Tag: hero
September 26, 2017 /

Rikidozan Hesitating

Who are we, as wrestling fans, and what have we lost? It’s March 28, 1962, in Los Angeles, California. It’s a Wednesday night at the Grand Olympic Auditorium, just south of Downtown, the famous arena about which Charles Bukowski once wrote, “the gallery boys went ape and the fighters fought like fighters and the place was blue with cigar smoke, and how we screamed, baby baby, and threw money and drank our whiskey.” That night…

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June 3, 2015 /

Thus Spoke Kevin Owens and John Cena (6/1/2015)

Wow, things are fairly groundbreaking, even game-changing, in the feud raging between Kevin Owens and John Cena. This stuff gives me chills! I am working on an editorial about the Cena/Owens duality for Tim Kail to read on his Work of Wrestling podcast, but I need to transcribe these promos to work from so I’m sharing them here. Notice how literary these words are when you see them in print. Kevin Owens speaks in precise,…

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November 23, 2014 /

On Cena’s Failure to Represent (Smackdown 11/21/14)

I do understand that behind the kayfabe, John Cena is tired lately. Possibly starting to burn out. You can hear it when his voice cracks, and in the real emotion that surges beneath his words when he talks about the haters and his controversial roll as a booed babyface. His fortitude is mighty, but the grind of life on the road may be starting to take its toll. One night a couple weeks ago, he…

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November 15, 2014 /

On Rob Schamberger’s Daniel Bryan (art criticism)

Lately I’ve been interested in examining the areas in which wrestling and the creative arts overlap, intersect, inform and inspire each other. In this realm there is no better artist to write about than Rob Schamberger. Schamberger is a Kansas City pop artist who works with a variety of mediums and techniques to create stunning and vibrant portraits that capture all that is larger than life about wrestling’s superstars, past and present. Schamberger paints legends,…

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September 10, 2014 /

On John Cena and Paul Heyman (RAW 9/9/2014)

Honestly, I avoided much of RAW on Monday. I was in the kitchen doing dishes and listening but not watching, in hopes of not having to see the Jerry Springer thing. I had thought surely as a species we had evolved beyond Jerry Springer. (I mean, what is this, 1999?) But I got drawn over to the TV during a few of the segments, one of which, of course, was John Cena’s powerful confrontation of…

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July 23, 2014 /

On the Tweets of John Cena and Rusev

John Cena had this to say on Twitter just now: You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villian.True or not I am and have always been me.Thru crisis or triumph #nevergiveup — John Cena (@JohnCena) July 22, 2014 I can see he recognizes his own hero problem, which I have written so much about. To be a heel or not to be a heel, that is the question! And earlier,…

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