R U READY TO DOWN SOME SMACK??? Royal Bumblef*ck

Matt and Adam take the brand extension very seriously. They each only identify with one brand and actively follow it. Matt bleeds Raw red and Adam has Smackdown blue coursing through his veins. Being soldiers in the ongoing war for brand supremacy has charged both of them up enough to provide handy recaps of the previous week's show. That way, no new viewers will feel lost. Thus, every Monday and Friday, we here at LOL, Wresslin' will offer you a refresher. Hey, it's the least we can do.


Ok, so we pretty much recapped all of the Rumble the other day. No need to make hilarious recaps since it's all there already! Still, here are a few of my Rumble observations.


He's bit of getting on the mic after every elimination was brilliant. It's a shame that there were only 90 second intervals rather then the full two minutes because parts of it felt rushed. It's also a shame that he got eliminated as early as he did. I'm not saying he should have won (well, not specifically), I'm not even saying the mic bit needed to last all night. But it seemed that as soon as HHH came out he was eliminated. In fact...

A lot of people were eliminated quickly this year.

We didn't really get a marathon man as has become custom with the Rumble. Again, I nominate CM Punk for this role. Or at least Ted Dibiase. Alas, no one really got time to hang out. One group who got no time:



And finally...




That's about it. Be sure to watch all the fallout tonight at 8/7c on MyNetwork TV. Or do it like me and watch it some other time on hulu.com!


Yes, you see the Devils recently acquired Illya Kovalchuk, only one of the most dynamic scorers in all of the NHL. They NEVER make moves like this! It's so exciting! The deal was amazing too!

They got Kovalchuk, the man who has scored the most goals since 2001, for Jhonny Oduya, Nicolas Bergfors, Patrice Cormier, and a first rounder? The Devils also got a serviceable D-Man back as well? What a fleecing! Oduya is a good enough NHL defenseman, but he's over payed and has played ass this year. And of course, Paul Martin is due back soon, so any problems with Oduya's departure will quickly be rectified. Bergfors is a nice enough rookie, but he's slumped the last few months, and he's one of those rookies who should have made the team two years ago. Consider me skeptical of his long-term success. Cormier is another good prospect (he captained Team Canada at the World Juniors this year), but I wouldn't say he'd ever be better than a third line center. He's also suspended for the remainder of the season for nearly killing a guy on the ice. We'll see how he bounces back.

So yea, all that garbage for ILYA KOVALCHUK!?! You can understand why I have to watch the game.

Oh interns at devils.nhl.com...I love you

Oh wait, why can't I watch Smackdown on my DVR replay like I usually do? Because there's also a 2 hour Smallville event title "Absolute Justice" tonight! The friggin' JSA! Hourman! Dr. Fate! Atom Smasher! All in live action, Smallville glory! I can't miss that either. Take a seat, Smackdown.

You can watch the Devils host the Toronto Maple Leafs at 7 o'clock on MSG + and Smallville at 8/7c on The CW! OR NEVER AGAIN BECAUSE THESE ARE ONE TIME ONLY EVENTS!

Yes, this is our new meme.

The NXT big thing

For a theme song to accompany this post please press play and enjoy...



The Attitude era can officially come to a close; ECW is finally dead. Yes, the little promotion that could is on its final legs, as in three weeks time, the Land of Extreme will finally close up shop. We for one, can't wait.

Brief history lesson: ECW started in the early 1990's out of Philadelphia, PA. They mostly ran out of bingo halls. They produced a few stars (like Rob Van Dam, Lance Storm, and "That 70's Guy/Fat Chick Thriller" Mike Awesome), but mostly disgusted any sane person with their antics. There was cursing, blood, violence against women, and sexuality rampant through their shows. You could usually only see it at 3 am on the MSG Network in New York. However, TNN eventually gave it a TV time slot as a lead in for their popular Slamball and Rollerjam sports series. It was soon canceled and Monday Night Raw took over.

As part of the deal to get Raw on TNN, ECW producer Paul Heyman became the new color commentator next to Jim Ross. ECW remained dormant until one fateful day in summer of 2001 when Shane McMahon's WCW merged with ECW (now owned by Stephanie McMahon-Helmsly) to create an Alliance to rival the WWF!

They then put their company stock on the line at the Survivor Series and lost.

ECW would be forgotten until 2005 when a bunch of old timers had a bake sale or something, and ran the One Night Stand pay-per-view. The show did a decent enough buy-rate, but WWE Producer Kevin Dunn rightfully hated the show. The highlights of the show were when Joey Styles said live on-air that he hoped Mike Awesome's dive to the outside "killed him" (Awesome would commit suicide soon after) and when JBL legitimately beat up the Blue Meanie. Fast forward a year and Rob Van Dam's title win over John Cena relaunched an ECW television series on Sci-Fi.

The show stunk. Hard.

The same old ECW shenanigans started up again as The Sandman beat up The Zombie and Balls Mahony hosted some strip poker segment that was so boring the Laugh Twins were only able to masturbate to it twice. The Miz became the The Miz there and Chris Benoit murdered his wife and son and committed suicide (clearly an ECW tradition) because he was drafted to ECW.

On the plus side, both CM Punk and Mark Henry became awesome while in ECW. Also, Christian is there and he rules.

ECW is also responsible for giving us the following talents with their "New Superstar Initiative": Jack Swagger, Abraham Washington, Tommy Dreamer, Tyler Reks, Evan Bourne, and DJ Gabriel.

Still, the luster of these "stars" was not enough to sustain this little promotion. Fact is, people don't watch minor league baseball.



That is to say, until now. What pray tell is replacing ECW? Why WWE Next Generation, or NXT for short! This is awesome! The stars of the future...today! What kind of set will this show have? Will Josh Mathews be there? Will the NXT also have that cool razor blade logo?

We think WWE.com summed up our feelings exactly with a little poll buried over at their ECW subpage.

What do you think about Mr. McMahon announcing the end of ECW?

1) This is great! Mr. McMahon promises us the next evolution of WWE in its place!

2) I'm disappointed but excited to see what will replace ECW.

3) I'm not sure. This raises more questions than it answers.

Ummm...obviously #1. NXT question!

W.W.W. featuring Kane/X-Pac and Jake Roberts

On Wednesdays, we here at LOL, Wresslin' like to really pull out the stops and offer up a double shot of righteously killer content. Why Wednesday? Well, we could impress you with market research, work habit studies, and human psychology tendencies to show you there's a scientific reason the middle of the week is the best time to bring your A-game. However, truth be told, we don't have any of that stuff and settled on Wednesday because that was the only day that didn't have any content scheduled.

So, here you have "Watch Wresslin' Wednesdays," the ORIGINAL wrestling-themed, YouTube video comedic co-commentary. Please feel free to suggest a better title, because we are woefully uncreative when it comes to naming stuff.

Better at naming stuff than us.

The idea of W.W.W. is we each send the other a video that is related to wrestling (a match, promo, interview, guest starring spot, etc.). The only restriction is that it cannot be user-created, so your tribute to dead wrestlers (that's most of YouTube, we think) ain't going to fly here, pal. Neither of us know what kind of video we're going to get that day.

After viewing, we each write a response. This could be anything we choose: a straight commentary, a philosophical enlightenment, or classless ridicule. Just as we don't know what kind of video the other will select, neither do we know what the other will write or how they will write it. What you end up with is a mash-up of styles, which in our book equates to two-blogs-in-one, and we can take the rest of the day off.

Matt's video to Adam- Kane vs X (sic) Pac Promo



Adam's response

Wrestling gets a lot of flack lately for going too far into the past. WWE brought back Bret Hart, TNA is just the old NWO and WWE midcarders who never did anything about get injured and kiss boys (and Ric Flair.) Still, sometimes the past isn't always as rosy as we remember it. The last "golden age of wrestling" had its fair share of past ripoffs. Much like this Kane/X-Pac feud from 2000.

Sure, it's the typical "friend turns on other friend by stealing his woman" story. That's a wrestling foundation and by no means is that a rip off. No, what is the ripoff is the basic idea behind the story. And as is clear, this entire story is just Harry and the Hendersons.

It's actually obvious, really

Let's see. Monster (Kane) finds family (DX) who want to exploit him, but eventually learn to love him? Yea, I saw this before in a John Lithgow masterpiece not named Footloose. Try again, WWE writers.

Of course, the main reason Matt sent me this video is to have me rip on X-Pac. So I'm going to just show you the silliest things this drug addict did here.

1) Overalls

2) Taking the female position in a kiss

Of course, that last one really just foreshadowed to another classic film.

Is this what Tori meant when she said "X-Pac in one word? Gentleman"?

Adam's video to Matt - Jake Roberts interview

Matt's response...

This has got to go down in history as the most uncomfortable interview set ever. The three look like they're wedged into the bench seat of a 1981 Chevrolet truck, with Paul Ellering somehow riding in the bed, poking his head through the back window. I don't know, that's kind of where my analogy breaks down...just like an old truck! Anyway, my point is it's ridiculously cramped on set. I know I've said this numerous times on all sorts of different occasions, but I still feel justified suggesting they just kiss and get it over with already.

Except for Bill Apter. He's totally straight.

I'd like to send a letter to that address at the end, just to see what happens. In fact, we should do that, as a little prank from the LOLiverse. Ask a question pertinent to 1984 as well, such as the ramifications of Vince McMahon buying Georgia Championship Wrestling from the Briscos, or maybe how we think this new kid Scott Hall is going to be a real straight shooter. Maybe they'll think it got lost in the mail or something. That would be a cute prank. Also, include some anthrax.

Kimonos are not used enough in wrestling these days. Is that not a manly thing to wear? Precious Paul sure seems to pull it off. I wouldn't mess with the dude. He just stands there, wearing his kimono and working on a crossword or something. That's tough. So I'd like to see more of that. At least make the divas have a geisha match or something. Slutty geishas, of course.

Let's fact check Jake here for a second: he guarantees that he will be the TV champion again. Wanna guess how that turned out? He didn't get it. Now, he would go to WCCW and win their TV title, but that's not really the same thing. However, I guess he's techincally correct. Checkmate, Snake.

Interesting note about the match their talking about: Ronny Garvin wanted to challenge Jake for that TV title, but the Snake wouldn't budge, probably because he knew he was supposed to lose it. So Garvin had to mortgage his house to pay Jake enought money to get him to take the match. I like that. These days, guys are just handed title matches like it's nothing. Sure they win a little bit or something to get there, but they really don't put a whole lot on the line. Garvin could have been homeless if this whole thing didn't work out. I think that's a pretty good story.

The ironic thing is now Jake's the one that's pretty much homeless.

He does drugs, is incoherent, and shows his penis to strangers...that's homeless.

OH BABY, I like it Raw! The Royal Stumble

Matt and Adam take the brand extension very seriously. They each only identify with one brand and actively follow it. Matt bleeds Raw red and Adam has Smackdown blue coursing through his veins. Being soldiers in the ongoing war for brand supremacy has charged both of them up enough to provide handy recaps of the previous week's show. That way, no new viewers will feel lost. Thus, every Monday and Friday, we here at LOL, Wresslin' will offer you a refresher. Hey, it's the least we can do.

For a theme song to accompany this post, please press play and enjoy...



Well, I'm back from my first annual late-January blogging break! Missed me? Of course you did. I'd say that was a stupid question, but we all know there's no such thing as a stupid question, unless you're the one asking.

Like this one: "Matt, are you going to provide a 10,000 word recap of the Raw happenings during the Royal Rumble pay-per-vew?" Yes, that is a stupid question, because I absolutely will not. We already did that during our special live blog/team-building experiment with fellow blogger (or bloggette?) Ray from Wrestlegasm. Consequently, I will not be giving you a blow by blow account of what happened. That's what YouTube and people who don't give a shit about copyrights are for.

However, a couple of important team squabbles went down that should be mentioned. First is DX. You see, both were in the 30-man Royal Rumble match, and both had aspirations of getting a Wrestlemania title shot. Triple H because, well, he's Triple H, and Shawn Michaels because that's the only way he thinks he can get a rematch with the Undertaker. A little backstage vignette showed us that there could be trouble if Trips and HBK were left unattended in the ring together, since they both made it clear they would be looking out for number one, just like every other tag team that's ever participated in the Rumble since the beginning of ever.

Fast forward to the match, and even though there are other people in the ring for him to fight, the Heart Break Kid went ahead and proved he was a man of his word.



Expect some smushing together of foreheads over this.

In our other Raw news, there was some speculation leading up to the WWE Title match as to whether Legacy would have Randy Orton's back when he went up against Sheamus. During the match, Cody tried to prove he's a team player by smacking the champ around. However, since the Code is severely lacking in ninja skills, he was spotted.

This is also your Cody Rhodes photoshop contest.

Of course, this led to a win for Sheamus by DQ. Randy wasn't happy with Cody, and he expressed his discontent with his fists. Henchmodel Teddy ran down to cool the situation with more yelling, and he got smacked around for his efforts as well. So it looks as if Legacy is more like History as of last night.

Alright, that's the stuff you need to know to be caught up for tonight at 9/8c on USA! Unless of course you're watching 24, in which case, GO JACK!