Post by joebaia88 on Apr 3, 2008 17:18:26 GMT -5
Ok, this is just a column I wrote a few months ago when applying for a columnists position on another site. Anywho, I didn't get the job, but no worries, I just thought I'd get my column out there and hope for some feedback on it. I'm currently a journalism student in my 2nd year at University and any decent feedback would be appreciated. Cheers.
How I fell in love with pro wrestling
By Joe Baiamonte
In an age where many online wrestling reporters are seemingly obsessed with bashing the product at every chance they get, I thought I’d go the other way and share with you my story of how I came to be a fan of the surreal circus that is professional wrestling.
Now, I’ve said in the title of this piece that I ‘fell in love with pro wrestling’, which might seem a bit much to some, but I’d say it’s a pretty accurate statement. When you love someone or something, you think about them every day and can’t picture your life without them. I feel like this about my girlfriend, my family and my friends. I’m constantly in touch with these people who I love, and if I’m not with them or in contact with them, I’m thinking about them and hoping they’re ok.
With wrestling, I’ll think about it every day, maybe delve into my DVD collection and watch a couple of matches if I get the chance, and I’ll browse the internet to keep up to date with the latest goings on whilst chewing the fat with fellow fans in discussion forums. Without wrestling, there would definitely be a squared circle shaped void in my life. I don’t care if that sounds overly dramatic, I bet the majority of people who read this feel the same way.
The basic principle of wrestling is obscene. Men get into disputes, then rather than just settle it with a fist fight, they adorn themselves in a variety of spandex tights and singlets, and grapple in a ring in front of thousands of people. All this comes complete with music, pyrotechnics and choreographed fights that come in a variety of stipulations. I’m not mocking wrestling here, even the most ardent wrestling fan would agree with me. But it’s this surrealism and OTT nature that lures you in. You see a couple of guys get into an argument in a nightclub over a girl, they have a fight outside, who cares? Who’s not seen that on a night out before? Now, instead of the two guys going outside to have a fight, imagine they decide to fight in a week’s time, within the confines of a 15 foot high steel cage. What sounds more appealing to watch?
My first exposure to the wacky world of sports entertainment came probably when I was around the age of 3. My older brother, who was 9 at the time, had gotten into wrestling as Hulkamania spread like wildfire from across the Atlantic Ocean to the UK. He bought a Hasbro Hulkster action figure complete with ‘gorilla pressing’ action and he had that action figure kick more arse than all of his Action Men, G.I Joes and Ghostbusters combined. Seeing my big brother idolize someone in such a way made me believe that I should do so too, and the more he told me about how great ‘The Immortal One’ was, the more excited I got every time I saw one of his matches.
Not long after I became a Hulkamaniac did I switch my allegiances to another wild, colourful character. Our local Blockbuster received a delivery of various WWF PPV’s from the 80’s, and it was after we rented Summerslam ’88 that Hulkamania took a back seat to Jim Hellwig, better known as ‘The Ultimate Warrior’. I’ll never forget how he sprinted to the ring like a man possessed in order to answer The Honky Tonk Man’s open challenge for his Intercontinental Title. I thought he was beyond human. He had arms the size of small countries, a head of hair that was more like a lion’s mane, face paint, tassles and entrance music so frenetic and intense that it made you want to flying shoulder tackle the nearest person in sight.
Altogether, his entrance combined with the match itself lasted roughly 2 minutes, but those 2 minutes turned me into the Warrior’s biggest fan. For my 4th birthday my parents bought me a wrestling ring and about 10 different figures. I say 10 different figures, they got me 9 figures and The Ultimate Warrior! He quickly usurped Hogan as world champ before winning the Intercontinental Title and the Tag Titles all on his own. To this day that action figure remains undefeated.
I actually regarded this man as a superhero. The Hulkster was a hero alright, but not on the same level as the Warrior. Hogan was the all American man, but he wasn’t superhuman like the Warrior was. Where was his face paint and his rope shaking entrance? I rented tape after tape, following the Warrior’s every match, until the fateful day when Blockbuster received a copy of Wrestlemania 6! The memory will last with me forever. I perused through the tapes I had now seen all twice over when I cast my eyes over a purple box with Hogan and the Warrior on the front, with the words ‘The Ultimate Challenge’ written on. I could barely talk I was that excited. Hogan vs the Warrior with the WWF and Intercontinental Titles on the line? I shoved the tape in my Dad’s hand, got home, pressed the tape into the VCR and fast forwarded through the entire under card until I reached the main event. I was trembling with excitement just from the pre match promos. Then, once the match began, I felt every punch, kick and bodyslam the Warrior felt. I kicked out when he kicked out. I became invincible when he did, I pumped my fist and sprinted around my living room when he began to dominate Hogan with his immense power. Seconds later I was watching the match through my fingers as Hogan kicked out of the gorilla press and then hit the big boot and legdrop of doom. The moments that followed are a total blur. Hogan missing the next legdrop and the subsequent big splash and pinfall all morphed into screaming, fist clenching delirium as I became excited to the point I almost had an asthma attack. My hero was both WWF champion and Intercontinental champion. Nothing got better than that.
