Remember Your Classic Wrestlers: Magnum TA

America's Heart-Throb
Photo Credit: Online World of Wrestling

Who?: Magnum TA
Promotions: Mid-South, NWA
Nicknames: America's Heart Throb
Classic Affiliations: Magnum was one of the many who feuded with the Horsemen, and his allies included Dusty Rhodes and the Road Warriors.

Height: 6'1"
Weight: 245 lbs.
From: Tidewater, VA

After the jump...Signature Maneuvers

Belly to Belly Suplex (at 0:19)


Classic Feuds:

- Magnum was one of the many wrestlers who mounted a resistance against the Four Horsemen. His primary focus was Tully Blanchard. The two traded the US Title until Magnum defeated him once and for all for the Championship at Starrcade in 1985 in an "I Quit" Match.

- Perhaps his most famous feud was his final one with the Russian menace, Nikita Koloff. Koloff got Magnum to lose his cool by insulting his mother. When the NWA President went to reprimand Magnum, Magnum lost his cool, said "Reprimand this!" and clotheslined him. He was stripped of his United States Championship and forced to wrestle Koloff in a best-of-seven series for the title. In a screwjob finish, Koloff won the title.

Titles Held:

NWA United States Championship (2x)
Mid-South North American Championship (2x)
Mid-South Tag Team Championships (2x, once apiece with Jim Duggan and Mr. Wrestling II)

Promos:

Promo with Ric Flair


"Reprimand THIS!"


Great American Bash 1986 Promo


Magnum's Legacy: Three words, fairly or not, will always define Magnum: could have been. He could have been the next big thing. He could have been JCP's answer to Hulk Hogan. He could have been an all-timer, but his career was cut tragically short when he crashed his Porsche on that rainy October night in 1986, much to the sadness of wrestling fans everywhere.

Still, for the relatively short time that he was in the business, he made a huge mark. He became an icon in Memphis and Florida. He was groomed as a foil to Ric Flair, a foil that maybe could have stood up against him in stature like Sting, Lex Luger and so many others couldn't do in later years. He was even a symbol of America in his feud with the Koloff Family. He especially had a bitchin' moustache.

Magnum TA might be known better for what he might have become, but that doesn't take away from what he's given us in his short career. It was impactful enough that he is considered among the best of all-time, even though he didn't have the longevity to stand up to others, and his memory in the ring lives on in the minds of Southern wrestling fans everywhere.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

How to Fix the WWE's PPV Problem, Part 2

Barrett/Cena might have more heat if it had more than two weeks of build
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Last week, I floated the idea of lowering the price point on WWE's PPVs so as to entice more people to buy, especially in this rough economy. While demand will go up as the price drops, the problem still remains of giving the fans something compelling to want to purchase month-in and month-out. No one is going to want to spend money every month on the same lineup of matches, continually devalued stipulations and titles and haphazardly built programs with little build behind them because of the short turnover between PPV events.

Even with expert build to PPV events, something that the WWE hasn't done a whole lot for an entire cards lately, it's a hard sell to get enough of the fanbase to buy 13 PPV events every year. The part to driving home the point that these are must-buy events is to make them feel premium. Averaging more than one PPV a month isn't the way to do that. Logically, the first place to start is to trim the number of events. But by how many?

The WWE has run 12 PPVs a year - one a month - for 15 years. Losing one PPV would probably be the knee-jerk reaction. I mean, why not go back to the last time the system "wasn't broken"? Well, I think the problems run deeper than that. As clichéd as it sounds, the times have changed. The WWE's roster is doubled, and they spend a lot more time tooting their own horn rather than putting focus on stories in the ring. I've written about it before, but it seems like the WWE writers don't have the capacity to write more than one story or feud per brand, or if they do, they can't do it well.

That's why I feel like they need to cut back the number of PPVs to eight per year. That gives six weeks between PPVs. That way, the writers wouldn't need to hammer in on the same story each week in order to make it a draw for the PPV. One week, you have one main event story, the "personal" feud, take center stage, and the next week, the World Championship feud comes to the foreground. What this does is it makes PPV matchups seem fresher and it gives more time for heat to build for the event.

When you give more time to build feuds, you give fans more of an incentive to buy PPVs anchored by wrestling matches and not gimmicks. Therefore, the gimmick-match themed PPVs can go out the window. So what PPVs make the cut? Here you go:

Early January: Royal Rumble

Obviously the Rumble goes here, but it gets moved up to earlier in the month for scheduling reasons.

Mid February: No Way Out

Give it back the old name, but keep ONE Elimination Chamber match for purposes of setting up the other World Championship match. The Chamber is that rare gimmick match (Money in the Bank being another one) that can stand on its own without needing a build-up for it. The name is a propos because there is no way out of the Chamber.

Beginning of April: WrestleMania

Duh

Mid May: Backlash

I always loved the Backlash name. It fits the period after WrestleMania so well because even though WM is a place for endings, there's usually a lot of fallout, especially if you get a big moment like Austin turning heel and joining with Vince McMahon. I understand wanting to have Extreme Rules here, since this is the one event where you potentially could have matches that warrant special gimmicks. Still, the no-DQ stuff is not only cheapened if everyone does it, but it's also too reminiscent of the old ECW, which as much as I and other fans love it is kind of going out of style.

Beginning of July: The Great American Bash

Again, it's all about the name. The GAB has just a great summery name. It invokes feelings of outdoor barbecues, fireworks, pool parties and horseshoes in the backyard. Hell, even for just the flavor of the summer, you could try to book an outdoor venue, something like a NASCAR track or a baseball field, but then again, there's always a threat for rain.

Mid August: SummerSlam

See WrestleMania

Beginning of October: Night of Champions

I know, I know, every PPV should be a night of Champions, but there's something about the name that evokes something greater than the normal PPV.

Mid November: Survivor Series

It's the PPV that just won't go away. The big deal was that it was on the chopping block after being made redundant by Bragging Rights last year, but the geniuses in WWE creative didn't find a replacement for it. I still like the idea of the eight-man tag matches, but I'd bring back the concept of having the "sole survivors" come back later on in the night in a winners-take-all elimination match.

Eight PPVs, all of which with great names and enough time beforehand to build them up. It's not hard. You can do a lot more with less, and in turn, the limited number of PPVs will make three-hour RAWs more special. And hell, it gives room to do specials on free TV, like, say, a return of Saturday Night's Main Event or Clash of Champions? Besides, what better way to gauge how a neophyte main eventer would do on PPV by having them do a dry run on a free TV special... but that's fodder for a whole other post.

While the opportunities for revenue would go down in the short term, with careful booking and turning each event into a must-see, marquee spectacle, the long-term benefits would mean more cash in Titan's pockets, but more importantly, it would mean a better wrestling product for us, the fans.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Wrestlespective 9/30 Power Poll: Age of Orton Lives On *yawn*

Jericho is punted out of WWE
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Welcome to yet another edition of the Wrestlespective Power Poll, a poll ranking wrestlers on a weekly basis based on how awesomely they performed or were portrayed on a Tuesday-to-Monday cycle. It is voted by a who's-who of wrestling bloggers, including my blogging Brothar of the Hill People, PizzaBodySlam. I will list the top ten, and then post and comment on my ballot. Here goes:

1. Randy Orton (Last Week: 1)
2. Kane (3)
3. Undertaker (NR)
4. John Cena (5)
5. Daniel Bryan (2)
6. The Miz (4)
7. Sheamus (10)
8. RED BELLY Wade Barrett (8)
9. CM Punk (NR)
10. Edge (NR)

Now, here are my rankings and reasonings:

1. Bryan Danielson/Daniel Bryan - More for his showings in Chicago and Milwaukee for DGUSA than his pre-taped match for RAW Monday, Danielson's indie tour is winding down in dates but not in quality. Great weekend for the American Dragon, having epic matches with both YAMATO and Jon Moxley.

2. Sheamus, fella - When you cut an impassioned promo about wanting to be Champion and then lay a beatdown on the Great Khali like he was Hornswoggle, then you deserve a spot on this list. Sheamus had a great night Monday, a rarity nowadays for the Ginger Celtic Warrior.

