It was saddening to learn that former wrestling legend “Macho Man” Randy Savage tragically passed away last week. He and Hulk Hogan were the two primary reasons why the then-WWF exploded into the mainstream in the 80s and early 90s. Growing up with wrestling I always remembered him as the crazy guy with the colorful outfits who always yelled nonsense in his promos. “Freak out, freak out!” “Oh yeahhhh!” “Dig it!”

“The Mach” was one of a kind outside of the ring with his in-your-face style of interviews and extraordinary outfits that only he could make look badass because there is not another man who could pull off wearing that outrageous, over-sized cowboy hat and shades in tandem with hundreds upon hundreds of tassels and still come off as a tough son of a gun in the ring. And let us not forget about the lovely Elizabeth that always accompanied Randy. Inside the ring, Savage was one of the pioneering high flyers of wrestling, where all it took back then was a flying elbow drop off the top turnbuckle to dazzle crowds instead of the countless backwards flips in midair that we see today.

Randy was not all flash, either. He backed up his gimmick as one of the top in ring technicians in his day. Back when the World Wrestling Federation was primarily known as the Hulk Hogan Company, where the Hulkster would be squaring off against stereotypical wrestling villains and resting on his laurels, Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat stole the show at Wrestlemania III in a match that is still regarded as a classic today.

When Hulk decided to take time off wrestling to attempt a movie career, Savage was finally given the ball to run with the company and became the WWF’s heavyweight champion. When Hulk Hogan came back from filming his latest disasterpiece, he teamed up with Macho Man to form the quintessential tag team, The Mega Powers. This new partnership was not meant to be, because Randy was led to believe Hulkamania was running wild on Elizabeth, and thus the Mega Powers exploded into another classic Wrestlemania match with Savage between him and Hogan at Wrestlemania V.

After Savage turned villain, he transformed his persona into the Macho King, and dumped lovely Elizabeth for the not-so-lovely Sensational Sherri. I prefer not to remember the next two years of Macho’s career because I always will remember him as being one of the memorable heroes of wrestling. I will remember, though, him carrying the Ultimate Warrior to the best match of his career at Wrestlemania VII, where Warrior kicked out of three straight flying elbow drops to my dismay, and according to the stipulation, sent Macho Man into early retirement. Retirements are meant to be broken in wrestling and Savage was brought back to the forefront in half a year after suffering enough torment from Jake “The Snake” Roberts. I still remember being terrified as a kid when Jake made his pet snake Damien take a chunk of flesh off of Savage’s arm, and was ecstatic when Savage got revenge on Roberts.

It was around this time in the early 90s when Randy Savage became synonymous for being the on-air mascot for Slim Jim. The outlandish Savage was the perfect match for maniacal Slim Jim commercials. Too young to remember them? Then check out this link, filled with plenty of early 90s “extreme” advertising showcasing the Top 10 Randy Savage Slim Jim Commercials.

Randy Savage stuck around the WWF for a few more years, capturing the WWF title one more time time in another Wrestlemania classic against Ric Flair before being transitioned into an announcer, as the WWF tried to focus on promoting newer stars. Savage was not content on being an announcer however and quickly followed Hulk Hogan into WCW in 1994 and spent the remainder of the 90s feuding and aligning with the likes of Hogan, Ric Flair, Diamond Dallas Page and the nWo. Other than a couple brief cameos in TNA Wrestling in 2004, Randy Savage has remained out of the spotlight from the wrestling scene this past decade. His most memorable pieces of work in the 21st century was his appearance as the wrestler Bone Saw McGraw in the first Spider-Man film, and landing a minor voice role in the CG movie, Bolt. The less said about his rap album, Be a Man, the better.

Considering how many times WWE nowadays brings back legends like Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin and Rowdy Piper to make special appearances on television, it was surprising the WWE never brought back Macho Man for an official television appearance since he left the company that made him famous in 1994. According to the rumor mill, he did some dastardly deed that made him persona non grata for many years. As a matter of fact, this past year WWE and Macho Man started to patch some of those old wounds and were working together again, with Randy doing some brief promotional appearances to promote a new action figure of him, and Savage filming a commercial for the WWE All-Stars videogame released just a couple months ago.

While Macho Man may have been second banana to Hulk Hogan throughout a majority of his time in the ring, that will still not deny the impact he left on pro wrestling as one of the top draws and one of the most fascinating personas of all time. Have a favorite memory or moment of Macho Man? Please share and post in the comments below so we can all relive the Macho Madness! Now if you excuse me, I am going to watch my best of Macho Man DVD set and go on a Slim Jim binge.

ESPN 30:30 Box Set - ESPN has been running this incredibly awesome series of thirty sports documentaries this year to celebrate 30 years on the air. ESPN reached out to some of Hollywood’s top directors to create these films that celebrate some of the most talked about and under-appreciated moments in sports. The first box set just went on sale last week, and it collects the first fifteen films of the series. This collection covers such memorable spectacles as the OJ Simpson car chase on June 17, 1994, the rise and fall of the USFL, the Wayne Gretzky trade to LA and the tragic death of Len Bias.

No more Lost - I had a very strong love/hate relationship with Lost. For every good episode that saw a major plot development or great moments, it was usually followed with an episode that killed off one of your favorite characters or added yet another unneeded question to keep the WTF balance in check for the series. With Lost finally ending after six seasons in 2010, I am grateful that I will no longer have to anticipate any more episodes of this bizarre program that sent me on a whirlwind of emotions like no other show before it. I promise to never waste another moment on this show again…unless ABC will somehow manage to re-release the entire series in chronological order.

The Book of Basketball - This was actually released in 2009, but the paperback edition just hit shelves a couple weeks ago and it includes all kinds of bonus content! I finally finished the hardcover edition of this book a few months ago, and even only being a casual hoops fan I found it to be an extremely informative and entertaining read. Bill Simmons knows his hoops, and his humorous writing style features all sorts of imperative footnotes that makes catching up on basketball history fun for everyone!

Season Two of The Tester & WCG Ultimate Gamer - As much as it pains me to lay this out there, I love both of these shows. Say what you will about reality television and the usual hi jinx that it contains, but I was entertained by second seasons of The Tester and WCG Ultimate Gamer this year. Both shows are eight episodes and features video game themed challenges where the goal is to win to become either the next PlayStation game tester (yes, really), or for a one year roster spot on WCG USA. There are a few characters and moments on each show that are pretty groan inducing I will admit, but that is par for the course with almost any reality show. If you can manage to stomach that, than you will be in for a fun ride that brought back memories of old video game contest shows like Video Power and Nick Arcade.

Heavy Rain, Alan Wake & Red Dead Redemption - If you happen to remember my article half a year ago here ranking the top 10 games for the first half of the year, you may recall that it was a particularly strong first half of the year for games. Rest assured, now with 2010 nearly in the bag, I can say without a doubt that 2010 is the first year where the first half year of releases easily outclassed the second half. It outweighed it so much so that my top three from the first half of the year are my top three for my overall game of the year. And I hold all three of these games on a high pedestal with not much ground separating them in my rankings. Pardon the cheap plug, but to hear my final top 10 rankings, please subscribe to my podcast where we will be having our game of the year episode within a few weeks.

Pinball FX2/Marvel Pinball - Hats off to Zen Studios for their consistency at pumping out nonstop awesome video game pinball tables! Almost every time I sit down to play games, I tend to warm up with a couple of runs on a pinball game made by Zen Studios. Whether it was them supporting Pinball FX and Zen Pinball with frequent DLC tables throughout most of 2010, and then proceeding to blow us away with Pinball FX 2 and its amazing evolution of table design and leaderboard upgrades. They did not stop at Pinball FX 2, because just a couple months after that fine release, they pump out Marvel Pinball, with four more addicting tables themed after some of the best superheroes in the Marvel Universe…and Blade. I dare you to download a table or two and not get hooked to the amount of sheer fun each table provides and the addictive nature of score chasing everyone on your friends list.

Miz as WWE Champ - This just would not be a “stuff of the year” list from me without a couple wrestling mentions. Mike “The Miz” Mizannin had quite an interesting journey to becoming the current WWE champion. From debuting in the entertainment world ten years ago on The Real World, to riding the MTV reality circuit for a few years until finally debuting in WWE in 2004 on its Tough Enough competition. Being one of the few Miz fans from his early beginnings in WWE when no one thought he would last a year in the company, I nearly lost it when he finally proved all the doubters wrong and  won the WWE championship.

The Nexus John Cena Beatdown - Just one more wrestling moment to add to this list. If you used to be a wrestling fan, odds are you watched during the WCW/WWF Monday Night Wars when each company was raising the bar each and every Monday to get you to flip the channel. With no real competition, WWE has become complacent with its storytelling and features less and less must see moments each year. In 2010 they managed to capture some of that old fire with the debut of the Nexus stable. Here they made an impact with an 8-on-1 beatdown on John Cena and literally tore apart the ring and beat up the entire ringside staff in a moment completely unprecedented. The Nexus has since become one of the most interesting stables of wrestlers in quite a few years.

On a recent episode of Drunken Gamers Radio, John stated they could not get enough of my wrestling articles. So I figured it was about time to write a new one. Today, I will review one on the newly-released DVDs chronicling the career of one of my all time favorite wrestlers, Chris Jericho, with WWE Home Video’s Breaking the Code: Behind the Walls of Chris Jericho. This three-disc DVD features a near two hour documentary on the career of Chris Jericho on disc one, and nineteen of his best matches, handpicked by Jericho himself, on the final two discs.

The documentary starts off like most previous WWE produced efforts, highlighting Jericho’s childhood years where he aspired to be a wrestler and rock star. The feature does a modest job at describing his early years in wrestling, from breaking into the business with Lance Storm at the Hart Family Dungeon to his days of being an international superstar in Mexico and Germany and getting his first break in the USA in ECW. I was hoping for a little more expansive look at this stage in his career since his autobiography, A Lion’s Tale, put a lot more emphasis on it, but the DVD does a decent job at covering a couple of his standout moments that he learned from. It is worth noting here that Jericho’s book is also the place to find his interactions and memories of Chris Benoit, who served as a big influence on Jericho’s career, but is understandably erased from WWE history (and is nowhere to be found on this DVD) after the double murder-suicide tragedy from 2007.

His exposure in ECW eventually landed him a job in WCW. During the infamous “Monday Night Wars” between WWE’s RAW and WCW’s Nitro from 1995-2001, one of the reasons I would usually tune into WCW was because of the high-flying action its Cruiserweight division delivered. I was more of a RAW fan, but Nitro usually started an hour before RAW, and that happened to be the hour most of its Cruiserweight matches took place so I got into the habit of seeing tons of incredibly athletic matches from classic Cruiserweights like Rey Mysterio Jr., Psycosis, Ultimo Dragon, Juventud Guerrera, Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko, to name a few. The DVD gives an accurate account on how WCW’s powers that be viewed the Cruiserweight division as nothing more than a preliminary attraction. If a wrestler was a Cruiserweight, than they may as well kiss any chance to climb their way up the ladder into the main event scene goodbye.

One of the few stars that escaped that stigma was Chris Jericho. After a couple years as just another faceless Cruiserweight, he took his opportunity to emerge out of the pool of high-flyers. Jericho talks about how he took every chance he got to cut a promo and develop his new bad-guy personality. The DVD goes into depth on two of his breakout feuds in WCW with Dean Malenko and Bill Goldberg. WWE used its archive interview footage with Goldberg and former WCW President Eric Bishoff to help flesh out a lot of his WCW years, and give their side of the story on why they held back Jericho from reaching true superstardom in WCW, which resulted in Jericho leaving the sinking WCW ship for higher ground into WWE in 1999.
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The Shield Season 7 DVD Set – The last season of my favorite cop drama, and possibly one of my all time favorite television series. If you have yet to give The Shield a shot, you are missing out on something special. The last season especially does not skip a beat, and features a very shocking, yet fitting conclusion.

PSN/Microsoft/WII Points Cards – Previous years have seen many high caliber PSN/XBLA/Wii Ware releases. 2009 is arguably one of the best years in download releases with studs like Shadow Complex, Trine and Final Fantasy IV: The After Years to name a few of many. Additionally, it has been a killer year for game add-on content with Neversoft and Harmonix still strongly supporting their respective music games, and titles like Call of Duty: World at War, Gears of War 2, FallOut 3, Little Big Planet, Killzone 2 and many more being consistently fed new DLC throughout the year to increae the lifespan and replay value of their titles. I do not know about you, but I have at least bought well into the double digits of PSN/MS cards this year alone. If you keep a keen eye to online retailers, you can find many of those going at huge bargains for big savings on that oh-so-easy-to-impulse buy DLC.

I Love You, Man – It was a close battle between this and The Hangover for my favorite comedy this year. But after seeing both a second time several months after the fact, I Love You Man surprisingly holds up better. The jokes still hit home for me, with the highlight being the vomit gag, which is easily one of the best shock laughs in all of film.

Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker – At Wrestlemania XXIV this year, I witnessed hands down, the best wrestling match of all time. This is somewhat strange since it featured none of the over the top gimmicks or stipulations from the wrestling world like ladders, thumbtacks, cages or other props. Strangest of all, this bout was between two wrestlers that many consider are both well past their prime and rapidly approaching retirement. Just like Brett Favre has proven skeptics in Minnesota this year, athletes can be like abottle of fine wine and improve with age as Undertaker and Shawn Michaels put on a five star mat classic for the ages. If you ever watched wrestling at one point in the past then by all means rent/Netflix Wrestlemania XXIV just f this match, I guarantee you will not regret it.

