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Undertaker Signing Report - Tampa, FL
Categories: ReportSend feedback » •One of our users NYY 4 Life attended the Undertaker signing and sent us a report.
NYY 4 Life with The UndertakerNYY 4 Life’s Undertaker AutographsI’ll try to keep it short. Me, My wife & 2 friends arrived around 12:15 and were the first 4 in line and little by little the line grew but it didnt get long till about 30 mins before it started. The woman running it said they sold 272 tickets (of which i bought 12 and if i had to guess i’d say that there was about 150 PPL on line. They let us in around 6:15 and me and my wife were the first 2 in Taker said hello to us and we said hello back. I had 2 bags of of stuff of which contained 15 figures, 2 promos, WM 25 program & a danbury mint gold card. Off topic for a second i got married this past Dec and me and my wife walked out to takers theme and i wore a black leather coat, the hat and had my hair down and the DJ had the strobe light & purple light going and and takers song was blasting and it was INSANE. So i had just that part copied to a DVD and i gave it to him and i threw about 30 pics of my collection in with the DVD. When i walked in i handed him the DVD and told him what we did and he was like Are you serious and i said to look at the pic on the DVD case and he was like Thats Awesome. So I put 4 figures i needed signed in silver on the table and taker says “What are you gonna do with these” and i said put them on my wall and my wife said that we had put pics of my collection in the DVD. So he popped open the DVD case real quick and looked through about 10 pics and looked up at me, put out his hand and thanked me for being a true fan so i shook his hand and said your welcome and i thanked him for signing all my stuff. so as he’s signing my stuff i’m taking to him and as he’s signing my wife is throwing more stuff on the table so after he signed all 19 of my things we got the pics with him. then as we were leaving he said he was gonna watch the DVD when he got back to his hotel and we both thanked him. All in all it was a pretty awesome day so i cant complain. heres pics of my signed stuff and my pic with him
Another one of our users class316 met the Undertaker and sent us a report.
class316 with the Undertakerclass316’s Undertaker autographsLet us now step out of the Savage realm and into a realm one notch below the Savage realm: An autograph signing with the Undertaker.
When this signing was announced, I almost immediately bought my meet and greet tickets.
I of course received a lot of criticism from people online and offline. Most people cannot justify going out of one’s way for just one person. And I agree with that notion. To be honest there are very very few people I would make a plane trip for. However, this statement is a moot point because the Undertaker is not just a man. He is the deadman!
This also has to mark the first time I pull a Ben and hop on a plane for one meet.
Price wise, I honestly did not spend much more in this trip than I did for a typical NE convention (superticket + vendors + travel costs). Although I now have a balance on a 6 month interest free credit card that I obtained especially for this trip. I just have to make sure I make at least the minimum payment each month and have no balance after the 6 month deadline. Not too shabby.
Plus I did not only get Undertaker on that trip. I will make a separate report for the non-Undertaker FCW portion of the trip. This report shall remain “Undertaker only” because, well do you really need to ask why?
As stated, the lines did not seem as bad as you would have thought considering it’s the Undertaker. To be honest a the free John Morrsion signing at Best Buy in NJ had more of a Hogan type line than this one!! Of course had this signing been in NJ for $50 an item free photo op you know he would have drawn Hogan x 100. He would have probably needed his own terminology!
Anyhow, it is my turn to meet the Undertaker. They were singling out people with multiple tickets, so when I was allowed to enter I sprung inside before they changed their mind. As I looked there he was, the pheenom, the deadman, in the flesh! I could not believe it!
Finally it’s my turn to meet the Undertaker. I could not believe I was in his presence. I could feel the energy of the awesomeness of the Undertaker! How cool is that?
Sig will be shocked to know that he was actually pretty friendly. Kinda like Randy Orton, Arn Anderson, and Dean Malenko at a signing. I told him what a huge fan I was since 91/92. He thanked me for that. When it came time to have my photo op I begged them to make it a good one. Thankfully it turned out pretty decent!
A PICTURE OF ME WITH THE UNDERTAKER!!!!
A phrase I never thought I’d ever utter in my life without waking up in my bed realizing it was just a dream and telling myself the picture will not actually be in the memory card of my camera!
I am going to make this into a poster! And it will be the center of my Undertaker shrine!!
All in all I got 7 things signed.
That WWF WM13 mag is now complete!! In this order I got Bret, Sid, HBK, Undertaker.
