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JR's Blog: Memories of Mike Shaw..Monday Night Raw vs. NFL..Queen of the Ring, a Film?..BBQ Salmon..Football Talk..

Posted: Sep 13th 2010 By: CMBurnham

A good day to all...thanks for dropping by. Let's grill...

I was saddened to hear of the death over the weekend of Mike Shaw, 53, who apparently died of a heart attack. Mike was an interesting guy. In the late 80's when I was a member of one of the many, infamous, WCW booking committees, I had the opportunity to hire Mike who had been a fixture for many years in Calgary for the Hart's Stampede Wrestling organization.

The Makhan Singh persona that Mike portrayed in Calgary was solid in my view but others wanted to create a new persona for Mike and, thus, Norman the Lunatic was hatched. I can remember when WCW flew Mike into Atlanta and then meeting him at the old, TBS studios and working on Norman vignettes even though neither one of us were quite sure of the description of the new persona. We did our best and subsequently launched the character on WCW on TBS. If my memory serves me correctly, I think that WCW head honcho Jim Herd had the basic idea for the Norman character.

I do remember speaking by phone with Stu Hart, an experience in its self, about Mike. Stu gave Mike a stellar reference and told me that Mike was loyal, hard working, reliable and a talented, athletic big man. All those things were true.

Mike was also a superb conversationalist and might have made a great sports talk radio host. He was a major fan of many sports and was quite the athlete in high school in multiple sports. Plus he was excellent at providing entertaining and provocative sound bytes.

Bastion Booger was likely Mike's most memorable role of which he portrayed in WWE in the 90's. Mike never embraced that particular persona but he had moderate success with it and was never a problem to deal with in WWE and was, as Stu Hart told me years prior, no problem with which to work.

Actually, Norman got 'over' to some degree in WCW as I recall him getting 100's of teddy bears when he made the turn to fan favorite. That persona likely got cut off prematurely, looking back in hindsight, and had the potential to be a 'character' fan favorite along the lines of a Bugsy McGraw and a George 'The Animal' Steele.

The last time I saw Mike was in December of 2007 at the 15th Anniversary of Monday Night Raw and we had a nice visit and talked football and the fact that his son was being recruited at the time by multiple schools as an offensive lineman. Mike was extremely proud of that fact. Little did I know that I would never see Mike again.

One last thing on Mike, he told me he kept copious notes on his years working in Calgary and had kept a journal detailing tons of hilarious stories of working for the Harts and traveling in Stampede Wrestling. I don't know what ever became of the journal but it might be diamond in the rough if it is still around. Mike told the best stories, in colorful and vivid detail, about the Hart Family and the adventures of working in Stampede Wrestling back in the 80's.

RIP Mike until we meet again.

Monday Night Raw is up against a challenging situation with ESPN's annual NFL double header that starts 2 hours prior to Raw going on the air. Plus, the gurus at NFL/ESPN exploit America's biggest market, New York City, by featuring the Jets against the powerhouse Baltimore Ravens. Nice booking.

Raw counters with John Cena, the face of WWE, versus Randy Orton, who is arguably the most popular WWE star with young, males 18-34. Plus, Raw will feature several matches where the stipulations will be determined by Raw Roulette. I remember when Jake Roberts came up with 'Spin the Wheel..Mke the Deal' in WCW for his encounter on PPV, as I recall, with Sting.

One man's opinion is that the longer the bouts on Raw can last the more likely fans won't channel surf, obviously if the bouts are compelling which is always the objective.

Interesting synergy with HBO featuring the Jets on 'Hard Knocks' during the pre-season, which are akin to a series of wrestling or UFC vignettes, and then debuting Monday Night Football featuring the Rex Ryan led AFC contender. Funny how preconditioning via various forms of video works to build stars and anticipation.

This is one area where UFC could better utilize Spike TV but I digress.

Nice win for my Sooners Saturday against Florida State especially after OU under performed on opening week against the underrated Utah State Aggies. I assure you that the Sooners will have a tougher time handling Air Force than they did with the Seminoles because of the option, run oriented offense that Air Force utilizes. Hopefully, the OU faithful will realize that for Air Force playing at OU on national TV is akin to a bowl game and their players will be jacked. Hopefully the Oklahoma squad won't take this game for granted and look past AF to their first road game the following week in Cincinnati.

Received several emails from fans who saw me on the Sooner sideline Saturday on ABC and I was wondering if they actually saw me or just my hat. :)

OKC is a Dallas Cowboy market and even though the 'Boys had some good things happen for them in their season opening at the Redskins, Dallas really soiled the bed with the last play of the first half and the last play of the game. Dallas' offensive line needs immediate repair as their offense is sickly. Is Tony Romo overrated? That question will be asked plenty this week in Big D. Too much premature Super Bowl talk down in Dallas for me.

QB Sam Bradford had a solid opener albeit in a losing effort in ST. Louis but I think it's obvious to see that the Rams have their franchise quarterback of the future. Let's hope that St. Louis offensive line can keep their $50M man mostly vertical and healthy all season.

Emailer....I am told that WWE research denotes that most fans do NOT watch all the programming that WWE produces IE people that watch Raw do not necessarily watch Smackdown and visa versa. Nonetheless, for TV exclusivity, to not over expose talents, to provide more roster slots for more deserving talents, and to better facilitate international touring I don't see the two brands, Raw and Smackdown, merging.

If you live outside the USA and want to order our Original BBQ sauce and Beef Jerky check out www.wweshop.com. They ship world wide while we only ship to the USA....but we do ship FREE inside the USA.

Emailer...I don't know conclusively the reason, but I suspect it is because many decision makers perceive that wrestling managers, valets, and tag team wrestling, to a lesser extent, are too old school/retro to make any kind of viable come back on national TV. Same goes for the occasional 2X3 fall matches, which are perfect for TV formatting that includes commercial breaks. The trend seems to be, at least on national TV, that there is an increased emphasis on non traditional, wrestling entertainment such as comedy, back stage scenes, etc. Traditonal wrestling isn't overly in vogue these days as there is a great deal of thinking outside the box which actually isn't always a bad thing. Old school wrestling 'announcers' are also on the endangered species list and are being supplanted by on air story tellers.

Emailer....I suggested that folks try our BBQ Sauce brushed on grilled, broiled, or baked salmon. Many have and love it. The simple trick is to prepare it as one normally would and then brush on a thin coat of our sauce during the last 2-4 minutes of the process. I promise that this is really good.

Highly recommend that you read 'Queen of the Ring' as it is a compelling read and I have talked to folks in Los Angeles about the potential of making it into a 'League of Our Own' type film but 'Queen' would be much darker. Helluva read even for a non, wrestling fan.

Emailer....we personally autograph all the cookbooks we sell, per your request. We are happy to personalize them which really enhances gift giving. The cookbooks are under $20 signed and that includes shipping in the USA. Great wrestling stories, photos and easy to execute recipes especially for novice cooks. This is a super, guy's cookbook or for newlyweds.

Our Q&A section has been updated as of Monday morning.

We are rapidly approaching 60,000 Twitter followers @JRsBBQ.

Join us at Facebook...http://facebook.dj/jrbbq/.

Remember, that if you order today we will likely ship your order via Federal Express Ground tomorrow.

We have several new packages available in our on line store and are still offering a FREE T Shirt with each case order which is a great deal. "The Sampler" is selling really well and that provides a bottle of each of our products and a bag of 97% Fat Free Beef Jerky.

Thanks, again, for stopping by and we greatly appreciate all of you who support our efforts here.

Boomer Sooner!

J.R.

Tags: Jim Ross, WCW, WWE, Bugsy McGraw, Jake Roberts, Sting