Some Random Quotes V7

Artificial intelligence can never replace natural stupidity.

I had to talk with my family at dinner today because the battery on my phone died :(

There is no past, there is no future, there is only this moment and you're using it to read this?!

Facebook is not so bad once you block your family and friends.

John 3:16. Matthew 3:17. Luke 3:18. It was a very close race.

Girls, just remember each morning when you put on makeup, somewhere in the world a clown is starting his day doing exactly the same thing

Home is where the Wi-Fi is.

Behind every pretty woman there is a bunch of jealous women making up lies about her.

The amount of time my phone spends plugged in, you may as well call it a landline

I offended you with my opinion? You should hear the ones I keep to myself.

Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the reason is that you're ignorant and make bad decisions.

It's all fun and games until she unlocks your phone on her own.

Money can't buy happiness. But love can't buy a Ferrari, either

Talking to Myself: Awaiting Payback

Written for The Wrestling Game     Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I am back with the lucky 13th episode of "Talking to Myself". In this article I will be starting 2 new segments as I await WWE's next pay-per-view, "Payback", in hope that they will give me material to bash at them some more.     Before I start, I would just like to mention that WWE seems to be working on getting better programing and is trying to get better ratings. Segments featuring McMahons this and last week were nice and I have enjoyed most of Raw this week. If only they didn't ruin it with Ryback vs. Cena snooze fest at the end, I would say it was very good. Seriously, if they keep it up and stop using Smackdown as a Raw recap show, I might start enjoying watching WWE.    And now, lets start with the segments! I will be using this first new segment every time WWE and/or TNA do something incredibly stupid. The name of the segment is: How Stupid Can You Be?     So, what made me start this segment? Well, as some of you might know, I am a fan of Damien Sandow and in the last few weeks he was showing off his "superior" intellect in a few promos that included Sheamus attacking him at the end. Now, putting aside the fact that Sandow finally got a chance to knock out Sheamus, the rest of the promo was complete and utter crap.    The promo started with Sandow standing in the ring with a table and a monitor on the table. He claimed that he was going to play chess against Deep Blue computer, that was famous for defeating Gary Kasparov in 1997, in a chess game, while Kasparov was the reigning world champion.    Now, there were a few problems with that picture. First problem is that Deep Blue was disassembled in 1997 after Kasparov complained that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the machine's moves, which means that human chess players might have intervened during the game and that was against the rules. There's that and then there is the fact that a closeup of the monitor reviled that the chess pieces weren't set up correctly. White queen goes to the left of the white king, not to the right, as it was on the monitor and black king and queen were also in the wrong positions. Also, when you make your move, the computer usually follows with a move of its own, which didn't happen and their game ended up after only one move, because Sheamus came out to kick the computer.    So, with all those WWE employees and Sandow claiming to win a chess tournament at the age of 8, it seems that nobody in WWE can set up a chess board correctly (something I was able to do at the age of 5).    Right, with that behind us, I can now start my second new segment in which I will be gloating about any of my predictions that turn out to be true. The segment is called: I Told You So!    Those of you that read my articles might remember that in my "Why WWE, Why?" article I have mentioned Kaitlyn's secret admirer storyline and added that I think that her "secret admirer" is just AJ Lee pulling her leg. Well, guess what. I was right! If you missed it, Big E Langston came out with some flowers for Kaitlyn, pretendin g to be her secret admirer and after dropping Kaitlyn on her behind, AJ came out to laugh at her. It was AJ all along and I told you so!    Well, this is all I have for you this week. My name is Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Awaiting Payback". Thank you all for reading and commenting and I will be back next week with another article (hopefully bashing WWE's fails at Payback). Until then, I bid you adieu!

Talking to Myself: Future TNA Hall of Famers

Written for The Wrestling Game     Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for this 12th episode of "Talking to Myself". Since I didn't write as many articles about TNA as I did about WWE, I have decided to write about TNA roster again. Last Sunday at Slammiversary, Kurt Angle got inducted into TNA Hall of Fame, so in this episode of "Talking to Myself", I will write about some people that in my opinion deserve to be future TNA Hall of Fame inductees. Some of the info has been taken from Wikipedia. Jeff Jarrett     I'm going to start with the guy that should have been the first inductee (in my opinion). Jeffrey Leonard Jarrett was born on July 14th, 1967 in Hendersonville, Tennessee. He is a third generation wrestler and he held seventy championships in various promotions (a total of 22 in WWE, WCW and TNA), including 11 world championships. Jarrett is also one of the founders of TNA and I think it is obvious why he deserves to be in the TNA Hall of Fame. AJ Styles    AJ Styles was born as Allen Neal Jones on June 2nd, 1977 and has been wrestling for TNA since TNA's first show. In the 11 years of TNA, he has been one of their top stars and he held World Heavyweight Championship four times, X Division Championship six times, World Tag Team Championship six times and Television Championship two times. AJ is the first to complete the TNA Triple Crown Championship and the TNA Grand Slam Championship and he is the only wrestler in TNA that held every male championship owned and sanctioned by TNA at any point during the company's history. Any questions about why he should be in the TNA Hall of Fame? Hulk Hogan    A legend of professional wrestling, WWE Hall of Famer, the current on - screen GM of TNA and a guy that I find to be very annoying lately. Maybe if his every other word would not be "brother", I might still tolerate him, but every time he grabs a microphone, I just want to push the mute button. Since everyone knows who he is I won't waste much time introducing him. Born as Terry Eugene Bollea on August 11th, 1953, this 13 time world champion is the second longest combined reigning WWF Champion of all time, the longest reigning champion of the 1980s, the longest reigning WCW World Heavyweight Champion of all time and holds two of ten longest title runs in WWE history (9th and 4th). With all his fame and accomplishments, he will most likely join the TNA Hall of Fame eventually, which is the main reason why he is on this list. As I have mentioned before, I find him to be very annoying and I think he should have stopped appearing full time on TV a long time ago.     Even though TNA has a few more people that deserve or most likely will deserve.to join their Hall of Fame, I'm gonna end this list with only three people on it. TNA inducts only one person every year anyway, so my list is good for the next three years :P. Instead, I am going to use this opportunity to start a segment called: Surprise of the Week    I will be using this segment in my articles every time WWE or TNA do something good for a change. In this first installment of the segment, I will mention a match form this year's Slammiversary. The participants were: Gail Kim and Tarryn Terrell.    I am not much of a fan of Divas and Knockouts matches because they... well, suck. There is a lot of hair pulling, unnecessary screaming and not enough well executed moves. Even though I find most of their matches to be boring, this one was quite good and judging by the reactions from the fans that were in the arena, they liked it too. Sure, there was a lot of hair pulling and unnecessary screaming, but these two ladies went a bit further then Divas and Knockouts usually do. Gail went flying head first into a chair that was wedged in the corner, Tarryn missed Gail on the Spear attempt and went flying trough the ropes, landing on the ramp outside of the ring and after fighting on the ramp for a while, they both went flying off the ramp to the arena floor.    It was a well fought battle and they deserved to be cheered by the fans. I just hope that they plan to give us more matches like that in the future. Comments from Readers    First two comments are from two weeks ago, but since I didn't respond to them last week, I will respond to them this week.    Max van Balen wrote: "Wow man another great article. The only one i really dont get is sin cara. And wy mark henry isnt on this list. I think sin cara is just in his wrestling prime. Altough wwe did change some stuff hes still entertaining. They also changed some other guys wich came out great. About embarrising himself that will be forgoten after a intercontinental push or something like that. My opinion of Mark Henry is pretty much that indeed he can still wrestle. But if you look at the time hes been in wwe and what he got for it is in my opinion way to less. 16 years he is with the company but got way less then brock lesnar who wwe seem to like. So i dont see his point to continue. Atleast thanks for another great article and i am looking forward to next week. Greetz Max"    About Sin Cara: I agree that he is in his prime, but  judging form the mistakes he makes in the ring, he should either practice more or change his style. At this moment, he can do a lot of damage to himself and his opponents if he keeps up botching like that. A change is definitely what he needs.    About Mark Henry: That list was for people who are either to old and too broken or people who are too old and wrestling par time. And Sin Cara. Mark Henry is not too broken and he is wrestling full time, so he didn't get on that list. The fact that he gotten less then Lesnar even though he has been in WWE for 16 years is just another blemish on WWE's record and has nothing to do with Mark Henry.    Arabash MKJ wrote: "wow another great artical I love reading your articals hmm I wonder if you could make a article of people on twitter are trying to threathen the Best In The World CM Punk saying "If you care for wrestling come back to the WWE" or "CM Punk shut your mouth" it's really disturbing but they do not know he is resting his knee.Stupid Zombie Cenation Apocolypse"    No, I will not be writing an article about that. I honestly don't think that people who write comments like the ones you mentioned deserve to be mentioned anywhere at all, so I'll just pass.    brian wrote: "perhaps u could list your favorite finishers of all time"    I was thinking about writing something like that, but I remember a few articles written about favorite finishers on this site already, so I have decided not to write another one. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.    Well, this is all I have for you this week. My name is Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Future TNA Hall of Famers". Thank you all for reading and commenting and I will be back next week with another article. Until then, I bid you adieu!

Talking to Myself: Same Old Same Old

Written for The Wrestling Game     Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for another episode of "Talking to Myself".     To be honest with you, I have no idea what to write about any more. I wrote about the past, I wrote about the future, I wrote about the present and with wrestling seemingly stuck in a rut, I have nothing to write about any more. WWE and TNA seem to be hellbent on doing nothing to make a better product even though wrestling fans keep "awarding" them with lower and lower ratings. I wish I could recycle articles like they are recycling storylines. I'm sure that would be just as fun to read as watching WWE and TNA interrupt commercials with bad matches and worse promos.    I watched WWE's Raw and Smackdown and TNA's Impact this week in hope I would get some inspiration for an article and the only thing I was inspired to do is quit watching wrestling. Sure, there are other promotions I could watch, but I have no intention of watching a promotion that brags about their top talent leaving to join WWE or TNA. That somehow tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth.    I take pride in being a wrestling fan. It takes some courage to admit that you are a fan of something that is fake/scripted, especially since I live in a country that doesn't have many wrestling fans and people tend to laugh at me when I say I watch pro wrestling. What I am even more proud of is my ability to make them look stupid after I explain to them that watching wrestling is not so different then watching a movie. For every "Wrestling is fake. They don't really fight.", I respond with "So are the movies. They don't really fight in them either.". For every "There is no blood in wrestling.", I respond with "There is no blood in movies either. That crap they use in movies is mostly ketchup (believe it or not).".   Then I go on and explain to them that to me wrestling is not just watching two guys jumping around the ring while touching each other. There have storylines, they insult each other, pull pranks on each other and watching them execute some of more complicated moves is only half of the fun. Watching them fail to execute them is the other half. And after explaining to them how some of the more "dangerous" maneuvers (tables, chairs, juicing, etc) actually work, they realize that I am not just some idiot that thinks that wrestling is real, but that I am an idiot that actually knows how wrestling "works". There were some that even started watching wrestling occasionally after talking to me.     It was easy to get people interested in wrestling during the "Attitude Era". My brother had a friend that called me a month after having one of those conversations with me about wrestling to ask me if I saw what Goldberg did to Henning on WCW Monday Nitro (it was a three move victory for Goldberg) that week. I laughed. These days I'm sometimes having problems getting myself to watch wrestling. Watching moments like Daniel Brian taking on The Shield all by himself help a little because they give me hope in the future of professional wrestling, but those moments seem to be rare recently. Let's hope WWE and TNA wake up soon. They both have talent for great TV moments, they just need to push them a bit more.    Well, this is all I have for you this week. I apologize for a short article and for not having "Comments From Readers" this week, but I am writing this very late, I am very tired and my wife is getting restless. I am Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Same Old Same Old". Thank you all for reading and commenting and I will be back next week with another article. Until then, I bid you adieu!

Talking to Myself: Just Give Up

Written for The Wrestling Game     Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for another episode of "Talking to Myself". Last week I was writing about people who I see as the future of WWE, so this week I will be writing about people who should retire. Some of the names here might surprise you and some of the names might not (especially if you have read my previous articles). Just like last week, some of the info in this article has been taken from Wikipedia. Chris Jericho     American - born Canadian wrestler born as Christopher Keith Irvine on November 9th, 1970. Joined Hart Brothers School of Wrestling in 1990 and two months later he had his first match as "Cowboy" Chris Jericho. After wrestling in Canada, Mexico an Japan, he came back to USA and eventually joined ECW in 1996. Since then, he won about 30 championships in ECW, WCW and WWE. Currently, he is alternating between being a wrestler in WWE and being a lead singer in Fozzy (a band he formed in 1999). He is still a big star in WWE and he can still wrestle, so I am sure that a lot of you will wonder why is he on this list. Well, my reason is simple. He can't commit full time to wrestling and he is only being used as a stepping stone for new wrestlers (people like Fandango). Besides, he already retired more than once (last time after being defeated by Dolph Ziggler) and that makes it hard for me to take him seriously. The Great Khali    Yes, he made it back to my article. I talk about this guy so much that some might think I hate him, but that is not the case. This first ever Indian wrestler in WWE was born on August 27th, 1972 as Dalip Singh Rana. He was a police officer in the Punjab state police before becoming a wrestler and he first came to WWE in 2006. Since then he won World Heavyweight Championship, Slammy Award for "Damn!" Moment of the Year and two Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards (Most Overrated and Worst Gimmick). He can "thank" Acromegaly for his looks, which is a disorder that causes the anterior pituitary gland to produce excess growth hormone. It also causes tumors and Khali had to have brain surgery in 2012. I talked about him in my previous articles a lot, mentioning problems with his legs (among other things) and I think it's fairly obvious why he is on this list. Rey Mysterio    Oscar Gutierrez Rubio, born on December 11th, 1974, made his wrestling debut in Mexico at the age of 14. He worked for AAA and then came to ECW in 1995. He was in WCW from 1996 to 2001 and then came to WWE in 2002. He won a total of 21 championships in WCW and WWE and he is one of the most popular wrestlers in WWE. Unfortunately, he also has a history of knee injuries and as a result he is often missing from the action.  Since this is happening a lot lately, I think it would be best if he would retire. Sin Cara     Luis Ignascio Urive Alvirde, born on December 22nd, 1982, made his wrestling debut on April 30th, 1998 at the age of 15. He wrestled as Mistico since 2004 and changed his name to Sin Cara when he debuted in WWE in 2011. He was a big star as Mistico and he got a few awards in 2006 from Wrestling Observer (Performer of the Year, Biggest Box Office Draw, and Best Flying Wrestler), but since he came to WWE he has been botching everything he could - his ring entrance, moves he executed in the ring and even tagging his partner. After embarrassing himself and injuring himself on a few occasions, I think he should just quit. Triple H     This guy doesn't need much introduction. He was born on July 27th, 1969 as Paul Michael Levesque. He wrestled in WCW as Terra Ryzing and Jean-Paul Lévesque and then came to WWE as Hunter Hearst Helmsley (abbreviated to Triple H after forming Degeneration X with Shawn Michaels). He won 23 championships during his career in WWE and he is currently wrestling part time. Even though he still looks good in the ring (just like Chris Jericho), he is wrestling occasionally and I see no reason why he should keep doing it any more. He should retire and take his spot in WWE Hall of Fame. Undertaker     I will finish the "official" part of the article with another guy that doesn't need much introduction. He was born on March 24th, 1965 as Mark William Calaway and joined WWE in 1990 and he won almost everything there is to win there (he is one of four superstars still eligible to become a Grand Slam Champion). He is also wrestling occasionally, but unlike Chris Jericho and Triple H, the reason for that are his problems with his knees. Aside from his Wrestlemania streak, I really see no reason for him to continue to perform. He should retire as undefeated at Wrestlemania and just like Triple H, take his spot in WWE Hall of Fame. Comments From Readers    Max van Balen wrote: "Hello my name is Max and i love your artical. You have fair opinions and they are fun to read. So i have a request. What about a artical about upsets. like who won a match or about title changes or heel face turns. I would love to know what you think are the best ones. Greetz a huge fan, Max van Balen"    First of all, thank you for the comment and kind words! As for your request, I don't think I will be writing an article about upsets or face/heel turns (at least not any time soon). I pretty much write what ever pops into my mind (sometimes a few hours before I actually write an article) and whenever I think about upsets, the only thing that pops in my head is me getting upset over the crap WWE and TNA are trying to sell as "entertainment".    As for heel/face turns, I really don't know what to write about them. In my opinion, the best people that could do face/heel turns are Lex Luger and CM Punk. Watching those two I have a feeling they could start a show with a heel turn, then do a face turn within an hour and then turn heel again within the next hour and the people would not only buy it, but also love it. So, no article, but at least an opinion.    Well, this is all I have for you this week. I am Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Just Give Up". Thank you all for reading and commenting and I will be back next week with another article. Until then, I bid you adieu! For a little "extra" hold your cursor over the text of the article.

