Non-White Friday

Season's Beatings!

Happy Thanksgiving, all! Or, to those of you not in the United States, Happy Thursday! Thanksgiving is that holiday that allows us to thank back to the time that the Pilgrims and Indians hooked up and had a great big feast and danced and smoked and generally thumbed their noses at the lame ass British that stayed on the island. Losers.


But did you also know that the day after Thanksgiving was a holiday as well? That's right, it's Black Friday! The un-official start of the Christmas shopping season, when retailers slash all their prices and open their doors at four in the morning. The day when shoppers wait up all night for a prime spot in line and then lose their mind when the store opens. The day when people die shopping.

Seriously.

We'd like for you to avoid all that. We don't want you to die. Who'd read the blog? So we're finding some of the best deals out there for the wrestling minded fan, and not from the normal places either. No, we're headed over to ShopTNA.com!

Apparently, TNA celebrates Black Friday as well. You weren't aware of that? Well, allow Don West to tell you.



So what items are they offering us at nutty low prices?

That's just frightening.

This beauty will only cost you $12.99. That's five bucks off! Quite the deal already!

Dave in South Dakota says: "This DVD is worth the money the bonus features are cool" Let it never be said that South Dakotans are not quick to get to the point. Now, we'd normally post other reviews of the product so you'd know what you're getting into when purchasing, but seeing how they are all just participating in a fanboy flame war, it's really somewhat useless. However, J*Box of Kansas does take a break from the bickering and offer this:

I'm a hugh Wrestling Fan, and hears why you the consumer should buy this DvD. It is Action Packed.

We definitely could have said it better ourselves.


For $55.99, you can get your hands on this piece of TNA memoribilia: a Kevin Nash autographed baseball. Does Big Sexy play baseball? Absolutely not, but that shouldn't stop him from signing one and sending it to you, should it?

Well, yes it should. This is just a stupid gimmick. They have these for a lot of wrestlers, like Mick Foley and Suicide. Yes, Suicide signed a baseball, and he signed it "Suicide." That should look great on your kid's shelf. So why choose Nash's over those others? Because it's the only one in existence. That's right! Act quickly and get it now! Nash hyper-extended his elbow and tore his bicep signing this one, so there aren't any more!

There must be SOME reason why we avoided TNA for so long...

Finally, for just a buck, you can score yourself a Curry Man 8x10. Go ahead and replace that photo of your kids in the hallway with this sweet puppy. "terrol" provided the only review, saying:

this photo looks cool BRING BACK CURRY MAN

Yes, terrol, yes this photo does look cool, doesn't it? Why shouldn't they bring back Curry Man, especially with that ringing endorsement you just gave him? Don't they care at about someone who'll spend a dollar for a completely worthless sheet of high-gloss photo paper?

We're going to save our Washington, though. There's something much better we could spend it on...

Sadly, this was only given a one-and-a-half star rating. We might have to reconsider...

Death, Taxes, and WWE Stock

Not to get all spoilery on last night's Raw, but sometimes some things are just too big to sit on for a week. Yes, we now have a new owner of Monday Night Raw! Donald Trump sold it to rival wrestling promoter Vince McMahon last night. The King is dead! Long live the king!

"We're leaders-two kings!!!"

Still, WWE is a publicly traded company, and as such, has responsibilities to its share holders. Thus, who cares who the owner is as long as our bottom line (cause Stone Cold said so!) is in the black? Let's take a look at the last ten years of WWE's portfolio.

Just like that.

As you can see, WWE stock opened it's first week rather strong, with $24.00 being the price for just a little of that Smackdown action. True, it closed it's first month down $3 from that initial opening, but $21 a share times a few thousand is a pretty spicy meatball! Also, this was the month that John Carpenter (not of this fame) became the first millionaire in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? history. Obviously America was following him for financial advice at the time.

Thank God we're here to translate all these complicated algorithms for you.

This is the financial chart from the time WWE announced their purchase of WCW to the end of the "WCW Invasion" angle. A year and a half later and the stock has dropped six dollars. Still, it remains pretty consistent the entire time, which should not be a good thing due to the angle of all angles they should have been running. Of course, that logic is pretty sound, since the stock went up after the purchase, only to return to its old neighborhood once the public saw that it was failing.

It's like every time this happens the stock goes down

Oh those wacky wrestlers! What a bunch of jokers! Yup, remember when Mr. McMahon "died" in that limo explosion? Yes, when that happened WWE Corporate issued this press release. All in a days work for a wrestling show, right? Except there was one small problem; Vince McMahon is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. When the head of the company dies people tend to lose faith and begin to jump ship. As exhibited by the above numbers. Thankfully, something else came along to distract buyers from these shenanigans.

Ooo..some good news!

Right. That unpleasantness. What's really astounding is how once the mass media went full on Chris Benoit coverage WWE stock dramatically rose. Then as the craziness died down, the stock dropped below its starting point of the time around the tragedy. Hmm, we guess there is no such thing as bad publicity...

Financial genius our ass

Finally, here are the daily numbers of Donald Trump's crazy week as owner of Raw. Yup, a dramatic decrease. Almost a full point. Could it possibly be because of this? Once again, a crazy wrestling stunt is leading the government to get involved because, hey, we're dealing with people's money here.

Still, most important in all of this is that Vince McMahon bought back Raw. And for the low, low price of double an "offer I couldn't refuse," as he said last week. All for a company that netted -$235,000 last night.

WWE stock! The smartest buy you can make!

Out of the groove

A couple days ago, we brought you a list of what we considered the best wrestling themes in existence.  However, with every up, there's a down, and where wrestling themes are concerned, there are LOTS of downs.  In the effort to be balanced, we're bringing you today the Bottom 8 theme songs.

The rules for consideration are the same - it has to be a song written to be an entrance theme.  It also has to be a song, which means Diesel's theme is out, because it pretty much is an entrance sound effect.  Right to Censor is out as well (looks like the Laugh Twins are the ones with the right to censor now!)

They also will be WWF/E themes, which narrows down the pool and makes it easier for us, but does preclude things like this gem.  We encourage you to listen to that, because your life will never be the same...it will be worse.

So, cue the pathetic drum roll, because here's your Bottom 8 theme songs of all time (as chosen by us!)

8. Chris Jericho - "Don't You Wish You Were Me?"

You may think this is breaking the first rule, because technically this was on the Fozzy album first, but since we made the list, this one is getting in.  It's Jericho's band, so we think we have a pass on this one.  The song itself is forgettable, but what really made this terrible is that he chose this over his truly great theme (which made #6 on our first list).  Also, anytime your theme song is altered to sell YJ Stinger, it's got serious stink on it.

7. X-Pac

"Quick, tell me something about X-Pac!"

"Uh, he was in D-X, right?"

Banking off his one recognizable plus, the original (and pretty kick-ass) Degeneration X theme was remixed for one Sean Waltman.  It was slowed down, a poor rap placed over the beat, and preceded with the command to "make some noise," which no one in the crowd heeded.  If there's one way to get someone to dislike you, it's to remind them of cool things you used to do.

6. Billy Gunn - "Ass Man"

Allow us to give you the first two lyrics of this song (aside from recognizing the fact that Billy Gunn is, in fact, an ass man)

I love to love 'em, I love to kick 'em, I love to shove 'em, I love to stick 'em

Love to flaunt 'em, I love to watch 'em, I love to pick 'em, and I'm gonna kick 'em

We should remind you that he's talking about ass here.  Just in case you missed it, he'll tell you twice that he's going to kick ass, but not before he also makes it clear he will stick and pick ass as well.  And later on he tells us the best is when you "sneak up from behind."  Billy and Chuck make a whole lot more sense now.

5. Gregory Helms

A problem some wrestlers have is a generic theme.  It's not necessarily bad; it just doesn't stand out in anyway from some other jobber on the roster.  Mr. Helms had that problem, because his theme wasn't all that bad, it was just "meh."  So to solve this (and ensure a huge pop), his theme was modified so you'd no for sure you were about to witness the genius of Gregory Helms.  How did they accomplish this?  By having him say "Gregory Helms!" at the beginning.  Good plan.

4. McMahon's Million Dollar Mania

Alright, so this wasn't actually a wrestler, but this concept was so ridiculous it had to make it in.  Right before he was crushed by the Raw set, Mr. McMahon spent a couple weeks giving away cash on the air.  Rather than simply come out to his own theme (which made it onto the other list as well at #5), McMahon thought he should start the segment out with a special theme for "da monaaay" itself.  Whichever Mozart came up with Gregory Helms's theme got some extra work that day, and some singer was paid to come and repeat the word "money" into a mic fifty times.

3. Any Diva theme

We're highlighting Torrie's theme here, but this applies to pretty much every Diva other than perhaps Lita.  The diva's theme serves one purpose - background noise while we oogle at her Titantron video or her prance down the ramp.  But they all share some common messages: this girl is hot; she likes to have fun; she might possibly want to do something nasty with you; and everyone likes to look at her.

2. The Mountie

This just sounds like a cartoon theme.  How this was ever supposed to create excitement for the Mountie is beyond us, because all this makes us want is some Fruity Pebbles.  In case you were curious, he's handsome, and brave, and strong.  Well, buddy, if your theme song has to inform us of that, it's probably nowhere near the truth.

1. Rob Conway

Immediately when we thought of this list, we knew what would occupy the number one spot.  Catapulting itself into the "so bad, it's good' territory, Conway's theme when he broke off from La Resistance is a classic case of missing the mark.  Rob Conway himself has said he hated it.  With it's ragtime-ish piano and absolutely ridiculous lyrics and vocals, Conway let the audience know that it was time to cast their gaze upon his wonderment, because he's been around the world and been with many, many girls.  The sad thing is, this theme is main reason both of the Laugh Twins are probably the biggest Con-fans you'll ever meet.