WWE Axxess Friday 4/5/2013 coverage

So, I have a lot of disposable income, and a lot of time off banked at work, therefore I have the ability to do a lot of stuff pretty much whenever I want. When I heard WrestleMania was going to take place pretty much right in my backyard, I figured I may as well go, even though I’m at best a casual fan. I watch all the shows every week, but usually just for background noise and only pay attention for the good matches. I grabbed my camera and took a trip up the turnpike to WrestleMania Axxess, WWE’s fan convention, to pretty much wait in line all day. See the pics and details after the jump.

Before I went over to Axxess, I read online about the WWE Superstore at Met Life Stadium. It’s described on the website as “The largest collection of WWE merchandise all under one roof!”. It was hardly that at all, it was just the standard Met Life Stadium team shop swapped out for WWE stuff. I was hoping to pick up a sweet CM Punk “Best in the World” shirt, but all the merchandise was pretty focused on the event itself, so instead I got this sweet CM Punk vs. Undertaker shirt that you’ll see me wearing all weekend (don’t worry, I’m washing it between days).

But the good thing about the store is all weekend they are doing a few signings there, for people who don’t have Axxess tickets. I had three people I wanted to see all weekend: CM Punk (not gonna happen, couldn’t get VIP passes, stupid Ticketmaster!), AJ Lee (also not gonna happen, she’s scheduled up against the Hall of Fame ceremony) and Kaityln. Well, turns out she was doing a signing at 4 PM. Because I cant tell time, and drastically underestimated traffic, I ended up at the Izod Center at around 12:30 PM (which meant free parking, Booya! Saved $20), even though wristbands weren’t given out until 2. This gave me plenty of time to browse the store and get in line with no problems. I ended up being like #10 in line just after 1 PM. The only problem with this is I then had a 3 hour wait outside in the parking lot. Which wouldn’t be so bad, it was a fun time, everyone around me was extremely friendly, and I had long geeky discussions about booking decisions with a bunch of people from the UK, Australia, and Boston to kill the time. Except that now half of my body is totally sunburnt, but its a small price to pay. These pictures totally don’t do her justice, but Kaitlyn is extremely hot, do yourself a favor and Google image search that, especially her older bodybuilding pictures, you’ll be glad you did.

So I was able to get my autograph relatively fast, and made it back over to the Izod Center at 4:30, which meant another hour and a half of waiting. They really should just call Axxess “WWE Line Con”, as that is pretty much all you do. Like literally. Once I was inside, I walked around the concourse, which is set up with a bunch of displays of WWE memorabilia. They had a whole section dedicated to the late, great, Andre the Giant, including a lifesize statue, standing a full 7’3″ tall. The girl sitting on his lap in the tuxedo picture is a young Stephanie McMahon. Just his hand is nearly twice the size of her head! I was most excited about the magazine detailing his appearance on the Six Million Dollar Man as Bigfoot, becasue I’m a nerd like that.

There was a wall with every promotional poster for every WrestleMania, which in and of itself isn’t too exciting. But in front of this wall they also had a bunch of WrestleMania ring attire, including famous outfits like HBK Shawn Michaels’ crazy sparkly suit, The Undertaker’s robe from WrestleMania 15, and HHH’s barbarian outfit. In addition, they also had the throne HHH used during this same entrance. On the side of the HBK picture is one of Mr. T’s boxing gloves from WrestleMania 2.

After the wall of posters came a display of most of the belts of the modern era, ranging from the Fabulous Moolah’s Woman’s Championship belt, to most of the belts of the attitude era, to all the belts from NXT and the current four minor Championship belts: Diva, World Tag Team, US, and Intercontinential. Separate from this display, but around the rest of the arena, they also had the Womans’ Championship belt from Wrestlemania 1 and the belt Bob Backland wore when he was champion in the 70’s.

The last set of displays set up around the concourse was a few displays for each member of the 2013 class being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately several of my pictures didn’t come out well or were unviewable due to glare, so I don’t have a picture of the belt Bruno Sammartino wore during his time as champion, but I do have outfits from various incarnations of Mick Foley, along with some of Trish Status’ hats and super sparkly robes (that don’t photograph too well), and her WrestleMania XX entrance attire.

So I was able to run around and see everything displayed out in the concourse in a brisk 15 minutes. Then the only thing left to do is the main attraction of Axxess, the lines. No, I mean the Superstars. The one problem with Axxess is they have 6 Superstars out signing at a time, and they swap out midway through the session, in addition to 3 Legends and a few photo ops. It’s physically impossible to get to every one of them in a given session, which may be why WWE has 6 different sessions throughout the weekend. Frankly, unless you are some huge superfan, there is no need to attend more than one, especially at $45 (or $60 after fees, plus parking/transit) a shot. The other major problem is they aren’t releasing a full accurate schedule. They list a few of the big names, but not all of them, so you have to kind of guess and hope that you actually want to see the people who are there. For this session the announced names were The Miz, Alberto Del Rio, The Shield, Kofi Kingston, Ted DiBiase, Fandango, Zack Ryder and Alicia Fox. What they don’t tell you is what they are doing, or when. Alberto Del Rio only cut a promo (which we have full video of below), Ted DiBiase (Jr., they really need to specify if it’s not going to be the Million Dollar Man) was just doing a staged photo shoot, and Kofi Kingston and Zack Ryder weren’t even there. Unannounced names included 3MB, Brad Maddox, Tensai, Terry Funk, Mil Mascaras, Teddy Long, Aksana, the Bella Twins, and Michael McGillicutty. There was supposed to be a text message service that would send you full details at the time of the event, but I still haven’t received a one of them, and I signed up on Monday.

Now, as I said, lines. That’s pretty much all there was to the event. But fortunately, this was the best thing about the event, and it happened only by happenstance. Usually Axxess is held in a convention center, but WWE was unable to book any in the NYC area, as their fist choice, the Javits center in Manhattan (home to NYCC) was booked years in advance. The only available venue was the Izod Center, so they had to improvise, and it was fantastic. Rather than long ass lines snaking through the concourse, they instead built little stages in the seats for all the Superstars, then would pull guests down into sections of the arena to sit while they waited. For a fat old man who had already waited in line for close to 5 hours, this was much appreciated. And guests weren’t just sitting there twiddling their thumbs, down on the arena floor there was a bunch of stuff going on to watch. They had a bunch of things setup, mostly for kids, like a WWE 13 booth, and a Fruity Pebbles ring (a deep pit surrounded by a ring that was full of multicolored foam blocks and looked like a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. I so wanted to dive in, but they weren’t allowing in adults). The main attraction though was they had a ring, and they put on a bunch of matches or had people cut promos, including dueling promos from Jack Swagger and the one above from Alberto Del Rio, or had kids come out and do stuff like ring entrance and Superstar impression contests. It was cool to have something to see while waiting. They had a sumo contest between two guys in fat suits refereed by Tamina Snuka. It was kinda unfair, as one dude was a rugby player from Australia, and one was a pediatrician. The only problem was that the actual matches were from stars of NXT, so no one had any idea who they were. R-Truth did come out for one match, but I didn’t see who it was against, it was still a NXT star and not a main roster player. They did put on a nice divas match, who I think was between Audrey Marie and Kendall Skye based on my research, but I could be wrong. (Indeed I am wrong. Further research shows that was Sasha Banks and not Kendall Skye.) Sure was nice to look at though, even if the wrestling still wasn’t very crisp.

The other bonus of the wait was that most of the activities were run by the WWE’s newest backstage member, Renee Young. If you’re not familiar, she only made her TV debut on SmackDown last week, but she’s been doing The History of Monday Night Raw on WWE on Demand with Matt Striker since January, and she’s not only adorable, but totally hilarious. And not just because it’s funny when little 5’2″ her tries to hold a mic up to 7’0″ Big Show and interview him and not look ridiculous. I hope the WWE starts to use her more, as she’s mainly just been doing the internet pre-shows before pay per views.

OK, so finally, the Superstars. I think overall WWE managed to do a great job, but it just needed a little more consistency. While the Superstars were great and very friendly people, the volunteers weren’t, as per standard procedure at any con. Over at the Bella Twins booth (and the Superstore signings), they had one guy just there to take people’s cameras to take pictures with the Superstars. And the Bella’s were extremely sociable and let everyone come around behind the table for photos, though they did yell at the camera guy to not hold the cameras pointed down so much, so as not to be totally down blouse, which is pretty much their main attraction, especially after Nikki’s recent “enhancements”. However, when I made my way over to Aksana’s booth, she barely said anything, and when I asked the volunteer there to take my picture, he flat out said “No, not allowed”. Fortunately, the guy behind me in line offered to take the shot so long as I returned the favor, which was nice. Brad Maddox was late to his own booth (which is totally in character). He was chatty, and frankly surprised me when I asked him when he’d finally get in a ring and wrestle when he told me “When I’m ready, I’m not ready yet”, which was very frank and not at all what I expected of him to say.

Final Thoughts? Well, it was nice to meet some WWE Superstars. There is just simply too many of them there to see everything. While I get that who does what and how (Will they shake hands? How long do they talk, if at all? Photos in front of or behind the table, if at all, etc.) is largely personal and up to the Superstar and line depth, not everyone has a friend to take their picture or is interested in autographs, so they need a dedicated person doing that at all the Superstars, not just some. They also need to work on the scheduling. The WWE brags all about their social presence, but I didn’t see any tweets or Facebook messages about timings, nor did I get the text messages I signed up for. If you just wanna meet your favorite superstar, go get in their line and then watch whatever goes on in the ring. I’d recommend bringing something for them to sign (I saw a lot of people with the new WWE Encyclopedia, but I can’t justify $35 for a program which is just basically a yearbook for them to sign), or else you’ll just end up with the below, which is what they’ll give you for “free” to sign on if you don’t have your own item. If you wanted too, you can be in and out in less than a hour. But there’s no need to attend more than one session. And avoid the Saturday night and Sunday sessions, as Saturday all the important people are attending the Hall of Fame, and Sunday everyone actually in WrestleMania is busy prepping, so it will be all NXT stars.
 

Stay Tuned for more coverage on Monday of the Hall of Fame Ceremony.

*A note on picture quality: Apparently I turned my camera off while it was still saving video, and that corrupted my SD card. I was able to recover most of the pictures, but many of them only recovered lower quality thumbnails. Still higher quality than my old camera. I’ll figure this technology thing out eventually!

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook