Wrestlemania XXVII – epilogue

Well, it was an epic night of fireworks, costumes, staging, choreography and physicality. Undertaker extended his streak to 19 – 0, despite the fact that he had to be carted from the ring on a stretcher; The Miz (my favourite…did you see him on Conan last week) beat John Cena to retain his title, in kind of a lame match ; Randy Orton and CM Punk tried to out-psycho each other in an excellent match that ended with a flying RKO; Rey Mysterio and Cody Rhodes got ugly with each other in a match that will only increase their hatred of each other; our homey, Edge, surprisingly defeated Alberto Delrrrrrrio and then proceeded to trash Alberto’s vintage Rolls Royce (a move which my eight year-old daughter felt was, “not necessary at all” and I agree with her).

Ever since my 10 year old son has got me involved in the WWE Universe (we’ve even attended two matches and we watch Smackdown every Friday night) I have become a bit obsessed. I love the storylines and the characters; the choreography and physicality of the matches is quite something. These guys (and gals) work their asses off. Their tour schedule looks like a rock band’s schedule with shows every night in all of the cities that any respectable rock tour would hit. Except these guys have to slam their bodies around every night (and some them are not all that much younger than some rockers that we know). They travel in tour busses with their crews and production in tow, some nights they play to half filled houses and some nights, like Sunday night, they find themselves in front of 70,000 people…but each night, no matter where they are, they need to “bring it” (as The Rock says). Its impressive and most importantly, really fun to watch. They are also marketing geniuses…no sooner had John Cena walked into the Wrestlemania ring in his new T-Shirt than I got an email hawking the sale of that new shirt. I’d love to see a behind the scenes documentary look at pro-wrestling (I’m sure its not a pretty sight) does anyone know of one? I would bet that the film The Wrestler is a pretty good depiction of what happens to a lot of these guys when their bodies finally give out. There is no doubt a lot of dark corners in this world (Chris Benoit found himself in the darkest of these corners), but I have grown to have tons of respect and admiration for these athlete-entertainers.