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You all knew this story was about to happen, didn't you?

Some people were shocked when the news came down on July 30. Others, especially me, had inklings that this would happen eventually and were not surprised at all.

But one thing seems to be the consensus, and that is the release of Brian Kendrick. I had been prepared for the news as early as the week before through another friend. Given the recent events of jobbing during the entire Australian tour in early July and if he saw any television time at all, he was either being defeated by a commentator old enough to be his father or a midget

I know what a few of you have been thinking in the interim; I have heard and read most of the comments. I read the "bad attitude backstage" stories and endured the jokes about his marijuana use. How much of these figured Kendrick's eventual cut we shall never know. If they were a factor, it's all a moot point now.

Much as it is a shame that Kendrick got released, like many others before him, no one was inevitable (with an exception or two, but I'm not going into that here).

In spite of being buried most of his seven years off and on with the company, there were at least three times that he did get what could qualify as pushes. The first was when he was the record-holding tag champion with yet another eventually released talent, Paul London. After the high-flying pair were drafted to Raw in the 2007 draft, they briefly became World Tag Titles in South Africa (which they lost three days later, but it was good while it lasted.).

There was also the championship scramble on 2008s Unforgiven PPV where he lasted the longest as interim champion (which was never acknowledged as part of the match stipulation). He and London were even included in the Raw vs. Smackdown 2009 video game and Kendrick was WWE.com's Superstar of the Day five times, more than any other up until his release his last honor of Superstar of the Day being July 12.

The early years saw singing telegrams to Undertaker, being a masked character for a particular city each week, the infamous streaking, and perhaps the most classic moment of all, the battle rap with John Cena.

While I loved the man during his WWE run and appreciate his talent, I'm not going to say he was the be all and end all. For example, it took several months and a complete change in character to have people take notice of (THE) Brian Kendrick again. In the beginning, some did take notice. In the end, he was jobbing once again.

On the good side, he showed up, put his heart, soul, and body into every performance, gave his 200 percent, and really didn't suffer many serious injuries in all those years (that weren't kayfabe anyway) that I can significantly recall. That says a lot right there.

With this in mind, speculation is already flying that TNA could snatch up Kendrick, not to mention ROH would probably take him back. At the moment, word is happening that he is set to return to PWG either August 28 or September 4. This is one stone that isn't gathering moss anytime soon.

If he goes to TNA, that will give me much more motivation to pay closer attention; if he goes to ROH, I may have to travel to a few Philadelphia shows to capture the ROH experience up close and personal. But I'm not going to make any premature conclusions just yet.

Meanwhile, since I may have a long wait ahead of me, I have some videos to watch. I have a feeling those future endeavors may not be far off and need something to fill my fix in between. There's a lot of good memories out there, and YouTube is a great resource for Kendrick video. I highly recommend it for fans suffering withdrawals.

In any case, I don't think he's going to be obscure for very long. It may also be safe to call him Spanky again!

Learn more about this author, L. Anne Carrington.
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