Excuse Me While I Talk About Wrestling

My one vice, even more so than listening to Lisa Loeb, remains professional wrestling. Yes, I still watch Raw every Monday night, and I’ll even tune in to TNA Impact if I feel like hurting my brain, and if something better (Archer, Always Sunny, most of NBC’s Thursday night lineup) isn’t on.

And my favorite pro wrestling event each year is always the Royal Rumble, and the rumble match itself. For those of you uninterested in pro wrestling, let me go on in GREAT detail about this!

The rumble match itself consists of 30 superstars fight in an over-the-top battle royal for a title shot at Wrestlemania. Two superstars start off, one-on-one, and every 90 to 120 seconds (it varies depending on the year), a new wrestler is thrown into the mix.

Basically, the match serves as a sort of poo-poo platter of wrestling. Most everyone in the match gets a chance to get some offense in, and because there are 29 eliminations, you get plenty of drama and storylines created and furthered by what happens in the rumble.

Today’s match, on paper, figures to be a bit ho-hum. My favorite wrestler, Chris Jericho, just returned to action this month, and the rumble will be his first actual match back. ([Right] Him in his over-the-top, fan pleasing persona right now.) He’s one of the favorites to win because he’s one of the few major WWE wrestlers lacking a regular feud right this second. Meaning, him winning would automatically propel him into a major angle / storyline.

For whatever reason, the best rumble of all-time, the 1992 edition, is available on YouTube in its entirety. Yes, it is totally 1990s wrestling, but if you like wrestling at all then you should be a big fan of the action. Plus, it has Bobby Heenan at his peak on the microphone! And Ric Flair! (If you want some awesomeness from both, skip ahead to about 9:15 in the match for his entrance, and 33:30 for the introduction of Roddy Piper.)

TV Review: WWE's NXT is A-OK

The Miz speaks with his "trainee" Daniel Bryan.

When the WWE decided to cancel its ECW promotion and replace it with a Tough Enough-esque reality show, I didn't have high hopes for the new program. Frankly, it sounded kind of weird and gimmicky and stupid, like the entire Divas division and past promotions giving away $1 million to viewers.

Lo and behold though, NXT has actually been pretty decent in its initial two episodes, as it has given a chance for raw wrestlers and performers new to the WWE scene to get some television exposure. The show's focus on just eight performers certainly helps, as does the inclusion of established pros like Chris Jericho and The Miz to help them out with promo work.

In my opinion, there have been two stand-out performers on the show so far. The first one, Daniel Bryan, shouldn't be that surprising to anyone who follows wrestling regularly. He has been wrestling regularly for years, mostly for independent promotions and Ring of Honor, under the name Bryan Danielson. While the WWE has downplayed this, acknowledging only that he has been wrestling for a decade, his polish in the ring comes through as compared to the other raw talents on the show. In the debut episode, he almost pinned World Heavyweight champion Chris Jericho, and except for a botch on a springboard in the second episode, he has been near perfect in his ring action.

(Side note: The Miz is Bryan's mentor, and he is shockingly good on both this show and regular WWE programming. Seriously. Bill Simmons mentioned it in a column or chat the other week, but we are at the point where The Miz is now probably the most successful Real World graduate. Simply stunning. He will probably be a world champion within the next three years; he is dynamite on the microphone, like a young Chris Jericho, and his ring-work is now very good as opposed to just passable.)

Justin Gabriel also impressed in his tag match, which pitted him and Matt Hardy against William Regal and his hick trainee, Skip Sheffield. Gabriel is a big guy, but he hit a 450-degree splash from the top rope after Hardy laid out Regal with his finisher. He didn't hit it as easily as Evan Bourne nails the Shooting Star Press, which worried me a bit, but still, the finisher has definite star potential.

The other wrestlers featured prominently in the second episode, which I saw all of, were a mixed bag to me. At best, Sheffield seems like a hick comedy act; Santino Marella with muscles. Darren Young is a more athletic, thinner version of ECW and Smackdown flame-out Ricky Ortiz. David Otunga has a monstrous physique, and he clearly has an "all-star" pedigree in that his fiancee is apparently Jennifer Hudson; the WWE has a weakness for celebrity connections like that. However, he is clearly the rawest performer of the bunch.

Overall, NXT was a fairly entertaining hour of TV, and I'll check back with it from time to time - It had some fresher storylines and more wrestling than Raw and TNA Impact, which is kind of damning it with faint praise right now. However, it lacks the "pop" of the Smackdown storylines, at least in its two initial episodes.

Grade: B