Natch. I’m not likely to go all out for a great seat this time, but it should still be fun.
I fell asleep at around 10 (just as they were announcing the stupid divas 6 man tag).
I miss anything?
Another Dorton Arena memory: Kamala, the Ugandan Giant!
Kamala had just signed on with Mid-Atlantic, and I don’t think he had debuted on TV yet, but when I saw he was going to be at Dorton Arena, I just had to go. Baron Von Raschke was also on the card, but he was past his prime and usually served as enhancement talent. Me and my friend Pat would stand up and extend our hands in claw-like salutes as he entered.
Most of the audience believed rasslin’ was real back in those days, and our group sat in front of a family that had a really vocal mother. She kept embarrassing her kids by screaming at the heels, but she was having loads of fun. Kamala was actually booked to be in a tag match. I don’t remember who his partner was. Kamala was the last to be introduced, and he came out with the spear, huge voodoo mask, jungle music, and a masked escort named Kim Chee. When he made his entrance, the entire audience stood up in wonder, straining to get a closer look. He was truly a spectacle to behold.
The match ended in a double count-out I think, because Kamala was brawling with the other guys in the aisles all the way back to the dressing room. He grabbed one of them by the throat with both hands and choke slammed him on the concrete floor. The vocal mother behind us hollered in a sharp country twang, “HE’S SO STEWPID HE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHUR HE IS!!!”
Poor guy’s a double amputee now. He contracted diabetes and ignored his doctor’s warnings to control his diet. He says not to feel sorry for him. He may have been a 9th-grade dropout and a truck driver, but Kamala definitely made his mark on the world.
I did not watch last night’s Raw. By all indications it was a trainwreck, and the slow but inevitable process of the crowd turning on Roman Reigns is beginning to pick up steam. (Whose idea was it to hold the Royal Rumble in Philadelphia? When/if he wins that thing the mutants are going to shit all over it, I guarantee.)
However, it has come to my attention that the Ascension will be making their official main roster debut on next week’s Raw, so I will definitely be watching that one.
Anyway, to mention some of my favorite WWE experiences.
As a child, watching Hogan beat Sgt. Slaughter for the world title at WrestleMania VII. Rewatching it now it wasn’t all that great a match, but as a 7-year-old who didn’t yet know wrestling was staged and had somehow gotten the idea that the outcome of the Gulf War was dependent on Hogan beating Slaughter, it was epic in a way that nothing else can ever be again.
As an adult, being in the audience for the Seattle Raw last year, the go-home episode to TLC. That show ran about half an hour overtime because we refused to stop chanting for Daniel Bryan (for who this was practically a hometown show since he’s from Aberdeen) during the Cena-Orton promo, and the whole mess ended with Bryan kneeing Shawn Michaels in the face.
Maybe I missed it, but I thought “At least they got the stupid fucker (Reigns) to stop smirking”.
Word on the street is that they’re thinking about changing course after last night.
[spoiler]It’s at least a possibility now that Reigns will not will the Rumble. Favorites to win in his place are Dean Ambrose and Dolph Ziggler, in that order.
My source is here, which links back to the ultimate source (inasmuch as it makes any sense to talk about sources for pro graps rumours).[/spoiler]
Meanwhile, I have to admit that seeing the Ascension’s call-up will be enough to get me to tune in to Raw–but possibly only in the third hour, so I can just fast-forward my way up to their match.
A quick memory if mine too (albeit a recent one):
Seth Rollins’s heel turn.
It’s been a long long time since I’ve been shocked by wrestling, had the air taken out of my lungs and thought “no!” and that happened when Rollins used a chair against Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns.
Indy gets all the good shows!
I’m finding it harder and harder to watch Raw, I skipped last week’s and mostly just skimmed through this week’s. I listened to the Steve Austin Podcast with Dave Meltzer and Meltzer and Austin both had some pretty solid critiques of the current product.
One thing Meltzer mentioned is that if his goal with Charlotte had been to ruin her debut, it’d be hard for him to have done a better job of it than WWE did. He also thinks WWE should advertise stuff on the network like NXT on their weekly television shows, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. I actually intend to start watching NXT, just haven’t worked it into my schedule yet.
