Years ago, when Hulk Hogan was getting the crowds on their feet, when Ric Flair was winning championships, when Shawn Michaels was rising to the top, and when Stone Cold Steve Austin was the biggest draw in wrestling history, the wrestling audience was much larger, and much more excited to watch the sports entertainment of professional wrestling. However, the media has rarely been friendly to the world of wrestling. And, when the Attitude era of World Wrestling Federation came roaring in, things went from bad to worse. WWE may be at a strong point right now, but the show will never gain the publicity that football or basketball gets in the media. Why is that? If you think about it, football isn’t as safe as wrestling. The risk is there in wrestling, obviously, but with football, one short fuse could have a six foot five, 300 pound monster looking to tear into you.
Okay, that reasoning is fairly dumb. Let’s look at it from a much more logical point of view: football is, as far as we all know, real. Wrestling is fake, for the most part. Fake is a loose term that barely applies. Choreographed sounds like ballet, so we’ll say a pretty popular wrestling term: pre-determined. Not just the media treats wrestling bad, anyone who isn’t a hardcore wrestling fan will no doubt laugh at you if you express your love for it. I find it incredibly difficult to talk to friends about wrestling, because apparently their opinion is the be all and end all of opinions, right? Well, I bite my tongue, and I listen to their boring preferences in television (at least I don’t call them down about it to your face). When I do gather up the courage to ask why they find wrestling unwatchable, a big reason is this: “Because it’s fake. Why would I want to watch that?” Yes, well you love paying ten dollars to go see the latest action film starring the latest action star (Vin Diesel, The Rock, etc.), which obviously are completely real, right? I’m not knocking action films, because a select few are good, but disliking wrestling because it’s fake? Please, spare me with your illogical reasons.
I know your next thought: well, wrestling is considered a sport to some, so they consider actual, real sports to be better, and thus more fun. True, true. I cannot deny that seeing guy 1 tossing a ball to guy 2, and then guy 2 hitting it and running around a few plates is bursting with fun. But, these people look past what televised wrestling ACTUALLY is: sports entertainment. Whoa whoa, let’s slow down, folks. Two words, lots of syllables, we better sound it out for the folks who don’t understand WWE or NWA. Sports… as in the concept of the sport of wrestling, which is an actual sport, although far more boring. That’s where entertainment comes in. Ooh, four syllables. Maybe that’s two big for the average person to understand. I’ll break it down into simple terms: entertain, as in to have fun making others happy. So, they have taken wrestling, a bland sport to begin with, and tweaked it with entertainment. Hardcore matches, busty divas, on-air feuds, championships, Jim Ross yelling “He’s, by God, BROKEN IN HALF!!”. The works. God bless the person who decided to make wrestling entertaining, because it’s a winning combination for me. For those who think it’s stupid because it’s fake should look into the facts a bit better next time. It doesn’t ever claim to be real, so where’s the problem? Illogical reason number one shot down.
Media. What harm DOESN’T it cause? I can rarely turn on the news anymore, because I get so depressed watching it. You see so much tragedies, wars, accidents, natural disasters, all of which are highly covered on your basic news stations like CNN. But, people are fine with it. … may I ask why? May I ask why Average Joe and Average Jane get offended watching an entertaining show like Raw or Smackdown, when Mick Foley takes a leap off of a steel cage through a table, but they don’t mind seeing depressing, horrible news, that could put someone into a nuthouse? I have never understood the FCC, mostly when it comes to scripted television. It’s fake! Check out the real world, and maybe you could put that thinking to better use, somehow. Sex and violence on TV (and to the point of this column, mostly wrestling) is wrong, but the real world is fine? I just don’t get that, how someone can be offended by something on TV or in the movies, and not be barred up in their home, locked away from society. In a nutshell: the mild violence seen on television that is not even real is perceived as a greater threat to humanity than the actual violence experienced in everyday life. What would you call that? You guessed it, illogical. That makes two poor reasons.
Strictly sticking within the guarded boundaries of sports, a lot of people get a little uptight when they see Triple H smash a chair over the head of Randy Orton, and watch as the blood trickles down Orton’s face. They see a greater risk for injury, thanks to these events. But why is it you only hear of the injuries in wrestling as being bad? I see injuries happening a WHOLE lot more in a game like football, yet tens of millions of people watch that every year on Super Bowl Sunday, and there is rarely a complaint of injuries there. Much like the last reason on violence, people seem to think that pre-determined matches with two guys who look out for each other while doing high-risk maneuvers is far more dangerous than a group of men tackling each other every six seconds. When an injury comes up in wrestling, it’s perceived to a non-wrestling fan as unnecessary and downright appalling. But, doesn’t it seem like when someone is injured during any other sport, it almost sounds heroic? They took it for the team. Look, I’ve never gotten myself injured for anyone else, let alone over a game, and why anyone else would perceive it as heroic is beyond me. At least the injuries in wrestling occur while entertaining the people, and not for the team or for the game.
