Like any industry, professional wrestling has, and always has had, a glass ceiling. The sad, barebones truth of pro wrestling is that not everybody can be a World Champion. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. Not everybody is born with The Rocks good looks and natural athleticism, fewer still are born with Hulk Hogans innate charisma and almost nobody can match Andre The Giant or The Big Show for their sheer awe-inspiring size. When hardcore wrestling was king, on the other hand, a wrestler didnt need the technical skills of a Ricky Steamboat or a Bret Hart, they didnt need the amateur skills of a Danny Hodge or a Kurt Angle, all they needed was courage, heart and a love for the wrestling business. In the same way that punk music allowed singers that werent necessarily Otis Redding or Elvis Presley to live out their musical dreams, hardcore wrestling allowed guys that wanted it badly enough to go out and get it. To be a hardcore star, you didnt need to be 6,5 and built like a brick sh!thouse, you didnt need to have the looks of a movie star, either. In this way, hardcore wrestling was the greatest leveller the business has ever seen. Guys that would have been jobbing in any other era were allowed to blossom and grow, many of them into all-time industry legends and enduring, if unlikely, World Heavyweight Champions. Now how can that be a bad thing?
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
