The Marsellus Wallace Speech: AEW Edition

 (OOC: I read a blog post today about how Marsellus Wallace's speech to Butch in Pulp Fiction can be applied to any relatable scenario, so I did a parody myself, just like the author did. Ready? Here we go:

We fade in on Bryan Danielson, a 44-year-old pro-wrestler who’s one broken neck away from being confined to a wheelchair. He sits across the table wearing a plain white T-shirt (because he doesn’t believe in consumerism). Sitting on the opposite side off screen is Tony Khan, the Head Honcho at All Elite Wrestling, where Bryan works. Tony sounds like a cross between a delusional billionaire and a giddy fanboy.

TONY (O.S.)

What do you think you’re gonna find when your decades-long career is over? I think you’re gonna find yourself one broken down, sad-ass motherfucker. The thing is, Bryan, you have a shitload of five-star matches. But as painful as it may seem, five-star matches won’t save your life, and yours is over the minute you take another bump. That’s a hard motherfucking fact of life, and it’s one your ass is gonna have to get realistic about. The wrestling business is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers who say they’re gonna retire but never do. Motherfuckers who thought their asses would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar like Ric Flair and Chris Jericho, it does. If you mean it gets better with age like R-Truth and Trish Stratus? It don’t. Besides, Bryan, how many five-star matches do you got left in you? Two? Wrestlers don’t have an Old-Timer’s League. It was called Heroes of Wrestling and it sucked ass. You came close, but you made it only a handful of times. If you were gonna make it again, you would have done it already. 

Tony holds release papers just out of Bryan’s reach.

TONY (O.S.)

You actually gonna retire this time?

BRYAN

Certainly appears so.

Bryan takes the release papers from Tony’s hand.

TONY

Night of your final retirement speech, you’re gonna feel a slight sting. That’s pride fucking with you. Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, probably about as bad as Jon Moxley suffocating you with a plastic bag. It never helps. You gotta fight through that shit. ‘Cause a year from now when you’re at home banging Brie Bella and hanging out with your two kids Birdie and Buddy, you’re gonna say to yourself, “Tony Khan was right”, which is something I hear from Dave Meltzer pretty much regularly. 

BRYAN

Yeah, me too.

TONY

At AEW Revolution, you job to Jon Moxley. Say it.

BRYAN

At AEW Revolution, I job to Jon Moxley.

The original blog post: https://www.kingdomoffailure.com/post/f-ck-pride-it-only-hurts-it-never-helps

"YES!" by Daniel Bryan

BOOK TITLE: YES!: My Improbable Journey to the Main Event at Wrestlemania
AUTHOR: Daniel Bryan (with Craig Tello)
YEAR: 2015
GENRE: Nonfiction
SUBGENRE: Pro-Wrestling Memoir
GRADE: Pass


In this David vs. Goliath life story, little Aberdeen, Washington boy Bryan Danielson gets hooked on wrestling from watching The Ultimate Warrior, Bret Hart, Chris Benoit, and Dean Malenko on TV. He became so passionate about it that after graduating high school, he got in his car and traveled to San Antonio, Texas to learn how to wrestle. He went from wrestling in Wal-Mart parking lots to the Tokyo Dome, from high school gyms to reputable American arenas, from English carnivals to his ultimate destination, the New Orleans Superdome, where he won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship by defeating three future Hall of Famers in one long, grueling night.

What makes this life story so amazing is that nobody expected the now christened Daniel Bryan to make it as far as he did. There are hundreds of thousands of wrestlers all over the world and only a select few of them achieve universal fame and fortune. Daniel Bryan is way under six feet tall, only slightly north of 200 lbs., and has more facial hair than a Serengeti lion. Against much bigger opponents, Daniel seemed like the ultimate underdog. He took a lot of beatings and suffered many horrific injuries along his path to success, but that’s what paying your dues in the wrestling industry is all about. Not only had Daniel Bryan paid his dues, but he paid 100% interest.

Daniel is the kind of person you want to see succeed and part of it is because of his personality. If you were to approach this man on the streets, you would find him to be a friendly, laidback, humble human being. He knows wrestling doesn’t owe him anything, in fact, he owes wrestling everything. Underneath all of that modesty is a fiery passion that pushes him through the worst obstacles in his life. Whether those obstacles are amassing a ten match losing streak on a boring WWE sideshow or losing his father and crying relentlessly because of it, Daniel Bryan will not stay down for anything. He’ll tell you everything’s okay one minute and burst into passionate flames the next. It’s part of his Gemini Syndrome, or his dual nature as most people call it.

If you’re in an absolute hurry to get through this book, don’t worry, it’s a fast read. It may not feel that way with Craig Tello’s play-by-play introductions at the beginning of each chapter, but over time you get used to having an extra writer there to narrate the action. Daniel Bryan’s own writing style is no-nonsense and to the point, which is a style most fast-paced writers employ. However, with too little description and liberal use of the word “very”, it’s easy to tell that Daniel Bryan doesn’t write for a living. I’m not saying this is a badly written book, because it’s not. But if you’re expecting a celebrity memoir, you’ve got one.

I’ve been a Daniel Bryan fan ever since I started paying attention to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards in 2008. I hadn’t seen one Daniel Bryan match prior to NXT in 2010, but apparently he’s famous in the online community for being the Best Technical Wrestler, Most Outstanding Wrestler, and having a Match of the Year. The first two awards he won multiple times over many years and eventually became the Most Outstanding Wrestler of the Decade for 2000-2009. It also helps matters that Daniel Bryan is an environmentally conscious animal lover who rubs shoulders with poor people. The fact that a mere hungry man like Mr. Bryan can accomplish so much through hard work and passion is a story that epics are made of. We love the underdog story and always will.

