It was a pretty busy, crazy, emotional weekend for me when it comes to pro-wrestling. This will be the first post of several that I type up over the next day or two as there is just too much to talk about for one blog entry.

Ring Of Honor in Manassas: Flair Autograph session
So this past Friday evening was the Ring Of Honor show / Ric Flair autograph session in Manassas. I jumped in the car and left the house shortly after 5pm, and pushed through rush hour traffic for about 45 minutes. I got to the arena shortly after the autograph session had started. I parked, grabbed my stuff, and went inside to get in line. The line was long but it moved pretty quickly and after about 40 minutes, I was standing in front of the Ric Flair! I had him autograph a copy of the ‘Ric Flair And The Four Horsemen‘ dvd. I then shook his hand and thanked him for coming out. It was definitely a great experience and one that I will not forget.

After the autograph session, we had to wait outside until they officially opened the doors. It wasn’t too long of a wait. No more than 30 minutes before they started to let people in. I was near the front of the line so I got in quickly. I bought a ticket to the next Manassas show (in December) and then I went and found my seat. After waiting about 20 minutes, the pre-show started.

There were only two matches on the pre-show but both were good. Match #1 saw Brandon Day beat Ninja Brown with a variation of the Brainbuster. The second match was Bobby Shields & The Set versus John Kermon, Atsushi Sawada, and Bobby Dempsey. Dempsey got the win for his team.

After the pre-show, we had another small break of about 5 or 6 minutes before the actual show started.

Ring Of Honor in Manassas: The Show
Match 1 – Colt Cabana, Necro Butcher, and Grizzly Redwood versus The Embassy of Jimmy Rave, Claudio Castagnoli, and Ernie Osiris (with Prince Nana at ringside). It was a good, fun opening match. As the match was going on, there was some sort of bug flying around the area. It eventually found it’s way into the ring where Cabana smacked it with his hands, killing the bug. The dead bug then found it’s way to Necro Butcher. At that moment, the whole place started to chant ‘EAT THE BUG’….and Necro did, which grossed everyone out. The match continued and the good guys won when Cabana made Osiris tap out.

Match 2 – Alex “Sugarfoot” Payne versus Shawn Spears. This was the first of two matches that I felt bad about simply because I forgot to take my Canadian flag with me. Spears is from Canada so it would have been a great time to show my support for all things Canadian. Anyways, the match was kind of uneventful. I don’t really like Payne at all but Spears looked decent, and he ended up winning the match.

Match 3 – Bryan Danielson versus Kenny King (with Rhett Titus). Some good action from this match which I wasn’t surprised by. Both guys can put on a show. And, if I remember correctly, this match also started off the snapmare obsession for the night*. Danielson picked up the win, despite some sneaky tactics by King and Titus.

(* A bit of history about Manassas and the snapmare. At the very first Manassas show, there was a guy there who called for and cheered every time a wrestler hit a snapmare on his opponent. The same guy has come to every other Manassas show and his calls for snapmares have slowly caught on with the rest of the fans as well as some of the wrestlers. At this recent Manassas show, the guy was sitting in my section once again but he brought a ’snapmare’ sign this time around. This definitely caught the attention of a lot of the wrestlers and several of them started to use snapmares…which got HUGE cheers from all us fans.)

Match 4 – The Young Bucks v Kevin Steen and El Generico. In my opinion, this was the match of the night. It was also my first time seeing both teams in action, and I was definitely excited to see Steen and Generico as they are both Canadian wrestlers. Steen and Generico also won the match after their Package Piledriver/Brainbuster combination finisher.

Match 5 – Austin Aries v Roderick Strong v D’Lo Brown v Eddie Edwards. Another good match, and my first time seeing D’Lo Brown live. The match started out as a 3 on 1 against Strong but quickly turned into an all-out brawl between the four wrestlers. Roderick Strong eventually got the win by making Aries tap out. After the match, we gave D’Lo a huge round of applause which I think really meant a lot to him.

Match 6 – Sonjay Dutt v Jimmy Jacobs. I was probably the most disappointed with this match. I love watching Jimmy Jacobs wrestle, and I know that Dutt is a good worker as well. But for some reason, this match really never got off the ground. There were some good spots and some good action, but it just didn’t ‘feel’ right at all. Jacobs eventually got the win by making Dutt tap out to the End Time.

Match 7 – Jay Briscoe v Davey Richards. This was the match that I was looking forward to the most. I expected a hard-hitting match and this certainly didn’t disappoint. The only disappointing thing about this match, actually, was that Briscoe won.

Match 8 – Tyler Black v Jerry Lynn. The culmination of the Snapmare-fest. Both guys fed off the crowd’s energy, and entertained us all with a series of snapmares. There was even a tease of a super snapmare off of the top rope. The match itself was pretty good. We didn’t get to see Black’s “Phoenix Splash” or Lynn’s “Cradle Piledriver” though. Black eventually won the match.

Overall, this was one of the best Manassas shows, right up there with the first Manassas show and much better than show #2 and #3. I’m definitely looking forward to the next show in December.

The day is almost here. The fourth Ring Of Honor event in Manassas takes place tomorrow night. I’ve blogged about it a few times already, and I’m really looking forward to the show. Save for maybe one more, all of the matches have been announced and the card looks fantastic.

Non Title Match
ROH World Champion Jerry Lynn vs. Tyler Black

Grudge Match
Davey Richards vs. Jay Briscoe

Special Challenge Match
Bryan Danielson vs. Kenny King

Tag Team Challenge Match
Kevin Steen & El Generico vs. The Young Bucks

Four Corner Survival
Austin Aries vs. Roderick Strong vs. D-Lo Brown vs. Eddie Edwards

Special Attraction
Sonjay Dutt vs, Jimmy Jacobs

Six Man Tag Team Grudge Match
Jimmy Rave, Claudio Castagnoli, & Ernie Osiris vs. Necro Butcher, Colt Cabana, & Grizzly Redwood

Big Brother 11 is set to begin on July 9th. I have a love/hate relationship with this show but it’s usually too interesting and enjoyable to pass on. I haven’t looked for any information on this new season though so I don’t know anything about the contestants. Hopefully there are some good ones this year. I guess we will know soon enough.

Starting June 25th, ABC will start airing the remaining Samantha Who? episodes. The show never caught my interest at all but my wife enjoyed it so this is mostly a reminder for myself to dvr the remaining episodes when they start to air. Although buying the series dvds might be in my near future as well depending on whether or not my better half wants to own them.

Comedy Central renews ‘Important Things with Demetri Martin’. I’m certainly glad to hear that. I’m pretty sure that I missed seeing the last episode of season 1 but the rest of the episodes were fantastic and pretty funny, which I guess is a good thing seeing as how it’s a comedy show.

The debut episode of ‘Jesse James Is A Deadman’ set a SpikeTV ratings record. I was really looking forward to this series when I first heard about it because I am a big fan of Jesse James. I thought that the first episode was interesting enough but they really could have just made it a half hour show and not dragged it out to a full hour. I’m looking forward to watching more episodes though.

And in related news, Monster Garage is set to return. I was a fan of the program when it initially aired so I’m looking forward to seeing it come back. If they can’t get Jesse James to take part in it again though, it just won’t be the same at all.

And finally, some big news out of the MMA world. Kimbo Slice will take part in season 10 of The Ultimate Fighter. This is huge news seeing as how Dana White, the president of the UFC, has called Slice a ‘joke’ and ‘not a real fighter’. It’s going to be really interesting to see how they get along, and also how Slice does on the show. If he makes it to the finale, it’s sure to set ratings records for the program.

Ahh, see what I did there with the title. Classic.

Anyways, I could care less about the MTV Movie Awards. I’ve tried to watch them over the years but, for the most part, they bore me to tears each and every time. This year’s show wasn’t much different which is why I changed the channel about 20 minutes in. However, before I changed the channel, I did manage to catch a glimpse of one of the greatest things going today: Leighton Meester (or Leester Meester as I prefer to call her).

           

So I guess the MTV Movie Awards were not all that bad this year.

So the 2009 NBA Playoffs are getting closer and closer to coming to an end. However, despite being a basketball fan, I haven’t really watched much of these playoffs at all. This is mostly due to the fact that the officiating has been painfully terrible. In more than one instance, it’s been blatantly obvious that the refs are siding with one team or one player and giving them the better calls, etc. I think that the higher-ups in the NBA want certain teams to win and so the refs are trying to make that happen. At least that’s one conspiracy theory that’s been running through my head a lot lately.

Anyways, one of my favourite basketball blogs ( Basketbawful really summed up the latest Orlando / Cleveland situation nicely and it shows just how messed up the officiating really is:

More lousy officiating: Ugh and double-ugh. Dwight Howard gets a technical foul with 4:11 left in the fourth for…flexing looking really happy after getting an And-1? (If this one stands, I will demand that the NBA retroactively assess about 371 technical fouls on Alonzo Mourning.) And even though only one tech was called, Mo Williams gets two free throws? Did I miss something? (Not according to the game log I didn’t.) LeBron draws a foul by falling into Pietrus with 0.5 seconds left, “earning” two FTAs that allow him to tie the game. Then Varejao rides Howard out of bounds on Orlando’s final play and there’s no call. (Even the always-impartial AP said: “Both players tumbled out of bounds, and although there was enough contact for the officials to call two or three fouls, there was no whistle.”) Now, mind you, I would have been fine if either a) both had been no-calls (my preference) or b) both had been called. Again, at this point I’ve given up my hopes for correct officiating and only want consistency. But I can’t even get that. Unless by consistency I mean “King James always gets the benefit of the doubt”…because I get that in spades.

I really hope that the NBA and the refs sit down this summer and really work out a plan at how to better officiate games because things can’t really get any worse than they are now.