One year ago, the build to WrestleMania 28 started. Here’s a review of WrestleMania 27:

The big selling point of WrestleMania 27 was that the Rock would return as host of the show. Now, what did host really mean? I figured he’d have several backstage vignettes and be with a lot of the guys, but after the show was over, it really didn’t mean anything. He was just there.

What it led to was coming back to main event WrestleMania 28 as an actual wrestler, but not knowing that beforehand, his promise of WrestleMania 27 being the most electric WrestleMania of all time didn’t come through. Overall, the show was disappointing as a four hour show, but because of two matches, you can’t say it wasn’t great in parts.

The Undertaker’s career as an active wrestler is nearly over. But when put in the ring with the right guy, he is one of the best big match wrestlers of all-time. Coming on the heels of a really good match with Batista at WrestleMania 23, and the best matches at WrestleMania 24 (Edge), 25, and 26 (Shawn Michaels for both matches), the expectation level was huge for his match at WrestleMania 27 with Triple H. The key to every Undertaker match at WrestleMania is simple. He’s undefeated on the WWE’s big show historically. Thus, his WrestleMania matches have predictable outcomes, but the way they get there becomes more and more important. In this match with Triple H, it started out slowly and then picked up after Triple H hit him with a couple of pedigrees. Triple H grew visibly frustrated as the Dead Man kicked out of his signature move. He then decided to use the Undertaker’s move against him, the Tombstone, and the crowd and people at home actually thought the streak was over. It was one of the greatest moments in WrestleMania history. Then, Taker kicked out and after withstanding a hellacious beating, put Triple H in his Hell’s Gate submission move, which is really just a sloppy gogoplata. Triple H struggled before submitting, making Undertaker 19-0 at WrestleMania.

It wasn’t the best match in WrestleMania history, or even in the top 7 or 8 probably, but it was the best moment of the night, and stole the show.

The other great match featured the guy who would become the hottest wrestler in the summer of 2011, CM Punk, against Randy Orton. Their match, had it been at the top of the card, rather than in the middle, really had a chance to be excellent, but it ended around the 15 minute mark. In the 15 minutes though, it was fantastic psychology by both men, with Orton selling his injured leg, and Punk making sure he wasn’t caught in either the RKO, or in punting distance. Punk, as the heel, controlled nearly the entire match, until the end, when Orton pulled up lame, giving Punk confidence that Orton was nearly done. Punk went to the top rop for a cross body and out of nowhere (well, not out of nowhere as we all predicted it was going to happen), Orton hit the RKO for the win.
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There were a couple interesting things to come out of UFC 2, even though the card itself wasn’t all that entertaining.

The first is that it was successful. The first show did about 80,000 PPV buys, which is a pretty good number in that of itself, even though the show wasn’t profitable. But based on word of mouth (and I’d guess a whole lot of tape trading of the first show), the second show did better and it set off the idea that you could run a series of these shows.

The second thing to come out of UFC 2 is that one of the more notable people in UFC history, Big John McCarthy was the referee of the show.

In an experiment, the tournament was increased from 8 fighters to 16 and thus, the winner (and first runner up) would have to fight four times on the show. From what I understand, this was done because none of the fights on the first show went long. But because there wasn’t enough time to air what would amount to fifteen matches, the show started at the very end of the first round with Royce Gracie facing off against karate fighter Minoki Ichihara. But just 12 seconds into the fight, Gracie took the karate away from Ichihara and took him down. He stayed on top of him for the entire fight, making for a terrible opening bout. But Gracie pulled off an armbar that got the crowd excited some five minutes later.
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One of my goals in the next couple of years is to have something written about every UFC show in history. When we started this website in 2007, the UFC shows were still in the 70s. But I’ve written stuff from UFC shows prior to that, and I will start writing about the shows from the beginning. It may take me a while, but I’ll eventually bring all of my reviews of UFC shows over. Here’s my review of the very first UFC show, UFC 1:

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What people see the UFC as today is clearly much different from what the UFC used to be. Today, the UFC is sanctioned in nearly every state in the United States by state athletic commissions. Back in 1993, they were the anti-sport.

The UFC was a two-headed monster. The first company was headed by Art Davie, Rorian Gracie, and John Milius and called WOW Promotions. Davie was a businessman who was interested in putting an event together, Gracie was a member of the famed Gracie jiu-jitsu family, and Milius had a background in film. The second company was their TV partner, SEG.

Together, they created what became The Ultimate Fighting Championship. What it also became was a showcase for the sport of Brazillian jiu-jitsu. Rorion chose his younger brother Royce to represent the sport of jiu-jitsu, feeling quite confident that his brother would win the show and help out the business of Gracie jiu-jitsu.

SEG is credited with coming up with the octagon, the main hold over from the early years of the UFC.

The first show was an 8-man tournament with the winner receiving 50,000 dollars and it was available on PPV. The theme of the show was the age old story of which type of athlete was the toughest. Was it someone from the art of karate? How about a boxer? What about a wrestler?