WWE Survivor Series: AJ Lee vs. Nikki Bella

MATCH: AJ Lee vs. Nikki Bella for the Divas Championship
PROMOTION: World Wrestling Entertainment
EVENT: Survivor Series
YEAR: 2014
RATING: TV-PG for violence
GRADE: Fail


Legendary WWE commentator Jim Ross said it best when being interviewed by Give Me Sport: “The diva’s division is in trouble.” He didn’t mince words, he didn’t sugarcoat, he told it like it is. From the 1990’s to the 2000’s, women’s wrestling in the WWE didn’t used to be all that painful to watch. Back then, you had high flyers like Lita, technical geniuses like Trish Stratus, and muscle-bound neck snappers like Chyna. They didn’t just roll around to entice the male viewers; they actually put on wrestling clinics. There were even times when the wrestled men that were much bigger and stronger than them. Fast forward to the 2010’s and Trish Stratus and Lita are in the WWE Hall of Fame while Chyna has been snubbed due to her being a porn actress who could be Googled by small children.

My, how the times have changed. Today’s divas division isn’t about wrestling or enticement anymore. It’s about making the women look inferior to the men. Instead of badass wrestlers like the ones I’ve mentioned in the first paragraph, you’ve got super skinny lingerie models with pretty faces and Barbie bodies struggling to perform the most basic wrestling maneuvers whether they’re clotheslines, scoop slams, suplexes, or dropkicks. You think we’re going to get a divas Hell in a Cell match anytime soon? If we did, it would only last 30 seconds like most women’s matches did in the 2010’s. It got so bad that as a heel announcer at the time, Michael Cole would go out of his way to bury the divas division, whether he was pretending to sleep at the announce table or picking up a microphone to tell the girls to hurry up and finish their matches. People like to say that there are real wrestlers in this division like Paige, Natalya, and Naomi, but when placed in the ring with Barbie dolls, their chemistry is screwed up and it turns out to be a less than 1-star match.

At Survivor Series in 2014, it was more of the same when AJ Lee was scheduled to defend her WWE Divas Championship against Nikki Bella with the latter’s twin sister Brie hanging around at ringside. In 2013 on the same pay-per-view, AJ Lee, Nikki Bella, and a bunch of other divas competed in a 7-on-7 elimination tag team match, which caught the attention of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter as the Worst Worked Match of 2013.

Fast forward to the buildup towards Survivor Series 2014 and Nikki and Brie were actually feuding with each other. With piss-poor acting, no real reason for the feud to happen, unrealistic dialogue, and appearances by Stephanie McMahon and Jerry Springer, this rivalry would go on to win Worst Feud of 2014, also in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. So far, the Bella Twins collectively have won two awards from that publication, but not in a good way. It didn’t help matters that the twins also received a Gooker Award from Wrestlecrap.com for their rivalry. Nice job, ladies.

And now we come to Survivor Series 2014 in what is supposed to be a competitive match-up for the Divas Championship. AJ Lee aka Mrs. CM Punk is ready for action against the challenger Nikki Bella aka Mrs. John Cena. The bell is rung and the match begins…but not without Brie Bella aka Mrs. Daniel Bryan standing on the ring apron wanting AJ Lee’s attention. Once Brie got it, she pulled AJ’s face into hers and planted a not-so-romantic lesbian kiss on her lips. The reasoning for this would later be revealed as revenge for AJ doing the same thing to Daniel Bryan at the Wrestlemania 28 pay-per-view and costing him the World Heavyweight Championship. And now Brie has cost AJ the Divas Championship. As soon as the geek goddess backs up into Nikki Bella, Nikki heaves the skinny chick on her shoulders and plants her down in a move called the Rack Attack. Nikki pinned AJ 1-2-3 and became the new champion in less than 30 seconds.

When I reviewed the match between Daniel Bryan and Sheamus at Wrestlemania 28, I gave it a failing grade because I wanted to see a war between those two. I wanted bloodshed, bruising, beatings, and battles and all I got was 18 seconds of garbage. I should apply the same logic to this match, but really, who wants to see two skinny divas with no meat on their bones prance around the ring like pixies? That meat on the bones comment wasn’t a joke; when AJ Lee gets put in a submission hold, you can see her ribcage. Yuck!

When Jim Ross said the divas division needed help, he knew exactly who could help them. If you’re tired of pointless divas matches on WWE, fear not, because the end is not the answer. All you have to do is subscribe to Hulu or the WWE Network and watch a weekly Wednesday show called NXT. The NXT divas are MUCH different from the ones on the main roster. Not only do they know how to wrestle, they know how to wrestle five-star matches. Who will ever forget the epic encounter between Charlotte (Ric Flair’s daughter) and Natalya (Bret Hart’s niece) over the vacant NXT Women’s Championship, where technical wrestling and meaty bodies were on tap that night. What about the match at NXT Unstoppable between Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks? Those two put it all on the line and did moves that no skinny model chick could ever do. Hell, those two matches had the crowd chanting, “This is wrestling!” Yes, it is, Full Sail University. Yes, it is.

Can the divas division on WWE’s main roster be saved? I’d like to think it can. I try to be optimistic about that sort of thing. The only way it can happen is if WWE puts more emphasis on wrestling (the second W) than entertainment (the E), but then again, mocking women who can’t wrestle isn’t very entertaining for any crowd.