Southpaw Regional Wrestling - Episode 1

Over the last couple years the WWE has really pushed to deliver more #content to it's subscribers and fans. Some of it has been really good but a whole lot of it has been complete drek. I'm not 100% sure what category Southpaw Regional Wrestling falls into yet. I think this is amazing but I'm not 100% sure. I feel like I could be convinced either way. Whatever it is it's definitely mesmerizing.

WWE Smackdown Live: The Review

My son and I went to WWE Smackdown Live last night. That's me in the circle holding a sign. I'm super famous now.

A couple months ago It came up randomly in a conversation with my son that the next time the WWE was in town he wanted to go. It was weird because he really doesn't have much interest in wrestling. Whenever I'm watching it he's usually got his face buried in his Kindle watching youtube or playing Roblox. So, when it was announced Smackdown was coming to town I jumped all over a couple tickets and we made a fun day of it. We visited the Space Needle first, checked out the EMP (Mo-Pop now), got a huge thing of french fries and some french fry only place at Seattle Center.

This was only my 3rd live wrestling show and the first one in about 15 years. I was expecting the experience to have changed a bit but it really hadn't. Same mix of drunk guys and families yelling at a bunch of sweaty dudes pretending to beat each other up. If you're into the pro-graps it's definitely worth your time and money to check it out. I had forgotten how loud everything is. The fireworks, the guys hitting the ring, the crowd. Oh man, the crowd. There were several time the crowd got really loud and tried to drown out the wrestlers while they were on the mic. The Miz in particular was having a lot of fun with it. Holy cow, that guy is fantastic at what he does. I think I had forgotten how much fun it was to boo someone in real life.

Anyway, we had a ton of fun. WWE puts on a good show. Key Arena is still a pretty good facility to check out small events like this (assuming you were in the lower bowl and not in the nose bleeds). Seattle Center has a lot of fun stuff to check out, it was more family friendly than I had remembered. All in all it was an A+ kinda day.

Daniel Bryan Says Goodbye

Here's Daniel Bryan's retirement speech from RAW last night, kind of. His speech was something like 20 minutes long and the WWE in their infinite wisdom has edited it down to 6 minutes. I'm sure some dutiful wrestling fan will upload the whole thing somewhere but I don't really feel like searching for it.

I'll freely admit I cried. I know it's a silly thing to cry about, a man who pretends to fight in his underwear for a living retiring. Daniel Bryan isn't dead or anything. He's living the dream, retiring early to raise a family with his hot wife, piles of cash and composting toilet. We should all be so lucky.

It's blog posts like this where I wish I was better with words.

Daniel Bryan wasn't anyone I knew personally but it felt like I did. I guess that's the beauty of entertainment, on occasion you're presented with something unreal that you connect to in a very real manner. There's a cognitive dissonance at work. It's the crux behind the meme "It's still real to me dammit". Ok, I think I'm starting to lose my point. I guess the point is that I don't think we should be ashamed to admit we've been emotionally touched by art and entertainment. I mean, that's sort of the point of it all, isn't it?

Daniel Bryan was a fantastic wrestler, he was one of the best in the world and by all accounts was a pretty good dude. Every time he wrestled it brought a smile to my face. Everyone in the DevilDinosaur household wishes him the best in his future endeavors.

re: Daniel Bryan

It doesn't matter if you knew him as The American Dragon or Daniel Bryan, Bryan Danielson was one of the best professional wrestlers of all time. He's retiring tonight on RAW. If you even have just a passing interest in pro-graps I'd suggest you check out the show. If nothing else it should be worth it for the spectacle. I'll definitely be watching with a giant box of Kleenex.

2016 Royal Rumble: The Review

Apparently my neighbors sacrificed their dog to the wrestling gods so that the 2016 Royal Rumble Could be amazing....

