Brussels Impact!

I embraced my inner red neck last night. Yes, I admit it. I went with Eric to watch some good ol' fashioned male soap opera....which is also known as TNA Wrestling. 

We had actually traveled to London last year for Eric to attend one of their events..I could've sworn I did a blog post about it, but apparently not. I blame my shiny syndrome for that! Anyway, we did the whole shebang then by taking the EuroStar train through the Chunnel, arrived at London St Pancras Station then hopped on the Tube to get to our hotel by Wembley Arena. 

He went solo to the wrestling match while I stayed at the hotel and got pampered with a spa date. Hard life, right? He had a blast and told me all about it..he sounded like a lil kid because he was SO excited about the entire thing since his favorite wrestler was actually there. In fact, here's a picture that he accidentally took of himself last time...he looks totally enamored:

Annnnd here's a picture of his favorite wrestler, Rob Van Dam:

Due to him having such a fantastic time at the match in London, I decided to snag some tickets for us to check 'em out in Brussels since that's only an hour away from here. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for heading back to London since I love it there..but we're both all busted up between his back problems and my knee being out of whack. It's for the best that we didn't trek all over the place like last year. I don't think either of us would've survived, lol. 

So, we headed out last night with some time to spare since we knew we'd hit some sort of traffic because, hey, that's how Brussels is. Unbeknownst to us, we didn't realize how cluttered Brussels downtown actually got. Then again, neither of us have ever experienced that city via car...we've always taken the train. It all become crystal clear why we always took the train, lol. My TomTom said we were only fifteen minutes away from the arena, but we were stuck in traffic for forty stressful minutes. Why was it stressful? Well, taxi drivers in that city apparently have no morals, ethics, or souls..they cut people off when there wasn't any room to begin with, almost caused multiple accidents and we have several close calls. Oh, by the way..we were in my Xterra which isn't very common here. With that being said, people had a knack of staring at the vehicle rather than the road, which caused a little more of an issue when it came to moving along. 

By the time we arrived at Vorst Nationaal, we were a little late for the start of the show due to the traffic AND since we had to park a kilometer away (that's all that was available for parking). But, it's all good since we didn't have to wait in a huge line to get in the door. In fact, we were able to walk right in, get our tickets scanned and off we went to find our seats. When we walked into the seating area, this is the first thing we saw:

The camera makes it look so far away, but we were actually pretty close to the ring! Plus, the arena wasn't packed at all, so we got to sit wherever we wanted unlike when Eric went to London (he said it was absolutely PACKED there). When the wrestlers were in the ring, you could hear them clearly (no microphones) and you weren't straining to figure out what they were doing. 

The first match we got to watch was Douglas Williams verses Gunner. When you watch these guys on TV, they look absolutely massive. I mean, they're big dudes when you see them in person..but Gunner didn't look AS buff, lol. 

The match was pretty interesting....in the end, Gunner ended up winning and the Belgians DID NOT like him at all! They were boo'ing and yelling at him. When he was exiting the ring, he was flipping everyone off. Niiiice! Then Douglas Williams waved to the crowd and thanked them for coming to the event, everyone was cheering and rooting for him. At least they were nice to him :) 

The next match was with Samoa Joe verses Crimson. Eric was rootin' for Joe while I was going for the "big ginger", as he lovingly refers to Crimson. 

After a variety of chop slaps, slams, kicks and all sorts of other technical stuff I know nothing about, MY guy won! HAHA!! Of course, Samoa Joe was a sore loser and had a bit of a hissy fit..attacked Crimson and screamed at fans. Ya know, kept his cool:

Then there was a match with the "Knockouts" which is with the female wrestlers. Honestly, I didn't watch the majority of the match since I was trying to fix Eric's camera and clear some of it's memory. Perfect time to do that, right? He had a ton of pictures on there he never removed (I'm talking a year and a half worth of pictures)..so, lots of deleting took place. Turns out, two of the female wrestlers I liked, which is Tara and Mickie James, won their tag team match against Madison Rain and some other chick. 

One of the next performers was actually from Georgia, and not too far from where Eric grew up. AJ Styles! 

AJ ended up wrestling against a guy named Bully Ray. 

To be honest, Bully Ray was so gross. Given, I understand these guys have a character to play, but some of the things this guy did was absolutely repulsive. He'd hock a loogie into the air and try to catch it (or it'd spatter into the crowd), or he'd spit out the side of the ring which looked like it went into the crowd. Just...GROSS. So, I was VERY happy when AJ ended up winning the match. The Belgians REALLY did NOT like Bully Ray..AT ALL! They kept screaming "YOU SUCK! YOU SUCK!". It was pretty hilarious considering they all had really thick French / Dutch accents while shouting that at him. 

Then there was the "main event", which was a three man match. It was with Kurt Angle, James Storm and Bobby Roode. If Kurt sounds familiar to you, it's because he won a gold metal in the Olympics back in 1996. 

Lots of slaps, throws, slams, and a "Double DDT"...

All three guys got knocked out for a lil bits..

After several minutes of high flying stunts, Angle and Storm ended up losing the match to Roode, but they still celebrated with some bottles of Duvel which is a fabulous beer to get drunk off of.

Beer showers! 

They LOVED Angle! 

Angle and Storm were thanking the crowd for coming to the event, which made the fans go nuts even more. THEN, Storm grabbed the Belgian flag from a fan and was waving it around the ring. They fans went bonkers, chanting his name and really got excited! 

Honestly, I was amazed with some of the stuff these guys did, the hits they took (although some were fake, some weren't) and the fans were absolutely hilarious. When you hear Belgians (with their accent) screaming some of the wrestlers names (sounds NOTHING like it) and throws insults at the bad guys in Dutch..it sounds like a comedy skit. Eric was entertained by not only the wrestlers, but apparently by some of my facial reactions to some of the stuff that was going on, lol. 

All in all, this is what I really cared about:

My husband had a great time! Despite the traffic and dealing with being late, he still had a blast, had a chance to get loud and rowdy with the rest of the fans and watch some good ol' wrestlin'! 

Hopefully we'll still be here around this time next year since TNA announced at the match that they'd be returning to Brussels again :) *fingers crossed*