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| Should Donst carry the torch in Chikara in 2013? Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
An appropriate volume number for Halloween, I say!
It's Twitter Request Line time, everyone! I take to Twitter to get questions about issues in wrestling, past and present, and answer them on here because 140 characters can't restrain me, fool! If you don't know already, follow me @tholzerman, especially around Friday night after Smackdown, and wait for the call. Or don't wait for it actually. I'll try to get everything for this feature no matter when in the week you shoot me the Tweet. Anyway, here we go.
First up, @el_spriggs wants to know if the best thing going-forward for story in Chikara would be Tim Donst upending Eddie Kingston at the season finale for the Grand Championship.
The best thing? No, I don't think it would be the best thing. I think the optimal event to happen at Under the Hood would be some kind of climax to this rudo Mike Quackenbush tease/Gekido story. That's not to say Donst as a nihilist Grand Champion wouldn't be a good or even great development, because it would. At this point though, Donst's chase of Kingston is just beginning. This Quack thing is ready to get out of the oven.
Although, it would be pretty damn intriguing if they decided to intertwine the stories, have Quack win the Grand Championship and have Donst, as a... ugh, I hate this word... "tweener" chase Quack while having to deal with the consequences of pissing off a pretty ornery War King. But whatever Chikara does promises to be at the very least intriguing.
@D_Nuggets wants to know if they're stalling out the Aces and Eights story to find a big name as the leader.
I would be absolutely shocked if that was the case, actually. I'm fairly certain that the leader was chosen before the story even began, and that leader is either Eric Bischoff or Jeff Jarrett. Now, it could be interesting if they thought those choices were too obvious and were looking to replace them midstream with a less certain-to-sign there name like Batista, John Morrison or someone else. However, I do feel like it's being dragged out because some wrestling companies don't know how to pay off mystery angles in a timely manner.
@Thaliono asks if I've lost hope for women in WWE since they've reportedly lost their patience with recruiting wrestlers and are now reverting back to the "Divas" model.
I'm not entirely sure that one casting call is going to signal the end of an initiative. The thing that we all need to understand about WWE is that it's going to take a long time for them to change and that they're going to be behind the curve. So a reversion such as this isn't the end of them having "real" wrestlers instead of the "20 minute EZ Bake Diva" model that gave us luminaries like Ashley Massaro and Kelly Kelly. It just means that an inherently misogynist company is having growing pains about changing its terrible policies. Of course, that doesn't mean we stop yelling at them for being sexist meatheads. It just means we have to expect bullshit like this and hope that signings like Sara del Rey will have more of a net impact than signings like, say, Hawaiian Tropic Model #486.
There's also the chance that one of their models turns out to be the next Layla or even Trish Stratus, so there's that.
Recent podcast guest @sallen_87 asks what my three favorite pizza toppings are.
This might be a little surprising, but here they are:
Norko Kipte of the A1 Podcast has two questions. First, he wants to know my favorite dip for chips.
This is hard. I like a good spinach/artichoke dip like anyone should. I also dig queso dip, guacamole and Mexican bean dip with the cheese pooled on top. However, my absolute favorite dip is taco dip, which is just cheese, meat, refried beans and salsa layered and baked en casserole. My wife makes a good version of this. Sure, it could be cheating because it's really just a deconstructed taco, but shut up, tacos rule.
Second, he asks whether I think the Tigers won the ALCS or the Yankees lost it.
To be honest, when the As and Orioles (and Reds) were eliminated, I kinda lost a lot of interest in baseball because the odds went to 75% that a team I absolutely didn't want to see win was going to win. The Tigers were (and still are) the last team standing that I'd have been okay with winning. So I may not be the most objective source on this.
That being said, it's probably a little bit of both. The Yankees are a better team than what they showed in the LCS. Even running on fumes, A-Rod isn't THAT bad. The ebbs and flows of a baseball season for the Yanks happened to ebb at the wrong time for the Yanks. That being said, when you have a pitcher for whom bagging Kate Upton is only the second most impressive thing on his resume, you did something right to win.
Brett Clendaniel of WrestleChat and Justin Henry of WrestleCrap teamed up to have me rank twelve natural disaster-related wrestlers by efficacy of their gimmicks.
