CodySave

What really put it in perspective for me is the reaction of my wife, who is the furthest thing from a wrestling fan there is (but is still supportive of my love of it, though very, very rarely watches it.) I told her yesterday that "Macho Man" Randy Savage died and briefly explained who he was. She was kind of enough to be understanding of me being sad about it, but also clearly didn't know him by name alone. This morning, while she was walking through our living room, I showed her part of the great tribute video IGN put together. As soon as she saw the opening clips, she stopped dead in tracks, her jaw dropped and she loudly said "OH, THAT GUY!?! I KNOW HIM! THIS SUCKS!" I will say this is maybe the only wrestling death that I can recall getting massive mainstream coverage and none of it (that I've seen) having any sort of comedic slant against wrestling in its delivery.

I'm really hoping they decide to at least test this route in the future, putting up, for example, "Superstars 1987 season" and "RAW 1998 season", just like the other TV shows on Netflix. Definitely could be some time, however, considering they just started to really release any WWE content on Netflix's Instant Streaming service in the past few months, and even then they did it very quietly with no hype. Love that most of their documentaries are getting release on here now though.

Thanks for posting this. I guess it never occurred to me just how young Landell was when he started in the business. Shocking that he is just now only 49 and even wilder seeing him with dark hair. When he appeared in WWF in 1996, I remember knowing of him from Apter mags and as a child thinking "Why did WWF bring in an old veteran like this?" I legitimately thought he was in his late 40s-early 50s. In reality, he was only in his early 30s. His hair really skewed my perception of him.

Don't forget Donald Trump, who went from legitimately polling well as a potential Repub candidate to dropping to massive approval lows in the span of a week, thanks to Obama and SNL's Seth Myers using the help of Hulkamania to shoot down Trump's claims. I think Ron Paul has a better chance so far compared to the last election thanks in part to familiarity from before and the fact that compared to the rest of the field, he seems much less cartoonish/realistic than the other options. It's wild to me that given how many people are supposedly displeased with the results of Obama in office the past two years that the Republicans can't even get their act together to enough to field a legitimate challenger with wide appeal. I don't pretend to follow national politics super closely, but I'm an Iowan that follows local news and there's always tons of presidential coverage. It seems to me that the possible Republican contenders right now are: - staunch "Tea Party" types (Bachmann, Palin, etc.) - Newt Gringrich (who, based on his past, doesn't have the support of "conservative Christian"-types) - Ron Paul (who appears to be the Republican Party's example of "Christian" - not the religion, but the wrestler; known for his workrate, popular amongst hardcore fans but not considered an option by Conservative power figures) - Mitt Romney, who started hot last election but fell out before the primary - Rick Santorum, who I admittedly know little about and I'm guessing the general public doesn't either - Donald Trump, who is No. 1 and 2 with Palin as the two people that have garnered the most attention amongst your average TV-viewing Americans as a possible choice. Is this it right now? I've also heard rumblings that Rand Paul, Ron's son, could be a big-time player in the future and could actually get big-wig Conservative support that has eluded his father. He must be the Randy Orton to Ron's Bob.

I believe they've just had one match, at AAW's first Bourbon Street show (which is the one available for free (with registration) for anyone to view at Go Fight Live). If you like Davey Richards, you'll love the match. If you dislike Davey Richards, you might not be such a fan. It's very much Shane Hollister adjusting to wrestle Davey Richards in a "sterotypical" Davey Richards match. I imagine in a live setting, the strikes come off as super vicious, because they already come off very stiff on video. As for AAW booking guys like Sabu - they've begun doing shows every few months at 115 Bourbon Street, which is a venue about three times as large as their home base at the Berwyn Eagles Club. To help fill the place, they are beginning a trend of booking bigger name wrestlers/celebrities to be at these shows, along with feud-ending gimmick matches with their regular talent. It worked the first time with guys like Dustin Diamond and Raven, as they did have triple their regular crowd. One drawback I noticed, however, is that with more fans that aren't AAW "regulars", the crowd at Bourbon Street actually comes across quieter than the Berwyn crowds because the majority of fans aren't reacting to the normal AAW talents due to lack of previous exposure and mostly only react to the names brought in. Though, this could also be the acoustics of the venue and production equipment not accurately picking up non-commentary noise. Was anyone at the first Bourbon Street show that can speak to this?

