I continue to be banned from the AWF message board, which is actually a blessing, rather than an annoyance, because now I have to do extra work to log onto there by routing my IP through an open relay server in the Ukraine and back through Pittsburgh. It's hardly worth the effort just to read what an "inglorious basterd" I am, written by someone anonymous who would probably celebrate my death by drinking a 24 pack of Old Frothingslosh .
UPDATE: No Longer Banned. So relations with AWF are improving.
After one of these episodes I usually question myself as to why I am a part of wrestling. As has been pointed out no small number of times by vitriolic pro wrestling cultists, I have never taken a bump; not true in the strictest sense because I did in fact take a bump in the late Billy Campbell's ring in the late 90's and in front of witnesses. But since I have never wrestled in the ring before an audience, and according to current enemy #1, Nathan Crown, I can never be "one of the boys."
As I answered back to him, not that he was listening; I do not want to be "one of the boys." Their gig is the performing entertainment art of professional wrestling. Their chosen activity is to go out before an audience (one of which is me) and through training, skill and cooperation with their opponent, convincingly beat each other silly without actually doing so, while receiving cheers or boos (depending on role) and afterward, depending on the promotion, being compensated with pay. It is a young person's game and frankly, just a little too kinetic for me.
I suppose that many of us fans wonder with a little envy what it would be like to enter the squared circle as a hero in a snappy uniform and vanquish the trash talking villain while rescuing the fair maid who has been captured by the evil faction that is threatening to cut her hair or force her to wear white after Labor Day. I did. But now I don't.
So again, I ask myself, why am I a part of wrestling? It's not so much for the friendship, for while many wrestlers greet me pleasantly, for some reason I still have not figured out, there are many more who literally dispise me if one is to believe Crown or any of the most-of-a-dozen anonymous posters on my message board, the GAWF or AWF boards. On the other hand, these are message boards - what credibility is there to be found in that environ?
Somewhere along my 14 year journey through wrestling, I discovered the talent and tools to create wrestling advertisement posters. I am proud of that. According to AWF, it has been a lot more than "not long ago" that I made posters for them, and that's probably true. Time means little to me now so I have no true sense of it. But I did make AWF posters at one time and helped with other AWF shows in non-wrestling ways. Once, at a show in Mobile, I ponied up a hundred dollar bill to the Mobile fairgrounds to keep the show from being cancled. The show went on as scheduled.
Now I am not picking on the AWF. Far from it. The AWF has come through for me as well from time to time in the form of allowing me to set up my table, and also teaching me valuable lessons in miniature golf. It saddens me to be at odds with them right now over something like "those" videos.
I make and (or) display posters for most of the wrestling feds on the Gulf Coast scene and my feet are being held to the fire by individual and groups of wrestlers who claim that by offering my help, I am somehow "harming" wrestling. So in their minds, making posters for SPW and displaying posters for APW ruins wrestling and homophobic videos somehow make wrestling better.
As I have said, wrestling is a strange religion.
Why do I put up with it all? It comes back to that question.
I wish I knew.
More importantly to me at least, I wish I knew why the question keeps coming up.
