Wrestlemania Weekend Thoughts Part 2

Kind of late on this but whatever. It's a good thing though so I can talk about the Raw on Monday as well.

So Sunday started off with Dragongate USA's Mercury Rising PPV. I missed the first match because hooking my computer up to my cousin's TV didn't work, but the PS3 web app pulled through where as the X-Box 360 never worked for me.

So Scott Reed vs. Caleb Konley started the show for me, and I was surprised with how good this match was, because the tag team matches from the scene are too filled with outside interference for me to have really enjoyed. Shenanigans at the end allow the bad guy, Scott Reed. The Super Smash Bros vs. DUF was a good match. The downside being that it looks like Uno dislocated his shoulder again.

Chuck Taylor vs. Brian Kendrick was a fun match, as any match with a swamp monster at ringside should be. Lots of nice back and forth before Kendrick picked up the win. The next match was the high flyers fray and it was awesome. Christina Von Eeries arrival in the match was cool and good to see her hit some nice moves before the Young Bucks superkicked her a ton of times to get the pin. I was disappointed to see Del Sol get eliminated so quickly, but he did hit a beautiful springboard reverse hurrincanranna before he left. Felt bad for Facade as he got no reaction from the crowd, but whatever. Fox eliminated him with a meteora from the top of a ladder which was awesome. Ricochet came down and hit Fox with a 630 on a ladder to let the Bucks eliminate him, and then there was a great 2 on 1 sequence with the Young Bucks taking on Uhaa Nation. Uhaa ends up getting the win with a rollup and then hitting his awesome standing moonsault/shooting star press combo.

John Davis vs. Orange Cassidy didn't last long, but it was a solid comedy match to start with neither man moving out of the corner to attack for a minute to start the match. Davis eventually had enough shenanigans and beat up the ref and all of the Gentleman's Club including the Swamp Monster. Then we have Ricochet, Gargano & Swann vs. EITA, Tomahawk TT & CIMA and this was my favorite match of the day. There was tons of action from everybody as well as Swann getting the shit chopped out of him for most of the match. Just everything you'd want from a DG six man and Richochet picked up the win and earned a title shot. There's some good stuff after the match with Gargano being a heel towards CIMA as well which hints there will be a CIMA vs. Gargano belt vs. belt match.

Shingo vs. Akira Tozawa was the main event of the show and it was awesome, and everybody who left the show early for Mania is a fool. Hard hitting action and the finish of this match was awesome with all the fighting spirit shown that leads to tons of head drops and great near falls. Shingo gets the win with two Made in Japans and a huge lariat. My favorite show of the weekend was this one, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't buy the replay option for it.

Then it was time for Mania and I liked that the show was mostly wrestling based. No backstage stuff and only a couple of video packages, but I could have lived without them, especially the big break between Punk/Taker and Lesnar/HHH.

The opening matches were all solid and used their time well. I've realized this is long so I'm not going to go into huge detail with them. I was surprised Ziggler and Big E. didn't pick up the win, but I guess WWE doesn't plan on breaking up Team Hell No so it makes sense. I didn't foresee Henry beating Ryback at all, that was crazy in a good way.

So for the main events Punk vs. Taker was the best as everybody was expecting and it was a really good match. I don't know why Lesnar/HHH went after this, they couldn't follow it up. Punk mocked Taker perfectly throughout the match and they just did everything right. Damn that announce table for not breaking for them on the elbow drop to the outside. One of the best matches of the weekend. HHH vs. Lesnar was a little long, but I still liked the match. It did plod at times, but it was violent, and physical and I loved that about it. A really good finish for the match as well. Rock vs. Cena was better than last year, but at the end it seemed to be too much of escaping the finisher and then finally hitting the finisher that wins. That works better in Puro where wrestlers have several finishers and they do it with some speed and impact. Still a good show over all and worth watching.

Raw the next night was awesome because the crowd made it that way. WWE made a lot of good decisions on that show, but the crowd was phenomenal. The pop for everything Ziggler did while cashing in Money in the Bank was awesome. The crowd shitting all over Sheamus/Orton was great and the random wrestler chants was awesome, as was them doing the wave, and then cheering for themselves. Obviously their masterstroke came when Fandango came out and they hummed his theme music, and then continued to do that for the rest of the night, when they left the stadium, and when they rode the train home. It was fucking magical and a great way to cap off four days of wrestling.

