Tag Archives: Wrestling

Once I became a “Flexetarian” (flexible vegetarian: I am working more and more each day to be a full veggie-saurus, but sometimes eating meat -with exceptions- is hard for me to avoid at the moment) I started to take note of the people I follow in media who are vegan and vegetarian. The more I thought about it the more I felt as though they needed a shout-out and appreciation post, because these people are not only health, animal, and Earth conscious, but they are also just plain awesome. This will be an ongoing project, I think, seeing as I find more cool people who love the planet and it’s inhabitants every day. 

Tyrannosaurus Lexxx on Youtube

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I stumbled across Lex’s page a few months back after seeing a video from Laci Green that was about internet equality and making the internet a safe place for women. The main reason her page had popped out at me was mainly because I had created a character with the same name during college (she was a super-villain version of me that wore a silly dinosaur suit and had a fat Komodo Dragon as her companion…really old and badly drawn evidence here), Obviously I had to investigate! It turns out that Lex is a super awesome Vegan-British woman who also happens to be very funny and smart. I hadn’t actually found out about her veganism until I was searching through more of her older videos. All I had known was that she was a big proponent of Lush which specializes in cruelty free and natural based cosmetics and bath products. Along with her main channel (listed above) which is updated weekly with varying types of videos she also hosts a channel called “Girly as Hell“. It hasn’t been updated in about a year, but it still has a great amount of informative videos about veganism and cruelty free beauty products, as well as fashion and ‘haul’ videos.

 Daniel Bryan

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While Daniel Bryan is not currently a vegan, he still tries to maintain a mostly vegan diet while being on the road for WWE. He has certainly mentioned his love for vegan food in a (somewhat) recent interview, but he’s been unable to continue his veganism because of a negative reaction to soy. Many “on the go” vegan products have a soy base, and while traveling at all hours of the night/day (and feeding themselves enough calories for an athletic body) it isn’t easy to keep to a strict diet like that. I also want to mention that he and his lovely wife Brie Bella are, as the call themselves, “locavores.” Being on the road as much as they are, they always make sure to post which local farm-to-table restaurant or coffee shop they visit. It’s adorable and I’m sure it helps out the businesses in some way as well! They also have a grey water system built into their backyard in Phoenix, Arizona. These two are probably some of the most earth conscious wrestlers I’ve ever heard of and I appreciate the fact that they don’t hide it to try and keep some sort of weird “street cred” in the wrestling world. It also helps to add to Bryan’s TV persona from time to time if the story calls for it.

Beside the fact that Daniel Bryan is a super chill guy, he’s also a fantastic athlete in the squared circle. He had two amazing matches during Wrestlemania 30 which led to him becoming the World Heavy Weight Champion (until complications intervened) and is currently the Intercontinental Champion. I could go on and on, and I wanted to post some of his best matches below but WWE keeps a pretty tight lock on their best material. I’ll just post my new favorite photo of Ian and I below!!

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Mr. Ian and I got to meet Daniel Bryan last month and I gave him a little drawing and a note telling him how much I appreciate him as an athlete. It was very brief, but it made my day (week, month, year). He’s also Ian’s favorite wrestler so it was nice to be able to go with him.

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Jen’s Sunday Unpacking Tunez: Stryper

Hey everyone! Jen and her husband moved from their apartment into their new house! It’s adorable and I am beyond excited for them. This week for the Sunday reads Jen posted what she could while she still had internet, and there were a few things I had wanted to share as well, hope you all like! – Alexa

Food:

OMG, I think I died a little when I saw that someone made an adult vegan choco taco. This was the ice cream dessert for kings (at least when you were a kid)

I’ve never been fussy about my vegan butters. I use it so little, I never really used real butter that much. But this recipe for vegan butter is making me wonder if I should try it out.

Here is a brief history of the vanilla bean.

Fashion/Visuals:

So Kate from Scathingly Brilliant started to scan her old copies of Delia’s Catalogues. I thought why would anyone possibly need that?! But it is a great reflection of how much I have changed. First I never noticed how “boyish” and boxy all the styles were. I remember them being very “adult” and therefore sexy, for some reason. I also remember how bold the clothing was, and now I am like “I would wear that and not even think twice about it. EVEN the dress with the open field photo, which I remember wanting SOO bad when I was little but was afraid of how many people would STARE at me. I’ve definitely changed over the years, and am so much more confident about myself. I liked my high school (well, enough anyways) but I do think since it was so small the need to blend or disappear completely was strong. Sure I rocked a Daria look (no seriously, it was all about knee high boots, plaid skirts, and quirky shirts) but there was a line that shouldn’t be crossed. I already knew I was different, and I couldn’t wear my vintage clothing unless it was halloween, or look too goth or something. So much has changed. BTW I am pretty sure my sister or I had these dyed shirts.

I love this cute little travel video on The Cat You and Us. I want to do some videos for YouTube about veganism and traveling. But I will have to wait until I get a new computer so I can process the video. Ugh. But this video gave me hope to keep the dream.

This outfit gave me chills. Perfect hair-dress combo.

Sports

Alexa here! It’s been a really exciting week for women’s sports, and I want to talk about it some more! I unfortunately did not get to watch the Women’s World Cup, but I do think it’s fantastic that the whole event has been getting a lot of press and opening up doorways for other women’s athletics to get more notoriety. 

I really enjoyed this article about how women need to start supporting women’s sports. It’s something I’ve noticed but never really thought about until now. I’ve only recently gotten into sports recently, and it’s mostly been wrestling or UFC but I have grown to love the women’s divisions more than the men’s in some cases. Which leads me into my next link…

Why I’m Done Defending Women’s Sports. I legitimately love watching women’s wrestling. People who don’t already love wrestling don’t seem to understand ( I could say that about wrestling itself but when I mention that all my favorites are ladies I get a weird look). I too, am done with defending them, because they shouldn’t need it. 

