Tag: wrestling

Being a man of my word

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A wise man; the Ultimate Warrior to be specific; once said: blah blah blah skeletons, blah blah blah, sacrifice.  Rooooarrrrrrrr snarrllllll

Chris Jericho said it best about the Ultimate Warrior: I don’t know what he said but it sounded cool yaaaayyyyy

Anyway, this isn’t a post about the Ultimate Warrior, Chris Jericho, or professional wrestling, for once.  Those were referenced just to zone in on a single concept, that’s kind of stuck with me, especially when it comes to trying to tempt fate and potentially get the things that I hope to get: sacrifice.

I have this belief that seldom do good things occur without some degree of sacrifice involved.  It’s basically like when kids behave and act good because they want something.  And when I’ve wanted things like, the Braves winning the World Series, I most definitely think that there should be some sacrifice made by all Braves fans, if they really wanted to see a World Series win.

A few weeks ago, I dogged on Dugout Mugs, and basically how I thought they were the most useless products on the planet.  And how in an era of pandemic, wealth inequity, teetering on the precipice of financial ruin everywhere, the absolute last fucking thing anyone needed was a cup made out of a baseball bat.

One of the last things I blathered about how was that I should probably make a sacrificial bet that if the Braves won the World Series that I should get a Dugout Mug, in spite of just how abhorrent I think they are, because if I really wanted to see the Braves win, I should make a sacrifice, after all.

I wasn’t at all writing all that, in an attempt to superstitiously manipulate fate, and put on a show.  Believe me, I have done it before, and naturally it doesn’t work, but my disdain for Dugout Mugs is very much legitimate.  They’re useless products, AND they have a ridiculously ludicrous $70 price point for a fucking hollowed out bat head.  The Braves winning the World Series would definitely cost me something, that I would never purchase in any other circumstance.

And despite the fact that I made this bet with myself, and probably zero people even read or knew about it, when the Braves finished the Astros, I went ahead and bit the bullet and purchased a fucking Dugout Mug.  Thankfully, there was some sort of promotional deal for early purchasers, and I was able to get my mug for not-$70, but it was still basically the cost of a brand new video game once taxes and shipping were applied.

I didn’t have to do it.  I could’ve denied everything and just said eating my words should be enough.  But when it comes to fates and superstition, I am that gullible, so I believe that it’s probably for the best that I remain a man of my word and fulfill the obligation I made for myself if the Braves were to win.  

Considering how long I’d been hoping to see this, $57 is a paltry price to pay, and even if I think this mug and all other Dugout Mugs are bullshit, at least everything will taste something like victory for a little while from it.  Even gross-ass IPAs.

WWE’s Women’s short-strap blets bother me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m fairly sure it might have started with Sasha Banks after she won the Smackdown women’s title from Bayley a while back, but I didn’t notice it until she lost the blet to Bianca Belair at Wrestlemania last year: the strap was noticeably shorter.  It bothered me.

This was no more prevalent than during a “surprise” segment during the NXT show after Wrestlemania, when all three brands’ women’s champions all gathered in the ring to signify the whole NXT and NXT alum success thing, with all of them holding their blets, with Belair’s stumpy looking blue blet next to the red blet and the NXT women’s blet.

Obviously, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that the logic behind shortening the strap was likely due to the fact that Sasha Banks is pretty petite in stature, and a short strap allowed her to wear the blue blet without there being like a foot of excess hanging off of her.  I just figured the WWE would transition back to a longer strap on a need-be basis, but from what I can tell there doesn’t appear to be any long-strap versions of the blue blet anymore, or nobody with a waist larger than 20” appears to have held it to warrant going back to one.

To make matters worse, the red blet has been shortened now too, so now RAW is subject to having a stumpy looking women’s blet as well.  Yes, Becky Lynch has bounced back from pregnancy like a house of fire, and is probably slimmer than when she rose to the stars, but thanks to such a body transformation, now the red blet is all stumpy too.

I dunno, it just bugs me to see these blets looking all stumpy and shortened.  There’s something prestigious and traditional looking about a normal-length strap with all its rivets and snaps, and seeing it all shortened just makes them look lower-class and less prevalent.  Alexa Bliss would undoubtedly not be able to do her trademark pose with these new stumpy blets, which is kind of ironic considering she’s probably the most petite superstar there’s ever been, to hold a championship.

All I know is that if the WWEShop ever changes their women’s replicas to short straps, there’s a 0% chance that I’d buy them for my girls.  They look silly, and they would undoubtedly fuck up the aesthetic that I’d try to go with their own hanging blets.  These women need to stop being divas, and get back to traditional, classic, normal-length straps.

Twenty blets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I got an eBay alert on a very specific search query, which doesn’t happen very often, so when I got it, I peeked eagerly to see if this was something that might be attainable.  T’was an official Figures Toy Co. replica of the WCW Television Championship blet that I had mild interest of getting if I could get a decent price for it.  And seeing as how I am whittling away at my short list of remaining blets that I might actually want, it has climbed up the priority.