3. Kane - Another week, another awesome promo and a really good match against Chris Masters to boot (although to be fair, Masters carried him a bit).

4. Randy Orton - On one hand, his kayfabe accomplishments are pretty substantial, what with him putting Chris Jericho on the shelf, but I'm just getting goddamn sick of seeing him run unfettered on RAW without giving me the same entertainment value back. I like Orton, but he's getting way overexposed.

5. Chris Jericho - This will be Y2J's last appearance on here for the forseeable future, but he made the most of his last appearance, going tooth and nail with Orton and being his old, entertaining self by rattling off a list of all the people he's beaten, including the immortal American Starship Eagle.

6. CM Punk - He beat Luke Gallows on Smackdown convincingly, but he's on here because he was epic in the broadcast booth on NXT last week. Seriously, he's got a future in broadcasting if he wants it after he retires, which is hopefully very far in the future.

7. The Miz - Another strong week of mic work to start the show and then good work in the tag match that followed.

8. John Cena - Y'know, if Chikara or ROH ran a show this weekend, Cena wouldn't have made this list. Good if a bit formulaic match with Edge on RAW.

9. Edge - Edge made the most of the Cutting Edge f/ A FUCKING TALKING LAPTOP, but still, it doesn't hide the fact that he spent a good portion of it beating up an inanimate object. Still, marginally entertaining and an okay match with Cena.

10. John Morrison - It's starting to become a running gag that I vote him 10th each week, isn't it?

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Zack Ryder Is the Man, Woo Woo Woo, You Know It

We all know that Zack Ryder is among the most underutilized wrestlers on the RAW roster. What we didn't know was that he lives his awesome gimmick outside of the ring too. Here's video of him singing along to various songs on the radio in his car, including his own theme song. At the end, he drinks a raw egg. I don't know why that was in there, but really, who cares? It's Zack Ryder drinking a raw egg. If this man is willing to risk salmonella in order to pay homage to Rocky and entertain his fans, then I say, who am I to question it? Anyway, here's the video.

Seriously, the WWE is missing the boat on him something fierce right now. It almost makes you wish that they had an active midcard on RAW, one where, y'know, there was room for more than just one feud (Miz/Bryan) that needed to have a heatless sack of suck shoehorned into it just so that he'd have something to do, because Evan Bourne vs. Zack Ryder would be an awesome, awesome, awesome display of talent, in the ring and, mostly because of Ryder, out of it too. Woo woo woo... you know it!

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

TWIOT: Why Education Sucks Nowadays

Classroom = wasteland anymore
Photo credit: IFC.com

Oh shit, another post tinged with politics. RUN FOR THE HILLS!

The popular meme among older people is "Back in my day, _______ was way better than it is now!" This can apply to a myriad of things - sports, music, even pro wrestling. Sometimes, it's just a clash between generations, what each age finds cool or entertaining. One area where I feel the old folks would be completely correct in, no subjectivity involved, is in education. Even as soon as 10 years ago, the school systems were better than they are now. The biggest reason for that is the paradigm shift between the old school of thought (pun not intended) and the new way of thinking regarding standardized testing.

Right now, the funding a school district gets is intrinsically tied to performance on standardized tests. Because of that fact, schools now teach to the tests more intensely than ever before. It's not like these kinds of tests are new. Yes, I had to take them in my days in high school and grade school. However, they weren't the focus of the curriculum. I learned proper spelling, grammar, creative writing and how to think critically in my English classes. I learned that there was more to my country than just my area and more to my world than just the United States. I learned how to socialize during recess and gym class, and if it weren't for gym class instilling some kind of need to be active, my starting weight at Weight Watchers might have been 436 lbs. instead of 336 lbs. I was able to get an understanding of the meanings of many words in the English language by studying Latin and German, two languages that are similar and have provided many different words to English over the centuries.

All of those things are becoming lost arts. Gym classes, as well as other "non-essential" programs like art and music, are being scaled back if not eliminated completely because of lack of funding. Instead of asking "why" in English or history classes, or writing about things, kids are being pummeled with memorization of definitions, events without context, formulas without any reason why they should be learning them. Everything is memorization. Children are being conditioned into being turned into robots or computers rather than living beings who can think or take a side on an issue.

Meanwhile, our culture is being decimated. Celebrities spring up no longer because they can play an instrument or act, but because they're rich or make sex tapes. If children don't have music classes to let them learn how to play or theater classes where they can socialize with other children and learn how to put on performances, how is this trend going to reverse itself? Children find it harder to shove time into their schedules to want to do these activities outside of school because there's so much pressure to study and do well on the standardized tests. Obesity is an epidemic, but because activity isn't being encouraged at school, kids aren't conditioned to want to release stress by playing games outside with their friends. Instead, they turn to their sheltered rooms to play video games, substituting real interaction with people with an unrealistic substitute, where anonymous interactions often lead to flame-fests and people developing anti-social attitudes. Because children's imaginations aren't being nurtured, we keep getting Hollywood executives who don't have imagination enough to want to greenlight anything that isn't a remake, a sequel, a prequel or a reboot. And because kids aren't having their critical thinking honed, nourished and developed, we get a select few spineless automotons in politics spouting "facts" whether they're true or not to a populace that by and large doesn't have the capacity to think whether what they're being fed is correct or not, or to figure out why people have those opinions, or why the opinions they have are valid or not.

Education is more about just memorizing facts, or at least it should be. Kids need to learn how to be social, how to interact, how to think, how to deal with life experiences, how to live. A lot of that needs to come from the parents, yes, and I have to say, with the rash of people having babies that really shouldn't be having babies, there are more shitty parents than ever out there. However, the schools and the state are doing nobody any favors by teaching to tests that won't be relevant past the moment they're finished being taken.

There needs to be a bipartisan effort to reform education. We need to bring thinking, socializing, activity and interaction back into the classroom. We need to instill in our children that memorizing facts is okay, but that it's useless without knowing the context behind them or at least being able to figure out context or argue a side for each fact that is presented. Furthermore, social studies curricula need to be diversified so that kids can learn more than just historical facts. Geography needs to be emphasized, as well as civics, home economics (because the key to healthy eating means knowing how to cook using things other than the microwave), mechanics and debate. Math courses need to be diversified as well. Let's face it, not everyone is going to want or need to learn advanced geometry, trigonometry, calculus or physics. Subjects like economics, statistics and other branch-off maths should be taught at lower levels. There's no reason why students shouldn't begin to learn about economics at as low levels as middle school. Things like student government, art classes, theater groups and musical education shouldn't be truncated or eliminated but promoted. Gym class should be mandatory and focus on things like nutrition, sex education and disease awareness as well as competing in sport and exercise.

Education needs to be reformed at all sub-collegiate levels. The bane of the standardized test is one that has harmed the school system more than any of the ills bandied about by people on both sides of the aisle combined. Get rid of them completely, or at the very least, lessen their impact on the curriculum, and the schools will at least be on the right path to recovery.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

What Does the WWE Plan to Do About Flagging Ratings?

IF you haven't heard, the WWE is in a bit of a ratings crisis, hitting 2.8 and 2.75 the last two weeks for RAW respectively. These are the lowest ratings since 1995, since before the Monday Night Wars. For a show that used to hit in the 6.0s reguarly, this is a bit of a fall from grace. WWE officials are hard at work thinking of ways to bring ratings back up, and again, my overactive imagination well-placed sources within Stamford have done some epic research on the ideas the WWE has to break the slump. The results have been compiled by the good folks at GraphJam in a pie chart, by probability of them happening, of course:

Because McMahons are the most compelling TV...

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Quick Hits: Money Never Sleeps

- So yeah, the ring that arrived fifteen minutes after the doors opened for the DGUSA show in Milwaukee was owned by Rasche Brown, a last minute replacement for the one that was supposed to be there from another promoter, whom, along with Larry Sweeney, was mugged. Yikes. Wrestling is a messed-up business though...

- I'm sure you've heard about the record low RAW ratings for the last two weeks. The Torch reported 2.37, which would be epic fail levels of ratings, but according to Dave Meltzer, whom I trust more than the Torch, the ratings topped out at 2.75, which is still a terrible number. Honestly, I'm not sure whether this is a sign that the bottom is finally dropping out on pro wrestling, whether fans are just not prepared to buy Randy Orton as the top face in the company or whether it's just presentation in that no one wants to see a top face who never faces any kind of resistance in doing what he's doing. Fuck, even Hogan sold guys as threats even if he almost never jobbed to a big-name heel, clean or otherwise, on PPV.

- Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly, more famous on this blog for their mini-rivalry in the indies, will begin life as contracted ROH employees as a tag team. Interesting pairing if I do say so myself.

- Sean Waltman was arrested with pot on 9/12 in New Jersey. In other news, the sun rises in the East.

All news courtesy of the Wrestling Observer online newsletter

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

The Best Moves Ever: Daisuke Sekimoto's Deadlift German Suplex

Daisuke Sekimoto was a man, then he was a dragon-man, then he was a dragon.... TROGDOR~! is a Japanese indie wrestler with Big Japan Wrestling among other feds. He's also worthy of folk hero status for how he conducts his business in the ring. One of the best big guy roughneck strong-style wrestlers I've seen, almost everything about Sekimoto is impressive, especially his deadlift German suplex. It's a thing of beauty. Here he is doing it to Brodie Lee, an impressive feat in its own right because it's Brodie Lee, not Helios or any of the other Chikara string beans:



Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Wrestling Six Packs: Worst Gimmick Matches



One of the worst gimmick matches ever
Photo Credit: WWE.com


Hell in a Cell is this Sunday. While yeah, the whole gimmick match PPV concept is kind of played out, it's pretty undeniable that Hell in the Cell is one of the greatest gimmick matches ideated of all-time. However, as we've seen throughout the years, gimmick matches can get pretty damn awful. Here are six of the worst.

1. Kennel from Hell

This is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the worst gimmick match of all-time. From the heights of Russo's insanity, he thought he was a good idea to embellish Hell in a Cell by adding dogs to the outside for a Big Bossman/Al Snow match on free TV. The dogs were obviously trained and friendly or else there'd have been problems. Still, that kind of situation doesn't exactly lend itself to a hazard. Y'know, since the dogs really aren't hazardous if they don't viciously attack the person who gets tossed to the outside. The funny thing though? They did provide a hazard, just not through biting or being vicious. Yeah, one of the dogs totally dropped a deuce on the outside. Thankfully, this one was one and done.

2. Doomsday Gauntlet

Yeah, I voluntarily watched the one and only incarnation of this terrible, terrible, awful, truly horrible abomination of a match. Any match where the action is trained away from the center of the ring has trouble succeeding from jump. Falls count anywhere matches can work because hey, you can still see the guys brawling in the crowd with a well-placed spotlight. But putting that away-from-the-ring action in a clunky, overbearing structure that obscures the shit out of the action? Yeah. Let's not forget that Randy Savage pinned a guy who was supposedly already eliminated to win the match. The very definition of convoluted.

3. _______ on a Pole Match

This is Vince Russo's trademark. It's become a running gag in the wrestling community, and yet he'll still pull it out every once in awhile. The sad part is, it's a derivative of the ladder match, which in and of itself is an awesome gimmick match. But when you start putting inane bullshit on those poles and running them every week? Well yeah. The worst was when Russo actually put Buff Bagwell's mom on a pole. Or was it the best in some kind of meta-WrestleCrap, so-bad-it's-good moment? Who knows.

4. King of the Mountain

Most ladder matches require you to take the Championship belt off the ring at the top of the ladder. There's symbolism in play here. You got guys climbing to the top of the mountain to grab the prize, symbolizing the arduous journey to get to a moment of glory. In true TNA fashion, King of the Mountain makes the winner make the arduous journey to put the belt back on the ring... only to take it right back off again. Un-fucking-real. And to make things even more convoluted, if you score a pinfall or submission in the match, you send the guy you just beat into a penalty box. Could we add any more rules to the fray? Simpler is better. And yet this has become one of TNA's signature gimmick matches. If that's not a microcosm of what that company is, I don't know what is.

5. Lockbox Challenge

I hate to pick on TNA here, but... no I don't, I love picking on them because they deserve every bashing they get. I couldn't believe this when I saw it earlier this year on Impact, and the kicker was that Christy Hemme started off explaining it by saying the rules were simple. Ha. Anyway, any match where you can have someone getting a decisive pinfall victory and still lose their title, or get a pinfall win and get "rewarded" with having to do a striptease is utter bullshit.

6. Buried Alive

Hell in a Cell has become one of Undertaker's three signature matches, along with the casket match and Buried Alive. The first two are actually good gimmick matches. The Buried Alive? Yeah, not so much, especially since out of kayfabe, being buried with all the dirt they provide is a death sentence. A cubic foot of dirt can weigh in upwards of 150 pounds depending on the consistency of the soil. Multiply that with the amounts used to bury the loser? That would be murder. It kills the believability and accentuates all the terrible things about both pro wrestling and the Undertaker as a character.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

The Death of the Special Attraction

The Last Attraction?

Last night was yet another chapter in the degredation of the Great Khali. If you watched RAW, you saw Sheamus kick the living hell out of Khali in a segment that put Sheamus over like gangbusters going into his Hell in the Cell contest for the WWE Championship against Randy Orton. It was effective in getting Sheamus over, but it could have gotten him over a whole shitload more without doing anything differently in that segment. What would have made it more powerful? Well, it would have been nice if Khali's heat matched his large stature.

Khali is not special in this regard. The Big Show, who entered the industry as the second coming of Andre the Giant, is now just another wrestler. For a guy who has the natural gift of height and size on freakish levels, he has become increasingly pedestrian in terms of his allure to fans. It's almost as if the WWE has forgotten how to book a special attraction wrestler... I know, it's hard to believe, but bear with me here, the WWE (and to be fair, in the case of Show, WCW too) fucked up booking someone.

Before the days of national television and national federations, of national penetration and exposure, guys like Khali or Show would have been given protection and used as draws even if they were put nowhere near titles. This is how Andre the Giant was used in the Northeast region by both Vince J. and Vince K. McMahons in the (W)WWF. The model may have changed, but can the mechanism still work? It kinda still does.

Necro Butcher is a guy in ROH who still has some kind of cache but doesn't really gravitate towards the title scene. You'd think that in this day and age, he'd be all over the title. He's been in movies, he's over wherever he goes and he gets a shitload of protection. Hell, you have to destroy him with every weapon in the locker to put him down it seems. Yeah, ROH is basically a part of the new regional system - the biggest part, yes, but still a part - but it shows that the model still works.

Of course, ROH is attempting to muck that up with turning him heel and putting him in the Embassy. Still, these things aren't permanent. Nothing in wrestling is. The model still works though. You just need to do it up right.

People like to see the freakshows, the iconoclasts, the special attractions. To see guys like Khali and Big Show become rank and file is a tragedy. To see the best special attraction in the world right now toiling as a heel against the wishes of the crowds, a guy who'll never make it to the big time because he's broken down even now due to years of hardcore wrestling, is damn shame. The special attraction wrestler is a lost art that is just one of the many symptoms of how bookers and writers are losing touch with what made wrestling great once upon a time.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Wrestling Guilty Pleasures

Dreamer when he's not blubbering on camera
Photo Credit: TNAWrestling.com

Jason Mann starts a lot of interesting wrestling-related topics on Twitter. The other day, he had an interesting one, wrestling guilty pleasures. Wrestling, like any other entertainment media, has a lot of subjectivity as to who is "good" and who's not. Even given that variety in opinion, there are people who are considered bad almost universally, people that are known as guilty pleasures, in that people are ashamed to admit they like them.

