LionDen
03-30-2007, 11:59 PM
Below is an article the Detroit News has up about obsessed wrestling fans.
Wrestling fans pin down fun
Obsessed followers gear up for WrestleMania
Francis X. Donnelly / The Detroit News
At wrestling matches, they paint their faces, dress like super villains, give themselves bombastic nicknames, make obscene gestures and strut around with oversized championship belts. And that's just the fans.
Sometimes they even fight each other but, unlike the wrestling matches, the battles in the stands are real.
Go ahead and laugh. Wrestling fans don't care. They've heard all the insults.
Most customers realize wrestling isn't real. Their emotions are as scripted as the action in the ring. And that's the point, they said.
They're stars -- ones of minute wattage, to be sure, but stars, nonetheless -- in the ever-expanding billion-dollar constellation of professional wrestling.
"There are some strange people at wrestling matches," said Richard Burkard, 68, a retired car salesman from Harper Woods who has been attending for more than six decades.
The supernova of this strange galaxy is WrestleMania, four hours of orchestrated, choreographed mayhem that comes to Ford Field on Sunday.
The annual event is wildly popular because it culminates all the byzantine plots of sex, betrayal and revenge from the past 12 months of matches, fans said.
Among those attending Sunday will be Rick Achberger, 38, a cell phone district manager who attends 40 matches a year around the country.
Achberger, who often sits in the front row with a dozen inflammatory signs and playfully argues with the wrestlers, has become such a fixture at events that other fans refer to him as the Sign Guy.
All those trips have left him $50,000 in debt.
"I'm like the wrestling version of Carrot Top," he said.
'I'm a little too obsessed'
At the start of a wrestling show Monday at the Allstate Arena in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Ill., star Stone Cold Steve Austin talked to the sold-out crowd with a handheld microphone.
Austin, a 252-pound adrenal gland whose head is completely shaved, had the look of most wrestlers: wild eyes, tight jaw, perpetual scowl. It's the face of barely contained fake rage.
Every time he paused during his diatribe against wrestling mogul Vince McMahon, the crowd responded with Austin's catch phrase, "What?" The bullet-headed wrestler and the 17,500 fans formed a cadence like the audience of a rock concert singing its favorite song.
Watching the televised spectacle from her home in Royal Oak was 16-year-old Fayth Yono, who yelled at her TV, referring to McMahon as "McWoman."
"I'm way over-obsessed with wrestling," she allowed. "I'm a little too obsessed."
Later in the Rosemont show, when the hated McMahon bounded into the arena with an exaggerated strut, arms pumping wildly, the crowd erupted with a flurry of thumbs pointing down.
After a night of head butts, heart punches, body slams, eye gouging, cobra clutches and atomic spine crushes, no gladiator was bleeding and all left the ring on their feet.
It's like reading a comic book where the characters leap off the page -- and hit their foe with a wheelbarrow.
WHOMP! SPLAT!! OOOF!!!
Eric Sirvis, 52, an ice cream truck driver and part-time comedian from Redford Township, attends matches dressed like wrestler Hulk Hogan and calls himself Roddy Hogan after the Hulkster's nemesis Roddy Piper.
"I should be in L.A. doing standup comedy," he said. "I should be a millionaire."
Good always prevails
Like the high-brow novels student Diane Hussein reads for college, pro wrestling teaches its fans about the eternal verities: good triumphs over evil, hard work is rewarded and hubris punished, cheaters lose in the end.
And it's more fun to attend a wrestling match than forage through Thomas Pynchon.
Hussein, 20, who matriculates at the University of Michigan in Dearborn, said she gets swept up in the soap opera played out by a half-ton of undulating, beefy humanity.
The fact that the outcome is preordained is a plus, not a minus, she said. The problem with going to Pistons or Wings games is that the good guy doesn't always win. In wrestling, not only does good eventually prevail but it invariably does so after mounting a comeback from death's door, emerging triumphant.
"You should just sit back and take it with a grain of salt. It's almost like a guilty pleasure."