I now consider the Undertaker VIRGILIZED (wow I cannot believe I just typed that!)
While I could use him on at least 2 more things if not more, I will never go out of my way to meet the Undertaker again! He would have to be either within a 1 hour driving distance free signing or someplace I’m already at
And when/if he ever does a convention, he will no doubt be Hogan prices. So I will happily pass on the $200 autograph. As Kris would put it, OVERUSED!!
As it stands, wrestling wise the only thing that could get me back to Tampa is Triple H.
Another one of our users oldschoolwwwf met the Undertaker and sent us a report.
I’ll make this somewhat brief since Rich did a great job on his report and I’m sure Class will also post something worth reading later tonight.
Me and LatinoHeat Lucas made the call to hit this very soon after it was announced. I had spoken with Tammy (who ran it) a number of times to feel this out and she totally led me to believe that Taker would definitely be doing photo ops. She told me that this was his favorite charity and that he had done events for them before and spent hours signing autos and taking photo ops with people. As someone who doesnt s t a l k, or meet, whatever, my chances of coming across Taker were very slim and even if I did, all I ever hear is no photo ops. So I did the math, figuring on 3 items, round trip air, 1 night hotel, rental car, etc, and figured we probably arent that far off $$$ wise from what it would cost me if Taker ever did a signing up here. Plus, life is short so no reason not to do it. He was probably 1 of like 3 or 4 names I would even consider this for. Also being a Wed night signing, I could fly out Wed morning, fly back Thurs morning, miss only a day and a half of work, and only 1 night with Isaac. If this would have been a weekend, very good chance I pass- but this worked out perfect. In my mind, I do think its somewhat nuts to fly somewhere just to essentially meet 1 person but at the same time, its Undertaker so what the hell.
We arrived at the Dallas Bull, a bar/ restuarant type setting around 3:30ish. Before we headed over there, we actually stopped by and met Heavenly Body Jimmy del Ray. One of the promoters who has been trying to book him had given me some info that Jimmy was only about 10 mins from the Taker signing. Since I know others had travelled to meet him at his business recently, and that he seemed cool with it, we took a ride to check it out. He was very cool, very happy to see us, to talk for a few minutes, sign our encyc and take a pic with us. Funny that later that night, we would also get a pic with and get our ency signed by the other Heavenly Body, Dr. Tom Pritchard. They havent spoken in years, and are so close in proximity, its actually kind of funny they never cross paths.
Back to Taker, we got to the event area and saw Max, Rich, etc. At that point, maybe 15 people on line and thats generous. We had heard some rumors involving Steve and his activities for the afternoon but I will not spoil anything, read his report later. Steve and his crew showed up maybe an hour later and we got the info from him directly. At that point, we waited around for FCW guys to show up for photos/ autos, while we were waiting for Taker.
We met a ton of FCW/ NXT people before the Taker signing, during, and after. There was a meet and greet that was part of the Undertaker thing with FCW wrestlers, Adam Hayward of the Tampa Bucs, some well known Tampa Bucs fan called Big Nasty (who was dressed in a picture taking worthy gimmick), and UFC fighter Tom Lawler. The FCW/ NXT wrestlers on this official meet and greet were Skip Shefield, Darren Young, Heath Slater, Vance Archer, David Otunga. You were able to get autos/ photos with each of them. Either no one knew about this or just didnt care because it seemed like only about 20-25 people or so were interested in this (it took place upstairs in the place, while Taker was going on).
Other FCW wrestlers we got photos with (and some autos) include (and I dont know most of these but who knows who hits it big I guess) Johnny Prime, Titus ONeal, Tito Colon (or Eddie Colon, Carlitos bro), Cable Jones, Tony Smith, Percy Watson, G-rilla, Conrad Tanner, Big E Langston, Duke and Bo Rotundo, Wes Brisco, Johnny Curtis, the FCW ring announcer don’t know his name, Lo-Ki (or Kaval), Jacob Novak, Mason Ryan, Michael Tarver, Jaime Keyes, Eli Cottonwood, Joe Henning, Byron Saxton, Abraham Washington, Drake Brewer, Naomi Knight, Alex Riley, Tyler Rekks, Dr. Tom Pritchard, Curtis Hawkins, Jimmy Uso, Leo Kruger, Tamina, Savannah, Trent Baretta, Caylen Croft, Devin Allen, Rhys Ali, and a few others who’s name we are not sure of. All in all, approx 50 photo ops. I’m not posting all of these though, once I set up a photo sharing album, if anyone’s interested pm me your email address and I’ll send it out to you. I know most are no names, who will never go anywhere but there were a few familiar names in there for me (mostly the kids of the legends) and you never know who might become something one day. It did get a little hectic at times, taking Lucas pics, taking Class’ pics, getting my pics done, when there would be 2, 3, 4 FCW wrestlers around at a time- a lot of scrambling. However, in the end, we basically virgilized FCW (again, not that it matters since so many of these guys will go on to nothing). Still fun though. They are all very cool, and with the exception of a few of the hotter divas who snuck out a different way to avoid the fans, I didnt see any of them refuse any fan a photo op or auto.