I don't believe in the term "guilty pleasure". I think that if you like something or someone, you should be out and proud about that. I will never hide the fact that I like Creed's first album or Adam Sandler comedies post-The Wedding Singer (excepting Little Nicky and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry... those ones were terrible). Similarly, I will never shy away from proclaiming my admiration for wrestlers who other people on the Internet hate or think are terrible. Let's pretend for a second that I do. If I felt shame for the guys that I liked, here's a list of what my guilty pleasures might look like:

Tommy Dreamer - Dreamer is a hardcore icon, but among those who feel the backlash against ECW that seemingly is sweeping the Internet right now, he's the one who probably feels it hardest. Every other week, he's on Impact, crying and cutting pandering, saccharine promos. Be that as it may, I still love the Innovator of Violence, even if I don't love those aforementioned pandering, saccharine promos. The guy can still go in the ring. Is he going to give you tope con hilos out the ass, or ZOMG WORKRATE? No, not at all, and if you expect that from him, you're highly delusional since he was NEVER about that. What he is about is producing a good brawl, making other people look good, and yeah, I'll admit it, unmitigated nostalgia. Whether it's in TNA or on the indie circuit, I'm glad Tommy Dreamer is still in the ring.

Mark Henry - This isn't the first time I professed a fandom for the World's Strongest Kool-Aid Man, and it won't be the last. Henry is criminally underrated by the Internet at large, a community that for the most part sees a fat guy and automatically thinks he's a slug. Get real. Henry moves around better than some guys half his size, but where I enjoy him most is when he's in there with smaller guys, like REALLY smaller guys. I love seeing him throw wrestlers like Evan Bourne and Zack Ryder around like lawn darts, and even now that he's teaming with Bourne, I love the potential for high spots combining their two body sets and abilities. They teased a SSP from Bourne off Henry's shoulders at Night of Champions. Let me go on record right now in saying that if they pull that spot off for realsies, I will probably mark harder than I have ever marked before.

Chris Masters - It's no surprise that I've pumped up Masters before too. I was first taken by Masters in a tag match against DX, where he was the best worker in the ring, but I really started to notice him when he did his boob-dance on the otherwise forgettable Osbourne talent search segment. After that, I noticed that, hey, Masters isn't that bad a wrestler, and in fact, he's one of the best on the Smackdown roster. Scoff at it all you want, but Masters has yet to have a bad match since coming back to the WWE.

Josh Matthews - I used to hate Matthews in the booth, so much so that I derisively called him "Mr. Dead Air". However, for awesome as heel Michael Cole has been on NXT, the show itself wouldn't have the same feel to it if Matthews wasn't there playing off Cole and riffing with him. All he needed was a venue to be himself on camera, and it works. It works bigtime.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Instant Feedback: WWE Does a Better Job Pimping TNA than TNA

Odd to hear Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler put over Mick Foley's new book, now that Foley is a TNA employee. Even weirder put in the context of Chris Jericho reading the names of guys he's beaten, 1004-moves-he-knows style, including a bunch of guys employed by TNA right now. The funny thing is, most of the people watching probably don't even know that these people work for TNA. Haha. By the way, that segment before the main event ruled all kinds of ass. Jericho leaving for however long he's leaving for may suck, but c'mon, at least he went out with something awesome to remember him by and putting over the main event for the upcoming PPV.

Other than that, it was a mixed-bag of a show. The wrestling, outside of the terrible Divas battle royale, was good. Even with the terrible action in said BR, the right woman won. How Natalya hasn't gotten more time in the ring by now is beyond me. The opening tag match was good, like really good, good enough to make the honor roll on the DVR report. OF course, Miz and Daniel Bryan were involved in it, and John Morrison extended his streak of not being terrible in the ring to three (or is it four?) weeks. The Tag Title match was pretty good too, although I hope that a) this "feud" is over, and b) they're not already breaking up the Harts. I also liked the Sheamus/Khali match-nub and the post match as well. This was the strongest they've made Sheamus look since he put Triple H out.

That being said, most of the non-wrestling match stuff was pretty brutal, including the Edge/Mystery GM segment. While yeah, Edge beating up the computer was hilarious, it was a "so-bad-it's-good" moment, and everything preceding was facepalm-inducing wrestling at its worst. Seriously? KITT on RAW? Christ. The Maryse/Ted DiBiase stuff would be alright if anyone, including myself, gave a shit about them. Ugh.

But at least the wrestling was good, and on a wrestling show, isn't that what counts?

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

"We Want Wrestling!" *clap clap clapclapclap*

Who'd-a thunk that one of the prospective future Divas would have been the ones to stand up for 'rasslin?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

The most notable thing to happen on last week's NXT wasn't anything said by any one of the three announcers. It took place during the Talk the Talk Challenge. Naomi, one of the only two competitors in this crop who actually doesn't look lost in the context of a wrestling match, announced that she didn't want to cut a promo about the non-contextual word she was given by Matt Striker. Instead, she claimed she came to the party to wrestle. That proclamation drew the loudest pop of the night from the live crowd in the arena.

To fans of the actual in-ring product, this was music to our ears. I know I was pleasantly surprised when the crowd assented to wanting to see the women wrestle rather than pratter on about teeth or rainbows or whatever happy horseshit that was so compelling that I forgot most of the topics given. To the Vince Russo crowd... well, fuck, they probably weren't watching the show to begin with. Still, they'd probably find some way to spin it into an interpretation of "People don't care about wrestling anymore". However, I'd like to think that maybe it opened their eyes a little bit.

That being said, it is an awfully small sample size, but it's still a reaction that shows people like to see men in spandex underwear hug each other in an attempt to pretend-fight. There wouldn't be a market for wrestling if people didn't want to see guys grapple it out in the ring. If people wanted to watch guys give soliloquys or get into sitcom situations, they'd watch regular TV.

Even if people do like to see the spectacle, the gaudiness and the characters, there still remains the reason why the thing exists. Wrestling can't flourish without star power, charismatic wrestlers and guys or girls who have a ton of personality. But the reason why wrestling still has fans and still can be viable is that the action in the ring is still unique. Even as MMA leeches popularity from pro wrestling, it can't script action or display it like pro wrestling can.

Of course, this isn't a license to the "pro wrestling as sport" crowd to go crazy and demand that we go to a more ROH-styled product in all facets of the game. The fans popped for "wrestling", not more technical wrestling. However, that can only be a good thing, as once you give two (or three, or four, or six, or however many) guys a blank canvas to work with, you give them license to create. I happen to be a fan of all styles of matches, from the kind you find on your average WWE TV card to the big-time puroresu main events, from what you find in your average indie bingo hall to the main event at WrestleMania. I'm just happy that people want to see action in the ring.

And just think, I thought that nothing good could come of this season of NXT in the ring, and that the only worth was in hearing Michael Cole, Josh Matthews and whoever else decided to drop by to tear the product down. Thank you Naomi if that was really you, or thanks to whomever scripted that for you.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Foley's Life Story to the Silver Screen

Mick Foley
Photo Credit: Online World of
Wrestling

Via his Twitter page

Mick Foley has delivered on his promise for a big announcement, via Twitter, today, being that his life story will be made into a movie. Unlike other people within TNA, this qualifies as a big announcement. Foley has written many books about himself to varying critical response. I know at least one person who hates Foley's writing, that being my boss over at the CCB, Eric Gargiulo. Me? I've never read anything Foley has written, but hey, good for him I suppose.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Intergender Wrestling: Not For Laughs Anymore



A scene that should be happening in ROH

Daizee Haze posted a blog at ROH's website, begging and pleading for the company to put better women's competition in front of her and Sara del Rey. It's an in-character plea that I can understand, seeing that the other female regulars in the company are either chemists by day (MsChif) or are green (Jamillia Craft, Rayna Von Tosh). It's also a plea I've heard before from the two, although not in ROH. Similarly to this complaint, last year, both Haze and del Rey had been clamoring for stiffer competition in Chikara, which turned into their motivation to join the BDK. Dissimilarly? Well, it proved to be a segue for the two standout women wrestlers to enter into intergender competition.

