The Only Thing Real in Wrestling is Death
- Buchanan
- Jul 5, 2017
- 4 min read
Even when you are a super fan, there are a lot of things that happen in the world of wrestling that are at the very least, questionable. We've seen things like Chavo Guerrero riding a fake toy pony named Pepe. We've seen Mae Young give birth to a hand. We've seen Snitsky kick a baby doll into the stands and many many more odd things in and out of the ring. Recently the Young Bucks even "killed" people off in there "Being the Elite" series on YouTube. While we are still under this umbrella of entertainment, it's odd to try and think about the little things that actually go into making this form of entertainment "entertaining".
Can death be entertaining? That question would be best answered by Vince McMahon. Most people aren't as invested into the product as others and that's to be understood. It's the same idea as the guy that talks to you about sports but never actually played any sports. Vince presumably "died" on air years ago on an episode of Monday Night Raw which you would assume was going to be a huge angle. However, the day of the "death reveal" show happened to be the day that the Benoit tragedy surfaced. The angle obviously changed immediately without true explanation, but it makes me wonder: Can death be an angle? It certainly didn't work with referee Tim White a few years back when he continually attempted to "kill himself" on air. A total of 14 failed attempts to be exact. Of course, when your talking about professional wrestling, you aren't supposed to take the story-lines seriously, right?
You can go as far as to say that even the injuries aren't "realistic". It all adds to the pageantry of this form of entertainment. When you're told to believe someone won't be back for months and then they show up three weeks later, it gets you excited. As a reluctant member of the "internet wrestling community",
I find myself constantly fighting the balance of being a complainer about the product, and just simply enjoying "the show".
It's no different than the balance in fans of professional sports teams. I truly want to believe that 80% of sports fans know in their hearts that sports professionals are simply on another level, and we really cannot relate to them nor should we try and think we can relate to them at all. This is why they are titled "professional" and we are titled "fan". However the other 20% of this made up statistic would be the people who honestly believe they know better than the actual professionals. When you are so invested into something, the dividing line is sometimes blurred.
With that being said, I'm relaying back to my title. Death in wrestling as a story-line simply cannot be done, and in a big way is one of the few underlining realities in the sport. In a world like ours today where words travel so fast (a la Twitter), death in the world is just another "link click" in the vast news and reports throughout our daily lives. When you sit down to watch a weekly syndicated wrestling show (that basically has the same cookie-cutter opening every week), and instead of your routine opening segment a picture comes up on the screen of a former wrestler that has just passed, your feeling going into the program changes entirely. This person is gone and will not be entertaining us as we've come accustomed to over the years.
I remember attending an NXT live taping years ago that began with William Regal coming out to greet the fans as he normally does. Normally this results in a huge ovation from the fans, as everyone loves Regal. However the mood quickly changed at this particular event. Days prior to the show, "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes had passed away. Pictures of Dusty came up on the screen in the theater. People began to remove there hats and then they began the "10 ring salute" of the bell as a tribute to Dusty. No one said a word, which is honestly a huge thing in the world of wrestling. Everyone was respectful and a "Thank You Dusty" chant soon followed. I'm extremely happy and grateful I was apart of it. I wish it was under different circumstances of course, but such is life. Sobering moments like that takes these larger than life characters, and makes them human again.
Who knows if the mind of Vince McMahon could have found a way to make his death an actual successful story-line. Undertaker is clearly the only wrestler that might have been able to roll with such a story-line, with his larger than life "undead" persona. The Benoit tragedy may be the sole reason the "Vince is dead" story-line never got legs. But the more and more I think about it, the more and more I am convinced it was for the best. And for the history of the sport that is professional wrestling, I feel that it is definitely something that is best left untouched.
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