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Throwback Thursday: Rikishi's Double-Cross Insurance

July 10, 2014, 4:45 pm
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Haku or Meng or whatever name you want to call him was not only a badass in character, but in real life he had a rep for busting skulls. No one messed with him in the locker room, which makes me wonder if this week's segment was a nod to real life. Rikishi was set to take on The Rock on this edition of RAW in a match with stipulations for an upcoming match at stake, stipulations that would favor one Triple H. Trips tried to get Rikishi to take a dive, but Papa Uso wasn't having any of it. Trips thought he'd sneak attack him while he was tying his boots, but fortuitously, one Haku walked right through the door. I'd turn and walk away too.


This week's inspiration comes from @djvecellio, former Penn State blogger and current meteorologist in training. His forecast if you mess with Meng? PAIN.
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Bill Watts in WCW: Where He Went Wrong

July 11, 2014, 4:30 am
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The Steiners felt the wrath of Bill Watts' poor booking
Photo Credit: WWE.com
To be fair, Bill Watts didn't helm the worst WCW creative staff in existence. The Vince Russo zeppelin fire takes the cake for that one pretty easily. But what we might have seen here is perhaps the most tonedeaf creative staff in existence, and one that proves the age-old maxim: The Customer Is Always Right.

First, a bit of background. Prior to the Watts era, someone by the name of K. Allan Frey ran WCW. He brought in Jushin Liger from Japan, cultivated a working relationship with New Japan, and was at the helm for the creative apex of the pre-nWo WCW. Simply put, it was a good run. And then, because politics in wrestling in general, and WCW in specific, are as important to understanding why and how things happen as workrate would be, he got turfed. In his place was Watts.

For a point of explanation, Bill Watts had run the UWF, which he had sold to Jim Crockett five years prior to his ascension. You know the UWF better by its colloquial name of Mid-South. Mid-South routinely sold out the Superdome with some of the best angles not just of the time period, but ever. The trouble was twofold.

Firstly, Bill Watts was not exactly a people person. He had a lot of views of how things needed to go, and quite a lot of people began to regard those opinions as antiquated. Just some of this was that the faces and heels weren't allowed to train together, ride together, or even talk to each other in the locker room area. As well, everyone had to stay until the end of the show. So, immediately, he did a lot to destroy morale.

The second problem appeared to be this other thing. He liked, and wanted to promote, a style of wrestling that wasn't in keeping with the style that WCW fans actually wanted.

Just before Watts came aboard, Superbrawl II happened. And in the opener, in a match that many regard as one of the greatest opening matches of the pay-per-view era, Jushin "Thunder" Liger lost the WCW World Light Heavyweight Title to "Flyin" Brian Pillman. It was widely considered a match of the year candidate at the time, and a match that made a fan out of so many (including this humble scribe). What did Bill Watts do when he got in? He banned any and all moves off of the top rope.

This thus meant that the match we had just seen, the title change and the spectacular matches that we had been promised, gone. In its place? Mat wrestling. Buckets of it. Now the top-rope rule is, on its own, not the worst idea in the world, although Watts's explanation that he felt the crowd was becoming de-sensitized to top rope manuevers stretched the bounds of incredulity. It was also that he drove the light heavyweight division, one of the main things that differentiated WCW from the big man's playground that WWE has always been, right off of a cliff, which then fell off into a volcano. To wit, the belt went from Brian Pillman to Scotty Flamingo. Not Brad Armstrong, who could have put together exciting matches while still keeping together with the ethos that the division was seemingly built on. Add that to the fact that he had surprisingly good chemistry with Liger and Pillman and you had something. NOPE. Instead, Scotty Flamingo got the belt only to lose it to Armstrong who then got hurt and, inadvertently, killed the belt.

Why was the division de-emphasized? Easy. Bill Watts had to get his son pushed. Erik Watts came into WCW and was immediately pushed as the next big young face. The only problem with this is that Erik wasn't ready. It's sort of sad to realize it, and think that it was nepotism, but this is the first and arguably the worst modern example.

Where we really start to get in trouble though is the NWA World Tag Team Title Tournament. At this point, WCW was still a member of the National Wrestling Alliance, and much like TNA would do a decade or so later, was using the NWA legacy and name as a nod to its great wrestling tradition. So over the course of a Clash of Champions and a pay-per-view, WCW hosted the tournament to crown the new NWA World Tag Team Champions. Now, anyone who knew enough to knew assumed that the Steiner Brothers, at the peak of their powers as a team and the dominant WCW World Tag Team Champions, were going to have to face the only team who had pushed them to their limits, Steve "Dr. Death" Williams and Terry Gordy (also a proto-hoss tag team). But what everyone assumed was that the match was going to take place at the Great American Bash.


Instead, after a terrible attempt at a storyline called the Puerto Rican Incident which was handled terribly by all sides, Williams and Gordy vs the Steiners took place at the actual Clash. You are also probably assuming that the Steiners went over because that's how the story is supposed to go right? The Steiners go over in the rematch after figuring out what they did wrong?


Williams and Gordy go over in the one match everyone would have paid to see. They then crush and rend the NWA World Tag Team Tournament, no-selling nearly at all and systematically dismantling everyone.

There are more mistakes (like his running off of the Steiners, Scott Hall, and a few others) to go over, but that might be another story for another time.
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The Polling Place: Renee Young, Brock Lesnar, World Cup

July 11, 2014, 6:30 am
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Is Young good behind the desk?
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Welcome to this week's edition of the Polling Place, where I ask the questions, and you pick from the field of answers which I furnish to you. This week's leadoff concerns everyone's favorite Canadian backstage interviewer, Renee Young. She's been getting reps at the broadcast booth down at NXT, and now, she's at the desk on Superstars. While her fandom of wrestling is unquestionable, and her chops as a backstage interviewer are tight, she's garnered mixed reviews behind the mic at the announcers' table. What is your opinion on Young as a color commentator?


Next up, the four-way match at Battleground for the WWE World Championship feels largely irrelevant because Brock Lesnar looms large at SummerSlam. Every rumor has him taking the title and holding it through WrestleMania. However, would a largely absentee Champion be beneficial to WWE right now? Unless Vince McMahon opens his checkbook up wide, Lesnar is not going to be working regular dates for the company. With that in mind, should he win the title?


