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This is not a rant against people who just don't like wrestling, who've given it a fair shake and don't enjoy it or who find the prospect offensive for some reason. That's cool, all things for all people. It's so totally not for everyone.
What I am so freaking sick of dealing with are the HARUMPH HARUMPH people who seem to be conditioned to blurt "You know it's FAAAAAKE" within a nanosecond of finding out that you're a wrestling fan. Or God help you if you're actually a WRESTLER and they find out because then you're going to get laughed at and made fun of for being a "fake puncher who rolls around with sweaty naked people" until you either be the bigger person and walk away or pummel the other person into silence (I've only done the latter one time, and that person had a beating coming well before they pulled that stunt).
First of all, that's a fallacy of statement anyway. Wrestling is not "fake." "Fake" implies that nothing you see is real, that the bumps and bruises and impact isn't happening, that when a person falls backwards off a five-foot tall post and hits the ground, that they're landing on an air mattress and it doesn't hurt. As Matt Hyson says, "You can't fake gravity."
Wrestling is "scripted." The two people in the ring aren't actually trying to hurt each other, the storylines are written up ahead of time, and generally speaking, the match is planned out or being called as they go. Scripting. Fake is not the right word. Wrestling HURTS. You get calloused to it, eventually you stop noticing it so much and can take a bunch of whacks in the back without yelping, but it never STOPS hurting. There wouldn't be so many wrestlers addicted to pain medicine and pot if it were fake.
Second, so what? Of course it's not real. It's a TV SHOW. If you want to put it like this, it's THEATRE. The ring is the stage, the motions are a dance, and the characters are all in their costumes. No one save 5-year-olds and a few mentally disabled fans have thought it was real since the late 80's. It's been at least 20 years since the reveal. Get over it!
I mean, obviously it's not a "sport" so to speak. I, having done both, say wrestling is comparable to cheerleading...a group of people, wearing fancy costumes, performing a choreographed series of movements, a sort of dance, to entertain a crowd of people. It is a highly athletic thing, not a sport. We all know this. We acknowledge it very openly. Hell, even Lance Storm has compared wrestling to figure skating (two people in costumes performing) and theorized that if figure skating could be an Olympic event, so could wrestling.
I mean, if absolutely nothing else, we want to compare fakeness, compare a typical wrestling storyline to a soap opera...
Wrestling: On RAW, Lita revealed that she was pregnant. One week later, it appeared that Hardy was going to propose to Lita, but he was interrupted by Kane, who claimed to be the father of Lita's child, as Lita had slept with Kane to persuade him to stop attacking Hardy. Two months later, it was revealed that Kane was, in fact, the father. Hardy and Kane feuded for several months, culminating in a "Till Death Do Us Part" match at SummerSlam, with the stipulation that Lita would be obliged to marry Kane should Hardy lose. Kane won the match, leading to he and a reluctant Lita marrying one another.
Days Of Our Lives: Isabella and "Roman" (John) grew closer and Isabella became pregnant just as "Roman's" wife, Marlena Evans returned from the grave. Marlena's death had been faked, and she had been the prisoner of Stefano DiMera. If that twist wasn't enough it was then revealed that Roman Brady (Wayne Northrop) was still alive meaning that the Drake Hogestyn Roman who had been in Salem for the last half of the 1980s wasn't Roman Brady after all.
You tell me the difference, aside from the fact that the wrestling storyline was told in a ring instead of on a set?
Finally, when people sneer their "You know it's FAKE" bit at me, why do they think they're allowed to get pissed off when I turn it right back on them and say "Yeah, and so is Star Wars/CSI/whatever fiction-based TV show" ?
I realize I'm probably the only person on here who would get this worked up over this subject, but it just drives me nuts that people think that just because they don't "get" what is essentially my livelihood, that they think it's okay to be condescending and stupid to my face about it. It's one thing to say "I don't care for it," or to say you don't approve of it because of the violence or the stories or whatever, that's totally cool. You don't have to show such sneering contempt over it just because you can't grasp that there's essentially no difference between it and an episode of Scrubs aside from the setting and the clothes the characters wear.
Sorry about the ranting, it just takes me right up the wall that people can be so immature about something that, in the grand scheme of things, JUST DOESN'T MATTER THAT MUCH. I love wrestling, it's about the biggest thing in my life...but I know that to your everyday person walking around, it's nothing but a passing distraction if even that. What's with the hate, Sour Kangaroo?