The fights could only be stopped if the fighter himself tapped out or if the fighter’s corner threw in the towel. I’m not quite sure the fighters knew exactly what they were getting into considering you had boxer Art Jimmerson come into the cage with a boxing glove on one of his hands, eliminating any chance he had to grab onto anyone. He submitted quickly to Royce Gracie who didn’t even really do anything to him.
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In the new Bruce Lee documentary, which only has one special encore release left at selective theaters, Dana White proclaims Bruce Lee as the father of MMA. It’s an interesting stance since I swear that several years ago, the narrative was that Bruce Lee was more show than go and that since he didn’t know jiu-jitsu, he wasn’t that big of a deal. While it’s hard to measure what Lee’s impact would’ve been on MMA since he died 20 years before the first UFC show, I’m sure he was a huge inspiration for a lot of guys who’ve squared off in the octagon over the years.

I Am Bruce Lee is a very good documentary on the life of Lee. It’s like a big screen version of an oral history book. Lee’s wife, Linde Lee Caldwell provides the soul of the piece. She is his biggest fan and provides a lot of insight into what Lee’s thoughts may have been in certain situations, such as his big fight with Wong Jack Man, which actually caused Lee to change his style into the more free-flowing Jeet Kun Do, which he liked the call the style of no style. His daughter is also all over the film and provides great insight as well.

The UFC is all over the film from Dana White to Jon Jones. It’s hard to tell if they were truly big fans, or if they simply provided another angle for Lee to fit into today’s pop culture. Gina Carano didn’t really provide much and she was just as stiff as she was in Haywire. Stephan Bonnar seemed to be a genuine Lee fan, remembering dialogue of his films and even trying to mimic a choreographed Lee punching scene.

The odd ball of the cameos was Gene LeBell, who claimed that Chuck Norris could beat Bruce Lee in a fight, in Lee’s own documentary. He cut a pro wrestling promo at the end that cracked a lot of people up. Others like Kobe Bryant and Manny Pacquiao provided nice commentary, but weren’t necessary either.

When the movie discussed Lee’s life and his movie career, it was pretty darn interesting. When it went off tangent with the UFC talk and other oddities such as whether or not Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini could beat Lee in a boxing match, it wasn’t as interesting. I’d still suggest checking it out if you’re Lee fan though. It was fun to see him on the big screen. I imagine it’ll be on DVD very soon.

Warrior, Gavin O’Connor’s MMA version of Rocky, is much better than it has any right to be. As a MMA fan, I expected two things out of this movie. I expected it to disrespect the sport of MMA. And I expected it to be completely unbelievable. And while there are some parts of the movie where things are unrealistic, O’Connor balanced the film with great action and heartfelt emotion.

The film’s major storyline is about a broken family. Brothers Brendan and Tommy are estranged because their father, played by Nick Nolte, was an alcoholic and drove their mother away. The brothers were split up as well as Tommy went with his mother, even though that wasn’t the original plan. They went their separate ways as early adults, but they’re back in the same place for the first time since they were teenagers, at a MMA tournament called Sparta, which pits all of the top non-UFC middleweight fighters in a two-day tournament with a winner-take-home purse of 5 million dollars.

This part of the film is pretty unrealistic if you understand how the sport of MMA works. Fighters wouldn’t join a tournament if only the winner was paid, and no MMA tournament would get the necessary publicity to make any sort of sense, unless there was UFC involvement, and even then, the UFC doesn’t run tournaments anymore. However, most people watching this movie won’t even understand how Hollywood-ized that portion of the film is, so it won’t really matter.

The brothers are played by Joel Edgarton (Brendan) and Tom Hardy (Tommy). Neither guy is easily recognizable for their work, but their characters are easily recognizable if you look for the inspiration for their characters. Brendan is a school teacher whose house is about to be foreclosed on because he and his wife had to take out a second mortage to pay for expensive treatments for his youngest daughter’s illness. And they’re short on money again. He also looks dead on like UFC welterweight legend Matt Hughes. Tommy is an ex-Marine (much like UFC star Brian Stann) who goes by his mother’s maiden name and has a sketchy past. He has tattoos, is angry, fights like Bill Goldberg used to wrestle and snarls like Brock Lesnar.
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When WWE decided to get into the movie business, the idea was that their wrestlers would star in their films and that with the crossover promotion from wrestling and some buzz, they could make a little bit of money in the theaters and then profit from the video release. Their first few movies starred John Cena, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and Kane. While Vince McMahon has had Hollywood dollar signs dancing in his eyes ever since he put Hulk Hogan on the big screen in No Holds Barred, I think their recent foray into the movie business was a reactive move based on Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson leaving WWE for Hollywood.

Their strategy hasn’t necessarily worked quite yet. The film branch of their business is continually one of the only money losers, yet they don’t seem to be quitting. Very recently, WWE’s strategy has been to do a limited edition theater release and then go straight to DVD. I don’t really know why they bother with the theatrical release, other than to simply say that they did it.

What separates That’s What I Am from their other movies is that it’s the first movie they’ve done where their star wrestler, in this case Randy Orton, only had a bit part, and real actors carried the movie. Ed Harris is the only adult actor on the poster and Orton’s in the movie for maybe five minutes. I think their goal here was to get publicity on the quality of the film rather than on their big bumbling wrestler who was in it.

That’s What I Am has heart and the idea is a fine one. But it’s message is very heavy-handed and has an after school special feel to it at times. The movie preaches tolerance and anti-bullying, which is kind of funny coming from a company that endorses huge wrestlers who bully each other.
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