1. Day 1 - Favorite WWE Wrestler & Favorite Song

2. Day 2 - Least Favorite Wrestler Of All-Time & Least Favorite Song Of All-Time

3. Day 3 - Favorite Tag Team Of All-Time & A Song That Makes You Happy

4. Day 4 - All-Time Favorite Promo & A Song That Makes You Sad

5. Day 5 - Favorite WWE Match & A Song That Reminds You Of Someone

6. Day 6 - Favorite Finishing Maneuver & A Song That Reminds You Of Somewhere

7. Day 7 - Worst Finishing Maneuver & A Song That Reminds You Of A Certain Event

If you have a Facebook page, there's a pretty good chance you, or someone you're friends with, is participating in some sort of 30 Day Challenge. The two most popular, at least on my news feed, are the Wrestling and Song challenges.

For those unaware, it's a "game" of sorts where a specific day has a specific question, and you answer that question with a picture or video to go along with it. Instead of doing these like everyone else and posting them on Facebook, I figured it would be fun to turn them into a new "series" of columns. Every single day this month, I'll be right back here to answer the question in the day's Wrestling Challenge, as well as the day's Song Challenge. They'll all be posted in this one entry, updated on a daily basis like I do with my normal HIPE columns. I think this is a fun way for people to get to know me better, as well as giving people yet more daily content to read. Let's get it underway, starting off with Wrestling, shall we?

Day 1 - Favorite WWE Wrestler

Really, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone if you've read my columns. I've never been afraid to admit to being a fan of John Cena, going all the way back to his debut, as a green-as-goose-shit (thank you, Bill DeMott) rookie answering an open challenge by Kurt Angle. Through the years, my fandom has grown and grown, and I've stuck by him through a lot of trash talk from fellow members of the IWC.

I'm not here to fight for the guy, or to try and sway anyone's opinion of him. At this point, you either love him, hate him or respect him, and there's really nothing else. What I can say is that I've always respected his grind.. his hustle, if you will.. through everything he does. I'm not saying that hard work is something that only he can bring to the world of wrestling. That's not true in the slightest. However, I've said, and continue to say, that he puts in more work, when you combine his in-ring and out-of-ring contributions, than most wrestlers of his status. Some of it has to do with him having no children and being single for a large portion of his time with the company. He doesn't have to go back home to see his wife and his children from time-to-time like his co-workers do. When he's not wrestling, he's always been able to dedicate his entire life to the business. Television appearances, charity work, autograph signings, you name it. His work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in particular, gets eternal respect from me. Late last year, he granted his 200th wish for the children's charity, and has continued working hard for them, including bringing over 30 children to WrestleMania 27 as his personal guests. He continues to be one of the most requested celebrities at Make-A-Wish, and chances are, that's not going to end anytime soon. I respect that attitude. He seems to truly understand that the fans, and the business itself, made him what he is today, and he's devoted himself to giving back to both. Props to him for that.

His in-ring work has never been on the levels of someone like Eddie Guerrero, Ric Flair or Dean Malenko, nor will it ever be. It's somewhat ridiculous that people look at him negatively because of that. The only person who will reach Eddie Guerrero's level is Eddie Guerrero. The only person who will reach Ric Flair's level is Ric Flair. The only person who will reach Dean Malenko's level is Dean Malenko. They're in their own world when it comes to workrate. I'm not going to punish someone for something that nobody else can accomplish. Sometimes, the IWC can.. actually, no, let me start that sentence over. Most of the time, the IWC can get lost in the amount of moves a wrestler can do, and it prevents them from actually sitting back and watching a match. I'm a fan of the indy scene, where you can see a seven-minute match feature nine different finishers from each guy, all of which were kicked out of at the last millisecond. I appreciate those matches for what they are. At the same time, I can watch WWE programming, see a John Cena match.. or a Randy Orton match, or a Miz match, or a Rey Mysterio match, or a Kofi Kingston match, etc.. and appreciate them for what they are. I'm a wrestling fan, way before the rap shit, bust the gat shit.. as well as before the "smark" internet columns.. and I take great pride in the fact that I haven't forgotten that.

Would I still like Cena to turn heel? Yes, of course I would. However, at this point, with his WrestleMania 28 match already being booked, I've accepted the fact that we'll have to wait at least that long to see a turn happen. No more predicting heel turns for him at this pay-per-view and that pay-per-view. No more hoping. No more wishing. Just waiting. I have no doubts that a turn will happen, and when it does, I'll still be there as a fan of his, and I eagerly anticipate all of the bandwagon jumpers that come along and claim that they've been Cena fans for years.

