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A report from Friday night's WWE Axxess session, courtesy Leon Peters and PWInsider:
I went to the Friday night WWE Axxess session and thought I'd send along some quick notes.
- Mickie James was at one of the photo stands and I had the chance to ask her about her leg injury and she said it was doing real good. I also asked her about the tag match on Sunday and she said she will indeed be working in the match and is looking forward to it.
- They had one match during the session. Justin Gabriel vs. Michael Tarver. About a 6 minute match with Gabriel winning with the 450 splash. Not sure if this will count towards their NXT records or not.
- Edge did a Q&A in the ring. One question asked was about reuniting with Christian. He said he would love to work with him again whether it's as a team or as opponents. He said if they did reunite he hoped it would be a one-time farewell tour. He didn't want to be like KISS or the Stones and have their 5th or 6th farewell tour. He was also asked about his new Slim Jim commercials and he said, "Yeah. I guess I'm the new Randy Savage. Snap into it! Ooh yeah, brother!" I hope Vince didn't hear that.
- Howard Finkel did a trivia segment with fans around ringside. All questions were WrestleMania-related. One question he asked was "What move did Hulk Hogan use to beat Andre The Giant at WrestleMania III?" A fan at ringside answered "the legdrop". Surprisingly Finkel said he was wrong. Another guy answered "bodyslam" and Fink said he was correct. Wow. That first guy got screwed.
-The THQ SmackDown vs Raw 2010 Video Game Tournament was a lot of fun. The Axxess session was supposed to run from 6pm – 10pm, but the final video game match between Kofi Kingston and JTG ran really long. The session didn't end until almost 10:30pm. Full results of the tournament are below.
FIRST ROUND
JTG vs Shad Gaspard —– Winner: JTG
Ricky The Dragon Steamboat vs. Jimmy Wang Yang —– Winner: Jimmy Wang Yang (After losing, Ricky gave yang a hard chop and Yang took a big bump, almost hitting his head on the TV screen on the mat. They hugged afterwards.)
Brie Bella vs. Nikki Bella —– Winner: Nikki Bella (I was standing next to the Bellas' mom at ringside. I only recognized her because they showed her on WWE Superstars a couple of weeks ago.)
The Great Khali vs. Hornswoggle —– Winner: Hornswoggle
Kofi Kingston vs. Evan Bourne —– Winner: Kofi Kingston
Sgt. Slaughter vs. Carlito —– Winner: Sgt. Slaughter
Beth Phoenix vs. Maryse —– Winner: Beth Phoenix
Dusty Rhodes vs. Matt Hardy —– Winner: Matt Hardy
QUARTER FINAL ROUND
JTG vs. Jimmy Wang Yang —– Winner: JTG
Nikki Bella vs. Hornswoggle —– Winner: Hornswoggle
Kofi Kingston vs. Sgt. Slaughter —– Winner: Kofi Kingston
Beth Phoenix vs. Matt Hardy —– Winner: Beth Phoenix
SEMI FINAL ROUND
JTG vs. Hornswoggle —– Winner: JTG
Kofi Kingston vs. Beth Phoenix —– Winner: Kofi Kingston (Beth actually came really close to beating him. She played as The Undertaker.)
FINALS
JTG vs. Kofi Kingston —– Winner: JTG (Before they played each other, Kofi wanted JTG to play as his own character because JTG had been playing as Randy Orton through the whole tournament. JTG used Orton anyway and won.)
Just an interesting note. One of the wrestlers, I forget who, used Jeff Hardy as their character in the tournament and Howard Finkel, who did the announcing and commentating throughout the whole tournament, would only refer to him as "JH". Pretty funny.
All in all it was a fun time. I highly recommend anyone who travels to WrestleMania in the future to check out one of the Axxess sessions.