Tag: wrestling

Happy Trails, Windham Rotunda

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Talk about a brutal week for the wrestling business; losing a genuine icon, legend and forefather of the industry on one day, and then losing one of the most captivating and yet to be fully untapped stars of today, very much in the category of having gone way too soon, in Windham Rotunda, whom most people know primarily as Bray Wyatt.

I’m very deliberate in using his real name over Bray Wyatt, because with no disrespect to the the departed, I can’t say that I was really ever that big of a fan of Bray Wyatt.  The whole supernatural character is something that I’m clearly not in the right demographic to really be a fan of.  And as much as I did like the originality and intrigue he brought to the table earlier in his run as Bray Wyatt, I do think his whole character evolution went from weird to progressively weirder and more bizarre, and not in good ways either.

I loved the whole creepy southern gothic cult leader of the original Bray Wyatt persona, but then that it literally killed by Randy Orton in storyline.  The eventual return of the split personality, super-positive and cheerful Bray Wyatt compared to the emergence of the demonic Fiend started off well enough in my opinion, but when he started up with brainwashing Alexa Bliss and being basically unkillable against Seth Rollins but then getting squashed by fucking Goldberg, I was kind of losing my shine to the character as a whole.  Ironically, this too was killed by Randy Orton in storyline.

Which brings us to his final incarnation and last stint with the company, kind of this strange amalgamation of Bray Wyatt who is kind of good, but kind of dark, with the Field still lurking around, but then the introduction of Uncle Howdy, and I’m just kind of like wtf is all this bullshit now.  At this point, I was no longer a fan of the Bray Wyatt universe, and I likened him to being like, Randy Orton, as in a guy whom with once you get tangled up with in storyline, you’re stuck with it for like 3-5 months of having to play scared patron to a haunted house, and barely a professional wrestler anymore.

It was actually during his feud with LA Knight, that I realized that I was starting to become impressed with LA Knight, seeing as how his whole tenure prior, ol’ Eli Drake wasn’t impressing me at all, but while feuding with Bray Wyatt, I found LA Knight to be a shining beacon of charisma and promo school, and even though he was getting his ass kicked and having creepy shit thrown at his character for three months, he was absolutely killing it on the mic, and even though he lost the feud, he clearly won over a lot of fans, seeing as how over he is with the WWE Universe currently.

I just felt that Bray Wyatt was a character that was clearly not geared for people my old age, and is clearly meant to capture the imaginations of those who are in “the demos” that the professional wrestling industry tries their hardest to cater to, children, and the vaunted 18-35 male range.  Aside from such, I just felt that a supernatural character is among the hardest characters to write and book for, especially when you exist in a universe with MMA converts, European wrestling purists and a Samoan dynasty running roughshod through the rest of the company.

Continue reading “Happy Trails, Windham Rotunda” →

We’re long past how the mighty have fallen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: WWE Hall of Famer, Tammy Sytch “Sunny,” pleads no-contest to vehicular manslaughter under the influence, faces upwards of 25 years in prison

I haven’t really kept tabs on Sunny since her gradual disappearance from the world of professional wrestling, but when the story came out a while ago where she killed a guy in a drunken car crash, it opened the doors to wondering how her life had gotten to this point.  The last time I really saw her was when RAW had their 1,000th episode, and I remember thinking how she had held up pretty damn well, but it’s abundantly clear that the last 12 years of her life most definitely have not.

I knew she had some legal issues and had been in and out of jail a few times, but nothing seemed more than her own dumb choices of DUIs and being flippant about parole or unauthorized travel, so despite her poor judgment, at least she wasn’t like a hot mess of violence or more than a drunk for a criminal.  Frankly, her manslaughter charge, as tragic as it is that it resulted in loss of life, was just her doing what she had been doing, but to an extreme point, seeing as how she allegedly blew a ridiculous .280 BAC, which is almost as impressive as Johnny Damon’s also-Florida drunken escapades.

So we’re long past the point of stating how the mighty have fallen, because over the last twelve years, ‘ol Sunny has fallen quite a bunch of times, but not to as severe of a degree as this one.  Goes to show that being one of the original OG breakers of the internet back in the day really doesn’t have any monetary worth, although like many people in my generation, probably feels she would have thrived in today’s society with what they had at the table back in the day.

Honestly, the only reason this post came to fruition was the .280 BAC and how it reminded me of how amused I was with Johnny Damon’s DUI.  Frankly, I was never really a fan of Sunny, even if she was supposed to be eye candy, and as time has passed, aside from her personal demons, I’ve never really heard much good about her ever.  She was not well-liked in the locker room, mostly due to her ego on top of the typical chauvinistic culture back then, but much as come out with her extramarital affairs and basically how she cuckolded her husband Chris Candido numerous times, which doesn’t really jive with my ideals.

