Event Report: Ultra Wrestle presents AWAKENS

Several weeks back I made the somewhat lengthy drive from my base of operations in Saint Matthews, South Carolina over to Abbeville, SC to witness an independent professional wrestling event promoted by a company known as Ultra Wrestle. The show - which was entitled AWAKENS, an apparent attempt at getting a rub from the fact that the next Star Wars film is being called "The Force Awakens" - would be UW's first of 2015 and looked to be something of a relaunch for the promotion heading into the new year seeing as how UW ran a handful of events in 2014 but now seems prepared to stake a claim in the western part of the state.

Abbeville is about as far west as you can go in traveling through the state of South Carolina without winding up in Georgia. It's not too far from Augusta, GA, but it is most definitely what a lot of people would consider a town in the middle of nowhere seeing as how there's not much to do there. As such, when something like professional wrestling "invades" (I have always hated seeing that word used in relation to a wrestling event; no one in wrestling politely enters, they always invade, wreck, or destroy - and people wonder why it's so difficult to get venues to rent out their facility for wrestling), people will come out to see it because it's something fresh, new, and exciting that they don't get to see very often, if ever. For this reason (along with the fact that UW's ownership did their job in actually promoting the event), AWAKENS was a tremendous success. The floor seats and bleachers were full, the gimmick tables were busy, and the concession stand had a line 10-15 people deep at times.

Starting off the show was this match between Alan Price and "The Thoroughbred" Jaxson James. Price has seen action with promotions around this part of the state and with a few entities running shows in the area of the low country. James is one of the top prospects in the Carolinas at this point in time, and he's only going to get better. That said, I will say that when I watched this match live I wasn't thrilled with it as it seemed clunky in spots. However, a second viewing told me a different story, one I didn't immediately notice the first time around.



For the second match on the card Chase "Cauliflower" Brown would meet Dean Richards. This was my first exposure to Richards; he seems to have plenty of ability but his physique is definitely a work in progress. What he lacks most, in my opinion, is a sense of charisma which is something that Brown has albeit in an odd kind of way. Chase fancies himself as an old school shooter or catch wrestler and he comes off as a kind of loveable grappler you can't help but cheer for. The match these two wound up having would prove to be a real physical test for both men as it went in a direction you don't often see on the independent scene.



Before you read further I'd like to make a comment about this next match. Yes, it involves Alan Price - yes, Alan Price was already in a match on the AWAKENS card. You see, our friends at the South Carolina Athletic Commission (SCAC being the division of LLR that oversees legitimate combat sports like boxing, mixed martial arts and...Professional wrestling?) made an appearance at this event and, as it would turn out, a few of the scheduled participants had to be removed from the card for failure to secure the proper licenses. As much as I would like to think that the SCAC isn't just a group of old fashioned Boss Hogg types disguised as government officials and that their role is a legitimate one in making sure things are being done properly (a sentiment that I detailed in a blog entry last year - Wrestlers & Promoters vs. South Carolina's Athletic Commission), there's this side of the coin where it seems like they should have better things to do than come around and tell a few people they can't put on costumes and dance with one another. It is what it is, and the show must go on!

This contest was a throwback to a different era, where wrestlers didn't have to do insane moves and all but kill themselves to elicit a response from the crowd. You don't see this kind of wrestling all that often anymore as the current generation of pro wrestlers have seemingly all been trained with the same mentality that the developers of a video game like Mortal Kombat have in mind when they're preparing a new title. By that I mean most matches seem to be nothing but a series of in-congruent moves strung together without any purpose that eventually culminate in one participant or the other succumbing to some random maneuver when their invisible health meeter has been depleted. Something that you see even less frequently than effective ring psychology is the performance of a manager like "Big Business" James McHone. The trio of him, Deon Johnson, and Boomer Payne made for a truly entertaining assemblage, one that Price and his tag team partner "Mr. Sleeze" Erik Thompson would have a hard time overcoming.



I feel obliged to tell you that Brice Anthony is one of my oldest friends from the world of independent professional wrestling - actually, he is my oldest friend from the world of independent professional wrestling. He and I were part of a promotion that ran in & around Lancaster, SC back 10-15 years ago. I say "he and I" when in reality he was a wrestler and I was something of a glorified gopher boy/photographer/web designer who did whatever was asked of me because it meant I got to be a part of a pro wrestling company. Brice's career in the ring has had a number of stops and starts but his passion for competition burns as bright now as I've ever seen it. He's a more mature hand and it is plainly evident in contrasting the kind of things I saw him do when we were younger to how he now enjoys making the fans hate him with not much more than the expression on his face.

For his match at AWAKENS, Brice would lock horns with local favorite Hoss Hagood - or Hoss Hayseed as Brice's manager, "Big Business" James McHone, referred to him. The main event of the show is still to come but, for my money, I felt like this was the best match of the evening.



Capping off the card was the main event, a tag team match featuring four of the best and brightest young professional wrestlers competing in this neck of the woods. AWAKENS would end with Avgerinos the Great and Josh Powers, better known as The Living Daylights, squaring off against TK Stark and Jett Black, a flashy, athletic duo calling themselves Chemical Z.



As I have watched talent come and go from this region over the years, I have oftentimes asked myself who will be left to continue on with things once the top tier guys & girls get opportunities in greener pastures? While I will be completely honest in saying that I feel fantastic about the fact that wrestlers who cut their teeth in the Carolinas move away because of the fact that business is better in different parts of the world, I always worry that the scene here will dry up and vanish or otherwise be left with nothing but backyard-level companies and wrestlers. That day may come but it's not here yet thanks to promotions like Ultra Wrestle and its roster.

The next Ultra Wrestle event is tentatively scheduled for March 28 in McCormick, SC. For details on that and everything else relating to UW, be sure to check out their social media sites at the following links.

Facebook.com/UltraWrestle
Twitter.com/UltraWrestle
YouTube.com/UltraWrestle

Our Road to Building a Family - Our First Visit to the ER

It's been roughly a month since the situation I'm going to recount in this blog entry took place, and to be 100% honest with you we've been on a bit of a roller coaster ever since then regarding matters relating to the Duke's health. I don't want that to alarm anyone because he's really fine, it's just that we've had an interesting few weeks and it all began the morning of Wednesday, January 28.

Our routine is such that every weekday morning my wife & I get up between 6-6:15 AM to begin our day. My wife will get her shower and get dressed whereas I'll do what's necessary to prep Duke for his day. This always involves changing his diaper into a fresh Pampers Swaddler (they come with a Sesame Street character on them; I've grown fond of talking to the character, and I end the conversation with "I'm sorry but you're about to have a very bad day..."), sometimes a fresh outfit (depending on whether or not we re-dressed him the night before), and maybe a bottle if he's feeling hungry. Pretty standard stuff in the way of infant maintenance, and his attitude is such that he's very cheerful throughout whatever processes we're involved with. He's really quite remarkable in that regard.

The morning in question, though, Duke was not his normal self. He was fussy to the point of seeming agitated. Duke is a very warm-natured lad, much like myself, but I knew as soon as I touched his forehead that he was much warmer than what he should've been. We checked his temperature (in the most invasive manner possible - sorry, son, but it had to be done) and that verified what we both feared. He had a fever in the area of 102 at that moment. We checked it again a few minutes later and it had risen to 103.

That being the case, my wife & I - being the first time parents that we are - did what first time parents are bound to do when their baby is sick, that being to completely freak out in regard to what needs to be done next.

