“Brooke Knows Best”, Brooke Hogan, was spotted hamming it up at the Bejeweled Swimwear show as part of Funkshion Fashion Week in Miami, Florida on October 1st.

FOX Pop Tarts’ Hollie McKay apparently overheard Brook respond to a question about her love life, “What love life? I’m not gay but I might as well be. I’m the [woman] of the group. We live a gay lifestyle.”

Brooke also talked about how she protects herself from the media. “I never read tabloids, I never buy books or go on Perez Hilton and I never ever watch the news. All news is bad. You never hear them say, ‘This dog gave birth to six puppies today.’ It’s always negative, like, ‘All these people got killed.’ I stay totally away from it.”

Brooke has been taking heat for avoiding politics and current news. In another interview, Brooke explained her attitude. “It’s a lot easier when you don’t listen to what people say. Sometimes it gets to me, but most of the time I can just let it roll off my shoulder. The emotional baggage does add up and explode sometimes, but I try not to dwell on the negative.” Brooke is learning to generate news as a celebrity while keeping the news out of her personal life. Put that way, we say good for her.

“We actually broke VH1’s history,” she says of her reality show “Brooke Knows Best.” “‘Hogan Knows Best’ broke VH1’s history, and then we broke ‘Hogan Knows Best’s’ history. I told my dad, “Brooke knows best, b—-!”

On another note, Nick Bollea will be released from jail Oct. 21, three months early, after Nick participated in the early release program and worked a prison job. Brooke can’t wait to spring her baby brother and says she plans on helping her brother put back on the pounds he lost in jail. “I’m going to make him anything he wants. We’re just going to chow down because all he’s been eating is yucky jail food.”

– The plot for the season finale of Brooke Knows Best on VH-1 this coming Sunday - “Brooke is at a crossroads with her music career without a current label, manager or distribution deal. When Ashley thinks about going back to college, Brooke is intrigued and goes with her to visit Florida Atlantic University. She attends a Shakespeare class and meets some football players. But could she ever become a student again?”

Brook and the twins looking great in pink.

Excerpts from The Wrestling Doctor, W.S. Thomason’s June 24 post. The good doctor illuminates factors that will affect TNA Knockout and WWE Diva brands into the future, especially if both companies compete for wrestling talent from the same pool.

A lot of feedback to last week’s column centered on whether or not I know something about the contracts of TNA Knockouts. I do not (nor ever did) claim to know the details of contracts. I use specific wrestlers as examples that I couple with past events in order to predict what is likely to occur in the future (much like everyone else who anticipates anything). This approach worked very well in predicting the change in direction for the WWE women’s division. I also am confident that the WWE will make attempts to snatch up several of the Knockouts, if for no other reason to weaken TNA in one area where it clearly has the WWE beat. I also did not state that the WWE would gobble up Knockouts immediately; however, I believe that they will at the first opportunity. The establishment of the WWE Divas title means they will be looking to bring in both eye candy and seasoned wrestling talent to add to the mix of both Raw and Smackdown. They can find the eye candy anywhere, but the wrestling talent is not coming exclusively out of FCW.

Contracts are great for the present, but remember that they run out. The wrestler in question then must make a decision based on many factors beyond whether or not a company is going to use them in the right way. A major consideration for wrestlers is whether or not the company with which they sign is going to provide them with a paycheck that will allow them to properly plan for the future.

Life factors are often the tipping point when it comes time for wrestlers to decide between staying with the smaller company that respects their abilities and appreciates their character, or a larger organization that may marginalize their role but provide for their financial needs. It is the reason that the WWE has been so successful in scooping up top wrestlers in the last 25 years, and why they will have an excellent chance of luring away most of the TNA talent in which they are interested once their contracts expire.

There is a prevailing idea in the industry that the WWE is the “big time.” Most wrestlers want to work there just to prove that they have “made it”; Sting is the only modern-era legend in the business who can claim otherwise. TNA may have a lot of talent who tow the company line now, but most of them will take the first offer they get from Vince McMahon. Do not forget that TNA has a poor track record of properly contracting its talent, so an opportunity to go north may come sooner rather than later for many.

If the advantages of signing with the WWE are coupled with a wrestler’s dissatisfaction with their TNA role, the decision is a no-brainer. Knockouts like Roxxi may become unhappy with TNA if only Gail Kim and ODB are kept at the top with Awesome Kong. In such a case, a mid-card spot in the WWE will look even more attractive when compared to a mid-card place in TNA.

For those workers who are under proper contracts, we have to consider whether or not TNA will be around in five or fewer years, or whether or not they will continue to be able to pay their talent (the cause of death for most wrestling companies). I hope that TNA sustains itself, but it all depends on how much money they are making and (far more importantly) how they are investing those profits to create reserves for the future. No one in the IWC knows for sure, since TNA is a private company. However, there are two things that we do know:

1. There is a lot more to being a successful wrestling company than having top notch workers, compelling storylines, and passionate fans. The original ECW enjoyed an abundance of all of these things, yet they went under in less than a decade, despite existing during the industry’s most profitable era. Paul Heyman was perhaps the most brilliant booker in wrestling history, but he made poor business decisions that undercut everything he built.

2. TNA cannot put more than 1,500 people in an arena for pay-per-view in wrestling-rich areas like Memphis, Norfolk, and Greenville. Their TV ratings and buy rates are frozen. The salaries of the big stars are subsidized by Spike. They are attempting to expand their core audience in a time where people are cutting back on non-essential expenses. They over-charge for on the road pay-per-views and house shows, most likely because that is the only way they can break even. These factors are not favorable for the future of the company. TNA could run out of resources if they are too quickly expanding their live event schedule and payroll. Their recent UK tour has been successful, but remember that WCW had great international runs during both its low point in early 1993 and its dying days of late 2000. TNA has to do solid business across the board, not just across the pond or in select areas of the US.

I hope that TNA not only survives, but grows and flourishes. I would love to see the day when Impact tapings draw 6,000 to 10,000 fans to arenas across the country. TNA’s existence is good for wrestling as a whole. I regularly am hard on TNA in this column because I love wrestling, and believe that everyone benefits when Vince McMahon has to look over his shoulder once in a while. I am not confident that TNA’s current state, from both a business and creative standpoint, is headed in the direction to sustain long-term growth. I really hope that I am wrong, but we will have to wait a few years to see.

In the meantime, you can bank on seeing some of TNA’s loyal talent jump to the WWE in the next few years. Just about everybody on the current WWE roster worked under contract for somebody else at one point. Contracts are not the only thing that TNA needs to put up to keep the WWE’s hands out of its pie.

(source: www.411mania.com)

nydailynews.com posted an article on Tuesday that reports on the strained relationships between the Hogans.

Brooke Hogan is fightin’ mad after her mother, Linda, accused estranged hubby Terry (Hulk) Hogan of violating a restraining order and stalking her. Linda recently told police that as she was leaving her house, she saw Hulk driving toward it and called 911.

“I know for a fact that the accusations made against my father are completely false,” said Brooke. She’s right: Miami cops found no evidence of a restraining order. According to Hulk’s lawyers, cops “apologized and said they were writing up the incident as a false report on the part of the wife.”

Since filing to end her 24-year marriage, sources say, Linda has been shopping around a “slew of other stories, some of which are nearly 18 years old.” And a best seller it ain’t: One tale blames Hulk for a bump on the head their son, Nick, sustained while water-tubing as a child.

Far more dysfunctional would be Linda’s recent romp with the family’s 19-year-old pool boy. Not that the Hulkster has been a saint himself: After a fling with Brooke’s look-alike best friend, he went on Larry King to defend Nick, who is in jail after a drag-racing accident last August left his pal John Graziano in a coma. But the wrestler managed to only salt wounds, saying that God caused the accident to make Nick and John “better people.” In response, Graziano’s parents released a heartbreaking video of their son in his hospital bed, where he will remain for the rest of his life.

Still, Brooke is blaming her mom for the family’s turmoil, telling friends: “I just wish she would think of the family first.”

On tour with Kelly Kelly
Scott Casey | May 17, 2008
From high school cheerleader to aspiring journalist to saucy World Wrestling star, Kelly Kelly’s career has followed a varied path - to say the least.
The star will join fellow wrestlers including John Cena and Randy Orton on a WWE tour across Australia in June.
Kelly found her way into wrestling via modelling while she in college studying to become a broadcast journalist, with hopes of becoming a TV anchor.
“I love [wrestling], I just love every day of it,” she said.
“WWE contacted me through my modelling agency and they knew I had an athletic background so they sent me down to Atlanta, Georgia where they kicked my butt for a week straight and asked me if I wanted a job at the end of it.”
At high school Kelly did gymnastics for 10 years until an injury forced her into cheerleading.
“I still get to use some of my moves so that’s pretty good,” she said.
Living the life of a professional wrestler working in one of the world’s most high-profile pursuits is difficult, she said, with an almost constant training schedule and travel around the United States and overseas.
“Even on my off days now I’m still training, so I try to get into the ring and learn different stuff,” she said.
“We consider ourselves a big family [inside wrestling], some people have their own little cliques and we try to get along a best we can.”
When Kelly first began as a wrestler she was billed as a “self-proclaimed exhibitionist” and put on strip shows called “Kelly Kelly’s Expose”.
“My jealous boyfriend Mike Knox used to come out and try and wrap a towel around me but I would still do it and eventually we broke up and I formed Extreme Expose with Booke and Layla and we were a little group who danced every week,” she said.
“That ended so now Layla and I are going at each other’s throats every week.
“The first night I did it [expose] my nerves were through the roof and then every week after if kept getting easier, but I still get nervous out there now.”
She might not dance much any more, but Kelly is looking forward to a long career in wrestling.
“I plan to be here as long as I can,” she said.
The SmackDown/ECW hits Australian shores on June 13 and will be in Brisbane on June 17 at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.
(source: www.brisbanetimes.com.au)

Mary Lillian Ellison, whose flying drop kicks, flying head scissors and hair-pulling ”flying mare” body slams brought her renown as the professional wrestler the Fabulous Moolah, died Friday in Lexington, S.C., near her home in Columbia. She was 84.

She died at a hospital after shoulder replacement surgery, said her daughter, Maryetta Austin.

For more than half a century, as a wrestler, promoter and trainer, the Fabulous Moolah was a leading figure on the women’s circuit. She held versions of the women’s wrestling championship for all but short intervals from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. World Wrestling Entertainment brought her back at age 76. Clad in a sequined jacket over a green leotard, she pinned her opponent, Ivory, in a match at Cleveland and was again proclaimed the champion.

The Fabulous Moolah enjoyed the mayhem, but she especially coveted the money.

When she started in pro wrestling in the early 1950s, the promoter Jack Pfeffer decided a name change was in order. As she told it in The Fabulous Moolah: First Goddess of the Squared Circle, Pfeffer told her “the name Lillian Ellison wouldn’t do. Not flashy enough.”

He asked her why she was wrestling, and, as she recalled: ‘Annoyed, I blurted out: `For the money. I want to wrestle for the moolah.’ ”

First, she apprenticed as a valet for Nature Boy Buddy Rogers; she was billed as Slave Girl Moolah and clad in a leopard-skin outfit. Soon, she was wrestling as the Fabulous Moolah, and she won the championship belt in 1956. On July 1, 1972, when the New York State Athletic Commission lifted a ban on women’s wrestling, she was the featured attraction at Madison Square Garden.

Mary Lillian Ellison was born in the country town of Tookiedoo, S.C., near Columbia, the 13th child and only daughter in her family. When she was 10, her father took her to pro matches in Columbia and she was inspired to become a wrestler by watching Mildred Burke, the reigning women’s champion.

The Fabulous Moolah was only 5-feet-4 and 118 pounds when she began wrestling as a professional, her physique not particularly imposing. But her maneuvers wowed the crowds.

”Flying drop kick is when you jump flat-footed from the floor up as high as the person you’re looking at and kick them in the face or in the chest, wherever you want to kick them, and then you fall to the floor,” she told National Public Radio’s Fresh Air program in 2005.

”A flying mare is when you get a girl by the hair . . . and pull her over your shoulder, then slam her to the mat as hard you can. And I love doing that,” she explained.

Her jet-black hair dyed strawberry blonde, Ellison remained active in World Wrestling Entertainment into her last years, writing commercials. She was profiled in the 2004 documentary Lipstick & Dynamite about women’s pro wrestling.

In addition to her daughter, of Conway, S.C., she is survived by six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Her five marriages ended in divorce. She lived for many years with Katie Glass, a former midget wrestler known as Diamond Lil, who joined with her in training wrestlers.

Ellison said she never minded the booing inspired by her roughhouse antics.

”I loved when they got mad at me,” she told The State newspaper of Columbia in 2005. ‘They called me all kinds of names. I said: `Call me anything you want. You don’t write my check.’ ”

Source: Richard Goldstein/Miami Herald