You can take the trailer park trash out of New Jersey, but can’t take the New Jersey out of the trailer park trash.  Especially when they relocate to the trailer parks of Florida instead.

But if I really have to have a last word on this, I suppose it’s for the best for all parties that Sunny gets the book thrown at her.  Not only will she be taken off the streets and be one less liability of a driver to not DWI and kill any other innocents, perhaps some nice quiet time in incarceration is what she actually needs to try and overcome her personal demons.

Welp, it was bound to happen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

😮 – Will Ospreay busts out the IWGP United Kingdom championship blet at the NJPW G1 Climax, supplanting the United States championship

I remember after getting my NXT UK Tag Team championship replica blet, thinking ahhh, no more blets are even in existence for me to even want now.  Maybe I can start actually saving my money for more responsible things or investing or putting it back into my house or something that isn’t trying to get more wrestling blets.

In spite of the title of this post, the itch actually kind of low-key came back a few times already at this point, with the WWE predictably releasing new renditions of existing blets, and Impact’s Joe Hendry and previously Matt Cardona giving me reason to possibly want an Impact Digital Media (World) Championship replica blet.  But those were mild itches that I could focus my body to not think about them, and they’d go away on their own.

But when I read highlights of the G1 Climax where after his loss to Tetsuya Naito, Will Ospreay cut a promo about how he’s British and doesn’t care about the United States, so the fact that he was holding the IWGP United States championship meant very little to him.  And then channeling Lance Storm, but instead of putting a sticker over the US title, Ospreay busts out a brand new version of the title, but instead of US flags all over it, is the same blet, but with UK Union jacks all over it, the IWGP United Kingdom championship effectively.

And to no surprise, my mouth did a partial gape, and now I’m thinking how much I already want it.  Regardless of the fact that structurally it’s basically the same blet as the IWGP US, but my general love and appreciation for British wrestling that has grown over the years makes this instantly appealing, and I would like to acquire one if it is possible.

The good news is that because NJPW are such hipsters and barely do replica blets, and none that aren’t made from 24 karat gold and would constitute as legitimate financial investments, I’ll have no other option than the Pakistani bootleg route where all my other NJPW, NWA and Impact have come from, and fortunately, their price (and quality) won’t really be that high.

One day, the blet wall will go back up, and once again, it’ll be a challenge to try and accommodate any new blet(s) that I may have acquired from that point.

Better start looking for a bigger home.

Cody Rhodes is the IPA Hipster of Wrestling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The irony of this post is that I’m so not a fan of Cody Rhodes, but this probably like the third or fourth time I’ve made a post about how much I don’t like the guy right now.  After the took the L at Wrestlemania this year I called him something like the mega tryhard fantasy football player of wrestling, the way he thinks he’s so wise and knowledgeable about the industry that he believe he sees the entire business on a completely tier as everyone else, and it’s obnoxious as fuck listening to him talk about it.

Well, he’s done it again, because (likely as part of his contractual obligation), there some documentary about him that’s set to release, and he’s on the promotional warpath once again, and I can’t stand the guy so much but I like wrestling so much I’ll probably still watch it, so that I can have some inspiration to write about how much I can’t stand the guy in the future.  But in some recent interview, he talks about how he dislikes the catchphrase that he created leading up to his feud with Roman Reigns AND he takes time to shit on the secondary World championship blet that the company introduced because Roman Reigns has such a stranglehold on the company’s top prize.

But I like how at the very root of it, he’s decided he doesn’t like his “finish the story” catchphrase anymore, because the internet got a hold of it and internet-ted it into a meme, and now he’s all regretful for making it in the first place since he’s soft as Charmin, and is too hipster transcendental to understand that there’s actually nothing wrong with having one’s catchphrase meme’d, and that it’s way worse to elicit no response at all from today’s fickle wrestling fans.

Frankly, I’m with him; it is a lame catchphrase, but the difference is that I always thought it was, and didn’t think it was cool at first but then turned on it because the fans ruined it. 

And then he has the audacity to take a big dump on the new big Gold blet that the company introduced, that’s currently being defended like a madman by Seth Rollins.  He proclaims that winning that title wouldn’t finish his story, because it’s not the championship that his dad, big ‘ol Dusty was incapable of winning, which is tantamount to basically saying that Rollins’ World Heavyweight blet is second-tier and that the only title that’s worthy of his obnoxious attention is big gold W that Roman’s rocking.

I don’t think it would ever happen, because usually the WWE is fairly decent at fulfilling their contractual obligations, but I do think it would be funny if the winds change within the next year, and Creative have no choice but to alter the general Roman Reigns timeline to where it’s not going to be Cody Rhodes who dethrones him at the next Wrestlemania, and he has to “settle” for the World Heavyweight championship instead.  But then again, if they were willing to completely eat the rise of Sami Zayn for Cody, that’s probably not going to happen.

Maybe by the time Cody does dethrone Roman, Rollins or whomever will have elevated the new Big Gold to heights that the Big W will be looking up to, and so even if Cody does finally get his story finished, nobody will care, because all eyes will be on the gods work that Rollins and the Big Gold challengers will be conducting at that time.

Continue reading “Cody Rhodes is the IPA Hipster of Wrestling” →

WTF is AEW doing #208

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The above picture are four of the marquee matches that are so far on deck for the 2023 edition of AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door.  Two of these matches, on paper, should absolutely blow the roof off of the venue; such could have been said about several of matches on the card last year, but in typical AEW overbooking, they underperformed as far as I was concerned.  Regardless, that means two of these matches, in comparison will not be blowing the roofs off of any venue.

If you guessed that those two duds were the two matches in which the AEW world title and the IWGP world title were on the line, you’d be spot on.  There is no reality in existence where either company would dare having their world championship going over to another promotion, no matter how collaborative and positive-working relationship exists between AEW and New Japan.

That being said, aside from the fact that there is little logic or even any buildup between the competitors in these matches, there’s little reason to believe that either of these matches will be particularly any good, much less be of any threat of being the show-stealing match of the night for such a loaded card.

MJF is so protected, there’s little reason to believe he’d lose at all this year, much less to Hiroshi Tanahashi, whom I’m coming to the personal conclusion that he’s basically the token jobber to the stars of NJPW, because sure I don’t watch NJPW with any regularity, but I’ve actually never seen him win a match in like, 4-5 years.  Him losing to MJF is about as a safe bet as expecting cash to come out of an ATM when you put in your PIN correctly.

And then we have Jungle Boy versus SANADA for the IWGP world championship, and when I saw this one, I’m furrowing my brow and thinking, there’s nobody else on the entire AEW roster that would’ve been more compelling to put in a match against the IWGP world champion??

In all fairness, Jungle Boy is a strong worker, but he’s 175 lbs, scrawny as a shoot of bamboo and can’t even sell the suspension of belief that he can hang in the ring with a stud like SANADA.  Off the top of my head, I could think of several other AEW guys I’d rather see have a match with SANADA, but none of them are one of their handpicked pillars or are really known to be tight with the Elite circlejerk to warrant getting the nod.

I mean, these turds might be by design, seeing as how lots of promoters tend to operate under the belief that a crowd has a finite amount of energy to give to a show, and it really is safe to assume that Bryan Danielson vs. Kazuchika Okada and Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay are going to be competing with each other to see which will be the first-ever Ten-Meltzer Star match in history as if it means anything in the long run, but on that same vein why bother having World title matches at all, if it means forcing the booking to include obvious and unexciting matchups?

Initially, I wanted to say that the show should have no titles be on the line, but thanks to the collaborative booking prior to the show, it’s fairly obvious that Ospreay is going to go over Omega and regain the IWGP US title, because Omega had gone over to Japan to take it from him months ago.  And if you’re going to defend one, might as well put others on the line, but most definitely the World titles shouldn’t be on the line, because they’re definitely not changing hands.

Continue reading “WTF is AEW doing #208” →

Fare thee well, NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

We hardly knew thee.

It’s evident that a change of eras is occurring in the WWE currently, because when blets start changing across the board, it’s a sure sign that we’re about to embark on a new era, that won’t officially be named, because they tend to happen organically based on the trend of whatever is going on.

At this point, there’s been a new big gold blet introduced, Roman Reigns’ two world championship blets have been merged into a singular gold variant of the same blet and called Undisputed, and just this past week on Smackdown, Asuka was awarded a brand new women’s championship, which was basically the women’s variant of Roman Reigns’ gold variant, but with a white strap, because as the E has established over the last era, black strap = men, white strap = women.

Obviously, I’m stoked that Asuka is the first one to hold the new women’s gold logo blet because I’m a fan of hers, and it seems inevitable that Rhea Ripley will be getting a new championship blet to replace the blue Smackdown variant, which if I had to guess will probably be the same thing as Seth Rollins’ new big gold blet, but with a white strap.

