Do you hide being a pro wrestling fan?

[goodhelmet]

OK, so I heard Dylan say on a podcast (maybe it was the HHH one I moderated) that everyone he doesn't hide his pro wrestling fandom from anyone. Then in another thread, Matt D made a comment about "embarrassed" wreslting fans. I thought about it and I don't hide it from my closest friends. However, I definitely don't mention it ever at work and I would probably deny it if it came up or keep my mouth shut. I have a huge network of relatives who knew I liked wrestling as a kid but I don't think i would volunteer the information to anyone now that i have 20,000 wrestling DVDs. I wear a handful of wrestling T-shirts but none of them mention wrestling. So, how open are you in your pro wrestling fandom? Will you ever come out of the closet?

[Guest TheGreatPuma]

I celebrate and love being a pro wrestling fan. Especially to women. And as tempting/fun as it is to elaborate on that I will keep it at that.

[KrisZ]

I have never hid it and there are so many people especially down here who has watched wrestling in the past or now that there is a lot of common ground.

[Loss]

Nobody knows. I've gotten mad at my partner for mentioning it to our friends before. My friends are mostly urban gays and hipsters. What am I supposed to do with that and wrestling?

[Loss]

On a separate note, I'm 34 years old with a child now and I've been thinking I need new friends anyway. So maybe I'll start putting it out there.

[Matt D]

You know, you two could have named the board a little less conspicuously if you were trying to stay closeted on it. Sheesh. It's easy to explain away deathvalleydriver. It's a bit harder to explain away prowrestlingonly when someone walks behind your cpu.

 

I was closeted to even my wife until October. It was just sort of the nature of our lives. When we finally decided to have a relationship years ago, we started out long distance for the most part so my life was very compartmentalized. People in college knew. My family knew. I just didn't show her that aspect of my life. We moved in the same month Benoit died and it stopped mattering much. I got a little embarrassed when someone would bring it up and I'd shrug it aside. My best man (who went to shows with me in college) mentioned it in the wedding speech as a throwaway thing. I brushed it aside.

 

I just did it on my own time and it really didn't negatively impact our lives. I came clean though because it was getting ridiculous not to. She always went on record of hating it in general but in specific I think she was sad that I thought she'd judge me poorly for it (and that's why I'm trying to get a friend at work to come out to his partner about his Days of Our Lives obsession. It's just not worth it in the end). It's still a little weird. I've a 12 year old stepson too and I've been in his life since he was three and he knows how to lock in a cobra clutch or a figure four, but we don't talk about it or watch it together. If he comes to it on his own I'll support it but I've seen too many wrestlers I followed die or be revealed to be horrible or both. I just can't draw him in. I think he did find the signed JJ Dillon pic someone got for me recently the other day but there were no questions.

 

I was trying to explain Parv and Johnny to my wife last night.

 

As for the rest of my life. Nope. I work for a fairly prestigious international organization. It's the last thing I'd talk about. I have some DVDVRers that I've known for the better part of 5-12 years on facebook but they're all cordoned off and I have tags controlled.

[Loss]

Just have to post here that it's amazing the parallels between being a closeted wrestling fan and a closeted gay person. Some of the things posted here are frighteningly similar. Seeing that is making me question my outlook on keeping my fandom to myself.

[goodhelmet]

Well, in the past, if you were a closeted wrestling fan, people would just laugh at you. Being gay, you could be risking your,life or livelihood.

[Matt D]

Well, in the past, if you were a closeted wrestling fan, people would just laugh at you. Being gay, you could be risking your,life or livelihood.

 

Though I imagine if I was outright open about being a wrestling fan, it'd negatively impact how I was regarded at work. I mean I MIGHT be able to swing it because I'm pretty good at bullshitting, but I could in all honesty see that impacting my ability to get a promotion (and maybe surprisingly enough, probably far more so than if I was homosexual, though I don't want to belittle the experiences others might have or have had there. I'm just commenting on my unique situation.).

[tim]

Pretty closeted. I would be embarassed if people knew. The unfortunate fact is if people know you like wrestling they are probably going to think lesser of you in any number of ways, specifically probably that you're less smart. I mean, if there were a way I could be "out" and only the people I already know well knew, then I guess I wouldn't care because they'd know me well enough to know that my liking pro wrestling isn't a reflection of me being dull or something, but if I were "out" then invariably some people I only know casually would also know, people I'm meeting for the first time might quickly find out before I make much of an impression otherwise, etc. This is probably the reason anyone else on here is "closeted" is so.

 

As it is I have a good friend who I watched wrestling with some years ago, even got him into Japanese wrestling a bit, so he knows I still watch to some degree but we don't live too close to each other anymore and largely only talk online. My best friend thinks it's pretty much only that I somewhat keep up with it by watching a RAW every other month or something.

[Loss]

Part of it also is that I don't want to be some know-it-all jerk to people who just see it as a TV show and forget about it until it's on next week. It's not my mindset but it doesn't mean it can't be theirs. If they enjoy something I don't, I don't want to tell them that they're wrong or try to engage them in a critical discussion about it. That seems snooty. So that's part of it. I don't really know what to say about wrestling to people who watch wrestling but don't watch like we do here. And I don't want to be condescending, so sometimes it's just better left unsaid. I would be just as annoyed finding some early 20s punk who visits Wrestlezone and thinks WWE should fire John Cena.

 

Oh and Matt, I worked from home for years before recently devoting myself full-time to parenthood. It became easy.

[Ricky Jackson]

I'm totally open about my fandom. I dunno, but to me it's just wrestling. Who cares if I like it or not? Most people I know don't give a shit about wrestling, but they could really care less if I like it or not. I don't care if they like crappy music or movies or reality TV. It's never affected my relationships with anyone. Well, I'm sure my wife thinks I waste too much time on it and I have occasionally pissed her off with PWO and doing podcasts, but whatever. She still loves me.

[shoe]

I never mention my wrestling hobby. My closest friends do know, but not to the extent of how much I like it. I never mention wrestling at work, never to girls. Usually when I go to a live show I go solo. I avoid having people over because I don't want to explain all the binders in the corner of my living room full of wrestling discs.

[goodhelmet]

Wait... what? You don't want to explain to people who or what a goodhelmet is???

[Graham Crackers]

Maybe I have some sort of wrestling fan radar. At every job I have ever had I have found a few coworkers who liked pro wrestling. They've never been the level of obsessive fan you see on these boards but enough that we could occasionally talk about it. One of my current coworkers is a die hard WWE fan and she organizes PPV screenings at bars. One of my old coworkers grew up in Puerto Rico and used to talk to me about WWC, IWA, and FMW. So these aren't just people who watched when they were kids.

 

I'll add that it's not like I do some sort of disreputable job. I work in early childhood education and I have a lot of experience teaching at various NYC museums as well. These coworkers who liked wrestling were reasonably intelligent and normal folks.

 

Outside of my day job I have surrounded myself with artists, sideshow performers, roller derby chicks, drag queens, and burlesque dancers. Many of those people have also been wrestling fans and those that weren't were always pretty accepting, probably because they have all had passions that seemed ridiculous to other people.

 

It's a shame so any of you guys feel this weird pressure about your fandom. Anyone who judges you for something like this is an asshole.

[ohtani's jacket]

I don't exactly shout it from the rooftops, but everyone at work knows about it. I haven't really gotten any shit for it, though.

[Jimmy Redman]

Part of it also is that I don't want to be some know-it-all jerk to people who just see it as a TV show and forget about it until it's on next week. It's not my mindset but it doesn't mean it can't be theirs. If they enjoy something I don't, I don't want to tell them that they're wrong or try to engage them in a critical discussion about it. That seems snooty. So that's part of it. I don't really know what to say about wrestling to people who watch wrestling but don't watch like we do here. And I don't want to be condescending, so sometimes it's just better left unsaid. I would be just as annoyed finding some early 20s punk who visits Wrestlezone and thinks WWE should fire John Cena.

 

I feel the same way. The only people I know in real life who watch wrestling are the kind of super casual fan you'd never be able to have a wrestling discussion with. When it comes up they tell me how much they love Randy Orton, love Triple H, when's Undertaker coming back, I hate Brock Lesnar because he hurts people for real, calling Bryan "goatface" non-ironically, etc. I never know what to say to that.

