Give 'Em the Axe March 31, 1966 "Taking advantage of the Riddler's mistaken belief that they were killed
escaping his deathtrap, the Dynamic Duo must stop the villain from
stealing a treasure of Incan jewels that would mean destroying an
archaeological treasure as well." 80 minutes
"RD is Hualpo Cuisi's Long Lost Bro" perhaps through Uncle Burt. He's happy because Stern Pinball has announced a Rush pinball table, which looks as beautiful as a Red Barchetta. (If I had to buy a Stern it would be between that and their Iron Maiden, even if it has yet to include a Pinball Eddie.) While he prefers heavier musical fare, he at first thought the playfield artwork of the trio made them look like Spinal Tap. (If that was the case, wouldn't it then be actual Stonehenge size?) His observation on Twitter caught the attention of Harry Shearer. Vince gives him boos for not then trying to get him on their video progrem.
RD could regale Vince for hours with his pinball knowledge, including former challenger Williams thinking a table based on Star Wars Episode I would be a best-seller. (I wonder if Blade ever played it.)
RD is wearing a Japanese Batman movie shirt. He knows the word Ichiban means 'number one' from his time watching WWF and their commercials for Ichiban Confections ("First in smiles!").
Vince worked in the same ring with Hulk Hogan and never had any real trouble with him, hair issues notwithstanding, yet he wonders why he keeps getting into trouble online. (:15) RD leaves it to habitual human nature if not just apathy. He compares him to WWE Hall of Famer Pete Rose ruining his chances by not apologizing when he should have. And also Paul Bunyan.
SPEAKING OF Paul Bunyan, the Narrator summarizes the previous day's Bat-adventure. (:24) Vince somehow still remembers the original showings of Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30. The Bros trade applause. RD does not remember Riddler having to wear a girdle. "RD Needs A Girdle More Than Frank Gorshin", he wanted to title himself but couldn't due to lack of space. Vince thinks it's a back brace to support his raucous laughter.
Batman: "Remember Riddler, you can't buy friends with money." Riddler: "With money, who needs friends?"
Moth gives theatrical coughs so she and Riddler have to vacate the room to watch through their "candlescope" periscope. They leave Batman to sweat his armpits in the heat. He guesses that some listed ingredients of sodium dichromate and potassium ferrocyanide are to create candle wicks that are "highly explosive when exposed to heat". RD wonders what used an explosive candle would be. In this case Batman twists slightly so his "highly polished" belt buckle can reflect sunlight into the chemicals to cause an explosion and free them, rather than just killing them, though it does knock them out.
Riddler sees bodies and shows his happiness through emotional whisper without actually checking on their status in person. He then calls Gordon to gloat and give a riddle before leaving for the Blue Van: "A crime is no fun without riddles. I'll have you know that's the main reason I took up this crime game." The Duo wait for him to leave before taking back the Batmobile to call Gordon that they're feeling better. RD wonders how they would fix whatever damage Riddler caused.
Gordon: "Who is this?" Batman: "Why? This is Batman! Your Caped Crusader!"
They figure out Riddler is going after an nonoperational lion fountain. The Bros find it confusing.
At the Gotham City Museum (:46) the Riddler and his goons determine their Incan treasure is in the sarcophagus of emperor Hualpo Cuisi. Goon: "Boss, I don't even know what an esophagus is." Riddler and Moth then find themselves in a basement of medieval torture devices (SPEAKING OF Iron Maiden). The Duo park in a no-parking spot and determine that the sarcophagus and treasure must be kept air-tight or it will disintegrate. Billionaire Batman wonders why he would do this for a "mere" million dollars.
As the door is locked and Batman and his stunt double can't fit into a third-floor hole (or just break in lawfully), Robin volunteers to enter. Vince wonders why he was straining to walk up the wall by himself. RD: "Maybe he feels more empowered when Batman's in the rear."
Robin immediately loses a fight, and is brought before the Riddler. He orders the goons to put the "pernicious pipsqueak" on a rack. Batman calls Gordon for backup before he deploys the Bat-ram barstool to break down an easily opened door.
Finding the sarcophagus Riddler notably pants as he prepares the wax, only to be stopped by a Bat-shadow. Riddler: "You lied to me, Boy Wonder!" Batman: "A little white lie is excusable when dealing with the likes of you, you black-hearted scoundrel!" Cue another fight, though it's so easily fought that West actually involves himself in it. To cover them Riddler picks up a sword and makes his own "SWOOSH!" cut-ins by his swinging. This does not stop the Dark Knight who puts him on the spinning wheel of death. Riddler: "Ow! Oh! Ow! Batman! That smarts!" He goes to relieve Robin. "One of Aunt Harriet's good nourishing meals will set everything right again," he declares loudly.
As O'Hara arrives (late, most likely to the bar; he lies by saying they accidentally went to the wax museum) Riddler's stunt double is clearly seen on a motionless wheel. RD thinks his stunt double was the same one for erect Robin. Moth pleads for forgiveness. Batman: "Unfortunately you learned your lesson too late, Moth. A moth that plays around candles is bound to be burned." Riddler: "You may have won the battle...but the war isn't over yet!"
At the museum which looks suspiciously like Stately Wayne Manor, bra-ed Aunt Harriet joins Bruce and Dick looking at the sarcophagus. Dick decides to write about it for school. Bruce: "Yes, most Americans don't realize what we owe to the ancient Incans. Very few appreciate that they gave us the white potato and many varieties of Indian corn." Dick: "Now when I eat mashed potatoes, I for one will think of the Incas!" Aunt Harriet notes the integrity of the sarcophagus. Bruce: "The old boy nearly didn't make it! Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha."
RD thinks the first half was much better than the second. Vince likes the plot's simplicity.
RD has an actual Gooker trophy even if the statue is just a regular turkey. (:69) He runs down the list for Vince. He voted for WWE's "attempts" at movie tie-ins.Vince would also if he had voted.