We threw on some clothes (I think I might have been wearing jogging pants, an old t-shirt I normally do yard work in, my cold-weather vest, a baseball cap, and a pair of Crocs - hey, at least I wasn't wearing socks with the Crocs), gathered up a few supplies for Duke in one of his travel bags, bundled him up in his car seat and drove as quickly as we could to the emergency room at the Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Why? Because that's what we had been told to do if he ever had any kind of urgent need, medically speaking.

My wife is somewhat familiar with the ER at RMC seeing as how she & I had been there several years prior when she thought she'd been bitten by a particularly nasty spider - turned out she had an infected hair follicle. (I will never let her live that down, ever.) When we got to the ER on this occasion we were somewhat haphazardly checked in by the staff at the admissions desk. (FYI: Patient identification wristbands that are sized for an adult DO NOT fit an infant.) We didn't have to wait long before we were taken into the triage area where Duke's vitals were taken. We then progressed on to an examination room where Duke was given a battery of tests to try and determine what was going on with him.

This experience made me realize that even though doctors and nurses can do amazing things these days thanks to medical science, the techniques they have for harvesting data from someone like Duke are rather infuriating to witness as a parent. At one point we waited outside the examination room while two nurses tried to get a blood and urine sample from him. Suffice to say when you hear your child screaming like he was then your instinct is to run to them, but we couldn't - we'd have only been in their way. I was able to get in on the act myself later on, though, as I was tasked with holding him in place while he was given a chest x-ray. As an aside to the unpleasantness we were all a part of then, I did get a kick out of hearing the imaging technician said "We're going to need a big one..." to his nurse when they tried to put a protective vest on me.

I'm going to fast forward through some things here, mainly because of the fact most of it involves the three of us sitting in an examination room that was the size of a jail cell while people in all manner of disarray wandered by the door (that part just about made me lose my mind - you know you've had an interesting day when one of your memories from it is the sight of a guy in a hospital gown carrying what could have been either a container of his own sick or possibly some kind of sample). What it all boils down to is that after having his blood drawn, urine collected, nose swabbed (to check for RSV and flu), chest x-rayed, and probably a few other things I've put out of my mind, we were told Duke likely has "something viral" and that we should give him some Child's Tylenol to help sooth the fever.

We were there from 7:30 AM until 1:30 PM, and "something viral" is the best they could tell us. That and a prescription for an antibiotic were our only genuine takeaways from the experience. (Apparently there's someone else in Walgreen's accounting system with the same name as the one Duke's biological mother gave him; hopefully that fellow understands why his insurance has been billed for a prescription of apple-flavored amoxicillin.) In the days following our little day trip to the ER, we learned from other parents that "something viral" is a common explanation for a lot of things when it comes to diagnoses that are given to children. I believe this is why doctors are said to be medical practitioners - they're still practicing because they haven't gotten it right yet.

Even though "something viral" is the only cause that could be determined for Duke's fever his initial blood work showed a few oddities for which we've had to take him back for several more blood draws and further examination. The results of those tests have been similarly inconclusive with everyone involved (as in the people making six-figures a year, who drive Range Rovers and wear Movado watches) more or less shrugging their shoulders while saying, "Well, it's probably his body's reaction to something viral."

I think I'm going to start using that myself as an excuse in everyday life.

"Robert, why didn't you come to work today?"
"Oh, it was something viral..."

"Robert, why haven't you paid the mortgage in 5 months?"
"Oh, it was something viral..."

"Robert, you caused World War 3, why would you do that?"
"Oh, it was something viral..."

My personal opinion of these additional tests aside (I know a lot of doctors and nurses mean well but I also know some of them look at a patient like Duke as if he were a living, breathing ATM machine), it goes without saying that we'll do whatever we need to do in order to insure his health. I just wish we weren't over a barrel with these suggestions from his doctors. Almost any other parent in the world could have refused those tests but we have to go along with whatever they say because of the fact that we can't do anything to jeopardize our standing in the adoption process. It is what it is - I'm just glad he's doing better.

And now we know better as well. You have to take a few lumps in going through this rookie parenting thing.

We seem to learn something new every day because he's changing every day. Duke just turned four months old last week. He's to a point now where he's picking up on things visually more and more, and he's learning how to use his hands better. (Jill will attest to this as he's to a point where he'll reach up and grab her lovely blond hair.) One of his latest tricks is that he can raspberry rather well and he can make a very loud "smack" with his mouth. He's measuring in the area of 14-15 pounds and is a little more than 23 inches, which his pediatrician tells us puts him right in line where he should be in terms of his physical progression.

Diaper Genie Refill Hack

Back when our journey with The Duke first began we were very fortunate in that we received a tremendous outpouring of support from our family and friends. We went from having literally nothing in the way of supplies that were suitable for aiding in taking care of a baby to having everything necessary for the task in not more than a matter of hours. (We'd prepared ourselves and our home for older children seeing as how we had been lead to believe our chances of ever having an infant placed with us were about as good as our chances of winning the lottery and surviving a plane crash in the same day.) While we will always be grateful for those gifts I would be lying if said we got a few items for which we've never had that much use or otherwise felt like they weren't worth keeping because of the fact they required specific, recurring supplies that would prove to be expensive over time (odd that the description of something specific that's expensive over time more or less describes a human being - do better at choosing your words in the future, Robert). At the top of that list, for me, is none other than the Diaper Genie, a diaper pail manufactured by Playtex.

Now that I look at it, I can't get over how much it looks like a turret from the Portal video games...

Fortunately the Diaper Genie has yet to sprout legs and begin firing machine guns at anyone, at least not in our home.

If you're unfamiliar with the Diaper Genie, it is essentially the same thing as those bio-hazard containers you see mounted to the walls of almost any examination room in a given doctor's office. It's a containment vessel meant to keep yicky, smelly diapers in an isolated chamber so that the odors of pee-pee and poopie don't overtake the entirety of your home. Truth be told, it does a great job of this as it keeps the foulness at bay to a remarkable degree. Be that as it may, what bothered me from day 1 about its design is the fact that it requires the use of interchangeable rings that come pre-loaded with a measured sleeve of plastic.

This sleeve can be cut down to size and tied off by the user as needed (read, as the child goes through how many ever diapers it takes to fill the bag). I have seen the resulting baggie referred to as a "Hell sausage" in several parenting blogs and I can't say that I disagree with that description.

Don't get me wrong, I love our baby boy but this thing here will make you wish he was old enough to be able to use a toilet.

The design of the device is sound, that much is unmistakeable. My problem is the fact that a single aspect of the Diaper Genie - that being the refills - makes people feel like the only way of doing things is how the product was intended to be used, and that simply isn't the case. What follows is how I was able to take the Diaper Genie, a spent refill cartridge, and use normal tall kitchen garbage bags in place of the sleeves that you're supposed to use in the device.

For this project, you will need:

- Diaper Genie (FYI, this is not the Elite version that has a few additional features; I do not know if this process is the same for both as I've never used an Elite)

- Empty refill cartridge

- Tall kitchen garbage bag (with or without drawstring; I use ones with a drawstring but either should do fine)

To begin, we will assume that your Diaper Genie is in an empty state and has also been depleted of its supply of plastic liner.

Once your refill cartridge is empty, it will look like this - nothing more than an empty plastic ring.

Now that you have your empty ring, take your garbage bag and turn it inside out (the reason for this will be explained later).

Once you have turned the garbage bag inside out, take the refill cartridge and turn it upside down so that you may begin loading in the garbage bag.

 
Carefully spread out the ridges of the refill cartridge where the plastic liner sleeve once resided and begin pushing in the top of the garbage bag, moving along so that the bag is inserted evenly along the gap. It is unlikely that you will damage the ring to the point that it is unusable as the plastic is quite malleable, however do not handle it too aggressively - it is plastic, after all. You will want to push in approximately an inch to an inch and a half of material from the bag into the ring. The bag will bunch up in spots and this is fine, just make sure that the bag looks to be evenly dispersed along the gap so that no section is thicker than any other.

Once you have the bag fully inserted, the cartridge/bag construct should look like this.

Next, take the bottom of the bag and push it up through the ring until it is fully extended out the other side. This is why we reversed the bag in a previous step; depending on how your garbage bag is made, you may or may not obstruct access to the drawstring if you do not reverse the bag. Once the bag has been pulled through the ring, it should appear similar to the image below.

You will then need to take the lid off the Diaper Genie so that the refill cartridge compartment and the spring-loaded jaws of the device are exposed.

Flip open the body of the Diaper Genie by pressing the release button then take the bottom of the bag and begin feeding it through the spring-loaded jaws. This step takes some coordination as you want to feed the bag in without pulling it out of the refill cartridge. (This should not be too much of a concern so long as you have done a good job of securely inserting the bag into the ring.) Take care when feeding the bag through the jaws so that you do not inadvertently get your fingers into the cutting mechanism used on the plastic sleeves. (NOTE: You will not be using the cutting mechanism at any point during these instructions as it becomes a useless feature with the addition of the tall kitchen garbage bags that do not have to be modified.)

As you begin feeding the bag through you should have an assembly that resembles this.

Continue pulling the slack of the bag through the spring-loaded jaws until the refill cartridge is sitting firmly in the refill cartridge compartment. Again, take care in pulling the bag so that you do not unravel the stuffing.

Now that the bag is fully pulled through the spring-loaded jaws, close the body of the Diaper Genie and stand it upright. If you look down on the device at this point you should have a view similar to this. Note that the spring-loaded jaws still create a seal even though you are no longer using the plastic sleeve.

Re-install the lid onto the Diaper Genie. This is where you'll find out how good of a job you've done in evenly spreading out the ruffles created by stuffing the bag into the refill cartridge. If you've done it correctly the lid will snap in place as it should if you were using a new refill cartridge. On the other hand, if you've got some excessive bumps that need to be smoothed out you'll know immediately because the lid will not snap on at all.

With the lid back in place you are now ready to begin using your newly hacked Diaper Genie! When you feel as though your bag is in need of replacing, remove the lid and carefully pull the top of the bag out of the refill cartridge. If you're using a drawstring bag, pull the drawstring tight and tie it off; similarly, if you're using a flat bag simply tie up the excess. Take the empty refill cartridge out of its compartment, open up the body of the Diaper Genie, pull the tied off end out through the spring-loaded jaws, and you should have a neatly contained bag of infantile excrement! All you need to do then is follow these instructions to refill your empty cartridge and you're ready for duty (Doodie?) once again.

The only downside to this modification I have noticed is that during the extraction process of a full bag the smell coming from all those accumulated diapers can be rather overwhelming. (Not to the point that you'll black out from being near it, but it's enough that you know you're staring into something that resembles the inside of a port-a-potty.) I have not purchased another type of bag to verify this but I believe the usage of odor-blocking or scented garbage bags would eliminate this issue entirely. You could also mount a stick-on deodorizer to the underside of the Diaper Genie lid, just be mindful of the fact that the recessed area between the Diaper Genie's lid and where the bag rests is shallow and may not accommodate all deodorizers.

In using garbage bags instead of the plastic sleeve the capacity of the Diaper Genie increases by roughly 60%. We have been able to go more than a week in replacing the garbage bag in the Diaper Genie, whereas with the traditional refill cartridges we couldn't go more than a few days. When you consider this along with the fact that a box of 100 generic tall kitchen bags will run you roughly $13 compared to $7-$9 for a single Diaper Genie refill cartridge, the advantages of this modification become plainly evident.

My Still-Way-Too-Early-to-Tell WrestleMania 31 Predictions

As of this writing we are but a few days removed from the 2015 edition of the Royal Rumble, World Wrestling Entertainment's January pay-per-view. If you know anything about the 2015 Royal Rumble you undoubtedly know that it was an event ripe with controversy. For the second year in a row WWE opted to take a creative direction that did not sit well with what I'll call a rather vocal, albeit possibly misguided segment of their fan base. Last year the uproar came when Batista returned and earned a WWE title shot by winning the Rumble match despite working a part-time schedule (he was back to promote the Guardians of the Galaxy film). Now the hullabaloo seems to be stemming from their having Roman Reigns win the Rumble match as opposed to someone else, namely Daniel Bryan.

I'm not going to delve further into the post-Royal Rumble shenanigans than that because every media outlet from Time to FOX Sports has chimed in on it. What I'd sooner talk about is the fact that WrestleMania 31 is quickly approaching and there's a whole lot up in the air at this point in time regarding the card. When I say "a whole lot", I'm talking 90% seeing as how the only match we know for sure is happening is the WWE World Heavyweight Championship bout featuring Reigns as he attempts to dethrone current champ Brock Lesnar. Everything other than that is purely hypothetical because no one knows (other than Vince McMahon himself, and there are those who would argue even he doesn't have a clue) what's going to ultimately take place at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California approximately two months from now. That being the case, I'm here to bring you my still-way-too-early WrestleMania 31 predictions!

What follows should not be considered gospel as I am attempting to assemble the contents of the event based on current angles, storylines, and trends. Even so, as my previous efforts at predicting the WrestleMania matches have proven (which you can see for yourself here and here), I have a decent knack for predicting the winners - now we'll now see how good I am at predicting the body of the show as well as the outcomes.

PRE-SHOW:

1) WWE Divas Championship Match - Nikki Bella vs. Natalya/Paige/Brie Bella

The Divas division is as big of a mess as it has ever been seeing as how the ladies who make up this portion of the roster seem to be there to provide fodder for the Total Divas program on the E! Network more so than anything else. Nikki Bella has held the Divas title for a number of months and she's faced random challengers without anything resembling a consistent adversary. The Bellas have been in a number of matches, either tags or one-on-one contests, with Natalya and Paige so they are likely challengers. It was announced in the past few days that Paige will challenge Nikki for the title at the Fast Lane pay-per-view, so it's possible that the feud will carry over into WrestleMania. Now that Daniel Bryan has returned to active competition it only makes sense that his wife, Brie Bella, would begin to see the error of her ways in sticking by her ne'erdowell sister. I'm leaning towards this being a Bella vs. Bella match as it would make for an attention-getting scenario.

PREDICTION: Nikki vs. Brie
WINNER: Brie Bella

2) WWE Tag Team Championship Match - The Usos (C) vs. The Ascension vs. New Day vs. The Miz & Damien Mizdow vs. Tyson Kidd & Cesaro

The tag team division has been something of a revolving platform throughout 2014 although the Usos rule the roost currently. It's tough to say where WWE might decide to take things as there have been a few other teams to have glimpses of success as the Usos have traded the belts with both the Miz & Mizdow as well as the Dust Brothers (Goldust and Star Dust). Despite being a new pairing Tyson Kidd & Cesaro are growing in terms of popularity through their in-ring performance. A New Day (technically a trio made up of Big E Langston, Xavier Woods, and Kofi Kingston) and the Ascension (Konnor & Victor) are also relative newcomers to the division and there's been a lot of effort made lately to get attention on both groups but especially so for the Ascension. It feels like the Ascension are being made out to be the next challengers for the tag straps, despite the fact that of the options available they're probably the least popular choice.

