Worst: Silent Rage is Angry, But Quietly!

Tough Enough winner Andy Leavine (Dugout screen name “LeavineConditioner”) isn’t on the show, but he’s got a video package about how he’s difficult to motivate and has a lot of internal rage, but you can’t see or hear it. Great idea for a character, guys. I can get behind a guy who doesn’t care or try until he’s about to lose, and then he flips out and starts shouting and hurting people. Actually, that sounds exactly like John Cena, so nevermind.

The last guy who worked a “silent but deadly” gimmick turned out pretty great. He won the World Heavyweight Championship! And also did other things.

I was going to make a joke about how his character should be “Guy who won a wrestling game show, but they never had plans to do anything with him other than make him look like a stupid chump and you’ll never see him again”, but I had to delete it because they’re already doing that with Johnny Curtis.

Best: Support Your Local Derrick Bateman

And speaking of wrestling game shows, one of the best things to happen all week was the return of Daniel Bryan’s NXT season 4 rookie Derrick Bateman to NXT Redemption. If you haven’t been watching the show, it’s like watching Superstars with Maryse standing slightly to your right for 48 minutes. Last week’s show had a great Tyson Kidd vs. Yoshi Tatsu match on it, continuing WWE’s weird tendency to put all the subversively good stuff where the fewest people are watching.

Anyway, Bateman’s return to the show didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense (returning from a week 12 elimination in season 4 17 weeks into season 5) but is still worth of your continued, undying support for a number of reasons. The number two.

1. He is from Cleveland (well, Willoughby, but I lived in Bedford for four years and tell people I lived in Cleveland. Besides, Miz is billed from Cleveland he’s from Parma, which is sort of like living in New Jersey and saying you’re a New Yorker).

2. WWE has a tendency to be Paul Blart: Zookeeper funny, but Bateman is shoot funny. I would even say he’s WORKED shoot funny. If you didn’t see his previous stuff, don’t sleep on the funniest WWE segment ever, his double date with Daniel Bryan and the Bella Twins.

I quote “no my pants. No, my pants. NO, my pants. NO! MY PANTS!” all the time, and if you don’t laugh at a bag of change to pay for drinks on a date you aren’t my friend. Do what you can to keep Bateman on this show, whether it be texting in Redemption Points to NXT or however it works. No matter what, it’s better than this:

or this:

Sorry, a Darren Young YouTube clip was supposed to be there, but I couldn’t find any.