WWE Peoria

Without Sugarland on tour this year, I've had an event withdrawal and opted to expand my horizons. A few weeks ago I took in Blue Man Group with Mom and Laura. It was great time and funnier than I anticipated. But having sat in the 2nd balcony... I have a lack of photos to share.

Tonight was another new experience. I talked my way into going with Adam and Westley to see a WWE Live event in Peoria. I regret to say that I missed a great opportunity to use glow sticks. 

The Main Event was supposed to include Randy Orton (butt shot below) and Daniel Bryan (current WWE World Heavyweight Champion), who I know as the guy with the goat beard. Bryan was an unfortunate no-show because of a family emergency, so we saw some randomness at the beginning, which lead to setting up a 3-on-3 Main Event to happen later in the evening.

I only watch wrestling when Adam is so kind to invite me over. But out of the handful of times, I've acquired a great dislike for Fandango. Dude's gimmick is dancing... dancing terribly!!! He probably wouldn't get past the first week on Dancing with the Stars. As evidenced below, I had to sit through a match with him in it! I'm happy to report he lost!

The following pic is from the match where I really started to get into the event. Why you ask? Well, I started a baseball style chant for Justin Gabriel and it caught on!
Here we Justin, Here we go! [clap-clap]
It was awesome!
Let the laughter and tears start.
As usual, my cheering jinxed his match... ya know, because it's not like they're planned or choreographed or something.

At some point there was an intermission because you had to let all the beer drinking fellows and young kids hit the restrooms. There were a couple BORING matches, before they got to a triple tag team match. Below was the intro for Goldust and Cody Rhodes.

Oh yeah, while the slow, stale matches went on... I was entertained by Adam's random exclamations and his echo sitting next to Westley. The super, die-hard wrestling fan below was something else! I have a feeling his wife didn't know what she was getting herself into.

As the wrestling continued, I became increasing distractible. The wrestler below with his back facing us was part of 3MB (Three Man Band) and had a rhinestoned logo similar to Harley Davidson across his butt. I could not turn away from the constant sparkling.

The Main Event featured The Shield who couldn't be bothered to enter or exit the ring the traditional way. Based on their wet hair and shirts, you may think this was taken after the match, but no, this was as they entered in from the concourse behind us.

The Shield ended up winning the 3-on-3 match. There was quite a bit of hair tossing where you could see a spray of mist from their soaking locks glisten in the spotlights. Their punches, slaps and kicks to the face were quite dramatic when timed with the flinging of ones chewing. Had the gum not been red or blue, you could have imagined it to be a tooth flying across the ring.

I did not expect to have as much fun as I did tonight. Some of the moves were so fake they brought on laughter, while some of the falls left me cringing and wondering how their tailbones are still intact. A few of the gimmicks were beyond ridiculous, like the party dude and his posse (seen below to the left of the blue shirted guy was a penguin costume). But to see the diehard fans fully invested reactions was priceless.

Safe to say a fun time was had by all!

Oh, I did did much googling to get some of the details correct. Here are the final results for those interested.