Eric Bischoff may regret shaving his head for this dismal rating!

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According to the Observer website and the ratings they published last week, Raw's rating this week rose by three tenths of a ratings point to a 3.7, while TNA's dropped by two tenths to a 0.8.  This means that Raw roughly quadrupled Impact's audience this week.  To say this is another bad sign for TNA is probably an understatement.  Dixie Carter can only cross her fingers, hope and pray that all the viewers lost from last week's two airings of Impact heeded her message on Twitter and didn't forget to set their DVRs this week.  Unfortunately the odds of that are pretty slim.

UPDATE:  According to Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez on their breaking news radio update, Impact peaked with a 0.96 rating for the quarter starting at 9:45pm (coinciding with the start of the Hogan/Sting confrontation) and continued to drop until the overrun, which showed a very small increase.  In particular, the AJ Styles vs. Jeff Hardy DREAM~!!! main event got destroyed, only drawing a 0.73 rating compared to Raw's 4.3 rating for the contract signing angle with Bret Hart, Vince McMahon and Steve Austin.

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Perhaps the only good news TNA got this week was that the replay of Impact in their old Thursday night time slot drew an impressive 1.0 rating.  Unfortunately this strong rating apparently didn't make Spike TV change their minds about the replay only being for one week only, as Dixie Carter wrote the following on Twitter 14 hours ago:  "TNA iMPACT! will NOT re-air on Thursdays. If you can't watch LIVE Mondays 9-11pm ET on SPIKE, please DVR it. PLEASE RT". 

Knowing TNA, I'm sure they forgot to tell the one million or so people watching their replay this salient fact and Dixie Carter had to make a desperation tweet to get the news out to her 34,000 followers on Twitter.  Well, that's sure to make a huge difference to their Monday night rating!  Forward planning is obviously not TNA's strong point.

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The Observer website has already posted spoilers for Monday's taped TNA Impact show.  Unsurprisingly the spoilers reek of the same overbooked nonsense that contributed to the demise of WCW.  The angles that most exemplify this failed desperation hotshot booking:

-  Eric Bischoff vows to shave Mick Foley's head and beard, but when he attempts to do so, Foley manages to turn the tables and shaves Bischoff's head instead.

-  Scott Hall gets $25,000 of Kevin Nash's money after he survives a five minute challenge, thanks to Sean Waltman handcuffing Nash to the ring ropes.

-  RVD gets revenge on Sting by sucker attacking him when Sting answers Hulk Hogan's challenge to come out and face him.  This leads to Eric "Do as I say, not as I do" Bischoff (him again) coming out and yelling at Hogan for getting physically involved again when he's supposed to be leading the company behind the scenes.

-  Finally, TNA gives away Jeff Hardy's debut match for free in the main event.  Moreover, Hardy defeats TNA World champion AJ Styles with his Swanton after a ref bump and special enforcer Abyss counts the pinfall.  But wait, don't turn the channel to Raw, there's more!  Yes, to close the show Abyss choke slams Ric "Whose the glorified stuntman now" Flair through a gimmicked stage, before threatening Styles.

If you are wondering why TNA are already so desperate, Dave Meltzer, gave the following key quote on the Observer message boards in response to a thread entitled "Why is everyone here so anti TNA?":

I get no glee out of TNA failing. I have friends who work there and if you know about their financial situation now, this is not looking good at all. They spent millions expecting a whole lot more return than they got.

Simply put, TNA are now losing tons of money again, after they managed to stem the bleeding through keeping their costs under control, moving to monthly PPVs, landing the Spike TV deal and expanding to two hours in prime time on Thursdays.  The stakes have been raised.  Dixie Carter may live to rue the day when she decided to go all in on the Monday night gamble.

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Much has been made of Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo not learning from the mistakes they made during the death of WCW and being generally clueless to the WWE product.  However, one thing that has been slept on is the lesson of the last time Hogan faced Flair on a Monday night and it's not a good omen for TNA. 

The night was May 13th 2002.  Hogan was in the midst of his last WWF title run, inspired by the big pops his nostalgic red and yellow Hulkamania schtick was getting.  Flair, in the storylines, was a co-owner of WWE, controlled Raw and had just turned heel on Steve Austin.  So the ultimate nostalgia match was booked with Hogan eventually Hulking Up and hitting the legdrop to vanquish once again the Dirtiest Player In The Game.  However, for the time it was an umitigated ratings disaster, as the Raw rating fell by seven tenths of a whole ratings point and was the lowest rated non-holiday episode of Raw since November 5th 2001.  Hogan doing his routine with the Rock was something special, going through the motions with Ric Flair again just reminded everyone how old and stale their acts were.

