Well, another one-time legend of professional wrestling now has his positive moment in the history books over: Bret Hart was given his pink slip from WCW on Friday.

It's another example of how callous they are there: here, after not at all using him in any way that would make him useful to the promotion, after an injury was incurred due to their own fault (a concussion caused by Bill Goldberg - an injury that may well have ended his in-ring career)... he gets fired.

The Bret of today doesn't earn any pity from me; after Survivor Series 97 here in Montreal (which I was at), all we've seen is a bitter man near the end of his career, known more for complaining and whining than for his ring work. This is the man who, rather than make the A&E Biography to his brother Owen a loving tribute, instead used it as a vehicle to snarl more at Vince McMahon... but this is also a man who does have a big cache among wrestling fans, a man who we knew could actually make better matches and storylines in WCW than he was allowed to. Now, it looks like he won't get the chance.

If Vince McMahon does end up the new owner of WCW, then he wouldn't be likely to hire Bret back - nor would Bret want to. He wouldn't go to ECW; they style they promote is one he's been vocal about his dislike for.

Maybe with his brother Bruce having relaunched the Calgary Stampede promotion, there's a place for him still... but I think North American exposure is done for him.

A point of significance in the American political process has to be mentioned here:

The Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates have held their last debate this past week - and never took up the Smackdown Challenge.

So it looks like they don't see the young voters as an essential demographic for their campaigns... a rather large portion of the voting public who'll now ignore them.

Maybe in their minds a debate on a wrestling program was too much a 'circus atmosphere' for them. Regardless, after being more than happy to pay lip service to youth by having WWF representation at their party Conventions, it does feel like a faint attempt.

I wonder how the voting will shake out now.

There's a buzz going in all the 'news' sheets right now, news that may most likely just be a rumor, but it's one rumor picking up a lot of steam even if not true: that WWFE have purchased WCW.

Again, on many fronts this rumor is quite likely not true. As a publicly-traded company, WWFE would have some serious justifications necessary to justify acquiring a promotion that is losing massive sums of money this year. That's the strongest negative to the rumor, first to the fact that Vince McMahon has publicly stated that he is not buying the company.

A lot of my analysis in this piece is most likely just conjecture - meaning it may well just be a case of "let's pretend", but some of it falls into the category of "fanboy wet dream" territory too:

• If it does happen, there are quite a few names on the list of employees who would walk away from the whole thing: Bret Hart, Vince Russo, Shane Douglas, Bryan (Crush) Adams, Jeff Jarrett... these are all people who have heat with the WWF, and wouldn't want to be associated with it once more.



• Actually, if he's still associated with the promotion, I guess you could also factor in Hulk Hogan. Mind you, fans don't seem to miss him, so that point may be moot.



• With Scott Hall just released from WCW, and a possible return to the WWF, wouldn't that murk up things even more?



• There's talk of Ted Turner's TBS and TNT still carrying the WCW product on their airwaves.
  
  Considering the bitter animosity between Turner and McMahon, that'd be a real surprise.



• There are a lot of theories about inter-promotional matches now becoming possible. The idea of Sting versus The Rock or Austin, or Lance Storm against Chris Jericho would interest me a lot

No matter how these rumors shake out, it sounds as if we're in for interesting times.

- So Steven William Regal won the European championship on RAW? Surprising.

Not that he won it; that he would was a foregone conclusion. What was surprising is the fact that he won it so soon into his WWF stint.

I haven't changed my opinion though: he's still dull to watch in the ring, title or not. He just always looks dorky in motion.