I'm Posting a Multipart Series Because "Cry For Help" Sounds Too Dramatic

I love pretty much everything about wrestling. At every level, wrestling to me is about as perfect a platonic ideal as I can point to of the word "passion." Wrestling is a storytelling medium unlike any other. That's not hyperbole. Pro wrestling is still pretty much incomparable to anything else in the modern day, and just marinate for a second on how rare a thing that is. In a world of imitators, there's nothing else like it.

Wrestling shows are joyful, ridiculous celebrations of a really bizarre thing. Like, in the objective sense. Wrestling is just a weird thing from the perspective of, like… thoughts.  That's not what fighting looks like! Ropes don't work like that! It's a fake sport where people with poor to sometimes very good acting ability with a similarly various assortment of physiques roll around and play fight like superheroes. Sometimes a man in a mask jumps off of something. Folding chairs are nature's Swiss Army Knife. Wearing a referee shirt gives you glaucoma and narcolepsy. There are no bad ideas. Wrestling starts from a place of "yes."

It's a totally open forum where any idea is allowed. Sometimes you get a guy who dons a nylon armband that looks like a snake and cobra strikes his opponents; sometimes you get an evil Canadian Mountie; sometimes you get a spooky undead wizard undertaker whose soul resides in an urn carried by his assistant named Paul Bearer; sometimes you get Friar Ferguson.

Yeah, they can't all be winners. I hated the Mountie.

Sometimes a prison warden kidnaps the Chihuahua of a crazy person named Al Snow who talks to a (female) mannequin head he carries with him at all times he named "Head." A few episodes later, that prison warden invites the crazy person to a hotel to apologize over dinner and reunite the crazy person with his dog. Then after the commercial the prison warden (named "The Big Bossman," by the way) reveals to Al Snow that Al had thought was a normal dinner was actually Al Snow's Chihuahua. He had been eating his own dog the entire time and only realized when Bossman mentioned the dish had a lot of pepper in it. "Pepper" was the name of Al Snow's Chihuahua.

Then they settle it at the pay-per-view in a steel cage match, except the steel cage is surrounded by another, bigger cage that for this match they call a "kennel," but which is commonly referred to as "an unnecessary cage." They tried to distract from the monstrosity by filling it with pit bulls. To win the match, you had to escape both cages. They tried to make it look harrowing, but the dogs were all like tranqued up and scared and mostly just barfed and shitted and barfed and ate they barf and doed a sex. 

That match was called The Kennel from Hell Match. They only did one of those matches. The reason why not is because it sucked. Some website called The Wrestling Section rated the Kennel from Hell Match the 19th worst wrestling match of all time. So heads up about the website called "The Wrestling Section": I think website is all written by AI and algorithms because the Kennel from Hell Match has never been the 19th anything.

This isn't the most exciting picture I could find of the match, but it is the clearest.

It is all very, very silly, is what I mean. We all know. We are all well aware.

But you know what else? Throughout that whole entire trainwreck remained earnest. They maintained sincere, unflinching commitment to the bit. It's an art form about embracing anything, no matter how bizarre or eclectic or silly. As long as you think it could move people, you are always free to try. Anything can be a match. Any belt can feel the most important for three seconds. Anyone could tell a story between those ropes if they wanted to. And more people should.

When you're in front of people, you're always portraying someone else, but it's a little different addressing a crowd as "it's just my actual personality dialed up to 11," or "guy who's tough," or "guy who's strong," or "guy who's just happy to be here." But where it seems like other genres are stagnating and becoming more safe, stale, and formulaic, wrestling is richer and more diverse than ever. It's just nice that among the jocks and the tough guys there's a place for "guy who cooks dogs," too.

So over the next number of days which will probably end up being too low but also seem way too high, I want to talk about some of the wrestlers I think are pushing the medium of wrestling through their characters. I'll get it out of the way now that anyone who steps into the ring to work has my utmost respect. If somebody doesn't get mentioned, it's not a mark against them at all. There are just so many all-time greats.  I know. I'm going to leave a ton out and, believe me, it's going to haunt me way, way longer than it's going to haunt you. If anything, it's the finite nature of time and the ever-present looming specter of mortality that's inconveniencing us. Just be nice if you leave a comment, okay?

EVERYONE SHUT UP AND LISTEN WRESTLING IS AMAZING

 Let me tell you about my new favorite tag team: The Boys, Brandon and Brent.

I love them. They are amazing.

They're unambiguously coded as gay. Not offensively flamboyant, but more than just out. They fight like monsters. All their moves make them attack like beasts. Seriously. The way they attack and move is evocative of animals. They have elaborate tumbling routines into moves. It's exactly the weird, different shit I loved as a kid. 

