Category: digressing

SportsLine weights $39.78mil offer (South Florida Biz)

Viacom (which owns CBS) already owns 38% of SportsLine shares and SportsLine is otherwise in debt to them; Viacom agreed to push back a previous deal for SportsLine to pay them back in stocks and cash now so they could do this deal, and without a last minute investor, they’ve got no real choice but to take the money.

Viacom would buy 26.52mil shares at $1.50 each, but has surged to 1.63 on the news. I dunno what changes to the site would be made after, though one would lean down to scaled down operations if anything.

At least they didn’t go bankrupt? I do like their real time scoreboard stuff.

Scott mentioned it Tuesday, and the lineup’s over on PWTorch, but I’ll save you some gunk.

– Samoa Joe (c) squashes Colt Cabana [ROH]
– Punk/Steel vs Maff/Whitmer [street fight]
– Homicide/Rocky Romero vs Briscoes
– Doug Williams vs Austin Aries
– American Dragon vs John Walters

(many others scheduled to appear – I’ll pick out Chad Collyer.)

The people in the US indy scene (so excluding lucha guys and whatever category Ultimo Dragon is in) I’d actually pay to see at this point are American Dragon, Spanky, various combinations of the Havana Brothers and Bobby Quance. There’s a some guys which I’d be eager if not as excited to see, like Collyer and Colt Cabana based on the last time I’ve seen them.

This card has a decent amount of those people…but I’m not enthused about the matchups. I have no particular feelings about John Walters, so I don’t care much about the matchup and it pales in comparision to the NJPW-LA Rocky/Dragon rematch Wisconsin’s getting, which might’ve been enough to get me to go alone.) I dunno that tag match is the Rocky Romero match I’m looking for. And I’ve got the impression that once you’ve seen Samoa Joe kill a mid card guy, the next time he faces one will be an awful lot the same.

I’m not sure what this needs to get me more excited. It’s just not clicking yet.

BTW, I’m sure I’m way overrating Quance and once I get around to seeing more of his work, I’ll be sad. But till then it’s all great.

99% Unrelated: If, as Dave says, the WWE is going to create a Middle Eastern team to annoy me (but surely cause an Iron Sheik return to thrill Tan!), instead of using an Italian guy and Jimmy Snuka’s son, why not use Daivari? He’s already got the gimmick down.

This story really hasn’t hit the “mainstream” wrestling media, so I’m gonna repeat it, correct a little bit and expand on it from over on the CMLL side.

The current main event angle in CMLL led to a six way cage match, with the last man out losing his hair, two weeks ago. Tecnicos/faces Perro Aguayo Jr. and Negro Casas were the last two in, and Aguayo took out Casas and fled for safety. This would normally be angle time, but CMLL doesn’t always follow up on things like this. Unrelatedly, in another match on another show, Vampiro broke his leg and will be out for a few months. But he had a top heel spot – part of that cage match – and so they needed a fill in on the rudo side.

Meanwhile, over in AAA, Hector Garza was upset with AAA promoter/sometime TNA persona Antonio Pena, allegedly for keeping Garza’s TNA pay for himself. Since lucha contracts tend to be very fungible/open things in Mexico, Garza jumped to CMLL to fill the spot, taking Vampiro’s spot on the rudo side of a tag match. (Garza ended up abandoning his partners – but helping fellow recent ex-AAA-er Aguayo turn on Negro Casas as well.) Garza’s also said some not so nice things about Pena in the press, after his move.

The point is, Garza, who’s captian of Team Mexico and still listed as such on TNA’s website, is no longer in AAA. (His AAA profile has been pulled.) After CMLL management (repeatedly) no-showed meetings with TNA, TNA’s said it’ll only deal with AAA for any lucha guys. So Hector Garza should be on his way out…

However, there’s another line coming out that Garza’s got his own individual deal, not signed thru AAA, and he’ll be able to keep on working there. And you’d think AAA wouldn’t be happy with that and threaten to pull out if TNA doesn’t honor it’s talent exclusivity agreement. Either way, it’s hard to imagine Garza and AAA co-existing.

Except – there’s been no talk about a possible situation here, except from lucha people in the know about Garza’s jump. I guess it could be fairly possible TNA doesn’t know anything’s up and won’t know anything’s up till all the parties arrive (or don’t arrive) on Wednesday. But I do expect something to come about from this, rather soon.

(There was also an Observer comment about people starting to get the same bad impression from Heavy Metal as they did Juvi. So maybe two members of Team Mexico would have to be changed.)