PREDICTION: The Usos vs. The Ascension
WINNER: The Usos

3) NXT SPECIAL ATTRACTION/CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH - Sami Zayn (C) vs. Kevin Owens

If you are a wrestling fan and you have never watched a match from the rivalry of El Generico (now known as Sami Zayn) and Kevin Steen (now known as Kevin Owens), you should immediately stop what you're doing and go check out as much material involving the two of them that you can possibly get your hands on. Much like Batman and the Joker, it appears as though these two are destined to be at each others throats forever, and that's a beautiful thing. If they're given time to shine, they might make some of the main events look bad by comparison.

WINNER: Kevin Owens

MAIN CARD:

1) Dean Ambrose vs. Dolph Ziggler/Sheamus/Wade Barrett

Some combination of these guys will be on the card, I'm convinced of that. Dean Ambrose is one of the more popular talents on the roster and he's still fairly fresh off of a really spectacular feud with Bray Wyatt that served to elevate the former leader of the Wyatt Family as well as Ambrose (or so it did in my opinion). As for who Ambrose will face, I am leaning towards a confrontation with Wade Barrett since Barrett is the current WWE Intercontinental champion and it only makes sense that every title/title holder get an appearance on what is certainly the biggest event of the year.

PREDICTION: Ambrose vs. Barrett
WINNER: Dean Ambrose

2) Seth Rollins vs. Randy Orton

This is a feud that has been simmering away for a number of months as Seth Rollins took Randy Orton out of action by way of a series of curb stomps into various objects back around November of 2014. (This was a method for getting Orton off television for a while so that he could film a movie.) Rollins has been on a roll ever since then and he still has the Money in the Bank briefcase which he can choose to use at any point in time to challenge the WWE champion, whoever that may be. With all that in mind, I think he gives Orton a happy homecoming by doing the job here.

WINNER: Randy Orton

3) Daniel Bryan vs. Dolph Ziggler/Sheamus/Wade Barrett/Kane/Big Show

Much like the Ambrose match I discussed above, this is a match that has potential to go a lot of different ways with the only definitive aspect being Daniel Bryan's involvement. Bryan has a had long-running feud with Kane that appeared to have been put to bed permanently on a recent edition of SmackDown when Bryan defeated Kane in a casket match. Thus, I am eliminating Kane as well as Wade Barrett as possible opponents. Sheamus is still on his way back from injury and I feel like throwing him into WrestleMania would be a mistake; let him continue to rest and come back after Mania. A match with Big Show would be a classic David vs. Goliath contest and it could be a fun contest, but I think the match that would give fans the biggest pop and likely steal the show would be Bryan vs. Dolph Ziggler. It feels like a match made in the hearts of purist wrestling fans everywhere and I cannot find any fault in the pairing.

PREDICTION: Daniel Bryan vs. Dolph Ziggler
WINNER: Daniel Bryan

4) John Cena vs. Rusev

Rusev is the current WWE United States champion, and he's also got the "Ravishing Russian" Lana at his side. In a different era, Rusev would have likely been in line for a main event match against the likes of Hulk Hogan or Sergeant Slaughter thanks to his role as a villainous "super athlete" from a part of the world that still smells faintly of communism. For at least the time being he's going to be involved with a program pitting him against John Cena, which could potentially be disastrous to his momentum. As you may recall, Bray Wyatt was in Rusev's position at last year at WrestleMania 30 and afterwards Wyatt was so far buried in terms of his credibility that he had to be rebooted as a character. Wyatt spent months re-establishing himself and Cena went on to continue being Cena. I hope Rusev can grow from this and if he wins I think it will mean he's in line for bigger opportunities in the near future.

WINNER: Rusev

5) Triple H vs. Sting

You don't often see a match anymore that will literally go down in history as being an important, relevant contest in the overall spectrum of the professional wrestling industry, but this is exactly that. Sting is an icon in the world of wrestling, a man whose carry spans three decades and that features feuds with almost every big name in the sport throughout that same length of time. He accomplished that in spite of the fact that, until last year, he had never been signed to a WWE contract. It's difficult to believe but he's never had a match for WWE - that will change come WrestleMania 31 when he's challenged by Triple H, a man who himself has had a historic career. This may be the one and only time Sting ever competes in a WWE ring, and I for one expect it to be a tremendous contest.

WINNER: Sting

6) The Undertaker vs. Bray Wyatt

The professional wrestling world reacted like they'd been told their significant other had an incurable disease when Brock Lesnar pinned the Undertaker at WrestleMania 30. Taker's undefeated streak ended and many thought so too had his career as a professional wrestler. As it has turned out, there is another dark soul lingering within the WWE roster, that being none other than Bray Wyatt, a man many consider to be the most interesting character WWE has produced since the Undertaker. It's only fitting that they go to war with one another.

WINNER: The Undertaker

7) WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match - Brock Lesnar (C) vs. Roman Reigns

At the time of this writing there is some doubt as to whether or not the WHC match will go on as scheduled due in no small part to the backlash that occurred after the Royal Rumble pay-per-view. It's unclear if Roman Reigns will be the only challenger Lesnar will face or if he'll even be Lesnar's opponent. Regardless, I'm going forward in presenting this as the main event of the card because that's what current plans reflect.

Rumor is that Lesnar wants to return to the world of mixed martial arts and if that's true then he won't be hanging onto the WHC for very long (unless Vince McMahon and Dana White have orchestrated some incredibly intricate deal wherein a WWE title could be featured on UFC programming and vice versa, that is - I think that's about as likely to happen as me getting into Metallica). Reigns has been recognized for quite some time as the next big thing in terms of talents to be pushed to the next level, however he is still very much in need of help in getting over with fans when it comes to his promo work. He's like many other performers over the years in that regard who had amazing physiques and a great look yet were lacking in the area of charisma and the gift of gab. This is a tough call, and it's made more so by the fact that the Money in the Bank contract could come into play at any moment in time.

WINNER: Roman Reigns

NOTABLE POTENTIAL EXCEPTIONS:

- Goldust vs. Star Dust

This is being teased on TV right now and could be on the main card but I don't know that it is as valuable as the matches I've laid out herein. It's an attraction, for sure, just not one I am convinced will be worthwhile.

- Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal

The AGMBR was featured on the WrestleMania 30 card and Cesaro was the winner of the match, but there's been no inclination as of yet that it will be a part of WrestleMania 31. This would be a way to get a lot of talent involved in the card but I don't think it's necessary when there are better contests that could be presented.

- Kane & Big Show


These two members of the Authority could be plugged into a number of different matches, the trick is whether or not they'll get those spots or even have a spot.

- Eric Rowan, Ryback, Wade Barrett, Luke Harper

These four men are stuck in limbo as far as their involvement with WrestleMania 31 is concerned. It would be entertaining to see Rowan and Harper go at it in some kind of gimmick match where they could get into some sort of insane arrangement. Barrett is one of my favorite members of the WWE roster and I hate that he as well as the Intercontinental title don't get the respect they deserve. Ryback is a meathead that I don't particularly care for one way or another, so no big loss there.

- Sheamus

There is a better than decent chance that WWE will pull the trigger on Sheamus' return prior to WrestleMania 31 and have him face Daniel Bryan, which would serve as a continuation to a quasi-feud they've had going ever since WrestleMania 27. I persist in the notion that Sheamus, who is apparently 100% after having been sidelined for the past few months with injuries, should be held off until after WM31 so that he can have a fresh start in a new program.


- AJ Lee

AJ Lee is one of the best female wrestlers in the world and yet she likely will have no place in the WrestleMania 31 card. She's been dealing with a neck injury as of late but depending on what you read and what you believe she's not as bad off as it would seem. That plays into the possibility that she might be getting the shaft thanks to the fact that her husband, CM Punk, is - well - CM Punk.

