keeps buffering. I might have to jack into the cable modem.(5:12)
• Dory gets a big pop for mentioning the Guerrero family. Slightly less of a pop for the Hart family. Well, they are in Texas, not Calgary.
• OK, after this, I'm jacking into into the cable modem. The buffering is getting ridiculous. (5:16)
• Dory just plugged his website for the remainder of his speech. That was kinda weird.
• Terry is YELLING HIS SPEECH!
• "THERE'S NO ROOM FOR DUMMIES IN THE WWE! YOU'VE GOTTA BE MULTIFACETED! SO KIDS OUT THERE, GET YOUR EDUCATION!"
• Dory's speech was understated and quiet. Terry's is so loud it's annoying. (5:19)
• Koko's next, so I'm gonna take a pause here and jack into my cable modem (5:21)
• I'm back, and the first thing I see is the Honky Tonk Man looking exactly like he did in 1990. Scary. (5:24)
• Gotta give HTM credit. He's actually making it sound like Koko deserves to be in the HOF.
• Noticed on the F4W messageboard that Bryan Danielson from ROH is sitting with some of he WWE wrestlers. Huh. That'll get the rumors started.
• Koko has a new Frankie. (5:28)
• Koko just thanked God that he's not dead (in so many words). Given the number of his former co-workers who are dead, I'm not sure if that's morbid or not.
• Frankie's gonna steal the show here. The closeup of the bird just got a pop. (5:30)
• Now Frankie is trying to eat Koko's speech. This is so funny!
• Perfectly acceptable speech from Koko, considering he should be nowhere near the WWE HOF. Seriously now.... (5:33)
• It was nice to see Bobby Heenan there, but boy did he look terrible.
• Von Erichs are next. Now this will be interesting. (5:34)
• I remember seeing that Kerry Von Erich-Ric Flair match on a VHS tape that Pro Wrestling Illustrated was selling back in the 1980s. I bet I still have that tape in a box somewhere in my basement.
• Michael Hayes doing the induction. Again ... this will be ... interesting ... (5:37)
• Hayes says no family had more influence tranforming wrestling into sports entertainment as the Von Erichs. Hmm ... I guess, considering the TV done by World Class was miles ahead of anyone else. And, I suppose if you look at all the early drug deaths ...
  
• Kerry Von Erich did not set any kind of world discuss record.
• I've kinda tuned out of Hayes's speech. I just don't like the man. He's such a worker, and I don't mean that as a compliment. He strikes me as a guy who would say anything to get the audience to pop, regardless of whether it was true or he believed it or whatever. (5:42)
• And the last Von Erich is up. Kevin immediately says, "I don't regret a thing." That's a kinda cold thing to say when you lost all of your brothers to this business.
• Kevin says Michael Hayes can talk. Yup. Ask Mark Henry about that.
• "I wish my brothers could be here with me. But, gosh, darnit..." Yeah, that's kind of an understatement. "Gosh, darnit."
• Kevin notes that his sons are in the building. Nice looking kids. "The Von Erichs still live," says Kevin. Great. Just keep them out of the business, OK?
• Impressed that Kevin has been married 31 years.
• OK, I'm not deliberately trying to be heartless about Kevin's speech. It was very good. But the tip-toeing around the deaths got to be a bit much. I know he can't dwell on them ... (5:47)
• Yay! Howard Finkel is next! I hope he gets the biggest standing ovation. (5:48)
• Mean Gene inducting Howard Finkel. That's entirely appropriate.
• Yeah, who didn't see that "Enough about me" comment coming?
• Howard credited with coming up with the term Wrestlemania. I actually believe that's true. And if it's not true, then it's been said often enough that everyone believes it's true.
• Howard's put on some weight.
• I think outside of Mae Young, I've never seen anyone so genuinely happy to be in the Hall of Fame.
• Howard is talking very, very fast. He needs to slow down.
• Howard just broke the volume knob in the control both.
• Chris Jericho has the world's orangest tan.
• Loved Howard's "NEW inductee!" bit. That was hysterical! (5:59)
• Bill Watts is next.
• Jim Ross inducting Watts will at least give it the context his induction deserves ... in three minutes or less.
• Ross just turned himself heel. And then he redeemed himself by making fun of Michael Hayes' hair.
• Ross just sent a message to the young talent with the "Watts was in the business for just 3 years before was main eventing the Garden."
• I think Ross is going over the 3 minute limit on the induction speeches. (6:05)
• Bill Watts can take off that goofy hat now.
• Anytime now, Bill.
• Um ... Bill ... you're wearing a giant green hat.
• OK, Bill Watts just made everything great by using the word "noogie" during his speech. (6:09)
• Erik Watts just introduced on camera. Hey, they should put him in Legacy!
• ... OK, maybe not.
• Boy, Bill Watts is sure putting himself over in a rather arrogant way. "What took you so long to put me in the Hall of Fame!?"
• I have no idea what Bill's talking about anymore. Someone yank him, please. This is why they put the time limits in. If he didn't have a 10 minute limit, he'd be talking for six hours. (6:13)
• Bill talks about Bruno Sammartino, saying "he was the strongest man in the world at the time, and we didn't even have steroids back then!" Wow ... got some guts to say that given the audience.
  
