Tag: wrestling

Praise for NXT Halloween Havoc

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few year and change, there’s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding the state of the WWE following the company’s sale and eventual restructuring into being an arm of their new parent company TKO.  Questionable decision making as far as staffing, personnel and eventual booking choices, but more primarily how they’re killing the WWE with their flagrant price gauging, cost increases across the board on tickets, merch, and various other microtransactions, masterfully finding each and every nickel and dime to bilk out of wrestling fans.

I often said to my friends that I didn’t really feel impacted by much of it, because I had little interest in going to any live events; I’d been to Wrestlemania twice now, and numerous other ppvs when they were still called ppvs, and at the prices of tickets these days, I would way rather just watch from the comfort of my own home.  Over the summer, I went to NXT’s Great American Bash, solely based on the fact that it was at my favorite venue (Center Stage), but after paying $130 for almost literally the last row of the venue, only to be seated next to 1.75x of humanity, I almost want to swear off going to WWE shows outright, fearing a similar fate the next time I plunk down grown up money just to be in attendance.

Additionally, I would say to my friends that as long as TKO doesn’t fuck around with my viewing experience, then I don’t really have many qualms with how they’re operating the company.  But over the last few months, WWE PLEs have all been shifted over to ESPN++ to some new tier that I can’t get access too without actually having to pay money for it, so I’ve missed the last two major events.  NXT remains on CW which I don’t have access to in a streaming capacity, and I haven’t seen an episode of Smackdown in years because I don’t have the means to watch whatever channel they’re on now.  RAW on Netflix is still available to me, but the production of the show is really wonky and weird, and it’s hard to stay engaged when they’re being so flagrant with performing at 60% so that they can save their ammo for the next PLE.

In other words, TKO has been fucking around with the viewing experience, and it definitely sucks as a fan.  Not knowing what shows are on what platform, if I can even watch them or not, and if and when I can, there being paywalls in order to see things as simply as storyline promo packages and performer entrances.  Obviously, I’m not going to swear off wrestling by any stretch of the imagination, but I am entitled to air out my grievances about the state of the WWE when I find their operational conduct to be annoying.

All that said, I wanted to chirp a little bit about how much of a breath of fresh air NXT’s Halloween Havoc felt like, because it definitely felt like a positive reprieve from the suffocating corporate cloud that the main roster WWE has been feeling like over the last year.

It was on Peacock, which had the occasional commercial break here and there, but the show as a whole had a banger of main song that they spammed throughout the evening, and the replay showed all the promo packages, which helped a viewer like me who can’t actually watch NXT to the minute, to catch up with what to expect in the show.  The show itself was at a smaller venue in a part of Arizona that I’d never even heard of, but it looked like the type of show that I’d have definitely been interested in going to, because it wasn’t a mega arena, and it wasn’t in a clusterfuck of a place like Atlanta, and looked like a fun place to watch wrestling.

And of course, the matches were all pretty entertaining.  Call me crazy, but sometimes some matches don’t really have to have a convoluted storyline behind them, and you can really just take a bunch of entertaining workers and throw them in a match together to great effect, and that’s how I felt with the opening match of Je’Von Evans and Leon Slater vs. La Parka* and Mr. Iguana.  No real story, just an NXT guy teamed with a TNA guy against two AAA guys, and they tore the house down to open the show.

*What’s funny is that on this exact date, there was a Lucha show in Atlanta that advertised La Parka on the card, so I’m amused by the fact that one of these shows got the actual current La Parka, while the other got an imposter, or they’re up to like La Parka IV or V at this point, like the Villanos, but whomever NXT had that night was wayyyy too talented of a La Parka than what fans of his from WCW might have remembered.  Motherfucker was doing picture perfect Asai moonsaults out of the ring and press slams into gutbusters, a far cry from the dumpy fat luchador in WCW that swung a chair and strutted his way to the bank.

Mariah May Blake Monroe got to flex a little bit of her actual wrestling skill in her win against Zaria for the women’s North American title, and I’m pleased that she’s allowed to do some of the work that elevated her so much in AEW, and I really enjoyed Ethan Page’s match against El Hijo de Dr. Wagner, and despite being the heel, Vic Joseph’s commentary about how much of a fighting champion Page has been, it’s hard to not respect the work the man puts into the business.  But the match had some really brutal spots, and it was enjoyable from start to finish.

The Hardy Boyz vs. Darkstate was an entertaining disaster, even if I don’t believe in all at the long-term viability of Darkstate.  They’re like a Temu-grade Shield, with less charisma, but given the fact that the Hardyz are still TNA guys, it seemed likely that they were going to have give those NXT blets back sooner rather than later.

Honestly, it’s not that the Ricky Saints vs. Trick Williams match was necessarily bad, it’s just that other matches on the card were more entertaining and compelling, that theirs just kind of didn’t stand out in comparison.  Both are talented workers, but in the context of the evening their fairly vanilla wrestling match just wasn’t as exciting as all of the matches that preceded it.  Plus, the finish seemed really wonky and almost rushed, and when it was over, I was just kind of like, that’s it?

But let’s really talk about Tatum Paxley’s ascension to the top of the mountain, beating Jacy Jayne for the NXT Women’s championship.  Firstly, I do want to give my flowers to Jayne for a respectable run with the top prize; I know her win was a surprise, considering she beat the aura-filled Stephanie Vaquer, but I didn’t hate it, because she was a solid hand that was easily the most talented worker of Toxic Attraction, and I always like seeing hard workers get rewarded with solid pushes.

However that being said, the same could very easily be said about Tatum Paxley, whom I get some Liv Morgan-like, love of the game vibes from, and like Jayne, her hard work has been noticeable and palpable over the course of the last 12+ months, and I’m pleased to see her get this honor of getting to be the women’s champion.  I think she’s more athletic than Liv ever has been and works pretty cleanly in spite of her general level of experience, but her character work and portrayal of the weird but talented goth girl seems to have captured the audience, and I’d be lying if I didn’t stop and let the look linger on her; she’s cute as hell.

But when she won the title, I definitely got those similar vibes to her championship that I felt when Liv won the women’s title for the first time, or when Iyo won the World championship the last time; it was a sense of satisfaction that a hard worker was getting their justly reward.

Overall, Halloween Havoc was a breath of fresh air of how good the WWE is capable of operating in a manner that I wish were the norm all throughout the company, and not just in NXT.  It kind of reminds me of that period between 2016-2017 where NXT was just firing on all cylinders so well that it was clear that they were the best brand in the company.  Look forward to the next NXT event, that is until they’re spontaneously sold off to start showing on like Tubi or Fubo or some other rando platform.

I kind of have to respect Mercedes’ game

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t mention it because life has a tendency to get all up in the way, but a little before Labor Day, I made a small trip, and my first destination was Philadelphia, where I met up with some friends so we could watch AEW live, on account of a childhood friend we have who is on their payroll and could hook us up with some tickets.  However, it wasn’t just watching AEW live, it was watching AEW live at the, now 2300 Arena, formerly known as the notorious ECW Arena, known for being the home to, Extreme Championship Wrestling.

This was very much as case of being more interested in seeing my friends and the venue itself as opposed to the actual product being shown, but honestly, it wasn’t that bad of a show, since the narrative of the whole night was leaning hard into the fact that they were at the ECW Arena.

It also didn’t hurt that our seats were front row.

Anyway, there really was no point to mentioning all that other than to just mentioned that I went to see the ECW Arena for the first time which I really enjoyed, and the whole point of this post is to, once again, talk about Mercedes Moné, seeing as how she’s hoovered up a 12th blet, and has been proclaiming herself to be better than Ultimo Dragon, and apparently, I’m not sure what prompted it, but also better than Bret Hart.

Little does she probably realize that kayfabe or not, by bringing up Bret Hart’s name in such a manner will embark her on a personal beef with the Excellence of Execution for the better part of the next three decades, but that’s neither here nor there.

Loosely tying back into my experience at the ECW Arena, I did get to see Mercedes live, in an in-ring promo where she was glorifying some new backyard promotion’s title win.  Despite being in the front row, nobody could really hear anything, because whether it’s AEW’s equipment being shitty, or the acoustics of the ratty old ECW Arena, nobody was getting any audio, but it didn’t really matter because in spite of the backhanded praise I have planned for this post, it doesn’t change the fact that she still gives really shitty promos, and on the trading card talent scale, her promos are probably at like a 2 out of 7, primarily on account of the fact that she’s not afraid to speak, it’s just she sucks at it.

But that was back on Labor Day, and as of now, Mercedes now holds 12 different blets, and finally lots of the internet are finally beginning to acknowledge that in spite of the number of blets, only nine of them are actually titles, considering the number of asterisks surrounding several of them, like the Owen Hart Tournament blet being a trophy and not an actual title, the Queen of Southside blet being technically retired and not an active blet, and I’m guessing the recently won Ring of Honor Women’s Television blet has an asterisk on account of it being an interim title, despite the fact that Red Velvet wouldn’t have a chance against Mercedes in a clean bout.

I’ve said it before, on account of some of them being not actual titles, and many of them being titles for a bunch of backyard promotions nobody had ever heard of, this whole blet collector arc for her is mostly meaningless, and if that makes me a hater to say such things, so be it, but it’s my version of the truth as far as I can see it.

I could argue with troglodytes on the internet about this topic, but I really do not want to, which is why it ends up being a brog post on a brog that nobody reads, but I have to say that I think I’m beginning to see what her large scale scope game is in doing all of what she’s doing, and if such really is the case, I think I do feel that I should respect her in this regard, because when the day is over in the wrestling business, it’s better to be hated and analyzed and criticized over being respected, heroic, but otherwise invisible.

And Mercedes is doing a masterclass job of doing what she’s doing, and getting people noticing and getting people talking.  Shit, as much criticism I have for what her character is doing, this is like my fourth or fifth post about specifically her, so whatever she’s doing is working, and in that regard, she has my respect.

And what she’s doing specifically, I would say is ragefarming, because between being the cockiest heel since prime Ric Flair, Mercedes is also taking her arrogance to the internet, dropping quotes and sound bytes, saying shit that is deliberately and tactfully setting wrestling fans off and getting them talking and interacting and engaging with her, with websites and groups and other outlets that are all scrambling to monetize the exposure.

