Popcorn Culture
Ruminations on TV Shows, Comics, And Music
Wrestling is a work. It's sports entertainment with predetermined results. It's a soap opera famously designed for late twentieth century male-identified fans of steroid-riddled beefcakes. It's silly. It, like all sports, is 90% garbage, 10% amazing. It's way better than fat old white guys wearing tacky clothes on a liesurely walk through manicured grass while occasionally hitting a ball with a stick, or that other ball with a stick sport where a bunch of steroid-riddled non-beefcakes stand around in the sun (or the moon if it's a night game) waiting for someone to hit the ball in their general direction so they can maybe catch it or something. Look, it makes just as much sense as soccer or lacrosse or underwater foosball . When it's great, it's Ping Pong Parkour Great, and when it's bad, it's insufferable golf with sweatier men. I've watched A Lot of it. First in the eighties. All of my friends were into wrestling during the Hogan-centric era. All of them. Kids would act out The Interviews, not even the matches, The Interviews during recess, probably realizing they were more likely to grow up into Gene Okerlund or Tony Schiavone than Bret Hart of The Ultimate Warrior. In the 90s, I lived with a family who got really into The Rock, Steve Austin, and Rey Mysterio, and I got hooked back in for a couple of years. Poetry slam took over most of my life in the 21st century, but I would hear people talk about certain names that I would remember, and I would go on Youtube or DailyMotion and seek out the match and see if it still had any emotional resonance. And sometimes it did. I am going to Seriously Condense wrestling history into a few seasons. Each season will contain YEARS of storylines. Maybe that sucks some of the drama out when you don't have to wait a full year for a feud to peak and resolve, but I want this list to MOVE. It will be mostly WWE (which is the product I grew up on) and some WCW. And eventually ROH, Impact, and AEW (which didn't even exist when I came up with this idea). The first season, Rock And Wrestling starts off with a Pilot Episode that doesn't really fit with the rest of the season but includes a bunch of famous matches from before I was born. Some of those matches are historically important, some of them just introduce characters who will come back much later but who you should probably see some of their Ancient Work. I have edited all of these episodes together for my own personal use. I won't ever be sending these files out to people (because copyright is important) but I might do some free Discord viewing if people are interested. Season One: |
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March 2024
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