Who The Hell Is This?

No, seriously. I have no goddamn idea who this guy is. Apparently he debuted on ECW last night... except it wasn't his real debut? He's filled in for Tazz on commentary? He had some sort of tag team? And now he's getting hyped as Vince McMahon's pick for "the future of ECW"?

Honestly, I've never heard of this guy before. CM Punk? Well before his debut, I heard about him. Shannon Moore? Yeah, we saw him backing up Matt Hardy in Seattle. Elijah Burke? Nope, I got nothing.

Please, Facebuster readers, tell me who the hell this guy is. I think I'm getting the fear.

Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams

We here at Arabian Facebuster are painfully aware that Randy Savage has been completely fucking mad for quite some time. Or if your one of those sissified politically correct types, feel free to replace "completely fucking mad" with "afflicted with undiagnosed mental health issues too lengthy and complex to recapitulate at present." But did you know that about fifteen years ago, the "Macho King" was both incredibly deranged AND incredibly wealthy!? Need proof? I submit for your approval this clip from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, offering us paycheck-to-paycheck livin', Totino's pepperoni and sausage microwavin,' Iron City drinkin' types a candid glimpse of how the robber baron class spends its carefree days.

That's Right, A City Of IRON

And, in honor of having Royal Rumble match predictions SLIGHTLY less inaccurate than those logged by his fellow staffers, the Pencil Neck Geek is awarded a delicious twelve-pack of IRON CITY BEER.

Test over Lashley? Christ, what was I thinking?

From the Land of Sky Blue Waters...

... comes this frosty, cold, and dee-licious trophy. Congratulations to Apollo Spas for winning the First Annual Arabian Facebuster Royal Rumble Sweepstakes. A long (and occasionally puzzling) decade of Undertaker boosterism has been handsomely rewarded!

Disstratusfaction

April 18, 1906: An earthquake causes a catastrophic fire that decimates San Francisco. Over 3,000 lost their lives. Countless more lost their homes and livelihoods.

May 6, 1937: The Hindenburg goes down in a fiery blaze. 36 passengers perished.

January 21, 2006: An explosion rocks the Sago Mine in rural West Virginia, trapping 13 miners. Only 1 survived.

Sadly, we must add yet another harrowing tragedy to this list...

January 27, 2007: Armed and Famous, CBS' answer to the question "What happens when you combine the grittiness of COPS and moral complexity of Hill Street Blues with the writing team from Pacific Blue?" is cancelled after only four episodes. Four of the most brilliant, revered, and scrumptulescent episodes in the history of television. Five celebrities (and I don't throw around that term loosely), including former WWE Women's Champion Trish Stratus, are now out of work.

Stay strong, dear reader...those feelings of bewilderment, animosity, anguish, and emptiness will subside with time. In the interim, clips from Thunder in Paradise are only a click here and here away.

Starting to feel better? You're welcome.

Yr "Before They Were Stars" Photo of the Week

AWA World Tag Team Champions Curt Henning and "Big" Scott Hall. Circa 1986.

Train Wreck!

Any predictions for the Unky Vince's Schmoz-Fest Supreme tomorrow? Pencil Neck Geek hereby pledges a half-rack of Iron City to the person with the most correct picks (including free shipping, Malibu) and a 40 oz. of Hamms to anyone who correctly selects the Rumble winner. Hell, if we're gonna subject ourselves to this steaming turd, we might as well make it interesting.

And if this guy wins, we riot in the streets.

God and Jesus Help Us, God and Baby Jesus Help Us...

This Tuesday sees the world premiere of MTV's new thing, Wrestling Society X. It stars (among others) New Jack, Justin Credible, and Vampiro. Oh, and the insufferable douche in the clip above. MTV's preview clips make the thing look pretty rad, but bear in mind: if the show's only half-an-hour long, and MTV plans to clutter it up with a lot of reality show malarkey, AND the Clipse are going to perform (a much better idea than an X-Pac match, to be sure), how much time do you think that leaves for all the spot-happy gymnastics pictured on their website?

Whatevs. The first episode is supposed to have two matches. One of them is going to be a ten-man royal rumble with electrified ring ropes, and this is shaping up to be the worst garbage wrestling abortion to sully wrestling's good name(?) since... oh, since the last time MTV dabbled in pro wrestling.

A Moment Of Silence

Arabian Facebuster salutes a man who truly embodied the Spirit Of Wrestling. We mourn the passing of Bam Bam Bigelow. Details of his demise to follow, but for now: rest in peace, Scott Bigelow.

A Cautionary Tale, Indeed!

Oh most wayward and wicked flock! Boys, Men, Men, Boys!! Hear my words and feel the terrible fury of your society's moral castration!!

Bear Witness and heed these words....



...Next time the Vile Villanous Vociferousness of the Solitary Vice!!

-The Rev.

Yr Space Mountain Related Photo of the Week

Ric Flair, a white stallion, and Ms. Elizabeth. Promo (possibly doctored) photo from the legendary "she was mine before she was yours" storyline of 1992.

Holdin' It Down For The BGV

I realize I'm probably revealing a bit too much about my personal hobbies in this post, but I'd like to ask you all to do me a favor. Take a quick hop over to your friendly neighborhood Google search engine and type in "Big Gay Viscera" (quotes included).

Awwww, yeeeaaahh. Take a look at THAT shit. That, in the parlance of the youth, is what the fuck I'm talkin' 'bout. I swear to god, I've never been prouder of anything in my life.

This is only the first step, fans. The Arabian Facebuster staff will not rest until King Mabel is finally enshrined, resplendent in his Righteous Queer Glory, in the main event at Wrestlemania.

POOOOUUUNNNCCE...?!

Well, I guess we can all quit wondering where Monty Brown was gonna turn up. He's on ECW, that lucky boy!
This is a tremendous career upgrade for the Alpha Male. He's traded a 1.1 Nielsen Rating for a 1.4 Nielsen Rating. He's traded wrestling Rhyno and Samoa Joe for... Test. Or perhaps Bob Holly (if he's lucky).

He's also traded his OWN NAME for the ridiculous moniker "Marquis Cor Von" (pronounced, inexplicably, as "Marcus"). While this seems silly, it's actually not a bad move, considering Vince McMahon's draconian attitude toward copyright law. Vince is, after all, the reason poor Kurt Angle can't say the phrase "It's true" without being tossed straight in the pokey.

My only real beef with Monty's New Name (that's going to be the title of the first book from Arabian Facebuster's new children's imprint, and we'll sue your balls off if you steal it) is that I'm confused by its etymology. Is it French? Portugese? South African? That would sort of make sense, since Monty's s'posed to be all "straight-out-the-veldt" and shit, but Monty's diction is so CLEARLY of American Jock Douchebag derivation that the whole thing leaves me UTTERLY confused.

Ah, well. The end result is that we've got one more halfway decent wrestler toiling away in the ECW wasteland. I hope he has fun jobbing to Kevin Thorn.

Yr Uplifting Old Skool Photo of the Week

Dick Murdoch gets ready to punch "Portuguese Man o' War" Aldo Montoya (aka Justin Credible) square in his smug little mouth. Royal Rumble, 1995.

This Freak Haunts My Every Step

The greasy pimp on the left (seen here in full Artie Lange mode) is the reason I will not be tossing another (metaphorical) log onto the raging inferno of pro-TNA hype we maintain here at Arabian Facebuster. His name, for those of you who haven't been brutally disappointed by pro wrestling over the last decade, is Vince Russo. He is the inventor of "WWF ATTITUDE," "Degeneration X," and "David Arquette, your World Heavyweight Champion." He's a total fucking shitheel, and I don't care if he's found Jesus or not.

To give the devil (har) his due, Russo DID reinvigorate the stale environs of mid-90's wrasslin' with his crude sexual innuendo, constant title changes, and sudden heel turns. Unfortunately, it's exactly this sort of Hard Sell writing that led to today's much-despised "New Era of Whimsy" and the mistreatment of Fudgie The Whale. Also, ECW did the same bit only about a gazillion times better.

Now he's back (for approximately the fourteenth time) in the desperate arms of TNA management. His writing "talents" have given us the Voodoo Kin Mafia, as well as the comedy stylings of Alex Shelley and Sonjay Dutt. He's also the reason that Thursday's hour-long iMPACT! episode only featured about twenty minutes of actual wrestling. What's worse, one of those matches was a brutal Kurt Angle squash of some damn cracker, and another featured the ponderous Tyson Tomko in a waddle-and-grimace-off with The Monster Abyss.

This left your action-starved correspondent with ONE MEASLY MATCH to watch, and it was some chaotic six-man tag schmozz that, while quite fun in a ludicrous spot-chasing kind of way, could not even hope to come close to this defiantly old-school number from last week's Smackdown!

In closing: to hell with Vince Russo. If wrestling fans hope to ever watch any actual wrestling, he will have to be removed. Maybe we can raise enough money to buy him and Sting some kind of frontier church where they can deliver the good word to apple-cheeked youngsters and pious housewives. Otherwise, expect TNA's admittedly scattershot booking to add entire new levels of meaning to the word "jittery." Also, Tyson Tomko will reveal that The Monster Abyss is pregnant with James Mitchell's demon baby.

A SmackDown! for the Ages...

...and I am sure you all missed it.

