The New York Mets broadcast booth doesn’t always stick to baseball, but apparently, they should steer clear of talking about wrestling.
With the Mets involved in a rare decisive victory Tuesday night, taking a 7-0 lead over the Milwaukee Brewers into the eighth inning, Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez had some room to diverge from baseball. The problem came when they chose wrestling as their avenue.
As Milwaukee’s Rowdy Tellez stepped to the plate, Hernandez noted it reminded him of a young Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates.
“You don’t think of Rowdy Roddy Piper?” Cohen asked, prompting Hernandez to pause as he seemingly scoured his brain to remember who Rowdy Roddy Piper was.
“Um…I forget about him,” Hernandez said. “I didn’t watch wrestling.”
Cohen admitted he didn’t watch or know anything about wrestling either, “but I know names,” the renowned play-by-play voice claimed. “Rowdy Roddy Piper and was it, Wonder Boy Ric Flair.”
Someone in the booth quickly corrected Cohen off mic, informing him it was “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, not Wonder Boy, which decisively contradicted the claim that he knows wrestling names.
“Nature Boy Ric Flair,” Cohen said to correct himself before admitting, “See I don’t know that much about wrestling.”
With both announcers now admitting they don’t know much about wrestling, the conversation could have ended there, but Hernandez was about to make wrestling fans shake their heads even more by touting Flair’s signature move, “the suflex.”
“I’m sorry what is that?” Cohen asked.
“The suflex,” Hernandez reiterated. “That was his outpitch right there. That was his whatever it was…his move. It was called the suflex.”
Hernandez was attempting to reference the wrestling move known as a “suplex.” Like Cohen and Hernandez, my wrestling expertise is nil, making it hard to confirm or contest the suplex being Flair’s signature move. The only thing I know about Ric Flair is “Wooo.”
“Sounds like something you’d do in yoga,” Cohen said of the suflex.
“Or if you have an upset stomach, something you can take,” Hernandez added.
Maybe the suflex will eventually be a yoga pose or a stomach medication, but it definitely isn’t a wrestling move.
