You don't like that I like wrestling?

First off, thank you to Blogger for finally allowing us to upload our own background images. I'll have something slightly more exciting in the near future, but getting to use the background from my personal site is far better than anything that they offered as a default image.

Secondly, I noticed that a few people who read yesterday's entry about my journey into pro wrestling decided to misinterpret some of the end of my entry, and think that I said TNA Wrestling was some sort of flawless entity. Not so; In fact, far from it. There's a lot of things TNA has done in the past that are inexcusably bad. But over the last several months, I think they've regained their focus, and I honestly feel that TNA is doing a much better job than either of the WWE's programs of keeping their World Championship as the most important thing in the company.

I don't care what wrestling company it is - WWE, TNA, ROH, indies, whatever! - If the between-match shenanigans aren't building towards a particular match either later that night or by the next PPV, then I'm not enjoying that segment, and it is a waste of my viewing time. For example, the entirety of Kevin Nash's recent storyline, about what happened in WCW over ten years ago? I don't care for these segments. I was watching WCW at the time, and rather enjoying the product (but, then, I've always been less cynical and far more forgiving than most wrestling fans on the Internet seem to be). And the biggest drawback to Nash's current storyline is that it's all based on backstage BS that never made it on to TV.

How is this relevant to any of today's fans? Bischoff and Hogan and Jarrett are calling Nash out on, what... the fact that he likes to get paid, in a capitalist society? And, really? Hulk Hogan is giving somebody shit about making money?

I think Ric Flair's "Fortune" stable vs "EV2.0" is being played backwards; Fortune should be presented as the young guys who have been with TNA for a long time, making their own name. Meanwhile, EV2.0 should be presented as the assholes who are coming in and taking up the young blood's valuable television time, despite having already had their chance in the spotlight.

What good is it to TNA's fanbase to have them booing the guys who will be with the company at the conclusion of this storyline, and cheering the guys who will all be gone by the end of 2011? This makes about as much sense as WCW's New Blood vs Millionaire's Club angle, which was basically the exact same thing... and when THAT version of this story was over, the New Blood was all that was left. But audiences had just spent the last year hating all the young guys, and had no reason to stop... probably driving a lot of the viewership to the WWF's product. And if the Fortune vs EV2.0 story isn't handled carefully, it COULD outright kill TNA.

However.

TNA is still doing a far better job of keeping the TNA Championship as the central focus of the company. Everybody is there with the intention of either winning that title, or helping to build its legacy. EV2.0 stuck around to hang out with TNA Champion Rob Van Dam. Fortune are a bunch of guys who think that EV2.0 don't deserve to be anywhere near the belt. Hogan, Bischoff, and Jarrett vs Nash & Sting is all about letting the young guys have their day in the sun, and not hogging the Championship on top of a glass ceiling. Meanwhile, Jeff Hardy, Kurt Angle, Ken Anderson, and D'Angelo Dinero have been setting up for the finals of the championship tournament at TNA's biggest PPV of the year, Bound For Glory.

The entire Knockouts division has been focused around Madison Rayne and her Knockouts Championship, for the last several months.

The Motor City Machine Guns and Beer Money, Inc. just had an incredible series of matches for the TNA Tag Team Championship.

Doug Williams has brought some attention back to the X-Division Championship with some unique championship defenses.

And AJ Styles winning the Legends Global Television Championship from Rob Terry and RE-re-naming it brings a LOT of attention to that title belt.

Again; In TNA, the focus is on the championships. On Raw, the focus is on mystery GMs and celebrity guests who do nothing to contribute to the actual matches, and just distract from the fact that half of the roster couldn't put together anything more than a basic match to save their careers, and a handful of rookies who can barely even put together a basic match. Smackdown, meanwhile, has never had a central focus since it began in 1999. It's always been the "B-show" that creates stars to feature on Raw.

One of my friends once described the WWE's product as "all sizzle and no steak." And I find it hard to disagree with that.

Which isn't to say that TNA is all steak. They've got plenty of sizzle, themselves. But of the two companies, I very much prefer what TNA is putting on television.

Or, at least, I did. I'm three weeks and a PPV behind. I could completely change my mind based on what's happened between The Whole F'N Show and No Surrender. Plus last night's episode.

Also, because I don't want this to become just another wrestling blog, this is the last thing I'm going to be writing about wrestling for a LOOOOONG while. For everybody else, back to your regularly-scheduled geekiness on Monday.

Finally, next time you have a comment about something I write, please at least have the decency to say it directly to me in my own comments section, rather than hiding behind somebody else's Facebook page. Let's all be adults, here, hm?

You don't like wrestling. part 2.

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.

Let me get this straight: You don't like wrestling. (part 1?)

"Yeah, I don't like wrestling. I like the real shit. UFC, MMA, that kind of thing."

This is the typical response i get from men who find out I like wrestling.

"I used to watch, back when it was the WWF/back when they had The Rock and/or Stone Cold," is the response I get from everybody else.

So, basically, when I mention that I like professional wrestling, everybody feels the need to not only tell me that they don't like it, they also tell me WHY IT SUCKS.

First of all, to everybody watching "MMA," that is the most mis-leading name of all time. "Mixed Martial Arts" is not a fighting style, and FUCK UFC and all of the other so-called "MMA Promotions" for confusing the masses.

Go back and watch UFC1, from 1994 or whatever. It was a boxer, a sumo, a kickboxer, a jiu-jitsu guy, a karate guy, etc. Eight guys out to prove what the best fighting discipline was. No pads, no "stopping the fight to protect the athletes," no weight classes, none of that bullshit. The Ultimate Fighting Championship was just that - an 8-man tournament to determine the Ultimate Fighter. And Royce Gracie was better at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu than any of those other guys were at their respective disciplines. THREE TIMES.

UFC is a far cry from what it set out to be, and is now a bastardization of Pro Wrestling's showmanship and the Olympiad Games' overabundance of rules so deep you don't ever get to see an actual fight.

Or, in the case that you actually DO get to see a fight, you get two guys covered in tattoos (because they're that HARD, you see) hugging, while punching each other in the kidneys until one of them falls over. Then they try and wrap body parts around each other, often resulting in a "Triangle Choke," so called because the guy in the hold has his face in a triangle between the other guy's wang, left testicle, and right testicle.

Or the thing that plagued boxing pay-per-view events, 30-second knockouts. Hey, it's totally impressive for the guy doing the knocking out. It's not impressive for the sucker that just shelled out $50 for the event and spent $100 on snacks for his friends that he invited over.

In the mid-1990s, Royce Gracie was the best fighter in the world. In 2010, nobody can pronounce his first name correctly, nevermind even remember it. Instead, we get the "Ultimate Fighting Championship Champion" (thank you for calling the department of redundancy department) Brock Lesnar, canceling fights because his tummy hurts. Referees are suddenly stopping fights at indiscriminate times to "protect the fighters," or not, because "the fight is too important." Everybody's wearing padded gloves and boxing shorts. It disgusts me.

Now, to the crowd you "used to" watch "WWF" programming:

You're the equivalent of what traditional sports viewers call a "fairweather fan." You like something that all of your friends like, because it's doing well right now. People who watched Stone Cold and The Rock in 1998-2002 are the wrestling equivalent of the lady who went into Sports Authority a couple months ago, and asked if they had any Netherlands' jerseys, so she could wear one to the World Cup Finals. Ten bucks says that lady had never even heard of the Netherlands before April.

Look, Stone Cold Steve Austin was one of the most compelling characters on television, ever. There's no denying that fact. He drank on the job, he got to swear at and beat up his boss, he gave people the finger... He embodied what the blue-collar worker wanted to do every day at the office or on the construction site. So, basically, a pissed-off, drunken, sociopathic redneck. The exact kind of thing that reasonable people make fun of each other for being.

And if Austin wasn't your flavor, there was The Rock, a man so obsessed with saying things more outrageous than you could imagine that nobody bothered to notice that he was also probably the world's biggest asshole. No wonder his only friend was Mankind, a guy so dirt-poor and smelly that he hung out with a sock, when he wasn't busy getting thrown off steel cages through tables.

Nobody seems to remember that in 1998 and 1999, Ken Shamrock was one of the biggest stars in the WWF. You remember Ken Shamrock, right? He tapped out to Royce Gracie in under a minute, at UFC1. I mean, he was the guy in the red wrestling trunks who would go crazy and suplex referees all the time, because he had a temper that he just couldn't keep in check.

Or what about in 1999, when the Undertaker went even darker than usual and started abducting wrestlers, and brainwashing them into joining his "Ministry of Darkness." Really? You forget that a 7-foot guy called The Undertaker (who is still wrestling now, by the way), was BRAINWASHING wrestlers, and forcing them to join his cult of death?

How about in November 1999, when Kurt Angle joined the WWF? You remember Kurt Angle, yeah? He won the OLYMPIC FUCKING GOLD MEDALS at the 1996 Olympiad Games in Atlanta, Georgia in Freestyle Wrestling. Kurt Angle was to wrestling what Royce Gracie was to Mixed Martial Arts (back when they were still mixed) -- THE BEST IN THE WORLD. And then he joined the WWF, and started acting like the world's biggest dork; preaching abstinence, well-balanced diets, and spilling milk all over himself.

It seems that people who no longer watch wrestling only remember eight matches, and seven of them are The Undertaker vs. Mankind in the Hell in a Cell match atthe  King of the Ring 1998 Pay-Per-View event. You know, the one where Mankind kept getting thrown off the steel cage, in what was one of the most brutal, disgusting, barbaric, revolting events in the history of humanity. The very fact that this match is as highly revered as it is makes me question the humanity of the people who talk about it fondly.

Mankind (whose real name is Mick Foley, which is what he's going by now) had one of his teeth driven up THROUGH HIS UPPER LIP during this match, and it got STUCK in his BEARD. No, think about that for a second. Imagine being thrown around so hard that one of your TEETH pops loose. And then, it gets driven THROUGH YOUR SKIN! And people talk FONDLY if the match where this happens.

(But don't forget, professional wrestling isn't real. UFC, the promotion where referees stop fights because one guy is getting punched by padded gloves, THAT'S real. But the one where a guy who gets a tooth driven through his lip is fake.)

The late 90s were a time when the WWF were in direct competition with rival wrestling promotion, WCW. The two companies had wrestling programs broadcast simultaneously on Monday nights, and both were always trying to one-up each other, in the war for that thing that stops intelligent television from existing: Ratings. People were figuratively and literally killing themselves just so one company could get a little bit ahead in the ratings, so they could charge a little more for advertising.

WWF totally ended up winning that war, by the way. One week in 1999, when WCW's show, Nitro, was pre-empted for the NBA finals, WWF Raw scored a 10.0 in the ratings. A TEN. That basically meant that at least one out of every 10 people you knew was watching wrestling, that night. And it didn't hurt that it was one of the better Raws ever produced.

WCW never recovered from that loss in ratings, and basically bankrupted themselves over the next year, trying to regain the lead (despite being owned by Time-Warner), They closed up shop in early 2001, and the WWF owner, Vince McMahon, was more than happy to buy his competition for a measly 3 million dollars (which was the cost of a month's worth of episodes of Raw, incidentally - So, basically, operating expenses). For that $3 million, the WWF gained access to most of WCW's talent, and every single one of their assets - Including their video tape library. McMahon saw ahead, and quickly began releasing DVD sets that included WCW matches for his more popular WWF stars.

A lawsuit with the World Wildlife Foundation forced World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, Inc. to "Get the 'F' Out," and become WWE. And that's when a lot of people stopped watching.

So, basically, WWF won the war, and then all their fairweather fans gave up on them. Way to go, guys.

I don't know what my point was in all this. I just really needed to vent about the stupidity i see in people's opinions about pro wrestling. Maybe tomorrow, I'll write about why I DO like wrestling.

But I'm not promising anything.