Cox

That's strange, I think all of Bix's impressions sound the same, which is to say they all sound exactly like Bix.

In hindsight, Lesnar probably should have won the Royal Rumble this year, since they were building to Brock/Goldberg anyway. Smackdown had too many weird hurdles to get to in order to make Orton/Wyatt the WWE title match at Mania this year. Styles had to lose to Cena, for Cena's record-breaking 16th title reign, that he held for two weeks before losing the belt to Wyatt, and then the build to Wyatt/Orton was...suboptimal. It would have made more sense for Lesnar to win the Rumble, Goldberg to beat Owens at Fast Lane, and that sets up Lesnar/Goldberg III. Oh well.

I'm not the world's biggest Conrad fan, but I'd rather listen to him than Brian Last. Last is a guy who, very quickly, became one of the most pompous, overbearing voices in wrestling podcasting. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but his podcasting persona began grating on me very quickly, particularly after Bix left 6:05.

Cody has also been part of some very impressive houses for Northeast Wrestling. My friend went to a show in Waterbury, CT that had a reported attendance of 3300 for Cody vs Angle in the main event.

I went to tonight's ROH TV tapings in Philadelphia. It was a decent show, some good stuff and some crap. It was also five fucking hours long. On a work night. On fucking Mother's Day. I don't ever want to go to a five hour wrestling show, let alone one after I ate lunch with my mom and then have to work the next day, I don't care how good the show was.

I think there's probably just as much insight as there used to be, but there's also a lot more bloat from all the gimmicks and schtick. I like Bruce and think he is a good storyteller but could probably do without Conrad for the most part, even if I do admit that he and Bruce do have good chemistry together. I just don't think Conrad is as informed as he thinks he is.

