Friday, March 13, 2020

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 289

Pats won 18 in a row to lose in the final game? You hate to see it.
Photo via USA Today FTW
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:

1. New England Patriots 18-game winning streak: The Dolphins went 17-0 when half the league consisted of milkmen and garbage collectors. Even though they didn't win that illustrious 19th game, thanks to a miraculous, non-repeatable catch after a dropped pick six, winning 18 games in a row in the modern NFL is HARD.

2. Oklahoma Sooners 47-game winning streak: Sure, this streak ended up happening when most football players in college were future mailmen and truck drivers, but 47 games spanning five seasons is, in a word, insane. How many teams can go back-to-back undefeated in any era? Oklahoma didn't lose for four seasons. That's nuts.

3. Philadelphia Flyers 35-game unbeaten streak: Now, in hockey before they added the shootout, ties were prevalent. A tie isn't a win, but it's also not a loss. There's so much variance in hockey that going 35 games without a loss is goddamn impressive, no matter how many ties were scattered in there.

4. Los Angeles Lakers 33-game winning streak: In basketball, it's a lot easier to create a superteam, and when the Lakers amassed a roster that made everyone else's look like a piece of shit, it was no wonder they'd be the best team in the league. But 33 games? That's a lot.

5. Michael Phelps' 10-year winning streak in the butterfly - There have been some dominant Olympic athletes over the years. Aleksandr Karelin in wrestling, Usain Bolt and Jackie Joyner-Kersee in running, but not losing a match for an entire DECADE, even when you've got a tireless work ethic with the appetite to match like Phelps, is inhuman.

If it were 1998, McMahon, with the aid of his even dumber consigliere Vince Russo, would have already given Beaver Cleavage a reboot into Patient Zero. Now? His basest desires have been reined in by stockholders. I'm not sure if that means there won't be a coronavirus angle, especially if Mania gets postponed. I'm just saying it's no longer the slam dunk it would've been in the pre-corporate era.

I got two words for ya, and they ain't "suck it." Direct action. Unless somehow voter suppression disappears into the aether and Bernie Sanders gets all the votes that were intended to him, the country is headed for a milquetoast centrist who has barely shown any will to move to the left taking on the racist game show host. I feel like the only way to prevent it is for the workers of the country to unite and grind society to a halt. That won't happen easily because of how many workers are brainwashed to believe right wing talking points. That being said, if the people can rise up in Libya and Chile and France, they can rise up here.



The matches would all probably be the same, to be honest. That being said, with all the studio space available and no live fans there needing to see the action, I would take the opportunity to send action all around the arena: bathrooms, luxury boxes, boiler rooms. Anywhere fit for human occupancy in the arena would be game. Maybe the Brock Lesnar and Bill Goldberg matches would stay in the ring area because of how short they're going to be. However, wouldn't it make sense for Edge to want to take a pound of flesh from Randy Orton somewhere other than the ring or for The Fiend to want to make John Cena fight him on his terms in his comfort zones? The possibilities would be endless.

I for one am SHOCKED that Game Changer Wrestling hasn't incorporated it yet into someone's character. It feels like they have the right combination of intentional tone-deafness as well as the people who could pull it off so that you forget it's tone deaf. Other than them, maybe Dramatic Dream Team does it, because nothing's off limits there and they treat all the things they make fun of with care. One thing's for certain; like above, I doubt WWE or All Elite Wrestling do it. Maybe WWE would be more likely than AEW, but still, I doubt the shareholders go for it.

Of the shows that have existed before, obviously Bloodsport is the choice. While neither of the Josh Barnett shows have come close to matching the juice level of the Matt Riddle one, and while the slavish devotion to telling you who their influences are is boring, honestly, there are at least two lights-out matches that scratch a different itch than most other wrestling. The one that hasn't existed before that I'm looking forward to is WrestleVania. Honestly, I just wanna see someone get sacrificed to Satan.

He-Man toys were cool because there were a whole lot of unique designs with a buttload of weapons. I'd love for my son to have them too, but my mom got rid of them when we all got holder. Sometimes, when you have a cartoon that is just there to sell toys, the toys were incredibly on point. It's not the same today. Then again, I'll take a show like Steven Universe that exists to tell a story but that doesn't have the best toys, y'know?

In theory, that sounds badass, but it's Randy Orton. He's the most disingenuous person to live. Do you really think he meant that, or was he just trying to troll Phoenix and Edge? Rated RKO didn't even last that long! It doesn't come close to the Golden Lovers, and even they're probably not in the upper echelon given how little Kota Ibushi seems to care about them.

The worst snack ideas always come from Japan, where the desire to make things like Mountain Dew-flavored Doritos or Sweet Potato and Green Tea Kit Kats overrides the responsibility of whether or not they should make them. The best snack combos are those snack packs where there's some dried fruit, nuts, and cheese all in the same pack. They're a little bit healthier than the normal snack, but they're a good taste combo.


Protected user @earthdog asks:
Should the WWE cancel WM or hold it in an empty arena?
These two are kinda the same question. Roman Reigns, one-half of one of the prohibitive main events of the show, is a year removed from his cancer going into remission. When you have cancer, you're already immunocompromised, whether or not you take chemotherapy. Of course it's worse after taking chemo, but there's always the chance that even a year after, his leukemia might make enough of a comeback that if he catches something as aggressive as the coronavirus, he could die. Honestly, while preventable deaths have never stopped Vince McMahon from continuing his planned events, maybe they should. I'm not sure I'd want Joseph Anoa'i's life on my hands when I've already got Owen Hart's blood on them without being able to scrub it off. Postpone the show. Have it when the pandemic cools down. No one is gonna care, at least no one whose opinion is worth a damn will.

The Landover Racial Slurs have been affront to sports since their inception. While it's not surprising that a team originally based out of Boston would have a racist-as-hell team name, that should have changed maybe when they moved to the capital. All Native American imagery is racist as hell, but the Cleveland and Atlanta baseball teams and the Chicago hockey team don't use the Native equivalent to the n-word as their nicknames. You don't need to change the color scheme. You just need to change the nickname and the mascot. The Washington Red Tails would pay tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen who helped win the last just war the world has ever seen. That name would go from racist to actively celebrating another group of historically downtrodden American people. The Washington Red Pandas would have internet meme cred from jump, and who wouldn't want a red panda as a mascot. Those are two exccellent choices to scrub the stain that the current nickname is leaving on the league and the country.

I haven't watched much Food Network lately, and honestly, a Tournament of Champions featuring the current slate of stars on Chopped and other shows feels... unappealing. Guy Fieri really is the only person on that network who is worth a damn, and he's the host. Granted, all of them make really good looking food, but it's like, do I really want to watch a show where I have to choose between Geoffrey Zakarian, Scott Conant, or Alex Guarnaschelli to win? Not a chance.

In five years? She'll look the same. Now, in ten or 15 years, she might start to turn from your hot aunt to your aunt who should've hung it up a few years prior. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you. Missy Hyatt turned into the latter and she's still pretty good looking and besides any aesthetic point, still pretty sharp when it comes to the biz. Flair will be fine.