Michael Fitzgerald

Mike Reviews Every WCW Great American Bash Main Event Part Two (1995 to 2000)

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Hello You!

Let’s close out Great American Bash. Sadly I don’t expect the overall match quality to be as good in this one as it was in Part One, mainly because we’re now moving into the Bischoff Era, where WCW’s trademark essentially became hot under cards with Main Events that couldn’t live up to what came before them.

The Bash actually took a break from 1992 to 1995, so there are no 93 and 94 Bash events. I’m not sure why they decided to get rid of it, especially as it had traditionally been such a big event for the company prior to it getting side-lined.

Anyway, less chatter, more chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews Every WCW Great American Bash Main Event Part Two (1995 to 2000)

Mike Reviews Every WCW Great American Bash Main Event Part One (1988 to 1992)

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Hello You!

Time for some more Main Event reviews, as we look at WCW’s Great American Bash Event. For simplicities sake, I’m just going to count the official pay per view events, as otherwise we’d be here for a long time due to The Bash being a big tour prior to it becoming an official pay per view. I’m also not going to cover WWE’s version of the event, because I never really enjoyed those ones and I’m not really that eager to relive them.

Anyway, there’s chuffing wrestling, so we should watch it!

Read moreMike Reviews Every WCW Great American Bash Main Event Part One (1988 to 1992)

Mike Reviews: Full Impact Pro – Fallout Night Two (13/11/2004)

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Hello You!

I’ve had this DVD in my collection for a while but never given it a full watch, so I decided to watch it in aid of having something fresh to write about, seeing as I’ve never done an FIP review before. The Main Event is a match you might have either heard of before or seen some clips from, especially for one particular spot in it, so it should be fun to review it hopefully.

For those not au fait, FIP is a company based out of Florida that operated for quite a while as a sister promotion to ROH. The FIP Title was even defended on ROH shows sometimes, with Roderick Strong in particular having an impressive reign with it.

Most of the people on this show will have turned out for ROH, TNA or even WWE in some cases, so I’m hoping that it will be an enjoyable enough show to watch.

Let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews: Full Impact Pro – Fallout Night Two (13/11/2004)

Mike Reviews: ECW Hardcore TV #369 – 20/05/2000

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Condolences to the friends and family of Larry Csonka and Shad Gaspard, who both sadly passed away this week. There’s actually a Go Fund Me up for Larry’s daughters if you feel like you want to contribute. I’ll put the link below;

https://www.gofundme.com/f/larrymania-living-on-in-his-girls?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

R.I.P

Read moreMike Reviews: ECW Hardcore TV #369 – 20/05/2000

Mike Reviews Every WWE Judgement Day Main Event Part Two (2004 to 2009)

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Hello You!

Let’s finish off these Judgment Day Main Events. I hope you like Bradshaw, because you’re about to get a heavy dose of him! You’re also going to get stuff from guys like John Cena, Edge and Triple H as well though, so hopefully the match quality on this one should be decent.

Let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews Every WWE Judgement Day Main Event Part Two (2004 to 2009)

Mike Reviews – ECW Hardcore Heaven 2000 (14/05/2000)

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Hello You!

It’s time for another ECW pay per view, one of which I thankfully have the official Laser Light Digital version of so I can enjoy it with all the real music and whatnot. If I recall there is a really random edit in one of the matches that never made any sense to me, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

This event hasn’t been promoted all that great, with a paltry three matches officially announced on the go-home show. I’ve not bothered to go back and check what the buy rate was, but I imagine few outside of the ECW diehards were going to bother buying a show where more than half the card hadn’t been confirmed in advance. That might still mean that the show defeats WCW Slamboree 2000 though, as when it comes to having barely any of the card announced or a full card with David Arquette defending his World Title in the Main Event, the former is likely to do better than the latter.

Read moreMike Reviews – ECW Hardcore Heaven 2000 (14/05/2000)

Mike Reviews Every WWE Judgment Day Main Event Part One (1998 to 2003)

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Hello You!

Judgment Day was an event that the WWF/E usually held in May, although the first one was in October 1998. This is just speculation on my part, but I think it ended up as a May event due to the horrible situation that took place at Over The Edge 1999, where Owen Hart tragically fell to his death. Seeing as that name would likely remind people of Owen’s passing, the WWF probably thought they would be best served to retire the name and, seeing as No Mercy was now the regular October event, they decided to reuse Judgment Day seeing as that one was currently available.

