I was looking over what I had written and realized I left out some
vital info about the time I saw greased up adult men pretend to
dance-fight with each other. . .Live! My friend Cole and I either
towards the end of our senior year or the summer after saw that the
WWF was coming to town and that was too juicy an unintentional comedy
romp to miss out on. We got tickets and made our way to the arena
where the Utah Jazz usually played and even in the approach there was
some people watching comedy gold. There were tons of guys dressed up
like their favorites and wearing all manner of outrageously
hillbillified super-fan clothing homages to the fanciful homoerotic
stylings of the squared circle that is the wrestling ring. We were
giggling to ourselves as we made our way to some mid-level seats and
we were surrounded by the faithful that had allegiances and foam
fingers that had one finger up so that all and sundry would be aware
that in their mind The Undertaker was number 1. They had a couple of
the deep bench wrestlers with the promotion start things off to get
us warmed up and a couple of them even squared off against so local
talent. I don't remember their exact names but it was something like
Tim 'The Human Annihilator' Carter TM versus Utah's own Tim Smith
from West Valley city. As was expected the Human Annihilator had some
rough spots where it looked like only a super-human could prevail and
wouldn't you know? He was able to pull together some super human
strength and win. When they introduced each of the increasingly well
known and popular contestants and their (boo, hiss) evil nemesis
their was clearly favoritism shown towards the good guy. My friend
and I started cheering for the heel and the guys around us were all
somewhere on the spectrum of disbelieving to agitated that we were
cheering for the wrong guys. You never know a tax accountant turned
pro-wrestler may just be able to beat the undead in human warrior
that is The Undertaker. Unfortunately, it was not the accountant guys
day and he lost but not after he cheated some and almost won. All of
the big name match-ups ended in no decision because ours was not a
nationally televised event and the story line would not be advanced
or altered on our account. I did get to see the Bushwhackers in
action until some unsportsmanlike behavior from their heel opponents
made it so they had to abandon the match but vow revenge on a
pay-per-view event maybe. If you thought that professional wrestling
looked fake on the small screen I have to tell you that it looks
infinitely more so in the flesh. One particularly egregious fake
punch that missed Hack-Saw Jim by a good foot, maybe foot and a half,
which sent him reeling had my friend and I in absolute stitches. That
further angered the faithful that were there on something of a
pilgrimage and audience. Their perhaps once in a lifetime opportunity
to indulge in the live event sacrament of the WWF was being sullied
by a couple of unbelievers, and mockers. Rude. Funny as hell but
very rude.
