Stephen Gray
On Saturday, September 7, 2013, World Wrestling Entertainment did something that I’d hope for years they would do but for years I thought would never happened – they ran a live event in my city at the WFCU Centre. Growing up, I never thought the WWF or WWE would run at the old Windsor Arena – nicknamed “The Barn” – as that place seemed old and dilapidated way back when I was in my youth, but when they broke ground on this new arena on January 22, 2007, I thought, “Yes, major wrestling might actually come here”; over 6 and a half years later, WWE did just that.
Now, some may ask why this is such a big deal – Detroit is just a border crossing away, and it’s not like I haven’t already been to two Survivor Series shows, several TV tapings since 2001 (including Hulk Hogan’s first match for the company since 1993 when he pinned The Rock in a 3 on 2 tag match), Vengeance in 2002, the 2009 Royal Rumble, Over the Limit 2010, a ticket ready to go for Night of Champions 2013 at Joe Louis Arena, or a few other house shows at Joe Louis or the former Cobo Arena. Oh, can’t forget about a Raw in Washington D.C. in 2004, a Raw in Toronto in 2010, a house show in London, Ontario in 2006, and something… right, a well documented trip to WrestleMania XXIX earlier this year. So why is a B-crew house show such a big deal? Because I live here, damn it! No customs officers, no tunnel bus, no traffic tie-ups at the border – no, just an extremely quick trip (hell, I could have just walked there if I was in the mood) for what I hoped would be a night of fun. It just seems that much more thrilling when everything is happening that close to your own backyard. Also, I signed up for a pre-sale code and snagged ringside tickets. I was looking forward to that.
Of course, a journey this long in the making isn’t without obstacles, and this show had a real bad case of “Card Subject to Change” fever. Very little of it are things I can fault the company for as a majority of it was injury related – namely, John Cena no longer appearing on the “A” shows caused a massive restructuring of house shows, but even before that happened there were changes. Some of the changes were reversed, some were for the better, some were unfortunate, and some I’m pretty sure happened but to be honest, I’m not sure. What I can blame the company for is the highly deceptive ads they air on TV where they name the entire Canadian weekend tour by naming Cena (pre-injury), Punk, Orton, etc. before switching to naming the B-team of Del Rio and Christian – this wasn’t technically incorrect since they ran a show in Montreal that combined both crews and Montreal was featured in the ads, but I bet if you were a young kid that didn’t know any better, you would think all of these people were coming to Windsor too. Locally the bigger names like Cena, Punk, and Orton were never advertised in any marketing, but Daniel Bryan and The Shield were – in fact, The Shield was the box office poster WWE provided the venue with (and it still popped up in some of the WFCU Centre’s online marketing, even after they stopped mentioning them on their website). For a brief period of time after SummerSlam, Daniel Bryan was listed on all 5 weekend house shows on WWE.com’s roster list, somehow being expected to appear in Windsor and New Jersey on the same night, then pull a similar trick with Hamilton and Brooklyn before WWE.com eventually positioned Christian in his spot on the “3 people we’re advertising” image on the website. Christian became another story all-together, so let’s just do a quick rundown of what happened:
Hey, The Shield! The Hounds of Justice had to take care of business elsewhere on the 7th, though.
1. Sheamus: Injury casualty #1, Sheamus was originally promoted locally as the top babyface on the card, challenging Alberto Del Rio for the World Heavyweight Championship. The injury he sustained at the Money in the Bank PPV put the kibosh on this appearance.
2. The Shield: Probably the 2nd biggest loss – they were moved to the A-show in Jersey in exchange for Dolph Ziggler and D-Bry appearing in Windsor. I was sad to see them go, but happy at the idea of Dolph and Bryan coming in.
3. Daniel Bryan: Like I said, I was willing to take the trade-off of the Shield for a Bryan appearance, but with John Cena out, he got promoted right back to the A-show. Once the move was finalized, the settled into advertising…
4. Christian: Billed as the native Canadian taking on Alberto for the title, I figured that would be fine – I had really enjoyed their TV and PPV matches and I’m sure being ringside for what I assumed would be a dumbed down but still good house show version would be fine. Turns out he became injury casualty #2 (or #2.5 if you want to say Bryan was moved due to someone else’s injury) after suffering a concussion on the August 26th episode of Raw. Right up until the show started it was unknown if he would appear as WWE had not made any announcement about the status of his test results for ring clearance. When the show started, Tony Chimel had everyone going so crazy and loudly cheering over the show starting and announcement of a battle royal that I think some people missed the fact it was casually glossed over Christian wouldn’t be there – they didn’t even acknowledge his absence or the previously announced main event, just that the battle royal was to determine Alberto’s opponent.
5. Cody Rhodes – Fired on TV, taken off the road for his real life marriage time off. WWE sometimes likes to play the “contractual obligation” game with these scenarios (a house show I went to in December 2001 in Detroit made a point to clarify that this is why members of The Alliance were still allowed on the show).