Okay, so let's dive into the rankings. First up, I don't have any recollection of Riptide, Hail or Avalanche, so I'm not ranking them. Okay, here goes, in ascending order:
9. Lance Storm - LOL, "Storm" and "gimmick" don't belong in the same sentence except to say "Lance Storm is not good at gimmicks."
8. Gorilla Monsoon - Monsoon wasn't so much a gimmick, just a name. While he was one of the most fearsome villains ever and one of the most beloved announcers, I wouldn't equate him with the massive rainstorms associated with his surname.
6t. Jushin "Thunder" Lyger
6t. "Lightning" Mike Quackenbush - If we were to rank these guys on sheer ability, Lyger and Quack might be 1 and 2 in some order. However, I think their gimmicks aren't so much weather related as much as they relate to their speed or how hard they hit.
5. "Wildfire" Tommy Rich - We're starting to move more into fitting into the oeuvre of the natural disaster phenomenon here, although I don't remember much about Rich being a "wildfire" as I did about him being surprisingly awesome in the FBI in ECW. And that rumor about him bl... nah, let's not get into that.
4. The Texas Tornado - I give him credit for swirling around on his lariat. Still, I feel like Kerry von Erich needed to have freakier strength to be able to throw heavy shit like cows or motorcycles or Earthquake. Tornadoes aren't just finesse, y'know. Still better than most.
3. Hurricane Helms - Hurricane as a name for a superhero is pretty cool, and he actually
2. Typhooon - Deducting points because he was also Tugboat, which is usually felled by natural disasters.
1. Earthquake - He was a big fat guy who jumped around to cause "tremors" and had seismographs on his gear. Yep, I think he's the winner.
@OkoriWadsworth asks what the best submission hold for each certain body part is.
The neck is one that hasn't been explored yet outside of science fiction (at least in my travels). I'd go with the Vulcan Neck Pinch. The legs, I've always been a fan of a really tight Texas Cloverleaf. The arms, it's the crossface chicken wing. Midsection... probably an abdominal stretch with cheating. You know, if you're not cheating doing the abdominal stretch, you're not trying.
@el_spriggs back again asking what the best show, top-to-bottom, has been this year.
I'm still pretty behind, so I haven't seen some obvious choices like Threemendous, Extreme Rules, Hot off the Griddle or anything in ACW except for Guilty by Association 6. Funny thing is, I'd probably put GBA6 on my shortlist, along with King of Trios Night 3 and ROH Homecoming. If you pressed me, I'd probably say King of Trios because I'm totally gay for Chikara and I was there live. Plus, the Spectral Envoy winning the tournament over three guys doing the best heel shtick of anyone not named Icarus all year? Yeah, that's the best way to end a show.
Two all-time trade questions! First, from @GayWrestlingFan, which wrestler from back in the day would I want to see today?
The obvious answer would be Dynamite Kid, because he was the spirit animal of so many different wrestlers around today, but I'm not sure how well I'd enjoy him. I like the more esoteric. With my affinity for hosses, I'd love to see Junkyard Dog, actually. Charismatic as hell, agile for a big guy and he barked like a dog. WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?
@BeerBaron4Life's trade idea is to do a trade from one promotion in the Attitude/Monday Night Wars era to another.
In 1998, I would have traded Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero and La Parka from WCW to the WWF for the Undertaker. Yeah, we would have been deprived the Ministry stuff and a few matches in The Streak, but with WCW's history, he would have been back in the WWF fold before long. Jericho and Guerrero would have gotten their pushes jump-started earlier and La Parka would have been AWESOME in late '90s WWF. Win/win for both companies.
Finally, @BeerBaron4Life wants to know how Shawn Michaels would be perceived today had he not been injured or found Jesus in his time away from WWF/E.
I don't think it would be all that different. If anything, I think he would have had a better resume in the ring. He would have had a lot more time to wrestle more matches against folks like Kurt Angle, Steve Austin, Chris Jericho and to face new opponents like Eddie Guerrero and The Rock. I just think the backstage stuff, as it is for most guys including Triple H, is overblown to such a great degree. Even for Michaels, it still is. People are going to think what they want to think.
It's Twitter Request Line time, everyone! I take to Twitter to get questions about issues in wrestling, past and present, and answer them on here because 140 characters can't restrain me, fool! If you don't know already, follow me @tholzerman, especially around Friday night after Smackdown, and wait for the call. Or don't wait for it actually. I'll try to get everything for this feature no matter when in the week you shoot me the Tweet. Anyway, here we go.
First up, @el_spriggs wants to know if the best thing going-forward for story in Chikara would be Tim Donst upending Eddie Kingston at the season finale for the Grand Championship.
The best thing? No, I don't think it would be the best thing. I think the optimal event to happen at Under the Hood would be some kind of climax to this rudo Mike Quackenbush tease/Gekido story. That's not to say Donst as a nihilist Grand Champion wouldn't be a good or even great development, because it would. At this point though, Donst's chase of Kingston is just beginning. This Quack thing is ready to get out of the oven.
Although, it would be pretty damn intriguing if they decided to intertwine the stories, have Quack win the Grand Championship and have Donst, as a... ugh, I hate this word... "tweener" chase Quack while having to deal with the consequences of pissing off a pretty ornery War King. But whatever Chikara does promises to be at the very least intriguing.
@D_Nuggets wants to know if they're stalling out the Aces and Eights story to find a big name as the leader.
I would be absolutely shocked if that was the case, actually. I'm fairly certain that the leader was chosen before the story even began, and that leader is either Eric Bischoff or Jeff Jarrett. Now, it could be interesting if they thought those choices were too obvious and were looking to replace them midstream with a less certain-to-sign there name like Batista, John Morrison or someone else. However, I do feel like it's being dragged out because some wrestling companies don't know how to pay off mystery angles in a timely manner.
@Thaliono asks if I've lost hope for women in WWE since they've reportedly lost their patience with recruiting wrestlers and are now reverting back to the "Divas" model.
I'm not entirely sure that one casting call is going to signal the end of an initiative. The thing that we all need to understand about WWE is that it's going to take a long time for them to change and that they're going to be behind the curve. So a reversion such as this isn't the end of them having "real" wrestlers instead of the "20 minute EZ Bake Diva" model that gave us luminaries like Ashley Massaro and Kelly Kelly. It just means that an inherently misogynist company is having growing pains about changing its terrible policies. Of course, that doesn't mean we stop yelling at them for being sexist meatheads. It just means we have to expect bullshit like this and hope that signings like Sara del Rey will have more of a net impact than signings like, say, Hawaiian Tropic Model #486.
There's also the chance that one of their models turns out to be the next Layla or even Trish Stratus, so there's that.
Recent podcast guest @sallen_87 asks what my three favorite pizza toppings are.
This might be a little surprising, but here they are:
- Pepperoni - This is the staple because it's so good. It's tangy and a little spicy and it works well with the cheese and sauce.
- Ricotta cheese - A non-traditional cheese to put on a pizza, ricotta adds well-appreciated creaminess and a little sweetness, which combines nicely with the sweetness of the sauce and as a counterbalance to the salty, stringy mozzarella.
- Bacon - Bacon isn't #1 because it's rarely ever done right on a pizza. There is no margin for error on this. It either has to be crispy, or it's just flaccid and more of a hindrance. That being said, when it's done right, it's friggin' awesome. My recommendation is to get bacon and pineapple, or as I like to call it, Hawaiian Internet Pizza. Once you do that, you'll never go back to ham.
Norko Kipte of the A1 Podcast has two questions. First, he wants to know my favorite dip for chips.
This is hard. I like a good spinach/artichoke dip like anyone should. I also dig queso dip, guacamole and Mexican bean dip with the cheese pooled on top. However, my absolute favorite dip is taco dip, which is just cheese, meat, refried beans and salsa layered and baked en casserole. My wife makes a good version of this. Sure, it could be cheating because it's really just a deconstructed taco, but shut up, tacos rule.
Second, he asks whether I think the Tigers won the ALCS or the Yankees lost it.
To be honest, when the As and Orioles (and Reds) were eliminated, I kinda lost a lot of interest in baseball because the odds went to 75% that a team I absolutely didn't want to see win was going to win. The Tigers were (and still are) the last team standing that I'd have been okay with winning. So I may not be the most objective source on this.
That being said, it's probably a little bit of both. The Yankees are a better team than what they showed in the LCS. Even running on fumes, A-Rod isn't THAT bad. The ebbs and flows of a baseball season for the Yanks happened to ebb at the wrong time for the Yanks. That being said, when you have a pitcher for whom bagging Kate Upton is only the second most impressive thing on his resume, you did something right to win.
