Wrestlemania Weekend - The Alternative

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

As is the case every year, COVID aside, Wrestlemania weekend isn’t just about WWE as other companies both major and Indy use the weekend to put on their own events, usually in partnership with the Wrestlecon convention. This is the guide for the key events, most of which will be broadcast on Fite TV

Thursday 31st March

The first Indy event of the weekend is presented by GCW with Josh Barnet’s Bloodsport 8. The feature matches on the card include AEW’s Jon Moxley take on the former Oney Lorcan, Biff Busick, the legendary Minoru Suzuki taking on Chris Dickinson, Barnett himself faces Impact’s JONAH, formally Bronson Reed in NXT while there’s a battle of two former WWE names as John Hennigan faces Simon Gotch

Next up is AAA’s offering as they present AAA Invades Wrestlecon which has a double main event of Laredo Kid defending his AAA Cruiserweight title against ROH champion Bandido and Flamita while La Rebelion defend the NWA World Tag Team titles against former Lucha Underground favourites Drago and Aero Star

MLW are taping a special called Intimidation Games to air at a later date on BeIn which will have a main event of MLW Heavyweight champion Alex Hammerstone defending against Jacob Fatu and Mads Kruger

New promotion Control Your Narrative hold their second show Awakening - Dallas which features Adam Scheer and EC3 take on Eric Redbeard and Big Damo, Austin Aries against Westin Blake, Killer Kross against Vincent and Flip Gordon v Dirty Dango

The second offering from GCW is Joey Janella’s Spring Break 6 Part 1 which has a main event of Mox defending the GCW title against AJ Gray, Nick Gage and Matt Tremont defending the GCW Tag titles against The Briscoes and the team of Mance Warner and Matthew Justice, Janella himself faces WWE Hall of Famer Sean Waltman while Mickie James faces Allie Katch

The final show of the day is the annual Wrestlecon Mark Hitchcock Memorial Supershow, featuring Suzuki v Busick, Tomohiro Ishii v Timothy Thatcher, the Briscoes against Low Ki and Homicide, a battle of 2 former WWE women as Mia Yim faces the former Ember Moon, Athena and a battle of the sexes as John Hennigan faces wife Taya Valkyrie 

Friday 1st April

Day 2 begins with another GCW offering in Zicky Dice’s Trouble In Paradise 2 which features Scotty 2 Hotty against Rich Swann, Effy against Speedball Mike Bailey and Black Taurus against Lince Dorado

New Japan are next up with their US brand Strong presenting Lone Star Shootout, featuring Ishii v Dickinson, Jay White v Bailey and Suzuki v Kross

The main feature of Friday night is the return of Ring of Honor, who begin the new era under Tony Khan with Supercard Of Honor the main event of which will unify the two Ring of Honor World Title belts as Jonathan Gresham, who won his version at Final Battle, faces Bandido who had to miss the event due to travel issues. Elsewhere the 12 time ROH Tag Team champions the Briscoes defend against AEW’s FTR after their face off at the last event, another AEW talent in Wheeler Yuta challenges Josh Woods for his Pure title while an interim Women’s champion will be crowed, due to Deonna Purrazzo’s unavailability, as Willow Nightingale faces Mercedes Martinez

The other big show comes from Impact Wrestling with Multiverse Of Matches, the main event sees the NWA’s Nick Aldis compete in an Impact ring for the first time in 5 years, teaming with wife Mickie James to face NWA World and Impact Digital Media champion Matt Cardona and his wife Chelsea Green. Trey Miguel defends the X Division title in Ultimate X against Rich Swann, Jordynne Grace, Vincent, Chris Bey and Blake Christian, Impact Tag Team champions the Good Brothers face the Briscoes, Impact World champion Moose teams with HNM’s PCO to face Josh Alexander and Jonah, Jay White faces Chris Sabin and The Influence defend the Knockouts Tag Team titles against Impact Knockouts champion Tasha Steelz and Savannah Evans, Decay and the team of Lady Frost and Gisele Shaw

Impact follow this up by opening the vaults to another show from the Impact Provincial Wresting Federation 

The final show of the night is part 2 of Joey Janella’s Spring Break 6 which features the traditional Clusterfuck Battle Royal, Matt Cardona v Chris Dickinson, Minoru Suzuki v Effy and Mike Bailey v PCO

Saturday 2nd April

Not much happening for Day 3 as, understandably focus will be on NXT and Night 1 of Wrestlemania 

