Tag: wwe

Thanks, I hate it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I like baseball.  I like wrestling belts.  You’d think a collaboration between the WWE and MLB to release team-themed replica wrestling belts would be a layup for a guy like me, right?

If you think so, you couldn’t be any more fucking wrong.

An obvious cash-grab for starters, but all I see when I think about the fact that there are going to be 20-30* belts that will be put into production starting in the 2022 season, all I see are 20-30 blets that stand in the way of the WWE getting off their lazy asses and actually making replicas of the only fucking WWE blet I want left, the NXT UK Tag Team Championship.

*why anyone would want a replica belt for teams like the Rays, Rockies, Reds, Marlins or Orioles is completely beyond me, but homers are homers for a reason

For the record, I don’t just hate these MLB-WWE collab belts, I hate every other belt out there that’s not an actual active or historic belt.  I hate all the shitty tribute belts that WWE makes that takes existing plates and slaps them onto some overly-designed shitty straps themed to a hall of famer, and calling it a tribute.  I hate Xavier Woods’ and Tyler Breeze’s shitty YouTube show belts that have come into existence ahead of the only active fucking belt without a replica available.  I hate when they take some shitty stinky brown leather and wrap it around an Attitude-era World championship and call it a Mankind tribute.

But both MLB and the WWE really like money, and it really is low-hanging fruit to make these and watch them sell a justifiable number of them to warrant the decision to produce them.  I can’t hate on the business of it, I just hate that these things are definitely going to stand in the way of what I actually want.

And frankly, given the news over the last months of NXT kind of being rumored to being shifted back into a true developmental territory, who’s to say that any of the NXT and NXT UK blets will even get to be sold for much longer in the future, especially if they’re deactivated and removed from television.

Only hardcore blet-heads like myself may have noticed that for about four days, the WWEShop released the NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship Replicas that’s still listed as available in the Euro store, but was already taken down from the American site, which initially had me curious that they took it down in order to have a brand new blet available at promotional discount, but seeing as how it hasn’t been brought back, it makes me wonder if it’s more the possibility that the blets will be deactivated on television, and therefore not needing replicas to be sold online.

As far as the NXT UK Tag blets, I’m beginning to think that they’ll never even be made in the first place, because perhaps the division as a whole might get folded up, if the talking heads surrounding Vince McMahon in Stamford see them as a risky ROI.

At least I’ll have an Atlanta Barves blet available to me with the cash I’ve been sitting on for literal years, waiting for the one blet I actually wanted.

What if… Tim Tebow, the professional wrestler?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The other day, my bros and I were bullshitting about professional wrestling as is often times the norm, and the thought crossed my mind that AEW is low-key owned by the Jacksonville Jaguars, since owner Tony Khan is the son of the Shahid Khan that owns the Jags. 

Recently, I saw some blurb about how despite having signed with the Jaguars, the attempting-to-return-to-football Tim Tebow is no guarantee to make the team, even though he’s still built like a tank and trying to come back as a tight end and not a quarterback, and then the wheels got turning in my brain to do so fantasy booking in the event that Tebow flames out of football again, but instead of trying to pursue professional baseball, chooses professional wrestling instead.  Especially since there’s already a convenient transition from the Jags to AEW, being under the same family umbrella and all.

After about five minutes of bullshit, I realized that this hypothetical bullshit would be better served as brog material and not a passing conversation in private company, because some of these ideas would be fucking gold in an ironic sense if they were to come to fruition, even though there can hardly be fewer things in the world nerdier than fantasy booking professional wrestling.

Anyway, Tim Tebow is cut from the Jags, not for anything performance-related so much as is it that the Jags are an NFL team and NFL teams are more afraid than Gabriel is in The Walking Dead of anything and don’t want Tebow’s faith to ever be mentioned in the same breath as them.  He’s in the locker room, silently crying, cleaning out his personal effects, and our character arc begins with Tim saving a cross that he hung, for last, staring at it wistfully, thinking to himself why the good lord has failed to give him the strength he needed to make it back to the NFL.

Tony Khan enters the locker room, and gives Tebow some fluff about how he performed great, and how his failure to make the team had nothing to do with his talent.  But seeing as how he wasn’t going to make the team, and to not let such physical gifts go to waste, he offers Tebow an opportunity to join All Elite Wrestling, so he could still potentially have a platform to spread the word.

