soccer's general consensus seems to be that the coming Clásico will be the worst in possibly decades, with both teams going through periods of crisis and/or transition.
But El Clásico was, is, and will continue to be the biggest, most renowned matchup in world football, with the two most successful clubs of our generation, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid C.F. facing off for the 245th time (the 181st in La Liga). It's fair to say this match should be on the watchlist of every football fan, so I'm going to give some insights on what to expect for the uninitiated.
https://preview.redd.it/nslpljd2cvu51.png?width=1100&format=png&auto=webp&s=f9a964e76ca2a450b4c90980a8249a7b5b1a8956

Statistics and history of El Clásico

Stat	Barcelona	Real Madrid
El Clásico wins	96	96
El Clásico wins in La Liga	72	73
Goals scored in El Clásico	399	405
Top scorer in El Clásico	Lionel Messi (26)	Cristiano Ronaldo and Alfredo Di Stéfano (18)
Most matches played in El Clásico	Lionel Messi (43)	Sergio Ramos (44)
Highest win in El Clásico	7-2 (24/09/1950)	11-1 (19/06/1943)

As you can see, El Clásico is not only a very high-level rivalry, but also an incredibly balanced one, with both teams having the same number of wins in competitive matches (52 draws), with Madrid having a positive goal difference of 6. Whoever is the winner of this Clásico will accordingly be the all-time best team in El Clásico, at least before the two teams meet again in April.
Some more fun facts:

The fastest goal in El Clásico was scored by Karim Benzema after 22 seconds in Madrid's 1-3 loss on 10/12/2011
Xavi and Iker Casillas have shared the most matches together on the pitch (36)
The fist Clásico in La Liga was played on February 17, 1929. Madrid won 2-1.
Before last season's 0-0 in Camp Nou, the last Clásico to end in scoreless was on November 23, 2002
This list features every player that has played for both Madrid and Barça at some point.

Source 1, Source 2 (in German)

Political importance

https://preview.redd.it/v9lkhi2jmvu51.png?width=674&format=png&auto=webp&s=fdef8f71e6ee282fec2f67e69e6720255e416a07
Barcelona vs. Real Madrid is a rivalry that surpasses sporting aspects.
In Francoist Spain, Barça was a symbol for local fans to not only express their support for the football club of their city, but also their Catalan identity. The meaning of Barça's club motto, "Més que un club" (= "more than a club"), is likely not what you think it is. To the people of Barcelona and Catalunya, Barça is a symbol of their regional identity, a medium to freely express their beliefs, a safe haven to freely speak their language and to vouch for democracy and the end of Franco's nationalistic regime. To this day, there is overwhelming support by most of Barça's fanbase for the movement of Catalan independence, with their supporters often being left-wing.
Madrid on the other hand has always been a symbol of Spanish nationalism, centralism and support for the Spanish monarchy. The club is viewed by its fans as the Spanish King's club, magisterial and full of honour. Most of Madrid's fans are supportive of the Kingdom of Spain and the monarch, some even with right-wing tendencies. They support the idea of a centralist Spain, as opposed to independence of any of the "nacionalidades históricas" (Galicia, Basque country, Catalonia).
This stark political contrast has led to clashes in the past.
It has also led to last season's Clásico in Camp Nou being postponed. Authorities had to make this decision as they believed the safety of fans (in- and outside the stadium), players and officials wasn't guaranteed at that time due to the wave of protests taking place in Catalonia in October 2019.

Current form, injuries and suspensions, expected lineups

Barcelona's last 5 matches: W (4-0 Villarreal), W (3-0 Celta), D (0-0 Sevilla), L (0-1 Getafe), W (5-1 Ferencváros)
Madrid's last 5 matches: W (3-2 Betis), W (1-0 Valladolid), W (2-0 Levante), L (0-1 Cádiz), L (2-3 Shakhtar)
Last 5 Clásicos: Barça 1-1 Madrid (Copa 18/19), Madrid 0-3 Barça (Copa 18/19), Madrid 0-1 Barça (La Liga 18/19), Barça 0-0 Madrid (La Liga 19/20), Madrid 2-0 Barça (La Liga 19/20)

Players unavailable (Barça): Ter Stegen (injury), Umtiti (fitness), Matheus Fernandes (injury)
Players unavailable (Madrid): Carvajal (injury), Odriozola (injury), Ødegaard (injury), Hazard (injury), Mariano (fitness)

Expected lineups:
Barça:
Neto - Alba, Piqué, Lenglet, S. Roberto - De Jong, Busquets - Fati, Coutinho, Dembélé - Messi
Neto obviously in goal as MATS is still injured. Alba has been included in the squad after recuperating from an injury, so I expect Koeman to also play him. Alternatives would be Dest and Firpo. I also expect Piqué and Lenglet to be starting, although some Barça fans seem to prefer Araújo over Piqué. Sergi Roberto should make it over Dest. I also don't think either of De Jong or Busquets will be replaced by Pjanić. The biggest uncertainty is whether they start Griezmann as a CF, or Messi, with Coutinho at CAM. I personally think it's best for a player so out of confidence as Griezmann to start the match on the bench.
Madrid:
Courtois - Mendy, Ramos, Varane, Nacho - Casemiro, Kroos, Valverde, Isco - Vinícius, Benzema
With an undisputed defensive line other than him, Nacho might be replaced by Militao or Vázquez, depending on how ZZ wants his team to play. The midfield 3 will most probably look like this, potentially with Modrić instead of Valverde. Playing Isco is something that I fully expect him to do, as Isco and the 4-1-2-1-2/diamond he brings with him are the "secret weapon" Zidane always reserves for big matches such as Clásicos and UCL finals. Vinicíus should be playing over Jović with the form both of them are in.

Zidane's Clásico tactics

Madrid have had some terrible, terrible results in El Clásico throughout the last decade. 1-5, 0-4, 0-5, 2-6... under Zidane though, their record against Barça has been remarkable (4 wins, 2 draws, 2 losses, GD of 14:11).
Zidane's Madrid normally play against Barça how they play against every big team: relatively passive. Handing the possession to the opposition, playing zonal marking or man marking high up the pitch instead of actively pressing throughout the whole match, with being effective on the counter through long balls, crosses and fast, line breaking passes, their offensive strategy.
Casemiro has been a key piece in not only giving Kroos more playmaking freedom, but also locking down Messi and the half-space between the defensive line and midfield, with Messi "only" scoring 3 non-penalty goals in the last 13 Clásicos since and including Case's iconic performance in 2016's Clásico:

https://reddit.com/link/jgt04v/video/ei5n0ciwsvu51/player
One of Zidane's essential points of focus is stopping Messi, which can backfire sometimes, like when Kovačić had to man-mark Messi in 2017's 0-3 loss:
https://reddit.com/link/jgt04v/video/ro13rio5tvu51/player
Zidane loves to use a diamond formation in big matches, and I except him to do so against Barça as well. With Ødegaard out, he will probably try to have Isco draw players on him, creating space for attackers to make runs, ideally looking something like this (excuse my poor MS paint skills):
https://preview.redd.it/0nvrwb13vvu51.png?width=1863&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b42a5c468b101abe8eb6726d9b31e8285232e25

Koeman's tactics

We haven't seen much of Koeman's Barça (no Clásico of course) so far, so my tactical analysis will not be very thorough.
The formation looks to be permanently switched to a 4-2-3-1, with Messi now having less positional freedom. Having two proper wingers eases the defensive pressure off of the two full backs, while having one central midfielder less will most probably make quickly passing through their midfield easier than before.
They still play high-press, possession-based football, but Koeman seems to like giving away some of the possession to the opponent (compared to Valverde and especially Setién), as in 4 of 5 league matches, their possession was only slightly above 50%.
Since I lack the material, the tactical knowledge, the dedication and the knowledge about Koeman's Barça to go any further than this, I'm going to link this brilliant and detailed tactical analysis of Barcelona's 3-0 win against Celta posted by u/Andremerlaux in barca for the people that want to dive into a more in-depth analysis of the tactical side of Barça's style of play. Sadly, the only thing I found on realmadrid regarding tactics were memes, so now you have to look at the abomination of a tactical analysis of mine.

5 reasons Barça is going to win

Leo Messi - we've probably all experienced the little magician's otherworldly touch at some point in our life as a football fan. There's little explaining to do, on a good day, Leo Messi can decide matches on his own. The last time this happened was in the 2nd Clásico of 2016/17, where Messi scored 2 and made THAT celebration, so it might be time for another Messi masterclass against Madrid by now.
https://preview.redd.it/vsdmucrdzvu51.png?width=761&format=png&auto=webp&s=d80cef34ce6d71a977ca44db2f0e4fe8dd6514b5
Madrid are having trouble scoring - Real Madrid are having massive trouble getting their players into goalscoring positions, and even then, Jović, Vinícius and co. often fail to finish the job. Post-restart, they've only scored 1,65 goals per game on average, extremely sub-par for their standards. If Barça score 1 or 2 goals, chances are high they're also winning.
Playing at Camp Nou - Camp Nou has been an absolute fortress over the last decade. In the 2010s, Barça only lost 9 matches at home in La Liga (Source), and since their loss against Betis in November 2018, they went unbeaten for all of 2019 in all competitions at Camp Nou before finally losing again to Osasuna in July 2020. Playing without fans might take this advantage away though.
Change of playstyle and formation - Zidane's tactics and his utilization of Casemiro to neutralize Messi have worked relatively well against Barça on most occasions. Barcelona's style might have changed over the years, but it was always possession-heavy. Zidane's Madrid have shown weaknesses when having too much of the ball, so maybe Koeman giving away more possession will hurt Madrid more than it benefits them.
Ansu Fati - the rising star has been in amazing form and with just 17 years, he's having essential influence in Barcelona's games this season. Reckless and calm in front of goal, he's already collected 4 goals and 1 assist in all comps this season, more contributions than any of Madrid's players. On the left wing, he'll likely be facing Nacho, Madrid's makeshift RB and possible weak point, since Carvajal and Odriozola are both injured.
https://preview.redd.it/vx84kodyzvu51.png?width=1002&format=png&auto=webp&s=0dc8bbab2a563efebbc40a86860f61e085b8af68

5 reasons Madrid is going to win

Defensive stability - Before the two matches against Cádiz and Donezk, Madrid have been extremely stable defensively. As hard as they struggle scoring goals, Madrid have been incredibly consistent in their defending, especially post-restart, only conceding 10 goals in 17matches (before the Cádiz match). If they can return to their usual defensive form and keep a clean sheet, another Ramos penalty might be all they need to collect all 3 points.
Zidane's Clásico expertise - out of 8 Clásicos played under Zidane, Madrid have only lost 2 (4 wins, 2 draws). Apart from the Kovačić man marking Messi disaster (0-3, 23/12/2017) and the Messi masterclass with a red for Ramos (2-3, 23/04/17), Zidane's tactics have been working very well against Barça, especially taking Messi out of the match. If there's one man that knows how to get a win or draw against Barça, it's Zizou.
Sergio Ramos - while Messi can be extremely decisive for Barça, the same goes for Sergio Ramos and Real Madrid. Madrid's captain is not only their leader and most important presence on and off the field, but also their defensive mastermind, as well as their free kick and penalty taker, with only Benzema (27) topping his goal tally of 13 last season. If there's one man to score a last minute winner in a big match, we all know it's him.
https://preview.redd.it/a29vxaa60wu51.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=4d416332137adb09ab6c71b6899eb89792e1f14c
They have the better midfielders and defenders - with all due respect to Barça, Madrid's depth and quality in midfield and defense (including GK, since Ter Stegen is injured) is higher than Barça's, on a normal day, that is. A midfield of Casemiro, Kroos and Valverde, with Isco and Modrić being options off the bench, might win the tactical battle for Madrid, while Courtois - Mendy - Ramos - Varane - Nacho with support of Casemiro is a backline that is hard to break down even for Messi, Fati and co.
Barça's fear of big matches - Barças latest performances in the most important matches have been underwhelming, we're not only talking about the infamous UCL bottlejobs, but also about them losing the 2019 Copa final against Valencia, the last Clásico, the Supercopa semifinal against Atleti and struggling with Sevilla and Atlético in the league. There seems to be some mental blockade in big matches.

5 reasons for a draw

Attackers out of form - Griezmann, Benzema and Messi have not been racking up the goals so far this season. Combine this with Hazard's injury and Jović + Vinícius and their chronic inabilities to put the ball into the net from the easiest of positions, and placing bets on a player to score first in this match will get really hard. Might want to try Ramos.
Both teams not scoring or conceding much - Barça (GF 2, GA 0,5) and Madrid (GF 1,2, GA 0,5) haven't scored much this season per match on average in La Liga, but neither have they conceded much. Smells like a 0-0.
Last year's Clásico at Camp Nou - last year's Clásico at Camp Nou ended in a 0-0 draw. Both teams had the same number of points before the match, the risk of letting their rivals wander off with a 3 point lead was too high, so maybe the situation will be the same this year (Madrid at 10pts, Barça at 7 with one match less).
The average goals per game in La Liga has never been this low - matches in La Liga are seeing 2,1509 goals on average this season so far. The only season that had less goals per match on average was 1972/73 (2,1438). I'm not saying this match will be a guaranteed 0-0, but seeing goalfests in La Liga is a rarity at the moment.
Both teams neutralizing each others weaknesses - Barça's defense isn't the most reliable - we've know this at the very latest since the infamous 2-8. On the other hand, Madrid's attackers are having massive trouble scoring or even creating chances. While Barça still is an offensive powerhouse (at least looking at the teamsheet) with players like Messi, Dembélé, Griezmann and talents like Fati, Trincão and Pedri, the core of Madrid's success last season has been their defense, with the likes of Ramos, Courtois, Mendy and Varane putting up insane performances in La Liga ever since the restart. All in all, both teams seem to be perfectly neutralizing each others weaknesses.

