Tonight is the WWE Royal Rumble. Here’s hoping someone other than Triple H or Cena wins this one. Come on, Kofi Kingston or CM Punk!

What better timing than for me to find this gem that I’ve been looking for for 13 years? In my Royal Rumble Week articles, I made mention of an ECW Rumble match I saw back in the mid-90’s. It was actually my very first ECW experience, so it stuck with me. Finally, I found it.

It’s called the King of the Hill Battle Royal, which is like a Royal Rumble, except for two differences. One, pinfalls and submissions count. Two, tag teams can enter together, as long as they’re willing to split the winner’s purse. The contestants:

Balls Mahoney
The Blue World Order (Stevie Richards, Blue Meanie and Nova)
Bubba Ray Dudley
Chris Candido
D-Von Dudley
The Eliminators (Perry Saturn and John Kronus)
“The Franchise” Shane Douglas
The Gangstas (New Jack and Mustafa)
Little Guido
Louie Spicolli
“Prime Time” Brian Lee
Rob Van Dam
Sabu
The Sandman
Spike Dudley
Tommy Dreamer

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The WWE Royal Rumble is on its way later this month. If you recall, last year I wrote up a seven day long review and ranking of all the Royal Rumbles from worst to best. Currently, I’m fresh into working on my Wrestlemania Countdown, which I can hopefully get done by mid-March, what with having to rewatch 25 3-4 hour shows. Right now, that’s not important.

Neither is this 108-Man Royal Rumble from Japan, but it’s a fun waste of time. It’s a big New Years get together between Big Japan Pro Wrestling, Dramatic Dream Team and Kaientai Dojo and you can tell that it’s New Years because when there’s one minute left in 2009, things get interesting.

I know only a handful of these guys from watching CHIKARA, but that doesn’t prevent it from being entertaining. Enjoy a man who can eliminate people from the ring with his mind, a guy who’d rather sit in the corner and snack than wrestle, the Japanese Shawn Michaels, a Hulk Hogan blow-up doll, a man with a giant turnip head and a gay rapist.

I’ve been asked to comment on the recent announcement about the new WWE Heroes comic on its way. For those who haven’t heard, 20 issues will be released by Titan Publishing, depicting the WWE wrestlers as fighting zombies and leopard men and stuff. I don’t know.

The press release mentions the inclusion of these wrestlers and personalities: Triple H, Undertaker, Randy Orton, Batista, Shawn Michaels, Big Show, John Cena, CM Punk, Kane, Edge, Chris Jericho, Matt Hardy, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Carlito, Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler and Kelly Kelly. Wait, Roddy Piper?! What? Why?

Another thing that bothers me is that why are they going to go through the trouble of doing a WWE comic book and NOT include the Hurricane, who is a wrestling superhero? He was born for this role! What is up with that?

I’ve followed the history of licensed wrestling comics. First we had WWF Battlemania in 1991, which I covered in two parts. It was doofy and kiddy, but not overly offensive in the grand scheme of things. A year later, Marvel released World Championship Wrestling, which I reviewed in three different parts. That one was both poorly written and showed the reasons for why doing a month-by-month story based on wrestling that’s written and drawn long in advance is a recipe for failure. At the end of the decade, we were given WWF comics by Chaos. This included comics based on Steve Austin, Mankind, the Rock, Chyna and the Undertaker. I recently reviewed Undertaker in two parts.

So I think I have enough authority to say that this is going to be bad on an epic scale. I can’t wait. I just feel sorry for writer Keith Champagne, who already took a hit for being assigned the job of writing Countdown: Arena. God, what a mess that was.

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Last time, I discussed the first few issues of Chaos Comics’ Undertaker, as well as the specials that came from it. The Undertaker, Paul Bearer and a newly-created character the Embalmer each hold a Book of the Dead and are going to war over who can get all three Books and become the ruler of Stygian, Hell’s prison. Meanwhile, Kane is sneaking around, watching the Undertaker and Mankind is able to see that some of the wrestlers in the WWF are really demons in disguise.

Just for shits and giggles, for those of you reading who don’t follow wrestling or haven’t followed it for long, here’s a list of some of the Undertaker’s silliest storylines:

– Fought a nearly 8-foot-tall dude who wore a muscle suit with fur covering the shoulders and crotch. Their “epic” battle at Wrestlemania 9 ended with this big dude, Giant Gonzales, chloroforming the Undertaker. This got Undertaker a win via disqualification and they always have to sidestep this fact when they go over how the Undertaker is undefeated at Wrestlemania and show a highlight reel.

– A match was set for Survivor Series of Lex Luger and his patriotic American guys vs. Yokozuna and his evil foreigners. Due to a last-minute injury, they needed someone to step into Luger’s team. This spot was filled by the Undertaker, who proceeded to do a lengthy promo that compared his gimmick to what America is all about. He ended it by growling, “Let freedom RIIIIIIIING…” and opened up his jacket to reveal a 1776 American flag stitched on the inside. Lex Luger saw this and got way too pumped about it.

– Undertaker had a match against Yokozuna where you won by stuffing your opponent into a casket. Just about every bad guy in the WWF came out to help Yokozuna by ganging up on the Undertaker and shoving him in the casket. As the casket is wheeled away, the big screen above the entrance shows a camera inside the casket, where the Undertaker promises he will return. Then he (or Marty Janetty in an Undertaker costume) flies off into the heavens on strings.

– The Undertaker delivered a Dominos pizza to Leslie Neilson as part of the lead up for the Undertaker to fight his evil doppelganger.

