You Know It’s Fake Right? Coming to Terms With A Childhood Fake Sport

        So I have a guilty pleasure; no, not that one.  This guilty pleasure is one that I won’t admit in public unlike my love of 80’s karaoke in the shower. This is something so dark, so heinous and embarrassing that I would never make a grand proclamation until till this very moment. I love old school pro wrestling. Yep, that’s right; the sport you watched as a child is this grown man child’s secret love. You remember pro wrestling right? Not the sweet science but two men grappling in the squared circle, each one having some kind of story or character gimmick and looking half naked the whole time. If none of this is making any kind of sense just think back to the days when Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior made children dress up in face paint and pajamas to jump onto the bed like the muscle bound heroes they saw on TV. I was one of those kids who dreamed of ascending the top rope to drop the elbow into all the bad guys chests. Then I found out it was fake.

            Anyone reading this has at least one guilty pleasure they call their own, something that brings a level of shame or embarrassment that prevents you from flying that flag 24 7. Comedian Doug Stanhope had a comedy bit in which he discussed his love of football as “My kind of stupid…” To paraphrase, some people dress up for medieval reenactments, others win look alike contests, and Doug watches grown men destroy themselves for his amusement. We all have our kind of stupid, and mind happens to be doing impressions of the larger than life cartoon characters of our past while watching the old memories of body slams, flying elbow drops and everything Hulk Hogan. Why do I enjoy a fake sport with cartoonish men, steroid juiced bodies and the stupidest storylines ever seen outside of the Sci-Fi channel? The same reason why my dad likes Pac Man and my mom enjoys Gunsmoke; we grew up with it. It’s part of us.

            No one can tell me anything I don’t already know; its dumb, silly, very sexually suggestive and did I mention fake? That doesn’t matter. Its not a real sport, its larger then life cartoons expressing the stories we relate to in our everyday life. Don’t believe me? In the fake sport of wrestling we see giants fall to the least likely of heroes, a rebel can rise past the hardships and conformity of his job to shine out on top, friends break up only to come back at the end of the story to a rousing crowd reaction. Wrestling appeals to the child in all of us who ever wanted to face life’s issues with chin down and hands up. Our heroes were without flaws and the bad guys were right out front and center. Yes its dumb, silly and stupid but its my kind of stupid. 
            So for Halloween I’ll be that guy dressed up as Rowdy Roddy Piper for nostalgia sake while enjoying a drink alongside a witch, Michael Jackson and lazy kid holding a fake knife alongside a box of cereal. So if you see me after reading this article, maybe you’ll have a drink with me and talk about Hulk Hogan slamming Andre.

Or maybe you’ll tell me its fake.