Are you a part of this new wrestling fad? Or were you watching it before it was "cool?" Do you still think wrestling is just one big joke? Have you ever been to a match? It's called a match, right? Event? I guess it doesn't matter.

How do you feel about professional wrestling? Would you like it more with a rock and roll band?

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

Answers

my governor was a professional wrestler. and everybody - yes, even the president of my college - refers to him as "the body" behind his back.

it's not the sort of thing you say to his face. he's big. and scary.

i find wrestling only amusing because it produced this crazy governor. other than that, it kind of bores me. but yes, i'd like it much much more with a rock and roll band.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

Funny that you should write about pro wrestling... my best friend just did a guest entry for me on.... pro wrestling! http://home.earthlink.net/~alianora/sept/2199.html. And while he's not an anthropology person, he is a doctoral student in culture criticism, with a special interest in pop culture. Now, lest you think that means my guest entry was dull and scholarly... let me also tell you he's a complete nut. ;)

Wrestling is a complete joke, but I confess, I've been sucked into watching it on TV before. Kinda like watching a train wreck. :)

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

one of the quirks i discovered about my boyfriend after moving in with him, was his love of the WWF. i teased him mercilessly for months, not knowing that i was slowly being converted. see, i had to actually WATCH the damn show if i was going to find things to tease him about.

now, three months later, i have favorites (the rock and mankind) that i *have* to watch and wrestlers that i love to boo (the undertaker, xpac). i'm even thinking about getting tickets to a taping of 'raw is war' when it's in town next month. =X

somebody help me.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

I like the WWF.... my kids watch it, allowing me to use the computer!

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

My brother and I use to watch back in the day when Hulk was huge and Macho Man had Elizabeth. I saw WWF live once with about 8 guys, I was the only girl. What can I say? I was a tomboy. Until a few months ago I hadn't watched a pro wrestling event in about 15 years.

Then I discovered THE ROCK. Now normally I don't like really beefy guys, most of them scare me. But I was channel surfing and I happened to end up on pro wrestling, and HELLO! Who was this huge, hot, italian looking mass of man? It was THE ROCK. I felt like a teenage boy watching Baywatch for the first time. I found myself with the incredible desire to swing from one of his biceps. hell I wanted to swing from both of his biceps. My little ROCKY.

So now I have to watch a little wrestling, if and only if to catch a few ROCK moments.

I think wrestling is very entertaining for a lot of people. They always have huge crowds. Why? It's entertaining. They totally play to the audience. Everyone gets involved. The whole audience yells out well known phrases with the stars. The audience knows whos coming out by the music they play. Everyone cheers and screams, boos and hisses. It's like the melodrama. It's not for everyone, granted, but given the opportunity I would go. And I would probably have fun. But I am easily amused.

I have even started to quote a little. I tell my husband if he doesn't pick his shoes up, I AM GOING TO TURN THEM SIDEWAYS AND STICK THEM UP HIS CANDY ASS.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

Yes, this is a shameless plug for my site in a way, but it fits your topic.

It also beats typing it all out again.

You can find it here.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

Ok, so once a week I volunteer at our campus escort service (it's a safety thing, not a big hair, bulging cleavage, and stilettos thing--sorry).

But anyway, the guy I work with forced me to watch WWF the other week and one of the wrestlers was named Ass Man. And he had his name all nicely printed on his butt... sorry, but it was just too silly for me.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

ok, i am a tomboy. guys love to hang out with me because i get just as into the hockey playoff season as they do, i insist on watching sportcenter and i ADORE action flicks ("bloodsport", anyone? "kickboxer", perhaps?). they think i'm cool. but, i must admit, i have never really been into the pro wrestling thing. my friend alex says that it's like soap operas for guys. hey, i guess my guys friends need SOMETHING to bond over when i'm not there. speaking of bond, isn't playing 007 on playstaton just about the most addictive freaking thing ever???

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

My friends and I used to love to watch pro wrestling on tv... I mean back in the fifties... it had the same basic plot elements as today -- good guys and bad guys... referees who failed to notice illegal choke holds... special secret moves and holds -- but it was not as slick and packaged as today. It used to play lots of small venues... I can remember as a young teen going to see live matches at the Municipal Auditorium in Kingston, NY (population about 30k, so we are not talking major arena here) where we would get to see some of the same stars we would see on our black and white television sets at home. I can remember the Graham Brothers, huge beefy bleachblonde musclemen ("bad guys"), impressive on tv, even more impressive when they are walking past just a few feet away.

Decades pass... and then I took my younger kids (now both in high school but they were probably ages 7 & 10 at the time) to see the WWF at the Broome County Arena in Binghamton NY (I think it was the WWF and not the other one, it was the one that has the Undertaker, etc.). I was amazed at how much glitz and glitter and strobe lights and theme music had been added. The first couple of matches were interesting but then the repetition of themes began to wear on me and I was bored with the ring action by the time the headliners wrestled after intermission... but I had a wonderful time watching my kids excitedly enjoying the show...

The scary thing was looking around the arena and realizing that you were surrounded by thousands of people, many of them who appeared to actually believe that this show was real (products of generations of inbreeding??) and that after the show these morons were going to be driving on the same roads as me....

