Times may change, but hype is still the same

Iremember the good old days growing up in Kimberley when I used to set my parents’ VHS recorder for the early hours of a Monday morning to tape WrestleMania or whatever WWF spectacular was showing on M-Net.

My friends and I would rush home from school pumped up after spending both break times perfecting our moves as we pretended to be our favourite wrestlers.

Whether it was Bret “the Hitman” Hart’s Sharpshooter, Diesel’s Powerbomb, The Undertaker’s Tombstone Piledriver or Shaun Michaels’ Sweet Chin Music, we had them all down to a fine art.

Bearing in mind, we were living in the mid-Nineties, and the Internet was something only reserved for the rich in this small town, becoming the best amateur pro- fessional wrestler in your circle of friends was certainly not as easy as 1-2-3.

It took hours of rewinding and fast-forwarding your VHS cassette – which was more than a couple of notches lower than standard definition quality – then pressing pause at the right moment.

The word pause was used very loosely because when that tiny button was pressed it still looked as if the image was imitating a bunny that had just downed a case of Red Bull.

Nevertheless, we pushed through the pain – both literally and figuratively – as we strived to become the WWF champion of our own little world.

I vividly remember one such Monday in 1994 when Shaun Michaels took on Razor Ramon for the WWF Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania X in the

Clinton Jones

mecca that was New York’s Madison Square Garden.

It was an extra special treat, because this was not just any old match. This was a Ladder match. Only the second time it had ever been seen.

An over-the-top affair where the only way to win was to unstrap the title belt that was hoisted high above the ring.

It was a contest that had us glued to the screen for almost an hour. A contest won by Razor Ramon that – to this day – goes down as one of the greatest fights in the history of professional wrestling.

We were in our element when it all ended. Everything was right with the world after getting our fix of wrestling.

Fast forward almost two-and-ahalf decades. WWF has now morphed into the WWE and in that time it was discovered – to our absolute dismay – that wrestling was fake.

So just like a time capsule all those magnificent memories were shunted to the back of my mind until about two weeks ago, when I was offered tickets to see the new breed of WWE wrestling superstars live in action.

Immediately all those great memories came flowing back and I felt like a schoolkid again. I was convinced it would be as awesome as I remembered.

So off my wife and I go not really sure what to expect.

We arrive at the Dome and it’s an absolute sell-out. Not a single open seat to be seen. Now I am thinking to myself this is going to be epic.

The show starts and the crowd goes berserk, just as I remembered on those VHS cassettes all those years ago.

They are cheering and singing along with all the quirks and actions that are synonymous with the world of professional wrestling. Truly a goosebumps moment.

Truth be told the quality of wrestling was nowhere near as high as I remembered. It was painfully scripted and very badly choreographed – but did that really matter?

I looked around in awe at the new breed of fans with their mobile phones working overtime thinking to myself that even though times have changed so much, the hype that the WWE brings has stayed the same.