AEW’s Double Or Nothing (DoN) Pay Per View (PPV) is this evening, and folks online are talking about it. Friends, there are a LOT of pro-wrestling takes out there on the interwebs, and some of them are, well, “strange” is a polite way to put it. To the point where I sometimes question what’s wrong with me that I’m actually reading some of this nonsense. And let’s be honest: if you follow me, As For Football, or my writing career in general, my interest in AEW might seem a little off-theme from the rest of it. So maybe now is a good time to talk about why I enjoy AEW -- and pro-wrestling in general.
So there I was, no shit.
The year was 1997, and I -- having graduated from West Point something like 18 months prior -- now stood in the motor pool as a tank platoon leader alongside the rest of B/4-64 AR. Individually, my soldiers had a variety of hobbies and interests the same as any diverse group of young men anywhere in America. As a group, however, they mostly talked about one of two things while we stood around working on the tanks -- the NFL and pro-wrestling.
Pro-wrestling was having a moment back in the day. The product was mostly pretty good, there was tons of variety, and since the two main shows went on head-to-head, you could flip back and forth if one channel wasn’t showing you something that you wanted to see right then and there. Plus, everybody was watching pro-wrestling -- at least in my circles -- so, it existed as a basic part of the background chatter.
Meanwhile. 1997 saw me make arguably the biggest mistake of my entire life. I got married to the wrong woman for reasons that were at best ill-considered. I realized this immediately after our honeymoon -- like, literally as we were coming back into the house with all of our bags. But at that point, the deed was done.
Lots of folks had tried to talk to me about getting married. Did I know what I was doing? Was this the right time? Place? Circumstance?
My tank battalion tended to be quite a socially conservative organization. The officers were all married professionals, and I was an officer and a professional. I wanted to be like those guys who were my mentors. More than anything else, I felt like I ought to be married. Finding a spouse -- any spouse -- meant taking the next step in my professional development.
This was the basic reason why I got married.
Alas, Misty and I did not have a lot in common. However, we both liked pro-wrestling, and there was a lot of high-quality pro-wrestling on TV back when we really needed it. I mean, it turns out that you can’t actually sustain a marriage on just sex and a shared love of pro-wrestling, but we gave it an honest try for every bit of eighteen months. We really did.
We separated in December 1998 and finalized our divorce in the spring of 1999. I went to the Career Course and Ft. Knox and then Korea, and I watched way less pro-wrestling, but I definitely still watched. But when I left Korea and the Army in September 2000, I also left pro-wrestling. I got back to the States and reinvented myself wholesale.
Enough was enough; it was time for a change.
Fast forward to 2014, and my daughter Emma and I gave pro-wrestling another try. I gotta be honest, though. It just wasn’t good. First and most importantly because there wasn’t enough actual wrestling on the shows. It was endless bullshit, forever.
Personally, I don’t care about sports storylines for the most part. Like, who cares why these two teams don’t like each other? Just show me the game. Similarly, I’m happy that there are lots of different kinds of pro-wrestling in this world, but I’m telling you, if I only had to watch one kind of pro-wrestling for the rest of my life, it would for sure be lucha libre. Give me dudes in masks doing flips onto other dudes in masks. That shit is amazing. A triple-jump moonsault doesn’t need context.
So Emma and I watched for a few weeks back in 2014 before giving it up as a bad deal. There was lots of stuff on TV. We watched that other stuff.
Mostly sports because I am a sports fan.
Then the pandemic happened, and we were stuck. There was nothing on, no sports whatsoever. I thought I was going to lose my mind. We tried AEW in something like desperation.
Emma and I both really liked it!
AEW is awesome because they havelots of actual wrestling, typically punctuated by amazing physicality. They bring in actual luchadores and treat them like they are a big deal. Dudes routinely do things that I cannot do, amazing things, things that I find incredible and entertaining.
It was cool because we -- accidentally -- got in on the ground floor of AEW. We’ve been watching long enough now that when tonight’s Four Pillars match goes down, it’ll be the culmination of several years worth of fandom for amazing athletes that we saw come up from out of nowhere. I am absolutely looking forward to it.
I’m just giving you my perspective here, but as you read it, I’m hoping that you’re seeing why I’m right about this, and you’re wrong. Whatever it is that you were thinking, I’m telling you right now that mine is the only take that matters to me.
It’s crazy because I like following some of the Internet wrestling news sites, and in particular, I think Wrestletalk does a good job of making opinionated rumor mongering into entertainment. But man, so much of what’s out there is completely incomprehensible. Like, I know intellectually that CM Punk is a big deal, but… I missed his whole run and don’t care. But I liked what he did with MJF last year as a part of AEW, and on that basis, I’m glad that they’re at least trying to figure out a way forward after all the craziness.
Similarly, I don’t get why people like WWE. It’s like a Disney princess story executed for teenage boys but with lesser special effects, and it’s inferior to, say, Daredevil on Disney+ but uses most of the same writers’ tropes.
What is the appeal there?
Whatever. I’m not a “real” wrestling fan. I just enjoy pro-wrestling.
Enjoy Double or Nothing, friends. I know I’m going to.
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