It finally arrived! The special moment when my son and I could attend a professional wrestling match together.
The venue: Wilkes Barre.. The moment: Magical!
My soon to be 7-year-old became an immediate fan. He knew little of the matches or wrestlers prior.. but during and after became completely immersed in all that is professional wrestling.
Wrestling is one of those things that I avoided over the past several years. When I was younger it was a must watch. During my teenage years when Stone Cold was stunning Vince McMahon weekly, I had and attended RAW parties every Monday night. Always fun times.
But as you age, as you grow.. (some would say as you mature) you neglect those old battles. You look back with a nostalgic tear at the memories and fun times. Such as when I saw Ric Flair live… or when my father used to take me to the local cable company to pick up the little box to hook on the TV for the quarterly pay per view events–everything now is different.
The thing that is not different however is professional wrestling: It is almost reassuring that you can figure out who will win, who will lose.. it is amazing to watch a TV production live, to see how truly staged everything is.. The number of times stagehands en masse change the mat and draping around the ring during the televised RAW program.
My son went wild for Roman Reigns. Really wished he could have seen the Undertaker wrestle.. but was in awe when the Big Show took part in a really quick tag team match.
Professional wrestling is taking a massive ratings hit right now. I can see why.. The soap opera drama is too much, and not fun. Besides the Miz, there isn’t much humor like years gone by. There is no big star right now.
This, however, is so often what happens with wrestling. The Hulk Hogan years led to the Stone Cold years, which led to the Rock years.. Vince McMahons needs that larger than life star to drum up ratings again..
And it is cyclical.
I stopped watching.
My son will start.. and most likely me again as well, at least enough to support his newfound love of the entertainment…
I have said before and will always argue this: Horror movies and professional wrestling exemplify pop culture of the day. The types of horror people see, and the types of stars people choose in wrestling, tell a whole bunch about pop culture of the time. The moral 80s with Hulk Hogan taking vitamins and Jason Vorhees killing sexy drug addicts… the 90s with Stone Cold stunning the system and GhostFace mocking horror. The 2000s? ….chaos! turmoil! Wrestling run amuck.. SAW films killing without mercy. The newer generation of both? Horror back to the roots again. Wrestling has to do the same.
If it does my son and I will be tuning in every Monday night with popcorn in hand. And attending the next live event..