As I grew older, I saw the Warrior’s title reign unfold courtesy of more Blockbuster rentals, then I saw him disappear from the WWF at the end of 1992. My love of wrestling still remained though, with or without Warrior. My Grandma and Granddad bought me Wrestlemania X for Christmas and I acquired a new favourite in Razor Ramon following his victorious ladder match against The HeartBreak Kid, Shawn Michaels.
With wrestling now being broadcast on Sky Sports (satellite sports channels in the UK), and my family not having satellite TV, I had to rely on my neighbours taping me Raw and any PPV’s (we got them for free in the UK until recently) when they could. I followed the phenomenal Bret/Owen feud and swore blind when HBK hung on to eliminate the British Bulldog from the Royal Rumble ’95 when it looked like the Bulldog had won.
However, as time went on, I missed more and more episodes of Raw and neighbours either couldn’t tape shows or forgot to and I couldn’t keep track of what was going on. That was until my Dad shelled out for satellite TV during the Christmas of 1997! By this time I hadn’t watched wrestling properly in over a year and was so excited to be watching live Premier League football, Nickelodeon and MTV that I’d completely forgot about the old WWF. That was until I saw ‘WWF Raw’ advertised in the Sky TV guide. Every Friday night (it was broadcast 4 days later at this time in the UK) at 10. This was it, I could watch wrestling regularly. I could actually watch weekly shows AND PPV’s and build my own VHS collection of tapes that I could watch whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to pay £3.75 to watch them over the course of 2 nights like I did at Blockbuster.
By late ‘97/early ’98, the wrestling world had changed dramatically. I’d just missed that business that happened in Montreal and now it wasn’t unusual for matches to contain weapons and much more bloodshed and violence. Wrestlers cursed openly and there were more women than I remember. More attractive women anyway. It was the ‘Attitude’ era, and who personified this ‘Attitude’ more than ‘Stone Cold Steve Austin’? He swore, he drunk beer, he drove trucks to the ring, he pushed Mike Tyson and beat up his boss! Vince Mcmahon was a commentator when I’d last watched wrestling! I didn’t even know he owned the WWF! When I watched wrestling when I was 4 years old, my Dad would watch wrestling just because he couldn’t avoid it. Now, he watched it because he wanted to see who Stone Cold would stunner next. He broke the news of the Tyson incident to me and I would walk into the living room and he would be laughing his head off watching Austin embarrass Mcmahon yet again.
Steve Austin wasn’t a character in the way Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior were characters. He was every working guy around the world. Only he was the only working guy in the world who beat up his boss on a weekly basis and got paid for it. People related to Austin in a way they couldn’t with Hogan and Warrior. Austin was just an ordinary guy. He wasn’t a role model, nor did he profess to be. He’d beat up other fan favourites just for the hell of it. He was a loner, who, 7 years earlier, would have been loathed most probably. Now, he had my Dad hooked, and that made me even more hooked.
When you have a hobby or an interest, it’s always best if someone you know shares the same interest. Having my Dad want to watch wrestling with me made it that bit more special. Everything culminated with a trip to Sheffield to watch my first live wrestling event. WWF Rebellion, with a main event of Kurt Angle defending his newly won WWF Title against The Rock, Austin and Rikishi. Every match was great in my eyes because it was live. The crowd was red hot and my voice was hoarse from shouting just 20 minutes into the event. It was surreal to see these men I’ve only ever seen on TV before wrestling live in front of me, throwing each other through tables, smashing each other with chairs and I jumped about 10 feet out of my seat every time someone hit their finisher. The night finished with Angle somehow escaping with his title, but Austin and The Rock cleaned house and celebrated with a few Steveweisers to end the show. 4 months later they would take part in the greatest wrestling match I’ve ever seen.
