August 5, 2010
Wrestling!!!?
I’ve been watching Spoony’s Wrestling Rants pretty religiously since he started them.
The question is, why am I doing this?
I have never, ever followed wrestling. I mean, I think I remember being sort of interested for an extremely short while as a child? At the very least, I know I went to see some sort of live WWF show at some point. Whether that was something I wanted to do or something my parents thought I’d enjoy, I honestly have no idea. I also remember having great times with the N64 WCW vs NWO game that everyone loved, because everyone loved it. Scantily-Clad Hulk Hogan was just going to kick some ass. That’s all there was to it.
And that’s basically my entire experience with professional Wrestling.
But I’m spending hours listening to these blow by blow readings of notes from the shows as they air now. Nothing I hear makes me actually want to watch the shows. Nothing about them makes them seem good, perse. I continue to watch. (Well, more listen, I tend to just put it on in the background.)
I mean, Spoony is a funny guy. I enjoy hearing him talk about things, even completely unscripted like that. That’s certainly part of it. I think more of the reason I watch, though, is just the passion he puts into these breakdowns. He is very passionate about wrestling, and is annoyed to see it in the garbage. I’ve been that sort of fan before, who was loving something, and saw it fall apart in front of them. (Let’s say, as an example… Harry Potter as J. K. Rowling developed protection from editors and started doing dumb things.) I have been there. Granted, I can’t remember being there with something that constantly ups and downs week after week like this wrestling obsession seems to. But it’s a sort of love/hate that I think all people have about something, whether it be a show or, say, a sports team I’d guess, if you were the kind of person who enjoyed a sporting event. It’s a very natural, real sort of feeling. It’s very, very relatable, even though I only vaguely know what Spoony is talking about half the time. (A lot of the names I get are from my playing through of the excellent TNA iPhone Wrestling RPG.)
So I keep watching and listening and absorbing more knowledge about wrestling than I ever thought I’d know. I suppose that’s alright.