— To clear up an unfortunate rumor, Mick Foley is alive and well. Foley posted a blog today on his MySpace.com page saying a friend informed him of an Internet rumor that he had died. Foley wrote, “A friend of mine since middle school actually heard I had died on the Internet today. Just want to clear that one up. I am very much alive and well,” Foley said. “I don’t know how these things get started, but hopefully no one beside my friend took it seriously.”

— Former WWE superstar and Spirit Squad member Ken Doane (“Kenny Dykstra”) will be appearing in a new FOX Reality channel series called “Seducing Cindy” – where a group of young guys compete to win the love of model/actress Cindy Margolis. Doane wrote on Twitter, “WWE don’t want me,TNA don’t want me right now. Guess I’m gonna get ready for “Seducing Cindy” Jan 30th 2010 glassmanmedia.com see the promo!”

• Visit PWTweets.com to read more Tweets from pro wrestlers and divas.

— TNA Champion A.J. Styles and free agent Rob Van Dam are scheduled to appear on tonight’s Between The Ropes radio show, hosted by Brian Fritz and D-Lo Brown. The show airs at 6PM (ET) at BetweenTheRopes.com.

WWE issued the following announcement today:

President Obama To Deliver Special Holiday Message to the Troops this Saturday on NBC’s `WWE Tribute to the Troops’ Holiday Special

The holiday season is approaching and once again World Wrestling Entertainment® in conjunction with NBC will honor the United States Armed Forces. Taking ‘the reins from Bob Hope,’ Vince McMahon and the WWE Superstars and Divas traveled to the Middle East for the seventh consecutive year to put smiles on the faces of the men and women of the U.S. military.

The hour-long holiday special will air this Saturday, December 19 at 9:00 PM ET /8:00 PM CT on NBC.

President Barack Obama via tape will deliver a special Holiday message to the troops. In addition, General David H. Petraeus, Commander, U.S. Central Command, will also deliver his holiday wishes.

WWE Tribute to the Troops chronicles the three days that the WWE Superstars and Divas visited multiple forward operating bases to meet the troops, culminating with a special live performance in front of thousands of military personnel. The WWE makes its annual pilgrimage in recognition of the sacrifices made by our nation’s service men and women and to thank the troops for their commitment to our country.

*SPOILER* Results for Saturday’s WWE TRIBUTE to the TROOPS Special

– Former WWE tag champion Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart said at an autograph signing this past weekend in Long Island, New York that WWE is working on a new DVD collection featuring The Hart Foundation ( not him & Bret but also Owen Hart, Davey Boy Smith, other Hart family members and possibly Brian Pillman). Neidhart told fans he recently finished shooting interview footage for for the project. With WWE teasing a return by Bret Hart on last night’s RAW, this adds to the speculation that Bret might be returning to WWE in some fashion.

– The following matches and events are advertised for tonight’s ECW on Syfy show.

* Kane is an invited guest of ECW general manager Tiffany.
* The Hurricane vs. The Ripper.

– The Miz was interviewed by FoxNews.com and spoke about his experience in Iraq for WWE’s 7th annual Tribute to the Troops taping earlier this month.

“One camp we visited didn’t even have running water. Could you imagine living without running water? Plus there’s nothing to do besides work out, eat, and work,” he said. “However when we came in seeing the smiles on these heroes’ faces was priceless.” I feel safe and secure with our troops protecting us. One of the great things about our tribute is that their families get to see them enjoy themselves, smile and be happy. It’s a great change from seeing the news with all the bombings and negativity.”

Miz also said he wants basketball superstar Lebron James, “the second biggest star in Cleveland behind me”, to join WWE in Iraq next year.

– Former Ring Of Honor champion and recent WWE-signee Bryan Danielson is still in Las Vegas working out and waiting on “the call” from WWE to come to work. Danielson, a seasoned worker, is expected to bypass WWE’s developmental system and head straight to the main roster.

– Michael Solomon, a member of WWE’s Board of Directors, cashed in all of his WWE stock last week to the tune of over $20 million. Solomon was reportedly unhappy with the way certain things were being run and got out. John Laurinaitis also cashed in $155,000 of his stock.

– Last week, ECW on SyFy had 17 minutes and 45 seconds of wrestling including a 10 minute and 57 second main event. TNA on the same week had 26 minutes and 34 seconds of wrestling. That broke down to 9 minutes and 21 seconds in the first hour and 17 minutes and 14 seconds in the second hour, including a 4 minutes and 49 second main event.

— In a strange turn, WWE teased Bret Hart hosting an upcoming edition of Raw during tonight’s broadcast after Vince McMahon presented the Slammy for Guest Host of the Year alongside Dennis Miller.

Vince asked Miller who he would book as guest host if it were up to him, to which he replied Bret “The Hitman” Hart. Vince said he didn’t think Bret would be interested in doing anything. Miller then asked the audience. Following their applause, Miller said, “The people have spoken.”

— As seen tonight on Raw, Shawn Michaels challenged Undertaker to a match at WrestleMania XXVI after accepting the Slammy for Match of the Year for their classic match at this year’s WrestleMania.

— It was announced during tonight’s edition of Raw that ECW General Manager Tiffany has invited Kane to appear on tomorrow night’s show on Syfy.

Hulk Hogan tells the UK Sun that he really pissed off WWE CEO Vince McMahon when he held his TNA press conference at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

“I don’t think he’s too happy. Knowing Vince the way I do and holding the press conference at Madison Square Garden…I know some people in house at the WWE and I know he didn’t respond favourably. There’s been nobody in the Garden for about 100 years really except Vince, his dad, his grandfather and his great grandfather promoting events and I kind of slipped in there and made the press conference for TNA. Then the other night I announced we’re going head to head with WWE on Monday nights.”

Hogan also hyped TNA’s live 3-hour Monday Night iMPACT! special January 4th, which he says could re-ignite the Monday Night Wars and begin a new era in the pro wrestling industry. “I can’t imagine what’s going to happen when the Monday night wars start again but it’s great because it gives the fans a choice and the talent room to negotiate and have somewhere else to go.”

Whether pro wrestling is considered competition of Mixed Martial Arts is up for debate. WWE CEO Vince McMahon denies UFC is his competition, but there’s no question that the two sports compete for pay-per-view dollars and these days, even talent (Lesnar, Lashley).

Spike TV and UFC got the attention of World Wrestling Entertainment when they announced the next live UFC Fight Night event will take place on January 11th – the first time UFC has run a live show on a Monday dnight, head-to-head with WWE Monday Night Raw.

In a move that is likely to upset World Wrestling Entertainment and probably hurt the PPV buyrate of its biggest show of the year, UFC have decided to bump UFC 111 ahead to weeks from 3/12 PPV to 3/26, the night before WrestleMania 26.

UFC 111 will take place from Newark, NJ and will be headlined by Georges St. Pierre vs. Dan Hardy.

It should also be noted that the highly anticipated Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao superfight will be taking place on 3/12, which likely contributed to UFC’s decision to move their show. The last time UFC went head-to-head the same night against a Floyd Mayweather fight (UFC 103: Franklin vs. Belfort) – UFC got crushed, with Mayweathter’s fight against Ricky Hatton drawing nearly twice as many PPV buys as UFC and setting PPV records. As much trash as Dana White talks about boxing, even he recently joked that he too wants to see the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight and thus would not want to put a UFC event against it.

Wrestling insiders believe this year’s WrestleMania buyrate will take a big hit from the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight, while some MMA journalists are reminding people not to sell WWE short, as WrestleMania is still WWE’s “Superbowl” event and a proven commodity on PPV. March will be a big month for fight fans and it will be very interesting to see how the PPV dollars are spent.

World Wrestling Entertainment has recently made a change to its Wellness Policy that closes up a pretty big loophole and clarifies the standing of a Superstar with Wellness violations who leaves the company and then returns at a later time.

The update states:

“Any WWE talent who leaves the WWE for any reason with a first or second violation on his/her record will maintain those strikes if he/she returns to the WWE.”

Many WWE superstars with Wellness violations on their record have left the company only to return at a later date – but it was previously unknown whether those violations remained on their record. Now, we know – your record isn’t wiped clean when you take a few months off. For somebody like Jeff Hardy – should he return to WWE one day, he’ll do so with his existing “2 strikes” and would then be let go should he fail another test.

– Sheamus was a “trending topic” on Twitter last night for a few minutes after winning the WWE Title from John Cena

– Mark Cuban posted the following on his Twitter page last night after WWE’s TLC: “Bummer that Sheamus won.. But remember I put him on the ground first !”

– Reader Mike sent the following: I caught several errors during the color at WWE TLC. For one, they said that the last time a WWE Champion was born outside the US was Yokozuna but they seem to have forgot guys like Edge or Bret Hart. Another was when Striker said it’s been decades since the IC belt changed hands in Texas but it just changed hands at Wrestlemania 25 when Rey Mysterio beat JBL among other times.

– This past Thursday’s episode of WWE Superstars on WGN America scored an 0.9 rating with the replay doing an 0.15. The first showing actually did better numbers than ECW this week.