A little update on my Hollywood Brother, who this fall embarks upon his first job where his name will actually be in the credits EVERY WEEK on a show, instead of just once or twice a season (when he and his Male Writing Companion supplied the actual story or script)...
 

Ironically enough, it's for the CBS show called "Jericho," which in premise sounds distressingly like a land-locked version of "Lost," but which I've been assured will be the first show my brother has ever worked on that I will actually like. Not that his 2 year gopher stint on the post-menopausal snoozefest that was "Judging Amy" is any competition, but I am letting myself be

I encourage everybody to keep an eye out for it next month (if you're like me, it's conveniently taking over the time slot currently held by the perversely-engrossing "Rock Star: Supernova" on Wednesdays, where the end of the sweet, sweet Carmen Electra Lovin' has finally rendered Dave Navarro into a fantastically mean spirited little bitch! Which is what roughly 80% of the finalists deserve). Because it's been long enough, and it's time for Hollywood Brother to start taking over that damned town. Because then he'll have no choice but to call for me to run his evil empire. Because his stories always seem to indicate that he's smarter than 90% of the fuckwits running that damned town, and there's over two decades of scientific evidence to prove I'm smarter than Hollywood Brother, so really, I figure I'm a shoe-in. I'll be worshipped as a god among men. Or, to put it in "industry terms," I'd be worshipped as the one barely-functional retard among a sea of JJ Abramsses. 

For full details about "Jericho," you can check out this column from TV.com. In it, you will discover that the one thing Hollywood Brother does do better than me involves his willingness to (and enjoyment of) meeting and kissing up to useless pustules of human beings, especially if it means getting to see his name in a fancy internet column. Other than this one, where, for now and for all eternity, the Big Brother Principle means he'll never get a fair shake from The Me. Ahhh, well....

Let's see what I can scrape together on the wrestling front today:

• Last night's TNA Hard Justice pay-per-view is obviously the talk of the town right now.... but not necessarily for the right reasons.
   
  Ten minutes into a show, a small fire in the rafters of the soundstage caused the building to be filled with smoke and extinguisher fumes. As soon as Eric Young and Johnny Devine wrapped up their match, the building actually had to be evacuated, and the PPV was put on hold for over 20 minutes.
   
  TNA did as best they could, initially running (and re-running) a few video packages, before briefly cutting to a live feed from outside the building, where Tenay and Don West finally filled fans in on what was happening.
   
  With the interruption, TNA was forced to eliminate the four-way #1 Contenders' Tag Team match, but has already promised to make-good on it during this week's Impact. All other matches took place, with only the mildest sense of time compression.
   
  Reports vary on the exact cause and severity of the fire, with some blaming hot lights and others blaming pyro. Also, one report says that a Universal Studios stagehand actually was injured and hospitalized, while other reports proudly declare there were no injuries and that the evacuation and resumption of the PPV went off remarkably smoothly. Then again, at least one of the media reports picked up by the newswires appears to have come straight from the TNA PR office itself, complete with ricockulous self-aggrandizing verbiage about how this was TNA's greatest PPV ever because we got to see the versatility of Mike Tenay and Don West as they ceased being Wrestling Announcers, and became Investigative Journalists. Uhhhh, wow. That's, just..... wow. I'm sure that somewhere, Al Michaels and his performance at the 1989 World Series in San Francisco still have absolutely no fucking idea who Mike Tenay and Don West are.
   
  Anyway, not to be too big of a dick, but it sorta sounds like a very minor deal, and that TNA was able to roll with the punches fairly easily. I doubt you'll find a single well-adjusted fan who thought the fire added any value to the PPV (as the one press release suggested), but this is also just as clearly in the realm of the Purely Accidental, and I don't think many viewers would count the fire and the delay against TNA, either. 
   
  If I had to pick a second defining characteristic of the show, it might be extremely assbackwards and un-inspiring booking. The biggest culprit was in the main event, where TNA did exactly what they should have avoided doing (unless they have some kind of DAMNED good idea for where to go with this, and haven't shown any of their cards yet), as Christian just blatantly turned heel on Sting to help Jeff Jarrett retain the TNA Title. I could have thought of a dozen different ways to end that match in a compelling fashion, and TNA selected "none of the above." Not helping matters: apparently, the Sting/Jarrett main event was easily the worst match on the show, and it's always a HUGE factor when the final segment of a show is the weakest match (accompanied by a weak angle/turn). The main event always colors one's overall opinion of the show more heavily than anything that preceded it.
   
  And that said, the third characteristic of the show would probably be the almost-universally solid ring-work (outside of a clunky women's match) that was praised by most. The Joe/Rhino/Monty match seems to be the consensus stand-out at this point, but most of the undercard delivered the expected or better. To a certain subset of fans, that's probably ample reason to congratulate TNA on a show well-done; to another subset (of which I'm a member), that's ample reason to be even more frustrated that the main event went a long way to erasing the good will generated by the undercard. Matter of perspective, I guess.
   
  Although it has not yet arrived in my grubby little hands, Jason Longshore's TNA Hard Justice Recap will be posted at some point this afternoon or evening, so just keep clicking that link, and eventually, it'll lead somewhere. Promise!
   
  
• The other drama related to the PPV was the announcement late on Sunday afternoon that Kevin Nash was backing out of his scheduled match against Chris Sabin due to a neck injury.
   
  Absolutely no word has circulated about when Nash may have suffered the injury, or of what variety the injury may be.
   
  However, word HAS circulated that Nash found out in the last week he was going to be asked to job to Sabin, which -- given Big Kev's track record -- set off a ton of Bullshit Detectors, industry-wide.
   
  And for once, I'm gonna side with Talent on this issue. *If* Nash suddenly felt a twinge once he found out he'd be losing a match to the ilk of Sabin? Hey, more power to him. Normally, I'm of the mindset that talent works and bookers book, and any attempt at tampering is inexcusable. I even had no problem saying bad things about Bret Hart's delusional ego mere days after the Montreal Screwjob.
   
  But here? For one, we're talking about what amounts to a low-middle-card storyline, NOT a world title or PPV main events; if a former WrestleMania headliner wants to throw a bit of weight around in how he's treated in an undercard storyline, you gotta be willing to humor him. And second, we're talking about a deal where Nash losing isn't just wrong for Nash, it's wrong for TNA and for the whole storyline they've spent however many months building. So kudos to Nash for caring more about the company than the company apparently does. Again, this only counts *if* he did anything fishy.
   
  Alex Shelley stepped in for Nash and did the job to Sabin, so now Sabin goes on to face Senshi in a match that has almost zero real sizzle or appeal outside of the most loyal core of TNA fans. Contrast that with what could have happened with a Nash win, and an X Title match (preferably not against Senshi, who is so utterly humorless that he'd be impossible to have an entertaining feud with) that would polarize the core group of fans (with most of the LOATHING the idea of Nash holding the X Title, but a few just enjoying the entertainment value of it all) while also having some appeal to casual fans such as myself and a lot of other WWE-centric/OO-reading types.
   
  Let's see..... zero entertainment leading up to a match next month where there's no real sizzle (unless you count dueling "Let's go, Sabin"/"Let's go, Shensi" chants from the core group of wankers)? Or a month of amusing vignettes and promos and matches where the wankers are mobilized to chant their loudest and where casual fans get something fun, all leading up to a match where people are actually gonna care about the outcome? Call me kooky, but the latter one wins with me six days a week and twice on Sundays....
   
  Of course, I reiterate that nobody really knows for sure what's the deal with Nash. Maybe he really is hurt. But if so, the fact that he worked the last set of tapings makes me think he's probably in good enough shape that if TNA had told him, "We really only need 4-5 minutes out of you, Kev, and you can use Shelley and Devine to do most of your bump-taking for you, then you can win with that devastatingly impressive Five Star Forearm Sledge of yours, OK?", then Nash would have been in Orlando with his wrestling boots on, ready to tough it out.
   
  For the record: I am not sitting here, condoning a long-term, undefeated X Division Championship reign for Nash. All I'm doing is being realistic about who Nash should lose to and when. If you honestly think that Sabin (already distressingly devoid of character/personality, and in recent weeks, also the victim of eyeball-rollingly-awful backstage skits with the equally-talented-but-equally-not-very-convincing Jerry Lynn) was the right man for that spot? We're just coming from two different places. When Nash lays down and loses to an X Division guy, it should be a big deal and the big finish to a big story. Last night was too soon for this to be "big," and frankly, given Sabin's lack of gravitas, his win would only drag Nash's legacy down, and would NOT boost Sabin's standing with the fans appreciably. That's a big time no-no, as Nash's generosity needs to benefit somebody who will make use of it. Not somebody who's probably a career curtain-jerker, even by TNA standards.
   
  And remember: I say this with Much Love for Sabin.... but there's a difference between appreciating his work in the X Division, and thinking he's the man to be the beneficiary of TNA's version of a "mainstream crossover" feud (by which I mean the rare examples of TNA storytelling that are done well enough and feature enough "entertainmentization" to appeal to fans outside their core). [It's an issue related to how I hope Mick Foley has learned his lesson after doing a selfless act for Randy Orton, which Orton has promptly spent two years fumbling and flushing down the toilet. Selfless Foley Acts for the Rock and Triple H worked out so well, maybe Mick's "Passing the Torch" Radar fell out of calibration back in 2004? Anyway, just as Foley should be VERY selective in who he puts over and how in his rare matches, so should Nash. Nash putting over Sabin would be no different, and no less pointless, than Foley deciding to put over Funaki.]
   
  I'm sure we'll know/deduce more about Nash's status in coming days/weeks.... to be honest, my "best case scenario" upon hearing the news was that not only was Nash lying, but that TNA was in on it, and this was all part of a work in which Shelley would beat Sabin, but then Nash would claim that the X Title shot was still HIS (instead of Shelley's), lending a slightly dick-ish and fluke-tastic subtext to Nash's X Title Chase. But nope: it's not that, either, as they still had Sabin go over Shelley. Oh well.... we'll see how it all pans out.
   
  
• And before we put TNA to bed for today, it's worth noting that the pre-PPV edition of Impact last week did a 0.7 cable rating, which is yet another mild drop. Not a good sign heading into a pay-per-view, but still basically within what appears to be TNA's "stand alone" ratings range.
   
  We'll see if the theory about Spike TV's god-awful 10pm block on Thursdays was behind TNA's 30-plus-percent ratings drop-off in the last month and a half.... cuz this week, the stupid UFC Reality Show returns with a new season, and should return to providing TNA with a lead-in rating in the upper-1's (to around 2.0), many of whom are the types of fans who'll stick around and give pro wrestling a look once their show is over.
   
  It might not be an instantaneous turn-around, but if the stronger lead-in gets TNA back to the 1.0s and 1.1s it was doing in June, that's nothing but a good thing as the company gears up for what they hope will be a hugely successful PPV in October (their first televised voyage out of Orlando; well, since the Nashville days, anyway).
   
  
• SmackDown! this weekend did a 2.3 prelim rating (which is probably not going to hold up, meaning the show is looking at another possible 2.0-ish number, and another week in which it is legitimately the #3 WWE brand, viewership-wise)...
   
  When I got to check out the show, I ended up being pretty pleased with the two "anchor" matches, but with little else. Rey/Kennedy was really good, and the Batista/Lashley/Regal/Finlay main event was OK and made more fun by the perpetually-hilarious King Booker on commentary. Outside of that, though? You had stuff that ran the gamut from entirely forgettable to downright awful.
   
  Headlining the perpetrators of the awfulness was the continued involvement of Vickie Guerrero in the "Who owns Eddie's Legacy?" story between Chavo and Rey. Again, I flash back to a year ago, when Rey and Eddie were both willing conspirators in the "Who's Dominick's father?" storyline.... but having willing participants doesn't make a storyline good, or appropriate, or even comfortable-to-watch. This current thing with Vickie is none of those three things.
   
  And then there's something I don't know whether it's contributing to the awfulness, or taking away from it. Because after last week's SD!, we'll no longer have to suffer through Taker vs. Khali at SummerSlam! But we *will* have to suffer through it on this week's SD!.... um, so: I guess, it's free, right? The reason for the change: after reviewing the video footage, Vince McMahon himself decided that the Great Khali sucks ass, and cannot be trusted to carry what they wanted to be a 10-plus minute PPV match on live TV. Wow: that Vince McMahon, always about six months behind the rest of the world on noticing the Patently Obvious!
   
  So to "protect" all involved, they'll do the match at SD! tapings, where they can edit out or re-do all major fuck-ups, of which there are expected to be many. Good times.
   
  And in charge of regaling you all with the tale of last week (and also in the crosshairs to take a bullet for us all NEXT week on that Khali match), it's PyroFalkon, who finally has a full-time gig here at OO again, as he steps in to supply the SmackDown! Recap.
   
  
• Rumors abound that WWE has locked Shawn Michaels up for a 5-year contract extension... I knew something was in the works between the two parties, but all intelligence pointed to a smaller/more-limited deal, with Michaels wanting to reduce his schedule in order to spend more time with his family and protect his various ailing body parts. 
   
