10 Ways Wrestling Changes You As A Person

When you take a step back, and look at a day in the life of a pro wrestling fan through a different lens, you begin to realise that it is all-consuming.

You check the news from across the globe.

Tensions rise inexorably between India and Pakistan. India has threatened the “complete isolation” of its neighbour after a suicide bomber tragically killed 46 soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir. Both lay claim to the disputed region, and already, the word “claim” triggers images of India interrupting Pakistan in the opening segment of Monday Night RAW.

President Donald Trump is set to declare a national emergency in his attempts to build a wall between Mexico and America, and we’re wondering why he can’t just learn from the example of Zeb Coulter and Alberto Del Rio. That might pop ‘em on Reddit, you think, as this dire political situation that threatens the integrity of the world’s biggest superpower and the lives of so many desperate Mexican natives simply disappears from your mind, replaced by *checks Twitter* Oh look, the Revival want to bring the old school WWF tag belts. That’s nice. They looked good.

Only, you don’t check the news from across the globe. I only did for the purposes of this intro. Instead, we rush to Twitter, and shake our heads at dismay because somebody already came up with the ‘Welcome to the penitentiary!” joke at Jimmy Uso’s expense. We all came up with it.

Pro wrestling is all-consuming…

People will mock your fandom of professional wrestling. We will cover this imminently. We need a little time to steel ourselves before opening up old wounds.

Some grow out of pro wrestling before adolescence, and if you remain under its spell, you must hide your love away in order to avoid ridicule. This secrecy lives on longer than Kane’s entire f*cking run, for the older you get, the more embarrassing it is to remain a fan of professional wrestling.

Youth is the aspiration to adulthood, and this invites comically earnest folly. Readers of a certain age wore baggy pants and hooded jumpers and thought Fred Durst spoke to you, you know? He understood. He understood that your “ass” and her “perfume” “make temptation hard to refuse”.

“The Chocolate Starfish is my man Fed Durst,” Fred Durst sang on Livin’ It Up, which isn’t quite up there with “The Walrus is Paul” in terms of grand rock n’ roll mythology.

This angsty douchebag was still cooler than you at school, because you liked pro wrestling, and with this lesson learned, you hide your hobby away from potential love interests. You panic when they come over, because you left the December To Dismember DVD on your bookshelf. You hurriedly fling it into a drawer, at which point they’re thinking What kind of sick porn are they into?

Wrestling is considered analogous to shameful pornography by wider society.