Our Road to Building a Family - Portrait Innovations? More like Portrait Hostage Negotiations!

It goes without saying that as new parents my wife and I are constantly taking pictures and video of our son, The Duke. We make great use of the fact that our cell phones are equipped with way better than average cameras - I couldn't tell you how many of him I have on my personal device but I would say it's in the area of 100 to 150 shots at this point in time. (My wife likely has 2 or 3 times as many, and I am rather scared to consider how many my mother in-law has.) That's one of the lovely aspects of digital photography as opposed to traditional film. You can take hundreds if not thousands of photos, more or less to your hearts content, because the only concern you have is whether or not your memory card is getting full. I recall when I was a kid feeling lucky if I got 24 quality exposures out of a roll of film. (Do people even remember what a roll of film looked like?)

Those pictures are all well and good but they're not the professional, keepsake kind of photos that every family has hanging around their home. This being the case, my wife decided a few weeks back that it was high time we had some pictures taken.

If it sounds like I wasn't exactly overwhelmed with joy over the idea, you wouldn't be too far off base. It's not that I didn't agree that we ought to do what we can to document Duke's life in as grand a method as possible, rather it was the frugal side of my personality taking over. (Call me cheap if you want to, I like to think of myself as being fairly skilled at stretching a dollar and that's not a bad thing.) Actually, my frugal side didn't so much take over as it did go into a screaming, riotous conniption fit seeing as how I suspected this was going to be a pricey endeavor, and that was with me having absolutely zero knowledge of what a photo shoot with a commercial vendor goes for these days.

After we'd decided to look into having pictures taken my wife booked an appointment for us with the Picture People studio at the Buy Buy Baby location in Columbia, South Carolina. I don't think either one of us took the time to investigate what the cost of their services might be at the point in time the appointment was made. Was that a mistake? Maybe, maybe not. In hindsight it likely wouldn't have mattered as they don't seem to publish their pricing online, but that fact should have been enough of a red flag for my frugal sense to start going berserk.

We wound up visiting that Buy Buy Baby before our appointment as we were in the area and needed a few supplies. Jill got some documentation from them that included a menu of sorts with packages they were currently offering. One of the lower packages was in the area of $300.

Suffice to say that frugal me had a mild stroke at the sight of that...

We canceled the appointment with the Picture People the same day in favor of looking around at other options. Low and behold, within a few days time, my wife had located a coupon for use at a competing photography studio, that being Portrait Innovations. The coupon offered a shoot with prints for around $40 - that sounded like a great deal to me when compared to the fact that the Picture People wanted the equivalent of a car payment for their services, so we set up an appointment with them.

I forget who it was that said this to us but when we told someone about the shoot and the coupon their comment was "Oh, but you know you're going to want to buy more pictures than that!" I already had it in mind that there was a possibility we might want to add a few prints but I didn't see us spending more than $60, tops, and I gave that number to my wife as a ceiling for what I saw as being a reasonable expenditure.

Those would fall into the category of famous last words.

Our photo shoot was scheduled for 11 AM on the morning of January 17. Jill's Mom was staying with us that weekend as the three of us all had the following Monday off in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. We got dressed, prepped Duke, and loaded ourselves into the car so that we could be there with time to spare.

It was around 10:35 AM when we arrived and the parking lot was rather full already by that time of day. I point that out more for the sake of describing the scene than anything else seeing as how this particular Portrait Innovations is attached to several other shops in a strip mall, so it only made sense that parking would be limited. Regardless, as we got out of the car I began to get the same feeling as I do when I have an appointment with a doctor; your appointment may be for 11 AM but what they mean is you'll be seen somewhere between 11 AM and the rapture.

When we entered the studio there appeared to be one family in the process of having photos taken and two others that were waiting to get started. The customers who were there had spread out in such a way that all the seating was taken except for one chair, which we quickly assumed possession of so as to give Duke somewhere to perch until it was our turn. I don't blame those other families for the lack of seating, I blame the business. The waiting area was big enough to have accommodated significantly more seating than what was installed. As it was, we made like a couple of horses and stood around.

By the time 11:30 rolled around the family that was already on set when we arrived had wrapped up their shoot and one of the families in front of us were roughly half way through their turn. The other family ahead of us that was still waiting to begin apparently lost their will to hang around any longer and left without saying anything to the staff. Low and behold, not five minutes passed from the point that they left to when one of the attendants came to fetch them and begin their shoot. Their loss was our gain.

We began our shoot around noon, nearly a full hour later than our appointment. Jill had told me that the plan going into this was to not only get photos of the Duke but to also have a few family portraits made, and that sounded like a fantastic idea to me. What did not sound like a fantastic idea was the photographers first pose for us as a family which would require the three of us to get on the ground.

I am 34 years old as of this writing however I will tell you that I am probably less than 10 years away from having to have some sort of procedure done to one or possibly both of my knees. I'm not immobile by any stretch of the imagination, but when you combine my joints being what they are with the fact that I'm not the most graceful of individuals anyway, you can hopefully understand why getting on the ground isn't something I often choose to do. I did it anyway because that's what was asked of me and I wanted to try my best to make the most of the situation.

The pose we wound up in had me on the ground on my left side with my right knee raised and my left arm/leg left to prop myself up. It wasn't an uncomfortable position, to be quite honest, but it became uncomfortable after my wife and Duke were added to the mix (I'm not blaming them, I'm blaming the pose!) as I wound up more or less having to support their weight with my hips and lower back. It just wasn't a good situation for my pelvis and spine, is what I'm getting at. Making matters worse were the commands of the photographer to lean in, get closer, turn your head, and keep smiling all the while even though your left femur feels like it's about to pop out of its socket. I don't know why it is photographers have to put their subjects in these odd poses - they are wholly unnatural and you can tell this in the resulting images.

We did one additional pose as a family and it was in a more traditional arrangement where my wife & I were seated on stools, holding Duke in between us. The shots we got from that pose were the best ones of the day and I would've been perfectly fine if the thing had ended there. It went on for a while longer, though, and Jill's Mom even got brought into the mix. The idea, of course, is to take as many poses as possible because then they can try to sell them to you, which brings me to the next phase of this event.

Once we were done taking photos, we sat down in front of a monitor with our photographer - a young black woman who looked to be in her early to mid 20s - to go over what we had to work with. It was then that my wife mentioned to the photog that we had a coupon; the photog more or less hushed my wife, telling her that it was only good for one pose and that we'd get a much better deal by going with one of the packages currently being offered. How much those packages were going to cost wasn't discussed at that point, though, as we first had to go through and select our favorite shots.

Remember how I mentioned earlier the fact that pricing information for packages offered by these studios isn't readily available online? Nowhere in the shop itself was there a display, menu, or any kind of signage that would clue customers in to what they'd be forking over for pictures made therein.

The pictures did look quite good for the most part, although there were a few poses (such as the one of us on the floor) that just looked weird. Once we had it narrowed down to somewhere in the area of 16 poses the photog navigated through her software to the sales module and we finally got an idea of what we were looking at in terms of cost.

The first package she showed us was $554.

FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR DOLLARS.

To put that into perspective, when I was still making payments on my truck they were $250 a month, and when we were renting a house after we got married the rent payment was $525 a month.

I think she was joking but the photog turned to me after the total charge for that package was displayed on the screen and said, "So, Dad, do you want to write a check for that today?" Joking or not, the disgust on my face and in my tone of voice was very real.

