10 Terrifying Wrestling Moments That Still Scare Adults
3. Magnum TA Almost Takes A Man's Eye
Sometimes the mutants have a point. In some ways, wrestling was better then than it is now.
A trade-off has happened, and it's not that pro wrestling, which has never looked real, looked any more real then. It felt realer then. Perhaps that's because we remember it through a childhood lens that will always inform how we receive it as adults. Perhaps it's because, and this isn't pissing and moaning about "psychology," there is so much more content in a modern wrestling match that it's difficult to engineer a tone of pure animosity. There's little scope for primal hatred - of the sort that makes a man do something simple and ugly because it's the most efficient way of f*cking somebody up - when crafting a long and complex match. This is what the audience wants now.
This is why pro wrestling has evolved as it has. A match like Magnum TA Vs. Tully Blanchard wouldn't get over because you can't sell the audience on that theme, much less realise it with such brutal economy.
But Christ, it's so great. It's so great, and it builds so well that one can actually believe Magnum has been driven to puncture Blanchard's eyeball. He quits before it can be done, but the horror lies in the conviction of the performance.
He was certain, or so it seemed, to do it.