bixenspandavid Page 9 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Samoa Joe Can't Be Stopped
Eight years ago and counting, Samoa Joe was done—or at least it seemed that way....
Women In Wrestling Have Taken A Hard Road To Get To Where They Are Now
Recently, Netflix released the first season of GLOW, a dramedy based on the production of Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, the comedic late ’80s women’s wrestling promotion that was, ever so briefly, a smash hit in syndication. Many reviews have focused on how a gifted, majority-female cast and creativ...
10 Years After The Chris Benoit Killings, Pro Wrestling Still Can't Fix Itself
When I take my mind back 10 years to the days and weeks right before and right after Chris Benoit murdered his wife and son, one thing in particular always jumps to the forefront of my thoughts....
10 Years Ago, WWE Killed Vince McMahon In Its Most Ridiculous Storyline Ever
When you watch WWE programming for a long time, certain patterns emerge, ranging from production quirks to how matches are laid out to certain tropes that consistently recur in the storytelling. One of these is the way WWE lets show its utter contempt for its audience. Hell, it showed up recently wh...
Rating Pro Wrestling's New "Best Match Ever" Is Way More Contentious Than It Needs To Be<em></em><em></em>
This week, much has been made of the main event of New Japan Pro Wrestling’s annual Dominion event, which took place on Sunday. IWGP heavyweight champion Kazuchika Okada and challenger Kenny Omega went to a 60-minute time-limit draw, the hallmark of classic title matches for decades. It came five mo...
Japan’s Most Ridiculous Wrestling Promotion Hits Somewhere Near The Big Time
Last week, Dramatic Dream Team, the largest independent pro wrestling promotion in Japan, pulled off one of its most ambitious events ever. Sanshiro Takagi, DDT’s promoter and one of its top stars, headlined the Tokyo Dome against New Japan Pro Wrestling star Minoru Suzuki. However, there were two k...
How Frank Deford Helped Pro Wrestling Journalism Become Very Real
To understand what Frank Deford, who died at 78 this past week, did for professional wrestling, you need to go back to one of his most famous articles, one which profiled what was, at the time, the other most popular entertainment sport in America. “The Roller Derby,” which was published in the Marc...
WWE Wants to Replace John Cena With Japan's Shinsuke Nakamura, And It Might Actually Work<em></em><em></em>
This Sunday night’s Backlash show marks the beginning of a new era in WWE, one that would have been shocking even two years ago. For the first time in its history, the world’s largest professional wrestling promotion is attempting to turn a Japanese wrestler into one of its top stars—the top star, i...
Randy Orton Gleefully Shits On Indie Wrestlers
WWE champion Randy Orton is normally not much of an interesting follow on Twitter. Sometimes he’ll express a thought of his own, but for insight into his personality, you’re not usually getting it there. That changed over the weekend....
Billy Corgan Is Buying Pro Wrestling's Oldest And Deadest Brand To Use As He Pleases
Depending on the specific argument you’re making, you might say that the National Wrestling Alliance, pro wrestling’s oldest governing body, ceased being relevant as much as 35 years ago. So it was definitely surprising last week when Billy Corgan (yes, that one) bought its remnants from Bruce Tharp...
Keith Lee, Wrestling's Out Of Nowhere Star, Wants You To Bask In His Glory
There are a few different ways to experience WrestleMania these days. The most basic distinction to make is between is watching at home versus taking a trip to the host city. From there, there are further distinctions. Some fans only check out the WWE offerings, and some take in the numerous indepen...
Katsuyori Shibata Is Just The Latest Japanese Wrestling Star To Suffer A Serious Head Injury<em></em>
Throughout its entire existence, the pseudo-sport of pro wrestling’s presence as a subgenre in Japan has been consistently defined by how much harder-hitting it is there than it is elsewhere in the world. Hard hitting can take a lot of forms. It can mean hard shots in safe places; it can mean laying...
Vince Russo, One Of Pro Wrestling's Biggest Bullshit Artists, Is Back Where He Started<em></em>
Hard as it may be for long-time fans to believe, this month marks 25 years since Vince Russo first emerged as a presence in pro wrestling. All these years later, the former WWE, WCW, and TNA storyline writer and television personality is best known for his role behind the scenes in the Attitude Era ...
ESPN's Jonathan Coachman Acts Like He Still Works For WWE
Jonathan Coachman is either a liar or an idiot....
Ex-WWEer On Announcer JBL's Bullying: "This Stuff Is Encouraged"<em></em><em></em>
When former WWE ring announcer Justin Roberts started writing his new book, Best Seat in the House, he had no idea what part of his autobiography would end up getting attention and coverage from wrestling fans. After all, the Instagram teaser post he put up in November is almost unwaveringly positiv...
The Best Thing About This Year's WrestleMania Is A Brutally Personal Reality-TV Feud
This Sunday’s WrestleMania is not your father’s, which is both the sort of thing World Wrestling Entertainment would say to promote it and true—if not quite in the way they would like you to think....
FBI Records Show Vince McMahon's Dad Caught On Tape Bragging About Threatening A Wrestler
It’s officially WrestleMania week, the biggest of the year in professional wrestling. The major events really get going on Friday night with the annual WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony. A mix of mainstream-sports hall of fame ceremony, Kennedy Center honors, and crass branding exercise, it’s one ...