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JR's Blog: JR's Saturday Blog, @TomPhillipsWWE, @ZZTop, @RealMickFoley, @steveaustinBSR, @TonySchiavone24, @WWENXT, Order JR's Online

Posted: Aug 25th 2014 By: Jim Ross

Red hot day in Oklahoma as I'm heading from Norman to Tulsa for #UFCFightNight soon. It's on @FoxSports1 tonight in the states. Tomorrow we grill....

The Mrs and I enjoyed the ZZ Top & Jeff Beck show tremendously Friday night in OKC at the Zoo Amphitheatre. Badass show to say the least. The encore with ZZ and Beck was amazing. Stayed on Billy Gibbons bus until after 2 am talking sauces. Billy and I are two "foodies" at heart and a collaborative effort down the road has potential.

WWE announcing a Hall of Fame forum to kick off RAW this Monday that includes Flair, Hogan and Shawn Michaels. I guess I missed the call. LOL. I hope that the panel is hard hitting and thought provoking and refrains from eye ball rolling rhetoric as it's a great opportunity to sell the Lesnar-Cena rematch coming in September. Let the talents use their old school promo skills and not how a writers rendition of what they 'think' these legends might say. Give them bullet points and turn them loose.

Nice to see Flair getting booked again in WWE after the Summer Slam experience of 2013.

My friend Mick Foley is talking major back surgery to help alleviate the pain that he is in 24X7 after a long career of taking extraordinary bumps. I wouldn't be surprised if Mick also did not need knee and/or hip replacements sometime down the road as well. Riding in those rental cards thousands of miles each year on his tours doesn't help matters either. Less may be more for Mick who I hate to see suffer simply getting out of a chair or walking from point A to point B. It almost seems as if Mick is working harder today than he has a certain times of his wrestling career. Mick is simply too nice a man and a friend to see suffer on a daily basis.

Stone Cold Steve Austin and I brainstormed about some, new collaborative projects this week. Stay tuned.

@TonySchiavone24 will be my guest this Tuesday night at 9 Eastern time on the Ross Report on podcastone.com and iTunes on what is a superb conversation on my podcast with my old broadcast partner. We had a great visit that I know that you will enjoy. The follow week will be my podcast with the legendary Stan "The Lariat" Hansen who is one of the most respected wrestlers ever and became a major star in Japan by doing it his way and not being manipulated by promoters.

Our podcast with @Celtics voice and big time wrestling fan/historian @SeanGrandepbp has done great numbers this week on the Ross Report. If you don't listen to this one, you're really missing out. Plus, they are all FREE.

Love the speculation on @steveaustinBSR talk of coming back to do one last match at WM32 if it is going to be held at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The average fan has zero idea how long the odds are on that ever occurring but I assume it's fun to speculate. No one would like to see it more than me but....

Congrats to WWE announcer Tom Phillips for getting promoted to Smackdown with Cole and JBL. Hopefully the Penn State grad will continue to improve and can relieve Cole who is being worked harder than a government mule. The RAW and Smackdown announce teams should be totally different so the shows have a different sound track because as it is virtually every major, WWE broadcast sounds too much alike. I had a chance to get to know Tom while in NXT and he's a quality young man.

Somehow someone will take that last paragraph and construe it as if I've just knocked someone when I'm only expressing an opinion and saying what I feel. Some love to take any remark that I make about wrestling announcing and turn it into me being angry that I'm no longer in WWE doing broadcasting which is not only ignorant but simply downright wrong. I had my run. I enjoyed it. Did I have some left? Hell, yes. But that's not the way it worked out and I look forward to many other non WWE opportunities in the future.

I know why I left WWE and it had zero to do with my on air work. More on that in my autobiography. Hold on to your hats.

Someone on Twitter asked if I thought WWE would hire any Impact Wrestling talents if they became available. First of all, I have no idea but my instincts tell me no that new talents will come from the WWE Performance Center. However, I would hire some of the better Impact talents to short term deals for two reasons, to work with the 'rookies' and to see if they might actually get over. Both reasons are good ones but I'm not holding my breath.

I do know this....young talents cannot improve working with those of equal or less talent than the rookies currently possess.

http://www.wweshop.com is back in business with the full range of JR's products. Great packages and free premiums are available now.

http://www.americansoda.co.uk and http://www.beyondtheropes.co.uk in the UK are stocked as well and awaiting your order from any where in the UK, Ireland or Europe.

Got your JR's tee yet from prowrestlingtees.com/jimross ? Get yours and tweet me the photo @JRsBBQ.

BTW...I watched NXT this week and it's arguably the best WWE TV show currently on the air. Liked the three persona announce team of Tom Phillips, Renee Yong and Byron Saxton. It was a rapid, one hour broadcast that focused on what I was seeing on my TV screen and not a multitude of mentions of product after product. My eyes were seeing what my ears were hearing....novel concept.

Have a great weekend!

Boomer Sooner!

J.R. @JRsBBQ