Brett Clendaniel of WrestleChat and Justin Henry of WrestleCrap teamed up to have me rank twelve natural disaster-related wrestlers by efficacy of their gimmicks.
Okay, so let's dive into the rankings. First up, I don't have any recollection of Riptide, Hail or Avalanche, so I'm not ranking them. Okay, here goes, in ascending order:
9. Lance Storm - LOL, "Storm" and "gimmick" don't belong in the same sentence except to say "Lance Storm is not good at gimmicks."
8. Gorilla Monsoon - Monsoon wasn't so much a gimmick, just a name. While he was one of the most fearsome villains ever and one of the most beloved announcers, I wouldn't equate him with the massive rainstorms associated with his surname.
6t. Jushin "Thunder" Lyger
6t. "Lightning" Mike Quackenbush - If we were to rank these guys on sheer ability, Lyger and Quack might be 1 and 2 in some order. However, I think their gimmicks aren't so much weather related as much as they relate to their speed or how hard they hit.
5. "Wildfire" Tommy Rich - We're starting to move more into fitting into the oeuvre of the natural disaster phenomenon here, although I don't remember much about Rich being a "wildfire" as I did about him being surprisingly awesome in the FBI in ECW. And that rumor about him bl... nah, let's not get into that.
4. The Texas Tornado - I give him credit for swirling around on his lariat. Still, I feel like Kerry von Erich needed to have freakier strength to be able to throw heavy shit like cows or motorcycles or Earthquake. Tornadoes aren't just finesse, y'know. Still better than most.
3. Hurricane Helms - Hurricane as a name for a superhero is pretty cool, and he actually
2. Typhooon - Deducting points because he was also Tugboat, which is usually felled by natural disasters.
1. Earthquake - He was a big fat guy who jumped around to cause "tremors" and had seismographs on his gear. Yep, I think he's the winner.
@OkoriWadsworth asks what the best submission hold for each certain body part is.
The neck is one that hasn't been explored yet outside of science fiction (at least in my travels). I'd go with the Vulcan Neck Pinch. The legs, I've always been a fan of a really tight Texas Cloverleaf. The arms, it's the crossface chicken wing. Midsection... probably an abdominal stretch with cheating. You know, if you're not cheating doing the abdominal stretch, you're not trying.
@el_spriggs back again asking what the best show, top-to-bottom, has been this year.
I'm still pretty behind, so I haven't seen some obvious choices like Threemendous, Extreme Rules, Hot off the Griddle or anything in ACW except for Guilty by Association 6. Funny thing is, I'd probably put GBA6 on my shortlist, along with King of Trios Night 3 and ROH Homecoming. If you pressed me, I'd probably say King of Trios because I'm totally gay for Chikara and I was there live. Plus, the Spectral Envoy winning the tournament over three guys doing the best heel shtick of anyone not named Icarus all year? Yeah, that's the best way to end a show.
Two all-time trade questions! First, from @GayWrestlingFan, which wrestler from back in the day would I want to see today?
The obvious answer would be Dynamite Kid, because he was the spirit animal of so many different wrestlers around today, but I'm not sure how well I'd enjoy him. I like the more esoteric. With my affinity for hosses, I'd love to see Junkyard Dog, actually. Charismatic as hell, agile for a big guy and he barked like a dog. WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?
@BeerBaron4Life's trade idea is to do a trade from one promotion in the Attitude/Monday Night Wars era to another.
In 1998, I would have traded Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero and La Parka from WCW to the WWF for the Undertaker. Yeah, we would have been deprived the Ministry stuff and a few matches in The Streak, but with WCW's history, he would have been back in the WWF fold before long. Jericho and Guerrero would have gotten their pushes jump-started earlier and La Parka would have been AWESOME in late '90s WWF. Win/win for both companies.
Finally, @BeerBaron4Life wants to know how Shawn Michaels would be perceived today had he not been injured or found Jesus in his time away from WWF/E.
I don't think it would be all that different. If anything, I think he would have had a better resume in the ring. He would have had a lot more time to wrestle more matches against folks like Kurt Angle, Steve Austin, Chris Jericho and to face new opponents like Eddie Guerrero and The Rock. I just think the backstage stuff, as it is for most guys including Triple H, is overblown to such a great degree. Even for Michaels, it still is. People are going to think what they want to think.