Day 1 - Favorite Song

A lot of people are surprised to find out that hip-hop isn't my favorite genre of music. It's not. I love hip-hop, but R&B has always been the type of music that has had my heart, even going back to when I was a very, very Lil' Hustle. Raised by my Grandparents, I came up listening to old-school Motown music. The Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, The Spinners, The Commodores, etc. Throw in other old-school acts like Earth, Wind & Fire and The Isley Brothers, and you have the music that would fill my heart and soul from the beginning.

I wish I had some sort of fancy story to tell you about why "Cupid" is my favorite song of all-time, but I don't. I bought 112's self-titled debut album in the summer before my freshman year of high school, and I was instantly hooked. That song just stuck with me. The harmony, the laid-back vibe, the message that damn near every man reading this can relate to (not wanting your woman to misinterpret what you say, turning your words into lies).. I just love the song.

I have a pretty eclectic taste in music, so you're bound to see a wide variety represented here in the next four weeks. Should be fun.

-------------------------

The first day of the challenge looked at my favorites, so, naturally, today would be the flip side to that coin. The way these challenges are worded is somewhat strange to me. Yesterday's Wrestling entry was simply "Favorite WWE Wrestler". There was no indication that the question was of the current or all-time variety, so I just answered it how it came to mind. John Cena is, obviously, my current favorite, while Eddie Guerrero or Hulk Hogan would get my vote for all-time. For the Song challenge, once again there were no indications of the question being about all-time or current, but "Cupid" is my favorite song of all-time, without question. Some questions clarify the all-time discussion, while some don't. I'll be sure to keep the clarification going for everyone else. Hope that clears things up a little bit for people who have been asking me. Before I handle business here, I forgot to mention yesterday that I'd love to hear everyone else's answers for the day's topics. You know how to contact me. Now, let's move on to the next one..

Day 2 - Least Favorite Wrestler Of All-Time

What? You were expecting someone else, perhaps?

It's still #FuckYouMattHardy all day, err'day. However, with all of the hate I put out towards Matt Hardy, he's still an average, at best, performer. More than anything else, he's just incredibly boring, but nothing offensive in the ring. The same can't be said about The Sandman, and that's been true since the day I first saw him in ECW, way back in 1994.

Back in the original days of ECW, I considered myself a fan of the product and just how different it was from anything we were exposed to with the WWF or with WCW. The characters, the production values, the fans, the matches.. everything was just different and unique, and it caught the attention of this guy when I was 12-13 years old, to say the least. Taz. Sabu. Rob Van Dam. Raven. The Gangstas. The Dudleys. The Eliminators. Shane Douglas. Tommy Dreamer. Cactus Jack. The list of ECW workers that I found entertaining at the time goes on and on.

The thing is.. damn near everything from those days hasn't been able to stand the test of time. When I go back and watch a lot of the matches from ECW, I cringe at just how bad they really were. It was like watching a bunch of people who weren't trained parade around and act like wrestlers. It had me fooled when I was 12, but all these years later, perhaps I've been spoiled by "real" wrestling, because that shit isn't fooling me anymore.

Even as a 12-year-old, however, I wasn't a fan of The Sandman. He wasn't good at anything he did. He couldn't wrestle. He couldn't cut promos. He didn't look intimidating. He didn't have an interesting character. Hell, he didn't even have a character. He was just an out-of-shape guy, drinking a bunch of beers and smoking a bunch of cigarettes. There were a lot of people that were brawlers in those days of ECW, but The Sandman couldn't brawl like, say, New Jack could. He couldn't brawl like Terry Funk could, like Sabu could, like The Pitbulls could, like Public Enemy could, like Tommy Dreamer could, etc. When the only thing you bring to the table is brawling, and you're not even good at that, it doesn't look good for you.

As time went on, Sandman actually began to get worse. His beer belly began to grow, his heavy smoking clearly started taking a toll on his stamina and his ability to do, well, anything without looking as if he just finished running a marathon. I couldn't watch any of the shit he did. Couldn't then, and I damn sure can't now. That's just how it goes, I guess. Sorry, ECW fans.

