This weekend’s links are below for your reading pleasure. If you come across any interesting links, then please share them with us in the comments section below. Enjoy!

Get your weekend started right by checking out these links, starting a new Feedly account, and/or adding the blogs above (and JerseySmarts.com, too) to your existing Feedly or other RSS aggregator account. Enjoy!

If you don’t know, that suite of websites consists of the blog that you are currently reading and a variety of professional wrestling websites. When I was younger, I was a big professional wrestling fan. However, as I was in college and then graduate school, I began to grow apart from watching the sport. Plus, I was a big fan of the old World Championship Wrestling (WCW) promotion and once it was bought up by Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) group, I gradually stopped watching the shows. Once the wrestler that I hated watching the most married his way into the McMahon family and, essentially, wrote the scripts so that he always won at the end of each feud, I was turned off to professional wrestling completely.

And then this upstart promotion out of Nashville and Orlando started putting out a product. I watched here and there, but my watching habits were nothing worthy of merit. Then about two years ago I started watching that TNA Wrestling promotion more and more and more and you know what? It began to grow on me. It reminded me of the old WCW and the old Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) and it was fun to watch. More than that, though, it made me want to get back into the business of professional wrestling websites. When I initially started making websites back in 1996, I was making primarily professional wrestling websites (The Balrog’s Lair, The Brood, and Wrestle Universe were the three wrestling-themed websites that I worked with back on the old GeoCities platform).

But this entry isn’t supposed to be a history lesson, so I’ll get on with it!

These days I own three professional wrestling websites – TBLWrestling.com, XHeadlines.com, and TNAStars.com. Of the three, I actively manage and operate the TNAStars.com website. TBLWrestling.com has been around the longest as it has existed in one incarnation or another since 1996. XHeadlines.com was the next site that I created and I think that, for a long time, it was my best work in terms of laying out the design of a professional wrestling website. However, I began working on TNAStars.com on and off during the summer of 2008. Once it was announced that Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff were moving to TNA Wrestling during the fall of 2009, I kicked the development of that site into high gear and we went live completely live on January 1, 2010.

On the first day that TNAStars.com was live back in January, it received 2 hits. And believe it or not, that is where this success story begins.

Viewership on the site gradually increased as the news articles were picked up by the various search engines. By the middle to end of January 2010, TNAStars.com was routinely pulling in around 500 hits per day and I was really pleased that the site had a decent presence with less than a month of existence underneath its belt. However, my goal for all of the new websites that I start is for them to be at 1,000 hits per day on a consistent basis – then grow from there. Sometime in March 2010, TNAStars.com began generating 1,000 hits per day, but then the summer months came on and – as has been my experience with professional wrestling websites – the hits began to go down until August, when they started to pick up again.

But I’m always looking for a consistent 1,000+ hits each day and I knew that TNAStars.com was so close. I’m not sure what it took to make the jump, but sometime around the end of September the website began consistently generating 1,000+ hits per day. Then on October 1, 2010, TNAStars.com generated 1,989 hits in a single day – the most in the site’s history. I was very pleased!

Until October 7, 2010 (last Thursday), when the site drew in 3,189 hits in a single day. I was floored at the great response, but knew that hard work always pays off in the end. Last Thursday I began to wonder – how high could this thing go? Then on Friday, the site drew in 3,147 hits – only a small decrease from the day before. But it didn’t stop there…

On Sunday, October 10, 2010, TNAStars.com drew in some 5,017 hits in a single day. Phenomenal! I was convinced that this number was going to be the high mark in the series of banner days for TNAStars.com. Then yesterday came around and wouldn’t you know it, but the website drew in some 8,500 hits in a single day!

