Cox

I went to PWS on Thursday and saw part of last night's Chikara show. Was supposed to go to Shimmer but my friend who was coming in from NYC wound up being close to an hour late, so we missed the show. PWS was probably the best PWS show of the three that I've been to, which isn't saying much since I hated the first two PWS shows I went to, but this show wasn't awful. It really showed where the ROH title is in the grand scheme of things these days when Kevin Steen taps out to Dan Maff in the third match. I had a blast marking out for the Rock 'n' Roll Express since I've never seen them live, so that was fun. Elijah Burke and John Morrison looked like the two best workers on the show, since everything they did just looked so much more professional than what we saw in every other match, if that makes sense (and it may not). And man, Davey Richards sucks. Kinda wish I hadn't seen him. But overall, show was decent. Chikara...man, Chikara just isn't for me. I do think they know their audience extremely well, but a lot of the cornball ironic hipster comedy just doesn't work for me. I don't get why every single group we saw on the show has people who aren't getting along. My group left early in the second half since it had been a long day walking around WrestleCon (described by one of my friends as "Just like ComicCon, but fatter") and because we weren't really digging on this show. Probably a better show than PWS, but not something I will be in a rush to ever watch again. Going to Wrestlemania tonight. Sitting in the absolute last row of the upper deck, behind the stage, so I won't see entrances. I am only hoping not to get burned by pyro.

I haven't been there in a while but traditionally, getting out of that parking lot is a nightmare. Budget for an hour and hope it isn't longer.

On the contrary, Henry/Ryback is one of the few matches I'm actually looking forward to on Saturday.

Thursday: PWS in Metuchen. Sadly, seeing Rock 'n' Roll vs the Briscoes will likely be the highlight of my weekend...but man, what a highlight that ought to be. Friday: Axxess. I don't have high hopes based on having gone to Axxess 11 years ago in Toronto, but supposedly it's better now. We will see. It has to be better than going to CZW, and I can't imagine wanting to go to a second night of PWS after 4-5 hours the previous night, and since Shane Douglas priced himself out of the market, Extreme Reunion is no longer an option (not that it ever really was an option...c'mon Shane, $50 General Admission running 30 miles from MetLife is just bad business). Saturday: WrestleCon Shimmer Probably Chikara but subject to change Hall of Fame if ticket prices on Stubhub drop another $20 or so...if not, probably Axxess again since I know a guy who knows a guy who can comp me into the Saturday night schedule MAYBE $5 Wrestling if I don't hate wrestling and wrestling fans after spending 12 hours around it/them Sunday: Wrestlemania if ticket prices on Stubhub drop...if not, i'll order the PPV, but I'd like to go since I live within 30 miles of MetLife. I'm hoping some tickets open up the Friday before the show after they figure out the stage configuration. Should be an interesting weekend if nothing else. Plenty of good wrestling to see.

Extreme Rising cancelled their Wrestlemania weekend shows last night. Shocking that a group that was trying to charge $50 for all GA seating in Staten Island (30+ miles away from where all the local Mania stuff is taking place, which means basically at least an hour and a half away in rush hour traffic on a Friday) had a poor advance.

I assumed this was bullshit, and it turns out DDP was mistaken, but not by much. Mysterio did win in '92, but DDP finished third behind Rey and Psicosis. Must have been a weak year, as Erik Watts finished fifth, and he was far from an Observer darling at this point.

Booker T's HOF video not only featured GWF footage (when did they get THAT library?) but it also featured the clip of the time Booker T called Hulk Hogan the n-word. Also, the video reminded me that few people did a better job with shitty WWE-style comedy than Booker T. Oh, and Paul was pretty awesome in the contract signing segment. Other than that? Eh, I've got nothing.

Some backwoods Southern indie needs to book that shit yesterday. The promos alone would be worth the price of admission. Well PWS on Thursday for Wrestlemania weekend is booking Rock & Roll Express vs Briscoes. Pretty damn close. Although I have yet to see any promos I'm not sure what it says about me, but I am looking forward more to Briscoes vs RNR than I am anything else Wrestlemania weekend.

John Olerud was pretty underratedly awesome for a few years. A lot of sabermetrically-inclined Mets fans still love the man for putting up a .425 OBP from '97-'99. Sting is a lot of things, but I don't feel like underrated is one of them.

Tennessee Chain match vs Tracy Smothers, Bluegrass Brawl, April 2, 1993. Might be my favorite match of all time (not the best, I'm sure there are thousands of matches that are better, but man, do I love that match).

Yeah, usually the only time Hulk Hogan ever actually did anything on Superstars was on the Brother Love show. Say what you will about the guy, but once every few months they'd throw a hot angle on the Brother Love Show, to where it trained fans not to skip it since something could happen.

The 1990 Yearbook threads are full of, ahem, love for Brother Love. I think he definitely had a certain charm in late 80's/early 90's WWE.