• Speaking of Bruno ... what a complete joke that he's not in the HOF. I mean, I know he's on the outs with WWE, but induct him whether he shows up to accept or not.
• Bill's been talking for 8 minutes now, and he's up to, like 1965.
• OK, so in the end, Watts's speech was somewhere between rambling and awesome. Kinda depends on how you look at it. On the one hand, it was utterly rambling at times. On the other hand, he talked about steroids and talked about dead wrestlers, which probably drove Vince McMahon insane.
• Watts, a WWE Hall of Famer, admits he's going to his first Wrestlemania tomorrow. Vince just popped another vein.
• Watts talks about going to heaven. I'm sure that raised a few eyebrows in the audience. (6:21)
• OK, apparently that's it for the web portion of the broadcast. Unfortunately, I'm not able to watch the USA version of the live broadcast with Rick Steamboat and Steve Austion, so thanks for joining me here.
  

It's Wrestlemania weekend!

It's Wrestlemania 25 weekend, which means the Hall of Fame tonight and the big show tomorrow. I've decided due to the poor build up of the card that I'm not going to see it live tomorrow, but will save my money for the DVD. However, I do plan to live blog and Twitter the Hall of Fame webcast tonight because that was fun to do last year, and resulted in an enormous increase in my page views, which is always good. Watch for that starting around 5 p.m. Alberta time tonight.

It doesn't get much weirder than the Undertaker in a suit

Hitman Hart - Wrestling With Shadows

While The Wrestler gets kudos as the best movie ever made on professional wrestling, Wrestling With Shadows is the best documentary ever made on the subject of professional wrestling.

The National Film Board of Canada has it streaming on their website.

It's an amazing documentary for so many reasons - not the least of which is that 10+ years later, it's hard to believe that "Montreal" is still an issue in professional wrestling, and that this more than anything else defined the careers of Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. It's also hard to believe in 2009 that anything like the events in the documentary could ever happen again.

Chris Jericho altercation with fan

Pro Wrestler's altercation with Victoria fan hits YouTube

Pro wrestler Chris Jericho punched a woman outside Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre after a World Wrestling Entertainment bout yesterday, an altercation captured by a witness on a cellphone camera and posted on YouTube.

Witnesses say the incident occurred when Jericho was surrounded by hundreds of people heckling him after he lost yesterday’s RAW Live WWE bout.

100% Authentic WWF Tag Team Wrestling Championship Belt - eBay (item 360130132520 end time Feb-17-09 17:30:00 PST)

Click link above for details. In case, you know, you have an extra $10,000 lying around.

Gimme a heckya!

It's looking more and more like Stone Cold Steve Austin - who will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame at Wrestlemania - won't actually wrestle a final match on the show.

That's fine with me. I was live and in person at Wrestlemania 19 in Seattle to see him lose to the Rock, which currently stands as the final match of his career. I'm perfectly happy keeping it that way for the completely selfish reason of saying I saw his final match live.

But even if he did come back ... with today's G-rated WWE that's catering to kids, does anyone really want to see a watered-down "Rattlesnake" giving us an "Oh heck ya" to 10-year-old kids who have no idea who he is?

Stay retired, Steve. For your own sake.

Michael Cole Bingo

Stolen from the F4W messageboard.

Even Jim Ross is more interested in UFC than WWE these days ...

MMA/UFC Thoughts...Radio Daze...Jeff Hardy face paint...Legends Roundtable back on tap... | J.R.'s Family Bar-B-Q

It looks as if the UFC might soon be cleared to promote events in New York state which, as a UFC fan, I perceive to be a good thing. The UFC would bring in much needed new revenue into the state and under these current economic times I can't see why any state would take steps to prevent the UFC from promoting and adding to the economy.

Click the link for the rest of Ross's latest blog, which is always a good read.

YouTube goes widescreen!

YouTube Embraces Widescreen Paves the Way for Hollywood Features - Webmonkey

As we pointed out last week, YouTube is now offering HD quality video on select movies. But one of the hallmarks of HD video is the widescreen aspect ratio (16:9 rather than 4:3) and now the YouTube site has been updated so that all video is now displayed in a new widescreen player.

As the YouTube blog notes, this means that the vast majority of videos on the site — which were uploaded as 4:3 — are now displayed with black bars on the sides (the empty space not used by 4:3 videos).

