JR mentioned earlier this week that he was uncomfortable with the direction the feud had taken and I agree with him tbh. HOWEVER, it's nowhere near as bad as how WWE horrendously exploited Eddie Guerrero's death. That was sickening, and a real low point for the company as a whole.

I thought WWE handled his death and brought it into storyline very well last week and this week.

They've done nothing to degrade the memory of Bearer imo. Punk is heel and it's working well imo.

It's made the match redundant. There's no way Taker is going to lose now, so why bother watching it? I was fine with Punk doing it in the first week to get some heat, but there's no need to keep doing it. It's cheap and lazy. What would they have done if Bearer hadn't died?

It was CM Punk. An uncomfortable segment. WWE have as usual taken the low road and decided to make Taker Vs Punk all about Punk disrespecting Paul Bearer. It could and should have been much more than that.

Ratings unfortunately don't!

I don't buy Bully as a mainstream promotion's heavyweight champion. It's not because he isn't good enough, he just doesn't have the drawing power to pull people in. I wouldn't be surprised if his reign was a short one.

Just saw this, too. Warning in advance, VERY strong homophobic language, from about 6:15.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wrLF3juVcU

Way, way over the top IMO. Apologies from him and Dixie Carter on Twitter, but Bully should know better than that.

I hope Dallas is able to get Hall clean. if he can get Jake clean then he has a good chance, because I think everybody had written Jake off. This really is Hall's last chance, if he bails on this then I think he'll be dead within a year.

I just watched a little of TNA's show for the first time in a while, they've just started touring on the road as opposed to staying in the Impact Zone in Orlando. I thought the show was a hit and miss (a bit too much Hulk Hogan and Sting considering it's 2013...) but the actual production values looked fantastic. Worth a watch IMO.

Are you thinking about going to their May event Tom? Some pretty big names there.

Sounds interesting, I may have to give it another chance.

i haven't watched NXT since its earlier series, which I thought were a joke. The stuff with Low-ki in particular was just horrendous and made a great wrestler look like a total dud. One of the few occasions where TNA actually did a better job than WWE with a wrestler (Ki wrestled as Senshi in TNA and was pretty good). I remember it having a ton of stupid gimmicks and dumb "challenges". Has it changed?

I've seen that they've taken Generico's mask off, so I guess he'll have a totally new name and gimmick. A shame.

Agreed there DE. I'm hoping that HHH can bring more a 'wrestlers' approach to the business again. Maybe even set up a loan system, whereby wrestlers in WWE developmental are sent out for a year to Mexico or Germany or Japan or wherever to at least experience other crowds.

Triple H definitely seems to have a more old-school approach to the business which one hopes will translate into future generations of wrestlers. It would be great if WWE could strike up a deal with Japan or Mexico, though Japan especially isn't what it used to be. I'd love to see some different styles on WWE programming. One of the best things about WCW was the mix of styles, from the luchadores, to the Japanese wrestlers, the mixed-martial artists and the shooters. You then had the heavyweight grapplers with charisma main eventing. For a few years WCW was a fantastic showcase for various styles of wrestling. Nowadays you have very little in the way of variety.

I'm sorry for the loss of Paul Bearer. Haven't kept up with wrestling for years. Just my humble opinion, but I think when the Big Federation merged the smaller ones into it, MidSouth, to me, it hurt the spectacle. The MidSouth Wrestling Federation didn't have all of these negatives or as many. Lex Luger was from the MidSouth Wrestling Federation but he got in trouble for possession and I think was investigated over abuse of Macho Man's Miss Elizabeth, who sadly has passed on too.

It's a double-edged sword. The disappearance of the territories reduced the ability for talent in the states to perform in front of vastly different crowds and hone their in-ring skills and promo abilities. It led to what we see now as the standard, cookie-cutter WWE wrestler - by and large, pretty boring. Guys like Jericho still managed to get their education abroad in Mexico, Germany and Japan... but the problem is these styles don't translate so well in the US. Jericho struggled to get anywhere in WCW and his early run in the WWE (then WWF) was difficult for him because he wasn't working the style the other talent were used to. If the territories still existed Jericho would have been able to fit in easier.

On the other hand, the dissolution of the territories heralded Wrestlemania, the birth of WCW as a single entity and arguably brought American wrestling to a more global audience. McMahon used the money gained from dissolving the territories to take the WWF and wrestling in general to the global stage in a way that hadn't been done before. Ted Turner followed suit with WCW and this eventually led to the Monday Night Wars from 95-01, when wrestling was as popular and mainstream as it is ever likely to be.

It's hard to argue that the industry isn't stale these days, though. I have little to no interest in the current WWE product and only a passing interest in TNA, who are only a contender to WWE on the basis there is nobody else credible to challenge. In truth TNA is a very distant second and probably always will be. The removal of the territories has undoubtedly contributed to the current state of affairs in regards to the wrestling landscape, but I doubt McMahon much cares.

Bearer played his role very well, and by all accounts he was a very nice guy. He was a big fella though and sadly this probably contributed to his early passing (I believe a blood clot is the official cause). He was supposedly very cut up over his wife dying fairly recently, so maybe it's merciful that he's with her now.

Poor girl. Thoughts with the family of course.

Probably not many lostprophets fans on here, but their vocalist is in court for conspiring to rape a 1 year old. Words fail me.

Can we terminate his contract for fraud? Dickson may be a lot of things, but footballer is not one of them.

I'll agree with that. Am not really defending the fan as such. If I had a go at somebody on twitter, regardless of who they were, I'd expect an angry response back. But at the same time I find it amusing when footballers whine about being harrassed on twitter. Set your account to private, only accept people you know or trust to follow you. Job done.

But a lot fans like the open interaction that it allows. It'd be a bit of a shame if the few spoiled it for the many.

Most footballers don't reply to fans tweet anyway. They only tend to reply to the abusive ones so it's irrelevant anyway. If they still want to interact then they can accept a fan's follow request if they wish to. Surely setting it to private is a much easier option than leaving themselves open to public "abuse"? And let's face it, a lot of people are going to feel entitled to throw angry comments at somebody earning obscene amounts of money for kicking a ball of air around for 90 minutes a week.

If footballers are so unhappy about being "harassed" perhaps they should set their accounts to private. It's very easy to do.

Footballers should really just stay off twitter. The real pros just don't rise to the bait.

One of many players at the club with disdain for the fans, there were many more loyal to Kean than we'd all like to think.

Does Dickson ever come over and applaud the fans, or run off down the tunnel after every match with his partner in crime Murphy?

A 4 year contract for a 30 year old? Seems a bit excessive. Decent signing nonetheless.

Sorry to hear about this pal.

That web page badly needs to be redesigned, if they want to get the truth out there then fine, but most people aren't going to read through that mess to find out what's happened.

Also a harsh lesson for them but one that should be obvious - don't lend your entire retirement savings to a bloke who has no money and no means of income. It was never going to end well.

Sad to see all that stuff if it's true. I lost a lot of respect for Hendry when he had a pop at the fans regarding Steve Kean, though, so I'm not massively impacted.

Very sad, especially at that age. RIP.

Rest in Peace Socrates, in '86, my friend would talk about him and I didn't know many of the stars too well. I think they called him the Professor because of that beard, you don't see too many, if any footballers with beards nowadays.

I believe he was actually a qualified doctor