As soon as the WWE announced the "Greatest Rivalries: Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart" project, I was eager to get my hands on it. It promised to be the perfect mixture of fact and fiction that makes for some of the best professional wrestling.

And sure enough it was. My colleague Keith Harris was first to review the bad boy and confirmed what I had hoped: the DVD was exactly what fans were hoping for.

The emotion both men -- especially Hart -- displayed as they went through their rivalry -- both on-screen and off -- bit by bit was absolutely engaging. Combined with the matches also available on the set, it made for a no-brainer of a purchase for any wrestling fan.

Now word is out via Good Ol' JR that a second installment is in the world. Jim Ross dropped the news in his latest blog that fans should expect the set by year's end:

"Will WWE do more Rivalry DVDs?" Absolutely. Another major production is scheduled for 2012 but I am not sure as to the rivalry that will be featured but the rumors that I hear are fascinating. Obviously, I hope to be involved as I was with the Bret/Shawn DVD which is a must see.

Let the speculation begin.

Me? It may be a longshot but I am hoping like hell we get Arn Anderson vs. Syco Sid. Hey, a man can dream, can't he?

In an update to Geno Mrosko's post about R-Truth being lucky to avoid a serious injury like a concussion after The Miz was out of position to catch him on a somersault plancha in the Six Pack Challenge Raw main event, Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez of f4wonline.com have confirmed that Miz has tremendous heat backstage for his serious lapse of judgement:

-- As noted on Observer Radio last night, tons of heat on Miz for not catching Truth during his dive spot in the six-man last night. Truth was legitimately helped out as they feared he had a serious injury. Although he smashed the back of his head on the mats, he ended up being OK and will continue onto the International tour.

Not only did Miz's mistake cause Truth harm, but it also took the shine off the rest of the match, as plans had to be changed on the fly and naturally everyone would be concerned for Truth's wellbeing, so Miz would be blamed for that too.

This is serious bad news for Miz, as having the rep that you're a dangerous, careless worker is a very difficult one to shake off and has spelled doom for many past WWE performers like Nelson "King Mabel" Frazier, Ahmed Johnson, Vader and most recently Mr. Kennedy, now working for TNA as Mr. Anderson. In most of these cases, there was some truth to that perception, but also locker room politicians capitalised on these concerns to ensure that people they didn't like working with got buried and even fired, despite still having name value at the very least. I wouldn't say that Miz is close to being released, but he's going to have to be very contrite about the incident, work hard to change the idea that he's more concerned with protecting himself than protecting his opponent, and almost inevitably spend some time being downplayed on WWE television. One things for sure, he can't afford any other major screw ups like this anytime soon.

The ratings are in for last night's (Feb. 6, 2012) episode of WWE Monday Night Raw and it should come as no surprise that they're down from where they were last week. That was to be expected, of course, considering the first Raw post-Royal Rumble always does well, but this week's show was bad enough that viewers once again decided to tune out from the first hour to the second.

PWTorch.com brings the numbers:

WWE Raw on Monday, February 6 came back to earth with a 3.25 rating, down nine percent from a 3.55 rating last week the night after the Royal Rumble PPV. Outside of last week's Raw, it was still the highest-rated Raw since the November 14 episode (12 weeks).

Raw averaged 4.62 million viewers, down 12 percent compared to last week's Raw, which was up 13 percent from the Rumble lead-in.

Raw's first hour opened with a respectable average of 4.80 million viewers - the most since Nov. 14 besides last week's show - but Raw tumbled to an average of 4.44 million viewers in the second hour. The second hour was down 14 percent and nearly 700,000 viewers compared to last week's second hour.

The numbers aren't bad, necessarily, but the product is. Or at least last night it was. Triple H opened with a twenty minute promo explaining his issues with Undertaker before we go the first of what felt like 18 different video packages and about two minutes of actual wrestling before a commercial break.

And that's how the show seemed to play out the rest of the way.

It was just a bad show, plain and simple. "The Game" rambled far too long, Chris Jericho and CM Punk's segment was far too short, The Miz had one of the worst nights of his career, R-Truth got hurt, Eve broke her nose, the main event was nothing more than a modified clusterf*ck and the final image we were left with was Kane being a complete creep with Eve while she was wearing a towel (but in full makeup).

It was bad. So very, very bad. For complete results and the running live blog click here and for reactions to the show click here.

I guess we'll be finding out pretty soon if the "Long Island Iced Z" loves Eve Torres for the person she is on the inside or if our favorite broski is all about looks.

During last night's incredible -- ahem -- eight-Diva tag team match on Raw, a stiff clothesline from Divas Champion Beth Phoenix ended up breaking the current Zack Ryder love interest's nose. Although nothing has been confirmed by the WWE itself, the injury does appear to be legitimate. Kudos for toughing it out and showing up in last night's final segment. I know everyone really appreciated it.

