What does wrestling mean to you? These days I find myself casually sitting on the couch, scrolling through my phone occasionally with wrestling on as filler, background noise. I may glance up at the TV if there is an interesting segment, or if something catches my…. eye (big RIP to Sasha Banks segments). However, it hasn’t always been that way.

        If you’re anything like me, wrestling made up a large part of my childhood. I spent just about every Monday night switching back and forth from TNT to USA (and whatever local access channel ECW was on at 2am), trying to catch every ounce of Pro Wrestling and Sports Entertainment my baby brain could retain. 

        To take things a step further, I also spent my free nights throughout the week participating in an online wrestling roleplay community, where we would cut promo’s, make our own graphics, and then have weekly shows competing against one another, in an AIM chatroom of course, rolling dice to see who’s move went over. Some may say I was a huge nerd (we all have our vices), but I’ve got two words for those people. Sprinkled in throughout the year, my local friends and I would also randomly have matches, with championships made of painted and laminated carboard, our own characters, our own “The Music” album. This would culminate every year at my birthday party, in which we would have our major event inside of a spacewalk (jump house, bounce house, whatever). I always went over, naturally.

        I knew it wasn’t real, I knew it was all planned out and I was constantly reminded of this by my family members who would tell me so.  This did not change the passion, the love that I had for these characters and the role they played in my upbringing. You see, I identified with these characters in different ways. I connected with the music, the stories told, the edginess of the product. It may not have been real, but it FELT real once you were caught up in the story line. I’m sure every person has a reason for why they fell in love with wrestling. Wrestling also caused me a lot of trouble as a child. Telling my classmates to “suck it” with a nice crotch chop, didn’t go over well on the elementary playground. Neither did randomly running past a classmate and trying to catch them with a surprise DDT or Stone Cold Stunner. 

        As a young adult, I disconnected a bit from the wrestling world. I missed the rise of John Cena, and the CM Punk era. I had children, grew a career, and became obsessed with many other things in life (I’m looking at you NBA/Cooking/Cocktails). There was a stretch of probably 8 or 10 years that I simply did not watch. As you can probably assume, I’m not a major fan of the PG era, though I think it has its place. 

        Today, this “background noise” is a bit different to me. I find myself drawn to those with the “gift of gab” (if only Enzo could have been a decent human/in ring performer). These days I find intrigue in the real-life aspect of the spectacle as well. Watching someone put themselves through a beating or achieve feats that I could never imagine. For me, these days, wrestling means passion, determination, grit. I watch for Sting, 62 years old, leaping off stage equipment into a sea of bodies. I watch for Roman Reigns, overcoming leukemia, honing his character, and becoming must watch TV on the microphone where he once struggled. I watch for the women’s evolution, the evolution of Chris Jericho, and new found competition in AEW (which I’m sure I’ll get into in future blog posts). You see, wrestling is still an escape for me, just as any other television show, but now I consider what these real people go through in order to give us this entertainment, and it makes it that much more special.

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