The Day I Discovered That Wrestling Might Not Be Real

Not sure exactly how it happened, but today I ended up watching a bunch of videos of wrestlers telling stories about the Iron Sheik. Videos like this one, for example.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, I remembered something.

When I was in grade two, part of our routine was listening to a newscast once every day. I think it was usually the CBC, but there may have been others. We would all sit at our desks, the teacher would turn the radio on and we would pay the best attention that a group of six and seven-year-olds could. When it was over, she would go around the room and we would each pick one thing that stuck out to us. She would ask us questions, we would ask her questions, and we would all come away having learned a wee bit more about the world. I don’t know how many classes did this or still do it, but I’m sure glad mine did. Looking back, aside from my radio and TV dial twisting obsession, these current events sessions did more than almost anything else to help me understand how important the news is. Thanks, Mrs. Kenyon.

One day, amongst all of the usual politics and conflict and AIDS and acid rain, I heard something I wasn’t expecting.

“Police in New Jersey have arrested two wrestlers.”

“Wwwwwwwhhhhhhaaaaaaaaat?”

Well, I know what my story is going to be today.

And then it continued.

“Hacksaw Jim Duggan and the Iron Sheik were pulled over…”

Aaaaaand my brain exploded.

How did Duggan and Sheik end up in the same car? Did Sheik kidnap him? I watch every show! These guys hate each other! I’ve seen Duggan go after him and Volkoff with a 2×4! There’s definitely no way they would be together willingly. The fact that there was beer and drugs involved was way down my list of concerns in that moment, because something really weird was going on here.

I can recall expressing all of these feelings to the class, but for the life of me I can’t remember what anyone else said. I was very confused and a little let down that day, though. It was a bit like finding out that your parents are Santa Claus. But it’s been 37 years since then and I’m still out here watching stupid amounts of wrestling, so I guess I got over it. And even after this, I don’t think I was completely convinced that it was *all* “fake”. Maybe some of it was, but this other stuff…totally legit.

In 1987, Duggan and The Iron Sheik (Khosrow Vaziri) were pulled over by New Jersey State Police before a WWF event, suspecting Duggan of driving under the influence. After a search of the vehicle and the persons, police discovered that Duggan was under the influence of marijuana and alcohol, while Vaziri was high on cocaine. Small amounts of cocaine were also found in the vehicle. Duggan received a conditional release while Vaziri was placed on probation for a year. The scandal that erupted after two in-ring enemies were found drinking and doing drugs together led to the end of the angle, the Sheik’s release, and Duggan’s temporary departure from WWF. Duggan soon returned to wrestling.

The Heritage Cup Tournament That Wasn’t

This is going to be old news to most of you who would care about such things,but since I’m just now watching episodes of NXT from last summer, here goes.

I don’t want to complain too much about the Heritage Cup tournament. The round-robin concept is a very un-WWE-like thing to present, and I mean that in a good way. The company has done the same things in the same ways for so long that it’s nice to see them trying something different. But I think maybe we could try a little harder, because I shouldn’t have to be annoyed by watching great wrestlers have good matches.

If you aren’t familiar with it, here’s how the Heritage Cup works.

  • Matches consist of six three-minute rounds with 20-second breaks between each round.
  • Matches are 2-out-of-3 falls.
  • Falls can be won by pinfall, submission, or countout.
  • Once a fall occurs, the round ends.
  • The match ends once a wrestler has won two falls.
  • In the event of a disqualification or knockout, the match instantly ends without the need for two falls.
  • If all six rounds are completed, whoever is ahead on falls wins the match.

It’s WWE’s take on British Rounds rules, and aside from the fact that we must stuff every television show so full of commercials that we often miss an entire damn round or more of each match, I like it. (See new things, trying.)

Ok, back to the tournament.

If I like the Heritage Cup, what’s my problem with it?

It’s simple, really. The trouble is that it’s not a Heritage Cup tournament. Yes, the winner gets a shot at the Heritage Cup. But to earn that shot, that person must win…a series of regular wrestling matches. No rounds, no multiple falls, no special strategy. You’re proving you’re worthy of a shot at something by being good at something that’s not the thing you’re supposed to be proving you’re good at. It’s a bit like me saying I’m qualified to be a hit songwriter because I know how to type and have a basic understanding of rhymes.

