Wrestle/Indie Mania Week of Shows!

It's WrestleMania week! I loved going to Philadelphia last year and attending all the IndieMania shows of GCW's The Collective, Stardom, WrestleCon and the WrestleCon Supershow at the ECW Arena.  Looking at the schedule of events this year I really do wish I was going to be in Vegas to catch these shows.

As I sit here typing this I am watching AEW Collision, with my girls Jamie Hayter and Billie Starkz battling in the Owen Hart tournament.  The show is in Springfield, Mass and my buddy Mikey is there and I'm jealous.

With over 80 shows schedule for the week, I'm going to list the Wrestling shows that I am going to try to watch this week:

Monday April 14th 

Monday Night Raw - Sacramento, California

Tuesday April 15th

NXT - Orlando, Florida

Wednesday April 16th

AEW Dynamite - Boston, Mass

GCW: WWE ID Championship Tournament

Thursday April 17th

AEW Collision - Boston, Mass, I am attending this show!

DEFY Wrestling: Living Proof

The match I'm looking forward to on this card is the Rock n' Roll Express vs. Midnight Heat

Stardom: American Dream 2025 in Sin City

WrestleCon Supershow

West Coast Pro Wrestling: Vegas Vacation

GCW: Josh Barnett's Bloodsport 13

A very stacked card but I'm looking forward to these matches the most:

Barnett vs. Gabe Kidd

Pete Dunne vs. Timothy Thatcher

ZSJ vs. Jonathan Gresham

Charlie Dempsey vs. Shinya Aoki

Progress Wrestling: Chapter 179 Las Vegas

Friday April 18

Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling

DDT Pro Wrestling

WWE Friday Night Smackdown

GCW: Joey Janela Spring Break 9

LOADED CARD!!! This is the show I am the most excited about!

No Rope Barbed-Wire: Joey Janela vs. Sabu

JCW World Championship: Masha Slamovich (c) vs. Suzu Suzuki

GCW Tag Team Championship: Violence is Forever (Kevin Ku & Dominic Garrini) (c) vs. Alec Price & X

GCW Career vs. Mask: Atticus Cogar vs. Fuego Del Sol

Wagner Family (Dr. Wagner Jr., El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. & Galeno del Mal) vs. Los Desperados (Gringo Loco, Jack Cartwheel & Arez)

Matt Tremont vs. Minoru Suzuki

Megan Bayne vs. Bozilla

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. 1 Called Manders

Mance Warner vs. Gabe Kidd

The Senior Scramble: The Warlord vs. Mike Jackson vs. Tommy Rich vs. Doug Gilbert vs. Ricky Morton vs. George South

WWE 2025 Hall of Fame

Saturday April 19th

NXT Stand & Deliver

GCW: Effy's Big Gay Brunch 10

GCW vs. TJPW vs. DDT

WrestleMania 41 Saturday

GCW: JJSB Clusterfuck Forever

Sunday April 20th

FSW Future Legends Women's Tournament

WrestleMania 41 Sunday

Monday April 21st

WWE Raw After WrestleMania

Tuesday April 22nd

NXT Live from Vegas

So much fantastic wrestling going on this week!

Thank you for reading, please leave a comment, check out my other posts, and if you want like my blogs Facebook page.  You can also head over to Amazon and pick up a copy of my book the 2024 Limitless Wrestling Almanac, or any of my other books.

Until next time! 

40 Years of WrestleMania

Forty years ago today, March 31, 1985 the first ever WrestleMania emanated live from Madison Square Garden in New York City.  This blog post is going to be about my experience and history with WrestleMania.

Growing up my dad was a fan of wrestling and we would rent all of the Wrestling tapes at the video store that we could find.  My first time watching WrestleMania was the Coliseum Home Video VHS tape.  In fact that is how I watched the first 3 WrestleMania's.

WrestleMania IV was the first time I watched the event live on PPV and I have watched WrestleMania live every year since then.  WrestleMania IV was the Tournament to declare a new WWF Champion after Andre the Giant and Ted DiBiase screwed Hulk Hogan out of the title on the Main Event in February of 1988.

I stayed with my Dad every other weekend and on Sunday's he would bring me home.  On this Sunday we instead went to his friend Roland's house where a big group of their friends had gathered to watch the PPV.  I was the only kid and I was given the coveted front row center seat.  I rented WrestleMania IV the most because it was two VHS tapes and such a long show it was like getting two for the price of one.

WrestleMania V through XI I watched at my Dad's house with him and my half-brothers.  WrestleMania XII & XIII I watched with my friends at their houses.  WrestleMania XIV my buddy Jay and I attended live at the then called FleetCenter, now called TD Garden in Boston.

  

We had tickets in the front row of the balcony, Jay picked them up.  This was our second wrestling show at the FleetCenter having attended WCW Monday Nitro in June 1997.  Sadly, I did not bring my camera to the show.  At that time I did not have a good camera, no zoom and I didn't think I would get any good pictures.  I should have brought it.  To be there when "Stone Cold" Steve Austin won his first World Championship is something special and the biggest wrestling show I had ever attended up until then.

When WrestleMania XV rolled around I was married and living in my apartment and I hosted my first WrestleMania watch party.  Every year, except for 2, I have hosted the WrestleMania watch party at my house.  I'm going to just chat bout certain WrestleMania's from this point on.

WrestleMania 2000 (16) WWE featured a special WrestleMania All Day Long.  Beginning at noon and running for 8 hours this event was live footage for axxess, highlights and recaps of the first 15 WrestleMania's with exclusive interviews.  Of course I spent the extra $15 for this 8 hour preshow. 

