Tag: wrestling

Tonight, a La Parka died in the ring

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

(spoken in the same manner in which Rorschach says “tonight, a Comedian died in New York”)

I have mixed feelings about this whole situation.  A La Parka died in the ring tonight, but it was confirmed to not be the La Parka that made me a La Parka fan in the first place.  It was in fact La Parka II who dove out of the ring at an AAA show in Mexico, crashed in the guardrail, broke his neck and later died. 

No loss of life is ever not tragic, but at the same time, it wasn’t necessarily the death of the guy that I was actually a fan of, which puts me in this awkward emotional state of where I hear news that “La Parka died,” but there’s always that explanation that it wasn’t the original La Parka that I really loved.

There’s still that emotional surprise of seeing the words that La Parka died, but when I read the explanation that it was actually La Parka II and not the chairman of WCW, and there’s this almost guilty feeling of relief that it wasn’t original La Parka.

I actually didn’t know that there were two La Parkas out there, and this kind of goes back to this joke my friends and I had in high school of how there were always myths that there were multiple Ultimate Warriors, and that they came from a Mayan temple in Parts Unknown that whenever one warrior died, another would remove his robes and sprint out of the temple and begin his own reign as the next Ultimate Warrior.

The difference is that there actually were two La Parkas, and it was a little fascinating reading about how it came to be, primarily stemming from a disagreement between wrestler and promoter, and then the promoter realizing just how easy it is to replace a masked wrestler in the first place.

Either way, I’m still sad that a La Parka died at all, even if it wasn’t the La Parka that would definitely warrant a longer eulogy in the brog.  In a way, La Parka is more than just an ordinary man, proven by two different men who took the mantle and were stars simultaneously, in different parts of the world.  And it’s only a matter of time before an el Hijo de La Parka shows up and starts blending the lucha flying of La Parka II with bashing guys with chairs from the original La Parka, and sets the wrestling world on fire.

The reflection post, circa 2019

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
photo courtesy Matt Altmix

If I had to make an observation about what it’s like getting older, I think I would have to say something along the lines of increasingly feeling like there isn’t enough time, like ever, for like, anything and everything.  Maybe it’s exclusive to me, or perhaps it affects millions of others, but I feel that I spent an inordinate amount of time feeling anxious about how I don’t feel like there’s time for anything, or at least, there isn’t an adequate amount of time that I’d like in order to do particular things, and therefore I simply don’t do them.

Like video games, or starting a new television series; typically, I prefer to have like a nice, 2-3 hour block of time in which I can dive in and be properly acquainted with something new, learn the controls, characters, look for critical information that might re-emerge later when stories unfold.  I’m not the type of person who’s ever satisfied with a short introductory period or just a singular pilot episode; subsequently, if I don’t get such conditions, there’s a higher chance that I simply don’t even begin, because there’s always something else I could be doing instead that’s probably actually more productive, or at least essential to my general pace of living, and then suddenly it’s the next day, and I’ve got to go to work, where there’s seldom adequate time for my team to get their tasks done because we’re constantly behind schedule, and are reliant on the partnership of other teams in order to get our jobs done, but they’re lazy and constantly coasting their ways to the next weekend, and then the weekend comes and then it’s almost over, and it’s back to work on Monday where we have yet another planning meeting on how we’re going to catch up, but then the people we rely on are already beginning their downhill coasting towards the weekend on Tuesday afternoon, and this cycle of constantly feeling like there’s no time continues to cycle and repeat.

All this being said, if I had to look back at 2019 as a whole, I would have to say that I think it went by pretty quickly.  Often times, I’ve given thought to how fast things have flown by, and amazed at the idea that when I was a kid, I’d often thought that time couldn’t move slow enough, and how I had all the time in the world to beat and master every single Nintendo game that came across my path.  About how when I was a teenager, I was able to balance time between numerous friend groups, family and responsibilities; like this one time back in 2001 where I somehow remember balancing my newspaper job, going to Baltimore to meet up with some friends who were arriving from out of town for Otakon, driving back to Virginia to meet up with some other friends that night so we could grill out, going to work the next morning, stopping on Columbia on my way back up to Baltimore to visit a cousin, then going to Baltimore for Otakon, taking 200 pictures, coming back home, whipping up a photo gallery and recap of the con for my website, while going back to work. 

Like, I couldn’t even fathom doing that many activities in the span of a week at the age of 37 now.

However, in spite of the perpetual feeling that the clock is spinning faster, this doesn’t mean that my quality of life is necessarily worsening.  In fact, I can say with tremendous clarity that 2019 was a pretty incredible year.  Without question, some of the most grandiose and life-changing events occurred within 2019 and have laid down the foundation for the rest of said life.  Most notably highlighted by the event of having gotten married to my beautiful wife, and having an incredible wedding celebration surrounded by friends and family who all poured into Georgia to celebrate with us.  But then the honeymoon didn’t last that long, or maybe I could say the magic of a Disney cruise was a little too OP in our case, because shortly afterwards did we discover that mythical wife was pregnant, putting us on the fast track to parenthood, and the jarring realization that I was going to become a dad.

