One Step Forward - Two Steps Back

ROH: Respect Is Earned
Manhattan Center - New York, NY
This show is intended to be the first Ring Of Honor pay-per-view event.  As excited as I am to be in attendance, I think this is a really bad idea for the company.  Shortly after ROH made the announcement that they're expanding to nationwide distribution on pay per view, TNA announced that they will no longer allow any of their contracted performers to appear at a Ring Of Honor show.  So, that means no more Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, AJ Styles, Homicide, Austin Aries, or anyone else who is currently under TNA contract.  That means that some of the biggest names in company history who would appeal to potential ppv buyers will be nowhere in sight.  Also, a significant percentage of main event level talent who aren't being pulled out of the company by TNA are wrestlers who are visiting from Japan and have agreed to a limited number of dates.  Without wrestlers contracted to TNA or Japanese promotions, I don't think that have enough left to maintain the company at the level they've been at for the past two years, let alone to grow and expand it successfully to a nationwide audience.

To make matters worse, this show isn't airing live on pay-per-view - it's being pre-taped for broadcast later on in the year, and it's not even going to be available throughout the country at the same time.  Dish Network will be the first carrier to air the show on July 1st and In Demand not getting it until nearly three weeks later.  It seems that this company believes that the recipe for success is to sell a nearly two month old show as a pay-per-view without most of the top talent that put them on the map in the first place.  For their sake, I hope they're right, but I can tell you that if I wasn't already a fan of this company, I highly doubt that this show would have made me a fan.

With the exception of the Takeshi Morishima vs BJ Whitmer match, which lasted about three minutes and felt more like a burial of Whitmer than a buildup of Morishima, all of the matches were good.  However, the structure of the show felt strange, and not in a good way.  Nigel McGuinness came out at one point to challenge Morishima to a match.  Then Morishima came out, followed by Bryan Danielson.  This led to a 2-on-1 beatdown of McGuinness until Kenta came in to make the save.  Finally, McGuinness challenged Morishima and Danielson to face he and Kenta in a tag team match in the main event.  I don't know if it was a problem with the microphones or the speakers, but I could barely understand what anyone was saying.  But even if it was crystal clear, the whole skit felt out of place for an ROH show.  It felt like they all got together to watch a few episodes of Monday Night Raw and were trying to imitate their format.  It did not feel like the Ring Of Honor that made me fall in love with the company in the first place.

Later in the night, Homicide came out to the ring with Julius Smokes to give his farewell speech to the ROH fans.  I was hoping someone would run out to interrupt him and we'd get one last match with Homicide going out on top in front of his hometown crowd, but it didn't happen.

I know this is going to come across as negative, but I don't mean it to be.  This was a very enjoyable show with a lot of great matches.  It's not my favorite ROH show that I've ever attended, but I'd probably put it in the top five.  However, it does feel like the company has decided to go in a different direction and are moving away from a company focused on the best in-ring product in the country in favor of trying to be WWE Junior, and that's not a change that I'm especially happy about.  I hope that I'm wrong.

Results:

• Brent Albright defeated Tank Toland

• ROH World Championship Match
  Takeshi Morishima defeated BJ Whitmer

• Naomichi Marufuji defeated Rocky Romero

• Davey Richards defeated Erick Stevens

• ROH World Tag Team Championship Match
  The Briscoe Brothers (Jay Briscoe and Mark Briscoe) defeated Claudio Castagnoli and Matt Sydal

• Sara Del Rey defeated Daizee Haze

• Tag Team Scramble Match
  Kevin Steen and El Generico defeated Irish Airborne (Jake Crist and David Crist), Jimmy Rave and "Scrap Iron" Adam Pearce, and Pelle Primeau and Mitch Franklin

• Roderick Strong defeated Delirious

• "The American Dragon" Bryan Danielson and Takeshi Morishima defeated Kenta and Nigel McGuinness

Brain Droppings

Brain Droppings
George Carlin (1998)
My favorite entertainer, and quite possibly my favorite person on earth that I don't know personally has turned 70 years old today.  I don't think there's ever been a person whose words cut through to my brain quite as directly as George Carlin.  It's not just that he's hysterically funny.  He has an outsiders view of the world that I've not found from any other source than my own brain.  It's as if he's from another planet and he's offering observations about a world and a species that he is studying academically, without any form of personal attachment.  I can't begin to explain how strongly I identify with this perspective.

I got to see him perform six years ago at the Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre, and I hope to see him again.  Maybe one of these days, I'll ask him to sign my book.  Brain Droppings was Carlin's first book.  It was published in 1998, and the audiobook won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Comedy Album in 2001.  It was his third Grammy for a comedy album, and now that I write this, I noticed that he accepted the Grammy for Brain Droppings twelve days after the show in Wilkes-Barre.

