source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter

— As things stand now, Rey Mysterio is scheduled to make his return at this Tuesday’s SmackDown tapings in Fresno, CA. He was happy with how the test run on his knee during the Mexico tour two weeks ago went. His cardio wasn’t up to snuff yet, but he figured with two more weeks of training he’d be ready to return to the ring full-time. Rey asked to work a program with Chavo Guerrero. It makes sense because Chavo is the one who put him out of action in the storyline when he used chair shot after chair shot to his knee. That made him quit and have surgery according to the storyline. In reality, he’d been needing the knee surgery for quite some time.

— Mexico is now the primary choice for expanding a new territory full-time. There was a meeting on the possible expansion a few weeks ago and Mexico has taken over from the U.K. as being the targeted first international WWE brand. The belief is that Mexico would be better because they would have an endless supply of good talent that would likely work cheap. Also, transportation is cheap and there are several different markets a Mexican group could springboard into. They would also be looking at getting exclusive arena contracts to lock out the AAA promotion. They can’t lock out CMLL anywhere because CMLL owns its key arenas. Talks between WWE and Real Quality Wrestling owner Len Davies, who had been the point guy for the U.K. territory, have cooled down. Nothing has happened as of late and Davies is worried. He is hoping that WWE doesn’t drop their previous plans.

— There has been a philosophy change with SmackDown. McMahon wants to book SmackDown more like Raw, which means more angles and less wrestling. The reason behind this is due to the recent losses of Edge, London, Kendrick, Booker, Kennedy and Benoit, the belief is that they don’t have the talent depth to do the show the old way even with Finlay, Rey and Matt Hardy there. McMahon has been changing the shows the past two weeks to lead to the new philosophy.

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