Globally Loved Sports Britain Does Not Care About

Sumo
The National Sport Of: Japan

My immediate thought is of Asians in fat suits running at each other and then falling over, because my mind has been utterly tainted by hours of watching Takeshi’s Castle repeats on TV. And whilst the utterly cruel Jap version of ‘It’s A Knockout’ may have a rubbish closing round and is dubbed by the unfunny Craig Charles, it manages to knock ten spots off the sport is sometimes likes to emulate. Where the appeal lies in sumo is a mystery matched only by that of people who sunbathe (what’s up with that? Where’s the fun?) or the strange disappearance of Snoopy from our TV screens. The sport doesn’t appear to have much technical merit and there’s seemingly little skill involved, and yet it has managed to become seen as a dignified and sophisticated sport. In short, it appears to have reached a level of admiration which the technicalities of the event don’t match up to. Of course, maybe when I do some more of that fabled Wilftonville “research” the sport will change my mind, but as it stands at the moment sumo wrestling seems even less worthy than clock solitaire.


What Is It?

Focusing on professional sumo, the sport is an insanely controlled and regimented way of life for many Japanese men. There’s a lot of money available, but at the same time the average life expectancy of the average sumo wrestler appears to be in the low 60s. In other words, it is the male equivalent of forced prostitution, given what I know of American romantic comedies. Sumo is contested between two different fighters, who wear nothing apart from a gigantic napkin round their waists to hide their jewels when they enter the arena. Said arena has a small stage in the centre where the bouts take place, and the idea is that the two wrestlers enter this circular stage and fight. They are only allowed to push each other, though (no kicking to the face, although that would be infinitely more amusing), and whichever of them pushes their opponent out of the circle or to the floor first is declared the winner. It’s that simple.

And most of Japanese society is based upon the spiritual purity afforded by sumo wrestling. For comparison, imagine if Britain or America respectively centred their cultural and social lifestyle on boxing and WWE wrestling. Oh, and also the Japanese religion, Shinto, is somehow connected to it as well. Although the sound of an overweight Jesus with boxing gloves, crown of thorns and lycra shorts does sound like a surefire crowd-pleaser, something tells me the western world would never accept it. Just to clarify: sumo wrestling is sort of religious. And you thought those little Jewish hats were silly!

But if we could get away from ridiculing religions (stop pushing me into slander, readers!) I’d like to have a little deeper look into sumo. Because heck – this blog is unlikely to ever cover this ‘sport’ again, so we may as well say everything we want to now, while we still have the opportunity. Sumo wrestling is possibly one of the strangest sports ever, in that the main activity itself is straightforward, but the lifestyle appears to be batshit crazy. For a start, all sumo wrestlers are a part of a stable, who look after them. When they are young they train up in the stable with their fellow wannabe sumo wrestlers, and it appears they are used as mini-slaves by the stable-owners. The Sumo Association also have a strict set of rules for their players which must be obeyed – Wikipedia (as ever, the main source for Wilftonville’s research. And, uh, the only) says that among other things, sumo wrestlers aren’t allowed to drive cars because once a sumo wrestler crashed his car and… well, died. So now no sumo wrestlers can drive. Don’t forget that this is one of the only sports in the world apart from darts which encourages participants to be fat and unhealthy, too! The main drink for a training sumo wrestler is alcohol. Why? Well… because.


Why Doesn’t Britain Care?

The first reason Britain doesn’t give two shakes of a pimp cane about probably has something to do with the aforementioned batshit craziness of the lifestyle, although a greater reason is probably the health-conscious nature of society. Fat children are shunned and the papers cry openly about the loss of exercise and fitness in the future generations. Sumo simply wouldn’t be accepted as a valid excuse for kids to eat as much as they want. The second reason is that Britain is a completely open society – too open, at times – and if sumo wrestling became massively popular it wouldn’t be too long until the women would start demanding to take part, too. Who on earth would want to see that? The idea of two fat British women wrestling each other while wearing tank-tops is physically and morally wrong, although knowing the general readership of this blog you probably all just got aroused. For shame, internet hordes.

One last point. It’d be really, really mean to force the geeky kids to take part in sumo wrestling in PE! Sumo wrestling gives a sense of worth to fat kids and those who are tall or well-built. In other words: the sporty kids. They already hold a monopoly on all the real sports – imagine their glee if they were put in a ring with a small asthmatic kid and told to throw them out. Personally, nothing fills me with hatred more than the glee of a successful person. Sumo wrestling should never become a part of British society.

The Ten Best WWF Wrestlers Of My Time

1
The Rock

I’ve been told by everyone that no matter who I make my favourite wrestler of all time; I have to base it on wrestling ability. Why the hell should I do that? Sure, your favourite wrestler could be someone who can expertly apply a submission hold at the drop of a hat, but submissions do not a fun match make. What you want is someone who you are excited by, a wrestler who is fantastically good fun and entertaining, who can also mix up his charisma with a decent fighting style. And that, god almighty, happens to be Dwayne Johnson, formally known as The Rock. Sure, he might not have the best fighting style, and you can crow til’ the cows come home (is that mixing a farmhouse of metaphors, there?) about if in real life he’d have any ability to take on big guys like Kane, The Undertaker, or whoever, but the pure fact is that The Rock is the biggest name wrestler to have ever competed in the WWF. Well, maybe Hulk Hogan can match him there, but still.

Besides, The Rock is one of the purest athletes that the WWF has ever seen. He started out as an American Football player (which we Brits traditionally, and fairly, judge to be a wuss sport), but after an injury he moved over to the World of Wrestling and eventually got in with the WWF after many years of training and hard work. Yes, I have his autobiography. Once with the WWF he started some of the most infamous rivalries and partnerships in recent history, against ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin and Mankind respectively, and then with HHH. With these wrestlers he tried out things that had never been seen before in wrestling – he kicked out of Austin’s patented ‘Stone Cold Stunner’ finishing move, something which hadn’t been done before, and he cut promos that nobody could match.

The Rock, you see, was a character unto himself. Detached from reality, The Rock is a supreme asshole, who is cocky, unendingly confident in his own ability to excite a crowd, and always speaks in the third person. He pioneered catchphrases. Well, not pioneered, but he certainly made the technique his own. Here’s just a sampling of the catchphrases he created whilst with the WWF:

“If you smell what The Rock is cooking”

“Finally, The Rock, has come back, to [wherever place happens to have returned to]”

“I want you to take your [whatever item it is], turn it sideways….” (at this point, the commentators would shriek “oh no!”, because they knew what was coming) “and stick it STRAIGHT UP YOUR CANDY ASS!”

Well, you get the idea. Anyway, The Rock has a tremendous charisma that surges straight off the screen whenever you see him, and went straight into the crowd. I’ve been to see wrestling live, for I am a sad weirdo, and right now I can say that nobody got a bigger cheer than The Rock. He was, and is, the biggest superstar within the company. And he acknowledged this by inventing a move which is arguably the silliest in the history of wrestling (although Scotty Too Hottie could disagree with this), in the form of The People’s Elbow. This is a simple elbow drop, a bread-and-butter wrestling move, turned into a massive display of pointless showboating just because the crowd loved it. On top of this, he had some proper moves going on. The Rock Bottom is one of the more distinctive finishing moves to have ever been defined, and he was also able to snap out a spinebuster that looked easy as anything, as well as samoan drops, hip tosses, even clotheslines, all delivered with a snap and crackle that no other wrestler can deliver. He was just so fast.

In many respects, he is one of the best athletes that the WWF ever hired. His roots aren’t in wrestling, sure, but in terms of energy and spark his ability was undeniable. Even after matches that lasted over an hour, you could see that The Rock still had energy to spare, and that meant you could never put him down. There was no foregone conclusion with The Rock, because he had so much stamina. At the same time, he wasn’t averse to losing matches, like some other wrestlers have been in the past, and he suffered some stunning defeats in the past – when he returned recently alongside Mick Foley, as a tag-team fighting some unpopular characters, the pair of ‘em actually lost the match. That’s unbelievable! But it happened, and it just goes to show the level of respect that people like The Rock and Mick Foley have for the next generation of wrestlers.

When The Rock ostensibly retired from wrestling, it was a massive blow for the sport, but a great gain for cinema. He’s got a humour about him that not many other wrestlers were willing to show off, because he’s essentially making fun of both himself and of his competitors, and his own fans. But despite all that, he’s my favourite wrestler, because he made wrestling into entertainment. There’s a lot of dull feeling going round wrestling at the moment, with nothing truly exciting going on anymore – at least part of that, I guarantee you, is because The Rock has retired. He was, as he always said, ‘the most electrifying man in sports entertainment’.

Also? He paid me to write this.

The Ten Best WWF Wrestlers Of My Time

2
The Undertaker

As any wrestling fan of merit (thus I lay down the gauntlet to you, oh commenters) will attest to: nobody is better than The Undertaker. He’s one of the most respected guys in the industry, both amongst fans and the other wrestlers themselves. He’s made his fair share of mistakes – the months and months he spent as “the American badass” springs to mind, where his character became a dull biker with sunglasses and a bandana to boot – but for the most part it’s hard to say that the guy has put a foot wrong. He’s been wrestling with the WWF since 1990, and as such has been on the books for longer than almost every other wrestler currently going. And during this time, he’s made a name for himself as possibly one of the most charismatic and astonishing athletes that’ve ever entered the ring.

The Undertaker has a great variety of mvoes which he’s made his own, from his one-handed chokeslam, to the tombstone piledriver, to a move where he walks on the ropes of the ring and bounces off them to deliver a smashing chop to his opponent’s shoulder. He can lift his giant foot to head height in order to hit another competitor, and uses a flying lariat (where he flips round in the air) with sometimes regularity. He also uses a variety of submissions, giving him the ability to win a match through all three of the usual routes – pin, submission, and TKO. He also has a pin where he rearranges the downed wrestler so they look like they’re sat in a coffin. Because you see, The Undertaker’s gimmick is that he is a supernatural sort of entity, a sinister ‘apparition’ who not only wins matches, but claims the soul of his opponent as he does so. It’s.. a little silly, in fairness, but it’s played with a spine-tingling nerve. Whenever he appears the crowd go mad – there is only one wrestler who has ever got a crowd more excited, and he wins this list – and it’s because of the way his gimmick is handled.

The Undertaker’s character plays things seriously. Despite the silliness of having a “buried alive” or “inferno” match, the fact that The Undertaker is the man involved elevates the whole thing and makes it seem, dare we say, more probable? The toll bell that announces his arrival, the smoke and darkness, it all seems really over-the-top until Undertaker himself appears. And now he’s regained this persona, after giving it up after ten years to become a rubbish motorbiker, he’s become an even more riveting persona than ever before. He’s been in some of the most memorable matches of all time – the casket match was brought about in part because of him, as well as the buried alive/inferno matches. But he can also take part in ladder matches, and the Hell In A Cell (perhaps the most infamous event in WWF history, aside from the TLC match) was made for him. It’s no surprise, considering all that The Undertaker has going for him, that he’s won Royal Rumbles and currently holds an unbeaten record at Wrestlemania of 16 matches won in a row. That’s sixteen years of wrestling. And he’s still going, and still in fantastic condition.

He also has his wife’s name tattooed across his neck, which is scary as anything.

The Ten Greatest WWF Wrestlers Of My Time

3
Mick Foley

I don’t remember Mankind, or Cactus Jack, or Dude Love even – way before my time. Well I say well, what I mean is that I caught onto wrestling the week after Cactus Jack lost his match with HHH and got ‘fired’ from the WWF. But Mick Foley was a character whom I immediately took a liking to, as he took on the post of commissioner within the WWF and thus was allowed to create whichever matches he wanted, whenever he wanted. And he wrecked havoc with his responsibilities. It was great fun. A beardy bloke with flopped hair and a penchant for checked jackets was taking over wrestling for no reason I could understand, and the crowd always went mental whenever they saw him. This merited further investigation.

It turned out that Mick Foley has had a long, distinguished career as a wrestler. He started out doing hardcore, anything-goes bouts (seriously: anything) with the ECW before transferring to WWF and bringing his unique kind of crazy to their shores. Mankind was his first character, a weird masked freak who lived in the basement who started out sinister but slowly became more a figure of fun than anything else. Then he vanished. Next came Dude Love, a hipster in bright blue lycra and sunglasses who saw himself as a love guru. Finally we got Cactus Jack, who carried a piece of wood wrapped round with barbed wire and fought… well, hardcore. Mick Foley was all of them. And each one of them had their own style, moves… it’s amazing what he did with these three characters. He also knew how to completely misdirect the crowds. With the HHH match above, the audience had been lead for some time to believe that this was going to be Foley’s time to win the WWF title. He’d been losing matches to HHH left, right, and centre, much of the time unfairly or because HHH cheated him, so it only seemed right that in this match, which stipulated that a loss would see him fired from the company, would result ina win for him.

