Why I love professional wrestling

An explanation.

(My view for the AEW “Revolution” pay-per-view in San Francisco)

On my last night in San Francisco, I decided to go see pro wrestling.

This wasn’t as random as it might seem. I was on the trip with a friend. He knew I liked professional wrestling. And it just so happened that we were going to be in San Francisco on the same night that All Elite Wrestling’s “Revolution” pay-per-view event was happening.

It seemed like kismet. We had to go.

I hadn’t been to a live wrestling event since the 1980s in Connecticut. And so, I came to it with relatively fresh eyes.

A few things were immediately obvious:

1. It’s more obviously fake in person. We sat pretty close — the picture above is taken from our seats — and with that vantage point you can tell that not all the punches actually land. (The chest slaps are, however, frighteningly real. And loud.)

2. The fans know it’s fake. One of the biggest misnomers of wrestling fans — propagated by non-wrestling fans — is that they are rubes who think all of this stuff is real. Nothing could be further from the truth. The crowd at Chase Center on Sunday night was wholly in on the joke. They laughed when a wrestler missed a spot or slipped off a rope momentarily. They booed the bad guys. They cheered the good guys. It was like hanging out with a group of good friends; there were lots of inside jokes and the people there were in on every one of them.

3. It’s takes a tremendous amount of athleticism. You can’t do a backflip off the top rope into a guy 10 feet below you without being in pretty incredible shape. Or be power-slammed. Or pile-driven. Or one of 100 other things that happen in these matches that can last up to an hour!

4. It’s amazingly entertaining. For more than two hours, I was RAPT at the action in (and out of) the ring. I cheered. I booed. I yelled. And I didn’t think of much else other than what I was watching. (As someone who is always thinking about 5 things, this was a major rarity for me!)

It’s that last point that stuck with me long after I left the arena. I hadn’t been that distracted — in a good way! — in a LONG time.

And it reminded me of what has always led me back to wrestling — from my teen years until now: It’s my kind of soap opera.

The wrestlers are, by nature, larger than life. While back in the 80s not every one of them was as carved up as they are now, they were still massive people. Hulk Hogan. Andre the Giant. Big John Studd.

And the storylines are even bigger — often outlandish tales in which double-crossing is the norm and the your allies always wind up secretly being your enemies. It’s unpredictable in the most predictable way possible. I find that hugely appealing.

Wrestling’s success — in my mind — is that it’s always on the leading/bleeding edge of the culture. If it’s happening in the world — and people are talking about it — you can be sure it will show up in a wrestling story arc (and quickly).

This is not always a good thing. Back in the 80s, for example, wrestling played on fears created in the Cold War by promoting characters like “Russian” Nikolai Volkoff (he was actually Croatian-American) and the Iron Sheik, who actually was from Iran.

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a group called the UnAmericans were formed; one of their schticks was trying to burn the American flag live on air.

Like I said: It’s not all pretty.

But, it is compelling. It’s a mirror of our society — the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s all there in the squared circle.

I guess that’s why I am continually drawn back to pro wrestling — despite the fact that most people think an adult man watching it is a quintessential sign of loserdom.

I have walked away from it in the past — in my late teens because girls and sports took precedence, in my early 30s because little kids took precedence and in my early 40s because, well, I thought I needed to grow up.

But, being in the arena on Sunday night — with the crowd booing the heels, cheering the faces and chanting “This is awesome!” at particularly amazing moments — reminded me of everything I love about wrestling, and why I keep coming back.

It’s over-the-top. It’s wildly fake. It’s, at times, maudlin. And I can’t get enough of it.

(For more on my wrestling fandom, check out this podcast I did with the Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last.)