Rob: Honestly, Maffew, I donate $10 per video because I’d have felt like a cheapskate for donating any less given how hard I’ve laughed at your videos over the past several years. I’m struggling to think of any questions for you and doubt I could come up with them every month. But whatever, let’s try one. Worldwide, what’s your favourite professional wrestling promotion of all time (anything from big companies to tiny indie ones)?

Firstly, hey any amount is appreciated. And thanks! Secondly…that question’s so open I’m going to give multiple answers.

My current favourite promotion in 2014 is PWG. Every match feels like a main event due to the over-the-top (to say the least) wrestling, and the insanely-into-it crowd. A lot of indy wrestling has turned into ”get as much shit in as you can” displays rather than good matches, but unlike other companies with matches like this (it rhymes with ”easy w”), the Reseda crowd make the matches amazing. Coupled with Excalibur on commentary and some of the best unsigned talent makes a product that makes me love wrestling every time.

Favourite period for WWE has to be late-99 to mid-01. I started watching wrestling on a full-time basis as a kid (this is when my mum was convinced to get ”Sky” meaning the dirt-cheap cable alternative to Sky that no longer exists but got you Sky One, Cartoon Network and that was all you needed when you were twelve) just before King Of The Ring 1999, so I was blessed with the amazing IT’S ME AUSTIN promo video that pretty much made me a fan for life.

Handily enough, the period of wrestling WWF was entering into was over-seen by Chris Kreski who emphasised continuity and made it incredibly rewarding for regular watchers. He didn’t just turn the product into the ‘male soap opera’ that wrestling often gets referred as, but a GOOD male soap opera. This was the period that gave us the McMahon-Helmsley regime, Austin getting ran over, Mankind vs. Triple H, the Radicalz debut, The Rock vs. Triple H, Dudleyz vs. Edge & Christian vs. The Hardyz, Rikishi joining Too Cool, Kurt Angle’s rise to the top and D’Lo Brown. The guy even got the European Title over (Al Snow as champ! Regal returning! Mark Henry siding with Jeff Jarrett) before the coherence apparently became too much and the product degraded shortly after Stephanie McMahon took over. WWE would try again in 2008 and as good as Raw is in 2014 (well, as ”not as bad as it was”, at least) it’ll never reach that level of entertainment in my opinion. The times and motives have changed too much.

Close second is late eighties/early nineties NWA, purely down to the tag team scene. Doom, Fabulous Freebirds, Four Horsemen, Legion of Doom, Steiners, Skyscrapers, Midnight Express, Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, Samoan SWAT Team, Varsity Club, Southern Boys, Fantastics…dream match every time or your money back.

It wasn’t asked, but my favourite wrestling company in England is Preston City Wrestling, because it’s where I met two of my exs.

edit: OH AND WORLD OF SPORT. I’m so happy a British influence hit American indies a few years ago because nothing touches World Of Sport.

Peter Siddorn: Hey Maffew. More then happy to donate to you as you are one of the few things that keeps me watching wrestling. Anyway my question for this month. Have you ever been shocked that a wrestler has said they are a fan of Botchamania?

Thanks again for the donation! I used to be shocked that any wrestler would watch the videos. Wrestlers would message me via YouTube and I’d reply back with ”yeah right, as if you’re THE Sonjay Dutt.” Then I went to CZW’s last show at the arena and more than a few guys knew who I was (Niles Young ran to me, for fuck’s sake) and I spoke about this with Chrissy Rivera and she nailed it: ”These are people who put on spandex and hurt themselves in front of people. You’ve got to be of a certain disposition to do this in the first place” which put me at ease. Now when a wrestler tweets or name-drops me I just think ”yeah, well. You’re crazy.”

There’s a few that stick out. I’m surprised Mr. Anderson was so complimentary, he’s been in enough of them. I suggested to a message board doing a Kennedymania given how mistake-ridden his run there was and it got a negative reaction, but everyone agreed ”yeah he could fill one.”

The best story (that was told by Jay Lethal. NAME-DROPPING EVERYWHERE) was about Jerry Lynn. People were waiting on Lynn and he said he needed to go online quickly. When they asked why, thinking he meant check his e-mails or FaceBook, he replied ”I need to see if I made Botchamania.” The thought of Jerry Lynn holding people up to watch the videos amused and confused me.

