Part of my job as the author of the Best And Worst Of WWE Raw column is finding things to love about pro wrestling, and I’ve started namedropping Anarchy Championship Wrestling so much I had to give them their own tag.

They’re my local promotion, running shows ranging from blood-soaked mayhem to full-scale wrestling proms regularly in an open-air bar on Red River in downtown Austin, Texas, but I can’t personally taking every Best and Worst reader by the hand, drag them into a mid-Texas bar and show them how great it is. Wrestling DVDs aren’t always cheap, and ACW doesn’t put a lot of content — at least not a lot of their best content — on the tubes. Even the tubes wouldn’t suffice. I own a handful of ACW shows, but nothing has ever come close to being there live.

Well, thanks to some amazing work by The Daily Texan I’ve got a much better approximation. The above video is a beautifully shot three-or-so minutes filmed at their most recent show and gets across a few things I can’t convince you of enough with words … the unparalleled athleticism of ACH (the next big thing in independent wrestling, and probably wrestling in general), the insanity of never being able to sit for very long because someone’s being thrown face-first at your chair, and the very understated humanity and fellowship of it all. Plus, Portia Perez shows up. And so do I at the 1:38 mark. I’m the only person nerdy enough to show up to a wrestling show in a Minor League Baseball hat.

So yeah, check it out. Fall in love with it, then come to Austin and watch a show with me. Maybe pick up a DVD. It helps knowing that no matter how bad the dumb niche thing we like gets, there’s always someone out there reinventing it, making it better, and it helps to know that when I’m namedropping this sh*t I’m doing it for a reason.

Pre-show notes:

- If you love The Rock and think he’s the best wrestler of all time, be sure to leave us a comment. That should cover my commenting hype-beg for the week and entitle every living human who isn’t me or Billy Jack Haynes to post something.

- An important thing to remember while reading this report is that I had a weekend literally full of awesome wrestling. I spent Friday night and Saturday and Sunday mornings at Wizard World Austin loitering around Darin Childs’ table in the 1600 aisle, commissioning professional art from my favorite wrestler in the world. Saturday night I went to Anarchy Championship Wrestling’s Lone Star Classic, which featured Portia Perez winning their heavyweight title only to lose it an hour later. ACH ended up with it, which was the second happiest thing that could happen. Also, the Nasty Boys were there. Sunday was CHIKARA’s High Noon iPPV. I was too worn out by then to cover it effectively, but it was one of the best shows of the year and Peck/Cabana II was simultaneously the best and worst match in history. So then Monday night comes along, and it’s three hours of Raw getting Rocked. My brain may not be processing this correctly.

- Oh, and before I forget, after the jump you can see four of my five (or six) favorite WWE Superstars appearing in one segment together on Friday’s Smackdown. Why am I not Besting and Worsting this show instead?

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This is what happens when you get excited about meeting a Power Ranger.

Links

Funny, Sexy And Austin Cosplay Of The Week: The Best of Wizard World - Relive my hilarious/awesome/unnerving weekend at Austin Convention Center, asking people if I could take a picture of their costume. It’s my Gamma Squad debut (and probably the only thing they’ll ever let me write), so please don’t miss it. [Gamma Squad]

Frank Miller Is A Delusional, Curmudgeonly Old A-Hole - I’m with Vince on the “you’re a delusional asshole” parts, but not on the “your comics are bad” part or especially the “The Spirit was bad” part. The Spirit is so good and I’m living in an empty universe of people who agree. [Film Drunk]

ACW: An Appreciation - The best part of Wizard World for me was loitering around the Anarchy Championship Wrestling table and bothering the wrestlers. To the immediate right of this is my favorite wrestler in the world, Portia Perez, finger-painting something for me. My heart is on fire. [The Wrestling Blog]

Jay-Z Hails As GQ Magazine’s “King Of The Year” - I’m sure this will do wonders for his ego. [Smoking Section]

Don’t Worry Guys, Gina Wasn’t Pregnant - Whew! Now I just need to make sure Phoenix from American Gladiators hasn’t gotten pregnant and we’re straight. I’m going to go see your bad movie, Gina! [Cage Potato]

R.I.P. The Fake ‘Jack & Jill’ Twitter Account - I really wanted that EXCOOLSIVE ringtone. :( [UPROXX]

