Thursday, June 1, 2017

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 189

Would YOU listen to a Hacksaw podcast?
Photo Credit: WWE.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:

Honestly, any show has a chance of being okay. I mean, who would've thought the goofy motherfucker doing Dusty elbow tribute spots and appearing to hang of CM Punk's coattails would have an insightful podcast, or the guy who played a beer-swilling redneck would be able to do something useful and thoughtful with his unprecedented access, strictly wrestling-speaking? Additionally, Mooney has experience in broadcasting, and Duggan can't be as loud and simple as his classic character, right? I mean, this show doesn't appear to be a shitty old man cashing in on the angst of fans of wrestling's antiquity on the surface. If I still listened to podcasts, I might give this one a chance, so yeah, I'd say it has a ceiling better than "shitty."

Everything.

More specifically, it's the troupe of people who try to pass off nostalgia as criticism. I know a lot of this falls under the "shitty old man" corollary, but at the same time, it's young people clamoring for everything and everyone they either saw when they were kids or watched on tape at the behest of like Dave Meltzer or some shit. One dude said that wrestling was missing someone like Sid today, which blew my mind. Granted, he had a presence like no one else, but that presence dissipated once he was actually asked to work or interact with anyone but himself. Besides, modern wrestling has Braun fuckin' Strowman. I don't know. I like the old days, but I don't need to see people fetishizing 1984 Mid-South like it didn't have its own problems or pretending like modern indies or New Japan Pro Wrestling are floating garbage islands in the Pacific Ocean.

The strikeout is so unique in sport, because it's both a defensive act (attempting to prevent the other team from accruing offensive output) but also a clear attack. So what's a better analogy in wrestling, an action that is both attacking but defensive in nature, than counterwrestling? It might be a shaky comparison since baseball is so compartmentalized, and wrestling, while able to fit into five divisions (intro/shine/heat/comeback/finish), has better potential for fluidity and flux. So a #grapplefuck match between Biff Busick (now Oney Lorcan, who is here for porkin' in NXT) and Timothy Thatcher might qualify more as a pitchers' duel. In fact, that's one such example that I would use as a 20 strikeout game, albeit with both pitchers throwing heat and not just one. Imagine if Dwight Gooden and Roger Clemens both had their apex games against each other in the same season, which would require imagining interleague play in 1985 (or at least that duel to happen in the 1986 World Series, which holy shit would've been the most warmly remembered and mythologized game ever), but I don't wanna get too far down the rabbit hole over here, okay?



Indie wrestling companies using crowdfunding shouldn't raise any eyebrows, mainly because of how little kitty exists for the taking once you get outside of WWE's immediate gravity. The fact so many people got mad at it in principle shows how blindly loyal people are not to wrestling, but to capital. WWE keeps pulling monopolistic shit by abusing the independent contractor label alone, but it's WrestleCircus and Lucha Underground and even Impact Wrestling that get slapped hardest with the carny label? Give me a goddamn break.

However, I feel like this story has more under the surface. WrestleCircus burst on the scene in Austin, a city with two other viable indie promotions, and started booking top-line talent right away. It has immediate distribution on Internet pay-per-view, has ties to noted grifter Eric Bischoff, and has raised hell with fans over fuckin' concessions of all things? Any other wrestling promoter sending out feelers for extra money for better digs might pass the smell test, but these guys, well, I don't know. It feels like the people behind it were trying to play capitalism and didn't want to dedicate to it once folks dropped a little heat on them. It wouldn't even reach a 0.5 on the Vince McMahon scale of fast ones pulled by promoters, but it was still fishy enough to warrant some discussion.

Never say never, especially since Lucha Underground always seems to be on shaky ground after every prolonged break. Even though he's found his niche as Johnny Mundo, I would never count out a WWE return. Chris Hero, Mickie James, Jinder Mahal, Drew Galloway, Curt Hawkins, and for a moment Shelton Benjamin all made their way back, and I don't remember Morrison having any particular bad blood with management. Now, if you want a timetable, I can't give that. However, I'd be shocked if Morrison doesn't at least have a one-off appearance left in him if LU ends and leaves him without a televised US home.
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