The strange world of professional wrestling had one of its biggest weekends in recent memory, with WWE running WrestleMania at MetLife Stadium this Sunday and New Japan Pro Wrestling holding its landmark G1 Supercard at Madison Square Garden. In honor of that, let’s take a look at some wrestlers who were in those events and try to imagine what they’d be like if they went to Cal.
Daniel Bryan
D-Bry used to be a nice guy, but then he rushed Epsilon Eta and got REALLY into it, and things got…weird. Now, as its president, he devotes his time to things like Instagramming about how he just loves the Earth y’all, getting mad at The Free Peach, and talking about how everyone else is trashing the planet while conveniently neglecting to call out the handful of corporations that overwhelmingly do the most to accelerate climate change.
Kofi Kingston
Kofi is an EECS/Media Studies double-major, which basically means he’s completely obsessed with Internet memes. Along with his friends Xavier Woods and Big E, Kofi is a premier poster in UC Berkeley Memes For Edgy Teens, and the three are also the life of the party whenever they go out. If you know Kofi, you love him…unless you’re Daniel Bryan, in which case you hate his guts because he reminds you of the well-adjusted, likable person you used to be.
Kazuchika Okada
With a nickname like “Rainmaker,” there’s no way Okada wouldn’t be that one super-rich international student whose cheapest outfit still costs $3,000. As a freshman, he was completely insufferable, but time and experience have broken down his ego and forced him to genuinely grow as a person. However, he still has trouble remembering that Okada Dollars aren’t legal tender, which causes problems when he tries to buy his daily cup of boba.
Jay White
Jay might look like a wannabe edgelord, what with his babyface and borderline-mallgoth fashion sense, but make no mistake, he’s as genuinely cutthroat as they come. He got into Haas by cheating as much as he possibly could and screwing his fellow candidates over, and would probably think nothing of literally stabbing someone to get ahead. Currently in a bitter feud with Okada because Jay paid Okada’s old tutor to steal all of Okada’s study materials.
Will Ospreay
Will met Okada in I-House, where they became fast friends. He tries to keep up with Okada’s expensive fashion sense, but Will isn’t quite as loaded, so he looks more tacky than anything. He’s also kind of a gigantic douchebag who only gets away with most of the stuff he does thanks to sheer charisma, and he’ll probably be dead or crippled by age 30 if he keeps living his adrenaline junkie lifestyle.
Brock Lesnar
Brock is a two-sport athlete, and quite possibly the most famous person on campus, but you’ve never actually seen him show up to class after the first week. Hell, he doesn’t even show up to midterms half the time. You have no idea what he majors in because he never talks to anyone except his friend Paul Heyman, and he’s never at practice because he’d rather drive up into the mountains and pick fights with large animals. But when Brock takes the field, he always delivers, and that seems to be enough for him to mysteriously pass all his classes and keep his gigantic scholarships. Charmed life, huh?
Seth Rollins
When Seth first came to Berkeley, he decided the perfect way to reinvent himself was to dye his hair blonde, but only on one side of his head. Surprisingly, he totally pulled it off, but he eventually got bored with it and stopped doing it—which is disappointing, even though he’s a lot less of a douchebag now that he finally got rid of it. He used to be pretty much inseparable from Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose, who he met at freshman orientation until they had a bitter falling-out during the spring semester of sophomore year. Thankfully, Seth managed to mature and rebuild his bridges in time for the three to all celebrate Dean’s early graduation together.
Becky Lynch
Look out, Berkeley! It’s summer again, and Becky Lynch has her J-1 visa. You’ll find her prowling the streets at night with her fellow Irish exchange students, looking for a good time and probably waking up all of Telegraph Avenue with their incomprehensible screaming. But unlike her cohorts, Becky is Big Dick Energy personified, which means that the party follows her wherever she goes. Charismatic as she is, though, you do NOT wanna bring her home to your parents—unless, of course, you want her to go back home and tell all of Ireland about the time she drank all your rum and fucked your dad, thereby making her the man of the house.
Charlotte Flair
Charlotte is a second-generation Cal student who’s pretty much had the world handed to her on a silver platter. Her father, Ric, was a Haas graduate who went on to become a jet-flying, limousine-riding multi-millionaire, and that enabled him to both donate generously to the school and get his little girl access to every possible advantage so she could follow in his footsteps. And follow she does—her shoes cost more than your house, and she’ll gladly tell you as much. But the most infuriating thing about Charlotte is the fact that she’s genuinely on top of her shit and probably didn’t need any of those advantages, but chooses to rub them all in everyone’s faces anyway.
Ronda Rousey
When Ronda transferred to Cal from USC last year, a lot of people expected her to take advantage of her generous athletic scholarships and coast the way Brock did. But she showed a surprising work ethic and a genuine love for her new home, and that helped her integrate into the Berkeley community in record time. Unfortunately, ill-fated encounters with the likes of Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair have turned Ronda bitter and paranoid about everyone she meets lately, to the point she might undo everything she accomplished when she first got here. And whatever you do, do NOT let Ronda talk about her Sandy Hook conspiracy theories.
Zack Sabre Jr.
Zack is an exchange student from the UK who’s supposed to be studying kinesiology, but apparently, he’s already so good at that that he’s decided to take a bunch of PoliSci classes instead. You can usually find him yelling about how all Tories are bourgeois dickheads who need the taste smacked out of their mouths or trying to twist his Tinder dates into pretzels.
Elias
They say all the world’s a stage, but Elias takes that quote a bit too literally. He has a habit of setting up on Upper Sproul and attempting to play his acoustic guitar, but thinks anyone else who tries to give a speech, whether they’re a fire-and-brimstone street preacher or that guy who’s always yelling about how cell phones are Satan, is there specifically to interrupt him—-and if there’s one thing Elias hates, it’s being interrupted. After all the guitars he’s smashed over other people’s heads, it’s a wonder he’s even allowed on campus.
Juice Robinson
You cannot tell me Juice Robinson would be anything other than a CNR major who’s stoned all the time. There is absolutely nothing that would convince me otherwise. Seriously, just look at him.
Lacey Evans
Lacey’s entire existence revolves around walking into lecture, hitting a button on her iClicker, and walking out again. She doesn’t even bother to sit down. No one has ever seen her do anything else.
Tetsuya Naito
Some people go on study abroad and come back saying “Oh my Gawwwwwd, it, like, totally changed my life!” even though they’re basically the same person. Naito, on the other hand, left for his semester in Mexico as a clean-cut, academically-focused guy and came back as a completely different beast. He and his new circle of edgy friends revel in the nightlife, and he often wanders into class 15 minutes late still wearing last night’s clothes before falling asleep in his chair. You would think he didn’t care about anything anymore, but every so often, you’ll catch him in Main Stacks agonizing over his grades and wondering if his 3.98 GPA will be enough to get him into the astrophysics Ph.D program of his dreams.
Batista
If you’re a GSI and you see Batista walking into your office, you know exactly what he wants. You already know he’s mad that he only got a 93 when he deserved a 95, and if you don’t give him what he wants, he’ll scream and cause a scene and most likely turn himself into a meme. So what are you waiting for? Give it to him! GIVE HIM WHAT HE WANTS!
Oh, by the way, please don’t touch his nipples. They’re very sensitive.
Kenny Omega
Kenny doesn’t go here anymore because he, along with his friends the Young Bucks and Cody, dropped out and is now trying to help start his own university. No idea how well that’ll work out, but good luck to ‘em.
We could seriously go on all day, considering how many bizarre characters in wrestling there are, but for now, we’ll just leave it at that.