This weekend I’ll be in Los Angeles, California, for WWE’s SummerSlam 2012 pay-per-view, and one of the coolest aspects of that is that I’ll be around at SummerSlam Axxess for THQ’s hands-on experience with/live roster reveal of WWE ’13. For those of you who don’t know, THQ’s WWE series is more or less the Madden of wrestling games, and this year’s edition is set to feature one of the biggest talent rosters ever, including a bunch of guys who were around in the late 90s when you probably watched. For those of you who DO know, yes, I am going to ignore almost everything they tell me to do and just stand in the middle of Axxess making local indy wrestler create-a-wrestlers.

Anyway, here’s the important information: I’ll be tweeting my thoughts and impressions of the game as well as up-to-the-minute roster information (come on, Damien Sandow!) on my personal Twitter account all weekend, so be sure to follow me @MrBrandonStroud.

If you guys have any questions you’d like me to ask the developers, drop them in our comments section here and I’ll try to get them answered. This is going down at Axxess, too, which means I should be within shouting distance of Dolph Ziggler if you want me to scream something to him about his Ass Cape. But no, seriously, the folks at THQ and WWE are awesome to let me take part in this, so let’s make it a big deal.

I have a shocking and incredible news flash for you – people love attractive female athletes. I know that some female athletes have complained in the past that they don’t like to be objectified or seen as sex objects, but deep down they know it’s unavoidable. That’s why so many other female athletes embrace it. But that won’t stop people from acting like we’re the bad guys for posting some videos, pictures, and GIFs of an attractive girl, despite the fact that we also pointed out that she’s incredible at her sport.

Enter The Daily Mail, which picked up the story of Australian hurdler Michelle Jenneke, who has absolutely shattered Internet records for becoming an instant sensation. Not since Allison Stokke have we seen someone become this amazingly popular and cherished in a matter of hours. From the moment we posted her video on Wednesday, the footage of Michelle dancing before she won the second heat of the Women’s 100 metres hurdles at the 14th IAAF World Junior Championships redefined viral.

And hey, look at us, we’re famous now. For being perverts, or something.

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That’s me, circa age four, standing in front of one of the tackiest looking Christmas trees on record. Yes, I’m wearing elastic jeans. Yes, I still have that haircut. Yes, I’m holding one of the Shirt Tales, and yes, I’m really that old.

I haven’t been the editor of With Leather very long, but around this time of year I turn into a Counting Crows-style winter mess and feel the need to emotionally spill myself on everyone. Saturday is Christmas Eve and Sunday is Christmas so we won’t be missing any updates, but this is my last chance to say how badly I want you to have a happy weekend (religion be damned) and how much I appreciate you sticking around with Zerkle left and you got stuck with a wordy pussy vegan as your sports guy. It means the world to me to get to do this, and it’s sorta my present every time I get up too early and get pissed when I’m not in your time zone.

Big Merry Christmas and/or other December-centric holiday wishes go out to Burnsy (who is so good at this it emasculates me on the reg … I absolutely could not do this without you), Brian and Jarret (for giving me a shot in the first place), Josh Z (for letting me fill your shoes), Matt Ufford (for being nice enough to say “hey, you should let this guy write here” when AOL fired everybody out of nowhere and I was gonna have to wait tables for a living again) and the rest of the UPROXX family. I’ve had the honor of writing at UPROXX.com, Warming Glow and Gamma Squad in addition to WL this year and every turn has been the most fun.

And yeah, that’s enough of me. If you’re traveling this weekend, be safe. I need you to stay alive because I love you, and because I desperately need your page views. Merry Christmas, everybody.

Pre-show notes:

- Hey, you, person reading this column. Register and leave us a comment. When you’ve done that (or possibly before), click that “like” button over the banner image and/or share this with everyone you have ever met, including your half-siblings and that one weird guy at work who found out you like wrestling and won’t stop trying to ask you about it. He’d love this column.

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

- SITE NEWS #1: We’re going to be running a TLC predictions contest on Friday where you can drop a comment and win $250 bucks. It didn’t work out so well for us with Vengeance (thanks a lot, Mark Henry breaking the ring) but I’ve got to give that purse to somebody. Be sure to check back throughout the week for that.

- SITE NEWS #2: Next weekend is my girlfriend Destiny’s birthday, so I’m not going to be around for TLC or Raw reports. Thankfully I’ve got a lot of funny ass friends, so SB Nation and Baseball Feelings writer Bill Hanstock will be filling in with a Best and Worst of WWE TLC 2011 report and Progressive Boink and The Best and Worst of Smackdown Live-Blog’s own Justin O’Connor will be filling in on Best and Worst of Raw. They’re awesome, so read those and support them.

- All internal gifs are courtesy of Jerusalem at Punchsport Pagoda.

- For further Raw reading, please consult UGO’s The Good The Bad And The Ugly and John Canton’s The WWE Raw Deal. They have slightly more positive outlooks on the show than me, but my report has pictures of A.J. (read mine first)

This show was three hours and killed me four minutes in, so I apologize in advance. Click through to enjoy The Best And Worst Of The Slammy Awards.

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This isn’t goodbye. This is…actually, I don’t know what the hell this is. It’s not as if this will not be the last post on With Leather. Hell, this won’t even be my last post on With Leather, but it will be my last post as the site’s managing editor. Still, even now I’m reluctant to make any incredibly personal remarks. Most of you realize that after two years on the site full-time, I’m burned out and just looking for a break. It’s a good time for me and for the site to step aside.

I seriously have no blinding prepared. I don’t have any bosses to badmouth or any topics of rage whatsoever. And I really just don’t like talking about myself, partly because I’m a boring guy. If I was a 17-year-old Korean lesbian, I would write about myself all the time. Tuesday: Went to the market. Played with my breasts. Ran away to America. I would totally read that.

I remember when Dick Enberg announced during the NCAA tournament last year that he was leaving CBS. There was a big to do about it, and they even interviewed Enberg during halftime of one of the games. All I could think to myself was, “Who cares? I just wanna watch basketball.” Even being on the other end of that now, I feel the same way. I hope that some of you will indulge me as I finish my run as editor here with a simple message. Read the rest of this entry »

Thank “Upstate Underdog” for reminding me of this video of Gus Johnson “narrating” a bulldog humping a teddy bear. It might be my favorite thing ever. I encourage all of you to visit the bulldog, named Skillet, and his original work here, and the Gus Johnson soundboard here.

We’ll recap some of the games later today, but this is pretty much it for now. I’ve got to cut a Bill Walton video (yeah, I met Bill Walton yesterday; it was rad) and, you know, get stupid drunk. I hope you all enjoy the day and the basketball, especially since our two favorite drinking holidays fall on the same day this year. I have mixed feelings about that.

Thanks for reading. Much more to come.