The Wednesday Wire 3.07.12: Match of the Year?

There’s a whole lot to talk about this week, so let’s get to it!

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WWE Monday Night RAW Supershow, 3.5.2012

“A vodka mixer and a Corvette from a mid-life crisis.”

The Rock v. John Cena
The Rock’s history lessons aren’t worth talking about and the same goes for Cena’s empty arena promo. I really dislike the two-faced nature of Cena’s position on this feud. He’s glad to run down The Rock and call him out for being a jerk, but them he goes all super-serial and talks about how this is the most important match of his life and means absolutely everything. The two sides are far too polarizing, and Cena’s serious, soft-spoken side is completely jarring when compared to everything else that has been happening between the two men. Let this feud be two men who want to win. Rock can do his lame jokes and Cena can own him at every turn and the forced bullcrap can be left out. It just doesn’t fit.

Triple H & Shawn Michaels
The show started off with Shawn Michaels returning again to Monday Night RAW, this time because he’s upset that all Undertaker had to do was tell Triple H that he’s better than Shawn Michaels to get Triple H to accept his challenge. That offended Shawn, and now he’s the guest ref in the Hell in a Cell match. On top of that, Shawn claimed that he knows who is going to win and then walked away and that was the last we saw of either man for the night. This is something I’ve been against since the beginning, but I’m not going to crap on it before giving it a chance. Still, though, Hell in a Cell sells itself.

Hey, look! It’s the host of “Are You Serious?” And some other guy too.

Teddy Long v. John Laurinitis
I am surprisingly interested in this feud. Thankfully the development of the GM rivalry has spelled what appears to be the official end of the Punk/Ace feud which was going absolutely nowhere and had no possibly discernible payoff. I don’t know what match this is going to lead to at WrestleMania; we’re probably going to get heels from RAW v. faces from SmackDown, which will include, I’d say, Miz, Ziggler & Swagger v. Santino, Kofi and Khali. Something like that. Hopefully not Khali.

Santino v. Jack Swagger
Look at Swagger’s hair! I hope they keep it that way. His character is better suited to having a clean-shaven face and nicely trimmed and combed hair. It’s Bob Backlund from the late 70s/early 80s as a heel. Or something like that. Santino is the US Champ, which now means that the plan we talked about last week with him taking the identity of a stereotype of the state he’s in has been set into motion!

Punk & Sheamus v. Jericho & Bryan
This was essentially filler, which is a damn shame. I guess they had to make sure that the entire show was mediocre.

Randy Orton v. Kane
Kane took out the entirety of the tag team division last week, so bad that the only surviving team was ZigSwag, and they ended up losing the only thing they had left, which was the US Title. He tried to do the same to Orton last week on SmackDown but was at least courteous enough to welcome him back. I guess that Orton figured that it would only be polite to come to RAW and thank him for his warm (hot?) welcome back to the active roster. I’m looking forward to finding out what Kane’s impetus was for attacking Orton. It’s certainly not due to Orton’s refusal to embrace the hate.

Eve Kisses Zack Ryder
And Ryder smiles? Uh oh. If this leads to a Ryder heel turn they’re just throwing money down the drain.

I am a big fan of WWE’s Backstage Fallout. It’s a quick 5-6 minute supplement (not quite as good as a Fripplement) that gives just a tiny bit more emphasis behind some of the events of the night’s show.

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Reports are saying that John Cena and The Rock are sharing tension behind the scenes. They aren’t at each others’ thoats, but since Survivor Series (for whatever reason) tension has been building. The two men don’t like each other but are willing to work together to do business. They’re not idiots, ya know.