I’m going to break this one into a couple of parts I think, just because there have been too many Judgment Day events to squeeze them all into one review. So we’ll do five this week and the final six the week after.

Let’s watch some chuffing wrestling.

Read moreMike Reviews Every WWE Judgment Day Main Event Part One (1998 to 2003)

Mike Reviews: ECW Hardcore TV #367 – 06/05/2000

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Hello You!

So last week ECW decided to put the World Title on a certain fellow known as Justin Credible. Yeah, as you can guess that was a tad controversial back at the time and is still roundly criticised to this day. Still though, let’s see if Justin can present himself as a credible (pun partially intended) Champion going forward. I mean, his first feud is likely going to be Tommy Dreamer, so it might take a while like, but we could get there eventually…maybe…

Chuffing wrestling, let’s watch!

Read moreMike Reviews: ECW Hardcore TV #367 – 06/05/2000

Mike Reviews Every WCW Slamboree Main Event

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Hello You!

More Main Events this week, as we look at one of WCW’s B shows in the form of Slamboree. Slamboree was never really an event treated with much gravitas by WCW and the show didn’t have a particular personality to it outside of its first three years. During those first three events WCW would use the show as an opportunity to induct people into its Hall of Fame and also have the odd legends bout here and there. The shows always felt a tad more laid back than other events in the WCW calendar, but the HOF and legends matches at least gave them something unique to hang their hat on. Once those legends matches were gone, Slamboree quickly became “just a show”, and it was often an event you could choose to miss during the hot period of 96 to 98.

Still, from my memory at least a couple of these matches are good, so that’s something to look forward to at least!

That’s enough chatter from me though. Let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews Every WCW Slamboree Main Event

Mike Reviews: ECW Hardcore TV #366 – 29/04/2000

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Hello You!

Cyber Slam 2000 happened the previous week, so tonight we’ve got some matches from that and we will also learn how the ECW World Title situation will resolve itself. That particular situation ended up being pretty infamous amongst the ECW fan base due to how it all ends up.

Let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews: ECW Hardcore TV #366 – 29/04/2000

Mike Reviews: Super J Cup 1995 (13/12/1995)

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Hello You!

I’ve got a bit of involuntary free time on my hands at the moment, so I decided to cheer myself up by watching some Japanese Junior Heavyweight action from the 90’s. This is show is actually available for full up on YouTube, probably because WAR has now gone out of business and whoever owns the video library isn’t especially arsed about these sort of things. I won’t embed it here in case I get Scott or the Blog in bother, but if you just search “Super J Cup 1995” on YouTube then it should be pretty easy to find.

The J Cup brought together Junior Heavyweights from all over the world to compete in a single elimination tournament to win a snazzy gold jacket. It reminds me a bit of The Masters in golf in that regard actually. One cool thing about it is that it brought together wrestlers from different promotions, meaning that there are plenty of inter-promotional bouts on this one.

Junior Heavyweight wrestling was very much the “gateway drug” that got me in to Japanese wrestling in the first place, and I still have a lot of nostalgia for the J Cup tournaments of 94, 95 and 2000.

Anyway, less chatter from me, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews: Super J Cup 1995 (13/12/1995)

Mike Reviews Every WWE Backlash Main Event – Part Three (2009 to 2018)

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Hello You!

I recently got furloughed, which means I’ll have a slight bit more free time on my hands in the coming weeks. Thankfully I’m still getting some of my wages and I live on my own, so I should hopefully be able to maintain paying bills and living costs. I hope everyone is keeping safe out there in the strange world we currently inhabit. It sure would be nice if they find that illusive vaccine wouldn’t it? Then we could all get some semblance of normality back.

On the bright side though, being stuck at home more means it’s been a lot easier keeping up with all my writing, so I’ll look to maybe post a bit more than my usual two reviews a week. I’ll try not to flood the Blog though, and maybe just add in additional reviews here and there. I’ve been thinking of reviewing some classic 90’s Japanese wrestling, and maybe even reviewing some classic World of Sport as well, so I’ve got plenty to keep me busy. Keep an eye out for the usual Hardcore TV reviews every Wednesday, along with more Main Event reviews around the weekends. Slamboree is next on the docket, as we’re finishing off Backlash today.

