The art of wrasslin'

I have a secret shame. I don't talk about it with even my closest friends. I've mentioned it in passing a few times on this blog, but that's about the extent of my public acknowledgment of it.

My dirty little secret is: I am a pro wrestling fan.

It is my guilty pleasure. Some people have Twilight, some have reality TV, others have giant bacon and cheese filled corn dogs. I have World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) - the premier pro wrestling organization of today.

It is one of the most ridiculous, over-the-top, fake-y, hyper-masculine things on television. It's guys and gals wearing nothing but tights while they grapple and throw each other around a ring. It's soap opera for men. It's all scripted, meaning it's not even a real sport, and the storylines aren't always well-written at that. At times it is downright sexist, homophobic, and racist (although they've gotten a lot better about steering away from that).

Yet it is one of the most entertaining things on television and I love it!

I bring this all up because WWE hosted its marquee event this past Sunday: WrestleMania. The 30th annual WrestleMania to be exact. More than 75,000 people filled the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans for this year's event while millions more watched at home (including me).

WrestleMania is the biggest, boldest, flashiest wrestling event of the year. The uninitiated will probably balk at the comparison, but WrestleMania is the Super Bowl of pro wrestling.

Now this is not boxing or MMA fighting. Pro wrestlers are less like athletes and more like action movie stars. Except they never break character and do all their own stunts on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

Pro wrestling is like a never-ending action movie; or perhaps a comic book is a better example. It's basic good vs. evil storytelling with larger-than-life characters. Imagine if Chris Evans had to always be Captain America in public, or if Tom Hardy always had to wear the Bane outfit. That's a pro wrestler for you. They are performers.

The competitors aren't battling each other based solely on skills, merit, and strategy. There's a team of writers who come up with plots, create new characters, develop rivalries, and decide when it is time to crown a new champion. The wrestlers themselves have a say in this process as well as they are the ones who practice and plan out every little move that occurs inside the ring (when to apply headlock, when to bounce off the ropes, when to hit him with the chair, etc.), but the outcome is predetermined by others.

WrestleMania is a time to end many rivalries and plotlines and begin brand new ones. Sunday night was no different as WrestleMania XXX (they even use numerals like the Super Bowl) started a wonderful new journey while also closing the book on the single greatest achievement in WWE.

Allow me to introduce you to The Undertaker.

All you need to know about The Undertaker is he is the best. Besides being a physically gifted freak of nature (6'10", approx. 300 lbs. but with tremendous agility and balance for his size), he also took one of the silliest character gimmicks ever (zombie mortician) and turned it into one of the most awe-inspiring wrestling careers ever seen. He's probably my favorite wrestler of all time.

He's so good at his job, you truly believe he's supernatural.You believe he feels no pain! You believe he controls the elements of lightning and fire! He once floated to the ring!

And just to further add to the mythology of The Undertaker (real name: Mark Calaway), he owns the greatest undefeated streak in sports-entertainment. Undertaker has gone 21-0 at WrestleMania.

To go back to the Super Bowl analogy, imagine a football team that won each and every time they appeared in the Super Bowl. And I'm not just talking five or six times in a row - I mean 21 Super Bowl championships.

Each year for the past 9 years, the story has been someone builds up the courage to try and break "The Streak" only to fail like all the others. 2014 was no different. His opponent on Sunday was Brock Lesnar (real name: Brock Lesnar, surprisingly). You may recognize him from his time in UFC.

Despite Brock being 13 years younger than Undertaker, and being a former NCAA Division I Champion and former UFC Heavyweight Champion, Lesnar had zero chance of defeating Undertaker. Taker's a living legend, a god even, to wrestling fans. "The Streak" is legendary; nothing can stop it.

Until Sunday night. Because Brock Lesnar pinned The Undertaker.

What should have been obvious to all of us, a 36-year-old former (actual) amateur wrestler and cage fighter defeated a 49-year-old semi-retired glorified stunt man, instead shocked us all to the core. In a real fight, any rational person would pick Brock to win. Pro wrestling, however, is anything but rational.

I was frozen for a few minutes trying to comprehend what happened. I waited for a replay to show some botch by the performers or trickery on Lesnar's part that might lead to restarting the match, but it was a clean victory. And then I saw the obviously planned ahead of time graphic pop up on-screen: 21-1.

The silence was deafening inside the Superdome.

I stormed around the apartment for the next ten minutes in utter amazement and frustration. They ended The Streak! To a part-time wrestler, of all people!

I couldn't understand the logic to it until I realized they were going for just this sort of reaction. Take a look at those faces I linked to up above: this was probably the biggest surprise in pro wrestling since Hulk Hogan turned heel  in 1996 (heroes and villains are called faces and heels, respectively, in pro wrestling).

No one saw this coming. I hate to say it, but another fault of pro wrestling is how usually predictable it is. The writers get lazy and re-hash similar storylines all the time. Certainly not I nor any of the people in the Superdome expected this; and according to rumors only six people in the entire company knew about the planned ending.

I was mad as hell, but they had accomplished a sense of surprise I haven't felt since I was a little boy and thought all of this was real.

Luckily, WrestleMania XXX wasn't over yet. The main event of the evening was Randy Orton defending his unified WWE World Heavyweight Championship against wrestler-turned actor-turned wrestler/actor Batista (real name: Dave Bautista. They didn't really try hard with his stage name) and Daniel Bryan. (real name: Bryan Danielson. I shit you not.)

Basically, the story is Randy Orton was awarded the two major championship belts (every wrestling promotion has multiple titles so that lower-tier wrestlers have something to strive for) by the company's CBO and COO, Stephanie McMahon and Hunter Hearst Helmsley (better known as Triple H, though is real name is Paul Levesque).

Batista just returned to WWE after a five year hiatus to start his film career, and earned a shot at the unified championship.

However, the audience couldn't care less about Batista and Randy Orton, so a storyline was invented that gave Daniel Bryan a chance to earn his way into the championship match as well if he first beat Triple H earlier that same night (Triple H being a decorated veteran wrestler). You see, a sub-plot to all this is Daniel Bryan has continually been put down and screwed over by Stephanie and Triple H since last August because they don't deem him "championship material."

Following me so far?

Just like with Stephanie and Triple H essentially portraying their actual roles within the company on TV, this is a bit of mixing fact with fiction - something WWE loves to do.

The thing that drives me and many fans crazy is that pro wrestling doesn't always favor the best wrestlers. Too often guys who have the "right look" are put over instead as the top guys because they are more marketable. Hulk Hogan and John Cena are the two most famous examples of this. They've mainstreamed pro wrestling better than anyone else, however, Cena is only an average athlete while Hogan's in-ring skills were complete garbage even during his prime.

Cena and Hogan.

Batista is a guy who fits that mold - he looks like how you'd imagine a pro wrestler to look; like a musclebound meathead. Randy Orton falls somewhere in the middle because he is a better wrestler than Batista, Hogan, and maybe Cena, but has earned more championship spotlight than he really deserves because his body looks like it's been chiseled from marble.

Daniel Bryan, on the other hand, looks like a garden gnome (and is roughly the same size too). He's the complete antithesis to what normal people would picture if they tried to describe the average pro wrestler. He's a long-haired, bearded, 5'9", 200 lb. vegan who looks like he should be working in a record store.

However, Bryan is one of the most gifted wrestlers I've ever seen. He alternates between flying all over the ring to launch himself into his opponent and tying them into knots with submission moves. He started as an indie wrestler, wrestling in gyms across the country in front of tiny audiences with little to no television cameras recording the action. He started making a name for himself and was signed by WWE in 2009 and debuted the following year.

Wrestling fans are commonly divided between two categories: casual fans and "marks".

Casual fans tend to go along with everything fed to them by the promotions. Boo the heels, cheer the faces, and buy up all the merchandising.

"Marks" are people who are able to recognize the better athletes and tend to cheer for them regardless of hero or villain status, which, to be fair, can change on a dime in the world of pro wrestling. They are usually more rabid and boisterous too, and aren't afraid to complain when the product feels shoddy. I like to think of myself somewhere in-between a "mark" and a normal fan.

Many "marks" also keep tabs on indie wrestling, so Daniel Bryan was already well-known in those circles.