Original article can be found here (http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070330/ENT0101/703300432/1032/ENT).
Wrestling fans pin down fun
Obsessed followers gear up for WrestleMania
Francis X. Donnelly / The Detroit News
At wrestling matches, they paint their faces, dress like super villains, give themselves bombastic nicknames, make obscene gestures and strut around with oversized championship belts. And that's just the fans.
Sometimes they even fight each other but, unlike the wrestling matches, the battles in the stands are real.
Go ahead and laugh. Wrestling fans don't care. They've heard all the insults.
Most customers realize wrestling isn't real. Their emotions are as scripted as the action in the ring. And that's the point, they said.
They're stars -- ones of minute wattage, to be sure, but stars, nonetheless -- in the ever-expanding billion-dollar constellation of professional wrestling.
"There are some strange people at wrestling matches," said Richard Burkard, 68, a retired car salesman from Harper Woods who has been attending for more than six decades.
The supernova of this strange galaxy is WrestleMania, four hours of orchestrated, choreographed mayhem that comes to Ford Field on Sunday.
The annual event is wildly popular because it culminates all the byzantine plots of sex, betrayal and revenge from the past 12 months of matches, fans said.
Among those attending Sunday will be Rick Achberger, 38, a cell phone district manager who attends 40 matches a year around the country.
Achberger, who often sits in the front row with a dozen inflammatory signs and playfully argues with the wrestlers, has become such a fixture at events that other fans refer to him as the Sign Guy.
All those trips have left him $50,000 in debt.
"I'm like the wrestling version of Carrot Top," he said.
'I'm a little too obsessed'
At the start of a wrestling show Monday at the Allstate Arena in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Ill., star Stone Cold Steve Austin talked to the sold-out crowd with a handheld microphone.
Austin, a 252-pound adrenal gland whose head is completely shaved, had the look of most wrestlers: wild eyes, tight jaw, perpetual scowl. It's the face of barely contained fake rage.
Every time he paused during his diatribe against wrestling mogul Vince McMahon, the crowd responded with Austin's catch phrase, "What?" The bullet-headed wrestler and the 17,500 fans formed a cadence like the audience of a rock concert singing its favorite song.
Watching the televised spectacle from her home in Royal Oak was 16-year-old Fayth Yono, who yelled at her TV, referring to McMahon as "McWoman."
"I'm way over-obsessed with wrestling," she allowed. "I'm a little too obsessed."
Later in the Rosemont show, when the hated McMahon bounded into the arena with an exaggerated strut, arms pumping wildly, the crowd erupted with a flurry of thumbs pointing down.
After a night of head butts, heart punches, body slams, eye gouging, cobra clutches and atomic spine crushes, no gladiator was bleeding and all left the ring on their feet.
It's like reading a comic book where the characters leap off the page -- and hit their foe with a wheelbarrow.
WHOMP! SPLAT!! OOOF!!!
Eric Sirvis, 52, an ice cream truck driver and part-time comedian from Redford Township, attends matches dressed like wrestler Hulk Hogan and calls himself Roddy Hogan after the Hulkster's nemesis Roddy Piper.
"I should be in L.A. doing standup comedy," he said. "I should be a millionaire."
Good always prevails
Like the high-brow novels student Diane Hussein reads for college, pro wrestling teaches its fans about the eternal verities: good triumphs over evil, hard work is rewarded and hubris punished, cheaters lose in the end.
And it's more fun to attend a wrestling match than forage through Thomas Pynchon.
Hussein, 20, who matriculates at the University of Michigan in Dearborn, said she gets swept up in the soap opera played out by a half-ton of undulating, beefy humanity.
The fact that the outcome is preordained is a plus, not a minus, she said. The problem with going to Pistons or Wings games is that the good guy doesn't always win. In wrestling, not only does good eventually prevail but it invariably does so after mounting a comeback from death's door, emerging triumphant.
"You should just sit back and take it with a grain of salt. It's almost like a guilty pleasure."
Original article can be found here (http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070330/ENT0101/703300432/1032/ENT).