*Blog post was started on April 5, 2021.

Daniel Bryan, Will Ospreay, and Why Every Heel Should Be John Lithgow

Watching NJPW's Sakura Genensis at Ryokogu was probably the best way to start off this WrestleMania week. It was a solid card with great upcoming bookings lined up. And perhaps it will line up Kota Ibushi to appear at AEW Double or Nothing. With Cesaro versus Rollins and Zayn versus Owens this weekend, I think it is okay to be optimistic.

Thankfully for me, "Being the Elite" will be my Monday night wrestling fix, so Vince McMahon cannot screw the vibe up. It sucks for AEW that they cannot use Impact Wrestling as a lead in any further. This does make booking the first Impact after WrestleMania interesting. We know that AXS TV will never beat USA in the ratings, but if they book Kenny Omega, can he keep NXT under one million viewers.

Two paragraphs, both of them either hint or state Kenny Omega's influence on the business. He is obviously the heel with the most power. Sorry Roman Reigns. If only you did not have to share it with Paul Heyman.

Perhaps if Reigns would do some weaselly stuff. I know that is what Heyman is for, but the biggest news not directly involving the IWGP Cody-versal Championship (should I have called it the Tattooniversal) is Will Ospreay delivering an Os-cutter to his real life girlfriend Bea Priestley to show that the IWGP World Championship is worth more than his lover.

 

FMK: Wrestle Kingdom 15, @Marty Scurll, The OCHO: The NEW Real Secondary Championship

 *Blog post started on January 4, 2021.

I somehow ended up with a three-day weekend, so productivity was not a primary concern. If anything, the schedule left me worried that a furlough is coming up at my retail job. After December 27, the curbside pickup shelves were pretty barren. The upside to this is that it should have at least made the "weekend show up and walk out" coworker have to be counted on. What a way to celebrate a birthday. This seems like inverse karma, but I will enjoy it however it comes.

With how I like to ideally lay every one of my blogs out, we are do for a wrestling one. It has been a week since Brodie Lee has passed, so I think I should be able to write about the business in a calm place. Having to put out my year end blogs ("A Call for Podcast Guests and Honorable Ninety-Minute [or 97 min] Film Discoveries of 2020" and "Best 2020 Ninety-Minute [or 97 min] Film Discoveries for Chilling") when it came to sub-100-minute cinema let me avoid the topic.

Unfortunately for pro-wrestling, a lack of productive fandom was present. WrestleTalk and WhatCulture released a lot love with year end lists, but since I work a day job and January 4th did not fall on the weekend, I have not seen any of Wrestle Kingdom's first night. Fate's bigger kick in the teeth is that the bank's five-day work week regardless of Saturday coverage means I will have a day off in the middle of the week. Sadly, that is Wednesday, thus I cannot watch eight hours of wrestling in one sitting tonight to be up to speed.

I blame fate, but now that I am the third most powerful person at the branch (That does sound like being the third tallest on an "NBA Jam" roster.), the wisdom should have been their to request those days off in advance. Not watching Wrestle Kingdom 15: Night 2 live is inexcusable for someone who has essentially become nothing more than a mark. Thank the gods for COVID-19 so I can just proclaim any non-signed talent is in the same status as I. If you are finding booking because of lack corona virus restrictions, you have a priority issue or an inability to accept reality. And that sounds like the pot calling the kettle their word.

*January 5, 2021

A pot of coffee has been brewed at the bank. It is not for me. The new hire needed it to plow through the regulatory training and the new father only had three hours of sleep. Though, since the new dad talked about finishing "Cyberpunk 2077" (as a nomad) last night and restarting (as a corpo), I doubt the son was the reason for that. This is all a long way of questioning what kind of wrestling fan I am. Surely I could have stayed up and watch the live stream of Wrestle Kingdom: Night 2 and not be any worse for wear.

I did work through Night 1, and it was a pretty solid card. My change would have been Will Ospreay defeating Kazuchika Okada because you should not let both up and coming talents loose out. Hiroshi Tanahashi put over the young upstart Chris Jericho the year prior, so he should not be made to lose to The Great-O-Kharn. Okada got to delay the Kota Ibushi ascension last year, so he should not be hurt by doing the favor. Call me old fashioned, but your Super Bowl is suppose to be the end of the story not the beginning. Are we working towards Okada giving Ospreay his win back next year?