6. Kaitlyn and AJ – Both of them were in early roster line-ups, then both got moved to the Jersey show, then in the last few weeks leading up to the show they weren’t listed as appearing at either show. Kaitlyn did not appear, but AJ – wonderful, sweet AJ – did end up appearing on this show.
7. Wade Barrett – I don’t really have anything to add to this, but I swear he was on the Windsor roster at one point, and then he wasn’t. Oh well.
So, who actually DID show up for this somewhat mystery roster of a show? I’ll tell you who – the fans! Kind of…
Some people guessed the attendance to be between 4000-5000 people. The Windsor Star reported 3500. I don’t know, I didn’t count (and I have literally counted chairs on the floor to do the math to report Border City Wrestling, and even the floor plus how many seats per aisle in the stands for two TNA house shows I attended here), and I don’t know what WWE was expecting for a B-show with an ever-changing roster, but at the same time the first WWE event ever in the city, but at least based on crowd reaction and media buzz, I’d call it a success. To look at it from a glass half full perspective, the shows TNA held at the same venue put a large black curtain down the middle of the arena, then had an entrance way set up on the other side of the arena. WWE’s entire stage was set up 3/4 of the way down the arena floor, as it would be at a TV taping – the rest of the seats were up for grabs, and as best I could tell just about every seat on the floor was sold. The $15 section appeared near sold out (this was a section at the very back of the arena that runs right to the top) – the only really looking bad gaps were where the pricing tiers became varied; noticeably, top tier bowl seats looking right at the ring were 3/4 to fully sold, but sections next to them that were still tiered to be in the upper pricing range were near empty. Move a section down to where it became cheaper and it was filled up again. If you took the total attendance of the TNA shows I attended here in November of 2010 and 2011 and combined them (and 2010 drew a much bigger crowd for a much better show, even though Ric Flair appeared at the 2011 as that was never stressed or marketed), this show probably had 3-4 times that number. Is it fair to compare the two? Maybe not, but again, glass half full. I attended WWF house shows at the Palace of Auburn Hills in 1994/1995 that had about 2,000 people in a much larger building, and even the last two house shows I attended in Detroit (2003 at the Joe and 2004 at Cobo) had under 3,500. I don’t remember the attendance when I was at my last house show in 2006 (the former John Labatt Centre – now Budweiser Gardens) in London, Ontario, but it was about the same – and that was an A-show with Cena, Edge, and DX. At the end of the day, it sounded like there were 20,000 people in attendance based on the crowd’s liveliness throughout the evening, which even the WFCU’s twitter account noted was “one of the loudest/most enthusiastic we’ve ever had”.
I never had to wait in a line-up like this for a house show before.
A combination of what shows actually run in the Detroit market (it’s been mostly PPV or TV tapings since 2005) and general apathy toward house shows and their location (Detroit did end up getting house shows in December of 2011 and 2012 as part of a holiday tour – which apparently do quite well since people buy tickets as Christmas presents – but I wasn’t having it), I had not been to a non-televised WWE live event since 2006. I had heard they had made upgrades to the experience and was pleasantly surprised with the ramp, staging effects, and mini-screens they had to enhance the show.
The Prime Time Players dance in front of the entrance way.
Let’s talk about the show: First off, I’ll say that I definitely cannot speak for people up in the stands, but people on the floor loved it. They could not believe that they were this close to the WWE Superstars they see on TV every week. I really enjoy being in a crowd of people who love the event they’re at, and these people loved it. There was even in article on the Windsor Star’s website about the show on Sunday. I had the great privilege of sitting right behind the legend himself, Mr. Tony Chimel, for the show (he acted not only as the ring announcer but also the timekeeper / bell ringer) and had an up close view of “The Big Guy” Ryback bullying him to a proper ring introduction.
Damien Sandow locks up his Money in the Bank briefcase / Ryback gives Tony a hard time.
As mentioned in the “card subject to change” section, the show opened with a Battle Royal to determine the #1 contender for Alberto Del Rio’s World Heavyweight Championship. Everyone from the show (except the Wyatt Family) were involved. From a technical standpoint, these matches are rarely any good but damn if the crowd didn’t love them some battle royal action. Fandango was eliminated quickly, and it just kind of went along for another 15 minutes while people popped for bodyslams and other safe for battle royal moves. There was a great spot where Ryback and Big E had a staredown, but Sandow snuck up and together, Sandow and Ryback eliminated Big E. Damien had a good laugh with his new friend, but Ryback was not amused and frightened Damien out of the ring, where he hid until the end of the match. When Dolph Ziggler was left standing with 3MB members Heath Slater and Jinder Mahal, the crowd loudly backed Ziggler – Dolph not only managed to outlast 3MB, but fight off Sandow making his end of the match return from outside of the ring.
