The Thursday Small-For-All News Report: 02.07.08

Posted by Jeff Small on 02.07.2008

The Apocalypse is Upon Us!

One To Start With…

From Ted in the Comments section from last week's Steve-For-All, "Small would never allow this much reporting in his column."

You're damn right, Ted! If there's one thing I hate in news reports, it's all that pesky news reporting. Seriously, after six news items, I'm spent.

Much love to Cook though for filling in for me last week. While probably unintentional, Steve use of my news report's name is quite a compliment. Here's the guy who made Thursday's known for like two years (or something like that) and for him to take my name was so sweet. I'm so gay.

Eh, Let's Read Another…

From two weeks ago, Peter requested ""Wait for it...

wait for it...

Yes, Yes

WHAMMY!!!"

Please stop this."

To which I will reply, I can't believe you even read that each week. Shit man, it's called an intro. Speaking of which…

Wait for it…


Wait for it…


Keep waiting….


So I must ask, did anyone miss me? At least I don't think I missed much. Let's see:

John Cena miraculously returns from injury early to win the Royal Rumble

Dave Lagana was fired from the WWE and only Byers had the gall to write about it (perhaps he should have been in my Top 20)

ROH makes a couple of cutbacks

JP is still hatin' me

White Lashley made his first UFC appearance. And what happened…



OWNED!!!

I guess I have nothing much to talk about today. Oh wait, I do. First, I can bore you all with the details of my trip to Mohegan Sun (only lost $100). Second, we can use at least three different Chris Benoit jokes to talk about Triple H's "Family Emergency". And last but not least, there's another silly TNA press release to guffaw at.

Guffaw? Gall? Man, where did I learn all these words.

NEWS FROM TITAN TOWERS

Of course the big news of the week is the recent WWE releases. However, I would rather not start on such a negative note. So why not talk about another recent epidemic in the world of the WWE: "family emergencies."

The More You Know

This is a tale of two parts. The first part broke last night while the second newsbit hasn't made the rounds as of yet. According to the main page, "The reason Triple H missed RAW on Monday is because his brother-in-law, Gordon B. Ouellette, passed away at the age of 41. Gordon was married to Triple H's sister, Lynn Levesque."

I really wish JR used better words when describing the reason for Triple H's absence on Raw. They could have easily stated that William Regal banned him from the building (for reasons unknown) or something else along those lines. But by using the words "family emergency", we all started thinking about Triple H's dogs. At least, I did. Thankfully, it was not as extreme as our darkest thoughts believed. Unfortunately for Trips and his sister, there was a loss in the family. While I do not speak for 411Mania, I think we all send our condolences to the Ouellette and Levesque family.

Before the case was closed on Triple H's emergency, some other news regarding HHH's family was revealed. And to all you HHHaters, there's a good chance you will be revoking your condolences. According to Bryan Alvarez, "I don't know if this is the HHH family emergency, but I'm told Steph is pregnant again and due to pop in July."

Yes, HHH's DEMON SPAWN NUMERO DOS! While the world was spared the first time when Stephanie born Aurora Rose (because female wrestling means jack shit), now, there's another chance of HHH, Jr! Remember these words: Wrestlemania L: HHH vs. HHH Jr for the WWE Heavyweight Title.

For the time being, this is strictly only a rumor. At least wait until a more credible 411 News Report (CSONKA, Meehan, hell even Byers) confirms this rumor.

Spring Cleaning

It feels as if every year it starts earlier and earlier. Well, outside of Black Lesnar's name, there hasn't been anyone on the main roster released… as of yet! That's of course a great relief to many people – especially those named Charlie Haas.

We'll talk about Lashley in the next bit. For now let's talk about the names of those developmental workers who are now unemployed. Let's begin (all insight with help from Bryan Alvarez)…

G-Rilla

G-Rilla was fired for not doing anything of note besides being a fatass. That said, who would want to fire this guy?



Ace Steele

Former creative team member Court Bauer was the one behind the signing of Ace. He impressed many people backstage for his accurate portrayal of Donald Trump during last year's McMahon/Trump feud. However, once Bauer was fired months ago, it looked to be the end of the road for Ace. According to Alvarez, there was an idea to use Steele and Colt Cabana as a tag team last summer. Of course, that never happened.

