Ok, I hereby admit that I, Coyote, watch WWE programming. RAW, Smackdown, Confidential, sometimes even Velocity and Heat.


Back in the eighties, when I was a young lad, I used to watch wrestling every Saturday around noon or so. I'd see Hulk Hogan, Roddy Pipper and other guys beatin' the crap out of each other. I remember when Brutus Beefcake went from being "The Butcher" to "The Barber" and watch him cut pieces of a guy's hair off after he won a match. I remember thinking The Honky-Tonk Man was lame, loving it every time he got his ass kicked, and being pissed off when he got to be Intercontinental Champ. I remember the Hart Foundation. I remember Brother Love and not understanding what the fuck he'd done to himself to get his face that red (and today I'm still not entirely sure how he accomplished it). I remember when the Ultimate Warrior appeared and I thought he was the coolest motherfucker I'd ever seen. He was the WWF equivilent of He-Man from Masters of the Universe. He was the guy who made me think the Intercontinental Belt was cool; cooler even than the Heavyweight Championship (which, at the time, was a kinda fugly fucking belt). I remember thinnking Mr. Perfect was an asshole, but he was also really cool because he seemed to always win, he was Intercontinental Champ, and he was the only guy out there that had tights that didn't look stupid. On those Saturdays, I also remember realizing that the guy whose name I didn't recognize or was already in the ring would always lose to the guy I did recognize or who had a cool entrance. Originally, I thought it was because the unknown guy was just lame. Obviously, later on I learned there was a little more to it than that.

So, I started playing WWF No Mercy well over a year ago on my N64 that I bought expressly for that game. Enjoyed the hell out of it. Still do, sometimes. Anyway, I was looking around online for cheats, codes or whatever for the game and what I ended up finding was a few sites that more or less revolved around the Edit Mode and the Create A Wrestler (CAW) feature. They posted stats for past wrestlers, wrestlers in other companies, characters they'd created, and other celebrities (like Axl Rose or Bill Clinton). I started using some of these, including new look updates (since the game revolved around the 1999-2000 era). So, one day I turned on a wrestling show and looked at what some of the characters were wearing and started updating my game. I continued to do this and gradually, I started paying more and more attention and before you knew it, I was more or less hooked.

So, now I watch wrestling. For a while, I felt a little embarrassed about it, but I got over it. I've played RPG's for a good portion of my life. I love Star Trek. I still LARP regularly, for fuck's sake. Are these things more highbrow? Arguably. It can require a good deal more education to understand Sci-Fi and gaming than wrestling, but nobody can tell me that both forms of entertainment don't attract some extremely backward-ass fucks to their ranks. None of us would want to hang out with the worst of either crowd.

I'll tell you right now, though; I'd be more comfortable talking about wrestling in mixed company than gaming. WWE has fat stock. The Rock is making movies left and right. Up and coming rock bands get promoted by having their songs played as entrance music (t.a.t.u.'s "All The Things She Said") or as Official Theme Songs for a Pay Per View (Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life"). Limp Bizkit played Wrestlemania 19 a month or two ago.

Yes, it's staged. The violence, the results, the dialogue, the relationships and the stories. All contrived. It's soap opera for guys.

But...it's still better than most "reality" television.

And I like it.