I should mention that the packages I speak of are set up in such a way that you have to buy a certain number of photos featuring a specific set of poses in order to get freebies. For example, you might select 12 poses which would qualify you for a free hardcover book, two softcover books, and a CD with all the photos burned onto it. The more poses you select the more freebies you get, and the fewer poses you select the fewer freebies you get. This whole deal is, of course, meant to make customers feel like they're getting a deal when in reality you're paying for every one of the freebies. I have no method of verifying this but I would hazard a guess and say that the photogs (who double as sales staff) are more than likely working off of commission.

We then went through the process of whittling down our selection so that we could try to get to a price point that wasn't quite so ridiculous. For me, this became like what happened last year when I took my truck in for service to get the brakes done. What I thought was going to be a $200 bill wound up being almost $600. In this instance, what I thought would be a $60 bill wound up being $100 (the package we picked was around $200 and, thankfully, Jill's Mom was generous enough to pay half of the total). We paid our due, left to have lunch (it was roughly 1:30 PM by then, and I was feeling every bit of it since the only thing I'd had to eat thus far that day was a fiber bar), then came back about an hour and a half later to pick up our photos.

I made a comment about our experience on Facebook and a friend of our family chimed in with the comment, "Been there, done that, got the t-shirt." Along those lines, the lesson I take away from this is that it's all a part of being a parent. Sure, the pictures are good and we'll undoubtedly treasure them for as long as we can, but this is one of those times we'll look back on in 10, 15, 20 years and say "Do you remember how silly this day was?" Then we'll see the pictures with that little boy and his perfectly round head, and the money won't matter. The standing around won't matter. The pain in my knees won't matter. What matters is that we have a family and we did this together as a family.

The Sudden Proliferation of Bad Wrestling Posters - Part 5

It has been more than three months since I've made a contribution to this running series of blogs dedicated to shining a big, bright, shiny light on what are more often than not dull, dark, and usually depressing documents meant to serve as professional wrestling posters. Why the gap in coverage of this all-important topic in this day and age? I would like to say it's because the promotions responsible for such drivel have dried up and withered away but I don't think I could ever be so lucky as to have that happen. Crap-can indie wrestling federations are like the mythical hydra in that regard - cut off one head and two more appear. There's an old saying that the only critters left on this planet after World War 3 or some other type of global holocaust occurs will be cockroaches. I'm fairly certain that somewhere, even after the bulk of humanity has been annihilated, there will still be a middle school gymnasium with a ring made out of old car parts, railroad ties, and garden hoses set up inside of it where half a dozen or so "professional wrestlers" shall gather to entertain their fans, the cockroaches.

Lets begin this entry with a flyer for an upcoming WrestleForce event entitled AGGRESSION.

I have to applaud WrestleForce because they've truly stepped up their game in terms of flyers over the course of the past year. They've gone from having what were decent posters at best to work like this that is eye-grabbing, colorful, and well designed in terms of the overall layout. I know that there are those who will look at this and say "Oh, someone's playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto, huh?" because of the similarities between this poster and artwork produced by Rockstar Games for use on the GTA series of video games. Imitation in this arena isn't a bad idea seeing as how that beloved 18-35 year old male demographic is going to see this and immediately recognize the design as something potentially interesting. Besides, gaming and wrestling are two forms of entertainment with overlapping fanbases, so it's an organic method of drawing in potential consumers.

Next we have the poster for the debut event from AML Wrestling - "AML" meaning America's Most Liked. Not to sound too snarky here but I will say what others are probably thinking by stating that it might be a bit early for them to proclaim themselves as "America's Most Liked" wrestling when they haven't even had their first show yet.

I like this poster as it has an American Gladiators feel to it, which is fitting seeing as how AMLW has clearly put a significant amount of money into this production since they're bringing in names like Sean Waltman, Matt Hardy, and others. I'll add that the logo is fantastic; I'm a big fan of symmetry in design and there's plenty of it to be had in this piece.

Now we'll take a look at a poster from Premiere Wrestling Federation, a company owned and promoted by Steve Corino. This was for their January event, entitled SOUL SURVIVOR.

This is a fine example of a clear, concise poster that isn't overloaded with graphics but still accomplishes everything that a good poster should in serving as an advertising mechanism. I appreciate PWF's effort towards having an event title pair up with a featured match. So often it seems as though promoters just pick a word to go along with their show as a title or tag line because it looks cool when you spell it out in a certain font style without ever thinking of how it should influence the card.

Ultra Wrestle is a relatively new company that launched in 2014 but looks to make strides in 2015, starting with AWAKENS, which will be their first event of the year.

I can't say that I dislike this poster but I'm not 100% sold on it either. I get what they're doing here in trying to get a bit of a rub from Star Wars' momentum. (In case you've been under a rock for the past 3 months, it was announced last year that the next Star Wars film will be called "The Force Awakens".) Even so, there's a lot of text and I feel as though images of the talent from more than just two matches could have been involved. As I mentioned, UW is a young promotion - hopefully once they have a greater library of stock photos to work with they'll be able to incorporate more of their roster onto posters.

We've been on an uphill climb thus far but the path is about to take a very abrupt and misguided left hand turn into the inane! Here's the poster for HARDCORE HOMECOMING, Milestone Wrestling's next event.

This is pretty mild as far as Milestone Wrestling's posters go in terms of being a random mish-mash of imagery and text. As much as I want to make fun of this poster, there's a certain artistry to it that is keeping me from being too derogatory in addressing it. The background looks like an Andy Warhol painting, but then you've got Mike Levy and the Burke County Boyz (it's spelled with a "Z" because of course it is - kind of like putting an "X" where it doesn't belong in a word, purely for the visual) and that's the end of anything beautiful about it. If you'll notice there's only one match announced on the flyer - someone asked them about this on their Facebook page, and a representative from MW replied along the lines of "Whatever we decide to bring it will be a blood bath", so if the flyer doesn't entice you hopefully the promise of potential exposure to blood-born pathogens will.

Following that is a recent poster from Southeastern Pro Wrestling for an event they dubbed NEW YEARS RESOLUTION. Regarding that event title, I will say that in the past two months I have seen more shows with some variation on the phrase "New Year's Resolution/Revolution" than I thought conceivably possible - some that were and were not grammatically correct (there's supposed to be an apostrophe in "year's" that some seemed to leave out for whatever reason - I'm guessing ignorance and stupidity), and some that went so far as to incorporate backwards letters or numbers into the spellings.

I harp constantly about the fact that wrestling posters should highlight a handful of the talent scheduled to appear on the card - young, good looking, physically fit athletes who appear to be ready to pop off the printed page - via clear, posed stock images. Why? Because you can't promote shows only to the people who know the wrestlers by their names, you have to promote shows to everyone and that includes the potential audience that (despite the assumed popularity of a given talent) might never have heard of or seen them before. That and the fact that there are those "fans" out there who will come to shows because they aren't actually wrestling fans, if you catch my drift (judging by some of the comments that get left on the matches I upload to YouTube there are a LOT of people watching wrestling who don't know an arm bar from a suplex; I'll stop there and leave that information for you to digest).

The images of the wrestlers on this poster are so small that they look like thumbnails, totally devoid of any detail whatsoever. I'm not just talking about how they appear when you look at this poster on your monitor/tablet/phone/etc. Imagine a printed version of this poster and bear in mind the fact that most documents of this type would be, at most, 16" x 20" in size. You wouldn't get a clear view of them even if it was 3' x 2.5'!

I grew up in Lancaster, South Carolina which isn't too far from Monroe, North Carolina. I don't ever recall there being wrestling around Monroe when I was a kid, but if New Life Wrestling (the company for which this flyer corresponds) was around back then I'm glad I never saw one of their posters because it likely would have damaged my point of view on indie promotions.

Here is an example of a poster loaded with images that were culled, for the most part, from action shots and cropped down so as to be suitable for use on a flyer. (I have no idea what is going on with the "wrestler" I'm assuming is in black & white face paint for the NLW championship match; by the look of things dude could be an alien, is all I'm saying.) This is one of the most carnal sins wrestling promotions make these days because there's no reason you shouldn't have stock photos of all your talent. Buy a bed sheet that's an odd solid color, download GIMP or some other free image editor, get yourself a decent camera, and have them pose for 4-5 photos once they're dressed to compete on your show - guess what, by the next time you run an event you've got a whole bunch of material to work with in making your posters!

I do have respect for whoever made this poster because it genuinely appears as though the effort was there. Someone went through the trouble to chop images of NLW's roster out of other photos so they could be used on the flyer, and trust me when I say that can be a painstaking process. Pardon my French but to make use of an phrase quite popular amongst wrestling critics, they tried to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

I want to briefly point out the title for that NLW show, REVOLUTION IV: A NEW BEGINNING. If you follow that logic, one can assume that there have been three "revolutions" prior to this one, and none of them were apparently effective seeing as how there's now going to be a fourth revolution. Whoever is leading that revolt should probably rethink their strategy, unless their strategy is to go around in circles in which case the title really is ironic (because sometimes words have double meanings).

We're getting towards the bottom of the proverbial barrel here now, and Southern Fried Championship Wrestling has the honor of being the upper crust of the worst this time around as they've published not one but TWO posters as of late that have drawn my ire.

The first event was called HALLOSCREAM and the second NEW YEARS NIGHTMARE (there's no apostrophe in the flyer so I didn't use one either). I am going to go out on a limb here and take a guess that SFCW utilizes the tried and true method of naming their events with the most clever thing they could think of based on what time of year it is. As such I expect their February event to be called VALENTINES VINDICATION, their March event to be FIGURE FOUR LEAFED CLOVER, and their April event to be EASTER EVISCERATION. See, it's not that hard - you just take something the month in question is known for then combine it with either a violent act or a wrestling-related term and, presto, you have your gimmick!

I'm not going to bother with going into more of a rant about the backgrounds, color choices, or the stock imagery being awful because I would be beating a dead horse, however I will add on a more serious note the fact that Anarchy Wrestling out of Cornelia, Georgia was recently purchased by SFCW's ownership. Anarchy has a rich history behind it as having been where a number of well known talents cut their teeth in the business (men like AJ Styles, Abyss, Xavier Woods, and others) and hopefully the new owners will be able to maintain that legacy rather than muck it up.

All Pro Classic Wrestling is (or possibly was; more on that in a moment) a promotion based out of Mullins, SC that, if memory serves, seemed to pop up onto my radar about half way through 2014. They never drew too much of my attention because they seemed to exclusively use a crop of performers from a region of South Carolina known for turning out competitors that are only slightly beyond backyarders in terms of their actual wrestling ability. Here's the poster for REDEMPTION, their November 2014 event.

I took an art class in high school and I remember one of the projects we had that semester was to make a collage using images we found in newspapers and magazines. I made this really creepy and rather dismal scene that had a passenger jet crashing into the letters "FAA" with background elements that were all either on fire or looked like they were part of a cave. (Don't ask me what my inspiration was, I think I just wanted to make something that looked mildly offensive for the sake of making something mildly offensive.) I tell that story because this poster reminds me of that collage in that it's a jumbled mess of logos, text, and stock photos that don't at all work well with one another. I can't stress enough how important having a clear idea in mind is when designing a flyer. It's like Steve Martin once said, "Here's an idea, have a point!", otherwise you wind up with something like this.

APCW had been promoting their January 3 event up until a few days before it was scheduled to happen, then without much notice at all it was cancelled. It was later made public that the reason for the cancellation was that they had issues getting the ring to the venue. I found that particularly silly seeing as how in the realm of professional wrestling the ring is arguably the most essential piece of equipment there is (although George South has proven that otherwise seeing as how he and his students once held a show for a community event in a grassy field after there were issues with the ring they were supposed to have used that day). Ironically enough, images of the ring APCW had used in the past were posted in a for sale ad on Facebook.

So was the show cancelled because they couldn't get the ring to the venue or was it cancelled because the ring had been sold? Only in indie wrestling, folks!

Last and certainly least I bring you another pair of flyers, this time from New Millennium Championship Wrestling hailing from Kings Mountain, North Carolina. These posters were for events called DEADLY GAMES and ROYAL BASH, titles that immediately reek of gimmick infringement seeing as how they're rather similar to WAR GAMES (the classic event that began back in the heyday of the National Wrestling Alliance and continued on into the World Championship Wrestling era) and the ROYAL RUMBLE (World Wrestling Entertainment's annual January pay-per-view) but that's where the similarities to anything awesome end.

I don't know where to begin with this, quite frankly. They chose to use Comic Sans as the font for the poster, which says a lot about the person responsible for it (i.e., childish, immature, and completely lacking good taste - I didn't come up with those character traits myself, mind you, I'm just citing the BBC). I am hoping I'm wrong here but the image of the wrestler (I assume he's a wrestler, anyway) on the right looks like it could have been a prison booking photo. I don't know if it's the jumpsuit or the forearm tattoos that make me think that. By contrast, the guy on the left has a double chin and no discernible muscle tone whatsoever yet he's trying to puff himself up by crossing his arms, a pose that everyone knows only real tough guys use. He's wearing sun glasses and he's got a super-cool replica of the "winged eagle" WWE championship belt (arguably one of the most identifiable belts ever yet one that gets made over by indie feds all the time as their "world" championship belt), so he's clearly not someone you should mess with if you know what's good for you!

NMCW took a different approach with the flyer for ROYAL BASH, their January 2015 event.

I would call it minimalist but I think lazy might be more fitting. To answer a few burning questions right up front:

- No, the date of the event isn't on the poster.
- Yes, this show was held on January 17.
- Yes, I had to spend more time than I'd like to think about verifying what the date of the event actually was.

No announced matches, no images of talent scheduled to appear, just a whole lot of tildes (~). When you're running a wrestling promotion and your posters look like this, it's time to rethink the decisions you've made that have brought you to where you are in life.

2014 - A Year in Review

Yeah, I know I'm a few weeks late with this (I say that apologetically although when you're examining the past should there be a realistic time frame in which someone has to look back in a retrospective manner?), but I have plenty of logical reasons for my first blog entry of 2015 having taken a while to make its way from my brain to the Internet. It's called being a dad and I am happy to say that of all the reasons I could have for ignoring something as ultimately frivolous (in the grand scheme of things anyway; not to discredit this fine publication but my priorities are what they are) as this here blog trust me when I say that there is none more rewarding than that.

I guess that's as suitable a segue as any into what was undoubtedly the most prolific, life-altering experience to come out of 2014, that being the culmination of the process my wife Jill and I have gone through in building our family. I won't bother recapping the entire turn of events that lead us where we are today (if you'd like, feel free to refer back to any of my blog entries that are titled "Our Road to Building a Family" as well as pretty much any blog entry my wife has made at her site - The Truesdale Times - in the past year), however I will make it known that to have what we have now is such an incredible gift. Our son - The Duke, as we'll still be referring to him until the adoption proceedings are finalized - will soon be 3 months old. He amazes me each and every day with his personality. There is nothing in the world that makes me as happy as seeing him smile and hearing him laugh. He's already changed and grown so much in the short period of time we've had him, it just makes me wish time would slow down or that I would somehow be able to appreciate it more because he'll only be this way for a short period of time. He'll be crawling soon, then he'll pull himself up to make his first steps, and before you know it he'll be graduating from college.

