e trip to San Fransisco for the Convention from hell!! LOL JD is currently settling in at Louisville, KY and will start for OVW real soon. JD and April are also available for booking in this area. If anyone is interested, drop me a line and I will get you hooked up with them. Pictured here are JD, Chyna and April.CLICK HERE for more photos from the event!!
Fiasco in Frisco by JD Michaels
Where do I begin....
We were booked for months. There is no reason why this should have been the disaster it was .There was more than enough time, period.
A few weeks back we got in touch with Chris Salisbury the promoter as we were awaiting our plane tickets and itinerary. He actually was slightly offended when we told him the whole thing seemed a bit suspicious. 'I'm not from your business of liars and bullshitters, please don't disrespect me by grouping me with those who have conned you in the past. This will be very professional'....We got our plane tickets so that was a start...but this event was over before it started.
The Fiasco In 'Frisco actually started when we got our tickets. We were scheduled to arrive Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco (via Hartford, even though we told him we were moving to Louisville) which we didn't want due to the high cost of everything out there and that we would only be getting paid for our time Friday through Sunday. We changed our tickets to Thursday which cost us a $80 change fee so from the get go, things were not on our side, or pretty much any of the other wrestlers and MMA fighters as we would soon find out. We landed Thursday afternoon in Oakland (which was 45 min away from San Fran, but cheaper plane tix...Lame) and were waiting for our 'driver' until I spotted a goober running down the sidewalk damn near tripping over his own feet with a 4X6 card that read April & Jordan. I had the luxury of riding to SF in a '89 Honda with a bullshit coffee can for a muffler while April rode in a pickup truck with our luggage. Apparently limo's were supposed to pick everyone up, but they had sent the 20 seat Hummer Limo to grab the Rowdy one himself, Roddy Piper and the other limo's were temporarily MIA. We were told we could do whatever we wanted for the rest of the day and to be ready for 10am the next day when the convention would start.
We check in and run into promoter Chris by the elevator who proceeds to tell us despite getting deposits, Hall and Nash were holding out for more money and refused to get on their planes, Kurt Angle was sick and couldn't come and Sid wouldn't show either. 'I don't know how you are apart of this business. I am already sick of dealing with wrestlers and it has only been a few months' he says. As we got on the elevator he said we would receive our itineraries later on in the day. Having been seriously deprived of sleep for the last 2 weeks due to relocating to Louisville, KY we decided to go to sleep. We woke up and ordered pizza which cost 30 bones for just the one pie, and fell back asleep around 11pm with no itinerary. Alarm goes off at 8:30 and around 9:45 we are ready to go. We call Chris to see what happened with the itineraries and he said they would be handing them out around noon. 'Noon? What happened to 10am?' we asked. 'Huh? It starts at 2pm today'. Lovely, nothing like getting up 5 hrs early and ready to roll with nowhere to go.
We head downstairs to find a big pile of wrestlers waiting to go to the Cow Palace which was apparently 25 min away. But this time, the limo's did show up and started taking us over. We headed over with Scott Norton & his wife Tammy, Blue Meanie & his gf Tracey and Larry Zybysko. Good thing we honestly didn't have any expectations going into this, because they would have been out the window as soon as we got there. Many vendors (who paid insane fees to be there) had taken up about 70% of the room with trailers and booths. They had a measly 8 tables set up for the 'photo ops' and then just a bunch of gaps. Big Scott Norton says 'Where the hell are we all supposed to sit?' I didn't even see enough room for a hundred wrestlers, let alone tables for all of us. Dr. Death Steve Williams started running out of patience fast and went, grabbed a table, table cloth and set up his own spot underneath a sponsor's banner. I asked him if he thought the sponsor would ask him to move so they could set up there and he said 'I'd like to see them move me'. The Doc has a reputation of being one of the toughest the biz has seen and his victory over cancer just proves that. The Doc has hole in his throat with a button about 2 inches deep that he has to press to speak. When he speaks now, I honestly think he is more intimidating than ever. We got word some of the wrestlers were dropped off at the front door instead of the back and security wouldn't let them in without passes. WHAT? I guess Brian Knobbs and Lance Hoyt just look like fans trying to get a freebie. April and I set up a table for us and Lance Hoyt in a open space we found.
We had a good time catching up and just bullshitting as well as commentating on what was er wasn't happening. Some people have criticized Lance's work, but I could care less 'cause he is a cool cat in my book. As the day progressed we noticed one thing above all (besides the female mannequin beside us with the huge rack...only in Cali I guess)...was the lack of fans. I mean, throughout the day, probably 350 - 400 fans came through (and by talking to most of them, they all paid hundreds to be there) but for an event of this magnitude, there should have been 3500 fans. As Tracy Brooks came over to commiserate on the lack of enthusiasm of the convention amongst other things, Bubba Ray swung by with a bottle of Jack and told everyone to take a big ass swig. It helped. Another breath of fresh air was finally meeting Bob and Mike from SLAM! Wrestling. They've written a few nice pieces involving me over the years so it was nice to meet them.
The card for Friday nights show kept changing with the no shows and the TNA guys who couldn't appear on PPV. Why did this have to air on PPV anyway? Originally I was scheduled to take on Sharkboy then it got changed to vs Sharkboy and Billy Kidman in a 3 way...but that got turned into me and Kidman vs Sharkboy and someone. Then that got scrapped and I was told I would probably take on Al Snow. But Al was then put into a 5 way ECW Hardcore match which got changed into Al and the Blue Meanie vs Luke Hawx and his partner.
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