Vinny Verhei from Wrestling Observer Live vs. AJ Styles from WWE: You Can't Please Everybody, So Don't Even Try

 

Bray Wyatt (R.I.P.) vs. Shawn Michaels: Schrodinger's Wrestler

 

Mike Sempervive from F4WOnline vs. Drake Wuertz from Parts Unknown...and Let's Keep it That Way

 

Kevin Rudolf vs. Pacman Jones: You Make the Rain Fall

 

Kurt Angle: Honorary Five-Star Wrestler

 

"Filthy" Tom Lawlor vs. Nick Aldis

 

Dave Meltzer vs. Seth Rollins

 

The Fiend

 Consumers of storytelling should never have to compromise when it comes to good character work. Apparently, the readers of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter agree with me given how often they slaughter Bray Wyatt in the yearly awards. No, this isn’t just a minor disagreement. They annihilate him! They murder him! They brutalize him! They do all the things he could never do to his opponents when it counts the most. Oh sure, they’ll give him the Stockholm Syndrome treatment with the Best Gimmick awards in 2013 and 2019. And trust me, there’s a lot to be said about playing a demented cult leader and an indestructible monster on TV. But unfortunately for Mr. Wyatt, that’s where the praise ends and the raging against terrible booking begins.

Most Overrated Wrestler in 2020 (that’s a little harsh, all things considered, but okay). Worst Feud of the Year in 2017 against Randy Orton. Worst Feud of the Year in 2019 against Seth Rollins. Worst Feud of the Year in 2020 against Braun Strowman. Worst Gimmick in 2017 for being the bodily host for the spirit of Sister Abigail. Worst Gimmick in 2020 for doing the same indestructible monster character in 2019, but with more losses and more ridiculousness. Worst Match of the Year in 2014 against John Cena in a Steel Cage match (deep voiced child, anybody?). Worst Match of the Year in 2017 against Randy Orton (the worms…all those fucking worms!). Worst Match of the Year in 2019 against Seth Rollins in a Hell in a Cell match (a.k.a. the match without rules and limitations that ended in a disqualification anyways). Last and surely least, Worst Match of the Year in 2020 against Braun Strowman in a Wyatt Swamp Fight (there was no clear winner in this cheesy horror movie with more plot holes than I can count).

So…how did this happen? How did the WWE fuck up this badly when they had handfuls of gold with Bray Wyatt’s various characters? How do you fuck up a charismatic cult leader who could and would kill you with a screwdriver if he wanted to? How do you fuck up a creepy children’s show host who looks crazy enough to be on the sex offender registry and therefore shouldn’t be around children? How do you fuck up an indestructible monster with a hideous, ugly, nightmarish face that would put Pink Floyd and Slipknot to shame? How do you fuck up a character with so many layers, so much creativity, and so much potential to be a top star for the rest of eternity? I’ve got your answer right here: he loses too much.

Yep, that’s right. He’s a three hundred pound killing machine who can hit like a cannonball and move like a cruiserweight. His dialogue is so cryptic, so seductive, yet so terrifying that it’ll echo in your mind like a schizophrenic voice for days on end. If he tells you he’s going to murder you in a cold blood and leave your corpse for the buzzards to feast on, you don’t question him for a second…until he loses all of his biggest matches. He talks a big game and never backs it up when it matters. The audience is so used to seeing him fail that when he finally does add a championship or two to his resume, nobody cares. All the Hawaiian shirts, bowler hats, demonic masks, and pedophilic tendencies don’t mean shit if no one believes in the villain who embodies those traits.

Even if you don’t watch wrestling and have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about, you as authors should still take Bray Wyatt’s story and career as a cautionary tale when creating your own villains. If you want to create a convincing villain, you can splatter them with all the creative tropes in the world as long as they’re powerful enough to make their eventual defeat believable and meaningful. I’m not saying the villain has to win EVERY time, but his losses should be in small ways that don’t derail whatever momentum he has. 

You think Darth Vader would be an iconic villain from the Star Wars franchise if he kept getting his ass kicked by the rebels? Fuck no, he wouldn’t have! So what does he do to solidify his power? He cuts off Luke Skywalker’s hand, he imprisons Han Solo and hands him over to Boba Fett to be frozen in carbonite, he destroys entire planets with his Death Star battle station, and he murders the fuck out of Obi-Wan Kenobi. If you’re coming for Darth Vader’s head, you’d better paralyze his ass, because he’ll kill you the first chance he gets.