Let me put this in perspective and explain why this is significant and worthy of celebration. The most hits that any of my websites ever received in a single day was on June 26, 2007 when TheBalrogsLair.com (which eventually became TBLWrestling.com) received 25,305 hits due to its thorough coverage of the Chris Benoit double murder suicide. Not really something to go screaming around about, but it’s true. The next highest day of hits in the history of my suite of websites? That would be the day before – June 25, 2007 – when the Chris Benoit coverage began. Blech. The story is the same with the third highest day in my suite of websites’ history – June 27, 2007 – Chris Benoit coverage.

You have to go to the fourth highest day in the history of my suite of professional wrestling websites to find a banner day in terms of visitors that were not drawn to the site because of a tragedy! And that day was Monday, March 15, 2004 when TheBalrogsLair.com took in some 7,299 hits in a single day due to its excellent coverage of WrestleMania XX. That was a good day for my professional wrestling websites.

Incidentally, the fifth and sixth highest traffic days in the history of my suite of sites are both Chris Benoit double murder suicide. Annoying.

But all of that changed over this weekend when TNAStars.com’s Bound for Glory 2010 coverage took the number one traffic spot away from the original TBL’s post-WrestleMania XX coverage. And it changed again when the post-Bound for Glory coverage pushed TNAStars.com ahead of one of the Chris Benoit coverage days back on the original TBL.

I hope that the momentum stays with TNAStars.com as it’s a great little website that isn’t bogged down with crap and annoyances. If you’re into professional wrestling, I highly recommend heading over there and seeing what we’ve done. Here’s hoping that the days of growing hits continues for the entire suite of professional wrestling websites that I own!

As a wrestling fan, I’m excited for this news. I stopped watching World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) programming around two or three years ago. Honestly, it got to a point where Triple H was winning every single feud that he was in and where he and his wife were trying to write him into some mythical figure week in and week out. I couldn’t take watching the utter bastardization of the sports entertainment industry, so I stopped watching. Hey, there are a lot of ways for people to express their support or dissatisfaction with a company or product. With sports entertainment, I decided to vote with my dollars and my leisure hours by taking them away from WWE and giving them to TNA.

That said, it hasn’t been an easy ride as a fan of TNA wrestling. There is a strong argument to be made that these guys have spent the last few years blowing their opportunity to be the clear alternative to WWE programming. For most of the last few years, there was no way that TNA could compete with WWE on a global level. Today, even with signing Hulk Hogan, I think that fact remains. However, bringing in Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff (more on him in a minute) gives TNA a real chance to compete with WWE domestically and, specifically, on the all-important cable television medium. As a fan of TNA, I hope that they don’t blow this gigantic opportunity.

Now to Eric Bischoff. When news broke last week that Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff had signed contracts to partner with TNA, most of the people that I talked to were saying that Hogan is too out of shape and getting up there in age to make an impression on TNA. Well, that’s true. But if you ask me, the real value of this transaction is Eric Bischoff. Forget about the fact that he has connections in the entertainment industry through Bischoff Hervey Productions. And you can even forget about the vast connections that Bischoff brings as the former President of World Championship Wrestling (WCW). What Bischoff brings to the table is a unique view on the wrestling business that is not only proven to be successful, but it is proven to be profitable.

The real value of this deal is Eric Bischoff’s brain with Hulk Hogan’s instant mainstream credibility. The only misstep that I’ve seen so far in this whole thing is the fact that while Hogan was on almost every major media outlet promoting his new book last week, he wasn’t wearing any TNA merchandise. I know that this announcement was a bit last minute and that TNA doesn’t even have a marketing plan built around Hulk Hogan yet, but it would have been nice for the company’s fortunes if Hogan was wearing some red and yellow themed TNA merchandise, you know?

However, that’s only a minor hiccup. Hogan was sure to talk about TNA in almost every interview and he talked about how he has a partnership with them and that he may or may not get back into the ring. In these interviews, he was very realistic about his body and how it has broken down over the years. That’s a good sign for Hogan who, as his new book details, has been battling some mental demons lately.

Anyway, the word is that Hulk Hogan will be featured on TNA Impact on Spike tonight, so if you get a chance be sure to watch the show!