Intergender compeition is nothing new, although it rarely ever got to the level it has gotten in Chikara in 2010. In the early '80s, Andy Kaufmann got laughs beating up on women in the squared circle, which led into the famous feud with Jerry Lawler, who resented that Kaufmann would "disrespect the sport" by beating up on girls. This stigma didn't go away throughout the years, as you had to be freakishly large and possibly a man in drag like Chyna in order to credibly compete with the men. Note that in most mixed-tag matches you see in the WWE, the rules state that women can only be in there with women and men can only be in with men for the most part. When those rules weren't in place, the women were seen as far inferior to the men. The Dudley Boys made a habit out of putting women through tables, which was seen as heinous mostly in part to the perceived disparity between the men and women in their abilities to fight and take hits. Hell, even Beth Phoenix, who's almost as beefy as Chyna was, didn't eliminate Great Khali at the Royal Rumble due to her abilities; she eliminated him by surprise-kissing him and leveraging him over the ropes. She then promptly ate a Go 2 Sleep from CM Punk and was disposed like yesterday's garbage.

It's not surprising that Chikara seems to be at the progressive forefront regarding women in wrestling. While SHIMMER has provided an all-women's fed that is not only prominent in the indie world but critically-acclaimed, non-patronizing and well-booked (setting it apart from other feds like GLOW and WrestleLicious), Chikara has been bold enough to put the women in the same ring as the men and make them look credible. Does it help that the women are about the same size as the smallish men? Of course it does. Haze and del Rey can utilize more of their movesets on a guy like Ophidian more easily than they could against, say, Husky Harris. However, who's to say that someone like Phoenix, Amazing Kong, Aloisia or even Cheerleader Melissa, who has kind of a large frame, couldn't credibly compete in the WWE or TNA against the men? I mean, wrestling is all about leverage, and a strike, when it's done correctly, stings as much from a smaller person as it does from a larger one. If Evan Bourne and Rey Mysterio can compete with guys like Sheamus and the other massive WWE wrestlers, then there's no reason why the larger women couldn't either.

Still, that is a pipe dream beyond all pipe dreams. The WWE would never regularly put someone the stature of Melissa in the ring with the men, and I can live with that. However, in ROH? Even with guys like Kevin Steen and (until recently) Rasche Brown competing on the reg? I think it can and should be done. ROH isn't going to beef up their women's division without recycling a lot of what SHIMMER has done. While ROH has a lot more exposure than SHIMMER does and matchups among women like del Rey, Haze, Chif, Melissa, Madison Eagles, Rachel Summerlyn, Portia Perez, Mercedes Martinez and Serena Deeb would be new to many fans, there's considerable overlap to where many in the audience would be seeing redundant matchups. That's not a bad thing if the matchups are good, but then again, if you have the choice between doing something that's been done before and something that might be a bit fresher, why not opt for the latter?

Who wouldn't want to see Haze and del Rey match up with teams like the Motor City Machine Guns, All-Nite Express, Dark City Fight Club, Briscoe Bros. or even the Kings of Wrestling (a matchup that wouldn't happen in Chikara, even if Chris Hero came back anyway)? Who wouldn't want to see how del Rey would match up against Roderick Strong, or if Haze could get a measure of revenge for Delirious' kayfabe injuries against Austin Aries? A raving sexist, that's who. The women of the indies are not short on talent, so disparity in talent wouldn't be the issue. Many of these male wrestlers have faced off against guys of smaller stature, so that's not the problem either. I think it would be the preconceived notions in our society that females can't hang with males in the field of combat, given proper training. That's a crock of horseshit if you ask me.

I'm not saying all women should go into the intergender wrestling game, but there's no reason that the best of the best, women like del Rey, Haze, Kong and Melissa, can't compete in ROH with the men. The company has teased it before by teaming del Rey with the Kings of Wrestling and Kong with the Briscoes for a card in St. Louis. They should go all the way and show a greater audience that intergender wrestling isn't just fodder for comedy anymore.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Weekend Wrap-Up: Where's My Bloody Ring?

Danielson's Whirlwind Indie Tour Is Drawing to a Close

- The big events of the weekend took place in Chicago and Milwaukee as Dragon Gate USA invaded the Midwest again, featuring Bryan Danielson's two penultimate matches in the indies before his morphing into Daniel Bryan becomes 100% complete. The Chicago event saw him close the card in the non-PPV main event against YAMATO, which I'm hearing was a phenomenal match. Also being reported is that Ricochet more than held his own and in fact may have had his coming-out party, teaming with CIMA against the team of Naruki Doi and Masato Yoshino.

The card in Milwaukee was a bit snake-bitten. The doors opened at 2PM, but the ring didn't even get to the arena until 2:15. Yikes. Apparently, there was a "personal issue" with the ring guy the night before. I couldn't find a report to the proceedings from the Milwaukee show, but the highlight of the card here was Danielson taking on Jon Moxley.

- Tyler Black made his final indie appearance Friday night, defending and losing his AAW Tag Team Championships with Jimmy Jacobs to the House of Truth. Now, he can continue his morphing into Caleb Downer unfettered in the swamps of Florida before moving on to NXT Season 4, to be shown on WWE.com if he's lucky.

- TNA did something pretty old-school last week. They had Jay Lethal drop the X-Division Championship to Amazing Red at a house show in New York City, Red's hometown. I got a little bit livid at this at first, thinking that Lethal's reign as X-Division Champ had just started, but Red dropped the title back to Lethal in his hometown of Rahway on Friday night. You can criticize TNA a lot, but having title switches on house shows, especially to reward guys in their hometowns, is pretty cool. Contrast that to what the WWE does for guys in their hometowns, mainly embarrassing them, jobbing them out and in the case of Jim Ross, making them kiss Vince McMahon's ass (literally), it's a stark contrast. That is one of the things I hate about WWE. They make people look like idiots in their hometowns or on their birthdays. Makes me wish that there was a company out there to compete with them so they couldn't pull this bushleague bullshit. And no, TNA isn't that company because they aren't competition.

- Matt Hardy apparently either has come down with dissociative personality disorder or he's trying to work somebody by pretending he has it. Who would he be trying to work? I have no idea. If Hardy were a dog, he'd have been put down by now. Since he's not, I take back what I said about laying off him for being fat and out of shape, since he's clearly being all attention-whorey and stupid in trying to get his release from WWE. At this point, if I were TNA, I don't think I'd want to go near him with a 10-foot pole, but then again, this was the company that willingly hired Sean Waltman, so who knows anymore.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

From the Archives: American Wolves vs. Super Smash Bros., ROH on HDNet

Hey, remember this feature?

Today's match is one from this year, actually a very recent edition of ROH on HDNet. It's a tag match between the American Wolves of Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards and the Super Smash Bros., Players Uno and Dos, airing on September 13th. While I run hot and cold on the Wolves as singles competitors, as a tag team, they always seem to deliver. The Smash Bros. are among the best tag teams that ROH is not pushing (and Chikara is inexplicably not booking all that much anymore...). This was obviously meant to be a "preliminary" match, but it had a big match feel, thanks to what both teams put in. Special thanks to TWB superfan and resident tortured Lions fan George Murphy for pointing this one out to me.



Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

This Week in DVR: OOOOHHH YES! PAUL BEARER RETURNS~!

We missed you, Mr. Paul Bearer!
Photo Credit: WWE.com

I watched what I couldn't watch live on my DVR this week. Here's what stood out:

Matches:

Goldust vs. William Regal on Superstars - Not as good their match a few weeks back, but whenever these two guys get in the ring with each other, it's a treat to watch. Regal worked the leg over really good, especially with that sequence on the ring steps. Goldust winning out of nowhere with the Final Cut was a nice touch, especially with the finish a couple of weeks ago when Regal won out of nowhere with the Knee Trembler.

Jeremy Buck vs. Alex Shelley on Impact - This was a nice little match with a few big spots, especially the neckbreaker by Buck on the apron. This was a good match in the context of their feud, which is one of the only good things going on in TNA right now.

Samoa Joe vs. Pope D'Angelo Dinero on Impact - Joe did a good job leading Pope by the nose in this match. It was a basic wrestling match, but I think for TNA, it stood out because you don't really see good matches that look like they were laid out by road agents all that often. The finish was wonky, as the whole "get distracted by stuff outside the ring" is played, especially when the new Wolfpac-flavored product beating on Jarrett had NOTHING to do with the match at hand, but at least it was clean-ish.

