Just a quick weekend update for you all today. It’s been a relatively quiet, mild weekend for news, which was much needed on my part at least. Working on several features and articles for the next few days that I’d like to get posted soon.
Our latest episode of Talking Sheet, recorded yesterday, is available for download or streaming here. Hugh and I take a look at the last couple of weeks, including Todd Martin’s first podcasts and articles for PW Torch, and looking at the Sheet Wars on Twitter that exploded over the whole TNA on Destination America story. We’re also back with the Rear View segment, looking at the Wrestling Observer Newsletter from February 2nd, 1987.
Don’t miss the latest in MeatyFist’s cartoons. They’re always available right here. This has quickly become one of our more popular features on the site, and with good reason. So if you haven’t checked them out yet, do yourself a favor.
Weekend News Update
** Thursday night Bob Ryder and Bryan Alvarez went toe-to-toe on Twitter particularly over the whole Bram contract signing deal. This was an extension of the situation where, in what many considered nothing more than a PR ploy to get people thinking anything other than TNA was headed for doom, the company released info on stars having been re-signed. Trouble was, most of the stars announced as having re-signed this week had, months ago, been announced as re-signing already.
** Alvarez tweeted: “I hope to never have a job that requires me to sign multi-year deals every few months.”
** Ryder shot back “Original contract. One renewal. New contract. That’s short, concise, and to the point. Now spin it as a negative.”
** PWInsider was there to help defend the situation, as Ryder’s former employee Dave Scherer wrote:
There has been some conversation as to why TNA announced Bram had re-signed with the company yesterday when earlier this year they had announced the same thing.
What happened was that the company negotiated a two year deal with him to replace the deal he had signed earlier in the year.
** Interesting exchange of ideas about what people expect from Dirt Sheets in the 21st century over at Scott Keith’s (yes, he still exists) Blog Of Doom here
** WrestlingInc. has a a piece including tweets by Austin Aries blasting reports about TNA’s demise on Destination America here
** Second week in a row where PW Torch’s Wade Keller has posted a classic wrestling audio show featuring both himself and Dave Meltzer on the same radio show—this time talking the incompetence of WCW from about 24 years ago.
** This past week Chair Shot Reality had a Q&A with Global Force Wrestling’s Jeff Jarrett here
** Vince Russo is back again, trying to go for the record of how few words a person can read before closing out his browser tab in disgust. This week may be tough to beat:
Truth.
Something that people just don’t want to hear.
** I can think of a number of people I’d rather hear “the truth” from that Vince Russo, and that number is probably close to the population of the entire world minus Vince Russo. So yeah, this guy is out to lunch.
** Very happy to know that Josh Nason at F4WOnline has changed the name of his new podcast on the site from the originally planned Figure Four Fridays (an MMA-centric podcast) to Punch Out! with Josh Nason. I’m certain Nintendo won’t mind, and it sets many a mind at ease that the name of an MMA show doesn’t feature the name of a venerable pro wrestling move.
** Elimination Chamber previews are all over the place as you’d expect.
** Hearing some rumblings that Todd Martin, while gone from F4W officially (despite actually still being listed among the contributors to the Figure Four Weakly newsletter) and now a staff member at the rival PW Torch website, is still “lurking” on the F4W BOARD. Some eagle-eyed members have noticed his avatar has recently changed, among a few other key hints that he has logged in recently. I just found this interesting.
** F4Wonline News vs Plugs for today – News: 211, Plugs 3297. Dire times, friends… dire times. Something’s gotta change, clearly. If anyone has any ideas, let me know and we’ll draft an open letter for the site with constructive ideas on how to help them in this area. #SaveTheNews