Anyway, that’s enough chatter, let’s watching some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews Every WWE Backlash Main Event – Part Three (2009 to 2018)

Mike Reviews: ECW Hardcore TV #365 – 22/04/2000

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Hello You!

So last week all heck broke loose due to ECW Champ Mike Awesome deciding to jump to WCW. ECW managed to get him back for one last show, where they had him drop the belt to WWF wrestler Taz, who then promptly got jobbed out to Triple H on Smackdown. However, Taz isn’t a regular roster member, so the Title picture is still in a case of flux with Cyber Slam 2000 looming on the horizon.

Let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews: ECW Hardcore TV #365 – 22/04/2000

Mike Reviews Every WWE Backlash Main Event – Part Two (2004 to 2008)

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Hello You!

I got this done quicker than I expected so I’m uploading this today and will upload Part Three around the weekend. ECW Hardcore TV from 2000 will be up as usual on Wednesday.

Back with some more Backlash Main Event’s, as we cover 2004 to 2008 today. There’s actually a shedload of multi-man matches on this one, which I think was owing to WWE not really knowing what to do post-Mania, so they decided to just throw some people together into Triple Threat and Fatal Four Way matches so that they didn’t have to do an outright WrestleMania rematch (Although the 2004 Main Event is a rematch of a multi-person match)

Anyway, there’s lots of good stuff to enjoy this time, so let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews Every WWE Backlash Main Event – Part Two (2004 to 2008)

Mike Reviews Every WWE Backlash Main Event – Part One (1999 to 2003)

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First things first, my condolences to the friends and family of Howard Finkel (I am writing this on the day of his sad passing). I think it’s fair to say that Howard was the greatest ring announcer in wrestling history and he will be sorely missed. If everyone in wrestling was as passionate about their job as Howard was then we’d have a much better industry that’s for sure.

Last time out we looked at the Main Events from WCW Spring Stampede over the years, so today we’re going to take a look at a WWF event that usually happened around the same time in the form of Backlash.

Backlash was usually the post-WrestleMania pay per view offering from the WWF, which often led to Mania re-matches most of the time. There have been a total of 14 Backlash events over the years, so I’ll be splitting this into three separate parts, otherwise it’ll be far too much to chew in one sitting.

There’s been some great Backlash Main Events and some that…weren’t, and there’s no better example than the offerings we have for you this time. Some of these matches are truly excellent, whilst others are a bit of slog.

Still though, I’m sure we’ll have fun regardless. Let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews Every WWE Backlash Main Event – Part One (1999 to 2003)

Mike Reviews: ECW Hardcore TV #364 – 15/04/2000

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Hello You!

So last week ECW looked to start a Main Event feud between ECW Champ Mike Awesome and Tommy Dreamer, whilst The Impact Players were set to feud with Nova and Chris Chetti. However, things have taken a bit of a wild turn, which we’ll get into today.

Let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews: ECW Hardcore TV #364 – 15/04/2000

Mike Reviews Every WCW Spring Stampede Main Event

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Hello You!

Thanks to all who read my ambitious attempt to review Every WrestleMania Main Event. Seeing as crowdless shows just can’t entice me, I’ve decided to go back to the retro well to find some stuff to review. I’ll still keep my reviews of ECW Hardcore TV from 2000 ticking away, but I’ll also try to keep up these Main Event reviews every weekend as well.

Today we’re looking at the event that was traditionally WCW’s April offering (If you ignore the two years when they didn’t have it for whatever reason) in the form of Spring Stampede. I decided to pick this one as there are only five Spring Stampede Main Events, so I can easily stick them all in to one article. I’ll probably attempt this with Backlash at some stage as well, though I’ll need to break that one up into smaller bitesize chunks as there’s been quite a few more Backlash events than there has been Spring Stampede one’s.

Anyway, I hope you’re all keeping safe and this provides a bit of a distraction from the pandemic.

Right, that’s enough chatter, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Read moreMike Reviews Every WCW Spring Stampede Main Event