RD entertains the people while Vince finds his McFarlane Batcave box set that he got for Christmas.
Special Guest Villain: The Riddler [3] (Frank Gorshin) [3]
SPEAKING OFs: 4. The Machines, Japanese, lying, Paul Bunyan
Let us get the obvious bad out of the way, besides the still present pandemic.
In March, our beloved WCR Co-Host Blade Braxton, at the age of 46, was one of several, including Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff, who are no longer with us. Many smaller and indie promotions found themselves reducing or closing operations. And WWE continued to coast on the waves of mediocrity, firing people left and right in the midst of average content, live audience or otherwise, and even reducing access to their Network in the US through its sale to NBC Universal's Peacock.
However there was still some good to be found. AEW continued to gain strength as a long awaited for viable contender, including some of the best matches of the year. TNA somehow managed to improve a fair bit. And RD successfully pivoted into doing a video progrem with Vince Russo.
Even if it was about the old Batman '66 TV series.
In any event, here are your nominees for the worst of the year.
Ethan Page was in IMPACT before he went to where he's at right now in AEW. The North, his one HELL of a tag team with Josh Alexander, had just lost the Titles. Apparently he didn't take the loss well. So Page kind of had a "psychotic break". He slowly turned into a personality he called "Karate Man", giving him the excuse to show off his martial arts skills and SPIFFY headband. Page, sorry, "Karate Man", started to randomly attack others then started to attack his partner Josh Alexander.
4. WWE promotes Netflix movies with hilarious results for all the wrong reasons: WWE took this on themselves on behalf of former WWE wrestlers superstars Dave Bautista for Army Of The Dead and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson for Red Notice. How did they do?
For the former, how do you promote a zombie movie? If you say..."introduce a whole bunch of zombies into a PPV event" then you would be right. [Also why are you reading this McMahon?] WWE randomly packed tons of zombies throughout their PPV Backlash, in such a way as if they asked Homer Simpson for promotional advice. [And then promptly fired him.]
How WWE handled things was somewhat, but unexpectedly, mixed. Some acted like wallkers from The Walking Dead, expected to run up and surprise targets and literally take them down. Some acted like theyy were the traditional B-movie zombie, walking slowly and loudly demanding BRAINSSS. Or they could act like Cesaro and completely no-sell them and go "Ooh! Zombies! Gotta get a selfie with them for my Instagram page!" They even interfered in a match between Damien Priest vs The Miz with ended up with Miz being *eaten* by zombies. Bautista was bombarded on his Twitter account for the horrifically bad promotion that WWE did. His response was basically "Don't blame me! I had no participation in this!" Of course, to the hardcore WWE fan who is still watching, aka the mentally challenged, they would call it "great entertainment".
If WWE didn't learn anything from promoting Army Of The Dead, which they didn't, they got paid literally a dump truck filled with money to promote Red Notice. WWE basically played up the idiocy by Vince McMahon bringing in one of the movie's "golden eggs" to set up a whodunit when the egg got "stolen". Social media didn't believe that horrible bad acting that was going on and they mocked it like hell. One of the commentators actually said "nothing happens at Survivor Series when an egg is involved" The egg got "stolen" then "found" at next day's Raw when Austin Theory returned it.
He got rewarded for his theft by being booked to lose the show's main match.
WWE just went by their recent formula for success: It doesn't matter if you make good quality "entertainment". As long as you get a huge pile of money, its all good!
(Also before WWE's "attempts" of promotion, Ryan Reynolds promoted for the movie one week before they did.)
[Also also because two films with massive budgets, two of the biggest stars in Hollywood, and on one of the largest streaming services...OBVIOUSLY needs as much advertising and marketing as possible on barely connected and barely watched wrestling shows. Totally makes sense.
Still it could have been worse. You could have had further promotion for Bautista in Dune by having McMahon go on a drugged bender in the desert. I mean, besides what he does already when overseeing the shows anyway.]
5. The Queen's Crown Tournament: Unless you make a lot of money with WWE (Sasha Banks, Bayley, Charlotte), or are protected like Roman Reigns (Becky Lynch), WWE claims that they try to have a women's revolution. Years later we know that they don't do that. They try, but they fail at doing so. [Or forget that they have tried doing so ala McMahon losing his memory at old age. Assuming they haven't already fired the people responsible.] Hence their latest attempt, "The Queen's Crown Tournament", the women's version of the classic King Of The Ring Tournament.
The whole tournament really was just...crapped out. All the competing women had insanely short matches with the final match was no longer than 5 minutes. The winner turned out to be...Zelina Vega?! The same Zelina Vega who didn't want to give up her successful Twitch account and got fired?! The same Zelina Vega given a Push from Hell as part of an apology for being brought back? Yeah...
6. Toni Storm's WWE tenure: A very late Gooker nominee since this occured on the last week of the year. Once upon a time, WWE hired one Toni Storm when she participated in The Mae Young Classic on NXT due to her obvious talent.
So what did WWE due next? If you said push her to the moon, you would be dead wrong. [Again, why are you still reading this McMahon? Don't you have more people to fire?] Instead, Storm got rarely pushed, she rarely appeared on NXT, and was promoted to Smackdown...where she rarely appeared. Oh wait, I'm sorry. She was promoted to Smackdown...to get into a pie fight with Charlotte Flair.
That was all she could take before she did her best Eric Cartman impersonation and said:
She quit WWE after that. She completed her last match, which was a house show, grabbed her things, paid for her own flight, and went home.
Storm took to heart the trend of "Knowing Your Worth" that's been making the rounds of social media of late. She recognized she was in a situation that was Wrestlecrap and quit. Now, unfortunately, she may get a possible Gooker for her tenure.
