Sports

SummerSlam (2021)

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  • Title: SummerSlam (2021)
  • wiki: link

One of cornerstone PPV events of WWE, 2021’s SummerSlam had some memorable moments, but not much in terms of memorable matches. Both main events showcased champions battling over-the-hill wrestlers coming out of retirement as Roman Reigns beat down the 44 year-old John Cena (who hasn’t wrestled full-time for five years) for the Universal Championship and Bobby Lashley defeated the 54 year-old Goldberg to retain the WWE Championship.

The biggest moment of the night, and only real surprise, came in the shake-up for the SmackDown Women’s Championship as Becky Lynch made an unexpected return and defeated Bianca Belair in under a minute in what can’t really be referred to as a match. A contender for match of the night, in the Raw Women’s Championship triple-threat match Charlotte Flair (as expected) defeated Nikki A.S.H. and Rhea Ripley to win another title and continue her run as the most decorated women’s champion in WWE history.

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Wrestlemania XXXVII

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  • Title: Wrestlemania XXXVII
  • wiki: link

Wrestlemania XXXVII DVD reviewWrestlemania XXXVII comes to DVD and Blu-ray featuring all 14 matches over the two night event. The first WWE Pay-Per-View with fan attendance in over a year didn’t offer much in the way of surprises but it did deliver the first main event to feature two African American women headlining the event as Bianca Belair defeated Sasha Banks.

Notable matches included Bobby Lashley successfully defending his WWE Championship against Drew McIntyre, Cesaro winning his first Wrestlemania singles match, Rhea Ripley successfully defending the Raw Women’s Championship against Asuka, and Roman Reigns successfully defending WWE Universal Championship against Edge and Daniel Bryan.

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WWE Elimination Chamber 2021

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  • Title: WWE Elimination Chamber 2021
  • wiki: link

WWE Elimination Chamber 2021 DVD reviewReleased on DVD, WWE Elimination Chamber 2021 includes all seven of the matches from this year’s Elimination Chamber PPV (although it’s stretching things to refer to two of them as matches) plus the Fatal 4-Way Match which was part of the kick-off show is included as an extra. Most of the matches are short (under 10 minutes each) and the PPV featured no woman’s Elimination Chamber Match for the first time since 2017.

The two Elimination Chamber Matches featured Daniel Bryan defeating Cesaro, Jey Uso, Kevin Owens, Baron Corbin, and Sami Zayn to earn a Universal Championship opportunity (and promptly get squashed by Roman Reigns) and Drew McIntyre successfully defended his title by defeating AJ Styles, Jeff Hardy, Kofi Kingston, Randy Orton, and Sheamus to retain his World Heavyweight Championship before being attacked by Bobby Lashley (who had lost the WWE United States Championship earlier in the evening) and then losing his title when the Miz cashed-in his Money in the Bank contract.

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Red Penguins

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  • Title: Red Penguins
  • IMDb: link

Red Penguins movie reviewRed Penguins looks back at the Pittsburgh Penguins owner Howard Baldwin bailing out the once great HC CSKA Moscow hockey team. Completely unprepared for what they were getting into in a country still struggling with replacing Communism with Capitalism, the Penguins hoped to lay the foundation for Russian players making their way to Pittsburgh and the NHL. A young marketer named Steven Warshaw was sent over to try and drum up support for the flagging team and bring a bit of capitalist know-how and 90s marketing to the former Soviet Union.

The engaging documentary is a bizarre tale including interviews from both American and Russians about the partnership which only lasted two years but involved a strip club under the hockey rink, free beer, a culture clash, the Russian mob, a potential business partnership with Disney, the Russian Army, corruption, and the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Despite the insanity and mismanagement, the Russian Penguins (as they were rebranded) were a short-term success only to be mismanaged leading to the end of the team and leaving behind a bizarre legacy and a legend of dazzling failure.

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Long Gone Summer

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  • Title: Long Gone Summer
  • wiki: link

Long Gone Summer reviewDirector AJ Schnack‘s examination of the historic home-run chase during 1998 Major League Baseball season is a solid documentary in covering the bases of what occurred, even if it fails for too much of its running time to fully capture the magic of the moment or find a way to better frame events following the exposure of rampant steroid use in baseball (which it saves for a lengthy epilogue).

Scheduled to air Sunday night as part of ESPN’s 30 for 30, the film includes interviews with both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa along with plenty of video from 1998 season and interviews from the likes of Bob Costas, Tony La Russa, Kerry Wood, and others. It also, oddly, spends quite a bit of time on Ken Griffey, Jr., who ended the year well off the pace McGwire and Sosa set, while barely mentioning Barry Bonds breaking the record again just a few years later.

Long Gone Summer is informative at times, especially in delving into the friendship born of rivalry between the two players. However, nothing presented here is likely to change your opinion one way or the other about the legitimacy of current baseball records.

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