Thursday, June 4, 2020

Twitter Request Line, Vol. 296

Dipshits like Cataldi make Philly sports radio unbearable
Photo Credit: Angelo Cataldi
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:

God, I haven't listened to Philly sports talk radio voluntarily in a long, long time, so I honestly don't have recollection of some of the current guys. I couldn't tell you anything about like, Tony Bruno (outside of the bad tweets) or Eytan Shander or whatever, but luckily, there isn't really a whole lot of turnover. That being said, they're all tied for last place. I'm not sure about other towns, but man, I'm pretty sure other towns are similar in how much of a cesspit the sports radio scene is. How can I choose between Angelo Cataldi, who drove a whole busload of people to New York for the express purpose of booing any selection by the Eagles that wasn't Ricky Williams, or Mike Missanelli, whose maturity and temper gets him off the air for days at a time, usually set off because someone called him out on his bullshit? When I say "Sports Talk Radio: Not Even Once," I mean it. You can find more thoughtful, intellectual opinions about sports or anything just by scrolling Twitter and following the right people. Honestly, I would start with the recently bought-out-from-Vox Spencer Hall, his cohort Ryan Nanni, former blogmistress of SB Nation's Phillies site Liz Roscher, TWB reader and longtime friend James O'Brien, and the inimitable Space Ghost avatar man @Cosmis. Or hell, just look at the people I follow. The above are only a sampling. There are a lot of great follows out there that won't make you want to blow your brains out the way radio does.

I'm gonna level with you; I've only ever seen one Uncensored, and it was the MONSTROUSLY INFAMOUS 1996 card that had the Doomsday Cage match between the Mega Powers and the Coalition to End Hulkamania, all featuring a wrestler called "The Ultimate Solution." Now, I think dumping on WCW is pretty passe, especially since it's usually Vince McMahon doing the cheerleading, but GOOD FUCKING GOD, what were they thinking with that wrestler's name? Anyway, the only good match on that card pitted Lord Steven Regal against a bemulleted, mustachioed Fit Finlay, billed as The Belfast Bruiser. Of course, the match didn't even have a pin/submission finish, which, why would anything on that one particular show not be touched with a little curse? I mean, they managed to put on a bad Eddie Guerrero match, although it's unclear at that point whether Konnan was good anywhere outside of Mexico. Hell, I'll defer to the lucha experts to argue over whether he was even good THERE. Anyway, Regal and Finlay could probably have had a decent match if both guys decided to take general anesthetic before the bell, so it's not surprising it was good. I know, I'm a bad wrestling fan for not poring over WCW's archive for the shows I missed, but honestly, I barely have the time to wake up in the morning anymore. I'm sorry, I'm old.

The best lesson is one I learned after the fact. I spent 13 years in Catholic school, which is a hell of a time to be indoctrinated and inundated with religion-based decision making. Some of it wasn't bad; a lot of what Jesus said in scriptures is the basis for a strong, moral way of life that will more often than not keep you on the side of good. The things that separate the good leftists from, say, the people who wear their Trad-Cath bullshit on their sleeves like the Bruenigs are all in the sort of technical bullshit that Catholics harp on other than the actual theology of radical change and care. It's a wonder I was able to be radicalized, but I also think anyone who pays attention in religion/theology class is easy to radicalize if you can stress to them the shit like the moneychangers in the Temple story and "feed the hungry" rather than "abortions get you into HELL, buster" and "no meat on Fridays or you're GOING TO HELL, buster." But I'm off-topic.

Being called out on the bullshit Trad-Cath hobbyhorses oftentimes lets Catholics lead the charge among fellow Christians when they rush to the front lines of undeserved victimhood. And thus the best lesson I learned years after the fact is that you should take everything a Catholic, or any devout Christian to be honest, says with a grain of salt, even if they mean well. That lesson came from my third-grade religion class. The teacher was a sweet old lady whose name I will not mention because one, she's probably dead, and two, well, she's not unique and thus doesn't deserve special mockery. Anyway, one day during class, she without irony said that John F. Kennedy, Jr. was assassinated because he was Catholic, and people thought the Pope was going to come over and rule America. As a third-grader, the statement tripped bullshit alarms that I didn't even know I had, but over the years, seeing not only the Catholic School Industrial Complex churn out self-serving, self-crucifying opinions, but seeing people in America with greater social standing cry victim, it was a calcifying event saw a person of parochial knowledge pass along to impressionable youth the most bonkers conspiracy theory of them all, a theory that ignored an entire 15 years of geopolitical posturing after World War II only to allow mostly White children to have something to hold to their hearts as skin in the oppression game when even though Catholics had by 1991 gotten the privilege of being included among "White" people instead of being othered like they were ethnically in times when they were seen as "Irish" or "Italian" and given the rabble that Black people, Jewish people, and mostly everyone on the gender and sexuality spectrum get for merely existing.

I got good grades, but I by no means was, or even am, a smart person, and I learned a lot of lessons about the human condition, interaction, ideas of justice, and the like after the fact, like a true l'esprit de l'escalier. But when you get something, it sticks with you for a good long time.