More Midwest wrestling videos: 1. 3XW (Des Moines) - "Delicious" Devin Carter & Casanova vs. American Ground & Air (Ben Sailer & Nate Bash) - Sept 2010 - This is a really solid 3XW Tag Team championship match that I think any tag team wrestling fan will really enjoy. Two long-time Midwest teams. This bout took place as part of 3XW's Clobberplaooza Classic 3 event on Sept. 3, 2010 in Des Moines, Iowa. Full event DVD available at http://www.3XWrestling.com. Commentary by Midnight Guthrie & Skylar Pierce and production courtesy of SEP Video. 2. 3XW (Des Moines) - Brian Ash vs. "The Unbreakable" Zach Thompson - Jan 2011 - Brian Ash's first defense of his third reign with the 3XW Heavyweight title is against "The Unbreakable" Zach Thompson, who was actually trained by Ash. Ash and Thompson viciously feuded throughout the second half of 2010, but this is their first encounter with a championship thrown in the mix. This match was part of 3XW's "Divide & Conquer" event from Jan 7, 2011 at the Des Moines Social Club in Des Moines, Iowa. Commentary by Midnight Guthrie & Chad Mylan and production by SEP Video. This event also features an insane No DQ Ironman match, highlights of which can be see here: 3. AWF (Minneapolis) Saturday Night Slam Episode 40 - Arik Cannon vs. Sammy Savard and Ben Sailer/Ryan Cruz vs. Aaron Corbin/John Johnson - aired March 12, 2011 - AWF is a Minnesota indy that specializes in running family-friendly "good guys vs bad guys" shows at schools as fundraisers. They have a weekly TV show Saturday night at 11 p.m. on Minneapolis station KSTC-45. I picked this show in particular because it features Cannon, who definitely is a love/hate guy based on the "indyriffic" work that is most people's only exposure to him. In this match, however, he plays a fired-up babyface against Savard, who looks like Buzz Sawyer and is a much more traditional wrestling heel (and once was squashed by The Boogeyman on an episode of WWE's ECW). It's definitely out of the normal "element" that many people see Cannon and I think people will be interested in the results. And "The Anarchist" hilariously enters the ring to the strains of The Outfield's "Your Love." The tag team match is a ton of fun as well and features some great moves. And Mick Karch is awesome levels of excited on commentary and Rob Page is an excellent ref. 4. Metro Pro Wrestling (Kansas City) Episode 28 - Maddog McDowell vs. Jeremy Wyatt (with Kwong & Steve J. Girthy) - taped March 2011 - 5. Metro Pro Wrestling (Kansas City) Episode 29 - Jimmy Rockwell/Maddog McDowell vs. Trevor Murdock/Bull Schmitt - taped March 2011 - Wyatt is definitely one of the best all-around guys in the Midwest and Maddog is an excellent big-man wrestler that plays to the crowd really well. Wyatt is an amazing heel with great charisma in a live setting, with an aura about him that doesn't always translates on video where often crowd noise is more muted. Rockwell sells really well and plays a good babyface-in-peril. Trevor and Bull make a good intimidating country-boy heel team. Todd Countryman is the ref in both these bouts and is a very solid hand that lets the wrestlers be the show. As a combined group, the Metro fans are also probably the strangest group in the entire Midwest, and often have more gimmicks than the wrestlers on the show (there's a contingent of masked fans, a fan that brings a shopping cart with a toilet and a mannequin, a LOUD group of friends of one wrestler that always have vulgar signs like "(WRESTLER'S NAME) Has AIDS!!!", among other examples.) Other Midwest news: - AAW (Chicago) is doing another major event at 115 Bourbon St on May 13 and it's an iPPV taping. Their first event there drew about 425 fans, way above their typical 200-plus at the Berwyn Eagles Club. Three matches from that event (Shane Hollister vs. Davey Richards, Silas Young vs. Raven, Kyle O'Reilly/Juice Robinson vs. Zero Gravity) are available for free viewing at gofightlive.tv as a means of promoting future iPPVs. On video, the bar is definitely an unique setting for wrestling. The May 13 event features Sabu and the BWO (Blue Meanie, Stevie Richards, Nova) in action and special appearance and major announcement by Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. Shane Douglas is also appearing. The announced matches are Jimmy Jacobs vs. Arik Cannon, Alex Shelley vs. Michael Elgin, Irish Airborne vs. Zero Gravity in a ladder match. This event originally was supposed to have Scott Hall, Dennis Rodman and Justin Credible, but Rodman is being inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame and has obligations with that. Credible missed his booking with AAW last month and Hall's troubles are plenty publicized.

