BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
(FOUR) CONSTANT CONTENT
With wrestling, there is no “off season”. So we can watch wrestling basically a million hours a week. The WWE has so many shows that I’ve seriously lost track of what’s on and not on anymore. It doesn’t end there. You can get on the internet and get lost in wrestling. There is podcasts, vlogs, columnists, interviews, shoot tapes, independents, and enough wrestling content to consume a million virgins. Wrestling is always there. Every aspect is there. With celebrity gossip and TMZ, we have our stories there too. We have the athletic sports fanatics loving workrate. We have promos. We have people making silly videos. There is music. There are rivalries. There are results, castings, spoilers, signings, tragedy’s, marriages, births, and death matches. It’s all there and it’s getting bigger every day. I’m getting worried.
(THREE) HEEL TURNS
I love it when the crowd loves a wrestler. He’s done good, he tries hard, he’s of good moral character, and he’s going to do his best to make sure YOU, the fan, goes home happy. The kids love him. THEN… out of nowhere… HE SNAPS! He beats up another good guy, he lets his “real emotions” be known, or he just changes his character and motives. It’s that big turning point in a character arch that gives everyone a chance to refresh and try something new.
(TWO) OLD MAGAZINES
Wrestling gets dates worse than just about anything. It’s typically behind on the pop culture times by a few years anyway. Then when you find a magazine in your garage from the 90’s you realize that all of your favorite wrestlers had mullets and looked like really flamboyant sailors. It’s all in good fun. You know the truth. It’s just these old magazines are like time crapsules. You get to look back, remember a younger you flipping the same pages and then realize how crappy it was. The days of going to a market and there being a half dozen generic looking wrestling magazines that you HAD to have are over.
(ONE) THE ACTION FIGURES
The old LJYN, or whatever, old school toys SUCKED. I don’t care if you have fond memories of them. I had a few of them as a child too. They were big rubber pieces of shit. They were well crafted, but there was not “action”. It was just one shitty pose that you had to “hand-hump” to make them “fight”. Wrestling action figures start for real with the Hasbros. They were little and had weird poses too, but there was SOME action to them. You could pretend to have matches with them. They made TONS of them and they all looked awesome. The ring was cool, they had a little belt, and they were pretty indestructible. From there they moved on to JAKKS. This was my bread and butter. There was MUCH more to move on the figures. You could have pretty legit matches and the look of them was pretty decent. They put out tons of accessories, tons of series, and it was a blast to keep up with all the new sets. Eventually I grew up and JAKKS would be over and they’d move on to some other company. I’m looking from the outside now, but it definitely looks like they’re getting even better. Good for the kids! (and the creepy nerds)
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