Thursday, September 20, 2018

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 251

Should you eat at Friday's abroad?
Photo via the Tennessean
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 don't know if I'd call it "silly" at all. It might be a matter of practicality. The fact that you're even asking the question makes me think you think critically about what you eat, which is a very good trait to have. Anthony Bourdain was popular because he lived a life that someone who thinks critically about food wanted to live. He would eschew the Americanized haunts abroad and dig for the local stuff, sometimes to levels that aren't really afforded to people who don't have his connections, wherewithal, or later on, his funds, especially for a "fixer" as he'd have in some places. The level of ironic silliness one might feel partaking in a chain restaurant on the other side of the world depends on the level of comfort they have with the culture which they are visiting. If you're new to Taipei and don't know the lay of the land or which places accommodate English-speakers, then I'd say eating at Friday's isn't silly at all. It's necessary. But if you've been there a few times, know some people, know where the English-friendly places (or even know a little Mandarin/Taiwanese Hakka), then it might be silly. Is it good or bad silly? Honestly, you're still putting money towards the employ of local people, and your tips go to Taiwanese servers, right? It's probably not ideal, but hey, no one said you gotta live by a code all the time.

It's probably Deadpool if you can convince him to pull his punches for the show. The combination of the healing factor, the proclivity towards masks (or his hideous face below the mask, for which he could use to be a real life Kane!), and his ability not to take himself seriously would make him a near-perfect candidate to be a pro wrestler. That being said, the hangup I have with him is that he talks through the fourth wall just a bit too much, which might make him a too-on-the-nose hire for a place that seems to love worked shoots like I don't know the biggest wrestling company in the world. I mean, that might make him a better fit, but if you think WWE's leaning on TEH SHOOTZ!@ now is bad, imagine when Deadpool shows up and takes breaks during matches to address the kid in the front row aghast him tucking his neck during a Styles Clash.

So with that being said, maybe the best answer is Spider-Man after all. No healing factor, so his range for taking bumps isn't as wide, but he has a similar sense of humor, and man, the flips he'll be able to do, either web-assisted or raw.

This cycles back to the first question. Being food-critical is a highly beneficial trait to have. Not liking the most mass-produced food in its genre isn't a bad thing at all, especially since Subway's reputation is that much in the gutter comparatively speaking even to someplace like McDonald's is in the burger industry. Like, I don't care what rumors you heard about the ditch-burger joints. McDonald's or Burger King never had a snafu as blatantly evil as Subway having used GYM MAT in its bread. While I think the concept of snobbery doesn't exist, or more pointedly, isn't so much about what you prefer, but about what you think about others for what they prefer, I don't think hating Subway would make you a snob in any sense of the word. If anything, it might make you someone whose opinion on food is more trustworthy than someone who eats at Subway for any other reason than it's the best they can afford or it's the only place near them that makes the thing they want to eat.

Right now, I don't know what Survivor Series is going to be, because the main event I envisioned since Rousey signed was Horsewomen vs. Horsewomen. The problem is it would take creative storytelling to pull it off for the NXT side, and it would require Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir to be on STEEP learning curves on the MMA side. The latter is self-explanatory (Rousey is ready, and Shayna Baszler is one of the best in the company right now), but the former got thrown into major doubt when they decided to make Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair a blood feud (which I'm still laughing that that pairing of Horsewomen got the H8 U treatment on main before Sasha Banks vs. Bayley). I mean, other than wacky alignments, I don't blame them for going that route. And they could also do the "corporate mandate" main event thing and then tell the story of Lynch and Flair having to coexist.

However, I think if the Survivor Series main of the two similarly named factions going against each other was the play, they would have held off on Lynch and Flair tearing each other apart. I'd say that going brand vs. brand would be the next route, but for some reason, the end of brand-exclusive pay-per-views feels like a strike against that plan for some reason. I just don't know. Perhaps it's because I'm divorced from the weekly run of the main product right now, but I just get the feeling that if they do BRAND WARS this year again, it's going to feel extremely half-assed, especially since now all the attention will be on Evolution and then the next Saudi Fuck Money show.

If this is a question about the President's penis, I'm gonna be mad.

(It's definitely yetis.)

A normal company would include its developmental brand in any attempt at shaking up the roster. In an objective point of view, absolutely yes, WWE should shake up NXT and send some guys who could use a bit more reps at a high level down there while making it an excuse to make call-ups easier. That being said, the objective best thing to do and the thing that's good for WWE to do as a shitbag dumbfuck company whose NXT administration does a good-to-great job and whose main roster booking only flirts with adequate every once in awhile are two different things. In a perfect world, NXT would be a career path for a WWE wrestler, replete with a comparable-to-main salary and big stardom. So as a matter of roster aeration, yes, it should include NXT. For my own selfish critical desires, that would be a big fat NO. Take whichever answer pleases you more as the one I've given.