5 reasons for you to tune in

Messi, Benzema, Griezmann, Ramos, Coutinho, Kroos... - even though the teams have surely lost quality in Cristiano, Neymar, Suárez etc. over the last few years, El Clásico still features some of the best and most appealing players in world football. Two world class teams, only meeting each other twice every La Liga season.
Polemics of El Clásico - even though the Clásicos are not as heated as they were when Pep and Mou faced off, the likes of Jordi Alba, Piqué, Suárez, Vidal, Ramos and Reguilón have generated heated encounters and situations in El Clásico throughout the last years. Watch the players confront each other, watch two sets of fans creating conspiracies about the ref on soccer and I'm sure Alba will obligatorily wipe his hand through someone's face once again. Not something you'd want to miss.
https://preview.redd.it/w7p7kfjc3wu51.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=b12637c3ba46e46d41b57cd314cc5c63dab24296
PL has Fulham-Palace on at the same time - I know this sub is full of PL fans who couldn't care less about the rest of Europe's leagues. But let's be honest, even to you guys Fulham vs Palace is surely not the most interesting white vs blue-and-red matchup taking place at 3pm this Saturday.
The losing team will be in massive trouble - both teams have lost points twice already this season, and with some Barcelona fans increasingly unhappy with the club's general situation and some Madrid fans increasingly worried about the way Zidane's team is playing, the losing team and its fans will want to turn their trajectory around as fast as possible. Watch the hot takes coming in - KoemanOut? ZidaneOut? - or think of something more creative.
Possibly Messi's last Clásico at Camp Nou - it's no secret the little magician wanted to leave Barça this summer. His contract is running out next summer, and if there is no other tie involving both teams this season, this could very well be his last Clásico at home. With the Messi-Ronaldo era in La Liga coming to an end, form your opinion on the new generation of La Liga's stars - Vinícius, Rodrygo, Valverde, Jović, Militão, Ødegaard for Los Blancos - Fati, De Jong, Dembélé, Pedri, Trincão, Puig for the Blaugranas.
Will this be the worst Clásico of our time? We can only speculate, but one thing is for sure: a new era of El Clásico has begun.

Analyzing Tottenham Players' Shot Maps

This is somewhat of a Part 2 in what’s turning out to be a series of posts analyzing various aspects of Tottenham’s players and their attacking data. See my first post discussing xG and xA of players over the past 5 seasons here. In this post, I’ll be looking at a few players’ shot statistics, focusing mainly on shot location and other variables like which foot they use and their respective xG.
Tl;dr: Son is truly two-footed, and that is probably what makes him such a deadly finisher. Dele creates/has much better chances on his left foot than right foot but takes few shots with his left. Kane loves March 5th, but August seriously hates him.
THE DATA
I used a python script to gather a host of shot data from understat.com, a website that compiles a ton of information on leagues, teams, and players throughout the seasons. To save space, please refer to my original post about how I gathered data. I use the same method here. The data includes variables for every shot a player has taken in the leagues that Understat covers (Premier League, LaLiga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Russian Premier League). I gathered shots for Harry Kane, Son Heung-Min, Erik Lamela, Lucas Moura, Steven Bergwijn, Dele Alli, Giovanni Lo Celso, Eric Dier, and Toby Alderweireld. I gathered the main shot-takers as well as Dier and Alderweireld, 2 of our defenders who join the attack and come up for corners. I only pulled the shots for players both here last season at minimum and still here this season, so players like Eriksen and Fernando Llorente’s Hip have been excluded.
The dataset only includes Premier League matches, so no Champions league (… or EuropaL…) shots are included. Finally, after pulling the data, I added in what team the player was on for each shot, as the raw data only includes home and away teams, without specifying exactly what team the shot is foagainst. While Kane’s only club covered in the sample is Tottenham, players like Lo Celso, Son, and Lucas have played for several teams. I then filtered out other teams to only include shots taken while playing for Spurs. This is partially because I’m a huge Spurs supporter and am curious about our shot statistics, and also because it’s good practice in statistics to control for any possible outside variables, like teammates on different teams that only a single player in the sample was receiving passes from.
Once I cleaned up the data, I imported it into Tableau for easy visualization and storytelling. I used JMP to perform some t-tests for analysis later on, which is basically checking to see if 2 means are statistically different from each other or if there’s not really a true difference between them.
The key variables in this analysis are the X and Y coordinates of the shots. Understat has assigned an X and Y number to every shot, which is where the player took the shot from on the pitch. Visualizing a football pitch, with the team attacking from left to right, with the attacking team’s goal line at x = 0, and the opposing team’s goal line at x = 1. The right-side touchline of the pitch is at y = 0, and the left-side touchline is at y = 1. So, the center spot is located at (0.5, 0.5), and the center of the goal you’re shooting on is at (1, 0.5). I hope that makes sense.
One limitation of the data is that the coordinates are on a square, but pitches are rectangles. This isn’t a major issue, but it means that a 0.1 change in X is not the same distance, in meters, as a 0.1 change in Y. Also important to note is the fact that almost all Premier League pitches have different dimensions, even if by just a few yards. To best reconcile this, I averaged out the distance from goal-line to goal-line (X axis) and from touchline to touchline (Y axis) of the 2019-20 grounds. I next calculated at what coordinates to add the 18-yard box and 6-yard box lines to. Since all grounds have the same dimensions for these boxes, that isn’t a major problem. In the visualizations, the 18-yard box is solid gray, and the 6-yard box is dashed gray. I limit the views to the attacking half of the pitch for easy comparison. Only a couple of Kane’s and one of Lucas’ shots are from their own half (all misses).
I validated shot locations by watching a number of Son, Kane, and Dele goals on footballia.net. I watched 5 each of their goals, noted the locations they shot from, and then located them in my sample. They were very accurate, so I have confidence enough in the (x,y) coordinates coding.
ANALYSIS
Please follow this link here to play around with this data yourself on Tableau Public. I can’t figure out how to embed a Tableau Viz into a Reddit post.
The image below shows the full sample—all Spurs shots for all players I downloaded. Naturally, this view doesn’t show much at all. We can see that there are many goals right in front of the net, and they all have high xG. And we can see that the further away from the goal you get, the fewer shots there are. One thing I like about this Viz is how few shots Spurs take on the right or left side of the 18-yard box. But one of these shots is also my favorite-ever goal, which I’ll get to later on.

All shots in the sample. Color is the result (goal, saved, etc.) and size of the circle is xG. I really want to know what the “bald patch” around (0.85, 0.6) is…
From here, we can filter down by various variables, such as player. First, let’s look at a few players’ shot maps. Again, head over to my Tableau post to see all of these graphics and ones I didn’t screenshot—they’re interactive too.

Kane's shot map

Son's shot map

Dele's shot map

Lamela's shot map

Dier's shot map

Alderweireld' shot map
I don’t know about you, but I love looking at these maps. I’ve added a lot of information to each data point on Tableau, such as date; the team it was against; whether it was from a free kick, open play, corner, etc.; and the player who delivered the last pass before the shot. You can also highlight only the Result of the shot.
Of course, just looking at a shot map blindly gives little insight. We need to dig a little deeper into the data. First, I looked at average shot location, starting with the y-axis. This will show us which side of the pitch a player tends to take shots from. Kane’s average shot location on the Y-axis (left/right side of the pitch) is 0.5052—almost perfectly in the middle, so he doesn’t favor one side or the other. And his median location is exactly 0.5000, which is legitimately creepy. Since Kane’s the only striker in the group, naturally Son, Dele, and Bergwijn shoot more from the left, while Lo Celso, Lamela, and Lucas shoot more from the right. Dier and Alderweireld shoot more from the right, which makes sense since Dier has was used a bit as a right-sided midfielder and occasionally as a right back when he joined, and Toby almost exclusively plays as the right-sided CB. Toby has an average shot closer to the right touchline than Dier, which could show how Dier has played a fair bit at left-sided CB and as a central holding midfielder.

Average Y-axis location for each player’s shots. Kane does not favor a side to strike from.
Next, I dug into each player’s shot data based on the foot they shot with. I looked at the average xG of every shot taken, the goal conversion rate (goals/total shots), and the total number of shots taken with each foot. This data, shown in the table below—coupled with shot locations—is the meat of my analysis.

Average xG for each shot by foot, goal%, and total shots taken for selected players.
This table is where I first saw something major in the data:
Dele needs to use his left foot much more often. His average xG for all left-foot shots is 0.2644, much greater than 0.1208 average with his right. In fact, this is statistically significant at the 95% level (t-test p-value of 0.0006), which means that there’s less than a 5% chance that this big of a difference is random. Basically, it’s almost a given that Dele will have a higher xG with left-foot shots than right (on average).
Further, Dele has a 14.71% conversion rate with his left, and 16.46% with his right. This is an insignificant difference (p-value of 0.7915) from 34 left-footed shots and 237 right, so we can conclude that Dele should take more shots with his left foot. It is probable that defenders know he favors his right, so his high left-foot xG could be due to him putting defenders off by shifting onto his left, giving himself a much better look at goal (I should note that Lamela, who is notorious for only using his left foot, does not exhibit this with right-foot shots. Dele’s left-foot xG are in fact crazy). Last, it is important to note that no other player in the sample had a statistically significant difference between left- and right-foot average xG—the quality of their chances is the same on their right- or left foot. This is something unique to Dele in this sample.
Next, let’s look at Son. Son is known for having no weak foot—and his shot data backs that up. Son’s average xG on left-foot shots is 0.1148, and it’s 0.1137 for right-foot. An insignificant difference of only 0.011! He also converts 16.37% of left-foot and 17.62% of right-foot shots, again insignificant. He uses whichever foot would be the best for the situation, and his shot map backs that up. Outside the box, he prefers his left foot on the right side of the pitch, and his right foot on the left side. This is good practice (unless you’re trivela-master Quaresma or Le Cut Inside Man), so you can bend it into the net out of the keeper’s reach. Inside the box, Son tends to use his right foot on the right side, and left foot on the left side. Again, this is good practice because you can typically get a much better shot off when you’re running at the goal by using the foot of the side of net you’re on (right foot for right side of goal, and vice versa).
Since we discussed Dele’s right vs left xG and how Son chooses the best foot for the situation he’s in, let’s dive further into Dele, Son, Kane, and Lamela’s use of their feet. These are—or in Dele’s current form, were—some of Spurs’ main attackers of the past 5 seasons or so (who are still here). We know Son uses the best foot for the situation. We can further see that that is in fact the case when we add a trend line to his right- and left-foot shot maps. On his right-foot shot map, we see a “negative” trend (slope = -0.69 nice), which is what we want to see, given that outside the box you typically want to use your right foot on the left side of the pitch, and closer inside the box you want to use your right foot on the right side of the pitch. Lamela has a very similar trend (slope = -0.91). Kane has a less pronounced trend than Son and Lamela, but still a distinct shape (slope = -0.38). Dele’s line, however, is relatively flat (slope = -0.12). So, while he exhibits this trend, you can see how he’s using his right foot in many scenarios where he might be better served using his left.

Shot map and trend line for Right Foot shots
Looking now at left-foot shot maps, we want to see a “positive” trend line, a mirror of the right-foot map. Son, as we would expect from the ambipedal maestro, exhibits this perfectly (slope = 1.18). Kane’s is again a solid trend (slope = 0.55), yet not as pronounced as Son’s; same with Lamela (slope = 0.29). Now look at Dele’s… It is actually the exact opposite from what we might “want” to see. The slope here (slope = -0.35) is strangely greater than his right-foot trend line. I want to walk you through my thought process regarding this data:

Shot map and trend line for Left Foot shots
First, it appeared that Dele should take many of these shots with his right foot, and I figured maybe this is the reason he’s been under-performing of late. However, he is a fundamentally different player than Kane and Son, so his shots from close to the net on the right aren’t usually coming from him running at the keepedefenders, but from being cute and technical from a stopped position in a somewhat-crowded box. From watching him the last few years, he tends to try a few movements in the box to shift his body or open his hips for a pass or shot. Finally, I realized that maybe this explains his abnormal xG with left-foot vs right-foot shots…
No matter the scenario, being relatively close to the goal on the right side of the pitch would lead a defender to expect you to either recycle possession or use your right foot to shoot/cross across the face of goal. If Dele shifts it onto his left foot to have a shot (which the defender may not expect since Dele favors his right foot), this could lead to a higher xG shot than a right-foot shot, where the defender could close the angle easily. I’ve noticed that Dele likes to open his hips for a quick pass/shot fairly often, so this would be a perfect opportunity to do so—even if he’s running at the keeper he likes to open up his hips and try to slot it far post.
I welcome any comments/discussion on this aspect of Dele’s analysis. I found it very interesting that his left-foot shot map goes against what we “should” see. For further validation, we can compare Lamela’s trend lines (since he and Dele play somewhat similar roles and are both very one-footed). As we saw above, Lamela’s trends follow Son and Kane, so Dele truly is an anomaly with his left foot. Dele if you’re reading this… take more shots with your left foot!!! Somehow your left foot shots are crazy better than your right. Get back to your best, you’ve got this!
Now let’s look at Kane in August. Until August 18, 2018, Kane hadn’t scored in the month. Before that day, he had taken 46 shots in August for a combined total of 4.52 xG. And looking at his shot map for these 46 shots, it’s not that he’s taking bad strikes. He has several very high xG shots that were saved or hit the post. Kane truly does not perform well in August. The following table shows all players’ goals, total xG, and number of shots taken in August before Kane scored. Excluding Lucas, who only had one shot, every other player in the sample had scored. In fact, they were all outperforming their xG. August is Kane’s Bane.

Kane’s shot map for the month of August. You can see all the non-goals. August hates him.

Table showing all goals, total xG, and shots taken in August before the game Kane scored in.
Let’s move on past attackers to defenders now. Alderweireld has taken 19 shots on the right side of the pitch behind the 18-yard box; more than anywhere else except the middle of the 18-Yard Box around the penalty spot (which is expected since he comes up for corners). This shows how he pushes up from right-sided CB and has a crack from distance fairly regularly. Not a new insight, but cool to see. Dier has a similar spread of shots on both the right and left side of the pitch, but most of his shots from the right side outside the box are from 2014 to 2016, when he typically played as a right back, right-sided CB, and right-sided mid.
Lo Celso, Lucas, and Bergwijn have nothing extremely interesting to call out in detail, but here are a few things I found interesting. First, even though Lucas plays mainly on the right or as main striker, his shot map is almost symmetric. This shows how much he buzzes around the pitch, even when coming in from the right. Second, I thought it was interesting that Lo Celso has only taken two shots with his right foot so far. Both were low xG, and the keeper saved both. Those Argentinians legit have a thing against right feet. Finally, I was surprised to see how few shots Bergwijn has taken in the Prem. I must have rose-tinted glasses on, because I could’ve sworn he had taken over 11 shots. However, he has scored 3/11, a remarkable 27% goal-shot percent. That number is even better when looking at shots on target: 3 goals from 8 shots on target. I bet we see that W celebration more.
And finally, all (pseudo-) research includes future research suggestions. I would love to add the entire squad and look at more temporal view of the team—analyzing shot maps across seasons. I also want to look at the last year of Poch’s reign and the first year of Mourinho’s. Since a lot of the key players are still on the team for that span, we can look at the differences between the two managers. However, we should probably look at a random 1-year span of each manager, since managers tend to get sacked for a reason. Last, we could dive further into individual players across time, to see how they develop, and maybe even compare in-form shot maps to out-of-form ones to see if they are unlucky given the xG of their shots or maybe if they’re taking worse shots from bad positions.
In conclusion, Spurs took shots, and I put them in Tableau to find fun stuff.
INTERESTING TIDBITS AND GOALS
I’ve added a few sheets at the end of the Tableau Viz that highlight some interesting/fun/banger goals.
Harry Kane has only ever played on March 5th twice, in 2016 and 2017. But he’s scored absolute BANGERS in both games. One beautiful goal against Arsenal from a crazy angle where he celebrated by sprinting faster than ever and ripping off his facemask (still brings me tears of joy… so much pashun), and one absolute show of strength against Everton, where he holds off defenders before belting the ball from deep past the keeper. The next time March 5th falls on a weekend is 2022 and again in 2023. I’ll be calling up the FA to make sure they schedule Spurs to play Saturday 3/5/2022 and Sunday 3/5/2023.
I also call out Kane’s infamous “claimed” goal vs Stoke. This had a high xG of 0.4587, so if it was an Eriksen goal, it would’ve had a much lower xG…… I’m sure Kane’s daughter is happy.
Vertonghen claimed the world’s second-best assist (behind Tommy Carroll’s assist to Bale) for Son’s Burnley goal. Son’s furthest goal also is fun to see at 0.0147 xG.
Dele’s insane flick-turn-volley against Palace gets a nice mention, as does Dier’s first-ever shot in a Spurs shirt: a stoppage time winner away at West Ham on his debut. Dude’s been oozing Big Dick Dier energy since day 1 at Spurs.

Sorry for how long this is, it kept getting longer and longer. Thanks to all who made it through!
Edited to correct broken links

Le Bilan - Ligue 1 Matchday 8 : The East Awakens

After a suboptimal first week in european competitions for the french clubs (1W, 1D, 3L), it was time to go back to domestic affairs. On paper, not a lot of must see matches but still two exciting features on sunday with Nice-Lille and Lyon-Monaco.

Appetizers

Rennes was beaten at home on friday night against Angers and it was far from undeserved. Despite a rather early goal from Hunou following a mistake from Bernardoni, the bretons couldn't capitalize and conceded an equalizer by the forever hope Sofiane Boufal. In the second half, it was even Angers who dominated Rennes, not in term of possession which was still in favour of the home team, but in clear chances created. Which in the end is what matters the most. And they were rewarded at the 57th minute with an astute lob from Angelio Fulgini. Rennes captain Damien Da Silva was unfortunately involved on both goals, on the first with a deflection, on the second he was weak on the duel. Rennes hasn't won in their last 4 matches (3 at home), even though the opponents weren't particularly scary (Reims, Dijon, Krasnodar, Angers).
Marseille seems to be finding their rythm. Maybe. At least in the league. With a second straight win over Lorient, Marseille reaches again the european spots. Of course it was quite far from a stellar performance and the only goal came from an individual error from Lorient's goalkeeper but at least it allowed the newcomer Leonardo Balerdi to score his first goal for OM. it may not be what's expected from him as a center back but it's still something you won't complain about.
What looked like a standard, boring 2-0 win for Paris became a bit more glittering with the two late Mbappé goals but clearly there's not much to talk about this match, the gap between the champion and Dijon being perhaps the bigger in the league. Moise Kean opened his counter under his new colours, and even twice.
After a big loss 4-0 at home against their rival Lille, Lens decided to go all-in and focus on the COVID Championship. And they did it in style with 11 cases in one day. Of course their match against Nantes was postponed.
Montpellier completely crumbled at home at the hands of Reims. For the fourth time in a row, the southerners didn't win and fall in the 11th place. But not only did they lose, they lost 4-0 against a team that hadn't won yet in Ligue 1. Of course the 2 red cards (in pure Ligue 1 style) certainly helped the Champagne team but still, it must feel good to open the counter like this. And for Boulaye Dia, author of a hat-trick, it was both a collective and individual satisfaction.
It's not often that we have something positive to say about Bordeaux so let's not waste an opportunity. Although it took long to open the score, it was fully deserved as the Girondins dominated quite significantly the second half after a rather shy first 45 minutes. Ben Arfa obtained a penalty that Jimmy Briand scored, making it his 100th goal in Ligue 1, the 88th player to pass this bar. Two minutes later, Oudin doubled the score and Nîmes tapped out.
After three straight losses, Strasbourg had no choice but to wake up. And they did, away in Brest by winning 3-0 with an opening goal from the new recruit Habib Diallo, his second in two matches since his arrival. Diallo even offered an assist to Ajorque for the third Strasbourg goal, another sign that he has integrated the group well. A much needed addition for a team that was the shell of its former self up to now.
The Europaleaguico between Nice and Lille didn't necessarily produced the expected result. After Nice got manhandled by Bayer Leverkusen 6-2 while Lille comfortably beat Sparta Prague 4-1, it would have been bold to bet on anything but a Lille victory. In fact it was a fairly even fixture and both teams got their moments. Kasper Dolberg opened the goal following a great collective move and an assist from Claude-Maurice. Eight minutes later, Burak Yılmaz equalized beautifully. Lille loses their top spot reclaimed by Paris for the first time this season.
After weeks of having troubles finishing their chances, Lyon balanced their statistical anomaly in the most spectacular way. By letting completely the game responsability to Monaco, they aspired the visitors and launched deadly counterattacks. It may not be what's expected from a juggernaut like Lyon from a tactical point of view (and it's enough to hear from Lyon fans to understand how controversial this way of playing is, even with a victory) but it was damn efficient. They scored four goals in the first half with only 28% of the ball, with Memphis Depay providing another masterclass and Karl Toko Ekambi, symbol of Lyon's inefficiency since two months, finally demonstrating his usefulness. On the other side of the pitch, Monaco is still looking like a team that we don't know what to expect from. But certainly not this.

Main Course

Matches

Home	Score	Away
Stade Rennais	1-2	Angers SCO
Hunou 18'		Boufal 27', Fulgini 57'
FC Lorient	0-1	Olympique de Marseille
		Balerdi 54'
Paris Saint-Germain	4-0	Dijon FCO
Kean 3', Kean 23', Mbappé 82', Mbappé 88'
RC Lens	POSTPONED	FC Nantes

Montpellier Hérault SC	0-4	Stade de Reims
		Dia 9', Dia 13', Mbuku 31', Dia 56'
FC Metz	2-0	AS Saint-Étienne
Boulaya 5', Sissoko (og) 78'
Girondins de Bordeaux	2-0	Nîmes Olympique
Briand (p) 80', Oudin 82'
Stade Brestois	0-3	RC Strasbourg
		Diallo 27', Lala 40', Ajorque 67'
OGC Nice	1-1	Lille OSC
Dolberg 49'		Yılmaz 58'
Olympique Lyonnais	4-1	AS Monaco
Depay 12', Toko Ekambi 34', Aouar (p) 41', Toko Ekambi 44'		Ben Yedder (p) 48'

Table

#	Team	Pts	P	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD
1	Paris Saint-Germain	18	8	6	0	2	20	3	+17
2	Lille OSC	18	8	5	3	0	14	3	+11
3	Stade Rennais	15	8	4	3	1	16	10	+6
4	Olympique de Marseille	15	8	4	3	1	11	8	+3
5	OGC Nice	14	8	4	2	2	11	10	+1
6	Olympique Lyonnais	13	8	3	4	1	14	8	+6
7	RC Lens	13	7	4	1	2	10	10	+0
8	Angers SCO	13	8	4	1	3	10	16	-6
9	Girondins de Bordeaux	12	8	3	3	2	9	5	+4
10	FC Metz	11	8	3	2	3	9	7	+2
11	Montpellier HSC	11	8	3	2	3	13	13	+0
12	AS Monaco	11	8	3	2	3	11	13	-2
13	AS Saint-Étienne	10	8	3	1	4	9	12	-3
14	Stade Brestois	9	8	3	0	5	11	18	-7
15	FC Nantes	8	7	2	2	3	9	10	-1
16	Nîmes Olympique	8	8	2	2	4	9	13	-4
17	FC Lorient	7	8	2	1	5	12	15	-3
18	RC Strasbourg	6	8	2	0	6	9	16	-7
19	Stade de Reims	5	8	1	2	5	10	13	-3
20	Dijon FCO	2	8	0	2	6	4	18	-14

1-2 Champions League group stage
3 Champions League qualifiers round 3
4 Europa League group stage
5 Europa Conference League group stage
18 Relegation play-offs
19-20 Relegation to Ligue 2

Goals

Player	Team	Goals	This week
Boulaye Dia	Stade de Reims	6	(+3)
Kylian Mbappé	Paris Saint-Germain	.	(+2)
Ibrahima Niane	FC Metz	.
Wissam Ben Yedder	AS MonacoC	5	(+1)
Memphis Depay	Olympique Lyonnais	.	(+1)
Ignatius Ganago	RC Lens	4
Gaël Kakuta	RC Lens	.
Karl Toko Ekambi	Olympique Lyonnais	.	(+2)
Yoane Wissa	FC Lorient	.
Burak Yilmaz	Lille OSC	.	(+1)

Assists

Player	Team	Assists
Florian Thauvin	Olympique de Marseille	5
Jonathan Bamba	Lille OSC	4
Gaëtan Laborde	Montpellier HSC	.
Pablo Sarabia	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Memphis Depay	Olympique Lyonnais	3
Kylian Mbappé	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Neymar	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Arnaud Nordin	AS Saint-Étienne	.

COVID Championship

(May not be 100% accurate)

Team	COVID cases
RC Lens	14
RC Strasbourg	9
FC Nantes	.
Olympique de Marseille	8
Montpellier Hérault SC	.
Paris Saint-Germain	.
Lille OSC	7
AS Saint-Étienne	.
OGC Nice	5
Stade Rennais	.
Nîmes Olympique	.
AS Monaco	4
Olympique Lyonnais	.
Dijon FCO	3
Angers SCO	.
FC Metz	2
Girondins de Bordeaux	1
Stade Brestois	.
FC Lorient	.
Stade de Reims	.

Dessert

Top 3 Goals of the Week

#	Player	Match
1	Nathanaël Mbuku	Montpellier Hérault SC vs Stade de Reims
2	Farid Boulaya	FC Metz vs AS Saint-Étienne
3	Angelo Fulgini	Stade Rennais vs Angers SCO

Upwards

FC Metz : Good period for the club from Lorraine. With their home win over Saint-Étienne, the Grenats are on a much more positive path than the one they were on five weeks ago. Metz started the season with three straight losses on the same frustrating 1-0 score but since then they haven't lost once, winning all their three home games and drawing away in Marseille and Angers. Two weeks ago, their head coach Frédéric Antonetti came back from personal leave that started almost two years ago to stay close to his wife who unfortunately passed away this summer. Though he was still involved in the club from his corsican home, it was Vincent Hognon who was officially leading the team. With Antonetti's return, Hognon left the club without drama. After losing Habib Diallo on the last day of the transfer window and Ibrahima Niane due to an ACL, Metz has seemingly found ways to overcome those obstacles thus far.

Downwards

AS Saint-Étienne : Take what was said above with Metz, reverse it and voilààà ! It's easy to write Le Bilan. Still let's go into the details. Last year, after a disastrous start, Claude Puel was appointed to save the club, no less. In a recent interview, Puel said the club was going "in the wall". So this summer he cleaned house and destroyed the core of influential players that was impeding the team (Ruffier, Mvila, Boudebouz, Khazri) either by making them leave or irrelevant regarding the future. The start of the season was a total success with three 2-0 wins. Unfortunately, those are still the only victorie sobtained by the Forez club. After a draw in Nantes, les Verts have lost their last four matches with only one goal scored and 10 conceded. Of course, Puel's project fundamentally can not have immediate consistent results given the number of young players involved (the defence against Metz was on average 20,5 years old). And obviously, selling Wesley Fofana on the last day didn't help. But the confidence has to come back somehow to get back on the right track. Two weeks before the Derby, the clock is ticking.

