Congrats, Davina!

Congratulations to Davina Rose (one of my favorites from Shimmer Wrestling), who recently signed a development deal with the big boys, World Wrestling Entertainment.  Davina was always very hard-working and enthusiastic in Shimmer and I wish her continued success in WWE.  And maybe one day she'll be the one pushing John Cena off a ladder!

New WWE Show

Hot off the heels of the lowest rated Monday Night Raw in ages, WWE's new show WWE Main Event debuts tonight at 7PM CST on the Ion Television (just checked-- we do get Ion Television here at the Hollywood Nation offices).  The main event of the, uh, the Main Event will be world champ vs. world champ, C.M. Punk vs. Sheamus (just giving it away on TV with no build up-- but that's another story).  A top flight main event-- but don't get used to it.  You just know we're three weeks away from Epico vs. David Otunga.

Raw Gets Rocked

Even though the show was 95% crap, including two truly atrocious lengthy skits, somehow an appearance by The Rock on WWE Raw made everything okay. His Rock Bottom on Mick Foley and his exchange with John Cena at the end were magic. Whether this translates to buys on Sunday at the Survivor Series is a different story, but for now, it was just good to have some fun back on the show.

Survivor Series

Well the opponents have finally been named for the mega-team of The Rock and John Cena at Survivor Series: it will be the upper mid-card team of R-Truth and The Miz. Even with recent WWE programming being full of bad announcing, major storyline inconsistencies, pro-bullying, and their bizarre obsession with Twitter, I'm still excited about The Rock returning (although next week's Muppet appearance should promptly kill that enthusiasm).

(Photo from wwe.com)

New Champ

Congratulations to James Storm, who was crowned the Impact Wrestling World Champion on last night's show. I've been pushing for this for years and they finally did it. Granted, they did it in the most ass-backwards way with no build, but they did do it. Baby steps.

(Photo from impactwrestling.com)

New Ring of Honor Wrestling TV Show

Don't forget the new ROH Wrestling show debuts this weekend in syndication (as they say, check your local listings). More information is available at rohwrestling.com. What fun it will be to see good matches, logical booking, and Michael Cole not announcing.

C.M. Punk on Monday Night Raw

I loved C.M. Punk's promo at the end of WWE Raw last night where he ripped on everything from Stephanie McMahon to USA Network's shows. It's this kind of stuff that makes putting up with leprechauns and John Cena's corny interviews worth it.

Monday Night Raw

Fun show last night. The return of Dolph and Vickie, an appearance by the Undertaker, a good promo by Miz, Sunny goes into the Hall of Fame (!), the return of STONE COLD (which was the highlight of the evening by far) and John Cena's wack rhyme (the worst rapping I've seen since David Silver of 90210). Should only get better with Snooki and perhaps The Rock joining the festivities in my hometown next week!

Guess Who's Coming To WWE...

This just in: The nation's most famous skank is invading the sacred world of professional wrestling. And it is taking place in the hometown of Hollywood Nation no less. According to several online reports, Jersey Shore's Snooki will be the guest star of next week's WWE Monday Night Raw in St. Louis. I'm actually looking forward to this for the entertainment value. On the flip side of this, you just know one of the wrestlers is going to hit that and end up burning. In the interest of time, I am providing these convenient links for local free clinics and urgent health care facilities here in town so the WWE Superstars don't have to go fumbling through the phone book when it's all said and done. You're welcome.

(Photo from rollingstone.com)

Non-Shocker

And what was Impact's big shocker last Thursday? The big shock was that they didn't show any remorse for totally ripping off WWE's recent Undertaker "2/21/11" skits with their very own "3/3/11" segment promoting the return of Sting. Totally lame. I haven't seen such unabashed biting since Vanilla Ice stole "Under Pressure" to make "Ice Ice Baby"-- and then pretended that he didn't.

(Photo from tnawrestling.com)

Dancing Is JERICHO!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the winner of the next season of Dancing with the Stars.... CHRIS JERICHO! Cheryl Burke is clearing off room in her trophy case as we speak!

The Rock Returns To Raw Tonight!

It's gonna be on and poppin' tonight!

(Photo from facebook.com/dwaynejohnson)

Here We Go Again

A shocker-- what could this be? Coherent booking? A match longer than five minutes? A straight up match with no stipulations? I won't get my hopes up.

He Just Saved WrestleMania

It was so great to see The Rock return last night. They announced on WWE Raw last night that he will be the host of WrestleMania this year. He gave a great promo that brought back memories of the glory years. As an added bonus, he absolutely buried John Cena. This suddenly makes WrestleMania a must-see show. One question though: who was the broad that came out of the limo?

(Photo from wwe.com)

The 2011 Royal Rumble

Congratulations to Alberto Del RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIO, the winner of the 2011 Royal Rumble. This was my first WWE PPV since March of last year and I thought it was pretty good. Dolph Ziggler (who desperately needs a name change) and Edge had a good match, Miz vs. Randy Orton was decent, the Divas match was okay and I really enjoyed the Rumble itself especially the John Morrison spot and Nexus just killing dudes. The returns of Booker T and Diesel had me out of my seat. The announcing was atrocious, but hey, you can't have everything. Good start on the road to WrestleMania.

(Photo from wwe.com)

No More ROH TV?

Sad news for fans of quality wrestling. HDNet announced yesterday that as of April, it would no longer be running Ring of Honor Wrestling, which is probably the best wrestling show on the air. I haven't been this mad about a cancellation since they took Good Times off after that episode where they finally got out of the ghetto.

Your New World Champion

Congratulations to The Miz, who was crowned the new champion WWE Champion after cashing in the Money in the Bank briefcase and beating Randy Orton last night on Raw. I have to give props because this guy went from being a totally inept scrub to going to the top of the mountain. I never would have seen this day coming back when he was flubbing lines on the Diva Search segments. Good job!

Call The Waaambulance

The gall of these people. They got called out on all the deaths, classifying employees as independent contractors to screw them out of benefits, no off-season for wrestlers, and they respond with this whiny campaign:

"THEY"

This is one of those weeks where you wish TNA Wrestling would just fold up and go away. It started on Impact last Thursday with the Ric Flair vs. Mick Foley match. It was just sad to see two of my favorite wrestlers bleeding and rolling around in thumbtacks. I started having flashbacks to the movie The Wrestler (and not the scenes with Marisa Tomei's ass). They followed this up with their biggest show of the year on Sunday, Bound for Glory, which saw the reveal of their long awaited "THEY" angle result in a heel turn of their most popular wrestler and merchandise seller, Jeff Hardy. Sounds smart to me. Finally at last night's TV tapings, they had a guest appearance from Jersey Shore's Jwoww which according to TMZ cost them $15,000. Are you kidding me? For 15 grand, they could have gotten J-LO. These idiots. No wonder Paul Heyman stayed away.

NXT Season Three

OMG. Last night's season three premiere of WWE's rookie-in-training show, NXT, was Trainwreck TV at its finest. Take six barely trained wrestlers, er, sports entertainers fresh out of the WWE Florida development system, put them on national TV to participate in skits and have horrible wrestling matches and hijinx galore ensue. It was fascinating to watch between the dreadful interviews, announcers making fools of themselves, and more botched moves than a

Candice Michelle vs. Lacey Von Erich blindfold match. For the record, I'm going with Naomi to win this thing (hardly going out on a limb seeing as how she won three competitions already). With only six contestants, I have no idea how they are going to drag this thing out for three months. Hell, they barely made it an hour. But if they can make it through the season and create one new star and go without some poor broad getting injured on live TV, the season will be a success.

(Photo from wwe.com)