Adding insult to injury, "The Glamazon" took to Twitter after the match and had a giant case of crocodile tears.

Check out what she said after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

Even though it's a blatant rip off of Daniel Tosh's "Tosh.0" Comedy Central show, "WWE Download" is still enjoyable with Dolph Ziggler as host. I believe it was said here on Cageside but Ziggler is much better when he's in character and free flowing with his words. He seems stunted here, not suited to the role of TV host.

Nonetheless, he does a fairly good job. Enjoy.

Independent wrestling can be viewed in one of two ways. One, it can be assessed as a collective of loosely confederated wrestlers and promotions that work to provide a pseudo-national, neo-regional network to help further the art of wrestling on a smaller yet more creatively boosted stage than what is presented in WWE and TNA. The other, it can be considered to be a term that is labeled upon any start-up promotion that is trying to make money either locally or nationally, with the promotions not working with each other but against each other. We all want it to be more of the former, but it's becoming increasingly clear that the landscape is taking on the shape of the latter.

There are two culprits for this. The first is iPPV. The medium has done wonders for fan accessibility for shows live and on demand, but it has an unintended consequence of companies, two in particular, forcing their wrestlers to sign contracts that include exclusivity clauses that they won't appear on anyone else's iPPV telecasts. The second, which ties in strongly to the first, is that there is bad blood between two indie companies, Ring of Honor and Dragon Gate USA, mainly stemming from the former letting booker Gabe Sapolsky go unceremoniously and the latter starting up around his vision. The problem is that other companies like Chikara and especially PWG suffer from this turf war.

Continue reading this post »

A long rumored signing is finally official. Chris Hero -- one half of The Kings of Wrestling -- has inked a deal with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).

The story broke courtesy (note: heavy spyware) of PWInsider who added that there were no plans to team Hero up with former partner Claudio Castagnoli who is currently working for Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW) under the Antonio Cesaro moniker.

It's another great signing for the WWE as Hero has made quite the name for himself on the independent wrestling scene stateside and also across the Pacific. A mainstay in promotions such as Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW), CHIKARA, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (PWG) and Ring of Honor (ROH), Hero has made appearances for the latter two promotions in recent months.

He took on Willie Mack at PWG's year-ending show, "Fear", in a losing effort and was also the one who answered Roderick Strong's open challenge at ROH's "Final Battle 2011" internet pay-per-view (iPPV) show. He lost that match as well as dropping a bout to Michael Elgin a month later at "The Homecoming 2012."

Despite his continued appearances in ROH, his performances indicated he wasn't to stay long in the Philadelphia promotion and was being brought in to add some star power to shows and also give the rub to younger stars in the making such as Elgin.

No word on exactly when Hero will show up in developmental -- likely FCW -- but it shouldn't be too long before "That Young Knockout Kid" makes his debut.

Any suggestions on new names for Hero?

Last night (Feb. 6, 2012) on Raw, R-Truth used the ropes to slingshot himself over for a flip to the outside on The Miz, who, by design, was supposed to catch him to help break his fall but make it look like he was getting hit.

Instead, Miz was barely touched and fell backwards, leaving his old tag teammate to fall to the floor unprotected where he landed flat on his tailbone and whipped his head back onto the floor. Padded or not, it looked terrible.

In a move we don't usually see in WWE, referees came down and helped walk him to the back, electing to take him out of the match instead of letting him continue. This is something that was made easier by the fact that it was a six-man match and losing one participant was no big deal but had they let Truth simply finish out the match, no one would have been surprised.

Now, WWE.com brings word that Truth didn't suffer any serious injuries from his nasty spill:

WWE officials have confirmed that R-Truth avoided serious injury after suffering a brutal fall on WWE's Raw SuperShow Monday night.

...

R-Truth performed a slingshot somersault over the top rope onto The Miz, who was outside the ring. Although the aerial attack glanced The Miz, R-Truth ended up receiving the brunt of the impact, falling back-first onto the floor. At that point, the referee decided R-Truth was no longer able to compete, and WWE officials helped him to the locker room area.

WWE officials do not believe any injuries sustained from the fall will keep R-Truth out of action.

I've seen arguments that say Miz shouldn't take the brunt of the blame here because he simply mistimed the jump and Truth wasn't in the right place to make the slingshot flip anyway. That's nonsense, though.

If you have to go out of your way to make sure your fellow wrestler doesn't get injured during a match, that's what you should do because that's what is right. Anything less than that makes you a liability. Thankfully, Truth isn't seriously hurt but it could have been a lot different.