After the match, Sandow explained to us that none of this mattered since he still had the briefcase, demanded SILENCE~! (then demanded “Silence, eh!” so we could better understand him), and issued an open challenge which Big E accepted. E – who is no stranger to playing a babyface from his days on NXT – did a good job here as people were into him and were quite happy when he pinned Damien. People were also very into the Prime Time Players as they scored a victory over 3MB, which bodes well for them rising the ranks of the WWE tag team division. Tony also announced that fans could tweet their match choice for R-Truth vs. Fandango – a regular match, or a dance off. Later in the night it was revealed that, apparently, dance off won which was great news for me as I wasn’t really interested in seeing them have a match… but I had to anyway. This was right before intermission and was probably the most quiet match of the night – people were ok with saying “What’s Up!” and cheering for Truth because they were ‘supposed to’, but I think everyone was just happy when Truth won the match and they could go to the washroom or buy merchandise during a 15 minute break.
Before that debacle, we had something great – AJ Lee!
Everybody loves AJ! Even when she’s trying her damnedest to be mean, tell us we don’t deserve to see a title defense (which I guess was code that her match with Naomi or Trinity or whatever she goes by now was non-title), etc, everyone was cheering and chanting her name. Naomi tried to get a “To-tal Di-Vas!” chant going but Windsor was not having any of that. My favourite part of the match – if not the night, as far as a funny “moment we can get away with at house shows” moment, was AJ hitting Naomi with the Shining Wizard, Naomi kicking out, and AJ informing the ref he must have screwed up his count because “that’s my finisher!”. She did lose in the end, and we moved on. Thanks for coming to Windsor, AJ!
Let’s talk about the Wyatt Family: The people popped for their entrance. I mean, they got REAL loud for it. Once their match with Tons of Funk started… not so much. It’s too bad that people are so into the act but a lot of ring work is being done by Eric Rowan – when Luke “Brodie Lee” Harper is in there, it’s fine, but Rowan is incredibly green. At least he has a unique look, and hopefully with time the team becomes better to watch in the ring. I read that the next night in Hamilton they actually swapped Rowan out for Bray, and Bray Wyatt is great. Before the main event, we had Ryback come down, bully Tony Chimel, say if there’s on thing he hates it’s coming to Canada, and if there’s one thing he hates (you know, like Steve Austin’s 2001 gimmick of, “If there’s one thing I can’t stand…” that apparently includes more than one thing) it’s having to face nobodies from NXT like Xavier Woods. They had a really good big guy vs. small guy match, with Xavier getting a lot of offense (and living in a city that airs NXT on TV, it seemed a lot of people were familiar with him – even yelling “It’s Morphin’ Time!” as he did his somersault clothesline) and while there were a number of fans who saw this as Superstar vs. Jobber, many people were also happy to see Xavier “Over 9000” Woods shine.
Sweet Dragon Ball Z reference, Xavier!
And of course, the main event of the evening: Dolph Ziggler vs. Alberto Del Rio. These two have had phenomenal televised matches over the summer so even though I missed Christian, I actually thought this would be the much better match. Not only was this a good house show main event, not only would this be an excellent TV main event, this was a PPV quality main event and it ruled.
Yeah, I suspect a lot of that is being drawn in by the whole experience, but that’s kind of the point of going to a live event. At one point Ziggler kicked out of the concussion kick, dodged an enziguri, and hit the Famouser / Fame-asser. You know they’re not changing the title in Windsor at a house show, but for that brief moment they really hooked everyone into believing. EVERYONE. Prior to the match, Del Rio did some stalling by stealing someone’s sign and faking him out repeatedly pretending to give it back before ripping it up and throwing all the pieces into the crowd. Another guy in the front row cheered Alberto and apparently caught his attention as he declared him “the smartest man in the building” and referred to the fan as his friend. Then there was cheering for t-shirts (Dolph apologized he only had one), then Alberto whipped his at Tony Chimel. The last bit of stalling was some comedy where Alberto wanted Dolph to shake his hand, and he gradually tried to gain his trust – he shook the ref’s hand, he put his arm behind his back, he got on his knee, and he prayed to God that he was on the up and up, all while making the best devious facial expressions. It was the most epic build-up to a dropkick in the face I’ve ever seen.
So of course it ends in a big screwy finish – Alberto shoved the ref into Dolph so he could quickly apply the cross armbreaker while Dolph was momentarily distracted and the bell rang… but waaaaait, DOLPH won because Alberto was disqualified! But, we all know championships don’t change hands by DQ, but I didn’t care, I was so happy to be there for this whole 35 minute main event presentation. I enjoyed the whole night, but this was just too good.
To sum it up, I had a hell of a time and I hope WWE considers coming back to Windsor – could we see a TV taping at the WFCU Centre one day? I would have to say no, but stranger things have happened.
