RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Thursday, April 10

12-Pack Review: ROH 02/23/02

BEER ONE: It is the opening Sunday of football season, but I am bored and need an excuse to drink beer and watch the wrestling, so here I am. On paper, it would not look good for Ring of Honor. It was hot today, so we shut the doors and had the machines that condition the air on, and I was watching football, so I sat there looking at the television for like five hours, which is more than I usually watch in a week, or transmitted TV rays, as opposed to videotaped rays. It is easier to turn your head from a tape playing, the brain-sucking rays are not being emitted. That’s why you flip endlessly on TV without finding anything good, then you say some shit like, “Man, we’ve got 100 channels and nothing fuckin’ good to watch,” and you flip for another hour, or settle for Press Your Luck reruns or Trading Spaces so you can hate that cocky fucker who turns people’s rooms into Pullman cars or some shit. Same thing at malls, they transmit those rays, so you just wander, even though you don’t really like it, you just wander, and think, “Man, we’ve got 100 stores, and there’s nothing fuckin’ worth buying,” but you keep walking and looking, and settling on a pair of clearance painters jeans from Old Navy because you saved ten dollars by spending twenty. So my brain is tweaked by TV and AC, and my bones are brittle and aching from the conditioned air as well. I live in the country and have no need to have my doors shut unless it’s cold outside. When I do, there’s no neighbors to hide from, so I’m just shutting my doors to the fields. This leaves me feeling weird and boxed in. With the anniversary of September 11 coming up, I hope you’ll take time to think how fuckin’ unfree you are, living in your shitty square house driving in that shitty car to your shitty job all the fuckin’ time. Take the day off, sick, and go get drunk at the river, or go play putt-putt, or go to the local gay park and let a gay guy suck your dick for twenty bucks (they pay you; that’s the greatest deal ever; and every town has a gay park). That brings me to the second thing going against Ring of Honor – Rob Feinstein. In an industry chock full of annoying assholes, he’s above and beyond the call of duty. The thing is, he’s the New Breed of Asshole, hip to internet message boards and tape trading and puro-influenced booking and all that shit. He has often been accused of being gay, and I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I do know this much – he plays a terrible stereotypical fairy gay with terrible stupid homophobic angles. So if he is gay, gay bikers should stab Rob Feinstein, for doing more to hurt gay people, at least in the little subculture he’s immersed in, than a thousand fagbashers could do. Only recently have I understood why gay people would want closeted gays to come out, and it’s to combat the negative effects these buffoonish “homo” characters like Rob Feinstein portrays bring about. There’s nothing wrong with being gay, except you don’t get to fuck pussy, unless you’re a gay girl, then you don’t get to get dicked by me. But to each his or her own, as long as you don’t bring the heat down on your compadres in whatever. As a teenage stoner, it was instilled in me, by my adult stoner dad and my teenage stoner friends, that you never snitch if caught, as it brings heat on somebody other than yourself. Feinstein’s antics cause people who have never met him to yell “Fag!” and “Cocksucker!” and post terrible homophobic things, and all just to get himself over in front of a small group people that will never amount to anything. Fuck Feinstein, fuck him and his northern con-man tape selling activities, which reinforces my hatred of all things yankee, and fuck his goofy fag character, which reinforces my hatred of people pretending to be gay in wrestling. There are many quality wrestlers out there who are bonafide gay, and they should come out and make it so people don’t have to hate the gays so goddamn much. I don’t think if Vader came out the closet, anybody would chant “You suck dick!” Anyways, wrestling. I’ve heard Ring of Honor is the shit, and I’ve never watched it before. I’ve also heard CZW is the shit, which I know to not be true, so time will tell. I know from spending too much time on the computer that ROH is chock full of all the little dudes that the dorks are gaga over nowadays. It’s a weird paradox with me in the last ten years. I used to hate how you had to be a steroids-laden monster to get over, as in the WWF’s heyday where if you weren’t six feet tall you couldn’t get a contract. It seemed stupid, and made everybody very slow and stupid in the ring. Now, all the indies are crazy over the lightweights, which is great to an extent, but where’s the balance. If all you have is little dudes doing little dude shit all night long, there’s nothing to cleanse the palate. Seems to me the proper wrestling company would have a mix of big guys, little guys, flyers and technicians and rednecks and black guys and the whole deal. A healthy mix of styles encourages a healthy mix of fans, and a healthy mix of fans encourages a wide array of asses in the fuckin’ metal chairs. Da Hit Squad is talking dumb stuff and going on a tour bus of wrestling fans to cut a promo. If you ever see me on a bus tour to an indy wrestling event, let me tell you, if you stab me seventy-three times in the back of the head with a flathead screwdriver, I will not press charges; I will deserve it. Tour buses do have the nicest carpet designs on the ceiling though. I do like Da Hit Squad talking into the bus driver’s CB thing to cut a promo. I also like Da Hit Squad yelling “Stand the fuck up!” at all the scrawny white guys on the bus to make them chant “Hit Squad! Hit Squad!” Mafia is a great hype man.

BEER TWO: Now Da Hit Squad is over to meet the dorks from Boston, a healthy mix of wannabe gangsta white kids, a couple black dudes, and one old white guy who is probably somebody’s uncle or dad. Mafia is the greatest hype man ever. When I get rich, and that’s when motherfucker, not if, I’m gonna hire Mafia and Monsta Mack to stop wrestling and just travel with me to hype people about me beign there. Oh fuckin’ fuck, the Christopher Street Connection, in full-on Feinstein terrible gay gimmick, a wrestling Men on Film skit. I also like the chain link ring barrier for this, giving it a sweet touch of old school, since cages used to be like that. Allison Danger does what a wrestling valet should do, wear a tiger-print skirt and make you wanna fuck her, even though she’s not a good girl. “I may be gay, but you’re queer,” to the crowd. Wow, these guys are frenching in neon boas; now that’s selling the angle. Da Hit Squad storms in, and drops dudes on their heads. Mafia and Monster Mack are good enough, and had ECW continued to exist, I could see them succeeding as the eighth and ninth members of Da Baldies. Da Hit Squad goes over in a squash, and is no free to hit a Chinese buffet. Wait, now, as is law by Philadelphia indies, they have the Allison Danger chick and will kill her. What is it about Philly and violence against women? One time, my wife and I went to an ECW show, and she made a sign that said “A WOMAN GAVE BIRTH TO YOU”, and every time a guy beat on a chick, my wife would hold her sign up. I love that woman of mine. The chick gets powerbombed through a table and is wearing a very un-slut valet-like leotard underneath her tiger-print skirt. Fuck Allison Danger, at least show your ass whore. It’s all about honor, over and over, it’s all about honor. I’ve heard that like seven thousand times already. I think I am being programmed. Man, the Briscoes and Red cutting promos in front of lockers makes me think pro-style wrestling became a high school competition thing like debate, with judges to tell you who does better. They all are so bird-chested and young and riding four deep in an Escort to go rent porn movies to watch with the pizza money Red’s mom left while she is out of town for the weekend. I like how Jay Briscoe has grown a goatee to differentiate himself from his brother, and from every other 17 year old wrestler in the tri-state area. If wrestling had any class, like lucha libre does, the Briscoes would drop the e from their name, and pretend that Jack Brisco was their father. If you could make all the red and black trunks disappear from tape for the last ten years, there’d be a shitload of naked fuckers wrestling, from WCW through ECW all the way to indy today. The red, white, and black is very common, which is okay, because it’s the three colors that represent heaven, earth, and some other thing in Hindu thought. I don’t care about the third thing, just heaven and earth. YIKES! My first beer slam causing maneuver, as Briscoe has Red up with his leg hooked and drops straight down into some sort of neckbreaker fisherman’s suplex combo.

