Never underestimate WWE house show fun

My iconic photo of Liv Morgan signing an autograph for a young fan.

If you want to find out how wide spread the reach of the WWE is, just post a photo of Liv Morgan on Instagram from a house show.

On October 2, I attended the Sunday Stunner WWE house show at the SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon as a ticket buyer. Before that night, the last WWE house show I attended was back in August of 2009, when I reviewed one for the Medicine Hat News that was held at The Arena in Medicine Hat.

The last previous time I attended a WWE live event as a ticket buyer was way back in late 1993 held at the old Winnipeg Arena, where the main event was a WWE title match between The Undertaker and then champion Yokozuna. Life often makes it hard to keep up with interests the older you get.

With all that noted, I went to the house show on October 2 in Saskatoon just to have fun. Morgan at the time was the WWE Smackdown Women’s Champion, and she was on for the second last match of the night.

After getting a pinfall win over Sonya Deville, Morgan circled the ring and went up the entrance way signing autographs and posing for pictures with fans. I took a picture of her with the camera on my mobile phone signing an autograph for a young fan at ringside.

I thought the photo was cool one, so I posted to Instagram with a share to my Facebook account. When I got home after the show, I posted the photo to Twitter.

Liv Morgan gets a pinfall win over Sonya Deville.

After I posted the photo to Twitter, I already noticed a copy of that photo was already taken from either my Instagram or Facebook feed and shared on various different WWE fan accounts on both Instagram and Twitter going viral in the process. My actual own Twitter post of the photo had 44 retweets and 518 likes.

I didn’t watermark the photo, because I wasn’t thinking about it potentially getting lifted off one of my social media accounts. I also wasn’t working the event as a photographer utilizing my digital SLR cameras I would use to shoot the hockey and football games I cover.

When the dust settled, I was just happy that a whole tonne of people enjoyed that photo I took with my mobile phone camera.

Overall, the house show was the best two-and-a-half hours I spent on the entertainment front in a long time. The fact I was in the second row from ringside also helped with the experience, because you get a great opportunity to interact with the WWE talent.

With that said, I would have enjoyed attending that event regardless of where I sat. Still, I was really happy with the $147 in Canadian funds I spent on my seat that was in the second row from ringside.

Sonya Deville became one of my favourites in the WWE.

WWE live events now have a different feel from the ones I used to attend from my childhood through to my teenage years from the mid 1980s through to the early 1990s. In those days, I remember a large part of the crowd consisting of the beer drinker who wanted to see blood, which was an old school style pro wrestling fan.

As strange as this sounds, the WWE card in Saskatoon on October 2 was the most clean thing entertainment wise I’ve gone to in the last 20 years. The majority of the audience was a mix of the comic book buying more geek type crowd and parents who brought their children. From my seat, I was pretty much surrounded by parents with their children.

Out of all the events I’ve been to in the last 25 years including the massive amounts of sports events I’ve worked, the alcohol that was consumed at the Sunday Stunner event in Saskatoon was very limited. It was by far the driest event I’ve been to in the last 25 years.

Plus, everyone in attendance was aware that WWE live events are shows with storylines that lead to decided outcomes. When I went to WWE live events in my youthful years from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s, matches were played out like they were athletic contests with undecided outcomes.

Knowing that the October 2^nd WWE live event in Saskatoon was a show with storylines that had decided outcomes, the heckles that happened were in good taste and fun.

Sami Zayn addresses the crowd in Saskatoon on October 2.

I thought the best lob I shouted out was for Deville. In the United States, Deville runs a donut making company with long time best friend Mandy Rose, who is WWE NXT Women’s Champion. The company is called DaMandyz Donutz.

After Deville entered the ring, I shouted out, “DaMandyz Donutz for everyone.”

Deville was working her match as the heel or bad gal. She immediately went into her bad gal character pointing at me and yelling for me to shut up.

When the crowd started booing her after her tirade, Deville broke character leaning in to where I was to thank me for the shout out for her donut making company and added an I appreciate you comment too.

That is one of the best parts of a house show is the WWE talent can interact with the crowd in a way they can’t if the event is a live broadcast event like a taping of WWE’s weekly, RAW, NXT or Smackdown shows or a pay-per-view event.

After Montreal, Que., product Sami Zayn was done his two matches for the night, he went out of character giving a great speech to the crowd saying the show they did the night before in Regina and that night in Saskatoon were the first time in his life he had visited Saskatchewan. Zayn talked about how great Canadian WWE crowds were and thanked the fans in attendance for their support.

One of the biggest rushes of energy for me came when Calgary, Alta., product Natalya came out for her match with B-Fab. Natalya is the niece of pro-wrestling icon Bret “The Hitman” Hart, and the Hart family’s ties to Canada run deep.

Natalya sets to blow a kiss to some friends at ringside.

Hart famously won the WWE title for the first time on October 12, 1992 at the SaskTel Centre, which is still viewed as one of the building’s all-time greatest moments.

Natalya can often act as a coach in the WWE’s women’s division and B-Fab was working her first main roster matches during the stops in the two Saskatchewan centres. After Natalya gained a submission victory with the “Sharpshooter,” she helped B-Fab, who had an outstanding performance, up and the two hugged.

That is the other great thing about house shows is WWE talent can try different things to see how the crowd reacts as a test to see if those things could be used for a broadcast event. That included the members of Maximum Male Models trying to hit members of Hit Row with a loaded fanny pack when the referee wasn’t looking.