Surprisingly, WrestleTalk did not cover the event. They are based in London. No one would have to stay up all night to watch it. At worst, you are waking up at six in the morning. It is your job guys. We all wake up at least an hour before the time clock needs to be punched. I am not regretting being a patron with the laziness being displayed.

They may have been covering it live on the Wrestle 2 channel, but if you do not even do predictions video for the second biggest show in wrestling on your primary channel to promote your secondary, did you really care.?Cutting those ties to a #SpeakingOut name (Will Ospreay) are we?

At least you can still count on them in regards to Western wrestling news. Knowing that Raw was would be the only show be covered in their daily news video, they mentioned that Marty Scurll coming to terms on his release from Ring of Honor, along with his #SpeakingOut allegation. I am just stuck wondering why Jay Lethal is still on the ROH payroll.

Reddit...Marty Scurll...if you want to see a sick pro wrestling entrance look him up

I do not want to come across as insensitive about abuse in the wrestling business. With what I gathered from the Marty Scurll situation was that he was just disrespectful to someone he was intimate with. If an accuser is not pursuing the predator criminally or civilly, I am open to overthink what happened. This comes from me being in a situation where I did nothing wrong except feel concern for someone who was coked up, angry, and dangerous. We reconciled over that incident, but are either of us admitting fault?

Most people who have heard my story seem to believe me, but I was definitely seen in a better light before hand. In retrospect, I should have been standing up for her and place myself in a position to understand her motives and fears, and making it clear that what she did in her past that did not involve the night in question should not lead to any assumptions about her. This thought process has lead me to unfollow a lot of Johnny Depp fans who think Amber Heard is evil thus Warner Bros should have canned Mera instead of Grindelwald. If she is not mentally stable or has any degree of PTSD, what she says cannot be called a bold-faced lie.

So, yeah, I want to see Scurll in AEW as soon as possible. He sounds more upstanding than Rick Swann. Scurll has never inspired a woman to run away from him to the point where authorities got involved. Scurll has undoubtedly been an asshole in the past, and it seems like he has paid for it. Unless the ROH deal was guaranteed money. If that is the case, I could see not booking him until Full Gear 2021.

I think my stance is better flushed out in my blog post "Postponing (Not Cancelling) @TheProductDS and the Disgruntled's Real Women's Champ" or anything under my #SpeakingOut category. If anything, I hope my views on the subject maybe evolving. COVID-19 has kind of ruined my chances to find parties with a better understanding of victims or have their own experiences of abuse. That is a scary statement, but I have found that most of us are dealing with trauma from abuse of some sort. Mine is documented in "#MeToo and the Disgruntled’s Real World Champ Part 4".

With all of my Disgruntled's Real Championship title histories seemingly always ending up associated with sexual trauma of some kind, I think I would be one hell of a shoot interview. Do the marks ever get those? But this blog post does not seem long enough, so lets get our current DRCW Championship.

If only I had decided to stay away from WrestleTalk this morning, I could have just transitioned into this topic based on Jon Moxley's Wrestle Kingdom promo which I hope leads to him facing off against KENTA at Revolution 2021 (I think I tweeted @tonykhan with "Full Gear". I was clean and sober, so that is a bit embarrassing.). That would be a nice throwback to the glory days of ROH not the Sinclair-owned era of picking and choosing of persona-non-grates.

#MeToo and the Disgruntled’s Real World Champ Part 4

Simon's Cat

Damn, it has been a tough week. Joe Madden may have over thought the Cubs last two games. “Venom” is a so bad it is good movie which leads me to fear the fate of the Sony franchises. I seem to be getting ahead of my blogs by one week, hence I may be working too much.

And then you have the all but certain demise of the country with the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation. How do you tell a happily married man who takes you to sporting event and respects his Nike-boycotting wife that there is no way I want to stand for a flag that represents a dead country. But I respect the man, so I should not embarrass him despite his wife has said that we cannot fault powerful men for abusing their power, unless they were communist revolutionaries.