Two things:

1) Now, all I need is a free video editor that will actually let me edit the widescreen video that my digicam will let me shoot ... except I don't shoot in widescreen because I can't edit it.

2) This puts YouTube ahead of the WWE in terms of providing me with easily-accessible widescreen content. Not that I'm bitter.

WWE: What is so hard about 16x9 DVDs?

I don't understand this.

The WWE has been broadcasting their events in high definition for nearly a year now. But their DVDs are still formatted in the standard 4x3 aspect ratio. I bought the No Mercy DVD this month, and was quite disappointed to learn that it was not presented in 16x9 widescreen.

And this isn't like the weird Wrestlemania DVD issue, either, with the DVD deciding (depending on your TV) whether to show the event in widescreen or not. (See this post and comments.) As far as I can determine, No Mercy has no widescreen option. It's formatted in 4x3. But it's framed in 16x9. Which makes for some very poor viewing of some of the action when both wrestlers disappear off the screen because they're in the portion of the 16x9 framing that gets chopped to make it 4x3.

This is ridiculous. Every Hollywood movie I own on DVD is in widescreen. Even UFC has put out regular DVDs formatted in widescreen.

So, WWE, what's your excuse?

EDIT 11:27 a.m.: OK, I need to clarify here after doing some experimenting. This is just like the Wrestlemania DVD. No Mercy will play in widescreen if you watch it on a widescreen monitor. I just tried it in my 17-inch widescreen laptop, and I get the little WWEHD logo and everything in perfect 16x9. Which, to me, is even more stupid. I can watch all kinds of widescreen DVD content on my 4x3 TV, but the WWE is compelling me to watch its DVDs in 4x3 on a 4x3 TV, effectively requiring me to upgrade my television to a widescreen, which I'm not going to do just to watch their DVDs. (Particularly considering that I don't have an HD converter box, and no HD capable TVs.)

So let me rephrase my question to the WWE: What's your excuse for not putting out the DVDs in native 16x9 format like every Hollywood movie release has been doing for years?

Ric Flair coming to Edmonton

Apparently, Ric Flair is coming to Edmonton in February. Ticket information is here.

I have to admit, I found out about this reading the stats for my blog, which contained a number of search strings looking for info on Ric Flair coming to Edmonton.

And judging from the ticket prices, I'm not likely to be going.

New ECW belt available for pre-order

The new ECW belt is available for pre-order from WrestlingSuperstore.com. It should be available in January.

The new Divas belt won't be shipping until March of next year.

Google search string weirdness

This afternoon, someone from WWE.com (that would be, World Wrestling Entertainment) Googled "wwe divas belt replica" and landed on this humble web page.

Now, I'm just thinking ... wouldn't someone who works for WWE know how to buy a replica of their own title belts?

Bret Hart book commentary

Anonymous writes (butchery of the English language left intact):

f you don't agree with the way Bret sees things, that is a commentary the man, not the book. The greatness of the book is that it is uncompromising in telling what the view of the world was from Bret's eyes. The book is an AUTOBIOGRAPHY - not a definative historical account, and it should be viewed as such.

I don't disagree that autobiographies are inherently subjective. But to try to draw some artificial line between "the man" and "the book" is slightly ridiculous. I mean, "the man" wrote "the book." And "the book" is about "the man" who wrote it.

Yes, the greatness of the book was the hard-hitting and uncompromising way in which Bret tells his story.

The failing of the book, however, is what I noted in my original commentary on it. Bret is quick to point out the failings of others, but in the process he makes himself look foolish and immature by refusing to take responsibility for his failings.

As a person gets older, there should be some wisdom of age and experience that better informs how they used to view the world. I do not doubt that, at those particular points in time in his marriage and career, Bret Hart thought his wife was being unfair to him in their marriage. My issue was more that at this point in his life, Bret should be able to see how selfish his opinion was (or still is) and grow beyond that.

New WWE DVD: The Definitive Braden Walker

Quickpost this image to Myspace, Digg, Facebook, and others!

Stolen from a messageboard. Click for full size.

WWE Diva and ECW replica belt ordering info

As a public service because about 99.982% of my Google hits now come from search strings wondering how to order replicas of the new WWE Diva belt or the new WWE ECW belt, Wrestling Superstore has a link up that's worth bookmarking for further information as it becomes available.

More ECW belt pictures

At first glance, it looks like the old Pride Fighting Championship title belts. Pretty cool!

EDIT: The more I look at this belt, the more I think it was a Triple-H custom WWE title belt that got modified to be the new ECW belt by adding a relief plate. It has that whole Iron Cross motif going that matches Hunter's merchandising.

FURTHER EDIT: The WWE has got great photos of it up here.

First blurry picture of the new ECW belt

The WWE unveiled a new ECW title belt tonight. This is the only picture I can find right now.