What was extra fun was beginning at 6am on ESPN Classic they aired 6 hours of classic wrestling, so I watched 16 consecutive hours of wrestling and it was a great day indeed!

In the summer of 2007 rumors began swirling that Ric Flair was going to be inducted in the WWE Hall of Fame in 2008.  So my buddy Jay and Rood and I bought Silver packages from WWE to attend WrestleMania XXIV in Orlando, Florida.  These packages included tickets to the Hall of Fame, Mania, and more.  

What we didn't know at that time, is that it would be the Last Match of Ric Flair...at that time.

You can read these two blog posts all about our trip to Orlando that year: 

WrestleMania XXIV Weekend

Wrestlemania XXIV Revisited

Although similar the posts are different, written at different times and have some shared and some different information.

Later that year after a my basement flooded and destroyed my wrestling collection, I was given a tour of then WWE Headquarters Titan Towers, you can read about that here: My Tour Of Titan Towers

During that tour they gifted me a complete DVD Collection of WrestleMania and when I rewatched WrestleMania 1 I was shocked to see this event was complete with all of the pre and post match interviews.  The Coliseum Home Video release only had a few of these from the top matches.  That was very cool to discover.

In 2019 Jay, Mikey and I traveled to New York City for WrestleMania weekend, however we did not attend any WWE Events and instead only went to Independent shows, and New Japan Pro Wrestling at Madison Square Garden.  The links are below for that weekend if you want to check it out.

IndyMania April 3 - 8, 2019
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

We took the train back to Jay's place in New Bedford, MA and watched WrestleMania 35 at his house to close out the weekend.

WrestleMania 36 was in 2020 and was taped at the Performance Center due to the Covid -19 Pandemic.  This was the first time that WrestleMania was a two night event and it has been every year since then.  I'm not a fan of two nights of WrestleMania I like having the show one night, it makes it more special in my mind.

WrestleMania 40 in 2024 was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mikey, Bradford, and I made the drive to the City of Brotherly love to once again take in IndyMania Weekend.  Those links are below:

More Than Mania 2024 Preview

More Than Mania Results

More Than Mania Weekend

Friends & Rasslers  

Rasslin' Photos

What was special this year was we watched WrestleMania 40 night on live from the ECW Arena, on closed circuit TV, just like the original WrestleMania.  

 

For many years we had a tradition of making big sandwiches for WrestleMania, just huge sandwiches that we would eat all night.  In 2009 & 2010 I filmed videos and posted them on YouTube, links below:

2009 Big Sandwich Day

2010 Big Sandwich Day

I think this year one on of the nights we need to bring the Big Sandwiches back.  Even though WWE is not my favorite brand of wrestling, I will never miss a WrestleMania. 

Thank you for reading, please leave a comment, check out my other posts, and if you want like my blogs Facebook page.  You can also head over to Amazon and pick up a copy of my book the 2024 Limitless Wrestling Almanac, or any of my other books.

Until next time! 

Tessa Blanchard's Impact World Championship Reign

In this post we look Tessa Blanchard's Impact World Championship reign.

Tessa Blanchard, is a 3rd generation wrestling star, the daughter of Tully Blanchard and granddaughter of wrestler and promoter Joe Blanchard and whose step-father is Magnum TA, needless to stay she has professional wrestling in her blood.

Tessa began her wrestling career in 2013 after turning 18, training with veteran George South in Charlotte, North Carolina.  For next several years she wrestled around the world including competing in NXT in 2016 and was in the 2017 Mae Young Classic.  She also competed for Stardom in Japan in 2016 and 2017.

In 2018 she debuted with Impact Wrestling where she captured the Knockouts Championship for 147 days from August 12, 2018 to January 6, 2019.  In July 2019 she main evented Slammiversary XVII in an intergender match with Sami Callihan coming out on the losing end.

On November 19, 2019 episode of Impact she won a gauntlet match to become the number 1 contender for the Impact World Championship.  On January 12, 2020 she would defeat Impact World Champion Sami Callihan in 24 minutes to win the title at the Hard To Kill PPV in Dallas, Texas.  To date she is the only women to hold a major Men's World Championship.

After winning the championship Tessa would appear on Impact tapings in Mexico City, Las Vegas, and Georgia, however she only had one title defense before the Covid-19 Pandemic caused the wrestling world to shut down.

Her one title defense was very historic in itself.  Taking place on February 8, 2020 at Sam's Town in Las Vegas, Nevada Tess Blanchard defended the title against Taya Valkyrie.  It is the only time a men's World Championship was defended in a match featuring only women.  The match aired on AXS TV on March 3, 2020 and Blanchard retained in 11:40 with her buzzsaw DDT.

Tessa was stripped of the the Impact World Championship in June 25, 2020 officially holding the championship for 165 days. 

Tessa would only wrestle a handful of matches until May 2023 when she did a tour with Canadian Wrestling Elite. Then in October 2023 she signed with CMLL wrestling a full time schedule in Mexico until signing with TNA Wrestling in January 2025.  She seems to have her sights set on the TNA Knockouts Championship, time will tell is goes for the World Championship once again.  

Thank you for reading, please leave a comment, check out my other posts, and if you want like my blogs Facebook page.  You can also head over to Amazon and pick up a copy of my book the 2024 Limitless Wrestling Almanac, or any of my other books.

Until next time!