Cassidy Riley

After jumping ship from TNA, Riley signed with the WWE and was given a brothers gimmick with KC James. Sadly for Riley, Stephanie McMahon hated it. Don't feel so bad for Riley. At least, he's not Jobber to the Jobbers on ECW on Sci-Fi.

Roadkill

I think Alvarez says it best. "Roadkill was said to be on the chopping block for a long time. John Lauranitis was his biggest proponent and put him over huge to Vince, saying he could be a great One Man Gang-level heel, plus he could talk. No one has any idea where he determined that since Roadkill had largely done one-word promos his entire career. Vince saw pictures of him and thought he looked great, but then came up with an idea for a 70s-style Polish-American heel from Milwaukee, plus made his shave off his trademark beard. Roadkill did what he could to make it work but it just wasn't him. And then came the day where Vince met this man he'd heard so much about, and discovered he was only about 5'9". When Vince looks down on you physically, that's usually a bad sign for your career unless you're super talented. They still gave him some dark matches and not much came of it, and soon he was history."

Shawn Osbourne and Robert Anthony

Not much about these two are known. Sadly, in a few hours, I will forget they have existed. Pity.

Overall, not much of a loss for the WWE. Sadly, due to his size, G-Rilla probably had the best chance of making the roster, which wouldn't have been pretty. I still think Roadkill should have gotten a chance with Danny Doring during the early days of WWECW. Alas, that didn't happen and I guess it's off to Japan for him. Not that that's a bad thing (it's done wonders for Tomko and A-Train).

But What About His DVD?

As mentioned earlier in the report, Bobby Lashley was finally given his release. We first spoke about this two weeks ago. Since that date, only a few new details have arrived. The big one revolves around something I should have guessed two weeks ago: money, lack thereof. You see, Bobby Lashley wasn't happy with his payout at Wrestlemania 23. For his second Wrestlemania payout, Lashley only made $250,000. He believed that because he was in the largest drawing attraction at the show, he should have made more.

On one hand, Lashley is right: the Battle of the Billionaires match was the biggest mainstream match of the show. It got great press and actually led to plenty of buys for the show (take note, TNA). But here's the thing, the match was known as the Battle of the Billionaires. The mainstream appeal dealt with both Donald Trump's and Vince McMahon's overblown personalities. It really never matter who exactly was in the match. Pick two superstars on the roster, throw in countless promotion by McMahon, have a few heated brawls, and voila – Wrestlemania match! You don't hear Umaga complaining about his pay (probably due to being a savage).

If Only We Were to Blame

From Figure 4 Weekly (I guess Meltzer is on vacation), "ECW writer David Lagana, who had been with the company for years and was at one point the head writer of Smackdown, was fired. The gist of the story is that Stephanie believed that Lagana was responsible for leaking creative and management information to newsletters and websites. They had been watching him closely for years but could never prove it.

The beginning of the end for him took place in May of 2006 during a creative meeting. The writers go over the show and they do a read-through of the script, and then Vince makes all his comments/changes, etc. So Lagana was sitting there at one of the desks on his laptop, and he usually sat in such a position where nobody could see his screen. But on this particular day there were people that could see his screen, and allegedly he was seen sending an e-mail with creative info to one of the major wrestling websites…

[In regards to Ken Kennedy: Illegitimate Son leak] Stephanie blew a gasket and had a meeting with the agents saying there were to be absolutely no leaks and if you were discovered revealing information you would be fired on the spot. That same afternoon, all the writers got laptop upgrades (everyone has a WWE-purchased laptop and Internet phone). The laptops, as it turned out, had shadowing software. Very shortly afterwards, Lagana was fired. The belief among the rest of the crew was that Steph had been feeding him false info on very specific information to see if it would get out, and it did."

Even though I don't speak for 411Mania, I'd offer you a spot in the Small-For-All. It did wonders for Wilcox!

