As I stated in a previous article, I’m not a huge fan of wrestling anymore but I was when I was younger. On a Saturday afternoon, I would watch the UK stars on Wrestling on a Saturday afternoon like Big Daddy, Kendo Nagasaki and Adrian Street thinking the fighting was real. It’s was on the World of Sport which shows competitive sports including some strange shit like Bar Skittles occasionally, although part of me knew it wasn’t real. When someone would do a drop kick and landed it, they would get up unhurt, if they missed, despite landing on the mat the same way, they would be hurt. My brain couldn’t figure out why but I’d never done wrestling, so who cared about that, I loved the drama and trash talking, so when World of Sport announced it was no longer showing wrestling, I thought "What a shitty decision. I will probably never get to watch a wrestling match again."
Fast forward a few years and we get Reddifusion Cable TV in our house, it’s hard to believe, but when I was a child, there was only 3 TV channels. Cable TV gave you about 8 more channels. Flicking through the cable channels, I came across wrestling again but this time it was American wrestling. It was called Southwest Texas Wrestling and this was unlike the British wrestling I had been exposed to. The wrestling was much more violent, they hit each other with chairs, fluorescent light bulbs, axe handles and I remember one match where a wrestler wrapped up another in barbed wire. This was extreme wrestling where more often than not, wrestlers were bloodied, the crowd love it and I fucking loved it. I remember coming across wrestlers like gurning tag team strangeness that was The Sheep Herders, Dusty Rhodes, Abdullah the Butcher, Gino Hernandez and Bruiser Brody. The last two I’ll bring up again in another article!
I was addicted and would eagerly put down video games and watch it as it was only on about 3 times a week, I was a wrestling fan again. Eventually Southwest Texas Wrestling finished and was replaced by the WWF, which we now know as the WWE. This was less violent but wrestling was more technical and spectacular with great characters, the transition was seamless. I would watch Hulk Hogan who seemed to be unbeatable keeps his belt week in and week out. I remember watching the emergence of challengers like Jake the Snake Roberts, Ultimate Warrior and one my favourites cause he was so fucking funny, Randy “Machoman” Savage. I remember seeing the very first Wrestle Mania and being awestruck at the spectacle of wrestling, I thought I would be a fan for life. To me wrestling was a sport, like boxing and it was real and I couldn’t get enough of it and I was still a fan as I got to my teens.
Then one day I was watching a WWF wrestling match and a wrestler was on the top turnbuckle with a wrestler lying on the floor, waiting for the inevitable leg drop and I saw it. Whether this was due to bad editing or camera work I don’t know but the wrestler jumped and completely missed the wrestler lying on the mat. The wrestler on the mat was writhing around in agony like he’d been hit when the reality was, it was me that was hit…….with reality. Wrestling wasn’t real. It was like a punch in the face.
Now before people go on about wrestling being real but staged or whatever it is as I don’t know the correct wrestling etiquette. I mean wrestling to me was no longer real. I would have been about 14 when it dawned on me, this isn’t real anymore, that’s why when a wrestler missed a drop kick they pretended to be in agony on the floor. Mystery solved! And that was it, I fell out of love with wrestling, I felt like I had been cheated on by a woman who I thought was going to be my wife and she turned out to be a whore. One of my older brothers would always say it wasn’t real and me being young and naive, I would argue that he’s an idiot and that he doesn’t know what he was talking about as it was real.
So for many years I avoided wrestling and fucking hated it for being fake, it was like being told that Santa is not real after believing in him for many years. If someone had said to me at the time that this type of wrestling isn’t a real sport but entertainment, I might have been fine with that but because I had no idea, I was bitter about it for years.
Years later, one of my niece and nephews wanted to see a wrestling match and my sister had got some tickets and asked if I would take them. I hated wrestling but being a top uncle, I decided to take them. Now I didn’t enjoy the wrestling or matches but what I did appreciate was how athletic wrestlers are and the balls out bravery you need to become a wrestler. To the point where I am no longer bitter about wrestling anymore, I’m not a fan but I have an appreciation for the entertainment and it provided me with many hours of entertainment while I was growing up.
So why am I telling you all of this?
Because I’ve been watching a fantastic set of documentaries on Channel 4 On Demand produced by Vice called the Dark Side of the Ring. So I thought I had better explain my wrestling background credentials and the love-hate relationship I have with wrestling as some of the timelines of the events in the documentary were happening while I was a fan and therefore very relevant to me.
Review coming shortly....
Hybrid Rules
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