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Ring of Honor released a CM Punk DVD last week and now they have released one for the American Dragon! Buy it HERE! Look at the lineup:

Disc 1
1. vs. Paul London…The Epic Encounter 4/12/03
2. vs. AJ Styles…Main Event Spectacles 11/1/03
3. vs. Jay Briscoe…Final Battle 2003 12/27/03
4. vs. CM Punk…ROH Reborn Stage 1 4/23/04
5. vs. Aries (Final Fall- SOTF 2004)…Survival of the Fittest 2004 6/24/04
6. vs. Austin Aries (2 Out Of 3 Falls)…Testing The Limit 8/7/04

Disc 2
7. vs. Samoa Joe (ROH World Title Match)…Midnight Express Reunion 10/2/04
8. vs. Jushin Liger…Weekend of Thunder Night 1 11/5/04
9. Bryan Danielson & Low Ki vs. Jushin Liger & Samoa Joe…Weekend of Thunder Night 2 11/6/04
10. vs. Homicide (Steel Cage Match)…Final Showdown 5/13/05
11. vs. James Gibson (ROH World Title Match)…Glory By Honor IV 9/17/05
12. vs. Christopher Daniels…A Night of Tribute 11/19/05
13. vs. Naomichi Marufuji…Final Battle 2005 12/17/05

That’s a good set of matches, people! BUY IT!

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Chris Masters is running an ongoing Twitter campaign to get himself into TNA. He may be the only wrestler who has ever had to beg to get to that company. I’ve heard plenty of good things about him over the past couple years, and he is said to have looked good for the Wrestling Retribution Project as well as Ring Ka King, so who knows what he can do given the opportunity.

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Rey Mysterio is featured on the new WrestleMania t-shirts, which is leading some to believe that he may find his way onto the card. Where would he fit in? The RAW v. SmackDown match?

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Carlito and the Pimp Fatha have joined the Territory League’s Las Vegas Rollers. I was very disappointed when I read that it’s just a wrestling company and not the roller derby. I want a refund.

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RING OF HONOR’S 10TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW – Young Wolves Rising
Hammerstein Ballroom, NYC – Sunday March 4, 2012

This was the first ROH iPPV I have ordered live, and gosh darned if I didn’t choose a good one. I paid 10 dollars of my very hard-earned money to catch some of the finest professional wrestling anybody is going to find anywhere. This show is actually the first time I have paid to watch a wrestling PPV live since last year’s WrestleMania, or as I call it, WrestleMania IX: The 18th Anniversary. That stinker really soured me on paying for wrestling sight unseen. I decided that the 10th anniversary of Ring of Honor would be a show worthy of my 10 dollars, and 5 o’clock on a Sunday evening could not be a better start time for my schedule.

You can read Greg De Marco’s full report of the show right here on 411Wrestling. Definitely check that out if you are looking for a comprehensive play-by-play of the show. Greg did a fantastic job and really was able to cover almost every moment of the action.

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After the ROH TV opening video they went right to Kevin Kelly and Nigel McGuinness in the ring. It took almost a minute for them to give the guys the cue to start, which is something they really need to get worked out. They have done a bunch of live iPPV shows and they have been taping the TV show in a live-to-tape format, which was reportedly set in motion at least partially in order to get the crew to hone their skills for the live broadcasts on GFL. It’s been too long for them to continue making these mistakes. I’ll get all of this stuff out of the way now — the production is still incredibly amateur, but the in-ring product is great, so it’s not fair to mar my review of the show with sporadic complaints about the production. To their credit, the lighting was very strong and the cameras are very good quality, which translated very well to the live stream. That’s something ROH definitely has right. The video itself looks very crisp and clear. It rarely went pixelated at all, which was a fear I had, so I’m glad to see that they have what I would consider to be the most important technical part of the broadcast in order. The sound was also good. It went up and down a bit throughout the show, but nothing major. The commentary was mixed very well. It wasn’t so loud that it would drown out the crowd and the ring action and it wasn’t so low that I had to strain to hear what Nigel and Kevin were saying. Big thumbs up on that one. Then theme songs were also loud and clear. Oh — I’m pretty sure I was complaining. Let’s put it very simple for the tl;dr crowd (which should be NONE OF YOU due to my amazing ability to captivate all those whose eyes are graced by my literary touch):

ROH iPPV Production Quick Review
The Good: Picture quality, stream quality, sound quality
The Bad: Director’s cues (missed some important spots), didn’t turn crowd sound off during promo packages (except for the one for the main event), graphics (tale of the tape, mostly) put on the screen and random/inopportune moments.

