Your Midweek Links: B-Stroud, Blogging Bro-se Cansec-bro and BUY THE QUARTERLY

Brandon Stroud, who totally didn't pay me to feature him this week
Photo Credit: Destiny D. Talley

It's hump day, so here are some links to get you through the rest of the week:

Self-Shilling:

- The Wrestling Podcast! Brandon Stroud talks about Robert Evans, Akira Tozawa and how awesome a dude Matt Ufford is, all while pretending to be Mitch from PizzaBodySlam. [Episode 7: In the Aeroplane over the CIMA]

- In which I wax poetically about a Christian vs. Sheamus Smackdown main event at Fair to Flair. [Your Match of the Week, 6/12-6/18]

- Fair to Flair Quarterly: You missed the presale, but don't worry, you can still get it on the cheap. Go with the digital copy, like I've been telling you since we started hawking this. It's cheaper, it's greener and doggone it, people will like you. [Fair to Flair Quarterly Spring 2011: On Sale Now]

Wrestling Links:

- Speaking of Mitch, here's his review of RAW this past Monday. It's a hoot! [Fair to Flair]

- Speaking of the guy who pretended to be Mitch on the podcast, here's a double shot of Brandon Stroud Best and Worst ofs, for Capitol Punishment and RAW. [With Leather]

- Lagana gets the FJM treatment from Wrestling Theory [Wrestling Theory]

- Razor scores a huge interview with Jeff Katz, the purveyor of Wrestling Revolution. [Kick-Out Blog]

- WWE bans fake weed. That sucks for anyone who wants to put oregano on their pizza backstage. [Cageside Seats]

- 10 Questions with Icarus. Next week, John Hyperion will interview his terrible back tattoo. [Dirty Dirty Sheets]

- Ric Flair wants a Coke, dammit! [PizzaBodySlam]

- What did Paul Heyman want to do with TNA? [Camel Clutch Blog]

- A review of the WWE's Hart and Soul DVD [The Harrison Analysis]

- Five good things about Capitol Punishment. [Grapple Kingdom]

- Good ol' JR on CM Punk and other things. [JR's BBQ Sauce Blog]

- Jillian Hall returns to the ring. [Diva Dirt]

- United Airlines vs. Sonjay Dutt [I Want Wrestling]

- Footage of Averno's unmasking [Luchablog]

- An interview with Christian. [South Atlanta Wrestling]

- Top 10 most racist/xenophobic moments in wrestling, featuring Booker T getting Sambo'd [MTV Clutch]

- Wrestlespective Radio with guest Joey Image [Wrestlespective]

Jamie Dobson Interviews:

- Don Rosario Caruso

- Referee Jay Stone

Non-Wrestling Links:

- A letter from Little Timmy to Roger Goodell. Not to be confused with Little Jimmy, or else R-Truth would be involved. Also, I reference this on the next TWP with guest Josh Zerkle, who wrote this. Read it, because PUNTE does good work. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

- How the Boston Bruins ran up a $150K bar tab. I ain't even mad, they earned it. [Puck Daddy]

- Taglines for romantic comedies that'll never exist. My favorite? "This spring, Adrian Grenier falls down a flight of stairs." [The Hairpin]

- Deep-fried Kool Aid. Somewhere in Canada, a bearded man drinking Jack Daniels just did a spit take. [Buzz Feed]

- Speaking of which, the laziest, but still an awesome, edition of the show Jamie Oliver doesn't want you to watch. [Epic Meal Time]

- Spencer Hall gives tribute to Ryan Dunn. [SB Nation]

- Justin Henry also writes about Dunn, but it's more a cautionary tale than a tribute. [Camel Clutch Blog]

- If talk radio callers took to the streets... [Sports Pickle]

- Rolling Stone's top 100 songs of the '00s. Sure to inspire FFFFFFUUUUUUs from people who are foolish enough to take any list RS does seriously. [Rolling Stone]

- Skype, making phone sex better... or worse? Not sure what to think about this one. [Deadspin]

- Game of Thrones season 1 finale recap! [Unreality Mag]

- A bionic dog? A bionic dog. [Gamma Squad]

- Interesting idea for Flashpoint [Comic Books and Whatever]

- A trailer for the new Muppet movie. [Blast-o-Rama]

- A fine rant about Ilya Bryzgalov, re: Flyers fans [Flyers Goal Scored By]

- George O'Leary might be in some trouble over his response to a UCF player dying on the practice field. [Dr. Saturday]

- Advanced sabermetrics for rock 'n roll? I don't know whether to revel or be aghast. Well, I'm aghast if only because Klosterman gave the Rolling fucking Stones a 0.989. THEY SUCK. [Grantland]

