Many people are calling the film the “ressurection” of Mickey Rourke’s career, as he plays the role of Randy “The Ram” Robertson, an old, broken down wrestler from the 80’s looking for one last gasp at the glory.

Rourke apparently threw himself headfirst (literally) into the role, right down to doing as much of the wrestling scenes as possible. The film also stars Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, and a supporting cast of real-life wrestlers (including the one and only Necro Butcher).

Here’s a look at the trailer, which was just releashed by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

There was this little bubble there at the beginning  which was really unique as the eighties made their last stand and slowly morphed into something completely different, yet just as brightly coloured.

Check out this clip from an early incarnation of the Howard Stern Show (circa 1991-ish) with Stevie Starr, the Regurgitator. You’ll be thrilled as he ingests everything from butane to sharks, all for your entertainment.

The fine people at Kayfabe Commentaries have released a free webcast of “Inside the Office With Rene Goulet.” [Click here to view]

Now, longtime fans may already know that Mr. Goulet had a lengthy stint with the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE) as a road agent. Even older fans may remember him as a former WWWF tag team champion, of in the later stages of his in-ring career during the earliest days of the WWF’s nation expansion.

Whether you know of Goulet or not, this webcast is extremely informative, as he takes you for a rare peek behind the scenes at what went into the day-to-day running of the WWF’s live events, whether in a high school gym, or a major arena like Madison Square Garden.

It’s well worth checking out, and hats off to KFC for offering it for free on their website. You may already know of some of their great products, which take the idea of the traditional “shoot interview” about 10 steps beyond. Past titles have included the popular “Guest Booker” series, (where the subject tackles the task of rebooking a period of wrestling’s past), You Shoot (where fans send in their questions for the guest), and of course the antics of The Iron Shiek are well represented.

Check them out at www.KayfabeCommentaries.com

When I blow my nose, what results is a glowing neon colour. I swear this stuff glows in the dark.

Anyhow, I’ve got a blankey and a warm drink  and I’m going to watch some good old wrestling. I’ll let you know what i watched afterwards with perhaps a review.

Today is halloween, when the freaks come out. When I was younger and single, Halloween was a good night to go out because for some reason, girls made extremely questionable wardrobe decisions that they otherwise wouldn’t make (read: dress provocatively) and get away with it.

This evening, I shall be taking THE DUDE~! out for his second ever Halloween experience. Last year went very well, and he has never forgotten it. We actually have two costumes for him this year, so I’m debating taking him out twice, or at least coming home, changing, and hitting up the houses that gave out the good stuff a second time in a different costume.

Yup, only the best in deceit and shenanigens for my kid! Actually, i’m a little bummed that I never thought of that when i was of Trick or Treating age.

Being that it is Halloween, I shall leave you with the 1985 Ministry track “Everyday Is Halloween” set to random horror movie clips. Have fun with it. Oh, and please be very safe out there tonight. Certainly don’t do any of the foolish things I did as a youngster, like shooting your friends with roman candles and bottle rockets.

There’s these things called “music videos,” and they come on giant shiny discs. They are going to save and revolutionize the recording industry.

But will people even want to watch something more than once?

I love watching this sort of stuff.
PART ONE…

PART TWO…

 

Yesterday morning (Tuesday), I read that Joe Krantz was shot and killed while leaving his MMA gym in Abbotsford, BC.

While there are plenty of stories going around to why something like this might have happened, I can’t say I knew that Joe. In fact, my only dealings with him at all were as first a referee and then a co-promoter of a former incarnation of All Star Wrestling than ran shows in Cloverdale, BC.  My dealings with him were always strictly professional. In fact, on a couple of occasions, he was the one in charge who paid me for performing on a show.

That said, Joe had a lot of friends in the BC wrestling community. Both in and out of a wrestling setting. His passing is no doubt even more of a shock to him than me.