Chris Masters vs. Kane, non-title, on Smackdown - Masters keeps impressing me. He went the extra mile to sell Kane's offense to make the World Champion look like a dominant wrestler, and yet he made himself look good in the match by hanging in there and really selling his fight and determination. Fun little opener. I hope they give Masters a run with the IC title, because I'd love to see him run with Dolph Ziggler, Alberto del Rio, CM Punk and other mid-to-upper carders, most of which on Smackdown can work really, really well.

Kaval vs. Chavo Guerrero on Smackdown - I'm not thrilled that Kaval is on the job train after winning NXT Season 2. This could be the old Kenta Kobashi push where they build to his first big win after a bunch of losses to quality competition, but I don't have the faith in the WWE to do that. That being said, it was a really good match. Kaval did everything well, and Chavo was game too. Chavo seems motivated again, and when he's motivated, he's one of the better wrestlers out there. I loved the finish, where Chavo countered the super rana by holding onto the ropes and then landed the frogsplash. Very well-done match.

Luke Gallows vs. CM Punk on Smackdown - Punk played the opposite role here than he did at Night of Champions, back on his heels for most of the match. The WWE seems to like to do the winner-gets-dominated-most-of-the-match template lately, and I hope they don't overuse it, because it's a good way to get a guy over when done sparingly. Punk played the role of punching bag very well, and Gallows looked pretty good on offense. It wasn't Punk's best Go 2 Sleep, and it's not a great looking move to me anyway. Still, it was a pretty good match.

MVP vs. Dolph Ziggler on Smackdown - Wow, this was the best MVP has looked in a long time, maybe since his match with Randy Orton last year on RAW. Ziggler carried the action, but I gotta give MVP his props too. The Vickie Guerrero/Kaitlyn stuff told a story. It's not really the best of angles, but hey, at least they're doing something with one of the NXT girls, and it gets heat for Ziggler, so it's a necessary evil. It was unclear whether it was for the IC title or not, but regardless, I still loved the finish. That's how you put a potential challenger to a title over without jobbing the Champion out clean. Countout finishes, especially intentional forfeit countouts, are good finishes in situations like these.

Shows:

NXT - Season 3 is turning into a tale of two shows - the embarrassingly bad content in the ring and the captivating commentary featuring Josh Matthews, Michael Cole and now, CM Punk. It's amazing how jarring a juxtaposition you've got there. It's almost like the trio in the booth is giving the show in the ring a MST3K feel. What I thought was the best was Punk indirectly poking fun at his own womanizing all throughout the broadcast. But in the ring? The only thing that I really thought was interesting was during the Talk the Talk challenge, when Naomi refused to talk on her topic and say she was "there to wrestle", which elicited a pop from the crowd. Quite the telling stat there to all the people who boost the "entertainment" part of sports entertainment, isn't it?

Superstars - Why is there any reason to replay a match from RAW in the middle of Superstars? Such bullshit. The burial of Nexus wasn't even all that great when it happened the first time. I mean, they couldn't have taped a shitty Divas match or something? I digress. The bookend matches were pretty good though. JTG/Primo didn't make the honor roll, but it was still pretty fun. Superstars is at its best when you get to see people you don't normally get to see expanded exposure on RAW or Smackdown, and replays defeat the purpose of that.

Impact - Rob Van Dam trying to sell long term injuries was hilarious. Meanwhile, Abyss, who tortured someone last week on camera, made a murder threat caught on tape. These are things that if everything was "real" like kayfabe wants us to believe it is, that the Orlando PD would have arrested him for. Add in the pointless brawling between Extra Virgin Olive Oil EV 2.0 and Fortune during yet another non-title ladder match on Impact, Lacey von Erich continuing to shove women's wrestling back by years with every move she makes and the continued insistance of Dixie Carter to shoehorn herself as a character on TV, Impact has too many handicaps week in and week out to be a good show. Also, way to get on the "bros icing bros" bandwagon when it was lame to begin with. Ugh.

Smackdown - Let's get the criticism out of the way early. I wasn't a fan of Emo-Taker, and the Hornswoggle/Dudebusters comedy stuff wasn't funny at all. Still, they could have had another Osbourne RAW-esque segment of terrible, horrible comedy and it still wouldn't have mattered, because PAUL BEARER IS BACK, BABY! So what if the angle is cheesy? Kane's execution, added with the unmitigated nostalgia of seeing Bearer again makes it bearable. It was a great ending to a solid show this week, full of really good wrestling matches. Kane himself said on radio that Smackdown would change from a "wrestling show" to a "TV show" when it went to Smackdown. However, I hope he's wrong, because when Smackdown is good, when it's based on the matches in the ring and not non-wrestling bullshit, it's one of the best shows on TV.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Know Your Indie Wrestlers: Naruki Doi

Bosou Muscle

Who?: Naruki Doi
Promotions: DGUSA, FIP (alumnus), PWG (guest star), TNA (guest star alumnus), ROH (alumnus)
Alias: Bosou Muscle
Current Affiliations: Member of the WORLD-1 stable, primarily with Masato Yoshino, BxB Hulk, Kotoka, Naoki Tanisaki and PAC. Doi and Yoshino form the team Speed Muscle

Height: 5'8"
Weight: 180 lbs.
Hometown: Ikoma-Shi, Japan

After the jump... Wrestling Style: A graduate of the Torymon dojo, which means lightning fast, questionable selling, head-dropping, emphasis on strikes. Doi is one of the most exciting wrestlers in the world.

Signature Maneuvers:

Muscular Bomb


Bakatare Sliding Kick


Avalanche Doi 555


Top 30 Moves of Naruki Doi


Titles Held:

DG Open the Dream Gate Championship
DG Open the Brave Gate Championship (2x)
ROH World Tag Team Championships (with Shingo Takagi)

Promos:

He no speaka the good English

Why You Should Know Doi: Aside from CIMA and possibly Dragon Kid, Doi is the most visible of the DGUSA Japanese guys. It's for good reason. He's one of the most exciting wrestlers in the world. He combines the Japanese head-dropping with the blistering speed that his tag partner, Yoshino, brings to the table. He's probably as close to being the complete package in terms of in-ring as any of the DG guys.

He has a great panache about him in the ring too. He plays cocky extremely well, which worked well in the beginning of DGUSA with his and Yoshino's feud with Shingo and Dragon Kid. He also measures up well with the Americans he wrestles, which was a big reason why he was chosen to wrestle Bryan Danielson last fall in his final DGUSA match before his recent indie sabbatical from WWE.

Doi is the cream of the crop, and it's easy to see why. While you're not going to get psychology, Doi brings excitement and storytelling in his own way, and that's why he's a guy you need to watch in DGUSA.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

RIP Giant Gonzalez

RIP Giant Gonzalez
Photo Credit: Online World of Wrestling

Via Dot Net

Jorge Gonzalez, who wrestled in WCW as El Gigante and the WWF as Giant Gonzalez, died Wednesday at age 44. He's been battling health issues all his life, which is not surprising due to his size. He'd been suffering from diabetes and was confined to a wheelchair in the later years of his life.

Gonzalez was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks in the NBA Draft, but when he didn't make the team, Ted Turner offered him a tryout for WCW, where he wrestled as El Gigante. He moved onto the WWF and had his most famous match against Undertaker at WrestleMania IX.

I offer my sincerest condolences to his family and friends. Forty-four is way too young to die, although I was surprised that he wasn't older. Anyway, rest in peace, El Gigante.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Who Knew Kane Was Pure Awesomesauce?

The Big Red Machine
Photo Credit: WWE.com

I'd like to take an informal poll. All of you who thought that Smackdown's MVP and the best promo in the WWE through three-quarters of the year this year would be Kane, please raise your hand. I'll wait.

If any of you raised your hands, you're either psychics or filthy liars. Kane's ascendency to the top of the Smackdown heap was about as unexpected as anything that happened this year and then some. The Nexus' rise to prominence was shocking, but hey, at least all of them were young guys with futures. Kane though? The man had been used about as terribly as one wrestler could have since that fateful run in 2002 when he was buried, absolutely buried by Triple H and the WWE creative staff with the Katie Vick angle. He vacillated back and forth between jobber to the stars and mid-card alpha male, with a few diversions in between like winning the ECW Championship and various stints teaming with the Undertaker as the Brothers of Destruction.

