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The WWE couldn't handle The Natural Dustin Rhodes. That man took down the Stud Stable.

Honestly thought this was going to be under the ...Of the Day subfolder.

Lawler was much better as a heel at the national level because his act was so in tune with Memphis. His AWA matches as a face were technically solid, but lacked the emotion of Memphis. On the other hand, his heel work in World Class was awesome, and his initial WWE run and Bret feud was really good. He has since had strong matches as a veteran face in WWE (King's matches with The Miz are arguably Miz's best save Daniel Bryan series), but his best national work was as a heel. However, very few smart fans do not enjoy Lawler as a face in Memphis.

The thing about the audience in the attitude era that always gets me is that for every wrestling related sign, there are about five signs of Cartman.

Paul looked like film nerd Valhalla: "Listen, I got a position in this town, a reputation...somebody's gonna be ruined."

I love you Tabe, but are ramblings of a mad man.

Duggan's like "YEAH! PUT ON WORKIN' FOR THE WEEKEND!"

Matheny: You'll not take her while I live. Hurdle: Then I'll take her when you're dead.

I did kind of like that they sort of used Blackman as the stabilizing for of the hardcore division as people were leary of sneak attacking him because he was so good with weapons. I did chuckle out of Mr. Charisma yelling "IT'S PARTY TIME!" when he grabbed the fighting sticks. That rail run counter was all kinds of crazy. I kind of wanted Blackman to get put in as the American member of Heisei Ishingun. I don't really recall Blackman doing that diving kick either.

"At least I got a finisher at this point. I hadn’t had a real finish up until then. I used something off the top rope back when I was Sparky Plugg: either a cross body, a splash, or a kneedrop. After I’d become “Hardcore,” I usually won matches by using foreign objects. I did use a pump-handle slam sometimes, but Vince Russo came to me around the time they were starting to push the hell out of Test and asked if I would mind giving the move to him. “Do I have a choice?” I asked. He replied, “Not really.” So why ****ing ask me?! I tried the Falcon Arrow for a while but didn’t really like it. It didn’t help that Russo wanted to call it “the Hollycaust.” That got stopped quickly when the office decided the name would offend a lot of people. After I watched a whole bunch of documentaries on the subject, I understood. It’s something people don’t want to be reminded of. To try and shock people, Russo probably would have pushed for me to use it to beat Bill Goldberg, Billy Kidman, and all the other Jewish wrestlers." - Bob Holly Yes, he had to watch documentaries on the Holocaust to get it.

Yes, Gameday comes to Fargo next weekend. MISSOURI VALLEY REPRESENT.

Six not sleeping with Joey is the second greatest betrayal next to Keri Russell's haircut.

And why did they need to re-use a title from a Matthew Broderick movie about testing radiation on monkeys?

WWE would confiscate any clever or edgy sign. Now all of the good sign-makers have migrated over to ESPN's College GameDay.

Great review, Greggulator. Makes it easy to keep it up with everything that's going on in NXT. Isn't that kind of, like, the distant past by now? Pat Patterson and So cal Val were at the show. Val was in the crowd.

Has the first "benefit show" been announced yet?

I'd previously looked for this clip, unedited, but couldn't find it. This is probably one of my favorite Austin moments: http://youtu.be/fAglSncw8Vw

We really need to start a campaign to get Edgar Wright to give Garrett Morris a cameo in Ant-Man.

Maybe tomorrow they'll take away the win from Carl Edwards for passing Menard before the line.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/35-pictures-that-will-change-the-way-you-look-at-breaking-ba Too awesome.

Kimya Dawson's Thunder Thighs album is fucking awesome. Just so you all know.

I think Renee Young is great at what she does. And I think Wargames 2000 is 100 times better than Wargames 1998, which is legitimately one of the worst matches I have ever seen.

This has been reposted by a lot of people on FaceBook. Chipotle's ad for The Scarecrow app:

Will they have to pay him, "Straight cash homie?" ER'BODY ONE CLAP!

With this being the 100th anniversary of Bear Bryant's birth, Manziel would be signing his death certificate if he did that. Some crazy Bama fan would kill him on the spot, on national TV.I guess we're forgetting A&M has a right to Bear Bryant. Kentucky probably more of a claim on the man. But do we think Tide fans care about that? He's theirs, damn it all! The average Alabama fan has neither the knowledge nor the mental capacity to appreciate that fact.Get the fuck outta here with that. Every Alabama fan is aware of and appreciates the shared history A&M has with the Bear. God, the Junction Boys stuff is part of his legend. The vast majority of the fanbase was glad to have A&M join the conference because of that very fact. They also share Gene Stallings who won the 92 title at Bama and is (or was, not sure if he still is) on the Board of Regents at A&M.It's far more likely that Johnny Football has no idea that Bear coached at A&M than your average Bama fan.

