Whatever you might say about WWE's current PG rating, the fact is that Vince McMahon's company has always appealed to kids and young teenagers. As such, it falls to the WWE to be responsible babysitters to their audience who might not know the difference between real violence and fantastical, choreographed, scripted violence. One such way is the airing of vignettes like the one above during programming, which reminds us all that WWE superstars are trained, professional athletes, that serious injuries DO happen and that above all else we should never try anything we see on Raw or Smackdown at home. It's a sensible message that WWE have been broadcasting for generations of fans, and for generations, we the audience have thoroughly ignored it. The fact is, the majority of wrestling fans began watching as young, impressionable children, many of them boys. And young, dumb boys love nothing more than to copy what they've seen on wrestling with their friends or siblings. I remember once getting in trouble at a friend's birthday party when I was 7. Playing around on a bouncy castle, I give my young chum a Stone Cold Stunner, he runs off crying, I get shouted at by his mum. Little crybaby. Didn't want any of his birthday cake anyway.... What we quickly discovered, however, was that maybe we should have listened to the TV and not tried wrestling moves on ourselves, because a lot of them do hurt. A lot. Submission moves in particular were enough to end mine and my friends amateur "matches", as we found out through foolish experimentation that our limbs were not supposed to bend that way. Here, we look at ten submission holds that most of us will have tried out at some point, and weren't really keen to try out again afterwards. Don't try this at home.
Stephen Maher has been a rock star, a bouncer, a banker and a busker on various streets in various countries. He's hung out with Robert Plant, he was at Nelson Mandela's birthday and he's swapped stories with prostitutes and crack addicts. He once performed at a Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras by accident. These days, he passes the time by writing about music, wrestling, games and other forms of nerdery. And he rarely drinks the blood of the innocent.
