Blade is currently in the UK being drunk while in a gutter filming yet another horror movie, so RD has to once again do things all by himself (any more) in order to fulfill his monthly obligations. This gives him the opportunity to reminisce the early days of the site where he used to reply to people's questions (and before he recreated it on the radio progrem just so he could make fun of the questioners). From that it led him to ECW Press and his eventual books and his friendship with Bryan Alvarez, and his friendship with Blade winning him over as the Black Scorpion by the power of FedEx.
But first, RD FINALLY has an opportunity to talk about wrestling! Blade is not around to interrupt five times in a row with bad jokes or whatever. (:09)
He thought the recent Royal Rumble was alright, even if was a bit too long.
He did have the time at least to write about Kurt Angle's final match with Baron Corbin, of all people. The Human Jigglypuff had a horrible match with Roman Reigns.
The Women RR featuring Molly Holly was alright, but he misses seeing more and older people.
The other matches also went well more or less. RD finds Kairi Sane cute, as do we all, and thinks she can do much better escaping WWE.
The Men RR with MVP and Brock Lesnar throwing out people constantly was as he expected. He understands why he was eliminated, but not if Drew McIntyre is up to the challenge to face him.
He wishes Edge (ED GE/Redger) would return with Vickie Guerrero.
AEW is still a blast, both old and new folks alike. MJF, Darby Allen, and Sammy Guevara are particular standouts to him.
Even NXT is having some fun.
Overall, some of his enjoyment of the genre has returned.
That out of the way, RD dives into his Facebook thread of questions.
One fellow, Paul LaParka (not PaulO’Parka), sent him an audio question asking who would play the Co-Fruitcakes in their movie. (:24) Obviously Blade will be played by Al Pacino as Tommy Michigan of course. RD wants the most boring actor he can find, but instead decides David Schultz as himself would do much better.
Ron Motta asked about his earliest wrestling memory. He ties it into his love of video games; someone he asked to come over was watching wrestling instead, so he first watched the British Bulldogs which hooked him before Bobby Heenan further sealed the deal.
Andy Denyer wants Bryan to appear on the show
Jason Lindsey remembers the Big Nippled Vampire.
Matthew Fox asks about She-Ra.
Kurt George Lewis thinks the King of the Ring should be a defended title. RD disagrees. Richard Gottfried wonders what happened to Mabel's belt.
Ryan Goodman loved the old Mailbag. He didn't phrase it in the form of a question. (:30)
John Rambo thinks Blade is starting WrestleCrap UK.
Joe Vernola asked him about Burt Reynolds. RD still calls him Uncle Burt and is still sad after his passing for some strange reason. RD took him from a flea market poster rather than go through with the original name of Jack Diamond.
Someone pretending to be Iron Mark Tyson asks about Lana's fluctuating accent. And are Bryan and Dave secretly with AEW? (:33)
Sean Bateman asks about Becky Lynch's pre-WWE matches. RD remembered when she was initially a leprechaun.
Brian Weckerly wonders which bad gimmick he would super push. RD thought Waylon Mercy could have gone further had it not been for physical issues.
Danny Rhoads has a tough question: which written about thing would he remove? (:36) His ultimate goal is to make people laugh, no matter the subject matter. But the one and only thing he would remove would be Blade suffering through Joanie Laurer's (first) adult adventure.
David Stidham misses Bobby Lashley's sisters in his latest bad angle. (:41) RD agrees.
Neil Purcell thinks Joey Janela's theme sounds like a Journey song. RD stresses the importance of good music in wrestling.
One of my fellow Co-Historians asks about noticing a show's sobriety. (:43) RD: "Yes." His throat is also hurting from all his monologues.
Ryan Goodman (again) asks a random Guevara question. Keith Lagasse follows up with another random Guevara question (on another thread).
Patrick McCabe is still unsure who was the Higher Power.
Peter Melnick asks if he was in a submarine. Yes he was. Two feet underwater anyway. He was in a helicopter once due to his mother entering him into a competition.
Ben Warrick remembers The Wrestling Album. RD prefers Piledriver.
RD cannot explain a photo on the air.
Jamie MacKay has a Terry Funk song to listen to. (:48) Mike Check RD uses the opportunity to take an intermission by playing it in full.
DJ Derrick Guynn (AKA Derek Quinn) has some games to rank. (:53) His #1 is WWF Superstars due to its play. Mania Challenge is #2, WWF Wrestlefest is #3. From Luke Lay's followup, ProWrestling is another #1.
Forest George wonders if Paul Teutel Sr. vs. Hogan would be a draw.
Ralph Archuleta has a question about Jaime Hayter.
Ryan Swartz has a badly worded question about a current wrestler using an older gimmick. (:56) RD thinks such a thing would be hard to do.
