Uncooked

There are several good reasons to refrain from calling professional wrestling "fake": pro wrestlers regularly suffer from the same type of severe injuries endured by competitors of other contact sports; it's unlikely you would be able to pull off the stunts that these behemoths routinely perform 52 weeks of the year; and if one of them heard you call it "fake" they would pound you through floor. So, in future, if anyone suggests it's "fake" in your presence, push your tongue behind your bottom lip at them. And if there are children present, immediately inform the transgressor they are wrong. But sadly, there is no longer any need to add credence to your opinion by going to see the WWE when they are in town.

See, in this country, most people's exposure to professional wrestling is maybe a two minute segment when they're flicking through their channels on a Saturday morning. And most rational people over the age of 10 will tell you it's shit, then flick back to Saturday Kitchen/Dick and Dom. But there was a period in the late 90s when wrestling wasn't shit: the WWF had hired some decent scriptwriters and introduced edgier, reality-based storylines; the simple morality play wrestling had become was turned on its head by Stone Cold Steve Austin, who piledrived the traditional Heel (bad guy) versus Babyface (good guy) dynamic. Your friends would give you stick for enjoying wrestling, but after watching some 'Attitute' era footage they'd realise it was no longer the childish pantomime it once was. Perhaps they might even think it wasn't that bad after all. This success pumped up a grand ambition for the World Wrestling Federation chairman Vince McMahon, and over the following years his rival promoters were either bought out or went bankrupt (apart from the one opponent the WWF couldn't pin: the World Wildlife Fund had inconveniently trademarked the acronym WWF). By 2002 the rechristened WWE had no competitors, and the market forces within a monopoly ensured the predictable outcome: a phenomenal drop in quality, ratings and sales.

This was none more evident when WWE RAW rumbled into The Odyssey Arena on 24th April. Naming the event after the show broadcast on Monday nights duped punters into believing the same production values would be in effect, but alas, there were no TV cameras, no TitanTron, and no pyrotechnics. Then there was the lack of "promos", where the wrestler lays out the stakes for the upcoming bout and defines his persona, giving the audience reasons to love or hate him. The storylines that added a touch of soap opera to proceedings were once incorporated into these promos, but for now 'Sports Entertainment' seems to have lost some of what made it entertaining in the first place. What transpired was a production line of beefcakes swaggering out to the ring, performing their tamest and least injury prone moves for 15 minutes before limping backstage triumphant/vanquished. Worse still was the insulting roster of non-entities and old codgers dragged up to distract us hicks; case in point: Ric Flair. Surely wrestling is no way for a 57 year old to be earning a living. At least the predominantly male audience had the pleasure of witnessing a celebration of 700 years of published feminism in the form of a 6-way WWE Diva elimination bout, when cosmetically altered, spandex-clad women battered each other for oh, at least 10 minutes (a little under-represented in a 2 1/2 hour show, perhaps?)

Which brings us to the fans... as mentioned, most were male and of those a fair proportion were dads accompanying wee boys (but with the cheapest tickets priced at £20 it made a costly night out for any family). The rest were, I'm sad to say, geeky young men. The kind of geek that could tell you all about Iran's nuclear program but get a boner the instant a woman enters the room; the kind whose constant leering forced the MC to cover her backside with her cue cards every time she entered or left the ring. The aggressive sexuality of the fans stands at odds with the elephant in the ring most devotees choose to ignore: ever since naked Spartans rolled around in the dirt in ancient times, wrestling has possessed a homoerotic aspect, and feats of strength and homoeroticism have always had a timeless quality (cf Stallone, Schwarzenegger). The macho image wrestlers portray react with predictable violence to intimations of homosexuality, but the WWE is a business that relies on it's ability to sell interest in large sweaty men rolling around on a mat. It would not be unfair to say that some of the men who pay this kind of money to see what is essentially a live action Tom of Finland comic book may have some issues.

So there you have it: the WWE was once good and is now shit. If you must watch wrestling go and see Ulster Championship Wrestling: it won't look like two ants fighting on a postage stamp, and you can have drink with the wrestlers afterwards. And if you're after more extreme feats of strength and aggression, check out some Fedor Emelianenko videos (Google him)- the hardest bastard in the world fakes nothing.