UPDATE: A couple better pictures can be found here.

Google search punchlines that write themselves

"john cena what protein powder is good"

His belts are awl the rage

His belts are awl the rage | www.azstarnet.com ®

A nice article on Reggie Parks, one of the belt makers for UFC and the former WWF belt maker.

There's a video up, too that's really good.

The WWE Divas belt generates traffic!

Here's my site stats for the last week or so in terms of Google searches leading to my page:

1. 32% wwe divas belt
2. 20% wwe diva belt
3. 11% divas belt
4. 6% new wwe divas belt
5. 5% wwe divas title belt
6. 5% wwe divas championship belt
7. 3% new wwe diva belt
8. 3% elitexc belt
9. 2% starfield abbotsford
10. 2% wwe diva's belt
11. 2% wwe new diva belt
12. 2% wwe new divas belt
13. 2% amanda falk
14. 2% wwe wrestlemania 24 aspect problems
15. 2% reign in me song starfield
16. 2% bret hart and cheating on his wife
17. 2% michael jenkinson

In short, the new WWE Divas belt is responsible for nearly 90% of my total Google search hits since it debuted on Smackdown a couple of weeks ago. I think the WWE has a winner, if the Internet traffic it's generating is any indication.

The new WWE Divas belt

The talk of the Internet Wrestling Community (tm) is the new WWE Divas title belt that debuts on Smackdown tonight.

Unsurprisingly, everyone seems to hate it.

But, look ... the WWE has discovered that replica championship belts are a big source of merchandising revenue. This design is going to sell bucketloads of toy belts to 12-year-old girls who love John Cena but don't want to buy a spinner belt because it's a "boy's" title.

And, frankly, I don't hate this design. It's strange for a championship belt, that's for sure.

But at least it doesn't spin.

Edge gets PUNK'D

OK, so that's not the most original headline in the world.

But I go away for four days to go camping, and when I come back, C.M. Punk is the World champion on Raw.

Huh.

Well, chalk that up as a surprise. But the new guys have to get elevated eventually, so I'm not unhappy about this development.

Newest Edmonton Eskimos' bloodlines run through WWE

Wrestling-related football story from the Edmonton Sun.

CANOE -- Edmonton Sun: - Newest Edmonton Eskimos' bloodlines run through WWE

Quick WWE Draft thoughts

I'm really tired, so this is going to be very quick.

• Raw just got far more interesting with Hunter off the brand and moving to Smackdown. Unfortunately, at the same time, Raw got far more unwatchable with Michael Cole moving to the announce desk.
• Take the above sentence and reverse it with "Smackdown" "less interesting" "Hunter on the brand," "more watchable" and "Jim Ross." Seriously, Hunter is so stale, and I fear he's going to SD! only to squash Edge. On the other hand, Jim Ross and Mick Foley could become an amazingly good announce team.
• If last night's draft is going to mean anything, it should build for Edge vs. Hunter and Batista vs. Cena for the respective SD! and Raw world titles at Wrestlemania 25.
• Poor Matt Hardy. Poor, poor Matt Hardy.

As for the show-ending angle with Vince being "crushed" by the set ... yawn.

Rest. In. The. Ice. Rink.

This search string led to my site today:

"undertaker at west edmonton mall"

Wrestlemania 24 DVD aspect ratio weirdness

Here's a strange one:

I bought the Wrestlemania 24 DVD. It's in 16x9 widescreen. When I play it on my 17-inch widescreen computer monitor, it plays in 16x9 widescreen. When I play it on my portable widescreen DVD player, it plays in 16x9 widescreen.

But when I put it in either one of the DVD players I have hooked up to our 4x3 resolution televisions, it does NOT play in 16x9 widescreen. Instead, it plays in perfectly cropped 4x3 standard TV aspect ratio.

Now, I have a lot of widescreen movies in my DVD collection. All of them play in 16x9 widescreen format with the black bars on my regular 4x3 TVs.

But not Wrestlemania 24. And I've fiddled with the TV/DVD settings on the DVD players to get it to play in 16x9, and it won't.

It's almost like the DVD auto-senses what the aspect ratio of the screen is and adjusts the DVD accordingly.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Scott Keith's new book: Dungeon of Death

A free plug for my buddy Scott Keith, who has a new book coming out soon on Chris Benoit called Dungeon of Death.

More details and a look at the cover available on his blog.

Raw rating slips to 2.9

wwe triple H
Originally uploaded by DBZ fusion

Gee. Wonder why?

WWE has brief moment of self-realization

WWE: Top 25 Most Annoying Gimmicks

I have to say, I strongly disagree with Numbers 15, 9 and 2.

Crazy Raw booking explained

William Regal suspended for 60 days.

See, there's a logical explanation for anything ... including last night's illogical Raw.

