Pro Wrestling

Detailed Ring of Honor in Baltimore TV Taping Spoiler #1 (from January 5)

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These are live spoilers and impressions from the episode of ROH TV that will (likely) air this weekend. I have highlighted in black the portions of the show which will likely not air on television. The episode is the first TV taping from the Du Burns Arena in Baltimore on January 5.

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As far as I can recall, the Code of Honor was abided by in every match.

Match 1 – Bobby Fish & Kyle O’Reilly def. Alabama Attitude (Corey Hollis & Mike Posey) in 5.5 minutes – This match was used to establish Fish & O’Reilly as a new force in ROH. They were aggressive, efficient, and like at Final Battle, they displayed great coordination. They also showed a willingness to cheat.

Fish and O’Reilly dominated most of the match, despite Posey hitting a nice top rope leg drop. After Hollis got taken out by a suplex on the floor, Fish and O’Reilly went to town on Posey. O’Reilly held him in a delayed vertical suplex position, Fish kicked him in the gut, and O’Reilly finished him off with the brainbuster. This looks to be their finisher.

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When referee Todd Sinclair come out after this segment, a fan in the bleachers to the right of the hard camera put on a Barney Rubble mask which led to a “Bar-ney Rub-ble” chant.

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Nigel McGuinness comes out to a great ovation and “Nigel” chant.

NIGEL: At Final Battle this year…

CROWD: WHAT!?

NIGEL: …I will admit things got a little out of control.

CROWD: WHAT!?

NIGEL: (pausing to give the crowd a look, then sarcastically) Is this 1999? Same old shit! Same old shit!

Nigel then pauses to restart the segment.

NIGEL: At Final Battle last month I will admit things got a little out of control and a situation occurred between Jay Lethal and myself where I had to kick him out of the building.

CROWD: Boooooo!!!

NIGEL: Look, it’s been a month now and I want to address the situation in a public forum so that I can make my position perfectly clear. Jay Lethal, I want you to be out here face-to-face so you can hear it straight from my mouth.

Jay Lethal comes to the ring to a positive reaction overall.

NIGEL: Jay, when I became Ring of Honor matchmaker here, I knew someone was going to step up to challenge me. And I have to be honest, I didn’t think it was going to be you. Maybe Kevin Steen, maybe Charlie Haas, but you spit in my face. I had no choice but to kick you out of that building. I hope you can understand that. I had some time to think about it – I can fine you, or suspend you…look Jay, we’ve been friends a long time and go back a long way. I’m not going to do that because I understand what it’s like to get emotionally invested. Sometimes things get out of control, so Jay, I’m not going to fine or suspend you. I’m going to give you a warning.

CROWD: OOOOOOooooooooooooo…..

NIGEL: Watch my lips. This will be the last warning that you get. If you step out of line again, you will regret it.

JAY: Nigel, these last two weeks have been the most frustrating two weeks of my entire life. At Final Battle it all came to a boiling point for me. I haven’t played the role of Mr. Nice Guy, I know you can’t stand for it and I respect your position. But Nigel, respecting your position doesn’t help my situation with Kevin Steen. What will help my position with Kevin Steen however, is if you just tell me in plain English what I need to do get my ROH World Title shot against Kevin Steen.

NIGEL: It’s real simple, Jay…

JAY: Whoa whoa, Nigel, please, before you give me that whole spiel you gave at Final Battle about, “I can’t get a World Title shot unless Kevin Steen loses the belt,” I am telling you Nigel, I can’t wait until Kevin Steen loses the title. I want my Ring of Honor Title shot as soon as possible. So come up with a new answer. WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO!!!???

NIGEL: No spin. I’ll make it simple. My hands are tied. Kevin Steen had it written in stone that you won’t get a title shot while he is champion. There’s nothing I can do about it. There’s nothing you can do about it. The only person who can do anything about it is Kevin Steen. So Jay, until you can change his mind, I don’t want to hear about that match ever again.

CROWD: OOoooooo….

JAY: Nigel, I understand what I have to do.

NIGEL: Just remember, Jay, I’ve given you one warning. You won’t get a second.

JAY: That’s funny, Nigel, because I was going to say the same thing to you.

CROWD: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

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Match 2: QT Marshall (with RD Evans) def. Mike Sydal in the 1st round of the ROH Top Prospect Tournament in 6.5 minutes – Truth Martini was on commentary. Marshall is developing well as a heel and drew lots of heat. He was swamped with toilet paper streamers upon entering the ring. The crowd chanted “Marshall sucks,” which was doubly insulting because they pronounced his name incorrectly, saying [mahr-shuhl] (like federal marshall) instead of [mahr-shal] (like I shall have a donut).

In the ring, Marshall and Sydal played to their individual styles, trading power moves (Samoan drop, suplexes, whips) and speed moves (kicks, dropkicks) respectively, with no man earning a clear advantage. The tide turned with RD hit Sydal from behind and attacked him on the floor. Despite Sydal rallying to hit a top rope moonsault onto both RD Evans and Marshall on the floor (which drew an ROH chant), Marshall recovered and hit an inverted powerslam (i.e. chest first instead of back first) for the win.