7. NXT 2.0h No: NXT was a failed reality competition show. Then Triple H changed it into its own farm system to train people in the WWE way before their official debut to make sure things don't go horribly wrong for themselves (see Sin Cara Negro). It was also a stopgap measure because at the time the average indy wrestler was getting more popularity than an average WWE wrestler thanks to social media. Take Danhausen for example. Danhausen took his indy career, social media, and his Youtube channel into a guest appearance on Conan O'Brien's podcast, occasional appearances as a guest host on Renee Paquette's podcast, appearances on other vlogs like Ethan Page's, and a brief career in ROH. (It wasn't his fault, it was Ring Of Honor having a temporary shutdown and release of all their contracts. They're not dead. Yet!) AEW & Danhausen fans are constantly wanting AEW to sign the guy.
NXT became quite popular thanks to the quality of talent from behind and in front of the ring, such was perceived that it was the superior product instead of RAW or Smackdown! WWE had faith in NXT that they secured a national Wednesday time slot, and also a way to stop some up-and-coming wrestling promotion from being a threat. That promotion was called AEW. Thus what fans would call a new version of the Monday Night Wars became the Wednesday Night Wars. First show Dynamite versus third-ranked NXT. WWE was thinking that NXT would destroy Dynamite easily.
Only...it didn't. Dynamite slowly crushed NXT to a point that WWE moved NXT to not be in direct competition.
WWE now thinks that NXT is damaged goods. So what does WWE want to do to "fix" it? Why, firing all the old people and replacing them with hip, younger people!
Imagine Vince McMahon and all the older staff people trying to look hip and cool!
All the talent were either fired, replaced, or had their contracts run out. NXT, along with the rest of the company, will now hire only young talent (to easily train them in THEIR ways). The backstage talent was also released. Gone were established talents creating a great product. Now its just "talent" who don't know how to wrestle a good match. Gone were the dark colors of NXT. Now its colors from a Ben & Jerry's carton.
Even to this day, WWE continues to fire a lot of backstage talent [I'm noticing a trend here] which just recently included on-screen talent William Regal who was just about to become a trainer. [And Samoa Joe. Again.] It looks like Vince and his lackeys are literally taking apart the hard work Triple H made to make NXT something and turning it into a memory.
[I am like many others believing that Bron Breakker Rich Steiner has far too much talent to remain stuck there. He should find a way to get to bigger fields before HE gets cut too. It's simple math.]
8. WWE's continuous future endeavours: Throughout 2021 WWE fired about 60+ employees. This adds to the 90+ released during 2020. 20% of those wrestling were hired evenly between AEW or IMPACT.
So, for all those that say, "Oh Tony Khan has hired everyone that left WWE!" Just shut up! Tony Khan has not hired everyone! That is a lie set up by WWE idiots and fans and idiot fans!
He's only hired half of everyone. That's all!
Here's the thing though. WWE keeps firing people and yet they are not losing any money at all. In fact they made a ton of money last year! This is my choice for Gooker. WWE: Abandon all hope ye who enter here!
[Also what good is McMahon's exultation for his workers to reach for those brass rings when he keeps firing them before they can do so?]
9. Cody Rhodes' will-he-or-won't-he heel turn: Now to AEW with, of all people, Cody Rhodes.
Cody was slowly gaining heat for that horrible reality show of his Rhodes to the Top, which is so bad it makes that one by the Bella Twins look good. At this point, he was becoming like John Cena: liked by others, hated by a few.
However he started getting full blown heel during a match versus Malakai Black, Cody accidentally knocked down his "trainer" Arn Anderson. Anderson fell like he was seriously injured while Cody just continued on like nothing happened. The fans noticed and started hating it IMMEDIATELY!
Now usually when WWE comes up a situation like this, they just ignore the fans and let people remain where they are role and story wise, such as John Cena staying face even though he was slowly getting booed throughout the years, or Roman Reigns getting booed for YEARS as a face.
Cody has tried to return to be a face but it's just not working. He even tried to toss his weight belt to the crowd. Usually the crowd would keep anything tossed in by the wrestlers. Here they tossed it back! He's enjoying his time teasing the heel turn that he just got back the TNT Title for a third time, off Sammy Guevara who fans wanted to see with it. Guevara went just TWO weeks with the title and they gave him a custom title FOR NOTHING!
Right now, Cody is ENJOYING the fact that he's teasing his turn. As the AEW faithful are waiting for it, and they can since they just spent over 2+ years waiting for "Hangman" Adam Page becoming World Champion, then that heel turn will come even if it means tolerating the return of Brandi Rhodes.
[Admittedly I wouldn't mind this indecisiveness if it avoids him getting another laughably bad neck tattoo. UNLESS ITS ALL PART OF THE PLAN TOO.]
And finally,
10. Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley in an "Exploding" "Barbed" "Wire" "Death" "Match": If you don't know what an "Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch" is, it's pretty simple. The ring ropes are replaced with barbed wire and actual explosives, not dangerous if possible, will detonate every few minutes. Mick Foley and Terry Funk had wrestled a few of these matches and in fact it was one of these matches that infamously made Foley slice his ear off. It's quite possible one of the most brutal matches ever! And it was definitely the most hyped match of the year.
It started like this: Kenny Omega just won the World Title off Jon Moxley by shenanigans. Moxley wanted the title back. Omega said he'll give him a rematch, but only if it was an "Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch".
The AEW fans were literally drooling over the place. Omega has had great matches and is nicknamed "The Best Bout Machine". Moxley had past expertise in deathmatches. This was a wrestling nerd's wet dream!
Everyone was expecting a good match.
It ended with Eddie Kingston trying to protect Moxley from...well...(minus the laughter of course):
We were expecting explosions and violence, not...sparklers!
AEW tried to correct the overselling for the crap they had heavily promoted by letting Omega be Aizen from Bleach [he was replaced by Kyle Hebert? I love his voice acting!]: he had "planned" for this and the sparklers was a way "to humiliate Moxley". Then he mocked Kingston by trying to impersonate him "protecting Moxley".
Though unlike Kingston AEW couldn't cover that they heavily hyped up a match that literally their asses wouldn't cash.
