Mailbag: Reader prefers ‘real wrestling’ vs. the more entertaining pro version

Why do you take up space with stories about professional wrestling? Maybe since you don’t have a cartoon section? There’s real wrestling out there – even at UVA!

James

The most direct route to my bad side is poking at pro wrestling, and comparing it to “real wrestling.”

I have backgrounds in both – with “real wrestling,” I was a play-by-play guy for ESPN+ for three years calling SoCon duel meets at VMI.

What was missing: anything remotely resembling entertainment.

The coaches made sure not to put up any real opponents to the “star” wrestlers on the other side, which I only figured out after doing prep work to talk up the stars’ bios for the first couple of meets, ahead of matches that would go a few seconds.

Absent stars competing in meaningful competitions, a college wrestling meet is: guys of varying sizes executing, or attempting to thwart the execution of, takedowns and counters, endlessly.

The term ad nauseam is never better used than it is here.

My work in pro wrestling was on the production team for a local company that grew big enough to actually put on a nationally-televised pay-per-view TV show, which broadcast out of Augusta Expo in 2011.

---

ICYMI

• My book on the 2011 ‘Night of Legends’ wrestling PPV is now available for free online

---

In addition to being on the booking team, which has you making reachouts to talents to gauge interest in working a show, I was involved in the creative aspect – specific to the TV show, that had me working with the wrestlers and the lead broadcasters on backstories for the PPV – and I had an on-camera role as a backstage interviewer.

Pro wrestling makes money where college wrestling doesn’t because: it’s entertaining.

As I can attest, from my experience on the backstage side of things, the shows are booked to build from the jerking of the curtain at the start of the night, with talents whose names you don’t know, but work their asses off for 15 minutes to get your blood flowing; to the midcard, where guys and gals who aren’t far from being the stars themselves test out the gimmicks that will get them to the top; to the main event, where the people who put your butt in the seat get you out of it as they grapple with each other for whatever the bragging rights are that particular night.

“Cartoon section”? I mean, sure. One thing I miss about tactile newspapers is flipping to the comics page, and the Sunday comics insert – with the variety of Calvin and Hobbes, my personal favorite, Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Garfield, the rest.

A good pro wrestling show has similar variety – young talents, tag teams, a luchador match with guys who seem to defy gravity, badass women who also look like movie stars, larger-than-life musclemen and biker-gang toughs who you wouldn’t want to see on a dark street corner, and the slick-talking heel champ facing off with a babyface hero with the moxie to pull the massive upset.

Don’t ask me if it’s fake, and I won’t ask you if your favorite TV drama is scripted, or if the bad pass at the end of last night’s game was the point guard making a careless mistake, or being on the take.

If our stories and columns on pro wrestling aren’t for you, you are so lucky – you don’t have to read them.

There isn’t a test at the end of the week with a question about who won the main event on Wednesday’s “Dynamite.”

No essay question on the wisdom of booking heel vs. heel multi-person tag matches.

Read another story, or, and this is revolutionary, in terms of being an idea – if you don’t like that we provide coverage of pro wrestling, and it really, really bothers you, there are other news sites that may be more to your liking.

Wouldn’t offend me at all if you left us for one of those.

Doesn’t offend me if you don’t read our wrestling content.

Mocking it as a “cartoon,” though, gets you on the list.