photo credit: THQ.com

Unlike the Kitana-costume-donning AJ Lee, whose 10 most beloved video games were featured on Monday, Kofi Kingston hasn’t made any big shout-outs to gaming culture on WWE programming. But much like Lee, Kingston is dedicated to the medium and was totally down to write and rank his favorite games before doing a countdown interview a while back. “The top 10 list is a big deal, so you didn’t have to ask me twice,” says the resident king of resourceful Royal Rumble spots.

Kingston’s life with video games began with the 1987 Commodore 64 title Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior. As a console player, he’s run the gamut. At first, his loyalty was strictly with Nintendo (he despised Sega), but his allegiance began to wobble when the SNES version of Mortal Kombat hit and substituted blood for sweat. Later, he was a fan of the original PlayStation. When he and Zack Ryder were going through developmental together, Ryder’s mom got her son an Xbox 360. Since Ryder wasn’t really into video games, Kingston bought the barely used 360 for a song and soon became an Xbox guy. Currently, he owns all three major consoles plus, as an episode of WWE’s YouTube series Superstar Toyz indicated, a 125-games-in-one arcade cabinet. “I guess that’d be pretty hardcore if you had to put a tag on it,” he says.

As of this writing, Kingston has disappointingly been given nothing to do for WrestleMania 29 on Sunday. If he doesn’t get a last-minute slot, this will mark the first WrestleMania without a Kofi match on the card since he debuted in WWE in 2008. Seeing as how he could especially use some love right now, let’s hand off the reins to everyone’s favorite ex-Jamaican to hear his ballot.

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There isn’t much to do when you’re the creative director of a Madden game (“okay, this year I think we’re gonna make it look like football”), so EA Sports’ Mike Young has spent the last few weeks tweeting about the amazing new features set to debut in Madden NFL 13, such as Tim Tebow being able to Tebow.

Still no word on whether or not planking and Batmanning will make the cut, but earlier today @EAMaddenNFL dropped the first official image of Tim Tebow Tebowing in a New York Jets uniform in the end zone at MetLife. If you were gonna get excited about this at some point, now’s your chance.

As Weed over at Sportress notes, being able to Tebow won’t matter if you can’t assign the pose to whichever linebacker murders him. Or the ability to Tebow via Kinect. Maybe the Wii version will have a mini-game where you run to the 50 yard line and do it, who knows.

Click to make it bigger. Personally I’m voting for Reggie Bush, because maybe if you have a bad enough life, the curse works in reverse?

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Links

What If Presidential Politicians Were More Like Kenny Powers? - I don’t know, Bill Clinton was already pretty much Kenny Powers and he was awesome. [Warming Glow]

Three Stooges trade Kate Upton’s heaving breasts for Sofia Vergara’s - Sorry, I’m gonna have to veto this trade. I may be interested in trading Kate for Monica Bellucci, though. [Film Drunk]

Leo Messi Hat-Trick Breaks Barcelona All-Time Goal Record - Puns about messy record-keeping, and at least two well-meaning jokes about how nobody watches soccer. [Smoking Section]|

The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 3/19/12: Little Mac Versus Bald Bull - If you haven’t already, go read my thing about pretend underwear fighting. People watch it, but it isn’t any good. Woo! [With Leather]

If Don Draper Handled Modern Marketing - “He’d would’ve slept with Jenna Marbles at least two years ago.” [UPROXX]

Meme Watch: Pissed Old Guy Is Very Pissed, Very Old - Back in my day, we hung pictures of old people on the walls of our schools, we didn’t photoshop sentences over them. [UPROXX]

Funny, Sexy, And Awesome Cosplay Of The Week - +1000000 for Ruby Rhod cosplay. Also, I’d like to be friends with the lady doing demade Harley Quinn. [Gamma Squad]

8 Funny Faces Of The “Mad Men” Cast At The New York Stock Exchange - Needs more “Pete doing the Charleston”. The new season also needs that. [Buzzfeed]

The Funniest #RomneyToys - The only problem I have with funny Republican candidate jokes is that you can’t do the same thing with Obama, because being super racist is usually the only joke Republicans have for him. [HuffPost Comedy]

Two Firemen Dressed in Drag Put Out Burning Car - Yep. [The FW]

