Why I Love Pro Wrestling
Sometimes to Manage Depression, You Have to Hurricanrana Your Sadness
I live with depression.
That’s a sentence that’s not easy to write. It’s gotten easier to say out loud, but it’s still tough to admit from time to time.
But what does that have to do with pro wrestling?
Pro wrestling is this strange animal.
It requires the athleticism of a sport and the creativity of an art form. Results are pre-determined, but the risk of bodily injury is still very real.
Performers toil for years just to gain some modicum of respect. Many wrestlers know they’ll never be recognized anyways.
But it’s that love, that passion, that absolute disregard for what others think that I love.
The first thing to go when your depression flares up is your sense of self. Rejection becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because you believe you’re lower than dirt.
But here is pro wrestling to save the day.
Take Rosemary, a female wrestler working for Impact Wrestling. Her “gimmick” is that she’s the “Demon Assassin.”
Rosemary’s story lines often center on defeating undead wrestlers who seek to impose literal Hell on the more “innocent” wrestlers who have not found themselves in such scenarios.
Sounds crazy, right?
But week after week, stories like this are not only told, but are encouraged.
And millions of people watch wrestling. And adore it.
We buy shirts of our favorite performers. We buy tickets to house shows just to get a glimpse of someone we’ve only ever seen on TV.
And I do all of this because it heals me to immerse myself in a world where people don’t care how “uncool” they are (putting aside WWE’s desperate attempts to be accepted by the mainstream).
When your constant concern is that you’re not good enough, not smart enough, not charming enough for the world at large — then seeing pro wrestling is like a revelation.
Wrestling is a world where a man can have the gimmick of a prehistoric dinosaur and can fight someone else whose gimmick is that he’s a rich snob.
It’s a world where demons can fight angels, dentists can fight beasts and superheroes can fight supernatural creatures.
You can escape in a way you can’t in any other medium.
And so I love pro wrestling. And I won’t stop loving it until it stops being so refreshingly bizarre.