Speaking of Flair, he used to explain that the point of being a good heel is to be so disliked and hated, that people start getting antsy and itching to see you lose, and one of the true arts of the business is being such to where they will be willing to pay money to see it happen, and I think Mercedes is doing an outstanding job of fulfilling that first part, but me personally I don’t like paying to watch wrestling other than live, but I am going to be excited if and when she starts having to drop all these blets back to their respective promotions.

In the grand spectrum of her career, it will be easier for her to parlay being a legendary heel back into a respectable face, as opposed someone who has to build up their fame and resume, and when the day comes, which I predict might be around next Thanksgiving, when Mercedes goes back to the WWE and becomes Sasha Banks again, she’s going to get a real needle-moving reaction, one way or the other, so the Four Horsewomen can have a massive blowup program with Asuka’s Team Japan with Iyo Sky, Kairi Sane and Giulia in a passing of the torch.

However, I still think the most defining period of Mercedes’s journey right now will be when it comes time for her to start returning the favor to all these companies whose blets she has right now.  My general scrutiny is that she may have stretched herself too thin to it almost being a no-win situation; if she bleeds her titles back piece meal, nobody will notice, but if she goes on a big tour of dropping titles in a sequence, a long string of L’s is going to make her look weak, and history has shown that Mercedes is not a fan of taking too many L’s in general.

If she pulls the losing her smile card, and starts relinquishing titles without having to take any defeats, it effectively kills whomever she does it to, and that’s just not good business at the end of the day, but I wouldn’t put it past Mercedes to keep this in mind if the thought of taking some losses starts to make her lose sleep.

Frankly, the only viable solutions are that a lot of companies will have to have some horsey, multi-women matches where Mercedes can drop blets without always having to take any pins or submissions, or she needs to start a feud with someone in AEW that reaches the level of hate that AJ Styles has reached in feuds with Dominic Mysterio or LA Knight, where they will be willing to cross seas and oceans in order to interfere in their matches and cost them in title defenses, thus keeping her somewhat strong in requiring interference in order to lose.

But anyways, because I’ve clearly got Mercedes unfortunately living rent-free in my head, and I’ve made yet another lengthy post overanalyzing what she’s doing, I’m wrap this up.  I think I’ve said everything that I’ve wanted to say this time, and normally I’d say I hope to not touch on this subject again, but there’s too much wrestling fandom and likely mileage in the Moné-train to not.

However, credit to where it’s due, Mercedes the Ragefarmer is holding a masterclass at ensuring people are noticing and people are talking, and in the wrestling industry such does require talent, and knowledge to parlay such reactions into positive, profitable careers.

Unpopular opinion: weight dropping is weak

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I suppose it’s kind of an oxymoron that I preface this post with unpopular opinion; over the last few months of randomly commenting on public shit on social media, it’s safe to say that most of the opinions I have are typically unpopular and am routinely told by randos how stupid and how much of a loser I am for having them which in a way is not a bad thing because it makes me think twice about engaging anything on the internet and saving my opinions for my own personal brog where I will never have anyone telling me that I’m wrong.

But anyway, I’m at the gym, more specifically I’m in the locker room changing out to get ready to head back up to the office.  And then I hear a thud; right past the walls to the men’s locker room is the little alcove of the gym where the dumbbells are situated, and there are 1-2 benches for people to do some dumbbell lifts.  Usually once, sometimes twice in a work week, I utilize these dumbbells, especially since my gym has no barbells or any free weights that would be useful to really do some swole seshes.

A few minutes later, another thud, of weights being dropped onto the ground, after what was probably a grueling, failure-inducing set of god-knows-what to push a man to the limits to where he feels the only logical option is to abandon ship and drop their weights to the ground, completely unconcerned about floor damage, or any collateral damage of rolling or bouncing weights.  Granted, the heaviest weights available at my gym are two 50s, but considering the majority of the people in my building, it’s still sufficient if you know what you’re doing inside of a gym.

I’m in the shower, and then there’s an even louder thud, and I’m beginning to think that whomever is using the dumbbells is increasing weight in between sets and slamming heavier and heavier weights based on the sheer magnitude of the thuds.

While I’m getting dressed comes one last thud, that kind of shakes the ground, and one of those impacts that you can feel in your bones.  There’s some extra clatter, and then the sound of the weights clearly having rolled or bounced into the drywall on the other side of the wall I’m standing in front of and I’m finally thinking to myself, what the fuck, dropping weights is fucking stupid, and a sign of weakness, because anyone with any modicum of strength and control would probably be able to workout without hitting such catastrophic failure points to where they have to start slamming their weights on the ground like when Hogan slammed Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania III.

Yes, I know all about hitting failure and the importance of it in order to achieve certain levels of growth, but I actually know the guy in question who was dropping the weights like he were in a Rocky training montage.  He’s definitely not a bodybuilder, and is probably like 155-160 lbs., tops.  I know he’s into crossfit, considering the crossfit shirts I’ve seen him wearing, and it’s evident where he picked up the habit of dropping weights.  Which is fine, when you’re at the crossfit gym, and all of the crossfit clowns are flinging and dropping and slamming their weights all over the place, but not while at the minimally loaded work office gym.

