Welcome to this week’s Wrestling List. Hope everyone is doing good and solid through this social distancing/quaranting/isolating. It’s definitely been a trying time. With this, there obviously hasn’t been much going on to talk about in the wrestling world. But hey, maybe you need a break and here’s something to read cause there are some topics to cover through all of this.
WrestleMania. What happens to WrestleMania? That has been the hot topic. Will it happen? Will it be cancelled? Will it be postponed? Why were they taking so long to make an announcement? What are you waiting on? All of those questions have been in play from fans. The answer was from Vince McMahon that WrestleMania will indeed happen but not in front of fans. The Tampa Bay event was cancelled and the event was moved to the PC. There was no chance of the event happening in Tampa. The mayor of Tampa said a week ago that he was basically giving Vince McMahon the opportunity to shut it down on his own. If he didn’t do it, the mayor said he was going to do it. You just can’t hold that event as planned. Even if things start getting better, that just still isn’t a safe option anyway. Another problem with that is with international flights being stopped, a HUGE fan base of fans that come in for that event can’t even get into the country. So, WWE is going to run the show but they announced something surprising yesterday that the show will be held over two days. This won’t be the first time WrestleMania has covered two days and I’m obviously making a job about last year’s seemingly to be a 12 hour marathon show that went past midnight at the venue. It looks like WWE appears to be doing this to break the event up a bit especially with it visually not being appealing and they are spreading it around to multiple locations. This is going to be one odd and strange WrestleMania. NXT Takeover and the Hall of Fame have been shut down from all signs. I know the daughter of the British bulldog has posted online saying that she has been told the Hall of Fame will take place over SummerSlam weekend so that will be interesting to see if WWE follows through on that.
WWE continues to run their shows in front of no fans at the PC. This has been something to watch for sure with the uniqueness of it. The first Smackdown last week was just wild from the start. Two commentators. Ring entrances. Talent on the mic cutting promos to no reaction and talking to fans….who aren’t there but watching on TV. With all the circumstances, I think WWE is doing as great a job as you can do with these shows. Triple H and Michael Cole were on commentary on Friday night and Triple H was all sorts of entertaining. I think he had that attitude of hey, we’re all having struggles here and I’m going to have fun and make this entertaining to make you smile at home. It felt the same with the crew there too as Triple H was running camera at one point as well. I was popping at Triple H using the “what a maneuver” line on commentary to which he got a huge laugh out of Michael Cole so he popped him too on it. It felt sooooo quiet in that room at times cause it is quiet. There was one video that leaked online where the women’s tag team opener on Smackdown stopped during the commercial break cause they are only performing to the audience at home. We are in very unusual circumstances over the last week and WWE is doing everything they can with these shows to make that happen. They are also one of the few companies running anything right now in the entertainment world. It reminds me a bit of 9/11 when WWE was the first company to be back after that happened. I still remember that night where they were doing sit-down interviews with talent talking about their week. I remember Lita saying that she had a moment where it was the first time she had smiled that week and she hoped that all of us watching had our first smile watching them perform giving them a bit of normalcy. I also remember The Rock walking out to that big pop on that night and the huge smile I had on my face watching in front of the TV at the time. Why? It was normal. It was fun. And after the week we had had, we needed that. With the tragedy of that awful week, we were able to have two hours to just have some sort of normalcy for the first time that week and watch. Here in 2020, we are all a bundle of nerves and anxiety and I have heard comments from people that loved that Smackdown show because it was a break. They enjoyed laughing at the silliness of Triple H and how they needed to just laugh. Agreed here. It was nice to laugh as well. Is WWE filling these shows with new content full show? Absolutely not and I’m glad they aren’t. There is no way possible to fill that time with new content. They are airing previous matches such as an Elimination Chamber match on Smackdown. With Raw being three hours, they aired the whole men’s Rumble to which I laughed and said, smart, cause that fills half the show there. Raw had a lot of veterans out there cutting promos to a camera. I liked what Edge did talking about Randy Orton. To close the show, we had the Austin silliness with Byron Saxton and Becky. It was fun and whew, was it weird to hear the glass shatter and there not be that monster pop. We are used to over two decades of monster pop with the glass shattering. So, that was a very symbolic thing of where we are at in life right now.
