A “sport” I will never understand
Okay, I admit: I have never understood, and I do not think I will ever understand, why this “sport” (sorry, I cannot avoid the quotation marks…) fascinates so many people. Men, women and even kids sit there and watch two or more people act like this in sometimes ridiculous costumes and just do what the choreographers told them to do and how it was rehearsed, the audience is screaming and cheering and completely freaking out… But what really confused me this morning reading the online version of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was: there was an article on this (as I thought) respectable news site about Tim Wiese’s first professional wrestling fight, even with an added video and picture gallery. I expected that in the Bild Zeitung, but not in the FAZ. Okay, he was a professional and well-known football player in Germany. But so many professionals who end their career do great things, further young sportsmen’s and -women’s talents, are socially committed and so on — and never end up in the news. Is it because he was a football player and not a gymnast, rider or swimmer? Or is the problem on my side, do I not get it because wrestling is not a sport I can take seriously? I know, the wrestlers have to be in a perfect condition, have to be highly concentrated so that they exactly do what they are supposed to do to make sure that they do not hurt each other seriously. But why do they simulate fights? Why is it so thrilling to watch people fighting like this? Am I such a wet blanket that I only see the (acted) brutality and ask myself: where is the sense in that? Maybe I should start with myself. Due to the fact that even the FAZ put that article on their starting page, there has to be something about wrestling. Or there is just a wrestling fan in the sports editorial who wrote the article and I can stay with my opinion.
