The Live Experience

A huge reason why last night rocked. Look at that slate of Champions. LOOK AT IT.
Photo Credit: @CMPunk

Over the last three years, I've been to plenty of wrestling shows. All but two were at the ECW Arena, and they were all promoted under the banners of one of three promotions (ROH, DGUSA or Chikara). I love independent wrestling, and I wouldn't dedicate a large portion of my efforts here as well as all my efforts at Cageside Seats and part of my writing for both Camel Clutch Blog and Fair to Flair if I didn't enjoy attending the events live and supporting them monetarily. That being said, I felt like I've been missing out by not attending a "big box" wrestling show as former podcast guest and Twitter maven Okori Wadsworth calls it. Until last night, I hadn't been to a WWE live event since 2000, and before then, I had only been to two other shows promoted under the banner of Titan Sports. I had forgotten what it was like to watch WWE live, and I thought that I would've been better off watching it at home, hence why I really had never been in a rush to buy live event tickets. I had always told my wife when she asked if I wanted to buy tickets to events down at the Whatever the Fuck They're Calling It Nowadays Arena in South Philly that nah, I didn't want to pay the same price on a general admission ticket to an indie show at the ECW Arena for a nosebleed seat. Yeah, I am kinda thrifty, to put it mildly, aren't I?

Well, it's a good thing she really didn't believe my passive-aggressive denials, because she got me really awesome tickets for my birthday this year. I was definitely looking forward to going, but my excitement level was dampened a bit again, because RAW had been kinda crappy the last two weeks. I didn't really want to invest energy in a show where I would just be witness to another slogfest. That being said, WWE has this habit of inconsistency, where they'll follow up two bad shows with three awesome shows into another bad show and so on and so forth. Philly also was one of those towns where they always seemed to bring their A-games. My companion for the evening, another former podcast guest Tom Kingsmill, had been to five or so shows in Philly, and not once did he recall being disappointed. Add in the fact that the night previous at TLC, both Daniel Bryan and Zack Ryder won the World Heavyweight and United States Championships respectively, making the WWE's Champion roster look as it did in the above picture? (As an aside, it would have looked just as good with the guy Ryder beat and the guy that the guy Bryan beat beat there too... Dolph Ziggler and Mark Henry are awesome, damn what anyone thinks)

Maybe it helped that my seats were so close to the action, but my view of the ring and watching what went down was just so visceral and real. Getting to see Dean Ambrose in a dark match was a glossier callback to when I saw Jon Moxley in a dark match before a DGUSA card I attended in 2009. Obviously, the result was way different, but the man exuded star power, and he was someone that I felt kin to because I saw him live before he made any kind of name for himself. That would be a recurring theme. Nearly everything looked better than it did on TV. Kofi Kingston's offense didn't look nearly as drawn out or stilted. Daniel Bryan hoisting the World Championship above his head was that much more satisfying than it was in stills or on television (my glimpse of it coming from his false-start title win on Smackdown last month). Even Vickie Guerrero looked hotter (from the neck down, obviously) last night than she normally does on TV, and she has one hell of a tight body.

I think another thing that helped the experience was that the announcers were inaudible. Even if it were Jim Ross and a late-'90s Jerry Lawler calling it, I think the experience would have been more enriching watching the matches with only the crowd and the people around me as a soundtrack. The fact that it was Michael Cole and late-'00s "I ain't care" Lawler at the desk made it even better. I didn't have to watch that main event trying to drown out the cacophonous serenade of "NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD" cries from Cole. I was enraptured in the moment, watching my favorite wrestler in the whole wide world right now teaming with two of my other favorites against three more of my favorite guys.

And when Bryan slapped the LeBell Lock on Alberto del Rio, making him tap out, I lost my shit, more than I have at any other wrestling event I've ever been to. Maybe it's the fact that I'm more invested in Chikara as a company than any one person in it. Maybe it's because I'm invested in Bryan succeeding and getting a chance to prove that he doesn't just appeal to nerds like me. Maybe it's that it was arguably his biggest decision to date that he scored while I was there live in the audience. Maybe it's a combination of all three, but I marked out harder than I have ever marked out at anything else in the history of my wrestling fandom. WWE could go tits up tomorrow and pro wrestling could disappear like Marty McFly in a bad, sad-ending version of Back to the Future, and I could be eminently satisfied because I was there when Daniel Bryan made Alberto del Rio tap the fuck out in the LeBell Lock while ~14,999 other people felt almost exactly the same way I did.

So yeah, I will never, ever trade in my memories of watching wrestling at The ECW Arena or the Palmer Center or the Goodwill Fire Association Hall or any future memories I'll have at a venue to be determined when said Arena stops holding shows. That being said, there is something for attending a WWE live event. Hell, it's an experience that Dylan Hales shares in the latest episode of the Wrestling Culture podcast as well. I'm so happy that my wife got me what I got for my birthday this year, because it was probably my most enriching and engrossing wrestling fan experience of the year.