Denny Taylor (in kayfabe) wants to know how real Giant Gonzalez's airbrushed muscles were.
Dave Hines warns RD about spelling Barry Manilow's name wrong. (Actually he spelled it right. Does hie also write his songs too?)
John Hudson thinks Tam, when (if?) released, could do a prisoner gimmick. (:57)
Luke Lay (again) asks him about his favorite Royal Rumble moment. Ric Flair in '92, no question.
Wes Lee has RD wanting to play air hockey with Sammy Guevara and his salmon pants.
Dylan Fionda asks about trains.
Arya Witner forgot that Kerry Von Erich was the second Ultimate Warrior.
Brian Beissel is scared about contagion. Although "Coronavirus" is a good name for a finisher.
Danny Rhoads (again) wonders who would win between Well Dunn and American Males. RD picks the latter.
Simon James Lindsay asks about Kane's titles. (:60) RD thinks he had as enough as he should have had.
And finally, Iron Mark Tyson (again) asks about Blade's Big Announcement. What a mark.
What's up my people, Raging_Demons here. It is that time folks! The return of The Gooker! It's the award from Wrestlecrap as voted on by us on who is the worst in the year in wrestling.
This year in 2019 let me say: WOW was there a lot of crap! So naturally let me explain the term "ForceRise". On social media I do admit I tend to watch some foreign programming. Currently I'm watching a program from Japan called "Kamen Rider Zero-One". Now the villains will basically transform a.k.a "morph" like the Power Rangers, the belt that they use says "ForceRise!" like so:
After thinking about it for awhile the word "ForceRise" kind of made sense for this year's Gooker. As in "This crap on my screen will FORCE me from my couch and RISE up from it to change the channel now!"
[Insert your own rimshot here. Preferably while voting.]
This year's selection is a mixed bag. We got people returning for a historic second win, we have newcomers getting their first nominations, and a possible historic nominee!
So let's look into the 2019 Gooker nominees!
And they are...
1. Baron Corbin's Push From Hell: For first timers on the site let me give you the definition of a "Push From Hell" is. A "Push From Hell" can be defined as when a promotion gives a wrestler major hype, and possibly major career hype, to make the wrestler look awesome, but they keep continuing the push to the point of ad nauseam. This Push from Hell goes to someone that doesn't even deserve it at all going to, of all people...Baron Corbin!
Personally, Baron Corbin is the most boring person on the roster. He does a promo in such a monotone voice it drives people to sleep. He says a promo like he's reading it out of a book. Hell, he does his promo like if he's doing an elementary book report; boring, slow, and lacking appeal. His wrestling puts people to sleep. Baron Corbin is essentially a human Jigglypuff. #BaronCorbinIsAHumanJigglypuff [I bet that .com is not taken either.]
So why would WWE, of all the pro wrestling organizations out there, decided to give Baron Corbin, of all people, a Push from Hell? For the dumbest reason ever! WWE thinks that Baron Corbin...is attractive to women.
I would use a pic of Baron Corbin and ask you all if you think he's attractive, but I'm afraid to do so because I think putting a pic of Baron Corbin up would shut this site down due to the sheer lack of interest and how boring he is. Seriously if I put a pic up, the servers will systematically shut down and go to sleep, that's how boring he is!
Now to make matters worse Corbin received an infamous "King" gimmick, for winning this year's King Of The Ring. The title gimmick can be crappy depending on who it is that has it. For example: King Haku: Great but does not come with crown as illustrated. King Hacksaw Jim Duggan: not so much. Currently, King Baron Corbin had a craptastic moment by pouring dog food all over Roman Reigns. Not only was it made cringeworthy, but it had fans turning off their TV while taking to Social Media that they wanted this for a Gooker. [If not asleep that is.]
2. Shorty G: Chad Gable, an Olympic wrestler who competed in the 2012 London Summer Olympics, signed up with WWE and became on of a great tag-team known as "American Alpha" with his partner, Gooker nominee Jason "I'm Kurt Angle's son" Jordan. Both of them had great success as a team. UNFORTUNATELY, WWE hates Tag Teams because they want to push INDIVIDUALS. So WWE broke the team up.
While Jason went off to embrace his "Dad", Chad just became...nothing. That is until his royal boringness King Baron Corbin showed up and gave him a new nickname: Shorty Gable, or Shorty G. See? Baron Corbin's boringness is contagious! He bored the career death of Chad Gable! #BaronCorbinIsAHumanJigglypuff
3. Crown Jewel 2019: Last year's Gooker returns in an attempt to be the first ever back-to-back Gooker winner. Admittedly this year's Crown Jewel was considered to be better than last year. However, what makes it a Gooker nominee this time was behind-the-scenes drama. The "story" has it that Vinnie Mac pulled the live feed because the current leader of the country, Mohammad bin Salman, has not paid WWE for their previous live events. Everything was resolved let's move on.
Or not! The "story" then continues that most of the WWE stars were held because of MBS while other people in private jets like Brock Lesnar, Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon took off leaving the other talent stranded. Of course I said "story" because there was another side to it claiming all of that never happened and it was just a technical issue. It was never proven which side was correct or not because none of the WWE talent never said anything about it, except for Karl Anderson's wife who said on Twitter that he will never be coming back to Saudi Arabia. Anyways. Whichever is the right side or not caused a mass delay for the following Smackdown.
4. WWE2K20: A first time a video game is nominated. WWE decided that this time they decided to go with a different video game publisher to make their video games and what they got was the stuff of broken video game legends. Currently this game is being compared to another bad game, Fallout 76, as the worst video game of all time! Social Media wise there were GIFs and pics that were spread all over about the game's constant bugs and botches. As proof, my saved pic of the game's Becky Lynch, seen here trying to be the female Fiend:
That is basically how bad the game is. Screwed up bugs, crappy scripting, and more that I couldn't even tell you what was going on because I don't have the knowledge of the video game business, but I do know someone that does! YoutuberMatt McMuscles provided a complete detail of how this game could become a potential Gooker winner:
[As someone with said aforementioned knowledge of the video game business - at least in the present day anyway - this one gets my vote. There's a reason games usually voted on as the awfullest or worst of their year often get a lot of coverage due to their notoriety. Usually this also includes the shenanigans encountered in making the game as bad as it is. This is something ridiculously evident here in droves, staring with the switch to a new developer with little experience on the series, which is itself deeply stagnated in look and game play. Wow, art imitating life here eh.
From there things compounded and kept growing. People who may not have been aware of what was being shared online may have finally noticed when supposed 'signed' special editions shipped without autographed photos. If you got the game running past the bugs morphing the characters into monsters if not acting possessed, you get environments and settings looking 20 years out of date, to the point where the new year made it literally unplayable.
...Although now I'm fearful that I've gone and done it yet again. If 2K makes DLC where you fight as an anthropomorphized animal, you'll know where they got that idea from.
Sorry about that.
On the other hand either one could create JigglyKing Corbin that the Rage is all the rage about. Silver lining?
#BaronCorbinIsAHumanJigglypuff]
5. The Fall of Ring Of Honor: In the 20 years that WrestleCrap and The Gooker have been around this is the FIRST time that Ring of Honor has received a nomination. This is especially damning considering that TNA/Impact hasn't had one in the past two years. That is awfully terrifying.
ROH has always had some shrapnel to it in recent years since their major broadcasting partner, Sinclair Broadcasting, had been linked to pro-right news manipulation like Fox News. This particular story however began in December 2018, when most of their major stars including The Young Bucks and So Cal Uncensored, left the company, leaving behind...not a whole lot of stars. There was Marty Scurll and...I think that's it? As attendance continues to reduce drastically their problems continue to get worse. Joey Mercury, who used to work with ROH as an agent, told some horrible stories on Social Media, like the awful treatment of wrestlers and even their business partner at the time New Japan. There are now people wondering if The Ratings Reaper will be claiming Ring Of Honor now instead of Impact. [That depends on how drunk Blade is currently.]
6. The Librarians: So what happened to The Young Bucks? Well in 2019 they, along with Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, and NFL Executive of the Jacksonville Jaguars Tony Khan went to create a new pro wrestling organization: All Elite Wrestling. In their short time, AEW has created some potential nominees like The Nightmare Collective (Cody's wife, Brandi Rhodes, creates a women's stable with Awesome Kong with it and they cut off the hair of defeated opponents for no good reason), The Dark Order (A cult-like stable whose followers were described by one Facebook poster as "failed gimps from Pulp Fiction" where they got noticed due to this), and AEW Dark's rotating color commentary seat (Seriously just listen and watch to the episodes Arn Anderson & Dustin Rhodes did; while Arn was bad in a boring way, Dustin became the new Art O'Donnell with saying in every other sentence "I want to go to the Private Party").
Out of all of them though the one that became a Gooker nominee were The Librarians. They didn't start on AEW, but on The Young Bucks popular Youtube vlog "Being The Elite". There The Bucks admitted that they "had to" create a librarian character and they both knew that the character was rather pointless. When you admit that your character sucks already then it does not bode well for them. The Bucks even did an internet contest with wrestlers submitting online videos to promote themselves why they wanted to be The Librarian. I said Librarian singular, because at the time there was supposed to be only one librarian character. In the end they chose two people as The Librarian. One was Leva Bates, who was widely known as an indie women's wrestlers known for her cosplay hobby and her appearances in NXT as..."Blue Pants Girl". (*sigh* I hate that name.) The other was an unknown NWA wrestler (way before NWA came back with "NWA Powerrr") named Peter Avalon, who was best known for being a pile of cheat heat-getting and wrestling sucking, among other failings. (That could be my opinion on Peter Avalon though I'm not quite sure about that.) Thus, one became two.
