I suppose if I was a Good Wrestling Fan, I'd at least pretend like I was gonna watch TNA's PPV on Sunday night. But I can't.
 

Nah. Sunday is reserved for "24," baby. Not that it needs any extra publicity from me. The FOX marketing machine, coupled with winning a shitload of Emmys for a season that wasn't even, pragmatically speaking, one of "24's" two best (unless you were measuring based on number of quality characters killed off), should do the trick in terms of generating an audience.

Also: anybody who is under the misapprehension that Sunday is for the season debut of "Rome" on HBO canNOT be my friend. That awful, overblown, under-watched, over-budget pile of feces is, in a round-about way, responsible for there not being a fourth full season of "Deadwood." Can anybody explain to me how four out of every five HBO Original Series are eyeball-rollingly terrible, but the remaining one out of five tends to be just about the awesomest shit on TV?

Enough. Here's a wee spot of wrestling to tide you over till Monday:

• Triple H had surgery on his torn quadriceps muscle on Tuesday, and the current prognosis is that he will return to the ring in 4 to 6 months. 
   
  The nature of the torn tendon (which caused the quad muscle to rip away from the knee/thigh) is apparently not as severe as the quad injury HHH suffered six years ago, and which kept him sidelined for about 8 months. [And yes, people, I now know that HHH suffered this latest injury on the EXACT five year anniversary of the day he returned from that initial injury. You may stop e-mailing me about the irony.]
   
  Trips will be staying in Birmingham, AL, for a couple weeks of aggressive rehab, and should be back to walking under his own power by the end of February. That's when the variables will come into play as to whether he heals fast enough to be cleared for 100% full contact shortly after WM23, or if that waits till the summer. You will recall that when HHH returned from his previous quad injury in 2002, he was haunted for almost a full year by slight re-aggravations of the injury and by other minor injuries caused by his compensating to protect the still-weakened leg. To my way of thinking, the lesson is "don't rush back, and spend a year working at 70%, if you can rehab for 2 extra months and be at 100% when you return." That wasn't really an option in 2002, when the WWF really needed Hunter to fill a slot on the WM card.... this year, he's already off of WrestleMania, and it's not nearly as big a deal if he makes his return at the Armaunforjudgmalash PPV they hold in April, or the one they have in June.
   
  
• Many folks, after reading Monday's column, responded with ideas for how to fill HHH's main event spot at WrestleMania 23. As I feared, some of them deviated substantially from the "Plausible Style" of fantasy booking that I prefer, but hey... like I said, I could only come up with 2 ideas (Orton stepping in to face Cena -- with a possible boost up to a three way by adding Edge into the mix -- or Shawn Michaels turning semi-heel to face Cena for the title), and so I felt obligated to solicit more thoughts from others.
   
  Nothing really stood out among the contributions (way too many people thought that the Bigggest Show of the Year would be a perfectly sane and rational place to yank some mid-carder out of left field and give him the main event slot against Cena; the most popular choice was CM Punk; would it be mean to say that apparently TNA isn't the only promotion with Clueless Wanker fans?), except that I did get a ton of people accusing me of missing the obvious.
   
  Namely: Chris Jericho.
   
  Which is absolutely the most outstanding Implausible Option out there, and it's not like I didn't consider it myself. But listen folks: you don't bring a guest star in to compete in a title match at WM. There has to be a legitimate chance of Jericho winning the title and hanging around afterwards for a Jericho/Cena match to make ANY sense on ANY level. And that means you're not just "fantasy booking" a Chris Jericho Saves WrestleMania Guest Spot. You're basically fantasy booking him into a new 3-year contract.
   
  And I know that his radio show got cancelled. I know his band is doing jacksquat. I know he tanked on Celebrity Dancing Duets in the Kitchen WITH CELEBRITIES, or whatever that show was. I know that there can't be a whole lot of money and personal satisfaction derived from getting all dolled up like a mincing douchebag to spout half-assed observations on lame VH-1 pop culture crapumentaries. But it's STILL awfully presumptuous of you to assume that all adds up to Jericho wanting to get it in gear for a full time return to WWE.
   
