Mike Reviews WWF — page 8

Hello You!

Going to post this today instead of Saturday, seeing as when I planned this series of reviews Mania was still supposed to be a one night event.

Well, seven weeks ago I decided to review 5 WrestleMania Main Events a week, and now here we are at the end. I’ve decided that I’ll leave the reviews of this year’s Mania matches to Scott Keith and Thomas Hall, mainly because I’m actually not sure whether I’ll watch WrestleMania or not.

I’ve made it no secret that I’ve not been enjoying these empty arena shows and I haven’t really been watching either WWE or AEW recently because of it. As Jock Stein once famously said, football without fans is nothing, and I think you could extend the same sentiment to wrestling. I probably will end up dipping in and out of Mania because it’s on the WWE Network and it’s still WrestleMania at the end of the day, but I’m not optimistic as to its quality. Hopefully I’m proven wrong and it ends up being a barnstormer!

Once again, thoughts with you if you’re having to isolate or any of your friends or relatives have been hit by COVID-19. It’s been a real pisser all told hasn’t it? Hopefully reading this can give you a bit of a distraction.

Please feel free to check my archives for the previous Mania Main Event reviews.

Anyway, that’s enough chatter from me, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

So we’ve had a bit of drama this week in the wrestling world haven’t we? This year’s WrestleMania is now supposedly in the can, but it won’t have Roman Reigns as he’s quite reasonably pulled out due to his previous health issues.

I’m in two minds as to what to include for this feature considering that this year’s Mania is going to be over two shows. Should I review the last match on each night or should I just review the final match on night two? Oh well, I’ll deal with that as it comes I think.

Once again, thoughts with you if you’re having to isolate or any of your friends or relatives have been hit by COVID-19. It’s been a real pisser all told hasn’t it? Hopefully reading this can give you a bit of a distraction.

Please feel free to check my archives for the previous Mania Main Event reviews.

Anyway, that’s enough chatter from me, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

So it looks like we might actually get a WrestleMania this year, although I’m not so sure it’s the best idea from WWE. Delaying it would seem to be the better tactic to employ, but Vince is gonna Vince I guess. I just hope everyone involved in it stays safe and healthy.

Thoughts with you if you’re having to isolate or any of your friends or relatives have been hit by COVID-19. It’s been a real pisser all told hasn’t it? Hopefully reading this can give you a bit of a distraction.

Check the archives for Main Events of the first 20 WrestleMania’s.

Anyway, that’s enough chatter from me, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

Well, I’m not sure if we’re actually going to have a WrestleMania this year, and even if we do it’s probably going to be later than the planned April date.

However, I’ve got written notes for all of these matches so I reckon I’ll keep uploading them anyway, and I can always re-post them during the build up for Mania should it end up in June like some of the rumours are suggesting

Anyway, let’s all try and distract ourselves from stuff going on in the real world and watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

I decided that, seeing as WrestleMania is on the horizon, I’d go and review every main event that has happened over the events 36 year history. I’m defining “main event” as the match that goes on last, so that will almost surely mean that I miss off some classic bouts, but don’t blame me, I didn’t book these shows!

I’ll be releasing one of these every week in the build up to Mania, with each one containing five matches. Hopefully they are fun and give you something to look forward to. If not, it shouldn’t be too difficult to ignore them at least what with all the other stuff going on here on the Blog of Doom during Mania Season.

Last week I covered the Main Events from Mania’s VI to X, and you can read what I thought by clicking right HERE

Anyway, that’s enough chatter from me, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

I decided that, seeing as WrestleMania is on the horizon, I’d go and review every main event that has happened over the events 36 year history. I’m defining “main event” as the match that goes on last, so that will almost surely mean that I miss off some classic bouts, but don’t blame me, I didn’t book these shows!

I’ll be releasing one of these every week in the build up to Mania, with each one containing five matches. Hopefully they are fun and give you something to look forward to. If not, it shouldn’t be too difficult to ignore them at least what with all the other stuff going on here on the Blog of Doom during Mania Season.

Last week I covered the Main Events from Mania’s I to V, and you can read what I thought by clicking right HERE

Anyway, that’s enough chatter from me, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

I decided that, seeing as WrestleMania is on the horizon, I’d go and review every main event that has happened over the events 36 year history. I’m defining “main event” as the match that goes on last, so that will almost surely mean that I miss off some classic bouts, but don’t blame me, I didn’t book these shows!

I’ll be releasing one of these every week in the build up to Mania, with each one containing five matches. Hopefully they are fun and give you something to look forward to. If not, it shouldn’t be too difficult to ignore them at least what with all the other stuff going on here on the Blog of Doom during Mania Season.

This week we’ll be starting out with the Main Events from the first five WrestleMania’s.

Anyway, that’s enough chatter from me, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

I’ve had this particular DVD in my collection for a while and have never gotten around to giving it a proper looksee, so I decided to do a review on it.

I actually bought this as part of Silver Visions “Tagged Classics” range, which was where they would put two releases in one DVD box from their cavernous back catalogue. One good thing about these releases was that they kept the old WWF “scratch” logo on them, which meant that pre-WWE Network they were by far the best option for watching retro WWF events, as they weren’t full of the horrible blurring and sound edits you’d find on regular WWE releases.

Released in September of 2001, “Action!” is meant to be a collection of all the “most thrilling” events that took place in 2001. Somehow I kind of doubt that, but hopefully there’ll be some interesting nuggets of gold nestled amongst the usual pap. This is the sort of thing they’d just put on the Network in the form of a playlist these days, rather than going to the trouble of doing a whole standalone DVD/VHS release.

The other DVD in this Tagged Classic collection is simply called “Hardcore”, and features lots of matches from the hardcore division (Although I’m sure some stores got a bit confused and thought the DVD might need to go in the adult entertainment section of the shop). If you like this one then I might review that one in the New Year.

Anyway, less jibber jabber from me, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling eh?

Mike Reviews: WWF Vengeance 2001

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Seeing as Chris Jericho is, in my opinion, doing a cracking job as the World Champ in AEW, I thought I’d look back to his very first World Title win in his career (Sorry if I just spoiled the result of the main event for you). Of course this reign ended up being a bit of a disaster (Owing mostly to the WWF booking Jericho to be an ineffectual putz as Champion) but it was someone new in the top spot for a change, which was refreshing at the time.

This event actually took place a month after Survivor Series 2001, an event that saw the WWF finally bring an end to the insipid “Invasion” angle by having The Alliance heel stable be defeated in the main event. As a result the company now had both the WWF and WCW Titles hanging around, so they decided to unify the two belts ahead of WrestleMania season, hence we get a four man tournament to decide who gets to take the two belts home.

Considering the December event this year is being treated as such an afterthought by WWE (To the point that it took till 10 days out to even announce any matches for it) it’s interesting to see such an important moment as unifying the two World Titles happening on this one.

There was actually a bit of controversy at the time as a lot of the marketing for the event seemed to strongly suggest that Triple H was going to make a return following his first torn quad injury, with his trademark sledgehammer all over the marketing and graphics for the show. Instead the WWF decided to have his return be changed to a Raw show in 2002. A video set to U2’s “Beautiful Day” (Which the WWE Network removes entirely) was added to the event to appease the people who might have wanted to see Triple H, but it mostly led to people feeling liked they’d be baited and switched.

Anyway, enough blabbing, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

I used to watch this one quite a bit back in my younger days as I had it on VHS, so seeing as we’re not far removed from the 2019 version of the show I decided to set the way back machine 30 years for some classic Survival action. In a nice bit of symmetry this event also took place in Chicago as well.

Back in 1989 we didn’t have “brand supremacy” or singles matches on Survivor Series events. Instead every match on this show is a survival format, with the change being that they’ve gone from 5 person teams to 4 person ones. This of course means the “Teams of Five, Strive to Survive” tagline is now ruined. They didn’t bother coming up with a new one for the four person teams. The best I could come up with was “Teams of Four, Go to War”, but if you can think of a better one then feel free to share it in the comments section.

Anyway, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling eh?

Seeing as its Halloween today I thought I’d go back and look at one of my favourite episodes of Smackdown from back in 2002. Indeed, I’ve watched this one episode of Smackdown many times over the years and tend to come back to it when this time of the year comes around.

It not only features some good wrestling but it also has a fun Halloween theme to it that they make good use of throughout the show in different ways.

Hello You!

The reason for this one is that it’s a show I’ve never seen in full, owing to the fact that when it happened way back in 2007 I was in the middle of moving house and thus didn’t have the disposable income to burn on a WWE pay per view. It’s quite an interesting show however due to what happens in regards to the WWE Title. And hey, now I have WWE Network it’s never been easier to catch up on the shows I missed back in the day and we’re still in October so it kind of fits.

The original main event of the show coming in was supposed to be John Cena defending the WWE Title to Randy Orton, but Cena then suffered a severe injury in a nothing Raw match with Ken Anderson which took him out of this show and meant he’d likely have to miss WrestleMania as well.

Thus WWE had to scramble to find a way to crown a new Champion and also rescue the pay per view card that had now been left without its main event. Did they manage it? Let’s take a look and find out.

Hello You!

So more 205 Live again, with a notable debut this week that I’m mucho looking forward to!

The event is emanating from Madison Square Garden

Calling the action are Vic Joseph and Aiden English. With NXT now going up on USA, Nigel McGuinness has sadly departed the announce desk. However, it’s apparently essential to have three commentators for whatever reason, so former NFL player Dio Maddin steps into the chair as the replacement.

Hello You!

The Copperbox show from 31/08/2019 is up on New Japan World now, so I’ll give it a look this week at some point, probably at the weekend. In the meantime, here’s some more of 205 Live, the show that WWE might do a big LOST like twist for one day and reveal that it was all really a nightmare of Vince McMahon’s following a particularly heavy lunch in the 80’s.

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More 205 Live for you, with a big #1 contenders bout to decide who gets the honour of facing Drew Gulak 2 hours before the actual pay per view portion of the show starts at Clash of Champions, because WCW (Oh, wait, hang on…)

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This week we’ve got a ruddy big Ten Man Tag to sink our chompers into, so let’s waste no further time and dive once again into some more 205 Live!!!

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So with G1 in the bag I’ll try to start getting these 205 Live recaps going again

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A combination of other commitments and going on holiday meant I couldn’t watch last week’s 205 Live, so you get a two for one this week so I can catch up. Lucky you eh?

Hello You!

Back again with some more 205 Live. This week we actually get a rematch of the match that got me interested in watching the show again in the form of Jack Gallagher Vs Chad Gable. The last time these two took to the ring it was an absolute corker, so hopefully we get just as good a match this time out.

Also, last week Mike Kanellis promised doom for the show due to his personal life going to the dogs, so there’s a good chance we’ll see some chicanery from him this week as well.

So without further ado, let’s take to the skies for another week of 205 action!

Hello You!

Back again with some more 205 Live action, as this show will be the go home for Extreme Rulz, where Drew Gulak will defend his Cruiserweight Title against Tony Nese.

So without further ado, let’s get Live with the 205!