It didn’t. And he became a viciously funny, charming guy who was barely rivalled on the mike. Still is, actually. He has a habit of waiting till an odd point during one of his speeches before giving the crowd a cheap thrill by saying he loved the town they were in and giving a thumbs up, and his finishing move involves suffocating someone with his sock. What’s not to like? He’s such an odd guy, but you can see how genuine he is – there’s barely much of a character there anymore. He’s playing himself. And the crowd love him for it. He’s made comebacks, which he’s invariably lost, but his style of fighting, the falls he’s taken, are amazing. This guy has fallen off steel cages, through the ring, been hit with barbed wire and just generally been beaten up in so many other ways that nobody can think of anything new to do anymore. He basically invented the hardcore genre for the WWF, and although he did do a lot of stunts, he also proved himself to be an extremely capable fighter. He throws punches honestly, gets injured realistically, and is a lot quicker than you’d expect for a guy like him. Even now, he’s in as good a shape as he’s ever been (even if he may have lost an ear and some teeth on the way).

He’s almost certainly the most likeable wrestler ever, I’d suggest. And nobody – nobody – has ever been thrown through the announcers’ table more times.

The Ten Greatest WWF Wrestlers Of My Time

4
Kane (with the mask)

I make the point because Kane has recently taken off his mask, which was as much a part of his character as anything, and has revealed himself to be a bald guy with a weird face who is no longer threatening in any way, shape or form.

It’s a shame, because the Kane I knew was amazing. A giant of a man, Kane wore a black and red mask over his face, which played an important part of his persona. The idea was that another wrestler – The Undertaker – had burnt his own house down as a child, killing his whole family. After a while though, Kane showed up, claiming to be The Undertaker’s brother and bearing a grudge. Kane’s face was completely scarred by the fire, but he had survived the fire and now wanted to destroy The Undertaker as revenge. Who says wrestling is over the top and unbelievable? So anyway, eventually the two reconciled and formed a tag team – perhaps the most powerful tag team you can ever have seen. Together, the two had a tremendous spark and charisma to them, which they carried around individually but really showed off as a team. Kane is around seven foot tall, and is the sort of man who prefers to walk slowly when he should we walking. He has repeatedly been shown as one of the toughest wrestlers around, taking chairs to the back that would knock out other wrestlers, and repeatedly getting up instantly after being given a “finishing move” by his opponent. Kane is, make no mistake, a tough son-of-a-woman.

Not that he’s a slow bruiser with no style, because he is (was) one of the most iconic wrestlers in the business. His moves included modifications of two moves the Undertaker made famous – the Chokeslam and the Tombstone Piledriver – but also many other moves. He’s willing to get up on the turnbuckle surprisingly often, and is even known to use a submission from time to time. His strength, though, was what set him apart. He was perpetually the dark horse in any sort of big match, like the Royal Rumble, because it takes so much to knock him down. Kane was imposing, a character who worked as a figure of mystery and as a figure of power. You could never count him out, and I loved that about him. He made matches more intriguing just by being there. He still does this now, but taking off the mask really hurt the mystery aspect, and although he has proven to be a great speaker on the mike, the WWF don’t seem to have a clue what to do with him anymore.

The Ten Best WWF Wrestlers Of My Time

5
Triple H

The list thankfully jumps up a whole notch for the second half of wrestlers, all of whom can be honestly called legendary figures. Triple H is perhaps one of the most consistent performers in the business, a man who has been up at the top of the business for years and years and years. I don’t know a time when he wasn’t one of the biggest names in the sport. Despite of this, people seem to gloss over the man formerly known as Hunter Hurst Helmsey (I cannot spell, this is presumably not the correct way to write his name, but you don’t read Wilftonville for the research, do you?) He doesn’t get the respect he deserves, I think, even though he has been in almost all the great matches of the past ten years. He fought one in two of the best matches ever: the two hell in a cell matches against Cactus Jack and Shaun Michaels showed a mix of crowd-pleasing stunts and brutal fighting, topped with astounding athleticism. The key to HHH’s career, however, I think is probably his stamina. He can hold out a match like nobody else.

