John Cena had a problem. The effective protagonist of the WWE, the largest professional wrestling organization in the world, was in trouble. Granted, by his standards, it was a minor affair: a young upstart named Dolph Ziggler, a former collegiate wrestler turned arrogant show-off complete with curly locks of bleach-blonde hair had, in the course…
On Object Permanence In The WWE
I. Should your roommate (Fig. 1, “Sam”) purchase a projector for your apartment, you may experience a televisual shift away from your traditional solo-Netflix viewership. Through an HDMI attachment to a laptop, beaming the projection across a Bradburian chunk of your living room wall may cause an increase in sharing one another’s company during screen…
Two-And-A-Half Heels
John Cena and Cesaro had a very long match Monday night. The announcers repeatedly deemed it a classic well before the fight was over, but there was a conspicuously absent element that made Michael Cole’s proclamations ring hollow: the crowd. They weren’t silent — more on that in a moment — but they did not chant…
Billy Corgan Goes To Nashville
Recently, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan — following in the footsteps of fellow alternative rocker Bob Mould — started his new job. At a professional wrestling company. Corgan is the newly appointed “senior producer of creative and talent development” for TNA Wrestling, the second largest wrestling organization — after WWE — in North America. In…
WWE RAW Recap: On Bo Dallas
Bo Dallas returned from a months-long hiatus on Monday night, and it’s the only part of Monday’s RAW that matters to me at all. Extreme Rules is this Sunday, but with Monday’s show bereft of pre-PPV shake-ups there was plenty of room to focus on the WWE’s most significantly insignificant wrestler. Roman Reigns appeared in…
WWE RAW RECAP: ‘Like Single White Female, But With Wrestlers’
Though Rollins made off with the Heavyweight title, the real winners of Wrestlemania 31 were the Intercontinental and United States titles. Both titles were won, not incidentally, by former Heavyweight champs Daniel Bryan and John Cena, respectively, ostensibly restoring a certain level of credibility to the both belts while failing to extract either championship from…
There Is A Flintstones/WWE Crossover Movie And We Watched It
Early in this 50’s-sitcom inspired, classic children’s cartoon straight-to-DVD WWE crossover movie, The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age Smackdown, Fred and Barney have decided their solution to their problems is animal fighting. Fred’s boss having just carved his paycheck on a stone tablet and smashed it with a hammer in front of him, as it…
WWE RAW Recap: The One Where We Realize Sting Is 56 Years Old
[Editor’s note: yes, that is Paul Stanley in the background of the picture. Why do you think we used it as the picture?] Look, I should’ve admitted this to you a long time ago: I wasn’t a wrestling fan as a kid. While I did play and enjoy WWE video games my one friend with…
RAW Recap: Pre-Pre-Wrestlemania
By way of challenging Rollins to a match at Wrestlemania — and accepting the terms that he fight Rollins that night, fully aware that he will likely be attacked by everyone in the Authority — Randy “The Viper” Orton declares “I have enough venom for each and every member of the Authority.” While not the…
WWE RAW Recap: If Fastlane’s Theme Isn’t The Eagles Song, We Riot
Hello, and welcome to last week’s RAW recap. It’s the RAW before Fastlane, the last Pay Per View before Wrestlemania and so far only PPV without a clear reason for its title. But never mind that, because John Cena’s already talking.1 If you take last week’s Cena-Rusev promo and subsequent brawl and reverse their roles,…