L'Équipe Team of the Week

https://imgur.com/a/TxJAbLJ

Quotes

Andre Villas-Boas, Marseille coach :

It's a very good match for us, I'm very happy. In a stadium like this, with the wind and rain, it gives a small advantage to those playing at home. But we've mastered the game. It's a very good collective performance, offensively and defensively. We missed being a little bit more incisive to score earlier. It's a very good win for us, a deserved win.

Thomas Tuchel, Paris coach :

Marquinhos is the heart and soul of our team. That's why he has to play at the center of the game. But also because he is talented. He has all the quality to be a midfielder, in addition to his working-class mentality. In the midfield, he can help both defenders and forwards. It is important that he is close to everyone because he is the leader. Marqui has the best volume of the team, he is valuable in counter-pressing.

Claude Puel, Saint-Étienne coach :

Metz deserves its victory. We make a gift from the very first minutes and that makes us fragile. These are things that are difficult to accept and give the opposing team confidence. But it was important to start well, to put in a good intensity. It took us a long time to resurface, we were on the back foot and we didn't dare, we didn't try.

Jean-Louis Gasset, Bordeaux coach :

We make catastrophic starts and everything we work during the week, we can't find it. When we play like in the second half, with drive, technical mastery, crosses, opportunities, at least we enjoy it. We win, we lose, but we enjoy ourselves and we play our football. But before that, seeing a shy team in an empty stadium is a horror.

Patrick Vieira, Nice coach :

We were affected by the defeat in Leverkusen in the Europa League. The reaction was very positive. We must continue to work and believe in our strength. We are still in the process of discovering ourselves. The players don't yet imagine what their collective strength can be. For the Lille reception, the message was to raise our head and play with a lot of personality.

Niko Kovac, Monaco coach :

We really made some bad decisions in the first period, and I was the first. I include myself in this because I didn't choose the right system, the right tactics, the right players. We had a lot of problems because we were more in reaction than in action. We didn't cover the spaces when we had to. It was a pretty incredible first period, I'd never seen anything like it, I told my players that. At the break, I asked them to win the second period, and they did. Even though that first act was really, really bad.

THZHDY, you know who he is :

6 matches without a loss, 3 clean sheets in a row, who knew we had to go down one division to find our level ?

Next matchday

Friday 30/10, 21:00
Olympique de Marseille - RC Lens
Saturday 31/10, 17:00
Stade Rennais - Stade Brestois
Saturday 31/10, 21:00
FC Nantes - Paris Saint-Germain
Sunday 01/11, 13:00
AS Saint-Étienne - Montpellier HSC
Sunday 01/11, 15:00
Angers SCO - OGC Nice
Dijon FCO - FC Lorient
Nîmes Olympique - FC Metz
Stade de Reims - RC Strasbourg
Sunday 01/11, 17:00
AS Monaco - Girondins de Bordeaux
Sunday 01/11, 21:00
Lille OSC - Olympique Lyonnais
Thanks a lot to Hippemann for all the clips and the tables ! For more news about the best league in the world (except for the other four) and to improve your french, come and subscribe to /Ligue1.
All feedbacks are welcome !
Previous matchdays :
Season 2020-2021
M1 - M2 - M3 - M4 - M5 - M6 - M7
Season 2019-2020
M12 - M13 - M14 - M15 - M16 - M17 - M18 - M19 - M20 - M21 - M22 - M23 - M24 - M25 - M26 - M27 - M28

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Apr. 4, 1988

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words, continuing in the footsteps of daprice82. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
• PREVIOUS •
1987
FUTURE YEARS ARCHIVE:
The Complete Observer Rewind Archive by daprice82


1-4-1988	1-11-1988	1-18-1988	1-25-1988
2-1-1988	2-8-1988	2-15-1988	2-22-1988
2-29-1988	3-7-1988	3-14-1988	3-21-1988
3-28-1988	*	*	*

”This is horrible, Gorilla.” These words open the issue this week, because Wrestlemania IV is in the books and, well, it was not pretty. Dave is flabbergasted by how bad a show it was, wondering if this was a dream or a nightmare that he hasn’t woken up from. Wrestlemania III was the best wrestling production of all time. It may not have had the best card, but it was entertaining all around and the fans loved it. It set Vince up as the king of wrestling, all-powerful over the business. He’s still the king, but he’s definitely not all-powerful, and Crockett absolutely kicked Vince’s ass on March 27. Financials will take time to come in, and of course McMahon will win that measure, but we can flash back to January 24 for an analogue: The Royal Rumble won even though the Bunkhouse Finals made more money.
Preliminary info Dave has gotten from phoning cable companies and hearing from fans at closed-circuit site is that Wrestlemania interest was down by nearly half of last year’s. The buyrate for ppv could be as low as 6 percent, half of WWF’s expected 12% and still way down from last year’s 10.3%. Even so, the PPV gross would be $10.8 million, of which WWF can expect no more than $3.5 million, plus an estimated $2.3 million from a minimum 175,000 (last year had 375,000) at closed-circuit and a live gate of about $ million and an undisclosed site fee from Donald Trump for putting on the show. The early (and I mean early, don’t get attached to these numbers) overall estimate is a total gross of $14 million, with WWF netting maybe $6.5 million, a far cry from the $18 million they were predicting their take would be. How much was because Crockett ran the Clash? How much was because WWF just has been less interesting? It’s hard to say, but Crockett hurt McMahon way more than anyone could have anticipated.
As for the shows themselves, just absolute night and day between them. Crockett’s Clash was a really solid show. It wasn’t as polished a production and only had 30 minutes of wrestling in the first 90 minutes of the show, though this was to allow Sting/Flair to work without commercial breaks so it was an overall benefit. The matches, minus the barbed wire one, were all good. The crowd was into it. Two excellent matches. Probably best to never let Steve Williams talk again, though. The Jim Cornette and Eddie Haskel bit was great and made Bob Uecker and Gene Okerlund look worse than they were. Meanwhile, Wrestlemania made Starrcade 1987 look like Starrcade 1985, and that’s too nice to say even. WWF’s guys, rather than working harder because it was Wrestlemania, opted to phone it in instead because Wrestlemania itself would carry the day. Even Jesse Ventura had no good lines and coasted while Gorilla was like soundbites of his Wrestling Challenge commentary.
Anyway, Dave breaks down the major problems for WWF, as he sees them. 1) Hogan - he’s too over, to the point he overshadows everything else and by booking him as just one of the guys in the field, they completely devalued their star attraction. And instead of putting Randy over at the end, which they need to do if they’re going to try and have him be even close to as over as Hulk has been, they put Liz and Hulk over. “It’s like Randy can’t even order a taxi cab unless Liz tells Hulk to flag down the cab.” 2) Hindsight is always 20/20, but Trump Plaza was a terrible venue for a Wrestlemania, and the crowd just wasn’t a wrestling crowd, so they were not invested at all. 3) Steroids. Dave supposes he’s probably the most hated person in the world among the heavy steroid users in the business because of all the nicknames he gives them, but in all seriousness it was embarrassing to watch so many guys get blown up in a minute or two to where they couldn’t even pace out a five minute match. Like, take out the health issues, take out any sense of blame on the guys, Dave says. The tournament was embarrassing. It wasn’t funny to see the guys fail like this. It was just sad. 4) The tournament as a concept flopped. It gave fans no specific issue to focus on because belts in modern wrestling just don’t mean anything to fans - the real draw is the big personalities, and WWF proved it with this show: the only matches anyone cared about were the ones with Hogan and, to a lesser extent, DiBiase and Savage. 5) Spoilers. Too many people knew the outcome, and giving Savage the title is almost a mistake after you’ve given so many spoilers of your own show. ABC News did a report the morning after, saying “Randy Savage was the winner at Wrestlemania, but of course everyone knew it since the WWF magazine had printed the result three weeks ago. The WWF claims the magazine report was simply a typographical error.” Anyway, Dave is sick of people blaming him for their wrestling promotions not being able to draw fans at live shows when they aren’t interesting enough. Newsletter subscribers are maybe 0.002% of the viewing audience - if all Dave’s subscribers quit watching nobody would notice in the viewing numbers. Meanwhile, the fans who read newsletters are probably the most dedicated and put more money into the business than the “marks” do and will be the ones stubbornly holding on to the end if the business somehow were to die. So don’t blame Dave if your show sucks and your creative is bad and you give away your finish weeks ahead of time and don’t even bother changing it.
Anyway, Wrestlemania preliminary numbers time. About 540,000 homes on PPV, plus 195,000 through closed-circuit, as far as the U.S. goes. They did just 95 closed-circuit sites in the U.S., 39 of which had less than 2,000 capacity. No word on Crockett’s ratings, but if they hit a 5 on TBS that’s about 2 million homes.
So all that said, time to look at the Wrestlemania card. Good production, particularly the opening graphics, but not as far ahead of Crockett as last year now that they’ve upped their game. Battle royal started hot and quickly became your standard boring battle royal. The Hart/Badnews angle at the end saves the match from a dud and gets it half a star. DiBiase vs. Duggan was real slow for a five minute match, and Duggan no longer resembles the worker he was in UWF/Mid-South just a couple years ago. Very little heat. 1.5 stars. Muraco vs. Bravo gets half a star, and both were blown up by the double clothesline like they’d wrestled a hard 20 minutes, but the whole match was under 5. Valentine vs. Steamboat saw Valentine look tired and old, and just not have his famed longevity anymore. Good finish, solid work even with the timing issues. Steamboat coming out with his son and being able to be lost in the moment of just being a proud father was “a tremendous sight” for Dave. 2.25 stars. Savage vs. Reed got a pop for the finish but nothing else, really. 1 star. One Man Gang vs. Bam Bam Bigelow wasn’t good. It was obvious how bad Bigelow’s knee was, and that takes away his agility, which is the thing that sets him apart. Dave says this is a -1.5 star match in a vacuum, but considering Bam Bam’s condition he’s not going to rate it that low and calls it a dud instead. Rick Rude vs. Jake Roberts was a 15 minute draw and Dave hated it. He hated Rude’s tights, the many long rest holds, the fact that there just weren’t any moves in there to pop the crowd, and the fact that the crowd chanted boring. Worst match of the year candidate. -2 stars. Ultimate Warrior blew up before he entered the ring for his match with Hercules and the match was bad. -1.5 stars, and Dave says it was worse than Rude vs. Roberts, but gets a better rating for knowing when to be done quick and not overstaying its welcome like the other match did.

Watch: Cleanse your palate with Hogan’s weird promo from Wrestlemania about faultlines and Donald Trump caring about his family

Wrestlemania continued, because holy shit that was a really long paragraph and we needed an intermission. Round two saw Hogan and Andre go to a double disqualification to start off. Andre could barely stand by two and a half minutes in. Lots of shenanigans, Virgil took a nasty suplex on the floor where Hulk didn’t protect him at all, but there’s a glimmer of a future face push for him at least. Maybe his father’s a plumber, Dave quips. Half a star if you ignore the posing at the end (dud if you count the posing). But really, the crowd came to see Hogan pose. DiBiase vs. Muraco had no heat but decent action for its short stay. 1.5 stars. Savage vs. Valentine was good, well-paced with good action. 2.5 stars. Beefer vs. Honkytonk Man amazed Dave since neither was over at all when both usually are decently over. Sherri Martel made more noise than the entire audience. Loads of shenanigans, Beefer’s new haircut makes him look like a Davey Boy Smith with less wrestling ability, dud. Islanders and Heenan vs. Koko and the Bulldogs had some decent comedy and started okay, but got boring quick. 1.25 stars. Savage vs. One Man Gang was watchable but the finish sucked. Half a star. Demolition vs. Santana and Martel was solid throughout, although the crowd seemed on Demolition’s side. If the crowd had been responsive this would have been a really good match rather than just pretty good at 2.5 stars. DiBiase vs. Savage saw the crowd missing “two top-flight guys trying to work a good match” because they were watching the entrance waiting for Hogan. Savage sends Liz to get Hogan, Hogan evens the odds, Savage wins, Hogan must pose. 2.25 stars. Once round two started, the show was pretty decent, Dave thinks, just the first half of the show wasn’t RestholdMania, but Rigor Mortis Mania.
Over in Crockett Country, it’s a whole different story. They drew 6,000 fans to the Greensboro Coliseum, and all six thousand were champing at the bit for the show, which created a great energy that the wrestlers fed on for their matches. Rotunda retained the TV Title against Jimmy Garvin in the amateur rules match with a one-count pin, pinning Garvin a minute into the second round. 2.5 stars. The Midnight Express beat the Fantastics by DQ to retain the U.S. Tag Titles in a classic Memphis style brawl that was so action packed the cameras missed a lot of it. Dave gives them 4.25 stars, saying the action earned it 4.5, but the overused finish with the over the top rope throw and the referee reversing the decision lost it half a star, but then the post-match action with Corette lashing Bobby Fulton’s back with a belt got it back a quarter star. Dusty and the Road Warriors (the Rhode Warriors, I almost typed) beat Warlord and Barbarian and Ivan Koloff in a real short barbed wire match, and Dave notes the resemblance between Dudty wearing facepaint and a black t-shirt and Dump Matsumoto (with the notable difference that Dump is prettier). Ivan was bleeding after 20 seconds and Dusty after 90. Dave hates these matches - everyone gets all cautious and careful and stays in the center of the ring, so nothing really happens. 1 star. Luger and Barry Windham beat Arn and Tully for the NWA Tag Titles. Good match all around, 3.5 stars. Flair and Sting had a 45 minute draw for the NWA Title in a match of the year candidate. Slow pace to start, but the heat kept up and they weren’t dull and Flair sold the hell out of every rest hold. Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone did fantastic work on this, particularly Ross who sold the intensity and importance of the match, which was critical for the first half (if only he were still able to do that today). There were supposed to be three judges, but there were five people at the table, only two of them didn’t vote, so no idea what the point there was. Anyway, Patty Mullen (Penthouse Pet of the year and who had been on Ric’s arm the night before on tv) picked Flair. Gary Juster, former NWA promoter, voted for Sting. Sandy Scott then ruled it a draw, and nothing came of the judging gimmick which made it utterly pointless. 4.75 stars

