Colette Arrand May 1, 2022. 5 minute read
Eleven Years Ago Today, John Cena Announced the Death of Osama bin Laden
May 1, 2011 was a day like any other in WWE history, a pay-per-view in Tampa Bay, Florida whose content, unless you’re a true weirdo, I can’t imagine you’d remember. Highlights from Extreme Rules 2011 include Randy Orton defeating CM Punk in a Last Man Standing Match, Jack Swagger and…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Apr 29, 2022. 5 minute read
Malcolm Bivens and Dakota Kai’s Releases Show How NXT 2.0 Has Changed
Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp reported earlier today that Malcolm Bivens and Dakota Kai have been released from WWE. Both having been fixtures of NXT 2.0 (and NXT beforehand, as far as Kai is concerned), the releases are reverberating through the wrestling community as something of a dull shock — it’s…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Apr 22, 2022. 5 minute read
Casual Wrestling Fans Are the Myth We Can’t Stop Talking About
On Wednesday, All Elite Wrestling announced a collaborative supershow with New Japan Pro Wrestling, Forbidden Door. Immediately, this poured gasoline on one of this era of wrestling’s favorite topics, whether or not AEW is alienating the Casual Wrestling Fan. Why? When I watch wrestling, I don’t concern myself with what…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Apr 21, 2022. 3 minute read
The $100 Vince McMahon T-Shirt: A Review
WWE is selling a $100 Vince McMahon shirt. That’s, uh, bad. But it’s also pretty funny because people will buy it, dazzled by the premium price, which will somehow create the illusion of scarcity that drives collectables buyers despite the fact that this is a direct to garment t-shirt and…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Apr 20, 2022. Less than a minute
Will AEW/NJPW Forbidden Door Be Any Good?
Yea, probably. More Professional Wrestling Why Do People Hate it When Tony Khan Makes a Huge Announcement? Jon Moxley and Wheeler YUTA Reveled in the Ecstasy of Combat Minoru Suzuki vs. Samoa Joe Was a Dream Match Stuck In the Real World In a Tale of Two Dream Matches, FTR…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Apr 20, 2022. 6 minute read
Why Do People Hate it When Tony Khan Makes a Huge Announcement?
They are the seven sweetest words in professional wrestling: “Tony Khan will make a huge announcement.” Every time AEW posts a match graphic about Tony Khan and his huge announcements, Twitter goes buckwild, as if the very soul of professional wrestling is at stake. Tony Khan will be making a huge…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Apr 18, 2022. 5 minute read
Minoru Suzuki vs. Samoa Joe Was a Dream Match Stuck In the Real World
Minoru Suzuki and Samoa Joe wrestled for the Ring of Honor Television Championship in the main event of Dynamite last week. It was fine. When I say “it was fine,” I don’t mean it dismissively. Both Joe and Suzuki are presence guys at this point, and that meant that the…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Apr 14, 2022. Less than a minute
Is Bret “Hitman” Hart Better Than “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels?
Yea, in a fuckin’ wash. More Professional Wrestling The Kliq’s Legacy Is Their Bond, Not Their Backstage Politics Pro Wrestling Tees’ Powerbomb Pizza Made Me Like Wrestling a Little Less Reexamining Shawn Michaels Losing His Smile 25 Years Later Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows Transcends the Genre It Pioneered
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Apr 7, 2022. 3 minute read
Logan Paul’s $5,275,000 Pokémon Card: A Review
I barely know who Logan Paul is. I will admit to watching a couple of boxing matches hoping to see him or his brother get knocked out by reputation alone, only to find myself disappointed in the ability of people who are good with their fists to deliver the kind…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Apr 1, 2022. 3 minute read
The Undertaker’s WWE Hall of Fame Statue: A Review
Today, Mark Calaway, better known as The Undertaker, rode his motorcycle a short distance from the entryway to the ring at WrestleMania Axxess, a WWE experience that’s something of a hybrid of a mall and a conference center if both only had one occupant, and gazed upon a bronze statue…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Mar 23, 2022. Less than a minute
Is AEW Better Than WWE?
Yes. More Professional Wrestling How Tony Schiavone’s AEW Comeback Saved His Reputation Did THAT MJF Promo Make You Uncomfortable? Good. It Was Supposed To. In Failure, Eddie Kingston Is the Wrestler of the Year Join Us: Every AEW Faction Ranked On Eddie Kingston, CM Punk, and Whether People Can Really…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Mar 18, 2022. 13 minute read
Scott Hall, Wrestling’s Bad Guy, Was Eternally Cool
Scott Hall died on Monday, March 14, of after an attempted hip replacement surgery loosed a blood clot which caused three heart attacks two days earlier. He was 63 years old. I have been struggling for two days to think of something to say about his passing, but it’s difficult.…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Mar 4, 2022. 6 minute read
What Is a WWE Superstar? A Theory.
Yesterday, Vince McMahon did an interview on The Pat McAfee Show, hosted, as you might guess, by former NFL punter turned podcaster and WWE SmackDown color commentator Pat McAfee. While it probably would have been a good idea to—interviews with McMahon have tended to be rare, and are increasingly so…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Jan 31, 2022. 8 minute read
Tony Schiavone Receives a Telegram (1997 Week 4)
Two weeks ago, I wrote a little about “meaningless wrestling,” specifically how to pry something from a match whose worth to the larger context of professional wrestling’s rich history is the labor performed by the men and women who won it. This week, the thing I am most excited about…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Jan 24, 2022. 9 minute read
Dawn of the Sad Rafter Clown (1997 Week 3)
I watched a frankly modern amount of wrestling this week. Raw was an hour. ECW was an hour. WCW, damn them, ran a Nitro, a Clash of the Champions, and nWo Souled Out, a whopping six and a half hours of content strung along, like most WCW programming, on the…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Jan 16, 2022. 10 minute read
Steve Austin “Wins” the Royal Rumble (1997 Week 2)
About a quarter of the way through an interminable tag team match pitting Goldust and Marc Mero against Hunter Hearst Helmsley and Jerry “The King” Lawler, I paused the episode of Raw and said “This is going to be hard” to myself. Not watching wrestling; watching wrestling is easy, even…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Jan 9, 2022. 8 minute read
The Greatest Year in the History of Our Sport (1997 Week 1)
I was nine years old when wrestling was cool. The thing is, I didn’t know it was cool back then; it was just wrestling, just something I watched. Now that I’m older, I still don’t know if it was cool. It was popular, but it was approached less like Nirvana…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Jan 6, 2022. 5 minute read
Jade Cargill’s TBS Championship Victory Was Her Best Match Yet
Jade Cargill is the first TBS Champion. Despite the moment created with her family, I found myself deflated when the bell rang, a second rope Jaded felling Ruby Soho. Jade being a heel, I’m supposed to be deflated when she wins a major match like this, but that deflation wasn’t…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Jan 4, 2022. 4 minute read
Obviously, Katsuyori Shibata’s Return to Pro Wrestling Ruled
In 2019, I declared Katsuyori Shibata a wrestler of the decade. The last six words of that essay were “I hope he never wrestles again.” I both do and don’t stand by that hope. I do because there’s a heightened awareness of wrestling’s inherent danger when someone like Shibata or…
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WRESTLING
Colette Arrand Dec 29, 2021. 9 minute read
In Failure, Eddie Kingston Is the Wrestler of the Year
I have abandoned a half dozen attempts at writing about Eddie Kingston. In theory, I gave myself an easy assignment. Eddie Kingston was the best wrestler of 2021. He was the best in the ring. He was the best on the microphone. I know those things are true, but I’m…
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WRESTLING