What Makes a Great Worker?

Worker. That is the word that is used to describe someone in pro wrestling who can work and audience through speaking and/or wrestling. Sometimes, but rarely, you get a performer who can work an audience into wanting  to watch a weekly television program, buy a pay per view, or buy tickets to an event("puttin asses in seats" is the colloquial term) by using both methods. The list of performers that can, or could, fo that is extremely short, but if you ask any fan of wrestling the list would include the names of guys like Ric Flair, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Chris Jericho, Shawn Michaels, Dusty Rhodes, Curt Hennig, CM Punk, and very few others. Now, the reason for that short explanation is because of an interview Kevin Nash gave to Grantland . In the interview Nash said the wrestling boom of the Attitude era died when Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit won and celebrated their title wins with each other at the end of Wrestlemania XX due to the size, or lack thereof, of both performers physically and personality wise.

Underrated: Ricky Morton

Most people know Ricky Morton as one-half of "The Rock 'N' Roll Express, one of the most popular tag-teams in the history of wrestling. The combination of Robert Gibson's power and Ricky Morton's athleticism was very entertaining. They had epic rivalries between "The Midnight Express", "The Legion Of Doom", and every other headline tag-team to go through NWA & early-WCW during the 80's. This "Underrated" column isn't about his tag-team career, but it is about his career as a singles wrestler.

During Morton's career, he won a total of 79 championships, 25 of them as a singles wrestler. He spent most of his early career as a singles wrestler and how he spent moments during his peak in the NWA & WCW. He was forced into many of those matches, due to Robert Gibson's injuries. One of the first matches that I can remember watching live on TV, was steel cage match during the 1986 "Great American Bash" between Ricky Morton & Ric Flair. The action was incredible and they worked the crowd throughout the match. I found the complete match on YouTube, which split the match into two parts.

Just Listen: Killer Mike's Ric Flair(Updated)

I may be a little late to this track but finally the rap industry recognizes wrestling's greatest mack in Ric Flair. A nice jam from Killer Mike, there is soundbites from the greatest wrestler to strut down the aisle. While this is a great track, it has a long way to go for it to be Macho Man's "Be A Man Hogan". Enjoy

Q&A with NWA Hollywood's Christian Cole

Going from the East Coast to the West, I had the opportunity to interview NWA Hollywood's very own Christian(Xtian) Cole and decided to find out a little about how life as a manager is in the world of wrestling. I have always been a huge fan of a good manager, whether they want us to hate or love them a good manager needs to do one thing and that is to get us care about the guy they're managing. Managers are like seasoning on a steak. Sure, an unseasoned steak will fill you up, but with the right seasoning you're gonna remember that steak. Mmmmmm steak..Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the interview, I know I did.

PTC: Give us a little back story on who you are, where you have been, who trained you, and how long you have been doing this.
CC: Christian Cole, trained by David Heath (Gangrel) and JR Fatu. Started training in Jan of 2009.

Note To Wrestlers: Quit Telling Me What You're Bad At

Imagine you're trying to sell something to someone. Now, you're not going to tell the potential customer "Well, this product isn't the best. It doesn't do this and it  doesn't do that, but it does this really well." because if you draw attention to perceived negatives the potential customer isn't going to fork over their hard earned money to buy your product. No, you're going to focus on what the product does really well, and even kinda stretch the truth about just how good it is at what it does to get the potential customer to put money in your pocket.  Common sense stuff, right?
Apparently, the next generation of wrestlers skipped wrestling school the day they were teaching that. I say that because, and he isn't the first nor will he be the last, Daniel Bryan cut a promo that made me think "Why the hell did they put a title on this guy?" instead of "Damn, I want to see more of this guy!" Now, I know that Bryan is on a short list of guys who can have a great match with a mop so, of course, when a match between him and Dolph Ziggler(AKA The Guy Who Makes Everyone Look Fantastic) is announced I'm going to watch because I know I am going to get a great match.