The United States and Intercontinental blets were re-designed in the middle of the last era, so they will probably stand pat for a little while longer, and I suspect that the Unified tag team blets that are currently held by Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens will probably be consolidated sometime soon.  But apparently the women’s tag team blets are on the docket next, because we’re getting this seemingly random and out of nowhere program pitting the WWE Women’s Tag champions against the NXT Women’s Tag champions who were drafted to the main roster without any resolution to what was going to happen with their NXT titles.

It’s not often where an outcome seems so overwhelmingly foregone, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s about the layup of the century that Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler are going to defeat Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn, and merge the NXT Women’s tag blets into their own, with a new design possibly to come soon, or maybe not, if scuttlebutt is accurate and Vince McMahon has more influence than is believed because he clearly doesn’t give a flying fuck about women’s wrestling and probably won’t bother redesigning their blets.

And a part of me hopes that doesn’t happen, because it’d be nice for the blets that I have replicas of for my daughters actually lasts a substantial amount of time, but that’s beside the point.

The point is, the NXT Women’s Tag Team championship barely lasted two years, so it really is genuine to say, we hardly knew thee.  Created because of a potential feud that went nowhere involving main roster talent versus NXT talent, the reality is that it was probably more for the WWEShop to have another replica to peddle, which reminds me that if they ever reduce the cost of these I might have to pick up a pair for my daughters, but what could’ve been a great championship to the brand, was kind of bungled around over the last two years, primarily due to the re-branding, management changes, personnel changes, injuries and just a lack of good booking.

In a way, I understand why the WWE is pulling the plug on the NXT Women’s Tag Team championship, but as someone who has always kept a close eye on the women’s division and the growth of women’s wrestling throughout the years, it doesn’t come without a feeling of good riddance from the company, which makes me a little melancholy about it.

All the same, going back a step, I wish there could’ve been a little bit more buildup for the match between the two teams, to at least give the ol’ college try to sell Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn as threats to Rousey and Baszler.  Most fans are aware of Kay Lee Ray, before becoming Alba Fyre, and how she’s a phenomenal worker in her own right, way stronger than anyone else in this match and if I could get more granular, it also goes without saying that Isla Dawn is the one who’s going to eat the L in this match, with the only question being whom she taps out to between Rousey or Baszler. Continue reading “Fare thee well, NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship” →

WWE’s new blets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I have to say, I’m very entertained by what the WWE has been doing over the last few months, with their management of their slew of championships.  Roman Reigns has had such a chokehold over the two world championships that the company is forced to introduce a new world-equivalent championship.  The RAW women’s champion is on Smackdown and the Smackdown women’s champion is on RAW.

And now, in honor of Roman Reigns’ aforementioned chokehold over the company’s world championships having surpassing 1,000 days, the WWE has decided to fold his two blets into a singular championship, and awarded him with a brand new, gold variant of The Logo blet, and are calling it the Undisputed Championship or at least that’s what the blet itself says.

I guess the Universal championship is kind of dead at this point, but I’m sure the WWE will rewrite the history books in some convoluted manner to make sure all holders of all variants of the title that have ever been folded in are accounted for except Chris Benoit.

The best part is though, with the Roman’s two blets now merged into one blet, he or Paul Heyman are looking a little inadequate when it comes to hardware.  So it’s good that the WWE introduced another world championship blet, because that way Roman can get back to being a dual blet holder in due time.  And I am here for it, for when Roman Reigns inevitably becomes WWE Undisputed World Heavyweight Universal Champion.

The funniest thing about all this blet shuffling is that I have no doubt in my mind that a lot of it is driven by the need for fresh merch.  Prior to the introduction of these two new blets, the WWE had basically made replicas of every active blet in the company, and had nothing new in the pipeline.  I’m guessing the parade of bullshit tribute blets, SEC college blets, and like the three MLB collaboration blets haven’t exactly been lighting the world on fire, so if WWE Shop wants to have some high-dollar items to peddle, they need to start developing some new shit, which is exactly what they’ve done.

My knee-jerk reaction is that I don’t have much interest in either the new big gold blet, or the new big gold blet, especially with their $499 price tag at full retail.  It’s like AEW fucked the market with their ridiculously high-priced replicas, so WWE Shop has taken that as established market and are selling their newer shit accordingly.  But never say never, and if in the 1-2 times a year where they sometimes have some deep price cuts, anything can happen if the inspiration and the financial means lines up just right.