Day 2 - Least Favorite Song Of All-Time

Are there worse songs throughout history than the Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps"? Yes, of course there are. However, most, if not all, of those songs don't get the type of play that this song got. Don't even begin to come at me with discussion about Rebecca Black's "Friday", by the way. For one, she's only 13. Two, it wasn't anything that was taken serious by the people who wrote the song or shot the video.

This song is just Head AIDS in audio form. David Payton and will.i.am should both have United States Special Forces hunting them down for the lyrics they wrote for this monstrocity. For example..

"They treat me really nicely.. they buy me all these iceys.."

"My love, my love, my love, my love.. you love my lady lumps.. my hump, my hump, my hump.. my humps, they got you.."

"What you gon' do with all that junk.. all that junk inside that trunk.. I'ma get, get, get, get you drunk.. get you love drunk off my hump.."

"I mix your milk wit my cocoa puff.. milky, milky cocoa.. mix your milk wit my cocoa puff.. milky, milky, riiiiight.."

"They say I'm really sexy.. the boys, they wanna sex me.. they always standing next to me.. always dancing next to me.. tryna feel my hump, hump.. lookin at my lump, lump.."

Humps and lumps, eh? I don't know about any of you guys reading this right now, but does the thought of mashed potatoes, breast cancer and Quasimodo arouse you at all? Those thoughts do nothing for me. The song became some sort of weird anthem for women all over the world. Women who had no "humps" or "lumps" would sing the song as if it were about them. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing the song. It was on the radio all the time. The video was on television all the time. If a woman had her own car, she was playing the song as she drove around. I'm sure whatever Ricardo Rodriguez and Chris Bosh were doing in 2005 heavily involved repeated listening of the song.

I'm 100% against songs that start phony movements. Girls with no asses shouldn't promote this song. Ugly women shouldn't promote Keri Hilson's "Pretty Girl Rock". Broke people shouldn't promote any of the 18,000 hip-hop songs about having lots of money. I'm just saying.

-------------------------Day 3 - Favorite Tag Team Of All-Time

That's right, folks. This is such serious business that the "There's never a three" rule has been broken again.

Even though Edge & Christian were the winners of the Hustle Madness tournament this year, as a #2 seed, they aren't my pick here. Hell, none of the #1 seeds (The Steiner Brothers, The Road Warriors/Legion Of Doom, The Fabulous Freebirds & The Dudley Boyz) are my pick, either.

"Stunning" Steve Austin & "Flyin" Brian Pillman didn't even last a full calendar year as a team, but for the near 11 months they did spend as a team, they were successful in damn near everything they did. First and foremost, I'm a fan of tag teams that feature two different styles in the team members. Teams like The Rockers are fine and dandy, but at that point in their careers, they were pretty much the same type of worker. With Austin and Pillman, however, you have two different styles, with Pillman being the high-flying half and Austin being the part-technical and part-brawling half. There are people reading this right now that only remember Austin as "Stone Cold" and are shocked to see me mention him being any sort of technical wrestler, but it was true.

I think the WCW tag team scene in 1992 and 1993 was really underrated. Pillman was originally teamed with Barry Windham, and they made another really entertaining team. Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat & Shane Douglas? Another entertaining team. The Rock N Roll Express were still around and kicking. 2 Cold Scorpio & Marcus Bagwell did just fine for themselves. Either of the Four Horsemen teams (Ric Flair & Arn Anderson or Arn Anderson & Paul Roma) were good. The Nasty Boys were able to put on the only real entertaining matches of their careers at that time. Harlem Heat was just beginning their rise to stardom. The Road Warriors were around. Barry Windham & Dustin Rhodes. The Steiner Brothers. Vader & Sid Vicious. Sting & Davey Boy Smith. That's stacked. However, even through all of that, The Hollywood Blondes stood out. Their charisma, their chemistry (we would only find out down the line that they were best friends), the way they worked, the amount of fun they always looked like they were having.. they just grabbed your attention whenever they walked out from behind the curtain.

Brian Pillman's ankle injury forced the Blondes to relinquish the NWA and WCW Tag Team Titles, and that marked the end of an era. We'll probably never know the truth as to why the team was split up, but if you ask Steve Austin, he'll tell you that someone in WCW was jealous of their success and didn't want that success to continue, so that person made the call for the team breakup. Austin, of course, would eventually move on to become, arguably, the biggest name in the history of the business once he finally got away from WCW and the backstage politics in the company. Pillman, of course, would suffer setback after setback, with many of them having to do with his drug and alcohol problems. In my opinion, Pillman could definitely have gone on to achieve great success as a singles competitor if not for his injuries, bad luck, addiction problems and heart condition. Unfortunately, we'll never know.

Day 3 - A Song That Makes You Happy

In its prime, The Simpsons is, in my opinion, the funniest cartoon of all-time, and one of the funnier characters on the show is definitely the mentally deficient third grader, Ralph Wiggum. In 2005, comedy-rock band Bloodhound Gang released a song called "Ralph Wiggum", and it immediately became legendary.

Perhaps you're wondering what the big deal is. Songs have been named after fictional television characters before, you say. Yes, they have. However, this song's lyrics were 100% composed of quotes from The Simpsons. The verses were Ralph Wiggum quotes, while the chorus was said by Ralph's father, Police Chief Clarence "Clancy" Wiggum. The best part? There's no flow, rhyme or sense to the lyrics. They're just random quotes strung together. The group turned a song that breaks down to 100% lyrical nonsense, and they come across as geniuses for doing it.

From the initial seconds of the song, it just brings a smile to my face, and I find myself singing along whenever I hear it. What makes it extra fun is listening to the lyrics and trying to remember which episodes the quotes were from. Again, there's no emotional, wild story behind why this song is being listed. It's just being listed. I can't listen to this song and not at least crack a smile.

-------------------------Day 4 - All-Time Favorite Promo

Hey, look, it's something from the original ECW that has held up through the years. In my opinion, Mick Foley is probably the best "talker" that the wrestling business has ever seen. He was able to bring out so many different emotions from the people watching his promos. He could make you laugh, he could make you cry, he could make you angry, he could scare the living hell out of you.. you name it. What makes Foley's promos so effective is that he's able to use real emotions and real events to help him craft what he's going to talk about. He isn't just reading from a bullet-point note that someone else has recommended for him.

The "Cane Dewey" promo was one of those instances. Foley has said, on multiple occasions, that seeing the "Cane Dewey" sign in the crowd was one of the lowest moments of his entire life, let alone of his wrestling career. That shouldn't be a surprise. No matter what line of work you're in, if someone advocated physical harm on your three-year-old son, you'd be upset, too. He took that pain and that passion, and he used it to craft the promo you see in the video above. Using the ECW fans and their "too smart for their own good" stereotypes, he spun that into an anti-ECW type of promo, pointing out the differences between life in WCW and life in ECW. ECW's "poster boy" at the time was Tommy Dreamer, and Mick, as Cactus Jack, tried to sell Dreamer on just how cold and heartless the ECW fans were. The promo almost turned into a recruiting sell, by Cactus Jack to Tommy Dreamer on behalf of Eric Bischoff and WCW.

It was a beautiful thing. If there was one thing that ECW fans hated more than anything in the world, it was WCW and what WCW represented. Any type of pro-WCW and/or anti-hardcore promo would really stand out in ECW, and Foley was on an incredible promo run in those days, but "Cane Dewey" stands out more than anything else. You can hear the anger in his voice. You can just about feel the pain in his heart. It was six of the most legitimately emotional moments that we've seen in wrestling. The promo is actually something that makes me dislike today's wrestling scene. Nobody cuts promos like that anymore. As I mentioned earlier, there's too much reliance on scripted promos and writers having to make bullet-pointed notes for workers to use. That doesn't allow for any of them to tap into real emotions and real feelings, and what we get is a lot of forced, awkward, unauthentic promos that nobody believes. That's a real shame.

Day 4 - A Song That Makes You Sad

Let me just say, right now, that I might ramble a bit in this section, so consider yourselves warned.

May 3rd, 2001 goes down as the worst day of my life.

As I've mentioned in my columns before, I lived with my Grandparents since I was only a few months old. To be more specific, it was my Grandmother and her boyfriend, so I wasn't related to the man by blood. Anyway, because my Grandmother was such a strict, old-school disciplinarian, I always found myself being closer to the man I called "Papa". He was my Grandfather, my Father, my best friend and my brother, all rolled into one.

When my Grandmother passed away in 1997, it left my Grandfather and I by ourselves, literally and figuratively. The family began fighting with each other over inheritance, and my Grandfather and I were the target of a lot of their hostility. She requested that he be in charge of her estate after her passing, and the family couldn't handle it. Who was he to decide what would happen with their Mother/Sister's things? It continued to spiral out of control, and eventually, contact with my family was shut off, and that continues on to this day.

