OSJ

Okay, in a bit of a departure from being the bringer of sweetness and light, to say nothing of being the champion of fair play, here's something a bit more negative. Who among wrestlers past and present do you really, really dislike? It can be a murderer like Benoit (though in all fairness, he appears to have suffered from severe brain damage), (Jose Gonzalez has no such excuse,) a racist twat like Hogan, a basic jerk like the late Bruiser Brody, a card-carrying member of the KKK like Dick Murdoch, or a generally mean-spirited, criminal prick like the Dynamite Kid. Certainly the kid-diddlers like Bob Sweetan and Buck Zumhofe rate highly on my own list, but who ya got?

That's awful! I almost feel bad for laughing at the guy, almost...

It's Joe Lansdale source material. Higher recs than that I don't have.

I just knew that the Hawk had some outstanding qualities to manage the Pale Hose.

Word has it that Reinsdorf is trying to coax Harold Baines out of retirement...

What gets overlooked is timing... Fedor beat those guys when it MEANT something. Cro Cop was deadly until Fedor schooled him, twelve years ago Arlovski MEANT something, Big Nog MEANT something. No, we're never going to see prime Fedor against Jon Jones, that ship has sailed, but to say that Fedor is anything less than in the discussion for GOAT is silly.

^ This!

I would go for the purpose of stretching Saran-wrap over his toilet bowl. Much hilarity will ensue.

Well, this would be a good time to invoke the "Once a season rule", and let Acuna bat 11 times like they do in Crickett... Oh, wait... There isn't any such... Ah, you guys just hate on the Braves...

Amazing what one has to go through just to see some titties flashed...

Don't wait. Couple of years back I reconnected with my friend Bill up in Eugene, OR, had a really nice chat. On the other hand, didn't make the call to my friend, Harlan, rationalizing that he might have been busy... The dude was like 83 years old, how fucking busy could he have possibly been? ;-(

So sorry, bro. I'm here 24/7 if you need an ear....

The problem with sports bios is that first and foremost they are sports bios. You start and finish with a person who has a single-minded obsession with doing a certain thing better than anyone else in the world. In most cases they at least make it into the top fifty at said endeavor, otherwise we wouldn't be hearing about them... This doesn't leave a lot of room for other hobbies or factoids, in a word they are likely as dull as ditchwater in all other areas. I'm one of those people who is passionately interested in a vast number of unrelated things, so I find the mentality of someone who can be so focussed on one particular thing to be fascinating. I've been told by people that are in a position to know such things that if I just set aside the pool cue and concentrated on the darts I could be world class in fairly short order, or set aside the darts and focus on pool or billiards... Thing is, my mind doesn't work that way, I enjoy being really good at a number of things as opposed to being lights out great at one specific thing. The type of person that Ted Williams was (who famously said: "When I walk out of a room I want people to say "there goes the greatest hitter who ever lived!"). What gets lost in these discussions when Babe Ruth is mentioned is that people tend to forget that he was one hell of a pitcher before switching to the outfield in order to keep his bat in the line-up. Lou Gehrig was a nice man who played baseball as well as anyone ever has and played bridge for enjoyment. He married his sweetheart and other than a tragically shortened life, he had a happy one, but there's really not much there in terms of tension or page-turning suspense. Mantle and Ruth were certainly more colorful if drunkenness and debauchery are your thing, having been there and done that I have plenty of my own escapades to relate to anyone interested in that sort of thing... So your sports bios tend to range on one side to the Dale Murphy sort of thing. "I've got this swell religion, I know you'd rather read about baseball stuff, but since I've already got your ten bucks, you might as well kick back and let me tell you all about this dude finding golden plates in the woods and talking to angels and all sorts of cool stuff like that..." Or you might get the other extreme, the Eddie Murray / Don Baylor sort of thing wherein the subject recalls every at-bat they ever had and the result thereof. When you're a player as renowned for consistency to the degree that Mr. Murray was, the virtue of said consistency grows somewhat tiresome after a bit, there are only so many games wherein the virtues of going three for five eor two for five can be discussed at length... Or you get the third thing, which is the biographer making a bunch of shit up. These books should be filed under "fiction", but they are a damn sight more entertaining than the other two groups.

60 is way too young to go. RIP, big fella!

I remember the good old days when baiting Corny actually took a little bit of ingenuity. ?

Remember: "Get hurtie, call Kurtie!"

We need a wrestler whose gimmick is that of being a wine snob... It's money, I tell ya, money!

Frank Booth was a face, just misunderstood...

Pretty much a tweener, he did this biker without a bike gimmick and the announcers kept trying to suggest that he might be a werewolf. Yeah, it's WWE it doesn't have to make any sort of sense...

Cocaine's a helluva drug...

Good Lord! That's some feline tonnage! They were at the rescue? What were they being rescued from, dinner? Granted, our Jackpot is just over twenty lbs., and my little guy, Seven (Jackpot's twin bro) is close to 19 lbs. but they're both built for it.

You want songs about poultry, Hasil Adkins is your man.

Rick Rude was one of those guys who could help little old ladies across the street, volunteer at a foodbank, and give half his earnings to charity and he would STILL come across as a heel. Hell, he did the most totally babyface thing ever in wrestling (knocked the fuck out of Warrior) and he still seems a heel. Damn I loved Rick Rude.

Maybe I'm a bit naive, but I really don't look a guy that beats people up for a living to be the most woke dude in the room. For every Genki Sudo who from all accounts seems to be a really decent guy, there are 100 meatheads like Covington. I hope to see him get his ears pinned back, but I doubt an aging and fading Woodley is the guy to do it. Would be just that much sweeter if he did pull it off, we'll see... I don't know Cerrone's politics and don't much care, he seems like a good dude.

Yeah, as a professional horror writer, I feel almost obligated to wear one...