caley

Ah, my beloved Kelowna Nitro! Some fun stuff from being at the show. -My brother, my cousin and I basically wandered around the arena area for 1-2 hours before the show. At one point,we spotted Dave Penzer strolling around and asked him about the show ("It's gonna be a fun show! Everyone's gonna be here!") then asked him point-blank if Bret Hart was there ("Oh yeah, everyone's here!")...lying bastard. -I was basically all-in on everything wrestling at the time, even listening to all the PPVs rather than paying for them in good, old-fashioned scramblevision, looking stuff up online when given the chance, compiling a Top 10 kayfabe rankings list etc. etc.. So when Vince Russo came out and started talking about "Your hero Goldberg!" my friend turned to me (We actually became friends because at work he was trying to tell two disinterested friends of his about Nitro and "that guy with the skeleton suit" and I chimed in with "La Parka" and he was all happy that someone else not only watched wrestling but cared enough to know the names that we hit it off) and was like "Wait, are we supposed to cheer for him now?" and all I could offer up was a shrug. -My cousin and brother who got comped tickets "courtesy Mr. Goldberg" were on camera every time they cut to the announcers. My mom went in to check on him that night and my cousin said "Auntie Liz, that was the best night of my life." Life got in the way, time has rolled on, and last summer I saw him for the first time in 22-23 years, he has a wife, two beautiful twin girls and one of the first things he tells me is how he just re-watched that Nitro and showed his daughters when he was on camera. -That main event was the WORST! For one thing, we were all expecting a match. For two, from our seats in the skybox we couldn't see the screen so all we could hear was Goldberg talking about something and some of the crowd reacting to it and the rest of the crowd who couldn't see it, turning to other people and going "What happened?" And for three, there was no dark match to send the crowd home happy, everybody just stood up and walked out like "Show's over, see ya!" and that was it. -I can't remember if it actually made it to air or ended up as C-show match, but on Thunder they do some sort of handicap match with BC-area wrestlers and there was one guy Juggernaut whom we all thought would be a big star because he was 6"+ and like 400 pounds and did moonsaults and bled buckets and hardcore matches and the like and I saw he was going to be on there and when I finally saw it, it was the most disappointing thing because he was, in all actuality, not that good and his pants kept falling down and got not offence in and the big takeaway from the match was Stevie Ray repeatedly going "His britches are falling down, Tony!" So, I hope you do get to see that!

In a much sillier part, I LOVE how they try to get over a catchphrase where one announcer says "It's Raw", the next one says "It's uncensored" and " It's uncooked! " which is genuinely a bad catchphrase (You really want people to think "uncooked" when describing your show? Is that a positive descriptor?) but is made even better that Macho and Bartlett keep forgetting to do their part, then later Vince says "It's uncensored" and Bartlett, who has most likely been talked to during a break, robotically adds "It's uncooked" and Vince stumbles not figuring on Bartlett's Pavlovian response. Eventually at some point they basically stop what they're talking about as Vince says let's get this right, and they go through the whole deal again and Vince is laughing but you know he's just seething underneath. It's a genuinely terrible show in almost all aspects (The Mike Tyson thing with Bartlett doing a bad impression is just interminable) and a hilariously entertaining car-crash especially knowing Vince's desire to control everything about WWE's presentation and his craving of creating a mainstream entertainment show and how badly it fumbles away from that.

Watching the first Monday Night Raw and Rob Bartlett is clearly terrible, but it's funny how he seems to genuinely irritate and befuddle Vince McMahon to the point that when Bartlett spots Doink the Clown in the crowd and calls him "Dork the Clown", Vince McMahon forgets the name of his own creation: "That's Dork! What a name for a clown. Dork?" before Macho goes "His name is Doink" and McMahon echoes it "It's Doink, not Dork."

Even better, the channel that shows Cheers reruns (Yet seems to be trapped in an endless loop of 'Wings' reruns as of late, of all shows!), is CMT. Yes, that did once upon a time stand for Country Music Television but now just shows no-longer-current sitcoms: Cheers, Wings, The Office, Schitt's Creek, that little-seen post-Community Joel McHale show where he worked with millenials. No country music, no country-themed programming, still called 'CMT' with the same logo it had when it showed country music videos all day.

Wrestling weirdness! USA Network acquires the rights to Smackdown over 5 years, USA hasn't really been available in Canada, until this week. In Canada, AEW runs on TSN (Kinda like a Canadian ESPN) but only airs Dynamite (Only showing Collision or the other show whose name I forget when they're in Canada, btu available online if you subscribe to TSN's online deal) while Sportsnet has the rights to WWE. So, WWE goes to Netflix and Sportsnet replaces it with TNA. And tonight, out of nowhere, AEW Collision airs on...USA!? So, Smackdown airs on USA Network in the States, but in Canada the USA Network airs WWE's rival?!

