What were the two you were underwhelmed by?

Holy shit, thanks for the heads up!

I'm in for the following:

Wrestlerave '03- Philadelphia, PA 6/28/03
Fight of the Century- Edison, NJ 8/5/06
Unified- Liverpool, UK 8/12/06
Anarchy In The UK- Broxbourne, UK 8/13/06
Epic Encounter II- St. Paul. MN 8/25/06

I've been told that the Danielson / McGuinnes match from Unified was top notch, and I never thought I'd see Wrestlerave come back.

I think the events were called War of the Wire 2 and Death Before Dishonor 2. The DBD disc was headlined by the czw/roh death cage match and the WotW disc supposedly had an outstanding couple of matches on it. I guess I should have realized that it might have been a bad idea to get two events headlines by garbage-type matches. I went off a couple of recommendations from the RoH site and some other sites I was reading. It was a complete impulse purchase, so I probably should have asked you guys here for some recommendations from the 10 dollar list.

It's not that they were bad or anything, but I swear if I saw one more hard lariat or running yakuza kick I was going to turn off the DVD. I've only watched each event once, so I'm willing to give it another shot, and I won't rule out that it takes a while to get used to such a fast paced, generally non-selling kind of style.

Yeah, War of the Wire 2 is not that great. Most of the big finale consists of BJ trying to get his hair untangled from the barb wire. I also thought the big Cage of Death between CZW/ROH at DBDV was a bit of a let down for me considering the build up between the two companies, but it was still pretty fun overall. Good enough to keep in my collection at least. The rest of the cards on both shows mentioned are not too memorable, so probably not the best to start off with.

Now THAT is in fact an amazing match. Probably my favorite match between the two. It's also got Briscoes vs. Aries/Strong, so you can't go wrong there.

bravesmg, here's a few suggestions from the $10 sale:

2002
The Era of Honor Begins 2/23/02: Mainly because it's the first show, but also because the 3-way main event (Low Ki vs. Bryan Danielson vs. Christopher Daniels) was damned good. Not to mention you get Eddie Guerrero vs. Super Crazy.


2003
Final Battle 2003 12/27/03: It's nice to see Muta, even if he can't wrestle like he used to. Kaz Hayashi shows that he was underused in WCW.


2004
World Title Classic 6/12/04
Joe vs. Punk II 10/16/04
All Star Extravaganza II 12/4/04

That's the wonderful Joe vs. Punk trilogy


2005
Redemption 8/12/05: Punk vs. Daniels vs. Gibson vs. Joe for the ROH title
Punk: The Final Chapter 8/13/05: Punk vs. Colt Cabana, best of 3 falls
Enter The Dragon 10/14/05: Austin Aries vs. Bryan Danielson - it's always insane when these two meet up.


2006
Better Than Our Best 4/1/06: Bryan Danielson vs. Lance Storm. Do I need to say anything more? It's great watching Lance wrestle in front of a crowd that genuinely appreciates his skill, and should be shown to every frustrated WWE worker. There's also a very solid tag match of Austin Aries & Roderick Strong vs. CIMA & Naruki Doi

different WWE Wrestlemania Anthology Boxes?
 

I have recently seen a lot of Wrestlemania Complete Anthology Boxes around on ebay. Some are offering 2005er 20 disc-boxes (WM1-21), some offer 2006er 22-disc-boxes. Some of them look black or darw brown with golden letters. But as I remember when the box first came out if was golden, not black. Can someone help me out with information to clear what different boxes are released ever?

WWE.com had an exclusive box, that should be the dark brown one you're seeing.

And what was that special with the WWE.com Exclusive?
Are there different version of the retail version available?

The outer box is leather and signed by Vince McMahon, and there is an additional autographed senitype on the inside (mine is HHH).

Already posted (check my sig also). My Wrestlemania Anthology Boxsets are Signed by Vince mchahon (Leather WWEShop Box Set) & Several WWE Superstars personally (Regular Box Set) e.g. Batista,Undertaker,Kennedy,Booker etc.

Damn, I knew I should have asked you guys first.

I think I'm going to wait on my grab bags, then post them in the wrestling thread and see what you guys think of the selection. I'm frustrated enough with WWE/TNA that I'm willing to give RoH enough time and money to really figure out if they're for me or not.

The announcers don't help though. I think the one guy is really good (I think the color man, not PBP), but the PBP announcer is just grating. If anything in the grab bag isn't a good representation I'll wait for the next $10 sale and then probably pick up the Joe/Punk trilogy at the very least.

If the lack of selling bothers you, then ROH might not be the promotion for you. There's a lot of "holy shit" spots that should end a match, but don't. However, there are also major technical fests like the aforementioned Danielson vs. Lance Storm as well.