These posts are pretty fucking dense so next year I'll try and break it up better so it's not so rough to read, but I can't help it, I get pretty excited about wrestling.

Wrestlemania Weekend Thoughts Part 1

So far I've watched two and a half indy shows so far this weekend, with Evolve 19 being plagued by connection issues, but I do have the replay of that show to watch later. Although the matches I watched were kind of disappointing, but I missed the main event, the first match, and then Super Smash Bros vs. The Young Bucks so that show was a disappointment, but I'm hopeful watching the rest of the show may make it better.

RoH's Supercard of Honor 7 was an awesome show though to cap off the night. Opening tag match was a sound, fun opener and it was quite enjoyable. Shelton Benjamin vs. Mike Bennett was my favorite match from both men in RoH that I've seen. It was phenomenal and the dirty finish worked for the match, but it was one of those super sloppy reffing things that drives me crazy.

Jay Lethal vs. Michael Elgin was phenomenal. This match had everything, and there were perfect near falls, that had me convinced either man was going to lose and was genuinely surprised when somebody kicked out. The finish to this match was fucking awesome. Elgin hits a big powerbomb off the top rope, then a lariat, a turnbuckle bomb, and then an Elgin bomb to get the win. It was awesome. SCUM attacks them after the match and then leads into the SCUM vs. RoH match.

This 10 man tag was a solid match and everybody got to get some good spots in and look good and of course SCUM gets the win after some shenanigans which isn't unexpected, but pretty welcome. Karl Anderson vs. Roderick Strong was a good match from both men. Kind of disappointed Strong didn't get the win here, but both men looked good.

Matt Taven vs. Adam Cole vs. Matt Hardy was better than I expected, but I feel like right now they are really giving Taven short shift as the champ with the Hardy/Cole feud taking center stage. Truth Martini's antics ringside distract from him as well, but I actually like Martini working with a less well known guy, but I've only seen Taven on the last two PPVs so I'm not sure how good he is, but I feel like he's better than being minimized in the matches and I'm hopeful he's going to get some good time on PPVs afterward.

ReDRagon vs. American Wolves was a brutal hard hitting affair with some phenomenal near falls, and the action was non-stop and enjoyable throughout. A nice dirty finish for ReDRagon with a handful of tights which I enjoyed for the story, and I'm confident we haven't seen the last of this feud and I'm excited about that.

Jay Briscoe vs. Kevin Steen for the RoH Championship was phenomenal. It was a strong match, and the story was great. RoH wrestlers intercepting SCUM coming out was great, especially Mark intercepting Jacobs at the beginning of the SCUM invasion. Tons of great near falls and big moves at the end and Jay winning this match, and the title was surprising and fucking awesome. DAY ONE!

Then on Saturday I watched the Shimmer show and it was really strong as well. I thought the show started later and missed the opening of Yim vs. Kong, but the ending was fantastic, and definitely a good way to start the show to get the crowd excited. A lot of these wrestlers were new to me as I haven't watched Shimmer in quite some time, but I still liked it.

Veda Scott & Shazza McKenzie vs. Cherry Bomb & Kimber Lee was a solid tag match, and the only production mistake as the cameras missed Scott hitting the Mind Trip, but it was still good. The five lady match was good as well, but it was kind of quick and confusing as there were occasional times when tags were enforced and mostly people just hit big moves, although everybody looked good. Evie debuted and looked awesome, so I should remember to get some older Shimmer shows, or at least get ready to buy the shows taped next weekend.

Mercedes Martinez vs. Ayumi Kurihama really stepped up the game of this show, and it's weird to see Martinez being a heel, but she does it well and pummels Kurihama like a dick. Also female wrestlers seem to bump way better for dropkicks than guys do. A good victory for Martinez and a nice run up to the finish. Serena Deeb & Regeneration X vs. Neheah, Jessika Havok, and Sassy Stephi was a solid six man tag, but it was disappointing to see so little of Havok. Regeneration X had an awesome entrance dressed as Jay & Silent Bob, and Serena Deeb is one of the best women wrestlers in the world and I love to see her come back

Madison Eagles vs. Jessie McKay was an awesome match that didn't get the crowd reaction it deserved. This was one of my favorite matches of the show and both ladies had some enjoyable comments they yelled at the crowd. I also enjoyed Eagles biting McKay's arm to stop a rope break. The tag title four way was good, but it definitely didn't have enough Kana, although to satisfy my Kana needs she would have had to win the titles. It was a good match and LuFisto messed up her knee when she missed a moonsault to the outside. Still a fun match to watch and everybody looked good, although the finish felt kind of overbooked as Nakagawa didn't seem to know what to do while her teammate was getting beat up.

