Happy trails, Hulkamania

Meeting the Hulkster in 2005 at a car show, coincidentally wearing this shirt. He greeted me “nice shirt, brother”

Countless sauces: “Hulk Hogan” Terry Bollea passes away at the age of 71

  1. Long ago, one of my closest friends and I were bullshitting about the random things that bros do, and at one point we talked about, how would we feel when Hulk Hogan inevitably dies? Nobody lives forever, and although we weren’t really so much die-hard Hulkamaniacs so much as we more or less liked him in this ironic manner because he was just so over-the-top and often larger than life,  we still were fans of the guy that basically embodied professional wrestling.

We knew that his time would eventually come, and although we’ve witnessed countless professional wrestlers from our childhood pass away from various reasons, there weren’t many who were going to be at the tier, that of someone on the echelon of the industry as Hulk Hogan was, and we pondered on what would happen around the business, and how we might possibly feel when it inevitably happens.

  1. Over the span of the last week, the world saw the passing of Malcolm-Jamal Warner AKA Theo Huxtable, and days later, Ozzy Osbourne, the so-called Prince of Darkness. And is often popularly murmured upon hearing the deaths of celebrities, it always comes in threes.

In one of the group chats I share with many of my closest friends, I specifically mentioned that a probable high likelihood name to be the third, was Hulk Hogan.  Leading up to today, it was known that he had gone to the hospital, but it was very ambiguous and this kind of gross game of information being spread on his condition, where some parties were spreading that he was on his death bed and didn’t have long to live, while others proclaimed that all was well and that recovery was oncoming; but when a 71-year old former professional wrestler of the rockin’ 80’s era goes to the hospital, there’s always the possibility that things are going to go tits up.

Unfortunately for me, wrestling fans, and all those whom might be interested, I just so happened to be right in this case.  And as much as I often extol the wondrous feeling of being right, this is one of those cases where I don’t feel any sense of satisfaction at it because in the end, the world lost an icon, whether people were a fan of him or not.

  1. As is often times the case whenever someone of a degree of celebrity passes away, I become fairly judgmental towards the parties that spout their condolences and keep them in their thoughts and prayers, primarily when I know that at some point(s), they’ve turned their backs on the departed. To me, their sudden returns to grace come off as disingenuous and attempts to piggy back sympathy and attention to themselves and it often disgusts me when I see people pulling 180s on guys like Hulk Hogan, just because they passed away.

I understand why a lot of people cancelled Hulk Hogan over the years; him getting caught dropping the hard-R on a recording was enough for many.  His absolute shitshow lawsuit against Gawker Media, revolving around the fact that he was involved in some bizarre cuckolding scenario with a Tampa shock-jock and a sex tape “leaked” didn’t really help his general public image.  And of course, who could forget him pledging his allegiance to the orange turd in the 2024 election, complete with him showing up to the RNC, cutting a pro-turd promo, and ripping his shirt off on stage.

I get it, man hasn’t been remotely close to the bastion of a paragon that prime 80’s Hulk Hogan was, encouraging children to take their vitamins and say their prayers, since his retirement, and I wouldn’t challenge or argue with anyone who decided to cancel post-career Hulk Hogan.

Yeah, I don’t dig the hard-R, and his over-the-top alignment to the right.  The Gawker trial was personally endlessly amusing, and I probably made no less than 13 posts about it during its lifespan.  Honestly, Hulk Hogan, or Terry Bollea, or whatever you want to call him, clearly wasn’t a perfect human being, but quite frankly neither are any of us.

If I decided to cancel every single celebrity that had done something offensive, then I probably wouldn’t be a fan of anyone.  If I decided to cancel any random people that I know, friends, colleagues or otherwise, for something that they’ve done that’s slighted me, I’d probably become a bigger island of a man than I already feel like sometimes.  And if I held myself to the same criteria as those I should be cancelling, I’d have cancelled myself probably 168 times.

The point is, yes some of the shit that Terry Bollea has done has been less than socially acceptable to people like minded to me, but there’s always been this part of me that always gave Hulk Hogan, as well as lots of other people a little more leeway and resistance to cancellation than others might, because I often think about people in the aggregate, and if I cancel a Hulk Hogan, then I probably ought to cancel 58 other guys that might have similar rap sheets.

I’m not saying what bad discretions that Hulk Hogan may have done are okay or acceptable, but I’m just not going to crucify and cancel everyone who conducts themselves in manners that I disagree with, because we’re all imperfect human beings and frankly I don’t want to expend the energy to consciously cancel other people.

Furthermore, a guy like Hulk Hogan, he’s built some equity with me personally, in the sense that he was basically the living embodiment of the professional wrestling industry.  Yeah, the whole business used to be something that I kept my fandom about under wraps, but it’s something that has outlasted countless other interests in my life, and I take some joy in how much more acceptable and mainstream it is these days, and the whole carny shitshow of an industry never would have gotten to where it did without the contributions of Hulk Hogan. 

