In addition to the June 8th Slammiversary pay-per-view in Southaven, MS, Total Nonstop Action (TNA) Wrestling will also hold a house show on Friday, June 6th at the Black River Coliseum in Poplar Bluff, MO.
Tickets for the show, which start as low as $20, go on sale this Friday, May 2nd. Tickets may be purchased at the Coliseum box office, by calling 866-646-8849 or by visiting www.ticketmaster.com.
The card is scheduled to include: Kurt Angle, Samoa Joe, A. J. Styles, the Motor City Machine Guns, Awesome Kong, Jay Lethal, Tomko, James Storm & more.
The Black River Coliseum opened in 1999 and has since featured several wrestling shows. The first scheduled show, set for late 2000, was supposed to be a Dale Gagne AWA Superstars show featuring an autograph session with Bill Goldberg and a mix of WWF, WCW, ECW and independent talents on the card. However, that show was cancelled when building director Calvin Rutledge received word from all three major organizations (WWF, WCW & ECW) that their talents would not be allowed to work the card.
The original Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW)held its next-to-last show ever at the building. That night is special to RRONews.com owner Brian Tramel as several of the talents he worked with received a tryout following the show. The match was performed in front of ECW talent.
Later that summer, I was involved with the next show at the arena, presented by Memphis Championship Wrestling (MCW). The card featured several WWF talents including Bradshaw, Faarooq, Spike Dudley, Ivory, Raven, Rikishi and others.
The next event is even more special to me as it was Lethal Attitude Wrestling's Black River Brawl, held Jan. 11, 2003. Yours truly was still a partner in the organization at the time. Ironically, TNA Management's Jeff Jarrett, Jeremy Borash and Don West, were all impressed with the turnout and the venue. I'm not surprised they booked the building, just surprised its taken almost 5 1/2 years to do so.
Harley Race ran the building once, I believe in 2005, with his World League Wrestling (WLW) promotion. Dusty Rhodes was the featured guest.
The last, most recent event there was a WWE owned ECW house show in June 2006. The event drew approximately 2,600 fans. It was the biggest ECW-only house show that WWE ran during a brief tour.
Check out www.blackrivercoliseum.com for more info on the TNA card.
