Tag: nostalgia

Cobra Kai, fin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, when I was having one of those nights where I didn’t feel like I had any real time to do anything, so I was instead just sitting around dicking around on my phone min-maxing my Duolingo XP as well as playing Fire Emblem Heroes, my au pair pokes her head into the media room and asks if I had started watching the final installment of Cobra Kai S6.

I looked at her perplexed and asked if it had dropped yet, and she said that it just released.  I looked at the clock and immediately grabbed the remote, and I said, why the fuck are we not watching it right now then?

We ended up watching four episodes and then it was 1 am, and I said that I needed to stop so that I wouldn’t be butt-tired in the morning, and that I wanted to save the final episode for the following day, preferably in a scenario where mythical wife wasn’t aware that we were going to watch it in front of her, since she’s such a giant fan of the show like we are.

Mission accomplished, and with that, the saga that is Cobra Kai is finally completed.

Frankly, it’s a show that desperately needed finality, not just because it’s the worst show in existence that had no right to be good as it was, but as is the case with any show that features child actors, it’s been like 6-7 years since the show started, and all the youth talent was growing the fuck up faster than kudzu, and the show needed to wrap up ASAP, before Dimitri grew to 7 ft. tall and Kenny turned into Terry Crews.

[Obviously at this point, spoiler alert is on, because I’m probably going to say shit that would be construed as spoilers]

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Once again; the path to the IWGP World Championship has been opened up

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WCPW: Miro AKA Rusev finally released by AEW after contentious dispute

Man, how quickly time flies sometimes.  Much like seeing the end of a professional athlete’s contract, it’s hard to believe that it’s already been five years since Miro, formerly Rusev in the WWE, jumped ship to AEW and is already on his way out.

Most of my zero readers know how much of a fan I was of Rusev, to the point where I didn’t really speak ill of his jump to AEW, and desire to see him succeed there as well, just because I liked the guy.

I was genuinely happy for Miro when he won the Popeyes TNT Title from Darby Allin, giving him his first championship with the company, hopefully to be of many, but we all know how that all turned out.  Like many have witnessed throughout the years, once the luster of newness wears out on whatever big acquisition AEW has, Tony Khan has absolutely no idea what to do with all the talent he amasses, and in some cases, guys take the time to rest and recover from their choice of lifestyle as professional wrestlers, but in lots more cases, talent just sits and rots, and become reliant on independent bookings or wrestling at Flatbacks or Natalya’s new Dungeon in order to keep their skills sharp.

Miro kind of falls into both categories, where he got hurt for some of the lengthy time in which he hasn’t been used and on television, but there’s also a tremendous amount of time in which the guy has been sitting around and doing nothing.  When careers head in this direction, it’s more of a disservice to keep a worker employed and doing nothing, versus giving them the release they want, and the ability to seek exposure and bookings from parties who want to use them. 

As DDP has opined numerous times, in this business, exposure is key, and every day when you’re not on television is writing your own death sentence, which is why he refused to sit and cash Turner paychecks after WCW was liquified, and opted to take a 50% pay cut but immediately be thrust into the WWE ecosystem.

Anyway, the wait is over, and Miro has been officially freed from the shackles of AEW, and the world has once again become his oyster as far as resuming his wrestling career.

So once again, I revisit this old post that I wrote in 2020 when he had been freed from the WWE, about how Miroslav Petrov Barnyashev is now free to fulfill his professional destiny of becoming the next great New Japan Pro Wrestling evil foreigner, but also become the IWGP World Champion along the way.

I don’t like my odds, seeing as how New Japan has kind of been swirling in mediocrity for quite some time now, having been gutted in talent by mostly Tony Khan and AEW, but from a holistic standpoint, I still think New Japan would be an incredible journey for a guy like Miro.  The man is monster worker with discipline and seeming tons of respect for the industry, which should lend him a quick path to earning respect in the Japanese puroresu scene, and as much as things change, there’s no changing something that ain’t broke in NJPW, by making an evil foreigner the threat to the world championship, and becoming a mountain for the next great Nippon hero to ascend and conquer.

