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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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]

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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No numbers this week, but I do have some bullet points.

- We didn’t get to our 200 comments goal for last week, but thank you to everyone who reads these every week and takes the time to comment. I really appreciate it, and the Voice Of The Voiceless is an important part of what makes these columns worth reading. I can’t form a decent opinion without weighing it against the opinions of my peers. I think that’s constructive, and the last thing I want to be with a wrestling column is deconstructive. So drop a comment, share this on your Facebook, Tweet about it, send Kaitlyn a sternly worded e-mail about how she has rational, normal fans who don’t want to take her to Heaven, they just want to talk about wrestling, and possibly bodybuilding.

- If you don’t want to click through the pages, here’s the short version: Triple H

- I think the podcast is going to get started in the next couple of weeks, so if you’ve got any pro wrestling connections or are a literate, wonderful pro wrestling personality yourself (Kyle Durden, I’m looking in your direction) contact me via e-mail or over Twitter and let’s start setting up some appearances. Finally, a wrestling podcast! Why didn’t anyone else ever think of that?

And believe it or not, it’s not just a joke about Kelly Kelly.

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