The best part about the listing is that it was from a Canadian seller, so no matter what the dollar amount was showing on the listing, the CAD next to it meant that I would basically be paying 79¢ to the dollar which meant I was rich, bitch, in comparison.  I low-balled the guy, mostly already deciding that I was going to buy it now no matter what but I had to try, and when they declined the offer, I went ahead and just hit Buy It Now to cut the suspense and not miss out on another Figures Toy Co. original.

So with the acquisition of the WCW TV title, this brings my personal collection of replica blets up to a cool twenty, 22 if you count the two women’s tag blets that I’m holding onto for my daughters until they inevitably decide that they want them for themselves.  Literally ten (12) more blets than I once said that I would get, since ten was a nice round number.

And because I never made a post about it because one, I never had the time to, and two, it is technically a Pakistani bootleg because there are no official replicas made anywhere, I also got a replica of the NWA Television Championship, ironically because I was tired of being unable to get a WCW one, that I went after its predecessor since it was available at a ridiculously low, bootleg price.

Now I have both TV titles, and get to deal with the first world problem of once again having to reconfigure my blet rail, to accommodate the two new additions, knowing that there are still other blets out there that I’d want and acquiring them would require more adjustments then too.

The best part is though?  Of the last five blets that I’ve purchased, they’ve all come from money made by doing surveys.  The NXT United Kingdom blet, two WWE Women’s Tag Team blets, the NWA and WCW Television championships – not a single cent of these came out of my pocket, and came from money earned by doing silly surveys for cents at a time, over the span of the last year.  

And I still have a substantial amount left, enough to purchase even moar blets, as they maybe come to fruition.  After all, there are still more unicorns for me to hunt down, and knowing me, I’ll probably bite on a good deal fallacy when Black Friday rolls around and WWEShop drops a lot of their blet prices to more reasonable numbers.

2 Under 2: the endgame for the girls’ blets (#069)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that I would’ve had any objection to have had a son, I low-key was hoping for a second daughter, for the explicit purpose that I could purchase a set of women’s tag team championship blets for my two daughters to become the lifelong tag team partners they were meant to be.

Anyone who’s seen the modest gender reveal video my wife and I did with a balloon filled with blue or pink confetti, when we popped the balloon and pink confetti rained over my kitchen, you better believe that within at least 3-4 minutes, my mind was already thinking about the tag team blets that I would have to inevitably get for my girls.

It took a few months, but I just so happened to be vigilantly on watch when the day came where the WWEshop dropped these specific blets to the price threshold I was awaiting them to hit before pulling the trigger.  I couldn’t have been more excited when they arrived, and not just because they made mythical wife’s eyes roll like Marble Madness.

Y’see, there actually was an endgame in mind for these blets, and I’m going to share it here, because it’s really going to be a toss-up if my brog lasts long enough for my kids to eventually read this, and that’s even if they’re even remotely curious to want read about dad’s online dear diary for the better part of what will probably be like 35-40 years old by the time they might be curious.

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It’s almost as if I spoke the TBS blet into existence

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I found out about the existence of the TBS Championship from one of my friends who texted me, making a snide sarcastic remark about it, as if assumed that I had heard about it when it was unveiled.  Despite the fact that I’ve insinuated no less than a hundred times that I don’t have the time or capacity to watch let alone follow most wrestling things these days, his approach hasn’t changed, but I don’t care, because it’s through messages like this that give me any shred of knowing what’s going on in the business all the same.

Regardless, let me tell you how giddy I was to excitedly quickly Google “tbs championship” and see what this new blet was, and just how much satisfaction I received when it turned out to be basically exactly what I had sarcastically photoshopped back in May, when the news broke that TNT was going to shove AEW programming off of the network and onto TBS in favor of the NHL rights that they had acquired.

I mean seriously, it’s verbatim what I had “designed” with the exception being that the logo is plated in gold-brass instead of actually using one of the “wacky” colors of that the TBS logo is available in, because wacky variety equals the comedy that TBS declares itself to be.

But let us show for the record that I had basically called the inevitability of the TBS championship back in May, and by it coming to fruition, it further cements my self-proclaimed status as an Oracle of professional wrestling, as if that’s something to be proud of.

I will say though, good on AEW to make a women’s championship, because it is one of the few times in which they can say they beat the WWE to the punch, by implementing a mid-card title for the girls.  Sure, they don’t have women’s tag blets yet, but frankly they don’t have the roster depth to justify it yet, but they definitely have enough individual talents to warrant having a secondary blet for the women.

Now by making it a women’s blet, it kind of eliminates the possibility of a unification match with the TNT champion, since even AEW walks on eggshells at the idea of men versus women, but considering their edge-lord want to to do all the things that WWE won’t do, I don’t think it’s entirely off the table either for the time being.

But anyway, with the introduction of the TBS championship, it brings the number of blets available on AEW programming up to like 37, since they feature all the blets from Impact, the NWA, New Japan on top of their own, and if new blets keep being thrown into the mix, we’ll get to the point where the six-man tag champs will feud with the ten-man tag champs, and nobody will come out of the tunnel without a blet eventually.

This hilarious meme captures the danger of the potential that exists if television networks are the basis for them, and all joking aside, the Turner family has like 15 networks under their umbrella, and as long as Turner bullies AEW onto other networks, it’s only a matter of time before we might actually have the TCM blet, the truTV blet, and the Cartoon Network blet.

And I might actually eventually want some of them, for my own collection. 

The rando wrestling post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Looking through my queue of random notes of things I wanted to write some words down about, I realized that there was the opportunity to occasionally consolidate some things into singular posts, to both artificially suppress my imaginary queue of important things to post about, as well as not to bore my zero readers with too much rambling about specific topics that really I’m the only one who cares too much about.

Naturally, my brog wouldn’t be the brog without there being random observations about professional wrestling, and although I’m having a tremendously difficult time keeping up with the business these days on account of having, no time at all, I sometimes try to keep up by either watching the top 10 clips that show up on YouTube, or by watching episodes of WWE or AEW, by fast forwarding through most of it.

Seriously, when I do that, I don’t even watch the wrestling itself; I usually fast forward until when I think the match could be potentially come to an end, and just try to watch the endings to the matches, just so I can see what post-match interactions there are.  Also, promos, because I like to see the progressions of stories and not the actual wrestling product itself, in comparison.

Watching one of the more recent episodes of NXT two-point-oh, it’s evident of what the directive of the product is, and I kind of do really understand that Triple H’s NXT was still anchored by a bunch of older performers, when NXT really was designed to be a training ground of young, up-and-coming talent, and not a place for outside stars to assimilate into the WWE machine.  I can’t say that I’m at all that impressed with the transition, nor its obnoxious ADD color schema, but I do understand the end game with the repackaging of NXT.

But there was an ending to the show where women’s champion Raquel Gonzalez was jumped by a new stable of women, and I couldn’t help but get flashbacks to Takeover: Brooklyn III, where Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly jumped Drew McIntyre after he won the NXT championship, only to be joined by a debuting Adam Cole, and the three of them stood over the champion, signaling the arrival of a new faction.

When Gigi Dolin and Jayce Jane jumped Gonzalez and then were joined by a repackaged Mandy Rose, with the three of them standing over her prone body afterward, it basically felt precisely like the debut of the Undisputed Era, all the way to Rose grandstanding with the championship.  I mean, with the Era all but dead now, with two of them in AEW, why shouldn’t NXT just swap the genders and try the whole idea all over again?

Sure, Mandy Rose was never a stalwart in the ring, Jane is as green as ten Lex Lugers, and Priscilla Kelly Gigi Dolin will probably never let her whole arsenal be used, so I can’t help but bet that they’ll never reach the heights of the UE, but at least they had a cool debut and looked good in the process.

Moving onto the other company, I feel like I had a home run of an analogy of how the world of professional wrestling fandom kind of feels like these days:

AEW is basically like Sega, while the WWE is unmistakably Nintendo.

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What’s AEW going to do with all this talent?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In spite of all the criticizing and clowning I do on AEW, I don’t hate them at all.  Quite the contrary, I support their existence, as an alternative to the WWE that I do more than my fair share of criticizing and clowning on as well.  It’s just that I don’t always understand what AEW is doing, or can’t really seem to grasp the ideas that they may or may not have in mind for the near to distant future.

Sure, CM Punk basically broke the internet on the night he emerged as All Elite, and as big of a fan of the wrestler he was during his time in WWE, he hasn’t wrestled in seven years.  Plus, the world kind of got to know him a little bit better during his time away, and I’m not going to say I full-on soured on the guy, but I am a little more skeptical about his general attitude and outlook on things, seeing as how Twitter was kind of the only thing he utilized to not completely disappear from the public eye, and few things really go well with Twitter.

And then they pair him up with Darby Allin, who is clearly on the hydra of protected AEW originals, along with MJF and Jungle Boy.  Maybe I was just raised on too much Vince-WWF, but his scrawny stature and 1998 persona don’t really do it for me, so the idea of a CM Punk and Darby Allin scrap was about as appealing to me as finding out a friend is a little more right-wing than you might have thought.

But obviously, the main topic of this post is that when the All Out revealed both the debuts of Adam Cole and Daniel Bryan Danielson, in non-wrestling capacities, no less, the first thought that popped in my head was, what the heck is AEW going to do with all this massive influx of talent? 

Going back a little further, they were all too willing to pick up Aleister Black when the WWE let him go, and this was after they had plucked Christian out of retirement, not long after bringing Rusev into the fold and renaming him Miro.  Suffice to say, AEW has been more than willing to fill their roster full of a lot of the talent liberated by the WWE, but again, my thoughts wander to wondering what they can do with all this talent, because a promotion can have all the talented creative in the world, but they’re still at the mercy of the clocks of available television time.

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