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| This man deserves to be mocked heinously |
There's no better representation of this than through journalism. I'm not talking about the dirtsheets and the people who steal info without credit from the dirtsheets. I'm talking about real, mainstream journalism. Is it telling that the only time they pay attention to wrestling is when a mainstream celeb crosses over into it for a sojourn or when someone dies? Oftentimes, when the former occurs, the tone is derisive. When the latter happens, especially when it's something horrific like when He Who Shall Not Be Named requested all his friends and family to "look after the dogs," it's condescending, like "Hey, I told you wrestling was full of scumbags" in tone.
The sharks were circling again Monday night when Jerry Lawler fell ill with a heart attack on the air. The news outlets picked up on it because hey, someone was about to die. Imagine the grief that occurred at some of these news sites when Lawler actually started to pull through. Some of them went so far as to start to reach out to freelancers about writing hit pieces about WWE's practices that night. Sean Sapp, who writes for 1Wrestling.com, got an honest-to-God, real life request from someone soliciting a column to criticize WWE for going on with the show. This was without even asking him what his stance on the subject was. Judging from his response though, he made the right choice.
It's bad when the only outlet out there that is willing to treat wrestlers and wrestling with the same respect as everything else they cover is a site known for harassing, haranguing and being unafraid to besmirch people they cover, TMZ. This is certainly a symptom of how some outside the circle of wrestling fans view the thing we love to watch. This wouldn't be a problem, though, if a lot of us didn't also hold the same sorts of shame or self-loathing for our fandom.
Think about how many wrestling shirts you own. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the number is low, because wrestling shirts are fucking garish as a rule, especially ones produced by WWE and Impact Wrestling. I have three, and two of them are for Chikara wrestlers. Unsurprisingly, Chikara is one of the companies at the vanguard of promoting the artistic potential of pro wrestling. The other shirt I own is the CM Punk "Best in the World" shirt that he debuted at Money in the Bank last year, which is probably one of the least-bad wrestling shirts WWE has ever produced. It's one that I actually have worn outside before in the presence of people. Shocking, I know.
One of the times I wore it was this past summer down on the South Jersey Shore. I was walking up the beach, which I am wont to do down there, and I got at least three or four different people or groups of people shouting out to me "BEST IN THE WORLD!" or "CM PUNK, YEAH!" One of those groups was a gaggle of comely lasses. I have never had anyone stop me on the beach before to compliment me on my shirt. Hell, people usually don't talk to me on the beach if I'm walking unless we've collided and it's to exchange awkward apologies. The shame of being a pro wrestling fan is so beaten into us that I feel like outward displays of it in areas where it's usually not displayed (those areas stereotypically being the wrestling arena, the trailer park or Wal*Mart) are taken as signs of brazen civil disobedience.
The fucked up thing about that is the fact that I fully am aware that I'm equating being a wrestling fan with something way more serious. Yeah, rake me over the coals about it, it's a terrible analogy, but sometimes, it can feel frustrating. Of course, it's a first world problem. I don't give a fuck. What I do care about is people being out and proud about their wrestling fandom and being able to show that not all wrestling fans are mouth-breathing morons. Sure, some of us are, but some of any large group of people in any walk of life are too excepting people in Mensa. Those guys are all freaking smart, although I'm sure there are some in there who are "dumb" in other ways that don't involve books or brainpower.
As wrestling fans, we can't really hope that people will change their minds about us magically, especially when the best representation of our medium is WWE portraying a racist dickbag as one of its top heroes and not really caring how dumb the fucking writing is. We have to do it ourselves. Doing things like flooding the Best and Worst with 100+ comments every week is a great start. The fact that it's one of the most widely read and commented-upon things on a sports blog with one of the best commenter bases on the Web (saying something since a lot of comments sections are awful and shitty) speaks volumes on the hunger for intelligent things written about pro wrestling. Wearing wrestling t-shirts in public is another good thing to do, as long as the t-shirt is, y'know, not screaming at you with Ed Hardy-knockoff fonts or super bright, super loud logos and shit. Then again, if you think Randy Orton's gasmask shirt is haute fashion, then fuck man, who am I to say not to wear it?
The best thing we can do though is to raise a stink about bad journalism. Again, my problems with most of the dirtsheet writers aside, I don't think they set the cause back as much as people who write about wrestling in mainstream media do. Hell, I don't think they set it back as much as some of the people getting paid to write Colin Cowherd-levels of commentary about it at sites like WrestleZone like Mark Madden do. He's a guy who openly hates wrestling writing for a site that supposedly promotes wrestling. If the people getting paid to write about our medium don't care about, why should the people at ESPN or other news outlets?
That's why I do the FJM-style posts. Sure, ignoring Madden is one way to go, but the thing is that I feel the need to mock him and point out to people who might not know too much about him how bad he is through satire. If my one page hit can turn dozens of people away, then I've done my job.
I don't know, maybe I'm rambling here. Maybe I'm making too much out of a situation that isn't really a problem. I mean, who cares, it's only wrestling, right? Then again, that's my point. I care a lot about wrestling and the people who do it enough to have my voice heard about how to improve it or where it's going wrong. Therefore, why wouldn't I care about how I'm perceived? There's so much more to wrestling than death and carnie bullshit, so why should we be satisfied when that's all it's marginalized as by media idiots?