  I'd be all for it if I had any reason to believe it were feasible. But at most, I think you can think of Jericho as able to be gotten for a 2 month run of RAW appearances leading up to a big one-off match at Mania. And that's AT MOST. You might be even better served to lower your expectations further and think of Jericho as somebody that might come in and just be the Guest Referee for Money in the Bank (which is, afterall, the Match He Invented).
   
  
• Still other folks wrote in to say that WERE gonna share some ideas about the WM23 main event, but after watching RAW, they just gave up, because they assume that now, we're stuck with Cena vs. the Great Khali. And if WWE can't be bothered to try coming up with anything halfway entertaining, they sure as fuck weren't gonna waste THEIR time on the mental exercise.
   
  All I can say is: have faith. I know I'm gonna try to.
   
  Look, it is true that the decision to move Khali over to RAW came quite suddenly. As recently as late last week, Khali was being talked about as the WM23 challenger to Lashley's ECW Title, and also as a possible Royal Rumble winner to jumpstart his monster push. It's easy to see HHH's quad injury, then Khali's jump to RAW, and to arrive at the conclusion that Khali is replacing HHH in WWE's booking plans.
   
  That's not NECESSARILY the case.
   
  Because something else also happened within the last week, and that's the realization that Big Show probably is NOT gonna come around on wanting to take the WM23 match against Hulk Hogan. Hogan would rather do it with Show, would rather get that big payday for his big buddy... but Hogan and WWE are said to be more attached to the idea of just doing Hogan versus ANY giant. And since Hogan will only work on RAW, the move of Khali to Mondays may just signal that WWE has gone to Plan B, and will start the Khali/Hogan program after the Rumble.
   
  But till then? Cena does need something to do, even if we don't know who his foe will be at Mania. So it's perfectly in keeping with his obnoxious Superman act if he now has to vanquish not one, but TWO, monsters, in the form of Umaga and Khali. One or both of them could be involved in a WWE Title match against Cena at the Rumble (which is increasingly known for its Shitty Title Matches, since the Actual Title Contenders Who People Care About are required to compete in the Rumble match itself; case in point: Angle vs. Mark Henry in the Worst PPV Main Event in ages last year). Then you move forward from there. [Also, I may get throttled for saying this, but post-WM23, I could even get behind the idea of Umaga/Khali as a full time tag team under Estrada; the way things are on RAW, a "division killing" team hogging the titles and winning short matches against everybody might be just the spark to make fans take interest in some of the other teams who'd try to go up against the monsters. I dunno.... could work, though, right?]
   
  So, anyway: have faith, people. If you want to stay sane, have faith. WWE may pay you back by raping your eyeballs with Khali in the WM main event, afterall, but 'tis the price we pay as wrestling fans.
   
  
• And a small handful (maybe about a half dozen) of my Most Respectful and Considerate Readers took the occasion of my Heroic Return to Columnizing to tell me to quit bitching and moaning and selling myself short, and just Fantasy Book them a full WrestleMania 23 line-up, because that's what they come here for.
   
  Well, OK, jerkfaces. Keeping in mind that my own rules for fantasy booking mean 100% Plausibility (which INCLUDES being able to market/sell the PPV, so you wankers don't get CM Punk in the Main Event, no matter how erect it would make your penisses), here's about the best I came up with over the past few days/nights of vicodin-assisted meditation:
   
  John Cena vs. Randy Orton vs. Edge (WWE Title Match)
  Pretty much as I outlined back on Monday. You start it with Orton being the main aggressor (since Edge "used up" his title shots and his feud with Cena last fall), but then you use the increasing tension between Orton and Edge to bring Edge into the mix and make it a three-way. It works on two levels: facing two men plays to Cena's Superman act, and the simmering dissension between Edge and Orton adds a bit of drama and an excuse for Cena to be able to eek out the win in the end. Triple Threat ("first pinfall wins") also means this is a de facto No-DQ match, which is always a nice way to open things up and let the guys go at full throttle to entertain us: we know Edge and Cena work great together, so Orton just has to not suck for this to be pretty solid.
   