Football Guys: Mark Sanchez Comes Of Age - Jon uses his football version of The Dugout to make an extended joke about Mark Sanchez looking like Kevin Arnold in his Jets jacket. The kind of thing you should click and fawn over immediately. [SB Nation]

Coonskin Cap Witness: Florida or Ohio? - The best part of a coonskin cap is that we still call it “coonskin”, instead of just “stupid raccoon hat”. I think when you get to the point where you’re saying “I want to wear something’s entire body as a hat” you’re f**ked. [Warming Glow]

A Very Young Stephen Colbert In FirsTier Bank Commercial - His career lasted longer than that bank’s. [Buzzfeed]

10 Reasons Life in Skyrim Will Be Better Than Real Life - You know what I hate about real life? Not being able to stop every five seconds and scroll through a huge menu of options, then leave the menu, hit a button, then go right back to the menu. [Adult Swim]

The Men Who Camped Out for Twilight: A Photo Essay - The Greatest Generation. [FARK]

Remembering Eddie Guerrero - The “Hurt” video loses its emotional impact now that we see Chris Benoit and Vickie Guerrero as different people, but still, losing Eddie was the worst and we shouldn’t ever forget how great he was. [The John Report]

via TexasAnarchy.com

Links

ACW: Beyond Good & Evil 2011 - You really want to see Rachel Summerlyn dressed as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You really do. You also want to see her dressed as Cookie Monster, and both of those things happen here. Austin pro wrestling rules hard. [DirtyDirtySheets]

The Best Wrestling Features/Sites I Don’t Write For - Linking this 80% because of the Chickbusters picture, 15% because Tom Holzerman is a nice guy and 5% because my Raw column is the first one on the list. Cough. [The Wrestling Blog]

The John Report: The WWE Raw Deal For 10/31/11 - Another interpretation of Muppet Raw (in case you didn’t dig all the animated gifs) from a good man who may or may not have something to do with me going to Wrestlemania next year. [John Report]

Oh, So This Is Why Some People Hate Occupy Wall Street - It’s sad that sane, tolerant young people so rarely have a natural, charismatic spokesperson instead of having their opinions communicated by a lady in ironic Sally Jesse Raphael glasses. Oh well, my girlfriend and I have been doing the “like” and “dislike” fingers all day. [Warming Glow]

‘Community’s’ Remedial Chaos Theory Gets A Board Game - I’m glad they finally have an episode better than paintball. Also, disappointed that Tumblr hashtags don’t equate to ratings. [UPROXX]

21 Jump Street Has A Red Band Trailer - I wish they’d do red band-necessary remakes of everything. Like, somebody splice back in controversial cut footage from Josie and the Pussycats and make it the greatest teen-ish sex romp of all time. [Film Drunk]

LOLNFL: Week 8 - Tim Tebow, you’ve got to stop doing that prayer pose, it’s making it too easy for people to blaspheme. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

Want A Murder Victim’s Batman Collection? - Sure, why not? Does he have A Death In The Family? [Gamma Squad]

Justin Bieber’s Ghost Writer Is Never Going To Hell - Of COURSE he wrote this. This is the guy who sang a song with the line “I should be chillin’ with my folks, I know” in it because he can’t write his own song about Christmas. He totally wrote this. [Smoking Section]

Jon Jones Agrees That Jon Jones Is The Michael Jordan Of MMA - If this leads to a movie where Jon Jones has to shootfight the Monstars, I’m all for it. That would probably be the best movie ever. [Cage Potato]

Sports Cards For Insane People: Pro-Visions Part 2, Or, What Sport Are You Even Playing? - Worth it for Tom Glavine playing hockey in what I can only assume is Heaven. Also, Tim Salmon, get it? [SB Nation]

The best game ever. I hope you’re just a high-def remake of San Andreas, GTA 5.

