Quick Thoughts On UFC81

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.)

DTM BLOG Classics #34 – The Weather And Other Stories

The string of bad weather began this past Wednesday, which started off nicely with some rain and wind (yeah right) and then when I get out of work, everything is frozen over and windier. Only the roads were ice-free, but the sidewalks were death-traps waiting to happen.

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First Impressions – Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360)

I got to play this game at one of my cousin’s houses a couple weeks ago and meant to comment on it then, but I got busy and so you’re getting my thoughts now. Now I only played about a couple hours of the game, but usually that’s enough to warrant some thoughts and opinions.

First of all, the graphics look pretty sweet, even on a rinky-dink old tube TV and the sound is fairly standard, crisp, appropriate sounding sound. Barring the intermission scenes which take place in present day, the story is rather workable and gripping. As for the gameplay, the controls are pretty solid, it’s fairly easy to play, and it doesn’t really get too boring. If you seem lost on what you have to do, a little window will pop up to remind you of what you have to do – a nice feature even if it gets redundant later on. All in all, my first real foray into the next generation of video games was a good deal. If you have a Xbox 360, go ahead and pick up Assassin’s Creed.

Classic Bite Commentary #72 – January 28th, 2008

So I’m just minding my own business visiting some sites, checking out the new AVGN and Irate Gamer videos, when I get Messengered by a friend of mine. The following conversation actually happened, I promise…

So my bud’s first message was “Dude, did you hear Heath Ledger just died?”

“Who?” I replied, not immediately knowing who he was talking about.

“The Brokeback Mountain guy?” he emphasized

It took me a while before I wrote “You mean the guy from A Knight’s Tale?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn. That sucks.”

And then in a long pause, he added. “So what happens to Batman?”

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RAW (Jan. 21, 2008) – Now In Pretentious HD

Last night, WWE made the leap to high-definition filming for all their programming, with RAW being the first show of this new technological advance. Great for some people who have HD televisions, noteworthy for those who don’t… but otherwise, I can’t comment on the quality of the video since I still have an old TV and the differences are negligible.

Now, the show on the other hand… heh. That’s another story.

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DVD Review – The Best Of WWE Raw (15th Anniversary Set)

15 years ago, Monday Night RAW debuted. 10 years ago, RAW featured Mike Tyson and Steve Austin almost going at it. 5 years ago, RAW celebrated its tenth anniversary with a piss-poor awards show that was generally disliked by anyone who watched it (and the DVD they released was no better). Now it’s the fifteenth anniversary of WWE’s flagship Monday night show and the company has decided to celebrate with a three-hour reunion episode (which was actually pretty good), a quick music CD featuring entrance themes of more popular RAW superstars, and a 3-disc set which shows the best moments of RAW, throughout its 15 year run.

For the most part, this is a pretty sweet deal. As someone who only got into this stuff during the Attitude era, it was pretty neat to see stuff I hadn’t been able to witness back in the day. Even revisiting some of the more memorable moments like BANG 3:16 and McMahon’s Stooges coming out to Real American (back when making fun of Hulk Hogan was perfectly acceptable behavior) was a treat. There are also a couple matches here and there, although they are outweighed by the amount of vignettes included.

Most of the footage is pretty solid, although there does seem to be some “recycling” of past edited footage for the sake of filling the disc (the ECW chapter seems to be ripped right from the Rise and Fall of ECW DVD they put out a couple years back), but it doesn’t really kill the product. Just about the only other flaw is that everything on this 3-disc set really serves as a reminder of how great and predictable RAW used to be in its glory days in comparison to what’s being shown now.

If you want to revisit the days of RAW back when it was actually unpredictable and daring, you should pick this set up. It’s a nice companion piece to the RAW show that aired a couple weeks back.

Cubed.

So many people can say that they’ve got the hottest new video game console on the market, whether it’d be the Wii, XBox 360, or even the Playstation Grill. Since I’m not one of those folks, I’ll just say I got a Gamecube for thirty bucks, thus granting me possession of three of the four consoles of the previous generation (the last missing system being the Dreamcast, but I’m not going out of my way to find one because I have no bloody room to stock pile these consoles).

Along with the Cube, I also managed to proquire a Game Boy Player, which allows you to play Game Boy games on TV. This came about roughly a week after I had picked up the Super Game Boy peripheral for SNES, which works fine on the spiffy FC Twin console. Oh well. More retro stuff for me, I suppose.

The Winners And Losers Of 2007

(2024 Update: Longtime followers of my web stuff will notice that this list hits slightly different from what was previously posted. The reason being is that this is a slightly updated version of the list that I had forgotten about until recently. It replaces the version that was posted back in 2011.)

Another year is in the can… and this is one where I can safely say can be sent to the abyss where it belongs.

I will be completely honest with you. 2007 was not a good year on both a personal level and in terms of overall entertainment, particularly within a realm of sports-entertainment, if you get my drift.

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