Tag: wwe

SEUPAAAH GLEEUU

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I was just finishing up my workout and was walking to the locker room, I ran into the current WWE Intercontinental Champion, Wade Barrett today. It dawned on me that there was a RAW taking place in Atlanta tonight, based on a scathing CM Punk promo from a week ago.

Anyway, Barrett was pleasant enough to take a quick picture with me as he was clearly done working out and was on his way out. I asked him if he remembered when Wrestlemania was in Atlanta a few years ago, during the Fan Axxess, if he remembered when someone asked him the question of what he put in his hair to keep it in place while he wrestled. He smirked and was all like “Oh yeah… What did I say? ‘Super glue, right?’”

Well, with his cockney accent it came out more like “seupah gleu” but yeah.

Cool guy, that Wade Barrett is.

How much the WWE has changed

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If anyone were to ask me who I thought was going to win between CM Punk and The Rock, I would have said CM Punk every time.  It’s no secret that The Rock is a part-time wrestler, and there would be absolutely no point in giving the WWE World Title to a part-time wrestler who is only biding his time until his next movie role begins filming.  So color me surprised that the WWE went ahead and put the World Title on The Rock at the Royal Rumble.

Obviously, this makes things pretty crystal clear of what is going to transpire over the next three months of WWE programming; with John Cena being the winner of the Royal Rumble and can choose which championship he wants to go for, there’s no question he’s going after The Rock, and at the same time, hope to avenge his loss at last year’s Wrestlemania, as well as win the World Title.  Cena will win this year, as The Rock will no doubt have some movie obligation to do by April.  This subsequently sets up an instant Punk/Cena feud, where Punk can cite that Cena has never beaten him for the title, and that he wants it back.

But what the point of writing about wrestling today isn’t so much current events as much as it is just musing about how much the WWE has changed in recent times.  I used to believe, and justifiably, by these rules when it came to watching WWE programming:

  • Part-time wrestlers never beat full-time wrestlers
  • You never win in your hometown
  • The business always comes out on top

It’s occurred to me that just about all of these are hardly the case anymore, and that more or less the company has done a complete 180 in regards to how these things are handled.  I can’t necessarily say I agree with the choices the WWE makes, but seeing as how they’re as strong as ever and are the ever-adapting entertainment machine it really doesn’t matter in the end.

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Ryback = Goldberg Type-R

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t hide the fact that I have no love for the wrestler Ryback, because quite frankly I am incapable of seeing him as nothing but a bastardized mish-mash of several other wrestlers from the past.  The obvious parallel is the fact that he’s a Goldberg rip, due to the fact that he’s white, bald, jacked up and does nothing but high-impact power moves while displaying very little actual wrestling talent.

He’s also part Rhyno, due to the ring attire that almost looks as if Ryback went to a Rhyno garage sale, bought all of his old ring gear and just had all instances of “Rhyno” airbrushed out and replaced to say “Ryback.”  And like Rhyno, Ryback uses nothing but brute strength and power moves.

But last night, Ryback copied else that I felt was inappropriate, and in my distorted reality, crossing the line.  I’m not sure what prompted Ryback to even get on the microphone in the first place, as he has the speaking eloquence of Corky from Life Goes On, but he decided to try and blurble out some words to the sheep that somehow cheer his every action.  But then he said the words “Enough is enough, and it’s time for a change.”  That’s what agitated me, and prompted me to write out my displeasure at this no-talent oaf chewing up television time.

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Why would Ted DiBiase wrestle in his suit?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

While at my parents’ house, I discovered that they had unearthed a lot of my old toys that still existed in the bowels of the basement, for my nephew to play with.  As much as my three-year old nephew was disinterested in a bunch of action figures that he had no idea of whom they were, I was just as ecstatic to take a trip down memory lane of the things I once shelled out money to buy and actually play with when I was still a kid.

Among these figures were all my old WWF action figures, and today’s post is going to be dedicated to just one of those figures: The Million Dollar Man, Ted DiBiase (series 2).

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Setting the value of today’s WWE titles

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Watching wrestling these days, I can’t help but think about how much has changed throughout the decades I’ve been watching this crap. I’m amazed and aggravated at just how over Ryback is, considering he is the verbatim second-coming of Bill Goldberg, but somehow worse because he has an even more limited arsenal of moves, speaks too much during matches, and has the annoying habit of bobbing his head to his own music.

I’m also concerned for the WWE in regards to just how many shows they have now. Off the top of my head, they have RAW on Mondays, Smackdown on Fridays, and I believe they have shows on Wednesdays occasionally and also a Saturday morning program. I don’t know if they have any reality television shows at the moment, but they have developed a fairly prominent YouTube channel, which now puts the onus on WWE performers and personnel to provide content for, while they’re not being pressured to engage the “universe” with their seemingly mandatory Twitter accounts. The level of saturation they’re reaching at this point is enough to kill WCW twice over at this point, and I know the WWE is very adaptable and a smart-operating company, but it still heeds an orange-level warning as far as I’m concerned.

But anyway what this post is about is in regards to the seemingly excessive number of titles that are circulating throughout the WWE at this point. And I guess this would be useful for an older fan hoping to pick up watching wrestling today, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure nobody reading this would fit that criteria, but it seemed like a good idea to write at the time. But what I’ll basically be doing is taking today’s current array of WWE championship belts and achievements, and appropriately providing an equivalent from an older generation, to help provide perspective for today’s viewers.

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The inadvertent humor of wrestling sabotage

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, for whatever reason, there was some sort of beef between Hercules Hernandez and Sid Justice. I don’t care to know the nature of this beef, but regardless when they were put together in a singles match, it turned into this hilarious 30-second squash match where Hercules refused to flat out sell (pretend to get hurt) by anything that Sid did, before the match concluded quickly with Sid delivering a powerbomb where Hercules dead-fished it and popped right back up and walked away upon the three count. Supposedly Herc was fired after this display, but aside from making the smarks laugh, he made Sid’s persona look weaker than it was arduously built up to be.

Not quite as long ago, when Bill Goldberg was rising in WCW, he was slated to have a match with former English circus shooter, Steven Regal.  I say “have a match,” because Goldberg couldn’t actually wrestle, so I couldn’t really say “wrestled.” But it was something that Regal felt the obligation to exploit, to the fans, to management, and to the other boys in the back whom might also be jaded by the rapid and aggressive pushing of Goldberg. Whereas Goldberg had been having 30-180 second squash matches for weeks on end, Regal put him through a gauntlet of basic wrestling holds and chess moves that Goldberg was completely incapable of, on national television, getting out of or countering.  After the display, Regal was fired, and soon after jumped to the WWF, but the damage was done; most everyone knew definitively that Goldberg couldn’t actually wrestle.

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Simple wrestling math

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What’s new is new and what’s old is eventually new again, at some point.  Even if it means unapologizingly combining two wrestlers not even one full decade old yet, to create one entirely new persona.

To no surprise, Ryback is getting over, because he’s completely, without any hitch, re-using Goldberg’s gimmick.  But wearing all of Rhyno’s old ring attire.  If you close your eyes, the theme even sounds like a bastardized version of both their themes combined.

To no surprise, smarks like I are not the least bit impressed by this whole schtick, because frankly we’ve already seen it before.