Spotlight: Michael Elgin

I recently returned to the land of independent wrestling after a rather long hiatus, because of reasons that don't matter because HI

Naturally my drug of choice is AIW, Absolute Intense Wrestling, otherwise known as The Only Wrestling In Cleveland That Matters. The show? Absolution 8.

Absolution is like AIW's answer to Wrestlemania, except with actual wrestling and less explosions and more mind-blowing twists. (Like last year, when #Nixon was revealed to be ERIC RYAN (And RSP, and Bobby Beverly, although you really kind of just expect Bobby Beverly to be involved with that sort of thing, and Duke) and then he threw a table at me. Well, not at me personally, he threw a table and I just happened to be in front of it. Admittedly it sure does beat having a GARBAGE CAN thrown at you, but I digress.

Needless to say, if you go to one AIW show, go to Absolution. (If you go to two, you should probably go to JLIT and save on your travel expenses.)

Anyway, the point I was trying to make here, is I went to AIW for the first time in the while and I'm a little bit out of the loop, because one of the most amazing, ridiculous, easily show-stealing matches of the night was between Michael Elgin and Josh Alexander, AKA two guys I had literally never heard of before that night.

I don't know what rock I was hiding under.

I really want to make a The Rock joke in there somewhere, but I'll refrain. I'm a professional, damn it. This post is supposed to be about Michael Elgin being badass.

Anyway, here I am at Abso8 and here is this match between dudes that I do not know. (Although I had been sitting in front of Michael Elgin as he was shilling shirts, and he definitely at one point said "Hey, those nachos would taste better if you were wearing an Elgin shirt" and I do not doubt the veracity of this claim.)

It looks like one of those matches that's going to be brawling and grappling, which is okay but not my favorite. After a while it's like "Okay if I wanted to watch MMA... I'd watch MMA!"

But here's this match. It's okay. Lots of grappling as I expected, but I'm not bored. Neither guy is really coming out as a heel or face so I'm not real sure who to root for. Then here is Michael Elgin, holding Josh Alexander upside down, straight up in the air. Which I've seen, we've all seen it. I'm not sure why being upside down makes it more effective but it looks pretty cool. It's impressive, I suppose, in the physical sense.

Michael Elgin held that move for something close to two minutes.

Any other time I've seen it, the guy holds it for ten seconds, maybe twenty if he's trying to be impressive (or if the opponent is smaller than he is).

But this guy, Michael Elgin, this guy right here, holds Josh Alexander, who is easily Elgin's size if not maybe slightly taller, upside down, straight up, over his head, for two minutes. Well, I didn't have like a stopwatch going, but I will comfortably say between a minute and a half to two. When the DVD comes out, we can time it.

(On an aside, kudos to you Mr. Alexander for being upside down for that long. I applaud you. His face was PURPLE, guys.)

And he suplexes Alexander and I'm like, "Welp! This guys has my vote."

The match goes on for a spine-melting thirty minutes of awesomeness. There were suplexes and powerbombs so massive I thought the ring was going to break. There were near-falls that had me clutching my hat in shock. There was at least one "This is awesome!" and "Holy shit!" chant. The room pretty much collectively lost its shit.

In the end they simply ran out of time. They ran down their thirty minute time limit, because that's how amazing they are. They each got on the mic, put each other over, and set a rematch.

Needless to say, I'm ready.


 Here's an MV of Michael Elgin vs. Davey Richards, because who doesn't also love a little Davey Richards am I right? It's not a match so much as it is a match cut and edited to music, but it's still pretty badass. Apparently Michael Elgin is in ROH which perhaps accounts for a bit of my cluelessness. I haven't followed ROH with any degree of consistency since they went off HDNet. It also turns out that Elgin is actually in contendership for the Heavyweight title.

Whoops.


Anyway, here is him vs. Brodie Lee. He does get the crap beat of him a bit but he puts on a heck of a good fight. Also, the announcer at one point uses the phrase "beating the cock out of", so there's that.


