JamesAsh.com

I’m going to stop you right there. Right where? Right at the point where you were about to say any of the following things:

“Pro wrestling is fake.”
“Pro wrestling is for rednecks.”
“How do you watch those ‘roided up freaks pretend to beat each other up?”
“It’s still real to me, dammit!”

I love watching pro wrestling every week. There’s something about it that makes me feel relaxed, so much so that if I am having a bout with insomnia, turning on an episode of Monday Night RAW is like singing me a lullaby.

Now, as much as I enjoy watching two “superstars” face off in the squared circle, I can’t stand to watch it live on TV anymore. I have to watch it on the DVR so I can forward through all of the crap that fills a show each week.  As much as wrestling is labeled “a soap opera for men,” that’s not really an apt description.  But that’s what it has become since Vince McMahon decided to pull the curtain back and call it “sports entertainment.”

The era of sports entertainment hasn’t been all bad for the wrestling aficionado, but it has been different.  Back in the day, wrestling had a lot of people known as jobbers – someone paid to take the loss and make the star look good.  Now, they just pay a lot of guys a lot of money and try to make them all superstars instead of having jobbers.

Wrestling also used to feature a lot of interviews in between matches, either to promote a coming pay-per-view or a live show in a certain city.  Now, those segments are all written by aspiring screen writers and sound nothing like what wrestling has been in the past.  The interview segments have been replaced by one of two things. Either the wrestler in the ring talking about the person he is feuding with, which is good, or some comedy bit in the back involving midgets, which is bad.

I know there are a lot of people out there that don’t like the programming.  It’s easy to criticize it as an industry. Some of the lowest common denominator storylines they use are hard to put up with. Put for me, pro wrestling will always be comfort viewing.