Athena vs. Ayako Hamada was an awesome match, and Athena's finisher the O-Face out of nowhere was awesome. This was my favorite match of the show, and the major reason I didn't love the main event as much as I should have. There was a long break as they set up the cage and it was an impressive cage. Saraya and Melissa used the cage well and delivered a tough match. Melissa hit several awesome curb stomps and gained the advantage after a big hurrincanranna on Saraya off the top rope then hit an air raid crash to get the win. Saraya has some really lazy kick outs where she lifts her arm up, but never bothers to actually roll her shoulder off the mat, which really bothers me for stupid reason. Still it was a good match and a really good show from Shimmer.

Pro Wrestling Guerilla's Mystery Vortex Review

PWG Mystery Vortex

Team Dojo Bros (Roderick Strong & Eddie Edwards) vs. The Young Bucks (Nick & Matt Jackson)

The show starts off with an amazing tag team match that could, and probably should be a main event. This match has a bunch of amazing near falls and a lot of hard shots for both teams and of course the Young Bucks delivering their unique blend of new moves, and classic heel tactics. Of course Strong and Eddie deliver their stiff chops throughout the match. Both teams deliver on some the double team moves. Both teams get in all their trademark offense and the end comes when Roderick picks up a Jackson for a dominator and Edwards delivers a double stomp to take him down for a three count. This fucking match is awesome, and if you're disc only had this match you'd be satisfied, and it's only the first match.

Drake Younger vs. Sami Callihan

Hard hitting action, that's what this match is all about. Drake Young busts his head open delivering headbutts to Callihan, which is pretty normal for him. The very beginning of this match has both men taking some wicked bumps that are kind of ignored later in the match, but the are awesome. Younger takes a nice bump off the apron onto some chairs from a bicycle kick. Younger then delivers a nice piledriver to Callihan on the apron, and all that is just in the first five minutes of the match. Sami eventually pulls out a win with a seated stretch muffler in a brutal match between two bruisers.

Super Smash Bros. vs. RockNES Monsters

Comedy shenanigans occur in this match as well as awesome wrestling, it's a delightful combination. The Monsters also provide classic heel shenanigans in the match which are quite enjoyable. I also enjoyed Goodtime cutting part of his beard and blowing it into Stupefied's face to allow Yuma to get a rollup that doesn't quite work. Yuma also hits one of the best looking reverse hurrincanrannas I've ever seen. Nobody can withstand the double team maneuvers of the Super Smash Bros. though, and they retain the belts in a really good match.

Joey Ryan vs. Scorpio Sky

A good technical start to the match after the two hug, and they each throw in references to retired members of the Dynasty. Joey does a Scott Lost double boot/stomp out of the corner and Sky delivers a Lion Cock Punch. After Sky hits a big tope con hilo on Ryan he fixes the chairs at ringside so Ryan can hit a mustache ride off the apron through the chairs afterward, it looked awesome and brutal. Scorpio gets the win with a nice combo ending in a TKO, and this is a great match for Ryan's PWG career to end on.

B-Boy vs. Brian Cage vs. Willie Mack vs. TJ Perkins

An awesome four way match between these guys. Lots of good stuff from everybody and TJ has a lot of nice multiperson submissions going for him in this match. There's a nice chop exchange between TJ. Cage, and B-Boy where TJ is avoiding the chops meant for him before he delivers a chop so Cage and B-Boy stop and both hit him with a chop. They do a couple of excellent sequences where everybody hits a big move, and they all fit into the match well. Even the dive sequence makes sense in the match. I like the ending with TJ having Cage in an STF, but Mack his the Chocolate Thunder Driver on B-Boy to get the pin before TJ gets a submission. Great work from all four guys especially TJ who is one of my favorite wrestlers.

El Generico vs. Rich Swann

An odd match for Generico as he plays the heel to start the match and slows the match down and grinds on Swann. Of course Swann escapes that and delivers all his high flying offense which is pretty awesome. I especially liked the jump up top rope hurrincanranna where he lands on his feet after delivering it. A good match from these two where Generico picks up the victory with his crazy flip the opponent around a couple of times into a powerbomb. That's an awful description of that move, but whatever.

