Corneroffandom Chronicles: WWE In Peoria 2017
So. This took me about a month. I know, I'm sorry. It isn't really an excuse but things are still about as ridiculous around here as they were during the time of the Bloomington event, so I've been meh and slacking and. Currently I'm slacking from resuming my BtB Bible project, so it's just a chain of procrastination! But I told myself, Dah, there's some rambling you want to do about Backlash, so you HAVE to have this stupid recap up before the damn PPV. Then I realized the PPV's tomorrow so I had to sit myself down and just do the damn thing already. Keep in mind please, no pictures taken during the actual matches, just entrances.
Well, since I bought everything in Bloomington that I wanted (Program, new fancy cup, yada) I didn't buy any merch here. I did peek at the merch table, and even looked at the cups (Which seemed to be from Wrestlemania and were 3D and would've given me a headache if I had bought one. Maybe I should rethink seeing Wonder Woman in 3D... lol) so I went down to find my seat and the security guard was nice, but about as confused as I was over the civic center's seating. Eventually we found it though and I sat down, all alone at the end of this aisle. Decent seats, I have no real complaints.
Definitely made myself at home until my seat neighbors arrived around 6:55 (Of course)
So a bit into the wait, I realized that where I was sitting was where the WWE event director guy was wandering around with headsets on, directing people around and helping the hosts do their little pre-show segments. That was kinda interesting, I've never seen him before. Course I usually have seats on the floor. But anyway, so the show begins and... strangeness of all strangeness, the first match is for the World title. Randy Orton vs Baron Corbin vs AJ Styles. So of course everyone starts rumbling about what the main event is going to be. Answer should've been obvious, I felt dumb once I remembered... but you know, it was still really early into the Superstar Shakeup nonsense and I was still confused about how they were splitting the tour between the Raw and Smackdown events.
So my camera started off ok but as the evening progressed, it just seemed to get blurrier and blurrier. Not sure if the lense got dirty somehow, or I was using the wrong setting, or it just completely gave up on the rapid changing lighting, but either way. I did the best I could, some pics will look better than others, sorry.
This match was about what you'd expect, with Corbin and Orton's both slower methodical styles. Thought AJ vs Orton in Bloomington was better personally. Kid behind me, who spent the entire show bugging his mom about if they were going to iHop (during which he called it iHop a few times, then proceeded to emphasize International House of Pancakes!!! every time after that. It was kind of a long two hours lol) after the event, and if maybe they'd see wrestlers eating there, told his parents insistently "If Orton loses the belt tonight, we'll know it's on TV! If he wins, we'll know it's just live." Oh, children.
Orton retained. I guess that meant it was just live :( The sadness.
Next match was Breezango vs Ascension, and it was my hint of what was to come, as for Breezango's face turn which I think started the next night on Smackdown. Breezango won after they worked over Breeze for awhile and Fandango got the tag.
Next match was Mojo Rawley vs Aiden English, which eh. About what you'd expect, and now that Aiden has his singing gimmick from NXT back, his big moment of offense was getting Mojo in the corner and singing over him about how he was going to beat him up, just for Mojo to rally and take him down. Haha. Welp.
Camera's starting to get blurry here. I feel like it was the lighting, it was very bad during the women's entrance, which was typically brighter than most of the guy's entrances.
After Mojo beat Aiden, Jinder Mahal ran down and beat Mojo up, leaving him to roll pathetically out of the ring while he lectured us Americans for insulting him, and how he will beat Orton and take his title back for his people. Part of the promo was done in Jinder's mother language. You can imagine how well it all went over. Heh.
Next match was American Alpha vs Usos for the tag belts. It was an ok match, like usual for the four of them... The iHop kid behind me was getting annoying again, because there were a couple guys in a section to the right of us yelling "You say UCE, we say OH", and he decided he'd thought of something really special because he kept yelling "You say UCE we say NO" ... then his mom became a little irksome with telling him what to chant towards who (He's a kid, let him chant whatever, but my God, make the repetitiveness stop after awhile please... lol)
Of course they couldn't wear the Day One Ish stupid hoodies in Bloomington, but they'll wear them here! Rabble, rabble, rabble. Usos retained.
So here was the match I'd been waiting for. Dolph Ziggler vs Shinsuke Nakamura. So, long story short, I almost didn't get to go to the Peoria event at all. Things fell into place kind of within a few weeks before the event (Because Emily's visit fell through :( which hopefully one way or another we'll be able to make up sometime this fall!), but for about a month there, I assumed I wasn't going. Then I bought my ticket, and then Nakamura debuted on Smackdown and my hopes of getting to see his entrance live came true. Now I'm going to be honest. For the first time since I started going to WWE events in 2002, I recorded something.
