All In

How many of you are in? Are you "all in"?

Cody Rhodes is "all in". The Young Bucks are "all in". By the looks of it, 10,000 fans will be All In at the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. From what I've been reading, thus far, this will be the first show to have 10,000 fans (or more) that was held by a company NOT NAMED WWE or NWA/JCP/WCW.

If I understand this correctly, in the last quarter century, the IWC was the last promotion to pull this off in the Continental US. If you want to exclude lucha libre promotions, you'd probably be looking at WCCW's Parade of Champions (May 4, 1986) or AWA's WrestleRock (April 20, 1986).

Just to put it simply, this is easily the biggest news hitting American wrestling in a long time. We've got a show being run in September in the Chicago area hitting at least 10,000 fans and no major promoter is involved.

We're talking about Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks running the show. At this moment, I'm not aware of anyone being announced for the show. Yet, according to Cody Rhodes' twitter account, it took 29 minutes & 36 seconds to sell out.

Think about that for a moment. Just under a half hour and they've sold out all 10,000 tickets. If this is a sign of things to come, the American wrestling scene is hot......and it's only getting hotter. Anyone outside WWE that can sell out a show with 10,000 fans or more is proof that fans are craving something different.

I don't intend this as a bash against WWE, by any means. For many fans, including myself, there's a need for something different.....an alternative, in all reality. TNA/Impact/GWF....whatever they're calling themselves......has failed to provide that alternative. Cody Rhodes & the Young Bucks are attempting to pull this off.

Obviously, we won't know if this is a success until the show is actually done. Then, and only then, can we determine if this was worth the effort.

I have to admit, I love the guts this is taking. This is a make-or-break scenario. Success could take them to whole new heights......heights that wouldn't have been possible just a few years ago. Failure will break them if they don't learn anything from it. I suppose you could make that argument if they succeed. If they learn nothing when/if they succeed, that's just as bad as losing.

Personally, I think they know what they're doing. I desperately want them to succeed. As a fan, there are few things I know. One of those things that I do know is simple. When fans have choices, it forces the rest of the business to get better. This includes WWE, as well. If WWE sees fans checking out something that they have no involvement in, WWE will (hopefully) see what the competition is doing differently. Maybe this will mean a few improvements in their own product.

At the very least, we'll have something different to watch. Hopefully, this is more then a one-off deal. I don't know Rhodes & the Bucks will use this as a chance to run their own promotion. Maybe they'll do cross promotion deals with different promoters. Who knows?

I'm excited to see where this goes. As I know more, I'll continue discussing the All In show.

Roman Reigns: The Failed Experiment

I know I'm about to repeat what's been stated countless times before. I realize it's repetitive at this point, so I'll try to get to the point as quickly as I can.

For the last few years, WWE has been trying hard to push Roman Reigns as a face. Try as they may, fans have either grown to love him or they hate him with a passion. My perspective, the haters seem to out number the fans. The more I've seen Reigns, the harder it is for me to watch him.

Personally, I don't think this is Roman's fault. I don't want to take anything away from him. He busts his ass night in & night out. Unfortunately, busting your ass simply isn't always going to be good enough. Whether or not you want to talk about basketball, music, Television, the Big Screen or daily life of the average person, hard work simply isn't enough.

Some people, regardless of the industry they're in, always find ways of skating through. Some people manage to succeed because of politics. Some people can actually work hard and succeed at it. Wrestling is the same thing. There are times where busting your hump isn't enough.

For Roman, I don't have any doubts that he's working hard. You don't make it into a company like WWE if you are a lazy jerk. I suspect the problem lays elsewhere. This could probably be debated for years to come. Since I'm only looking at the problem from a fans' perspective, all I can give is a fans' perspective.

Based purely off my own vantage point, part of the problem is WWE trying to hard to make Roman the face of the company. It appears as though John Cena's time at the top has finally come to an end, for one reason or another, WWE wants Roman to be "the guy". This could be a simple case of trying too hard. How often does this happen in life where people try too hard to be well-liked by others, only ending up pissing everyone off in the process?

Happens far more then any of us could comprehend. I'd bet my bottom dollar this is one of the main problems with Roman, right now. WWE is just too desperate to make Roman so well loved by the fans, many fans have automatically rejected him. Same problem Cena had for many years. WWE tried too hard to get fans to love him.

With all the access fans have to wrestling, this sort of tactic doesn't work like it did 30-40 years ago. Back then, you could push wrestlers to the moon and get away with it because you didn't get to see them every week. If we did see certain wrestlers more often, there was only so much time on TV they could get as promoters needed to make every minute count.