And the Rev forgives you, my lambs, because what else could one expect other than a full steaming stew of crapulance to spray out across the airwaves and into your innocent faces as it is wont to do every Friday night at 8pmPST on the local C'dub affiliate? But the past Friday Night SmackDown! was better, and for the first time in this lifetime, actually a superior product to Mssr. Monday Night Raw. As hard to believe as it is, the titanic New Year's Day Clash of the hardest core white rappers in the biz today, John Cena and Mr. Brittany "Tip-Toe through the Two Lips" Spears hardly left the impact of say even one-half a "OMG ITS KANE " Tombstone Piledriver delightfully delivered to the gambling and chewing gum addled skull of one Pete Rose.
But SmackDown!? SmackDown! delivered its most cohesive night of story telling since Jeff Hardy started saying "No" to drugs and "Yes" to seconds. And thirds.

And this humble clergy certainly could ask "Please Sir, 'an I 'ave some 'more?" and suffered the swift and certain Dickensonian retribution layed into my Tiny Tim ass, if only for another dose of the sweet ambrosia that is our country's longest standing proto-cultural feud.

No, I am not speaking of a scintillating inter-continental feud between the New Wigs and 'ol School Torries, or even Rosie and the Trump, but rather the original enemy of our dear civilisation, the sinister mystery that embodies an open wilderness and wild frontier, the dark recesses of our new world, the bloody savages drenched in pagan heathenism, the unbridled sub-human nature that is the Native American Turncoat TATANKA and his bitter arch rival, the most gallant of all American heroes, (well, perhaps a GI from WWII or from the popular Gulf War Ver. 1.0 might possibly be a more gallant hero) an all-American Cowboy Jimmy Wang Yang. Cowboys and Indians! Yes!

Please indulge your dear Rev. at this point by placing your open palm against your mouth and rapidly removing it, then again re-applying it whilst making a blood-thirsty "WOOOOOOO" noise as you do so. Now, you must understand the savagery that burns within TATANKA!

Now dear congregation, if you will indulge me just a bit more, turn your index fingers skyward and curl back the rest of your didgets to form a rudimentary pistol 'o flesh and say the words with me as you pump said pistol-fists skyward, "WOOO-HOOO!! YiP, YiP, YiP!!!! YEEEEE-HAAAA!!!" Exuberating, no?

Now I ask you, which of these two pantomimes do you believe to be the real, true, civilised war-hoot? If you replied the former, than believe me, you are destined to a pathetic existence of Tax-Free cigarettes, endless Whiskey drinking, and an insatiable urge to build Casinos and "Cultural" centers from sea-to-shining-sea.
But if like me, dear lambs, you found the cool imaginary steel a comfort to your cultural psyche, than I believe that you are on the right track, the long journey to that vaunted City on the Hill, the endless press to the West and its Manifest Destiny, just as is our daring and culturally correct young Jimmy Wang-Yang.
Join with me now in prayer, so that we might give young Mssr. Wang-Yang the strength that he most certainly will need to face the godless vessel of Satan that is the black heart of the savage TATANKA, and let him overcome all obstacles, be they poor booking, possible injury to the sternum (see last week's FridayNight SmackDown! for that one) or the loss of his lovely golden haired valet, whats-her-name. And let us pray for the delivery and salvation of the soul of the savage TATANKA, and pray that we never have to witness another 6min.+ demonstration of his pathetic winded pagan stumblings in our sacred squared circle, (in the words of fellow believer), AGAIIIIIIINNNNNN!!!!!!

Amen.

-The Rev.

Yr Vintage Rock-n-Rasslin' Poster of the Week

How TNA Has Impacted my Life, Part II

As a result of the overwhelming response throughout the Arabian Facebuster Nation to my reflections in this post, I would like to offer an updated account of how TNA Wrestling continues to touch my life:

1. Per the advice of Don West (the troglodyte pictured at left in the highly flammable shirt), I sold my Honus Wagner baseball card for $5.00 to a precocious 10 year old neighborhood boy. What a sucker...thanks DW!

2. I now refer to the Indian guy at my work as the "Original Playa from the Himalaya." It's far easier to pronounce (let alone remember) than Jawaharlal.

3. I no longer refer to my girlfriend's vagina as her "honey pot." It is henceforth nicknamed her "Impact Zone."

4. At my white trash cousin Brandy's wedding, I persuaded the band to supplant "Here Comes the Bride" with "Adrenaline Rush." Later that evening, I persuaded the disc jockey to spin some unreleased tracks from Ron "The Truth" Killings instead of "Celebration."

5. Like "The Professor" Mike Tenay, whenever I am confounded or disgusted by another person's thoughts, behaviors, or motivations, I accuse them of engaging in "sadistic mind games."

6. In order to help my married friend secure permission from the wife to go out for a night on the town (read: excessive drinking, followed by the defacing of historical landmarks, followed my more excessive drinking), I clamp the ankle lock submission on his unsuspecting significant other, threatening to "break her damn ankle" unless she capitulates to our plans. Not surprisingly, she taps out instantaneously.

7. In response to the on-screen taunts of the Latin American Exchange, I decided to enlist in the Minutemen Militia in order to combat the threat posed to our American values and way of life by illegal immigrants from the South. Instead of employing the more conventional method for keeping our borders secure -- shooting a suspected illegal in the face and asking questions later -- I give him/her a temporarily dehabilitating yet forever humiliating "Border Toss," then drape the stars and stripes over his/her limp body. Its called poetic justice, bitches.

A New New Era Of Whimsy

First of all, I want to make it abundantly clear that I did NOT watch RAW this week. After driving across town to find a RAW-friendly watering hole (cheers to the staff of "Tom's Pizza and Sports Bar" from all of us at Arabian Facebuster) and dropping twenty bones on High Life and Cheese Dip (a twenty I DID NOT HAVE if the chiselers at my credit union are to be believed) only to have last week's K-Fed appearance send the show spiralling into sub-debacle territory, I swore off RAW for all time (again).

As such, I did not witness the atrocity pictured here. I did, however, receive two critiques of the event from highly reputable sources. Our own Malibu Sands described it as "time-filling jibber jabber" and my darling Valerie (who watched it on some celebrity gossip site or other) found it "NOT FUNNY."

This comes as no suprise to me. When I consider the truly great comic minds of our modern era, I realize that not a man fucking jack of them works for a major wrestling promotion. Quite the opposite, in fact. While the cast of Stella take their place in the unemployment line, the Wrasslin' Masterminds churn out Michael Richards imitations and sub-par Jackassery. This faux Trump-Rosie feud is just the icing on a very unfunny cake.

Not to be confused with this guy over here, who actually IS a very funny cake, and deserves better than to be involved in this ridiculous angle.

The Origin of Macho's Madness Revealed!

Poor Randy Savage. First, Ms. Elizabeth left him for "The Total Package" Lex Luger. Then, he was booked into a lackluster feud with frivolous lawsuit initiator and chronic self-high-fiver Diamond Dallas Page. Soon thereafter, he was replaced as the spokesman for Slim Jim and their inimitable brand of artificially flavored meat-like products by a talking -- albeit eco-friendly -- computer generated wrapper. Finally, he cut the most (unintentionally) dreadful rap album of all time. Its sheer atrociousness makes K-Fed look like the second coming of Ghostface Muthafukin' Killah. Or if rap is not your forte, then replace "K-Fed" with "Hulk Hogan and the Wrestling Boot Band" and "Ghostface Killah" with "The Beatles" in the previous sentence.

What started this downward spiral for this once beloved and sane superstar? The only plausible explanation: a nasty bump on head thanks to the clumsiness of the sports entertainer currently known as The Big Shew.

Warning: repeated viewing of this clip may cause an uncontrollable fit of laughter and a temporary loss of empathy.

Yr Old Skool Masked Man of the Week

USWA Texas Heavyweight Champion The Punisher (i.e. The Undertaker) with Gen. Skandor Akbar. Dallas, TX circa 1989.

RAW is Indecipherable

From the incoherent lunatic backstage ramblings of the Great Khali (insert random keyboard strokes here to approximate transcription), to the equally incoherent lunatic in-ring ramblings of the Great Khali (awkwardly bellowing "Aaaarrrrgggg" to the rafters after every less than convincing knockdown of John Cena), to the incomprehensible, time-filling jibber jabber between fake Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell, to the affable Commie oaf Vladimir Kozlov (the guy pictured above who looks like the hypothetical love child of Batista and Shane McMahon) twice mispronouncing the name of the very company that signs his undeservedly gigantic paychecks ("I love double double E, I love double double E,"), I imagine that last night's episode of RAW frustrated and perplexed linguists and etymologists alike.

Update: Preliminary chatter from the academic community seems to support my contention. According to notorious ivory tower lefty George Lakoff, The George "The Animal" Steele Endowed Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, "USA brands itself as the network to find compelling, complex, and relatable characters. However, after viewing last night's egregious episode of RAW, seemingly the only 'characters welcome' on its network are inscrutable Neanderthals and mush-mouthed celebrity imposters. For shame."

Ladies and Gentlemen, The President Of The United States...

I hope you're ready to stand up and cheer. Take a quick hop through this link and check out exactly how worthy the gentleman on the left is. Worthy of internets acclaim. Worthy of the WWE Championship. Worthy of the PRESIDENCY.

He's more independent than McCain, he's smarter than Bush (in the same way that the sun is brighter than a mine shaft), and he's as white as the driven snow. If it weren't for that darn Nazi thing, he'd be the Red State-er most likely to capture the crucial anarchist-pinko vote.

The less this guy wrestles, the more I like him.

Yr Old Skool Mustaches of the Week

Robert Gibson and Ricky Morton: The Rock and/or Roll Express