Professional wrestling is a niche like no other.
There’s no other form of entertainment that can take you on the psychological ride like wrestling does. Yes, you must suspend your disbelief for a couple of hours, but that’s the same with movies and no one complains about that.
However, it’s still different with wrestling. The sports entertainers, like WWE Chairman Vince McMahon likes to say, are taking all the bumps and acting in front of a live audience all the time. Let’s just say there’s little room for error.
Maybe it’s the combination of the athletic side and the acting side that makes me love professional wrestling. Or maybe it’s the fact that I wish I could captivate an audience and have them listen to or watch everything I do with their full attention.
Regardless, I’ve always had a passion for wrestling. I started to watch during the Ruthless Aggression Era, which was around 2003. One of the headliners at the time was a bald, buff guy named Bill Goldberg, a former World Championship Wrestling superstar.
No, I was not infatuated with the former Atlanta Falcon. But I was a fan of the other bald guy who drank beer and whooped ass every Monday night on Raw. He went by the name of Stone Cold Steve Austin and my eyes never left the TV screen when he came on. Unfortunately, by the time I started watching World Wrestling Entertainment, Austin’s in-ring career had ended and he just went to the ring to hand out Stone Cold Stunners to anyone who happened to piss him off. I thought it was entertaining as hell.
The one wrestler who captivated me and turned me into an avid fan was Shawn Michaels. “The Heartbreak Kid” always gave performances that just blew my mind away. He was good on the microphone, but what really got me was how he wrestled. It seemed like he never had a bad match.
Of course, it helped that he was a good sympathetic babyface — or “good guy” in WWE lingo — and it also worked that he was battling the heel Triple H. In 2003, Triple H started a faction called Evolution that included the 16-time World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair, “The Animal” Batista and a third-generation kid named Randy Orton.
Fast forward a few months and Triple H and Michaels were battling it out for the World Heavyweight Championship. I think that feud might be my favorite in wrestling history. Those two just had a chemistry and knew what the other wanted to do.
The match that solidified my fandom was the last-man-standing match between Michaels and Triple H at the 2004 Royal Rumble, an annual wrestling pay-per-view. Granted, I was only 10 years old at the time, but the match caught my attention like no other. It was the type of match where they just beat the crap out of each other. I had seen some beatings but nothing like that.
Both men were battered and bloody at the end of the match. Michaels had an opportunity to win it by standing up before the count of 10, while Triple H was laid out motionless on the mat. Michaels grabbed the ropes and almost came up to his feet when the ref counted to 10. It was ruled a draw.
I was devastated. Michaels had gone through hell and had nothing to show for it. Well, at least that’s what I had thought at the time.
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Michaels had more than enough to show for it. He had my full attention and everyone else’s in the arena. That’s what he wanted as a performer. He wanted to captivate me as a fan and that’s what he did.
Now those moments of disbelief are few and far between, but that’s what keeps me watching. I yearn for those moments where the matches seem real and I can’t take my eyes off the TV screen. That’s what makes professional wrestling to me. It’s not the championships. It’s not the entrances. It’s not the sport.
It’s those moments where you forget what’s real and just soak it all in. That’s wrestling.
Thomas Romero-Salas is the sports editor for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @ThomasRomeroS.
