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June 7, 2007

CRESS: For the love of wrestling

By MATT CRESS

Tuesday night marked the return of regular professional wrestling cards to the area, so you had to assume I was going to talk about this.

I’m not going to talk about whether or not wrestling is fake, because if you don’t understand that argument by now, you never will.

I’m not even going to talk about how the event was quite a success for the XCW Midwest organization and New Albany’s own Mitch Ryder, who beat former WCW star Buff Bagwell in the evening’s main event.

What I’m going to talk about is love.

For the 400 fans who attended the event, a number that exceeded even the highest expectations, they already understand.

What I am going to say is that in the current sports landscape, there isn’t a lot of room for love of the common fan.

In most major sports, the common fan has been priced out of the equation. This is an era of luxury boxes. An era where sports has become an indulgence of America’s rising new class of corporate royalty.

Ever woke up on a Sunday morning and decided to drive up to a Colts game?

If so, empty out the college funds and prepare to exile your kid to Otisco Tech, because that’s what it’s going to take for an afternoon in the nosebleeds. Hundreds of dollars for an event that is, most of the time, captured better on television than through a set of binoculars you got from subscribing to Sports Illustrated.

That’s where people get pro wrestling wrong. It’s not pretending to be a legitimate sport. It’s differentiating itself through its accessibility. And through its love.

If you go to that Colts game and want to get a word with Peyton Manning, you had better (God forbid) join the media, or put on your running shoes and hit the field, although you will most likely be tasered and beaten before so much as saying hello.

But at Tuesday’s show, if you wanted a word with Bagwell or Ryder, or any other of the athletes on the card, there’s no doubt that you got as much time as you needed. It’s easy when the athletes finish their match and then come out to watch the rest of the matches and meet the fans.

That’s like seeing Alex Rodriguez at a Reds game on his day off. I’m not saying A-Rod doesn’t love the game, but he’s got much better things to do. Like hit the gentleman’s club and put up big numbers for my fantasy team.

And that’s the difference between what are considered “legitimate” sports and wrestling — love.

Instead of an environment where you await the next scandal, wrestling shows are about the common fan, people from all walks of life. People like me and some friends, looking fairly clean-cut in our polo shirts, to guys in factory uniforms with their name stenciled on the chest.

All the way to families and kids clutching pictures they had taken with Bagwell, treasures they will have for countless years. The same way my friend dug out a picture of Dundee that he had taken when he was six years old, just to have it re-signed more than 20 years later.

I’m not saying wrestling is for everyone. I will always feel compelled to defend something that got into my system and never got out, no matter how old I got.

But Tuesday night, and at the next show at Armory in New Albany on Aug. 7, I got to be a part of something I loved.

Hopefully, that still counts for something.

Contact Matthew Cress matthew.cress@newsandtribune.com

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