Your main villain doesn’t have to have political power over an entire galaxy. Maybe he can have power over another person. Maybe he can kidnap somebody and bend them to his will through mind-fucking torture and endless agony. Can his captive defeat him over and over again for the story to be believable? Hell no! But can his captive run away for a little while and get recaptured and brutalized over and over again? Sure! Even if the kidnapper gets an infected bite on his arm, that’s still a small enough defeat that he’s not completely gone just yet. Maybe he has no medical supplies for that wound. Maybe over the course of the story, he has to travel a long way to the nearest hospital for care. The longer he travels, the sicker he becomes. Even if he does make it to the hospital, he still risks getting captured himself, but by the police. So many layers to this story, yet the kidnapper in question is still a villain you love to hate and would love to see systematically destroyed.

Now…take those two scenarios I laid out and replace the head villains in charge with “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt. He’s the last motherfucker who deserves to wield a light saber. He shouldn’t be allowed near anybody whom he can easily stuff into his windowless van on its way to a room with no view. Long dreadlocks that look like Cthulu’s tentacles. A face with an enormous grin, rotten teeth, and ripped skin. A lantern with Bray Wyatt’s original head covering the light. Dialogue peppered with death threats and seductive promises of the darkest kind. Immunity to pain that his torture victims could only dream of having during their times of torment. If he’s written like a killer, he will succeed in these roles and become even more iconic than his predecessors. If he’s written like a chump like he’s been for most of his career, Siskel and Ebert will come back from the dead just so they can shit all over whatever story he’s a part of. And then they’ll be put back in their graves by The Fiend’s necromantic powers.

Even the most brain-dead authors understand the idea of the villains having a shit-load of power. Power can come from anywhere, but if a villain has a lot of it, then his defeat will be even more incredible, especially if the hero comes from modest means. But that of course is giving the WWE too much credit. They used to know how to build stars. Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, and John Cena are all shining examples of their success in that department. But as Vince McMahon got older and slower, so did his storytelling. 

As the CEO of WWE, Vince gets the final say in whatever creative decisions make it to television. When his brain is rotting that badly and he has that much influence over the shows, people start to notice and people turn off their televisions. I turned off mine in 2018 and haven’t turned it back on for WWE since then. Thanks, guys, for completely murdering my love for pro-wrestling. And an extra special thanks goes to the geniuses who set Bray Wyatt up to fail. He had all the creative potential in the world. He could have been a badass villain everyone can be scared of. But not anymore. That makes me sad. I’m sure it makes him sad as well.

Authors, if you’re going to make your readers sad, do it the old-fashioned way by killing off their favorite characters or at least badly torturing them. Don’t do it by creating awful villains. And don’t do it by creating awful heroes and neutral characters either. If you’re going to create a character cast, do it right! Make them three-dimensional. Make them overflow with personality. Saddle them with crazy gimmicks. But most importantly, make their victories and losses believable, for fuck’s sake! 

(sigh)

…In case it wasn’t abundantly clear already, my heart hurts for Bray Wyatt and all of his incarnations (except for Husky Harris, but he was just learning how to do decent character work at the time, so I shouldn’t be too hard on him). Wrestling fans were angry as hell in 2020 when the Wrestling Observer Newsletter put out their yearly awards and Bray Wyatt was absolutely wrecked. If those same fans still believe in the magic of Bray Wyatt, then they’re certainly welcome to. I’m not going to shit all over their happiness in that regard. So maybe the negative attention has less to do with the wrestler himself and more to do with the way he’s portrayed on TV. Even Dave Meltzer, the head journalist in charge of the WON, called him a genius when it came to his character work. I bet it hurts him and the rest of his voters to do Bray dirty like that. But silencing criticism is the same thing as acknowledging the problem doesn’t exist. WWE fucked up Bray Wyatt like a bunch of idiots and now they’re surprised when he doesn’t connect with everyone who watches him. How sad. How relentlessly sad.