Here's one with him and Josh Alexander, from 2009, when they were but wee tiny babies. You can see a ghost of the awesomeness that will be them at Abso, especially around the 10 minute mark when Elgin goes "ALRIGHT I have had ENOUGH of your SHIT Alexander!"


A proper match between Elgin and Davey Richards. For whatever reason I enjoy these two together; I think it's because I find them to be similar. Not in movesets or anything -- Davey Richards is more like KICKS and FLYING, whereas Elgin is like "I WILL POWERBOMB YOUR FACE" -- but because you basically have to half-kill them to keep them down. Three-quarters in the case of Davey Richards. And maybe that aspect doesn't show so much in this match but in Abso8? Oh my goodness. I actually found myself rooting against Davey while watching this, which is rare, to say the least.

And one final time, here he is wrestling obvious crowd favorite Manabu Soya. In it you will find excellent of examples of Elgin just not staying the fuck down, and those massive powerbombs I mentioned earlier.

So, if you're a clueless noob like I am, apparently, I hope I made a good case for Michael Elgin and why you should definitely know who he is. I hope he does well in ROH with his title aspirations... just so long as he doesn't forget about AIW and the rematch he promised us!

Tyler Black's Incredibly Low Opinion of Female Wrestling Fans

I'm a female. I love wrestling. That should be self-evident. I shouldn't have to justify why I love it. It should just be enough that I say I do. Nobody questions a male wrestling fan. But because I'm a girl, I'm only in it for the hot guys, right?

No. Like I said, I shouldn't have to justify my love for this sport. I could draw up a whole blog post about why. I could talk about the sound of bodies smacking the canvas, or sitting in a crowd of raucous fans chanting obscenities, or the matches that take your breath away and make you rise to your feet and scream at the top of your lungs and do victory arms so hard your shoulders hurt. It's moonsaults and enziguiris and suicide dives off the top rope and dragonranas and crazy submission moves. It's passion; the passion of the guys in the indies, doing what they love. And doing what they love is what we love.

Seriously, I could talk about this for hours. And pages. But that's not why we're here, that's another post. (Or possibly several other posts.)

Now. There are wrestlers I do find attractive and love to watch because of that in addition to their incredible talent. Chris Sabin off the top rope, Alex Shelley Slicing Bread, Eddie Edwards in a backbend, whatever. There are some incredibly good-looking wrestlers, I'm not going to lie to you guys about that.

But so we're absolutely 100% completely clear on this fact, it is not all about the attractive guys in spandex. Okay? Okay.

Now that we've cleared that up. Here's what I came here to talk about. I stumbled across this today:

This is Tyler Black (AKA Seth Rollins, referred hereafter as Tyler for continuity's sake) responding to a question on Formspring.

Now, in my opinion, a ring rat is essentially a wrestling "groupie". Someone who's there for the sole intention of gaining a wrestler's attention in order to fuck him. I honestly don't know how often this happens, but you generally find rats attending the main promotions. Whether these girls are honest fans of the sport or are just there to fuck a pseudo-famous person, I don't honestly know. It probably varies from person to person. I'm not a rat nor have ever been a rat, so I really cannot say with any authority on the matter. However, I can say that there absolutely is a difference between honest fan and ring rat.

(Feminist disclaimer: it's the 21st century, and women can fuck whoever they want as many times as they want, I don't care. However, "ring rat" holds a negative connotation, whether rightly or wrongly given. I speak only of the reputation of the term in the industry.)

But apparently there are some people who don't feel the same.

When asked the difference between an honest fan and a ring rat, Tyler Black blithely says that there is no difference. In essence, Tyler Black just called the entire female wrestling fanbase whores.

There are so many things wrong with that statement that I don't even know where to start.

As a female wrestling fan, I am appalled and offended by that answer. That is a horribly negative, sexist, unthinking stupid assholish thing to say. I don't know if he was kidding, or being a smart ass, or trying to stir some stuff up. I don't care. The fact of the matter is that he looks like a sexist moron. It's one thing for an average dude (or average wrestling fan) to say something stupid like that. But this man is (supposed to be!) a professional.

I get it. Sometimes you say stupid things. Sometimes you accidentally call a fan a fag when you're trying to heel up the audience. (Punk, I'm looking at you.) In the heat of the moment, sometimes things slip out. While that is an incredibly derogatory term, I forgive Punk for having said it because, again... things slip out.

Sometimes you're trying to be incendiary because you're a heel. I get that too. And one of the best and easiest ways to be a heel is to alienate your fans. There's a lot of "YOU PEOPLE" in heel parlance. But there's a line. You call your fans stupid; you don't call them whores or faggots or retards. You don't alienate one subsection of your fans.

I don't know what Tyler's current character orientation is at this time, nor do I care. There's being a heel, there's being ignorant, and then there's just being an asshole. Refusing to acknowledge a solid percentage of serious fans isn't being a good heel, if that is what he was going for. It's being a sexist idiot, end of statement, no excuse.

Rumor Mill 8/10 - 8/17

Sorry I missed last week. I don't really have any excuse at all; I'm even doing this week's with the pain of having had my wisdom teeth out five days ago and under no Vicodin whatsoever, so.

Anyhoo, you're here for the news.

Rumor Mill 7/28 - 8/3

This week's Mill.

News of the weird world of wrestling.

Rumor Mill 7/20 - 7/28

Rumor Mill... late again. My apologies.

Rumor Mill 7/13 - 7/20

Rumor Miiiiill... sorry I missed last week.

Special Spotlight: CM Punk

Since it's been all but confirmed that this Sunday is CM Punk's last appearance with the WWE, whether or not he wins the belt (which, personally, I hope he does) I wanted to do a special look at this superstar. Love him or hate him or somewhere in between, you have to admit the term suits him.

Rumor Mill 6/22 - 6/30

Sorry I'm late. My internet has been broken. Really didn't miss much... it appears to have been a slow week.

ROH PPV -- Best In The World

Review/recap of ROH's Best in the World PPV

Spotlight: Eddie Edwards

Since my last spotlight -- all of six months ago -- was for Davey Richards, and they have an epic, epic title match tomorrow, I thought I'd do the other half of the American Wolves, Eddie Edwards.

Rumor Mill 6/15-6/22

Hellloooo, ladies and gents!

Rumor Mill 6/1-6/8

Oh my, yes, it's the weekly news grinder, the Rumor Mill!

*if the Rumor Mill had a theme song, it would be playing right now. I imagine something in the style of either 80s game show or midi video game*

Let's get started!

Rumor Mill: 1/26 to 2/2

I'm thinking about making the Mill a daily occurance. Thoughts on this, guys? It's the only thing I do on this damn site anymore.













Whiteout blizzard edition.

Rumor Mill 1/19 to 1/26

Well, hi guys.


The Rumor Mill; braving the dirt sheets and the pop-up ads... so you don't have to!

Rumor Mill, 12/29 to 1/5

Happy new year!




News after the jump!

Today in Wrestling: ROH and WWE

New format. Why? Because I'm bored and I enjoy talking about wrestling. I don't need a reason.

Thoughts on WWE and ROH on the other side of the thing.

Spotlight: Davey Richards

In light of Davey's incredible performance at ROH's Final Battle last month and resulting injury, whether work or shoot, I believe we all need to take a closer look at this amazing athlete.

Davey has wrestled for numerous promotions, including PWG, Squared Circle Wrestling (2CW) and abroad in Japan, for New Japan Pro-Wrestling. He's currently under contract with Ring of Honor and is a former heavyweight and tag team champ, most notably with Eddie Edwards, where they are known as the American Wolves.

It's no secret that the man is one of the most intense players in the game. Watch just one of his matches and you will see it.

I have provided you with some. Check 'em after the jump.

Rumor Mill 12/1 to 12/8

Lake Effect Snow edition.



(I do not own this picture)

What's news this week?

ROH recap -- 11/1/10

*Eddie Edwards vs Rhett Titus for the TV Championship
*Sara Del Rey vs that Summerlyn chick
*Kevin Steen and Steve Corino vs El Generico and Colt Cabana, steel cage match

Rumor Mill: 10-13 to 10-20

Sorry for the rant. (You'll see in a second.)