Austin had a critique I thought was pretty good of Ziggler–he said Ziggler sells way too much, and that it’s hard to transition to being a top guy if your style is selling all the time. He contrasted Ziggler with Michaels, who sold a lot but also worked in dominance/offense, even against much bigger guys like 'Taker and did so convincingly.
Austin and Meltzer both said they thought Reigns is so bad at scripted promos that WWE needs to seriously consider not using him on those. Austin said that him and Reigns had a back and forth at a WWE Network appearance awhile back in which Reigns was very entertaining, and in his opinion Reigns shouldn’t be put in awkward scripted promos but allowed to freestyle more.
Meltzer is also an MMA guy and talked about the Punk situation some, both him and Austin thought it’s cool Punk is trying something he really wants to do but it’s unlikely he’s successful. Meltzer’s logic is almost every guy who has done what Punk is doing and been successful in MMA had a background as a strong amateur wrestler, Punk has no real athletic experience outside of professional wrestling. Punk’s jiujitsu stuff will help, but for actually blocking take-downs and taking guys down you need wrestling experience, which Punk completely lacks. He’ll also need significant training on strikes/taking punches. Meltzer also made the observation that a lot of the young guys coming up in MMA are basically working for starvation money and feeding their family and getting ahead is based on their winning fights. Punk doesn’t have that motivation, and in Meltzer’s words “getting hit hurts more when you’re rich.” By contrast Bobby Lashley and Brock Lesnar were both accomplished amateur wrestlers, and while not broke or anything they had a very strong base of skill to augment with striking and submissions in MMA training camps.
So, just back from the house show in Cincy! First, there were rumors of a “big announcement” at the show earlier this week, possibly of a 2015 PPV to be held in Cincinnati. Nope! No big announcement at all. So while Cincinnati may get a 2015 PPV, we’ll have to wait to hear about it.
My seat was decent, if not spectacular; five rows back from the floor on what would normally be the side facing the hard camera, all the way over by the stage where the [del]sports entertainers[/del] wrestlers enter. This led to difficulties with some matches, but I’ll get to that when I get to the matches. I could actually kind of see into gorilla position from where I was sitting.
Eden was the ring announcer for the evening.
We get things started off hot with… Sin Cara v. Justin Gabriel. Good on Eden trying to sell the match, but when you say “Let’s get things started right”, Sin Cara’s music is not the thing you expect to hear next. I haven’t been watching main roster lately, so I don’t know if this is a new thing, but Cara came out in his highlighter yellow gear. I was desperately hoping for Kallisto to show up, and considered starting a Kallisto chant, but this was not the sort of crowd that was going to get on board with that. Honestly, this was not the sort of crowd that would get on board with much of anything–it was pretty dead. Justin Gabriel, on the other hand, did some nice heel work–he teased throwing his shirt to the crowd and then didn’t do it, and there was a fair bit of chickenshit heeling. Getting out of the ring, that sort of stuff. Sin Cara did typical Sin Cara flippy shit and got the pin.
Sin Cara’s celebrations are interrupted! Lights go down, we get a Bray video on the screens, we’re all waiting for Bray to come out–and when the lights come back up, he’s in the ring, Sister Abigailing everyone in sight! He gets a microphone and promises to destroy Dean Ambrose in his home town.
Next up, a six-man tag and my personal highlight of the evening: PRINCE PRETTY! Tyler Breeze, in all of his mop-booted glory, teamed up with Titus O’Neill and Hornswoggle against Los Matadores + Torito. While the last thing I want to see Prince Pretty doing is comedy matches, I was absolutely elated to see him at all. (He also retweeted my tweet about him, yay!) Overall, this was a fun little match. There was a genuinely amusing pair of spots early on–Torito had the pin on Hornswoggle, Swoggle kicked out, causing Torito to fly off into the arms of the ref. The ref tosses him back onto Swoggle, counts the pin, Swoggle kicks out and we repeat the whole thing two or three times. Shortly after, Swoggle’s got the pin on Torito, Torito kicks out, Swoggle goes flying onto the ref who collapses under him. Torito counts the pin. Fun little spot. Generally speaking, it was a fun match with plenty of action. Personal problem here is that my angle was such that I was directly behind the Matadores corner, so it was a bit hard to see what was going on in the ring, especially if the minis were in there. Matador Uno gets the pin on Titus. Or maybe it was Matador Dos? I dunno. Those guys need numbers on their kits.
