Eternal Optimist Cody Rhodes Says He “Expects to be paid” by TNA



How could this possibly go wrong??

Whilst Cody Rhodes, son of the legendary Dusty Rhodes, falls someway short of his father in many areas – charisma, promo ability, cellulite and belly splotches – the former Stardust has clearly inherited his late father’s sense of unbridled optimism.

 

This was demonstrated this week when he boldly stated that he “expects to be paid by TNA” following his recent appearance at the companys TV taping.  Cody openly admits that his agreements with TNA are all on a handshake basis, and despite this, thinks that he will soon receive a sizeable chqeque from the company that is currently being sued by everybody it deals with for nopn-payment of invoices.

 

The Rhodes gene pool clearly contains a high proportion of positive thinking, as shown by Cody’s decision to leave WWE on the assumption that he would be equally as successful elsewhere and the numerous examples of father Dusty’s ‘Sunny Side’ attitude, which include:

• Booking a screwjob title change in every town the NWA ran in, three times in a row, and still expecting fans to keep paying t come to the shows
• That with the right booking and promotion, and with Dusty by his side, Lex Luger could be as big a star as Hulk Hogan, probably bigger
• That he could sweet talk Ric Flair into dropping the world title to Rick Steiner
• That when the financial results came in and NWA/WCW had lost $6 million in a year under Dustys management, it would be someone else, not him, who was fired, even though he was flying everywhere by private jet.
• That the fans would buy him as a legit six man partner for the Road Warriors of all people, and
• That anyone could inderstand more than six words he said

As yet, Cody has not received any compensation for his work in TNA but checks the mailbox for or five times a day, each time anticipating the check will be there

Billy Corgan Loans £250k to UFC “I just like Wasting Money”

The dictionary definition of  'More money than sense'

Hot on the heels of loaning doomed “wrestling” promotion TNA money to pay the bills, keep the lights on and, for reasons unknown, hold another TV taping that nobody will watch. the former lead singer of grunge-era runner-ups Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan has decided to loan some money to the UFC.

The UFC, once considered the rising star of the sports and entertainment world, has since announcing a $4bn sale to a potentially sinister conglomerate, fired a shitload of back office employees and released thirteen of its fighters in cost cutting moves, following the revelation of a financial black hole that could swallow several galaxies. Upon hearing the news of the financial difficulties faced by the worldwide leaders in face kicking, Corgan sprang into action:



“When I heard that another wrestling-type company was haemorrhaging money, I just had to get involved.  I am sick and tired of all these royalty checks I keep being sent for Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness cluttering up the place, and throwing money at a failing promotion is so much more satisfying that just flushing it down the toilet”

He added:

“I hope that someone tries to revive Roller Derby soon so I can p*ss away more of my cash”

Simmons to Sheamus “Stop this Irish on Irish Hate”

He causes problems? Really?

Simmons feels that Irish people need to unite rather than fight between themselves, and that some ginger freak has no business insulting his overtly self indulgent chat show. To that end, he has used his huge Twitter following to start an ‘All Leprechaun Lives Matter’

The dictionary definition of  'More money than sense'

The dictionary definition of  'More money than sense'

Pasty weirdo Sheamus’ slam of noted sports broadcaster Bill Simmons has prompted the ‘Sports Guy’ to issue a plea for calm and reconciliation to end the “Irish on Irish hate”
Los Angeles resident Simmons identifies as Irish due to his Boston upbringing and Single White Female-esque relationship with Celtics legend Larry Bird (native of Indiana) and feels that his feud with Sheamus will only fuel the anti-Irish tension that has spread across the country.

As Irish as a Kikenny Spring morning

The long standing animosity against Americans who claim to hail from the Emerald Isle despite the only “Ireland” they have ever visited being ‘Coney’, ‘Long’ or The Treasure Island Casino and Buffet in Hackensack New Jersey, stems from their unrelenting arrogance about the success of their sports teams, and their accent. Their grating, nasally f*cking “chow-daaah” whine.

Outside of their native New England, Irish Americans have reported numerous incidents that they consider to be ‘attacks’ in recent months. These include:

-       a Bruins fan in Austin Texas having his snapback hat sniggered at
-       a McDonalds in Lincoln, Nebraska running out of Shamrock shake mix at 7.45pm on St Patricks Day 2015
-       The Red Sox not winning the MLB title in over two years
-       Leo DiCaprio being passed over for the Best Actor Oscar for ‘The Departed’ (That was wicked haa-aarsh), and
-       NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s recent purchase of a Doomsday laser to finally settle the ‘Belichick Conundrum’

Dolph Ziggler Claims He Is Victim of Smear Campaign

Ladies are steering clear of Ziggler for fear of being unable to keep up in the sack, meaning former Spirit Squad member is left to fish in the very small pool of endurance athletes, female MMA fighters and crazy bitches. The first two are hard to find in many mid-west towns on the regular WWE house show loop, and Dolph is getting desperate.

