Beware: Some of the pics and video below are of a graphic nature. Do not let your kids read or watch this.
You have been warned.
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As a kid, I was very much into professional wrestling. I remember watching the WWF's very first pay-per-view, The Wrestling Classic, a 16-man tournament won by the Junkyard Dog in November 1985. Religiously, I watched WWF programming on Saturday and Sunday mornings from 1985 to maybe 1990. During this same time, I also watched the National Wrestling Alliance on TBS. As the years went by, WWF programming was aimed more and more at kids. They had a Saturday morning cartoon, were trying to sell ice cream bars, and introduced increasingly childish characters like Irwin R. Shyster (IRS, get it?) the evil accountant and Doink the Clown. I always preferred the NWA because their wrestlers were "real people" like Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes. I eventually stopped following wrestling altogether, but stayed aware of it as it was always on TV.
In college, in the mid to late 90's, I started to notice wrestling again creeping into mainstream pop culture. I would see guys at MSU wearing an Austin 3:16 or New World Order t-shirt.
It wasn't until I graduated in 1998 and started hanging out at The Stables Bar and Grill on Monday nights that I started paying attention to wrestling again as Stables had it on the big screen. Little did I know it, I had walked right into the middle of the Monday Night War.
Between 1995 and 2001, WWF (later WWE) was in a life or death fight against its rival company World Championship Wrestling (WCW - a revamped version of the old National Wrestling Alliance). They each put out their flagship television program on Monday nights, stole each others wrestlers, took potshots at each other, and ratcheted up the adult content, especially the language, sex, violence, and blood. I had originally walked away from wrestling because it had gotten too childish, but this new adult product rubbed me the right way.
Yes, I know it's "fake", but these guys really were beating the shit out of each other and it fascinated me.
Every week, I watched somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 hours of wrestling television. I spent hours every week reading the various online wrestling newsletters. Not propaganda put out by the companies, but actual online newspapers devoted to following the inside story of how wrestling worked. Actually, I wasn't interested in the on-camera storyline so much as I was fascinated by the business of professional wrestling, both the current product and the history of the industry. From the carnival, to the territories, to cable television, to pay-per-view, to the then-current state of the business, I immersed myself in it. Professional wrestling became a subject I knew better than pretty much anything else in my life (and writing that in 2014 elicits a twinge of embarrassment).
One guy in particular became a favorite of mine. Mick Foley.
If you do not know Mick, allow me to present you with a history lesson.
This young man grew up watching professional wrestling. While attending college, he enrolled in a wrestling training camp, learned the ropes, and embarked on a career around the world.
In 1994, he lost part of his ear during a match in Germany.
In 1995, he "won" the Japanese King of the Deathmatch tournament. This gruesome spectacle included barbed wire, small amounts of C4 explosive, thumbtacks, and other things you don't want your kids playing with.
His reward for taking this beating was a trophy and $300.
In 1998, while working for the WWF, he had his most famous match, a "Hell in a Cell" match with the Undertaker. The point of the match is to lock the participants inside the cage so that the two men can settle things once and for all without any outside interference. The cage itself can be used for a weapon. Foley, thinking outside the box, came up with this brutal stunt.
If that wasn't enough, later in the match, he went back up to the top of the cage, was slammed through the cage, fell to the mat, and was knocked unconscious. Pay attention to the folding chair that goes with him. It smashed his mouth, punching a hole in his lip and knocked one of his teeth into his nose.
That's not a booger. That's his tooth.
Always looking to top himself, 9 months later he took 10 unprotected chairshots to the head. The point of this "I Quit" match is that you do not pin your opponent. You have to break his spirit and force him to quit.
This match was included in the documentary "Beyond the Mat". What you don't see in this video is Mick's wife and two children sitting ringside and sobbing as he takes this beating.
At the time, I appreciated the suffering he incurred for my entertainment.
Believe it or not, this guy is actually not a monster. He has written several New York Times Best Sellers, including a few children's books. His writing is thoughtful, humorous, and shows a sensitive soul. Seriously:)
Just a shell of the performer he once was due to abuse he put himself through, he retired from active competition in 2000 at the ripe old age of 34. At the time, he already walked with a pronounced limp and was already showing the effects of dozens of concussions. In one of his books, he talks about not being able to remember how to get home from the airport, just driving aimlessly until he could figure it out.
At our wedding in 2003, the bridal party entered the reception to Mick's WWE entrance theme.
And now? He's telling jokes on a stage. http://www.realmickfoley.com/this-is-what-i-do/
I stopped actively following wrestling back in 2007 when one of my other favorites, Chris Benoit, murdered his wife and son before hanging himself. Kind of took the wind out of my sails.
