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.

It’s that time of year again and that means it’s time to get excited. Wrestlemania Week is upon us and the lineups, both from WWE and everywhere else, are absolutely stacked. As usual, I’ll be going as nuts as I can with reviewing stuff from around the wrestling world. I currently have 33 shows scheduled (with an additional 9 I’d like to do but they aren’t currently being announced as being broadcast), starting Wednesday night and ending with Raw on Monday.

Of course I won’t be able to get to them all in real time (Thursday has 13 shows on its own) but I’ll be getting them done as fast as I can. Sleep isn’t going to be much of a factor this week so please keep your eyes open around here, as I’ll have stuff going up at some odd hours. Also note that I don’t plan on doing these shows in straight chronological order, but I’ll absolutely be getting to all of the usual shows as well. This is the big time for me and I’ll be doing as much as I can do for the next several days. Let’s get to it.

KB

Dang it feels good to say that. It’s the biggest week of the year for wrestling and it is going to be the busiest week I have by far. I have my schedule ready and from Wednesday – Monday, I’ll be covering 22 shows, which might go up to 26 if some more are streaming. The regular schedule is going to be more than a bit off from Thursday – Saturday but if it is a show I usually do, it will be posted at some point, hopefully less than 24 hours after it ended. I’m really not sure what order they are going to go up in, but it is mostly going to be whatever I can find/get to next. It’s going to be a crazy few days, but I’ll have everything I can for you as fast as I can.

KB