Foreign Object Friday: Finlay's shillelagh

Hornswoggle & Finlay with their shillelaghs
Courtesy: WWE

By Kevin Hunsperger

@kevinhunsperger & @my123cents on Twitter

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It's St. Patrick's Day so it only makes sense to talk about Irish Superstar Fit Finlay and his shillelagh in today's Foreign Object Friday. The official definition of a shillelagh is a thick stick of blackthorn or oak used in Ireland, typically as a weapon.

Lashley tastes the shillelagh
Courtesy: WWE

Like Jimmy Hart's megaphone, Mr. Fuji's cane and Jim Cornette's tennis racket, Finlay's shillelagh was often at his side. He used it more than a time or two against opponents both big and small. Bobby Lashley tasted the shillelagh after Little Bastard (eventually Hornswoggle) slid him the weapon. That blow helped Finlay capture the U.S. Championship. 

Little Boogie Man gets hit
Courtesy: WWE

Little Boogie Man was also abused by the shillelagh. Finlay used it during he and Hornswoggle's feud with the Boogie Man and his diminutive counterpart. Even the World's Strongest Man Mark Henry has been whacked with the wooden stick too.

Father and son
Courtesy: WWE

Eventually, Finlay and his son turned good, but that didn't necessarily mean an end to the shillelagh shenanigans. It was used among several other foreign objects during Finlay's Belfast Brawl match against JBL at WrestleMania 24. There were even times Finlay relied on Hornswoggle as a weapon too, launching his pint-sized partner on unsuspecting foes.

Season's Beatings: Choir Boys (and Girls)

The WWE Choir
Courtesy: WWE

By Kevin Hunsperger
@kevinhunsperger & @my123cents on Twitter

If you've yet to see the latest video by the WWE with the Superstars and Divas wishing their fans a Merry Christmas, shame on you.  This is one of those creations that is awesomely bad in my opinion.  I was always a fan of the group sings on the Wrestling Album and Piledriver.  This holiday remake captures some of that old time magic for me.

Wrestlers can't sing, or at least most of them can't and that's what makes this fun.  John Cena serves as the maestro, and superstars like the Prime Time Players, Hornswoggle, and the Big Show all have singing parts, making this little ditty is fun as far as I'm concerned.

The little cartoon at the beginning (or the end, I don't remember) adds to the entertainment.  Check it out.

Why Hornswoggle?

Mystery solved, but why?
Photo courtesy: WWE.com

By Kevin Hunsperger
@kevinhunsperger & @my123cents on Twitter

 Those of you who watched Raw this past Monday night learned the answer to a longtime mystery in the WWE. The anonymous Raw General Manager was Hornswoggle. Yeah, that's right we're to believe that for more than a year the diminutive wrestler was behind one of the WWE's biggest angles. After all, week after week fans speculated who was sending all those mystery emails setting up matches and making the rules on the show.

 Then on July 9, 2012 we found out it was Hornswoggle. It's a move that still has me shaking my head and really losing more than a little faith in the WWE Creative Team. It seems like they pitched this angle in the trash just for the sake of doing it. I don't think the WWE ever had a plan for the reveal, so I don't know why they did something so hastily. I think we could have all gone without this.

Daddy's boy
Photo courtesy: WWE

 Of course this isn't the first big angle that we've seen Hornswoggle the focus of. Several years ago he learned that he was the "illegitimate son" of Mr. McMahon. Initially I believe Mr. Kennedy was supposed to be the one revealed as the long lost son, but he had gotten hurt or suspended around the time the announcement was made. In the long run though Hornswoggle turned out to be pulling a fast one on the McMahons with his "real" father Finley.

Hornswoggle is entertaining to the kids, but as an adult I find him borderline annoying.  If the creative team wants to use him, he should be in that silly sidekick role, and not the center piece of major story lines.  I'm not hating on the guy, I'm just expressing some frustration that I've had with several things in the WWE right now and Hornswoggle is the straw who broke the camel's back.

Body Slam Your Taste Buds

By Kevin Hunsperger
@kevinhunsperger & @my123cents on Twitter


Okay, I'll admit, this isn't really a wrestling related blog, but I'm going to connect them.  Go figure.  I recently participated in a fundraising event for the local Kiwanis Club.  It's called 100 Men Who Cook.  Last year, I dressed like a wrestler and made Chicken a la Jericho.  This year, I baked Irish Cupcakes, thinking of both Hornswoggle and Sheamus as I did it.


I got so many requests for the recipe, I've decided to write up a blog about it.  First and foremost I must give credit where credit is due.  I got this recipe from my friend and coworker Emily Finnegan.  People at the fundraiser really enjoyed the treats and asked me what made them Irish.  My response... the whiskey in the ganache, which got a lot of thumbs up and smiles.


So, here's the recipe.

For the cupcakes:

1 cup Guinness
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Dutch-process if you want them to be really dark chocolatey!)
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sour cream

Preheat the oven to 350--prepare pan either with liners or grease and flour (it says it makes 24, but it made 32 for me)

Melt butter with the beer in a sauce pan over medium heat; bring to a simmer. Whisk in cocoa powder until smooth. Allow to cool slightly

In a large bowl whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt together.

Beat the eggs and the sour cream together until well blended. Add the beer/butter/cocoa mixture and beat to combine. Add the flour mixture and beat briefly just to combine--do not overbeat. 

Fill the cupcake liners 3/4 full; bake for about 17 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean. Cool completely to room temperature. 

For ganache:

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 to 2 teaspoons Irish whiskey (I used 4!)

Bring cream to a boil in a saucepan; pour boiling cream over chocolate. Add whiskey and allow to stand for 1-2 minutes. Whisk until smooth. Allow to cool slightly until it thickens, about 10-15 minutes.

You can use an apple corer or small knife to cut out the centers of the cupcakes and fill them with the ganache, or you can just use it to frost them.

As you can tell from the pictures, the cupcakes I made are much smaller than a traditional cupcake.  Since I was cooking for 100 people, I used the mini cake liners.  All told, this recipe was enough for about 106 mini cupcakes if you're going that route.  But because they were so small, I did not use the apple corer for the ganache.  Also, I probably could have used more ganache on the cakes I had, as I ended up with extra at the end.

12 Days...World's Strongest Santa

World's Strongest Santa and Rudolph

By Kevin Hunsperger
@kevinhunsperger on Twitter

Back when ECW was still around, the WWE had Mark Henry dress up like Santa Claus and cut a promo on Hornswoggle.  Admittedly, I didn't watch a whole lot of the ECW show and I don't remember Henry and Honswoggle feuding.  I only recall them teaming up on Raw a couple of years ago.

This was well before Henry's push to the World heavyweight title, but I must say, he does a pretty good job with the "Santa Gangsta Rap."  I'm not sure why Tony Atlas is standing behind him as Rudolph.  He looks pretty funny, but at least he's not doing that annoying laugh.

Anyway, enjoy a tune from the World's Strongest Santa.

Luck of the Irish

Meetin' Horny at Wrestlemania 26 Axxess

By Kevin Hunsperger

Happy St. Patrick's Day.  I've decided to do a video, so go to My 1-2-3 Cents on YouTube for more on that.

The video focuses on my thoughts on Hornswoggle, but something I failed to mention in the video was the whole angle with him being the "son" of Vince McMahon and then the reveal being he was actually Finlay's boy.  I felt like that whole angle was thrown together.  From what I've read (so take it for what it's worth) Mr. Kennedy was actually supposed to be the bastard child, but that plan was scrapped when Kennedy was suspended.

I'm not hating on the little guy, I just felt like the angle could have played out much better.

Drew McIntyre & Sheamus with dates after HOF

Since it is St. Paddy's day, props to Sheamus for winning the U.S. title Monday night.  I've mentioned before I hope they're going to put him in that monster heel role again.  The creative team seems to have squandered opportunities with the big man in past.  Here's to hoping this title reign is better organized than his WWE championship runs.

Who can forget wrestling's favorite Irishman, Vince McMahon?  After all without his vision wrestling wouldn't be where it is today.  Good or bad, right?  I'll share more thoughts on McMahon for a future post.