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Match 3: The Briscoes retain the ROH Tag Team Championships against Cedric Alexander and Caprice Coleman in 11 minutes – This was a good match, one worth watching. The Briscoes got an ABSURD amount of streamers, but to my ears, the crowd was 55/45 in favor of C&C.

This match went through a few phases. After Mark and Cedric exchanged quick moves and counters into a standoff, C&C, who looked crisper and more cohesive to start, took over with simultaneous Topé con hilos.

The matched settled down as the Briscoes worked over Cedric. Coleman’s hot tag was punctuated by hitting suplexes on both Briscoes simultaneously. After C&C escaped the Briscoes’ Doomsday Device, Coleman hit the top rope hurricanrana and Cedric followed with the top rope splash. They pinned the Briscoes simultaneously, but both kicked out in a very close near fall.

CROWD: This is awesome! This is awesome!

Then it was the Briscoes’ turn. After Coleman was taken out with a powerbomb/neckbreaker combination, Jay hit the falcon arrow and Mark hit the top rope froggy elbow on Cedric. The crowd thought it was over, but Cedric kicked out at 2.9. The Briscoes responded by hitting the Doomsday Device and got the pin.

CROWD: That was awesome! That was awesome!

Post match, Corino and Jacobs run in and attack everybody. Then, Rhino runs out wearing a S.C.U.M T-shirt. He gores Cedric to a huge reaction as the show goes off the air.

PhotographyTravel

Anti-American Videos from the Czech Republic

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I came across an art installation in Brno, Czech Republic in the summer of 2008 (sorry, but I forget the name of the gallery).  Part of the installation was a simple television embedded in a wall.  On that screen, videos would play on a loop for about 15-30 seconds each.  I photographed frames from two of them and set them to music.

I find their anti-American sentiment to be very interesting.  The pieces were presented at a time when America was unpopular abroad, particularly because of the Iraq War, but also, as one work points out, as a result of the US’s role in globalization and rampant consumerism.  Perhaps coincidentally, at the time these videos were presented, around two-thirds of the Czech people stood opposed to a US missile-defense radar base being placed inside their country, a base ratified by parliament and signed by a visiting Sec. Condoleezza Rice several days earlier.

PersonalPhotographyTravel

Photos from the Czech Republic, Prague, Austrian Alps and More

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Better late than never, I guess.

I would like to announce that my Czech photography gallery is finally finished and available for viewing!  Click the image below or this link to check it out.  For a smaller, elite gallery of only the very best photographs, click here.

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While working in Germany during the summer of 2008, I took two short excursions outside the country.  The first was a visit to the Czech Republic organized by my friend and fellow astronomy graduate student, Pavel (the second was to Rome – this is featured in another gallery).  A Prague native, Pavel showed me the city’s ins and outs before we embarked a mini road trip that took us through Brno (the Czech Republic’s second largest city), Salzburg and the Austrian Alps.

Despite some Alpine mountains and clouds, these photographs are definitely urban-centric.  You’ll see images of Prague’s winding streets, Old Town Square and Prague Castle.  Other highlights including some interesting art pieces from a gallery in Brno, the often overlooked astronomical tower in Prague’s Clementinum, and some striking city shots from the walls of Prague Castle.

PersonalPhotographyTravel

The Grand Canyon’s Secret Waterfall (and other silly Southwestern adventures)

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In August, 2009 I took a road trip through the American Southwest. Along the way, I chronicled my adventures in the form of the video embedded below. If the video is not available, click HERE to watch it.

After some initial silliness, I detail hiking the Grand Canyon’s North Kaibob Trail. About a vertical mile down into the canyon, I arrived at a collection of waterfalls known as Roaring Springs. I ventured off-trail and scrambled up to reach a secret waterfall that few people have ever set eyes on.

Next, I include a bunch of animals just for fun. Photos and videos come from the San Diego Zoo, the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde UNESCO World Heritage Site and the famous bat bridge in Austin, Texas.

This video is part of a larger multimedia collection. Please visit http://www.mikespecian.com/photography/american-southwest/ for more.

PersonalPro Wrestling

My Radio Interview on Wrestleview International is Now Online

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Click here to listen to interview.

Like I mentioned in yesterday’s post, my Ignite talk “The Summer of Punk” has been garnering a lot of attention both in the US and abroad.  Last week, I was contacted by Darragh O’Connor, host of the Wrestleview International Desk radio show based in Dublin, Ireland.  He extended an invitation for me to come on the show to talk about my Ignite performance and a few other wrestling-related topics.

The interview aired on 92.5 FM in Dublin on Friday night and is now available online.  We went over 20 minutes and had a great discussion about many things pro wrestling-related including growing up a fan in New Jersey, race wars and a little TNA.

PersonalPro Wrestling

My Interview on 411mania Is Available

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My Ignite talk “The Summer of Punk”, in which I introduce one of the most fascinating stories in professional wrestling to a non-wrestling audience,  has generated some buzz on the Internet.  Last week, I was asked to do an interview about it with Tony Acero of 411mania.com.   You can check it out here.

In introducing the interview, Tony wrote:

A certain video has been making waves on the internet the past week or so, and it comes from a source that is altogether baffling. At an event called “Ignite Baltimore,” an astrophysicist from John Hopkins University was posed with these questions:

If you had five minutes on stage, what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? At every Ignite Baltimore 16 artists, technologists, thinkers and personalities will answer this challenge.

The possibilities are obviously endless for such an expansive mind. He could have talked about the universe, the cosmos, the density of the cosmic microwave background, Samos, ANYTHING! Instead, he chose a topic dearest to all of our hearts. Yes, readers, an astrophysicist took this daunting task of stage time and spoke about”¦.CM Punk.

Once again, you can check out the interview here.  It’s about halfway down the page.

PersonalPhotographyPro Wrestling

The Summer of Punk

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I am extremely happy to debut my Ignite Baltimore presentation, The Summer of Punk.  It’s also available on Vimeo.

Ignite is an event in response to this question:

If you had five minutes on stage, what would you say?  What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?  At every Ignite Baltimore 16 artists, technologists, thinkers and personalities will answer this challenge.

I applied to speak in the beginning of August and my proposal, along with 15 others, was officially accepted on September 16.  This left me almost exactly one month to get ready.

Even though I’ve given over 500 speeches in my life (mostly through debate), the constraints of this format were totally new to me.  Not only did my speech have to be exactly 5 minutes in length, it also had to coincide with slides changing every 15 seconds.  If I forgot a phrase or fell too far behind, I’d be sunk.  Word choice was critical.

I struggled mightily with trying to explain what professional wrestling is, what’s good and bad about it, the major players, their motivations, the conflict in question and its resolution in 300 seconds.  I wrote/transcribed almost 10 full pages of material, nearly all of which I ultimately threw away.  There were times where I thought there was no possible way I could tell the story in under 7 minutes.  I reworked the entire format no fewer than 4 times.  All the while I had a Blaise Pascal quote in my head, “I apologize for the length of this letter but I didn’t have time to make it shorter.”

But after days of hard work and countless rehearsals in the shower, I showed up at the Brown Center of the campus of Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) on October 18 ready to go.

An interesting feature of Ignite is that the steering committee doesn’t actually see any of the talks until they are performed for a live audience.  Beyond the application, there is no vetting process!  (Somehow this system has worked so far.)

The only exception is the optional rehearsal held a couple hours before the show.  I arrived early to scope out the room and figure out where I was going to position my cameras.  I knew that Ignite always recorded a feed from the back of the auditorium but it never picked up crowd noise, was stationary and had too low a resolution.  I set up my sister with a telephoto lens connected to a Nikon camera on the left and my friend with a Flip camcorder on the right.  You’ll notice these feeds in the video.

Once that was set, I hopped on stage for my rehearsal.  In front of me was the Brown Center auditorium – sold out tonight – with a seating capacity of 525.  On the edge of the stage a few feet in front of me was a computer monitor that would cycle through my slides.  As I began speaking, I focused so much of my attention on moving my eyes around the auditorium that when I tried to sync my speech with the monitor, I forgot my lines.  It took what felt like an eternity (it was actually about 3 seconds) to glance at the screen, remember where I was and recover.

It wasn’t the worst screw-up ever, but it made me a nervous wreck.  Instead of focusing on the other talks, I obsessively ran my lines over and over and over again in my head.  Because I was third to last, I stewed in my own nervous juices for almost two hours.  15 minutes before my speech, my tripod literally fell to pieces and we had to jerry-rig the thing back together.  In a moment of panic, I debated whether I should bring the script on stage with me, like 10 other speakers had.

But one thing I’ve learned is while I’m an emotional jitterbug before presentations, once I start speaking everything’s usually totally cool.  I noticed that three-quarters of the talks before mine focused on some aspect of Baltimore, e.g. turning its neighborhoods into “playborhoods”, why the city is pathologically modest or how there’s a lot of beauty to be found off Rt. 95.

This is what inspired my opening line and it put me more at ease.  That almost no one in the audience admitted to being a fan of pro wrestling was a welcome challenge.  The best feature of speaking on stage is that there are bright lights in your eyes the entire time, turning the audience into an anonymous cloud of silhouettes.  Beyond saying the word “now” too much and “disagree” twice, I didn’t have any major screw-ups.

After, a number of people approached me to comment on how they enjoyed the talk and how they had never thought about wrestling in that way before.  That night I received a Facebook friend invite from someone at the event.  I politely declined, but he sent a very flattering note regardless,

Hey Mike! Didn’t get a chance to meet you in person last night to say “great fucking job.” You spoke with passion and professionalism, never missing a beat with the slides. It seemed like you truly entertained an audience of people who likely believe wrestling is a lowest common denominator form of entertainment. That’s quite a feat! I look forward to seeing your speech go viral within the internet wrestling community. Great fucking job!

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