  Batista vs. Chris Benoit (World Title Match)
  OMG~! An Internet Jackoff picking Benoit to get a title shot at WM! How shocking! But hear me out.... Batista has been, let's just say, underwhelming since coming back from injury. Benoit's been spinning his wheels, too. One of these guys could probably use a heel turn (I vote Batista, but that's just me) to jazz things up and light a fire under 'em. Benoit's problems are more just a symptom of Shitty Booking By The Writer Monkeys the last few months, all of which can be fixed by.... wait for it.... wait for it... giving him the win at the Royal Rumble. Put Benoit on a path of rage to Mania (keeping the US Title the whole time), and I think you'd have the makings for a pretty marketable face-vs.-face match, with the pure intensity and competitiveness shown by both men setting the stage for latent heelishness, too. Throw 'em in there, and let the fans pick who they like. NOTE: it also helps that Benoit is one of the very small handful of guys who I've ever seen have a genuinely good match against Batista in just a straight-up, no-gimmick-match setting (on RAW, probably almost exactly 2 years ago, heading into Batista's WM title win); and this match, by nature of the things around it, would be stuck being a simple, gimmick-free affair, which is not Batista's strength. So put him in there with somebody who can still get something out of him, says I!
   
  Hulk Hogan vs. Khali
  Duh. Feel-good re-do of Hogan/Andre from WM3. I've got no problem with that, and think it'll come off just fine if they go ahead and give Khali Estrada as a mouthpiece.
   
  Lashley vs. RVD (ECW Title, Hardcore Rules)
  Make no mistake: ECW's weekly TV has been absolute, unmitigated shit lately, and if it falls behind TNA in the ratings, well, it's probably not entirely unjustified. But with the story they are telling, it appears that the inability of Lashley and RVD to go to a decisive finish is going to be a running theme. Can it be milked all the way to WM? I say yes, and I figure this is also the way you squeeze the absolute maximum value out of RVD if he's on his way out later this summer. Wait till Mania, give them the "Hardcore Rules" and I think you get a match with some sizzle behind it and which will be action-packed enough to deserve the WM slot.
   
  MONEY IN THE BANK III: Carlito vs. Umaga vs. Booker T vs. Ken Kennedy vs. CM Punk vs. Sabu (Chris Jericho as Special Referee)
  It's a WM staple, and I see no reason to discontinue it. Two guys from each brand, each one viewed as either "title contender worthy" already or as a potential break-out star. Three of the guys capable of doing the insane high spots. Two more guys capable of keeping up. And one Umaga, because these matches always need the one Monster to act as a "prop" and give the match the ability to chance pace/style. Plus Jericho as the ref, just because it's an excuse for a month or so of "The Highlight Reel" going on a traveling tour of RAW, SD!, and ECW to help hype this match, which would be fun. If you wankers out there want to get CM Punk to PPV main events, then HERE is where you start the process, by having him win MitB. Either him or Kennedy.
   
  Mick Foley vs. Rob Conway (Vince vs. Trump "Apprentice Challenge" Match)
  Let's -- in the name of "Plausible Booking" -- accept that this Vince vs. Trump thing HAS to happen. How to make it most palatable? Simple: get Mick on the phone and ask him to help me save it. The notion of Trump showing up in WWE to bitch about his slanderous impersonator on RAW is a no-brainer. The "challenge" between him and Vince to see which is the better mentor follows easily thereafter. And Trump picking Conway (whom Vince "fired," and who genuinely is an under-rated talent) makes some sense. But that's when Vince gets all cocky and says that Conway can't be turned into a WM-worthy talent.... not when he's got an Ace up his sleeve. At which point he announces that Mick Foley will be HIS "apprentice." Why's it work? Remember: Vince fired Mick last summer, so this could simply be the only way Mick can get his job back, by accepting this position. Mick (purposely) being the most inept apprentice ever could lead not only to a few months of funny skits, but also to a cheap way out for Conway (and that egomaniac Trump) to get a win at Mania.... but best of all: it could jumpstart a Foley/McMahon feud that might serve us well over the summer. Think of what Vince and Shane did with HBK last summer; repeat with Foley. I think that'd be dandy. Especially Shane vs. Mick in an Insane Off.
   
