• Wrestling News & Wrestling Rumors – WWE & TNA

- Comedian/Musician Jack Black recently posted a blog on tmnt25.com discussing his work in pro wrestling and news that RVD nearly became a Teenage Turtle:

Back on January 25, 2009, my wife and I paid to watch a professional wrestling match on TV. We weren’t especially interested in the show as she and I are more casual fans of the “fake sport” than a lot of people (I have written two books for the main wrestling company, as well as covered it as a “sport” for a series of magazines that treat it as a real sport, but my commitment to the events has waned in recent years…).

The only reason we were willing to plop down our hard-earned money was because the event featured the cameo return of our favorite wrestler and good friend, Rob Van Dam, who retired from wrestling in June 2007.

You may be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with TMNT?” Well, easy there, sport. I’ll tell you…

Back in 2003, shortly after my first published comic book came out from the Distinguished Competition, I set out to take the comics industry by storm. I contacted every publisher and editor I could, Mirage being among them.

I mentioned in a previous post that my pitches to Mirage in these early days were based on the old cartoon. But as I researched the comics, and saw their more mature tone, I thought they would provide a fun forum for me to tell a story with my pal, and fellow comics fan, Rob Van Dam (RVD).

Steve Murphy approached the higher ups at Mirage, asking if they would be interested in reading a pitch from RVD. The story (as I remember it) was that Peter Laird imitated RVD’s famous thumb gesture (Google Rob Van Dam, and you’ll find numerous pictures of him in said pose)

Well, Rob and I went to work. We crafted a pitch that had the TMNT, spearheaded by wrestling fan Mikey, busting up some thugs, and needing some help. RVD would step in and help the reptilian heroes save the day. It was a fun yet simple premise.

Over the course of the next several weeks, upon gaining feedback from the aforementioned Peter Laird (who is heavily involved in the story process on all the TMNT comics at every stage), the story evolved to one where an alien bounty hunter was collecting the best fighters in the universe and forcing them to fight each other for his pleasure. When he arrived on Earth, he saw an RVD wrestling match, and kidnapped the wrestling star to add to his menagerie of alien fighters. Mikey was also kidnapped in the process, while trying to save his favorite wrestler from the clutches of the strange extraterrestrial fight promoter.

Peter liked where this idea was heading, and gave us a few more notes. Specifically, he said that he liked the parallel to the Battle Nexus episodes of the animated series, and thought that would be a good fit for the comics. Rob and I refined the pitch, now very different (and a few months older) than the first one. Rob even talked to officials at the wrestling company that employed him who were excited about the prospect of tying into the TMNT. They hoped it could be an animated episode!

Well, after several drafts of our pitch, Peter Laird still didn’t like what we’d come up with, and passed on the RVD story altogether. Rob and I were both disappointed at first, but we recognized that the TMNT are Peter’s toys, and it’s up to him how others play with them.

I still think the Rob Van Dam story would have been great fun, and it could have sold very well if the wrestling company’s PR machine was behind its programming (the most watched on cable/satellite TV). Personally, I’d rather plop down three bucks for a Rob Van Dam cameo in a TMNT comic than the extravagant costs of a pay-per-view, but it was not to be.

It did bring a smile to my face, though, when the Battle Drome concept was introduced in the Volume 4 comics. I just thought the drome was lacking one major fighter.

- Press Release:

On June 25, 2007, professional wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife Nancy, and their seven-year-old son Daniel were found dead at their home in Georgia. Authorities concluded Chris Benoit, over a three-day period, murdered his wife and son, then committed suicide. The media speculated that Benoit’s horrific behavior was caused by the presence of anabolic steroids in his system. New neuropathological research on how repeated trauma had damaged the brains of deceased professional football players inspired Michael Benoit, Chris’s father, to donate Chris’s brain to the non-profit Sports Legacy Institute (SLI), founded by former WWE pro wrestler Christopher Nowinski, for examination at a university medical school. In the first educational presentation ever provided on the events, learn the details what SLI found, what it tells us about the tragedy, and how this information will change the professional wrestling industry forever.

Hosted by SLI founder and President Christopher Nowinski and SLI Athlete Advisor Booker T

20 minute presentation followed by 10 minutes of Q&A. Christopher Nowinski will also sign autographs for anyone attending the seminar.

Admission Fee: $20

100% of proceeds will benefit the Sports Legacy Institute and Booker T Fights for Kids, both 501(c)(3) charitable organizations. This educational event is being run with the knowledge and support of Michael Benoit.

- Former WWE Diva Ashley Massaro will not be in the Wrestlemania 25 Diva’s battle royal, nor at any of the Wrestlemania weekend events. She posted on her Myspace that there was a scheduling conflict, but in truth she is not welcome.

Massaro had major heat on her backstage during the final months of her run, was known as a partier and one source even notes that she acted like a “disgruntled high school girl” around authority figures. It is also no secret that most of the heat on former WWE star Paul London came from his association with Massaro.