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"I am the shepherd"

Chairshots
11/20/01

Flair and Lawler Return to WWF
In case you're a wrestling fan, living in a cave, Ric Flair and Jerry "The King" Lawler both made their return to the WWF last night. Storyline wise, following the Alliance's loss last night at Survivor Series, Vince McMahon fired Paul Heyman and replaced him with the King. Ric Flair was revealed to be the person the Shane and Steph sold all their WWF stock to in order to buy ECW and WCW. Vince and Ric and now co-owners of the WWF. Whatever the storyline, it's great to have both men back.

Jerry Lawler had been working with XWF and denied rumors that he would be returning to Raw. Jerry even claimed to have signed a contract with XWF, but several XWF sources said that they would not stand in the way of Jerry's return and no lawsuit would follow. Lawler and the XWF amicably agree to part ways.

Flair accepted a buyout of the remaining time on his AOL/Time Warner contract in order to return to the WWF. Last I heard the buyout offer was 50 cents on the dollar and Flair had about one million dollars of time left. Money wise, Flair should come out ahead though, since the WWF is probably paying him quite well for his services. The only downside to Ric's return is that this means inevitably his son David will return as well. David has been training in the WWF's Ohio Valley developmental territory in recent months.

Raw Thoughts
Well, you'd have to be an idiot to not have liked Raw last night. Yes, there was a lack of wrestling but it was a necessary lack. Raw showed that the WWF is forgetting about the last several months of crapitude, and is making changes from top to bottom. If you've strayed from watching WWF television, now is an excellent time to come back.

Ratings
The ratings are in and Raw got a big jump from last week, scoring a 4.8. That's way up from last week's 4.1 and is the best rating news that they have had in a while. The opening segment did a 4.5 quarter rating and the Ric Flair overrun segment did a 5.4 quarter hour rating. It sure didn't take the WWF long to get back half a million bored wrestling fans. Hopefully word of Ric Flair's return will continue to spread and boost the WWF ratings back to 5-6 on average.

Awesome Injury
The latest word on Mike Awesome is his ACL ligament is totally torn and ordinarily, he would have knee surgery and be out of action six months. Awesome, however, feels that he can work with the current injury and reportedly would like to do so. He has been working out the last week and thinks he can work on it. He had another doctor's appointment on Monday and, if he can get clearance, may actually come back within a few weeks. He probably doesn't want to take time off since he knows that lay offs are coming and he's probably already on the top of the list.

Stand Back!
There is some backstage conflict in the WWF over the booking committee's use of Hurricane Helms. Some feel that so much TV time is given to Hurricane that he should either be given a legitimate push as a threat or have his TV time scaled back, as his time could be better used to build characters who would make the company money. In a recent match against Tajiri, Hurricane struck his super hero pose after getting hit with a stiff kick, then fell over. This drew groans from the veterans in the locker room.

SummerSlam Buy Rate
SummerSlam got around 500,000 buys, far less than Invasion which got from 600-700,000 buys. SummerSlam is traditionally the WWF's second biggest event of the year, next to Wrestlemania, which did huge box office numbers in 2001. Told you the numbers would suck. They really should have promoted my version of SummerSlam, which you can read here.

Foley News
Word going around the WWF locker room is that Mick Foley is done with the WWF, at least for now. Foley had been vocal lately about not liking the direction of the WWF and telling friends that he preferred at this point to simply write books. It appears that may be exactly what Foley will be doing now.

Who Better Than Kanyon?
Chris Kanyon suffered a serious knee injury in a dark match against Randy Orton a few weeks ago that will necessitate surgery. The operation will keep Kanyon out of action for about six months. Kanyon is reportedly very happy with the treatment that he has received from the WWF since getting injured. In one instance, Kanyon was picked up and brought to the hospital by a limo provided by the WWF. Swanky.

Grand Master Assault
Brian Christopher was recently involved in an incident at an indy event where he ended up punching and knocking out a fan. There is a fan in the Alaskan shows that is known for causing trouble, and when he ran into the ring during a pre-match promo by Christopher, he reportedly punched the fan. The fan was taken away by security.

That's it for today. Catch y'all Friday.