This is the first time I've had the majority of the back WWE catalog at my fingertips as a longtime Netflix subscriber. So far, I've watched the first two 'In Your Houses'. It's actually no wonder the NWO was so big because the WWF is so CORNY, here. I was a bigtime WWF watcher but kinda lost interest in high school/after Bret Hart lost the title, but I gravitated back toward it when Hart formed the Hart Foundation group. But these shows are SO clique-heavy (Which I know in retrospect but wasn't aware of at the time), the first show has Razor match, a Diesel main event, a phonecall from 123 Kid recovering from injury and SO many references to Michaels even though he isn't on the card. The second show has another Razor match, a 123 Kid match, a Michaels match and another Diesel main event. But it's actually quite funny because Diesel does a promo on both shows and they're pretty dreadful, Michaels does 2 promos on the second show and they're REALLY bad, even forgetting what the name of the show is but Vince is just enamored of them, praising them non-stop, laughing at all their jokes. it's WEIRD, man. It's kinda like Vince finally got to sit at the cool table with Shawn and the clique and he's so worried about screwing it up. But the funniest thing on the two shows is Jeff Jarrett doing his concert because, even though Jim Johnston has the songwriting credit on it, I assumed Vince had a lot of input because No. 1. He LOVES the song and No. 2. It sounds like a song you could imagine Vince singing; in the car, in his office, angrily over the phone to Jim Johnston when the early versions don't do what he wants. So, Jarrett "performs" it, Vince keeps saying things like "Wow!" and doing that "fun" Vince chuckle and talking about how surprised he was at it. Then they cut to Petengill in the crowd surveying the fans about it and, of course, Jarrett being a heel and these being WWF fans of the era, the kids are like "It's not bad", "it's terrible" and "it's ok" and you can practically hear Vince's heart breaking going "Oh.", "Well?" and "Tough crowd". I laughed really hard thinking of Vince ranting afterwards "Goddamn kids wouldn't know good music if it kicked them in the ass!" then driving home, listening to 'With My Baby Tonight' and weeping. Also, somebody is really monkeying with the lyrics that are displayed when you try to Google it. "You call me narrow-minded About music and stuff like that So I called you retarded And I'm sorry If I ruined our little chat" No, Musicmatch, I do not think those are the lyrics to "With My Baby Tonight"

Quoted for posterity

There was a terrifically bad Big Vito promo in late WCW where he tried to get over a thousand different catchphrases at once but delivered them all poorly and kind stilted where he said "I've been hearing things...I've been hearing things...I am the goomba of ooh-aah, the Pavarotti of shots to the body and they feel real...good!" that my brother and I had queued up on a video and would just put on every time we walked past the VCR and laugh at.

I DO remember just how hated Adam Page was when he was first in the Elite in ROH, most memorably on here when Adam Cole had the huge lump on his head and one poster asked "What is that awful lump at the side of Cole's head" and someone on here responded "I think they call him 'Adam Page'."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Xqdl3ARi0 Aja Kong vs Chaparita Asari from the Vault...could win the award for worst commentary on a serious match ever!

I did NOT realize that!

Yeah that was a bad one. But the sisters thing was on another level for me. I remember he was in TNA and they told the story about how he was likely to be on the 2004 US Olympic team and ended up having to duck gunfire during a bank robbery, tearing his knee up and ending his amateur wrestling career. And I thought "What an amazing story, why wasn't it told before?!" I mean, you can use that story two ways about how it made him stronger and more determined to prove himself (face route) or how it left him an embittered mean bully with an axe to grind with the universe (heel route). So when they did the interviews, I thought they were going this route and instead told these bizarre stories about his sisters. And then just to make it worse, added an extra layer of transphobia with Sami bringing out his sisters and HA! they were all guys dressed as women!

I only saw a couple minutes of Lashley 2 on 1 (Cheeserbuger's pop was pretty huge!) and I thought Lashley's jacket said "All Night" on the back (It was quite obviously 'Almighty') and laughed uproariously at Lashley coming into AEW and dropping his "I'm a big strong dude" gimmick for a lady's man gimmick. It would only be the second worst Lashley booking (The worst being that weird thing in WWE where he talked about his sisters then his "Sisters" (AKA men in dresses) came out for a promo with Sami Zayn and he beat them all up...that thing just KILLED him for a long time in his WWE return).

Haha, he went right back and did it right the next night...and got 3 assists if I'm not mistaken

This is the highlight of the season as far as I'm concerned.

Hahaha, I've been rolling my eyes or scratching my head for these last two reviews but this is the one that really got me. What a terrible choice of weapon! No wonder Arn in AEW seemed to be packing heat, he was tired of swinging around a log!

Lin-Manuel Miranda (sp.?) dressing up as Dirty Dom is not something I had in my 2024 bingo card.

Man Adam Cole's tan... He looked like he was sick. My niece had jaundice at birth, he looked like she did (She's fine btw). It was weeeeeeeeird. It didn't look like he had overtanned (Like Triple H a few years back!) and it wasn't like a Trump tan. It was a weird off-yellow color. It was genuinely distracting from what was, in fact, a very poor match. I got distracted after that, should I watch anymore?