I just think a guy like Miro could really thrive in a place like New Japan, and be the change the company needs to steer them away from the remains of Bullet Club and all their stale creative.  Miro could just be this monster from a foreign country to wreak havoc on the promotion, crush the G1, ascend to WrestleKingdom and demolish Hiroki Goto or whomever they have as the IWGP World Champion at the time, and become that insurmountable obstacle over the next indeterminate amount of time, before he’s ready to pass the title off to someone else.

But the reality is that he ends back up with the WWE.  He’s always a Triple H phone call away from being brought back in with a good idea, and whether it’s through NXT, or maybe a stop over at TNA, but I think for a guy as talented as Miro, all roads lead back to Rusev, and Rusev’s home is the WWE.

As a fan, I’d be stoked to see him back in the E, but one of these days, I’ll be even more pumped when I’m eventually right about calling one of these guys one day crossing the ocean and fulfilling their destiny to become the next great foreign IWGP World Champion.

I’m not sure all these soft-ass new Dodgers fans even know who Clayton Kershaw is

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLBTR: Clayton Kershaw set to re-sign with the Dodgers for his 18th season

Back in 2008 when I was still on my quest to visit every MLB ballpark, my journeys took me out to the west coast, where I was going to hit a Dodgers, Angels and Padres game in one fell-swoop.  I got tickets to the Dodgers game on ebay well in advance, and was pleased to have apparently gotten someone’s season tickets, as they were printed with a design versus the generic Ticketmaster printed tickets.  Little did I or the guy who sold me the tickets, realized the significance of the specific game that I was going to.

My friend and I were having a quick breakfast after landing in Los Angeles, before heading to Dodger Stadium, and we had little idea of what we were in store for seeing.  Frankly, since they were playing the St. Louis Cardinals, we were more excited at the prospect of seeing Albert Pujols, very much still in his prime, doing Albert Pujols things.  Being fans of east coast teams, we had little clue to who this kid Clayton Kershaw was, but was starting that day.  I remember saying to my friend, man, but he has a 9.7 K/9, as a starter, so we kind of had an idea of what to expect.

This Kershaw kid would go on to strikeout the first batter of the game, ultimately pitch six innings while only giving up two earned runs, and although he didn’t get a decision in the game, the Dodgers ended up winning in extra innings.  A few people on the internet told me that I was really lucky to have been able to bear witness in person, to the debut of Clayton Kershaw, but I didn’t really think much of it that year.

In ensuing years, Clayton Kershaw would become the de facto ace of the Dodgers pitching staff, and basically become the best pitcher in all of Major League Baseball.  He was a strikeout artist, with his signature pitch being this cartoon-looping curveball that has paralyzed an entire era of hitters, on top of the fact that he comfortably pitched at 98 mph with his fastball.  He would win three Cy Young awards in 2011, 2013 and 2014, and he was so good at baseball in 2014, that he would also win the NL MVP award, which was a tremendous rarity for a pitcher to take home the MVP.

However, there was a lot of tough luck in Kershaw’s career, where no matter how good he was at baseball, the Dodgers just couldn’t ever seem to get the job done, when it came to winning championships.  Twelve years after he debuted, the Dodgers did win a World Series, but it was the 2020 World Series that receives a tremendous amount of scrutiny over its legitimacy, but for all intents and purposes, Kershaw did get to be able to declare himself a champion, finally.

He technically pitched in 2024, to which if I understand correctly, means he gets to declare himself a champion again, even though he was barely a factor in the team’s overall effort, but the point is, the Dodgers never really amounted to anything when he was the man, and nowadays, as the subject of this post implies, I’m not even sure all the swaths of brand new lifelong Dodgers fans are even aware of who he is, regardless of just how much of an absolute world eater he was throughout the entire 2010s decade.

I may or may not have written about this over the last few months since the Dodgers became World Series champions and spent a gozillion deferred dollars to create a mega roster for 2025 and beyond, but Dodgers fans are an interesting fanbase, in that they’re basically terrible from all criteria sports fans use to judge other sports fans.

