Tag: wrestling

I still can always sniff out winners in a fake sport

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know whether it’s just the WWE is just that predictable, or that I really am the self-proclaimed Oracle™ of professional wresting, but I just kind of knew that the B-Team was going to win the tag team champions at Extreme Rules.  Very likely just the former, even if the whole point of the B-Team was that it was supposed to be two jobbers who just keep lucking into wins.

The reality is that the union between Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt seems to already be getting old, and I figure that Creative has better ideas for the each of them as singular performers instead of this tag team that was more or less a hold pattern for two individual stars.  Or seeing as how Jeff Hardy jobbed the United States championship away in a gratifying squash match, maybe the Hardy’s latest run has already come to an end, and it’s time to start saying goodbye to them again, until they make yet another surprise comeback in 2019.

Who knows, who cares?

Either way, the fanboy in me is happy to see the B-Team win, because who doesn’t appreciate it when two guys who have been jobbing to the stars for the better part of the last two years finally get a little bit of recognition and reward for their dutiful work?  The funny thing is that in spite of the lovable losers that Curtis Axel and Bo Dallas portray, the two of them are guys with tons of potential and talent that is more or less kind of expiring unused on the road.  I mean one is the son of Mr. Perfect, the other the son of Mike Rotundo, so they’ve definitely got wrestling in their genes.

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I couldn’t have asked for a more appropriate savior

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Just a few weeks after I’d declared my utter disgust over the mainstream uncoolness of Bullet Club, it’s almost as if bookers from New Japan Pro Wrestling read my words, and did something about it.  Surely, I’m not the only wrestling fan out that there that thinks the Bullet Club is worse than DJ Tanner Wrestling these days, and I was ecstatic to see the next rival stable emerge and basically declare war on them.

But that stable being composed of none other than the legendary god-beast and toughest motherfucker on the planet, Haku, and his two sons Tama and Tanga?  I couldn’t possibly have dreamed of a better or more appropriate person and his offspring to systematically decimate all the rest of Bullet Club by themselves.

Seriously, I think Haku became a bigger star than he ever was during his career, after it ended, due to the evolution of the internet as well as all the former wrestlers out there who released autobiographies.  Be it through shoot interviews on YouTube or in personal memoirs, suddenly anyone who was in the business between the 80s into the early 2000s had a Haku story to share, because back in those times, the boys always ended up at bars or dives, and it wasn’t nearly as well known that wrestling was scripted, and local tough guys always wanted to start shit with wrestlers. 

Despite the fact that general sentiment shared by most about Haku is that he’s a gentle and respectful person who just wants to mind his own business and provide for his family, he seems to be a magnet for trouble, and almost always ends up on the receiving end of harassment, to which the monster comes out when he’s forced to defend himself.  Guys getting eyeballs ripped out, noses bitten off, fish hooks and broken teeth, most idiots don’t seem to realize the idiocy in provoking a 300 lb. Tongan in a bar.  Even the cops weren’t safe from the wrath of Haku, when they had to try and either incapacitate or outright arrest him; tales of him snapping off handcuffs, inhaling the mace they tried to spray him with to simply beating the shit out of cops, nobody was safe once the monster got woken.

After hearing all these tales of how he was the baddest motherfucker on the planet, it was a shame that the vast majority of his wrestling career was over, save for the sporadic cameo appearance in the indies.  It was well documented how smoothly his everyday life was going in retirement, managing the detailing department of a Toyota dealership down in Florida.  After all this knowledge was made available of how dangerous of a man Haku really was, who wouldn’t want to see him get in the ring and decimate an endless number of wrestlers who may look more polished and chiseled, but have a fraction of the legitimate toughness of Haku.

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It’s a work

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: Daniel Cormier wins  UFC heavyweight championship, immediately provokes Brock Lesnar afterward, inviting him into the Octagon from the audience

When in doubt, it’s probably a work (read: premeditated).  As the line continues to blur between the UFC and WWE, with stars jumping from one promotion to the other, there’s one thing that has always been crystal clear: the pursuit of money.  Both are businesses, with the goal of making as much money as humanly possible, and despite the fact that one is more legitimately a sport than the other, the objective remains the same.