Fast forward to that day.. May 3rd, 2001.

After a day out with my friends, I came home to find my Grandfather dead on the floor of his bedroom. He was on a lot of medications for asthma, arthritis and other ailments, and his heart simply couldn't take all the extra stress anymore. Words cannot express the guilt that someone feels in a situation like that. For the rest of my life, I have to live with wondering whether or not I could have saved his life had I simply stayed home that day.

This song was something that I stumbled across almost by fate. I had purchased the City High CD earlier in the year, off of the success of their hit single, "What Would You Do?", but as was the case with a lot of albums I bought back then, I never really got around to listening to it. I had albums sitting in my CD booklets for months.. sometimes even years.. without so much as even putting them into a CD player. A few days after the death of my Grandfather, I was going through my CDs, looking for some new material to listen to as I cleaned the house. I saw the City High album, and I played it. One of the last songs on the album was "So Many Things". I listened to the song, and as I began hearing the lyrics, I broke down, and I cried. I cried hard. I cried for a really long time. I cried a lot on the night of his passing, but I was holding a lot of my emotions in over the next few days. Hearing this song for the first time opened the flood gates, so to speak.

Here we are, ten years later, and I still can't stand to listen this song more than once or twice a year. However, and anyone who has suffered a real loss in their lives will understand what I mean, there's just times that you need to cry. It might come across as "soft" to some people, but that's of no concern to me.

I apologize for the non-wrestling section of today's entry being much longer than the actual wrestling section was. I just started typing, and it pretty much went where it went, even though I really shortened the story.

Rest In Power, Ardy Kvanvig
7/6/44 - 5/3/01-------------------------Day 5 - Favorite WWE Match

If you've been a reader of mine for a while, this should come as no surprise to you, as I've mentioned my fondness for this match on a few different occasions. Bret "The Hitman" Hart VS "Stone Cold" Steve Austin in a Submission Match at WrestleMania 13. Wow. The reason the match is here in this spot isn't even all because of the in-ring work. In fact, it can be argued that the Hart VS Austin match from a few months prior to this, at the 1996 Survivor Series, was a better overall match. However, what the Survivor Series match didn't have was one of the greatest stories told in a single match that we've ever seen. It also gave us the culmination to one of the best double-turns ever executed, and it was all by accident. The WWF fans called for the turn that made Bret Hart a heel and Steve Austin a face. Bret stood for the "old school" and everything it represented, and Austin, for lack of a better term, was something of a new age outlaw. Times were changing in the world, and they were changing in wrestling, as well. Things were written around the fan reaction, and it all went down at WrestleMania.

Don't get it twisted.. the match itself was really good. Just an entertaining brawl from beginning to end, everything they did was believable during the match, as was the same for the entire feud. It came across as more than just a wrestling storyline. It seemed as though Hart and Austin actually hated each other's guts, and from the opening bell, they beat the hell out of each other here. It brought out a different side of Bret Hart than a lot of people were used to seeing, as he was a technical wizard, while Austin was the one known as a brawler with a smashmouth style. Hart matched Austin, punch for punch, here.

To add to the "fate" or "destiny" of this match, not only was the double-turn accidentally stumbled upon, but the most iconic images of this match.. Austin's bloody face as he screamed in pain while locked in the Sharpshooter.. happened by accident, as well. From every account, the spot that busted Austin open wasn't supposed to happen the way it did. He slipped a bit, and that caused him to crack his forehead on the guardrail, busting him wide open. Think about that level of luck for Vince McMahon. The entire thing turned into one of the best storylines in company history, branching out into the USA VS Canada deal that was also incredibly entertaining, and all of this helped turn Steve Austin into the megastar that he became, making Vince millions and millions and millions of dollars. Would Austin have become a star had he stayed heel? Would Austin have become a star had he not been busted open by the guardrail? The saying that the cream always rises to the top probably applies here, but damn, there's not a lot of sense in looking at the hypotheticals, is there?

Did I mention that this match also introduced "The World's Most Dangerous Man", Ken Shamrock, to the world of wrestling? Well, it did. That has to count for something, doesn't it? He did give us the Ankle Lock as a finishing move, after all. Hooray!

Day 5 - A Song That Reminds You Of Someone

"Kawaipunahele" by Keali'i Reichel

This song will always remind me of a really good friend of mine. She's someone that I've fallen out of touch with multiple times through the years, but when we do talk again, it's like we never stopped.

When I was in the 8th grade, I was on the Yearbook staff. Epitome of cool, I know. I'd spend all of my breaks and lunch periods in the Yearbook room, which also happened to be the same room as my homeroom and my Social Studies classes. Anyway, on top of that ridiculous workload, the teacher also taught hula, so a lot of the girls would spend their time in the class, going over routines, etc. Fellas, let me tell you this.. when done right, the hula is incredibly sexy beyond any words that I can form into a sentence for you to understand. Back on track, though.. this good friend of mine was one of the hula girls, and I'd always see her and her friends doing their thug thizzle while I helped to put the yearbook together. "Kawaipunahele" was one of the songs they performed to, and it just became part of my thinking. When I think of her, I think of hula, and when I think of hula, I think of this song.

Same old boy, same sweet girl.. ten years down the road.. we used to drive around the island, doing little sightseeing tours. Just because I live in paradise and get to see it every single day doesn't make it any less beautiful and worth checking out, you know? We used to throw the Keali'i Reichel album into the CD deck, roll the windows down and just drive. Great times.

You know what? I think I'll contact this friend right now.

-------------------------Day 6 - Favorite Finishing Maneuver

Sure, I'm a big fan of a lot of the current wrestling scene, with fantastic athletic moves and creative juices flowing left and right, but I'm still an old school wrestling guy at heart, and that's why I'm choosing the Powerbomb as my favorite finisher of all-time.

When I was growing up, one of my favorite wrestlers was "Psycho" Sid Vicious aka Sid aka Sycho Sid aka Sid Justice aka Lord Humongous. He was never the most spectacular in-ring worker, but I was a little kid, so what the fuck did I care about any of that? He was big, he had a crazy laugh, he yelled a lot and he had a blonde mullet/jheri curl combination.. it was difficult for him not to grab your attention. When he went into a match, he usually destroyed his opponent, and he damn near crippled them with his finisher.. a Powerbomb.

Through the years, we've seen dozens of Powerbomb variations, and damnit, I love them all. In the video I provided, you see the infamous Ganso Bomb delivered on the late Mitsuhara Misawa by one of his greatest rivals, Toshiaki Kawada. When he hits the move, look and listen for the crowd reaction. The normally quiet and respectful Japanese audience went crazy. The building was shaking for a moment. That's not even mentioning the poor announcer, who sounded like he just shit himself and was forced to watch his sister eat his doodoo-streaked underwear. Perhaps it's a bit cheap to group all of the Powerbomb variations together under one heading, but this is my column, and I'll do what I want to.. do what I want to.. do what I want to.

The Ganso Bomb is the most jaw-dropping version of the move, while Sid Vicious is my favorite deliverer of the move, but I'm also a fan of Vader's Powerbombs. The sheer power and force he put behind the move was incredible. He's injured people left and right with Powerbombs. Some intentionally, and some not. I still remember the sound that was made when Vader hit the move on Cactus Jack in WCW. When Jack's head and back hit the concrete floor, I thought he was dead. It sounded like a solid double from the bat of Albert Pujols. You can't really tell in this video, because of the quality, but trust me..

In today's wrestling scene, a Powerbomb can often be nothing more than a regular transitional move, used to set something else up. That's a real shame. It starts from the independent wrestling scene, where wrestlers often try to cram as many moves as they possibly can in a short amount of time, instead of trying to focus on making the moves they have actually mean something. It's to the point where we, as wrestling fans, have been spoiled. If Wrestler A hit Wrestler B with a Powerbomb and actually got the pin with it, it would catch people off guard. That isn't 100% accurate, of course, but we're reaching that point.

Sad times, folks. Sad times.

Day 6 - A Song That Reminds You Of Somewhere

Hawaii might be the only place I've ever been to that doesn't support local hip-hop talent on the radio. It's pretty ridiculous.

With that said, I was in Orlando, Florida for WrestleMania 24, and lived there for a few months afterwards before getting homesick, coming home and never going back, leaving an empty two-bedroom apartment just sitting there collecting dust for nearly a year. Well, while I was in Orlando, I couldn't get away from hearing Florida hip-hop artists on the radio. Their songs were played all the time. Perhaps the top artist at the time was Flo Rida (get it?!?!?), who was brand new to the scene. His song "Low" was one of 2008's biggest singles, but "In The Ayer" remains the song that reminds me of Orlando more than anything else. Hearing it on the radio. Hearing it blasting from people's car stereos. Seeing the video on television. Pantomiming the entire song while driving all over the streets of Orlando. Yeah, I said it. Typed it.. whatever. My levels of nerdery will surprise people sometimes.