  Instead, now there's this rumor about a 5-year deal. I believe it is Dave Meltzer who has also reported a dollar figure for the deal, placing it at a $1.5 million per year guarantee (before bonuses and merchandise and stuff). With WWE's schedule the way it is, that works out to a projected value of about $10,000 per match for HBK, which is probably a pretty big motivator in terms of agreeing to work the full-time schedule despite having just turned 41 last month.
   
  The thing that strikes me as fishy is that this huge contract (for a guy who has had injury issues over the past 4 years) comes at a time when WWE is willfully trying to nudge the payscale in a downward direction. Negotiations (or lack there of) with some of the biggest departing talents of the past year (Jericho, Dudleys, Christian, especially; with Trish and Lita among the next possible upcoming victims) were torpedoed, at least in part, because WWE would have to ask proven top level talents to take paycuts versus their last contracts. Business isn't appreciably better now than it was 12 months ago, and yet: if Meltzer's dollar figure is right, Michaels has just gotten one of the Fed's few top-shelf contracts.
   
  Then again, maybe this is something even more rare than a full-value contract: a case of Vince/WWE saying "thank you" and showing appreciation for a loyal soldier. Michaels, due to his back injury, missed out on the entirety of the WWF's "glory days" of Attitude between 1998 and 2002. At some point in those four years, he would almost certainly have gotten the chance to renegotiate a contract, and would have cleaned up given the payscale at the time. Instead, he came back just after the company started really faltering, didn't get one of them big fat contracts, and might now, in 2006, be getting paid back a bit. I don't think I could argue with that.
   
  I just wish that the company would be equally generous in other cases, because no matter how highly Vince McMahon thinks of his "star making" ability, that's still no excuse to go low-balling the stars-already-made (with the exception of backing dumptrucks full of money up to Hulk Hogan's door).
   
  
• Curious If True: despite both parties acting like it's a done deal, there is no contract in place yet for ECW to continue on Sci-Fi beyond the August 29 episode. This despite ECW appearing on all advance Sci-Fi schedules for September, and Sci-Fi being listed as the sponsor of all ECW house shows through October.
   
  One compellingly-logical rumor I did hear this weekend is that the extension (for at least one year, possibly two) is considered a done-deal by all involved, but that WWE decided to change negotiating tacks a few weeks ago, asking Sci-Fi to either up their license fee or to provide a flat-fee production bonus that would allow WWE to produce ECW at its OWN TV tapings, instead of piggybacking onto SD! tapings.
   
  This would jibe with the word that even Vince and his usual band of sycophants recognized the value of a fired-up ECW crowd following the show a few weeks ago at the Hammerstein Ballroom. And also jibe with the notion that Vince is a cheapskate always looking to cut corners, as noted a mere one bullet point above....
   
  
• Speaking of ECW: the tag team of Danny Doring and Roadkill is no more. Doring is now working as a singles wrestler for ECW, while Roadkill has recreated himself (sans Amish gimmick) in OVW. So much for my notion that (with the addition of the Basham Brothers, who have GOT to be under the SWAT Team Gear, at this point) ECW would have a stronger tag division than SD!, eh? 
   
  
• Last bit o' ECW: tomorrow night (Tuesday) would be a good night to check out ECW on Sci-Fi if you haven't been. They have announced a Three-Way Ladder Match main event...
   
  Sabu vs. Rob Van Dam vs. Kurt Angle. Whoa.
   
  Give that 20-plus minutes, and you might be talking Match of the Year. Of course, since the match is for the #1 Contender spot for the ECW Title, a run-in by Big Show and a non-finish (leading to a four-way match at SummerSlam) is another possibility, but I get the feeling they're running this match for a reason. Keeping Sabu out of an ECW Title match should be one priority (to feed the storyline with Heyman "crucifying" the ECW Originals in the name of his New Vision), and assuming ECW's gonna get more than one match at the PPV, you can do that here: RVD vs. Big Show, and then the Sabu/Angle rematch (to give us the clean finish we didn't get last week between the two). Voila.
   
  
• Edge's skit on Carlos Mencia's show was on last night, and in the post-coital glow following an excellent edition of "Deadwood," I made the mistake of flipping past it. That was the end of that post-coital glow.
   
  In a perverse way, I enjoy watching "comedy" shows that can go upwards of 5 minutes without even once making me crack a smile. And which are SO bad that I go those same 5 minutes not even bothering to roll my eyeballs or mutter to myself. That is exactly what this show supplied me with last night (which is not entirely unexpected, since this is what Carlos Mencia invariably supplies any time I've been exposed to him). 
   