The Librarians are basically jobbers to the stars but in my opinion, I don't think they deserve a Gooker. Avalon being a cheap Barry Horowitz wannabe makes it definitely deserve it just for himself, but Bates brought some good entertainment on the side of things that redeems it.
[Note that they are not to be confused with the Co-Librarians of this fine site. Not unless Ms. Bates gets in touch with us. This is assuming I remember what our contact location is at. Perhaps, if she is reading this, she can let us know somehow.]
7. The 2019 WWE Draft: WWE couldn't keep Smackdown on USA Network any longer so they shopped around and...Fox Sports was the winner?! So they did the Draft which included the stupid "Wildcard Rule" and the humorous picture of a meeting room filled with people including, of all things, the mascot for Fox's NFL programming.
8. Bray Wyatt vs. Seth Rollins at Hell In A Cell: Let's get this out of the way. Seth Rollins had an awful 2019. In that year he did weird AF toy commercials, his girlfriend Becky Lynch outed their relationship to the world to use it as ammunition in a Twitter feud with Edge, he was embarrassed by The Kliq, Brock Lesnar beat the respect and manhood out of him, and he had a feud with Bray Wyatt.
Bray has been a recent magnet to all things Gooker but it looked like he made it clear with his new gimmick in the "Firefly Fun House". Unfortunately for Rollins it made him look bad. Bray's new "alter ego" as "The Fiend" not only made Rollins look like he wet his pants in one encounter but their Hell In A Cell match was...ugh! The match was covered in The Fiend's signature red lighting, good for creating terror but not good in a wrestling match. The ending of that match was very controversial. While The Fiend used a Harley Quinn-esque, cartoon sized, giant hammer to hurt Rollins, Rollins got...Triple H's best buddy in the whole wide world, MR. SLEDGEHAMMER! In that moment the referee rang the bell to end the match...which was No DQ.
Needless to say the fans were pissed off! I personally think Triple H had his heart broken when he saw Mr. Sledgehammer so he called the match to end. It took them two days to figure out an explanation to that match. TWO DAYS!
9. The Bennett's Pregnancy Mess: So real-life married couple Mike and Maria Kanellis-Bennett had re-signed their WWE contracts, giving them a storyline to reflect on Maria's status of being pregnant with Mike's baby. Which is...that the baby isn't Mike's and he's a limp-dick loser? Huh? Then The Bennetts got removed from TV due to her pregnancy followed by Mike claiming he wants out of his WWE contract? Wha...? If "rumors" are true then their actual story had been transferred to...
10: The Lana/Rusev Love Triangle of Eternal Torment 2: Lashley Fever: Guess who's back? Lana and her hubby Rusev, that's who! The previous 2015 Gooker winners of a love triangle with Dolph Ziggler are doing another love triangle with...Bobby Lashley? Uh...Yeah. Long story short, Lana accuses Rusev of being a no-diddly good cheater and a sex addict and wants some of Lashley's BBC. So Lana wants a WWE divorce just before revealing Lashley made her pregnant.
The divorce happens and Lana overacts terribly. She overacts so much she's actually butt-hurt over the complaints she received on Social Media. Yes, it does gets worse from here. Now Lana and Lashley are getting married in the worst WWE wedding ever! Just how bad was it? Well after couple of wedding interruptions, Liv Morgan came back saying she was in lesbians with Lana! Now where have I seen that before? Hrm... Nope! No idea.
Oh by the way, RVM Kai mentioned to me that he hoped when Liv Morgan returns he hopes she doesn't end up like Emmalina. Too late.
Then Rusev pops out of a cake, no seriously he does, and goes a-squashing. By the way, this is still ongoing AND it was rumored to be for Mike and Maria Bennett before they left TV. Did they dodge a bullet on that one or what?!
This is my choice for Gooker and the odds-on favorite. Also this is being heavily criticized not by us the pro wrestling fans, but by EVERYONE! This Gooker nomination has gone plaid! Even CM Punk took his complaint to Twitter saying WWE needed to hire an LGBTQ-sensitive writer. [I'm worried Vince would read that as BBQ writer and perhaps try to hire back JR.] If this wins it will be historic. It will make Lana and Rusev 2-time Gooker winners, which will tie with Hornswoggle, but it will make the first-ever winners to win WITH THE SAME STORYLINE of Love Triangles that never, ever stop causing us eternal torment!!! Make it stop, please!
You've got until January 11th to vote for what was the worst of them all. So go ahead and vote!