So yeah, I’m not going to turn my back on him for discretions that I think a lot more people might have in common than they’d care to admit, and it did punch me in the gut when I found out about it, and it has been living rent-free in my head all fucking day, to where I was itching to be able to sit down and get to write this in real time, and not a post where I write it as retroactively as I can.

I’m not going to say that I was the biggest Hulkamaniac in the world, but I was still a fan.  As a kid, I ate his shit up, believing that he was getting his ass beat by Andre the Giant, Earthquake, Sgt. Slaughter and everyone else he ever feuded with, and was always blindsided when he kicked out of their finishers, Hulked up and ended the match three punches, a big boot and a leg drop later.

Even as I grew and learned, I was still amused by his whole schtick, and even though it was kind of lame, there was a comfort in familiarity in seeing him do it again and again throughout the years.

The nWo and the birth of Hollywood Hogan was pretty groundbreaking for me to digest, and it really was something of a renaissance, as he worked evil for the first time in history, but by then, I was older and wiser and more cynical, and well, Hulk Hogan was older then too. His whole sinking with WCW was an ironically hilarious ride, as he reverted back to yellow and red Hulkamania, FUNB Hogan, and back to nWo for sporadic stints.

His later years in wrestling were pretty awful, but there was still something to be said about a man who kept lacing up his boots and getting in the ring and taking F5s from Brock Lesnar, or giving an extremely rare tapout L to Kurt Angle.  As much as he was accused of gatekeeping and being selfish, man did give back to those who were the most worthy of getting his rubs.

I didn’t really follow his TNA career into ultimately true retirement, and by then, shit like his hard-R scandal, and then Gawker overshadowed his wrestling legacy.  But I was always amazed at how the man simply knew how to stay relevant and not stray from the spotlight for ever too long, and even up to his passing, the man always managed to popup somewhere, every few months, and kept reminding the world of who he was and that he still existed.  Whether it was his clown show at the RNC, the debut of Real American Beer, or his hilarious bomb at the Netflix premiere of RAW, if there was one absolute truth, it was that Hulk Hogan always knew how to remain relevant.

In the end, you didn’t really have to like the guy, but I do believe that it was pretty undeniable that he was a force of nature when it came to his footprints on wrestling, pop-culture, and celebrity status.  The man was truly larger than life, and especially in the professional wrestling industry, I would say, is one of the most monumental passings of an icon there could be, for at least three different generations.

Rest in peace, Terry Bollea.  Hulkamania will live forever.  Brother.

WWE Evolution 2: I think that was the greatest women’s match in company history

I closed my laptop after the show because I was watching on my laptop because Peacock on XBOX sucks and doesn’t let me rewind because I can’t watch live events live because I have kids and it conflicts with their bedtime routine so I always have to start all the PPVs PLEs late, and I said to mythical wife, who humors me and knows a little bit about professional wrestling in her own right; I think that might have been the greatest women’s match in WWE history.

Obviously, I’m talking about the World Championship match between Iyo Sky vs. Rhea Ripley that closed out Evolution 2, where [spoiler alert that doesn’t matter because I have zero readers] Naomi ended up winning the match and the World Championship when she cashed in Money in the Bank and committed the heist of the century of the women’s division.

I’m not even mad about the ending, with Naomi sneaking in at the end and doing what she did, because it was logical, it made sense, and in the context of WWE canon, why the fuck shouldn’t she have done what she did, preying on two superstars who had just put on a legitimate match of the year contender and were spent and exhausted and easy pickings?

Everything about the whole main event to Evolution 2 was outstanding; frankly, the whole show deserves its flowers, considering the tremendous amount of adversity it faced, but the main event was honestly, in my opinion, not just the best WWE match I’ve seen all year, but as far as from their women’s division goes, I am hard pressed to say that it’s genuinely the greatest WWE women’s match in company history.

Which is really funny considering I believed that the company put the match on the card as a panic move when Liv Morgan dislocated her shoulder, because it seemed like the card was going to be built around her vs. Nikki Bella in a battle of eras.  There was no inkling of seeds that Iyo Sky was going to go against Rhea Ripley, and the match literally came to fruition barely two weeks prior, to which I think was a complete in case of emergency break glass moment by the WWE when they realized that they had literally no marquee matchup for Evolution 2 anymore.

Honestly, the whole show was a masterclass of taking chicken shit and making it into chicken salad in my opinion.  I said back in 2018 that the original Evolution absolutely had to be the best PPV of the year, considering the historical impact of being women-only, in a massively male dominated industry.  For the most part I think they succeeded, seeing as how Becky Lynch and Charlotte saw to it, with their incredible last-woman standing match, but they also had a lot of build-up, a stacked card, and very apparent careful planning that went behind it.

Evolution 2 was announced quite a while ago, but there was almost no buildup for it.  For all the flack that TKO gets as being money grubbing, it felt as if the event was announced as a cash grab, banking on fans to just throw their money at it no matter what, solely because it was WWE.  Packaged into a whole weekend of wrestling in Atlanta, it was the third show following NXT’s Great American Bash, and Saturday Night’s Main Event, and they arrogantly pulled the bullshit of only selling tickets in egregiously priced two-event packages at first, before realizing sales weren’t what they were hoping for, and then bringing things (slowly) back to earth.

However again, despite the cards being built for NXT and SNME, Evolution 2 hardly had any proper build-up, and matches started forming in manner that was reminiscent of a slacking student realizing they have an assignment due, but they waited until the last minute to start it.  The one thing they really tried to get started with, with Liv Morgan assaulting Nikki Bella immediately went off the rails when Liv got legitimately hurt, and then they put the whole event on the shelf to further kowtow to their Saudi overlords, and then started to start flinging shit on the wall after the gross Saudi version of Money in the Bank.

Fewer things say, “we didn’t plan for anything, but we want to include as much talent as we can” than a battle royale, which helped fill out a talent sheet for the event, but then the rest of the matches just started filling in, in really clunky manner.  Naomi vs. Jade Cargill, Becky/Bayley and Lyra for the women’s Intercontinental, a four-team clusterfuck for the women’s tag blets, an NXT Women’s championship match, and Tiffany Stratton vs. Trish Stratus?  Like really, how much lead time was Trish Stratus given before she knew she’d be thrust into duty?

So yeah, obviously Iyo vs. Rhea was put on the card to be the one obvious hard carry, that was going to rescue the show if it was bad, or put the exclamation point on a show if it had been good leading up to it.

And in spite of the clunky booking, in spite of the concern of wrestling fan burnout from a full weekend of shows before Evolution 2.  In spite of the Beyonce concert next door at the Mercedes Benz Arena, and in spite of MLB All-Star Weekend taking place 9 miles north on I-75, Evolution 2, fucking delivered.

This is why I have keen interest in women’s wrestling; not just because so many women are easy on the eyes, and not just because as a father to daughters, it’s important to me to see women get their chance to succeed and thrive.  It’s that the women always, always have to perform in manner that is fighting an uphill battle, fighting to prove something, because unfortunately, this is just something that they always have to do, in a male dominated industry in a male dominated world.

I’ve been watching wrestling long enough to have witnessed all sorts of talents come and go, and believe me, it’s really easy to pick out the guys who really genuinely care about the business versus the ones who are tourists and are hoping to parlay success in wrestling into other careers.  And these days, with as much infrastructure there is in the industry, a lot of the tourists get weeded out before the mainstream can get to see them, and by the time we get to events like Evolution, it’s definitely more all hands on deck of people who not only want to be there, but want to give their best and prove that they belong.

But for the sake of not turning this entire post into a love letter to each and every match, I want to get back to the Iyo vs. Rhea match, because as I stated before, this match was not only the best match on the card, it was honestly one of the best matches I’ve seen all year, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to say that it was the greatest women’s match in WWE history.

Yes, better than Bayley vs. Sasha’s Iron Woman match, better than the Four Horsewomen-four corners match.  Better than Charlotte/Becky/Sasha for the inaugural WWE women’s championship.  Better than Trish Stratus and Lita’s first-ever women’s main event match, and leaps, bounds and galaxies better than just about everything in the Divas’ era.

It had everything from a compelling base story, with the whole Rhea has never beaten Iyo narrative.  Both put on their carry shoes and delivered a match that had everything from a respectful start, technical prowess, near falls, digging deep into their arsenals.  An extremely rare female referee bump from Jessika Carr, which most internet geeks know is a wrestler herself, so she sold it like a million bucks, which led to a brutal brawl outside the ring which saw some crazy bumps and spots.

And when the action came back into the ring, there were a few more crazy spots and near falls, and a great Spanish fly spot so late in the game, massive respect to both workers for executing it.  Of course, there was always the possibility that Naomi could show up, but I was actually predicting it would happen shortly after the match, but when she did, it was still a surprise, because the match was still in progress.

When Naomi completed the heist, I wasn’t even mad, because I’ve always been a supporter of Naomi specifically because I respect her as a worker, and I’m happy for her to reach the top of the mountain, especially after the years of shit she had to trudge through with her Sasha-led abandonment of the company a few years ago.

Everything about the match was outstanding.  The work from Iyo and Rhea, the performances of their selling and storytelling.  The drama of a ref bump, and the brawl that occurred with no supervision.  Iyo hitting her moonsault and Rhea kicking out.  Rhea desperately trying to land a Riptide with the ref in play.  Naomi cashing in, and completely saving the heat that all but ensures the Iyo and Rhea rivalry will have yet another chapter in the future with the original narrative completely intact.

I loved everything about it.  I was entertained, I was thrilled, and even a jaded smark like me felt like a true fan again, throwing my hands up at near falls and covering my mouth and going OHHH at some of the impressive spots.

This was truly the greatest women’s match in WWE history, and I will die on this hill.  It is a front-runner for WWE match of the year as far as I’m concerned, and in the future when we talk about stalwart matches of history, Iyo and Rhea deserve a chance to plead their case.

Does this mean I’m fatphobic?

Over the weekend, I went to a wrestling show with some friends.  Not just any show, but a WWE show – NXT’s Great American Bash to be specific.  It was the first of three shows the E was running in Atlanta over the weekend, and although I was interested in either of the other two shows, GAB won out because:

  • NXT is the most fun brand in the company
  • I could only really afford tickets to one show
  • It was held at Center Stage, which is basically my all-time favorite place to watch wrestling; I would watch a show put on by Somali pirates if it were held at Center Stage

All shade about the WWE, their parent company TKO and their predatory decimation of the fan experience aside, I was looking forward to this show a lot, because I’ve always had good experiences with NXT, I always love watching wrestling at Center Stage, and it was a small reprieve from parenting for an afternoon with some friends.

The show itself was decent; a little below my expectations as far as NXT goes, not to mention this was technically a PLE, which meant that I would’ve expected a little bit more.  But considering how much B-or lower tier wrestling I see in this building, the level of polish from a WWE show is evident.

However, my biggest complaint of the whole event and getting to the point of this post was simply the fact that I had the unfortunate misfortune to have been seated next to an extremely obese person whose body continuously transcended the boundaries of their own seat, and I had to spent nearly the entire show rubbing shoulders and legs with this person and it was rather unpleasant and had a tangible negative influence on my general enjoyment of the show outright.

Let me also point out that Center Stage was built in the 60s and hasn’t really changed much since then, meaning the seats haven’t been renovated and maximized like on an airplane, meaning reduced in order to shoehorn as many people in as possible.  They’re actually very generous and comfortable seats, when seated next to ordinary human beings.  Just for context at being able to picture the size of the person that effectively put a damper on my entire experience.

Now before anyone can immediately accuse me of being a fatphobic asshole, I do believe large people have the same rights as everyone else.  They shouldn’t be denied the ability to enjoy things like live experiences and travel because of their size.

However, I do think that society has been way too quick to deem obesity and all other forms of habits of excess as, addiction, and labeling addiction as a disease, instead of what I think it is, bad habits gone rampant with those with them lacking the willpower and fortitude to try and break them.  The fat guy seated next to me wasn’t fat because he has the disease of addiction, he’s fat because like so many stereotypical wrestling fans, he’s a guy who doesn’t exercise, watches too much tv and eats way too much shitty food, and is completely at peace with such lifestyle.

When my friends and I got inside the arena and we were heading up to our seats, I knew it was going to be unpleasant when we got to our row, and he was sitting in one our seats, because the friend he came with was also a big guy, and in typical bro mentality, if you can give a bro space, you give a bro space, but this was a WWE show that was known to be 95%+ sold out.  He was quick to vacate and move to his actual seat and wasn’t a dick about it, but I knew that one of my party was going to have take one for the team and be the unfortunate one to have to sit next to him.

And seeing as how this show was my idea, and it had a way higher cost than what my friends were probably thinking, who aren’t nearly the wrestling fans that I am, I quickly decided that it should probably be me to be the one to eat the shit sandwich, because I’ll do my best to find enjoyment in the show itself, but I’d feel like shit if one of my friends who was probably more there to hang out and casually watch, had to be the one whose experience was ruined by having 3/5 of a seat to watch from.

If being pissed at having to sit next to a guy like this, oozing into my personal space makes me fatphobic, then I guess I am a little fatphobic after all, because there’s not one iota of me that doesn’t believe anyone, whether they believe that they’re fatphobic or not, wouldn’t be absolutely miserable in the conditions I was in. 

I paid a lot of money to go to an event I was really looking forward to, and my general enjoyment of the whole thing was completely sandbagged by virtue of having to sit next to a morbidly obese person whose physical mass was all up in my business for the entire show.

I know it sounds like a terrible, shitty thing to say or write out, but it’s the honest truth, and I don’t think many people in my circumstances would feel differently.  I do not hate the guy for being large, and he has every right to be there as all other paying attendees were.  But I am disappointed and upset with his life’s choices that led to him being the size he was, and disappointed that I was the poor unfortunate soul to have to end up sitting next to him.