They’re fair-weathered, in that they’ve multiplied by 50, coincidentally immediately after they won the World Series.  They’re the sorest winners I’ve ever seen from a fanbase in that they can’t seem to shut the fuck up and be happy that their team just won a championship and are more interested in parroting the same shit to textually barb with fans on the internet.  They’re softer than Charmin in that they are incapable of accepting the criticism and scrutiny that goes with success, and they all seem to go ballistic at any sort of judgment, regardless of the fact that they’re repping the reigning champions.

But on account of the fact that I’d say 69-70% of Dodgers fans decided that they were lifelong Dodgers fans probably three months ago, they seem to be pretty unaware of their team’s general history, or anything beyond November.  They’re all so busy parroting the same shit in their little echo chambers about their stacked roster, that it feels like the news of Clayton Kershaw coming back for one more year, seems to have fallen on deaf ears, despite the fact that he was easily the best pitcher for an entire era, and honestly if he’s remotely healthy, can probably be a legitimate pitcher all over again.

None of these fans seem to care, because the ドジャース Dodgers rotation is pretty shored up with Yamamoto, Roki, Glasnow, Snell and very likely Ohtani will return to pitching this season, so even if they did care, there’s really not any room currently for Kershaw, in spite of his right to be in it.

Sad as it, having written out this summary of events, it kind of seems apropos that Kershaw is in the background of things, considering the fact that such kind of has been the story of his entire career.

However, considering he needs like 32 strikeouts to reach 3,000, I’m sure the Dodgers media machine will work wonders getting their hordes of fairweather fans all educated up on just how legendary of a pitcher Clayton Kershaw is, and by the time he’s knocking on the door, they’ll all be ready with their freshly purchased Kershaw merch, ready to represent and proclaim themselves fans of his entire career, but at least it will afford Kershaw to be in the spotlight where he rightfully belongs, as artificially manufactured as it might be.

Either way, I’ll be happy for him when he inevitably hits it, because unlike a lot of Dodgers fake ass fans, I have been following the guy’s career, and despite the fact that I generally revile the Dodgers these days, save for Freddie Freeman, I’ve always had a soft spot for the guy I just happened to luck into being able to see his major league debut, after all he very well might be the greatest pitcher of my entire generation, and undoubtedly one of the best to ever do it.

Who does Roki think he’s fooling?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: .com makes a point to let everyone know that next big Japanese shit, pitcher Roki Sasaki will not be signing with the Yankees

Back in like 1998, there was an episode of WCW Monday Nitro where Bret Hart was cutting a promo in the ring with Mean Gene Okerlund, going on about whatever Bret Hart martyr speak he was gushing about at the time, most likely his beef with the nWo.  And then without any notice, Brian Adams, formerly Crush of WWE just meanders into the ring to confront Bret.

At the time, the nWo was wildly more popular than anything WCW-branded, and the nWo was seemingly adding new members left and right, whether they were WCW guys turning coat, or guys just coming into the company just being introduced as new nWo members.

Brian Adams was pretty much a guy that had been primarily a bad guy heel character throughout his whole career to this point, so he seemed like a natural fit for the nWo.  Furthermore, he came into the ring wearing all black and a black trench coat, and the most cliched trope in history at the time was opening a coat and revealing a nWo shirt underneath, oh what a dastardly bad guy.

Basically, Adams got on the mic and told Bret Hart that he would have his back in his plight against the nWo, but absolutely anyone with even just a quarter of a brain knew what was going to happen.  Neither Bret or Mean Gene were remotely convinced, and even the crowd, and WCW crowds were a very different breed of dumb wrestling fans, could smell the most obvious of rats in the history of attempted trickery.

Sure enough, they didn’t even bother to save it for a later segment much less a future show, and Adams opened his coat to reveal the nWo shirt that even Ray Charles could see was there, and Bret got a beatdown when the rest of the gang showed up.

Roki Sasaki is basically Brian Adams, and pretty much every baseball fan on the planet knows he’s going to end up on the Dodgers.  No matter what he says, no matter what bullshit media reporting is done that he’s “giving everyone a chance,” and trying to convince people that there’s a possibility he ends up anywhere other than the Dodgers.

