Rang de Basanti from the film Rang de Basanti (2006)
Teri Mehfil Mein from the film Mughal-e-Azam (1960)
Rob Van Dam wins the WWE Championship at One Night Stand (2006)
CM Punk wins the World Heavyweight Championship (2008)
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So, it's been a few days and the work week is officially over. As I decompress a bit tonight, I have to honestly say that my enthusiasm regarding CM Punk's big win has definitely made this a good week for me. I know it is weird and pretty eclectic for me to get so much pleasure out of something as cheesy and over-the-top as pro wrestling, but I just can't shake it. I have watched Punk's win at least twice a day over the last 3 days or so and every time I thought about it this week, it has brought a smile to my face. I forget about politics, bills and all my other worries for a few moments and I'm just happy. Really. The whole angle was just wonderfully executed. If you don't know the story leading up to it and you don't know what "Money in the Bank" is, then it's probably all lost on you, but take my word for it that this was all way cool.
I started watching WWE again about a year and a half ago after a really long hiatus from all the current wrestling shows. Before that, I had basically just spent years watching the same old Memphis and ICW tapes and DVDs over and over again. Once I picked up WWE again and started watching Raw on a weekly basis, I really looked long and hard for one of those great "Raw" moments that are celebrated in the DVD retrospectives and YouTube compilations. But the writing for WWE is pretty sloppy and inconsistent at times and it's hard to get too excited about story-lines and feuds, especially when there seems to be a real tendency on the part of WWE to endlessly tease and screw with fans. The "big" moments are really few and far between these days. I think the last time I really jumped out of my seat was when Edge cashed in MITB and beat Undertaker for the Heavyweight title last year. Before that, it was when Shawn Michaels beat Cena after that hour-long bout in London after WrestleMainia 24. That was way cool. Jericho's comeback was a big deal and it was fun to see Shawn Michaels superkick Randy Orton a bunch of times. But that's really my short list of big WWE moments for the last 18 months or so. And Punk's win really trumps all of those for me.
A lot of Internet "smarks" have moaned and groaned about Punk winning in such a heel-like fashion, but I think that is a pretty lame complaint at the end of the day. I don't think it takes anything away from his charisma or appeal to have him turn the tables on Edge, who won the title from the Undertaker in the exact same way. That's the whole point of the angle -- to bring it full circle, really. Besides, it's best not to over-think this stuff at the end of the day and just enjoy the moment. It's called "sports entertainment" for a reason.
I saw it live on Raw and it was the coolest thing I have ever seen on television...ever! EVER! I screamed so loud that I scared the kids and the dogs!
I am a big Edge fan, but it was amazing to see Punk cash in MITB and totally steal the title. My throat hurts from yelling so much. Seriously, it went on for like ten minutes. I almost hyperventilated. Sweet.
August 27, 1994: Shane Douglas throws down the NWA title and makes history
Is there any better wrestling blog/column these days than Paul Heyman's "The Heyman Hustle"? I really don't think so. And is it really that big of a surprise that Heyman is so insightful? Nah. I mean, the guy changed the face of the pro wrestling industry almost a decade and a half ago and quite a bit of what wrestling fans see these days – good and bad – bears the unmistakable imprint of Heyman's creative genius. He doesn't have the golden touch every time, he's not always right, and sometimes he's downright unbearable...but when he is on the mark, nobody can touch him. His recent column on Ric Flair and the NWA Hall of Fame was both poignant and hilarious at the same time. And how great is it that Heyman can still get a rise out of the NWA's top brass almost a decade and a half after he almost single-handedly buried the entire promotion by having Shane "The Franchise" Douglas throw down the NWA title (watch the video here). Hell, the NWA was so pissed at Heyman after his last column that they even issued a press in an effort to refute his piece, but in the end they just ended up looking as ridiculous as they did when he screwed them in 1994. The man knows how to play ball. Too bad Paul E. probably doesn't read greeklish.org, because I totally think he is the man.
I am currently reading Hardcore History - The Extremely Unauthorized Story of ECW by Scott E. Williams and I have to say it is pretty good. In some places, it kind of reads like a synopsis of the The Rise and Fall of ECW and Forever Hardcore DVDs, but I like revisiting a lot of these old stories anyway and there are some good, relatively obscure nuggets in the book that make it a worthwhile read if you're interested in wrestling.
And speaking of ECW, over at 411mania.com, there's a new series underway called "The History of the (WWE) ECW Title." I just read part one today and found that it's not so much "history" as it is one person's opinion wrapped in contempt and elitism. Here's the first couple sentences:
At One Night Stand in 2006 Rob Van Dam cashed in his Money in the Bank title opportunity against WWE Champion John Cena. Thanks to the assistance of a Paul Heyman, Edge, and a table, RVD defeated Cena for the title much to the delight of classless, intolerant ECW fans worldwide.
Ummm...what? Wow, you jerk. Way to alienate a whole bunch of your readers right of the bat. Seriously, even though most people are less than excited about WWE version of ECW these days, I think most ECW and WWE fans still acknowledge that RVD beating Cena at ONS 2006 was entertaining, shocking and incredibly exciting. That is, unless you're a Cena fan...I guess. Kudos to the guy who posted a comment to the article in which he quoted the "classless and intolerant" quip and then called the article's author "pathetic."
Phillyburbs.com, another good online wrestling news source, gets it. They just posted a "Top 5" ONS moments column in which the RVD/Cena match comes in as the best ONS moment of all time. But the column's author Eric Gargiulo doesn't stop there, saying "This is one of the greatest main-events in all of WWE pay-per-view history." No kidding. It is still a really great match to watch even today, but some of the drama is probably lost on folks who aren't familiar with all of the plot and drama leading up to the event and the controversial finish.
By sheer coincidence (I hadn't seen either of the above-mentioned columns until yesterday), this weekend I added a clip of RVD winning the title at ONS to my "What I'm Watching on YouTube" on the left of the main page of our site. And not only that – just yesterday, I got one of my most recent eBay purchases in the mail: an authentic "take home" folding chair from the actual ONS show on June 11, 2006. Nothing says "I am obsessed with wrestling" like a limited edition folding chair!
Oh yeah...I saw Jericho's heel turn on Raw last night. I thought it was pretty impressive.
Monday evening, I was flipping through one of the old wrestling magazines I picked up at last month's Gem City Comic Con and I was surprised to come upon this great, old picture of one-time Cincinnati Bengal turned pro wrestler Brian Pillman:
The picture is from the September 1988 issue of Inside Wrestling magazine. It's from Pillman's Stampede Wrestling days when he was half of the tag team known as "Bad Company". There is a short blurb accompanying the photo which reads:
Brian Pillman, one-half of Stampede International tag team champs Bad Company with Bruce Hart, was sidelined for three weeks when he injured his right bicep in a match against The Cuban Assassin and Jerry Morrow.
Now, although I have been a wrestling fan since I was a kid, I wasn't actively watching wrestling on TV during the Monday Night Wars and the "Attitude" Era. What's more, I completely missed out on the original ECW promotion. So I never really followed Brian Pillman's career when he was alive, but I have become relatively familiar with his exploits through YouTube and my growing collection of wrestling DVDs. Although Pillman's career was still going pretty strong immediately before his untimely death, it's apparent by looking at the old Stampede photo that his better days were long behind him by 1997. A bad car accident and years of addiction ultimately took a terrible toll on what could have been a fantastic in-ring career.
March 30 was a pretty good day for wrestling fans – unless, of course, you are one of those unlucky folks who got hit by fireworks at the end of the show that night. I can't let Wrestlemania XXIV go by without writing just a bit on the production and its aftermath. There were some not-so-good moments in the show, but thankfully the Mayweather vs. Big Show match was not as bad as I had expected. My favorite matches of the night were (in ascending order): the Money in the Bank Ladder Match, Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels and Undertaker vs. Edge.
I had kind of figured that CM Punk would win MITB and I had hoped that would happen because he is one of my favorites. But to read the online gossip rags, one might be led to believe that Punk is kind of on the outs with some important folks in WWE. The fact that he is now "Mr. Money in the Bank" means he will probably get some really good promos and matches coming his way for at least a few months. Punk had a teriffic match with Jericho last night that seemed to indicate there is some infinished business between the two.
Flair's final match with Michaels really did steal the show, just like everyone expected. My favorite spot was when Michaels attempted a huge moonsault off the ring apron and ropes and missed Flair, obliterating a ringside announcers' table. In the end, it was all very well done and Flair's retirement ceremony on last night's Raw capped things nicely.
Now truth be told, I am not really a big fan of the Undertaker. It was fairly predictable that his Wrestlemania streak would not be broken, but the match was so exciting and well-done that I can't complain too much. I really don't get these folks to complain about Edge and say things like they're "sick of his character," et cetera. Like I said before...Sorry guys, but we can't all be Cena fans, eh?
Love him or hate him...he'll be the champ again someday, people!
I had planned to write about something a little more serious tonight, but then Chris Jericho won the WWE Intercontinental Championship. Now I am too giddy to focus on much of anything else. Awesome.
You know, there's a lot of important stuff going on these days, but I haven't had a lot of time to write anything original lately. So, I'll just say for now that I am really enjoying the push that Jeff Hardy is getting from WWE. Monday night's steel cage match featuring Hardy versus Umaga (01/07/08) was a terrific show, indeed. I know wrestling is all staged, but some things are just too impressive to call "fake." Hardy's big "Whisper in the Wind" move off the top of the cage was one of these amazing moments. The whole match is on YouTube, but if you can't sit through the whole match, just check out this short clip below. Awesome.
The next blog article will be about something meaningful...I promise!
I know everyone out there doesn’t follow wrestling. No problem. I’ll gladly pick up the slack for all the non-fans out there. So last week, it finally happened: The second coming of Y2J. After reading scads and scads of reaction and analysis on wrestling sites and personal blogs over the past week, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that most wrestling fans think that the return of Chris Jericho was very well done, to say the least. There are the inevitable comparisons to Jericho's original WWE debut, which is the stuff of legend. And of course, there is a small group of wrestling snobs who have complained that the first glimpse of Y2J shouldn’t have have been on the Tron. Then there are the folks who have whined that he waited too long to talk and that the crowd got tired of cheering. And some of the “haters” have complained about Jericho’s outfit and new hairstyle. Sorry guys, but we can’t all be John Cena fans.
As for me, I spent the last 10 minutes of last week’s RAW on my knees in the middle of my living room staring at the television in awe. About 5 minutes into it, Thomai gently asked, “Are you okay, Mike?” I responded, “Yeah...It’s just...so...good.” That was the best I could do at the moment.
The return of Y2J is certainly one of the best moments within the last year or so of pro wrestling. One day, it might even rank up there as one of the best wrestling moments of all time. But for now, let’s just call it what it is: 100% Jericho!
From the first time I read about Fire Pro Wrestling Returns a few months back, I have been totally psyched about it. Exploding death matches, extensive create-a-wrestler features, customized logos and venues...I mean, this game sounds like it has just about everything I have ever wanted in a wrestling video game. By the end of September, I couldn't take the anticipation any more and I started mapping out my quest to land a copy of the game. So one afternoon in late September, I called a local GameStop store just south of Dayton to try to reserve a copy and I ended up talking to the store manager. Now, I have been shopping at this particular GameStop location for years and I know from experience that the individual in question purports to know everything there is about every game for every system. Seriously. So, I really thought that I would make out okay. One might imagine my surprise when I was met with some brief silence and then the curt response, "It's not on my list." I explained a little more about how Fire Pro was supposed to ship on the same day as SD vs. Raw 2008 (an historic event in and of itself), how Fire Pro has a cult following amongst wrestling gamers in the US and Japan, and how the game was to retail for $15 – a mere fraction of the SD vs. Raw 2008 retail sticker. Still nothing. The manager said again, "It's not on my list. I have no information about it." Never mind that it was all over the Internet. GameStop had nothing for me. The same day, I called another location and I talked to a guy who was somewhat familiar with the game. He explained that GameStop did not provide shipping details on cheaper games and they did not allow customers to reserve cheap games out of concerns that people would not buy the more expensive games like SD vs. Raw. Now that was interesting.
