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Sega 32X posted:Wasn't Dino Bravo a mob enforcer? Did he get killed because he was bad at being intimidating? Dark Side of the Ring made it sound like he probably hijacked the wrong person's shipment of cigarettes.
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Sep 24, 2023 00:58
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I miss the super heavy weights. I want a big tall fat wrestler who does belly flops from the top ropes. He also cheats to win. Call him Big Bam Boozle. Needs to know how to dance.
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Sep 24, 2023 00:58
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Sega 32X posted:Wasn't Dino Bravo a mob enforcer? Did he get killed because he was bad at being intimidating? The story goes he was the nephew by marriage of a Canadian mob boss who got him involved in a cigarette smuggling ring, and it was his involvement in that which eventually led to his murder. Whether it was by a rival mob family or someone within his own organization is still unknown.
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Sep 24, 2023 01:00
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EVERYBODY LOVES THE BIG GUY: PART 3 The return of Paul Heyman to wrestling is a hell of a thing. When CM Punk was doing his pipe bomb promo back in 2011 and made a big stink about how he was leaving the company, he brought up how he was a “Paul Heyman Guy” much like Brock Lesnar, who also left. Considering it had been years since Heyman was involved in WWE at the time, this was rather shocking to hear in a promo. In 2012, the day after WrestleMania 28, Brock Lesnar returned to menace Cena. When it became apparent that Brock could not cut promos by himself, Heyman was brought back. Then when Punk turned heel a few months later, Heyman represented him too. Eventually, it was time to turn Punk face again, which was built around Heyman (via Brock) betraying him. So... how do you do a long-running feud between Punk and Heyman when Brock only shows up extremely sparingly? Well, you obviously give him more wrestlers to represent. It’s just that in the grand scheme of things, they don’t exactly matter because Brock is the final boss character and the one that Heyman actually gives a poo poo about. SummerSlam 2013 had Brock defeat Punk. There was no intention of having Punk get his win back over Brock, but they at least intended to have him win the feud over Paul Heyman. Just... without Brock’s involvement. Heyman did have a midcard heel working with him already in Curtis Axel. The son of Mr. Perfect, Axel was a fine, if bland, talent who was a great hand in the ring. He was the guy who got the Rock back into ring shape. Booking did him no favors as he had a main event match on Raw with Triple H where he proceeded to give Triple H a kayfabe freak concussion, only to COMPLETELY VANISH as the remainder of the episode focused on Triple H just sitting down to deal with his injury. Even the idea of bragging rights for messing up Triple H didn't happen in the aftermath. At Night of Champions 2013, Punk was in a handicap match against Curtis Axel and Heyman. At the end of the match, Ryback showed up to lay Punk out and reveal that he too was a Heyman Guy. It was time for another Punk vs. Ryback feud. Something that Punk was not too happy about because to him, Ryback was a really stiff and unsafe worker who kept hurting him. According to Punk, he angrily ranted at Ryback about his fuckups and asked, “Are you trying to outright hurt me or are you just dumb as gently caress?!” Ryback paused, looked down, and said, “I’m dumb as gently caress.” This association with Heyman didn’t last too long, but it did give something of a new coat of paint to Ryback. No longer was he an angry loose cannon. Now he was this big goofball bully who at times looked like a giant Muppet. It might not have been good for him in the long run, but it was entertaining at times. Kind of surprisingly, the poster for Battleground 2013 was just a big picture of Ryback. Didn’t know he had that kind of star power left, but then again, these things were always put together way in advance. Ryback lost to Punk due to a low blow. A month later, they did a Hell in a Cell handicap match of Ryback and Heyman vs. Punk. Punk won and beat the poo poo out of Heyman on top of the cell with a kendo stick afterwards. On the following Raw, Punk beat Ryback in a submission match. Shortly after, Heyman cut ties with Ryback and to a lesser extent Axel. Heyman was gone until it was time for Brock to return at the following WrestleMania. After that, Cesaro was the unfortunate victim of being the unimportant Paul Heyman Guy. Speaking of WrestleMania 30, Ryback claims that there were rumblings of a match between him and the Ultimate Warrior, but that fell apart almost