Anyway, I watch Professional Wrestling. It's not something I usually bring up in casual conversation because It's not something people can respect as an form of genuine entertainment. I usually stick with the UFC stuff, people can respect the UFC as a bunch of really fit guys beat the shit out of each other. Wrestling on the other hand is fake and doesn't deserve the same level of respect. Well they do and this is the reason why.
I love Professional Wrestling. I grew up watching it at around 6. These tall hulking Goliath's of men with equally larger than life personalities fighting crazy colourful bad guy characters like the nWo or the Iron Sheik. It's all just crazy staged nonsense and I ate it up. Still Love it to this day, just in a different way. Thanks to the Internet there is a sub culture of wrestling of wrestling fans. They casually call themselves smarks or in old school wrestling terms... a smart mark. A mark is a person that believes in it still. I don't generally believe in the use of those terms any more, thanks to the internet, EVERYONE knows what going on. As far as I'm concerned the difference between a Mark and a Smark these days is a Mark is someone who'll watch it on Television whenever they feel like it and a Smark is someone that follows it religiously, knows the ins and outs of the business and then goes online to discuss it with other die hard fans. A Smark is more of a Super Fan, but more of a cynical Super Fan then just a regular Fanatic. Smarks don't take bullshit and will chant accordingly.
Now being one of those more cynical super fans I've followed wrestling news sites, read online interviews, participated in various online wrestling discussions on message boards, read wrestler autobiographies, watched countless behind the scenes documentaries and of course watched Pro Wrestling itself for the past 18 years.
I have one thing to say to those that want to become Professional Wrestlers.
Good Luck.
The Life of a Wrestler is fucking hard. It's really something that you have to just commit to entirely if you want to make it to the top. Wrestling is basically stunt fighting. It's like watching two guys come up with a ridiculous fight you might see in a bad movie. It's a form of physical theatre where these two athletes have to put on a fake fight without hurting the other guy. They're like physical actors that try to make it seem all real.
God I love the Internet, such a personal moment immortalised.
So you spend hours at a time figuring out safe ways to take a punch, a suplex, an arm dag, a snapmare, BASIC FUCKING MOVES. You are training you body to take impacts on what can only be described as bouncy yet hard and stable planks of cardboard (They call it canvas). You are taking these impacts for 15 - 20 minutes, you body is going to feel it. Hell the first thing they teach you in Wrestling School is How to fall... and what it feels like to do 200 Squats after a 5km Run.
The Training alone is ridiculous but once you've tuned you body to the point where you can safely kick your own ass in front of people. Then you move on to making a character for yourself. Make yourself stand out, you got to be able to put on a good match but you got to be charismatic. You need to connect to people, you need to play a character. A do gooder hero every-man, a joker, a hard nosed thug, or maybe you could be An Undead MMA Biker like the Undertaker...
A guy that has been buried alive 3 times now still wrestles on the odd occasion to this day. I am never going to forgot something like that entrance. HE LOOKED LIKE THE FUCKING DEVIL!
That is the Undertaker (Real Name: Mark Calloway), A truly talented Wrestler, adept with a great striking game (He's punches looked damn real most of the time) and a pretty exciting and agile move set for a big guy his size. 6'10 at around 300 pounds, dude was a supreme athlete. he still does daring crazy suicide dives to the outside of the ring and lifting guys upside and driving them head first into the ground. This man was a hero to so many growing up and the stuff of nightmares to those kids as well.
So back to the topic at hand, Once you've become a supreme human specimen capable of enduring ungodly amounts of pain and have sufficiently practised in the art of staged stunt fighting whilst also coming up with a way to exude a particular level of charisma to get people to care about you. Then and maybe then with hard enough work you'll make it into a Wrestling Promotion.
At the start all your doing to getting your ass kicked by the older more established wrestlers and you're helping put up then take down the ring at every event. As a Wrestler you won't be covered under any Health Insure. They just won't insure a Wrestler, they get injured... ALL THE TIME.
Not only do they not get medically insured but then there is constant travel schedule which would drive a normal person insane. Not only are they on planes, not sleeping well, working out and then kicking their own asses for work. Professional Wrestlers are away from their family for more than half the year. They're just never there. It's sad, if one of your parents worked in the WWE or TNA or even ROH you'd just never see them.
Why would anyone do this? Because they love the business. They love entertaining people. They love to put a smile on your face. Wrestlers are Heroes to many and to me they'll always have my respect.
Wrestlers give up so much of their time and lives for the audience. The least we could do is throw a little compassion and respect their way. If you're not doing anything for the next hour and a half, check out the Best Wrestling Documentary in the business.
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