That’s what HHH says on Twitter.  It’s the verified account as well.  What in the freaking world?

Take this with a HUGE grain of salt as it could be some storyline etc.

Saddened to announce the passing of the Ultimate Warrior. Icon and friend. My sympathy to his wife Dana and his daughters

— Triple H (@TripleH) April 9, 2014

Edit: WWE has confirmed the story.  No cause of death has been released yet.

Editx2: TMZ has posted a story saying Warrior collapsed outside his hotel and was taken to the hospital where he passed away.  That would heavily imply it wasn’t self inflicted.

Saturday session, 1-5pm.

Most of these are self explanatory.

Ascension vs. Jason Jordan/???

Wrestlemania Today being filmed.

Lanny Poffo.

The Wild Samoans after their signing.

There was a camera crew following her.

Camera crew as well.

Legends House.  They had a professional photographer take the Duggan shot and gave me a card to download the picture.  This would have been really good everywhere but it was the only booth they did this at.

\

For you Becca.

Contract expired yesterday.  This can be filed under “what took so long?”

If true, this makes things a lot more understandable.Allegedly Undertaker was injured coming into the match and couldn’t move around that well.  The word on the street is that Undertaker made the call to end it because he couldn’t perform at a high enough level anymore.  I genuinely wonder if the F5 on Raw had something to do with it.  If true, there you go people that insisted they have contact before Wrestlemania.  You got what you wanted and now the Streak is over because of it.

Also Undertaker suffered a concussion/possible neck injury and was hospitalized as a result.  No word on his future or plans for tonight at all.

Even today I’ve got news.

Word on the street is that she’s getting into another business and is leaving after tonight.  I haven’t seen anything that says there’s heat on either side so she would likely be welcomed back in the future.  She got on my nerves at times but she played her role VERY well over the years.

I took in Axxess earlier today after having wanted to go for the last 14 years or so. There was a lot of good stuff but some of the things could have been done better. I took a ton of pictures which I’ll post when I get back home and get to my camera cord. There were some VERY nice surprises there though and I met some people who weren’t advertised.

My session started at 1pm and ran for four hours. I got there about 50 minutes early and there were already hundreds of people in line. The line moved FAST though and I was in maybe three minutes after 1. This brings the first major problem: it’s a crap shoot as to who is at which booth. You can find out on the WWE App, but NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS. Even the staff didn’t know what was going on.

Anyway I got in the second line I saw which had a big WWE 2K14 sign behind it. I passed on the Scooby Doo booth which had Santino Marella as the guest. I asked one of the people next to me who the guest was and then I see none other than Dolph Ziggler (in an NWO shirt for some reason) take the stage.

Despite having maybe 50 people in front of us, it took an hour and fifteen minutes to get through the line. This was partially due to Ziggler stopping to talk to the disabled/handicapped people in a separate line (nothing wrong with that and something that happened all day long). The other reason was Dolph doing a TWENTY MINUTE INTERVIEW while we waited in line. The cool thing about this: I might be on Wrestlemania Today on the Network. The camera pans over his line and I was at the front at the time. Ziggler was very nice and kept eating Pizza Rolls (sponsor) between meeting fans. He shook my hand and posed for a picture while signing the back of my Axxess map.

After that and with ¼ of my time gone, I ran over to the NXT booth to try for Dusty Rhodes. On the way I saw about five seconds of Ascension vs. Jason Jordan/??? for the NXT Tag Team Titles. While I was in line for the NXT booth I could hear Paige retaining the Women’s Title over Charlotte and the start of a Sami Zayn match against I believe Corey Graves.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see Dusty as the first two hour session was already up and a new set of guests came in during the second hour. To Axxess’s credit, they told us we wouldn’t get to the front of the line with nearly half an hour to go. While in line I was given a little NXT gift bag with some very nice trading cards made by Topps (big company in the trading card industry if you’re not familiar), an NXT poster with the roster on the front and mini bios on the back and a bag which came in handy for carrying all my stuff around.

While I was in line, Bob Backlund of all people came casually walking behind me and went behind a curtain. I waved at him and got one in return but he was too far away for a picture or autograph. You could hear him giving one of his ranting promos in the NXT ring while I was in line.

Since the NXT thing wasn’t happening, I ran over to the legends booth to find…..Lanny Poffo and the Wild Samoans. Not exactly a thrilling lineup but Lanny is from Lexington, Kentucky so I got to chat with him for a few moments about that. However, I didn’t get their autographs because the lineup changed again. In their place, and with me fifth in line: Paul Orndorff and RICKY STEAMBOAT. Orndorff looks great all things considered but he’s grown a mustache that would make Hulk Hogan jealous. Both guys were serious but friendly with Steamboat hyping up the crowd while they changed places.

The interesting thing here was the cast of people walking around from an entrance in the back to their booths. From there I saw Eva Marie, the Funkadactyls (all being filmed for Total Divas), Darren Young, Norman Smiley, Damien Sandow and Mick Foley, with a bad limp. Backlund walked right back into the crowd while this was going on as well. He has that goofy look on his face the entire time as well.

After that I walked around to look at some exhibits and to try and find the shortest line. I came across the Legends House booth and saw Hacksaw Jim Duggan signing on a Legends House set. The line took awhile as there was a professional photographer who gave you a card where you could access your pictures online for free. This would have been a great thing to do all over the place instead of just with Legends House but whatever.

This was a very efficiently run booth as I got through the line in about 40 minutes and got to chat with Duggan. I was wearing a Cleveland Indians shirt and he asked if I was from Ohio. I said I saw him wrestle in Lexington about twenty two years earlier and he said I go way back. He asked if it was my first Wrestlemania (it is) and he said once I go I’ll never want to miss another one. Very nice guy, as was everyone else.

Something interesting about the Duggan booth is while he was getting up to go meet the handicapped people, he would always start a USA chant or get us all to shout HOOO before he went down to meet the people. You can see the old guys know how to keep a crowd going instead of just focusing on the people in front of them. It’s a dying art but it worked well here.

After that I was running low on time and started to head to the 30 Years of Wrestlemania exhibit but opted for Undertaker’s Graveyard. It’s a cool concept with a bunch of Undertaker stuff and a tombstone with the Wrestlemania logo, date and name of the opponent engraved. There’s also a cased urn, a bunch of caskets, and an open grave with a tombstone for Wrestlemania 30 minus a name. I wanted to hit the 30 Years thing though so I cut out in the middle. The biggest problem here: it’s right next to the Superstar entrance booth so when the organ music was restarting, you could hear LET’S LIGHT IT UP!

So I run back over to 30 Years of Wrestlemania with fifteen minutes to go….and it’s closed. Like EVERYTHING ELSE. The idea is to get the fans out in time for the next batch to come in, but it’s cutting off a part of the time the people paid for. Why they can’t just have a 30 minute buffer in between is beyond me, but a lot of people were annoyed as the exhibits would take about ten minutes to get through and there was plenty of time to go. I don’t blame the guards as they had orders, but that’s stupid planning. I walked through the store (you have to as you leave) but the stuff was your usual overpriced weekend event stuff. They had a TON of merchandise though.

Overall it was fun and I’d definitely go again, but man alive were there some issues with how it was set up. For one thing, have a sign up that says who is going to be at your booths later in the day rather than just making it a guessing game. Also, and I’m not sure how you go about doing this, they need to cut down the wait time. Spending an hour to get one signature is eating up too much time. I would think maybe having everyone in a line and you can meet them and then go to booths, but it would get REALLY annoying standing there while everyone got pictures etc. It’s more than worth the $50 to get in and see everything and meet people like Steamboat and Duggan though.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book of on the History of Clash of the Champions at Amazon for just $3.99 at:

And check out my Amazon author page with wrestling books for under $4 at:

I’ve been getting ready for the trip and didn’t really want to get into any big reviews.  Instead I just kind of watched stuff on the Network all day so I figured I’d give my thoughts on its original series so far since I somehow haven’t this far into the launch.Wrestlemania Rewind – I like the concept here but there’s only a certain amount of episodes they can air.  However, they can switch it up to various versions such as Summerslam, Royal Rumble etc or even the lower shows like MITB.  It’s a cool concept and it comes back to the best thing the WWE Network has going for it: they can air whatever they want and they have all the time they want to do so.  It’s cool for a flashback and a great way to get people ready for Wrestlemania.  Airing the match is another nice touch.

Beyond the Ring – Not really original but it’s a really smart move.  Those documentaries can rock and they have like a million of them to air so far with more coming out every year.  They’re long so I wouldn’t recommend starting one unless you have a lot of time on your hands.

Legends of Wrestling – Maybe my favorite show they have, even though a lot of them are old.  I love listening to the legends telling stories for an hour on any given topic as there’s a very natural feeling to the idea.  It works so well but some of the panel members are just awful choices, like Mike Graham who just isn’t relevant to anything outside of “The Mike Graham Story.”

Countdown – I thought this was going to be a really generic show but I’m digging the heck out of it so far.  There are hundreds of ideas you could do for this show and it could go on for a long time.  Some of the choices have actually surprised me and the whole thing is far better than it should be.  THe talking heads help a lot and the mini features they throw in are great too.  For example there’s an episode about entrances and they throw in a retrospective about ring robes.  That’s awesome stuff for old school fans like myself and it allows for a lot of debate after it’s over.

Shockingly enough I’m loving most of these shows which are all bonus material to the huge library and all the regular programming you get as well.  The Network is everything I was hoping it would be and it’s just awesome so far.  I can’t wait for them to add even more content as they could keep putting out new stuff for years.

So I checked out the WWE Scooby Doo movie tonight and was actually entertained. If this isn’t a good enough tease: John Cena hits the Five Knuckle Shuffle on a bear.

I won’t go into a point by point plot synopsis but the basic premise is pretty basic: Shaggy, Scooby and the gang win tickets to Wrestlemania when Scooby wins a WWE video game contest. They go to WWE City (more on that later) and are attacked by a ghost bear. Scooby is accused of stealing the WWE Title belt and has to team up with Shaggy in a handicap last man standing match against Kane in the opening match of Wrestlemania to clear his name. It’s law in WWE City. Seriously. This leads into a plot to destroy Wrestlemania by the villain, who is of course revealed at the end.