I've been having a lot of mixed feelings with the WWE lately. RAW has been pretty horrible for a while now and the the last few PPVs have been sort of "meh". NXT (the WWE developmental show) is still freaking amazing so I'm not about to ditch the network or anything but the main product has left a lot to be desired over the last year. I wasn't expecting much from the Royal Rumble this year but Sunday night was the kind of night where the DevilDinosaur household needed a win.

Early Sunday morning I looked outside my bedroom window, just to see how the lawn was dealing with all the rain and I noticed something on our fence. Turns out it was our neighbors dog hanging by it's leash. Our neighbors have a line that runs parallel to our back fence where they can tie up their dog and it looks like he had just enough slack to jump the fence but not enough to make it to the other side. He was very dead, hopefully it was a quick death.

I talked with the neighbors, or at least the sister of our neighbor who had just moved in. I'm not sure where the real neighbor was, the sister spoke broken English so I wasn't getting a lot out of her. She did tell me that the dog had been missing since last weekend. So, we've had a dead dog hanging in our backyard for about a week. I can see why he would be hard to find considering he was still attached to his leash. /s

After waiting a few hours a friend of the neighbors sister came over and tossed the extremely rigor mortised dog back over the fence. Finally it was time to start the Royal Rumble!

Triple H won, because of course he did. TNA legend and NJPW superstar AJ Styles made his debut. Chris Jericho somehow coaxed his dad bod into almost 40 minutes of Rumbling. Sami Zayn made his triumphant return to the main roster to toss his long time nemesis Kevin Owens out. The Wyatt family continued their feud with Brock Lesnar by ganging up on him and eliminating him. Most importantly Roman Reigns looked strong even in defeat.

I give the Royal Rumble a perfect 5/7 and the dead dog in the back yard an F minus.

... The Blurst of Times: Santa's Little Helper

In what has become a bit of an annual tradition, the relatively slow Holiday season has provided me with ample opportunities to explore the depths of Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel's Holiday programing. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whichever horrible made for TV movie I watched the night before (or in the case like 2 weeks ago).

Santa's Little Helper staring The Miz, and AnnaLyne McCord is definitely a Christmas movie. You can tell because Santa is right there in the title. It's brought to you by the fine film makers at the WWE, the studio responsible for such classics as The Marine 3: Homefront, Jingle All the Way 2 and my favorite Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery. Quite frankly it's one of the stupidest most cliched movies I've seen in a while and I LOVED IT.

Within the first 5 minutes we find the Miz basically shutting down a community center full of cute kids on Christmas, because he's a grinch, so you know we're in for a redemption story. The rest of the plot follows The Miz as he gets laid off from his highfalutin corporate gig and finds himself in competition to earn the right to become the right had man of someone "famous and powerful" who unbeknownst to him, just happens to be Santa. AnnaLyne McCord plays the sexy elf sent to put the Miz through a series of tasks meant to challenge the Miz's character and WWE Diva Paige plays the sexy elf that hopes to derail the Miz so she can take the Santa job for herself.

It's the kind of movie where you know at some point someone is going to get hit in the nuts.

It happens on a ropes course because OF COURSE THERE'S A ROPES COURSE!

Anyhoo, I'd watch AnnaLynne McCord in just about anything and believe it or not the Miz isn't that bad of an actor, at least not when he's asked to play a pompous ass-clown, so a likable cast really makes up for what's a laughably bad script. In fact the laughably bad script is what really makes the movie enjoyable. If Santa's Little Helper was a better written movie it wouldn't have been anywhere near as fun to watch. I definitely give this one a perfect 5/7.

WWE Debuts of WCW Legends

Here's a fun list for anyone that watches or used to watch the pro graps (that's what the cool people call professional wrestling these days). One of the best things about the old Monday night War between the WWF (now WWE) and WCW was the surprise debut of a wrestler from the other promotion. you still see that on a smaller scale when WWE signs a guy from the indies but it's not quite the same.

On a related note, WCW legend Sting wrestled in the main event of last nights WWE PPV. It didn't go well. Sting took a couple bumps no 56 year old has any business taking. It's being reported that he suffered a serious, possibly career threatening, injury when WWE Champion Seth Rollins powerbombed him into a turnbuckle. I guess it's commendable that Sting was so game to make this a special match but someone in the WWE has to be able to step in and tell them to dial it down a bit.

Here's hoping he makes a speedy recovery, I like my pretend violence to stay pretend. Seeing guys get hurt, especially legends like Sting, is awful.

Underpaid Links

Dragon*Con 2015 Favorite Cosplay. As someone that's put together their fare share of cosplay galleries I can hands down attest tot he fact that Dragon*Con has the best Cosplay. This gallery from our friend Norman is as impressive as it is long.

Sasha Banks, The New Day, And WWE’s Black Revolution. Since Vince McMahon has run the WWF/WWE (30+ years) there have been only one black wrestler to hold the top belt. Plenty of black wrestlers have held the other title belts but the Rock (who some argue that in this context he isn't Black enough, whatever that means) is the only one to be the chosen face of the company. That's a pretty awful track record.

I Went Undercover to Find Out What It Takes to Be an Underpaid NBA Cheerleader. Over the last few years there have been a lot of stories about how being a professional cheerleader sucks. I don't doubt them one bit. However, if there are a thousand girls willing to take your job are you really underpaid? There's sort of a supply and demand thing going on here, if the job's not worth it you shouldn't take it. Maybe they should all unionize.

Hands-on with the iPad Pro, its keyboard, and its pencil. I give Apple a ton of flack, most of it stems back to how awful the original Mac was compared to the Apple IIgs, but the IIgs was buried while the Mac was pushed to the moon all because Steve Jobs didn't really like computers. Also Apple fanboys are the worst. Anyway, this new iPad Pro and the pencil thingy it comes with actually has my interest. I know they're not really doing anything that hasn't been done before but as an artist I really want to play with it. Sitting on the couch watching NXT drawing comics on my tablet eating a big block of cheese. That's the dream right there.

Disastrous Links

Star Wars EW Pics. Woohoo, new pictures from Star Wars! Is it November already? Seriously it was 82 degrees inside my house when I went to bed last night. Save me mild Fall temperatures.

I Spent A Day With The Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet. Doug Murano is a pretty funny car writer over at Jalopnik who has a predilection for unique cars. Here's what happened when he spent a day with the ugliest car Nissan has ever made. Also of note, my car is in the shop again. Nothing like the engine dying on you while you're sitting in the left turn lane of a busy intersection. Thanks for nothing Germany.

‘Fantastic Four’ Grossed A Disastrous $26.2 Million On A $120 Million Budget. Yikes. You know what? I'm honestly surprised the movie made $26.2 Million. Is that sort of the baseline for any blockbuster now. Like as long as you spend over $100 million plus another $50 million on marketing you're sure to open at about 25? There couldn't be anyone that went to see it thinking it was going to be good, right?

I'm actually sad that the movie was re-shot and edited as heavily as it was. I'm sure that Josh Trank's original version was pretty terrible too but at least it would be a singular vision, not something the producers tried to slap together when the movie wasn't testing well with focus groups.

‘Arrow’ Star Stephen Amell Will Be Wrestling A Cosmic Supervillain And An Evil King At WWE SummerSlam. Hey Summerslam is in like 2 weeks. Anyone want to come over and watch a bunch of terrible wrestling? That guy from Arrow is going to be there.

Practice? Links

Allen Iverson Has Destroyed The Legacy Of Allen Iverson. Sooooo Allen Iverson is kind of a loser. That's sad I guess. I mean I never met him or anything so it's not like I really care if he was a good guy or not. I will say he's one of the most freakish athletes I've ever seen in person. He must have weighed 100 pounds and there he was driving the lane, scoring and rebounding over huge guys. He was a lot of fun to watch.

Copy of original Star Wars script discovered in UNB library. Guess what? Han Shot first. That is all.

