Month: April 2022

Wrestlemania weekend, and such a thing as too much wrestling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few months ago, I got an email from Ring of Honor wrestling, advertising a show that would be their return show after a four-month hiatus.  It was set to take place in Dallas, and my eyes lit up at the thought of going to visit my brother, and going to a show that was likely going to be a banger of an event.

But then, it was brought to my attention that this was going to be taking place the same weekend of Wrestlemania, which was also in Dallas, and suddenly the idea of going to a show that was more than likely going to be attended by other mouthbreathing marks from all over who were on their way to watching Wrestlemania really took the wind out of my sails, and the idea was dead in the water just like that.

Over the last few years prior to coronavirus, a thing that been happening was that whatever city was hosting Wrestlemania, promotions and events that weren’t even WWE, would start booking shit in the same city, around Wrestlemania’s dates, all with the obvious intent to try and leech off of the droves of people who would already be coming into town to watch Wrestlemania, and entice them into these giant weekends of wrestle-everything.

One notable example was when Wrestlemania was in Brooklyn, New York, New Japan Pro Wrestling booked Madison Square Garden two nights prior.  Over the last few years, there’ve been what’s been dubbed WrestleCon, which is exactly what it sounds like, something of a convention for wrestling fans, with the primary thing being all sorts of meet and greets with current and former wrestlers.

However, this year’s Wrestlemania weekend in Dallas, would turn into this week-long affair, where numerous events and promotions started staking claim to times and venues all around the Dallas area, and I thought to myself, man, there really can be such a thing as too much wrestling.

There was one year where Wrestlemania ended up being like five hours long, and I was completely toast by the end of it.  They’ve since moved to the two-night model which I greatly prefer, and I’m sure all involved parties do too, since there’s two nights worth of gate, merch, parking and revenues to be made instead of one.

But Wrestlemania being two nights, on the Saturday and Sunday meant that even their own in-house Saturday show, the usually outstanding NXT TakeOver, got relegated to Saturday afternoon status.  In addition to the WWE’s presence in Dallas, there was the aforementioned ROH show that took place on Friday night, and earlier in the week were events booked by GCW, and even one venue that had MLW and the upstart Control Your Narrative promotion at the same time.

And of course, WrestleCon took place too, to help fill in the time in between actual wrestling shows.  Except that WrestleCon had their own mini-show at it too, with Impact Wrestling running an interesting event with a multiverse theme, which flexed just how many companies Impact had working relationships with.

All in all though, this is a good example of how there really could be such a thing as too much wrestling.  Now obviously, I love the business, and I’d definitely love to have been able to go to the ROH show, and maybe the NXT show.  But as I’ve said numerous times, I don’t really have that much desire to go to a Wrestlemania again, seeing as how I’ve been to two.  They’re just too large, and frankly, the quality of them aren’t really as good as they used to be when they’d have cards full of actual wrestling matches and not these spectacle/moment-maker matches where Johnny Knoxville and Logan Paul get on the show while the current US and Intercontinental champions don’t.

And because I don’t have the time, nor desire to pay to watch any special events, the only thing I ended up watching was Wrestlemania, which I have to say was pretty below average as a whole.  The matches that I was expecting to be good weren’t necessarily terrible, but they could’ve been better.  I had high hopes for Edge vs. AJ Styles, but it was average at best.  I had hoped the Roman vs. Brock match would’ve been as hard hitting and Japanese strong style as some of their earlier matches have been, but a supposed injury to Roman seemed to take the steam out of it, and make it seem very abrupt.

The best match of the show was probably Seth Rollins vs. the mystery opponent who turned out to be the return of Cody Rhodes which I called within the first month of AEW’s launch.  And it’s not like it was a Macho Man vs. Steamboat-caliber classic, it’s just it was the best match on a widely mediocre card otherwise.

Regardless, I was pleased to see Roman Reigns end the show with the double belts, because I still do believe Roman is still the best thing going in the WWE now, and he’s not just cutting promos about being in god mode, because he really is performing like he is.

All things considered though, I caught much of the ROH show’s primary matches after the fact, and to no surprise, everything they did was leaps and bounds better than Wrestlemania, as far as actual wrestling talent is concerned.  But frankly, actual wrestling is hardly what Wrestlemania’s been about over the last few years, and they’ve gotten content at just being an entertainment spectacle above all else.  But 150,000 attendees over two days doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s not the wrong call either.

Good riddance, Coach K

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

North Carolina 81, Duke 77 F

There comes times when successful sports people call it quits, that people tend to come out of the woodwork to shower them with praise, or just show a whole lot of respect and grace, regardless of if they were a teammate, rival, competition or adversary.