If you’ve seen a Scooby Doo movie, I’m sure you get the story structure as it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before, but this time it’s with WWE. That’s my world and there were some rather interesting points to it which I’ll list off here. There won’t be much context to these but you’ll see them if you watch the movie, which you should.

There’s a WWE City with a 50 foot HHH statue pointing the way. You can totally imagine Vince opening a WWE theme park one day. It comes complete with the Vince Hotel, Mr. McMahon’s Waffle House and Tombstone Tacos. There’s also a picture of the WWE Title carved into a mountain. I would so go there every summer.

This isn’t WWE related but I took notes chronologically. As they go on their trip, it turns out Shaggy forgot to pack the bags. Shaggy: “What difference does it make? We wear the same clothes every day.” That got a good chuckle out of me.

The animation on Miz and Cena is off. Miz is far worse than Cena but they messed up Cena’s hair badly. That’s hard to do as Cena has a really simple haircut. Christian was off as well.

Oddly enough, Sin Cara is arguably the most important wrestler in the movie. He’s at worst second and is about equal to Cena as far as importance. If this were based on the current roster, he’d be Daniel Bryan. HHH is in the movie but has about as many lines as Brodus Clay. He’s not featured for the most part save for a few moments that had to be overdone on purpose.

There’s a scene at a house show which had HHH, Vince, and commentary from Cole. There’s also a running gag where Cole gets annoyed that his announce table keeps getting broken which made me smile. Oh and it was the Raw Titantron instead of the house show one.

One of the problems with this that is going to date it slightly is the title belt, which is a big plot point, is the old spinner belt instead of the new one. The new belt has been out for over a year. You would think they could have changed that in time.

There’s a training area that has the old Smackdown fist set as a backdrop. Then later on there’s another version of it where that set is the only wall and the ring is outside otherwise. That was rather odd. However, we get a training montage with AJ getting our heroes in shape, set to Let’s Light It Up. Shaggy describes AJ as Kane wearing lipstick, which I’m surprised hasn’t happened at some point throughout his career.

Speaking of odd, the Ghost Bear keeps changing size. At one point it’s the size of a human and other times he’s about 10ft tall. The same is true to a less degree about the wrestlers, as Cena goes from being about his usual height to roughly 6’8.

At one point Shaggy calls Vince the Higher Power.

You know it’s coming, but let’s get to the John Cena superhero power list. At various points in this movie, Cena displays the powers of producing house show tickets at a moment’s notice, shove boulders around (with his theme music playing in the middle of a cave), falling asleep after being rammed into a wall, lift trucks out of ditches with his bare hands, and speaking masked luchador. That’s a quote from the movie, as Sin Cara doesn’t speak a line in the movie but explains the backstory while Cena translates. We also get a good tagline for Cena: “He’s Cenamazing!” That’s a t-shirt if I’ve ever heard one.

Wrestlemania’s opening match is an unannounced handicap last man standing match which is later put inside a cage. I checked the credits for Vince Russo but he wasn’t listed as a writer. Must be under a pseudonym.

To wrap it up, hearing Vince McMahon chant SCOOBY DOO is bizarre.

The movie is good if you turn your brain off and have fun while considering it’s made for eight year olds. They throw in enough stuff to make older fans smile and it’s your usual Scooby Doo style move. I was only a mid level fan of the character but it was entertaining enough and runs about 80 minutes before the credits. Check it out on Netflix or Red Box (assuming it’s there) on whatever newfangled video rental system you people have today.

This was announced earlier today.It’s Mr. T.  You’re not going to get a better celebrity than that with actual connections to wrestling.

That seems to be the general consensus I get.Today I saw yet another article talking about how WWE needs to stop using part timers.  This year’s Wrestlemania will be headlined by matches including HHH, Undertaker, Brock Lesnar, HHH and Batista (not a part timer but that’s the general consensus).  Yeah Wrestlemania has been making a fortune with Wrestlemania, they’re going to make a fortune on the TV rights, they’re making a fortune off the Network and they’re giving the fans what they want with Bryan more than likely walking out of Wrestlemania as WWE Champion, but they clearly need to plan for their future because they’re headed for a cliff because of the part timers.

Why do people think WWE is blind to this idea?  Yeah, these guys are part timers now but here’s the thing: the current roster isn’t going to be around forever.  One day John Cena, Randy Orton, CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Sheamus and so on will be part timers and they’ll be headlining Wrestlemania just like the previous generation is now.  It’ll make money, WWE will continue to reign on high and crush whatever “competition” comes against them.

Now go and tell me that I can’t prove that and write three paragraphs explaining why so I can poke holes in it using logic and common sense to counter the argument of “I think it might go this way because I say so.”

Remember to follow me on Twitter @kbreviews and pick up my new book of on the History of Summerslam at Amazon for just $3.99 at:

And check out my Amazon author page with wrestling books for under $4 at: