Professional Wrestling

The 10 Most Hilariously Awful Wrestling Entrance Themes

Last Friday was the 46th birthday of one of my absolute favorite wrestlers, William Regal aka Steve Regal before the WWE instituted its rather bizarre No-More-Steves rule. Not that it matters, his real name is Darren Matthews. "Regal" is an amazing man, rising to hold more than 60 titles in various ... More >>

The 10 Shortest Wrestlemania Matches Of All-Time

When I do these wrestling posts, one of the things I hear from readers is that the amount of content and embedded video in the post will typically derail them for an entire day at work. Well, the last thing I want to do, as I pay tribute to Wrestlemania 29 on Sunday, is be yet one more reason the ec ... More >>

R.I.P. Paul Bearer, 1954-2013: The Definitive Video Anthology Of His WWE Career

In news that when transcribed sounds like some sort of weird mix between a scene from Inception and a webcam installed in Vince McMahon's brain, William Moody, an actual trained mortician turned wrestling manager by the name of "Paul Bearer" and longtime WWE manager of the legendary Undertaker, died ... More >>

How Billy Corgan Won at Life and Won My Heart

I've previously been critical of Billy Corgan for a lot of the ridiculousness he has engaged in. But folks, I'm here to tell you, all of that changed for me last week when I saw this video of good old Billy and his wrassling federation shilling furniture. Now I get it. Billy Corgan is not Generatio ... More >>

Move Over, Johnny Football! Kevin Sumlin To Be Named WWE World Champion On Sunday

2012 was an unbelievable whirlwind for Texas A&M head football coach Kevin Sumlin. After quickly making the transition from Houston to College Station last spring, Sumlin went to SEC Media Day in July and basically learned that the respect level from the rest of the SEC for his Aggies was practicall ... More >>

A Birthday Playlist for Edge (No, the Other One)

It's been a fair few years since I watched professional wrestling regularly, something you can trace back to absolute mishandling of the ECW invasion and the death of women's wrestling in favor of juvenile sex fantasies. That being said, WWE Raw was on the other night and I decided to take in a few ... More >>

Y2J Forever: Fozzy's Chris Jericho Steps Out of the Ring and Onto the Charts

This weekend the last of the big touring festivals rolls into town in the form of the Uproar Festival. The 2012 edition of the tour brings some of the bigger names in hard rock's past (Godsmack, Staind) and present (Shinedown, Adelita's Way) to The Woodlands. Listed among the bands playing on the s ... More >>

Rock Arcade: 6 Musicians Featured In Video Games

Recently Green Day have been trying to promote their latest album by infiltrating all forms of mainstream media and somebody in the band must have realized that Angry Birds is a thing so why should it be left out? That is, presumably, how the world came to see Green Day members immortalized as gree ... More >>

In Honor Of Tonight's RAW 1000, The Definitive Timeline Of WWE's Victory In The Monday Night Wars (w/ VIDEO)

I don't know that any television product has changed the way we visually consume it more times than professional wrestling. For a majority of its history (which I am counting as the period from "dawn of time" until around 1978 or so), syndicated television was basically a weekly commercial for whate ... More >>

Top 10 Houston Rappers & Their Wrestler Counterparts

Since the days of Hulkamania, I've been a wrestling fan. That's not slandering anybody who gave up on the attraction or entertainment aspect after the second-generation boom in the late '90s, that's just me once again self-deprecating while tossing off a few knife-edged chops in defense. Take that, ... More >>

WWF's Top 7 Classic "Foreign Heel" Theme Songs

The WWF may have been the most patriotic American institution during the '80s and '90s; it turned Hulk Hogan into one of the biggest symbols of patriotism in recent memory. But there's a fine line between patriotism and nationalism, which the WWF straddled for years. By using jingoist superstars ... More >>

WWE Smackdown

The 3 Best Musician/Wrestling Tag Teams

The world of wrestling and the world of music have an awful lot in common. You've got you over-the-top characters, the lights, the spectacle, the flashy costumes and choreography. (See this, in fact.) Pretty much the only thing separating them are the injuries, and depending on the rock show not eve ... More >>

Jerry "The King" Lawler Piledrives Clipper Fan: Old School WWE Wrestlers for Each NBA Playoff Series (w/ VIDEO)

People laugh dismissively when I say it, but the more they can incorporate WWE performers and the general WWE "way" of entertainment, the more enjoyable other genres of sports will become. No, I'm not talking about the predetermined outcomes of matches (The NBA has already incorporated that aspect o ... More >>

Squared Circle: Top 5 Songs About Pro Wrestling

Although the wrestling boom of the late '90s is a fading memory, the absurd mix of sport and theater continues on in bingo halls and arenas across the country. Every night, under the bright lights, someone is trying to avoid being hit with a steel chair. It should come as no surprise that there are ... More >>

Lucha Libre USA: Masked Warriors Live

Weekend's Best Bets -- Final Four and Wrestlemania 28

When I was a kid, there were only a small handful of sporting events to which you set your calendar/watch, events that owned certain weekends or weeks of the calendar year. They were the biggies: Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals. But with the advent of a million different television channels, a ... More >>

6 Wrestling Finishing Moves That Would Suck at Stopping Riots (w/ Video)

Your riot-control specialist​I am admittedly not always the most up to speed on current events. I'm a generally selfish person. If it has nothing to do with my a) job, b) family, c) friends, d) bank account or e) need to satisfy hunger pangs, then whatever "it" may be gets thrown on the back b ... More >>

Saluting C.M. Punk With 5 Awesome Wrestling Promo's (w/ Video)

C.M. Punk lights up Twitter​If you're plugged into social media, the new litmus test for the relevancy of a show, a sporting event, a singular occurrence is "Did Twitter react?" And if they did react how heavily did the reaction clog your Twitter feed. I am a fan of professional wrestling. I ... More >>

Mark Cuban Hit In The Face With Flying Projectile; Video of Five Times He Deserved It

Mark Cuban: We have the video evidence​Apparently, at the end of Game 3 of the Maversicks-Blazers series on Thursday night in Portland, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was pegged in the face with a mysterious unidentified object. While I don't condone the anonymous launching of projectiles a ... More >>

Finally...the 2011 Jim Rome Smack-Off Recap

Glory days, well they pass you by....​"It's good to be in something from the ground floor, but I came in too late for that. But lately I get the feeling that I came in at the end, that the best is over." -- Tony Soprano In the first three minutes of the greatest television show of all-time, ... More >>

Undertaker's 18-0 Wrestlemania Record -- The Definitive Anthology (with VIDEO)

Yeah, it's Final Four weekend in Houston. We're all very excited. But a little secret (that's not very well kept) -- for me, the Saturday and Monday games are a mere buffer surrounding Wrestlemania Sunday, baby! This year is special because Houston's very own Undertaker (real name Mark Calloway, Wa ... More >>

Year in Review Appendix -- Five More Stories For The Road

One more for 2010...​I love the last week of December. Between Gary Kubiak and the option to just pick out some category from the past year and recap it, it's ready-made content. Just add snark! So in the spirit of lazy "Year in Review" style posts (one of which I've already submitted today! ... More >>

The 7 Basic WWE Metaphors For Real Life Situations (w/ video)

Let's get ready to....examine life!!!​I'm working on my 2009-2010 NBA Preview which should be done by tomorrow. I hope that some of you will cut me slack given that a whopping three games will be in the books by the time it gets posted here on Hair Balls, including the Rockets opener against the L ... More >>

Get In The Ring: How 7 Wrestlers Match Up With Their Rock-Star Lookalikes

​ While rock stars wrestle with their inner demons, the performers of the WWE wrestle with other people. A rock star may cut himself because he just needs to feel something; a wrestler will cut himself because it's the championship pay-per-view event and needs to look more intense. The rock stars ... More >>

Game Time: Shawn Michaels' Most Memorable Moments (With Video)

​Professional wrestling is one of those things that, if you're a sports fan as a kid, you probably dabble in at some point. I think at one time or another all of my childhood friends went to the matches at the Hartford Civic Center; somewhere along the way, usually as a teenager or young adult ... More >>

Game Time: 2010 Fiesta Bowl....Thanks For Coming, TCU

​The winner and NEEEWWWW Intercontinental Champion...the Boise StateBRONCOS!!!-- me on Twitter last night after the Fiesta BowlFor those of you who don't get the analogy, I'll give you the back story. In professional wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment (known better by the acronym WWE) has th ... More >>

Game Time: At That Moment, Jerry....I Tell You, The Texans WERE A Playoff Team!

"So I started to walk into the water. I won't lie to you boys, I was terrified! But I pressed on and as I made my way past the breakers a strange calm came over me. I don't know if it was divine intervention or the kinship of all living things but I tell you Jerry at that moment I was a marine bio ... More >>

Game Time: My Plea To In-N-Out Burger...Let Me Speak For You

​I host a sports talk show for a living, four hours a day, five days a week. That's a lot of air time to fill, so you can imagine the number of hotly debated topics that arise during a regular twenty hour broadcast week. Just over the last few weeks on our show, we've seen John Harris and Rich ... More >>

The Young and the Restless

Welsh indie-pop scamps Los Campesinos! live for the moment.

The Big Show

WrestleMania XXV brings out 72,000 fans and Mickey Rourke.

WrestleMania: A Beginner's Guide

Gonna be upfront here: I don't get the whole pro-wrestling thing. Never did.I grew up in New Jersey, where every pizzeria had a glossy shot of Bruno Sammartino on the walls, but it just never took.With that in mind, here is my analysis of the matches in the upcoming WrestleMania 25, which is the sin ... More >>

Wrestlers, Art, A Library & Bill White: The Madness Arrives

Cameras flashed, the crowd oohed and ahhed, and WWE superstar Jeff Hardy carefully painted a nose onto an oversized white canvas. The WWE onslaught that culminates with Sunday's Wrestlemania XXV eased its way into Houston this evening in an unusually genteel (and slightly unsettling) fashion - ... More >>

The Best Wrestler Theme Songs of All Time

With Wrestlemania in town for its 25th anniversary, Rocks Off thought we could take a little stroll down memory lane and relive some of the WWE's best wrestling theme songs. Nowadays, the WWE can afford to purchase the rights to slick, well-produced songs by popular music acts such as Saliva, O ... More >>

WrestleMania In A Dispute Over A Charity Event; No Chairs Hurled (Yet)

Logo courtesy WWEIn the world of professional wrestling, there appears to be a smackdown going on outside the ring.Hair Balls was alerted to this controversy after reading an article in Professional Wrestling Insider -- one of our favorite sources of news about big sweaty thespians pretending to bea ... More >>

Oh Noes!! Mickey Rourke Drops Out Of Wrestlemania!! (Danny Bonaduce Still Available, Though)

Houston, you have had a tough few months.Ike hit. The Texans missed the playoffs. And now -- most crushingly of all -- comes news that Mickey Rourke won't be coming to Wrestlemania after all.Of course, this being professional wrestling, things may change a half-dozen times before the event. Still, a ... More >>

AC/DC to Piledrive Wrestlemania

Daniel KramerDo people still watch professional wrestling? We stopped watching when the Rock left to make awful mummy movies and Stone Cold Steve Austin started fighting women instead of other dudes in black Speedos. That, and we graduated high school. Nonetheless, World Wrestling Entertainm ... More >>

Christmas Chaos 2

Pro Wrestling Alliance star Booker T takes on RVD

Our top DVD picks scheduled for release this week:

The Condemned

Stone Cold is hot, but The Condemned's hypocrisy is not

Our top DVD picks for the week of December 28

We Want the Funk

An '80s wrestling star relives his days of chain saws and headlocks in More than Just Hardcore

Triple H-town

Toyota Center gets "Raw" when WWE rumbles into town

A Tall Order

The Rock tries on Joe Don Baker's shoes for size, and they don't quite fit

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Reality Bites, Slams and Spears

The WWE floods Houston with Bad Blood

Wham, Bam, Thank You, McMahon

Wrestlemania X-Seven enters the ring

Are You Ready to Rumble?

Roots Rasslin'

At Tugboat Taylor's gym, would-be wrestlers are taught the eternal verities: It's more fun to be a heel, but heels always lose.