I’ve occasionally wondered if the MGK.com audience is interested in professional wrestling analysis, and I suppose there’s no better reason to test the waters than what Dave Meltzer calls “the biggest money-drawing pro-wrestling show of the last 130 years.”  (It is a little known fact that the Earp brothers and the Clanton gang actually settled their differences with a eight-man tag in front of a sellout crowd at the Tombstone Sportatorium.)

The sensibility that WrestleMania is a special show on the WWE calendar is somewhat artificial.  There’s no particular reason that WWE couldn’t save their biggest matches or their stadium events for, say, SummerSlam or Survivor Series.  But WrestleMania has an aura about it, primarily because of epic matches like Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant (1987), Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior (1990), the Rock vs. Steve Austin series (1999/2001/2003), Hogan vs. the Rock (2002) and Shawn Michaels vs. the Undertaker (2009-2010).  For WrestleMania XXVIII, WWE is poised to deliver the same kind of big-time, clash-of-the-titans feeling with a main event the company has been hyping since about a month before WrestleMania XXVII.  It’s just that big!

John Cena vs. The Rock

I’m not sure the wrestling fandom has anticipated a match this much since Hogan and Andre.  For over a year I’ve heard serious discussion about whether fans in the Sun Life Stadium will riot if the Rock loses in his hometown.  There’s been tons of buildup for this one, as Rock and Cena have traded “is this a fake storyline or something more?” barbs at each other for years.  Ostensibly, the story is that Rock retired in 2004 to make movies, and now he feels like coming back but Cena resents that the “people’s champion” walked out on the people.  Recently the Rock has added the wrinkle that he wants to prove he’s the greatest of all time by becoming the only man to defeat Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, and John Cena at WrestleMania.

The real story, though, is as follows:

1. The Rock was one of the biggest stars of one of WWE’s hottest eras.
2. John Cena is one of the biggest stars of the last 7-8 years.
3. Hardcore wrestling fans can’t fucking stand John Cena and want to see him die.
4. But nobody ever really beats John Cena when it counts because he’s a big star.
5. But  the Rock is a bigger star, and if anyone can get the job done, it’s him.

Basically, this match is every online Superman vs. Batman debate made manifest.  Up to and including the part where nobody notices that Batman is just Superman with a blue cape.

Who will win?  Let’s put it this way: WWE is hoping this will be the highest-grossing WrestleMania of all time, and very few people are paying to see the Rock lose.

Who should win?  My personal WrestleMania experience would be perfect if I could hear millions of butthurt Cena-haters wailing as one on April 1, so I’m rooting for John Cena.

1) Bears punter Devin Hester died at some point during the 2010 season. Bears head coach Lovie Smith used unholy rituals to bind his spirit to this earth, in order to force him to act as a ghostly punt returner for the team. This can sometimes unnerve opposing punters. (“It’s got to be tough for [the Green Bay punter], with the spectre of Devin Hester downfield waiting for him.”)

2) Lions quarterback Shaun Hill makes a terrible mattress. (“You should never sleep on Shaun Hill, I’ll tell you that.”)

3) The injuries to Seahawks quarterback make it very difficult for him to insert a football into his rectum at the current time. (“He’s having trouble opening up his hips and really driving through that football.”)

4) Rams running back Stephen Jackson is a compulsive masturbator, but one with impressive stamina. (“I just gotta touch it 25-30 times a game.”)

There is a school of geekdom that shows no interest in professional sports. To them, I say, there is nothing quite like a group of men having to speak extemporaneously for several hours using terminology that can quite easily be taken wrongly.

Every time I hear about the latest college football recruiting/scheduling/conference-jumping/coach-changing/insert-scandal-here scandal, I always hear someone trying to excuse it by simply acknowledging what we all know. “Hey, it’s a business!” they say, as if to imply, “Only foolish and naive people actually believe that crap about ‘the purity of the student-athlete’, pal. That kind of thing went out with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Get with the times.”

Which is all absolutely true, but misses the point: The problem isn’t that getting money involved in college athletics taints the purity of the sport and that they should return to the good old days when it was a sport for students, by students; the problem is that if it’s a business, then the college athletes are the employees. And if they’re employees of a business, then they should get paid. Instead, not only do they not get any actual financial compensation for their labor (they get scholarships, which generally include campus housing, but even at the most expensive colleges that usually amounts to less per year than you could make driving a garbage truck–not to mention, the kids aren’t getting as much use out of their scholarship when they have to spend so much time practicing and playing) but in addition to that, if someone other than their employer, the university, tries to recompense them for their labor, they’re suspended from their job without pay. The school gets to make as much money as they want off of the students, but the student has to stay broke to keep their love of the game “pure”.

Some people claim that the college players get valuable football experience that helps them make the pros, but that’s not an excuse either. Minor-league baseball players gain experience and get paid (although admittedly, they don’t make as much as garbage-truck drivers either.) The point is, if we’re going to have college teams serving as farm leagues for the NFL, then college athletes should be paid for their labor the same way every other working American is. Colleges that make millions off of their football programs, then insist they’re simply providing an extra-curricular activity for their students when it comes time to pay the people who are making those millions possible, are exploiting those kids. “It’s a business” isn’t an excuse, because it’s only a business when the people in charge want it to be a business. The hypocrisy of the stance is what people are complaining about, not the fact that money has sullied the sport.

ROUND OF 16
Uruguay over South Korea
Ghana over USA
Netherlands over Slovakia
Brazil over Chile
Mexico over Argentina
Germany over England
Japan over Paraguay
Spain over Portugal

ROUND OF 8

Ghana over Uruguay
Netherlands over Brazil
Germany over Mexico
Spain over Japan

ROUND OF 4

Netherlands over Ghana
Spain over Germany

FINAL

Netherlands over Spain

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Also: after today, I don’t think Spain has nearly as good a chance to advance to the group rounds as some people do, even though they did beat Honduras today. Chile was always going to be their toughest match in this group, and if you assume that Switzerland beats Honduras (and the Honduran team just isn’t on the level of anybody else in this group, so the Swiss have good odds), then Spain has to beat Chile to advance. Chile can cheerfully play for a tie, which still nets them first place in the group.

I still think Spain can eke it out – heck, I picked them to win the whole thing before it started – but, yeah, it’s a bit uphill.

So I am looking at the World Cup draws and MGK was complaining about how “fucking Italy gets a walk to the semis,” and he doesn’t like Italy because he thinks they play the game like dicks somehow. I’m not up on soccer beyond the basics, but I assume they try to bribe referees or grab the microphone before the soccer match and they run down the local fans, like “hey we slept with all your sisters last night and they weren’t even that good, not like the girls in Italy,” or something like that. Because that’s what I’d do if I were a pro wrestler, and I figure it translates to other sports.

But that’s not the point. The point is that North Korea is somehow in the World Cup this year, which is fantastic, because the entire country is apparently, like, insane or something. And insane countries will do anything to win a soccer match. It might not make sense to anybody else, but you got to understand that North Korea, being a crazy country, will think their plans are all sensible and rational no matter what they might be otherwise. Because they are crazy.

Like, maybe they capture a bunch of whales. And then, they put the whales on their team as goalkeepers. They get two defensemen to swab down the whale with water and feed the whales buckets of mackerel, and the other teams are all “how do we get the balls past these whales? The whales are bigger than the net!” And the other teams can’t score against North Korea (well, except for Brazil, because Brazil will always find a way to score a goal somehow – if Brazil wasn’t allowed to travel to South Africa for the World Cup for some reason, they would invent intercontinental ballistic corner-kicking technology) and North Korea gets into the semifinals based on tie scores. Then Portugal threatens to sue FIFA, and they go to court, and Portugal’s lawyer at a key moment clutches his knee and falls down to the courtroom floor and starts rolling around in agony. The North Koreans say “this is blatant anti-whale discrimination and those whales are North Korean citizens,” but when the judge asks the whales to sing the North Korean national anthem, the whales just go “eewwwwoOAAAAAAAuuuuuuuuh.” And then North Korea quickly says “well, that’s our anthem,” and to prove it they have a thousand North Koreans assemble and sing just like the whales, in unison, because the North Koreas believe in being prepared for all eventualities and are willing to use whips to get what they want. And they go all the way to the final, where they lose to Brazil.