I fully agree. He's only been on the air for something like three weeks, and his monologues have all been magnificent.

Is it safe to say that Olbermann, despite being one of the biggest blowhards and douchebags in the media, is probably the single best on air sports personality on TV right now? He rubs plenty of people the wrong way, but that guy is so fucking talented.

Sure that's The Big Wiggle!

I can't put into words how excited I am for heel Dixie. Dixie and AJ doing McMahon vs Austin has potential to be the greatest horrible angle ever. Of all the things TNA needs God knows Dixie turning heel was at the top of the list. I hope they play up TNA firing that kid who broke his neck, not paying for Ion's or Daffney's medical expenses, and how horribly paid the Knockouts are. If they turn her into Mr. Burns it would almost be worth it. I also hope since I guess Sabin turned heel they make him and Dixie into the shittiest power couple in history, TNA's version of Hunter and Stephanie.

Nothing to be confused about. Since she's been doing the backstage interviewer gig she's been tremendous. She actually brings a sense of realism with her style and subtle reaction shots.

OK, I thought that this was interesting, and I'm going to try a review. I don't think I quite know what I like and don't like about matches completely, so hopefully it doesn't turn into too much of a discovery thing and it isn't totally uninteresting. Triple H [c] vs. Rikishi - Smackdown 1/4/00 I'm not a HHH fan or a hater, really. I find his Flair/Race hybrid tribute act to be crappy compared to just watching Flair or Race, and he never held my interest as the ace heel of the promotion, but there are times when he really has a much better performance than his average. I remember this match as one of those performances, and I remember LOVING it when it first aired. I haven't seen it in a handful of years, however, so looking it again should be interesting. HHH sells Rikishi's name being drawn as his opponent fantastically before the match starts. The dumbfounded, pissed-off look on his face as he glares at Howard Finkel for screwing up the rigged drawing is wonderful. HHH jumps Rikishi at the bell and beats him down in the corner, showing pretty good urgency and cementing the idea that Rikishi needs to be taken out quickly or HHH might be in for a world of hurt. They go outside and Kish ragdolls HHH, who sells pretty nicely. Loved the legdrop on the floor from Kish. It just looks brutal for some reason. This part of the match early where they are outside the ring is pretty good, actually, as it just turns into a fight-for-your life brawl and they use the ring steps effectively. They go back inside and a couple reversals lead to a HHH knee to the face and a brief control section of the match which is highlighted by that signature spinning clothesline bump Rikishi always does. Kish gets control right back, however, and does a nice fat man splash in the corner and a Samoan drop that the crowd pops for. Rikishi has such awesome offense. Love his belly-to-belly and of course the Rikishi Driver. The crowd (and I) are going wild for Rikishi's offense. Banzai Drop gets two, and the crowd goes nuts. This is where 2.9s work, where a challenger with awesome offense that can credibly beat anyone gets soooo close to winning off of his big moves. They follow with a Rikishi Driver -----> Pedigree ----> back bodydrop sequence that gets a big pop. Nothing special, but man, the crowd really loves Big Kish. HHH, by the way, is awesome at selling offense when he wants to be. He is bouncing around nicely for Rikishi's offense. He also does a good job of juuuuuust barely getting the shoulder up after Kish connects with a superkick. Now here's what I like. Stephanie interferes by sliding a chair into the ring and then running interference. HHH's chair shot to the head only gets two, though. I almost forgot myself a bit and popped like the crowd did when Kish kicked out. I remember thinking the chair shot was the end when I first watched this match in '00 too, so it was a pretty effective spot. HHH just gives up and blasts Kish in the face with a belt shot, getting DQed; then, he lays out Kish with chair shots, but Rikishi gets up almost immediately and chases HHH out of the ring. OK, so some of my big criticisms about HHH in general are these things: He typically doesn't give enough to faces on offense when he wrestles them. He often doesn't act like his opponent is a legit threat. He often has interminably long and boring control segments that are just painful to watch and that kill otherwise good matches (HHH/Goldberg at Unforgiven '03 comes to mind). I think this list helps to explain why I enjoyed this particular HHH match. This match was a sub-ten minute match, so it didn't have the overlong HHH control segment. Honestly, HHH selling every move from Kish like it just knocked him out dead was perfect. His facial expressions were also great at conveying that Kish was a serious threat, both before and during the match. The mixture of fear and hatred on his face as Kish kept coming after him post-DQ worked for me. Basically, HHH taking Rikishi's offense and just hanging onto his belt through chicken-shittery was perfect. Rikishi looked like a world-beater and HHH got to play up being the Cerebral Assassin by realizing when it was time to just get out of dodge with the title. I don't love it as much as I did in context back in 2000, but it is a really smartly-worked match to me. There are very few 1-on-1 HHH matches that I would ever watch more than once, but I wonder if the ones that I would watch just cut out the long HHH control segments and feature good facial selling from Trips. I'll have to check that theory out sometime.

