As noted earlier here on the site, during a recent interview, Dawn Ostroff of The CW Network talked about why WWE Friday Night Smackdown was being cancelled. Ostroff said quote, "It was really all men. There was no duplication in our audience at all for any of our other shows. When you looked at the viewers who came to us from WWE, they did not watch any other show on The CW and vice versa. We know that taking something like WWE off, which was a very strong performer, will have an impact on the schedule. The question is will we be able to compensate in other places. But I think what's really important is that we have talked about building a brand, about having flow." Lots of interesting things coming from those comments. The general line is that even if a single person watched another CW show or not, the Smackdown rating alone helped bring up the average for the entire network every week. So losing the show will be a huge problem for them no matter how they spin it. Of course, some see Smackdown heading to MyNetworkTV as a way of saving that network as well, although there is a possibility it could flop and cause huge problems for WWE.
WWE are advertising Triple H vs. The Big Show for the WWE title as the main event for the WWE SmackDown and ECW taping in Pittsburgh on August 26th. (Thanks to Danny Tric)
I saw that it says "R-Truth" on wweshop.com for Ron Killings name for the sweepstakes. It also says R-Truth for his on his myspace, so I'm guessing that it is what he will be using in the WWE. (Thanks to J Barbour)
Matt Hardy was in Cleveland on Friday doing autograph signings at a local store. He spent a while helping do the afternoon radio show on 92.3 Krock. He said that he'd be facing Mark Henry at SummerSlam for the ECW title. Of course this is a few days before WWE announced the fatal four way number one contenders match. (Thanks to Chad Porto)
The Austin Chronicle just ran an interview with ECW champion and Austin resident Mark Henry. I had the chance to talk to both Mark and Terry Todd, the man who helped get him into competitive lifting and from there into wrestling. You can find the interview at http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:645907. It was part of a larger feature about professional wrestling in Austin, which you can read at http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:645906. (Thanks to Richard Whittaker)
