Origins of Nostalgia

I don’t follow professional wrestling now.  I don’t really care for it and about it now, and I certainly don’t have time to spare to watch all the various incarnations of wrestling out there.  I don’t even own a working TV.  But there was a time in my life when watching wrestling was a weekly ritual, almost on par with watching the new Star Trek: The Next Generation episode.  Every Saturday afternoon, after watching our cartoons, my brother and I would tune in to catch the latest plot twists and feuds happening in the world of the WWF.  (I still call it the WWF and not the WWE because that’s what it was when I watched.)  Occasionally they’d show some matches too.   For me it was, and still is, all about the spectacle that is wrestling.  The matches are fun to watch but become predictable.  The characters and personas that the wrestlers create, that’s where it’s gold. 

I grew up watching wrestling at a pretty early age.  I believe it was the old AWA circuit that I watched first and it used to be on later at night.  It was one of the only things I remember being able to stay up late to watch.  This was back in the early 1980’s.  My favorite early wrestler was Baron Von Raschke.  He’d been a heel (bad guy) most of his wrestling career, but when I watched him he’d gotten older and had turned face (good guy).  He still had elements of his heel days though, still being vaguely an evil WWI style German.  All this I didn’t understand then of course.  What I loved about him was his finishing move, the claw or brainclaw.  For some reason as a 5-year-old kid I loved this.  

As I grew up in the 80’s wrestling hit it’s peak in popularity.  Though still inappropriate in certain ways, mainly blatant uses and promotions of stereotypes, wrestling was a little more kid friendly in those days.  There certainly wasn’t as much sexual content as there is today.  It was a very mainstream type of entertainment, with wrestling entering back into prime time television.  The WWF and its top entertainers began to reach global icon status. Though I was never on the Hulkamania bandwagon (thank god), and I never was a huge fan of the Ultimate Warrior, there was no denying that they were some of the most liked and most popular celebrities in my elementary school, and I’m sure most elementary schools across the country. 

I eventually grew out of following wrestling in the 1990’s.  Getting older and having other interests won out.  The product had also started to change too.  Things didn’t seem quite as fun.  The characters were quite as interesting, with the brief exception of The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin in the late 90’s.  And so now I look back on the time with heavy nostalgia.  I am just as entertained now though watching the old wrestling clips and interviews, maybe even more so.  But now I’m much more entertained by the heels, the bad guys.  They seem much more interesting, and much funnier.  Watching Rowdy Roddy Piper [1], Macho Man Randy Savage [2], Jesse The Body Ventura [3], and The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase [4] is high entertainment and high comedy to me.  These guys were expert actors and so skilled at making the audience hate and love them at the same time.  That is something that I am still very impressed with.

Works Cited:

[1] "Roddy Piper promo before Iron Shiek Match" YouTube <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99fitG5XM4o&feature=related> (accessed May 31, 2011)
[2] ""Macho Man" Randy Savage" YouTube <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E7Ch4Gw-Kk&feature=related> (accessed May 31, 2011)
[3] "Jesse Ventura commercial" YouTube <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OILrhjni-8> (accessed May 31, 2011)
[4] "Ted Dibiase Promo" YouTube <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td9i6-oa4Kw> (accessed May 31, 2011)