A guy who probably speaks no English isn’t going to want to go to any place not a small market with absolutely no Japanese presence much less Asians in general.  He’s not going to Milwaukee, Kansas City, Cincinnati, and I highly doubt Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Oakland Las Vegas Sacramento, or Baltimore were any of the 20 teams that were reportedly interested because Japanese hot shits require this thing called money to even be invited into the conversation.

Japanese hot shits want money, and want comfort.  So they require a big market, preferably one with Japanese and other Asian people, to have some remote chance that they can get a taste of home when they’re playing abroad.  This is why New York, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles are always in the conversation whenever Japanese hot shits are on the market, but when it comes down to it, Los Angeles always covers multiple bases because they offer money, comfort of demographic, and the shortest flight distance to Japan, which is why they typically have the highest success rate at landing them.

Geography is undefeated. 

Nobody’s buying it, and nobody really even cares.  At this point, it’s more exasperating that they’re wasting people’s time at even bothering to exert time and energy into this sad ruse, and baseball fans just want him to go ahead and declare the Dodgers his choice of destination, have his shitty little press conference, put on his jersey and shut the fuck up so we can move onto the next storyline, or even the arrival of Spring Training.

Furthermore, the Dodgers have been low-key tampering with the whole thing, with golden boy Shohei Ohtani probably having all sorts of conversations and being in his ear trying to recruit him, since they were national team teammates.

Money isn’t going to be an issue, because the Dodgers would probably defer 60%+ of the contract until like 2040.  The only real issue is that the Dodgers frankly don’t need Roki, because they already have a full pitching rotation with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Balakey Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Dustin May, and eventually Ohtani himself, but there’s always the possibility that Ohtani just goes another season as just a DH while he recovers, and the Dodgers aren’t the type of team to not pick up a hot shit free agent because they have no need, so much as they can deny others from getting them.

The only question mark and viable alternative to the Dodgers are the San Diego Padres, who also fulfills a lot of the Japanese hot shit checkboxes, but they also play in paradise.  Plus, the fact that Yu Darvish is already there is the safety net that holds some legitimate weight for Japanese guys.

But if I’m a betting man, when Roki does peel off his black trench coat, I still got the Dodgers shirt on underneath.  In the cyclical ecosystem of baseball, the rich tend to get richer, before they eventually age out, crash out and bail out before they actually deal with any sort of adversity, many years down the line.

I mean it might’ve been a coincidence, or it might not have

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I saw this meme about how Hulk Hogan was booed the fuck out of Los Angeles during his cheap appearance at the RAW is Netflix debut, and then the following day began the insane fires that have completely decimated the Palisades, Eaton and Hurst regions of the greater Los Angeles area; confirming that god was in fact, a Hulkamaniac, brother.

I admit that I did smirk upon seeing that, which is also admittedly inappropriate and off-base considering the very real tragedy and horror that the California fires have been wreaking out in LA, but sometimes all we can do at times is just laugh, no matter if it’s appropriate or not.  Life and the world are fucked up like that sometimes.

I’m deliberate in not calling them wildfires, because to me, wildfires imply that they were started by in most cases, a lighting crash that then causes enough sparks to ignite something dry and flammable, and then it blazes out of control.  By definition, something that happened in the wild, naturally. 

The cause of the fires have not been determined yet, but I’m going to say that if it were sunlight magnifying through a littered piece of plastic or a glass bottle that set some makeshift kindling on fire, or what I’m going to guess is more likely some stoners hiding in the hills and discarding a joint or a cigarette butt, then they were not caused in the wild, and more accurately caused by the stupidity of people.  Stupidfire.  Dumbfire.  But I’m not going to wager that it was actually a wildfire that’s caused all this chaos.

All the same, it’s a horrendous tragedy and nightmare that is still not over, and serves to kick the 2025 year off to a terrifying start as one of the big stories of the year.

Getting back to Hulk Hogan though, I get why people booed him.  Sure, some of it has to do with his history of getting caught on tape being racist and dropping N-words, and more likely has to do with his very public political allegiance, cringingly going up on stage during an orange guy rally to cut a promo in support, and ripping his shirt.  Probably both, in most cases.

