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Tonight Chris Jericho performed on Dancing With the Stars under his real name, Chris Irvine. He is also doing quite well and he and Cheryl Burke are one of the top couples. Considering this and Jericho's other interests outside of wrestling, what are the odds that he will pull a "Stacy Keibler" and leave WWE at the end of DWTS?
I don't think you can really compare the two since Jericho has already left a few times on his own, to pursue other projects. Plus, Jericho was a highly paid top wrestler while Stacy was a lower paid diva. For her, the life of a D Lister was a huge step up. Jericho, to me, already is, at least, at that level. I saw him dancing under his real name as being a way to identify with the DWTS fan base that doesn't know wrestlers and it was a smart move to humanize himself. With that said, if something huge were to come out of this I would expect him to jump on it. That just makes sense.
As much as I hate to admit it John Cena is getting booed overwhelmingly, and it is a shame because he obviously is a great guy. However with his match versus the Rock being less than a year do you see them turning Cena heel? I know he is a cash cow, but at this point do they have a choice? Or do they just wait till it all dries up?
Cena's merchandise considerations are obviously huge. They don't want to throw them away. Honestly, they don't have to in this case. I agree that Cena the person is a good guy. The problem is that his character is so hokey that he turns men off because he works so hard at being a kiddie superhero. That, however, will work in WWE's advantage with this feud as they can continue to market Cena as they have and grab the merch money from his fans while marketing The Rock to those that already don't like Cena. I would love to see them try a Cena heel run, but I think what we will see is both guys continuing in their current roles.
I had a question about Trish Stratus. I'm a big fan, and it was so nice when she got to retire by winning the women's title in her final match. I had hoped that she wouldn't come back to WWE, in order to preserve not only the specialness of that final match, but also her star power, as I think that sendoff made her something special because it's rarely done. Trish has come back multiple times since her retirement, and some of those returns have been really good and some have been kinda lackluster, including this latest one. My question is, does Trish constantly coming back ruin the specialness of her retirement or her star power? Does it depend on how many times she comes back, or how long she sticks around, or the quality of what she comes back for? Or would it be wiser to view her retirement as the end of a really good novel, and her comebacks as an epilogue to the story?
We talked about this on audio last week. Mike Johnson agreed with you. Mike Epsenhart and I both feel that it doesn't hurt her at all to come back.
Wasn't it a huge slap in the face to one of WWE's longest tenured employees, Michael Hayes, to not induct the Freebirds into the Hall of Fame this year? I mean they were from "Badstreet, Atlanta, GA", they were big stars there well before LOD, and I'm sure being inducted there would have meant a lot to Hayes.
Michael Hayes is a highly paid, important part of the WWE team so don't worry about him. The issue is you can't have everyone come in at once. The Freebirds will get their turn one day.
Among other reasons why the Invasion angle failed was that the top WCW names were not part of the angle (Goldberg, Nash. Steiner, Sting etc....). From what I understand, the reason for not bringing them in was due to the size of the big stars' contracts. Do you know whether when WWE purchased WCW, they made an offer to AOL that WWE would absorb the big contracts as well, as long as AOL paid a percentage (similar to what baseball teams do when they want to offload an onerous contract). This would have benefitted both sides, as WWE would have had the big stars, and even if WWE was only on the hook for 10 cents on the dollar, AOL wouldn't be paying 100% of the contracts for all those wrestlers to stay home.
In some cases, the contracts were non-transferable, which meant even if WWE wanted to pick them up the talent didn't have to work for anyone but Time Warner. In the case of the other contracts, WWE didn't have to make that offer because no one else was offering much of anything for WCW once the TV slots were off the table. Without them, the company was pretty worthless. AOL wanted WCW off of the Time Warner ledger before the merger happened so they took the best and only deal that they were offered.
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