I never got away with anything growing up. Being too honest has plagued me. Striving for decency deters me from a negative path. The point is, if I screwed up, I paid, and have always paid. If we have learned anything from the Me Too Movement, is that everybody should answer for their indiscretions. It is not vengeance, it is a means to encourage protecting those whose safety is the target of those in power.

Thus, I am pondering if I should make this rant relevant to the current theme of the blog by exploring the incidents of sexual assault and harassment that I have experienced from my time in professional wrestling. You could call it hazing bullshit, but the fact of the matter is if I broke these guys faces, I risked never being booked again by that promotion. What really hurts is that the promotion never used me again. To their credit, I was booked and wisely ended up being a healthy scratch on my last trip to Southern Wisconsin for a last minute appearance by Silas Young, so at least the promotion remembered me.

It was 14 years ago. I was victimized. You cannot hold it against me if I was bumped from the card for someone less prestigious that The Last Real Man in Professional Wrestling (do not hold the gimmick against him). The culprits and facilitators are remembered, especially those who boasted about it. The stories were something I laughed off with the guys in the business like it was just a permanent marker stunt on my face, but when normal people ask for crazy and obscene stories from the business, you realize that the ones that come to immediate mind demonstrate behavior that is not acceptable. You realize that you were abused and you feel you can only blame yourself since you still want to be a part of the business. You cannot blame the sport.

But, these guys (for the most part) are friends and a couple of them have kids. There is a slim chance their life could be ruined since I am already wrestling’s persona non grata south of I-80. Why be afraid of going national? Should I wait till I hear about their next job opportunity? I have not killed their present, but why do I feel like I have paid for their constant happiness I have perceived?

I suppose I should just be happy not having post traumatic stress in regards to this issue, or am I just now showing that I suffer from these stunts? Time does not heel all wounds. If this would have been realized when I was in therapy in regards to abusive relationships and and failing to prevent a gas station suicide, perhaps the Supreme Court fulfilling the wills of sex offenders for the next 20 years would not leave me considering snuffing myself (I really needed a better therapist, so probably not).

Hopefully, Ronan Farrow gets wind of this blog and helps me decide if I will name names. Provided that we get over the mess of me being a Woody Allen apologist of course. Time wears away, it does not heal. So I guess the moral is not to wound in the first place.

With that said, I would like to apologize to “Lauren” at Big Al’s in Peoria (2015) if I was too handsy to begin with. It was me testing boundaries, and regardless if I stopped when told, I did wrong to begin with.

I gotta at least answer for my indiscretions, before I get this blog back on track. If only I could hold off on the posting till WWE’s Evolution for the sake of cultural relevance. But, releasing this a week later may be too much time from when I wrote this.

Anyhow this blog has all the stuff marks want in bold, so the intro and transition do not matter to anyone besides me I suppose. More reason to try and be brave about abuse and the regret that people may have givien a shit about me if my struggles were more relatable than just being in my head.

Pardon the dark tone. It makes me hope a lot of the visitors just paged down to The Disgruntled’s Real World Champion content.

66th Real World Heavyweight Champion - WWE Champion John Cena (2) - 5/11/2001 to 7/17/11

The Days of E&C and TLC: The Disgruntled Real Tag Team Champions - Part 4

The non-highlighted was written on February 6, 2020.

Well, I appreciate all the news coverage that allowed me to stay occupied the vast majority of my shift, but I definitely could have waited one more week. In other words, trying to develop an argument to convince my mom to abandon the Grand Old Party is what is on my mind. Not to say that witnesses would have changed the result, but one would have to at least appreciate the effort put into the cover up.

There has been enough news that some decent conversations have been held at the day job. Margot Robbie's amateur tattoo stories have come out filled the pop culture and its influence on college kids and impulsive soon to be 40 somethings (If she and Jeff Hardy can own machines, why not I?). The Christian Right (and white) Facebook opinions about the Super Bowl halftime allowed for a common ground with the more religious types in the office.

The Religious: You know how much I love Jesus, but whoa. And the stupid Bible verses to defend her stance.

Me: Did she go straight to Leviticus?

The Religious(s): Ha!