Links

Grand Theft Auto 5 Trailer Announced - AY CESAR, THE YAY LEAVIN’ SAN FIERRO, RIGHT. Right, but they’re using bikes, CJ, and they go cross country! [Gamma Squad]

The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 10/24 Live From Austin, Texas - I know I know, it’s the post below this one, but our new commenting system has severely limited the number of times an anonymous person can comment with “john cena gay”, so we need you to head down there and read it and talk to us about it. Us meaning me. [With Leather]

The Best And Worst Of WWE Vengeance 2011 - But wait! Before you do that, read Monday’s report about Sunday night’s show. The ring collapsed and Jerry Lawler said he’d never seen anything like it, except when it happened previously. [With Leather]

Bring ACH To Beyond Wrestling - If you live on the East Coast, love pro wrestling (or want it to be better than it is) and have a few extra bucks, donate to the cause of bringing one of the best young wrestlers in the world to where you can see him perform. ACH is the f**king bomb, and should be a TV millionaire already. [Indie Gogo]

This Week in Posters: Twilight, Muppets, and Diagonals Oh My! - Puss In Boots would be so much more appealing if it was called LE CHAT POTTE over here. That’s also what I call my drug-humor AOL parody. [Film Drunk]

The 1992 Dream Team In Action (Figures) - Pretty sure the most heterosexual thing about me is how much I love the 1992 Dream Team. [Smoking Section]

First Look At Scarlett Johansson As An Alien - I was really excited when I clicked this, but it turns out the “alien” is just “Scarlett Johansson not looking as good as she usually does because of bad clothes and a worse wig”. Good job with your alien movie, guys. [Gamma Squad]

More Halloween Episodes, Please - The genre peaked with ‘Roseanne’ and ‘Martin’, but I’m willing to accept new works in the medium. [Warming Glow]

Fully Functional Nikon Camera Halloween Costume - Pretty cool, and guaranteed to be talked about almost as much as the one hot girl who just wore underwear outdoors and didn’t even buy cat ears. [Buzzfeed

The 18 Worst Wide-Release Opening Weekends of 2011 - Most of these aren't a surprise, and if you supported Judy Moody or her Not Bummer Summer you're a bad person. The climax of that movie is someone eating a poop sandwich. [Moviefone]

Which of These Five Hollywood Subjects Sold Out the Hardest? - I always thought that if someone can refer to you as a “Hollywood subject”, you’re already sold out. [Pajiba]

87 Year-Old Man Arrested with 228 Pounds of Cocaine - Now let’s flash back to when he was a young man and find out how he got here! [The Daily What]

Censored Zelda Will Make You Laugh Against Your Will - The title is right. I hate fake censoring jokes, but even I laughed when Zelda called that guy a f**k. [Unreality]

The Gentlemen’s Rant: Hipsters - Someone put this site out of its misery. If you like Tim Allen on TV in 2011 style “everyone who isn’t fat and boring and middle-American like me is wrong” humor, you’ll love this. Attention “average guys tellin’ it like it is” — you are the least funny people in the world. [NextRound]

It’s like somebody photoshopped out Brock Lesnar. Pre-report notes:

- We’ve got a fresh new commenting system, so if you read and/or flip through the report to read the boldface, make sure to leave us a comment to let us know what you liked or didn’t like about Vengeance, and which shoehorned-in Dragonball Z references in the report you thought were the least unfunny.

- Speaking of comments, With Leather offered a $250 Amazon gift card to the person who could accurately predict Vengeance. Thanks in part to that image up top, nobody could. We still want to give away money, though, so I’m opening it up to you, the participants. Do we award the prize to a random commenter, organize a Raw contest or push the giveaway to Survivor Series and see if anybody takes it home?

- Full disclosure: I didn’t watch this show live. I spent my Sunday night at Mohawk on Red River in downtown Austin watching Anarchy Championship Wrestling’s Beyond Good & Evil, a show that included Rachel Summerlyn dressed as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, ACH and Matt Palmer almost chickenfighting on the ledge of a building, Davey Vega taking one of the sickest German suplexes I’ve ever seen to the bottom turnbuckle and Robert Evans (who looks a heck of a lot like CHIKARA’s Archibald Peck) sitting quietly in the crowd in a Halloween costume for five hours to do a run-in at the end. I’m watching Vengeance this morning and writing about it as I go, so if the Cena/Alberto Del Rio match write-up turns into “heh, so here’s ten paragraphs about ChrisTrew.biz” I apologize.

- This is the third pay-per-view in six weeks. Just wanted to remind you.

Please click through to enjoy the Best And Worst Of WWE Vengeance.

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