10 choices. One possible winner for the 2021 Gooker. Admittedly these nominees are very hard choices to select for this year. It's as if you have to go "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe".
[Or you could just be me and vote for all of them using the sneaky of hack of "multiple private browser windows. Or if you're as lazy as I am, just voting for the mass firings. Although NXT 2.0 is also a close contender on matters of mishandling talented people. But please don't let me try to interfere. This isn't a 2020 US election!]
You have until Jan 14th to pick who will get the 2021 Gooker, with the "winner" being posted on Jan 20th. Vote now!
I'm not going to spend too much time on the obvious. For some it might have been a good year. For others it might have been a bad year. For others it might be in-between. Whatever the case, if you're reading this you've managed to outlast it into another year that may also be similarly good, bad, or in-between. Whatever the situation, the only way is forward.
So too did professional wrestling. The show must go on; it has to in order to survive. Even in a time with no, limited, or digital audiences, a show can still be put on, talent can still be developed, feuds and challenges can still be written, and TNA can still continue to be TNA (they're probably the only promotion to see an increase in physical audiences). Of course not everything can be good, and there will always be some stinkers or two. And none stunk as much as the following ten nominees of -
Wait a moment.
What do you mean, it's already halfway through January? I could swear it was New Year's just a couple of days ago -
They voted already?
Huh. How about that.
Well, there's only one thing to do. Pretend voting is still ongoing and go over the nominees like it hasn't been called for yet.
[Make your own election joke here.]
Anyway, in alphabetical order:
1. Seth Rollins' vs. Rey Mysterio's Googly Eye for a Googly Eye
Still less goofy than the actual card.
Now I understand that having fights over yet another title or belt can get boring after the 10,000th time. There is nothing wrong with shaking things up by changing the stakes as applicable. (Except if it's over shampoo.) But it has to be something feasible and logical and not (too) goofy to fight over. And if you still decide to just because, it has to be executed properly.
Seth Rollins is no stranger to gimmick fights if his participation in last year's winner is any indication, but at least that was (originally) a proper match. And I know lucha libre has its own goofiness sometimes, but the traditional ways and establishments of it mean that they have become things that can actually work because or in spite of it. And even despite that, if the promotion still wanted to stick to the course, they should do so in a way that pays off deservedly.
But this is Vince McMahon we're talking about. He still thinks the kids of today watch (admittedly still good) Looney Tunes of his childhood.
And thus we get Rey Rey wearing that high concept technology of a googly eye.
When even the inevitable Headlie makes more sense than what WWE is producing, you know things have gone very wrong.
2. Rob Gronkowski's fumble
There's not much to say on this one because he didn't do much to warrant it. I don't mean any disrespect to him (and not because I don't think I ever drafted him in the WC Fantasy Football League), but the bookers didn't give him much to do for fear of harm and/or underestimating his skill.
Unless he tried his hand for a bit, found things were more absurd than he liked, and escaped back to football, in which case I applaud his acumen. It's not like he was Pacman Jones or anything. (Whatever happened to him, I wonder?)
3. Jeff Hardy, drunk Brother Nero
Because angles involving battling personal demons of intoxication are always fun right? It's not like he once main evented a PPV inebriated or anything. NEXT!
4. Tables, Lana & Cringe
With Rusev escaping through redundancy future endeavors, Lana finally had space of her own to do...something else equally as random as her romantic escapades. Unless they thought they could also try to get rid of her too by having her crash through a table every single week just because. When they called it the Divas' Revolution I didn't realize it meant they would fight against props and objects instead of each other and/or over a man.
5. Matt Hardy vs. Sammy Guevara vs. Gravity
Speaking of the competition and speaking of Hardys. The feud between the two became extremely physical, as if the writers wanted to make Matt literally Broken. (But at least he's not drunk right? Right?) Their Last Man Standing match where Matt fell into a concussion was the gory pinnacle (and without Gronk or Vince to show him how it's done either!) I'm not a squeamish Co-Librarian by any means (I watch un/intentional contact sports as one hobby after all), but this was just emotionally painful to watch.
6. Money In The Titan Towers
Speaking of heights and changing stakes. (Changing heights?) I can understand them wanting to do some more cinematic matches, and even try their hand at humor like they did here.
Unfortunately anyone who's suffered through a WWE Films "comedy" knows how well they do filmed humor.
This includes when they thought knocking people off the "roof" would be a good idea. I'm saddened they didn't say they fell into a body of water and have them appear on Raw still soaking wet.
7. Raw Underground/ratings
Speaking of heights and changing stakes. (Changing heights?) The concept of raw (no pun intended) mixed martial arts fighting and brawling is a novel one. Why, you could make a championship out of such. An ultimate fighting championship if you will. And if you wanted that, why would you not be watching that instead of wrestling?
I'm saddened that Shane McMahon didn't attempt to involve himself in the fights as "best in the world" by the power of his air punches. The BITWFC if you will. That's a license to print money if ever there was one.
8. Retribution (Ride To Hell)
Oh boy.
Vince McMahon, that youthful liberal radical and totally not a rich white man who is friends with a "Hall of Fame" "president" and married to someone who worked with them after two failed Senate attempts, tries to draw on the racial tensions and movements of the year by:
using current NXT folk
having them do random heel stuff in the ring
have said heel stuff be extremely limited and small-scale and as-if organized
reveal RIDICULOUS names for them
bring them onto Raw despite their anarchic intentions
job them out almost every single time.
And people wonder why this won this year's Gooker I MEAN why this is the Gooker frontrunner.
9. The Swamp Fight from the Black Lagoon
Oh look, more cinematic matches. Again, WWE Films does as well with horror as they do comedy (or just about any film genre for that matter). And with Bray Wyatt involved too! Poor guy always seems to get involved in some of the unintentionally worse stuff. Perhaps this year will make up for it.It just has to.
10. The Viking Raiders and Street Profits fuck around and find out
With all the stalling and messing around these two tag teams did I could have sworn they were attempting their own version of WCR including Co-Hosss Contest lengths of wasted time, culminating in yet more cinematic "komedy". Again, see the aforementioned WWE Films track record.