Joe, who was only 28, sadly leaves behind an eight year old daughter, and another child on the way. My deepest sympathies go out to his family and friends.

Slam Wrestling article by Marty Goldstein

Vancouver Sun article

No matter the circumstances that led to his death, and the activities he was involved in, it is always heartbreaking to hear of yet another child losing a parent.

Like I mentioned previously, my dealings with Joe started and ended in the wrestling arena. I never associated with him outside on an event setting, and only ever saw him once out in public. I’m sure it’s a way many of his close friends and family would prefer to remember him…

He was buying flowers and chocolates.

Adam

That said, I just wanted to take a quick minute to wish all my Canadian friends and fans out there a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

And with that, I’m off to eat copious amounts of food. COPIOUS, I tell ya!

Adam

In my opinion, tag team wrestling requires a completely different dynamic and approach. That would be why you can take a great tag team wrestler (for example, let’s say Ricky Morton) and he flounders as a singles wrestler (WCW early 1990’s).

Of course, for every example like the one above, feel free to throw Shawn Michaels in my face.

But to get back on track here, tag team wrestling is a pretty sweet science. It’s an artform to do right and smoothly. I have been in a few tag teams that I thought were very good, and have wanted to be in a few others that I thought would be even better.

The first tag team I was a part of was Generation X with Strife. I have so many fond memories of that timeframe, as, while I had a little more ring experience than my partner, we were still learning and at the very least learning tha tag team side of things together. We were young, pretty fearless, liked the same style of wrestling, and got to work with guys way out of our league like Dr. Luther and his Army of Darkness. Those matches were total fights, but were valuable learning experiences, Japan style.

See the terrible story of our split HERE!

That was the only established team I was a part of besides my combination with Ladies Choice around 2003-2004. We were just sort of thrown together as two heels, but I thought we did fairly well for ourselves. Most people don;t know it, but I’m better on the mike than in the ring, and few can touch the LC behind the mike. My style in the ring is quite a bit different from his, but I felt when all the parts came together we were actually a really good team with a perfect combination of entertaining qualities, trash talk, and wrestling ability. This is one team that i would have liked to have seen developed further. Watch us take on Scotty mac and MTV Select host Brian Adler HERE.

As for failed teams…I pitched hard to be in a team with two men. Tony Kozina and Chance Beckett. With Tony, I just thought it would be fun and something different rather than beat eachother up. Plus, we’re great friends, so it makes it very easy to work in the ring together. We did get to team up n the inaugural Pacific Cup Tag Team Tournament, and that was the first time ever teamed up. I don’t think we did too bad at all.

With Beckett, there was an entire heel turn involved. I wanted to do something different and shake things up a little and see how the other side lives. Also, there was a lot of new, younger talent in ECCW at the time and I thought I could help their development by working with them. But the whole turn was supposed to result in an Adam Firestorm-Chance Beckett tag team. The two of us a very alike in many ways. But the key here, is at the time, Beckett was hotter than me, coming off his Super 8 appearance. People would be looking for his name for a while, then I’d come up. Yeah, that part is true. But also, I thought we’d gel perfectly. He’s a better wrestler than me, but I think I have a better grasp on some of the more psychological aspects of the ring game. We can both talk, but if we have someone to play off, we’re even better.

Sadly, I think Beckett and ECCW were having some issues at the time and it never paid off. Not putting that team together is one of the bigger wrestling regrets I’ve ever had. Bigger than when I picked up the phone and the voive at the other end said “this is Kevin Kelly from the World Wrestling Federation” and my response was “huh?” I thought individually we could have been good. As a team we could have been something awesome.

So, like I promised, I watched the ROH DVD “Best in the World” the other day. It was a good thing, too. The weather here got downright miserable for a couple days (although it’s back to being sunny and fantastic today). The switch in weather and staying up too late gave me a cold, which, with the exception of a little fatigue, I’ve handilly beaten already.

