Category: Wrestling Musings

So former WWE Superstar, non-rapist fellow, and all-around nusance Enzo Amore released a rap video and… I didn’t listen to it.

I’m not a rap guy; I like some rap when it has a good beat to it, but I generally don’t care for it. So when someone like a former WWE guy who was already grating on the ears when he was a featured player on TV decides to cut a rap song, I’m not going to show much interest either.

While I did not listen to the song, I did see the video – the mute function is a beautiful thing, after all. And when I say that I “saw” the video, I mean to say that I skipped through a whole bunch of it, which apparently featured a fat guy, a coffin, and Enzo flipping off the viewer. Suddenly, that ad-blocking gimmick on my computer makes me thankful I’m sending cents his way because of this stupid thing.

In any event, if that’s what he wants to do now, then all the best to him and hope he does well regardless of what direction he takes his future endeavors.

So long as he doesn’t take any more sick bumps in a rasslin wring. Lord Cyrus might not like that.

WWE Backlash was a pretty awful show, but the one bright spot was that it wasn’t a ten-hour show or anything. Well, turns out that was an accident.

Word has gone around that WWE sent their international broadcasters advance noting that starting with the Money In The Bank PPV, all WWE PPVs will start at 7 p.m. and have a run time of four hours or more. The exception would be Wrestlemania and Summerslam, which will undoubtably be ten-hour marathons featuring a bunch of shitty matches and even more failed attempts to try and get people to give a shit about Roman Reigns in a way that makes him feel like a big star and not just in a THIS TIME FOR SURE.

Yeah, well, you know what? I tap.

I showed a bit of weakness on the “road to Wrestlemania” and gave the B-shows a chance… and they failed miserably. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to watch a four-hour PPV where the best match on the card is the opening contest and the bed gets shat on afterwards. You know what? I’m perfectly content on using the WWE Network to watch a whole bunch of old wrestling PPVs that I haven’t seen in a long while or even at all. And if that’s all the wrestling musings I end up doing on this blog going forward, then I’m perfectly content with that.

So I will more than likely skip the Money In The Bank PPV… and the PPV after that… and who knows? Unless the Summerslam card stacks up to something worth a damn, I may as well skip that show too. Worst case scenario, I don’t touch another WWE PPV until the Royal Rumble. And if I do end up watching a show, it’ll be weeks after the fact when I’m bored and I need random background noise to keep me awake.

This saddens me, because we got all these great, talented guys on the WWE product. I like watching guys like Seth Rollins, AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Daniel Bryan Danielson, Kevin Owens, and others. They do good stuff and can pull off some awesome material and it just irritates me that the creative monkeys not only give these guys little to work with, but also manage to find ways to make me uninterested in anything they do. In some ways, I get irritated at seeing AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura get turned into a joke despite being awesome appearances while watching WWE attempt to get people to accept Roman Reigns as THE Guy, only to turn it into a running gag that I can’t take seriously anymore. I’m all but glad to see Daniel Bryan Danielson back to doing what he loves doing and am hoping he gets some deep material to work with in the future, but doubt that he will. I’d want to be able to give the women a chance, but how can I when WWE decides to put the focus on their failed UFC charisma vacuum?

So yeah, unless there’s something worth watching, I’m done with WWE PPVs until the Rumble rolls along. I think I’ll stick with watching some of the older stuff. Sure, there might be some stinkers, but at least they’ll be interesting… unless the focus is on McSon-In-Law. Then, it’s going to suck.

Source article can be read here.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Fox could very well be the new home of WWE Smackdown starting October 2019. The deal will not only ensure that Smackdown will air on FOX for five years, but the deal is estimated to be worth close to $1 billion. Now that’s a huge chunk of change right there.

Good news for WWE as they found a home for Smackdown and maybe Fox will give that show a good push in ads. Meanwhile, it looks like RAW will stay on USA network for the moment.

So the big story as of late is that ALL IN, the independent wrestling show thing that is organized by Cody (Rhodes) and the Young Fucks… er, I mean, Bucks (sorry; slip of the tongue and all that jazz) that’s being held at the Sears Arena in Chicago, has sold out in roughly half an hour. And without the benefit of television promotion, hyper hyperbole through the “usual” media circuits, or that WWE machine that people claim to hate but still support. For the record, I don’t hate the machine; just the shitty shows they’ve been putting out in the past few years.

As for ALL IN selling out, that’s pretty impressive. I’m sure we all had our doubts as to whether they could pull it off with what little in terms of promotion they had at their disposal, but the fact that they were able to pull it off shows that there is some genuine interest in what Cody and the Fucks (sorry, I mean Bucks… GODDAMIT WOO!) have in store for this show.

Think about it… there was nothing in terms of big-scale promotion; only lots of social media stuff and even then, not all that much. And on top of that, they didn’t have a card on there. It’s just three guys with a vision of sorts who wanted to put a big indy wrestling show at a rather big arena… and for the most part, their vision paid off in half an hour. There’s an interest in this show and now that there’s an audience, the real work begins.

Whatever the case may be come September – whether it ends up being a card for the ages or the proverbial drizzling shits – this is a good sign for the indy circuit and I wish Cody and the Bucks (got it right this time) all the best in their upcoming show.

Now if only they find themselves a nice streaming deal so that the rest of us can watch this thing…

And that’s not even counting the pre-show… for fuck’s sake.

That Daniel Bryan Danielson is now an active wrestler again…

Or that someone allowed a cameraman to film someone wearing an old WWF Attitude T-Shirt.

SOMEBODY CALL THE PANDA!

Originally posted on the old DTM Blog on February 4th, 2008:

Managed to get myself past the Brock match to see the rest of the show, whom a friend of mine foolishly blew fifty bucks on and taped the event for me. Other than a few quick moments, I couldn’t really get into the show. It just seems like after watching a bunch of sports-entertainers trying to make scripted entertainment seem real for a whole bunch of years, I’d expect a real fight to even more intense, only to be sorely disappointed as I watch two grown men in their boxers swatting each other like flies with about as much ferocity as a ball of cotton. Maybe I prefer my action to be scripted.

But let’s get back to Brock for a minute. Obviously his first UFC outing didn’t turn out too well, as after a minute of solid punches, he was caught in a leglock and forced to tap out. While I mentioned this already in a previous blog post, Brock is far from the next big choke. It’s his first match and naturally, you can’t win them all. But from the short time he was offensive, he didn’t look like a complete idiot and may do very well in his new UFC career.

So best of luck, Brock.

The Modern Take:

As is probably known, Brock Lesnar recovered from his first UFC loss and eventually became UFC Heavyweight Champion. And then he lost the title and came back to WWE in 2012, where he sporadically remains to this day… at least, as of this recording.

Unfortunately for the world of real fights and MMA, I never could find the enthusiasm to enjoy watching two people beat the crap out of each other. I can certainly respect the toughness of these individuals in regards to the training and endurance required to participate in such intense contests, but when it comes to actually sitting down and watching the fights, I find myself falling asleep faster than if I were to watch a HHH promo.

This is perhaps why I prefer the wrestling shows. Sure, the fights are all phoney-balooney and all that, but at its best, wrestling tell better stories and feature characters with larger than life (or at least very likeable) personalities that you can’t help but take a liking to. So, MMA fans. You can have your real fights and stick ’em. I prefer my fights to be staged and pre-determined.