Corneroffandom Chronicles: WWE in Peoria, 7/18/15
So last Saturday was another WWE event in Peoria. First row ticket was acquired, signs were made, and batteries were stocked up for the night to come. I arrived with a lot of time to spare, around 6 PM. Which is usually how I prefer it, especially with how Peoria's been in construction lately. I'd rather arrive super early than miss something, haha. First stop was, of course, the merch table. Bought my Seth Rollins shirt and put it on over the Jericho shirt I had on currently (Bit too hot to be doubling up on t-shirts but what can ya do) and a program before getting into line to wait for the doors to open. Which happened around 6:30. I was anxious (when am I not?) because I had a printed out ticket for the first time, since Ticketmaster wanted to charge $4 to mail me a physical copy and I decided to at least save a few dollars, but it went fine. They didn't even ask to see ID, just tore off the side of the ticket and let me through.
I then got my soda and headed off for my seats. I ended up next to where the security guards were sitting, helping direct people and making sure no one was being naughty, so I fell into conversation with the security guard, who had been oversea in the Navy for the last few years and had retired from service, returning to work part time as a security guard at events, and had no idea what was happening in WWE. At one point he suggested I should go down to Florida and learn how to compete myself, since I knew so much about the business. In another life, my friend... So after maybe twenty minutes, it was approaching 7 PM and I hear "Excuse me" so I shift aside so whoever it is can take their seats, before looking up at the person. Immediately I'm awestruck. Before I had left, Sign Guy had tweeted that he was on his way to Peoria's event, and I had wondered where his seats were going to be compared to mine. Yeah, you've guessed it. I ended up sitting close o him the entire night.
At first, he was two seats away, then he and his friend realized they were in the wrong seats so he moved down and sat right next to me. So he's got this huge black carrying case for his signs, and mine are folded up in a little WWE merch bag and they're sitting next to each other on the floor... boy did I feel underwhelming and entirely unprepared for a sign off with him, haha. I was also too shy to talk to him for most of the night so I just kind of sat there and laughed at his antics. He does bring a ridiculous kind of energy to the shows, it was pretty cool to witness first hand after years of watching him on TV (We were actually both at the same event back in 2010 and I watched him wile ADR up so badly that he stole his hat and kept it in his MITB briefcase, but Sign Guy had a spare haha)
So sat and talked with the security guard for a bit longer. Just as the show was about to start, people were trying to figure out where their seats were and while shuffling around so they could get into my row, I JUST missed the cue to stand for the national anthem and felt awful, but I had it straightened out before most people did (A lot of people will stand in the wrong direction before realizing the flag is BEHIND them and then have to scramble to join everyone else going that direction, haha) and then the event began.
Eden Stiles was our commentator, as always:
And the first match...
Stardust and Heath Slater vs... Mandow and Axelmania. Probably the last time those particular gimmicks will ever be seen, lucky us Peorians, lol. I enjoyed this match a lot, Heath and Stardust were a pretty good team, actually. They seemed to be having fun with it anyway, and that's the important thing! Heath ended up on the floor in front of me early in the match, snping back and forth with Sign Guy. Couldn't tell you what they were saying, I was too stupefied by being that close to Heath... haha. Then not long after that, Stardust came down and grabbed Sign Guy's hat and threw it into the crowd, but the person a few rows down waved it over his head when Sign Guy began to look for it and he dashed past me and went to get it. Heh. After a minor bit of offense hit on Mandow, they went in circles, celebrating like they'd actually won while their opponents looked on in confusion:
Any time the crowd started chanting Cody, Heath would get offended on Stardust's behalf and let us know that that wasn't his name, and the first time they did so, this happened:
Hullo there... oh, oops... ahem, where was I?
So after some back and forth, Mandow went for some highrisk
But Stardust grabbed Heath and pulled him to safety
And they regrouped on the outside (There's my security guard friend in the corner!) until deciding to return, Stardust tagging in then.
He startles Mandow with an offer to shake hands, and upon not knowing what to do, Mandow asks the crowd's opinion
Heath's encouraging of it all
Eventually Mandow accepts but...
