Tag: wrestling

I don’t care if it’s a work

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I mean, there’s a 100% chance that this is a work, because things in the WWE universe don’t happen if they aren’t; but anyway, I just wanted to say that I took tremendous enjoyment out of Adam Cole blasting into Pat McAfee during his shitty radio show, because I fucking can’t stand Pat McAfee, and it’s a pleasure to hear a strong talker like Adam Cole tear into him.

Since I’ve devolved into a way more filthy casual wrestling fan over the years, my only real exposure to the WWE product really is down to NXT re-broadcasts once they’re made available on the Network, and PPV events.  Without cable, I can’t watch RAW, I can’t watch NXT live, and frankly I can never find the time or want to watch Smackdown despite the fact that I can watch FOX on Friday nights.  NXT UK is currently shuttered due to coronavirus, and I don’t even think the WWE personnel even watches Main Event or 205 Live.

So occasionally, I’ll have the wherewithal to tune into a WWE PPV, and over the last few years that I’ve been able to intercept a pre-show, my thoughts have often been, who the fuck is this guy??

This ginger, jew-fro’d geek with a receding hairline and a voice that makes me think of the scientist guy from The Simpsons, so having said that, I am naturally referring to Sam Roberts.  I had no idea who he was, and why he got to be on the pre-show panel with guys like Booker T and Renee Young, but all I knew was that I thought he was annoying, and I was not a fan.

But then came along this other guy, some douchebag-looking Chad, who exuded a frat-bro personality tantamount to his appearance, and my brow crinkled even more at the notion that the WWE kept opening their doors to these douchey marks to be on their pre-shows.  Well that turned out to be Pat McAfee, and he immediately gave me X-Pac Heat vibes, and I was really tempted to tune out entirely thanks to him, but I wanted to watch the PPV, so I grit my teeth and soldered through.

Continue reading “I don’t care if it’s a work” →

It’s kind of appropriate that it sucks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I caught wind that the WWE was going to unveil a brand-new United States Championship design, I had a moment of dread; if it looked baller, then I was undoubtedly going want to get a replica, no matter how many times in my life at this point I’ve said NO MOAR BLETS.

Plus, I’ve been very unhappy with the WWE Shop for having available replicas of just about every single championship belt design over the last 30 years, except for the one and only WWE-branded belt that I want: the NXT UK Tag Team Championship.  Seriously, they have shit like the yellow Intercontinental belt that the Ultimate Warrior wore like, twice, and the old European Championship which only existed for like 3-4 years, but they do not have the NXT UK Tag, which unlike the litany of “tribute” belts they seem to release on a weekly basis, is an active championship in the company right fucking now.

To hell if I was going to be wooed by a brand new US Championship belt before I could get the one and only belt that I really want*

*not entirely true, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for a Ring of Honor World or John Cena US spinner belts as well

But then Monday Night RAW came and aired, and because I don’t have cable television and don’t actually watch RAW anymore, I had to wait and see when the pictures broke on Twitter, and unlike the NXT UK Tag, the WWE Shop was more than ready to push the new shit available online like a software hotfix.

And the verdict is . . . it sucks.  Whew!

Continue reading “It’s kind of appropriate that it sucks” →

This would be a sad way to go for NXT UK

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: there is speculation that the WWE’s NXT UK brand could get shut down amidst the hashtag-Speaking Out movement

To those of my 0 readers who don’t pay attention to wrestling, to summarize, there’s been an online movement in the industry known as #SpeakingOut in which people (men and women but mostly obviously women) went on social media to identify and post documentation of those in the professional wrestling industry of bad behavior, of the less than fortunate nature.

There hasn’t been a company large or small that hasn’t been named in some sort of capacity, be it a promoter, producer or a talent, and so far the names that have been thrown out have been pretty eye-opening, and the fallout of lots of it is beginning to get big.  The trying-to-rebirth NWA has put themselves on hiatus amidst the allegations, and their VP has outright resigned.  Philadelphia’s Chikara Pro wrestling has outright shut down.  Jim Cornette, the guy who can’t not get involved with anything in wrestling, had a disgusting sexual adventure/fetish unearthed.  Notable names from Ring of Honor, Impact and even AEW have been unearthed as people who have done things as far as being too clingy, not taking no for an answer, to some, little extreme remarks to express physical desire.

But with obviously anything pertaining to the wrestling industry, all eyes eventually seek out what’s going on in the world of the WWE, and believe you me, things have not been easy for the ol’ McMahon family business either, amidst all this.