The entire book is great, but the part that speaks the loudest to me is the preface.  I've scanned it below.  The part in the red box matches who I am and how I think closer than anything else I've ever found, and he explains it better than I could.  It's not necessarily who I want to be.  Truth be told, I sometimes wish I could just melt into society, be normal, and go along to get along like just about everybody else.  I can fake it for short bursts, but it's like bailing water out of the Titanic with a bucket.  Eventually, it's going down and it's taking me with it.  If you're reading this and you want to get to know me better, read these pages.  If you still want to get to know me better after that, it's on you.

The Hitman Meets The Bartman

WWF Magazine
May 1997

Ten years ago, Bret "The Hitman" Hart teamed up with Bart Simpson on the cover of WWF Magazine, just six months before the Montreal Screwjob that ended Bret's career in the World Wrestling Federation.

Grandpa Grabs A Heinie

Cherry Blossom Festival
Kirby Park - Wilkes-Barre, PA
Angie and I went shopping at Sam's Club and out to the Old Country Buffet for lunch with Grandma and Grandpa.  Afterwards, we stopped at Kirby Park where the Cherry Blossom Festival was being held.  While looking through a t-shirt rack at one of the vendors, Grandpa discovered this Heineken T-Shirt which features a bikini clad woman straddling a beer bottle with the caption "grab a heinie".  Grandpa decided to not add this classy garment to his wardrobe.

No... It's Bouquet

Keeping Up Appearances
BBC One (1990 - 1995)
My grandmother was recently given a set of four VHS tapes of this BBC classic comedy.  I've watched it before this week, but I don't think I full appreciated it until now.  It's very funny!

Dad At Dinner

Picture In Picture

Grandpa is looking at prints of photos from Easter that I recently got back from Snapfish.  He's looking at this picture of my dad and stepmom:

Spring Is In The Air

Little Sammy loves to lay down in the grass.  I think he's happy that it's finally starting to get warmer.

Rey de Voladores

Chikara: Rey de Voladores
New Alhambra Arena - Philadelphia, PA
There's nothing like a Sunday afternoon show at ECW arena.  You get to spend a few hours munching on soft pretzels and watching awesome pro wrestling, and then head down the road to Tony Luke's for cheesesteaks and bacon cheese fries.

This show has been called Rey de Voladores, which translates to King of Flyers.  It's a tournament of sorts which began with two four-way elimination matches, with the winner of each match facing off in a singles match to determine the winner.

Here are the results of the show:

• Create-A-Wrestler defeated Darkness Crabtree

• Rey de Voladores Semi-Final Four Way Elimination Match
  Chuck Taylor defeated Ricochet, Pac and Retail Dragon
  ^{Ricochet eliminated Retail Dragon, Pac eliminated Ricochet, Chuck Taylor defeated Pac}

• Rey de Voladores Semi-Final Four Way Elimination Match
  Lince Dorado defeated Equinox, Jigsaw and Ruckus
  ^{Lince Dorado eliminated Equinox, Jigsaw eliminated Ruckus, Lince Dorado eliminated Jigsaw}

• Six Man Tag Team Match
  The Order Of The Neo Solar Temple (UltraMantis Black, Crossbones and Hydra) defeated Drew Gulak, Andy Sumner and Tim Donst

• "Sweet and Sour" Larry Sweeney defeated Shane Storm

• Fire Ant defeated Lance Steel

• "The King of Diamonds" Eddie Kingston vs. Hallowicked ended in a no-contest before the opening bell

• The Colony (Soldier Ant and Worker Ant) defeated BLK-OUT (Joker and Sabian)

• Rey de Voladores Finals
  Chuck Taylor defeated Lince Dorado to win the Rey de Voladores tournament

• Chris Hero defeated Claudio Castagnoli
  ^{"Lightning" Mike Quackenbush was the special guest referee for the match}

• Chikara Campeonatos de Parejas Match
  Two out of Three Falls Match
  F.I.S.T. (Icarus and Gran Akuma) defeated Up In Smoke (Cheech and Cloudy) to retain the tag team championship

     

Claudio Castagnoli holds Chris Hero down while referee Mike Quackenbush looks on.

Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli prepare to lock up.

Chris Hero attempts to make peace with Mike Quackenbush after his victory over Claudio Castagnoli.

Icarus stands victorious over Cloudy after the tag team championship main event as Gran Akuma looks at the crowd.

One Last Great Memory With Colt Cabana

ROH: April 14, 2007
Inman Sports Club - Edison, NJ
Less than two months ago, I was at a show in Philadelphia which was the second in a series of six shows that were collectively known as The Fifth Year Festival.  These shows began in New York City and ended with two shows in Liverpool, England.

