The 3 Coolest Things About WWE's Crush

The WWE Network is built for nostalgia, and I every few episodes of Raw, I will come across that a guy that I liked way too much or didn't appreciate enough. Crush falls into the former category, as I thought Crush was really cool. When watching now, I am wondering what I thought was so cool, so I decided to break down the three coolest things about Crush in the eyes of a child.

1. Demolition
I thought Demolition was awesome, because I was a WWF kid, so although I was aware that the Road Warriors were awesome, I thought Demolition was just as cool. When looking back, Hawk and Animal actually were awesome, where Axe and Smash were kind of flabby S+M-looking perverts. Anyway, Crush joined the team towards the end, so he had a lot of built in credibility from being associated with Demolition.

2. "Brudder"
A few years later he came back as a Hawaiian who said "Brudder" a lot. I thought that this was both exotic and totally badass.

3. Kona Crush
The coolest thing as a kid is also the lamest thing as an adult. His finisher was the Kona Crush where he basically just squeezed a dude's head until they gave up. The reason this is so awesome for a kid is that kids are small and weak, so being strong enough to just squeeze a man into submission is an amazing fantasy to live vicariously through a wrestler.

After a year of being a cool Hawaiian dude who beat up Doink the Clown for being mean to kids, he "hurt" his back trying to bodyslam Yokozuna and became a Japanese sympathizer, because Macho Man didn't call to check up on him while he was recovering. He then bounced around various tag teams and various organizations over the next few years until retiring due to real back issues.

Like too many wrestling stories, he passed away in 2007 at age 43. Maybe Crush wasn't built for the modern-day cynical adult, but he was still cool by me, brudder.

Every Animal Will Kill You

I just finished an excellent book called Deadly Kingdom by Gordon Grice. It's excellent in that it's a really good read that is both entertaining and educational. It's also the scariest book that I will ever read in my life, because I now know that every single animal that has ever existed is trying to kill me in its own unique way. I mean, I knew a lion or a polar bear would probably be favored in a fight with me, but there is no animal out there that couldn't kill me. Check out some of these random facts.

Hyenas have the strongest pound-for-pound jaws of any animal, you know what that means? It will crush your skull when it tries to and successfully kills you.

Think you're safe in the water? Ha, you stupid fool. The orca is the most dangerous animal in the world. I'm not sure if the Titanic ran into an iceberg; I'm pretty sure that an orca ran into it, and crushed the thing. Those people didn't die in the water, they died in an orca's stomach.

An ostrich kick can tear you from your pelvis to your sternum.

Even the animals that I could easily kill in combat will still find a way to kill me.

Sure a frog can't kill me, unless I eat it.

Maybe I could eat a random exotic Japanese fish, but that fish is poisonous and it will probably kill me.

In fact, pretty much any animal that I thought was not dangerous has some sort of venom in it that will kill me.

There are things in the water that will swim in your urethra and you'll have to have surgery to get it out.

At least small bugs like grasshoppers aren't dangerous, right? Wrong again. They will eat every crop around by having swarms in the billions and the fact that they can eat their body weight in a single day.

You can't crush a flea with your fingers.

At least with big animals, people will respect you for going out like a man. It's the small ones that scare the shit out of me. Go swimming in a river, and a worm will crawl into your eye. When it gets done making you blind, it will probably crawl back to your brain and kill you. Flies seem pretty harmless, except they can attack you in such a swarm to suffocate you. Well, at least ants aren't scary as you can just step on them. Oh yeah, one time a lady had surgery and while she was recovering from the anesthesia, ants ate out her eyeball and killed her.

So yeah, I highly recommend reading the book, because it's awesome, but I am now terrified of every living creature out there. So that's healthy.

-Joe

P.S. Here's a guy on fire, because people on fire are far more interesting than people not on fire.

The Road Warriors Book Review

I recently finished the book, The Road Warriors by Joe Laurinaitis.Yes, father of James, and the professional wrestler known as Animal has a book about his time in possibly the greatest tag team of all time. Overall, it was an interesting read with a lot of good stories (which are always in abundance in the world of professional wrestling). The biggest downside of the book was that the descriptions of the wrestling matches came across as if what was happening was real. I found that distracting while reading through it, but it's still well worth a read if you have any interest in pro wrestling.

Here are a few of my favorite stories from the book:

First off, a lot of pro wrestling fans probably know this, but The Road Warriors helped create Zubaz.

So that's pretty awesome.

There was a bar in Minnesota called Gramma B’s that had the following bouncers, Nikita Koloff, Scott Norton, Hawk, Animal, The Bezerker, and Rick Rude. With those bouncers, they could have taken care of the Double Deuce way easier than Dalton did (that's a Road House reference for all those nerds reading this).

Haku got in a bar fight with a wrestler named Jesse Barr and popped his eye out of its socket. Note to self: Don't get in bar fights with Haku.

Animal was making good money but had zero game with the ladies. He fancied a lady at the gym, and when he found out it was her 21st birthday, he said to have some champagne on him as he handed her a couple hundred bucks. He didn’t even go out with her that night because he had to travel for wrestling. He casually tells this story like it’s not a big deal, but this is one of the saddest things I have ever heard in my life. At least it has a happy ending as he married this woman and produced a badass middle linebacker for the St. Louis Rams.

Hawk married a woman named Dale. That sentence epitomizes the world of professional wrestling.
On top of that, Macho Man pulled a Clubber Lang, and asked Dale if she’d like him to take her under the table and show her what a real man’s like.
Hawk retaliated by slapping him backstage at a show in Japan right before Savage was about to head to the ring.
Oh yeah, years later, they fought at, you guessed it, a Kid Rock concert. Professional wrestling has to be the most interesting profession in the world.

And finally, a story that is definitely not for the feint of heart. Mike Rotunda (best known as IRS) decided to go to the pool for some late night skinny dipping. He hopped the fence with no problems on the way in. On the way out, he did catch a problem, as the fence caught his guy and ripped the top skin off his member. He was so drunk that he didn't realize it until he woke up the next morning and had to go to the hospital.

Yeah, pro wrestling is awesome.

-Joe

P.S. Here is a good interview with Iowa Head Basketball Coach, Fran McCaffery.