In between shows for Chadd 2 Badd, 42561 and I took a detour to hit a show in Abilene. It was a Christian wrestling show. I’ve known about them but never been to one before.
Like with real athletes, there’s a strong streak of born-again Christians in the wrestling community. It makes sense. When you spend 20 years doing drugs, committing sexual assault, and neglecting your family, the concept of forgiveness is going to be appealing.
It’s easy to see why Christianity caught on. Do whatever evil shit you want and then you say sorry and it’s fine. What’s scary is that it’s on the wane now. Why is that scary? Because that means people don’t even care about getting away with evil shit now.
Wrestling seems like a weird thing to mix with religion, but if god didn’t like violence he wouldn’t make so many violent people right? And he wouldn’t make everyone else love watching it. It really wasn’t much different from a normal wrestling show.
The thing that was different was the Nazis. Not in the crowd. I mean I hope not. 42561 and I wrestled a tag team called Ubermadchen and they were doing a straight up Nazi gimmick. That was a thing in wrestling in the 30s, I’ve heard. I was shocked that it was happening in modern times.
It really made me wonder what being a wrestling heel is. I don’t think bad guys do enough to cross the line in wrestling. To really make people mad. I’ve said before that my goal as a heel is to rile people up like in the old days when and old lady would try to hit you with her cane.
But I have my limits. Should I judge these women because they don’t? Or at least have different limits than me? Is there a line where some villains shouldn’t be presented in any light, even that of being defeated?
Once in a while in the south, I see someone with a KKK gimmick. It makes me uneasy even though they’re being portrayed as buffoons. If you have an utterly reprehensible character and you don’t try to gain any sympathy for them, does that make it “okay”?
I watched a movie where a guy goes around beating pedophiles to death with a hammer. It seemed pretty fucked up because you’re still watching people get violently murdered. There’s a reason we don’t hang people in the town square anymore.
I’m not sure what I’m saying. I had a weird night in Abilene.
