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Submitted by Sheepster on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:29 PM EST 
 I’ve been busy going to various places and events recently. Most notably, I spent a week in Orlando, Florida. While there, I took the opportunity to watch Wrestlemania XXIV live in the Citrus Bowl. I also decided to mosey along to the Hall of Fame ceremony, and the post-Mania Monday Night Raw as well. I was there with a few friends, and a whole bunch of people from LordsofPain came along too. Most notably, the main page’s very own Hustle, and part of LOPforums’ moderation team, Pen15 and Mac. Fun times were had by all. So much fun, in fact, that we’re all doing it again. Most of us have tentatively agreed to turn up to Houston next year, and several others who missed out this year have also joined the list. If you wish to register interest in coming to Wrestlemania 25, come join us in the forum thread about it. 2009 LoPForums Wrestlemania/ROH Weekend Yep. It says ROH as well. Some of the guys are ROH fans, and if ROH goes to Houston next year, they’ll be looking forward to those shows more than Wrestlemania itself. They persuaded me to go see a show and it was awesome. Those people do crazy things to themselves. Seriously, if you’re old enough and you’ve always wanted to go to Wrestlemania but never had anyone to go with, come with us next year. We had a right old laugh (when our cell-phones finally worked). Meanwhile, on with the show. I was chatting to a friend when the subject of Rey Mysterio came up. I immediately voiced my displeasure for Mysterio. The friend was quick to defend him but that just made matters worse. Every argument I heard for Mysterio being a favourite could be batted down by my own possibly biased opinions. And with every back-and-forth I got madder and madder. This is my rant. I hate you, Rey Mysterio.  I’ve never liked cauliflower cheese. Cauliflower on its own? Tasty. Cheese melted on other foods? Delicious. But putting the two together just destroys any flavour you could hope to get from either staple. And when you cook cauliflower cheese, invariably it comes out burnt. Not only did it start of with little hope of tasting nice, you’ve now got carbonated cheese to contend with. If I had to make a list of my worst foods, I’d put cauliflower cheese right on the bottom with tree bark just above it. I’d put mud sandwiches above cauliflower cheese. I’d put wallpaper paste above cauliflower cheese. That’s how much I despise cauliflower cheese. Cauliflower cheese is the pinnacle of what is wrong with the world today. I’d put money on it that wars have been started over cauliflower cheese. Okay, perhaps not. But I’d bet the people who started these wars were at least fed cauliflower cheese as a child. Rey Mysterio. You’re the cauliflower cheese of wrestling.  You’re A Scrawny Little Runt Much like cauliflower cheese, you have no nutritional value. Have you ever seen a film called ‘Alive!’? It’s the one where a sports team crashes into a snowy mountain range and must eat the dead to survive. Imagine this happening to the Smackdown crew back in the early-to-mid 2000s. Big Show could probably eat a whole Rey Mysterio and still have room for a rack of JBL spare ribs and a Stacy Cobbler. I’m not telling you this to explain how hungry Big Show can get, or how little meat Mysterio has on his bones. I’m simply showing you the size difference. Rey Mysterio cannot believably take on the heavyweights of WWE. Every single time I’ve seen him down Mark Henry, Khali and Big Show, I’ve shaken my head in disbelief. When he won the Royal Rumble I was apoplectic. I didn’t mind when Mysterio was vying for the now-obsolete Cruiserweight title. That’s his thing. And I wouldn’t mind if he wanted to mix it up in the US or Intercontinental divisions. MVP and Chris Jericho are close to his size. I can imagine him beating them easily. But when you get to the Heavyweight division, you start getting out of the ordinary. The Heavyweight titles are the biggest prizes in wrestling. That’s where the nutritional value is in wrestling. I want to turn on and see titanic monsters clash over these titles. Triple H, Dave “The Chimp” Batista, John Cena… and even Randy Orton and Edge to an extent. I’m quite a big guy, but these guys look like they could crush me. Mysterio looks like he could barely crush a grapefruit. It’s a rule of nature. If someone can eat you whole and leave room for dessert, you can’t take them in a fight. I don’t care how fast or tricky you are; you’re not going to win without help. Gazelles are pretty fast animals, but the lion always gets its meal in the end. You’re Not A Heavyweight Cauliflower cheese does not contain any meat whatsoever. As such, it cannot contend with the likes of Toad in the Hole or Beef Stroganoff when handing out the title of “World’s Greatest Meat Dish”. I’ve mentioned the logistical problems in