The 10 Most Unwatchable Films Featured on MST3K. This list is a good reminder that I haven't watched enough MST3K. When it was at it's most popular I didn't have cable and by the time I finally did it was already winding down on comedy central. Are these on Netflix yet? I feel like they should be on Netflix.

WWE Money in the Bank: A Step-ladder? We delve in to find the truth about the real ladder. In honor of the Money in the Bank PPV this weekend (only $9.99 on the WWE Network) one blogger has finally answered the question all pro wrestling fans have had at one time or another. Where do they get those ladders?

Wrestling Isn't Wrestling

This fan film by Max Landis (yes the son of John Landis and the screenwriter of Chronicle) on Professional Wrestling and Triple H is amazing. I know, I know it's 20 minutes long but I enjoyed the hell out of everyone of those 20 minutes. Professional wrestling is equal parts ridiculous and awesome and he really captures both. It's a must watch.

Refined Links

WWE Diva AJ Lee Publicly Calls Out Stephanie McMahon Over Women's Wages and Air Time. This is kind of hilarious. Basically Stephanie McMahon (daughter of Vince, on the board of Directors for the WWE and underrated in ring performer) tweeted some bland congratulations on Patricia Arquette's Oscar acceptance speak using the hashtags #womensrights and #useyourvoice. She of course tweeted that on the same evening the only WWE Divas match on Raw as an embarrassingly short 30 seconds. AJ Lee (WWE Diva, wife of CM Punk disgruntled ex-WWE employee) responded by blasting the WWE on twitter over how they treat their female talent.

Whoops.

Homeworld Remastered impressions: A refined masterpiece. Homeworld! You remember homeworld, right? Right? Ok, so Homeworld wasn't a huge hit but it is remembered fondly, fond enough that it's getting an HD remake. I'm pretty excited for this one.

Surprise: Almost Everything About Pimp My Ride Was Hilarious Bullshit. This is pretty fantastic. It's hardly surprising but it's still pretty fantastic. I like the part about how MTV put it into the contract that you couldn't list your car on Ebay right away.

Comic Book Writers Matt Fraction & Kelly Sue DeConnick Sign Deal With Universal TV. Woot Woot! These are two of my favorite comics book writers right now, I'm excited to see what they'll bring to TV.

Retro Light Guns Throughout History. Cool little stroll down memory lane. I'm surprised light guns aren't a thing anymore. Shooting games are some of the more popular games at the 7 arcades that still exist in the country. Why hasn't anyone tried to bring that experience home lately?

Christmas Wish List: Better Pro Wrestling

Hey kids it's December! You know what that means? Every day in December I plan on posting one thing from my official DevilDinosaur Christmas Wish List (patent pending). Why? Because I can.

Being a fan of Pro-Graps (ie professional wrestling) isn't always the easiest thing in the world. Lets just look at the picture above, that's Cody and Dustin Rhodes (sons of Dusty Rhodes) on local morning news show. Dustin is the one in the Santa hat while Cody is the one in FULL ON STARDUST RING ATTIRE AND IT'S AWESOME. See, that's why being a pro-wrestling fan is hard. Stardust is goofy as hell and he's awesome. On the other hand John Cena is also goofy as hell and he sucks hard.. How do you explain that?

I tell you, it would be a lot easier if the WWE actually made their weekly flagship show watchable. I understand that professional wrestling is never going to be the coolest thing in the world but man, right now they're not even trying. Even the most die hard fans are tired of saying "let's wait and see what happens with this.."

On the plus side the WWE developmental show NXT is FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC right now. So I guess there's hope for the future. Or even if there's no hope I could just stop watching RAW and start watching NXT regularly. If you think Stardust is crazy just wait until you see Fin Balrog Balor.

The 12 WWE Days of Christmas

Here's the 12 Days of Christmas as sung by the current WWE roster. I mean it's not the entire roster, just the guys you see on RAW every week in the same stupid matches. If you see me this Christmas be sure to ask me my thoughts on the WWE. Make a drinking game of it, every time I say Vince McMahon is out of touch and senile take a shot. You'll be dead in like 4 minutes.

