I met Tommy “Wildfire” Rich, my late father’s favorite wrestler, at a wrestling show in Carollton, Georgia. After a brief conversation, the topic turned - as it often understandably does with wrestlers behind a table at a show - to his merchandise. Gesturing to the stacks of DVDs in front of him, “Wildfire” explained to me that “these are all my good guy stuff and these are all my bad guy stuff.” This was a turning point in my wrestling fandom. As much as I love this great sport, I’ve never been one to pepper my conversation with “insider” terms. I don’t talk about a crowd’s “pop,” I don’t refer to wrestlers “going over” and I definitely don’t use the terms “heel” and “face.” I’ve never taken a bump. Those words are not mine. But former NWA World Heavyweight Champion Tommy Rich specifically dividing his career between “good guy stuff” and “bad guy stuff” cemented it for me. Those are the terms I will always use.
I bought both of those DVDs (and a signed 8X10 that’s so pixelated it looks like “Wildfire” was built in Minecraft), but the one I go back to most often is his “bad guy stuff” DVD. I think about “bad guy stuff” quite a bit in terms of professional wrestling, what makes a bad buy most effectively bad and what seems like a good idea in theory and kind of falls flat in practice. One of the most effective “bad guy stuff” tools in professional wrestling today is former AEW World Champion Jon Moxley’s thin gold hoop earring.

- As Bart Simpson (poet and a prophet) once said, “sparkle sparkle.”
- Mox looks like he’d fit right into the Claire’s ear piercing video sketch from Season 2 of I Think You Should Leave.
- Serves as a focal point for wrestling fans’ ire and frustration as they watch Moxley beat up on beloved legends like Satoshi Kojima and Minoru Suzuki.

- It’s not the dangly sword earring that Moxley wore for a while
- It always skeeves me out when wrestlers get in the ring with their piercings in. Those things could get caught on something.
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