Ever heard of this asshole?

[The Curmudgeon]

I know a few of you, Trashcanman especially, who are into UFC/MMA etc, so I wondered if you'd seen or heard of this guy before?



Daniel Puder, a legit MMA/UFC cage fighter that was signed by WWE a few years back, when they tried to merge the two fighting styles (never a good idea. One is rolling around on the floor and the other is, well, fake).

Anyway, back then, if you wanted someone who could do both, the showmanship of wrestling and the legit tough bastard who could mix it up with these guys, you went to Kurt Angle.



The guy won an Olympic medal for wrestling ("with a broken freakin' neck!!") and was up there - easily - with Brock Lesnar as one genuinely BAD motherfucker.

So, during a WWE show called "Tough Enough", where rookies try and make it into WWE, they had Kurt Angle pick fights with a few of the rookies and beat them easily. And one guy he then went to fight was Daniel Puder.

Here's the link, and the text next to the video tells the story.

www.wrestlinggonewrong.com/video/puder_angle_shoot.html

In my view, Puder can crow about how he almost "broke Angle's arm" and made him tap out, but he fucking sucker punched the guy. Angle was expecting a FAKE fight, the idea being that Kurt beats him in 2 minutes. Instead this prick starts wanting to fight for real? Way to go, Puder! And then he tried to shake his hand after?

This is a LONG, ongoing debate between wrestling/MMA fans over who was in the right, who would've won etc etc. The way I see it, if you're going into a fight expecting it to be scripted, and then some idiot trying to make a name for himself on live TV decides to play it for real, you've already won in the first place. The likes of MMA and UFC are built on mutual respect a world away from the theatrics of WWE, that's the whole point. Trying to legit break a guys fucking ARM when you're supposed to be faking it? What a dick.

Anyway, that's my view on it. Anyone else see this happen or hear about it? And has anyone seen Puder since? (Oddly enough, he didn't last long in WWE after this...)

[trashcanman]

I don't know that I've ever seen Puder fight, but guys like that are everything that's wrong with the sport. I HATE poor sportmanship. Wish I could hear what Angle said to him. UFC fans are starting to get back on the wrestling hate train now that Lesnar got his ass handed to him. And it didn't help that afterwords, The Undertaker was up in the camera looking for attention, which pissed some people off.



followed by...

[The Curmudgeon]

I have a friend who's a thai boxer and he used to love wrestling when he was a kid but sees it as a joke now. He couldn't believe I was still majorly into it (moreso than I was as a kid, just without the t-shirts and posters, obviously).

So, yeah, I get that people who are into, or perform in, actual combat sports can look down on things like WWE. But I've always noted that the actual fighters themselves show a hell of a lot of love and respect for wrestlers. Maybe cos they grew up watching guys like Taker (who's always been an MMA fan) or because they know how dangerous that whole fake sport really can be.

That was a pretty interesting clip of Taker there, and something I'd never seen before. WWE usually frowns on showing Taker with his brand new wife, who I spotted in the background there.



You can, uh, see why he likes her.

So who knows what that whole stare-down business was all about? Macho testosterone fuelled bullshit or something more? But let's face it, if anything were to ever happen, I'd pick a 30 something UFC monster over Taker any day.

[trashcanman]

His wife's a bit of a butterface. The rumor is that Taker was trying to goad Lesnar into appearing at Wrestlemania with him or something like that and was trying to get people to talk by acting like there was some animosity there. As you can see, Brock just got the shit kicked out of him and lost his title so he wasn't really in the mood for WWE drama. I'm no longer into pro wrestling, but I do respect that those guys put on a great show with some serious stuntwork, scripted or not.