Cox

At this point, the only active promotion I follow weekly is the promotion I do stuff for, the UWC based out of South Jersey. For a while, I was watching 2-4 episodes of SMW TV a day until I ran out of DVDs. I will occasionally pop on Raw (and even more rarely Smackdown) to see what's going on, but I rarely keep up with anything recent that isn't a tiny indy promotion, whose internet TV I produce weekly.

I think my favorite part about this whole angle was Cornette being involved with it, and then trying to downplay it in his Fanweek shoot interview, saying how he had no control of the storylines and how he thought it was hokey but he does what the boss says, blah blah blah...meanwhile, at the same time this took place, he had a wrestling mummy in Smoky Mountain.

The idea that Vince McMahon would even know that Gabe Sapolsky exists is utterly laughable to me.

Hey now. Davey Richards has never sucked me thank you very much.

Paul Lee was an SMW jobber mainstay, which makes sense as WCW and SMW used a lot of the same job guys (Larry Santo, Rip Rogers, etc). In fact, I think Killer Kyle lost his push for a while in SMW because he had done some WCW jobs and Cornette didn't want a WCW jobber looking strong on his TV.

Not to go too far off topic, but I wouldn't say the match was ruined so much by the trash so much as Robert Gibson taking that stupid bump off the basketball hoop and hurting his ankle. I still think that street fight is pretty great, but Robert Gibson barely being able to walk for the finishing segment definitely hurt things.

And Shawn only did a job in the Survivor Series after he was down 3 on 1 against the other team and got to beat Rey and JBL in succession. And that wasn't even the first time he pulled that stunt - he did the same exact thing in Survivor Series 2003, only doing a job in a Survivor Series tag after he's left alone 3 on 1 and got to beat two members of the other team by himself. Anybody who says Shawn was a changed man after finding God wasn't paying attention.

My momentum has stalled temporarily as sometime between moving from my parents' place four years ago and moving to my current place two years ago, I seemed to have misplaced my mid '94 to the end SMW discs. I'm either going to have to find the rest of the discs or buy new ones to replace them, but I do have Will's SMW set to tide me over in the meantime, and that's worth a hearty recommendation.

I think it was IRS who destroyed the headdress, because Tatanka didn't pay taxes on it or something.

I have had a similar dream, only because I'm not a wrestler, my dream is that I'm at the building and the show is about to start and I don't have my tripod, and since I can't hold my camera (well, iPhone) straight to save my life, the entire "TV" show for the next four weeks will be shaky and awful.

I think you're giving Vince Russo too much credit - he might be dumb enough to believe his own bullshit on this one. If time has proven anything, it's that Vince Russo is not a smart man.

The first wrestling show I ever went to was a local indy show that, sadly, I can't find the results for online (as I guess nobody has created a website that includes indy show results from 1991). Funny story there, my dad had bought tickets from somebody at work but wanted to do something cool, so he called our house from work and pretended to be from some fake radio station with wrestling tickets if I could answer the day's trivia question (which I think was "Who was buried in Grant's tomb?" or something similar). I thought it was a crank call so I hung up, but the second time around I thought it was "real" so I answered and won. I got worked by my own dad before I even stepped foot in the building! I know Chris Candido was on the show, as he dropped the WWA Junior Heavyweight title to "Jungle" Jim Macpherson on the show, and in my mind, that title belt is the same one he used in SMW a couple of years later. I was also told once that this may have been the show Chris first met Tammy Sytch, but I think that story may be apocryphal. Also on that show was The Spider (future Headbanger Thrasher), Ray Odyssey, Bob Orton, and the main event was Cactus Jack vs. Morgus the Maniac. I got an autographed Cactus 8x10 because I recognized him from Herb Abrams' UWF, (yes, that was the first place I ever saw Cactus as I didn't start watching WCW until 1991) and that 8x10 is still somewhere at my parents' house. The first ever "big two" house show I went to was at the Civic Center in Philadelphia. I won free tickets on TV through WPHL-17 by being the first caller after they showed a graphic to win tickets, so that was pretty cool, and this time I really DID win free tickets, as I doubt anybody from my family would have wanted to drive me out to Philly to see a wrestling show unless the tickets were free. Results from the show: We got there in the middle of the Dustin/Joey Maggs match. I don't remember a whole lot from this show other than Cactus being on it and being surprised, since just a few months earlier he was working indies for Dennis Coralluzzo. Since I didn't go to another wrestling show for a few years after that, for a while Cactus Jack had the odd trivia point of being the only wrestler to appear on all of the wrestling shows I had attended live, which I guess is something. And hey...I got to see the great Bill Kazmaier live and in person! Oh, and I bought my sister a Tom Zenk t-shirt that I think she still owns, because literally the only WCW wrestler she liked was the Z-Man. The other weird house show story I have is from my dad, which is strange because he never really liked wrestling, and this was shortly after I was born. Apparently, he went to a WWWF show with one of my uncles. He ran into Bob Backlund on his way out and tried to get him to hit the bar with him after the show, but Backlund told him he had to go to a show in Boston and couldn't make it. He offered to sign an autograph for my dad, but my dad didn't have a pen. Based on the clues (had to be a show in the central NJ area headlined by Bob Backlund, show in Boston the next day with Backlund) I THINK this is the show he went to live. God bless the internet for being able to figure things out like, "What was on a wrestling show that my dad attended when I was 2 years old?" And you can tell that my dad really didn't follow wrestling that closely when he's asking Bob freaking Backlund to go back to the bar after the show...

