Pro Wrestling vs. "Real" Sports

Recently, I was by my parents’ house to visit and the subject of wrestling came up. My mom asked me if I had watched Smackdown the night before, to which I quickly replied “No.”

“Did you just not watch it last night, or what?”

“No, I don’t watch wrestling much anymore,” I said.

“Why is that? I thought you liked wrestling,” my mom persisted.

“Uh, I just don’t. I don’t really know.”

I supposed that exchange shouldn’t really surprise me; I made it a point over the last three years or so to watch both RAW and Smackdown every week, I’ve ordered myriad pay-per-views, I own no less than five wrestling-themed t-shirts, and I’ve been to more than a few live wrestling shows. To say that I wasn’t a wrestling fan at one time would be a lie.

So, why am I not a wrestling fan anymore?

Back in June 2007, wrestler Chris Benoit was found dead in his home along with his wife and son. At first it was thought to be a straight-up triple murder; WWE consequently canceled that Monday night show to show a tribute to one of their most-respected stars. Thanks to the power of the Internet, reports were updated as the show was airing. Those reports said that the police no longer thought it was a triple murder; it was now being investigated as a murder-suicide. The lead suspect? Chris Benoit.

This is not why I stopped being a fan. The Benoit murder-suicide thing is why I took a self-imposed break from watching wrestling. Obviously, the show must go on, so WWE taking a break was out of the question. Personally I thought that it would have been a classy move out of respect to the family of Nancy Benoit, but classy and Vince McMahon don’t go together.

Yes, I realize that for some of the wrestlers the only way for them to grieve would be to keep wrestling. Perhaps some of the fans saw it that way as well. I don’t want to go all Dr. Phil here, but a week off might have been a good time for some self-examination. What made this tragedy happen? Are there any wrestlers that are going through something similar? How can we stop this from happening? Can we stop this from happening?

Alas, it was not to be.

Instead, life went on as usual and Chris Benoit was scarcely mentioned on television. It’s fine, really, because I don’t believe his problem was as widespread as the media made it out to be.
But yeah, I took a break. The line between what was reality and what was fiction became blurrier than normal for a wrestling fan, and I decided the only way to clear things up (and to come to terms with the fact that a widely-respected superstar was also a cold-blooded murderer) was just to take a step back for awhile. After a couple of weeks I found that I didn’t miss wrestling all that much. I kept up with wrestling news for a while after that, but determined that it simply wasn’t worth it. My interest in pro wrestling had been waning for at least a year before then, and now my hiatus from watching it on a weekly basis was the final nail in the coffin.

I should note that I didn’t stop watching because I thought WWE produced an inferior product. I am not a smark. I stopped because I was burned out and bored with watching what is essentially the same thing every week: good guy versus bad guy, hot girls with breast implants, so on and so forth. Not only that, but wrestling is fairly predictable. This is not a bad thing – I think predictability is part of its charm – because the “sameness” that bored me is exactly what keeps wrestling fans coming back in droves.

The stoppage of my watching of wrestling is not an anomaly by any means. Throughout my life, I’ve grown bored or sick of many things. Television shows, music, video games, people (!)… it doesn’t really matter. Things that I take an interest in have a short shelf life with me and they probably always will.

This got me to thinking: Is there anything else that I’ve liked for a long period of time besides oral sex and beer? The only thing I could come up with is professional sports.

Now it should be said that at its very base, football and baseball (my two favorite sports, easily) suffer from the very “sameness” week in and week out that wrestling does. A football game is always going to look like a football game that I’ve seen one hundred times before: there will be passes, running plays, big hits, and at least once per game Brett Favre will do something completely ridiculous.

Where “real” sports win out is with unpredictability. How many of you thought the Giants were going to win the Super Bowl? How many thought the Giants would be easy pickings in the NFC championship game? See what I mean?

This is not to say that you always know what’s going to happen on any given wrestling show, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to handicap a football game than a wrestling match.

The other reason I think sports have held my interest for so long is that there’s an offseason. For some, that just may be more time to dwell on a certain loss or obsess over the draft or free agency. For me, it gives me time to do other activities.

But perhaps the most important side effect of the offseason is that it creates anticipation. In football, you only get 16 weeks of meaningful games, 20 if the team goes to the Super Bowl. By the time August rolls around, I’m jonesing for some football.

The baseball season does indeed slog on and on for six months, but I’m a damned liar if I say that I’m not excited about the upcoming season. Finally, the Brewers might make the playoffs!

Wrestling simply doesn’t offer that kind of anticipation. Yeah, the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania are big events, but aside from that it’s hard to get worked up for a show that airs every four days or so on basic cable.

I think the final reason I’ve lost interest in wrestling – and this might be considered a personality flaw by some – is that to truly enjoy it you have to immerse yourself in it. You have to watch every week or you’re out of the loop. You have to discuss it with others – whether in person or on the Internet – because otherwise it will occur to you at some point that all you’re watching is two sweaty, over-grown men rolling around on a mat pretending to punch one another. (Trust me, the distraction was necessary for me because trying to come to terms with something so ridiculous, is, well, trying.)

With sports, you don’t need to watch every game to follow the team. Sure, you might miss out on certain things – “Holy shit! Did you see that catch last night?” – but ultimately the experience isn’t completely ruined by missing a game or two.

I don’t know what any of this means, so I’ll just stop now before I ramble on for another 1000 words.