McMahon must survive another defection

Another major blow to the ego of Vincent Kennedy McMahon in the form of Hulk Hogan announcing his new partnership with Dixie Carter at TNA and the results of last week's Bragging Rights pay-per-view are our major focus for this week's column.

First, his wife departed to run for the Connecticut Senate, and then, son Shane announced he was bolting from the WWE universe for as yet undisclosed reasons. Now, Hulk Hogan shows up at Madison Square Garden in the midst of his whirlwind media tour to promote his non-WWE book and makes, what at least the Hulkster considers, a bombshell announcement that he will be partnering with Dixie Carter to assist her upstart TNA promotion in becoming the number one force in sports entertainment.

Don't feel too sorry for Vinny Mac, though, as his accountants are probably still counting the receipts from last Sunday's ppv and the Hogan betrayal isn't likely to make anywhere near the huge difference the egotistical Hulkster would like to believe it will.

When was the last time Hogan really drew television ratings or any significant ppv buy rates? Yes, he got some long ovations for his last couple of hurrahs at live Raws. However, lengthy standing ovations don't necessarily translate into drawing money and that ship probably set sail quite a while ago.

Aside from the perverse enjoyment of watching the Hogan-McMahon ego bumper car battle, this could easily be a case of much ado about nothing (or at least very little). Hogan was never a great in-ring worker and can't physically do much of anything these days. He doesn't really have anything left to offer inside the squared-circle. If he can't wrestle, how does he possibly draw money for the company? Reports indicate there may be some other names joining Hogan over at TNA that could create some short-term curiosity, but are also not likely to be any threat to the McMahon domination of the industry.

With Ric Flair already committed to the Australian tour with Hogan, some folks are wondering if that might be the next shoe to drop under the TNA bed. Bill Goldberg is still out there and might be willing to come in if the price is right and if Vince Russo finds the door. The cost-benefit analysis would say these guys are simply not worth it, but some people with lots of money don't have to operate on that basis when making such decisions.

Eric Bischoff introduced Hogan at the Garden, where WWE seems to have a strained relationship right now after many years of considering it the Mecca of professional wrestling. Hulk had the audacity to say the Garden was the "house that Hogan built." Somewhere out there in Pittsburgh, Bruno Sammartino must have been gagging on that line and was probably instantly ready to cut a promo on the Hulkster that would be better than any of those scripted ones we have been having to listen to in recent years.

As for Hogan's new book, when he was on Larry King and Larry's B-side, the Joy Behar show, he said little to convince anyone that the book was anything other than a shallow continution of his old reality show and just as much of a work as the matches of his admittedly successful ring career.

The Today Show also gave him book promo time and the attention grabber was that he was ready to commit suicide after his marriage crumbled, but Muhammed Ali's daughter called him in the nick of time to snap him out of it. If Hogan didn't have such a rep for telling one whopper after another, maybe there would be less cynicism here. Probably not.

At Bragging Rights, John Cena defeated Randy Orton to regain the WWE championship in a 60-Minute Iron Man match by capturing six of eleven falls. Undertaker retained the Smackdown version of the world title in a four-way that included Batista, Rey Mysterio and C.M. Punk. Big Show turned on his Raw team to help Smackdown and Y2J capture the big fourteen-man tag battle between the brands.

Today's Raw will have some tough competition in the ratings department as it goes up against Monday Night Football and the World Series. Next ppv for WWE will be the Survivor Series, which should get a buy rate break with the announcement that former WWE star and current MMA champ Brock Lesnar is off the MMA ppv scheduled for the same weekend due to a bout with the flu that prevents him from adequately training for the fight.

Sign up for Text Alerts

Sign up for e-mail newsletters