Two of my favourite activities come together

Found this in my email today. My love of professional wrestling meets my love of Skillet.

SKILLET’S “MONSTER” TO BE USED IN “25th Anniversary of WrestleMania – World Television Premiere” THIS WEEKEND ON NBC

August 28, 2009
**As they near the close of an exciting street week, SKILLET’s active rock single “Monster” (currently #26 on the Active Rock BDS/Billboard chart and #28 on the Mediabase chart) will be used during the “25th Anniversary of WrestleMania – World Television Premiere” this Sunday, August 29th on NBC at 9:00 p.m. (ET/PT).  This Special will feature all the action from the original April 5, 2009 Pay Per View broadcast, but condensed to one hour.  Unforgettable performances will be highlighted from WWE Superstars including Triple H, Randy Orton, John Cena, Big Show, Edge, Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Jeff Hardy and many others.
**WWE programming reaches nearly 16 million people per week in the U.S., and is available to nearly 500 million homes worldwide.  "WWE Superstars" is the newest addition to WWEs line up, a one-hour show, which recently premiered on April 16th, 2009 and has been WGN America’s most-watched Thursday telecast every week since its premiere.

Paying more to save money

I received an e-mail from Amazon.com a week or so ago telling me that Wrestlemania 25 was available for pre-order for just $19.98, which for a 3-disc DVD set, is quite the deal. Of course, that's $19.98 American, but these days that's still only about $22 Canadian, so it's still a good deal.

I checked Amazon.ca, and it was an even better deal, as the Canadian price on the DVD was a shade under $33. I was saving $11, even factoring in currency conversions.

So, I placed my order through Amazon.com ... and lo and behold, the $11 spread vanished in shipping charges. Suddenly, my $20 DVD was nearly $31 US, which after currency conversion, became more expensive than the highly-marked up Canadian version.

In the end, I pre-ordered the DVD through Amazon.ca, because after adding a book I was planning to buy anyway, I got free shipping.

Wacky.

Wrestlemania 25 live coverage

My good friend Scott Keith is doing live coverage of Wrestlemania here.

The UT-Shawn Michaels match was an easy 5 stars. Just a tremendous, fantastic match. Nice to see that Scott agrees.

WWE Hall of Fame 2009 Liveblog/Twitter!

Welcome to my liveblogging and Twittering of the WWE Hall of Fame 2009 webcast from wwe.com.

While we kill time, here's the link to last year's liveblog.

I've never Twittered and liveblogged at the same time, so this will be an interesting experiment.

