The Importance of…7.31.09: Professional Wrestling

Every week, millions of us spend hours of time watching professional wrestling—whether it’s Raw on a Monday night, ECW on a Tuesday, Superstars or TNA on Thursday or Smackdown on Friday, a pay per view on Sunday—and that’s not even touching the house shows, DVDs or YouTube clips in which so many of us indulge. But what’s the appeal? Why do we devote ourselves to watching fake fights between half naked men, padded by promos that are often beyond juvenile? On the surface, I’ve come to terms with the fact that my fanhood makes little sense, and that it’s something I’ll never be able to fully explain to the uninitiated. Nonetheless, it seemed fitting that in this, the final installment of The Importance of…, I take on the topic of the importance of professional wrestling in my life.

For all of its flaws, there are some obvious draws to professional wrestling. For one thing, there is the physical spectacle of the business. There are awesome feats of strength—Sid Vicious delivering powerbombs, The Ultimate Warrior executing his press slam, Hulk Hogan bodyslamming the likes of Andre the Giant, John Cena adjusting the attitudes of men as large as The Big Show. Say what you will about how fake the set up may be—it takes individuals of tremendous power to make these moments happen. What’s more, there are images of stunning athleticism. There’s Shawn Michaels’s moonsaults off the top rope to the outside, shooting star presses from stars ranging from Evan Bourne to Brock Lesnar, hurricurranas, headscissor takeovers, spiral taps, and so on. Sure, the opponent has a scripted position to make a given move work, but you can’t deny the sheer athletic prowess that goes into executing these maneuvers. On top of all of this there are those stars who exhibit technical brilliance. I’m talking about the Bret Harts, the William Regals, the Ric Flairs of the world who just flat out execute when they come to the ring, twisting bodies into convincing stretches, carrying out lighting quick power moves so smoothly, so crisply, that you can’t help but wonder how they aren’t crippling their opponents—when all the while, by all accounts, they’re delivering their offense as soft as a feather. The physicality of wrestling represents power, agility and precision in positively thrilling ways that go a long way toward selling the business in and of themselves.

Beyond the visual spectacle of wrestling, there is the heart of the business. In his WWE Hall of Fame induction speech, Dusty Rhodes talked about what the business represented. He talked about entertaining the fans through sunny days and rainy days alike—and how those gloomy days were when the business was most important. Professional wrestling holds the potential to help people to forget their problems. After all, in a world where you have to sweat deadlines at work, paying the rent each month, doing what you can to keep your girlfriend happy—what more surreal, escapist universe could there be than that of the world of professional wrestling? It’s a universe in which disputes are settled in physical fights, but hardly anyone gets hurt for long. Where some dramatic turn is always on the horizon. Where the good guys, more often than not, come out victorious. It really is a pretty glorious world.

Throughout my life, wrestling has provided me not only an escape, but something to believe in, and a moral compass. In my life, I’ve rarely been the biggest guy around, nor the best looking, funniest, smoothest or smartest. Through all of this, wrestling has served as a legitimate source of inspiration. In my earliest years, watching Hulk Hogan mow down King Kong Bundy, Andre the Giant, Earthquake and countless others taught me that a hero could overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, if he worked hard, had faith, and demonstrated a commitment to doing the right thing. In my ‘tween years, Bret Hart was the champion who proved you do not need to be a super hero to be a champion. Indeed, plucky and average-sized, it was The Hitman’s courage, commitment, character and smarts carried him to victory against a wide range of challengers. Growing older, there was Sting, standing tall as a lone wolf against the nWo, refusing to conform. There was Stone Cold, refusing to bow to the boss, instead raising his middle fingers in the air to scream his independence. Indeed, the shape, size and personality of the hero has changed over time. What remains is that professional wrestling presents truly unique heroes to generations of fans—to borrow a phrase from The Dark Knight, time and again giving us not necessarily the heroes we want, but heroes we, as a collective consciousness need for the world in which we exist at that moment.

In addition to serving as a source of inspiration, in my personal life, professional wrestling has served the truly unique function of providing me with connections to people. Growing up, my relationship with my father was, at best, antagonistic. He held high expectations for me, and this led to a stricter upbringing than most of my peers went through. This style of upbringing often came at the expense of our personal relationship—my father was rarely a confidante, rarely even a true partner in conversation for me. But one of the few bonds we did have in my formative years was professional wrestling. We would sit together by the TV, be it in the cold of winter or the heat of summer, taking in the spectacle of the shows together. I remember sitting side by side, laughing at the give-and-take between Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan, agreeing in the excellence of the Bret Hart-Chris Benoit tribute match on Nitro, and so on. All the more fundamental was the connection wrestling drew between my grandfather—an immigrant from China—and me. He spoke only the smallest scraps of English, and I never learned a lick of his language. And yet, when our eyes turned to the wrestling ring, we took in the same sights, understood the same fundamental story that was being told. It’s a testament to the power of the business that it is these memories from the ring that still connect me to that man, so long after his passing.

What’s more, I will forever owe a debt to wrestling for the friendships it has fostered in my life. A shy kid in elementary school, wrestling was one of the first conversation pieces I found to connect to my peers. Most importantly of all, it was when I brought a WWF magazine on the school bus, that another kid named Mike saw it and struck up a conversation about Wrestlemania IX, just days behind us. Sixteen years later, that same kid from the school bus is my closest friend, and was my traveling companion as we each took in Wrestlemania in-person for the very first time this past April in Houston. As I’ve grown older, wrestling has grown to be a more and more taboo topic, specifically as I made my journey through higher education and into my career. Still, discovering fellow fans has served as a source of comfort—an immediate bond I can share with someone who now shares, or once did share the same sort of passion for the business—who gets the appeal, who shares in the spectacle. It’s a powerful thing, that’s difficult to really put a name on or define, but that has led to so many wonderful moments, long after I’ve held any illusion that being a professional wrestling fan was cool.

And so, professional wrestling has had an undeniably profound effect on who I have been, and who I have become. It’s part of the fabric of my life, just as I sincerely believe that is a part of America, and a part of the world—a timeless form of entertainment, source of inspiration, and mode of storytelling that I imagine will long outlast the lives of anyone reading this column. With all of this in mind, it’s pretty hard to question the importance of this business I love.

And with that, I’m sorry to say that I will not be seeing you in seven. It has been a pleasure to write for 411wrestling.com. I’d like to thank Larry Csonka for the opportunity, my fellow writers for sharing the space and sharing your talents, and, most of all, all of you readers who have made the journey of the last year and three months worth the while. All of my best to you.