Category: Pro Wrestling

Joe Tessitore joins WWE as latest sports announcer fans will eventually turn on

Tessitore previously covered WrestleMania in his capacity at ESPN. He’ll be fine.

WWE is going through a boom period. After being freed from the influence of billionaire septuagenarian and alleged sexual predator Vince McMahon, the company’s storytelling has soared to new heights and cemented its place atop the professional wrestling landscape.

In the midst of that, the company is turning to a recent tenet that has struggled to pay off in the past. It’s bringing an established sports broadcaster from outside the world of wrestling to its announce team.

Joe Tessitore is a staple of ESPN’s college football broadcasts and has been a part of NFL and boxing coverage in his career. He’s also one of the hosts of ABC’s Holey Moley alongside Rob Riggle. Now he’ll join Corey Graves and Wade Barrett at ringside to call the action inside the squared circle in prime time.

Tessitore is qualified to handle his business. He’s a combat sports veteran who understands the history of pro wrestling — he was part of ESPN’s coverage of WrestleMania 40 this spring. His turn on Holey Moley has proven he can pull off serious or silly with aplomb.

That’s not to say this move doesn’t come with risk. WWE has borrowed from other sports in an effort to punch up its commentary in the past. Broadcasters Adnan Virk, Jimmy Smith and Kevin Patrick came from sports backgrounds outside the ring and failed to leave a lasting impact with the promotion.

Even so, Tessitore has the capacity to outshine each thanks to his bonafides as a media personality and familiarity with the product. WWE is hoping his addition will be more Pat McAfee than Kevin Patrick. The question now is whether his wrestling duties will interfere with his gridiron coverage and if the respected voice of ESPN coverage can keep from spreading himself too thin come autumn.

AEW star Willow Nightingale surprised a middle school wrestling club in a heartwarming moment

Pro wrestling can be beautiful sometimes.

Willow Nightingale is having a moment.

The All Elite Wrestling star has planted her flag as one of the most promising talents in professional wrestling. After a long career as an underappreciated workhorse on the independent scene, she’s taken full advantage of the spotlight afforded by a national promotion. After a run as New Japan Pro Wrestling’s first ever Strong Women’s Champion, she harnessed a swell of fan support and recently defeated Julia Hart to claim AEW’s TBS title.

That admiration extends to members of The Wrestling Club, a group of students at KIPP AMP Middle School in Brooklyn. Students in the club, guided by English teacher Victor Perry, spent Monday’s lunch and recess watching Nightingale challenge Athena for the Ring of Honor championship at last year’s Death Before Dishonor. That’s when a special guest arrived.

In the midst of dueling “Let’s go Willow/Let’s go Athena” chants, Nightingale snuck into the classroom with her TBS title draped over her shoulder. After a moment of recognition, the classroom exploded in cheers for the subject of that day’s Wrestling Club. Students shouted in disbelief as the women they’d been watching high-fived any and every student who came up to say hello.

It’s the kind of uplifting moment that transcends the weird tribalism that too often dominates wrestling discourse.

Nightingale, Perry and The Wrestling Club helped remind us why we watch the spectacle inside the squared circle. It can be terrible, and it can be empty calorie television at times. But at its best, pro wrestling is its own mythology, creating larger than life heroes — the kind who can make a middle school classroom explode simply by walking in.

On Monday, Nightingale got to pull off an ultimate babyface move. In the process, she proved she’s more than just a champion; to members of The Wrestling Club, she’s a straight up legend.

The Timberwolves – NWO Wolfpac mashup is the perfect intersection of basketball and wrestling

Rudy Gobert truly is the Lex Luger of his generation.

TNT planted the ear worm. The network threw to halftime of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Game 2 beatdown of the Denver Nuggets by playing the entrance music for revolutionary pro wrestling faction the NWO — specifically the “Wolfpac” offshoot that featured some of the coolest guys in the business during the late-1990s.

It was a throwaway clip that could have gone unnoticed. Except all those 90s kids who drove the Monday Night Wars happen to be extremely online, pointing at their screens like Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at the mere mention of a wrestling reference from nearly three decades earlier.

That included Rob Perez, formerly of The Ringer (among other places) and currently a host of his own NBA show on SiriusXM. Perez helped bring the Wolfpac shoutout to the forefront earlier in the week (and maybe inspired it by tweeting the theme before the series started). On Friday, he took it to a logical conclusion; a custom Timberwolves/NWO Titantron video that combines the best of both worlds (and is mildly NSFW, depending on how many crotch chops you’re allowed to watch on the the clock).

Interspersed between clips of Sting and Lex Luger are Anthony Edwards’ ascension to stardom and Naz Reid’s rise to prominence. Much like the Wolfpac, Minnesota has emerged to take a starring role by beating the tar out of anyone in its path. And, thanks to TNT and Perez, reminded us all of a wrestling theme topped only by the American Males in terms of being so bad it flips all the way around to greatness.

Patrick Mahomes’ linemen protected him against 386-pound Braun Strowman because there is no offseason

No one gets to Mahomes without dealing with Trey Smith and Creed Humphrey first.

The 2024 NFL offseason is in full effect. Most of this year’s free agents have been signed. The draft has come and gone. Now’s the moment where teams and players can relax a bit.

Except when you’re an offensive lineman, WWE Monday Night Raw has come to your town and your starting quarterback has a front row seat. In that case, there is no offseason.

That’s the situation Kansas City Chiefs starters Trey Smith and Creed Humphrey found themselves in when the WWE stopped at the T-Mobile Center for its flagship weekly show. Mahomes had a starring role throughout, even giving social-media-parasite-turned-shockingly-good-wrestler Logan Paul his Super Bowl rings to abet in a (foiled) attack.

But when 6-foot-8, 386-pound Braun Strowman got in Mahomes’ face later in the evening, it was time for two of the league’s best blockers to do what they do best.

In the matchup between strongman bod and dad bod, Mahomes was outclassed. But Humphrey and Smith rose up to ensure their quarterback would live to see another season.

Those two aren’t the only elite linemen getting reps in the WWE this spring. Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson made their Wrestlemania debuts earlier in the month, helping Rey Mysterio continue his legendary career with a win at wrestling’s biggest event. In an industry that values big meaty men slapping meat nearly as much as the NFL does, this may be the beginning of a big man renaissance in the squared circle.

Patrick Mahomes gave Logan Paul his Super Bowl rings so he could attack Jey Uso

You’re not having a stroke, it’s wrestling.

WWE Raw is in Kansas City, Missouri this week. And given the number of custom made championship belts the wrestling monolith has sent the Chiefs for winning Super Bowls the last five years, it made sense they were able to snag a cameo from the city’s biggest sports star since George Brett.

Two-time NFL MVP and three-time NFL champion Patrick Mahomes showed up early to the show in order to film a segment with social-media-pest-turned-wrestling-savant Logan Paul and WWE champion Damian Priest. So it wasn’t a surprise when he played a role in the show proper.

Namely, handing over all this Super Bowl rings to abet in an assault.

Mahomes tried to help Paul and Priest’s fellow Judgment Day members Finn Balor and JD McDonagh assault Jey Uso in the middle of the ring. But Paul’s three-ring knockout punch instead sent McDonagh to the mat, leaving Balor and Paul to improvise a new plan on the fly. And by that I mean stand in awe, struggling to process anything before getting attacked by Uso.

After six seasons in the NFL, Mahomes has finally shown his weakness. Helping any Paul brother in any facet of the world — in this case the drink-hawking crypto-scammer — suggests serious character flaws. Just think; would Tom Brady ever get in cahoots with someone willing to steal money from vulnerable people shilling volatile, too-good-to-be-true crypto Ponzi schem-

Ah yeah. Yeah, I hear it. Well dang. Carry on, I suppose.