Not only are there already holes and dents in the drywall from gee I wonder wear, the floors are minimally padded with an appropriate floor covering, but the fact that the floors are hollow sounding, I don’t imagine 80, 90 or 100 lbs of weight being slammed onto the ground is great for the long-term.  This isn’t a crossfit gym, and it’s barely a real gym in general.  It’s a repurposed section of an office building that had some basic gym equipment placed into it, that’s convenient for casual and/or knowledgeable exercise enthusiasts to come and get some work in, not for crossfit clowns to come in and fling shit around and lift weights with shitty form.

The bottom line is that, I think weight dropping is stupid, weight dropping is potentially harmful, and weight dropping is just weak, in general.  Fewer things seem a better indicator of strength and ability to harness that strength than being able to control not just the press of weight, but also the return of it, and I frankly don’t want to hear any nonsensical bullshit about how I’m not hitting failure and hampering my own gains.  I workout in order to maintain good health, not train for the next fucking Olympics, I’m not trying to break floors and walls and make tremors when doing so.

Wrestlemania XLIII in Saudi Arabia? Thanks I hate it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I heard the rumblings that Wrestlemania was going to be held in Saudi Arabia in 2027, I had two thoughts run through my mind:

  1. This was always going to happen eventually, I guess most of us wrestling fans didn’t expect it to happen just yet. When the WWE got in bed with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, most fans saw a gamut of dollar amounts being thrown around as the cost of the union, with the only thing in common being that they were all ridiculously high with absolutely nothing measured in millions, but billions.  There was always talks and rumors that eventually Wrestlemania would make its way into the kingdom, but honestly I figured that at least Europe would have gotten a shot to host a ‘Mania before Saudi Arabia, but as is the way of the world, money talks.

  2. Regardless, I hate it. I’ve always been vehemently opposed to everything in regards to the WWE’s partnership with Saudi Arabia, and the only reason why I spite-watch the shows that they hold out there is that over the last few years, they’ve actually woven storylines into the Saudi shows as if they were going to Birmingham, Alabama for a PPV, and I have FOMO on any progressions in them.
    Yes, I know that makes my wrestling fandom a little bit (more) gray, but at the end of the day, I’m still a fan of the business, and I like to consume as much of it as I can, even if I don’t like the town they’re in.

But I am not a fan of the Saudi culture, which no matter how many billions they dump into the world economy to try to change the world’s perspective on them, doesn’t change the fact that they exist in a reality where women are full-stop, a full-ass tier beneath men, and there is absolutely nothing a woman could to do change the status quo.  Forcing them, as well as all visiting women to adhere to their bullshit laws of being completely covered up and probably other nonsensical things that would probably result in a beheading if violated.

Furthermore, they’re a culture of extreme homophobia, transphobia and just plain opposed to the LGBTQ+ community entirely.  Frankly, they’re just a culture of extreme prejudice in general, and early on in the arrangement, it was known fact that if Sami Zayn were to even step foot in the country, he would probably be killed, due to the conflicts in Syria and him being a native Syrian.

Honestly, I know I’ve said my piece about how I feel about Saudi culture, and I don’t much see the point in typing in circles and doing it again.  I just hate that the WWE has finally pulled the trigger on SaudiMania, and we’re less than two years again from the showcase of the immortals™ having to be broadcast from a culturally backward country at very likely an extremely inconvenient time to account for time zone, and I’ll probably get completely spoiled to everything by the time I can get to watch it, because not only can the internet never shut the fuck up, the WWE themselves has a really nasty habit of firing off emails in real time to the show, announcing critical results in order to hock their shitty overpriced merch powered by Fanatics™.

However, I had another thought while pondering this post: if there were ever a time for AEW to launch a genuine tactical strike against the WWE with the sole intention to gain industry footprint, I think this would be the perfect opportunity to do so.

Like, AEW books a show on the same weekend, entirely to counter and challenge SaudiMania.  Absolutely load the card, spread it over two nights.  Collaborate with everyone, especially since all the smaller and indy feds that love to book in the WWE’s gravity during Mania weekend probably won’t be able to do so if they’re in fucking Saudi Arabia, in order to help stack the card.

Hold it at EverBank and not Daily’s Place, where they could fill probably 50-60k, which would be a huge economic win especially since April is not football season, and since Daddy Shahid owns the team, it’s probably basically a free venue less the cost of event operations.

Run it free with existing subscription on HBO Max with any additional charge, to mitigate one of their biggest handicaps against the WWE, which is the fact that they effectively still operate on a pay-per-view model.

Capitalize on all of the western and global WWE fans who probably won’t be able to get into SaudiMania for fear of getting beheaded or just plain not being able to afford the royal cost of tickets.  Emotions are already high and resentful towards the E for running in Saudi, and if there ever was a moment in time to try and flip any fans, this would absolutely be it.

Over the last year, WWE hasn’t been shy about running counter to AEW, even though they claim that they don’t view them as competition.  And maybe it’s because they are still kind of the little brother in the real/unreal rivalry between them, AEW has for the most part avoided running shows on dates that the WWE had “claimed.”

But I’m just saying, I feel like if there was ever a chance for AEW to take the offensive and have it do some noticeable impact, running a mega show right on top of SaudiMania’s dates, could possibly be effective.  A combination of fan resentment and the likely time difference could lead to it running almost entirely unopposed, and if they deliver, could have some massive effectiveness at closing the gap with their competition.