- Dennis Rodman hates LeBron James almost as much as he likes wearing women's clothing. In a related note, no, B-Stroud didn't pay me at all to feature him four times this week. Why did you ask? [With Leather]

- The primary difference between mayo and Miracle Whip. [The Oatmeal]

- Who knew ancient artists were pervs? [Cracked]

- Better to be pissed off than to be pissed on [The Daily What]

- How to remember the ACC divisions mnemonically [Every Day Should Be Saturday]

- Len Bias, 25 Years Gone [Dan Shanoff]

- Amare Stoudemire talks trash to a retiree. [Hugging Harold Reynolds]

- Jimmy Rollins looks to break a world record in something other than having the most swagger. [The 700 Level]

- No Shatner in Star Trek 2. *sad* [Film Drunk]

- Bit LOST actor marries a country music star 35 years his junior. He's 51. Yeah, and if this girl is 16, then I'm Idris Elba. [Warming Glow]

- So true. [Skull Swap]

- A look at "traditional" marriage over the years. [GraphJam]

- Who knew the ICP didn't have a sense of humor? [Uproxx]

- Roy Halladay's epic St. Louis workout [I Want to Go to the Zoo with Roy Halladay]

- "That's funny, I didn't think nerds were capable of relationships." - some jock [Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]

- Swine flu dirty bomb Russian insurgents Paris Hilton's vagina. [The Onion]

- The Japanese interview the Phillie Phanatic. Yep. [The Fightins]

- The long awaited new "Weird" Al Yankovic video for "Perform This Way". As a side note, "Weird" Al in drag looks an awful lot like Jane Krakowski [Topless Robot]

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Promoting the Ultimate Conspiracy Theory: Why R-Truth Should NOT Get a Rematch

Little Jimmy gets his revenge and Truf bitching about it would be gold!
Photo Credit: See the watermark to the left

R-Truth got his first-ever shot at the WWE Championship last night at Capitol Punishment. It was an unsuccessful endeavor after a "Little Jimmy" threw soda in his face, the ultimate full-circle moment in the five-week build that allowed John Cena enough of a distraction to put Truf down with an Attitude Adjustment. While the match felt like a blowoff to most who watched last night, (and reading recaps, it read just like a blowoff as well) the trend in WWE is that when you get one PPV title match, you usually get three or four of them, regardless of how many of them in a row you lose. I fully expect Truth to come out and blather on about how he was robbed and expect to get a title shot.

And that's exactly why he shouldn't get one. Because once he gets denied, are you going to doubt that the meltdown will be anything less than epic? I don't. The thing with Truth is that as great a character as he's become in the last month, he really hasn't evolved in the ring to match his character. Yeah, we all loved his Larry Z stall-job to earn said title shot, but at the same time, that was wholly independent of anything he could do in terms of moves, selling, pacing etc. He played cat and mouse, and while it was great theater and awesome storytelling, what would come to pass when he had to actually wrestle?

If you give Truth the title shot at Money in the Bank, that's what you're banking on, Truth carrying a rematch angle on the promise he and Cena can deliver a good match. Even worse, the other scenario would be the GM giving Truth what he wants, and then making it a steel cage match so that the "Little Jimmies" of the world can't get involved. From a traditional storytelling background, that is obviously the best thing to do, but at the same time, this really isn't a traditional character. Well, scratch that, the conspiracy victim IS a traditional character, but it's not a character where this traditional storytelling trope works.

Keeping Truth away from the WWE Championship would create, in my mind, a better opportunity for a very limited WWE Creative team to generate a memorable story. I'd say have Truth beg for his shot because he was done in by a fan who had no business interfering. The GM denies it, citing the numerous shots Christian got on Smackdown as an example of guys who clearly don't deserve it continuing to get shots, and saying he doesn't want to be like Teddy Long because Teddy Long is an awful human being. The ensuing meltdown would be epic, and the next couple of months could see Truth trying like hell to get his shot back, either by legal means or by continually calling the GM to the carpet for trying to screw him out of his rightful second title opportunity. Or better yet, have Truth win Money in the Bank for RAW and every time he goes to cash it in, have some sort of nefarious circumstance prevent him from cashing it in. That would keep the story going and it would give Truth an out to get his title opportunity down the line.

Besides, we all know the money program here is to start prepping Alberto del Rio for his SummerSlam title opportunity. I mean, they already tipped their hand with this Youtube video that WWE Games put on their channel. They told as good a story with as good an ending for the time being in five weeks as they could have, which is more an argument to me for eliminating the number of PPVs and extending time between them than it is continuing the program with Truth for the time being. Let it go for now and start ramping up to SummerSlam.

I know that Truth has gained a lot of fans over the last month. I know, I'm sort of one of them. However, the idea that titles are the only thing that mean importance nowadays is pretty antiquated. A title means something in the right situation. For Truth, the lack of a title in his future is the best story. In the modern day, and really, any time in wrestling history for that matter, the story is always the most important thing. What's the better story that can be told? TO me, it's R-Truth complaining about The Man keeping him from a title opportunity, not him getting the obligatory, warmed-over weaksauce build that tends to happen in the second PPV of a several-PPV-title-feud.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Weekend Wrap-Up: There Was a Payoff to the Obama Dream Sequences

Jesus Christ, no
Photo Credit: WWE.com

- Capitol Punishment was last night, and it was actually a pretty eventful PPV. Both secondary titles changed hands (Ziggler and Zeke, your new US and IC Champions respectively!), CM Punk beat Rey Mysterio cleanly(-ish) and Evan Bourne and Jack Swagger had a PPV match. None of that was enough to make the consensus positive for the show though. Both John Cena and Randy Orton retained their titles, which for some reason shocked and appalled some of the more hardcore smarks on the web. For one, Cena winning should have been a foregone conclusion, and really, Truf shouldn't be Champ just yet (although when he does win, I expect theatrics and histrionics the level we haven't seen since... errr, King Joffrey's reign of terror in the last four episodes of Game of Thrones this season... seriously, go back and watch this before HBO takes it off On Demand... expect a review of the season for TWIOT).

Orton winning though? Well, I'm ambivalent to it anymore, mainly because I didn't watch the event. However, the way it played out sounded a bit cheap to me. That being said, I don't think Christian is really going anywhere, so settle your tea kettles₁. If you really want to get up in arms about something, do it over the Obama impersonator. That shit wasn't funny when it was Clinton, or for the millisecond that it was Bush. It's so cheap and cheesy. It's the kind of thing... hell, it's one of the ONLY things that makes me ashamed to be a wrestling fan. Ugh.

- Alex Riley got his DUI charges dismissed. Good news for him, I suppose, but hopefully, he doesn't see this as license to continue to drive intoxicated.

- There was an indie show this weekend, out in Berwyn, IL at the Eagles Club. AAW ran Day of Defiance. In the main event, Rhino defeated Silas Young. Also on the card, Jimmy Jacobs tapped Christian Hayme to win a multi-man scramble match that also included Sami Callihan, Samuray del Sol and Alex Colon, and the Awesome Threesome became new AAW Tag Champs by defeating Zero Gravity.

1 - Nattie Neidhart's greatest non-in-ring contribution to the wrestling tapestry.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Quick Hits: On Stranger Quick Hits

- After RAW went off the air last night, the RAW GM announced that R-Truth, by virtue of his count out victory over John Cena, deserves another match with Cena for the title at Capitol Punishment under one condition - he has to apologize on the air next week for his "abhorrent behavior" (and given they show two replays of him throwing soda in the "fan's" face after, that's what they're referring to). That should be amusing to say the least.

- ROH has announced when that Eddie Edwards/Davey Richards World Championship match will take place June 26th at their iPPV event The Best in the World, to be held at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. This will be the same event Jay Lethal makes his ROH return at, as well as promised title defenses from both the World's Greatest Tag Team as well as Christopher Daniels. My early feeling is that Edwards wins here to set up Davey chasing a "final" opportunity for the belt to cash in at Final Battle. But that's just me.

- WWE announced today that they're changing the name of their video game franchise from Smackdown vs. RAW to just WWE '(year), starting with WWE '12. You can see the trailer here.

- There was a big deal made of TNA cracking down on cell phone usage in the Impact Zone and spoiler reports, to the point where a correspondent from PW Insider (LOL) was thrown out of the building. In what can only be surmised as a big FUCK YOU to Universal Studios (since they're more the ones who are pushing this rather than TNA itself), F4W Online has spoilers for the next episode of Impact. I've been hard on Alvarez and Co. lately, but this is pretty awesome. Also, I don't usually like posting spoilers without extensive care to hide them, but at the same time? This just goes to show that no matter how hard you try, you're not going to totally prevent the leakage of pre-taped shows. Not at all.

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!

Capitol Punishment Poster...

WWE released its poster for Capitol Punishment today, and, well, yeah, it's interesting to say the least. To the left of the page is a snippet of said picture, and honestly, I'm not feeling it. Maybe it's because I'm burnt out on politics to the point where I don't even want to look at any kind of picture stylized like a political cartoon, but I really just don't want to see my least favored field of discussion mixed with my most favored.

Honestly though, I'm waiting for the first person to call the poster racist because of how caricatured Obama is...

Remember you can contact TH and ask him questions about wrestling, life or anything else. Please refer to this post for contact information. He always takes questions!