(Apologies for not getting the remaining days of WM weekend out sooner. We've both been engulfed in work and life and attending this stuff, adding in the aforementioned, has left us a bit fatigued...more to come!)
Friday was a little different.
We
left work and came rushing over, only to find that the gates hadn't
opened yet...and there was a line, about a mile long, to get in, with
that classic "zig-zag" format you see in a line at Disneyland.
Luckily, we got in fairly quickly...and immediately got in the first signing line we saw.
It
was rumored that Dolph Ziggler was signing at the station we stopped
at. There was another rumor going around that Paige was supposed to be
here again tonight and that she'd be at the station next door...Danielle
really wanted to get her Paige T-shirt signed.
We
waited for a few minutes to see who would end up where. When the first
Superstars appeared, the crowd cheered...and they were headed for a
booth across from us. It was Erick Rowan and Sin Cara.
Ok...we
got Sin Cara yesterday. Rowan isn't totally somebody we want to
meet...we decided to stay in our line. Then, more cheers next to us --
and out came Natalya. I was a bit bummed. Then her Dad, Jim, showed up.
Man...
I asked Danielle if she wanted to move. She said, "No. Let's see who we get."
Suddenly, our line began to cheer...and out popped...
Dolph Ziggler.
Let
me tell you something about Ziggler. The dude was performing for the
entire line. Just like Paige, he played to the crowd and toed the line
between cocky and incredibly charming. He gets up from his seat and
says, "Sorry...I'm done. I have no time for ANY of you. See ya'." He was
only kidding: he left to go sign for the disabled guest line.
At
one point, he came back from the empty disabled guest line, stopped to
take pictures with the couple of people near the immediate area, signed
their stuff real quick, then rolled his eyes at everyone else as they begged him to sign their stuff, too. With a hair flip, he went back to tend to the regular line.
When we got there, I asked if he would sign for our mutual friend, Tania, who couldn't make it out.
I don't know if it was the volume in the place or if Friday fatigue was hitting me...I spelled her name wrong. Ziggler could have just signed her name, as was spelled to him...but he notices and says, "Wait...T, A, N, A, I?! That's 'Tawn-ay', bro! That's not how you spell that. I don't even know your friend and I know how she spells her name!"
So, we had some laughs and Ziggler says, "Let me spell it again..." So, he writes over
the original spelling, then realizes that you can see a "T", followed
by some scribbling. He puzzles over it and asks, "I think that looks
like 'TANIA'...you think she'd be able to tell? I mean, maybe if I
scribble all fancy and professional-looking, she'll think it says, 'TANIA'...right?" And we just laughed. He was just a great guy.
He shook our hands and we got our photo with him.
After this, we grabbed some quick food and drink and headed out to see what else we could see.
Turns out, some pretty good Superstars were signing that night.
Kane...who
didn't look happy to be there at all. Kinda strange. Maybe he was
trying to be the "Corporate" character...but I took quite a few photos
from a few rounds of fans and he didn't smile once.
A strange choice to sign: The Bogeyman...
And he'd actually sign with Hornswoggle:
After
that, I checked my WrestleMania App (an attendant told me it would give
me signing schedules...huzzah!) and found out that JBL and Jerry Lawler
were signing...so we went to take a pic with them.
Danielle
and I stopped by the Elimination Chamber to take a couple pictures of
Stardust and Miz-dow. One of the funniest things was watching Stardust
freak out and shriek before he would hug the person getting into the
ring with them.
We
were just in time to watch a Q&A session with Howard Finkel and
Booker T in the NXT ring. NXT was hosting some "house shows" all Axxess
weekend, so things like this were awesome to watch.
In
the Q&A, Booker praised former manager, Sherri Martel, and said
that he misses her each and every day. When a fan asked if Harlem Heat
would ever get back together, Booker's response was, "In this business, I
always have one response: never say never."
We stayed around a bit to do the Gratuitous WrestleMania Sign Point...
We made one last trip to the museum as we'd heard that they had added the Andre trophy...
We visited a couple of our favorite wrestlers...
We invaded a Triple H signing and took some pics of him...
And
we closed the night out by watching a really fun match between Heath
Slater and Curtis Axel, in which Axel took bump after bump and sold
everything Slater had -- then came back like Hulk Hogan. It was truly
great, crowd-pleasing stuff that the crowd around us loved.
Last, but not least, caught this excellent shot of Goldust being interviewed by our local media...
Stay tuned for Part 3...
Er...that's it.