Writing about professional wrestling has been for me an exercise in churning out old school critical content at the speed of the internet age. I have learned much! I used to be the type to fiddle with my sentences, question the quality of my thesis, wring my hands for days on end before I felt confident sharing my writing with the world, or anybody. But that doesn’t work when one is writing about wrestling. I’ve taught myself to buckle down, let the words flow, and throw them out on the internet to let them find their audience. And if I still find myself laboring over thoughts about RAW by Smackdown time, it’s pretty much old news. I have to get my act together or give up on the idea.
Some ideas I do have to give up on. I wrote a big long thing last summer about the idea of WWE’s hundred year continuous narrative, but it just wouldn’t grok and still never has. This thing I just wrote recently about the global wrestling market I showed to my husband the telecom economist, who pointed out I was all over the place with my talk about cable and internet and this product and that product. I’ve got some kind of good point there, but I haven’t had the spare brain cells to go back and wrestle it down into a coherent thesis.
Thing is, after adding to my shows NXT, Lucha Underground, and now a fledgling interest in NJPW, I’m getting burned out on the pace. I’ve got hefty pile of other projects, too. I’m translating two difficult Russian novels and promoting one that was recently published. I’m toiling away on a difficult to write book about my grandfather, who was a renegade cowboy tycoon in Southern Arizona. I have several other projects I’m laying the groundwork for in anticipation of certain possibilities taking root as opportunities. Plus I homeschool my kids and haul them both to hockey 3-4 days a week. I take care of a family and and a small menagerie. I try to do yoga minimum every other day. I’m always going in eight different directions. Something has got to give, I say, and it is this harried WWE schedule.
I’m not going to write notes on RAW or Smackdown anymore. I’ll tweet about them if I feel like it. I may not watch WWE all the time, either, just because life’s too short when consensus among east coast Twitter folks is that the evening’s show sucks eggs. Plus, I’m beginning to resent the sheer number of often mediocre shows WWE tries to cram down our throats every week. I don’t need to keep up with the demands of their oversaturating product, I’ve got enough to write about as it is.
I will, however write periodic posts about character, story, and the overall state of affairs on RAW, Smackdown, and NXT when good ideas occur to me.
I will also try to buckle down and write in more detail about some of the matches that impress me. This is a challenge, because I usually have to think pretty hard to say relevant things about the wrestling itself. I do have certain smarkish credentials, but I’m a bit of a space cadet about the more technical aspects of the wrestling. I’m still sometimes like, wait, what kind of inverted suplex was that? But I’m into learning more about the moves and holds lately, they’re such a key part of the story. On this topic, I still want to go back and write about that Sexy Starr/Ivelisse match that knocked my socks off a few weeks ago. Hoo boy, that was something. Perhaps it’s what inspired me to write about Wendy Richter vs. Leilani Kai from 1985. I also have a sneaking suspicion that the ladies of NXT have been watching that sublime luchadora match.
And most importantly, I intend to spend more time writing about the world of cottage industry creativity that thrives in the realms of the wrestlers and their audience: artists, internet entrepreneurs, yogis, novelists, pop culture writers, historians, and humorists. Just this afternoon I started writing about a Rob Schamberger painting of Vince McMahon that I find deeply compelling. This stuff is even more interesting to me that wrestling sometimes — just look at what a dedicated and creative bunch of people make up the #wrestlingfamily.
So my friends, this is the plan going forward in 2015. I look forward to writing and hope you all write some great stuff for me to read!
Recent Comments