No, I didn’t get hit in the face with a steel chair. I just look like that.

A few days ago, I went to the All Elite Wrestling show at the downtown arena. The show aired live on TBS, and I had a very good seat near the entrance ramp.

And although I blogged about the show itself … I did NOT have a chance to actually SEE what happened on TV or how it was filmed.

And yep … there I am.

Background. For those who don’t follow All Elite Wrestling, I’ll give you a thumb’s nail synopsis. AEW is a competitor of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). In fact, AEW is WWE’s top competitor. AEW has three very popular prime time wrestling programs – Dynamite on Wednesday nights, Rampage on Friday nights, and Collision on Saturday nights.

The Dynamite match that’s the focus of this blog was the first one broadcast that night. The International Champion, Orange Cassidy – he’s the one that looks like he rolled out of bed and entered a Ryan Gosling “Wet Hot American Summer” cosplay event – put his belt on the line against strong veteran AR Fox. Fox received this title shot because Fox’s friend, Darby Allin (a wrestler who coats half his face in skull facepaint and wrestles like he wants to kill himself in the ring and have everyone witness it) vouched for Fox to get the shot.

Cassidy and Fox had a very good match – trust me, Orange Cassidy’s slacker style is fun to watch. At the end of the match, after Cassidy beat Fox, Cassidy handed Fox Cassidy’s trademark sunglasses and they posed for a picture. Fox immediately broke the glasses in half, and sucker-punched Cassidy to the mat.

Now here comes Darby Allin down the ramp. And Allin and Fox start arguing – with the camera catching everything – and I’m right between them. Yep. There I am.

You have a choice. You can watch the finish of the match and its aftermath …

Or you could watch at this clip, which is synced up to the argument between Fox and Allin.

So … I’m the one who’s got on the AEW T-shirt where the “A” is replaced by a pair of scissors, and the “E” is bright pink. I’m also pointing at Fox, chastising him like some old guy who told the neighbors’ kids to get off his lawn.

Yeah, old-school me is having a blast with this. But again … this is the extent of what I can do in the arena. I can’t throw anything at the bad guy, I can’t say anything profane or vulgar to him (I just kept it to “BOO” and “YOU SUCK” and stuff like that).

But apparently that wasn’t the ONLY time my face made the broadcast.

See, there was also a main event – the Blackpool Combat Club (Claudio Castagnioli and Jon Moxley) versus the Lucha Bros (Penta El 0 M and Rey Fenix) versus the Best Friends (Chuck Taylor and Trent Berretta). Now a little bit of a backstory. After the Orange Cassidy / AR Fox match earlier in the night, Jon Moxley entered the ring and clobbered Orange Cassidy. So during this three-way tag match … Orange Cassidy came down the ramp, and got in a few punches of his own. And just as he’s slugging Blackpool Combat Club member Wheeler Yuta …

Yep, there I am. At 2:17 of the video. I’m there gesturing and pointing as Orange Cassidy clobbers Wheeler Yuta with his “Orange Punch.” I can just imagine what I’m saying right there. “Get him! Hit him in the labonza! Inna labonza!”

Here’s the clip synced up.

Now because of certain restrictions on when AEW can perform in Albany – WWE has a rule that AEW can’t run a show in the same building as WWE during a certain time period, which limits AEW to one appearance in Albany per year – I’ll most likely have to wait until 2024 to see another AEW show live.

But I know one thing. I can get good tickets at the right seat location.

Yeah, this is fun.