Numerous names of talent have been named, and you can practically see the WWE machine scrambling to figure out the guys who are above a certain tier to whether they’re safe from losing their job, versus the guys that need to be immediately let go in order to look like they’re doing something about it.

One very alarming and unfortunate pattern that has emerged however, is the volume of reports coming out of the UK, primarily involving guys that are on the NXT UK roster.  As the link above details, guys like Ligero and Travis Banks have been immediately released, with the latter being somewhat of a surprise considering I figured he had a future with at least 205 Live reinforcement.  But guys like Trent Seven, Joe Coffey and Jordan Devlin are also names of accused parties, and regardless of what happens from their individual cases, it’s a frightening notion that already so many names in the British wrestling scene have popped up in such a short amount of time.

Continue reading “This would be a sad way to go for NXT UK” →

Let’s talk about the AEW TNT Championship Belt

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was in high school, some of my friends had this backyard wrestling fed, that I occasionally participated in from time to time.  My “ring name” was The Yellow Meanie, which was a play on the fat blue haired blob in ECW who went under the name The Blue Meanie, except this was more racist in the obvious sense.

One day, for no other reason than boredom and an idea for our own amusement, I took an old weight belt, some cardboard, packing tape, spray paint and most importantly, an empty box of Popeye’s fried chicken, and I created the Popeye’s Championship Belt.  It symbolized absolutely nothing at all, but regardless I brought it into our backyard wrestling federation and began “defending” it, and cutting promos about how important and prestigious it was.

That kind of logic, is basically what comes to mind when thinking about All Elite Wrestling’s new don’t-call-it-a-mid-card championship belt, the TNT Championship; yes, named after the network in which AEW airs its one and only program, Dynamite.

They’ve literally named a flagship championship after a television station, as if they didn’t seem remotely aware that networks can change, whether the network themselves re-brands or re-identifies, or the network changes directions, decides they don’t want professional ‘rasslin on their network anymore, and dumps them off to Spike TV or Destination America. 

Additionally, they’ve designed the belt to the specific current TNT logo, again, ignoring the fact that in the last ten years, the TNT logo has changed twice prior, and could very well change again in coming years, as Turner is such a volatile company that’s always knocking on the door of being acquired by FOX every year, resulting in endless rounds of layoffs that many people I know in Atlanta have been victimized or threatened by but that’s another story.

Continue reading “Let’s talk about the AEW TNT Championship Belt” →

Shad for father of the year

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This story breaks my heart.  Shad Gaspard, former WWE performer, has gone missing after being swept out to sea by a rip current in Venice Beach.  The last thing he did was to instruct rescuers to get his 10-year old son first, before a wave crashed down on him and submerged him.  His son was successfully rescued, but at this point Gaspard has been missing for over 24 hours.

I hate writing it out, but after this much time, the outlook does not look positive.  Open water is about as frightening as being lost in the woods, but at least in the woods, it’s entirely possible to remain stationary and hope someone can find out; out in the ocean is like trying to hit a moving target.  We can all hope for the best, until something definitive emerges.

It’s ironic, because while in the WWE, Gaspard was in a criminal tag team called Cryme Tyme, which was even for the standards back then, tasteless and racist, but being the pros that he and JTG were, made it work, and got over with the fans.  They never achieved any notable success, because the team simply wasn’t really given a chance to achieve any success, but they can at least take credit for being entertaining whenever they were on screen.

Eventually, they were bid best wishes on their future endeavors (read: WWE speak for fired), but the two remained active on the independent scene.  One of the more notable stories to emerge post-WWE was when Cryme Tyme actively prevented actual crime time, when in Orlando, Gaspard himself foiled a robbery attempt by beating the shit out of a would-be gunman at a gas station, and detaining him in a chokehold until the police arrived.

But the thing is, in spite of their tasteless WWE personas, Gaspard was anything but the degenerate thug he was portrayed to be and it turns out that he was some pretty heroic father of the year material, ultimately.  My heart breaks hearing this story, and can only wish for miracles for Gaspard’s wife and son.

Looks like the WWE was finally ready for Asuka

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I wonder if my posts are too long, mostly on account of me rambling about something in the long form that sets up what I’m actually intending on writing about, and then five paragraphs later, I really actually get to the point of the impetus for writing in the first place.