My Dad eventually phased out of following wrestling with me and after the Invasion angle and Hogan’s return, I too phased out. Everyone I knew did. I’d followed wrestling avidly for 10 years, and it was time for a break. Over the course of the next 2 and a half years I could count the number of wrestling shows I watched on one hand.
Come 2005 and I randomly came across an episode of Raw whilst channel hopping late one night. What the hell was Eric Bischoff doing on there? Who was Randy Orton and why was he challenging for the title? It was Royal Rumble time, the ‘Road to Wrestlemania’ specifically, and guess what, I was hooked again.
I caught up the best I could and joined the wrestleview forums in June 2005. I now had a domain to air my opinions and debate how I would do things differently if I were in charge etc. Much like every other internet wrestling fan. Only, I look for the positives in wrestling, rather than dwelling on the negatives like so many others do. I will never jump on the ‘smark’ bandwagon, nor do I want to be considered a stereotypical member of the IWC. I like what I like and ok, I can dish out criticism when I don’t agree or like something, but I don’t beat the subject to death as if I was gaining some sort of pleasure from the experience. I like to think of myself as a ‘mark in the know’. I know the workings of the business and I’ve seen shoot interviews. I know there’s a sleazy element to wrestling, but there is in practically every business. It doesn’t bother me.
Wrestling is entertainment. Plain and simple. It’s no longer men fighting and that’s it. It’s a soap opera with steel cages and bra and panties matches thrown in for good measure. Never take it too seriously. Ok, not everyone’s going to like everything the WWE produces. There are terrible matches, gimmicks and angles alike, but it’s all in good fun at the end of the day. So what if the Great Khali can’t perform 20 variations of a suplex or do a 450 splash? The guy’s a 7’4 monster from India who chops people square in the head just for fun! So what Vince Mcmahon loves himself and he takes up a lot of storyline time with more and more bizarre twists. He’s a 60 year old billionaire who could be sitting on his big pile of money not giving a crap about his product as long as he makes money. But instead he starts his own religion, books God in a match, beats his daughter in an ‘I Quit’ match, cheats on his wife with the entire female roster practically, fakes his own death and gets his arse kicked by his employees all on air to entertain us.
Without the slapstick, the silly skits, the bizarre characters and the T&A, what are you left with? A roster of charismatically challenged technical wrestlers who ‘never got their due’. That’s not the wrestling world I became obsessed with 16 years ago. It’s an escape from reality, and if you can’t do anything but find fault, then your watching the wrong show.
Thanks for reading,
Joe Baiamonte
How I fell in love with pro wrestling
By Joe Baiamonte
In an age where many online wrestling reporters are seemingly obsessed with bashing the product at every chance they get, I thought I’d go the other way and share with you my story of how I came to be a fan of the surreal circus that is professional wrestling.
Now, I’ve said in the title of this piece that I ‘fell in love with pro wrestling’, which might seem a bit much to some, but I’d say it’s a pretty accurate statement. When you love someone or something, you think about them every day and can’t picture your life without them. I feel like this about my girlfriend, my family and my friends. I’m constantly in touch with these people who I love, and if I’m not with them or in contact with them, I’m thinking about them and hoping they’re ok.
With wrestling, I’ll think about it every day, maybe delve into my DVD collection and watch a couple of matches if I get the chance, and I’ll browse the internet to keep up to date with the latest goings on whilst chewing the fat with fellow fans in discussion forums. Without wrestling, there would definitely be a squared circle shaped void in my life. I don’t care if that sounds overly dramatic, I bet the majority of people who read this feel the same way.
The basic principle of wrestling is obscene. Men get into disputes, then rather than just settle it with a fist fight, they adorn themselves in a variety of spandex tights and singlets, and grapple in a ring in front of thousands of people. All this comes complete with music, pyrotechnics and choreographed fights that come in a variety of stipulations. I’m not mocking wrestling here, even the most ardent wrestling fan would agree with me. But it’s this surrealism and OTT nature that lures you in. You see a couple of guys get into an argument in a nightclub over a girl, they have a fight outside, who cares? Who’s not seen that on a night out before? Now, instead of the two guys going outside to have a fight, imagine they decide to fight in a week’s time, within the confines of a 15 foot high steel cage. What sounds more appealing to watch?
My first exposure to the wacky world of sports entertainment came probably when I was around the age of 3. My older brother, who was 9 at the time, had gotten into wrestling as Hulkamania spread like wildfire from across the Atlantic Ocean to the UK. He bought a Hasbro Hulkster action figure complete with ‘gorilla pressing’ action and he had that action figure kick more arse than all of his Action Men, G.I Joes and Ghostbusters combined. Seeing my big brother idolize someone in such a way made me believe that I should do so too, and the more he told me about how great ‘The Immortal One’ was, the more excited I got every time I saw one of his matches.
