Falling Into The Wrestling Hole; or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love The Dive Bomb

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates the past few weeks. Partially life being busy and me failing to plan ahead. I’ve also wanted to write this particular post for a couple of weeks, but I wasn’t really sure how to tackle it.

When I was in high school, my entire Spanish class got sucked in by a telenovela called Rubí. It was about a woman who wanted to be rich and she married a doctor to do so, screwing over the love of her life Alejandro in the process. Alejandro proceeds to become rich and Rubí spends the next several years pulling underhanded deeds to try and get him back and fails miserably. Lots of other stuff happens in between. It is a telenovela after all.

It was ridiculous, for sure. Everything was turned up to 11 and were not how actual people would function at all, but we were all sucked into the drama of it all. Same for the fantastically heartbreaking Korean drama You’re Beautiful and Showtime’s critically acclaimed Masters of Sex. I called these shows my soap operas with how much they dragged me in with their stories, no matter how ridiculous or deviating from actual history they were.

Now when you add punching, which my secretly aggressive little heart loves…

Oh, I think you know where this is going.

Hi, my name is Ashley Leckwold and I got into pro-wrestling about a month ago.

Accurate. [youcantheelme.tumblr.com]

It was a bit of a series of convoluted events that lead to it happening. I was aware of wrestlers like Daniel Bryan and AJ Lee from various posts on Tumblr, but I wasn’t digging too deep.

Then around the same time earlier this year, CM Punk contributed to the Thor Annual with artist Rob Guillory about young Thor getting into a drinking contest with Mephisto, Seth Rollins was challenging Jon Stewart on his own turf, and Max Landis released his follow up to “The Death and Return of Superman” with “Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling,” a 25 minute Drunk History style retelling of Triple H’s career over 20 years.

Yes, Landis makes some good points on wrestling as a storytelling medium, but I’m going to tell you what tipped me from morbid curiosity to actually watching a match or five:

AJ Lee reads Saga and Hawkeye.

I know there’s a whole bunch of nerds in the WWE currently, but I’m easily susceptible to women I find attractive who have good taste in comics. Once I watched her rush in to save Paige from the Bella Twins and washed that down with Randy Orton’s methodical beatdown of Seth Rollins, I knew I was in.

It also helped that one of my good online friends gave me links to past matches and promos to watch of Lee, I found myself in a hole of Seth Rollins clips, and I eventually capped it off with Wrestlemania 31 that first week.

I still have feelings about this. [rampaigers.tumblr.com]

I still really cannot explain how this stuck. Maybe it’s the fact I’m a comic book reader and I’m a sucker for serial ongoing stories with people in ridiculous costumes. Maybe it is that soap opera drama I referred to earlier because there’s a lot of that. Most of my time lately has been screaming at WWE Creative to end the Roman Reigns/Big Show and Orton/Rollins feuds so that they can get to the Reigns/Rollins feud that’s been brewing since Wrestlemania, viewing The Miz/Mizdow feud as a metaphor for escaping an abusive relationship, and wishing they would come up with some better angles for the Divas division already dammit. 

Or maybe I just like watching people hit each other between all of that. That’s a possibility too.

Whatever it is, I have two things to say about it: I’m sorry, and I don’t care.

The “I’m sorry” is specifically directed to the people I judged for liking it and wearing their wrestling shirts to school when I was younger. I grew up in a low income area around a bunch of aggro Southern boys and was constantly raved to about my intelligence by adults, so I ended up associating wrestling with low intelligence. I mean, don’t they even know it isn’t real?

Well, I watched Xavier Woods pick up a guy dressed as a bull and carry him around the outside of the ring and everything involving Fandango on last night’s Smackdown, so I think there’s gotta be some sense of self awareness there.

Now to play my favorite game of Wrestling or Gay Porn. [hiitsmekevin.tumblr.com]

And if there was or wasn’t, what is my place to judge either way? I was a shitty kid who didn’t know how to let people enjoy what they wanted without judging them for it. It’s not like my taste was much better. My favorite manga in 8th grade was Miyuki-Chan in Wonderland. Google it. I’ll wait.

I know we all suck in middle school, but still, I’m sorry to whoever I judged for it. If you wanna come talk to me about Roman Reigns, John Cena and Rusev, Randy Orton, or whoever, my door is open.

As for the “I don’t care,” well, it says on the tin. If you’re thinking less of me for liking it, I honestly don’t care. You have the media you enjoy and I have mine. Unless I’m somehow stealing your TV while Game of Thrones is on to catch up on Raw, I don’t see how we can’t both be happy.

For me, wrestling is fun. It’s ridiculous and I find myself questioning some of these storylines (please tell me what Sheamus’ deal is), but not anymore than I’ve been questioning Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for their insistence on making Hunter a character or attempt to redeem Grant Ward. Watching old matches, Raw, and Smackdown have been some of the best unwinding material I’ve had in ages. Not to mention it just feeds my gif problem.

I seriously used this to describe my reaction to the Superman vs. Batman trailer.

Yeah, it sucks that my first favorite wrestler retired two weeks into me getting into it, but I think I’m deep enough in that it’s going to be alright. To the future, The Undisputed Future, Naomi getting her title shot and Dolph Ziggler’s glorious hair!