I suggested to both to just use the "unfollow" option on Facebook, but my manager said she needs that craziness every now and then, so she prefers to let them snooze for 30 days. That is where I went to bat for Twitter (@maineventzombie) and stated if I need that insanity, I will just go and troll Tomi Lahren (whom I should have immediately tagged in my "If you are Generation X or younger and support the GOP, you are a sellout." tweet). Turns out, that is when you can get the religious on your side

The Religious: She's such a hypocrite.

Me: Actually, no.

This was a place to say that the religious one was not necessarily conservative by explaining the separate approach to it. Lahren uses personal freedom to justify the stuff that she did not agree with. My goal was to show I understood the religious, but why she may want to avoid calling herself conservative. She even acknowledged that the success of religious conservatism would be replacing god.

Of course, she is a millenial. I do not know if telling my mom to shun the GOP cunts (broad use of the noun, not about the GOP's broads) so that you can start a new with a conservative party instead of depending on the power-hungry. If Dad was not so fluid in his political acceptance, he would be a good teammate in this argument. Life is all about good teammates, like:

The 54th Real Tag Team Champions: ECW's Impact Players (Justin Credible and Lance Storm) - 1/9/2000 to 2/26/2000

Credible and Storm were two guys that Paul Heyman wanted to keep looking strong until the right time came to elevate them to the main event. Essentially, this reign was to keep them in a holding pattern, so when it came to wrestlers not named Jerry Lynn, they were the top. And because of the attention they garnered, they would be in the main event picture anyhow...too the point that when the reign ended, the titles were diluted.

The 55th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's New Age Outlaws (2) - 2/26/00 to 2/27/00

ECW's belts were swapped twice in a matter of weeks with a couple of makeshift teams (Masato Tanaka and Tommy Dreamer; Raven and Mike Awesome). WCW's tag division fell off once the Russo Era began. The Outlaws were not as over as they once were, but they were the top team and represented the past of WWF best. It was just about time for the division to finally go to the future.

The 56th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Dudley Boyz (4) - 2/27/00 to 4/2/00

It ended in the Triple-Threat Tag Team Ladder Match at WrestleMania 2000 (16).

The 57th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Edge and Christian - 4/2/00 to 5/29/00

The 58th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Too Cool (Grand Master Sexay and Scotty 2 Hotty) - 5/29/00 to 6/25/00

I really wanted to place the titles on KroniK (Brian Adams and Bryan Clark). They were the last memorable WCW team and Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor should not be a match for them. Unfortunately, Shawn Stasiak and Chuck Palumbo needed to get over faster than their talent's growth.

The 59th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Edge and Christian (2) - 6/25/00 to 9/24/00

During this reign, they successfully retained the titles in the first Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match.

The 60th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Hardy Boyz (Matt and Jeff Hardy) - 9/24/00 to 10/22/00

The 61st Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Los Conquistadores/Edge and Christian (3)- 10/22/00 to 10/23/00

The 62nd Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Los Conquistadores/Matt and Jeff Hardy (2) - 10/23/00 to 11/6/00

The 63rd Real Tag Team Champions:

ECW's Full Blooded Italians (Tony Mamaluke and Little Guido Maritato) - 11/6/00 to 12/3/00

I had forgotten, or perhaps failed to remember, the reign of Right to Censor (Bull Buchanon and The Goodfather). This faction did not work because everyone in it (with the exception of Stevie Richards) felt like a retread. WCW's titles were being swapped on a weekly basis at this time. After the Impact Players disbanded, this was the only lengthy ECW title reign recorded.

The 64th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Edge and Christian (4) - 12/3/00 to 12/18/00

The ECW titles had their last title change (Danny Doring and Roadkill) before they became inactive.

The 65th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Rock and Undertaker - 12/18/00 to 12/19/00

This was part of another Edge and Christian angle that helped build up the main event scene (Kurt Angle being the guest referee in their only defense) and lasted a night, so no harm done to the legacy of the belts.

The 66th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Edge and Christian (5) - 12/19/00 to 1/21/01

The 67th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Dudley Boyz (5) - 1/21/01 to 3/5/01

The 68th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Hardy Boyz (3) - 3/5/01 to 3/19/01

The 69th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Edge and Christian (6) - 3/19/01

Edge and Christian's chicanery will always be forgiven for any short WWF reigns they played a part in. After stealing the Dudley Boyz title shot, it was determined that they needed to defend them the same night against the rightful number one contender.

