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| Who's gonna replace him, brother? Photo Credit: ImpactWrestling.com |
First up, cohost of the International Object podcast Rich Thomas asks who TNA should hire to run Impact when Hulk Hogan leaves.
Are we talking in-character or out of character? I'm not interested in their on camera bullshit. As a booker, I don't think anyone they hire will matter as long as Dixie Carter is still up there, opening up purse strings for every washed up former name, be they wrestling or mixed martial arts. They should make a godfather offer to Paul Heyman once his contract is up, because he's the only guy I know of who gets what makes a successful wrestling company on a consistent basis. Realistically, Spike should somehow get Carter frozen in carbonite and let whomever they get to run the show have six months to establish a vision unfettered.
@thisiszach wants me to choose a better suicide dive between Daniel Bryan and this goat.
I don't really think the goat is doing a suicide dive here. It has good form, no doubt, but a suicide dive goes through the ropes on a downward slope. I don't know how to characterize what the goat's doing there. Plus, Bryan has a pretty suicide dive, doesn't he? Let's call it a draw.
@cursethedark asks if Rob van Dam's stepover counter kick is the crappiest signature move ever.
I can only think of one move that I never got the purpose of. Sean Waltman used to do a move where he'd double over his opponent, put his leg on the back of their neck like he was gonna guillotine them, and then did a backflip, causing no real impact. I was always baffled what purpose that spot served in the match. Did Waltman pull it off just to show he was nimble? I don't know. At least RVD's stepover kick, especially when he performs it slower than Nick Foles running the 40 yard dash in a three-inch cover of saturated mud, can be explained by him giving his opponent a contact high. But yeah, like most of RVD's offense anymore, that shit is putrid.
Best Coast Bias-erButch Rosser asks which celebrity, one male and one female, currently unused by WWE would "get it" best.
I would peg Sacha Baron Cohen as the male celebrity. Much like Andy Kaufman, Cohen is well-versed in the art of trolling. He knows how to get responses from people, which is half the story in being a great pro wrestler. The other half is letting yourself get your ass whipped (or appear to be whipped), and anyone can pick that up if they let their guard down enough.
Along the same lines for a female, I don't think an obvious choice exists. Who are the troll goddesses? Am I missing out on someone obvious here? Lena Dunham is the name I keep coming back to, except she's serious in her craft and might take going in front of a WWE crowd as a heel to be super destructive to her belief system, even if her character from Girls would melt steel with how much heat she'd get in front of a typical RAW audience (for the wrong reasons, obviously). So, in the interest of not trying to make a spurious answer just for the sake of pops, let's go with Gillian Jacobs, since she's a pro wrestling fan (or at least a Pro Wrestling Guerrilla fan), an actor on a subversive comedy, thus probably most likely to deliver. Then again, Maria Menounos hosts an inane celebrity gossip show, and from where I sit, she's been pretty terrific in her guest spots, so who the fuck knows.
@OkoriWadsworth asks which is my favorite Girl Scout Cookie.
The problem with Girl Scout Cookies is that nearly all of them, okay, ALL of them, are addictive like nicotine, especially for a food-crazed Epicure like myself. But if I had to choose just one out of the foray, I would go with Peanut Butter Patties or Tagalongs (same thing). Peanut butter, like bacon, is one of those foods that I can't get enough of. Seriously, if given my druthers, I might eat entire jars of it in one sitting. So when you put it on a shortbread cookie and enrobe it in chocolate, I'm there, brother.
Scott T. Holland of Irresistible/Immovable asks what my least favorite sporting affectation is in wrestling.
I don't know why it grates on me, but whenever anyone, announcer, fan, official WWE dude on Twitter, says a match has a "big fight feel," I get douche chills. I blame Dana White for force-feeding that phrase to his announcers, because so many WWE dudes love the shit out of MMA, they try to affect a lot of what goes on in the ring from the "real" counterpart. Don't get me wrong. Even if I'm not a fan of MMA, I have no problems with it. However, not everything from that world needs to be ported over to wrestling. Submission holds and unique strikes? Fuck yeah, anything to diversify the variety of matches I can see on my TV. But don't pander to me about something being a "big fight feel." Let the match speak for itself. The phrase's inclusion into WWE lexicon is just another part of their false-ringing, self-aggrandizing hype machine.
