Did anyone else know about the (seemingly legit) beef between Undertaker and Brock Lesnar?

This video is pretty interesting. Couldn’t possibly be a worked shoot. Right?

Insane awesomeness from John Podhoretz.

A bunch of catch-up items:

* I’ve got another longish essay on Obama’s vanity. I’ll stop writing these pieces when he stops giving me material.

* Galley Friend Mike Russell has a long, angry, awesome defense of David Foster Wallace.

* President Obama wants to remind Americans that just because they elected him president three years ago, they’re not off the hook for being a bunch of racists yet.

* The history of the Nature Boy’s legal and financial problems is yet another depressing chapter in the story that is professional wrestling. Styling and profiling have their costs.

* That over-under we had going on when Perry would overtake Romney in the RCP average was a sucker’s line. Perry passed Romney on 8/24. The next question is, when does Perry open up a double-digit lead? Before, or after, Ron Paul passes Romney? We’ll have more–lots more–on Mitt Romney . . . coming up next!

If you want to order one of these and send it to me, it will look great on the wall of my office the next time I do a WSJ webcast.

Galley Friend J.S. sends along this dynamite profile of alt-wrestling star Colt Cabana. It’s worth reading as a lifestyle piece even if you’re not interested in wrestling.

That said, it reinforces my suspicion that CM Punk’s anti-WWE diatribe of a few weeks ago wasn’t just the greatest worked-shoot in the history of wrestling. (Unless the Montreal Screwjob was really a deep work.) It was also a seminal moment in wrestling: It represented mainstream wrestling’s first attempt to completely assimilate alt-wrestling.

Wrestling has always had minor leagues. Once upon a time, the entire enterprise was nothing more than a collection of minor-league road shows. But in the last ten years or so, there has emerged a kind of wrestling that isn’t just minor league, but fundamentally different. You could think of it like this: alt-wrestling is to the WWE what the Suicide Girls are to Playboy.

As the alt-wrestling subculture grew, the WWE tried to contain it, and sometimes co-opt it (by putting guys like Cabana and Punk under contract). But with the angle they’re currently playing with Punk, they’re doing something more: It’s like they’ve given up trying to subsume it. Instead, they’re attempting to meld the two, incorporating aspects of alt-wrestling into their mainstream product. If it works, it could change mainstream wrestling.

Look, I know what we’re supposed to think abut Simmons. And lots of the criticisms of his schtick are valid. But this column is just awesome. The links alone are worth the price of admission. And for my money, I’m in total agreement with his top two.

Update: From Galley Friend A.W.

Holy crap, I forgot how good Vince McMahon’s entrance theme was. Between the theme songs for McMahon, DX, and Chris Jericho, the WWF pretty clearly had on retainer the greatest Rage Against the Machine cover band of the decade.  DX’s theme, for example, was simply a rip-off of Killing in the Name Of.

But the New Age Outlaws’ theme deserves nothing but scorn.  Their call-and-response gimmick was entertaining for a couple of weeks, but before long it had overtaken every headliners entire interview gimmick — the NAOs, Stone Cold, the Rock, Angle, all of them, their segments devolved into a mess of predictable one-liners all lined up in a row.  And that’s the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so.

Galley Friend A.W.–a smark–reveals the embarrassing extent to which I’m merely a mark. Concerning the C.M. Punk off-script rant, A.W. writes,

Skimming the TV menu, I see a listing for a show called WWE A.M. Raw.  Here’s the description: “CM Punk steps way over the line.”

Ouch.

Go watch this now, before WWE disappears it. It’s the new Montreal Screwjob. And C.M. Punk is the new Roddy Piper. Epic.

The Masked Man (now writing for Grantland!) has an exegesis.

Deadspin’s Masked Man has a farewell to Randy Savage. Fantastic:

The “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” of the average Savage interview functionally defined the paranoid style in American pro wrestling.

The video clips in the piece are great, too.

It’s a sad, sad day–Randy Savage has died of (surprise!) a heart attack. He was 58.

The Macho Man probably belongs on the Mt. Rushmore of wrestling–at least of the modern, post-regional era. He was a force of such wild charisma (and physical talent) that he was the only guy in the Hogan-era of the WWF who was capable of pulling the promotion’s center of gravity away from the Hulkster who was, for nearly a decade, the entire WWF franchise.

You could see the foundation of Macho’s act early in his ICW days (check out this fantastic promo) and he made for a great heel when he arrived in the WWF in the mid-’80s. But in 1985 he crushed Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat’s larynx, creating what is, for my money, the gold standard of wrestling feuds. (Go to the 2:50 mark here and watch (1) Savage “crush Ricky Steamboat’s throatal region”; Steamboat sell the move as well as anyone has ever sold; and (3) the crowd go absolutely nuts.) The feud put Savage over as the dominant heel; created a year-long, slow-play drama; told a story with a beginning, middle, and end; and climaxed in such a way as to both give proper moral resolution and continue to elevate Macho. It was epic work from Macho, Steamboat, and the writers and maybe the high-water mark of the ’80s WWF.

By 1987, the Macho Man had so much heat that the WWF simply had to turn him face and it was only once he was side-by-side with Hogan in the “Mega Powers” that Hogan really started to look small. For all the camp about Hulkamania, Hogan knew what he was selling and how to do it well. But when Savage was next to him, suddenly it became clear who the real icon was.

I’ll leave you with a couple of Savage promo montages. Watching him pirouette and pause and point with his pinky should help dull the pain. For my money, there’s only one other wrestler I’ve seen that I would class with Macho as the best there is, the best was, the best there ever will be.

History beckons the Macho Man.

Galley Friend S.B. sends along this link to Bodog, which is taking action on this weekend’s upcoming WrestleMania. Someone who knows more about gambling will have to give a definitive answer, but S.B. says he thinks that the minus number is the favorite.

If that’s the way it works, then it looks like the Undertaker moves his streak to 19 and Snooki earns a Cyndi Lauper-style victory.

I’m not sure how Bodog can take bets on something that’s scripted–it seems like there’s a huge opportunity for a fairly large universe of people with insider information to cash in.

Galley Friend A.W. calls attention to Deadspin’s Captain Lou Albano essay. It’s well worth your time. I had to read a bunch of wrestling books a few months ago when I was writing about Linda McMahon and until then I hadn’t realized how big a deal the Lou Albana/Cyndi Lauper Rock’n’Wrestling gimmick was for the industry. As a kid, I had always thought that it was a goof, but it turned out to be the big solid-fuel booster for the WWF’s ascent during the ’80s.

Key point:

But Albano’s appearance on MTV is the moment modernity at last entered the petrified WWF. And rather than evict Albano for crossing the line, Vincent K. McMahon, who had recently taken over the company from his father, embraced the crossover appeal it provided. It would prove to be a savvy business decision, but it would also bring to wrestling what modernity brings to every precinct it touches: a culture that values ratings over tradition and histrionics over history, a culture in which everything is disposable, a culture of … whatever.