Wrestlers do not have a very long life expectancy. At least half of the guys I watched growing up as a kid died a premature death from booze, pills, overdose, murder, suicide, or heart disease that may or may not have been brought on by massive steroid use. Check out http://www.deadwrestlers.net/. Look at the ages of these guys. Seriously, it is disgusting and sad.
Disagree if you like (you probably will), but I still think professional wrestling is an art form. I really do. When done right, it is a phenomenal combination of athletics and theater; however, it has a really seedy side and the more I have learned about it, the more I understand how deeply flawed and damaged most of the people are who make their living doing it.
For me, Benoit was the last straw. Too many guys I liked watching were dead. The business didn't kill them, but it created a toxic environment, a cycle of pain, followed by chemical agents to mask the pain. Wash, rinse, repeat. The wrestlers themselves are little more than cannon fodder. Did you know they do not even have health insurance?
I got to a point where I just couldn't find the enjoyment in seeing guys take needless risks like being thrown off of 16 foot cages through tables, taking chair shots to the head, or cutting their own foreheads with razors to "show a little color". Still, since Benoit, I have maintained an awareness of the industry, but have not actively followed it like I used to.
A few months ago, I started listening to different podcasts while driving. One of them was Mick Foley on Chris Hardwicke's Nerdist network. http://www.nerdist.com/podcast/nerdist/. It was about a year old and Foley was explaining how he tried, at first, to distance himself from wrestling entirely and be a legitimate stand-up comic, but it really didn't go too well. Someone who watched his act give him the good advice to stick to what he knows and just tell wrestling stories. He has a big enough built-in fan base to sell out comedy venues across north america. Those people want to hear him talk about wrestling. So, he wrote an act consisting of stories from his career and inserting some humor along the way.
For Christmas, TheWife gave me tickets to see Foley at Ridley's Comedy Castle in Royal Oak. I didn't want to seem ungrateful for the present, but I had my reservations about whether I would like the show. And I REALLY doubted that TheWife would enjoy it. Her exposure to wrestling was just from being around me for a few years while I still was neck-deep in that world. She didn't actively watch it, but she absorbed enough of a base just from being around me. Almost knowledge-by-osmosis.
Turns out, we had a great time. I knew 90% of his stories already, but Foley's act is very polished and entertaining. TheWife even really liked it. She knew just enough about wrestling to catch many of the references and know who the people were in the stories.
It wasn't until after the show and we drove home that I started to get a bit sad. Still short of being 50 years old, Foley has a difficult time moving. He was very sharp mentally during the show, but we know enough about concussions now to be able to predict how he will be effected over time. He made jokes about it, but he really did hobble himself by taking all of those insane bumps. The human body is not supposed to do this 250 times a year for 15 years.
In case you were wondering, that is a flat back bump on a concrete floor with no pads.
Quite a bit of the show was Foley talking about Hell in a Cell, his most famous match. Having never seen the match, and having been entertained by the story, TheWife asked if I owned it. Of course, I have several Mick Foley DVDs. I played it for her and she was appalled. The way he tells the story downplays the brutality he willingly subjected himself to. Really, he romanticises it more than anything. Seeing the video in its entirety shocks you back into reality.
He doesn't include the I Quit match or the King of the Death Match tournament in his show. There isn't much funny about having your skull bashed in while your children sob.
He also doesn't acknowledge that by escalating the danger inherent in his stunts - first a fall off the ring apron, then a fall off a cage - he kept raising the bar for the other wrestlers. How do you follow that? Foley is universally acknowledged as a pioneer of the hardcore style of wrestling and the inspiration for a generation of idiot kids and adults doing this crap in their backyards.
So, here I am, at 37 years old. Married with 2 kids. Apparently, I've grown up a bit. While I still love the history of professional wrestling and appreciate the artistry of two athletes telling a story in the ring, I am acutely aware of the toll wrestling has taken on the lives of its performers. For every great match, there is a corresponding corpse to go along with it.
To date, my kids have not seen wrestling, but eventually I know they will be exposed to it. I'm not concerned about TheGirl as I doubt she will be that interested in it, but TheBoy is a different story. My other childhood obsession that has followed me into adulthood, comic books and superheroes, has already taken root in the boy. He has been Spiderman and Captain America the past two Halloweens. He fancies himself to be a superhero. TheWife and I take turns telling him he doesn't have any superpowers and that it is all pretend. I can see him getting sucked into the world of suplexes and body slams. I can also see him diving off the couch onto TheGirl, just like I used to do with my brothers, because he already does it.
It's funny the way your perspective changes over time.
