Month: January 2024

Georgia Snow Day 2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Photo 100% unedited.  Yep, totally

The best part about not having to go into the office is that the day before, the entire state was going into winter snow storm protect mode.  Thanks to Snowpocalypse a decade ago, the entire state is, preferably, always on the side of caution and quick to pull the trigger when it comes to shutting down the city over thinking they can handle any modicum of snow, because as Snowpocalypse showed the world, Georgia is not.

Sure, it was chilly and the temperatures were rapidly falling, but with the chance of precipitation vanishing, I knew there was no real chance that we were going to get any snow.  Black guys ice, sure, was a possibility, but I didn’t think there was much chance that we were going to get any white blanketing over any parts of the state.  All the same, the Metro Atlanta area was quick to pull the trigger and shut down all of the schools, and my building was quick to declare a delayed opening, which honestly if there’s one drawback to the advent of remote work, is the fact that seldom can we ever be able to use snow days as an excuse anymore for not wanting to go into the office.

In the early morning, since I’m always the first person up in my house, I let the dog outside, and unsurprisingly, it was dark, dreary, cold and blustery, but not a single snowflake appeared to be floating around anywhere in sight.  As I prepared the kids’ breakfast and the sun began to creep up, it looked like a gray and dreary day, but definitely no snow in sight.

Despite the fact that my office had a report time of 10 am, I punted on the day, since I had started working remotely at like 8:45, and I wasn’t about to pack up my shit, drive to the office to set up shop again, and risk burning an hour of relocation and commute time when I had already started working.  And much like responsible people in the workforce, I probably ended up working longer and more studiously working from home that day, because my workload was quite slammed, and I was pretty much on the clock all the way up til 5 pm, without taking much of a lunch break because I was in such a groove.

But it was during one of these moments where I poked my head out to get some air, did I notice that not only was there no snow, it was absolutely, majestically peaceful, sunny and beautiful outside, albeit a frigid 16F degrees and windy as fuck.  So I had to snap the above picture to send to my friends to show them what snow in Georgia looks like.  It’s not my fault if the birds and wildlife decided to celebrate in front of my camera like the start of a Disney Animated Classic.

Praise for TNA’s blet refresh

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Initially, I wasn’t really keen on Impact Wrestling re-branding back to TNA.  There was just this bush league reputation of TNA that always stuck with me that involved Jarretts, Dixie Carter, strange booking, Cups for no prizes, convoluted booking, the six-sided ring and a drunk Jeff Hardy that I didn’t think was a good idea to going back towards.  I always felt that Impact was a respectable endeavor of scaling back, restructuring, reinventing, and growing back towards respectability.

Especially compared to the questionable things that AEW does, I found Impact to be the more refreshing alternative to the predictability of the WWE, and over the years, I’ve always made a point to hit up Impact when they stopped in Atlanta, and even liked their product so much, it inspired me to get an Impact replica blet, as bootleg Pakistani as it undoubtedly was.  I enjoyed what they were doing, and I respected the fact that they weren’t necessarily trying to compete with the Joneses and were out there, as a solid #3 promotion, doing their thing, letting people work, and putting out decent product.

But I kind of get it why they wanted to go back; probably if for anything, because all of the noteworthy promotions in the land are all three-letter acronyms, and being “and Impact” might’ve felt like being way too much of an outlier.  WWE, AEW, ROH, NWA, GCW, PWG… and Impact.  Perhaps there’s just something about three letters that means wrestling, and just like that, TNA is back, and the Impact name reverts to being the flagship television show.

Regardless, if there was one fun thing to come out of the rebrand was the inevitability that there would be new blets, because Impact blets sure as heck weren’t going to fly in the land of TNA.  And I have to say, despite my reluctance to accept the TNA name back into existence, as far as their refreshed lineup of blets across the promotion, I have really nothing but praise.