The director et al. are making some really novice mistakes. Don’t they run through the show before going live so they can ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible? Get on that, boys. As I said above, though, it’s the wrestling that matters most…

The All Night Express (Rhett Titus & Kenny King) def. Wrestling’s Greatest Tag Team (Charlie Haas & Shelton Benjamin
The show was kicked off in the ring by the returning-to-action Rhett Titus (the Rhetturn, as he called it), who underwent knee surgery and had to sit out for a couple months along with his tag partner, the always fantastic Kenny King. They were followed out by WGTT, who have been strongly reinvigorated thanks to their heel turn. Charlie Haas absolutely shines as the crazy middle-aged dude who is just mad at the world and wants to take it out on everybody. Haas and Benjamin didn’t do any of their signature double team moves, in fact I’m not sure if they performed any tandem offense whatsoever. Their mission was to isolate Rhett Titus and work on his still healing knee, and they did that as expertly as one might expect. King and Titus looked like they hadn’t missed a beat, performing some good double team maneuvers and showing tons of heart. They were actually able to pull off 2 or 3 legit hot tags in a sub-15 minute match, which is impressive. ANX were able to pull off the victory and one would assume that they are destined for a meeting with the Young Bucks on WrestleMania weekend to get some retribution for Titus’ injured knee before looking to get back into the title mix.

Rating: ***

“The Prodigy” Mike Bennett def. “The Notorious 187” Homicide
Bennett came out with Brutal Bob and the always stunning Maria. I’m glad they are keeping her around; she played the completely clueless girl very well during her WWE run, but Maria is a truly talented woman who would have fit in very well in an earlier era in which female valets were an important part of the show. Both her and Bob played big roles in this one, as Brutal Bob pushed Bennett out of the way of a Homicide dive and sacrificed himself to save his charge and Maria distracted Homicide, which allowed Bennett to pull out the surprise victory. I’m always glad to see Homicide, but even though he has been off the active roster for a long while and only shows up for the NYC dates he comes off as completely stale to me. It was no different at the 10th Anniversary show. Obviously, since ‘Cide is one of ROH’s founding fathers he deserves to be, and should be, a part of an event like this, so I won’t bitch about it. The match itself featured Bennett trying not to die while Homicide paid tribute to the other two ROH “legends”, as they have been called, who are unable to appear due to one being WWE Champion and the other one-half of the TNA Tag Team Champions.

He nailed Bennett with a powerbomb and after a quick two-count he floated seamlessly into a STF in a homage to Samoa Joe. He then tried to get the Pepsi Plunge but was foiled, so instead he utilized CM Punk’s current finish, the Go To Sleep, to grab a near fall on The Prodigy. The match was okay and the right guy won, but it was just a quick throwaway match to make sure Bennett got on the card and Homicide could represent himself, Joe and Punk.

Rating: **1/2

CHIKARA Grand Champion Eddie Kingston Visits ROH
It was originally reported that the ROH/CHIKARA scuffle from earlier this year was done only to build interest for the “Synergy” double header that is set for Chicago on April 28, as CHIKARA will run an afternoon show followed by a Ring of Honor show in the evening. It seems now, though, that we may be setting up an interpromotional rivalry. My first thought, and likely the first thought of many fans of ROH was that they already did this with CZW and there’s no way they can top that. I believe that’s true. The war with CZW was truly something special and should not be within the realm of comparison to whatever is in store for a possible CHIKARA invasion.