“Professional wrestling?” thinks Tebow.  The fake sport with fake storylines, so much of which is debaucherous, scandalous, and frequently sacrilegious?  Khan assures Tebow that AEW is different than those whom might have put out such unsavory product, and points no further than AEW’s own TNT Champion, Miro, God’s Favorite Wrestler, as proof of AEW’s respect and commitment to Christianity.  Tebow is intrigued, and agrees to a developmental tier-1 deal.

Continue reading “What if… Tim Tebow, the professional wrestler?” →

About AEW’s replica blet…

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not entirely sure how I ended up on ShopAEW’s distribution list, as I have never purchased anything from them, or ProWrestlingTees.com at any point in my life, but for whatever reason, I still get their periodic emails.  It’s hasn’t really been a nuisance yet, and as much as I clown on them as a promotion, I do think that they still produce some decent merch from time to time, 75% of it being for Britt Baker.  And I figured if the company were ever to eventually release replica title blets, this would probably be the most accurate source to get information about them.

Well, that time finally came, and I saw an email titled “AEW World Championship Replica Title” and my interest was immediately piqued.  Honestly, I’m not that big on their world title; if I had my pick on any of the actual AEW blets available, it would be a Tag Team blet, and since Miro became TNT Champion, it’s slowly softened my opinion on what I originally designated a Popeyes Blet.  But as a collector of replica blets in the first place, I still wanted to see what was going, in case there was an appealing price point that could change my mind.

$699.  Six hundred, ninety-nine dollars. 

For a replica blet.

My knee-jerk reaction is definitely, yeah fuck no

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not shitting on this blet because it’s AEW and I know I’ve been quick to shit on them for all the dumb things they’ve done so far.  I’m not shitting on this blet because of its seemingly high price tag; frankly, this isn’t the most expensive blet out there.

I’m shitting on this blet because it has a high price tag for what they’re not going into any real detail about.  I even watched the video of it in case there was some more clarification on what materials they’re using and the quality of the metal, but it’s instead just more fluff from Pentagon’s valet/AEW’s Spanish language announcer, Alex Abrahantes.

New Japan sold official replicas of IWGP belts, which ranged from $2,080 to $1,800; but they’re clear that they’re using 18-karat gold, and the craftsmanship is very Japanese exquisite.

Even WWE sells more expensive blets, like their deluxe line, which justifies the cost by using real leather, and then they have nearly $2,000 elite replicas which are basically actual, television-ready replicas that are made from 10-karat gold and cubic zirconia stones.

However, WWE also sells all sorts of “more affordable” replica blets, usually not exceeding $399, and are always going on 20-30% off sale, and that’s the bread and butter in which I like to throw my money away at.

The fact that AEW comes out of the gate with a $700 blet doesn’t particularly seem like a great idea, but that’s just me.  Especially if there’s zero information on why it costs that much, other than “simulated jewels.”  I know I’m one to speak seeing as how I have literally 20 replica blets, but not one of them has exceeded $349, and nobody’s ever looked at a blet of mine to try and validate its authenticity.

But as someone who’s literally purchased blets before solely because the price point was appealing, if AEW really wanted to move a lot of blets, having more cost-effective alternatives to their $700 coup de grace would probably result in more profit which ultimately should be the goal of any self-respecting retailer.  It boggles my mind how many examples of people and companies who raked in millions selling a whole lot of cheaper, that there are so many out there that still think selling a lot less of really expensive, is a viable business model.

I know the blet industry is about as niche as they come, but if AEW, WWE and NJPW want to actually compete with Pakistanis making bootlegs in caves out of scraps, they all need to rethink their strategies and start releasing some more cost-effective alternatives and an NXT UK Tag Team replica.

Cen-owned

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol’d – John Cena calls Taiwan a country, gets massive backlash from China, apologizes, then gets heat from the industry that made him

I don’t really have an opinion on the whole is Taiwan a country thing, and frankly I don’t really want to.  I have no horse in this race, and I have friends and acquaintances that are both Chinese and Taiwanese, and it’s really none of my business to what my opinion might be.

But what prompted this post is that throughout his wrestling career, John Cena has been something of this stoic, unflappable icon, that in spite of the internet’s general disdain for him, has been somewhat of a maestro at navigating through time, shifts in fandom and I have a tremendous amount of respect for everything that he’s accomplished.  Scuttlebutt may disagree, but I feel that he’s aged extremely well and has gracefully transitioned from wrestling into movies almost as well as the Rock did.