And finally…

3 of the top women of WWE’s developmental division (NXT) debuted on RAW last Monday. The Divas division has been stale recently and I’m really hoping that this is the start of something great. While I personally think the division is full of talent the writing for the Monday night show has not done any favors for the women. Story lines are started and dropped for no reason, characters aren’t cohesive, and they don’t get a lot of time devoted to their matches. NXT is a very well written show with good character development and great athletes, and while I think it’s great to add new blood to the Divas locker room I can only hope the influence reaches high up to whoever gets a say as to how everything shakes out. I have hope…but it’s not like WWE hasn’t flopped in the department before. Only time will tell.  
 


smackdown I had the pleasure of going to another live wrestling event a few weeks ago and it was just as amazing as the first few times I’ve been. I know I’ve said this before guys…but…man oh man do I love wrestling.  We saw on TV that WWE was advertising a taping of their Friday night show “SmackDown” in Newark NJ, and since it’s so easy to get to we decided that we probably had to go. Sadly – I didn’t get a group selfie this time, I’ll have to make that a tradition from now on.  We hit a bump in the road on our way to the Prudential Center this time, the train heading that way which we had planned on taking was CANCELLED. At first it had been delayed and we figured it wasn’t a huge deal but once the announcement came over the loud speaker we knew it was too late. Mr. Ian and I couldn’t just hop into my truck and go – mostly because we were meeting Billy on the train and we would have to find parking for either us or him until after the show. The next train ended up coming on time, thankfully, we met up with Billy on said train and got to Prudential in one piece. It was then that we also met up with my friend Vinny! I got to know Vinny through working at Old Navy a year or so ago – and it wasn’t until after we both stopped working there that I found out he also loved wrestling. We both happened to be going to the same live event (also at the Prudential Center) and met up briefly during the intermission. I was just super happy that he could make it to SmackDown with us this time!  The trouble with being late to a taping though is that you miss some of the “dark matches” that may or may not happen before the show officially starts. We missed out on a match between two really awesome tag teams – The Ascension, who they seem to be bringing up from the developmental program and show NXT, and Goldust and Stardust. Mr. Ian was pretty bummed, he wore his brand new Ascension shirt and everything! I felt so bad but let’s be real, we were all just happy that the second train wasn’t cancelled too. 

Left: Goldust & Stardust Right: The Ascension

Left: Goldust & Stardust Right: The Ascension

 If I could just gush about the two men in black and yellow (urm…gold) for a moment. They are definitely two of my favorite wrestlers on the current roster – Cody Rhodes (Stardust) is a chameleon when it comes to wrestling in the ring. He’s had several different gimmicks within the last few years, and his newest one does not disappoint. He changed his move set slightly to mirror that of his (real life!) brother’s, Goldust (aka Dustin Rhodes). I don’t want to rant on and on…but I love them SO much. They are both very talented and I love watching them work!
Highlights of the Night!

Damien “Bruce Springsteen” Sandow

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Damien Sandow’s regular gimmick has been known as the “Intellectual Savior of the Masses”, he would come out in a blue robe and hold the microphone as if it were a snifter while telling everyone in the audience about how much smarter he was. It was a great character! He has currently been coming out as different people to try and confuse his opponent…part of me thinks it can be clever and funny, while the other part is just frustrated that they seem to be dropping his original persona. I don’t want Damien Sandow to turn into one of the wrestlers who just wears black trunks and gear and has almost no personality. I will admit though, this was hilarious! It was the week before 4th of July (…I told you this was a little while ago!) and WWE was in New Jersey – what better way to get a reaction out of the crowd than to have Damien come out as The Boss?

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Hey guys! I feel as though everyone knows this by now – but if you don’t, here it is… I love Professional Wrestling.  Like…really love it. I love it so much that I drunkenly stated (with GREAT emotion, on my birthday) to Mr. Ian “…I really  love wrestling!” as CM Punk was having a match on Smack Down. My first real experience with watching WWE was when Mr. Ian was getting back into it. He watched a little more regularly in the 80’s and 90’s but fell out of it as the talent got muddled and confused (around 2000). No one really stuck out for him and the writing wasn’t at it’s strongest. He had been telling me all about the matches he was watching with our good friend Billy (who should be credited for me getting into wrestling in the first place – if it wasn’t for him, this never would have happened!) and asked if I would watch an episode of Monday Night RAW with him. I wasn’t too keen on it but there was really no harm in trying something new. As we turned on the TV CM Punk came down the ramp and walked into the ring to give the WWE Universe and Paul Heyman a piece of his mind (no – it was NOT the infamous pipe bomb … if you go to the link skip ahead to about the 1:40 mark) … and I was in. He didn’t even do anything that extravagant – just started talking. That was really and honestly all it took. I think I had these pre-conceived notions that pro-wrestling would be like other sports that I had been exposed to … boring. When I saw that it was *actually* more complex than that, I became obsessed! My best way of describing it to people who ask is this: Wrestling is the best live-action-comic-book-soap opera I have ever seen. And I mean all of those things in the best way possible!       With all of that being said, I went to my first “Pay-Per-View” on March 4th – Extreme Rules!!!

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“Tres Extremos” From left to right: Me, Mr. Ian and Billy

I went with Mr. Ian and Billy, and once parked in the parking lot outside the IZOD Center we met up with our friends Rich and Ryan where we drank beer and took in everything around us and GOT HYPED for what was in store. Sorry guys…this is about to get very picture heavy!

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