Not long after I became a Hulkamaniac did I switch my allegiances to another wild, colourful character. Our local Blockbuster received a delivery of various WWF PPV’s from the 80’s, and it was after we rented Summerslam ’88 that Hulkamania took a back seat to Jim Hellwig, better known as ‘The Ultimate Warrior’. I’ll never forget how he sprinted to the ring like a man possessed in order to answer The Honky Tonk Man’s open challenge for his Intercontinental Title. I thought he was beyond human. He had arms the size of small countries, a head of hair that was more like a lion’s mane, face paint, tassles and entrance music so frenetic and intense that it made you want to flying shoulder tackle the nearest person in sight.
Altogether, his entrance combined with the match itself lasted roughly 2 minutes, but those 2 minutes turned me into the Warrior’s biggest fan. For my 4th birthday my parents bought me a wrestling ring and about 10 different figures. I say 10 different figures, they got me 9 figures and The Ultimate Warrior! He quickly usurped Hogan as world champ before winning the Intercontinental Title and the Tag Titles all on his own. To this day that action figure remains undefeated.
I actually regarded this man as a superhero. The Hulkster was a hero alright, but not on the same level as the Warrior. Hogan was the all American man, but he wasn’t superhuman like the Warrior was. Where was his face paint and his rope shaking entrance? I rented tape after tape, following the Warrior’s every match, until the fateful day when Blockbuster received a copy of Wrestlemania 6! The memory will last with me forever. I perused through the tapes I had now seen all twice over when I cast my eyes over a purple box with Hogan and the Warrior on the front, with the words ‘The Ultimate Challenge’ written on. I could barely talk I was that excited. Hogan vs the Warrior with the WWF and Intercontinental Titles on the line? I shoved the tape in my Dad’s hand, got home, pressed the tape into the VCR and fast forwarded through the entire under card until I reached the main event. I was trembling with excitement just from the pre match promos. Then, once the match began, I felt every punch, kick and bodyslam the Warrior felt. I kicked out when he kicked out. I became invincible when he did, I pumped my fist and sprinted around my living room when he began to dominate Hogan with his immense power. Seconds later I was watching the match through my fingers as Hogan kicked out of the gorilla press and then hit the big boot and legdrop of doom. The moments that followed are a total blur. Hogan missing the next legdrop and the subsequent big splash and pinfall all morphed into screaming, fist clenching delirium as I became excited to the point I almost had an asthma attack. My hero was both WWF champion and Intercontinental champion. Nothing got better than that.
As I grew older, I saw the Warrior’s title reign unfold courtesy of more Blockbuster rentals, then I saw him disappear from the WWF at the end of 1992. My love of wrestling still remained though, with or without Warrior. My Grandma and Granddad bought me Wrestlemania X for Christmas and I acquired a new favourite in Razor Ramon following his victorious ladder match against The HeartBreak Kid, Shawn Michaels.
With wrestling now being broadcast on Sky Sports (satellite sports channels in the UK), and my family not having satellite TV, I had to rely on my neighbours taping me Raw and any PPV’s (we got them for free in the UK until recently) when they could. I followed the phenomenal Bret/Owen feud and swore blind when HBK hung on to eliminate the British Bulldog from the Royal Rumble ’95 when it looked like the Bulldog had won.
However, as time went on, I missed more and more episodes of Raw and neighbours either couldn’t tape shows or forgot to and I couldn’t keep track of what was going on. That was until my Dad shelled out for satellite TV during the Christmas of 1997! By this time I hadn’t watched wrestling properly in over a year and was so excited to be watching live Premier League football, Nickelodeon and MTV that I’d completely forgot about the old WWF. That was until I saw ‘WWF Raw’ advertised in the Sky TV guide. Every Friday night (it was broadcast 4 days later at this time in the UK) at 10. This was it, I could watch wrestling regularly. I could actually watch weekly shows AND PPV’s and build my own VHS collection of tapes that I could watch whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to pay £3.75 to watch them over the course of 2 nights like I did at Blockbuster.
