News and Notes in and Out of the Ring
Lots of things going on in the WWE and wrestling these days, and here are just a few tidbits with some thoughts as we move on getting closer to the Cyber Sunday PPV on November 5th in Cincinnati.
* As it usually goes, another former WWE star has come out, bashing the company as he tries to make an impact with his new employer. Such as the case with Kurt Angle, who gave the WWE a tounge lashing in a 90+ minute conference call earlier this week. Angle had lots to say, and funny now that after leaving the WWE on "good terms" he now is coming out and pretty much stating that he was not happy at all with the position that he was in. There was a ton of negative comments about Vince McMahon and him not letting Angle take time off to address a painkiller addiction, and also not letting him take time off in general. He stated that in TNA there are plenty of "5 star" wrestlers that he can have great matches with, while in WWE there were only a few. I think the most ridiculous statement in the presser was that he is "100 percent healthy," and is ready to go full steam ahead with TNA. Why do I think that as much as I enjoyed Angle and what he brought to the ring night in and night out, he will regret some of what he is saying now just to get over with the second rate TNA.
* For all you bachelors out there - get ready - Torrie Wilson is about to be single again. Wilson disclosed on her MySpace.com page that she and wrestler Billy Kidman are in the stages of a divorce. I can't imagine how tough it would be to stay working for a company that fired your husband. Here is a portion of the story on her page: "Well, I have decided to let you in on a secret that I have been holding in for much too long. I am very heartbroken to say that I am in the stages of a divorce. It makes me incredibly sad to say this and I hope that you will respect me and my privacy at this really difficult time. This is just something that has been eating at me for some time now, and I feel it's best to hear it straight from me rather than read it somewhere else. I think I have made things harder on myself by pretending that everything is fine and dandy to the outside world. I just pray that by opening up about this now, it might be easier to move forward in my life journey." Gee, wonder how many guys will be in line to get a date with the Playboy Diva?
* Picked up the new Hulk Hogan Anthology DVD set yesterday at Best Buy for just $20. It's three disks of wrestling and comes with a bonus "Hogan Knows Best" disc as well. Got most of the way through the first disc, which included possibly my all-time favorite Hogan match - the "War to Settle the Score" between he and Roddy Piper at Madison Square Garden on February 18th 1984. The match was the setup for the first WrestleMania main event, which is also on the first disc. The most rare match on the 3 has to be a match between Hogan and the late Curt Henning from the short lived XWF wrestling group that Hogan was a part of in Florida. Overall the four disks are easily worth the $20 that most retailers are selling it for.
* Pretty much everyone knows that the "Cyber Sunday" main event will be for nothing more than to set up this years main event at Survivor Series in Philadelphia. The RAW team vs the SmackDown team vs the ECW team. These types of matches always look good on paper, but usually come out flat and in the end fail to live up to the hype. The match might be better this time around as its basically just three men on each team. The Raw team will be John Cena and DX. SmackDown is King Booker, Rey Mysterio and Batista, and ECW is Big Show, RVD and Sabu. Again, great on paper, but we'll see how it plays out in the end.
* "The Marine" with John Cena finished 6th this past week at the theaters, and you can bet that with all the hype on WWE TV that is not where the company thought it would be. Here's the problem from where I see it - it's a bad movie. There have been some bad movies with wrestlers, but from everything I have read (I have yet to see it), this is not a very good flick. Movies.com gave it a "D" rating, with the following commentary: "When a movie is this stupid and unconcerned with reality, the goal posts get moved. Is it fun anyway? Are there enough brutal killings? Enough car chases? Enough fireballs? Is the block-of-granite star ridiculously indestructible? And the answer here is yes. It sucks and yet it doesn't, you know?" The one positive review that I could find came from the SF Chronicle - "The genius of the film is in its unapologetically obvious crowd-pleasing moments. There's a hot girl-on-hot girl catfight, for example, that goes on just long enough for you to get some popcorn, validate your parking ticket, move to another lot and get back in time for the last of the hair pulling." I just hope that in th future with these WWE films that we can stop spending 10-15 minutes per show with preview after preview and interview after interview with each and every actor or actress in the film.