I went to this year's Super 8 for the first time since 2003, when Paul London beat Chance Beckett in the finals, but I came out convinced that Chance Beckett was a future star and Paul London was a flash in the pan propped up by a few decent ROH matches. Whoops. Anyway, with tournaments in indie wrestling having become fairly prominent since the Super 8, I thought it would be fun to check in and see what the OG indie tournament was up to all of these years later. Now, to be clear, while it is still ECWA's premier wrestling event of the year, it's not quite the same ECWA you may remember from the late 90's/early 00's. Jim Kettner retired a few years ago and the new ECWA is run by a different crew, so while it's still called the ECWA and still uses the same ring and entrance set (with heel and babyface entrance ways!), it's also very different. For one thing, this ECWA doesn't really even run in Delaware anymore, this show was in Woodbury Heights, NJ. And while the Super 8 used to bring in guys from all over the country in what was often their first break, this year's show featured mostly local guys. I don't know where Lio Rush is based out of, but he would probably have been the least "local" guy on this year's show, and I don't think he's from very far away. So it's definitely different from the Super 8's I remember. This show also lacked the ECWA Summit, which was usually entertainingly bad and featured the antics of Mr. Ooh La La, who apparently worked some shots for ECWA as recently as last year, which seems insane to me. I got there as the show was just underway, and apparently Bob Artese is now the ring announcer for the ECWA, only he's now blond, which is weird. Anyway, they started the show by announcing that Joey Janela was out of the Super 8, which came out about a week ago because Janela had taken an afternoon booking in Connecticut for Beyond Wrestling, and they were concerned that he would not make it to the building in time for their fan festival that began at 6. Now, on one hand I sympathize for the promotion that they wanted Janela there by a certain time for their fan festival, but Janela is something of a hot property in wrestling right now coming off of the buzz he was able to generate for Joey Janela's Spring Break, and having Janela meant more for the Super 8 than it did Janela at this stage, so taking a hard stance on this just meant that they didn't have a guy that could have really helped get them buzz for their show this year. And in the end, they only had 7 of the 8 guys at their fan festival anyway, so what did pulling Janela really do for their show? So with Janela out, they announced that an ECWA regular would be in the tournament to replace him (I honestly don't remember his name). On his way to the ring, he was jumped by "Hybrid" Sean Carr, who then threatens to break the guy's ankle if he does not replace him in the Super 8. Eventually, the ECWA matchmaker relents, and Sean Carr is now in the Super 8 instead of Joey Janela or the guy whose name I don't remember. They did the usual Super 8 introduction ceremony with all of the wrestlers being presented with a medal and posing with the trophy, as they have done since I went to my first Super 8 in 1998, when it was won by Lance "Not Yet Simon" Diamond. 1. Lio Rush over Anthony Bennett. Bennett does not seem to have improved much since the CWC and his work was so light, I don't think it would break an egg. But Lio made this somewhat entertaining. This would become the theme of the night. 2. Zombie King over Leon St. Giovanni. LSG is a former UWC guy, so I was hoping he would at least get a run to the semis, especially since he's an ROH TV regular, but he put over the ECWA regular Zombie King here. This was OK, I thought LSG looked good but Zombie King was green. He also doesn't really do a zombie gimmick, like he just appears to be a regular dude, so I am not sure why he is the king of the zombies. 3. Joe Gacy over Timmy Lou Retton. This was pretty decent too, probably two of the bigger guys who have ever worked a Super 8, as Kettner tended to use guys who had a different look when he was still promoting. Retton has a few good spots and I have liked Gacy when I have seen him wrestle around New Jersey of late. 4. Sean Carr over Brandon Scott. Probably the worst match of the first round. Carr didn't look that impressive to me, he always looked a step slow and this match came off overly choreographed and co-operational to me. I think Carr is coming off of an injury, which might be why he was a step slow, but he still didn't look that great to me. 5. Chris Wylde defeated Azrieal (the same one who people may remember from being Angel Dust in Special K in ROH) by DQ in an ECWA Heavyweight Title Match, so Azrieal retained the title. This was a decent match but a weird dynamic. Apparently Wylde recently turned heel and said he no longer needs the fans in ECWA anymore, only Azrieal is also a heel, and the crowd mostly cheered Wylde. Anyway, they did a cheap title saving DQ finish when PCA (the top heel group in ECWA these days) hit the ring when Wylde was about to win the title. 6. Lio Rush over Zombie King. Rush did a nice job carrying Zombie King here and this was pretty good. Still, this only made me disappointed that LSG didn't advance, as I think Rush and LSG could have had the best match of the tournament if they had been given some time. 7. Sean Carr over Joe Gacy. Gacy looked good again. Still not totally sold on Carr. 8. The Extreme Rednecks (Chuck and Kyle Payne) over PCA (Damian Adams and Howie Timberche) to win the ECWA tag team championship. This was a no DQ match where they did some brawling around ringside and some garbage can shots. Extreme Rednecks have wrestled for UWC in the past and I think Chuck Payne has enough size to where I could see him going somewhere at some point. John Finnegan was the referee for this and apparently his gimmick now is standing in the corner looking frightened. Seriously, he never looked this scared when he was in ECW, and I'm sure he's been in the ring with New Jack countless times. 9. Sean Carr over Lio Rush to win the Super 8. I thought Carr looked the best he had all night against Rush, who I thought stole the show and looked great all night. I can see why WWE is interested in Rush. So they really put Carr over strong here, with clean wins against the CZW Heavyweight Champion (Gacy) and a guy who has wrestled for ROH, EVOLVE, PWG, and might be WWE bound soon (Rush). I get why they want to put their local guy over strong in Carr, but in some ways, I don't know that Carr needed it. He's a former ECWA heavyweight champion, who just lost it on the previous show, so he doesn't need the push in front of their local fans, as he should already be over to them. They drew a crowd of around 125, which I can't imagine is much higher than what they normally draw and seems low for what used to be the premier tournament on the indie scene. I see that and I think that they need to rebuild the prestige of their tournament, and to do that, you need to put over the guy who is known outside of ECWA, and that's Rush. That is where their disagreement with Janela really hurt them, as without Janela, it's down to really Rush, Gacy, LSG, and Bennett (who is mostly known for being neck and neck with Ho Ho Lun as being the worst guy in the CWC, and Lun has gotten a lot better since the CWC) to really carry the prestige of the Super 8 to non-ECWA fans. I remember when the DVDVR guys would come in for the Super 8, and when it was a real destination tournament, and it's not that anymore at all, and I think going with a guy like Carr to win doesn't help rebuild the tournament's prestige. Granted, I may be biased as I didn't think much of Carr's work, but when I see the lack of buzz for a tournament that used to be a pretty big deal not that long ago, I think that's sad. So I created this topic to talk about my own impressions of this year's Super 8, but if anybody has seen some of the past tournaments, which included guys like Daniel Bryan, the Hardys, Christopher Daniels, Low Ki, AJ Styles, Reckless Youth, Devon Storm, Lance Diamond, Xavier Woods, Tomassa Ciampa, Adam Cole, and yes, Paul London, feel free to discuss that here as well, since I'm assuming most folks probably weren't there last night (I saw almost no buzz on the show on Twitter, and as mentioned before, the crowd seemed a bit light).

(Sorry for the consecutive posts - I listen to this show in batches) On the subject of Brian Christopher and his rumored WWF start dates, I think it was a week or two after this week where the Observer first started reporting that he was going to be Chris Candido's tag team partner in The Bodydonnas, months before it wound up being Tom Prichard. I don't know how serious this was, but this would definitely go on the list of rumored ideas WWF had for Brian Christopher at the time, before he wound up finally going as part of the Light Heavyweight division in 1997 after the USWA closed.

I'm almost positive the person doing commentary over the Smoky Mountain tape is Tommy Noe, the former Smoky Mountain ring announcer.

Honestly, I'm surprised Conrad didn't bring up Mantaur just so he can do his whole "was that a rib?" schtick. Unlike a lot of the times where Conrad has done the rib schtick, this actually did kinda feel like a rib, since you have ultra serious Jim Cornette, who hates gimmickry in his wrestling, managing a dude wearing a giant buffalo head, and since this was supposed to be about Cornette in the WWF, when else would they bring that up.

One of the wrestlers who Bix had not heard of while reviewing the Jersey All Pro section, The Orphan, was a UWC stalwart until about a year ago when he retired. I think he has the most matches in UWC history by a fairly healthy margin. Long time NJ death match guy who somehow became a UWC guy, despite the fact that UWC is about the most G-rated wrestling promotion of all time that doesn't allow wrestlers to use any gimmicks whatsoever, and found a niche in that environment somehow. Not that important, but I figured, when will I ever get to talk about The Orphan again, so why not?

I was there for this live. It was a fine house show card and I remember everything being at least decent, but it also didn't feel like an ECW show. A lot of ECW shows were probably far worse than this, but they would also try different things and felt less rigid than this typical house show style event.

Mercury Rising was up against an absurd amount of competition, with NXT headlined by Nakamura, ROH headlined by Hardys and Young Bucks, and CZW with an absolutely loaded Best of the Best show. Hopefully, next year companies are more careful about shows in that Saturday at 8 PM slot if that is where NXT plans to run, as HHH already showed when he poached Drew Galloway from WWN's main event what happens when you run against his baby. Even with 70,000 wrestling fans in the area, there are still only so many hardcore wrestling fans who are out there and available to attend indie shows that weekend, and only so many different ways they can be split before one or more shows are hurt.

I have a mutual friend of Reckless Youth, who once asked Reckless about his time in Memphis. It was largely negative, but one one of the positives was getting to work with Regal night in and night out, as until the TWA guys came in, Reckless was the only guy he wanted to work with, as he was trying to get back into shape for a WWE run, so they would work no less than 30 minutes a night on the MCW house shows. Later, Regal would take Reckless around WWF shows and put him over, which he could tell carried a lot of weight with the wrestlers there, but he never really got an opportunity as he was not well liked by Bruce Prichard (which is something I intend to ask Prichard about on his podcast the next time he does an open Q&A format).

I usually AirPlay FloSlam stuff off of my iPad to my Apple TV for replays. I find that their web is usually updated earlier than the apps and the stream looks fine. It's not as strong with live stuff but it's good for replays.

Drew McIntyre no-showing WWN's main event so he could be seen ringside at Takeover is why you don't run head to head with Paul's baby, even if you think you have a working relationship with WWE.

I went to a few New Jack City Wrestling shows, which used a combination of Dennis Coralluzzo guys like Donnie B, Twiggy Ramirez, Don Montoya, etc, and ECW guys. I think they usually ran Sunday afternoons so they would have access to the ECW guys who had just worked the arena. I THINK Mike Illions/AJ Sparx (the same guy who ran ACW and did the Great 8) was involved somehow, but I could be wrong about that. But these were usually fun shows. One exception, at least on a personal level, was a show we went to after our car broke down driving back from a Scranton ECW show in January on the PA Turnpike, so we were up all night and went to the New Jack City show afterwards, and I remember being a zombie at that show. But usually, these were good shows.

Fun part of the first ECW TV show: Eddie Gilbert gives himself a television credit as "Thomas Edwards" as an Executive Producer or some such title.

I feel like this is either going to delight people or infuriate them, with no in between: https://twitter.com/WWE/status/842074228312559616

I find it to be a pretty telling statement of current Ring of Honor that the past two winners of their Top Prospect Tournament (Donovan Dijak and Lio Rush) are now both working for EVOLVE. In fact, most of the guys who have worked those tournaments aren't with the company anymore, and of those who are, only Dalton Castle has anything resembling a push. I'd love to see Will Ferrara or LSG get a bit more than they've had to work with over the past year, but then again, I'm biased, having worked with both in UWC. But this certainly doesn't help the narrative that ROH is not a good place to work if you're a young talent looking to get noticed.

I wasn't surprised Danielson won, and although I didn't vote for him, I have no issues with him winning whatsoever. I'm mostly surprised at his margin of victory. I thought it would be pretty close between him and Joe, because to me, those are easily the top two guys in company history. I had Joe slightly ahead of Danielson, mostly because I think his matches hold up a little bit better (Danielson as ROH champ would often fall into the "self conscious epic" trap) and because Joe's title reign was so important in establishing ROH as a top wrestling company, especially in the wake of the Rob Feinstein scandal, but that is a matter of taste. I was just shocked that all of Danielson's votes were in the top 10, and that all but two of his votes were in the top 5. It's rare you see anything close to that type of consensus for one wrestler like this. I do wonder if Danielson's post-ROH career going as well as it did, while Joe's was a mixed bag trending towards disappointing, helped Danielson's ultimate ranking here, because based on ROH work alone, I think it's a lot closer than the results bear out.

Impact lowballing the Hardys and then threatening them with legal action if they used the Broken Hardys gimmick for ROH (which caused Dish Network to pull the PPV last night as apparently Impact threatened to sue them as well) is among the shittiest things this company has done since it first came into existence, and think of the ground that covers. All to prevent the Hardys from taking a gimmick that TNA could never make money off of, which other, smaller companies were able to do, to a bigger company and looking foolish when ROH or WWE made more money with the Broken Hardys than TNA ever did. As Rebecca Hardy posted on Twitter, fuck that owl.

At this point, Dave only cares about PWG on the indie scene. He will write those shows up because he'll see them in person, but other than that, he doesn't really care. He might give a line or two to an EVOLVE result if they do a title change, but it's usually not much more than that.

On the subject of Paul Heyman in Memphis, at one of the first ECW internet fan conventions in 1996, Heyman told a story of his first live interview in the WMC studio, talking about how if Jerry Lawler was such a big man in Memphis, no wonder there were so many lesbians, which apparently caused Jerry Jarrett to freak out and fire him. Having first heard this story in my teens, I was hoping to see somebody trading for the video, but never saw anything out there. 22 years later, in the age where everything eventually makes it on YouTube, I still haven't heard anybody say that they have this or any evidence that it actually exists. I realize that if the line really made Jerry Jarrett that angry, that he would have edited it off of the Evansville feed, which is the Memphis feed most people seem to have, but I haven't heard any mention of the story or any footage pop up from this since the ECW fan conventions. So did Heyman make the story up? The story, for those who haven't heard it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBlurI_4UGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2weN6iT3IKk

I don't think the Tombstone from Florida was 911. I think when 911 had his brief WCW run in 1996-1997, it was a rib on Heyman, since Sullivan knew Heyman from his brief Florida run in 1987 and named 911 (who had just left ECW on bad terms with Heyman) Tombstone as a rib going back to his first run as a manager. I don't think 911 was wrestling Florida, or anywhere in 1987, unless it was in the tinest of Jersey indies, like indies UWC-sized or smaller.