Floyd Mayweather is an unlikeable Rocky, Big Show is a fat Thunderlips

If you didn't see, unbeaten welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather signed a contract with the WWE for a "match" against The Big Show at Wrestlemania. The cost to get the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world to be a part of the biggest wrestling PPV of the year? A cool $20 million.

You really can't blame Mayweather - he's pretty much made for this sort of activity, and it's a ton of free publicity for his upcoming rematch against Oscar De La Hoya. And by "free" I mean "getting paid $20 million." It's a better version of "free" than getting a "free" Rhapsody download with an upsize combo at Wendy's.

Of course, when you think boxing and wrestling coming together, there's one thing that comes to mind: Rocky Balboa vs. Thunderlips in Rocky III. Certainly Hulk Hogan's best cinematic work, with Santa with Muscles coming in a close second:



I don't know about you, but when I'm feeling sick, nothing picks me up more than a Leroy Neiman sighting...

Now, this isn't the first time that real life boxers have mixed it up with "fake" wrestlers in forms of cross-promotion. Even The Greatest "lowered" himself to taking on wrestlers, not once but twice. The first was against the legendary Gorilla Monsoon, where he got involved in a match after watching at ringside. Needless to say, Ali does not fare well against the big bruiser:



This was all part of the build-up to Ali's match against Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki. Was it worked (i.e. fake) or shoot (real)? If it was worked, then it was made to be terribly, terribly boring. Rules were set and then changed at the last minute that limited Inoki's abilities to grapple or kick. So he basically just took on a crab-like position on his back and kicked a bit for 15 rounds, while Ali refused to get close enough to land a punch. Theater at its most absurd:



Part of the undercard to the fight was Andre the Giant vs. "The Bayonne Bleeder" Chuck Wepner. While probably more of a work at first, make sure that you watch the second part, when Wepner actually clocks Andre and pisses him off. Bad idea.

Part 1 (also, check out the sweet-assed Harley Davidson a young Vince McMahon is hawking between rounds):


Part 2:


Vince McMahon had wanted Mike Tyson in the 1990s. Bad. And a deal was in place for him to work as Special Guest Referee in match pitting Hulk Hogan versus "Macho King" Randy Savage on NBC's Main Event III in February of 1990. Right after Tyson took care of dispatching a certain tomato can in a fight in Tokyo named James "Buster" Douglas.

History tells us how that turned out. McMahon quickly recovered, and offered Tyson's spot to America's Favorite Underdog, who probably wishes his first title defense was against Randy Savage instead of Evander Holyfield:



And can we please, please get Jesse Ventura back doing WWE matches?

Vince McMahon eventually did get his man, post-jail. It started off great with the first confrontation between Iron Mike and Stone Cold Steve Austin. Although things went south when Tyson, in his first "promo", kept referring to his opponent as Cold Stone, a devastating blow to the wrestler, a lifelong fan of Thrifty's ice cream:



I'm sure there are other examples that I'm blanking on, right? I'm pretty sure I've seen Hector "Macho" Camacho or Jorge Paiz on Lucha Libre while flipping through the Spanish channels.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 11:22 PM 1 comments  

50 cans of Red Bull...a day

Meet Paul Gascoigne. Known as Gazza to England soccer fans, the former captain is perhaps best-known for his emotional, tearful reaction after receiving a red card in England's semi-final game against Germany in the 1990 World Cup, knowing that meant he would have to miss the final game if England advanced (they didn't).

That, and being a massive drunk and drug-addict. You can probably guess the cycle: binge, get caught, express shame, "get clean", relapse, etc. It's the same story you've probably heard thousands of times before, with the same "I've cleaned up my act this time!' story running every few years, to break the time between the next report of his latest escapades.

Well, things have somehow gotten even worse for Gazza, with reports out of England that he's been placed in a mental health ward after his latest serious of bizarre events while staying at a London hotel. Among the gems:

• He holed up in his room for two months, with his only companion being toy parrots that he treated as real and had programmed to swear at guests in the lobby (where he would sometimes appear with a fake parrot on his shoulder)
• He ordered plate after plate of liver from room service, saying that "it was good for his blood"
• Female staff was barred from his room since he had a habit of answering the door naked

My favorite story, though, is that he had recently checked himself into a rehab clinic in the US for a month (at a cost of £16,000) to treat his crippling addiction. Not to cocaine or alcohol, which he clearly was still happy to keep doing. But to Red Bull.

How much Red Bull was Gazza drinking? How about 50 cans. A day. I cannot even fathom how one could possibly choke down 50 cans of that vile swill, much less how one's system could survive. If I have more than one in one day (or night), I feel like I'm Redd Foxx, getting ready to "have the big one." I start twitching and shaking, I get sweaty and jittery - basically, I turn into Bill Belichik getting prepared for the post-Super Bowl press conference.

Honestly...50 cans of Red Bull a day? How does that even happen? Do you start at a couple of cans, and then that doesn't work, so you go to five? Then 10? Then 25? Was Jolt cola the "gateway" drug into the harder stuff? And why not 75 or 100 - Gazza was always the "ultimate competitor," so why not go for something truly amazing and set the bar so high that not even Kobayashi could beat it?

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 12:47 PM 1 comments  

My Face is a Giant Mess

I have a new rule for living, one that I should have learned a while ago: doctors lie to their patients all of the time. For example, if they say that you'll be "up and around the next day" after a surgery, what they actually mean is "five days later, you'll still feel like barely warmed-over death." It's a slight, subtle difference between the two.

As fknmclane mentioned earlier, I've been down since Thursday after having...well, I guess it's fair to say that they pretty much removed my sinuses and decided to "start from scratch." It's five days on now, and I still feel lousy - I can't breathe, my nose hurts and is still oozing blood/water/mystery liquid (brain juice? transmission fluid? Tang?) every few minutes. Plus, I'm tired. Really, really tired. Like, "falling asleep at my desk" tired. At least my office passive-aggressively guilt-tripped me into coming into work today instead of working from home.

Good times!

Expect the posts to be even more bizarre and meandering than usual - at least until I can get through a day without washing my Vicodin down with a whiskey chaser. So, probably early April.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 10:22 AM 3 comments