Royal Rumble 2009

It's the time of the year again where 30 men will battle it out in one ring, until only one man is left standing, and the victor of this Royal Rumble match will go on to face the reigning champion of his choice at the grandest event of them all... Wrestle Mania XXV.

Here is the card for the Royal Rumble pay-per-view event so far...

John Cena (c) vs John Bradshaw Layfield (w/ Shawn Michaels)
World Heavyweight Championship match
My prediction: If JBL wins this, we'll all be damned!! Then again, I got a feeling that HBK will reclaim his soul by giving his 'employee' a dose of Sweet Chin Music or something...

Jeff Hardy (c) vs Edge
WWE Championship match
My prediction: Given the series of unfortunate incidents that Jeff had been through in recent weeks (most particularly the pyro malfunction that occurred last Friday), it remains unclear whether he would be able to walk out with the title intact, let alone even be able to participate in first place. Edge could do nothing but worry for the well-being of the champion... but it seems that Edge may have a better chance of regaining the title.

Jack Swagger (c) vs Matt Hardy
ECW Championship match
My prediction: Jack Swagger confirm will retain the title one lah... still I must admit I was surprised by his victory over Matt even though he did it with some help of an exposed turnbuckle. And believe it or not, this marks the "Real American"'s PPV debut.

Beth Phoenix (c) vs Melina
Women's Championship match
My prediction: I do hope Melina wins this one. The Glamazon has been holding onto the title for waaaay too long already. Then again, with 'crazed fan' Rosa Mendes rooting for BP in recent weeks, anything can happen...

Here is the list of confirmed Royal Rumble participants as of January 23rd... (updated on 26th Jan)

1. Triple H
2. The Big Show
3. Vladimir Kozlov (first time)
4. Shelton Benjamin
5. The Undertaker
6. Randy Orton
7. Rey Mysterio
8. Kofi Kingston (first time)
9. The Miz
10. John Morrison
11. Kane
12. Ted DiBiase (first time)
13. Cody Rhodes
14. Santino Marella
15. R-Truth
16. The Brian Kendrick (first time)
17. Carlito
18. CM Punk
19. Finlay
20. Mark Henry
21. Chris Jericho
22. Chavo Guerrero
23. The Great Khali
24. MVP
25. JTG
26. Shad Gaspard
27. Goldust
28. Mike Knox
29. Hacksaw Jim Duggan
30. ROB VAN DAM???

Who's gonna win the Rumble and earn the opportunity for a championship match at Wrestle Mania XXV?

List of recently released WWE personnel...

January 9th
D'Lo Brown- former European/Intercontinental Champion reduced to doing absolutely nothing
Bam Neely- worthless fella, once known as Chavo Guerrero's bodyguard
Val Venis- former Intercontinental Champion being reduced to jobber status in recent years
Kevin Thorn- known for his time as part of the New Brood in ECW, used to be known as Mordecai in 2004
Gavin Spears- another worthless bum, kept losing to other ECW Superstars
Tim White (referee)- best known as the regular for "Lunchtime Suicide" between 2005 to 2006

January 13th
Ron Simmons- best known as one half of the APA, as well as for saying out his trademark quote which is... "DAMN!!!"
Sgt. Slaughter- 2004 Hall of Fame inductee, former WWE Champion

January 14th
Matt Cappotelli- co-winner of WWE Tough Enough season 3 alongside John Hennigan, better known as the "Shaman of Sexy" John Morrison.

January 15th
Mike Adamle- former announcer of various tv shows, former general manager of Raw (July to Nov 2008), contract not renewed into the new year

January 16th
Victoria- WWE diva who recently retired following a losing effort against Michelle McCool
Hardcore Holly- 15-year veteran in the WWE, started off as "Sparky Plugg" back in 1993

Love Mattere roadshow at Hougang Mall

Happy Birthday to Jack Neo and Nur Ayu

Yesterday I left the house a bit late at 1 plus, meeting up with Terence at Hougang Mall and had our lunch at Kopi Tiam. Then we went downstairs to await the start of the event.

Michelle Tay was the emcee for the event, much like she had been for the previous roadshows in the past few weeks. As Gilbert Chan and Jack Neo came out, Mich rallied everyone to sing a Birthday song for "Liang Ximei" (it happened to be Jack's birthday). Then came the youngsters Alex (who plays son of Henry and Yann Yann) and Natalie (who plays love interest of Alex). Natalie is very chioh xiah, I couldn't resist snapping lotsa pictures of her again (much like what I did for the previous events at AMK and Vivo). Natalie sang CNY song, same one she sang at AMK Hub last week. Finally, the main leads arrived... Henry and Yann Yann. Hui Ge went ahead to say that very funny "English-improvement" joke with the use of colors inbetween. :-p


As the event was about to come to an end, the cast started giving away hong baos to the fans present within the central region. I received mine from Yann Yann... and I got her to autograph on the i-weekly magazine containing an article on her. :-)

I took pic with Michelle Tay before the event began, before the cast arrived...

As the cast were on their way to the exit, me and Terence managed to take pic with the beautiful Natalie after the show, woo hoo!! (but arghh, the sunlight ruined the whole shot lah...)

After the cast left in the bus for the next location at Ang Mo Kio Hub, me and Terence went our separate ways... I headed to Heartland Mall for a haircut, and I joined my family for dinner.

This is the set of hong baos I received from Yann Yann towards the end of the show... I think i'm going to watch it later this coming week. :-)

You can go to the following link to view more pictures taken during the roadshow... http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=85313&id=556354026

Wedding Game event at Bugis, and Late Nite at Esplanade

Happy Birthday to Fiona Xie and Adria Tham

I came across a certain stage setting located in the midst of Bugis on my way to have lunch. I thought to myself, "why not I drop by to take a look before going to the Esplanade?" And that's exactly what I did after knocking off from work at abt 6 pm... :-)


So immediately after I knocked off from work, I headed back to Bugis to await the start of the roadshow. As expected, it started late at abt 6.30 pm insead of 6 pm. Other than Ekachai, Dennis Chew, Alice Lau and Hei Ren (some Taiwanese heartthrob), there were also 3 sportswomen from Team Singapore... retired table tennis player Jing Junhong, national swimmer Tao Li and a certain Pearlyn Wee or something like that. And yeah, I know Tao Li is the cousin of many people's worst enemy... I bet Mr Kiam Pa will be hopping mad if he ever found out that he missed out on such a rare opportunity (i.e. to see his cousin Tao Li). It was during the event that I happened to see Edmund and Jessie. :-)

More pictures can be found here... http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=85267&id=556354026&ref=mf

Event ended at abt 7.10 pm, with the cast heading for the first of 2 gala premieres at Great World City (the 2nd one was at VivoCity). I had a chat with Terence for a while, then I went to have dinner at the food court located at the basement level of Suntec City. Walked around the place, then went to Esplanade to attend Daphne's Late Nite performance at the Recital Studio. Sorry to disappoint you readers, but photography was prohibitd during the show, hence the noticeable absence of photos on Daphne performing.

The turnout was quite good with 90% of the seats being filled up... unfortunately, the audience seemed rather dead and unethusiastic, I think I was one of very few people clapping along to some of Daphne's songs (some of which were covers by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Avril Lavigne, M2M, etc). Jack from Jack and Rai was one of the guitarists as well as back-up vocalist. Her diction seemed to have become a bit Westernized since the last time I saw her at Ngee Ann Poly which was abt a year ago... but that's mostly because she is now studying in Perth. Of all the people I expected to see, I only managed to see Keith and Shawn Tok (!!!). There was no sign of Daniel, Joakim, Benji or even Sly anywhere within the studio...

After the show, I took pic with the cutie pie and got her autograph on my ticket. And yeah, most of the people were waiting for her as well. I reached back home on time before Mother could turn me into a pumpkin... :-p

Guangzhou dancers at Raffles City

Happy Birthday to... Mas Selamat
Problem is we don't even know what's happened to him already!!

Before I went to MediaCorp on Wednesday, I heard some loud music from the 3rd level of Raffles City, so I went up to take a look...

Eight beauties in pink attire doing some folk dance. Cutie pies!! :-p


Tribal-dance by 4 guys and 4 girls. One of the girls has got a baby face... the music sounded catchy yet a little offensive cos one part of the singing sounded a lot like a vulgarity directed at a certain race.


Martial arts-based dance by 8 guys. I wasn't really interested in male dancers, so I didn't take much pictures.

As the performances came to an end, the dancing instructors came on stage and opened up a scroll to unveil some hidden message or something. The whole thing ended at about 1345 hrs. The Chinse dancers are an awesome bunch.

I saw this banner outside Raffles City and that's when I got a clearer picture on the performances. Ahh, no wonder... I'm thinking of watching the Guangzhou Song & Dance Troupe performance this Friday before heading to the Esplanade to watch Daphne's performance. And yes, I think I'm gonna check out the Nanjing Acrobatics Troupe sometime between 28th Jan to 4th Feb! ;-)