Watch: Clash of the Champions. I’ve set it to start with the Steve Williams promo because it needs to be heard to be believed

During Clash of the Champions, after the first match, there was an ad on TBS for the WWF 900 number advertising play-by-play for Wrestlemania. WWF managed to get an ad on TBS during Crockett’s big special, and that’s hilarious. They also ran the first ad for the new Four Horsemen vitamins, which was hilarious but unintentionally so, and Dave thinks they aren’t going to sell a lot of those vitamins.
Last week Dave teased a big story, and it’s that Crockett has been negotiating with Ken Mantell of World Class Dave didn’t give any details beyond the tease last week because he was hoping to get more before press time. He promises to never note a major story the way he did again without giving more details up front, because he expected more details to break before he had to print copy but it didn’t. Anyway, negotiations have been ongoing for ten days and there are conflicting reports. Crockett’s goal is taking over World Class the way they did Florida, getting the valuable channel 11 time slot on Saturday nights in Dallas. They’re going to need Fritz on board to complete the deal, though. If it does go through, Kerry and Kevin will have guaranteed work and a push in the NWA, but neither really seems to want the travel, so they’d likely get a deal for local stuff and maybe occasional work in St. Louis. The bottom line everyone needs to consider, though, is that Mantell and Michael Hayes may be the most creative bookers anywhere right now, but they aren’t turning WCCW’s business around and it just may not work out that they can. Dave doesn’t expect a deal done now, but he thinks Mantell and Hayes may give themselves until May to see if their hard work will pay off before considering any offers.
An example of that creative booking is the WCCW title change on March 25 in Dallas. Hayes was at ringside with Kerry while Black Bart and Buddy Roberts were for Parsons. Iceman King Parsons is one of the least likely champions in wrestling history, and the match wasn’t particularly good, but the finish saw the lights go out after Terry Gordy came down, at which point Bart and Roberts used flashlights to blind the fans in the front row so nobody could see what happened. When the lights came back on, Kerry was knocked out in the ring, Hayes was bleeding on the floor, nobody knew who hit whom, and Parsons pinned Kerry to win the belt. They even had Kerry carted out on a stretcher. Dave doesn’t think (and actively prays against) Parsons will hold it for long. Hayes looks like the best prospect (nope. It’s going back to Kerry in May at the Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions). Also, I just learned that King Parsons is his real legal name. I always thought combining Iceman and King was a weird combo of gimmicks, so that solves a mystery for me.

Watch: Iceman King Parsons wins the WCWA World Title

Eddie Gilbert is leaving Memphis to book for Continental beginning April 10. Continental’s business is bottoming out and it’ll be interesting to see if Gilbert and Missy can get things going there again like they did in Memphis. This also puts Memphis in some dire straits, since the Gilberts were basically all their storylines and they were drawing triple what they had been by giving the Gilberts such big spotlight, so they’re in trouble.
Lanny Poffo, brother of WWF Champion Randy Savage, has a book coming out called Wrestling with Rhyme. It’s a book of poetry coming out in late April and will be available at Walden Books. Man, I remember when Walden went out of business. It was a sad day for me.
The only news Dave has from Japan right now is that Bruiser Brody beat Jumbo Tsuruta for the International Title at Budokan Hall on March 27. Tenryu also retained his PWF Title against Hansen.
Roddy Piper’s latest project is a new film going into production called They Live.

Watch: They Live trailer

A correction on the Bruno Sammartino stuff. WWF isn’t trying to ban Bruno from using his name. They’re trying to ban him from using the trademarked nickname “The Living Legend” in contexts outside WWF. There’s a lot of talk about his radio interview , and some excerpts in the mail section of this issue.
There’s a film in the works about former Olympic and pro wrestler Chris Taylor. Taylor was a 450 lb wrestler from Iowa who won bronze in the 1972 Olympics and died in 1979. A book about him called “The Gentle Giant” is being adapted into a film, currently called “Lean On Me.” That does not wind up being the title, and I can’t find a movie based on him so this might have gotten scrapped. In other biopic news, no word from Hollywood on any upcoming Hulk Hogan movie.
WWF went up to the number 4 slot in the syndicated ratings for the week ending Feb. 28. They had a 10.6 rating, an increase on the previous week. Crockett’s network fell to number 9 with a 7.6.
Paul E. Dangerously firing Joe Pedicino, Gordon Solie, and Boni Blackstone on Pro Wrestling this Week aired this past weekend. It was fantastic stuff, and Paul has cemented himself as one of the top managers in the business. This is all part of a reformatting of the show to a 30 minute format with Pedicino and Patrick Schaeffer (who was the mastermind behind Global doing an IPO to build up a million dollars of operating capital) at the helm, with Schaeffer as the heel commentator.
Crockett had a big angle taped on March 21 that they aired this past Saturday, involving Magnum T.A. Magnum was doing an interview when Tully and J.J. came out, then Barry Windham came out and Tully popped Windham with a hit, then hit Magnum. J.J. was behind Magnum and helped Magnum gently go to ground, then Dusty barged in with a baseball bat and swung for the fences on Tully, then knocks out Jim Crockett without realizing who he’s swinging at when Jim and David Crockett and Rob Garner try to restore order. Jim Cornette did a tearful interview about his “good friend Jim Crockett” and Magnum even bladed, though that last didn’t make it to tv. Later on, Magnum came out and hit Tully with a bat in a match to cause a disqualification. Dave loved the concept here at first because you have to imagine Magnum hates being on the sidelines and wants to be involved to some extent and this gives him something to sink his teeth into. At the same time, “the idea of beating up a cripple, which unfortunately is the reality of the situation” is just kind of pathetic. That said, it’ll draw, and it’ll let Dusty (with Magnum in his corner) push himself as top star once again, and it may even be enough to put heat back on Dusty vs. Tully. Dusty will be suspended for 120 days come Saturday’s tv (taking us into July - will we see the Midnight Rider face Flair at the Bash, Dave wonders), Dusty will return as the Midnight Rider with Magnum at his side, and he’ll likely get the U.S. title in the tournament they’re going to hold in May.

Watch: Tully suckerpunches Magnum

The Oregon State Athletic Commission held a public hearing on March 18. Topics mostly stuck to safety concerns such as cleaning the mats, barriers at ringside, security, mats on the floor by ringside, etc. A lot of wrestlers were there, along with Billy Jack Haynes and Don and Barry Owen. Most of the wrestlers were negative about the Owens’ promotion, with only Tony Borne and Art Crews saying anything positive. Borne testified against the idea of using mats outside the ring, saying it’s not going to help as much as it hurts the visual effect of a spill to the floor. He also said the commission’s drug testing proposal went too far by including painkillers and marijuana on top of cocaine. The commission indicated they’ll be looking at action like the use of chairs in the future and potentially issuing fines. They also clarified their stance on blood: hardway is good, blading is bad. It’s pretty absurd to say that the more dangerous way of getting color is good but blading is bad, but this whole blood thing has become a thing for commissions around the country because blading sounds absolutely insane to people outside the industry, and even Dave has mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, blading is a minor safety issue at best, especially compared to rampant steroid and drug use and nasty bumps. On the other, Dave’s not sure fans are really drawn by excessive bleeding either, and probably actually turns off a large number of potential casual viewers. It doesn’t hurt if kept rare, but it doesn’t help if half the matches have it. And more dangerous to the wrestlers in a blood match than AIDS (they’re more likely to get that from outside activities) is scabies, which Owen’s wrestlers had an outbreak of not too far back. Rip Oliver said he’s gotten scabies four times since July and wound up giving it to his wife and kids on top of it. The outbreak led the Commission to pass a ruling against wrestlers working while they have communicable diseases and that they must notify promoters.
Eddie Gilbert vs. Jerry Lawler on March 21 drew 6,000 fans for Memphis. Gilbert won in what’s being hailed as a great match (and Dave’s heard their match the week before was even better). On tv on March 26 Gilbert acted like he was going to throw fire at Lance Russell, which got Lawler out from backstage in his first tv appearance in a month. They wound up brawling into the parking lot and Gilbert slammed Lawler on the hood of a car, shattering the windshield.
Scott Rechsteiner, using the ring name Scott Steiner, debuted as a babyface in Memphis recently. No mention of peaks or freaks yet.
Some random trivia about AWA Tag champ Paul Diamond. His real name is Tom Boric, and he was born in Winnipeg, you idiots, on May 11, 1961. He played soccer for the Tampa Bay Rowdies in the old North American Soccer League and was drafted sixth in the 1980 collegiate draft by the Calgary Boomers, before getting traded to Tampa in 1982. He stayed until the NASL folded, which is when he got into wrestling.
Anyway, Diamond and Tanaka won the belts because the Midnight Rockers wanted $500 a week guaranteed to stay and Verne doesn’t believe in guaranteed money. They don’t appear to have left yet.
[Continental] Looks like Eddie Gilbert is replacing Robert Fuller and going to be sole booker.
[USA] The other spinoff from the old Continental promotion ran its first big show in Knoxville, drawing a $10,000 gate. Previous sellouts there hit $27,000, to give an indication of relative value there. Not a lot to report about this. Moondog Spot is there as “The Dog.” He’s not a big dog. He’s not a little dog. He’s The Dog.
WCCW drew 1,700 on March 25 for their Dallas show, where Kerry dropped the title to Parsons. The other main event had Michael Hayes vs. Buddy Roberts, and Roberts kept trying to apologize for hitting Hayes, but Hayes wasn’t going to let it slide. Terry Gordy did a run in and broke things up, and told Hayes they sold Angel of Death’s contract so they can all be friends again. Hayes walked out on Gordy, though.
[WCCW] Fabulous Lance keeps getting booked for shows but hasn’t returned. His agent still doesn’t want him to be a heel because it’ll cut down his opportunities for tv and modeling work.
To illustrate how bad business is for World Class, here’s the biggest gate they drew out of three shows last week in Mississippi: $783.
A man named David Peschel of Washington, New Jersey is suing Randy Savage for a million dollars. He alleges that Savage punched and bodyslammed him when he got out of his car at a light to ask Savage for his autograph. He describes Savage as 6’4” and 280 lbs, prompting Dave to ask if this was maybe a different Randy Savage.
Rumor has it that Angelo Poffo put a $1 bet on the Wrestlemania tournament. Apparently, his bet was on Ted DiBiase.
According to a sumo journal in Japan, Futuhaguro is 99% certain he won’t go into pro wrestling. Koji Kitao will debut near the end of 1989 in the AWA, so I’ll put my dollar bet on the 1% chance.
Reader Mike Rodgers attended the Oregon commission hearing on March 18 and writes about his take. The commission is making big improvements to safety that he thinks are great, but thinks they’re overstepping by wanting to legitimately fine wrestlers who use foreign objects or chairs, and says they don’t understand “that promoters do what they can to fill up arenas.” Banning the blade but not blood is just going to increase the chance of legitimate injury, and it’s part of the proof that the commission really isn’t smart to what wrestling really is about.
We get a really long letter on Bruno’s radio interview. The writer taped the second hour and is hoping to get tape of the first hour. But before getting to the good stuff, he first wants to note that lying and silly gimmicks didn’t start in 1984 (was Gorilla Monsoon really from Manchuria? Didn’t Bruno employ gimmick wrestlers when he booked Pittsburgh? How about when he’d blade and claim to have spent the night hospitalized receiving transfusions) and that Bruno’s not really got a leg to stand on for “wrestling must be credible and it is an insult to the fans’ intelligence to lie to them.” Fans knew then just as they know now that it’s a work, but that doesn’t matter - you watch the show because it’s entertaining and you want to see the magician do their tricks. Also, the writer weighs in that the real story with the Main Event will be told by the demographic breakdown rather than the overall rating. In other words, is Hulk Hogan the Demo God? Anyway, after all this preamble, we finally get some quotes from the interview:
Bruno denies blading happened in his day but says “today, nothing would surprise me.”
Says he’ll never work for the NWA. “I wouldn’t touch it with a 50-foot pole.”
He breaks kayfabe on George Steele and says he’s been a teacher for years.
He thinks Bobby Heenan is a “dud and a disgrace” to wrestling.
He compliments Ric Flair as a guy who can give you an exciting 30 or 40 minute match, but the NWA “have an awful lot of bizarre nonsense in there that, to me, is no good.”
He says David wanted to be like him and he tried to warn David that these days they aren’t interested in “guys who just want to wrestle” but he’ll be going to Japan where they appreciate that better.
He didn’t like doing commentary. He just clocked in, did his job, and left as soon as he was done. He was very uncomfortable and unhappy doing it.
Bruno says WWF didn’t really have anything great to generate interest in the tournament for Wrestlemania.
A caller asks if his wrestling was all real, and Bruno says “Well, it was in my day, at least I thought it was.
We get a letter that feels so much like it could have been a post here on /SquaredCircle when Dave rated Omega/Okada 6 stars that I’m posting it in its entirety. Be warned, it is long, kind of racist, and absolutely bonkers, but that’s not unfamiliar around these parts. It gets the headline “Sick of praise for Japan.”