That being said, I’ll keep it short about how much I cringed like OJ Simpson in court, when fucking Otis won the men’s Money in the Bank briefcase.  Sure, I’ll give the WWE a little bit of credit for actually taking a stab at some pure unpredictability, but based on the lineup of contenders, Otis had to have been the one guy that nobody and their mothers from their basements would have actually considered winning MITB, but here we stand.

Needless to say, I’m disappointed that fucking Otis is going to be the get-out-of-jail-free card for WWE Creative for the next calendar year, and I have to assume that he’ll end up like Damien Sandow or Baron Corbin, as dudes who will inevitably have failed to successfully cash in their championship opportunities; or, they’ll go very radically, and have Otis cash it in on tag titles, or do some revisionist history to where he can cash it on any brand and any title, which might actually make it a little more interesting.

Anyway, the point of this post wasn’t to talk about fucking Otis, but to applaud the WWE for their choice to get back on the Asuka train and actually give her a god damn push.  She went from being one of the hottest talents in the company with an undefeated streak that eclipsed Bill Goldberg, but once the streak came to an end against Charlotte Flair, she was dropped down to the mid-card faster than television ratings during an X-Pac match.  Sure, she had a Smackdown women’s championship in this time, but again was jobbed out to Charlotte Flair, and relegated to tag duties, which she actually spun gold from shit, with Kairi Sane and their cringeworthy Kabuki Warriors name.

Regardless, I was excited to see Asuka win the women’s Money in the Bank briefcase, but before I could even write about it, the following night on RAW occurred, where Becky Lynch announced her pregnancy to the world, and relinquished the RAW women’s championship over to Asuka, for winning the MITB contest.

Now it’s no secret WWE loves to build their company on “moments,” and it was widely reported that absolutely nobody other than Lynch, Seth Rollins (the father) and only a few key creative bigwigs knew about it, and not even Asuka was informed before the segment, so it’s safe to say that Becky’s announcement and the bequeathing of the RAW women’s championship over to Asuka was an entirely unscripted and about as genuinely real moment as one could see in professional wrestling.

Continue reading “Looks like the WWE was finally ready for Asuka” →

Well, she wasn’t entirely wrong

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol: A Susan goes to Wal-Mart, sees an nWo wrestling t-shirt, blasts Wal-Mart on social media for supporting global elites trying to push for a literal new world order

I guess she didn’t see the WWE logo on the very picture she took, or more likely she didn’t take the two seconds to verify what the logo was if she didn’t recognize it in the first place.

Either way, this story made my day, and it’s not often that I’m put in a position where I have to take the side of Wal-Mart, but when the day is over Susan/Becky/Karen culture is worse than the corporate disgust of even Wal-Mart.

This was a classic case of a Susan who goes around looking for things to SJW about, and hoping to be the first one to do such.  And once she found something that she thought she could get her teeth into, she doesn’t even try to do a little background research about it before going off on Facebook about her conspiracy theories of global elites on top of attempting to shame big business despite the fact that she herself was apparently shopping at a Wal-Mart.

And naturally because the internet lives for little else than the opportunities to point out when other people are wrong, it didn’t take long for the Susan to become the target of all sorts of laughter and ridicule once it was realized that she was flagrantly mistaking a professional wrestling t-shirt for propaganda for the Illuminati.

But let’s play devil’s advocate here a little bit; Susan wasn’t entirely wrong with her remarks of:

global elites pushing for the nWo (New World Order) which includes one world leader, one world religion, one world currency and one world government

…as long as it was kept within the appropriate context: of professional wrestling.

I mean seriously, look at those assholes (above).  Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall (sorry, it was hard to find a decent image that didn’t include at least one scrub like Sean Waltman), if it were truly up to them, they really would have pushed for such an agenda.  Undoubtedly, Hogan would love to be the one world leader [of professional wrestling] and he’s already declared himself to be God before [not just god of professional wrestling, or A god, but just straight up God god with a capital G].  Nash and Hall are two of the greediest motherfuckers in the history of the industry, so they’d obviously be all about one world currency, especially if it meant they got to have more of it than anyone else, and would probably be supportive of whatever one world government would help expedite that collection of money.

So Susan wasn’t totally wrong with her conspiracy theory, she just went a little overboard with its boundaries, and it was just unfortunate that she happened to do it on social media, where once it makes it onto the internet, it didn’t matter that she deleted the post later, there’s always going to be at least one prick who will have screen grabbed it and chronicled it forever, and then it becomes fodder for some rando brogger.