What I am so freaking sick of dealing with are the HARUMPH HARUMPH people who seem to be conditioned to blurt "You know it's FAAAAAKE" within a nanosecond of finding out that you're a wrestling fan. Or God help you if you're actually a WRESTLER and they find out because then you're going to get laughed at and made fun of for being a "fake puncher who rolls around with sweaty naked people" until you either be the bigger person and walk away or pummel the other person into silence (I've only done the latter one time, and that person had a beating coming well before they pulled that stunt).
First of all, that's a fallacy of statement anyway. Wrestling is not "fake." "Fake" implies that nothing you see is real, that the bumps and bruises and impact isn't happening, that when a person falls backwards off a five-foot tall post and hits the ground, that they're landing on an air mattress and it doesn't hurt. As Matt Hyson says, "You can't fake gravity."
Wrestling is "scripted." The two people in the ring aren't actually trying to hurt each other, the storylines are written up ahead of time, and generally speaking, the match is planned out or being called as they go. Scripting. Fake is not the right word. Wrestling HURTS. You get calloused to it, eventually you stop noticing it so much and can take a bunch of whacks in the back without yelping, but it never STOPS hurting. There wouldn't be so many wrestlers addicted to pain medicine and pot if it were fake.
Second, so what? Of course it's not real. It's a TV SHOW. If you want to put it like this, it's THEATRE. The ring is the stage, the motions are a dance, and the characters are all in their costumes. No one save 5-year-olds and a few mentally disabled fans have thought it was real since the late 80's. It's been at least 20 years since the reveal. Get over it!
I mean, obviously it's not a "sport" so to speak. I, having done both, say wrestling is comparable to cheerleading...a group of people, wearing fancy costumes, performing a choreographed series of movements, a sort of dance, to entertain a crowd of people. It is a highly athletic thing, not a sport. We all know this. We acknowledge it very openly. Hell, even Lance Storm has compared wrestling to figure skating (two people in costumes performing) and theorized that if figure skating could be an Olympic event, so could wrestling.
I mean, if absolutely nothing else, we want to compare fakeness, compare a typical wrestling storyline to a soap opera...
Wrestling: On RAW, Lita revealed that she was pregnant. One week later, it appeared that Hardy was going to propose to Lita, but he was interrupted by Kane, who claimed to be the father of Lita's child, as Lita had slept with Kane to persuade him to stop attacking Hardy. Two months later, it was revealed that Kane was, in fact, the father. Hardy and Kane feuded for several months, culminating in a "Till Death Do Us Part" match at SummerSlam, with the stipulation that Lita would be obliged to marry Kane should Hardy lose. Kane won the match, leading to he and a reluctant Lita marrying one another.
Days Of Our Lives: Isabella and "Roman" (John) grew closer and Isabella became pregnant just as "Roman's" wife, Marlena Evans returned from the grave. Marlena's death had been faked, and she had been the prisoner of Stefano DiMera. If that twist wasn't enough it was then revealed that Roman Brady (Wayne Northrop) was still alive meaning that the Drake Hogestyn Roman who had been in Salem for the last half of the 1980s wasn't Roman Brady after all.
You tell me the difference, aside from the fact that the wrestling storyline was told in a ring instead of on a set?
Finally, when people sneer their "You know it's FAKE" bit at me, why do they think they're allowed to get pissed off when I turn it right back on them and say "Yeah, and so is Star Wars/CSI/whatever fiction-based TV show" ?
I realize I'm probably the only person on here who would get this worked up over this subject, but it just drives me nuts that people think that just because they don't "get" what is essentially my livelihood, that they think it's okay to be condescending and stupid to my face about it. It's one thing to say "I don't care for it," or to say you don't approve of it because of the violence or the stories or whatever, that's totally cool. You don't have to show such sneering contempt over it just because you can't grasp that there's essentially no difference between it and an episode of Scrubs aside from the setting and the clothes the characters wear.
Sorry about the ranting, it just takes me right up the wall that people can be so immature about something that, in the grand scheme of things, JUST DOESN'T MATTER THAT MUCH. I love wrestling, it's about the biggest thing in my life...but I know that to your everyday person walking around, it's nothing but a passing distraction if even that. What's with the hate, Sour Kangaroo?
I mean, I don't care for rodeo. Around these parts (rural Arkansas/Texas) that makes me a total freak. But I don't insult the people who do like the rodeo and I certainly don't belittle the people who compete in it. (I could do a whole 'nother rant on how people talk about wrestlers themselves, but the anger is gone and I don't feel up to it just yet, heh.) I just don't go to it or pay it any mind, and if someone wants to talk to me about it, I just smile politely and nod and leave it at that.
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