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.”
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.
Best: Former G.I. Joe and WWF Champion Sgt. Slaughter is one of several pro wrestling personalities (like Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler and Mr. Belding from ‘Saved By The Bell’) who tour Minor League Baseball parks over the summer to sign a few autographs, make a little cash and entertain fans between innings. Here he is during Thursday night’s game between the Lakeshore Chinooks and Lacrosse Loggers for ‘Military Appreciation Night’. He expertly dodges an attack from a guy named ‘MoFoley’ (no relation to Cactus Jack) and incapacitates him, allowing Gill the Chinook to get a pinfall. Not sure whether or not that was sanctioned, but whatever.
Worst:Busted Coverage calling the Cobra Clutch “a sleeper”. I don’t expect you guys to be run by a lonely pro wrestling encyclopedia like SOME sports blogs, but the guy yelling COBRA CLUUUUUTCH did the work for you.
Worst: At no point did Iron Sheik run out and Pearl Harbor Sarge. This also eliminated any chance of Sheik calling Gill the Chinook a homosexual jew, or whatever.
I don’t know what it is about fame that makes people think they can be musicians. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian made sex tapes to become famous, and then to maintain their celebrity statuses they decided to become pop singers. Plenty of actors have done it – Keanu Reeves, Gary Sinise, Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, to name a few – and God knows there are quite a few athletes who think they’re regular Scott Stapps. I’m no Darren Rovell, but I’m willing to guess that 99% of them have failed.
But for some mind-bending, unknown reason, becoming a music star has always been a favorite hobby of professional wrestlers and every single one of them that has tried it has been terrible. Sure, that’s personal opinion, but I’d love to know who I’m overlooking. In the meantime, I’m sure that I’ve overlooked plenty of the most terrible singing wrestlers, but I could only handle 15 videos in the YouTube wormhole before I was screaming in agony.
Witness the horror for yourselves and feel free to add your least favorite songs in the comments.
Every now and then a pro wrestling-related clip nobody should’ve seen pops up on the Internet and decides to go viral. Today’s clip, courtesy of our friends at Buzzfeed, is quite possibly the most masculine thing ever recorded and a living interpretation of every Chuck Norris joke you’ve heard as performed by monster trucks, electric guitar and Sgt. Slaughter. To catch you up to speed:
Following his third tour of duty in Vietnam, Sgt. Slaughter retired from service to pursue his life long dream of wrestling. After gaining the world championship belt and super stardom, the Sgt then moved onto rock star, monster truck tug of war champion and GI JOE. They just don’t make them like they used to.
Highlights of the video include the finest of 1980s girls in Bud trucker hats, the tape wearing out at the part where a lady starts jacking off an exhaust pipe, Sarge’s “battle battalion” not looking too different from the Village People and a bunch of monster truck and funny car drivers calmly lip syncing parts they should be screaming. In case you were wondering, Sgt. Slaughter did all those things in the blockquote but the guy who played him didn’t — he actually started off as a flamboyant character in the mid-70s, and if you need confirmation of military time not served, listen to Jesse “The Body” Ventura (Navy UDT veteran and former Navy SEAL) talk about it.
Regardless, the fictional version of the army guy had a pretty amazing life up until the Gulf War, when he decided to side with Iraq. Man, Sgt. Slaughter was always kind of a lying jerk, wasn’t he? Those Joe PSAs are meaningless now. I’m gonna go put my fingers in the light sockets no matter what Flint tells me. Ah well, at least you can’t take “monster truck tug of war champion” away from him.
I wrote this week’s Best and Worst of Raw immediately following last week’s, so by the end of it you’re going to be tired and not cheering for anything and wishing you could just go home. Or, somebody copy-pasted this week’s Best and Worst to Rajah.com last Wednesday morning and you’ve read it already.
Either way, enjoy. Your comments, thoughts, shares and donations of out-of-print UltraMantis Black memorabilia are appreciated. The only way to affect change in the way wrestling is reported online is to get people to support those trying to change it. Visit Fair to Flair, Dirty Dirty Sheets, the Art of Wrestling Podcast and anywhere else talking about wrestling without a fat head and a lisp.