That said, I wonder if they are going to run a full on invasion-style storyline or just build for another almost 2 months for a showdown in Chicago to blow off the whole angle. I’m personally hoping for them to do that, and then throughout the rest of 2012 (and beyond, I would guess) the two promotions partake in a friendly rivalry every so often. Maybe ROH and CHIKARA can also team up to try to take the belt back from Kevin Steen, who holds it hostage after defeating Davey Richards in the coming months. I’d like that.

Speaking of Steen, he interrupted Kevin Kelly’s interview with the Grand Champion and proposed that the two of them team up to destroy ROH and CHIKARA. Kingston vehemently refused, taking great offense to Steen’s proposition, and a pull-apart brawl ensued. Eddie Kingston v. Kevin Steen is on the horizon. Awesome. Will it be champion versus champion? Non title? For both belts? Intrigue!

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The House of Truth (Roderick Strong & Michael Elgin) def. Amazing Red & “Technical Lightning” TJ Perkins

This is the second tag team match in a very tag-centric 10th Anniversary show. Amazing Red makes an appearance in ROH for this important show, and it’s great that he was put on the card as Red was 1/2 of the first match ever in Ring of Honor, defeating Jay Briscoe one-on-one. As you might expect if you know anything about these four men, this match consisted of Red and Perkins flying around and Strong and Elgin catching them. The three guys on the active roster (Strong, Elgin and Perkins) aren’t really involved in any angles right now, but they can keep putting on matches like this and I won’t even notice. Michael Elgin is going to be a big star in ROH as time goes by and he’s likely to eventually sign with TNA and be something akin to how they used Rhino. I’d be fine with that. The action was fast and wild and this match is definitely worth checking out.

Rating: ***1/2

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Jay Lethal v. “The Dominant Male” Tomasso Ciampa (Time Limit Draw)
ROH World Television Championship

Our first of two title matches in the evening pitted the fourth TV Champ against the still undefeated crown jewel of The Embassy LTD. This was a much different match from anything thus far on the card (and anything else afterward as well). Ciampa worked slowly and spent a lot of time countering Lethal’s explosive offense. When he was on offense, Ciampa worked over Lethal’s back, and for a brutal 30-45 seconds took the TV Champ into the aisleway and whipped him back and forth from guardrail to guardrail. As it tends to happen, as time began to run out Ciampa did what he could to pick up the pace, but time was not on his side. I think most people expected this to be a time limit draw, as Ciampa isn’t quite ready to hold the belt but they aren’t going to give up his undefeated streak just yet. Lethal has had a handful 15-minute draws but they’ve all been good matches. The only one (I believe) that has been granted extra time was the match in which he won the title by defeating El Generico on the second episode of ROH TV that aired back in October. That’s a smart thing, because if they go for 5 more minutes every time a title match ends in a draw it will take away a lot of drama for the times they do decide to go into OT. Ciampa and The Embassy LTD took Lethal out and then stole his belt. Belt stealing happens every so often, but for some reason I feel like there’s going to be a really strong storyline coming out of this one. Time will tell.

Rating: ***1/2

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Jay & Mark Briscoe def. The Young Bucks (Nick & Matt Jackson)
ROH World Tag Team Championship

Holy superkicks, Batman! I think the Young Bucks are great, although ever since coming back to ROH after their stint in TNA they seem to be lacking something. I don’t know if the same holds true for their recent performances out west in PWG, but they’ve been very “eh” for the most part. That said, everything they did was crisp and looked good, but it was disappointing. There were some great spots, as both teams are famous for, but the match was more disjointed than a usual spotfest. It wasn’t bad by any means, it just felt almost like they were going through the motions. I do love the “big set-up, tiny move” spot that heels (and sometimes comedy wrestlers) like to do. In this case it was Nick Jackson vaulting into a double back handspring, stopping short and getting a devastating BACK RAKE! The finish was fantastic, too. The YB go for More Bang For Your Buck but Jay got his knees up on Nick’s 450 attempt and then Mark knocked Matt off the top rope and to the floor to thwart his moonsault attempt. Mark took Matt’s place on the top rope while Jay got Nick on his shoulders and #DemBoys finished strong with the Doomsday Device. Gotta love that finish.