Most Disgusting Promotional Tactics of 2017

***MOST DISGUSTING PROMOTIONAL TACTICS OF 2017***

I said I was going to write one of these blog entries and by god I plan on delivering. It took a while, but the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards are finally released to the public. Before I get to the part where I combine my love for pro-wrestling with my love for shocking the shit out of people, I must make a few observations. Firstly, poor Bray Wyatt. Poor, poor Bray Wyatt. Worst Gimmick, Worst Feud of the Year (vs. Randy Orton), and Worst Match of the Year (also vs. Randy Orton). And secondly, I can see the irony in a wrestling machine like Daniel Bryan winning an award for Best Non-Wrestler. Yes, he’s been retired since 2016, but still, that’s kind of ironic. Now that those tidbits are out of the way, it’s time for some shock and awe…and maybe just a modicum of writing advice. A modicum may be all that you need tonight. As usual with these yearly journal entries, I’m going to start with the winner of the actual award and work my way down the list. There we eleven candidates this year: one winner, nine runner-ups, and one honorable mention. Pick your jaw up off the floor!

***WINNER (OR LOSER, DEPENDING ON HOW YOU LOOK AT IT)***

LIST ITEM: WWE promoting Jimmy Snuka as a hero in death.

THOUGHTS: What can be said about Jimmy Snuka? He was a legend. He was a high flyer. He was a Hall of Famer. You know what else he was? A suspect in the manslaughter of his former girlfriend Nancy Argentino. Of course, he was never convicted of the crime because he was declared legally incompetent to stand trial. Uh-huh. Sure he was. And what does WWE do after Snuka dies of pancreatic cancer? They play a video package of him looking like a million bucks inside the ring. The audience booed the shit out of this display and rightfully so. Jimmy Snuka didn’t remember murdering his girlfriend…but Pepperidge Farm remembers!

***SECOND PLACE***

LIST ITEM: Jinder Mahal’s racist tirade against Shinsuke Nakamura.

THOUGHTS: If you’re living in the year 2017 or beyond, it’s probably not a good idea to compare a Japanese wrestler to Mr. Miyagi while doing fake karate moves in the ring. It’s also not a good idea to say the Japanese wrestler doesn’t “rook right”. And please, oh please, don’t say Mr. Nakamura looks like Pikachu having a seizure. Is it any wonder the audience chanted “That’s too far!” over and over again during these promos? Don’t we already get enough racism from our current president and the rise of the alt-right? Next thing you know, Jinder Mahal’s going to come out in a Pepe the Frog mask.

***THIRD PLACE***

LIST ITEM: WWE using the Ultimate Warrior’s legacy to promote Susan G. Komen’s breast cancer cause.

THOUGHTS: It’s bad enough The Ultimate Warrior was once known for telling an Arab college student to “Get a towel!” It’s bad enough he said, “Queering doesn’t make the world work!” It’s bad enough he said he was happy that wrestling manager Bobby Heenan had cancer. Now you’re going to take this social pariah and put his face on breast cancer awareness campaigns? That’s like putting a climate change denier in charge of the EPA or a dumb shit in charge of the Board of Education. Oh wait…

***FOURTH PLACE***

LIST ITEM: Pushing Jinder Mahal has WWE Champion in order to please the Indian market.

THOUGHTS: Poor Jinder can’t catch a break, can he? He’s already the recipient of Most Overrated Wrestler in 2017 and he’s second place for Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic. Now he gets fourth place on the list as well. Let’s be honest: he wasn’t a very good champion. His matches sucked, his character development was non-existent, his monologues were derailed by a blown-out voice, and the only way he could get legitimate heel heat was by being a racist asshole. Imagine if Family Guy pushed Herbert the Pervert as their top protagonist. Actually, they could very well do that one day. Bad example!

***FIFTH PLACE***

LIST ITEM: Rizin MMA booking Gabi Garcia in fights against older and smaller women.

THOUGHTS: I think we can all agree that super muscular women shouldn’t be beating up on grandmas. Unless you want your promoted character to be seen as a super villain, it’s probably not a good idea to book him or her this way. I once joked with my brother James and his friend Blake that The Simpsons would be disturbing if Homer choked other characters besides Bart, namely Maggie (a baby), Marge (his wife), Santa’s Little Helper (the dog), or Abe (his father). Well, do you see where I’m going with this?

***SIXTH PLACE***

LIST ITEM: Kevin Owens head-butting Vince McMahon.

THOUGHTS: I’m actually okay with this one since Kevin Owens is supposed to be a jerk-ass heel and this is how he earns the audience’s hatred. I know, I know, Vince is an old man and shouldn’t be taking stiff head butts, but it was his own idea, so if he’s okay with it, I’m okay with it.