They did the smart thing, and refreshed them all at the same time, so they can have something of a cohesive and uniform look to them.  Not like when the WWE updates the US title in 2020, the Intercontinental blet in 2021, a 24/7 title that came and went in the blink of an eye.  I didn’t know who ZBro’s Belts was, but after seeing how great these TNA blets came out, I dug to find out who the maker was.

I appreciate that there’s both cohesion as well as variation with all the blets, and they don’t all look like the same fucking blet like Ring of Honor’s entire lineup of titles look after Tony Khan bought them.  Gold for men and women’s top prizes, red straps for the tag blets.  The X Division blet has come leaps and bounds from when it was basically just a big red X on a blet, and looks like a solid #2 prize, and I know it gets a lot of criticism mostly for its name, but I really dig the updated Digital Media blet.  I love how it has kind of a circuitboard pattern in the background, and there was obvious thought that went into its design as opposed to copying bits and pieces from Japan and UK to create a bunch of AEW midcard titles.

As for the inevitable question on whether or not I’d entertaining getting any replicas should they be available, legitimately or though Pakistan, there’s always the possibility for the right price.  I’d honestly go for a Digital Media championship first, and if I ever had the disposable income, even go after a set of the Knockouts Tag Team blets for my girls, especially since these don’t have the goofy-ass Garfield Copper font on them like the old ones did.  The others, would be dependent on if any workers appear to be doing good enough work to inspire me to want to get one, and if Nic Nemeth captures the world title, it just might be enough to get the job done.

Critiquing the IWGP Global Championship

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When Dave Finlay involved himself into the program with Will Ospreay and Jon Moxley, and then destroyed both the IWGP United States and the unofficial UK championship blets, and then it was announced that there would be a new title announced to replace them outright, I held my breath with hopes that it would be a sweet design.

The IWGP World championship that looked like the X-Men’s Phoenix Force emblem was kind of a letdown in my opinion, and came at the cost of merging out the old Intercontinental championship in the process.  The NJPW World Television championship that they unveiled was without question one of the worst blet designs I’d seen in a while.  The IWGP Women’s championship looked like a repurposed Jr. Heavyweight blet from 1996.

And to be fair, as much as I liked how flashy and gaudy it was, I know that the US championship that Finlay destroyed was also not really that well received by lots of smarks and blet aficionados, but I was still a fan, and was sad to see them go, although I understood why they were doing it; Ospreay brought in a variant of it, plus he was on his way out, so the company had to do something to consolidate the blet’s position in the company. 

Frankly, I was really hoping they’d just bring back the Intercontinental championship, because much like in the WWE, the IWGP Intercontinental was often seen as the workhorse blet, that usually the most talented worker gets, and has been held by so many greats, most recently from Kenny Omega, Shinsuke Nakamura, Chris Jericho to Tetsuya Naito.

So when they unveiled the IWGP Global Championship in preparation of Wrestle Kingdom, I have to say that my knee-jerk reaction was that of kind of a push.  It wasn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, my breath wasn’t taken away when seeing it.

Now I’m not saying all new blets need to be radical and unique, but I thought the Global blet was kind of vanilla.  The hard squared plates in the center and the fairly generic globes as the side plates.  It’s funny because I think AEW lifts a lot of design cues from NJPW’s blets, but the hard vertical lines of the Global make me think that they borrowed cues from AEW for a change.

What I really liked about the old Intercontinental blet is that it was nearly a clone of the old World championship, in terms of the centerplate.  It had fairly generic side plates as well, but the fact that the centerplate was fairly similar to the World, it was metaphorically stating its position as a blet close to the tier of the World championship.

The IWGP Global championship, most definitely looks like a tier below the World championship now.  Make no mistake, this is a true #2 blet, and a guy like David Finlay holding it is still very much a #2-tier talent, even in an absolutely decimated roster like New Japan’s current state is.  Even Dolph Ziggler Nic Nemeth showing up to immediately put his name in contention for this new blet couldn’t save the fact that it still seemed kind of mid.

