I Know It's Fake, Dammit. I Just Don't Care.

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January 14, 2013 by WonderbreadIsDead

FINALLY…  The Rock HAS COME BACK…  Home.

To be honest, I remember sitting there in my living room on February 14, 2011 with my eyes glued to the television set, watching as The Great One made his triumphant return to the WWE.  It had been nearly seven years since The Rock stepped into a WWE ring, but to me it was as if he had never left.  I am fully willing to admit that when he delivered his 20 minute promo that night, I gladly soaked in every second, remembering the pure awesomness that is the Trailblazing, Eyebrow raising, Jabroni beating, Pie eating, Heart stopping, Elbow dropping, Peoples Champ, The Rock.  The interesting fact about this story, however, is that at this point I had already stopped watching wrestling regularly.  It’s true, I’ve been a wrestling fan for as long as I can remember, but recently finding the time to watch Monday Night Raw or Friday Night SmackDown has proved hard and I’ve mainly used the internet to keep up to date with what’s happening.  There was something special about The Rock coming back that had me interested enough to make sure I had the time to watch Raw that night, and when his music hit, my heart started pounding and I could feel the excitement almost radiating out of my body.

I’ve been watching more often lately, and the show’s ability to invoke such a strong emotion in me has me thinking.  Right now, I can probably guess what most of you are thinking:  “Why would you like WWE?  It’s totally fake.  UFC and MMA is the way to go.”  The obvious fact is I know wrestling isn’t real; nobody could execute the moves they do in a real fight, but to me that’s not the point.  Most of the time when confronted with this logic, my reply is simply that I enjoy the entertainment value instead of watching two dudes roll around on the ground for three 5 minute rounds.  While true (the truth being that I don’t understand UFC.  Seriously guys…   Just bang each other and get it over with.  This rolling around isn’t helping anybody), I would be lying if I said that this was the sole reason for my dedicated support for the WWE.

I, as I’m sure many kids were, was introduced to the world of wrestling at a young age by my father.  My father is a major wrestling fan, so naturally he would pass the torch down to me.  If I were to make a guess, I would say that my neverending love for the WWE centers around not the sport itself, but the memories I have watching it with my father.  I’m sure most wrestling fans over the years can remember the first time their parents bought them a plastic WWE Championship belt, or the first time your dad bought you a Hulkamania shirt and told you to strike a pose.  There’s just something special about those moments that make you smile when you look back on them.  It is within these memories that I can find the root cause of my love for the World Wrestling Entertainment.

Anybody who really knows me knows that my parents and I have had a little bit of a rocky past.  Despite what our relationship looks like now, my father and I weren’t always on the best of terms with each other.  In fact, most of the time we were at odds with each other, and it often ended in ways best not described.  In all honesty, until recently I could probably think of more bad memories with my father than I could good ones, but that always made the good memories mean so much more too me.  It’s no secret that my entire life I’ve tried as hard as possible to gain a close personal relationship with my father.  Throughout my childhood, we were never really able to bond over anything in particular, except for the WWE.  Some of the best memories I have from my childhood involve my father and I just sitting in the living room watching Monday Night Raw.  We were never close as father and son, but when the music of our favorite superstars started playing, and they began their walk to the ring, we were joined together in our mutual support for the character.  For 2 hours every Monday and Friday, my father and I would put everything aside, and just be fans of the WWE.  For 2 hours every Monday and Friday, my father and I would put aside our differences, and just be friends.  That’s everything I’ve ever really wanted.

Look, I understand everybody’s criticism when it comes to the WWE.  I know that the writing can often be terrible, that the superstars are unbelievable, and the matches are scripted.  I know that the onscreen romances are fake, and that nobody could do a 450 Splash in a real street fight.  The fact of the matter is that wrestling is more than scripted fights and terrible storylines could ever produce.  Wrestling, to me, is the foundation in which I’ve built my relationship with my father.  Because the truth is, I love my Father.  I may not have always felt like he loved me, and sometimes I may have wondered if he hated me, but for the few hours that wrestling was on every week, it didn’t matter.  It’s taken me a while to understand the reason why WWE means so much to me, but I finally understand the feeling that comes over me when The Rock hits that ring.  So with that in mind…  I just want to say that I know wrestling is fake, dammit.  I just don’t care.

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