Thoughts On That Symposium

I managed to find a video of  the now controversial Thirty Years of WrestleMania Symposium yesterday.

Wow.

The event took place this past Saturday and was organised by both World Wrestling Entertainment and 2K Games to coincide with the upcoming release of the next WWE video game.

Jim Ross was the host and the plan was for him to ask an array of WWE stars from the past and present a series of questions based on a WrestleMania theme.

The other stars attending the symposium were Dolph Ziggler, Daniel Bryan, Rey Mysterio, Paul Heyman, Mick Foley, Ric Flair and Steve Austin.

On paper, it looked like a good opportunity to see a band of stars talk about wrestling's biggest event. It turned into - and I quote Jim Ross here - a train wreck.

It is apparent that some of the guys had been drinking before they took to the stage. The most notable person was Flair.

It was sad to see Ric Flair ruin this thing. He has gone through hell this year so, in hindsight, it was definitely not the best idea to have him drinking before being a part of this.

With that said, some of the most interesting things I learned from this near ninety minute event came from Flair.

He told a story on how he placed his Hall of Fame ring on his son, Reid's finger as his casket was being closed. He then gave his eldest son, David, the Hall of Fame ring he received as part of the Four Horsemen induction last year. Triple H and WWE ended up giving Flair a third ring with Reid's name engraved on it which was an extremely nice gesture.

He also shot down Daniel Bryan at one point and also complained about the company not booking a Hulk Hogan versus Ric Flair match at WrestleMania VIII.

I don't which straw broke the camel's back first but this ended up with Flair not being brought in for a surprise appearance at SummerSlam the following night. It also led to Stephanie McMahon having to apologise to the WWE's partners in this venture.

As for the game - I didn't take that much away from it other than you can create your own dream WrestleMania matches (can't you do that in most of the other WrestleMania themed games?).

One really interesting gimmick of the new game is that they will only use High Definition in the WrestleMania settings that took place during the era of HD television. So, say I wanted to have Ric Flair versus Randy Savage from WrestleMania VIII, the Hoosier Dome will look exactly like it did in 1992 and so will the way it is viewed. If I wanted to do The Rock against John Cena from this year's WrestleMania - the game will be in HD.

It will probably annoy some people but I think that is a neat idea.

The game is out in the autumn.