It has been quite the week for the WWE, as they get set to conclude the last TV show of the week with SmackDown tonight, which was taped Tuesday in Peoria, IL. The show will wrap up the "SmackDown Sprint," which will decide the challenger for Batista for the Royal Rumble. It's a different concept, which is cool, and opens up a door for a new challenger for the belt. So far Ken Kennedy has the "lead" in the competition, and tonight we will find out if another wrestler is able to better his time. On the RAW side, expect Monday night to have an official announcement for Cena-Umaga II with some sort of stip thrown in.

I guess for some strange reason the WWE actually is a bit upset this week with the notion that no one really picked up on the Rosie vs Trump garbage that they ran on Monday night. From what is being said, Vince McMahon for some reason really felt that the national media, even in a joking manner, would run some sort of footage of it on some national news or news magazine shows. That was not the case. Howard Stern was the only one that talked about it, and that was brief and he bashed it up and down, and for good reason, because it was awful and had no business taking up 20 minutes of the biggest TV of the week for the company.

There has been some internal talk this week about a WrestleMania match pitting Kahli vs Hogan. I recall writing about this sometime ago that I thought if done right, Kahli would be the perfect guy to go up against Hogan in the 20th anniversary of Hogan beating Andre at WrestleMania III at the Silverdome. I think at that time though I was a bit unaware of just how bad Kahli was, but I still contend if they build Kahli up right with this monster push on RAW, then have something short and sweet at Mania, it can work. The talk from day one was that Hogan would face Big Show, but with Show taking a long break, they may have to shift plans and get another huge wrestler in there to recreate the match from 1987.

Jim Ross wrote in his latest blog that with Steve Austin's movie coming out in late April, you can expect him to make an appearance at WrestleMania in some form. Last year at Mania all Austin did was show up at the Hall of Fame show the evening before Mania and intro Bret Hart for the Hall of Fame. It would be nice in some way, shape of form if he actually makes an appearance this year in the ring, not wrestling of course, but at least comes out and gives the fans a beer bath.

Speaking of Mania, the night before the WWE will have its annual Hall of Fame induction. There are a lot of wrestlers that are deserving, as usual, but here are a few that I could see getting big time consideration for 2007: Ricky Steamboat, Randy Savage & Elizabeth, Dusty Rhodes, Jake Roberts, The Road Warriors, The British Bulldogs, Austin, The Rock, King Kong Bundy, Hillbilly Jim, Honkey Tonk Man, Rick Martel. Those are just some of the names that I think you could make a case for. With the Mania III anniversary being pushed this year, it would be perfect for Steamboat and Savage to go in after what may have been the greatest Mania match ever 20 years ago. Roberts would be perfect as well, and with that you can have Alice Cooper, who was in is corner at Mania, go in as the celeb. Of course Rock and Austin would be the headline name(s) if they were picked this year, but I think they will wait on those. They always do a solid job with this, but I think there are some can't miss names out there this year.