But, even though I want to, I do not believe that I am going to go out and buy a video game. There’s no one, single reason that I can put my finger on as to why I’m not going to get one, but here are a few thoughts that keep crossing through my mind…

Cost. Even though I have a Nintendo Wii, the cost of a video game is still expensive! Sure, it’s not $60 to buy a new game like it is on the other consoles, but games range in price from $30 to $50 which really isn’t that cheap, either. Of course, if the right game came along, I would be willing to spend the money on it.

Difficulty Level. This is an odd qualifier for me. When I was younger, I could play games at the hardest difficulty and beat them. Now that I don’t really play games as much as I used to, the easy-to-medium difficulty level becomes a challenge – and that’s fine with me. I never had a desire to be a hardcore gamer, so I’m glad to play a game on easy or medium. But some of these games are just too easy or too hard. I could never get into the current Madden games on Wii because there’s no way I’d be able to understand what’s going on. At the same time, I’d never be into a lot of the downloadable games that Wii offers because they’re all too easy. There’s no happy medium these days.

Genre. My favorite type of game is a role playing game. The old Final Fantasy games are the best series in my view. Give me Final Fantasy numbers 1 through 10 and all of the sub-games that have come out of that series and I’m a happy gamer. But you don’t get that any more. Today, you get companies that try to make games in the Final Fantasy mold and they fall short. And for their part, Square-Enix (developer of the Final Fantasy series) has too many breakaway scenes in the beginning of their games – so much so that you could start a game and only play for maybe ten minutes of the first hour. It’s overkill. Plus, the only games they put on the Wii are these Crystal Chronicles games, which I have very little interest in. I’m looking for a game like Final Fantasy 7 or Final Fantasy IX – games that take a while to get through. Which brings me to my next point…

Time. Yes, I want a game that takes some time to play, but one that also allows me to play it in intervals. I don’t want to sit in front of the screen for hours on end – I don’t have the time for that. I want to be able to play in 30 or possibly 60 minute intervals.

Fun Factor. Finally, I want a game that’s fun to play over and over again. My cousin and I used to play WCW/nWo video games because there were easy to control and a hell of a lot of fun (I would always whip his ass – isn’t that right, cousin?). I like the Final Fantasy games because they’re fun to play, same goes for the Mario Kart series.

So there are some of the problems that I’m facing as I try to figure out which video game, if any, I want to purchase. If you have any recommendations, let me know. If not, then no worries. I’m not that concerned, really!

Enjoy!

After watching the DVD, one of the things that comes right out at you is the thoroughness of the sit-down interviews. All of the Horsemen except Steve McMichael, Lex Luger, Sid Vicious, Sting, and Ole Anderson are interviewed during the DVD. That’s pretty amazing considering that these weren’t the main guys (except Ole, that is). You get to hear the story of the Horsemen right from Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Chris Benoit, JJ Dillon, and Dean Malenko. I would be remiss if I didn’t say that JJ Dillon’s interviews were exceptional. This man is a true wrestling proponent and someone that should find himself in the Hall of Fame soon. If not for his excellence as a manager, then at least for his dedication to the sport.

It would do no good to go over the minutia of the DVD here, but I will say that this is one of the more candid WWE DVDs that I’ve ever seen. Paul Roma is interviewed and he comes right out and said that he shouldn’t have been a Horsemen…which is funny only because Flair’s interview is interspersed with Roma’s in that Flair (and the rest of the Horsemen) were saying how Paul Roma was not a good fit for the group and that he was just the completely wrong person for the job. Then you have Roma’s take that the “idea” of the Horsemen was becoming an ego trip for Flair and Anderson and the gang – it’s a good bit of shoot-style video.

I will say that I didn’t like how much storylines played a part in the one-on-one interviews. It was weird – they would sometimes set up the next part of the DVD by talking about the storyline and then gradually move into the backstage/real life discussion. It was odd at times.