I watched that video and couldn't help but notice that TNA, in all its inherent TNAness, can't even do something good like this video package, without screwing it up, saying that Joseph Park was on the TNA team in the cage match when he isn't.

Predictability is not in and of itself bad. It's more that the build to everything on this show has been pretty bland and uninteresting. There is no juice whatsoever behind anything on the show, and nothing scheduled for the show feels like a new, fresh match that people are dying to see. Rock vs Cena II feels like a huge miscalculation to me, as I don't think there is any interest in seeing these guys feud for a third straight year.

No, that was fun when I did it in 1990. This shit sucks. Maybe YOU thought it was fun, but maybe your friends thought you were a babbling idiot who wouldn't shut up about Parts Unknown.

Also, seriously David Crockett, how hard is it to buy belts? You couldn't find a men's clothing store or a fucking Walmart or K-Mart or even a mall? I know the preponderance of big box stores today may be affecting my viewpoint, but seriously, it had to be easier to find a place that sold belts than a sex shop.

That was probably better than either of their Wrestlemania matches will be, and possibly better than anything that will be on the show. My guess is they both figured that was their last match with each other so they threw it all out there. Great match.

They do not, but that is because the distillery is located in a dry county. They are allowed to sell one comemerative bottle of Jack Daniel's at the distillery, but not on Sundays, and of course, the day I took the tour was a Sunday. So if you want to actually buy Jack Daniel's from the distillery, do not go on a Sunday.

I drove to Nashville and Memphis about two years ago and had a blast. A few recommendations: -Not sure if you're a whiskey guy or not, but the Jack Daniels distillery is less than two hours outside of Nashville. It's not really on the way to anything so if you're not a fan, it's skippable, but I had a blast when I went there because I'm a huge Jack guy. -The Mid South Coliseum was still standing in Memphis when I went there two years ago, but it's not currently in use, and it was fenced off, so I'm not sure if people are actually allowed to go over there. Still, it's a pretty cool monument to wrestling history that may not be there much longer, so stop there if you can. The Channel 5 studios are not too far from there as well, if you wanted to see the location of so many great Memphis studio brawls. I had my picture taken at both since I'm a huge mark. -Food recommendations: all of the BBQ places in Memphis (Interstate, Payne's, Neely's, etc; my personal favorite was Interstate) are worth visiting, but for the love of God, make sure you go to Gus's Fried Chicken in downtown Memphis. Best fried chicken I've ever had. I went to Memphis expecting to love all the BBQ places, and I did, and wasn't even going to go to Gus's since I had seen this as primarily as a BBQ and whiskey road trip, but Gus's wound up stealing the show. Not sure how the Brits feel about fried chicken, but Gus's is the absolute best. Total hole in the wall type place, but what they're doing with the fryer there is magic. -Not sure if you're a big Dirty White Boy fan, but if you are, there is a gas station off of I-40 in Bucksnort, Tennessee that sells a ton of Bucksnort swag. I went in there and basically bought one of everything, since I'm a huge Dirty White Boy mark. Only thing I wish I had bought but didn't was a Bucksnort t-shirt, but that was only because I was too fat to fit into an XL at the time. Now that I've lost weight? Huge regrets. I need to go back to Memphis now just so I can get some more Gus's and a Bucksnort t-shirt. That's all I can think of for now. I didn't stop in Knoxville at all because I went with my dad, and I knew I was going to have a lot of weird wrestling requests in Memphis, so I wanted to keep the weirdness to a minimum, but the Knoxville Civic Coliseum is where most of SMW's big cards took place (their other big location is in Johnson City, not too far off the beaten path either). One day, I'd like to go back and hit more weird wrestling landmarks, like the Nashville Fairgrounds, but there is plenty to see and do in Tennessee while driving through. Have a great time!

I feel like I need to watch this again. I kept having problems with my disc while watching it the first time and because of the issues, I felt like I couldn't really get a feeling for the flow of this match. What I saw and how I witnessed it made it feel like a very good match for sure, but not one of the best of all time. I'd like to give this another try, and maybe I'll check out the YouTube version if I keep having disc issues.

That is the single dumbest spot I think I've ever seen. What was that guy's plan for protecting himself after he hit the DDT? And if his plan all along was to "crash and burn on the floor," that's even stupider.

They probably filmed that before Swagger's arrested.

At least it's a payday. Kind of a crappy way to get a payday, but what are you going to do? At least it's getting a featured match payday at Wrestlemania, assuming Swagger didn't blow it for Dutch.

This was good. I'd be hesitant to call it an all out war or anything (Choshu vs Hash would be a better fit for that description) but they lay in some stuff, do some nice dives, and wrestle a perfectly acceptable match.

Not as full of shit as you'd expect a piece about Jerry Lawler to be, which is a plus. I have to imagine that this was probably one of the better mainstream pieces you'd see about pro wrestling in this day and age. Still, strange that they would choose to spotlight Lawler, since he was pretty far removed from the national spotlight at this point, and even stranger that they didn't even mention Andy Kaufman.