Finally, the World Cup Championship match is on Sunday. On one side, the Germans have lit their path on fire, scoring blowout victories in the opening match of group play against Spain and most recently in the semifinal match against Brazil. On the other, Argentina may boast the best soccer player in the world today in Lionel Messi. Who ya got?

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The Rock Is Black, but That Doesn't Excuse WWE's Institutional Racism

July 11, 2014, 8:30 am
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The Rock is a black man who got to the pinnacle, and that doesn't make WWE any less racially insensitive
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Yesterday, The Atlantic dropped an article on WWE's racial problems by Dion Beary. The column had the right message and came to the right conclusion, but it had some factual inaccuracies. One of my least favorite things when one of these kinds of articles calling wrestling companies or fans on their heads from publications/sites that aren't in the know is that fans have too much of a hive mentality in discounting the overall message because of a few factual missteps. If the jabs began and end with calling Beary to the carpet for implying that Zack Ryder was inspired by the Jersey Shore when he predated it by months or that Booker T was WCW Champion in its heyday rather than the dying days of the company, I might be willing to ignore the cacophony altogether and write it off as wrestling fans being petulant nerds.

However, at one point in the article, Beary wrote something that just wasn't true at all:
In its 62 year history, WWE has never chosen a black wrestler to hold its world championship.
WWE has put its major, lineal Championship on a black superstar, and his name was Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

I admit that when I read the article the first time, my own personal red flags didn't go up for reasons that I'm not proud of admitting. I didn't necessarily think of Rock as a "black" Champion because of his diverse ethnic heritage, despite the fact that WWE made a big deal that his father was the goddamn "Soul Man" Rocky Johnson and that he was part of a stable of militant African Americans in the vein of the Black Panthers. Just as David Dennis pointed out over at With Spandex, no one can decide how "black" a person is based on who their parents on or how they're presented within the context of a fictional story. It doesn't matter if Vince McMahon didn't present Rock as a "black Champion," because Vince McMahon doesn't get to decide how black anyone is. No one does, and just as Dennis pointed out in his column, it didn't matter if you had all black lineage or just one black grandparent. You had to drink from a different water fountain than white folk did back in the day.

Beary, rather than taking the criticism in stride, doubled down on his mistake byregurgitating what amounted to pretty much a terrible Family Guy joke and then tried to paint himself as a martyr later on. I agree black people talking about racism on the Internet gets the ignorant white racists in a tizzy more than anything else, but you can't claim that moral high ground when you yourself stumble at making a point and further polarize the people you're speaking as a representative of. Side note, being Samoan in WWE isn't a walk in the park either, since historically, you either pretend to be another race to get ahead like Yokozuna or Rikishi, or you're a hard-headed "savage" like the Wild Samoans, the Headshrinkers, or Umaga.

The problem is that whether or not Rock ever won the WWE Championship or not as a representative of whatever race doesn't detract from the overarching point in Beary's article at all. In fact, Rock probably buttresses his point, because he represents the awful practice of tokenism. He can be trotted out as an example of how WWE is this welcoming company that pushes black people the same as white people, but when put in the context of the real history, it doesn't cut muster. Sure, Rocky started from the bottom and had to sleep in his car and on piss-stained mattresses just to get a shot in Memphis. He certainly wasn't handed anything because of his legacy status in the business, but when he got to WWE, no one can argue that he wasn't given chance after chance because McMahon had a hard-on for the offspring of wrestling icons. He had the right lineage, knew the right people, and still, he's the only African-American wrestler in history who got to sniff the historical top title in the company.

Sure, other white wrestlers had the benefit of those doubts as well. Randy Orton is the shiningest example of a fuck-up who may not have lasted more than five years in WWE if he wasn't Bob Orton's kid, just as you can point to white wrestlers who have been racially or ethnically lampooned over the years as flimsy counterevidence to the WWE's racial profiling of wrestlers of color (no matter what race they may have been). But what you can't do is point to the black, or Asian, or Latin wrestlers who were given good faith pushes based on something other than a stereotype like you could for white people. No wrestler of color analogue exists for John Cena or Bruno Sammartino or Hulk Hogan with the bare exception of maybe Pedro Morales. The Rock had everything going for him; he had wrestling genetics AND had to overcome a racial stereotype (the Nation of Domination) in order to show the charisma needed to attain god status within the company. I can't make the argument in the other direction that if he DIDN'T have all that going for him that he wouldn't have reached the heights he did, but to be fair, few other wrestlers of color have broken through that barrier if any at all.

Debating Rock's "blackness" helps no one, but it's also pretty irrelevant to the conversation and overall point of Beary's original article. It doesn't stop me from being disappointed that he would make such an ugly and misinformed argument in the face of criticism, but the fact remains that wrestling is an ugly business when it comes to race altogether. The fact that so many fans are people of color despite the fact that they've had so little representation on cards is astounding, especially when the root of that lack of representation came down to the grassroots of several wrestling schools outright refusing to train aspiring black wrestlers.

However, more and more wrestlers of color are making their way through the ranks. WWE can do its part by giving more black (and Latin and Asian) wrestlers gimmicks that are independent of ethnicity. One can only look to how the company's only success stories of ethnic Asians being Hakushi and Yoshihiro Tajiri as damning evidence to how ineffective its stereotyping is in that direction. It can start by letting Big E Langston be Big E Langston and not generic Martin Luther King, Jr.-knockoff #9823. It can start by letting KENTA (who is reported to be signing his contract today) get over in NXT the way he did during his Ring of Honor excursions. And it can start by firing Kevin Dunn into the Sun and allowing the reparation of the women in the company and their shattered reputations begin. WWE can change the game from the top. I know that would be asking a lot since like many inertiatic corporate entities, it waits for the indies and companies abroad to innovate and then take their ideas, but at this point, the soul of its fanbase can't take much more of this all-white-men, all-the-time corporate message.

