Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What is something that people consider “childish”, that you still love?

I know it is considered “childish“ but I absolutely love professional wrestling! The crazy part is I probably like it more now at years old than I did as a young boy.

You DO know it’s fake, right?

People love to say that like they’re just completely shattering your whole perception of the universe – as if they’re dropping some monumental revelation upon you.

And for the record, wrestling isn’t fake, it is PREDETERMINED. It is scripted. As is virtually everything you see on television. Professional wrestlers are performers. Their actors. They are doing live theater in-the-round, or in the square if you will. They are their own stuntman; and they only get one take to perform a particular move properly.

Pro wrestling is dangerous!

Professional wrestling is dangerous. And my 40 years of pro wrestling fandom, I have seen an unfortunate number of pro wrestlers get hurt performing, or being on the receiving end of a particular wrestling move. But mistakes happen. As I mentioned above, pro wrestling is live theater. These performers are literally putting their lives in their opponents hand every time they step into a ring.

Wrestlers are storytellers! 

Your most successful pro wrestling promotions have “storylines“. It’s not really enough to simply have two wrestler, stepping into the ring to fight each other because they’re ultimate goal is winning a championship belt. There’s usually some storyline written into their “feud“. Some of the storylines makes sense. Other storylines are crazier than anything. You would see on an old soap opera or reality TV. Of course, sit near conflicts inside a wrestling ring is about as insane as it sounds. But that’s what’s so entertaining about it. It’s crazy! It makes no sense, except in its own little bubble.

The Internet roped me back in!

Like a lot of people of my generation, my interest in professional wrestling Wayne in the early 90s. In my case, as a WWF fan at the time, the products became stale. Then WWF owner McMahon got caught up in a federal trial involving distribution of steroids. Because of it, the quality of the product diminished. Many performers at that time seemed like they had “other occupations”. You have the evil dentist, the evil hockey player, the evil baseball player, the evil, garbage man, the evil Mountie, the evil repo man, and even the evil tax man! Yes, those are real game WWF wrestlers were using at the time.

But as I got into college in the mid to late 90s, something happened. WCW, arrival company to Vince McMahon’s WWF decided to start gearing his program to an older audience. When the WWF caught onto WCW’s newfound success, they followed suit.

But as these two companies started battling for rating supremacy, another called the Internet was just starting to come of age. And while professional wrestling “dirt sheet” magazines have been around for years, the Internet was becoming a source for backstage wrestling gossip: who was about to enter a feudwith who? Who is about to get a “title run“? Which wrestler was jumping ship and going to the other company? As I started falling down the rabbit hole of online dirt sheets, I realized that I was becoming just as interested in the backstage real-life exploits of professional wrestling as the product that they were putting on-screen.

Not all fun and games

Just like everything else in life, there is a dark side of professional wrestling. The “boys will be boys” locker room culture that permeated for decades seems to finally be lifting. For many years, wrestlers were treated as a little more than workhorses, performing sometimes 200 days a year – and being on the road for 300 days each year. As a result, many wrestlers to self medication: alcohol abuse, prescription or even illegal drug use was rampant.

Even now, professional wrestlers still fall into a gray area. They are not actors, per sé; so they’re usually not members of the Screen Actor’s Guild. Nor are they considered professional athletes. Likewise, they do not have a players union like MLB, NFL, NBA or the NHL does. in the case of the WWE, the wrestlers are considered employees as much as they are “independent contractors”. In many respects, pro wrestlers of the 21st-century are not unlike the old carnival performers  of a century prior. The big bosses still hold all the power. 

There’s still a long way to go for professional wrestling to be a clean, safe, friendly work environment; but damn if I don’t find it entertaining as hell.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts

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The article “confessions of a lifelong pro wrestling junkie” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob