a quick recap from Day 1:
first, I arrived back to this hotel on Thursday night after the Yankees-Indians game and while I did close out the bar I apparently did NOT close it out at 2:30 as I originally thought because the place actually closes at Midnight (one of my very few complaints about this venue.) I know I was originally told that bars in Cleveland stop serving alcohol at 2 and then kick you out at 2:30 and I guess after a number of drinks (at the Tilted Kilt, the ballgame, and then later at the hotel) that they were closing because it was 2:30- Cleveland's standard time for kicking you out- and didn't bother checking the clock before going upstairs to my room and instantly crashing.
yesterday morning, I checked out of my room just as Jim Steele was arriving (perfect timing) and checked in with him into this room we are sharing to save some money (that is how I made it here.)
Tournament Master asked me to go with his wife to pick up Greg Valentine from the Cleveland airport. I've enjoyed talking to Valentine. Me and him are both from Seattle and it was something to talk about during last night's show and he was even asking me questions about my time and family there.
Me and Jim had lunch and then Swarm arrived and the 3 of us were collating cards (such as the AIW and general starter sets) as others started to arrive.
It was awesome to finally meet Osk yesterday. Although technically it was a 10 minute draw, he kicked my ass in a video game matchup of Randy Savage vs Curt Hennig.
It was also awesome to meet Joe- I've missed him posting on the boards as I always thought he tended to be one of the better posters. Joe is really cool.
I also have also really enjoyed meeting Troy and Casey- they've been good roommates- Sickman (I admired that bus journey he took to get here, hopefully I get a chance to talk more to him today,) Smoke (really cool guy- and his sons seem cool too- but that is no surprise after meeting Smoke,) Mike Fortune (really glad he was able to make it here!,) Brock, and others who I apologize if I temporarily forgot as I am just waking up.
It was also great to reunite with Tom, Tournament Master, Jeff G (he and Tournament Master have done an amazing job with this event,) Jim Steele, Swarm, JMello, Dayton Dave, Wiggie, and anyone else I apologize about forgetting because I am just waking up.
The show was really good (I don't mind intergender matches but I guess I would prefer not an entire card of them) with the best matches IMO being Johnny Gargano (who had his birthday yesterday) vs Candice Lerae (my favorite woman wrestler,) and the main event of Veda Scott vs Rickey Shane Page. For the show, Tom asked me to help him with the merchandise table and I was able to sell a number of the new AIW sets- one person who bought them liked the cards so much he later returned to me and also bought the first ROH and EVOLVE sets too.
After the show, there was the wrestling comedy show. Each comedian made me laugh to some extent so I think it was successful in that regard.
Afterward, I was disappointed to see I was wrong about the bar's closing time and went upstairs and crashed for the evening. Looking forward to Day Two!
continuing my recap for Days Two and Three
on Saturday, I had breakfast with Osk (really glad he made the trip) and talked about the game and the NFL and then went to the convention room to play the day's tournaments- JMello does an awesome job organizing these tournaments (I don't think I could do it) and Jim Steele also does a great job organizing the games cards and providing all of the dice for the tournaments.
In the Indy tournament, one of the cards I drew was Adam Cole and I made it to the finals but I lost to Troy who had Saraya Knight- we didn't use the women conversion chart as women frequently wrestle men in the Indys in fact there was an entire card of those matches by AIW in the same building just the previous night. But it was my own dice that caused me to lose as on defense I kept rolling my PIN one roll after the other until I finally lost that match.
In the GWF tournament, I lost pretty quickly (0-2) in that one.
In the Legends tournament, one of the cards I drew was Piper and advanced to the finals where I lost to Dayton Dave (not the only tournament Dayton Dave won last weekend) who was using Randy Savage in a great match- we both put like 7-8 tokens on the other but Dayton Dave prevailed.
In the AIW tournament, one of the cards I drew was Eddie Kingston and I won a couple matches to advance a couple of rounds before losing.
The live recording of WrestleZone Dailey was great. Paul London was one of the guests- it was hilarious hearing about some of Brian Kendrck's conspiracy theories- and afterward two fans were brought up to play a game of "I believe" or "I don't believe" (a Bo Dallas action figure was one of the prizes) in response to questions about Paul London's career. I should have volunteered to play because I would have won easily based on how many questions those two got wrong- for example one of them said "I don't believe- in fact I don't even believe they were in that match" in response to a question/statement about whether London and Kendrick won that classic ladder match at Armageddon 2006. During this podcast, Eddie Kingston was in the back the entire time playing video games as Mia Yim him brought him waters.
Unfortunately I had to miss almost all of the premiere of "Wrestle Donst Wrestle" because it coincided with the 24 hour time when I had to print out my boarding pass for the next day (I flew Southwest and I wanted to make sure I had a good seat so I didn't have to check my bags as I had to change flights in Chicago) and in the process of looking up my confirmation number on my labtop I saw I had a personal message about something in my life in Las Vegas that I also had to deal with right away.