A lot of matches go through the motions, where you get one guy winning, then another, then someone wins. HHH doesn’t usually go for this, instead mixing around his matches. When he fought The Undertaker in a fascinating match at Wrestlemania, the bout ended with perhaps ten minutes of HHH getting the crap knocked out of him. The drama lay not in seeing two wrestlers alternate their supremacy, but in waiting to see if HHH would cheat to win the match, or not (he did cheat, but lost anyway). See, with HHH the fun all lies in watching to see where he will go next. He can wrestle and brawl with anyone, and in his time has been allowed to take on all the top names in entertainment – he’s done cage matches, iron man matches, ladder matches, tag teams… he’s done just about everything. He’s fought every big wrestler, and a number of lesser wrestlers. Each time, you don’t know where the match will go.

His persona, you see, is that of a complete prick. He sucks up to authority in order to get the advantage in his matches, and because of this you never know just how he will win or lose a match. He’s lost to novices, he’s cheated to beat superior forces, and he’s spent entire matches dominating someone before pinning them (poor Jeff Hardy). It’s so unpredictable, and HHH plays his character extremely well. He’s got incredible charisma, which you can see when he walks into the arena. He seems to believe himself invincible, and you honesty can understand how he got to the position he’s in today. He’s a riveting performer, and perhaps one of the more complex and tricky wrestling personas in the game today. He also has a sledgehammer as a weapon. Cool!

The Ten Best WWF Wrestlers Of My Time

6
Kurt Angle

I never actually liked Kurt Angle. He annoyed me. His entire routine as a character was comprised around the age-old “American Hero” ideal, and I really have no time at all for American Heroes. I’m not American, I’m British, and what the WWF tended to do was set up foreign wrestlers as baddies to fight against American goodies. It grates a little, but from a business perspective I guess you can see why they do it. Americans are, if nothing else, insanely patriotic, and they like to see their guy win. Kurt Angle, when he first came in, seemed to be yet another example of this.

Then he turned evil, and I got interested. The fact that Kurt had in real life represented the United States in the Olympic Wrestling event and won them gold medals was turned to make him look like a conceited jackass, and Angle played the role, it has to be said, really really well. It’s easy to get wrestling fans to hate you, yet Angle got them to dislike him, which is slightly different, but far more impressive. They’ll boo other wrestlers for hitting their favourites, or being nasty to women (feminism!), but the crowd had no idea how to react to Kurt Angle, and it was great. It helps, I suppose, that he is tremendously talented himself. As a man brought up in professional, real, wrestling, Angle brings to the table a sensible, realistic approach to the sport, and I appreciate that. I don’t like seeing silly over-exaggerations, so Angle doesn’t give us them. His signature moves looked painful; and I liked that. He also had the best part of the whole “WWF-WCW-ECW” Invasion storyline, which was perhaps the best storyline I got to see during my time as a wrestling fan. So well done, Kurt Angle. You got me to change my mind.

Now go grow your hair back, please.

The Ten Best WWF Wrestlers Of My Time:

7
Chris Benoit

We’re going to pass by the entire ‘murderer’ aspect of Chris Benoit and focus entirely on his wrestling instead, because we have no idea what was going on there and frankly we don’t like to get too depressing here on Wilftonville. Chris Benoit was, simply put, one of the hardest-working wrestlers out there. There are a lot of wrestlers who do the job to put on a show – Chris Benoit never really cared much for that style. He wanted to make wrestling look realistic, and violent, and brutal. Which is really what wrestling should try to get back to. There’s an interest nowadays in providing controversial storylines that overshadow the wrestling itself, which is what lost our interest in the whole shebang. What we want are more people like Chris Benoit, who don’t oversell, who have integrity (in the ring he did) and grit. We want to see wrestling - and correct us if this is a strange way to view it – that looks painful.

Chris Benoit was also an astonishingly capable guy. He got injured quite often from the visceral way he fought, and his signature moves showed athleticism and tactical play that you don’t get much anymore. Not the best of characters on the mike, though, but he more than made up for any of this with his attitude in the ring. If you saw Chris Benoit make his way to the ring, you knew that something was going to happen. He helped make wrestling gripping again. He was completely committed to the art of wrestling, which made his rise inevitable. It’s just a shame this was followed by such a shocking fall.