Zack Ryder, as mentioned, is really doing an excellent job garnering a cult following for himself simply through the use of a video camera, YouTube and basic video editing. His goofy webshow is garnering more views than WWE shows on YouTube put up by the WWE themselves each week The Miz also has done an incredible job and is amazing guest on any show he appears on. He really made an incredible accounting for himself on Conan before Wrestlemania. I mean, no one could have possibly imagined The Miz would be where he is now 5 years ago.

I honestly don't remember most of the buildup to this (and definitely didn't remember other professional athletes being involved), but seeing Luger pulling this off was one of the more impactful wrestling angles of my youth and made me a huge Luger fan for a couple years. I even had the WWF Lex Luger "Made in the USA" t-shirt. It was amazing to me at the time that someone that was doing nothing of significance in the WWF pulled a sudden, unannounced 180 switch from heel to face and slammed the massive Yoko. And he did it on a warship no less! I was 9 when this happened and was just entering the "smarter" stage of my life, thank in part to reading tons of magazines like PWI, The Wrestler, Inside Wrestling and reading about indy talent and the like. I didn't have cable, but read enough magazines and had seen just enough NWA/WCW to know Luger was a big deal elsewhere that was being used very oddly in WWE. So, I was pumped to see him used in important fashion. I also remember how much mileage the heel commentators (I think mostly Heenan?) got out of claiming that Luger had actually only hip tossed Yoko.

Speaking of Todd Pettingill, I read today that AIW out of Ohio is holding the TPI tournament this year. No, not perennially-cancelled the IWA Mid-South tournament named after Ted Petty. This TPI is the "Todd Pettingill Invitational" tournament. http://www.aiwrestling.com/ Quite the lineup so far. Also - does anyone have any info about how long Akira Tozawa is staying in the United States? I ask because I've seen his name pop up on the lineups of various US indies of all shapes and sizes every weekend for the past few months.

I'll take this opportunity to say the one positive thing I think of whenever Vince Russo comes up and that is, under his time as head writer of WWE, all the low-to-midcarders served a purpose, we're unique from one another, and received a response from the crowd. Granted, they were put in odd storylines, but at least they were given direction. This became really apparent to me watching some late 90s-early 2000s WWF PPVs recently, which is something I think is missing from current WWE. I think it was Wrestlemania 2000 that had the throwaway hardcore battle royal and even in that, I felt like I knew the background and gimmicks of everyone involved. Today, if you did a similar match with Caylen Croft, Trent Barreta, Curt Hawkins, Chris Masters, most members of The Corre/Nexus, Primo, Tyler Reks, and The Usos, among others - current fans would just see a bunch of dudes in similar tights and have no connection to them. I mean, Masters might be recognized because of his work 4-5 years ago, but I imagine many regular fans couldn't tell many of them apart.