It’s safe to say that John Cena has kind of transcended into something of a brand throughout the years, based on how methodical and clinical he’s conducted himself throughout his wrestling careers and his transition into Hollywood.  Look no further than his time on Total Divas to realize that nobody was a bigger diva than John Cena; he’s such a company of a man that he basically has the equivalent of a pre-nup for a live-in girlfriend.

So in the whole adage of as much as people love heroes, they love see heroes fail, it’s noteworthy and hilarious to me, that of all the things in world that could possibly trip up a machine like John Cena, it would be a subjective opinion on China that would land him in global, public hot water.

Honestly, regardless of the cringey, pandering and embarrassing apology to all Chinese people, a Fruedian slip-like blurting out of a statement like calling Taiwan a country is clearly what he believes, and there’s nothing wrong with that – it’s an opinion, and we’re all entitled to them, no matter how much criticism they’re subject to.

Frankly, I’m more disappointed in Cena’s response to the whole Chinese backlash, because contrary to the hustle-loyalty-respect brand he built himself on throughout wrestling, he kowtowed and crumpled like a burning piece of paper when it came to upsetting an entire country and very obviously at the behest of a Hollywood studio, he tucked his tail between his muscular legs and made a pretty immediate apology.

He, and the studio could’ve sent a powerful message to the world by digging in and standing their ground, but because the Chinese economy is basically the strongest in the world, they couldn’t possibly risk upsetting them and their coffers, so they showed their hand at what they prioritized above all hustle, loyalty or respect.

In the end, John Cena has basically jobbed three times in a row, which is probably a new record and something he didn’t even do, even in the post-Ruthless Aggression era.  He jobbed to China by looking like a bitch kowtowing to them, which makes him job to the wrestling industry that made him, because his peers now reportedly have heat with him for being a bitch, and of course, he’s jobbed to himself, because this course of action is most definitely something that the John Cena brand really wouldn’t be doing, if not for the tainted influence of Hollywood money.

2 Under 2: the girls’ first blets (#042)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Until my girls are old enough to make the choice themselves that they want to have their respective blets on their own walls, they will have a forever home on my office wall, alongside my existing collection.  It brings the total blets on the wall up to 20, but the reality is that I hope to someday relinquish these two blets to my daughters one day, and I will be the proudest dad in the world on the day I get to mount these onto the walls of their rooms.

I have to say that up until I received my replicas, I’ve always been kind of lukewarm on the design of the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship blets.  Seeing them on television, I wasn’t ecstatic about the design, but I knew that after I learned I was going to have a second daughter, that I was going to want replicas of them anyway, because two daughters are a natural tag team, and they need to be recognized as the champions they are inevitably going to be.

But upon receiving the replicas, I’m quite blown away by the quality of them.  I don’t know if the actual blets are like it, but the replicas’ straps are more of a cream color than straight up white as I figured they, and all the other women’s blets in the company were, but it’s such a subtle thing that I really like.  The plates are impeccably crafted, and I’m both sold and thrilled that I have a pair of them to bequeath to my girls when #2 officially arrives.

It’s so lame, it’s so expensive and it’s so frivolous, but I don’t care.  Collecting blets is something that I enjoy and I hope that one day my girls recognize such, and would be willing to indulge their old man and want to carry a piece of his hobbies, at least onto their own walls to maybe show that they love me too, even when they’ll inevitably hate their parents for being squares and out of touch.

Kenny Omega: The Blet Collector(?)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As much as I clown on AEW, I have to say that one of the things they’re doing that actually has me pretty fascinated is the way they’re booking Kenny Omega.  Which shouldn’t really be surprise that he’s got a compelling storyline, seeing as how he’s one of the VPs of AEW as well as one of the foundation blocks in which the promotion was built on.  But with his cross-promotional victory over Rich Swann of TNA/Impact, Omega adds two more blets to his expanding collection of championships, adding the TNA and Impact unified world titles to the AEW championship as well as the AAA (Mexico) championship, which basically says he is the top guy for three different promotions.

I’ve always been fascinated by belt collector storylines, because historically it’s so rarely done, primarily because more often than not, it requires a degree of cross-promotion, which is a lot like asking a Klansman to partner up with a Black Panther to save the planet.  It’s been attempted within a single promotion a handful of times, with Lance Storm coming to mind with his torrid 2000 run collecting the WCW United States, Cruiserweight and Hardcore titles in quick succession.  And as much as I liked the Miz’s run in 2010 where he was toting around three blets, the tags were unified and kind of count as one.

