Originally Posted February 9, 2007.
Writing your first wrestling column is a lot like answering a personals ad -- and I know quite a bit about both. You find yourself dipping your toe into uncharted waters, not knowing exactly who and what you'll find out there as your audience. You're selling yourself, your opinions, and your thoughts to a sea of unknown faces. Ultimately, all of that talk can be boiled down to the single focal point of sweaty men and women rolling around.
I've been a wrestling fan since I was seven years old. It was love at first sight. Twenty years later, professional wrestling (along with copious amounts of caffeine and cheesy, '80s butt-rock) is an addiction I have yet to kick.
As a kid, before bedtime, my parents would allow me to watch the Morton Downey, Jr. or Geraldo shows, both of which regularly incorporated chair-shots a decade before ECW made them de riguer in a wrestling ring. (Just to clarify, I meant that Messers Downey and Rivera were heavy on the chair-shots. Not my parents.) Preparing myself with milk and cookies for some televised loud-mouthing before drifting off to La La Land, I was pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of equally loud men, only much hairier and more muscular than the talk show hosts that normally inhabited that block of time.
As I soon found out, both of my parents had been wrestling fans in their youth. They fondly recalled the early days of televised wrestling, telling me all about Gorgeous George, a bleached blonde brawler whose effeminate ways caught his opponents off guard and carried him all the way to an AWA world title. "The Human Orchid" had his counterparts decades later in Ric Flair, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, and the superlatively shameless "Adorable" Adrian Adonis, not to mention influencing Henry Winkler's character in the 1978 film, The One and Only. Incidentally, the film featured a young Chavo Guerrero, Sr. (AKA - Chavo Classic) and Roddy Piper. Even more incidentally, the film's title theme served as my parents' wedding song. It seemed that I was predestined to be a wrestling fan.
My younger brother and I were fascinated by it and looked forward to the weekly night time episodes, Saturday morning shows, and Hulk Hogan's Rock n' Wrestling cartoon. In spite of being a closet-fan herself of a less-rabid variety, Mom would cringe whenever my brother and I would loudly cheer and attempt to re-enact what some of our spandex-clad heroes were doing on the tube. We had adopted the tag team of the George "The Animal" Steele and the late, great Junkyard Dog as our chosen favorites.
To this day, I still mark out like an 8-year-old whenever I see either wrestler in old-school clips or "The Animal" making a rare, current appearance in the ring. There was something very endearing about both of these men. JYD was very kid-friendly and even today, from all accounts and interviews within the wrestling world, had a reputation as an all-around nice guy. George "The Animal" Steele, a man after my own heart, was a very human animal. He carted around a stuffed toy with him, something my 7-year-old self could totally identify with. (Hell, that's something my 27-year-old self can identify with! But that's an entirely different story altogether.) Plus, he ate turnbuckle pads. What's not to love? Even better, I later found out that "The Animal" is an incredibly articulate man who made his wrestling career jive with his teaching career, using his summers off for his WWE appearances.
As irritated as Mom would sometimes get with the Wrestlemania that was running wild in our small apartment, she found a way to use it as a great parenting tool. Mom cleverly found a way to get me to eat this god-awful frozen beef stew by insisting that it was really "Hulk Hogan Stew." She insisted that no matter how often I took my Flintstones vitamins or said my prayers, I would never be a true Hulkamaniac if I didn't eat all of my dinner. Suffice to say, I ate every last pearl onion of that stew -- in spite of the fact that to this day, pearl onions still skeeve me out -- because I wanted to be the best little Hulkamaniac that I could be.
While wrestling proved to be a great parental bargaining chip, my folks also knew how much I enjoyed watching it and would make certain concessions to ensure that I could view my shows guilt-free. During the span of time when the WWE would show the original Saturday Night's Main Events on NBC in place of SNL, sometimes these Main Events would fall before an Easter Sunday. Faced with the dilemma of staying up late to watch my favorites grapple it out or possibly incurring the wrath of the Easter Bunny bypassing our house with his endless bounty of chocolate eggs, Mom and Dad assured me that everything would be okay.
In a tale of near-legend status, Mom and Dad insisted that my Grandma and Great-Aunt Johanna were keeping the Easter Bunny busy, plying him with High Ball after High Ball so that I could stay up late and watch Saturday Night's Main Event. This dastardly plot would ensure that I could have my candy and wrestling, too, having trudged happily off to bed without risk of seeing a hungover Hopper of the Bunny Trail sneaking into the apartment to drop off some loot for me and my brother.
The years of Vince McMahon's Once-A-Month Productions coincided around the time I started making my own "Once-A-Month-Productions." During these years, in spite of still being a tomboy, I developed a decidedly feminist streak. This was also around the time I had discovered G.L.O.W., the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Unlike the WWE weeknight wrestling, G.L.O.W. was shown well-past my bedtime at either midnight or 1AM. I used to time-tape it on the VCR and watch it with Dad and my brother the following evening.
