Thursday, August 29, 2019

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 271

Few are better to have around in WWE rotisserie than Adam Cole, BAYBAY!
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 280 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:

It's hard, but I'd go between teams five, ten, and 12. They all seem to mix guys who are well-protected in their card positions. Granted, WWE's booking habits could change on a whim. However, I'm tempted to say 12 is the best team because even though they have two part-timers in Brock Lesnar and Triple H, Charlotte Flair and Adam Cole could potentially carry their weight in gold all year long. Andrade is a sleeper pick. Then again, the Reigns team with two tag stalwarts and two guys who get midcard wins on television might be good too. I don't know. But my gut says those three teams are all playoff teams. Sorry.

I actually rarely eat while watching wrestling, or if I am eating, it's random stuff I pull out of the fridge/freezer/pantry. This does give me opportunity to talk about the time I hosted a WrestleMania party at my house, and my wife made a ham, because we had one sitting in the freezer. It was perhaps the biggest mismatch between food and event I could think of, but it was memorable!

I think he's right 100 percent. People are in on the joke nowadays, so instead of trying to fool them, you should give them something they can attach to emotionally. I'd go a step further and say that worked shoots have become mentally exhausting and do nothing but insult the audience's intelligence. Pretending to pull back the curtain is paradoxically the last resort to protecting the old ideals of kayfabe, and honestly, all it does is allow the most boring people in the fandom loudly dominate discussion.

Honestly, I'm so washed that my routine doesn't change from when the Eagles aren't playing at 1 PM ET. Sunday is my morning to get up with the kids and the dogs anyway. I either play Switch or watch whatever wrestling I missed. I eat breakfast, sometimes even make it. I know it's a boring answer, but I don't have season tickets, and therefore I don't have the need to tailgate. The only thing that changes is between 1 PM and around 4 PM, I have so much more knotting in my intestinal tract.

Exactly like that, no starters, no gods, no masters. Honestly, the preseason is a joke anyway. Stadia charge full price for half-assed football. I mean, if you want to keep it, make it two games where no one who is not in danger of being cut has to play. Remember what I wrote yesterday about the WWE schedule being so fraught with risk because it gave more chances for guys to get hurt? Yeah, that's what preseason games do, AND they don't even count. So no, none of my starters would play a down in the preseason, and I would limit their physical activity to training camp practice. That's what you should use to warm up for games, practice, not meaningless games where the defense is expected to hit you just as hard as if the game counted.

1. Icarus - He's the only guy who's been there for both incarnations, and he's so good at getting people to boo him and possibly throw garbage at him.

2. Gran Akuma - He was always the yang to Icarus' yin, the steely shooter who made you hate him because he broke your favorite wrestler's arm, not because he had a back tattoo or took a whole lot of shortcuts.

3. Tony Deppen - Controversial to place him above his older doppelganger, but Deppen fills the Chuckie T role of being the wild card asshole better because he's less ironic and likable than Chuckie T. To be in Team FIST, you have to be a bastard.

4. Chuck Taylor - Look, Chuckie T is probably my favorite wrestler ever to be in FIST, but he was always slightly miscast. He was always meant to be a goofball guy helming the Gentlemen's Club or schlepping around with Beretta.

5. Travis Huckabee - I think Huckabee has massive shoes to fill with Akuma, but he does it well enough. He's less of a martial arts-influenced guy more than he's an old-school shooter, and I think Akuma's aura fit better. However, he's not a bad guy to associate with the, ahem, bad guys at all. Give him time and he'll grow more and more into the role.

6. Johnny Gargano - The chasm between Huckabee and Gargano is ten times wider than the one between Icarus and Huckabee. He was a total misfit in the group. I will never buy Johnny Wrestling as a dick heel. Ever.

7. Sugar Dunkerton - Chikarametrics sucked, man.