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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According to the great, in-depth research that I do before writing any post, the Rue Saint-Denis is a really old street in Paris, France and it’s full of hookers. With that said, I will now accept my professorship of European history at Harvard, thankyouverymuch. But while they put together that offer, I’ve been running my typical routine of ignoring the work that I’m supposed to do in favor of scouring the Internet for fun pictures, and last night I was delighted to find this picture of some street art in Rue Saint-Denis. Yes, that is Muhammad Ali standing over Street Fighter’s Ryu and it is spectacular.

Obviously, I have a problem with the fact that Ryu still has half of his energy, so he’s probably going to get up and keep fighting. I’m also curious to know how Ali can withstand Ryu’s Hadouken attacks. Unfortunately, I won’t know the answer to that query unless I can actually speak to the artist, known as Combo (The Culture Kidnapper), who also has a few other awesome sports-related works.

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Welp, time to pack it up, UFC and Strikeforce, because there’s a new breed of fighter out there and his name is Zhang Feng. The 23-year old man, hailing from parts unknown (or China, if you believe him over me), recently put on a little fighting exhibition for China News, and quite frankly I am terrified of the results. It seems, if a YouTube video is to be believed, that Feng has mastered the Street Fighter art of Hadouken, or energy blast punches to us common folk.

Feng, however, calls his incredibly unique talent the “Shaolin Sunshine Hand”, which upon first glance is much weaker than the Buddhist Palm, but I suppose all mystical martial artists need to start somewhere. For this news interview, Feng lined up 15 candles, lit them and invited two journalists to punch at them and see if they could put any of the flames out. The woman could not and the man only managed to put out one flame. When it came Feng’s turn, he punched until every candle was extinguished.

Is he a great, big phony? Or is he the most powerful warrior on the face of the Earth?

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Yesterday I wrote a little about sexy Australian hurdler Michelle Jenneke, and how we’d helped make her life miserable by exposing her to the creepy nooks of sexy and parody on the Internet. That got me thinking a lot about Kate Upton, a woman who purposefully used the Internet to wedge herself into those nooks, and how she’d been cyclically berated and celebrated by the Internet all year. Then I thought a little more about her, and I had to lie down.

The go-to spot online for bizarre online worship (assuming you don’t want a Chan page popping up in your browser history) is DeviantArt.com, a place where people of varying artistic ability upload their work, mention how they put no effort into it and showed it to you for no reason, then obsessively beg you for praise. So, uh … it’s like a blog, but in crappy sketch form.

Anyway, with Kate’s rise to prominence in 2012 via Sports Illustrated and Cat Daddying comes an increase presence on DeviantArt, so I’ve put together a collection of my favorite pieces. Inside: Kate being beaten up by Street Fighter characters, a little tentacle porn and a Nightmare On Elm Street crossover.

Yeah, I don’t know either.

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It ain’t gon’ be nothin after that.

Links

UFC 140 Aftermath Part I: Jon Jones Puts Doubts, And Machida, To Rest - But honestly, what do you expect? You can’t get the nickname “Bones” by being passive. Unless you’re Leonard McCoy. [Cage Potato]

The 10 Stupidest Characters in Street Fighter History - These all come from later games, as if “T. Hawk” wasn’t f**king stupid. [Gamma Squad]

New Dark Knight Rises Poster: ‘The Legend Ends’ - Batman Begins was as iffy to me as The Dark Knight was good, so there’s a 50/50 chance this movie will make me sad. I need Bane yelling I WILL CRUSH YOU and trying to run at me repeatedly, dammit. [Film Drunk]

A Collection of ‘Community’ Christmas GIFs - Won’t you be my daddy? I’m a silly Christmas baby! [Warming Glow]

Apple Store Opens In Grand Central, Thousands Of Apple Slavish New Yorkers Lose Their Minds - You know the drill. There are no funny Apple jokes or observations left. It’s the airplane food of commerce. [UPROXX]

My Weekend With The Black Keys’ “El Camino” - If you listen to the radio in Austin, every weekend is your weekend with The Black Keys. And Foster The goddamn People. [Smoking Section]

Yee Haw My Family Is Traumatized - How about those people on the football team known as the Cowboys?? [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

The 40 Best Protest Signs Of 2011 - And the sign says you got to have a membership card to get inside. HUH! [Buzzfeed]

The Ten Most Inappropriate Christmas Songs Ever Rrecorded - “Santa Baby” is the worst and least appropriate, especially when sung by Taylor Swift, which is what makes that Annie scene from last week’s ‘Community’ so amazing. [FARK]

A Broken Soul Stares from a Pair of Watering Eyes: The Most Intriguingly Odd Television Characters of 2011 - Update: Claire Danes is still not interesting. [Pajiba]

Five of the Worst Movies by Otherwise Great Directors - Lists like these always devolve into commenters agreeing about how much they hate the Coen Brothers, which is the worst conversation a person can have. [Unreality]