2005 -- Wrestling was COOL!

I'm off work this week, three unpaid days due to the state of California not having enough money to pay public employees, and two holidays. So, I'll be posting reports of all my awesome wrestling escapades this year...including meeting Chris Jericho for the first time, Wrestlemania 21, and meeting Batista for the first time. Kind of an interesting sandwich...meeting Jericho on the day we set our clocks ahead that year, and meeting Batista on the day we set them back. ^^

Anyway, the year started with my first "indy" show in February, UPW Homecoming Havoc. Awesome for two reaons: SEAN O'HAIRE AND CHUCK PALUMBO! Wow. Here are the small notes I wrote for this show...

02.23.05

We had a great time...but sadly no opportunity to molest either O'Haire or Palumbo, and they lost their match. It was a good match though...

After the show we went to hang around to meet the UPW stars. We met Shawn Riddik (hello! hottie!), Lionheart (who was so cool he asked us what our names were!), Lil Nate (new champ)...and oggled Ma'koa (who I swear looked right at me from the ring and pointed!).

Then...we saw Daniel Puder milling around...so we went over, waited for him to finish up talking to some people, stuck our hands in his face and said "Nice to meet you." What a cool guy he is! Dis told him I voted for him in the T.E. thing, and he genuinely looked pleased, so I say "Yeah, I voted several times..." and he responds "SEVEN TIMES???? WOW!" *giggle* He talked to us for like 5 minutes, about UFC and OVW, and how much he likes OVW and Cornette, and Lance Storm, and Al Snow (who is like a 2nd father to him).

After that we went to sit down, saw Tom Howard up on the stairs. There was this drunken female fan there who we ended up chatting with. Dis saw her hand something to O'Haire at the end of the match (when I was watching Palumbo be pinned by Howard) and he stuck it down the front of his trunks. This girl was so odd, she said she doesn't have a name, she's just "Super Fan"...

Well...all of a sudden I look up...and there he is. *swoon* I'd told Dis I would not approach him, but I saw him and was out of my seat in a flash. We high-tailed it over, but he was already gone. Turns out he just came out to return Super Fan's enveloppe, which had contained a picture of him and he autographed it and returned it to her.

He's so beautiful handsome up close.

--Other notes of interest were drunken Tank Abbot who had to be bodily removed.

--Me sitting in VIP seats and being thrown out by female-security-guard-from-hell....and as we left she said "Good night" to us in a cheerful voice.

--Watching Howard hoist Palumbo up over his head, CLEARLY grab his balls, the guys behind me in VIP seats saying "He tweaked his balls!" and me saying out loud, "Yeah he did!"

--Jesus Aguilera...the guy is good, but what a male chauvinist pig! Of course, the crowd was 80% men...so go figure.

--Out in the smoking area after dinner and talking to 2 random guy wrestling fans...they're talking about "cool" things, and one of them said "Did you see what Batista did to HHH?" I marked...random guy wrestling fans think Batista is cool!

--Frankie Kazarian getting a really nice ovation from the crowd to congratulate him for his WWE contract. He had an awesome match where he lost the UPW LH title to Lil Nate.

And that's all for now. We have shelves to build and stuff. I took a TON of pictures...hopefully I can get them up this afternoon.

Eddie Guerrero Five Years Later

These are some thoughts I blogged about in 2005...

11/14

I can not believe how insensitive people are. Really.

I'll be the first one to say that Eddie Guerrero wasn't my favorite wrestler,  so I hope it doesn't look like I'm jumping on a bandwagon, or pretending to be something I'm not. I admired Eddie, and I enjoyed watching him very much...even when he wasn't in a storyline with Batista.

So...today several people at work came up to me to see if I knew about that "wrestler who died." Right off the bat I felt that was insensitive to approach me that way. The people who asked are people who know my penchant for pro-wrestling...and they like to make fun of me about it. They chose to use this as another angle for making fun of me.

People are like dogs. You know the FarSide cartoon "What we say to dogs" and "What dogs hear?" All they heard in the reports was that he'd had problems with drug use...and so all I heard all day was that he must have died of an overdose, or that steroids had enlarged his heart and thus he died because of that. It became unnerving after a while.

One person had the good grace to come up to me later and apologize for being insenstive, but by then it was too late and the damage had been done.

There are kind and caring people in the world too though. My husband for example. He doesn't watch wrestling, doesn't like it...but when I finally mentioned it to him in the afternoon he was very sympathetic. Even remembered that he'd just seen him on Friday night when he came in to watch it with me for a few moments. And my friend Alan, who called from Phoenix last night simply to offer his sympathy.

11/15

Walking down the hall to get my kids this morning, and another teacher is calling me from the other end of the hallway, "Did you hear about that wrestler who died?" I brace myself, but she was genuinely concerned, so that was good. I dreaded going to the teacher lunchroom at recess because I didn't want a repeat of yesterday.

Totally different today. The cafeteria manager is a big wrestling fan. In fact, he went to 'Mania, and that's how we discovered we shared this love. I almost talked to him about it yesterday, but I held back for some reason. Today I found out that he didn't know. He found out last night when his family watched Raw.

Eddie *was* his favorite wrestler, I got teary-eyed all over again talking to him. He shared his memory of meeting Eddie in person in April, he was as excited as I was when I met Batista. He said he broke down in tears watching Raw last night...particularly mentioned how Benoit's promo broke him up. He spoke very passionately, as a staunch member of Eddie's huge Latino fanbase here in Southern California...I shivered listening to him give Eddie such glowing credit. He threw it all back in the faces of the teachers who were so rude yesterday.

I was outside taking some garbage out, and I looked up at the sky. It's a full moon, and there's been some beautiful coronas around it for the past 2 nights. Tonight, it's a big sweeping corona, like a huge lasso. Inside of the corona with the moon was a planet. Venus maybe? I'm not sure which planet, but it glows brighter than a star. I went out front to look at it, it was so touching.

Later, I went out to look again...and the planet was outside the lasso. And I had the clear thought in my head ... we had to let him go.

And then the cafeteria lady gave me a little carrot cake, for free. I was so touched I cried. She even warmed it up for me.