WWF.com - World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. Acquires WCW from Turner Broadcasting. It's official... no more speculation or "let's pretend" games.

How ironic is it that Eric Bischoff tried to run the WWF into the ground a few years back... now, he's nowhere near the product, and Vince McMahon is now holding the bag or Eric's folly.

I suspect a few key workers - if they aren't sacked outright - won't be happy. Shane Douglas, Brian Adams, Jeff Jarrett...even Gene Okerland all left Titan angry... will they still draw paychecks from it now?

On the positive side: WCW booking will no longer be in the hands of a committee that knows nothing about the 'sport'. It may become watchable again. Time will tell.

Vince McMahon confirms rumors about WCW (taken from the Wrestleline Website). If this comes true in the next few days, Vince's words on the Howard Stern show may well be the final word on this story.

The situation for WCW looks grimmer by the moment...

Fusient Media have made an announcement that they've pulled out of a deal to buy WCW. Apparently, mention of the promotion has been removed from their Website too.

Add that to the fact that Scott Steiner is injured, and likely won't be a part of the "season finally" (read: end) show next week - the last WCW program on Turner's networks - and you have a very bad sign indeed.

I'm still leaning towards the idea of this being a huge swerve on us 'smart marks', so that we'd all have egg on our faces next week for our analysis... but it now seems to involve far too many people to actually be a swerve.

If anything, if Eric Bischoff has no more involvement in the promotion, that I'm fine with. After all, much of the financial losses in the promotion were caused by him. He tossed out tons of green and guaranteed contracts without proof that WCW could continue to support them... but for now, a promotion with a lot of NWA history seems headed to a finality.

Grimmer indeed.

If this story is not a swerve by WWF.com, then Wrestlemania is shaping up to be very wacky!

(Taken from Colin Vassalo's Wrestling-Online newsletter):

BATTLE ROYAL AT WRESTLEMANIA!
- It's been quite a while since we've seen a battle royal at WrestleMania. If my memory serves well, the last time was at WrestleMania 13 - the opening match which had all the tag teams. The WWF lined up one unbelievable battle royal for this year, and when we say unbelievable, we mean it! Participants? Fasten your seatbelts, here are who they announced so far! The Bushwhackers, Doink the Clown, Brother Love, Sgt. Slaughter, Freebird Michael Hayes, Nikolai Volkoff, the Iron Sheik and the Gobbeldy Gooker! No, we're not joking, the stupid turkey from the 1990 Survivor Series is part of the match as well! This was announced on WWF.com earlier today and more names from the past are being added to the match. Hey, can we have the Red Rooster on? This will be very funny and interesting to see.

We live in interesting times!

Now that Turner networks are out of the picture - the reason a deal fell through before - it's been confirmed that the WWF are once again trying to purchase WCW.

I still think that Eric Bischoff and Fusient Media have the promotion in the bag; too much of this whole "WCW may be history" story screams "WORK!" to me. If they didn't already own it, why could Eric bring all the Cruiserweight talent into the fed when they're trying to cut costs?

Ultimately, I think we'll have the whole situation answered by the 28th.

Little Spike Dudley. That appearance on RAW was a major mark-out moment for this smark fan. Not surprisingly, the debut of Rhino didn't do anything for me... but Spike - that's a whole different matter.

Was this a one-time deal, or is it yet another nail in ECW's coffin? We'll have to wait and see.