Intro
Hello! Did actually mean to post this last week alongside the last episode but time ran away from me. By that I mean I had to go to the cinema to see _The Phantom Thread_, which had a disappointing lack of suplexes. Still, you had some content last week so here's some more. This week some reminiscing, some rampant speculation and a review.
How Phil Started Watching Wrestling Again
No, not recently and besides, I know that was a combination of The Rock and CM Punk. No, I’m talking way back when I came back to wrestling in the late 90s, just what it was that brought me back. And I’ve landed on some combination of the following:
Seeing wrestling t-shirts At the time I worked part time in my local(ish) Asda which was basically Saturday work and I have this really clear memory of seeing someone wearing a Triple H shirt, one from just after he started calling himself The Game, this one I think: I remember this because the dude was far away which meant I could hardly read what it said. But, it intruiged me enough to get that wrestling itch going. I think I also saw someone wearing a Rock t-shirt asking if I could smell what The Rock is cooking. My reply to that was "just who is this The Rock and why should I care what he's doing in the kitchen?"
VHS Tapes By this time my parent's Sky Sports subscription was loooong gone, pretty sure the SummerSlam with the Boiler Room brawl was about the last PPV I had watched. But that wrestling itch sent me to one of the local video stores and their racks of WWF videos. The one I ended up picking up was one about The Undertaker, a compilation of his career which ended just before the whole Minstry storyine, which meant it had the Hell In A Cell match from *King of The Ring* 1998. Oh my goodness. Was that an eyeopener. First of all to see the change in Mankind ("he wears a shirt now?!") and then the actual match. Despite the undoubted damage it did to Mick Foley it's still one of the greatest moments to happen in wrestling. That was it, I was back in.
The internet Also at this time the internet was making that switch from a luxury to a utility. We still had dial up but we had moved from the “pay by the minute” deal to the “flat monthly free so go nuts” deal. This meant that you could just pretty much have an always on internet connection, when the PC was turned on obviously. So after watching that Undertaker video I could fire up google and go hunting for wrestling stuff that was out there, the main site I remember being a section of the IGN website of all things. It was great, and it was a way to reconnect with the current shows and draw myself back in that way, just in time for WrestleMania X-7.-Phil
John Cenna vrs Randy Orton 247
That headline isn't my joke, by the way, it was Euan's on a comment thread on Facebook. See, he had shared the linked from the WWE website where they've announced that after WrestleMania they will have mixed Raw/Smackdown Pay Per Views. So it's one a month, rather than the one every couple of weeks(ish) being either Raw or Smackdown with only the Big Four shows being mixed. Which led to the obvious question, how long till they re-(re-)unify the titles, hence Euan's joke. If this is where it's going (and thats not clear at this stage) then this doesn't fill me with confidence. Splitting and unifying and splitting the titles surely just takes away from them more than anything else? It was hard enough to get the Universal Title over with the fans, now they'll have one eye on their watch checking to see how long it'll be around. Still, it they do re-unify the titles hopefully we'll get some better tag team belts out of it at the very least. -Phil
The East End Up North.
For a long time I didn’t see the point in going to see my local wrestling promotion. Target Wrestling, based in Carlisle, seemed like it was just putting on shows based around whatever former WWF/E talent they could book that month. I was happy paying a bit more to go to watch ICW up in Glasgow. When September 2016 rolled around and Target managed to get former ECW Champion Raven to the Border City I knew I had to go and see him. On that night everything I thought Target couldn’t do, they did. Raven might have got me there but Target regulars such as Shady Nattrass, Karnage and Damon Havok have kept me coming back ever since. There were stories, the show had its own atmosphere. I’ve attended the vast majority of Carlisle shows since. The first Carlisle show of 2018 took place a couple of weeks ago and featured a main event of Target Heavyweight Champion Karnage, a Carlisle boy himself, defending against The East End Butcher Sha Samuels. Karnage had already defeated such names as Rampage Brown and Dave Mastiff on previous shows so it seemed like he would walk out with his title again against another name who would be just passing through. In the end though, after Karnage was completely waffled by a chair shot, Sha got the win and held the title aloft. We’ll be seeing plenty more of the man from the East End in the future it would seem. Target shows don’t have the budget or the production values of companies like ICW or Progress. When I go to Glasgow though I’ll be a good few metres away from the ring, sometimes relying on the TV screens above to see the action. Once the show is finished we’ll head off back to the hotel with thousands of others among us. With Target I’ve shook hands with Jackie Polo after his match, Zach Gibson and James Drake have taken a photo with me because I bought their t-shirt, Joe Coffey has wished me good evening, Paul London has offered me a high five and Mikey Whiplash has grimaced at me from the merch table. The last time I saw Sha Samuels wrestle was at ICW’s Fear and Loathing X this past November at the Hydro. During this Target show though he got so close I had to move out of the way so he could Irish Whip Karnage into the bar. Your local shows have an intimate buzz that can’t really be replicated by the bigger promotions out there. British wrestling has come a long way from a few years ago when the best you’d get would be WWF ‘Tribute’ shows. We’ve taken the American style and converted it with a British slant. Wherever you live in the UK there’s probably a promotion near you to go and see. If you like pro wrestling then I’d encourage you to support what’s going on in your local scene because you’ll get a far more close knit experience than on the bigger shows. -Cam
Film Review: Black Panther
It was real good. But a highlight from a wrestling standpoint, there weren't that many wrestling moves on display. There was quite a gnarly looking choke hold at one point but it was more MMA than anything else. The main highlight was the moment when it looked like one of the characters was going to get an Attitude Adjustment, or at least a Samoan Drop, but it was avoided at the last moment. Could do better. -Phil
Next Time
Next show will be recorded soon (ish) then after that it’s one of the special round table episodes, this time to decide on the GREATEST PROMO OF ALL TIME. Send us in some thoughts about that via Facebook or twitter because I can’t remember right now if we have an email address setup somewhere. It should be a good show this one but expect Al to try and get a Bushwacker promo which would probably ignite a podcast civil war. Again. Generic leaving message! -The Conquistabores