– The Undertaker had a rematch against Yokozuna, this time with Chuck Norris there to make sure nobody interfered this time.

I can go on with this for days. To be fair, I do really love the Undertaker and he has had his share of kickass moments. Like that time Paul Bearer did an interview from the safety of his own home and Undertaker burst in, yelling, “Did you think I forgot where you live?!” and pummeled the everloving hell out of him. Then it cut to the arena’s locker room, many miles away as Kane went into a hysteric crying rampage and Mankind had to try and calm him down. That was neat.

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Some people believe I always go out of my way to search for weird comics. Not always. The truth is that most of the time, weird comics go out of their way to find me.

For instance, one day I’m flipping through some back issues, when I find a batch of issues for a Honeymooners comic from the mid-80’s. I didn’t even know there was a Honeymooners series. I’m still not certain why there was one in the 80’s, considering the show was long dead and gone for decades. Now that I think about it, it does give me hope for one day reading Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Perfect Strangers.

Okay. So now we have an old sitcom re-imagined into a comic years after the fact. That’s a good start. I looked through the covers and found one that completely stood out. It’s the kind of comic that makes you question the industry and reality itself for allowing such a thing to exist. Ralph Kramden in a comic book? I guess I could buy that.

Ralph Kramden in a comic book, wrestling alongside Captain Lou Albano?! Welcome to flavor country.

Much like the epic battle of Superman and Muhammad Ali, there are plenty of cameos in that crowd. I notice Frankenstein’s monster, Gumby, White Spy, Groucho Marx (obviously not amused by rest-hold spots), Alfred E. Newman and Gorbechaf.

Also note the top right corner. Not only is this issue #7, but it’s #7 of 24. That’s… odd. I guess Triad must have had a two-year contract and decided to flaunt it. Though from what I’ve found, the series didn’t make it past the twelfth issue. No other wrestler cameos, from what I’ve gathered.

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I’m sure some of you may have seen the site Tube Dubber. It takes two YouTube videos and merges them, showing one vid’s visuals and the other’s audio. As it turns out, there are a mountain of wrestling entrance videos, otherwise known as Titantrons, on YouTube. These being the looped highlight reel videos that play on the big screen whenever someone walks to the ring. Not only are seemingly all of them on YouTube, but some fans decided to make these videos for those wrestlers from earlier eras.

At the Something Awful wrestling sub-forum Wrestlehut, a bunch of us started playing around with Tube Dubber and seeing what we could do to improve on these wrestling Titantrons. Here are some of my better ones.

The Hurricane
Doink the Clown
Vladimir Kozlov
The Ultimate Warrior
Jeff Hardy (my favorite one)
CM Punk
Adam Bomb
Brutus Beefcake
John Morrison (listen, the guy slows down time. I had to do this one)
JBL… if he was a face.
Rated RKO
The Miz
Mike Knox
The New World Order

Later on, I decided to take some CHIKARA and indy highlight videos and tack on a new soundtrack.

The Osirian Portal
The Super Smash Brothers
Chuck Taylor
Mike Quackenbush

This is way too fun. Try it!

For the past couple years, I’d take a second every once and a while to talk about CHIKARA, an indy wrestling organization based out of Philadelphia. Founded by wrestler and head trainer Mike Quackenbush, it’s a school that turned into its own federation. With seven years under its belt, it’s grown to have its own cult following and for good reason.

I regularly bring guests to their shows, tending to take those along who know little or nothing to do with wrestling. They always have a blast. Where else can you see a mute sea monster in a muscle suit team up with a amateur wrestling Rocky Balboa against two clown-like figures dressed up like ice cream people? And not only that, but the wrestling is actually GOOD! It’s routinely funny and the storytelling is top notch.

Back when I first got into it, I did a post about how a bunch of the DVD covers are homages to notable comic book covers. As time went on, the article became a bit popular, but I lost track after a while and kept putting off an update. Now, I think it’s time not to pick up from after I left off, but to redo it from beginning to end. Here we go!

Kids Eat Free On Tuesday & Pick Up Or Delivery
Based on: Flash #123
Features: Mike Quackenbush… and Mike Quackenbush

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It’s been a while since I’ve given some love towards my favoritest wrestling fed in the whole wide world. I do have a full-on comic-to-DVD cover gallery in the works, but first I have to wait for an older show to reach my mailbox because nobody on the internet seems to have a good picture of the damn thing’s cover.

In the meantime, here are some YouTubian reasons why you should check out CHIKARA.

(The sound on this next one is a little off, but it’s Player Uno — the only wrestler to have his own pause button — debating the raving psychopath Delirious about Nintendo and its competitors)

So fun.

Personally, I highly suggest checking out all three nights of King of Trios 2009. Especially Night 2, which features an amazing four-way elimination match between El Generico, Nick Jackson, Jigsaw and Kota Ibushi.

What a weekend. Maybe a write-up later. Tired (and according to that image, dead) now. I did get a muffin kicked into my face. So there’s that.

Seriously, I can’t recommend going to a live CHIKARA show enough.

The Royal Rumble was last night, meaning you no longer care about anything I have to say. Yeah, well… shut up, okay?

I thought the event was top notch. Jack Swagger vs. John Morrison is going to make a very fine PPV main event one day.

The Rumble match itself was pretty good. It had a lot of fun spots, but got bogged down by keeping the ring too full. They were so determined to keep every single main eventer in the ring until the end while keeping them scattered on the card that it seemed to blow up in their face.

But the highlight of the Rumble?

MAMA MIA!

(thanks to Jerusalem for the gif)

Let’s finish this off and call it a day.

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