Yo!
Sorry this was late.
Last Sunday night, we had an appointment in Lynbrook to see the Doctor.
The doctor in question was none other than Dr Cool, Jay Klang, billed from Los Angeles, Coolafornia.
Dr. Cool is part of the Create-A-Pro Wrestling Academy, a training site in Hicksville, where aspiring Pro Wrestlers go to learn all the tricks of the trade, not just the moves in the ring, but also character development, plot twists, promotion, everything that goes into the show.
Dr. Cool, in real life is the nephew of my best bud and co-editor Karl (the Ace) Ludwig. I have never been to a wrestling event in my life. Timmy goes with my brother-in-law every year to see the WWE at the Garden. I’ve been curious, but not enough to go.
But going to watch the Dr. in action would check off a few boxes. I’d be supporting quite possibly my favorite family outside of my own, I get to spend some quality time with Timmy, who loves this stuff, and I’d get to witness a wrestling card live for the first time.
The card was at the Lynbrook Knights of Columbus, the big crucifix hanging on the wall right outside the ring gave the whole thing a Rocky Balboa-Spider Rico vibe.
We got there late so the first match was already going on as we walked in. I couldn’t believe the size of some of the guys in the ring, TV doesn’t do these dudes justice. Tim told me a couple of the guys in the ring had actually wrestled in the WWE, and I can believe it.
We ran into my bud Ed (Auggie) DePuy and his two sons, Brendan and James. Long time readers of Weekly Mail might remember Brendan, I wrote about him a ton when he was a baby. He’s 20 now, and James is 18.
And thank goodness too, because I have to say, it was some crowd that goes to these matches. I figured it would be mostly friends and family of the participants, but I think a lot of these fans are die-hards. One guy I saw I was convinced was Mike (Cubby) Sanfillippo, Auggie’s brother in law. I went to say hello, and while he was nice, he wasn’t’ Mike. And he thought I was trying to steal his spot.
Catching up with Auggie and the boys was cool (especially when James pointed out the dude who looked just like Uncle Cubby) and the matches were fairly entertaining. Besides Dr Cool’s match, my favorite segment was an interview show in the ring hosted by a guy names JGeorge, a Jimmy (Mouth of the South) look alike, who wore a red sports jacket and red pants. He was one of the obnoxious bad guys (a heel in wrestling vernacular). He came out later on and tried to disrupt another match and got clobbered for his efforts. There was one guy whose entrance music was Against All Odds by Phil Collins (if you think that was weird to read, you should have seen how weird it was when I was there) Another tag team’s entrance song was I Want it That Way by the Backstreet Boys. Strangely enough, though the crowd looked like they were as far from a BSB crowd as one could get, everyone seemed to know the words. Go Figure.
Dr. Cool’s was the second to last match, and we were joined by his dad Steve and his younger brother Will. (Jay and Will’s mom Jen, is Karl’s sister and another dear friend of ours) He was in what was called a Lumberjack Match. Each wrestler has about 5 or 6 guys outside the ring, the idea being if you leave the ring, they’ll grab you and toss yo a$$ back in. Often times, if you end up outside the ring in near where your opponents people are, they tune you up a bit. That’s what happened when Dr. Cool ended up out there. Luckily, his pals came over and helped out. They got the Good Doctor back in the ring, where he was able to pin his opponent and send his fans home happy. Indeed, Eddie, Steve, myself and the boys all headed for the exits as soon as Dr. Cool’s match was over.
I know pro-wrestling is not everyone’s cup of tea, and if you’re going to tell me that Vince McMahon is one of America’s more despicable people, well you’ll get no argument here. But watching these young folks establishing their characters and personas was a treat. I’m biased because I’ve known him since he was a baby, but Jake is a phenomenal performer. You can teach only so much, the rest is natural talent. He’s a natural. And I can’t wait to see where he goes from here.
OK, from there we go to the news of last week..
TELEVISION- Whoopi gets suspended...
View co-host and actress/comedienne Whoopi Goldberg was suspended by ABC last week for making "wrong and hurtful comments" about the Holocaust.
The panel was discussing a Tennessee School Board's banning of the book Maus, a graphic novel dealing with the Nazi death camps during WWII. Goldberg's head scratching comment was that the Holocaust was not about race.
When I first heard about this, my first reaction was "WTF is she talking about?" So I watched the clip. To me, the money quote was actually what she said before the race comment...... "This is white people doing it to white people, this is y'all fighting amongst yourselves." It was several minutes after she dropped that beauty, that she came back with
"If you're going to do this, let's be truthful about it, because the holocaust isn't about race....no, its not about race.... it's about man's inhumanity against man."
So let's start with the obvious.. to say that race played no part in the holocaust is, I mean as wrong as wrong can be. Hitler was trying to wipe out an entire race of people. I mean we can all agree on that right?
Right.
To say that it's about man's inhumanity against man is not wrong or even controversial, because the Holocaust might be the greatest example of inhumane behavior in the history of the world. But you combine that with, "This is y'all (white people) fighting amongst yourselves" to me, that's where she trivialized the whole thing. IMHO, that's where the punishment is warranted.
I hear a lot of talk about "cancel culture" lately. I mean, think about it, the View people were discussing book banning, which is what led to Goldberg's infamous comments. As someone who writes and posts almost every week, I do tend to give the benefit of the doubt on many of these issues. Even writing about this whole mess, I find myself having internal debates..... Do I really want to go down this road? What if I write something that offends someone? Discussions of the Holocaust always run that risk. It's such a painful part of human history, and it needs to be discussed, so that we never go through it again.
But there's been something that's been sticking in my craw about this whole thing.......