IIRC, Eden started to do an promo for the “WWE VIP Experience”, which i think is something where you pay even more than you are already paying for the ticket and probably get some backstage access. Whether or not that was here, next out was Bad News Barrett! I’m a huge Barrett mark, so I was thrilled to see him live again. He cut a brief promo, asking if we wanted to see him have his return match here in Cincy, and then saying that he had some BAD NEWS, and would never have his return match in such a hellhole as Cincinnati. Cheap heat, which you’ll see was a bit of a theme of the night. I guess it’s the easiest thing to get heat with when you’re sort of wrestling outside of normal continuity.
Next up… sigh. Adam Rose v. R-Truth. Maybe Kane booked this match to punish Cincinnati for being the home of Pete Rose. Adam Rose had a set of six rosebuds, none of whom were the bunny. I’m not enough of a super-smark to be able to identify the indie wrestlers. I’ve been meaning to make a bit of a habit of visiting the lesser of our two local independent promotions, so maybe next time I’ll be able to figure it out. R-Truth was, yet again, shockingly over. I don’t get it. I guess people like to yell what’s up. Anyway, they got into a catchphrase-off, I said “fuck this shit” and went to get a smoothie. I did my best not to pay attention to the rest of the match by giving myself ice cream headaches. R-Truth got the win on a bit of a clever finish–Rose went for a roll-up on Truth with a fistful of tights, but Truth managed to roll it on through for the pin. More whats-upping ensued. Rose shoved one of the rosebuds or something. Like I said, I was trying to not pay attention.
Connor the Crusher video package/ad for charity. I’m a horrible person, because I don’t really care about any of this.
Next up, our “special guest”: HULK HOGAN! He was accompanied by Jimmy Hart. Obviously, he got a HUGE pop. Look, I’m not a big Hogan mark, and I kind of wish he’d retire gracefully and stop trying to get “one last match”. But FFS, it’s Hulk Hogan. If you don’t mark out for Hulk Hogan at a live show, I’m not sure if you’re a wrestling fan. Anyway, he then starts talking about previous trips to Cincinnati, and how he wants one last match (no, really). This causes me to wonder if he’s pretty much gone into business for himself here–I’m sure nobody hands Hulk Hogan a script. He says Vince isn’t sure if the WWE Universe wants to see Hulk Hogan in one last match, and puts the question to the crowd. This was probably the pop of the night. Then–
RUSEV UDRIA, RUSEV MACHKA! Lana and Rusev come down to the ring; Lana cuts a typical Lana promo on Hogan. Rusev gets a few words in. Hulk says he’s gonna get his brass knucks from his buddy Jimmy Hart and knock Rusev out. I am waiting to see who is going to stop Hulk Hogan from killing himself in the ring. Sure enough–
Roman Reigns’s music hits. (I wish there was an easy way to write out Roman’s music.) This was probably the second or third biggest pop of the night–it was in serious competition with Hogan’s entrance pop. Like it or not, the man is over as hell with the WWE Universe in general. Anyway, he makes his way down to the ring, hops in, and cuts a refreshingly competent (if not particularly electrifying) promo on Rusev, saying that Rusev is a guest in this country, and you don’t disrespect the Hulkster or the USA. He tells Hulk to go get a cold one, kick back and watch the match. Do they not script promos for house shows? Reigns seemed to be relaxed and in control. The promo itself wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was natural and easy. If this is what Roman’s like when he’s not on a script, they really need to have some faith in him and start giving him bullet points. I doubt he’ll ever be one of the great talkers, but he’s a hell of a lot better off the cuff than he is working from a script.
Match itself was… ok? It was a US Title match, too. It didn’t really grab me. Roman hit his signature spots–superman punch, apron dropkick, Samoan drop–but not all in order like he tends to. They were sprinkled in the match. The match started w/ Roman working Rusev’s arm/shoulder a bit, and as usual, Rusev sold like a champ for the most part, though somewhere in the second half of the match his arm had a miraculous recovery and he stopped selling it. Nice little character beat when Roman was laid out near the ropes and accidentally? knocked over the Russian flag. Rusev went out immediately to rescue it and gave it to Lana before continuing the match. Rusev got a ton of heat–lots of USA chants and the like. Someone over on the floor on the other side of the arena had a hammer and sickle sign, which was great. Rusev lost on a DQ that I sort of missed–I’m completely clueless on what he did to get himself disqualified. So he lost, but not by submission or pinfall, and retained the title. Reigns hit him with the spear post-match to a nice pop.
Intermission, which was a bit unfairly short for the folks who went out to get a soda or some merch.
So when I came in, they were having a vote for whether we’d have a normal, one-on-one Divas match, or a six-man Santa’s helper Divas match. Need I even tell you which one was the runaway winner? Whatever. So, we’ve got Natalya (who basically wrestled in her normal gear, but she wore a Santa hat to the ring), Naomi and Charlotte vs. Summer Rae, Cameron (sigh) and THE BOSS! I knew Charlotte was working this half of the house show circuit, so I wasn’t surprised to see her; Sasha was a nice surprise. I desperately wanted to try to get a “Sasha’s ratchet” chant started, but again, this was not the crowd for that. The ladies worked as good a match as you can ask for with basically seven minutes; even Cameron managed not to completely fuck everything up. There was a moderately amusing spot where Naomi stole Cameron’s mirror and held it up to her, stopping her in her tracks; she followed it around like some idiotic bird until Naomi threw it away. Spots making fun of Cameron’s intelligence are perhaps hitting a bit too close to reality, but I liked it anyhow. Charlotte got a ton of "woo!"s (I think I helped get them started, as I was one of the first) and had a nice little bridging pin early in the match. She’s absolutely great, and overhearing folks around me, I think she impressed. Nattie gets the sharpshooter on Summer, who taps out.
Triple threat tag team match for the No. 1 contendership. First out, Gold[del]dust[/del] and Stardust. Stardust is wearing normal make-up–silver and black. He grabs a mic and cuts a promo, though he doesn’t do it in the normal weird Stardust fashion. It’s pretty much just Cody Rhodes cutting a promo while wearing strange makeup. Has he dropped the weirdness gimmick on the shows? He says he’s written a poem about Cincinnati, and proceeds to get some cheap heat–theres’s a shot at Pete Rose never getting in the Hall, and a shot at the Bengals losing to Pittsburgh tomorrow. FWIW, they got pretty decent pops (grading on a bit of a curve here)–I think Goldust is enough of a minor legend and eventual Hall of Famer at this point that people are always going to pop for him, and Cody’s still pretty over with the Stardust gimmick. He’s actually staying over with kids–I heard some cheering him, despite his heel status.
Next out, Cesaro and Tyson Kidd. They’re wearing matching black t-shirts, except Tyson’s says “FACT” and Cesaro’s, I think, says “SWING”. Tyson, of course, has his glorious cat-faced kickpads on. Cesaro’s got the stick, and he cuts a promo on the way down to the ring, calling out Goldust and Stardust for having a lot of make-up on and getting some cheap heat by saying that unlike the Bengals, he and Kidd have a chance at winning the championship. Tyson Kidd punctuates Cesaro’s every line with “fact” in various tones of voice. These guys together are money. If I can’t have a proper Cesaro push into the main event, I’ll settle for him tagging with Tyson Kidd forever.
Finally, it’s New Day. Xavier Woods cut a promo, about which I remember exactly nothing. That said, they seemed to be fairly over with the kids and maybe the casuals. They were over as all hell with this one little black kid in the first row–he was as fun to watch as the in-ring action sometimes, and I think he was at Smackdown back in June as well. It’s great to see a kid really getting into it and having fun like he was. It’s Big E and Kofi actually wrestling in the match.