If I took the time to photoshop Vince in uniform he'd be in a jet ski race with Tank Abbott.

Canadians and Australians rejoice. Lucha sets are on the way.

Correction. Just Meet is a baseball thing.

Looks like Hera's been slapping Io around a little.

The only thing I want this weekend is Johnny Football celebrating a A&M Touchdown by pissing on Nick Saban's shoes. Or Johnny Football celebrating a touchdown by Tebowing.

The WWE line of thinking bugs the hell out of me. They always say that Cena was the only one who didn't cash in MITB for a title win and blame it on giving Punk a week's notice. Cena had the match won when Big Show interfered for the DQ so it was hardly Cena's fault that the cash-in wasn't successful. As for the other part of it, RVD gave Cena about a MONTH'S notice on his cash-in and still won. Thus is wrestling, though: History only matters when it's relevant.

"Dillon! Yoooouuu son of a bitch."

ENZO AMORE AND BIG CASS VS. SYLVESTER LAFORT'S MONEY MAKING LEGIONAIRRES-- This feud is why I love wrestling. The only one of these dudes who is actively good is Alexander Rusev. But everyone else is at least entertaining. One team has some French scumbag wearing sparkling coats, a Bulgarian Muy Thai dude and a Walker, Texas Ranger henchman. The other team has some big dude with a mullet inexplicably wearing trunks that have the NYC skyline airbrushed onto them and some Jersey trash who can't even match his leopard print top and bottom. Watching wrestling as a fan goes way beyond marking out for Daniel Bryan or Eddie Guerrero or ECW. It's also enjoying the random weirdness that these people would have a reason to know each other at all, let alone not like each other to the point where they want to fight. NXT is a well-written, well-produced wrestling show that has some really great wrestling shlock to it. I can't really remember a show like this. Regal puts Rusev and Dawson over HUGE. He also buries Enzo and calls him the most annoying human who has ever lived. Cass had a good little trash talk spot -- Dawson tried to kick him, Cass caught the boot and said "HOW YA DOIN'?" like a Sopranos tough before clotheslining him. Rusev is DAMN good. This is the weirdest finish ever. The Legionairres did a Hart Foundation type move but instead of the clothesline, Rusev did his cartwheel kick thing. But the heels didn't leave the ring by 5 -- a "slow developing tandem move" as the announcer put it. This felt like watching a baseball game than ends via a balk-off win. It's a pretty awesome ending, actually, because now I'll pay attention to that in future tag matches.BO DALLAS INTERVIEW -- Bo Dallas has become one of the best heels going today in a very quick amount of time. His heel work is superb. This dude comes off like a total tool. He's wearing a pink dress shirt with black vest over it tucked into white pants with the belt fastened around his waist. He looks like such a doofus. I love him talking about all the support he's getting (which includes food) while people are just flat-out destroying him. He also goes from calling himself Sami's mento, to offering Sami a match, to offering Sami a non-title match, and then humbly saying "Who am I to make that match?" That's a really great way to cowardly duck a challenge. "I believe I can fly!" "Don't stop BO-Lieving!" His commitment to being a total j-o is outstanding and I salute him. CJP -- Renee interviews CJ Parker about his beef with Tyler Breeze. This was the best IWCCW promo ever. CJ talks about his "inner self" and stuff like that. Renee rules (duh) because she stares off to the distance when CJ stares and talks about the mythical Phoenix of yore. Parker talks about spreading positivity via photo bombs when Breeze jumps him from behind and then takes a selfie while laying on his downed body. Good, quick segment to continue a really entertaining, dumb feud. SASHA BANKS VS. PAIGE -- I like Paige's whip into the ropes -- she uses the top rope as a clothesline. Regal hilariously claims Paige is a huge superstar in NXT and on the front page of the daily press. Paige is REALLY good. She's got great mannerisms down and comes off like a vicious, spiteful little thing -- she wants to win and does not care about anything else. But she also has respect, giving Sasha a nod of respect after Sasha nearly beat her with some Eddie/Dean roll-up thing. Paige also does a great job selling that a body scissors is tough to get out of when she's struggling to do so. Paige regained control with a snap Fisherman's Suplex that felt a little Benoit-ish. End sequence saw Sasha nearly steal a pin with a roll-up. Sasha then hit Paige with a cross-body. Paige used the momentum against her and got the pin. Paige tries to console an upset Sasha Banks post-match. Sasha attacks Paige when her backs turned, gives her a bunch of slaps and then a cross-armed neckbreaker thing. Heel turn complete. This was a decent match. Sasha needs some work. But Paige is really good already. This was solid. It could have been a bit better is Sasha sold getting upset at the ref during a near fall here or something along those lines but then containing her inner heel rage that eventually came out after the match. But nice work. The WWE signing Sara Del Rey to teach the ladies how to wrestle will pay off dividends in a few years when the Bellas and those girls move on to whatever it is ex-divas do. Afterwards, Sasha thanks Summer Rae for being the inspiration to turn heel. LEO KRUGER VS. XAVIER WOODS -- Xavier's got a great, fun entrance. Kruger does some Zbysco stall work on the floor until Xavier grabs him by his greasy ponytail. Kruger uses that to his advantage and rakes Leo's left arm against the ropes. He then goes into ADR mode, focusing on that left arm. Xavier finally gets separation, sends Kruger to the floor with a nice spinning headscissors. He then goes for a plancha and completely eats the floor when Kruger dodges. Thank you, Xavier Woods, for doing that. Woods survives the onslaught on his left arm that he doesn't use at all during the match, selling it really well. Xavier ended up using his fighting spirit, stiff kicks and smarts to get back into the match. He ended up winning with his Honor Roll thing at the end -- not the best finisher ever but it works. This was another good match. It felt like a really poor man's ADR vs. Daniel Bryan -- those guys would structure that match the same way, but are obviously 50,000 times better performers. But learning the structure of a good match focused around a body part is the important lesson.NXT, thank you once again.