TNA tried to kind of run a blet collector in like 2015 when they had Kurt Angle win every single blet within the company as well as the IWGP World Championship, but so often times is the case with TNA, nobody noticed, nobody cared, and it fell flat pretty quickly when he started rapidly shedding blets, and New Japan doesn’t officially recognize the reign with the IWGP championship because of one of the many spats they had with Antonio Inoki over it.

One of the most famous blet collectors of all time was Ultimo Dragon, who once held a mind-blowing ten blets at one time, thanks to the infamous J-Crown tournament in 1996, where it was a tournament held in Japan where all participants were respective champions from varying promotions, where every blet was on the line and as participants advanced through the tournament, they would collect the championships of everyone they defeated.  In the end, the Great Sasuke would win the tournament, collecting eight blets in the process, but in a return match against Ultimo, who went in as the WCW Cruiserweight and NWA Middleweight champion, would lose, giving him ten blets in total.

In more recent years, Austin Aries became a blet collector, in a more traditional way, in the sense that throughout 2018, he actually did bounce around the indies and beat champions and eventually made his way to Impact, where he collected two blets from them, meaning as big league as TNA/Impact thinks they might be, their titles have on multiple occasions, been gathered by guys outside of their promotion.  But at the peak, Aries collected a total of six blets, and as is often the case with Aries’ career, he took himself too seriously, and kind of sabotaged his own career.

Needless to say, the blet collector doesn’t happen often, and when it does, it typically tends to sour pretty quickly and to disastrous result.  However in spite of the history of the gimmick, AEW is taking a stab at it with Kenny Omega, but in spite of my oft-criticisms of the promotion, I actually wonder if they might be able to do better with it than all preceding attempts?

Continue reading “Kenny Omega: The Blet Collector(?)” →

Thoughts on Wrestlemania Week

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It occurred to me that in spite of how much I like sports like baseball, college football and basketball, or any other sport that I tend to get into for various spurts of time, when the day was over, and I really had to pick one thing to really stay interested in giving my very limited time these days, what wins out in the end is professional wrestling, the so-called fake sport.

I mean it’s really no surprise, considering my interest in wrestling precedes every single sports interest I’ve ever had in my life, so I’m literally falling back all the way to my childhood interest when there’s an overabundance of options to be interested in.

Anyway, so this past week was for lack of a better term, Wrestlemania Week.  Both NXT and the main roster broke up TakeOver and Wrestlemania into two-night affairs apiece, and to be perfectly honest, I really liked it in this format, and kind of hope it remains as such in the future, and not just a pandemic thing.  I enjoyed the fact that every single evening was a 2-3 hour event, and unlike ‘Manias in the past, wasn’t an exhausting five hour show to where I’m dog tired by the time the Brock Lesnar match at the end is over.  I literally had time to slap on a paint of coat in my second daughter’s nursery after night 1 of TakeOver went off the air before going to bed.

By breaking up the shows over multiple nights, I could build anticipation for matches on each of the nights, and I didn’t feel tired or burned out from watching any one show too long, and it actually helped me remain engaged and entertained.

However, before I get into the meat of this post and talk about my favorite matches of the week, I have to say that I was one part happy to see a raucous live sellout crowd at Raymond James for Wrestlemania, because fans really are one of the things that have been truly missing throughout the last year, and I know AEW and NXT have been running small crowds regularly, but seeing a packed house, made it feel like for the first time, something back to normal.

But on the other hand, the other part of me was absolutely mortified at the fact that there were 25,000 people sold out two nights straight in Tampa Bay, and just days prior in Dallas, were about 40,000 people packed into a ballpark for the Texas Rangers’ home opener.  The mere thought of these kinds of gatherings when coronavirus is very much still a thing makes my skin crawl at the sheer ignorance and selfishness being exhibited by all the people going to these things, and turning these gatherings into what will probably become super-spreader events.

I know people miss and desire the feeling of normalcy by going to major events like home openers and Wrestlemanias, but I’ll be damned if I go to anything expected to be packed houses, for at least, the rest of my life, if not another two years, without feeling scurred and/or paranoid the whole time.

But that’s just me.  Save for the awkward scariness of seeing tens of thousands of fans gathering in a venue again for the first time in over a year, Wrestlemania week was full of some fantastic work; and these were my favorites.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Wrestlemania Week” →