I don’t think I’m doing a great job of articulating it, but it just doesn’t really look or feel like a big deal, like the #2 blet in New Japan Pro Wrestling really should feel like.  The design is classic, but it’s safe and kind of boring.  It feels like a blet that’s going to be passed around by guys who get over with character work, tenure and obligations to free agent acquisitions, like David Finlay, TJP or Jeff Cobb, and doesn’t seem like it’s going to be held by guys who seem like they’re on the rise to greatness, and would be the guys to elevate the title, like Nakamura and Naito did with the old Intercontinental.

Overall, the blet is fine.  But compared to the relatively short histories of prior #2 blets in the company, it already looks and feels like it will never be more than a true #2, and not one of those blets where it can someday feel like the guy holding it really does seem like they’re on the cusp of becoming great.  It’s like with the recent roster decimation recently, it’s apparent that NJPW is headed for a downswing, but it’s also as if they prepared for such by introducing a downwardly-safe and vanilla championship for the promotion to wield, and for an inherently prideful and honorific Japanese company, such just seems kind of mediocre in the big picture.

Every sports journalist’s worst nightmare

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

😬 – high school football prospect sets the internet ablaze by just his name alone: Noah Knigga

This right here, is every sports journalist’s worst nightmare.  Already, the biggest questions are on the correct pronunciation of his name, if the K is silent, and other low-hanging fruit remarks, but the harsh reality is that his mere existence, is going to inadvertently make life really hard for people who do not have bad intentions and merely want to report on sports.

Honestly, looking at his general junior year stats, 7.8 tackles per game and 3 sacks in just six games is pretty impressive, and supposedly Knigga is on some top-22 best underclassmen list, so it doesn’t sound like he’s a slouch.  He’s also rocking a 4.0 GPA, which leads to believe his character has some class and he respects academics enough, which makes it all the worse that he’s a kid that really deserves to advance his career, and make life difficult for all the people merely scared of his name, from a PR standpoint.

The funny thing is that despite his general paper-test shine, he seems to only have the attention of:

Knigga with a ‘K’ has piqued the interest of several top programs, which include West Virginia, Miami (Ohio), and James Madison

Now WVU is a decent program that often lives in or near the top-25 every year, and JMU is the pride of my hometown that I always have a soft spot for, but it’s interesting that he doesn’t seem to be attracting the attention of anyone, well, better.

I mean, if Arkansas is willing to recruit some kid named Bumper Pool, and Oklahoma is fine going after some guy named General Booty, it’s surprising how many power-5 programs are afraid to go after a guy who’s name sounds like the N-word.  Especially when you consider how most of their predominantly white student bases and boosters probably already use the word liberally behind closed doors, you’d think they wouldn’t bat an eye at a kid who’s name sounds like it in the first place.

But it feels like Knigga is going to be a kid who’s going to unfortunately suffer for what his name looks like it sounds like, mostly because teams don’t want to deal with the hot potato his name will create for their general PR.  You’d think, especially in like an SEC school, where most of the students are a bunch of racists to begin with, Knigga would be capable of moving a fuck-ton of merch from bros and troll bros who basically want to have an excuse to use the name that sounds like the word.

However, make no mistake, by the time the dust all settles, I agree with a lot of sentiment, that there will probably be a lot of sports journalists over the next few years, who will face some scrutiny, if not actual backlash, for them using Noah Knigga’s name.  And by no fault of his own, the poor guy will basically be, the living nightmare of sports journalists all over, and especially the ones local to where he ultimately ends up.

College Football presents: Van Wilder

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This shouldn’t be legal: NCAA grants Oklahoma State quarterback, Alan Bowman, waiver to play in his seventh college football season

This is funny to me in so many ways.  In an age of CFB where there are 18-year old true freshmen who bounce after one, softly-mandatory year of college, here we have a 24-year old man-child who is seemingly determined to stay in college, and has been granted a waiver to play for a seventh year.

