My Wrestling Anniversary
Today, July 1, 2021, marks the 30th anniversary of my first live professional wrestling match. While, I’ve been to many since then, I will absolutely never forget the roar of the crowd and the incredible energy that filled Madison Square Garden to see the evening’s matches, which included The Ultimate Warrior taking on The Undertaker in a body bag match, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, accompanied by Andre The Giant taking on Earthquake and The Nasty Boys taking on The Hart Foundation. I’d been a fan of pro wrestling for years before this, primarily following it on television and through magazines, this date seems as appropriate as any to reflect on what my fondness for pro wrestling has meant to me over the years.
So much of what I know about broadcasting, politics, radio, world affairs, nutrition, anatomy, sports, life and language, I learned from pro wrestling. When I go back and watch classic wrestling broadcasts from decades ago, I can hear echoes of my current presentation in the way Mean Gene Okerlund enunciates certain words. The first time I ever heard the term “Broadcast Journalist”, was when it was used by Bobby Heenan. While I haven’t followed wrestling on a regular basis for years, I frequently reflect back upon the two decades that I did follow wrestling closely. Recently, I’ve enmeshed myself in reading scores of books about pro wrestling- both its history and memoirs written by wrestlers I’d followed by years. The thing that I’ve grown a new appreciation for is how difficult the life of a pro wrestler was (and probably still is). Much like Roman Gladiators of an ancient era, there’s a reason that most wrestlers don’t get to enjoy their golden years. The sacrifice that they put their bodies through, hundreds of days on the road, away from their families and the meager wages they’re so often paid, all for the sake of entertaining crowds of strangers that they’ve never met is something that I find both sad and inspiring.
My fandom for wrestling bordered on obsession- long before there was a WWE network in which you could watch any previous wrestling event you wanted on-demand, my week’s schedule was always focused on seeing the 3 or 4 hours (more later on) of wrestling that aired on TV in my market. It was a wonderful morality play and an incredible story of athletes telling a story with their bodies. Their improvisational skills made them the greatest one take actors in the world and the storylines could rival any soap opera (for better or worse). When I was a young person and I was in a room with one person or 50, I’d find the person in that room that was most interested in having a conversation about wrestling. Maybe they hadn’t watched it in decades….that didn’t matter, I wanted to learn about the stars they watched growing up. Over the years that I’ve been involved in talk radio and politics, I’ve seen untold similarities in the way both worlds tend to parallel pro wrestling. I think being so familiar with the terrain of the wrestling world, has helped me immeasurably in navigating both worlds. Additionally, dealing with the disappointments I experienced as a wrestling fan, has helped me to better emotionally process the disappointments I’ve experienced in politics and talk radio.
Furthermore, the fact that my mother took me to MSG by herself, which involved taking a car to a train station, then a train, then a ferry, then another train, even though she had zero interest in wrestling, would later portend her later efforts to dive head first into all of my other endeavors including television production and electoral politics. Years later, she’d find herself hosting guests for my television program, “Morano Vision” at her house, as they flew in from around the country, and running for State Committee with the Independence Party, even though prior to my involvement, she probably couldn’t have told you what the Independence Party was.
I know that I’ll always be grateful to the world of pro wrestling, for unlocking so many aspects of imagination and opening so many different areas of interest to me. I’ll especially always be grateful to the extraordinary performers who sacrificed life and limb for the sake of entertainment, particularly those that are no longer with us. If history made judgements based on the merits, then Andre The Giant, Bruno Sammartino, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Roddy Piper, Randy Savage, Harley Race, Bobby Heenan, Ted DiBiase and Sgt. Slaughter, would be recorded with the same acclaim that history remembers Spartacus, Commodus, Spiculus and Marcus Attilius.
