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PWINSIDER Q & A: MITB, EDGE'S INJURY, THE STATE OF THE BRAND EXTENSION, FUJI VICE, TAG TITLES AND MORE

I've seen Fuji Vice mentioned on the site several times over the past few weeks, so out of curiosity, I found an episode on YouTube. To be blunt, I didn't really find it all that funny, or a reason to be talking about it still 20 years later - were there multiple episodes, and I just found a dud?

Fuji Vice was all about being so ridiculously bad that it was good.  It was an offshoot of the WWF's Tuesday Night Titans show that was so campy that at times it was great and others it was horrible.  Fuji Vice was truly classic stuff and at the time there had never been anything like it.

I really think that you needed to be a fan at the time to truly appreciate Fuji Vice.  Watching it now, as the business has changed in that time, takes away a lot of what it was back in the day.  It's one of those things you really had to see when it was happening to appreciate.  Over time, it didn't hold up the way that it came across back then.

When is Cryme Tyme going to get a push for the tag team title or is that not in the plans?

Well, they won a title shot at New Years Revolution and it was promptly forgotten by WWE.  Instead, they have been relegated to a humor role with the likes of Eugene while the tag belts were made part of the WWE Title feud.  So, their push has obviously been toned down.  That doesn't mean they won't get a run in the future with the belts, but if they do, it will be when creative goes back to treating those titles as an afterthought.  They are not the first tag team to get a big, short push by creative, only to be forgotten, and they won't be the last.  To be fair, both of the guys in the team are still pretty young and could use more seasoning in the ring.

Why does the WWE almost insist on "hiding" certain titles when going into Wrestlemania? I'm not even talking about leaving Kendrick & London, and Chavo off the card. Why are the world tag straps on Cena and Michaels? I understand that they've used it (somewhat) in building up their story, but why couldn't they have dropped them a few weeks ago (to say, Haas and Benjamin or MNM) so they could have been defended at WM23?

The tag belts in 2007 are largely a prop, nothing more.  At least, that is how they have been treated by creative the last few years.  In the case of Mania, they made the call of using them as a bullet point in the Michaels-Cena storyline and I liked what they did with them.  I would not have had Michaels and Cena drop them before Mania either because by doing so after the match, it's another chapter in the story between the two men.  Besides, London and Kendrick have held their belts forever and they couldn't get on the PPV.  Do you really think new tag champs would have?  I sure don't.

In the buildup to Wrestlemania, I believed that Edge would once again win the money-in-the-bank match. So my question is two-fold: is Edge's injury legit, and was Kennedy always supposed to win it or was he the back-up plan?

While it was logical to have Edge win, I didn't think that he would.  I picked Kennedy in my Mania predictions because it made the most sense to elevate someone else with the win instead of putting someone over for the second time.  Edge is already a top guy.  He didn't need the win.  I am under the impression that Kennedy has been the pick for a while and Edge's jaw injury, which as we reported on the Elite site is legitimate, didn't factor into the decision.

So with PPVs now showcasing all WWE talent from all brands, the mixing of brands on TV for the past year, and now after Wrestlemania on RAW, we have every brand represented not just once in shows, but several times, what is the point of keeping RAW and Smackdown separate if they are going to mix talent up anyway? And is WWE admitting the brand split is over, and didn't work?

One reason we still have the brand extension is that WWE doesn't want to admit that it didn't work, so it's still on.  Another thing to consider is that they have contracts with USA and UPN to provide specific shows, and there may be language in the contracts that goes against mixing all the talent up.  The best reason I can think of to keep the extension as is though is that you can have the surprise element of "so and so" appearing on Raw when you didn't expect it.  If you knock down all the walls, there wouldn't be any shock value when a Mr. Kennedy or Undertaker shows up on Monday night or Shawn Michaels or John Cena on a Friday.  

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