Over the last three years, especially the last eight months, Daniel Bryan transformed from beloved indie hero of the "marks" to the most popular guy in the WWE. He turned a single-word catchphrase into the most fan-driven movement since "Stone Cold" Steve Austin during the height of pro wrestling's "Attitude Era" of the late 90's.

You know what; let this WWE video promo help explain the Daniel Bryan situation to you. It does so better in four minutes than I can in 4,000 words.

I could watch that video and listen to that song all day.

WWE management finally decided to listen to the fans. So after months of having the WWE Championship stripped from his grasp, Bryan was given his chance to shine on the biggest stage of them all - WrestleMania XXX.

And he did it! He won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship by competing in two matches on the same night and defeating three of the most decorated superstars in WWE history! Despite long odds and several dirty tricks by his opponents, Daniel Bryan won both matches and won pro wrestling's biggest prize.

Bedlam broke out in the Superdome! Bedlam broke out in my apartment for that matter, as I jumped all over the place! I was my eight-year-old self again. Even GF celebrated a little bit - she generally prefers to just mock wrestler's ring attire or silly speeches on the rare occasions she watches with me, but even she likes Daniel Bryan.

Therein lies the payoff to a long-running well-crafted story, and therein lies the reason I love pro wrestling.

In one night, WWE presented the climax to two thrilling stories that captivated fans. And as my regular readers should know by now, there's nothing I love more than a good story. WWE doesn't always get it right, but when they do it is magical.

On one hand, The Undertaker's greatest accomplishment was tarnished in what is probably the final match in a storied career. Now that the shock has worn off a bit, I can see the genius behind it. I can see that Undertaker, at 49, is ready to retire and was willing to sacrifice "The Streak" to provide a reasonable explanation for fans as to why. Only time will tell for sure, since wrestling retirements must always be taken with a grain of salt (see: Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Mick Foley, and countless others). Meanwhile, Brock Lesnar is now villain of the century for committing the heinous act of finally breaking "The Streak."

On the other hand, a storyline that has infuriated fans for many months finally found a happy ending. Daniel Bryan achieved his childhood dream and sits atop the most popular pro wrestling company in the industry. He holds the two biggest championships in pro wrestling history in the most dominant wrestling company ever. A fan favorite that everyone can get behind now is the top man.

A man who once lost a championship match in just 18 seconds.

A man who was fired in 2010 for an incident deemed inappropriate for TV (he "strangled" a man with a necktie. Back in the day this would have gone without incident, but WWE has kept things PG since 2008). Bryan was brought back that same year because fans and wrestlers alike demanded upper management to give him a second chance.

That's what helped add the sense of realism to all this. Bryan was treated like garbage from the get-go. It truly seems like WWE management never imagined he'd reach these heights. Over the last four months, I've watched the show change dramatically in order to adapt to Bryan's rabid fan movement (and to the sudden resignation of one of their top stars, but I don't have time to get into that mess).

Now they've hit upon something that, in a matter of two short days, seems to have reinvigorated wrestling fans worldwide.

Already new stories are being put into the works. Last night's episode of Monday Night Raw saw Bryan secure his new title reign with some unexpected allies. It showed signs of new blood preparing to take the step into the limelight. The fear will always hang over fans like me that management will change their mind on this new direction, that they'll let Bryan have just a short-lived title reign and go back to having Cena, Orton, and Batista always wearing the belts, but that kinda adds to the excitement and tension. Even if they do, I know I'll come back so I can see the next Daniel Bryan rise to the occasion.

That's why I love this insane fictitious "sport." It is usually mindless action and stupid comedy, but every now and then something truly shocking and amazing happens. Sometimes they hit upon some good story-telling where good usually triumphs, but only after evil gets plenty of solid victories to cast doubt into your mind. Even though the Daniel Bryan one is clearly inspired by Austin's rise to fame, they've assembled the perfect cast of characters to make it feel fresh again.

And let's not forget the great athleticism. Yes, pro wrestling is fake, but only to a certain degree. Ask Mick Foley how fake this felt. It still takes great strength and agility to pull off the moves the truly good wrestlers perform. I admire the men and women who pull it off and trick my mind into thinking it's all real. Daniel Bryan and The Undertaker are two perfect examples of this. I look forward to much more from the former, and always remembering the memories of the latter.

Now say it with me: YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!