Archive for the ‘anarchyroll media’ Category

potatoshooterlogoby @anarchyroll
1/13/2014

The Royal Rumble is right around the corner, the fourth biggest show of the year is definitely the company’s most unique.  The show is a representation of Vince McMahon’s ability to take an existing concept and improve it. The battle royal existed for decades, the Royal Rumble is the battle royal perfected. Single entrant style, with the winner getting the top spot, at the biggest show of the year as the prize.  The only way to make it any better was to have a ladder match battle royal which is what Money in the Bank is, with an even better prize to the winner.

Royal Rumble 2014 is on paper shaping up to be one of the best cards in the history of the event. 2002 presently takes the cake in my opinion with honorable mentions to 2001 and 1992.  The Undisputed Title will be on the line, Brock Lesnar will be having a singles match with someone he has chemistry and history with, and the Rumble match itself will see the advertised return of Batista with Sheamus and RVD likely returning as well though both are presently unconfirmed.

I believe Orton will retain the Undisputed Title and Lesnar will go over on Big Show.  The real question is who will win the Rumble, as it is every year.  Though as someone who can be considered a WWE “hater” I want to give props for how much effort they have put into beefing up the Rumble undercard the past half decade.

Daniel Bryan will win the Royal Rumble. I believe the Rumble will come down to him and Bray Wyatt and Bryan will return to face and eliminate Wyatt punching his ticket to the main event of Mania. Bryan and Wyatt can have a two month TV feud to hold him over until the Undisputed Champion going into Mania is determined at the Elimination Chamber PPV in February.

Daniel Bryan is the most popular wrestler in WWE. Cena makes the money, Bryan makes the crowd pop louder and longer than Cena EVER has.  They may not buy his merch as much, he may not pop ratings, but people are coming to the arenas to shout “YES! Y ES! YES!” and watch Bryan combine the technical proficiency of Chris Benoit with the sports entertainment acting of Hulk Hogan.

I think WWE knows what they have with Bryan. I think they have been building him while the internet thinks they have been burying him. I believe he has been filling time until he has his full face run as Undisputed Champion from Mania to Summerslam like many before him. His feuds with The Authority and Wyatt Family have been his ways of proving his overall well roundedness. Proving he is a good soldier, a company man, a team player, willing to play the game, and evolve rather than just stick to his indie shtick (cough, cough Chris Hero cough cough).

Bryan as champion makes storyline sense and financial sense. I believe Bryan will fight John Cena in the main event of WrestleMania with HEAVY storyline tie in of the Bella Twins who both are dating in real life. Total Divas season two premieres around WrestleMania. Bryan and Cena are the two biggest and hottest faces of the last decade. They had a MOTY candidate the second biggest show of the  year in 2013 and are yet to rematch.

Batista, Lesnar, Sheamus, Undertaker, CM Punk, Orton, Triple H will all take care of themselves with feature gimmick matches.  Cena vs. Bryan II for the Undisputed Title in the main event of the 30th Anniversary of WrestleMania is my pick, and I’m sticking to it until Vince McMahon changes his mind ten times between the night before the Rumble and the night after the Chamber…again.

sportsrollby @anarchyroll
1/12/2014

The distance between the #1 and #’s 2 & 3 are vast in the world of professional mixed martial arts.  When the distance between the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the closest things resembling competitors; the World Series of Fighting and Bellator MMA is as great as it is, desperate times call for desperate measures. One doesn’t need a look at their financial books, one need only look at the crowd size of their televised events to know that even if neither company is at immediate risk to going out of business, they are both desperate to bring new and existing mma fans into their respective folds. Which brings us to the event, if one can call it that from this past week.

World Series of Fighting challenged Bellator MMA to a cross promotional pay per view event.

Why? The same reason Sirius and XM are now the same satellite radio company. The same reason Pro Wrestling USA was formed in the 1980s. The same reason kids get in free at the local rodeos and wet t shirt contests are held at bars.  Good for the sport? Sure.  Good for the fans? Yes. A desperate attempt to stay relevant and stay within the same galaxy as profitability, absolutely.