UFC promoting a Daniel Cormier vs. Brock Lesnar fight will draw millions of viewers, as there’s a legitimate correlation between gigantic numbers and Brock Lesnar fights.  Which equates to a whole lot of money.

WWE having Brock Lesnar as its champion will create a cross-pollination of viewership, drawing interest from UFC fans who want to see Lesnar perform in the fake sport, whether it’s out of curiosity, or to see if any of his three matches he’ll have this year might give away any sort of intel to strengths or weakness for betting purposes.

And in the end, regardless of who wins in the Octagon, both parties and all involved participants stand to make a gigantic payday out of this affair. 

Not that it really matters, but it’s still all probably a work, if you look into the details of the scenario.

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Long past mainstream now, smarks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, I went to a Ring of Honor house show with my brother while I visiting Dallas.  Despite my general revulsion of the idea of going to another WWE event in my life, I was looking forward to this one, because I’d been to a ROH show back in like 2013, and enjoyed it a great deal. 

Back then, Kevin Steen was the world champion, and I was exposed to wrestlers whose names I’d heard before but never actually seen, like Roderick Strong and Jimmy Jacobs.  I saw some guys I’d never knew existed, like the Briscoes.  And there were a few familiar faces still proving they could still work, like Steve Corino and Rhyno.  Shelton Benjamin was on the card and got a massive beatdown after the match; apparently he was on his way back to the WWE, and as is often the tradition in the biz, a wrestler must go out on their backs as to repay the promotion for keeping them employed.

Plus, the crowd was smaller, and not a clusterfuck of humanity like a big-box WWE event can get, so I found it wholly to be a way better experience as a wrestling fan.

But that was over five years ago, and a lot has changed since then.  Most of the names and faces I saw back then have moved onto to the WWE or gone to New Japan.  After TNA collapsed, a lot of their wrestlers entered ROH, among other promotions.  And this little stable known as Bullet Club that was just being formed in 2013, is now probably the biggest brand in the industry today, and yes that is taking the WWE into consideration as well.

Overall, the ROH show in Dallas was pretty decent, in spite of the particularly weak ending, which saw a title change of the ROH Television championship going to a big oaf wrestler known as Punishment Martinez.  The fans in the crowd hated the shit out of him because he had a slight resemblance to Roman Reigns, and derided him with taunts of being Roman Reigns, therefore we hate you.  It’s a title awarded to a guy that doesn’t quite embody the reputation of ROH, which is fast, exciting technical wrestlers, but who really knows what direction they’re trying to go?

It doesn’t really matter.  I’m not that hardcore of a fan anymore to add ROH to my weekly list of promotions to keep my ear to the ground for to care that much.

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JOBBERS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: three professional wrestlers take on a 2.5-year old lion in tug-of-war, fail miserably

Honestly, I wouldn’t have guessed that the humans would lose, especially in such a dominant fashion.  The laws of physics would say that the three wrestlers combined to outweigh a not-yet fully matured lion, and that they should probably be able to simply brute force win a match of tug-of-war.

But I guess this is where we as humans get cocky over our position on the food chain and underestimate the raw primal strength of wild animals.  The lion doesn’t even appear to budge, against three men who are practically required by their profession to hit the gym and have more strength than the average human being.

Granted, as talented as he is in the ring, Ricochet is still probably like 185 lbs. and classifies as “a small guy” in the wrestling industry, so I’m not surprised that his contributions to this battle were probably minimal in comparison to the jacked Fabian Aichner, and the fat guy Killian Dain.  Even still, the three of them combined had to have been nearly double the weight of a young lion, yet they still jobbed like the Public Enemy going against the Acolytes.

Not a good look with NXT TakeOver: Chicago happening tomorrow.  If Ricochet ends up losing to the Velveteen Dream over the weekend, that’ll be twice in the same week where he’ll have been televised jobbing, which is never good for anyone’s body of work.  But then again, you kind of deserve it if you screw around too much against actual lions.

