The unwritten rules of pro wrestling

· Victory can either be by pinfall, submission, countout or disqualification

· Submission can be signaled by the wrestler tapping out or by the referee lifting the wrestler’s arm and dropping it three times without the wrestler keeping it raised, thus signaling that the wrestler is unconscious. In the history of pro wrestling this has never happened. Every single time the wrestler will let his arm fall twice and on the third try start his comeback.

· If one wrestler offers to shake another wrestler’s hand the other wrestler will look at the crowd using their reaction as to whether to shake hands or not.

· If they do shake hands, within thirty seconds somebody is getting punched.

· If a birthday cake is brought into the ring someone is going to be shoved into the case. Likewise, all trophies carried into the ring will likewise be broken over someone’s head before the end of the match.

· The strongest substance in pro wrestling is the championship belt. Being hit with the belt will cause immediate unconsciousness even if the other wrestler had spent the past thirty minutes seemingly impervious to being dropped on his head or smacked in the face with a steel chair.

· The second strongest substance in pro wrestling is the skull of a Samoan wrestler. It is assumed to have something to do with the fact that they are unable to wear shoes.

· Under no circumstances are wrestlers allowed to acknowledge the camera crew in the backstage segments in which they reveal their nefarious plot to attack another wrestler.

· Likewise, none of the wrestlers backstage watch the show that they are currently appearing on in order to realize that “Hey, those guys just mentioned that they planned on jumping me in the parking lot. I think I should be cautious when I go out there.”

· Newton’s First Law of Wrestling: Force equals mass times acceleration times the number of flips in the air

· Einstein’s Corollary: The cooler it looks, the more it hurts

· If a good guy starts to grow facial hair it means that he is about to become a bad guy.

· Foreign wrestlers are by nature evil no matter where they are actually from. Thus we can hate Nikolai Volkoff even though he is from Detroit. Or better yet the case of Ludvig Borga, a wrestler from Finland who played the role of evil foreign monster even though no one in the crowd could figure out precisely why we were supposed to hate Finland.

· If a wrestler comes to the ring without entrance music he is going to lose

· Touching a referee will render him unconscious for a good five minutes. However, he will regain consciousness just in time for the match to have a proper finish.

· If a match is announced as having a time limit said match will be a time limit draw. (Sadly, we have done away with time limits in pro wrestling as well as the announcing of home town and weight. Thus we no longer have wrestlers hailing from parts unknown with weight unknown. Parts unknown I always understood but how can you have weight unknown? Is the guy deathly afraid of a scale?)

· Russian wrestlers always lose Russian Chain matches. However, wrestlers with a “dog” nickname will always win dog collar matches.

Wednesday Night Music Club: In honor of their new album here is a Swell Season song.