J.R.'s Family Bar-B-Q

Howdy folks and thanks for stopping by and paying us a visit. We appreciate your support, The rains moved through and the grill is hot so let's get to cooking...

My long time friend and former business associate Paul Heyman has been Googled to oblivion the past few days as he has been the source of endless, sensationalistic, some planted, rumors regarding his alleged, pending return to pro wrestling. Does Paul really want a 'future' in wrestling? I will believe it when I see it but if Paul Heyman is back in the game and is in a role where he likes, the game will get more interesting. 

Paul has provided me invaluable advice on my book project of which I appreciate. We have also discussed the possibility in collaborating on multiple ,non wrestling projects in the future. However for Paul to do many more projects not already on his plate there will be a need for an 8th day of the week as he is multi tasking himself to the max. 

Count on Reverend Jesse Jackson to chime in on a basketball issue featuring LeBron James and tie in 'slavery' of all things. Cavs owner Dan Gilbert was compared to being a slave owner recently. Stop the pain Rev even though I'm one of Jesse Jackson's biggest admirers as I like to hear Jackson speak and would love to have his life style with no clearcut job description but making what seems to be a nice living. Nonetheless it seems lo me that  $100M athletes are far from slaves and the Rev's latest analogy was a little bit of a stretch. I do think that Reverend Jackson would have been a helluva, excuse me, a heck of a wrestling manager back in the day.

Speaking of race, if "The Baron" Adolph Rupp was still the head man at Kentucky, he might have an issue with WWE featuring black athletes in Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky Monday night for Raw. Rupp was an amazing college hoops coach but it is well documented that Rupp did not endear himself to black athletes. When Texas Western, with 5 black starters, won the NCAA March Madness tournament and NCAA Title over the all white Kentucky it was huge news. A movie was even made about it. Rupp sounded like those old, Caucasian wrestling promoters of many generations ago who generally only wanted one black in the territory at a time. How stupid was that? 

Yours truly will be doing three, aggressive days of THQ voice overs next week as we continue to attempt to move the WWE Wrestling All Star video game along for a 2011 release. There are some really cool legends that will apparently be featured in this game that may surprise some. 

Emailer...What's WWE's top priority as it relates to Raw or Smackdown? Not to be Mel Gibson crazy here but you've got to be kidding. RAW was, is and always will be the WWE's premier show. Smackdown will never outperform RAW and it will never be positioned over RAW. Even when Friday Night Smackdown went to MyNetworkTV it ended up being much to do about nothing. Trust me...I was a part of that 'upgrade.' For college football fans, Raw is the Southeastern Conference while Friday Night Smackdown is more like the lovely and talented Mountain West Conference. 

Check out Mike Mooneyham's great column about Danny Hodge in the Sunday paper which is available on line. Do a Google search for Mike as it was live Sunday. Really nice job done by the veteran journalist and long time fan, Mike Mooneyham. I think the paper is the Charleston Post Courier. I'll be inducting the greatest wrestling alive today at the NWA Hall of Heroes at the NWA Legends Fanfest in Charlotte on August 6. Don't forget our BBQ on Thursday evening August 5. www.pwinsider.com had the story up Sunday morning.   

Emailer....Why is Vance Archer called the "American Psycho?" I don't have the slightest idea but perhaps someone will explain that to us viewers some day. I do like Archer though for the record. I think he can be a player.

WWEShop.com ships our Original Sauce and our 97% Fat Free Beef Jerky to the UK, Canada and Germany. This is the one item that most wrestling websites will not mention when they review this blog. However you can bet your ass they will run with the Heyman material. Web site gurus just please link back to our site and I'm sure all will be well. WWEShop.com has restocked as they ran out of inventory last week I am told.

Emailer....Yes if I had my 'druthers', there is no doubt that there are several ROH talents that I would be recruiting for WWE. Some may say that some of the ROH guys are 'too small' but I don't buy it. I love the ROH guy's overall passion and the fact that to become a wrestling star is many of their live long dreams. I can work with that. 

Emailer....No I am not an overwhelming fan of tattoos but I can live with them. However I think that some companies could easily call a halt or a moratorium on Tat's for a while. Globs of ink on HD TV isn't flattering. My rotund body is a tattoo free zone in case any of you over inquisitive types were wondering. 

OU is talking of starting a Sooner Network in 2011 and boy does that interest me. 

Emailer...How do I think that the Rock and Stone Cold would have fared in the WWE's PG environment? Both were talented enough to pull it off, without question, but it likely wouldn't have been as much fun for either talent considering how their TV persona's were crafted. "For all that want to see Stone Cold drink a 'Near Beer' give me a "heck, yeah!"

I can't believe that Brock Lesnar's next fight is on the same day as a Big 12 college football battle when my Sooners travel to Columbia to play the Missouri Tigers. Brock fights Cain Velásquez, the undefeated, perhaps soon to be MMA king of the Hispanic community, on the same date, October 23, in Anaheim. Insiders are already saying this fight will go five rounds which is thought provoking. I'm not sure that I'm buying that one just quite yet. I do know that if the consensus is that the Heavyweight Title Fight will go five and be more of wrestling match that a stand up war then someone should check on who the judges are going to be before the experts throughly dissect the fight and subsequently place friendly wagers on the outcome. Plus, the selection of the referee for this fight might be interesting. Has Josh Rosenthal become "the guy" after the phenomenal job Rosenthal did in the Lesnar-Carwin fight by not stopping the carnage in round one? 

Paul Heyman, there's that name again, and I talked about several things this week and one of them was attending the upcoming Fedor fight if our schedules were compatible.  I would like to see Fedor fight once in person because with his "people" making the decisions, one never knows where Fedor will land next. Sounds like it's like working with Silvio Dante and Paulie Walnuts....only with an accent....he says tongue in check.    

I hope that those of you that are holding back on ordering will get ready to pull the trigger on Monday and Tuesday as we just had a SLOW weekend but will resume shipping this week. I'll be off cat patrol on Tuesday and business will pick up on Wednesday. 

Big Raw Monday night. I expect John Cena to be beat like a Government Mule when he faces SEVEN men named Nexus. I wonder how the internet service is in Rupp Arena? Plus, Orton and Edge renew their 'vintage,' Opportunistic, Viper-like rivalry, as well. 

Q&A's are updated for your reading pleasure. Please don't be angry if I don't answer your question. Some questions are duplications of recent days, some are WAY too long, if you start out by saying, "I've got FIVE questions for you to answer, then that's usually a bye-bye, and if you preface that "you probably won't want to answer this and I don't blame you" then except that one to be deleted as well. However the main reason I can't answer them all is simple volume. I'm doing my best but if you're question isn't answered then don't take it personally. Some do unfortunately. Perhaps if I made it so that everyone had to buy something first but how fair would that be? Point being, be patient, research your questions as best you can, and keep them succinct. Thanks.

Boomer Sooner!

J.R.