Wrestling is my happy place – By Wrestle G

I don’t understand it. I scroll through Twitter, I scroll through comments on wrestling websites,
forums the lot. I repeat, I don’t understand it.

Why is wrestling making people angry? Why are people interested so much in others’ opinions on
wrestling that clash with their own? When did we all become experts in the statistical analysis of
Television ratings?

I think there are lots of reasons. Firstly, we have the WWE who, for over two decades now have
forced the narrative that the ratings war was a cataclysmic event. That everyone’s jobs hinged purely
on those numbers that swung WCW’s way for 83 weeks in a row as a usurping of the WWE’s power
over wrestling that had lasted for an age on the national stage.

There’s some truth in that of course, the ratings were an indication of where wrestling fans wanted
to watch their wrestling. But it has also been used for PR and is now being fed through wrestling
fandom as the be all and end all of their favourite or least favourite promotions.

What the crux of this all is though, is that the WWE have fed a generation of wrestling fans on ‘us vs
them’ there’s the WWE and then there is everyone else. Pick a side, nail your colours to the mast.
AEW haven’t been that overt, but they have labelled themselves for difference, they have proudly
carried the moniker of being the ‘alternative’. A much nicer, less combative way of saying that you
can choose one path, AEW is for you.

And fans very much choose that path in their fandom.

I’m not here today to tell you what to like. I’m not here today to tell you that not watching one show
and watching the other exclusively is a bad thing. I am here today to tell you, in a very Bray
Wyatt/Uncle Howdy fashion. To Revel in the wrestling fan you are, and not to worry about the
wrestling fan you aren’t.

And to do that I want to make an admission. Wrestling is my happy place. It always has been, and it
always will be. When I’ve been sad in my life, wrestling has lifted me up, when I’ve been happy in my
life wrestling has been that cherry on top. It has been constantly by my side since I was 6 years old,
and it will never leave me.

But lately, I’ve found that we all as wrestling fans are not making wrestling a happy place. We are
making it a place where we are constantly looking for ways to mock, constantly looking for ways to
soak in the happiness at others failings. That was never the intention of this sport, and it shouldn’t
be our intentions as fans moving forward.

So, I want you today dear reader to come and indulge in a task with me. I want you to sit and think
of the time in your life you discovered wrestling. I want you to think about what that first image was,
what was it about wrestling when you saw it that got you hooked? Who was your first favourite
wrestler? First favourite match? How did these things make you feel? I suspect we will all have very
similar feelings. Awe, Joy, Spellbound, intrigued. All of the greatest emotions you feel in a moment
of innocence, a raw visceral feeling that we seldom get to repeat.

So next time your on Twitter, on a message board or listening to a podcast and you feel yourself
getting angry about someone liking something that you don’t I want you to catch yourself and hone
in on that feeling you had when you first found that sport and remember that Wrestling is personal.

It offers all of us something we like. As long as you still find that joy and those moments in your own
heart then it doesn’t matter what anyone else likes, they can’t take away your feelings unless you let
them.

Wrestling is YOUR happy place. Keep it smiling.

Until Next time,

Cheers,
G