Traditionally, kids enter college at around age 18, if they do everything by the book, they’re usually out in four years, by age 22, and then they’re unleashed upon the real world with as much earthly idea of what to do after college as they did before it but that’s another story for another day.  But Alan Bowman, will be 24 years old when he suits up for his seventh season of college football, and we basically have a real-life Van Wilder, as in a grown-ass man who seemingly is entirely against leaving college.

I love the explanation of how he was redshirted in his freshman year a decade ago was the justification for allowing him to play a seventh year in college ball, because typically redshirting is a cheap tactic employed by schools who are glorified sports franchises, to immerse a kid in the team culture, practice with the squad, train with the squad, learn with the squad, and occasionally get into a very small number of games.  It does not go against their finite number of eligible years, and it’s basically a way to get a bonus year from a kid before really actually using them.

But typically a redshirt year adds just a single year to a guy’s college career, but in the case of Alan Bowman, it’s being the rationale of why he’s going to get a seventh year.  This isn’t like the case of the 34-year old kicker for UVA, because that dude at least served his country forever ago and held off on college until he basically got the GI Bill to pick it all up for him and then decided to play ball.  It’s just a guy that just flat-out refuses to leave college for whatever reason.

Frankly, aside from it being hilarious, it really shouldn’t be legal in the holistic sense that a grown-ass man will be taking the field against squads that will have literal teenagers still playing against him.  There are probably freshman players who are still learning how to live on their own, while Bowman is probably throwing away AARP applications from his mail.

I mean I have to assume that Bowman is sticking around as long as he can because he’s probably not good enough to play professionally, and he’s trying to milk an NIL train or some sort of under-the-table benefits as long as humanly possible, because when his lengthy college career is over, his playing days probably are too.

Either way, it’s just hilarious that there will be a guy playing in his seventh college season, taking the field for a fairly adequate football program.  He’s literally nearly done with his second tour of college if he’s been taking school by the books, which he probably isn’t in all fairness but still, damn boy; get the fuck out of there, and let actual college players have an actual college career.

The Braves are the High Expectations Asian Dad of MLB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even though I don’t pay nearly as much attention to baseball as much as I used to, it can’t be said that I don’t know the Atlanta Braves.  Going into the offseason it was painfully obvious what the team’s needs were, which was pitching, pitching, pitching and moar pitching, because as the Braves were painfully exploited, their lack of pitching absolutely blew up in their face once the playoffs began.

They might have had the greatest offense in a century, and even with Ronald Acuña pulling a disappearing act in the playoffs, you can’t win baseball games if you can’t prevent the other team from scoring more runs than you do.

But in spite of the very obvious glaring need, I what was going to happen to the Braves before the offseason even really began.  Their name would be thrown into the hat on just about every notable starting pitching candidate, but one-by-one, they would lose in every single sweepstakes, usually because the Braves were too cheap, or unwilling to outbid any competitive suitors in terms of money or trade chips.  And once all the major names were off the board, the Braves would then land on picking up a starting pitcher that was too old, coming off injury/down year, both, or some other reason that made them available to the Braves and not all the other teams who are willing to dole out money like white people raising taxes on minorities.

And the Braves front office would pat themselves on the back and applaud themselves for not going over-budget, not locking themselves to a free agent contract that has any modicum of chance of being labeled a colossal bust, and then the contingent of Barves fans who believe Alex Anthopolous or any of the other Braves’ front office stooges are incapable of making bad business decisions with applaud them to, and the Braves will go into 2024, not a terrible team, but not exactly the world beaters that are expected to compete for the World Series.

Sure enough, that’s pretty much exactly what happened this off-season, and absolutely nothing that has transpired throughout the entire baseball winter has been a surprise to me, as it pertains to the Atlanta Braves.

