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September 1, 2005

Greetings, wrestling fans. Have you ever asked yourself how you came to this point? Being a wrestling fan, I mean.

My particular love affair with the sport started when I was a young boy, watching the matches with my Grandfather. I loved my Grandfather. Or, to put it a bit more accurately, I worshiped him. Hey, wrestling was good enough for Grandpa, it was obviously good enough for me.

Dad didn’t share the same enthusiasm, so watching it at home wasn’t something that we did often. However, when we were at Grandpa’s, you could believe that if it was Saturday night, it was the Saturday Night at the Fights followed by wrestling.

And what a great group I was indoctrinated by. Ray Stevens! Haystacks Calhoun! Bearcat Wright! And many more that have passed into the mists of time and a fading memory. However I can still recall sitting there on the floor, absolutely enthralled by the action! Grown men grappling.

My Father tried to destroy the magic by letting me know “it’s not real.” Yeah, well, OK. But still! Picking a man up off the mat, spinning him around in a circle, and then dropping him down on the mat? Turning a man’s face into a mask of blood? How could it not be real?

And women! Women wrestlers! They were far from the glamour girls in the sport now. They were like the men, only in a single piece bathing suit, and didn’t have as much facial hair.

This was a golden time of my life. A time that I look back on with nostalgia. A time that I will never be able to recapture regardless how hard I try.

What happened? Did I change? Did wrestling? Did the world?

When I was first indoctrinated into wrestling the average “interview” lasted about 20 seconds. Generally it was right after the match and the interviewer would stand there with a scared look on his face as the heel would say how he was going to break his opponent in half on the next show, coming up at the auditorium this Saturday night or whatever.

Today a wrestler is judged on his work on the stick, along with the story lines that have turned my beloved sport into a soap opera. Today it’s more about the acting than about the actual match.

Yet, regardless of the change, it’s still my sport. I’ve watched from the 50’s. Through it all, at the very heart, lies the wrestling. And that’s what it’s all about.

In future columns, I’d like to examine some of these changes. Some of the things that have evloved. The mic work, the story lines, the screw job endings and even check out some of the other aspects of the sport. The announcers and the fans themselves.

Thank you for your time.