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WWE Does Something Really Classy

Ric Flair

I’ve pretty much stopped watching wrasslin’, mostly due to the great Hornswaggle debacle of 2007. But I tuned in tonight to find out what happened at Wrestlemania. I was surprised to find out that Ric Flair was retiring. Just an angle? I thought so, but now I don’t.

At the end of the show, Flair gave his retirement speech, which was basically a thank you to the fans. Then HHH came out and thanked Flair and introduced a bunch of other guys who wanted to say thanks as well–guys I haven’t seen in a long time–The Four Horsemen, including Arn Anderson, JJ Dillon, Dean Milenko, Tully Blanchard, and Barry Windham. Lots of other old school wrestlers too–Ricky Steamboat, Greg Valentine, and Harley Race. Then some prominent guys who are currently wrestling and are close to Flair personally came out, then the whole cast came out.

Flair was crying, and everyone in the arena was chanting, “Thank you Ric!” A very nice way to pay tribute to a guy who IS professional wrestling, at least to people of my generation.

Whooo!

By the way, noticeably absent? Vincent K. McMahon.

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Three Things I Haven’t Let Go

When I first got hit with this meme by BillyMac, I thought the topic was “3 Things I Wouldn’t Let Go”. That one would be pretty easy–family, health, and some other random item.

But this is “3 Things You Haven’t Let Go”, which has a much different conotation. Maybe I’m inferring it incorrectly, and it’s vague enough for interpretation, but I take this as “3 Things I Haven’t Let Go (but probably should)”. Believe it or not, this is a part of my character I’ve really worked on over the past few years. I’ve really tried to develop “the ability to let that which does not matter truly go.” Despite my best efforts, I still have plenty options. After all, I am powered by spite.

Spite CanAs I’m trying to narrow it down to the top three, I’m realizing how much I don’t want to admit any of this publicly. It’s not the fear of baring my soul that’s holding me back–it’s the realization of how stupid they all are. All instances of forgiven, but not forgotten. In order of increasing ridiculousness on my part…

Las Vegas August, 2005
I was going out for a weekend with about 15 other guys. Soon after booking my ticket I saw that there were UFC fights that weekend, so I asked some other guys if they wanted to go. I could only buy eight tickets, and as soon as seven other guys said they were in, I bought 8 together. $100 per ticket before all the taxes and charges. Not a problem–these guys are all local and they all have jobs. I’ll get my money back this week, right? Wrong. But that’s not the worst part. Literally thirty minutes before the fights I met up with the final two guys who owed me for their tickets. They walked up with two other guys who I didn’t know, paid me for the tickets, and turned around and sold them for $200 each to the other guys right in front of me! Chuck Liddell is lucky he didn’t have to fight me that night.

Summer 1993
I was living in a dump of a house in Ft. Sanders with two other guys–$300 rent. We split the electric and basic phone service evenly, but if anyone had long distance calls they had to pay it themselves. The month he moved out, one of my roommates had $37 worth of long distance calls to his girlfriend in California. By the time the bill came, he was gone, and the other guy and I had to eat it. Sure, not a lot of money, but at the time it was, and besides it’s the principle. I never got the money back from him, but I did hit him in the back with a folding chair (part of the height of my pro-wrestling obsession) in Long Branch one night when he was playing pool. Surprisingly, it didn’t make me feel any better.

St. Patrick’s Day Rugby Tournament, Savannah Georgia, 2000
We had a pretty solid team, and were scheduled for a Sunday morning match. Of course we’d all gone out on and had fun on Saturday night. At game time on Sunday, we only had 12 guys there. We started the match shorthanded, and when the other guys finally rolled up, I was infuriated. I didn’t even want them to come into the game–my preference was to take an ass kicking and let them sit and watch it. After the match (we lost) I refused to shake their hands. I love all of those guys, but I haven’t let the fact that they didn’t show up for us that morning go. I could have stayed in Knoxville if all I wanted to do was drink beer and not play rugby. Under certain conditions and in the presence of certain people, this one still sends me into a mild rage.

See the common thread here? All cases of being let down by friends. So I guess that is my biggest pet peeve? Possibly.

Up next are:
SVD
Ivy
Taylor–fingers crossed she’ll relate this to public education

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You Mighta Heard By Now, We’re Doin’ a Little Survey

There were some pretty interesting results from my last poll–at least I thought they were interesting. I asked readers to choose (one) between free markets, free religion, free speech, and free beer.

With 50% of the vote, speech won pretty handily. I’d assume that the 29% who voted for beer were being funny. It’s easy when the punchline is provided, no? 14% chose free markets, and 7% chose free religion.

Why is this interesting? Mostly because free speech won so easily–much more easily than I would have predicted. I think I know why.

Scott HallIf you give me free speech, I can use it to get the rest of them. Okay, to get free beer it helps to be as handsome as ten movie stars, but you get the point.

There’s a reason why freedom of speech is the first right guaranteed in the Constitution. If we ever lose it, all is lost.

*** Bonus points to the people who know why wrestling great Scott Hall is pictured in this post.

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Canuck Buck Catches Up

Well, the Looney has finally caught up to the dollar. What should we expect from this? What is the most likely outcome–pandemonium or bedlam? Sorry, I just like using the same phrases as wrestling announcers. Surely we should be in a panic. I mean, Canada’s dollar just caught up to ours. Before today, they were a third world country, right?

This whole situation makes me glad that I took trips to Canadia with Billymac, Halfacre, and the Shippensburg Old Boys while the dollar was still riding high. Ottawa, and The Bare Fax especially, would have been a lot more expensive with today’s exchange rate. Yet somehow, it’d still be worth every penny.

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Yet Another Dead Wrestler

This time it’s Brian Adams, who was known as Crush when he was part of the tag team Demolition. This is happening way too frequently. The powers that be in pro wrestling have a reputation of chewing guys up and spitting them out–not really caring about what happens to them afterwards, but sooner or later this is going to come back to haunt them.

This is just bad marketing.

It’s sad that they will only be able to see the business side of what all of these deaths mean, but if those are the terms that get them motivated to try and change things, so be it.

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This Freaks Me Out

I’ve been a little worried about this whole Ron Paul thing for a couple of days, and today it only got worse. It started with the realization that one of my biggest fears has started to come true lately–this is starting to look like a Ron Paul blog. I haven’t been posting much stuff recently about rasslin’, getting held up at gunpoint by the gov’ment, or local porn stars. I remember how annoyed I got earlier this year with the “Run Fred Run” hype that was going on in the Tennessee blogosphere, and I don’t want to be doing the same thing with regards to Ron Paul, even if it is relevant.

Then my world really came crashing down. I had a conversation today with a friend of mine that has made me question everything in life I know to be true. To give those of you who know him a frame of reference, it’s that guy you’d least like to face in the front row. So I’m sure you can actually hear him saying, “I been readin’ yer website. You like that Ron Paul fella don’t cha?”

For those of you who don’t know him, he’s among the most reliable, solid, stand up guys you could ever know. He’s also very set in his ways. I wouldn’t go so far as to call him close-minded, but that is mostly due to the fact that doing so may put me in danger of having him choke me with my own small intestine. Let’s just say that he defends his own views strongly and leave it at that. Imagine what Fred Thompson would be like if he ate nothing but raw meat laced with gunpowder for a few months, and you’ll be close to understanding this guy.

Anyway, I was extremely shocked when he said, “I like that guy the best out of all of ’em. It kinda scares me that you like him too, ’cause you got some fv(ked up politics.” Believe me, it is just as scary to me as it is to him that we actually agree on who we’d like to see as the Republican nominee.

This Ron Paul thing may just work out after all. Hopefully I was wrong!

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Vince McMahon on Today

I saw Vince’s interview with Meredith Viera at the gym this morning. She pretty much grilled him about the Chris Benoit tragedy. Vince did his part and (correctly) portrayed Benoit as a monster, but it doesn’t seem like the media is going to let this steroid angle go.

The seem pretty set on making this out to be “roid rage”. Over a three day period? I don’t think so.

Now to the bigger question…is steroid use rampant in professional wrestling? Uh, you think? Does that question really even need to be asked?

Seriously, if you know so little about steroids and the signs of steroid use that you need to ask that question about anyone on the WWE roster, you don’t have the adequate background knowledge to ask if this was an instance of roid rage.

And again, why is the mainstream media even covering this beyond the published facts of the case? Yes, it is a horrible tragedy, and I can see why the people who actually follow pro wrestling want to know more about it, but outside of that small market it is just more sensationalist journalism.

In other late breaking headlines…Did you hear that Paris was on Larry King? Did you hear the iPhone is coming out in a week?

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More On Benoit Deaths

I just finished watching the tribute on RAW and logged on to see if there were any updates. The AP is reporting that the incident is being treated as a murder/suicide. That is truly shocking.

The station said that investigators believe the 40-year-old Benoit killed his wife, Nancy, and 7-year-old son, Daniel, over the weekend, then himself on Monday.

We can only hope that this isn’t true. No matter the cause, it is a huge surprise and tragedy. This will only make the situation more tragic and more shocking.

A lot of the people who commented on the tribute show tonight noticed that Benoit was a quiet and intense guy. He didn’t let a lot of people get close to him, yet he was really respected by all the guys in the locker room.

I didn’t realize before watching the show how ironic it is that he was one of my favorite wrestlers. I watch wrestling only for the story, usually ignoring the actual matches. Chris Benoit never talked. He didn’t hype anything or make threats or bust balls on the mike. But I always watched his matches because he was super intense and athletic. It was the closest thing to real you could get in pro wrestling.

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Chris Benoit and Family Found Dead

I was unbelievably shocked just now to read that The Canadian Crippler Chris Benoit and his wife and son were found dead in their Atlanta home. WWE.com released the news today, not mentioning it at the pay per view last night.

I’ve always loved telling people my story about The Rabid Wolverine. I ran into Chris Benoit in the parking lot when I was at the gym one day when WCW was in town. I’m a huge wrestling fan, by the way. Unlike the wrestlers who were working out in the gym that day, Chris Benoit was an incredibly nice guy. The other guys would just nod when I said “hello”. Benoit, on the other hand, replied with a friendly, “Hey! How’s it going?”

He was very gracious when I asked for a photo and asked if my friend and I were going to the show. A really nice guy, and on top of that, one of my all time favorite wrestlers. I hardly ever watch a match, but I always watched his because the guy could TRULY wrestle.

Wrestling will not be the same without him. WWE is doing a special tribute to him tonight. I’ll be watching.

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NASCAR and Pro Wrestling

I’ve been saying it for years. NASCAR is fixed. Professional Wrestling may have predetermined outcomes, but NASCAR is rigged. At least pro wrestling doesn’t claim to be real.

Finally I’m vindicated. One of NASCAR’s own has broken kayfabe and told the truth.

Two-time champion Tony Stewart likened NASCAR to professional wrestling and accused it of using bogus caution flags to shape races in biting comments made on his weekly radio show.

The day I apologize for dogging out NASCAR while defending pro wrestling is the day I have to watch John Cena chase Randy Orton around and around the ring for four hours straight.