If they don’t want to take up so much time on the shows with Cup style matches, that’s fine. But instead of not having them at all, why not just modify them? Rather than each round-robin match going six rounds, do four. It would be like MMA. Most fights are three rounds, but the championship matches are five. That I could live with. You wrestle some four round matches to earn a shot in a six. There’s continuity there. But as it is, it’s driving me more and more nutty the more I have to think about it. And that’s too bad, because there’s no good reason it has to.

If they ever do this again, I hope they’ll listen to me, or if not me, everyone else who had better have been ranting about this at the time.

What Flavour Were they, Kill Pickle?

It sucks that this happened, but on the other hand, a guy shooting a stranger in the face outside of a strip club because he wouldn’t share some potato chips with him is exactly why we have a food feuds tag. And hey, it sounds like the bullet recipient is going to be ok. He even got his own self to the hospital, which is almost assuredly more than I could expect of my own self in a similar situation.

Officers found the 31-year-old with a gunshot wound to the face that was deemed non-life-threatening.
Preliminary investigations show the victim was confronted by an unknown man outside of Lusty’s Adventure in the 40 block of Stanton Avenue, police say.

The victim told police the suspect shot him with a handgun after he refused to give the suspect some potato chips.
Police say the suspect then fled in an unknown vehicle.

This is Lusty’s. It wound up being exactly what the name makes it sound like it’s going to be, but I had to look it up on the off chance that it would be a weirdly named grocery store or something.

Oh, and police did eventually arrest a suspect.

No, Steve. No one needs your “Did they rough him up?” joke. Yes, we know it fits because strip club, but we’ve already made it ourselves. You’re good.

Will You Stop!

An AI generated Gorilla Monsoon telling rapid fire wrestling and dick jokes for an hour on a pretend podcast with AI generated versions of Bobby Heenan, Mean Gene Okerlund and others is one of those things I didn’t know I needed in my life, but I sure am glad I watched it.

If you’re a casual fan, I can pretty much guarantee that you’re not going to enjoy this. But if you’ve watched a shitload of wrestling in your life and have spent so much of the rest of your time reading and listening to podcasts about it that you understand a whole lot of obscure references, have yourself some fun.

Thanks, Alan.

Bunches Of Bloopers And A Big Thank You


I hope everyone had a nice Easter weekend. Mine consisted of a family brunch and a trip to AEW Collision in London. I want to take a second to thank our friends Barb and Alex for setting us up with tickets to that second thing. Twas extremely amazing of you to do that and trust me, a fine time was had by all. I think even Carin, who has just about 0 interest in wrestling, will remember it. At times it seemed like she was having almost as much fun people watching as I was having watching the matches.

This was my first live AEW show, and I absolutely got our friends’ money’s worth out of it. It ran about four hours between the Ring of Honor segments, the live Collision and the episode of Rampage that they filmed when that was over.

There were quite a few memorable parts, but I think my favourite was Adam Copeland coming out to start Collision. Everyone lost their everloving minds, including perhaps the one guy in the entire building who was determined to boo him out of it. Between that and Matt Cardona showing up as a surprise to except the open challenge, that segment was easily the coolest of the night as far as atmosphere.

Sadly the video is missing Adam’s entrance and the first “this is awesome” chant they got when they had barely touched, but hopefully you get the idea.

Like I said, this was my first time at AEW, but probably not my last. If you’re on the fence about going when it comes anywhere near you, go. Trust me. You’ll enjoy yourself.

And now, enjoy this compilation of Easter news bloopers to wind things up. I hope you’re having as good a Monday as those rabbits did, or at least that you got to eat some nuts this morning.

Sultans Of Storm


Laszlo Buring gets the originality points today.

“Riders on the Storm” has never been one of my favourite songs, but I quite like “Sultans of Swing”, so this works for me.

Riders on the Storm, if it were written by Dire Straits.

Went with a Lady Writer/Sultans of Swing kind of approach for this one, raising the original tempo quite a bit. I tried to work a few of Ray Manzarek’s piano riffs in there, with the walking down the Dorian scale type of stuff.