 

In July 2011 me and my friends went to Melbourne for a holiday. I had accepted that I was going to miss MITB live and just watch a replay when we got back...and then Punk's promo happened. At that point there was no way I was missing that shit, so when the day came (PPVs air morning/lunchtime Monday in Australia) I left them in the middle of shopping or whatever and went to an internet cafe to watch the PPV live. One of my friends who was with me on the trip is a big wrestling fan, and had NO IDEA why I did this, what the big deal was about Punk or his promo or why I wanted to watch the show. No idea.

 

Experiences like these are why I never, ever underestimate that there are the dreaded "casual fans" out there who are completely unlike us in every way. Like in the Bryan thread, this is why I was so adamant when people were skeptically asking if fans would actually believe Hunter when he calls Bryan a goatfaced troll and a B+ player. Yes, yes they would. I know they would because I am friends with them and they happily tell me!

 

I don't hide my fandom. I try not to shout it from the rooftops, but my friends know. My family knows. I wouldn't bring it up really, but I wouldn't deny it either. Being a girl it's not really likely to come up in conversation randomly.

[Jordan]

I've never really been too closeted with it, but I can honestly be a pretty shy person so at the same time I wasn't just going around and letting everyone know I was a fan. But if it came up I've never been embarrassed about it. I had wrestling friends in elementary and middle school, but don't really remember anyone bringing it up in high school, so I just carried on the interest on my own. Interestingly enough, so far in college I've met quite a few fellow wrestling fans. Freshman roommate was pretty big into it.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

I mostly hide that I watch the current WWE stuff. If I am talking wrestling on Facebook, or something, it's in a private group. I'm more open with my love of old school stuff, because there are a lot of people who have nostalgia for it and it can be a conversation piece. I also don't take it serious in situations that it does come up.

 

I'm pretty self-deprecating when it comes to my love of wrestling, and I'm sure a lot of fans have become deft at using that tactic to diffuse situations. If someone's already dismissed wrestling, you know better than to try to convert them or explain why you love it.

[Jmare007]

Most people that know me know that I love wrestling, but besides a couple of girlfriends, they have no idea who much I love and how much I watch/have watched. Someone might bring up wrestling when telling a joke or a weird reference and I jump in and say I've always like it but the thing ends there, nobody has ever asked me much about it because no one gives a shit

 

But I gotta say, wrestling doesn't have nearly the bad rep it has in the US here in Chile. Like, it's seen as a nerdy thing if you still watch it but it was huge here in the Attitude Era and had a considerable resurgence between 05' and 08', so there's a whole generation that remembers it fondly - and those who didn't watch it, don't really give a damn about it - there's no baggage from decades of being portrayed as a joke or just "fake fighting" even though wrestling had been on TV in Chile since the 60's (and had a couple of "booms", so to speak). I mean, it was never the coolest thing to be a fan of or anything like that, but it certainly isn't as bad as in the US.

[Matt D]

I mostly hide that I watch the current WWE stuff. If I am talking wrestling on Facebook, or something, it's in a private group. I'm more open with my love of old school stuff, because there are a lot of people who have nostalgia for it and it can be a conversation piece. I also don't take it serious in situations that it does come up.

 

I'm pretty self-deprecating when it comes to my love of wrestling, and I'm sure a lot of fans have become deft at using that tactic to diffuse situations. If someone's already dismissed wrestling, you know better than to try to convert them or explain why you love it.

 

There's something to this. If you say you like obscure 80s mid south or are partaking in a lucha set from 30 years ago, there's some social protection there.

[JerryvonKramer]

I've become a lot less closeted in the past year or so because 1. wrestling is so far off most people's radars here that it might as well be "I'm into origami" for how much anyone cares and 2. I reckon most people who know me just chalk it up as "just another eccentricity" any way.

[Kevin Ridge]

For being a fan so long it really is not something I put a whole lot of thought into anymore. So very fascinating to me to read about other people. None of my current friends are wrestling fans but I now wonder if any of them are closeted. Keep my level of fandom to myself. I view wrestling as just this hobby of mine for me alone that I enjoy. Some of my family probably knows I went to a few live shows. My nephews were really into it a couple years ago but I never talked to them about it. Though I was not pleased when I found out they got into my DVD collection at parents house. The collector in me was horrified at them scratching up my stuff and breaking it.