BEER THREE: I also commend the fact Jay Briscoe doesn’t shave his underarm. Why the fuck do wrestlers do that? I cannot tell you how much it fuckin’ creeps me out to think about a drunk Dick Murdoch in his home bathroom, shaving his fuckin’ underarms before flying off to Japan. Fuck! Briscoe just broke Red. Red throws his leg on the bottom rope, playing the unpinnable pin cushion of pain. Briscoe has hit two terribly ugly looking maneuvers, not aesthetically, but realistically ugly. I hope they don’t go for more. Actually fuck that, paralyze the Amazing Red. I mean, that’s what we’re here for, bloodsport, and potential maimings. I’d probably have more in common with a shaved head white kid from Delaware than from a miniature Puerto Rican from NYC. Briscoe misses that move that Dick Togo always does, whatever it’s called, and Red hulks up for a twisting senton somersault legdrop flippitydoo for the win. Low-Ki kills me by trying to be so fuckin’ hard. He’s a fuckin’ tiny dude. Ahh, Homicide and Boogalou are dropping the “this is where I’m from” promo in a vacant lot in the middle of the ghetto, talking about selling drugs and eating chicken. I would love this promo so much better if Schoolly D was playing in the background. I love gutter ghetto wrestlers. They’re ultimate moment was when New Jack threatened to pawn the Smoky Mountain tag belts. Scoot Andrews is cutting a promo, and he talks like the type of black guy who has a lot of Dave Matthews Band CDs. It’s time for Xavier and Scoot Andrews. I really want to love Scoot Andrews, because he’s the Black Nature Boy, and just being called something like that makes me like you. But goddamn, his voice I just heard. There’s nothing worse than a black guy who likes the Dave Matthews Band and I can’t shake that thought from my head.

BEER FOUR: I just realized that’s Steve Corino on color, which is great. Perfect use of that fucker. Xavier punches the fuck out of Scoot, causing Scoot’s hair to go up and make him look like Buckwheat’s balding cousin with a regular job he has to keep his hair trimmed for. Hey, I dug Xavier going for the bulldog, and Scoot just twists into a hard clothesline. That was original, and I drink to that. Xavier takes a Force of Nature on his brain, but his foot is under the bottom rope, so the ref, John Finnegan, who is bigger than every wrestler on the card, stops the count at two. I’ll be honest here, I have only seen a few Xavier matches, but his matches always keep my attention. He is an underrated lightweight fuck, as folks don’t push him in their self-congratulatory smart opinions like Ki and that Christian shithead A.J. Styles. Xavier wins, and well he should. Scoot looks perfectly pissed off. I’m glad Scoot didn’t shake hands afterwards, you can’t do that shit every match of the night. Oh fuck, he comes back in the ring and shakes hands and raises Xavier’s arm, because “it’s all about honor.” The Boogie Knights are out, and their opponents are Homicide and Boogalou, the Natural Born Sinners, who are wearing a Jason mask and a the other carrying a chainsaw. If I had ten bucks for every indy match I’ve seen with a tag team doing a Jason and Freddy Krueger take-off, I wouldn’t have to pawn my DVD player tomorrow to pay the light bill. Man, that rocked, Boogalou did the suplex thing where he held onto it and rolled to the edge with one of the other guys, then Homicide came off the top with the Mack-favorite, the double boot stomp to the gullet.

BEER FIVE: I finally heard the name of one of the white guys, Danny Drake. “Homicide is self-trained; trained a little bit with The Raging Bull Manny Fernandez…” I have never heard a better commentary about a wrestler. Homicide is my new favorite wrestler; plus he’s beating people with a rubber chicken. He should use a real chicken, and call it the Natural Born Sinna Salmonella. Trust me, there’s been stupider shit in wrestling. They were dq’ed for using the rubber chicken, by H.C. Loc, who I expect will get fucked up now. Homicide cuts H.C. Loc the dumb ref the hard way, then picks him up to drop him on his brain. I hope that RF didn’t pay H.C. in videos. You know, for a fucked-up gay gimmick, The Christopher Street Connection is entertaining enough. Maybe they should do a Piper’s Pit thing. Mikey Whipwreck is your special referee and he’s wearing a flame Hawaiian print shirt over his white and black striped deal. Well well well, you’ve got Brian XL, Chris Devine, Quiet Storm, Jose Maximo, Joel Maximo, and Red, in a Big Fat Six-Way Aerial Chicanery Ciudado D’eliminado Death Match. Mikey has the best special ref outfit ever, and he trained all these fuckers except Brian XL. I imagine this will be much better than Boogie’s Wrestling Camp’s graduation card. Corino brings the insider nonsense, and says whoever wins gets to pick what radio station they listen to since they all ride the roads together. I like the Maximos better when they are dressed like Super Crazy. All these guys should go to Mexico; Virus needs partners. This rocks so much, pure nor’easter lucha. I wish all S.A.T. matches were this way. Red hits the crowd-pleasing sixth move to the outside; the main event move. Brian XL fuckin’ rips it. Red and XL are the first two back in the ring, and somehow I think they’ll be the last two left. These guys could go to Mexico and put their insane triple team moves into the mindset of lucha; they just need beer guts to fit in down there. Even fuckin’ swank ass dudes like Rey Bucanero have the weird Mexican wrestler beer gut. They are dropping shit in there I can’t even try to explain to you, but I do wish Satanico was there to smack the fuck out of them as well.

BEER SIX: Jose pins Red, and I’m sure we’ll see like three more pins real quick to narrow it to two dudes. Yes, Devine pins Brian XL, so the two I thought would be there at the end are gone first. Devine got clocked with the Spanish Fly and got pinned, but Quiet Storm snuck in with a German suplex to pin Jose Maximo simultaneously. Joel Maximo and Quiet Storm are left to try and impress Mikey Whipwreck. The only submission move a lot of guys do is the fujiwara armbar; give it up. Learn another weird submission move. Hell, you don’t have to watch foreign shit, watch Arn Anderson or some shit. Goddamn, wrestling pisses me off sometimes. I took a break there to make a fried egg sandwich. Where I’m from, a fried egg sandwich has to have mayonnaise on it; and a fried egg sandwich is part of this complete breakfast. Part of the weird influence wrestling has had on my life, is instead of cracking an egg on the edge of the pan, I take two out and smash them against each other. One breaks, the other doesn’t. The non-breaking egg gets the first position in the dozen, and gets to defend his smashing title against the next egg next time. The best one ever went like a month and a half, and when it finally broke and I fried it and ate it, it sucked. Quiet Storm won. Now we have the ultimate shitty match with Prince Nana vs. The Towelboy. Nana is a guilty pleasure, but Towelboy wiping the ropes before his match, that sucks. Prince Nana wins in a squash, and is way cooler than Scoot Andrews. Nana shakes the lifeless hand of the Towelboy. Next up is the Shawn Michaels school tag match, with Michael Shane and Oz vs. Spanky and Ikaika Loa. Spanky and Shane are proof positive that the Heartbreak Kid has taught his stupid homoerotic dance moves as well. This is my first viewing of Spanky, and I dig his stupidity. Now we finally get the tag to make Spanky and Shane in the ring together, two longhaired confident talented wrestlers. Young and good-looking, and kicking the homoerotica.

BEER SEVEN: “Memphis, Tennessee, will make a man out of the smallest boy,” says Steve Corino. I will drink to that cryptic comment, considering Michael Jackson had a kid with Lisa Marie Presley. The winner of this match, the guy that gets the pinfall, gets a Ring of Honor contract, which comes with a few Buff Bagwell t-shirts, some firefighter porn, and old fairy wings autographed by Feinstein. I hate a fuckin’ double clothesline. The announcers are so pumping up Michael Shane and Spanky, that I could care less about the Hawaiian and Oz. Spanky takes a great backdrop off of Oz; and there’s something to be said for a heel who can take a great backdrop. It makes the crowd happy, much more than Stone Cold license plates or puro videotapes for sale in the lobby. Spanky wins, and though he’s a wonderfully overconfident flamboyant heel, he’s fuckin’ small. Why can’t there be a fuckin’ wrestler bigger than me in this world of indy wealth? Spanky and Shane make me think Shawn Michaels found students at gay parks, like I was mentioning earlier. And I really don’t let gay dudes suck my dick for twenty bucks, not during the regular year. That, plus giving plasma does make the Christmas tree a little brighter, though. H.C. Loc is talking to somebody who doesn’t exist on a cell phone that ain’t activated. Hey, your next match is for the IWA (Puerto Rico) Intercontinental title. It’s between Super Crazy and Eddie Guerrero, and the winner will get a convertible and backrubs from a rich Puerto Rican guy named Victor. The thing that makes Eddie Guerrero great is he’s just as much a cocksucker heel in a gym in Philly as he is on a pay-per-view for WWE. His mannerisms alone make him heated. Goddamn, if Art Barr hadn’t have died and he and Eddie were still together, they would be so fuckin’ sick I’d have to beat up wrestling nerds who didn’t think they were the greatest. Super Crazy is great, but goddamn, Eddie he ain’t. As the camera scans the crowd who chants something or other after an Eddie pin attempt, I notice they have ROH banners over two of the three visible basketball goals. That’s weak. Get a third banner, motherfucker. Two brainbusters, spit at the crowd, and tease the frogsplash but do a dive. Crazy moves, kicks, rolls up, and schoolboys his way into blowjobs from Victor Quinones, as long as Ricky Banderas doesn’t get too pissed. Low-Ki talks like a fuckin’ mongoloid. American Dragon hits the ring first; Low-Goloid second; and the great evil Fallen Angle third. Three is the lucky number, motherfuckers, plus he has metal riffs in his entrance music, plus a dark hood.

BEER EIGHT: Daniels, as I start paying attention, brings the boston crab/camel clutch combo, putting the imagined hurt on both opponents at once. Low-Ki’s stiff kicks are great, so is his ape-like jaw pout he does, I hope he gets stabbed with the same flathead screwdriver I do on that tour bus. So Dragon has Daniels in some shit, and Low-Goloid starts kicking on Dragon, but AD still has Daniels in a Scorpion-like hold, then finally AD catches Low-Goloid in a suplex, still with the hold on Daniels, and it was sick. I do dig how the announcers are pushing the overall booking of the show, though I could do without anybody else telling me it’s about honor. Low-Goloid and AD are going through a “who kicks harder” thing, then they both take turns on Daniels to prove who’s the better Grammatica. Wow, Daniels ducks from like the third double sided kick by the other two, and they kick each other in the shins, hard. I hate Low-Goloid, but this is probably one of the best three-way matches I’ve ever watched. So great, so great; Daniels’ crab on Low-Goloid is great on multiple reasons. I’m not one to love the indy fanboy favorites like many, but there’s so much about Christopher Daniels’ delivery to even the simplest of moves that makes him worthy of the fanboy love. Daniels hits an abdominal stretch on the top rope on AD, only to be broken up by some shit by Low-Goloid, another great trading series. Wow, Daniels broke Low-Goloid’s jaw with a tight uppercut. They do a big double suplex angle thing off the top rope, and the white people in the crowd chant “HOLY SHIT” because they’ve been trained to do so in their internet lives. Low does a “dragon clutch” which I’ve never seen before that I can remember; that’s a great move. Usually, I hate triple threat matches and would always prove a three-way, but mostly because most triple threat matches lack the proper attention to the triple threat stip. This match is fuckin’ great, and all the pin attempt break-ups make sense, and the match makes sense, and there’s multiple subplots going on. Daniels clocks a twisting phoenix splash, to be the rock star of the night, but then gets caught in a Goloid-crusher, and loses the match. Low-Goloid is your winner and your hero of the day. That beer is gone, way gone, like a crazy beautiful Greek chick with big titties you love and live with throwing your clothes out the window, way way gone.

BEER NINE: Figured I’d open another and drink on it while they talk their post-match shit and shake hands. AD talks first. HAHAHA! Great, Christopher Daniels is great. He says it took both of them to beat him, and he could beat each individually singles match style, all this echoing the announcers mentioning how Low-Goloid and AD worked together a number of times in that match. They also bring together Daniels staring at Super Crazy after Crazy’s win. Wow, usually shit that nerds says rules end sup sucking, but this didn’t. Wait, an end of tape interview with Eddie Guerrero in the basement. Eddie Guerrero is the best Mexican ever. I went ahead and finished that beer off during the highlight montage. Wrestling, if you read this, I will always love you, in one form or another (Go Virus!). RF, if you read this, I hope gay bikers stick their fist up your ass while holding a knife.

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