Tag: PF

El Grande Americano: how can you not be romantic about lucha libre?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I never really wrote about it because I just never really had the time or the opportunity or the perfect timing to put my thoughts to brog about it, but I’ve been a fan of El Grande Americano since Chad Gable first put the mask on and began parading around as an obvious goof on lucha libre as well as Mexican culture.  Not because it was a goof on Mexican culture, but the sheer hilarity of the notion that Chad Gable put a silly mask on and worked with the expectation that nobody would know that he and El Grande Americano were one and the same, despite the fact that the ring attire was almost entirely the same save for the tassle-ey boots.

It was a little bit of a throwback in a time where fans and followers of the industry are smarter and more connected than ever, and for the most part, the WWE had figured out that fans actually appreciated it more when their intelligences weren’t being tested, but El Grande Americano instead did go back in time, and for weeks and months, Chad Gable would often be performing double duty on television, as regular all-American Chad Gable, and then acting as if El Grande Americano were a completely different human being outright.

And under the El Grande Americano mask, he would clown and he would cheat, but the fact of the matter was that he was starting to win more matches, and I’d never been more entertained than when he started putting the metal “plate” into his mask and using loaded headbutts to win matches underhandedly.

But then Chad Gable got hurt, with some sort of shoulder injury, and my immediate reaction was, what’s going to happen to El Grande Americano???  Fewer things are more deflating in the world of professional wrestling than when a talent finally begins to start to gain some traction and momentum with a gimmick that appears to be working, only to be derailed by injury.  As a fan, I felt crushed for Gable, whom I’ve often been high on as a worker, as well as the fact that he really was beginning to blossom into an entertaining personality as well, only for an injury to completely derail all the hard work that was starting to pay off.

I figured the El Grande Americano storyline was going to die right there without its rightful mask wearer.  Even when the also-underutilized Marcel Barthel AKA Ludwig Kaiser took over the mantle in a second-tier goof of Who Is El Grande Americano, I figured this was an instance of Ludwig basically taking over the mantle just so that they could tie up loose ends with the persona and eventually kill it off, so that El Grande Americano didn’t just abruptly vanish and make it obvious for the two fans out there that didn’t actually know the identities that El Grande Americano was Chad Gable.

I don’t know how much the creation of the El Grande Americano character coincided with the E purchasing Mexico’s AAA promotion, but when the E really started to take over operations of AAA, it was very apparent that there was no better place for the El Grande Americano persona to apply their trade than there, since he was basically the anti-luchador, pretending to be a luchador, going up against real, authentic luchadores.

And at first, El Grande Americano did his job as was to be expected; being booed the fuck out of Mexican venues, by Mexican people who were supposed to be incensed and offended by a guy who was obviously not even Mexican, pretending to be a luchador, cheating and defeating actual luchadores.  And it didn’t help that he was aligning himself with Dominik Mysterio, who was supposed to be the rudo (read: heel), invading AAA and setting his sights on the AAA Mega Campeonato, and even went as far as helping him upend El Hijo del Vikingo for their top championship.

But the thing is, Mexican fans really loved and really popped for all of the WWE talents that were crossing the border to make appearances for AAA, and in spite of their expected alignments, Dom was getting pops that were almost Stone Cold Steve Austin in the 90s-level in Mexico, and everyone in his gravitational pull, including El Grande Americano was benefitting from the proximity.

Continue reading “El Grande Americano: how can you not be romantic about lucha libre?” →

Bobby Bonilla Day presents the 2025 MLB All-Deferred Money Team

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year again, where Bobby Bonilla collects two big* paychecks from the New York Mets and Baltimore Orioles for playing baseball despite the fact that he’s 62 years old today and hasn’t played baseball since 2001; and I trot out this annual post to put on blast just how stupid and egregious that baseball salaries continuously escalate.