 

I go to shows alone myself. Heck, I go to movies alone too. Not something that bothers me. I did enjoy those wrestling viewing parties back in 2000 that I went to. It is a lot of fun to sit around with a couple people and watch some wrestling. Would probably enjoy watching WWE PPVs a lot more if I could still do that. It would have to be someone on the same level as me though for me to watch 80s sets and Yearbooks with.

 

Amazed at you married folks on this board getting away with the amount of wrestling you can watch. I keep my fandom very quiet when it comes to girlfriends. It may come out that I watched some WWE. I have a big shelf with all my movies in my living room. My wrestling stuff is in boxes in my bedroom. But my collection is starting to get pretty big now so harder to hide.

[Boon]

I keep myself to myself when it comes to how much I watch. My girlfriend and my dad knows how much I watch as they see me watching it or how much I've Sky Plused, plus my dad was a huge WOS fan in the 70s and 80s. Plus a shit load of DVDs come though the door, he's always signing for them.

 

As for friends, I don't mention it, more because it doesn't come up, and I can put it down to myself being a causal fan watching on Sky Sports in passing, rather than someone sitting there watching 1987 Memphis.

 

Funny story is a friend of mine came over and saw my dupe out and loads of DVDs on the side and asked what I was doing, I explained, he seemed pretty cool with it, all things considering he is a police officer.

 

My dad recently brought it up in a group discussion at the pub with some causal fans, who were amazed I had a copy of 2000 Royal Rumble and could easily get hold of a copy of Summerslam 1994. I showed them a PDF of my DVD collection, I honestly believe they didn't realise so much was available when it came to tv footage etc. I explained I had some Mid Atlantic from 1978 and 32 discs of Midnight Express matches and they were more concerned I had Goldberg winning the title on Nitro on DVD.

 

So to answer the question, I don't hide it, it's just less effort explaining why the "Bill and Buddy Show" is better than last weeks Miz TV with Kofi Kingston, because why would it be? Is a football match from 1987 ever going to match up to City-Barca this week? I doubt it? But Older Pompey fans will tell me that winning the old division 2 was better than Milan at Fratton Park.

 

"What really that commentator Jerry Lawler is one of your favourites?" Or "Ric Flair was rubbish when he was in WWF when we were younger". Where do I go with that? I'm going to sound like I'm lying of being smug if I reply with anything?

 

I think someone mentioned earlier, too causal fans it's a lot harder explaining why you think something is better without looking like a know it all or snotty about it, so I just don't get into a conversation about it.

 

It's always nice to see on facebook when something wrestling related gets mentioned, and I recently saw that my best friend at middle school brother is actually a pro wrestler here in the uk under the name Chuck Cryus, especially as I don't remember him showing much of an interest in wrestling due to them not having sky when we were younger.

[DR Ackermann]

I usually avoid having conversations with people about it, but if it comes up I will admit that I like pro wrestling. I avoid talking about it with people because it would just take too much time and work to explain why I like it. When I was a kid I would watch it with my mom a lot and talk to her about it all the time. She seemed to take an interest in it, but when I got older I realized she didn't actually enjoy it at all and was just being a good mom.

 

I started a new job last summer, right around the time I started to really get back into wrestling. Anyway, I found out that a guy at work watches RAW every week and he told me that wrestling was his favorite thing. I talked to him about wrestling a few times and he told me that Sin Cara was his favorite wrestler and that he hated the Shield because they wouldn't leave CM Punk alone. I didn't to talk to him very much about it after that. He' told me the other day that he's dropping his Hulu account for the WWE Network when it comes out.

 

My roommate loves wrestling though and it was partly because of him that I got back into it. Outside of this place, he's the only person I talk to extensively about wrestling. He found my coworker's viewpoint fascinating because its diametrically opposed to the perspective you find online.

 

My girlfriend is bored to death by it but she will watch with me sometimes. She likes Tajiri & despises Ric Flair after seeing how he acted on an episode of Celebrity Wife Swap.