I continued to watch trailer videos and read up on the buzz surrounding Fire Pro in the following weeks and by the time November 13 rolled around, I was pretty excited. I went into the Dayton Mall GameStop that evening and there were plenty of copies of SD vs. Raw 2008 available, but I couldn't find a single copy of Fire Pro. I asked at font counter and the guy looked at me like I was speaking another language. I told him a little more about the shipping date, the cult following, the buzz, etc. He was still clueless. He started looking through the computer as the queue of customers grew behind me. I am sure he must have gone through 20 different computer screens. I eventually told him to forget it and I was almost out the door when he yelled, "I found it!" I hurriedly returned to the counter and he looked again at the screen, saying, "Yeah, we don't have any." He then explained that since the release date was November 13, that meant I had to wait another day for the games to actually make it to the store. SD vs. Raw was an exception because it was a big seller and GameStop had those games shipped to them via some kind of overnight express shipping. But when I asked if he was sure they would have a copy of Fire Pro on November 14, he could not really guarantee it.
I went home and thought on it a bit more. I looked at the Amazon.com listing for Fire Pro Wrestling Returns and thought about just ordering a copy from there, but I wanted to try once more to find a local copy. I remembered there is an EB Games in Beavercreek, so I looked up a listing on the 'net and called. Turns out it's not an EB Games any longer...Now it's a GameStop. The guy I talked to told me the same thing about adding a day to the release date to cover shipping time and he again went through the whole story about how GameStop doesn't want people to be able to reserve cheap games. I was beyond annoyed with all this nonsense. But the guy was very nice and he told me to call him first thing the next day and he would check through all the new games for me and even hold a copy if they had one. I really thought things were going to work out. Then, the next morning I called and got the same guy. He told me that right after I had called the day before, he had gone to the official Fire Pro web site and found that they had postponed release of the game until November 23. Really. I was stunned. Stunned and pissed. Really stunned and really pissed.
As the day went on, I became really suspicious. Why change a Tuesday release date to a Friday release date? What kind of arbitrary crap is that? The Amazon listing did not indicate that the release was delayed and I was finding blog article and news items featuring excepts from Agetec press releases regarding the shipping and distribution of Fire Pro – on schedule. So, on November 15, I ordered Fire Pro through Amazon (via Hubbagames). The next day, I got my shipping confirmation. And today – November 19 – when I arrived home, there it was on my front porch. Just like that.
As irrational or paranoid as it sounds, it really feels like GameStop didn't want me to have Fire Pro. They are apparently far more interested in forcing an artificial demand for their top-tier titles than giving customers what they actually want. So much for the Randian argument that the happiness of consumers is actually important to capitalists. Since I am not a big gamer, losing my business will be a negligible loss for them. But I don't need the aggravation of shopping at GameStop – any GameStop – ever....e-eh-ehh-ever again. Besides, Fire Pro Wrestling Returns is as good as I think it will be, I won't need to buy another wrestling game for a really long time.
The only bad thing about getting Fire Pro today is that I won't have a lot of time to take it for a test run. Any wrestling fan worth his or her tights knows what's going down tonight...
I know it's probably hard to believe, but I am practically ready to declare "Fire Pro Wrestling Returns" my favorite video game ever without ever having played it. The game isn't even available in the US yet. I read about it a few months ago after finding an article during my daily Google News search for wrestling gossip. Apparently, Fire Pro debuted in Japan many years ago and it was a big hit there. There were some attempts at releasing US versions, but the effort never really picked up momentum. Even still, "Fire Pro Wrestling" is something of a legend in the US. So, the news that there will finally be a US version that is easy to fund and very affordable is creating quite a buzz on the Internet.
