WrestleMania

Five Songs That Name-Drop the Astrodome

On this day in 1965, what was then called the Harris County Domed Stadium opened to the public. These days the Astrodome sits mournfully overlooking the empty lot that was Six Flags Astroworld, a testament to the fact that no one can think of what to do with an enormous structure that has outlived i ... More >>

Louisville 82, Michigan 76: 4 Winners, 4 Losers

A roller-coaster first half, which had Twitter in a frenzy of hyperbole, led to a grinding second half, and in the end experience won out as Louisville knocked off Michigan 82-76 to win Rick Pitino's second career men's basketball title, making him the first coach to win it all at two different scho ... 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 >>

A No-Holds-Barred Look at Insane Clown Posse's "Chris Benoit"

Rewind: Insane Clown Posse Incites Spiritual Debate, Asks "Where's God?" Here's a Video of the Entire Geto Boys Show From Saturday's Juggalo Gathering It's been a pretty good week for both the Insane Clown Posse and Juggalos across the country. Aside from an argument that led to a Texas ninja gett ... 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 >>

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 >>

Gorilla Monsoon: A Birthday Playlist For A Wrestling Legend

Growing up as I did in the '80s, professional wrestling was more than entertainment, it was religion. The Hulkster, Roddy Piper, Randy Savage and Andre were all unapologetically over-the-top, one-dimensional; comic characters that did glorious battle for dubious reasons. It was a great time to watch ... 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 >>

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 >>

Packers 16-0, Colts 0-16: A Wagering Public Service Announcement

All aboard!​It's Christmas shopping season, and as someone who has to had to "overbuy" presents for years now, I understand the phenomenon of those Christmas bills showing up a couple weeks after December 25, and your asking yourself "How in the sparkly, tinsel hell am I going to pay these?" ... More >>

The Peyton Manning Saga -- A Very Special 4 Winners, 4 Losers

Everyone wants The Beard​"Peyton Manning's not going to let (the Colts) draft Andrew Luck." -- Phil Simms "I don't talk to Phil. Phil doesn't talk to me. He did text me after that, saying 'Hey, sorry to drag your name into this.' I wrote back, 'Phil I don't know what you're talking about.' He ... 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 >>

Top 10 Musician WTF Hobbies

Zazzle.com​Musicians are weird. Well, the good ones, at least. It's a little-known, beloved factoid. While artists' news, drama, and private lives are sometimes aired to the point of over-saturation, it becomes more interesting when we learn relatively kept insight into their rockers' offstage ... More >>

Randy "Macho Man" Savage (1952-2011) -- A Video Anthology

R.I.P., Macho Man​In 1999, I was invited by my buddy Ken Hoffman of the Houston Chronicle to go to lunch with Randy "The Macho Man" Savage. Having grown up a child of the '80's, I was absolutely giddy. (Giddiness factor for me was a fraction of Hoffy's, although admittedly that had more to do ... 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 >>

The Four Best Final Fours of the "One Shining Moment" Era (w/ VIDEO)

Hopefully more shining and less Hudson this year​Some of you mistook my piece on Monday as my not being excited for the Final Four this weekend in Houston. That couldn't be further from the truth. I am incredibly excited to have the event here in our town, for a couple reasons: 1. I'm a Con ... More >>

ESPN Headlines -- Sex, Lies, And Shrunken Testicles

It's a bad news day when you're hoping for stories on barry Bonds' shrunken balls​"I see trees of green ... red roses too I see em bloom ... for me and you And I think to myself ... what a wonderful world." -- Louis Armstrong Clearly, Louis Armstrong would have never made it as a sports fan ... More >>

NFL & College Football -- Weekend's Best Bets

When it comes to college football, I'm not a staunch traditionalist. I believe the season is more compelling when the longtime powers are strong (Translation: Texas, Florida, Michigan, Notre Dame, and Miami all being mediocre is, to me, a bad thing.), and yet I picked Boise State before the season ... More >>

Ten Songs We Are Sick Of Hearing At Football Games

Take that Crazy Train right on out of here, Ozzy. Thanks.​That sound you heard Sunday was the collective shattering of the playoff hopes of thousands of Houston Texans fans as the team suffered yet another home loss, this time against the hapless San Diego Chargers, bringing their record to 4- ... More >>

College Football & NFL -- This Weekend's Best Bets

Reggie Bush has always been a cheater​I'll get to the Best Bets of the weekend in a second, I promise, but first some venting.Reggie Bush is rapidly moving up my most hated list.Not because he chose to attend Southern Cal instead of Notre Dame. Not because the defining play of Notre Dame's decade ... More >>

Deporting All WetWacks

Houston's Mayalino swears a lyrical vendetta against fake rappers.

Game Time: Cinco De Mayo...Frenchies, Bye Bye-Oh!!

Mexico joins the not-so-exclusive "We kicked French ass" club​Go to any Cinco de Mayo celebration today and ask ten of the patrons what exactly they are celebrating and you're likely to get a range of answers that looks like this: -- Six drunks slurring that it's Mexico's Independence day -- Two ... 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: Assessing The 2010 Final Four

​I was on fire. As dismal as my bracket had become whittling the field down from 64 to 16 teams, once the field was down to the Sweet Sixteen, I was seeing things much more clearly. This wouldn't save my bracket, because brackets are like kids -- once you crank one out, it's yours for better or ... 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 >>

Midweek Match-Up: U2 Vs. Wrestlemania In The Battle Of The Spectacles

As you well know if you've been reading our sister blog Rocks Off (and Lord knows you should be), U2 is in town tonight.The new tour requires something like 90 huge trucks to cart around the massive stage they use so as not to detract from the quiet beauty of their ballads. Or to keep the people in ... More >>

The Big Show

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

WrestleMania: The Fans. Let's Not Forget The Fans

Last Sunday's WrestleMania promised to bring the faithful to Houston, and in that regard at least, it didn't disappoint (unless by "faithful" you were expecting personages of some religious significance, in which case you'd certainly be a little disappointed). Let's take a look back at some of the ... More >>

WrestleMania: The Slideshow!!!!!

Photo by Dan Kramer"Have you ever seen a one-legged dog making its way down the street? If you've ever seen a one-legged dog than you've seen me," Bruce Springsteen sings in the title song to The Wrestler.Well, we've never seen a one-legged dog, to be honest, but we could have seen Mickey Rourke if ... More >>

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 >>

Cyndi Lauper

Sunday, April 25

You Don't Know Mac

Get your recliner and No. 2 pencil

Tale of the Tape

KHOU gets defensive about airing a blurry spring break tape

Wham, Bam, Thank You, McMahon

Wrestlemania X-Seven enters the ring

Dependable. Reliable. Ken Hoffman.