Talking to Myself: The future of WWE

Written for The Wrestling Game     Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for another episode of "Talking to Myself". In this article I will be talking about current WWE wrestlers that in my opinion deserve a push and deserve to be the future top stars of this business. Please note that some people will not be mentioned in this article (people like Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler, The Miz, etc) simply because those guys already got or are getting a push in WWE. This article is about people who seem to get skipped or forgotten when it's time to give a shot at the top two titles in WWE. Some of the info was taken from Wikipedia. Antonio Cesaro     Swiss wrestler, born as Claudio Castagnoli on December 27th, 1980 . He started wrestling in 2000 and was a part of ROH, Chikara, Pro Wrestling Noah and other independent wrestling organizations before coming to WWE in September of 2011. At this point WWE doesn't know what to do with him and that's a shame. He is good in the ring, he is good at the mic, he held title before (both singles and tag team) and he has great potential. Unfortunately, WWE has a creative team that seems to lack creativity. I hope they come up with something soon and he doesn't end up as just another jobber. Brodus Clay    Born on February 21st, 1980 as George Murdoch, Brodus Clay signed a contract with WWE in 2006. He was released in 2008 and resigned in 2010 and he got his RAW debut in March of 2010 as Alberto Del Rio's bodyguard. He was also in the 4th season of NXT and he ended up in the second place, losing to Johnny Curtis (Fandango). Brodus is the only "dancer" in the WWE roster that makes dancing look like a good part of his gimmick even though he is one of the big guys in WWE. His size doesn't stop him from moving around the ring and the fans love him. I see no reason why he shouldn't become a big star in this industry. Cody Rhodes    Cody Garrett Runnels, born June 30th, 1985, son of Dusty Rhodes and half-brother of Goldust. A man that has wrestling in his veins. He was a referee in his father's promotion during high school and started wrestling in 2006 and made his WWE television debut in 2007. It didn't take him long before he started winning titles and at the age of (almost) 28 he still has a lot of time to become the top guy in WWE and in wrestling in general. He has the skills, he has the background, he has time... Let's hope that WWE doesn't mess up. Damien Sandow     Born as Aaron Steven Haddad on August 3rd, 1981, formerly known in WWE as Idol Stevens, majored in psychology and urban studies at Worcester State University. Debuted on June 23rd, 2001 in Chaotic Wrestling and signed his first contract with WWE in 2002. He made his Smackdown debut in 2006 and was soon sent back to OVW. After going back to the independent circle, he signed a new contract with WWE in 2010 and came back to Smackdown in 2012 as Damien Sandow. This guy is one of my favorite wrestlers that are currently signed to WWE. I love his attitude, his gimmick and his in ring abilities. If this guy doesn't become a legend in this business, then WWE really deserves to get shut down and be forgotten. Wade Barrett     Stuart Alexander Bennett was born on August 10th, 1980 and made his wrestling debut in 2004. He had tryouts with WWE in 2006 and 2007 when he finally signed a contract with them. Barret was the winner of the first season of NXT and he made his Raw debut in 2010 as the leader of Nexus. This former bare-knuckle boxing champion is the current WWE Intercontinental champion. The fact that he is holding one of their titles doesn't seem to stop WWE from using him as a jobber. Not even to people like Sin "Botch-Daddy" Cara. I really hope WWE decides to manage his career a bit better because this guy has great potential. Comments From Readers    That is the end of the "official" article and I will use this opportunity to start a segment entitled "Comments From Readers" where I will be responding to some of the comments made by people who read my articles at WrestlingGame.com and take the time to comment on them.    Julie Bow wrote: "some interesting thoughts you have here and I completely agree with it all even though I don't have to ;) So now that you told us everything that is wrong, come with your own solution, what stories could they run, what steps needs to be taken to bring their game up (beyond bring the tag team titles back), what can they do with guys like Khali since dancing seems not to be a part of it."    I'm gonna start with the guys like The Great Khali. As I mentioned before in one of my earlier articles, guys like The Great Khali shouldn't be in this business at all. Sure, the guy is huge, and looks like a monster, but he can barely walk. Not only that, he can barely talk. I do understand that a person can't grow to that size without deformations and health problems and that my comments about him may be considered as derogatory (which is not my intention), but this guy is at least 30 years too late to be a wrestler. He could have been a huge star in 70's and 80's, but people today ask for speed, agility and high risk moves from wrestlers. Khali is not the guy who can offer that. When he was feuding with Batista for the World title and he wasn't a dancing clown, but a monster that was destroying everything in his path... That could have worked even with his current health issues. With his current gimmick, I don't see much use for him in wrestling. So, what can they do with the guys like Khali? Not much, really.    As for the stories and steps that they need to make to bring their game up, I have a few suggestions. Storylines should be fun and entertaining. Instead of hiring a writer who wrote soap operas, maybe they should hire some comedians. Mix up some serious storylines with a little more comedy. Another thing they should do is make the matches more interesting. Speed them up a little and add more high-flying action. Maybe they could bring back the Hardcore division or at least have a Hardcore PPV ( Extreme Rules could be the one). I know that would make wrestling more dangerous, but they didn't care much about that during the "Attitude Era", did they? When the competition was strong and WWE had to fight for ratings and Linda McMahon wasn't in politics they weren't so "concerned" about the "safety" of their employees.    Well, this is all I have for you this week. I am Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: The future of WWE". I will be back next week with another article and until then, I bid you adieu!

Talking to Myself: Why WWE, Why?

Written for The Wrestling Game     Hello people of TWG™ (hi Julie!) and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for another episode of "Talking to Myself". In this article I will be venting out my frustration about the last few episodes of WWE programing and their programing in general. Before I start let me just apologize for not writing an article last week. I was busy all week with my full time job and since this job pays in supporter, I just decided to get some sleep instead of writing an article.     So, I was planing on writing about people I see as the future of this business (professional wrestling, not writing) but after watching last week and this week Raw (I had to skip Smackdown and Impact due to before mentioned time constraints, but judging by the ratings I'd say I didn't miss much) I have decided to write about this instead and keep the other topic for next week. Now, I understand that WWE has no real competition and that they don't have to bother to give people a good product to stay at the top, but this serious amount of suckage (I know that's not a real word) is getting really frustrating to watch. I do understand I don't really have to watch it, but what else is there for me to do? I already saw all of the episodes of my favorite shows, I saw all the movies I wanted to watch and I don't like other sports that much (so you got a sport where a bunch of people carry an egg in their hands and you call it "football" and you have a sport where 22 guys chase a ball for 90 minutes and the game ends at 0:0 and you call that "entertaining"). Sure, some will say that pro wrestling is not really a sport, but at least they admit it's all prearranged.    Right, so what is my problem with wrestling and WWE? Let's see. Last week they had a dancing contest between Fandango and The Great Khali (you know, that big guy that can barely walk) and the audience was to decide who will be the winner. It seems to me that WWE is having a hard time realizing that all of those people are Fandangoing as a joke. They don't really like Faaan-daaan-gooo or his stupid giii-miiick. All those "You can't wrestle!" chants during his matches should be their first clue. The second clue should be the fact that he lost the dancing contest to The Great Khali. I know that Fandango's dancing in the ring that night was crap (I am no expert but that looked ridiculous) and that blond chick he had as his partner had a hard time doing splits (why did they have here as his partner if she can't do those right? I mean, it's a part of his entrance and she can't do it right), but Khali and Natalia looked like they were fighting instead of dancing.    So, Khali and Natalia win and Fandango decides to attack Khali by clipping his leg. Unfortunatelly, he decided to clip his left leg and everyone knows that Khali's left leg doesn't bend at the knee. Needless to say, it all looked ridiculous even before Fandango decided to execute a Russian leg sweep which looked bad because Khali is too big for Fandango to do that move on him. Right, that went bad, so WWE decides to have another dancing contest next week where Fandango will be dancing against Chris Jericho. I can't wait! :(     Another thing that frustrates me is the lack of good storylines. Or any storylines for that matter. Right now I would settle for a bunch of bad storylines. At least have one storyline for every title you have. It's not like you have that many titles in one organization. Instead, WWE decided to just have a storyline for the top two titles and maybe for the diva's title (I think that Kaitlyn's "secret admirer" is AJ Lee and that all of that is just her joke). US and Intercontinental champions are used as jobbers and Tag Team champions are involved with The Shield in a storyline that has nothing to do with the Tag Titles (at least for now). So what is the point in having those titles at all?     And what is with all those people WWE creative has no idea what to do with? And why are they called "creative" when they can't think of what to do with people? How about you take those people and form a bunch of tag teams with them and let them fight over the Tag Team titles. Get that Tag Team division going again. Or fire some people you don't need or don't know what to do with them. You can start with firing WWE creative. It doesn't look like they are doing much anyway.    Seriously, with this kind of programing the future of pro wrestling looks bad. I just hope TNA will come up with something good soon. With WWE doing so badly it shouldn't take them much to take the top spot away from them. All they need to do is stop copying them and stop recycling old storylines and get a few good ideas going. Maybe see if CM Punk is willing to jump to TNA and give him a good run in TNA. Or take Cena and turn him heel. I'm sure a lot of people would tune in to see that.    Well, this is all I have for you this week. I am Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Why WWE, Why?". I will be back next week with another article and until then, I bid you adieu!

Some Random Quotes V6

If you don't think drinking gives you added confidence, you should see the shorts I ordered online at 3am

9 out of 10 voices in my head say I am crazy... the 10th just hums the Tetris tune.

Be careful what you wish for because it'll suck when you don't get it.

What's worse than getting a text from your girlfriend saying "I'm breaking up with you"? Getting a second, saying "Sorry, that wasn't meant for you"

If you are ever at a playground this summer and someone asks you which kid is yours, just for fun tell them you haven't decided yet.

Why does gravity cease to function when removing ketchup from a bottle?

The people who shout the loudest about their all powerful God protecting them & delivering them from any evil, also own a gun, just in case.

Imagine calling for an ambulance and hearing: "I'm afraid we don't do house calls anymore but we can pray for you if you think that helps"

Guys communicate by insulting each other, but don't really mean it. Girls communicate by complimenting each other, but don't really mean it.

Triangles make poor wheels

With great power comes a total lack of responsibility.

Woman's "I'll be ready in 5 min" is the same as man's "I'll be home in 5 min".

Looking at Facebook is a great way to realize you can't stand most of the people you know.

Talking to Myself: Short History of TNA

Written for The Wrestling Game       Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for another episode of "Talking to Myself". In this article, I will be talking about the history of TNA (or Impact Wrestling as some call it today). Originally, I wanted to write about the history of WWE, but I am too lazy to go trough 61 year old history of the number one wrestling promotion today, so number two it is! Some of the info was taken from Wikipedia.     Well, once upon a time there was a wrestling organization called WCW. After WCW was sold to WWF (you can read about that in my previous article called "Rewriting History"), Jeff Jarret and his father Jerry Jarret went fishing with their friend Bob Ryder. While they were fishing (honestly, I think they just went drinking), Jarrets have decided to form a new wrestling organization that would rival WWF which was at the time the only wrestling product on US national TV. Since a lot of TV stations thought that wrestling was "risky business", they eventually decided to run their shows as weekly PPVs.     Since their company started as a member of National Wrestling Alliance, they called it NWA Total Nonstop Action. Their first show aired on June 19th 2002 and after a while they were able to get a TV deal from Fox Sports. Their show was called TNA Impact and it featured their famous six sided ring for the first time. One year later, Fox Sports decided not to renew their TV deal with TNA and TNA had to start making webcasts broadcasting from their website, using BitTorrent (yes kids, you can use BitTorrent for something other the illegal downloading) and RealPlayer.    Later, they were able to close a TV deal with Spike TV and return to weekly TV programing. I the attempt to become more competitive with WWE, they have decided to run Impact on Mondays and they went back to four sided ring. Since that backfired, soon they were back to their Thursday slot (lucky for them Spike TV people were smart enough to keep it open by running reruns of Impact on Thursdays).    Eventually, TNA was sold in full to Panda Energy International, a company that constructs, maintains and operates environmentally friendly power plants. The company is family business owned by Robert W. Carter (father of Dixie Carter). Apparently, she talked her father into buying TNA to save it from bankruptcy when HealthSouth Corporation (largest owner and operator of inpatient rehabilitative hospitals in the United States that was involved in a corporate accounting scandal after being accused of directing company employees to falsely report grossly exaggerated company earnings in order to meet stockholder expectations) decided to withdraw their support. And now you know how Dixie Carter became the president of TNA.    TNA tried various ways to make themselves look different then other wrestling promotions. Aside from a hexagonal ring, they also formed the X Division. They didn't want it to look like a cruiserweight division (even though most of the performers were below 220 lbs), so they advertised it as "It's not about weight limits, it's about no limits". Most people loved the hexagonal ring and the X Division and were disappointed with the arrival of Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan who decided to bring back the four sided ring and pretty much turn the X Division into the cruiserweight division.     A few bad decisions later, a lawsuit against WWE that went nowhere and storyline recycling, TNA ended up being a product it is today: A bad copy of WWE trying to get ratings that will endanger WWE's top spot and failing miserably. When WWE officials were contemplating renaming WWE to World Entertainment (since the company has "moved on" from being just a wrestling company in their "humble" opinions) TNA decided to change their brand name to "Impact Wrestling" (because to them "wrestling matters"). That decision was yet another fail to get more ratings because even though "wrestling matters" to TNA, it seems that TNA doesn't matter much to wrestling. Unless you are from the UK. Rumors are that TNA tends to beat WWE rankings there.    Well, this is all I have for you this week. I am Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Short History of TNA". I will be back next week with another article and until then, I bid you adieu!

Talking to Myself: Rewriting History

Written for The Wrestling Game       Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for another episode of "Talking to Myself". In this article, I will be talking about WWE and their everlasting need to change what has happened in the past just to make themselves and their stupid ideas look good.     Honestly, I had no idea what I was going to write about this week. I wanted to write about the Divas and Knockouts, but it seems one of the other writers was writing about Divas last week, so I was stuck with nothing to write about (well, there is always something to write about - I just couldn't think of a topic).     I was excited about Smackdown show last week. I couldn't wait to watch it just to see how the crowd will react after the best Raw episode ever (in my opinion) that I wrote about last week. If you read my article and watched Smackdown I am sure you know that I was disappointed. Raw was no better this week either. I guess CS was right when he wrote that if you want that kind of pop, you would have to have every Raw in NYC (read the comment on my last article).     Now, even though I was disappointed in both Raw and Smackdown shows, one thing caught my eye and gave me an idea for an article. I forgot which show had that segment, but WWE decided to show a recap of Cena's post Wrestlemania celebration on last week's Raw. Naturally, it was edited "slightly".     I am not going to lie. My memory is not very good. I work a lot, I don't sleep much, I am married and have a kid. The only time I have some peace is late at night while my wife and kid are sleeping, unless I work at night (which is often). Then I have some time while the wife is at work and the kid is in the kindergarten, but that also means I won't sleep much... and I digressed again.     Anyway, WWE showed the recap of Cena's .segment last week and even though I remember people booing so loud that you almost couldn't hear any cheers (but if you look at the paragraph above you will see why I could be wrong), the recap had nothing but cheers and happy faces in it. That reminded me of a little hobby WWE has: Rewriting history and selling people false information. For example, everybody loves The Rock, right? They like him so much that they are forgetting that in his "prime" the people's champion was like John Cena in some ways. One way is that (contrary to what WWE wants people to remember) not everybody liked The Rock. Just like there are "Lets go Cena" and "Cena sucks" chants alternating during John Cena's matches, "Lets go Rocky" and "Rocky sucks" chants were alternating during Dwayne's matches. I guess that after he left WWE to become a big movie star (which hasn't happened yet, no matter what WWE says) people forgot about that. I am sure that some people will say that The Rock already is a big movie star, but as long as people refer to him as "that guy from Scorpion King" and then other people ask "What is Scorpion King?", he will not be a big movie star in my eyes.     So, WWE has been doing things like that for a long time. Not only did they start storylines and then abandoned them pretending they never happened (kind of what TNA has been doing), they are also flat out lying about their biggest "win" ever. Their acquisition of WCW and their victory in "Monday Night War".     This story has been told over and over again. WCW and WWE were duking it out for ratings in the mid and late 1990's. WCW was on top for over a year and then WWE (WWF at the time) took over the rankings and eventually bought WCW. It was a great victory for WWE and their chairman Vince McMahon and everyone has been bowing down to him ever since. Like in every war, the winners wrote the history and soon Vince McMahon shaped the history the way he liked it. He bought WCW because his company was better, he bought WCW because WCW's ratings were so bad they had to sell it and the ratings were bad because Vince is a genius and he made WWE the best wrestling company in the world all by himself...  and WCW ruined everything.    Lets forget for a moment that all wrestling promotions have people that write storylines, people that work behind the scenes and (of course) people who perform in the ring and that all Vince had to do is say "We'll do this and won't do that" and concentrate a bit on the facts that actually "destroyed" WCW.     When WCW was at the top, it was owned by Time Warner company. WCW had a drop in ratings and WWF was at the top when they bought WCW, but the reason WCW was being sold was not bad ratings. The reason for sale was Time Warner merging with AOL who had no interest in WCW. Rumors are that Eric Bischoff had a group of investors that offered 60 million $ to buy WCW, but AOL was in charge of Time Warner and the ordered TNT and TBS to terminate all wrestling, basketball and baseball programs. Since there was no TV deal included in the sale of WCW, Eric Bischoff and his group of investors decided to back down and WWF remained the only interested party whose interest was WCW name, logo and video archive (30 or so years of footage that was worth a fortune all by itself). Rumors are that WWF bought WCW for 6 million $.     These days WWE has the largest archive of wrestling videos and they like to show them off as WWE's past events even though, at the time of the making, most of those videos had nothing to do with WWE (or WWF) or the almighty Vince McMahon and his team of trained monkeys.    Well, I could go on and on about this topic, but I would like to leave some material for another time and I don't want to stretch this article for too long (also, I just looked at the time and I have to go). I am Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Rewriting History". I will be back next week with another article and until then, I bid you adieu!

Talking to Myself: Best Raw Ever

Written for The Wrestling Game

Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for another episode of "Talking to Myself". In this article, I will be talking about Raw that aired on April 8th 2013.    I have been watching wrestling for a long time and I can honestly say that I have never seen a more entertaining episode of Raw and the fact that it was the best episode of Raw had nothing to do with anything WWE did. It had nothing to do with the matches that were scheduled, wrestlers that appeared on the show or promos they held. The reason why I liked that show was the fans.    The show started with John Cena coming out to flash his newly won WWE championship belt, just to get booed by the audience. By the way, did anyone notice the new shirt he was wearing? "The champ is here" with an arrow pointing downward? Sure, there is a WWE title belt drawn below the arrow, but please don't tell me you didn't find that shirt funny. Basically implying that the champ is... you know... No?    Anyway, Cena came out to suck up to the fans as usual and got booed so loud you could barely hear the cheers. I'm sure everyone is already used to it, but I don't understand why is he still doing it. I understand that he and WWE want the people to like him, but can't they see that what they are doing is not working? The kids love him, so they can't make him do a heel turn (it would be like shooting the Santa and Easter bunny on live TV), but if they want people to like him, all they have to do is make him stop sucking up to the fans. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin never sucked up to the fans. The Undertaker never sucked up to the fans. Kane never sucked up to the fans. Everybody hated The Rock until he said "You know what? I hate you too!".    I digressed. Anyway, during the entire show the fans were cheering the "wrong" people and chanting  the "wrong" names. They even hummed Fandango's theme during his match with Kofi Kingston. Naturally, thanks to that John Cena decided to do a little dance during his match with Mark Henry to suck up to the fans again.    The biggest surprise to me was the match between Sheamus and Randy Orton. Looking at the achievements of these two one would say that that match is a high profile match worthy of a PPV main event. And the audience loves these two, right? Well, the match barely started and the fans decided to start a "boring" chant. They started that same chant a few more times during the match along with "Randy Savage", "RVD", "EC Dub", "JBL", "Jerry" and "Cole" chants. That's right, folks! The fans were chanting Michael Cole's name during Orton vs. Sheamus match! The fans hated that match so much that they actually chanted "Thank you Big Show!" when Big Show came out to interfere in the match.    Dolph Ziggler finally cashed in his "Money in the Bank" briefcase to win the World Championship title. The fans loved it even though Dolph never sucked up to the fans either. They hated Cena's countout victory over Mark Henry. Mark Henry decided to attack John Cena after the match ended, but Ryback stopped him. Ryback then attacked John Cena and the fans loved it. It seems that if you want the fans to love someone, all you have to do is have them attack John Cena.    I have checked the WWE website and in their recap of Raw they thanked the fans for their participation and their enthusiasm during the show. They also wrote that they are glad they had fun. I would have no problem with that if only the fans didn't have to entertain themselves. They literally stole the show and they are the ones responsible for that show being so good. WWE should have payed them to be on that show and the wrestlers that were on the show should have bought tickets to perform there.    I haven't seen Smackdown yet, but I do hope that the fans continue to act like that. Boo people you are supposed to cheer, cheer people you are supposed to boo, chant the names of the people that are not even in the match, etc. Maybe even chant someones name and then boo him when he comes out or go nuts when a "nobody" enters the ring and let the "big stars" hear crickets when they enter the ring. Also start "boring" chants at random during matches and promos no matter who is in the ring. Promoters and bookers are already confused as it is and have no idea what to do and I would love to see them go crazy over the reactions from the audience if things like that start happening.    This could be the beginning of a new era in professional wrestling. An era in which the people will tune in to see what will the wrestling fans come up with and do to confuse the bookers, promoters and even the performers in the ring.    Meanwhile, Fandango's theme went high in iTunes charts (number 2 in UK, number 3 in USA, number 10 in Australia). In fact, some say that it went higher then any other WWE song ever did. People started requesting that song to be played at various sports events and everyone is "Fandangoing" to it (look it up if you never heard of "Fandangoing"). Fandango's theme song is the new hit in the world and even though some say that this is a chance for WWE to capitalise big on Fandango, I would have to disagree. It will most likely blow over soon and even if it doesn't, WWE will find a way to screw it up.    Well, this all I have for you this time. I am Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Best Raw Ever". I will be back next week with another article and until then, I bid you DAH DAH DAH DAH DA DA DA DA DA!

Talking to Myself: Wrestling and Substance Abuse

Written for The Wrestling Game   Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for yet another exciting (or not) episode of "Talking to Myself". In this article, I will be talking about substance abuse in professional wrestling.   So, professional wrestling is a sport that has no off season. People (are supposed to) compete all year long, every week with little to no time off. Even though everything is scripted and pro wrestling is a world where nothing is real (according to Bret "The Hitman" Hart), injuries happen all the time and painkillers are so easy to get addicted to. There is that and also there is good old human stupidity.   With pro wrestling "evolving" from a few simple moves wrestlers used to execute to a modern day product where the action gets faster and faster and moves get more and more dangerous, the injuries have gotten much worse and happen more often then before. Also, since WWE turned into a beauty contest after the fall of WCW and the end of "Monday Night Wars", there is more and more steroid abuse (Brock Lesnar is having a history of abdominal problems? You don't say!)   In recent years we have seen WWE trying to put a stop to substance abuse with some (I dare say limited) success. After what happened to Eddie Guerrero, WWE has decided to make sure their superstars take tests to ensure that they are not using illegal substances (their well known "Wellness Policy"). Fail the test once, you are suspended for a month, fail the test twice, you are suspended for three months, fail the test three times, you are off to TNA for a second (third, fourth, fifth, etc) chance.   Without mentioning people whose deaths are also linked to substance abuse (like Miss Elizabeth, Bam Bam Bigelow, Chris Benoit...), I would like to talk about more recent "incidents" involving some of the pro wrestling's top stars. Starting with: Jack Swagger   Did I say top stars? I meant top stars and this guy. This guy was never liked much (unless you are from Oklahoma) and he still got pushed a few times. Recently, he was away from TV and then they finally found something for him to do. They gave him Zeb Colter and put him in a heel xenophobic patriot storyline. The storyline works great (no thanks to Jack or his swagger) and all Jack has to do is scream "We, the people!". Jack won the number one contender Elimination Chamber match and he will be facing Alberto Del Rio in a match for the World Championship title at Wrestlemania (or did face already, depending on when you are reading this article).   Now, what do you do when you get a chance like that in a company that is allegedly frowning upon the people who abuse substances? You get yourself arrested for DUI (driving under the influence). It also seems to help if you are arrested for DUI while you got some of the illegal substance left with you (for more info, google "Jack Swagger DUI Arrest"). So what does your company that is allegedly frowning upon the people who abuse substances do? Nothing, I guess. He is still in WWE, he is still the number one contender for one of their top titles and he is still going to Wrestlemania. Sure, he will probably lose the match and be gone from TV again, but I'll believe it when I see it.   Anyway, this is yet another opportunity WWE wasted on the wrong person (and they say WCW ruined everything). They would be better off if they gave Zeb Colter to somebody else. Maybe Fandango. It would be better then that dancing thing he does. Or maybe they could have combined the two by having him say "We, the people!" the same way he says his name. Maybe even have him and Zeb tango down the ramp together. I bet that would get a few laughs. It wouldn't be the craziest thing WWE did either. Jeff Hardy   Here is a guy that calls himself "The Charismatic Enigma" and his fans "The Creatures of the Night". His hobbies include painting his hair, painting his nails, painting his face, getting really high to jump at people while executing some of his moves and just getting really high.   So, long story short, he was in WWE, he failed their "Wellness Policy", got suspended, learned nothing from it, went to TNA, got a second chance, got a world title, showed up for a PPV main event in no shape to compete and disappointed everyone by losing the match to Sting after one move. Fans were very vocal about it (unfortunately, I can't write what they were chanting here) and Sting agreed with them (I'm sure everybody did).   Luckily for Jeff Hardy, WWE has a policy to pay for rehab for any WWE superstar (past or present) and Jeff decided to take them up on it (I bet they hate it when that happens). He went to rehab, got better (I guess), came back to TNA, got his second second chance and haven't failed his employers and his fans (yet). We'll see what the future brings for this guy and I really do hope he doesn't fumble again (even though I can't say that I am his fan). Randy Orton   Randy Orton is a third generation wrestler who was called a "Legend Killer" and who was (I'm not sure if he still is) known as the youngest WWE champion ever. He is also known as a guy who signed a 10 year contract with WWE and in the meantime failed the "Wellness Policy" twice. And even though Vince McMachon was very disappointed in him, at least we all found out why Randy Orton hears voices in his head.   So, he is back after his second suspension, he got pinned at Elimination Chamber by Jack Swagger to lose his shot at Alberto Del Rio and he had to join Sheamus and Big Show to face "The Shield" in order to get his ticket for Wrestlemania (and it's likely "The Shield" will win that match). He still has one more shot to get fired from WWE by failing the "Wellness Policy" third time and then he can look for his "second chance" in TNA. And maybe he can get Kennedy fired again (sorry The Bouncer, I couldn't resist).   Well, this all I have for you this time. I had to cut it short a bit since I'm close to deadline again, it's almost 3 am, I got to work in the morning (even though it's Sunday) and I need my beauty sleep. I am Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading "Talking to Myself: Wrestling and Substance Abuse". I will be back next week with another article and until then, I bid you adieu!

Talking to Myself: State of Professional Wrestling (part 3)

Written for The Wrestling Game   Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for the third (and most likely final) episode of "Talking to Myself: State of Professional Wrestling". In this article, I will share with you my views and thoughts about some of the current TNA talent and after that I will most likely be talking about something else (still wrestling related). Aces & Eights   I'm going to start with the "new age" NWO. Aces & Eights is another attempt at the good old invasion story that WWE and TNA are doing at least once a year with no major success. There is a saying that only a fool keeps doing the same thing and expects different results (or something like that), so my advice to both organizations would be: Give it up already!   Anyway, Aces & Eights came to TNA one day and started causing trouble. They were wearing masks (I guess that is something different) and soon they were losing masks and their identities were revealed. It turns out that some of them were WWE rejects (as usual) and some of them were current TNA talent (what a surprise).   They now have World title and TV title in their possession (they will most likely be getting more titles over time), they will probably be split in two fractions soon (Aces & Eights and Deuces & Nines?) and I wouldn't be surprised if Hulk Hogan joins them and is revealed as their true leader (so far their "true" leader was Devon and now is Bully Ray). Then they will have Sting beat some sense into Hogan and he will be back to his old (very old now) self. Or not. Nobody really cares. Garret Bischoff   This guy is in Aces & Eights, but I think he deserves to be mentioned because of the great amount of sucking this guy is capable of. Unlike WWE, TNA was able to gather a whole bunch of good talent and there isn't a lot of people there that anyone can say that they suck. Unfortunately, Garret Bischoff makes up for all of them. Usually people go trough a wrestling school before they join a wrestling organization, but it seems Garret Bischoff was able to do the opposite. If he did go to a wrestling school before he joined TNA, then he should just hang himself for sucking that bad. I mean, Sin Cara botches everything he tries to execute in the ring, but at least he can execute something. Garret Bischoff has nothing to botch because he can't do anything. TNA should either make him a referee again or just fire him. Joey Ryan   This guy has some skills, but he is just lame. Maybe he wouldn't be so lame if they were actually doing something with him, but he seems to be there just to job for people, rub baby oil on himself and get laughed at for wearing a thong (even though a lot of wrestlers wear a thong - Hulk Hogan included). Joseph Park   He came to TNA a while ago looking for his brother Chris (you know, Abyss). Since then he had some matches and apparently some training. In reality, this guy is Abyss (but everybody knows that) and this is TNA's attempt to do... something. Nobody knows what and it seems this story is going nowhere. It might go better if Joseph Park wasn't overacting and just looking stupid while doing it. Tone it down a little or bring Abyss back. He was more fun then Joseph Park. Matt Morgan   Here is a big guy that deserves to be in the title picture. Instead they had him babysitting Joey Ryan. He was in the title picture while Mr. Anderson had a concussion (if I remember correctly), but they soon had him back to doing nothing. No wonder he is thinking about going to WWE. The only thing that might be stopping him is the fact that he will probably be doing nothing there as well. Either that or WWE being dumber than I thought and not wanting to sign him. Conclusion   Like I said before, TNA doesn't have a lot of wrestlers that you can say they suck. They have filled up their roster with a lot of good talent and it's understandable that some of the people who deserve a push can't get one. Personally, I prefer TNA over WWE and I like TNA matches more. I always found most of WWE matches to be boring and I don't really understand why is WWE more popular then TNA (even though they are trying to be a copy of WWE). I guess people look at the ratings, see WWE on top and assume it's a better product (it wouldn't be the first time that happened). After watching TNA they see it's nothing special (too similar to WWE) and decide to stick with WWE.   Unfortunately, if this keeps up, wrestling will be stuck at being a sucking half-product it is today. WWE won't try to change much since they are on top (even though their ratings are on a decline) and TNA will keep being a bad copy of WWE. Instead, they should at least try and do something different and new. Work on better storylines (forget "Dancing With Stars" and "Hogan Knows Best"), push people the fans already like (not push people you think the fans should like) and don't give wrestlers super powers (like John Cena never losing a match cleanly while WWE motto is "Anyone can beat anyone"). Stop selling people half a product and wonder why your ratings never go up!   Well, this was Ninoslav Maricic and you were reading part 3 of "Talking to Myself: State of Professional Wrestling". I will be back next week (hopefully not cutting it close like this week) with more thoughts about this great sport some of us have learned to love and hate at the same time. Until then, I bid you adieu!

Talking to Myself: State of Professional Wrestling (part 2)

 Written for The Wrestling Game

  Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for the second episode of "Talking to Myself: State of Professional Wrestling". In this article, I will share with you my views and thoughts about some of the current WWE talent (or lack of one). Basically, I will be talking about some title holders, people who get pushed, people that should be pushed (out the window), good an bad gimmicks, promos etc. So, lets begin!

Team Hell No

  What to say about Kane and Daniel Bryan? They are both great singles competitors and they work well as a team. They are great in the ring and they have great and entertaining promos. The name of the team is the worst I have seen in a long time, but other teams can't say they have better names either. WWE creative should work on that a bit. Also, they should get more permanent teams with their more famous competitors. Something like Team Rhodes Scholars. They need to bring the tag division back into the spotlight.

Brock Lesnar

  "The perfect storm" (yeah, right). This guy is a beast and it's perfectly understandable that he gets invited to compete in WWE. What bothers me is that he gets invited only when WWE wants a rankings boost (like in Wrestlemania). In my opinion, this guy is just steeling spotlight from people who are wrestling every week and deserve to appear in PPVs. He can barely cut a promo and his first match after his return (against John Cena) had enough potatoes in it to feed a third world country. WWE should concentrate on their current talent more. Having Lesnar show up for one match just to quit after he wins or loses will get old really fast. They have people in the roster that can be considered beasts. They should give them a storyline they keep giving to Brock Lesnar instead of turning them into dancing idiots.

The Shield

  I like these guys even though they are just another attempt at the good old "invasion" storyline. They have great in ring skills and they work well as a team. Maybe they could hold tag team belts in the future. It would be good for the tag team division. What bothers me about them is their promos. The camera is all over the place in their prerecorded promos and they keep repeating their names over and over again just like Wade Barrett did when he came to WWE (I am Wade Barrett! Remember my name, Wade Barrett! I will be the next world champion! Me, Wade Barrett!). It seems they were taking advice about cutting promos from the same guy. Unfortunately, that makes their promos look like they were recorded and edited by a drunk they found in the geriatrics ward (Uh, lets see... first they introduce them selves... Uh, then they can introduce themselves... Uh, then they introduce themselves and... Uh... To finish they can introduce themselves).

Fandango

  I've mentioned before that WWE is turning beasts into dancing idiots. This guy is no beast, but he is an idiot. Some of you may know him as Johny Curtis and from his appearances on "Santino's Foreign Exchange" series on Youtube. What he is doing now is, he comes out and asks his opponent to pronounce his name correctly. Since his opponent can't do it, Fandango just turns around and walks away. The good thing about it is: I don't have to listen to that guy any more. The bad thing is: he doesn't get a beating he so desperately deserves. Honestly, the sound of that guy's voice makes me wanna jam my foot down his throat.

The Great Khali

  Here is another dancing idiot. The sad part is: this guy can barely walk. Sure, he is huge and he was brought to WWE to get WWE more popularity in India, but all this guy is able to do is twirl around in the middle of the ring because it seems that only one of his legs bends at the knee. If I was in charge of WWE, I would kick this guy and spend the money on someone else. I am sure that there are other big guys from India out there who can wrestle. Or maybe they could hire someone like Jinder Mahal. Maybe even not put him in a joke stable like 3MB. I wonder what Drew McIntyre and Jinder Mahal did to deserve such punishment.