  Shawn Michaels vs. the Undertaker
  If you remember my Monday column, you know I was a big fan of the idea of quasi-turning Michaels heading into WM for a match against Cena. Well: I gave that match to Rated RKO, but I *still* sorta love that speech I put into HBK's mouth about "It's been exactly 10 years since I Lost My Smile on the road to WM. But this year, I haven't lost a damned thing. This year, I Found My Heart." And you have that newly focused Michaels use that heart to do something kinda brash and cocky. In this New Scenario, instead of challenging for a World Title, he'll take his cocky edge, and he'll vow to do something that nobody's ever done before (cuz doing things people say are impossible is, afterall, his specialty).... he'll beat the Undertaker at WrestleMania. Is it kind of a re-do of Taker vs. Orton 2 years ago? A bit. Except that, with no Orton, it won't teeter on the brink of Suck. Michaels, unlike Young Randall, has the gravitas to pull this off, and I think that fans will genuinely get into seeing Taker facing off against someone nearly his equal in "legend status," with his Undefeated Streak on the line. Other reasons why it works: (1) there's nothing better for either guy to do, (2) it's a cross-brand match, which we need a few of, and (3) it's been a decade since these two have wrestled but it was always really sweet when they did.
   
  Rey Mysterio vs. Chavo Guerrero (Last Man Standing Match)
  Rey oughta be back just in time to re-ignite the feud with Chavo from last Fall, and deliver us the happy ending to this story. And to hopefully put an end to the use of the Ghost of Eddie Guerrero as a character in SD! storytelling. The matches these two ended up having right at the end -- with Rey working on a torn-up knee -- were pretty superb, so just imagine what they'd deliver with Rey healthy, and knowing this was gonna be the end of the feud...
   
  Jeff Hardy vs. Kenny Dykstra (IC Title)
  Pretty straight forward, here: after this past Monday, it seems like we oughta see Jeff/Flair vs. Kenny/Nitro as a tag match, so you just keep the hostilities swirling for a couple months until you're on the homestretch to Mania, and WWE's new goldenboy, Kenny, steps up for his title shot. Unlike many recent Golden Boys, at least Kenny doesn't totally suck, and I'd not be too upset if he keeps the effort level up, and gets a run with the IC Title to see what clicks for him. Possible bonus feature: Kenny maybe wins the title from Jeff BEFORE WrestleMania, and this would be Jeff's rematch for the belt.
   
  Paul London/Spanky Kendrick vs. MNM (Tag Title Match)
  Let's just get it over with, already, and admit that Johnny Nitro has nothing as a singles wrestler, and reunite MNM. Think of how awesome MNM were as underappreciated uppercard heels on SD! back 12 and 18 months ago. Now think of how good things could get with a chance to actually pay off on the feud with London/Kendrick that got short-changed when Mercury had to go away for a bit. The build-up writes itself, and the match should stand up very well against anything else on the card.
   
  EXTRAS
  Don't whine to me about which wrestlers didn't get booked on my version of the show. Ten matches is a pretty good limit, and a strong show is one that doesn't shove unworthy/unover guys into a match they don't deserve just to say they were there. Sorry Gregory Helms and Matt Hardy and everybody else..... but I figure there's room for you in the massive three-brand battle royale that'll go on before the show (it will be won by Kane)..... also: there will be some form of Diva Nonsense. I didn't bother booking Mickie into a match, since there's no point now that the feud with Victoria is over and there are no remaining ring-capable females on the roster (until Beth Phoenix and/or Nattie Neidhart are ready to go). So let's just do a half-naked Inverted Swimming Pool Filled With Hot Oil Battle Royal Evening Gown Match with all the divas from all three rosters, and be done with it (Ashley wins, since she's the one what's in Playboy this spring)..... everybody says Steve Austin will be making WWE cameos this spring because of his movie, so he could show up in any number of non-wrestling capacities.... same with other legends and Hall of Fame inductees, especially Roddy Piper, who has made it his goal to whip cancer's ass for the express purpose of making it to Mania.
   
