• Wrestling News & Wrestling Rumors – WWE & TNA

- In his latest Newsday.com blog former WWE creative writer Seth Mates explains that WWE take what is said on the internet quite seriously and even compile regular reports on the general internet opinion:

“There were two main reports I’d put together. On a daily basis, I’d compile a “web rumor report,” and after the main TV shows (Raw, SmackDown and Pay-Per-Views), I’d compile feedback reports.

I can’t speak to how WWE would look upon web news and rumors prior to my time there, but I know that after Owen Hart’s death two weeks after I started at the company in 1999, we were asked to compile reports with what fans and sites were saying about the death. They were intrigued by how much was out there and the decision was made to start compiling clips of what they were saying about any and all topics in the industry.

I remember a few weeks later — on the night that the Greater Power was revealed — Vince mentioned in a promo in Raw about all the speculation as to who the Greater Power was, naming specific names I knew he’d gotten from our report. That was cool.

I was the young, driven intern at the time, so I was more than happy to put the reports together. On an average day, I’d go to all the big sites — the Observer, the Torch, 1wrestling, etc — and anything new and/or relevant would find its way into the report, which could be a page or two, or could be 10 pages, depending on the day. By the time I started at WWE full-time the following May, there were a few dozen people getting the web rumor report, and the readership ballooned to more than 120 within a year and a half of then.

The TV feedback reports started in earnest shortly after WrestleMania XII in 1996. The story, as I’ve heard it, is that Vince McMahon went up to a guy named Jim Monsees, who was then running WWE’s AOL site, at the WrestleMania After Party and asked what fans thought of the show. Jim passed along so much good feedback from the online fans that Vince asked his team to start compiling TV feedback on a regular basis.”

To read the full blog visit Newsday.com

- WWE got what they wanted. A news outlet in Texas picked up on the Vince McMahon incident from Raw claiming it to be a freak accident. I believe they took a fake press release as gospel and reported it – which echoes what I said yesterday. This is when WWE goes too far and it gets offensive.