• The Score is supposed to be showing the USA network portion of the show tomorrow (Sunday) at 5 eastern time, I think. Check local listings would be the suggestion (4:35 p.m.)
• Meanwhile, TSN is supposed to be showing the world men's curling championships, but it's delayed. (4:36 p.m.)
• Waiting ... (4:58 p.m.)
• Feed is buffering from WWE.com (5 p.m.)
• I'm getting great audio and not so great video. Which, I suppose, is fine, considering the HOF involves people standing in front of a microphone. (5:01)
• Love the "How on earth are you gonna stop this guy!" from Gorilla Monsoon in the Shawn-UT video. (5:03)
• Here we go! The HOF is on and live! (5:03)
• Opening with the Funks. This should be fun. (5:06)
• Holy crap, that NWA belt looked really beat up. (5:07)
• Dusty is inducting the Funks. Let's see if Big Dust can stick to the 3-minute limit on the inductions.
• Wow! Dusty just named dropped Lou Thesz!
• Pat Patterson is looking very old.
• Only Dusty can link Terry Funk to Tommy Dreamer and make it work.
• Man, the guys of today just can't deliver promos like Dusty can. He's got no notes, and he's delivering an entirely fluid and brilliant induction speech. (5:10)
• I think Dusty's already gone over the 3 minute limit.
• OK, not by much.
• ARGH! My feed keeps buffering. I might have to jack into the cable modem.(5:12)
• Dory gets a big pop for mentioning the Guerrero family. Slightly less of a pop for the Hart family. Well, they are in Texas, not Calgary.
• OK, after this, I'm jacking into into the cable modem. The buffering is getting ridiculous. (5:16)
• Dory just plugged his website for the remainder of his speech. That was kinda weird.
• Terry is YELLING HIS SPEECH!
• "THERE'S NO ROOM FOR DUMMIES IN THE WWE! YOU'VE GOTTA BE MULTIFACETED! SO KIDS OUT THERE, GET YOUR EDUCATION!"
• Dory's speech was understated and quiet. Terry's is so loud it's annoying. (5:19)
• Koko's next, so I'm gonna take a pause here and jack into my cable modem (5:21)
• I'm back, and the first thing I see is the Honky Tonk Man looking exactly like he did in 1990. Scary. (5:24)
• Gotta give HTM credit. He's actually making it sound like Koko deserves to be in the HOF.
• Noticed on the F4W messageboard that Bryan Danielson from ROH is sitting with some of he WWE wrestlers. Huh. That'll get the rumors started.
• Koko has a new Frankie. (5:28)
• Koko just thanked God that he's not dead (in so many words). Given the number of his former co-workers who are dead, I'm not sure if that's morbid or not.
• Frankie's gonna steal the show here. The closeup of the bird just got a pop. (5:30)
• Now Frankie is trying to eat Koko's speech. This is so funny!
• Perfectly acceptable speech from Koko, considering he should be nowhere near the WWE HOF. Seriously now.... (5:33)
• It was nice to see Bobby Heenan there, but boy did he look terrible.
• Von Erichs are next. Now this will be interesting. (5:34)
• I remember seeing that Kerry Von Erich-Ric Flair match on a VHS tape that Pro Wrestling Illustrated was selling back in the 1980s. I bet I still have that tape in a box somewhere in my basement.
• Michael Hayes doing the induction. Again ... this will be ... interesting ... (5:37)
• Hayes says no family had more influence tranforming wrestling into sports entertainment as the Von Erichs. Hmm ... I guess, considering the TV done by World Class was miles ahead of anyone else. And, I suppose if you look at all the early drug deaths ...
  
• Kerry Von Erich did not set any kind of world discuss record.
• I've kinda tuned out of Hayes's speech. I just don't like the man. He's such a worker, and I don't mean that as a compliment. He strikes me as a guy who would say anything to get the audience to pop, regardless of whether it was true or he believed it or whatever. (5:42)
• And the last Von Erich is up. Kevin immediately says, "I don't regret a thing." That's a kinda cold thing to say when you lost all of your brothers to this business.
• Kevin says Michael Hayes can talk. Yup. Ask Mark Henry about that.
• "I wish my brothers could be here with me. But, gosh, darnit..." Yeah, that's kind of an understatement. "Gosh, darnit."
• Kevin notes that his sons are in the building. Nice looking kids. "The Von Erichs still live," says Kevin. Great. Just keep them out of the business, OK?
• Impressed that Kevin has been married 31 years.
• OK, I'm not deliberately trying to be heartless about Kevin's speech. It was very good. But the tip-toeing around the deaths got to be a bit much. I know he can't dwell on them ... (5:47)
• Yay! Howard Finkel is next! I hope he gets the biggest standing ovation. (5:48)
• Mean Gene inducting Howard Finkel. That's entirely appropriate.
• Yeah, who didn't see that "Enough about me" comment coming?
• Howard credited with coming up with the term Wrestlemania. I actually believe that's true. And if it's not true, then it's been said often enough that everyone believes it's true.
• Howard's put on some weight.
• I think outside of Mae Young, I've never seen anyone so genuinely happy to be in the Hall of Fame.
• Howard is talking very, very fast. He needs to slow down.
• Howard just broke the volume knob in the control both.
• Chris Jericho has the world's orangest tan.
• Loved Howard's "NEW inductee!" bit. That was hysterical! (5:59)
• Bill Watts is next.
• Jim Ross inducting Watts will at least give it the context his induction deserves ... in three minutes or less.
• Ross just turned himself heel. And then he redeemed himself by making fun of Michael Hayes' hair.
• Ross just sent a message to the young talent with the "Watts was in the business for just 3 years before was main eventing the Garden."
• I think Ross is going over the 3 minute limit on the induction speeches. (6:05)
• Bill Watts can take off that goofy hat now.
• Anytime now, Bill.
• Um ... Bill ... you're wearing a giant green hat.
• OK, Bill Watts just made everything great by using the word "noogie" during his speech. (6:09)
• Erik Watts just introduced on camera. Hey, they should put him in Legacy!
• ... OK, maybe not.
• Boy, Bill Watts is sure putting himself over in a rather arrogant way. "What took you so long to put me in the Hall of Fame!?"
• I have no idea what Bill's talking about anymore. Someone yank him, please. This is why they put the time limits in. If he didn't have a 10 minute limit, he'd be talking for six hours. (6:13)
• Bill talks about Bruno Sammartino, saying "he was the strongest man in the world at the time, and we didn't even have steroids back then!" Wow ... got some guts to say that given the audience.
  