Perennial nearly-man Dolph Ziggler has claimed he is the victim of a smear campaign that is severely impacting his prospects.

Start stretching now ladies

“Ever since Amy Schumer said I was ‘too athletic’ in bed, I have been batting under 100, its a baaad situation”

Warning: May harm your sex life

Ziggler feels that women, with whom he previously would experienced a great deal of short term romantic success, are turning him down at an alarming rate, and it is Schumer to blame.
I need to clear my name, chicks have to know that I can be a lazym two pump chump in the sack. I’m serious, my nuts are like freakin’ concrete!”

Koko B Ware Documentary Found In Prince's Vault

By far the most significant news of recent weeks and possibly the greatest sentence ever written was 


"In the vault of the late pop star Prince, there was a documentary he had made about Koko B Ware, narrated by Morris Day of 'Morris Day and the Time' fame" 

This Guy! Obviously

That is a sentence that's almost too big to fit into your head. It positively fizzes with potential and generates more questions than than there are people who will buy the next TNA PPV.
So twelve, twelve questions

The obvious ones that jump out are:

• Did Koko even know about it?

• Why Koko? Was there not enough footage of Tito Santana to use? Are any other high level jobbers featured?  Scott Casey? Gene Ligon, Heath Slater??
• Why have we not heard of this before?  Such a project is too magnificent to be kept a secret
• Why was Prince not narrating it himself? 

Perhaps it was made during the period when he was protesting the multi-million dollar contract he had from Sony by painting a symbol on his cheek and not talking to anyone - stroppy little bugger. It's more likely that the subject matter wasn’t sex, and if Prince isn’t talking about making sweet audio love to your ears, he ain’t talking.
The more pedestrian rationale is that Morris Day once recorded a song called 'The Bird' and so got pegged for the Koko doc.

Will Frankie get points on the gross?

On that basis, we can safely expect to see 80’s one hit wonder Survivor doing a Tiger mask retrospective, Ringo Starr narrating an animated feature on Davey Boy Smith and Keith Richards doing the voice over for a Terry Taylor biopic.
A few cryptic references for the teenagers there.
Much like wrestling feuds, every great documentary needs an angle. Where was Prince going with this film? We can only speculate, and speculate we will....
Perhaps it was a thoughtful look at the sacred relationship between a man and his parrot. Yes, that may sound like something Tracey Jordan would have appeared in on 30 Rock, but this was a documentary where all subject matter is fair game, and the producer was the mad as a box of cheese, Prince.
It could have been the first in a series examining of the impact of short men who enter a world traditionally reserved for those who feel the rainfall long before others.. I would imagine others in the series focussing on Muggsy Bogues in basketball, Lionel Messi in soccer, Tom Cruise in what we shall euphemistacally call acting, and Napoleon in the field of world conquering, before culminating in the ending on the most impressive of all - Prince himself (you see, thats why he wan’t doing the voice-over - that would have just looked egotistical!). Not only did he dominate the music scene like no other (cough, Michael Jackson cough)but he was also the most underrated basketball player ever, He narrowly missed being drafted out of Central High School in Minneapolis because of restrictive draft rules regarding high school players, his insistence on wearing eye liner glitter and stack heels whilst playing, and the fact that he was 5’ 2.
And politics, its always about politics
Personally, I like to think it was an expose, a la Loose Change or those Sandy Hook Youtube docs that wave at the shores of sanity from a safe distance, that looked into why Koko was cheated out of a world title win in 1985 against Flair. Going over each frame, shot by shot in Zapruder fashion, it revealed that Koko actually won the title. Given that it is mid 80’s Memphis, the footage is actually even more grainy that the super 8 shot Zapruder film,

What has gone unreported in this story is the the interesting stuff found in the vaults of other recently deceased stars.

Gary Shandlings safe contained tapes of a four hour documentary about Tommy Rich, narrated by Jeffrey Tambor, of course

Hey Now!

Glenn Frey of the Eagles was writing a follow up to the Eagles 1973 concept album Desperado and had contacted Dutch Mantell about doing backing vocals.

Should not have eaten Dutch's 5 alarm chilli

Natalie Cole, daughter of Nat King had had completed the first draft of an article for Rolling Stone analyzing her fathers influence on the late 1980’s WWF run of ‘King’ Harley Race

Shortly before he passed away, Beatles producer George Martin was apparently mixing master tapes of Piledriver 3 the album.