Tensai

  Prince Albert left WWE, went to Japan, had a good career and then came back as Lord Tensai. Big guy, can move around the ring, great wrestling skills. What does WWE do? The team him up with Brodus Clay. Now, Brodus is also this big tough guy who likes to get funky before and after the match. It looks good and he is pulling it off nicely. Tensai, on the other hand, can't pull it off. He looks stupid. If you wanna make someone look stupid, try Brock Lesnar. Have him dance around like an idiot. What's that? He doesn't wanna do it? I wonder why?

John Cena

  Yeah, I'm sure you saw this one coming. John Cena, the hardest working man in the business. Kids love him, most of the others can't sand him. Why? I talked about how things used to work in wrestling in my previous article. You give people the good guy and the bad guy. They cheer the good guy, they boo the bad guy. Cena is the living proof that that formula no longer works and no matter what WWE does "Cena sucks" chants are just as loud as "Lets go Cena" chants. Why? Well, WWE has ben pushing Cena so much in the past few years that a lot of people are sick of him. Super Cena can't lose a match. Even if he does, there is always controversy involved. Why not push someone people already like instead of trying to force people to like someone? The only way I can see people liking Cena is if he goes away for a few years and then they bring him back as one of the greatest of all time (kind of like what they did with Dwayne "Rocky 'The Rock' Maivia" Johnson). They could even recycle that "Once Twice in a Lifetime" storyline.

Santino Marella

  Here is one guy I usually get a lot of heat for. Why? Because I believe he should have been pushed more. Santino is a guy who had been making a fool out of himself (in a fun and entertaining way) ever since he came to WWE. In my opinion, they should have made him a world champion last year at "Elimination Chamber" PPV. The setup was perfect. He won a Battle Royal match to qualify at the last moment (the fans loved it, by the way) and he and Daniel Bryan were last two competitors in the Chamber. Santino hit the Cobra on Daniel Bryan and the crowd went nuts (in a good way). Unfortunately, he only got a two count and Daniel Bryan won the match. I think the fans wanted Santino to win and I believe it would be better if he did. Now, here are the usual responses I get from people when I say this:

#1: Santino is a joke!
My response: So is John Cena!

#2: Santino has like 5 moves!
My response: So does John Cena!

#3: You can't have Santino headline "Wrestlemania"!
My response: Why not? World title match at that "Wrestlemainia" was the opening match and it was 18 seconds long. Daniel Bryan kissed AJ and then turned around to kiss the sole of his opponent's boot. There is nothing Santino could have done to make that match worse.

Sin Cara

  I'm gonna finish up with Sin "Botch - Daddy" Cara. Here is a guy who got a lot of hype when he was coming to WWE, just to botch everything he could. He kept botching his entrance, half of the moves he executed and he was even able to botch a tag. That's right! He tagged Ray Mysterio while they were both standing on the ring apron (technically, outside of the ring). Meanwhile, he never learned English, so promos are out of the question too (they could give him a translator, but they don't seem to care). Why do they still keep him in the roster? All he is able to do is hurt himself or his opponents. Fire him before you waste more money on him.

  And that's all I have for this time. I could mention more WWE talent, but this article is already long enouh as it is. I'll leave them for another time. Next week I will talk about current TNA talent in part three of "State of Professional Wrestling". This is your host, Ninoslav Maricic, and you were reading part two of "Talking to Myself: State of Professional Wrestling".


Big "Thank you" to The Bouncer for advice about editing articles!

Talking to Myself: State of Professional Wrestling (part 1)

Written for The Wrestling Game

   Hello people of TWG™ and whoever stumbled upon this article! I am Ninoslav Maricic and I will be your host for this episode of "Talking to Myself: State of Professional Wrestling". In this article and those that will follow, I will share with you my views and thoughts about this sport and people who compete in it or work behind the scenes. Before I start, let me assure you that all of the typos, misspellings and grammatical mistakes are intentional and have nothing to do with he fact that English is not my native language (wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more).

  I would like to start with a little bit of history (yes, this will be yet another article about the "Attitude Era" and "Monday Night Wars") just to give you my thoughts on why wrestling has become how it is today, so sit back, relax and try not to fall asleep.

  As you know, in mid 90's WCW started a program called "Monday Nitro" in order to give WWF (later renamed to WWE) some serious competition. WCW was struggling for a bit until Eric Bischoff (or so they say) came up with the idea of creating a fraction that will try to "take over" WCW. WCW recruited Razor Ramon (renamed to Scott Hall) from WWF and had him interrupt WCW program. He was later joined by Diesel (renamed to Kevin Nash) who was also recruited from WWF and Hulk Hogan to form NWO. Many other WWF and WCW talent followed them and NWO became a seemingly unstoppable force.

  The ratings shifted in favor of WCW and WWF eventually ended up being a number two wrestling organization for over 80 consecutive weeks (that's over a year and a half). Organization number three was ECW. ECW will only get a mention here since they were never a real competition to WCW and WWF even though ECW was able to make a big impact in pro wrestling and had a major role in shaping this sport into what it is today. The reason that they never made it to the top might be timing, luck or the fact that WCW and WWF had more money to toss around and they kept "stealing" ECW's top talent.

  "Monday Night Wars" changed wrestling in more ways then one. Wrestling was more famous then ever before and all the struggling for ratings and all of the new ideas and attempts to "invent" something new, different, never seen before had a strange side effect. Up until then, things were simple. You would give people a good guy and a bad guy. They would cheer the good guy and they would boo the bad guy. Simple, right?

  Well, with the appearance of NWO in WCW and people like "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Dwayne "Rocky 'The Rock' Maivia" Johnson and Degeneration X in WWF, being the bad guy became fun. Bad guys were more entertaining then good guys and people started cheering the bad guys. Writers, promoters and bookers found it hard to adept to the situation and wrestling was becoming a mess. Best laid plans were backfiring and nobody new what they were doing any more. I know some people will disagree with me here, but they still have no idea what they are doing.

  Anyway, a few bad decisions from WCW later, the balance of power shifted back to WWF and WCW was struggling in vain to get it back. ECW lost their top talent and closed and eventually WWF bought WCW. With "Monday Night Wars" being over, Vince McMahon could breathe more easily and shape wrestling in any way he wanted. Unfortunately, he decided to turn it into a beauty contest.

  With all real competition gone, it seams WWF/WWE stopped trying to give people a quality program. It could be that they have nothing to compare it with. WCW kept making them push harder and since they are gone, there is no one to steal their fans. TNA is trying, but all they do is trying to copy WWE.People that stop watching WWE don't want to watch a bad copy of it, so they just stop watching wrestling, i guess.

   Linda McMahon decided to run for senate which brought the "PG Era" to WWE. One good thing that came from that is that wrestling became safer for wrestlers. Bad thing is: wrestling lost more fans. In the attempt to bring more fans to wrestling, WWE started recycling storylines. Naturally, TNA is doing the same.

  Old storylines that worked once no longer work. The fact that they still persist in using them over and over and over and over again makes me think that there is a few people pulling all the strings in pro wrestling. People who got their status by selling people a few good ideas and now they have no idea what to do next. Their new ideas are crap, their old ideas don't work and they are just running in circles now. Too bad there isn't a game on the internet (lets call it "The Wrestling Game") with a bunch of people playing it who have a whole bunch of great ideas running inside their heads. If WWE or TNA would hire some of them, maybe they could help wrestling become more popular.

  Well, that's all I have for this time. I will talk about current WWE talent in part two of "State of Professional Wrestling" and I'll try to explain more about what I meant by Vince McMahon turning WWE into a beauty contest. This is your host, Ninoslav Maricic, and you were reading part one of "Talking to Myself: State of Professional Wrestling". I'll be back with more next week (I hope).