Oh and this.

Chris Salcole: I am a massive fan of the Nintendo 64. Always have been and part of me still thinks that it is the best console ever released. Can you name us your best/favourite games or least favourite/worst games ever released on the N64? If that is too broad, your best/worst games you have ever played on any console?

I think one of the reasons the video I tried to do for this sucked was because I ummm’d and errr’d over this for about an hour. As you can probably tell by the videos, I’m a big retro gamer. Or rather ”I still play the same games I played as a kid”, whichever one you prefer. My favourite console of all time hands-down is the N64 so I have to be careful with the word limit here. Oh wait it’s my website.

Best/favourite well let’s see now.

Super Mario 64: Few vidya-related memories touch the first time playing this for the first time and realising ”it looks just like the screenshots!” Defined the series of collect ’em ups that followed that everyone decided to make fun of, but everyone can fuck right off.

Banjo-Kazooie: Case in point, Super Mario 64 made by dirty Brits. A blast from start to finish and so colourful it gave me a mini-seizure as a kid. Also see Donkey Kong 64 for the same reasons.

Mischief Makers: It’s 2D and it’s made by Treasure, so it’s got two great things going for it already. Fun as hell, wacky and only frustrating some of the time.

Blast Corps: Like a good woman, it’ll annoy the fuck out of you but you’ll still love it. You will lose the skin off your hand though.

Goldeneye 007: Big surprise there. My Dad used to have a ’30 minutes on the computer then get off and do something else rule’ until we showed him Goldeneye and that went pretty quickly. Still good, I don’t care about the frame-rate sucking. Oh yeah, I used to go to people’s houses as a kid and beat Jungle for people. For whatever reason that level was a game-breaker for lots of people. Looking back, I missed out on making money by putting adverts in newspapers. ”Ring me to kill Xenia!”

To save this Q’n’A turning into a mini-series, let’s just say all Rareware games.

Pokemon Stadium: For the mini-games. And the commentator.

Starfox/F-Zero X: In terms of best N64 games, these are the two that have aged the best. Still insanely playable, the sound-bites are still amusing and they still look great.

WCW vs. nWo: World Tour/WCW vs. nWo: Revenge/WWF Wrestlemania 2000/WWF No Mercy: Still the best wrestling games ever made, I don’t give a fuck.

Also: South Park Rally, Fighter’s Destiny, Goemon: Mystical Ninja, Shadowman, Glover, Turok: Rage Wars.

When I go and revisit old games I haven’t played in ages, I try and play them with someone else so I can get an impartial opinion that isn’t running on nostalgia. Banjo-Tooie and Majora’s Mask are two games that I loved to death and couldn’t understand the criticism about them. Trying to make my friends play them in 2014 and their negatives shine like a light-house in the night fog. Both games are over-convoluted to the point where there’s fun, but it’s hidden under several layers of arbitrariness to get through. Majora’s Mask hit me as a kid because it’s one of the only games that made me care about the characters enough to grind through the complications and it’s definitely the game’s best asset. After replaying it, I’m happy to have the game in my memory rather than on my TV. As for Banjo-Tooie? Take a shot every time you go ”oh, can’t get that yet.”

As far as crap games? Flat-out worst was Chef’s Love Shack, simply because of how much of a cash-in it was. A game that cost £50-40 on release that can be finished in roughly ten minutes is a fucking disgrace. On the flip-side, the crap game that I (and others) played for unreasonable lengths of times is South Park. Literally days were spent playing that fog-ridden, overly-long, bizarre-system (kill all the ‘tanks’ before they reach the base otherwise you have to kill them in a mini-level rather than just be ”finish the fucking level”) and we loved it because we didn’t have much money and it was South Park. It couldn’t suck, Mr. Hat was in it, we told ourselves.

Well, that’s the end of the Q’n’A. I’ll gladly debate or discuss any of the above answers in the comments section. In the case of the N64 one, I insist.

In closing, GIVE ME YOUR MONEY. Oh and ask me questions.