Wrestlemania is on

WRESTLEMANIA 27, Atlanta.

Grandest stage of them all.

Lifelong dream.

And I am officially attending with my good mate and late 90s WWE fan C Phillips who is now brushing up on the new stars.

We have gone for the Wrestlemania Gold package at a cost of £500 each.

This includes Wrestlemania, Hall of Fame and Axxess tickets, a private autograph session and a three night stay at the Marriott Hotel.

A bit over the top I hear you say? In my eyes, you either go all out or not at all.

This is one of the greatest sporting events of the year, on par with the Champions League final, Wimbledon final, Super Bowl and whatever else.

History will be created and to be a part of it is special.

The one thing that is concerning us is flights... Simply too confusing online e.g what time to arrive etc...

Anyone who has been before and is in the know, a bit of advice would be welcomed.

http://www.twitter.com/mark_weatherup

Chris Blackwood shows the pain of being slapped!

While wrestling may appear to be staged some moves can cause a huge amount of pain.

Usually wrestlers do not use their full force when delivering the patented slap across the chest but Chris Blackwood's injury proves that this is not always the case.

The Midlands based performer has recently acquired a red raw hand imprint on his chest for his troubles.

He said: "I got this during a recent match and it was incredibly painful.

"I can't say I've ever been able to see the outline of a hand on my chest before.

"I was working with a friend called Dan Ryder so he will be getting one back next time!"

WWE Raw Review :: London 02 Arena 20/4

This was the second time I have been to see WWE Raw live and the show did not disappoint.

On arrival to the O2 arena my mate and I were greeted with the usual howls of 'wooo' with excited fans replicating Ric Flair's signature phrase. We also came across a number of men dressed up as Hulk Hogan while others chose to carry around full size title belts on their shoulders.

Merchandise stands had queues that were three or four people deep and with printed t-shirts at £25 a pop this wasn't going to be a cheap outing for some people.

The event began with a dark match between William Regal and Dolph Ziggler and Regal must have felt disappointed that he wasn't considered for the main show especially as its in his home country.

Compared with my last experience of Raw in Manchester I thought that the atmosphere in the arena was far more electric with all areas of the crowd being very vocal.

This was particularly apparent whenever John Cena appeared as half the crowd booed him and the other half cheered him. The amount of reaction he generated was unbelievable.

The English crowd seemed to have a liking for the heel wrestlers which was shown early on as chants of Y2J could be heard despite Jericho telling the crowd they were parasites and hypocrites.

At one stage male fans were booing every punch by Cena and cheering every punch by Jericho which I wasn't expecting to happen. Obviously most of the women and children were cheering for Cena but they were being drowned out.

This also happened when Randy Orton was fighting Triple H which was the best match of the night. Orton had the WWE champion on the canvas and was stomping on him in an arrogant manner when all of sudden I could hear 'RKO RKO RKO' from the crowd.

I don't think Orton was too happy about this considering he is meant to be a massive heel and he snapped at the crowd making them boo him. This is certainly something for the WWE to note as this is not the first time I have heard Orton being cheered.

There was an embarrassing moment in the very boring match between Kane and CM Punk where they botched the small package pin. CM Punk left the ring victorious but then had to come back in, awkwardly walk up to Kane and perform the then ending again. It was painful to watch and they were lucky that Raw was not being shown live.

After Raw had finished the crowd was treated to some more matches as the new WWE show 'Superstars' was being filmed. Having endured a match earlier between Big Show and Rey Mysterio we were given another serving of the lethargic giant who paired with Kane to take on Misterio and CM Punk in a pointless tag team match. Rubbish.

We then had Edge vs Kofi Kingston followed by Edge vs Cena which really didn't excite.

The one disappointment of the night was that Shawn Michaels didn't make an appearance but overall it was an enjoyable show and I would give it 7/10.

See the full match results here.

My favourite wrestling moves

As a young lad I used to wrestle against my little brother on my parent's bed and I was a massive believer of finishing him with a pedigree (seen above).

If we rolled back the years and had another match I would still use this move to end the contest providing he would let me win of course. He is now 18 and persuading him to lose to me may prove slightly more difficult.

Although I don't like Triple H anymore due to his face turn, the pedigree is still one of the most effective finishers ever. The sight of someone having their arms hooked and then their face slammed into the canvas is very powerful and looks like it would hurt.

Unfortunately this theory was proven to be true when in year 7 (1999) my form had a massive wrestling match in the classroom and someone performed a pedigree which went wrong. The lad in question left school to go to hospital in a neck brace but fortunately was OK.

Another move which was particularly popular throughout my early senior school days was the vertical suplex (pictured below). A very standard move to watch on TV but when the two biggest lads in your class are holding someone up in the air in a suplex position as a teacher walks in the room it becomes very entertaining. I don't think the teacher in question could quite believe his eyes.


There have been many great finishing moves throughout the years including The Rock's Rock Bottom, Shawn Michaels' Sweet Chin Music, Steve Austin's Stone Cold Stunner and more recently Randy Orton's RKO.

The defining quality in all these maneuvers is that they can be applied out of nowhere. Surprising the audience is the best way to create excitement and that is exactly what happens when these finishers are executed.

Child dies jumping off a roof

A nine-year-old has died from jumping off a roof allegedly trying to imitate his favourite WWE star Jeff Hardy.

Damori Miles made a parachute out of string and plastic bag and attempted Hardy's signature 'swanton bomb' finishing move.

According to his friend Shakar, 11, Damori had seen this type of stunt when playing the Smackdown vs Raw video game.

Whilst my condolences go out to his family I have never seen Jeff Hardy perform a swanton bomb from a roof with a parachute on.

To link the WWE with this death seems slightly unfortunate for Vince McMahon and I'm sure fingers will be pointing his way.

His 11-year-old friend confirmed that he was attempting to copy Hardy and I think this source is a little unreliable when considering there are so many other games, films and television programmes that feature dangerous actions.

Young children need supervision and guidance when following far-fetched programmes that appear to be real.

If a parent doesn't have an interest in what their child is doing they cannot know what they are being influenced by.

How and why this lad was inspired to jump off a building puzzles me because this would suggest he had no idea of the difference between fantasy and reality.

In this day and age children are bombarded with far more unsuitable material for their age than they have been in the past.

For some it would be harmless but for others who are more easily lead, it is dangerous because their mind isn't developed enough to understand you can't do certain things in real life.

It really depends on the individual and their parental back up.

For example when I was nine I thought everything about wrestling was real and I'm sure this kid was no different.

I was guilty of doing moves on my brother and hurting him and vice versa but we were never tempted to do anything really silly.

I would say in general the WWE is far more child friendly than ten years ago and really believe that this child's actions were caused by something else.

Read the full story here.

Draft picks fail to excite

The WWE draft picks last Monday didn't particularly interest me.

As of late most of the big name wrestlers have been working overtime by appearing on Raw and Smackdown so the decision to move Triple H to Monday nights seems insignificant.

The fact that he is going to appear on Smackdown this week against two other supposedly Raw superstars, Rhodes and Di Biase, further backs up this statement.

It seems to me like Triple H was drafted purely to get a 'pop' from the crowd. I don't see the point of that because it's not like he is the most popular face to grace the company.

The most significant change up was the separation of Miz and Morrison. For me this is big as one of these guys is going to get a massive singles push and it should be Morrison. Read my recent post about why here.

It is slightly disappointing as they were such a good tag team but having been together for quite a while I suppose it's about time for a change.

I am surprised they have been moved onto different brands and presumably the writers aren't going to go with the customary 'lets see who is better' angle when a tag team break up.

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what the have planned for the pair of them. Without a doubt the most boring draft pick has to go to Kane. He hasn't had a decent story line for so long now and it is a case of just waiting for June when he will be retiring from the ring.

Finally a mention must go to Jerry Lawler for mixing up the names of John Cena and Jack Swagger during their match. He called the ECW champion John Swagger which I found very amusing. The best thing is that no-one corrected him!