And…..yeah I should be used to this by now.

So as you probably know (or may not), I’m down in New Orleans for the annual Wrestlemania weekend festivities (hence why the reviews are all late, though I’ll get them up ASAP as I have a lot of Saturday free). I’ve got a full week scheduled and first up was the opening session of Axxess.

Now before we even get anywhere, it starts off as a mess. I’m in the central time zone at the moment, meaning it’s an hour before eastern time. Things were supposed to get started at 6pm CST and that was all well and good. I checked the WWE App to make sure everything was fine…and it says 5 CST. Therefore I rush over, only to find out that the WWE is wrong about THEIR OWN PRESENTATION so I’m an hour early. Well done indeed guys.

I park, I go in, I show my ticket, I look for a line….and I’m alone on the Axxess floor as they’ve sent me to the wrong room. That’s quite the visual but then I went to the right room and saw a decent sized line. Since it’s so early, I hit the Superstore and picked up JR’s BBQ sauce, ketchup and mustard, along with a shot glass and Shawn Michaels POP. Expensive, but it’s worth it one time.

Then of course it’s time for the long line of sitting, which has become a custom of these things. After another hour and a half in line, it was time to go in for….more waiting in line! Since it’s a total guess as to who you might get, I jumped in the Elimination Chamber line and met Tye Dillinger and Mike Kanellis (Who got there about ten minutes after the session started, just like everyone else. How hard could it be to have them ready?). Not much to this one, though I mentioned watching Tye in OVW, which seemed to impress Mike more than Tye. Also congratulated Mike on becoming a father, which got a genuine smile.

After that it was a tossup between DDP and Lana/Dana Brooke and since I could feel the glare from the wife, it was off to Page. That meant a lot of standing in line, but this time around I could watch the NXT matches on the big screen. I caught the very tail end (as in the last thirty seconds) of Keith Lee beating Kassius Ohno, most of Mustache Mountain over Tino Sabbatelli and Riddick Moss (seemed like a nice comedy match, more on Bate and Seven later) and parts of Lio Rush (Fan in line with me: They hired him back?) defeating Buddy Murphy in a surprise.

Anyway Page left at the halfway point (when they switch it out) but did take a selfie with us while also telling us an email address for a free month of DDP Yoga. Nothing wrong with free, but next up was seeing who would be the next guests. That would be Teddy Long (more on him tomorrow) and Jimmy Hart, both of whom I’ve met before so I left and jumped into Apollo’s line (which was next door and the shortest all night) before he left and was replaced by…..Carmella and Alundra Blayze. Eh not the worst. Carmella was one of the most charismatic people I’ve seen at one of these things while Blayze was calm but cool. I did get to touch the briefcase, but with only one finger.

After that I didn’t have time to get in any more lines because of the WrestleCon SuperShow starting with half an hour left in my session, so it was off to the memorabilia section. This is my favorite part of Axxess with a great look at each Hall of Famer and a TON of old stuff, from costumes to belts to ring worn gear. There was also a women’s evolution section and a Hall of Legends, featuring a WWWF World Title from the 60s and a pair of Andre’s boots. I could look through that kind of thing for days.

Overall, this was one of the weaker Axxess sessions I’ve been to, but that’s pretty much to be expected. You can never guess what you’ll get with these things and while it’s annoying, that’s just how they work. It all depends on which guests you get, but since the lines take so long you’re not going to get many people anyway. Not the worst, but Axxess is reaching the top of the list of things I’d cut next time I go to Wrestlemania.

Did I forget to tell you that I was doing Wrestlemania weekend again this year?  At the moment:

Axxess

WrestleCon Supershow (Some guy named Omega is wrestling)

WrestleCon Friday and Sunday (with various pictures with guests already purchased)

Rev Pro (With Tana….Tana…..that air guitar guy)

Maybe Impact vs. Lucha Underground (depends on how tired I am as there’s a long wait between shows)

Wrestling Revolver

Takeover

Wrestlemania

Raw

Smackdown

And anything else I find time to do.  Already in the hotel, which I can do because of all of you.  Thank you again, as always.

The paperback sells for $10.99 and is available through Amazon. If you’re not big on the physical book, the e-book is still available as well. In case you don’t have a Kindle or device to read an e-book, there are plenty of FREE apps you can get from Amazon for pretty much any  electronic device, all of which are available at this link.

You can pick up the paperback from Amazon here.

From the UK Amazon here.

If you’re in another country with its own Amazon page or want the e-book, just search “KB Grab Bag” and it should be the first thing to come up.

Also you can still get any of my previous books on the WWE Championship, the Intercontinental Championship, Monday Night Raw from 1997, 1998 and 2001, Monday Nitro from 1995-1998, In Your House, Summerslam, Starrcade, ECW Pay Per Views, Royal Rumble, Saturday Night’s Main Event, the WWF and WCW pay per views from 1998, Wrestlemania, NXT and Clash of the Champions at my author’s page here.

I hope you like it and shoot me any questions you might have.

KB

Once every so often, a personality steps between the ropes of the squared circle and transcends the wrestling business.

Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Cena and Dave Batista; every era and generation has a select few who became notable to the wider world for more than just lacing up a pair of boots.

They are living legends – WWE Hall of Famers or sure-fire bets to one day take their place among the pantheon of wrestling greats. It is easy to quantify their in-ring legacies through championships amassed, Royal Rumble wins or other accomplishments and pay-per-views headlined. Consider this though; there wouldn’t be a WWE Hall of Fame without Andre the Giant.

Just a Gimmick?

Nicknamed “The Eighth Wonder of the World” and billed from Grenoble in the French Alps, he was actually born and raised in Coulommiers – a commune 60 kilometers east of Paris. A postwar farm boy and school dropout who suffered from gigantism from an early age became one of the most popular wrestlers on the planet. Andre the Giant notably competed in Europe and Africa, the Far East and Down Under, and throughout the Americas.

For all that globetrotting, Andre’s actual accolades in wrestling are modest by modern standards. He was no 16-time world champion like Flair or Cena, winning the old WWF title once before quickly surrendering it to Ted DiBiase. Andre’s was a gimmick – the gargantuan monster – that didn’t need a run with the belt to enhance it. The only other notable example like him in this respect is The Undertaker.

Andre enjoyed greater success in terms of championships in tag team wrestling, holding a couple of belts in the NWA with “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes. He also earned notoriety in Japan when partnering Giant Baba and won the WWF tag titles with Haku, who, in his own way, was a trailblazer for current wrestling stars with Pacific Island heritage like The Usos and Roman Reigns.

And the critics? It seems Andre the Giant divided opinion or at least drew different responses at various stages of his career. He won awards for most popular (1977 and 1982), hated (1988) and embarrassing (1989) wrestler of the year.  Twice involved in Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s match of the year (1981 and 1988), Andre also received the less desirable honor of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s worst worked bouts (1987 and 1989). They also named him worst wrestler of the year on three occasions.

A Giant Legacy

The 25th anniversary of Andre’s death came in January – coincidentally, one day before this year’s Royal Rumble event – and that milestone is reason enough to ask what his legacy is.

First, who can forget the “Andre the Giant has a posse” stickers designed by renowned street artist Shepard Fairey? He also starred as Fezzik (a giant, no less) in the cult 1987 film The Princess Bride. There is now possibly a biopic and definitely a documentary in development too, as WWE and HBO team up to tell the story of his life.

Andre has also been immortalized in more than a dozen WWE computer games as a playable character. The wrestler routinely appears in the annual WWE 2K series of games and has a starring role in the much older WWE All Stars for the PSP. A variety of online game types feature Andre as the running theme, and he’s listed as “The Irresistible Force” in the Android and iOS app WWE Champions, a title that melds signature grappling moves with modern match-three gameplay.

And the tangible things just keep on coming. There are countless action figures in his image and the annual Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal that has featured on the WrestleMania undercard for the last four years. Wrestlers not otherwise engaged in a program at “The Showcase of the Immortals” compete for an eponymous trophy of Andre in his signature arms folded pose.

The Big Show is a previous winner of the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal and that is where his legacy starts to enter the ether. Paul Wight resembles Andre in size and stature, even suffering from gigantism during his youth too. When debuting in WCW more than two years after Andre’s death, Wight played his kayfabe son and was simply called The Giant.

In WWE’s main rival creating this character and putting Show straight into a feud with his storyline father’s old nemesis Hulk Hogan, Andre was the basis upon which an entire storyline was founded. That shows not only how respected he was, but how much he was missed as a monster attraction and crowd draw.

That Body Slam

If you haven’t seen that iconic wrestling moment with The Hulkster taking Andre off his feet with the body slam from WrestleMania III, then watch it and you’ll realize that spot is a gift that keeps on giving. Cesaro directly invoked the spirit of it and paid homage to Andre when doing the very same move to Big Show in the inaugural Memorial Battle Royal at WrestleMania XXX.

There had been big wrestlers before Andre the Giant. Big wrestlers who had got over too. Without him, though, would there have ever been a Big Show? The storyline son angle is something WWE is still using today too, with Monday Night RAW general manager Kurt Angle and Jason Jordan.

Another comparison besides Paul Wight, and arguably a better one in other ways, is The Great Khali – a foreign wrestler coming to the USA from abroad as Andre did and making it big by winning a world title. India is a market the WWE has belatedly tried to cultivate properly through Jinder Mahal’s near six-month WWE Championship reign in 2017 and an end-of-year tour of the Subcontinent.

Whether Andre the Giant really was a trailblazer for massive athletes becoming wrestlers or just one of many that paved the way, so that today we have “The Monster Among Men” Braun Strowman on a seemingly never-ending push doesn’t matter. The similarities are there and the debate is one for internet forums. Strowman’s own in-ring performance is nothing flashy, his moveset limited, but it’s believable his basic offense – just like Andre’s before him – hurts opponents.

It seems apt to end this in-depth look at Andre the Giant and his legacy with where it began; the WWE Hall of Fame. He was so beloved that it was created for him as the initial inductee. Over 100 wrestlers have followed Andre into it since, including former tag partner Hillbilly Jim for the class of 2018.

Now, it is very easy to downplay this. Popular sports in America all have a hall of fame. It’s easy to say Andre’s death was just a convenient time for the then WWF to establish theirs, but that doesn’t change the fact his passing was the catalyst for recognizing wrestlers – living or otherwise. Nothing else highlights the Giant’s legacy quite like it.

It might keep you awake during the show!

https://steelcageforums.com/showthread.php/174-Fastlane-2018-LD-(OR-The-Most-Pointless-Show-of-the-Year-2018)

We don’t bite.  At least not at these prices.

https://steelcageforums.com/showthread.php/157-Come-Post-in-the-Live-Discussion-for-Raw?p=3169#post3169

It’s that time of year again.  The Wrestlemania Count-Up begins this Tuesday and I’ll be redoing both Wrestlemania XXXIII and one more that you all get to vote on.  You can list your votes in the comments with the following being out of the running (due to being done recently):

XXXIII

XXXII

XIX

XXVIII

Any of the other 29 editions are available though.

Over at Steelcageforums.com.  I’ll be popping in with thoughts during the show.

https://steelcageforums.com/showthread.php/98-Elimination-Chamber-2018-LD

So as some of you may or may not know (or as you may not care about whatsoever but keep reading anyway), there has been some upheaval over at the WrestleZone Forums.  I won’t go into a discussion of it here but in short, the people who own them aren’t happy with a few things and I’m not sure how things are going there in the future.  Therefore, my (now former) partner on there and I have put together our own forum.

We own, edit and operate the place and would love to have you join us.  We’ll have sections for news and live discussions, with me being around every single day to talk about whatever.  There’s a core group of people there who are all incredibly smart, whom I consider my peers and as close to my equals as I’m going to have (I mean, it’s not like anyone there is better at this than I am or anything.  Like that’s possible.).

We’d love to have you come check us out and stay awhile.  The place was literally just opened to the public over the weekend so it’s brand new and could use some new faces.  Come check us out and say hi, especially to me (klunderbunker).

Steelcageforums.com

If you can see this, the site may be down for a few hours in the near future.  Apparently the site has been hacked and I’m having it cleaned soon to get rid of the malware.  I’ve been told it should only be for a few hours, if it goes down at all.  Therefore, if the site happens to be offline, just check back in a few hours and everything should be fine.

KB