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

May 31, 2026June 3, 2026 ~ 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?” →

How to reflect on a decade

December 31, 2019September 23, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This year ending isn’t just an ordinary ending of a year, because it’s also the end of a decade. Naturally, a sentimental person like me tends to want to reflect on an entire decade, because much like individual years, a decade is a nice round chunk of time that one might think it would be easy to reflect upon, but in the greater spectrum, it’s ten full years we’d be trying to look back onto. Now I like to think I have a good memory, but even without the aid of my trusty brog, it’s difficult to really look back at an entire decade.

Regardless, that’s not going to stop all the self-important jobbers of the internet who will try their darnedest to speak with authority and copy and paste all the same milestones the major news outlets will when it comes to trying to summarize and reflect upon the entire decade. The funny thing is that most of the internet savvy generations probably aren’t that much older or younger than I am, which means that in the grand spectrums of our respective lives, we’ve only really lived through 3-4 decades, whereas I’d probably estimate that 1.5-2 of them are pretty invalid, because we’re simply not articulate and/or educated enough to have the capacity to reflect on entire decades.

So combined with the advent and growth of the internet, and the notion that everyone has a voice, I’d wager this is probably, at the very most, the second real decade of the modern high-speed internet that people really care to really reminisce about; and I’m being generous by calling it the second, because DSLs and cable internet didn’t really flourish until nearly the mid-2000’s; I couldn’t imagine people trying to use streaming, auto-refreshing social media on a 56K modem, so frankly I see this more as the first real decade that everyone and their literal mothers on the internet are going to be writing about.

Anyway, I’m going to attempt to try to recollect from mostly just my own memories, and stick to things that are more relevant to my own little world, and not the big gigantic depressing one we live in. If I had any readers, they can google any decade in review, and probably find more worldly and probably more high-profile shit than the things I have to say about the things going on in my own little life, like the start and finish of Game of Thrones, Pokemon Go, the sad state of American politics, all the endless mass shootings, and Bill Cosby being outed as a rapist.

And the reason that I disclaim the whole “if I had any readers” because one of the most devastating things that occurred for me is the fact that despite my WordPress going online in 2010, at nearly the very start of the decade, midway through the decade my brog went down indefinitely, when my brother relocated from one part of the country to another. A lot of hardware changes meant no more place to host my brog, and despite having the supposed backups, I simply haven’t taken the time or allocated the funds necessary to get my site up and running again.

If I were the type to do New Years resolutions anymore, I think I’d resolve to get my site back up and running again in 2020. TBD on if that will actually occur, and frankly with the things I have on my plate going into the next decade, I don’t want to commit and then fail to deliver.

In spite of the brog blackout, that hasn’t stopped me from writing. Even to the day my site went down, I have been writing on a fairly regular basis, taking no more than two weeks off before the internal guilt gets my fingers flying across the keys again, and I’ve got at this point, hundreds of folders of dated and timestamped Word docs, all awaiting their day in which they can be posted retroactively to a brog.

Continue reading “How to reflect on a decade” →

The last singles

June 21, 2019August 11, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If I can pull the curtain back a little bit, whenever I sit down and write, there’s no guarantee that the most recent thing I’m writing is actually the most recent thing that’s actually happening. Especially these days, I often times come across things or thoughts that spark the want to write, but I just simply don’t have the time to write, because I’m always busy at work, and by the time I get home, I’m either too busy to write or too fried to write.

In times like those, what typically happens is that I have a cloud-based document where I jot down the date and the general theme of what was going to be written, and if there’s any links that I want to refer to, that too. And when I have the time and the motivation to do some writing, those are the things that I try to tackle first. Typically, I don’t like the queue to grow too big, because then it gives me anxiety and a feeling of being worthless as someone who likes to write. But there are exceptions to the queue, where I start writing about something in the true present, because usually there’s some degree of time sensitivity to where it’s not something that I can go back and write about retroactively. At the time I’m writing this, there are three posts queued up that I still want to write about when I get the time.

Right now, is one of those moments. Because the last few days, I’ve been coming to the realization that a lot of the things I’m doing, are the last time I’m doing them as a single guy. Yes, melodramatic me is actually writing about the slow farewell to single, unattached life, because I’m two days from entering the wedded bliss of holy matrimony, and getting married. What started out as mythical gf became mythical fiancé, and now I’m about to have a mythical wifey, and I’m actually going to be somebody’s husband. Sucks to be them!

But anyway, it’s a lot of little things that I’m doing that I’m realizing are the last times I’m doing them as a single person. All throughout the week, I’ve had my final chest and tris day as a single guy. My last time running on the treadmill as a single guy. Today was my last bis-shoulders-hamstrings day. As the weekend progresses, I’ll have my last meals and drinks as a single person, and then when I’m at the altar, likely watching down at mythical fiancé coming down the aisle, probably looking radiant and beautiful, I’ll be ticking down my last minutes and seconds as a single person.

Continue reading “The last singles” →

Today is a special kind of day

October 6, 2015July 17, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A year ago today, at like 4:30 in the morning, I asked a particular girl if she’d be willing to give a doofy guy with no game like me a shot. She must have been groggy and discombobulated by the time of the day, because she miraculously agreed.

For all the times I’ve mentioned the mythical girlfriend, there’s still a thin veil of secrecy, because I’m generally a private person who typically tries to keep my brog relevant to me, not because I’m trying to be narcissistic and deny others any sort of spotlight, but mostly because I’m not going to assume that everyone in my little world will be okay with me throwing out their names and pictures on the internet.

But a guy that looks and acts like me, should want to boast a little bit, especially when he’s somehow able to dupe and deceive a pretty girl into getting stuck into a relationship with him. That being said, if there was ever a time where I felt like pulling the veil back a just a little bit, today seems about as good as any.

The mythical girlfriend and I, at Disney World; look, she actually exists!

And for whatever reason, a year later, she’s (voluntarily) still around, much to my confusion. <3

D*C 2014: The dryhumpers

September 4, 2014July 13, 2020 ~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Okay, I wanted to address this, before someone sees this picture in the eventual gallery and thinks “wtf, danny’s a fucking voyeur perv.”

Naturally, there’s a story behind it.

It’s no secret that lots of conventions, and not just Dragon*Con, are full of sexually frustrated boys and girls, hoping to get their rocks off at some point during the weekend. After all, conventions are kind of the perfect setting; what with being away from home, a mutual meeting place for those who have been courting one another be it in person or over the internet, or those simply hoping to spontaneously meet and engage in a quick fling. And in the case of D*C, there’s probably no other convention with as much alcohol flowing throughout the concourses and hallways, and with alcohol often times comes questionable decisions.

Like dryhumping in public.

Continue reading “D*C 2014: The dryhumpers” →