I know, I'm not supposed to. But it was my first time experiencing Nakamura's entrance and I wanted it for the longevity of it all. I am going to TRY to upload the entrance video but the sound is funky because my camera is old, and of course you can hear certain people singing with Nakamura's theme. So. Yeah. No judging. :P Btw Dolph keeps his shirt on the ENTIRE match. He at one point feigned taking it off then shrugged, waved it off and kept it back on and I called out "Thank you!" lol.
Now this is the match I want to talk about. I sincerely hope WWE doesn't book their PPV match like this tomorrow night. Not that it was bad, to be honest, it was alright. Of course I'm going to be lenient, it's my first time seeing Nakamura so there's that mystique to it anyway. But also it's a lot of people's first time seeing Nakamura in any capacity at the PPV tomorrow so you'd think they'd make it a little special. This match they gave us in Peoria was just kinda there. No Sami vs Nakamura, that's for sure. But maybe I just overinflated it in my own mind, I've done that before (like the first time I saw Sami vs Owens live kinda fell flat because I was expecting more, and their match that night ended kinda quickly and I think, if I remember correctly, Sami won which had me going uhhh?) but anyway. My main gripe with this match was in the middle of it, Nakamura and Dolph collided in the middle of the ring and what felt like a few minutes passed with Dolph sprawled out on one side of the ring and Nakamura on the other, and no one moving except for the ref going from one to the other, checking on them and talking to them. Which ok, sure, I could see it going on for a bit but after awhile...give us a count, make them start moving, something. Just seemed to drag on too long. Then Ziggler feigned like he was getting up just to slump back down to the ring while Shinsuke still laid across from him, and then the process began all over again. Finally both got up, and eventually Nakamura hit the kinshasa to win, so that was a yay, but just weird booking and I hope they don't repeat that on the PPV tomorrow. They've already bungled his promos up enough to some extent.
So awhile ago I heard about Clown Rowan. Clown Rowan is, of course, Erick Rowan in a clown's mask with balloons
He takes the balloons, he chooses a kid at ringside, and he hands the kids balloons. Then proceeds to pop them in the kid's face. I'm vicious and laughed at it a lot when I saw it live in Peoria. :P
So his opponent was Harper and Harper decided to carry the kid around a bit, try to cheer him up
Harper beat Rowan
So two of my only real disappointments in Bloomington was that Miz and James Ellsworth weren't there. Of course Miz got drafted over to Raw just before my event... but that left me James. And James was in Peoria! Yay! I could just barely see him wandering ringside and sticking by Carmella's side whenever she got knocked out of the ring but it was still enough to make me happy. Now since my camera really didn't like this match up next, I really only mostly got decent pictures of their titantrons but this match was Naomi vs Tamina vs Carmella vs Charlotte vs Becky vs Natalya in a six way match for the women's title.
Pretty sure James is just out of sight there since their gimmick is Carmella dropping her hat down to him as she enters the ring, but people were standing up so I couldn't see him :( anyway
So they all brawled back and forth for awhile, getting various bits of offense in (all of them got their spots in, basically, haha) then Naomi locked Carmella into a submission and... Here's James!! First chance I had to get a picture of him at all:
So he argues with the ref until Naomi releases Carmella and then goes after him, kicking him off of the apron. She wins shortly there after.
So now it's main event time and by now I've figured out, and feel dumb for not deducing it sooner. So remember I mentioned earlier that I saw Sami vs Kevin a few years back, and it wasn't really the match I was expecting? Yep. Kevin vs Sami for the US title main evented Peoria this year, and this was more like what I wanted between the two of them! It was given more time, it was all around more intense, and Kevin won so I was happy.
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BLURRY PIECE OF ISH CAMERA. Haha. So yep! Really good match, and I can see why they swapped the triple threat main event for this. Why end the night with a slower paced match when we can have these two decimating each other, right? ;) So as said, Kevin retained, and then demanded a mic.
Talked about the match, heeled on us fans, then tried getting us to stand up and accept him as our United States Champion when...
Uh oh. Sami recovers and waits until Kevin turns around to meet him with the Helluva Kick (which of course Kevin still had mic in hand so it was another of those great "Kevin screams into the mic before getting knocked out" moments lmao) to send the crowd home happy.
I'm not sure when my next event will be, by the spoilers out there about WWE's future touring dates, there are no Peoria or Bloomington dates past March 2018 so it's probably going to be next summer if I'm lucky. We'll see. Either way, I'm glad I went to these two! As always, a lot of silly fun.