I’m not saying such would make me a massive AEW fan for life, but I think I’m in a position where I’d prefer to see the E take a ding for their poor decision making, and if it means supporting their competition, so be it.  I don’t hate AEW by any stretch of the imagination, I just find their brand of product to be puzzling at times, but it does not meant that I wouldn’t want to see them succeed as well.  AEW being prosperous is good for the industry as a whole, certainly more than an arrangement with fucking Saudi Arabia.

Gunther treating the WWE like a day job makes me like him more

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

During an appearance, former WWE world champion Gunther was met by a fan who proclaimed to have driven nine hours in order to meet him.  Usually a lot of workers, regardless of if they’re a face or a heel would probably say something along the lines of ehhh that’s an honor or ehhh I really appreciate that or at the very least, thank you. 

I mean, I’m pretty self-deprecating and am really uncomfortable when any sort of praise is lavished onto me, but even I’d probably say something to express my gratitude and how humbled I am that anyone would want to travel a great distance to see me, and of course, thank you.

But nah, Gunther claims to have told this fan:

Do something better with your time.  Do something that actually benefits you.

And the thing is, I don’t get the impression that he’s playing the heel that he is supposed to be in the WWE character alignment chart.  I genuinely feel like that that’s precisely how he felt about the information, regardless of how well-intentioned it was.  Sure, there’s some murky waters on where this quote is coming from, but if I’m a betting man, I’d wager that this is the real Walter Hahn coming through, and that it’s not that he’s probably not appreciative and grateful that people want to see him, but he genuinely believes that there are more beneficial things out there for people to want to do with their time rather than seek him out for a quick meet and greet.

I’ve read/watched some interviews with him in the past, and if there’s one thing that has remained consistent is how often he has voluntarily opined that he was always dubious that he and the WWE would pair together, because he makes no secret that the general WWE style and his style didn’t necessarily align in the past.  He always credits Japan, specifically strong style as being more of an inspiration to him than anyone in the WWE ecosystem, but he seems intelligent enough to know that for the sake of his future and future well-being, there’s no better place to go than the WWE.

The point is, it’s as if he treats his WWE career like a day job, where sure, he will give his best efforts to the company, do whatever it is that he’s told in order to make as much money as he can in the time that his body can perform, but when the day is over, he will not bleed WWE and be the kind of guy that will be synonymous with the company, ten or twenty years down the line.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a high on Gunther, and I admit that I was not on board when he first showed up in NXT UK, as Walter, looking all doughy and with man tits, and I was not on board with him ending Pete Dunne’s UK championship reign.  I thought his style was excessively stiff, and I couldn’t get over the physical eye test, that this guy was being booked as such hot shit as he was.

But then he had matches with Tyler Bate, carried the fuck out of Joe Coffey, and then the match with Ilja Dragunov in an empty COVID-era BT studios, changed my mind, at just how talented of a worker he was.  He showed up to NXT in America and had great matches with Tommaso Ciampa, and then eventually passed the torch to Dragunov in the highly anticipated rematch.  Then he arrived on the main roster, but in much better shape, and over the months, would improve physically as well as find his groove working main roster.  He won the Intercontinental blet, held it for over 600 days, and proved that he could have a good match with pretty much anyone and I was already a fan by now, and has further ascended in the company hierarchy, where he’s just barely removed from having lost the World heavyweight championship for the second time.

And the whole time, he’s been treating it like a day job, and absolutely nothing more than that, and I really love that that’s the vibe he gives me, because for some reason, I really appreciate guys who operate like that.

One commenter, than more commenters as the story began to circulate, said one thing that stuck with me, and served as the impetus to this whole post, was along the lines of how Gunther was the WWE’s equivalent to Nikola Jokic, the Denver Nuggets’ wunder center, whom it’s so obvious that the NBA is his day job, and that he wants nothing more than to be home in Serbia, raising his horses.  A ton of jokes were had within the last two weeks where footage of him sobbing with happiness at one of his horses winning a race, compared to when he won the NBA championship for the Nuggets, and then basically asked at the press conference when he could go home.

Andrew Luck is another guy that treated his career, as an NFL quarterback, as a tedious day job, that I loved the way he conducted business.  He clearly sat down with mom and dad with a tall glass of milk at the kitchen table, and drew Venn diagrams and wrote down career pros and cons lists and landed on NFL quarterback at being the most fiscally beneficial for the long term.  Otherwise, when not playing football, he was far the fuck away from the sport.

But yeah, Gunther is totally just like Jokic and Luck in the sense that he might be an outstanding wrestler and does give his full effort to the business, but when the day is over, it’s not his passion, it’s not his end-all, and he probably has some interests he’s way more into than wrestling.

A while back, I remember seeing a video of Gunther dancing at his wedding, doing an Indian dance (Bhangra?); of course an athlete of his talent is probably doing it correctly and not looking like an idiot, but the most notable thing about it is the massive smile on his face.  Now I’ve seen a lot of Gunther over the last few years, and he’s had some heel-ish smirks and smiles in his promo work, but there ain’t ever been an instance where he’s had such a genuine or happy looking look on his face as he is dancing with his new bride. 