To quickly summarize, the Braves’ name was associated to quality pitchers like Aaron Nola, Sonny Gray, Tyler Glasnow, Dylan Cease and even lol, Shohei Ohtani.  Nola used the Braves to leverage moar money before re-signing with the Phillies.  Sonny Gray signed a fairly reasonable deal with the St. Louis Cardinals so it stands to believe the Braves probably low-balled him and he joined a rebuilding Cards squad instead.  Dylan Cease talks appear to have evaporated for the time being, so the Braves probably were not willing to acquiesce on whatever the White Sox wanted from them, and not only did the Dodgers naturally win the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes, days later they managed to swipe Tyler Glasnow from the Rays and secure him for several years, before doing the same thing with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, building a monster super squad in the process.

So with one part of my predicted Braves offseason complete, the second part came to fruition when the Braves traded one of their better prospects, Vaughn Grissom, to the Boston Red Sox for, Chris Sale.

A decade ago, landing Chris Sale would’ve been a boon, because he was easily one of the best pitchers in the game in the 2010’s decade.  But here’s a guy that almost as soon as he turned 30 years old, fell off a cliff.  His numbers started plummeting, he blew out his arm and required Tommy John Surgery, and has been battling a parade of random injuries since then.  He did manage to pitch over 100 innings last season, but to a far less effective 4.30 ERA than when he was still good at baseball.  His strikeout rates were still decent, but he was getting hammered when people did connect, allowing 15 homers in his limited duties.

The Braves landing Chris Sale at the expense of a prospect the caliber of Vaughn Grissom, I told my friend, was about the most Braves transaction ever, because it truly was.  They biffed on all of the available high-tier starting pitching options, and then settled on getting a high-risk, formerly-good player, because of cost, and with a litany of hopes and dreams attached that he can bounce back to being the dominant force he was throughout the 2010’s, a decade later and through tons of injuries.

And to make matters worse, they locked themselves into this union by extending him for two more years at $38 million, and I’m too lazy to look up the specifics, prior to this, they were only on the hook for around $500k of his 2024 salary, while the Red Sox had to pay the rest, but I’m assuming that that’s no longer the case with a new contract in tow.

But basically, the modus operandi of the Atlanta Braves is always avoid the risk of high-cost assets, even if means the team as a whole is hampered by mediocre alternatives.  They will never splurge on top-tier talent, and always pick up guys who are coming off of down years, injuries, or assumed to just be needing “a change of scenery.”  The Braves always seem to think they can always operate by getting okay talent and that they’ll magically outperform their expectations because they’re playing for the high and mighty Atlanta Braves, which is fine if you went into every single year with no aspirations other than not sucking.

They’re basically the High-Expectations Asian Dad of baseball, where they’re always banking on everyone to outperform their peripherals and history, and are full of nothing but loathing disappointment if and when they don’t succeed.

The Braves haven’t really played with their balls out since Ted Turner unloaded the team to Liberty Media, and Braves Corporate hasn’t shown that they don’t care about on-field results as much as they care about appeasing the shareholders, so I guess if that’s their goal, then they’re doing a bang-up job of being above average.

Seriously though, Chris Sale and Jarred Kelenic aren’t going to fix the team and get them any closer to getting over the hurdle of the October Phillies or any other playoff team they run into, should they even make the playoffs in 2024.  As good as Spencer Strider has been, it’s been two straight Octobers in which he’s faltered, Charlie Morton isn’t getting any younger, Chris Sale is still a gigantic question mark on what we’re going to get from an older, busted up version, and Max Fried might be the only reliable pitcher the team has, and only because it’s his walk year, and he’s going to be pitching for his next contract.

Not very promising going into 2024, but then again, I’m not convinced that Braves Corporate really cares about the team’s success as long as the annual report continues to show high profits.  But as much as the Braves have sucked throughout yet another offseason, there’s always a measure of satisfaction at knowing that I’m still usually right when it comes to matters pertaining to the Braves being the Barves, and being right always feels good.