Thursday, August 3, 2017

The Subway Royal Rumble!

BAH GAWD, THAT'S GOTTA BE KANE GETTIN' ON AT 666TH STREET STATION
Photo Credit: WWE.com
For as long as pro wrestling has existed, people, despite the better warnings from said promotions, have pretended to be wrestlers in less than professional settings. Whether it be kids screwing around on a mattress all the way up to those janky backyard wrestling promotions that were so huge in the late '90s/early '00s or anything in between, the art of wrestling has held allure for many fans to emulate. In the age of YouTube, people have taken to putting their emulations on video. User timhannrivera has chosen a venue equally parts disruptive, creative, and absurd for his canvas: the New York City subway. He's been doing subway wrestling videos for a little while, featuring his friends dressing up as classic wrestlers and working matches on the train. The most recent entry? A mock Royal Rumble:



Everything about this is awesome, from the looks on the passengers' faces (which were mostly in awe and at least passive approval) to the announcing all the way down to "Booker T" yelling at "Hulk Hogan" that he was coming for him, n-word. The fact that a person of color portrayed Hogan was even more delicious, but I won't get more into that right now. Anyway, this venture was one of the most creative things I've seen people do in service of wrestling, even if all the characters were bad parodies of old WWE/WCW wrestlers. Then again, that kind of thing can be really fun and creative in its own right. I mean, "Weird" Al Yankovic has made a career parodying popular songs, and no one denies he's creative. I'm overthinking this.

Anyway, the only quibble I had was the winner. Kane? Really? But then again, maybe these guys are all about righting the wrongs of the Attitude Era. I mean, Kane should have been a much bigger deal than he was, same with The Big Show. Maybe these guys are onto something...