What The Hell Happened To...

...Pro Wrestling?

I loved pro wrestling when I was a kid, loved it. When I was like 10 years old, if I could have quit my life and picked anyone else to be, I probably would have picked the Ultimate Warrior (who, in case you haven't heard, is completely insane now. Apparently painting your face and acting like a lunatic every night eventually makes you go crazy. Who knew?) Even in high school and early in college I watched a lot of wrestling. I didn't care if it wasn't real, it was fun and entertaining, more so than a lot of the other crap on TV. Now, I never watch wrestling, and I haven't for a while. I'm not sure why. I don't remember ever thinking "screw this, I'm done with wrestling." I never made a conscious decision to stop watching, I just slowly stopped paying attention to it, until it sort of faded away, like old married couples do to each other.

So, here's the plan. Tonight, I'm watching Monday Night Raw and keeping a little journal here of what I see. Raw starts at 8 tonight. Usually that'd be a deal breaker because House is on, but since Jennifer Morrison has apparently left the show, I'm somewhere around 40% less interested (OK, maybe more like 99%, we'll see how it goes), so I can easily pay attention to both shows. Since I have Chris Johnson and Andre Johnson on my fantasy team, I may also throw in some Monday Night Football comments, but mostly Monday Night Raw. What I really want to find out is this: Did anything really happen to wrestling, or did something just happen to me?

And here we go. It seems I've picked an awesome night to do this. Not only am I getting an extra hour, but I'm getting all the stars of Raw, Smackdown and ECW in one big Thanksgiving spectacular (by the way, I'll be using the internets to identify who all these stars I'm seeing are, because if I just keep calling everyone "that angry looking dude", you won't know who I'm talking about). I'm pretty confident that I won't find myself, at any point tonight, thinking how glad I am they didn't have to cut this show down to just two hours.

They're coming to us live from Hershey, PA, or as announcer Michael Cole just called it, Chocolatetown, USA. First up, here comes Randy Orton. I feel like I've heard of him. He looks pretty angry, he's also the former WWE champion. So far, I'm learning that Jesse Ventura is tonight's Raw guest host. The internets helped me a out little here too. Earlier this year, Raw went away from having one guy pretend to run the show every week and, instead, they bring a different celebrity (a term they use quite loosely) on each week to pretend to be in charge. I'm sure this leads to many well thought out plot ideas that make perfect sense. Anyway, after doing some typical bad guy stuff, like insulting the crowd, Randy invites Jesse to come out and talk to him.

Ventura announces that he ain't dressed like no governor tonight, he's dressed like wrestling (the people of Minnesota must be so proud). Then he goes on to say he's the governor of revolution (I thought he wasn't a governor tonight, I'm so confused). We're taking the long route to finding out what tonight's big theme is, it's some kind of battle royal to decide who the number one contender will be. These two guys couldn't have less chemistry working together. Also, Ventura's wearing a shiny, sort of snake skin printed jacket and what appear to be swimming goggles, and Randy looks like he fell into a vat of tattoo ink and couldn't get it all cleaned off.

Next segment. Kofi Kingston in a qualifying match for the battle royal we get to see later. Kofi seems to be oscillating between looking happy and jumping around and looking tough and mean. They may still have some character development work to do there. He's wrestling some guy named Dolf Ziggler. Dolf seems to be doing a Mr. Perfect impression (they didn't actually let him talk, but visually, it was pretty dead on). You can tell this match doesn't matter because the two announcers (the previously mentioned Cole and the ridiculous Jerry Lawler) are spending most of it talking about Jesse Ventura and Randy Orton and how good the show is gonna be tonight. Eventually, Kofi gets the win with some kind of super street fighter spinning kick.

Cut to the backstage Thanksgiving spread, which is absolutely getting destroyed by 11PM. In the presence of the soon-to-be-on-the-floor Thanksgiving food, we get an address from The Miz. I remember this guy from the Real World. Back then, he was one of the most unlikeable people on TV. It seems not much has changed. Too bad too, because he finished by telling us that he's The Miz, and he's awesome. Pretty good catch phrase wasted on a pretty hopeless guy. Some people are just intolerable, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Another battle royal qualifier, and here comes Sheamus. Big Irish dude with cool entrance music. Obviously, I'm a big fan. Apparently he kicked Lawler in the head last week, I like him even more. He's wrestling the other Irish guy, Finlay, who I think I remember from WCW. Sheamus's skin is so pale the camera can't actually pick him up, we're just seeing tights and red hair. Apparently they're trying push Sheamus on the fans a bit, because they just let him destroy Finlay in like two minutes. Then he makes sure we know he's a bad guy by beating on Finlay some more after the match. Wrestling announcers are really good at that fake somber tone, like they're watching something genuinely terrible happen.

Another little vignette in front of the Thanksgiving food. I have a bad feeling we'll be seeing these all night. I'm noticing my first trend. When I used to watch wrestling, the talking segments were interesting and funny. The talking I've seen so far tonight has mostly been poorly written and uncomfortable. I can't decide yet if they've decided to intentionally not have a funny show, or if they're just trying to be funny and failing. My point was just amplified by another unbearable Orton and Ventura segment. It's like they're making those two do it over until they get it right.

Here comes CM Punk. More solid entrance music, but I get the sense the crowd doesn't like him. Apparently Mr. Punk is straight edge, which means he's no fun (OK, that was mean). That's funny, because if you showed me a picture of him and asked me, straight edge or meth head, I'd definitely go with meth head. He's off on some tangent about calling the crowd fat. Then he calls his opponent for the night a turkey (get it? it's Thanksgiving. Now that's comedy). We'll see him wrestle John Cena next.

