FlipBoardA few things, because this worked well on the wrestling post.
1. Don’t be afraid to leave us a comment. I don’t troll the commenters, I actually want to hear what you have to say and interact with you. Creating a community of sports fans at With Leather is one of the best ways to differentiate us from the +1 Dens and gargling bitchfests of other sports blogs.
2. Follow us on Twitter @WithLeather and like us on Facebook so you don’t miss anything, or follow ME on Twitter @MrBrandonStroud for Nickelodeon jokes and sh*t you don’t care about.
3. Click these links, because hey, they’re here.
Sports
Just in Case: The 2011-2012 NBA Schedule Released – Highlights include the Miami Heat being awarded the NBA Championship at the BEGINNING of the season, just to make sure, and “Cleveland Cavaliers” with quotes around it playing a Cub Scout rec-team in January. The Cub Scouts are going to kill them. [Smoking Section]
When Neck Still Mattered – Green Bay Packer Sam Shields decided to get a gigantic tattoo of his own Super Bowl ring on his neck. I think it’s a great idea. I won 2nd place in my 5th grade science fair and have had the ribbon tattooed on my neck since I was 11. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]
Duke Roufus Talks About Pat Barry and the Future of His Gym – Including this for three reasons: 1) we need more MMA coverage on this pro wrestling and Kate Upton website, 2) Maggie Hendricks is great, and 3) whenever somebody talks about the future of their gym I imagine them as Cutty Wise, standing in their doorway making bug-eyes at some petulant 14-year old who would rather shoot Snoop than box. [Cagewriter]
Why Can’t NBA Players Be Aerophobic? – An opinion piece about why NBA players playing overseas would be a bad thing. If I was an NBA player, my response to this would be “lol I’m rich, gonna go get a million dollars to play pick-up basketball for two months in Prague, smell ya later”. I wish I was an NBA player :( [Pineriders]
With Leather
The Best and Worst of Raw 7/18 – With over 100 comments and counting, I’m doing my very best to create and nurture a community of sane, level-headed wrestling fans who just want to enjoy their dumb show and not have to explain to to everyone, much less the other people who watch it. If you don’t like wrestling, click through and look at hot muscular girls in their underpants. [With Leather]
This is the Greatest Collection of Kate Upton Pictures You’ll Ever See – If you still haven’t clicked this, do it just to read the comments section, where a guy is convinced that Kate Upton, super hot magical woman Kate Upton, is a “chubber”. Hilarious. [With Leather]
In Case You’re Wondering, Michael Jordan Is Still Michael Jordan – One of the best comments we got for this story was a retweet that added “if you didn’t think 48-year old Michael Jordan couldn’t dunk, kill yourself”. Man, if I killed myself for every misconception I’ve felt I would’ve perished in the womb. [With Leather]
Chris Kluwe Is The Voice of Reason – The most controversial thing ever said by a punter (outside of With Leather) is now an online phenomenon, and Lockout or no we should spend the next five months watching NFL players compare dicks and lengths of piss on the Internet. [With Leather]
Not Sports
Amazing Spider-Man Trailer Leaks, Goes First Person POV – You know what would make Spider-Man better? Making it be exactly like Twilight. You know what would make the Twilight Spider-Man movie better? Making me play Mirror’s Edge for 20 minutes while it’s on. [Gamma Squad]
Call James Cameron, They’re Planning a Captain Planet Movie – Hopefully they’ll get the guy from Sugar Ray to play Captain Planet like I’ve been joking about since I found out what “Sugar Ray” was. Donald Glover with a flat-top as Kwame NEEDS TO HAPPEN. [Film Drunk]
Fun with the New Two and a Half Men Ads – To date, the only thing remotely resembling fun I’ve ever had with “Two and a Half Men”. [Warming Glow]
The 10 Most Bangable Celebrities on the Planet – I really hate the word “bangable”, but Alison Brie made the list so I’m sharing it. People who did not place, but should’ve: the girl from Paramore, the Chickbusters, the drugged-out 30-year old Taylor Momsen is pretending to be, Mia Tyler (no, seriously), Julie from “Growing Pains” (still), Aubrey Plaza (specifically in Funny People), Scarlett Johansson (all versions). [Pajiba]
[header photo credit to Cody Duty]
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75% less wrestling coverage would be just fine.
@essequemodeia – the last wrestling post has 106 comments. NBA posts top out at about 5, NFL posts get less than that, baseball less than that. So, gonna keep doing what works.
“Mia Tyler (no, seriously)”
Big girls need love too, plus they give great bj’s.
Also, I vote for more baseball posts.
@UU – We aren’t really voting. I love writing about baseball, they just don’t do any traffic and nobody talks about them.
Big Ups for The Wire reference. Got a date. Got to keep it.
The mia tyler sentiment thirded…ive just realized my lady is roughly two and a half kate uptons
Voted more australian rules football
@B, it was meant to be a silent vote.
/silent vote for more Kate Upton
@UU – Silent vote counted
Couldn’t the wrestling posts getting a lot traffic have to do more with the fact that wrestling is (apparently?) doing some exciting stuff at the moment and that, of all the articles, you probably put the most care/heart into writing the wrestling ones, and not just that people want more wrestling?
I’m not complaining about the wrestling posts, because I enjoy reading them. But I do think they are so qualitatively different from the others that it’s a bit hasty to say that that’s just what people REALLY want.
@Later-era Dugout Convert – I tried doing something similar about baseball with Baseball is Boring but nobody really responded to them. Same with the A Guide to Recognizing Your Mascots series, which I could write passionately about, but nobody was looking to read about on the Internet.
More vagina coverage would also be nice. Seeing that this is a family-friendly site, a vagina is pretty much a prerequisite for forming a family.
Fair enough. Well, I liked both columns quite a bit! Probably didn’t comment enough on them though. Oh well, I like your writing — I’d probably read a summary of a bowel movement you had if you wrote it — so I’m just glad that you’re writing SOMETHING.
@L-eDC: Also, it’s hard to write ten pages on an NFL player being a douche. Like, how do you unpack that? Or look, a basketball player did something terrible to children. I know Uproxx likes to squeeze 20-page slideshows out of a few Twitter remarks by famous people, but there’s only so much you can do with random sports stories.
The Guide to Mascots feature was one of the best things I’ve read on the internet, Brandon. Honestly, I thought it was brilliant. I shared it with a lot of people; in fact, I’m going to link to the tag again right now because I liked it so much.
[withleather.uproxx.com]
I think the sharp transition in style that came with new editorship might have had something to do with the lack of reader comment on it. That and it takes time for news to travel, so a fair amount of your readership might not have migrated with you yet.
@FSJ – I really do want to start doing it again. Maybe I will, whether people read it or not.
In other words, I will comment my dick off on the next non-Dugout baseball post. I don’t give a sh*t, I’ll start a flame war with UU. You’ll see. THE PEOPLE WILL HAVE TROLLEN.
I’m with essequemodeia and others: less wrestling, please.
It’s not a professional sport; it’s theatre. Theatre with oiled-up, sweaty roid freaks and bimbos with implants, but theatre nonetheless.
Sure, those posts get a lot of attention & comments, but then, so would posts about Sarah Palin being an idiot or Barack Obama being a secret Muslim out to steal our pots o’ gold.
Long story short, if you want to make this a blog about sports and pro wrestling, you’re gonna get the pageviews. But will this still be a sports blog in the way that meant in the past? Nope.
I mean, I skip over any post that has anything about wrestling. That doesn’t mean I skip checking the blog. But too much wrestling might hit a critical mass for me.
Boobs always help, of course.
Regarding the esteemable 48 year-old Airness, the guy’s 6’6″ with a huge wingspan–which means he can probably reach 8’9″ – 8’10”, maybe close to 9′ on his tip-toes with his shoes on. That means to dunk on a 10′ basket, he needs a vertical of maybe 2 feet. Considering that in his prime he had a vertical somewhere in the 48″-49″ range, I’m not impressed that he can still dunk. Ten years from now? Sure.
And here’s another vote for Mia and her zaftig sisters: when you get to be an old husband like me, you prefer a gal who isn’t afraid to order her own damn dinner–and keep her mitts off mine–instead of pretending that she only eats salad while she slices off half of your rack o’ ribs.