Hello wrestle friends from around the world! It is officially WrestleMania week, and many of us here at Wrestlezone are indeed in Orlando for all the festivities. WZ Weekly host Nick Hausman will be hitting up virtually every WWE show for a mountain of coverage, while I hit the ground running with a ton of awesome indie wrestling events throughout the week.
I’ll be keeping you updated with this here live journal, adding pictures, videos, some interviews and all kinds of content from Orlando every single day, so make sure to check back!
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29
1:00 PM CST: Well, my plane has been inexplicably delayed. At least security was easier than usual at O’Hare, but sitting in the airport for an extra few hours while they find us a new plane is not the way I wanted to start my vacation.
3:00 PM CST: We have a plane! We’ll be boarding in the next 30 minutes, thankfully. There are definitely quite a few wrestling fans waiting to board, as its a non-stop flight to Orlando. Nobody is chanting anything or even talking about wrestling as far as I can hear, but there are many families with young kids wearing a combination of Disney and WWE merch.
7:00 PM EST: Landed in Orlando without too much trouble. You can already tell the atmosphere is completely different. As I got off the plan I was welcomed by a sea of wrestling fans covered in various WWE and indie wrestling shirts. Unfortunatley, due to the fact that my bank is garbage and does this any time I leave the state, my cards were frozen the minute I tried to use them at the food court. I was put on hold for an hour, but no luck so far and it may have to wait until morning. This also means I won’t be able to get the deposit on my rental car. Oh, and the villa I’m staying in now won’t be ready until Thursday afternoon, so I have to find a place to crash…and get there somehow. VACATION!
11:00 PM EST: A huge thank you to my friend Trina, who picked me up after a Punk Pro Wrestling show. Because this night is destined for failure, we attempted to meet up with some friends at a Chicago style pizza place (didn’t I just get off a plane from Chicago?) and went to the wrong restaurant. So we settled for Taco Bell, and are now consuming it like beasts on the back porch of Trina’s very nice Orlando condo. My friend Curt Stallion is here, who you may know from the recent ROH Top Prospects tournament, as well as three other new independent wrestlers from down south. Although this was an awful, awful day of travel and frustration, there is nothing that a few cold beers and pro wrestling can’t fix, as we all finally relax in the warm breeze of a clear Florida night, and watch some New Japan Pro Wrestling.