I mean, I'm a wrestling fan, too ...

WWE RAW
Originally uploaded by rockhoward001

... but not like this.

The new WWF logo

Wrestling fans will get the joke. Everyone else can enjoy all the other great content found here!

Tip of the hat to Bits & Pieces.

An interview with Scott Keith

A good interview with my buddy Scott Keith is linked from here. Scott is the author of several good books on professional wrestling, and has a new book coming out on Chris Benoit.

WHAT!? Hillary, Obama and McCain really on Raw?

WWE has been advertising Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama on Raw tonight. No one believed it, but then this video leaked.

This may be the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. Who knew American politicians could do wrestling catchphrases?

Before They Were Stars - Batista vs. Brock Lesnar

From their days in Ohio Valley Wrestling:

Ric Flair Appreciation Night

Eh, well, it was fun while it lasted. Apparently, fan-cam footage shot from the nose-bleed sections of a WWE live event now violates the WWE's copyright.

Sometimes it can be Shakespeare

Tonight's tribute to Ric Flair on Raw was one of the best things the WWE has ever put on television.

Very classy and emotional send-off for Flair. Well done, WWE. Well done.

Best. Wrestlemania. Ever.

Quick Wrestlemania 24 thoughts:

That was a thumbs up show if I ever saw one. I'd venture to say that top to bottom, that was the best Wrestlemania show I've ever seen (and I've seen them all). The Citrus Bowl turned out to be a great venue that really magnified the majesty and importance of the event. The guys all had their working shoes on. And with only a couple of exceptions, the matches were all very good to downright great. I watched it at the West Edmonton Mall theatres on the big screen in high def, and the show looked awesome that way. The place was PACKED (sold out earlier today), and the crowd was pretty hot for everything.

• The Belfast Brawl was short, but intense. Good stuff.
• The ladder match was an entertaining spotfest. The Matt Hardy run-in popped the WEM theatre crowd big-time. Having CM Punk win was an interesting twist. I just hope he doesn't cash it in for the ECW title. Really good match.
  
• Batista looked like he tore every muscle in his back on that power bomb. Another good match. Umaga is a very underrated worker.
  
• Kane. Yup. Worst match of the night just by the virtue of it being so short.
  
• "I'm sorry ... I love you." Awesome. Flair-Michaels was the match of the night, and one of the all-time great Mania moments.
  
• The women's match was almost saved by the blackout. Not offensive.
  
• Having Orton retain the title was hardly the worst booking decision ever made. At least Hunter didn't win. Plus, I've turned the corner on Randy. He's a great heel champion. They should keep the belt on him as long as possible. Another very good match.
• The Big Show-Mayweather match was way better than it had any right to be. Very entertaining and well done.
• Edge and Undertaker put on a far better match than I expected. The crowd at WEM erupted when Taker put on the gogoplata, and absolutely exploded when Edge tapped. Maybe Bryan Alvarez will now admit that the move is over. Great match, and very satisfying to see Edge get the headline spot on such an enormous show.

WWE Hall of Fame Liveblogging!

OK, we've got the HOF already lined up in its streaming window, ready to start at 5:30. The desktop computer is ready to go. The laptop is sitting nearby. The festivities begin in about 10 minutes.

5:35 ... Well, things haven't started yet. I guess the WWE means business when they say "Approximately 7:30 ET."

5:45 ... still waiting ...

5:55 ... Are we having fun yet? ...

5:57 ... Apparently, the delay is due to the WWE taping the inductions of Rocky Johnson and Peter Maivia by the Rock for TV first. Then when that's done, the webcast will begin.

6:06 ... At this rate, I'm worried that Mae Young won't live long enough to see her own induction ...

6:17 ... For the last 5 minutes or so, the HOF graphic showing up in Windows Media Player has simply said "Coming Soon." Oh joy.

6:22 ... Still no stream from WWE.com. Now I feel bad for making fun of TNA on Thursday night.

OK, not really.

6:28 ... If there's any good news here, it's that this delay is doing wonders for my hits and page views, as frustrated WWE fans try to find out what's going on with the HOF stream.

6:32 ... YAY! IT'S STARTED!

6:37 ... Jack and Jerry Brisco kick off the webcast portion. Virtually everyone has commented on the ridiculousness of putting the Briscos in together as a tag team, when Jack Brisco is more than worthy of being inducted as a singles wrestler due to being one of the great wrestlers of the 1970s and a former two-time NWA World champion. Jerry Brisco ... not so much. Yes, the tag team was the high point of his career, and he's an entertaining loyal McMahonite, but HOF material? Not quite.

JBL kicks off the Briscos induction by slamming the Rock for talking so long that Ric Flair had sobered up. It was meant to be funny, but came across as mean-spirited. Plus, none of us saw it.

