NO-stalgia: The Return of the Ultimate Warrior

The Ultimate Warrior made his return to the squared circle last night. Or yesterday. I have no idea when it actually happened. All I know is that the group assigned to deliver the match last night as (sort of) promised, did not. After several "we swear it's working now... oh no wait the website crashed again" emails, I gave up for the night. My guess is the Warrior probably needed to approve of the video edit before releasing the match worldwide. While I'm pissed off by the delay, as a control freak myself, I sort of don't blame him.

Anyway, as of this morning the stream is working. And I'm about to watch it and tell you everything that happens. I'm also going to post some screencaps I took from the Daily Motion stream, which could get us into some trouble. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.

SPOILERS AHOY! (as if you don't know who wins the match)

First impressions. Orlando Jordan, the opponent and reigning NWE (no idea what that stands for) champion was announced first. Just as it's unusual for the first bidder on The Price is Right showcase showdown to not pass on the first set of prizes, it's strange to see the champion announced first. I guess this is a special situation as the Warrior is technically a bigger name, but to be honest, not many fans in the arena outside of high-five range seemed to give two shits.


While the Warrior legally owns the rights to his name, he clearly does not have the rights to his music, which used to be fucking awesome. It was a bastardization of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" in the first place, but his new music is like the Japanese half-cousin, twice-removed of the original. Maybe they're making an Ultimate Warrior video game, I don't know.

He barely ran down to the ring, and he wore that big fucking coat. Maybe that slows him down? Maybe it's an excuse. I'm pretty sure he was limping a bit too. I'm not surprised; he was apparently training 8 hours a day for the past month and probably broke his knee or something.

I know I'm spending so much time just critiquing his ring entrance. That's because with the Warrior, 95% of the appeal was the entrance (which also exhausted 95% of his stamina). He always ran and shook the ropes and got every kid in the audience to jump up and freak out too. It was electrifying. But maybe no one in the Barcelona crowd remembers him? I don't know, it has been a long time. I felt bad. He shook the ropes and scaled the turnbuckles, but hardly anyone stood with him except for the two little girls that came into the ring to help him take his coat off. Are they his daughters?


Ok, the coat's off and the dude is still in shape. Sure, a little deflated from the 80's steroid heydey, but I applaud him. He's 50! He looks out of breath already, but the crowd has acknowledged his facepaint, armbands, and muscles. Orlando Jordan is doing a good job selling the moves, but already after about a minute, they're locked up in an extra long collar-and-elbow-tie-up (or is it a collar-into-elbow-tie-up?) and look they're having a fucking business conference. This is when people are supposed to yell "BORRRRING!" We all know the match will be ten minutes top. Did they not rehearse?

Two minutes in, and we've already seen 8,000 shots of what I'm presuming is the Warrior's wife and kids sitting in the front row. Who fucking cares?

A bear hug from behind (aka another "BORRRRING" moment) and I can see fans in the crowd taking the opportunity to go get some papas fritas. The close-up camera work is kinda shitty anyway. Sometimes I can't tell if the Warrior is kicking out of pins, or if Orlando Jordan is just deciding to stand up. Also, his face paint is almost all gone already, but a few seconds of rolling around on the floor outside and he's attached enough gold confetti to his skin to make up for it.

The crowd has finally come alive (vocally, at least) but they're chanting something that I can't understand at all. It doesn't sound like they're saying "ABURRIDO!" but I can't make it out. Whatever they're saying, it has envoked a suplex from the top rope, though it looks incredibly obvious that Orlando Jordan cinches himself into the move.

Oddly, Orlando Jordan covers the Warrior for the pin after the suplex, which technically should have hurt him more. Regardless, the Warrior is now hulking up and I assume this match will soon be...

Jesucristo! It was over before I finished typing the last sentence! A half-assed shoulder block ends the match before a nonchalant cover and 3-count. He ended a lot of matches that way (minus the crickets chirping), but usually, it was the apex of a flurry of ropework. This was more like an accidental collision:

Despite the lack of the Warrior's iconic gorilla press slam, he begins celebrating his victory in the ring, and already, I see lots of empty seats. Maybe they're running up to get autographs, I don't know. Maybe they're just unimpressed. As the Warrior proudly holds his daughters hands in the ring, a father and son in the crowd give the Warrior a rude gesture on their way out (and it's not a "Hail, President Skroob" as it may look in the picture). It makes me want to cry. Ok, maybe the match was disappointing, but the Warrior's matches were never highly technical in the first place. What did people expect?

