Henry's World

 It's time to start something new, as I kick off my TNA reviews with their first monthly pay-per-view, Victory Road 2004. My knowledge of the company is admittedly a little lackluster; I know of a lot of the bigger players and I've seen some reviews of their best matches, but I've never really sat down to watch any of their shows. In fact, this is the first time I've watched a TNA/Impact show from start to finish, and it was quite something. I'll get into more of my thoughts as we go on, but the main point I want to establish is that this is a very different beast than something like the WWE. Everything feels significantly less professional, which has it's upsides and drawbacks. Ultimately, all I would look for in my wrestling is to be entertained and never bored, and I think Victory Road accomplished that.  - TNA Victory Road 2004 comes to you from Soundstage 21 in Universal Studios, the largest of the three that the company used for pretty much every pay-per-v...

 This is the real fancy sh** right here, I'm writing a blog update for a month that hasn't even started yet. You've probably noticed that I've been quiet, at least on this blog, for about two weeks now, and maybe somebody out there is wondering why. If you follow me on Twitter(@htk0215) you would already know, but if you don't, my computer literally broke shortly after my Fully Loaded review. When I say literally, I mean literally, one of the hinges ripped itself out and the computer is basically holding itself together by a couple wires right now. Don't get a laptop with a touchscreen folks, it ain't worth it. I borrowed another computer to keep working on the Dog League, which you can find on my second blog , but now I've managed to get a new one of my own, so I'm ready to come back to work on this blog.  In the time that I've been gone, I thought about what I wanted to do going forward, and the one thing that I've kept coming back was an u...

 This is the final WWE pay-per-view to bear the Fully Loaded name, as there was originally scheduled to be at least one more version the following year, which was replaced by the Invasion pay-per-view. At least it went out with a bang, as this was definitely the best Fully Loaded of the three, with a stacked card and several big highlights. Let's get into it.  - Fully Loaded 2000 comes to you from the Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas, which is the one and only WWE event to take place in the venue, at least to my knowledge. The crowd here is very hot for virtually everything on the card, definitely one of the better crowds for a 2000 show, which is really saying something.  - We open in style, as Team Extreme(The Hardy Boyz and Lita) take on Trish Stratus and T&A in an intergender tag match, where women and men are allowed to wrestle each other. As is often the case during this time, the women are the focal point of the feud, with Trish taking multiple opportunities to g...

 We kick off this review with a very sad fun fact, as this just about marked the one year anniversary of Owen Hart's death, off by just two days. Of course, the Over the Edge pay-per-view name had to be changed after that tragedy, so Judgment Day got it's spot in the lineup instead and would turn into one of the WWE's long-running annual events, going for the next 9 years straight. The most heavily promoted match leading into this night was the Iron Man match between The Rock and Triple H, a major upping of the stakes from Backlash and the main reason I wanted to cover this show, as I also reviewed the first televised version of the gimmick at WrestleMania 12. That match was received in somewhat of a controversial fashion, mostly due to Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels not scoring a single fall in the entire 60 minutes. Let's see how the second attempt would change the formula.          -  Judgment Day 2000 comes to you from Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ken...

 I refused to cover WrestleMania 16(I'm not calling it 2000, sorry Vince) for a number of reasons, but mostly due to the overbooked main event, the one that infamously featured a McMahon in every corner. That 'Mania still did extremely well, business wise, despite being panned by most critics, which I think Vince took as a challenge to produce a show that could be both commercially and critically successful, which leads us to Backlash. This show remains one of the most beloved B-level pay-per-views in WWE history, and somehow achieved the 2nd highest buyrate of the year, an incredible accomplishment that was mostly due to the promised appearance of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin in the main event. Austin made his first WWF appearance in 6 months on the go-home edition of SmackDown!, destroying the D-X Express and promising to bring Hell with him at Backlash. Ladies and gentlemen, find your comfiest chair and grab some popcorn, because it's about to get wild. Here's...

 The Road to WrestleMania 16 continues at No Way Out 2000, where Cactus Jack/Mick Foley, the two names are used interchangeably, gets his last shot to main event a WrestleMania as he challenges Triple H for the WWF Championship inside Hell in a Cell. Not much to talk about in the build to this one, Hunter offered Cactus another title shot in a stipulation of his choosing if Foley agreed to put his career on the line. It's worth noting that about a week after the Royal Rumble, the Radicalz jumped ship from WCW to join the WWF, which was really the nail in the coffin for the slowly dying WCW, especially seeing that Chris Benoit was their champion when he left. That group, with help from the dynamic tag team division and the likes of Chris Jericho and Kurt Angle, would stabilize the WWF's midcard, which had been the company's weak point for many years. We'll see more of the impact of all of these wrestlers on this night, another great one for the WWF.  - No Way Out 2000 co...

 We now enter a new millennium in my pay-per-view reviews, as the WWF enters 2000 with all the momentum in the world. 1999 was a rough year for WCW, and business would continue to fall off a cliff for Billionaire Ted while Vince McMahon slowly took over the wrestling world. This is far and away the best year in WWE history, both in terms of business and on-screen product, producing consistently entertaining episodes of Raw and SmackDown, plus an incredible output of top quality pay-per-views. It all begins here at the Royal Rumble, a show notable for the antics of Jeff Hardy, the debut of Tazz and one of the greatest hardcore matches in wrestling history.  - Royal Rumble 2000 comes to you from the historic Madison Square Garden, which is always my favorite host for any WWE show. As you can see on the poster, the company is now using the "Road to WrestleMania" phrase and I believe this year is it's debut, though the team of Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler don't use it at all...

 Time to finish off my coverage of the WWF's 1999 pay-per-view calendar, as we move to No Mercy, which was actually the second event of the year to bear that name, with a special UK version of No Mercy taking place in May, ironically also featuring Triple H and Steve Austin in the main event. Though most of the build to this show heavily featured Hunter and "Stone Cold", their Anything Goes match to close the night is not the reason why it's well remembered. No, that honor goes instead to the show-stealing ladder match between Edge and Christian and the Hardy Boyz, a match so good it ended the rivalry between both teams, turning all four men into potential megastars and setting the stage for the next decade of WWE programming. Add on to that the infamous story of Jeff Jarrett holding up Vince McMahon for a six figure payout just hours before the show began, and you've got the recipe for one extremely interesting night of action.  - No Mercy 1999 comes to you from ...

 The summer of 1998 was terrific for Vince McMahon and the WWF, but while business remained hot throughout the spring and summer of '99, this time period has not held up as well. Both behind and in front of the camera, Vince Russo's booking was starting to go absolutely wild, resulting in an extremely confusing product filled with a ridiculous amount of nonsensical swerves, title change and heel/face turns. The reveal of the "Higher Power" that The Undertaker and his Ministry had been subservient to as Vince McMahon might be the worst in history, though I don't have anywhere near enough time to get into that right now. By far, the absolute lowest point of the year came at Over the Edge, when Owen Hart fell to his death in a stunt gone horribly wrong due to the company's negligence and frugality. With all that being said, there were definitely some great acts and entertaining storylines, which helped SummerSlam 1999 hold it's place as one of the better pay-...