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PWINSIDER Q & A: BILLIONAIRE VINCE, ANGLE IN MMA, BRET HART AND MONTREAL, MUSIC RIGHTS AND MORE

I don't understand Kurt Angle's MMA obsession. He's obviously bluffing and really has no intentions of entering an MMA ring. It seems that he embarrassing himself with all this talk and the only thing more embarrassing would be he getting humiliated in the ring. Do you think sooner or later all this talk is just gonna die down and nothing's gonna come of it?

I too have serious doubts that Angle has any real intention of ever doing MMA.  I think he has been talking about it as a way of bringing attention to himself.  It's part of the pattern of curious behavior that he has exhibited since leaving WWE.  I also agree that he would have major problems if he did ever compete against anyone of consequence in MMA.  He hasn't ever done it and it's not s simple thing to just go and do.  He was a great amateur, but that was over a decade ago.  He has a lot of miles on his body from working for WWE and he is nearing 40.  I see it as being similar to Brock Lesnar trying out for the NFL a few years ago, and we all saw how that went.  Kurt doing MMA is a recipe for potential disaster, if he were actually serious about doing it.

I have always found Bret Hart's behavior in the time leading up to Survivor Series '97 very immature and unreasonable. I know, McMahon and HBK screwed him, which is something that shouldn't be done and is disgusting. But he wasn't exactly innocent, was he? He was the one who didn't agree to lose the title at Montreal, after all. Then he said that he didn't want to lose the title at his home country, which is ridiculous. That's like an American wrestler from Detroit not agreeing to lose the title at Texas, because that's his home country. Montreal isn't close to his home town, and Canada is a big country. There were also his stupid ego battles with HBK. What is your opinion about this?  Also, I've noticed Hart a personal issues with some (or most?) of the big wrestling stars in history (Hogan, HBK, Flair...), isn't that saying more on him than on them?

Bret believes that since he had creative control over his matches that he could dictate his finishes.  Technically, that is completely true.  I was 100% on his side when the whole screwjob went down back in 1997 but as I have thought about it over time, I can see why Vince did what he did.  He had his title belt to think about and I understand that he wanted it off of Bret in the manner of his choosing, especially with Bret going to WCW soon thereafter.  Looking back, both Vince and WCW would have been better served to have the creative control clauses pertain to everything but title belts.  But, they didn't.  I agree that Bret's "I didn't want to lose in Canada because I was a hero there" was weak, especially when you consider that the province of Quebec has had its issues with the English speaking parts of Canada.  Wrestling is a work.  Winning and losing is a not real.  I thought he was a bit goofy to think that way.  I definitely think that losing to Michaels, who he detested, played a part in his desire to not lose on the PPV.  If he were asked to drop it to Undertaker he probably would have been more willing to do so.  

As for your last question, a lot of stars have had issues with their fellow headliners.  Bret is just someone who has always said what he thought while others seethed in private.  Sometimes you are better served by keeping quiet.

These days when ever I watch some new presentations of old matches (DVD'S, WWE 24/7 etc.), I noticed that on some of the matches, the entrance music is filtered out and a generic version of it is put in. I'm not really surprised when it comes to old ECW matches since they used mainstream songs, but every now and then they will take an old entrance theme and change it, most recent is on the Hulk Hogan anthology they changed the nWo theme to a generic version in "Hollywood" Hogan vs. The Rock. It doesn't make sense. What is the reason of this?

It comes down to rights fees.  If WWE doesn't own them and can't get them at a reasonable price, they go in a different direction.  For example, if someone outside of their company does a theme for John Cena, a contract is signed that gives WWE usage rights in certain areas for a set amount of time.  After that, they have to do another deal to use the music.  That is why WWE does most of their own entrance music now, to avoid those problems down the road.  It could also be a case where they were granted the rights to use the music on TV and maybe PPV, but distribution to the home market via DVD was never part of the deal.  That would mean negotiating rights fees after the fact, which usually drives the price up.  So, when you see matches from the past with the wrong music accompanying it, it's because they lost the rights to use it or it would cost more than they want to pay to do so.

Now that Forbes has published the real billionaires list and Vince is not on it (there are more than 900 who are on it) why doesn't the WWE just work that angle in and let those with a brain have some satisfaction of at least minimal truth. 

1) Forbes' list is an estimate.  They don't have full access to everyone's holdings, so it's possible that Vince really is a billionaire.

2) More importantly, when has WWE creative ever cared about giving fans credit for having intelligence?  He tells them what they want.  He doesn't let the truth get in the way of a good story.  He wants it to be a battle of the billionaires and he isn't going to admit to the masses that he isn't one (if Forbes is correct).

I have noticed that your site uses a lot of ads.  I have also noticed that occasionally a risqué ad slips in from time to time.  Why does that happen?  Don't you make enough money off of the ads to be able to avoid those kind of ads?

Actually, we don't make all that much on the ads from the free site.  In a nutshell, the free site uses far more of our resources than it brings in due to the rates that the ad companies pay being so bad. I feel that we give away more original content on our free site than any other wrestling news site on the net.  We are able to do so because we are the only wrestling news site that I know of that has three full time employees working for it.  With that comes three salaries to pay and to make the money that we need to provide the kind of content that we do on the free site, we are forced to use ad companies that bundle ads. As I said above, they don't pay that much but something beats nothing and literally every penny that comes in is needed to keep the free site content as it is now. 

Unfortunately, bad ads do occasionally slip through the cracks at times.  As soon as we hear about them, we contact the offending company and get them removed.  We can't just arbitrarily remove the ad code because if we did, we would be in a position to have to change how much content we give away for free (obviously, this has no effect on the Elite side where there is no ad code and there are tons of extra stories and features).  We could just choose to move 90% of our content to Elite only and hope that we would sign enough people up to offset the loss of ad revenue, but we have always taken pride in giving away as much free content as we can and we will do everything we can to keep doing so.  

That's why the occasional bad ad will slip through.

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