Dr. Darin Davis

Okay, this isn’t wrestling related, so it’s categorized appropriately.

I picked up MarioKart for the Wii yesterday. I know about 8 other people that have a Wii, and I play fairly regularly with a couple of them. We sort of informally divided up buying games between us so that we would each buy something different. We don’t buy a lot, and except for a few cases (Super Mario Galaxy) we don’t buy the same things. I “signed up” to buy MarioKart.

A bit of trivia: the Target store where I bought it is the same one where Diablo Cody wrote her Oscar-winning original screenplay for the movie Juno. She sat at the second table from the counter in the Starbucks section of the store.

The game is fun and I spent way too much time on Sunday playing it. I started out just playing to unlock a couple of courses so that we’d have them to play this week, but I ended up getting hooked on the online multiplayer. After several hours of playing Mario, I started talking like Santino Morella. “Hey, that’s a nice a set a wheels Yoshi.”

I’m usually not one to go for the online option in a game because I’m not as good as the other people that play. I also don’t want to talk to people or have to schedule a time to play. Sounds kind of anti-social, but that’s just me.

Nintendo has been criticized for their late adoption of online play, but they really got it right with this one. After selecting the online option, they give you the choice of being matched up with people in your region (North America in my case), or worldwide. I tried the worldwide option and it matched me up with 11 other people that had a similar skill rating. There were a few from the US, one from Canada, a couple of “blokes” from the U.K, someone from Germany, and a guy from Japan that was either staying up way too late, or got up way too early. I wasn’t eager to take on anyone from Japan since the game came out there 2 or 3 weeks ago (I found out later that it came out in Europe at the same time) and they had more time to practice, but he didn’t stick around too long. His skill level was a lot higher and he probably got bumped up to another match.

One of the cool things was that at the start of the matchup it shows the globe like it does on the Weather Wii channel, and as each person came on their Mii would do a little dance on the globe where they were located.

Each person can vote on which track they want to race on (or pick “random”) and the computer decides which one we’ll play. Once the race starts, your names show up next to the characters on the screen and it’s everyone for themselves. I can proudly say that I represented the good old “U S and A” well. A couple of the races I came in near the bottom, but for most of them I was in the top three. Some guy (or Mii) named Dave from the U.K. was giving me some trouble but I got him back in the next few rounds.

At the end of each race, you can choose to either continue or quit. If you continue, you’ll most likely be matched up with the same crew you were just with, so that you can hold a grudge and carry it over to the next race. I haven’t tried the Friends race yet as I don’t know anyone that has it.

MarioKart gets a big thumbs up from me. It’s a lot of fun, the included steering wheel works really well, you easily can pick up and play, and I don’t have to talk to anybody

A previous post talked about how Chavo Guerrero‘s bodyguard in ECW, named Bam Neely, used to wrestle in the Minneapolis area as Hellraiser Gutts and Hellfire, among other names. I had included a couple of screen captures from a match I had with him back in 2000.

Well, I ended putting that entire video up on YouTube (minus a few nips & tucks to get the video below the 10 min limit). You should be able to watch it below.

I missed last week’s (4/15) ECW broadcast. At least I don’t remember it. I might have fast forwarded through most of it. I started watching this week’s show and at some point they were showing a recap of some contract signing between Kane and Chavo Guerrero where Kane was attacked by Chavo’s new bodyguard. It was a black and white montage so the bodyguard was only shown for a few frames, but I somehow sensed that I knew him.

Wait! Back it up a second. Let’s see that again (I think I mentioned before I have a TiVo). Crap, that was too fast. Okay, slow motion…Stop!

Hey… if it wasn’t for the shaved head and the beard, I’d say he’s a dead ringer for another wrestler that went through Sharkey‘s camp while I was there. Considering that would have been at least 6 years ago, I think that would give someone enough time to grow a beard. Definitely enough time to shave your head.

I checked around a few sites on the net and found out that my suspicions were right. The bodyguard, who will be called Bam Neely apparently, wrestled in the Minneapolis area as Hellraiser Gutts.

And as Hellfire.

And as Hellfire Gutts.

And as Magnus Maximus.

And maybe a few others that I forgot.

You could use an old line like, “this guy changes gimmicks like I change socks”, but he wasn’t really changing his gimmick, only his name. Basically the same character, same intensity.

Didn’t have any good pictures of his face, but I included a couple of vidcaps of a match I had with him at the Main Event sports bar in Fridley, MN. The second picture is of him giving me a Razor’s Edge (a.k.a. Crucifix Powerbomb). Wayne McCarty has a much better picture of him as Magnus Maximus at his photo site.

It’s getting to seem like there are a disproportionate number of wrestlers from Sharkey’s camp that are showing up on TV. Daivari, Austin Aries/Starr, Hellraiser Gutts, Payton Banks (though technically she didn’t start training w/ Sharkey). If you throw in guys that came a couple of years before me you can include Lenny Lane. Of course if you go back even farther you get into the Road Warriors and all the guys he was famous for training.