And as always, there's more pictures here http://s82.photobucket.com/user/ayumidah/library/Peoria%202017?sort=3&page=1 and I will go see if that video embedded correctly since I've never done this before, haha.
Well, since I bought everything in Bloomington that I wanted (Program, new fancy cup, yada) I didn't buy any merch here. I did peek at the merch table, and even looked at the cups (Which seemed to be from Wrestlemania and were 3D and would've given me a headache if I had bought one. Maybe I should rethink seeing Wonder Woman in 3D... lol) so I went down to find my seat and the security guard was nice, but about as confused as I was over the civic center's seating. Eventually we found it though and I sat down, all alone at the end of this aisle. Decent seats, I have no real complaints.
Definitely made myself at home until my seat neighbors arrived around 6:55 (Of course)
So a bit into the wait, I realized that where I was sitting was where the WWE event director guy was wandering around with headsets on, directing people around and helping the hosts do their little pre-show segments. That was kinda interesting, I've never seen him before. Course I usually have seats on the floor. But anyway, so the show begins and... strangeness of all strangeness, the first match is for the World title. Randy Orton vs Baron Corbin vs AJ Styles. So of course everyone starts rumbling about what the main event is going to be. Answer should've been obvious, I felt dumb once I remembered... but you know, it was still really early into the Superstar Shakeup nonsense and I was still confused about how they were splitting the tour between the Raw and Smackdown events.
So my camera started off ok but as the evening progressed, it just seemed to get blurrier and blurrier. Not sure if the lense got dirty somehow, or I was using the wrong setting, or it just completely gave up on the rapid changing lighting, but either way. I did the best I could, some pics will look better than others, sorry.
This match was about what you'd expect, with Corbin and Orton's both slower methodical styles. Thought AJ vs Orton in Bloomington was better personally. Kid behind me, who spent the entire show bugging his mom about if they were going to iHop (during which he called it iHop a few times, then proceeded to emphasize International House of Pancakes!!! every time after that. It was kind of a long two hours lol) after the event, and if maybe they'd see wrestlers eating there, told his parents insistently "If Orton loses the belt tonight, we'll know it's on TV! If he wins, we'll know it's just live." Oh, children.
Orton retained. I guess that meant it was just live :( The sadness.
Next match was Breezango vs Ascension, and it was my hint of what was to come, as for Breezango's face turn which I think started the next night on Smackdown. Breezango won after they worked over Breeze for awhile and Fandango got the tag.
Next match was Mojo Rawley vs Aiden English, which eh. About what you'd expect, and now that Aiden has his singing gimmick from NXT back, his big moment of offense was getting Mojo in the corner and singing over him about how he was going to beat him up, just for Mojo to rally and take him down. Haha. Welp.
Camera's starting to get blurry here. I feel like it was the lighting, it was very bad during the women's entrance, which was typically brighter than most of the guy's entrances.
After Mojo beat Aiden, Jinder Mahal ran down and beat Mojo up, leaving him to roll pathetically out of the ring while he lectured us Americans for insulting him, and how he will beat Orton and take his title back for his people. Part of the promo was done in Jinder's mother language. You can imagine how well it all went over. Heh.
Next match was American Alpha vs Usos for the tag belts. It was an ok match, like usual for the four of them... The iHop kid behind me was getting annoying again, because there were a couple guys in a section to the right of us yelling "You say UCE, we say OH", and he decided he'd thought of something really special because he kept yelling "You say UCE we say NO" ... then his mom became a little irksome with telling him what to chant towards who (He's a kid, let him chant whatever, but my God, make the repetitiveness stop after awhile please... lol)
Of course they couldn't wear the Day One Ish stupid hoodies in Bloomington, but they'll wear them here! Rabble, rabble, rabble. Usos retained.
So here was the match I'd been waiting for. Dolph Ziggler vs Shinsuke Nakamura. So, long story short, I almost didn't get to go to the Peoria event at all. Things fell into place kind of within a few weeks before the event (Because Emily's visit fell through :( which hopefully one way or another we'll be able to make up sometime this fall!), but for about a month there, I assumed I wasn't going. Then I bought my ticket, and then Nakamura debuted on Smackdown and my hopes of getting to see his entrance live came true. Now I'm going to be honest. For the first time since I started going to WWE events in 2002, I recorded something.
