Wacky Wrestling Quote Wednesday 7-28-10

"I have decided that when I win my next championship, I'm going to thank Ron Artest's therapist too."
-Samoa Joe, the true American badass

Just a little tweek here or there.....

I may be asking the wrong audience but does anyone remember that episode of Friends where Ross and Joey's TV magically started getting free porn all the time and they were afraid to change the channel because they didn't want to lose it so they just watched porn all the time for multiple days straight? I tried to get youtube to help me out here, but the sugar addled 14 year olds running that thing are apparently a tad to young to be interested in Friends. Alas.

ANYWAY, so basically the guys watch porn for days on end and they decided they have to stop when everything in their world basically becomes about porn. They get very indignant when all the pizza delivery girl wants to do is deliver pizza, or when the bank teller just gives them their money, etc.

Sometimes watching wrestling makes me feel like that.

It is really really really hard to appreciate an athlete being a jerk without pondering how he could have been even worse.

Of course I'm still talking about Lebron.

The Historian and I spent a really long time this weekend trying to figure out exactly what was missing from Lebron "taking my talents to South Beach" James' special last week, and I think we've finally got it. So now, from a wrestler's perspective, top 3 things Lebron shoulda woulda coulda done to make his heel turn bigger and better:

3. The timing. As any good wrestler knows, it's not just about what you do, it's also about when you do it. While the press conference is all well and good, this really should have been announced immediately after Game 6 of the playoffs. Hugging Doc Rivers? No. He should have socked him. Then as Cleveland Fans cheered, he should have DOUBLED the turn and peeled off his Cleveland jersey to reveal a Heat jersey underneath, punched his coach and "Oh my GOD....that's Pat Riley's entrance music!!!!". Hiring JR to scream that last line would have been a nice touch.

2. The sneer. Of course, I'm not saying the hour special shouldn't have happened. It absolutely should have. Throwing your mother under the bus was a nice touch too (question: when do I get to see the footage of the first time Lebron's mom tries to go grocery shopping after this????). What it was missing was something for the fans. Why merely break their hearts when you could antagonize them? "Yeah, I'm going to South Beach. I mean, have you seen the Cleveland Fans? They suck. Especially the children. God I hate those kids." Then he could have taken out the whole Boys and Girls Club and it would have been awesome.

3. The crazy. This is really the one he should have gone for. There's been a lot of talk in the media about Lebron and "how could he have done this well". I personally go with the theory that there's was no doing this well....if he's sane. I think he should have left everyone who saw that special with the deep impression that he had lost it. Here's what I think he should have done. Sub out "Tommy Dreamer" for "Mo Williams" and "Mikey Whipwreck" for "Mo West" and "Raven" for "Dwayne Wade" and it totally works:


I think that would even have made Kobe flinch.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether....

Myths and legends die hard in America. We love them for the extra dimension they provide, the illusion of near-infinite possibility to erase the narrow confines of most men's reality. Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of 'the rat race' is not yet final."
— Hunter S Thompson The Great Shark Hunt, 1979

Lebronomania is running wild.....

The wrestling and Lebron comparisons are now ubiquitous (at least 4 people in Bill Simmons mail bag along made the comparison directly....the only analogy that rivaled it was the Vinny Chase/Ari Gold show down from Season 3 of Entourage) so I won't belabor the point.

All right....I will for a quick second because I have to honor the person who set their heel turn scene to JR screaming "Oh My God....that's Pat Riley's music!" which actually made me laugh out loud.

Since I can't say anything about the wrestling connections here that hasn't been said before, I will simply tell you this Cleveland: The Rock actually warned you.

Think about that and have a nice day....

I've been feeling a bit like a badass on the train lately.

This summer's been sweltering and thanks to a rogue platelet donation accident I have an absolutely enormous and disturbingly colored bruise on my arm that I have just given up trying to hide. I also have had a break from class and have been catching up on a few wrestling books in an attempt to get a little more edjumacated about this crazy world of sports entertainment. Between the enormous heroine addict bruise and the weird book covers, I've been getting a lot of weird looks.

Strange looks aside however, I really think a wrestler's autobiography is the single best type of book to have on a train ride home from a long day at work. Take yesterday for example: I left for work at 7 am. I got home from work at 9pm. For those 14 hours, I dealt with politics, rivalries, jealousy, pettiness and waaaaaaaaay too many budgetary issues. I was stressed, I was exhausted. After 5 minutes of reading "The Death of WCW" though, my stress was gone and all I could think was "thank God I know that I will never ever go in to work worried that I'm going to break my neck, my foot, sever an artery, or herniate a disc".

They should pass these books out in business school.

