Twitter Request Line, Vol. 264

Gotta load up like the Big Dog if you wanna win the parents' youth baseball rumble
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:

What’s your go-to move in a mass brawl during an 8U baseball game? #TweetBag

— Star of Savage (@StarOfSavage) June 19, 2019

You've gotta keep it simple, stupid. When you have dozens of parents going at it in a battle royale, you don't have the time to set up an elaborate move that may or may not hurt like you're Will Ospreay. You have to hit hard and fast, which is why you gotta be throwing spears like you're Bill Goldberg, Roman Reigns, Edge, and Kairi Sane all rolled up into one. You clear the field by putting respective combatants on their asses, especially if you're a big guy like me. I mean, if you're some wimpy pre-teen umpire, would you think twice about calling a questionable pitch a strike on my kid if I can floor multiple parents with a spear? I don't fukkin' think so, brah.

Why don’t the western (Americas, Europe) non wwe promotions have nothing resembling the support for women’s wrestling that japan has?

— 🤭This a.... wrestling account😉 (@Leaveitbe22) June 19, 2019

Short answer is sexism.

The long answer is the sexism of one or two guys in charge of WWE. In the late '80s/early-to-mid '90s, WWE actually had a decent if threadbare women's "division," in that it had Wendi Richter and then Alundra Blayze, a rotating cast of sometimes-wrestlers, mostly-managers like Luna Vachon and Sensational Sherri, and the Joshi of the Month, like the Jumping Bomb Angels at the beginning into Bull Nakano and eventually Aja Kong. Oh, and Fabulous Moolah was always lurking in the shadows, which is why WWE had to pivot from Richter to Blayze. I'm not sure whether it was Vince McMahon who had a sudden horny revelation or whether it was a ratty asshole like Vince Russo or Kevin Dunn in his ear, but WWE led and everyone else followed afterwards. It also bears repeating that World Championship Wrestling had a burgeoning women's division around the time of the Monday Night Wars, and they brought in their own hired gun joshi like Nakano, Akira Hokuto, and even an incredibly wet-behind-the-ears-but-still-really-good Meiko Satomura, but they kinda just dropped their division sometime after Blayze came to Nitro under her more familiar name Madusa and trashed the WWE Women's Championship. Ah well.

What's funny is that WWE inadvertently launched a ton of women's careers inspiring them with Chyna as a legitimate wrestler with the men. What's funnier, and I actually mean sadder, is that Chyna was ideated as a trans panic gimmick who caught fire and then was thrown in the garbage heap with no support once her boyfriend Paul Levesque decided to successfully try to marry into the McMahon family. In the short term, WWE disrespected her memory by relegating the women to HLA and bra and panties matches and in the long term by abandoning the very idea of intergender wrestling. And while WWE sucks up innovation from the people on the indies actually making it, it repays the favor by wringing out sexism to drip all around the rest of the American indie scene.

SHIMMER has been in existence for nearly 15 years. Other companies around the country book women to great effect. Yet, the perception is WWE controls the narrative with how women can advance in the careers of women, mainly because it can, whether you and I like it or not. Chikara can have a woman Champion, and Central Texas eliminate its gender barriers completely, but even as WWE claims to respect women with its "revolution," look around the rest of the landscape. Pro Wrestling Guerrilla hasn't booked a woman since Candice LeRae moved east. Ring of Honor's women's division still hasn't escaped the pre-show black hole despite booking top joshi like Mayu Iwatani. EVOLVE, known as the last stop before your NXT contract, has one woman on the roster, and people freak out when she does a spot that evokes her femininity. It's a matter of exposure, and the person giving the exposure being sexist as hell.

But hey, sometimes, you want to flesh out the short answer, y'know?

You can only partake in one condiment for the rest of your mortal days, what condiment is it

— baotter (@baollisque) June 20, 2019

My knee-jerk reaction would be sriracha, but I'm already a big dude in danger of coming down with that Type 2 Diabetes shit. Sriracha has too much sugar, man. Therefore, I will go with it's chunkier counterpart, Thai chili paste. It has everything I need: heat, piquancy, garlic. It's also lighter on vinegar than most Western hot sauces.