A Live Report From Jim Ross’ ‘One Man Show’ During WrestleMania Weekend

Credit: PWInsider

I attended last night’s Jim Ross Show at the House of Blues in Dallas, Texas following the WWE Hall of Fame. The show was completely sold out and featuring Rob Van Dam as the mystery guest plus appearances from Shane Helms and Jeff Hardy.

It was, at they say, a racous affair and easily as good, if not better, than the last time I saw Ross’ show a few years ago. While the Ross everyone saw on TV for decades was a storyteller presenting the best story possible for the promotion he was working for, this is Ross the storyteller speaking from his own perspective, letting his wit and sarcasm come to the forefront. Ross even went back and forth with a few fans and let some expletives fly.

The show began with Ross telling stories about his career including some great stories about Dick Murdoch since we were in Texas. One involved Murdoch meeting what he thought was a woman one night when he was out with Ross on Bourbon Street. Ross also told a great story about flying in Bill Watts’ plane with Watts and Andre the Giant. Watts was the pilot and with Andre, they had pretty much hit their weight capacity…and Andre had to have his cases of beer on the plane.

While telling stories of Andre, Ross compared him to Big Show today and broke down what made Andre unique and special as an attraction and how WWE didn’t do the same with Show, who Ross personally recruited. Ross admitted that he was as much to blame as anyone in that process. Perhaps the best Andre story had to do with the woman who propositioned Ross….trying to bribe him to get a photo of Andre’s manhood.

Ross also took issue with some of the chants that fans do today, including “This is Awesome” and “You Still Have It”, mocking the chants as he bounced back and forth on stage.

Once RVD was brought out as a mystery guest, the tone of the show changed into a Q&A that was pretty raw in tone with RVD specifically speaking about how he should be presented, why he pushed for ECW to be brought back, what was going through his mind while he was waiting to do a now historic dive onto Bam Bam Bigelow, dropping the WWE & ECW titles and more.

Wrestlemania was also a big topic of discussion with Ross and Van Dam both agreeing Undertaker needed to win at Wrestlemania and Van Dam especially being harsh on the idea of Shane being in thatangspot.

Van Dam also spoke of his anger at being told he needed to go and have a better relationship with Vince McMahon when he had been “busting his ass” every night and talked about the idea that he didn’t want to have to “kiss ass” to have a higher position.

As the night went on, fans would bring RVD and Ross shots, which helped add to the more liberal, honest storytelling and interactions.

Towards the end, Jeff Hardy (still dressed from his Wrestlecon Supershow match) and Shane Helms appeared, even surprising Ross and they joined in with some of the fun.

Overall, an excellent night and I highly recommend hitting the Monday Show after Raw if you are still in town.

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