A Photographic History of Jennifer Lawrence’s Brief Career - This is barely an article and is just a bunch of pictures of Jennifer Lawrence, but I’m not gonna complain. [Pajiba]

Hell is Other People – How Gamers are Ruining Gaming - I feel their pain about online gaming. I went online once with Red Dead, wandered around scared out of my mind that somebody was gonna call me the n-word, then logged off. It wasn’t great. [Unreality]

Military Dad Dresses Up as Captain America to Surprise His Son by Coming Home on His Birthday - The guy Military Dad’s wife is sleeping with while he’s gone should show up as USAgent. [Brobible]

New England Patriots tight end slash adult film industry philanderer slash teenage dunk master Rob Gronkowski is harnessing the power of social media (and obnoxious-for-pay viral videos) to compel his fan base to rock the ESPN’s SportsNation vote and get him on the cover of ‘Madden 13′.

His plan includes:

- Doing bicep curls with a crutch
- Making aggressive animal noises into his friend’s stomach
- Tons and tons of Zubaz pants
- Just getting jacked at all times
- Going crazy
- Inviting you to check out his brothers, who cannot stop exercising on the floor of Gronk’s house even when he’s injured.
- Putting on sunglasses without using his hands
- Getting hyped
- Getting Gronked

Sounds solid, bro. I want to see a follow-up video where instead of asking fans to vote for him, Peyton Hillis tells his bros that he’s not feeling well, and he’s probably just gonna go take a nap.

[h/t NESN.com]

From a May 11 interview with ESPN:

“Actually, I don’t even believe in curses. It’s really sad how many people believe in curses. This is football; everyone gets hurt. If you run the ball 40 times a game, you’re going to get banged around and get nicks and bruises here and there, but I don’t pay too much attention to that. I’ll let it take care of itself.”

Then came an eight-touchdown, 600-yard decline in productivity, a hamstring injury, an exchange of tough guy back-and-forth with his team over a contract and that time he bailed on a charity gig with the Cleveland Boys And Girls Club. This deadly combination of bad PR, commonplace injury, personal assholery and “living in Cleveland” can only mean one thing.

From a December 19 interview with Cleveland.com:

“No doubt about it, things haven’t worked to my favor this year. There’s a few things that happened that made me believe in curses. Ain’t no doubt about it.”

There you have it. There ain not any doubt about it. Peyton Hillis is cursed, and the only way the Browns can get back on track is if Mike Holmgren tricks John Madden into walking over a cleverly disguised pit and rips off his face to reveal Old Man Jenkins from the abandoned amusement park.

I think they should find the worst player in the NFL and put him on the Madden 13 box just to see if he spontaneously combusts. Any takers?

[h/t to Shutdown Corner]

Michael Vick wants the Philadelphia Eagles to sign Plaxico Burress. That’s all well and good, except for the fact that Burress doesn’t get out of prison, where he’s been since 2009 for shooting himself in the leg with a handgun at a nightclub, until the first week of June. Apparently football exists in this heightened reality where you can go to prison and come out with “options like any other free agent.” In an interview with Anthony Gargano and Ike Reese on WIP in Philadelphia, Vick says he’d like to add Burress to the squad, then take on the Pittsburgh Steelers, who have all gotten jobs as prison guards.

“Absolutely it would be a great addition for our team. I think with the guys we have now I think we can fit him in and make it work. Obviously the ultimate goal at the end of the day is to put that ring on your finger at the end of the year.

“I think certainly Plaxico is going to come out with a chip on his shoulder the same way I did and he’ll go out and help this football team to whatever capacity he can. I think the guys would be willing to embrace him and bring him in. If that happens? Who knows? We talking about “what ifs” now? It would certainly be a good thing.”

I feel like if I spent a couple of years in prison, I would come out humble and kind of anxious, not with a chip on my shoulder, but what do I know, I wear my hat with the bill in front. To put things into perspective (in case you still think Vick is a normal guy who “realizes his mistakes”), the interview also features Vick saying he didn’t get a second Madden cover because God doesn’t want him to have “everything all at once.”

You can listen to the interview here. While you’re doing that, I’m going to send Vick an e-mail (care of his life coach) with some insider information about the availability of O.J. Simpson (note: he is not available).

[H/T Off the Bench]