Arguing over whether Rock was black enough or not doesn't help anyone, but with regards to the bottom line, it's also not terribly relevant to how institutionally racist WWE and the wrestling industry it spring forth from is. One drop in a bucket isn't enough to dispel years and years of lax treatment towards wrestlers of color.
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CESARO AND KOBASHI IN A PICTURE TOGETHER NOT A DRILL

July 11, 2014, 10:30 am
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Via Antonio Cesaro's Instagram

WWE is in Japan right now on tour, and Antonio Cesaro and Paul Heyman happened to run into one of the greatest professional wrestlers in the history of the art across any continent or style. Kenta. Fuckin'. Kobashi. The amount of HOSS in that picture is off the goddamn charts right now. The best element, however, has to be how wide Kobashi's smile is. This picture is note the first time Mr. Burning Destiny cheesed a mile for one of the prime guys in the biz. Check his mark photo with Kazuchika Okada. He's just the best.
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Smackdown: Friendship is Magic

July 14, 2014, 4:30 am
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This was a big deal, and yet the announcers blew it off like it was nothing
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Worst Friends Forever—Michael Cole and JBL
I don't know what it was with this episode — maybe it was the glut of distraction finishes and no-contests, maybe it was the lack of the ongoing Sheamus/Cesaro saga — but the commentary on this episode just ruined it for me. Now, normally I either let the commentary wash over me like an obnoxious, ignorant wave, or I just mute it. But they got to me this week, and they got to me good. There were friendship facts aplenty to cover, but my sheer annoyance with Cole and JBL even managed to cancel out my usual enthusiasm. Thus I am going to devote this review to them, get it out of my system, and hopefully by next week I'll be back in fine friendship form.

The badness started with the AJ Lee vs. Cameron match, wherein it was revealed that the latter's latest attempts at character work are simply going to be reduced to “she's crazy.” JBL, with support from Cole, continually referred to the match as a “psychologist's dream” and also referred to the women as “two cuckoos.”

Now, let's break this down. How, exactly, was Cameron “crazy” here? Because she has an attitude? Because she's now using make-up application as a stalling tactic and as a weapon? Because she tries to win matches? The announcers are the ones who made no sense. Cameron's character is image-obsessed and entitled and everything she did was perfectly in sync with this. Furthermore, her trajectory is perfectly plausible and is, in fact, an epic tale of friendship gone horribly wrong.

The Funkadactyls danced in the shadows of Brodus Clay, Sweet T, and (briefly) Xavier Woods, but they've now been seemingly abandoned by all three men. While the WWE never saw fit to give us ANY sort of Funkdactyl reaction to these successive desertions, one can only assume that it might make an insecure sort, such as Cameron, determined to never again be the one left behind. After she and Naomi were left on their own, she had to start wondering where this was headed. It's not like there's a women's tag division wherein they could win titles together. No, it's solo shots or nothing, and Naomi is clearly the better performer. Instead of asking her partner for advice on how to improve, Cameron gave in to the Dark Side, growing bitter and frustrated, yet attempting to mask the ugliness within through an ever-growing obsession with her beauty regimen. Thus, her selfish nature is now on full display. So, while in some ways Cameron's actions are understandable, she's also completely wrong and a terrible person. Pretty basic heeling, actually.

But, yeah, sure, let's just keep calling her “crazy” and make it seem like the ladies are completely out of control. There's a STORY here, you assholes, if you would bother to tell it.

Also, is AJ Lee a face now? I mean, to me she has always been a face, but she was audibly cheered when she returned and nobody has seemed to paint her defeat of Paige as an act of evil. Also, she was facing Cameron, who is clearly a heel. I ask because, along with refusing to acknowledge Cameron's character work, the announcers are still referring to Lee as crazy, too. However, if she's the person we're cheering for, shouldn't you NOT be constantly running her down? Just a thought.

In other female-centric news, the Fandango/Layla/Summer Rae quagmire resolved itself in the best possible, yet least expected fashion. Layla and Summer joining forces to attack Fandango and then dancing enthusiastically together should have been a moment of triumph. Instead, it was quickly swept under the rug and dismissed by JBL and Cole.

The Adam Rose vs. Fandango match earlier in the show reinforced the norm of centering the narrative around Fandango, and not the two women. The announcers remarked that Fandango was having difficulty making up his mind, and that either way he couldn't lose, because women are simply props one can choose from. They don't have feelings of their own! There was absolutely no discussion of Summer or Layla's motives or thoughts. And when they finally pursued their surprisingly progressive course of action, the announcers merely cackled over Fandango's plight, again making it all about him, and talked about how weird the women's actions were. Women: They sure are crazy!

Summer and Layla both did a fantastic job with their facial expressions throughout: from the slow realization that Fandango had only ever cared about himself, the resulting fury, uncertainty about each other afterwards, the cautious extension of an olive branch, all the way to joyous dancing in friendship and solidarity. Awesome, awesome stuff, yet disappointingly overshadowed by commentary's refusal to acknowledge anything positive associated with women.

Speaking of possible blossoming friendships, Heath Slater and Titus O'Neil gave it a go against the Usos. However, this mostly resulted in JBL hollering “Slater and the Gator” every few seconds (STOP TRYING TO MAKE IT HAPPEN), with nary a word about what these two could actually offer each other.

My breaking point arrived during the Goldust vs. Curtis Axel match. At the appearance of Stardust accompanying his brother, Cole once again started in with “This is weird, he's so weird, ugh all this weirdness is dumb and I don't get it.”

Just what is he even trying to accomplish here? First of all, if he hates weird stuff so much, why would he EVER work in professional wrestling? Secondly, as JBL (in a rare moment of clarity) pointed out, putting your opponents off-balance is a smart tactic and one that Goldust has been employing for years. Thirdly, Stardust IS weird, but he's also awesome. The Dust Brothers are weird and awesome. Why hate on the weird and awesome? Fourthly, Goldust and Stardust are good guys. We are supposed to support them. People already love Goldust and they WANT to love Stardust, so why in the fuck is Cole acting like he can't believe these guys have jobs? Is he just incapable of saying anything nice about anyone?

Honestly, for all that I've been giving both of the commentary chowderheads shit, I truly believe that Cole is worse than JBL. He's the one who's supposed to be a journalist, yet he can't seem to grasp the basic fact that word choice matters. When he talks about Stardust “babbling,” when he scoffs that Stardust is a “nutjob”--THESE WORDS MATTER. These words tell us that Stardust sucks and that he isn't worth our time. With his poorly chosen words and tone, Michael Cole can ruin any number of promising characters and developments.

I was pretty done with the rest of the show. I should have enjoyed Bo Dallas showing remorse for decimating El Torito, and then just decimating him some more. I should have enjoyed Randy Orton vs. My Beloved Chris Jericho (ruined by some particularly out-of-place shilling of the WWE Network. “Remember the groundbreaking '80s Saturday Night Main Event?” Um, DO YOU REMEMBER THERE'S A MATCH GOING ON?). I should have enjoyed Rusev vs. Roman Reigns, complete with the SHOCKING TWIST of Lana calling off Rusev in deference to Orton (possible secret friendship? I hope so!). However, I couldn't get into any of it.

Never underestimate the power of terrible commentary to take you right out of the moment, my friends. Sometimes even the power of friendship isn't enough.
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WWE.com Gettin' a Little Too Busy with the Photoshop

July 14, 2014, 6:30 am
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Photo/Graphics Credit: WWE.com

I've always been impressed with the degree of autonomy that the Dot Com branch of WWE has, but with its latest venture, that autonomy may have gone just a bit too far with its latest project. Someone within the graphics department got to flex a bit of his or her Photoshop muscle and put cat heads on the bodies of various WWE superstars. Obviously, my personal favorite is the delightfully creepy mashup of Ryback with that gray tabby depicted above, but don't sleep on the floofy Zeb Catler here. Although I'm a dog person more or less, I do appreciate a good weird photo essay on graphics manipulation. However, if this project leads to WWE superstars with possum heads? Fuck it, I'm out.
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Best Coast Bias: Oh, Kidd, You Devil

July 14, 2014, 8:30 am
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The suxeN is undefeated; FACT
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Desperation and fear aren't synonyms, but at the very least they're cousins.  It's a quadrilaterals/squares kind of thing where the subset of one can be folded neatly into the other.

Maybe in theory you shouldn't be into skullduggery and you should be one of those nice people what helps matrons across the street and donates their old newspapers to the local library and all that jazz, but do you ever notice people bring up theoretical situations to deflect and distract from realities of trying to survive with your wits intact without going into meltdown?

But fine, let's dust off a fedora and play devil's advocate.  It's the hottest game on the Interwebs, after all.  So hypothetically if you were the secondary character in a two-wrestler marriage and you possibly lost a couple of the best years of your life due to injury and in theory your career had turned you into the white Xavier Woods and you were losing so often that not only were members of the Brazilian national team laughing at you but the next generation of wrestlers was already using you as a stepladder to take the spot you'd fallen off of maybe it could perhaps kind of make you the sort of person who wants to win first and check on his wife later.

In a completely related note, Tyson Kidd pinned Sami Zayn in the middle of the ring, and was so chuffed over his morally wonky victory you could almost hear the playlist in his head yelling out DEEEEEJAAAAYYYY KHALED!  With he and Justin Gabriel overcoming Zayn and the NXT Champion Adrian Neville in a great match to close out the show about the only thing that could hinder Tyson's perceived righting of his ship would be the fact that the endgame saw him faking a knee injury to avoid getting Helluva Kicked before he would (accidentally?) bump into Nattie off of a Zayn punch and send her sprawling before feigning going to check on her with Sami and rolling him up for the three.  Well, that, and the fact these episodes are broadcast, so you would have to figure Nattie would see him almost backstage preening and celebrating the fact that he did it before coming back down to the ring.

Irregardless, that .6 Eddie impersonation was the crumbled-up cookie things on a really superlative match frogurt, made all the better by the fact that up until the last 90 seconds or so Tyson didn't do anything overtly scummy.  He may've gotten in a couple of to-date-in-NXT uncharacteristic stomp and punch flurries in on only Zayn but besides that -- in theory -- you could've been forgiven for thinking this was a battle of babyface tag teams if you didn't have the prior knowledge of the past couple of months to bounce off of.  Oh, sure, the Nattie chants when the Harts came out followed by the Nattie's Husband chants as Tyson found his arm worked over by the partnership of Canadian Air may've given away a scoch, but not enough. No, this was things like Neville doing a freakin' corkscrew moonsault off of Sami and standing Shooting Star Presses or a textbook tope con hilo from Zayn to everybody involved and their heirs being met by the full legal parameters of aggression by Kiddriel, even if the main roster veterans were losing pretty badly on points before the end.

It was certainly a good Thursday to be bad, as outside of a Sin Cara victory the people who were left standing tall all would be pushing the previously referenced matron into traffic rather than holding it up for her to cross past it safely.  Eddie Princeton, err, I mean Bull Dempsey won another squash, CJ Parker laid Woods out with what should've been an enzui sidekick but instead looked like the world's biggest fan wave (well, maybe the resultant breeze from it whiffing gave Dr. Woods hypothermia thus triggering his President Harrisonesque reaction), and Summer Rae decided the best way to make this the Summer of Summer so far as she was concerned was to best Bayley and earn the #1 contendership alongside a shot at her former BFF Charlotte for the title.

She got the spot despite (in a really nicely subtle recurring theme on this show) facing a more aggressive Bayley, who didn't let the crowd's willingness to take a bullet for her keep her from starting off the match by almost nearly introducing Summer's pretty face into every turnbuckle in every corner of the ring.  Bayley being who she is, she couldn't stop herself from indulging one more time chants to do the whirlybird on Summer's back on a second occasion after grappling her down to the mat but it's always interesting to see her character development slowly increase over time and given the right antagonist, as the seemingly arrived fully formed Summer was here. For crying out flayven, she got booed for yanking off a hair tie.  A hair tie!  And anybody who can survive an Exploder suplex to win a match cleanly in the center of the ring referee hiccups aside deserves a shot at the prestigious belt no matter what her frenemies say.

Of course, in that aspect, Summer's got it relatively easy.   After all, she's not the one currently making a frenemy out of her wife.
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From the Archives: Sting vs. Cactus Jack, I Quit Match

July 14, 2014, 10:30 am
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In case you're more intelligent than most of the average wrestling fans out there (especially smarter than me) and you've avoided all the hazardous Twitter accounts who pass along news, NEWZ, and rumors, then you may have missed that Sting posted a cryptic tweet last week that said only "7.14.14." That date is, well, today's date! Could he be appearing on RAW? WILL HE FINALLY START HIS LONG-AWAITED PROGRAM WITH THE UNDERTAKER? WILL HE REPLACE DANIEL BRYAN AS THE AUTHORITY'S PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE? WILL HE ALLOW ME TO TURN OFF MY CAPS LOCK KEY? Oh wait. Anyway, whether he finally shows up on WWE television in a capacity other than a simulcast of the final episode of Nitro is unknown, but I will take the opportunity to post a match of his back when he was among the top names in all of wrestling (and not just for nostalgia reasons either). Cactus Jack is the opponent. The stipulation is an "I Quit" match. Let's do it to it.



