Umaga Character Change?, Killings/WWE Update, JBL/WWE, More

Source: The Wrestling Observer Newsletter

RJ Gabrintina sent this in: I was watching VH1's I Love The New Millennium, the 2001 edition. If you're not familiar with the show, actors, singers, and so-forth look back at the different years and talk about the things that happened. One subject that was brought up for 2001 was the XFL. After explaining what the Xtreme Football League was, they began to make fun of it. None of the people on the show said that they liked the XFL or that it was a good idea. They all pretty much just bagged on it and some thought it wasn't even worthy enough to be put on the show. Just thought that was a pretty big kick to the nuts to Vince.

As reported on earlier, the company handling the prize giveaways for WWE's Million Dollar Mania contest were contacting all the people that were finalists an hour before the show to make sure they would be home and watching the show. The finalists were not told what they would be winning, but were told to say by the phone and be watching Monday Night Raw. The first week impression of the contest was that they were dialing completely random numbers, but that didn't turn out to be the case.

Several in WWE were surprised JBL was not drafted over to Smackdown to utilize his heel character much better since it had much more success on that brand during his run as WWE Champion.

There is talk of wanting to transition Umaga's character to where he begins doing interviews for himself. He'll reveal that he's able to speak English. Whether or not it will happen remains to be seen.

According to a new report, the latest idea for Ron Killings is to have him start on TV in July with a gimmick playing off his "Truth" nickname. Considering that gimmick was first created by TNA, many have found it to be highly unusal that WWE would go with that name. It is possible they could go with something different, but that was the talk as of right now. The company does feel they need to push more African Americans on TV right now because of the decline in that demographic and also want to get some new people in the mix.