What Happened?

Last Monday, I was flipping through channels and saw that the 15th Anniversary of WWE "RAW" was just beginning. I'm not ashamed to say that when I was growing up, I was a big professional wrestling fan or maybe I would have been better described as a "smark" (smart mark). That means I was a BIG fan, but I also knew all the behind-the-scenes story lines and all the history that went with the organization.

Back when I stopped watching wrestling, it was still the WWF, so all this WWE business was new to me. Honestly, I hadn't seen an episode of Raw in probably seven or eight years, so really, I had no idea what was going during about half of those 15. But for the first part of that 15, I was on the couch, every Monday night from 9-11 (now it's 8-11). It was always the hot topic of Tuesday at school, discussing what had happened and what we thought would happen next. It was like a soap opera for adolescents or instead of a "water cooler" show, it was a blackboard show. It was huge. Me, my friends, and most kids my age were a big reason that not only the WWF, but the WCW and ECW thrived in the mid to late 90's, posting huge TV rating numbers every Monday night. It was the "Attitude" era of Stone Cold Steve Austin, Degeneration X and The Rock (and NWO vs. Sting in WCW) when wrestling really boomed.

These days, the ratings aren't as high. Part of that is because Vince McMahon bought out his only two competitors. As we know from economics class, monopolies aren't good for anyone except the person that owns it. But that's not the only reason. There will always be young teenagers to watch, like I was back in the day, but things have changed too much and gotten too adult for the young teens. When it started getting big, the WWE, thanks mostly to DX and Austin, started featuring some more racy storylines, but they were pretty harmless compared to what I saw on the most recent episode.

I fully excepted the anniversary episode to feature some classic footage or reunions of old stars. It did provide SOME of that, but the opening sequence had Vince in all his glory strut to the ring for a family photo to commemorate the evening. Once there, his nemesis HHH (or Triple H for you non-wrestling fans) proceeded to the ring to announce that not all of Vince's family was there. He then, one by one, called women...and men...to the ring that Vince had supposedly had "relations" with. He also called down Vince's illegitimate son, which happens to be a "little person" from Ireland. Needless to say, I was a bit taken aback. I remember when Undertaker having casket matches was over-the-top. But this was downright disturbing.

Amazingly, I don't sound like a kid any more. I used to be the one saying, oh it's not that bad. But now I'm saying, it IS that bad. At some point the line has to be drawn, and it's not even about the racy story lines and gratuitous sexual content. Wrestling was almost goofy 10 years ago, and it was good for a laugh and fun to jump on board with a guy and enjoy his ups and downs. It's not fun and games anymore, though. Since I stopped watching, Davey Boy Smith, Rick Rude, Curt Hennig, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Crash Holley, Big Boss Man, and Brian Adams just to name a few have all died (most of the cause of the deaths say heart attack) and they were all in there 30's and 40's. I just read an article that said wrestlers have a death rate seven times higher than the regular population and are 12 times more likely to die of heart disease. It's unbelievable what these men did to their bodies and the price that it cost them. All in the name of entertainment, I suppose.

While watching, I started to wonder why I quit watching wrestling. Suddenly, thanks to Vince, I remembered.