We are pleased to announce that ONE Voice will be contributing to The Jump Off by submitting a Sports Entertainment blog entitled : Living Inside The Outside Of The Ring. We here at #TEAMJUMPOFF are very excited to bring this new written aspect to the site and if you are interested in publishing a blog of your own, email us at thejumpoffpodcast@yahoo.com THE JUMP OFF...IT ALL STARTS HERE!!!
LIVING INSIDE THE OUTSIDE OF THE RING by ONE Voice
Thousands of people surround me, and they all sound like one roaring voice crying out for a phenom that they are skeptical could even exist. No one is thinking about is this real? Is this fake? All they are doing is awaiting the appearance of this modern-day mythical character that doesn't seem to be just a creation for mere entertainment. Their wait for him seems to be longer than the length of my intentional run on sentences that have started this entry about my first time seeing the Undertaker in person.
Why make the sentence so long you ask? To help build the suspense, similar that which Taker built as he walked out to the ring that night. Almost 22 years later, he still gets the same response. The moment that I was reminiscing about was sometime in the early 1990's. My mom and I had seats along the aisle. The Undertaker passed by while we all slapped at his arm in excitement, and he was cold as ice. The Phenom, the legend, was true, or at least wrestling was that good that it made you feel that way. He received the same level of respect that the business itself received from the fans. Well, that was until his most recent comeback to television for this year's Wrestlemania. You can now hear a reflection of some inebriated guys in their early twenties screaming you suck to him. Taker still gets his respect though. The arena's so quiet that it's easy hearing those couple of guys stands out. They are just confused. They don't understand what we all do...that wrestling has lost a bit of respect to say the least. They are trying HARD with Wrestlemania 28 to get it back.
Let's take a step back - I'm not a blogger or a columnist. But I like to think I'm a somewhat decent writer about my point of view. So you can call me a reporter of sorts. Might I add that it's worth mentioning that it bothers me to hear the boo's for Taker. But that's what happens when you haven't retired, and the world knows you're only going to wrestle once a year. It's not OK that he needs to do that to even make a paper-pay-view, let alone the biggest one, worth buying.
Never have I swayed on how I differentiate wrestling from other forms of entertainment. As a kid, I had a healthy naive view of it. As a teen/young adult, I didn't budge on this viewpoint. I knew it was athletic entertainment, not just marketed sports entertainment. Now in my late twenties, I've grown to have an unconditional love, respect, but objective outlook on each time I watch pro-wrestling. The reason someone may boo Taker these days, is because times have changed. The respect wrestling used to have has changed. The world has changed. That's a bigger conversation for another day. What I want you to keep in mind for the moment is that maybe me sharing my unconditional love for this topic will escalate to a person that will motivate another person to inspire another person to introduce wrestling to their kids like my grandfather did for me.
Fitting I'd start this relationship with you all right before Wrestlemania 28. The event that I'm 1 year older than so hopefully I'm wiser that some of the mistakes we've seen wrestling make over the years, and these words will have a positive affect for them to get it together. They got real fans out there that STILL exist. That enjoy people like CM Punk, Randy Orton, John Morrison who was royally burned recently by the business. Let's hope that if my passion isn't enough, then the End of An Era Match, Rock vs. Cena, Punk vs. Jerico isn't just another big name card...Let's hope that it brings that transition that never happened before. The most recent/best complete era of wrestling was the Attitude Era. There was no transition to Cena, Orton, or even Batista for that matter. Stone Cold and The Rock took their risks and made their own moments, but they didn't pick up from a crappy time in wrestling. Things were semi-hot from rise of the stars from the 80's. Now the WWE needs to right any wrongs from the past by just moving on with more genuine story-lines (true to character at least). What way will this turn out? We'll just have to stay in touch to find out. But trust me, if wrestling doesn't get better...these words will be enough to keep you entertained -
PEACE