Man didn’t give in to any sense of elation at winning the NXT UK championship, or when he won the Intercontinental championship, or even when he defeated Damian Priest for his first WWE World title.

WWE Superstar truly is his day job, and the fact that this attitude bleeds out into how he interacts with fans, I fucking love it.  This whole mentality of his only serves to make me like and appreciate him more, and I can imagine that he’s definitely going to be one of those guys that retires way earlier than he would be physically capable of doing, and we will absolutely not see him again, except during his Hall of Fame induction, or any overseas shows where you also know the E had forked over a hefty fee in order to entice him to show up.

So if we are Gunther fans, aside from the fact that we should probably be doing some more productive things with our lives, we should probably appreciate him to the fullest while we have him, because I have a feeling he’s definitely going to retire earlier than lots of balls-to-the-wall professional wrestlers will.

Happy trails, Hulkamania

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Meeting the Hulkster in 2005 at a car show, coincidentally wearing this shirt. He greeted me “nice shirt, brother”

Countless sauces: “Hulk Hogan” Terry Bollea passes away at the age of 71

  1. Long ago, one of my closest friends and I were bullshitting about the random things that bros do, and at one point we talked about, how would we feel when Hulk Hogan inevitably dies? Nobody lives forever, and although we weren’t really so much die-hard Hulkamaniacs so much as we more or less liked him in this ironic manner because he was just so over-the-top and often larger than life,  we still were fans of the guy that basically embodied professional wrestling.

We knew that his time would eventually come, and although we’ve witnessed countless professional wrestlers from our childhood pass away from various reasons, there weren’t many who were going to be at the tier, that of someone on the echelon of the industry as Hulk Hogan was, and we pondered on what would happen around the business, and how we might possibly feel when it inevitably happens.

  1. Over the span of the last week, the world saw the passing of Malcolm-Jamal Warner AKA Theo Huxtable, and days later, Ozzy Osbourne, the so-called Prince of Darkness. And is often popularly murmured upon hearing the deaths of celebrities, it always comes in threes.

In one of the group chats I share with many of my closest friends, I specifically mentioned that a probable high likelihood name to be the third, was Hulk Hogan.  Leading up to today, it was known that he had gone to the hospital, but it was very ambiguous and this kind of gross game of information being spread on his condition, where some parties were spreading that he was on his death bed and didn’t have long to live, while others proclaimed that all was well and that recovery was oncoming; but when a 71-year old former professional wrestler of the rockin’ 80’s era goes to the hospital, there’s always the possibility that things are going to go tits up.

Unfortunately for me, wrestling fans, and all those whom might be interested, I just so happened to be right in this case.  And as much as I often extol the wondrous feeling of being right, this is one of those cases where I don’t feel any sense of satisfaction at it because in the end, the world lost an icon, whether people were a fan of him or not.

  1. As is often times the case whenever someone of a degree of celebrity passes away, I become fairly judgmental towards the parties that spout their condolences and keep them in their thoughts and prayers, primarily when I know that at some point(s), they’ve turned their backs on the departed. To me, their sudden returns to grace come off as disingenuous and attempts to piggy back sympathy and attention to themselves and it often disgusts me when I see people pulling 180s on guys like Hulk Hogan, just because they passed away.

I understand why a lot of people cancelled Hulk Hogan over the years; him getting caught dropping the hard-R on a recording was enough for many.  His absolute shitshow lawsuit against Gawker Media, revolving around the fact that he was involved in some bizarre cuckolding scenario with a Tampa shock-jock and a sex tape “leaked” didn’t really help his general public image.  And of course, who could forget him pledging his allegiance to the orange turd in the 2024 election, complete with him showing up to the RNC, cutting a pro-turd promo, and ripping his shirt off on stage.

I get it, man hasn’t been remotely close to the bastion of a paragon that prime 80’s Hulk Hogan was, encouraging children to take their vitamins and say their prayers, since his retirement, and I wouldn’t challenge or argue with anyone who decided to cancel post-career Hulk Hogan.

Yeah, I don’t dig the hard-R, and his over-the-top alignment to the right.  The Gawker trial was personally endlessly amusing, and I probably made no less than 13 posts about it during its lifespan.  Honestly, Hulk Hogan, or Terry Bollea, or whatever you want to call him, clearly wasn’t a perfect human being, but quite frankly neither are any of us.

If I decided to cancel every single celebrity that had done something offensive, then I probably wouldn’t be a fan of anyone.  If I decided to cancel any random people that I know, friends, colleagues or otherwise, for something that they’ve done that’s slighted me, I’d probably become a bigger island of a man than I already feel like sometimes.  And if I held myself to the same criteria as those I should be cancelling, I’d have cancelled myself probably 168 times.

The point is, yes some of the shit that Terry Bollea has done has been less than socially acceptable to people like minded to me, but there’s always been this part of me that always gave Hulk Hogan, as well as lots of other people a little more leeway and resistance to cancellation than others might, because I often think about people in the aggregate, and if I cancel a Hulk Hogan, then I probably ought to cancel 58 other guys that might have similar rap sheets.

I’m not saying what bad discretions that Hulk Hogan may have done are okay or acceptable, but I’m just not going to crucify and cancel everyone who conducts themselves in manners that I disagree with, because we’re all imperfect human beings and frankly I don’t want to expend the energy to consciously cancel other people.

Furthermore, a guy like Hulk Hogan, he’s built some equity with me personally, in the sense that he was basically the living embodiment of the professional wrestling industry.  Yeah, the whole business used to be something that I kept my fandom about under wraps, but it’s something that has outlasted countless other interests in my life, and I take some joy in how much more acceptable and mainstream it is these days, and the whole carny shitshow of an industry never would have gotten to where it did without the contributions of Hulk Hogan. 

So yeah, I’m not going to turn my back on him for discretions that I think a lot more people might have in common than they’d care to admit, and it did punch me in the gut when I found out about it, and it has been living rent-free in my head all fucking day, to where I was itching to be able to sit down and get to write this in real time, and not a post where I write it as retroactively as I can.

I’m not going to say that I was the biggest Hulkamaniac in the world, but I was still a fan.  As a kid, I ate his shit up, believing that he was getting his ass beat by Andre the Giant, Earthquake, Sgt. Slaughter and everyone else he ever feuded with, and was always blindsided when he kicked out of their finishers, Hulked up and ended the match three punches, a big boot and a leg drop later.

Even as I grew and learned, I was still amused by his whole schtick, and even though it was kind of lame, there was a comfort in familiarity in seeing him do it again and again throughout the years.

The nWo and the birth of Hollywood Hogan was pretty groundbreaking for me to digest, and it really was something of a renaissance, as he worked evil for the first time in history, but by then, I was older and wiser and more cynical, and well, Hulk Hogan was older then too. His whole sinking with WCW was an ironically hilarious ride, as he reverted back to yellow and red Hulkamania, FUNB Hogan, and back to nWo for sporadic stints.

His later years in wrestling were pretty awful, but there was still something to be said about a man who kept lacing up his boots and getting in the ring and taking F5s from Brock Lesnar, or giving an extremely rare tapout L to Kurt Angle.  As much as he was accused of gatekeeping and being selfish, man did give back to those who were the most worthy of getting his rubs.

I didn’t really follow his TNA career into ultimately true retirement, and by then, shit like his hard-R scandal, and then Gawker overshadowed his wrestling legacy.  But I was always amazed at how the man simply knew how to stay relevant and not stray from the spotlight for ever too long, and even up to his passing, the man always managed to popup somewhere, every few months, and kept reminding the world of who he was and that he still existed.  Whether it was his clown show at the RNC, the debut of Real American Beer, or his hilarious bomb at the Netflix premiere of RAW, if there was one absolute truth, it was that Hulk Hogan always knew how to remain relevant.

In the end, you didn’t really have to like the guy, but I do believe that it was pretty undeniable that he was a force of nature when it came to his footprints on wrestling, pop-culture, and celebrity status.  The man was truly larger than life, and especially in the professional wrestling industry, I would say, is one of the most monumental passings of an icon there could be, for at least three different generations.

Rest in peace, Terry Bollea.  Hulkamania will live forever.  Brother.

WWE Evolution 2: I think that was the greatest women’s match in company history

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I closed my laptop after the show because I was watching on my laptop because Peacock on XBOX sucks and doesn’t let me rewind because I can’t watch live events live because I have kids and it conflicts with their bedtime routine so I always have to start all the PPVs PLEs late, and I said to mythical wife, who humors me and knows a little bit about professional wrestling in her own right; I think that might have been the greatest women’s match in WWE history.

Obviously, I’m talking about the World Championship match between Iyo Sky vs. Rhea Ripley that closed out Evolution 2, where [spoiler alert that doesn’t matter because I have zero readers] Naomi ended up winning the match and the World Championship when she cashed in Money in the Bank and committed the heist of the century of the women’s division.

I’m not even mad about the ending, with Naomi sneaking in at the end and doing what she did, because it was logical, it made sense, and in the context of WWE canon, why the fuck shouldn’t she have done what she did, preying on two superstars who had just put on a legitimate match of the year contender and were spent and exhausted and easy pickings?

Everything about the whole main event to Evolution 2 was outstanding; frankly, the whole show deserves its flowers, considering the tremendous amount of adversity it faced, but the main event was honestly, in my opinion, not just the best WWE match I’ve seen all year, but as far as from their women’s division goes, I am hard pressed to say that it’s genuinely the greatest WWE women’s match in company history.

Which is really funny considering I believed that the company put the match on the card as a panic move when Liv Morgan dislocated her shoulder, because it seemed like the card was going to be built around her vs. Nikki Bella in a battle of eras.  There was no inkling of seeds that Iyo Sky was going to go against Rhea Ripley, and the match literally came to fruition barely two weeks prior, to which I think was a complete in case of emergency break glass moment by the WWE when they realized that they had literally no marquee matchup for Evolution 2 anymore.

Honestly, the whole show was a masterclass of taking chicken shit and making it into chicken salad in my opinion.  I said back in 2018 that the original Evolution absolutely had to be the best PPV of the year, considering the historical impact of being women-only, in a massively male dominated industry.  For the most part I think they succeeded, seeing as how Becky Lynch and Charlotte saw to it, with their incredible last-woman standing match, but they also had a lot of build-up, a stacked card, and very apparent careful planning that went behind it.