*$1,193,248 from the Mets and $500,000 from the O’s; paltry in the grand spectrum of MLB salaries, but still tremendously more than what successful doctors, teachers and actual essential personnel in the real working world make

It’s funny this year, because of the Dodgers’ absolute bonkers spending spree, and spamming of salary deferral, the whole concept of deferring salaries has come under a massively public microscope.  Most old nerdy fans like me know it’s all well within the rules and that any team in the league can employ it, and as I’ve documented, many have throughout the years, but nobody has really done it to the effect of the Dodgers have over the last offseason, promising out over a billion dollars to several players that will be paid out mostly between the years of 2030 through like, the end of the human race, at the rate we’re going.

But even in spite of the Dodgers’ deferral spree they went on this year, in the grand spectrum of the 2025 season, the Dodgers are but just a mere blip on the radar in the master list of deferrals, as well as dead money throughout the league.  Granted, this will change dramatically in the 2030’s, when Bobby Bonilla’s contract finally ends, and the Dodgers’ deferrals start to kick in and I’ll probably have to change the name of these posts from “Bobby Bonilla Day” to “the Dodgers present,” but until then, there’s still a lot of life in this little exercise continuing to be named after Bobby Bo.

Anyway, on with the show.

In the 2025 season, there are 24 players making deferred monies, according to Spotrac, spread between 14 teams.  Compared to last year, this is one less player and one less team, primarily on account of Ken Griffey Jr. finally coming off the Cincinnati Reds’ books despite not having played since 2010.  I made a joke last year that it was perfect that it was 25 players, since rosters (used to be) are 25-man rosters (with a 26th injured reserve spot).

However, in spite of the one fewer player and one fewer team, these 24 players are making an estimated $83.156M, which is a higher payroll than three teams’ total payrolls: the Chicago White Sox, Miami Marlins of course, the Oakland the Sacramento The A’s.  Barely avoiding the embarrassment of being outspent by a roster of deferred salaries are the Tampa Bay Rays and Pittsburgh Pirates.

Continue reading “Bobby Bonilla Day presents the 2025 MLB All-Deferred Money Team” →

Dad Brog (#151): Father’s Day 2025

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

#4 of forever

True to my neurotic nature, this is the date in which I will forever post the annual Father’s Day blet picture day photograph, so that I can be tickled in future years when I look at the On This Day section of my brog and see a veritable montage of the years and passage of time as my kids go from tiny little baby nuggets into the vibrant and sassy little shits that I love more than anything in existence.

I should also like to point out that this is the first, and probably only year in which all blets in the photograph are actually still actively on television.  Literally every other blet in my collection is retired or redesigned, and it’s only a matter of time before NXT rebrands the North American blet, and it’s seemingly always rumored that the WWE will scrap the women’s tag team titles.

Full disclosure, I actually took these photos almost a month in advance and have been sitting on them until this time, and I’m glad that I did.  I had just gotten my hair cut, and my lawn was cut a day earlier, and I’ve been having some issues with my landscapers and was forced to softly fire them, leading to me having to cut my own grass after taking the last four years off from the chore.

Also with the summer in full effect now with daily 90F+ temperatures, all of us would’ve been miserably hot and cranky doing our photos now, compared to the conditions of when I had taken these.  So no regrets whatsoever on shooting well before Father’s Day and well before my arbitrary posting dates, especially with how they turned out in the end.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#151): Father’s Day 2025” →

On the precipice of history: the 2024 Chicago White Sox

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ordinarily, I would think I would be committing the ultimate jinx by writing this, and tempting the tides of fate into absolutely feeling the utmost need to punish me for my attempt at clairvoyance.  But I am doing so because I’m about to skip town for the next week, and when the historic inevitably occurs, I won’t really be in a position to be able to take the time to write about it, and I feel that this is one of those things best brogged about as close to its drop date, rather than being something having to be written in retrospect, like the unfortunate majority of the posts I write these days.

And let’s be real here, in order for the White Sox to avoid becoming the worst team in MLB history, they have to go 7-1 in their remaining games, and at the precise time I’m writing this, they’re down 4-1 to the Padres to which if the score holds, puts them at loss #119, tying the American League record for worst team in AL history, and one loss away from tying the 1962 Mets for the worst team in baseball history, before they’ll have several shots to futilely avoid becoming the de facto worst team in baseball history.