The 70th Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Dudley Boyz (6) - 3/19/01 to 4/01/01

The 71st Real Tag Team Champions:

WWF's Edge and Christian (7)

Robschamberger.com - Edge and Christian

Hashtag IWA MeToo: Match 2 - Add a Pound Sign or Names of Jerks?

Do not look at your blogger stats when you are looking for motivation to write.

I am starting to think that writing maybe nothing more than practice. Too bad I need a better work situation to just take a day or two to devote writing my next work of fiction. If it is any comfort to my tens of readers, management positions at my day job are something that I am pursuing which is a first. As for freeing myself from the overnight drone work, that will have to wait for a relationship building trip to Vegas to pass, a long with my anti-anxiety and sleep aid.

May be I cannot do anything right. My third trip to Sin City is being planned, and yet again, I cannot enjoy all that the state of Nevada has to offer. Granted, I have out grown wanting to visit the adult entertainment facilities outside of Clark County, but they turn around and legalize cannabis. How do I always miss out, be it blogging or partying?

It is sad to say that it seems that you have to shock people to get a response to your posts. If memory serves me right, (and after checking out the stats from Harshside.com, it does) calling out pit bull owners in a title and referring directly to Peoria wrestling seemed to have resulted in my biggest numbers of views. On this website, people were not reading “Racism Can Play in Peoria. What About Your Local Wrestling?”, but they had a response…oh did they have a response. Either everyone’s social media feeds lean so far left or right that those people who defended the absolutely wrong ideology of Tracy Smothers are not aware of the last blog post (to my credit, I found out about Ian’s insensitivity), or they have just become too jaded to even think about somebody suggesting they are assholes.

Damn people basing philosophy from novelty tees (“Mom told me I could be what ever I wanted, so I became an asshole” for example). It may inspire me to take a motorboat engine to those GEICO matinees.

Or if I infer from Ian Rotten’s Facebook feed, the man who is excusing the awful, just does not produce enough interest for Twitter’s wrestling pundits to care about his reckless posting.

So after quite a few shows with unsatisfactory houses (meaning they did not pay the bills), we have to switch some things around in order to keep this Thursdays show at $15.

I am not saying he is being a bad promoter, he just does not have the resources to affect the business. That is something I can definitely relate to. Hence, when I thought about a shocking blog title to sell this, I came up with “Redefining Rotten.” That that may be redundant. His further digging of his trench with those who permit a sexually dangerous environment shows how he wants to be defined.

If I have to give more credit to Rotten, I have to acknowledge that he has a better clue of what his audience wants. But with fans like the ones who immediately responded to my first response, why would you want to keep them?

Tonya Heath: I don’t give a shit about who’s cheating on who. I wanna see someone get their ass kicked and bleed! If that makes me sick and twisted, fuck it.

Esequiel Mark Gonzales: That’s kind of why I don’t give a damn about what’s going on in WWE any more and prefer to support my local Indies. It’s pretty much the only environment I can just sit back and be a fan like it was meant to be

Some may say that these folks are just ignorant. If that is the case, they are impressionable, so they can be educated through your product to be transformed from not only being lost, but from being douche bags. I did offer an education to these two.

It’s kind of embarrassing to find out that certain Indie fans are feeling disenfranchised by WWE’s efforts to keep rapists and and domestic violence out of their company, which is still affiliated with Donald Trump. If an ally to the autocrat is more socially aware and concerned about safety than these fans, you know these marks are on the wrong side of history.

If a promoter plays to the marks on the wrong side of history, it is hard to call them a good person.

This is where I left off with my Facebook fury for that day. I should be more optimistic. It was already posted on THE social network, why would they need two “PgDn” of explanation to why the misogyny that dominates it is so messed up?

With that said, I wonder if there are collegiate journals dedicated to the online society’s bullshit? I may just have to get over the possibility of being a college student in my 40's. It does not seem to be a stretch from what I am doing with my life now.

Here’s hoping for a few good nights at the tables come May.

Drools MacDougal went to work on his breakfast, landing most of it in his mouth. helladamnsquirrels.tumblr.com