Wacky Wrestling Quote Wednesday 7-7-10

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
- Marcus Aurelius

5 Athletes I think I would like more if they became wrestlers right now....

After pondering yesterday's post, it occurred to me that there are plenty of athletes out there who currently have a whole lot of untapped potential. As such, here is my quick guide to athletes who I would like more if they were wrestlers. To be clear....these are not the five athletes I think would make the best wrestlers, or 5 athletes I currently don't like (necessarily), just ones I think I would truly enjoy more if they ditched their current sport and started taking some nasty falls off the turnbuckles:

5. The entire French soccer team

First they screw the entire country of Ireland, then they turn on their manager, blow it at the World Cup, and throw the worlds biggest hissy fit? I've got $5 that says they're already under contract with Vince just in case this NXT stable thing doesn't work out.

4. Tom Brady

After a so-so comeback last year, I think Brady should cut ties with football all together and go in to wrestling. I see some versatility here: he's good looking and could definitely buddy up with Cena with the Massachusetts/golden boy connection, but with the model wife and the millions of dollars, he could go heel easily. Interestingly enough, he'd also have automatic heat in Tampa Bay (near TNA headquarters, sorta), the Carolinas (for THE MARK, North Carolina is a hot bed of wrestling history) and Philadelphia (also a city with lots of wrestling history) because of his Super Bowl wins. This could also be used to the WWE's advantage during football season when they start losing ratings to Monday Night Football. Why fight forces when you can use them Daniel-san? Just don't ever let him reference the XFL, and I think we're good to go on this one.

3. Venus and Serena Williams

It's no secret that I hate the Divas division of the WWE, and TNA is doing their damnedest to catch up with them in terms of insulting every female alive. That's where these two come in. They're jacked, they're not afraid to show some skin, and they've got a crazy father just to add some flair. Start them in a feud where they eat the Bella twins for lunch, and continue from there. Thanks.

2. Kobe Bryant

Everyone outside of LA pretty much already hates him, he's got a cranky irritating wife who I'm SURE would be on camera in a heartbeat if she was asked, and he's got some legitimate badassery cred for not flinching here:



After watching him in the Finals, I not only think he could be a top heel, I think he'd take a dive in to a pile of thumbtacks and get up smiling. Put another way: Kobe Bryant has no soul. He's in.

1. Tiger Woods

Yeah, I'm stealing this from the Historian, but it's one of the best points he's ever made: after everything Tiger's been through, this man is just crying for a heel turn. Apology press conferences? I don't think so. Why? BECAUSE I'M TIGER WOODS AND I'M BETTER THAN ALL OF YOU!!!! YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS DON'T APPRECIATE HOW GREAT I AM...YOU SHOULD FEEL HONORED TO HAVE EVEN BEEN ABLE TO WATCH ME PLAY!!!! DID I SLEEP WITH ALL THOSE WOMEN, YES I DID, AND I ENJOYED EVERY MINUTE OF IT.....WHY? BECAUSE I'M TIGER WOODS AND I'M THE MOTHER@#$&% MAN!!!!

Seriously Tiger, what have you got left to lose? Your wife? Your sponsorships? Your winning streak? Nope, they're gone already. It's time for some therapy. More than anyone else in the world, you know Tiger's had some vivid dreams about doing this already. In the words of Nike, Just Do It.

I do want to express myself, okay? And I don't need 37 pieces of flair to do it!!!

I had a major paper due this past week, and as such have been totally good for nothing but catching up on sleep and watching tons of World Cup action while wondering how my condo association would feel about me getting a vuvuzela.

Anyway, is anyone else totally intrigued by the international freakout over all these people taking these horrible dives? I think every single day last week either Around the Horn or Pardon the Interruption mentioned at least once a day how awful the shenanigans were from teams trying to get the call to go their way.

I'm sure where I'm going with this is as obvious as your average Raw plot twist, but let's go there anyway....

Can we all just stop and admit for a second exactly how much we all love the acting????? If we didn't, there would be instant replay for every single big game for every single sport. We have the technology people, we're just not using it because we love it. We all secretly want athletes to have to ham it up, to play for our sympathies. We want good guys and bad guys, we want archetypes, we want to be able to classify these silent athletes, we want to feel like we know something about the character of these guys....since after all isn't one of our most pretentious justifications for youth involvement in sports that it "builds character"? Heaven forbid some kid says they just like beating other kids....no no, they're supposed to like competing. We want to know when someone takes a dive that they're not a good person, that we can sit and judge them.

I think the screw job is one of our favorite parts of sports, but no one wants to admit it. Go ahead and ask ten sports fans if they'd want a perfectly and painstakingly officiated game. I guarantee they all pause before answering. They'll come up with about 5 reasons why you could never do it, then start mumbling "well it will never happen". Why isn't this on the top of all of our wish lists, if fairness is what we all want? Why can't we admit that we all love a little flourish?

Sometimes I think wrestling fans are the only honest fans in all of sports. We've seen the embellishments for what they are, and we've kept watching. In some ways, as Mick Foley points out, it goes even further. In other sports, when someone gets hurt, they stop. In wrestling, Stone Cold breaks his neck and finishes the match.

I'm about to end the rant, and I promise I'll have something more amusing tomorrow, but here, for THE MARK, is what wrestlers do when they get injured: