I’ve talked at length about my exploits in taking improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Training Center for the past year. Currently, I’m in the opening couple weeks of Improv 401 and that’s fun. Recently, I’ve completed another class at the school in the form of Sketch Writing 101. Taught by Zack Poitras, the eight-week course was loads of fun while giving me plenty of challenges in terms of creativity.

Every week, I’d have to complete some kind of sketch-writing assignment. We’d do a table reading and I’d receive some notes from both Zack and my fellow students. Since I now have a pile of these things lying around, I figured I’d post them up here.

Sketch 1: FAMILIAR DATE

During the first week, we discussed recent incidents that happened to us that were kind of funny. Then we were told to evolve that into a comedy sketch. My story was about how I met a girl through an online dating site and later found out that not only was she employed in the same company as me, but she was also on the cover of that company’s community magazine, which was sitting on the break room table. That inspired this skit.

Sketch 2: BRING YOUR DAUGHTER

In the second week, we had to bring in a pitch for a sketch. Mine was about the idea of an undercover cop doing Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. The idea got a lukewarm reaction, but I decided to stick with it and try to make it work. Unfortunately, I was never able to turn it in. I had jury duty during the third week. Still, I’m proud of how this one turned out.

Sketch 3: NEWS POPS

I was at least able to get the next assignment, which was to do a commercial parody. I didn’t realize that it was supposed to be based on a specific commercial, so I did a more genre-based one. This one got the most criticism, mainly because it’s too long and goes in too many directions. It is funny to see how many people sympathize with the childhood hell that was being stuck staring at the same cereal box for six months at a time, reading the same crap over and over again.

Sketch 4: CASABLANCA ENDING

For the fifth week, the assignment was to do a non-commercial parody. This one took a lot of thinking, but I decided to play on the iconic ending of Casablanca and how Ilsa was so reluctant to be with Victor, who was essentially the world’s most perfect and virtuous man. The main criticism for this one is that it took too long for it to reach the “game” (premise/main gag of a comedy sketch) because I felt the need to use the actual dialogue from the movie.

Sketch 5: CHIP BRAXTON: TIME TRAVELER

Next up, we had to write a character sketch. In other words, a sketch where it’s all based on one character and how people react to him. Nearly every 90’s SNL skit, basically. It was brought up in class that the Casablanca Ending sketch was itself a character sketch, but that didn’t make this assignment any easier. I struggled with a lot of half-baked ideas for a premise, like “retired professional wrestler who becomes a professional golfer” or “mall Santa Claus who tells the children on his lap way too much personal information”. The idea of Chip Braxton randomly popped into my head during a drive to work and it’s probably my favorite of the batch. The stinger at the end got one of the strongest reactions during the table reading.

Sketch 6: GRAMMYS MEMO

This one was also a pain in the ass. The idea was that we had to do a topical sketch. The week wasn’t giving us much to work with other than the big snow storm and the post office “no more Saturdays” announcement. The Pope stepping down was announced, but that was really last minute. I was thinking of writing a sketch about the History Channel celebrating Rebecca Black History Month, but that idea wasn’t going anywhere. I remembered that ridiculous CBS memo about the Grammys that got leaked and used that for inspiration. A lot of the earlier terms in there are word-for-word from the memo, including the hilarious term, “female breast nipple”.

Sketch 7: NEWS POPS 2.0

For the final week, we had to do a rewrite of a previous sketch. I wanted to do that Bring Your Daughter one, but it had to be something that everyone in the class was familiar with. I went with the News Pops one, since it needed the most improvement. I cut out about a page’s worth of stuff, streamlined some of it together and added an intentionally boring cartoon mascot in the form of Woody Bernstein.

Sketch 8: LANTERN TRAILER

Also for the final week, we had to write the first page of a sketch that shows us what the game is. This was originally one page when I handed it in, but that’s because I used MS Word and the formatting is different. This is also a dropped idea from the topical assignment.

There was also a ton of great skits from my fellow students. While I don’t have them to show, some of the highlights include:

– A college RA going over rules and regulations, repeatedly explaining that it’s NOT COOL to post pictures of muscular children on the bulletin board, no matter how much he wishes that wasn’t against the rules.
– A DJ on an oldies radio station who has completely gone insane from having to hear the same songs again and again for years, hiding his crippling depression with his obnoxious DJ optimism.
– “The Good Girls Club”, a reality show where nice women constantly screech at each other, “You’re motherfucking talented, you beautiful bitch!”
– A movie trailer for Goldilocks as an action flick.
– James Bond discovering that not only are there a bunch of movies about his exploits, but he’s the last person to know about this and it’s REALLY hurting his chances with getting laid.
– A homeless man on a subway, interviewing people for a talkshow that exists in his mind. Unfortunately, other homeless people get in on this and start the subway version of a late night war.
– The National Rifle Association change their name to the NWEA, deciding that instead of rifles, they’ll support the use of weaponized ebola.

I hope to start taking Sketch Writing 201 soon, as the whole experience was a blast.

So a thing happened in the wrestling world. Recently, “the All-American American” Jack Swagger came back from hiatus with a new gimmick of being “the Real American” and ranting about immigrants and lazy people and all that. Then he got a manager in the form of old-school wrestling personality Dutch Mantel (now known as Zeb Colter), who acted as a mouthpiece, ranting his Tea Party-like views for the sake of getting the crowd’s ire. Weeks into his return, Swagger won a big multi-man match to gain a title shot for the World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestlemania against Alberto Del Rio, a Mexican aristocrat with a love for the downtrodden. It’s a feud that makes sense and sounds like it would give us an entertaining story with a great payoff.

But that’s the thing about the unpredictable world of professional wrestling. It’s so many factors planned out and the best laid plans of mice and men have a tendency to go astray. With WWE, they aren’t even the BEST laid plans to begin with. No, a huge wrench came into this situation in the form of Jack Swagger being arrested for speeding and driving under the influence of marijuana.

This is one of those times where the behind-the-scenes story will trump the scripted stuff in front of the cameras, even if heroic immigrant vs. bad guy who hates immigrants has so much potential. So what’s so interesting about this Kurt Angle/Biff Tannen hybrid getting pulled over?

1) Jack Swagger continues to be the epitome of dropping the ball. Let’s take a quick look at Swagger’s WWE career. The deceptively-tall Swagger showed up on WWE’s ECW in late 2008, immediately shooting to the top with his easily-hateable goofball heel charisma and a power grappler style that made him look like he had a serious future in the company. He enjoyed some time as champ, although the ECW brand was so third tier at this point that he didn’t even get a match in the four-hour Wrestlemania 25. He got called up to the Raw roster and proceeded to do a big pile of nothing.

WWE did nothing of note with Swagger and he quickly faded into the background as just another midcarder. In 2010, he won the multi-man Money in the Bank match at Wrestlemania 26, which was a major surprise, as this development came out of nowhere. After all, he hadn’t really done anything to suggest he’d suddenly get any major push, yet here he was. Days later, he cashed in his automatic title shot on a beaten-down Chris Jericho (also a heel, which was weird) and became World Heavyweight Champion. This is part of one of WWE’s more recent problems of cheapening their titles by sticking them onto random people in hopes that it would make the wrestlers seem like a big deal instead of the other way around.

Swagger would go on to have one of the worst title runs of actual length in the company’s history, up there with Rey Mysterio and Jeff Hardy. Other than a clean win over Randy Orton at a PPV, he was made to look like a joke who in no way deserved to be considered on the championship level. Just as bad, they removed his full-of-himself jock personality and replaced it with a serious, suit-wearing character that they kept using for all heels around the time based on Chris Jericho’s success using the same gimmick. He ended up losing the title to Rey Mysterio and fell right out of the title picture.

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Welcome to ThWiP! Was Taters is off competing in an arm wrestling tournament to win the custody of Sylvester Stallone’s kid, so no panels from her this week. Instead, I’m helped out by Gaijin Dan, Jody and Space Jawa.

Still got to get around to reading that One-Punch Man thing. I’ll need to keep an eye out when that gets collected.

Age of Apocalypse #12
David Lapham and Renato Arlem

Avengers Assemble #12
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Pete Woods

Batman #17 (Jody’s pick)
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo

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That title isn’t even grammatically– you know what? Forget it.

The Street Fighter franchise has always given us interesting comics to work with. When the second game hit the scene and became an early-90’s phenomenon, we got both a terrible series in America that got canceled by the third issue and a manga that made enough sense out of the few existing story beats and created something entertaining. Various manga would appear throughout the years, becoming so beloved by Capcom that they’d introduce characters and concepts as being canon in the games, such as Sagat’s adopted children and Sakura’s rival Karin.

Starting in 2003, UDON – known mainly for that badass redesign of the Taskmaster back in the day that nearly every artist has chosen to foolishly ignore – began a Street Fighter series. While the constantly-changing and cropping titles makes it a headache at times to keep track of, it’s a fun narrative that tries to streamline the many characters and happenings in the game’s universe. Mainly written by Ken Siu-Chong, the comics have told the stories of Street Fighter, the Street Fighter Alpha games and Street Fighter II while doing side stories to build on the cast of Street Fighter III and Street Fighter IV. All that and miniseries based on Chun-Li, Sakura and Ibuki. Sadly, Adon is yet to get his own series.

The end of the Street Fighter II: Turbo series doesn’t quite stick the landing due to the reveal in Street Fighter IV that Gouken – Ryu and Ken’s master – isn’t so dead after all. Incorporating him into the final issue is not unlike having Thomas Wayne show up to punch out the Joker in the climax of a lengthy Batman story. Once that was done, UDON stayed silent for a while until announcing that their Street Fighter comics would no longer be monthlies, but released in graphic novel format. The first of which is Super Street Fighter: New Generation.

More than the format, what really makes this new story different for Siu-Chong is the pre-existing definition. Capcom has defined much of the events of the earlier Street Fighter games and what became of who, so the previous comics were Siu-Chong connecting the dots with his own little touch. New Generation is based on the Street Fighter III games (which storywise is comprised of Street Fighter III: Second Impact and Street Fighter III: Third Strike), which lack all that narrative detail. The games introduced an overwhelmingly new cast with only Ryu and Ken returning, eventually bringing in Akuma and Chun-Li for familiarity. Capcom never went out and came up with too many canon descriptions of what went on in the storyline.

The book tells its own version of the events of Street Fighter III, but with the inclusions of characters from previous games. Heck, Guile is our main character and he wasn’t even in any version of Street Fighter III. It’s neat to see explanations of what became of certain people from the pre-III games. For instance, after Bison’s death and Sagat’s refusal to have anything to do with the criminal enterprise, Shadaloo’s resources were divvied up by Balrog and Vega, who each went legit. Sakura graduated high school and became Ryu’s student, all while wearing an even more gratuitously fanservicey outfit (she’s now Ryu without pants). Zangief, Mike Haggar and Rainbow Mika became members of the Olympic council, making the recent real world situation with wrestling being dropped kind of hilarious in the timing.

The main story deals with the Secret Society, a cult run by the ever-powerful, thong-wearing, two-toned nutjob Gill. Guile – who has spent the last four years at a desk job since the fall of Shadaloo – is investigating the situation, but is alarmed when his inside man has gone missing. Even worse, he finds out of an unfinished list of targets that the cult is after and everyone’s favorite karate Jedi Ryu is on top of the list. Worser than that, Guile’s already too late and he discovers that Ryu’s already been taken. Worse-worsier, he finds this out through Sakura, who’s been driven insane from the experience and demands that Guile stay out of her way. To uncover the mystery, Guile is joined by angry military grappler Alex and another world warrior who I won’t spoil.

That’s not the whole package. Scattered throughout are chapters that tell side-stories. Wrestler Mania with art by Gonzalo Ordonez Arias shows how an argument between E. Honda and Hakan over which wrestling style should be added into the Olympics becomes a full-on fight. Target. Dhalsim. with art from Andres S. Blanco has Twelve attack Dhalsim in the Himalayas while morphing into various characters from the first game. Final Forest Fighter II by Jim Zub and Sean Galloway shows a sparring match between ninjas Guy and Ibuki. There’s also origin stories for Alex (Long Vo on art) and Juri (Zub on words, Omar Dogan on art) with the latter one being especially good. At the very least, it explains why Juri could be so vengeful against Bison/Shadaloo while being a full-on villain with no redeeming values.

Oh, I almost forgot. America’s sweetheart Chris Sims teams up with Edwin Huang to write School in the Summertime, a six-page story where brash, powerhouse boxer Balrog crosses paths with refined fisticuffs gentleman Dudley. It definitely hits its potential and as luck would have it, UDON released the full thing on Facebook. That keeps my conscious clean enough to post them here.

“…gutter trash.”

The hardcover also features a bunch of pages of character art. It retails at $34.95, but you’re better off hitting Amazon or BN.com for a better deal. If you’ve enjoyed the previous comics or have always wanted to read a story about an overly-happy Turkish man who loves oiling himself up more than anyone ever should, it’s worth checking out. Just not at list price.

Now if only UDON would allow me to write an Adon backup. He’s basically just Chris Jericho, but with more kicking. What’s not to love?

Hello nice people. This week it’s me reading way too much superhero comic junk, Gaijin Dan reading way too much manga, Brobe sending in a chunk of stuff and a little something-something from Was Taters, Space Jawa and Jody.

I should feel alarmed that I’m enjoying Thunderbolts, even though I know that Way will do me wrong like he always does. Then again, to paraphrase Mitch Hedberg, we eat every apple knowing that it’ll become a core.

Unleash the panels!

Animal Man #17
Jeff Lemire, Scott Snyder, Steve Pugh and Timothy Green II

Avengers #5
Jonathan Hickman and Adam Kubert

Batwing #17
Fabian Nicieza and Fabrizio Fiorentino

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It’s really pretty amazing how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the more versatile properties in comic history, ranking up there with Batman and Wolverine. Remembered mainly for the popular 80’s and 90’s children’s cartoon, you have to remember that the foursome started out in a comic where Leonardo impales Shredder with his katana in the very first issue. He even drinks some beer a few issues later, which feels off in retrospect. The property has taken some strange turns over the years, even to the point where the more kid-oriented comic series by Archie Comics featured a storyline where they go back in time, beat up Hitler, convince him he’s in Hell and trick him into shooting himself in the head. Around the same time, Michelangelo was teaming up with the Muppet Babies, Alf and Bugs Bunny to get a kid off drugs on a Saturday morning TV special.

When the Turtles fad died down, the cartoon still remained on TV for a long, long time. How long? There was an episode that featured April O’Neil looking stuff up on the internet. Jesus. I even remember stumbling upon the very last episode one Saturday morning, surprised that it was still around. The ending was rather nice, with Splinter telling the four that he had nothing left to teach them. They were all his equals and would no longer be able to call him “Master”. They tried to keep the franchise around just a little bit longer with a live-action show, but with that failing, the Turtle stuff took a break for a few years.

In the early 2000’s, a new Ninjas Turtles series was created by 4Kids that revitalized the concept. It decided to go back to basics, throwing away all the ideas and characters from the 80’s cartoon and basing everything on the original Mirage comics. In fact, there’s an almost purist distaste you can feel from the series in their refusal to pay any lip service to the first cartoon, outside of a couple Easter Egg references. Though it is rather cool that by revealing their version of Shredder to be an Utrom alien, he’s essentially Krang and Shredder in one character. Regardless, it was a good show and lasted a rather long time, even after jumping the shark and going into the future for a season.

It was announced that Nickelodeon was buying the rights to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and if the 4Kids series wasn’t already on its way out, this made it definite. The creators decided to go out the best way possible: an animated movie in the style of a crossover between the 4Kids TMNT and the 80’s cartoon TMNT.

The movie begins with Hun, leader of the Purple Dragons and go-to muscle for Shredder, as he steals some tech stuff at a lab. The Ninja Turtles appear to stop them. Later that night, the situation makes the news, distressing Splinter, who can’t believe his students would be so careless. What’s extra strange is that all four turtles have been home in the sewer all night. They figure out that the Purple Dragons are involved and go to find out what’s going on.

We find that the Purple Dragons won that little pre-credits skirmish and have the Turtles as prisoners. Hun sees them and is completely confused.

“You were expecting maybe someone else?”

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The big nerd news of recent months is that Disney bought Star Wars from George Lucas and that Star Trek guy is going to be directing it. For me, this is great news no matter how you look at it. For one, the franchise isn’t in Lucas’ hands anymore. Already a plus. At best, Disney might be able to use some of their magic to make a good Star Wars trilogy to break the tie created by the previous two. At worst, we’ll have something new to make fun of.

I thought about doing a Crossover Celebration article about Star Wars, but then it hit me how sparse Star Wars crossovers are. Even then, they’re all fairly brief to talk about. Ergo, I figured I’d go over every Star Wars crossover I can possibly think of. Remember, it’s official crossovers only.

The first crossover came in 1979, in-between the first two movies. During the 11th season of Sesame Street, a UFO land and out come C3PO and R2D2. The two befriend Big Bird and reveal that they are sent by an intergalactic relative of Oscar the Grouch to deliver a message for the grumpy, green guy. That message being, “GET LOST!” Over the course of the episode, as well as another episode later in the season, the two droids mostly hang out with Big Bird, including a segment where they sing a song about remembering which number is which. There’s also an amusing bit where R2D2 happily tells C3PO that he’s in love, only to be brought down when he discovers that it’s just a fire hydrant.

A year later, Star Wars would keep the Muppet friendship going with a hosting gig during the fourth season of the Muppet Show. As Scooter readies the show’s guest host, a Scottish Muppet named Angus McGonagle, the trio of Luke Skywalker, R2D2 and C3PO bust through the wall. The three are looking for the kidnapped Chewbacca, but Scooter sees this as an opportunity to get rid of Angus and replace him with some real stars. Other than R2, the heroes seem disinterested in the idea of hosting a variety show. They’re more focused on tracking down their kidnapped friend Chewbacca.

Luke appears less whiny and unsure and more of a gung ho revolutionary, screaming, “REMEMBER ALDERAN!” when he bursts into the room at one point. While he isn’t keen on singing and dancing, he does leave the room so that his cousin Mark Hammill can give it a try. Wait, cousin? I wonder if he was Owen and Veru’s kid. If so, he’s certainly gotten over their fiery death. Mark fails to impress Kermit and Fozzy, especially after he and Angus do a musical gargling duet on stage.

Things pick up when they invade the set of Pigs in Space. They commandeer the Swinetrek in hopes of finding Chewy and interact with the cast. Link Hogthrob gets along swimmingly with Luke, inquiring about where he gets his snazzy uniform. Dr. Strangepork is intrigued with R2D2 and Miss Piggy dresses up as Leia as a way of hitting on Luke. This episode was released as hype for Empire Strikes Back, so we aren’t aware of how creepy this is. The two sci-fi teams fly to a planet where they confront the mysterious Dearth Nadir!

He too wants to know about Luke’s tailor. The segment becomes a pure clusterfuck with Chewbacca coming to Luke’s aid (wasn’t he kidnapped?) and Nadir being saved by Angus McGonagle’s gargling abilities. Then Kermit arrives to transform it into a musical segment, which includes the horrors of Chewbacca dancing. Then it gets into cosmic territory as both the Muppets and the Star Wars cast get together and sing “When You Wish Upon a Star” as a Disney-like castle appears behind them.

Yes, they’re doing this decades before Disney would own both properties. Absolutely crazy.

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Okay, okay. So my writing has been a little lax lately. I’ve been a bit busy, what with jury duty, a sketch writing class at UCB, the Royal Rumble, the Superbowl and work kicking my ass. But I promise I’ll get back to actually writing about comics again real soon! Scout’s honor!

I was never a scout, but I’m pretty sure I can keep that promise.

My superfriends are, as always, Gaijin Dan, Was Taters, Jody and Space Jawa.

All-Star Western #16
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Moritat and Phil Winslade

Aquaman #16
Geoff Johns and Paul Pelletier

Avengers #4
Jonathan Hickman and Adam Kubert

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Hey. I’m helped out this week by Gaijin Dan, Was Taters and Space Jawa. No Jody this week. He’s too busy digesting the Cookie Puss we devoured while watching tonight’s Royal Rumble.

Wade Barrett was robbed, by the way.

Sweet week of comics. I mean, just check out this Avengers panel. Also, there’s a new series included called One-Punch Man and it strangely doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Guy Gardner.

Avengers #3
Jonathan Hickman and Jerome Opena

Before Watchmen: Minutemen #6
Darwyn Cooke

Bleach #523
Tite Kubo

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Date: August 16, 2011 (aired on August 19, 2011)
Company: WWE
Show: Smackdown
Rules: Normal
Stipulation: #1 contender for World Heavyweight Championship at Night of Champions
Roster (19): Trent Barreta, Wade Barrett, Johnny Curtis, Ted Dibiase, Justin Gabriel, the Great Khali, Mark Henry, Tyson Kidd, Ezekiel Jackson, Jinder Mahal, William Regal, Cody Rhodes, Zack Ryder, Sheamus, Sin Cara, Heath Slater, Yoshi Tatsu, Jey Uso and Jimmy Uso

As we hit the last battle royal of this one-a-day series, we end on one of my favorites. It’s from the first Smackdown after Summerslam 2011. At that Summerslam, Wade Barrett defeated Money in the Bank holder Daniel Bryan. Sheamus’ sense of honor cost him when Mark Henry slammed him through a barricade and won via count-out. Randy Orton had finally ended his feud with Christian, meaning he needed a new contender for his World Heavyweight Championship.

And so, a battle royal was put together. It was meant to be a 20-man battle royal, but Daniel Bryan chose to challenge Alberto Del Rio earlier that night and got his arm destroyed. Too destroyed to compete again that night. Also, one of the angles of the time had Jinder Mahal more or less owning Great Khali, due to his status as brother-in-law. It’s a complicated Indian thing.

You can tell that they’re trying to make Mark Henry a big deal because when he walks to the ring, resident strong face dude Ezekiel Jackson is all, “Uh… shit.”

The bell rings and Henry stands in the center of the ring. With the exception of Khali guarding Mahal in the corner, everyone pounds on the World’s Strongest Man. He decides that it merely tickles. It tickles and Mark Henry isn’t a man who enjoys laughter.

“ENOUGH!”

He immediately removes Trent Barreta and Yoshi Tatsu. The minutes that follow include your usual filler of guys working each other over with nothing happening. Stuff comes alive when Ezekiel Jackson throws his rival Cody Rhodes over the top and he holds on by skinning the cat and pulling himself back in. Then Big Zeke just sends him back out with a massive clothesline.

Khali is still guarding Mahal in the corner and is commanded to take care of Ezekiel. Ezekiel stuns Khali with a running clothesline, steps back for a second one and runs right into a Brain Chop. Khali flings Ezekiel out of there and Henry decides to step up.

You might recall that Khali/Henry was a showdown that wouldn’t be in that 2007 battle royal I covered a few days ago and while they tangled in the Monster Mash, their interactions were barely of note. Finally, they’re going to go at it and I’m ready for it to be terrible. Khali chops Henry down and prepares for the Vice Grip. Henry powers out and then decides, fuck this, I’m the World’s Strongest Man!

Whoa! That’s kind of awesome! Extra points for most everyone else in the ring hanging back to see how this fight plays out.

Sheamus runs into Henry with an axe-handle and sends him rolling to the outside. He’s still in the match, but just angry. Also, champion Randy Orton is watching the battle royal unwind as he sits near the announce table with Henry angrily roaming around.

Whenever somebody gets eliminated, Henry proceeds to grab them and throw them around like a ragdoll. Just ask the Usos.

His rage not quite satiated, he returns to the ring and helps take the number down to four finalists: Henry, Sheamus, Wade Barrett and Sin Cara. You can tell Sin Cara is the fan favorite because of all the chants they edited in in post-production. Barrett, Sheamus and Sin Cara go at Henry together, but Barrett’s greed gets to the best of him and he turns on Sheamus. The two Europeans end up brawling on the apron after each going over the top rope. Sheamus wins the brawl with a kick to the chest and Barrett falls to the floor.

Sheamus and Sin Cara have a nice little battle that ends with Sheamus preparing to Brogue Kick him out of the ring. Henry gets up from the earlier beating and washes his hands of the big Irishman.

Now we’re down to Sin Cara vs. Henry. Sin Cara does a crossbody off the top and Henry falls over after catching him. It’s hard to tell if it’s a botch or not, but my gut says yes. Sin Cara is unable to move Henry with a couple hurricanrana attempts and goes for a crossbody off the second rope. Henry catches him correctly this time and crushes him with the World’s Strongest Slam. Then he presses Sin Cara’s sin carcass over his head and dumps him out of the ring like he’s nothing.

Mark Henry is the #1 contender and ends the show staring down Orton, taking a second to get a whiff of him.

“YEAH, I SMELL YOU. THAT’S FEAR. THAT’S FEAR I SMELL!”

After a career of being a jobber to the main event, Mark Henry would be rewarded for being suddenly awesome after 15 years by going over Orton cleanly and decisively. Twice! He proceeded to have the best heel title run in forever that sadly got derailed by an injury. Part of me will always lament that we never got the correct ending to the Rocky III Balboa/Clubber angle they were setting up with Daniel Bryan and Henry. But hey, said injury also led to Bryan’s heel turn and the whole, “YES! NO!” thing, so it all evens out.

Enjoy the Royal Rumble, everybody.