I get so sick of the way that people talk about Japanese wrestling. There’s no question it should be covered extensively in the Observer because it is a significant part of the wrestling world. However, when you start printing letters that criticize the American society and the jazz scene, then you are going way too far.
Anyone who thinks the Japanese never forsake quality for showmanship is full of it. The rock group KISS has enjoyed phenomenal success there because of their wild appearence [sic] and stage show. In fact, when they stopped wearing their makeup in the United States, they waited almost two years to do the same in Japan because they knew they wouldn’t be accepted there without it. And what about the movie industry? Do you think Godzilla movies are popular because of great acting?
As a student, I find teachers constantly comparing the American intelligence with that of the Japanese. I’m sure that the wrestlers love being compared to Japanese wrestlers as much as I love being compared to Japanese students. The Japanese do well at everything because they become obsessed with it. For them, it’s a matter of pride. If they screw up, it’s not only a mark on themselves but also on their entire family. You may think that’s great, but it puts a lot of pressure on everyone. They spend hours studying and I’m certain spend hours learning wrestling skills and have no time for themselves. Cut the North American wrestlers some slack. They’re just trying to make a living and preserve their bodies in the process. Look at what trying to wrestle like the Japanese did to Tommy Billington. Everyone would love matches filled with nothing but high spots, but working them is a great way to destroy yourself in a hurry. Now there is no excuse for total duds like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant either, but there are many non-Japanese who can hold their own without going crazy about it. I wonder how many Observer readers can honestly say that they work as hard at their own jobs as the Japanese in the same profession do. If they do, then I think they would quality [sic] as workaholics.
If there is anything wrong with our society, it’s the lack of national pride, which is so evident in the pages of the Observer. You seem to hate everything that wasn’t imported from the other side of the world. I have absolutely nothing against the country of Japan or Japanese wrestling, but I don’t think it’s up to a bunch of wrestling fans to dictate what’s wrong with our country just because they prefer the Oriental style of wrestling. I think the Observer is great, but I’d like to see you stick to writing about wrestling instead of how rotten our way of life is. I’m sure that’s what a Japanese journalist would do.

Anyway, Dave responds to that letter, giving the writer only 4 stars because it’s not in the literally-only-opened-a-couple-weeks-ago Tokyo Dome:

DM: Have I ever written about how rotten our quality of life is or done any cultural comparisons between the U.S. and Japan except to where it pertains to the wrestling business? If I lived in Japan and made a comparison of the quality of the football product and wrote the U.S. product was superior, I hope people wouldn’t take it as an indictment against an entire society.

Lastly, it’s about that time of year, I guess, because we have letters arguing about whether Dave should include GLOW coverage or not. Two letters this week on that theme, the first noting what the writer calls a progression in the letters calling for more coverage of women’s wrestling. First were the calls for more coverage of “conventional” women’s wrestling. Then the calls for GLOW coverage. Then POWW. Guess the next will be coverage of the apartment house wrestling scene, the writer supposes. The other writer claims to speak for 90% of subscribers and says Dave would offend that much of his readership if he covers GLOW and POWW and says that if you even consider GLOW to be pro wrestling, you’re incapable of understanding what makes a match good or not. This one asks if Dave’s going to be asked to cover mud wrestling next. There’s no misogyny problem in wrestling fandom. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Back to news, the Kentucky Athletic Commission has put up some new rules. There are to be guard rails around the ring now. Throwing an opponent over the top rope will result in a fine or suspension. Ditto for any referee who doesn’t immediately stop the match for it. The top rope rule is now state law, as insane as that sounds.
Dave should have national numbers next week, but in Atlanta Clash of the Champions drew an 11.7 rating, with the FlaiSting match hitting 14.5 National numbers will not be nearly that high, but hitting that 5 Dave mentioned earlier that would mean 2 million viewers doesn’t seem so far fetched anymore. Clash beat the NCAA tournament on the networks in Atlanta. TBS is reportedly looking to do another in prime time on a Wednesday early in the summer.
Stampede set up an angle where Johnny Smith (kayfabe Davey Boy’s cousin or brother or something) argued with Diana Hart Smith, which got Owen out to defend his sister. Davey Boy was supposed to come in after Wrestlemania to work with Johnny, but Vince put the kibosh on that. There were also considerations for some Stampede guys to participate in the Crockett Cup, but politics (Vince) made that a no-go. So it’s probably no coincidence that when Owen did the job for Hercules it was just outside Greensboro. Anyway, the real takeaway is that Owen is probably coming over to WWF by the end of the year.

NEXT WEEK: Clash vs. Wrestlemania poll results, Clash ratings and Wrestlemania buyrate, an assload of mini headlines because news is apparently thin next week, and more

TIFU by getting half my dick caught in my zipper on a double-date with her parents and meeting my mom's friend at the doctor's office.

