I had to get a new flash drive today and I thought it would be fun to count up the total number of reviews I’ve done.  I now need someone to tell me it’s going to be ok.  This is a bit much.

ECW

ECW on TNN – 60

Miscellaneous – 6

Pay Per View – 43

Total – 109

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous – 73

AAA – 5

AWA – 14

CWA – 7

Eastern Championship Wrestling – 3

Lucha Underground – 98

Middle Kingdom Wrestling – 12

NJPW – 8

NWA – 5

USWA – 16

UWF – 4

Total – 245

ROH

Miscellaneous – 16

ROH TV – 130

Total – 146

TNA

DVD – 4

Pay Per View – 162

TV – 378

Total – 544

WCW

Pay Per View – 177

TV – 542

Total – 719

WWE

Miscellaneous – 83

Pay Per View – 572

TV Total – 1956

205 Live – 41

ECW on SyFy – 29

Main Event – 50

Miscellaneous – 55

NXT – 413

Saturday Night’s Main Event – 81

Superstars – 39

Wrestling Challenge – 8

Smackdown – 462

Raw – 778

Total – 2611

Grand Total – 4975

Not counting:

25 Books

167 Columns

32 I Want To Talk A Little Bit About

So therefore, I’m coming up on a heck of a milestone.  What should I do for my 5000th review?  It can be a redo or something fresh but let me have some ideas in the comments.

So as you’ve probably heard, the latest hot show on Netflix is GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), a dramatized story about the backstage workings of the comedy wrestling show of the same name from back in the 80s. The original was actually a hot show in syndication, though it was one of the dumbest things you’ll find related to wrestling. I checked out the new series though and it’s actually quite good.

The show is a drama built around how the show is put together and how the girls were brought in. It’s certainly entertaining and goes by very fast (ten episodes, the longest of which doesn’t even break forty minutes, meaning you can knock out the season in just a day), which helps fix a major flaw in a lot of these online originals: episodes basically being short movies instead of TV shows.

There are a bunch of wrestling cameos, with John Morrison, Brodus Clay, Carlito, Christopher Daniels and Kazarian as the most notable. That’s the best wrestling stuff on the show though, as GLOW certainly wasn’t known for its in-ring product. They do a pretty entertaining job of showing how the training portion works though and that’s always cool to see from an outsider’s perspective.

Check the show out if you have the chance, but keep in mind that it is NOT PG. There’s a bit of nudity, a lot of swearing and some rather adult plotlines. It’s going to be around for at least another season and that’s a good sign as it’s one of the best depictions of wrestling I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s worth seeing and given how fast you can go through the season, it’s an easy watch.

On the other front, I recently received a rather nice Amazon gift card and spent a good chunk of it on a pile of wrestling books. The first one I finished off was Tim Hornbaker’s Capitol Revolution, the story of the New York territory which of course became the WWE of today. This is a good choice if you want a look at the older days (it goes back to the 1920s and carries forward), which is a period that isn’t often covered.

The book is rather detailed to start and covers a lot of the backstage nature of the territory. There are a lot of names that you might be familiar with (Toots Mondt, Strangler Lewis, Jess McMahon) and several you won’t (who I won’t list because, you know, they won’t mean much to you). You get a good look at how the structure worked back then, which goes to show you how things tend to stay the same over the years. It’s a very interesting look back at how the system used to work, which isn’t something you get to see very often.

Now the problem is how fast the pace picks up. The book is less than 300 pages and the first two thirds or so cover the origins up until the rise of Bruno Sammartino. Then the speeds picks WAY up and we’re suddenly at the Rock N Wrestling Connection era, which is where things wrap up. It feels like they hit a deadline and had to wrap things up instead of letting it build like they wanted it to. The majority of the book is very entertaining though and worth checking out, though I could have gone for a much longer edition. Still though, check it out if you like the historical aspect of wrestling.

Stole this idea from a friend of mine.  On the right hand side of the screen near the top you will now see a box with a random review link in it.  If you would like another one, just refresh the page and a new random review will appear.  I hope it’s something you all enjoy.

KB

It occurred to me that with 31 PPVs to go, it was going to take me until about Halloween to get done with all of the PPVs. I want them done by around the 4th of July so until I get done with them, I’m going to do alter my schedule a bit. First I’m going to finish this trio of WCW shows then three TNAs. After that I’ll do my usual Raw/Nitro/ECW series plus a few others. Then I’ll be doing three PPVs from each company in a row, then the Raw/Nitro/ECW thing again, three PPVs from each company in a row, Raw/Nitro/ECW, two PPVs from each company in a row, Raw/Nitro/ECW, and then the final PPV from each company.

In other words, the TV reviews are going to come a little more slowly for the next month or two. After that I’ll be adding more of them to my schedule, such as some earlier Raws. Sorry if you’re not a fan of this but I’ve been doing the PPV reviews for over three years and I want to get them done.

KB

On March 12, 2009, I posted my first review. In just shy of 3 years, I’ve reviewed 1257 shows, or over one a day on average. It breaks down like this if you’re curious:

ECW – 30
Misc – 57
ROH – 17
TNA – 163
WCW – 221
WWE – 769

That doesn’t include articles, the weekly reviews I post on the forums, or a few I did for a guy as a Christmas gift.

I’ve been getting a ton of requests for shows from this series lately so just to clarify: once I get done with the No Mercy reviews, I’ll be doing the Backlash reviews in order as I always do. Those are the only two series I have left in WWE and I’ll be doing Backlash 2006 as the final WWE PPV review.