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Take the Sex Out of Sports Entertainment

July 14, 2014, 12:30 pm
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This feud has always been problematic, but Saturday, it took a turn for the gross
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein
If JT Dunn and David Starr winning the Women's Superstars Uncensored Tag Team Championships at the promotion's United event Saturday - the first since Denver Colorado sold his shares of the company to DJ Hyde - was the most egregious thing to happen, things might not be too contentious right now. Sure, the fedora-clad, evangelically atheist "Men's Rights Activists" might say what's good for the goose is good for the gander, but the reason why companies like WSU, SHIMMER, SHINE, and nCw: Femmes Fatale among others exist is so that women have a place to grow and exist without the encroachment of men and the implication that the only legitimate wrestlers have dicks and balls.

The idyllic situation in pro wrestling is that the women's-only promotions in the future will become superfluous as everyone in the industry will eventually overcome the institutional misogyny and thus see women as equal performers no matter what the differences in body mass or genital makeup should exist. But in all honesty, the Juicy Product will more than likely meet a cathartic comeuppance that will help put over whatever team, whether it be the unfortunately nicknamed team that comprises Kimber Lee and Annie Social or some other enterprising duo.

But on a show where Hyde threatened to make Jessicka Havok blow him in the middle of the ring if she lost a match, I can't be bothered by how sexist or "equal" men winning women's titles is. Hyde's first major act as sole head booker of WSU hit the plaid of major grossness with ludicrous speed.

For those who are not in the know, Havok, the longest-reigning WSU Champion in history, was stripped of her title a week or so before she was set to defend against LuFisto at the prior event, the Queen and King of the Ring tournament. Havok took a booking to wrestle at the TNA One Night Only pay-per-view series rather than defend her strap, so it was taken from her. LuFisto ended up winning it anyway against Athena in a Best Two-out-of-Three Falls match for the vacant title. At the time, the move appeared to be real, but the way the cards have fallen indicates that it was a planned turn in the feud between Havok and Hyde, one that has been brewing ever since Colorado initially partnered with the Combat Zone Wrestling owner, one that was established by one party not liking the other one and devolving into a series of sneak attacks, gendered slurs, and spitting. Oh man, the amount of non-romantic spit-swapping going on between the two during the last year or so has been grimy to say the least.

But the dynamic of extreme sexual harassment as a heat-garnering mechanism seems too much to me. I don't want to make any grand judgments about how Havok is being exploited because for all I know, she was on board with the idea 100%. Wrestling has a way of attracting strange creatures, ones who don't think twice about pushing the edges no matter what it might say about them. It's all a work, right? Plus, I doubt that Havok was ever in danger of getting down and performing a sex act on her boss as the result of a wrestling match. Even if she lost, she wasn't putting her mouth on Hyde's member as much as she was shoving a fist onto it. But none of that matters. The fact that sex was introduced into the story in the fashion that it was implemented is pretty unacceptable.

Regardless of who's okay with what among the performers, stipulations like those more often than not end up perpetuating the awful, societal view that women are nothing more than playthings for male sexual pleasure. The ideas of agency and equality don't just mean men and women get to work programs against each other, and maybe the men put the women over at a healthy clip. Women need to be treated just like men in the process. A man is never threatened with oral sex against his wishes in order to keep his job, partially because wrestling stories play to homophobic tendencies and because women authority figures are few and far between. Then again, would anyone be okay with the roles being reversed? Even in the vacuum of power dynamics and sexual politics, acts of intimacy being used as warfare feels gross on any level.

It's bad enough that most major religions have criminalized sex to the point that fornication has been deemed as mortal a sin as homicide. But the extreme reaction to it, to plaster sex as recklessly and tawdrily as possible throughout any form of popular entertainment is just as unhealthy. I'm not speaking from a position of morality; sex is a part of humanity and needs to be addressed maturely. OF course, "mature" is not an adjective that can be used to describe most wrestling promoters, from the Vince McMahons of the world all the way down into the indies. Hyde is one of the worst offenders, and whether or not his booking treats men and women "equally" as bad as each other, his presentation is part of why wrestling is seen as such a lowbrow form of entertainment.

Truth is that nothing in the genetic code of pro wrestling says that it has to be garbage, but the people in charge of most of the big and influential companies have awful track records when it comes to the things that make entertainment progressive and not recursive. So maybe all wrestling companies, starting from the bottom and working up to the big fish, ought not to handle sex at all for awhile. Since it's clear no one can really handle interpersonal and intimate relationships between the sexes (or among same sexes given the nasty history of the portrayal of lesbianism in various companies), then maybe it should be retired as a trope for a little while. No promises of HLA, no fated love triangles, no women threatening to show their bosom as a distraction, and ESPECIALLY no commentary of a male wrestler wailing on a female one by describing it as her "asking for it." All of it needs to disappear from every company until relationships and sex can be written into stories in a way that doesn't leave decent people with their skin crawling.

Once sex is removed from promoters' arsenals as a toy that a toddler misuses is taken from him or her, then the other problems can start to be addressed. The hand-wringing over Juicy Product winning the WSU Tag Team Championships might seem like it's as daunting as the problematic blowjob theater was, but in reality, it's far more innocuous and probably will end in a healthier manner even if it's far from the ideal. However, in no world is implied forced fellatio okay, not even for a second. It's sad proof that DJ Hyde is far from ready to handle sex in a healthy manner, and it's a stark reminder that most other promotions aren't too far ahead of his. The only way to rectify it is to remove it from the equation altogether, at least for as long as the current crop of promoters is in charge of the respective companies.
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KENTA Officially Signs with WWE

July 14, 2014, 2:30 pm
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If Hogan presided over it, it's real, brother
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Via WWE.com

The first of the four big rumored signings to WWE has been made official, as Saturday, KENTA officially signed his WWE developmental contract. The contract was made official at a house show during WWE's current tour of Japan with Hulk Hogan and Jimmy Hart presiding it over. I don't know about you, but having the most legendary WWE superstar of all-time presiding over my contract signing would make me super stoked, but then again, I'm an American child of the '80s/'90s and thus The Hulkster was my everything, brother. I can't speak for KENTA.