AEW. They are trucking right along doing their thing and nothing proved more than that with the two big reveals on the show last night. They also performed in front of no fans and moved the show near their home base in Florida. They had talent watching in the first couple of rows so it did give it more of an intimate feel of being the slightest bit more normal cause they had more people out there. WWE feels like you are watching them walk out into a quiet theater. We had the first surprise reveal of the artist formerly known as Luke Harper being revealed as the exalted one for the Dark Order. I liked the way they did it. The video package was really well done with the covering of his voice and him wearing a hood to hide his face. Then, he pulls the hood off and reveals who he is as the voice clears up slowly right before that. Then, the video ends and he attacks Daniels. I thought that was very well done. The ending of the show had the biggest reveal. As Inner Circle with Jericho are cutting their promo about how Cody and crew are down one member for the “we’re not calling it war games” match, we see and hear a drone start buzzing in front of the screen. I said IS THAT VANGUARD ONE???? It lands in the ring and then the camera pulls wide and we see Matt Hardy up in the stands. He is in Broken Matt Hardy gimmick while he starts doing the delete chants. It was great stuff.I thought AEW did a great job here doing two big reveals while doing it under these circumstances.
I watched the Stone Cold Steve Austin Broken Skull Session with Bret Hart. I really enjoyed it and the time flew by. Austin goes into the topic of Montreal immediately and they spend 20 minutes discussing the backstage happenings of it and the lead up and fall out. There were things in there that Bret said that I had never heard so there are some new details in there. Austin and Bret have a lot of respect for one another and have always spoken highly of one another. Austin and Bret both tell the story of how Bret saw Austin having been fired from WCW and pushed Vince to bring him in saying how great of a talent he was. Bret also tells the story of how he got told of don’t go to WCW. They are a mess there and won’t use you right. Bret said “you told me that” to which Austin said “did I? was it me that said that?” Austin and Bret talk about the mess that was WCW at that time. One thing that you will really love is when they get into the Austin/Bret rivalry stuff. They roll footage from clips of their matches while they talk over it. I’m glad they put a major focus on their Survivor Series 1996 match which was their first big match in that rivalry. I always thought that match was great and it is overlooked cause of their incredible match at WrestleMania 13. That Survivor Series match was awesome though and they spend a bunch of time talking about it and watching it. They then, of course, do the same with WM13. That is awesome to watch. Lots of backstory and they just really enjoy looking at the footage looking like buddies getting together discussing old stories. They were afraid that the double turn was not going to work and Bret said he was very worried about that as the match started. Hoping that they could do the story of the match good to make the crowd double turn like they hoped. Note from me. I was not a Bret fan at all through the early to late 90’s so I was all behind Austin through that whole feud. So, I was already on the Austin train by Survivor Series instead of WrestleMania. LOL. The Rumble finish and then WrestleMania was just making me louder on the train. If I remember right, I believe Bret said that the WM13 match was the favorite of his career cause of the match and the story they told of getting to the double turn. He said when he talks to fans that didn’t get to watch him that this is the match he shows them to view. Bret Hart is still not a fan of Goldberg. Still very critical of him for ending his career saying Goldberg had a reputation of injuring opponents saying Hennig was all the time hurting from working with him. He said he told Goldberg before their match to “just don’t hurt me out there” and then he took the kick that caused the concussion and ended up finishing his career. The two discuss the irony of that Bret never injured an opponent through his whole career and then that was how his career ended was from an opponent not taking care of him. Austin joked saying that he could never say he never injured an opponent unfortunately cause he worked stiff at times and could basically accidentally potato a guy out of nowhere. LOL. This is a really fun interview. If you grew up loving that era of Austin and Bret like I did, you’ll love them looking back on it. I think that is one of the greatest feuds of all time and one of the greatest rivalries of storytelling of all time well with all they accomplished.
Trying to think of anything else to discuss but that is really all I have. Wrapping it up for this week. I’ll jump up with Lists from time to time depending on if there is anything to discuss. Gives you a break and gives me one too. Keep yourself safe out there!
About the Author
