November 12th 2008, WWE Survivor Series Tour, Nottingham Arena
Despite some numpty crashing into my car on the way home, apparently we give way to traffic from the left at islands now!, both Leah and I got to the tram stop in time, met up with Chris and headed off to watch the WWE Survivor Series tour.
The last time I’d seen live wrestling was with my Grandma and Granddad way before American Wrestling had even been invented.
Then I got to watch Big Daddy (real name Shirley Crabtree - honest! Look it up - a big fat man with his name on his leotard, who used his belly “splash” to defeat opponents and went around shouting “Easy! Easy! Easy!” a lot) and Giant Haystacks (an even bigger, even fatter man with a beard that wouldn’t look out of place on Rasputin, dressed in a fur waistcoat with a rope to keep his trousers up)
Fortunately things have moved on since the early 80s and wrestling has changed.
For a start the wrestlers now look the part. Gone are the fat men wobbling around belly flopping each other (Easy! Easy! Easy!) The wrestling may be “choreographed” but there is no denying that these guys do some very impressive and often crazy moves.
With Leah possessing the most up to date wrestling knowledge, she provided insight into who likes who, why such and such didn’t like thingy throughout the show.
Having been corrected that we weren’t chanting the right names, its Khali not Kylie and MVP not QVC, me and Chris decided to put more effort in and concentrate on the next match…
…which just so happened to be ladies match. Now apparently they have names, but they didn’t seem to be important, and they were fighting for some title belt or other, but again that wasn’t important.
What was impressive was the level skill shown as the photos demonstrate....(ahem!!)
One slight disappointment was the lack of commentators. Its seems that the ridiculous ramblings of Jim Ross, a man with a face so fat the only his bottom lip can move, making him look like a huge Thunderbirds puppet, are a big part of the show after all!
We had come specifically to see Jeff Hardy, The Undertaker and Triple H. Sadly The Undertaker wasn’t there but the others were.
Despite the odd mistake that saw wrestlers collapsing under the force of a move that missed by some distance, and some very bad acting, in particular Big Shows staggering back to the dressing room after his match, the whole thing was pretty impressive.
By far the best match was the last one, with the current WWE Champion Triple H fighting and eventually beating the 7ft tall Big Show. Triple H is just an amazing sight to see in action.
The whole show lasted 3 hours and even though no titles changed hands on the night (Odd that!) there’s no denying its good entertainment and great value for money. So much so that we have already booked to watch the WWE Wrestle-mania tour in April 2009….Easy! Easy! Easy!