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| If you can see it, you can be it Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Since yesterday was my first live show in about a decade and my first pay-per-view, I wanted to throw out my viewing of the live experience since I haven't seen what you guys saw on TV so we can compare and contrast as a group. Let's cook.
Axxess, Etc.
But having had a taste of the ice cream triple scoop before it got smacked out of our hands?
It seems like an awfully long time to wait before the marriage.
Axxess, Etc.
- Several NXT matches took place throughout the day and afternoon leading into bell time. Of highest note, Adrian Neville pulling off a Red Arrow to best Conor O'Brien, another standout match between Paige and Emma for the NXT Women's Championship with the champion retaining, and Bo Dallas retaining as well over Sami Zayn in an NXT Championship match much to the dismay of a few awesome children behind me. Emma also coerced Byron Saxton and the referee into doing the Emma Dance before the match because of course she did.
- Next year when I use my press privileges for gain to attend the show (assuming they continue to keep turning Summerslam into WrestleMania West) I will attempt to find the security guards who accidentally (?) cblocked me from meeting Emma and retribution will be had.
- Total Divas cameras were all over the joint, as Nattie Neidhart and Menounos won a bout over Eva Marie and one of the Bellas.
- It turned out I was one of a handful of attendees rocking Wyatt cosplay, though I'm pretty sure the guy with the actual full-length lantern gave security fits when the time came.
- The crowd was heavily invested in the two big matches, with Bryan and Punk being the most common shirts seen in and around Staples (the Respect the Beard shirt would sell out in short order at the kiosk behind where I sat in the medium-to-back of the second tier, at 4:00 to the announce table being able to see the whole stage).
- It was one thing to catch a fleeting glimpse of it earlier at Axxess, but another with the pre-game show setup right off to my left -- HBK was rocking a 1.4 Bryan and a .7 Kaczynski.
- SIERRA HOTEL INDIA started just as my friends and I entered the concourse, and we were able to catch the US Title match in its entirety. Surrounded by fellow wrestling hipsters (™ Shoemaker Industries), Mark Henry got the biggest pop for coming out and everyone was surprised Teddy Long didn't show up to turn this into a six-man tag, playa. Van Dam was highly popular as WWE seems to have settled into a groove into picking from a handful of good guys who will pop the crowd huge in opening the show with them.
- Surprising at the time but not in retrospect to see the ringworkers milling around with the Ring Of Fire setup, checking settings from "this is working" to "who needs eyebrows?" (the latter happened exactly once and generally happened during bumps in the match proper).
- dah DAH! dah dah dah dah dah dah dah DAH!
- I threw a lot of shade at Jojo during her Main Event debut, but she can belt a national anthem. She's my second-favorite singing Jojo. The Hacksaw chant began after she finished.
- Cell phone lights and my lantern went in the sky as Broken Out In Love came on over the PA, with some fans clapping to the beat and more than a few people cameraside in the good seats swaying back and forth in time to the music. NXT nation rep to the death! All that was really heard live in the arena during the Dante match was the WHOOOOOOOOOSH! everytime the flames...oh, TH already beat me to it. Well, then. Eventually the brilliance of Rowan and Harper finding a way to outsmart the rules came through and while the crowd wanted the Undertaker badly, it wasn't to be as Brother Wyatt introduced Kane to Sister Abigail. The stair decapitation made a big noise and caused the crowd to ooh loudly before they dragged Kane off into heeldom.
- Sandow's promo was hilarious, and a large segment of the crowd was displeased to find out Cody was sans flavor savor. Everything was crisply done and I wasn't the only one shocked at how fast the match flew by.
- Del Rio was really popular in the building (quelle surprise) but so was Christian, so the crowd generally pogoed back in forth between cheering whoever was on offense before chanting for the other guy to rally back. This kicked out the jams and seeing Del Rio's offense live and Christian's selling was a joy. Almost worth the price of admission alone, ¡SI! chants and some face time for Renee Young, who could complain? If Del Rio wants to continue being a hero to the Latinos, here's what he should do: a) wrestle in Southern California and b) put on matches like that c) with that kind of hard, impressive offense. Liked this better than Cena/Bryan, honestly.
- dah DAH! dah dah dah dah dah dah dah DAH!
- Took a brief sojourn to the water closet during the Total Divas match (sorry, boss) to reset the vocal chords after the barnburner of the previous match. Oh, did nobody care until the catfight and the Sharpshooter. And yes, Paige/Emma was better.
- Oh, Ryback. And that poor catering guy having to be the Lisa Simpson to his Barney Gumble.
- The crowd loved Lesnar. The crowd really loved Punk, with a vocal majority yelling It's Clobberin' Time! alongside the Guru of Grammar. The crowd wanted to see violence. They got it. Punk got a lot of chants, basically because Brock was beating the end-of-the-show out of him for most the opening portion of the no DQ match. (I love the fact they're part timing Lesnar with all these no-DQ matches. We want to see Brock smash and things have broken accordingly, with the E saying "We're not going to explicitly say 'Watch this land monster throw dudes around and make people cringe who usually know better'...but we're not not saying that, either.") Violence + storytelling = pro graps at its finest. But don't have a rematch until I can be there live again.
- Those Doritos suck. Cool Ranch or GTFO.
- The intergender tag didn't do anything special but was perfectly acceptable. Maybe I'm just downgrading it because seeing the Chickbusters fight hurts my soul. Of note, sitting with NXT Nationers who know what Big E's really capable of, we started counting his offensive attacks against Ziggler (who went Full Ziggler at one point b/c duh) and he never reached the full fingers on the hand. Hmm.
- ...whelp, it was probably better than Miz wrestling. Besides, the man's worth a few figures and is with Maryse; I guarantee in his position my response to a chorus of boos would be a chuckle as I headed home to lay down on my cash Saul's goons style with my French-Canadian goddess.
- Daniel Bryan couldn't've been more beloved if he lowered the cost of gas to 99 cents a gallon while saving a basket of kittens from a burning building. Of hilarious note, a few rows in my section got up and turned their back on Cena before he even came out, not turning around until his theme music died down. Yes, I joined in. Yes, I'd be doing so again before the hour was over. And if TH was grumpypants about the chants during the Total Divas match I'd sure love to see his reaction to certain Canadians and former best in the worlds getting namedropped chantwise after Bryan's consecutive Germans. Anyways, D-Bry chants resounded when he wasn't on offense and in a part of the arena where there were only a couple of kids his support was total and absolute. The surprise wasn't in the win, but in it coming via busiaku (though I would've sworn on firstborn that that small package was going to tie it up in a bow).
- And then I left and everything was fine. Let the Bearded Era begin, everybody! WHOO! YES! YES! YES!
- ...
- ...
- ...you know, I hadn't even finished the sentence "I'd feel a lot better about this if Triple H wasn't still in the ring"?
- There's a pretty well-known story in late night television history about Carson swinging Letterman towards CBS after NBC wanted to call a mea culpa on Jay Leno but make Dave wait 18 months to get the Tonight Show after him, saying "It sure does seem to be an awfully long engagement to wait for the marriage" (something along those lines) and telling Dave if he was put into that position he'd rather just leave. So I have to wait half that time for the third every-decade-we-let-the-little-guy-have-his-WrestleMania-moment. I'm going to have to wade through more McSingularity, Triple H and Randy Orton cutting promos together, and everything else that's making me roll my eyes and sigh resignedly. Even with the audience being how it was, I don't know who this invisible fan is they suddenly think is now going to be on Daniel Bryan's side that wasn't before. Little boys were wearing fake beards. Little girls had on Respect the Beard shirts that looked like dresses on them.
If you're reading this, we share similar thoughts and you were on the bandwagon back when it was unformed nails and wood in high school gyms or ROH. And very few people had my turn-my-back-on-the-whole-thing reaction I did to the endgame. You would've been hardpressed to see all the people I saw in the cheapseats, luxury boxes, and second level cheering and striking the Orton pose that two heel turns had obstenibly just happened. Even giving them the benefit of the doubt with the history of the cash-in superceding them there was plenty of time for BOO THOSE MEN and live, it almost didn't happen at all. - After the credits rolled, Bryan got up and got another chant. This series of events may be making him regress emotionally. His head shook back and forth. For a brief moment, two letters were in vogue. Then they got subsumed by an eight-letter euphenism for Michael Jordan on the toilet for the better part of a minute. Bryan heard it, encouraged it, and looked like a man flailing wildly drowning under the weight of quicksand when he did instead of someone trying to stoke a chant before he trode slowly backstage. It was almost like he couldn't hear the ones of us who were chanting for him at all.
But having had a taste of the ice cream triple scoop before it got smacked out of our hands?
It seems like an awfully long time to wait before the marriage.