Went to dinner last night with my wife at a nice place, and then stopped at another nice place for a nightcap, and on the TV over the bar there wasn't the usual golf or baseball or other summer pursuits. There was professional wrestling.
NBC was airing a primetime WWE show because it was some character named Goldberg's retirement bout, and all sorts of weirdness was commencing. While we were watching there was a bout between Randy Orton and some other guy, and Orton pinned him, and then one of the Paul brothers jumped in the ring and started raining blows on Orton's bald head, and then Jelly Roll -- say what? -- jumped in the ring and decked the Paul brother with one punch ...
Ah, hell. I couldn't keep up. All I know is, at some point Jelly Roll got knocked colder than a polar vortex, and a bunch of 'roided-up dudes started yelling and pointing fingers at a bunch of other 'roided-up dudes. And then two other 'roided-up dudes got in the ring and started jawing, and those two 'roided-up dudes wound up throwing each other out of the ring and onto the broadcast table.
It was about that time I turned to Julie and said, "Who watches this stuff?'
The answer, of course, is a lot of people watch this stuff, because if it's not exactly legit sport, it's a damned entertaining un-reality show. In fact I've always thought they should do an entire season of "Survivor" (another long-running phenomenon I don't get) where they strand a bunch of pro wrestlers on Tom Hanks's desert island. Last one to get eaten by the others wins.
Look. I'm not trying to disparage pro wrestling and its enthusiasts here. It has its place in the entertainment sphere, and it's made Vince McMahon and a bunch of other guys some serious jack. Vince's wife Linda is even our education czar now, though God knows why.
At any rate, it is what it is, pro wrestling. I guess I find it weird because at some point I outgrew it, and it's not the pro wrestling I used to watch back in the day anyway (the eternal rant of the elderly, natch). In my day, pro wrestling was Dick the Bruiser and Yukon Moose Cholak and Baron Von Ratschke. It was Sailor Art Thomas taking on Mitsu Arikawa in the prelim, or maybe Wilbur Snyder vs. Pepper Gomez.
These guys were not 'roided up, unless you count Budweiser. They looked like normal human beings. Some of them had the muscle tone of beanbag chairs.
I don't know if that made them more real to us, but it sure made pro wrestling more fun. Who could forget Bruiser's legendary powers of recuperation? He'd spend 20 minutes getting knocked around the ring by the Baron or Black Jack Lanza, and then he'd shake his head ... shake it again ... and JUST START WAILING on the Baron or Black Jack.
Awesome stuff. And it's not as if it distracted us from more bonafide athletic events, like roller derby.
Big Joanie Weston! Charlie O'Connell! The San Francisco Bay Area Bombers!
Now that was entertainment, ladies and gents.
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