Tag: wrestling

(Mostly blurry) Photos: Wrestlemania XXVII

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

To be perfectly honest, Wrestlemania XXVII was kind of a weak Wrestlemania.  I know that there’s something about being at the live events that actually takes something away from the viewing experience, since you typically don’t have the comfort of a couch or domicile, but are instead crammed into gigantic arenas with tens of thousands of other wrestling fans.  Wrestling fans that are typically 723% larger wrestling fans than I could fathom to be.  And in many cases, wrestling fans that are typically 200% larger in girth than I could ever be.  Regardless, I could tell by what I witnessed that overall, it was a weak show from the viewing standpoint, and no one particular match that I watched stole the show.  But it was hardly about the matches, but simply the fact that it was still a fun experience with some of my closest friends.

For the sake of my own laziness and sanity, I’m not going to go too much into the matches themselves.  The blurry shots that I took are probably only things that I could really interpret and explain if anyone were curious enough to inquire about, but as for the matches themselves, there’s not a whole lot for me to write about.

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Photos: Wrestlemania Fan Axxess

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Throughout the last few years, during Wrestlemania time, I’ve grown very interested in the concept of Fan Axxess.  More than the event itself, I thought it was a great idea that the WWE would have this kind of open house event, where the fans could meet wrestling stars and personalities.  Additionally, I was really impressed with the museum-like exhibits they erected for the event, full of mementos and icons from decades of professional wrestling.  They genuinely put forth an earnest attempt to hit all ends of the spectrum, and appeal to the kids, as well as the grownups, and capitalizing on their nostalgia.  To be perfectly honest, with Wrestlemania XXVII in Atlanta, I was more looking forward to going to Fan Axxess than I was the actual wrestling event itself.

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Meeting WWE’s Melina Perez

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I saw Melina available for photo-ops, I literally ditched my friends to get in line.  Not because it was simply an opportunity to take a photo with random diva tits and ass (although I was hoping to have gotten to get such a photo with the Bella Twins), but because I genuinely am a fan of Melina the wrestler.  She’s a hard worker in the ring, and naturally, I do find her pretty.  But the moment I decided I was a fan of Melina, was how she handled an embarrassing mistake.

Female wrestlers have it rough.  Whereas Billy Kidman can practically kill a guy with a botched Shooting Star Press and get to show up at Nitro the next week, if a diva completely botches something, typically, she’s deemed needing more practice and sent down to OVW, or now FCW for refresher training.  The fans are merciless in those cases too, with “you fucked up” chants typically reverberating throughout arenas.  One only needs to look up “Jackie Gayda” to see just how bad this could be.

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There will be blurbs until the free time returns

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently, I don’t have nearly as much free time as I think I do.  To me, this is not really a bad thing, as being busy is better than being bored.  I’ve got a large backlog of photos and words to catch up to, and between work, going to baseball games, family shit, and a subsequent impromptu trip up to Virginia this weekend ahead, I will not be able to get to them.  So until I can play catch up, I will relegate to brogging random blurbs until I do catch up.

After picking up my friends and indulging in some Gladys Knight chicken & waffles during the start of Wrestlemania weekend, while walking down Peachtree Street, I spotted WWE superstar, Kane.  He literally passed by me coming out of the Peachtree Center, and despite me recognizing him, Huzzard didn’t believe me, thinking he should be taller.  We caught up to him while he was stopped by other wrestling nerds who happened to recognize him as well, and I got to take this picture with him.  Not pictured: white plastic bag with probably something relatively healthy in it.  Or Manchu Wok.

Nerds like me, who are interested in behind-the-scenes wrestling hierarchy knows that Kane is among the most well-respected wrestlers today, among fans and peers.  Having met Kane myself now, and especially in comparison to guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin, Kane is easily one of the nicest.  Not bad for a guy who’s character has been involved in storylines involving necrophilia, knocking up Lita, and once needing to speak with the aid of a tracheotomy speaking valve.