From this, to arguing with Vince about the chorus of  'Stand Back'

Alan ‘Professor Snape’ Rickman was in the middle of recording a voiceover for a three part BBC documentary about Otto Wanz’s CWA promotion. Rickman watched a whole lot of CWA while he was in Germany researching accents for his role as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, which explains why PN News gave the eulogy at his funeral.

Yo...Potter........Yo

Androgynous Weirdo David Bowie had begun principal photography for a sequel to his 1976 movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, titled ‘The Fat Bastard Who fell Through the Mat’  starring the Big Show. Well, it gave him something to do, eh?

In a curious twist, it is rumored that the late (One Night in) Chyna had completed, shortly before her untimely demise, a thesis on the importance of Jackson Browne in mid 1970's AOR music for her BA in Comparative Culture.

Rejected Sex Tape Title: "Running on empty"

"Dude, He's Raggin On Your Cord" The Worst Belts in Wrestling History

Belts are big news right now with the debut of several new belts, sorry championships, on in the WWE. The Universal title, the Smackdown womens championship, tag team titles, and the Southern States States Heritage Six man TV Titles, business has never been better for belt maker / designers.

Not since the heady days of Mike Tysons peak when new boxing feds were set up almost weekly, just so promoters could milk more 'unification bouts against  the diminutive, squeaky voiced sex offender.

Unfortunately, this 200% increase in hardware has not been met with Universal praise. Quite apart from the obvious gripes about ‘diluting the value’ of the titles.  (As if that means anything anymore after Zach Ryder’s epic one day reign, and the fact that somehow The Miz is not only still employed but holds what was once the second most prestigious title in the world) Rather, at the moment, fans are revolting against design of the belt, which the fans feel is, well, revolting.

The mere fact that the debut of the Universal belt at Summerslam generated a stronger negative fan reaction than the three top heels, Rusev, Reigns and Rollins, combined shows that fans are becoming increasingly concerned with the aesthetic rather than the meaning of what they see.  A principle that kept  Sid Vicious in the main event for so many years
But did the Universal title deserve such derision?  Yes, it looks like the product of that unfortunate month when the company took the gimmick of Corporate Kane too far and actually put him in charge of the design team.  (he was a disaster in HR so they gave him a sideways move) but at least it’s clear which company the belt is from. The WWE logo occupies 43% of the face of the belt, with the tiniest font possible used to state which title it represents, just in case anybody was unclear what the values of the company are.

The only way it could have been more blatant is if they had stuck a Polaroid of Stephanie McMahon mid-rant on it

Grotesque as many are accusing it of being, it’s main crime is not being as aesthetically pleasing as the legendary Winged Eagle Belt, it is by no means the ugliest belt in wrestling history.  For that honor, we have a number of contenders….
(Note: for the purposes of this article, we are ignoring 'gimmick' belts like the Cena’s Spinning belt, the mashed up hardcore title and the million dollar belt, and obvious jokes like the TNA championship and anything won by Randy Orton)

Western States Heritage (1980's, probably)
Average belt, but the greatest name for a title ever.
Why only the Western States? Where does the border lie? And what is this heritage that they speak of that merits a wrestling championship?
If this writer were to take a guess as to how it all came into being,  I would suggest the belt maker was a persuasive fellow who charged by the letter and had a couple of kids to put through college.  Whilst it is not a bad looking belt overall, there is one glaring problem, or two in fact.

Exactly why are there two homunculi on either side of the red oval?  One presumes they are meant to be wrestlers, but could just as easily be dogs, chimpanzees or some inhuman hybrid from the Island of Dr Moreau. Either way, they turn a relatively attractive belt into the inspiration for a simian themed nightmare.

WWE Divas Belt (2000's)
Designed by the same geniuses (Genii? Genipodes?) that brought the world the ‘Powered by Fairydust’ rear windshield stickers, that pair oh so well with the giant eyelashes  on the headlamps. Because that’s how to reverse the stereotype of women being bad drivers – dress the car up like it’s a My Little Pony!

Party in the front, Set back the Womens movement by 50 years in the back, wooh!

In the same vein, we have this…thing.  If it were made of sugar frosting, it couldn’t be more sickly.  Most notably however, is that it has wings.  Do you know what else has wings? Certain types of sanitary towel. 
And of course, its pink – really, really pink., which makes it hard to believe that anyone would put their life on the line trying to win it.  In fact the only time anyone in wrestling fought over anything this pink was when Terry Garvin and Pat Patterson first saw Caden, the fresh faced, teenage ring boy in Poughkeepsie in '86.

AWA Belt (1968)

It's sooo metal, Judas Priest are jealous

The first thing that strikes you about this vintage AWA belt is the distinct lack of leather.  Where there would ordinarily be cowhide, there is metal, thus necessitating the use of more metal to link the plates together..

