Burrows: Why I Love Wrestling

Professional wrestling; A world where women give birth to hands, dentists can strike up a relationship with Satan, becoming his favourite demon and a man can become loved, simply for his lack of a literal chin, but why do we love it? I don’t know, simply, to try to comprehend a world that makes as little sense as the world of the squared circle would be idiotic, or at least incredibly taxing. People love this art (yes, wrestling is an art) for many different reasons, ranging from enjoying the combat, the stories, or just the music, however I can only speak for myself, and this is why I love professional wrestling.

I used to watch wrestling as a kid, believing these larger than life characters were actually attempting to hurt each other to the extent that they could not lift their shoulders off the mat. I ‘grew out’ of this, and stopped watching for a while, convincing myself wrestling was fake, therefore not worth my time. It wasn’t till I learned a friend watched WWE that I decided to watch another episode of RAW. I watched, wanting to hate it, but oddly I ended up liking it. The performance these performers were putting on was amazing, the crowd was lapping it up and when the match finally ended (which didn’t take long, the match was a Ryback squash, I know) I knew this guy was a monster, character building at its best something in my brain licked that day, this was good, I enjoyed wrestling! I didn’t watch regularly after this, but every now and then would watch the shows, following the story, secretly hoping the good guys would win, and the bad guys would get what they deserve.

So why? Why do I waste my time, watching the same stuff over and over and over again? Well, I believe it is because the worth of the art is more apparent to me, with a closed mind I could never like wrestling, its dry and repetitive, although, once you open your mind and accept that it’s a show, a whole new world opens up. Wrestling is not what it was back in the 90’s, when it was cool to watch, but in my opinion, its better now than it ever has been with people such as ricochet and the young bucks revolutionising the business, the performers are athletes, and continuously push further and further to create a true spectacle.

I do like cool spots with lots of flips; however what interests me personally is when 2 performers can get in a ring, not leave it, but tell a story in the time they are there. This is truly a skill that only the best have mastered (Kevin Owens, John Cena and Kenny Omega are just a few that have). This question can’t be answered with words though, to truly understand wrestling you must watch, and feel everything that is going on, you must feed off of what the performers are doing and truly forget who you are, what you’ve done and why you’re there. Then, and only then will you understand, why WE love Wrestling.