It's nowhere near the greatest song ever made, but to this day, over three years later, when I happen to hear it, all I can think about is those few months I spent living in Orlando.

Good times, folks. Good times.

-------------------------Day 7 - Worst Finishing Maneuver

Sorry, nony.

I've seen a lot of people picking Hulk Hogan's Leg Drop as their choice for this entry, but I'm not buying into that. If you look at it from the standpoint of kayfabe, it's a muscular 300-pound man jumping in the air and crashing his entire leg across his opponent's throat and chest area. Let someone do that to you right now, and I bet you'd be down for at least three seconds.

In my columns, I've also stated that I'm not a fan of Big Show's Knockout Punch finisher, either. Again, in kayfabe, it's great, because it's a 400+ pound monster punching you in the face. However, if you try to think logically, if your finisher is a single punch to the face, why wouldn't you just land it five seconds into the match and get things over with? Why would you wrestle a ten-minute match, and then go for an attempt at it? If he's that big and that strong, he should be able to win all of his matches in mere seconds, right?

Instead, I went with Scotty 2 Hotty's Worm.. pause.. for the sheer ridiculousness of the entire thing. If you look at it from the world of kayfabe, it requires an opponent that is flat on his back, completely still, for upwards of an entire minute, just so Scotty can do his dance and actually hit the move. If you've incapacitated your opponent for 30-60 seconds already.. FUCKING PIN HIM! You look like an idiot going through all of the extra rigmarole when you could have already won the match. It's slightly different, of course, but it's like certain indy workers who have several legit finishers in their arsenal, but use most of them as regular moves. They go up top and hit a 450 Splash. Then they pick their opponent up and nail them with a Lariat. Then they pick their opponent up again and hit them with a Running Tigerbomb. Then they hit a Phoenix Splash and get the win. They could have pinned their opponent after the original 450. Everything else was just for show, and simply a waste of time.

If you look at the move itself.. it's a chop to the chest. Even after all the dancing and the over-the-top theatrics.. it's a chop to the chest. Just about every wrestler alive today hits opponents with chops to the chest at some point during a match, and you know what? They hit the chops much harder. Look at Ric Flair's chops. Look at when Shawn Michaels used to hit chops. Look on the indy scene, with guys like Roderick Strong and Davey Richards who chop their opponents with such force that it makes their chests bleed. Never once have you seen Scotty 2 Hotty chop someone even remotely close to that hard. It just doesn't make sense, on any level.

At least it got the crowd excited, though. In that era, there weren't too many things that elicited a bigger face pop than Scotty making that face, coming to the realization that his opponent was in position. Too Cool were really over. It's crazy to go back and watch videos from then, to see just how over they really were.

Day 7 - A Song That Reminds You Of A Certain Event

While I'm a fan of G.C. Cameron's original version of the song, I'm talking about Boyz 2 Men's version of "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday".

It's a little weird, really, because the original version of the song (from the movie, Cooley High) was about the emotions that a student feels when high school is over and you have to move on, either to college, to a job, the military, etc. However, in this generation, the song is definitely more linked to funerals and death, and is one of the most requested "funeral songs" of the last 20 years. Most people assume Boyz 2 Men were the original performers of the song, so all they know is the "lost loved ones" theme. It's with that line of thinking that I take you back to my senior year of high school.

I don't know how it works in other high schools across the globe, but at my school, we got to choose our graduation song. There was a week where the entire senior class got to submit their choices, and the senior class president (along with the rest of the student council) chose the top five vote-getters, which we then had a week to vote on. The winner was to be our graduation song. I couldn't even tell you what song I nominated, or what the other four final choices were, but "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday" won in a landslide. The Boyz 2 Men version was it, because, like I said, most people don't even know they weren't the original artists. So, of course, the biggest thought that went through their minds was trying to figure out just why the hell our graduation song was a song written about dead friends and family members. Only a few of us really knew what was happening, but there was still a weird vibe whenever we had to get together to practice singing the song for graduation.

To this day, nearly 11 years later (FML), whenever I hear the Boyz 2 Men version of the song, I think back to graduating high school, and just what an important event it was in my life.

Stay in school, kids.

Hustle
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Source: lordsofpain.net