As I write this I am preparing to drive from Norman to Tulsa, a two hour drive, to broadcast Friday Night Smackdown for air this Friday night. This will be my first broadcast in the Tulsa Civic Center in over 20 years since the UWF days of Cowboy Bill Watts. I have great memories of that period of my professional life highlighted by Steve "Dr. Death" Williams ascension to becoming UWF Champion and having epic and physical battles with Big Bubba Rogers aka The Big Bossman and the One Man Gang. I wonder how many guys in the business today could or would hold up to the physicality that Watts demanded back in the day. I have a feeling that some "superstars" would fold their tents and head to the house with "injuries" because few men can or feel motivated to maintain the physical style of wrestling that Watts demanded on a regular basis.

This will be my second Smackdown with my new color analyst Mick Foley and we should be better than we were last week which I did not think was a bad effort. Developing chemistry takes time and I know without fail we will arrive at that desired destination as it is just a matter of when not if.

Let’s hope the Smackdown trend of having more wrestling than talk continues. Talk is great but the more talk the less the talk means and TV viewers are simply regular human beings with lots of their plate who have short attention spans and have 142 hours to devote to their lives until the next two hour wrestling broadcast. Point being is that less talk will mean more and will be better remembered and all talk should lead to something directly related to the program preferably "tonight’s" program. At least that’s my two cents on that topic.

The Night of Champions ended up being a solid, decent investment of a PPV and the huge crowd at the American Airlines Center selected the matches in which they emotionally invested and supported them in kind. I thought the last two title bouts of the evening were especially top notch and apparently the live audience did as well as they seemed to be into them.

Basketball Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman and her son and pal who were my guests in Dallas, I know, had a great time at the live event.

Being able to address the crowd in OKC was a nice opportunity that is greatly appreciated on my end. OKC grossed north of $400K with well over 11,000 fans on hand which is more than attended the WWE’s first PPV in the market, Unforgiven, a couple of years ago. I know our Bar-B-Q place in Norman had a HUGE day of which we are thankful. I had a challenging time getting through the in ring promo as a million thoughts were running through my mind about my years on Raw, especially my OKC experiences, beginning my career in my home state, etc. I did not "write" any thing down to say nor did any one else if you are keeping score at home or simply just need to know that info. From what I understand neither did Edge. Certainly Raw was an unpredictable program which has been its trademark over the years which is essentially the reason it is live every week. The OKC crowd was hot and helped make this roller coaster ride of a program a really fun TV show to watch. I know that WWE broadcast 1A will continue to be like Monday night. 1A.

Many of the WWE superstars and staff were at J.R.’s Family Bar-B-Q in Moore Monday night after the show and many of us left there after 2 a.m. which was after the WWE group was well fed and had a great time. The Raw talent don’t leave OKC until 5 p.m. Tuesday at which time they will fly to DFW and then onto Santiago, Chile. I’m glad it is them and not me traveling this week and I also suggest that the travelers hang close to their hotel rooms from what info I have read and the information that the Superstars have received about this tour. Please, no nasty emails or comments about Chile, Peru, etc. I’m just providing the facts ladies and gentlemen. BTW the J.R.’s in Moore opens July 14.

WWE Superstars HHH, Mick Foley, Jerry Lawler, Tazz and Smackdown GM Vickie Guerrero and her daughters plus the duo of the Brooklyn Brawler and new author Bruno Lauer all stopped by J.R.’s in Norman during the day Monday which is greatly appreciated by the Ross’ and our "Q" team.

It will be interesting to see how the new members of Smackdown step up on this week’s show to capitalize on the opportunity to make a positive "first impression". I hope this TV taping rocks Tulsa like we used to do on two Sunday nights a month when basically everything happened in the ring which kept the fans in attendance emotionally attached to the show and never let them "relax".

Thanks for checking out the site and for your business. Take care.
Boomer Sooner!
J.R.

All is good in the land of Smackdown and Bar-B-Q.