
HHH Pushing For Him & JR To Take Over WWE Developmental
In what may be the very first clue of post-Vince McMahon World Wrestling Entertainment, HHH is pushing hard behind the scenes for what a key insider described to WrestleZone as "a major overhaul" to the developmental system.
"It's no secret within WWE that HHH feels the developmental system is a joke," our inside source told us this evening, "and the Florida developmental area looks to be a runaway train."
Our source tells us that HHH has pitched directly to Vince McMahon that Jim Ross be utilized in a recruiting capacity, while HHH would oversee more of what Talent Relations Executive John Laurinaitis does on a daily basis in terms of checking up on the system.

TOUGH ENOUGH?
WWE released that Steve Austin would be the host of this season’s Tough Enough series, which is a big coup for the show. Talks for Austin in this role had been going on for some time. The deal was made by Shed Media Inc., the production company, with Austin, which is an interesting note because it wasn’t WWE that made the deal, although WWE did attempt it and did want Austin for the spot.
It makes sense because as noted before, Tough Enough has to do good ratings, nearly double that of Ultimate Fighter, to be a success because of the higher standards of ratings by the USA Network in prime time. A 1.2 for Spike is great when they average an 0.6, but a 1.2 on USA, which averages a 2.3, is a disaster. The NCIS reruns in that time slot have topped 3.0 at times, and while nobody probably expects that, Tough Enough in a sense is in a similar position as NXT, and NXT ratings would be a major failure for the show and hurt their chances of landing anything non-in-ring wrestling going forward.
Austin I believe will help in week one, which airs after Raw and will do a solid number. But the first episode has to be good, because 8 p.m. on Monday has its drawbacks, including whether people want to watch three hours of wrestling on Mondays. Just Austin as host isn’t going to mean much for ratings by week three or four unless the show itself works.