Rewind: A Tribute to Eddie "Umaga" Fatu

 This article was written the day after Umaga's death in 2009, by myself while working with another website. I wanted to share this piece in order to tribute a true family man and a one of a kind entertainer, Umaga.

In the world of professional wrestling, we have seen the rise and the fall of many careers in the squared circle.

Some may frown upon the sport due to it being sports entertainment and the results are pre-planned, but some tend to be blinded in their own self assurance that wrestlers work just as hard if not harder than athletes of any other sport.

These men and women work over three hundred days per year, rarely see their families, and hardly receive time off unless there is an injury or something along those lines involved.
Needless to say that these men work to the bone to entertain us... the wrestling world, even to the point of risking their lives. Life as a wrestler is not what of which we depict on television.

The Best Match in Survivor Series History is: Team Orton vs. Team Kingston

It was a great match that had storyline, and great participants that made it the final factor in my choice. The teams were mostly even, as the up and coming mid-carder at the time, Kofi Kingston, was taking on one of the top main-eventers, Randy Orton.

It was a huge win for Kofi (or so it seemed), as he pinned CM Punk and Randy Orton, as they were the sole survivors for their team. Team Kingston was made up of Christian, MVP, R-Truth, and Mark Henry, and Team Orton was made up of CM Punk, William Regal, Cody Rhodes, and Ted DiBiase. Kofi was on the rise, getting on Orton's nerves like no one has done before.

It seemed this was Kofi's time, and the WWE proved that by giving him the huge win here. In the end, Kofi is still in the mid-card, but it was still a match with huge implications at the time. It not only surrounded this rivalry, but other ones like CM Punk and R-Truth.

Impact Wrestling: Bound for Glory Preview

When you want to find a true critic of IMPACT Wrestling over the years, you are looking at him. When I first watching TNA, I always wanted to truly enjoy the product simply because of the sheer talent on the roster as well as being a true alternative to compete with WWE. Unfortunately, all the horrible booking over the years have cost TNA and have given the company an awful reputation.

From pushing young stars aside and pushing men in their sixties to the flat out dumbfounded booking, TNA has been nothing but a let down and it got to an all time low when Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff walked into the fray. However, in the past few weeks, IMPACT Wrestling has turned things up to the point where it has been an overall better show than Raw....Raw has been at its worst of all time, arguably, but that is big for TNA to be the most entertaining mainstream product on television.

What Happened to the Hardys?

When I was a kid in the 80’s I watched wrestling religiously.  In high school I grew away from it.  One night however in the late 90’s I landed on the station playing RAW and I saw these two guys wearing baggy cargo pants and that initial image made me stop and watch.  They were different. Of course we are talking about Matt and Jeff Hardy.  

​The Hardy’s drew tons of money in the 2000’s and were over like Austin and Rock.  I have always been a wrestling fan and always pretended to wrestle on my trampoline as a kid but the Hardy’s made me want get into the business for real.  They were from North Carolina like me, and they were about my size, so I said if they can do it then so could I.  Call me a mark if you must.  I tried out for the first season of Tough Enough and as luck would have it I was selected as one of the cast members.  We met a lot of the big names during that experience.  We walked in one day and saw 2 ladders standing on the ring and on the ladders were Jeff, Matt, and Lita.  When I told them I was from NC, Matt called me “Carolina Blood” and that felt pretty cool to have something in common with those guys that nobody else in the room could claim.  

WWE/TNA Tales: The Rise and Fall of Jeff Hardy and Other Sombre Cases

When I began watching wrestling in 1998, I was relatively new to the sport when World Championship Wrestling began exploiting Scott Hall’s demons on television.

Hall was a longtime alcoholic and at times, WCW would allow Hall to wrestle intoxicated. Despite the fact that it ruined Hall's marriage to his wife Dana, Eric Bischoff and WCW Management allowed Hall to continue his destructive antics.

The angle disgusted thousands of fans to a point where his wife Dana wrote a letter about Scott and his employer.

Flowing with emotion and anger, Dana pleaded with WCW to end this angle and claimed that Scott’s alcoholism ruined their marriage, future, and future with his kids.
Dana asked that Scott’s friends help him overcome his addiction for the sake of their kids.