"It's Stephanie McMahon's belt, she just lets you hold it."

I don't buy Sandow ever being a main eventer. Entertaining guy on the card? Sure. I think he'd be great as an eventual replacement to Lawler or JBL on commentary. Then again, Del Rio's big gold belt is a borderline World Television Title at this point so sure Sandow can win it.

But I thought Vince is so out of touch with current pop culture that we wouldn't see twerking jokes until 2025. Internet, you have forsaken me!

The indie game rush continues. RECIEVER - Incredibly surreal dungeon crawler. The dungeon is randomly generated, and you start with the only weapon you have (of which there are three possibilities). There are only two kinds enemies. You are trying to pick up 11 pieces of treasure, and if you do that, you win. I am describing this so sparsely because I think saying a lot about it ruins the bewildering nature of the first few runs. If you're all about minimalism, go get this game. MIRRORMOON EP - Speaking of trying not to ruin the first run of a game, I'm not going to say shit about MirrorMoon EP other than "space is involved" and "non-violent exploration madness." HAMMERWATCH - Gauntlet. Like, to the point that the bonus levels are just Gauntlet arcade levels. So Gauntlet. Massively Gauntlet. None More Gauntlet.

I kept some, so I can convert them to DVD later, which deep down I know I will never ever do.

Glad to see someone else so high on the Hansen vs. Slaughter 2/23 match -- I really liked it and was honestly surprised when I had 9 matches above it.

"Do you come from a land up over? Where the women glow and the man chauffeur. Can't you feel, can't you feel the polar? You better run, but never do sober."

It's unfortunate when you work in a place that is desperate for bodies (call centers, Wal-Mart, etc.), that slackers and screw-ups aren't rewarded per se, but are kept on to fill a void while the rest of us have to pick up their slack. I'm sure there's a comment about how this burden improves one's character, but I hear your frustration. We've got a few at the casino that are like this: they make the day that much longer.

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. There's a lot more pop in punk rock than a lot of punks would like to admit.