My friend Christian just tweeted this completely hilarious chart that explains Dungeons & Dragons alignments in terms of characters from The Muppet Show. It’s awesome! Of course I want to know which Muppet alignment you identify with. I think I’ll go with Fozzie’s neutral good. Et vous?
Michael Cole was set to have JBL as his special guest referee at WrestleMania XXVII…but “Stone Cold” Steve Austin had other plans. As JBL was about to sign his referee contract, Austin hit the ring, landed a stunner on JBL, spilled beer all over the place, signed the contract, landed another stunner, and spilled some more beer.
I love how WWE contracts work. I remember when Chris Benoit was about to sign a WrestleMania title match against Triple H. Shawn Michaels hit the ring, gave Benoit a superkick, and signed the contract to face Hunter. It’s a plot device that has been used over and over again. It makes absolutely no sense, but people buy it. It’s awesome and I love it.
Now let me get back to my master plan of crashing Albert Pujol’s next contract signing. I’m going to lay him out with a baseball bat and sign a multi-year contract that’s worth more than $100-million. It’ll be legit by WWE logic.
At a press conference in Mexico City, WWE announced that former CMLL star Mistico will perform for the company as Sin Cara. For those of you not familiar with Mistico, he’s been the lead face in CMLL for the last six years and one of the biggest draws (of any kind) in all of Mexico.
Time will tell if Sin Cara can make the transition from luch libre to the WWE television style, but the signing will surely nab viewers in Mexico and other countries where CMLL is popular. The WWE has been aggressively pursuing viewers in Central America and Latin America for the last few years. Signing the biggest face in CMLL will go a long way in those markets.
Check out the clip of Mistico embedded above and let me know what you think (please). I absolutely love his tilt-a-whirl head-scissors take-down that transitions into an arm-bar submission. It’s a nice, modern twist on a classic move.
Here’s a video of The Undertaker’s (expected) return, as well as Triple H’s (surprise) return. It looks like they’ll be facing off at WretleMania XXVII. As I mentioned to RPadholic RROD, Taker’s pop wasn’t huge because most people knew it was him featured in the teaser videos for 2/21/11. Hunter got a bigger pop since that surprised most fans. In addition to the Triple H surprise, I love how the two of them told a story without words.
‘Taker will be trying to extend his WrestleMania undefeated streak. Hunter can be the face by trying at avenge Shawn Michaels’ loss to The Undertaker at last year’s WrestleMania. He could also go heel and try to prove he’s better than Shawn — while pissing on HBK’s hall of fame induction on WrestleMania weekend — by ending The Undertaker’s streak. Either way, I see The Undertaker adding another notch.
Please let me know what you think of the setup and share your prediction for the angle/match.
The rumors were true! Amazon has kicked off unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows for its Amazon Prime customers. In addition to free two-day shipping and $3.99 next-day shipping on goods shipped and sold by Amazon, Prime customers now have access to “5,000 movies and TV programs”.
I strongly encourage you to consider Amazon Prime. I’ve been a customer since launch and love the service. You get great shipping rates and a decent library of videos to stream…and any purchases you make through this site help keep it going a bit longer. Honestly and selfishly, I think it’s a great value at $79. Plus, it’s cool to get free two-day shipping on really heavy items.
During Chris Jericho’s promotional tour for his book Undisputed How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps, he told numerous reporters that he considers Shawn Michaels the best wrestler of all time. Let’s have some fun with today’s poll and debate the point. While I’m a huge HBK mark, I don’t consider him the greatest of all time. That designation goes to…
…”The Nature Boy” Ric Flair. It’s a close argument and I can see both sides. Michaels had a greater aerial arsenal than Flair, but Ric was better at mat wrestling. Both were capable of carrying scrubs to great matches. There are two things that put Flair ahead of Michaels in my book. First, Flair was extremely effective as a heel and a face. Michaels was much better at being a face than a heel. Flair is one of the greatest talkers of all time. While Michaels cut some great promos, I don’t think he’s in the same league as Flair on the mic.
Not it’s your turn! Kindly vote and discuss when you have a moment.
[poll id=”102″]
With THQ set to release a Voltron videogame, it seems like every beloved cartoon from the ’80s has made its way to the realm of interactive entertainment. Are there any ’80s cartoons that you adored that haven’t made their way to a videogame console?
Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, Joba Chamberlain becoming Joba the Hutt, if Nokia is destined to be just another handset maker, or if this is Albert Pujols last year as a Cardinal, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.
With THQ set to release a Voltron videogame, it seems like every beloved cartoon from the ’80s has made its way to the realm of interactive entertainment. Are there any ’80s cartoons that you adored that haven’t made their way to a videogame console? Perhaps there’s an ’80s franchise that has mostly sucked in gaming and you’d love to see it get one more chance.
As for me, I’d love for Robotech to get another shot — specifically The New Generation. I was absolutely mesmerized by the third Robotech war as a kid and think it would make a brilliant game. I see the diverse action of the cartoon recreated in a diverse game; there would be third-person shooter action with guns, motorcyle levels with cyclones, and aerial missions with veritechs. A combination of awesome vehicles, diverse action, and Ulpio Minucci’s brilliant soundtrack would be a dream come true for me.
Now it’s your turn. What’s your ’80s cartoon dream game like?
Here’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s fantastic promo from last night’s episode of Monday Night Raw. It’s just brilliant stuff on multiple levels. He’s simply amazing on the mic, but it’s cool to see that he’s genuinely having fun and truly touched by the amazing crowd response. (When was the last time you heard a crowd pop like that, btw?)
Now for the downer — some of the best parts of the promo have been edited out. That’s like abridging Shakespeare. Why?!?
On last night’s episode of Monday Night Raw, the WWE announced that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will be the special host of WrestleMania XXVII. The Rock cut a brilliant promo — one of the best face promos in years — calling out WWE Superstars The Miz and John Cena. Several people have come to the conclusion that The Miz will successfully defend his title and John Cena will win the right to face him on Sunday’s Elimination Chamber pay-per-view event. This would lead to a WWE Championship match between the two at WrestleMania XXVII.
The Miz facing off with The Rock is a natural. Love him or hate him — and I still think it’s hilarious that some of you think he’s “unworthy” — there’s no denying that The Miz has been one of the best heels on the microphone over the last few years. His future exchanges with The Rock will be memorable.
Cena and The Rock is, perhaps, more interesting. Cena has been critical of The Rock for “abandoning” the WWE for Hollywood. Mixing in some reality into “sports entertainment” has always led to some of the best angles in the WWE. I’m terribly interested to see how far they go with it. Last night The Rock ripped into Cena’s merchandise and silly catchphrase. One easy and obvious comeback would be The Tooth Fairy.
Although The Rock will only be a WWE regular for a short period of time, his presence has already invigorated the WWE. It’s been years since I’ve seen a face totally capture a crowd the way he did last night. It was an excellent reminder of how extraordinary he was — and still is! — on the microphone. If you didn’t mark out then you don’t really like pro-wrestling.
One of the most fascinating destinations for Conan O’Brien was the Xbox 360. How crazy would it have been if Conan skipped cable television for a direct-to-console show on Xbox Live? Conan executive producer Jeff Ross recently shared some details of the Microsoft negotiations with Gamasutra:
The Xbox thing — a lot of the conversations were ‘well, it’s a show, but it’s not a show and there are no breaks, but maybe there are breaks and it’s not 60 minutes, it’s this’ and nobody really knew what it was.
So it was really going to be a leap of faith to jump in with these guys and figure something out which we didn’t know. Plus there were 100 people who were out of jobs and that didn’t bode well for that.
It was interesting to sit and look at it and say, ‘it would be great to be involved in this,’ but at the end of the day, we had some eventual television offers and we basically shied away from the other.
Although it would have been nice if Microsoft launched an original show with O’Brien, I’m still hoping that the company’s rumored plans for television pan out. It still seems odd that Microsoft could be the one that ends up freeing America from the shackles of cable television and bring a la carte TV to the country. In my head Conan O’Brien would have been the perfect symbol of entertainment liberation…especially since Comcast-NBC is one of the primary oppressors. Ha!