But fans aren’t as dumb as I like to sometimes embody them as, and when it really comes down to it, I feel like most people have come to their own conclusions that Terry Bollea, the man himself, is just kind of a dude who’s full of shit, and is pretty shameless when it comes to utilizing the Hulk Hogan persona in order to benefit himself optimally.  Like there are plenty of other wrestling personalities who are known Republicans and have donated large sums of money to orange’s plight, but they don’t parade it around like Hogan did.

And I know a lot of people are really trying to do such these days, to carve out of their lives, the people whose political ideologies don’t necessarily mesh with their own, and if I did that, I’d lose one of my best friends, and many in my family, who support party without thinking about it, even if their representative exists entirely counterculture to their very existence.  I often feel like an island when I explain to others that I am willing to accept people who support the alternative, especially when we already have a long positive history behind us.  And if I were to consider professional contacts in the mix, I live in fucking Georgia, if I’d want to keep my job, I’d have no other to be able to tolerate.

That being said, I did find a modicum of amusement of the correlation between Hulk Hogan getting boo’d and then the fires starting in Los Angeles, meaning god might just be a Hulkamaniac.  I’ve met Hulk Hogan before, and he was friendly and gave me knucks for coincidentally wearing a Hulkamania shirt.  I can’t say I’d be nearly as pumped if the opportunity ever arose to meet the guy again, because I do think he’s just this walking meme of a human being with some very large public flaws hanging from him, but at the same time, I wouldn’t treat him like a piece of shit and go out of my way to disrespect the man.

Alright, done writing about Hulk Hogan, preferably for a long time, or at least until he does something else stupid and worthy of busting out a litany of Hulkamania references.

Dad Brog (#145): almost three years to the day

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I have this saying that it only snows once every five years in Georgia, but miraculously, we got snow today.  It wasn’t a huge amount, but enough to give a nice white blanket to the world around us, to where the girls could wake up, look out the window and be marveled by the sight of falling snow a bright white morning outside.

In preparation for the winter conditions, most of the state went into its typical overreaction of shutting everything down, but after the Snowpocalypse of 2013, I’m not going to complain about the state erring on the side of safety and precaution versus thinking it won’t be so bad and ending up being a national embarrassment all over again.  The government shut down, schools closed, dance class closed.  My waste management company straight up said they weren’t coming, with no makeup day planned.  Pest control company was scheduled to come, and they nope’d out, understandably.

But the best was my job, who graciously announced closure of the office on Friday in preparation for the wintery conditions.  The kicker?  Everyone works from home on Fridays anyway, so it’s basically the equivalent of allowing people to go to church on Sunday.

Regardless, with snow having arrived, it was my utmost priority to get outside and spend some time with the girls, since they basically will see snow only every five years for as long as we live in Georgia and the south.  So, channeling one of my all-time favorite Calvin & Hobbes strips, I didn’t wait to have to be coerced and swayed to play some hooky from work so I could play with my kids in the snow, I basically just checked in at 9, got myself dressed and ready for the cold, and was out the door and in the snow with the girls as soon as I could.

And let me say, how lucky we were to have gotten that real good type of snow, that’s perfect for snowballs, making snowmen and being all malleable and perfect.  Getting to build a snowman with my kids is a privilege I didn’t think about how lucky I am to get to do it, considering the lack of opportunities it’s more likely to be in coming years, and it brings me great joy just thinking about how I was able to do such.  And the fact that my house just happened to have an actual carrot and lumps of coal for traditional eyes and noses, how fortunate that all have lined up so well.

I decided to name our snowman “Jon Snow, king in the south;” the girls were not impressed, and balked immediately. 

So I said okay, we can call him Aegon. 

They didn’t like that either.

But my au pair did have a wonderful idea, which was to recreate a photograph from when #2 wasn’t even a year old, when the last time snow fell on Georgia.  And it was from this, did I realize that it’s almost been exactly three years since the last snowfall.  Otherwise, I will never say no when the opportunity to do a timelapse photo.

#2 usually isn’t a fan of smiling for cameras, but clearly the arrival of snow seemed to elicit such a genuine happy response that here we are.  Best snow day ever.