So for him to come out and take over the focus of Smackdown for two months with his investigation into the plight of his kayfabe brother before winning Smackdown's Money in the Bank match and the World Heavyweight Championship is pretty shocking. What's even more jaw-dropping, though, is how he's carried himself throughout this entire run. Many people, myself included, had Kane pegged as just one those bit players, a guy you could count on in a pinch for an angle, misused yes, but pretty much settled into a role that he was good at. Then, they gave him the microphone and let him cut extended promos. Extended promos that were blowing away those from nearly everyone else who was given a microphone at the time except for maybe CM Punk and The Miz. Maybe.

Yes, Kane has been that good, selling and getting an angle that really at its heart is hokey and wrestling at its facepalm-inducing worst. He's made Smackdown must see for more reasons than the excellent array of workers and characters that reside in the undercard. The shame part is that the WWE could have been tapping into this a lot sooner than they started.

As with any good argument about the underutilized in this past decade, it all starts with Triple H. He eluded putting guys like Rob Van Dam, Booker T and Chris Jericho in meaningful fashions while at the same time laying some pretty serious kayfabe heat/embarrassment on them. I mean, Jericho had to pick up dog shit for Stephanie McMahon in the lead up to their WrestleMania X-8 match, which didn't do much to lend credibility to then-Champion. In fact, the feud was more between Triple H and Stephanie than it was between Trips and Jericho, so that tells you how much the head creative mind at the time (who was, you guessed it, Stephanie McMahon) thought of Y2J. Booker T had his mugshots from when he was arrested for theft in his earlier days plastered all over the Titantron, and you know how he got his heat back? By having Triple H endure the Harlem Hangover and defeat him with a Pedigree in the middle of the ring. There was no real burial moment for RVD, but when Trips beat him in the middle of the ring at Unforgiven in 2002, the arena deflated after having witnessed yet another Trips title win over a guy they wanted to see as Champion so bad they could taste it.

The most humiliating burial, however, was Kane's. Triple H accused him of necrophilia and even humped the reputed corpse of his victim. Then, you guessed it, he jobbed clean at the PPV, never to get his heat back against Triple H whatsoever. The Trips fanboys all say "yeah well tripel h had to f*kk a corps and he wuz fien!!1" Yeah, you know why he was fine? For one, the corpse-humping was done as a measure of fratboy ball-busting, and two, Triple H got to continue on the push of his lifetime, one that really never ended, even with him FINALLY putting guys like He Who Shall Not Be Named and John Cena over. Kane? Well, like five years later he got to be ECW Champion. Oh, and he jobbed a shitload of times to Rey Mysterio. That's a great consolation prize if this were Opposite Day.

We all know that the guys Triple H held down were great talents who could have injected some life into the main event had they gotten their due sooner than they did. However, it was the consensus that Kane was the weakest of the lot. Given what we're seeing now, there's no doubt that we were wrong in that assessment. As an overall talent, he was far better than Van Dam and probably better than Booker T. It's hard for me to gauge him against Jericho because I'm the world's foremost Jerichoholic, but he had one thing over Y2J that Jericho never could have made up... the size.

So, in the same way that I, like most of us all do, revel in Kane's awesomeness now, in the same way I get a bit disappointed in the fact that this freedom to be completely and utterly epic wasn't unleashed in a time when the then-WWF could have used it more and at a time where he would have been in a position to carry more of a weight for a longer period of time.

Still, better late than never I guess. Here's to Kane, who is making Friday nights better for him having to be on Smackdown!

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Friday Five: Kurt Angle

This week's Friday Five is all about the 1996 Gold Medal Olympian, former WWE Champion and current TNA anchor, Kurt Angle.

1. Did you watch his debut against Sean Stasiak at Survivor Series 1999? If you did, did you ever think that dorky-looking guy would become one of the most important pro wrestlers in the next decade?

2. Buy or sell: current angle in TNA where if he doesn't regain the TNA World Championship, he retires.

3. Did not blowing off the love triangle angle with Stephanie McMahon and Triple H hurt him or have no effect on him?

4. Better character - serious, amateur athlete competitor or goofy badass?

5. What was your favorite Angle match ever?

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Remember Your Classic Wrestlers: Andre the Giant

The 8th Wonder of the World
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Who?: Andre the Giant
Promotions: WWF, AJPW, NWA (Internationally)
Nicknames: The Immovable Object, The 8th Wonder of the World, Tiant
Classic Affiliations: Andre's most famous affiliation was with Bobby Heenan later in his career as an answer to Hulk Hogan going into WrestleMania III. That affiliation would segue into a partnership with Ted DiBiase. When he went to AJPW at the very end of his career, he tagged with Giant Baba.

Height: 7'4"
Weight: 500 lbs.
From: Grenoble, France

After the jump...Signature Maneuvers

Tombstone Piledriver


Elbow Drop Pin


Classic Feuds:

- Killer Khan snapped Andre's ankle during a match legit, and it set up a huge return match later on, defeating Khan in a Mongolian Stretcher match in Philadelphia in November 1981.

- Andre would have two seperate feuds with Hulk Hogan. The first time around, it would be Andre as the face and Hogan as the heel, with the feud culminating at the famous Shea Stadium card in August of 1980. The second time, the roles were reversed in one of the most famous WrestleMania feuds of all-time. It culminated in the main event of WMIII, which saw Hogan bodyslam Andre the Giant for the "first time" and retain his WWF Championship. Later on, Andre would beat Hogan for the title and try to give it to DiBiase, nullifying the reign and causing the tournament at WrestleMania IV where Randy Savage would win the title. Hogan and Andre fought to a draw in said tournament.

- Andre would have a big feud in the '80s over who the best big man in wrestling was with Big John Studd. Studd and his tag partner Ken Patera shaved Andre's trademark white-man afro. This culminated a body slam challenge at the original WrestleMania, which Andre won.

Titles Held:

WWF World Championship
WWF Tag Team Championships (w/ Haku)
NWA Florida Tag Team Championships (w/ Dusty Rhodes)

Andre was the first ever wrestler inducted into the WWF/E Hall of Fame.

Promos:

Andre didn't really speak English all that well...

Andre's Legacy: Andre the Giant is the best special attraction draw ever. He's the biggest example of how to book a guy who has something who that endears him to crowds without needing to win a title. Just look at how sparsely he's won titles over the years. He never won the WWF Championship until the twilight of his career, and yet he drew gobs and gobs of money for both Vince McMahons, J. and K. Along with Bruno Sammartino, Antonino Rocca and Superstar Billy Graham, he serves as the WWF's marquee wrestler from the pre-national days.

Andre was literally larger than life. The man was a gentle giant outside the ring as he was an imposing figure inside of it. He was affable and at the same time, mystic. He'd be able to carry girls in the palm of his hand, literally. He reputedly holds the Guinness World Record for most beers consumed in a sitting. But while he seemed distant and legendary, his personality made him a great fit in movies, most notably The Princess Bride.

Andre the Giant will always be fondly remembered by the WWE and by wrestling fans alike. He's definitely one of the true legends of the business.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Wrestling Comfort Food: Chikara's The Mint Condition Review




Tim Donst, Vanquisher of both Smash Bros.

 If there was any way to polish off five big reviews in five days, it would be with Chikara. As my favorite fed, they're the wrestling show equivalent of comfort food, like meatloaf and mac 'n cheese. Only watching it won't make you fat. Score! Let's dive into the card, which emanated from Reading, PA on 2/27 of this year.