It doesn't end well for him
Heath gets tagged in but the referee doesn't approve of his shenanigans...
Stop harrassing the boy, ref!
Stardust gets back in and Heath once more finds it necessary to remind the crowd that Stardust is NOT this "Cody" person they keep chanting for, imploring us to stop.
Heath gets back in and sends Mandow down to the mat, which makes Stardust so happy that he feels the need to show Heath just how much with a hug
Again we need reminded that Stardust is NOT Cody
but upon getting back into the ring, Heath is met with Axelmania hulking (Axeling?) up and Stardust is unable to save him from what's to come.
Time for the second match, which...
is Zack Ryder vs Rusev (with Summer Rae)... great.
At one point, I've since figured out the crowd was chanting "We want Lana" ... but I was chanting "We want Ryder" *shrugs* Well, if I had to choose who to support... A few minutes in, Rusev swiped Zack off of the top rope and he hit the mat so hard, I was worrying about his head but I haven't heard anything so apparently he was ok. It looked pretty nasty, and he was holding his head/neck area for awhile.
Summer Rae took exception to the "We Want Lana" chants (oops) and tried waving to everyone, just to get boo'd back down. The match continued but the various chants propelled Rusev to demand his flag,
but in the time it took him to hand the flag back over, Zack regained a little strength
His only getting a two count off of his broski boot disappointed him
but his further attempts at hitting the Rough Ryder didn't go well at all
Everything stopped for a moment when Lana decided to make her way to ringside and Summer cut her off, slapping her which led to....
The two of them cat-fought to my side of the floor before Lana left Summer laying. The match then proceeded, to
Zack tapping to an Accolade but Rusev wasn't done
Fandango chose to run down and try to pull the save
'
but faired no better in the end.
Match #3 was...
The Ascension vs Los Matadores vs Lucha Dragons in an elimination tag team match. The Los Matadores were eliminated first, then Lucha Dragons proceeded to eliminate the Ascension to victory.
Sin Cara circled around the ring and slapped my hand afterwards.
Match #4
Bray Wyatt vs Roman Reigns. I was pleasantly surprised by this match, it was the one I was least looking forward towards because I'm not really a fan of Roman's, but it was pretty fun, especially towards the end. After one of Roman's punches, Bray bailed and laid on the floor in front of us and Sign Guy was mocking him, so Bray turned and yelled at him "You try getting hit by a Samoan!" before getting back in the ring. Haha. I think, now that Roman's out of the heavyweight title scene, if he wasn't so heavyhanded with some of his move sets up (like the Superman punch... ick), I'd have very few problems with him, really. Roman won after a few nearfalls that hyped the crowd up pretty well.
Then it was time for intermission and Sign Guy left. After a moment, the security guard asked me about Sign Guy, assuming that he worked for WWE. I explained to him that Sign Guy was just a fan like me, who goes to a lot of events every year and so the wrestlers know him, which explains why so many of them communicated with him through the night. I then explained that Sign Guy was kind of a Internet celebrity, people'll come up and get their pictures taken with him and post it online and all of this. So the security guard then suggested that I get my picture taken with him and I tried to defer, "Eh, I don't like getting my picture taken..." and he was like "WHY?!" haha. So Sign Guy returned and sure enough, people started coming up, asking for pictures with him... so then the security guard motioned to me and asked if I wanted a pic taken with him, so I finally gave in and handed him my camera. Once the last people left, the security guard spoke up and asked Sign Guy, "Is it ok if she has a picture with you too?"
Sign Guy looked over and said, "Oh, you mean the girl we've been annoying all night? Sure." I didn't know what to say to that, trying to get in place for the picture, so I just kind of laughed and said, "I haven't been... I've watched you on stuff for years" then I realized how creepy that sounded, but he seemed cool with it, so...
We just got into position when the lights went off for the end of intermission, so I had to grab my camera and turn the flash back on, haha. So in a year, I've had my pic taken with Ricardo Rodriguez and now Sign Guy. This being a wrestling fan thing really can be fascinating sometimes, haha.