Thanks for reading and watching.  Don't forget to check out My 1-2-3 Cents on Facebook too.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

All Dressed Up

Money Inc. & Chris Hero

I am a very fortunate man.  I have officially gotten the confirmation that I'll be attending Wrestlemania 27.  This will be the fifth one.  My friend Chad and I have attended 22, 24, 25, and 26.  And each year we dress up.

We're heading back this year with another friend, Travis.  So we are looking for costume ideas.  Here are the four previous ones.

Wrestlemania 26:
Without a doubt, last year was my favorite.  We dressed like Money Inc.  I think we got the biggest reaction from other fans on our duds.  Even ROH star Chris Hero, who we ran into after the show, commented and posed for a picture with us.

The Million $ Jacket

I have to give credit where credit is due and thank my mom for putting together the Million Dollar jacket.  She took one of my suit coats and added the gold to the labels and cut a couple of dollar signs out of cardboard and covered them with material.  She also made a gold cummerbund and a giant dollar sign for the back of the coat.

I had to borrow a clip on bow tie from a kid in the neighborhood, as I couldn't find one in the thrift stores around here.  The pants were just a pair of black dress pants that I have. I used a brown makeup pencil to create the beard as I am unable to grow one myself.   I bought one of the tag team titles, and borrowed the other one from a coworker.

I picked up Chad's white IRS shirt from the Goodwill store in town.  I like to find items at the thrift store as chances are we will never use the items we wear again.  The good thing about the jacket is that my mom made it so everything was stitched on and easy to remove.

Hogan vs. Piper

Wrestlemania 25:  To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Wrestlemania in 2009, we decided to pay homage to the main event of that inaugural event.  Well, at least half of it.  


That Hulkamania shirt I'm wearing I bought back in 1988 at Wrestlemania 4.  No, I wasn't there.  But my dad and I went to the Kiel Center in St. Louis and watched it on the big screen via closed circuit.  I held on to the shirt for all those years.  Never wore it.  Not once.  But in my adulthood now, I've worn it a few times.  


I borrowed the Hulkamania headband from a viewer of mine.  I wore a pair of yellow workout shorts for my "trunks."  And bought a fake moustache and spirit gum to secure it to my naked upper lip.  


It's hard to tell in the picture, but Chad is wearing a kilt.  He picked it up at a costume shop in LA.  And that's an authentic Hot Rod tshirt he's sportin'.

Feelin' horny.  (I'm Hornswoggle)

Wrestlemania 24:  As you can see this costume isn't very exciting.  We basically couldn't make up our minds on how to dress up, so we went with the Hornswoggle idea.  Chad was also dressed like the little leprechaun.  It's basically just leftover costumes from St. Patrick's Day.  That's really it.  


This is the only picture I have in the costume.  But someone there took a picture of us with a guy who was dressed like Triple H as the King of Kings, and his friends who were dressed like the Undertaker and Shawn Michaels.  I wish I had a copy of it, because the Triple H was totally bad ass.  The guy could have passed as a stunt double.  Seriously.

We've got spirit!

Wrestlemania 22: Our first Wrestlemania.  We wanted to do something off the wall.  Another friend of ours, Jeremy joined us on this first adventure.


Chad came up with the idea to be the Spirit Squad.  We were able to pick up the shirt and pants at Walmart, so there wasn't a whole lot of work going into this costume either.


The hard part was coming up with cheers.  And yes we did.  I think we had a cheer for five or six of the matches.  Prior to the doors opening at the All State Arena, we walked around and "performed" for the fans waiting in line.  It was a lot of fun and I think people got a kick out of it.


And believe it or not, some people really thought we were the Spirit Squad.  I'm serious.  Several times we were stopped and asked if we "really them."  In fact, when we were walking around the Target store near the arena, we were followed by a group of teenagers who kept asking us if we were the Spirit Squad and if we were wrestling that day.  Definitely made for a memorable event.


So, Wrestlemania 27 is almost here.  We need to come up with something for the three of us.  Right now, we're considering Bobby "the Brain" Heenan, the Red Rooster, and the Brooklyn Brawler.  What's your suggestion?