Pre-show notes:

- Comments, shares, likes, and anything else that gets people to come here are appreciated, as always.

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

- GIFS courtesy of Jerusalem over at Punchsport Pagoda.

- Be sure you’re reading With Leather’s This Week In Horrible-Looking People every Monday. It’s wrestling related, and way more palatable than these dense-ass paragraphs.

- We start shooting Meet Me There this weekend (Jill Thompson is going to be at my house, holy crap), so thank you again to everyone who reads the column, contributed to our IndieGogo fundraiser and made that possible.

So hey, please click through to enjoy the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for May 6, 2013. I wouldn’t give it a zero.

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If you’d like to know what happened on tonight’s WWE Raw but don’t want to read star ratings and wordy paragraphs to decipher it, With Leather is here for you. We are the only site allowed to write about wrestling on the Internet! Here’s what happened on the May 6, 2013, episode of WWE Raw:

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Our weekly look back through the best and worst of pro wrestling promo photos continues. If you missed week 1 and week 2, I encourage you to go back and check them out first, because otherwise you won’t be able to figure out my complexly layered jokes, like “Jeff Jarrett is terrible and looks like a monster.”

Week 3 encapsulates the last 20 years of WWE programming … legendary champions, beautiful Divas, the time Kane was a pro wrestling dentist and at least eight tag teams you’d completely forgotten about. Also, Steve Blackman holding weapons!

So please, click through to enjoy 50 more ridiculous WWE promo photos. If you don’t, Triple H is gonna look at you like that all day.

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Hello! It’s nice to see your faces! It’s been too long! We’re back, a little older, probably not much wiser, but definitely ready to assign positive and negative attributes to wrestling on television! First things first:

- It’s been a busy two weeks over at The Mandible Claw. Podcastravaganza is ready to take over your earholes and fill your brainstuffs with delight! Guests include Leva Bates, and Beyond Wrestling/WSU’s Drew Cordeiro. Brandon joined me to talk about the pitfalls of leisure time at Lucha Libre shows, teenage crushes, and the importance of Halloween costume accuracy. The week kicked off with Robert Newsome of the Atomic Elbow sharing more crazy Chikara theories as we descend deeper into the rabbit hole, and also potentially complete and utter madness.

- I dug into the mess of unopened discount wrestling DVDs that live on my shelf to review WWE’s One Night Stand: Extreme Rules 2007. It involves wrestling reenactments, du-rags, and shark attacks OUT OF NOWHERE. Vintage Mandible Claw!

- I’ll be at the (maybe) two ROH shows in Toronto (Border Wars and (probably) the TV taping), so if you see me, say hello! I’ll be the one in the ACH shirt looking slightly uncomfortable when ACH or Veda aren’t around. Or, if you see a lady and think “hey, that girl looks like she shrunk Brandon’s wardrobe but increased his visible distaste for Kevin Steen,” yes, that is me.

- If you didn’t get enough podcasts at the Mandible Claw, I guested on Holzerman’s Wrestling Podcast: Tweetbag Edition. This one has dinosaurs! I also had a wicked fun time recording What a Maneuver: Monday Night Raw/Monday Nitro January 27th, 1997. I watched my very first full episode of WCW Nitro with hilarious and incredibly confusing results. Did you know that Eric Bischoff once thought it acceptable to wear a leather jacket with tearaways? Man, what a dick.

We should all be Twitter bros. Do that by following me here, With Leather here, and UPROXX here. It’s perfect should you need to keep on top of funny sports happenings, Alison Brie gifs, and my obsession with Kyle Starks live-tweeting Hemlock Grove.

This week on Impact: Chris Sabin’s knee, Chris Sabin’s ACL, Chris Sabin training, and Chris Sabin talking about stuff. Spoiler alert: Chris Sabin.

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wait what the f**k is going on

Writing about Alex Karras in today’s Sports On TV: Archer’s 15 Greatest Sports Moments sent me down a YouTube rabbit hole, and I cannot believe what I found.

If you’re like me, you know George Plimpton best from Ken Burns’ Baseball and from that one episode of ‘The Simpsons’ where he tries to talk Lisa into throwing a spelling bee for a college scholarship and a hot plate (“it’s perfect for soup!”). In the 1950s and 60s, Plimpton was a prolific sportswriter and author whose schtick was signing up to participate in pro sports without any training or know-how, then writing about his experience. He boxed with Sugar Ray Robinson, stood in net for the Boston Bruins, pitched in a post-season exhibition game at Yankee Stadium under coach Mickey Mantle and attended preseason training as a backup quarterback for the Detroit Lions. These moments were shared in beautifully-written books or in the pages of Sports Illustrated.

Also one time he learned pro wrestling against the dad from ‘Webster’ dressed like a caveman lion. That was … uh, not written about beautifully.

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You're welcome.

Pre-show notes:

- Comments, shares, likes, and anything else that gets people to come here are appreciated, as always. If you can start one of those Reddit threads where people are all, “oh yeah, I like this column,” I will mail you candy.

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

- If you’d like more wrestling jokes, be sure to check out our now ongoing WWE promo photos galleries.

- The biggest-ever thank you goes out to everyone who helped make our Meet Me There fundraiser a success. We raised over $6,000 (!!), which will go very far toward making it the best movie we can make it. Thank you, and you are my friend from now until whenever you wanna stop. We’re shooting in May, so I’ll be socially AWOL for most of it, but it shouldn’t mess with the column at all. Go like the movie on Facebook and keep up with us!

And now, with 100% fewer helicopter entrances, it’s the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for April 29, 2013.

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