Raw for 7/19 scored a 3.7 rating, just a touch above last week's 3.6 1/2. The hours were a 3.7 and 3.7.
Velocity scored a 0.5 rating.
Sunday Night Heat scored a 1.2 rating.
WWE Experience scored a 0.5 rating.
Amongst the top rated shows on basic cable, WWE for 7/12 ranked #4 for hour two, and #7 for hour one.
I was checking out the "Official Rules" for the WWE Divas Search and found two things interesting. No the two things aren't Christy and Carmella, although WWE will do everything possible to have one of them win. And based on two added "rules", expect some hokey s**t to happen in the upcoming weeks.
The following are excerpts from the official rules for the Divas Search:
"WWE reserves the right in its sole and exclusive discretion to grant immunity from fan voting in any given week to finalists who compete and win such immunity. Finalists who win immunity in any given week cannot be eliminated from the Search. For example, if fan voting determines that finalist #1 is the first choice for elimination and finalist #2 is the next choice for elimination, finalist #2 will be eliminated to the extent finalist #1 has won immunity that week. WWE is under no obligation to offer immunity to finalists."
(In other words, if WWE isn't happy fans voted off Christy or Carmella, they can change it).
"WWE, IN ITS SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE DISCRETION, RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE THE RULES, METHOD AND MANNER OF FAN VOTING AND WINNER SELECTION AT ANY TIME, FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER, OR FOR NO REASON AT ALL."
(In other words, if WWE thinks fans are voting based on "spite", or voting off someone they want to keep around, they can change the rules at any time.)
Two WWE favorites, two examples how WWE will make sure they, not the fans, choose their winner.
MEMBERS OF USA WRESTLING TEAM ON TNA IMPACT
NWATNA announced they have invited two members of the United States Olympic Wrestling team to appear on this week's Impact! show. Daniel Cormier and Joe Williams will appear on the show before they head to Athens Greece for the Summer Olympics.
Here's a great article on the current wrestling school run by Playboy Buddy Rose & Col DeBeers. The school is based in Portland, Oregon. Article and photo courtesy of The Tribune based out of Portland:
Ex-Portland Wrestling star Paul “Playboy Buddy Rose” Pershmann coaches Justin Stoker (left) and Aaron Nelson on the finer points of the sport at the wrestling school he runs with Ed “Col. DeBeers” Wiskoski.
Welcome to the school of really hard knocks
With his girth, the pinkish tone to his skin and the peroxided hair, he’s one of the most recognizable figures in Portland. At 51, Paul Pershmann hasn’t changed much. He walks down the street, and people still know who he is.
It was decades ago that this man stood in front of a camera every Saturday night in the old converted bowling alley they called the Portland Sports Arena and made so many people angry. He was arrogant. He was dirty. He was mean. He was a cheater. He was, in fact, “Playboy Buddy Rose” — and in his prime he was one of the best “heels” — professional wrestling’s term for villains — in the business.
His pal Ed Wiskoski began his wrestling career using his own name but moved on to being “Mega Maharishi” in the days when the Rajneeshees were seemingly trying to take over Oregon. When that act cooled off, he became “Col. DeBeers,” a dastardly South African bigot intent on upsetting every minority group in the world. I can’t believe anyone had the nerve to adopt such a persona.
They were a tag team, Rose and Wiskoski. An evil one, although both were great guys away from the ring. Now, a good two decades removed from their Portland Wrestling heyday, they’re partners again. They’re teaching youngsters how to eye gouge, body slam, pile drive and snapmare each other without causing injuries.
They’re running a wrestling school Sunday mornings at the Straight Blast Gym on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, preaching safety first and encouraging their students to have fun learning the tricks of one of the world’s trickiest trades.
They teach the basics
In these days of World Wrestling Entertainment stars getting huge exposure and making a lot of money, there are wrestling schools everywhere.
Usually, for several hundred dollars, people who haven’t had half the success of Wiskoski or Rose will teach you a few moves and send you on your way — without a thought for how hard it really is to make it to the top of a business that these days is dominated by a small number of people.
Or they’ll do it the old-school way — take your money, then rough you up so badly in the ring you want no part of ever coming back.
But this school is a little different.
“It’s 25 bucks an hour,” Rose says. “Fifty bucks for two hours every Sunday. Pay as you go. You want to quit, go ahead. And we don’t charge people to do calisthenics or lift weights. You get in shape on your own — that’s up to you. You come here to learn the basics.”
Very basic. It’s old-school stuff like ring generalship, ring psychology, how to do an interview. A good many of today’s wrestling stars can do all the high-flying flips off the ring post but don’t know how to work a crowd or build a match. And many of them also don’t observe the niceties of what was once thought an art — “working” a believable wrestling match, making a crowd think you’re beating someone up — but actually not hurting the other person at all.
"It’s a lost art,” Rose says. “I’ve had guys in the WWE today tell me that they don’t want to work with a lot of these young guys because they are afraid they’re going to get hurt. They don’t know how to work.”
As Wiskoski tells a student: “It’s safety first. That’s for you and your opponent.” Each man counts himself lucky to be out of the pro wrestling world alive. It’s been a hazardous occupation for years, what with steroid abuse mixed with an abundance of recreational drugs and painkillers. Rose, particularly, put himself in jeopardy with a wild lifestyle that didn’t get straightened out until a trip through rehab. He makes a decent living now as a frequent guest at wrestling nostalgia conventions and shows (he was, by the way, the very first man to step into the ring at the very first Wrestlemania).
Wiskoski, 59, left wrestling to teach school for several years and is now, like Rose, living in Southwest Washington and enjoying a retirement interrupted by the occasional opportunity to make a few bucks signing autographs or reminiscing about the old days in the business.
“We talk all the time about how we wished we would have made our own tapes of our matches,” Wiskoski says. “There’s such a market now for that stuff.”
Only memories remain
Portland promoter Don Owen, known for his thriftiness, didn’t save tapes of his Saturday night shows on local TV but taped over them — saving a few bucks on video. It’s a shame. A lot of early Portland Wrestling stuff was classic and would be valuable in today’s world of tape trading and selling.
In their school, Rose and Wiskoski are working with a group of about six to eight students, some of whom show promise. Nineteen-year-old Brian Schiedel, who will be a sophomore this fall at the University of Oregon, wrestles as Brian Zane. He has been in the school since December.
“Three weeks ago I had my first two matches, at a show at Parkrose High School,” he says. “It was quite an experience. Neither was a stellar classic match, but that’s all right. I know I’m not ready for the WWE, but I’m learning. It’s been really cool to learn from two local legends.”
Rose, who sells DVDs of a lot of his vintage stuff and takes inquiries for the wrestling school through his Web site, PlayboyBuddyRose.com, was a terrific athlete in his youth — a baseball and hockey player. It’s why he was always able to make athletic moves in the ring even when his weight ballooned over 300 pounds. He isn’t any smaller today but says he’s doing fine — other than the aches and pains that dog most veteran wrestlers in retirement.
This stuff is staged, but it isn’t fake. Very often it’s a physical test to step into the ring and put on what Vince McMahon calls “sports entertainment.”
You have to learn the basics somewhere. And if you have any recollection of Rose going nuts when the ring announcer wouldn’t announce his weight at 220 pounds, or of DeBeers twirling the end of his handlebar mustache before hitting someone with a low blow, you figure these kids came to the right place.
The Playboy and the Colonel know the ropes.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
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