@NielJacoby asks which wrestler I thought had a low ceiling who has surpassed it, and which wrestler I thought had a skyward limit who hasn't panned out.
I'll admit that I was part of the mob of fans who thought Ted DiBiase was the breakout star of Legacy. I liked Cody Rhodes well enough, but I never really thought his ceiling was anything higher than middle of the show dude. Maybe his was a case of being suppressed in the tag team by Randy Orton being such an overbearing leader. However, ever since he got the "Dashing" Cody Rhodes gimmick, I've done nothing but get higher and higher on him to the point where, now, I feel like he's going to be a fine 1A to Daniel Bryan's 1 in the babyface ranks.
As for the dude I thought had a high ceiling who flamed out, well, DiBiase comes to mind. He had the look, I thought he could cut a decent promo at first, he had it together in the ring, and hey, even later on, I thought the DiBiase Posse was a great way for him to get a cult following. I guess Zack Ryder showed everyone how grassroots campaigns are repaid. I want to say he was never given a legit chance, but the truth of the matter is that DiBiase did have a golden opportunity to run with that trust fund Million Dollar Champion story. They didn't do him a lot of favors, sure, but I was left underwhelmed by his presence in that character everywhere but inside the ring.
@DethlikeSilence asks if Kyle O'Reilly is the next Pro Wrestling Guerrilla World Champion.
That company put so much juice behind Drake Younger that I was shocked he didn't take the belt home at any point this summer. I still want to say he's the one to beat Adam Cole, but if I had to criticize PWG in one area (and believe me, giving them critiques can be a challenge sometimes), I would say that they miscalculate when to pull the trigger on a guy and then give up on them when their peak crowd reaction dies down. Brandon Gatson and Willie Mack are prime examples of this syndrome. Obviously, Younger is aligned with O'Reilly, Joey Ryan, and Candice LaRae as part of the resistance against Mount Rushmore, and he's still super over with the fans. O'Reilly is a guy to me who feels more at home as a heel for one, and someone who is a bit more evergreen due to the fact that he'll have marquee matches around the country as long as he keeps getting bookings alongside Davey Richards. But I didn't answer your question. I say no, Younger's the next PWG Champion if I had to put money on it.
@Insane24Se7en asks which three wrestlers I'd most want to write biographies.
You know, I've never read any wrestling-related book ever? Not even Have a Nice Day. But anyway, if I had to pick three people to write autobiographies in terms of both insight and entertainment level...
Vince McMahon - Honestly, he's the only one whose story I want to read, even if I know that he wouldn't be fair at all writing it.
Bill Apter - He's basically the only wrestling journalist who matters to me historically (for the record, all my peers today within the blogosphere are doing a bang-up job changing the image), and he's gotta have a ton of stories on getting Pro Wrestling Illustrated together.
Mae Young - In an industry where women traditionally don't last long at all, she's tenured over 70 years. She's gotta have some insight.
@mikepankowski asks if the Orioles/Rays game from last night would have ended before the mailbag got posted.
I did not start writing this mailbag until this morning, and the game was already over, but was there anyone left at the game to verify whether it actually ended on a baseball play? I mean, eighteen innings is a long time to play ball. I know people who struggle to get through nine innings. How do we know that they didn't just flip a coin to see who'd win rather than keep playing that game right now?
@fairbeezy wants to know whom I think is the equivalent to the Houston Astros or Jacksonville Jaguars in professional wrestling.
To be as bad as the Astros or Jags, one would have to combine a special blend of ineptitude and unpopularity. I don't know, Mason Ryan? Chavo Guerrero? Sin Cara? Let's go with Sin Cara.
Finally, @TheEnforcer4 asks are vee not men?
We are Devo.