As for the announcers, it's not going to get any better than what you have now. Dave Prazak is the main announcer, and is probably the best they've ever had. Before Dave it was always booker Gabe Sapolsky in one identity or another, and he always sucked.

I kind of knew that going in, but in the extremely small sample size I've seen, I was stunned at how quickly they moved on from moves that you would think broke their necks.

Again, I know I sound like I'm bitching a lot here, but I think my expectations were too high, especially taking into account I probably didn't make the right purchasing decisions to get started in the promotion. There are a ton of things that I do love so far. Number one with a bullet is clean pinfalls. I can't remember ever seeing so many clean pinfalls without worrying about protecting everyone and their greatgrandmother with ref bumps, powder, countouts, DQs, run-ins... I don't know if there are ever screwjob finishes, but even if there are, they will be done so infrequently that it actually makes them mean something. It's like bizarro-Russo booking.

I also really like the roster that I've seen so far. I purchased the PPV and thought Nigel and Claudio looked like superstars, and I now know what you mean that the Briscoes seem like each match will be their last (until their next steroid fix I guess). I'm not terribly sold on Danielson yet for all of the hype, but it's far too small a sample size to make any absolute statements.

Overall, I hope I get lucky with these grab bags. I'm dying to love the promotion (even if it means going broke), but it's harder than I thought to just jump in.

There are a good string of interference spots with certain people. Julius Smokes constantly interferes and assists the Rottweilers when they're heels, and Prince Nana interferes a hell of a lot for the Embassy, particularly Jimmy Rave. But for the most part it's clean finishes and handshakes at the end. It's a good example that you can have people lose clean but not look weak. It's all in the booking and the in-ring action.

Briscoes - yeah, they're high on my list of next wrestlers to die because of steroid abuse. The back acne on one of them is downright scary.

Danielson - I can understand why it's hard to take to him. He has 2 major drawbacks... one being that he's the type that can take 10 or so minutes to really get going in the match. The second being that even when he's trying, he really has no personality... and that makes it harder for the fans to identify with him.

I don’t own the WWE Dusty Rhodes 3-Disc set, but I read the packaging is some the best WWE has ever done…does anyone want to share pics the inside of the box? I would appreciate it…

Not good news in regards to the Benoit footage editing. JR posted this on his blog:

Re: Benoit

I just picked up a couple of older Wrestlemania DVD releases (the original ones), and the Wrestlemania 17 one is signed by Chris Benoit. What I found odd was the guy that I bought it from only mentioned it in passing, after a couple of emails back and forth. I think that he didn't want to tell, but he thought that he should.

I didn't really follow up after the tragedy, but are people that had signed Benoit stuff trying to dump it off without any luck?

just got my grab bag dvd's. I scored a 9 out of 10.

Only straight shooting w/mr. fuji is a double. Anybody wanna trade?

Anyway, here goes.

Ipw fight club 3
Straight shooting w/Cornette & watts
Straight shooting w/Terry Funk & Shane Douglas
Straight shooting w/Jim Mitchell
Good Times, Great Memories: The best of colt cabana
The Best of the Rottweilers
Best of the second city saints
Danger!Danger! Best of spanky
F.I.P: Violence is the answer

Pretty happy with the haul. Wanna get a few more but I'm worried I'll get doubles of my most recent grab bag.

IIRC, that question was referring to the WWE 24/7 offerings but I didn't think he meant it would impact DVDs.

i just got my 2 grab bags, i got
FIP Fallout 2005
Straight Shootin' with ROn KIllings
" " The Fantastics
" " OMG
" " Skandar Akbar
FIB heat Stroke 2005
ROH Do Or Die IV
ROH Suffering is Inevitable; The Best of Rodrick Strong
ROH Good Times, Great Memories The Best of Colt Cabana
ROH Our Time Is Now The Best Of Generation Next

If you post what DVD's you received from the grab bags in the comments/special instructions box - located on the very bottom of the order forum - they will make sure you won't get any doubles.

LB...

I picked up:

ROH Straight Shootin: Jim Cornette/Bill Watts Vol. 2
FIP THe Usual Suspects 4/22/05
ROH Best of Colt Cabana
ROH Best of Roderick Strong
ROH Straight Shootin: Midnight Express

Came to $3.58/title shipped priority, so I'm satisfied since they're all about $15-$20 DVDs regularly.

i was really hoping i'd get Danger! Danger! The Best of Spanky

Did anyone pick up the recent Mid-South release that came out nationally? I was just wondering it the matches were complete and all.

Seriously? Pretty cool. Will keep that in mind.