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| Who carries a pic like this in their wallet? |
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| AWESOME BOMB! |
So, by the end of high school I guess I finally grew up. I gave up on the idea of becoming a professional wrestler since you seemed to have to wrestle until the day you died (which by that point more and more wrestlers of my youth were dropping dead due to "heart problems" no doubt from all the years of Roids abuse - YOU CAN READ MY ARTICLE ABOUT IT HERE!) or there was hardly no protection/benefits like a true job could give you. It was almost like working as a carnival strong man and travel the country three hundred fifty times a year. I ended up focusing more of my interests on art and I attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
I had two students in my classes called Scott and Evan who seemed like hardcore wrestling freaks. They would randomly hit each other with chairs, throw each into walls or piles of garbage on the street and after it was all said and done - just laugh it off. I was too shy to go up to them and chat, so I decided to start just wearing my "E C F'N W" t-shirt to get their attention. One day Scott came up to me with a small photo of Sabu that he carried around with him everywhere. He asked if I knew who that was, I responded with the Sabu impersonation and pointed my finger to the air. I got to know them quite well and they even rode the train home with me back to Poughkeepsie where ECW had one of their final house shows. We yelled at Rhino and he spit on us and we freaked out when Mike Awesome "Awesome-bombed" his opponent - so awesome.
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| It is a lame hand shake due to a cut on Flair's hand |
For the rest of college I had different classes and didn't see them anymore. ECW lost their contract with the MSG network so they were no longer on late at night - and it wasn't too long thereafter that they went bankrupt and that was my official last viewing of wrestling. My dad would try to tell my brother and I about what he had recently seen on wrestling the night before but we were both officially done and just considered it kiddie stuff. The dream had died and I found my venue in the nerdier things in life again like comic books and Star Wars. If I ever wanted to dapple in wrestling again, it was getting the newly released dvd's of legendary matches and profiles of wrestlers I grew up with. Or when I got to meet Ric Flair at the Myrtle Beach Wal-Mart, which was totally exciting. I even got to ask him, "who came up with the whole falling flat on your face bit, the figure four and the lavish robes? You or Greg the Hammer Valentine?" The dirtiest player in the game just rolled his eyes, "C'mon man, I am often imitated, but never duplicated." Also, this past summer I saw that similar matches would be found on late night on ESPN when they showed old AWA wrestling. But it still wasn't enough - it was like I was feeding a beast and it was needing more.
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| An interesting promotion to give WWE a run for it's money |
"You are always a wrestling fan - they'll always find a way to get you sucked back in." Those immortal words of my father will probably trickle down to my own son someday as he watches me geeking out. Here I am, at thirty now and an on again / off again relationship with watching wrestling. One night I just decided upon myself to check out what this TNA wrestling was all about since WWE was still waaay too ridiculous and childish for me. I also thought I could bond more with my kids at school and be like, "Hey, did you see Super Eric last nigh?!" Watching the beginning of an episode reminded me of a guided tour of the DC Comics building that I had by legendary Batman writer Denny O'Neil who claimed the number one reason kids can't get into comics because they had no idea where the story currently is or what / how extensive the continuities and histories some of these characters have. Well, TNA took care of all of that for me. They had a simple prologue to get me caught up into the story line, familiar characters such as Sting, Kurt Angle, Booker T and once again Hulk Hogan was back - all of which that I remembered watching and some very entertaining new characters that brought back that silly childish fantasy of wrestling that I loved as a kid.
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| TNA girls (no pun intended) |
My wife and brother think it is sad and ridiculous that I am getting back into it. I doubt I will be as obsessive as I used to be - but it is still a nice place to escape to for a week. I guess that is why I still read comic books - I need that escapism for a while and journey into another world of fantasy, heroes and villains. Oh, and plus the girls are really hot when they beat the crap out of each other. I now feel more like my Grandfather who would watch G.L.O.W. (Glamorous Ladies Of Wrestling). But I used to see female wrestling as cheesy and ridiculous girls running around in skimpy clothes trying to give the fanboys some cheap thrills. But the ladies of TNA are amazing with their abilities - I'd say some of them, like the super skanky ODB, Velvet Sky or the monstrous Awesome Kong are better or AT LEAST equal to some of the wrestlers I have seen in my day.
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| My costume if I were to wrestle |
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Well, so you have it. I have spilled my guts all over for a love of something so fake, while I hopefully educated some of you of it's history, terms and my own personal connections to the business. I guess I always will be a wrestling fan and just have its ups and downs throughout it's history. But I think I'm gonna get going now in order to watch last week's taped show, but it just felt great reliving my youth through my notes and being able to write again.
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