Day: April 7, 2024

Wrestlemania XL brought to you by, MAGAlcohol

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally I had intended on this post being a part of the post I had made about how Wrestlemania basically sold out as hard as a NASCAR event with how many sponsorships they’ve piled into the production of their grandest event of the year™, but I felt that it had some legs of its own and I had lots of jokes and puns that I thought were the best things ever, cementing my obvious status as the dad who makes dad jokes that are only hilarious to myself.

Among the numerous sponsors that the WWE allowed to dump money into ‘Mania this year, this particular one stood out leaps and bounds above the others for me, one because of just how uncomfortably white-wing it comes off, but also finding out that they’ve basically bought Cody Rhodes and plastered their branding all over his American Nightmare™ bus, but we’ll circle back to that part later in the post.

On purpose, I’m not going to use mention their name because fuck them for being some creepy dog whistle white-wing racist undertone company, but as if that doesn’t set the stage enough, that’s basically the gist of what their commercial and branding seems to exude.

It starts with a catch-phrase that does rhyme but doesn’t necessarily roll off the tongue so easily, and I want to play the Stewie Griffin game with their name, because of the “wh” in it, and that serves to ramp up the difficulty in saying their name or mocking their jingle.

But as the commercial continues to unfold, it’s as if they’re continuously doubling and tripling down on their pride of being whiter than, well, a right-wing gathering, because as the scenes change to larger and larger groups of what appears to be solely white people, it’s apparent that this is a company that really gives no flying fucks about DEI and they want viewers to know that.

They even have a ridiculous line where they ponder why Moscow gets the mule, and while looking up the YouTube video to take a screen grab from, they’ve already posted a recipe for “American Mule” which is basically the exact same thing as a Moscow Mule except not Russian; which in itself is laughable considering so many orange guy disciples love Russia as much as he does.

As the commercial ends, only one word or phrase popped into my head: MAGAlcohol, because that’s precisely what the fuck this shit actually is. 

I’m not much of a vodka drinker, other than the sparse times where I like a cranberry vodka, but I kind of feel bad for the spirit itself.  MAGAlcohol makes me not want to have any vodka in general, because it’s murdering the entire category for me as if it were a white cop pressing his knee on a defenseless black man’s neck on asphalt.

Getting back to Cody Rhodes, I was abhorred when footage of him arriving to the Linc was shown, and Corey Graves was being a good soldier, by not failing to mention that his entire bus was also co-sponsored by MAGAlcohol, and I could feel my eyes widen at the disgusting sight of it.  Just when I was beginning to soften my stance on Cody Rhodes, and beginning to turn face on my opinion of him, he has to go and associate with MAGAlcohol, and I’m pumping the brakes at how much I want to support him. 

In some regards, I get it, he’s the American Nightmare, his ring attire is basically a Homelander from The Boys skin, and he’s a white guy from Georgia.  There’s few guys at his stature in the business that would be as worth co-sponsoring as Cody Rhodes.

But he’s also a pretty sensible, intelligent human being, from what I can surmise from interviews and the way he conducts himself in and out of the business.  I would’ve assumed that he would’ve been a little more cerebral than to associate himself with a company that clearly has no hidden agenda on whom they want their demographic to be.

Oh and his wife is also black.  I know that Brandi Runnels seems to be as white-washed as perhaps I am, but when push comes to shove, white folks wouldn’t hesitate to throw her under the bus if there was an incident that needed a minority scapegoat and she was within eyesight.

Perhaps it was out of his control, and it was the bigwigs at the E that forced it onto him.  But I would’ve also figured Cody, by now, and at his position within the company, would have the ability to veto this if he really wanted to.  But as so many legends in the business have so often said, the business is all about as making as much money as you can, because there will come a day when you can do it anymore.

Not that I think Cody was starving before his associate with MAGAlcohol, but accepting more money when you’re already rich is among the whitest things a white guy can do, so unfortunately, as much as The Story has been compelling, there is a little turd in the celebratory punch bowl, that most definitely does not make it go down so sweetly.

Re: the literal selling out of Wrestlemania

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I’d wait until both nights of Wrestlemania had passed before passing on any sort of judgment, but this is fresh on my mind, and I’ve got this small window of time to write where it’s not enough to take a nap or do anything other than knock out a quick brog post.

The title of this post is not indicative to what I thought the quality of the show, at least Night 1 was for Wrestlemania, but it’s to refer to the fact that this show, and probably going forward future shows, had more sponsorships than a NASCAR race.  Prime energy drink, Snickers, Dude Wipes, Credit One, some Insurance company, and some super creepy right-wing sounding vodka company that I’ll circle back to later, but it was evident that every match had a sponsor, commercials were being aired in between every match for non-premium Peacock subscribers.

Very literally, Wrestlemania sold the fuck out.  They’re probably making millions of dollars in doing so, and I don’t judge that, but for a company that used to have zero in-ring sponsorship and usually relying on a singular chief sponsor per show, it is a stark contrast of the yesteryears, the generations of wrestling fans are hell-bent on creating a rift from then and now.

Prime had the top turnbuckle, and their logo emblazoned in the center of the ring, and it made Cody Rhodes look like he was kissing the Prime logo during his entrance.  Dude Wipes appeared to sponsor more matches than anyone else, and there’s something to be said the demographic when company that manufactures basically baby wipes for grown men has such sponsorship flex during a professional wrestling event, especially the magnitude of Wrestlemania.

My brother was the one who pointed it out, but he brought up the query on if it was fucked up or not, that the match that had a team of three black women, was the only match of the night to have been sponsored by WingStop.  I didn’t notice it at first, but once it was pointed out to me, I couldn’t not see the giant-ass WingStop logo lighting up the LED apron board and on the ring barrier throughout the match, and it definitely falls into the category of that’s fucked up.

Like seriously, surely there are marketing people at the E, and at some point, they’re milling among themselves, or coordinating with their sponsors, namely the WingStop people, and somewhere at some point, while divvying up the on-screen advertising, made the conscious decision that the match featuring Naomi, Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill, was the appropriate time to advertise WingStop.  Not that I was trying to be an eagle eye, but I don’t recall seeing them advertise again after that match.

I haven’t paid that much attention to the card for Night 2, but I do know that there is a match featuring Bobby Lashley and the Street Profits, and I have this sneaking suspicion that WingStop might be the chief sponsor for that match too now.

Everyone else can get Dude Wipes for the colossal amounts of shit that much be swirling around the city of Philadelphia’s sewer systems from 150,000 neckbeard wrestling fans converging in a single location.  Too bad most of them will believe their claim that they’re flushable, because there’s no such thing as a flushable wipe, and the streets of Philly are destined to be overflown by sewage at some point sooner rather than later.  But I guess such wouldn’t really be that far off from daily life up there.