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I have abandoned a half dozen attempts at writing about Eddie Kingston. In theory, I gave myself an easy assignment. Eddie Kingston was the best wrestler of 2021. He was the best in the ring. He was the best on the microphone. I know those things are true, but I’m not drawn to them.…
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Yesterday, per Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful, WWE released John Morrison, Top Dolla, Ashante Adonis, Isaiah “Swerve” Scott, Tegan Nox, Drake Maverick, Shane Thorne, and Jaxson Ryker. Regardless of what you think of the talent listed on an individual basis, those are eight more names in an absolute bloodbath of a year that has…
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[Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.] Atsushi Onita is one of the most influential wrestlers over the past 30 years of wrestling in the United States of America. In that same stretch of time—and you can go back to the end of his 1981-1982 North American excursion that took him…
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Something I’ve been obsessing over the course of the pandemic are the ways in which wrestling fans “see” wrestling. We’re restricted, at the moment, to the broadcast version of wrestling, shot by a finite number of cameras and edited live to the specifications of a company’s house style. It’s fine—it’s how most of us…
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Jon Huber, known in wrestling as Brodie Lee and Luke Harper, passed away suddenly on December 26, from non-COVID related lung issues. He was 41. In a year rife with shock and tragedy within the wrestling industry, his passing registers as one of the biggest: Universally loved by his peers, lauded for his dedication…
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It’s Toru Yano Season, otherwise known as the G1 Climax, an incredible stretch of time where Toru Yano, my pick for wrestler of the decade, proves that he is, without question, the best wrestler in the world, taking on a rugged schedule, facing top opponents, and laying them all to waste without so much…
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There’s probably nothing new that can be said about “Hard Times,” the 1985 Dusty Rhodes promo that defines its feud, its performer, and its time. It’s huge, y’all, so big that it has a name, which isn’t true of many promos. You say “Hard Times” to a wrestling fan and it evokes something: the…
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The first thing you need to understand is this: The world is coming to an end. Not “the world” as in the planet Earth. Not “the world” in its metaphoric context, which is to say the world as it is perceived by the human consciousness one assumes will cease perceiving at the end of…
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At this point, everybody knows the picture—”Macho Man” Randy Savage, clad almost entirely in denim, looking pensively into the distance while sitting on a rocky shore. It’s an indelible portrait of one of wrestling’s most beloved figures, something at once cartoonish and real, completely sincere and utterly ridiculous. It’s my favorite picture of a…
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The new World order are going into the WWE Hall of Fame this year, and while the company is limiting the group to its three founding members, I’d like to believe that the lack of a physical building for the Hall of Fame means that there’s room for everybody. Can’t remember who was in…