Welcome back to new Cageside Seats Mailbag! If you missed our first edition last week, you can find that here!
If you caught it, you know that this whole thing is a work in progress. But we’re committed to answering several questions from the community each and every Sunday while we figure it out. The worst thing that can happen is that we all get to know a little better. In my experience, folks you meet online are rarely dull. And while the “internet wrestling community” gets a bad rap — often deservedly
so — I’ve met a lot of good folks right here at cSs.
We’re tracking everyone’s questions, and it remains my goal to get them all answered… somewhere, eventually. Even the ones that came in this week!
Now, without further adieu…
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Photo by Pedro PARDO / AFP via Getty Images
" data-portal-copyright="Photo by Pedro PARDO / AFP via Getty Images
" />sherry king has a question for/some suspicions about the wrestle web’s best live blogger:
“Is Claire a human or an AI model?”
Claire: I am just a normal human woman. A normal human transsexual woman with the kind of autism where you hyperfixate on learning the names of the wrestling moves and turn that into a job somehow. Yep, a normal woman who dresses like it’s 1959 most days and loves cats (as one might infer from my usual bio tagline of “petticoats, pussycats, and pro wrestling”) and plays bass guitar in a band with her wife and a drum machine.
Definitely not a cybernetic organism from the planet Nobotron here living among you in the guise of a normal human performance woman.
Glad we settled that. SirTrey didn’t fall for pro wrestling as a kid, but most of the staff first connected with this wild, wacky pastime as yutes…
When did you all get into wrestling? I feel like I’m an outlier only starting to follow it recently in my 30s, seems like most people started as kids.
Geno: I distinctly remember a brown box from a local video store with a VHS tape inside it. That tape was Survivor Series 1990, and it’s the first pro wrestling show I ever watched. I remember Vince McMahon doing the intros for all the teams, and being enthralled by the larger than life characters. I didn’t know it at the time but that was a historic show if only because it was the debut of The Undertaker and featured the infamous Gobbledy Gooker segment. What a show.
Josh: My first exposure to wrestling was at a friend’s house in the late 90’s. (I was 9 or 10 years old). His grandfather was a retired professional wrestler, so it was big for his family. We played one of the old wrestling video games on Super Nintendo quite a bit and I stayed at his house one night to watch WCW Nitro with him and his family. The shows were just so magical when I was that age, and I was hooked. As I got older and understood the wrestling business better, I went from a wide-eyed fan to having a love and appreciation for it. Now I’m 39, I still love it and I get paid to write about it. Crazy!
Kyle: I first watched any wrestling when I was like 15 at my cousin’s house because he had one of those black boxes that you can get any PPV for free (remember those)? But I didn’t really stick with it at the time. I then started watching with friends who were into it within the same year – so around 16 years old. I remember watching the Highway to Hell SummerSlam at a friend’s parents’ house but I was already hooked by then. That core of that group still traveled to WrestleMania yearly for a long while (double Vegas followed by Saudi broke the streak – we didn’t count COVID years as breaking the streak).
Manolo: I have a vague recollection of watching WrestleMania or WrestleMania II on closed-circuit in a theater. I don’t know for sure if that actually happened or if it is a fake memory.
Starvenger had a set of sports entertainment questions of the non-rasslin variety:
What is your go-to non-wrestling show?
And what other sports do you follow?
Geno: The new streaming world well and truly killed television for me, to the point that I didn’t even have one in my house until the get togethers for Sunday afternoon started, which leads into your next question. I loosely follow all the major sports, but baseball gets more attention and football (of the American variety) gets the most. My beloved Chicago Bears gave me so much hope to start the year, and then our quarterback was turned into a meme. I share in the same pain as Seth Rollins every week, loving and hating it depending upon the outcome of the Bears game.
Marcus: I watch a lot of tv so it’s hard narrowing this down. But if I’m forced to pick, I’d say High Potential on abc. I love a procedural. Especially when they’re spins on Sherlock Holmes. This is about a high functioning, incredibly gifted woman who becomes a consultant for the LAPD. It helps that Kaitlin Olson plays said woman. Fun cast, nice overarching mystery, and I love watching smart people be smart.
I follow baseball and football. I’m a Yankees fan and a [New York football] Giants fan. The less said about the latter the better considering the disaster that was week 2. Football sucks and it’s misery for everyone.
Qazox’s asked this twice, but only one staffer was bold enough to take the challenge…
You get to book a wrestling event that has to feature wrestlers from every decade since WWII (basically the last 80+ years); in a G1 climax style tournament. You only get 1 wrestler per decade to represent that decade regardless of how long their career lasted (ie 80s Hogan can’t be used for the 90s, you get the point) and 1 wild card entry to make 10 wrestlers involved. Who are you picking and who would most likely win that tournament???