The main thing is because if Red is anything like his anime counterpart, he's a big giant loser who chokes in the biggest matches. Both Lance and Steven lean hard on one type, even though both have diverse teams because of circumstance. I gotta think that if Lance had the full 896, he'd not have had to have had Charizard, Gyarados, Aerodactyl, and THREE Dragonite on his team. But you play the cards with which you are dealt. Steven is even worse because you can wreck his shit with a strong Blaziken if you have one, especially if it's post-Gen V and they have Speed Boost. Cynthia is the first non-rival Champion who built a team instead of sticking to a type, and man, she used all the Gen IV studio space. Garchomp was a monster until Gen VI with the introduction of Fairy-type, and even then, like, Dragon/Ground is still a titanic same type attack bonus (STAB for short) to have. Backing them with Lucario, Spiritomb, Roserade, Milotic, and Gastrodon or Togekiss, depending on which game you encounter her in, is the definition of challenging.

Ah, a challenge!

Machamp - I am not building a perfect team for regular battle, but one for wrestling, so they're all going to be humanoid and able to do wrestling moves. Machamp is big, bulky, bruising, and their four arms allow them to be a catch wrestling dream. Their finishing move would be a combo Camel Clutch/Boston Crab, where with his upper arms they grab the clutch and their bottom arms, they yank the legs. No one escapes it. NO ONE.

Hawlucha - The lucha bird has an advantage over all other of their peers either in Pokemon or wrestling in that they can fly. I would give them La Mistica, because it would be even more visually impressive when done out of a dive bomb from the sky.

Incineroar - The Fire starter from Alola is another big bruiser, and they already have a signature move, Darkest Lariat, or even a Z-move, Malicious Moonsault, that are tailor-made to be wrestling finishes. The Alolan Lariat would be their regular finisher, while a big, American Balloon-style moonsault would be the special match one.

Grapploct - Hawlucha was introduced as a lucha bird in... POKE-FRANCE? Not Poke-Mexico? At least Grapploct, the catch-as-catch-can wrestling whiz, was introduced in the country where that style was prevalent. And of course, it might be cliche to give them the Octopus Stretch as a finisher, but it's also fitting.

Mewtwo - They could wrestle without ever having to move a muscle. That's the Kevin Nash dream! The finishing maneuver for this Psychic-type titan would most definitely be a powerbomb that would look like it was done by the Invisible Man. It would look great, AND Jim Cornette would have an aneurysm. Great work!

Grimmsnarl - If any Pokemon was meant to wrestle who wasn't already a wrestler, it would be the short king with a wide shoulder base who would lift all opponents up and slam them down VIOLENTLY. Grimmsnarl's finish would be the military-press into a powerslam, and it would rule, especially when they did it to a much taller Pokemon.

WWWYKI

There was a fight in the schoolyard where I hung out in high school. Someone called the cops, and everyone ran when they showed up. Even though I was just there to spectate, I was caught and thrown in the back of a squadcar for like 10 minutes before they let me go. IT should've been my first clue, but again, I'm slow to the uptake.

So, the build has to remain the same, in that Triple H does everything but call Booker the n-word? The match should then have been Booker hitting Trips with a scissor kick right off the bat before pinning him. The match would have been completed in less time than it took between the Pedigree and the pinfall that actually ended the match. The only way you end a build where a White guy uses a Black BABYFACE's mugshot from YEARS ago to shame him is having that White guy eat the most amount of shit possible. Just remember that the next time you see WWE, Paul Levesque in particular, make a statement on current events.

Wrestling is the ultimate "judge the art, not the artist" medium, because the amount of shitty people who have passed through a locker room is a big percentage of total people who occupied one. Yes, wrestlers are getting better nowadays, and especially now, where it's vitally important that performers in a business revered and attended in the Black community in big numbers either show support or don't open their mouths at all, but that's not going to stop the idiot in some guys from leaking through. It's amazing that Randy Orton, YES THAT RANDY ORTON, not only said "Black Lives Matter" but embraced it on social media, and Jericho, who not two months ago was surprisingly chill with Nyla Rose's journey as a young trans woman, had to keep fucking the "All Lives Matter" chicken. Wrestlers are a weird breed of people, man.

Anyway, Jericho has shown all of his ass lately, and it's disappointing. I think the ability to compartmentalize things will be the key to whether you can enjoy him or not, how strongly you feel about the topics where Jericho is egregiously deficient in his opinion. I will scream it from the rooftops if I have to, but consumption is not activism. What you enjoy doesn't determine your morality, but for as much as someone's virtue or lack thereof shouldn't determine the worth of consuming their art, rejecting the consumption of their products as a means of protest is more than valid, and it's as personal as you can make it. Personally, I think it's a problem Tony Khan and Cody Runnels need to address and address RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, especially since the former has gone after low-hanging fruit targets like Linda Hogan to make examples of them, probably to deflect from how certain people in the company like Jericho but not just Jericho have handled the current events. But I also think tuning into Dynamite has little to do with objective truths about how one does activism nowadays. TO answer the question, it's up to you if Jericho's bullshit conservative tendencies are too much for you, and no one will blame you if you don't watch Dynamite anymore because it features a guy peddling racist rhetoric, especially since he had the President's dipshit failson on his podcast in a 100 percent uncritical interview.
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