***SEVENTH PLACE***

LIST ITEM: Sexy Star staying employed in wrestling even after intentionally breaking Rosemary’s arm.

THOUGHTS: The only way pro-wrestling works is if the contenders in the ring trust each other with their bodies. Yes, it’s supposed to look and feel as painful as possible, which is why it’s even more important to be careful in there. Well, Sexy Star wasn’t careful at all. In fact, she tore the shit out of Rosemary’s arm and blamed the victim for it. How nice. How fucking nice. There seems to be a lot of victim blaming these days, though for much worse crimes against humanity.

***EIGHTH PLACE***

LIST ITEM: WWE encouraging bullying in the workplace while simultaneously pushing an anti-bullying campaign.

THOUGHTS: I already did a journal entry last year about Mauro Ranallo and his struggles with being harassed by JBL. But yeah, this is a company-wide problem that affects everybody employed. In 2011, WWE actually won the Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic award for pulling this shit with overweight and Bell’s Palsy-suffering announcer Jim Ross. I thought Mauro’s dilemma would be the winner in this case as well.

***NINTH PLACE***

LIST ITEM: Conor McGregor’s racist comments against Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

THOUGHTS: Telling a black boxer to “dance, boy” and calling his family members “dancing monkeys”? Not cool. Not cool at all. It also doesn’t help that Conor once said that he’s “black from the waist down”. If Jinder Mahal can’t get away with pulling this shit against Shinsuke Nakamura, then Conor McGregor (regardless of his popularity) has to be held to the same standard. It did make for a lucrative feud between Conor and Floyd, but that’s beside the point.

***LAST PLACE***

LIST ITEM: Promotion of Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva vs. Rico Verhoeven.

THOUGHTS: If you thought booking Gabi Garcia against grandmas was cruel and unusual, get a load of this. Rico Verhoeven had earned his moniker of King of Kickboxing. He has a great record with wins over big names and has stayed fresh as a daisy in recent years. Bigfoot Silva? Not so much. He’s only won one match in the past few years and his many defeats were mostly by KO. And now Bigfoot wants to try his hand at kickboxing? It’s no surprise that he lost miserably against Rico, so all of this hype and promotion was for nothing. Oh well.

***HONORABLE MENTION***

LIST ITEM: Bayley: This Is Your Life.

THOUGHTS: It takes a special kind of dork-a-puss to screw up a lovable character this much. As a WWE wrestler who helped pioneer the Women’s Revolution with her wild popularity and strong work ethic, Bayley seemed to be headed for big things. And then…the creative writing team, in all of the infinite wisdom, broadcast a segment called Bayley: This Is Your Life, where her opponent for a pay-per-view, Alexa Bliss, painted her as having a helicopter father who was there during her first kiss and during kindergarten class. But don’t worry, because Bayley will soon get her revenge, right? Wrong! She looked like a clown in this feud and the fans booed the shit out of her for it. Poor girl. Poor, poor girl. She deserved so much better than this.

***CONCLUSION***

Boy, that was a fucking feel-good read, wasn’t it? You’re not shocked or depressed at all, are you? That reminds me, be sure to buy a copy of my book American Darkness on Amazon and other online retailers! Oh, that was ill-timed. Feel free to shiver if you’d like. Hehe! I’m Garrison Kelly and I’ll see you next time!

WWE Summer Slam: John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar

TITLE: WWE Summer Slam: John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar

YEAR: 2014

GENRE: Professional Wrestling Match

RATING: TV-PG for moderate violence and language

GRADE: Pass

In order to appreciate the sheer brutality of this main event match for John Cena’s WWE World Heavyweight Championship, it’s important to understand the back story of both competitors, the champion John Cena and the challenger Brock Lesnar.

John Cena started his career in the WWE in 2002, won his first world championship in 2005, and ever since then has become the cornerstone of WWE as well as a 15-time world champion. In other words, he’s not just some schmuck from the gym. Even the heel announcers are calling John Cena a future Hall of Famer. He gave 12 years of his life to the wrestling business and has made epic memories throughout his entire career.

Brock Lesnar is an entirely different animal. He hates the wrestling business and hates people even more. He’s a mercenary with a lust for money and inflicting pain on others. He too started in the WWE in 2002, but after winning multiple world titles left in 2004 to pursue other athletic careers. His most noteworthy achievement outside of WWE is being a former UFC Heavyweight Champion with victories over Shane Carwin, Randy Couture, and Frank Mir. He returned to WWE in 2012 on a part-time basis and did the impossible: he defeated The Undertaker at Wrestlemania 30 and handed him his first defeat at that pay-per-view.

The hype surrounding this upcoming Summer Slam main event was epic. It was a battle everybody wanted to see. And when it was all said and done, Brock Lesnar shocked the world yet again. This wasn’t just a professional wrestling match. This was something John Cena would later call a “100% ass-kicking” at the hands of Brock Lesnar. The match was only 30 seconds old and already Lesnar hit Cena with his finishing move: a fireman’s carry face buster called the F5. But Lesnar was far from finished.

Using his MMA background, he delivered hard knees, wrecking ball fists, and battleaxe elbows to John Cena, rendering him so helpless that the offence he could muster was extremely minimal. On top of those hard strikes, Brock Lesnar delivered 16 German suplexes to his opponent and left him gasping for air and struggling for clear vision.

Did I mention already that John Cena is a 15-time world champion and a future Hall of Famer? Okay, I was just making sure. It would seem unrealistic that a man with John Cena’s illustrious credentials would suffer a beating as torturous as that and not have anything left to give of his own. But that’s the way it happened and Brock Lesnar won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship in convincing fashion, as Michael Cole put it.

The hype leading up to this match along with the sheer brutality of Lesnar’s offence was enough to convince Dave Meltzer, a well-respected wrestling historian, to give the performance 4.25 stars out of 5. I’m not speaking for Mr. Meltzer, but I’m guessing the reason it didn’t get the full five was because John Cena took a long time to recover from each suplex and strike and it slowed the match down considerably.

I’m normally all about fast-paced matches, but in the case of Lesnar vs. Cena, I can make an exception. This match was maximum brutality and resulted in a huge push for Brock Lesnar. If somebody were to defeat him for the WWE World Title, it would be an admirable and heroic feat. You might have to search far and wide for a wrestler who’s willing to do that, but he’s there, trust me.

As for John Cena, his future was being questioned after taking such a devastating beating. Triple H, the man in charge at the time, considered not giving him his obligatory rematch. A panel of Hall of Famers, Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair, and Hulk Hogan, actually got together to debate whether John Cena would be ready for another rematch or if he should just retire since Lesnar’s unstoppable.

If John Cena ever did get another chance at the title, he would have a huge mountain to climb. If he climbed that mountain, it would give him the biggest boost in his career and would pretty much seal the deal for a Hall of Fame induction.

To prove he was ready, Cena did the exact same thing to Bray Wyatt during an episode of Raw that Brock Lesnar did to Cena at Summer Slam: delivered a 100% ass-kicking. Bray Wyatt’s a 300-lb wrecking ball, not some loser off the streets, so giving him a 100% beating is a heroic feat in and of itself.

Everything about this Summer Slam match from the in-ring action to the hype to the aftermath was well-executed on the part of WWE. Some would question their decision to make Brock Lesnar the champion since he’s on a part-time schedule and won’t defend it that often. I don’t question it, because main event pay-per-view matches in the WWE are still top quality without Lesnar’s presence. Isn’t that right, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins?

UFC: Gilbert Melendez vs. Diego Sanchez

TITLE: UFC: Gilbert Melendez vs. Diego Sanchez

GENRE: Mixed-Martial Arts Contest

RATING: TV-14 for violence and blood

GRADE: Pass

A TV-14 rating doesn’t do this UFC fight justice. Let’s try some more creative titles for this bloody slugfest between two aggressive lightweights. How about Diet Hostel? How about Zero Carb Saw? Or if you really wanted to get disgusting, try Human Centipede Light. Tuck the kids in early, folks, because the battle between Diego Sanchez and Gilbert Melendez was so brutal it should have been fought in a Roman coliseum. Are you prepared for me to show instead of tell? Alright then, I can certainly do that.

The first round of the fight was anything but a feeling out process. Gilbert and Diego didn’t paw at each other or try to keep each other at distance. They came out swinging like they were playing Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots. The punches and kicks were so frequent in this round that the strike count must have been in the hundreds. And then when the round was almost over, the strikes became even more frequent. The closer to the ending horn they got, the more it resembled a battle from Dragon Ball Z: blurs and blood.

