Former WWE star Umaga dead aged 36

In another sad story regarding a wrestlers premature death, it was earlier confirmed that former WWE Intercontinental Champion Umaga (real name Eddie Fatu) has died as a result of a heart attack at the age of just 36.  At this stage it’s impossible to speculate on whether natural causes took his life, the strain on his heart as a result of a tough working schedule and a large frame, or the more frequent cause among wrestlers going to an early grave – drugs.

I’m in no position to say too much until a post mortem has been carried out, but considering Umaga was fired from the WWE just this summer for failing a second drugs test and refusing rehabilitation all the clues point to the obvious.  With that being said I don’t want that to tarnish this very unfortunate loss until all the details are made clear, personally I was never a fan of his wrestling persona but the man himself was apparently a loving husband and father who adored his wife and children, not to mention he had a lot of respect from his work colleagues and friends.

Today is a sad day for fans of wrestling no matter what the circumstances, we’ve lost another one far too soon.

Big names to host RAW in the future

Fans of WWE show Monday Night Raw will know that in recent weeks they’ve put together a ‘guest host’ gimmick for the show, attracting some big name already like Seth Green and particularly Shaquille O’Neal but more importantly gaining a 10% viewership increase since the idea began as well as mainstream publicity.  As it turns out the news site Lords of Pain is reporting that even more big names have already signed up to host the show, including Bob Barker, Al Sharpton, Nancy O’Dell, Floyd Mayweather and LeBron James.  Either because I’m British or (more likely) largely ignorant regarding American celebrities I’m not familiar with those names excluding the last two, but it sounds pretty good all the same.

Shaq is perhaps the most famous person to host Raw to date

Not only that, other celebrities are reportedly in talks with the WWE to also host a Raw show, which the writers are hoping will continue right on through until possibly WrestleMania 26 next March.  These names include Pete Wentz, Ashlee Simpson, the Osbournes, Danny DeVito, Regis Philbin, Kelly Ripa, Jimmy Fallon, Rachael Ray, MC Hammer, Woody Harrelson, Serena Williams and Ashton Kutcher which are people I’m familiar with and hoping they’ll give it a go.  The Osbournes in particular would be fantastic.

WWE Raw, making this viewer cringe

I’ve been a wrestling fan for more than 15 years, and in that time I’ve laughed, cried, got angry, excited and sat on the edge of my seat more than once – “holy shit!” is a phrase that’s passed my lips more time times than I can count over the years.  In recent months I’ve found myself preferring to do other things over watching any wrestling though.  TNA is a company I gave up on a long time ago – the six sided ring idea, a Pay-Per-View consisting entirely of needless cage matches plus numerous other really stupid ideas put me right off that.  WWE is something I lost interest in as well for various reasons, Smackdown and ECW seemed to plod along aimlessly and Raw’s domination by John Cena and/or Triple H gradually made me turn to other shows to occupy my time.  However this week I decided to catch up and see if I was missing anything good, and maybe, just maybe, call myself a proper wrestling fan again.

Despite wrestling on the whole being considered largely ‘uncool’ and ‘fake’ by the average guy who dislikes wrestling one thing the product has rarely made me do is cringe with embarrassment.  I’ve watched muscular 300lb oiled up men getting hot and sweaty with other oiled up men in nothing by latex underwear for a long time and never thought anything of it despite the homoerotic nature of it all, but lately I’ve found myself being almost embarrassed watching certain storylines and segments which is another thing that turned me off (bad wording I know) wrestling a while back.  None more so that this previous Monday on Raw unfortunately, the show which I hoped would get me back into the world of sports entertainment.

Smackdown vs Raw 2010 – all about customisation

Unusually for a Smackdown vs Raw game very little information has been revealed for the latest instalment in the popular franchise.  All we know is that a release date is scheduled for November, which has been the norm for the series for several years.  What we don’t know is… practically anything else, oddly.

Usually by about mid-August we have a vague idea of a roster, any new match types, what type of game modes there will be an so on, but this year there’s absolutely nothing like that – not even any footage or a working demo to my knowledge.  To me that suggests they’re behind schedule and will therefore rush the finished product, or that they have so much in store for us they’re saving it for one big surprise down the road.  Apparently a playable demo of the game is being showcased at the SummerSlam fan event later this month, so I’ll be sure to post more details as and when they’re available.

Upon trawling YouTube I managed to discover one thing of interest however, which is that ‘customisation’ is the theme for this years Smackdown vs Raw game.  Last years was all about tag team wrestling so by comparison this is a little bit more interesting to those of us who don’t have friends or family members who appreciate and enjoy wrestling, so over to John Morrison to explain a little about what to expect.

OVW streaming shows from their website

Credit goes to indy wrestler and fellow e-fedder Jacky Williams for this piece of news, the former WWE development company Ohio Valley Wrestling has begun showing their weekly shows online via their website, which is good news to those of us (for example the United Kingdom) who have never had the chance to watch full shows before.

You can watch a good example of what their shows are all about below.