  So... would you pay $50 for that? I'm guessing I probably would, but I'd understand if you wouldn't. The top four matches are pretty much the Best I Could Think Of for dealing PLAUSIBLY with the marquee matches and the titles. The next four matches represent my best attempts to be a bit more clever and put together some things you might not expect (but might be interested in; I especially think that Michaels/Taker could be really good in build-up and in execution). The last two? Well, every show needs a couple matches that will be certain to be well-worked, but might not have QUITE the sizzle of the rest of the show (plus, it never hurts to make sure your key titles get defended on big shows).
   
  As always: lemme know what you think. And if you think you can do better, lay it on me, Potsie.
   
  
• Monday's RAW, which featured Khali's terrifying brand-switch as well as a pitiably bad "Rosie vs. Donald" match (which had fans chanting "boring" among other naughty things), did a 3.7 rating. That's down from the week before, and again, WWE is internally blaming Mitigating Circumstances. In this case, the BCS Championship Game.
   
  The test is simple: if RAW does a 4.1 next Monday, then WWE's four months of excuses for depressed ratings are valid. If RAW's still in the mid-upper-3's next week, then I'm right, and the show just stinks, and that's why fewer people are watching.
   
  And man alive, I'm not hyperbolizing a bit when I say Monday's show was bad. I mean, the bad bits (peaking with the unfathomably awful Rosie/Trump thing) were heroically bad. The kind of bad you actually remember for months to come. And even the rest of the show was put together in a way that made it really hard to stay focused or give a damn. I mean, c'mon: who the fuck's idea was it to spend one entire 6 minute segment dedicated to retelling the DX/Edge/Orton story via Video Package, and then spend the VERY NEXT SEGMENT with 10 minutes of Orton, Edge, and Michaels REHASHING WHAT WE JUST WATCHED? [And with Orton absolutely mangling the English Language for the majority of that bit, that made it doubly tough to swallow.]
   
  My stance is that one of the GOOD things about the brand split is you only have two hours per week to fill up, so you should be able to go wall-to-wall with the content. But with each passing week, RAW seems to invent new ways to waste time, as if the creative team is out of ideas, and can't even do ONE hour per week, much less two. At least SD! covers up their pitiful lack of ideas by ramping up the amount of in-ring time, rather than on superfluous video packages and non-stop replays of stupid shit that wasn't even worth my time the when it happened the first time.
   
  For the next 20 weeks, RAW is going to be forcibly shoved back to a full 60 minute Time Shift (rather than the 35-40 minutes that I generally give it), due to competing programming on FOX.... I fear that if this trend continues, 60 minutes of Time Shift won't be nearly enough in any given week.
   
  
• ECW did a series-low 1.4 rating on Tuesday night. Well, that's "series low" if you omit holidays and preemptions. Given how terrible the show is lately, I see no particular reason to think this trend will reverse itself anytime soon.
   
  Case in point: this week's ECW not only featured Bob F. Holly defeating CM Punk, but also featured the second straight no contest between RVD and Lashley. This time, caused by Test. Bob Holly. Test. If anybody at Titan Towers is confused why ECW if flopping, they're the only ones. Cuz it's pretty obvious to the rest of us. WHO THE FUCK PUSHES BOB HOLLY AND TEST AS THEIR TOP STARS??!!!?!?!?!!??
   
  
• Last night's TNA Impact rating isn't available as of this writing, but if things hold up like they have the past few weeks, you're looking at something in the 1.0-1.2 range, and we honestly are on the cusp of seeing TNA surpass ECW as the #3 brand in American Wrestling.
   
