kingy7

[kingy7]

Let's Talk About Wrestling

I am a Geek. I am totally comfortable with this. In fact the older I get the more comfortable I am. Being a Geek comes with its challenges, particularly in ones youth. Being the 'Star Trek' kid at school isn't fun. However as one grows and those around them do too, it becomes less of a taboo to discuss love of all things geeky. More so now perhaps than ever as franchises like Marvel and Doctor Who become more and more mainstream.

However there is one area of my Geekiness that still baffles people, one passion of mine that many simply cannot understand and one that still carries a stigma. You see, I am a proud Geek but I'm also a wrestling fan.

Let's take a look at the three stages of my wrestling origin story:

There's always a new fad when you're a kid. He-Man, Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers. Pop culture phenomena that spring seemingly out of nowhere, become the driving force of playground life then disappear without trace save for a mild embarrassment that we ever enjoyed them in the first place. And so it was in 1991 when suddenly all anyone wanted to talk about was wrestling. Specifically WWF wrestling as that was the only type most could watch in those days. I don't recall exactly what piqued my interest. It was as if one day I knew that wrestling was the next big thing and that I had to be invested in it. The cool action figures may have played a part too. In fact, I owned an Ultimate Warrior figure before I knew who he was or indeed how bad he was. That latter realisation wouldn't come until phase two of my wrestling journey but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

We were lucky enough to have Sky TV as this was the only way to watch WWF in those days. Again I have no memory of how exactly it transpired but somehow I was aware that SummerSlam was showing on Sky Movies (not Sky Sports, that should have been a clue) and as it was broadcast at 1AM my Dad taped it and the next day I watched my first wrestling show.

Incidentally having Sky TV had the knock on effect of making those who had the service the centre of our fledgling wrestling communities. My neighbour would regularly 'call round' to watch the events as would friends from school in the years that followed.

SummerSlam '91 was a curious PPV (Pay Per View, American Audiences had to pay for each event whereas in the UK they were shown for 'free' on Sky) in that it features a 'double main event'! One of these events wasn't even a match at all in the traditional sense, it was a wedding. The pun being that the participants were a 'match made in heaven'. The other featured as a tag team the two biggest stars in wrestling at the time Hulk Hogan and the life size version of my action figure - The Ultimate Warrior.

What struck me immediately was how clearly drawn the characters were. I could tell instantly who I was supposed to cheer and who deserved my boos. Early in the show The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase cut a promo (wrestling speak for yammering on the microphone) and I turned to my Dad and said "I don't want him to win because he thinks having money makes him better than everyone else". Little did I know this was the first time I would be successfully 'worked' by a wrestler.

Later in the show I would find some new favorites. Brett Hart, The Bushwackers and of course our countryman The British Bulldog.

I was taken in by the spectacle of it all. The over the top action, the hysterical commentary and the larger than life characters. I was certain to watch the next show. I was so invested that I felt the need to stand during the 'wedding' section of the show. Something I have never confessed to anyone.

It's worth noting that SummerSlam '91 does not hold up to modern scrutiny displaying as it does homophobia and racism. These are tropes that to this day are not entirely absent from wrestling and will always cause me conflict.

Over the next few years WWF became a way of life. I watched the shows, collected the trading cards and action figures and even attended a live event. Such was its grip on British popular culture that one year on from my introduction SummerSlam '92 was held in Wembley Stadium. Absent from that show was Hulk Hogan.

And with Hulk eventually would go my interest in the 'sport'. He became my hero, and as the whole show was built around him it was hard to accept anyone else as the 'top guy'. I soldiered on for a while before stopping watching at SummerSlam '93 almost exactly two years after I'd started.

And as so many fads do, wrestling in the UK became a forgotten past time. Never spoken of at school and regarded with scorn for the poor souls who still watched it.

The question I was asked most over those years, usually by adults, was "Don't you know it's fake?". Yes I did. Everyone told me frequently enough. But I chose to ignore it. I chose to pretend it was real. This is something that non fans seem unable to grasp. Wrestling is no more fake than films and as a result can be no less real if you choose to allow it to be. Maybe we'll take a closer look at that another time.

The next time I watched wrestling was in 1998. Five years may not seem like a long time but the difference between a 12 year old and a 17 year old is like a lifetime.

Had you asked me at that age if I had any interest in wrestling I may well have laughed. It was a part of my childhood, that I now viewed with an ironic detachment. I looked down on younger me who had been taken in by this fake sport. I had no idea that I was about to become a fan for life.

It started with a video game. WWF Warzone. Myself and my friends has been playing it on the N64 and enjoying the fighting mechanics and the characters. We were surprised to see some old favorites in there, The Undertaker, The Bulldog and Brett Hart. Then as we played more we came up with the idea of maybe watching an event for old times sake. See what it was like now?

That event was Survivor Series '98 and it could not have been a better re-introduction.

What we didn't know at the time was that the WWF title had been vacated (It was this whole thing with The Undertaker and Kane and Stone Cold Steve Austin) and so the whole event would be a tournament to crown the new champion. It's rare that a wrestling show has one story over the whole night and even rarer that it's so accessible for an audience who haven't watched in years. Through the tournament format we got to know most of the main characters and saw how they related to each other. We saw the planting of seeds for future rivalries and the twists and turns that were now central to the narrative. I've often wondered if we'd have chosen the previous month's show or the one after if we'd have been as hooked.

But hooked we were, as Survivor Series introduced us to a new generation of grapplers, the aforementioned Steve Austin, Mankind and The Rock being standouts. The latter of course would become one of the most famous people in the world but here he was just getting into his groove as a bad guy. His betrayal of the fans at the end of the show was what compelled us to watch the next episode. The sudden turn with seemingly no reason left an unresolved cliffhanger that demanded an answer. This was where I really started to think about wrestling from a story telling perspective. As a kid it was all about the superheroic characters, but this was different. It was as if the matches served mainly to drive the story onward and the soap opera like sagas were the real draw. I began to think about the wrestlers as playing pieces and the writer as a chess master whose job it was to position them ready for their next match.

Since that event I have barely missed a monthly PPV. My interest has waxed and waned but even at times when i've been unable to watch the shows, I've maintained an interest and followed the story. There have been major lulls in wrestling over the years since. The Cena years were a struggle and the less said about Roman Reigns before he was a bad guy, the better. However the third turning point in my wrestling journey would come not from the stalwart WWE (they got the F out) but from a new company called AEW.

You see WWE had gotten pretty boring by the 2010's. There were no big stars who captured the imagination and the in-ring style was familiar to the point of tedium. I kept an eye on the developments and watched Wrestlemania every year but there was no passion for it in me anymore.

That would change when I heard that there was a new company opening its doors, one that promised to be an alternative, to deliver exactly the kind of entertainment that WWE was not.

It took me a while to get into it if I'm honest. The style was different and the action spectacular but it was so far removed from what I'd thought of as 'wrestling' that I found myself struggling to follow it.

Then something clicked and everything I'd been missing since the heady days of the 'attitude era' was back. Not just back but better. And through AEW I discovered different styles of wrestling and began learning more about its history.

I still watch AEW weekly, I have attended one of their shows as well as local British shows and I would say that my love of wrestling as an art form is at an all time high.

I know many people will still laugh but wrestling is something I care about. It's a form of storytelling that can't be seen elsewhere and above all I love stories. Whether they're written in a book by a novelist or told in the ring by enormous muscled maniacs.