{"id":1517,"date":"2010-03-09T00:02:23","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T05:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ringsidereport.com\/?p=1517"},"modified":"2010-03-09T00:02:23","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T05:02:23","slug":"a-column-by-an-old-weird-wrestling-fan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/?p=1517","title":{"rendered":"A Column by an Old & Weird Wrestling Fan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By John Pitroff<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whether or not you can tell by the columns I write about pro wrestling, in only a few months I will be 25 years old.\u00a0 I realize most of the time I sound like a fifteen your old mark, but that is beside the point.\u00a0 Complaining about champions, groaning about talent, and acting as if I could write better storylines than the WWE writers is something I need to get over.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been doing that since I was 15.\u00a0 My life character has grown less than the AJ Styles character has grown since the beginning of TNA.\u00a0 It will be soon time for my heel turn
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\nBut, with age comes thought, and I have started thinking about a lot of things lately.\u00a0 What is going on with my life, what have I done of consequence, what more could I have done, where am I going, what will the rest of my life consist of?\u00a0 Why do my wrestling columns always seem to be more about life than wrestling?\u00a0 Why do the beginnings of my columns always ask so many questions, and why do I even ask about why I ask so many questions?\u00a0 I guess it isn\u2019t a bad thing I ask questions.\u00a0 WWF forgot to ask questions when they gave the Phantasio character the green light to appear on national television.\u00a0 What am I saying?\u00a0 That character was awesome, and I\u2019m sort of angry I never got to see more of him.\u00a0 He seemed to just disappear.\u00a0 Disregard that lame joke and please continue reading.
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\nIs wrestling going to be part of all that is to come?\u00a0 One reaches an age where they first feel like an adult, and I have reached it this last year of my life.\u00a0 One question that just came to my mind about this whole adult process is one in which I am not so sure I want to directly confront.\u00a0 Like Vince McMahon to Steve Austin circa 1998.\u00a0 Here it is:\u00a0 Am I now that old weird adult wrestling fan?\u00a0 I must be.\u00a0 What other adult spends hours every week writing two columns about wrestling just for the fun of it?\u00a0 Old?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Weird.\u00a0 For sure.\u00a0 Wrestling fan?\u00a0 Of course.\u00a0 As Ron Simmons would say before his recent retirement:\u00a0 \u201cDamn.\u201d
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\nI never wanted to be that adult wrestling fan alone at shows going insane because it is all I have left.\u00a0 Hell, I already have been doing that my entire life.\u00a0 But, at least before I had the excuse of, \u201cI was young and stupid, we have all been there.\u201d\u00a0 Bringing signs to independent wrestling and house shows is something I need to stop, regardless of age.\u00a0 At what point does growing up become relevant here?\u00a0 At what point does it just become creepy to be a wrestling fan?\u00a0 At what point do I realize that when I beg Hulk Hogan to stop stepping foot in the ring to wrestle, that perhaps I should stop marking out when does.\u00a0 Who needs to grow up Hulk Hogan, or me?\u00a0 Hogan growing up?\u00a0 How much older can that man get?
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\nDon\u2019t get me wrong, wrestling fans of all sizes, shapes, colors are cool to me.\u00a0 As I mentioned in a previous column, wrestling fans are just people, and just as diverse a group.\u00a0 Somehow I likened fans of wrestling to Snickers (don\u2019t ask me how, I have no clue).\u00a0 Bite size, King size, regular size, fun size.\u00a0 The fact is that I have just come around to the idea of older, adult wrestling fans.\u00a0 Just like I have only recently enjoyed the King size Snickers.\u00a0 Age teaches you things\u2026
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\nSometimes one forgets to learn from the words in his own columns, because I was still myself living with the stigma that older wrestling fans need to do something better with their lives.\u00a0 I have to admit, I\u2019m still having trouble understanding these adult Star Trek dorks, although I am sure they feel the same way about me.\u00a0 They like shows and movies about humans flying around in spaceships, I like watching shows where 80 year old women give birth to hands.\u00a0 The is a schism here, and we have to attempt to understand one another.\u00a0 Let\u2019s understand that we will most likely never understand each other.\u00a0 Understand?\u00a0 Me either.\u00a0 Star Trek and wrestling fans do have something in common, and no, it is not the fact that they don\u2019t have sex that often.\u00a0 William Shatner recently was a guest host on Raw\u2026we might be more alike than at first glance.
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\nOnly recently have I opened my mind to the fact that these adult wrestling fans are just as cool as the rest of the wrestling fans of the world.\u00a0 I used to think they were totally out of their minds, needed to grow up, and needed to find some sort of hobby to fill up their day.\u00a0 Now that I think about it, all of this is still true, but it is these things that make them as cool as they are.