Several years ago, the View had Fox News bigshot Bill O'Reilly on as a guest, mainly so he could promote whatever his latest book was. The discussion on the couch got around to the hot button topic at the time...a proposed mosque either at or very close to Ground Zero. At one point in the discussion, O'Reilly said that "Muslims attacked us on 9/11" This statement, caused Goldberg and her colleague Joy Behar to storm off the set, to a mixture of cheers and jeers. O'Reilly amended his statement to what admittedly he should have said from the beginning.... "Extremist Muslims attacked on 9/11" He could have said Fundamentalist Muslims too, but we all get the point. I truly don't believe he was suggesting that the entire religion was attacking America.
It just bothers me that Goldberg was so up in arms over what O'Reilly said that she had to walk off right there on live TV, but then treat the slaughter of 6 million Jewish people in such a flippant way. "Y'all fighting amongst yourselves" She says she's sorry. Again I can forgive anyone misspeaking, or especially miswriting. Something like this though, it sounds more like a long held belief rather than a misstep. You want to give her another chance after her two week suspension, so be it. But don't be shocked something similar happens again.
LAWSUITS: Brian Flores vs. the NFL....
Former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a class action lawsuit in federal court last Monday, accusing the NFL (in general) and the Dolphins, Giants and Broncos in particular of racism in their hiring practices.
He cited a text he got from his former boss, Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who sent a congratulatory text to Flores, three days before he was set to interview for the Giants job. Turns out at least according to Flores, that Belichick meant to sent the text to Brian Daboll, another former Pats assistant, who had interviewed that day. Flores believes that Daboll was the choice all along, and that his interview was nothing more than the Giants covering themselves under the Rooney Rule-the rule put in place that requires all teams conducting searches for coaches interview at least one minority candidate. Flores claims the same things happened when he interviewed three years ago for the same position with the Broncos, going so far as to accuse Bronco GM John Elway of showing up to the interview an hour late and "hungover"
Ouch!
The worst of the allegations were made against the man who actually did give Flores a job, Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, who Flores says tried to pay him to lose games during the 2019 season. If that is shown to be true, Ross may be forced to sell the team.
Now obviously this has to work it's way through the courts, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around these allegations. I mean I understand the idea of tanking, but I don't really believe that teams do that. I mean, you maybe give younger guys longer looks, or you give your injured players more time to heal, but I always believe coaches are doing their damndest to win. To actually instruct your coach to lose? Yeah I'm having a hard time with that.
Here's my $0.02 on all this...
1) When the Giants won the Super Bowl in 2008 and 2012, it was all champagne and roses for John Mara. Everyone talking about what a class act he was. Now that they have been losing for the last few years, it's fake flowers and supermarket wine. On Carton and Roberts, the week leading up to Michael Strahan's jersey retirement. the two hosts were suggesting Mara shouldn't show up, lest he be booed out of Met Life Stadium. Mara's father went through the same thing, you recall I recently quoted an old Mike Lupica column in which he compared Wellington Mara unfavorably to our future 45th President. Kept referring to him as Well Mara. Two Super Bowls later, Lupica referred to him as Mr. Mara and called him the greatest owner in NFL History.
But as much heat as the younger Mara has taken of late, I don't believe anyone really believes him to be a racist. Forget that he had an African-American GM for many years, many of the Giants players, both White and African-American have spoken warmly of him. They may have handled this clumsily, but I don't believe it was done maliciously.
2) I will however be very interested to see if Flores can prove that Elway and Broncos owner John Ellis were hungover during Flores interview in Denver 3 years ago. Does Flores have a list of Denver area bartenders he's going to call to testify? Elway came out and strongly denied the allegations.
3) What this all boils down to is the wisdom and good intentions of the Rooney Rule. Let's face it, over 30 years since Art Shell broke the color barrier for NFL Head Coaches, we are pretty much back at square one. Right now, the only African American coaches in the NFL is recently hired Texans coach Lovie Smith and longtime Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, who was hired interestingly enough, by the Rooney family. (The Steelers also replace coaches as often as Hailey's Comet comes around- they've had 3 coaches since 1969-think about THAT for a minute)
That we sit here in 2022 with only two head coaches of color is just unacceptable. Whatever comes of this lawsuit, it's obvious now that the Rooney rule has to be revisited. There were always going to be issues with it. I remember many years ago, the 49ers got rid of coach Steve Mariucci and the Lions wanted to hire him straight away. I think the Lions got hit with a hefty fine for not interviewing any minority coaches, but at the time, Mariucci was clearly the best candidate available and really wanted to come to Detroit. I don't believe for a minute there was any malice intended by the Lions. (Mariucci had the misfortune of coaching for perhaps the worst GM in NFL History-Matt Millen)
I know another issue that has come up of late is the rule that you can't interview coaches on staffs that are in the playoffs. Before they hired Rob Saleh, I really wanted the Jets to hire Chiefs OC Eric Bieniemy But with the Chiefs having been to 4 straight AFC Championship games not to mention 2 Super Bowls, it's been hard for Bieniemy to get an interview. Almost like he's being punished for success. My college team lost their head coach as they were preparing for a bowl game, so I really don't know what the answers are.
It took a lot of guts for Flores to do what he did, and that he did it two weeks before the Super Bowl was particularly gutsy. As I said, I'm fascinated to see how this all plays out.
As for the Super Bowl tomorrow night, my prediction is that either the Bengals win in a squeaker, or the Rams blow them out. I don't see Cincy winning big. Like I said before, the other two times the Bengals were in the Super Bowl, they were at least competitive games. My gut is leading me to believe this will be another one.
Another Weekly Mail coming out tomorrow night at halftime.
Stay Safe.
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