There was no YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or other forms of social media to interact with wrestlers or watch them on.

Over-saturation is another problem for Roman. Tied in with WWE's efforts to get the fans to love Roman, fans are naturally going to boo him.

Here comes the problem. Fans want to boo him, regardless of what WWE wants them to do. Typically, this would be a chance to make a heel turn. Considering the investment WWE has in making Roman the top good guy, I don't imagine that happening anytime in the foreseeable future. Yet, this would be a great chance to do it.

WWE could still push Roman as a top tier wrestler. He'd easily be the top heel, automatically. Fans would easily want to see Roman's teeth kicked in on a nightly basis. There's only a few people that fans would readily accept as top faces. Because of this, Roman would easily viewed as a top ass kicker. Anyone that would take him on would automatically be cheered like the Second Coming of Christ....in a manner of speaking.

A simple heal turn would be a wise decision, in my humble opinion. I realize that the odds of this happening are pretty slim. I realize that WWE wants Roman as their top face, regardless of what I think. I'm fine with that.

If WWE wants to keep Roman as their top face, that's their choice. I doubt I'll ever agree with their choices 100%. Then, that's the nature of the beast.

the worst of wrestling.....part 1

KERWIN WHITE

Poor Chavo. For the life of me, I'll never understand why he got saddled with a character like this.

As a well established wrestler, as well as a member of the legendary Guerrero Family, WWE decided to repackage Chavo. Not like he needed a new gimmick, but WWE was hell bent on making it happen anyway.

What did they give Chavo? He was repackaged as a middle class yuppy who loved golf. He'd drive to the ring in a golf cart. Dolph Ziggler was his caddy before he became a male cheerleader, but that's for latter.

Take a few seconds to notice how Chavo had to dress. Yeah.....that's embarrassing.

And we were supposed to forget that his name was Chavo Guerrero. We were expected to call him Kerwin White. His catchphrase was "If it's note White, it's not Right."

If memory serves me right, his entrance theme was played by Frank Sinatra.

Kerwin was a completely stereotypical middle class, conservative character. This might've worked if it weren't for the fact that Chavo was already well established. He's talented. Chavo just didn't need a character like this.

MAN MOUNTAIN ROCK

Previously working in WCW as Maxx Payne, he would debut in the WWF somewhere in February 1995. All I recall of his time in the company was him :"playing" the guitar (shown in the above photo). 

According to his Wikipedia page, MMR was released in October of the same year. 

P.N. NEWS

Yo baby, yo baby, yo baby, yo!

That was the catchphrase to the current craptastic blunder known as P.N. News. A lowcard rapper in WCW, PN News debut on the May 11, 1991 episode of World Wide Wrestling. According to his Wikipedia page, he was modeled after P.M. Dawn. Don't ask.....I probably know less about P.M. Dawn then you do.

He had a brief feud with then WCW Television Champion "Stunning" Steve Austin. Unfortunately, he managed to injure Dave Sheldon (AKA Angel of Death) during a house show on June 21, 1992 after a botched Broken Record (top rope splash) on Sheldon's legs. This injury would put Sheldon out of action for the better part of a year.

P.N. News made sporadic appearances on TV after this before finally being released.

I've heard he currently wrestles in Europe under the name Cannonball Grizzly.

He's also the cousin to Mike Halac, who's better remembered as Mantaur in WWE. I'll go into detail about that later.

ABE "KNUCKLEBALL" SCHWARTZ

Steve Lombardi will be known for playing a wide variety of characters during his time in wrestling. His most well known being the Brooklyn Brawler, which I hope to get to eventually.

In this case, he briefly played the part of Abe "Knuckleball" Schwartz during 1994. At this time, Major League Baseball would eventually have a player strike, which would inspire the character. Abe would be a revamped version of a character known as MVP......not to be confused for Montel Vontavious Porter.

His theme would be a variation of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".

ARACHNAMAN

I don't recall if this started in late 1991 or early 1992. What I recall is that Arachnaman was WCW's version of Spider-Man. The differences between the characters were minimal, such as the color of the costumes.

The character didn't last long as Marvel Comics threatened legal action against WCW.

Played by Brad Armstrong, Arachnaman wouldn't be the first bad gimmick he'd be saddled with. Even worse, this was far from the last (or worst) gimmick he'd be stuck with. For whatever reasons I'll never understand, Brad Armstrong was constantly stuck with lousy gimmick after lousy gimmick. He really should've been given more money for being saddled with so much crap.


More to come in later posts.