By late ‘97/early ’98, the wrestling world had changed dramatically. I’d just missed that business that happened in Montreal and now it wasn’t unusual for matches to contain weapons and much more bloodshed and violence. Wrestlers cursed openly and there were more women than I remember. More attractive women anyway. It was the ‘Attitude’ era, and who personified this ‘Attitude’ more than ‘Stone Cold Steve Austin’? He swore, he drunk beer, he drove trucks to the ring, he pushed Mike Tyson and beat up his boss! Vince Mcmahon was a commentator when I’d last watched wrestling! I didn’t even know he owned the WWF! When I watched wrestling when I was 4 years old, my Dad would watch wrestling just because he couldn’t avoid it. Now, he watched it because he wanted to see who Stone Cold would stunner next. He broke the news of the Tyson incident to me and I would walk into the living room and he would be laughing his head off watching Austin embarrass Mcmahon yet again.
Steve Austin wasn’t a character in the way Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior were characters. He was every working guy around the world. Only he was the only working guy in the world who beat up his boss on a weekly basis and got paid for it. People related to Austin in a way they couldn’t with Hogan and Warrior. Austin was just an ordinary guy. He wasn’t a role model, nor did he profess to be. He’d beat up other fan favourites just for the hell of it. He was a loner, who, 7 years earlier, would have been loathed most probably. Now, he had my Dad hooked, and that made me even more hooked.
When you have a hobby or an interest, it’s always best if someone you know shares the same interest. Having my Dad want to watch wrestling with me made it that bit more special. Everything culminated with a trip to Sheffield to watch my first live wrestling event. WWF Rebellion, with a main event of Kurt Angle defending his newly won WWF Title against The Rock, Austin and Rikishi. Every match was great in my eyes because it was live. The crowd was red hot and my voice was hoarse from shouting just 20 minutes into the event. It was surreal to see these men I’ve only ever seen on TV before wrestling live in front of me, throwing each other through tables, smashing each other with chairs and I jumped about 10 feet out of my seat every time someone hit their finisher. The night finished with Angle somehow escaping with his title, but Austin and The Rock cleaned house and celebrated with a few Steveweisers to end the show. 4 months later they would take part in the greatest wrestling match I’ve ever seen.
My Dad eventually phased out of following wrestling with me and after the Invasion angle and Hogan’s return, I too phased out. Everyone I knew did. I’d followed wrestling avidly for 10 years, and it was time for a break. Over the course of the next 2 and a half years I could count the number of wrestling shows I watched on one hand.
Come 2005 and I randomly came across an episode of Raw whilst channel hopping late one night. What the hell was Eric Bischoff doing on there? Who was Randy Orton and why was he challenging for the title? It was Royal Rumble time, the ‘Road to Wrestlemania’ specifically, and guess what, I was hooked again.
I caught up the best I could and joined the wrestleview forums in June 2005. I now had a domain to air my opinions and debate how I would do things differently if I were in charge etc. Much like every other internet wrestling fan. Only, I look for the positives in wrestling, rather than dwelling on the negatives like so many others do. I will never jump on the ‘smark’ bandwagon, nor do I want to be considered a stereotypical member of the IWC. I like what I like and ok, I can dish out criticism when I don’t agree or like something, but I don’t beat the subject to death as if I was gaining some sort of pleasure from the experience. I like to think of myself as a ‘mark in the know’. I know the workings of the business and I’ve seen shoot interviews. I know there’s a sleazy element to wrestling, but there is in practically every business. It doesn’t bother me.
Wrestling is entertainment. Plain and simple. It’s no longer men fighting and that’s it. It’s a soap opera with steel cages and bra and panties matches thrown in for good measure. Never take it too seriously. Ok, not everyone’s going to like everything the WWE produces. There are terrible matches, gimmicks and angles alike, but it’s all in good fun at the end of the day. So what if the Great Khali can’t perform 20 variations of a suplex or do a 450 splash? The guy’s a 7’4 monster from India who chops people square in the head just for fun! So what Vince Mcmahon loves himself and he takes up a lot of storyline time with more and more bizarre twists. He’s a 60 year old billionaire who could be sitting on his big pile of money not giving a crap about his product as long as he makes money. But instead he starts his own religion, books God in a match, beats his daughter in an ‘I Quit’ match, cheats on his wife with the entire female roster practically, fakes his own death and gets his arse kicked by his employees all on air to entertain us.
Without the slapstick, the silly skits, the bizarre characters and the T&A, what are you left with? A roster of charismatically challenged technical wrestlers who ‘never got their due’. That’s not the wrestling world I became obsessed with 16 years ago. It’s an escape from reality, and if you can’t do anything but find fault, then your watching the wrong show.
Thanks for reading,
Joe Baiamonte