"Bren Blaihr, after I cut off your hair ya jabroni, I'm going to break ya back, and then fuck ya ass, make ya humble old country way! Punjab Michigan, Numba One!"
Rather than talk more about the Undertaker, RD listens to Blade (for once) and talks about the Gobbledly Gooker instead who first hatched from Vince's mind 30 years ago.
Blade fondly remembers the egg competing with his Black Scorpion. RD always found the egg ludicrous, even if Ric Flair had hatched from it. Blade thinks he should have done so with an alligator gimmick. (Besides, wasn't that Scott Hall?) But it was Hector Guerrero instead, and Blade wished he went feral and attacked Mean Gene with a crossface chicken wing. (:09) Blade kept the original bootleg recording which kept in the booing while commentating Piper and Gorilla Monsoon tried to salvage things.
RD admires their attempt to badly make a mascot ala the San Diego Chicken. (:13) Blade compares him poorly to WCW's Wildcat Willie. RD uses TNA's Stomper. They wonder when AEW will get one. At least he's not the Indianapolis Colts' Blue who charges $200 for home appearances and fumbles harder than [insert quarterback here].
The Gooker was refrigerated for 11 years before his outfit was redesigned. Maryse once portrayed him and cracked an eyeball. (:18) RD had his wife to fix it when they were loaned it (and Jordan was forced to wear it alongside RD, poor guy).
Blade still wonders where the kaiju-sized mother Gooker would be. (:21) As expected he missed his chance to make a movie with the outfit, most likely involving Don Mason in some capacity or other.
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!
When you take a look at these nominations all I have to say is...Thank God I'm not watching WWE these days! Hit it!
Return of The Gooker, once again, Return of The Gooker, Oh My Lord!
Raging_Demons here once again kiddies. Yes while not dealing with Mike Check I get to do this once in a while. It is once again Gooker Time. Yes the 2016 nominations of The Gooker are out. The Gooker represents by the wrestling fans as the most recognized award for the worst ever in pro wrestling. Be it a match, a storyline, a wrestling character, and for the first time EVER the grand daddy of them all, they are eligible to receive the award for the worst of the worst.
Luckily I missed most of this mess. For those that don't follow me social or comment wise I am no longer watching WWE. It had started with that "Sting's Road to Wrestlemania" garbage giving that feeling that all it was is simply for Vinnie Mac to stroke his cock. Then we add Road Dogg's insensitive Twitter comments basically saying, and I'm paraphrasing here and also this is important since Road Dogg is a WWE Road Agent now (Gee I wonder how he GOT THAT JOB?!?) where he said "Sure you can go try it out (referring to watching other wrestling promotions like New Japan, Ring Of Honor, and even TNA of all things) but we all know that you'll be back (referring to always coming back and watching WWE)" which I found completely tasteless. The straw that broke the camel's back was one guy's constant, never ending push even thought he's got the physical gifts but the actual talent of a Ziggy comic.
You know the guy. Roman Reigns. That was it! Thank God for The Broken Hardy's for bringing me back to wrestling.
So I got to watched all of this for you and let me say...
God damn 2016 was bad! Did The Ratings Reaper try to kill actual wrestling talent as well?
Without further adieu here are your 2016 Gooker Nominations!
AND THEY ARE....
1. Wrestlemania 32: There have been several close attempts for a Wrestlemania, deemed "The Grand Daddy Of Them All", to be nominated for a Gooker, but this is a first time EVAH that a Wrestlemania has been nominated for a Gooker. Not only the event was WAY longer than the entire run of "Firefly" but most of the matches were either ranging from mediocre to god awful. Yes even Shane McMahon's match with The Undertaker were in the lines of cringe worthy.
2. Jeff Jarrett Selling "Global Force Gold": Hey you! Yes you! You like Jeff Jarrett? You like Jarrett's idea of a World Pro Wrestling League called "Global Force Wrestling"? You like gold? I know you like gold! Well Jeff Jarrett has a deal FER YOU! Sure selling gold may look like a pyramid scheme of Herbalife levels and this makes all the gold selling commercials that you see on FOX News seem even less credible than this, but its gold right? RIGHT?!?
3. Darren Young versus Titus O' Neill with Young's Life Coach...Bob Backlund?!?: Personally speaking I think that Darren Young gets constant crap level gimmicks due to the part that he's openly gay. Pro Wrestling at times can be so mentally backwards. Heck, Paul Heyman and Colt Cobana admitted in interviews that there's still antisemitism in pro wrestling today! Okay mini-rant over moving on. Bob Backlund has been a great character in the previous years, even Mick Foley admitted that in one of his books; I think it was "Foley Is Good" but I'm not quite sure but don't let me know about via Social Media okay. SO what do you do to make Darren Young a wrestler on Roman Reigns' level? You...force him to feud Titus O' Neill over and over again with Backlund doing random stuff during the feud that makes no sense what so ever. HUH?!?
4. Enzo Amore's TRIP TO...Sensitivity Training: Remember this kiddies...
Okay take the same premise, change it a little, let's say...a sensitivity class. Put in Enzo Amore, who is so freaking huge right now it's not funny. Enzo Amore is big, GABBY HAYES BIG! What you end up is a set of "comedy" skits, and I refer to "comedy" in this sense as in you were supposed to laugh at the jokes but instead you look at it and say to yourself "Who the hell wrote this crap?" Like what you're reading right now. OH!
The bottom line here is that these "Sensitivity Training" skits made Enzo Amore look real bad here.
5. The Big Nippled Vampire (Shelly Martinez) versus Rebel: Every Wrestlecrap Radio Listener (all 12 of them) and even us here at Wrestlecrapradio.com knows who Shelly Martinez is. She's The BNV, the Big Nippled Vampire. Shelly got that name during her times in the WWE version of ECW running around as a vampire with giant fake fun bags with, as RD Reynolds would say about her nipples are "big and round as a dinner plate". Shelly is also a great wrestler and entertainer wise and I personally met her and she is a good person...Just don't try to start an argument with her because she will win! Oh yes she will! So what happen when a highly trained wrestler like Shelly Martinez goes up against a VERY GREEN wrestler like Rebel who is known for only two things: She can wear jean shorts so tiny that they look like she's wearing a thong and she's real life best friends with Christy Hemme? Put the two together and you get a match that is SO BAD that if I air the video here right now you would sue all of us for causing such psychological damage and I SO do not want that to happen! I hate to steal RD's gimmick but...SPEAKING OF HORRIBLE BAD THINGS!
6. The Wyatt Compound Match: There were a lot of people not happy that "Broken" Matt Hardy and his hijinks along with "Brother Nero" (I Knew You Would Come!) Jeff Hardy should be a shoe-in for a Gooker, but lets face the facts here that Matt Hardy actually created what WWE has been trying for years. Actual "Sports Entertainment" that is good. With the popularity of The Broken Hardyz WWE decided to do one little, itty, bitty, tiny thing. They tried to rip-off "The Final Deletion", turn it into a gimmick match with The Wyatt Family and The New Day, and turned it into a third rate garbage match that hasn't been seen in years. Let me edit that for a sec here. They ripped-off "The Final Deletion", made it into a fifth rate garbage match, and they ripped off Rob Zombie and his movies by making that match look like crap that Uwe Boll poops out. By the way I'm way glad Uwe Boll is retired. Gotta steal Deal's gimmick again here. SPEAKING OF THE NEW DAY!
7. The New Day vs Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson Feud: Poor Luke Gallows. He started as the mouth breather Festus, became liberated in The Straight Edge Society, and was a part of Aces and Eights. Yeesh! I feel bad for the guy. Gallows FINALLY gets some success in New Japan as a part of The Bullet Club. Then he along with fellow Bullet Club members AJ Styles and Karl Anderson get signed by WWE. While AJ Styles gets his own solo push the other two, Gallows and Anderson, get...this crappy feud right here! The Old Day? Midget New Day members? Anderson holding a jar of Big E's testicles saying that "he got no balls?" Did Triple H give Gallows and Anderson a D-Generation X Joke Book and say "Here do everything in this book when you are feuding with The New Day?" FFS MAN!
8. The Shining Stars: OK what the hell! It all begins with Primo and Epico getting a attractive female valet. Then they become comical masked bullfighters with a pet midget dressed as a bull. Now they are Puerto Rico time share sallsmen! What the hell did they do to deserve this crap?!?
Oh yeah, they're related to this guy here!
[I'm quite astonished no one has yet memed on Carlito having Giorgio "The A is for Aliens" Tsoukalos' hair. - PB]
9. The Golden Truth: What happens when you combine R-Truth and Goldust?
Oh Hell No! Instead of two wild and crazy guys we got two guys stuck in a constant loop of really bad jokes and honestly I'm quite offended. I'm supposed to be the one to tell lame jokes around here!
10. TNA in 2016: My personal pick for who should win the Gooker. TNA in 2016 was literally quite a huge embarrassment. First they started to stiff their wrestlers and their technical staff with not paying them. Then they lost wrestlers and staff left and right. Then they had to beg around to get money to do some recording of shows which is downright sad. Then they had wrestlers perform piss poor matches on TV since they are no longer a wrestling company. Then they began stiffing all their creditors not paying them back. Then they got an investor like Billy Corgan, who ran his own (actual) wrestling promotion, to invest in them only to alienate and steal from him. Its like all of this is a giant scheme of some sorts...
(Credit: James Hornsby over at BotchedSpot.com. Check it out now! Its one of my favorite websites!)
Whatever or however TNA does business is beyond me. After all the stupid stuff that they do they always finds a way to stay alive. With recent news event Dixie Carter is now gone from TNA, having new owners from Anthem Sports (Finding new buyers to take over is WAY beyond me for a money-pit of an organization like TNA), and just recently re-signing Dutch Mantell and Jeff Jarrett (Have you heard? Our current Gooker Nominee has a way for you to be rich on gold!) they can actually get out of this mess but in 2016 you can teach a class on TNA on how many times TNA FUBAR'ed.
A little Tenacious D to stomach what's about to happen.
Raging_Demons here and once again kiddies we here at WrestlecrapRadio DOT Com as we take a look at the only award that most places recognize as the "WORST" In Pro Wrestling today as the 2015 Gooker Award Nominations are out today.
2015 was...was...Basically horrific in train wreck epic proportions. There wasn't particularly a lot of good that happened that year (I'm looking at you New Day). Instead it was piles upon piles of utter pile of monkey-flinging poo that I rather go hide out in my cave than watch any of it. In fact I literally did that in 2015. Everything pro wrestling wise in short of a Joey Ryan Penis Slam turned me off as a fan & unlike Road Dogg who thinks I'll be back to WWE one day just shows how at times pro wrestling promotions are SO out of touch.
How bad was 2015? Well lets take a look at the nominations and hear the opinions from us over here at WrestlecrapRadio.com
The Nominations are....
1. The Divas Revolution: In 2015 WWE's farm system NXT were at times even better than WWE. While WWE went off to do "sports entertainment" NXT did what some fans actually wanted. A little concept called...PRO WRESTLING! NXT had legit women wrestlers, an occasional Un-Diva that was from Ric Flair's loins (Charlotte), & Snoop Dogg's cousin (Sasha Banks) to do things and wonder that WWE could never do with its craptasitc roster of Divas like The Bella Twins & Alicia Fox. Seriously if you type in "Alicia Fox Botch" on YouTube there's a couple of pages of her botching all over the place. So what did WWE do? Well they left them alone to continue to build the NXT Brand of course. KIDDING! KIDDING! WWE exploited the hell of the NXT Divas and brought then to the RAW/Smackdown roster. Next thing you know the NXT Divas were regulated to mini-factions, given the usual dumbass storylines, and most of them were buried to Super-Whore herself Nikki Bella. Mick Foley tried to spread the gospel of The Divas Revolution on Social Media and that failed. If Mankind himself couldn't do it then YEESH!
