Spectacle of Excess

Side blog where I process my complicated feels about grapple sport and its participants. Call me Lars and often. (Main blog: Stan-Leigh-Bowery)

[shiftythrifting]

RAT🐭BABY

[stringerbells-deactivated202105]

person: “you know pro wrestling is fake right?”

me:

[breadclubrising]

i don’t really go here anymore but MAN i bet it feels good to make your triumphant return to wrestling after several years of uncertainty, still known as one of the best in the game, and be made to use some of your most sincerely held beliefs—which, although often in practice are harmful and unpopular, in principle are important and necessary—for heel heat. 

probably not quite as good tho as calling out the racism and ignorance you’ve faced your whole life, but doing it! slightly! rudely! thus upsetting white people and garnering heel heat. which i’m sure feels even better when the language of your family’s culture is used as an immediate boo-trigger

[userkyle]

[roland-barthes-simpson]

Kenny Omega really went hard on the Sephiroth imagery this year at WK huh?

[roland-barthes-simpson]

Me: Is too busy trying to get a PhD to update stupid wrestling side blog that no one reads for many months, let alone sit down and watch a wrestle sport match

Also Me, after one (1) image on the interweb catches the attention of my monkey brain: Better yell this lukewarm take into the void!

[roland-barthes-simpson]

Kenny Omega really went hard on the Sephiroth imagery this year at WK huh?

[mith-gifs-wrestling]

Favorite reaction: Jack Gallagher’s utterly bemused “Who… who is Tozawa teaming with? Where did Brian Kendrick go?” face.

[roland-barthes-simpson]

:: "Curb Your Enthusiasm" theme plays ::

[mitchtheficus]

Maybe I like Lars Sullivan?

[roland-barthes-simpson]

How much? How much???!

[breadclubrising]

Ibushi: A trap? Did I fall for Goto’s trap? Reporter: I guess Goto knew if he took it back, you’d come for it. Ibushi: I just did, so. Reporter: Right. Ibushi: Did I fall for it? Huh? Reporter: [laughing] I guess we can say he was a step ahead of you today. Ibushi: But, since it’s set, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. And actually, I wanted to face him. Reporter: [laughing] Even though you turned him down? [Reporters laughing] Ibushi: Yes, I wanted to. [Reporters laughing] Because I have nothing else at the Dome. I have no other opportunity. Reporter: Were you at all flattered to be named by Goto? Ibushi: Yes, part of me was happy. But then I was like, “Really? This isn’t going to happen?” [Reporters laughing] So it forced me to come back. Well. It’s done. Anyway, honestly I’m looking forward to it. [Reporters laughing] What? Is something funny? [Reporters laughing] Reporter: [laughing] You strung Goto along? Are you serious? [Reporters laughing] Ibushi: It’s set, right? Can you write an article about this? Reporter: That the match is set? Ibushi: That the match is set. [Reporters laughing] About the situation that led to this. Please. [Reporters laughing]

(x)

[raaaaaaaandy]

[elgenerichoe]

I’d like to thank this person in the crowd for providing us with the overall mood for Survivor Series 

[16kclj]

No words. Just pure raw, emotion that is utterly heart breaking. Roman will beat this.

Believe that.

[quoms]

More And More Wrestling Fans Are Wondering Why Wrestlers Don't Have A Union

On Monday, one of the biggest non-WWE stars in pro wrestling—if not the biggest—tweeted something that could, if you squinted and tilted

Ventura, for his part, has told his story numerous times, most notably in extreme detail on Steve Austin’s podcast two years ago. There, Ventura expressed his disgust with WWE wrestlers being classified as independent contractors. “I thought, ‘we are not independent contractors—we can’t work for another promotion on Wednesday and work for you on Friday,” Ventura said. “‘It don’t work that way. How are we independent contractors?’” As the former Minnesota Governor tells it, he held a locker room meeting in 1986 about two weeks before WrestleMania 2 during which he pitched the idea a union, noting that it would be relatively easy to gather support given that all of the advertising for the show was out and the event was being held in union buildings.