I have been playing wrestling video games for years, but I really just have a few favorites. The first wrestling game I played on a home system was probably "WWF WrestleMania" for the original Sega Genesis. It was pretty good for its day, but it didn't really blow me away. I played a few other games over the years and some time later, I picked up a copy of "WCW Mayhem" for the original PlayStation system. I loved this game. I mean, it was really what I had been looking for all along. The fact that I could create a bunch of my own characters and pit them against each other was a huge deal to me. See, what I really, really like to do is to create characters based on real life to make things more interesting. I even have based characters on Thomai and me. In fact, if you're reading this now and we know each other from high school, college, or from any previous or current employment, there is a strong chance that I have based one of my created wrestlers on you at one time or another. Okay…I've really only done that with a few people to be honest. Seriously. I don't just create characters based on people I know, though. For example, I've also created some wrestlers based on the Indian RevolutionaryBhagat Singh(complete with tweed pinstripe suit and fedora) andVenomfrontman Cronos (wearing vintage-era black and red spandex). The thing of it is, up to now I've only been able to create maybe 20 to 35 characters for each of my favorite games. The memory space for created wrestlers is pretty limited. So, while I can still delete "stale" characters and add new ones, my options for match-ups get pretty limited after a while. And believe me when I say that I put a lot of thought into this stuff. I mean, I create my own storylines, venues, stables, titles, etc. A lot of it's in my head because gameplay options can kind of limit things no matter how good the game might be.
The Red Menace and Elektra vs. Glenn Danzig and Cronos
Currently, I'm playing the original "SmackDown vs. Raw" for PlayStation 2. I just bought it around the end of 2006 when my interest in wrestling picked up after a long hiatus. I really enjoy this game, particularly due to the fact that I used GameShark to unlock all the features. That way, I could access all of the venues, create my own custom titles and max out attributes on created wrestlers without having to play all of the ridiculously boring "season" features of the game itself. Currently, I have 35 created characters in my own "federation" and those characters are the only ones that I play on the game. I did pick up a copy of SD vs. Raw 2006 a while back, but my GameShark codes only unlocked the venues and some other stuff and I couldn't do much in the way of attributes for my created characters. If I can't maximize my created characters, the game is pretty much useless to me. I think I'll pass on the 2007 and 2008 versions.
So, this is where "Fire Pro Wrestling Returns" comes in. Apparently, the "create a wrestler" feature on this game is tremendous. I have read several articles that indicate that you can store up to 500 created wrestlers for gameplay. That's in addition to the 327 wrestlers already on the Fire Pro roster, some of which – perhaps many of which – resemble well-known superstars like Terry Funk. And the options for gameplay are absolutely astounding, including bizarre matches like an "Exploding Death Match" and some kind of match where wrestlers hit each other with fluorescent light bulbs.
The big compromise to this game is that it apparently not a three-dimensional game like the SD vs. Raw series. That's not really too much of a concern for me, as I tend to like games with a "retro" feel anyway. The screenshots that I have seen seem to indicate that players can have some action out of the ring, so the fact that the perspective might be a little skewed or stiff is not a big deal at the end of the day. There is some give-and-take involved in building a better wrestling game, I guess. From what I've read, "Fire Pro Wrestling Returns" is a very big threat to the SD vs. Raw line, especially considering that both games ship on the same day – November 13, 2007 – and that Fire Pro will retail for somewhere between $15 and $20, compared to $50 and up for SD vs. Raw. Even if Fire Pro Wrestling isn't the end-all of wrestling games, maybe the challenge will force WWE and THQ to think out of the box.
411mania.com has a fantastic article that covers the entire history of the Fire Pro game. Click here to read Ramon Aranda's "Fire Pro Wrestling: A History Lesson."
