Category: Wrestling Musings

So according to TMZ.com, WWE has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, telling him to stop using the name they own. Beefcake is currently featured on Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling show, where a bunch of celebrities learn to wrestle and subsequently forget to do so when their time on the show is done… at least that’s my thought.

Anyway, the golden middle-aged guy who saved wrestling Eric Bischoff posted a comment on his blog, which reveals more about this situation than the TMZ story says. I don’t want to say what he says because I actually want you to read the post… so here it is. Read it and come back.

Now I can’t agree with Uncle Eric about the quality of the show… mostly because I haven’t seen it and most probably won’t unless I move to the states… which isn’t fucking happening, but I will agree on the notion that Vince hates to do new things. That must be why I haven’t seen him do anything new.

While I’m not the biggest fan of past-their-time celebrities wrestling each other in fake matches, it’s at least a different concept and I’m sure the show has its audience. Hopefully it does well and it sticks around for a while.

(2019 Update: What the fuck are you drinking, 2008 Dave? By the way, the winner of the competition was Dennis Rodman, because of course it was.)

So apparently Cena has yet to swap the Big Gold Belt for his usual spinner garbage. I give it about a couple weeks before that happens.

Regarding the tournament… why call it an Intercontinental Championship tournament when the top prize is a shot at the champion himself rather than the title? Who names these things and why are they allowed to live?

So they’re bringing back the Slammy awards… wow, that’s so random.

The McMahon kids… ugh. Please go away… PLEASE GO AWAY! BRING BACK MIKE ADAMLE! At least he was inoffensive… for a time… but definitely more tolerable than the kids…

That’s it for now.

In what is undoubtedly the worst kept secret in wrestling (well… at least until the next worst kept secret in wrestling rolls around), former WWE World champion Chris Jericho returns to RAW, sporting shorter hair and a spiffy new entrance. Yeah, they’ll push his return like a big deal for a short while, but then it won’t be long before they have him fighting over Triple H’s dog.

On the flip side, though, is this something you’d want to do with a guy like Chris Jericho? He’s a big name in and out of the ring, he has his own band, he has some mainstream appeal… do you really want to kill that to sate the minds and egos of the little men.

According to this article and the proceeding video (which you can check out here), Jake “The Snake” has gone bonkers after sipping a few drinks or twenty. Normally, I’d say that this is mildly funny and amusing, but after watching that vid, I almost find it sad that he’d turn out this way… maybe he should quit while he’s still… um, yeah.

And you know what the funny thing is? Apparently, this is the same guy who had posted a very detailed analysis of last week’s RAW on his MySpace blog. It absolutely boggles the mind on how he could have gone from fine-tuned commentaries on the net to hanging your dick out at a benefit wrestling event.

Just go away, Jake. As a favor to all of us and as a favor to yourself. You’ve done everything you could have ever done in the business, now it’s time to step aside before you become even more of a joke and embarrassment. We already have a joke of the industry walking God’s green Earth: his name is Hulk Hogan.

Sometime last year, Ric Flair started a financing company. A year later, said company is now out of business and the site now has contact information for anyone who wants to book Ric. Yeah, that’s a bit of a fair trade. “Hey, kids. Ric Flair Finance is out of business, but to make for it, you can book Ric Flair to be on your show and then receive a note from WWE preventing Ric from appearing.”

Still, it’s always sad to see a venture go down the crapper. And I would have thought Ric would have done fairly well in financing. Oh well.

There appears to be at least one disgruntled wrestler within TNA according to rajah.com. A TNA wrestler currently in the midst of a push made the following remark to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter: “Impact sucks so much I don’t even watch myself on television anymore.”

Well, we can say for sure that anonymous TNA wrestler isn’t totally bashing the company. After all, he only says that Impact suck and not necessarily the entire promotion or any of its storylines. Although to be honest, I’m not entirely surprised if the guy really feels that way about TNA.

On the bright side, CM Punk is still your World Heavyweight Champion… so there, some good news today.

Haven’t bashed WWE in a while now, so let’s have some fun.

Tonight is the second Million Dollar contest, where a bunch of random fans will be eligible to win thousands of dollars (with one lucky fan possibly winning two dollars – yes, I’m serious). I don’t know about you, but I had such a good time watching the Million Dollar mayhem (sarcasm, of course – although LOL at Vince being rick rolled) that I immediately switched to an older Ring of Honor show that was airing on the Fight Network.

Yeah, Vince. I’m really looking forward to tonight’s publicity stunt as well as your ongoing quest to devote as little time and money as possible to the contract wrestlers that risk their lives to keep you in business.

Top notch, man!

So I am currently working to restore the 2003 Bite commentaries to the archive and I came across this tidbit from the January 15th, 2003 edition of the Bite.

I’ve purchased the March 2003 issue of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. One particular piece in it is called Talkin’ Trash. Supposedly, they take the ten most talked-about things in wrestling and sum up their gut reaction. For the first time ever, I’ll put three of those topics here and follow it up with my own brief comment.

VINCE MCMAHON MENTIONS POSSIBILITY OF BRINGING BACK ECW
PWI states: Yeah, that’s exactly what we need, a third half-assed brand under the WWE banner.
Dave Says: If Vince McMahon mentions a possibility of bringing back ECW, there’s an even better possibility he’s full of shit. Remember all that talk about bringing back WCW in June 2001 before the Invasion crap?

Five years later and what do we have? A half-assed brand under the WWE banner that happens to bare the ECW initials but has nothing to do with the original ECW product, thus not bringing back anything and proving that Vince was indeed full of shit.

Bow, puny fools. Bow before me… and PWI.

(2024 Update: To be fair, the fact that ECW turned out to be less of a revival of the “original” ECW and more of a reskinned bottom-tier WWE show shouldn’t have been much of a surprise to anyone with even a quarter-functioning brain who has followed WWE on and off air for ages. Neither the Apter mags nor the Meltzer rags were required to make this prediction in the first place.)

WWE has apparently signed a deal with Mattel as far as toys are concerned. Meanwhile, Jakks Pacific, the company doing the WWE toys now, has signed a deal with TNA to do their toys. Just what we always needed; Barbie in a Diva Search contest. The sad thing is Barbie could very well be the most talented Diva of the bunch should she enter.

Sadly, both of these deals are expected to take affect in 2010.

(2024 Update: We took this piss out of this deal happening, but the WWE/Mattel relationship continues to be a beneficial one as of this brief update. The TNA/Jakks Pacific deal, on the other hand? Not so much. Oh well. Maybe they can fire that up again now that TNA is no longer a joke… or not. Whatever. I don’t care.)

You know the funny thing about hype? Chances are you’ll never live up to it.

I say this about Brock Lesnar: he had put up a good fight for a minute there, even getting a foul for a shot to the back of the head. Unfortunately, all it took was a simple little leglock from Frank Mir to put down the former WWE champion. It was a complete embarrassment of a fight and one of the reasons why I prefer watching “scripted” entertainment as opposed to a real fight.

In any event, I went past the Brock match and tried to watch the rest of the show, on which 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.

(2011 Update: May do very well? Brock Lesnar would eventually win the UFC World championship; the only guy to hold the top championship in both WWE and UFC… I severely doubt anybody else is going to repeat that feat.)

This is a thing. Mind blown.