Chris Jericho and the Mt. Rushmore of Wrestling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A week or so ago (it’s hard to really pinpoint approximate times and dates for New Japan for me), Chris Jericho defeated Tetsuya Naito and became the IWGP Intercontinental Champion.

There was a time where I was often unimpressed with Chris Jericho, because he seemed to me as somewhat of a performer that operated on a formula.  He’d vanish for six weeks to six months, reemerge to monster, welcome back pops, have one or two notable feuds where he’d ultimately lose in the end, and then vanish again, only to repeat the process again in another six weeks to six months.  In the midst of each of these tenures, he’d win an Intercontinental championship, and then give the rub to some main players on the way out.

I always thought of him as an extremely talented worker, that understood ring psychology and had a very deep wealth of technical ability, but I also thought of him as a guy that had the ability to adjust the knob up or down depending on the magnitude or quality of the feud, and/or his general enthusiasm for it.  Examples of when Jericho shined were his feuds with Shawn Michaels and AJ Styles come immediately to mind, but I thought his work with guys like John Cena and CM Punk were uncharacteristically weak.

Perhaps it was his books, or his podcast, that I indulged in, because I’m a wrestling fan, but my opinions of Jericho have gradually changed over the more recent years, and I’ve grown to really admire, appreciate and enjoy all of the things that he’s been doing not just now, but throughout his career, through a refreshed re-analysis of his past work.

Looking back, it’s pretty crazy to think of anyone voluntarily leaving WCW and their fat paychecks, back when they were thoroughly winning the Monday Night Wars, week after week, beating WWE RAW in the ratings.  But completely unhappy with his career in WCW, Jericho endured a typical WCW farewell tour, meaning he was completely removed from television and if he was used, it was to job to Ralphus, a fat non-wrestler, and then jumped ship to the WWE, where he would basically start over and rise to heights that WCW was completely silly to never have capitalized on.

But then we come to the span of the last year, nearly 18 years after when Jericho jumped from WCW to WWE.  An older Jericho, despite his ability to perform, frankly wasn’t getting the opportunities to shine in the WWE.  I’m not sure whether he opted to not re-sign a contract with the WWE or if the WWE even offered one, but very quietly, Chris Jericho kind of vanished from WWE television after his last program with Kevin Owens.*

*Yes, I’m aware of his appearance in the “greatest” Royal Rumble, but one-offs happen all the time in the WWE

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Hakus in video games

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was watching a YouTube video of a speed run of Super Nintendo’s Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, often considered one of the most challenging games ever, and midway through the game, the player triggers aggro of a Red Arremer Devil, or what Capcom and Google insist was always named “Firebrand.”  The speed runner ran for it, with Red Devil continuing chase, but as soon as the player passed a stage checkpoint, they immediately turned around, and jumped to their death, committing a suicide.  They restarted the level past where the Red Devil was and resumed running the game, without having to fight the flying nuisance.

I understand that in speed runs, speed is all that matters, even if it means strategic suicides in order to save some time.  This is a common practice in Zelda runs or any action/RPGs that spawn fresh lives or load states in strategic locations.  But it always feels kind of cheap to me that suicide is necessary, because perhaps it’s just me, it’s just more impressive if one didn’t have to literally kill themselves in order to beat a clock.

Make no mistake, Red Arremer Devils are extremely pesky throughout the entire franchise, as they have very erratic and difficult to combat patterns, and can absorb a good deal of damage before actually going down.  Furthermore, they’re virtually impossible to ignore and outrun, because to my experience, they will follow you until they die, or more likely, you die.  But they are not impossible to kill, and with a little bit of luck, the ability to read patterns and most importantly, patience, they can be handled.

However, patience is the very antithesis of speed runs, and in the case of a Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts run, it makes a degree of sense to kill yourself once you pass a checkpoint, and resume playing without being hounded by a Red Devil.  The difference between this tactic and strategic suicide in like Zelda is that this speed runner does it to avoid having to engage a difficult opponent, whereas in games like Zelda, it’s done in order to avoid having to traverse an entire dungeon in reverse in order to leave.

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