immediately. Considering Warrior died two days after the event already, that was DEFINITELY for the better. Ryback and Curtis Axel came out of the Heyman angle as a tag team called RybAxel. It did not do Ryback any favors as the two were never very successful. I seem to recall the two of them getting destroyed by Sheamus in what essentially an impromptu gauntlet match. I think the moment that really showed how far Ryback had fallen was what I consider one of the all-time most entertaining episodes of SmackDown. During the last stretch of the Shield’s original run, they were put in a three-on-eleven tag match on Raw. It ended with a no contest as everyone just beat the poo poo out of the three. On SmackDown, it was announced that there would be a rematch. The Shield spent the entire episode just completely ambushing and loving up almost everyone set to be involved in that match. By the time of the main event, it was three-on-five and the Shield were dominant. It all culminated in the Shield doing the triple powerbomb to Ryback. It was an image we’ve seen so many times before, only three guys were on top of the roster and Ryback was bordering on jobber. Seeing Ryback panic as they hoisted him up, I felt kind of bad for the guy. At least there was some fun in Ryback giving less of a gently caress. While I can’t remember anything off the top of my head, he would say some ridiculous poo poo on Twitter, then delete all of his tweets. Repeatedly. Then you’d see him walking to the ring, pretending to type before “deleting” it and laughing. He’d get the fans to chant, “FEED ME MORE!” and take a second to turn his head to the hard camera and say, “I’ve still got it!” RybAxel ended after Ryback was off TV due to surgery and Axel moved on to different teams based around being a loser. Ryback returned a few months later and went back to his usual singles stuff, going through various midcarders. There was a big Survivor Series main event coming up between Team Cena and Team Authority for the fate of WWE. Being a heel, Ryback was recruited by the Authority. Then the rest of the team pissed him off enough that he decided to switch sides and join Cena. Team Cena vs. Team Authority at Survivor Series 2014 is a fantastic match that was incredibly well-booked and well-performed. There’s a whole interesting story in there about how Dolph Ziggler worked his rear end off due to getting plugged into a role meant for Roman Reigns (who was on the shelf due to surgery). I’m not going to get into all of that because Ryback was the first member of Team Cena eliminated and felt like nothing more than a footnote. Cena’s team won, meaning Triple H and Stephanie weren’t allowed to be in power, but that got overturned down the line. Ryback had a pretty fun rivalry with Kane, but then spent the next several months getting jobbed out to guys like Bray Wyatt. He was also in the infamous 2015 Royal Rumble, known for a segment where Kane and Big Show teamed up and dumped out popular wrestlers like Ryback, Wyatt, Ambrose, and Ziggler in hopes of making eventual winner Roman Reigns seem more popular in comparison. IT DID NOT WORK. As this was a rather uneventful part of Ryback’s career, I thought I’d talk about a funny botched spot from somewhere in his career that I can’t remember well enough to pinpoint. During a televised match, Ryback picked up his opponent and held him up for a vertical suplex. They went to a commercial. The obvious idea was to come back from a commercial and have him in the same position before doing the slam, even though he wasn’t really holding him up for that long. He hosed up the timing and was re-lifting the opponent right as they returned from the commercial, screwing up the whole gag. In mid-2015, Ryback was somehow the one guy on the poster for Elimination Chamber. He was competing in a Chamber match for the Intercontinental Championship and poo poo went so completely wrong. I’m someone who genuinely enjoys these kinds of matches and will even defend the much-hated ECW Elimination Chamber, but this one was just so bad. What happened was that someone got thrown into Mark Henry’s pod and the glass broke. It wasn’t supposed to. Henry was suddenly free even though he was meant to enter way later. All the wrestlers stood around completely confused with zero momentum while Dolph Ziggler tried to scream directions to everyone, hoping to carry this into something watchable. It was a mess and it ended with Ryback winning and finally holding gold. Ryback’s Intercontinental title run lasted for over 100 days, but was in no way memorable. He only retained through one feud, a three-way rivalry with Big Show and the Miz. It didn’t help that Ryback took time off during this due to a staph infection. He ended up dropping the title to Kevin Owens and then failed to win it back in multiple rematches. Also, I think this was around the time when Ryback started cutting in-ring promos about how he was really into the self-help book the Secret. Of course he was. As WWE Champion Seth Rollins’ knee exploded around this time, a tournament was held to crown a new champion. Ryback lost in the first round to Kalisto, but the two kept it friendly afterwards. They teamed up in a Survivor Series elimination match where Ryback ended things by pinning Sheamus (Kalisto and Jey Uso also survived). Considering Sheamus would cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase later in the night and pin Roman Reigns in the show’s finale, you would think that maybe Ryback would get some kind of title match in response. Even if it was just to lose. Nope. Ryback spent the next few months jobbing out to Rusev and Del Rio. Ryback’s last major win came at Fastlane 2016. He ended up teaming with Big Show and Kane as the Titans against the Wyatt Family and pinned Luke Harper to win the match. In a rematch on Raw, Ryback ended up leaving his allies in a huff, tired of being in team-based matches. Ryback turned heel and became more of an rear end in a top hat during his squash matches. He beat the poo poo out of Sin Cara and demanded a title shot against United States Champion Kalisto. They would face off at WrestleMania 32...’s pre-show. Barely anyone was there to watch Ryback lose. Around this time, Ryback’s promos had become a lot more stream of consciousness. Gone was the intensity and charisma that got him over as a killer. Gone was the modern day Ultimate Warrior nonsense of a man who wanted people to FEED HIM MORE! Now he was rambling about the Avengers or something and how it related to him beating up Kalisto. As is the style of WWE at their most creatively bankrupt, Ryback beat Kalisto in a non-title match, earning him another title match. At Payback 2016’s pre-show, Ryback cleanly lost to Kalisto. Shortly after, he was sent home as he was having contract arguments with WWE. Ryback would later explain his frustrations that merch royalties aside, he didn’t understand why all the wrestlers were paid differently despite basically doing the same amount of work. He was then released in August of 2016. He spent the next couple of years wrestling in the independents, apparently demanding quite the payday for his services. His last match was in August of 2018. Ryback’s final WWE appearance was May 1, 2016. Less than a month later, 2K Games released a trailer for WWE 2K17 with the incentive that pre-ordering it would grant you Goldberg. The trailer showed Goldberg on WWE TV for the first time since 2004. The trailer ended with a hint of him having a confrontation with Brock Lesnar. Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar would main event Survivor Series 2016, six months later, and it was a huge hit. Goldberg would go on to have a very lengthy and lucrative part-time run in WWE that would MOSTLY make up for how mundane his first run went. In the end, they didn’t need to create a new Goldberg after all.
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Sep 24, 2023 05:15
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Thanks for another write up! Ryback also released his own brand of supplements. They were explicitly made to supplement steroid use. Mentioned "cycles" and even had a supplement to keep your balls from shrinking after your "cycle."
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Sep 24, 2023 12:39
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Oh and on a roundtable thing, Daniel Bryan brought up the Panera Bread incident - Bryan and Cody wanted to go to Panera with Ryback and he yelled at a teenage girl and pitched a fit because he didn't understand the menu. Ryback then accused Bryan of bullying him. He said that's the reason he traveled alone. I think Jim Cornette said "you travel alone because no one can stand you, you stupid roided up gently caress."
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Sep 24, 2023 12:42
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The Ryback ryteups led me to find the scene where he bothers Kane who's been forced to work at the concession stand and that video also had a bit with Santino where he calls him "Ka-ne" and I loved that about him. "John Chena".
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Sep 24, 2023 13:46
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Hogan Hogan married a Scientologist. This should be interesting.
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Sep 24, 2023 18:52
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Bonzo posted:Hogan Hogan married a Scientologist. This should be interesting. It’s Clearwater, brother.
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Sep 24, 2023 19:07
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He gave L. Ron Hubbard the idea for Dianetics, brother.
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Sep 24, 2023 19:21
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that doesnt work for me ron
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Sep 24, 2023 19:22
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Pope Corky the IX posted:He gave L. Ron Hubbard the idea for Dianetics, brother. ONE DAY WHILE I WAS TRAVELING THE HULKAMANIAC UNIVERSE THROUGH THE MACHO PLANE, I ENCOUNTERED THE BIGGEST, BADDEST, MOST EVIL ALIEN I'VE EVER SEEN BROTHER. HIS NAME WAS XENU,
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Sep 24, 2023 19:24
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AlmightyBob posted:yeah Cody is a huge loving mark lol Yeah, I don't know how much of it was wrestle Twitter being weird with "scoops" or whatever but she seemed very unliked outside of being a front office HR person. Even then she wasn't great but she was also working with people like Swole who seemed difficult to work with. Not because of Swole's chronic illnesses but because she just seems like one of those wrestlers. The lack of writers and the general state of the AEW women's division didn't help. Same was said for a bunch of the women's division who came in, flamed out, and then went off to do very little in the indies during Brandi's time there. I feel like no matter who was in charge of the women's division during that period, it would have been bad due to everything going on. As much as Cody is a mark, I think he honestly thinks because he's a Rhodes and his dad worked with WWE until he died, that Cody can get past the fact that Vince is a psycho who never forgives or forgets to a level only seen in North Korea. Vince has no hobbies outside lifting and I'm sure he just ruminates all day and 100% has an enemies list scrawled out in some old copy of Muscle & Fitness. Maybe when Hunter was at the helm and maybe after Vince is dead or kicked out but right now Cody is never finishing the story. He just needs to get past his WWE developmental programming and just get his paychecks until he can parlay that into a better deal at wherever, which isn't going to happen for him tbh. You see it come up with wrestlers like Bayley who can't comprehend that the lovely company you work for doesn't actually have your best interests at heart, regardless of draw or "vaunted lineage." Vince made a Hart a joke character and then literally killed him through negligence. I'm all for wrestlers getting paid but the fact that in 2023 people are still lowkey working themselves into shoots is astounding. The only silver lining is that the workrate is so low at WWE, outside of the women's division and the freak incidences in the men's, you're not going to get crippled and older guys, Owens and Zayn for instance, can just collect paychecks until retirement.
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Sep 24, 2023 19:33
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its cody's destiny to ping pong between promotions just like his father and brother before him
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Sep 24, 2023 19:34
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DID YOU KNOW... that the X in XWF actually stood for Xenu-free?
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Sep 24, 2023 19:42
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I thought Hogan loved Jesus. In fact, didn't he put him over in Wembly?
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Sep 24, 2023 19:58
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hogan doesnt put anyone over, brother
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Sep 24, 2023 19:59
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No, he was there with Mr. T and Michael Jackson. That was where Hogan taught him to kick out on the third day and Hulk up.
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Sep 24, 2023 20:02
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I made a 19-minute video fantasy booking Orange Cassidy's year in Ring of Honor. Would anyone want to see it?
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Sep 24, 2023 20:45
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Time_pants posted:I made a 19-minute video fantasy booking Orange Cassidy's year in Ring of Honor. Would anyone want to see it? Could be good. Could be bad. Whatever. Whatever is fine I guess.
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Sep 24, 2023 20:46
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Mulaney Power Move posted:Could be good. Could be bad. Whatever. Whatever is fine I guess. How did you find my wife's wedding vows? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qvEU6Xkoi4
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Sep 24, 2023 20:50
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the loving time travelling vikings are 1890s-level-bad as a gimmick but that big fucker can move pretty well for his size
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Sep 24, 2023 20:51
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Chikara's time traveling knight Lance Steel was cooler
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Sep 25, 2023 01:08
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I know I'm in the minority here, but like wrestling simple. I like knee lifts as finishers, fat dudes doing rest holds, masked dudes in pajamas with numbers at the end of their name...actually, no, that all kind of sucked
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Sep 25, 2023 01:13
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Mulaney Power Move posted:I know I'm in the minority here, but like wrestling simple. I like knee lifts as finishers, fat dudes doing rest holds, masked dudes in pajamas with numbers at the end of their name...actually, no, that all kind of sucked
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Sep 25, 2023 01:23
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Was the personal attack on Mr Wrestling 2 really necessary?
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Sep 25, 2023 01:49
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Vince does nothing except lift and hate Yeah, if I had to describe the man in a sentence, that's a good one.
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Sep 25, 2023 01:57
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Szyznyk posted:Was the personal attack on Mr Wrestling 2 really necessary? I was thinking more Assassin 2 or Checkmate
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Sep 25, 2023 01:57
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the grappler (technically the grappler 2) had a show in Portland for a while they had an angle where him and Jake the Snake were feuding over who invented the ddt, it was bad lol if you don't know the history, in the 70s Jake had the grappler in a front facing headlock, took a step back and tripped and the ddt was invented
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Sep 25, 2023 03:55
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Lost another Loser Leaves Town match. Time to mask up and pretend I’m left-handed.
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Sep 25, 2023 10:07
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Like when Jimmy Valiant wore a mask and his giant beard was popping out of it
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Sep 25, 2023 12:56
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Cubone posted:I think this was the idea behind NWA Power Missing a few r'sss
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Sep 25, 2023 16:01
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Mulaney Power Move posted:I thought Hogan loved Jesus. In fact, didn't he put him over in Wembly? Makes sense. Jesus kicked out of a protected finish at 3 1/2 and then came back like a week later to cut promos without a neck brace or anything.
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Sep 26, 2023 00:20
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YOU’RE WELCOME FOR THE MEMORIES: DAMIEN SANDOW IN WWE Aron Haddad was a wrestling journeyman who had several minor runs with WWE in the 2000s. In 2003, he dressed as the Easter Bunny and showed up at Vengeance in a Bar Room Invitational hosted by the APA. Then he had a tag team run in 2006 as Idol Stevens, which I have ZERO memory of. He feuded with SmackDown tag champs Paul London and Brian Kendrick. That didn’t work out for him, so he went back to the indies for a bit and returned in the early 2010s. His new gimmick was Damien Sandow, the Intellectual Savior to the Masses. He was a super-smart egomaniac in pink trunks and a blue bathrobe. His promos would be confident and condescending, ending with him telling the viewers, “You’re welcome.”  Debuting in mid-2012, Sandow had your usual competent build for his specific flavor of heel. He did pre-taped promos for a while, then moved on to live promos. He took on lower midcarders to establish him, occasionally taking down large faces who should crush him on paper like Ezekiel Jackson and Brodus Clay. Sandow was doing great until falling into one of the sadder pitfalls of modern WWE: coming across an established act from yesteryear. In Sandow’s case (at least his first case), it was D-Generation X. He acted all superior to them and got his rear end handed to him because they’re a legendary team from the old days and he was a modern talent that they were trying to turn into a star. At least he wouldn’t get his first loss for another three months and considering it was against World Heavyweight Champion Sheamus, it was nothing to sneeze at. Around that time, Sandow started teaming up with Cody Rhodes as the Rhodes Scholars. They made for a fun heel team with their post-match taunt of the two shaking hands right before Cody launched Sandow into a cartwheel. While being a tag champ is rather meaningless in 21st century WWE, the two never even got to get that far. At the time, Team Hell No (Kane and Daniel Bryan) were hugely popular and the tag champs. Rhodes Scholars had what seemed like a dozen title shots and could never seal the deal. Oh, and they also got to be punked out by the Rock one time. Money in the Bank 2013 had two separate ladder matches. One was made up of all faces as they competed for a chance to cash-in for the WWE Championship. The other was made up of all heels as they competed for a chance to cash-in for the World Heavyweight Championship. That meant both Sandow and Cody were in the latter ladder match. At the time, Cody was starting to show more face-like fire and Sandow insisted that they were in this together and that he would not betray him. So of course Sandow betrayed him. While it led to a decent feud, it still made Cody look like an idiot because it was Money in the Bank. The whole point was that it was every man for himself. Why wouldn’t you expect Sandow to try and win?  Regardless, Sandow seemed to be on the border of making it to the top. After Cody stole Sandow’s Money in the Bank briefcase into the Gulf of Mexico, Sandow had it replaced with a classy leather number with the logo etched into the sides. With the belief that Sandow could handle losses due to having a promised title shot (and likely win) on his hands, Sandow lost his feud with Cody and then proceeded to lose practically every match after that for a while. John Cena won the World Heavyweight Championship from Alberto Del Rio and it was apparent that Cena’s shoulder was kind of busted. Sandow confronted Cena and then went ham on the shoulder, bludgeoning it with his leather briefcase. After the briefcase fell to pieces from the assault, Sandow cashed it in. It was Sandow having a hell of a match against a one-armed John Cena. Cena won decisively. Sandow was the first person to ever cash in his briefcase and outright lose. There was no turning back from this. Sandow’s momentum shifted into a losing streak. At one point he tried to repackage himself as a CM Punk type who would angrily go off on how the company was holding him down in a worked shoot as they turned off the microphones on him. That led to nothing. What did lead to something was Sandow dressing up as Magneto. See, once upon a time, Hugh Jackman hosted Raw and teamed up with Zack Ryder against Dolph Ziggler. When Jackman returned, Ryder was already long buried and Ziggler was a face. Ergo, Jackman helped Ziggler beat up Magneto Sandow. Sandow started doing weird impressions week after week, whether it was wrestlers, celebrities, or fictional characters. It was definitely enjoyed by the fans, but people wondered where this was leading to.  WWE struck gold by having Sandow do impressions of the Miz. With Miz being a Hollywood rear end in a top hat, Sandow – renamed Mizdow – was his stunt double. Sometimes this meant that Mizdow would take beatings meant for Miz. Sometimes this meant that Miz would get hurt and Mizdow would mimic his behavior elsewhere. Either way, it was a popular act and people could not get enough of it. Probably the strangest part of it all was that when Miz started to get jealous of Mizdow’s popularity, Miz would refuse to tag him in and was suddenly awesome enough to win entire tag matches by himself. Odd choice, but okay. The team remained together for a good stretch. Mizdow helped Miz briefly hold the Intercontinental Championship. They also won the tag titles for a little while. Eventually, the crowd was ravenous for the Mizdow face turn, feeling that he would be propelled to superstardom the moment he turned on Miz and got his big win. I really cannot undersell what a layup this was. People loving loved this guy and were in anticipation for the other shoe to drop. As talked about many times, Royal Rumble 2015 was a disaster of a match that made sure to screw over all the popular acts in order to make Roman Reigns’ win seem more palatable. While most of these victims came at the hands of Big Show and Kane’s team-up, Mizdow’s loss was more of a footnote. Miz entered at #1 and lost in a few minutes. When it was Mizdow’s time, Miz insisted that he take his spot. Deciding to show some spine, Mizdow threw his boss to the side and entered himself. He lost in a minute. The team stayed together for the next couple of months, but with mounting tensions. On the WrestleMania 31 pre-show, they were both entered in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal. It was there when Mizdow finally turned on Miz and decided to stand up for himself and become his own success. A victory would have put him over the top. Instead, he literally went over the top, losing to the Big Show. Yes, Mizdow’s big moment was a massive thud for the sake of reminding people that Big Show is kind of like his former kayfabe father Andre the Giant. But whatever, at least Mizdow could get some rub by beating Miz. They even set up a match where the winner would get the Miz’s identity. So of course Miz won, killing any potential for where that storyline could go. Now he was back to being Damien Sandow. Going back to Royal Rumble 2015, one bit that happened early in the match was Curtis Axel entering, only to be jumped by Erik Rowan on the ramp. Rowan took his spot and was eliminated in about a minute. As Roman winning was an unpopular ending, people joked about how Axel was never really eliminated from the Rumble and was the true winner. Axel himself decided to jump onto that joke. For months, he would insist that he was still in the Rumble. He would say how many days and minutes it had been. He would still do this even after someone threw him over the top rope. Over time, he became more deranged about it all, making a big deal about AXELMANIA. Soon he started picking up Hulk Hogan’s mannerisms. Probably my favorite part in all of this was a segment on a WrestleMania pre-show where he cut a promo in front of Michael Cole that involved him tearing off his shirt. He ended the promo with, “Axelmania! Yeah!” and threw the tatters of the shirt straight into Cole’s face with it hitting his mic so hard it made an incredibly loud impact. While Cole cracked up, Axel turned and walked away to hide how hard he was laughing at this. Axel and Sandow started a mini-feud, but it led to Axel going full Hulk Hogan while Sandow became Macho Mandow. This should have been decent, as Sandow’s whole thing was impressions and he looked enough like Savage. Too bad his impression was distractingly bad. The two became the brilliantly-named Meta-Powers, though Vince didn’t like the joke and had them just call themselves the Mega-Powers anyway. Their one feud was with the Ascension. They were a tag team who dominated NXT as champs for a while, only to come to the main roster and get buried hard. On the main roster, they were pushed as open knockoffs of the Road Warriors and Demolition, which caused JBL to make fun of them on commentary and then we got another segment of old wrestlers beating up new wrestlers for the hell of it. The Meta-Powers lost their match with the Ascension. Er, matches, as they fought on the Payback 2015 pre-show, Main Event, and Superstars. You know, all the top WWE shows. Then one night in 2015, WWE proceeded to scrub every mention of Hulk Hogan due to that leaked sex tape where he was