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\nAren\u2019t the same things true of any wrestling fan, regardless of their age?\u00a0 Those are things you hear as a wrestling fan, no matter your age:\u00a0 \u201cYou are crazy, grow up, get a life and find a hobby!\u201d\u00a0 Perhaps the fact that are out of their minds, refuse to grow up, and need a hobby to fill up their day is the fact that makes them cool in the first place.\u00a0 As far as that hobby goes\u2026why not just start to collect wrestling action figures?\u00a0 Is it sad at the age of 25 I still play with those things, and I just had a dream about them last night?\u00a0 No, seriously, I did.\u00a0 No need to interpret that dream, I already know what it means:\u00a0 YOU NEED TO GET OUT MORE JOHN!\u00a0 When you are a wrestling fan and someone tells you to get a hobby, I\u2019m pretty sure they didn\u2019t want you to find a hobby that involved pro wrestling.\u00a0 Then again, anything that can get an adult to play around with toy action figures has some sort of magical power that only Phantasio could recognize.
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\nIt is relevant here to compare adult wrestling fans to adult fans of sports.\u00a0 Couldn\u2018t a lot of these \u201cnegative\u201c aspects of being an adult wrestling fan pertain just as much to being an adult fan of the NFL, if not even more so?\u00a0 Perhaps the NFL fans are worse.\u00a0 Don\u2019t they need to stop acting insane, grow up, and find a hobby just as bad as even the most die hard fifty year old wrestling fanatic?\u00a0 Seriously, being already terribly overweight, getting drunk on beer, eating wings, going to games in freezing temperatures with your shirts off exposing your fat bellies with letters painted on them is going a bit far as a fan.\u00a0 Wait a minute, what am I saying?\u00a0 That is awesome!\u00a0 Where is that type of dedication, wrestling fans?\u00a0 I always like to think of wrestling fans as the most dedicated, most insane, most fun group of fans that exist, but c\u2019mon, boys, man up, we aren\u2019t going to games dressed up as dogs barking uncontrollably!\u00a0 What happened to your Spirit (squad) wrestling fans?!
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\nThe thing I like about older fans is that they still find awe in something that they loved as a kid.\u00a0 They don\u2019t blockage that type of emotion because it is youthful, because it is playful, because it is downright fun.\u00a0 Not enough people know how to have fun, and many a reason for that is because they are too scared by the judgments of other adults.\u00a0 Seriously who doesn\u2019t like running up escalators the wrong way?\u00a0 But, then, who does it as an adult?\u00a0 Why not?\u00a0 Societal judgments.\u00a0 And, who doesn\u2019t enjoy a good wrestling show?\u00a0 But, who talks about it?\u00a0 The same amount of people that run up escalators the wrong way.\u00a0 The next person that shows up to the office next Tuesday and brings up the previous nights Raw at a board meeting deserves a raise. The next adult to build a wrestling ring in the backyard or to hire Doink The Clown for their child\u2019s birthday party deserves some adulation.
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\nIt has come to the point where I am that adult wrestling fan, whether or not I want to admit it.\u00a0 It took a long time for me to come out of the wrestling closet and admit my love of wrestling.\u00a0 Things felt a lot better once I could be honest about my love of wrestling.\u00a0 Recently, I have been living with the fact that now I am an adult. In addition, I am still a wrestling fan.\u00a0 I know most wrestling fans aren\u2019t that smart, but let\u2019s put this together. I am an adult.\u00a0 I am a wrestling fan.\u00a0 That means that I am an adult wrestling fan.
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\nPerhaps this is my coming out as an adult wrestling fan.\u00a0 Yeah, I\u2019m an adult.\u00a0 Yeah, I love pro wrestling.\u00a0 Yeah, I get what is going on.\u00a0 Yeah, I still like it nonetheless.\u00a0 Yeah, I say yeah a lot.\u00a0 No, I\u2019m not stupid or ignorant.\u00a0 And, no I don\u2019t live in a trailer park, although I wouldn\u2019t mind getting a place with Duke \u201cThe Dumpster\u201d Droese.
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\nThere are cooler older wrestling fans, those dudes that never lost the passion.\u00a0 The ones that go to shows and yell and scream and become a kid again.\u00a0 The ones I used to think of as weird.\u00a0 I guess it is tough to judge someone when you become the thing you were judging.\u00a0 Perhaps it is tough for an outsider to understand because they just see an adult watching men in spandex rolling around with one another and having too much fun while watching it.\u00a0 See, I told you we would never understand one another.
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\nGrowing up is a fun thing to do.\u00a0 And, everything looks different in retrospect.\u00a0 It is easy to judge wrestling fans as insane madmen who need to do with more with their lives, especially when they are no longer kids.\u00a0 But, when you come to the point where you are now an adult, and still a wrestling fan, you must confront the fact that you have now become what you used to laugh at and were never able to understand.\u00a0 Next time, before I go judging away more Judge Jeff Jones with Mike Awesome, I will look attempt to look in retrospect first.\u00a0 I will attempt to put myself in the wrestling boots of another.\u00a0 I apologize for this abrupt ending, but my wrestling figurines are on my mind and I need to go book a match.<\/p>\n

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By John Pitroff Whether or not you can tell by the columns I write about pro wrestling, in only a few months I will be 25 years old.\u00a0 I realize most of the time I sound like a fifteen your old mark, but that is beside the point.\u00a0 Complaining about champions, groaning about talent, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27,708,775],"class_list":["post-1517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing-news","tag-27","tag-tna-old-school","tag-wrestling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}