I seriously doubt it was Big Show. He is FAR from a main event talent right now and this is a main event type storyline. My guess is that Flair's announcement was that he is joining Smackdown. I doubt we'll see Goldberg for at least a couple more months. They haven't even started negotiating with him, and the negotiations are going to be protracted. We'll see...anything is possible in the WWE.
Big Show, HHH, and Booker T would all be way too obvious. I think it's definitely someone out of the loop (ala Rikishi/scsa). Could it be Scott Steiner? Also, hasn't this happened to HBK before? Didn't x-pac do this to him awhile back?
Or maybe...it'll be someone that's too obvious because the WWE was trying to throw us off track by thinking that it couldn't be someone obvious. ...
I think it will be the Big Show. As much as I hate to say it, they try to make most things very obvious because many of their fans are r****ded hillbillies. That is why WWE beat WCW by playing to the lowest common denominator. Anyone see beyond the mat? Remember the kid who said, "Goldberg? He's just a Stone Cold wannabe."? That is wrestlings target audience. Some of us educated folk like it, to be sure. But it doesn't go after us. It wants that kid. I miss some of the stars from the WCW. Goldberg, the Steiners, Bobby the Brain Heenan, Blitzkrieg, Van Hammer, all the old nWo black and white guys, Sting. Why the WWE dropped Buff Bagwell, I can't figure out. They gave him no push. When he turned babyface on WCW he was just starting to blow up. Oh well. I'm afraid that they would all just become cartoonish when brought to the WWE though, like Booker T. Maybe RAW will become something like Nitro was when Bischoff was running things over there and pushed the WWF to the brink of collapse. Vince Russo sucks. He killed the WCW, he almost killed the WWF before that, and he will likely as not kill whatever promotion he is running now. The powers that be was the beginning of the end for WCW, and that was all Vinne Ru. Who are you guys favorites right now, not counting the eye candy? I would have to rank them: 1. Hogan (always) 2. 'Taker 3. Rey Mysterio Jr. 4. Devon and Bautista 5. Bubba 6. Booker T and Golddust (I know I said he was too cartoony, but with Golddust he can pull it off) 7. Bischoff 8. The Anti-Americans (great heels) 9. The Rock (his messing with the interviewers is great) 10. Jeff Hardy
I think Russo has some good ideas, he just needs a filter, like what McMahon did when he was in the WWF. Russo was in a concussion and had nothing to do with the final year or so in wCw. But some of his ideas...Arquette *shudders*...eww. Even though that did get wCw on USA today, it diminished the belt greatly.
It was marty jannety. just kidding. I think it was a Smackdown! person. They'll show up on Raw next week.
Buff was dropped because he was a bad worker. I will bet that it isn't the Big Show, way too obvioius. I mean, who would have suspected Rikishi? I think it will be Steiner. Oh, Van Hammer sucked.
Part of WWE's strength during their amazing run in the late 1990s was a happy lockerroom. Backstabbing in the lockerroom is a BIG part of what killed WCW. Buff Daddy was brought in and immediately started being extremely unprofessional in the lockerroom. That is why they canned him. That is also why they canned Scott Hall and Curt Hennig. True...but the damage had already been done. Things had gotten so bad that the sale of WCW was a foregone conclusion. Time Warner had basically given up on it. It was sick when Russo came on board...but he put it into the ICU. Remember that for the last 6 to 9 months of WCW, they were working on selling it to Fusient Media or to Mandalay Entertainment. Mandalay stopped pursuing it early on. Sadly, the Fusient deal looked done, but fell apart literally at the last minute. Enter Vince McMahon.
I certainly hope not. They have really started to gut the Smackdown roster. Any more big defections and they'll have a real problem on Thursday nights. Not to mention that they need to create angles for the talent that is already on the Raw roster. Due to the Bisch vs. Steph angle, many good talents are languishing right now...not good.
Yea, I was following that like crazy. The whole merge was history...but my satellite screwed up so I missed it! I really didn't want them to merge. Competition makes the products better. Now if only another company can get enough fans... And you gotta admit, even if some of the things in wCw were in fact stupid and idiotic, at least with Russo there, some of the ratings went up. Maybe like a point or so.
I don't really think all of that can be attributed to Russo. Bisch came back and there was a rebirth of the nWo. I also think that competition would be great for the business. It will NOT come from NWA:TNA though. There will have to be a group with tons of cash to sign big talent and major TV outlets at their disposal. Two owners have been rumored to be interested that fit this description. 1) Rupert Murdock. The FOX mogul could run programming on any of a dozen national cable channels, in addition to the FOX broadcast network. 2) Ted Turner. Seems like old Ted never wanted to get rid of WCW. He disagreed (angrily according to reports) with the companies decision to drop WCW programming and sell the promotion. WCW was at its best when Ted was making all the personnel decision. When he sold his entertainment properties to Time Warner all of that changed. It was not too far later that WCW programming started going downhill. Well it seems that Ted is ready to go to war again. At least that's what I read a few months ago.
What's amazing is that the wwe's current ratings are lower than when wcw was competing with them. I'm sure the diehard wcw fans never bothered to watch wwe, but I think Vince has certainly lost some fans. I think Goldberg could provide at least a temporary ratings spike.
Great talent. The WWE would have been well advised to throw him an offer. There are many of us who would watch Raw live and tape the late night replay of Nitro. Vince may have lost some fans, but many of them are in the teenage demographic. Have you seen the attention span of the average teenage male these days? They'll be back in time...
I was just going through this post to see what people wrote, and I came upon this, Dave. You said you went to the Live Smackdown, that was on 9/13/01, 2 days after 9/11. Weren't people still in shock and disbelief of what happened in NY? I'm surprised they held something that day....but that's what you get w/ the WWE.....
I hope something comes about from those two really soon, because the WWE is running out of things to do....same ol repetitive stories. I thought the DX thing would of spiced things up, but that went very well on Raw....
I was also at that show and it was exactly what people needed in order to get their minds off of what had happened if only for a couple of hours. The atmosphere was electric, and I heard the first USA chants at a wrestling event since the Iron Shiek left the squared circle.
I think that Vince was using the DX tease to set up a larger storyline. I think things will get interesting soon enough.
I watched it on tv. It took place at Compaq, I remember. Yes, I know it was still "fake" and was probably still for ratings, but tears still fill my eyes when I think of that day. Vince's speech was great. I wish I could hear it again. It was very pro-American and very relevant, imo. Very proud to be an American.