Or maybe the North Koreans decide that the key is misdirection! So they disguise themselves as South Korea, and go play South Korea’s matches! Their opponents, not expecting the radical North Korean strategies and being prepared for South Korea’s disciplined orderly style of soccer (I don’t actually know what South Korea’s style of soccer play is, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it is disciplined and orderly, because the South Koreans are the Germans of Asia and everybody knows it) lose terribly. Meanwhile a team of elite North Korean secret agents work to confuse the South Korean team into playing North Korea’s opponents for them, and South Korea loses to Brazil for them. At the semifinal ceremony (there is a ceremony, right?), the North Korean team takes off their South Korean jerseys and say “a HA, we were the North Koreans all along! Now we will advance to the semifinals!” And then they lose to Brazil.

Or maybe the North Koreans get their asses kicked in their own division, and then in the first semifinal round the Ivory Coast team is playing Spain, but then the speakers start blaring Ted DiBiase’s old WWF theme song “Money, Money, Money.” And the North Koreans come out with briefcases and the briefcases are filled with Euros and they say, “look, Ivory Coast, we understand that your average per-capita income in your country is like sixteen hundred dollars, because we read it on Wikipedia. Would you rather lose right now, to Spain, or would you like to let us play Spain instead and you can take home all this wonderful money?” And then the Ivory Coast team looks all ashamed and the crowd cheers them because they don’t want the Ivory Coast players to sell out but ultimately the Ivory Coast players have to take the money because their country is poor. And then North Korea whispers in their ear that now they are their slaves because they took the money and that means it is a binding contract, so the Ivory Coast team goes to the trucks the North Koreans brought and releases the bulls, which stampede onto the field because they are the mortal enemies of all Spaniards. North Korea wins by default, and progresses to the next round, where they lose to Brazil.

So many ways this could go!

I’m a big fan of K’naan, so to hear that Wavin’ Flag is the official anthem of the 2010 World Cup makes me happy.

I think the existence of Donald Sterling makes the case that the European football club system of league construction (the freewheeling, free-enterprising “to play in the top leagues you have to make an effort”) is superior on multiple points of argument to the American system of league construction (tightly controlled and defined membership).

Sterling’s profit model – which essentially consists of doing the bare minimum necessary to compete in the league – simply wouldn’t fly in European leagues because the Clippers, in a Euro-style system, would eventually sink to whatever second tier existed, at which point the Sterling model fails because the expense of running a team as large as the Clippers wouldn’t be satisfied by the revenues generated by a second-tier team. Admittedly, Sterling could then rejigger his system to do even less and allow the Clippers to do the bare minimum to compete at second-tier – but then they’d eventually slip to third-tier, and at that point your worth-hundreds-of-millions-team is not actually worth hundreds of millions any more, and you’ve run a profitable enterprise into the ground.

Discuss.

Due to a couple of scheduling/software conflicts, two spots have opened up in the official MGK fantasy baseball league, so there is now room for new people to get their asses handed to them by my almighty draft powers participate in a fun time that will be healthy competition for all concerned.

I know the season has already (only just) started, but whatever, I figure I might as well set up a fantasy baseball league because I likes me some fantasy baseball, and who better to trounce than my loyal readership?

So if you are a baseball fan like me, go here.

ID: 311479
League Name: MGKBL
Password: rexsezwhut

Twelve-team maximum, unfortunately; if there’s more interest than that I’ll set up a second league for folks to play in as well. (Draft is next week because I don’t want to do it until after my Tax exam.)

EDIT TO ADD: Draft for first league is 9:30 EST next Wednesday, as someone pointed out in comments that this would be wise to mention.

EDIT TO ADD AGAIN: And the first league is now officially full. If enough people comment asking for a second league I’ll set one up.