Longtime Washington DC area sportscaster George Michael died today at the age of 70. He was well known nationally for his weekly recap show ‘George Michael’s Sports Machine’ which was essentially Sportscenter for the non-cable viewer. He was also a big pro wrestling fan and thanks to YouTube here are some clips of [...]

Mike Tyson’s guest host gig for WWE Raw–scheduled at the same time as UFC’s Ultimate Fight Night–on January 11th is a done deal. There’s a big story announcing his appearance on the WWE website:
Very familiar with being the center of attention inside the squared circle, Mike Tyson is ready to return to the ring. [...]

Taking a page from the UFC’s playbook, the WWE is pulling out a big gun to counter the 1/11 Ultimate Fight Night event. In recent months, the WWE has featured a different celebrity guest host on ‘Monday Night Raw’ and on this evening they’ve signed former world heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson to do [...]

Anyone who has watched a lot of pro wrestling knows that any time two pro wrestlers sit down for an ‘arm wrestling’ exhibition it never ends well. Its a similar deal when pro wrestlers get involved in a bodybuilding posedown, weigh lifting challenge, etc. Here’s a couple of historical examples:

Anyway, last year we [...]

From the golden days of Portland Wrestling–’Rowdy’ Roddy Piper wears a Santa suit, busts a beer bottle over his head and cuts a promo:

I’ve watched this several times and I’m still not really sure what I just saw…

Here’s a circa mid 1980’s promo video from Puerto Rico featuring Abdullah the Butcher. The song on the video–ID’d by a sharp YouTube commenter (now *there’s* a phrase I never thought I’d utter) is “Hunger’ by a band called King Kobra.

Here’s a circa 1980’s Japanese Honda commercial featuring the original Tiger Mask aka Satoru Sayama. Sayama went on to be an influential figure in the development of MMA in Japan, among other things founding the Shooto promotion:

Tom Zenk aka ‘The Z Man’ would achieve some degree of success in the sport, but here he’s on the wrong end of a squash match with the legendary Road Warriors with ‘Precious’ Paul Ellering:

Strikeforce has signed former WWE superstar Bobby Lashley to a multiyear deal. The monstrous Lashley will make his debut for the organization on January 30. Here’s the press release and we’ve got some analysis:
NEW YORK (December 10, 2009)–Former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) heavyweight champion and undefeated mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Bobby Lashley [...]