  Which doesn't necessarily please me, since Impact isn't exactly a wall-to-wall awesome-a-thon each week, and has it's own problems to deal with, but what the hell.... maybe somebody, somewhere, will take being overtaken in the ratings as symbolically significant, and stop BEING SO GODDAMNED RETARDED. Good on you, TNA, if  you somehow end up being responsible for ECW ceasing to suck.... otherwise: well, you should probably get your own house in order before you go getting too big for your britches.
   
  I'm talking about everything from the Very Big (such as logical character- and storyline-development, which seems to be not so big a deal for Mr. Short Term Memory Vince Russo), to the Very Small (such as the way continuity is no concern on Crash TV; was it last week that you had The Lovely Miss Traci going from All Prim and Proper to Looking Disheveled After Being Sent Backstage to Being All Prim and Proper Again in a Backstage Skit.... ALL WITHIN THE SAME 5 MINUTE TV SEGMENT?!?!?).... it actually kinda makes me think that what might be best about an expansion to 2 hours for Impact might be that you could give Russo one hour to do his schizophrenic crap, and then use the other hour to create a version of "Hour One of Nitro".... remember that? When Nitro was 3 hours, the hour before RAW would come on head-to-head was usually just the underappreciated guys actually having really good long matches, and the other crap didn't kick in till the second hour.
   
  Ah well, TNA still has Kevin Nash, and that's good for 2 minutes of comedy each week. Then again, they still have Billy Gunn and Road Dogg, which is good for 5 minutes of agony each week, too. D'oh. [Seriously: now that HHH is hurt, and there's no DX to hypocritically mock, what use is VKM, anyway? None. OMG~! HHH is holding VKM down! His injury was on purpose to scoop their heat and steal their shtick!]
   
  All joking aside, the vibe I get from TNA the past 2 weeks is that we're pretty close to Angle vs. Christian for the TNA Title, which is actually about as cool a major title feud as there could possibly be on any of the four brands. If Russo can wean himself off this absurd Abyss fetish of his, I'm man enough to admit that Angle/Christian on the top line would pique my interest.
   
  You can get the full report on how this might develop on Sunday night's PPV in the comprehensive TNA Final Resolution PPV Preview. [If that link is dead, please just wait a bit and try again. I'm holding for a few final sets of predictions from the TNA Posse as of this writing.]
   
  
• An unfortunate TNA tidbit that I left out of Monday's catch-up newsbites.... Konnan is gonna be sidelined for a while, but not for the reason folks were expecting.
   
  He went in for planned hip replacement surgery in early December, and instead found out that his kidneys were not functioning adequately. Konnan has since gotten dialysis to clean out his blood and gotten the hip replaced.... but now he's in need of a kidney transplant.
   
  That sucks for the guy, big time. Here's hoping he gets what he needs to return to 100%, so I can go back to wishing him a long and healthy (and immediate) retirement, somewhere away from my TV screen! ZING~! [conan]I'ma gonna go to hell when I die[/conan]
   
  
• OK, so Khali went to RAW, either to fill the gap left by HHH or to facilitate the start of a feud with Hogan.... but what's that mean for ECW, which had been planning on pushing him as the lead heel for the brand?
   
  Brace yourselves, folks, cuz in "WWE Think," the answer is..... GENE SNITSKY.
   
  I am not making this up. But I wish I was. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, there are people (people who GET PAID to think about things like this, mind you) who are proposing that freaking Snitsky be repositioned as ECW's lead heel and possible WM23 title challenger to Lashley.
   
  This is seriously getting so bad that I'm forced to wonder if Vince McMahon isn't under the mind control of Evil Midgets again. Otherwise: what's the explanation?
   
  
• I think that's most of the important stuff for today, folks. In keeping with my stated promise from Monday, I'll see you again early next week -- if there's not enough news to make a column worthwhile, maybe I'll get back to trying a RAW Recap on Tuesday? -- to continue my quest to get back to polishing pro wrestling's turds at least 2 or 3 times per week.
   
  See you then, kids....