Memes have largely taken over the internet, and wrestling is no different. But Steve Cook looks at the wrestling influence on some of the internet’s top memes!

I was chillin’ on Twitter early Sunday afternoon and the College Football Playoff Selection Show was the main topic of discussion. The teams selected didn’t come as much of a surprise, and the teams not mentioned didn’t come as much of a surprise. There is a football program in Central Florida that has won a large number of consecutive games, but get left out of things like the College Football Playoff due to playing their games in the American Athletic Conference and not having any non-conference wins worth talking about.

(I was more willing to listen to and potentially utter these complaints when Louisville was in the Big East. Now that we’re ACC I can be a Power 5 snob & look down on these other conferences. Also, now that we’re terrible I don’t have to worry about things like rankings.)

UCF caught everybody’s attention by going to an old classic as a response…the wrestling meme!

tHeRe Is A pAtH fOr UcF pic.twitter.com/ijSWxvHm3N

— UCF Football (@UCF_Football) December 2, 2018

Hey, you gotta respect the fact that whoever does UCF’s Twitter is a big NXT fan. They could have gone with one of the old classics, but they went right to the here & now.

Wrestling memes are very here and now. The genre of sports entertainment is a vast array of moments in time that make perfect GIFs, that can be used in videos, and just make things funnier.

Here are the Top 5 Wrestling Memes Applied To Real Life.

5. Randy Orton RKO Outta Nowhere

Longtime Internet writer & commenter Wyatt Beougher’s Facebook response to my mention of Randy Orton in last week’s column on Rhea Ripley got me thinking. What will Orton’s legacy be? How will the Viper be remembered whenever he hangs up the boots? He’s a complicated character with countless ups & downs during his career.

I figured it out while I was researching this column.

He’ll be remembered for the RKO OUTTA NOWHERE Vines, where we would find out that epic failures were caused by an RKO. Much like Randy Savage is mostly remembered for his Slim Jim commercials, Randy Orton will be remembered for reasons other than his wrestling ability. I think that’s ok.

4. Jim Ross Calls the World Cup

Wanna make a sporting event even more epic? Dub some Jim Ross over it! Countless sports + JR clips have popped up over the years, but the Brazil-Germany World Cup ’14 match still rates as the best I’ve seen.

The beating Brazil took certainly deserved the treatment.

3. Kevin Durant Joins The Authority

The NBA has become even more of a soap opera than pro wrestling. The players are over-dramatic about everything and the fans are more than willing to buy in. When Kevin Durant chose to join the Golden State Warriors during free agency, some fans took that the same way wrestling fans used to when their favorite wrestler turned heel.

It reminded some people of when Seth Rollins turned against the Shield.

The detail in the facial expressions on Durant, Russell Westbrook, Steven Adams, Steve Kerr & Steph Curry is beautiful. Simply amazing.

2. Donald Trump vs. CNN

It’s not the most artistic wrestling gif of all time, but it’s probably the most viewed. The President of the United States tweeting out a wrestling-related gif would have been unthinkable prior to 2017. To be fair, most Presidents weren’t able to tweet & didn’t have to deal with the Internet & gif images. I still like to think most of them would have been above such things.

#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017

Then again, I can imagine Andrew Jackson tweeting out gifs of him beating up Native Americans while taking their land. FDR was always on top of using the latest technology. Nixon would have been all about using memes against his enemies. Maybe other Presidents would have been social media trolls as well. They just didn’t have the chance.

1. LeBron James Joins The NWO

This is the one that set the mold. When you think wrestling combined with real life events, you think of the video where LeBron James joined the NWO. They even went to the trouble of over-dubbing the commentary to make it fit.

The Decision paved the way for everything to follow in NBA player movement, and in wrestling memes.

What do you think?
Let us know on social media @theCHAIRSHOTcom and always remember to use the hashtag #UseYourHead!