The Ten Best WWF Wrestlers Of My Time:

8
Yoshihiro Tajiri

Any man whose name can be shortened to “Yoshi” (see also, ‘Yoshimitsu’ and, uh, ‘Yoshi’) is automatically allowed into my cool book, but Tajiri has more going for him than just a cool name. A Japanese wrestler, he should typically have appeared for the WWF once or twice as a villain before being dropped, as is the typical norm for any foreign wrestlers who might suggest that America isn’t the fountain of everything that the wrestling fans tend to believe. Yet Tajiri managed to stay with the company – not only that, but he became a ‘face’, too. That means he is a character the crowd supports, as opposed to the hated ‘heels’. Granted, he was fighting another foreigner – the awesome Stephen Regal, who is the snottiest character possible, and brilliant for it – but Tajiri’s upward career with the WWF was symbolic of one thing: he was a damn fine wrestler. His fights see him employ a number of different moves, which was nice for a change. He did a lot of high-flying moves, but he also did lots of kicking manouvres and submissions, which made him perhaps one of the most versatile Japanese wrestlers ever seen on American shores. Here he is:



He also had a great gimmick in the ring where he would suddenly spit a mist into the eyes of his opponent, dropping them to their knees before he finished them off with a kick to the side of the head. You never knew where it was coming, which made his matches fascinating. I really liked the lil’ fella.

The Ten Best WWF Wrestlers Of My Time:

9
The Hardy Boyz

Is it really cheating to have two wrestlers together in my list? Yes, yes it is. Hideous cheating. But I make no concessions, because Jeff and Matt Hardy on their own are only okay, whilst The Hardy Boyz are flipping fantastic. High-flyers, that’s the term for then, because they are both well-known for getting up onto the turnbuckles and performing elaborate, complex, and downright stupid manoeuvres. As with Shane, the Hardy Boyz are mentalists who are perfectly willing to completely destroy their bodies in exchange for the love of a crowd. My time had them teamed up with Lita, the only female wrestler who could actually wrestle in any way, shape, or form, and the trio together are responsible for some of the best matches the WWF ever had. The TLC match (tables, ladders, chairs, that is) came about partly because of them. While Edge & Christian contributed the chairs, and the Dudley Boyz the tables, it was the Hardy Boyz who really made the matches stand out. Just take a look at some of the falls they took (they’re the ones with red/black hair):



Unlike Shane, though, the Hardy Boyz were also fulltime wrestlers. They fought as a team, and individually, creating many famous moves and adding new spins on established ones. Jeff Hardy put in ‘The Swanton Bomb’, where he flips in the air and lands on the opponent with his head first, and Matt Hardy created ‘The Twist Of Fate’, which flips someone round before smashing their face to the mat. Both became much loved, and as a team they made a great trifecta with E&C/The Dudleyz. They’re still going now, and Jeff and Matt have individually won great matches against people like Triple H, Kane, Rob Van Dam – they’re two of the most popular wrestlers around, and by God, they’ve had to earn it.

The Ten Best WWF Wrestlers Of My Time

10 :
Shane McMahon

Most of the time he’s busy being the villain, but it’s hard to deny the sheer idiocy that makes up a lot of what Shane McMahon is all about. He’s not the best wrestler who ever went into the ring, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who is as willing as he is to do a stunt for his company. Oh, I should mention… he’s the son of the man who owns said company, by the way. Yep, as the heir to a multimillion pound fortune, he could be sunbathing his way through life, living it up without a care in the world. He certainly doesn’t need to wrestle!...

So why, then, does he insist on doing THIS?



Shane McMahon is insane. But at the same time, his athleticism is just as astounding. He can jump from one side of a wrestling ring to another, and does so regularly as one of his finishing moves. Have you ever seen a wrestling ring? They are HUGE! He can trade blows with the best of them, and has a habit of showing up many of his peers when in the ring with them. He can take a match against someone like The Undertaker (7ft tall) or Big Show (8 friggin’ ft!) and make it seem like a perfectly balanced fight. Sure, wrestling is all fake anyway, but it takes someone with massive amounts of skill to actually sell the equal stature of two wrestlers, when one is clearly stronger than the other. One final reson why we like him so much: he doesn’t over-sell his falls. Some wrestlers start shaking like some kind of spasticated electric eel made of jelly when they get hit, writhing around the floor in obviously fake agony. Shane McMahon... he makes it real.

Ish.