So why, when I found out that my favourite Sumo Wrestler, Asashoryu did I feel the need to take pot-shots and generally be insulting about WWE? WWE has nothing to do with Sumo. It’s not even wrestling, it’s a soap opera which entertains it’s many fans. Why should I have anything against it?
I think it’s because it has the word ‘wrestling’ in it’s title. I should point out here that I quite enjoy amateur boxing matches but do not enjoy Professional Boxing for related reasons. Boxing is a sport, now I admit I’m an unlikely person to enjoy watching sports and I’m certainly not a sports fan but I am a chess fan and I like games. By games I’m talking about things like poker, chess, board games etc.
The reasons I enjoy sports fall into two reasons; one is the sport of it and the other is the art of it. For the sport of it, I like to go to live matches, soak up the atmosphere, eat the food (cream teas at cricket matches, chillie dogs at baseball matches, pie and chips at the football etc.etc.) and enjoy for much the same reason as I enjoy going to see live music. For the art of it, well I didn’t know about the art of it really until I took up Tae Kwon Do. That’s when I twigged, the time sport is at it’s best is when it’s just a very, very fast game of chess. What I really enjoyed about Tae Kwon Do, and in fact what I enjoy about all martial arts, is the sparring. When you are looking for the strategy to take your oponent out, when you’re looking to gain a tactical advantage, whereas in chess you have time to plan out, to think, in sports you don’t, it has to be done very, very fast, possibly instinctually.
So I sat down with this newfound understanding and watched a football match. Then I discovered that in sports, as well as the sport of the thing when it is played well there is also the art of the thing. So I will happily watch a decent match of most sports but my first love is always going to be for the martial arts. They taught me what the attraction is of these things.
To return then, to my original point. I don’t like Professional Boxing because it takes the art of boxing out of it and turns it into a one type of hit only wins and it’s about which fighter can take most of them before becoming terminally brain damaged. I don’t like Pro-Wrestling because it contains neither the sport nor the art of wrestling.
I do know it’s not supposed to, it is and artform akin to soap opera or stage performance. But, it contains the word wrestling. That’s what bugs me, the word wrestling is in the name of this thing yet there is no actual wrestling involved. It pisses me off for indefinable reasons. It’s not even as if I don’t enjoy soap opera.
So, as I have discovered the way to get me to understand anything and get over my random prejudices is to pretend to do it, I have devised a whole new character for new VIP. (A role-playing game which will start at some point this year).