Why, when it comes to tag-team wrestling, does JBL have this weird obsession with the Simpsons? I mean, I've been a big wrestling fan for most of my life, and I barely remember those geeks from Texas.

6:46 ... OK, I've pretty much turned around on JBL's induction speech. He won me over by the sheer force of his charisma, even if there were too many off-color jokes.

6:57 ... Jack gave a nice, understated speech largely thanking other people for his great career. Jerry makes some insider comment to Jericho about having 2 minutes for his match on Sunday night and works in an insider gay joke about Jim Barnett. After that, Jerry also gave a nice - if slightly overly long - speech recapping his career and talking about the importance of giving back to the community. Nicely done, gentlemen.

Miz can take off that goofy hat, please.

7:01 ... While I watch the induction video for Gordon Solie, it reminds me why I love the WWE Hall of Fame show so much: it's because for years the WWE completely erased the history of wrestling unless it was done under the WWWF/WWF/WWE banner. But now that Vince has a virtual monopoly on the industry and owns most of the tape libraries, the HOF serves as the WWE's acknowledgment of the REAL history of wrestling - that there was wrestling - successful wrestling - done outside of the control of Vince McMahon. And that's really cool.

That said, I always thought Solie was over-rated as an announcer.

7:15 ... Jim Ross gave the expected great induction speech for Solie. It is going to be a sad say when Ross is no longer with the WWE. Jim Barnett made another appearance tonight, having been referenced in both induction speeches tonight, despite being dead and not being inducted. Nice of Jim to mention Gary Hart. Maybe the WWE will induct Gary Hart next year, considering Mania is in Texas.

The acceptance speech by Solie's family was quickly interrupted by a moron who yelled "speak up!" about 5 seconds into the speech. And the heckling continued from there. Brutal. OK, the son who accepted wasn't the most charismatic person on the planet but have some class and let him give his speech.

7:20 ... OK, the second son made a terrible US election/wrestling joke that deserved to get booed.

7:21 ... Mae Young. I have such low expectations for this induction. Having Pat Patterson induct her was a MUCH better choice than the rumored original choice, Stephanie McMahon.

7:23 ... I'm sorry, but the highlight of this induction so far was the crowd shot of Victoria.

7:27 ... The most polite thing I can say about Patterson's induction speech is that he reminds me of a terrible lounge act in Vegas - the guy who thinks he's funny but really isn't.

And no sooner did I post that, then Pat broke out into song, and he has a halfway decent singing voice.

7:29 ... Mae Young is either extremely senile or extremely drunk.

7:32 ... I'm a bit worried about this speech going long because Mae is only up to the Bronze Age.

7:34 ... Candice Michelle is decked out in a fashionable shoulder bandage.

7:35 ... OK, Mae Young had her moment. She had her fun. Let's move on.

7:37 ... Eddie Graham is up next. This one could be interesting, as I actually don't know a lot about Eddie, and, of course, growing up in Winnipeg, it wasn't that easy to get Championship Wrestling from Florida on the local cable ...

7:41 ... I can't wait for the unedited DVD of this, as Dusty Rhodes also commented on how long the Rock talked. That must have been either the best speech in history, or a trainwreck of monumental proportions. Given that it was THE ROCK giving the speech, I'd venture on the side of awesomeness.

7:45 ... This is a compliment, albeit in a backhanded way ... but Dusty Rhodes is such a great talker, that you actually have to concentrate closely on what he's saying to realize that his induction speech on Eddie Graham is actually more about how great Dusty Rhodes is.

7:50 ... Mike Graham is trying to honour his dad, and these stupid wrestling fans keep yelling random things at him. Unbelievable.

7:52 ... Mike's donation of the photo of the first NWA meeting was a nice touch.

7:54 ... And that's it for now. Assuming The Score shows the TV portion of the show, I'll be back liveblogging that later. If not, thanks for reading.

Tonight's WWE Hall of Fame plans

I'm going to try to live blog the Internet and then TV portions of the WWE Hall of Fame ceremonies tonight. Tune in at 7:30 ET for the festivities ... all four of you who regularly read my blog.

It's Wrestlemania weekend!

The biggest wrestling weekend of the year has already started in Orlando, what with the TNA tapings, ROH shows, and tonight, things really kick into gear as the WWE Hall of Fame show is on, with the first portion being broadcast on WWE.com.

I'm willing to bet that the Hall of Fame show does not crash the WWE's servers, unlike, say, the TNA experience from Thursday night.

I know that the Americans get the last hour of the Hall of Fame ceremonies on USA Network. Is it getting any Canadian TV coverage at all? Anyone?

EDIT: Apparently, the TV portion of the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony is going to be on the Score tonight.

From bad to worse for Jeff Hardy

First the suspension.

Now his house burns down.

