Thursday, February 19, 2015

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 110

Could Joe to WWE work?
Photo Credit: Lee South/ImpactWrestling.com
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, and wait for the call on Wednesday to ask your questions. Hash-tag your questions #TweetBag, and look for the bag to drop Thursday afternoon (most of the time). Without further ado, here are your questions and my answers!

I'm gonna go ahead and assume that Senior Joe means Samoa Joe and is an unfortunate yet unintentionally hilarious typo. Anyway, I think anywhere Joe goes, as long as he's healthy and motivated, will help cement his legacy. His TNA career met the common criticism that he was "uninspired" or "phoned it in" after he lost his mega-push when Kurt Angle got there. To blame it all on Joe would be to take the extreme boot-licking, brown-nosing point of view that absolves TNA management and creative for totally creating an environment where Joe or any other employee would easily lose motivation. The question would then become would main roster WWE provide a similar environment for him, or could he be fulfilled?

The answer to that question is not easy. The cop-out answer would be that he heads to NXT as a part-time trainer, part-time "townie" who helps get stories over and wrestles to enhance the younger or more upwardly-mobile talents, like a more active William Regal. IF he went to the main roster, however, he'd fall into the same traps as he would have if he had taken the Umaga role back in the day like he was rumored to have been offered. WWE has a checkered history with Samoan wrestlers, and with three Samoans on the roster playing non-traditional (read, not racist) roles, can anyone trust Vince McMahon not to saddle Joe with a hard-headed, savage gimmick?

One indisputable fact is that if Joe went to WWE, he would have better financial security than he would if he went back to Ring of Honor without having to supplement with Lucha Underground or New Japan. I'm not entirely sure what those last two companies pay anyway, although I suspect NJPW, as the top dog promotion in Japan, is a nice payday. Either way, Joe's future is wide-open, and he's probably the most interesting free agent to hit the market since his former TNA colleague AJ Styles.

The go-to condiments seem to be barbecue sauce or honey mustard if corner pizza places are to be believed. McDonald's also goes with sweet 'n sour sauce. All of them are good because they have big flavors but aren't overpowering. That criterion eliminates anything with a strong vinegar underpinning like yellow mustard or hot sauce, even the sainted sriracha. But I think the key is to have some sweetness but also a bite afterwards. Let's face it, chicken fingers aren't the most flavorful of meats, so they need some outside complexity. For that, I'm going with sweet Thai chili sauce. It's sweet, a touch sour, and it has a nice spicy finish that goes great with any fried food, especially one as pliable/nondescript as chicken.

Outside of everyone already written about in my Who To Know series, I have a few picks. One is Sasha Banks. Yeah, yeah, she's super visible in the NXT, but WWE women, main roster or not, don't usually get the shine that could or should propel them into the top five. I have her right now as #2 or #3 on my ballot, pending on how many more Fred Yehi matches I get to watch before I start making announcements, and I feel like many prospective voters feel similarly judging on what I've been seeing on the Twitters.

Speaking of WWE women, Nikki Bella is one to watch. Of all the main roster women, she's surprisingly the only one who's been solid in the ring in every match she's been in with the rider that she's been in more than one match (since Stephanie McMahon technically was awesome in all of her 2014 matches, although she only had the one at SummerSlam). She could make some noise around the 50-60 mark, which a year ago would have been unheard of.

As for indie wrestlers, although I disagree completely with any elite marks given, Kyle O'Reilly might make a ton of noise this year. His solo run in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla has gotten a lot of critical acclaim, and even I have to admit that his tag team work in reDRagon has been tight. I wouldn't vote him in the top 50 on my ballot if I included him at all, but I'm also one guy out of a sea of at least 50 prospective voters.

DVDs will never really go out of style as long as Netflix and the WWE Network are around. Sure, the physical copies may become passe, but documentaries that can chew up an hour or so of time that may or may not have matches appended to them will never go out of style. An hourlong retrospective available on demand on Netflix and the Network might be enough to get people interested enough to check out the show every Wednesday.

AS for a NBC special, if the main roster can't get anything more than a truncated replay of WrestleMania, then I don't think NXT has any hope of getting over the air treatment.

I'm not a doctor or a psychologist, but I am willing to bet that Vince McMahon has the worst case of body dysmorphia in recorded history. But other than that, he looks really pretty AWESOMELY great.

Reigns should be a lock to look better as long as he doesn't squash Bryan in 15 seconds and then act like nothing's wrong when he gets buried in soda cups and crumpled programs. However, he will probably end up being entangled in a fuck finish that leads to a three-way at WrestleMania, and if it's one that mimics the end of RAW this past Monday, he will be in a position where he can be a viable main event player going forward. The Roman Reigns who populated the screen on Monday was viable either as a WWE-style fan-favorite who's cool but kind of a dickhead, or as a heel. He has hope going for him after all.

In a just world, they'd all walk out right before their WrestleMania multi-woman match where they have to cram like 12 women into a match that gets two minutes. At this point, WWE would be better served, at least creatively, by expanding NXT to two hours and dedicating one hour apiece on men and women. But then again, who would populate the sexy photo shoots? It won't happen, but it should.

The only reason that the disparity is so huge is because of how massively talented Sabre is, to be honest. I like Ryder as a performer when he's able to do more than hilariously job to Rusev or cram his five moves of doom into a two minute space because WWE needs recaps of recaps of recaps for shit that happened five minutes ago. His run in WWECW showed a lot of promise, and he was able to have some good matches when he was on Superstars in the halcyon days when Superstars was a thing. But I won't deny that the gap is huge because Sabre is a goddamn stud.

However, I would say the gap between Daveys is much, much, MUCH wider. Davey Richards is one of the worst talents I've ever seen, and the gap between him and either Davey Boy Smith or Davey Vega, take your pick, is about as massive as longest linear point between continents separated by the Pacific Ocean.

Captain: Claudio Castagnoli. Members: Bryan Danielson, Squire Dave Taylor, Chris Hero. Team Uppercut Plus. DO IT.

Assuming a spherical Maria, you'd need her weight to figure out density, which will let you know whether she can float on water or would sink. Then you would need the distance from the center of orbit to figure out angular momentum, depending on what Maria you're talking about here. If it's Maria Kanellis, then the distance from Mike Bennett would be short, but if it was Maria Shriver, I can't imagine she's spending too many days close to Arnold Schwarzenegger these days and you'd have to use the Kennedy Compound as a central point. In fact, a problem "like" Maria doesn't give enough information to solve the problem. You're on your own, kid.
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