No, really. I can't make this stuff up if I tried.
I know what their first teachable lesson would be to the fine ladies: don't work for WWE. - PB]
2. Roman Reigns in 2015: And you thought John Cena was too cartoonish. 2015 saw WWE literally AND figuratively cram Roman Reigns down our throats so we like him. A little observation here but when you try to force people how to think and act most of the people do not like that. Reigns wins Royal Rumble (BOO!), Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson tries to get people to cheer for Reigns (BOO!), Reigns versus Brock Lesnar (KILL HIM BROCK!), and it just goes on and on and on. WWE even had Reigns basically quoting Looney Toons quotes while Bray Wyatt basically said "Anyone but you". It had to take an act of Vincent Kennedy McMahon to actually make him not loved or even liked but more like apathetic towards him. Oh yeah and "Tater Tots".
3. Throw Mickie James from The Train: Unfortunately this doesn't have Danny DeVito or Billy Crystal in this one. We here at WrestlecrapRadio.com have kept track for over a decade of Blade's obsession to do UNGODLY things to Mickie James. Hell the Co-Fruitcakes made a word up for Mickie's ass (Centaur's Ass or Centaur-licious). So in 2015 when TNA decided to pull off something stupid in having James Storm kill off Mickie James by chucking her in front of a "moving train" it wasn't bad. It was REALLY BAD! It was so bad that TNA had to say that Mickie James was ALIVE after it aired!
[What's funny is that not only did TNA bungle this up while showing it, but James Storm was even called to the police for the angle. I think the bigger crime is that TNA is still "on the air" in the loosest sense of the word. I think that's punishable by the electric chair, no? - PB]
4. Sting's Road to Wrestlemania: It was every wrestling fan's dream from the early days of WWE to the "Monday Night Wars"/"Attitude Era" WWE. After years of anticipation Sting finally debuts in WWE. So WWE decides to give him the epic storyline of WCW versus WWE. Such an epic storyline from 15 years ago! That's almost a generation of fans for Christ Sake! Not only was the storyline bad but Sting's Wrestlemania match was so bad from beginning to end you think Vince Russo scripted the whole thing while drunk and on acid. How bad was it? Over on our sister website "The MikeCheck Show"made fun ofthe entirestoryline and Wrestlemania Match.
5. The Rosebush: Take one Adam Rose, who was formerly the life of the party and last year's Gooker Nominee versus a feud with a Bunny so what do you do with him? Well after a heartwarming story from ESPN you give him a mega push right? Or...you give him a very lame TMZ rip-off show that was written by 6th Graders. Take your pick.
6. Jon Stewart Turns Heel: For years Jon Stewart was hated by Politicians, Arby's (*cough* Mickie James *cough*), and FOX News as host of "The Daily Show". Now Jon Stewart has added another bunch of people to hate him, Pro Wrestling Fans. Yes you can all blame Jon Stewart for costing John Cena the match versus Seth Rollins at Wrestlemania but after that...geez! Well at least he had a nice segment with Seth Rollins on his show.
[Now, if WWE had got Stephen Colbert for their show, leading to him taking things over and becoming the new RAW GM and delivering his own promos in his signature style? License. To. Print. Money. - PB]
7. Mahabali Shera's Dance Party: Take one giant Indian, make him do a dance, make said dance "addictive", and what do you got? The first ever storyline that was ripped off from "The Harlem Shake".
8. The Lana-Ziggler-Rusev Love Triangle of Eternal Torment: With help from Vince McMahon because he thought Rusev "didn't deserve someone as hot as Lana" this love triangle was the result. I mean it's not petty jealousy or anything like say...Lana leaking it out on Social Media that she and Rusev were getting married or whatever Dolph Ziggler did just to piss WWE off that day (I say cutting in line in front of Triple H for Hot Cocoa Day. Gotta get the whipped cream and Marshmallows). A very painful thing to watch especially with the whole "if they did it" deal or not.
9. Authority Kane: Kane getting a job performance review, Kane "leaving" on vacation to become regular Kane, Kane "outwitting" Seth Rollins when the whole point of Rollins in WWE right now is that he's Emo Triple H. I know I like my wrestling rivalries when its like my job. AND SPEAKING OF The Authority!
10. The Authority WILL NOT DIE: Just like "The Metal" The Authority, no matter how much you put it that they need to go away, WILL NOT DIE! Fueled by the prepubescent egos of Triple H (World Heavyweight Title Reigns of Hell anyone) and Stephanie McMahon (like giant ego filled father, like giant ego filled daughter) who wants to have more screen time than anyone in the history of TV; and not even letting the good guys win just ONE thing - it has to be shown that The Authority wins in every way. Entertainment 101 here is if you let The Villain win every single time then no one cares at all. Same for The Hero (and I'm looking at you John Cena AND Roman Reigns). Whether its Triple H's ability to bury Mother Nature and Father Time to Stephy Bear's ability to make everybody on the WWE roster look like crap (yes even the timekeepers). YET thanks to these two they think they are the ratings draw when the honest truth is that they are the opposite.
10 Nominations, HOPEFULLY One Winner. Who do you think was the worst of 2015? Only one way to find out.
Oh joy. My honest opinion, and this is my opinion since this is Raging_Demons here kiddies, is that this time of the year we should get The Chipmunks to sing us a song about this oh so joyous occasion.
What occasion you say?
Well first of all if your saying anything while reading this blog post you must have some sort of mental condition but enough of that you geeks, nerds, and poindexters. We are talking about...
The 2014 Gooker Nominations are out! Wrestlecrap.com's widely known recognizable reward for the worst in wrestling for angles/storylines/feuds or what now. RSPW? Nope. Dave Meltzer? Dave Meltzer probably not talking about carnie hating twins (or something like that?) Its The Gooker.