A final thought on Jeff Hardy's suspension

Of course, this 60-day suspension means Jeff's push in the WWE is basically over now. I mean, he's been suspended twice. And who on earth would put the WWE title on a guy who is such a problem?

This is cool

This is a rare convergence of my love for pro-wrestling with my love for Christian rock music:

Rockers Disciple Land Song On New WWE Album; Gain Support From WWE Stars Hawkins And Ryder

The WWE's "Moron of the Month" is ...

Jeff Hardy

As my good friend Scott Keith said, "Way to screw up your big push, Jeff."

Controversial Tell-All Book Reveals Wrestling Fans Are Fake

This is a repost from my old blog. But it's still very funny.


Controversial Tell-All Book Reveals Wrestling Fans Are Fake

Liveblogging Monday Night Raw

For something completely different ...

I'm going to try to live-blog Monday Night Raw tonight. All the fun begins in 15 minutes, when the Score starts the show...

7:05 - The Score is showing highlights of the WWE press conference today with Floyd Mayweather, and one of the first things they show is a dude wearing a UFC hat. Well done. Big Show looks very dapper in a suit.

7:18 - William Regal wants a photo-op with Cena, Orton and Triple-Haich (sic) for "prosperity."

7:23 - Cena stands nose-to-nose with Hunter ... which means, of course, that Cena is in the ring and Hunter is half-way up the ramp.

7:25 - Opening segment ends with Orton laying out Cena and Hunter. I suspect next week will see Cena lay out Orton and HHH, and then the week after, HHH will triumph over Orton and Cena. Oh, wait, he did that last week.

7:28 - The Score's sports cutaway just compared the Leafs vs. Senators game to Hulk Hogan vs. Iron Mike Sharpe.

7:32 - Santino and Carlito vs. WWE tag champions Bob Holly and Cody Rhodes. Please, let Santino and Carlito win the tag belts here.

7:35 - Phooey. Rhodes and Holly won. The match wasn't that great.

7:45 - Highlights of the Floyd Mayweather and Big Show build for Wrestlemania, and today's WM 24 press conference in LA. I would absolutely LOVE this feud if I could figure out why Big Show is the heel and Floyd Mayweather - the outsider, interloping, midget boxer - is supposed to be the babyface. That would be FLOYD "MONEY" MAYWEATHER, the BIGGEST HEEL IN BOXING RIGHT NOW! He's the BABYFACE in this feud.

7:46 - Tonight's main event - Cena and HHH vs. Kennedy and Orton. Reminds me of Sesame Street - one of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong ...

Hey, Chris Jericho wants in the Money in the Bank match at Mania. He gets to face Jeff Hardy. Well, that should be a good match at least.

7:58 - Chris Jericho vs. Jeff Hardy ... Commercial break. Good match so far.

8:07 - Jericho wins! Great finishing sequence.

OK, while that was a fine match, I wish the WWE would stop having Intercontinental champion Hardy and U.S. champion MVP continually losing all these non-title matches while never having them defend their titles. The secondary belts in the company mean virtually nothing as it without adding to this problem. I mean, Jericho just beat the IC champion clean, and I'll bet $100 that next week on Raw, he does NOT get an IC title shot.

8:12 - Wrestlemania is in Orlando this year. That would be, Orlando, Florida. One of the theme songs for Mania this year is by the Red Hot Chili Peppers ... a song called SNOW.

Alrighty then.

8:16 - Yay. It's the weekly Hornswaggle soap opera segment. Wake me when it's over.

8:28 - UMANGA! vs. D.H. Smith. I suspect the match will be over by the time I finish typing and uploading this.

8:30 - Young Mr. Smith lasted about 2 minutes longer than I thought he would. I believe the D.H. stands for "designated hittee."

8:32 - It's Crumpet and Tea Hour with William Regal, and Paul and Katie Burchill. Can someone please put the closed-captioning on so I can understand them?

8:39 - Currently on CNN-Sports Illustrated: Mayweather goes from WBC to WEE.

WEE?

Oh yeah, Shawn Michaels is wrestling Lance Cade. This is interesting only because Cade was a student at Michaels' wrestling school a few years ago.

8:46 - Ric Flair challenges Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania. I like Lance Storm's idea for this match: everyone thinks Michaels is going to win and retire Flair, so have Flair win instead, and then announce he's retiring.

8:55 - Yay! The WWE is putting the Maivia-Johnson family in the Hall of Fame! And the Rock will be inducting them! Awesome.

8:59 - With just the main event to go, I'm shutting down for the night. Time to get the kids to bed ...

WEE?

wbcwee
Originally uploaded by mjenkinson

Sports Illustrated gets its acronyms mixed up. But, seriously, you'd never see SI.com get "NFL" wrong in a headline.