10 Year Anniversary of the Dreamcast – Sega’s dream may be long gone, but at least it was honored and remembered this year with class. Across the web, many videogame press outlets had a ten year anniversary nod towards the Dreamcast, and even a few new indie games were released for it this year. Someday, somewhere, Shenmue III will see the light of day.

Taken – Note to self, do not kidnap Liam Neeson’s daughter.

I was not the most hardcore WCW fan until the great Monday night wars started in 1995.I stumbled across a couple episodes throughout the years on television, but for the most part, all I knew WCW for was being the home for one of the greatest wrestlers of all time in the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, and the man that had the bleach blond hair and all types of various face paint patterns, aka Sting. Then when WCW decided to start having its own Monday night telecast, Nitro to compete directly with WWE’s RAW show at the exact same timeslot, I could not help but flip to it during commercials in favor of watching the same Karate Fighters commercial for the umpteenth time. Slowly but surely over the months, I became a fan of the WCW, especially when a lot of my favorite WWE mainstays like Razor Ramon and Diesel defected over to form the phenomenon that bumped pro wrestling into the mainstream in the mid-to-late 90s, the nWo.

Now all the highs and lows of WCW are chronicled into a fantastic documentary (albeit with WWE’s version of history, needless to say they took a few liberties), titled “The Rise and Fall of WCW.” WWE has done a tremendous job putting together documentaries based on other promotions they have put out of business over the years like ECW, AWA and WCCW. For newer fans of wrestling this is a great cliff notes version of the southern promotion, though avid fans of the squared circle will be bummed that they only covered so much ground in the 100 minutes this documentary runs (compared to WWE’s ECW DVD, which was based on a company that was around for a far shorter time that lasted over three hours).

For fans like myself who were not into WCW before the 90s, there is a great summary of the roots of WCW when it was the major player of the NWA (a group of wrestling territories from around the country) and was going by names of Jim Crockett promotions and Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. It covers a lot of ground from how WCW was one of the first promotions to get featured on a coveted cable timeslot, to its tumultuous management problems throughout the 80s that led to the company getting sold to Time Warner which led to another rotating door of management problems until Eric Bishoff came in and getting the promotion on the right track.

The DVD dedicates a fair amount of material to recapping the Monday Night Wars and how ruthless Bishoff was competing with RAW by making Nitro live every week and taking advantage of that and giving away RAW’s results at the top of the show (back when RAW was mostly taped several days before hand). The whole Monday Night War portion of the documentary is the most interesting since I was the most familiar with it and it does a an outstanding job at covering what drove WCW to new highs in the 90s (namely the explosive Cruiserweight division, Goldberg and the mega-popular nWo). I would have liked more detail on the demise of WCW, especially since they paid barely any attention to a couple pivotal moments of the Monday Night Wars that helped propel the downward spiral of WCW – the mishandling of Bret Hart and complete mess of a payoff to the year and a half build up to Sting vs. Hulk Hogan at Starrcade ’97.

I can see some reasons to why Sting is not highlighted (other than briefly seeing him in montages throughout the feature), mostly because he is currently one of the main acts on WWE’s competition, TNA Wrestling. If that were the case however, than why does this DVD take the time to bury two other key TNA figures in Kevin Nash and Jeff Jarrett? Speaking of non-WWE employees, I was surprised that WWE tracked down several figures of WCW past to get comments from in the feature like former WCW executives Jim Crockett, JJ Dillon, Harvey Schiller and even the man, Bill Goldberg himself. Eric Bishoff oddly refused to be interviewed for this documentary, but WWE had enough archival footage of Eric’s past interviews from older WWE documentaries to make his comments relevant in this release.

Rounding out this package is the usual wealthy amount of bonus matches WWE includes with every DVD release. There are 20 bonus matches, most notable are the excellent Chi-Town Rumble bout between Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat, Hulk Hogan’s WCW debut against Ric Flair and Goldberg vs. DDP at Halloween Havoc ‘98. While this is not the most fully detailed history of WCW it could have been, it does cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. WWE also released a couple other DVDs that would be terrific supplemental viewing to The Rise and Fall of WCW, so if you want to know more about WCW after watching this than I highly recommend tracking down “Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen” for a detailed look at WCW in the 80s and 90s, and “The Monday Night Wars” for a extensive look at one of the most exciting times in wrestling.

