Tag: wrestling

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.

The path to the IWGP World Championship has just been opened up

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When the first wave of future endeavors was announced, my initial thought was, meh, no real loss.  Maybe Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows, but anyone with a pulse who follows wrestling knows they’ll be back in Bullet Club t-shirts by the end of the month in Japan, so they’ll be fine.  It sucked for Drake Maverick and Sarah Logan who are/were in championship programs literally right now or weeks ago.  And it also sucked for Heath Slater, who I figured was going to be one of those company lifers, and whose sole shirt was one that said I GOT KIDS | I NEED THIS JOB.

But really, it didn’t seem like anyone particularly consequential was axed from the company in light of coronavirus screwing things up.  That is, until a second wave of future endeavors was announced shortly afterward.

Introduced Alexander Rusev, and then gradually shortened to just Rusev, he was always one of those guys that I was always high on since his ascent to the main roster.  I appreciated that even in spite of being the archetypical evil foreigner, he showed a tremendous amount of respect for the ring itself and the business, and I loved the way he was originally built up, with a different face of the month being put in front of him, before he would ultimately meet them at the next pay-per view and then finish them with the Camel Clutch he called The Accolade.

Riding this burgeoning undefeated streak, Rusev would eventually capture the United States championship from Sheamus and hold it for several months, before having an eventual Wrestlemania program with none other than John Cena, whom he’d lose it to at the Showcase of the Immortals™, but not before having an epic entrance where he rode to the stage in a literal tank.  Seriously, if this moment couldn’t be considered the pinnacle of his WWE career, then I don’t know what else could.

Either way, Rusev maintained a pretty strong presence for a while afterward, and even managed to turn face, when he for whatever reason, started christening every day as a holiday known as Rusev Day.  I mean whatever, the fans ate it up, and it got him over, even if his win-loss record wasn’t nearly as sparkling as it was during his initial run.

Eventually, for reasons I don’t really particularly care to research beyond Wikipedia, WWE seemed to sour on him, and such was easily reflected in how he was treated on screen, if he was even allowed to make it on television.  I’m going to guess there was some sort of contract dispute or something of the sort, and Creative basically took him to the woodshed with his character.

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People can’t get over their disrespect for wrestling to realize there are many worse options

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When this story came out about how the Baked Potato in Charge appointed Vince McMahon among other leaders of sports organizations to some think tank of how to revitalize the US economy, numerous Facebook friends shared it in the typical “ha ha look at what stupid shit the baked potato did now” kind of attitude that the landscape of social media among people my age tend to operate.

It felt like I was being baited to debate over it based on how many people were posting the link, with the flippant ridicule at the tips of their tongues.  Now as much as I want to heroically say that I never took it, I did, to the first friend who posted it; naturally, sticking up for anything that the Baked Potato in Charge does means I’m an asshole, and it didn’t take long for some person I didn’t know to snidely remark to me, but I got the last word in and decided to take this offline to where I can really explain my opinions without strangers flapping their e-gums at me.

Sure, I get it, the headline itself does sound ripe for criticism given the types of people that the Baked Potato in Charge and the chairman of the WWE are.  But what really got on my nerves was not just people shitting on professional wrestling because “it’s a fake sport,” but the fact that so many people have such blatant disrespect for professional wrestling that they aren’t capable of actually realizing that maybe Vince McMahon really isn’t that horrific of a choice, and that if anyone took two seconds to get over the whole wrestling thing, might actually realize that there’s an avalanche of far worse people to bring aboard as an advisor to stimulate an economy.

Vince McMahon is absolutely no saint, he’s perceived as an egomaniacal tyrant who is kind of racist, kind of sexist, kind of size-ist (if there’s such a thing as someone who discriminates against non-roided up freaks of nature).  But the reality is that most people can’t delineate between the on-screen persona of Vince the Asshole Boss, and the off-screen Vince McMahon, owner and chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment.

The latter is a shrewd businessman who has operated the WWF/E for four decades and has steered his ship through several generations of fans and the changes of the time that come and go with them.  He’s kept his business afloat through numerous scandals, allegations and criticisms when it came to drugs, steroids, concussions, among others.  And he not only revolutionized professional wrestling, he brought it into the mainstream, constantly evolved it, and continues to grow and expand.

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I thought Ric Flair loved his daughter

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The intentions may have been pure, but to me, comparing anyone to Randy Orton may as well be telling them they’re vanilla ice cream, so when Ric Flair said his daughter Charlotte was akin to the female equivalent of Randy Orton, well, that’s not necessarily a compliment as far as I’m concerned.

Frankly, Ric probably should’ve stuck with naming all the attributes he thinks Randy Orton has that he loves, and applied those to Charlotte without actually naming Randy Orton, but what’s done is done.

Ric Flair thinks Charlotte is boring, stale, never-changing, and getting put into a program with her is getting put into the friend zone of WWE Creative for the women’s division.

To which by that logic, is completely untrue and unfair to Charlotte, to compare her to Randy Orton.

Randy Orton, is exactly what I said he is, and he genuinely is the equivalent of being put into the friend zone.  Poor Edge, makes this monumental comeback after nine years of forced retirement, and then is immediately thrown into the slammer of WWE Creative, being forced to run a months-long program with Randy Orton.

Most wrestling fans can only guess the queue of younger guys salivating at the dream of getting to work with Edge, and I can only imagine the potential four-star+ matches that could be had if he got to work with guys like Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Johnny Gargano or Tommaso Ciampa.  But instead, the WWE welcomed Edge back with a soul-crushing program with Randy Orton.

Charlotte Flair, on the other hand is in my opinion, genuinely the best female superstar in professional wrestling, bar none.  Ric is definitely not wrong about that part, it’s just not fair or cool to compare her to Randy Orton.

Continue reading “I thought Ric Flair loved his daughter” →