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The Rock Rocks My World:
But there's more to wrestling than just drooling at The Rock...
It's Monday night and I turn on TSN, hoping to catch my favourite sports program. No, it's not any of the big four: basketball, football, hockey or baseball. It's Monday night, and WWF "Raw is War" is about to begin.
THE ROCK
The allure of wrestling is stereotyped to prepubescent boys, "young at heart" men, and people who don't take hygiene too seriously. But the reality is that wrestling, in the last couple of years, has caught on to many people from different walks of life, and yes, that includes women. Vince McMahon has built an empire any shrewd, respectable businessman would be proud of. That is, an empire built on the public's fascination of grown men and women pummelling each other for giant belts they can adorn around their waist or over their shoulder. Most recently, the WWF expansion has included playing large venues across the country several nights a week, the acquisition of their main competitor, WCW, and an MTV reality show called "Tough Enough." The company has also grown to be mainstream, with personalities such as Stone Cold and The Rock having their catch phrases repeatedly used in conversations without any explanation. Some of them have even imploded into movies, most notably ex-WCW star Bill Goldberg and The Rock's five-minute turn in The Return of the Mummy (but he did eat that scorpion convincingly, didn't he?)
For me, the fascination began when I was just a wee girl in the fifth grade. Back then, if I remember correctly, the show was only on once a week, played from a small, dimly lit arena that could barely hold enough equipment for the intricate light show some of these men required for their grand entrance into the ring. Every Saturday morning I'd wake up and half-heartedly watch my morning cartoons, waiting for noon to come so I could switch to WWF. Hulk Hogan, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, and The Ultimate Warrior were some of my faves. Although I already knew that all wrestling was faked, I think I secretly enjoyed all the non-real violence. To me, it was like watching a movie in weekly instalments.
Later, puberty hit and I was preoccupied with that. I stopped watching for years.
When I started dating my ex, I quickly found that he was a huge wrestling fan, and he can be accredited with pulling me back in. I watched with a new vigour, trying to reacquaint myself with new wrestlers, new alliances, and new wrestling moves. There is a huge difference with then and now: the shows are bigger, more elaborate, the fans have since grown in size, and the wrestlers have more machismo than ever before. Women also play a larger role in the grand scheme of things. While there have been women in the past, they were mostly "managers" or "girlfriends" of the wrestlers; now, they're out there, wrestling with the best of them, and a force to be reckoned with. Of course, you can still catch them on those soft-core porn videos as well.
I know a lot of people don't see the appeal of wrestling. Is it even a sport? some of you ask. Well, let's see. There's some skill to be had in order to wrestle, even if it is fake wrestling (then there's the skill of not actually hurting your opponent while making it look like you hurt him - and as rehearsed as it all may seem, there are still risks to be taken, as in the sudden loss of Owen Hart a couple of years ago). There's body on body contact, just like football without the ball. There's a referee, although most of them are hired not on their credentials but on their acting potential. There are titles to be won, although how much weight they carry in the real world is up for argument (the "Hardcore Champion"?) It's entertaining enough, and its fan base is probably greater than that of, say, curling or the skeleton.
Okay, so you may argue about men liking it because of high testosterone levels, the caveman effect, etc. What about women? Think of it like a soap opera (with really big men) that takes place in the course of one night in a crowded arena. There's the evil boss, the rivalries between athletes, the good and the bad, and sometimes even the odd love triangle. But instead of backstabbing, lots of scheming, and oddly placed soliloquies, there's backstabbing, lots of scheming, and a means of relieving tension by pummelling your arch nemesis in a title match. There's also the sense of solidarity among wrestling fans, a subculture of people who can talk endlessly about the NWO's return to the ring or Chris Jericho's sudden turn of sides. When you watch it, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll want to scream at all those baddies (I've been known to scream at my television during very heated matches).
Last month, "Wrestlemania X8" made its way to Toronto (I suspect 18 is not totally spelled out in Roman numerals because the WWF thinks we can't count that high). "Wrestlemania" is, as a close friend of mine and avid fan claims, "like the Oscars of Wrestling." In fact, it was such a big event that he shelled out $250.00 for his ticket, a small price to pay, he said, for level 100 seats and a chance to see the main event live. The main event pitted The Rock, a WWF favourite and who is, in my opinion, partly responsible for resurrecting the flailing franchise (not to mention a very fine specimen), against Hulk Hogan, yester-year's hero, who was partly responsible for bringing the WWF onto the map in the 1980s. If you ask me, Hulk Hogan is way over the hill. Shouldn't they have a retirement plan for these people?
So I asked my friend for the inside scoop, since I've never seen an event live and I always wondered if it was any different from what is broadcast - editing nowadays can make even "Big Brother" mildly interesting to watch. He called me Monday night, the day after "Wrestlemania," and the first thing he said was that they did not sing the national anthem. We both took offence at that. He further complained that the event did not have any celebrities as the others had (maybe the trek to Canada was too difficult). This event, though, apparently broke attendance records for the previous "Wrestlemanias," although he easily moved one row down because there were so many empty seats. Okay, onto the actual wrestling. He was careful to point out that there were no surprises, and nothing special really happened. The match between The Rock and Hulk Hogan was the highlight of the night for him. "An icon in wrestling," he said of Hogan. "It was just like watching old-school wrestling again." Of course, he cheered for him. "What about The Rock?" I whined. "Oh, people booed him," he replied. I felt hurt, and immediately wanted to run to The Rock and console him. "But he won the match," my friend reassured me. "And I'm sure they edited the booing out since Hulk Hogan is supposed to be the bad guy." Okay, crisis averted.
Overall? "It wasn't that great," he said. "They should have saved the Hogan and Rock match for last, instead of placing it right in the middle." Most fans left after the match, and if he hadn't paid $250.00 for the tickets, he would have too. "Everything afterwards paled in comparison." I asked him to rate the night on a scale of one to ten, and he confidently said it was"about a nine." I repeated my question, suggesting that he should take into account what he said about everything else. "Still a nine," he insisted. "Because of the Hogan match."
With fans like these, the WWF should be around for a long time. ¤ C.Ho.