Pro-Wrestling On My Mind

Note: Post is only tangentially related to wrestling today. I am not a fan of horror. I think real life is scary enough as it is, so I have never understood why people want to scare themselves via entertainment. I especially don't like jump scares, so horror movies and games are generally a big no for me. Fortunately, pro-wrestling has never been too terrifying. I always liked the Undertaker, so he never freaked me out, and his storylines with Kane, while creepy, never got too far into the realm of horrifying for me (grossed me out some, but never scared me). Had I been a child when they debuted, I might have found the Wyatt Family scary, but I was already in grad school when they first showed up. While I am not a fan of horror, I am a fan of good storytelling, a necessary element of good pro-wrestling. As such, I am willing to step outside my comfort zone of non-horror entertainment if I think there is a worthy story to experience, like when I read Dracula  as a kid (slept with a ...

Ask me how many times today I've watched a clip of John Cena turning heel where the audio had been replaced with Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." Go on, ask. Ok, trick order because I've watched it so many times that I can't remember anymore. Some not so great stuff happened today, so I really needed a laugh. To refer back to the title, the John Cena heel turn was absolutely worth the wait because the memes are DELIVERING! This all went down on Sunday and I am still seeing a bunch of new ones every day. The wrestling community is really coming together on this one and producing ample amounts of hilarity.  The rest of the world may be burning, but I hope John Cena's retirement tour continues to be the gift that keeps on giving humor and memes.  ...Please universe? We kinda need this*.  *Well, except R-Truth. He clearly needed anything but  this. Someone hook that poor man up with a therapist or something.

The synapses were firing again on Friday during Fantastica Mania. When the fourth match entrances started and Los Depredadores came out, I was looking at Volador Jr. and thinking "Who does he remind me of...?" It hit me as we were waiting for the match to start while the referee was checking the wrestlers. Dear Reader, do you see it? Or have I completely lost my mind (or maybe my eyes are just that much worse (they are already super not great) and I need to visit the optometrist)?   

Seeing the many images and clips of John Cena's heel turn at Elimination Chamber made the gears start whirring in my brain and, fortunately, it was only a short amount of time before the proper synapses fired and the connection was made.  "The Simpsons," season 10, episode 4, "Treehouse of Horror IX." Specifically, the first segment, titled "Hell Toupee." The story revolves around Homer getting a hair transplant that is possessed by Snake, a criminal who was executed and vowed revenge on the witnesses to his last crime. Honestly, worse hair had done worse things. For someone who had a buzz cut for most of his career, John Cena's return to WWE with a bit more on top was definitely a conversation point (and instigated rumors of a hair transplant apparently, as I learned when I searched for pictures). The hair change didn't strike me as that big of a deal at first because I have seen enough of him in trailers for movies that it was nothing new. Bu...

It was almost 70 degrees and sunny in Tokyo yesterday. Today it was 32 degrees and snowing.* I think we know who to blame for that. "IT'S JOHN CENA!" Do-do-do-do.* I knew it was going to be cold today, but was not expecting the snow. I should have though because, as I was doing my usual updates scroll on various sites as I ate breakfast, the biggest news everywhere in the wrestling world was that John Cena finally (FINALLY) turned heel. I'm definitely not as emotionally invested in this event as a lot of people. A lot of Cena's reign at the top of the WWE hierarchy came when I was not regularly watching pro-wrestling (but I was keeping up with what was happening via various news sites and knew of the growing frustration with "Super Cena" expressed by a portion of the fandom). So I absolutely recognize the significance of this event, and I know that literally everyone (and I am not being facetious when I use the word "literally") over a certain ...

Dear Reader, have you ever heard a word or phrase that you instantly knew would become a part of your lifelong vocabulary? Pro-wrestling has provided many such words and phrases over the years for fans to chant and incorporate into their daily lexicon. From "'Cause Stone Cold Said So" to "If you smell what the Rock is cooking," and John Cena's "You can't see me" to Daniel Bryan's (as he was known at the time) optimization of both "Yes!" and "No!", we wear these sayings on shirts and engrave them on our souls.  I write about this because I had an incident on Friday where I heard something that I immediately knew would become a regular quote I share. One of the students asked to use the restroom and was given permission to go. He was gone for quite a while, so long that the other teacher I was working with went to check and see that things were ok. Finally, after the bell rang and all of the other students had gone back to...

Dear Reader, did you watch Sony's "State of Play" that dropped today? Specifically, did you see Paul Heyman introduce the newest feature of "WWE 2k25"?  My name is Paul Heyman, and I could sell water to the ocean. It's called The Island. I don't know about the rest of you, but those two words immediately triggered some MAJOR flashbacks for me. Can you see the title floating towards you on a black background, or are you normal? This was my show in college. Obsessive theory crafting, watch parties with my fellow Lost Girls, roomie finding ways to pirate episodes so we could keep up with the latest twists and turns when we were studying abroad, I did it all. So, I am going to be VERY disappointed if "WWE 2k25" does not include the following: 1) Opening segment with a deadly plane crash (Who would you like to see get sucked into a turbine and turned into fleshy mulch?). 2) A specific sequence of numbers you keep seeing throughout the game that you...