No disrespect to the first round, but the second round was where the bloodbath began. Gilbert Melendez smashed Diego Sanchez above his left eyebrow and opened up a gusher of a cut. That one extra hole in Diego’s head made his entire face look like a vampire’s dream come true. There was even a point in the second round where the referee Kerry Hadley had to pause the match so the ringside doctor could look at the cut. Despite the drooling blood, all that needed to happen was a liberal application of clear ointment and the match continued.

The third round was more of the same: Bravo-Oscar-Oscar-Lima-Delta. Once again Kerry Hadley paused the match due to the waterfall flowing from Diego’s head and once again the doctor put more ointment on the cut. Truth is, there isn’t enough ointment in this world to keep Gilbert Melendez from opening somebody’s face with his chainsaw fists. Gilbert and Diego kept swinging and smashing each other to where both of them were in danger of being finished. The final horn sounded and the fans were on their feet screaming their heads off. If they screamed any louder, the doctor would have more blood to clean up because of the exploding skulls all over the arena.

The judges didn’t have much of a chore to do that night. It was obvious from Dracula’s buffet table who was the clear winner of this battle. The judges scored the fight 30-27, 29-28, and 29-28, all three of those scores in favor of Gilbert Melendez. What puzzles me about all of this is why would the audience boo that decision? It’s not rocket science, it’s brain surgery, almost literally. Gilbert won the fight fair and square and the audience is going to bitch about the decision? Is Diego Sanchez that untouchable?

It should come as no shock this fight earned praise from everyone in the MMA community who wasn’t booing like a lunatic. Both Gilbert Melendez and Diego Sanchez earned Fight of the Night bonuses from Dana White. They also earned the Fight of the Year award from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, which is a prestigious pro-wrestling and MMA publication. Joe Rogan called it the best fight he’s ever seen and he sounded like he was serious this time. Mike Goldberg made a wise-ass remark to the tune of “Jones and Gustafson who?”, though he was only kidding and meant no disrespect.

All the praise in the world can’t compare to what Gilbert Melendez received for his victory: a lightweight title shot against Anthony Pettis. Congratulations, guys. The judges ruled in Gilbert’s favor, but there are no losers in this match.

"Countdown to Lockdown" by Mick Foley

“Thank you, Vince McMahon, for making my decision to leave WWE an easy one!” These were the words spoken by Mick Foley when he jumped ship from World Wrestling Entertainment to Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in 2008. If he hadn’t jumped ship, he wouldn’t have had an amazing match with Sting at Lockdown for the TNA World Championship. “Countdown to Lockdown” is a memoir that documents Mick Foley’s moments leading up to his main event match at that same pay-per-view along with the events that led him to leave WWE. This book was published in 2010, a time in Foley’s life where his wrestling career is on hold due to his advanced age and the many injuries he’s accumulated along the way. The number of matches he wrestled during the time documented in this memoir was not the normal amount that a much younger wrestler would have from week to week. One of the things Foley did to make himself useful within the WWE was color commentary on Friday Night Smackdown. Being at that booth was one of the many reasons why leaving WWE was so easy for him since Vince McMahon would actually scream and cuss at him through the headsets while he did commentary. And then you have the many storylines that Vince came up with that would have been worthy of an award for Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. The Katie Vick storyline was a huge example of this since it involved murder and necrophilia. And then there was the time Vince McMahon did a skit where he mocked Jim Ross’s colon surgery. But the one storyline that set Mick Foley off was Vince’s limousine exploding and apparently “killing” him. Foley felt that this storyline cheapened death around a time where a WWE superstar had actually died: Chris Benoit. Upon leaving WWE due to these disgraceful storylines, Foley trained hard to get in shape for the few matches he had in TNA. He practiced promotional monologues in order to get people to buy the Lockdown pay-per-view in the first place. All of his time and effort paid off in the end since his match with Sting turned out to be more than just “good enough for his age”. It was spectacular. These words are coming from a guy who doesn’t have any illusions about what he does or how long he’s going to do it, which makes the story all the more believable and Foley a likable guy. It also helps that he can be lighthearted in moments where he’s putting his body on the line and crack a few jokes. We may never know when Mick Foley’s wrestling career will end, but I certainly hope his creative writing days will continue beyond his retirement.

　

***WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“I have a question for Damien Sandow. If Michael Cole’s stupidity is a handicap, will he get a better parking space?”

-Jerry Lawler-