Wrestlecon presents a supershow dubbed USA vs The World, which features 2 title matches, the UK’s own Rev/Pro will see their British Cruiserweight champion Michael Oku defend the title against Rich Swann while the Warrior Wrestling Tag Team titles are on the line as Sam Adonis and La Hiedra face Mr Iguana and Abismo Negro Jr 

GCW present the annual Effy’s Big Gay Brunch with matches including Allie Katch vs Dango and Dark Sheik vs NWA star Parrow

For the late night crowd post Mania there is a show from Black Label Pro, matches include Jake Something defending the BLP Heavyweight title against PCO, legends The Faces of Fear take on the Work Horsemen, Charlie Haas faces Effy and Big Damo collides with Warhorse

[Kfogg1991]

Thank you very much for this dude, out of these and wrestlemania itself I'm much more excited for alot of this. 

I personally really enjoy GCW so there is a hell of alot of big matches and end of storylines culminating this weekend. 

With no ufc this weekend I might even check out some AAA for the first time amongst other bits. 

[Jazzy G]

I hope they stick that IPWF show online to watch. Presumably Matthews will be back for commentary, but I wonder Hannifan is going to be doing. I'd totally lose my shit if he called himself Wilson Phillips. 

[Merzbow]

I've watched Spring Break Part 1 and it was ok at best, great to see X-Pac still going strong but outside of that none of the matches really delivered. Allie Katch and Mickie James was dumb fun with those spots, but they won't be for everyone.

Nick Gage being in the tag match was odd, he felt really out of place but having his partner not able to compete did make it weird.

[Supremo]

I wasn’t that fussed about much of the stuff surrounding Wrestlemania this year until I saw this photo from Bloodsport on my timeline yesterday. Jesus Christ. I need to watch this!

Spoiler

 

[Doog]

Conrad Thompson did a Supershow interview segment thing with Jeff Jarrett, Eric Bischoff, William Regal and Jeff Hardy last night in Dallas. Few decent little stories, especially with Regal HD was brilliant.

Anyway, Jeff Hardy was clearly off his fucking head, the rest of the panel are clearly uncomfortable when he's talking, he was asked one question about Triple H and blabbered on about fuck knows what and made no sense, guys a mess and needs help

[Merzbow]

Yeah he was weirder than usual there, just started singing out of nowhere and going on about Prince at one point.

Then when he was supposed to come on and sing he didn't, I think he'd just left the place.

Edited April 2, 2022 by Merzbow

[garynysmon]

29 minutes ago, Doog said:

Conrad Thompson did a Supershow interview segment thing with Jeff Jarrett, Eric Bischoff, William Regal and Jeff Hardy last night in Dallas. Few decent little stories, especially with Regal HD was brilliant.

Anyway, Jeff Hardy was clearly off his fucking head, the rest of the panel are clearly uncomfortable when he's talking, he was asked one question about Triple H and blabbered on about fuck knows what and made no sense, guys a mess and needs help

You'd have thought that Bischoff would have called an audible ....

[BomberPat]

2 hours ago, Merzbow said:

I've watched Spring Break Part 1 and it was ok at best, great to see X-Pac still going strong but outside of that none of the matches really delivered. Allie Katch and Mickie James was dumb fun with those spots, but they won't be for everyone.

yeah, just watched it now, and it's not great. Hopefully part 2 is better, as it didn't deliver on the "wackiness" that Spring Break is normally good for or as a showcase for GCW talent.

Allie Katch suffers from being the only woman regularly working GCW shows, in that she's booked to appear stronger than she really is. The matches with Ruby Soho and Mickie James should have been to show that she was able to hold her own against bigger names, but the Ruby match really highlighted that she's just not good enough to, and while the Mickie match was better - and I daresay Mickie is better at carrying lesser opponents than Ruby - she still didn't come out of it looking good, either in kayfabe or otherwise. Didn't help that she immediately did a post-match promo promising to "run through all the top women in the industry" after having lost to Mickie, and her last big match being a loss to Ruby.

Nick Gage in general just feels completely checked out, and it's hard to ignore how much weight he's put on. I'm hoping that's just post-injury weight, or maybe even getting (relatively) clean - I don't know where Nick's at these days drug use-wise - and that he's winding down his career, because otherwise it's a a bit worrying.

[Merzbow]

Yeah I'd just gone back and watched the Jericho stuff with Gage and wow, there's such a difference in how he looks from only then to now. I love the guy, he comes across as one of the nicest guys in wrestling and is one of the few to openly show love to queer and trans people like he does so I hope he's good.