Best Pro Rasslin’ Segment In ForEVER!
As many of you know, my El Somnambulo monicker comes from my fictitious lucha libre background, featuring my legendary but totally made-up feud with the dastardly Teletubbymundo.
I love pro rasslin’s zaniness, which WWE has excised from its product as Vince McMahon falls deeper into senility.
Fortunately, a new alternative, AEW (All Elite Wrestling), premiered about a year ago, and is bankrolled by Tony Khan. What distinguishes AEW is that the wrestlers play a much bigger role in developing their characters and writing their storylines. And they have some incredibly creative minds there. Plus, there’s a lot of winking going on between the talent and the audience.
Anyway, the storyline leading up to the segment I’m about to post is this. Chris Jericho plays a smarmy heel, and he is the leader of the primo heel stable in AEW, The Inner Circle. MJF (Michael Jay Friedman) plays an equally-smarmy, but much younger heel. They are the two best at their gimmicks in pro rasslin’. Anyway, MJF is trying to insinuate himself into The Inner Circle. The other members smell (their sense of smell is not misplaced) a rat looking to enter their sleeping quarters. But Jericho is intrigued. Last week, MJF, in a hilarious segment, asked Jericho to let him join. Jericho said that they’d talk about it over a steak dinner. Which leads us this week to ‘The Dinner Debonair’. Watch the whole thing, you will not be disappointed:
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Are you really into wrestling? I’m confused to be honest. I wouldn’t have pegged you as the type.
Yep. Although the WWE product has sucked for a long time now, and I stay away from it, except for NXT. But I grew up watching it, and I love the pop culture elements of it. I mean, how could ANYBODY turn their noses up at the Jerry Lawler-Andy Kaufman feud?
I watched the amazing New Japan product when it was on AXS a couple years back.
I’ve subscribed to the Wrestling Observer for well over a decade, and I look forward to Wednesdays when both AEW and NXT air. Don’t watch much of Raw or Smackdown though…
When I used to do the radio show with Al Mascitti, I always opened our show in the persona of El Somnambulo, and I did some brief pro rasslin’ talk. Yes, it was in bad taste, but that’s what I love about pro rasslin’. And the character of El Somnambulo…
My son was a wrestler in the Chikara organization for several years. His character was Hydra. He was really into rasslin’ back in the day. We went to wrestling events all over – as far north as Toronto, and as far south as Jacksonville. We even went out to Nashville for TNA events, and Smyrna for CZW (loved those Briscoe Brothers!). I think the last event we all went to together was an RoH event in South Philly.
I miss Tuesdays with the masked luchador!
I was never that much into it but when I got my license In the 90’s my uncle who was ten years older than me had ring side seats every month to ECW in south philly. I drove up every month to take the seat next to him. Not sure if you’re familiar with it but it was hard core and pretty famous for a while as far as a smaller organization goes. That was a blast. Since then not so much. But you should look it up if you’re unfamiliar. It was legit.
Totally familiar. The Bingo Hall! It was the hardcore promotion at the time. Sabu wrecked his body doing insane dives for them.
Pretty sure Paul Heyman was part of the ownership team. They went bankrupt.
Leslie/Kenny Butterscotch? Is that meta TV series viewable anywhere?
Folks, be honest, you don’t get this on any other political blog…
Yes, that Leslie Butterscotch! Thankfully, he retired from rasslin’ before he broke any major extremities! He’s now teaching middle school English in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, he got out before Chikara started producing action figures.
There’s a little bit of Chikara on line. However, there are lots of Chikara DVDs available at the merch table at their events.
Thanks for reminding me about everything that’s online!
You’re absolutely right about not getting this on any other political blog!
I umpired Little League and Senior League baseball for the Brandywine Little League for 28 years. One of the players, a catcher, became a pretty successful pro wrestler.
He was a real good kid and an excellent ballplayer. Of course, the catchers generally liked me b/c I was a ‘pitcher’s umpire’. Nothing worse than having somebody behind the plate squeezing the strike zone on Little League pitchers…
His name is Pat Kenney and his most notable pro rasslin’ name is Simon Diamond:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Diamond
He was a contemporary of mine in the local baseball scene. Interesting because the subject was the new Sallies field the other day, (from his wiki page), “In 2009, Kenney filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against a former priest at Salesianum School.[17].” In my day….Sallies was known among my peers to be that kinda of school, no joke.
Man, I hate to see that. He was a real good kid.