WWE 2K15 in a Nutshell

Remember a couple weeks ago when I said I was interested in the newest WWE game, WWE 2k15. Yeah, I kind of take that all back. What can I say? I'm easily swayed.

WWE 2K15 is Body Slamming my Budget

Sweet Christmas, the launch trailer for WWE 2K15 looks amazing. Cesaro in a motion capture suit? Yes please.

I'm not going to front, I'm pretty jelly right now of my PS5 and Xbox One brothers and sisters right now. I thought a Wii and a PC would cover any video game needs for the next couple years but THE NXT CHAMPIONSHIP IN A VIDEO GAME? That's something I didn't know I wanted until I saw it.

A Trios of Reviews

WWE Network
For my birthday my wife got me a six month subscription to the WWE network. Now when the WWE network first launched a lot of people lauded it as the future of "television". I use quotes there because the WWE Network like any modern app works on Kindles, iPads, computers, etc. I still don't think that's the case. The WWE is unique in that it completely owns all of its content and is in a situation where it's old product is still highly desirable. Wrestling fans will gladly pay 9.99 a month to watch Bret Hart vs Stone Cold Steve Austin from 1997 but how many NFL fans are willing to pay a monthly subscription to watch the Bills choke away a Superbowl to (insert team name here). Anyway not the point.

The WWE Network is a lot of fun, for a long time wrestling fan like myself it's easy to just spend hours watching it. You get current Pay Per View events live as the happen, every old WWE, ECW and WCW PPV on demand, some original shows that vary wildly in quality and some random WCCW and Clash of Champions shows from the 70s, 80s and 90s.

It's not a flawless app. It froze on me a couple times during last weekend's big Money in the Bank PPV and the search feature is TERRRRIBLE. For example, I searched for Raven (one of my favorite wrestlers from the 90s) and it returned about 5 results, about 100 too few.

TL/DR, for a wrestling fan the WWE Network is well worth $9.99. There are bugs they need to iron out but as a whole the network delivers on it's promises. Solid B+

My wife is awesome, she gets an A.

Heroes of Cosplay: Season 2
Last year I reviewed Heroes of Cosplay, looking back on the review I was probably a bit too kind. I felt like the shows repetitive format mixed with some really fake drama took away from what the show was supposed to be about. Fast Forward to Season 2, which had its season finale last night, and a few of my complaints with the show have been addressed, while others have been exacerbated.

Most of the stupid fake interpersonal drama has been ditched, which is great. The problem is without the drama every episode follows the exact same format. What to wear? I'm running out of time! Oh man I didn't win the contest.. or WOOHOO I won the contest!

That's literally every episode. I mean I still watched and for the most part I enjoyed the costumes but it would be nice if the producers could figure out a way to avoid every episode ending with a contest. From what I've learned of the Cosplay community having a picture go viral or hit the front page of reddit is every bit as important as winning a costume contest. Heroes of Cosplay gets a metacritic score of 72/100

The 2014 USMNT World Cup Performance
So the World Cup is over now right?

The US Men's National Soccer team showed once again that they can compete on the highest level but they also showed just how far they have left to go before we can even dream of actually winning the cup. All we need to improve is our defense our midfield and our forwards. We're pretty set at goalie.

It's hard to complain about the results, getting out of the group of death was really amazing but if you look at the Nat's record over the last two World Cups we've only won 2 out of 8 games. That's not very good. The inability to posses the ball with purpose really kills the team at this level. Turns out Michael Bradley isn't the world class midfielder a lot of us thought he was. The striker pool is as thin as we were afraid it was. It's telling that when Jozy went down with injury we started Dempsey out of position for the next 3 games as opposed to replacing him with one of the other 3 forwards on the squad. The defense is still full of potential but young guys like Besler, Cameron and Gonzalez are still trying to find out a way to actually play together and form anything that resembles a competent back line.