Regardless, it's highly ironic that a week after Lagana was fired, the WWE was able to pull off a massive surprise at the Royal Rumble. I'm not saying that word would have leaked out earlier, but it's still quite amusing. While Lagana will not be remembered for his creative storylines (hell, the only thing I can remember him proposing was Heidenreich: Frozen Nazi), at least, he wasn't as bad as the current TNA creative team.

Finally a DVD I Can Skip!

The WWE has listed the matches for their upcoming "Greatest Superstars of Wrestlemania" DVD, which will only be sold at one major retailer (probably either FYE or Wal-Mart). The matches are as follows:

Hulk Hogan vs. Sgt. Slaughter: WM VII
Bret Hart vs. Yokozuna WM X
The Rock vs. Steve Austin: WM XV
The Rock vs. Hulk Hogan: WM XVIII
Triple H vs. Chris Jericho: WM XVIII
Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho: WM XIX
Batista vs. Triple H: WM XXI
The Undertaker vs. Randy Orton: WM XXI
John Cena vs. JBL: WM XXI
Rey Mysterio vs. Kurt Angle vs. Randy Orton: WM XXII
Edge vs. Mick Foley: WM XXII

Odd-match listing. I don't see any "hidden gems" on this DVD outside of HBK/Chris Jericho (which will probably be released on an upcoming Jericho DVD) and Rock/Hogan (which has to be on his upcoming DVD). Throw in the fact that this DVD leans very heavily on WM21 and WM22 while forgetting WM20 (c'mon, no Rock and Sock vs. Evolution match!) and it's a tad disappointing. Oh and there's no way of a Macho Man match on this DVD! I don't even want to hear about it.

Quick N Dirty WWE Newz

From all the usual sources…

The WWE hired two more Divas! First is Diva Search reject/Playboy Playmate Tayrn Terrell. Expect her to show off her notable acting ability on ECW before being shitcanned in a few months. The second Diva is Alycia Lane, a former Philly news anchor. Alycia is known for assaulting a female police offer in NY and sending bikini pictures of her and her friends to a NFL Network executive.

Johnny Ace and Ty Bailey will be evaluating talent at both OVW and FCW over the next few days. Expect more layoffs in the upcoming weeks. Sadly, there's a better chance of being fired than being promoted during these evaluations.

Chris Masters's 90 Day No-Compete Clause has ended. Masters's roster spot has been filled by this man:




NEWS FROM O-TOWN

As if Pacman Jones Wasn't Bad Enough

From a TNA Press Release, "Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling is offering its first-ever Head Coaching job to Bob Knight, the all-time winningest Division I men's basketball coach known as much for his coaching genius as his fiery temper, who resigned Monday in the middle of the season as the Texas Tech coach."

Why God Why? Look I have nothing against Bobby Knight, but there's no reason why TNA should seriously discuss adding Knight to their roster. As if their roster isn't crowded enough! Add the fact that Knight won't add much publicity to the company as no one takes TNA seriously! Hell, not many take the WWE seriously and that's a profitable company that's been around forever!

Okay okay, the likelihood of this press release is that it's nothing more than a joke. The sad thing is that in TNA there's always a chance that a joke situation (Sharkboy Steve Austin!) turns into a reality.

Quick N Dirty TNA News

From Figure 4 Weekly,

Global Impact DVD features all the TNA matches from the Tokyo Dome and will feature commentary in both English and Japanese. They also have a bunch of touring Japan vignettes, etc.

Badass. This will be my first TNA DVD purchase which says a lot (mainly that I'm a cheap).

Angle did a wacky interview on the Rise Guys radio show in Greenville, SC, saying he expected Bobby Lashley to be the next guy to come to TNA, that he would beat Brock's ass because Brock was a mental midget (he was chiding him here and probably trying to build up a pro-wrestling match in Japan perhaps as well), and that he and John Cena were the two hardest workers that WWE had when he was there.

I love Krazy Kurt Komments. In the same interview, he pushed hard for TNA to sign Lashley, he built to a future MMA match with Brock Lesnar, and still sucked up to John Cena in case his other ventures fail. Got to love a man who covers all of his bases.


COMING ATTRACTIONS

Yes, Yes…

WHAMMY!!!!!!!




For the Thursday Small-For-All News Report, I'm Jeff Small… and you're not!!!!!!!!!!!!!