If you include those that went to The Sheriff‘s Midwest Pro Wrestling training camp that split off from Sharkey’s you can include O.D.B. in the mix.

Maybe it’s just like when you buy a new car, and then notice that every 5th car on the road seems to be the same model as yours. You never noticed it before until you were looking for it. Maybe there are clusters of wrestlers out there from other parts of the country that I don’t notice, but it sure seems like there are a lot of folks from around here.

The mother of my good friend Tim passed away last week. I went back home for the funeral service this past weekend. Tim’s mother Karen lost her second battle with cancer at the age of 65.

As I would have expected, there was a really big turnout at the church. It made me think of a book I had recently read called The Tipping Point, where the author describes different types of personalities, including this one:

“Sprinkled among every walk of life are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connectors.”

Karen was a Connector. At the service, I saw many friends that I haven’t seen in a long time, I saw several of my elementary school teachers, and other people I’ve known over the years that were there because of knowing her. They knew her from when she worked in the school system, or from her church, or from the handbell choir, or from her coffee group, or from visiting the McDonald’s where Tim and I worked, or from traveling,… the list goes on.

Tim’s parents and my parents met when we both started Kindergarten, so I’ve known her and her husband Jack since I was 5 years old. When I started wrestling, Karen and Jack were very supportive. I remember them driving down to Hayward, WI to see me wrestle Robbie Thunder at the LCO Casino. She seemed to get a kick out of being there and I’m sure was cheering for me during the match.

One of the memories that popped into my head was a running joke that had started around the time that Tim and I were finishing high school or just starting college. I was over at his parent’s house and I somehow ended up eating a Milk Bone dog treat. I don’t remember if it was just to see what it tasted like, or if I was dared to. After that, whenever I would go over there, even years later, she would say something like, “Can I get you anything? Do you want a Coke? Or a Milk Bone?”

She will be missed.

If you don’t know the results of the recent Wrestlemania XXIV, you might want to stop reading this now.

I’ve been trying to think of how to describe this, but I don’t think anything I write could do it justice.

On March 30th 2008, in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, FL, at Wrestlemania XXIV, in front of a record-setting crowd of nearly 75,000 fans, “The Greatest Wrestler of All Time”, the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, wrestled his last professional match, ending a 35+ year career.

Through all the changes there have been in the wrestling landscape (ECW folding, WCW bought by WWE, ECW resurrected by WWE, lack of competition), there were three things you could always count on: Death, Taxes, and that Ric Flair would still be wrestling.

It’s not like I didn’t see this coming. When they set up the storyline 6 months or so ago that the next time Flair lost a match he would be forced to retire, you knew it was just a matter of time. Wrestlemania seemed like the logical place for that to happen. But during the match I kept hoping that it was just a big swerve. That maybe they would tease the retirement and that Flair would win the match. I ignored the feeling I had after seeing the expression on Flair’s face while he was walking down the ramp to the ring. It was the expression of a man that has been given one more night to live and wants to take in every moment.

I might be a little over-dramatic here, but in some ways his retirement actually feels more like a death. When other wrestlers have “retired” over the years, it seemed like it was always with a wink in their eye, or their fingers crossed. You knew the retirement wouldn’t really stick. Would they be out of action for six months? Eight? Would they jump to another promotion? Wrestlers like “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, while they never technically announced retirement, would keep popping up from time to time and get back in the ring for “one more match”. Newer superstars like The Rock, Mick Foley, and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin would be away from the squared circle for a while doing movies, books, and other projects, but you always had the hope that they would come back for “one more match”. Usually, the only thing that would take away that hope was when they left this Earth.

But when Ric Flair said in his farewell speech on Monday Night Raw that he “…will never, ever, wrestle in this ring again.”, I believe him. I don’t think we will ever see him wrestle again. And since he has already been inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame (the first active wrestler to be inducted), there is a chance that we may never see him in front of the camera again.

How long will wrestling fans remember him? Will the next generation of fans know who he is and what he’s done for professional wrestling? Will they care? If we as the current generations of fans keep reminding them, will they listen?

I would hope so, but I can’t be sure.

The only things I am sure of are Death, Taxes, and that there will never, ever, be another “Nature Boy” Ric Flair. He will always be “THE Man”.

Wooooooooooooo!

—
The WWE.com site has some good pictures of this match (Flash player required), or look at them here.

The tribute during the last 20 minutes of Raw was well done. It was good to see some of guys he ran with like the Four Horsemen, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, and Harley Race come out to congratulate him, along with his family, all the wrestlers in the back, and what seemed like the entire production crew. There is a decent writeup of this on the WWE site as well.