All the WrestleManias Rich Sigwald & Tim Hackman

When Tim is away, Rich will play! While Tim enjoys the Dutch tropics, Rich toils away endlessly for content to entertain the masses. Rich comes back to you with another episode of Classical Music and Professional Wrestling. This time, Rich digs into circus music, film scores about the founding of Israel, and post-modern American music. Mix in a sprinkling of Freud, music theory, and P.T. Barnum, and you get an episode about the music and characters of Doink the Clown, Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig, and Mick Foley's Mankind. Enjoy and thanks for listening!
 
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Virginia Championship Wrestling's former World Tag Team champs, the Golden Pinky Society stop by to talk about the upcoming VCW Show on September 2 at Hampton High School. We dive deep into their disgust with friend of the show and VCW Director of Operations, Jerry Stephanitsis. We also talk a little bit about anime and the art of cosplaying, wrestling inspirations and some other stuff. Benjamin Banks and "Diamond" Victor Griff are a couple of good dudes have been singled out and targeted by the management for no reason and they're ready to fight back!

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," as Henry V says in the Shakespeare play. Tim and Rich charge back into the quixotic quest with the the nearly 4-hour bloat that is WrestleMania 28 from sunny Miami, Florida. Ironically given the tag line, "Once in a lifetime," we are greeted by a WrestleMania tradition - a squash match! We have an AEW main event between CM Punk and Chris Jericho and an end of a career match between HHH and The Undertaker, though, is it really? There's an overly emotional Big Show winning a mid-card title from a floundering mid-card Cody Rhodes. Finally, then a once in a life time match between The Rock and John Cena in the main event, but again, is it really?? With a resounding rating of "two and half our of four," Tim and Rich enjoyed this one, even though it turns out the real once-in-a-lifetime moment was the long-anticipated in-ring debut of Maria Menounos. Thanks for listening!
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Read Henry V: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/henryv/full.html

We hop in the ol' WrestleMania Time Machine and warp back to Madison Square Garden on the night of December 17, 1979. We find a strange, mysterious WWF that we're not familiar with; a WWF not owned by Vince K. McMahon dominating the pro wrestling landscape, but a northeastern territory owned by Vincent J. McMahon that has packed the most famous arena in the world. We find a diverse card reflecting the ethnic mixing bowl that is The Big Apple. We benefit from the the recently renamed WWF rejoining the NWA, which gives us not just Dusty Rhodes vs. Harley Race for the NWA World's Heavyweight Championship, but also talents from Antonio Inoki's New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJWP), the WWA from California, and other incredible stars. We encounter a young upstart named "The Fabulous Hulk Hogan" making his debut at The Garden. We think he's going to go places! We also encounter The Great Hossein Arab, later known as The Iron Sheik. Bob Backlund is in action to secretly recapture the WWF World Heavyweight Championship. Plus, Pat Patterson defends the brand new Intercontinental Championship. Thanks for listening!Support the Show: http://www.ko-fi.com/allthewrestlemanias

This week, we have the VCW Director of Operations, Jerry Stephanitsis on the show in advance of his big match for the VCW World Tag Team Championship at the Liberty Lottery on July 29. He regales us with tales of being trained by Lou Thesz and how much of a shooter he is, but Rich isn't having any of it and things get a little heated to the point that only the mutual love of a certain evil clown named Doink can cool. We talk all things wrestling, from Andy Kaufman to the rich history of professional wrestling in the Tidewater region of Virginia. You don't want to miss this episode.  Thanks for listening!
VCW Liberty Lottery featuring "Indie God" Matt Cardona: https://vcwprowrestling.com/events/
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This week we welcomed Dr. Marc Ouellette (pronounced Well-ette), associate professor of English from Old Dominion University, to the show. Dr. Marc is a life-long wrestling fan and has published on all bits of pop culture, from video games to professional wrestling and how they intertwine with gender relations and studies. We talked about his 2016 paper, "If you want to be the man, you’ve got to beat the man’: Masculinity and the Rise of Professional Wrestling in the 1990s." We get in deep on the Attitude Era of WWF and the nWo concept in WCW and the parallels between those story arcs and the changes in the portrayal of villains post-cold war in movies and tv. We also discuss the WWF's reactionary tactics to the changes in 90's American culture and angst and the paradox of choice, "A million options and choosing none" 
Dr. Marc's paper: https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_fac_pubs/90/
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