Category: Wrestling Musings

All posts related to pro rasslin’ that isn’t covering specific shows or events.

Minor Traffic Violations At Wrestlemania XLI

Some traffic related incidents occurred at last night’s Wrestlemania 41 event… and before anyone asks, the Ramblemania post will be up this coming Wednesday and yes, it’ll cover both nights. There will also be a RAW After Mania posted later that day.

Anyway…

Stone Cold Steve Austin drives an ATV down a ramp and hits a barricade that startles a fan at ringside. Apparently, the fan was unharmed, but none too happy about the incident. Do I smell a lawsuit? Who knows? Maybe WWE offers the fan a makegood package or something as an apology for the incident.

This was clearly an accident and Austin probably slipped or something. Obviously, they’ll need to be more careful next time.

And then after a show, a fan was hit by a tour bus as it was headed towards the WWE press media thing. If the fan was running after the bus, that’s probably on them. And if the fan was just standing there… that’s also on them because they should know better than to stand in the way of a tour bus that’s in a hurry.

This was clearly an act of stupidity on the part of the fan and hopefully, they have learned to fuck off out of the way of incoming traffic.

Have a safe Easter Monday, kids.

Someone At TNA Is Smart…

Source: https://itrwrestling.com/news/nixed-wwe-plans-for-joe-hendry-revealed/

Apparently, TNA World Champion Joe Hendry was supposed to appear on WWE television so he could feud with THE MIZ and then take a pinfall loss… and then someone at TNA (someone named Ariel Shnerner) said no because they didn’t want their reigning WORLD CHAMPION to lose to THE MIZ.

That TNA executive deserves a raise for protecting the integrity of their World title.

Hey, remember when WWF-contracted wrestler TAZZZ defeated WCW-contracted wrestler Mike Awesome for the ECW World title at a random ECW house show and then appeared on Smackdown as the ECW World Champion where he took a pinfall loss to Triple H? Because Pepperidge Farm sure as shit does.

And look, I’m sure Joe would have been happy with the added exposure of being on MONDAY NIGHT RAW with the TNA World Title on his shoulder… but even he would have to balk at sacrificing the integrity of that title (for whatever that’s worth these days) to show up on RAW and lose to THE MIZ.

It only goes to show that even in the much-ballyhooed Paul Levesque era that you all worship on a pedestal, there comes the occasional dumbass attack that produces stupid ideas like this.

 

25 Years Later And Ready To Rumble Is (Still) The Worst Movie In Human History

Twenty-five years ago, on this very day, Ready To Rumble was unleashed onto the world.

I never watched this thing in theaters, but even back in 2000, I’ve heard about how bad this film was. Not just in terms of being a bad wrestling movie, but also just a bad comedy in general. It wouldn’t be until a couple years later that I’d eventually get around to renting a copy of Ready To Rumble from the video store and see for myself what I was missing. After pressing PLAY, I bore witness to what everyone else had been raving (or raging) about these past few years. Shortly afterwards, I opened up Frontpage on my computer, started a new document, and proceeded to write the words “Ready To Rumble is the worst film in human history.”

This would have been back in 2003-2004 when I was still renting videos and also when I was first putting up stuff on the IMDB site. At some point, I was going to post this little write-up on there until I realized that I had more than whatever the usual word limit was for IMDB user submitted reviews… and also there was more than a fair share of colorful metaphors… so it never saw the light of day… well, until the move to this blog, which you can find here.

About a decade later, I’d revisit the movie as part of my Slideshow Movie Review series and I’m not quite sure that I truly vocalized my disdain for this film. So now, here we are and… listen, I am not going to try and convince you that this is a misunderstood masterpiece. That much is obviously when the title of this post is “25 Years Later And Ready To Rumble Is (Still) The Worst Movie In Human History.” And to this very day, I have yet to see a movie that I would consider to be worse than Ready To Rumble. I’ve seen plenty of juvenile films in my day. I’ve seen plenty of utterly terrible films. But none of them were as bad as Ready To Rumble.

Hell, if the day ever comes and I break my long-standing moratorium on Ghostbusters 2016 to give that a watch, you know what? Yes, that movie is gonna suck, but I can guarantee you that it won’t be as bad as Ready To Rumble.

(Maybe that’s why I don’t want to watch that movie now that I think about it. Imagine the horror I’d feel when the possibility exists of a movie that is WORSE than Ready To Rumble. I don’t even want to contemplate that.)

Look, I’m sure there are movies. People can come up and tell me that the Deuce Bigelow movies are the nadir of comedy films. And yeah, those are bad… but you already know going in that those movies are aiming for the lowest common denominator. Ready To Rumble aims a little lower than that. It’s a terrible movie that is so unfunny and yet reprehensibly stupid that it somehow makes you stupider with each passing second that your eyes and brain are exposed to this vapid piece of garbage. Now would I have had this same kind of contempt for this film had I not been a wrestling fan? And the answer would invariably be yes. In fact, if I had not been a wrestling fan or if I had downright hated wrestling, I probably would’ve despised this movie even more.

Look, I just rented a painfully dull and unfunny film called Leonard Part 6 from Amazon for the expressed purpose of watching a movie other than Section 31. Yes, the one with Bill Cosby… and yes, it is every bit as bad as people made it out to be. But you want to know something? The worst thing that I could say about this movie was that it was BORING. None of the jokes landed. None of the bits worked. All the actors were phoning it in. It was deathly dull. And yes, I would have considered this a big ol’ waste of time… but on the flip side, I did not walk away from Leonard Part 6 with the same kind of contempt and utter bile that I got from watching five minutes of Ready To Rumble.

Some time ago, F4WOnline guy Bryan Alvarez teamed up with former wrestler Lance Storm and indy wrestler/former MMA guy “Filthy” Tom Lawlor to review this movie. Alvarez, a former wrestler and a normally intelligent fellow, had claimed that this movie is not the worst film ever made. When pushed to name a worse one, he admittedly couldn’t name one, but maintained that this was not as bad as people say that it is. This proves that Ready To Rumble has the capability of rotting brain cells of any person who willingly exposes them to repeated viewings of this thing.

Anyhoo… here we are.

Twenty-five years later AND STILL the absolute worst movie in human history… Ready To Rumble.

See you all in another twenty-five where we get to do this shit all over again.

John Cena Was Always The Heel

On Saturday, March 1st, 2025, at the WWE Elimination Chamber premium live event from Toronto, 16x WWE World Champion and once franchise player John Cena did the unthinkable when he aligned himself with DWAYNE and beat the crap out of undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes, finally turning heel for the first time since 2003. Wrestling audiences and the WWE Universe were in awe, citing this as the greatest turn in recent memory.

My reaction to the turn? Took them long enough.

You folks need to understand something here. What John Cena did wasn’t going against his principles. He was simply doing what was best for the company that made him a household name. John Cena was all about doing what was best for the brand. If that meant toning down his act to be more acceptable to the kiddies, if that meant being the goofy do-gooder in the same vein as Hulk Hogan (minus the bullshit), if that meant siding with the company over things that fans took issue with, then that’s what he was going to do. People claimed that John Cena sold out, but really, they’re just seeing him for what he truly is.

See, in my eyes, John Cena was always the heel. Whenever he would be in a program against somewhat who deserved a run with the WWE title, I’d be rooting for the other guy. One only need to read my wrestling musings from the late-2000s to early-2010s when I would refer to Cena with juvenile names such as “John Worthless” or “John Useless” or some other stuff like that. Every time there was an up-and-coming talent that was catching fire and John Cena was somehow involved, that was usually the kiss of death for that up-and-comer. See, it wasn’t about Cena giving the new guy the rub, but rather it was about Cena taking the spotlight from the new guy; the idea being that “hey, if I pair up with this guy, people will stop booing me.”

They try this every single time and it not only almost fails every time, but the guy that they paired Cena up with that was popular with the fans… well, he’d be off to jobber territory, seen as collateral damage in the effort to make Cena look really, really strong. And so the end result becomes not only is Cena no more loved than before, but eventually, they figure out how to chant JOHN CENA SUCKS in line with his theme song. How bad was Cena getting it in the ass from the crowd? When Rock came along and Cena decided to be the defender of WWE honor because he’s a full-timer versus the part-timer Rock who says he cares but really doesn’t… people were rooting for the part-timer. It got to a point where anytime they try to do this part-timer vs. full-timer thing these days, nine times out of ten, they’ll cheer for the more popular part-timer because the full-timer comes across as a whiny geek.

And so one day, John Cena’s time in the ring is limited. He spends more time in Hollywood, he gets meme’d, he comes back for sporadic appearances to put over younger talent, including Austin Theory… with whom they’d proceed to do fuck all with afterwards. And when John Cena decided to go for one last farewell tour… well, this year’s he’s gonna win the Rumble… that didn’t pan out… so fuck it, he inserted himself into the Elimination Chamber and he won the match… and then he turned on Cody… and then he cut his promo a couple weeks later about being in an abusive relationship with the fans, who were just awful, awful idiot losers that kept booing him no matter what stunts he did to get their approval.

Nothing he said in that promo was untrue… but he’s just admitting what most of us already know. But then comes the unspoken part… people boo him being in the spot he’s in because they’d rather see other people be in that spot. In a sense, John Cena’s journey was similar to that of Roman Reigns when he first broke away from the Shield and WWE would attempt every trick under the sun to get people to like the guy because THIS TIME FOR SURE… and it never happened. In fact, what did happen was that Roman took time off for leukemia, came back, took time off because of COVID, and drastically reinvented his whole schtick to become the Tribal Chief he is today. So yes, he started off as a babyface hero nobody wanted, became one of the biggest heels that people started to like, and now he’s one of the top fan favorites in the company. Took him long enough to get there, but he got there.

This John Cena heel turn… if you want to call it that… isn’t going to mean anything in the long term. It’s not a paradigm shifting event like Hogan being the third man. It’s more along the lines of Andre The Giant, who was a fan favorite for years and often neglected by all who mattered, taking matters into his own hands by joining with evil forces to confront the fans’ new beloved babyface. It adds intrigue to the WWE Championship picture at Wrestlemania 41, but that’s about all it’s going to do.

And you know what? I’m fine with that.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t too keen on the whole Cody/Cena thing and even with this latest wrinkle, I’m still a bit on the cautious side of things. Still, you’ve got a bit of spice in a feud that desperately needed it. And if nothing else, fuels potential speculation for what happens next.

WWE 2K25 DLC Packs Revealed… Not A Lick Of Belief…

Source: https://www.sescoops.com/gaming/wwe-2k25/wwe-2k25-dlc-packs-revealed-legends-nba-stars-attitude-era-more/

For anyone who gives a shit, the DLC packs for the upcoming WWE 2K25 video game was revealed and anyone hoping that a certain TNA World Champion who appears whenever his name is said… well, his name was never mentioned. And therefore, he doesn’t appear. However, one of the DLC packs does include Abyss as a playable character, so it’s not all bad.

Otherwise… eh, I don’t care. Including that fellow who shall not be named in one of your stupid DLC packs would have been enough incentive for me to actually fork over money for this thing… alas, I can rest easy and stick with what I’ve got, which is more than enough.

Took Them Long Enough…

So apparently, something big happened in Toronto last night. Something the world never saw coming but were clamoring for this to happen since the dawn of time. I didn’t witness the event, I only heard about it just a few short minutes ago after I woke up, I thought about it for a bit, and said, “Took them long enough.”

And then I went back to bed.

In case anyone missed the State Of The Blog yesterday, I was going to avoid posting anything about wrestling this month outside of the scheduled PPV Musings, which means I’m not going deeper into this until April. I think, by that point, we’ll have a clearer picture on where things are going, but for now, just enjoy the ride.

Miro Gone From AEW

Source: https://www.f4wonline.com/news/aew/report-miro-released-from-aew/

Where the fuck is Miro? Who knows… but now we know where he isn’t.

How long before he crawls back to WWE, hoping for a fresh new run, and then realize he’s a small fish in a gigantic ocean?

Or maybe he takes a chance and goes to TNA.

Or maybe he goes back to his video games.

The world may know eventually… but hey, we can put this stupid meme to rest, I guess.

The Guzzling Goose Turd That Is AEW Grand Slam Australia

Source: https://www.sescoops.com/news/aew/aew-grand-slam-australia-scam-fan-backlash/

Someone at SEScoops.com – apparently feeling that today is a slow news day in the world of professional wrestling – decided to venture into the Reddit world and scour some opinions about whether or not AEW’s Grand Slam event in Australia is a SCAM.

A scam, you say? That’s serious business… or something…

Continue reading “The Guzzling Goose Turd That Is AEW Grand Slam Australia”

McSon-In-Law In WWE HOF

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Might as well get it out of the way now.

There’s a bunch of jokes to be made about the guy spearheading the Hall Of Fame putting himself in the Hall Of Fame, sleeping his way to the top, and all that, but honestly, when you look at his resume and everything he’s done – both positive and negative – is there any reason why he shouldn’t be in there? Sure, the pseudo-induction as part of DX was nice, but the man is more than leading an influential faction. Hell, what he’s doing now behind the scenes is actually more vital to the development of WWE than his in-ring career ever was… and that’s saying something when you’ve had an impressive in-ring career.

Whatever the case may be… we’re in the mood to celebrate the greatness that is Paul Levesque. Might as well give him an HOF nod and get that out of the way. The man has more than earned his flowers.

Royal Ramble post will be up this Wednesday.