Running, and music, and a gorilla press, that's what. Fuck, I am going to cry.

So I guess he's the NWE champion now? I'll be honest, I don't think he's going to keep wrestling. I'm pretty sure he's already injured. I think a lot of people felt cheated by this 8-minute production too. Do I count myself as one of them? I'm not sure. The comeback was inspirational for old men like me, but the results, meh. Or, bah. Possibly, fah.

To sum up my review in a language that only wrestling fans will understand: this match was no Gorilla Press. It was just a fucking shoulder block.

[Go here for some additional comments on the full length version of the match]

Armenian Gladiolas

I'm really bummed out because I just discovered that American Gladiators' open call casting was TWO DAYS AGO. And the deadline for video entries is in two hours. I guess that gives me a year to plot my strategy. I should start listening to American Gladiators: The Music for inspiration.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I think I really wanted to give it a shot. Two weeks ago, I thought this show was horrible. Maybe that's part of the drive? I just don't know what's gotten into me lately that's making me want to conquer the world, but it can't be bad. I wanted to be a WWF Wrestler when I was a wee lad. The problem was I stayed a wee lad for the rest of my life. But now I'm sitting here watching this new Gladiator action on TV and I just want to grab their faces and throw them. I may be developing a Napoleon Complex ("developing," they laugh). I'm just looking at everything and thinking "I can do that." I'm just not content facing off with jerks my size anymore.

Jerks like James Madison.

Flawless Failure

My super power has returned. Two light bulbs down. Snap. Crackle. Pop. The hallway in front of the bathroom and one of the lamps in the living room's many tentacles shorted out rather spectacularly when I grabbed its bendy neck to direct the light. My body is filled right now with a potent chemical cocktail of unhappy sauces: prolactin, cortisol, and adrenaline. It is not responding well to this, and I guess my electromagnetic field is shorting out on certain frequencies. All of us here at Princess Central (me and the voices in my mind) have been strung out on love hormones like a fucking junkie. I am jonesin' for the body's natural opiates, the enkephalins; I don't want to kick the endorphins and the dopamines. I want to be high on love all the time, but kids, sadly that high can so rarely stay. It passes, and you feel a little sick, a little shaky, a lot raw. The upside to crying your eyes out? Sssh, it's nature's chemical peel, as well as, a way to purge that overdose of negative hormones out of your body. I am secreting my despair and thus purging myself of it, and once my face has healed from the slight prolactin, sodium chloride, and potassium chloride burn, my skin is going to look be-yoo-ti-ful. This time around, I took note of the emotions coursing through my body when the light bulb sparks and burns out, and it is straight up despair, a river of angst pouring through my chest. I just wanted to turn my brain off yesterday, so I wouldn't feel. Too late. Apparently, I broadcast across a wide spectrum. All artificial lights will feel my wrath and tremble.

Why the long face little bear? Well, I met a man or a robot (it's entirely possible) on the internets. We laughed, we loved, we conducted a relationship entirely made of pixels and electrical bursts. We entered into a year-long family plan cell phone contract. Do you take this 404 area code to have and to hold as your own even though you live in Sayton, Ohio? He did, and there was much chatting and texting and rejoicing on the full keyboard of the Sidekick. We named our future children. In fact, if it was possible to be impregnated via sms protocol, I would be 6 months pregnant right now. Alas, it was not to be, and I come now to you, the blogosphere, to bury this cyber-relationship. For truly, it is over.

There are ways to end a relationship that require tact and delicacy. Some go for more of a burn the bridge and salt the earth approach. I have experienced many finishing moves that were awesome in the scope of their douchebaggery. There was the boyfriend who left me while my mother and BOTH my cats were dying of cancer. There was the boyfriend who went to the beach with his buddies for New Year's Eve rather than spend that magickal moment with me; though, I begged and pleaded with him to go on a trip with me anywhere, my treat. He later met a new horse-faced makeup beast and flew to London the next year to celebrate New Year's Eve with her. Ah yes. Still, it burns. Today. Today, I have experienced a new finishing move, a move worthy of Mortal Kombat: the Douche-ality.