There is so much STUFF on these shows that I get confused reading these recaps and wonder if I missed something (Rick and Tank are buddies now?!). It made me wonder if I kept them straight back when I was watching and then I remembered when we saw Nitro here and Russo talked about "Your hero Goldberg" and my friend looked at me and went "Wait are we supposed to like him again?!" and, me, who was like my friends' wrestling encyclopedia (There is even a photo in my high school yearbook of me kissing the PWI Almanac!) shrugged my shoulders and said "Uh...I guess?!" As a guy who fashioned himself as some sort of writer for a while, I think that's where these shows hurt the most: they're so badly written. Stories start and stop with no resolution. Character motivations are often nonsensical (especially with Russo's SWERVES). I can tolerate mediocre matches or acting if it's in service of a solid storyline but all three at once!?

I used to rent that video more than any other wrestling show, even though the matches were all dreadful. I don't know how many times my poor GI Joe fed had resets or injuries just so I could run title tournaments!

Shelton-Sammy was all right. Fletcher's promo was all right! Cage-Archer squash was all right, who were their opponents? I never heard them intro'ed and couldn't hear the commentators discuss them much. Was it the guys who were a part of Swerve's army that got the big heel turn on Swerve, followed by getting crushed by a solo Swerve? If it was them, are they done with AEW? Because I'd say that looked like "You've got one more match on your contract" kind of match. Kamille-Aminata looked somewhat like a high school drama class fight scene. I read ahead to see what else was on the show and tapped out in advance.

When my brother worked at Value Village, he found and bought himself a DDP shirt that had such a lousy font on the back that an old lady stopped him one time and said "Excuse me young man, what is Dop?" I feel like everyone would have questions about a shirt that says "HUGH!" on the back, but also that would require someone to actually buy a Hugh Morrus shirt. So, just to get this straight, Russo makes fun of Colorado Springs in the opening promo, but still names a match after it? "I hate this place, bro, New Yawk is so much better..let's book a Colorado Collision match, though!" --- Have they suspended the DQs/countouts yet? I'm pretty sure I vaguely remember them mentioning it at some point early in the Bischoff/Russo era, to make things more "extreme"! But then they run into the the problem with submissions, if there are no rules couldn't a wrestler just keep his opponent in a submission hold whether he gets the ropes or not?! I actually did a double-take when I read about Kidman coming down for the US title match and getting pinned. I thought "No they're building Kidman up for Hogan, they wouldn't use him as fodder a segment or two later for Scott Steiner. Oh no I did read that right."

Those ECW matches where he and Tanaka try to cave in each other's skulls with unprotected chairshots are a real hard watch now.

Man I knew the two of them were close...but... Man I was such a big Mike Awesome fan and they JAG him faster than you can believe. It was clearly a "He's a big star in ECW it'll work." without actually watching him in ECW and noting that Paul E. matched him up with guys that were smaller than him to !ale him bigger, that Paul E. had someone talk for him but also that the bulk of his offence would be unusable in WCW (iirc the one time he does his Awesome Bomb over the ropes through a table he gives Vampiro a concussion!). Also feuding him with Nash makes him look small from the get-go!

One year, my sister's boyfriend/future husband's family and her best friend's family were both out of town, so my mom invited them all to Thanksgiving dinner and I said "What is this the Dead End Kids Thanksgiving?" in mock anger and it made my mom laugh really hard, despite me having no idea who the Dead End Kids even were. Last year I tried to watch a movie with the Dead End Kids and it was dreadful, I think I made it 20 minutes before tapping out. Considering the last Dead End Kids show seemed to be in 1945...Heenan's reference is only about 55 years out of date at this point. It's still kinda funny, though. I mean, no one cared at this point, but it would have been really funny if Duggan showed up to Thunder and someone said to him "You know the Powers that Be left months ago, you don't have to be the janitor anymore...well at least for two weeks...cuz Russo is coming back." I don't remember how long Duggan stays around but there's a surprisingly fun little angle with him coming up at one point (No, not Team Canada). God I HATED all talk about characters and scripts and creative. Still do. There is WAY too much "Is this going off script?" stuff anytime Russo is involved. Imagine if one night on Game of Thrones, they asked Sean Bean (I didn't watch the show and he's the only name I know off the top of my head!) about the new show-runners and he spoke to the camera "Well, the new guys really like characters so that'll be good for me!" I, uh, don't think your age is the defining trait here if you look at the guys Bischoff pushes, Hacksaw. So i was trying to figure out how much Harrises you have left (Falsely remembering them not being around during the Bischoff/Russo era, but Wikipedia says they stick around to the end of WCW!) but then I found these two AMAZING nuggets: "In 2002, the brothers appeared on a TNA PPV wearing shirts with the Nazi SS symbol.[16] They also displayed their SS tattoos (which were later covered up).[17] TNA apologized for the incident after the PPV.[18] In 2018, the CEO of Aroluxe denied the brothers had Nazi ties, claiming the shirts were worn because they were in character as bikers.[16]" OHHHHH they wore the shirts because they were in character as bikers...they're so committed to their character work that they even got SS tattoos! I've had them all wrong all these years! AND "In the same year, Ron Harris retired from professional wrestling and began working for the Christian music record label Beach Street Records." Hmm, Ron Harris...Christian Music guru. There's a joke in there, somewhere, but I'm staying away from it.