The main event of the Philadelphia show had an unexpected ending of Takeshi Morishima  defeating Homicide for the ROH World Championship.  It's not that Morishima is an undercard or untalented wrestler.  He's a big dude who is surprisingly agile in the ring for his size, and he works a hard hitting match that could easily main event anywhere in the world.  It was shocking because, to the best of my knowledge, Morishima is not a contracted ROH talent.  He works for Pro Wrestling Noah and, as far as any of the fans were told, was temporarily touring the United States.  Then I remembered that the Fifth Year Festival ended in England, and ROH has a big British dude on their roster named Nigel McGuinness who they've been building up for years, and it all made sense.  

I thought for sure that they were booking Morishima to be a transitional champion to get the belt onto Nigel in his home country.  Then, Morishima would go back to Japan and Nigel would come back to the states and spend the spring and summer feuding with Homicide.

Well, that didn't happen.  In fact, Takeshi Morishima didn't wrestle on the Liverpool shows at all, and he's still in the United States to main event in tonight's show.  I did get one thing right - he was scheduled to defend the title against Nigel McGuinness, and I thought for sure that we were going to see another title change.  However, that wasn't the case.  After an intense match with a few near falls for McGuinness, Morishima won via pinfall after hitting three Backdrop Drivers.

As awesome as the main event was, my favorite part of the show was the fifth match of the night.  Colt Cabana has been a part of Ring Of Honor since its first year in operation back in 2002, and he was one of the highlights of every show that he wrestled on.  I met him a few times, and he was one of the kindest people I have ever spoken to, inside or outside of professional wrestling.

Colt signed with the WWE earlier this month, so he'll be joining his old buddy CM Punk on television.  He's finishing out his ROH shows that he's already been booked to appear in, so this was his farewell match to Ring Of Honor fans on the East Coast.  After his match against Doug Williams, he gave a nice speech to the fans where he said that he wasn't moving up, he was just moving on.  It's not going to be the same around here without Colt Cabana, but I'm extremely happy for him for the opportunity he's been given  It truly could not have happened to a nicer dude.

Speaking of nice dudes, I bumped into Tank Toland before the show.  Look at the size of this dude's arm!  His bicep is the size of my freaking head!  Tank joined the ROH roster late last year after wrestling as James Dick (one half of the tag team, The Dicks) in WWE.  He's part of Larry Sweeney's Sweet & Sour Incorporated faction as Chris Hero's personal trainer.  He's got the size and the look, and he's great in the ring, so this can definitely work really well if the company gets behind it.  I can absolutely picture he and Hero having a lot of success in ROH as a Hart Foundation style tag team, with Hero as the Bret Hart technician, and Toland as the Jim Neidhart muscle.

Results:

• Eddie Edwards and Jason Blade defeated Sweet & Sour Inc. (Chris Hero and Tank Toland)

• Top Of The Class Trophy Match
  Pelle Primeau defeated Shane Hagadorn to win the trophy

• Rocky Romero defeated Claudio Castagnoli

• Kevin Steen and El Generico defeated Jay Briscoe and Erick Stevens*
  * the match begin with Jay Briscoe and Erick Stevens teaming up, but the No Remorse Corps attacked and injured Stevens five minutes into the match.  The injured Mark Briscoe ran to the ring to take his place, and took the pinfall loss.

• "The Anarchist" Doug Williams defeated "Classic" Colt Cabana

• Sara Del Rey defeated Ernie Osiris

• Shingo Takagi defeated "Iron" Matt Cross

• The No Remorse Corps (Roderick Strong and Davey Richards) defeated Jack Evans & Delirious

• ROH World Heavyweight Championship Match
  Takeshi Morishima defeated Nigel McGuinness to retain the title

I was hoping to see Colt Cabana after the show, just to shake the man's hand and thank him for being a big part of what makes coming to these shows so much fun.  I didn't see him, but I did have the opportunity to meet some of the other wrestlers from tonight's show.

Although I didn't bump into Colt, I did get to meet his opponent from tonight, Doug Williams.  Williams is a British wrestler who was a regular in ROH show early on, and he was the second ROH Pure Champion in company history.

This is Shingo Takagi, who came to Ring Of Honor last year from the Dragons Gate promotion in Japan.  He held the ROH Tag Team Championship last month with fellow Blood Generation  member Naruki Doi.

Rocky Romero is one of the most accomplished wrestlers in the world today.  He was trained by Antonio Inoki and wrestled for New Japan as Black Tiger IV where he had a four month reign as the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion.  He also became a big Lucha Libre star in Mexico where he was a three time World Lightweight Champion in CMLL.  In Ring Of Honor, he's a former Tag Team Champion as one half of the Havana Pitbulls, and a member of The Rottweilers faction with Homicide, Low Ki, and his Pitbulls teammate Ricky Reyes.

