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JR's Blog: JR's MITB Observations, RAW in Brooklyn, UK Spoken Word Tour Update, Q&A's Updated, Order JR's Today Online!

Posted: Jul 15th 2013 By: CMBurnham

Hello from rainy Norman, Oklahoma. Good to be home after a five day road trip for WWE. As always, I invite you to check out the great deals on JR's family of products at http://www.wweshop.com. Quick and easy, safe online shopping with delivery right to your front door. Let's start Grilling! It was good to get home from the road that included the grand opening of the WWE Performance Center on Thursday followed by the taping of four, one hour NXT broadcasts Thursday night, an EARLY morning flight Friday to Iowa from Orlando via DFW, tryouts featuring 14 matches, and then all the festivities through Saturday night at the Dan Gable Museum in Waterloo, Iowa. No one is more excited than am I about the Performance Center. Years ago our team had a vision to start the Development Program in WWE and I always dreamed that we would have a state of the art facility someday but I never dreamed of anything the magnitude of what WWE now has. Can't encourage fans enough to visit the Gable Museum in Waterloo some time in your life and specifically plan on attending the annual, big event there next July. Follow them @wrestlingmuseum on Twitter. It's an amazing place with priceless artifacts and memorabilia from pro wrestling's past. It should be on every fan's Bucket List. Got home Sunday in time to order and watch WWE's MITB PPV. I was beat from travel and fighting sleep but the PPV invigorated me and I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation from Philly. The live audience, as we've said so many times, can help make or break a televised, WWE event and Philadelphia delivered in a significant way. Great way to utilize the pre game show to lead right into the PPV. Sound marketing strategy highlighted by a superb bout that had meaning. Loved the start of the PPV being the WHC MITB match which mirrored the close of the themed event with the other MITB Ladder match. Thought the order of events was spot on. Never saw Damien Sandow's win coming but thanks to hard work and re-inventing himself, Sandow is now the winner of MITB and his career got another boost Sunday night. Damien is a great example of never giving up and doing what one has to do improve himself and to eventually "make the team." He's also taken a piece of creative, made it his own, and has become what was creatively envisioned for him and more. Cody Rhodes took a big step toward renewed relevancy after his controversial loss to Sandow in the MITB contest. Lots of winners can potentially come out of these multi person bouts. Although I enjoy the potential and upcoming opportunities for RAW GM Brad Maddox I felt like he overstayed his in ring welcome last night but that may have been by design. Maddox has a little of the late, Eddie Gilbert in him in my view and has a bright future in WWE. Like Sandow, it will be up to Maddox to make his TV persona his own and to grow it. Curious to see where the Vickie Guerrero story takes us. After her dismissal as RAW GM, Vickie seems to be more topical and interesting than ever. Significant win for Curtis Axel, without Paul Heyman at ringside, over Miz. AJ using her Octopus Submission made famous by Antonio Inoki is sound strategy to me. AJ is the focal point of the WWE Diva scene and her eyes tell a compelling story more often than not. Thought Jericho and Ryback had a solid, sound wrestling match that had a surprising ending with Ryback using a cradle rollup to win. Another ending that I did not see coming. Del Rio vs. Ziggler was a masterpiece. Some fans will bitch and complain about "AJ ruining the match" due to her in ring involvement but I didn't see it that way. ADR and DZ had ample time to tell a compelling story and they accomplished that. AJ's involvement just adds another element to the storyline that has to be addressed and could lead to more, interesting things for Ziggler to sink his teeth into. Cena vs, Henry was the type of match that I used to covet calling back in the day. Straight forward, easy to understand story that made sense. Of course, those that aren't Cena fans likely weren't happy that Cena won but that's nothing new. Mark Henry really came to play Sunday night and was impressive especially when one considers that he is a 400 pounder. I also loved the lighting for this WWE Title contest. It felt classic, old school. The final match of the evening, the MITB Ladder match for the WWE Title was a human demolition derby of epic proportions that delivered in a multi layered, big way. Several issues were forwarded, everyone in the match got an opportunity to shine and, at least for me, the winner, Randy Orton, was unexpected. RVD got the major star treatment largely in part to the partisan Philly crowd and Van Dam's debut couldn't have been in a better place on Earth. The Heyman/Punk element adds a significant log to the fire of what looks to be as hot a personal issue as WWE has had in a good while. Bring on Lesnar! Daniel Bryan's flurry of offense late in the MITB match was a thing of beauty and his natural emotion and intensity was riveting. Young talents can learn a great number of lessons on that one sequence of offense. Simply amazing stuff. There has to be many banged up men today and some with multiple staples and stitches, This ain't ballet and the toughness of many of the WWE Superstars is admirable. To think that most of the men who went to hell and back last night will be up again tonight in Brooklyn for a sold out Monday Night RAW is amazing to me. I expect the Brooklyn live audience to be rapid tonight as the arena is completely sold out and will be hosting their first RAW ever, The road to Summer Slam is now in full swing so tonight's show should be most interesting. The ticket sales for my upcoming UK Spoken word tour are going extremely well. London is completely sold out and limited tickets are available for Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester. We have the opportunity to have our biggest turnout in Manchester at the Comedy Store and I encourage everyone that can to join me. Tickets are available at http://www.psievents.eventbrite.com/. VIP tickets are really getting scarce and they include a private meet and greet which I always enjoy. It looks as if all the tickets for all events will be sold prior to me getting on my plane to fly from the States to London. http://www.americansoda.co.uk who distributes JR's products throughout the UK area and Europe will be at each event selling JR's BBQ Sauces, Chipotle Ketchup and Main Event Mustard. You can follow them on Twitter @americansoda. I'm working on the Q&A section of the site as time allows as I got behind while being on the road and having such a pressing schedule the past several days. As I write this, it's 47 days until the first Oklahoma Sooner football game....not that I'm keeping track. :) Boomer Sooner! J.R. PS Sorry about the lack of paragraphs as we are having some computer program issues that are being addressed.