The story of how I got the price of my car to where I got it, in wrestling speak

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Obviously, in the process of buying a car, nobody goes to a car dealership, finds the car they want, and immediately agrees to pay approximately what’s written on the sticker of the vehicle.  Fuck that.  And in the case of my recent car purchase, I most certainly did not pay the listed price that was posted on the vehicle I ultimately ended up with.  I paid significantly less was posted; perhaps I could have done better if I had a little bit of time on my side, but I didn’t, but I’m fairly satisfied with the whole process in the short amount of time in which I accomplished it.  But suffice to say, it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t speak with many different parties.

After sniffing around for the car I wanted, I discovered that it was available at Big Boss Man’s dealership.  Right then, I decided that the Big Boss Man was ultimately going to be my primary target of where I wanted to purchase, since they had the exact car, with all the features I wanted, right there, ripe for the taking.  However, I didn’t want to pay close to the sticker price on it, so in order to play ball, I knew I had to get some other parties into the fracas.  So, I inquired with Buff Bagwell, Muhammad Hassan, Stevie Ray, K-Kwik, and Konnan’s dealerships, to see what estimates they would be willing to give me for the same car, regardless of the fact that I knew not one of them had what I was looking for in their current inventories, but it wouldn’t be impossible for any of them to acquire what I was looking for in order to gain my business.  And to make things interesting, I decided to reach out to the distanced Ric Flair’s dealership, in order to have an unknown ace in my pocket for negotiation purposes.

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Technicalities

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently, Deadspin is the only place left that it can really be seen, since YouTube has pretty much 86’d all the versions of it there.  Long story short, for some reason scrawny, little kid picks fight with much, much bigger kid.  Bigger kid absorbs a few blows before finally snapping, before grabbing the whelp, and slamming him to the ground violently.  Deadspin called it “a body slam,” but this commenter literally almost had me in tears:

BufordJustice Mon 14 Mar 2011 12:36 PM

Technically that was more of a Ron Simmons-style Dominator but I guess to the average layperson a “body slam” would suffice.

/goes back to reading PWI. (Edit comment)

hahahaha, he’s so right.

Turning heel on Bret Hart

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The other day, while trying to undermine Jen’s online streaming Netflix queue, I re-watched Wrestling With Shadows, essentially the Bret Hart/Montreal Screw Job story.  As many people know, wrestling is indeed scripted, and to some degree “fake,” but the story of the Montreal Screw Job was very much real, or it is one of the longest-standing, existing storylines going on 14 years now.

Long story short: then-WWF champion Bret Hart’s contract was up, and WWF Vince McMahon owner felt that he couldn’t match the offer by Ted Turner and WCW (three years, $9 million guaranteed), so it was agreed that Hart would be allowed to WCW with no hard feelings upon expiration of his WWF contract.  So instead of having Bret Hart lose the belt at any time before his departure, Vince McMahon waited to the very last day of Hart’s contract, deviated from the scripted finish of his final match on live pay-per-view with the assistance of several conspirators, and portrayed Bret Hart as submitting to a wrestling hold, thus stripping him of the championship, in his home country of Canada.

As a result, Bret Hart has held a grudge against Vince McMahon, and involved conspirators for the better part of the last decade and change, and only within the last two years has pretended to bury the hatchet in order to financially benefit from DVD collections, appearance fees, and for the sake of his wrestling next-of-kin.

Throughout the span of the last 14 years, Bret Hart has been made to look like the victim, a martyr, in this whole scenario, and that he did absolutely no wrong.  But after reading his excellent autobiography, and now having re-watched Wrestling With Shadows, I don’t agree with such a portrayal anymore.  Maybe it’s because I’m older, more jaded, and possibly a little more understanding of the business standpoint, but the way I see it now, Vince McMahon was right in his iconic post-screw job interview – Bret screwed Bret.

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