But hey, the games were entertaining and a lot of people watched. That's the most important thing for US Soccer going forward. More people interested in the sport equals more money which will in time provide us better players (knock on wood). I rate the USMNT 2014 World Cup Performance as plucky.

Ultimate Warrior died and it sucks

So yesterday around 5pm Jim Hellwig (aka the Ultimate Warrior) collapsed while walking to his car outside of an Arizona Hotel. By the time they got him to a hospital he was already dead.

I don't know man. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the whole thing. I'm not a huge fan of The Warrior now, but back when I was 13 and he was in his prime he was one of my favorites. He's survived by 2 daughters and his wife which honestly probably hits me the hardest. Dude was 54, that's way too young to die. Someone on twitter posted a picture of him with his daughters at the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony last weekend and it just crushed me. Here's the ultra creepy part. Warrior had appeared on WWE RAW just the night before and gave this speech:

Speak to me, Warriors! As I thought about what I was going to say this evening, it's been hard for me to find the words. [Puts on mask.] Well then, you shut up Warrior, and let me do the talking.

No WWE talent becomes a legend on their own. Every man's heart one day beats its final beat. His lungs breathe a final breath. And if what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse through the body of others, and makes them bleed deeper, and something larger than life, then his essence, his spirit, will be immortalized. By the storytellers, by the loyalty, by the memory of those who honor him and make the running the man did live forever.

You, you, you, you, you, you are the legend-makers of Ultimate Warrior. In the back, I see many potential legends, some of them with warrior spirits. And you will do the same for them. You will decide if they lived with the passion and intensity. So much so that you will tell your stories and you will make them legends, as well. I am Ultimate Warrior. You are the Ultimate Warrior fans. And the spirit of Ultimate Warrior will run forever!

Leave it to the Ultimate Warrior, a guy who in his time truly felt bigger than the sport, to deliver his own eulogy the day before he died.

Lets talk about the WWE Network

Last week at CES the WWE announced a new streaming service that many have heralded as the future of television. Go ahead and click the link if you want all the details, if not allow me to summarize. For $9.99 a month you'll have access to a large portion of the WWE's catalog; Pay Per Views, DVD compilations old episodes of RAW and Nitro. All available on your tablet, PC, Roku, Xbox Live, etc. Essentially it's the Netflix of wrestling. Here's the kicker though, you also get live Pay Per Views such as Wrestlemania, the Royal Rumble and Summerslam.

Now I don't know when the last time you ordered a wrestling or even a UFC pay per view but they start at $50 and can run $70 easy. If you're a wrestling fan who orders just one PPV a year, you're a sucker not to sign up for the WWE Network. For the price of Wrestlemania alone you get 6 months of programming along with 5 other PPV events.

Ok, enough of the wrestling geekery. Here's what has net-nerds excited. The thought that other networks will follow suit. The holy grail of a la carte networks of course being HBO.. or ESPN I guess, if you're into Sportsball. Kids these days don't want to sit down in front of their TV and watch what's on. They're greedy little snots that want to watch what they want when they want and they only want to pay for what they watch. Which I guess is reasonable. The problem is that most channels (like ESPN) aren't built like the WWE.

The WWE owns everything it produces. Sure USA and SyFy and ION put their programing on the air but they don't actually own the shows. In contrast save for old episodes of PTI, ESPN owns nothing. In fact a lot of networks are in the same boat. There are a handful of shows they actually own and then everything else is owned by the production companies that produce the shows. For example If NBC tried the same thing using content they owned 100% they would have rerun after rerun of The Single Guy and ZERO episodes of Seinfeld.

Long story short, I'm not sure how much the WWE network really heralds a new era of a la carte programing as much as it heralds in a new era for the WWE. Quite honestly I'm not looking forward to a future where I have to pay a dozen different subscriptions for the same content you can get with cable for one price but I guess that makes me an old fuddy duddy.

Wrestlers Vs Inanimate Objects

I could watch Ric Flair wrestle a book all day long.