OK, I think I have sulked for long enough. To those of you who are asking yourself, "What does he mean?", I shall endeavour to explain. Whilst I was home for the Christmas/New Year holidays, I attempted to come up with a new column for [slash] wrestling. Not to make excuses, but I wasn't sure what to write about, so I thought I'd throw my thoughts on the 'best of 99' into the ring, as everyone else was doing it. Perhaps that's where the problem lay: it wasn't only half-assed, it was UNORIGINAL half-assed!!! Now, the next part assumes that CRZ actually RECEIVED my submission, but to cut a long story short, CRZ exercised his 'editorial control' and failed to publish the column. Therefore, I have been sulking for the past few weeks....OF COURSE I HAVEN'T!!!! Rather than write a column when I had nothing to say, plus I have been really busy at university: yep, I'm proof that wrestling fans aren't all stupid as the media would like you to believe: I would wait until I could do a column justice.

So here goes:

The most newsworthy event in the UK since the dawning of Y2K is the [mostly] successful debut of WWF programming on free-to-air terrestrial (read 'network') television. The first two episodes of HeAT drew 1.1 and 1.5 MILLION viewers respectively, as many would have seen on the 'Ross Report', and the live feed of the Royal Rumble drew 600,000. The figure for the Royal Rumble does not account for 'timeshift' viewings, i.e., those folks who taped the show to watch at a more respectable hour, so probably was actually over 1 million as well... Of course, thousands of fans literally CURSED the channel for airing ad breaks in the first portion of the PPV (as mentioned by Marvellous Martin). I *was* disappointed, but was not as angry, since the ability to catch my first LIVE PPV on tv since September's "Unforgiven" more than made up for the minor inconvenience. Furthermore, there were no commercial breaks from the beginning of the WWF Title match to the end of the broadcast, which was greatly appreciated. None of the ads were obstrusive, save for one which cut The Rock, of all people, off mid-promo. Unfortunately, I understand that the next PPV on C4, Backlash, will probably feature some ads as well... The Royal Rumble's standout tag-team, The Hardys, were interviewed by that waste of space Coachman on UK HeAT last weekend, and the news I, and countless others attending the Earl's Court PPV in a few months wanted to hear was confirmed: THE HARDY'S MAKE THEIR UK DEBUT AT EARL'S COURT!!!! I hope that they stay safe and well throughout the next three US PPVs and TV, as I feel that this feud with the Dudleys could end up travelling down some very dangerous paths. I see that rumours of some Hell in the Cell/tables hybrid is a possible stip for their "No Way Out" encounter are already doing the rounds.

Liked CRZ's resolution (read him on emzee, folks) about changing the name of the site to [stroke] wrestling given the abundance of UK contributors. Congratulations to both Marvellous Martin and Kirk Wagstaff for making it onto the site, it's good to have some company from this side of the Atlantic. During my sabbatical I have especially enjoyed reading CyanIndigo and Michealangelo's columns: the joint column was a personal favourite.

Back to UK news: a magazine I have namechecked in the past (use the-possibly buggy-search to find my previous efforts) here in the UK, heat, recently made the mistake of dissing the WWF. To its credit, it has ran letters defending the Fed in its last two issues, and also ran a full-page article on "Stone Cold's" successful surgery under the headline, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin: Yes, they can put him together again! (a Six-Milion Dollar Man reference for the younger [slash] readers out there). The piece was accompanied by a photo taken after Austin's win at Wrestlemania 14, alongside Mike Tyson, in which each of Austin's injuries were annotated for each body part.

In the current issue of "Empire" magaine, a film title, there is a piece on Andy Kaufman and "Man on the Moon" (out in the UK on March 25). This article unfortunately is not so factually correct, referring to the incident during shooting of the movie where Jim Carrey was assaulted by WWWF 'Wrestling champion' JIM Lawler after the actor spat in Lawler's face. The strange thing was that in the main body of the text, they had already correctly mentioned JERRY Lawler.

I feel that this is probably enough to be getting on with for now, and if I am published this time, I will take it as I haven't been blackballed for some reason I'm unaware of!!!

I was thinking about 'borrowing' an idea from Wrestleline and emzee staffer, Scott Keith, in recapping the four UK-only WWF PPVs in the run-up to Earl's Court in what I must surely term the "Web-Bobby" (Netcop: geddit!!?) Rants... Unfortunately, some of the actual matches/promos are not clear in my memory, so I will need to wait until I get home in a few weeks, so as I can watch the tapes (I'd especially like to transcribe Vince's hilariously anti-English diatribe from Capital Carnage: all these English fans were booing like crazy, yet the Scots, Welsh and Irish fans were all 100% behind Mr McMahon!!!) I *would* graciously ask that having trailed this as my idea, that no-one rip me off and do this before I get the chance, or else I might go back into hiding!!

Also, I will try to pull together a few other pieces of UK news including:

How to get your hands on WWF Raw (the rap-remix CD)
Ditto for "The Rock Says"
When WWF Smackdown is out in the United Kingdom
Hopefully a first-person account of Mick Foley and Tori's planned
promotional visits to the UK to hype the London PPV
and any other worthy news tidbits...

In closing, it's good to be (hopefully) back, and please CRZ, please publish me this time (I don't know if I could take the rejection twice in a row!!!)