Michael Fitzgerald

Mike Reviews – Catalyst Wrestling “Steal This Show” (17th September 2021)

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S’up everyone!

I discovered Catalyst Wrestling (Formerly Capitol Wrestling) during the first lockdown here in the UK as they had a slot on something called the Showcase channel. They sadly don’t seem to have a presence on UK telly anymore but you can watch their regular show over on YouTube for free.

I’m becoming quite the fan of Colby Corino and he does regular work for them, so I decided to check out one of their recent shows from September this year seeing as he’s in the Main Event and all. I think he’s been doing some stuff for the NWA as well and also had an appearance on 205 Live, so he’s definitely worth keeping an eye on, especially if you were a fan of his dad’s work like I am.

Some of the peeps at Catalyst actually reached out to me and gave me a promo code for this show for review purposes, so thank you to them for that, but I think the show was only £0.72 UK anyway, which isn’t a bad price to pay for 2 hours and 21 minutes of wrestling in all honesty.

If you like the sound of this show then I’ll post the link for YouTube channel as well as the link for this particular show below if you want to see some of their stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/c/CatalystWrestling/videos

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/stealthisshow

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Mike Reviews – WWF Survivor Series 1998: Deadly Game (Cause it’s a Deadly Game)

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Happy Saturday Everyone!

I’ve been meaning to do this one for a while, being that in some ways it was one of most intricately booked shows of the entire Attitude Era and I enjoy that sort of thing.

The story here was that both Undertaker and Kane had pinned Stone Cold Steve Austin at the same time in a WWF Title match, leading to the belt getting made vacant and a big tournament needing to be held in order to crown a new Champ. Going into the show Mankind had been chosen as Vince McMahon’s hand-picked Corporate Champion, whilst Stone Cold and The Rock were the main babyface options to win the thing.

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Blog of DOOM Daily Thread – 4th December 2021

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Happy Saturday Everyone!

Caught Rampage this morning. As usual it was an easy show to watch, but pretty forgettable once it was over. To be honest, I can live with that so long as Dynamite keeps delivering week on week. It’s all about whether the ratings are high enough to keep TNT happy. If so, then it’s all just gravy on top of the AEW chicken dinner, and who doesn’t like gravy?

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Mike Reviews Shows Considered To Be Stinkers – LPWA Super Ladies Showdown (23rd February 1992)

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Howdy Ho Stinkerinos!

Back with another Reader Request this month, as we look at the LPWA’s failed foray into pay per view courtesy of Dave Newman.

For those not acquainted with these reviews, I look back at a show that has a bad reputation and decide whether it deserves it or not. This one is probably going to be more the case of production woes dragging things down, as looking at the list of wrestlers included then the in-ring aspect should likely be decent once the bell rings.

The Ladies Pro Wrestling Association was a women’s only federation from 1989-1992 that tried to present the women as actual wrestlers as opposed to companies like GLOW, that focused more on gimmicks and titillation.

The company was run by a guy called John Berg and they produced some television and VHS releases before throwing their hat into the pay per view realm. I’ve decided to do minimal research into the women I don’t know for this one to see how good a job the LPWA does of introducing its roster to a new viewer. I might even factor that into the eventual decision at the end actually. I’m going into it as someone who has never watched the product before and we’ll see how good a job the LPWA does of getting me up to speed.

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Blog of DOOM Daily Thread – 27th November 2021

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Happy Saturday Everyone!

I’m away for the weekend so Sunday and Monday’s threads will be a little bare bones, but we’ll be back to normal on Tuesday. I’m off down south to see Everton against Brentford. It’s my first ever visit to Brentford, and if their impressive performances continue whilst Everton continue to be mince then it might be the last time in a while that I get to go there.

I caught Rampage from last night and enjoyed it. It’s a very easy to watch show, although it definitely feels like it’s the Thunder to Dynamite’s Nitro these days (albeit it’s a good Thunder at least). AEW has a stacked enough roster that they can load up both shows, but I also get that they probably want to reserve the stronger stuff for Dynamite as it’s the flagship. At least the show is fun to watch.

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Blog of DOOM Daily Thread – 26th November 2021

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Happy Friday Everyone!

Today is Black Friday, which is annoyingly something we seem to have inherited from North America here in the UK. Our big “sales” day was always Boxing Day on the 26th of December, but I guess the shops over here saw another pie they could stick their fingers into meaning we now have to suffer Black Friday as well.

If you are out at the shops today then please spare a thought for those unlucky enough to be working retail jobs, as they’re going to be rushed off their feet to begin with and have no say as to things like price and stock, so any anger directed at them is both unpleasant and utterly pointless.

As someone who served a few years in the trenches on consecutive Boxing Day’s at an electronics store whilst in his teens, I know just how horrible it can be during this time of year, so please be kind to those retail workers you encounter today because they’re ultimately the ones that suffer the most so that you can get 30% off a surround sound system or a new TV (outside of those people who work in the sweat shops that make some of these things to begin with of course, but you know what I mean)

Basically, don’t be a jerk today if you’re out shopping

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Mike Reviews – ROH Glory By Honour II (20th September 2003) – Part One

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Welcome to another ROH Wednesday Everyone!

This time we’ve got the first part of Glory By Honour II, an event that got a lot of hype at the time due to the quality of some of the matches and the star power involved, with Terry Funk actually making an appearance next week. This week we’ve got Steve Corino Vs Raven, in a match I don’t think ever really happened in ECW despite them both passing through there. I think by the time they were actually booking Corino as a credible threat to the top guys Raven had already left to go to the WWF. They might have had some smaller matches back when Corino was doing his Jericho Light gimmick and managing Rhino, but it was pretty much just tags for them whilst they were still in the company together I think.

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