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How to reflect on a decade

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This year ending isn’t just an ordinary ending of a year, because it’s also the end of a decade.  Naturally, a sentimental person like me tends to want to reflect on an entire decade, because much like individual years, a decade is a nice round chunk of time that one might think it would be easy to reflect upon, but in the greater spectrum, it’s ten full years we’d be trying to look back onto.  Now I like to think I have a good memory, but even without the aid of my trusty brog, it’s difficult to really look back at an entire decade.

Regardless, that’s not going to stop all the self-important jobbers of the internet who will try their darnedest to speak with authority and copy and paste all the same milestones the major news outlets will when it comes to trying to summarize and reflect upon the entire decade.  The funny thing is that most of the internet savvy generations probably aren’t that much older or younger than I am, which means that in the grand spectrums of our respective lives, we’ve only really lived through 3-4 decades, whereas I’d probably estimate that 1.5-2 of them are pretty invalid, because we’re simply not articulate and/or educated enough to have the capacity to reflect on entire decades.

So combined with the advent and growth of the internet, and the notion that everyone has a voice, I’d wager this is probably, at the very most, the second real decade of the modern high-speed internet that people really care to really reminisce about; and I’m being generous by calling it the second, because DSLs and cable internet didn’t really flourish until nearly the mid-2000’s; I couldn’t imagine people trying to use streaming, auto-refreshing social media on a 56K modem, so frankly I see this more as the first real decade that everyone and their literal mothers on the internet are going to be writing about.

Anyway, I’m going to attempt to try to recollect from mostly just my own memories, and stick to things that are more relevant to my own little world, and not the big gigantic depressing one we live in.  If I had any readers, they can google any decade in review, and probably find more worldly and probably more high-profile shit than the things I have to say about the things going on in my own little life, like the start and finish of Game of Thrones, Pokemon Go, the sad state of American politics, all the endless mass shootings, and Bill Cosby being outed as a rapist.

And the reason that I disclaim the whole “if I had any readers” because one of the most devastating things that occurred for me is the fact that despite my WordPress going online in 2010, at nearly the very start of the decade, midway through the decade my brog went down indefinitely, when my brother relocated from one part of the country to another.  A lot of hardware changes meant no more place to host my brog, and despite having the supposed backups, I simply haven’t taken the time or allocated the funds necessary to get my site up and running again.

If I were the type to do New Years resolutions anymore, I think I’d resolve to get my site back up and running again in 2020.  TBD on if that will actually occur, and frankly with the things I have on my plate going into the next decade, I don’t want to commit and then fail to deliver.

In spite of the brog blackout, that hasn’t stopped me from writing.  Even to the day my site went down, I have been writing on a fairly regular basis, taking no more than two weeks off before the internal guilt gets my fingers flying across the keys again, and I’ve got at this point, hundreds of folders of dated and timestamped Word docs, all awaiting their day in which they can be posted retroactively to a brog.

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You heard it here first

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Say it with me now: Luke Harper* – IWGP World Heavyweight Champion

*or whatever name he chooses to go with, because the WWE probably owns the copyright the name “Luke Harper”

When news broke that the WWE had released, among several performers, Luke Harper, from their contracts, my friend and I immediately realized the destiny that was now free to become fulfilled: Luke Harper was now free to migrate over to the land of the rising sun, and begin his reign as a foreign terror, en route to a lucrative and prosperous career revitalization for New Japan Pro-Wrestling, culminating with at least one reign as the IWGP World Heavyweight Champion.

For a while now, my friend and I have always made the joke about how Luke Harper was a future IWGP champion; historically, there’s no secret that NJPW loves bringing in big white guys to push as these evil foreign heel characters for their national Japanese heroes to feud against.  And in order for the feuds to have any modicum of impact, they occasionally need to be allowed to ascend to the highest honors, so that the heroes can have lofty goals to achieve.

From guys like Vader, Scott Norton, Tyson Tomko and even Prince Albert, Japan has often times embraced the big white guy heel, pushed them to the moon so that their stars could fight them, and eventually put the faces over, and if there was ever a guy more destined to be the next great big white terror in Japan, it was Luke Harper.

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AEW Full Gear: What is Kenny Omega trying to prove?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I really want to like AEW more, but I’m finding it really difficult to not see all the parallels between it and WCW.  Don’t get me wrong, AEW isn’t a bad product after six weeks, but given the hype, the mission statements and even more hype, it was envisioned to be this grand WWE-killer promotion, but honestly if I could be objective, isn’t even remotely close at this point.

The roster is bursting with potential, but there’s no denying that a lot of the talent is still really raw and unrefined, and could definitely use a lot of polishing.  Private Party is the first that comes to mind with two guys that have athleticism up the wazoo, but you can literally watch them talking and calling spots in the ring, and they rush all the time and are often seen waiting for someone to jump off the top rope or springboard, and it looks really sloppy to the smark’s eye.

Commentary is also really sloppy, as JR and Excalibur can’t stop plugging the global real estate company that actually has AEW.com, and nobody seems to have told them that.  Tony Schiavone is still “accidentally” saying “WCW” instead of “AEW” and after 30+ years in the business doesn’t know the difference between a running clothesline and a Buff Blockbuster.

It’s no secret the involvement of the promotion’s management, and how the Young Bucks, Kenny Omega and Cody Rhodes are executives, as well as primary talent.  But there are two sides right now, which is Cody Rhodes who is acknowledging this on screen, but at the same time is very much in the main event picture, having fought Chris Jericho for the AEW World Championship.  Also benefitting is Elite member Hangman Adam Page, who has probably had the most screen time of anyone on the entire roster.

However, on the other side, is the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega, who have basically jobbed themselves to oblivion.  I get that they’re afraid of being accused of whatever nepotism executives elevating themselves would be considered, but at the same time, these guys were gods in New Japan, but have rendered themselves to be glorified jobbers to the stars in their own federation.  And not just that, they’re also repeatedly taking losses from almost solely former WWE or TNA guys, which can’t help the perception that they were ever better than the competition.

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WWEShop fail

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In 2000, the WWE changed from the WWF to the WWE because the World Wildlife Fund out in Europe kept suing them over the acronym WWF, or something along those lines, I don’t really care to cross-research the whole story in order to sound smart.  Either way, the WWE ran this whole campaign for about a month afterward, where they showed all these bumpers about how the WWE was “getting the F out” on a sophomoric play on words, but also literally, explaining that they were eliminating the F from the company’s name effective immediately.

Well, if it were up to me, I’d like to give the WWE their F back, mostly as it pertains to WWEShop.com, because their selection of replica title belts, fucking fails.

Despite the fact that the number of championship belts in my collection continues to grow and mythical wife continues to ask me how many more belts I need, there’s one belt in particular that I would really like to get my hands on: an NXT UK Tag Team championship belt.  It’s the one belt in all of NXT UK that I like the most, and it would kind of put a nice cap on my collection of NXT belts in general, as I have the NXT Championship, the NXT North American Championship, and the NXT UK Tag would represent the one tag title for the NXT brand outright.

But for whatever reason, the WWE and WWEShop have yet to make the NXT UK Tag Team championship belt available in their shop of replica belts.  As it stands right now, it is the only active championship belt in all of the WWE that they are not selling replicas of currently, and I don’t really know why.  The excuse of it being the newest belt doesn’t apply anymore, since the WWE introduced the 24/7 Championship, which once R-Truth isn’t in the picture holds any importance, but WWEShop is selling replicas of it already.

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I thought AEW was trying to compete

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Leading up to October 2, I was actually starting to get excited about the launch of All Elite Wrestling’s new flagship show on TNT, Dynamite.  All-In last year was a pretty good show, and I thought there was some definite potential with Double or Nothing, despite the fact that I felt that the performer/owners spread a little too much agenda into the show, but the wrestling was solid.

I like the idea of there being a solid alternative to the WWE, as I definitely feel that they’ve gotten very stale and more predictable than ever, and the only good shows now in my opinion really are NXT and NXT UK.  And with the WWE, despite the fact that they’ll never admit it, preparing for competition with AEW, by putting the WWE Network original NXT on the cable USA Network, they effectively bone cord-cutters like me who don’t want to have to pay for cable television.

For those not aware, the USA Network’s app does not show any WWE programming, for whatever reason; at least not live.  App users can watch old episodes, back a month or so, but for the intent of watching it live, it’s not an option.  As the arrival of AEW Dynamite approached, I was curious on whether or not TNT’s app would show professional wrestling live, and I was optimistic and pleasantly surprised when I realized that I could watch wrestling on Wednesdays again.

So as I began settling into watch the new alternative, I already began envisioning myself watching AEW regularly, since the WWE still hasn’t figured out what it’s doing with NXT yet, since at first it was one hour on USA, one hour on WWE Network and then it was all hours on USA and fuck you WWE Network, and then in preparation for episode 1 of AEW Dynamite it was entirely on USA with limited commercial breaks (also fuck you WWE Network).

The show starts off with Cody Rhodes versus some guy I’d never heard of before, Sammy Guevara, who actually thought was a woman at first, when he came out wearing like a Pablo Sandoval panda hat, but turned out to be a pretty decent worker.  My first impressions were that I thought it was interesting that AEW maintains that they’re going to keep track of wins and losses, which is hilarious considering professional wrestling is predetermined, so I can imagine the creative walls that AEW will get backed into when they try and push someone who’s like 4-10-3 and try to sell that they’re a contender for a belt and not a jobber with ten losses.

And they’re claiming to have time limits; like old WCW.  I can’t wait to see how flustered fans will become when they start having time limit draws instead of definitive finishes.  I hope fans start pelting the rings with trash like they used to in old WCW.  Speaking of WCW, Tony Schiavone fucked up on two different instances that I bothered to catch and said “WCW” when he clearly was meaning to say “AEW.”  He also called a fallaway slam a blockbuster; making me realize just how much I missed Tony Schiavone and his complete lack of knowledge of professional wrestling moves despite being in the industry for like three decades.

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