This fuckup didn't happen today, it was back in 1992. But there’s a lot of stories about medical professionals and their quiet acts of often invisible heroism in the news right now. I thought that this week, I would share one of my own stories about them. Because while they are absolutely heroes in our midst, some of those life-saving stories and incredible acts come with a laugh or two along the way.
These laughs, as they often do, come at my expense. It’s a price I gladly pay to give you a much needed moment to breathe in all of the hell we are enduring together throughout the world right now.
Enjoy, Chris
Yes, I know, I’m a complete fucking idiot. Let’s just get that out of the way from the start. My only defense was that I was a teenager in the 90's at the time, and my dick was doing most of the thinking for me. On the whole, I’m a reasonably intelligent guy. My dick however, is much like one of those morons you meet who is all balls, no brains. Despite the fact that thinking with my dick got me through highschool at the top of my class, it has proven itself repeatedly to have no memory, no conscience, and what I will simply classify as “questionable moral fiber”.
An obscure, late 20th century English philosopher known for his ballistic dentition once said “Dicks have drive and clarity of vision. They’re not clever.” and he was correct. But like most people who are all balls and no brains, that kind of decision making invariably leads to collecting good stories, and occasionally being scarred for life.
This is one of those good stories, and it’s about a scar.
I was sixteen, vacuously stupid, and the world as I knew it revolved entirely around my radiant affections for one hell of an awesome girl. She was short, beautiful, built like a soccer player, and had curves in all the right places. Miraculously, she was also my steady girlfriend. We had a magnificent system that involved a standing weekly date. This almost always consisted of exactly three things: dinner, a movie, and the furious, passionate, awkward sex that only inexperienced young lovers can have in the contorsionistic confines of an automobile.
Good times.
On the right day of the week you could catch a 2nd run movie at the Alpine Twin for just a couple bucks. Urban sprawl hadn’t reached far enough yet to consume all the best spots for privacy, and we knew every one of them. It was a great time to be young and in love.
God is not without a sense of humor, however, and one particular week fate would throw me a curve. A movie had just come out that her father wanted to see. In a tormentative moment of parental schadenfreude, they decided it would be a great idea to join us on our weekly movie night for a wholesome double date.
I was trapped. I couldn’t say no, her dad was a towering giant of brooding scowls who instilled the fear of God in me. He was an incredibly kind and funny man, but he commanded my respect and there was absolutely no doubt he held the fate of my love life at his whim. I was a nerdy, country kid from the wrong side of the tracks and he made it very clear that I was dating his daughter only so long as both her and him deemed that acceptable. She adored me, he tolerated me, and it was my lowly position to be grateful for the opportunity.
I was fine with that. I was spending every Saturday night with her sowing my wild oats, and going to church every Sunday with him praying for crop failure.
So we all met at her house, the whole family piled into their car, and off we went. We didn’t go to our comfortable, low-budget, second-run theatre out on the north end of town with the thin crowds that encouraged sitting towards the back well away from anyone who could see wandering hands and notice the whispers of young lovers. We went out to the fancy first-run theatre, the gigantic cineplex and shining star of the lower west side, Studio 28, where we would be packed side by side with strangers and held to much higher standards of socially acceptable behaviour.
Studio 28 was massive. Thousands of people filled its acres of parking lots and watched the latest movies on twenty different massive screens with reclining seats in air conditioned comfort. One movie cost more than what we would spend for a month's worth of dates at Alpine - including food. But her dad was funding the entire expedition and I was happy to just be with her.
My lovely girlfriend however, was a hormone-driven, devious genius, and happened upon a simple idea that changed my life forever. She noticed that they list not only the start times of the movies, but the duration as well.
It had never for a moment crossed my mind that we didn’t all have to go to the same movie. Studio 28 was so massive that not only did they have a ton of different movies playing, many of them shared the same start times. She found a completely different show to catch, sorted out the details with her dad, and off we went on our own. She had stared into the bleakness and brilliantly wrought forth for us the greatest commodity of young lovers who live with their parents: privacy.
For such a monumental day in my life, I don’t even remember what the movie was. But I do remember spending an hour and a half in the dark getting each other as worked up as we dared. The lines of socially acceptable behaviour were a lot tighter back then, but we were enjoying them to the best of our youthful ability.
Our movie got out, and we made the long walk to the back-forty of the parking lot hand in hand and hopped in the car. We had no concrete idea when her parents' movie would get out, so we were just hanging out, waiting, and of course sharing only the most chaste and pure of good Christian thoughts.
Just her, me, and our collective sexual tension that burned with the power of a supernova. It really was only a matter of time before it all reached criticality.
Because sitting in a glass bubble in the middle of a thousand cars is totally the best possible place to be doing such things. I was a little on edge, but that didn’t stop her. It certainly did, however, limit our options.
The good news was that I at least had a clear line of sight all the way up our row, and would easily see anyone approaching from the theatre. I kept a watchful lookout, and she decided to take action.
In a matter of a few seconds, she was sucking my dick like it was filled with her father’s acceptance. Not a moment later, I saw the crowd of people start pouring out of the theatre doors. It didn’t take me long to spot her parents, hand in hand. Her dad’s bright blue shirt stuck out in the crowd, even though they were still a quarter-mile away.
And then, at that exact moment, is when I fucked up.
That’s when I did one of the dumbest things in my entire life; I made a split-second trivial decision that would leave me scarred forever.
Now, what I could have done is simply reach down, gently pull her head out of my lap, and have a mildly disappointing end to some fun, gone on with my day, and been just fine. Hell, given how far away they were, the hair-trigger of a teenage boy, and her skillful abilities we could have likely finished without pushing our luck.
The problem with wisdom is that you don’t get it until five seconds after you need it.
What I did, in a moment of youthful stupidity, was say “Your dad’s coming!” and sit up straight in my seat.
And that, my dear reader, is the exact moment that shit got real.
Please understand that what I’m about to describe is much like a car crash. It will take me far longer to describe it than it took to actually happen. All of this transpired in just a moment, but that moment is burned into my brain forever. I apologise now, that it shall be burned into yours. When you share this story with your friends, you’ll know they got to this part when you see them adjust themselves in their seat. No man is immune to this effect.
In one smooth powerful movement driven by pure reflex and fear, without a moment’s conscious thought, she snapped her head up, bolted upright in her seat, and while making that transition from laying on me to sitting next to me she stuffed my dick back into my jeans and ran that fuckin zipper all the way home with the power of an angry linebacker.
The problem is I had never unbuttoned my pants, and it was a lot smaller when it came out ten minutes ago than it was when she decided to cram it back in through, what was now, much too short of a hole. She fought it in there in half a second, it just wasn’t situated as well as it needed to be.
Then, with the delicate touch of a bricklayer she had yanked that zipper though several inches of my most delicate sensitivities and made me one with my Levi’s.
It happened in the blink of an eye.
I was absolutely convinced I was going to die.
The pain was far worse than what you imagine right now. It was radiant and consuming. She had caught roughly…very roughly...the entire front of the most sensitive skin I own and interlaced it down nearly the full length of the zipper. I could glimpse a thin line poking out the front, and there was nothing I could do about it but sit there with tears running down my face and her parents approaching.
She immediately knew what had happened, subtlety is not a skill I possess even on my best days. I think it may be when I levitated, shooting to the ceiling, howling in pain that she got her first hint that something was wrong. She was mortified, I was in agony, and the shitshow had just begun. I untucked my shirt to cover the obvious injury, and wiped my tears.
It was hard travel across the great prairies of the parking lot. I heard they lost five good men, and at one point had to start eating the horses to survive. But eventually, months later, her parents finally made it to the car.
The first battle was the parking lot. Several hundred people had all gotten out when we did and had to find their way to the exit. It took half an hour of stop and start agony while we all shuffled into place and trickled out onto 28th street - a bustling busy main thoroughfare of the lower-west side.
And the fun was just beginning.
Florida makes oranges, Idaho makes Potatoes, and Hollywood makes movies. But Michigan, we make potholes. Northbound 131 is a washboard of suspension testing craters that can knock your teeth loose. Because of the complicated interaction of freeze-thaw cycles, capillary action of water retention in asphalt, and the fact that we run snow plows for a third of the year there is a regular pattern of patched sections on the highway spaced at predictable intervals for miles on end.
And I felt every one of those sonsabitches as we launched and bounded from pock to pock, all along my dick.
It took about thirty minutes to get from Studio28 to their house. That was the longest half hour of my life. I felt every bump in the road in between my own heartbeats as I throbbed in agony sitting awkwardly in the back seat. The only saving grace was that her and her mom were making small talk about the movies they had each seen and my opinion didn’t matter. I sat there sniffling and rubbing my swollen, red eyes. When her mom asked me if I was okay I uttered the only word I could manage on the entire ride home.
“Allergies”.
We made it to her parent’s house, said our goodbyes, and she walked me across the street to my car. It took more work to get into my mom’s old boxy beige Pontiac Grand Prix than it did to get out of her parent’s SUV, but I made it, tenderly.
Mission two accomplished, her parents had no idea. So that crisis was averted.
Now, I had to choose. I was on the edge of The City. If I went East, I could fight my way through traffic to the giant gleaming state-of-the-art hospital located right downtown and wait in line in the emergency room. If I went West, I was heading towards home and in my own small country town was a little Med Center staffed with only a handful of people whose main job was helping people with minor bumps and bruises, and keeping the critical patients alive long enough for the ambulance to get there and haul them off to one of the much larger neighboring cities.
I headed towards home. It was farther, but faster. I hopped on I-96 and blasted into the night more scared of hitting a deer than being pulled over for speeding. I figured if any cop pulled me over, all I had to do was show him my situation and there wasn’t a man in the world who would fault me for being in a hurry. I had a much higher chance of getting a police escort to the Med Center than getting a ticket, so off I went as fast as Mom’s old Pontiac would carry me.
I arrived without incident and walked gingerly through the front door. I’d never been to the Med Center before. My parents were on the rescue squad of the local volunteer fire department so anything short of a sucking chest wound in my house was dealt with by someone running for the jump-bag in Dad’s truck. Any sort of injury was handled on only the best of equipment: the kitchen table.
Life’s different in a small town.
That’s why I wasn’t even slightly surprised when I walked in the front door and the triage nurse at the front counter stopped typing, looked me straight in the eye with genuine concern on her face and said “Chris, are you ok?”.
It was my mom’s friend. Not only did this woman know me, she’d known me since I had training wheels on my bike. I knew she was a Nurse. Half the women in my world were Nurses, my mom was a Nurse. She worked at a nursing home filled with other Nurses. How the hell was I supposed to remember that one of her best friends just so happened to work at the Med Center.
I should have gone East.
“No Ma’am” I said, and quickly added, wincing, “please don’t tell my Mom”
“What happened, show me what you did”
Now, I grew up around trauma and emergency medicine. Back then they were dispatched with one-way pagers the size of a brick that looked like walkie-talkies. There was only one channel for the whole county, and every department had its own unique series of musical tones that told us who the message was for. It squawked and whistled all day and night and you never even noticed it.
But when the BEEDEEBEEDEEBEEDEEBEEDEE-DOOOOOOOOO-----DEEEEEEEEEEEE sound that designated our unit came over that radio, it would take you out of a dead sleep before they got to the “COOPERSVILLE UNIT TWO-OH-FIVE” part of the message and Mom, Dad, or sometimes both, were headed out the door on a dead run before it stopped talking.
If this happens while you’re out somewhere with Dad in the truck, you’re along for the ride. It was somewhere around age twelve when “stay in the truck” just didn’t work for me anymore. I’d learned where babies came from by watching a screaming Asian woman have one on the tailgate of a Subaru in the McDonald’s parking lot. I’d seen bodies mangled and I knew first hand why they called the people who ride crotch-rocket motorcycles “Organ Donors”. I’d learned the smartest and most heroic humans alive fly in AeroMed, and I knew that rescue crews have no problem working up to their elbows in your blood and then going out for pizza half an hour later. It’s just meat.
I was also well aware that the strongest, hardest, most stoic, most unimaginably un-fucking-fazed woman you’ll ever meet, is a Triage Nurse.
So I lifted up my shirt.
And, for just a moment, I saw her humanity crack through her professional stoicism.
I pray that you go your entire life and never once hear a Triage Nurse say “Oh Dear” when she looks at whatever injury you have. It’s up there with getting a prostate exam and hearing the Doctor behind you say “Aw, fuck!”. You don’t want any part of this situation.
There was no paperwork, and my ass never touched one of the beige plastic chairs in the tiny waiting room. She stood up and walked me through the door behind the counter and ten seconds later I was sitting on the crinkly butcher paper of an examination table with my legs dangling over the edge.
A Nurse who was only ten minutes older than I was came in just a moment behind me. Thankfully, I didn’t know her at least, but I’d have liked to under different circumstances. She held a BP cuff in one hand and a clipboard in the other and asked me how I was feeling and if I had any allergies. We chatted for perhaps a whole minute before she asked me what was wrong.
I lifted my shirt.
She took it well, just a tiny gasp before she got her shields back in place. But her blush betrayed her. She held tight to her professionalism and assured me that the Doctor would be right in as she stumbled gracefully backwards out of the room. However, I did notice that she never did get my BP, temp, or anything else.
The Doctor was indeed, right in. I had been sitting there less than five minutes when he strolled into the room and said “So, I hear you’ve had an interesting evening.”
He pulled up a little rolling stool, put on a pair of gloves, and scooted up for a front row seat between my knees as I sat sideways off the edge of the table. We discussed how I had gotten myself into this situation, and he surveyed the damage. I found it ironic that the one person who had shared this experience with me and who could truly appreciate what I was going through was the one person who was completely at ease with the situation. Of course…..it wasn’t his dick.
It was also the first time I’d gotten a real look at things myself, and it was worse than I’d imagined. The skin on the bottom of my shaft was peeking out through the golden teeth of the zipper all the way from about a half inch above the bottom of the zipper to the top. There was way more blood than I had noticed at first and it had stained my pants several inches in every direction. The total zipped length was nearly five inches, and it was under tension on the inside because the standard response to pain is for your dick to shrink up like a stack of dimes.
The added effect, because my brain is an asshole, was that the pain just intensified once I got a look at it.
He pulled out a pair of trauma shears and we discussed what he was going to do about half a second before he did it with a running commentary. He planned on cutting my pants off around the zipper. I was fine with this, off is good, let’s get this off - free me from my golden restraints good Doctor!
Deftly, gently, and with surprising ease the shears sliced right through the seams and folds of my jeans. He cut the bottom through several layers of denim and seams straight up to the base of the zipper, and sheared off either side about four inches away, leaving me with two flaps joined only by the teeth of the zipper and the button on top. He spun on his wheels, reached in the third drawer behind him, pulled out a pair of cutters like I would have in my toolbox, and snipped off the bottom half-inch of zipper entirely. It fell to the floor and landed with a wet plop.
He gently unbuttoned what was now a much smaller piece of my pants, and examined it closely for a couple minutes with a flap held in either hand.
Then he said something you never, ever, want to hear any manner of medical professional say to you.
“We’re gonna go on three...”
We’re…..WHAT!? Where? Whatthefuckare...
“One”
There was no motherfucking Two. Three was an outright lie.
The way out was as blindingly fast and traumatic as the way in. The entire process was loud, a wild blur of motion, and terrifying. In what I have absolutely no doubt was a process he had experienced before, he tore apart the two halves of my zipper with the haymaker strength of a farm boy and kicked himself away from the side of my examination table with both feet to send himself rocketing backwards across the tiny room well clear of the wild reflexive punch I swung through the space his head had occupied a split second before. He landed in a heap, half fallen off his rolling stool, with a piece of my jeans in either hand and an accomplished smile from ear to ear.
That all happened in less than a second. It took exactly the amount of time it took me to say “MOTHERFUCK-....eh?”
The good side is, it didn’t actually hurt all that much when he did that. The bad side was, the blood was now rushing to my dick and it was throbbing with every heartbeat. It hurt like all hell.
We both took a moment to compose ourselves and both spoke at the same moment, saying the exact same thing.
“Are you alright?”
I looked at the sad strip of hamburger laying in my lap, surrounded by a terrifying amount of dried blood in matted black hair. It looked like Edward Scissorhands had given me an old fashioned.
“No?”
I had visions of sutures, staples, and all forms of Spanish Inquisition cock torture that I was about to endure and was blissfully thankful that all he needed to do was clean everything off and tape a strip of gause to it. After the most unpleasant experience I’ve ever had involving my dick being cleaned, complete with being hosed down with Betadine, now it I just looked like I’d fucked an Oompa Loompa.
I asked what would happen if I got a hardon, would I bleed to death or something? He assured me that the last thing I was going to get in the immediate future was an erection. After a few days it would be fine all on its own.
I thanked him for saving my manhood, secured my pants with my belt, hid the giant square hole in front under my shirt, and headed home. I tossed my shredded jeans in the trash, took a shower that involved the creative application of a baggie and a rubber band that moments before had been holding the wing on my model airplane.
He was right, I didn’t have any danger of getting a hardon for over a week. The throbbing pain became a dull ache that would hover just on the edge of being actively conscious of it. Sleeping was complicated, but I managed. After a few days it didn’t hurt at all, and a couple weeks later I was back to normal. In the third week a full operational test proved that all repairs had been completed and that all systems were operating within nominal specifications.
But it’ll be a cold day in hell before I let a woman zip me up again. I’ll take care of that on my own, thank you.
The scar is considerable, tapering to half an inch wide at the base and running front and center along the bottom of my shaft up to the tip. It’s been the topic of more conversations and won more stupid bets than I want to think about. But it’s part of me, a part of my life, and I’m just thankful that despite the relentless abuse and poor decisions my dick has endured, that all in all, things are working just as they should thanks to the compassionate care of a young country Doctor and a small team of Nurses.
Thank you to everyone in the medical profession, of any rank and stripe, for enduring all that you do to help us fumbling idiots live to see another sunrise. You are awesome.
With my kindest regards, cb
---------Addendum Edit, Because holy shit my inbox.
In the end, like all good stories, things actually worked out alright. Her and I resumed our weekly Pontiac wrestling match and eventually as we gained wisdom, experience and the seasons turned warmer, found several much more comfortable places to explore each other’s bodies. All in all we dated for a little over a year in total. Our relationship ran the natural course of typical highschool lovers, and ended just as it should have. We both ended up dating each other’s friends, such is life in a small town, and went on with our lives.
Her Dad never really did like me all that much, and that’s ok. I was a shitty teenager and certainly didn’t have the best of intentions for his daughter. That’s ok, she wasn’t nearly the good little girl he thought she was. But we were, on the whole, decent kids and we came out alright. He was a good and righteous man and was worth my respect; though I wouldn’t learn the true depths of that until I gained a lot more maturity. He died years ago, far too young, from a heart that wasn’t worthy of the love he carried for so many people.
She’s married now, with a couple kids and what I hope is a good and happy life. I haven’t talked to her in decades, but I sincerely wish her well.
I healed up just fine. This all happened back in 1992. Over the years the scar has faded to being something that’s still there, but hardly noticeable. It looks more like a shadow now, or a slight discoloration. You can still spot it, if you look, but it’s something that doesn’t get mentioned by anyone unless we’ve been together for several months and they’re really exploring my cock. I have to think it’s fine now, as I’ve been complimented many times on it’s appearance.
I’d like to thank the many people who have read this and commented on my writing. I’m just starting out on the path to being an author, and I’ve been posting my stories here on Reddit to see if anyone liked them. It turns out, you really do, far more than I imagined. With all of my heart, thank you. Your support and enjoyment of my dopey stories means far more to me than I can adequately express. I’m still learning how to find my voice, but you’ve certainly helped me along on the path.
If you enjoy my writing, there’s much more of it out there, and even more coming. Check my profile and you’ll find half a dozen other stories scattered about the Reddit universe. You're welcome to follow me or friend me on here if you wish. I would be sincerely honoured and I'm working to earn an audience, and even someday a paycheck. You’ll also find my YouTube channel (I make science and technology educational videos as my day job), and my Patreon if you’d like to support my work. I’m a full time YouTuber now, and for the past year. Though after your responses to my stories lately, I think I’ll add Author to that as well.
And for the ridiculous number of people who have begged for a goddamned pic, fine. Go to Imgur, it's /a/WbCHtEw it's VERY NSFW
Yes, that’s really me. Yes, it’s real. No, I’m straight, but thank you.
TL:DR - A bit of adventuresex at a movie theatre resulted in a blowjob and I get zipped up epicly. Had to go to the Dr and learned my mom's best friend worked there. I was scarred for life. It's a long story but worth your time, read it, you'll like it.

