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Why Do I Watch?
by Captain Awesome

Why do I watch?

It’s a question I’ve been asked a thousand times whenever someone finds out I watch wrestling. My revelation is something that just simply blows their mind. Aren’t you an educated person, they will ask. Don’t you know it’s fake, is another fun inquiry. The fact is I know it’s fake. I’ve known it’s fake since, pretty much, the beginning. I watch wrestling when it’s not cool – like right now – and I watch it when every one and their brother are watching. I just like it. But watching pro wrestling has a nasty stigma to it.

If you know someone who’s a Star Wars or Star Trek or, heck, even a Harry Potter fanatic, it’s okay. You don’t harass them for why they like. Sure, you might crack a joke or two but it doesn’t render them any less intellectual or important that they are obsessed with something. Yet, tell someone you love pro wrestling and you might as well them you like to go out dress like a woman for fun on Friday nights. It’s just not acceptable.

Being a pro wrestling fan is not easy, especially now that Vince McMahon and the WWE, in all their infinite wisdom, have decided that the only way to draw fans back are with more “outrageous” and “risqué” angles during their shows. Just a few weeks ago, they promised the new WWE champion Edge celebrating in the ring with his on-screen (and off-screen) girlfriend Lita in a “live sex celebration”. Yes, the WWE was actively promoting that they would have two people “do it” in the middle of the ring. It was childish, to say the least, yet at the some time painful. The two wrestlers got into the ring, cheesy porn music played and the announcers gave a play-by-play as the two undressed. It was sick. Worst of all, it was boring.

That, if you could not guess by now, is not why I watch.

I don’t watch Raw or SmackDown! as religiously as I once did and, unfortunately, it is the memories of those times that keep me coming back. I remember watching the WWE in late 1997 when just about nobody else was when a young wrestler named Rocky Maivia turned heel, called himself the Rock and started acting like a dick. I loved it. He was, by far, the funniest wrestler I had ever seen and I kept coming back for more. By the end of the next year, the Rock was well on his way to being, arguably, the biggest pro wrestling star ever and, for me, it was like watching a kid of mine grow up. I was there when Rocky’s hair looked like a pineapple and no one gave two poops what he did in the ring. So when I was in the stands in April 2000 when he won the WWF title – and the 20,000 in attendance made a roar like few I’d heard before – the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

That’s why I keep watching.

I watched WrestleMania XX with great anticipation because one of my favorites – Chris Benoit – was wrestling in the main event. Chris Benoit is what wrestlers like to term “old-school” – he’s not flashy, he doesn’t look great, he’s not that funny on the microphone but man can he wrestle. To me, all a wrestler has to do to be great is to get me, in the course of a match, to forget what I’m watching is “fake”. Suspend my belief into thinking it is real – just as if a great actor like DeNiro makes you believe he’s Vito Corleone – and I’m happy.

I desperately wanted Benoit to win that match and halfway through, something odd happened – I started rooting out loud. It was like I was watching my favorite team play – I was cheering and booing every move. At one point, when it looked like Benoit had lost, I was dejected to the point I just wanted to go to bed. And when he actually did win? I stood up and damn near cheered. What had happened to me? I had gone from a reasonable 20-something, to a 12-year old kid who didn’t know it was scripted that way. Even better, Benoit broke down in tears in the ring and celebrated with his best friend, the now-deceased Eddie Guerrero, as he cried too. It was moved. There I said it – I was moved by pro wrestling.

That’s why I can’t stop watching.

Pro wrestling isn’t particularly good anymore. I began watching because guys like Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels would put on 20+ minute wrestling clinics that had more twists and turns than a Tarantino flick. They sucked you in, threw you about and then spit you out – and all I could ask for was more.

Now, wrestling has changed. I don’t want to sound like an old fart since I’m not yet 24 but the entire direction of pro wrestling has gone away from its essence and why millions of people my age were little Hulkamaniacs when were young and why we couldn’t get enough of Stone Cold Steve Austin.

It’s not about how many breasts you can fit on my television screen at one time. It’s not how many times you can say “bitch”. It’s not even about the blood or the gore. It’s about the wrestler. It’s about getting me to care about a wrestler so that when Raw comes on Monday night, I will watch for two hours to see what happens to my favorite wrestler.

That doesn’t happen anymore, but the thought of it happening again keeps me watching.

I guess, in the end, it’s pretty much impossible to explain why I like pro wrestling because, sometimes, I can’t even explain it to myself. There are times where, sadly, it’s just embarrassing to like pro wrestling. Like when “live sex” is promised and, against all your better judgment, you flip the channel to watch it. Yes, I am an idiot.

But I will keep watching because it’s been too good to me in the past. Hulk Hogan was a God-like figure when I was 10. Bret Hart entertained me for years. The Rock has provided me with lines I still use today – I will call someone a jabroni if he or she deserves it. So while pro wrestling isn’t for everybody, it is for me. So I’ll be writing the Goodness on a weekly basis for those fellow losers who can’t get enough of the squared circle. And for the rest of you...if you never come back, that’s okay...you wouldn’t understand. I don’t understand myself but I watch.