Month: January 2015

January 30, 2015 /

I have been consulting Roland Barthes as I percolate several thinky posts, and it occurs to me that I should share some of the original motivation for starting this blog. Even if you’ve read it before, Roland Barthes’ essay “The World of Wrestling” from his influential book of post-structural pop culture criticism Mythologies is great for wrestling fans to revisit. Every time I read it, I notice new things. But I also want to tell you…

January 26, 2015 /

The other weird thing for me about the Twitter Rumble riots is that all the complaints I’m reading, without many exceptions, seem to be based on the idea that the wrestler who won the Royal Rumble should have been based solely on how much he was over with the fans. That is an important factor, yes. And we have been burned a lot lately. I am no fan of the company these days and I…

January 26, 2015 /

It strikes me as a bizarre turn of events that people are rioting on Twitter over a Roman Reigns victory at Royal Rumble and making mean gifs at the expense of our old world knight of justice. Look, I am totally over Roman Reigns, even when I was swooning over him a year ago. But you know what? I’m also over Bray Wyatt. And Dean Ambrose. Oh come on, admit it, those guys have really…

January 20, 2015 /

Tim Kail read my story about the first wrestling match I ever saw on his podcast The Work of Wrestling this week. He made it sound so good! You should go listen to the podcast and also check out his blog — he has been working tirelessly to celebrate professional wrestling and redefine it as an art form, away from the ever problematic label of “sports entertainment”. He also talked about our new heroes Kyle…

January 17, 2015 /

Tim at The Work of Wrestling turned me on to these guys and they are brilliant. Political satire for the WWE Universe! Just what we need during these dark times: Kyle and Oliver do awesome covers of WWE entrance songs, Paige’s being perhaps their most kick ass: But their NXT song is more complex than a bold cover — it is a parody delivering a satire that is actually a message of grievance from the…

January 13, 2015 /

“Русев удря Русев мачка!” Have you wondered what it is Rusev is saying at the beginning of his entrance music? It’s been driving me crazy because I couldn’t make it out. Then I finally saw it in one of his tweets and spent a little time with Google Translate. Rusev udrya Rusev machka! is Bulgarian. It’s hard to hear in his entrance: I always thought I heard budrya instead of udrya. Machka stumped me because…

January 10, 2015 /

Writing about professional wrestling has been for me an exercise in churning out old school critical content at the speed of the internet age. I have learned much! I used to be the type to fiddle with my sentences, question the quality of my thesis, wring my hands for days on end before I felt confident sharing my writing with the world, or anybody. But that doesn’t work when one is writing about wrestling. I’ve…

January 6, 2015 /

I skipped right over RAW this week. From the advance tweets I saw, it looked like it was all about The Authority being mean to people which is such a downer, plus my kids were total rascals at Costco, so I was like, “No soup for you!” Also, it was Day One for my husband’s DDP Yoga resolution (which I am joining in on) so we didn’t have hours to sink into a show that…

January 3, 2015 /

It occurs to me that CJ Parker is actually an impressive character. In the era of monster douchebag asshole heels like Seth Rollins and creepy greasy antihero heels like Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper, good on this kid for getting over as a loathsome pussy hippie liberal jobber heel. Sorry to be crude, but I can’t think of a better way to describe CJ Parker. And while he gets his ass kicked every time, he…

January 1, 2015 /

This final RAW of 2014 was fascinating, despite being pretty low key until the hostage situation at the end. There were no celebrations of Hulk Hogan or a holiday or a charity, just well-composed rising action and character development. The episode functioned as something of an airing of grievances, as is seasonally appropriate and a welcome change from the Christmas shenanigans of the previous week and the tired cliches of overall holiday season. It was…