Nov 9, 2022
Today I Am Going To Be A Better Writer
I’ve Decided To Believe This, I’ve Done Well For Myself
***Trigger Warning**** This post may trigger some folks, so please proceed with caution.*
Practicing something alone isn’t what makes you great at doing something. In the last 30 years of watching WWE I will say the greatest entertainer in that ring was the Undertaker, but the best Wrestler? Owen Hart.
You may or may not remember him, but Owen was a wrestler, and the Undertaker was a fighter.
There are different kinds of beasts in that WWE ring, and each of them has its own style, some focus strictly on wrestling, and others focus on the shock and awe kind of fighting. Which usually involves chairs, tables, etc.
Brock Lesnar can wrestle, but he chooses to fight. Kevin Owens, fighter, Sasha Banks wrestler, The BST, Wrestler, Natalia Hart, Wrestler, Seth Rogan, Wrestler, and Fighter. Both of the best worlds. There are some who can do it all “well” and those who can do it all “greatly,” but the few that make it truly majickal, well those ones are gone.
Rick Flair was one of the best WWE Superstars in the universe, and that’s because he understood what the audience wanted, and he gave it to them every single time.
Rowdy Roddy Piper was a wrestler by career, but he was a fighter by nature. Rhonda Rousey is a fighter by nature, but a wrestler by career, she can pass as a wrestler, but as a fighter? Release her MMA skills and she’s one of the most dangerous women on the planet. Literally.
Owen was a wrestler, it was what he was best at, this was the days before tables, chairs and ladders were big in the WWE when men alone ruled that ring, and when the focus was mostly on the wrestling and the storylines.
His death rocked the wrestling world and changed the way that things were allowed to be done, but today you have a few different kinds of wrestlers.
You have the shock and awe let me use anything I can get my hands on, kind of wrestlers, then you have the guys who love to fight like Bobby Lashly, who actually know how to wrestle, and then you have the big guys like Roman Reigns, and Drew Mcintyre, who don’t wrestle so much as they do beat the crap out of each other with long legs and heavy punches.
Now that I’ve explained this let me make my point. Each wrestler, male or female, or non-binary, has their particular skill, but not one of them is as good at one particular thing as the other. Because they have to be good in a variety of styles of fighting, they all excel at one over the other.
Becky Lynch is a strict wrestler, she knows all the moves, studied in Japan, and knows the kinds of holds that would make most trained-to-kill soldiers wet their pants. But, she’s not very good on the microphone, unless you get her really, REALLY passionate about something. If she’s not truly interested in the storyline, you can tell.
The Undertaker had very, very few tells when he was in the ring, but you could always tell when he was pissed off, because of the way his lips would curl up or down depending on his mood.
The Rock was always fun to watch because GREAT on the microphone, but as a strict wrestler? His dad was better, and that’s because The Rock is a fighter, not a wrestler, you got me?
The mouth with the mic, John Cena vs the Rock is some of the most entertaining television in the history of the show because both these tools are hilarious on the mic, BUT they don’t hold a candle to the Triple X and DMX years when DMX declared war on WCW. That was amazing, right? But that involved absolutely no fighting. All they had to do was really just be themselves in their mid-twenties being ridiculous.
Different folks, different times, and different skills, practice doesn’t make perfect. I’ve seen guys get up on that stage and put everything on the line and I mean EVERYTHING, I’ve seen broken bones, I’ve seen them break eardrums, bleed, and almost or actually die in that ring (Rest in peace Owen,) and yet the fans will still turn on these guys on a dime.
Hundreds of thousands of shows, John Cena has helped grant more wishes to the Make-A-Wish Foundation than anyone else in the entire world, and he still walks out onto the WWE Stage to the sound of “You Suck,” just like Kurt Angle.
At this point, it’s more of a joke, but it wasn’t always. Kurt Angle broke his neck in that ring, and that was the moment that “you suck,” turned into “thank you, Kurt,” and that took 15 more years before people “forgave” Angle for retiring in the first place, to heal that aforementioned broken neck.
Nikki Bella also broke her neck in the ring, but maybe it’s because she’s a woman, she got a lot more love when she retired with her sister Bree than Kurt Angle did. “The men can take it.”
My point here is you can literally break your neck in front of 140,000 fans, on live television, and it still won’t be enough to impress some people, so stop trying to impress people.
“Today I will become a better Writer.” Yup, I will because I just took you through 30 years of WWE history, for no other purpose than I’ve been wanting to write about it for years, and I couldn’t figure out how to talk to you about how important it is that we take this show for what it is.
It’s amazing what you can do when you’re passionate about a situation or a topic, but if you’re not passionate, if you’re not 100% in, you will get hurt.
Go into every goal with eyes wide open. “I can do this,” is going to get you a hell of a lot further than “I fucking can’t anymore.” I’ve said that repeatedly in the last week and yet here I am, still doing the thing that I said I couldn’t do.
“I can’t,’ lasts for a single moment, and “I won’t,” lasts forever. Choose your words carefully, validate your dreams, and remember that you, as a writer, and as creatives, we don’t have to break our necks, but you shouldn’t try. You’re not a trained professional.
There will be tears and blood, and it will be sad, and hard, but you can do this, you can get better, and you are a fighter. If you fight with words, if you fight with fists, you are a fighter. Be a fighter.
Do not let them take away your goals and dreams because you can’t, because if YOU can’t, then who the fuck will?