Eric Bischoff had a good, frank discussion about his lawsuit against Ric Flair and – to the DVD author’s credit – the Flair interviews against Bischoff are included either in the extras or as a part of the main story. You have to admire the passion that Flair showed in those interviews on NITRO where he looked like he wanted to rip Bischoff’s head off of his shoulders. Though most of us knew that it was real at the time, Flair tells us straight up in the DVD that he would have killed Bischoff if he had the chance on the night that he returned in Greenville.

All in all, this is a great look at the premier “gang” in professional wrestling. I suggest watching the DVD, though I’m unsure that you should purchase it. If you can rent it for a few bucks at Blockbuster or if you’re willing to wait until the price drops from $20 to $10, then go for it. You won’t be disappointed.

And I’m glad that I did. This book reaffirms all of the things that I like about Eric Bischoff. He talks (in detail) about how he viewed the wrestling business in a completely different way than how the old veterans of the business viewed it. He calls wrestling the “purest form of marketing.” And you know what? I agree with him 100%. He’s right. Wrestling is as basic as it gets in terms of entertainment. Two wrestlers are in a ring and they have to sell a “product” or, in other words, their feud. If it works, they get the cheers of the audience; if it fails, they get the jeers.

The other thing that I really liked about this book was that Bischoff had a chance to put the record straight on many issues and he hits the internet “dirt sheets” pretty hard. Most of this criticism is deserved since his basic premise is that the dirt sheet writers were not just pro-WWE, rather they were anti-WCW and even more anti-Eric Bischoff. And why were they anti-Eric Bischoff? Well, for the same reason that many of the old school wrestlers were against him – he was an outsider to the industry and he took a much different approach to running a wrestling company than they were used to seeing.

And that’s a great way to sum up this book. It’s Eric Bischoff’s tale of being an outsider to the wrestling world and then, in a matter of only a few years, finding himself rising from an entrepreneurial third-string announcer to the head of the biggest wrestling company on the planet. Not many people liked his rise to power, but many of these same haters made a lot of money from his out-of-the-box ideas. Bischoff also tells the real story of the corporate suits who killed WCW. He pulls no punches when he talks about how guys like Vince Russo had no chance of helping WCW and how the people who were making decisions for AOL Time Warner were completely unrealistic in terms of the wrestling industry. It was nice to finally read this all from Bischoff’s point of view.

This was a man who brought professional television writers to the wrestling world to help stretch storylines over the course of two to three months (a practice now used heavily by WWE). This was a man who saved untold hundreds of thousands of dollars by moving WCW’s syndication to a sound stage in Florida (a practice now used by TNA). He was the first to go live week in and week out, he was the first to break the wrestling business down to its 4 core “wheels” of revenue, he was the first to shun the “inside” fans and dirt sheet writers (though not the last)…

Eric Bischoff has made a remarkable contribution to what we watch each week on RAW, Smackdown!, Impact!, and ECW. This just cannot be denied. A lot of what is out there on the internet about Eric Bischoff just isn’t true (even his birthday isn’t properly reported online). For the objective reader, this book finally puts a lot of the bullshit to a halt and gives Bischoff the credit he deserves for restructuring the wrestling industry.

Before I give my recommendation for the book, I have to say that the biggest problem I had with the book was the spelling and grammar errors. I don’t see how the publisher could have let this book go to print when there were punctuation errors, misspelled words all over the book, improper grammar used… Hell, they even labeled a picture of “Sensational Sherri” incorrectly as “Missy Hyatt!” That’s just basic stuff that made what should have been a nice, smooth read a pain in ass sometimes.

I highly recommend Controversy Creates Cash for the fan of professional wrestling. For those of you who aren’t wrestling fans, I wouldn’t bother with the book unless you’re one of these entrepreneurial types who looks at the world of business a little bit differently. You may enjoy this book for its look at the business side of professional wrestling.