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Four Eyes, Nine Lives: An Interview with Veda Scott
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I was in the crowd for Veda Scott’s seventh match. It feels like a lifetime ago at this point, my first Absolute Intense Wrestling show, my third independent wrestling show, a three day weekend that finished with a match between Sara Del Rey and Claudio Castagnoli, but I still remember Veda’s match, her seventh,…
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A Non-Violent Form of Entertainment: The WWE and the 1999 Super Bowl
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It’s Super Bowl Sunday, a day where Americans across the country gather together to either watch the NFL Championship game or pretend to not know what “sportsball” is. It’s a bloated, glorious spectacle, a day where everything from individual plays to the halftime show to Budweiser commercials are watched and picked apart by people…
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Put Limp Bizkit in the WWE Hall of Fame, You Cowards
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It’s 2001, and an era is ending. The World Wrestling Federation stands alone as the major wrestling promotion in the United States, purchasing and dancing on the corpse of WCW Monday Nitro while traveling the road to WrestleMania X7, which will be main evented by The Rock and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, the two…
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Will Ospreay Isn’t Even a Top 25 Junior Heavyweight
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I’m just going to come out and say it: I’ve never been much for Will Ospreay. I thought his much hyped IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship match against a returning Hiromu Takahashi was terrible. I wish it wasn’t. Takahashi is an insane genius, a star burning so bright that his next flurry of offense may…
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Will AEW Getting More Television Time Fix Their Narrative Issues?
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A funny thing happened while Hunktears and I were watching AEW Dynamite last night. We were talking, as geniuses do, about Diamond Dallas Page, doing our level best to ignore an SCU promo, when Adam Page showed up on the scene, three fingers of whiskey on hand, to sploosh that liquor all over Christopher…
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Dustin Rhodes: Wrestler of the Decade
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Dustin Rhodes is the wrestler of the decade. There is no critical gesture emptier than declaring something or someone the best of the decade. Look at who I’ve gone with thus far—Katsuyori Shibata, Daniel Bryan and Toru Yano. They’re great at what they do, but in declaring them the best wrestlers of the decade…
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Daniel Bryan is the Wrestler of the Decade, but Not for the Reason You Might Think
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Yes, he is the best wrestler in WWE, a title you can easily give him every single year he was active this decade. Yes, his 2014 conquest of Evolution at WrestleMania XXX may be the single best moment WWE ever produced. Yes, his return, despite being tied, three-legged race style, to another McMahons vs.…
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Toru Yano Is the Wrestler of the Decade
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It’s been a depressing decade, the 2010s. Like, one of its mascots is a cartoon dog sipping a cup of coffee in a burning house. Like, the things keeping me going are professional wrestling and the promise that John Wick: Chapter 4 and The Matrix 4 are gonna come out on the same day…
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Katsuyori Shibata Is the Wrestler of the Decade
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Let’s start at the end: On April 9, 2017, Katsuyori Shibata wrestled Kazuchika Okada for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in the main event of Sakura Genesis. He hasn’t wrestled since. After the match, he collapsed backstage and was rushed to the hospital, where he underwent surgery for a subdermal hematoma, the result of a…
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An Oral History of Dave “The Animal” Bautista’s Dick
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For nearly two decades, fans have asked wrestlers the question “How big is Bautista’s dick.” Here, at last, is the answer.