Rating: ***1/4

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“Wrestling’s Worst Nightmare” Kevin Steen def. Jimmy Jacobs

Jacobs came out to the ring wearing street clothes. He was flanked by Steve Corino, who claimed that Jimmy was using his better judgment and would not be wrestling in this match tonight. Steen didn’t like that and called Jacobs out, and it appears that Jimmy was ready to go all along, pulling off his fur coat to reveal the white coat he wore at the unveiling of the Age of the Fall all the way back in September of 2007. I think the significance of that was likely lost on a lot of fans in the building, expecially, obviously, new fans that aren’t familiar with Jacobs’ past in ROH. For those unaware, after the first Ladder War in ROH at the company’s “Man Up” PPV in Chicago, Jimmy Jacobs, Tyler Black and Necro Butcher emerged from the crowd after months of mysterious happenings. They strung Jay Briscoe upside down on the hook that was used to hold the Tag Title belts and had it raised up. Jimmy stood under Jay, who was bleeding profusely, and essentially showered in his blood while wearing the white coat that I mentioned above. It’s significant because that coat represents Jimmy Jacobs at his most evil point, which is how he needed to be if he wanted to defeat Kevin Steen.

I’ve grown tired of “hardcore” style matches, although I have heard that Steen’s match with Steve Corino from Final Battle 2011 was well above average. This match was definitely good and both men put out a superb effort, however, so even though I am (and always have been, really) partial to a good technical/hard-hitting/hard fought wrestling match, I really enjoyed this one. The first memorable moment of the actual contest came when Steen took Jacobs up the entrance aisle and started pulling down the guardrails. He pulled down one or two and slammed Jimmy on them, and then he grabbed another, but a female fan (who must not have been paying any attention) happened to be holding on to that specific railing and came tumbling down into the entrance area with the disconnected piece of metal meant to protect her. Steen didn’t bat an eye and threw Jimmy down again. It’s also worth noting, at least as far as I’m concerned, that throughout the night the crowd chanted “Yes! Yes! Yes!” a la Daniel Bryan Danielson, and during this match Steen responded to it by telling Paul Turner that he “has ’til FIVE, referee!”

Jacobs nailed the always-scary spear through the ring ropes through a table below (like Edge v. Foley from WM22 without the fire) and then spent some time getting his ass kicked some more until he pulled out his infamous railroad spike. He was eventually able to use it on Steen, but instead of going for the win he stopped short and looked conflicted. Not remorseful, but it seems that using his most heinous weapon made him realize that he is no longer the evil man he once was. This hesitation allowed a bloodied Steen to nail a massive low blow (DeMarco says it was with the spike, but I couldn’t tell) and pick up the win with the F-5 ribs-first on top of the backs of two chairs. Nigel calls the move something else… sounds like “F-Aught” or something like that. Anybody got some help on that one?

Rating: ***1/2

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“Die Hard” Eddie Edwards & Adam Cole def. ROH World Champion Davey Richards & Kyle O’Reilly
Young Wolves Rising

I’m going to say this right now. Up to this point, this is my Match of the Year. I know people will (and already have been, even though many of them haven’t seen it) criticize the match for too many kickouts of moves that should have finished the match, fake MMA, too much forced/fake “puro”, and everything else they all like to toss out, but anybody who is going to critcize this, as well as a lot of ROH/other indy matches for those alleged indiscretions doesn’t watch, isn’t paying attention or is just looking for any excuse to attack/troll.