• 2 (Rey, Mordecai) for 6 predictions.
• The early lineup was 2 (sorta) of 8 right, so at least I beat that. Chavo Classic leaving explains why there was no Chavos/Rico/Haas tag team title match. I think they’ve given up on Jindrak – or at least don’t see him as anything more than a background character. The Cena/Booker vs RVD/Rene got smushed into one match, and it might have been better if they hadn’t, just to prevent other stuff from being filler.
• Bradshaw vs Eddie has been an interesting TV feud – when it has been interesting, it hasn’t been because of any interaction between them, it’s been Eddie doing Eddie things and Bradshaw being ticked off about CNBC. They’d be insane to drag (and I mean DRAG) it out another seven weeks.
• Knowing that, I’m surprised they didn’t take the US Title off Cena, and maybe they will in the near future. Without doing a title switch on TV, I think the best SD! part of the SummerSlam card is JBL/Cena, Eddie/Undertaker or I guess Mordecai, Undertaker/Heyman or a wrestler stand in. Though I don’t know if Cena should win the big title so soon and I don’t know that he should get another big loss, so there’s a problem.
• Watch free TV to get the explanation about the PPV ending? They’re stealing from TNA! How rude.
• Chavo and Rey getting all that time probably is more a result of not wanting to do a lot of time for a lot of stuff on the show. It’s nice to dream. For self-assuming/boring content purposes, I actually grabbed all the SD! show dates from now till SummerSlam to What If a WWE Super J tournament, but I found out there’s a lot of shows, and it’s possible they haven’t announced the last few yet. Plus they like to cancel things. Plus it’s fantasy booking. Plus I haven’t gotten to it.
• I don’t think there’s anything that happened that people are going to be kicking themselves for not seeing.
• It probably wasn’t feasible because of HBK’s schedule, but they really should’ve made the HitC PPV the last of this three in four weeks PPV bit. Because I could see someone
• They should’ve built up the Bull Rope match more than “hey! it’s a object you can hit someone with!” before Sunday. Like, instead of Holly nonsensically beating Jindrak, his arrogance catches up to him and a smaller person catches him by surprise for a three count, then they do a Bull Rope example match the next week, with Jindrak’s power/size giving him a huger than normal advantage because of the gimmick, which plays into Bradshaw/Eddie.
• I wonder how giving away the show free to military is going to affect the buy rate numbers. The deal is, if you want it for free, you buy it like normal and send your bill in. Does that mean it’ll show up as a buy when they do the numbers?
• Either way, it’s still going to be the lowest number in some time.

TLC to hold FOX reality show contest to replace Lisa Lopez (Boston.com)

I can kinda see it because what else are T & C going to do but this seems like such a bad idea. Replacing a dead person is always iffy, replacing a dead person with someone who’s got no more cred than winning a reality show seems horrible. But they’re gonna get enough press out of it to sell some albums for the first CD, I’d guess.

Amazingly, this competition with another planned show that’s going to do the same for INXS.

I never did talk about the press confrence? Blame it on the baseball mood I’m in.

Mostly, they threw out a lot of ideas

– As one of the bigger Tough Enough supporters, I’m really dislike this idea of Tough Enough on SmackDown! The problem with the normal episodes of Tough Enough is you couldn’t get a read on anyone but the two or three people who got (edited) storylines that episode. Even if they cut down the particpants, there’s no way 5-7 minutes per week is going to give you any idea who’s worthwhile and the whole contest turns into whoever the editors think looks best in video packages. It’s less a competition and more a multi week long form vignette build up for whoever they choose, and that doesn’t seem to make for intersting TV.

Scaia has floated idea for the Diva Search turning into angles, but since there’s a stated big money contract already, I think they’d get in too much trouble if it was or turned in to one. Since nothing’s been announced here, there’s not that problem, and I think they should use it. If we’re only going to end up picking who they people deciding things want us to pick, why not use it as a vehicle to introduce a new character from OVW? Fill out the “trainees” with indy guys to make the OVW guy look good and build towards a debuting angle, and cover yourself by promising a contract to those indy guys if they impress, but don’t make the mistake of pretending it’s not fixed when talking about it off-TV.

One of the drawbacks to the normal structure of Tough Enough is the characters with the most intersting/wacky traits are often kicked off because those traits. If Tough Enough was worked, instead of a Scott or Wendell or Hawk having a couple weeks invested into them only to get cut, they can actually win, since they’re only characters (and hopefully the real people wouldn’t be as annoying.)

That’s a lemonade out lemon situation, but I still think it’s a bad idea.

– No offense to people not in North America, but when’s the last time a TV show taped not in NA actually was worthwhile? The WCW foregin shows were always filler (but then, so was everyting), the WWF UK PPVs were usually filler, and last RAWs they taped elsewhere are only notable for the contiunally shrinking ratings number Vince Russo claims they got. (How it will be told somewhere around 2010: “They had RAW on three contintents and it got a .00004! That next Tuesday, Vinny Mac came into my office, got down on his hands and knees, and begged ‘Mr. Russo, please save my company! Your multi-million dollar magazines are the only shining light in this barren franchise! Please share your incredible singular genius with this entire company!’ I consented, and the next week, we got a 12.4”)

There’s some curosity interest here – RAW in Japan would be interesting for the reactions, but I don’t see this improving the quality of the shows benefiting from this. I hope I’m wrong. I do suspect they’ll be hot crowds when they try this.

– DVD sales doing huge numbers is a great sign for those of us who like DVDs and old matches being brought back to life. They’re definetly believing there’s a market for these things, and when the WWE finds a market for something, it floods the market. I expect “the Best Of A-Train (a 3 DVD set)” sometime in 2006. Presuming he’s still A-Train then.

Actually, unless the UPN deal is preventing it, they need to get to doing some Best Of SmackDown! DVDs already. While TLC3 is finally making it on a recorded device in the near future, there’s a lot of great stuff that gets left off because it’s not a PPV release and doesn’t fit a narrower biograph.

– I’m sure I love the idea of voting for President of RAW and SmackDown! more than most. But as long as we’re coming up with new ideas for existing talent, I’m usually for it. There’s a lot of potential for goofy campagin speeches and I hope they take advantage of it.

– WWE saying “we don’t expect SpikeTV to pay less for our shows” is a complete positioning statement and I doubt they even believe it, but why give up that position until they have to.

– How many quarters in a row have they talked about the movies they’re doing without having done anything about the moves?

– Somehow, I’m thinking they’ll bring up 4 PPVs in one quarter a lot more next quarter (and next year) than they did here.

WWE Quareterly Investor Teleconfrence – Meltzer

No time to talk, but they actually had a lot of intersting/new info on it for once.

The tell that house show business in the US is bad is when they go out of the country to do shows, so the numbers must look really bad if they’re taping TV out of the country.

Next person, whoever, who regales me with another stupid tale about how when they were in college, they had to use these things called “punch cards” gets punched straight in the nose.

Every single person of a certian age tells the same story about the same punchcards and “technology sure has changed!” is about as a boring story as they come and then they forget they told me and tell me the whole stupid pointless story again and then forget and do it AGAIN and by then I’ve got to leave the room before a multiple homicide takes place.

“And if you’d leave a space in the wrong place, the program wouldn’t work!!!!!” Wow, I’m so unfamiliar with that concept. At all.

It’s a wonderous combination of being annoyed with PUNCHCARD stories – which peoble can’t contain themselves from telling you about if you work in the right jobs, like people constantly telling a cook about some chocolate chip cookies they made in 9th grade home ec – and those who tell me a story and completely forget about telling me it so they tell me it again next being a pet peeve. Lots and lots and lots of hate.

NJPW Inoki TV Debut lineup, PWI (watch for many many many popups or cheat like I did and just read about it on the DVDVR board; NJPW.com does not confirm, but they haven’t bothered to update in a few weeks)

Figured the card would be switched around because of Curry’s injury, but I had no idea:
– Samoa Joe (c) vs Shinya Makabe for the ROH Title
– IWGP Jr. Champion Heat vs Rocky Romero [non-title?]
– American Dragon vs Ultimo Dragon [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! such a dork !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
– Toru Yano vs ???
– Kazuhiro Hamanaka vs ???
C.M. Punk and Vampiro to appear

They had me at Rocky vs Heat, actually.

Expedia says I can get from O’Hare to LAX (via PHX!) and back sameday for $428.30 and I’m almost thinking about it. It’d probably be better if I actually looked at a map to find Santa Monica but hey, that’d be thinking.

At the very least, I’ve gotta get that tape. Anyone get KVMD?

Edit: As noted in the comments, I won’t be going. Was an interesting idea. Still need the tape.

Ralph Wiley – Page 2 Memorial

Tanvir mentioned in the comments back on Monday, and I’ve been kinda felt I should add more since then, but I don’t find much to add.

I liked his columns – Page 2 and back when I used to get SI. I was always curious about his books, though I never actually read them. I didn’t always agree with him. Sometimes his metaphors were too forced, or gimmicks too annoying, or his desires to group different topics outreached his grasp. But the highpoints were so good, even if you disagreed, you’d want to hear his side of the argument.

Which is not different than hundred of other people have managed to say about him this week. Wiley own found his own way to say things. If I’m not doing that, I’m not doing much of a proper eulogy.

I do know one thing; if I ever come up with something half as good “All a man’s got is the integrity of his work”, feel free to off me right there. Wiley’s ability to grab you with a good opening line was vastly underrated.