saying a lot of racist stuff. As you can guess, that completely nixed the jobber tag team gimmick where one guy pretended to be Hulk Hogan. At least Axel and Sandow continued to be a tag team at house shows and were finally booked to beat the Ascension regularly. The two split up and Axel founded the Social Outcasts, a group made of likeable comedy heel jobbers (with Bo Dallas, Heath Slater, and Adam Rose). Looking back, it’s kind of shocking Sandow wasn’t part of this. Sandow spent most of the year off TV and his only singles win was against Heath Slater on Main Event. Otherwise, he only competed on house shows and when he wasn’t, he was losing on TV. As WrestleMania 31 was his botched chance to become a major name, WrestleMania 32 was his last memorable appearance on WWE TV. Once again, he took part in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal. This time, as Big Show and Shaq had a showdown in the ring, Sandow stood with them, like he measured up. The crowd popped huge for this and were still absolutely in Sandow’s corner. But WrestleMania 32 was one excessively long middle finger to the audience (that might need a write-up) and Sandow was thrown away like he was nothing. Over here at Something Awful, the wrestling sub-forum with the ever-changing name was always behind Sandow, up to a point. Xavier Woods was still in the early days of his YouTube series Up Up Down Down, which was based around wrestlers playing video games backstage. It was a way to see wrestlers out of character, being themselves, being grounded, and being their regular charming selves. Even hated wrestlers came off as genuine here. Sandow, for some reason, decided that he would spend every episode of UUDD being an annoying white rapper and it was grating as hell. He just killed the mood of every video he was in and people here couldn’t stand him anymore. Sandow was on TV sparingly, usually in multi-man matches, and while he lost all the time, he was still getting big ovations. With his final loss being a four-minute match with Titus O’Neil on Main Event, Sandow was released in mid-2016. Months later, he appeared on TNA as Aron Rex, where he heavily trimmed down the beard and later shaved it off completely. He lasted for less than a year there and was definitely not in the greatest shape. During a promo, he held his giant hand against his face which led to this.  And that’s his legacy. Oh, and once Cody Rhodes left WWE, Sandow did get in contact with him, thinking that they could do a reprise of their old rivalry, but in the indies. Cody decided thanks but no thanks. It’s really depressing because while Sandow wasn’t the best in the world, he was a solid worker who did what he was asked. He didn’t act like an rear end in a top hat and get his just deserts. He didn’t go out of his way to piss off Vince or anyone backstage. He did his job, got hugely popular, and then got hosed over several times over just because. At least he got to meet Shaq.
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Sep 26, 2023 01:53
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I was surprised to see Sandow show up in the drive-thru sketch on I Think You Should Leave.
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Sep 26, 2023 04:32
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Anyways here's Aron Stevens (FKA Aron Rex (FKA Damien Sandow)) demonstrating https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mgft3YcJ3Q Question Mark was over a gently caress.
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Sep 27, 2023 02:42
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:As much as Cody is a mark, I think he honestly thinks because he's a Rhodes and his dad worked with WWE until he died, that Cody can get past the fact that Vince is a psycho who never forgives or forgets to a level only seen in North Korea. I freaking love this comparison hahah
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Sep 27, 2023 14:00
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Vince is basically Donald Trump with a longer attention span, yeah. I know the personality type, and Vince at least has the virtue of a work ethic. Or what might frankly be a real life supervillain in that he will work tirelessly for the purpose of satisfying his endless ego.
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Sep 27, 2023 14:09
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Vince is basically Donald Trump with a longer attention span, yeah. I know the personality type, and Vince at least has the virtue of a work ethic. Or what might frankly be a real life supervillain in that he will work tirelessly for the purpose of satisfying his endless ego. Trump hates working though and only has stamina and patience for golf
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Sep 27, 2023 14:15
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vince loves humiliating the rhodes
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Sep 27, 2023 15:38
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