When David Ortiz was on his retirement tour, the New York Yankees and their fans gave him a lot of respect, standing ovations showed a lot of grace.  When Derek Jeter was in his final games, the Boston Red Sox reciprocated and showed a lot of respect to the Captain on his way out.  Michael Jordan was celebrated in every city on his way out, and the list goes on for notable figures who were shown a lot of respect at the ends of their career.

But as far as Coach K goes, fuck the grace and dignity.  Good riddance to this sniveling little troll that is basically the most reviled guy in the history of men’s college basketball.  As a fan of college basketball, I for one am ecstatic that Coach K fell short of getting to go out a winner, and once again, collapsed and lost in what should’ve been one of the grandest highlights on his way out.

In fact, to some capacity, this really has been one of the best years of college basketball in my life, because Virginia Tech won the ACC Championship AKA the National Championship A, and Coach K choked in three different games which should’ve been the coup de graces on his retirement tour:

  • Lost to North Carolina in his final home game at Cameron Indoor Stadium
  • Lost to Virginia Tech in the ACC Championship/Natty A game
  • Lost to North Carolina in his final game ever, in the Final Four

And the way he lost in all of these, as a legitimate contender for success, only to fall short repeatedly, it’s the perfect way to see Coach K ride off into the sunset.  I’ll be the first to admit that I was a little worried that Duke really was going to ride some wave of do it for Coach all the way to the National Championship-B, seeing as how they managed to not suffer their typical chokejob to some non-conference opponent, but the narrative of the journey couldn’t have been written any better if it were done by Vince Russo.

Of course, it had to be North Carolina who sent Coach K packing, and of course, it had to be in their first-ever meeting in the Final Four.  Of course this had to be the rubber match of the season.

And I let out a sigh of relief that North Carolina did their job and actually put Coach K down for good.  I had a bad feeling of sports pessimism that Duke was going to get their retribution, and ride that momentum into the Natty B and actually win, and let Coach K retire as a champion, the ultimate baller way to leave a career.  A way that should really only be reserved for true good guys in sport, like David Robinson, John Elway and Peyton Manning.  Had Duke overcome North Carolina and won a Natty B, that would have exorcised all of their failures of the season previously, and Dook Nation would have been even more insufferable, if that’s even possible.

But thankfully, the good guys won in the end.  Frankly, once this game had passed, nobody will even give a shit about the actual Natty B game.  Shit, I had no clue to whom Kansas was even playing, it’s that irrelevant compared to the other side of the bracket.

Good riddance, Coach K.   And for as much dislike I have for his career, it’s because he was a good coach. It’s just he looked like a little troll goblin and always recruited obnoxious players whom his obnoxious school would make into hateable douchebags, but I digress.  I’m not supposed to be giving this sniveling goblin any respect on the way out.

Morbius bad film??  How can that be??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shocker of the century: Morbius starring Jared Leto is not garnering favorable reviews

Who would’ve imagined that??  (Me)  That a film based on Morbius the Living Vampire, a D-class Spider-Man villain would have any modicum of success, especially in a film universe where it will have nothing to do with, Spider-Man?

I mean Jesus Christ, this was about as predictable as the internet exploding over Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars.  Anyone who had any inkling of idea of what these properties originated from, or even just followed comic books or movies in general probably knew that Morbius was a terrible idea from the start. 

It was the very definition of scraping the barrel looking for ideas to make into films, and someone over at Sony was probably like, “eh, who’s this Morbius guy?  He’s in Spider-Man, and he’s a vampire!  People like Spider-Man and maybe people are still into shit like Twilight, so let’s green light this!”  But having zero idea that Morbius is a fifth-rate villain and basically was more of a vehicle for Blade to come in than anything else.

Regardless, the project survived the pitch and concepting and actually came into fruition.  And to nobody’s surprise, the reviews are not doing so hot, and are currently at the time I’m writing this, on a historically bad pace, but again, it’s more surprising that gas prices have actually dropped below a leading 4, than finding out that Morbius is garbage.

In the past, I used to makes jokes about how I wouldn’t see this thing even if it were pirated, or I’d watch something pirated and state how I wanted my money back despite seeing it for free.  But with as little time I have these days, it would be a tremendous offense for me to even consider wasting any bit of my precious free time on a turd like Morbius.

But this post still must come to fruition to point out the obvious fact that I called this two years ago when it was announced, but Hollywood most certainly doesn’t let perception, facts or just plain bad ideas stand in their way of their pursuit for a buck here and there.

Just because it’s a Marvel property doesn’t automatically make it a key to the money printer.  And as more and more major properties get gobbled up by the film industry, there are bound to be more and more Morbius-shaped turds to come into existence in the future.  The bar appears to have been re-set by Morbius and it’s anyone’s guess to what the next shitty Marvel installment will be; but at least Jared Leto is off the table for a little while.