In the last ROH show in Edison, Romero walked out on Ricky Reyes in a match against The Briscoe Brothers, officially breaking up the tag team.  He is the newest member of a group that also includes Roderick Strong and Davey Richards called the No Remorse Corps.  Not gonna lie, it's not the greatest name I've ever heard for a wrestling faction, but its made up of three of the most talented performers in ROH, so they've got a hell of a lot of great matches in their future.  I look forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Last, but certainly not least, I met the ROH World Champion himself, Takeshi Morishima completely by accident.  I was headed out to my car to go home, and I guess he must not be parked too far from where I was, because I literally almost bumped into the man.  He was a very cool guy and was happy to take a picture with me.  A smaller man who was with him seemed a bit less happy.  I don't speak Japanese, but I'm guessing that he said something along the lines of "stop taking pictures with this dork and let's get the hell out of here".  Sorry dude.

Yup... I'll be there!

UPDATE: This show was released on DVD under the name "Fighting Spirit".  It is available on ROHWrestling.com.

A Night At The Grindhouse

Grindhouse: Planet Terror / Death Proof
RC Theaters Movies 14 - Wilkes Barre, PA

Directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino have partnered up to create a double feature of films that pay tribute to the grindhouse theaters that they grew up with.  Both movies are deliberately scuffed up and made to look like old prints that have been heavily used, including skips in the story where a "missing reel" card is shown.

In addition to the two feature length films, they invited guest directors to create their own ads and trailers for grindhouse-inspired movies.  These included Machete, Werewolf Women Of The SS, Thanksgiving, and my personal favorite, a movie that's simply called "Don't", which is a play off of all of the slasher flicks of the 70's and 80's with titles that begin with that word, such as Don't Answer The Phone, Don't Go In The House, Don't Look In The Attic, Don't Look In The Basement, etc.

The first film of the double feature was directed by Robert Rodriguez.  It's an absolutely batshit crazy action/sci-fi/horror flick called Planet Terror.  It stars Rose McGowan, who you can see on the poster as having an assault rifle for a leg.  She doesn't start out the film that way, but the story that gets you there is pure insanity, and I loved every minute of it!

The second half of Grindhouse was Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, and for as much as I loved Planet Terror, I enjoyed Death Proof even more.  It stars Kurt Russell as a homicidal maniac stuntman who hunts and kills women using his tricked out muscle car, of which the drivers seat has been made to be "death proof".  Whereas Planet Terror is a tribute to zombie horror, Death Proof is a tribute to car chase thrillers, and it is done to perfection!

UPDATE (October 2022): We went to see a double feature at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater that included Death Proof.  I wanted to see if I could find the exact date that I originally saw it in theaters during its initial theatrical run, which is how I stumbled across my ticket stub.  It was in a scrapbook that I was putting together at the time, so it's covered in scotch tape and it has faded pretty badly over the years, but I figured I'd add it in here to this page of what has become my digital scrapbook.

Easter Sunday

Little Sammy with his new Easter Bunny toy.

Sammy laying in one of his favorite spots.

Sammy still laying in the kitchen near the back door.

Trish, Dad and Angie in the living room.  Sammy is on Dad's lap.

Sammy loves Dad.

Angie and Grandpa in the living room with Little Sammy.

Grandpa laughing at the dinner table.

Grandpa and Trish at the table in the kitchen.

Dad and Trish in the kitchen.

Happy Birthday, Dad

Lucha Libre In Northeast PA

Chikara
American Legion Hall - March 24, 2007
Hellertown, PA
I feel very lucky that I live in an area that has a lot of indy shows.  As much as I love Ring Of Honor, I think that Chikara is my favorite company out of all of them.

Chris Hero vs Ricochet

Chris Hero vs Ricochet

Results:

• Chuck Taylor defeated Billy Roc

• Equinox defeated Brodie Lee

• Crossbones defeated Create-A-Wrestler

• Eight Man Tag Team Match
  Hallowicked and The Colony (Fire Ant, Soldier Ant and Worker Ant) defeated BLK-OUT (Ruckus, Sabian, Joker and Eddie Kingston)

• Chris Hero defeated Ricochet

• ShaneSaw (Jigsaw and Shane Storm) defeated The Olsen Twins (Colin Olsen & Jimmy Olsen)

• Claudio Castagnoli) defeated "Lightning" Mike Quackenbush

• F.I.S.T. (Icarus and Gran Akuma) defeated Lince Dorado & Sicodelico Jr.

UPDATE:  This show was released on DVD under the name "Time Will Prove Everything".  It is available on ChikaraPro.com.

Pop Up Puppy

Sammy cannot help but to be adorable.