Pete

(***)

Here's Meltzer's direct quote (WON 6/2/2014). Well, that's certainly encouraging.

Bring them in as the New American Males. Good to see KENTA found someone who assimilated to American culture well and is learning from them. Good move KENTA. According to Funaki's Wiki page he speaks SIX languages fluently (Japanese, English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese). They should keep him on contract just for training and translations.

Indeed.

Instead of the New NOD, Woods should call his group the Black Power Rangers. Missed the first hour at my mom's birthday dinner, but I'm not sure anything from that could've topped Heyman's look of sheer glee when Brock came out.

The correct answer is Blackpool.

Makabe with the suit and blond hair looks like a super-badass Japanese Harley Race. SOMEBODY TAKE THE DAMN YEN!

It's mid-summer, I'm in full-on baseball book mode and I've discovered the Oyster app, which is like Netflix for books. Why no, this will not end well. Watching "Battered Bastards of Baseball" on Netflix inspired me to re-read Jim Bouton's Ball Four, which is a 100% absolute must-read for any baseball fan as it's the sport's first "shoot book." Bouton documents his season with the one-and-done Seattle Pilots of 1969, and clearly went in with no fucks to give in terms of exposing the daily life of a major league ball player (and very briefly a minor league player as well), warts and all, consequences be damned. As a result the book was INCREDIBLY controversial for its day, to the point where he was unofficially blackballed from baseball for several years. One of the most important sports books ever.

Mero is/was a good dude. I'll always remember him going on RSPW back in the mid-90s to solicit ideas for his character and even giving us a shout-out that made TV before one of his TBS matches.

Seconded. This is a great doc with a real stick-it-to-the-man vibe in the persona of Bing Russell, and lots of great 70s footage. I fully expect Ebbets Field Flannels to produce some Mavericks stuff now if they haven't already. Apropos of nothing, I'm in the middle of re-reading Ball Four by Jim Bouton (who pitched for the Mavericks) and it turns out that "Battered Bastards of Baseball" is a direct quote from his book.

Garner's statue in his hometown of Norman, OK. In other news, James Garner was from Norman, OK and had an awesomely jaunty statue cast in his honor.

Whole second half of that show sounds spectacular. Like we were all watching the wrong PPV.

I just cracked up picturing everyone's feed crapping out as Ambrose zeroed in on Rollins. It sucked a high hard one for me last night to the point where I was almost 5 minutes behind the live shot and got tired of tweeting as everything kept getting spoiled. I'd be royally pissed if I paid $50 or whatever for that on PPV.

It's also a table-topping MLS club in mid-season form vs a BPL club in pre-season friendly mode. Not much else to take from this.

If nothing else it'd give someone a chance to explain Honma's VAMPIRE CHICKEN gimmick to me.

Rio to QPR, and doesn't he just look thrilled? There's something awesomely funny about this photo.

I always thought the 6 Man match they had a week earlier that was shown on ECW tv was much better. Supposedly the one in Revere the same week was off the charts, but the fans there would shit on everyone who wasn't spraying plasma everywhere and realized right away that they weren't going to get any blood in this match, so they were chanting shit like "egg foo young" at them.

Nick Gage getting a stealth mention was something else. He really is the Titty Master!

Gran Hamada having a career renaissance in his mid-40s with Michinoku was a real eye-opener at the time.

HA! No joke, I hadn't even considered TNA. We'd be staying on-site so it could be a consideration.

http://youtu.be/AtTeodwPxNw Heyman's OVW was soooooo wacky.