It was my older brother who introduced me to WWE. I was ten and had to watch whatever he was watching, in the early 2000s this was either The Simpsons, Crystal Maze or WWE.
At first I didn’t see the appeal of two sweaty men in pants trying to hurt each other, but I soon realised that there were stories behind the matches, and before I knew it, I was shouting with all the air in my lungs when the goodie (or ‘the face’ in wrestling terms) won the pin.
Once you look past the exaggerated punches and the leather pants, what you’re left with are the elements of a good story; the David and Goliath victories, cheating, revenge, and redemption… then add in some flashing lights, rock music, and an arena full of shouting fans – you can’t help but to get passionate – and passionate I did.
There was no way around it, I was obsessed. I had posters of my favourite wrestlers on my walls, and an army of growling action figures lined up on my shelf. I wore fan t-shirts and played video games. Soon, all my friends from catholic school knew about the wrestlers of the WWE (whether they wanted to or not), particularly my favourite, Lita.
Lita was different from the other female wrestlers. She had long red hair and a giant three-eyed green gargoyle tattooed on her right arm. She would come to the ring to a theme song that screamed, “Go f*** your rules, man”, and wore baggy cargo trousers. She would do moves that the other women wouldn’t dare to, like backflip off the side of the ring (called a ‘Moonsault’). I read her biography (yes, wrestlers have biographies) and rewatched her matches on VHS again and again.
I dyed my hair red, wore cargo pants, and spent a summer flipping around on our trampoline. Then, one fine day, the WWE came to the UK, and my dad drove me and my brothers to Birmingham, where I finally saw Lita fight in real life. When her theme music started to blast out of the speakers in the NEC arena, I could have died with excitement.
At one point I seriously considered I was going to be a WWE wrestler, just like Lita. One day on the drive home from school, I let my Mum know my big dream.
“You can be whatever you want to be,” she replied, but I sensed by her tone that she didn’t mean it.
At the time I was angry that she didn’t believe in my career plan, but in hindsight, I wouldn’t have been a happy wrestler. For starters, I don’t like being hurt and I wouldn’t want to live in America.
The company is also vastly corrupt. There are countless drug abuse stories (one where a wrestler, Chris Benoit, killed his wife and child and then hung himself after years of steroid abuse). And the co-founder Vince McMahon, good mate to Donald Trump, has been accused multiple times of sexual misconduct. (According to Wikipedia, in 2022, McMahon had $19.6 million unrecorded payments made to settle sexual misconduct claims between 2006 and 2022….)
So probably best I didn’t go down that career path.
My wrestling obsession inevitably faded, and at times, I’m embarrassed about the phase; after all, wrestling is unsophisticated, crude and unethical. It would have been a lot easier if I had been fanatical about Harry Potter like the rest of my peers.
Still, as I watched some of my old clips of Lita Moonsaulting for this blog, I felt that excitement again…..For a moment, I stopped typing this blog, sat back in my chair and seriously considered, is it too late to become a wrestler?
THE QUACK 