So what did 2014 stink up this time around? Here are YOUR Nominations.
1. The Summer Rae/Layla/Fandango Love Triangle of Indifference: Once upon a time not so long ago Fandango was huge! Fandago debuted with a win over Chris Jericho on a Wrestlemania, he was a meme, I mean he was big! Gabby Hayes big! Put him with an Un-Diva named Layla & a piece of plastic and you got crap.
2. Adam Rose vs The Bunny: Remember when we thought we liked Adam Rose, then we hated him because he stole The Midnight Rose's gimmick, then some dude in a Bunny costume got more famous than him (rumor that its the same Bunny that competed in the APA Bar Room Brawl is still inconclusive). Now we have Adam Rose feuding with The Bunny and nobody cares.
3. Return of The RAW Co-Hosts: Grumpy Cat? Hota & Kathy Lee? Yeah I'll pass.
4. "The Stalker" Sam Shaw: Stalker gimmicks are never good. Go ask Barry Windham or DDP about that. Now rookie Sam Shaw becomes the new stalker and takes things way creepy. Hell I had fun with that gimmick with Sam Shaw over on Twitter and it was no bueno.
5. Bella vs Bella: My personal choice there. The Bella's are probably the worse Divas ever in WWE. They can't wrestle & now they prove they can't act by doing this nonsensical feud as filler until Daniel Bryan comes back. Once again WWE proves that if a woman goes down on her knees no matter how awful a performer you are (yes I'm taking to you Nikki Bella) you will get a push from hell!
6. Vince McMahon's Live Interview on "The Steve Austin Podcast": This one interview, at the time a cross-promotional stunt for "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's podcast & the WWE Network proved to literally destroy the roster from an emotional standpoint how Vince sees his stars. If you think I'm wrong go listen to it yourself.
7. How the 2014 Royal Rumble was booked: Daniel Bryan not in the main event? A returning Batista winning The Royal Rumble Match?
Yeah...
8. The Menagerie: Take former "Aces & 8s" member Knux, add Christy Hemme's best friend Rebel, throw in Rob Terry in a mask & a crazy clown named "Crazzy Steve" (because you can't be crazy without saying he's "Crazy" or have 2 z's in your name I guess) & you got...a lot of shots of Rebel in jean shorts.
9. Jeff Hardy as "Willow": Jeff Hardy re-packages himself as some guy in a mask with a thing for umbrellas & jibberish.
10. The Return Of Claire Lynch!: Claire Lynch was so popular, I mean it did win the 2012 Gooker, for being so horrible WWE decided to rip that off for The Authority's feud with Daniel Bryan last year. Not only that was such a bad idea but when that happened "Claire Lynch" was trending again on Twitter due to the fact that WWE copied it!
[Raging_Demons here once again folks.] A lot of websites cover the best but only one covers one thing & a thing that I love...The Worst!
The website that covers the "Worst of Pro Wrestling" is back with the acclaimed yearly award "The Gooker", the award that awards what was the worst storyline/character/feud of pro wrestling for the year 2012.
This year's are...
1. The Life & Loves of AJ Lee: 2012 was not only the year that AJ Lee got over as a main eventer for the WWE Divas but unfortunately showed as a major unstable skank. AJ Lee bounced around in 2012 from Daniel Bryan, to CM Punk, To Kane, hell even to her current conquest of Dolph Ziggler while being putted in almost every WWE segment that made no sense. John Cena's pic on the New Year's Eve episode of RAW showing AJ's "KIDS" says it all. WWE finds a way to try and kill
her likability.
2. Claire Lynch: The Odds-on winner. It all started when Kazarian and Daniels a.k.a. "Bad Influence" calls out AJ Styles for being a no-good Adulterer! *Grandpa Simpson fist shaking* It soon turned out that was the best part of the story as AJ Styles and TNA President Dixie Carter introduced us to the pregnant crack whore known as Claire Lynch. The storyline turned worse each week until
the Internet Wrestling Fans Cyber-Bullied the actress who played Claire Lynch to quit TNA.
3. Farting Natalya: WWE trying to find something to do with Natalya so she can be on TV, "The Brain Trust" a.k.a. WWE Creative decided to give Natalya the gimmick of having a bad case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome /the ability to pass gas everywhere she went. Yes this angle certainly did stink!
4. Aces & 8s: TNA's version of "Sons of Anarchy" decided to invade TNA with barely anybody caring about them at all, with the best plot point of the whole thing being Hulk Hogan locking them out of the Impact Zone.
5. Sheamus/Daniel Bryan World Heavyweight Title Match at Wrestlemania 28: Daniel Bryan was INSANELY over heading to Wrestlemania this year adding to it that most fans were expecting a great match since these two were the Dark Match at Wrestlemania 27 last year. So what happens next? Sheamus squashes Daniel Bryan in 18 seconds just to get himself over. Oh did that piss off the world and I mean the world!
6. The Zack Ryder/Eve Torres Love Affair: After years of WWE not giving a damn about him Zack Ryder gets over with the fans by his own damn self! Thanks to Zack Ryder WWE now gives a damn about Social Networking. Zack Ryder even earned himself an U.S. Title run. So what happens next? Zack Ryder is paired up in a love affair with Eve "I-Slept-With-A-Brazillian-jiu-Jitsu-Master-And-I-Now-Know-Brazillian-jiu-Jitsu-while-having-a-rumored-affair-with-John-Cena" Torres and gets so re-DONK-ulously buried that if you ever read Ryder's Tweets now he's now a broken man thanks to
this storyline.
Those are your nominations. Voting is only open for two weeks! Winner will be announced as an induction on Wrestlecrap on Feb. 1, 2013. Get to a voting NOW!
[Update: Here's the overall 2012 Gooker results from wrestlecrap.com, and your winner is.....Clare Lynch -RVMKai]