Yeah, it would take a legitimate act of god at this point for the White Sox to avoid making history at this point.  And if it were to actually happen, then I’d have received all the validation in the world that I needed to know that I am a supreme being that has actual influence on fates of the world.

But yes, this is a post to talk about and preemptively congratulate the 2024 Chicago White Sox, for becoming the worst team in Major League Baseball history.  Full stop, ever.  Not in this generation, this century, or some other made-up record,* we’re talking about: baseball is invented.  Period.  Worst team in history is the 2024 Chicago White Sox.  Period.

*oh and there’s a lot of this bullshit going around lately, like Elly de la Cruz becoming the youngest player to join the “25HR/65SB Club,” Bobby Witt Jr. being the newest member of the “30HR/30SB/10Triple Club” and any time Shohei Ohtani does anything, he’s the “only” member of the 51HR/51SB Club and you can hear the ancient Oriental gong ring when anyone talks about him

Seeing as how the Braves are slowly dying a truly slow and miserable bleed-out, and have fallen into a position of outside-looking-in as far as Wild Card positioning goes, the White Sox have actually been the thing that I’ve actually been tracking and paying attention to as an alternative.  And I have to say that it’s been really refreshing, from the standpoint of hoping for an outcome, and getting it with tremendous regularity; whereas the Braves inept offense keeps making them lose, much to my disappointment, I could always count on checking the scores and seeing the White Sox take L after L after L each night, as they keep on chugging to immortality.

It’s almost like being a kid again in 1996, watching the NBA box scores every morning and seeing the Chicago Bulls notch another W, en route to their historic 72-win season, and it seems fitting that it’s another Chicago sports franchise, also owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, that’s trouping their way towards a historic season, even if it’s not the side of history that a franchise would really want to be on. 

It’s still cool and incredible from a fan of history perspective, and even better that I have no real stake in it, other than the fact that White Sox fans really tore into me after I tore into their shitty ballpark in my sports brogging days, so I’ve always had a negative lean in my perception of the Chicago White Sox.

Bahaha, a little bit of live brogging here, I checked the Padres/Sox score just now to make sure that the Sox were still on their way to #119, and I was frightened to see that the Sox had gotten on the board and it was not only 4-2 Padres, but the White Sox had the bases loaded with just one out; a scenario where scoring a run(s) is a positive probability, and nothing short of two strikeouts or a double play is going to prevent that from happening . . . and then Dominic Fletcher promptly grounds into a double play and the Padres are now three outs away from the W, and the Sox are three outs away from tying the worst record in AL history.

But yeah, it’s still incredible to actually be able to witness like real history happening in sport, even if it’s as ironic as crowning a new worst team in history.  It’s not some fake record that the dorks at Elias come up with on a daily basis like most hits on a Thursday evening game with a humidity under 40% with Laz Diaz as home plate umpire after he ate Burger King for lunch, but a solid, concrete historical mark that actually was on a pedestal of being a record that might not be perceived to be possible to break.

I mean, it really is difficult to be this bad; there’s an adage in baseball that every team will win 60 games and lose 60 games every season, and it’s the other 42 games in which a team either becomes a championship caliber squad, or a team tanking on purpose to get optimal draft positioning.  The 2024 White Sox not only won’t get to 60 wins, it’s a very solid possibility that they might not even reach 40.

There was this one statistic I saw a little while ago about how the AL Central has four out of the five teams solidly above .500, but solely on account of the White Sox anchoring them down, the division as a whole is still under .500.  And the hits just keep on coming and coming as far as all the statistical anomalies that have bubbled up about just how bad the White Sox are, and as the kids say these day, I am here for them, all of them.

Like I said, ordinarily I wouldn’t dare tempt fate and write something like this before it happens, but math is a game of probabilities, and a .234 team miraculously going 7-1 down the stretch to avoid becoming the worst team in history isn’t a bet that I would take, and contrarily, in spite of my general phobia against sports betting, I would actually feel comfortable betting my house that the White Sox are going to fulfill their destiny in becoming the worst team in baseball history. 

It’s just a matter of when it’s going to happen, because they still have one more game against the playoff-hopeful Padres, three against the awful Angels who are still 29 wins better than the Sox while simultaneously being 31 games under .500, and then they close out their season with the Detroit Tigers who are very much in the thick of the Wild Card field and will more than likely still be fighting for their playoff lives next week.

But the odds are that it’s going to happen while I’m out of town and away from the keys, so as out of character it would be for me to commemorate before it happens, I just wanted to give a hearty congratulatory shoutout to the 2024 Chicago White Sox, for becoming the worst team in Major League Baseball history.  Y’all deserve it.

EDIT: Unsurprisingly, the Sox would make me sweat, winning 2/3 from the Angels and relying on the still then-unclinched Tigers to actually exert effort to get #121, before dropping the final two games to the Sox, allowing them to finish out the season with “just” 121 losses, one more than the 1962 Mets.  But like the wise Dom Toretto once paraphrased, it doesn’t matter if you lose by an inch or a mile, losing’s losing.

KOREA VERSUS EVERYBODY

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

BBC: South Korea wrongly introduced as North Korea at the Paris Summer Olympics

If anyone has ever been curious to why I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the treatment of Koreans, this is a perfect example of why.  The bottom line is that my general opinion is that Korea; Korean culture, Korean contributions to the world, and Korean things in general; gets no respect from the rest of the fucking world.

Everything Japan does is admired and revered by the rest of the planet, and all UN countries are so scared of China’s population numbers and economic potential, that they all kowtow to them, as if they were the grasshoppers from A Bug’s Life, after the ants had uprisen against them.

Meanwhile, Korea has historically been an exemplary ally to the UN, the United States and many other countries.  They haven’t enslaved or bombed anyone, they’re not always lurking in the shadows installing sleepers all around the globe to spy and disrupt.  Korean economy is stable, prosperous, and other than the fact that everyone is black haired and narrow eyed, Korean society really is a lot like American culture.

Yet, people can’t even put down Asian people without disregarding Koreans, like when racists mock Asian people, asking them if they’re Chinese or Japanese.  Saying any other country much less Korea usually results in the person asking having to grind gears in their brains to process the existence of any other Asian race, but the fact that Korea is lumped into that denigrating B-tier of Asian countries fills me up with piss and vinegar.

Just in general, Korea is overlooked and not shown the respect that I think that the entire fucking culture is worthy of.  It doesn’t matter how many global industries Koreans dominate, how competent and good at athletics or competitive events they become, because we’re not Chinese or Japanese, the rest of the world tends to gloss over us, and it leaves me feeling disgusted with the entire world whenever shit like this occurs.

I mean seriously, the fucking Olympics?  The announcers had one goddamn job to do, which was to just name countries, and they can’t even get the Koreas correct?  You know they have rehearsals and practices for putting on monumentally things like this, and yet on global television, they still manage to bungle it the fuck up and mistake the Koreas.

The thing is in America, there have been numerous announcers, news anchors and commentators who have been shitcanned getting caught on a hot mic saying things that were either flagrantly racist or perceived to be racist, primarily to black people.  I would, seriously and as objective as I could try to be, put this up there with that kind of mistake, and if I were the superiors to the both English and French announcers, consider dismissal for both of these ignorant fucks for one, not knowing their world geography for the fucking Olympics, and two, being a colossal embarrassment to the entire International Olympic Committee.

But seeing as the only party being denigrated by their mistake was “just” Koreans, I don’t really see much retribution occurring.  Twitter apologies are not sufficient, and on behalf of Koreans worldwide, I do not accept it.  It’s insulting and embarrassing, and Koreans deserve better than this.

I hope this slight lights a fire under the asses of the 159 Korean Olympians, North and South, and they squeeze out a few extra medal wins here and there out of vindictive spite alone.  Not that it would really matter or be noticed, since the only countries that ever really get any spotlight at every Olympics is the US, China, Japan, Russia and whatever host country.

But whatever, fuck it.  It’s just another day at the office for Korea versus Everybody.

Bobby Bonilla Day presents the MLB All-Deferred Money Team 2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year again, where Bobby Bonilla collects a paycheck of $1,193,248 from the New York Mets (as well as a cool $500K from the Baltimore Orioles), despite the fact that he hasn’t played a game of Major League Baseball since 2001. 

