Alright, so yesterday I pretty much just bitched about what I didn't like about UFC, which is exactly what I complained about them doing with pro wrestling. So today, I'll instead not talk about what I don't like, and try to focus more on what I do like about wrestling.
First things first. I'm a child of the 80s in basically every sense. I was born in 1982, so I'm young enough to still be in my 20s, but old enough to actually remember the world in the 80s. And what I remember was violence.
Not in the sense of wars; the Vietnam War had been over for almost two decades by the time I had ever heard about it. Not in the sense of gangs; I turned 8 in 1990, and lived in rural or suburban New England for a lot of my childhood. The violence I remember was on television.
I'll often describe The Transformers as "my first favorite thing after Sesame Street and/or Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Transformers was a show about good robots who turned into vehicles battling evil robots who turned into vehicles. Before Transformers, I have vague recollections of watching He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, where an evil warlord is trying to overthrow the kingdom of Eternia, and battles with its defenders, the Masters of the Universe. I recall Voltron, where an evil sorceress and a twisted prince would send robot beasts to destroy worlds they wanted to rule, and they would be fought off by a quintet of robotic, Lion-shaped vehicle gestalt. G.I. Joe combated Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world. The Thundercats defended Third Earth from an evil, ancient Egyptian wizard. The Silverhawks confronted an intergalactic mob. The Real Ghostbusters would battle evil apparitions. The Super Mario Brothers were always trying to stop King Koopa from kidnapping Princess Toadstool. Link was in conflict with Ganon over the Triforces in the Legend of Zelda. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fought evil ninja.
My childhood was filled with violent entertainment. As far as I was aware, that's pretty much all there was for kids to watch - Action cartoons with heroes in brightly-colored outfits fighting against villains in secondary colors.
I was aware of professional wrestling, thanks to a few neighborhood kids having the video games, or my cousins inviting me to watch WWF Superstars of Wrestling with them when I'd visit on the weekends. But it wasn't until the morning of Monday, April 5th, 1993 that I would give it much of a second thought.
I was ten years old, and had only been living in this particular city for about a year. I'd made friends with some of the kids in my neighborhood, and we'd all walk to school together, a lot of mornings. We'd usually talk about any of the aforementioned action cartoons, or what video games we were playing (Street Fighter II on the SNES being the most popular bit of our gaming conversations). But not on that morning.
The night before was the World Wrestling Federations ninth annual Wrestlemania program. And, as my friends explained to me, in the main event, Bret "Hit Man" Hart was defending the WWF Championship against Yokozuna, the winner of January's Royal Rumble match, the first time the winner of the Rumble faced the champion at Wrestlemania.
At the conclusion of the match, Yokozuna's manager, Mr. Fuji, threw salt in the eyes of Bret Hart, blinding the "Hit Man," allowing Yoko to take advantage and take not only the win, but also the WWF Championship title. The omni-present Hulk Hogan came out to help Bret from the ring, but before he could guide the now-former champ to the backstage area, Mr. Fuji got on the microphone. Fuji claimed that Yokozuna could beat anybody, anytime, anywhere, and Fuji challenged Hulk Hogan to a match for Yokozuna's newly-won WWF Championship. Hogan reluctantly agreed, having had already competed in a tag team match, himself, earlier in the night.
As the second WWF Championship match of the night commenced, Mr. Fuji tried to throw salt in the Hulkster's eyes, as he'd done to Bret Hart, just moments before. But the Immortal One saw what was coming and ducked. The salt hit Yokozuna in the eyes, and the Leader of Hulkamania quickly scored a win (in under one minute), becoming the first-ever five-time WWF Champion.
Now, put yourself in my shoes. I knew Hulk Hogan was the ultimate hero in the land of the World Wrestling Federation, and I had just heard a tale of him overcoming what sounded like the ultimate in evils to re-take the title of the greatest warrior in the land.
To put it bluntly, that sounded awesome.
It was the exact kind of story I would expect in one of my action cartoons, except these were REAL PEOPLE. And I was ten years old, so I was a double-digiter. It was time for me to phase out those silly kid's cartoons and start watching something with real people; After all, that's how I understood the world to work, at the time. Cartoons were for children, live-action shows were for adults.
And WWF television sounded like the perfect transition.
I'm pretty sure it was that night (although, honestly, it could have been the following week) that I tuned in to my first episode of Monday Night Raw, back when it was still being broadcast from the Grand Ballroom in the Manhattan Center.
