10 Problems Only WWE Fans Will Understand

Here’s your scheduled cornball alert. That muppet who shouts FAKE FAKE FAKE all over your picture of you meeting Lance Storm in an airport in 2003? He’s the tip of a cheerfully oblivious iceberg of people desperate to inform you that, like, they’re not really fighting, maaan.

You can try and explain the glorious, fascinating history of pro wrestling, taking in the art of kayfabe and the modern day suspension of disbelief required to go all in on a giant undead wizard staging a mock-scrap for bragging rights against a middle-aged man in chaps who refers to himself as a ‘kid’ and boasts of being a ‘boy toy’…

You can try. You can try and ask them to list the favourite TV shows and movies of theirs that feature genuine fighting competition… but really, who has the patience? So you’ve perfected the glassy, dismissive smile in public, and the sarcastic pantomime online. They’ll never understand... and neither will any of the New Japan obsessives or the indie fanatics.

This is WWE. This is the biggest wrestling promotion on earth, with a reach and a production that dwarfs the competition. There isn’t any competition, in fact, not for nearly twenty years. How can we suspend disbelief in the face of duff matches, falling ratings, bad booking and worse politics?

Because we’re WWE fans. Mark or smark, young or old, insider or casual: believing is what we do. Then, now… forever.

I told you there would be corn.