Let me set the stage for you. It was Xmas, and I was working 3 jobs to ensure that when my dearest cyber-love winged his way to me that I would have enough money to be able to not work during his visit thus ensuring that I could stay home all week and have violent monkeysex and bathe in the aura of our love. We could not be together at Xmas, or New Year's Eve for that matter (foiled again), because he has a child and shared custody and needed to save his money to make a little girl's Xmas special. All perfectly understandable, I gave him props for tending to his child and having his priorities in order. Did I expect a present from him at Xmas? No. Would a $2 card and a $.25 plastic ring have sufficed? Yes. Yes, it would have been enough for me as I am a cheap and sentimental date, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I bought him a small gift and waited to give it to him in the flesh. I kept the light of our love alive in my stupid, stupid heart.

Sadly, it truly was the beginning of the end. Things were amiss. He became wishy-washy. I mean we had only kept this thing alive for 6 MONTHS without ever meeting one another for real. Everytime he was supposed to come visit me (and there were 3 separate incidents all to be paid for on my dime), he would get cold feet and come up with outlandish excuses...like teeth. Yes, TEETH. Not mine but his. Apparently, he was afeared to meet me because his teeth weren't perfect, but kids, I had seen pictures of his teeth, and they were fine for my purposes. Plus, I was IN LOVE, and frankly, he could have been purple and had tentacles for all I cared. I just wanted to touch him and love him and perform unspeakable sex acts upon his naked flesh. BUT NO. It was not to be. Teeth. My birthday rolled around Feb. 2nd, Groundhog's Day. We had been squabbling a little and expectations were low. A phone call would have been nice; a 2 word text saying "Happy Birthday" would have even been acceptable. Nothing. Friends I had not spoken with in 2 years took the time out to text me Happy Birthday. People I have never met made an effort to leave me glittery birthday comments on my mspazz page. There were phone calls and life-sized Wonder Woman pinatas --(Dear Spanish language, I apologize, but I cannot find the enyas and tildes on this damn non-standard keyboard)-- and cake and plastic rings and many Lonestars, but there was nada from the cyberboy. Nary a peep nor a pixel was to be found. I got a phone call a few days later. His excuse? I had said my bday was not a "big deal", and he didn't want to be an asshole. Seriously? But, you are being an asshole by not calling so how are you not being an asshole again? Oh that's right, you are being an asshole and you KNOW it; you just don't want to have to deal with why you are being an asshole. You can't hide from the truth because the truth is all there is. Classic move straight out of the Douchnozzle Twatwaffle Handbook. Let me explain the ultimate triple ice burn subtlety of this move. Acting like the ultimate asshole forces me to preemptively break up with him right before Valentine's Day thus pulling the perfect no-gifting trifecta of Xmas, my bday, and Valentine's Day. Your plan sir is fiendishly simple yet cowardly implemented. It would have been easier and more humane to rip the band-aid off this thing months ago pre-holiday season, but, and here is the kicker, he didn't even realize he had pulled the Classic Ultimate Douche-ality until I pointed it out to him, and he had the grace to kind of act SORRY. Listen, DUDE, I GET it. You didn't think about it. You didn't even bother to think about me. In fact, you had already stopped thinking about me altogether. God, at least if he had done it on purpose, I would have known that he had spared at least 2 FUCKING seconds of concern and thought for me. I TOTALLY get the message; we has received it loud and clear. Thus, sir, I crown you the winner in this round of the Mortal Kombat that is love and romance in this digital age.

Ultimate Douche-ality: Flawless Failure.



(I tried to make a snappy Photoshop pic of Sub-Zero ripping the spine out of a bleeding unicorn to go right here. It just wasn't in me today though. I have even lost the will to form Voltron. Tragic. Ask and ye shall receive. This lovely graphic is courtesy of Moo. Much Love.)

I name thee wonderkiller, unicorn maimer, butterfly crumpler, doubt sower.

What's the moral of the story kids? Don't put yourself out there? Don't try? Make better choices with your heart? Expect the best but prepare for the worst? Don't meet people over the internet? All plausible, but I don't think so. I'd still walk this heart over the lava pit, no net, for the right person. What do I know though? I'm just the dumbfuck who fell for it all. To borrow the much finer words of Mr. William Faulkner, "'Tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying...nothing."

(via XKCD click pic to make bigger)