Happy Trails, Mt. Mutombo

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It might not be one of my most prevalent Dannyhong-isms, like Sonny Chiba, lobsters and truckloads full of food spilling onto Georgia highways, but I’ve always been a big fan of Dikembe Mutombo, and hold him in a similar esteem as I do a lot of the random things that I’m fiercely devoted to.  So to hear about his unfortunate passing at just the age of 58, genuinely, really makes me sad and regardless of the fact that the Braves miraculously managed to eke their way into the playoffs on this bonus day of baseball, I still consider the day completely ruined on the news of Mutombo.

Admittedly, a lot of my earliest fandoms of Dikembe were along the lines of irony and stemmed mostly from the fact that he had a name that sounded silly to my American ears, and teenage me would butcher it in all sorts of ways, but still be picking the Denver Nuggets in NBA Jam, because Mutombo had a max stat in defense, and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf had a max stat in three-pointers, and they were a way better team than most realized.

But also, being a Georgetown guy, he was somewhat local to where I had grown up, and thanks to the fact that I was a Knicks fan, which meant I was a Patrick Ewing fan, which meant that I knew all about his history, including Georgetown, and along with Alonzo Mourning, I had an interest in him early on.  Among the numerous great stories about Mutombo that will surely bubble up in the wake of his passing, one of the funniest ones will be how he would go into local area bars, and in his big booming, accented voice, query to female patrons, “WHO WANTS TO SEX THE MUTOMBO?”

Irony aside, in 1994 I became an actual fan of Dikembe Mutombo the basketball player, when in the playoffs, he led the #8 seed Denver Nuggets to become the first #8 seed to topple a #1 seed, when they defeated the 64-win Seattle Supersonics in five games.  Seriously, Mutombo’s defense was other-worldly during this series, and he swatted 31 blocks in the five games, which is about a third of what the best defenders in the league were doing in 82.

Rudy Gobert is a stalwart defender today, but Dikembe’s performance in the 94 first round is a true masterclass of defense, and watching a man go from blocking a few shots, to completely rendering an opposing offense petrified of going into the paint, lest Mutombo block another shot or two.  Even beasts like Shawn Kemp and the 6’10 Detlef Schrempf were turned into Muggsy Bogues under the living tree that was Mt. Mutombo guarding the rim.

I’d always followed his career, from where he basically had a second home when he was traded to the Atlanta Hawks, and became a perennial all-star for them, and some more playoff successes, in spite of never winning a championship himself.  And no matter where he landed, I was always willing to cheer for the guy, even when playing for teams like the 76ers, Nets, Rockets and even the Knicks.

However, as incredible of a basketball career Dikembe had, what’s more important is the fact that he will always be remembered as a true humanitarian, who was always at the forefront of NBA charitable initiatives.  The man was always involved in charitable efforts, especially when they pertained to matters in Africa, and the Congo native never, ever missed any chance to give back to his home.  The man basically built a hospital completely out of his own pocket.  He suited up with Hakeem Olajuwon in 2015 to play in the first NBA (exhibition) game in the continent of Africa despite the fact that both were long past their playing days, but it was way too historic and important of a game for them to not participate.

And I can’t talk about Dikembe Mutombo without bringing up his Geico commercial, which is one of the greatest commercials of all time.  Oh, and his partnership with Old Spice, where he was the star of his very own 8-bit video game, Dikembe Mutombo’s 4.5 Weeks to Save the World.

Like a guy like Sonny Chiba was to my life, Dikembe Mutombo wasn’t just a person, a basketball player, a humanitarian, a meme; he was in a way, a way of life.  I’ve always tried to give defense the respect it deserves in sport, and I always put a lot of personal weight in good deeds and humanitarian efforts.  Mutombo’s name is one that’s always at the top of mind when coming up with names for use in video games, trivia names.  His iconic finger wag, and quotes like “NO NO NO” or “NOT IN MY HOUSE” are used without concern or care if anyone knows where they stem from or not.

It’s cliché to say that a piece of one’s self is killed when an important person, place, or thing is ended, but in the case of Dikembe Mutombo, I do feel like a little piece of me, and probably everyone else who thought highly of him, died a little bit today.  But a guy as influential as Dikembe Mutombo was, it should be easy to keep his memory alive, with stuff as simple as finger wags or quotes, of a guy that the world simply did not deserve.