I watched pro-wrestling the other day. Not on purpose, of couse. The television was on that channel, and I dropped the remote. While I debated whether it was worthwhile to pick up the remote to turn to "When Buildings Explode 5" or whatever was on Fox, I became curious.
"Why," I asked myself aloud, as I always do, "Is this claptrap they call professional wrestling so popular?"
What I couldn't understand was why something would be branded as a "sport" when it was so obviously a travshamockery.
And, as someone on TV got hit over the head with a chair and taunted, it came to me, as if I, myself had been hit with that chair and been compared to a female child.
What I had discovered, as if by Susan Lucci's divine intervention, was that pro-wrestling is nothing but a soap opera for men.
While fans of this... sport-type-thing will go blue in the face arguing this, as if they were in a chokehold or something, the similarities are mind boggling.
First, the acting. Soap operas are littered with bad acting and worse dialogue. Something along this line:
"Cherline, I have a horrible secret."
"Are you in a coma?"
"No. Cherline, I'm in love... with your mother...."
"But my mother is on her death bed."
"Yes, but still, I love her and there's nothing you can do to stop me from being with her."
"What if I were to shoot you with this conveniently-placed gun?"
"Well, I suppose that might..."
[GUNSHOT]
"Oh. Oh my. Tell Mrs. Butterworth that I love her very much."
Somehow I doubt you'd need 1,000 monkeys on 1,000 typewrtiers and 1,000 years to get that.
Anyway, wrestling features the same bad writing, and the same bad acting. I love the look of searing pain that they get on their face when someone is supposedly breaking their leg slowly. It looks closer to indigestion to me.
Wrestling also has those plot twists and conspiracies that make soap operas so clich+â-¬. Wrestlers will ocassionally turn on their managers and teammates by hitting them and not hitting their opponents with a chair.
This isn't a new phenomenon, though. All you need to do is look at the Star Wars Trilogy, George Lucas' self-proclaimed space opera, to see that men love soap opera plots. "I am your father," is closer to dialogue from "As the World Turns" than it is from your typical action-adventure film.
The only difference between wrestling and soap operas is the audience. Men, most of whom consider themselves too much of a man to watch General Hospital, watch wrestling in droves, despite the fact that it's faker than Donald Trump's hair.
Eventually, I decided to expend the effort to change the channel, but I still thought and thought, which marks the first time in history that pro-wrestling has caused someone to think. Ever.
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