I know, I'm not supposed to. But it was my first time experiencing Nakamura's entrance and I wanted it for the longevity of it all. I am going to TRY to upload the entrance video but the sound is funky because my camera is old, and of course you can hear certain people singing with Nakamura's theme. So. Yeah. No judging. :P Btw Dolph keeps his shirt on the ENTIRE match. He at one point feigned taking it off then shrugged, waved it off and kept it back on and I called out "Thank you!" lol.
Now this is the match I want to talk about. I sincerely hope WWE doesn't book their PPV match like this tomorrow night. Not that it was bad, to be honest, it was alright. Of course I'm going to be lenient, it's my first time seeing Nakamura so there's that mystique to it anyway. But also it's a lot of people's first time seeing Nakamura in any capacity at the PPV tomorrow so you'd think they'd make it a little special. This match they gave us in Peoria was just kinda there. No Sami vs Nakamura, that's for sure. But maybe I just overinflated it in my own mind, I've done that before (like the first time I saw Sami vs Owens live kinda fell flat because I was expecting more, and their match that night ended kinda quickly and I think, if I remember correctly, Sami won which had me going uhhh?) but anyway. My main gripe with this match was in the middle of it, Nakamura and Dolph collided in the middle of the ring and what felt like a few minutes passed with Dolph sprawled out on one side of the ring and Nakamura on the other, and no one moving except for the ref going from one to the other, checking on them and talking to them. Which ok, sure, I could see it going on for a bit but after awhile...give us a count, make them start moving, something. Just seemed to drag on too long. Then Ziggler feigned like he was getting up just to slump back down to the ring while Shinsuke still laid across from him, and then the process began all over again. Finally both got up, and eventually Nakamura hit the kinshasa to win, so that was a yay, but just weird booking and I hope they don't repeat that on the PPV tomorrow. They've already bungled his promos up enough to some extent.
So awhile ago I heard about Clown Rowan. Clown Rowan is, of course, Erick Rowan in a clown's mask with balloons
He takes the balloons, he chooses a kid at ringside, and he hands the kids balloons. Then proceeds to pop them in the kid's face. I'm vicious and laughed at it a lot when I saw it live in Peoria. :P
So his opponent was Harper and Harper decided to carry the kid around a bit, try to cheer him up
Harper beat Rowan
So two of my only real disappointments in Bloomington was that Miz and James Ellsworth weren't there. Of course Miz got drafted over to Raw just before my event... but that left me James. And James was in Peoria! Yay! I could just barely see him wandering ringside and sticking by Carmella's side whenever she got knocked out of the ring but it was still enough to make me happy. Now since my camera really didn't like this match up next, I really only mostly got decent pictures of their titantrons but this match was Naomi vs Tamina vs Carmella vs Charlotte vs Becky vs Natalya in a six way match for the women's title.
Pretty sure James is just out of sight there since their gimmick is Carmella dropping her hat down to him as she enters the ring, but people were standing up so I couldn't see him :( anyway
So they all brawled back and forth for awhile, getting various bits of offense in (all of them got their spots in, basically, haha) then Naomi locked Carmella into a submission and... Here's James!! First chance I had to get a picture of him at all:
So he argues with the ref until Naomi releases Carmella and then goes after him, kicking him off of the apron. She wins shortly there after.
So now it's main event time and by now I've figured out, and feel dumb for not deducing it sooner. So remember I mentioned earlier that I saw Sami vs Kevin a few years back, and it wasn't really the match I was expecting? Yep. Kevin vs Sami for the US title main evented Peoria this year, and this was more like what I wanted between the two of them! It was given more time, it was all around more intense, and Kevin won so I was happy.
\
BLURRY PIECE OF ISH CAMERA. Haha. So yep! Really good match, and I can see why they swapped the triple threat main event for this. Why end the night with a slower paced match when we can have these two decimating each other, right? ;) So as said, Kevin retained, and then demanded a mic.
Talked about the match, heeled on us fans, then tried getting us to stand up and accept him as our United States Champion when...
Uh oh. Sami recovers and waits until Kevin turns around to meet him with the Helluva Kick (which of course Kevin still had mic in hand so it was another of those great "Kevin screams into the mic before getting knocked out" moments lmao) to send the crowd home happy.
I'm not sure when my next event will be, by the spoilers out there about WWE's future touring dates, there are no Peoria or Bloomington dates past March 2018 so it's probably going to be next summer if I'm lucky. We'll see. Either way, I'm glad I went to these two! As always, a lot of silly fun.
And as always, there's more pictures here http://s82.photobucket.com/user/ayumidah/library/Peoria%202017?sort=3&page=1 and I will go see if that video embedded correctly since I've never done this before, haha.