Match starts. I don’t remember a lot for this one–I got distracted at one point where I thought my phone had dropped under the seat or something, so I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should’ve been. There may’ve also been a certain amount of wrestling-fatigue setting in at this point. Two highlights: first, before the match really started, Goldust called out some particular fan, invited him up to the railing, said he was doing a great job and everything, but now he needed him to SHUT THE HELL UP!!!. No idea what brought that on, but man, wouldn’t that just make the hell out of your night if it happened to you? Second, Cesaro and Kidd’s double-team move of the swing into a dropkick–that is pure goddamn class. Did I mention that these guys were money as a team? Anyway, I think E got the pin on Stardust. While this isn’t canonical, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this replayed on an upcoming Raw to set up a tag title match for the Rumble.
Main event time! It’s a “Cincinnati Street Fight” between Bray Wyatt and Dean Ambrose. Bray out first, then Dean. What to say? Dean got a decent pop, but not as big as I would’ve expected for the hometown boy; Roman easily beat him. Crowd was a bit dead for the match in general. Maybe they had wrestling-fatigue as well. Bray got decent heel heat, though there was a little kid somewhere in my area cheering for him. They redid the kendo stick spot in the corner. For a street fight, the beginning of the match was surprisingly free of foreign objects; we were probably ten or fifteen minutes in before Dean finally got some chairs. Dean got a table and set it up, then got Abigailed through it; a little later, Bray got a table, wound up laid out on it, and Dean did the flying elbow drop from the top rope on him through the table. Eventually Dean gets the pin, possibly off the Dirty Deeds–the match ended a bit earlier than I expected, and I"m not terribly familiar w/ Dean’s finisher for whatever reason, so I"m not sure. Anyway, Dean runs around mugging for the crowd, and that’s that!
Some general thoughts:
There’s a bit of a different feel at a house show than one of the TV shows. Everything is a bit more relaxed, and I think the wrestlers are a bit more willing to have fun and do things off the cuff. There were lots of little moments with this–Roman’s promo, some of Justin Gabriel’s heeling, Goldust calling out that fan. It’s fun in a way that the regular shows often aren’t.
This was a wrestling show that primarily featured–wrestling. Sure, there were some brief promos here and there to get some heat or set up a match later in the night, but we pretty much had a bunch of wrestling matches tonight. It’s nice. Also nice, as compared to a Smackdown taping (or probably a Raw) is not having the various backstage/video segments messing up the flow of the evening. When I went to SD, I couldn’t hear what was going on in the video segments, so you’d basically just have a few minutes of nothing happening every so often. Here, everything was in-ring action or a live promo with a hot mike.
They use old-school barricades at house shows, which surprised me. I was expecting the padded, more substantial barricades that we see on TV.
Crowd, as I said, was dead dead dead. This made the entire show a bit less enjoyable, but what can you do? Particularly as compared to my Smackdown taping in June–as that was immediately after the Shield breakup the night before, that crowd was white hot for anything to do with the Shield.
Since we fired the timekeeper, I guess it’s too much to ask to bring an actual bell to house shows. The bell was the most spectacularly fake sound effect; it was so bad, it basically interfered with my suspension of disbelief every time they “rang” it.
Bottom line: Fun, but not great. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, with my fingers crossed for a hotter crowd.
Sounds like a fun show. I’ve only been to one house show since I started watching wrestling again,just before Summerslam last year, and it was honestly a better show than most Raws I’ve seen. (In fact, I think there was a bigger crowd for the house show than for the Smackdown I saw at the same venue a few months later.) I’m fairly sure the promos are unscripted or loosely scripted, and the shots backstage are being called by the road agents and producers (guys like Mike Rotunda, Arn Anderson, Dean Malenko, Sgt. Slaughter, etc.) rather than by Vince or Triple H who don’t bother with the house tours, so everything is a little more improvised and on the fly. They used a few pre-taped promos at the one I went to, but there were also live promos (including one by Paul Heyman introducing Curtis Axel that got the most heat I’ve ever seen live.) House show audiences also tend to be more kids and their families, so you’re going to see more straight matches with the babyfaces winning as opposed to the endless DQs and screwjob endings on TV, and when there is a DQ ending (usually to avoid having a heel go over a face in a title match) they tend to let the face get some licks in after the bell in order to send the crowd home happy.
