Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Shut Up, Meatheads

Eli Drake is just so tiring, man
Photo Credit: ImpactWrestling.com
Honestly, I've written so goddamn much about intergender wrestling for such a long time on this blog that when idiots like Eli Drake, the only wrestler to get owned harder by Kevin Owens than Alex Riley, start spouting off about how it's "unrealistic," it should roll off my back. Yet, something about how reductive these arguments still are nowadays triggers my anger reflex.

I don't know if this is better or worse than the concern trolling "but DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS" complaints. I mean, for real, the realism argument went out the window the first time someone did an Irish whip. And that's not even taking into account that height and weight don't automatically equal a victory in a fight. Pretend for a second though that somehow Jordynne Grace's lack of height and weight meant she "realistically" couldn't defeat a male competitor larger than her. The fact that Undertaker, a literal zombie who also knows MMA, is one of the most over wrestlers in history means that realism doesn't automatically equal "casual fan interest."

At least Drake, whose ability as a top guy in wrestling despite being more vanilla than the white third of a Neapolitan ice cream gallon requires a bigger suspension of disbelief than any woman wrestling a man could ever, didn't totally slag women's wrestlers on the whole. Gunner Miller, former Scenic City Invitational Tournament winner who has decided to change his Twitter gimmick to CTE-addled shit-for-brains, thinks intergender wrestling is good for the total wrong reasons:

I wanna know what women's wrestling this dude has been watching. I mean, even forgetting the heyday of the All Japan Women's division in the '90s even existed, you can look at, at random, Sara del Rey's dalliances in Absolute Intense Wrestling vs. Mickie Knuckles and Hailey Hatred as examples of matches that went harder than a whole lot of man vs. man matches ever could. Or hey, maybe look at modern-day WWE, where Ronda Rousey, Asuka, and the Four Horsewomen put on clinics every time they get the chance. Nothing about his shitty sexism is even rooted in reality.

I've gotten to the point where shitty arguments such as these just fall on my shoulders like a ton of bricks everytime they get made. Why are the meathead dorks getting more and more oppressive? It's because they're fading like dinosaurs. I see people lament wrestling being "taken over by theater kids" like the people currently occupying it are somehow worthy of being a protected class. Wrestling was founded by carny scum, is mostly worked by tryhard muscleheads with a worse hard-on for the "unwritten rules" than even the most overbearing baseball players, and the fans by and large are insular and combative. Why not let some weird-ass theater kids in to try and class up the fucking place a bit? I mean, the drawback is it's not like all theater kids have the best politics either, but I mean, the inclusive and boundless mindset they bring is better than adhering to a bunch of rigid bullshit heteronormative, patriarchal rules that make almost no sense.

Of course, it kinda mirrors real life, as White nationalists who don't want to be "replaced" come out of the woodwork to defend worldwide conservative movements, and hey, some of those people overlap the idiot conservative dorks who hate the idea of female participation in this grand thing everyone loves in spite of itself. Hi SHLAK! The thing to do is not to make everyone from the old school feel unwelcome, but make the ones with that mentality who are unwilling to move forward and bring in new ideas and new fans feel unwelcome. People like Eli Drake and Gunner Miller shouldn't be the gatekeepers; they should be the smelly hobos on the outside looking in who lament that "goddamn PC bullshit" ruined a business that they were wholly unprepared to adapt to.