Mufasa: King of the Neckbeards

Well I'm new to the Moonhorse community and can thank my friend Molly for that, but I have several stories about the neckbeards in my life, and I have been meaning to submit them, and since I have a 8 hour overnight shift gives me plenty of time. The names of everyone in these stories will be changed to protect the innocent and the not so innocent. But for my first neckbeard story I'll start by talking about my friend, who for the sake of this story will we be calling Mufasa. If anyone is wondering why Mufasa it is because he at one point he wanted to have his beard and hair meeting to look like he had a lion's mane. He's moved on from that dream but compared to some other "dreams" he has, that wasn't even the worst. I met Mufasa in my senior year of high school. We took auto shop together. The auto shop department in my school was so small they merged the senior and junior classes together into one big class. Being a senior and having taken the first two auto classes the school offered, I already had my small group of people I worked with, we will be calling them Chauncey and Broccoli. For our first class project our teacher Mr.F, says to work in groups of 4. So of course my group would consist of myself, Chauncey, and Broccoli , but we need a 4th person, who walks over but none other than Mufasa. He doesn't really ask to join our group he just kind of stands next to us until Mr.F sees him next to us and writes down that he is part of our group. Right off the bat Mufasa starts kissing up to us, talking about how all the other juniors in the class are dumb, hes working with us because were smarter then them, and so on and so on. None of us thought twice about him either, at first seemed like a weird kid, but was nice so whatever right. Throughout the school year learned a lot about Mufasa, he gets angry easily, he's awkward, and he'll pretty much do anything you tell him to do. He had a really big zit on his neck, and Chauncey as a joke told him, tie a string around it and pull, the zit will pop right off. He did it and missed 3 days of school as he was too embarrassed to tell us. He cut the exhaust pipe off his truck because as a joke, Broccoli told him too,there's more of those stories but high school feels like it was so long ago, I can't remember all of the stories from back then, and I don't feel Mufasa truly grew into a neckbeard until after college. I feel the best way to describe Mufasa in neckbeard stories is to just go by each girl, he pursued, and Soccer Mom Now Soccer Mom was a girl Mufasa had been pursuing since high school. Just about everyday Mufasa would be texting in our group chat asking us how to respond to Soccer Mom's text, where should he take her on a date, should he make her pay, what should he wear etc. It got annoying but that's what friends are for right? He takes Soccer Mom on a date, to the movies, all day he has been texting us asking us questions. He goes on his date, and we get a text that night that reads "All I got was a hug." Chauncey responded with a "What" and Mufasa responded "We met at the movie theater, and she hugs me, and that was it, no kisses, none before or after, just a hug, I blew it tonight" We got several text messages like this about Soccer Mom, to the point where we wondered if he secretly wanted to blow it. She keeps going out with you dude, you must be doing something right, but in the end he wasn't as she eventually stopped talking to him, met someone else, got married, and had kids, and is a soccer mom now. Parkland Girl I don't remember much about this girl, she wasn't around long as she probably wasn't going to put up with his crap as long as Soccer Mom did, all I remember is she was from Parkland. Saturday night, Chauncey and myself are hanging out, we text Mufasa asking if he wants to join us, he responds with "No I might actually be getting a pee pee touch tonight." Now I'll admit Chauncey and I burst out laughing, because come on who calls it a pee pee touch? Now here's where it gets bad, I make a bet with Chauncey, $20 he blows it. Chauncey took that bet because someone had to have faith in him. We don't hear from Mufasa the rest of the night, I'm all set to give Chauncey $20, I text our group chat the next day asking Mufasa if he got his pee pee touch, he responded with "No pee pee touch" Of course Chauncey has to ask him what happened, I don't fully remember the full story but the gist of it is, they went back to her place, spent the night talking on her couch, she said she was tired and was going to bed, Mufasa thought going to bed translated to, come sleep with me, and got up headed towards her bedroom while undoing his pants on the way there before she kicked him out. Fast & Furious 7 We're going to take a break from the girl stories here to talk about a very specific night. Mufasa worked Friday nights, he never could hang out on Friday nights, and anytime we asked him to hang out on a Friday night he would start bitching "blah blah blah I told you guys I can't hang out tonight I'm working blah blah blah" so if Chauncey and I ever hung out on a Friday we wouldn't invite him. So this Friday Chauncey and I were out downtown at a barcade with some friends, One of our friends takes a picture of us all posting it on Snapchat or Facebook, I don't remember where exactly. Next thing you know Chauncey and I get a text to our group chat Mufasa: Where are you guys Me: Headquarters its a barcade out in Chicago Mufasa: Why didn't you guys invite me? Me: Its Friday you normally work Fridays Chauncey: Yea dude, everytime we ask if you want to hang on Fridays you tell us you're working and then start bitching Mufasa: Well I was but its nice to be invited still Chauncey: When do you get off work? We were going to see the new Fast & Furious movie but we can wait til you're off work Mufasa: I don't want a pity invite Me; Mufasa we'll pick you up, I'll buy your ticket, all you have to do is enjoy yourself Mufasa: No, I'm going to be too tired after work tonight, so have fun watching Fast & Furious 7, I guess I'll just go home and fast & furiously beat it 7 times tonight That is where that story ends, but this is when Mufasa starts using the phrase gaming and chill. Anytime we asked Mufasa if he wanted to hangout, at least 80% of the time he would respond with saying "No I'm going to game and chill tonight" It was funny anytime he said he was staying in to game and chill we never saw him online that night, which makes us think that was keyword for something else, I'll let you use your imagination.
Famous Daves Out by me there is a restaurant chain, called Famous Daves its a BBQ joint, me and my buddies used to go to frequently. Usually once month, Mufasa, Chauncey, our friend who we'll call Chewbacca, and myself would go a split a platter of ribs. Every month we would alternate who's turn it was to pay, tonight it was Mufasa's turn. Mufasa gets the bill, his total is $68.99, he tips the waitress 1 cent just so his total would be $69.00, and for some reason that was more important than the waitress getting a good tip, when he went to the bathroom all of us gave our waitress cash and apologized for Mufasa's 1 cent tip. After that we head on over to the movies, I can't remember what movie we saw, I fell asleep during it, and everything that happened before was probably better than the movie could've been.We arrive at the movie theater, first place we all go is to the bathroom. Now Chewbacca and Mufasa both need to use it, and there is only one stall, Chewbacca gets in first, and Mufasa in the bathroom just starts screaming "Come on Chewbacca hurry up, Power Shit! Power Shit!" over and over. I'm leaving the bathroom, and I can hear him through the door, everyone out there can hear this dude screaming power shit. So Chauncey and myself head to the theater taking our seats waiting on the two of them, Chewbacca comes back, few minutes later Mufasa comes back, and tell us the story of his bathroom experience "So I feel bad, I was in there taking a shit, and I heard someone walk in and grab a bunch of paper towels, I thought it was you guys coming to mess with me, so I screamed "You assholes better leave me alone or you'll be sorry!" Then on my way back to the theater I heard the janitor talking to someone saying he went to clean the mens room and some guy in the stall started yelling at him" For once the dude feels shame
Christmas I blame myself for this one, if it wasn't for me this girl would've never met Mufasa, she would never have gone through any of this. I had recently met a girl at a concert a month or so prior to all of this. One night she asked me if I have any single friends for her friend who we will call Christmas as her name translates into Christmas. Now after reading the previous stories you may wonder why would you be like oh yea my friend Mufasa is single, and I honestly don't know, but I ask him and of course he says yes. The four of us have dinner and decide to check out the band playing that night. While the band is playing the girl I was seeing and myself head out to the dance floor, we're dancing, and then the slow song starts playing, and then the cliche, her and I start slow dancing, we look into each other's eyes, we lean in and kiss. However it is a very short kiss, as I feel her being yanked away from me. I turn and see her friend Christmas grabbing her arm, she looks at her and says "We need to leave" then she turns to me and goes "your friend Mufasa is gross, disgusting, and a pervert" of course I ask her what did he do, so she tells me "He asked me if I wanted to dance, I told him no, then he said well you want to give me a blowjob?" Now at this point I am fuming because not only did he say something way out of line, he ruined my moment. So I go looking for him, I'm pissed so I find him at the bar wearing his Pickle Rick t shirt Me: What the fuck is wrong with you? Mufasa: (looks down) What I like this shirt Me: Not the shirt, you asked Christmas to give you a blowjob? Mufasa: Yea I took a shot Me: Did you think that would work? Mufasa: Yes Me: Why? In what world would that work, you just met this girl, you're wearing a Pickle Rick t shirt in public, she won't dance with you so you think she'll give you head, come on man Mufasa: Well I'm just sick of being the only person in the group who is still a virgin, like the fact that you can get laid and I can't Me: What is that supposed to mean? Mufasa: You're too chill to get laid I don't get it Me: And you're not chill enough Mufasa: No I'm trying Me: Trying what? To come off as a creep because asking a girl you just met for a blowjob is creepy This goes on for a bit and I'll admit I am paraphrasing here as I don't fully remember word for word what was said, I would love to say the girl stories end here but, oh no we have two more My Best Friend Now this next girl was my best friend from high school, we drifted apart from time to time, but we always would make it a point to hang out every now and then. Being my best friend from high school she would hang out with the guys and myself from time to time. All of us went to go see this band we all liked. We get in we head to the bar, while my best friend goes to buy a t shirt, Mufasa asks us "Is it just me or is Ting's best friend looking good tonight" and then my best friend bought Mufasa a beer, in Mufasa's mind that means, she is trying to get me drunk to sleep with me, she bought him one beer, he bought himself 4 more, but in his mind she wanted to get him drunk, to sleep with him? Come on man. He spends most of the night hitting on her, dancing on her, singing to her, and we all just kind of watched this train wreck, could've stepped in, but did we, no. Throughout the night my best friend kept trying to get away from Mufasa and gravitated towards Chauncey, the two of them sat at the bar and had a few drinks. Mufasa sees this and shuts down, walks over to the corner and sulks. Chewbacca and I walk over there, and do our best to cheer him up, get him to enjoy the rest of his night. I head back to the crowd keep listening to the band out of the corner of my eye, I can see Mufasa talking to a girl, I decide to walk over there, just in case he starts acting with this girl like he did with my best friend, and I have to admit, he was doing fine, he wasn't being creepy, he was having a normal conversation, he was doing good, then this guy in a wheelchair comes over, and grabs the girls hand and she lets us know this is her boyfriend. I can see the look of disappointment hit Mufasa's face, so we talk with them a little bit longer, then were getting ready to part ways, I turn around with Mufasa, we don't even take two steps, the two of them are right behind us and he screams at the top of his lungs "I CAN"T BELIEVE THAT FUCKING CRIPPLE HAS MORE GAME THAN I DO!" Of course my natural reaction is to shout back at him to shut the hell up. I wish this story ended here, but it doesn't. The car ride back, due to Chauncey and my best friend sharing drinks, and Mufasa getting himself drunk, Chewbacca and I get the joy of having to haul two drunk men into the car. We threw them both in the backseat which was a terrible idea, because they spent the whole night arguing over who could sleep with my best friend where I heard lines such as I'd have sex with her for $2 right now I'm going to take pictures of her pussy and send them to all of you She wants me she let me feel her boobies and they felt good, maybe it was her shoulder I don't know And of course the famous line we heard all night Pull over I have to puke! So in one of Mufasa's puke sessions he decides now would be a good time to pee, so he starts undoing his pants, I tell him to turn the other way or else we'll all see his dick Before I can finish that sentence Chancey looks out the window "Oh my God, Mufasa what the hell why is your penis so small? Like I've heard of micro penis but my God thats even smaller" Mufasa gets in the car and of course its rant time " Yea I have a small dick, ok, I can't helicopter spin it, and thats why I'm still a virgin no girl wants a guy with a small dick, big dicks are all girls want, only way to have sex with a samll dick is to get married, because then they are stuck with your tiny dick" I'm glad he passed out after that because my God all of us wanted to just lay into him, like this pity party is not helping you, on top of you being creepy with girls you like. We called his sister and she helped us get his ass in the house, Woke up the next morning like nothing from last night happened and we still don't talk about that night. Music Teacher I feel this is the worst, this was just the worst Mufasa had been, he had just started growing his beard around this time, and oh boy did it show in more ways than one. Music teacher was a friend of my at the time girlfriend. Music Teacher was a girl who got around and she had no problem letting people know. My girlfriend at the time suggested we set up Mufasa with Music Teacher, now if you remember our previous story that seems like the worst idea, but for some reason I asked him, and without hesitation he said yes. Now for some reason we decided to make a group chat consisting of Music Teacher, my girlfriend at the time, Chauceny, Chewbacca, Mufasa, and myself. Now in this group chat Mufasa wasted no time, asking Music Teacher for pictures screenshotting any picture she sent, telling her shes so beautiful, etc but the feeling was never mutual, and she made it known in the group chat, where she called Mufasa things like a condom fail, 40yr old virgin, and that if she were to ever marry him it would be just to divorce him and take half his stuff. Now I would hope that most of you if someone were to say these horrible things to you, that would be a sign to stay the fuck away, it wasn't for Mufasa, he kept trying. So we decide to plan a day for all of us to hang out, we decide we will grab dinner at a Buffalo Wild Wings that night. Mufasa feels the need in the groupchat to ask Music Teacher to send him nudes. How does she respond? She sends everyone in the group chat except Mufasa a nude picture with the caption "Let Mufasa know I sent this to everyone but him" We tell him but hes still not listening to us, still thinking him and music teacher are going to be together someday. Mufasa picks us all up, and we head on out to BWW, The entire night Music Teacher is ripping Mufasa to shreds, in front of everyone, and its at the point where all of us have enough of it. Chauncey starts ripping Music Teacher down, and starts defending Mufasa. How does Mufasa respond? He starts attacking Chauncey, for saying terrible things about Music Teacher, she spends the whole night ripping you, and when someone finally had enough of it, and goes back at this girl, you're going to defend her? Alright at that point we all gave up, he wasn't going to listen to us, and we had to let him learn. The check comes and he pays for everyone wanting to play hotshot, and after he pays he looks Music Teacher in the eye and 3 times says "Hey baby you want some fuck" she then laughs at him gets up and starts flirting with Chewbacca in front of him. Dude still doesn't get it, we drive back he keeps saying he thinks he can do this, shes playing hard to get, and no matter what we say, That night Mufasa goes on Facebook and Instagram and likes every single picture that Music Teacher ever posted. Shocker, she has never talked to him or any of us again. Now this is the final story as its been over 3 hours of writing this, so I think its time to wrap it up Mufasa seemed to be doing good for himself, he got a new job, new truck, he moved out of his parents house, bought a house with his sister, things seemed to be going good for him, and the rest of us seem to be doing well, in this time Chauncey got married,had kids, bought a house, Chewbacca and I got new jobs, things were going well, but Mufasa will always find something to complain about everyday, whether it be a fight he had with a coworker, an issue with his house, or something that he saw on Facebook. Then 2020 came along, and Chauncey's wife lost her job, leaving Chauncey as the sole provider of his household, and he had it with Mufasa's bitching. Mufasa had been bitching about who knows what anymore, Chauncey goes back at him talking about his problems, and Mufasa's response, "Why are you trying to one up me, on who has it worse?" Chauncey retorts with "Because you have a good job, no kids, and you're single, I'm struggling everyday, and you don't hear me bitch all the time, think of all the good things you have man" And Mufasa replies the only way Mufasa can "Well things can't be that bad for you, you're still getting pussy" And I think I'll end it there, I still talk to Mufasa, I don't know if Chauncey had a private talk with him, or if something happened but he doesn't seem to bitch about everything anymore. Moral of the story kids count your blessings, and don't be a creep

best soccer bets for saturday video

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