  I'm trying to decide if Edge would be well-served to pretend the appearance never happened.... and what I've decided is that if he wants to be a dick (and he should, it's his gimmick), he SHOULD mention it. And he should actually act proud of it. And not only should he praise his own comedic genius, he should go to great lengths to explain just how insanely intelligent, creative, and funny Carlos Mencia is. Cuz if that line of unmitigated horseplop won't get you booed out of a building, nothing will.
   
  But deep down? Edgeward should be embarrassed. Very embarrassed. I'm talking almost "Surreal World" embarrassed. ALMOST.
   
  Because there's a difference between realizing you made an error in judgment and thinking you need to jump off a tall building to atone for it.
   
  
• This just in: Randy Savage is appearing on the next season of "The Surreal Life."
   
  This also just in: Rick Scaia remains the master of effortlessly smooth segues that leave Wade Keller babbling and drooling like a vegetable, confused as to why his third-rate liberal arts "journalism" degree didn't involve any classes on how to write all "interesting-y" like this....
   
  
• Two news items that ultimately don't have anything to do with wrestling, but if I don't at least mention them, I'll have to deal with lots of e-mail pestering me about them....
   
  (1) Brock Lesnar has announced his intent to compete for K-1 starting in 2007. He even did what I would call "an angle" (although MMA people would scoff -- SCOFF, I tells ya -- at the notion that a legitimate fighting company would run "angles") in which he announced Royce Gracie as his trainer, although it was more an excuse for the two to do a few interviews together than anything else. The only interesting thing about this is that K-1 intends to run at least some of Lesnar's matches here in the US (or so says current conventional wisdom), which tells us a little something about who got the better of the out-of-court settlement between Lesnar and WWE. I'd thought for sure WWE would fight to keep Lesnar off domestic TV and limited to working in Japan, but if they did: they lost.
   
  And (2) Bill Goldberg posted a blurb on his official website about signing a "holding deal" with Spike TV, which creates a 90-day window in which he's having to turn down other appearances and stuff. Obviously, this leads wrestling fans to wonder about Goldberg and TNA (a flame Goldberg himself fanned in rather ham-handed and non-Jericho-tastic fashion)... but being realistic, Goldberg's "holding deal" is related to non-wrestling projects (such as his appearances on that Jocks vs. Couch Potatoes show and on motorcycle shows/specials), and at most, you'd get a deal where Goldberg might show up in TNA to cross promote some other Spike Project of his (and it'd end up being even less involved than some of Rock's more recent one-night RAW cameos).
   
  Thus ends today's installment of Stories That Aren't Really Stories....
   
  
  
• WWE's not showing their hand with regards to tonight's RAW.... unlike recent weeks, there are no announced matches or specifics to talk about. Just generalities.
   
  Stuff like "Edge and Cena will probably do something to get in each others' faces".... or "Hogan will be there and will have something to say to Orton".... or "DX and the McMahons will tangle again, and it may or may not involve Umaga, too".... oh, and "Flair and Foley won't be forgotten, but I think they've probably done all they can to raise expectations for their SummerSlam Match high enough as it is, and anything else would just be unfair to ask either of them to live up to".
   
  It's doubtful that RAW will get to add any more matches to those four (unless, as one reader half-joked last week, Foley only agreed to the "I Quit" match because he intends to walk out to the ring, immediately say "I Quit," and then laugh and laugh and laugh because he just got himself a PPV payday without doing anything to help Ric Flair rebuild his legacy; HA!), but there's certainly enough backstory to add either IC or women's title matches (Kane's the #1 IC Contender, while Trish/Lita could be a match, as could Trish/Mickie, or even Trish/Lita/Mickie).
   
  We'll just have to see how things shake-out tonight. I thought RAW hit the "sustainable episodic TV" nail on the head with last week's show (absolutely nothing fancy or memorable, but just solidly compelling throughout.... except for the Diva Search crap), and with most of the table already set for SummerSlam, I think that's the most we can really expect tonight, too. Hopefully, RAW will deliver.
   
  And whether it does or not, you know The Rick will deliver. Tomorrow. With the finest RAW Recap in all the land. So whether you take a pass on RAW, or whether you just want me to re-tell the story for you in a more entertaining fashion, I do insist you stop on back and visit OO tomorrow. 
   
  See you then, kids....