Cross Face Chicken Wing

Grantland's style is mostly essays and navel-gazing. Even though the content is thin and meaningless, it's usually written well. Dave's run-on sentences and "unique" grammar would seem very out of place.

I enjoyed his Dead Wrestler of the Week posts at Deadspin. His Grantland work has been terrible.

Actually there's a thing in the Observer from around the time the UWF trophy cover came out. Dave says most of the comments he'd heard about that picture were in the same vein of "why were all those guys staging a photo together?' It's fine because wrestling was and still is portrayed as a legit competition on some level. Boxers who talk trash and punch each other in the face over and over again still get together for a news conference/weigh-in/photo-op before the fight. Obviously, I think way too much about things like this......

Harley as an NBA Jam character back in the day would have been amazing. Who would have been his teammate? The possibilities are endless.......

Pretty much everything is justifiable as realistic in a wrestling/entertainment sense with a little imagination. An Irish whip is the equivalent of throwing someone into a wall. Criss-cross is the equivalent of chasing someone. I could go on and on..... Munching on someone else's open wound cannot be related to anything besides a literal fight to the death or a zombie attack, which wrestling does not portray itself as (at least in my view). It's silly. Why give yourself hepatitis when you can just punch/kick/stab/gouge/headbutt/elbow/whatever to the wound and do a lot more damage than biting it? It also looks a lot more gay than it does brutal.

Agree on this. Biting the cut is more silly and stupid than brutal and cool. I can see a man biting another man's cut in a fight to the death, but not in a wrestling match that is being sold as a competitive sport (at least on some level. What about in a no dq/no holds barred/lights out/cage match etc. There's a reason why the belts are so often not on the line in AWA cage matches. Still dumb. And unrealistic. These are pro wrestlers, not zombies or vampries.

Agree on this. Biting the cut is more silly and stupid than brutal and cool. I can see a man biting another man's cut in a fight to the death, but not in a wrestling match that is being sold as a competitive sport (at least on some level.

How in the hell do some of you have time to watch these sets multiple times?

Terrible news. Thoughts and prayers to Ric and his family.

"Serving the narrative" can mean different things to different people. What I think serves the narrative might make absolutely no sense in your view. It all kind of depends what we view a match narrative to be in the first place.

I hate it when the announcer just randomly says shit because he has nothing else to say. Maclin would just yell random things for no apparent reason on this match. "BIIIIIGELOOOOOW" "THE BEEEEEEEEAST FROM THE EAST" "YOOOOOOONIFIED WORL TITLE" There's nothing wrong with a little silence every now and then to let the match itself get over. No need to fill up possible quiet parts by just randomly saying someone's name or nickname.

I actually liked Dory's Euro upper-cuts and spinning toe hold. They actually looked believable, unlike everything else Dory did. Dory threw some of the weakest punches I've ever seen in this match. I couldn't tell if he was trying to wipe Rocco Rock's nose or punch it during the sequence at the end. Dory looked like a Mulkey brother, only taller.

There was absolutely no vibe in the building for this match at all. Not sure if that was becasue of the slow start or the general stupidity of the ECW crowd (probably both), but either way, this match sucked.

In honor of Andre, I am going to drink 113 beers and a case of wine while listening to this.

Does anybody have any leads on how to buy Gary Hart's book for a realistic price, not $200? http://www.amazon.com/Playboy-Gary-Hart-Li...words=gary+hart

How would you book the Yeti's return? Would you try and make him (it?) into more of a badass character? Or would you have him reprise his initial debut and just waddle into the ring and start humping somebody?

If this restults in the Yeti returning, I'm all for it.

Harley has been quiet lately. Did he have a few too many Old Fashions with Don Draper and Roger Sterling? Or maybe Draper's influence caused Harley to drop everything and marry some young girl half his age that is now consuming his every waking moment? Or perhaps Kerry King kicked Harley out of Slayer like he just kicked out Dave Lombardo and Harley is laying low for a while.

Ah yes, forgot the early Rock releases.

Depends who is buying them. Good sales figures for a DVD are much lower than good sales figures for a PPV. If 30,000 hardcores buy the DVD it is good business for them. Doesn't mean he will/did draw massive gates around the country or sell huge shows as a headliner. I'm not arguing that at all. My post was just an observation. Not trying to make any sort of larger point. I could be missing a few, but it looks like Hart has four DVDs where he is the main draw or co-main draw. Austin also has four, Hogan has three and Rock has two. I get that generating PPV buys and ticket sales > DVD sales, but you'd think WWE would devote more DVDs to the latter three since they were at the top of the two most recent wrestling booms. If you can sell tix and generate PPV buys, your name should also result in a bunch of DVD sales. If one were so inclined, and I'm not so inclined but I can at least see the argument, one could argue that timing is everything in life. Wrestling was due for a mainstream boom in the mid-80s and late 90s and Brett could have done the job if he were given the torch instead of Hogan/Austin/Rock. By the time Bret got his turn, people were burned out on wrestling and saw Bret as a tag-team guy.

Moondogs vs. Cactus Jack and Max Payne. The body odor alone from these four would probably clear out an entire arena.

For someone who supposedly wasn't a draw, they sure make a lot of DVDs about Bret Hart.

I dug the match. It was....different. In a good way. I didn't mind the crotch-based finish, either. Yeah, I said it. Crotch-based finish.

I don't know how I missed this thread since I mark out like a 10 year old whenever I see Kamala. To me, Kamala is pro wrestling. One of the reasons I love pro wrestling is something I refer to as the "WTF Element." The WTF Element is when somebody walks into the room and you're watching wrestling, they might be intrigued initially, but then they sit down, watch for a bit, say "What the fuck is this shit?!" and leave. That's Kamala in a nutshell. Just like pro wrestling as a whole, Kamala is fat, goofy, scary, funny, mean, violent, soft, racist, over-the-top, fun to watch, terrible to watch, nostaligic, etc., etc. Sometimes he has a good match, sometimes he's embarassing to watch. Sometimes the African savage schtick is offensive, sometimes it's hillarious. Sometimes I remember how Kamala scared me as a kid. Sometimes I wonder why someone so silly scared me as a kid. I could go on and on..... These are the same general feelings I get whenever I watch wrestling and I feel like all of these emotions come out at once whenever I watch Kamala. That's why I love the guy. As far as the stereotypical element of his gimmick: I've softened a lot over the years. A lot of my more conservative friends now think I'm a weak-assed, PC liberal. Even so, the Kamala gimmick doesn't bother me at all. It's pro wrestling. What do you expect?

Can we mix eras? Early 80s NJ version of Andre the Giant and Haku vs Hansen/Dibiase.