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.