Tag: wrestling

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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#8

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Considering I had the World Championship belts for the WWF and ECW from the late 90s into mid 2000s era, it was inevitable that I would need to get the WCW World Championship belt eventually.  An opportunity arose when I saw one for sale on Ebay with an egregiously high Buy It Now price and an unknown reserve attached to it.  I knew what I had wanted to spend and I honestly didn’t think it had a chance to break the reserve considering that the Buy It Now price was almost twice what I had in mind, but it turns out that my Hail Mary bid ended up nicking the reserve by three cents, making me the winner to a Big Gold Belt.

And the thing is this is actually a WCW belt and not one of the replicas from WWE after they had acquired all of the WCW assets.  Nowhere on the belt is a WWE logo or emblem anywhere, and even still had a Bill Goldberg nameplate attached to it.

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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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