As easy as it would be to simply clown on the Mets for locking themselves up into such a legendarily bad arrangement (among other things), the game has changed, and deferring money has become a pretty commonplace strategy employed by all sorts of teams who utilize it to circumvent salary constraints, avoiding the luxury tax threshold, or simply to offer up more money than should be necessary to greedy free agents.

After all, fewer things exemplify the white man’s business world than promising money so far down the line that it’s realistically possible that the people writing up the offers could actually have died of old age when it comes time for the terms of payment to come into play.

That being said, in the 2024 MLB season, there are 25 players making deferred money according to Spotrac records, from 15 different teams.  This is three more players and three more teams employing the buy now-pay later method than the year before.  Which also is a convenient number, because that’s basically a 25-man roster without a 26th injured reserve player.

Cumulatively, they are making $78.3M, which is a higher than the Oakland A’s (shocker) total payroll of $63.3M.  The Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles upped their payroll this year, so they wouldn’t be outspent by squad of non-players for a second year in a row.  But as far as cumulative 26-man roster values, $78.3M is high enough to eclipse literally a third of Major League Baseball, costing more than what the White Sox, Marlins, Nationals, Reds, Pirates, Rays, Indians Guardians, Rockies, Brewers and A’s are spending on their daily rosters.

The Washington Nationals once again take the crown for highest amount of deferred money at $18.5M.  This is heavily weighted by the annual $15M chunks they owe SP Max Scherzer between now until 2028, so it doesn’t look like the Nats are going to be relinquishing this crown, at least until the Dodgers begin making their annual payments for Shohei Ohtani’s deferred salary.

By the way, $18.5M is more than what NL MVP Ronald Acuña, Jr. is making this year, but the Nats will be getting zero home runs and zero stolen bases for their spend.

The Nationals may be one of the most frequent users of deferred money, but they’re no longer alone in this tactic of gaming the payroll system.  The Orioles, Cardinals and Brewers each had three players making deferred monies this season, and there are teams like the Phillies, Dodgers and Padres are waiting in the wings that will have their own Bonillas in the future as well.

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Dad Brog (#134): Father’s Day 2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

#3 of forever

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that there are few things that I look forward to every year more than this photograph.  I actually almost took it a month early, because the conditions were ideal, having just gotten a haircut, my lawn just been freshly cut, and the weather wasn’t sweltering yet, but mythical wife kind of poo-poo’d on the idea, and so I felt that I should just hold off until the actual month of Father’s Day. 

But that’s just how much I was looking forward to this particular shoot, that I was on the cusp of doing it nearly seven weeks earlier than I would’ve actually done anything with the photo.

Regardless, when the conditions were right to do it in June, there was no stopping me this time.  I got the blets all out of their storage, took time to deliberate on which blet that I wanted to wear myself because I’m a hipster that loves rando-midcard titles over any traditional World championship blets, and got all my camera equipment prepared for, what the girls have declared, “belt picture day.”

When I said it was time for belt picture day, I was so tickled when #1 quickly grabbed her little bejeweled tiara and magic wand, and was 1000% on board with her accessorizing for the photograph.  #2 still isn’t as gung-ho about it as her sister is, but she also didn’t fight at all when I said it was time to go outside.  Fighting boredom is clearly among the most important of duties I have as a parent in the summertime, and I’m fortunate that they still love the idea of belt picture day.

I almost thought this might be the year in which I could actually do it all in a collective photo, seeing as how they both got into their chairs with their blets, and all I had to do was jump in, but getting them to actually look at the camera, and not at a bird, a squirrel, or the dog taking a dump in front of them was too much to ask for, and despite some funny candids, I did have to resort to shooting them individually and then myself, and putting this together in Photoshop, in post.

But all the same, mission accomplished.  I’m so stoked with how it turned out this year, and much like how I happy I was last year, the following year just gets better, and I’m thrilled to time-lapse these, and see just how big these kids are getting with each successive year.

So until belt picture day in 2025, fare thee well.