So to Taker.
About 5:00 pm, one hour before scheduled signing, there were maybe 60 people on line. Wow. I was thinking if this was in Jersey or NYC, is 500-1000 people unrealistic? I bought 3 tix bc I had 3 priority items for Taker. While getting stuff together, I realized that if I got the 3 projects I bought tix for (WWE Timeline poster, Top 50 mag, WWF champs poster bought by George Mayfield a few yrs ago) plus my figure 3 pack of Taker and the encyc, with a photo op, Taker would be Virgilized to me. So I brought along the 2 extra items just in case he was maybe signing extras.
When Tammy arrived, I talked to her and she indicated they were going to originally sell only 100 meet and greets but she had sold 272 of them because Taker said open it up. She agreed to sell me the last 2 tickets she had available. I figured extras were probably gonna be difficult (not withstanding that some of the guys got many extras done) and since it was for charity anyway, better to just guarantee myself the items. If I had gone home not getting those 2 extra things done, I would have been pissed I just didnt spend the money.
By the time they started after 6, the crowd had swelled to probably 120 or so- once again, Jersey or NYC, this signing would have had 500-1000 easily.
They started the signing, we were with Class and crew, maybe about 15 back. Only complaint was that those running it got frazzled at times. There was way too many staff in the room (pretty much all unnecessary) , which in my opinion just frazzles the situation more. One of the guys was griping about people who bought multiple tickets, saying next year, they will not be selling multiple tickets. I never even said a word to the guy, had all my items as ready as they could possibly be, but for some reason, he seemed to have an issue with me, looking disgusted at my 5 items, saying are you sure you have a ticket for each item (in a snarling way)? Since I did, f him, I was of course getting my stuff done. I think this dude would have glady pushed me out of the room even if I did not get all my items signed.
Taker was absolutely awesome though, in a great mood, talkative, joking, started laughing out loud at my Top 50 magaizine for some reason, asked me why I wanted blue sharpie on one of my posters, started signing my 3 pack in silver but he could tell right away the sharpie wasnt great and immediately got a new pen, even though the asshole dude was trying to rush things along. The dude also started to announce that from now on, they couldnt take the time to switch pens for different items (which I’m sure didnt happen, theres just no way it could have).
Lucas took a great photo op for me with Taker. Over the table but that was expected.
With Lucas’ photo op, which was before mine, I snapped his pic but the flash didnt work so it was kind of blurry. So I immediately said we need to do another (which pissed the guy off but what could he do, Taker was cool with it). Unfortunately, again, no flash so the pic was again kind of blurry but he wouldnt let us go again. So I started getting my stuff signed, and Lucas started to talk to the dude or another dude about a re-take. One of the suggestions was that Lucas should just jump in on my photo op. Fortunately, that wasnt the resolution- they let him do another one and I guess he fixed the flash issue bc his pic came out great.
Then, just like that, it was over. We also were given an unsigned event poster, a free t shirt (not wrestling related) and were able to sit pretty much anywhere you wanted for the matches. Some of the matches were decent but I am no longer that big on wrestling matches themselves so I watched a couple of them and just walked around and hung for most of them, bullshitting with Steve, Max, etc.
I will say that this was a very fun 24 hours, a well needed break, and once again, I got to meet one of the biggest names in wrestling that I ever will. I never thought I would ever meet Stone Cold or Undertaker and I have now met them both in a less than 3 month period.
A very fun and fruitful day.
Another one of our users latinoheat578 met the Undertaker and sent us a photo.
latinoheat578 with the Undertaker
To see the rest of this report including high res pictures of the great autographs, check out our forum
If you attend any sort of event or meet anybody by chance, please send us your report so we can post it here. You can post it in the forum or email it to me at WOODMO@markedout.com.
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