First, there weren’t a lot of crazy “that should have been the end” near falls. There were a few, of course, but that’s the case for most big matches in any company. These guys spent too much time hitting moves, countering and countering counters to go for an excessive amount of pinfall attempts anyway. The fake MMA argument is beyond ridiculous — Davey and co. train in an MMA style in order to prepare themselves for the parts of their matches that employ more of a counter-based catch wrestling style. They aren’t in there spending 15 minutes tentatively throwing kicks and slowly working for holds. I honestly think the “fake MMA” criticism is the dumbest attack non-fans of Davey et al can possibly use. It makes absolutely zero sense. The “too much puro” critics are the same. First and foremost, a lot of these guys have spent extensive amounts of time living, training and wrestling in Japan. It’s not like they ordered a “Best of Misawa versus Kawada” tape and decided to copy all of the moves. That’s silly and it’s disrespectful to all parties to assert something like that.

That said, I am personally getting tired of Davey Richards’ character. Instead of portraying a man that is dedicated and intense he often sounds corny and seems like he’s trying too hard. That has little-to-nothing to do with his work inside the ring, however.

All four men in this match worked their asses off and presented an unbelievable match that, for me, topped off the show so well that everything leading up to it actually seems better just by association of being on the same card. Much like The Dude’s rug, this match really tied the 10th Anniversary Show together. The only technical issues with the match were from Adam Cole, but I think it was nerves that got to him. This was by far the biggest match of his young career and he made a few mistakes, but the match wasn’t worse off because of them. I love that he got the pinfall over the World Champion and in my eyes the finish was spectacular. I really thought that the match was over when Davey got that ankle lock in, but Edwards rolled out and Cole got some HUGE air on a simple crossbody from the top that surprised an exhausted Davey and sealed the upset win for the young man.

Rating: ****3/4

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Kevin Steen calls out Davey Richards

The show closed with what began as a lovefest in the ring but quickly deteriorated. First it was thanks to Kyle O’Reilly, who is a young man with a hot temper and a sense of loyalty stronger than any dog you’ll ever find. He refused to shake hands with the night’s victors and cited the reason that he doesn’t shake hands with men he doesn’t respect. Then Kevin Steen’s music hits to throw an even bigger monkeywrench into the (almost) show of true sportsmanship and Mr. Wrestling appeared in the first balcony. He’s done playing around and he’s done dealing with Jim Cornette. He knows that the only man who can get him a title shot is the Champ himself, so he’s calling on him to get the job done. Davey did everything but grab the mic and verbally accept the challenge, so you know that over the coming weeks he’s going to advocate Jim Cornette sanctioning a World Title match between he and Kevin Steen. I’m just worried that they’re going to wait too long for Steen to take the belt. Early reports are saying that they might have the match at Final Battle, which is just way too long to wait. They lost a lot of heat when they waited far too long with Tyler Black and I would hate to see them make that mistake again.

If it wasn’t for Steen making an appeal directly to Davey for the title shot, I could see them going with Cornette throwing Steen through a gauntlet of sorts and forcing him to defeat Cole, O’Reilly and Edwards to get to Davey, but since Steen made a direct challenge to the champ they really need to do the match at the summer PPV — which I would assume to be Death Before Dishonor X in June or July.

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Overall: High Reccomendation. This show is a definite must see. It featured some great wrestling, a strong crowd and some big moments; they have now set the tone for the rest of 2012. Kevin Steen is done, for now, with Corino & Jacobs and is ready to move on to Davey Richards, the World Title and a full takeover of ROH. Kyle O’Reilly is very upset with Eddie Edwards and now Adam Cole as well and he is not going to take shit from anybody any longer. I smell a heel turn on the horizon. The All Night Express are about to work their way back up the card to get a shot at the Briscoes to renew an old rivalry, only this time the tag belts will be on the line. Tomasso Ciampa and The Embassy LTD are in possession of the ROH TV Title and are likely to hold it hostage while throwing obstacles at Jay Lethal in his attempt to take it back. Jimmy Jacobs looks to no longer be stable enough (was he ever?) to be Steve Corino’s “sponsor” and will likely need to do a lot of soul searching after letting his evil ways out again in New York City. And finally, ROH versus CHIKARA appears to be gearing up to become a rivalry rather than a loose partnership.

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Before I go, I promised to post something that I wrote 7 years ago, and here it is. The column originally went online all the way back on March 1, 2005 (which is why I originally intended to post this last week) and discusses why we get excited for WrestleMania every year, even if the product over the past few weeks/months has been less than inspiring. Here’s the link to the full column, and here’s an excerpt:

411’s Countdown to WrestleMania 21: Why We Still Buy WrestleMania
By Nick Marsico, Originally posted on 3/1/2005

Every year since 1985, a wrestling extravaganza known by the name of WrestleMania has taken place. This event has taken on many names in the span of existence, being recognized as “The Granddaddy of Them All”, “The Super Bowl of Professional Wrestling”, “The Showcase of the Immortals” and “The Grandest Stage in Sports Entertainment” among others. Every year it gets grander and grander, bigger and bigger, and every year so many people continue to buy it. But why? What makes WrestleMania so much more special than the other 17 thousand pay-per-view events that WWE runs during the year? Why do the arenas always sell out so much quicker when the WrestleMania tickets go on sale? Why do people who may not spend their hard-earn dollars on any other show go out of their way to catch this particular event?

“I have not bought the last 3 WWE PPVs not because I didn’t want to, but because I have been working 2 jobs; for WrestleMania – I am taking off both jobs. It is the Super Bowl of wrestling, as clich? as that sounds.” – brahmaskull316, 411Mania.com Forums

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I personally buy every pay-per-view I am capable of, which means I have ordered every show from January 1999 to August 2004 with only one exception (I was on vacation for SummerSlam 2001). And now after a 4 month drought, I have once again found a way and have seen every show since New Year’s Revolution, but that is all beside the point. Even though I order all of the shows, WrestleMania is still the one most important one to me. The build that takes place from January, which elevates through February and March as the excitement rises and becomes almost tangible makes me remember why I still am a fan. Sure, I love to see a great psychological contest with stiff striking, innovative submissions and fast-paced action with an incredible showing of workrate and an amazing story, but not even that plays to my emotions like the months leading up to and culminating with WrestleMania. The titles regain focus, actual feuds and intricate storylines develop, friends turn on friends and foes become more ferocious and menacing. Because of things like that I forget my bitching and whining about the lack of direction or the lack of usage of some wrestlers because they always provide a direction and even if only for a short time, guys I might not see more than once every month, if that, on the main shows come around and get their opportunities to prove something to the world, and I love to see that.

“WrestleMania is a time like no other. WrestleMania is where anything is possible, and WrestleMania is every wrestler’s chance at immortality. Hogan slamming Andre, HBK’s boyhood dream coming true, The Rock vs. Hollywood Hogan…this is what wrestling is all about.” – JJ Johnson a.k.a. dwoodson28, IGN Wrestling General Board

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All of that, and I didn’t even bother to mention some of the incredible matches that took place that made not only the events themselves but the cards as well some of the most memorable and unbelievable wrestling spectaculars of all time. With all of that history, how could a true wrestling fan even consider passing up the opportunity to see another piece of history unfold in front of their eyes? The majority of wrestling shows out there, no matter for what promotion, can basically guarantee that every time they run it anybody who watches is bound to see a classic moment. WrestleMania can. I’ll let IGN Wrestling General Board member, Jersey’s own Kevin Maher a.k.a. Magneto22 explain in his words to send us off…

“Because it’s Wrestle-fucking-Mania. Simply put, I live for it.”

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That’s going to do it for me this week. I’m going to be off next week but I’ll be back again soon!

Y’all come back again soon!

Next week: Substitute teacher!

– Nicholas A. Marsico