DVD started off with a promo from Green Ant directed at Pinkie Sanchez. Pretty good stuff. First match was obviously the Colony against the BDK trio of Sanchez, Daizee Haze and Lince Dorado. Sara del Rey accompanied the über-rudos out to the ring. The Colony started off hot, waiting to get their hands on the BDK. Daizee started by begging off from the Ants with the other two members getting the Pearl Harbor in. Fire Ant served as a punching bag early, but was able to escape to let in Soldier Ant, who soon enough ended up in the grasp of the BDK. The Colony played underdog for a good part of the match. At one point, Lince got Soldier in a Mexican surfboard and Sanchez landed a springboard double stomp. Brutal and good looking spot. Despite getting hammered down most of the match, the Colony had their moments. Green pulled out a nice leglace counter out of Sanchez planting his foot on his chest. During the Colony's comeback, the men of the team left Daizee in the ring by herself to play up the "chivalry" thing and then slapped all three in the face. The Ants had enough and started unloading on her. No, that wasn't a sexual reference, seeing as this is family friendly. Match ended with Soldier locking Sanchez in the Chikara Special, but del Rey broke up the hold. No she wasn't a legal competitor, so it was a DQ. This was a really tense, very hot opener. I really liked the struggle to get in the Chikara Special at the end. Sanchez really has been a revelation.

Next up, Delirious, still under the control of UltraMantis Black and the Order of the Neo-Solar Temple, took on Player Dos. Pre-match, Mantis cut a brilliant promo detailing all the things he wanted the Order to accomplish (which they wouldn't). Delirious stood still before Mantis called out to him from the Commentation Station, turning Delirious into a raving madman. Almost like Festus, only shorter. A lot of the initial action took place outside the ring, but once it got inside, it stayed fairly grounded with Delirious in control. One of Dos' first attempts at high flying, a springboard body press, was countered beautifully into a gutbuster by Delirious. They really put over how extra-brutal the then-pet of Mantis was since joining the Order, both by Mantis himself on commentary and in the match with Delirious putting extra oomph behind his moves. Dos did make a comeback, but Delirious won, countering out of a fireman carry spinout into the Praying Mantis Bomb/Tiger Driver '98 for the win.

Next match was an atomico. FIST's Icarus and Gran Akuma teamed with the Badd Boyz to take on Incoherence (Hallowicked and Frightmare) and the Osirian Portal (Ophidian and Amasis). The rudos taunted some fans on the outside. Obviously, Icarus is far inferior in this department than his FIST stablemate Chuck Taylor, but then again, Chuck Taylor doesn't have the bad judgment to get a horrible tattoo on his back like the one Icarus has. Match started out on the spotty side, but there were a few really impressive ones, especially Frightmare leaping over Akuma onto the turnbuckles, and then leaping back to hit a rana. A dance-off broke out mid-match, much to the dismay of one of the Badd Bros. Amasis wanted Akuma in the ring, who teased dancing to Lady Gaga, but double-crossed the Funky Pharaoh with a kick to the gut. Akuma's such a dick, it's delicious. Or he was a dick. Who knows if he's going to be tecnico when he comes back now that he's been booted from FIST. Amasis spent much of the match after the fake-out taking a beating from all four rudos. It got a little slow at this point. Match picked up when there was dissention in the ranks among the rudos, and the tecnicos made a comeback. Tecnicos got the win when Hallowicked surprised Icarus with a kick to the face as he was trying to do a running plancha to the outside. Forgettable match, although it wasn't really bad.

The Throwbacks cut an anti-BDK promo, and then we went into Dasher Hatfield and Sugar Dunkerton against Claudio Castagnoli and Ares. The Throwbacks came sliding into the ring and were met with stomping from $wi$$ Money Holding. After an initial flurry comeback, the BDK team kept Dasher Hatfield away from his tag partner for a good part of the match before making a comeback of his own and allowing Dunkerton to get in the ring, who landed a nice sliding DDT on a kneeling Ares. $MH ended up winning when Dunkerton went for a tag on Dasher, but Dasher wasn't there because Claudio pulled him off the apron. Ares got a stunned Dunkerton and nailed him with a Tiger Driver that looked more like Tiger Driver '91. Didn't know if that was a botch or not. Okay match, but not enough of the fun Throwback spots that usually pepper their matches.

A Tim Donst promo preceded his match against Player Uno for the Young Lions Cup. Uno came out guns blazing, but Donst retreated between the ropes, then attacking after Uno retreated per BRYCE~!'s orders. Uno came out working pretty intense but pretty smart too, playing up getting revenge for his friends Hydra, whose career Donst ended, and Player Dos, whose YLC Donst took. A lot of set-up work for an arm submission called the Joystick. Uno was really good here. Donst was pretty good too, as he worked a good ground game, including the illegal but TH-pleasing fishhook on the outside of the ring. He also had a really good counter of the Joystick into a pinning combo. Donst went for the worst-looking frogsplash not done by a leprechaun ever, but Uno countered it with double knees and broke out the HydraLock (full nelson) to the delight of the crowd. Donst retained after hitting Uno with a second Donstitution, which is a front chancery-STO. Good match, a very well-worked affair with a personal-stake feeling to it rather than a lucha libre sprint. The Chikara roster has done a great job of putting over the feeling and the "fight for your life" feel of this war. This might have been Uno's best performance I've seen to date.

Eddie Kingston cut a promo where he called Tursas "Turd-sauce" and then the match between the two was next. Kingston landed a yakuza kick and two hard punches, and Tursas shook them off like mosquito bites. Tursas spent the next few minutes manhandling Kingston, but Kingston did a great job putting over his "no-quit" spirit. Tursas actually landed an impresive-looking German suplex, which for a guy his size is an impressive feat. Claudio appeared mid-match and got wiped out by a Kingston plancha before he could do anything. Then, as Kingston got tied up with Tursas, Claudio heel-tripped him onto the apron out of the sight of referee Nick Papageorgio, setting up a second-rope splash from Tursas and another BDK victory. This was a shortish, almost squash, which did wonders for Tursas' standing, given how over Kingston was in the fed. I don't know why Claudio had to interfere, but I guess this is just building to a season finale showdown this year between the two.

And now, time for our MAAAAAAAAAAINNNN EVEEEEENNNNTT~! The Future Is Now (Jigsaw, Equinox and Helios) teaming with mentor Mike Quackenbush against the unholy union of The UnStable (Colin Delaney, STIGMA and Vin Gerard) and Brodie Lee. Unorthodox start with patented Chikara comic relief with Equinox rolling out of the ring to leave Gerard to Quackenbush, Quack taking Gerard down with an unusual leg takedown and then Brodie Lee and Equinox hugging it out to a chant from the crowd. There was one point where there was a contrast in selling, going from STIGMA not selling a crossbody at all to Delaney overselling an inverted atomic drop and a foot stomp. As was the theme of the night, the faces spent most of the match in peril, with the UnStable really playing up the dick-heel antics, at one point with Gerard mocking Quack's legit injured back. Quack got to escape and Equinox cleaned house, hitting his former (and once again) tag partner Delaney with a deadlift alley-oop before taking his turn to get worked over by the rudos. The best highspot of the match came from Brodie Lee, who surprised everyone, including Gavin Loudspeaker who was in the Commentation Station for this match, by landing a suicide dive to the outside.

The tecnicos made a big comeback with Helios just hitting everything in sight, which led to Equinox, Quack and Jigsaw landing a triple plancha on the rudos on the outside right in the front row. There was this one black fan who took a fair part of the brunt of the hold, which wasn't the first time he took a bump all-night. I think he took one in the Throwbacks/BDK match too. The tecnicos got the exciting if a little sloppy win via a Quackendriver Classic, an inverted Razor's Edge position Iconoclasm, on Delaney. Good cap to the card, although there were a few sore points, specifically STIGMA no-selling that body-press and some obvious ballet from Helios towards the end during his big comeback. Still, a nice main event.

The crew had a tough task following their season premiere, A Touch of Class, but I think they did a fine job of breaking in the new building. It was punctuated by an opener and a main event that pretty much defined what Chikara is to a tee and had a nice journey in-between, especially a visceral feel to the burgeoning BDK/Chikara war, typified most by the YLC match. At the time, it was disheartening to see the BDK whitewash Chikara with only one loss coming via DQ, but looking back now with the BDK on its heels, it stands as the second chapter in a good story. It may not have been the best meatloaf and mac 'n cheese that Chikara had ever served up (that would come a month and a half later at KoT), but it was still damn good comfort food and worthy of going back for seconds.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!