Show resumed and match #5
\
Cameron and Alicia vs Emma and Layla. Layla came around at the start of the match, slapping hands with people, and our fingers brushed before she lifted her hand and slapped Sign Guy clear across the face. He fell back into his seat like he was shot, "OW! ... I kinda liked it though!" A few minutes into the match, people were still filing back from intermission (I'm not joking, it's barely 15 minutes if you're lucky. Unless it's dire, best just to remain in your seat because you WILL miss things) and I hear some older guy in the second row exclaim "Aw dammit, we missed the best match!" perv, haha. This match was hard to focus on, especially when Cameron was in the ring. She had a mirror and spent most of the time running around, freaking out with Alicia over it in the corner and flashing it at audience members who were heckling her, telling them to look at themselves, how ugly they were and such. Thankfully Emma hit her and she threw the mirror out of the ring and it was never seen again, so that was good. At one point, Sign Guy and I were both grabbing our ears because Cameron freaked out after getting hit, squeeching in the ring for a good thirty seconds. The only time I regretted having front row, heh.
Alicia eventually tagged in and defeated Layla.
MizTV time!
Every time the audience started to boo him while he was trying to take his sunglasses off, he'd stop, glare around, then begin the process again just to stop every time the heckling started up again. Haha. I love him.
He promo'd about how awful Big Show's movie was, even showing a preview of it, before continuing to insult it and Big Show and who knows what all else (I can never hear well at these things, so I got the gist but most of it... nah.) Sign Guy had a Miz-nions sign, where he'd taken Miz's face and photoshopped it onto Minions, and Miz didn't like it at all. Unfortunately his focus was on Sign Guy's so mine didn't really get noticed by him, but I'll probably keep it for the next time and hope I have better luck then.
Big Show eventually came out and sat down while Miz continued to talk, eventually standing up...
just to KO punch him
Then it was time for the main event!
Dean Ambrose vs Seth Rollins in a Peoria Street Fight for the WWE World Heavyweight Title!
They fought all over
And Dean kept trying to introduce weapons, most of which Seth rejected
But some had their uses
In a lull, he grabbed a mic and reminded us that he's our World Heavyweight Champion and should be treated as such.
Well, he tried.
Seth then decides to take his belt off and whip Dean with it, but it backfires.
Dean gets his hands on the belt and repays the favor, but much worse to Seth's shirtless back. He then goes to look for more weapons.
High risk backfires on Dean this time
And Seth gets his hand on a weapon
or two
He then decides to make things just that much more dangerous...
but Dean takes advantage of the time it takes and...
sends Seth into the chair face first
Dean decides maybe he could see what it feels to sit like a champion...
but he quickly tires of it and throws the chair away, going out to get a table at the crowd's prompting chants of "We want tables!" Seth is waiting for him, however
Seth puts Dean through the table but only gets a two count
He then gets another table, determined for this to be the finish
But he takes too much time
and Dean dives onto him through it this time. But... JnJ security and Corporate Kane may be no more, but a world champion never goes into things without a plan B!
Bray Wyatt appears and hits a Sister Abigail on Dean, then pulling Seth over from the wreckage of the table to cover Dean
Bray wants more suffering and destruction, however, so he picks Dean up and...
They quickly forget this course of action when Roman Reigns' music hits.
Trying to figure out where he'll be coming from in the crowd, no one expects he'll do the boring "Entrance ramp entrance" but that's what happens! Bray is quickly taken care of and Seth bails before he can take too much offense, needing to be on top of his game for Lesnar in less than 24 hours!
The two former SHIELD members stand tall to end the night.
Ambrose makes his way around the ringside area and slaps my hand. I then say farewell to the security guard and Sign Guy, exchanges "Nice to meet you"s and we all slowly file out of the arena, another event done and over with.
There are some more pictures here if anyone's interested, and I will also be posting some on my Tumblr in a little bit:
http://s82.photobucket.com/user/ayumidah/library/Peoria2015?sort=3&page=1