Mysterio taking on the heavyweights. Now how about the more logical problems? See, I always thought there were reasons for the rules and the weight divisions. Allow me to indulge for a moment, if you will. In boxing, much fuss is made when a boxer moves from his original weight division to another. Wales’ own Joe Calzaghe has moved up from super middleweight to light heavyweight. To be a super middleweight, you must weigh between 160lbs and 168lbs. To be a light heavyweight, you must weigh between 168lbs and 175lbs. They’re making a fuss over a 10lbs weight change! Calzaghe’s opponent has been light heavyweight for a couple of years, so he may have more power in his punches. By gaining weight, Calzaghe may lose a bit of his speed. If this is the commotion that’s caused when a boxer gains a couple of pounds, how are we meant to believe that a man with a THREE-HUNDRED POUND weight disadvantage can possibly win a wrestling match where the whole point is to cause damage by throwing your opponent around?? Back in 2003, Matt Hardy had to lose some weight before he was allowed to compete for the Cruiserweight title. He had to get down to 215lbs. I thought this was awesome. Then, just 3 years later, Rey Mysterio is allowed to compete in the heavyweight division, no questions asked, despite being severely underweight?? Mysterio is a cruiserweight and should not be allowed to compete in the heavyweight division until he gains the appropriate amount of weight to do so. It’s for his own safety more than anything. I know comparing boxing and wrestling is like comparing apples and oranges, but they’re still both types of fruit. You Can’t Stay Healthy I like crunchy, barely-cooked cauliflower. But when cooking cauliflower cheese, the cauliflower looses all semblance of strength. Unless you cook it absolutely perfectly, it turns into a gooey mess. Rey Mysterio has been wrestling with his same half-baked lucha style since 1989. It would seem that 15 years of this has turned his body into a gooey mess. Let us investigate his short time with WWE. July 25, 2002: Mysterio debuts on Smackdown, fighting Chavo Guerrero. Four months of uninterrupted action. December 5, 2002: Mysterio is taken out by Albert. He then undergoes arthroscopic knee surgery. January 16, 2003: Mysterio returns. Three months of uninterrupted action. April 23, 2003: Big Show throws Mysterio into a turnbuckle whilst strapped to a stretcher. He is shaken up after the event and spends the night in hospital for observation. Three and a half years of uninterrupted action. Nice work, Rey. October 20, 2006: Chavo Guerrero defeats Rey Mysterio in an "I Quit" match. November 3, 2006: Mysterio comes out on crutches and promises to return some day. Chavo Guerrero takes him out. He then has more knee surgery. August 26, 2007: Mysterio returns triumphantly to defeat Chavo Guerrero. Five months of uninterrupted action. February 14, 2008: Mysterio suffers a bicep injury during an overseas tour. He’ll be out for 6 months. That’s an average of about a year between injuries. You get 12 months of wrestling from the guy, and then he’s gone for another 6 to 10. And when he does wrestle, he’s pushing on through other nagging injuries. This month marks the start of his 19th year in the business. That’s commendable for any wrestler. Then you think about the style that he uses and that longevity becomes quite impressive. He’s had 19 years of flinging himself across the ring at people. Now it’s time to take the Ric Flair route and settle down. Learn a few rest-holds or something. Only climb the turnbuckle if you’re expecting to be thrown off. My handy “Guide to Old Age Wrestling” might help. And please, Mr. Mysterio. For all our sakes… learn how to wrestle. You Can’t Wrestle You, sir, are bland and boring. Even if I could stand cauliflower cheese, I’d get pretty bored of it after eating it 3 times a week. Other more wholesome meals keep me wanting more. I eat cereal every morning. I buy a box and go through it in about two weeks, and I still want more at the end of it. It can take me a good month or two to get bored of a particular brand of cereal. And even when I do get bored of it, I’ll probably want the same brand again in a few months. It never gets old. Unlike you. Mysterio does the same things in every match. Yes, I’ll agree with you; other wrestlers do it too. If you’re not particularly fond of John Cena (Hi Hustle!), you may say that he only knows two moves and that he uses them 17 times in a match. But at least he makes it interesting. I can name most of the moves that I’ve seen him use and they’re all proper old-school wrestling moves. I can believe it when he uses one of these old-school moves to pick the Big Show up and it just adds to the theatre of it all. Conversely, I can barely believe it when Mysterio picks Cena up, and so Mysterio must rely on a strange set of luchador moves that don’t look as credible. Don’t get me