“I gave this big speech, I left it at there, I went home,” Ventura told Austin. “The next night, I got a phone call from Vince [McMahon] who basically threatened to fire me if I ever brought it up again and read me the riot act. And I then did WrestleMania 2 and immediately left and did Predator and was a member of the Screen Actors Guild. [That’s] my union that I get retirement from now, healthcare from, all of that from. And so, when I came back, I told Vince point blank, ‘Vince, I won’t ever bring up union again.’ And I said, ‘if these guys are too stupid to fight for their rights, I have my union now. I’m a member of the Screen Actors Guild. I get healthcare, I get retirement, I get everything from them. I’ll pay my union dues.”

Several years later, Ventura sued WWE for unpaid home video royalties and won; he presented a case that he was defrauded because only agreed to no royalties after he was misled about which WWE talent got them. Curious how Vince had found out about the unionization meeting, Jesse asked his lawyer in the case, David Olsen, to bring it up during the WWE owner’s deposition by asking Vince if there was a wrestling union and then if anyone had ever tried to start one. “I remember the quote,” Ventura recalled. “He said ‘Jesse Ventura may have spouted his mouth off about it one time,’ so they asked ‘How did you know?’ and without hesitation, he said ‘Hulk Hogan told me.’”

[breadclubrising]

kota ibushi is a grown ass man. it’s true, and we should all say it. often. everyday. right now, perhaps.

Right, yes. There has been some confusion here! 

Look, friends, I understand that this is a man who doesn’t “trust books,” who does backflips off cars, and eats fireworks. I know, too, that this is a man whose tweets are so cryptic that native speakers of his language are regularly confused by them. He is delighted by cheese. He makes himself sick by forgetting to drink water. Such is Kota Ibushi.

Yes, he locks himself out of his hotel room and then forgets where his hotel is, and gets lost in airports to the point where he somehow gets on the wrong plane going to the wrong city. Yes, to rectify these things, he tweets about it instead of…. anything else; employing Hot People Problem Solving (letting people know that there is a problem and hoping someone figures out a solution, because someone always will, for hot people). 

He’s also soft-spoken, unthreatening, and demure outside of a wrestling ring. He’s handsome, well dressed, and still beatifically baby-faced; unbelievably—there’s no other word for it—adorable, for someone who is 36 years old, jacked beyond reason, and occasionally becomes a sadistic eldritch gremlin when someone makes him mad. He has… just… so many feelings. And if he’s not A Gay irl, he sure does Play One On TV. 

I understand that I have just described a real-life Manic Pixie Dream Boy, so I get why this shit happens, but! 

Keep reading

[roland-barthes-simpson]

I tweeted about this briefly the last time Kota got lost. Assuming he's stupid because he's clearly anxious about traveling, bad with directions, and has difficulty expressing himself verbally is... gross and bad. I would argue all the stuff you lay out here is the broader extension of that.

Kota feeling confused doesn't mean he's brainwashed. Kota being dramatic doesn't mean he's being abused. The dude contains multitudes, as do we all.

[breadclubrising]

it is with a heavy heart that i must announce that it is all over for you hos, now that i have received my ultra-limited-edition @ibushistyle x hanes x “supreme” collabo

it came with specific instructions to flex on some haters/geeks, so come 2 my dining room in the next 44 minutes if u want an ass kicking

Edit: resident hypebeast v tells me it’s “collab” and “collabo” is for rap. Local uncool white lady regrets the error.

[breadclubrising]

Honestly tho why tf was cody there in that match? What purpose did he serve?

(KOPW spoilers)

I’ve heard some folks say that it was a red herring, but like. That would only be a red herring for the smarks; not everyone saw that and immediately went ‘oh Cody is there to eat a pin so that Kenny and Kota don’t have to actually fight.’ On the internet, yeah, but keep in mind internet fan communities are full of people who pay attention to/care about the thing a lot more than the (much larger number of) casual fans do. So IMO that explanation is pretty unlikely; very few booking choices are done ‘for the smarks,’ ever.

My guess would be that the Golden Lovers, as they say all the time, actually do not really want to fight each other. I am sure, knowing how they are about their story, they did not agree that it was time for Kenny to finally pin Kota (because it wasn’t), but for some reason It Had To Be Like That. So a compromise would be a triple threat match, so at least Kenny has still not beaten Kota in a singles match. Cody was a pretty obvious shoehorn but also makes as much sense as anything else, and was probably volunteering for his role (as opposed to being assigned it) to help out the lads in their scheme. Trolling the smarks is an added bonus.

To me, the real question is why was it necessary to do this now? 

Keep reading

[bruiserminody]