Fifth Avenue Forum

ICYMI: Elimination Chamber spoilers:

Miz deserves another run with the belt. I'm a little surprised it's happening so close to Mania. I guess he could be the champ going in since the main event will likely be Edge/Reigns.

The Smackdown Elimination Chamber match was great. I didn't understand the title shot coming directly following the Chamber match but whatever. Bryan was never going to be the main challenger for Reigns.

It's been weird to see WWE come full circle and go back to the hilariously campy stuff from the early 90s. Papa Shango, Kamala, etc.

The segment is also dumb because the fact he didn't open his mouth at all after the cutaway makes it readily apparent he put that liquid in his mouth during it.

This is a documentary about an independent wrestling show held in Alabama. I was hoping it’d explore the mythos and zeitgeist of that particular culture and time. Instead, it confirmed all of the general populace’s worst fears and stereotypes about wrestling fans.

There’s some text that starts off the program, featuring the following line that is in reference to independent wrestlers, “the Outlaw Wrestler, a vanishing yet determined breed of gladiator.” Seriously? You’re telling me slobs that don’t pay their child support and work a five-minute match once a month are some superior determined group? I don’t think so. We open to footage obviously shot by someone with a wobbly grip holding a camera outside a car window as it drives by rural Alabama. During the first full-shot of the car look towards the foreground to see some roadkill.

We then see an old man as he staples a wrestling flyer onto an old, abandoned wood and tin barn. He calls this, “wild posting.” Which is illegally posting propaganda. My question is, who the ****’s going to see a flyer on a barn when they’re driving 45MPH in the woods?

We go through a sequence introducing us to a lot of the roster. The first time we see Iron Sheik he’s wearing suspenders and a WrestleMania VII t-shirt with Sid Justice and Hulk Hogan on it. Then we see the crowd, which sadly, is a rather excruciating experience. They’re all sweaty, several are toothless, and many lead me to find inbreeding as a potential cause. One tells the camera, “I want to see the good ones” referring to wrestlers, not “jerks off the streets.”

Our first match features “Nasty” Steve Lane, adorned in a Jim Beam t-shirt, versus Shanghai Pierce. Lane lives his gimmick, that of a loudmouthed a-hole. Wait, they busted out a Cactus Jack clothesline over the ropes in front of 225 people? Lane takes a hiptoss on the basketball court floor, to boot.

Speaking of oof... Sheamus glitches through the ropes!