Like many teenagers, or at least many of the teenagers who I was friends with, I used to be something of a wrestling fan. By which I mean the sports entertainment wrestling best exemplified by what was then the WWF. I grew out of it but since moving to the USA I discovered an abundance of now-WWE programming on the Peacock streaming service. Dipping into that programming has rekindled a childhood spark.
Alongside the weekly shows themselves, Peacock also hosts a number of documentaries about the wrestling world. My favourite to date has been a documentary about Ric Flair. For all the showmanship and playacting of professional wrestling, Ric Flair certainly had as colourful and dramatic real life. The same was true of Yokozuna based on the documentary I saw about him.
With the TV rekindling my interest, I took a look at where the shows were being filmed. By chance, it turned out Smackdown was coming to Washington DC. Having watched enough real American sports, I felt it was only right to watch a fake one! Tickets purchased, Friday night came around and I was off to the Capital One Arena.
The show was certainly a spectacle. As if it was obvious enough on screen, the sound of bodies hitting the mat prove that whatever you might think about how realistic the wrestling is, the men and women flying around the ring certainly take a knock. The atmosphere was great. It is impressive to see how the wrestlers work the crowd and get that reaction which comes across on TV too. If there was any problem, it would simply be that I wasn’t fully up to speed on all the storylines and so it wasn’t as interesting to follow the matches and the segments in between which form part of those longer plot arcs.
Overall it was a great trip down memory lane, albeit with a different cast of characters. The WWE certainly know how to put on a show. I’ll probably be back again.
Commonplace 