Second post today as this just popped up. I'm still playing "Ace Attorney Investigations." Made it to the third case, "Turnabout Legacy," and the name of the accused murderer threw me for a loop. This is Samson Tangaroa, a confectioner accused of killing a sculptor.  Check that last name again. Seem familiar? Yeah, the spelling has changed slightly now that he's wrestling for WWE, but Tanga Roa is one of the variations he has used over the years. I highly doubt this is a direct reference, but who knows. Whatever the case, I'm never going to be able to look at Tonga Loa again without imagining him singing, dancing, and extolling the virtues of making sweet. Thanks, "Ace Attorney!" (And, oddly enough, a comment was just made on the episode of "Lucha Underground" that I have playing about confusing "Aztec Pride" for "Aztec Pie." I think the universe just decided to be silly today. Or is craving sweets).

I wrote in a previous post about how I am playing "Hades." I still am, and am happy to say I have beaten Hades himself more times (but not enough to complete the story yet), but I am also playing another game when I need a break from slaughtering countless hoards of the dead. My current other game is the "Ace Attorney Investigations Collection." I've made it to game two in the collection, "Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit," and am in the midst of the second episode, "The Captive Turnabout." In this chapter, you meet a new character, Eustace Winner (Yumihiko Ichiyanagi in the original Japanese version), and damn is this boy an annoying dumbass. This is one of the most punchable faces I have ever  seen. As much as Eustace is currently irritating me, mentally griping about him gave me pause because it reminded me of a very similar situation. When I played "Pokemon Violet," there was also a boy who popped up early ...

More fallout from the Royal Rumble.  Not for anyone on any of the WWE rosters, but for me personally. I'm not sure if I believe in Joe Hendry, but I do believe the song is catchy. And I like the guitar solo. So I caved and bought the damn thing on iTunes. Are Joe Hendry and Drew McIntyre the two ends of the Scottish Spectrum? At least I already had a playlist ready to insert it into: Yes, it's really called that, and yes, it's true.

“Never do that again Cole, there’s people listening.” - Wade Barrett during the Women’s Royal Rumble The above quote made me laugh and inspired today's post.  The quality of commentary can have such a major impact on pro-wrestling. It’s not necessary for enjoyment, as attending a live event makes clear, but it can greatly enhance or detract from the experience when watching on TV or streaming. Good commentary can elevate an average match to good and great to legendary. Conversely, bad commentary belittles, if not ruins, a match; it can distract from talent and even harm careers. There have been many times over the years where poor commentary has made me reach for (or want to reach for in instances when it was not me in control of the remote) the mute button. Every time Jerry Lawler so much as mentioned women during the Attitude Era filled me with disgust and my brain tried to transform his voice to sound like a teacher from the “Peanuts” cartoons. Michael Cole’s tenure at attemptin...

A second post today because I watched the Royal Rumble and was inspired.  We need a wrestling database akin to Letterboxd. I have my first category ready: Wrestlers who betrayed their friends because they felt they were being screwed over and/or held back and then made their own merch at home to mock their former friends. But only one of them looks like an extra in a Lady Gaga music video. Now I kinda want to see them as a tag team. And, let's be honest, having them become a tag team because of this makes more sense than a lot of other tag teams WWE has thrown together over the years.* *One of my pet conspiracy theories is that a lot of the seemingly random WWE teams we've seen over the years is the result of shenanigans at company parties, consisting of drunk people putting on blindfolds and throwing darts at a roster list taped to a wall.

I like to think, Dear Reader, that I am a person of, at minimum, average level intelligence. However, every now and then something happens that gives me the feeling that even a circle is sharper than I am. Case in point: Wrestlers and their teeth. Specifically, Shinsuke Nakamura and his teeth. When I first got into New Japan, Nakamura was still a member of the roster (though his tenure would soon come to an end). I also watched a fair number of old New Japan events online to catch up with who was who, faction histories, etc. One of the first things I remember thinking about Nakamura is “Huh, he has no teeth.” I would see close-ups of him during matches and there would always be a solid black line where his teeth would normally be. I thought it looked kind of odd, and my brain just assumed he’s lost his teeth as part of his MMA exploits, some match with a crazy stipulation, through an accident or who knows what and never bothered to get any kind of replacement. It never occurred to me t...

Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1753. New philosophical debate: Which is worse, having your book burned or your head curb stomped? Rousseau may one day have an answer for that! A much more wrestling-adjacent than pure wrestling content post today. I spend a fair amount of time on the train for my commute, and I like to pass the time by reading. There's a great app called Hoopla that lets me access my home library in the US and borrow stuff from their online catalog. It's fantastic and I love it. Yeah libraries! Anyway, I am currently reading "Emile," aka "On Education," by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It's a treatise on education (obviously) and has had a major influence on the way students are taught even to this day. It is divided into five sections, and the first three are pretty solid (with some weird, understandable because it's ye olden times, stuff thrown in). The fourth section would be fine if not for the inclusion...

I went to visit one of my favorite families today for a rousing (and surprisingly peaceful) game of Monopoly. One of the niblings won a copy of the game in a dance off and wants to play it as much as possible. Who am I to say no to the whims of a child? This made me think about children and whims, eventually bringing me to a consideration of the opposite scenario: Children doing things (or having things done to them) because the whims of their parents. And this led to "Damn, I really miss seeing babies dressed up as Kushida!" I feel like, before Kushida left for his stint in WWE, seeing babies dressed up like him was a somewhat regular occurrence at NJPW shows. It at least happened enough that I have a solid memory of it. However, once he came back, I have not really seen it. I've seen a fair number of people who dress up as Hiromu, and there is one girl often at shows who dresses as The Great-O-Khan (and her costume is AMAZING), but I don't see people dressing up the...

Today is Sunday. Tomorrow is Monday. But do you know what tomorrow also is? A public holiday. No work. GLORIOUS! YouTube, hit Bobby's music!