Curiously enough, the WWE press release referred to him as "Kenta" throughout, which aside from being wrong stylistically (ALL CAPS FAH LYFE), set off a conflagration of speculation as to whether he'll actually get put through the NXT Name Generator™. I have no lean either way; it either could be a "placeholder" thing before a new name is given to him in the same way Mistico was handled before he became Sin Cara, or it could be a nod to his actual, real given name, Kenta Kobayashi. Either way, KENTA's signing is real and he'll be headed to the Performance Center in a matter of time. Exciting times to be a hardcore wrestling fan are afoot!

In other news, another one of those big four, Kevin Steen, made his presumably final appearances for Squared Circle Wrestling this past weekend, and the popular hashtag for use in promoting the event was "Thanks Steen Thanks." So the rumors may be true. Steen might be packing up shop to install air conditioners and work at the GAP in Orlando, FL as soon as he can. I'll keep you guys posted on those developments as they arise.
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The Wrestling Blog's OFFICIAL Best in the World Rankings, July 14

July 14, 2014, 4:30 pm
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Besties (in the World) this week, ABSOLUTE ENEMIES next?
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Welcome to a feature I like to call "Best in the World" rankings. They're not traditional power rankings per se, but they're rankings to see who is really the best in the world, a term bandied about like it's bottled water or something else really common. They're rankings decided by me, and don't you dare call them arbitrary lest I smack the taste out of your mouth. Without further ado, here's this week's list:

1. Paige (Last Week: 4) - Despite losing her title to AJ Lee the week before, Paige showed excellent sportsmanship and buried the hatchet to take on the Funkadactyls on RAW last week. Basically though, Paige was in a win/win situation anyway. If she had flipped out, she'd have taken everything that her mom taught her, and hey, she'd have won this spot anyway. What can I say, I'm biased.

2. AJ Lee (Last Week: 2) - Of course, if Paige had flipped the fuck out on her, I'm not sure Lee would have taken it like a rookie level Veda Scott did from Mama Knight. The ensuing chaos might have destroyed Montreal. Maybe it was for the best that they called a truce.

3. Mario Götze (Last Week: Not Ranked) - He scored the only goal in Germany's World Cup clinching match against Argentina on Sunday, inspiring both national pride in Deutschland but a cringeworthy meme about his last name!

4. Pizza (Last Week: Not Ranked)OFFICIAL HOLZERMAN HUNGERS SPONSORED ENTRY - Pizza always. Pizza forever.

5. Haku (Last Week: Not Ranked) - Really, the real reason why Germany won? Argentina was scared shitless of getting Tongan Death Gripped into eternity, one by one.

6. Mark Henry (Last Week: 9) - I honestly think this movie would've been WAY better than the original version of it, don't you think?

7. Tatiana Maslany (Last Week: Not Ranked) - I hear the only reason she was snubbed for her work in Orphan Black was because they couldn't decide which clone she'd be nominated for, and it wouldn't be fair to everyone else.

8. Lana (Last Week: Not Ranked) - She visited the Wildwood Boardwalk with Alexander Rusev after the WWE house show there. The only drawback is that she was there a whole week before I'd be in the area. My chance to get a live verbal berating from Lana has gone out the window, sadly.

9. George RR Martin (Last Week: Not Ranked) - His reaction to people questioning whether he'd get A Song of Ice and Fire finished before he died? A hearty FUCK YOU! I'd like to imagine he spent the next five hours killing off every awesome character left, but then I realized he'd kill every character left that I'd like, and I got really sad.

10. Sara del Rey (Last Week: 10) - SARA DEL REY FACTS: She was in Brazil ready to koppo kick Vladimir Putin AND Sepp Blatter in one shot, but she was delayed by rare acai berry chewing gum.
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Instant Feedback: The Song Remains the Same, the Dread Boring Same

July 14, 2014, 8:40 pm
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The poster children for WWE Creative's malaise
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Ric Flair showed up at RAW this evening, which I suppose made sense. The show rolled through Richmond, VA, which is located a state north of his adoptive home state of North Carolina. Flair styled and profiled, appeared to make Renee Young feel uncomfortable, predicted John Cena to win the Fatal Four Way on Sunday at Battleground, and then bailed when Roman Reigns hit the ring. Oh, and Cena gave him the Big Gold Belt when he hit the top of the stage. DOES THAT MEAN SOMETHING? Follow @HorbFlerbminber to find out. If I didn't know any better, I'd have thought WWE wanted Flair to be on the show but didn't have a plan for him and scrambled at the last minute to chew up scenery. Far better for Flair rambling around the ring to be put in the death spot than, say, a meaningful feud development for the Divas, but at the same time, it's a symptom of a greater problem within WWE right now.

Granted, this problem is rooted in real life circumstances. I'm sure no one at Titan Towers expected July to roll around without CM Punk under contract, and having Daniel Bryan and Wade Barrett out with injuries can't help either. But Antonio Cesaro continued his holding pattern. Roman Reigns, while charming and magnetic, is on his way to becoming Sheamus before Sheamus became irrelevant. Cena's the Champion again doing Cena-as-Champion things. An entire midcard seems stuck in a morass of trading victories for no net gain, as the WWE machine once again is in full effect turning people who once had momentum into "just another guy."

Big E Langston and Cesaro's match served as a emblem for that exercise in star-killing. Before and around WrestleMania, Cesaro could have kicked a puppy over the Hoover Dam and gotten mad love for it. Nine months ago, Langston was having showcase matches for the Intercontinental Championship. Now, Cesaro is jobbing with no real storyline advancement. Langston has a preacher voice. And his companion Kofi Kingston, who at one time was as hot as the midday Sun in his native land of Ghana, has been in the same rut since 2009.

The story has been the same for more than a decade. Creative cares for a few programs (and to be fair, the ones the body does care about - Jericho/Wyatt, Paige/Lee, Rollins/Ambrose - have been p. good), and everyone else is tossed by the wayside. It would be one thing if WWE's universe were contained in one hour weekly like NXT is, but those goons have seven hours to fill. The show is only promoted like three matter, and even those minutes are dreadfully wasted.