wrong. It looks impressive and I gawp whenever he lands a spinning 1280 leg drop splashsault perfectly. However, I don’t believe that someone like Triple H is going to stay down after a spinning 1280 leg drop splashsault from Mysterio. That’s like throwing a brick at his stomach. It’ll smart for a few minutes but that’s about it. I suppose it’s not really Mysterio’s fault. He can’t help who he is, and he’s made the best of what he came with. It’s just a shame he isn’t any bigger. Chavo Guerrero is just 3 inches taller but 50lbs heavier than Mysterio, and he’s far more believable in my mind. If he landed on Triple H’s stomach, I could expect that Triple H isn’t getting up again. Maybe it’s because I was taller than Mysterio by the time I was 12. I don’t know. What I do know is that I didn’t like eating cauliflower cheese then and I still don’t now. A Culinary Culmination ‘Eat your vegetables’ we’re told when we’re young. ‘You’ll grow up big and strong’. Well, there are more vegetables than just cauliflower cheese. You know how some anti-vegetable kids add ketchup to their peas or cover their potatoes in gravy, just to make it taste nice? Cauliflower cheese is what pro-vegetable kids eat to finally realise what those anti-vegetable kids have been going through all these years. If I must eat vegetables, there are plenty of vegetables out there that I do like. Chavo Guerrero, Tajiri, Jamie Noble, Gregory Helms… these are all vegetables I enjoy. Perhaps I enjoy them because they’re all bigger than Mysterio by at least 40lbs. Or perhaps because they don’t pretend to be something they’re not, like cauliflower cheese does. “Hey! Look at me! I’m a complete balanced meal!” No, you’re not. You’re a vegetable with cheese. Drop the cheese, stay with the rest of the vegetables and leave the meatheads to get on with their own wrestling.   This week, we take a look at The Rock’s brief encounter with facial hair. Back in the early months of 2004, Evolution was riding the wave of their success and WWE was hyping up the biggest PPV of its history. Wrestlemania XX, where it all began… again. Throughout January and February, Randy Orton had taunted Mick Foley endlessly after he spat in Foley’s face. There were numerous beatdowns before Foley stood up to Orton and the rest of Evolution. He was just waiting for a little bit of help. He was just waiting for the right time to strike. And on March 1st, 2004, he decided it was time. Mick Foley announced the return of the Rock… and the Rock brought a little friend of his own. The 5 O’clock Shadow, as it was known then, ran down to the ring along with the Rock and Foley, and the three of them took Evolution out. For the next two weeks, the Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection was back. This culminated in a 3-on-3 match at Wrestlemania XX where Mick Foley, the Rock and the Shadow took on Randy Orton, Dave “the Chimp” Batista and Ric Flair. The match was going well until a Dave the Chimp clothesline hit the Shadow full in the face. This legitimately injured the Shadow. When pinned, the Rock was luckily able to kick out at 2 and get the tag to Foley. The Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection went on to lose the match and the Rock left wrestling for good, but the Shadow wasn’t going to let things conspire against him. The Shadow would be out of action for 18 months thanks to a sprained lip. With the Rock long-gone, the WWE creative team were scratching their heads over what to do with the Shadow. They toyed with the idea of teaming him up with Jillian Hall, but that fell through. Finally, they settled on teaming him up with a monster about to make his debut. On April 7, 2006, the Great Khali debuted on Smackdown alongside the Shadow to become one of the most dominant teams in recent history. Just over a year later, the Shadow helped Khali to win the World Heavyweight title. He rode into the business on the coat-tails of a legend, but now he’s a star in his own right. It truly is one of the most remarkable facial hairpieces of wrestling.  Happier days  Thank you all for reading and for bearing with me through my dire time-keeping skills. Now that the Wrestlemania trip and various other obstacles are behind me, I think I’ll be a bit more regular. See you soon… If you’d like to leave a message, reach me at the UTF Mailbox: underthefleece@yahoo.co.uk, or you can log onto the forums here and find my Feedback thread in the Feedback forum. Have a good week, everyone. This is Under the Fleece… over and out. DISCLAIMER: This article has been created using nothing more than over-the-top opinions, hostile hyperbole and a Delia Smith cookery book, and any conclusions reached in this column are purely for entertainment purposes. Very few animals were harmed in the making of this column. *NEW GALLERY* Simply AMAZING Gallery Dedicated to Amy "Lita" Dumas HOT POSES!
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