-Tonight's Smackdown will feature a series of qualifying matches for a battle royal that will take place during the show to determine which wrestler will face Undertaker at the Judgment Day pay-per-view for the vacant World Hvt. Title. The qualifying matches feature C.M. Punk vs. Matt Hardy, MVP vs. Finlay, Batista vs. John Morrison, Big Show vs. Tommy Dreamer, and Chavo Guerrero vs. Kane. The other matches on the show are Natalya vs. Kelly Kelly, and Vladimir Kozlov vs. a local wrestler.

-The storyline excuse for Vickie Guerrero not including Edge in the qualifying matches is that he has not been medically cleared to compete after taking Undertaker's "dangerous submission hold." Seriously, come up with a name already.

-WWE has five house show events scheduled this weekend. The Raw crew is touring Michigan with shows in Saginaw, Kalamazoo, and East Lansing. Meanwhile, the Smackdown/ECW crew will be in Huntington, W. Va. and Dayton, Ohio. If you attend one of these events, please send a report to dotnetjason@gmail.com.

-TNA has a busy weekend with house shows in Derby, Vt. and Plattsburgh, N.Y. They will wrap up the weekend with the Sacrifice pay-per-view in Orlando. I will be covering the event live on Sunday night.

-Ring of Honor is expected to set an company attendance record on Saturday at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. They are also running tonight in Manassas, Va. with the following lineup: Roderick Strong, Rocky Romero, and Davey Richards vs. Takeshi Morishima, Naomichi Fujiwara, and Go Shiozaki, Bryan Danielson vs.Tyler Black, Austin Aries vs. Erick Stevens, Jay Briscoe vs. Jimmy Jacobs, Nigel McGuinness vs. Claudio Castagnoli vs. Brent Albright vs. Damien Wayne, Jack Evans vs. Necro Butcher, Chris Hero vs. Pelle Primeau, Rhett Titus and Rex Sterling vs. Mitch Franklin and Sean Denny.

-I'm happy to announce that Chris Shore will make his Dot Net debut as the new Smackdown reporter. Chris is a teacher from Greensboro, N.C., but he swears he doesn't know Bruce Mitchell from PWTorch.com, which is a good thing (just kidding). Look for Chris's debut report shortly after Smackdown goes off the air tonight.

-TNA will be holding house show events in Illinois and Ohio next month. They will be in Bloomington, Ill. on June 20, and in Danville, Ill. on June 21. They'll close out the three-day tour with a show in Cincinnati on June 22. [Thanks to Devin Cutting of ProwrestlingEvents.tk.]

-Lance Storm republished a commentary he wrote for Fighting Spirit magazine on whether he thinks pro wrestling was better off during the "kayfabe" era. It's an interesting read. Storm says he didn't see what the point of protecting the business was until Keith Hart explained to him that it was important to preserve the magic of the industry. I highly recommend this article, which you can read at StormWrestling.com.

-The following matches are advertised for tonight's AWA on ESPN Classic: Curt Hennig vs. Jerry Lawler, a Nasty Boys squash match, Steve O vs. Greg Gagne, the Midnight Rockers vs. Samoans (yes, Samoan week continues), Brickhouse Brown and Cruise vs. Lang and Karate Kid. I have no idea what that last match is all about. I'm just passing along the matches as ESPN advertises them.

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