Major Announce Team Shakeup?, Flair To Retire, More

Monday night was a test run to see how Jim Ross and Tazz would do as a team, and some people were impressed. Vince McMahon has been wanting to split up J.R. and Lawler for some time, feeling the combo is "too Southern," but television producer Kevin Dunn is strongly against it. If it's made permanent, Lawler would join Joey Styles in ECW, and occasionally work matches there as well. Dusty Rhodes really wants Lawler on ECW. Lawler and J.R. are really close and would obviously not be happy with the change.

It is believed that a Ric Flair retirement storyline is going to start imminently, perhaps in the next few weeks, to culminate at either Royal Rumble, No Way Out or WrestleMania next year. Flair would obviously prefer the latter. Flair, who is 58 years old, has been saying that this was going to be his last year as a regular in-ring competitor.

As reported earlier, the waiter in the Simmons/Maria/Santino skit on Raw was Raw head writer Brian Gewirtz. He also wrote and directed the whole skit. He produces a number of the skits that happen on Raw.