New Jersey Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban are living out their own WWE storyline.
For those of you who don’t follow professional wrestling, here’s how a modern WWE storyline works. Remember when the guys you watched as a kid would punch each other and lay snakes on each other and rip off one another’s crucifixes? Now they just talk. They badmouth each other on Twitter, that turns into them badmouthing each other in person (for several weeks, usually) until the final, underwhelming conclusion that would’ve been great if they’d been guys who actually hated each other, and not just rich folks pretending on the Internet.
On Tuesday, Mikhail said the following awesome underwater-training thing about Cuban, should he try to sign Nets point guard Deron Williams in free agency:
“May the best man win,” Prokhorov quipped. “If he wins, I will crush him with the kickboxing throwdown.”
I had no idea the NBA settled their contract disputes with kickboxing, but it’d go a long way toward explaining why the owners are always getting kicked in the face. Cuban can’t respond with an IF I CAN CHANGE, WE ALL CAN CHANGE speech until the fight’s over, so (because the greatest talking point of a WWE speech is always “I’ve done well in WWE”) he evoked his time as a special guest host for World Wrestling Entertainment as evidence of his ability to resist kickboxing damage by … I don’t know, shoving?
From ESPN:
“He obviously didn’t see me be the first in WWE history to put Sheamus on the mat,” Cuban replied Wednesday night via email, referring to his guest host appearance on “Monday Night Raw” in 2009. “He knows not what he gets himself into.”
As funny as that is, Cuban failed to mention that his WWE appearances always end badly. Proof:
And don’t forget about that Sheamus confrontation he mentioned.
I’m gonna say this fight would end similarly, and given Prokhorov’s six-foot-eight stature, it’ll involve at least one big boot to the face. And maybe a chokeslam.
[h/t Sportress]