The way they move through the air and dodge and evade is incredible. Don't get me wrong, they're starting off as heelish jobbers. Basically a tag team of evil henchmen there to take pins for their leader, the suave, self-styled hedonist socialite Dalton Castle.

And they do like comedy sound effects.

Incredible. Amazing. There is nobody else out there in the mainstream like them. We need to appreciate that.

Awesome stuff unlike anything we've ever seen this side of the border--at least in the mainstream. This is amazing. Oh my God! It could've been like this all along?? We got all the gravity-defying flippy lucha stuff from Mexico, and it was amazing, but we were missing this. We needed this. WWE needed this.

Would you ever see that portrayed that cool and that earnestly in a Hollywood movie? No. Then why would I care about Hollywood movies?

I hate repeats and rehashes. Show me new stuff. More like this, please.

But not, like, the same thing but a little different. Show me something out of nowhere. Weird. Show me weird. And I say this to you now with all earnestness and sincerity that if The Boys ain't the future of wrestling, then it is a much poorer future for it. This is an amazing showcase of the weirdness wrestling can be. Don't turn away from it. Embrace it! You'll find the kind that appeals to you. 

So let me tell you about the kinds of wrestlers I like. I like the Randy Savages. I loved the vampires and the weird goth team that jumped off high things. I loved the team of breakdancing dorks and their fat friend who slapped his own ass and sat on his opponent's face. My first favorite, die-hard favorite wrestler was the guy  who just presented himself like a star and he was so charismatic he jumped out of the sport and won the championship in a completely different form of media. 

Stone Cold was alright, but he was "a tough guy." Cool. Seen those. Brock Lesnar was intriguing as a hard-as-nails tough guy because he was legit as they come with the credibility to back it up. But I don't care about the next Brock Lesnar. Seen him already. His name was Brock Lesnar.

But let me show you what I really mean. Let me show you how wrestling can tell stories. I don't mean good guy and bad guy. I don't mean David and Goliath. I mean any story you can think of, as long as you can present it in the form of a match. Sound too lofty? Let me provide an example.

Watch this and tell me it's not amazing. You can't. Nobody can survive being that wrong.

This is a match between my favorite wrestler, Orange Cassidy, and career-long friend and wrestling space alien Kris Statlander. Watch as, over the course of 11 minutes, they tell an utterly incredible story.

Dude, tell me this isn't amazing. A guy who doesn't care fights an space alien in an intergender match and it fukken ruled. Let me explain, and watch the story of this match unfold.

Kris doesn't know how to approach an opponent that doesn't attack her, and Orange Cassidy doesn't care to try and win it. Orange Cassidy just keeps evading her and evading her until finally the alien nearly strikes a blow that Orange can only just barely dodge. It's at the turn of act 1 that we see the first part of a multi-layered story and the match unfold. The guy who doesn't care meets an equal in combat, and suddenly he wants to win. And so a legitimate contest ensues.

Oh. Yeah. "Wrestling isn't the greatest medium for telling stories known to man," said the person who needs to stop having bad opinions. Look. Video proof wrestling is irrefutably amazing. Shut up and watch and let it show you.

Anyway, the Earthling's underhanded (some might say "heelish") tactics cause his opponent an injury, suddenly he takes advantage. Now the question of the ultimate twist ensues: is the Earthling the good guy?

LIKE SHUT UP

SHUT UP

WHAT

TELL ME WHAT MEDIUM TELLS THAT STORY BETTER

I'M SORRY TO TELL YOU THAT NO

So the match proceeds on into its final act. The fans have turned on Cassidy and cheer for Kris Statlander as she fights back against bigger and bigger moves from Cassidy's arsenal. She guts it out time and again, just barely beating the count.

In the end, the alien wins. Kris Statlander evades Orange Cassidy's signature spray from the mouth with orange juice. Stat lands her finisher and triumphs to rapturous applause as she seizes Orange Cassidy's championship.

But that's crazy. She gets the Earthlings to chant for her in the end. Her catchphrase came true in the end: "I am your leader."

Wrestling is amazing. It's amazing. Shut up. Yes it is. If you're still arguing I'm wrong, you didn't watch it. Watch the video. Watch it. It's amazing. You'll thank me. Watch it.

That's amazing. They told that whole story without dialogue. Oh my God.

Wrestling can tell a story unlike any other medium. If you say you don't like wrestling, that's like saying you don't like food. Yes you do. You just don't like what's been served to you.