I’d agree that this was a more enjoyable evening than your usual episode of Raw. Setting aside the dead crowd, we had a night that was packed with wrestling and no BS. Not only that, only one match had a non-definitive finish, and that was one that pretty much had to–they weren’t going to put the strap on Roman at a house show, and they couldn’t have Rusev pin or submit Roman. And yeah, I pretty much knew going in that the babies were going over.
Fun night. I’d probably recommend a house show over a Raw or SmackDown, unless there’s some reason to think that good stuff is going to happen, or the product’s hit a good run of form.
I went to a house show back in March, a “Road to Wrestlemania” event, ha ha. The faces won most of the matches, which I assume is because the event drew a lot of kids.
Anyhoo, I’ve been w/o the Internet for the past 5 days, so time to catch up on NXT.
The Xmas episode of NXT was, unfortunately, a clip show, with the exception of a Chatlotte/Sasha Banks title match, where Charlotte retained.
I was somewhat late in getting around to watching the last week’s episode, which was pretty good and has already been commented on, but I just have to mention how odd it was that the Vaudevillians, when explaining to William Regal that there had been a false finish to their title match at Takeover, did so by showing him the finish on a tablet. Shouldn’t they have sat him down in a room with a pull-down canvas screen and a reel-to-reel projector and showed him a silent film of the match, possibly with Simon Gotch playing the piano accompaniment?
I suggested they should’ve rolled in with a nickelodeon, myself.
I’m hoping we get a proper episode this week. New Year’s Day is a holiday, but doesn’t seem like the sort of holiday you cancel a show for.
Well it looks like I didn’t miss much from havng not seen RAW, NXT or (eyeroll) Smackdown.
Thanks for the house show recap!
I think that I might venture on down to Orlando and see my girlfriend come presidents day weekend. What’s that? RAW is in town? And it’s the go-home show for a new PPV they just created? This is brand-new information to me!!
We’ll see how it pans out with work, but right now that’s what we’re thinking
funny, Smapti. Now I want to see a b&w version with piano roll music and subtitles.
Anybody else have trouble watching WWE Network on Chrome? I did a search and found others are having the same problem. I went into Incognito mode and can watch it now.
Another Dorton Arena memory: there used to be a playboy heel in Mid-Atlantic named Jimmy Garvin. He had a big mane of curly hair, like one of the three musketeers. His valet Precious was always spraying and brushing it and would give him touch-ups whenever he bailed out of the ring. She also occasionally sprayed Garvin’s opponents in the eyes when the ref wasn’t looking.
When I saw him at Dorton, his opponent was Dusty Rhodes. Precious went up to the ring announcer before the match and said something. The announcer turned on the mike and said to the audience, “Precious has asked that you all please DON’T SMOKE! The fumes get in Jimmy’s hair and make it smell awful!” That of course made all the marks light up. Dusty drew his man boobs together and started acting all prissy and mocking her.
Another shameless heel moment: Jim Cornette had his Midnight Express. I don’t remember who they were up against, but it was probably Rock & Roll Express for the millionth time. One of the MEs got hit really hard and Cornette jumped into the ring and hugged him like he was consoling him through a painful moment. He then stuck his tongue out at the opponent. Cornette’s such a great sissy heel. It’s too bad he keeps burning bridges with whatever federation he works with.
Well, so long as you don’t have to miss an NXT show for it…
DB? Lesnar?
Look at these surprises
Ugh. Worst Raw of the year. Perhaps I should find something else to do on Monday nights.
Well, I guess the game-changing main event stipulation of Survivor Series managed to stay intact for an entire five weeks before the writers ran out of ideas and said “Hey, what if we start opening every show with a 20-minute Triple H promo again?” And just in time for Daniel Bryan to come back so we can end every single show with him getting beaten down again! What a creative genius Vince McMahon is. 
At least we got babyface Cesaro, the return of Bad News Barrett, the debut of the Ascension, and Ryback talking about The Secret out of the deal.