I think I might be the only person who unironically enjoys the Thrillseekers videos (well, maybe not the workout one...). I mean, you have to give them credit, Lance Storm comes off as likable in these, and time has shown exactly how hard it is to make Lance Storm likable, so they were good for something. They were definitely out of another time period for sure, but I think these would have worked at getting the Thrillseekers over as the next Fabulous Ones if Storm and Jericho were willing to put in the work at the towns to get themselves over with the yokels, rather than looking down upon them (as Jericho admits they did in his book).

It was this segment (which I put on YouTube last week because it was so hideously bad) that caused my friend and I to go on a YouTube rampage last week looking for Dennis Coralluzzo stuff on YouTube. Dennis' acting here is beyond atrocious, and I'm still not exactly sure what Dennis had that "proved" that Tracy Smothers was Vito Marinara from Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, as they never really brought up this storyline again after this show. I think Cornette just put this on here because he was friends with Dennis.

Can Brock even realistically get on the ballot? Didn't Dave set a minimum of ten years in wrestling to get on the ballot? He wrestled in developmental for about a year, in WWE for two years, and then worked an extremely part time schedule in New Japan for about a year. That would mean he would have to wrestle another six years in order to become eligible for the Hall of Fame. Does anybody realistically see Lesnar, who has never stuck with anything longer than 3-4 years at a time, sticking around long enough to get eligible for the HOF?

If this leads to Paul E coming back, I'm all for it.

Fred the Elephant Boy used to go to Dennis' shows all the time. Not sure if he had any official capacity or what, but I used to go to NWA shows in New Jersey and Fred was always a part of the show in some way. Instead of watching ROH or Dragon Gate iPPVs on Saturday, my friend and I watched Will's SMW set and YouTube videos of Dennis Coralluzzo's stint in Memphis. I'm pretty sure these promos were much, much better than Davey Richards vs Michael Elgin.

Some of my thoughts about last night's show. -I'm of two minds of the opener. On one hand, Sheamus and Bryan could have had a good-to-great 10-15 minute match, so it's disappointing that they didn't get to go out and have that match, as that definitely would have helped a show that was lacking in good matches. On the other hand, if the idea is to make Sheamus the next top babyface on Smackdown (which appears to be the plan, as they protected him from doing a job at Survivor Series, they put him over in the Royal Rumble in surprising fashion, and then they put him over so strongly here), then this was probably the way to go. Sad as it is to say, no matter how great Daniel Bryan was as the heel Smackdown champion, he was getting shuffled down to the midcard after Wrestlemania anyway, so might as well have him put over Sheamus strongly on his way down. But like I said, this was a show that REALLY could have used another strong match, so for last night's show, it was a definite minus. -I honestly can't remember a single thing about Kane/Randy Orton or Cody Rhodes/Big Show the next day, which probably sums both of these matches up pretty well. As Loss said, Orton desperately needs a heel turn, and I suspect we're going to get that sooner rather than later with Sheamus seemingly bumping Orton down to the #2 babyface on Smackdown. I was hoping Rhodes/Big Show would be better, as I'm a Big Show fan and I have the (perhaps misguided) hope that Cody Rhodes will one day become a guy that I like watching based solely on bloodlines, but it was pretty much a nothing match. -The woman's match was the woman's match - too long and not at all good. What does it say about Kelly Kelly when the non-wrestling celebrity with a rib injury is booked to take the heat, the hot tag, and the finish? -HHH/Undertaker was the self-indulgent epic that I think most people were expecting coming in. The overwrought acting stuff was a bit much, but that seems to be the story of the annual Wrestlemania Self Indulgent Epic match dating back to Michaels/Flair a few years ago. What I don't get about all of that stuff, though, is that it can't play to the last row of a freaking stadium show. I know that current WWE is more about playing to the cameras than playing to the live crowd, but isn't there a domino effect that if something can play to the back row of a stadium show, it should definitely play to a live viewer watching at home too? Anyway, I can't say that I hated this match, even though it was way too melodramatic, but it's not a match I'll ever want to watch again either, like most Wrestlemania Self Indulgent Epics. -The twelve man tag was OK. Good on all of these guys for getting Wrestlemania payoffs. That said, it sure feels like they're killing Zach Ryder dead with horrible booking since he won the US title from Ziggler. And speaking of Ziggler, he's been spinning his wheels since seemingly being ready to take it up to the next level work-wise at the end of last year. I guess you can say that about a lot of folks here, though. -Punk/Jericho was my match of the night, and probably something I would enjoy more on a repeated viewing. As much as I love throwing my annual Wrestlemania party (and if I have anything to say about it, next year's Wrestlemania party will be thrown in the parking lot at MetLife Stadium rather than my basement), it's not always conductive for getting to seriously watch a wrestling match. I suspect this will hold up better for me on a second or third viewing. -Main event pretty much delivered. I'd say easily the second best match of the show, and a lot better than I thought it would be going in, as I did not have high hopes for Rock working a long singles main event after such a long layoff. Good on him for coming in here after such a long layoff and delivering a big epic Wrestlemania main event. This is the match Undertaker and HHH wanted to have but didn't, and they even had the advantages of blood, gimmicks, the cage, etc, only some of which they chose to use but still. Overall, my experience is that even when Wrestlemanias aren't great (and it doesn't appear this will go down as one of the best), having a Wrestlemania party pretty much guarantees that the show will come off better than it would have if I had watched it by myself, so I can't complain about my own personal Wrestlemania experience, even if it wasn't a great show. I can say pretty safely that, warts and all, I'd rather watch any of the eight matches on this show (plus the preshow spotfest match) than Davey Richards vs. Michael Elgin, so I guess they have that going for them!

Isn't Dave's standard response to the "the building held 81k for football" that all stadiums and sports arenas work their attendance capacity or something like that?

From this week's WON: Why in the world would Vince tell people to put on a good show for Wrestlemania during a social media meeting? "Alright crew, I want you to go out there and have a great match...six days from now. And now some more about hashtags..." C'mon Dave.

Miz killed himself more than anything. He improved pretty consistently from the time he was teaming with John Morrison until he won the title, and then he started getting progressively worse after he got the title (well before the Cena feud, actually). He has nobody to blame but himself for barely making the Wrestlemania card this year.

That was the point though. Fake Undertaker was there to draw out the real Undertaker and then to lose to the real Undertaker. If you read the Observer, though, the plan at one point was for Fake Undertaker to stick around for a while, but they wound up changing course at some point. Either that, or somebody was giving Dave bad info. Really, WWE's track record with fake anything (Fake Undertaker, Fake Kane, Fake Razor Ramon, Fake Diesel, etc) is incredibly poor.

Brian Lee at SummerSlam '94. They spent months advertising Undertaker vs Undertaker, brought in Leslie Nielsen to do skits to sell the match, a huge Domino's Pizza promotion...and then basically buried Lee at the event, and that was the end of that.