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

*hides head in shame* i was a faithful watcher of the GLOW girls. I had a reason though, MT.Fiji lived on my block and we went to the same high school. Her real name is Emily and she is the nicest gal in the world... she can just throw a 130 lb gal across a wrestling ring is all... I must admit though, i liked it. The sketches were really funny. they really were. sabrina

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

I have to admit it...
"Hi. My name is Meghan, and I have a problem. I'm a closet WWF freak."

Yeah.

This is one of those things...I also love football and hocky when no one's watching me. (Hell, I may not know much about football, but I sure as hell know a tight end when I see one!)

In much the same vein, I LOVE The Rock. I'm just all about him. And when he's not on, I just love to yell at everyone else. Booing Undertakes, laughing at Ass Man...Maybe it's just me.

As a postscript...Since I moved into my dorm, I've noticed that wrestling is the real social event around here. We fit over fourty people into our teeny tiny living room every Monday to watch RAW.

Go fig.

-Meghan of http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/confused

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

I agree with Jim; what scares me isn't that wrestling is making a major comeback (I'm sure there's going to be another Saturday Morning "Rock and Wrestling" cartoon), but that there are people who get so into it. I had a friend in college who got paid to go to matches and act really excited (what an acting gig), and she had horror stories of people accosting her for rooting for one wrestler over another.

Now, I've never gotten excited over any sport, but I can at least understand team loyalty and the tradition that comes with football, baseball, basketball and hockey. But THEY'RE REAL! Although I won't be trying to change anyone's mind on that, because if there's one thing I've learned from living in the south it's that when someone is convinced that wrestling is real, they are probably more than happy to demonstrate Jake the Snake's DDT on you.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 1999

I like wrestling.

I actually think there's a deep-rooted white trash part of me that likes bad TV movies starring Tori Spelling, beauty contests, cheerleaders, boybands and wrestling.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 1999

Andy, when you say "Jake the Snake", I think of NFL's Jake Plummer from the Arizona Cardinals.

A friend of mine used to watch the WCW version regularly and tried to get me to watch as well. "Hell no!" was always my answer. I used to sit with friends on a Saturday night and before we'd watch a movie, they'd switch on WWF. Yawn. "Where's the video games at?" would be my next question.

I think it's one big joke. Big sweaty guys in ludicrous costumes with distasteful colors slamming into each other in obvious choreography just makes me wonder what this world is coming to. If it was "real", where's all the blood, the broken bones? Forget the rock n' roll band, Pamie, cuz that'd just make it even more cheesy.

I wrestled in school. This WWF/WCW stuff? Ha! Go read a book.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 1999

I thought professional wrestling was for people who didn't understand monster truck competitions.

Or is that the other way around?

-- Anonymous, October 01, 1999

I discovered my fiance's love of pro wrestling after we moved in together, too. He doesn't go to the live shows, he doesn't wear the t-shirts, and he is fully aware that it's all faked -- his explanation is, "It's a soap opera for guys." I do get pulled into the story lines sometimes -- wrestlers betting their wives on the outcome of a match?? The loser gets buried alive in a grave?? Or set on fire??? It's so ridiculous that it's entertaining. The scary thing is, in my town there's a little sports memorabilia shop that hosts appearances by sports figures...and lately it's been one wrestler after another. The Undertaker was there last year, the line was truly scary.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 1999

okay, so i wasnt going to answer this thread, but when all you other ladies started talkin about the rock, i must say, my heart did a little pitterpat. ahh... the rock, so sexy, those little "shorts" oh baby, i can smell what the rock is cookin, and it better be breakfast for me! hell yeah! also, why didnt anyone talk about chyna, i mean, damn, she's a big woman, she could kick all our asses, come on, admit it, no one's really into their tae bo anymore, but i think chyna rocks, i watched this thing on mtv about her and um.. triple h, i think and they're soo cute together, although i think they should have babies, but i think everyone should have babies, ahh.. i digress, anyway, i like wwf, not wcw. wcw is a little cruddy, but wwf.. man, not at all, i think i talked enough

-- Anonymous, October 01, 1999

I, too, was a wrestling convert. It all began about 4 years ago, when I was a freshman at college. The guy who lived next door to me (thanks Dave!) watched wrestling whenever he could. I think he even set his alarm to watch the recap on Saturday morning. So, we teased him constantly about it. Then, little by little, I realized that even though its completely choreographed and scripted, these guys were pretty darn good. Both as actors and as athletes. They may not be as athletic as basketball players, but it does take a hell of a lot of endurance and strength to do the stuff they do. It got to be that when we lived together, I would take time out on Monday nights to watch Raw and even watched a PPV event. Only once, though, I swear. Now that me and Dave aren't roommates any more, I don't watch it so much. But sometimes, I just need to find out what "the bottom line" is, and what Stone Cold is saying.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 1999

I went to see Blue High Machine last night, and I have to say it was a blast. At first we just had a little group of friends there to support our friend Mikey, but then we started cheering for all of the bad guys. We even invented specialized cheers for each character. There was also much trash talking, specifically towards the buff guys that Chuy, Matt, and I were sick of hearing about. I still think the Lone Star Connection hates us.

-- Anonymous, October 05, 1999