Oh, life - won't you take your shoes off and stay for a while? Quick, let me move on to other topics before I get any more cheesy and emotional over how awesome our little family unit became over the stretch of 2014.

Last year was full of experiences for my wife and I as we were able to travel and do some things we'd not been able to previously. I, personally, started off the year with a trip to Winston-Salem, North Carolina in pursuit of one of my hobbies, that being following independent professional wrestling promotions in the region. Jill & I made our way to Duluth, Georgia (which isn't too far away from Atlanta) for a Valentine's Day jaunt to pay a visit to a third Medieval Times castle. (We've been to their locations in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and Orlando, Florida; I won't say that we're officially on a trek to visit all the MT castles but at the same time I won't deny that it sounds like a fun endeavor.) May was a month that I think I'll remember fondly for the rest of my life seeing as how we got to go to one of our favorite vacation destinations, that being Walt Disney World, for the 2014 edition of Star Wars Weekends during which we got to meet a slew of Star Wars characters as well as see a panel that involved actors Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett) and Warwick Davis (Wicket). Our yearly vacation to Myrtle Beach was memorable for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the fact that I was able to reclaim the Annual Myrtle Beach Putt Putt Challenge Championship trophy for the second time. Our tires got a bit of rest towards the middle of the year but they got back onto the road around Labor Day as we ventured to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for a weekend getaway that turned out to be an adventure. And to cap things off as far as road trips are concerned, I traveled to Gibsonville, North Carolina in October to attend a pro wrestling card held there.

I had several people pose the question "Where are y'all headed this weekend?" to me throughout 2014. I guess by that you could say that we do a good job of documenting (and publicizing) our lives seeing as how they wouldn't be asking that otherwise. The truth of the matter is that I've never been a homebody - I blame my Grandmother for this as she was exactly the same, seemingly never content to spend too much time at home, preferring to be out and about enjoying herself whether that meant taking a bus tour across the country or going shopping. I enjoy getting out, seeing the world and doing things, and I don't anticipate that changing any time soon. That being the case the answer to "Where are y'all headed this weekend?" is, quite simply, wherever we feel like it.

2014 was not without its moments of trauma, unfortunately.

We got our first dose of what it's like to be fearful for our property's health and well-being in February when a horrible ice storm assaulted our part of the world. Rarely have I felt a sense of isolation so thick as I did during the few days that we were more or less cut off from the rest of the world by the effects of the storm (we only lost power for a few hours but our home phone, television, and internet connectivity was down for several days; to make matters worse our cellular reception isn't that great where we live). And, for the record, I'll be perfectly fine if I never hear the sound of trees cracking and falling under the weight of accumulated ice. I kid you not, our neighborhood was so tense that it seemed as though there were a thousand ACME brand anvils strung up by frayed twine, all of which were waiting for just the right moment to fall - but would they fall harmlessly to the ground or calamitously onto someone's house? We were fortunate that our home wasn't damaged, thankfully, and aside from a few downed limbs we didn't have much to concern ourselves with in terms of cleanup.

Not everyone has a pet. Those people are weird, or at least I believe they are. Animals, dogs specifically, make life better in my opinion. They give us companionship and affection, and in return all they want is for us to be happy. That being the case, it's easy to understand why it's so hard to deal with when age gets the best of them and they finally come to the end of what was hopefully an adventurous life. Chewie, my Mom's beloved dachshund, left this world towards the end of 2014 and it still makes me sad to think about the fact that he's not with us anymore. I buried him behind our storage shed. When the weather is right I plan on reseeding our lawn and once the grass gets going I'll put down a marker my wife & I had made for him.

Raise your hand if you've ever thought you were going to have to fight a brush fire extending off of a 4 alarm house fire with a garden hose while wearing your pajamas and a pair of sandals in 40° weather? No takers? My hand is raised, because I've been there!

Near the end of November, just after Thanksgiving, a vacant house two doors down from ours was more or less gutted by a fire. The heat from the blaze was so intense that it melted the vinyl siding on a home that exists between ours and it. At one point I genuinely thought I was going to have to try and stave off the flames that were steadily marching across the grassy lot between the two properties but fortunately enough the local fire department arrived with haste, thus saving me the trouble. (I was ready and willing, is the point I'm trying to make.) The house was a total loss and arson investigators from South Carolina's State Law Enforcement Division were on hand in the days after the fire. I don't think there has been any progress in the case (there's been no public comment from any authorities on the matter) but it definitely seemed suspicious seeing as how no one had been there for weeks and, from what we were told, the electricity had been turned off. It's been several months since then and the house that burned still sits in the state it was left, complete with crime scene tape. It's an eyesore and I certainly hope the owners of that property will have it cleaned up sooner rather than later.

Everyone who knows me well knows how big a fan I am of professional wrestling. Always have been, more than likely always will be. (I say that even though here lately the bulk of World Wrestling Entertainment's TV programming has made me question why I bother tuning in to their shows anymore.) In recent years I have grown especially fond of supporting our local pro wrestling promotions and the talent making up those rosters. I mentioned earlier in this post how I went to Winston-Salem, NC for an event. It was around that same time that I began to hatch the idea for my very own YouTube show, which I envisioned as being something of a reality or documentary series wherein I would depict the experience of what it's like to be a fan of indie pro wrestling and what it's like to attend events put on by promotions falling into that category. Rasslin' with Redbeard is what that idea eventually became, and I'm proud to say that I was able to produce 12 episodes in 2014.



In addition, I began filming matches at the events I attend and I add those to my YouTube channel as well. My mission there has been to hopefully do my part in giving the talent that exists in our neck of the woods an opportunity to be seen by eyes that might have bigger and grander ideas for them than what they're enjoying currently. It pleases me greatly when I see individuals sharing the content I publish, not because it does anything for me, personally, but because it validates the objective I've set for this effort.



I made a point to say that last bit there because I don't know that everyone understands that seeing as how I've had to deal with a few negative reactions to what I've been doing. More so than anything, that sort of response comes from people who feel as though I'm either presenting them in a negative light or otherwise cutting into their profits by way of making their product freely available when they had machinations of selling it. The fact of the matter is that with Rasslin' with Redbeard I am sharing my personal experience as a fan who drives (several hours in some cases) to a venue, pays for a ticket, and spends money at the concession stand. Not that shelling out my hard earned cash grants me a right to do whatever I want, rather that if I offer constructive criticism it's the honest opinion of someone who's been to enough shows and seen enough matches to know what's good, what's bad, and what falls somewhere in between. Believe me when I say that I do try to stay positive in promoting indie pro wrestling as a whole because there's enough snarky commentary out here on the Internet about pro wrestling as is, hence the reason why I want to build up as opposed to tearing down. That said, if I enjoy a show, I'm going to tell you I enjoyed it and if I didn't enjoy a show, I'm going to tell you about it, too.

To those of you who've taken issue with me over any of the material I've published, please know that I make no money from doing what I do with this content. I invest my personal time, effort, funds, and materials for the exclusive purpose of (hopefully) increasing the exposure of talent and promotions because I feel like they deserve it.

2014 was a great year and, in my heart, I have high hopes for 2015. I think that this will be a stellar year for my wife & I, and our still developing little family unit. With any luck we'll soon be able to share all the details imaginable about The Duke and we'll be able to go about our lives without need for all the cloak and dagger nonsense we've had to endure. He'll be joining us on all our adventures and get to live the full, spoiled rotten life he deserves.