Still, the night belonged to the kids. I got a kick out of how excited the two little guys that were sitting next to me got during the main event when Drew McIntyre landed his “Claymore Kick” and tag team partner Sheamus connected his “Brogue Kick” on members of Imperium.

That helped the team of McIntyre and Sheamus to take victory in that bout. On a side note, the members of Imperium are spectacular as heels, especially in a house show setting.

With all that said, the joy of those two kids seeing their heroes in McIntyre and Sheamus prevail was priceless.

Sheamus meets the fans after his WWE match in Saskatoon.

Hart once said pro wrestling should be something you should be able to bring your kids to. “The Hitman” would have loved the WWE show in Saskatoon on October 2 because lots of kids who are young and young at heart had a great time.

If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

-------

If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.

Athletes should try to expand their identity

Ultimately competitive sports comes to an end for all

Tim Vanstone salutes Prince Albert Raiders fans after his last game.

Competitive sports will come to an end for all athletes.

Whether that end comes today, tomorrow or more than 20 years from now, all athletes eventually leave competitive sports. The end can come via injury, a health matter that pops up, a decision by a coach or manager or you ultimately get brought down physically by Father Time.

Father Time is undefeated, even though NFL greatest of all-time quarterback Tom Brady is trying to do his best to change that record.

When the end comes, the biggest hurdle athletes deal with is loss of identity. For athletes that compete at the highest level their sport has to offer, they have usually been life consumed by their sport to the point that they don’t have any other way to identify themselves besides being an athlete.

With sport specialization taking place at younger ages in Canada, that only adds to streamlining a person into seeing themselves as an athlete. Outside of school, the only people school aged athletes deal with are usually other athletes and coaches.

It gets to the point that the idea of going to a function like a school dance is laughable.

You are a hockey player, a football player, a baseball player, a softball player, a gymnast, a lacrosse player, a swimmer, a hurdler in track and field or a competitor in whatever sport discipline you pursue.

The Saskatoon Blades enjoy a win in December of 2020.

Back on June 8, 2015, Claire Hanna likely wrote the gold standard piece regarding athlete transition and identity on her personal blog, where she went through what it was like to be cut from Canada’s senior national women’s volleyball team. If you want to check that piece out, you can do so by clicking right here. It is well worth your time to read Hanna’s piece.

Now in 2021, it is crazy to think there are people out there that don’t even think of Hanna as a star volleyball player or know of her ties to the sport. They see her as a sports media personality for CTV Regina.

Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that has clamped down the world since March of 2020, athletes have had to deal with the loss of identity issue in one form or another earlier than they had to.

In Canada, most athletes that are under the age of 18 have seen their lives in sports ground to a halt. The lucky ones have been able to train on a regular basis.

The extremely lucky ones have participated in a handful of competitions.

The unlucky ones have had to keep motivated training at home as they aren’t able to get into any sports facilities due to restrictions brought in via public health orders.

Athletes have had to deal with how these changes have impacted their mental health. It would not be an exaggeration to say some have taken the halt of sports a lot harder than others.

U of Saskatchewan Huskies football players enjoy a TD in 2019.

For a lot of athletes, it seems like they have lost the purpose for their very existence.

What seems to be forgotten is the root problem is that sports have become the thing that defines these athletes as a person. Sports become who you are versus what you do.

To think this can happen to a person under the age of 18 or like someone who is 11 or 12-years-old is crazy. They are only just starting out on the grand marathon of life.

For the athletes that have hit the point where sports defines them as a person, they got conditioned to think that way, because there is such an emphasis in sports specialization to pursue a chosen sport at all costs with tunnel focus.

This is often instilled in athletes even as young as age 11 or 12.

For these athletes, it is lost that they are also a son, a daughter, a grandson, a granddaughter or a student at the school they attend. These identifiers are not as sexy as being an athlete, but those identifications are there.

To be fair, even those in the adult working world can fall into that trap. If anyone is doing anything that consumes them, they can fall into that trap.

For athletes, the best way to manage the funk where sport becomes the thing that defines who you are is to find another interest. If an athlete is out of action due to restrictions that were put in place to combat COVID-19, now might be the opportune time to find another interest.

The Saskatoon Stars enjoy a win in 2020.

Finding another interest doesn’t have to mean finding a career, but you can do things like taking first aid training to maybe lean towards maybe working as a paramedic one day.

Interests could mean being a fan of a musical artist or band. You might even take up playing an instrument like a guitar or drums or you might become a singer.

You might get into things like following science fiction and get to know all the ins and outs of a franchise like Star Wars. You might take an interest in comic book heroes put out by D.C. or Marvel.

You might even get into following the sports entertainment spectacle of professional wrestling in the WWE or AEW. After I started following WWE and AEW a little more closely back in January, I found out talent like Alexa Bliss, Sasha Banks, Britt Baker, Bobby Lashley and Drew McIntyre have interacted with youngsters that are training to be just like them.

It should be noted this training does not include trying moves you see in WWE and AEW programming outside of a supervised training environment.

Besides those suggestions, you could also take up a hobby of making your own clothes or perfecting your cooking skills in the kitchen.

Come to think of it, high level athletes that come from farm or ranching families might have the advantage of being a bit more rounded, because they have been likely helping out with activities on the family farm or ranching operation at a very young age.

The U of Saskatchewan Huskies women’s hockey season end in 2020.

Overall, it will be beneficial for competitive and high level athletes if they can find ways to expand their identity even in a small way.

Even after the COVID-19 pandemic passes, the day will still come when competitive sports come to an end for all athletes.

If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

-------

If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.