WWE: Insert headline here

 

A funny little blooper on the back cover of the WWE's 2007 Survivor Series DVD. While it is factually correct to say that the extras on the disc will come from Monday's TV, that really should have been removed in favour of, you know, what extras from Monday's TV were put on the disc.

Buy Hulk Hogan's destroyed title belt

An actual ring-used WWF title belt that was worn by Hulk Hogan is up for sale on eBay. It's being sold by PawNtheSandman, who I can vouch for as a real person who is a serious collector of championship belts.

Background on the belt, courtesy of the auction:

On October 31, 1989, at WWF Saturday Night's Main Event XXIV, The Genius defeated WWF Champion Hulk Hogan by count out. Hogan was counted out after Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig hit Hogan in the back with the WWF title belt. After the match, Mr. Perfect stole Hulk's WWF championship belt.

Later that night, Mr. Perfect came out with the belt, and proceeded to destroy the belt with a hammer to send a message to Hulk Hogan.

For years after that night, many people wondered what happened to that belt. Many people believed it was simply thrown away. Numerous others believed the WWF Hardcore Title was made from the same belt destroyed that night in 1989.

Now we know the truth.

After being destroyed, Hulk Hogan's WWF belt, and as many of the pieces that could be found, were collected and eventually ended up in the private collection of then WWF referee/booker Mel Phillips. Mel maintained possession of the belt until I acquired it through his estate sale.

UFC 81

Tonight is UFC 81, featuring the very hyped debut of former WWF champion Brock Lesnar, who is facing ex-UFC heavyweight champ Frank Mir.

This was a show that for the longest time I had planned to buy. About a week ago, I changed my mind and decided I would skip this show.

It basically boiled down to deciding that watching Brock Lesnar's first UFC fight wasn't worth $45.

I have absolutely no doubt that I am in the minority on this one, because the buzz for tonight's show is gigantic, and UFC has very smartly cross-promoted the fight to WWE fans to get them to buy the show.

Bully for UFC. But I'm not plunking down $45 for a one-match show ... particularly when that match has the high potential to be a three-round snoozefest.

The secondary consideration in skipping the show tonight was that the only title fight is Tim Sylvia facing off against ex-Pride heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira - and it's for the interim UFC heavyweight championship. (Interim, of course, because of the contractual standoff with Randy Couture, who remains the official UFC heavyweight champion for the time being.)

I have and will continue to pay for UFC title fights - even interim titles on occasion. (I bought the December show, which featured the interim welterweight title match of GSP and Matt Hughes.) But Tim Sylvia is hardly the most entertaining fighter in UFC, and this match is nearly guaranteed to be a five-round snorer.

Bottom line for me: I'm figuring there's not going to be $45 worth of entertainment out of this show. And if I'm wrong, I can buy the DVD for $25 in a couple of months.

Now ... the April show in Montreal featuring George St. Pierre unifying his interim welterweight title against welterweight champion Matt Serra ... nothing will stop me from watching that show on pay-per-view.

Cool findings on the Interweb

WWE referee Charles Robinson has his own Flickr photo collection.

Some neat pictures in his collection.

Raw in HD in Canada = Raw in SD like last week

OK, I knew that because I don't have HD capabilities at home that I wasn't going to get Raw last night in glorious high definition. But I at least expected The Score to give us the 16:9 feed in standard definition.

Wrong.

Instead, we got a cropped 4:3 version of the show.

Oh well ...

Raw in HD for thee but not for me

The big news in the pro-wrestling world is, of course, the fact that the WWE's flagship show, Raw, moves to high definition tonight.

As someone who watches the majority of his television on either crappy 15-inch set in the bedroom or a crappier 27-inch set in the basement - both in very standard definition - I suspect the only difference for me will be the widescreen format and new Raw set.

Edmonton Journal review of Bret Hart's book

Full review is on the Journal's website.

While I enjoyed Bret's book tremendously as a gritty and detailed behind-the-scenes look at his wrestling career, I can't disagree with reviewer Ruth Myles's comment that "Hart slams others for their betrayals, real and perceived, but doesn't hold the mirror up to his own behaviour."

That's true. And it shows up most in the book when he's slamming his then-wife Julie for being cold to him at various points - whether she had jetted out from Calgary to New York or somewhere else to join him at a pay-per-view, only to go shopping during his match, or if she wasn't talking to him when he was home from a grueling road trip. Bret was very quick to point out Julie's perceived failings as a wife, but he was far less likely to admit his failings as a bad husband who was constantly cheating on his wife.

Not to mention, Julie raised their kids virtually alone as a single mother, and not once in the book do I recall Bret praising her for that - or even acknowledging that fact.

It's a shame that for all of Bret's openness in the otherwise brilliant book that he didn't open up a little more for some self-reflection on how his actions hurt his own family.