So the DVD gave me something to pass the time. I had editing work to do, but in my weakened state, I couldn’t concentrate for long periods, and I was into a very detail-oriented, meticulous portion of my project. I know many in recent years (more specifically the last two) consider ROH’s quality to have taken a bit of a slide, but that’s what makes these compilation DVDs so fun.

Here’s a list of the matches on the DVD, and a few thoughts on each. Generally, I liked “Blood Stained Honor” better, but that might just be because I was on a rougher, more violent match kick that day.

Samoa Joe vs. Kenta Kobashi- New York, NY 10/01/05

Wow, this match was something else, and I can see why at the time people were really raving about it. The live crowd also helped make it easy to get into the match, which may not be to the fancy of more “mainstream” wrestling fans. Really fun, rough match, even if it was not quite my style. Can’t debate these two put on a heck of a match.

AJ Styles & Matt Sydal vs. Dragon Kid & Genki Horiguchi- Detroit, MI, 3/30/06

Super fun match. Matt Sydal, for the uneducated, is the current Evan Borne, which should tell you plenty about what this match is like. Dragon Kid is always fun, even if I haven’t seen a Dragon Kid match for years. Some ROH matches seem to go on five or six minutes too long. This one was just right. 

KENTA vs. Austin Aries Chicago Ridge, IL, 6/24/06

Couldn’t quite get into this one. Austin Aries was somewhat of an internet darling a few years ago, and was even the ROH champion. I thought he was a little disappointing in this match, but that’s just my opinion.

Samoa Joe vs. Kikutaro with Mick Foley Elizabeth, NJ, 2/19/05

Fun little comedy match, which you normally would associate Samoa Joe with. Joe put up with it for a while, then killed him dead. Foley provides a few fun moments as he gets involved. Some of Kikutaro’s (Asbestos Jack?  Ebessan Jack?) offense was downright awful. Sorry. 

Bryan Danielson vs. Lance Storm (ROH World Title Match Chicago Ridge, IL, 4/01/06)

One of the main reasons i picked this DVD over “Greatest Rivalries.” Certainly didn’t disappoint. Another match which I thought went the perfect length. This is the style of match Lance really suits, and makes you miss his Japan/ECW days.

CM Punk vs. Terry Funk- Philadelphia, PA, 9/20/03

Kind of an ending out of nowhere, I thought. But Funk did a ton more than I was expecting him to do. Kind of a weird mesh of styles, but certainly held my attention.

Jay & Mark Briscoe vs. Naruki Doi & Shingo (ROH World Tag Team Title Match- Liverpool, UK, 3/03/07)

Remember what I said about some ROH matches going too long? Here’s a perfect example. A really exciting match full of a million crazy moves. All four guys should be dead right now. Seriously. This match could have ended 147.5 times given all the crazy finishing moves used. Quite the spectacular spectacle. Definately worth seeing, but I got the feeling that they could have blown up the ring with dynamite and the match still would have continued. 

Claudio Castagnoli vs. El Generico (Race to the Top Tournament Finals Edison, NJ, 7/28/07)

Haven’t seen a ton of Claudio matches, but I’ve seen enough to know what he’s all about. El Generico is always fun. Another match where maybe both guys should be dead, but it made more sense than the Briscoes match. 

Takeshi Morishima vs. Nigel McGuinness (ROH World Title Match- Edison, NJ, 4/14/07)

If it’s crazy, stiff matches with a bit of everything that you like…this match is for you.

This DVD definately gets a thumbs up for me, just on the amount of action alone, even if I had a few issues with the seeming invincibility of some of the wrestlers. But that’s what ROH fans seem to go for, and what they’ve come to expect, so it’s really just a case of ROH and their crew giving the fans what they want. In the ROH environment it seems to be the way to go.

Like I said, I enjoyed “Blood Stained Honor” more, but perhaps that’s because the nature of the matches made the lengths the wrestlers were going to to kill eachother make more sense? Or maybe it just caught me on a good day?