Tag: wrestling

Photos: Clearwater, Hogan Beach and baseball

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I made a spontaneous trip down to Tampa, Florida, because my boy James said he was going to make the trip up to Clearwater to visit the Hulk Hogan Beach Store.  Frankly, I couldn’t see myself visiting on my own and I’m not sure to who I would be able to force come along, so this was an opportunity that I was not willing to pass up.

As for the store itself, it was pretty much the Hulk Hogan Nostalgia Center located on the Beach for all intents and purposes, filled to the brim with Hogan-related memorabilia, souvenirs, crap on the wall, as well as a huge variety of t-shirts and other chintzy things that all have Hogan’s likeness all over it.  And tons of yellow, it was like Asian camouflage in there.

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I can’t get over this story

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Everything about this story is pretty incredible.  Long story short, former WWE wrestler Chris Masters, rescued his mother from her burning home, set ablaze by a crazy neighbor.  He accomplished this act of heroism by retrieving his mother through a window that he bashed through with a tree.

Let those words soak in for a moment.

With a tree.

Not a stick, or a substantially large piece of wood that happened to be lying in the ground.  Chris Masters picked up an entire tree, and smashed through the window in which he rescued his mother from.  And this wasn’t just some fallen tree that happened to be conveniently located, Chris Masters uprooted a ten-foot tree from the ground with his bare hands and used it as a battering ram.

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It must suck to be New Jersey

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year when a big inanimate sign with the Wrestlemania logo on it ends up being a bigger star on WWE programming than guys like Kofi Kingston, Santino Marella and the Great Khali.  From January until the start of April, the John Cenas, CM Punks, Big Shows and Dolph Zigglers will stare dreamily at, or point at the sign which hangs high above the arenas in which these shows take place in.  But the point of this post is not wrestling at all; it’s about the Wrestlemania logo, or more specifically what is on the Wrestlemania logo.

“NY|NJ”  As in “New York | New Jersey.”  Which will be taking place at MetLife Stadium, which is located approximately in East Rutherford, wait for it, New Jersey.  Not New York.  No part of Wrestlemania will be taking place in the state of New York.  100% of Wrestlemania will be taking place in the state of New Jersey.  Yet the actual Wrestlemania logo goes as far as to integrate the Empire State Building into it as well, further adding to the absurdity that Wrestlemania is going to take place right in the heart of Times Square or something.

The bottom line is that I don’t really understand why New Jersey so often needs or is unnecessarily given the crutch of New York to give it appeal.  The irony is that I don’t even really like New Jersey, but I still feel bad for the state for constantly being in this strange identity limbo that requires New York to be handcuffed to them in order to give them any notoriety.

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Photos: Ring of Honor TV Tapings

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

These pictures are actually over a week old at this point, but due to the shitty natures of internet going down at my house, as well as the eternal struggles of Induku, these are being a posted a little tardy.  But anyway, I went up to Baltimore with some friends, and we went to go watch a Ring of Honor taping, which was actually four, hour-long programs worth of segments and matches that needed to be filmed.

It was a good time, as much like baseball, I prefer wrestling shows to be minor league sized, smaller and more niche.  It was actually kind of amusing to me that all these wrestlers’ music themes would hit, and not just myself, but there were a good bit of people who had absolutely no idea of who was going to emerge from the curtains.  Sometimes it would be a familiar face, like Matt Hardy or Steve Corino, but in the case of their regular wrestlers like Jimmy Jacobs or even their own World Champion, Kevin Steen, complete blanks for me.

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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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#9

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, that lasted what, two weeks?  Despite my declaration that I wouldn’t get any more belts, I actually did happen to stumble upon the last belt that I was remotely interested in.  And much like the Big Gold Belt, it was priced for more than I would be normally willing to pay for it, but it had the option for a Best Offer, and floated a lowball offer that required very little negotiating over ten bucks to come to a selling price.  And here we stand: championship belt number nine.

It’s the ECW Television Championship belt, which was made famous when Rob Van Dam won it from Bam Bam Bigelow, and held it for just under two straight years.  He never actually lost the belt, and it was stripped from him when he suffered a legitimate broken ankle, and it was apparent that the company couldn’t afford to keep the title off of television when there were storylines to be moved along.  But it was 23 months of mostly excellent Rob Van Dam matches of him in his prime, having classic bouts with guys like Jerry Lynn, Lance Storm, Sabu and each of the Dudley Boyz, giving some good legitimacy to it.

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