Sean: Like my ten wrestlers/ten meals answer from last week, this could be different if I answered it at a different time (except for Bruno… my great-grandmother would curse me from beyond if I neglected to pick her idol for either the 60s or 70s). I’m sure some might quibble with my decades, but I’m pretty sure everyone was at least popular in the ones I picked. Here goes…
Lou Thesz (1940s), Rikidōzan (50s), Bruno Sammartino (60s), Harley Race (70s), Ric Flair (80s), Stone Cold Steve Austin (90s), Kurt Angle (00s), Bryan Danielson (2010s), Kenny Omega (2020s)… and I’ll cheat a bit and say my wild card goes to the winner of a match between John Cena and Kazuchika Okada circa around 2016-2017, because, God, I would have loved to have seen that.
And while Grandma Angelucci would grumble, I think she’d allow me picking another Steel Country neighbor. Kurt Freaking Angle wins Sean’s Time-Spanning Tournament of… we’re still workshopping a name.
Others took on more straight-forward questions about their wrestling preferences. Our General and one of our newest soldiers agreed when GM05 asked:
Which discontinued wrestling promotion do you want to see come back?
Jon: Lucha Underground. While it may have been too cinematic for some people, I found its unique style pretty compelling. Also, whoever was hiring talent there had an amazing eye for prospects when you consider Penta, Chelsea Green, Iyo Sky, Swerve Strickland, and Ricochet were among the stars who were featured in LU.
Geno: I’ll echo Jon’s sentiments and say Lucha Underground as well. The entire presentation of it felt like a big time production, even though it was held in such a tight venue. The cinematic stuff somehow never felt out of place either, like it augmented the in-ring action instead of becoming its own thing. It easily could have been the cheesiest mess of a show and it just wasn’t. I miss it.
Decker was tempted to go full Festivus when Myusuf2 asked about biggest pet peeves, but focused on the crowd:
Kyle: There are a ton, but here’s one off the top of my head.
There are certain fan chants that annoy me. “We want tables” is probably on the top of my list. Two people are having any stipulation match and minutes in, the fans are chanting for tables almost like some Pavlovian response. I’ve seen brutal AEW matches where fans chant for that – something way more tame that they’ve already seen. And every time it starts, the talent has to pretend they’re going to get a table and either get interrupted (babyface) or put it back (heel). Table spots are often whatever anyway. And don’t get me started on the Slim Jim logo on the WWE tables.
I also get annoyed with a blanket “You sold out” chant just because someone turned heel. This happened with Maxxxine when she joined the Vision. She didn’t sell out – that implies she betrayed her morals for money or power. Instead, she did so to be with some loser.
Our other 2026 addition to the team offered a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down when Choyzinthehood asked about best and worst finishers.
Josh: There are sooo many wrestlers and finishers to choose from if we go all-time, so I’ll stick to current moves. My favorite current finishing move is Baron Corbin’s End of Days. It’s so unique and Corbin hits it smoothly. I wish they would’ve kept protecting it and hadn’t let Drew kick out of it. I’ll give honorable mention to the Sol Snatcher, the Mexican Destroyer, Oblivion, and the Cemetery Drive.
For one to keep an eye on, Myka Lockwood on NXT does a move that I can’t even wrap my head around. It’s like a combination of a powerbomb and a running powerslam and it looks sick!
As for worst moves, the Trick Knee doesn’t do it for me. I’m a huge Trick fan but he’s going to need something else if he makes it to the next level. I also am not a big fan of Bayley’s Rose Plant. It just doesn’t feel impactful enough to be a finishing move.
I’ll also throw some tag team moves out there. The Street Profits do an electric chair blockbuster that I really like. On the flip side, the Brutus Ball drives me nuts. I’m so glad the Creeds seem to be getting away from it.
We wouldn’t want to go without getting a little weird (shout out to my guy Johnny Dango Curtis)…
Thatdamnpetersboy asked:
Who would be who in Mortal Kombat among the staff, and why do I see Rueter as Raiden?
Cain answered: I’ll stick with characters from Mortal Kombat II because it’s the game I’m most familiar with in the series.
- Jon is Liu Kang since he’s the most professional and respectable one among us.
- Josh is Jax because he doesn’t put up with much bullshit and is handy with technology.
- Claire is Kitana because she has better fashion sense than Mileena or Jade (or Sonya Blade).
- Marcus is Sub Zero because he’s the coolest guy on staff.
- Sean is Scorpion because he has to reign me in with his proverbial spear every time I write a dumb or bad headline.
- Geno is Raiden because his blogging speed is electrifying and his wisdom is unmatched.
- Manolo is Reptile because he’s somewhat off the radar and we never know when he might disappear without a trace.
- I’m Shang Tsung because I rarely ever show anyone my true form.
- Which Mortal Kombat character is the biggest piece of shit? Shao Khan? Then I guess that’s who Kyle Decker is. But also because he likes to sit in the background and watch the rest of us do all the work.
- And the Cageside community has a lot of Johnny Cages who love punching people in the dick.
And that’s our second Mailbag! Hopefully it was worth a read, and I hope you’ll help us continue to make it a better and better one each week. If your question wasn’t answered above, stay tuned and keep checking those notis!
Now give us your thoughts on these answers below, along with tips for next Sunday and beyond. And look for a new Questions prompt this week!