The first match I saw was a six-foot-eight, three-hundred-pound man in orange-and-purple spandex with the RADDEST blond mullet I'd ever witnessed in my entire life (also, remember, it was 1993, and mullets were just beginning to become popular. And, yes, in 10 years, everybody will laugh at you for combing your hair in front of your face the way people laugh at mullets, today). This wrestler was named "Crush," and that's exactly what he did; He CRUSHED his opponent, with seeming ease.
Crush quickly became my favorite of all the WWF's Superstars (They weren't just wrestlers. They weren't just stars. They were SUPER-STARS!), but over the next several weeks, I became intrigued by the egotism of "Mr. Perfect," the all-business attitude of Bret Hart, the youthful courage of the "1-2-3 Kid," and the cockiness of the Intercontinental Champion, Shawn Michaels (the Intercontinental Championship was the 2nd-tier title in the WWF).
I was also just getting into comic books at this time, and the parallels between the Marvel Universe and the World Wrestling Federation were rather astonishing. Both featured overmuscled men in bright, colorful tights covered in intricate designs, fighting for what they felt was right.
Every week, I would try to stay up to watch Monday Night Raw, and then I'd watch WWF Superstars and WWF Wrestling Challenge on Saturday afternoons at 1 and 2pm, respectively. WIthin a couple of months, I was even watching All-American Wrestling on Sunday mornings at noon, as well as WWF Mania on Saturday mornings at 10am. The WWF was the absolute coolest thing I had ever seen, and somehow I had never been privy to this world of excitement. And the best part was, it seemed like all of my friends already knew a lot about wrestling, so they could explain to me who guys were and what other wrestlers they'd had matches with before, and who'd they'd beaten.
Over the next several years, I began watching as much wrestling as I could, exploring into the WWF's rival promotion, World Championship Wrestling. WCW had a very different product, but a lot of their roster was made up with wrestlers who were leaving the WWF when I started watching the "sport," so it was cool to get to witness them all again.
Somehow, I recall knowing that wrestling was "fake," right from the beginning. I don't at all remember how I knew this, but I know that I knew things weren't entirely legitimate. After all, if everything in the WWF was on the up-and-up, then Crush would surely at least be Intercontinental Champion, right? He was the best guy in the entire company!
And, really, I think that's what I like best about professional wrestling - It appeals to the ten-year-old boy in me who is fascinated by people striving to be the best there is at what they do (even if what they do isn't very nice).
Somewhere along the way, the WWF/WWE's writers lost sight of the fact that everything in the company is supposed to be about becoming the best of the best, and everybody should be striving for the championships. And as a result, I have progressively lost more and more interest in their product.
However, leading up to their pay-per-view event in October of 2009, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (with the unfortunate acronym of "TNA") really started to focus on making the TNA Championship the most important thing in their company. And when that happened, I was immediately attracted to their world in the same way I became obsessed with the WWF, 17-and-a-half years prior.
And that leads me up to today. The TNA Championship is still the most important thing in TNA, and, behind-the-scenes, the promoters and writers are still dedicated to putting on a new, exciting show every Thursday night, with fresh matches and exciting action.
Meanwhile, the WWE has this unspoken caste system amongst their "Superstars," resulting in endless tirades of rematches, and everybody builds their matches in basically the exact same way, using a lot of the same basic maneuvers and defenses. And there is far too much "ga-ga" between the actual matches for my tastes.
Now, I understand why the WWE operates the way it does; They're trying to get away with doing as little as possible and make a living off of not putting the folks they have under contract in any more danger than is necessary. It's a very smart business decision on their part, and as a businessman, I don't disagree with that decision. What is unfortunate, though, is that, at the end of the day, their product eventually becomes completely predictable. And if I see where a story is going before it gets there, I tend to find that rather tedious and boring.
And the bullshit they fill the shows with between the matches is abysmal dreck. A comment was left in yesterday's entry about how the storylines of pro wrestling are much like a male soap opera; "the invented stories of each are equally as stupid and trite." And I ABSOLUTELY agree. I wish it wasn't there.
I know a large percentage of the population apparently gets off on it, but I just don't care for the out-of-the-ring shenanigans. The "You hit on my wife and now I must kill you!" or "You're a smelly butthole and so we shall fight!" bullshit really doesn't do anything for me.
I just want to watch two guys get in the ring and beat the shit out of each other to prove which of them is the best. Right now, TNA is giving me that. The WWE is not.
But I still like watching brightly-colored violence, and there are few better places to get it than in a wrestling ring.
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