I like to believe that I’m not a fatphobic person, seeing as how I could definitely afford to lose 30 pounds or so myself, but I’m also not going to lie and say that my experience at NXT wasn’t neutered by having the unpleasant feeling of a morbidly obese person all up in my space the entire show.  It sucks because this is one of those things that nothing can be done about, because it’s not like when you’re buying tickets for any sort of show, there’s specially designated sections for larger people.  It’s basically just a massive game of Russian Roulette whenever you purchase a seat(s) to anything, and pray that you’re not next to a large person.

And it’s shit like this that really makes me averse to leave the house, and go out and experience things.  Inevitably, other people have the ability to ruin everything, whether they’re doing it deliberately or not.  I maintain that there’s no better place to watch wrestling than at Center Stage, but after an experience like this one, I might have some pause the next time NXT rolls around, because it will be packed, it will be expensive, and my chances of ending up in a situation like this one are tremendously higher than any of the other lower-tier wrestling shows that’s book there.

Why the Mercedes Mone blet collector gimmick isn’t as impressive as it looks

When I saw that Mercedes Mone was scheduled to fight Zeuxis at their Grand Slam Mexico show, I knew right away that Mercedes was going to walk away with yet another blet.  That’s the problem when someone is booked so invincibly over the last two years, that after a little while, no match seems remotely debatable to what the outcome is going to be. 

And I know that the mouth-breathing troglodytes of the internet wrestling community are always debating on whether or not Mercedes has creative control (AKA makes the call on their own wins and losses), and I really don’t care enough to seek out the answer for myself, but it’s also not like those who believe she does have it, doesn’t have reason to believe it.

Typically, I love blet collector gimmicks, and as a collector of wrestling blets myself, I always appreciate seeing it done in actual industry storylines.  I loved when Ultimo Dragon walked out of Japan with ten championship blets at the Super J-cup, I was a big fan of when Lance Storm when on a collecting spree upon arriving in WCW, winning the United States Canadian championship, the Cruiserweight 100 Kilos or Less championship, and the Hardcore Saskatchewan Hardcore Invitational Title in short order.  I loved when The Miz was holding both tag team championships at the same time as holding the United States championship, carting three blets out every show.  Even though he turned out to be a colossal asshole, I liked the journey of Austin Aries amassing a bunch of blets, and I was a big fan of when Matt Cardona became the King of Independent Wrestling, collecting blets like he were Ultimo Dragon.

AEW has dipped into this well a few times already, with Kenny Omega holding three world championships concurrently (AEW, AAA, TNA), as well as when FTR had their greatest year ever, holding the ROH, AAA and IWGP tag team championships, and I did enjoy those as well, in spite of my oft-criticism of AEW as a whole.

Which brings us to the present, where Mercedes Mone has been hoovering up blets like Thanos collecting Infinity Stones, currently carting around six straps: AEW TBS championship, RevPro Women’s championship, Queen of Southside blet, the AEW Owen Hart Memorial women’s blet, the EWA Women’s championship, and the freshly won CMLL Women’s championship.

Ordinarily, six blets does sound impressive, but my issue is that several of these blets are mostly useless, and (are trying to) make her look more impressive than she really is.  In my opinion, the TBS, RevPro and CMLL straps are the only ones with any actual value, but the other three blets are basically decorations and aren’t real championships:

  • Owen Hart Memorial Championship – this is strap that is awarded to a tournament winner, and isn’t actually defended. Britt Baker carried it around for two weeks tops after winning it the first year, as was the case with Mariah May a year ago, before dethroning Toni Storm for the actual AEW women’s championship.  While Mercedes is still lugging the women’s strap around to boost her blet count, the men’s winner Hangman Adam Page held the men’s strap for two seconds to acknowledge and pay respect to the late Owen Hart and then gave it immediately back.
  • Queen of Southside championship – I don’t follow the British scene much, but a little research shows that the Queen of Southside championship was deactivated in 2019, with its actual value being merged into the RevPro women’s championship. Not sure why the physical blet was still being hauled around six years later, but because it’s been kept around that long, means Mercedes is more than happy to do the same, again to make her look more impressive than she is.
  • EWA women’s championship – I’d never even heard of EWA in my life prior to Mercedes winning their women’s championship, but I suppose that is the point. Based out of Vienna, Austria, they’re an indy promotion more than happy to utilize Mercedes’ name to boost their exposure, and she’s more than happy to carry their championship in order to boost her collector status, even if this is basically the equivalent of Norman Smiley invading a backyard wrestling group and absconding with their tin foil championship blet

In all fairness, the three that do have value, are still respectable championships, and put her on a similar tier of collector as Kenny Omega and FTR, but I just don’t like the fact that she’s hauling around three blets that are mostly useless with the intention of making her look more impressive than she actually is.

Frankly, AEW/ROH missed the boat on really boosting Mercedes’ odyssey by not having her go after Athena’s ROH women’s championship, after their actual banger of a match a few months ago in the Owen Hart tournament, but considering Athena has been champion for over 800 days, it’s evident that they didn’t want to job her out just for Mercedes’ burgeoning ego trip, nor did they really want to cannibalize within their own ecosystem, at least not yet.

Instead, they’re going to feed their crown jewel to Mercedes, when Timeless Toni Storm, not long removed from winning back the AEW Women’s championship, will effectively become a transitional champion when she has to drop her blet to Mercedes, capping off the insane run of blet collecting.

Frankly, the real interesting story is going to be, when inevitably all the partner companies start wanting their blets back, what is going to happen with Mercedes.  Her whole career can mostly be defined by her massive resistance when it comes to taking L’s, which is undoubtedly the biggest reason why Sasha Banks left the WWE, and since she became Mercedes Mone, has almost never lost, and in fact has taken a fall just two times in the last three years, with one of them being on account of an improvised finish due to legitimate injury.

So it’s going to be a real telling story when RevPro, CMLL want their championships back, and it’s going to be an even more telling one when minor leagues like EWA wants theirs back, and Mercedes is going to be expected to not win a match in some backyard fed in Wien.  The Owen Hart strap will just magically disappear in the mass exodus, but ultimately all that’s really going to matter is the AEW women’s championship, which will undoubtedly be the last blet standing.

But still, Mercedes will be expected to do the business back to all the partners who have been helping boost her, and as history as shown us in the past, we can’t be too sure on if that’s going to work for her – brother.

WTF is AEW doing #412

In short: AEW unveils the Unified Championship to be awarded to the winner of Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada, thus “unifying” the AEW All-Atlantic International championship and the AEW Continental Championship

Man, there’s a lot to unpack for me upon this topic coming up.  I know that I have a fairly unhealthy collection of replica wrestling blets, but I’m fairly certain that Tony Khan is worse than I am.  Almost to the point where I begin to have doubts on whether or not I want to continue my collection, because TK is running so many blets out there that it risks them all becoming meaningless, and ultimately uncool.

I mean, AEW has Mercedes Mone running around carrying five blets currently, with only two of them being remotely meaningful with the TBS championship and the RevPro Women’s championship.  But she’s carting around the Queen of Southside title which frankly nobody outside of England has ever heard of, recently went to Austria to win some backyard federation’s championship, but my favorite is that she’s carting around the Women’s Owen Hart tournament blet, which really was meant to be a blet to be shown like three weeks of the year, for the winner and maybe 1-2 weeks afterward.

Hangman Adam Page basically held the men’s title up once, and then immediately gave it back, while Mercedes is still slinging the honorary degree around like it actually means something, and it’s a shame that she’s inevitably going to overthrow Toni Storm for the AEW Women’s championship, and as much as I like Blet Collector gimmicks, Mercedes’ is just really kind of off-putting, given her station within the industry.

But this post isn’t meant to be about Mercedes Mone, but I was able to barf out these thoughts without having to dedicate an entire post to it in the process, but rather the fact that AEW has unveiled yet another new blet on television, and all I can really do is laugh and shake my head about it, even if it’s ultimately meant to kind of alleviate the excessive number of titles within the TK-verse.

The AEW Unified Championship is a hilarious name for a title, considering the titles in which they are unifying are for lack of a better term, mid-card titles.  In all other combat sports, boxing, MMA, and even the WWE, the term of unifying titles is typically reserved for unifying top prizes.  Boxing especially has had all sorts of unified world champions throughout its history, due to federations and promotions merging and separating and merging and requiring consolidation.  Even the WWE has had unified champions in its history, but always reserved for World championships, most notably Roman Reigns unifying the World and the Universal titles and then holding it for 1,000+ days.

But AEW is basically unifying two mid-tier titles, into a single one, but then best of all, calling it the Unified Championship.  It will have an A-tier name, but still have stemmed from B-tier titles, and inevitably, if they don’t swap the name of it at some point like they did All-Atlantic to International, the Unified champion will run into the AEW World champion, and what are they going to do, unify the Unified championship into the World?  Call it World Unified championship?

Honestly, I don’t really know what TK thinks, beyond when he’s going to get his next bump, but I dunno, you have the International championship, and you have the Continental championship, seems natural if it were to become the… Inter-Continental championship or something.

I mean, it’s no secret that AEW has absolutely refused to adopt that name, seeing as how the WWE Intercontinental championship is one of the most coveted prizes among those in the industry, but it’s not like they own the word or anything.  NJPW for the longest time had their own Intercontinental championship, and they built that title into something equally as coveted within the company, thanks to guys like Shinsuke Nakamura and Tetsuya Naito.

And perhaps NJPW has been spending too much time with TK, because they dropped the name when they unified it with their World title, and in an attempt to re-create a mid-card title, have only produced the woefully uninspiring IWGP Global Championship, but designed it to look precariously similar to the old, white-strapped IWGP Intercontinental blet.

Back to AEW though, it’s funny that the Unified Championship is just a merger of two mid-card titles, because within the company and all adjacent companies, there are still a whole litany of other B-tier prizes, and C-tier prizes within the TK ecosystem.  The TNT Championship, the ROH World and Television championships, and the revolving door of straps from other promotions that their talents drag onto AEW television, like the NEVER Openweight, the IWGP Strong championship and the RevPro World championship.

Would the Unified champion be like a Borg and just go after other champions to unify their championships into the Unified?  Or what if a Unified champion takes an L to another champion, does that keep the titles separate, or does the winner take the Unified and unify their titles? 

So many question marks!

Of course, the true motivation behind all this hullaballoo most likely stems from the fact that the two titles being unified in question are currently held by Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, two of the biggest stars within the company.  And TK seems to have this belief that the importance of them coming together for a match actually needs the incentive of both guys carting championship straps around, and decided that two guys with blets need to be fighting over a new blet, despite the fact that they have had some of the greatest matches within the last decade, whilst in NJPW.

If I had to put money on it, I’m guessing Okada is going to be winning, and becoming the FIRST-EVER AEW Unified championship, because Omega is banged up and doesn’t need to be taking on a champion’s workload and frankly, Okada needs the professional rub more than Omega does.

But I would also wager that, even though it won’t be for long afterward, despite the fact that the Unified championship was introduced to remove two blets from play, I would bet that Okada will show up at least once, carrying all three blets on television, like when Eddie Kingston was carting around a ton of blets at one point, because Tony Khan appears to have a bigger hard-on for championship blets than I do.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: The ultimate flex and power move

KHOU: Houston teen achieves the rare Ivy Sweep – accepted into all eight Ivy League schools, then proceeds to turn them all down and pick MIT

I know there was a #TRYHARD who had 155+ acceptances and $6M in scholarships that I already declared the queen of the #SZN, but let me introduce y’all to the king.  It really doesn’t matter how many cumulative schools he was accepted into and how much in scholarships he’s been offered, because he achieved one of the most rarest feats in the game, the Ivy Sweep; as in this nerd was accepted into all eight Ivy League schools, making him the ultimate enemy to slacker Asian kids, because he is the boy that all Asian parents envy and fantasize over having, and measure their own failures of children against.

However, the story gets even better, because not only did King #TRYHARD accomplish the Ivy Sweep, the kid also decided to hold a press conference to announce which school he was going to attend, like he were LeBron James in The Decision, or was some big dick sports recruit picking which school they were going to go play for.

And then, the story continues to get even better, because in the midst of his massive flex, he pulls yet another power move, by stating that he’s not going to go to any of the Ivy League schools he was accepted into, and declared himself to MIT.

He also hid his MIT shirt behind a thick ass coat, and did an unveiling like he was joining the nWo.  But instead of being a jacked wrestler or an athletic blue chip prospect, it’s just some dumpy Asian kid who basically looks like the default build-an-Asian that everyone can imagine in their heads when they think of an Asian nerd.

Y’all can’t imagine the shit-eating smirk of amusement on my face reading about this #TRYHARD and the bullshit he pulled.  I love it all too, because he flexes his academic prowess and superiority by getting into eight of some of the hardest universities on the planet, but then immediately takes a big steaming shit all over them by rebuffing all of them at the same time, and then picking MIT, the geeky little brother to Harvard, basically.

It’s funny, I came across this story before the announcement was actually made, and I noticed in the article, to stay tuned until 1 pm local time, where the announcement was to take place.  I try to plan my writing out, and I had actually prepared this photo to use to accompany this post to exemplify the nerdy arrogance of an uber-dork getting his moment to shine in the sun, but then after seeing the highlights of the video package of this kid’s press conference, and I was just like, wow, I didn’t think this whole story could possibly get any better than just being a nerd who achieved an Ivy Sweep, but how wrong I was.

Make no mistake though, when this really boils down to is undoubtedly money, and although he made the Ivy Sweep, I’m going to assume that none of them were remotely close to offering up a full-ride, which is what MIT is doing.  And considering his Asian background, free > everything, including the Ivy Leagues, and he and his parents are probably ready with all sorts of rebuttals to justify why their boy is not going to Harvard or Yale.

What’s also funny is that this #TRYHARD’s area of study is computer science and engineering.  Sure, such fields could be pursued at some of the Ivy League schools, but really if that’s the route he wanted to go, he really needed to end up at a place like MIT or any school where technology is at the forefront.

But now that I think about it, it was all probably part of a great ruse by this #TRYHARD and his famiry; flex the Ivy Leagues when discussing school, and try to force institutions like MIT to want to “poach” him from them, by offering up perks like a free ride, so that they have to be the pursuer and not give off the notion that MIT is probably where he wanted to end up.

Really, at the end of the #SZN, it’s not really going to be who the biggest #TRYHARD is, but what story is the best to come from it.  As of right now, the obvious front-runners are the girl who cleared 150 acceptances and one from every state, the dork who essayed himself out of nearly every application he tried, and this guy.  Recency bias aside, the flex, the power move, and all the antics and theatrics behind it, make this a hard contender to try and top this #SZN.

WTF is AEW doing #387

When I first saw this shirt, I thought it was a joke, a bad photoshop from some shitty wrestling shitposting meme account or something.  But nope, it’s very much real, and actually available to you for the low, low price of $29.99 plus tax and shipping, which means it’s basically a plain white t-shirt for somewhere just under $40.

Of course I know that there are all sorts of brand name designers out there who have been peddling plain white t-shirts for upwards of $100+, but they’re often times players in the egregious fashion industry, whom most of them have earned the right to hawk their shitty wares for exorbitant prices, and people not smart enough to realize that they’re being fleeced will actually buy them.  But yeah, them, they’re not a professional wrestling promotion, whom most equate their product and their merchandise as tantamount to carny shit, and only exist at that price range solely on the basis of inflation.

Yes, I can see the Property of the Death Riders wordmark on them, anyone (with a magnifying glass) can see it, but the point remains is that AEW’s merch team has basically posted up the absolute bare minimum effort in an actual product available to the public.

In the past, I’ve called out other bullshit cash grab products like Faarooq’s DAMN shirt which is basically just the word DAMN written on the chest in Rockwell Bold, and the B-Team’s signature shirt, which was obviously deliberately shittily made to help sell the fact that Axel and Bo were B-tier talents, but still turned into a screen print and peddled for $30 a pop (plus tax and shipping).

Well, Property of the Death Riders joins that club of some of the worst wrestling shirts in history, without any question at all.  Like, I’m becoming desensitized to a lot of the weird and silly shit that AEW does that I have a hard time grasping because I grew up with the WWE, but to offer up a plain white shirt with the tiniest of logos as an actual product definitely stands out in a sea of weird and silly shit, at least in my mind.

Here’s the funny thing though, as I’m typing this out, there’s a part of me that actually does admire the fact that in spite of the overall bullshit this shirt really is, as far as utility and being able to wear it out in public outside of wrestling shows or flaunting fandom, this shirt actually probably a GOAT.  Being a plain white t-shirt, it’s a perfect undershirt, and the lack of any design whatsoever on it means that there’s zero concern of any design being visible behind an opaque white dress shirt.  And 10 times out of 10, whenever I’d be wearing a plain white t-shirt, it’s tucked into dress pants, and the dorky little Death Riders wordmark wouldn’t be a factor at all.

But I’m not really fan of white t-shirts in general, because white fabric is like this ticking time bomb where they’ll slowly turn yellow from absolutely no other reason than existing, and any exposure to air, water, moisture accelerates it, and even more so when exposed to human oils or perspiration.  I literally had a few white tees that were still in their Ziploc bags, completely unopened and unworn, and when the day came where I felt the need for one, and ripped open the sack, it was yep, yellowed with age.

White t-shirts are basically for weddings and funerals, or any other instances where I’d need a specifically white t-shirt underneath a more priority garment.

Back to the Death Riders white shirt, the jokes just write themselves, as far AEW’s fanbase is concerned.  The schlubs who will be willing to plunk down the cash to get these bad boys don’t have to worry about them yellowing from age, because they’ll rapidly turn from the sweat, nacho cheese from Daily’s Place, and vape juice they’ll be exposed to, accelerated whenever they see Toni Storm, Harley Cameron or Skye Blue.

All these observations, without even having to even scratch the surface of what failure the whole Death Riders faction has turned into, because when they formed, they had a ton of momentum, but as is often the case with Tony Khan booking, there’s no focus, no end game or no execution, and all members of the group have been swirling around doing dick and butt for weeks, with no end in sight.

It really is incredible how Jon Moxley in NJPW took his Death Rider persona and absolutely slayed over there, but bringing the name to AEW and making it a group has been absolute death to the brand and identity of it completely.

And I don’t really get it either, the whole white t-shirt thing was Bryan Danielson’s, and the Death Riders basically smothered him and killed his career, and suddenly Mox picks up the whole white shirt thing, acting like a jacked psychotic Andrew WK or something?

As the subject of these posts goes, jesus, wtf?