I Swear I’d Lose My Head If I Accidentally Detached It And Dumped It In The River

Police seeking help identifying ‘intentionally dismembered’ human remains found at Cherry Beach
If you can help the authorities out with this please do, but what I need is more information on all of the human remains that end up hacked apart, wrapped in plastic bags and floating in the harbour by accident. I assume there must be a lot of them. Why else would it have been so important to mention twice that in this case it definitely happened on purpose?

Police speak has gotten way out of control.

On Oct. 9, 2023, two human thighs were located on the water’s edge at Cherry Beach. Police responded to a call from a civilian who made the initial discovery, said Det-Sgt. Tiffany Castell.  
Toronto police later discovered a human torso, partially wrapped in a black plastic bag, in the outer Toronto harbour area of Lake Ontario on Oct. 30, according to the news release. 
The torso had on a generic necklace and a light-coloured, size small t-shirt from the brand ‘Cotton Best,’ police said.

DNA testing confirmed that the body parts belong to the same individual. Police said the remains had been “intentionally dismembered.”

My First Prime Minister Died


Technically speaking that’s not true since there were Joe Clark, Pierre Trudeau and John turner before him, but Brian Mulroney is my first Prime Minister in the sense that he’s the first one I remember actually being in the job. When I started getting old enough to notice the news and when we began learning about politics in school, he was the guy. I think that’s why I was so unexpectedly shocked when I heard that he had gone. We don’t write so long posts here as often as we used to, but this one has stuck with me since it happened, so I feel like I ought to at least note it.

My strongest memory of Mulroney was him being so deeply unpopular that he resigned before the end of his second term and set the stage for his majority government to be reduced to two people, but he was certainly much more than that, for better or worse. He was, as I would discover as the years went by, not a typical conservative or even your typical politician. He had big ideas and wasn’t afraid to take a risk. And some of his policies (acid rain treaty, working to end apartheid) were actually good. He also took big swings with the GST, national unity and North American free trade, enormously complex issues that cost him politically and absolutely changed the country forever.

“Whether one agrees with our solutions or not, none will accuse us of having chosen to evade our responsibilities by side-stepping the most controversial issues of our time,” he said when he stepped down in 1993, in a way summing himself up better than anyone else could, minus the bribery scandals and whatnot.

I have no idea how the world is going to remember Brian Mulroney. Probably somewhere between skilled politician and asshole who taxed us all to death and sent our jobs to Mexico, if I had to guess. But if there’s only one thing that I’ll take away from him, it won’t be something he said, but rather something I’ve heard said about him many times by people across the political spectrum. During this process, I called Brian Mulroney for advice, or while all of this was going on, Brian Mulroney called me to offer his help and encouragement. That’s pretty cool, and it’s how I’ve always tried my best to see the world. People who don’t see things your way often suck and are wrong, but not always. Sometimes it’s worth the effort it takes to listen to them, to try to help them, to find some common ground and to use that to make things better for everyone. We’re all in this life together, whether we want to be or not. Brian Mulroney certainly didn’t teach me that, but he’s at times been a nice reminder that it’s possible.

We’re From The Government And We’re Here To Help

Five people have been killed and 10 wounded in Gaza when a parachute on a humanitarian airdrop package failed to deploy properly and the parcel fell on them, a witness has said.
The casualties were taken to Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, the emergency room’s head nurse, Mohammed al-Sheikh, said. The airdrop took place north of the coastal Al-Shati refugee camp, he added.
A witness from the camp said he and his brother had followed the parachuted aid in the hope of getting “a bag of flour”. “Then, all of a sudden, the parachute didn’t open and fell down like a rocket on the roof of one of the houses,” said Mohammed al-Ghoul.
“Ten minutes later I saw people transferring three martyrs and others injured, who were staying on the roof of the house where the aid packages fell,” he said.

Honest question to which I sadly think I know the answer: Israel is, eventually, going to be charged with war crimes, right? That’s not me endorsing Hamas or being antisemitic, it’s just a weird moral thing I have where it bothers me very much when someone responds to an awful thing by being even more awful. It shouldn’t be this hard to tell which side of a conflict is the terrorist group, and it shouldn’t be controversial to say that.

As for this specific story, I’m surprised it isn’t one we hear more. Is that because it doesn’t happen, because it isn’t usually covered when it does or because I just don’t see it?

Also, when I shared the article from my phone to my computer, the first option I saw was “AirDrop”, but I went with mail just to be safe.