Now that's how to make me want to buy a PPV.

If you missed Raw tonight, too bad for you. Shawn Michaels capped off a solid month of awesome heeltastic promo work by cutting a PHENOMENAL promo(in Montreal, no less), in which he basically came out and said, "yep, I screwed Bret, and I'd do it again." The young guys in the back should take a lesson from Shawn, who has made me hyped up to see a PPV for the first time since Wrestlemania. He's absolutely killed Hogan, and he's done it by telling the truth(sort of) about the real Hulk Hogan.

One of the things that people like me (internet wrestling geeks) like to think is that we know a lot about the backstage happenings going on. We pride ourselves on knowing the secret language of the world, the words and the signals and the moves that the "mark" doesn't see. The reason that Shawn's promos, to me anyway, are so successful, is that he's basically coming out and saying the things that the "smart" fans think are true. The "marks" boo him because he's running down Hogan, but the "smart" fan is sitting out there going, "Yeah, right on. Shoot on him, Shawn."

It's not a shoot, though. (For those of you who don't know, shooting is where you go off script and say or do something real.) If Shawn was actually shooting on Hogan, he wouldn't be around anymore, regardless of how essential he is to the company. But it makes for good promo, certainly better then the retread of Austin/McMahon they're currently pushing as the storyline for John Cena and Bischoff/Jericho/Carlito. And it makes the slightly smarter fan more likely to buy the show, even though, as a smart fan, I know that Hogan's not going to lay down for HBK. But it is fun to watch HBK walking around dressed as Hogan saying "brother" after every other word.

Hopefully, though, this will be the last we see of Hogan for a while. Now that "Hogan Knows Best" is off the ground, there's certainly no reason to keep the old bastard occupying TV time that could go to a number of other people. I'll probably throw some Summerslam predictions up here before the weekend.