• Speaking of Bruno ... what a complete joke that he's not in the HOF. I mean, I know he's on the outs with WWE, but induct him whether he shows up to accept or not.
• Bill's been talking for 8 minutes now, and he's up to, like 1965.
• OK, so in the end, Watts's speech was somewhere between rambling and awesome. Kinda depends on how you look at it. On the one hand, it was utterly rambling at times. On the other hand, he talked about steroids and talked about dead wrestlers, which probably drove Vince McMahon insane.
• Watts, a WWE Hall of Famer, admits he's going to his first Wrestlemania tomorrow. Vince just popped another vein.
• Watts talks about going to heaven. I'm sure that raised a few eyebrows in the audience. (6:21)
• OK, apparently that's it for the web portion of the broadcast. Unfortunately, I'm not able to watch the USA version of the live broadcast with Rick Steamboat and Steve Austion, so thanks for joining me here.
  

It's Wrestlemania weekend!

It's Wrestlemania 25 weekend, which means the Hall of Fame tonight and the big show tomorrow. I've decided due to the poor build up of the card that I'm not going to see it live tomorrow, but will save my money for the DVD. However, I do plan to live blog and Twitter the Hall of Fame webcast tonight because that was fun to do last year, and resulted in an enormous increase in my page views, which is always good. Watch for that starting around 5 p.m. Alberta time tonight.

Ah, yes, that classic Wrestlemania match:

"jon michael vs rick flair"

(From a Google search string found in my website stats.)

Geek fight!

The legendary Scott Keith of rspwfaq.com and I get into a friendly debate over the psychology of a wrestling match.

Gimme a heckya!

It's looking more and more like Stone Cold Steve Austin - who will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame at Wrestlemania - won't actually wrestle a final match on the show.

That's fine with me. I was live and in person at Wrestlemania 19 in Seattle to see him lose to the Rock, which currently stands as the final match of his career. I'm perfectly happy keeping it that way for the completely selfish reason of saying I saw his final match live.

But even if he did come back ... with today's G-rated WWE that's catering to kids, does anyone really want to see a watered-down "Rattlesnake" giving us an "Oh heck ya" to 10-year-old kids who have no idea who he is?

Stay retired, Steve. For your own sake.

Wrestlemania 24 DVD aspect ratio weirdness

Here's a strange one:

I bought the Wrestlemania 24 DVD. It's in 16x9 widescreen. When I play it on my 17-inch widescreen computer monitor, it plays in 16x9 widescreen. When I play it on my portable widescreen DVD player, it plays in 16x9 widescreen.

But when I put it in either one of the DVD players I have hooked up to our 4x3 resolution televisions, it does NOT play in 16x9 widescreen. Instead, it plays in perfectly cropped 4x3 standard TV aspect ratio.

Now, I have a lot of widescreen movies in my DVD collection. All of them play in 16x9 widescreen format with the black bars on my regular 4x3 TVs.

But not Wrestlemania 24. And I've fiddled with the TV/DVD settings on the DVD players to get it to play in 16x9, and it won't.

It's almost like the DVD auto-senses what the aspect ratio of the screen is and adjusts the DVD accordingly.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Best. Wrestlemania. Ever.

Quick Wrestlemania 24 thoughts:

That was a thumbs up show if I ever saw one. I'd venture to say that top to bottom, that was the best Wrestlemania show I've ever seen (and I've seen them all). The Citrus Bowl turned out to be a great venue that really magnified the majesty and importance of the event. The guys all had their working shoes on. And with only a couple of exceptions, the matches were all very good to downright great. I watched it at the West Edmonton Mall theatres on the big screen in high def, and the show looked awesome that way. The place was PACKED (sold out earlier today), and the crowd was pretty hot for everything.

• The Belfast Brawl was short, but intense. Good stuff.
• The ladder match was an entertaining spotfest. The Matt Hardy run-in popped the WEM theatre crowd big-time. Having CM Punk win was an interesting twist. I just hope he doesn't cash it in for the ECW title. Really good match.
  
• Batista looked like he tore every muscle in his back on that power bomb. Another good match. Umaga is a very underrated worker.
  
• Kane. Yup. Worst match of the night just by the virtue of it being so short.
  
• "I'm sorry ... I love you." Awesome. Flair-Michaels was the match of the night, and one of the all-time great Mania moments.
  
• The women's match was almost saved by the blackout. Not offensive.
  
• Having Orton retain the title was hardly the worst booking decision ever made. At least Hunter didn't win. Plus, I've turned the corner on Randy. He's a great heel champion. They should keep the belt on him as long as possible. Another very good match.
• The Big Show-Mayweather match was way better than it had any right to be. Very entertaining and well done.
• Edge and Undertaker put on a far better match than I expected. The crowd at WEM erupted when Taker put on the gogoplata, and absolutely exploded when Edge tapped. Maybe Bryan Alvarez will now admit that the move is over. Great match, and very satisfying to see Edge get the headline spot on such an enormous show.

Where to watch Wrestlemania 24 in Edmonton

Click here for the information from Cineplex for the West Edmonton Mall location.

Click here for the South Edmonton Common information.

WWE Hall of Fame Liveblogging!

OK, we've got the HOF already lined up in its streaming window, ready to start at 5:30. The desktop computer is ready to go. The laptop is sitting nearby. The festivities begin in about 10 minutes.

5:35 ... Well, things haven't started yet. I guess the WWE means business when they say "Approximately 7:30 ET."

5:45 ... still waiting ...

5:55 ... Are we having fun yet? ...

5:57 ... Apparently, the delay is due to the WWE taping the inductions of Rocky Johnson and Peter Maivia by the Rock for TV first. Then when that's done, the webcast will begin.

6:06 ... At this rate, I'm worried that Mae Young won't live long enough to see her own induction ...

6:17 ... For the last 5 minutes or so, the HOF graphic showing up in Windows Media Player has simply said "Coming Soon." Oh joy.

6:22 ... Still no stream from WWE.com. Now I feel bad for making fun of TNA on Thursday night.

OK, not really.

6:28 ... If there's any good news here, it's that this delay is doing wonders for my hits and page views, as frustrated WWE fans try to find out what's going on with the HOF stream.

6:32 ... YAY! IT'S STARTED!

6:37 ... Jack and Jerry Brisco kick off the webcast portion. Virtually everyone has commented on the ridiculousness of putting the Briscos in together as a tag team, when Jack Brisco is more than worthy of being inducted as a singles wrestler due to being one of the great wrestlers of the 1970s and a former two-time NWA World champion. Jerry Brisco ... not so much. Yes, the tag team was the high point of his career, and he's an entertaining loyal McMahonite, but HOF material? Not quite.

JBL kicks off the Briscos induction by slamming the Rock for talking so long that Ric Flair had sobered up. It was meant to be funny, but came across as mean-spirited. Plus, none of us saw it.

Why, when it comes to tag-team wrestling, does JBL have this weird obsession with the Simpsons? I mean, I've been a big wrestling fan for most of my life, and I barely remember those geeks from Texas.

6:46 ... OK, I've pretty much turned around on JBL's induction speech. He won me over by the sheer force of his charisma, even if there were too many off-color jokes.

6:57 ... Jack gave a nice, understated speech largely thanking other people for his great career. Jerry makes some insider comment to Jericho about having 2 minutes for his match on Sunday night and works in an insider gay joke about Jim Barnett. After that, Jerry also gave a nice - if slightly overly long - speech recapping his career and talking about the importance of giving back to the community. Nicely done, gentlemen.

Miz can take off that goofy hat, please.

7:01 ... While I watch the induction video for Gordon Solie, it reminds me why I love the WWE Hall of Fame show so much: it's because for years the WWE completely erased the history of wrestling unless it was done under the WWWF/WWF/WWE banner. But now that Vince has a virtual monopoly on the industry and owns most of the tape libraries, the HOF serves as the WWE's acknowledgment of the REAL history of wrestling - that there was wrestling - successful wrestling - done outside of the control of Vince McMahon. And that's really cool.

That said, I always thought Solie was over-rated as an announcer.

7:15 ... Jim Ross gave the expected great induction speech for Solie. It is going to be a sad say when Ross is no longer with the WWE. Jim Barnett made another appearance tonight, having been referenced in both induction speeches tonight, despite being dead and not being inducted. Nice of Jim to mention Gary Hart. Maybe the WWE will induct Gary Hart next year, considering Mania is in Texas.

The acceptance speech by Solie's family was quickly interrupted by a moron who yelled "speak up!" about 5 seconds into the speech. And the heckling continued from there. Brutal. OK, the son who accepted wasn't the most charismatic person on the planet but have some class and let him give his speech.

7:20 ... OK, the second son made a terrible US election/wrestling joke that deserved to get booed.

7:21 ... Mae Young. I have such low expectations for this induction. Having Pat Patterson induct her was a MUCH better choice than the rumored original choice, Stephanie McMahon.

7:23 ... I'm sorry, but the highlight of this induction so far was the crowd shot of Victoria.

7:27 ... The most polite thing I can say about Patterson's induction speech is that he reminds me of a terrible lounge act in Vegas - the guy who thinks he's funny but really isn't.

And no sooner did I post that, then Pat broke out into song, and he has a halfway decent singing voice.

7:29 ... Mae Young is either extremely senile or extremely drunk.

7:32 ... I'm a bit worried about this speech going long because Mae is only up to the Bronze Age.

7:34 ... Candice Michelle is decked out in a fashionable shoulder bandage.

7:35 ... OK, Mae Young had her moment. She had her fun. Let's move on.

7:37 ... Eddie Graham is up next. This one could be interesting, as I actually don't know a lot about Eddie, and, of course, growing up in Winnipeg, it wasn't that easy to get Championship Wrestling from Florida on the local cable ...

7:41 ... I can't wait for the unedited DVD of this, as Dusty Rhodes also commented on how long the Rock talked. That must have been either the best speech in history, or a trainwreck of monumental proportions. Given that it was THE ROCK giving the speech, I'd venture on the side of awesomeness.

7:45 ... This is a compliment, albeit in a backhanded way ... but Dusty Rhodes is such a great talker, that you actually have to concentrate closely on what he's saying to realize that his induction speech on Eddie Graham is actually more about how great Dusty Rhodes is.

7:50 ... Mike Graham is trying to honour his dad, and these stupid wrestling fans keep yelling random things at him. Unbelievable.

7:52 ... Mike's donation of the photo of the first NWA meeting was a nice touch.

7:54 ... And that's it for now. Assuming The Score shows the TV portion of the show, I'll be back liveblogging that later. If not, thanks for reading.

Tonight's WWE Hall of Fame plans

I'm going to try to live blog the Internet and then TV portions of the WWE Hall of Fame ceremonies tonight. Tune in at 7:30 ET for the festivities ... all four of you who regularly read my blog.

It's Wrestlemania weekend!

The biggest wrestling weekend of the year has already started in Orlando, what with the TNA tapings, ROH shows, and tonight, things really kick into gear as the WWE Hall of Fame show is on, with the first portion being broadcast on WWE.com.

I'm willing to bet that the Hall of Fame show does not crash the WWE's servers, unlike, say, the TNA experience from Thursday night.

I know that the Americans get the last hour of the Hall of Fame ceremonies on USA Network. Is it getting any Canadian TV coverage at all? Anyone?

EDIT: Apparently, the TV portion of the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony is going to be on the Score tonight.