I am in favor of a WSOF vs. Bellator show, just not on PPV.  PPV has been in decay for ten years and in 2014, the corpse is starting to stink.  WWE the PPV innovator and porno the PPV dominator, are or have moved to online Netflix style stream services to compete with rampant digital piracy. The ratings for Bellator are aight, WSOF’s ratings, well not so much.  TNA Impact Wrestling, the whipping boy of the pro wrestling critic world, gets double Bellator and 10x WSOF and is considered less than second rate by the hardcore sports entertainment fan base.

Desperation is a stinky cologne.  The idea of this show reeks of it not matter how in favor of it I personally am. Bellator doesn’t need the WSOF, but it’s not vice versa. WSOF desperately needs more eyeballs on its product both in the arenas and on screens. Bellator can just as easily scoop up all the fighters WSOF has if they company were to fold due to unprofitability, which is presently what the promotion is.

I’m not a WSOF hater, as a pro wrestling fan, let me tell you competition is VITAL to combat sports, real or simulated.  Two national promotions on cable television is the minimum needed for the fans, three is even better. Both of pro wrestling’s boom periods of the 80s and 90s were directly correlated to a “Big Three” national promotion hydra (80s: NWA, AWA, WWF | 90s: WWF, WCW, ECW). So don’t get me wrong, I am rooting for WSOF to stick around for a long time and for Bellator to start averaging over 1 million viewers a week on a regular basis. A cross promotional event would pop a rating, fill an arena, and be good for the sport of mma as a whole.

But would the NFL do a cross promotional event with the Super Bowl champions versus the CFL Grey Cup winner?  And would they put it on PPV or on television where the biggest possible audience could see it. Why does the UFC put titles on their FOX cards at least once a year? Why did WWE just move all their PPVs to an a la carte digital cable service for $10 a month when they were charging $60 per event? It’s about eyeballs on screens, selling ads to those eyes, and popping a rating to gain leverage in future contract negotiations.

So if you’re gonna do it, do it right. Bellator is on Spike, owned by Viacom, which owns CBS.  Put the event on CBS in prime time, show the world that mma is more than just the UFC, not just to the hardcore fan base willing to pay $50 at home or $5 at a bar. Yes, please, thank you, you’re welcome.


by @anarchyroll
1/11/13

The chemical spill in West Virginia has been making a little news, as most environmental stories do, just a little bit of news. I am a believer in science, global warming, and am anti fracking. I believe fracking is short term thinking at its most despicable. Why? Because it contaminates the fresh drinking water! It makes it undrinkable, forever, much longer than the amount of time energy bills will be excessively high. 3/4 of the Earth is covered by water you say? True, but less than 1/3 is drinkable.

With all of the news fracking has been making locally and internationally, chemical spills can some time be forgotten. But the spill that has seeped into the drinking water near Charleston, leaving 300,000 people without drinkable water has brought the concept back into the spotlight of the current news cycle. Let’s hope it stays there for a while…the attention, not the chemicals contaminating the groundwater.

The POTUS declared a state of emergency almost as fast as the state’s governor, that is what you would call rare.  As I’m writing this, four people have been hospitalized, 32 have sought medical treatment, and I guarantee those numbers will go up. Everything vital to being human involves water. And 300,000 people have had it taken from them. The federal government and armed forces are deploying water like we deploy food to places in Asia hit by tsunamis, here in America.

This contamination has been brought to you by Freedom Industries…..how quaint.

#anarchyjc
by @anarchyroll
12/30/2013

The 2013 Person of the Year issue of TIME magazine starts off with a literary hand job to the new pope. It uses quotes, pictures, and charts to shill to Catholics, namely Latino Catholics, to please buy TIME magazine because they love the new Pope. Truth be told, I like the new Pope too, ever since he publicly shit all over Reganomics/Trickle Down Economics. Its a like not a love because of the whole, you know, child molestation cover up thang. I know, I know he didn’t preside over it, but like Chase bank inherited the obligations of Bear Stearns…..

Anyhow, with the Pope getting the gold medal for Person of the Year, it certainly came as a shock that Edward Snowden came in second. The bronze went to Edith Windsor, the winning plantiff in the case that made it to the Supreme Court that enabled same sex marriage nationally.

To be fair to TIME, all three received the same treatment. The articles were each robust with pictures, statistics, graphs, charts, a listing of pros and cons of each POY candidate. Whoever at the magazine came up with the title Edward Snowden, The Dark Prophet is the person who gets my POY nomination.

If you can’t handle a long form piece, skip the the part of the article that highlights his direct quotes to understand Snowden and why he did what he did in his own words. Getting his perspective from his own words without being limited to the initial Guardian video is refreshing. It may not sway you to his side, because if you aren’t on his side, then you’re likely too old to be reading this blog or even knowing what one is.

potatoshooterlogoajclogo2by @anarchyroll
1/2/2014

2013 started out with a lot of potential. The Rock came back, the spinner belt was retired, Hulk Hogan’s TNA contract wasn’t renewed, Jim Cornette stopped booking ROH, Brian Danielson became the biggest star in the business, and Brock Lesnar made magic with CM Punk at Summerslam in an absolute masterpiece of a pro wrestling match. However, as I’ve been reading various dirt sheets’ year in review lists, blogs, polls, etc one thing is clear…2013 was an overall down year for the business.

Ratings, attendance, and buy rates were down for each of the big three. WWE, TNA, and ROH were each at one point during the year completely unwatchable, although as per usual ROH kept their bad programming to a minimum and insanely awesome programming to a maximum. Especially as the year went on, Delirious distinguished himself as one of the best bookers of post attitude era, if not the best in my personal opinion. Many would say TNA was unwatchable the entire year, I wouldn’t argue per say, but would stick up for the last month of the BFG series and the last month of the year. We all know when WWE went downhill don’t we? I’ll give you a hint, the entire season of autumn.

I’m from Chicago, I’m not a Cubs fan but waiting until next year seems woven into my DNA whether I want it to or not. I believe 2014 will be a very good year for pro wrestling/sports entertainment. Here’s why:

WWE: Lesnar, Batista, Taker will all be in the fold from January through April. WrestleMania season is literally a 1/4 of the year and those three part timers mixed with the emerging era of midsized workhorses WWE has developed (Bryan, Punk. Cesaro, Ziggler, Ambrose, Rollins, Rhodes, Sandow) will lead to great matches by default that will only need good storytelling and production value to pop a rating, both of which are WWE’s specialties. My money is on Brian Danielson main-eventing and winning the Undisputed Title at WrestleMania XXX. Why? A gut feeling guided by pattern recognition from 24 years of watching pro wrestling.

TNA: In case you haven’t noticed, and judging by all metrics of monetary success, you haven’t, TNA Impact Wrestling has been putting on quality television for a whopping six weeks now. Although many haters shat all over the Dixie gimmick tournament, and Dixie Carter in general (deservedly so), the pacing, production, character development, and storytelling segment to segment, show to show, has become definitively solid since Bound for Glory. TNA has a history of this, see 2009, and even though I may not find the majority of the show personally entertaining, good TV principles are good TV principles, and TNA is utilizing them consistently for six weeks and counting.

ROH: As a mark for the original ECW it should come as no surprise that I find ROH to be the most entertaining company in the modern wrestling era. The fast paced, aggressive, more high spots less selling style appeals to me more personally. BUT my match of the year 2013 is CM Punk vs. Brock Lesnar, which was the opposite of what I just described. Take the indyriffic matches out of it and I still say ROH is producing the best television show consistently, week in week out, month in month out, big show to big show. Everything that takes place on ROH TV means something, leads to something, and/or is connected to something that has been going on in the company for at least three months. If you bitch and moan about WWE and TNA being piss poor (which at times you’d be right) then you better be watching ROH. In case you missed it, Cornette is gone, so it’s safe to come back, Smokey Mountain of Honor died as of Final Battle 2012. 2013 was a great year for the company and unless the entire roster reports to NXT, 2014 should see them grow as big and bright as Sinclair Broadcasting is willing to monetarily invest.