Finally got around to watching most of episodes 3-5. I got a kick out of the Warhead vs. Legion match because that's the epitome of your local $10 indy big man match - you will never see two guys that look like that wrestling on national TV. What's Warhead's background - has he been wrestling for years or is he an older guy that decided to break into wrestling later in life? I was pretty impressed with Ryan Blackheart as well. And Dave Patera looks nothing like Ken Patera. By the way, we posted the newest episode of our 3XW a few days ago:

What a strange Wrestlemania - in many ways it felt like a super-long episode of RAW. I didn't get the impression that many of these feuds are tied up and clearly they're building to a match between The Rock and Cena down the road, though this is something we knew going into the show. I guess I was expecting a real surprise in the main event, like Cena turning full-fledged heel (despite throwing away millions of merchandise dollars) or even The Rock working his way into the match or somehow winning the belt after the Cena-Miz match.

The crowd's into the match now, but there's only about 10 minutes of PPV time left. Amazing that there was 4 hours to work with and I imagine they'll still have to rush to a finish.....whoa, that's it?

It has the same cool entrances, but unlike the Triple H vs. Cena Wrestlemania match from some year's back the crowd is still heavily booing Cena, but not cheering for The Miz to make up for that. Just boos all around and an apathetic crowd.

Wow, this is really something special! I hope someone has clued that poor choir into the fact that Cena gets boo'd....I'd hate for them to think they did a poor job, because they were awesome.

Snooki does a better back handspring into corner than Chyna, so she has that going for her. The video before The Miz's entrance was so, so, so awesome. They must have worked on that for some time.

I had mixed emotions about this throughout the match. I hated that it was sort of a slower-paced version of the second Michaels/Taker Mania match, where in this they essentially exchanged some awesome punches early on and then immediately started nailing each other with major moves outside the ring. Really just spot, sell, show replay for much of the bout - like a video game. Though, the moves themselves were a cool spectacle, and that backdrop Triple H took on the outside 10 feet to the floor was nuts. Plus, the crowd has been conditioned to not really believe that the first or even second Pedrigree, a chokeslam, etc is going to end the match, so there's not much reaction to those nearfalls. But man, I did a total about-face because the last 5-10 minutes of this was awesome and I really got into the drama of the story as this wound down. Weird though to have Triple H in the role of the youngster telling the old man to "stay down", considering I think most current fans would consider them to be of the same generation.

I agree it was an awful match, and I totally agree that Cole was on offense far too much. But, by and large, I really had fun watching this whole segment - the awesome close up of Swagger's face when Austin's music hit as he was doing the pushups, Austin running Swagger off the ramp and driving around erratically at ringside on the 4-Wheeler, all of Cole's antics as the match was starting. JR and Booker did great on commentary here as well. Hilarious to see Lawler, a non-drinker, toasting with Austin after the match. The other post-match stuff was just strange - Austin stunning Booker T I imagine may lead to something on Tough Enough? Maybe not. And the anonymous GM reversing the decision - was that necessary to get Lawler and JR as the lone duo in the booth?

WWE put Refrigerator Perry in the HOF when they were in Chicago. No way will Chicago ever boo Refrigerator Perry. That's a good point I totally overlooked and didn't remember until after I posted.

Your new Wrestlemania broadcast team - Josh Mathews, Jim Ross, and Booker T. Business just picked up, sucka!

Regarding all these goofs booing Drew Carey - you sure as hell didn't boo Refrigerator Perry when he made the Hall of Fame and he wrestled in just as many battle royals as Drew Carey.

Regarding Rock's promo - some people may crap on a long promo opening a major PPV, but the whole concept of an "opener" is to excite the crowd for the rest of the show, and the Rock certainly accomplished that. Still would have definitely liked to see Sheamus vs. Bryan, and unfortunately it's going to be a short one on the DVD due to quickly being turned into the battle roya. And man, can't wait for Cole and Lawler to leave the booth together after this match (based on reports that JR will call the last half of the show). Mathews has done a fine job and thankfully he's holding all the play-by-play together between Lawler and Cole's bickering.