The most egregious violation, however, is how WWE has slowly but surely sucked the life out of any appearance by the Nature Boy. This shot wasn't the first time he showed up and did nothing. The best promo in the game, the most magnetic personality in wrestling history, and he's giving limp endorsements? Making weak predictions? At some point, shouldn't the blame be pointed inward at the people writing and greenlighting this shit?
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17 Time World Champ, WOO!

July 15, 2014, 5:10 am
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Photo Credit: WWE.com

So, Ric Flair's appearance on RAW wasn't totally uneventful last night. While he was exiting the arena and John Cena was entering, the two performed a little exchange, namely of the Big Gold Belt. Something seemed like it was afoot when Cena eschewed the "wear both belts like a scarf" aesthetic for having the main WWE Championship snug around his waist. Whether the Big Gold Belt is being retired, it was just a one-night gesture, or whether Flair actually won the World Title for 17th time is unknown, but it was still a cool visual.
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What I'm Watching: Liger vs Ohtani

July 15, 2014, 6:30 am
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If you read this week's edition of the Tweetbag, you probably noticed that I asked TH a quesiton about who was better, prime Danielson or prime Liger. And admittedly, he had not seen prime Jushin "Thunder" Liger, having only seen him in WCW and in his other North American excursions for Chikara, Ring of Honor, and PWG. This is a situation that needs to be fixed. And the best, quickest, way to do that is to turn to the magic of YouTube.

Now for a lot of people, this isn't going to be Liger's greatest rival. That honor might fall, depending on how old you are, to Naoki Sano, or Chris Benoit, or even Koji Kanemoto. But even despite this, watching this match is instructive in one big way - body language. At this point in his professional life, Liger is, by any reasonable understanding of it, the Man. He is the top of the junior heavyweight heap. Watch how he carries himself. And watch how, even without understanding a single word, that comes through when you watch this match. This, right here, is prime Jushin Liger.


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Jessicka Havok Doesn't Shill

July 15, 2014, 8:30 am
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David Starr and JT Dunn, collectively known as the Juicy Product, have been attempting to get various women in wrestling to promote their match at Beyond Wrestling's Americanrana II 12 days from now. The latest in their series of spokespeople happens to be one Jessicka Havok, and, well, you can imagine before clicking play how well the plot worked out for the current CZW/FIP/*groan* WSU Tag Team Champions. Personally, I love vignettes like these. YouTube can be a wrestler's worst enemy, but sometimes, it can be a huge asset if played right.
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Women Do Not Need to Prove Themselves on the Indies

July 15, 2014, 10:30 am
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Against women or men, Kimber Lee has proven she belongs
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein
Kimber Lee's star in wrestling has risen meteorically since she made her debut a couple of years ago, and for good reason. She's fundamentally sound with her mechanics in the ring, has great facial expressions, plays to the crowd superbly, and can develop chemistry with any opponent against whom she faces. Many promotions have recognized her talent, so she's gotten bookings across the country. Of course, she's made her mark in competition against other women in promotions like Women's Superstars Uncensored and SHIMMER, but her work in Beyond Wrestling is what intrigues me the most. Since the Tournament for Tomorrow II tapings inclusive, Lee has wrestled Rory Mondo, Chuck Taylor, Sozio, Drew Gulak, and JT Dunn (three times!). In each match, she was treated less like a dainty flower who needed special treatment and more like a peer, especially in her matches against Dunn. I hate using the term "next [so-and-so]," but if anyone could claim the mantel of barrier smasher that Sara del Rey had before she became a head trainer at the WWE Performance Center, Lee's the one to stake that claim.

The thing about Lee is that she's not a particularly large woman. She stands 5'3" and weighs 125 lbs., small even by independent wrestling standards. Yet the way she carries herself in the ring would suggest that her character has the confidence of a man the size of a Chris Hero or a Michael Elgin. If her style of work now indicates the body of her career, then she proved herself worthy of being in the same ring as the top male indie wrestlers the moment she stepped into her first intergender match. Yet, as Brandon Stroud pointed out yesterday in his Wrestling Hipster column at With Spandex, that respect is not always shown to female competitors, whether it be in their first or billionth match against a dude with a dick:
In the Northeast, one very specific man vs. woman match reigns: a cocky, sauntering heel guy gets into a match with a plucky, thinks-she’s-tough woman. She has to “prove” herself to him. It starts with the guy not taking her seriously and shoving her in the face, maybe stretching her out and kicking her in the face while the crowd yells “oooooh” and laughs about domestic violence or kitchens. But WAIT A MINUTE, she starts to come back! She gets in a bunch of offense and some hot nearfalls before she gets cut off, and then she either loses and “earns respect” or wins with a flash pin. The guy gets mad about it and attacks her to set up a rematch or shakes her hand to let her know she did a good job, and this would all be perfect if the next time they fought the exact same goddamn thing didn’t happen. The woman doesn’t keep the respect when she wins … she must repeatedly earn it, over and over, against whatever man decides he needs it. She can be the most decorated, storied female champion in the area, but as soon as COCKY HEEL shows up her value defaults to zero. It’s an endless, lazy cycle of pretentious garbage.
While I am a fan of men and women tangling in the ring, I'd be lying if I said I didn't notice that trend happening in some places. For every Jessicka Havok vs. Sami Callihan match where both wrestlers were equally the aggressor, or every post-Claudio Castagnoli Sara del Rey match, one match like Hania the Howling Huntress vs. Eric Corvis, one that also happened in Beyond, seems to have taken place. Granted, I love that match too, but the former Saturyne has gone hard with every competitor she's wrestled against since voluntarily shedding her mask, including competitors like Athena, a veteran of several acclaimed intergender matches in Texas. She shouldn't have to prove a goddamn thing. Neither should Lee, or LuFisto, or Cheerleader Melissa, or Candice LeRae, or any one of the talented wrestlers on the scene who happen to have a vagina instead of a set of cock-n-balls between their legs.

The counterargument that gets bandied about is that women are naturally smaller and thus must sell the physical imposition that male wrestlers on average have over them, to which I say bullshit. The only reason why men are more athletically gifted on average than women is because women over the years have been browbeaten to think that they HAVE to be soft and fatty so that they can rear children. The ridiculous debate over whether women can "have it all" is rooted in this fallacy that every female on the planet has a duty to raise a child. I could get into a whole aside about how that premise is asinine, but then I'd have to start covering socioeconomics on here, and life's too short for me to get worked up about that on a site dedicated to people play-fighting in their underwear. The short of it is that women can do whatever the fuck they wanna do, just like men can, because they're human beings, just like men are.

