SmackDown LowDown

Professional wrestling is a source of constant amazement to me. I just don’t get it. Anyone can see it’s just a show but the fans are fanatics and will whip you ass if you try to point that out to them. (BTW, if you haven’t seen the film The Wrestler, with Mickey Rourke, check it out. It’s great.)

The one man whom I respect and love as much as anyone in my life is my maternal grandfather. An graduate engineer of Texas A&M University when a college degree really meant something. A senior engineer on the Panama Canal. The man who introduced me to Theosophy. Granddad was a proper gentleman. Always dressed for dinner. Was honest to a fault. He would drive to the store to give back the nickel extra the clerk had mistakenly given him in change.

To my eternal consternation, granddad was a wrestling fan. And so was my maternal grandmother, Nanny. There could not be two people more different than those two. But the two of them would get together and watch wrestling, glued to the tiny 13” black and white TV, and hoot and holler like a couple of kids. You ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen a pair of 90-year-old wrestling fans.

My dad once tried to point out to them that it was fake and nearly got his head bitten off. From that point forward, we just enjoyed the old folks enjoying themselves.

Now I know the skinny on professional wrestling. In a previous post, I mentioned that I was once the director of a large agricultural festival. As director, I was in charge of booking the entertainment. Throughout the year I would get phone calls from wrestling promoters wanting me to stage a wrestling match. I wanted to do it but the board of directors strictly prohibited it. They had tried it in the past and the result was the wrestling fans spilling out of the arena, into the carnival midway, and starting fights with every carney they could find. The last straw was when they had to call in the state highway patrol to help bring it under control.

But in my conversations with the promoters, I would ask some pointed questions, like, Q: How long does a match last? A: As long as you want. Q: How many matches are there? A: As many as you want. Q: Can I decide who wins? A: Sure, just let me know ahead of time.

When I was working for public television, we produced a nightly news and entertainment show hosted by Monroe (pronounced, Mon-row). Monroe had recently been to a wrestling match and proclaimed, on air, the whole thing a disgusting sham. Just so happened a local wrestler, Dusty Rhodes, heard the broadcast and took great exception to that assessment. Within minutes, Dusty had barged his way into the station and onto the set of a live television broadcast with the proclaimed intent of separating Monroe’s head from the rest of his body.

Dusty charged after Monroe who, naturally, fled his chair and started running around the anchor’s desk with Dusty, screaming at the top of his lungs, in hot pursuit. Someone called the cops and they got there in the nick of time as Monroe was quickly running out of steam. That show got the highest ratings of any other show we ever did.

I don’t know if the whole thing was staged or not. You couldn’t tell from the look on Monroe’s face. If he was faking it, he deserved an Academy Award.

Whatever else it is, pro wrestling is big business. The stars make some serious money. You don’t have to look far online to find tons of action figures and wrestling paraphernalia, including masks and full uniforms of your favorite troglodyte.

People are crazy about it, no doubt. But I still don’t get it.