Non-WWE Wrestlemania Week Thoughts/Notes
So Wrestlemania Weekend has come and gone and it would certainly be classified as eventful. As you might have seen, I went a bit nuts over the week, taking in 30 shows from Wednesday – Monday with 208 total matches. There are still a few more that I’m planning on doing before I wrap up everything for the year but we’ll get to those in time. As for today, I wanted to take a look at some of the things you might have missed over the weekend (outside of Wrestlemania/WWE), or perhaps just something that deserves a bit more attention. Or just random thoughts I have.
These are in no particular order.
• I am sick of the WWE ID wrestlers. They were all over the weekend and while I get the idea of promotions wanting to have someone officially part of WWE around, they wore out their welcome in a hurry. It doesn’t help that Swipe Right aren’t the most interesting villains in the first place and the other guys are only so interesting either. I know it isn’t something that is going to be a long term thing, but geez I do not want to see them for a long, long time. Naturally, their show is on tonight.
• Mike D. Vecchio caught my attention in a good way. He has a great look and while I didn’t get to see much of his work, what I did see went well. He’s from Belgium and apparently wrestles a bit in Japan so he’s getting in reps. You might want to keep his name written down for the future.
• There was a match at Spring Break between Fuego del Sol and Atticus Cogar, mask vs. career. The story was built around the idea of Cogar just not liking Fuego for various reasons and wanting to destroy everything he had built. I knew nothing about Cogar and only know Fuego from his time as a jobber in AEW, but this completely drew me in. I wanted to see Fuego beat this guy and stop the darkness he was trying to spread and that is exactly the kind of storytelling I love to see. They absolutely made this work and it was one of the best matches, at least from a storytelling perspective, all week.
• Dragon Gate USA is back. I’m not sure if this is a full time return or just for the weekend but they held a show of their own and a co-promoted show, both of which were great. This promotion has a reputation for a reason and those reasons were on full display. Very fun, exciting stuff and worth a look if you’re not familiar (or if you are).
• Minoru Suzuki had a pretty terrible weekend, with awful matches against Butterbean (easily the worst thing all weekend) and Matt Tremont. It isn’t a good sign when your best performance was against a doll, but that’s all that I got out of Suzuki in his multiple matches this weekend.
• Masha Slamovich and 1 Called Manders both had awesome weekends, appearing everywhere and not having a bad performance between them.
• Last week’s Dynamite was outstanding and easily one of the best shows the series has ever seen.
• Defy Wrestling and Prestige Wrestling are both solid indies if you’re looking for some quality material outside of the bigger promotions.
• Stardom continues to be high quality women’s wrestling. Tokyo Joshi Pro is good as well, but the styles are so totally different that it’s almost easy to forget they’re doing the same thing.
• Joey Janela’s Cluster**** is still a blast every year and the ultimate turn your brain off and have fun with goofy wrestling.
• I am absolutely exhausted from this weekend and I can’t wait to do it again next year.
Will you be reviewing Effy’s Big Gay Brunch? That show was a ton of fun.
Probably not, no.
Oh, you should! It was one of the better shows Wrestlemania weekend.
I’ve heard good things. Odds are I won’t but if I can squeeze it in, I’ll try.
I would keep in mind that a lot of the wrestlers who had multiple shows to work were probably toning it down some. You can go all out if you only have one matches a week, but when you have 10 matches as some of these people had, the matches are not going to be that good. The WWE ID people are probably even more serious about it because if they get hurt, they may miss the next set of Evolve tapings. I learned a few years back that these Wrestlemania shows are not going to be even on the level of most indy shows due to people needing to take it easy. It sucks because you see a match with two bigger name stars and it looks so good on paper, but it’s not going to be that in reality due to how many matches they have to do.
Minoru Suzuki is in a similar situation. But in his case, he’s just older and limited. Even if he wants to go all out, he probably can’t due to age/injuries. I don’t find him very entertaining at this point either. He’s just a slapping machine and little else.
Mike D is definitely a specimen. He has a good look and he can do all kinds of cool flying moves. The problem is that’s all he can do. He has nothing else except some of the cool flying moves and there’s no logic or heel/face work in his matches. He’s basically just an indy style worker at this point. He was at the WWE UK tryouts so he’s already on their radar. All Japan is using him regularly already, but if it comes down to a bidding war, WWE and AEW will win.