Evolution 2 was announced quite a while ago, but there was almost no buildup for it.  For all the flack that TKO gets as being money grubbing, it felt as if the event was announced as a cash grab, banking on fans to just throw their money at it no matter what, solely because it was WWE.  Packaged into a whole weekend of wrestling in Atlanta, it was the third show following NXT’s Great American Bash, and Saturday Night’s Main Event, and they arrogantly pulled the bullshit of only selling tickets in egregiously priced two-event packages at first, before realizing sales weren’t what they were hoping for, and then bringing things (slowly) back to earth.

However again, despite the cards being built for NXT and SNME, Evolution 2 hardly had any proper build-up, and matches started forming in manner that was reminiscent of a slacking student realizing they have an assignment due, but they waited until the last minute to start it.  The one thing they really tried to get started with, with Liv Morgan assaulting Nikki Bella immediately went off the rails when Liv got legitimately hurt, and then they put the whole event on the shelf to further kowtow to their Saudi overlords, and then started to start flinging shit on the wall after the gross Saudi version of Money in the Bank.

Fewer things say, “we didn’t plan for anything, but we want to include as much talent as we can” than a battle royale, which helped fill out a talent sheet for the event, but then the rest of the matches just started filling in, in really clunky manner.  Naomi vs. Jade Cargill, Becky/Bayley and Lyra for the women’s Intercontinental, a four-team clusterfuck for the women’s tag blets, an NXT Women’s championship match, and Tiffany Stratton vs. Trish Stratus?  Like really, how much lead time was Trish Stratus given before she knew she’d be thrust into duty?

So yeah, obviously Iyo vs. Rhea was put on the card to be the one obvious hard carry, that was going to rescue the show if it was bad, or put the exclamation point on a show if it had been good leading up to it.

And in spite of the clunky booking, in spite of the concern of wrestling fan burnout from a full weekend of shows before Evolution 2.  In spite of the Beyonce concert next door at the Mercedes Benz Arena, and in spite of MLB All-Star Weekend taking place 9 miles north on I-75, Evolution 2, fucking delivered.

This is why I have keen interest in women’s wrestling; not just because so many women are easy on the eyes, and not just because as a father to daughters, it’s important to me to see women get their chance to succeed and thrive.  It’s that the women always, always have to perform in manner that is fighting an uphill battle, fighting to prove something, because unfortunately, this is just something that they always have to do, in a male dominated industry in a male dominated world.

I’ve been watching wrestling long enough to have witnessed all sorts of talents come and go, and believe me, it’s really easy to pick out the guys who really genuinely care about the business versus the ones who are tourists and are hoping to parlay success in wrestling into other careers.  And these days, with as much infrastructure there is in the industry, a lot of the tourists get weeded out before the mainstream can get to see them, and by the time we get to events like Evolution, it’s definitely more all hands on deck of people who not only want to be there, but want to give their best and prove that they belong.

But for the sake of not turning this entire post into a love letter to each and every match, I want to get back to the Iyo vs. Rhea match, because as I stated before, this match was not only the best match on the card, it was honestly one of the best matches I’ve seen all year, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to say that it was the greatest women’s match in WWE history.

Yes, better than Bayley vs. Sasha’s Iron Woman match, better than the Four Horsewomen-four corners match.  Better than Charlotte/Becky/Sasha for the inaugural WWE women’s championship.  Better than Trish Stratus and Lita’s first-ever women’s main event match, and leaps, bounds and galaxies better than just about everything in the Divas’ era.

It had everything from a compelling base story, with the whole Rhea has never beaten Iyo narrative.  Both put on their carry shoes and delivered a match that had everything from a respectful start, technical prowess, near falls, digging deep into their arsenals.  An extremely rare female referee bump from Jessika Carr, which most internet geeks know is a wrestler herself, so she sold it like a million bucks, which led to a brutal brawl outside the ring which saw some crazy bumps and spots.

And when the action came back into the ring, there were a few more crazy spots and near falls, and a great Spanish fly spot so late in the game, massive respect to both workers for executing it.  Of course, there was always the possibility that Naomi could show up, but I was actually predicting it would happen shortly after the match, but when she did, it was still a surprise, because the match was still in progress.

When Naomi completed the heist, I wasn’t even mad, because I’ve always been a supporter of Naomi specifically because I respect her as a worker, and I’m happy for her to reach the top of the mountain, especially after the years of shit she had to trudge through with her Sasha-led abandonment of the company a few years ago.

Everything about the match was outstanding.  The work from Iyo and Rhea, the performances of their selling and storytelling.  The drama of a ref bump, and the brawl that occurred with no supervision.  Iyo hitting her moonsault and Rhea kicking out.  Rhea desperately trying to land a Riptide with the ref in play.  Naomi cashing in, and completely saving the heat that all but ensures the Iyo and Rhea rivalry will have yet another chapter in the future with the original narrative completely intact.

I loved everything about it.  I was entertained, I was thrilled, and even a jaded smark like me felt like a true fan again, throwing my hands up at near falls and covering my mouth and going OHHH at some of the impressive spots.

This was truly the greatest women’s match in WWE history, and I will die on this hill.  It is a front-runner for WWE match of the year as far as I’m concerned, and in the future when we talk about stalwart matches of history, Iyo and Rhea deserve a chance to plead their case.