As much as I enjoy feeding my professional wrestling addiction each and every week with several hours of prime time television programming, there is something special about seeing it live in person. I have attended nearly a dozen events over the past ten years. I have been to a few un-televised live events, which are unique because those audiences I discovered consists more of passionate fans like myself and features more straight up wrestling than an average television taping card would. However, I would be lying to admit that the energy level and being surrounded with the elaborate entrance sets and spectacular pyrotechnics that are part of the television tapings help complete the overall package.

I attended past tapings for episodes of Smackdown, Nitro & Thunder, but the only big television taping that I missed out on in the past is WWE’s flagship broadcast, Monday Night RAW. So when my fellow wrestling podcast co-hosts alerted me that RAW was coming to the Target Center in the Twin Cities, I instantly hopped on board and anticipated the day the superstars of the WWE would invade the land of 10,000 lakes.

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If you were a wrestling fan growing up in the years when Hulkamania was running wild, then you have to be aware of another star of the squared circle whose claim to fame was that he was “absolutely perfect!” I am talking about none other “Mr. Perfect” himself, the late Curt Hennig. To honor his career and life, WWE has released the ultimate tribute in a 2-disc DVD called, “The Life and Times of Mr. Perfect.”

Disc one has an in-depth, 75 minute documentary on the life of Curt Hennig. Going back to his family roots in the business where he was brought up and even teamed with his dad, Larry “The Axe” Hennig, to his rise to stardom in the AWA and finally going to the big time and becoming a national name as the unforgettable Mr. Perfect. The DVD chronicles his rise to stardom with lots of highlights, photos, and interviews with family, friends, and peers. Going into this DVD, I was only familiar with Hennig from his then early 90s WWE days, and only knew of him being a big deal in the AWA, so it was a thrill to see a lot of his old footage of him breaking with the AWA and becoming a star after winning AWA’s World Championship from Nick Bockwinkel in 1987.
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Being a lifelong wrestling fan, one of the unfortunate things that come with the business is witnessing a lot of former ring veterans pass away at such a young age from drug abuse, health problems, and other sad circumstances as the Chris Benoit tragedy showcased last year. I feel a little redeemed when I see a wrestling great actually manage to live up to their life expectancy. Last week, wrestling legend and WWE Hall-of-Famer Walter “Killer” Kowalski died at the age of 81 after suffering a massive heart attack a few weeks prior.

Kowalski retired from the ring well before I became a wrestling fan; before I was even born actually. WWE does a commendable job at paying tribute to (most) of its former stars, and as I watched wrestling throughout the 90s I recall him being inducted into the 1996 (then) WWF Hall-of-Fame. When his induction was announced, I remember it being accompanied with a montage of clips from classic matches of his, along with interview snippets from his peers remembering his signature style in the ring known as “hooking,” where a wrestler would apply maximum force on his submissions until the point where it would cause serious, long lasting pain.

There are a couple other memories I have of the Killer. Speaking of the nickname, he earned it by legitimately severing the ear of one of his opponents, Yukon Eric, mid-match after a move didn’t go as planned. The fans took a hating for his lack of public remorse and they started calling him “Killer” and the name stuck. Killer had a lengthy career of nearly thirty years from his debut in the late 1940s until finally retiring in 1977. His career highlight had to be winning WWE’s tag team titles with the late Big John Studd as the masked Executioners tag team. In retirement he founded a wrestling school and was responsible as the trainer for arguably one of the most popular wrestlers of this decade, Triple H.

I remember always hearing Kowalski’s name brought up in numerous Triple H matches of being the man who trained “The Game.” I felt a little guilty he wasn’t around when I became a fan. However a couple months ago I finally was able to watch some of his matches off WWE’s superb video-on-demand service, WWE 24/7. Each week they produce a retrospective on one of many past wrestling legends and throw in a couple of his memorable matches and interviews from past friends and foes. Even though the matches that aired from his career were in black and white from the 50s and 60s and it was a completely different style as seen on television today, I made sure to get a glimpse of one of the most feared combatants to step in the squared circle.

It felt good to a get a chance to see some of his past work before he passed on, kind of like how you get to visit a family member during their final years. RIP, Killer. May you forever be ripping the ears off of your rivals.

I’ll admit it, I’m a wrestling nerd. If there’s one thing I’m mindlessly addicted to, it’s trying to catch as much of the seven hours of prime time programming each and every week. Then there’s the backlog of DVDs I have to catch up on, and as much of the WWE 24/7 On Demand programming I can stomach in my free time. Some of my favorite times of the year are when I throw a WWE Pay-Per-View party for some of the WWE’s top events of the year. Last night I had some friends over for WWE’s annual summer spectacular, Summerslam.

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