If it didn't work in 2002, how is it going to work almost eight years later with both men being much older and more broken down, a point Hogan has stupidly reinforced in viewers minds in the hype for tomorrow's Impact main event?  That TNA are repeating the same mistake WWE made eight years ago seems to be borne out by Impact's rating on Thursday night, where the big closing angle where Hogan bloodied up Flair was the lowest rated quarter of the night by far, drawing a dismal 0.9 rating.  And that was without Raw competition to take their viewers away.  Wish TNA lots of luck, they're going to need it!

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The Wrestling Observer website is reporting that in an interview today Hulk Hogan said that TNA had made a major signing and then did Rob Van Dam's double thumbs gesture to the back.  Obviously TNA are going all out to sign even more big name talent before Impact moves permanently to Monday nights, head to head with WWE's flagship show Raw.  Rob Van Dam is one of the stars they've been most heavily recruiting that had yet to sign with the company.  From RVD's perspective, if he is to return, working for TNA instead of WWE makes a lot more sense given TNA's lighter travel schedule and lack of pot testing.  He has always been a strong advocate of the benefits of marijuana and has been very outspoken about how he hated being away from home so much and all the travel WWE's heavy house show schedule caused, especially towards the end of his WWE career.

In the newest issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reported more details on what led to the arrest of Jackie Beems, Ric Flair's wife, for assaulting him last week.  Of note:

• Flair being offered a ride home by the staff of the sports bar that they were patronizing when he's too drunk to drive is a regular occurrence.
• Allegedly, when they got home, Jackie brought up his behavior at the bar and slapped him.  He ran into the house and started packing a suitcase.  She followed, punching and kicking him.  He tripped over the suitcase and hit his head on a dresser drawer, opening a gash where he had bladed at a the TNA Impact tapings four days earlier.

A month after asking for it, Awesome Kong got her release tfrom TNA, and they didn't even bother to get the Knockouts Tag Titles off of her and Ayako Hamada first.  The linked Wrestling Observer story says it's not clear if this happened now because she asked again, though.  Her lawsuit against mortal enemy Bubba The Love Sponge probably sped things up.

On her Twitter account, Kong made a funny by thanking TNA for wishing her the best in her future endeavors.

Another weird story.  For those unfamiliar with the backstory, Bubba says "Fuck Haiti!" and acts stupid on Twitter, Kong beats the hell out of him, both seem to vanish from TNA.  Anyway, now Kong (real name Kia Stevens) has filed a lawsuit against Bubba (rel name Todd Clem) for making a threatening, racially insensitive phone call, as well as AT&T for not revealing the identify of the caller  According to Courthouse News Service:

Stevens claims Clem called her at her Tampa home from a blocked number at 5 a.m. on Feb. 10. She says the caller said, "'This is Bubba the Love Sponge here at (and at this point the caller named a radio station' and then alluded to the fact that the call was being broadcast on the radio. "The caller then started talking in a stream, threatening to come to the petitioner's house and 'sucker punch' her until she stopped breathing and then said, 'You'll be dead like all those other n----rs in Haiti you fat black bitch ... Fuck Haiti!"

Stevens claims that when she did not respond, "the male who had identified himself as 'Bubba the Love Sponge' stated 'What d'ya think about that, Monkey Kong?' ... 'What? Those big fat Jimmy Walker lips ain't talking shit now, huh?'"

Stevens says she recognized Clem's voice, having heard his radio show.

There's a problem with Stevens' version: Bubba/Clem wasn't broadcasting at the time of the alleged call.

"We can prove without any doubt the allegations made in this petition are false. First Ms. Stevens claims that she was called on the air, at 5:08 AM on February 10th, we are not even on the air until 6 AM Eastern time. We have phone records and eye witnesses that account for my every movement that day from 4:50 AM forward. No call was made to Ms. Stevens at all," Bubba said in an email statement to RBR-TVBR.

"We will be pursuing all legal remedies available to us in the State of Florida to fight these deliberately malicious allegations," he added.

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens here.