Wrestlemania 30

Well, WrestleMania 30 has come and gone and as I sit here writing this I have to say, I was definitely satisfied. In fact, I thought the show was great. Earlier in the weekend I said that I hadn't been this excited for a WrestleMania in probably 10 years. Turns out that's fitting because also haven't been this pleased with the results. Until this weekend, it's been 10 years since I've truly enjoyed being a wrestling fan. Sure there were bright spots between then and now, but for the most part I've found the WWE to be stale, boring and disappointing since WrestleMania 20 closed with two of my favorite wrestlers celebrating in the ring, both world champions, both having reached the pinnacle of their sport.

 

WrestleMania 20 was at Madison Square Garden. I was there, and getting to see Chris Benoit (one of the aforementioned favorite wrestlers, before he turned into a monster) beat HHH clean in the main event to become the World Champion will always be one of my fondest memories as a wrestling fan. In fact, until last night, that was probably my LAST fond memory as a wrestling fan*.  It makes sense then that the end result of WrestleMania ten years later has a lot of similarities. Daniel Bryan went over not only HHH, but also Randy Orton and Batista later in the night to finally, conclusively, become WWE World Heavyweight Champion.

 

*Ok, maybe the two ECW One Night Stand pay per-views briefly interrupted the ten year streak of indifferent disappointment, but considering how WWE's version of ECW turned out, I still maintain that WrestleMania 20 was my last fond memory.

 

Wrestling's Most Memorable Moments - Warrior, Hercules, Tug of War!

It's time once again to look back in time to an era when wrestling was fun and memorable! This weeks memory, while in the scheme of things not quite as earth shattering as some others I'll be covering, was still pretty unforgettable. And, like many of the finer things in this world, this week's article involves The Ultimate Warrior!

Wrestling's Most Memorable Moments - The Rockers Breakup

Over the years, professional wrestling has changed. I'm not breaking any new ground with that statement, it's obvious to even a casual observer that wrestling is not the same thing as it was in the 80's when I was a kid, or even what it was when I was a teenager and young adult in the 90's and early 2000's. Still, I'm a lifelong fan, and although I now get way more enjoyment out of watching old matches on YouTube or WWE Classics on Demand, I still try to catch Monday Night Raw every week, even though roughly three quarters of the show does nothing but piss me off and make me wax nostalgic for the days when wrestling was "good".

 

But what makes older wrestling good, you may ask? Well, for starters, nowadays the WWE doesn't even refer to itself as wrestling , they call themselves "sports entertainment" (not sure what they think that second W stands for), and the wrestlers are "superstars." They avoid saying the words wrestling or wrestler like the plague. The title belts are only referred to as "championships" too, for reasons I still don't quite understand (to the point where the announcers will say "he hit him with the championship". Its a little fucking ridiculous). And I guess that's fine, Vince McMahon can market his product however he likes. I can watch or not watch as I see fit. And I do. I still watch hoping to catch a glimmer of what used to make wrestling great. Every now and then they even come close.  I could go on a rant listing all the things that are different now, and why it was much better 10, 15 or 20 years ago than it is today. But I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to focus on one thing that it seems to me that the WWE has forgotten how to do, and the product in my opinion suffers for it.