Where did the leather go? Possibly it was all used up to make that guys thong?  We will never know, and frankly we are better for not knowing.   All this over reliance on metal to make the belt means as well as losing some visual appeal, it must have chafed like a mo-fo when you were wearing it.
What really sets this off is the attention to detail. Where other belts will feature a discreet plate with the champions name, this one features a little pic of said champion, juuuust above the twig and berry area.  Glossing over the deeply homoerotic tones of the belt, the use of the picture does explain why short, chubby and balding Verne Gagne kept himself as champion for 27 of the 31 years the promotion existed. It wasn't because he was a shameless self promoter whose ego ultimately caused the downfall of his business, it was because the cost of recreating a passport photo in metal was prohibitively expensive. Mystery solved!

Mid Atlantic TV Belt (1978)

Funk-eeee!

This was from the late 70’s where everything was beige. Shirts were beige, couches were beige, bathroom suits were beige, hell, even the color Red was beige for a few months in 1978. So it should come as no surprise that it was into this gloriously bland period that this abomination was born.
If you were the champion at the time, you would have paired that puppy with a white polyester suit, black (shiny) polyester shirt and some lethally high stacked heels and strut your way down to Studio 54. The only question is whether the strap was made of leather or some petroleum based, man made material that temporarily slips my mind.
As a bonus, its immense width offered a second purpose – as a medical support (or ‘truss’ as it would have been called in those halcyon days). Given yourself a hernia defending the title? No problem, just wrap this around your middle and you are good to go.  Groovy

ICW Tag Team Titles (1981) 
This blocky beauty is from the infamous ‘renegade’ promotion, ICW. Famed for running against Jerry Lawler in the Memphis territory and for being owned by the Poffos – Angelo, Lanny and Randolph, who, unsurprisingly changed his surname to Savage.  Why? because he was as mad as a box of cheese and the name Poffo just didn’t get that message across properly
Whats the first thing you notice about this belt? Apart from the distinct lack of curves or course?  It’s overwhelming whiteness, which is not normally a color used for championship belts because there aren’t many white metals out there. There are none in fact - that's just science.  This leads your writer to believe that the panels were made of either:

• Compressed cocaine (it was the early 80’s so that is definitely in play) and was therefore used as a way to transport the colombian nose candy from place to place without being hassled by the man, or,
• Ivory from elephants who were recently alive until Randy, full of  the aforementioned coke, appeared on the scene ad thought how sweet a white-panelled belt would be
  

Proof of the success of the concept is the overwhelming absence of white belts you see these days. In fact, you can barely turn up at an indie show without not seeing anything that looks like this.

NWA TV Title (1980's)

Was this the red leather that was the inspiration for the Universal title? It might be the actual leather

A fairly standard belt in overall design, but with one major difference - the unmissable use of red leather that simply screamed 'Jobber!'
This may be a case of tail wagging the dog, perhaps
Also,  one can't help but notice there isn't an actual tv depicted on it, although there are the amusing attempts at making it tv relevant by having the ABC and CBS logos on the side. Can't help but notice there's no TBS - foreshadowing??

NWA World Title / Big Gold Belt (1980's, early 1990's, revived in early 2000's. Fuck You HHH!)
A controversial pick when you consider that it may be the most beloved title belt in history, but it's time to lay down the railroad tracks of truth, shovel some coal into the boiler and slam this steam engine of realism into your face.  First things first, it was affectionately referred to as 'The Big Gold Belt'. Just one problem with that - it was fucking silver!!!  At best, in a strong yellow light, if you squinted and thought really hard about gold, it would look like slightly tarnished silver. Case in point:

Go ahead, try and convince yourself it's gold, we can wait

Secondly, it lacks color, and I don't mean the lack of gold (we covered that in the previous sentence), I mean it lacks all color.  if it was a person, you would tell it to eat more vegetables and get some sun, which may explain why so many wrestling fans can relate to it.   Frankly, it looks like a large piece of crumpled aluminium foil, which it may have been for  period just before the Ted Turner buyout, when money was tighter than Dusty Rhodes' speedos. (get that image out of your head sucker). 

Does your dad know you borrowed his belt?

Finally, its oversized. The NWA / was never the home of the big man so they overcompensation by having the biggest title belt around. Kind of like every guy who ever bought a Humvee.  All this did was serve to make the champions look like a Mexican Mini.
Were this the WWF, with it's Hogans, Andre's, Undertakers, et al, the belt would have been more in proportion, but the NWA's list of champions included Ronnie Garvin, Ricky Steamboat and of course, Charlotte's father, Ric.

All fine men to be sure, but at a maximum of 6 feet tall, that belt make them look ludicrous by reaching from nipple to knee.  Good for defending against snipers though.
The first time it looked appropriate was when The Giant beat Flair, but thats barely any succour when you consider it.