My buddy Almar Reyes texted me this photo of the Honky Tonk Man at Wondercon today. He gave me approval to put it up.

Thanks to www.purolove.com for the lineup.

This promises to be one of the best shows of the year. NOAH’s on a roll right now with a change in booking philosophy, and several of it’s wrestlers being on fire.

The top three matches are ridiculously good on paper. The NOAH vs. NJPW tag will look to continue where the Tokyo Dome left off, with Go Shiosaki and Milano stepping in for Misawa and Goto respectively. The two stars of the 1/4 match, Nakamura and Sugiura, are still in place though and will no doubt be fired up every time they cross paths in this match.

Nakajima and KENTA just put on a MOTYC three weeks ago and that will be hard to top, but these crazy S.O.B’s will no doubt try. KENTA is pretty clearly the best wrestler in the world based on form in the last three months. He has never looked better and considering some of his prior years, that’s really saying something.

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After the huge main event at Wrestlemania VI where The Ultimate Warrior beat Hulk Hogan for the World Heavyweight Championship, it was pretty much etched in stone that they would have a rematch at Wrestlemania VII. And after selling a ton of tickets at the Skydome in Toronto for Wrestlemania VI, Vince was going to try to do it one better. Actually he was going to try and do better than Wrestlemania III at the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit where they claim to have put 93,000 butts in the seats. Wrestlemania VII with the Hogan vs. Warrior rematch was going to take place at the LA Coliseum, which can hold over 100,000 people. If you’ve ever seen Wrestlemania VII, you’ll know that Hogan vs. Warrior part two never happened, and it wasn’t held in the outdoor stadium in Los Angeles. Wrestlemania VII was held in the LA Sports Arena which barely holds 15% percent of what the LA Coliseum did, and it was main evented by Sgt. Slaughter as the champ and Hulk Hogan as the All American belt chaser.

How did we get there? Well, after Hogan was beaten by Warrior, the WWF struggled without Hogan. House show business was down and people weren’t really paying to see Warrior like they were Hogan. Let’s face it. Warrior was fun to watch jump up and down while shaking the ropes, but he wasn’t going to be the man. He was horrendous on interviews, couldn’t wrestle for long periods of time despite his awesome physique, which tells you a little bit of how he got that physique, and simply didn’t draw as well as Hogan did as a champion. Also, the Persian Gulf War was going on at the time, and Vince McMahon decided it would be topical if the main WWF storyline carried the same timeliness. Enter Sgt. Slaughter. But not as you’d think. This time the Sarge was as an Iraqi supporter with General Adnan and later, Col. Mustaffa, who is most well known as the Iron Sheik, in his corner. It’s a horrible storyline if you think about it. It was a fake sentiment created by a storyline that took advantage of a war situation. Typical classy wrestling.

Since there was no way the WWF was going to sell anywhere near the number of tickets needed for the LA Coliseum, they opted for the smaller LA Arena, but used the excuse that because the Iraqi supporting Slaughter was so hated, they were worried things could get out of control in an outdoor stadium and thus had to move indoors. But they never answered the question as to how they would fit all those fans who bought tickets into the smaller arena. It’s because they never sold enough tickets.

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The Contender Season 4 Finale
MGM Foxwoods Casino, Connecticut
25th February 2009

Rico Hoye (22-3) vs. Akinyemi “AK” Laleye (12-2)
The live broadcast opened with Rico Hoye taking on Akinyemi “AK” Laleye over eight rounds in the Bronze medal match. AK started off fast, closing down Rico, and throwing a lot of powerful shots on the inside. He looked to be the far more confident of the two in the early going, but the momentum quickly switched when Hoye hurt Laleye with a hard shot to the body late in the second round. It appeared to knock a lot of the fight out of AK. His work rate dropped after that and it never really recovered. He continued to press forward, but was throwing fewer punches, and Rico was able to outwork him at close range.

Hoye came close to finishing it with a big flurry of shots in the 4th round. Laleye was blocking a lot of the punches, but nothing was coming back from him. He lay against the ropes under consistent pressure from Hoye. The Referee took a very close look, but AK did just enough to keep himself in the fight.
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One of the best angles of 1991. Sid Justice had entered the WWF in 1991 and quickly found allegiance with Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior. The issue is, when you make friends with guys like Hogan and Warrior, enemies will come crawling.

Sid Justice was scheduled to face El Diablo, a jobber, on an episode of WWF Superstars until Paul Bearer and the Undertaker call an audible and decide to fill in for El Diablo.

It’s more than meets the eye…

Jake Roberts was the Heel MVP of 1991, much like Jericho in 2008.

Despite the steroid trials, despite the allegations, WWF in 1991 was THE SHIT…

DRAGON GATE – Infinity 117!
117

01-18-09
1.SHINGO & Akira Tozawa vs. Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino

Just like last week, Infinity kicks off with KAMIKAZE vs. World-1 action. Only this week’s version had one key extra – the return of on of the world’s best wrestlers, Masato Yoshino! And boy did things get turned up a notch with the Speed Star back in the mix. This was as slick an 11 minute TV match as you will EVER see, in any style of wrestling. Every was clicking 100%….. Tozawa was great in the underdog role, trying to hang with the higher status guys; Yoshino was great bringing the speed and sheer athleticism; and Doi and Shingo were awesome resuming their hard hitting strike battles from last week. We saw a bunch of the double teams that made DoiYoshi the best tag team in wrestling in 2008 and the crowd were eating it ALLLLL up. It came down to Tozawa and Yoshino, with the former taking everything the latter could dish out until he was put down by the MUTHA of all Lightning Spirals. This was the hot stuff right here.

2.Loser banishment “Real Hazard” match
Gamma vs. Yasushi Kanda

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