Here comes Cena, and I really can't describe the sound the crowd made for him. Imagine 10,000 children cheering as loud as they can while, simultaneously, 10,000 grown men with way too much time on their hands boo lustily. It was really quite something. This has the feel of a long match during which, as a non-fan, I'll be pretty bored. It looks like Cena's been appointed the new Hulk Hogan. He gets beat up for a while, then he gets a second wind and waives his arms around and stuff and gets the victory. By the way, are free tattoos part of the WWE health plan? This Punk guy is covered in them. Finally, Cena wins the match with something called the attitude adjustment. Also, apparently, I can't see him. I don't know what that means, but the fans do, so OK.

And now we're watching a replay of the first crappy Ventura/Orton segment. But then, hey! it's Vince McMahon. Vince is talking to Ventura, still nothing funny yet, but they're plugging Ventura's new TV show pretty hard. I could tell you about it, but it'd probably be easier to just say that you don't want to watch it, trust me. At the end, we find out that Vince and Jesse are going to do some announcing together today, like the old days, this isn't a terrible idea. I'd stick around for this, but the talking is still more uncomfortable than entertaining. We're about an hour and fifteen minutes in, I haven't laughed once.

Next up, another battle royal qualifier, this one's a six man tag. It's too bad, because these guys each look pretty ridiculous, but they're all out there together, so it's hard to pick one to mock. I guess I'm saying, I don't think we're looking at any future big stars right now. That was quick, the three black guys won. Is it racist that I've seen four black wrestlers tonight and three of them were just on the same team? I honestly don't know.

Hey, it's DX. I remember these guys. Apparently they've run afoul of a leprechaun. That was easily the funniest segment so far, but that's not saying much. It looks like they've toned these guys way down since I last saw them. I'm starting to notice another trend. It seems they're now gearing the show toward two audiences. Children, and adults who take wrestling way too seriously. I'm not sure this is a recipe for success.

Orton's back again, he's wrestling some guy named Evan Bourne. I get the sense Evan's one of those guys who jumps around a lot, but isn't allowed to talk. More importantly, Ventura just invented the word persistency. This guy was a Governor, of a real state, not like the "Governor of Pain" or something. Listen Minnesota, Al Franken was strike two, one more of those and we're selling you to Canada. Predictably, Orton and his tattoos just destroyed that Bourne kid, good persistency out of Orton there.

They're making a sequel to John Cena's awful Marine movie. I'm not kidding. We're getting a look at an extended trailer. Even better, Cena's not even in the sequel, some other wrestler is. What a disaster, I'd rather get my ass kicked by a bar full of actual Marines than see that movie.

Time for the WWE women's division. They've got some of the ladies dressed up as pilgrims. When we get back from commercial, I assume we'll see the others dressed up as indians(yup). They should find the guy who thought this was a good idea, take him out behind the arena after the show and shoot him. I really don't know what to tell you about this, so I'll just say, I don't particularly care for fake breasts and 10 pounds of make-up, but if you do like strippers, you'd love this. So there.

Next up, our friends DX vs. the Hart Dynasty. DX comes out waiving around glow sticks like they're at a rave. Something has gone horribly wrong here. The Hart Dynasty looks like a new Hart Foundation, and I can't say I like their chances. They've got a girl with them though, so there's that. OK, we're past two hours now, I haven't seen anyone go through a table, I haven't seen anyone get hit with a chair, I'm even starting to wonder if they'll be destroying the Thanksgiving spread. What happened here?

After DX wins, they get a visit from Chris Jericho, who is one half of the unified tag team champions. Jericho used to be legitimately funny and entertaining, so, of course, they've got him playing Mr. serious guy. Honestly, he looks bored with himself. He still has his cool Canadian accent though, they can't take that away from him.

Next up is Batista. I would describe the initial crowd reaction as indifferent. He got roughly the same reaction I would get if I got past security and wandered out to the ring. He's talking about whatever it is he did last night at survivor series. Good for him? By the time he was done talking, I think he almost got someone in the arena to pay attention to him. Luckily for everyone, he got interrupted by Kane. That's one big, scary looking, dude right there. He says some tough guy things and chases ole Batista out of the ring. I think everyone's pretty grateful.

Next up, a tag team match. The first team is two black guys called (I'm not kidding) Cryme Tyme. Wow, just, wow. The other team, two guys called Legacy. If I had to pick a word to describe them, I think it would be oily. Yea, those guys look slippery. This seems to just be bathroom break filler time while they set up for the main event. Quick win for Legacy over (sigh) Cryme Tyme. I'm just glad that one's over.

Who is this Santino Marella guy? He was easily the best thing about this show. The writing for his segment wasn't any better than anyone else's, but he did a solid job with it. I think I actually cracked a smile.

The main event is up next, but I can't take it anymore. If my job was to torture terror suspects, I'd tape their eyes open like in Clockwork Orange and make them watch Raw. I'm done, I'm tapping out, WWE has beaten me.

Here's what I found out. This was some of the worst television I've ever seen. Maybe the great stuff they were doing in the 90's set the bar at a level they can't possibly get back to. Maybe steroid concerns forced them to choose between great entertainers and great athletes, instead of being able to turn great entertainers into great (or at least passable) athletes. Either way, I don't think 10 year old me or 15 year old me would have sat through the last three hours. So, am I the one that changed? I don't think so. What the hell happened to pro wrestling? I don't know, but I hope it never happens to me.