The Heat and the Shine

Dave Scholler , UFC's head flack (technically Director of Communications, but I view the ol' Variety-style term "flack" for PR people with some fondness) took me to task a bit on Twitter recently because I wrote that UFC scaled the pricing too high for the UFC pay-per-view in Milwaukee on August 31.  Dave correctly pointed out that tickets had yet to go on sale to the general public, so my criticism was unfair.  My point was that anyone who wanted to but a UFC Fight Club membership for about $80 USD could gain the right to buy tickets, so essentially the event was on sale with an extra $80 tax added to each ticket order. Tickets to the August 31 UFC pay-per-view in Milwaukee are on sale now, and sales are meager thus far.  The Ticketmaster arena map shows that the cheap seats on both the upper level ($70 plus fees) and lower level ($150 plus fees) sold pretty well.  The best ringside seats ($400 plus fees) have also sold.  The problem is that the other sixty perce

The highlight of Raw -- tonight, definitely; this year, probably -- was the Mark Henry retirement angle. Everyone loved the speech.  Everyone loved the swerve. The speech was beloved because it was real.  Henry may not have had time to recap his dark days of bag craps and storyline fetishes, but he really does have a career to be proud of.  Many thought the 10 year deal he signed in 1996 would be his last.  Few thought he had potential after he spent the first half of the deal in sputtered starts.  Yet he became a reliable performer who at times elevated himself into being one of the more entertaining wrestlers in the promotion. Cena being swerved was also well done.  Cena's skepticism kept him from playing the impotent babyface.  It made sense for Cena.  He kept his guard up until Henry had the audience duped.  Keep the babyface in step with the audience and the babyface keeps from looking dumb. There was one problem with the turn: it didn't make a whole heck of a lot o

WWE Monday Night Raw starts in about sixty minutes.  In ninety minutes, Raw gets obliterated. The irony is in which network will be doing the obliterating: TNT.  A shade over twelve years after Vince McMahon's pyrrhic vanquishing of WCW, the Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers will cause TNT to smack Raw down to a number that belongs in the pre-Attitude era dark ages.  That TNT is paying the NBA an average of $445 million per year over their current contract is all the more delicious.  If WWE was booked for intelligent adults, Stamford wouldn't be left slurping the gruel of a USA network contract that draws about 10% of that. I submit that more 90's wrestling fans will watch the latest vanilla babyface try to vanquish basketball's monster heel tonight than will watch WWE's flagship wrestling show on the other channel.  Pity, that. Back when Vince fashioned himself the big dog (or other d-word) on the block, he'd have never gone down like this.  He'd have pu