The return of Straight Shoot!

Blood brothers

Way back in the halcyon days of earlier-this-year, I did a regular, weekly column for the fine folks at UGO.com called “Straight Shoot.” If you asked those aforementioned fine folks, it was done to capitalize on keywords, search terms and current events in professional wrestling, while helping build a regular audience for UGO.com – that’s why they paid me to do it.

But between you, me and everyone-else-who-might-stumble-upon-this-post, I really did it because I’ll take any excuse to yammer on and on about wrestling.

To that end, I’ve started a new Tumblr blog called, you guessed it, “Straight Shoot”, which I’m describing as a curated look at wrestling. Basically, it will be a big collection of everything I like about wrestling: Great matches, awesome promos, ridiculous video packages, maybe even some wacky merch. Along with it, for the reading-inclined, I’ll also be rambling on at-a-not-so-oppressive-that-it-cuts-into-my-time-actually-watching-wrestling length about what it is exactly that I find so great about the post. I’m going to be posting to it as regularly as I can stand, but keep in mind that I have serious comic book and video game habits I’m also trying to feed here.

Go check out “Straight Shoot” now, and make sure to follow it so you know when I post something new, and everyone else knows that I’m not just talking to myself.

Oh, and those gory looking badasses up top? That would be legendary tag team Stan Hansen and Bruiser Brody, who also happen to be a couple of things I really like about wrestling.

The great Rock/Cena promo battle of 2012

The past few weeks have seen the year-old Rock/Cena feud get far, far more interesting than it ever has been, largely due to the fact that John Cena has finally started landing some verbal body blows on his much more charismatic and beloved rival. That’s led to folks like me praising Cena’s abilities, and folks like some of my more irritable commenters doubling-down on their anti-Cena stances. But if you ask me, by doing either of those things, we’re playing right into WWE’s hands and missing the most interesting part of the feud.

Despite the fact that we live in a day and age where everyone knows that everyone in professional wrestling is a performer, with matches and promos that are both oftentimes heavily scripted, much of the weekly WWE audience has gotten sucked into this feud in spite of themselves. Even more impressive is that it’s a babyface-on-babyface storyline – there’s not even really a bad guy here – but by blurring the lines between fact, rumor and outright fiction, WWE has gotten people to take sides anyway.

This is when wrestling is at its most interesting, when you’re not exactly clear how much you’re being worked (see Montreal Screwjob, CM Punk last summer, etc.). In my most recent Straight Shoot article at UGO.com, I go into more detail and depth about the still-ongoing Rock/Cena storyline, and how it’s become far more interesting than I ever thought it would.

Straight Shoot: The Great Rock/Cena Promo Battle

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