I ate dinner with Tom, Greg "the Hammer" Valentine, Alex Filsinger, Swarm, Dayton Dave, Mike Fortune, JMello, Sickman, Pete, Joe, and others. Valentine sat next to me and I told him I ordered the salmon because I am from Seattle and he laughed because he is from Seattle too. Great food and great company (meaning everyone there) at that dinner on Saturday night.
For the WGF Saturday Night Spectacular, I sat in the front row and sitting with me (either in the front row or in the second row) were Jim Steele, Dayton Dave, Casey, Troy, Pete, Jmello, Smoke, and J- he showed up for the show on Saturday night and for some of the after party afterward- it was great to see J again for the first time in about 5 1/2 years!)
The show opened with Dalton Castle in the ring and Gavin Loudspeaker rolling dice on a Filsinger Games chart to see from what fed Castle's mystery opponent would be coming from. The first roll was WCCW- but nobody from WCCW was in the back. So Gavin had to reroll a couple of times until he got ECW and Colin Delaney (wearing an ECW shirt) appeared to wrestle Castle in the opening match.
Before the next match, Gavin said the entrance way was also a time portal and brought out from the future the Gladiators and they wrestled Wolf in a handicap match. Perhaps not the match of the year (or for the year 2087)- but it was still really cool to see COTG happening live in the ring right in front of me.
Next the entrance way/time portal gave us a matchup from the past- an Olde Wrestling Extravaganza match-a 6 man tag in which the heels (including Judge Hugo Lexington Black) were 1920s Prohibitionists as I drank my beer front row for this entire match. The prohibitionist heels got really mad at Smoke (the coolest principal I ever met) behind me because he kept taunting them by holding up his beer bottle and after the match they threatened to have him arrested but the Nation of Intoxication (NOI) arrived to make the save. The match order for the first half of the show just flowed perfectly.
In my favorite match of the first half, the entire Nation of Intoxication wrestled OI4K and Mad Man Pondo with DJ Hyde as the referee. The action spilled out of the ring and around part of the convention room floor (it sort of reminded me of PWG.)
After Intermission, Madison Rayne defeated Mia Yim.
In the best match of the night, Tim Donst defeated Paul London. I was shocked to see London come in through the entrance- he usually instead arrives in a door in the back or side of the room- but as usual he went around and slapped hands with every fan in the venue before entering the ring.
Moose wrestled Eddie Kingston in the main event. Good main event that I don't think has happened anywhere else.
After the show, it was time for the after party hosted by Gavin Loudspeaker and Bryce Rumsfield. It started with improv comedy and one of my favorite parts was Dalton Castle being a dating game contestant whose character was a stuttering Randy Savage (he did much better than one of the other contestants- Dick Justice as a Dusty Rhodes with a British accent.) Also, at one point, Virgil appeared and he was asked to join in the dating game segment but he quickly left the room with somebody on stage saying "so that is how you get rid of Virgil." Greg Valentine was then brought out to be contestant #4- a former Intercontinental Champion- and he started off by saying "well I didn't know I was a bachelor." Valentine was hilarious, but I think the funniest was Eddie Kingston doing Improv comedy. At one point he stood behind Mia Yim and she was the body and he was the hands and acting together you had to figure out what wrestler they were portraying.
After some Improv, it was time for music presented by Kenny Pickett, who has written alot of entrance music for ROH and CHIKARA, and his band which played wrestling music including American Dream (as Gavin and Leva Bates were dancing on some of the empty chairs,) Tonight She Won't Come Fast Enough (Young Bucks CHIKARA entrance music,) Ass Man, and other songs too. Good band playing extremely loud- it was late at a hotel so the room must have been soundproofed- and it really was like a mini rock concert.
On Day 3, I got to meet Green Lantern and COTG artist Darryl Banks. I played some more tournaments including a hardcore tournament- I had Sick Nick Mondo and I defeated Bruiser Brody in the first round but lost to Piper in the next round.
In the finals, Dayton Dave defeated Troy to win the cup and get his name engraved on it. The last thing was a podcast with Tom, Wiggy, Tournament Master, and various guests including Darryl Banks, Greg Valentine (some interesting comments he made about women,) and Gavin Loudspeaker. I was there for alot of it, but unfortunately I had to leave before it ended to catch a scheduled hotel shuttle to get me back to the Cleveland airport for my flight home to Las Vegas (with a 2 hour stop in Chicago where I almost forgot my bag in an airport bar.)
Tournament Master and everyone else involved IMO did such an awesome job running the convention this year and I am definitely looking forward to going to next year's convention! Great to see everybody in the community who attended!