Five Hours In Paris

20 February 2006

In college I had a brief, and rather secretive, affair with professional wrestling. While I grew up during what many consider to be wrestling’s golden days (i.e. the time of Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant), I was never on of those kids that really got into it. Wrestling always seemed a little too fake to me to really enjoy, which is odd considering my continued love of almost anything animated.

Flash forward to junior year of college when my roommate began watching the WWF¹ every Sunday and Monday night. Jeremy was one of those kids who really got into wrestling when he was growing up, and at the time his younger brothers were very much into professional wrestling. In addition to bonding with his brothers, I suspect that watching wrestling was somewhat nostalgic for Jeremy, much like finding a toy from one’s childhood. Although I suppose it could also be that Jeremy just really enjoyed professional wrestling, and that would be okay too.

When Jeremy first started to watch wrestling in our dorm room twice a week I did what any good liberal-minded, elitist, English major would: I mocked him relentlessly. Many of my taunts centered around the fake-ness of it all, a charge that professional wrestling has alternately ducked and embraced since the beginning. My taunting had no effect, Jeremy continued to watch. The surprise was that I found myself getting more and more drawn into the world of the WWF. Week after week I found myself pulled in more and more. I knew the affair was in full swing when I found myself discussing the previous nights proceedings and speculating about the next episode over lunches. Imagine my horror, I was supposed to be spending all of my free time worrying about to whom Shakespeare wrote his sonnets, not whether Triple-H would finally beat the Rock for the WWF title.

So there I was, for nearly an entire year, rapt by what might happen on the next episode of Smackdown. While the exact plots escape my memory now, I do remember that I wasn’t entirely surprised when Triple-H turned heel and abandoned his friends. I was surprised that Mick Foley could return each week after the punishment he put his body through. While professional wrestling is certainly fake in the sense that the outcome of each match is known, and that the matches are very choreographed, wrestling is very real in the ways that some of the wrestlers are injured. I find the idea of putting oneself in that sort of danger incredibly idiotic, but at the same time I have an odd respect for the men and women of the WWF willing to push their bodies to those limits.

And then, after almost an entire year, the affair was over. I moved out of the dorm and no longer had cable. I also started dating Jenn and suspected that she wouldn’t find my interest in the WWF very endearing. I’ve occasionally lingered on wrestling on television a little longer than should be expected for someone just flipping through the channels, but I’ve never been drawn in again like I was that year in college. Perhaps it’s because Jeremy is no longer here to encourage me, or that the characters I like no longer seem to be in the spotlight, whatever the reasons I’ve moved on.

Professional wrestling had always seemed distinctly American, not unlike NASCAR or country music. Sure, I knew there was something similar to the WWF in Japan, but I didn’t imagine it to be nearly as popular as it was and is here. Imagine my complete surprise then when, finding myself in a Paris hotel for five hours the day after Christmas², I found professional wrestling in France. Could this be true? Could the French, who we normally think about as being very cultured (which some interpret as snobbish), also enjoy watching two grown men pummel each other surrounded by soap-opera-like drama?

Of course it was very late at night (or very early in the morning depending upon your outlook), so professional wrestling may not have the following in France as it does here. But then again the WWF didn’t start out in Prime-Time here either.

I enjoyed my wrestling relapse in Paris. I didn’t understand a word of what was spoken, either by the announcers or the wrestlers, but thanks to my earlier affair with the WWF I didn’t need to know what was being said. Trash talk is the same in any language. Here I was, stranded in a hotel room half a world away, feeling just a little bit better about the past few days because of a little escapism on French television.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of watching wrestling in that lonely Paris budget hotel was recognizing characters from my earlier affair with the WWF. At first it was just the character types, but then, in the last match of the evening, appeared a character who seemed to be plucked straight from the WWF in 1999. Everything from his stringy black hair to his attitude, from his moves to his black and green unitard was the same. Even the way he taunted the other wrestler was the same.

I’d like to think that this is the same wrestler I had watched and rooted for so many times in college. And I’d like to think that he’s moved to France to bring his love of professional wrestling to another culture. After-all, as I know all too well, it only takes one other person’s enthusiasm to get drawn in and to start to love it as well.