IN pro wrestling, the physical limitations that keep women from competing with men on average in any "legitimate" sport are washed away by the worked nature. You don't have to have proof that Lee can rock Dunn's jaw with a vicious shotei in a shoot-fight if her shot is stiff-looking enough and he sells it appropriately. Any continued insistence that she, or any other woman who can work to the standards of the indies (and believe me, mostly all of them can), has to prove herself is blatant sexism and should not be tolerated. In the post-Sara del Rey world, why would anyone have to go through the same "proving" process she did that to me culminated when she wrestled Castagnoli in a main event for Chikara, one of the three biggest promotions below WWE in America? The fact that she even had a barrier to break down is ridiculous, but I didn't make the societal rules preventing women from doing "manly" things on an equal plane. If del Rey could come within an inch of winning the Chikara Grand Championship and credibly compete against the standouts of the circuit like Eddie Kingston, El Generico, and the Osirian Portal, then why can't those who have wrestled her in SHIMMER, WSU, and in the assorted women's divisions around the country?

If any justice in the world exists, then Lee will continue to run with the ball she's been given, not just in Beyond Wrestling and the women's promotions, but in other places around the country. The door's already been kicked in, but promoters continue to insist it's still there and still has to be opened by every woman who dares compete against men, sometimes more than once. Sorry, but if you're laying out a match that paints a woman as needing something to prove because of her gender, then you're in the wrong. You literally have nothing to lose by promoting more women and as equals to the men except for the repugnant sexists who refuse to believe intergender wrestling can work because of old biases that have been shattered. Even then, I get the feeling those fans who will refuse to watch are slowly dying out in number anyway. I'd like to assume that people just wanna watch good wrestling, and the growing fact out there is that competitors like Lee and LeRae and their peers are just as good if not better as a collective than the men who populate the scene.

Women like Kimber Lee have nothing left to prove. The time has arrived for them to normalize the scene and make women equal fixtures in main events and down cards everywhere. Separate but equal doesn't work anymore, because the former gets emphasized and the latter never gets achieved. The best wrestlers need to wrestle the best wrestlers, and more importantly, the best wrestlers need to be treated as if they were the best wrestlers regardless of their gender. Anything less is unacceptable.
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The Wrestling Blog Retro Live Tweet Series, Episode 2: WCW Sin

July 15, 2014, 12:30 pm
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Sure, Jeff Jarrett headlined this PPV. Watch it with me anyway!
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Several months ago, several intrepid Twitter users embarked on a journey to watch the Forgotten WrestleMania, WrestleMania 2, at a coordinated time with me in order to tweet their thoughts in time with the show. The concept was a mild success in terms of turnout, but a massive success in terms of the people who participated and the tweets they sprung forth during the time allotted. Now, four months later, the second installment shall be announced. I am pleased to announce the return of The Wrestling Blog Retro Live Tweet Series. This installment will happen on Wednesday, July 23 at 8 PM Eastern Daylight Time, and it will be open to anyone who has a way to view the event in question and has a Twitter account. This time, those who choose to journey into greatness with the crew of live-tweeting snarky assholes will travel back in time to a more recent epoch and into a different company, as the event in question will be...

WCW Sin.

Dying-days WCW was a strange creature. Booking regimes came and went with little to no staying power, and thus the stories and week-to-week providence of Nitro made about as much sense as every M. Night Shyamalan movie after Unbreakable. It is regarded as one of the absolute worst stretches for a promotion in history, and yet within the piles of shit grew some promising sprouts in terms of in-ring work. Not every match or wrestler was reputed to be good, but enough quality was supposed to be happening that makes the dying days of the company worth checking out. And checking it out is what I and the people who shall join me next Wednesday shall do. Maskless Rey Mysterio will be there! Bill DeMott with a sex-pun for a name will compete. Meng and Terry Funk will be in the SAME GODDAMN MATCH! While I'm not hopeful that any main event that features Sid, Jeff Jarrett, Scott Steiner, and Road Warrior Animal will be anything less than a trainwreck, I am willing to give the show on the whole a chance. Will you? Join me in eight days on Twitter and via the WWE Network (or by other means if you do not have it/it's not available to you yet).
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AR Fox Injured

July 15, 2014, 2:30 pm
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Fox is gonna be out for a bit, which sucks
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein
According to the latest WWN Live e-mail, AR Fox has suffered a broken wrist that requires surgery for a full recovery. He will be out for two-to-three months, which will cause him to miss the EVOLVE dates in Florida, and more importantly, Beyond Wrestling Americanrana in less than two weeks and the Battle of Los Angeles tournament in less than two months. It's uncertain where he suffered said injury, but given his high-risk style, I'm not surprised. Still, I hope he gets well soon and recovers fully.

The more important question now becomes who will replace Fox at BOLA. The field is already loaded, but now Pro Wrestling Guerrilla has the opportunity to fill Fox's spot either with a hungry SoCal native or with another bombshell of a guest announcement. My gut feeling says that someone already booked for the weekend - a member of Bad Influence, Joey Ryan, or Candice LeRae in particular - will get the nod, but at this point, nothing is certain. I personally would love to see LeRae get the spot. Either way, I'm sure PWG will select a worthy replacement. Losing Fox is a huge blow to the tournament, but the indies are rife with talent that could make his loss a bit more bearable.

Thanks to friend of the blog @themib for the tip.
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The Best Moves Ever: Bionic Elbow

July 16, 2014, 4:30 am
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Oh lawdy lawdy, ain't no harder part on da body than da elbow, and Dusty Rhodes know that, daddy. Err, I mean, if you think a simple elbow is too base a move to be celebrated, you don't know shit about pro wrestling. The Bionic Elbow, dropped right on the crown of the head by the ol' Bull of the Woods himself, is one of the most iconic signature strikes in the history of professional wrestling. The following video has 30 seconds worth of Big Dust hitting various fools, from Ric Flair and Harley Race all the way up to Randy Orton and Dean Ambrose with it. ON DA MUDDASHIP!

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