Much like the impending confusion resulting from puberty, I found myself faced with a strange conundrum in terms of my wrestling fandom. While I infallibly rooted for the "good guys" in the WWE, in terms of women's wrestlers, I found myself to be more simpatico with the "bad girls." They were funnier, they fared better in the ring, and overall, seemed to have a lot more fun. Sure, my brother and my best guy friend growing up liked G.L.O.W. girls like Palestina and Hollywood and Vine for entirely different reasons that I did, but I thought they were spunky.
This paradox spilled over from the realm of G.L.O.W. into the WWE, too. Although the late Beautiful Miss Elizabeth certainly and classily lived up to her epithet, it was Sensational Sherri Martel who turned me towards the dark-side of the WWE, prompting me to root for her charge, "Macho Man" Randy Savage. It was the sheer amount of ass-whooping fun the two of them seemed to have together that made a lasting impression on me.
Slowly making the transition from tomboy to discovering the wonders of womanhood, watching "Scary" Sherri scream and pummel all who opposed her and the Macho King, yes, it was possible to be feminine and not have to be completely passive, demure, and spend your days with your legs crossed at the ankles. Beyond that, everything I ever needed to know about make-up, I learned from "Scary" Sherri, a fact my boyfriend will grimacingly attest to.
These were the final days of kayfabe, a more innocent time when there were strict boundaries between good guys and bad guys and all trade secrets were kept among the wrestlers themselves.
As I grew up with wrestling, in turn, it grew up with my generation. The puzzlement of puberty could easily be reflected by the changing role of the anti-hero in professional wrestling. Prior to the Attitude-Era of the WWE and the n.W.o. of WCW, the only real anti-hero was "Superstar" Billy Graham. The Superstar, however, was just one man. With factions like the original DX and the n.W.o "taking over," it was easy to eschew sentimentality and root for the bad guys. Even the foremost face of all time, Hulk Hogan had joined the n.W.o. Plus, I'll cop to having a mad crush on the bad boys like Shawn Michaels and Scott Hall back in the day. I think it was the chest hair. Mrrrowr. Definitely the chest hair.
The revolution was televised. Besides the two larger wrestling organizations, an upstart, young company known as ECW was making a name for itself and introduced hardcore to wrestling fans at large. Having lived two hours outside of Philadelphia, our local cable provider carried Sports Channel 20, one of the first stations to show ECW. That period rekindled the flame for wrestling all over again with something completely fresh and new.
My brother and I weren't the only ones. Throughout high school and college, there were tons of other rabid wrestling fans who loved all three brands. In high school, there were kids who would call themselves the n.W.o. In the A/V Club (yes, I was in A/V. I played Dungeons and Dragons, too. Let's just get all that out of the way.), several of us would do broadcasts in-character as our favorite heels and send "shout-outs" to other n.W.o. "members" within the school. My love of wrestling managed to crossover into something as dainty and delicate as ballet, an extracurricular I had also participated in (shut your mouth), referring to several other teenage ballerinas with a more dedicated style as "Hardcore Legends."
It was a great time to grow up with wrestling with so much of the "attitude" of the time reflecting teenage angst and disdain for tradition similar to the feelings of a lot of young adults.
Attending college in Philadelphia, I was closer to the ECW arena and had picked up a boyfriend who had fallen out of the wrestling fold around the time when guys like Mantaur and T.L. Hopper were on the scene. (I can't say I blame him.) I managed to rehab him and bring him up to speed with all of the latest and greatest he had been missing out on, eventually coercing him into picking up a cable subscription. Nearly nine years later, he still sits in the same room with me watching nearly every wrestling-related program that's on.
Now, as an "adult" (and I use that term loosely in reference to myself), I still have a fondness for all of the rule-breakers as well as the more traditional good-guys that comprise this fandom we all know and love so well. Each one still has a special place in my heart. Once you become an "adult," you learn it's all about balance and that there's a place for everything.
Having attended numerous house shows, television tapings and communicating with the huge community of wrestling fans both in-person and online, I've come to the conclusion that wrestling really is a fraternity. Not just for the athletes and performers themselves, but for the fans who enjoy sports entertainment, as well. Whenever you start a new job, somehow, there's always one or two wrestling fans that you end up finding in the office. Usually, those are the people you can trust and invariably bond with. There's no need to explain yourself or that even though the athleticism and tremendous physical conditioning of these men and women is 100% real, yes, the storylines are scripted. The fraternity continues even beyond a wrestling locker room and into the 9-to-5 working world.
While I miss a lot of the more fantastical characters that I grew up with, I still religiously watch any and all wrestling-related programming. It's like a soap opera with sweaty, muscular men. You can have your General Hospital, I'll take my Monday Night RAW, thank you very much.
With so many DVD sets on the market, I get to have the best of the old stuff I grew up with, learn more about the history of wrestling and see the competitors who were a little before my time or that were on cable television before my family had a subscription, or to just enjoy some of the newer stuff out there. I love it all.
And right now, to paraphrase the Heartbreak Kid himself, Shawn Michaels, I get to live my "girlhood dream" and write about wrestling. Check back next week when I lament the Lost Art of the Two-Minute Promo. Thanks for letting me introduce myself and I hope you've been entertained. Til next time…
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