A Look at WWE NXT: Season 2

For those of you that don't follow professional wrestling, then the bulk of this entry will probably sail straight over your head.  But for those of you that do, then you probably already know that WWE's NXT has started it's second "season".  To me, the concept is pretty novel: Pair 8 "Rookies" with 8 WWE "Pros" and have them show their talent via a reality show-type format where the winner receives a WWE contract and a title match at a future pay-per-view event.  However, Season 1 seemed to be a work in progress, starting off strong then flailing in the water with weak storylines (save for the epic Daniel Bryan vs Michael Cole story) and embarrassing  Physical Challenges straight out of a mid-'90s Nickolodeon show.  Luckily NXT ended Season 1 fairly strong by naming it's first winner and winding up becoming part of one of the most intriguing storylines in recent memory.  Therefore, before I take a look at Season 2's class of Rookies, let me catch you up with what happened at the end of Season 1.

Live Report: WWE Raw 5-23-10

I suppose it's only apropos that I'm writing this on National Geek/Nerd Pride Day.  Of course, I pride myself on being quite the geek...just not in the traditional sense.  For example, today is also Towel Day (for fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy) and Star Wars Day was earlier this month.  But I myself have never read any of Douglas Adams books or even seen all of the Star Wars movies to completion.  I've only seen The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi in bits and pieces but all of those bits probably add up to seeing them multiple times.  Plus, I fell asleep during the last half-hour of Episode III.  So you see, science-fictiony stuff like this doesn't really grab my attention like it does for most nerds.  But thankfully there's so many things out there that you can be a nerd over practically anything.  All it really takes is a intelligent, persistent and fervent interest in something.  I consider myself a little bit of a computer nerd (at least enough to build my current PC out of random cheap parts), a geek for horror and action films, cheesy or not (Geek-sploitation, perhaps?) and a huge nerd for heavy metal music.  But I'm sure the one that trumps them all is my geek-dom for professional wrestling.  Much like most Star Wars fans, my fandom for pro wrestling started young.  I'm nearing 27 years old and I'm sure I've been a fan for 20 of those years, probably more.  However, despite watching it over the years and amassing quite the DVD collection (though its probably not much compared to other die-hard fans), I have NEVER been to a live wrestling show.  My parents never took me to any growing up and now that I can go to them on my own, I always seem to be broke or something when they pass through my area.  But when WWE announced that they would be airing a live episode of Raw from the new arena in Toledo, I kinda HAD to go.

Wrestlemania 26, The Game (the book, not Triple H) and A Bunch of Crappy Movies.

Any wrestling fans reading this knows that last night was the biggest night of the year for the business as it was time for Wrestlemania 26.  Regardless of whether or not the event is any good (believe me, there are some Wrestlemanias that outright suck *cough*#9*cough*), there's always excitement in the air.  Even though I haven't really seen too many Wrestlemanias live (the only ones I can recall are 14, 18 and 22), I figured it'd be fun to get a few of my friends together and watch it last night.  But we ran into a few hangups along the way.  I had been calling around for places in town that might be playing it but could only think of Buffalo Wild Wings and Hooters, neither of which were playing it, opting only for UFC pay-per-views.  So eff you B-Dubs!  At least Hooters has skanky waitresses for the whole family.  Then we debated ordering it but none of us have actual cable boxes, just cable connections.  So then we finally decided to get WWE.com's live stream of it and hook it up to my friend's 50-something inch HD flat-screen.  While the output of the computer looked spectacular on his TV, the live stream was just OK, made slightly worse by the fact that the highest speed option kept buffering out on us so we opted on the next option down, taking a small hit in quality so that we could watch it uninterrupted.  Ah well, it still looked pretty good though.  Anyways, here's the results and a few of my random-ass observations accompanying them:

WWE vs TNA: The Monday Night Wars Redux? (Part 2)

It took me a few days but I finally was able to watch this Monday's edition of Raw.  I tried to do the recap in the same format that I did Impact's as a more reactionary-type thing instead of a play-by-play.  But forgive me if it feels a bit anti-climactic considering I had already read the results and knew what happened before I saw the whole thing.

WWE vs TNA: The Monday Night Wars Redux? (Part 1)

Anyone that knows me well knows that I'm a huge fan of professional wrestling and have been since the day I was born.  But truth be told, I haven't watched wrestling with any regularity in some time.  You see, in my teenage years, the wrestling business had reached a high not seen since the days of Hulkamania in the '80s due to the Monday Night Wars.  WCW went head-to-head with the WWF every Monday (at least when the WWF wasn't pre-empted with stuff like the US Open) and for a good couple years, wrestling fans were in heaven.  On the WCW side, you had the nWo taking over but also some great matches including guys like Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero who would go on to become huge.  On the WWF side, there was Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, D-Generation X and the newfound "Attitude".  After a few years, WCW fell due to bad business decisions and ended up being bought out by Vince McMahon and absorbed into the WWF, which would later become the WWE that we know of today.  But soon enough, wrestling got boring to me with the WWE being the only show on the air and I stopped watching.  Other than a few years ago when ECW (another competing brand that was bought out by McMahon) was making a comeback, I haven't watched any shows regularly.  Now, I'll turn it on every once in a while if I'm with friends and we need something to laugh at but I can't really watch it on my own.  In that time, a new company dubbed TNA Wrestling had risen through the ranks but despite grabbing plenty of top stars in the wrestling business, they've failed to gain a foothold to go toe-to-toe with the McMahon empire.  But with the recent decision to not only hire Hulk Hogan to help run the company but to run a show head-to-head with the WWE's flagship show Monday Night Raw, I couldn't not watch.  Of course, the WWE wasn't going to be outdone as they had brought in Bret Hart, a wrestler who hasn't been in a WWE ring in 12 years and who many thought they would never see him appear in one ever again.  Yeah, maybe I'm a bit more cynical now than I was then but I can't deny that history is being made, whether TNA shows that they're a contender or falls by the wayside when it's all said and done.  So, I decided to do a bit of a recap.  Due to the fact that TNA was running a 3-hour show, starting an hour earlier than Raw, and that the USA Network comes in a bit fuzzy for me, I decided to watch TNA Impact first and I'll watch Raw online at a later date, probably tomorrow.  Forgive me if this review seems a bit scatterbrained as I typed it up while watching.  I'm pretty much copy-and-pasting this a half-hour after the show had ended so I'm not going to edit it.  If you're unsure as to what something or who someone is, let me know in the comments and I'll clarify.  This one's for my fellow wrestling fans and I hope they're not disappointed.