Please allow United States President George Washington “Linda” McMahon to usher you into the latest in our series of embarrassing pro wrestler 8×10 treasuries, now helpfully categorized as “This Week In Horrible-Looking People.”

If you’ve missed any of our previous galleries, be sure to check out the cheesy late-80s/early-90s WWF promo photos, the extremely 1990s photos of Extreme Championship Wrestling and parts 1 and 2 of our vintage WCW promo run. Believe it or not, there are still about a thousand embarrassing pictures of wrestlers that were printed into stacks of 8x10s with the intention of them being signed and handed to strangers. Wrestling is weird.

So for the first installment of our infinite new series, please enjoy 51 of my favorite random, amazing WWE promo photos from the 90s, 2000s and today. Warning: a veiny John Cena is inside.

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Update: Part 2 is now up. Check it out!

Back in September, we shared A Golden Treasury Of Cheesy Late-80s/Early-90s WWF Promo Photos, a collection of the best photos from pro wrestler 8x10s. If you missed that … yeah, you should click the link.

Anyway, I was never a WWF kid when I was growing up. I was born in southern Virginia and was raised on the National Wrestling Alliance — if you’re a WWF lifer, that means we had Ric Flair when you had Hulk Hogan — and eventually what the NWA became, World Championship Wrestling. You may remember WCW from its sudden, crazy popularity in the late 1990s when Hulk Hogan became a bad guy, Sting became The Crow and WWF put as many curse words and dick jokes on television as they could to combat it. Spoiler: the dick jokes won.

That said, WCW is still my favorite thing, and if I’m going to share the worst of WWF’s promo photos, I might as well dip into the endless well of embarrassment that is the WCW library. What follows is only part one of a series, because holy shit you will not believe some of these pictures.

Enjoy, and show this to everyone you’ve ever known.

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One of the best part of our popular The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw column is the amazing collection of animated GIFs from Casey at Hammerlock Dialectic. They’re so good, in fact, that I’m sad when people who don’t read the column (or like pro wrestling) miss out on them. Trust me, there is some colossally ridiculous looking stuff happening in the world of pro wrestling and you don’t need the ability to pretend it’s real to appreciate it.

Combine that truth with what Jon Bois is doing to improve GIF art awareness at SB Nation and a “best wrestling gifs of the month” feature sounded like a no-brainer. So here are my 21 favorite animated GIFs from the world of pro wrestling for June, keeping in mind that:

1. The July 4 weekend messed up everybody’s schedule, so go along with me and pretend June just ended.
2. So far we only do a WWE column on the site, so June’s GIFs will be WWE heavy. With GIFs Of The Month becoming a regular feature, we’ll move forward with more of an emphasis on giffing everything that happens in the world of wrestling, and oh my god you are not ready for Japan.
3. A lot of GIFs appeared in the Raw column, but a lot of them are being seen for the first time.
4. We’ll try to get a more uniform GIF size in the future.

Anyway, enough qualifiers. Check out the 20 best pro wrestling GIFs for June, with little-to-no context provided.

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When you find out why the banana split is there, you’ll wish it was something else.

Father’s Day is this Sunday, June 17, and to celebrate, I’ve devoted an entire episode of With Spandex to Adventures In Bitchsitting, a nearly-lost pro wrestling fan fiction masterpiece about Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit being single fathers. Trust me, that’s the least bizarre thing that happens. Preserved from an attachment on a post in a long-forgotten Yahoo! fan fic group, the story features a frank discussion of French sexuality, two complete viewings of Lilo & Stitch and Teddy Long as the proprietor of a sex club. It’s amazing, and if I only accomplish one thing in my writing career I want sharing Adventures In Bitchsitting with you to be it.

This week’s special guest (and reader) is Ari from Tumblr’s Feminist Pro Wrestling, the person magnanimous enough to share the story with me in the first place. Also joining With Spandex are Lex Lybrand and Kelli Kelli from Wear The Cheese, because sh*t, somebody had to hear this for the first time.

Happy Father’s Day week, everybody. You can listen to and download the podcast below. Be sure to comment on this one in the comments section below, because … well, you’ll hear. LISTENER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Subscribe to With Spandex on iTunes (finally) here: With Spandex on iTunes

RSS Feed: feed://withleather.uproxx.com/tag/with-spandex/feed

Direct download of the episode here: With Spandex Episode 5 – Father’s Day Fan Fiction Special

Pre-show notes:

- Hey, you, person reading this column. Register and leave us a comment. You’ve gotten used to me prodding you about it, and I’m never going to stop, so just go ahead and join our little wrestling column community so you can at least stop being the one prodded. I’d also really appreciated it if you’d click that “like” button over the banner image and/or share this with everyone you have ever met, including your 10th grade physics teacher and any girls you may’ve kissed.

- Follow us on Twitter @withleather, follow me personally @MrBrandonStroud and like us on Facebook.

- I’ll remind you again as the column rolls on, but Justin O’Connor of Progressive Boink and myself are hosting a Best And Worst Of WWE Smackdown Live-Blog tonight at 8 PM EST. They’re airing it live this week, so you should come and chat with us and leave comments that I can hopefully multitask well enough in spite of Justin’s funny to include. Seriously, you’re going to laugh your ass off at this. Stop by, and tell folks.

- Another good reason for you to stop by and get to know Justin: he’s going to be filling in for me on the Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 12/19 report on Tuesday the 20th. The 19th is my girlfriend’s birthday, and as much as I love wrestling, yeah, no.

- All the gifs you see within the report are courtesy of the awesome Jerusalem at Punchsport Pagoda.

- Listening to me is better than reading me, so be sure to spend … jesus, two hours listening to me talk to K. Sawyer Paul over on the International Object podcast.

- For further Raw reading, please consult UGO’s The Good The Bad And The Ugly and John Canton’s The WWE Raw Deal.

But first, please to enjoy the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for November 28.

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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]