Team Dojo Bros vs. Super Smash Bros.

Goddamn this match. Dojo Bros attack while SSB are doing their opening pose and then lay a beatdown on Uno. They deliver awesome offense and keep Stupefied on the outside. Once Stupefied gets the hot tag it might be the hottest tag I've ever seen. He throws Edwards to the outside and hits him with a dive, runs into the ring and hits a springboard move on Strong, then another dive on Edwards, a springboard DDT on Strong, another dive, and then a Meteora on Strong and the crowd goes apeshit, 'cause it's awesome. The finish is amazing with Edwards hitting some sick double stomps and Roderick hitting one of the best of his suplex into a backbreaker on Stupefied. I love both these teams, and this was a baller match especially considering they had both wrestled awesome matches earlier in the show.

Adam Cole vs. Kevin Steen (Guerilla Warfare)

This match is best summed up by the word violence. To start Steen runs Cole dong first into every corner post on the outside, and then hits a powerbomb onto the apron on all four sides of the ring. Several ladders and many chairs are used to beat on each other before the two men construct a brutal looking stack of chairs. Steen wins the battle on the top rope and puts Cole through the chairs with a fisherman buster in one of the coolest looking spots ever and the crowd and announcers go nuts, and when Cole kicks out they go even nuttier. Steen then brings in some thumbtacks including some he drinks and then spits onto Cole because Steen is fucking insane. They tease the tacks several times before Cole delivers a nice german suplex into them and follows up with a superkick and straighjacket german suplex to get the win and become the PWG Champion.

Overall: Buy this fucking show now, it's fucking awesome. Every match is main event caliber and everybody is going all out the whole time to provide the best wrestling on the planet. The best wrestling show of 2012 from top to bottom and there's not a single match that isn't good, and most of them are great.

Editing Second Draft

I dropped fifty words in this edit and tightened every thing up. There was a lot done in the intro and the beginning of the action. After this step I would have other people look at it to get feedback on what I should change, this next edit might take a while as I need opinions before I make changes.

Edit: I have removed the story so I can submit it to places. I should have thought of that when I started this thing. Although I hadn't planned on writing something of good quality, just a demo piece.

Seeing the Editing Process

So to keep myself active I'm going to show you fine readers of my blog the process I would go through to edit a story from rough draft to something good. Normally my editing process is very long because I'm bad at editing, but I'm going to keep it fairly quick for this go around. Here is the rough draft of a flash fiction piece I wrote tonight. Tomorrow I'm going to post the first draft with my edits. After that I'm going to get crits from friends and then post a second draft on the blog and you can see how things change with each edit. So with that said I present the flash fiction piece.

Edit: Removed so I can submit this beast.

Bird Banded

I'm doing the Terribleminds flash fiction challenge that had these Inspiration Pictures to create a story on. I went with #1 because it's so ridiculous I couldn't resist.

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Finally our band had its first paying gig and I slid into the costume then stood up to let it drop down to seat itself. I strapped on wrist braces to hold the wings off my hands enough to play then the tech worked the guitar over the head of the raven costume. Three years I had played without any costume for nothing except for occasional studio gigs, but finally Vladov, Yuri, and I created Quoth the Raven and after four months of playing in parks and wherever people might here somebody got interested in a trio playing music in bird costumes.

I walked onto the stage and the bar was packed, but mostly with drunks, not with the kind of person who seemed like they would be interested in our music. Vladov sat down at his drums while Yuri went to the microphone with his bass slung low.

“We are Quoth the Raven, and this is The Murder.”

Vladov started off with a slow beat, but as he slammed hard on the bass drum I started thrashing out the chords on my guitar. It was a sonic wave and it woke up even the hardcore drinkers from their stupor. An old lady looked up at the stage from her nearly empty glass and screamed. She threw her seat to the ground and charged at the stage, more specifically me. She screamed about the giant birds as she she dove into my legs. I shifted my balance to stay on my feet, but beyond that I had no clue what to do. The costume made playing guitar hard let alone doing anything else, and I didn't want to hit this lady. Vladov pounded away on the drums apparently unaware of the lady's attack, but Yuri had stopped playing and was just laughing.

His mirth was cut short when one of the other patrons shattered a chair over the back of his head and sent him sprawling to the stage. Vladov stopped playing, stood up, and with his costume got tangled up in the drum set and fell down with a clatter. I turned to the left and saw another guy coming toward the stage and I took a punch to the face, the costume providing some padding, but the mask got turned around and left me blind. I staggered, but with the lady holding onto my legs I fell to the stage. I felt more kicks and stomps to my body with slightly more cushioning as the suit was thicker in that area before I finally started to hear the sirens of police cars. Normally that meant time to flee before they broke up our sidewalk performance, but this time it meant safety.

The beating slowed as the sirens drew nearer, but it didn't stop until the sirens had finished their approach. Somebody hauled me to my feet and tugged the mask around until I could see out of it again.

“Looks like you boys can't run away from us this time.”

“We were supposed to play here,” I said.

“Did they want you to start a riot?”

“Probably not, but I didn't ask,” Yuri said.

The pithy response got him a police baton to the midsection and he doubled over gasping for breath. The cops pulled us out of the club with the drunk lady still screaming about the giant birds attacking. Afterward came a bunch of the assailants. Thankfully the band got our own paddy wagon to the station, and I knew this was the final time I was going to play music in a bird suit.

Wrestling for Free

I went to my mail box eagerly today hoping that I'd gotten a bunch of Ring of Honor DVDs in the mail, and I was disappointed, although I figured they wouldn't be in, I was just hoping they would be since it was my day off. The good thing about being a wrestling fan is that I don't need to spend money on DVDs to see new matches and get a fix of my hobby. Thanks to Youtube and similar sites there are hundreds of hours of wrestling free to view whenever I could want to. The easiest things to find are WWE and Puro matches. WWE has a lot of television matches that they don't seem as worried about taking down and it's a great way to check out old Velocity matches where you can watch Bryan Danielson when he was one of the local talents they'd bring in to lose to midcarders. It's also the best way to check out matches from guys that are never going to get a DVD release. You can see all the awesome Jimmy Yang vs. Paul London matches, and other great stuff like that.

Paul London vs. Akio (Jimmy Yang)

Bryan Danielson vs. John Cena

Bryan Danielson vs. James Gibson

The real gem of Youtube is being able to watch puro for free. NJPW and NOAH are the two that seem to have the biggest following and not care that the matches are put on the internet since they don't really sell tapes or PPVs in the USA. There are whole NJPW and NOAH shows uploaded and the some of the best matches you are going to find are there to watch for free. Dragongate has the style of wrestling I like the best, but since they have a branch in America now they seem to patrol Youtube a little bit to try and keep matches off there. At least I've noticed the DG matches from my wrestling playlist disappear unlike any other Japanese promotions. With twitter becoming more popular a lot of American wrestlers who go to Japan are promoting that fact. The one that sticks out the most to me is MVP who tweets out youtube links to his matches all the time as well as somebody who made a playlist of his NJPW matches.

Vader vs. Antonio Inoki

CIMA & Ricochet vs. PAC & Dragon Kid

Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Ricky Marvin

It's a pretty awesome time to be a wrestling fan and I forget that once in a while. It was one of Colt Cabana's Art of Wrestling podcasts that reminded me that there is all that wrestling on Youtube. Which I kind of knew because I go in streaks of watching matches on there, but it's the kind of thing you need to be reminded of. I don't have to worry about tape trading and that hassle because everything is there to get easy. And even buying wrestling can be that quick with video on demand and Smart Marks downloadable content as well as IVPvideo, which also offers a free download every week. And going back to the beginning of the paragraph the Art of Wrestling is a phenomenal podcast to listen to as a wrestling fan. Cabana gets all kinds of awesome guests and then has great conversations with them that are fun to listen to and easy to enjoy.

Art of Wrestling

Beyond watching full matches on Youtube there are a lot of really good editors who make wrestling music videos. I did that for a while as well, and didn't reach anywhere near as high as the best can do. When they cover a subject you love they're fun to watch, or a great way to introduce people to wrestling. And then there is always the genius that is botchamania. It may cover the downside of wrestling, but it is never not entertaining, and the recent addition of CZWmania is awesome as well, although I feel for Masada showing up so much. I really like him, but I blame it on him being in death matches and CZW's not very wrestling proficient roster of death match workers. Either way they're fun to watch and if you don't want to spend money on wrestling there is always free wrestling to watch.

AJ Music Video

Summer of Punk 2011

RoH 100 Shows Music Video

Botchamania 205