Before I touch on my biggest concern, I want to look at how sports are viewed on news stations, news broadcasts, and the major sports channels. Whenever you hear the sports portion of the news, do you ever hear about wrestling? Right right, it is sports entertainment, but it’s still considered, in a rather loose way, a sporting event. There’s tons of coverage on the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL (although, they’re not playing this year), but you never see even a mild mention of wrestling. They celebrate all of those teams, rarely with a stand-out bunch of players. Wrestling always has a stand-out, so I think it would be easier to cover. But, that isn’t a major problem really, but a little more coverage now and again would help out.
Now, we come to the bigggest concern that has been plaguing the wrestling world lately: backyard wrestling. Mind you, I know very little about this, except that it’s a bunch of kids wanting to wrestle, but they’re jumping off rooftops and cutting themselves open to look hardcore. Perhaps that is the basic gist of it. I will not lie, I used to pretend to have wrestling matches with my brother, but it was always ALWAYS fake, but fun. You use your imagination, and it never involved blood or pain. It was just fun. If you need to act out your favorite hardcore matches, complete with stiff chair shots and falls onto tables, work for it like the real guys. Don’t be stupid, and think that you’ll be recognized as more than a bunch of dumb kids, because you won’t. Go to college, try and get into wrestling, and if you don’t, do what the rest of us do when something doesn’t turn out like we want: go to a plan B.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not in defense of backyard wrestling, but I have a huge problem with these parents complaining about Vince McMahon because their kids did this in, what else, the backyard. I know Mr. McMahon is perceived as something of a ladies’ man on television, having brief encounters with Trish Stratus, Torrie Wilson, and Stacy Keibler. But, I highly doubt that Vincent Kennedy McMahon is the father to all of these kids. He’s not parenting ANY of these kids that are doing this, so why the hell should he receive all of the blame? Did these parents ever stop to think that maybe they screwed up? Trust me, you’re not automatically a good parent when you have a kid. If Jimmy is going outside with his friends, and looking to imitate the high-risk stunts he sees on TV, whether it’s Raw, Smackdown, Jackass, or whichever, maybe you as a parent didn’t lay down the law enough, that this stuff cannot be imitated with your friends. Especially in a non-professional manner.
The warnings that you see before Steve-O has a date with an alligator, and those warnings you see telling you “not to try this at home” are meant to be taken seriously. I could understand if wrestling never ever showed those warnings, but that is not the case. Heck, even before every show, I get a little warning telling me I may be offended by the content, and that discretion is advised. So, they tell us not to be stupid and perform those high-risk maneuvers, and they ALSO tell us that if we easily get offended by what we see on television, we shouldn’t watch? Where’s the problem? Obviously, these parents and the FCC all want something to complain about. Well, if you get rid of violence on television and in the movies, when are you going to get rid of violence in real life? Trust me, it’s not going to solve anything. So, take the advice of those warnings, and turn the damn TV off if you don’t like it. I don’t get how these people think that someone is actually telling them to watch these shows on TV. No one is. So, why are you sticking your nose into business you are not obliged to watch? If you said that’s illogical, you deserve a prize.
Like I stated previously, it infuriates me to no end that parents blame everyone except themselves. Maybe your parenting skills, or lack thereof, should have came into play when your kid was with his friends. I know kids hate to have their parents nosing in to everything, but they have to. Otherwise, accidents happen. But, blaming wrestling for it? That is ludicrous, and you know it. Parents blame everything for what happens to their kids. If their son goes and pulls a gun on someone else/other people, you can guarantee that movies or video games are instantly questioned. If these kids are that impressionable, maybe they need better parenting. Maybe I’m biased towards wrestling, but then again, when I don’t like rap at all, but when parents starting blaming that and any form of music too, I call it… well, you guessed it, illogical.
In the end, it really doesn’t matter how many chair shots your kids see on TV, how many stunts your son watches, and how many violent video games that they play, a good parent would know that it takes a lot more than making their lunches and giving them money. This is obviously not directed at all parents, but if your kid does something wrong, chances are you are to blame as well. No kid is perfect, but at least realize that his or her problems aren’t the fault of everyone except you. It’s really not that hard to make sure they’re not into huge trouble.
The media has never been gentle with professional wrestling. They don’t get the coverage that other sports do, they get noticed more for their injuries (even when most other sports all experience injuries, too), it is blamed for in certain pertainable cases, despite all warnings urging not to mimick those stunts and warnings urging you not to watch if you get offended. Wrestling will undoubtedly never be a big hit with audiences, and will continue to please their loyal viewers, like myself. Call it dangerous, call it the cause of many problems, and even call it life-threatening, but in the end it’s sports entertainment on television, in the midst of countless other far more offensive television programs. When you boil it all down, the violence you see on television is not the cause of the violence you see outside your window. They want to control the real world, but when they figure out they can’t, they latch on to a world inside the television set. It’s only TV, people. Get used to it, because as long as there’s an audience, there will be television.
That is all for this week’s special edition of The X-Factor, covering both the media’s take on wrestling, and the parental take on wrestling, as well as other forms of sex and violence. We’re heading into Wrestlemania, so I’ll be back soon with a few previews to the biggest night of the year for wrestling. Buh-bye!
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