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Wrestling with REALITY - Wrestling With Reality |
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Written by Glenn BurnSilver
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Wednesday, 27 September 2006 |
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Page 1 of 4
 When I was about 12, my sister and I used to watch Big Time Wrestling on Saturday mornings. There was Andre the Giant, some masked guy from Mexico and other hulking figures throwing themselves around the ring. While our parents slept upstairs, Amy and I would try some moves ourselves in the padded confines of the living room. Just don’t ask how the mustard ended up on the ceiling.
Of course, we thought it was all real, and compared to the spectacle wrestling has become today, it was certainly much simpler and more believable. Not that I am disappointed, but truth be known, everything we watched back then was scripted. Little has changed, explained Tommy Dreamer, a current Extreme Championship Wrestling competitor who has been pounding opponents (and taking his share as well) since 1993.
 Back when you watched it you did see larger- than-life characters paraded about. Back then … people say it was real, but wrestling has always been predetermined,” Dreamer said during a recent phone interview. “But, if anyone told me it was fake, I’d say let me body slam you and you tell me how fake it is. Or let me through you against the ropes, those steel cables. … I did it 40 times in one match. It’s real.”
No, if you want to see real wrestling, head to the high school gymnasium where teenagers square off in weekend meets. This is entertainment. In the ECW, rivalries are planned and hyped, and the posturing looks good before an audience, but the results are determined before the wrestlers walk into the ring.
It is basically a male soap opera, said the 6-foot-2, 265-pound Dreamer. “A lot of the stories we have are very real to life: guys who wound up with someone else’s girlfriend behind the scenes. That’s real life, not television, but we still have to go out there and fight. It’s reality. Wrestling was a reality show way before reality shows were fashionable.
“But (as a wrestler) you feel it. You go to school, learn how to fall and everything, but you still feel everything,” he continued. “A lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about wrestling. … A lot of people don’t understand what we do for a living, but that’s what we do.”
Dreamer recounted some of his many injuries —13 concussions, a broken back, a broken neck, being hit with chairs, being hit in the groin with a baseball bat and “you name it” — the real question is why do this of all things for a living?
“People say there is inherent risk in anything you do. I was just watching a guy climb up my telephone pole because the power was out and he was playing with electricity,” Dreamer said. “If you asked me to go up there I’d say, ‘Are you crazy?’”
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