The Duke On Beyond The Mat

A couple thousand years ago there were these folks what went by the name of The Romans. What these The Romans enjoyed more than anything was throwing a few folks into a circle and watching them rip the guts out of each other, hit them on the head, jump on their spines and so on. A famous example was a character by the name of Russell Crowe, who ended up killing some guy in the arena on account of the motherfucker wouldn't let him finish his poem.

Don't fuck with Russell Crowe, was the point to be made.

Anyhow, here we are a couple millennia later, and still we like nothing more than to see fellas beat the bejesus out of each other. Sometimes we like to see them get thrown through steel cages and so on. Maybe they'll get smacked in the skull with a chair, or a speaker system, or a toaster.

Nowadays, though, this isn't just a spectacle for the kind of folks what think Cannibal Holocaust Is A Damn Masterpiece, but is actually a legitimate prime-time television event, and more than that, a multi-million gazillion dollar industry.

The reason for this turn of events is a gentleman by the name of Vince McMahon who turned the gladiating from being something to do with tigers eating men's livers into a thing by the name of WWF, or World Wrestling Federation. He brought pomp and theatricalities to the table, and then probably knocked somebody through it. But anyway, before the table was the result of a fat man tumbling betwixt its splinters, Vince made sure that there were characters involved in it all that people would pay to see get mutilated, and also cereals with these lad's mugs on the box, that you could eat whilst setting fire to the plastic toy modelled to look like The Undertaker or The Doink or The Human Enema.

To be honest, I've never had much of an interest in the old wrestling. Sure, when The Duke was a youngster, he liked nothing better than to cheer from the sofa as The British Bulldog or Papa Shango kicked a man in the head. That head kicking, that was very enjoyable to a young man of my gender.

But then I lost interest. It was all fairly dull, if truth be told, unless you liked the costumes and the fireworks. Being raised in Northern Ireland, though, costumes and fireworks weren't that big a novelty to be honest, and the violence was too obviously fake to hold any lasting interest.

Holy shit, though. I've been missing out like a motherfucker.

It turns out this whole Wrestling tomfoolery has got mighty interesting in the intervening decade or so. Nowadays, the videos released of Royal Rumble In The Bronx or Wrestle Dementia IX are rated 18, and are filled with teeth being knocked out of gums and breasts being exposed with little or no regard for social etiquette.